“I’ll explain later.”
“But Carter, listen—I don’t think we should discuss this mess with anyone right now—”
“I told you—I’ve already done it. Oh, and by the way, you should know about my one lie. I told the clerics I made an anonymous call to tip off the police once I was on my way back to London. I didn’t want them getting hung up on the morality of—”
“Of course not. But why continue to confide in these guys? After all, what can two clergymen possibly know about the world you and I move in?”
“More than you can begin to imagine,” I said drily, and headed back into the study.
He followed more slowly, trailing behind, his fists shoved deep into his pockets and reluctance engraved in every line of his tense, shadowed face.
II
“Have a seat here at the table with me,” said Lewis sociably to Kim. “By the way, may I offer you some whisky?”
Kim was so surprised that it took him a moment to say: “Thank you. With soda, please.”
Lewis disappeared. When Kim and I were both sitting down I said to Nicholas: “We’ve decided to have an exchange of information.”
Kim said abruptly: “You mean you’ve decided. I’m only going along with this because—” But he clearly could not think of a reason which did not look like a loss of face.
“I expect,” said Nicholas peacefully, “you want to make a gesture of support to your wife.”
Kim looked relieved to have his behaviour explained in a way which showed him in a passable light, but he was still shifting uneasily in his chair when Lewis returned with a glass of whisky and soda.
“What you two have to take on board,” said Kim after he had taken a sip, “is that I love my wife. I know it must be looking to you as if we’re going through a rough patch, but we’re going to win through. My marriage means everything to me.”
Lewis murmured: “I understand you haven’t been married long.”
“Just a few months.”
Lewis took out his packet of cigarettes. “Smoke?”
“I gave up. Except for the occasional cigar.”
“Congratulations! That’s a feat I’ve never been able to achieve. Will it bother you if I—”
“No, go ahead.”
This odd little social exchange, reminiscent of the early stages of a cocktail party before the drink had started to flow, somehow seemed to lighten the atmosphere, normalising it, finally achieving the conversion of a violent scene into a business meeting.
“Carter,” said Nicholas, slipping effortlessly into the role of chairman, “since Kim’s made his gesture of support, would you care to reciprocate by giving him a summary of what happened tonight up to the moment when you reached the flat?”
Well accustomed to performing at business meetings, I found myself embarking on a workmanlike narrative.
III
My monologue was only derailed when I revealed my decision to search Sophie’s desk.
“But what did you think you’d find?” demanded Kim, apparently astonished.
“The truth, of course! What else? The truth about your past, the truth about your first marriage—”
“But I’d told you the truth!”
“Let’s just pass that up for now,” said Nicholas, “and stick to the narrative. Go on, Carter.”
“Don’t try and con me,” I said fiercely to Kim. “I’m no whippet with minimal p.q.e. who can’t figure out a fluffed-up contract! If you didn’t have more unpleasant truths to hide, why did you rush to Oakshott to get to Sophie before I did?”
“Hold it,” said Nicholas, determined to rein me in. “We’ll find out exactly what Kim did in a minute. Let’s just complete your story.”
“I rifled the desk,” I said, willing enough to continue now that I had warned Kim not to mess me around, “and found the files which related to legal matters, but the divorce file was missing. There was also a locked drawer which proved to be empty. I then left the house and returned to London. End of story.” I swung back to Kim. “What did you remove from that locked drawer?”
He sighed but admitted willingly enough: “Love-letters. Apparently she’d had an affair some years ago but the man had broken it off.”
“But she was so moral! She was a Christian!”
“Not all Christians are saints.” He gestured to the clerics. “Ask them.”
“I’m afraid that’s true,” said Lewis. “Human nature being what it is, we can’t always live up to our ideals.”
I said to Kim: “I don’t understand your motivation for taking this file.”
“As a matter of fact it was a large brown envelope, not a file. I took it because . . . well, this may sound odd but I felt it was something I could do for Sophie. I didn’t want that piece of gossip to get out into the community where she was respected.”
“I’m sure I’d have felt the same if I’d been you,” said Lewis sympathetically, and added: “I was married once myself.”
“Then you’ll understand my second reason for not wanting the letters to become public: I didn’t want anyone to know my wife had been unfaithful. It was a question of what the feminists call ‘macho pride.’ ”
“Ah well,” said Lewis with a thin little smile and a shrug of his shoulders, “feminists . . .”
Nicholas cleared his throat, as if he felt all this male bonding might prove excessive, and said crisply before I could unleash a response: “Thank you, Carter, for that summary. Now, Kim, perhaps you could start your own narrative by telling us when you made the decision to go down to Surrey.”
Kim drained his glass and held it out to Lewis. “Can I please cadge some more of this stuff?”
The manoeuvre gave him extra time to think, of course. To my dismay I realised he could still be deciding to lie to the back teeth.
IV
“I came out of a long meeting,” said Kim when Lewis returned with the refilled glass, “and was told that Mrs. Mayfield had called.” He paused. “I’m not sure how far I should backtrack to explain about the disturbances in the flat.”
“We’ll get to the disturbances later. Keep going.”
