Original Sin (20 page)

Now he turned to Claudia Etienne. “Shall we go up?”

She turned to the three partners who, with Lord Stilgoe, were standing together in a silent group as if waiting for instructions, and said: “Perhaps you’d better wait in the boardroom. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

Lord Stilgoe said in a voice more reasonable than Kate expected: “I’m afraid I can’t stay any longer, Commander. That’s why I made such an early appointment with Mr. Etienne. I wanted to discuss progress on my memoirs before I went into hospital for a minor operation. I’m due there at eleven. I don’t want to risk losing the bed. I’ll telephone either you or the Commissioner at the Yard from the hospital.”

Kate sensed that this suggestion was greeted with relief by de Witt and Dauntsey.

The little group passed through the open doorway into the hall. Kate gave a silent gasp of admiration. For a second her step halted, but she resisted the temptation to let her eyes too obviously range. The police were always invaders of privacy; it
was offensive to act as if she were a paying tourist. But it seemed to her that in that one moment of revelation she was aware simultaneously of every detail of the hall’s magnificence, the intricate segments of the marble floor, the six mottled marble pillars with their elegantly carved capitals, the richness of the painted ceiling, a gleaming panorama of eighteenth-century London, bridges, spires, towers, houses, masted ships, the whole unified by the blue reaches of the river, the elegant double staircase, the balustrade curving down to end in bronzes of laughing boys riding dolphins and holding aloft the great globed lamps. As they mounted the magnificence was less intrusive, the decorative detail more restrained, but it was through dignity, proportion and elegance that they moved purposefully upwards to the stark desecration of murder.

On the third floor there was a green baize door which stood open. They mounted a narrow stairway, Claudia Etienne leading with Dalgliesh at her shoulder and Kate at the rear. The stairs turned to the right before the final half-dozen treads led them to a narrow hall about ten feet wide, with the grille doors of a lift to the left. The right-hand wall was without doors but there was a closed door on the left and one immediately in front of them which stood open.

Claudia Etienne said: “This is the archives room where we keep our old records. The small archives office is through here.”

The archives room had obviously once been two rooms, but the central wall had been removed to produce one very long chamber running almost the whole length of the house. The rows of wooden filing racks at right angles to the door and reaching almost to the ceiling were ranged so closely that there could hardly be room to move comfortably between them. Between the rows hung a number of light bulbs without shades. Natural light came from six long windows through
which Kate could glimpse the intricate stone carving of a balustrade. They turned to the right, down the clear space about four feet wide between the ends of the shelves and the wall, and came to another door.

Claudia Etienne silently handed Dalgliesh the key. Taking it he said: “If you can bear to come in I would like you to confirm that the room and your brother’s body look exactly as they did when you first entered. If you find that too distressing, don’t worry. It will help, but it isn’t essential.”

She said: “It’s all right. It’s easier for me now than it would be tomorrow. I still can’t believe it’s real. Nothing about it looks real, nothing about it feels real. I suppose that by tomorrow I’ll know that it is real and that the reality is final.”

It was her words which to Kate sounded unreal. There was a strain of falsity, of histrionics in the balanced cadences, as if they had been thought out in advance. But she told herself not to be overhasty. It was too easy to misinterpret the disorientation of grief. She more than most surely knew how oddly inappropriate the first spoken reaction to shock or bereavement could be. She remembered the wife of a bus driver stabbed to death in an Islington pub, whose first reaction had been to lament that he hadn’t changed his shirt that morning or posted the pools coupon. And yet the wife had loved her husband, and genuinely grieved for him.

Dalgliesh took the key from Claudia Etienne. It turned easily in the lock and he opened the door. A sour gaseous smell wafted out like a contagion. The half-naked body seemed to leap up at them with the stark theatricality of death and hang for a moment suspended in unreality, an image bizarre and powerful, staining the quiet air.

