Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Gray’s flat was in a large, Edwardian redbrick block on Marylebone Road. Its many numbered entrances were set back between pairs of bay windows rising the height of the first three storeys. By the looks of the place, Albert hadn’t stinted his son in the matter of accommodation.
As he climbed the stairs, Alec reflected that dates and the distance travelled didn’t tell the whole story.
It was unlikely that Gray should have somehow found out that his stepmother was moving and therefore might not be missed for some time—unless the lawyer, Ainsley, had written to him.
Another question to put to the irritable little man.
Even then, to travel all that way hoping that Judith Gray was still in Beaconsfield was to draw the bow at a very long shot.
Yet the man was a spy, presumably used improvising on the spur of the moment and to taking chances for far less personal reward than a sizable fortune. If circumstances did not conspire to favour him, he might have reckoned to be able to trace Judith and rid himself of her in her new abode.
Alec reached the third floor. The passage leading back into the depths of the building was ill-lit, narrow, but carpeted and clean. Several doors opened onto it, each bearing a letter. He found Gray’s and pressed the electric bell.
Nothing happened.
He waited a minute, then rang again. This time, he heard a male voice within calling, though he couldn’t make out the words.
Again he waited. No footsteps, but his patience was rewarded by the click of the Chubb lock.
The door opened to reveal a diminutive cleaning lady in carpet slippers and a flowery overall.
“Was you wanting Mr. Gray?”
“Yes, please. I’d like a word with him. Would you give him my card, madam?”
“Ho, madam, is it? I’ll give him your card but it won’t do ’im a lot of good, seeing he’s got a bandage over his eyes.”
“Perhaps you could read it to him.”
“Forgot me glasses, di’n’t I.”
“Tell him I’m a police officer.”
“Who is it, Mrs. Dee?”
“A rozzer, sir,” she called back. “Leastways so he says, but he ain’t wearing no uniform.”
“Even without his uniform, I daresay he’ll relieve the tedium. Show him in.”
The voice was educated, though not, Alec thought, at the best schools. Gray and Eric Bragg must have been drawn to each other because neither sported a Public School tie or accent.
Mrs. Dee—Mrs. D.?—stepped back and Alec followed her over the threshold.
On his right a door stood open to a pleasant, masculine sitting room, well-lit by the tall bay windows.
The charwoman led him the other way, down a corridor even narrower than that at the stair top, its left wall being shared with the common passage beyond; a comfortable flat, but not extensive.
The next door was ajar. She tapped and pushed it open. “’Ere ’e is, sir.”
The room was darkened, illumined only by a lamp concealed behind a folding screen, and what little light came from the corridor. Alec made out a bed against the far wall, with a man’s figure lying on his back on top of the counterpane. His upper face was hidden by a folded napkin.
“Mr. Robert Gray?”
“That’s me. You’re the ‘rozzer,’ I take it.”
“Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher. May I come in?”
“Please. You’ll excuse me for not getting up: doctor’s orders. Find a seat and tell me what a high-up copper wants with me. I’m already intrigued. It’s as boring as hell—Don’t you think hell must be the ultimate eternal boredom? None of those raging fires!”
“It’s certainly a possibility, if you believe in hell.”
“Not really,” Gray admitted. “All the same, the tedium is driving me mad. I have to lie here for a couple of hours twice a day, with this damn lotion-soaked cloth swathing my eyes, and I’m not allowed out of the flat at all for fear of getting grit in the irritable orbs.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“Keratoconjunctivitis. Aren’t you sorry you asked? It’s quite a common ailment in the Middle East—dry air and blowing sand. I suppose you know I’ve been in the Middle East.”
“Eric Bragg told me.”
“Eric!”
“He didn’t specify where.”
“Then neither shall I. Is this an interrogation?”
“I have some questions I’d like to put to you. You’re at liberty to refuse to answer, though your refusal will be noted and may—”
“And may be used in evidence against me?” He sounded amused. “What am I supposed to have done? Not a traffic accident, I assume!”
“Rather more serious. Before I explain, would you mind telling me when you reached England?”
“About ten days ago. The fifth, I think. I was rushed straight to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, in case my eyes were infectious. Which, I’m thankful to say, they are not.”
“Was your passport stamped?”
“I’ve no idea. At that point, I couldn’t see at all. My eyes were bandaged very thoroughly whenever there was the slightest chance of light reaching them.”
