Last Nocturne (25 page)

Lamb found fixed on himself an expression of aversion, almost as though he had made a joke in bad taste. ‘Murder, did you say? Are you sure? Excuse me, I didn’t mean to imply—but by whom, may one ask?’

‘That’s why I’m here, to try and find out.’

‘And why, I ask myself, should you expect me to know anything about it?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t expect that, but I’d like to ask you a few questions. Amongst other things, if you knew of anyone who disliked him enough to want him out of the way – professional jealousy, maybe, that sort of thing?’

‘Tch!’ said Mr Ireton. ‘Professional jealousy is one thing – but killing him? One would hardly think so. But of course, I really didn’t know enough about him – or his work, come to that – to be able to say.’ He picked up the gold pen and began rolling it under his well manicured fingers, watching Lamb in silence. ‘Look here, would you like some coffee? I certainly would.’ He rang a bell on the desk and within a minute one of the acolytes of the previous evening appeared and was instructed to bring coffee and hot milk.

‘Mr Martagon didn’t mention anything to you last night about Benton, then, after I’d talked to him?’

‘No, he and the young lady left shortly after you did – though I have to say he seemed a little – abrupt – and asked if we could postpone the business discussion we were supposed to be having – which I was only too willing to do, I might say. You’ve simply no idea how exhausting an opening is.’

‘I understand he doesn’t intend to follow in his father’s footsteps and run the gallery?’

‘That’s correct. I have every expectation’, he smiled secretively, ‘of buying it myself. It would be a pity to let go all Mr Martagon’s – Eliot’s – work in building up its reputation.’

‘It’s been nine months since he died. Have you had any more thoughts since then about why he should have decided to end his life?’

A leap of alarm in the wary eyes. A tightening of the hands around the gold pen. Then a raised eyebrow. But Lamb had thought the question worth asking. Memories were apt to be selective; Ireton’s recollections of what had happened at the time might not now be the same ones he had decided to tell the police about then, but rather those which had stayed in his mind, long after the event, because they were the ones which should have been told.

The coffee arrived and Ireton took his time pouring and serving it, offering Nice biscuits on a pretty, gilded plate. ‘Well, as I told you at the time, I had a feeling that Eliot had had something on his mind.’

‘But you weren’t able to say just what.’

‘That was true, then. But on reflection I’ve since wondered if he might have been worried about the future of the gallery. You see, a few months before, he’d approached me and said he was thinking of selling, and asked me if I would be interested in buying it. And indeed I would, though the price he was asking was stiff, considering how long I’d worked for him, and that business has not been quite so brisk lately.’ He looked a little petulant. ‘I didn’t know how the deuce I was going to find the money, I might say, but I was determined I would, somehow. A place like this, of one’s own! Something one’s always dreamt of. Then for some reason, he called the whole thing off. He didn’t see fit to say why. Just said he’d changed his mind.’

‘He didn’t tell you why he’d intended to sell in the first place?’

‘No, Chief Inspector, but he may have been intending to go abroad. I fancy – oh well, no point in beating about the bush now – I’m almost certain there may have been a woman involved. Letters with a Viennese postmark and all that, you know.’

‘Does the name Mrs Amberley mean anything to you?’

‘No.’

Lamb watched him nibble on a biscuit. He looked not unlike a rabbit. Why had he lied?

Ireton had been anxious at the time not to cast aspersions on the dead man, but it seemed evident to Lamb, despite his protestations of friendship, his alleged shock at his employer’s death, he had clearly worked up a grievance since then against Martagon over the aborted sale of the gallery. The fact that it was being sold at all hadn’t emerged at the time of Martagon’s death. Ireton had also known, or suspected, that he was involved with a woman but had kept that to himself, too. Not through altruism, to spare Martagon’s family, Lamb was certain. Then why was he revealing it now?

‘Look here,’ he said suddenly, ‘why all this interest in Eliot? It’s Theo Benton you came to see me about, isn’t it?’

‘Did you know it was in Vienna that Mr Martagon met Theo Benton?’

‘Yes, I believe I did know that.’

‘What’s your opinion of Benton’s work?’

‘His recent work? You’ve only to look at the number of stickers on the pictures out there.’ Ireton smiled thinly and jerked his heads towards the gallery. ‘They speak for themselves.’

