She Died Young (18 page)

chapter
23

A
T FIRST THEY’D MET
at hotels, a different one each time, but in recent months they’d used the flat Rodney leased in Pimlico. Regine interpreted the change as an important step forward, although in fact the flat was no less impersonal than the hotels. Also, she didn’t have a key. Rodney always arrived first. Yet he took a risk in inviting her at all. Neighbours might notice her. Other MPs lived in the block. That he was prepared to take that risk said something.

Suppose his wife turned up unexpectedly. Oh, she’d never do that, Rodney said carelessly. But the fantasy alarmed Regine, at least at first. Later she thought that if his wife
did
find them together, would it be such a bad thing? At least then the situation would be out in the open. So hoped Regine, the romantic optimist. Regine the realist knew that married men were not so easily detached from their wives. She knew this, not from experience, for this was her first venture into double adultery, but from her observation of her friends – and enemies: the poetess Edith Fanshawe, for example, whose affair with a married man had been leading nowhere before she ensnared her banker.

Regine wasn’t even sure she wanted to detach him; nothing so rational; nothing so calculated. It was just that when they were apart she longed and longed to be in bed with him. It hadn’t started like that. To begin with it had been at least partly about getting a foothold in the political world, for William’s sake as much as her own. For might not William himself become a politician? Look at Harold Macmillan – he’d been a publisher too, and now there was talk of his becoming prime minister. To be a political hostess: it was a rather intoxicating thought. Now, though, everything had changed, for she’d fallen in love.

On this December evening Rodney had had to leave abruptly, called to the House by the division bell. That there was a parliamentary division bell in the flat would be a valuable selling point, as Rodney had pointed out. The thought that he might sell the flat had unsettled Regine. Surely they would meet here into the indefinite future.

Left alone, she lay in bed and didn’t know why she felt close to tears. Then she thought of him as he entered the House of Commons, rapid, eager, the very picture of the public servant, the man in charge, when half an hour ago he’d been at her mercy and she at his. She was encouraged by that. She, after all, knew things about him no member of the public knew – nor, he assured her, his wife.

She slid out of the warm cocoon of sheets and eiderdown and dressed slowly. She felt tired now. She sat at the dressing table to comb her hair and reconstruct her make-up, applying violet eye shadow and dark lipstick. The memory of love began to fade as gloomy thoughts crept in. She thought again of what he’d said, what he hadn’t said and the hidden messages in his careless words about his wife. Oh, she can open a fête with the best of them, but she doesn’t understand that politics means compromise. To her it’s all clear and simple and straightforward. The Tory Party is always right and that’s the end of it. She doesn’t understand you have to make choices. She doesn’t understand my misgivings over Suez, she sees things in black and white, but you, you see how difficult it is, don’t you, Reggie … You take an interest in these things. Lettice doesn’t have an enquiring mind.

It was encouraging to hear him thus dismiss his wife to her. Yet for all Regine knew, he might at other times and in her absence dismiss her just as casually. But no – of course he didn’t say similar things about her. For no-one knew about her – at least she hoped they didn’t.

Now she was ready to leave. But here she was alone in the flat. It was an opportunity. She was not due home just yet. William was at an old boys’ dinner and she’d asked nanny to stay late to put the twins to bed. She laid her fur coat aside, draped over the sofa. (The violet mohair was too conspicuous for visits to the flat.)

She was not a systematic person, but now she did her best to make a thorough search. There were few clues to the politician’s tastes and interests. Copies of Hansard were ranked in chronological order on the bookshelves, together with a few thrillers of the kind that dealt with wartime heroics, alongside back numbers of the
Economist
and the
Spectator
. The familiar cliché of a Modigliani reproduction adorned one sitting-room wall. The twisted, elongated face looked, to Regine, like that of a discontented mistress.

She looked in the drawers of the console table and in the desk in the sitting room and the nearly empty ones in the tiny cabin kitchen. There was hardly even any food, just some coffee, some tea, biscuits, a few tins and in the fridge a jar of caviar. On the other hand, the drinks cupboard was well stocked.

The impersonality of it depressed her. This was hardly the entry into Rodney’s life she’d hoped for.

She returned to the bedroom. She had carefully stripped the bed and remade it minus the sheets. These were put in the linen basket, to be removed and washed, Rodney said, in the morning. The bed was smooth and innocent now beneath its white counterpane.

She turned her attention to the dressing-table drawers. Here there were a few signs of Lettice. What an affected name that was, but Lettice came from the old Tory aristocracy and hers was a traditional family name, Rodney had told her. And it was not Lettice herself who threatened Regine but that family, that ancient, aristocratic family. Rodney would never dare to offend his in-laws by destroying his marriage. His father-inlaw was in the House of Lords and a powerful figure in what Rodney always referred to as ‘the Party’, as though it were the only one.

