Jack took a deep breath. Carrington must be sick of answering questions and was understandably suspicious of a stranger. ‘In the past I’ve been involved in working out what actually happened in a couple of cases where things were pretty obscure.’
‘You’re Jack Haldean, aren’t you? I’ve read about you in the papers.’ Carrington’s voice had a cynical twist. ‘You say you’re a friend of Inspector Rackham’s. He thinks I’m guilty. Why does he need you to confirm it?’
‘Inspector Rackham doesn’t need me to do anything of the sort.’ Jack’s voice was measured. ‘I know he arrested you. In the face of the evidence, he couldn’t do anything else.’ He looked away, apparently examining his fingernails. ‘Inspector Rackham is a very fair-minded man. He had sufficient reservations about you to wonder if all the facts had come to light. Because of what I’ve done in the past, both he and the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, Sir Douglas Lynton, trust me enough to let me see you and ask a few questions.’
Carrington caught his breath. ‘They think I might be innocent? Do you?’ There was a sudden strength of hope in his voice, which shook Jack. For some reason it was far more convincing than any declaration of innocence and yet a guilty man could hope for freedom too.
He looked up. ‘It means I’ve got an open mind.’
The eager light faded from Carrington’s eyes. ‘That was too much to expect, I suppose,’ he said softly. ‘Still . . .’ He sat up, alert and expectant.
He reminded Jack of a child who, longing for a treat, has been met with the words,
wait and see.
Poor devil. ‘Let’s get the obvious question out of the way first of all,’ he said, trying to make his voice matter-of-fact. ‘Did you kill Andrew Dunbar?’
‘Well, of course I didn’t, but it seems so hard to make anyone believe me.’ Carrington looked at him with bewildered irritation. ‘I always thought a man was innocent until he’d been proven guilty. What the police seem to think of as proof doesn’t tie in with any notion of scientific evidence at all. I’ve said again and again that Dunbar was alive when I left the hotel. I can’t see why they can’t simply take my word for it. I mean, why should I be lying?’
‘Because you’ve been accused of murder,’ said Jack dryly.
‘But I didn’t do it!’
‘Mr Carrington, why did you leave the hotel in such a hurry?’
Gerard Carrington looked at him with a mutinous expression. ‘I’ve explained that. I was going to have tea with Mrs Lewis. Apart from anything else, I wanted to find out why Steve hadn’t showed up. Whatever’s wrong with that?’
Jack sighed. ‘Well, I’m afraid, you know, it looks as if you were running away from the scene of the crime.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘No, it’s not.’ Jack’s voice was calm. ‘It’s a perfectly understandable assumption. What time did you arrive at the Lyon’s?’
‘It was just after five. I was in a rush because I was late. I’d stayed far too long with Dunbar and hadn’t realized the time.’
‘Can you tell me about your disagreement with Dunbar?’
Carrington firmly pushed his spectacles back on the bridge of his nose with his index finger. ‘It was a bit more than a disagreement. I’ve never pretended otherwise. It was about my father and his machine.’ Carrington looked at him questioningly. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard of it?’
‘It’s a new sort of gramophone, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a jolly sight more than that.’ Carrington interlinked his fingers thoughtfully. ‘Technically speaking, it’s a huge step forward. My father was brilliant.’ His voice altered. ‘The trouble is, once he’d understood something, he couldn’t see why anyone else couldn’t understand it as well. Things were so obvious to him he really couldn’t grasp that it wasn’t self-evident.’ Carrington’s voice faltered. ‘He . . . He could be an awkward beggar.’
‘He’d had a nervous breakdown, hadn’t he?’
Carrington sighed. ‘You can call it a nervous breakdown if you like. I suppose it’s as good a description as any other.’ He looked at Jack appraisingly. ‘You know, I really think you might understand. I said he was outstanding. As a matter of fact, I think he was a genius.’ Carrington caught the flicker of scepticism in Jack’s eyes. ‘I don’t mean it as a compliment,’ he said wearily.
‘Don’t you?’ asked Jack, startled.
‘No. His work meant more to him than anything else in the world. He was so removed from ordinary concerns that he was horribly isolated. A genius – a real genius – is, you know. Even I couldn’t follow him when he really got underway. He was driven by a vision that was virtually incomprehensible to the rest of the world.’ He gave a tired smile. ‘He used to talk non-stop to my poor mother. She couldn’t grasp what he said, but she was there, at least. When she died, he went to pieces.’
