A Willing Victim (10 page)

Miss Kirkland paused in front of one of the doors on the landing and turned to face him. Her hands fluttered as though she were barely managing to restrain herself from brushing lint from his suit, so that Stratton found himself glancing down at his lapels and shoulders to check that they were presentable. Beaming, with an isn’t-this-fun? expression on her face, as though Stratton was a child about to be given a surprise birthday treat, she breathed, ‘Ready?’ When Stratton nodded, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and closed her eyes momentarily, in the manner of one summoning mental and emotional strength, and knocked on the door.

Theodore Roth was, Stratton guessed, in his mid sixties or thereabouts. Sallow of skin, with eyes as sunken as if his face had sucked them in like quicksand, staring fiercely from beneath bushy eyebrows, he had a slightly hooked nose and prominent chin that reminded Stratton of Mr Punch, and a noticeable paunch. His suit was clearly an expensive one but, in contrast to the neatness of Miss Kirkland, it had a crumpled look, the lapels sprinkled with ash. Being in his presence, Stratton thought, was like a meeting with a great actor must be: the sonorous voice, the air of natural authority, and the way he drew the eye and filled the room, so that one was barely aware of anything else. Glancing round him, he saw that there was not, in fact, very much else to be aware of, because the room was almost as sparsely furnished as the one downstairs, containing only an armchair, two hard chairs and a small sofa arranged before the fire, and a side table with leaves and berries arranged in a vase. The sole ornament was a framed print of the Virgin Mary by one of the Old Masters, blue draped head inclined slightly to one side, eyes downcast to the chubby figure of the infant Jesus that lay on her lap.

Roth’s manner, and the way he said, ‘Be seated’. as if they were in church, gave Stratton the feeling of being granted an audience.

This was intensified when Miss Kirkland, seating herself on one of the hard chairs, assumed a tilt of the head exactly like that of the Virgin on the wall, which position, though minus drapery and halo, combined devotion and attention in much the same proportions. Roth himself took the armchair closest to the fire, and said nothing further. Clearly, small talk and spiritual enhancement didn’t mix. Determined not to be put on the back foot, Stratton said, ‘I’ve come to ask you some questions about Jeremy Lloyd. He was found dead yesterday.’

Roth gazed at him intently for a moment. Then, producing a silver cigarette case from his waistcoat pocket, went through the process of selecting one, tapping it, lighting it, inhaling smoke, holding it and then, very slowly, exhaling. There was something theatrical about the whole performance that suggested that while it was going on, Roth was building himself up for some incredibly weighty pronouncement. ‘So I understand,’ he said, finally.

Stratton, who found that he’d been holding his own breath, exhaled in his turn, with the sensation of having expended great effort to lift up an enormous dumb-bell and found it made of balsa wood. ‘How do you know?’ he asked.

‘Mr Tynan telephoned me. He was good enough to tell me I might expect you.’ Roth gave a lofty smile, as if the whole thing was some sort of mildly amusing cosmic joke.

‘Did he also tell you,’ asked Stratton, tight-lipped, ‘that Lloyd was murdered?’

‘He did.’ Roth’s accent was foreign. Stratton couldn’t place it, but the thickness of speech reminded him of the Polish servicemen who’d been in London during the war.

‘He was one of your students, I understand.’

‘He was here for a time, yes.’

‘When did he leave?’

‘In April.’

‘Why?’

‘He had ambition. An idea in his head, shall we say. That was really his defining feature, a striving after greatness. He believed himself to be marked out for it – literally.’ Roth tapped his cheek, reminding Stratton of Lloyd’s birthmark. ‘It took the form of wishing to write a book about esoteric practices, such as the discipline we follow here. To enlighten the world.’ Roth smiled his all-knowing smile and shook his head indulgently.

‘That’s not such a bad thing, surely?’ said Stratton. ‘I mean,’ he glanced about him, ‘you had the ambition – the idea in your head – for
this
, and the aim is the same, isn’t it?’

A flicker of irritation in the other man’s eyes, and Miss Kirkland’s momentarily pursed lips told him that the two things simply did not bear comparison, but neither was prepared to say so. ‘Lloyd seems to have told several people that he was writing a book,’ said Stratton, ‘but we were unable to find a manuscript. Have you ever seen it?’

