Death in Disguise Read online

  ‘No thanks to that bacon if I haven’t. Well, if I can’t share the paper,’ he scowled at his daughter, ‘perhaps I can share the joke?’

  ‘A man who thought he’d been unfairly sentenced broke into the judge’s chambers during recess and boiled his wig in an electric kettle.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. I do not believe that.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Show me.’ It almost worked. The paper was nearly passed across. Then at the last minute snatched back.

  Joyce laughed, started to read out bits from her section; the weather, a recipe, a detailed account of someone squatting up a tree to save the whales.

  ‘Won’t find many whales up there,’ said Barnaby.

  ‘There was another car bomb at the weekend,’ rustle, rustle. ‘The victim was someone in the UDR. It says he’s emigrating to Canada.’

  ‘Quite a blast then.’ Cully grinned at her father.

  ‘That’s not very funny, darling.’

  ‘Is this murder at Compton Dando’—Joyce peered over the edge—‘the one you’re working on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You just said “out Iver way”.’

  ‘What does it—’

  ‘That’s absolutely typical.’ Joyce folded her paper and slapped it on the table, upsetting a salt cellar. Barnaby’s hand crept out.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ snapped his wife.

  ‘Do you know what’s got into your mother this morning?’

  Cully gazed out of the window at the flowering jasmine—refusing, as she always did, to collude or take sides.

  ‘Don’t discuss me as if I’m invisible, Tom. It’s infuriating.’

  ‘All right. So what’s supposed to be typical of me this time’?’

  ‘You don’t talk to me.’

  ‘My God, Joycey—I’ve been talking to you about my job for twenty years. I’d’ve thought you’d be glad of a break.’

  ‘And—what is worse—you don’t listen.’ Barnaby sighed. ‘I bet you don’t remember Ann Cousins.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I thought so. My friend at Compton Dando.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Last year after Alan died this Manor House lot did a workshop called New Horizons, which she thought might help. A great disappointment as it turned out. All style and no content. We both went.’

  ‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I did tell you.’ Joyce smiled with a certain grim satisfaction. ‘In great detail. Even when your body’s at home your mind’s at work. You have no interest in anything I do.’

  ‘That’s grossly unfair. I’m always down at the theatre painting scenery. I never miss one of your shows—’

  ‘You missed the last one.’

  ‘Two children had been abducted. Or perhaps you don’t remember—’

  ‘Poppy Levine’s getting married.’

  Cully’s voice, loud and clear, sliced through the deepening acrimony. Her parents, choosing to believe their daughter was becoming upset, immediately ceased hostilities.

  Cully, merely bored, continued: ‘In a skirt up to her cleavage and sequinned leggings.’

  ‘I’m late.’ Barnaby got up. ‘We’ll talk about this visit of yours when I get home.’

  ‘Suddenly I’m interesting,’ said Joyce sourly. She got up, too, and moved behind Cully’s chair where she lowered her greying curly head and scowled at the wedding picture. ‘Six husbands and she looks about twenty-one. How does she do it?’

  ‘Rumour is she sold her epidermis to the devil. Look at that.’ Cully flicked the paper hard with her nail. ‘It really gets me the way they always print how old a woman is. Poppy Levine, thirty-nine, marries cameraman Christopher Wainwright. No mention of his age—Dad!’ The Indy was snatched away. ‘Don’t be so bloody rude!’

  Barnaby scanned, shook out the relevant page, folded it. ‘There’s an interview with Nick Hytner on the back of that… Dad…’

  ‘What is it?’ said Joyce. ‘Something to do with the case?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Barnaby shrugged on his jacket. ‘Take too long to explain.’

  ‘There you go again. That’s exactly what I mean.’ The door slammed. Joyce turned to Cully and repeated herself. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  Troy sped along the A40. Fast, easy, relaxed, enjoying his superior position as the one who knows. His passenger did little drum rolls on his blue-denimed knees. Before that he had played with a packet of Polos in the glove compartment, then fiddled with his seat belt until Troy had sharply instructed him to desist.

  ‘But what does he want to see me for?’

  ‘I couldn’t rightly say, sir.’

  ‘I’m sure you could rightly say if it suited you.’

