A Detective in Love

by H. R. F. Keating

  Right. Go in.

  ‘And you, Mr Youngman, did you visit Wimbledon last year?’

  A long, perhaps fearful, pause.

  ‘Come on, you’ve been following Bubbles Xingara round the tournaments for years, haven’t you?’

  ‘No. No, that’s not true. I hadn’t heard of her until she began to get into all the papers and they said what a little beauty she was. Thought I’d drop down to Eastbourne and see her then, and, when I did, I knew she was just wonderful. Wonderful.’

  ‘And then you took to following her wherever she went. Yes?’

  Had he, the bouncy little old man, pestered Bubbles? Pestered her once too often? Tried perhaps to seize hold of her and give her a kiss? Been treated to some stinging put-down? And then, the Leven at dawn ... ?

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Dare say I’d have liked to have gone wherever she went. Oh, I would have done. I would. Yes, indeed. But couldn’t afford it, couldn’t afford it. Fare to America, all that. No, no, had to be content with whenever she happened to play in England. Exhibition games, Eastbourne, and then I’d get myself a ticket for the whole of Wimbledon.’

  So, not quite such a persistent worshipper? And, worse, he’s slipping away from me. Change course.

  ‘But you’re not at Wimbledon now, are you, Mr Youngman? Because something’s happened to Bubbles, hasn’t it?’

  Little Angus Youngman took a faltering step backwards, allowed himself to sink into one of his scuffed leather armchairs.

  ‘Poor Bubbles. Poor little kid.’

  Wait. Is this it after all? The beginning of the cough? Those tears forming in his blue, blue eyes?

  ‘Yes, poor Bubbles, as you say. Poor dead, murdered Bubbles. Now, why don’t you tell us all about it? All about it, everything. Just tell us.’

  ‘Tell you?’

  He looked up.

  ‘Mr Youngman, just what happened down by the Leven?’

  ‘I — I don’t know. You mean where Bubbles was murdered? But how should I know anything about that? Anything more than was on the television, in the papers?’

  ‘There’s one very good reason why you might know more about it. Isn’t there, Mr Youngman?’

  ‘Reason? What reason?’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us, Mr Youngman? Why don’t you?’

  ‘I — I don’t know what you mean?’

  ‘I think you do. Weren’t you there? There by the river at Adam and Eve House?’

  ‘No.’

  The word shot out of him as if an internal spring had been triggered.

  ‘You were at Adam and Eve House when Bubbles was killed, weren’t you?’

  ‘No. I said no. No, I wasn’t. I — I’ve never been there. I didn’t know that was where she — where Bubbles lived till I read it in the paper the day after she was killed. I didn’t. I didn’t.’

  ‘But you wrote to her, didn’t you? You wrote while she was still alive? This.’

  She pulled out the second plastic wallet and pushed it in front of his face. He stood for a long moment staring at the first of the three sheets of the chaotic outpouring. It seemed almost as if he was failing to recognize what it was he was looking at. But then he spoke.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I sent that to her. I’m so pleased she saw it. You see — You see, I loved her. Yes, I loved her. I — I know I’m much too old for her. People would think it’s ridiculous, but I did love her. I loved little Bubbles more than I ever loved anyone in my life.’

  She looked down at him as he shrank sprawling back into the big leather chair.

  Very different from Maybe it’s because I’m a gentleman. And what does that tell me?

  A sudden descent. What does that tell me? It tells me that, however little strength it may have taken to drive that smooth spike into Bubbles Xingara’s neck, the feeble creature in front of me now is very unlikely to have done it.

  As I should at least have suspected — the thought came tumbling at once into her head — if I hadn’t been thinking with half of myself about something else. About Anselm.

  No, don’t dodge.

  What I should have remembered was that this screed here in my hand was sent, not to Adam and Eve House, but to Bubbles care of the Lawn Tennis Association. Didn’t he just confirm that? I’m so pleased she saw it. So this silly, shrinking old man never knew where Bubbles lived until he heard it on TV. After her death.

