The Murder Room (29 page)

She was surprised by the strength of her anger—against Mrs. Faraday for her arrogance, her effortless superiority, and against herself for giving way to an emotion so unprofessional. Anger at the scene of crime was natural and could be a laudable spur to action. A detective who had become so blasé, so case-hardened that pity and anger could find no place in his or her response to the pain and waste of murder would be wise to look for another job. But anger against a suspect was an indulgence which could dangerously pervert judgement. And tangled with this anger she was trying to control was an emotion equally reprehensible. Essentially honest, she recognized it with some shame: it was class resentment.

She had always seen the class war as the resort of people who were unsuccessful, insecure or envious. She was none of these things. So why was she feeling such anger? She had spent years and energy putting the past behind her: her illegitimacy, the acceptance that she would now never know the name of her father, that life in the city tower block with her disgruntled grandmother, the smell, the noise, the all-pervading hopelessness. But in escaping to a job which had got her away more effectively from the Ellison Fairweather Buildings than could any other, had she left something of herself behind, a vestigial loyalty to the dispossessed and the poor? She had changed her lifestyle, her friends—even, by imperceptible stages, the way she spoke. She had become middle class. But when the chips were down, wasn't she still on the side of those almost forgotten neighbours? And wasn't it the Mrs. Faradays, the prosperous, educated, liberal middle class who in the end controlled their lives? She thought,
They criticize us for illiberal responses which they never need experience. They don't have to live in a local authority high-block slum with a vandalized lift and constant incipient violence. They don't send their children to schools where the classrooms are battlefields and eighty percent of the children can't speak English. If their kids are delinquent they get sent to a psychiatrist, not a youth court. If they need urgent medical treatment they can always go private. No wonder they can afford to be so bloody liberal.

She sat in silence, watching AD's long fingers on the wheel. Surely the air in the car must be throbbing with the turbulence of her feelings.

Dalgliesh said, “It isn't as simple as that, Kate.”

Kate thought,
No, nothing ever is. But it's simple enough for me.
She said suddenly, “Do you think she was telling the truth—about the affair still carrying on, I mean? We've only her word for it. Did you think Angela was lying, sir, when she spoke to you?”

“No. I think most of what she said was the truth. And now Dupayne's dead she may have convinced herself that the affair had effectively ended, that one weekend away with him would mark the end. Grief can play odd tricks with people's perception of the truth. But as far as Mrs. Faraday is concerned, it doesn't matter whether the lovers were or weren't proposing to have that weekend. If she believes they were, the motive's there.”

Kate said, “And she had means and opportunity. She knew the petrol was there, she supplied it. She knew Neville Dupayne would be at the garage at six o'clock but that the staff of the museum would have left. She handed it to us, didn't she? All of it.”

Dalgliesh said, “She was remarkably frank, surprisingly so. But where the love-affair is concerned she only told us what she knew we'd find out. I can't see her asking her servant to lie. And if she did actually plan to murder Dupayne, she would take care to do it when she knew her son couldn't be suspected. We'll check on Selwyn Faraday's alibi. But if his mother says he was on duty at the hospital, I think we'll find that he was.”

Kate said, “About the affair, does he need to know?”

“Not unless his mother is charged.” He added, “It was an act of horrible cruelty.”

Kate didn't reply. He couldn't mean, surely, that Mrs. Faraday was a woman incapable of such a murder. But then he came from the same background. He would have felt at home in that house, in her company. It was a world he understood. But this was ridiculous. He knew even better than did she that you could never predict, any more than you could completely understand, what human beings were capable of. Before an overwhelming temptation everything went down, all the moral and legal sanctions, the privileged education, even religious belief. The act of murder could surprise even the murderer. She had seen, in the faces of men and women, astonishment at what they had done.

Dalgliesh was speaking. “It's always easier if you don't have to watch the actual dying. The sadist may enjoy the cruelty. Most murderers prefer to convince themselves that they didn't do it, or that they didn't cause much suffering, that the death was quick or easy, or even not unwelcome to the victim.”