‘As a prominent artist has recently said to me, there’s all the difference in the world between being popular and being good. He seemed to think Benton may have had a promising future with a different type of work he was doing.’

‘At the moment I’m more interested in selling than investing in future hopes. I know Eliot believed that one day Benton might turn out to be – well, maybe not a genius, but
somebody.’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose that may well have happened. But at the moment I can’t afford the luxury of speculative acquisitions. I went along to his studio and with his father’s permission brought away the ones I knew would sell. And they have.’

Lamb decided to surprise him some more. ‘We have reason to believe that Mr Martagon’s death might not have been suicide, either, Mr Ireton.’

This time, the effect on Ireton was startling. The pen slipped from under his fingers and rolled to the edge of the desk. As he stood up to retrieve it a tide of colour suffused his face and his scrawny neck, then receded just as abruptly, leaving his naturally pale face paler than ever. He sat down very suddenly again, as if glad the chair was already in place. ‘What? But – but – the gun.’

‘What about the gun?’

The self-possessed Mr Ireton had begun to sweat. Beads of perspiration stood on his forehead. ‘Look here,’ he began, with what seemed to be his favourite expression, ‘look here, it wasn’t my fault. I know I shouldn’t have left it there but – oh, God!’

Two people passed the window, talking and laughing loudly. Lamb waited until they’d gone. ‘We’d better have the truth, hadn’t we?’

He watched as Ireton brought his features under control, then spread his hands in a gesture of surrender.

He had bought the pistol, he said, on one of their joint trips abroad – in France, to be exact – after that time when the bronzes and the watercolours had been stolen. It was apparent that the indignity of that particular incident, as much as the ease with which it had been accomplished, had ruffled his smooth feathers exceedingly. The burglars had entered via the entrance into this office, surprising him, had gagged him and tied him up before taking what they had come for – including two small but valuable paintings, obviously previously earmarked – and disappeared. Neither they nor the stolen articles had ever been found. ‘They tied me up!’ he repeated, still outraged by the assault on his dignity. ‘After that I decided it was folly to remain unprotected. I certainly didn’t intend to let myself be caught out again.’

‘Martagon knew about this gun?’

‘He may have done – must have done,’ Ireton amended hastily, ‘since he took it to shoot himself with, though I kept it right at the back my personal drawer, behind a stack of blotting paper. I didn’t want him to know about it, because he was so against guns, you know, even for self-defence. It was no use locking it up,’ he added, anticipating what was coming next from a glance at Lamb’s face. ‘I wouldn’t have had time to unlock a drawer or a cupboard and get a gun out when those thieves broke in, but if I’d had one handy, I assure you they wouldn’t have got further than that door.’

‘And when did you find it was missing?’

‘After Eliot’s suicide. And I’ll tell you something else,’ he added with a show of bravado, ‘I’ve bought another gun since that one disappeared, and I carry it about with me when I go out, too.’

If he had expected Lamb to show surprise or disapproval he was disappointed. It wasn’t in the least unusual for gentlemen to be armed, ladies too, sometimes. The pleasant streets of London could be dangerous, and not only after dark. The affluent were an easy target.

‘You might have saved us from wasting a great deal of time if you’d spoken up when Mr Martagon died,’ he said severely. ‘Why did you keep silent?’

‘I blamed myself, I blamed myself! Try and imagine how I felt. If I hadn’t bought the gun, Eliot would never have found it, and he’d still be alive.’

Everyone close to a suicide felt guilt – which was sometimes precisely what the dead person had intended, that those left should blame themselves for the tragedy – and some felt fear. Fear because they had lied about the circumstances which had led to the suicide, or at least evaded the truth. But not Ireton. For a moment Lamb looked into Mr Ireton’s eyes, and found them quite cold and empty. Here’s one to watch, he thought. One who had so far not entered the equation. It was often so: the one on the sidelines who came forward into the spotlight, while others merged back into the shadows. Except that so far there had been no others. Not a single suspect.

‘I suppose you’re going to say I should never have left the gun in that drawer.’

‘Perhaps not, but if Mr Martagon was intent on taking his life, he would have found some other way, I assure you. But as I’ve told you, like Benton, he may not have died by his own hand, though it’s looking very likely that was the gun which killed him. Did anyone else have access to that drawer? Any of your staff, for instance?’

