The Murder Room (5 page)

Closing his office door for the last time and entering the empty corridor, he was surprised and a little concerned at his lack of emotion. Surely he should be feeling something—regret, mild satisfaction, a small surge of nostalgia, the mental acknowledgement of a rite of passage? He felt nothing. There were the usual officials at the reception desk in the entrance hall and both were busy. It relieved him of the obligation to say some embarrassed words of farewell. He decided to take his favourite route to Waterloo, across St. James's Park, down Northumberland Avenue, across Hungerford footbridge. He went through the swing doors for the last time and made his way across Birdcage Walk and into the sweet autumnal dishevelment of the Park. In the middle of the bridge over the lake he paused as he always did to contemplate one of London's most beautiful views, across the water and the island to the towers and roofs of Whitehall. Beside him was a mother with a swaddled baby in a three-wheeled pram. Next to her was a toddler throwing bread to the ducks. The air became acrimonious as the birds jostled and scrabbled in a swirl of water. It was a scene which, on his lunchtime walks, he had watched for over twenty years, but now it brought back a recent and disagreeable memory.

A week ago he had taken the same path. There had been a solitary woman feeding the ducks with crusts from her sandwiches. She was short, her sturdy body enveloped in a thick tweed coat, a woollen cap drawn down over her ears. The last crumb tossed, she turned and, seeing him, had smiled a little tentatively. From boyhood he had found unexpected intimacies from strangers repellent, almost threatening, and he had nodded unsmiling and walked quickly away. It had been as curtly dismissive as if she had been propositioning him. He had reached the steps of the Duke of York's column before sudden realization came. She had been no stranger but Tally Clutton, the housekeeper at the museum. He had failed to recognize her in other than the brown button-up overall that she normally wore. Now the memory provoked a spurt of irritation, as much against her as against himself. It was an embarrassing mistake to have made and one that he would have to put right when they next met. That would be the more difficult as they could be discussing her future. The cottage she lived in rent-free must be worth at least £350 a week in rent. Hampstead wasn't cheap, particularly Hampstead with a view of the Heath. If he decided to replace her, the free accommodation would be an inducement. They might be able to attract a married couple, the wife to do the housecleaning, the man to take over the garden. On the other hand, Tally Clutton was hardworking and well liked. It might be imprudent to unsettle the domestic arrangements when there were so many other changes to be put in hand. Caroline, of course, would fight to keep both Clutton and Godby and he was anxious to avoid a fight with Caroline. There was no problem with Muriel Godby. The woman was cheap and remarkably competent, qualities rare today. There might later be difficulties about the chain of command. Godby obviously saw herself as responsible to Caroline, not unreasonably since it was his sister who had given her the job. But the allocation of duties and responsibilities could wait until the new lease had been signed. He would retain both women. The boy, Ryan Archer, wouldn't stick at the job for long, the young never did.

He thought,
If only I could feel passionately, even strongly about anything.
His career had long since failed to provide emotional satisfaction. Even music was losing its power. He remembered the last time, only three weeks ago, when he had played Bach's Double Violin Concerto with a teacher of the instrument. His performance had been accurate, even sensitive, but it had not come from the heart. Perhaps half a lifetime of conscientious political neutrality, of the careful documentation of both sides of any argument, had bred a debilitating caution of the spirit. But now there was hope. He might find the enthusiasm and fulfilment he craved in taking over the museum that bore his name. He thought,
I need this. I can make a success of it. I'm not going to let Neville take it away from me.
Already crossing the road at the Athenaeum, his mind was disengaging from the recent past. The revitalizing of the museum would provide an interest which would replace and redeem the dead undistinguished years.

His homecoming to the detached, boringly conventional house in a leafy road on the outskirts of Wimbledon was no different from any other homecoming. The drawing-room was, as usual, immaculate. There came from the kitchen a faint but not obtrusive smell of dinner. Alison was sitting before the fire reading the
Evening Standard.
At his entrance she folded it carefully and rose to greet him.

“Did the Home Secretary turn up?”

“No, it wouldn't be expected. The Minister did.”

“Oh well, they've always made it plain what they think of you. You've never been given the respect you deserve.”

