Original Sin (27 page)

He was very tall, certainly over six feet, and loose-limbed with a suggestion of gawkiness in the long bony wrists. His face, with something of the melancholy humour of a clown, was lean and intelligent, his cheeks flat under the jutting bones. A heavy strand of light brown hair fell across the high forehead. His eyes were narrow, sleepy under heavy lids, but they were eyes which missed little and gave nothing away. When he spoke, the soft agreeable drawl was oddly inappropriate to his words.

“I’ve just seen Claudia. She looks desperately tired. Did you really need to interrogate her? She has, after all, lost an only brother in appalling circumstances.”

Dalgliesh said: “It was hardly an interrogation. If Miss Etienne had asked us to stop, or if I thought she was too distressed, we would obviously have deferred the interview.”

“And Frances Peverell? It’s just as ghastly for her. Can’t her interview wait until tomorrow?”

“Not unless she’s too distressed to see me now. In this kind of investigation we need to get as much information as possible as soon as possible.”

Kate wondered whether his real concern had been for Frances Peverell rather than Claudia Etienne.

He said: “I suppose I’m taking Frances’s turn. Sorry about that. It’s just that my arrangements have temporarily broken down and my friend, Rupert Farlow, will be alone if I don’t get back by half past four. Actually, Rupert Farlow is my alibi. I’m assuming that the main purpose of this interview is for me to provide one. I went home yesterday by the launch at five-thirty and was at Hillgate Village by half past six. I took the Circle Line from Charing Cross to Notting Hill Gate. Rupert can confirm that I was at home with him for the whole evening. Nobody called and, unusually, no one telephoned. It would be helpful if you could make an appointment before you check with him. He’s seriously ill now and some days are better for him than others.”

Dalgliesh asked him the usual question, whether he knew anyone who might wish Gerard Etienne dead. He asked: “Any political enemies for example, using that word in the widest sense?”

“Good God no! Gerard was impeccably liberal, in talk if not in actions. And after all it’s the talk that matters. All the correct
liberal opinions. He knew what can’t be spoken or published in Britain today and he didn’t speak it or publish it. He may have thought it, like the rest of us, but that’s hardly a crime yet. Actually, I doubt whether he was much interested in political or social affairs, not even as they affected publishing. He’d pretend to a concern if it were expedient but I doubt whether he felt it.”

“What did concern him? What did he feel deeply about?”

“Fame. Success. Himself. The Peverell Press. He wanted to head one of the largest—the largest—and most successful private publishing house in Britain. Music: Beethoven and Wagner in particular. He was a pianist and played rather well. It’s a pity his touch with people wasn’t as sensitive. His current woman, I suppose.”

“He was engaged?”

“To Earl Norrington’s sister. Claudia has telephoned the Dowager. I expect she’s broken the news to her daughter by now.”

“And there was no problem about the engagement?”

“Not that I am aware of. Claudia might know but I doubt it. Gerard was reticent about Lady Lucinda. We’ve all met her, of course. Gerard gave a joint engagement and birthday party for her here on the tenth of July instead of our usual summer bash. I believe he met her in Bayreuth last year but I gained the impression—I could be wrong—that it wasn’t Wagner who had taken her there. I think she and her mother were visiting some continental cousins. I really know little else about her. The engagement was surprising, of course. One didn’t think of Gerard as socially ambitious, if that’s what it was all about. It’s not as if Lady Lucinda was bringing money into the firm. Lineage but not lolly. Of course, when these people complain that they are poor they only mean that there is a slight temporary difficulty about paying the heir’s fees at Eton. Still, Lady Lucinda certainly counts as one of Gerard’s interests. And
then there’s mountaineering. If you had asked Gerard about his interests he would probably have added mountaineering. To my knowledge he only climbed one mountain in his life.”

Kate asked unexpectedly: “Which mountain?”

De Witt turned to her and smiled. The smile was unexpected and transformed his face. “The Matterhorn. That probably tells you as much about Gerard Etienne as you need to know.”

Dalgliesh said: “Presumably he intended to make changes here. They can’t all have been popular.”

