Farthing (17 page)

I was the one who had to destroy the Yard’s copy of the file. So in case it makes any difference to anything, you can take it as absolutely proven that he’s a sodomite.” Stebbings’s tone did not vary as he said all this.

“A powerful sodomite who can pull strings,” Carmichael said.

“That’s just it,” Stebbings said. “I don’t like seeing justice made a fool of that way.”

“One law for the rich and another for the poor,” Carmichael said, sourly.

“The boy’s guilty of no more than being poor enough to agree to do something disgusting, and he pulled five years hard labor,” Stebbings said.

Carmichael wondered if Normanby was one who preferred boys who didn’t want to do what they were doing. He could easily imagine the man being like that, the power being as much of a thrill for him as the sex. It made him feel queasy. “Thank you for telling me, sergeant,” he said.

“Not that it probably means anything to your case,” Stebbings said. “Not now you have a Bolshevik gunman tangled up in things.”

“Then why didn’t he shoot Thirkie as well?” Carmichael wondered aloud. “There’s something about all of this I don’t like at all. I don’t like the smell of it.”

“Would that be a hunch, sir?” Stebbings asked.

“No it would not,” Carmichael said, grumpily. “I’d appreciate it if you’d get me any information from the files as soon as possible, Guerin or Brown. And please send someone down to Bethnal Green to check out Brown and any associates, right away. Also get someone digging on the Bolsheviks in London and why they might be wanting to kill off the Farthing Set. Oh, and whether there’s been any stir among the

Bolsheviks recently, or at the Russian consulate or anything like that.”

“What are you going to tell the press?” Stebbings asked. “They’ve been ringing up.”

“I’ve announced a press release in two hours, which will give me time to talk to Mrs. Kahn and Lord

Eversley,” Carmichael said. “I’m going to have to tell them the truth, so far as Guerin/Brown
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goes, anyway. Some of them seem to have heard the shots, and it’s possible that someone might have seen him on his motorcycle with the rifle.”

“Good luck,” Stebbings said. “Don’t get yourself shot by any Bolsheviks.”

“I won’t, thank you, sergeant.”

Carmichael put the heavy black receiver down carefully and rang the bell.

“Tea. China tea,” he said to Jeffrey when he came. “And ask Mrs. Kahn if she has the time to speak with me.”

15

Inspector Carmichael opened the door to me and ushered me into Daddy’s little back office, which he’d quite taken over. He had papers all over the desk, which Daddy never would; Daddy’s terribly tidy and always uses folders and clips for everything and puts them away as soon as he’s done. The Inspector had them in little piles, and he had notes everywhere too.

He rang for Lizzie, and when she came, asked her for a tray of China tea. “You needn’t, just for me,” I

said, though I was touched and surprised. “I don’t mind Indian for once.”

“The Inspector prefers China too, madam,” Lizzie said.

“Really?” I asked, surprised. He didn’t look one bit like a man who’d care about his tea.

“Is it such an unusual taste?” Inspector Carmichael asked. He turned to Lizzie. “Are we really the only ones in all of Farthing who prefer it?”

“Yes, sir, at least, there’s Mr. Kahn as well, but otherwise everyone wants their tea strong, or they prefer coffee.”

“Barbarians,” the Inspector said, but he was frowning. He made a tick against something on one of his piles of notes.

“I wanted to say, madam, from me and the rest of the staff, that we’re very glad indeed that you’re all right,” Lizzie said.

“That’s very kind of you, and really, I’m fine. I was more shaken up by the whole thing than hurt.

It’s just a… a graze really.”

Lizzie went off to fetch the tea. I could see I’d be swimming in it by the end of the day, but it was all meant very kindly.

“So tell me exactly what happened, Mrs. Kahn,” Inspector Carmichael said.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see anything. My horse did.”

“Unfortunately, we can’t question her,” he said, with a funny little smile. “How do you know she did?”

“She checked her stride, and whickered, as if she heard something. Then the next thing I knew the bullet passed between us.”

“You were riding close together?”

“Quite close, yes, perhaps six feet apart, maybe closer. I’m not exactly sure. After the bullet, or maybe there were two, because I thought I heard the sound after it hit me.” I stopped. “I’m sorry, I’m not being very clear. Did Daddy show you where it happened?”

