Berta Isla Page 8

  ‘What man?’ asked Morse.

  Tom told him what he had seen from the shadows on the corner of Beaumont Street. He described the man and regretted not having had the time to fix his face in his memory, but only to have had that one glimpse, which became still vaguer the harder he tried to fix it. Southworth very prudently tried to stop him and said to Morse:

  ‘I don’t know if my student should be speaking to you without a lawyer present. I understand that, at this point, and given the circumstances, suspicion may fall on him. Is that right?’

  But the policeman took no notice. His job was to investigate and to ask questions, and so he responded briefly:

  ‘As long as no one has been arrested, suspicion can fall on anyone. Even on you, Mr Southworth, unless you have a verifiable alibi. One never knows who knows who.’ Southworth looked daggers at Morse, pressing his lips together as if preparing to open them again, but then stopped or perhaps decided it was unnecessary; his expression could not have put it more clearly: ‘That remark is an impertinence and entirely uncalled for.’

  ‘Please go on, Mr Nevinson. This is all very useful.’

  The innocent suspect cannot wait for the eye to stop looking at him, to dispel any doubts, and he collaborates almost too enthusiastically, too eagerly, and will say anything he thinks might shift the spotlight away from him, not realising that spotlights are as mobile as a torch, and come and go. And so Tom kept talking and even mentioned Hugh, the little he had found out over the years and what Janet had confided to him that night. He was Someone, she said. She had given him an ultimatum, to Hugh, that is. She could ruin his life, that’s how Janet had put it. And she had used the word ‘vengeance’: vengeance was hard work and stressful too, and she wasn’t sure she could be bothered. But she would do what was necessary in order to harm him. It was a question of fairness. Tomás was surprised to hear himself use that word, which was his own choice, although it in no way contradicted the young woman’s intentions; he still found it hard to believe she was no longer alive, that she could no longer breathe or speak as he could. ‘She’s dead,’ he thought, ‘and I should no longer feel desire for her, and yet my last memory, my last vision of her, is that of her parted thighs and her cunt that I wanted to enter again. Perhaps once time has passed over her corpse, I’ll feel the respect one owes to the dead, and even more so to those who died violently and very young, and I will cancel out the image that did not seem inappropriate yesterday, but is beginning to seem so today. I don’t know why, but that’s my feeling, as if continuing to feel desire were a kind of profanation, as if it were at odds with the pity or compassion one usually feels. In our minds, we don’t really differentiate between the living and the dead, and from now on, Janet, poor Janet, will be just that, nothing but evocation and thought.’

  Morse gave a friendly, ironic smile:

  ‘Leave it to me to decide what to do next. These are all conjectures, but very useful. We will probably have to question you again, but tell me three things … Do you smoke?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I see what brand you smoke, if you have them on you, of course.’

  Tomás took out his oblong metal Marcovitch cigarette case: on the left, vertical black and white lines, on the right, a small vignette of a man in a black top hat lighting a cigarette, his grey-gloved hands cupping the flame, and, snug around his neck, a white scarf; his convex nose was as sharp as the blade of a tomahawk; his thin, intensely red lips seemed about to smile; and he had very thick eyebrows and rather murky, painted eyes, more mask than face, a little sinister really. Tall flames rose up behind him, perhaps the flames of hell. He held the case out to Morse:

  ‘Why do you want to see it?’

  The policeman looked at it for a moment, then handed it back.

  ‘What a shame,’ he said. ‘If you didn’t smoke that brand, we’d have to find someone else who did. It’s not that common. But I see that you do. And tell me, how did you get that scratch on your chin?’ And he pointed to the precise spot on his own chin (more or less where Wheeler’s scar was), to show Tomás what he meant.

  Morse was very observant. Tomás had completely forgotten about the scratch until he saw it that morning in the mirror, and, by then, it had already begun to form a slight scab, and he had carefully shaved around it.

  ‘This?’ He touched it. ‘Oh, Janet did that accidentally. She was lying on the bed, and, without looking, she raised her hand to stroke my cheek, miscalculated and scratched me. As you may have noticed, she had very long nails. I hope you’re not thinking anything untoward.’

