An Expert in Murder (25 page)

– that will happen, of course, but I have no faith in capital punishment. Death means different things to different people, and I think Bernard was right when he said it could often be the easy way out.

But before they die, I’d like you to try to make sure they understand what they’ve taken from this world. He was a good man.’

Penrose knew it wasn’t his place to question what Grace Aubrey had said about the relationship she shared with her husband, but he couldn’t help reflecting that there were many kinds of love. As he left, he could not decide for whom he felt the greater sadness: the man who had died so full of regret; or the woman left alone to deal with a grief which she had sincerely never expected to know.

A walk through London in the early hours of the morning would not have been Josephine’s preferred way of dealing with the shock of Aubrey’s murder, but she found herself with very little choice.

Archie’s departure had been followed by an uncomfortable interlude in the Green Room, during which Marta’s anger had dis-174

solved into frustration tinged with embarrassment, and things were only made worse when Lydia snapped at her to calm down and stop wrapping her in cotton wool. Josephine’s gentle suggestion that they all go home and get some rest met with adamant refusal.

‘No, you two go home if you want to,’ Lydia said, getting up suddenly, ‘but after what I’ve seen tonight I intend to put off rest for as long as I can – particularly the eternal sort. I need to see a bit of life, so I’m going for a walk. You’re welcome to join me, or I’ll see you later.’

Marta started to protest but thought better of it and gave Josephine a look which begged for solidarity, so they left together, accepting a police chaperone as far as Number 66 and then, as soon as the constable’s back was turned, setting off in the other direction. God help him if any harm came to them, Josephine thought: Archie’s fury would be merciless.

The night was cold and damp, but the rain seemed to have cleared permanently now and the air was not unpleasant. All signs of Saturday’s revelry were long gone and, as they skirted Covent Garden and crossed the Strand to head down Villiers Street towards the river, there was barely a soul to be seen. It was a little after 3 a.m. and ordinary people – those whose evening had not been interrupted by death – had gone home to bed long ago, leaving London in the care of a very different populace. The coffee stalls – which appeared out of nowhere as the public houses closed, taking up their nocturnal pitches at the foot of bridges and on street corners – were in full swing, a magnet to the sleepless, the lonely, and the fugitive; to anyone, in other words, who could be regarded as a poor relation of the city’s daylight hours. Josephine and her friends crossed Victoria Embankment and made for the stall that was tucked against the steps to Hungerford Bridge. The soft yellow glow of its interior was a welcome distraction from the unrelenting blackness of the river, and the pungent aroma of sausages and coffee did its best to be inviting, but Josephine doubted that the affirmation of life which Lydia craved was to be found among its clientele.

175

‘Never let it be said I don’t know how to show a girl a good time,’ Lydia insisted with a flash of her old humour and walked undaunted to the counter, where a man and a woman stared out into the street as if from a box at the theatre. As the woman pushed three mugs of hot liquid towards Lydia, her wedding ring

– sunk almost without trace into the middle-aged plumpness of her fingers – seemed a revealing expression of the extent to which she had given up on life.

They sat down on one of the benches that lined the Embankment, and Lydia was the first to speak. ‘It’s funny, you know, now I think about it – although it was such a shock to find Bernie tonight, I couldn’t honestly say it’s a surprise that he ended up like that.’

Josephine was intrigued. ‘Why do you say that? I know theatre can be harsh but violent death seems to me a little excessive.’

Lydia was quiet for a moment, trying to put her finger on why she felt the way she did. ‘This may sound melodramatic, but he always seemed to live in a darker world than the rest of us – something more sinister than the sad old muddle that most of us will admit to. I remember we got drunk one night during a particularly awful run of the
Dream
. It was Christmas Eve and his wife had gone to visit their son in Cirencester, and Bernie didn’t fancy seeing Christmas in on his own so we sat in his office and got smashed on his finest malts.’ She drained her mug, staring out across the river. ‘It’s not the most cheerful of drinks at the best of times,’ she continued, ‘and it was getting close to the anniversary of my brother’s death, so we soon got to talking about the war. It surprised me, his attitude towards it all.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, I’d always thought of him as quite a peaceable man, a reluctant soldier if you like, but he was adamant that war was a natural instinct. I can still hear him saying it, in that great booming voice he had when what he was saying came from the heart – that the trenches appealed to those murderous instincts which slum-bered close to the surface, and the war had simply smashed this flimsy armour of culture that we all thought was so strong. Up until then, I thought that war was the interlude for him as for all of us –