“That didn’t mean they weren’t necessary, still are necessary I suppose. Maintaining this house has been eating up the annual profit for decades. I suppose we could stay on if we halved the list, sacked two-thirds of the staff, took a 30 percent cut in our own pay and contented ourselves with the backlist and being a very small cult publisher. That wouldn’t have suited Gerard Etienne.”

“Or the rest of you?”

“Oh, we grumbled and kicked against the pricks at times but I think we recognized that Gerard was right; it was expand or go under. A publishing house today can’t survive on trade publishing. Gerard wanted to take over a firm with a strong legal list—there’s one ripe for plucking—and to go into educational publishing. It was all going to take money, not to say energy and a certain amount of commercial aggression. I’m not sure that some of us had the stomach for it. God knows what will happen now. I imagine that we’ll have a partners’ meeting, confirm Claudia as chairman and MD and defer all disagreeable decisions for at least six months. That would have amused Gerard. He would have seen it as typical.”

Dalgliesh, anxious not to detain him too long, ended by asking him briefly about the practical joker.

“I’ve no idea who’s responsible. We’ve wasted a lot of time in the monthly partners’ meetings talking about it but we’ve got nowhere. It’s odd really. With a total staff of only thirty, you’d imagine that we’d have got some clue by now if only by a process of elimination. Of course, the great majority of the staff have been with the Press for years and I’d have said that all of them, old and new, were beyond suspicion. And the incidents have happened when practically everyone has been there. Perhaps that was the joker’s idea, to make elimination difficult. Most serious, of course, was the disappearance of the artwork for the non-fiction book on Guy Fawkes and the alteration of Lord Stilgoe’s proofs.”

Dalgliesh said: “But neither, in fact, proved catastrophic.”

“As it happens, no. This last business with Hissing Sid seems to be in a different category. The others were directed against the firm, but stuffing the head of that snake into Gerard’s mouth was surely an act of malice against him personally. To save you asking, I may as well say that I knew where to find Hissing Sid. I imagine most of the office did by the time Mrs. Demery had finished her rounds.”

Dalgliesh thought that it was time to let him go. He said: “How will you get to Hillgate Village?”

“I’ve ordered a taxi, it’ll be too slow by launch to Charing Cross. I’ll be in at half past nine tomorrow if there’s anything else you want to know. Not that I think I can help. Oh, I may as well say now that I didn’t kill Gerard, nor did I put that snake round his neck. I could hardly hope to persuade him of the virtues of the literary novel by gassing him to death.”

Dalgliesh said: “So that’s how you think he died?”

“Didn’t he? Actually it was Dauntsey’s idea, I can take no credit for it. But the more I think about it the more credible it appears.”

He left with the same unhurried grace as that with which he had entered.

Dalgliesh reflected that questioning suspects was rather like interviewing candidates as a member of a selection board. There was always the temptation to assess the performance of each and to put forward a tentative opinion before the next applicant was summoned. Today he waited in silence. Kate, as always, sensed that it was wise to keep her counsel, but he suspected that there were one or two pungent comments she would like to have made about Claudia Etienne.

Frances Peverell was the last. She came into the room with something of the docility of a well-trained schoolchild but her composure broke when she saw Etienne’s jacket still hanging across the back of his chair.

She said: “I didn’t think this was still here,” and began to move towards it, her hand outstretched. Then she checked herself and turned towards Dalgliesh and he saw that her eyes had brimmed with tears.

He said: “I’m sorry. Perhaps we should have taken it away.”

She said: “Claudia might have removed it, perhaps, but she’s had other things to think about. Poor Claudia. I suppose she’ll have to cope with all his belongings, all his clothes.”

She sat down and looked at Dalgliesh like a patient, waiting for a consultant’s opinion. Her face was gentle, the light brown hair with strands of gold was cut in a fringe above straight eyebrows and blue-green eyes. Dalgliesh suspected that the look of strained anxiety in them was more long-standing than a response to the present trauma and he wondered what Henry Peverell had been like as a father. The woman before him had none of the petulant self-absorption of a spoiled only daughter. She looked like a woman who all her life had responded to the needs of others, more used to receiving implied criticism
than praise. She had none of Claudia Etienne’s self-possession or de Witt’s dégagé elegance. She was wearing a skirt in a soft blue and fawn tweed with a blue jumper and matching cardigan, but without the usual string of pearls. She could, he thought, have worn exactly the same in the 1930s or 1950s, the unexceptional day clothes of the English gentlewoman; unexciting, conventional, expensive good taste, giving offence to no one.

