“Were you there?” enquired Dalgliesh.
“Bang in the middle of the third row of the stalls, my dear, and curling with embarrassment. Seton was in a box. He’d got Celia with him and one must say she did him proud. Hardly a stitch above the waist and tinkling away with imitation jewellery like a Christmas tree. Do you think Seton wanted people to think she was his mistress? I’ve a feeling our Maurice liked to be taken for a naughty boy. My dear, they looked like a couple of minor émigré royalties. Seton even wore a decoration. A Home Guard medal or something of the kind. I was with Paul Markham, such a sensitive boy. He was in tears by the end of the first act. So, admittedly, were a good third of the audience but in their case I suspect it was tears of laughter. We left in the first interval and spent the rest of the evening drinking at Moloneys. I can bear quite an amount of suffering provided it’s not my own but I do draw the line at public executions. Celia, gallant girl, stuck it out to the last. They even had a party at the Ivy afterwards. When I think of that evening, oh Arabella, how thou art revenged.”
“Latham’s notice was Latham at his most vicious wasn’t it? Did you get the impression that he had a personal interest in killing the play?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so.” The large eyes bent on Dalgliesh were as innocent as a child’s but Adam had a considerable respect for the intelligence behind them.
“Oliver can’t tolerate bad writing nor bad acting and when they come together it tends to make him savage. Now if Oliver had been found dead with his hands hacked off one could have understood it. Half those illiterate little secondary-mods who swan around London calling themselves actresses could have done it happily given the wit.”
“But Latham knew Dorothy Seton, didn’t he?”
“Oh, Adam! How you do go on about a thing! Not very subtle, my dear. Yes, he knew her. We all did. She was a great dropper-in. Sometimes drunk and sometimes sober and equally tedious either way.”
“Were she and Latham lovers?” enquired Dalgliesh bluntly. As he expected, Bryce was neither disconcerted nor surprised by the question. Like all inveterate gossips he was fundamentally interested in people. This was one of the first questions he would ask himself about any man or woman in his circle who seemed to find each other’s company agreeable.
“Celia always said so, but then she would. I mean, the dear girl can’t conceive of any other relationship between a heterosexual man and a pretty woman. And where Latham’s concerned she’s probably right. One could hardly blame Dorothy, stuck in that glasshouse with Seton, so dull. She was entitled to find consolation anywhere so long as it wasn’t with me.”
“But you don’t think Latham was particularly fond of her?”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t have thought so. Poor Oliver suffers from self-disgust. He pursues a woman, then, when she falls in love with him, he despises her for lack of discrimination. The poor dears simply can’t win. It must be so exhausting to dislike oneself so much. Now I’m lucky. I find myself fascinating.”
The fascination was beginning to pall on Dalgliesh. He glanced at his watch, said firmly that it was 12.45 and his lunch would be ready and made to go.
“Oh, but you must see that snap of Dorothy. I’ve got it somewhere. It will give you some idea how lovely she was.”
He opened the sliding lid of his writing desk and rummaged among the piles of papers. Dalgliesh thought that it looked a hopeless task. But there must have been some order in the chaos for, in less than a minute, Bryce had found what he wanted. He brought the photograph over to Dalgliesh.
“Sylvia Kedge took it when we were picnicking on the beach one July. She does quite a bit of amateur photography.”
There was certainly nothing professional about the photograph. It showed the picnic party grouped around Sheldrake. They were all there, Maurice and Digby Seton; Celia Calthrop with a sulky-looking child recognisable as Liz Marley; Oliver Latham; and Bryce himself. Dorothy Seton, wearing a bathing costume, was leaning against the hull of the dinghy and laughing at the camera. The snap was clear enough but it told Dalgliesh nothing except that she had an agreeable figure and knew how best to show it off. The face was that of a pretty woman but no more. Bryce looked at the snap over his shoulder. As if struck by this fresh evidence of the perfidy of time and memory he said sadly, “Funny… It doesn’t really give one any idea of her… I thought it was better than this…”
Bryce came to the cottage gate with him. As Dalgliesh was leaving an estate car came lurching up the lane and stopped with a bump at the gate. From it bounded a sturdy, black-haired woman with legs like jambs above her white ankle socks and schoolgirl sandals, who was greeted by Bryce with squeaks of pleasure.
“Mrs. Bain-Porter! You haven’t brought them! You have! How perfectly sweet of you.”
Mrs. Bain-Porter had the deep, rich, upper-class female voice which is trained to intimidate the helots of empire or to carry across any hockey field in the teeth of a high gale. Her words boomed clearly in Dalgliesh’s ears.
“When I got your letter yesterday I thought I’d take a chance. I’ve brought the three best from the litter. It’s so much nicer to choose them in your own home I think. Nicer for them too.”
The back of the car was opened now and Mrs. Bain-Porter, helped by Bryce, was carefully lifting out three cat baskets from which there rose at once an agitated squealing, treble descant to Mrs. Bain-Porter’s bass and Bryce’s joyful chirpings. The concert party disappeared through the cottage door. Dalgliesh trudged home to his lunch in contemplative mood. It was one of those little things which can mean everything or nothing. But if Mrs. Bain-Porter got a letter from Justin Bryce on Thursday it was posted on Wednesday at the latest. Which meant that on Wednesday Bryce had either decided to take a chance on Seton’s cat-killing propensities, or had known that there was no longer anything to fear.
13
On Friday afternoon the suspects walked, drove or were driven to the small inn just outside Dunwich which Reckless had taken as his headquarters and there made their statements. They had always thought of the Green Man as their local pub-indeed they took it for granted that George Prike ran the place principally for their benefit-and the Inspector’s choice was criticised as showing crass insensitivity and a general disregard for the comfort of others. Celia Calthrop was particularly bitter although she used the Green Man less than most and was scathing in her denunciation of George’s folly in allowing himself to be inveigled into such an invidious position. She was not at all sure she would be happy to continue to buy her sherry from George if she were going to be reminded of Inspector Reckless every time she had a drink and a visit to the saloon bar would become intolerably traumatic. Latham and Bryce shared her view of the Inspector. Their first impression of him hadn’t been favourable and thinking it over later they decided that they disliked him. Perhaps, as Bryce suggested, a too-close acquaintance with Seton’s Inspector Briggs had spoilt them for the real thing. Briggs, who was occasionally called Briggsy by the Honourable Martin in an excess of spurious camaraderie, had a humility which they hadn’t detected in Inspector Reckless. Despite his eminence at the Yard Briggsy was always happy to play second fiddle to Carruthers, and so far from resenting the Honourable Martin’s interference with his cases, made a practice of calling him in when his special expertise was required. Since Carruthers was an expert on wine, women, heraldry, the landed gentry, esoteric poisons and the finer points of the minor Elizabethan poets, his opinion was frequently invaluable. As Bryce pointed out, Inspector Briggs did not turn people out of their favourite pub nor gaze at them fixedly from dark, morose eyes as if hearing only half of what they were saying and disbelieving that. Nor did he give the impression of regarding writers as no different from lesser men except in their capacity to invent more ingenious alibis. Inspector Briggs’s suspects, if required to make statements-which was seldom-made them in the comfort of their own homes attended by obsequious policemen and with Carruthers present to ensure, in the nicest possible way, that Inspector Briggs kept his place.