Stephanie by Winston Graham
Have you ever had papaya with lime? Or prawn curry with peppers? Or lassi? They’re not all that exciting but they certainly make a change!
Longing to see you as soon as I get home.
Ever lovingly,
Stephanie
IV
As he put the letter away James again looked at the date: 14 April. Her letter carried no hint of strain or reservation. He knew her extrovert nature too well to suppose she could dissemble even in a letter. On 14 April and up to that date all had been fine. Whatever had happened between her and Errol had happened after. Did it help to know that? It would greatly help to know what.
That evening he said to Mary Aldershot: ‘It’s lucky you didn’t marry me.’
She smiled at him over the top of the glasses she now used for reading. ‘It would never have done.’
‘That’s nonsense, the way you’re looking at it. But it would never have done to be married to a killer who carries his criminal instincts into his old age.’
‘Not old age,’ she said, ‘ and not criminal instincts, if I may correct you, Mr James.’
She used the ‘mister’ this time mockingly. Since Stephanie’s death her complete concern for him, partly hidden by a spiky independence, had been clear enough.
‘On consideration,’ she said, ‘perhaps it would have been better if I’d married you. A wife, you know, can’t testify against her husband.’
James rubbed his hand. ‘ D’you know, over this affair I feel an utter louse, but all for the wrong reasons. I’m humiliated and angry that I have involved three innocent people – three of you counting Henry’s servant – in a very nasty crime by making them accessories after the fact. I have more unease over that than over the crime itself.’
‘You shouldn’t have.’
‘I know I shouldn’t have. The self-disgust at my having involved the three of you in this should indeed be great, but it should be overwhelmed by bitterness and remorse at having committed the crime. It isn’t. I ask myself why this is not so, and all the answers so far have been unpleasant.’
She put down the evening paper. ‘Get you a drink?’
‘I can’t allow myself to escape from the situation in a haze of whisky. Listen to me for a moment.’
‘I am listening.’
‘In my life, as far as I know, and not counting people who as a result of my efforts got themselves blown up, I have actually killed only four people. Two Germans, and two last night.’
‘It was wartime–’
‘Exactly. And killing during time of war makes one a hero. Look at all those goddamned medals! Last night I found myself being painfully frogmarched towards the stairs by a man who was going to enjoy kicking me out. I lost my temper and threw him over the banisters. Then I went back into the room and killed the man who was responsible – in one way or another – for Stephanie’s death. This was not a momentary lapse of self-control, this was quite deliberate. Quite deliberate. You understand, woman: where is your sense of horror?’
‘He tried to kill you!’
‘Yes. He fired and missed. So I grabbed hold of him. He didn’t stand a chance then. But I could just have squeezed his throat until he passed out. Instead of that I hit him where I knew it would be lethal.’
‘It was instinctive, of course,’ Mary said. ‘An instinct of your training.’
‘I suppose,’ James said, ‘the Christian doctrine of Redemption shows Christ as suffering for the guilt of the world and therefore allowing mankind off the hook and able to perceive a reason for His suffering. In other words you don’t get what you deserve, He gets what you deserve. In this way a sort of justice is done and an equilibrium achieved. What am I trying to say? That one of the basic human needs is to achieve that equilibrium. Yet one of the other basic human needs is to know satisfaction when a man gets what is coming to him. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Is it because I’ve taken the law – and the Lord – into my own hands that I have to struggle with myself and prick myself into feeling a sense of remorse? Would I be more at ease with myself if Errol had been killed by a thunderbolt? Hardly. Even if I were a practising Catholic I don’t think I could confess to something about which I feel so little remorse.’
‘I think,’ Mary Aldershot said, ‘that remorse is bound up with love. If you hurt the people you care for or who care for you – or neglect them and something goes wrong … I hope – I pray – I shall never have to kill anything bigger than a spider; but if I did kill someone so undeserving as Errol Colton I should feel less about it than if I neglected a child, betrayed a lover, deserted a family …’
There was silence.
Mary said: ‘ Sorry, my dear. I got carried away. I wasn’t thinking in personal terms …’
‘Say no more.’
The paper rustled. Mary rubbed an eye. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing new in the paper, beyond what they said on the radio. It’s still the same line …’
‘Perhaps the tabloids tomorrow will waken things up.’
Chapter Ten
I
The superintendent said: ‘Are you at present still allowing the media to go on that assumption?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Foulsham. ‘But I don’t think we can carry on very much beyond tomorrow with that story.’
‘A quarrel is ruled out?’
‘Not a quarrel. But two deaths – there is no way, after Forensic’s report, that we can suppose these two men killed each other. This man Angelo Smith died of a broken back, but before that he received a blow on the upper lip and a second one below the left ear which would have knocked him out cold. Errol Colton died of a fracture of the larynx caused again almost certainly by a single blow. His body – Colton’s body – was moved after his death – dragged towards the door.’
‘And the gun?’
‘Seems to have been discharged harmlessly, though harm no doubt was intended. Colton fired it. Just once. Then Smith – or someone else – grabbed him and killed him. It was a very expert job.’