Jack was silent for a moment. Like most people, he cheerfully bandied the word
genius
around as a shorthand term for
very clever
. With sudden insight he realized it meant much more than that. Professor Carrington had been at the top of his profession. Without any conceit he would know he had equals but no superior. There was no one to knock the edges off, no one to keep him humble. Jack shuddered. Alan Carrington would always be alone.
‘D’you know, I think I’ve just understood something,’ Jack said slowly. ‘It’s the meaning of the word. Genius can mean supernatural power. We talk about a good or evil genius inhabiting a place or a person, setting them apart. I’ve never really seen why before, but I think I do now.’
‘You do understand,’ said Carrington softly. He buried his face in his hands. ‘D’you know, that’s such a relief ?’ His voice wavered. ‘Mrs Lewis understood as well. That’s why . . .’ He broke off abruptly, then took off his glasses and polished them on his handkerchief. ‘She understood,’ he said, more to himself than to Jack. His hand slowed as he continued to polish his glasses.
Jack looked at him sharply. Carrington’s face was shielded by his hand. He was sure the man had turned away to hide his emotions. He had a good idea that with a little careful probing he could draw those emotions out into the open. It would be as easy, pointless and cruel as pinning a struggling butterfly to a card. Poor devil.
Carrington put his glasses back on and, sitting upright, straightened his pullover, and drew a deep breath. ‘Anyway, perhaps you can see why my father was such easy game for a shark like Dunbar.’
‘Was he really such a shark?’ asked Jack.
‘Absolutely he was. My father thought he was wonderful. He wasn’t remotely practical himself and always had an exaggerated respect for practical men. He had as much worldly knowledge as a babe in arms and was about as helpless. He ran across Dunbar at a meeting of a learned society. I’ll say this for Dunbar, he really knew his stuff.’
‘This society – it wouldn’t be the Otorhinolaryngological Society, would it?’ asked Jack with a grin. ‘I have to gear up before I say that.’
‘That’s the one,’ said Carrington in surprise. ‘It’s a dickens of a title, isn’t it? Dunbar was a member, which must have taken the guv’nor off guard. He’d expect any fellow-member to be a scientist, with a purely theoretical interest in the subject. Dunbar suggested that my father should put some of the ideas they’d discussed into concrete form by making a working electronic machine. The guv’nor was delighted. He saw it as a purely academic exercise. It never occurred to him – and I could never get him to realize – that once it was developed it would be a very valuable commercial property. Dunbar realized it,’ he added wryly. ‘Dunbar was out for every penny he could get.’
‘Is it really so valuable?’
‘I’d say so.’ His eyes brightened. ‘The system my father came up with has the potential to make acoustical recording obsolete. I’m not exaggerating. He transformed both the quality of the sound and the length of the recording. You can see what a giant step forward that is. The absolute limit of a disk played at seventy-eight revolutions a minute is four and a half minutes. Three is much more common. Theoretically, the guv’nor’s system can record and play for hours at a time.’
‘Hours?’ asked Jack, sceptically. ‘That seems a pretty big claim. Besides that, who would want hours of recorded sound?’
‘Have you ever seen a film, Major Haldean?’
‘Well, yes . . .’ Jack’s eyes widened. ‘I see what you’re getting at.’
Carrington craned forward excitedly. ‘Can you imagine it? Instead of having to read what the actors said, you could actually hear them say it. It’s not just speech, either. Any sound at all can be recorded and played. Just think what that would do to a film of a battle, say, or even something as ordinary as a street scene. It would make the whole thing come alive in a way that just isn’t possible at the moment.’
‘It would be like being there,’ said Jack slowly. ‘I’m beginning to understand why this is so valuable.’
‘I’ve replicated my father’s experiments,’ said Carrington, his eyes alight. ‘His system needs work, of course, but he’d done it.’ He took off his glasses and polished them absently once more. ‘He experimented, as others before him, with recording on wire but he believed a much better sound could be obtained by using a metal ribbon. The sound he was able to reproduce was truly extraordinary and Dunbar realized that. The way things were shaping up, Dunbar was going to have a genuinely revolutionary system and my father would be left with nothing. I was delighted when Dunbar approached Otterbourne’s. Mr Otterbourne had a reputation as an ethical man and I hoped there would be fair play.’ He slumped back in his chair. ‘Well, you know what happened next.’
