Gently with the Ladies (8 page)

‘Yes?’

‘You’re not having me on – there’s a genuine chance of Fazakerly getting off?’

‘I’d say it was a sixty-forty chance.’

‘But damn it, he did it – you’re sure of that!’

Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘I’m pretty certain, and so will the jury be, too. But not certain enough. The detail evidence is all consistent with his innocence. Then there’s the character of the deceased, and alternatives with opportunity and motive. No, unless Fazakerly confesses I can’t see us winning this one.’

‘Would he confess?’

‘Most unlikely.’

‘Have you talked to him since this morning?’

‘No. But he was decided enough then. And he’s a long way from being stupid.’

Another pause. By now the A.C. would have swivelled his chair a little, would be resting his elbow on the desk and throwing a dirty look at the window. He had played much mental chess with Gently. These days he studied the board with care.

‘I think you’d better talk to him again, Gently.’

‘Yes, I’ve one or two things to ask him.’

‘I daresay you have. But what I’m suggesting is putting pressure on him for a confession.’

‘I’m not the man to do that—’

‘Oh yes you are, Gently, no one more so. He obviously trusts you or he wouldn’t have come to you, so he’ll perhaps respond to your advice.’

‘But that’s doing the dirty—!’

‘He’s guilty isn’t he?’

‘He’ll get the verdict if he keeps his mouth shut!’

‘Tsk, tsk,’ the A.C. said. ‘A mere technicality, Gently. I assume you are still interested in villains getting their deserts? Anyway, that’s what you’ll do.’

‘I’ll suggest a confession. No more.’

‘And I trust you’ll get it, with your ability. My best men usually get results.’

Gently left the phone-box without his smile and stood glowering some moments at the kerbside. The A.C. had come back very neatly – Gently really should have foreseen that one! Not that Fazakerly was likely to confess, either under pressure or treachery, but it was a stinging
quid pro quo
and the A.C. was probably still chuckling.

Gently got in the Sceptre, his current enthusiasm, and belted away with a surge of gas. Outside a café two streets away he spotted a parking-space, and slammed into it under the bumper of a Mark 10 Jaguar.

‘You’re not still kicking it around are you?’

He was alone with Fazakerly in the interrogation room. Reynolds, who’d brought Fazakerly in, had caught a stony glance and had hastily bowed himself out of the presence. Fazakerly was looking sprucer, more wholesome. They’d fetched him some clothes from the flat. He’d shaved, and the abrasion across his forehead was covered with a strip of pink plaster. His eyes were still ringed and looking tired but now there was more life in them. His suit was expensive. He wore a Yacht Club tie of dark blue silk, perfectly knotted.

‘Take a seat,’ Gently said.

‘But I thought you’d washed your hands of me. You should, you know. I’m a lost soul. It’s really not worth your wasting time on me.’

‘All the same, I’m doing just that.’

‘I should never have come to you in the first place.’

‘But you did.’

‘Yes, and now I feel bad about it. I’d sooner you forgot the whole thing.’

‘Just sit down.’

Fazakerly sat. He had a feline grace of movement. In the suit he appeared more slender and it revealed an elegant slope of the shoulder. Colour had returned to his sallow cheeks and the absence of fuzz hardened his jaw-line. He had curious, fine-boned, bred-out good-looks of the sort which other men find irritating. His assurance had returned.

‘Did you know they haven’t charged me?’

‘Don’t pin any hopes on that,’ Gently grunted.

‘Oh, I don’t. I haven’t any hopes. I know they’re only digging my grave a bit deeper.’

‘So what are you pleased about?’

‘I’m damned if I know. I’m feeling a tremendous sense of release. It’s as though – yes, that’s it! – as though I’m being reborn. And all that’s happened is I’ve killed my wife.’

‘You – did kill her?’ Gently said.

‘Yes. I mean, as far as everyone knows. They think I did it, which amounts to the same thing. When they look at me they see a wife-killer.’

‘And that gives you release?’

‘I can’t describe it. You’d need my background to understand. To have been a worthless, degraded bum without a shred of self-respect. And then suddenly you’re not a bum, it’s all forgotten and swallowed up, you’re someone different, a wife-killer, and that’s the only way people think of you. Can’t you see that? I suddenly don’t care. Or rather, I want to go on being that thing.’

‘You didn’t want to go on being it this morning.’

