Cast a Cold Eye, page 15
She lifted her shoulders. "That Clive refused to give a job to the boy, who was a protege of Marcus's. And the upshot of it, which was really quite terrible . . ." Her voice had become so low he had to strain to hear. "He was so shattered at not getting the job, he actually took his own life."
There was a silence while her listeners absorbed the implications of this. We're getting somewhere, thought Kite with a sudden surge of excitement, infected with the tension that he knew was building up inside the chief inspector, who looked taut, as though poised on the edge of discovery, and the effort of holding himself back was hurting him, physically.
Mayo forced himself to tread cautiously. "Wasn't that an excessive reaction, to kill yourself for not getting a job?"
"To most people it would seem so, but apparently Simon always was—rather over the top, or so I believe. I only knew him very slightly, myself. In this instance, it was all made very much worse because Marcus accused Clive, saying it was all his fault. Clive of course claimed he'd a perfect right to refuse to employ Simon . . . Well, his actual words were that Waring & Lethbridge weren't a philanthropic society."
"Meaning what?
"Meaning, I'm afraid, that he'd reason to believe Simon was taking drugs, hard drugs, and he was in fact addicted. It was probably true. The cause of his death was from an overdose."
"How long ago did this happen?"
"Four or five years, at a guess."
"It would rankle with Dymond, a thing like that? He wouldn't be able to forget?"
She was very distressed. "Forget? Oh no, never that. Simon was much more than a pupil, you see. He was very close to Marcus, and Enid; in fact, he lived with them for some time after his parents were divorced. I don't believe Marcus would forget, and he'd never forgive, either, but if you're asking me if he would kill Clive for it, especially after all this time, then I'd never believe that, either."
Marcus Dymond viewed death dispassionately, a necessity viewpoint he had cultivated over the last few years, occasioned by the events that had overtaken him. Enid's painful and progressive illness he saw as one from which death would be a blessing. He believed the only pain that death itself—not its ugly preliminaries—brought was to others, and the single, solitary regret about Clive Lethbridge's demise was the sorrow it would bring to the bereaved. Even in death, Lethbridge was capable of making others suffer. He himself knew that agony intimately; he had been there already, projecting himself into the future, when Enid would leave him behind, and back into the past, when Simon had died.
He waited, watching the daily woman, Mrs. Chisholm, point the way to the two men who had rung the bell, waiting for them to reach the path to the summerhouse, the chief inspector and another policeman whom he hadn't met before, a tall, rangy man with a cheerful, youthful face.
"Enid," he began, "leave it all to me this time, won't you?" "If you wish it, of course—but don't worry, my dear. Everything's going to be all right. There's nothing bad enough to hurt either of us."
Her calm serenity shamed him twenty times a day.
The summerhouse reminded Mayo of a Tunisian birdcage. The lacy woodwork of its octagonal frame was painted blue and white, but inside it was roomy and very English, with creaking, comfortable old basketwork furniture, and a small picnic stove. It smelled like a cricket pavilion, of dry old wood, and tea. A table was laid with cups and saucers and a teapot under a knitted cosy. The view from each side of the summerhouse was different: winding paths; a small coppice of elegant silver birch; flower beds and lawns, smooth where they faced the house; a still, natural pool. Beyond this the land dropped steeply, levelling out into ploughed fields parallel with the main road, which was far enough away not to be troublesome, before rising again to Brome House on the skyline, with Oddings Cottage in the middle distance. Church bells sounded distantly, a maple flamed against a duck-egg-blue sky, the occasional leaf fluttered to the ground, and Mayo had to make an effort not to be beguiled. He waved away the offer of one of the basket chairs which Dymond indicated, and refused tea. "Thank you, but time is pressing. Sergeant Kite and I would like to have a further word with you please, Mr. Dymond. I suggest you might prefer it to be in private."
"I've already told you all I know, and I can't see any possible reason for your questioning me further." "That's for us to say, sir. Shall we go into the house?" "There's nothing you can't say in front of my wife." "I don't think you're in a position to judge that until you know what it is," Mayo insisted stolidly.