“Lord Eversley was kind enough to show me, yes. I could also see the prints of the horses quite clearly.

You checked, you heard at least one shot, one certainly scored your cheek, and then you galloped down towards the house?” When he said “Eversley” he sounded very Lancastrian all of a sudden.

“Daddy told me to run, and I didn’t do anything, but he gave Manny a great wallop that sent her charging off downhill,” I said.

“Manny’s your horse?” he asked.

“Short for Manzikert,” I said, laughing a little. “It’s a battle, but don’t ask me who fought in it or what

year it was. Practically all our horses are called after battles. I learned to ride on a pony called Hastings.”

“Manzikert was 1050, in Anatolia, Greeks versus Turks,” he said, surprisingly, because I wouldn’t have thought he was the kind of man to know about battles either. He was a surprising sort of man altogether.

“I’m sorry. Your father cuffed your horse, and she ran away with you. What did he do then?”

“Didn’t he tell you?” I asked.

“He told me—now I want to know what you saw.” The Inspector was watching me very carefully.

Of course, this was where Mummy wanted me to be very clear and lie if necessary to get Daddy off any hook he might be on for having killed the terrorist. I decided I was going to tell the complete truth and not a word beyond that. “I didn’t see anything,” I said. “I’m sorry. Manny took off, and I was trying to get control of her. Daddy was behind me. I didn’t see him or anything he did until I turned around again, and by then he was coming down towards me, with a bullet in his arm.”

“Did you hear any more shots?” Again he looked at me with that wary look.

“I heard the shotgun, definitely. I think I may have heard more rifle shots.”

“You were aware it was a rifle?” He pounced on that.

“Not at the time, no. Your sergeant told me afterwards.”

Carmichael looked a little irritated. “So how many rifle shots would you say were fired?”

There was a knock and Lizzie came back in and set the tea things down. I poured, asking the Inspector about milk and lemon, and there was all the paraphernalia of cups and saucers— she’d brought the best china, Mummy’s Spode. Mummy would have a fit if she knew it was being wasted on a policeman, even such an unusual one as Inspector Carmichael. Not that Mummy would have appreciated his unusual qualities—knowing about battles and drinking China tea wouldn’t have cut any ice with her; indeed, it would probably have made the ice deeper, if I know Mummy.

We settled back down, with our tea, and he asked me again: “How many rifle shots, Mrs.

Kahn?”

“I definitely heard one, after the bullet scraped my cheek,” I said. “Then I’m fairly sure I heard another as

I was going down the slope, just before the shotgun blast. That’s all I could swear to.”

“But there might have been more, before, and when you were going downhill?”

“There might have been the whole Battle of Mons up there,” I said, in a shaky kind of way. “I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t get Manny turned around. I thought they’d killed Daddy.”

“That was a very reasonable thing to think, because the intruder had a rifle, and your father only had a shotgun. A rifle has a much longer range, as you know.”

“I know. It’s quite incredible really that Daddy managed to pot him.”

The Inspector just looked at me for a moment. Maybe he was adding something up in his head.

“Well, he was very lucky,” he said. “Does your father generally carry a shotgun on rides around the property?”

“It depends on the time of year,” I said. “In the autumn, practically always. In winter too. But at the moment all the birds are out of season. All there is to shoot is a hare or a rabbit, which isn’t much sport.

He only took the gun today because Harry insisted.”

“Harry insisted,” Carmichael said, making a note.

“Harry in the stables,” I expanded.

“I know who Harry is, Mrs. Kahn,” he said. “So you and your father were very very lucky indeed. You probably owe your lives to Harry insisting.”

“I was thinking about that earlier,” I said. “It’s one of those horseshoe nail things, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is,” he said, getting the reference at once, as I’d known he would. It’s a poem about a whole battle being lost for the want of a horseshoe nail. Hugh used to love it and recite it. He knew the whole thing by heart when he was quite a little boy and I wasn’t much more than a baby. “Who suggested that you go riding this morning?”

“Daddy,” I said. “I’d mentioned feeling restless and cooped up, you know, because we have to stay here and can’t go home, and he suggested that we could take the horses out. He said it would be all right if we didn’t go off the property. We didn’t—we kept very carefully to Farthing land.”

