Fat and coarse was the way she once described her. I suppose—I suppose I was attracted to Katje from the start, but I never did anything about it. She was a young girl and I was-well, in loco parentis. I told myself I thought of her as a daughter. How we delude ourselves!’ He turned away his face. ‘It’s almost impossible for me to find the words to tell you. I ...’
‘You slept with her?’ Wexford said expressionlessly.
Quentin nodded.
‘The night before last?’
‘That wasn’t the first time. Chief Inspector, in all the sixteen years we’d been married, I’d never been unfaithful to my wife. I’d had my opportunities. What man hasn’t? I loved my wife. All those years I hoped for a sign of warmth, just one spontaneous sign that she recognised me as a human being. I never gave up hoping until Katje came. Then for the first time I saw a woman who was close to me, a woman living under my roof, behaving like a woman. Perhaps not as a woman should behave. She had boy friends all over the place and she used to tell me about them.
Sometimes in the evenings Elizabeth would be out, walking in the grounds or gone early to bed, and Katje would come in from some date and she’d tell me about it, giggling and laughing, talking as if the best thing in the world was to take and give pleasure.
‘One night, after one of these talks, I was lying in bed, waiting for Elizabeth to come in. I said I’d given up hope but that isn’t true. I always hoped. I never remember feeling such a depth of loneliness as I felt that night. I thought I’d give everything I possessed, this house, the fortune I’ve amassed, if she would just come into my room and sit on the bed and talk to me.’
Again he covered his face. When he took away his hands Wexford expected to see tears on his cheeks, for he had spoken that last sentence on a sob, but he was quite calm, even relieved, it appeared, at having so nearly got it all off his chest.
‘Presently I heard her come upstairs,’ he said. ‘I willed her to come in. I exercised all the power of my will. God knows how I stopped myself crying out to her. Her bedroom door closed and I heard her begin to run a bath. In that moment I forgot who I was, my age, my position, my duty to my wife. I put on my dressing gown and went upstairs. I knew what I was going to say to Katje, that I smelt gas and thought it was coming from her room. Of course I couldn’t smell gas. All that was coming from her room was the faint sound of music from her radio.
‘I knocked and she called to me to come in. She was sitting up in bed, reading a magazine. I didn’t have to say anything about gas. It sounds incredible but I didn’t speak a word. She smiled at me and put out her arms...’
Abruptly he stopped speaking. Like an old-fashioned novel, Wexford thought.
If it were written down, asterisks would come at this point. Quentin Nightingale’s asterisks were a sudden burning flush that threw into sharpness the whiteness of his hair and his moustache, ageing him. Fumbling for words and getting no help from the chief inspector, he said:
‘There were-well, other times. Not many. There was the night before last. I went up to Katje at about a quarter past eleven.
I didn’t know whether Elizabeth had come in. I wasn’t thinking about Elizabeth. Katje and Iwell, I stayed with her all night. It was Palmer walking about on the floor below that awakened me. I sensed something was wrong, so I got up and dressed and found him on the terrace.’
‘A pity you didn’t tell us all this before,’ Wexford said, frowning.
‘Put yourself in my place. Would you have?’
Wexford shrugged. ‘That’s beside the point.’ He was at a loss to account for his feelings. An alibi had been destroyed and a more convincing one had replaced it. Normally, when this occurred, he felt anger at the wasted time, relief at progress made. His present unease wasn’t normal and briefly he questioned himself. Then he knew. He was allowing himself something indefensible, personal involvement. What he felt for Quentin Nightingale was envy. Stiffly he got up.
‘This will have to be corroborated, Mr Nightingale,’ he said in a cold hard voice.
Pale again, Quentin said, ‘I realised you would want to ask Katje. It won’t embarrass her. She’s strange, unique. She’s ... Oh, I’m wasting your time. I’m sorry.’
Wexford went upstairs. When he reached the first floor he paused for a second outside the door of Quentin Nightingale’s bedroom and then, as he turned towards the top flight and began to mount, he heard music coming from above. It gave substance, near-reality to the unpermitted dream his envy of Nightingale had evoked. A soft, throaty voice was singing the number one song in the pop charts, singing of love. A passionate longing, bitter and savage, to recapture for one hour the youth he had lost engulfed Wexford. And suddenly growing old seemed the only tragedy of life, the pain beside which every other pain dwindled into insignificance. Mature, wise, usually philosophical, he wanted to cry aloud, ‘It isn’t fair!’
He came to the door and rapped on it sharply. The music should have stopped. Instead the voice welled and trembled on a vibrant note and she came to the door and let him in.
Her pink dress had white frills like a nightgown, and like a nightgown it was cut low to show milk-white halfmoons and shoulders where even the bones looked soft. She smiled at him, her sea-blue eyes full of laughter.
Quentin Nightingale had had all this, easily, without argument. So had the waiter at the Olive and Dove. So had how many others?
For the first time in his career he understood what impelled those men he questioned and brought to court, the men who forgot for a while chivalry and social taboo and sexual restraint, the rapists, the violators. But here there would perhaps be no need for violence, need only for a smile and an outstretched hand. Ca me donne tant de plaisir et vous si peu de peine. Oh, how much pleasure!
He followed her into the room, and out of the dressing table mirror their reflections marched towards them.
A young girl with her father. No, her grandfather. She was one of those people who make other people look unfinished and ill-made. In a bitter flash of illumination, Wexford saw himself as a battered bundle of old clothes. Not even middle-aged. Elderly, a grandfather.
‘Please sit down, Miss Doorn,’ he said, surprised that his voice was steady and sane. ‘And would you turn that radio off?’
She complied, still smiling.
He felt just the same about her. The longing-perhaps only a longing for rejuvenation?-was still there, but as he had turned away from the mirror he had experienced that sensation which divides the sane man from the mad. Between fantasy and reality a great gulf is fixed.
And that which seems possible, reasonable, felicitous, when conjured in the mind, dissolves like smoke in a fresh wind when its object is present in words and solid flesh. He had seen her for a brief moment as a lovely thing, but a thing only, without the power of discrimination, without rights, without intelligence. Now he saw her as a young girl who saw him as he was, an old man. Inwardly his whole body seemed to laugh harshly at itself.
‘I have some questions to ask you,’ he said. He wished the laughter would stop so that he could control himself and mould himself into the image he desired, something between God and a robot, tempered with avuncular geniality, ‘About your relations with Mr Nightingale.’ Pity they had to talk about sex. But if they hadn’t, perhaps the fantasy would never have grown. ‘What terms are you on with him?’
‘Terms?’
‘You know very well what I mean’ ‘ he growled at her.
She shrugged at that, threw out her hands. ‘I work for him and I live here in his house.’ She pulled at a strand of hair, considered it and then poked it into her mouth. ‘He is very nice and kind. I like him much.’