‘Is it quite certain there was another person there at the time?’
‘One or more. If Smith killed Colton, then someone threw Smith over the stairs. We can find no evidence yet who it was likely to be. The drive, as I say, is loose gravel which holds no tyre marks. No one seems as yet to have seen any car in the vicinity. The lane leading to Partridge Manor only feeds the two farms over the brow of the hill and then turns back to the main road. Opposite the house is grazing land, and the house is screened by trees and bushes. Of course we’ve only had a day to inquire so far. The clouds came up on Tuesday evening, but it was light till nine-thirty. Someone may yet come forward.’
‘No signs of robbery.’
‘Not really robbery. Mrs Colton says a lot of photographs have gone, photographs intended for an exhibition in London next month. That’s all. It may have some significance. It does tend to confirm the existence of a third person.’
‘How is Mrs Colton taking it?’
‘She was in shock when we got there, but she seems a fairly stable sort of person. And relations can’t have been too good between her and Colton after the death of the girl undergraduate.’
The superintendent rubbed his eyes. ‘This I think is where we might look for evidence of motive.’
‘Yes. I’m afraid we’ll have to open that case again – see if the girl had other lovers or another special lover who might have been seething with a desire to revenge himself on Colton.’
‘This man Smith; you say he was staying as a guest with the Coltons. There was, I think you’ve told me, no living-in staff.’
‘No, sir. Smith had been staying there about three weeks. Apparently he’s a fellow director of Sunflower Travel; that’s Colton’s company. According to Mrs C. he had recently become a close companion of Colton’s, and usually went to London with him, though sometimes he came back alone.’
‘And his history?’
‘We haven’t got it all yet, but Smith is not his real name. A quantity of cocaine was f
‘Did either of them inject?’
‘No. It was snorting. But Smith had much more than a man could want for his own requirements.’
‘These are muddy waters,’ the superintendent said after a moment. ‘We may be looking for a revenge killing, tied up with the youngster who died in Oxford, or it may be some sort of a gang feud.’
Foulsham rose to go, but the other man waved him back to his seat. ‘One more thing. James Locke. Involved in some strange affair on Tuesday afternoon with a young Indian who he turns over to us; on Tuesday evening the “ betrayer” of his daughter – if one can use such an old-fashioned expression – dies. Any connection?’
‘I went to see him this morning. We obviously must keep him as a possibility, but I doubt if it’s more – at least so far as he physically is concerned. He’s well into his sixties and badly crippled. It doesn’t seem on.’
‘Hell hath no fury,’ said the superintendent, ‘like a father bereaved.’
‘He has very hard hands. I shook hands with him on purpose. And the knuckles of his right hand are dark – likely to be bruised, I’d say.’
‘D’you mean they have bled?’
‘No. The skin wasn’t broken.’
‘Pity.’
‘Yes. He gardens, of course.’
‘So he can get out of his chair?’
‘Yes but …’
‘And the young Indian?’
‘The people in the hospital are pretty certain he has been carrying drugs into England. He’s under observation. We shall know more tomorrow.’
II
On the morrow Nari Prasad, the inflammation of his peritoneum miraculously reduced by the administration of antibiotics, was given an enema, and voided the last four packets of heroin. The condoms had withstood all the pressures and the gastric juices working within the bowels and had not burst. Therefore Nari Prasad lived to fight another day. Indeed, he recovered quickly, but he refused to explain how or why he came to be carrying the drugs. A detective sitting at his bedside pointed out certain advantages which would accrue to Nari if he gave full details of who had recruited him in India and who had received him in London. Nari said nothing. He knew that his future would not be a pleasant one in Britain and subject to British law. But he knew how much more unpleasant it would be if he returned to India (or accepted an invitation from the police to start a new life in – say – Calcutta). If he gave anything away. India is a continent. It is possible to get lost among the teeming millions. Or is it? How would one sleep at night never knowing when two men would materialise out of the darkness and beat you to death?
Sometimes he even thought longingly of Bonni and the life he had left. He had not had a woman for more than a month, and as life returned old appetites revived. It had not been poverty they had lived in – not poverty of the sort that had existed all round him: the begging priest with the tin bowl and the marigold garland round his neck; the thieving children, picking up anything they dared steal to feed their hunger; the old men in rags squatting in the gutters; the cripples edging their way along on trolleys and boards. He had never really suffered that sort of poverty; his parents had lived quietly, he had had poor food to eat and had sometimes been hungry, but not in any state of despair. He had been sent to school (where he had met such degenerate characters as Shyam Lai Shastri) and had been found a respectable if lowly position in a prosperous law firm. All thrown away! For what? It was those crooked cards! He was certain the other players had cheated him. Why had he ever gone to the Hotel Welcome? If he could roll back the last twelve months! Of course it was largely Bonni’s fault for being such a complaining and exacting wife. If she had been different, more willing, more supportive, more cheerful, he would never have gone out so much in the evenings, never have been tempted to try his skill at poker. He had played often at school, for cigarettes, and often he had won. (Shyam had been in those games.) He had become skilled at bluffing the other boys, and lucky in the cards dealt him. And he had begun well in Bombay, but his luck had deserted him at the worst time, just when he was beginning to wager larger sums than he could afford.