But she spoke with less rancour than he had expected. Watching her, he thought he detected in her voice a suppressed excitement, half guilty and half defiant.

She said, “See to the sherry, will you, darling? There's a new bottle of the Fino in the fridge.”

The endearment was a matter of habit. The persona she had presented to the world for the twenty-three years of their marriage was that of a happy and fortunate wife; other marriages might humiliatingly fail, hers was secure.

As he set down the tray of drinks, she said, “I had lunch with Jim and Mavis. They're planning to go out to Australia for Christmas to see Moira. She and her husband are in Sydney now. I thought I might go with them.”

“Jim and Mavis?”

“The Calverts. You must remember. She's on the Help the Aged committee with me. They had dinner here a month ago.”

“The redhead with the halitosis?”

“Oh, that isn't normal. It must have been something she'd eaten. You know how Stephen and Susie have been urging us to visit. The grandchildren too. It seems too good an opportunity to miss, having company on the flight. I must say I'm rather dreading that part of it. Jim is so competent he'll probably get us an upgrade.”

He said, “I can't possibly go to Australia this year or next. There's the museum. I'm taking it over. I thought I'd explained all that to you. It's going to be a full-time job, at least at first.”

“I realize that, darling, but you can come out and visit for a couple of weeks while I'm there. Escape the winter.”

“How long are you thinking of staying?”

“Six months, a year maybe. There's no point in going that far just for a short stay. I'd hardly have got over the jet lag. I won't be staying with Stephen and Susie all the time. No one wants a mother-in-law moving in for months. Jim and Mavis plan to travel. Mavis's brother Jack will be with us, so we'll be four, and I won't feel
de trop.
A party of three never works.”

He thought,
I'm listening to the break-up of my marriage.
He was surprised how little he cared.

She went on, “We can afford it, can't we? You'll have your retirement lump sum?”

“Yes, it can be afforded.”

He looked at her as dispassionately as he might have studied a stranger. At fifty-two she was still handsome with a carefully preserved, almost clinical elegance. She was still desirable to him, if not often and then not passionately. They made love infrequently, usually after a period when drink and habit induced an insistent sexuality soon satisfied. They had nothing new to learn about each other, nothing they wanted to learn. He knew that, for her, these occasional joyless couplings were her affirmation that the marriage still existed. She might be unfaithful but she was always conventional. Her love-affairs were discreet rather than furtive. She pretended that they didn't happen; he pretended that he didn't know. Their marriage was regulated by a concordat never ratified in words. He provided the income, she ensured that his life was comfortable, his preferences indulged, his meals excellently cooked, that he was spared even the minor inconvenience of housekeeping. They each respected the limits of the other's tolerance in what was essentially a marriage of convenience. She had been a good mother to Stephen, their only child, and was a doting grandmother to his and Susie's children. She would be more warmly welcomed in Australia than he would have been.

She had relaxed now, the news given. She said, “What will you do about this house? You won't want a place this size. It's probably worth close to three-quarters of a million. The Rawlinsons got six hundred thousand for High Trees and it needed a lot doing to it. If you want to sell before I get back, that's all right by me. I'm sorry I won't be here to help but all you need is a reliable firm of removers. Leave it to them.”

So she was thinking of coming back, even if temporarily. Perhaps this new adventure would be no different from the others except in being more prolonged. And then there would be matters to arrange, including her share of that three-quarters of a million.

He said, “Yes, I'll probably sell, but there's no hurry.”

“Can't you move into the flat at the museum? That's the obvious plan.”

“Caroline wouldn't agree. She sees the flat as her home since she took it over after Father died.”

“But she doesn't actually live there, not all the time. She's got her rooms in the school. You'd be there permanently, able to keep an eye on security. As I remember it, it's an agreeable enough place, plenty of room. I think you would be very comfortable there.”

“Caroline needs to get away from the school occasionally. Keeping the flat will be her price for cooperating in keeping the museum open. I need her vote. You know about the trust deed.”

“I've never understood it.”

“It's simple enough. Any major decision regarding the museum, including the negotiation of a new lease, requires the consent of the three trustees. If Neville won't sign, we're finished.”

And now she was roused to genuine indignation. She might be planning to leave him for a lover, to stay away or return as the whim took her, but in any dispute with the family she would be on his side. She was capable of fighting ruthlessly for what she thought he wanted.