Jack swallowed. The coroner had said Professor Carrington was innocent; he had a sudden, vivid impression of a brilliant, vulnerable man caught like a fly in a spider’s web, threshing helplessly as his struggles brought the waiting horror ever closer. ‘What did you think of the coroner’s findings? Were you satisfied?’
‘Satisfied?’ Gerard Carrington looked blank.
‘Do you think,’ said Jack, choosing his words carefully, ‘they arrived at the correct verdict?’
Carrington paled. ‘You know what happened to my father. He was unjustly accused, Major Haldean. I know that now, but, at the time, even I wondered if his temper had got the better of him.’ The muscles in his throat contracted. ‘I’ve blamed myself for that, but it was only later the truth about the pensions and so on came out. That explained why Mr Otterbourne took his own life. It made sense afterwards but at the time I was bewildered. The guv’nor didn’t help. He tried to deal with it as he dealt with any situation he couldn’t cope with. He ignored it. I shouldn’t have left him.’ He put a hand to his mouth. ‘I told him I’d be back and when I did return, it was all over.’
‘It must have been difficult,’ said Jack awkwardly.
‘Of course it was difficult! What the devil does that matter? He
needed
me. He always did. You were in the war, weren’t you? I wish I’d been able to fight. Because of my father, my mother begged me not to go. My cousin, Steve – my God, how I envied him! He got the D.S.O. No one’s ever questioned his courage or his patriotism. My grandfather was a foreigner and, even now, even someone like Mrs Lewis thinks I’m not quite English. It matters, you know?’ His mouth trembled. ‘I wanted to
prove
I could do it. I was desperate to join up.’ He touched his glasses. ‘My eyesight was a problem, but I could have rigged the test.’
‘It’s as well you didn’t,’ said Jack sharply. ‘I mean it. One knock, one nudge, your spectacles have gone and, without good eyesight, you’re a danger to yourself and to your men.’
‘So I was told,’ said Carrington miserably. ‘I allowed myself to be persuaded. I knew how much Dad needed me, so I let myself be classified as unfit for service. I finished my degree and knuckled down to academic work on soundwaves.’ His face twisted. ‘It’s not very heroic, is it?’
‘You were probably a damn sight more use at home than in France. There’s more than one sort of heroism.’
‘It’s good of you to say that,’ said Carrington. He gave a long sigh. ‘In the end, what did it matter? He needed me and I wasn’t there.’
Every instinct Jack possessed urged him to offer some comfort but he couldn’t think of any words that wouldn’t seem unbearably clumsy. He forced himself to ask the next question. It was cruel, he knew, but he had to see Carrington’s reaction. ‘You don’t have any doubts that Mr Otterbourne did shoot himself ?’
Gerard Carrington rose from his chair, his eyes gleaming. The warder outside tapped on the window and he subsided, his body rigid. ‘Are you trying to say that my father
did
kill him?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Jack. ‘But there were other people in the house.’
‘But . . .’ Carrington broke off. ‘Someone else shot him, you mean?’ Jack could see the idea take hold, then Carrington shook his head regretfully. ‘I can’t see it.’ He started to speak once more, then broke off.
‘What is it?’ prompted Jack. Carrington remained silent. ‘If you’ve got any doubts at all about the verdict on Mr Otterbourne, I’d be very obliged if you’d tell me.’
‘I didn’t have any doubts at the time,’ said Carrington slowly, ‘but since then, I’ve wondered.’ He ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this. It won’t make life any easier for me, I know, but I’ve wondered if Dunbar could have been responsible.’ He looked at Jack with narrowed eyes. ‘You don’t seem surprised. I thought you’d be astonished.’
‘It’s not the first time I’ve come across the notion.’
Carrington leaned forward. ‘Isn’t it? On the face of it, it seems a ridiculous idea, but I kept coming back to it.’ He grinned cynically. ‘You can see why I didn’t want to say anything. I’m in quite enough trouble as it is without saying I thought Dunbar could have murdered Mr Otterbourne and shoved the blame off on to my father. That’s handing the police a motive on a plate. And –’ he shrugged ‘– it’s only an idea.’
‘Why did it even cross your mind?’ asked Jack. ‘You must have had a reason.’
Carrington clicked his tongue. ‘I’ve asked myself the same question. At the time, he was horrified, or I thought he was, at any rate. I didn’t pay him much attention.’ He clasped his hands together so the knuckles showed white. ‘But since then, yes, I’ve wondered. The first time I saw him after my father died was at the inquest and, although he acted perfectly properly and said all the right things, I knew he didn’t really mean any of it. His attitude was all wrong.’