Barry Maitland - The Marx Sisters

Kathy rolled over and swore quietly into the pillow.

She met Brock at the south end of Jerusalem Lane, as arranged.

He nodded as she got into the car. ‘Productive morning?’

‘A bit. Commercial Section are doing checks on Derek Slade and known past associates. Also Herbert Lowell and Bob Jones. Sylvia Pemberton can’t be more specific about when she saw Adam Kowalski, but I’ve arranged for people to check with the book dealer in Notting Hill and the van rental place in Camden Town about the timing of the Kowalskis’ movements that afternoon.’

‘Yes, good. Thought any more about Jones’s story?’

‘I have been thinking about it, yes, sir. There are things about it that bother me now. He was very shaken up when we first told him why we were there, but his story didn’t give much grounds for that, if it was true. Bits of it just don’t make sense, and other bits sound like fantasy.’

‘Which bits don’t make sense?’

‘Judith Naismith wouldn’t fly specially here from New York to see Meredith Winterbottom, desperate to see what she had to offer, and then just leave her and have a cup of coffee while the old lady has an afternoon nap. They would have tried to wake her up. If they had phoned and got no reply, they’d have shot straight back to make sure she hadn’t woken up and gone out.’

‘Agreed, although he did know about the ambulance, so he was surely there after the event as well as before. What about the fantasy?’

‘This amazing discovery-the Marx diaries or whatever they are. In the cold light of day the whole thing sounds so implausible. How convenient that we can’t talk to Judith Naismith-if she even exists. Sam spoke only about a man in a bow tie, and the same with Adam Kowalski. Neither mentioned a woman. If she does exist, well, some of what he said may be true, but not all of it. Perhaps he did fax her the letter, and then met her in London that first time and found out the letter might be worth something. Then he might have decided to work her into the story of his subsequent visit to Meredith in order to throw suspicion on Judith, just as he threw suspicion on Slade.’

‘What was he up to, then?’

‘If he is up to something,’ Kathy said reluctantly, ‘it surely has to be something to do with the redevelopment project. It has to be. He is, or was, the architect, after all. How extraordinary that he should be hanging around the last building in the street that Slade hasn’t been able to buy. Perhaps he’s trying to embarrass Slade. He certainly did a fair job-“have to carry her out in a box”!’ Kathy snorted. ‘I think we took him by surprise when we told him he’d been seen going into Meredith’s house, and he came up with a half-thought-out story to explain his presence there without mentioning the real reason.’

‘Which was?’

‘I don’t know. He could have been advising her how to fight Slade through the planning process. Or trying to persuade her not to sell out, or perhaps to sell to him. I don’t know.’

‘Well, you seem to have thought it through’-he gave a little smile-‘very objectively. So what do we do?’

‘After we’ve finished here, we should see Jones again. At least he should show us the letter he supposedly bought at Kowalski’s. Remember, Kowalski couldn’t even recall that it was a letter he sold him.’

They climbed the stairs to the second floor of number 22, passing on the way the silent landing on the first floor. Kathy’s eyes were drawn to the locked door along the shadowy passage as if its panels had somehow acquired a residue of the personality whose private place had lain behind it, its paintwork now standing in for her face to the world.

The sisters were in Peg’s flat. Through the living-room window the other side of Jerusalem Lane could be seen bathed in the afternoon sun. The room was less severe than Eleanor’s, with chintz patterned curtains and armchair covers, and a patterned pink china tea service set out on the chest of drawers opposite the gas fire. This cosy domestic scene was presided over by a dramatically colourful portrait of Lenin hanging above the Wedgwood. It was painted in a social realist style, with the great leader gazing off towards a splendid future somewhere beyond the embroidered tea cosy.

As Bob Jones had said, there were fewer books here than in Eleanor’s room. They filled one tall bookcase in the recess to the right of the chimney breast. A number of titles published by such bodies as the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CPSU Central Committee were jumbled in with a few Mills amp; Boon and Barbara Cartland romances.

There was a third person in the flat when Kathy and Brock arrived. Kathy recognized Terry and Caroline Winter’s elder daughter whom she had met briefly in her home at Chislehurst, and then seen again at the funeral. Seeing Alex Winter now beside her two aunts, Kathy recognized the same dark, intelligent eyes as Eleanor’s, the same serious set to her face and strong line to her jaw. But as yet she had none of her aunt’s self-confident dignity and upright bearing. She glowered and turned away as Kathy acknowledged her.

The two sisters welcomed their guests warmly. Peg, a gracious hostess presiding over the proceedings as if over a vicarage tea party, produced from her small kitchenette cucumber sandwiches and thin slices of fruit cake served on Wedgwood plates, and sugar lumps offered with silverplated tongs.

‘We really just wanted to check that you were all right, and see if there was anything you’d thought about or remembered since we saw you last,’ Kathy said, suddenly ravenous after missing her lunch.

‘I’d better go.’ Alex Winter jumped up abruptly and began to pull on a quilted anorak. Turning to Kathy she said with sudden vehemence, ‘You should ask them who’s been trying to throw them out on the street!’

‘Alex, dear…’ Eleanor rose to her feet. ‘There’s no need to worry.’

‘Has someone been bothering you, Miss Harper?’ Kathy asked.

‘Yes. My father!’ Alex blazed. ‘Less than an hour after cremating his mother he was trying to bully her sisters into leaving their homes!’

‘Is that so?’

‘It was something he said in passing when we were driving back to Chislehurst after the funeral, Sergeant,’ Eleanor said. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to sound quite so forceful. He was upset after the service. We all were.’

‘Isn’t that just about the most repulsive thing you’ve ever heard?’ Alex glared for a moment at Kathy, then turned to her great-aunts and quickly hugged each of them and ran out.

‘She has the inflexible and unforgiving morality which only the young can afford,’ Eleanor smiled after her. ‘She is in her second year at LSE. Doing very well. I would like her to become a little less intense, though.’

‘She is a fighter, dear.’ Peg nodded with satisfaction and offered Kathy some cake. ‘Meredith made it,’ she murmured.

‘And Alex is quite right about her father,’ Eleanor added sternly. ‘I would never have offended Meredith by saying it to her face, but her son is a parasite.’ Kathy was surprised at the feeling with which the elderly lady spat out the word. ‘He preys upon the vanity of women quite ruthlessly.’

‘You did tell her to her face, Eleanor, dear. Don’t you remember?’ Peg corrected her sister with a sweet smile. She turned to Kathy and added, ‘She usually tells people exactly what she thinks. As a matter of fact, we were having a discussion about you, Sergeant, just as you rang the doorbell.’

‘Oh dear, am I a parasite too?’ Kathy laughed.

‘No, you are part of the repressive apparatus of the ruling class, my dear, with which it maintains its grip upon the means of production and distribution and alienates the proletariat, naturally,’ said Peg, beaming at her.