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tragic, unforgettable, but something to leave behind. That night, I realised he carried it with him all the time. All the colour and the joy and the make-believe that he made so real for the rest of us – it had never convinced Bernie.’

Privately, Josephine wasn’t sure how many people it had convinced. Lydia lived her roles wholeheartedly – it was one of the great joys of watching her on stage – but she would be the first to admit that she sometimes found it reassuring to continue the performance in her daily life. Like Aubrey, Josephine found it difficult to ignore the contradictions between her personal sense of justice and the single-mindedness which war demanded: one day, if an Englishman killed a German he was hanged; the next he was a patriot, and she remembered how upset she had been to see her friends and neighbours, even her family, scanning the papers for news of enemy slaughter with hopeful eyes, driven by fear for those they loved. She was not yet twenty at the time but, as the years passed, she realised that her revulsion had nothing to do with age: now, with talk of Nazi rallies and worries over Britain’s air power, another storm was gathering and, at thirty-seven, her anxiety for people on both sides was as complex as ever. If war broke out again, she knew there would be some difficult years ahead for people who felt as she did.

‘I can understand what Bernard meant,’ she said. ‘Jack was in London at the time of the declaration, and he wrote to me about it. Jack was my lover,’ she explained, realising there was no reason why Marta should know anything about her personal history. ‘He was killed at the Somme. But he said the crowds in the city as war broke out were really quite terrifying: when the population was united like that in a mob, all the instincts of hatred and prejudice were given a free rein and nobody questioned them. It was as if everyone had reverted to an innate violence, with all reason and mercy just swept away.’

‘I didn’t know you’d lost someone,’ Marta said.

‘Haven’t we all?’ Josephine retorted quickly, then remembered she was talking to a friend and put away the curt matter-of-factness which she habitually used to deflect sympathy. ‘He was medically 177

trained, and shot in the back trying to help another soldier – an English one, although I’m sure he would have done the same if he’d come across a German alone and needing help. He found it very hard to reconcile his pacifism with the role he was given. It was one of the things I loved about him. In fact, I based a lot of Richard’s character on Jack.’ She smiled, remembering Marta’s earlier comments about
Queen of Scots
. ‘And of course I
did
love him, which is perhaps why people are so convinced by Richard.’ Marta took the dig good-naturedly, and Josephine turned back to Lydia. ‘I don’t see why a dark heart makes Bernard a candidate for murder, though.’

‘It’s not just that, it’s something much more personal he told me that night.’ She didn’t go on straight away, but now it was not her sense of timing in front of an audience that made her hesitate. ‘He made me promise never to mention this to anyone, but I don’t suppose it matters now. His nephew died in an accident halfway through the war, but Bernard was convinced he was murdered, and that one of his colleagues had killed him out of spite.’

‘But why?’ Josephine asked, horrified.

‘He didn’t say anything more. It was a secret he’d carried with him all that time and I think he regretted telling me almost as soon as he’d opened his mouth. But Bernard was there when it happened, so he must have had his reasons for suspecting foul play.’

‘Why didn’t he just go to the authorities?’ Josephine asked, highly sceptical. ‘Even in war, there are laws and systems of redress.’

‘I got the impression that he had no proof – either that or he wanted to deal with it himself.’

‘You should have told Archie this earlier, you know. If Bernard Aubrey was going around swearing revenge for a twenty-year-old murder, I’m not surprised someone wanted him silenced.’

‘It really wasn’t like that. Bernard knew how to keep his mouth shut.’

‘How can you be so sure? He’s dead, Lydia, and there’s no point in protecting him now. If you don’t want to tell Archie, I will – but either way, he has to know.’