  Yes, damn it, damn it, damn it. Another wild-goose chase.

  *

  It seemed, when Harriet got back to her office in Levenham, as if wild-goose chases of the sort that bedevil every eye-catching major inquiry were to be the order of the day. She had scarcely caught up with her messages when one of the DCs in the Incident Room below rang through to say they had a weirdo on an outside line.

  ‘She’s insisting on talking to you yourself, ma’am, the Hard Detective,’ he said, and then gave a suppressed chuckle. ‘Or at least her actual words were the Firm Detective. But I guess that’s you, ma’am.’

  ‘Right. But I don’t want to know. You must have dealt with women like her before. Probably wants to tell me she could lay hands on the murderer by psychic means. Put one of the women DCs on the line, and let her think she’s talking to me.’

  She put her phone down and turned back to the pile of reports that had accumulated even in the short time that she had been over in Boreham.

  But before long there came a tap at her door and, in answer to her sharply irritated Come, one of the Birchester WDCs came in.

  ‘It’s Johnson, isn’t it? What is it?’

  Putting an evidently brave face on it, WDC Johnson advanced to the desk.

  ‘Ma’am, I’ve just been taking a call from the woman you said I was to let think I was you.’

  ‘Well, how did that go? Bark a bit, did you?’

  WDC Johnson grinned.

  ‘I think I managed to convey I was heading the team without resorting to anything like that.’

  ‘So why have you come to me now?’

  ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry but — well, I’m sort of sure there’s more to this than some crank trying it on. Ma’am, she sort of said, as far as I could make out from all her toings and froings, she was wanting to confess to the job.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Johnson. We’ve had half a dozen like that already.’

  ‘But, ma’am, there was something ... I mean, she sounded pretty barmy a lot of the time. But there was one bit that made me wonder if she knew something.’

  ‘So what did she say? Exactly.’

  ‘It was this. I think I’ve got the words. I speared her. I had to do it. I thrust the javelin in. Then she went off on a great rambling spiel about conquering the Evil One. Or something. She was speaking so fast, I couldn’t really make it out.’

  ‘A javelin? She spoke about a javelin? You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely, ma’am.’

  Harriet thought.

  Not certain just what a javelin’s like. Used in athletics. So ... So, yes, it could very well have the sort of spike that ...

  ‘You got a name? An address?’

  ‘She suddenly went all shy when I asked her, ma’am. I think she may have cottoned on she wasn’t speaking to the Firm Detective. To you, ma’am. But she had said something about somewhere called Grainham Hall. At least I think it was Grainham. She was gabbling away so fast.’

  ‘No, you’re quite likely right. Grainham Hall’s a big independent school just north of Birchester. And — And it’s got a reputation for its sporting record. So there could well be javelins about. And, what’s more, Bubbles Xingara was once a pupil there. Good work, Johnson. Good work.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ And an unstoppable blush.

  It might, she thought when Johnson had left, it just might be kosher. Confessions, of course, two a penny. But those few words Johnson quoted. I thrust the javelin in. As far as I know there’s been nothing in the papers or anywhere else in the media about the weapon being a javelin.

  She picked up her green internal
phone and got through to the Incident Room.

  ‘Is DI Brent there? Put him on, if he is.’

  Damn it all, she had thought, DI Brent — oh, hell, Anselm then — is a senior officer under my command. Just because ... Just because, damn and blast it, I think I am in love with him. No, just because I am in love with him I can’t cease making use of him.

  But perhaps it’s better if I do it without us coming face to face. That last time, watching him admit to defeat in Marseilles and having to stop myself defending him, was more than enough.

  As it was, his voice over the phone, with that touch of Levenham burr, almost undid her. She had to grip hard on the edge of the desk.

  ‘DI. We’ve had a call from a woman at Grainham Hall, where Bubbles was once at school, you know.’

  ‘I remember, ma’am.’

  A steady enough reply. So long as this could be kept to that level.