Rodney was torn; Regine believed that. He was mad about her. But …

The madness of love did not last for ever.

Regine sat at the dressing table again. She removed the pretty lid from the box of Coty face powder, covered with a design of powder puffs on a bronze ground, and saw that the box was almost empty. What did that mean? That Lettice came to London often or hardly ever? Impossible to tell.

The longer she lingered in the flat the worse she felt. Her search had been pointless and had merely depressed her.

She reached for her coat. Just as she did so the telephone rang. The coat slid to the floor as she looked around for the instrument. Better to ignore it, but the temptation was too great. Heart pounding, she lifted the handset.

‘Abbey 4850,’ she said. Nerves made her almost swallow the words.

‘Is Mr Turbeville there?’

A woman’s voice. Regine’s heart seemed to be bouncing in her throat and choking her. But it wasn’t Lettice. The accent was wrong.

‘I’m afraid he’s not. I …’ She had a brainwave. ‘This is his secretary. Would you like to leave a message?’

‘Please tell him Sonia called.’

The telephone clicked at the other end. The line purred.

Regine took a taxi home to Kensington. The house was warm and glowed with soft light. The twins were asleep already. There was white wine in the fridge, left from yesterday. She poured herself a glass, took it to the drawing room and tried to feel pleased with the new colour scheme. They’d decided on Morris curtains rather than wallpaper, which, she thought, would have made the room too dark; instead she’d had the walls painted subtle celadon green. She’d taken much trouble to make the room aesthetically perfect, but this evening the weight of its beautiful Hepplewhite furniture, and two really quite valuable paintings on the walls, oppressed her.

It was inexcusable. Her previous husband had had unpleasant sexual habits and smoked a smelly pipe. He was irritable and he wasn’t good-looking. To be honest, money had been the main thing; and anyway it had been during the war, when everything was difficult and provisional and rash decisions were understandable.

William was so different. Regine could hardly understand how she had ever got into this position. It was wicked to have even thought of being unfaithful to such a decent man. Good-looking too, tall, blond, so English and rather bashful with it. It was his innocence as much as anything that had first attracted her. He was several years younger than she and at first she’d thought she would teach the shy boy (well, he was thirty, but seemed so much younger) all about love.

It hadn’t quite worked. Whether it was because he was so involved in his publishing firm, or whether his particular kind of decency had an inhibiting effect, but she had come to see that there were certain acts that shocked him and that he did not wish to explore. A sort of prudery, perhaps, or maybe he wanted to keep her on some kind of pedestal, although they’d been married now for five years. It wasn’t that he wasn’t keen on love-making; on the contrary, he was enthusiastic. It was just that … but she was too tired to think about it.

Oh, what is the matter with me? Why am I never satisfied with my lot? She looked at herself in the mirror, sat down again, turned on the wireless, then turned it off. This restlessness was terrible.

A woman called Sonia rang and wanted to speak to you.

Of course she could never tell him. That would be tantamount to asking the fatal question: who is she? Who are you seeing apart from me? I thought at least you’d be faithful to your mistress, if not to your wife.

If only, if only: she longed to return to the safety of her peaceful marriage. How good, how benevolent it seemed, now that she was separated from it. For she had been happy, hadn’t she, with William, happy enough at any rate, until Rodney had appeared.

She forced herself to calm down. She made herself scrambled eggs and toast and ate them at the kitchen table.

Later she went upstairs, undressed for bed and lay in the purity of the lovely white room. She tried to read her book, a peculiar novel by this new writer, Iris Murdoch. Everyone was talking about it, but it was too eccentric to grab her imagination. She let it fall from her hands and stared at the wall.

She must have dozed off, for she was startled to hear William bounding up the stairs as he called her name. He sat on the edge of the bed, flushed from the evening’s drinking.

‘How was the dinner?’

‘Bloody Quinault was there,’ he said. ‘That was a surprise. He’s always made a point of being educated at a grammar school. I suppose someone brought him. Typical really. He has a finger in every pie.’

chapter
24

T
HE AMBASSADORS CLUB FORCED
itself garishly on the street, shoved between the cramped terrace houses and dark, traditional restaurants on each side of it in one of Soho’s central areas, demanding attention. Its façade, decorated with neon, made a bold statement. It was the future.

Beer crates clanked on the pavement. A car hooted its horn. Soho had its sleeves rolled up, preparing for the evening’s entertainment.

Jarrell stood outside and looked up at it. Then he mounted the steps. At mid-morning the interior smelled of dust and soapsuds. A hoover buzzed in the basement. The foyer’s red carpet, mirrors and photographs of leggy girls in ostrich feathers, ogling ridiculously into the camera, looked tired at this hour. The weedy-looking waiter who was overseeing the drinks delivery glanced at Jarrell’s identity card indifferently. ‘I’ll say you’re here.’ Jarrell waited in the foyer.