The air inside the summerhouse seemed suddenly used up. Mayo had the feeling that Dymond knew what was coming. He made a gesture that seemed oddly uncharacteristic of him, a half-sketched indecisive turn, then his wife said, "Go along with them, Marcus. I shall be quite happy here. We were watching a heron on the pond before you came, Mr. Mayo; perhaps he'll come back." She spoke tranquilly, and had already turned her wheelchair towards one of the windows. He saw that the binoculars he'd used yesterday were on her knee.
"Thank you, Mrs. Dymond." He turned abruptly, to begin the walk back to the house.
"Goodbye to you both." She was already lifting the binoculars to her eyes when they left.
Dymond showed them into the same room as before. "When we spoke to you last," Mayo began, immediately he was seated in that enviable armchair, "you mentioned that your quarrel with Clive Lethbridge went back a long way. You neglected to mention, however, the very specific event which started it, over something—or someone—who was very important to you, and to your wife. I'd like to know more of the details, as much as you can remember."
"It appears to me you're already very well informed on the subject, which I assure you can have no possible connection with your enquiries."
"We'll be the judge of that. Please don't evade the issue, sir."
"I can only presume you are referring to the death of Simon Johnson."
"I am."
"Which you must know I held Lethbridge directly responsible for. If he hadn't refused to employ Simon, that young man would still be alive."
"Isn't that assuming a good deal? Most people can cope with being turned down for a job without resorting to such lengths."
"Most people, Chief Inspector, would not have had his problems."
"Supposing we go back to the beginning. For a start, how you came to be personally involved with him—apart from teaching him at school, I mean."
Dymond stood with his back to the fireplace, his hands clasped behind his back, as if resigned to facing a recalcitrant fourth form with a lecture in which, if he was lucky, they would appreciate about one word in ten. "Very well." Gazing into the middle distance, he began, speaking fluently, dryly and without emotion.
"One can say of very few boys that they are a pleasure to teach, but Simon was—not only clever, but receptive. But he was a product of our so-called civilised society, of divorced parents who took off to the ends of the earth with their respective partners, his father to Bahrein, his mother back to the United States. Fortunately, they still had enough sense to realise that Simon, who was in his last year at school, needed to continue his education here, and they decided to leave him. There was a problem as to where he should live, and since we had plenty of space, it was decided he should stay here with us for a year before going on to college." Dymond paused to clear his throat. "My wife and I have never had children of our own, but Simon was—well, let's just say we had no cause to regret what we did."
"May I see the photograph you have of him?"
"How—?" Raised eyebrows, followed by cynical recognition. "Oh yes, the inestimable Deeley, I take it? One should never be surprised at anything."
"Detective Constable Deeley was observant enough to notice it, when we were last here, yes," Mayo replied curtly, annoyed by the man's unnecessary sarcasm, which was effectively quenching the thought that he might after all be human.
Dymond stepped over to the piano and, selecting the photograph which Mayo assumed to be the one that had attracted Deeley's attention, handed it over. Mayo saw a tall, good-looking boy with large, round spectacles, a defenceless face.
Mrs. Dymond looking not five, but ten years younger. Marcus Dymond looking much the same.
"Carry on, please."
"Yes. Well then, Simon had been determined to become an architect since he was a very small boy. Buildings fascinated him, and he happened to have the required difficult combination of talents—a certain artistic ability, and a complete grasp of mathematical principles. He took a preliminary course at art college, and then won a place at the Architectural Association. He was confidently expected to become a star pupil, but something went seriously wrong. Though he continued to win commendations from time to time for his outstanding work, his day-to-day progress was so erratic, in the end he left without much honour." He stopped, gazing unseeingly out of the window. "We know now, of course, that someone had already introduced him to drugs. I would like nothing better," he added, unemotionally, "than to see such persons on the end of a rope."
Poor devil, thought Mayo, exchanging glances with Kite. They knew all about those who sold misery and death to the young, the bored, the desperate. But he kept his opinions to himself. "I take it you tried to get him to accept professional help?"