  ‘She’s a confessor, or seems to be. But she may just possibly be the real thing. She said something — I didn’t take her pretty confused call myself, WDC Johnson did — about having thrust in a javelin. Presumably one of the ones used in athletics. And that’s made me think this ought to be further investigated. You’ve seen that wound. It could well have been inflicted by something like a javelin. So, listen, she wouldn’t give a name, but she did indicate she came from Grainham Hall. Talk to Johnson, get as much out of her as you can. Then first thing in the morning go over there and see if you can track her down.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  The phone at the far end put down. All done in safety.

  *

  At home that night as she dropped into her usual chair and took the first long swallow of the whisky-and-ginger John had brought her she told him — she would tell no one else — how wrong she had got it about old Mr Youngman. She kept back, however, not without a pang of conscience, the reason she had not taken into account that the love-tormented scrawlings of the Angus letter had been sent to Bubbles via the Lawn Tennis Association in London. Anselm, if he was to be spoken of, must be left to another day.

  After all, she argued, John’s said more than once over the years since he became the Majestic’s chief negotiator and liable to long stays abroad that if in his absence I felt some overwhelming sexual urge I could do what I allow him to do. But, no, if this is different ... If Aphrodite really has come in on Eros’ heels, it’s all very much more serious. But sex and love. They’re not to be measured in percentages. I can’t stick some litmus paper into my head and see whether it comes out blue (swift attack of lust) or pink (in grip of obsessive love).

  And, even if it is the coils that can knot two human beings together so blindly, those coils can fall away. Love doesn’t always last for ever, never mind what the romantic poets say. If I am in love with Anselm Brent at this moment, it doesn’t mean I still shall be in — what? — another moment’s time. Or, in a day’s time. Or a week’s. I don’t have to be in love with him for ever. Look at what nearly happened between John and myself at the very beginning. When, after wrapping bloody Aphrodite’s coils round and round myself just knowing this sexy chap as John, I learnt he was John Piddock. I felt the coils loosen then. I swear I did. I can recall the moment now. So maybe when I learn something about Anselm, something however odd, that jars horribly, then it’ll all go away.

  And it’d be stupid to do a big confession thing to John now if that’s going to happen.

  But I don’t want it to. I don’t want it to.

  But hardly had she finished her tale about dapper little Angus Youngman when abruptly all the paths seemed to be leading towards just that confession.

  ‘Well, yes,’ John had said, ‘didn’t I tell you the other day that age makes no difference to the omnipresence of the sexual impulse? From eighty down to eight, we’re all liable at any moment to be struck down.’

  She reacted to that ominous we’re all liable more sharply than she might have done.

  ‘Oh, nonsense. Eighty I’ll concede. God knows, I’ve just had all the example of that I could want. But eight? No. Never.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Exaggerating a bit, I admit. Led away by a piece of alliteration. But up that figure just a little, to, say, thirteen, and you’re well inside the target area. I don’t know about thirteen-year-old schoolgirls of your time, but I promise you when I was that age the hormones were really throbbing. And not only in me, in every other boy I knew. We none of us could wait till, as the more sophisticated among us put it, we’d got rid of our virginity. We were swept onwards by the cloud of sexuality, about which we didn’t have the faintest understanding, on towards that simple generative act it seeks to make us arrive at.’

  ‘Well, to be honest, I don’t remember too much about myself at thirteen. I suppose I did know about your simple act, though I dare say I may have had friends who didn’t. But it’s true enough, by the time we’d got to fourteen or so most of the girls at school could think of little else but boys, unless someone held their heads, our heads, my head, firmly down to our textbooks, or perhaps to hockey sticks.’

  ‘Exactly. But how much was ever said in public about that, forty years ago? No, it’s really only more recently that the ever-interesting subject — and it’s not called that for nothing — has been allowed to come to the forefront the way it has.’

  ‘Well, I wish it hadn’t. Think how much more interesting the papers would be if there was something other than the sex-angle to every story.’

  ‘Ah, but, you see, there is a sex-angle to every story. Or — must stop exaggerating — to almost every story. And it’s not always so obvious that it gets into print. And even when it did, in the pre-Victorian days for example, it quickly enough got supplanted by a version people were happier with. Nobody — or, well, hardly anybody — wants actually to acknowledge the omnipresence of sex. Altogether too much to cope with.’

