Nicola Upson - An Expert in Murder

‘This killing is personal – as personal as it gets – but it was also carried out quickly and efficiently, so it’s almost certainly premed-itated. In which case, the killer would hardly plan to use something that was likely to give him away and then be forced to swap it. No, the method of killing here is about the victim; get to know her, and she will lead you to your man.’

Penrose thanked him more perfunctorily than was characteristic of him, but his mind was playing with an imbalance of questions and answers, the most persistent thought being that it was all very well getting to know the victim if you were sure it was her death which had been intended – but his personal jury had yet to deliver its verdict on that one. There was little to be gained from sharing his doubts with the pathologist at this stage: he should be gathering information on the murder which had actually been committed rather than trying to investigate one which existed only in his worst fears.

‘I’ll let you know if I come up with anything else,’ Spilsbury said. ‘And good luck – I think you’ll need it.’

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Looking at the clock and realising he was late to pick up Josephine, Penrose went to find Fallowfield to give him the glad tidings: firstly, that the murder weapon was devoid of any prints other than the victim’s; secondly, that it was not actually the murder weapon at all. There was really only one way for their luck to turn.

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Six

Josephine was already waiting on the pavement when Penrose’s car turned into St Martin’s Lane, and he imagined she had been there for some time. Looking at the anxiety etched on her face, he questioned for a moment the wisdom of allowing her to accompany him in what must surely be a painful interview for all concerned but he knew that, had he refused, she would merely have passed a long afternoon alone, grieving for a situation which she believed to be partly her fault, or embroiled unnecessarily in the tangle of raw egos and ruffled feathers that lay in wait at the theatre. Less philanthrop-ically, his instincts told him that Josephine would be a useful string to his bow when it came to questioning the Simmonses. Undoubt-edly, there was important information to be had from the encounter and a mildly spoken woman with a natural curiosity and gentle eyes was likely to get much closer to the heart of the matter than either Fallowfield or himself, particularly if she held a certain celebrity status in the eyes of half her audience. When he had telephoned ahead to make sure there was no objection to Josephine’s inclusion in the appointment, Frank Simmons had implied that, on the contrary, it was the one thing that might just make the ordeal bearable.

In all their years together, Penrose had yet to decide if Fallowfield’s driving was very good or very bad. Down broad streets and across open countryside, he supposed it might be called exhilarating, but breadth and space were rare commodities in London and the Sergeant never allowed his surroundings to intrude upon his style. Within minutes, the car came to a shudder-ing halt in front of Josephine, who managed – with considerable pluck, Penrose thought – to take only two hurried steps back.

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He kissed her briefly, gave her arm a reassuring squeeze and stood aside to allow her to get in. With a jerk, they moved off and the car was soon proceeding at a terrible rate up Monmouth Street. Resisting the impulse to close her eyes, Josephine smiled at Archie as a fellow passenger on the road to perdition and handed him a solid-looking parcel, wrapped in greaseproof paper. ‘The Snipe insisted I bring this for you,’ she said. ‘It’s cheese and tomato with extra pickle. She thinks you need feeding up because you’ve already left two meals she’s put in front of you today, and she specifically asked me to tell you that this is your last chance. Eat these or she’s giving you her notice.’

‘Three Snipes and you’re out then, Sir,’ chipped in Fallowfield from the front seat as they shot across Hyde Park Corner, oblivious to the set of traffic lights that had just turned red. ‘Mind you, she’ll always be welcome at my house if she does give up on you.

You can tell her that, Miss Tey, when you see her next,’ he continued, winking at Josephine in his rear-view mirror while she watched the road ahead on his behalf. ‘Fine figure of a woman, she is, and wasted on you sparrows.’

‘She speaks very highly of you, too, Bill,’ said Josephine.

‘There’s a sandwich here for you as well.’

‘It’s a queer business, this, Miss Tey,’ he continued with relish, apparently undeterred by having spent a fruitless morning at King’s Cross questioning the station staff and going through a passenger list which threw up nothing whatsoever of interest. One of the many qualities that Penrose admired in his sergeant was an utter immunity to despondency, no matter how many setbacks he came up against. Fallowfield was of that school of policing which had an unshakeable faith in the fact that truth will always out in the end; his optimism, which was no doubt nurtured by the amount of leisure time he spent in the company of fictional detectives for whom luck and inspiration knew no bounds, had been a spur to the more cynical Penrose on more than one occasion, and it lifted his spirits again now. When he had given the Sergeant a succinct account of Spilsbury’s report on their way to the car, he had expected Fallowfield to share his disappointment at the lack of evi-80

dence, in particular the blow of the absent murder weapon, but that had not been the case. There was nothing the Sergeant enjoyed as much as a puzzle, and here he had plenty to occupy his thoughts.

Josephine, keen to hear more about the ‘queer’ nature of the case than she had been able to glean earlier from Archie’s troubled account, and knowing she would get far more out of his sergeant, made an encouraging murmur of agreement. ‘From the start, it reminded me of your book, Miss,’ he expanded out of the blue, referring to Josephine’s detective novel in which a man had been stabbed in a theatre queue. ‘You know, a murder in a busy place and a risky one into the bargain. And then when the Inspector told me that the real weapon was a thin knife and not a hatpin – well, I half expected us to start looking for a Dago with a scar on his left hand, brandishing a stiletto.’

The suggestion was not a serious one, but the similarities had already occurred to Josephine and it struck her as ironic that she of all people should find herself on the periphery of a real murder case, travelling to talk to the victim’s family with the policeman upon whom she had based her popular fictional inspector, Alan Grant. Not to look at, of course: Archie’s height and dark good looks were a million miles from Grant’s slighter build and – for want of a better word – his dapperness; no, a pleasant voice and a well-tailored suit were all they shared physically, but professionally speaking they were a perfect match. She had wanted a hard-working, well-meaning police inspector, a credible detective to stand out among the figures of fantasy and wish-fulfilment found in so many other crime novels, and in Penrose she had the perfect model. He could not quite claim Grant’s perfect record of never an unsolved murder to his name, but he was patient, considerate and intelligent, a sensitive individual who cared about people both as a human being and as a policeman. She had added a few passions of her own – Archie had never been known to pick up a fishing rod, for example, whilst she was an expert with a fly – but the essence of Grant, the egalitarian nature of his view on the world, had been inspired for the most part by what she liked about Penrose. Seeing him now, though, preoccupied by thoughts which were out of kil-81