  ‘I’m thinking all kinds of things,’ said Morse. ‘It may not always seem so at times, but that’s partly what my colleagues and I are paid for. So I think everything, insofar as I can. Lastly, what exactly was your relationship with Janet Jefferys?’

  Tom shot an interrogative glance at Southworth. Despite the latter’s youth, he was still his tutor, or one of them. Southworth nodded more with his lips – which he pressed together – than with his chin, as if giving him his approval or confirming that he was indeed being asked about the degree of physical intimacy between him and Janet.

  ‘We had sex occasionally, if that’s what you want to know. Not very often. She had her Hugh in London, and I have my girlfriend in Madrid. The weeks are very long, and the terms even longer.’

  ‘And last night?’

  ‘Yes, last night too.’

  ‘Every time you met?’

  ‘Yes, more or less, with the occasional exception. But, as I said, not very often. I didn’t matter to her, and she didn’t matter to me. She lived for that man Hugh. We just provided each other with a reciprocal, superficial way of passing the time. You’ll have to look elsewhere.’

  Morse ignored that last piece of advice.

  ‘How long have you been a “reciprocal way of passing the time”?’

  ‘Well, it started in my first year here.’

  Morse raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise, and said:

  ‘Something that happens repeatedly over a period of several years is an odd form of superficiality.’

  Then Southworth decided to help his student out, feeling that there was more in that last remark than there actually was, a degree of distrust and incredulity, an insinuation, although, in fact, the policeman’s words merely reflected his lack of familiarity with the customs of those ten or fifteen years his junior, or, at most, were an abstract expression of disapproval of sexual mores that he assumed to be loveless, indelicate and inconsequential.

  ‘One can spend one’s whole life going to bed with someone and never get beyond the superficial, wouldn’t you agree? I’m sure many a marriage must follow this to the letter.’ Mr Southworth was such a very precise man that he found it impossible, under any circumstances, to keep silent and not point out the finer details of a topic. He was greatly feared in the erudite seminars held in the Sub-faculty of Spanish.

  Morse shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m not married, but I find that hard to believe.’ This sounded faintly nostalgic, as if he were remembering a particular person whom he might have married. ‘I wouldn’t …’

  He was about to say more, but did not go on. He opened his hand and looked at his palm, and he did this twice, perhaps feeling the lack of the wedding ring he wasn’t wearing; it was a gesture that seemed to be saying: ‘But what do you care about that? What does my opinion matter? Let’s drop the subject.’ He thanked them both, asked Tom not to leave town without first receiving authorisation, and warned him that he would probably be asked to give a signed statement in the next few days, at the police station, setting down exactly what he had just told Morse. His collaboration might also be needed for an artist to create an identikit picture based on his description of the man who had arrived at Miss Jefferys’ door just after he had left.

  ‘Quite a character, that Morse fellow,’ Tomás said to Southworth when they could hear Morse’s footsteps on the stairs.

&nbs
p; But Southworth did not seem relieved, quite the opposite. He told Tom to sit down again and said very seriously:

  ‘I’m not sure you realise how bad things look for you. I’m sure they won’t be able to come up with any reason why you’d want to kill the girl, but they don’t always need to find a motive and, for the moment, you’ll be the prime suspect unless they can locate that other man and establish that he did go to Janet’s flat and not to someone else’s, because you have no idea where he might have gone. She couldn’t be pregnant by you, could she? They’ll perform an autopsy and if she is, they’ll find out.’ Southworth spoke very rapidly, albeit in a perfectly calm voice, which was precisely what betrayed his feelings of alarm.

  ‘No, she was on the pill. And if for some reason it didn’t work, it’s far more likely that she’d be pregnant by that man Hugh. But please don’t ask me to worry about that now, to worry about myself, I mean. What matters is that someone killed Janet, I still can’t get over the horror of it. I was with her last night, Mr Southworth. I had sex with her, and that might be why she was killed.’ Tomás Nevinson clasped his head in despair. This hadn’t occurred to him until that moment, until he said it.