"When we found out, of course we did, but there's nothing to be done if the will isn't there." Dymond contemplated the empty pipe he'd again picked up. "Naturally, he couldn't keep a job, and it became evident he was becoming more and more dependant, losing his hold. He began to look like a—a derelict. And then, quite suddenly, he seemed to find the motivation from somewhere, God knows where. He told us he'd agreed to have treatment to help him to 'kick the habit,' as he put it. Later he came to see us, and he was apparently completely cured. It seemed like—it was —a miracle."
"And that was when he applied for the job with Lethbridge?"
"Not then," Dymond said. "Not until he'd tried every other avenue open to him. But with his record, no formal qualifications, what could one expect? Not one person was willing to take him on, give him a new start."
"But you thought Lethbridge might have done so?"
"Not I. But Simon did. He knew someone who worked for Lethbridge, who told him of a vacancy in the firm. He was quite sure they would be prepared to take him. Simon went along, full of hope, and sure enough, he was offered the job. To say he was jubilant would be an understatement. Then a letter arrived, not confirming the offer, but curtly stating that the position had been filled. That night he took an overdose and died. It doesn't take much, as I'm sure I've no need to remind you, to push a reformed addict back over the edge." An aircraft, flying low, filled the room with its roar. Dymond waited until it had ceased. "Well, now that you have succeeded in wringing that out of me, and seen that it has nothing to do with the case, as I said, I must ask you to leave. I can't help you anymore, and I'm not sure that I want to. No doubt our present namby-pamby laws will allow whoever killed Lethbridge—if by some chance you manage to catch him—to walk free in a few years, but in this case I say good luck to him."
It was possible to feel sorry for Dymond, in the hell he'd been through, quite impossible to like him. Mayo said, apparently at random, "What happened to Simon Johnson's sister when the parents divorced?"
Dymond raised his head, and blinked. "Sylvia? Why, she finally stayed with her mother. As far as I know, she's still there. We are not, and never have been, in regular correspondence."
"She hasn't visited you recently?"
"Certainly not. Not since she was a child."
"You didn't know, then, that she had recently been employed as Clive Lethbridge's secretary?"
Dymond looked astounded. "That's preposterous! She would never have worked for that man after what he did to her brother."
"She did, however, for the last six weeks. Are you sure you didn't know?"
"I've said so. And how should I have known?"
"Perhaps she told you. Perhaps she took the job at your request. Perhaps the two of you cooked up a scheme to find some way to make Clive Lethbridge pay for what he had done to Simon. Did it start with blackmailing letters and phone calls, and end up with murder? Did it, Mr. Dymond?"
"You are talking utter rubbish!"
"I put it you that you could have walked from here on Friday afternoon to Brome House, knowing through Sylvia Johnson that Lethbridge would be alone in the house except for Mrs. Peach, who is somewhat deaf, and killed him. You could have established an alibi by telephoning Mr. Waring as if you were ringing from your own home, and then calmly walked back."
"That's neither true nor feasible, and you know it." Dymond had gone very pale, but he met Mayo's gaze without flinching. "It's pure supposition."
"Is it? It might be up to you, Mr. Dymond, to prove otherwise." He stood up, preparing to go. "By the way, what was the date of Simon Johnson's death?"
"June the fifteenth, three years ago."
"And the name of the friend who recommended him to Waring & Lethbridge?"
"Murfitt, his name was, Donald Murfitt—though he was Sylvia's friend rather than Simon's. I believe," Dymond added with some distaste, "they were both involved in some kind of freakish religion. She was, I'm afraid, that kind of girl."
"Do you mean the sort whose religious principles might state a life for a life?"
"Not at all. I mean she was just the type to take up some extreme religion. She was unfortunately rather plain, not very clever, and without even an attractive nature to compensate. Even my wife could find very little likeable about her, and I can't say that for many people."
"What sort of man is Murfitt?"
"I've never met him, only heard of him. But I thought him —misguided, to say the least, sending Simon to Lethbridge."
"Do you think it might have been through his sister's influence that Simon was persuaded to come off drugs?"
"Unlikely. He was inclined to be scathing about what he called her nutty religion, her 'do-gooding.' "
"Yet she did try to get him a job."