  Troy was not to be provoked. Nor was he unwise enough to show his pleasure at having a member of the great British public sweating away, supplicant and vulnerable, at his side. He was especially pleased that it was Wainwright whom he’d had down as a swaggering bastard—although in the sergeant’s book this meant no more than a simple refusal to be struck all of a heap at the sight of a CID warrant card.

  ‘I expect it’s about the murder?’

  ‘Probably, Mr Wainwright.’ Troy tightened his lips to check a smile. He’d really enjoyed saying ‘Mr Wainwright’. Playing the bloke along. He enjoyed it so much that, swinging into Uxbridge turn off, he said it again.

  ‘Won’t be long now, Mr Wainwright. Five minutes at the most.’

  Barnaby was at his desk re-reading statements when a blue Orion zoomed past his window and redirected into a sensational curve before braking savagely a hairline from the station wall.

  The chief inspector buzzed for three coffees and they arrived stimultaneously with Sergeant Troy and his companion, who sat down, looking even paler than usual, convinced he had just narrowly escaped multiple windscreen lacerations at the very least.

  ‘What do you want to see me about?’ Christopher accepted the coffee, drank it very quickly then said: ‘Mind if I have a cigarette? They’re rather frowned on at the Windhorse.’

  To Troy’s chagrin (the No Smoking sign was plain enough), Barnaby told Wainwright to go ahead. Catch me going ahead, thought the sergeant. I’d be hearing about it to the end of time, plus replays. Christopher shook out a pack of Gitanes and offered them round. Both men declined, Troy with a marked slaver. The cigarette was lit, vigorously inhaled and the first question repeated.

  ‘I take it you haven’t seen today’s paper?’

  ‘Not allowed. Too much external stimuli impedes one’s journey to a higher plane.’

  Barnaby was sure he deduced a whisper of sarcasm. ‘Poppy Levine was married yesterday.’

  ‘Again?’ said Christopher. ‘Well, it’s kind of you to let me know, but surely a simple phone call would have sufficed.’

  ‘Rather a coincidence really.’ Barnaby folded the Independent to a quarter square. ‘The groom was a television cameraman.’ He passed the paper over.

  ‘Why not? We’re hardly an endangered species.’ He glanced down. ‘What a ghastly—’ A catch of the breath. Barnaby grabbed the paper just before it knocked over a coffee cup. There was a lengthy pause then Christopher said, ‘Sod it.’

  ‘Quite.’ Barnaby began to read. ‘The groom, who was at Stowe with the bride’s brother, has recently returned from shooting a film in Afghanistan. After a whirlwind romance and a wedding at Chelsea Town Hall, the happy couple returned to the bride’s house in Onslow Gardens. Next month they take a delayed honeymoon in Santa Cruz. So…’ he dropped the paper into his wastebasket, ‘that tells us all about Christopher Wainwright. What we’d like to know now of course is—who the hell are you?’

  The man facing Barnaby screwed the stub of his cigarette out in his saucer, fished in the pocket of his cotton Madras jacket and shook out another. ‘Do you think I could have some more coffee?’

  Delaying tactics. Won’t get him anyw
here. Troy stepped into the outer office to find Audrey on the telephone and the only other policewoman present comforting a scrubber who was faking tears that wouldn’t have deceived a baby. Reluctantly he got the coffee himself, managing even during this brief and extremely simple procedure to project an air of put-upon truculence wildly disproportionate to the task in hand. When he returned, the interviewee was still staring over Barnaby’s head and punishing his cigarette. The chief had a notebook in front of him and a Biro in his hand. Wainwright accepted the coffee, sipped a bit, stirred a bit. Barnaby waited until the cup was empty then said, ‘Answer the question, please.’

  ‘That’s rotten luck.’ He nodded at the Independent. ‘He’d only just met her when we had lunch. Bowled over though, went on and on.’

  ‘This lunch, I presume was before you moved to the Manor House?’

  ‘Directly before. I ran into Chris in Jermyn Street. He’d been buying shirts at Herbie Frogg’s. I was going to the cheese shop for some sausages, which should give you some idea of the delicate gap between our respective incomes. It’s quite true that he was at school with Levine minor and so was I. A spiteful little prig he was too. Wriggling in and out of people’s conversations and assignations, and beds.’