  ‘Yes, I realise that, Tom. I understand,’ said Southworth protectively. ‘But you’re wrong. You are the one you should be worrying about. I can understand your horror, your grief, your shock, but she’s no longer important to you. To the living, that is. The person in danger now is you. Talk to a lawyer who can advise you, defend you. Defend you from what might happen next. The situation is so urgent, though, that it’s probably too late to consult a lawyer anyway. You shouldn’t have told that man Morse so much. So openly and unreservedly. He used his good manners to excellent effect, and took full advantage of your inexperience. I tried to warn you.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Don’t be so naïve, Tom. You can never know just how much you have to hide. What you deem to be true is irrelevant, as is what happened, unless it’s corroborated by someone else. The important thing is what other people understand from what you tell them, or what they decide to understand. As well as the use they make of it, especially if they want to distort it and turn it in their favour. How did they know about your visit last night? Did someone see you go in?’

  ‘Yes, I passed a neighbour when I arrived, not for the first time either. I seem to remember Janet introducing her to me on the stairs once, ages ago now, and they stopped to chat. She might have remembered my name, but I don’t, of course, remember hers. Although I doubt if my surname was mentioned.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. They’ll have asked at Waterfield’s and asked the young woman’s friends too. You don’t know how much she might have talked about you, nor in what terms or with whom. You may have been more important to her than you think. You might have been more than just a way of passing the time or she may have been hoping that you might, one day, step up and save her from Hugh.’ He fell silent for a moment, then added, in French, something that sounded like a quotation: ‘Elle avait eu, comme une autre, son histoire d’amour … We don’t always know about other people’s love stories, not even when we’re the object, the goal, the aim. Find yourself a lawyer quickly. You really have no idea.’

  ‘But where do I get one, Mr Southworth? They’re expensive, and I wouldn’t want to ask my family for help. I wouldn’t want to frighten them or involve them in any expense unless it’s absolutely necessary. After all, this may come to nothing. I mean, as far as I’m concerned. They may find that man and find evidence against him.’

  Mr Southworth always wore his black gown for the tutorials in his rooms and at the classes held in the Taylorian. The skirts of the gown fell about him in a cascade, and he wore it with distinction, allowing the folds to drape about him in waves; he resembled a Singer Sargent portrait. He placed the fingertips of both hands together, thus increasing his clerical air, as if he were about to say a prayer right there and then, in that book-lined room full of some most ungodly books. He wasn’t yet thirty, but he already had a few grey hairs, which gave him a greater air of dignity and respectability than corresponded to his youth. It was as if he couldn’t wait to leave youth behind him.

  ‘Hmm. Hmm,’ he murmured pensively, almost theatrically. He crossed and uncrossed his legs a couple of times, showing considerable artistic flair in his management of the black gown enfolding him. ‘Hmm. Speak to Peter.’ Despite the difference in age and rank, Southworth called Wheeler by his first name. ‘Speak to Professor Wheeler,’ he said, correcting himself. He was, after all, addressing a student, however brilliant and however much admired by his teachers. ‘He’ll know someone, he’ll know what to do. He can advise you better than I can. Better than your family and your godfather Starkie, better than anyone. He has endless contacts, and there’ll be very few areas in which he hasn’t. Tell him what has happened, although he’ll almost certainly have heard about it already. By now,’ he looked at his watch without registering what time it was, ‘he’ll know everything, possibly more than you do.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Tomás Nevinson in surprise. ‘How can he know? How can he know more than I do, given that I was there?’

  ‘Well, he won’t know precisely what you got up to last night with the young woman, and he wouldn’t be interested anyway. Unless you’d killed her, of course, which I don’t believe and nor would he. It’s likely, for example, that he’ll have found out the identity of her long-term lover, Hugh. And about Morse’s visit; he may even have known it would take place. And about what kind of man he is, whether he’s helpful or not.’ He shifted his glasses to halfway down his nose in order to peer at Tom over the top of the lenses with what Tom thought was a strange mixture of sarcasm and gravity. ‘Very little of what happens in this town escapes Peter. And certainly not a murder.’