Never poverty; a certain drudgery, a sameness to every day, fighting his way into the trains and filing letters and typing letters and hurrying and scurrying at Mr Srivastava’s beck and call, then another fight – almost literally a fight – to board the train for the long trip home, and home was Bonni, with her mother or her sister or her cousin, sitting in a corner together, whispering and complaining.
But that seemed little now. In his mind the drudgery became a gentle routine, the crowded trains an opportunity to see his acquaintances of yesterday and the day before, the two-roomed flat a symbol of safety and security and comfort. All lost. He faced the certainty of prison in England or the near-certainty of a very nasty death somewhere in India. Between them there could only be one choice.
III
On Thursday night Henry Gaveston kept a long-promised date to dine with Peter Brune and Dr Alistair Crichton, the Principal of St Martin’s. They were all old friends but they were more accustomed to meet at High Table. It was a year or more, Henry reflected, since he had been to Postgate, Sir Peter’s house near Woodstock. When he arrived he saw the Principal’s old Volvo already parked beside two other cars, one of them a shining black Mercedes, and wondered who else was going to be there. He thrust a hand through his untidy grey hair and straightened his crumpled tie.
Talking to Brune and the Principal were two men Henry knew by sight but could not name until he was introduced. One was Michael Somerdale, seventh Earl of Crafton and Somerdale, a cheerful, extrovert, balding aristocrat of fifty-odd with a noisy voice and a keen sense of humour. The other, Lord Worrel, an industrialist and a life peer, was stout and quiet, with a polite smile that never lost its trace of grimness.
Alistair Crichton, a tall round-faced, red-faced Scot, had a voice that was impeccably English and a bumbling manner; but he was a good administrator and an authority on European political history, on which he had published six books.
They stood drinking round the fire that burned in the grate. The May evening was chill but Henry thought the fire more for appearances than heat in this big room. But another fire was burning in the dining room and Brune said, noticing Henry’s glance: ‘Sorry to contribute to the smog layer but I have never been able to take to the gas and electric substitutes.’
‘You were never one for anything but the real thing, were you, Peter?’ said Lord Somerdale, and laughed.
‘No, I suppose not. Though I accept background central heating. How could one exist in England without it?’
‘Many do,’ said Crichton. ‘And in Scotland too!’
‘Have you suffered from Royal invitations?’ asked Somerdale, and there was another laugh.
They dined well. Brune had the luxury of a French chef. He told them he had only just got back in time to greet them, having lunched in London with Professor Shannon of Berkeley, who claimed to be the New World’s authority on Aristophanes.
‘We clashed amiable swords. Lunch didn’t end till four, and then the traffic!’
This led to a discussion, chiefly between Peter Brune and Alistair Crichton, on the respective merits of Philippos, Araros and Nikostratos as comic poets, and then by gradual stages to the problems of the University’s finances, the prospects for the new cricket season, and the forthcoming Encaenia on the 20th of next month at which Peter Brune was to be invested with an Honorary Degree. This, Peter said, was an ordeal he was both looking forward to and dreading.
It was left to Alistair Crichton to mention Errol Colton’s murder. (Henry had thought it probable in this company the subject wouldn’t come up at all, but he was determined not to broach it himself.)
‘I believe you knew him, Peter?’
‘Oh yes, quite well. I didn’t hear
Lord Worrel was not abreast of events and had to have the story explained to him.
‘But there were two, weren’t there?’ said Gaveston. ‘Two of them. That’s what I read.’
‘Yes, a man called Smith. Angelo Smith. I think he was a colleague of Colton’s. I see the police have dropped the idea of its being a quarrel. They think it was probably burglars who were disturbed and turned nasty.’
‘Was anything taken?’ Henry asked.
‘It doesn’t say in the account I read,’ Peter said. ‘But if you’ve just killed someone you probably don’t stop for the swag.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘ Would you, Henry? You’re the expert.’
‘I never actually met Colton,’ Henry said. ‘I saw him once, at the inquest on Stephanie Locke.’
‘That was the undergraduate?’ said Worrel. ‘He was concerned in that? A nasty business.’
‘A very nasty business,’ said Dr Crichton. ‘One of the nicest and brightest of our girl students. I think everyone felt it deeply.’
The next course was served and conversation became general. Then, since he could now do it without remark, Henry dropped the name into the pool again.
Crichton said: ‘I did meet him a couple of times at functions. He seemed to have a liking for university life – though he was never at Oxford. I didn’t take much of a fancy to him.’
‘He was a contradictory character,’ said Brune. ‘I suppose we all are, but we don’t carry it to such extensive lengths.’
‘And he did?’
‘Well, I’m sure he was never above turning a dishonest penny, but that isn’t all the world. He was a likeable rogue, and on his day the best company you could wish for. What I did dislike about him was that he was such a shit towards women.’