'Yes? Sheer illusion.'
They walked over the little climb to East Heath Road; then across that, and over the grass down towards the ponds. She didn't return to work until the next Monday; she was just a general dogsbody at the publisher's. He knew more about her than she realized, from the checking that had been done when she was temporarily under suspicion. She was twenty-four years old, a graduate in English, she had even published a book of stories for children. Her parents were divorced, her mother now lived in Ireland, married to some painter. Her father was a professor at York University.
'I don't know what on earth I can tell you.'
'Have you seen Peter Fielding since you got back?'
She shook her head. 'Just over the 'phone. He's down in the country.'
'It's only routine. Just a chat, really.'
'You're still...?'
'Where we started. More or less.' He shifted his blazer to the other arm. One couldn't move without sweating. 'I'm not quite sure how long you've known the Fieldings.'
They walked very slowly. It was true, though meant as a way of saying he liked her dress, in spite of the heat she seemed cool beneath the white cotton; very small-bodied, delicate, like sixteen; but experienced somewhere, unlike sixteen, certain of herself despite those first moments of apparent timidity. A sexy young woman wearing a dark French scent, who tended to avoid his eyes, answering to the ground or to the Heath ahead.
'Only this summer. Four months. Peter, that is.'
'And his father?'
'We've been down two or three times to the grand baronial home. There was a party in London at the flat. Occasional meals out. Like that last one. I was really just his son's bit of bird. I honestly didn't know him very well.'
'Did you like him?'
She smiled, and for a brief moment said nothing.
'Not much.'
'Why not?'
'Tories. Not the way I was brought up.'
'Fair enough. Nothing else?'
She looked at the grass, amused. 'I didn't realize you were going to ask questions like this.'
'Nor did I. I'm playing it by ear.' She flashed him a surprised look, as if she hadn't expected such frankness; then smiled away again. He said, 'We've got all the facts. We're down to how people felt about him.'
'It wasn't him in particular. Just the way they live.'
'What your friend described as the life of pretence?'
'Except they're not pretending. They just are, aren't they?'
'Do you mind if I take my tie off?'
'Please. Of course.'
'I've spent all day dreaming of water.'
'Me too.'
'At least you've got it here.' They were passing the ladies' pond, with its wall of trees and shrubbery. He gave her a dry little grin, rolling his tie up. 'At a price.'
'The lezzies? How do you know about them?'
'I did some of my uniformed time up the road. HaverstockHill?' She nodded; and he thought, how simple it is, or can be when they don't beat about the bush, say what they actually think and know, actually live today instead of fifty years ago; and actually state things he had felt but somehow not managed to say to himself. He had grown not to like Fielding much, either; or that way of life. Just that one became brainwashed, lazy, one swallowed the Sunday colour-supplement view of values, the assumptions of one's seniors, one's profession, one forgot there are people with fresh minds and independence who see through all that and are not afraid Suddenly she spoke.
'Is it true they beat up the dirty old men there?'
He was brought sharply to earth; and was shocked more than he showed, like someone angling for a pawn who finds himself placed in check by one simple move.
'Probably.' She had her eyes on the grass. After a second or two he said, 'I used to give them a cup of tea. Personally.' But the pause had registered.
'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked that.' She gave him an oblique glance. 'You're not very police-y.'
'We're used to it.'
'Something I heard once. I'm sorry, I... ' She shook her head.
'It's okay. We live with it. Over-react.'
'And I interrupted.'
He hitched his coat over his back, and unbuttoned his shirt. 'What we're trying to discover is whether he could have got disillusioned with that way of life. Your friend told me his father hadn't the courage--either the courage or the imagination to walk out on it. Would you go with that?'
'Peter said that?'
'His words.'
She didn't answer for a moment.
'He was one of those men who sometimes seem to be somewhere else. You know? As if they're just going through the motions.'
'And what else?'