‘No. I did not ask to see it. He had allowed this . . . compulsion . . . to dominate his personality, and I took the view that it was something he needed to get out of his system.’

‘So you didn’t approve?’

‘I neither approved nor disapproved.’ Roth’s tone was lofty.

‘Did you think him capable of writing a good book on this particular subject?’

‘He was certainly capable of insight, but as to the necessary discipline and clarity of thought . . . No.’

In other words, nothing half as good as anything you could produce yourself, thought Stratton, wondering if Lloyd’s presumption had been a factor in his departure from the Foundation. ‘Are you paying for his lodgings in London? His upkeep?’

Roth looked as though he found the question distasteful. ‘I am not.’

‘Do you know who is?’

‘I have never enquired. That is – was – a matter for him.’

‘And have you any idea as to
why
someone might have murdered him?’

Roth did some more theatrical smoking, during which Stratton became conscious that he was holding his breath again, and irritated with himself for doing so.

‘I’m afraid not,’ he said, sounding anything but. ‘But then . . . I am not a detective.’

Ignoring the clear implication that he wasn’t much of one, either – which, Stratton thought sourly, was right at that moment, absolutely fucking spot on – he asked, ‘Did he quarrel with anyone here?’

This won indulgent smiles from both of them – clearly, it was the type of question only to be expected from one so unenlightened – before Roth said, ‘We try to create harmony, not division. Our students work to free themselves from their likes and dislikes. Such a thing would not have been tolerated.’

‘If you had known about it,’ said Stratton, after a pause.

‘I should have known, even if it had been unspoken. Conflict brings about a change in the atmosphere. One can sense it.’

‘Not always.’

‘
Always
,’ said Roth, with finality.

Giving up on this as a bad job, Stratton said, ‘We found a photograph of a woman who has been identified as Mary Milburn – you call her Ananda. What was his relationship with her?’

During the next loaded silence between Roth’s inhaling and exhaling of smoke, he looked at Miss Kirkland, and saw a tenseness to her face which definitely hadn’t been there before. Freeing oneself from likes and dislikes was obviously easier said than done. Roth, on the other hand, was positively beaming. ‘Everyone loves Ananda,’ he said.

Stratton glanced back at Miss Kirkland, who flushed slightly under his gaze but did not look up. Oh, really? he thought. There’s
one who doesn’t love Ananda, and she’s right here under your nose, mate.

As if reading his thoughts, Roth said, ‘People need to overcome resistance in themselves, of course. Our work is not for the faint-hearted.’ Miss Kirkland’s colour deepened at this indirect rebuke.

Keeping his tone deliberately neutral, Stratton said, ‘But love can take many forms.’

‘It can. And some of them’ – here, Roth’s even-toned detachment was suddenly and disconcertingly replaced by a jolt of anger that caused Miss Kirkland to start involuntarily – ‘are debased and gross.’ He leant forward and gestured with his cigarette, sending a shower of ash across his trousers. ‘Slavish following of the sex impulse is not tolerated – students must come under discipline in order to learn to self-regulation.’

‘I shall need to speak to Mrs Milburn,’ said Stratton.

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. At least, not at the moment. She’s left.’ A twitch of Miss Kirkland’s eyebrows told Stratton that this was news to her.

‘When did she leave?’

‘This morning.’

‘But she was here before that?’

‘Yes, she was.’ Miss Kirkland nodded her head in confirmation. ‘No unexpected absences?’

‘Not unexpected, no.’

‘But she went out?’

‘Yes, a few evenings ago. The thirtieth of October.’

The night Lloyd was killed, thought Stratton. ‘Where did she go?’

‘The pictures, with Mr Tynan.’

‘He didn’t mention it.’

‘Did you ask him?’

‘No,’ admitted Stratton, cursing himself. In all the business about the Foundation and the various dates of people’s arrivals, it hadn’t occurred to him.

‘Do your students often go to the pictures? Isn’t it contrary to your . . . discipline?’

‘I don’t encourage it, and most of them do not wish to go, but . . .’ Waving his cigarette hand, Roth treated him to a tolerant smile, ‘some of us need a little diversion, every now and then.’ Miss Kirkland’s tight expression said very clearly that she was not one who needed diversion. It also conveyed, Stratton thought, the fact that Ananda, whom everyone loved, was treated with rather more indulgence than the rest of the community. ‘This isn’t a prison, Inspector.’

