CHAPTER SIX
Charles rang the police and stayed beside Hugo in the sitting room until they arrived. Hugo was catatonic with shock. Only once did he speak, murmuring softly to himself, ‘What did I do to her? She was young. What did I do to her?’
When the police arrived, Charles steeled himself to go out once again to the coal shed. The beams of their torches were stronger and made the colour of Charlotte’s cheeks even less natural, like a detail from an over-exposed photograph.
The richness of her perfume, which still hung in the air, was sickly and inappropriate. The staring eyes and untidy spread of limbs were not horrifying; the felling they gave Charles was more one of embarrassment, as if a young girl had been sick at a party. And his impression of callowness was reinforced by the Indian print scarf over the bruised neck, like a teenager’s attempt to hide love-bites.
The bruises were chocolate brown. On one of them the skin had been broken — and a bootlace of dried blood traced its way crazily up towards Charlotte’s mouth.
Hugo remained dull and silent and Charles himself was dazed as they were driven to the police station. They were separated when they arrived and parted without a word. Each was taken into a separate interview room to make a statement.
Charles had to wait for about half an hour before his questioning began. A uniformed constable brought him a cup of tea and apologized for the delay. Everyone was very pleasant, but pleasant with that slight restraint that staff have in hospitals, as if something unpleasant is happening nearby but no one is going to mention it.
Eventually two policemen came in. One was in uniform and carried a sheaf of paper. The other was fair-haired. early thirties, dressed in a brown blazer and blue trousers. He spoke with the vestiges of a South London twang. ‘So sorry to have kept you waiting. Detective-Sergeant Harvey. Mr. Paris, isn’t it?’
Charles nodded.
‘Fine. I must just get a few personal details and then, if I may, I’ll ask a few questions about… what happened. Then Constable Renton will write it down as a statement, which you sign — if you’re happy with it. Okay?’
Charles nodded again.
‘It’s late, and I’m afraid this could take some time. Say if you’d like more tea. Or a sandwich or something.’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’
So it started. First, simple information, name, address and so on. Then details of how he came to know Mr. and Mrs Mecken. And then a resume of the last two days.
As he spoke, Charles could feel it going wrong. He told the truth, he told it without bias, and yet he could feel the false picture that his words were building up. Everything he said seemed to incriminate Hugo. The more he tried to defend him, the worse it sounded.
Detective-Sergeant Harvey was a good poker-faced questioner. He didn’t force the pace, he didn’t put words into Charles’s mouth, he just asked for information slowly and unemotionally. And to damning effect.
‘After your lunch on Monday you say that you and Mr. Mecken went on to a drinking club?’
‘Yes, a sort of strip joint in Dean Street.’
‘And what did you drink there?’
‘Hugo ordered a bottle of whisky.’
‘So, by the time you left there, you had both had a considerable amount to drink?’
‘I didn’t drink a great deal in the club.’ Immediately Charles kicked himself for prompting the next question.
‘But Mr. Mecken did?’
‘I suppose he had quite a bit by some people’s standards, but you know how it is with advertising people — they can just drink and drink.’ The attempt at humour didn’t help. It made it sound more and more of a whitewash.
‘Yes. But you then both returned to Breckton and continued drinking at the theatre club. Surely that made it rather a lot of alcohol, even for an advertising man.’
‘Well, yes, I agree, we wouldn’t normally have drunk that much, but you see Hugo was a bit upset and…’ Realizing that once again he had said exactly the wrong thing, Charles left the words hanging in the air.
‘Upset,’ Detective-Sergeant Harvey repeated without excitement. Have you any idea why he should have been upset?’
Charles hedged. ‘Oh, I dare say it was something at work. He was involved in a big campaign to launch a new bedtime drink — that’s what I was working on with him-and I think there may have been some disagreements over that. You know, these advertising people do take it all so seriously.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ The slow response seemed only to highlight the hollowness of Charles’s words. ‘You have no reason to believe that Mr. Mecken was having any domestic troubles?’
‘Domestic troubles?’ Charles repeated idiotically.
‘Worries about his marriage.’
‘Oh. Oh, I shouldn’t think so. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone can begin to understand anything about another person’s marriage. But I mean Charlotte is a — I mean, was a beautiful girl and…’ He trailed off guiltily.
‘Hmm. Mr. Paris, would you describe Mr. Mecken as a violent man?’
‘No, certainly not. And if you’re trying to suggest that — ’
‘I am not trying to suggest anything, Mr. Paris. I am just trying to get as full a background to the death of Mrs Mecken as I can,’ Detective-Sergeant Harvey replied evenly.
‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry.’ Blustering wasn’t going to help Hugo’s cause. As his interrogation continued, Charles kept thinking of his friend, in another interview room, being asked other questions. Where were Hugo’s answers leading?
‘You say Mr. Mecken is not a habitually violent man. Is he perhaps the sort who might become violent when he’s had a few drinks? I mean, for instance, did he show any violence towards you during your long drinking session on Monday?’
Charles hesitated. Certainly he wasn’t going to go back to Hugo’s bizarre outburst while an undergraduate and his instinct was to deny that anything had happened on the Monday. But Hugo’s second swing at him had been witnessed by a bar full of Backstagers. He couldn’t somehow see that self-dramatizing lot keeping quiet about it. He’d do better to edit the truth than to tell a lie. ‘Well, he did take a sort of playful swing at me at one point when I’ suggested he ought to be getting home, but that’s all.’
‘A playful swing.’ Detective-Sergeant Harvey gave the three words equal emphasis.
The questioning ended soon after and the information was turned into a written statement. Detective-Sergeant Harvey courteously went through a selection of the questions again and Constable Renton laboriously wrote down the answers in longhand on ruled paper.
Inevitably it was a slow process and Charles found his mind wandering. He didn’t like the way it was heading.
Previously he had been numb with shock, but now the fact of Charlotte’s death was getting through to him. The feeling of guilt which his initially casual reaction had prompted gave way to a cold sensation of nausea.
‘With it came a realization of the implications for Hugo. As Charles went through the details for his statement, he saw with horror which way the circumstantial evidence pointed.
There were so many witnesses too. So many people who had heard Hugo’s denunciation of his wife and his violent burst of aggression towards Charles. Unless Hugo could prove a very solid alibi for the time at which his wife had been murdered, things didn’t look too good for him.
At this point it struck Charles that he was assuming Hugo was innocent and he paused to question the logic of this. On reflection, it didn’t stand up very well. In fact the only arguments he could come up with against Hugo’s guilt were Hugo’s own denial that he would ever hurt Charlotte and Charles’s own conviction that someone he knew so well would be incapable of a crime of such savagery.
And those weren’t arguments. They were sheer emotion, romantic indulgence.
The thought of romanticism only made it worse. It suggested a very plausible motive for Hugo to kill his wife. Hugo was a romantic, unwilling to accept the unpleasant facts of life. He had built up his own life into a romantic ideal, with his writing talent supporting the professional side and his love-affair with Charlotte the domestic.