  ‘Another John Piddock theory looming into view? You’re ruddy incorrigible.’

  ‘No, let me give you an instance. Take the eighteenth century in England. What do we think of it as being?’

  Harriet blinked.

  ‘You want me to answer that?’

  ‘Yes, come on. Put your hand up. Miss, miss, I know. I know.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if I do. But I suppose I’d say it’s sort of elegance. A land of art and elegance. Didn’t somebody call it that? You see, I did read books, once.’

  ‘Yes, well, thank you, answer I hoped for. An age of elegance and good manners. But did you know that in London at that time there were as many as twenty-five thousand women prostitutes? In the trade, as it’s often put. Because it was trade, and trade of considerable proportions, affecting — and this is my point — the whole economy of the city. Ubiquitous sex. There was a guide to the various women available, names, specialities, the lot. All right, the same thing, more or less, goes on in Birchester today, and most of the other big cities. But in those days London was a much smaller place, and so these activities really affected the whole of society, economically just as much as morally. There were fortunes to be made in the trade. One woman, Moll King she was called, started out with a coffee house, that’s to say, a brothel, and ended up building a whole street in a fashionable part of north London. It was known then as Moll King Street. And astronomical prices were paid for sex, as much as twenty guineas. God knows what that would be in today’s money. And more. More was paid by one lady of quality, fifty guineas, to be, I quote, well mounted.’

  ‘John, is all this getting to you? Or what?’

  A self-deprecating laugh.

  ‘No, not really. Or only in a strictly intellectual sense. Your virtue is safe, madam. At least for the present.’

  Well, yes, she thought. But the trouble is I don’t want it to be safe. Not safe from Anselm anyhow. Oh, God. Oh, God, I’d like to be in bed with him. Now, now, now.

  She might even have told John then, after all. I could do, she thought. Didn’t he once get tangled in Aphrodite’s long hair hi
mself? That woman in Delhi he eventually told me about.

  But John was clattering on.

  ‘No, let me give you another example. A better one really. Sex between man and woman affecting the destiny of at least one nation. Queen Elizabeth the First. Did you know she was, it’s fully come to light recently in a biography by — Damn it, I’ve forgotten the name. A Professor Somebody. No, wait. I made a note.’

  Harriet waited, amusedly patient, while he rummaged in the pocket of his slightly the worse-for-wear summer jacket. Half a dozen tattered and battered pieces of paper, cards and receipts, examined, discarded. Then he hit on what he was looking for, an old envelope.

  ‘Yes. Of course. Starkey, Professor David Starkey. And he said Elizabeth was sexually molested by the married man who was both her uncle and her guardian, Thomas Seymour. Contemporary documents go into some detail. So, guess what effect that had, first, on her, turning her into a woman who distrusted all men. And then, more importantly, that distrust affected the course of national life. She refused to marry, became the Virgin Queen, although old Eros put in front of her various courtiers and at least one foreign prince. And that meant she never did her duty in providing an heir to the English throne. So afterwards what happened? Chaos. Rebellion. Every kind of trouble, and all because of the ubiquitous cloud.’

  ‘Well, I certainly didn’t know all that. And I see, yes, it’s a good argument for the power of your great god Eros.’

  ‘You should read more. It’d make you less ignorant.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, mastermind. But has it ever occurred to you that a really major inquiry such as the Bubbles Xingara business probably spawns more words than ever Shakespeare wrote? And who has to read those words? Every one of them eventually? Yours truly.’

  ‘Okay, okay. As you know, I’d be the last to denigrate that sort of reading, whether in the end it produces an answer or not.’

  ‘Or not may be right in this case. Nothing so doomed to failure as what we call a stranger murder. I could be looking for almost anyone in the whole United Kingdom. Or, worse, the tennis world stretches from America to Australia, and Bubbles could have become a target for a really obsessed stalker from anywhere.’