It was some minutes before he was summoned upstairs, not by the waiter, but by a young woman in a tight pencil skirt and red sweater. The lift took them to the top floor. Mallory was standing in the doorway. He was a big man and looked as if he might have once been a boxer himself. His bespoke suit emulated the impeccable conservatism of the bent copper or big-time gangster. A man less confident than Jarrell might have felt shabby and lean in his presence. Jarrell did not.

The office was decked out in black leather and mahogany to create a club-like atmosphere that to Jarrell felt excessively masculine. Photographs of boxing stars decorated the bookcases that lined one wall.

Mallory’s wide, flattish face was dominated by the blue eyes. The retroussé nose appeared too small for the pale expanse, as did the rosebud mouth, which now twisted into a strangely feminine dismissive moue as a big hand came out. ‘What can I do for you?’ Jarrell’s fingers were crushed.

‘I’d like a word about Valerie Jarvis. She worked for you until recently.’

Mallory’s bright blue eyes trained themselves on Jarrell. ‘Terrible thing. Tragic accident. I hadn’t seen her for a while, but I heard.’ He gestured towards a drinks trolley adjacent to his desk. ‘Whisky?’

Jarrell shook his head.

‘Coffee then. I’ll ask Julie …’ He spoke through the intercom.

‘As it happens, sir, it seems it wasn’t an accident after all. The proprietor pushed her down the stairs. He’s confessed.’

‘Is that so?’ Mallory picked up a cigar box and offered it to Jarrell, who refused. ‘You don’t smoke? These are excellent.’ Mallory selected one himself and began the ritual of lighting it.

‘Camenzuli. Known as Maltese Mike. Worked for you at one time, I believe.’

Mallory didn’t say a word. His cigar was taking up all his attention.

Julie in the red sweater appeared with a coffee tray. She poured a stream of liquorice black into white china cups. Foamy milk followed in Jarrell’s cup.

Mallory took his coffee black. ‘Good stuff,’ he said. ‘Italian. Espresso. From down the road. Camenzuli. I may have had dealings with him in the past. But it would be a while ago.’

‘You should remember. He trained with you. Bantam-weight. Didn’t make the grade. Vicious temper.’

Mallory smiled. ‘There were quite a few of them. Wanted to fight for all the wrong reasons.’

‘But you don’t remember him?’

‘It rings a bell, but …’

‘His story is there was an altercation. He lost his temper and struck the blow that sent her down the stairs to her death. Does that seem plausible to you?’

‘If you don’t mind my asking, what’s the problem if he’s confessed? You don’t need my help.’

‘On the contrary, Mr Mallory. It could be helpful to know a bit more about your relationship with the Maltese. And with the victim. For instance, why she stopped working for you.’

‘Can’t see how that’ll help you.’

‘We need to build up a picture …’

‘Her heart wasn’t in it. She’d met someone,’ he said. ‘She began to get sloppy. Kept showing up late. I had to let her go. Pity. She was a looker. Very popular.’

‘But it was all quite amicable, was it? You parted on good terms?’

‘I ain’t going to lose sleep over a stripper.’

‘Not even when her life comes to a sudden end?’

‘That’s a different matter. She’d left. Nothing to do with me what happened when she wasn’t working for me no more.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Terrible tragedy of course, but …’ The sentence faded into a shrug.

‘No-one said her death had anything to do with you, Mr Mallory. What gives you that idea?’

Mallory occupied himself with his cigar.

‘I heard you weren’t too pleased she left.’

‘That’s the trouble with you coppers. You spend too much time listening to idle gossip,’ said Mallory with a flinty smile. The façade was impregnable – although it was not exactly genial.

‘Camenzuli’s been charged, but I’m not convinced and nor’s my guvnor. We’re wondering who put him up to it.’

The smile was fixed tighter. ‘You know, Detective Sergeant Jarrell, I can’t see what this has to do with me. Very sad about poor little Valerie, but you’ve lost me now.’

‘You and the Maltese go back a long way, I’ve heard.’

‘Like I said, you coppers shouldn’t listen to idle gossip.’

‘Were you annoyed when the girl left, or by the way she left?’

‘I didn’t give a sodding toss. There ain’t exactly a shortage.’

Jarrell stood up. ‘I won’t keep you. There’s just one thing, though. Someone else you knew was present when Valerie Jarvis died. A certain Doctor Swann. And the funny thing is, he’s also departed this world.’

Mallory didn’t turn a hair. ‘I’d heard,’ he said blandly. ‘I was sorry to hear it.’ The eyes seemed bluer than ever. ‘But I hadn’t seen the old geezer for a very long time. And now I think we’ve finished this little conversation. I’m sure you’ve got work to do.’