Kate said, “But none of that is true of this murder.”

“No,” said Dalgliesh. “Not of this murder.”

14

James Calder-Hale's office was on the first floor at the back of the house, situated between the Murder Room and the gallery devoted to industry and employment. On his first visit, Dalgliesh had noticed the discouraging words on a bronze plaque to the left of the door:
CURATOR. STRICTLY PRIVATE
. But now he was awaited. The door was opened by Calder-Hale at the moment of his knock.

Dalgliesh was surprised at the size of the room. The Dupayne suffered less than more pretentious or famous museums from lack of space, limited as it was in scope and ambition to the inter-war years. Even so, it was surprising that Calder-Hale was privileged to occupy a room considerably larger than the ground-floor office.

He had made himself very comfortable. A large desk with a superstructure was at right angles to the single window and gave a view of a tall beech hedge, now at the height of its autumnal gold, and behind it the roof of Mrs. Clutton's cottage and the trees of the Heath. A fireplace, clearly an original Victorian but less ostentatious than those in the galleries, was fitted with a gas fire simulating coals. This was lit, the spurting blue and red flames giving the room a welcoming domestic ambience, enhanced by two high-backed armchairs, one each side of the fireplace. Above it hung the only picture in the room, a water-colour of a village street which looked like an Edward Bawden. Fitted bookshelves covered all the walls except above the fireplace and to the left of the door. Here was a white-painted cupboard with a vinyl worktop holding a microwave, an electric kettle and a cafetière. Beside the cupboard was a small refrigerator with a wall cupboard above it. To the right of the room a half-open door gave a glimpse of what was obviously a bathroom. Dalgliesh could see the edge of a shower cubicle and a wash-basin. He reflected that, if he wished, Calder-Hale need never emerge from his office.

Everywhere there were papers—plastic folders of press cuttings, some brown with age; box files ranged on the lower shelves; heaped pages of manuscript overflowing the compartments of the desk's high superstructure; parcels of typescript tied with tape piled on the floor. This superabundance might, of course, represent the administrative accumulation of decades, although most of the manuscript pages looked recent. But surely being curator of the Dupayne hardly involved this volume of paperwork. Calder-Hale was presumably engaged in some serious writing of his own, or he was one of those dilettantes who are happiest when engaged on an academic exercise which they have no intention—and may indeed be psychologically incapable—of completing. Calder-Hale seemed an unlikely candidate for this group, but then he might well prove as personally mysterious and complex as were some of his activities. And however valuable those exploits might be, he was as much a suspect as anyone intimately involved with the Dupayne Museum. Like them, he had means and opportunity. Whether he had motive remained to be seen. But it was possible that, more than all the others, he had the necessary ruthlessness.

There was a couple of inches of coffee in the cafetière. Calder-Hale motioned a hand towards it. “Would you care for coffee? A fresh brew is easily made.” Then, after Dalgliesh and Piers had declined, he seated himself in the swivel armchair at his desk and regarded them.

“You'd better make yourselves comfortable in the armchairs, although I take it that this won't be prolonged.”

Dalgliesh was tempted to say that it would take as long as necessary. The room was uncomfortably hot, the gas fire an auxiliary to the central heating. Dalgliesh asked for it to be turned down. Taking his time, Calder-Hale walked over and turned off the tap. For the first time Dalgliesh was struck that the man looked ill. On their first encounter, flushed with indignation, real or assumed, Calder-Hale had given the impression of a man in vigorous health. Now Dalgliesh noticed the pallor under the eyes, the stretch of the skin over the cheekbones and a momentary tremor of the hands as he turned the tap.

Before taking his seat, Calder-Hale went to the window and jerked the cords of the wooden slatted blind. It came rattling down, just missing the pot of African violets. He said, “I hate this half-light. Let's shut it out.” Then he placed the plant on his desk and said, as if some apology or explanation were needed, “Tally Clutton gave me this on the third of October. Someone had told her it was my fifty-fifth birthday. It's my least favourite flower, but shows an irritating reluctance to die.”

