A Willing Victim (28 page)

The little room was arranged just as before, with a table, chairs, and a delicate vase bearing a spray of berried ivy and late autumn leaves. Parsons had just finished talking to the clumsy, moonfaced woman Stratton remembered from their first round of interviews, who’d spilt the tea on his crotch. Skirting them carefully, as if on the other side of an invisible cordon, she scurried off, leaving the policeman shaking his head. ‘Hopeless,’ he said. ‘Not a dicky bird.’

‘We’ll take it from here,’ said Ballard, pulling a sheet of paper
out of his pocket. ‘I’ve crossed off all the ones we’ve spoken to, so if you can find this lot – we’ll have Miss Kirkland at the end, and Mr Roth last – and we’re going to need a policewoman up here as soon as you can.’

‘Right you are, sir.’

Parsons departed, returning a couple of minutes later with Mr Longley, who Stratton remembered as the chap who’d told them how Roth had cured his drink problem. He obviously had no clue about the birth certificate, and neither did Miss Mills, who followed him, or Mrs Welch. Stratton was hoping that Miss Banting, who arrived in the same arty, wooden-beaded get-up as last time, might prove more forthcoming, but after several questions both men decided that her puzzlement was genuine and allowed her to rattle off down the corridor.

As instructed, Parsons brought Miss Kirkland in last. The joyful smile, Stratton thought, had a slightly fixed quality about it this time. Asked to sit down, she perched herself on the extreme edge of one of the chairs, hands palm down on either side of her thighs and arms braced as if she were intending to launch herself from the room at the earliest possible opportunity.

‘As you may be aware,’ said Stratton, the formalities being concluded, ‘we have been asking questions about an item which went missing from Mrs Milburn’s room.’

‘Then I am unable to help you. I know nothing about it.’

‘Do you know what “it” is?’

‘I gather,’ Miss Kirkland said stiffly, ‘that you have been asking about a birth certificate, but I am afraid, gentlemen, that I cannot shed any light upon the matter.’

Despite her precision of hair and dress she seemed, compared to the last time Stratton had seen her, to be somehow ragged about the edges, and he could see dark troughs of exhaustion beneath her eyes. ‘Have you ever been in Mrs Milburn’s room while she’s been away?’ he asked.

‘Certainly not.’ Miss Kirkland drew herself up. ‘I do not make a practice of snooping.’

‘No? But you didn’t like her, did you?’

‘I …’ A deep blush suffused Miss Kirkland’s pale face. ‘I tried not to show it – not to think it. I knew it was wrong, what I was feeling, that it was just an idea – something I had to get rid of … give up.’

‘Pretty difficult, I’d have thought,’ said Stratton, ‘to make yourself like somebody.’

‘It wasn’t easy. Quite apart from anything, it was the way she behaved with the men – she caused a lot of disturbance.’ Remembering something he’d read somewhere – H.G. Wells, he thought – about moral indignation often being jealousy with a halo, Stratton imagined Miss Kirkland’s initial assessment of Ananda’s face and the contours of her body, and her dawning realisation that her own devotion would not, by itself, be enough to keep her in pole position. Miss Kirkland was staring down her tweed-covered knees. ‘Sometimes …’ her voice had dropped to a whisper, ‘it was agonising.’

‘You told us,’ said Stratton, ‘that you arrived at the Foundation
after
Mrs Milburn, but that wasn’t true, was it?’

Another whisper. ‘No.’

‘You’d known Mr Roth for some time before she came along, hadn’t you?’

‘Yes. I met him in 1946. I was in London, working for the civil service, and I saw an advertisement for a talk he was giving and went along. And it was quite marvellous.’ Miss Kirkland may have been tired, but as she said this her face was radiant.

‘So,’ said Stratton, ‘you came here when?’

‘I was here right from the beginning. The place was such a mess, you wouldn’t believe …
So
much work to do.’

‘And you looked after Mr Roth?’

‘Yes. It was my particular duty at that time.’

‘Until Mrs Milburn came.’

‘Yes. Mr Roth said I was needed to look after the ladies here. He said they needed particular guidance, and that I could supply it. That was to be my work.’

‘But you resented Mrs Milburn for supplanting you?’

‘That wasn’t important,’ said Miss Kirkland, sharply. ‘Only the Foundation is important. The work. The rest is,’ she lifted a hand from the seat of the chair and waved it dismissively, ‘irrelevant.’

