Death of a Nobody (17 page)

Lambert said, as though stating a fact they would not trouble now to deny, ‘You were here that night, both of you.’ They looked at him sullenly, and he spoke briskly, like one impatient to have this over. ‘It would be foolish to deny that, Mr Faraday, with your fingerprint upon the handle of the murder weapon. A bloody thumbprint, to be precise. It’s my belief that you went away from the garage downstairs with blood upon your clothes. But no doubt you have disposed of them by now.’

It was so exactly the truth, and Lambert’s tone made the actions seem so futile, that Ian Faraday’s face was suffused with fear. It flooded in like a physical thing to replace the blood which drained from his cheeks. He struggled for a moment to say something, anything, which might seem like a defence of his actions. Instead, it was Gabrielle who forced out, ‘Ian didn’t shoot him. He only came here when I told him what had happened.’

Her voice was very low. She sat beside Ian Faraday on the settee with her hand on top of his. Lambert transferred his gaze from Faraday’s face to hers, regarding her steadily, making no further attempt to rush things along, leaving time for the grave situation they were in to establish itself. He said, ‘I advise you both to consider your position carefully. We have had nothing but a pack of lies from either of you so far. In view of the forensic evidence, particularly in relation to the murder weapon, you will need to give us a full and frank account of what you did that night, if you expect us to treat it seriously.’

It was a long speech for him, articulated slowly. It seemed to have the sobering effect it advised upon the couple to whom it was delivered. Gabrielle Berridge nodded twice in the course of it. When it was ended, she took a deep, shuddering breath and said in what was almost a monotone, ‘I came home at about ten o’clock on Tuesday night. My husband was dead then. I found him.’

Lambert said dispassionately, ‘Details, please.’

She looked at Hook, who was making notes in his round, surprisingly rapid hand, then continued in that curious, plodding tone, so unsuited to the dramatic nature of her material. ‘I drove my car into its garage; it’s next to my husband’s. I was going to come up here and ring Ian: we were supposed to be meeting the next day, which he had taken off. Then something seemed wrong about the garage next to mine.’

‘Can you remember just what that was? Was the light on in there?’

She wrinkled her brow in concentration, like a dutiful schoolgirl trying to provide an accurate answer. ‘No. The place was in darkness. But I could smell something.’

There was a quick gasp from Sarah Farrell. Gabrielle looked at her, as if she had forgotten in her concentration that the other woman was there, and divined in an instant the reason for the horror on her light-skinned, damaged face. ‘It wasn’t blood, or flesh. It was a smell of smoke. A particular kind of smoke, which at first I didn’t recognize. I realized later that it was what you get after a gunshot. But at the time I just thought that something might be wrong.’

It was a bizarre moment, with the wife trying to convince the mistress of her story, and everyone in the room picturing the grim scene which awaited her in the stark brick box where James Berridge had died. Lambert recalled her attention to himself. ‘You didn’t hear any shot?’

Again there was that strange, unguarded face, as she strove for accuracy. Shock takes many forms. Or this was acting of a high calibre. ‘No. I’m certain I didn’t. Just this peculiar smell.’

‘Go on, please.’

‘Well, I knew something was wrong, but I thought I wouldn’t be able to get into the garage because my husband normally operated the door with his electronic gadget.’ She seemed determined not to refer to Berridge by name. It gave her words even more the effect of a formal, prepared statement. ‘But the door wasn’t shut: it was pulled down, but not closed. So I slid it up and put on the light. There’s a switch by the door.’

Lambert said, ‘Just a moment, please. Miss Farrell, you’re sure you shut the door when you left the garage?’

Sarah Farrell did not reply immediately. She could not see yet where this was going, but she was somehow aware that it was important. After a moment, she said quietly, ‘Yes. I banged the door down hard. I was in a hurry, but I’m sure I heard the lock clang shut behind me.’

‘But Mrs Berridge says that it wasn’t quite shut when she arrived there.’ He turned back to the widow. ‘Carry on, please.’ But Gabrielle had fallen silent, checking her story, trying to work out the significance of this for her. Lambert had to prompt her towards the horror they all knew was coming. ‘And what did you find?’