“How did you manage?”
“I can’t tell you how I reached a consulate in a port city, nor which city, come to that. But they had someone help me aboard, and then the steward took good care of me. The purser had one of the crew deliver me to the passport people, who sent me to the hospital.”
“We’ll check with the hospital.”
“I wasn’t travelling under my own name,” Gray said dryly. “As I arrived under the auspices of a passport official, I was admitted…”
Alec sighed. “I suppose, in your profession, you have several passports.”
The man on the bed grinned, an odd sight with the cloth hiding the rest of his face. “And they’ve all been turned in to the FO pending my next assignment.”
Abandoning that line of questioning as unprofitable—after all, he didn’t really need to know about Gray’s most recent arrival—Alec asked, “And your previous trip home? When was that?”
The spy’s mouth hardened. “June. As soon as I heard of my father’s death in April. I still can’t believe your lot didn’t think there was anything fishy about it.”
“‘Our lot’ asked for an inquest, even though Albert Gray’s doctor said he died of a heart attack that was not unexpected, in view of his health.
The coroner’s jury ruled his death natural.
In the light of the verdict, the police had no grounds on which to proceed. What grounds have you for suspicion?”
“What grounds had the police for requesting an inquest?” he parried.
“Nothing but gossip. The ‘better safe than sorry’ principle. People were saying Mrs. Gray fed him arsenic. That always resounds in the public’s imagination, but there were no symptoms of arsenic poisoning and no significant trace in the body. He had a weak heart. You knew that?”
“Yes. He was taking some sort of pills that kept it beating.”
“The other prevalent rumour was that she’d substituted dummy pills—difficult, if not impossible, to prove.”
“It didn’t take rumour to make me suspicious. The bitch he married led him a dog’s life.”
The pun was unintentional, Alec thought, certainly not intended to amuse. “Why did he marry her?”
“He missed my mother. They’d hardly been apart for a day all their lives. Even as children, they’d grown up in the same street. And he was lonely. I was away too much.”
“Your stepmother was very much his junior.”
“But reaching the age when she’d begin to be regarded as a spinster, not a ‘Bright Young Thing.’” His voice was full of scorn. “She was too desperate for a husband to be particular. Except where money was concerned. She wouldn’t have married a poor man. She had expensive tastes, had my stepmama.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Gray’s grimace was wolfish. “What she hadn’t realised was that Dad grew up quite poor and he regarded extravagance as a sin.
He didn’t stint on clothes or housekeeping, but he refused to dissipate what he’d worked so hard for to buy useless baubles or expensive cars, let alone to throw house parties for people he didn’t even like. ”
“You disliked and despised her.”
“From the moment we met. That was several months after the wedding, because I’d been out of touch. She’d cajoled him into tying the knot as soon as possible, though Dad said he wanted to wait for my return. I could have saved him if I’d been here.”
“I doubt it. Or if you had somehow prevented the marriage, he would always have resented your interference. You remained on good terms?”
“Oh yes. He was still infatuated with her, but it was too late to open his eyes, so I was polite to her in his presence.”
“What made you dislike her instantly?”
“I suppose it was her manner towards him,” Gray said slowly.
“There was nothing I could pin down. I tried to persuade myself it was the instinctive mistrust that’s essential to my job.
Yours, too, I would imagine. Then I overheard her talking to a friend about my father and that dispelled all doubt. She despised him, and I hated her.”
“So you ceased to be polite?”
“I ceased to meet her. Dad came here, or we went to my club. He was completely disillusioned by the next time I was in England. Why am I blabbing to you?”
To deflect suspicion? Or because he didn’t know Judith was dead? “You tell me.”
Gray was silent for a moment. “I haven’t been able to talk about it to anyone else.
No one else has shown any interest, of course.
Maybe some of his friends in Beaconsfield cared, but I don’t know them.
My parents moved there long after I’d left home.
” He paused. “Partly, it’s because I can’t see you. Damn my eyes!”
“When can you take the bandage off?”
“Permanently? A couple more weeks at least, the doctor expects. Depends on progress, which is why I obey orders. This session, you tell me. I set the alarm for half past eleven.” He gestured at the clock on the bedside table. “Should be soon, but it always feels like forever.”
“Just a couple of minutes.” Alec wanted to see the man’s whole face. In general, the eyes were far less capable of concealing emotion than the mouth.