He was lying supine, his feet towards the door. He was wearing grey trousers and grey socks. The shoes of fine black leather
looked new, the soles almost unscuffed. It was odd, Kate thought, how one noticed such details. The top of his body was naked and a white shirt was bunched in the extended fist of his outstretched right hand. The velvet snake was wound twice round his neck, the tail lying against his chest, the head jammed into the wide-stretched mouth. Above it his eyes, open and glazed, unmistakably the eyes of death, seemed to Kate to hold for a moment a look of outraged surprise. All the colours were strong, unnaturally bright. The rich dark brown of the hair, the face and torso stained an unnatural pinkish red, the stark whiteness of the shirt, the livid green of the snake. The impression of a physical force emanating from the body was so strong that Kate instinctively recoiled and felt the soft bump of her shoulder against Claudia’s. She said: “I’m sorry,” and the conventional apology sounded inadequate even if it referred only to that brief physical encounter. Then the image faded and reality reasserted itself. The body became what it was, dead bare flesh, grotesquely adorned, displayed as if on a stage.

And now in a swift glance, standing in the open doorway, she took in the details of the room. It was small, no more than twelve feet by eight, and bleak as an execution shed, the wooden floor uncovered, the walls bare. There was one high narrow window, closed tight shut, and a single white shaded bulb suspended from the middle of the ceiling. From the window frame hung a broken window cord no more than three inches long. To the left of the window was a small Victorian fireplace with coloured tiles of fruit and flowers. The grate had been removed and replaced by an old-fashioned gas fire. Against the opposite wall was a small wooden table holding a modern black angled reading lamp and two wire filing trays each holding a few shabby manila files. Aware that some small detail was incongruous, Kate looked for the remaining length
of the window cord and saw it under the table, as if it had been casually kicked or thrown out of the way. Claudia Etienne was still standing at her shoulder. Kate was aware of her stillness, of her breathing, shallow and controlled.

Dalgliesh asked: “Is this how you found the room? Does anything strike you now which didn’t then?”

She said: “Nothing’s changed. Well how could it? I locked the door before we left. I didn’t notice much about the room when I—when I found him.”

“Did you touch the body?”

“I knelt by him and felt his face. He was very cold, but I knew he was dead before then. I stayed kneeling by him. When the others had gone, I think …” She paused, then went on resolutely, “I laid my cheek briefly against his.”

“And the room?”

“It looks odd now. I’m not often up here—the last time was when I found Sonia Clements’ body—but it looks different, emptier, cleaner. And there’s something missing. It’s the tape recorder. Gabriel—Mr. Dauntsey—dictates onto a tape and the recorder is usually left on the table. And I didn’t notice that broken window cord when I first came in. Where’s the end? Is Gerard lying on it?”

Kate said: “It’s under the table.”

Claudia Etienne looked at it and said: “How odd. You’d expect it to be lying by the window.”

She swayed, and Kate put out a supporting hand but the girl shrugged it quickly away.

Dalgliesh said: “Thank you for coming up with us, Miss Etienne. I know it wasn’t easy. That’s all I wanted to ask now. Kate, will you …?”

But before Kate could move, Claudia Etienne said: “Don’t touch me. I’m perfectly capable of walking downstairs by
myself. I’ll be with the others in the boardroom if you need me again.”

But her way down the narrow stairs was impeded. There was the sound of male voices, quick light footsteps. A few seconds later Daniel Aaron came swiftly into the room, followed by two scene-of-crime officers, Charlie Ferris and his assistant.

Aaron said: “I’m sorry I’m late, sir. The traffic was heavy on the Whitechapel Road.”

His eyes met Kate’s and he gave a shrug and a brief, rueful smile. She liked and respected him. She had no difficulty in working with him. He was in every way an improvement on Massingham, but like Massingham he was never happy to find that Kate had got to the scene of crime before him.

The four partners had moved together into the boardroom on the first floor less by deliberate intention than by an unspoken feeling that it was wiser to stay together, to hear what words were spoken by the others, to feel at least the spurious comfort of human comradeship, not to retreat to a suspicious isolation. But they were without occupation and each was unwilling to send for files, papers or reading matter in case this demonstrated a callous indifference. The house seemed curiously quiet. Somewhere, they knew, the few staff still on the premises would be conferring, discussing, speculating. There were things they too needed to discuss, a provisional reallocation of work to be agreed, but to do so now seemed as brutally insensitive as robbing the dead.