For the first time since she had started this account, she sprang out of that monotone, with a flash of something near anger. ‘You know what I found. My husband with most of his head shot away. He was lying on the floor of the garage, with just his legs in the car.’

‘Did you touch him?’

‘No. I think I nearly fainted. I remember leaning against the wall for a moment. Then I came up here.’

‘In the lift?’

‘Yes.’

Lambert turned to George Lewis. ‘Did you hear any shot? Or see anything of Mrs Berridge’s movements?’

The porter looked surprised by this sudden demand. ‘No. I was in my own flat at that time. I didn’t hear anything at all.’ He looked at Gabrielle for a moment: perhaps in speculation, perhaps in apology that he could not confirm her account.

Lambert nodded, turning his attention back to the widow. ‘And what did you do when you got into the flat?’

‘I rang Ian. I could hardly speak. He calmed me down a little. When he realized what had happened, he told me to lock myself in and wait for him to come over.’

‘And that is what you did?’

‘Yes.’ For the first time, she allowed herself a grim little smile. ‘I put the phone down and just made it to the bathroom to be sick.’

Ian Faraday seemed to take that as the termination of her part of the story. He took over the account, and Lambert let him do so. ‘I must have been here within twenty minutes. I checked that Gabrielle was OK, then went down to the garage in the basement. I suppose I thought she might have missed something, but the scene down there was exactly as she had described it.’

‘Except that she has not described the murder weapon, or its position. No doubt you are going to tell us something about that.’

Faraday ran his right hand through his thick brown hair, as if it were an aid to concentration. He spoke carefully, as if each phrase was an explosive which would detonate in his face if not handled with extreme care. ‘I went into the garage, which was still open. Berridge was lying as Gabrielle described it, with his legs in the car, and his torso on the concrete outside it. I — I went to see if there was anything I could do for him. I don’t know why: as Gabrielle said, it was pretty obvious that he was dead. But I felt for a pulse in his wrist. There wasn’t one, of course.’

‘Was the corpse warm?’

He looked as if there was a trap lurking in the question. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure it was.’

‘And the pistol?’

Faraday looked at the superintendent for a long moment. There was a desperation lacquering his features, as he wondered how he was to convince them of what he had to say now. ‘I saw the barrel of it when I felt the pulse. It was just under his right arm as he lay on the floor of the garage. I lifted the arm and slid it out to look at it before I really thought about what I was doing. I scarcely touched it really: it was covered with blood.’ He looked at Lambert to see if he was being believed, but found no comfort in that impassive, attentive face. He said lamely, ‘It was a Smith and Wesson. I didn’t move it more than a few inches.’

‘Fortunately for you, the prints rather support your story. Anyone who’d gripped the pistol to shoot Berridge without gloves would in all probability have left more than a thumbprint and a smudged index-finger print. What else did you do at the scene of the crime?’

‘Nothing. You were right: I did get blood on my sweater and trousers. There was blood and — and gore everywhere in there.’ He moved his fingers to grip the hand which lay upon his on the settee, whether in apology or in search of comfort it was impossible to see. Every person’s eye was drawn to the gesture, because there was so little movement in that large room. ‘I came back up here to Gabrielle. She was almost hysterical for a few minutes — I suppose it was a delayed reaction to finding him killed like that.’

The woman beside him nodded confirmation at Lambert, as if she hoped to reinforce Faraday’s credibility by the gesture. But it was Hook, looking up from the record he was compiling, who said sternly, ‘Why the flight to Stratford? And why the lies?’

It was Gabrielle who answered him. ‘I wanted to be somewhere, anywhere away from what was lying there in the basement. I suppose I knew then that I was going to be a suspect. The wife always is, isn’t she? And I’ve wished him dead often enough in these last months.’ Still she had not used her husband’s name throughout their exchanges. ‘And I wanted to be with Ian. We’d been to the theatre. in Stratford, only a fortnight ago. Seen
The
Winter’s
Tale
there, as a matter of fact. So it seemed natural to make that part of our alibi, when we found it was the play on Tuesday night. We booked our usual hotel on Ian’s car phone, on our way to Stratford. We didn’t get there until about half past eleven. But you seem to have worked that out for yourselves.’

