‘Why did you say that Jackie— that Mrs Kennedy was here?’
‘Did I?’
‘Is she here?’
He turned his head from the crowd and looked at me; his lips still smiled.
‘Perhaps. That murderous animal her husband certainly is.’
‘He’s not the only murderer – and his murders were long ago.’
‘You have an odd sense of humour,’ Brond said contemptuously. ‘Who do you imagine killed Peter Kilpatrick?’
But before I could answer, the silver-haired man rejoined us. He was shadowed by a gaunt anxious man whose shoulders were spotted with scruffs of white dandruff.
‘Alex here tells me,’ the silver-haired man gestured towards his companion, ‘that E.M. Forster used to worry because his bum was full of hair.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Brond said. ‘It’s one of those evenings where everybody learns something new.’
‘It certainly gives “only connect” a new connotation,’ the silver-haired man reflected.
‘You already made that joke.’ The anxious man was not amused.
‘I know – that’s why I came over here to get a chance to repeat it.’
‘It’s a joke in bad taste,’ his friend said. ‘I believe in the virtues of liberalism. I’m even willing to believe that Forster was a thoroughly nice man.’
‘Nice people.’ The voice was high and uncontrolled. It didn’t sound like me at all. ‘Dachau must have been surrounded by nice people.’
The two men stared, lingering on the edge of being offended with me until Brond took up the idea smoothly: ‘Nice farmers, nice schoolteachers, nice lawyers too, taking the children on nice family picnics – chorusing with Brunnhilde, “O Heil der Mutter, die dich gebar!” – and never one to notice there was a stench of burning flesh on the air. But then a defective sense of smell is a medical condition not a moral one.’
‘You’re young,’ the anxious man said to me. ‘You have a lot to learn. You’ll learn.’
The silver-haired man affected a transition to the combative. ‘That’s not an argument, Alex. The matter has still to be taken to avizandum. Just you suppose some wretched dictator builds and fills a camp at Swanston – and you wake up one morning with a smell greasing the air – “Wer ist der Held, der mich erweckt?” eh, Brond? – What on earth could you do, Alex?’
The anxious man hesitated. ‘We-ell . . . I shouldn’t stay there. I should certainly move. I’d even be willing to take a loss on the house.’
And suddenly not looking at all anxious, he began to giggle and they moved off together, well pleased with one another.
‘No question of it,’ Brond went on as if there had been no interruption, ‘Kilpatrick had been sleeping with that charming married woman you call Jackie. That was something no one had foreseen. You see how I resist the temptation to impress you with my omniscience? I didn’t foresee it. I might claim to have improvised rather well once it did happen.’
‘Improvisation,’ I said, ‘– the mark of the artist.’ The words weren’t mine. It was a favourite phrase of Donald Baxter’s. Brond blinked at me. It may have been the only thing I ever said which surprised him.
‘No matter how wonderful our policemen are,’ he said, ‘a woman of that sort always offers a temptation. I shouldn’t imagine she put up much resistance, and Kilpatrick seems to have had a weakness for women. We all have our weaknesses.’
‘You want me to believe that Kennedy killed him for sleeping with his wife?’
‘He killed him twice over – and why not for that? Kennedy isn’t a citizen of the permissive society. A violent man – jealous of that neat little wife of his. That gun you delivered to me was Kennedy’s and it was Kennedy who used it.’
Not Kennedy. Not that sanctimonious keeper of a lodging house. Michael Dart had killed poor loud-mouthed Kilpatrick. And despite anything Brond said or thought about Jackie Kennedy, I didn’t believe she had ever betrayed her husband before she met Kilpatrick. Poor Jackie had forgotten to be afraid of the man she married; and he had hidden all there was of him to love.
‘Twice over,’ I said stupidly. ‘How could he kill him twice over?’
‘According to the helpful Mr Muldoon, they traced him to where the Briody girl had hidden him. It was inevitable after the stupid girl chose you as her saviour and brought the gun back to Kennedy’s own house. That was a joke, but an unfortunate one for the amorous Kilpatrick. While the girl was fetching you, he was tied up and carried outside to that dirty shed to die of exposure. Muldoon helped with that. I’m afraid Kennedy was a touch vicious there; being cuckolded does that to a man. The slowest way to die is the hardest way.’
It was possible that Kennedy-Dart had done that; but Brond had known where to find the body. And the old politician who had been beaten to death in the Riggs Lodge hotel (‘of ancient Scottish family’ – ‘a man of honour’ – ‘much loved’: the newspapers said so; how else would my father know what to believe?) he had died that same night while I shared a narrow bed with Margaret Briody. But before he died he had been tied up with a piece cut from the same cord that had bound Kilpatrick. Whether it was Kennedy or Brond himself who had carried Kilpatrick out and hidden him under the sacks to die, I had no way of knowing. The only evidence from my own five unsure senses was a hotel door wrecked by a strength like Primo’s.
The silver-haired man wandered through the idle groups to confront us again.
‘Remembered a funny story,’ he said. ‘Maisie had heard it.’
He was perceptibly less sober.
‘Excellent,’ Brond said. ‘My friend here loves a good story. He’s amused me a number of times.’
And he caught my arm and turned me so that I blocked the way for a woman who was moving past us out of the room. I knew her. Some kind of social apologetic foolishness came to my lips. I knew her—
It was the prostitute I had watched Brond strangle to death. The look on my face alarmed her and she stepped back, directing beyond me a conciliatory grimace.
‘So simple.’ Brond patted my arm. ‘It’s all so simple. Why did you think people came here if it wasn’t to buy illusions?’
He followed her out, but when I started after him the little man took me by the sleeve, a full handful with his weight behind it.
‘Don’t be a boor. I’ve to tell you this story.’
‘Let go!’ I gave a jerk that tore my sleeve free, but he snatched again.
‘Listen!’ he shouted.
There was silence and then people hurried back into talk. Side glances policed us. The room was too full of portly, prosperous, guilty men. I stood still and fixed a smile on the little man.
‘It’s about this chap who’s on the bench for the first time. It’s his first time – local government kind of chap. Knows nothing about the law. First case – drunk and disorderly. Ten a penny sort of thing. Thirty shillings or thirty days’ imprisonment – usual sort of nonsense.’
Shillings? He must have retold his joke on years of occasions like this.
‘Chap listens to the evidence. Then – worst case in my experience; this kind of thing will not be tolerated; I was born and bred in this town; stamp it out – fourteen years’ penal servitude. Consternation in court! All gather round him – psst psst psst. Whisper whisper whisper. Chap clears his throat – hum – heh – hum. On further consideration, I will commute that sentence to thirty shillings or thirty days. Bring in the next criminal.’
Bring in the next criminal.
‘It’s supposed to be funny.’ He released my sleeve. ‘No one tonight has any blasted sense of humour.’
In the hall, Primo was near the front door. He had a glass in his hand, but standing there alone it looked like a disguise, something put there to pretend it was only by accident that he could watch anyone coming in or trying to leave. Brond was nowhere in sight, but the woman was in front of a mirror tidying her hair.
‘The gentleman says you’ve to see him in the room up the stair.’