Gently with the Ladies (6 page)

‘I think this deserves a libation,’ she said. ‘Poor Clytemnestra would have enjoyed that touch, also the paper doesn’t seem very combustible.’

She went to a tantalus on the side-table and fetched a decanter of cognac. She lifted the decanter high above the dish and let cognac pour from it in a stream. Then she ignited it. A clear, liquid flame spread about the dish and paper, becoming yellow and smoky as the paper began to char. At last the paper burned fiercely, sending angry tongues towards the ceiling.

‘There,’ Mrs Bannister said, ‘Clytemnestra’s manes receive again Clytemnestra’s gift, and the money can go where it likes. I’ll see that Lipton isn’t a loser.’

‘Does this prove something?’ Gently asked.

‘If it doesn’t, I’ve wasted a lot of cognac. Just see the hunger in those flames – how they lick from sheet to sheet.’

‘If Fazakerly gets off he’ll have the money.’

‘Never. The deed was in his face.’

‘You may not convince a jury of that.’

‘Does it matter? With the facts?’

She was staring at the flames in a sort of abstractedness, and now she stiffened and raised her arms. Her fine-featured face, looking downwards, caught a flickering ruddiness from the blaze.

‘At least, Fazakerly showed some grief.’

‘Crocodile tears. He’d know how to use them.’

‘But you’d have no need for crocodile tears. Tears from you would be genuine.’

Her eyes flashed at him across the flames.

‘What do you know of grief?’ she snapped. ‘Some maudlin hypocrisy in a witness-box would be the extent of your comprehension. Did I offer to exhibit my grief to you?’

Gently shook his head. ‘Does one exhibit grief . . . ?’

‘Oh, I could exhibit it if I wanted to, if I wasn’t too numbed to put on a show!’ She let her arms fall. ‘But of course,’ she said, ‘I was forgetting I was suspect too. So sorry. I should have squeezed out a few tears. This would have been such an appropriate moment.’

The flames burned low in the chafing-dish, became searching blue glow-worms, went out. A few browned scraps of paper remained unconsumed in the rustling ash.

‘Get out of here,’ Mrs Bannister said.

She turned her back on the dish and Gently.

Gently took his leave. He surprised Albertine, who had her ear to the door.

T
HE DIVISIONAL H.Q.
was newly-built in a style of sixth-decade New Town, and inside had an air of hearty brightness and aggressive anti-traditionalism. The C.I.D. was on the first floor. It was reached by a sweep of riser-less steps. Flanking the foot of the steps, in strip-work holders, were two potted rubber-plants with dusty leaves. The steps projected from raw brickwork which extended from the hall to the first-floor ceiling, but which was met at the level of the landing by a plastered wall painted dark blue. Reynolds’ office was at the end of the landing. It was shaped like a shoe-box and had one end of glass.

Gently went in without knocking. He found Reynolds in conference with Buttifant. They were seated on opposite sides of a formica-topped table on which lay a pair of shoes and some pieces of clothing. Buttifant was peering at these with a magnifier, but Reynolds was smoking and staring out of the window. He threw a sharp glance as the door opened, then ducked his head and rose.

‘Well,’ Gently said, ‘are we any forwarder?’

‘We’re filling in the story, Chief,’ Reynolds said. ‘Seems there’s no doubt about Fazakerly’s sea-trip, though nobody knows why he wasn’t drowned.’

‘He probably lacks a drowning mark,’ Gently said. ‘He has a different sort of complexion. Have we found his yacht?’

‘At Harwich, where he said. And the owners at Rochester recognized his photograph.’

Gently pointed to the clothing. ‘What about those?’

‘We’re sending them down to the lab now.’

‘But there are no obvious stains?’

Reynolds shrugged. ‘I did mention her turban hair-style, Chief.’

Gently stared at him, grunting. ‘Did her hair-style cushion the blow?’ he asked.

‘No, but . . .’

‘It wouldn’t have stopped the blood spurting either – there’d be blood on those clothes, if he struck the blow. I suppose you did find spattered blood?’