She cried, “Then you and Caroline must make him! What's it to him anyway? He's got his own job. He's never cared a damn about the museum. You can't have your whole future life ruined because Neville won't sign a piece of paper. You must put a stop to that nonsense.”

He took up the sherry bottle and, moving over to her, refilled both their glasses. They raised them simultaneously as if in a pledge.

“Yes,” he said gravely. “If necessary I must put a stop to Neville.”

4

In the Principal's room at Swathling's, Lady Swathling and Caroline Dupayne settled down at precisely ten o'clock on Saturday morning for their weekly conference. That this should be a semi-formal occasion, cancelled only for a personal emergency and interrupted only for the arrival of coffee at eleven, was typical of their relationship. So was the arrangement of the room. They sat facing each other in identical armchairs at a mahogany partners' desk set in front of the wide south-facing window which gave a view of the lawn, its carefully tended rosebushes showing their bare prickly stems above the crumbly weedless soil. Beyond the lawn, the Thames was a glimpse of dull silver under the morning sky.

The Richmond house was the main asset Lady Swathling brought to their joint enterprise. Her mother-in-law had established the school and it had passed on to her son and now to her daughter-in-law. Until the arrival of Caroline Dupayne, neither school nor house had improved during her stewardship, but the house, through good times and bad, remained beautiful. And so, in the opinion of herself and of others, did its owner.

Lady Swathling had never asked herself whether she liked her partner. It was not a question she asked herself of anyone. People were useful or not useful, agreeable to be with or bores to be avoided. She liked her acquaintances to be good-looking or, if their genes and fate hadn't favoured them, at least to be well groomed and to make the most of what they had. She never entered the Principal's room for the weekly conference without a glance in the large oval mirror which hung beside the door. The look was by now automatic, the reassurance it gave unnecessary. No smoothing was ever needed of the grey silver-streaked hair, expensively styled but not so rigidly disciplined as to suggest an obsessive concern with externals. The well-cut skirt reached mid-calf, a length she adhered to through changing fashions. A cashmere cardigan was slung with apparent carelessness over the cream silk shirt. She knew that she was seen as a distinguished and successful woman in control of her life; that was precisely how she saw herself. What mattered at fifty-eight was what had mattered at eighteen: breeding and good bone structure. She recognized that her appearance was an asset to the school, as was her title. Admittedly it had originally been a “Lloyd-George” barony, which the
cognoscenti
well knew had been bestowed for favours to the Prime Minister and Party rather than to the country, but today only the naÏve or the innocent worried about—or indeed were surprised at—that kind of patronage; a title was a title.

She loved the house with a passion she felt for no human being. She never entered it without a small physical surge of satisfaction that it was hers. The school which bore her name was at last successful and there was enough money to maintain the house and garden with some to spare. She knew that she owed this success to Caroline Dupayne. She could recall almost every word of that conversation seven years earlier when Caroline, who had been working for seven months as her personal assistant, had put forward her plan for reform, boldly and without invitation, and seemingly motivated more by her abhorrence of muddle and failure than by personal ambition.

“Unless we change, the numbers will continue to fall. Frankly there are two problems: we're not giving value for money and we don't know what we're for. Both are fatal. We can't go on living in the past and the present political setup is on our side. There is no advantage for parents in sending girls abroad now—this generation of rich kids skis at Klosters every winter and they've been travelling since childhood. The world is a dangerous place and it's likely to become more dangerous. Parents will become increasingly anxious to have their daughters finished in England. And what do we mean by being finished? The concept is out of date, almost risible to the young. It's no use offering the usual regimen of cooking, flower arranging, childcare, deportment, with a little culture thrown in. They can get most of that, if they want it, free from local authority evening classes. And we need to be seen as discriminating. No more automatic entrance just because Daddy can pay the fees. No more morons; they aren't teachable and they don't want to learn. They pull down and irritate the rest. No more psychological misfits—this isn't an expensive psychiatric unit. And no more delinquents. Shoplifting from Harrods or Harvey Nicks is no different from stealing from Woolworth's, even if Mummy has an account and Daddy can pay off the police.”