‘But all the same, you resented Mrs Milburn,’ said Stratton, flatly. ‘Just as Mr Lloyd must have resented Michael.’

‘He never said so.’

‘But he did, didn’t he? The pair of you,’ here, he saw her flinch at the bracketing, ‘felt pushed out.’

‘What are you suggesting, Inspector?’ The voice was still fluting and the tones well-modulated, but the blush, Stratton saw, had concentrated into a hard spot of colour on each cheek.

‘I wasn’t suggesting anything,’ he said mildly, ‘but I am wondering why you lied to us. You may, of course, have decided it was your business to find out a bit more about Mrs Milburn, who she was, where she came from, and the …
provenance
, shall we say, of her son Michael?’

‘I did no such thing. There was – and
is
– no reason for me to question Mr Roth’s teaching on that matter, whatever I may think about his mother.’

No pretence now, Stratton noted, that she’d come to terms with her feelings towards Mary/Ananda. ‘Actually,’ he said, leaning forward and resting his arms on the table, ‘there was a reason to question it, although perhaps – and I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt, at least for the moment – you did not know it. Michael is not Mrs Milburn’s son, and he certainly isn’t the product of immaculate conception.’

Stratton wasn’t sure if he’d expected Miss Kirkland to be shocked by this, but if she was she gave no sign of it. He gave her a brief
summary of what they’d discovered about Michael’s parentage and the reasons that Mary/Ananda had ‘adopted’ him, then said, ‘The woman whose body was found in the woods is Rosemary Aylett, Michael’s real mother. She’d received an anonymous note from someone in London to say that the boy was here at the Foundation, along with a photograph of Michael – so there was no chance of any mistake about
which
boy – and she was on her way to claim him back when she was killed. That is the reason we’re asking about the birth certificate. It’s Michael’s – or, to use his real name, Billy’s – and when we interviewed Mrs Milburn last night she told us she’d hidden it in a suitcase in her room. It isn’t there now, and we think that somebody here took it and tracked down Mrs Aylett, in order to make trouble for the Foundation – and that somebody else,’ he gave her a penetrating stare, ‘apprehended her and killed her before she could turn up and put the cat amongst the pigeons by claiming her son. What do you have to say to that?’

‘Well …’ Miss Kirkland’s beam was now so set that it looked as if some unlikely form of muscular paralysis had crept up on her. ‘Who Michael is is not important, Inspector. What matters is
what
he is.’

Interesting, thought Stratton. She didn’t deny anything he’d said, or attempt to argue with it. A mental adjustment was being – or had already been? – made. The recipe was being altered retrospectively, but the outcome, and its utter desirability – remained the same. ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that the whole business about him being the Son of God was just window dressing?’

The corners of Miss Kirkland’s mouth turned slightly upwards in the superior and impenetrable smile of
one who knows
. ‘Things can be understood on different levels, Inspector. Not all knowledge is acquired through facts, you know.’

‘I can assure you that ours is.’ Stratton couldn’t stop himself.

‘Some knowledge,’ Miss Kirkland continued as if he hadn’t
spoken, ‘comes direct from the heart. And the scriptures have many levels of meaning, you know – from the coarsest to the finest and most subtle.’

‘But we’re not talking about something written hundreds of years ago. We’re talking about a bunch of people here and now.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Miss Kirkland looked at him with compassion – the way, he imagined, that she might look at a student who wasn’t ‘getting it’. ‘And Michael is a very special young man. He was sent to us as a … gift, if you like. The rest is unimportant.’

‘Whoever killed Rosemary Aylett didn’t think it was.’

‘But you have no proof of that, do you, Inspector? And, as you said, yours is knowledge that must be acquired through facts alone.’

‘She had you there, all right,’ said Ballard, as they sat smoking, waiting for PC Parsons to find out Roth’s whereabouts. ‘Smart cookie, that one.’

‘Bet you wouldn’t dare call her that to her face.’

‘Too right, I wouldn’t.’

‘She’s right, of course,’ said Stratton, ruefully. ‘We don’t have a shred of evidence from the scene of Rosemary Aylett’s death to link it to anyone in this building – or anywhere else, for that matter.’

‘Sounded like a challenge to me.’

‘It did, didn’t it?’

‘She couldn’t have actually
known
about us having no proof, though.’

‘Well, if we’d had proof we’d have said so, wouldn’t we? She’d probably say that was an example of knowledge coming from the heart – even though it’s just common sense. Making the ordinary extraordinary, that’s what they do here.’