He settled himself in his chair and swivelled it to regard the two detectives with some complacency. He had, after all, the physically dominant position.

Dalgliesh said, “Dr. Dupayne's death is being treated as murder. Accident is out of the question and there are contra-indications to suicide. We're looking for your co-operation. If there is anything you know or suspect which could help, we need it now.”

Calder-Hale took up a pencil and began doodling on his blotter. He said, “It would help if you told us more. All I know, all any of us knows, is what we have learned from each other. Someone threw petrol over Neville from a tin in the garden shed and set it alight. So you're confident that it wasn't suicide?”

“The physical evidence is against it.”

“What about the psychological evidence? When I saw Neville last Friday week when you were here with Conrad Ackroyd, I could see he was under stress. I don't know what his problems were, apart from overwork which we can take for granted. And he was in the wrong job. If you want to take on the more intractable of human ills it's as well to make sure that you've got the mental resistance and the essential detachment. Suicide is understandable; murder incomprehensible. And such an appalling murder! He had no enemies as far as I know, but then how should I know? We hardly ever met. He's garaged his car here ever since his father died, and he's been arriving each Friday at six and making off in it. Occasionally I would be leaving as he arrived. He never explained where he was going and I never asked. I've been curator here for four years now and I don't think I've seen Neville in the museum more than a dozen times.”

“Why was he here last Friday?”

Calder-Hale appeared to have given up interest in his doodle. Now he was attempting to balance his pencil on the desk. “He wanted to find out what my views were about the future of the museum. As the Dupaynes have probably told you, the new lease has to be signed by the fifteenth of this month. I gather he was in some doubt whether he wanted the place to continue. I pointed out that it was no use asking for my support: I'm not a trustee and I wouldn't be at the meeting. Anyway, he knew my views. Museums honour the past in an age which worships modernity almost as much as it does money and celebrity. It's hardly surprising that museums are in difficulties. The Dupayne will be a loss if it closes, but only to people who value what it offers. Do the Dupaynes? If they haven't the will to save this place, no one else will.”

Dalgliesh said, “Presumably now it will be safe. How much would it have mattered to you if the lease hadn't been signed?”

“It would have been inconvenient, to me and to certain people who are interested in what I do here. I've settled in comfortably in the last few years as you can see. But I do have a flat of my own and a life beyond this place. I doubt whether Neville would have stuck it out when it came to the crunch. He's a Dupayne, after all. I think he'd have gone along with his siblings.”

Piers spoke for the first time. He said uncompromisingly, “Where were you, Mr. Calder-Hale, between, say, five o'clock and seven o'clock on Friday evening?”

“An alibi? Isn't that stretching it rather? Surely the time you're interested in is six o'clock? But let's be meticulous by all means. At a quarter to five I left my flat in Bedford Square and went by motorcycle to my dentist in Weymouth Street. He had to complete some work on a crown. I usually leave the machine in Marylebone Street but all the places were taken, so I went to Marylebone Lane at Cross Keys Close and parked there. I left Weymouth Street at about five twenty-five, but I expect the dental nurse and the receptionist will be able to confirm the time. I found that my motorcycle had been taken. I walked home, cutting through the streets north of Oxford Street and taking my time, but I suppose I got there at about six o'clock. I then rang the local police station and no doubt they'll have recorded the call. They seemed remarkably unconcerned about the theft and I've heard nothing from them since. With the present level of gun crime and the terrorism threat, a stolen motorcycle is hardly a high priority. I'll give it a couple of days and then write it off and claim the insurance. It'll be dumped in a ditch somewhere. It's a Norton—they're not made now—and I was fond of it, but not as obsessively fond as poor Neville was of his E-type.”

Piers had made a note of the times. Dalgliesh said, “And there's nothing else you can tell us?”

“Nothing. I'm sorry I haven't been more helpful. But as I said, I hardly knew Neville.”