  ‘Stick to the point.’ Barnaby could easily sound more angry than he was. A useful accomplishment. The false Christopher Wainwright hurried on.

  ‘We went for a drink in the Cavendish then he suggested lunch at Simpson’s over which he told me in interminable detail about his glorious rise in the BBC and this trip to what he kept calling “the roof of the world”, although I’d always thought myself that was Tibet. Then he started on Poppy. I couldn’t get a word in so I just switched off and concentrated on the glorious protein. We had some trifle and when the bill came he picked up his jacket—we were sitting on one of the banquettes by the wall—and couldn’t find his wallet. Said he must have left it at the shirtmakers. I got lumbered with the bill for forty-eight quid. I was furious, being nearly broke at the time. Specially as I was sure he hadn’t lost it. He was always tight as a tick at school. Locked everything up—even his face flannel.’

  Barnaby was hunched forward, elbows on desk and hardly aware of the increased fumage. He made a forceful beckoning gesture of encouragement with his left hand and ‘Christopher’ began to speak again.

  ‘I needed to visit the Golden Windhorse. To look around the house, get to know the people. Search their rooms and belongings if necessary. I couldn’t do any of those things under my own name.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Andrew Carter.’

  Troy looked quickly across the room and watched his chief absorb the name and settle back, easing off the pressure. As if a point of no return had now been reached and the unravelling could safely be left to continue on its own.

  ‘Jim Carter was my uncle. I don’t know if the name means anything to you?’

  ‘I’m familiar with it, yes.’

  ‘I believe he was murdered. That’s why I’m at the Windhorse. To find out why. And by who.’

  Barnaby said: ‘Wild words.’

  ‘Not when you hear my reasons.’ He pulled out an envelope and produced a photograph. ‘My bona fides by the way. Such as they are.’

  He passed the picture over. It showed a laughing fair-haired boy of perhaps ten or eleven years old, on a donkey. A man in early middle age, also blond, held the reins. The boy looked straight ahead but the man, so alert as to appear anxious, was studying the child’s face as if to reassure himself as to his safety and enjoyment.

  ‘There’s certainly a likeness.’ Barnaby did not return the picture. ‘But very slight.’

  ‘That why you dyed your hair, sir?’ Troy was now behind the desk, picking up the snap.

  ‘Hell—is it so obvious?’ Nervously he smoothed the dark cap. ‘Yes. I thought it might lessen any resemblance. He brought me up—my uncle—after my parents were killed. He was tremendously kind. He couldn’t afford to keep me on at Stowe but apart from that I wanted for nothing. I didn’t notice of course how much he went without himself. Children never do.’ He held out his hand for the photograph. ‘I was very fond of him.’

  ‘I’d like to make a copy of this, Mr Carter.’

  Andrew hesitated. ‘It’s the only one I have.’

  ‘It’ll be returned before you leave.’ Barnaby passed the picture to Troy who took himself off with it. ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Some time ago. Our relationship was close but we didn’t meet all that often after I left home. I was eighteen. We had a row. I got involved with someone who was married and a lot older. It was the only time there was any real conflict between us. He said it was morally wrong. He was old-fashioned like that. He got really angry. His disappointment made me feel guilty and I stormed off. The rift didn’t last five minutes nor, oddly enough, did the affair, but I never lived permanently at home again.

  ‘I was a bit of a drifter I’m afraid. I liked being on the move and picked up work wherever I happened to be, sometimes abroad. I did grape-picking in France and Italy, moved on to a ski lodge in the Alps. Worked in a circus in Spain—lion tamer of all things but they were poor toothless animals. Went to the States—couldn’t get a work permit. Dodged immigration for a bit then had to come back. I even did a stint on the Golden Mile at Blackpool, working the amusement arcades. All very picturesque. Or sordid, according to your age and tolerance quotient.’

  ‘But you always kept in touch with your uncle?’

  ‘Of course. I wrote regularly. And I always went to see him between sorties. He’d feed me up a bit. And he never lectured although he must have been sad at the way I turned out. Just accepted me for the grey sheep that I am.’