‘She was still so bloody certain, wasn’t she? Even after you’d explained about the kid.’

‘Yes, and a bit too calm for my liking. I’m not at all sure it
was the first time she’d heard all that. I think she’s already had time to come to terms with it – reconcile it with her beliefs, or make it fit in, or whatever you want to call it.’

‘Do you think she killed Lloyd and Rosemary Aylett?’

‘I don’t know. It’s possible. She said Michael’s origins were unimportant, but that wouldn’t stop her wanting to prevent his real mother from taking him away as she obviously considers him to be an integral part of the place.’

‘She told us she was here the night Lloyd was killed.’ Ballard spoke thoughtfully. ‘But at that point we were asking people about where Mary/Ananda was, not where
she
was—’

‘And,’ Stratton interrupted, ‘Grove and his lot have been going door-to-door round Soho with Mary/Ananda’s photograph, not hers.’

‘I wonder if she can drive,’ said Ballard.

‘Only one way to find out,’ said Stratton.

‘I know. Interview the buggers all over again tomorrow. They just quote him all the time, don’t they?’

‘Roth?’

‘Yes. It’s as if he’s actually in the room, inside their heads.’

‘I know. Wait till you meet him.’

Ballard grimaced. ‘Christ Almighty. I think I might just start foaming at the mouth if I have to go through this all over—’

Footsteps sounded in the hall, followed by scuffling noises and a remonstrating female voice, and then the door burst open and a man appeared, pulling with him Miss Banting, who was clutching grimly onto the sleeve of his jacket. The man strode across the small room, Miss Banting still attached, and stopped a couple of inches from Stratton, who recognised him as the chap who’d been piling up the logs in the hall on his arrival. He was trembling all over – so much that, for a moment, Stratton feared he was about to fall down in some sort of fit. Then he opened his mouth and, as loudly as anyone could without
actually shouting, said, ‘It is not true. You are a liar, and it is not true.’

Then, shaking Miss Banting off so that she took an unsteady step backwards and landed in a chair, he turned on his heel and left the room. Miss Banting leapt up, beads clashing, to go after him, but Ballard got to the door before she did and, closing it swiftly, stationed himself in front of it and said firmly, ‘I think you’d better tell us what that was about.’

Miss Banting looked wildly round the room: at Stratton, who was wiping a fleck of spittle off his cheek, at the door, still guarded by Ballard, who gave her a decisive shake of the head, and then at the window, as if hoping she might be able to climb out of it.

Stratton stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘Sit down,’ he said.

Hesitantly, as though she thought he might bite her if she got too close, Miss Banting, head down, slithered into a chair, Ballard remaining behind her to block her escape route.

‘Now then,’ Stratton said, gently. ‘Perhaps you’d like to tell us
what
isn’t true?’

Miss Banting rocked backwards and forwards and twisted her head from side to side so that her beads shook. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, miserably. ‘I mean, I know
what
he said, but it doesn’t … He’s got it all wrong.’

‘Got what all wrong?’

‘Well, it’s …’ She emitted a sudden staccato laugh, obviously intended to signal that what she was about to say next was absurd. ‘He told me he’d overheard what you were saying to Miss Kirkland—’

‘How?’ asked Stratton.

‘He was outside the window, fetching more wood, and—’

‘Wait a minute.’ Stratton turned to look at the window, one casement of which was ajar. ‘He must have been standing in the flowerbed.’

‘Well …’ Miss Banting flushed and twisted her head about a bit more. ‘I don’t know – and of course he shouldn’t have been eavesdropping – but he said you said … something about Michael. About it not being true.’

‘What isn’t true?’

‘That he’s not the Maitreya – not Ananda’s child at all, but someone else’s, not even legitimate … all sorts of rubbish. I told him it was nonsense and that he couldn’t have understood you properly, but he wouldn’t see reason.’ She ducked her head and began fiddling with her bracelets. Head still down, she spoke in quick jerks as if desperate to get the words out. ‘It’s all been so
disruptive
. To the work. Everything. We were so peaceful here, and then there was the business over Jeremy, and … I know you have your job to do, but why can’t you leave us alone?’ Emboldened, she jerked her head up and stared at him defiantly. ‘People who don’t understand are bound to criticise, but you come and accuse us of stealing things, of murder, even, and it’s
horrible
!’