Again that pause. 'Dangerous isn't the word but someone... very self-controlled. A tiny bit obsessional? I mean someone who wouldn't be easily stopped if he'd argued himself into something.' She hit her head gently in self-remonstrance. 'I'm not putting this very well. I'm just surprised that Peter-- 'Don't stop.' - 'There was something sort of fixed, rigid underneath. I think that could have produced courage. And this abstracted thing he showed sometimes. As if he were somewhere else. And that suggests a kind of imagination?' She grimaced. 'The detective's dream.'
'No, this is helpful. How about that last evening? Did you get that somewhere-else feeling then?'
She shook her head. 'Oddly enough he was much jollier than usual. Well... I say jolly. He wasn't that kind of person, but...'
'Enjoying himself?'
'It didn't seem only politeness.'
'Someone who's made up his mind? Feels good about it?'
She thought about that, staring down. They walked very slowly, as if at any moment they would turn back. She shook her head.
'I honestly don't know. There certainly wasn't any buried emotion. Nothing of the farewell about it.'
'Not even when he said goodbye?'
'He kissed me on the cheek, I think he touched Peter on the shoulder. I couldn't swear about the actual movements. But I'd have noticed if there'd been anything unusual. I mean, his mood was slightly unusual. I remember Peter saying something about his getting mellow in his old age. There was that feeling. That he'd put himself out to be nice to us.'
'He wasn't always?'
'I didn't mean that. Just... not simply going through the motions. Perhaps it was London. He always seemed more somewhere-else down in the country. To me, anyway.'
'That's where everyone else seems to think he was happier.'
Again she thought, and chose her words. 'Yes, he did enjoy showing it all off. Perhaps it was the family situation. Being en famille.'
He said, 'I've got to ask you something very crude now.'
'No. He didn't.'
The answer came back so fast that he laughed.
'You're my star witness.'
'I was waiting for it.'
'Not even a look, a...?'
'I divide the looks men give me into two kinds. Natural and unnatural. He never gave me the second sort. That I saw.'
'I didn't mean to suggest he'd have made a pass at you, but whether you felt any kind of general...'
'Nothing I could describe.'
'Then there was something?'
'No. Honestly not. I think it was just me. Psychic nonsense. It's not evidence.'
'Do I get on my knees?'
Her mouth curved, but she said nothing. They moved up, on a side-path, towards Ken Wood.
He said, 'Bad vibes?'
She hesitated still, then shook her head. The black hair curled a little, negligently and deliciously, at its ends, where it touched the skin of her bare neck.
'I didn't like being alone with him. It only happened once or twice. It may have just been the political thing. Sympathetic magic. The way he always used to produce a kind of chemical change in Peter.'
'Like how?'
'Oh, a kind of nervousness. A defensiveness. It's not that they used to argue the way they once apparently did. All very civilized, really. You please mustn't say a
nything about this. It's mostly me. Not facts.'
'The marriage seemed okay to you?'
'Yes.'
'You hesitated.'
She was watching the ground again as they mounted the grassy hill. 'My own parents' marriage broke up when I was fifteen. I sort of felt something... just the tiniest whiff. When the couple know and the children don't. I think in real relationships people are rude to each other. They know it's safe, they're not walking on ice. But Peter said they'd always been like that. He told me once, he'd never once heard them have a row. Always that façade. Front. Perhaps I just came in late on something that had always been there.'
'You never had chat with Mrs Fielding?'
'Nothing else.' She pulled a little face. 'Inch-deep.'
'This not wanting to be alone with him--'
'It was such a tiny thing.'
'You've already proved you're telepathic.' She smiled again, her lips pressed tight. 'Were these bad vibes sexual ones?'
'Just that something was suppressed. Something 'Let it come out. However wild.'
'Something he might suddenly tell me. That he might break down. Not that he ever would. I can't explain.'
'But an unhappiness in him?'
'Not even that. Just someone else, behind it all. It's nothing, but I'm not quite making it up after the facts.' She shrugged. 'When it all happened, something seemed to fit. It wasn't quite the shock it ought to have been.'