“Well, when I called her back she said Carter had caught her on the podium and accused her of trespass and malicious damage. Carter had already accused me of trashing the place earlier. I said to Elizabeth—to Mrs. Mayfield—that it sounded to me as if Carter would see her presence near Harvey Tower as proof we were engaged in a conspiracy to discredit Sophie, and that Carter was now going to want to see Sophie to find out why she needed to be discredited. I said to Mrs. Mayfield that I’d go straight down to Surrey to work something out, but she advised me against that and offered to see Sophie herself.”
“Obviously the hag got straight into her car and drove down to Oakshott,” I said. “I think—”
“Yes, I can imagine what you think, but you’re wrong. Carter, when I phoned Elizabeth back from my office at ten to six this evening I was calling a number in north London which she had given Mary earlier— after leaving the Barbican she’d gone out to Hendon where she had an engagement tonight.”
“Where she planned to prance around with another of her bloody groups, you mean!”
“I take your point,” said Nicholas swiftly to Kim to keep the narration on track. “You’re saying that if Mrs. Mayfield was in Hendon, not Fulham, she couldn’t have killed Sophie before you arrived on the scene. But how do you know when Sophie died?”
“The body was still warm when I found her, so she couldn’t have been dead long. And incidentally I really didn’t want Elizabeth to go to Oakshott. By that time I was sure appeasement, not intimidation, was my only hope of neutralising Sophie.”
“Would you mind not calling Mayfield Elizabeth?” I said. “It makes me want to puke.”
“Let’s just recap for a moment,” said Nicholas, making another skilful intervention. “You talked to Mrs. Mayfield. She advised you not to go to Oakshott and offered to go herself, but—”
“
—I refused the offer and ignored her advice. After this phone call I immediately tried to get hold of Carter but she wasn’t at the office, and I was just considering the horrific possibility that she’d already left for Oakshott when she rang from the flat and said she was going to be dining out with a friend. (Of course I didn’t believe her.) I then said I was going to be spending the evening at the Savoy with an American colleague of mine, but as soon as the call ended I took a cab to the garage at Harvey Tower. When I saw Carter’s Porsche was still there I was enormously relieved because I knew I’d have that vital headstart on the journey to Oakshott.”
“So you left London.”
“Yes, but I didn’t call ahead to warn Sophie I was coming until I’d taken the Oakshott exit off the A3. I hadn’t intended to call her at all, but then I realised that if I just turned up on her doorstep she might be intimidated and I didn’t want the meeting getting off to a bad start. When there was no reply to my call from the car-phone I was surprised as I didn’t think she went out much in the evenings, but I was confident she wouldn’t be late back. I left a message and drove on.”
“Did you have a key?”
“No, Sophie had the locks changed after I left home. We used to leave a spare key in the outside lavatory, but she’d changed that hiding-place too along with the locks—as I discovered when there was no response to the front doorbell. At that point I tried the handle of the back door more out of frustration than any real hope of finding it unlocked, and lo and behold, it opened. When I found the alarm was off I was concerned because I felt sure Sophie wouldn’t normally have gone out without leaving the house locked and the alarm set, so even before I found the body I was prepared for something bad to have happened.”
“What did you do when you found her?”
“Made sure she was dead. After that I saw the broken heel of her shoe and decided the death was probably an accident, but at the same time I knew she could have been killed by a madman. There was evidence that she’d been gardening . . . someone could have slipped into the house . . . anyway, when I considered the possibility of murder I’m ashamed to say I lost my nerve, so . . .” He hesitated.
“So you took evasive action,” said Lewis, still exuding sympathy.
“Right. I found the answering machine and played back the tape. To my horror I heard Carter had also left a message to say she was on her way, and I certainly didn’t want her involved in the mess. I wiped the tape.”
“Were you worried that Carter might arrive at any moment?”
“No, on the tape she’d said when she was leaving London and I figured I was safe for at least another twenty minutes, particularly since she had to find the house.”
“Was it then that you searched the desk?”
“No, I then drew the ground-floor curtains to give Carter the impression that Sophie had gone out, leaving a few lights on and the curtains closed to await her return after dark. But after I’d done that, yes, I went to the desk and removed the large brown envelope along with the divorce file. I knew her lawyers would have copies of all the divorce correspondence, but I didn’t want her relatives paddling through letters which could have contained very private and personal information.”
“I don’t suppose you were keen on me doing any paddling either,” I said.
“Sweetheart, I told you—I never thought you’d enter the house!”
“Obviously there was no time to read the file at that moment,” said Nicholas, “but did you take a look later?”
“Yes, on the way home I pulled off the A3 and had a quick flick through, but as far as I could see it was all standard stuff, nothing dramatic at all.”
“Sez you,” I muttered before demanding sharply: “Where’s that file now—outside in your car?”
“No, when I finally got back to the Barbican after dining with Warren I took both the file and the envelope of love-letters up to the flat so that I could examine them properly, but as soon as I got inside and saw the mess—”
“Hold it,” said Nicholas. “We’ve skipped a bit. What did you do after your quick flick through the divorce file in the car?”
