Off the Record (17 page)

‘Now that,’ said Mr Bryce in a pleased sort of way, ‘is the kind of radical idea that we need.’

‘You can’t give it up now, Mother, you really can’t. What’s the problem? You were all for it earlier on.’

‘You seem to think, Hector, that I am running the firm solely for the benefit of you and your friends.’

‘That’s not—’

‘You have, I know, ambitions to be a musician.’

‘I
am
a musician,’ said Hector, flushing. ‘What on earth’s got into you, Mother? You’ve always encouraged me before.’

‘If you are serious, Hector, you should study. Paris, perhaps, or even New York. I’ve heard you talk about New York often enough.’

‘I don’t want to go to New York,’ said Ferguson mutinously. ‘Not now. You said I could run the firm.’

‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ said his mother with a lightning smile. She picked up the pair of gold-wire framed spectacles she wore on a chain round her neck, carefully put them on, and stared at her son without speaking. Then she laughed. ‘Look at you. You’re far too young to tie yourself to an office desk. It’s all for the best. You don’t want to be bothered with business at your age. You’ll be far, far happier in New York.’ There was an edge to her voice. ‘Trust me.’

‘
M
rs Dunbar,’ said Bill Rackham, once they were out of the house and safely out of earshot, ‘takes the biscuit. She must be the most appalling woman I’ve ever come across. I couldn’t believe it when she insisted on telling us about money and her freedom and so on.
A pearl of great price.
I’ve never heard anything like it. It was downright embarrassing, to say nothing of all that toe-curling stuff about supping sorrow with a spoon, or whatever it was.’

They crossed the street, walking towards the tube station. Essex Gardens was one side of a square. In the middle of the square was a tree-lined, railed-off garden which, as the notice detailing Regulations For Use beside the iron gates informed them, was restricted to Residents Only. The shady paths and open lawn were, in a picture of prosperous middle-class content, occupied by a scattering of householders and, correctly Secured On A Leash, a bevy of well-behaved dogs, all enjoying the evening sun.

‘I mean,’ said Rackham in disgust. ‘Look at this place! It’s hardly a picture of grinding poverty, is it? To hear her talk, you’d think she’d been forced to take in washing.’

‘It was a wonderful performance,’ said Jack with a grin. ‘I wonder if the Bluebell of Scotland has become a thistle. Or, to put it another way, if she was spiking your guns?’

Rackham looked at him. ‘You mean all that nonsense was intentional? It can’t have been. You’d have thought the silly woman
wanted
to be arrested.’

‘Maybe she did.’

‘Following in her mother’s footsteps, you mean?’ Rackham sighed impatiently. ‘She’s such a blinkin’ drama queen she’s probably rubbing her hands together at the thought of appearing in court. I know people do confess to crimes they haven’t done. They want the attention, I suppose. She’s half-baked enough to be one of them.’

‘She didn’t actually confess, though, did she?’

‘No, she stopped short of actual lunacy.’

‘And yet she was demonstrably on the spot and she certainly had a motive. Like you, I think nine hundred quid a year is nothing to be sneezed at, but if she’d really had money to burn before she married Dunbar, she probably did resent it. And I know she put it oddly, but she
has
regained her freedom now Dunbar’s dead. What she’s done is present you with the points that tell against her wrapped up in way that means you can’t really take her seriously. After all, say you did arrest her. What would happen?’

‘If she treated a court to a fraction of the nonsense we’ve just heard, I imagine most of the jury would die laughing. You can never tell, though. Some of them might think she was a tragic victim. It wouldn’t wash though, Jack. Once her doctor gave evidence that her ankle really was crocked, she’d be acquitted.’ He looked at his friend inquisitively. ‘What’s on your mind?’

Jack clicked his tongue. ‘She’s an actress, Bill. She looks like an unremarkable middle-aged lady. Before she rang the bell on the desk at the Marchmont Hotel no one from the hotel had taken any notice of her.’

‘So what?’

‘So our unremarkable middle-aged actress could easily come into the hotel, complete with a change of clothes and a different hat. She could get up to Dunbar’s room, do the deed and be back downstairs without anyone really noticing she’d been there in the first place.’

‘But her ankle was crocked.’

‘Her ankle might have been crocked but that doesn’t paralyze her from the waist down, does it? She is still capable of movement. How were you so sure that she hadn’t taken the lift up to the second floor?’