'You think the someone else was very different from the man everyone knew?' She gave her slow, reluctant nod. 'Nicer or nastier?'
'More honest?'
'You never heard him say anything that suggested he was changing his politics? Moving leftward?'
'Absolutely not.'
'Did he seem to approve of you as a future daughter-in-law?'
She seemed faintly embarrassed at that.
'I'm not interested in getting married yet. It's not been that sort of relationship.'
'Which they understood?'
'They knew we were sleeping together. There wasn't any separate room nonsense when we stayed down there.'
'But he liked you in some way you didn't like? Or is that oversimplifying?'
Suddenly she gave him a strange look: a kind of lightning assessment of who he was. Then she looked away.
'Could we go and sit down a moment? Under that tree?' She went on before he could say anything. 'I'm holding out on you. There's something I should have told you before. The police. It's very minor. But it may help explain what I'm trying to say.'
Again that quickness: a little smile, that stopped him before he could speak.
'Please. Let's sit down first.'
She sat cross-legged, like a child. He took a cigarette packet out of his blazer pocket, but she shook her head and he put it away. He sat, then lay on an elbow opposite her. The tired grass. It was totally airless. Just the white dress with the small blue stripes, very simple, a curve off her shoulders down above her breasts, the skin rather pale, faintly olive; those eyes, the line of her black hair. She broke off a stalk of dry grass and fiddled with it in her lap.
'That last meal we had. ' She smiled up. 'The last supper? Actually I was alone with him for a few minutes before Peter arrived. He'd been at some meeting at the L. S. E., he was a tiny bit late. Mr Fielding never was. So. He asked me what I'd been doing all week. We're doing a reprint of some minor Late Victorian novels--you know, those campy illustrated ones, it's just cashing in on a trend--and I explained I'd been reading some.' She was trying to split the grass-stalk with a nail. 'It's just this. I did mention I had to go to the British Museum reading-room the next day to track one down.' She looked up at the sergeant. 'Actually in the end I didn't. But that's what I told him.'
He looked down from her eyes. 'Why didn't you tell us?'
'I suppose "no one asked me" isn't good enough?'
'Not from someone of your intelligence.'
She went back to the grass-stalk. 'Then sheer cowardice? Plus the knowledge that I'm totally innocent.'
'He didn't make a thing of it?'
'Not at all. It was just said in passing. I spent most of the time telling him about the book I'd been reading that day. That was all. Then Peter came.' - 'And you never went to the Museum?'
'There was a panic over some proofs. I spent the whole of Friday in the office reading them.' She looked him in the eyes again. 'You could check. They'd remember the panic.'
'We already have.'
'Thank God for that.'
'Where everybody was that afternoon.' He sat up and stared away across the grass to Highgate Hill. 'If you're innocent, why keep quiet about it?'
'Purely personal reasons.'
'Am I allowed to hear them?'
'Just Peter. It's actually been rather more off than on for some time now. Since before. The real reason we didn't go down to Tetbury that weekend was that I refused to.' She glanced up at the sergeant, as if to see whether she had said enough; then down again into her lap. 'I felt the only reason he tried to get me down there was to put me in what you just said the future daughter-in-law situation? Using something he pretends to hate to try and get me. I didn't like it. That's all.'
'But you still wanted to protect him?'
'He's so desperately confused about his father. And I thought, you know... whatever I said, it would seem fishy. And Mrs Fielding. I mean, I know I'm innocent. But I wasn't sure anyone else would. And I couldn't see, I still can't, that it proves anything.'
'If he did go to see you, what could he have wanted?'
She uncrossed her legs, and sat sideways to him, hands clasped round the knees. 'I thought at first something to do with me being in publishing. But I'm just a nobody. He knew that.'
'You mean some kind of book? Confession?'
She shook her head. 'It doesn't make sense.'
'You should have told us.'