“The hell with it!” He sat up, taking off the cloth and dropping it with a slight splash in a basin beside the clock.
His eyes were reddish, half-open. He blinked, and raised his hands with forefingers crooked, then froze.
“Damn, it’s so hard not to rub them. Make me think about something else.
Why are you interested in my father’s second marriage, anyway?
” Through slitted eyes, he stared at Alec.
“Your father’s second wife is dead.”
Gray’s eyes opened fractionally wider. “Dead! Good riddance! But she was my age, a year or two younger. What did she die of? Motor smash? Wait a minute, you came to bring me the news? A detective chief inspector, didn’t you say? She was murdered! And you presume I did it.”
“I don’t presume you did it. I have to consider the possibility. You have a very strong motive. Are you aware of how your father left his affairs?”
“He told me he felt obliged to provide for his widow, if that’s what you mean. He apologised, poor old chap! But everything was to come to me if she remarried or died. At the time, the former seemed far more likely.”
“Did the solicitor, Mr. Ainsley, write to tell you Mrs. Gray proposed to sell the house, Cherry Trees, and did in fact do so?”
“He may have. My letters are held for me when I’m abroad, and I haven’t been able to read anything since I got back. It doesn’t surprise me, though. She was never cut out for life in a village. I expect she’s bought a flat in town.”
Alec chose not to enlighten him. “You don’t mind?”
Gray shrugged. “As I mentioned, I didn’t grow up in that house, and I haven’t even visited in years.
I have no emotional attachment. I do see what you mean about motive, though.
I assure you, I’ve been unable to leave the flat since I was discharged from the hospital. I’ll give you my doctor’s name.”
“Thank you, that won’t be necessary. You see, she died a month ago.”
“A month? Mid-September? I was in—I was a long way from England, and a long camel ride from the nearest port.”
“I’ve heard camels aren’t the easiest ride in the world.”
“They’re not, particularly when you can’t see.”
The alarm clock rang shrilly. Alec took it as his cue to leave.
He returned to Whitehall, but not to the Foreign Office. They weren’t going to give him an answer unless he called in the heavy guns. The question was, in view of his unofficial status in the case, would the super cooperate?
Several colleagues greeted him on his way up to Crane’s office. Word of his present situation had spread, inevitably. Some were inquisitive; some teased him about his penchant for odd cases. Only a couple knew about Daisy’s frequent involvement, and they were too discreet to mention her.
Superintendent Crane was fatalistic. “As soon as I heard Mrs. Fletcher was involved, I knew there’d be complications.”
“Sir, you can’t blame my wife for the Foreign Office’s reluctance to divulge where one of their secret agents spent September!”
“When you put it like that … But I bet she has relatives in the FO.”
“A cousin, on her mother’s side. Would you like me to appeal to him for assistance?”
“Heaven forbid! I’ll see what I can do. What’s the man’s name, again?”
“Robert Gray, sir. The victim’s stepson.”
“Ah yes, difficult relationship. Not that I mean to suggest … How are the children doing these days, Fletcher?”
Alec assured him that Belinda loved her boarding school and the twins were growing by leaps and bounds.
“Good, good. I’ll be in touch when I get the information. Or not, as the case may be. Never can tell with those Foreign Office Johnnies.”
* * *
Alec made his way to Belgravia. Judith Gray’s friend, Elizabeth Knox, lived in a fashionable maisonette in a row of fashionable maisonettes with pretentious columned entrances. All the curtains were closed. He rang the bell.
Again, an overalled cleaning woman opened the door. “Not at ’ome,” she said, and started to shut it.
“Just a minute!”
She stopped and fixed him with an incurious gaze. “Nobody’s ’ome, like wot I said.”
He lifted his hat. “Is Miss Knox out for the day?” he asked hopefully.
“Mrs. They’ve both gone off.”
“When will they be back?”
“Dunno.”
“Can you tell me where they went?”
“Dunno. They don’t tell me, do they. I comes in three days a week like always. Don’t make no odds to me, savin’ there’s more work when they’re ’ome.”
“They must leave a forwarding address with someone?”
“Dunno. If that’s all, I’ve got me work to do.”
The door started to close again, and Alec found no reason to arrest its progress. Where, oh where were all the inquisitive, garrulous charwomen of England hiding?