solitude.
'Children?' Norman West asked into the pause.
'Three,' Malcolm said. 'Pompous little asses.'
West glanced at me questioningly, and yawned.
'Are you too tired to take all this in?' I asked.
'No, go ahead.'
'Two of Donald's children are too young to drive a car. The eldest, a girl at art school, is five foot two and fragile, and I cannot imagine her being physically capable of knocking Malcolm out and carrying his body from garden to garage and inserting him into Moira's car.'
'She hasn't the courage either,' Malcolm said.
'You can't say that,' I disagreed. 'Courage can pop up anywhere and surprise you.'
West gave me a noncommittal look. 'Well,' he said, taking the list himself and adding to it, 'this is what we have so far. Wife number one: Vivien Pembroke. Her children: Donald (44), wife Helen, three offspring. Lucy, husband Edwin (ne Bugg), school-age son. Thomas, wife Berenice…?'
'Two young daughters.'
'Two young daughters,' he repeated, writing.
'My grandchildren,' Malcolm protested, 'are all too young to have murdered anybody.'
'Psychopaths start in the nursery,' West said laconically. 'Any sign in any of them of abnormal violent behaviour? Excessive cruelty, that sort of thing? Obsessive hatreds?'
Malcolm and I both shook our heads but with a touch of uncertainty; his maybe because of something he did know, mine because of all I didn't know, because of all the things that could be hidden.
'Does greed, too, begin in the nursery?' I said.
'I wouldn't say so, would you?' West answered.
I shook my head again. 'I'd say it was nastily adult and grows with opportunity. The more there is to grab, the greedier people get.'
Malcolm said, only half as a question, 'My fortune corrupts… geometrically?'
'You're not alone,' I said dryly. 'Just think of all those multi- billionaire families where the children have already had millions settled on them and still fight like cats over the pickings when their father dies.'
'Bring it down to thousands,' West said unexpectedly. 'Or to hundreds. I've seen shocking spite over hundreds. And the lawyers rub their hands and syphon off the cream.' He sighed, half disillusionment, half weariness. 'Wife number two?' he asked, and answered his own question, 'Mrs Joyce Pembroke.'
'Right,' I said. 'I'm her son. She had no other children. And I'm not married.'
West methodically wrote me down.
'Last Friday evening,' I said, 'I was at work in a racing stable at five o'clock with about thirty people as witnesses, and last night I was certainly not driving the car that nearly ran us over.'
West said stolidly, 'I'll write you down as being cleared of primary involvement. That's all I can do with any of your family, Mr Pembroke.' He finished the sentence looking at Malcolm who said, 'Hired assassin' between his teeth, and West nodded. 'If any of them hired a good professional, I doubt if I'll discover it.'
'I thought good assassins used rifles,' I said.
'Some do. Most don't. They pick their own way. Some use knives. Some garotte. I knew of one who used to wait at traffic lights along his victim's usual route to work. One day, the lights would be red, the victim would stop. The assassin tapped on the window, asking a question… or so it's supposed. The victim wound down the window and the assassin shot him point blank in the head. By the time the lights turned green and the cars behind started tooting their horns, the assassin had long gone.'
'Did they ever catch him?' I asked.
West shook his head. 'Eight prominent businessmen were killed that way within two years. Then it stopped. No one knows why. My guess is the assassin lost his nerve. It happens in every profession.'
I thought of jump jockeys to whom it had happened almost overnight, and I supposed it occurred in stockbrokers also. Any profession, as he said.
'Or someone bumped him off because he knew too much,' Malcolm said.
'That too is possible.' West looked at the list. 'After Mrs Joyce?'
Malcolm said sourly, 'The lady you so artfully photographed me with at the instigation of, as you call her, Mrs Joyce.'
The West eyebrows slowly rose. 'Miss Alicia Sandways? With, if I remember, two little boys?'
'The little boys are now thirty-five and thirty-two,' I said.
'Yes.' He sighed. 'As I said, I recently dug out that file. I didn't realise that… er… Well, so we have wife number three, Mrs Alicia Pembroke. And her children?'
Malcolm said, 'The two boys, Gervase and Ferdinand. I formally adopted them when I married their motherand changed their surname to Pembroke. Then we had little Serena,' his face softened, 'and it was for her I put up with Alicia's tantrums the last few years we were together. Alicia was a great mistress but a rotten wife. Don't ask me why. I indulged her all the time, let her do what she liked with my house, and in the end nothing would please her.' He shrugged. 'I gave her a generous divorce settlement, but she was very bitter. I wanted to keep little Serena… and Alicia screamed that she supposed I didn't want the boys because they were illegitimate. She fought in the courts for Serena, and she won… She filled all her children's heads with bad feelings for me.' The old hurt plainly showed. 'Serena did suggest coming back to look after me when Coochie was killed, but it wasn't necessary because Moira was there. When Moira was killed, she offered again. It was kind of Serena. She's a nice girl, really, but Alicia tries to set her against me.'
West, in a pause that might or might not have been sympathetic, wrote after Alicia's name:
Gervase. Illegitimate at birth, subsequently adopted
Ferdinand. The same
Serena. Legitimate
'Are they married?' he asked.
'Gervase has a wife called Ursula,' I said. 'I don't know her well, because when I see them they're usually together and it's always Gervase who does the talking. They too, like Thomas, have two little girls.'
West wrote it down.
'Ferdinand,' I said, 'has married two raving beauties in rapid succession. The first, American, has gone back to the States. The second one, Deborah, known as Debs, is still in residence. So far, no children.'
West wrote.
'Serena,' I said, 'is unmarried.'
West completed that section of the list. 'So we have wife number three, Mrs Alicia Pembroke. Her children are Gervase, wife Ursula, two small daughters. Ferdinand, current wife Debs, no children. Serena, unmarried… era fiance, perhaps? Live-in lover?'
'I don't know of one,' I said, and Malcolm said he didn't know either.
'Right,' West said. 'Wife number four?'
There was a small silence. Then I said, 'Coochie. She's dead. She had twin sons. One was killed with her in a car crash, the other is brain-damaged and lives in a nursing home.'
'Oh.' The sound carried definite sympathy this time. 'And wife number five, Mrs Moira Pembroke, did she perhaps have any children from a previous marriage?'
'No,' Malcolm said. 'No previous marriage, no children.'
'Right.' West counted up his list. 'That's three ex-wives… er, by the way, did any of them remarry?'
I answered with a faint smile, 'They would lose their alimony if they did. Malcolm was pretty generous in their settlements. None of them has seen any financial sense in remarrying.'
'They all should have done,' Malcolm grumbled. 'They wouldn't be so warped.'
West said merely, 'Right. Then, er, six sons, two daughters. Four current daughters-in-law, one son-in-law. Grand-children… too young. So, er, discounting the invalid son and Mr Ian here, there are fourteen adults to be checked. That will take me a week at least. Probably more.'
'As fast as you can,' I said.
He looked actually as if he had barely enough strength or confidence to get himself out of the door let alone embark on what was clearly an arduous task.