‘Well, yes . . . on her dress, on the settee . . .’

‘Her turban hair-style didn’t stop that.’

‘In the lab, perhaps.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on that.’

Buttifant looked up to say: ‘I think you’re right sir. There’s no sign of blood on any of these . . .’

Then he caught a look from Reynolds and took cover again behind his magnifier.

‘So, if no blood,’ Gently said, ‘we’ll need to skate lightly around that one. We’d best advise ignoring it altogether and letting defence counsel make the running. Then it’ll sound less important, more like a defensive finesse. It’s a pity though . . . the prosecutor’s office won’t be so happy without its blood.’

‘But it’s not conclusive, Chief—!’ Reynolds burst out.

‘Oh no,’ Gently said. ‘Just one of those things. Provided we don’t come up with too many, the prosecutor’s office will soldier along with them.’

He ignored Reynolds’ goaded look and went over to the C.I.D. man’s desk, where he could see a manilla folder of prints with
Fazakerly Case
scribbled across it. He turned them over. The divisional men had done a comprehensive job. The sprawled, nod-headed corpse of Clytie Fazakerly had been photographed from a score of angles. Not more than a yard from her slippered feet lay the gleaming belaying-pin, and dark stains covered the shoulders of the dress and peppered the settee-back adjacent. He turned to Reynolds, who had joined him at the desk.

‘Let’s face it: she was killed where she sat on the settee. Those scatter-marks prove it to the hilt: when she was struck she was precisely there.’

‘That doesn’t mean Fazakerly couldn’t have done it.’

‘It means another hole in the ice. I suppose there’s nothing in the P.M. report to suggest she was knocked out before she was killed?’

Reynolds shook his head bleakly. ‘Just that one depressed fracture.’

‘No broken nails?’

‘Nothing of that sort. She was hit once, we think from behind.’

‘Well, it could have happened. In the middle of a row she may have sat down on the settee, and she may have ignored Fazakerly going behind her and getting the pin down off the wall. Did the housekeeper handle the pin, by the way?’

‘Says she didn’t,’ Reynolds mumbled.

‘We’ll suggest the pile of the carpet smeared the prints, and that he changed his grip before throwing it down. Those are the tricky points about the actual commission. We’re lucky to have a good witness in Mrs Bannister.’

He sorted over some more prints. The last was a portrait which Reynolds had collected. It showed Clytie Fazakerly at full length and wearing nothing but swathes of gauze. She had a curiously round face with large cheek-bones and a squat nose, eyes that seemed to encroach on her forehead, and a chin vanishing beneath pouting lips. A bold, exposed face, resembling the type portrayed in Minoan paintings, having that same quality of belonging to a remote, dawn culture. Her blonde hair was twisted in a turban which accentuated the impression. She had a strong, buoyant body which carried a hint of athleticism.

‘Have you contacted her family?’ Gently asked.

‘They want nothing to do with it,’ Reynolds shrugged. ‘Her step-father is a solicitor in Bristol. He soon let me know what he thought about her. Then there’s her half-sister living in Kensington, she just wanted her name kept out of the papers. You’d think they’d care about the money, but apparently she smelled too high even for that.’

‘Did Fazakerly know where the money was going?’

‘No. We’ve got him on that at least. He didn’t know his wife had made a will, so he must have been thinking he was going to collect.’

Gently smiled frostily. ‘So he may.’ He told Reynolds of Mrs Bannister’s bonfire. The C.I.D. man listened blankly, his eyes rounded at Gently.

‘But shouldn’t we pinch her for that?’ he asked at last.

Gently shrugged. ‘It’s up to you. If you can afford the time Mrs Bannister can afford the expense.’

‘But what was she getting at?’

‘That’s easy. She seemed to think she was under suspicion.’

‘Mrs Bannister . . . ?’

‘She had that impression. It may have been something I said to her.’

‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Reynolds said.

‘Of course Quite ridiculous. She even went on to admit how she might have gone up there after she saw Fazakerly leave. She’d have gone to condole with his wife, of course, and she’d find her sitting on the settee, and she’d know exactly where the pin was kept because it was she who chose the spot for it.’