"That's true. She was very fond of him, and in any case, she would have considered it her duty. As I've said, whatever else, she was a very worthy sort of young woman."
CHAPTER 17
"We're never going to make that one stick." Kite wound down the car window, letting in air that was no cooler than inside the car.
"You reckon?" Mayo still sounded somewhat short, due, had Kite known it, solely to his own inability to grasp and hold that something he still felt was there just beyond his reach. Last night he'd been gripped with that surge of tension and excitement that told him he was on the verge of a breakthrough, and now . . . He looked at the seat belt buckle in his hand as if wondering what it was doing there, then clicked it fastened. What he needed was time for a rethink, a reappraisal.
Loosening his tie, he relaxed suddenly. "Well, whatever, it won't do Dymond any harm to sweat for a bit. He owes us one, for Deeley if nothing else. Patronising buggers like him get on my wick. Come on, take that grin off your face and let's be having you."
They drove back to the station. Mayo spent some time in the busy incident room, where every item of information about the murder was being fed into the computer, indexed, cross-referenced. He picked up fresh information which had come in during the course of the morning. Amongst this was a preliminary report on Lethbridge's BMW, mainly to confirm what Mayo already suspected, that the car was going to need a lot of working on. Several of the garage staff had handled it during the course of its servicing, leaving prints which would have to be eliminated. Hairs and clothing fibres would be more difficult, because of the protective polythene, still on the front seats. But . . . blood had been found on the driving seat covers and the carpet, quickly tested and found to be group O, Lethbridge's own, though further exhaustive tests by the experts would split it up more precisely. It was the first piece of solid evidence that had been found.
Albert George Wisden, fifty-one, of Finchley, had, it seemed, been contacted, with the result that Wharton was now apparently in the clear. A report from Deeley, who'd been sent to make the enquiry, stated that after Mrs. Wharton had thrown the two men out, they had gone on to the Prince of Wales, where they could get drinks, since Wharton was staying there. The girl who served them remembered them because she was annoyed at having to open the bar up specially at that time in the afternoon, the time when Lethbridge was being murdered.
He'd just finished reading this when Kite brought in the report of the D.C. who'd talked to the waiter at the Brandon Hall. "Odell's just confirmed that the waiter at the Brandon Hall served Mrs. Lethbridge and Royston with tea at about quarter to four. There was this other witness Royston mentioned as well. She was in the grotto having tea when they had theirs, then saw Royston seeing Caroline Lethbridge off in the car park at ten past four, after they'd finished. It's unlikely she's wrong; she's an old lady living there in the hotel on her own with nothing to do but watch other folk, and she scented romance."
Mayo said, "So that's two we can cross off definitely, three if we count Mrs. Wharton, which I'm inclined to do, barring some hitherto undiscovered motive turning up, four with Caroline Lethbridge now that the employment agency have confirmed the times she gave us. But what about Royston? What about him, Martin? D'you see him as a murderer?"
Kite thought for a moment or two. "He's capable of taking decisions into his own hands, and if he saw murder as the only solution, he might not hesitate, but I'd bet he'd look for a more civilised way out first. Though there was time for him to have done it, just."
"He'd have had to get a move on, but it's just possible."
Mayo pushed his papers away. He was back on an even keel. He never despised instinct, that other name for gut feeling or whether or not something smelled right, but this last hour was what it was all about as well, routine procedures, weeks and months of patient, even boring sifting of information, slowly piecing a case together. Police work was mostly based on common sense and what you'd learned about human nature. You could expect a lot of reverses and disappointments, and a few breaks, and in the end, if you were lucky, you came up with the right answers. If not, your career could be blighted with one of the unsolved cases. This hadn't yet happened to Mayo, but it was one of his nightmares that one day it might. Apart from a few back-handed comments coming your way, if you'd done your job right, nobody in the force . . . there but for the grace of God . . . would really blame you for it. But you would. He pushed the possibility far into the back of his mind and went out with Kite to find somewhere cool and quiet for lunch, where they could talk, relax and bounce a few more ideas off each other.