“I called Mrs. Mayfield—or at least, I tried to but I didn’t succeed because I couldn’t remember all the digits of that Hendon number. I then called my New York colleague, Warren Schaeffer, at the Savoy, and told him I wanted to stop by—I’d actually called him earlier, before I left the office, to ask him to cover for me if Carter rang up to check where I was, and he’d promised to tell the switchboard not to put through any calls made by a woman. I’d done the same thing for him once in New York when he was in a tight marital corner, so I knew he’d be happy to oblige.”
“I’d realised you were lying about having a business meeting with Warren,” I said. “If that had been true, you’d have picked up your organiser.”
Before Kim could attempt a reply Nicholas asked: “What time did you get to the Savoy?”
“Not long after eight-thirty. But when I reached the Savoy I didn’t go to the reception desk to ask for Warren because I didn’t want any of the staff there remembering when I’d arrived; I thought I should make at least some attempt to set up an alibi. So I parked the car down by the river and slipped in the Embankment entrance when the doorman was busy hailing a taxi. Then I went straight up to Warren’s suite—he’d already told me the number.”
“And you dined with him.”
“In the Grill, yes, at around nine-thirty—his stomach was still on New York time. We had drinks in his room first and also in the bar afterwards.”
“Did you try calling Mrs. Mayfield again?”
“I tried the Fulham number when I got back to my car but she was still out. I left a message and drove on to the Barbican.”
“And at Harvey Tower—”
“I found no Carter, the flat a shambles and your message on the answerphone.” He turned to me again in what appeared to be genuine bewilderment. “Why on earth did you smash up the flat?”
“Me?” I cried. “But it was that arch-cow Mayfield!”
“I’m certain that’s not true.”
“Well, if I didn’t,” I said heatedly, “and you didn’t and she didn’t, who the hell did?”
“Perhaps this is the moment,” said Nicholas, “to try to establish with Kim’s help exactly who caused these disturbances.”
I said at once to Kim: “It was a conspiracy, wasn’t it?”
“Well, yes and no,” said Kim confused. “Certainly nothing could have happened this evening. You must have done it yourself in some kind of trance—what do the psychologists call it? A fugue.”
“I damn well did not!”
“May I intervene,” said Nicholas, “before this argument gets too circular? Let’s start at the beginning. Now, the first incident, if I remember correctly, was the smashing of the print of Kim’s Oxford college. Can you both agree on who did that?”
“It was an accident caused by the vibrations of the building,” said Kim without hesitation, but I answered: “It could have been an accident. But it could also have been the first act of a conspiracy.”
“No, it was a genuine accident,” insisted Kim, “but it did give me the idea about how I could destroy Sophie’s credibility by suggesting she was demented.”
“You see?” I said triumphantly to Nicholas and Lewis. “He’s confessing to a conspiracy!”
“But it wasn’t operating today,” said Kim, deflating me. “Mrs. Mayfield dropped out.”
V
My automatic response was: “I don’t believe you.”
Before Kim could answer Nicholas suggested: “Let’s just look at the second incident, the smashing of the painting, the breaking of the cereal bowl and the spilling of the garbage bag,” but he had barely finished speaking when Kim said: “Okay, that was me. I did it, just as you suspected, Carter, before I left for work. Mrs. Mayfield told me how much to disarrange because she said it was important not to go over the top. She also agreed to be visible on the podium at the f
ar end of the Speed Highwalk when you came home from work that day. By coincidence she had a royal-blue coat, so—”
“What about that time when we saw the woman in royal blue leaving the supermarket?”
“Yes, that was Mrs. Mayfield. I wanted to give you the impression that Sophie was lurking around like the mistress in Fatal Attraction.”
“And after that we get to the first disturbance today,” said Nicholas, allowing me no time to comment. “This was the disturbance Carter found when she returned home early from work. Did you at least plan that, Kim, even if you didn’t do it?”
He admitted that the plan had been in place. “Carter had asked me if I’d created the earlier disturbance,” he said, “and that gave me a bad jolt because I realised my scheme was about to backfire—and once it backfired I knew she’d want to talk to Sophie. So I said to Elizabeth—to Mrs. Mayfield—that she had to help me by creating a disturbance at a time when I had a cast-iron alibi. When I saw her last night we worked out the plan. I gave her my front door key; then we designed her way into the building by using the excuse that she was dropping off my organiser. But when I called her back after my meeting this afternoon she said she’d changed her mind—she’d dropped off the package at the porters’ desk but she’d never gone up to the flat. She said she didn’t want to get into any situation where she ran the risk of being arrested for damaging property.”
I said stubbornly: “I don’t believe her. She had the key of the flat copied this morning and then went to the flat this afternoon to do the first round of damage. After that she dropped off your key with the organiser in the Jiffy bag, returned tonight with the copy of the key and—”
“No, I’m sure that’s not right,” said Kim firmly. “She said she’d come out against the conspiracy not just because it was too damn risky but because ultimately the impression we were trying to give of Sophie slickly whisking past all the porters time after time was too implausible.”
“Mrs. Mayfield was lying to put you off the scent! She’s determined to destroy our marriage and destroy me too!”
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