McWhirter laughed.
Nigel Steen laughed too, Charles thought a bit too heartily. But perhaps he was being hypersensitive and letting his suspicions race like Jacqui’s.
‘Anyway,’ the Detective-Sergeant continued, ‘I don’t have anything to do with your father’s death. Different department, you know.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well, goodbye, Mr Steen. And thank you again for your help. If only more members of the public were as co- operative as you have been, our life would be a lot easier. They shook hands. Nigel’s felt like a damp face cloth.
Detective-Sergeant McWhirter went through into Miss Menzies’ anteroom. ‘All sorted out now?’ she asked brightly.
‘Yes, thank you, Miss Menzies.’
‘Hmm. We’ve seen quite a lot of you lately.’
‘Yes,’ said the Detective-Sergeant casually, unprepared for what happened next.
Miss Menzies suddenly stood up, looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘Do you know it’s a very serious offence to impersonate a police officer?’
‘Yes,’ said Detective-Sergeant McWhirter slowly, waiting to see what came next.
‘I rang up Scotland Yard to tell you something this morning, and they’d never heard of you.’
‘Ah.’
‘And from the start I thought your accent was a bit phoney. I know a lot of people who come from Glasgow.’
‘Yes.’ There was a pause. Then Charles continued, still in his discredited Glaswegian. ‘Well, what was it you rang up the Yard to tell me?’
Joanne Menzies looked at him coolly. ‘You’ve got a nerve. But I think you’re probably doing something I’d sympathise with, so I’ll tell you. I checked with Morrison, the chauffeur at Orme Gardens, and he was suspicious that the Datsun may have been used on the Saturday night.’
‘Yes, I know. I’ve just got that from Mr Nigel Steen.’
‘Ah.’ She sounded disappointed that her information was redundant. ‘You’re suspicious of him too, aren’t you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘No maybe,’ she said, ‘you are. Incidentally, “Detective Sergeant”, what’s your real name?’
‘Charles Paris.’
‘Ah.’ Her eyes widened and she nodded slowly. ‘Very good.’ It was a warming compliment, from someone who knew about the theatre. ‘Well, Charles, if there’s anything else I can tell you, or I can find out for you, let me know.’
‘Thanks.’ As he was leaving, he turned and looked at her. ‘You hate Nigel Steen, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said simply.
Christmas intervened and the business of investigation was suspended. Charles told Jacqui the new information he’d gleaned, but met with little luck in following it up. When he rang Joanne to check Nigel’s movements in the week before Steen’s death, a strange female voice answered and informed him that Miss Menzies had already gone up to Scotland for her Christmas holidays. Gerald Venables was getting a very slow response from Cohn, Jarvis, Cohn and Stickley on the matter of the new will, and also seemed preoccupied with family arrangements and Christmas drink parties. His enthusiasm for the cloak-and-dagger business of detection seemed to have waned.
Charles felt his own sense of urgency ebbing too. Though he got excited at each new development in his investigations, he soon became disillusioned again. And Joanne’s seeing through his disguise made him a bit wary. He had no particular desire to break the law. Detection was a serious business, and perhaps he should leave it alone. The days of the gifted amateur investigator were over. It was better to leave everything to the police, who with superior training and equipment must stand a greater chance of uncovering crime.
And each time Charles looked at his progress it seemed more negative. Though he had enjoyed his little investigations and masquerades, his only real discovery was that Nigel Steen had tried to disguise the fact of driving down to Streatley on the night of Saturday 8th December. And though the visit could have given him an opportunity to kill his father, and then drive down the next day to discover the body, that was the one crime which every logical motive screamed against. By killing Marius then, Nigel would have been sacrificing a great deal of money. Duties at 80 per cent on an estate of a million, only reduced by 30 per cent, because of the donor’s death before the end of the sixth year (to borrow Gerald Venables’ terminology) would mean that Nigel would be paying more than half a million in estate duty. Whereas if he only waited till the seven years were up, all the given property would be his without any tax. It’s a rare character who commits murder in order to lose half a million pounds.
And the only other fact, hanging around in the background, was Bill Sweet’s death, which, by some fairly dubious reasoning and some circumstantial evidence, could be laid at Marius Steen’s door. But Marius Steen was dead. Why bother him now?
The Montrose was open over Christmas and so, along with a lot of other divorced and debauched actors, Charles Paris spent a week sublimely pissed.
He was feeling distinctly drink-sodden when the phone rang on the morning of the 3rd of January, 1974. He wanted to be picked up and wrung out like a floor cloth to get the stuff out of his system. He lay in bed, hoping the phone would go away or someone would answer it. But the Swedish girls were still in Sweden for the holidays and he was alone in the house. The phone went on ringing.
He stumped savagely downstairs and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello.’ His voice came out as a croak.
‘It’s Jacqui.’ Her voice was excited again, bubbling. ‘Charles, I’ve been to the police.’
‘What?’
‘About Nigel. I went to Scotland Yard this morning and saw an Inspector and told him all about our suspicions, and about how we knew Nigel had been down at Streatley that Saturday-’
‘I hope you didn’t tell him how we found out.’
‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t mention you at all.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Anyway, the Inspector said it all sounded very suspicious and he’s going to authorise an aupopsy-’
‘Autopsy.’
‘Yes. Anyway, he’s getting an order to have Marius exhumed and check the cause of death. He took everything I said very seriously.’ The last sentence was pronounced with pride. There was a pause; she was waiting for him to react. ‘Well, what do you think, Charles?’
‘I don’t know. In a way, I think it’s asking for trouble…’
‘Oh, Charles, we’ve got to know whether or not Marius was murdered.’
‘Have we? It’s all sorted out. The baby’s being looked after …’
‘Charles, do you mean that?’
‘No.’
‘We’ve got to know.’
‘Yes. When’s the exhumation to be?’
‘Quite soon. Probably next Monday.’
‘And when will the results be known?’
‘End of next week. There should be an inquest on Friday.’
‘You realise that, by doing this, you have virtually made a public accusation of murder against Nigel?’
‘Yes. And that is exactly what I meant to do.’
Ten days passed. In America, with the tide of Watergate rising around him, President Nixon celebrated his sixty-first birthday. In England wild storms swept the country, and commuters were infuriated and inconvenienced by the ASLEF dispute. Housewives started panic buying of toilet rolls. And in a churchyard in Goring, the body of Marius Steen was moved from its grave after a stay of only four short weeks. Then it was opened up and samples of its organs were taken and analysed.
All of these events, international and domestic, seemed unreal to Charles. Since sobering up after Christmas he had degenerated into a deep depression. Inactivity and introspection left him lethargic and uninterested in