“He couldn’t have known you’d be there, then,” the Inspector said. “The assassin, I mean. It wasn’t something you planned and told the servants about so that anyone might have got to know about it?”

“No, it was pretty much spur of the moment,” I said. “Daddy suggested it as I was finishing my breakfast.

I went up and changed and then met him in the stables. It was hardly an hour.”

“Who else was at breakfast when you discussed it?”

“The Normanbys,” I said. He made a note, his pen strokes very hard.

“Were any servants in the room?” he asked.

“No… Lizzie was in and out, but I’m almost certain she wasn’t there just then.”

“There isn’t time for it to have been a conspiracy,” Carmichael said, almost to himself. “They couldn’t have conjured him up in that time; he had to have been waiting.”

“Waiting in case anyone happened to come along, I suppose,” I said. “Only it isn’t all that likely, is it?”

“Nobody went up there yesterday,” the Inspector said. “He could have been there then. He could have been prepared to wait until he found someone.”

“Have you found out yet about the—you called him the intruder?” I asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.

Who was he?”

“We’d know a lot more if he was alive to question,” he said. He frowned again and tapped his fingers together. “From what he had on him, and without more inquiries, he appears to be a Bolshevik agent.”

“A Russian agent?” It seemed incredible, like something from the tuppenny papers, like the sergeant saying my wound was “just a scratch.” It seemed absurd, although I supposed that the Russians had no reason to like Sir James, after he’d got Hitler to attack them, or Daddy either for egging him on.

“Either that or someone who wanted to make us think he was one.” Inspector Carmichael’s face was unreadable. “It could be a masquerade. Though the mystery there would be who it’s aimed at and how they persuaded him to be involved.”

“And is this Bolshevik the one who killed Sir James as well?” I asked.

“I don’t believe it for a minute.” Inspector Carmichael’s face was a picture. He wasn’t looking at me at all. He could have posed for a bronze statue of “Determination” to set on the Embankment.

“Then why did it happen now—isn’t it an awful coincidence?”

“It would be, if it were a coincidence. But once Sir James was killed and it was in the papers, I suppose the Russians might have thought it was open season on the Farthing Set.”

I shuddered at the image.

The Inspector seemed to remember that he was talking to someone. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kahn, I
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really didn’t mean to distress you. It’s just that this business doesn’t make any sense. You mentioned horseshoe nails, and finding the horseshoe nails is part of my job, and following them on to the horseshoe and the horse and the soldier, if you see what I mean, fitting the pattern together. But this time I have the pieces, and there’s a very obvious pattern they could fit into, but it all smells wrong. It’s like one of those conjuring tricks, sawing the lady in half, now you see it, now you don’t. There’s a whiff of sawn lady about all this, and I feel I’m being led by the nose to come to certain conclusions, which just don’t fit.”

“But who would be leading you by the nose?” I asked, thinking all the while that it must be Mummy, that world-class expert in nose-leading. I wondered what she would have said to me if David hadn’t been there. I finished my tea and put the empty cup down on the desk.

“If I knew that I’d know who killed Sir James,” he said, which left me feeling just a little taken aback.

“You think it’s David, in league with the Bolsheviks,” I said, then put my hand to my mouth too late; I’d already blurted it out.

“I don’t,” he said. “I’m Scotland Yard. I’m not interested in politics. I’m keeping an open mind.

I haven’t ruled out the possibility that it might be your husband, but at present it seems to me far more likely that someone wants me to think it is.”

“I know he didn’t do it,” I said. “I know you won’t believe me, but he was with me all night, from considerably earlier than one o’clock, and I know you think I’d say that anyway, but it does happen to be true, Inspector, and I wish you’d believe me.”

He just looked at me. I’d jumped to my feet somewhere in that, for no good reason, but I’d have felt even more of a fool to sit down again, so I stayed standing, holding on to what little dignity I had left.

“I do believe you, Mrs. Kahn,” he said. “I believe you believe you’re speaking the truth in any case, not trying to shield your husband or anything of that nature. That doesn’t mean that what you’re telling me is true, but I believe you’re speaking the truth. And while we’re on the subject, just to reassure you, on the whole I’m not inclined to believe that Mr. Kahn is involved. What did he have to gain? Revenge, because