Dalgliesh said gently: “I always think that’s the worst job after someone dies. Watches, jewellery, books, pictures; these can be given to friends and it seems right and appropriate. But clothes are too intimate to be given as gifts. Paradoxically it seems that we can only bear to think of them being worn not by people we know, but by strangers.”

She said with eagerness as if grateful that he understood: “Yes, I felt that after Daddy died. In the end I gave all his suits and shoes to the Salvation Army. I hope they found someone who needed them, but it was like clearing him out of the flat, clearing him out of my life.”

“Were you fond of Gerard Etienne?”

She looked down at her folded hands and then straight into his eyes. “I was in love with him. I wanted to tell you myself because I’m sure you’ll find out sooner or later and it’s better coming from me. We had an affair but it ended a week before he became engaged.”

“By common consent?”

“No, not by common consent.”

He didn’t need to ask her what she had felt at this betrayal. What she had felt, and was still feeling, was written plainly on her face.

He said: “I’m sorry. Talking about his death can’t be easy for you.”

“Not as painful as being unable to talk. Please tell me, Mr. Dalgliesh, do you think that Gerard was murdered?”

“We can’t be certain yet but it is a probability rather than a possibility. That’s why we have to question you now. I’d like you to explain exactly what happened last night.”

“I expect Gabriel—Mr. Dauntsey—has explained about the mugging. I didn’t go with him to his poetry reading because he was adamant he wanted to be alone. I think he felt I wouldn’t enjoy it. But someone from Peverell Press should have gone with him. It was the first time he’d read for about fifteen years and it wasn’t right that he should be alone. If I’d been with him perhaps he wouldn’t have been mugged. I received the telephone call from St. Thomas’s at about eleven-thirty saying he was there and would have to wait for an X-ray, and asking if I would be with him if they sent him home. Apparently he was more or less demanding to come back and they wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be alone. I was watching out for him from my kitchen window but I missed hearing the taxi. His front door is in Innocent Lane but I think the driver must have turned at the bottom and left him there. He must have rung as soon as he got in. He said he was all right, that there was no fracture and he was going to have a bath. After that he’d be glad if I’d come down. I don’t think he really wanted me, but he knew I couldn’t be happy if I hadn’t made sure he was all right.”

Dalgliesh asked: “You haven’t a key to his flat, then? You couldn’t wait for him there?”

“I do have a key and he has a key to my flat. It’s a sensible precaution in case there’s a fire or flood and we need to gain access when the other is away. But I wouldn’t dream of using it unless Gabriel had asked me.”

Dalgliesh asked: “How long was it before you joined him?”

The answer was, of course, of vital importance. It was possible for Gabriel Dauntsey to have killed Etienne before he set off for the poetry reading at 7.45. The timing would have been tight but it could have been done. But it seemed that the only chance he would have had to return to the scene was after one in the morning.

He asked again: “How long was it before Mr. Dauntsey rang to call you down? Can you be fairly precise?”

“It can’t have been long. I suppose about eight or ten minutes, maybe a little shorter. About eight minutes I’d say, just long enough for him to have a bath. His bathroom is under mine. I can’t hear it when he runs his bath but I do hear the water running away. Yesterday I was listening for that.”

“And it was about eight minutes before you heard it?”

“I wasn’t watching the time. Why should I have been? But I’m sure it wasn’t unduly long.” She said, as if the possibility had suddenly struck her: “But you can’t really mean that you suspect Gabriel, that you think he went back to Innocent House and killed Gerard?”

“Mr. Etienne was dead long before midnight. What we are considering now is the possibility that the snake was put round his neck some hours after he died.”

“But that would mean that someone went up to the little archives office specially, knowing that he was dead, knowing that he was lying there. But the only person who knew that would be the murderer. You’re saying you thought the murderer went back later to the little archives room.”