‘Not this morning. I was scared stiff. When you can see your life about to come apart you grasp at anything, like a drowning man. But even then I could see there was no hope, I mean of holding the bits together. Only just at that moment I was scared. I didn’t have the nerve to let go.’

‘And now you’re content to be a wife-killer.’

‘Better than that. I don’t care.’

‘In that case, you may as well confess.’

‘It doesn’t matter. They’re sure I did it.’

Gently stared at him blankly. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You can smoke. I suppose the new Fazakerly does smoke?’

‘I’ve got the feeling I can do anything.’

Reynolds had evidently leant over backwards to bend the rules for Gently’s protégé, for Fazakerly immediately produced a full cigarette-case and a gold-plated lighter. He offered the case to Gently. Gently quickly shook his head. Fazakerly sprang a light and lit his cigarette carefully.

‘You know, if you’re still trying to help me,’ he said, ‘don’t bother. I don’t want to be helped any more. I’m not sure that anyone could help me. If I got off, if I had Clytie’s money, I might drift back into being a bum. And just now I’m beyond all that. So let the balls run how they’re played.’

‘You’ll like being a prisoner?’ Gently said.

Fazakerly puffed and shook his head. ‘It’s so difficult to make you understand. You wouldn’t believe me if I said I looked forward to it. You see, it’s not a prison, not to me. I shall be sentenced to freedom. It’s up till now I’ve been in prison, up till they fetched me away from your office. I was a prisoner in myself, a terrible solitary confinement, and I could see them coming to open the door and I was frantic to stop them doing it. It was you who kicked me through that door. You were the last thing I was clinging to. But you broke the hold and kicked me out, and suddenly I was outside the prison. Because you don’t think I’m innocent, do you?’

Gently shrugged, watching him curiously.

‘No, you don’t. And that was the kick. When I knew that, I simply stopped struggling.’

‘You’re in a state of shock, Fazakerly. It won’t seem the same later on.’

‘You can’t see it. This isn’t hysteria, my mind is quite as calm as yours is.’

‘You know what your sentence would be, do you?’

‘Fourteen years, less remission.’

‘So you may be fifty before you come out.’

‘But – how can I put it? – that doesn’t signify!’ He leaned forward on the table. ‘You
must
see it: I’m a free person. Whether I’m quarrying stone on Dartmoor or sailing down-Channel I’m equally and inalienably free. You can’t do anything to me. What I am you can’t lock up. I’ve escaped. It’s all the same. I just let go, and I was free.’

‘You won’t find any women in Dartmoor.’

Fazakerly shook his head. ‘You’re still not with me. And anyway, I never really wanted women. It was just compulsive, just pacing the cell.’

‘Prisons smell. They’re not pleasant places.’

‘Did you sniff around in the flat?’

‘You’ll find the life there degrading.’

‘I’ll find life. The rest is words.’

‘So if you’re looking forward to it so much, what’s the point of giving us trouble? Why not confess?’

‘Because I didn’t do it. And I’d simply rather not tell a lie.’

Gently drew a deep breath. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘you didn’t do it. And if you didn’t do it, it’s still up to us to find the person who did. And you can’t mind us doing that, even though it dashes your prospects of Dartmoor, because on your own admission it’s the same to you whether you’re breaking stones or off on a spree. So perhaps you’ll come to earth for a moment and try to give us some assistance.’

Fazakerly shrugged his neat shoulders. ‘I certainly owe you something,’ he said. ‘And you’ve every right to be annoyed with me. This must be very awkward for you.’

‘First, I’m not happy with the quarrel you had with your wife. There’s something about it doesn’t ring true. Half an hour earlier she was in a good mood and thinking only about dresses.’

Fazakerly smiled faintly. ‘That sounds like Clytie,’ he said. ‘She spent the best part of her life chasing fashion trends. And mannequins.’

‘But when you came in she was in a rage.’

‘She was in a filthy temper. She was sitting there working it up, ready to clobber me when I walked in.’

‘And about this Rochester woman – nothing else?’

‘She was the text of the sermon.’

‘Then what could have happened during the previous half-hour to put her into that temper?’

Fazakerly shook his head. ‘She could flare-up in a moment,’ he said. ‘But this wasn’t that sort of row, it was something she had on the boil. I don’t know. I’m puzzled too. She was really putting the boot in. This whole business has just suddenly exploded without a reason, out of nowhere.’