‘I asked the lift boy. When I was called to the Marchmont I saw Sergeant Butley. He was waiting in the manager’s office with Mr Sutton, the manager, Mrs Gledburn, the chambermaid who’d found the body, and Mrs Dunbar. Mrs Dunbar was so upset I sent her home. We’ve got to be careful of interviewing witnesses when they’re in a state. I don’t like doing it and any statement they do make would probably be deemed inadmissible as it was obtained under duress. However, before she left, I collared the lift boy and asked him if he’d taken Mrs Dunbar up in the lift. I wanted to ask him while it was still fresh in his mind. He was positive he hadn’t.’

‘But he didn’t know Mrs Dunbar, did he? I bet he didn’t recognize her as such, but remembered what she was wearing. If he was asked to identify a lady in green tweed with a cloche hat, say, it wouldn’t occur to him to him she could possibly be a woman in red, for instance, with a fox-fur collar and a wide-brimmed panama with a veil and a feather.’

Rackham bit his lip. ‘That’s true enough. You’re right, dammit. I’ll tell you something else, too. She must have said about a dozen times how awful it was to think of her husband lying dead upstairs while she was sitting alone in the lobby, waiting for him. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but she did insist upon it. She told the manager he must have seen her, sitting quietly in the lobby, not knowing what dreadful news awaited her – I think those were more or less her exact words – and he agreed, of course.’

‘He would, under those circumstances. He wouldn’t want to argue with a newly bereaved woman. I can’t imagine the manager was feeling any too bright, either.’

‘No, he wasn’t. I can see he wouldn’t want to contradict her. At the time I thought he probably hadn’t noticed her at all, but it’s odd, you know, how convincing that sort of innocent-sounding statement can be. I have to say I didn’t take Mrs Dunbar seriously as a suspect. Her account of herself seemed so credible that I didn’t really doubt it.’

They walked for a couple of minutes in silence. ‘If Mrs Dunbar did murder her husband, she must have planned it,’ said Rackham. ‘It can’t have been impulsive, not if she changed her clothes and so on. How would she know he was alone?’

‘She might not be certain, but she could have hoped for the best. She certainly saw Carrington leave the hotel, so she’d have known he was out of the way. She’d asked to have tea with Dunbar, hadn’t she? If he intended to keep that appointment, he’d probably rid himself of any other guests beforehand. And if, by chance, he wasn’t alone?’ Jack shrugged. ‘She hadn’t committed herself in any way. All she’d actually done is turn up for afternoon tea. That’s not a criminal offence.’

‘I don’t like this,’ said Rackham after a little while. ‘It’s beginning to sound all too plausible for my liking. What’s her motive? I know she told us about money and freedom and so on, but none of that is new. She’s been separated from Dunbar for about five years. Why should she decide to take action now?’

‘She wasn’t too happy about Dunbar’s association with Otterbourne’s. That’s new.’ Jack frowned. ‘It doesn’t seem enough though.’

‘I couldn’t understand why she was so worked up about that. After all, Mr Bryce said they stood to make a lot of money out of it.’

Jack suddenly stopped dead. ‘Bill! That’s it!
Mr Bryce
.’

‘Mr Bryce?’

‘Don’t you think he knew a lot about her? He’s the manager of the firm. Why on earth should he know how much Mrs Dunbar had to live on? That’s nothing to do with the running of the company, that’s strictly private.’

‘I don’t know if that woman knows the meaning of strictly private,’ muttered Rackham. ‘I see what you mean, though. D’you think they might be more than friends?’

‘I think it’s possible. After all, he knows a lot about how she’s situated and they clearly got on well enough.’ Jack cocked an eyebrow at his friend. ‘It’s all speculation, I know, but it could be a motive.’

Rackham was unconvinced. ‘Isn’t she a bit old for that sort of thing? She must be fifty-odd if she’s a day.’

‘And that’s too old, is it? Think about it, Bill. Here’s a woman who’s been discarded by her husband. She’s used to admiration. She must have resented it. It’s only natural that she should. I know she talked about ‘Poor Andrew’ but I didn’t get any impression she was fond of him and I know Hector Ferguson couldn’t stand the man. From what we’ve heard, Dunbar wouldn’t have wanted a divorce. He’d have to make her some sort of settlement and, by the sound of things, that would have seriously dented the apple cart, if not overturned it altogether. Then, along comes Bryce, who thinks she’s the caterpillar’s boots, and, all of a sudden, life without Dunbar seems very attractive indeed. All that high falutin’ stuff about freedom needn’t have been made up, you know. It’s always easier to exaggerate an emotion that’s really there, rather than invent one from scratch.’

