As soon as she had spoken, she wondered whether this frankness had been wise; spoken to her host, it had hardly been courteous. But Ambrose accepted the comment without offence. He said easily:
'You're probably right. I doubt whether they'll believe either of us. After all they only have our word for it that Munter lied. And it's very convenient for us, isn't it; a dead suspect who can't now deny what any of us choose to say about him? The butler did it. Even in fiction, so I'm led to believe, that solution is regarded as unsatisfactory.'
Sir George lifted his head:
'I think the police launches are arriving.'
He must, thought Cordelia, have remarkable ears for an ageing man. Hers had caught nothing. And then she sensed rather than heard the throb of engines. They looked at each other. For the first time Cordelia saw in their eyes what she knew they must be recognizing in hers, the flicker of fear. Ambrose said:
'I'll meet them at the quay. You two had better get back to the body.'
Sir George and Cordelia were alone. If it were to be said it had to be said now, before the police questioning began. But it was hard to get out the words, and when she did they sounded harsh, accusatory.
'You recognized that drowned face, didn't you? You think he could have been Blythe's son?' He said unsurprised:
'It did strike me, yes. Never occurred to me before.' 'You'd never seen Munter like that before, his face upturned, dead and drowned. That's how you last saw his father.' 'What made you think of it?'
'Your face when you looked down at him. The War Memorial he decorates every Armistice day. The words he shouted out at you, murderer, murderer! It was his father he meant, not Clarissa. And I think he muttered in German to Simon. Even his Christian name. Didn't Ambrose say he was Carl? And his height. His father died slowly because he was so tall. But, most of all, his name. Munter is German for "blithe". It's one of the few German words I know.'
She had seen that look of strained endurance on his face before, but all he said was: 'Could be. Could be.' She asked:
'Are you going to tell Grogan?'
'No. None of his business. Not relevant.'
'Not even if they arrest you for murder?'
'They won't. I didn't kill my wife.' Suddenly he said, quickly as if the words were forced out of him:
'I don't believe I deliberately let them kill him. May have done. Difficult to understand one's motives. Used to think it was all so simple.'
Cordelia said:
'You don't have to explain to me. It's none of my business. And you were a young officer at the time. You can't have been in command here.'
'No, but I was on duty that evening. Should have discovered that something was afoot, should have stopped it. But I hated Blythe so much that I couldn't trust myself to go near him. That's one thing you never forget or forgive, cruelty when you're a child and defenceless. I shut my mind and my eyes to anything that concerned him. May have shut them deliberately. You could call it a dereliction of duty.'
'But no one did. There was no court martial, was there? No one blamed you.'
'I blame myself.'
There was a moment's silence, then he said:
'Never knew he was married. No mention of a wife at the inquest. There was talk of a girl in Speymouth but she never showed herself. No talk of a child.'
'Munter probably wasn't born. And he could have been illegitimate. I don't suppose we shall ever know. But his mother must have been bitter about what happened. He probably grew up believing that the Army had murdered his father. I wonder why he took a job on the island; curiosity, filial duty, the hope of revenge? But he couldn't have expected that you would turn up here.'
'He might have hoped for it. He took the job in the summer of 1978. I married Clarissa that year, and she has known Ambrose Gorringe nearly all her life. Munter probably kept track of me. I'm not exactly a nonentity.'
Cordelia said:
'The police have made mistakes before now. If they do arrest you I shall feel free to tell them. I shall have to tell them.' He said quietly:
'No, Cordelia. It's my concern, my past, my life.' Cordelia cried:
'But you must see how it will look to the police! If they believe me about the musical-box, they'll know that Munter was in the gallery a few feet from your wife's room at about the time she died. If he didn't kill her himself, he could have seen the person who did. Taken with that shout to you of "murderer" it's damning unless you tell them who Munter was.'
He didn't respond but stood rigid as a sentry, his eyes gazing into nothingness. She said:
'If they arrest the wrong person it's a double injustice. It means that the guilty one goes free. Is that what you want?'
'Would it be the wrong person? If she hadn't married me she'd be alive today.'
'You can't know that!'
'I can feel it. Who was it said we owe God a death?' 'I can't remember. Someone in Shakespeare's Henry IV. But what has that to do with it?'
'Nothing, I expect. It came into my mind.'
She was getting nowhere. Beneath that apparently guileless and inarticulate front of personality he harboured his private under-cover agent, a mind more complex and perhaps more ruthless than she had imagined. And he wasn't a fool, this deceptively simple soldier. He knew precisely the extent of his danger. And that could mean that he had his own suspicions; that there was someone he wanted to protect. And she didn't think that it would be either Ambrose or Ivo. She said helplessly:
'I don't know what you want of me. Am I to carry on with the case?'
'No point is there? Nothing can frighten her ever again. Better leave it to the professionals.' He added awkwardly, 'I'll pay, of course, for your time so far. I'm not ungrateful.'
Ungrateful for what? She wondered.
He turned and looked down at Munter's body. He said:
'Extraordinary business, putting that wreath on the War Memorial every year. Do you suppose Gorringe will keep up the tradition?'
'I shouldn't think so.'
'He should. I'll have a word with him. Oldfield could see to it.'
They turned to make their way across the rose garden, then stopped. Coming across the lawn towards them in the pale apricot light, their footfalls absorbed by the soft grass, were Grogan and his coterie of officers. Cordelia was caught unawares. Facing their silent, inexorable advance, their bleak, unsmiling faces, she resisted the temptation to glance at Sir George. But she wondered whether he shared her sudden and irrational vision of how the two of them must look to the police, as guilty and discomforted as a couple of poachers surprised by the gamekeepers with their dead spoils at their feet.
PART SIX. A Case Concluded
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Munter's body was taken away with a speed and efficiency which Cordelia thought was almost unseemly. By ten o'clock the metal container with its two long side-handles had been slid from the jetty on to the deck of the police launch with as little ceremony as if it had held a dog. But what, after all, had she expected? Munter had been a man. Now he was a weight of latent putrefaction, a case to be given a file and a number, a problem to be solved. She told herself that it was unreasonable to expect that the men – police officers? mortuary attendants? undertaker's staff? – would bear him away with the solemnity appropriate to a funeral. They were doing a familiar job without emotion, and without fuss.
And with this second death the suspects were able to watch the police at work. They did it discreetly from the window of Cordelia's bedroom, watching while Grogan and Buckley walked slowly round the body like a couple of marine scientists intrigued by some bedraggled specimen which had been washed up by the tide. They watched while the photographer did his job, hardly seeming to notice or speak to the police, occupying himself with his own expertise. And this time Dr Ellis-Jones didn't appear. Cordelia wondered whether this was because the cause of death was apparent or whether he was busy elsewhere with another body. Instead, a police surgeon arrived to certify that life was extinct and to make the preliminary examination. He was a large and jovial man, dressed in sea boots and a knitted jersey patched on both elbows, who greeted the police like old drinking companions. His cheerful voice rose clearly on the quiet morning air. It was only when he knelt to rummage in his case for his thermometer that the watchers at the window silently withdrew and took refuge in the drawing-room, ashamed of what had suddenly seemed an indecent curiosity. And it was from the drawing-room windows, less than ten minutes later, that they saw Munter's body borne through the archway and across the quay to the launch. One of the bearers said something to his mate and they both laughed. He was probably complaining about the weight.