Blame The Dead

'I think so. It's the keystone of the whole thing, as far as I can see – Fenwick's vulnerability to a divorce.'

'Oh, I don't know… They aren't too old-fashioned about these things at Lloyd's.'

Til bet they're pretty old-fashioned about an underwriter suddenly losing most of his deposit – and that's what would have happened. Give a divorce judge a nice clear-cut case where the man's been set up in business on what was his wife's money and then the breakup's all his fault… Christ, Fenwick would have come out of court with his bus fare home and a bob for the meter to gas himself with.'

'Yes – I suppose a judge's decision would override everything else,' he mused.

The prisons are full of people who disagree.'

'But of course, youai eassuming Lois would have divorced him. She might not.'

'Yes…' After all, Mrs F herself had as near as dammit told me she believed Fenwick was taking a horizontal opinion of Maggie. 'Probably it was that he couldn't affordany risk of divorce, it would have been so final for him. So he was vulnerable to any threat at all.'

'I suppose you must be right…' He did a neat piece of light-jumping that brought us out ahead of a Rolls-Royce. Headlamps flashed angrily behind us. 'What do you make of this business of Maggie having you followed to Norway and so on?'

'That she was damn fond of him – didn't want me raking up anything to discredit him. And maybe her as well.'

'But she then went and told you about it.'

'Yes – when I was bound to find out anyhow. And I'd suspected it before.'

'Ah. I say, how much would it cost her to hire him?'

T calculated. The Rolls's headlights were still throwing broadsides after us, making Willie's rear-view mirror flash like a warning lamp. 'In case you hadn't noticed,' I said nervously, 'you're about to be rammed by a Cunarder abaft the starboard lug-hole.'

He grunted. 'Some damn silly little East European ambassador.' But he pulled over and we rocked in the wake of the big car whooshing past.

I said. 'With sea and air fares, she must have spent at least two hundred pounds on that jaunt.'

'Probably more than we've spent on you, so far, what?'

'Certainly.'

'Impressive, rather.'

'Maybe it just proves she was in love with him. Sex hardly proves that, these days.'

'Bit cynical, what, old boy?'

I just shrugged again.

The houses in The Bishop's Avenue have just two things in common, they're all set back from the road, giving room for nice big lawns and a good piece of driveway, and people like you and me couldn't afford them in a million years. These aspects apart, each house is different – and intended to be. Not just Stockbroker's Tudor and Banker's Georgian, but everything from the Third Gothic Age to North London Château of the Loire via green-tiled Haciendaàla Rudolph Valentino and Plantation Scarlett O'Hara.

This last was Mockby's: a square-cut block of the deep South in red brick with a white Grecian portico and a flood of wide steps sweeping down to the green tarmac drive. Willie found a bellpush in among the brasswork of the double front doors, but the house was too big and solid for you to hear it ring inside.

After a cold wait, one side of the doors opened and the big chauffeur I'd met at my flat looked stonily out.

Willie said pleasantly, 'Mr Mockby's expecting us.'

The big one nodded at me.'And him?'

I gave him a friendly smile. 'Passed your finals in robbery with violence yet? Or d'you want some more lessons?'

He bunched his fist. Willie looked at me reprovingly. Then, from somewhere inside, Mockby bellowed, 'Don't fart about, Charles! Let 'em in!'

We went through an inner set of french doors, along a big hallway with enough furniture to start a chain store, and into the lounge.

It was a big room but with an odd confined feeling. There must have been windows somewhere behind the gold silk drapes, but you wouldn't bother with them: there was too much to look at inside. The place was jammed with furniture; usable stuff like fat wing chairs and sofas and couches, unusable bits like tiny tables covered in silver photo frames, carved benches, embroidered footstools. Even the flock wallpaper was put up in panels, and each panel with a gold-framed still life of dead pheasants and careful beads of moisture on every grape.

Willie must have seen it all before, but I thought I heard Mm give a little sad sigh.

Mockby was standing in the middle, wrapped in a vast red velvet smoking jacket with green lapels.

'Hullo, Willie,' he called, 'What are you doing with that blackmailing bastard?'

Willie twitched like a nervous horse. His faith in me wasn't even skin deep, after alclass="underline" he'd taken me more or less on David's trust.

'Blackmailing?' he asked warily.

'Of course,' said Mockby. 'Trying to sell us something that belongs to us already.'

I said, 'You mean the Skadi's log?'

'That's what I mean, sonny.'

Willie said, 'Oh, that,' and looked vaguely relieved. Even he couldn't believe I was fool enough to try and sell Mockby something I hadn't got.

Mockby seemed puzzled, but recovered fast. 'Well, have you come to do business now?'

I shrugged. 'Anything could happen.'

'I suppose you want a drink first.' He strode over to a bookcase that turned out, of course, of course, to be a cocktail cabinet lined in rose-tinted mirror glass (one of these days I'm going to market a cocktail cabinet that turns out to be a bookcase; there must besome secret readers in The Bishop's Avenue).

'Scotch? And you, Willie?'

'Ah – pink gin if you could.'

'Oh, Christ,' Mockby said impatiently. 'Mix your own.' He strode back with two big cut-glass tumblers and shoved one into my hand. Willie went and started necromancing with the little bottle of bitters.

Mockby and I drank; then he said, 'Well, now are you going to hand it over?'

Willie called, I've never seen this thing. Which log are we talking about?'

Mockby swung round. 'Deck log – chief officer's log. Not the rough one that went with the bridge, but the fair copy they kept below.'

'Ali, yes.' He went on blending.

'Well?' Mockby asked me.

'What does it prove? – the log, I mean.'

'You've had it long enough, haven't you?'

Willie was zigzagging elegantly among the furniture towards us. 'I don't suppose Mr Card reads Norwegian sea-going terms frightfully well, what?'

You know, it's damn silly, but maybe it was hearing all those Norwegians talking perfect English that had made me forget they'd write up their logs in Norwegian. I'd somehow imagined Fenwick skimming through the book and saying, 'Aha! – the Captain's butler did it!'

'Did Martin Fenwick read Norwegian?' I asked quickly.

Mockby and Willie looked at each other; Willie sipped his pale-pink mixture and shrugged delicately. Mockby said, 'Bit, I think. Not much.'

So Fenwick must have got an explanatory letter with the log. Or phone call. But if you're parcelling up the log, you'd add a letter as well anyway. Would Fenwick have kept that? Say, in the bureau at his flat? And would an interested party have swiped it before I got there?

Mockby was staring down into his glass, baby features crowded into a slight frown.

I said, 'So, what did he tell you the log showed?'

He stretched his big chest with a deep breath. 'Oh, something about whether it invalidated the policy or not.'

Willie stared at him.'Invalidated it? Did he really say that?'

Mockby got angry. 'Of course he did. I just said so.'

I said, 'If you do pay out in full on the collision, how much? – it'll be pretty big, won't it?'

Mockby heaved his shoulders in a big shrug. 'The whole claim comes to about half a million – plus bloody great fees to every lawyer that can get his greedy great gob into the honey-pot. We had a line of seven-and-a-half per cent. It'll cost us about forty thousand quid.'

I frowned. 'That doesn't sound too bad… I mean, it does to me, but…'