‘But Chief, you can’t—’

Gently shook his head. ‘That would be too convenient, wouldn’t it?’ he said. ‘Still, there’s a point about it which does interest us.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It fits.’

But the impression he carried away from Reynolds’ office was of the disturbing face of the dead woman: it was beautiful, but with a beauty of a distant, half-comprehended time. By present standards it was not beautiful, which was why it was disturbing. Yet you knew immediately that in its own age it was radiant and royal. It carried back to a child-like morning, an Olympian youth of culture, pre-Hellenic, beyond the stamp the Greeks had given to female beauty. It set you fumbling for the clues to it, for vague tidings of an infant world, for a glimpse behind the blank veil raised by a thousand incarnations.

He went down and sat for some moments in his car, just letting that face rest in his mind. Before seeing the photograph he’d begun to picture this woman from what he’d picked up from Fazakerly and Mrs Bannister. But the face altered all his ideas. It had suddenly wiped the record clean. In place of the depraved parasite he had been seeing was this . . . what was it? At the moment, a face!

A face that excused what the woman had been? Not quite: but a face that helped one understand it. For example, she was amoral, and not immoral: to her, morality would be just a sound. She used her body to secure a fortune, well. It was merely an exercise of her power. If she had that power, why not use it? Why be put off by a clash of words? Then again, in service of that power, why not create conditions to heighten its enjoyment? To exploit to the full its mystical sensualism, unknown in her philosophy as sin?

No doubt it was the strength of her amorality which fascinated the intellectual Mrs Bannister, which drew into a focus her slightly guilty inversion and set her defensively theorizing. For Mrs Bannister was synthetically amoral. She felt the sting of opinion. She had an answer waiting for the condemnation which Clytie Fazakerly would barely notice. And so she would worship that utter insouciance and discover there a mythic quality and perhaps feel herself the priestess of the myth: and exult a little when left in possession of it. For the priestess is an inferior until she embodies the goddess herself.

A motive there? Gently mentally shrugged, then reached forward to turn the ignition key. But he must know more of Clytie Fazakerly before he could let the matter alone. Instead of a right turn towards Millbank he made a left turn towards Kensington. He drove to a block of flats in Knightsbridge Place, parked, and climbed two flights of steps.

‘Yes – who are you?’

The door of the flat was being kept ajar by a safety-chain, and the blonde woman who answered it was wearing an embroidered dressing-gown and beaded slippers.

‘Are you Miss Merryn?’

‘Perhaps. Who are you?’

Gently identified himself.

‘Oh, I see. I thought you might be the Press. They’ve been pestering Daddy ever since it happened.’

She peered sternly at Gently through the gap, a manicured hand straying over her dressing-gown. If he’d been hoping for a resemblance to the dead woman he was disappointed by what he saw. Brenda Merryn was no Clytie Fazakerly. She had the commonplace good looks of the city woman. In any street you would meet a hundred of her going facelessly about their business.

‘Well, have you arrested Siggy yet, or have you come to tell me he’s done your job for you?’

‘Our job . . . ?’

‘Oh, it wouldn’t be a shock. He’s not the sort to face his responsibilities.’

Gently shook his head. ‘Fazakerly is in custody. He gave himself up to me this morning.’

‘You surprise me. So what do you want, then?’

‘Just a chat with you. If it’s convenient.’

For a moment he could read a curt refusal in her eyes, then she slid back a cuff to reveal a wristwatch, consulted it and sighed.

‘All right then, if you have to. But I can’t give you very long. Unlike my sister I work for a living, I have a surgery to attend at five-thirty.’

She unchained the door and admitted him. They passed through a vestibule into a lounge. It was pleasantly furnished in contemporary style and had curtains of gay cretonne. A meal was set on a tray on a leaf-table under the window. It consisted of poached egg on toast, crisp-bread, honey, an apple and a small pot of tea.

‘You don’t mind my eating while we talk? I’d just got this served when you rang.’

She drew up a chair to the table and began pouring herself a cup of tea.