  These last few words were spoken so quietly that Barnaby had to strain to understand. But there was no mistaking Carter’s expression. His eyes were burning with a heated mixture of anger and despair. The muscles in his jaw strained with the effort to stop his mouth from trembling. Troy came in with the photograph and some more coffee but Barnaby signalled sharply for him to wait.

  ‘So when did your uncle go to the Windhorse?’

  Carter took a deep breath and long moments passed before he spoke again. He seemed to be bracing himself with great effort for the next step as if it would bring him to the very kernel of his unhappiness.

  ‘He wrote to me about joining when I was in the States. I must admit I wasn’t altogether surprised. He’d never married. As a child of course, I was glad. It meant I didn’t have to share him. And he’d always been a bit…well…reclusive. There were periods each day when he’d ask to be left alone to just sit quietly. In meditation, I suppose I’d call it now. Nearly all his books were religious or philosophical. Bhagavad-Gita, Tagore, Pascal. I remember them all throughout my childhood. They’re mostly still in his room at the Manor House. It really broke me up when I found them…’

  He paused again, this time pressing his knuckles against his mouth as if to dam some unseemly rush of emotion. When he removed his hand, his lips were white. Troy discreetly slid the photograph back on to the desk.

  ‘It was eighteen months before I got back to England. I moved into a bedsit in Earl’s Court, then I wrote giving my address and phone number and told him I’d come down for a long weekend as soon as I’d got a job sorted. He wrote back saying how much he was looking forward to it. He hadn’t been well—some sort of stomach upset. Then a few days after the letter this arrived.’ He picked up the envelope again and drew out a sheet of lined writing paper which he passed to Barnaby. It read: Andy, Something terrible has happened. Will call you at eight P.M. tomorrow (Thursday) from village. Can’t use house phone. Make sure you’re there. Love, Jim. The last sentence was heavily underlined.

  ‘I never heard. On the Friday I hung around till lunch time, then I rang the Manor House. I simply couldn’t believe it when they told me he had died. My whole family just…gone. I sat for hours trying to take it in. Then I went out and got good and drunk. Belie
ve it or not it was well into the next day before the two things—the letter and his death—sort of connected up.’

  ‘Are you suggesting he was deliberately killed to keep him quiet?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit melodramatic, Mr Carter? The terrible news could have been all sorts of things. Of a medical nature perhaps?’

  ‘He was only in his late fifties. And his health, apart from this upset I just mentioned, was always good. They told me it had been an accident. “A tragic accident.”’ He turned the phrase into a spit of disgust. ‘I found out when the inquest was and went along, sitting upstairs in the gallery. And that’s when I discovered for certain I was right.’

  Barnaby’s coffee was by now stone-cold and even Troy had forgotten the half cup of scummy liquid hanging at a dangerous tilt from his finger and thumb.

  ‘Up until then although I was deeply worried and suspicious I had nothing definite to focus on. But when I heard the medical evidence I knew.’ He leaned forward gripping the edge of Barnaby’s desk. ‘The doctor said Jim had been drinking. That he smelled of whisky and some was spilt on his lapel. That was absolute nonsense. In his first letter he told me the doctor had given him some tablets for this intestinal infection and had warned him most specifically not to drink, as alcohol would have a very unpleasant perhaps even dangerous effect. An unnecessary warning as my uncle never drank anyway.’

  Barnaby gave it a moment then said: ‘Is it your belief, then, that someone who knew this forced him to drink and it killed him?’

  ‘That would be a bit uncertain. I think it much more likely that they killed him then poured the stuff down his throat to make it look as if he’d had a drunken fall.’

  ‘Easier said than done, Mr Carter. Deglution—like most other bodily functions—ceases upon death. A corpse—forgive me for being blunt—cannot be made to swallow.’

  ‘It should have been brought out at the inquest, nevertheless. I was banking on that.’ Carter became angry, raising his voice. ‘I thought that’s what post mortems were for.’

  ‘Pathologists are busy men. He may have had other jobs waiting. A pm starts at the head…’ Barnaby suddenly had a spectacularly vivid picture of just what this involved and felt momentarily queasy, ‘he got to the neck, saw that it was broken and stopped there.’