‘Do you know where they went?’

‘Ipswich. It was a documentary film –
Seven Years in Tibet
.’

‘I see. And she came back the same evening?’

‘Of course. But you can’t imagine that Ananda had anything to do with . . .’ another waft of the hand, this time sending a gentle rain of ash down the front of his jacket, ‘the matter in London.’ It was very much a statement, and not a question.

‘When are you expecting Ananda back?’ asked Stratton.

This got him a repeat of the tolerant smile. ‘I have no expectation. When she feels the need to return, she will.’

‘Where has she gone?’

‘That I can’t tell you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I do not know. People come and go as they wish.’ The smile returned with full force. ‘As I said, Inspector, this is not a prison. We aim to make people free, not to confine them.’

‘Has her son gone with her?’

‘She prefers to leave him in our care. This is, after all, his home.’

As Miss Kirkland trod nimbly down the stairs beside him, Stratton reflected that denying the existence of something, however vigorously, didn’t mean that it stopped existing – especially if that
thing was the sex instinct. A group of students were gathered around the wide fireplace in the hall, sipping tea and making hushed, earnest conversation, a drift of complacency hanging over them like cigar smoke at a smart boxing event. That’s all surface, he thought, eyeing them as he went past. They were high-minded all right, as well as genteel, and – now he thought about it – curiously sexless. But underneath . . .

Instinct told Stratton that, although the students might be none the wiser, whatever
had
happened in London – plus Tynan’s warning of his own arrival at the Foundation – had resulted in the very rapid disappearance of Lloyd’s pin-up girl.

‘Rum bunch, aren’t they?’ said Adlard, when Miss Kirkland had escorted Stratton back to the car.

‘You can say that again.’

‘There’s been a bloke out here scrubbing that lot.’ Adlard jerked a thumb at the red tiles on the floor of the porch. ‘All dressed up in a suit, he was. Didn’t even take his jacket off. Never used soap, either, just water. And I’ve been watching that lot over there,’ he jerked his head in the direction of the wood-choppers. ‘Not a clue! None of ’em look like they’ve ever held an axe in their lives.’

‘Probably up from London,’ said Stratton, settling himself in the passenger seat. Most of the students, he imagined, would be the sort of town-dwellers for whom everything to do with nature and the countryside had profound spiritual significance, who thought – God help us – that manual labour was noble and uplifting.

‘Helpful, were they?’ said Adlard, starting the motor.

‘Not the word I’d have chosen.’ Stratton grimaced, and then, spotting something out of the corner of his eye, said, ‘Hold up,’ and got out of the car. Running across the grass towards the house was a boy of eleven or perhaps twelve years old. Stratton
did a rapid calculation – Tynan had said the place was bought just after the war, and Ananda and her baby son had arrived a year later, so that would make him about the right age . . .

As the boy came closer, Stratton could see that he was handsome – exceptionally so, in fact – with an eager, shining face and blond hair that, even in the weak winter sunshine, seemed to glow about his head.

The boy stopped, looking puzzled, when he saw the car and Stratton standing beside it. There was a neatness about him – well-pressed suit, spotless shirt and conker-shiny shoes – and an awkward solemnity which, together with the long trousers, made him seem older than he actually was. Before either of them could speak, Miss Kirkland bustled past and took his arm. ‘You’re late for your Greek lesson, Michael. Mr Hardy’s waiting.’

As she spoke, a man appeared round the corner of the house, looking breathless, a schoolmaster’s gown flapping crow-like at his shoulders. ‘There you are, Maitreya. Let’s get cracking, shall we?’ Acknowledging Stratton with a bob of his head, he put an arm round Michael’s shoulders and led him inside. When they reached the door, however, Michael suddenly stopped and, detaching himself from his teacher, ran back to where Stratton and Miss Kirkland were standing. Putting a hand on Stratton’s sleeve, he stared into his face with blazing blue eyes and said, ‘You are carrying a burden. Your burden is guilt. If you shed your burden, then you will be happy.’ Before Stratton could collect himself enough to reply, the boy grinned at him, revealing a gap in his teeth – a sudden flash of unadulterated childhood – and ran back into the house.

There was nothing playful about what he’d said, however. Evidently intelligent – as well as photogenic – he’d obviously meant it. ‘Is that Ananda’s son?’ he asked Miss Kirkland.