There was almost a reluctant admiration in her voice on this last thought. Her delivery had lost its flatness and her voice was almost back to normal. Confession, however damning, brings with it a kind of catharsis, thought Lambert. He said quietly, ‘Did you remove your husband’s pistol from his desk, Mrs Berridge?’

Fear danced back into the features which had begun to relax. She could not control it, because she had thought the worst was over and had dropped her defences. She said in a voice suddenly hoarse, ‘Yes. I had a key to the drawer, and I took the pistol away. But I didn’t use it on him.’ She looked wildly around her, aware of how unconvincing her denial sounded. None of the faces could give her any solace, though the hand beside her gripped hers even more tightly.

‘Why did you take the pistol?’

‘Not to kill him. I think I feared what he might do to me if he found out about Ian. And perhaps I thought I could threaten him with it, if I felt in any danger from him.’ She was stumbling through this, and it sounded implausible, even to the speaker. She said despairingly, ‘I just didn’t like the idea of him having a gun in the place. I suppose I thought he might turn it upon me, if things came to a crisis.’

Lambert studied her for a moment. Whatever had been her intentions when she had taken the pistol, they scarcely mattered now. ‘And where did you put the pistol, after you had removed it from his desk?’

‘In the top drawer of my dressing table. And before you ask me, I don’t know how it got from there to the garage.’ Her voice rose shrilly on the last claim, until it was almost a scream.

Lambert’s voice was suddenly curt, as if to control this suggestion of hysteria. But his remarks were not directed now at Gabrielle Berridge. ‘There are two people here who could have removed that pistol from where you hid it. One is Mr Faraday, but I don’t believe he touched it.’

There was a long pause before anyone spoke. Then George Lewis said quietly, seemingly without emotion, ‘I have a skeleton key to all the flats. Of course I have. Are you suggesting that I would have known where to look for that pistol?’

‘Any burglar would, George. Your days of larceny are long behind you, but you’re not stupid: you know what any policeman knows, that the back of a dressing-table drawer is the favourite hiding place for the innocent. When did you remove it?’

‘It’s the first time I’ve ever opened a drawer in this place.’

It was the easiest confession Lambert could remember. He was suddenly torn by a compassion for the criminal which was wholly inappropriate in a policeman. He must uphold the law, but in this case he had no sympathy for the victim and an understanding, even a sneaking approval, of his killer.

And now George Lewis was making it too easy for him. There was no need to throw in the forensic findings about the fibres on the rear seat of the car, the powder burns on the jacket in his flat. Lewis was not interested in deception; he seemed more concerned with the betrayal of his porter’s trust than with the accusation of murder. He ran a hand down the stomach of his uniform, as if checking that in this crisis his buttons were fastened. ‘I knew that bastard had a pistol somewhere in the place: he’d told me that when he first moved in. I thought it would be in the study. When it wasn’t, I almost gave up; then I tried the dressing table on spec and found it.’

‘When did you take the pistol?’

‘Tuesday morning. After you’d told me about how Berridge had organized Charlie Pegg’s murder.’ He looked at Hook, writing furiously, then at Lambert. ‘I said you’d need to get to the man who killed Charlie before I did, Mr Lambert. But I didn’t murder Berridge, you know. I executed him.’

‘Unfortunately, the law will not recognize that, as you are well aware.’

‘Yes, I know that. But I thought until now that I might get away with it. I hoped it might go down as unsolved, if you thought one of his rival villains had gunned him down. I wouldn’t have let any of these people take the rap for me, of course.’

He said it so calmly that they all believed him. Lambert said quite gently, ‘You heard Miss Farrell say that she was quite certain that she shut the garage door when she left. But Mrs Berridge found it open. You were the only one who could override that electronic mechanism on the garage door, unless someone had used the second set of keys.’