‘It’s possible,’ said Rackham. ‘By jingo, Jack, it really is possible, isn’t it?’ He swallowed. ‘They could have planned it out between the two of them. When I first interviewed Mrs Dunbar, she said she’d written to Dunbar in Falkirk and Bryce replied, saying Dunbar was in London.’ He puffed his cheeks out unhappily. ‘Is she capable of it, though? Maybe I’ve been totally taken in, but I find it hard to believe she could actually hold a pistol to Dunbar’s head and pull the trigger.’

‘Bryce?’ suggested Jack softly.

‘Bryce was in Falkirk.’ Rackham’s lips thinned. ‘Or so I’ve assumed. At least Mrs Dunbar told me that Bryce had written to her from Falkirk. That’s something I can find out. There was a man in the corridor. I wonder if the chambermaid would recognize him?’

Jack’s landlady, Mrs Pettycure, poked her head round the door of her sitting room as he came in to the hall. ‘Is that you, Major? A Mr Carrington’s been on the telephone. He’s rung twice, wanting to speak to you. He’s at a Captain and Mrs Lewis’s. He wants you to slip over and see him. Very insistent, he was.’ She felt in the pocket of her apron. ‘I’ve got a note of the address here.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Jack, picking up his hat. ‘I know where it is. If he rings again, tell him I’m on my way.’

Stephen Lewis answered the door. ‘Major Haldean? It’s good of you to come.’

He certainly was a good-looking beggar, thought Jack, remembering Mrs Dunbar’s censorious comments, but he wasn’t any sort of empty-headed stage-door Johnny. Captain Lewis struck him as a decisive, intelligent man who was not only worried but wary as well.

‘Hector Ferguson brought us the news. I believe you called to see him earlier this evening. He’d just finished telling us what was what when Gerry himself turned up.’ Was it Jack’s imagination or was there a slight reservation when Lewis said his cousin’s name? ‘We’re all pleased, of course. Very pleased. It’s just that . . .’ He broke off and ran a hand through his hair in a bemused way. ‘I don’t mind telling you, though, it’s knocked us all for six. But please, come into the sitting room.’

The fashionable sitting room was warmly lit by shaded lights glinting off polished mahogany, glass, silver and the rich leather bindings of books. There were four comfortable brocaded armchairs, a sofa, a grand piano and a large, ornate gramophone with records in a mahogany case beside it. To a man freshly released from Brixton prison, it must have seemed like a vision.

Molly Lewis and Gerard Carrington stood up as he came into the room. It wasn’t, Jack thought, as they came forward to greet him, just the furniture that had drawn Gerard Carrington here.

Molly Lewis was a quiet, self-contained woman in her early twenties, attractive in a square-necked turquoise silk dress with her chestnut hair cut fashionably short. Her jaw was too determined for beauty but she looked an extremely capable sort of person. Judging by the quick, encouraging glance she gave Carrington, she certainly felt protective towards him. She had, Jack thought, a maternal nature, the sort of woman who needed to look after someone. An Otterbourne trait? That probably wasn’t a bad guess, remembering the way her father had organized everyone’s lives for them.

‘It’s very good of you to come and see us, Major,’ said Molly Lewis. Her fingers clasped together nervously. ‘Gerry’s free and that’s wonderful of course, but we don’t
understand
.’

Carrington’s shoulder twitched as if he was about to put a soothing hand on her arm. He hesitated, thought better of it, then stuck his hands in his pockets. His face was gaunter than Jack remembered but he still had the same air of rumpled bewilderment. ‘Were you responsible for my release?’

Jack nodded.

Carrington put a hand to his mouth. ‘Thank you,’ he said at last. ‘I’m more grateful than you could ever realize but . . . but I don’t know why I’m free.’ He pushed the bridge of his glasses back up his nose. ‘No one explained anything. They just said I could go.’

Hector Ferguson, who had gravitated towards the piano as naturally as a compass needle points north, looked up with a sheepishly embarrassed expression. ‘Thank goodness you’re here, Haldean. Everyone’s bombarding me with questions and I don’t know any answers. I was so bowled over when you turned up at home I never thought to ask you the whys and wherefores. I felt such an idiot when I realized I hadn’t actually asked you any details.’