But, at first their wait was not long. Within ten minutes of his arrival Commander Dalgliesh appeared with Inspector Miskin. As the tall dark figure moved quietly up to the table, four pairs of eyes turned and regarded him soberly as if his presence, at once desired and half-feared, was an intrusion into a common grief. They sat unmoving as he pulled out a
chair for the woman police officer and then himself sat down, resting his hands on the table.

He said: “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting but I’m afraid that waiting and disruption are inevitable after an unexplained death. I shall need to see you separately and I hope to give those interviews before too long. Is there a room here with a telephone I could use without too great inconvenience? I shall need it only for the rest of the day. The incident room will be at Wapping Police Station.”

It was Claudia who replied. “If you took over the whole house for a month the inconvenience would be slight compared with the inconvenience of murder.”

De Witt broke in quietly, “If it is murder,” and it seemed as if the room, already quiet, grew quieter as they waited for his reply.

“We can’t be sure of the cause of death until after the post-mortem. The forensic pathologist will be here shortly and I shall then know when that’s likely to be. Then there may be some laboratory investigations which will also take time.”

Claudia said: “You can use my brother’s office. That would seem appropriate. It’s on the ground floor, the right-hand front room. You have to go through his PA’s office to get to it but Miss Blackett can move out if that’s inconvenient. Is there anything else you need?”

“I would like, please, a list of all staff presently employed and the rooms they occupy and the names of any who may have left but were here for the whole of the period during which your practical joker has been at work. I believe that you have already carried out an investigation into these incidents. I need details of the incidents and what, if anything, you have discovered.”

De Witt said: “So you know about that?”

“The police had been told. It would be helpful too if I could have a plan of the building.”

Claudia said: “There’s one in the files. We had some interior alterations done a couple of years ago and the architect drew up new drawings of the interior and the exterior. The original designs for the house and for its decoration are in the archives, but I don’t suppose your interest is primarily architectural.”

“Not at present. What arrangements are there for securing the building? Who holds the keys?”

Miss Etienne said: “Each of the partners has a set of keys to all the doors. The formal entrance is from the terrace and the river but that door is only used now for big occasions, when most of the guests come by boat. We don’t have many of those nowadays. The last one was the joint summer party and celebration of my brother’s engagement on the tenth of July. The door from Innocent Walk is the main street door but it’s rarely used. Because of the architectural oddity of the house it leads past the servants’ quarters and the kitchen. It’s always kept locked and bolted. It’s still locked and bolted. Lord Stilgoe checked the doors before you arrived.” She seemed about to make some comment on Lord Stilgoe’s activities but checked herself and went on: “The door we use is the side one on Innocent Lane by which you came in. That is normally left open during the day as long as George Copeland is on the switchboard. George has a key to that door, but not the back door or the river frontage. The burglar alarm system is controlled from the panel beside the switchboard. The doors and the windows on three storeys are locked. The system is fairly rudimentary, I’m afraid, but burglary has never really been a problem. The house itself is, of course, almost priceless but few of the pictures, for example, are originals. There is a large safe in Gerard’s office and after an incident when the page
proofs of Lord Stilgoe’s book were tampered with we installed additional locking cupboards in three of the offices and under the reception desk so that any manuscripts or important papers can be locked up at night.”

Dalgliesh asked: “And who normally arrives first in the morning and unlocks?”

Gabriel Dauntsey said: “Usually it’s George Copeland. He’s due to start work at nine o’clock and he’s usually on the switchboard by then. He’s very reliable. If he does get held up—he lives south of the river—it could be Miss Peverell or me. We each have a flat in number twelve, that’s the house to the left of Innocent House. It’s a bit haphazard. Whoever arrives first unlocks and switches off the alarm system. The door on Innocent Lane has a Yale and one security lock. This morning George arrived first as usual and found that the security lock hadn’t been used. He was able to open the door with the Yale. The alarm system was also switched off so he naturally assumed that one of us had already arrived.”