An Expert in Murder

The night was cold and damp, but the rain seemed to have cleared permanently now and the air was not unpleasant. All signs of Saturday’s revelry were long gone and, as they skirted Covent Garden and crossed the Strand to head down Villiers Street towards the river, there was barely a soul to be seen. It was a little after 3 a.m. and ordinary people – those whose evening had not been interrupted by death – had gone home to bed long ago, leaving London in the care of a very different populace. The coffee stalls – which appeared out of nowhere as the public houses closed, taking up their nocturnal pitches at the foot of bridges and on street corners – were in full swing, a magnet to the sleepless, the lonely, and the fugitive; to anyone, in other words, who could be regarded as a poor relation of the city’s daylight hours. Josephine and her friends crossed Victoria Embankment and made for the stall that was tucked against the steps to Hungerford Bridge. The soft yellow glow of its interior was a welcome distraction from the unrelenting blackness of the river, and the pungent aroma of sausages and coffee did its best to be inviting, but Josephine doubted that the affirmation of life which Lydia craved was to be found among its clientele.

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‘Never let it be said I don’t know how to show a girl a good time,’ Lydia insisted with a flash of her old humour and walked undaunted to the counter, where a man and a woman stared out into the street as if from a box at the theatre. As the woman pushed three mugs of hot liquid towards Lydia, her wedding ring

– sunk almost without trace into the middle-aged plumpness of her fingers – seemed a revealing expression of the extent to which she had given up on life.

They sat down on one of the benches that lined the Embankment, and Lydia was the first to speak. ‘It’s funny, you know, now I think about it – although it was such a shock to find Bernie tonight, I couldn’t honestly say it’s a surprise that he ended up like that.’

Josephine was intrigued. ‘Why do you say that? I know theatre can be harsh but violent death seems to me a little excessive.’

Lydia was quiet for a moment, trying to put her finger on why she felt the way she did. ‘This may sound melodramatic, but he always seemed to live in a darker world than the rest of us – something more sinister than the sad old muddle that most of us will admit to. I remember we got drunk one night during a particularly awful run of the Dream. It was Christmas Eve and his wife had gone to visit their son in Cirencester, and Bernie didn’t fancy seeing Christmas in on his own so we sat in his office and got smashed on his finest malts.’ She drained her mug, staring out across the river. ‘It’s not the most cheerful of drinks at the best of times,’ she continued, ‘and it was getting close to the anniversary of my brother’s death, so we soon got to talking about the war. It surprised me, his attitude towards it all.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, I’d always thought of him as quite a peaceable man, a reluctant soldier if you like, but he was adamant that war was a natural instinct. I can still hear him saying it, in that great booming voice he had when what he was saying came from the heart – that the trenches appealed to those murderous instincts which slum-bered close to the surface, and the war had simply smashed this flimsy armour of culture that we all thought was so strong. Up until then, I thought that war was the interlude for him as for all of us –

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tragic, unforgettable, but something to leave behind. That night, I realised he carried it with him all the time. All the colour and the joy and the make-believe that he made so real for the rest of us – it had never convinced Bernie.’

Privately, Josephine wasn’t sure how many people it had convinced. Lydia lived her roles wholeheartedly – it was one of the great joys of watching her on stage – but she would be the first to admit that she sometimes found it reassuring to continue the performance in her daily life. Like Aubrey, Josephine found it difficult to ignore the contradictions between her personal sense of justice and the single-mindedness which war demanded: one day, if an Englishman killed a German he was hanged; the next he was a patriot, and she remembered how upset she had been to see her friends and neighbours, even her family, scanning the papers for news of enemy slaughter with hopeful eyes, driven by fear for those they loved. She was not yet twenty at the time but, as the years passed, she realised that her revulsion had nothing to do with age: now, with talk of Nazi rallies and worries over Britain’s air power, another storm was gathering and, at thirty-seven, her anxiety for people on both sides was as complex as ever. If war broke out again, she knew there would be some difficult years ahead for people who felt as she did.

‘I can understand what Bernard meant,’ she said. ‘Jack was in London at the time of the declaration, and he wrote to me about it. Jack was my lover,’ she explained, realising there was no reason why Marta should know anything about her personal history. ‘He was killed at the Somme. But he said the crowds in the city as war broke out were really quite terrifying: when the population was united like that in a mob, all the instincts of hatred and prejudice were given a free rein and nobody questioned them. It was as if everyone had reverted to an innate violence, with all reason and mercy just swept away.’

‘I didn’t know you’d lost someone,’ Marta said.

‘Haven’t we all?’ Josephine retorted quickly, then remembered she was talking to a friend and put away the curt matter-of-factness which she habitually used to deflect sympathy. ‘He was medically 177

trained, and shot in the back trying to help another soldier – an English one, although I’m sure he would have done the same if he’d come across a German alone and needing help. He found it very hard to reconcile his pacifism with the role he was given. It was one of the things I loved about him. In fact, I based a lot of Richard’s character on Jack.’ She smiled, remembering Marta’s earlier comments about Queen of Scots. ‘And of course I did love him, which is perhaps why people are so convinced by Richard.’ Marta took the dig good-naturedly, and Josephine turned back to Lydia. ‘I don’t see why a dark heart makes Bernard a candidate for murder, though.’

‘It’s not just that, it’s something much more personal he told me that night.’ She didn’t go on straight away, but now it was not her sense of timing in front of an audience that made her hesitate. ‘He made me promise never to mention this to anyone, but I don’t suppose it matters now. His nephew died in an accident halfway through the war, but Bernard was convinced he was murdered, and that one of his colleagues had killed him out of spite.’

‘But why?’ Josephine asked, horrified.

‘He didn’t say anything more. It was a secret he’d carried with him all that time and I think he regretted telling me almost as soon as he’d opened his mouth. But Bernard was there when it happened, so he must have had his reasons for suspecting foul play.’

‘Why didn’t he just go to the authorities?’ Josephine asked, highly sceptical. ‘Even in war, there are laws and systems of redress.’

‘I got the impression that he had no proof – either that or he wanted to deal with it himself.’

‘You should have told Archie this earlier, you know. If Bernard Aubrey was going around swearing revenge for a twenty-year-old murder, I’m not surprised someone wanted him silenced.’