‘She couldn’t have found something, perhaps – say some letters from Miss Johnson?’

‘Sarah never wrote me letters. I used to ring her each day.’

‘You can’t explain it?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’d like you to think back very carefully.’

‘I’m afraid it’s no use.’

‘What I want you to remember is whether you and your wife were certainly alone in the flat.’

Fazakerly’s mouth opened, then he hesitated. He gave Gently a quick look. ‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘It’s just possible you’ve put your finger on it there. I’ve gone over that scene a hundred times and each time it bothered me somehow. It may be you’ve found the answer. Though I didn’t hear or see anyone.’

‘Did you notice if any doors were open?’

‘The door of the lounge, that was open. I dumped my kit in the hall and went straight in to get a drink.’

‘Was that the only room you visited?’

‘Yes. And I never got the drink.’

‘What was your wife doing?’

‘Just sitting.’

‘With a cigarette?’

‘She didn’t smoke.’

He slapped his forehead. ‘That’s it!’ he cried. ‘She didn’t smoke – never has done. But the room was smoky when I went in. Somebody was there, or had been there.’

‘It’s a thin clue,’ Gently grunted.

‘But I noticed – I was going to make a remark. Then she started on me and I forgot it. It’s bloody true – can’t you believe me?’

‘Who did you think might have been there?’

‘Sybil of course. Who else?’

‘I’m asking you.’

‘Well I thought Sybil. And that’s the reason for her going at me.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It wasn’t natural, not her threatening me about Sarah. I’ve had women all over the option and Clytie didn’t care a damn. But suppose it was Sybil put her up to it – she hates my guts, you know that? – and suppose she was listening round the corner: then it begins to make sense. Clytie was laying on an act. She was showing Sybil how she could handle me, how I’d jump when she cracked the whip, even give up the woman I was mad about. Oh yes, it falls together all right. Put Sybil in there and it clicks.’

‘But you didn’t actually see Sybil.’

‘Who the devil else could it have been?’

‘Another smoker.’

‘It took Sybil. She’s the only one Clytie would want to impress.’

‘And then, of course, after you’d left . . .’

‘She killed her. That has to follow. I know it’s illogical as hell, but it’s the way it must have been.’

Gently frowned at Fazakerly’s cigarette, which was burning unnoticed between his fingers.

‘You know about the wills?’ he asked.

‘I do now, but I didn’t when I made my statement.’

‘Would you say there was a motive there?’

Fazakerly flicked the cigarette. ‘It’s tempting, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It would wrap it up for you nicely. But no, I can’t suspect Sybil of that, malignant bitch though she is.’

‘Your wife was worth a lot of money.’

‘But Sybil’s worth a lot more. And honestly, I have to say this, Sybil doesn’t have a passion for the stuff.’

‘So why should she want to kill your wife?’

‘She wouldn’t. I’ve said so all along.’

‘But now you’re suggesting that she did.’

Fazakerly slowly shook his head.

‘Tell me about your wife and Mrs Bannister,’ Gently said. ‘What sort of relation was it they had: who was the dominant one, for instance, who used to lay down the law.’

‘Have you talked to La Bannister?’

Gently nodded.

‘Well, you may have got the wrong impression. She was the masculine element all right, but she never dominated Clytie. Clytie always had the edge. She could make Sybil shrivel up. She liked Sybil to wear the jack-boots because it titillated her, but she always had Sybil under control.’

Was your wife masochistic?’

‘When it suited. She was anything that gave her an emotional kick. That was her preoccupation in life, raising a high emotional head of steam. Sybil was really a foil for Clytie, though it seemed to be Sybil who made the running. Sybil is a sadist, period. Twisting the knife gives her a thrill.’

‘Was she jealous of your wife?’

‘That’s an understatement. They’re worse than men, you know, are Lesbians.’

‘And your wife of her?’

‘Clytie too. They nearly broke up over one of the girls.’

He sent a curious look at Gently.

‘You know what I’m talking about?’ he said. ‘A pair like La Bannister and my wife always have a third girl in tow. She’d be a mannequin, probably, or some hanger-on in that racket. You’d be surprised if you knew the extent of the Lesbian colony in London. Well, these girls come and go. They’re just to freshen-up the scene. But Sybil got stuck on one once, and then the fur began to fly. She worked for a fashion magazine, this girl, and Clytie pulled some dirty tricks on her; she lost her job and her reputation. She was sunk without trace.’