‘OK, OK, but there are different ways of making amends, you 178

know. I’m not sure that Bernard intended revenge. I think one of the reasons he was so soft on Hedley was as a way of making up for what happened to his nephew. Hedley’s about the same age, and I think Bernard wanted to give him a start in life, to look after him.’

Perhaps, Josephine thought, remembering how devastated Aubrey had been in the foyer earlier that evening when she had explained that it was Hedley’s girlfriend who had been killed; had that really been simply sympathy for a young friend’s grief, or was there more to it? She wondered if Archie had made any progress in finding a connection between the two murders. Was there anything she could think of in what Elspeth had told her which might link her to Aubrey, or to what had supposedly happened to his nephew? Or something that might give Hedley White a reason to resent them both?

‘I wonder where Hedley is?’ Lydia said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘He must be shattered by what’s happened, and I don’t expect he even knows about Bernie yet. That’s what I really meant about Bernie’s death not being a surprise; you don’t expect people like Hedley’s girl to be killed, not with all that youth and innocence

– why would anyone want to? But Bernie was different – you always got the feeling that he understood violence, even if he didn’t have it in him.’

‘I have to say, I wouldn’t have wanted him as an enemy,’

Josephine admitted. ‘Without his support, I think I would have found Elliott Vintner’s accusations much harder to deal with. He propped me up through that trial with his loyalty and his determination – and that was professional, not personal. I can imagine how ruthless he could be if something really mattered to him, if it were a question of life and death.’

Marta, not having known Aubrey, had taken little part in the conversation but she seemed glad now to have the chance to speak about something other than murder. ‘That must have been a difficult time for you – after all that success, to be accused of stealing someone else’s story. I remember reading
The White Heart
ages ago – I worked in a hospital for a bit after the war and one of the patients asked for it to be read aloud to him. I liked it, but I 179

remember being so disappointed by the books Vintner wrote later; perhaps I’d just moved on.’

‘No, you’re right, it was something special and I never questioned its merits – only my reliance on them. But he couldn’t repeat the success of that first novel, no matter how hard he tried – the rest were all failures.’

‘So he thought he’d get the money from you instead?’

‘Yes, and he might have succeeded if it hadn’t been for Bernard, an expensive lawyer and a judge who said that if any dues were to be paid, Vintner should first settle his account with Shakespeare.

Of course, it turned out that the judge had seen the play five times and was a huge fan. I imagine Bernard treated him to a sixth performance on the house after that.’

‘You certainly couldn’t fault Bernie’s generosity,’ Lydia agreed.

‘Did you know he’s given all the money he made from
Richard of
Bordeaux
to the families of those who died in the war?’

‘What, you mean he hasn’t made a penny out of it himself?’

Marta asked, astonished.

‘Not one. He said its pacifism was what struck a chord and he wanted to honour that. He really was a remarkable man. I owe my career to him. So does Josephine, in a way. I only wish I could have thanked him.’

‘The best way to do that now is to help Archie catch his killer,’

said Josephine firmly. ‘Tell him what you’ve just told us, or at least let me tell him.’ As Lydia looked doubtful, she added, ‘Has it occurred to you that knowing something about Aubrey’s secret might put you in danger as well?’

Clearly it hadn’t. ‘All right,’ she conceded at last. ‘You talk to Archie, Josephine. If he has any questions, no doubt he’ll find me, but I’ve told you everything I know. I wonder what will happen to Bernie’s theatres now? It seems disrespectful to say this so soon but, if
Queen of Scots
falls through, I’ll have to look for something else to give me a reason to get up in the morning. Nothing would compensate for a future without work. What else is there? I’d rather lie down and die.’

Josephine saw the hurt in Marta’s eyes, and marvelled that 180

Lydia could concern herself with a dead man’s feelings when she had just all but destroyed her lover’s hopes that they might have a life together. In the silence that followed, she watched as the coffee woman came out from behind her counter, collecting coins from under the plates and brushing bits of saveloy skin and cigarette ends onto the pavement, and was suddenly overwhelmingly depressed by the ease with which – through carelessness or cruelty