Ireton made a show of affront that any of his staff would open drawers that were private. And anyway, he said, anyone who casually opened the drawer would not have seen the gun, obscured as it was by the thick stack of blotting paper sheets.

‘So if Eliot Martagon didn’t shoot himself, that leaves only one possibility, doesn’t it, Mr Ireton?’

Ireton looked suddenly careworn. He had created a neat little world for himself and it looked like collapsing around his ears.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It does. But it wasn’t I who killed him.’ Adelaide Crescent had not undergone any improvement since the last time he’d seen it, Cogan thought, as Smithers’ beefy fist beat a tattoo on the door. In the bright, hot sunlight it looked even more run-down. A rag-and-bone man rang his bell and called his wares, a dog lay panting on the flagstones and some children jumped over a skipping rope, one end tied to the railings, shouting noisily.

This time, it wasn’t Mrs Kitteridge who responded, but a small, very neatly dressed woman with hair drawn back into a tight bun. She told them she was the landlady’s daughter, Miss Kitteridge, Ethel. She spoke as if holding her breath while looking down her nose. Cogan understood a lot when he learnt she worked as a sales assistant in Ladies’ Hats at Whiteley’s Emporium, and occupied a room in their hostel in a virtuously unmarried state. She would no doubt give token help to her mother because she felt it her duty, while feeling such mundane tasks were well beneath her. She probably ‘cleaned’ the stairs with her eyes closed so she couldn’t be offended by their filth.

On the other hand, she was sharp and observant. She’d never seen any evidence of any women in Theo Benton’s rooms, and no, she hadn’t examined the stuff he painted, she said with a righteous expression, but she did remember admitting a foreign gentleman who’d come enquiring for Theo Benton.

‘Foreign? How did you know that?’ asked Cogan, unwisely.

She stared pityingly at him. ‘Because he didn’t speak English very well, of course. Anyway, he just looked – foreign. He had a green coat on and a hat with a little
feather
in it.’

‘Oh, definitely not English, then! Gentleman, was he?’ She inclined her head. This was one thing she would never be mistaken about. Judging exactly on which rung of the social ladder her customers stood was her stock in trade. ‘French, mebbe, or German?’

‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure. They all look alike, don’t they?’

She had admitted the man herself. Her mother was a little hard of hearing nowadays and didn’t always hear the bell. Mr Benton had been in and she’d sent the caller upstairs. Yes, she remembered clearly which day it was, since it was her day off. It was the day before her mother’s lodger had died. Oh yes, and the man had worn eyeglasses, the sort that fitted on the bridge of your nose. Most uncomfortable, she’d have thought, they’d have to pinch to stay on, wouldn’t they? Stood to reason.

The sale of his beautiful Queen Anne house at Chiswick, and many of his art treasures, had resulted in a substantial profit for Julian Carrington. He’d made sure of that, though profit had only been incidental to the main purpose. Everyone had expected, within the next few years of his return from Vienna, that he would in his turn hand over the reins at the bank to the next Carrington in line and supposedly thereafter enjoy a contented retirement in his exquisite home, but the truth was, retirement was against his nature. He was fit and active, but not only that, the house which had once seemed to shine like a perfect jewel had come to seem like nothing more than a museum as he faced the prospect ahead. Alone in the immaculate, echoing rooms except for his manservant, his housekeeper and the rest of his well-paid staff, including two gardeners and a coachman for the private hansom which served for Julian’s journeys to and from the City, where he spent his working hours at the bank and his leisure time either at his club, dining out, or enjoying an evening of opera at Covent Garden.

Finally weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of the situation he decided there was no reason why he should continue to squander money on an under-occupied house and servants who had nothing much to do except eat their heads off at his expense. He put the house on the market, took a spacious apartment in the Albany, and transferred himself and the best of his art collection there. Rather than feeling a sense of loss, he was astonished to find himself liberated: to realise that it was possible to enjoy more by possessing less. How had it taken him so long to find out this simple truth? And why could he not view his relationship with Isobel in that light? But that was a question to which he could find no answer. Otherwise – if indeed there could be an otherwise in his situation – he continued to enjoy a pleasant and well-regulated existence, satisfied that his plans had, as usual, turned out as he’d confidently expected. In due course he would retire from the bank, yes, but without regrets. He had another, quite exciting, prospect in mind.