  Wheeler, it turned out, was so well informed that he didn’t even deem it necessary to meet Tom face to face. ‘I was expecting your call,’ he said over the phone, without a hint of alarm or drama. ‘What’s this mess you’ve got yourself into,’ he added, more as a statement than a question, although Tomás took it as such and launched into a long explanation, a defect of youth. Wheeler pulled him up short: ‘I know all that, and I don’t have much time.’ Tomás thought he must be offended or disappointed, or still vexed by his negative response a week or so earlier. Since then, he had only attended one of Wheeler’s classes, and when they had passed in the corridors of the Taylorian, they had greeted each other perfectly normally, but hadn’t stopped to talk, not that there was anything strange about that either. And yet the Professor was one of those men so convinced of the rightness of whatever he thinks or proposes that he cannot understand when someone resists or fails to see his ideas or proposals in the same clear light. He was probably more disconcerted than wounded. ‘Now, listen, and pay attention. I’m afraid you’ve got yourself into a far more serious situation than you realise. There are certain factors of which you know nothing and that will make it very hard for you to extricate yourself; things really don’t look good. An acquaintance of mine from London, Mr Tupra, is going to help you and see what he can do,’ and he spelled the man’s distinctly un-English surname. ‘He’ll be in Oxford tomorrow. He’ll meet you in Blackwell’s at half past ten, on the top floor, in the second-hand section. Talk to him and listen, he’ll find some way out of all this. It’s your decision as to what you do, but I would advise taking serious note of what he says. He’s a very resourceful fellow. He won’t offer you any unfounded optimism or false hopes. But he’ll give you some sound advice.’ ‘And how will we recognise each other?’ asked Tomás. ‘Ah yes. Pick up something by Eliot. He’ll do the same.’ ‘T.S. Eliot or George Eliot?’ ‘The poet, Tomás, the poet, your namesake,’ Wheeler replied with a touch of exasperation in his voice. ‘Four Quartets, The Waste Land, Prufrock, whatever you fancy.’ ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you introduced us, Professor? So that you can hear what he has to say to me?’ ‘I’m not needed there at all, and I wan
t nothing to do with it. This will be entirely between you and him. Between you and him,’ he repeated. ‘And what he tells you will be perfectly sensible, even if you don’t like his advice. Although, in your circumstances, I don’t know that you’re going to like anyone’s advice.’ Wheeler paused. He had spoken very quickly, like someone eager to finish a conversation, an assignment. Now, though, he took a few seconds to make a minor digression: ‘It would be far worse to be arrested on a charge of homicide, wouldn’t it? You never know how a trial might end, however innocent you are or however well things seem to be going. The truth doesn’t count, because that has to be decided upon, established by someone who can never know what the truth is, namely a judge. It’s not a matter that should be placed in the hands of someone who is simply flailing about in the dark or tossing a coin and who can only guess or intuit the truth. When you think about it, it’s absurd that anyone should be judged. The prestige and longevity of the custom, and the fact that it’s spread throughout the world with greater and lesser degrees of success, and even in places where there’s absolutely no guarantee of impartiality … that it exists, in short, even as farce …’ He broke off and began the sentence again: ‘That no one seems to realise the impossibility, the senselessness, of that age-old, universal task is something I’ve always found incomprehensible. I wouldn’t recognise the authority of any court. If I could avoid it, I would never submit myself to a trial of any kind. Anything but that. Bear that in mind, Tomás. Think about it. You can be sent to prison on a mere whim. Simply because they don’t like you.’ In other circumstances, Tom would have asked him what he proposed to replace the courts with, and if no one was qualified to decide what was true and what was false, apart from the interested parties, who, precisely because they were the interested parties, could not be believed or have their views taken into account, then surely we would be left with a real paradox: the only people who knew what had happened, the accused, would be the least trustworthy, and yet would be authorised to lie and invent. He also wanted to ask if he believed him to be innocent of Janet Jefferys’ death by strangulation. Given what he had said and given his clear desire to help, he presumably did, but Tom would have liked to hear him say so, just for his own peace of mind. None of this was possible, though, because Wheeler immediately hung up, without even wishing him luck or saying goodbye.