'The other man didn't explain what he wanted. You have.'
'Thanks. And you've still been wicked.'
'Duly contrite.'
The head was bowed. He pressed a smile out of his mouth.
'This feeling he wanted to tell you something--is that based on this, or something previous?'
'There was one other tiny thing. Down at Tetbury in June. He took me off one day to see some new loose-boxes they'd just had put up. It was really an excuse. To give me a sort of pat on the back. You know. He said something about being glad Peter had hit it off with me. Then that he needed someone with a sense of humour. And then he said: Like all us political animals.' She spoke the words slowly, as if she were listing them. 'I'm sure of that. Those words exactly. Then something about, one sometimes forgets there are other ways of seeing life. That was all, but he was sort of trying to let me know he knew he wasn't perfect. That he knew Tetbury wasn't my scene. That he didn't despise my scene as much as I might think.' She added, 'I'm talking about tiny, very faint impressions. And retrospective ones. They may not mean anything.'
'Peter obviously didn't know about the Museum thing?'
'It didn't come up. Fortunately. Something in him always liked to pretend I didn't earn my own living.'
He noted that past tense.
'And he wouldn't have believed you--if he had known?'
'Do you?'
'You wouldn't be here now, otherwise. Or telling me.'
'No, I suppose I wouldn't.'
He leant back again, on an elbow; and tried to calculate how far he could go with personal curiosity under the cover of official duty.
'He sounds very mixed-up. Peter.'
'The opposite really. Unmixed. Like oil and water. Two people.'
'And his father could have been the same?'
'Except it's naked with Peter. He can't hide it.' She was talking with her head bent, rocking a little, hands still clasped around her knees. 'You know, some people--. that kind of pretentious life, houseboys waiting at table and all the rest of it. Okay, one loathes it, but at least it's natural. Peter's mother.' She shrugged. 'She really
believes in the formal hostess bit. Leaving the gentlemen to the port and cigars.' She glanced sideways at him again. 'But his father. He so obviously wasn't a fool. Whatever his political views.'
'He saw through it?'
'But something in him was also too clever to show it. I mean, he never sent it up. Apologized for it, the way some people do. Except for that one thing he said to me. It's just some kind of discrepancy. I can't explain.' She smiled at him. 'It's all so tenuous. I don't even know why I'm bothering to tell you.'
'Probably because you know I'm torn between arresting you for conspiracy to suppress evidence and offering you a cup of tea at Kenwood.'
She smiled and looked down at her knees, let three or four seconds pass.
'Have you always been a policeman?'
He told her who his father was.
'And you enjoy it?'
'Being a leper to most of your own generation?'
'Seriously.'
He shrugged. 'Not this case. No one wants it solved now. Sleeping dogs and all that. Between ourselves.'
'That must be foul.'
He smiled. 'Not until this afternoon, anyway.' He said quickly, 'That's not a pass. You're just about the first person I've seen who makes some kind of sense on it all.'
'And you're really nowhere nearer...?'
'Further. But you may have something. There was someone else. Saying more or less what you've said. Only not so well.'
She left another pause.
'I'm sorry I said that thing just now. About police brutality.'
'Forget it. It does happen. Coppers also have small daughters.'
'Do you really feel a leper?'
'Sometimes.'
'Are all your friends in the police?'
'It's not that. Just the work. Having to come on like authority. Officialdom? Obeying people you don't always respect. Never quite being your own man.'
'That worries you?'
'When I meet people I like. Who can be themselves.'
She stared into the distance.
'Would it ever make you give it up?'
'Would what?'
'Not being your own man?'
'Why do you ask?'
'Just... ' she shrugged. 'That you should use that phrase.'
'Why?'
She said nothing for a moment, then she looked down at her knees. 'I do have a private theory. About what happened. It's very wild.' She grinned at him. 'Very literary. If you want to hear it, it will cost you one cup of tea.' She raised the purse. 'I didn't bring any money.'