Birdcage Read online

  He reached for his private telephone and dialled the Birdcage number. There was no reason why he should report to them but old habits recently revived spurred him on. After he had spoken to Kerslake he would get in touch with Lord Bellmaster. He did not, though, imagine that Lord Bellmaster would be very concerned with the news.

  * * * *

  Kerslake was reading the Polidor file when Geddy telephoned. After he had finished speaking with Geddy he wrote a short memorandum for Quint to bring him up to date. Information was information and one never knew when it might turn out to be useful. Farley was all right, he felt. No ball of fire but not a scrounger. Given the circumstances the odds had always been that they might form some relationship. The chap was fundamentally sound and decent. Bit idle perhaps. Nice woman, too. Not his type, though. Margaret was his type, small, dark and full of life. Just now and then, though only briefly and with little conviction, he wondered whether Birdcage was worth all the sacrifice a man had to make. He could have gone high in the police force eventually. . . a nice house. . . kids. . . Margaret. . .

  He turned back to the Polidor file to finish it. It terminated with a brief obituary.

  Died—death from drowning—during Cowes Week while guest aboard Lord Bellmaster’s yacht, Lion de Mer. Shore-going motorboat capsized in bad weather. Lord Bellmaster at helm, with Lady Jean Branton and Polidor aboard. Both Lady Jean and Bellmaster strong swimmers. Polidor—non-swimmer, no life jacket. Body recovered from sea off Selsey Bill a week later. Scalp fractured presumably by blow from some contact with boat’s structure during accident. Lord Bellmaster gave evidence during inquest. Lady Jean’s evidence, owing to illness, was given in sworn affidavit. Accidental death. F.S.O.

  And that was interesting. Maybe it was the reason why Quint had given his permission to read the file. F.S.O. File Still Open. The Coroner’s cut-and-dried accidental death was one thing. But a Birdcage diktat of F.S.O. was something quite different.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FARLEY WAS AT a loose end. Sarah’s allowance had started to come through from her father into the bank which she had nominated in Faro. Also from her solicitor she had received her passport. And today she had gone off shopping for clothes which she needed for their trip to England—since they had both decided that before they could get married they should go and see her father. Might even—and he had no objection, because what did time or place mean so long as they were married?—be married over there. But because she knew that he would be bored hanging around while she did her shopping she had said that she could take Mario and Fabrina with her—as a treat—and Mario could drive his car. Well, there was one thing—if Mario were the worst driver in the world he could not do much harm to his old car.

  At ten o’clock in the morning he sat on the sun terrace sipping a beer, wondering what he should do. Idleness sat uneasily on him. Drive and ambition he might lack but he felt lost with nothing to do. Love and marriage, the happiness which he knew now with her . . . they were all there to colour the future. But in himself he had felt growing the thrust of a need to have something positive to own and cherish which would give him a truer pride in himself and, he supposed, turn him from a satisfied idler into a man with a wife and, he hoped, children to come, who would have the dignity of being a true provider. What was it he had told her once? About a place in the Dordogne which he would turn into a hotel. Pipe dream, then. But not necessarily now. They could do it between them. Neither of them was closely tied by need or sentiment to this country. Well, they were going to drive to England. They could go up through the Dordogne and maybe find a place. Wouldn’t have the full capital to buy. But a fair bit—and then he could really get his teeth into it. And this time, no more regarding it as a refuge, a joke thing like Il Gallo. Raise a mortgage to get it. And then hard work. No credit to chums. By yourself you didn’t care. Amanha had been good enough then. But from now on it had to be hoje. A wife and kids. God, that was a new one for him, but he was already looking ahead to it. Perhaps it was as well that bloody Venus girdle had been a phoney. No help, no pennies from heaven. What you got for yourself was the only kind of real thing to have. What a sod that Bellmaster had been . . . probably still was. Might take some time before they could find a place and move. Meanwhile there was this villa. Selling it would help; he had not thought of that. Why should he? He was not used to having assets. One thing he couldn’t be was a kept man.

  He got up. Take a walk around the place. Mrs Ringel Fanes had neglected it a bit. Could find himself plenty of jobs to do.

  He went round the lower part of the house now with a different eye. The paintwork in the kitchen and the servants’ quarters had gone badly. Some wall tiling was loose, a tap dripped needing a new washer; there were a score of small things. Cracked window panes. All things Mario should have kept in order but had not because—with a mistress away so often—who cared?

  At the foot of the stairs he paused and looked at the Augustus John painting. The likeness of daughter to mother was there, but with a difference. Sarah, her feet on the ground now, was fast showing a solid, practical nature. Lady Jean floated, seeming scarcely to touch the stone steps, buoyed up by her own ebullience and some ethereal spirit in her . . . a wild one, he guessed. Perhaps not exactly trailing clouds of glory but certainly never lacking admirers and lovers, he already knew. She’d take a fence and deep ditch without a thought of broken collar bone or neck, and if she had had scruples they could never have been born of conscience, he felt. For a moment or two he had a passing curiosity about her lover Lord Bellmaster. She would have given him a hell of a time had she ever discovered his cheating over the golden girdle. Was the one she wore in the painting the real or the replica, he wondered. Mother and daughter so much alike to look at and a whole shift of genetics between them. Not that he found that odd. He and his father looked much alike, but his father had been far, far more of a man than he would ever be. He shut his eyes for a moment. . . glad for the peace which was with him now when he thought of his parents. Sarah had given him that.

  He went up and looked around the top floor—doing now what he had so often done in the villas of friends to whom he wanted to repay kindness with service to them; but knowing now that he had a sharper interest in the improvements he could make. In a few weeks he could give the villa a face-lift and raise its value for when the time came to sell it. Dordogne. Well, why not? A gladness grew in him. A married man, a family man, a business man—something to work for. Exit Richard Farley, footloose and free; enter Richard Farley, breadwinner and, without doubt, in the fullness of time family man.

  He entered Sarah’s bedroom. One of the window frames had warped with the weather and needed easing. The tiling on the floor near the door had bulged slightly and wanted taking up and resetting. All over the villa a host of small things now leapt to the eye and remedying them would keep him busy. He sat down at the bureau, pulled a sheet of paper from a pigeon-hole and carefully made a list of all the things he had noted around the villa. Method . . . his father’s favourite word. The list completed he sat back and lit one of his occasional cigarettes and let the peace of the happiness he had known and, pray God, would know for always, in this room envelope him. Wrapped in his growing bliss, he ran his fingers idly over the blue suede cover of the book entitled Dialogues of the Soul and Body—Saint Catharine of Genoa which still lay on the bureau top. Slowly becoming aware of the book he picked it up. Lady Jean’s diary. What, he wondered, had made her choose that title to camouflage it from idle eyes? Though, as a matter of fact, he acknowledged, there was an aptness in the words. Soul and Body— the complete human being. He grinned to himself, sure now that it had been no idle choice of the woman who floated down the stone steps, the eternal Eve, wearing the girdle of Venus. Virtus Vincit. He wondered. Thank the Lord anyway, Sarah— he had more and more discovered—had no illusions about her mother and her lovers. From twelve to sixteen what son or daughter did not begin to know their parents as they really were?

  He
slipped the brass catch free and opened the diary, riffling the thin, closely written pages at random. A small pen and ink drawing in a margin caught his eyes. A woman in riding habit, sitting side-saddle, was taking a stone wall jump. It was beautifully done, with a telling economy of line. Augustus John would have been proud of her. He turned the pages and found other drawings. A middle-aged man in evening clothes, sprawled in a club chair, a glass in one hand and a cigar in the other, the face a Satanic caricature, a devil’s tail curling from under him to the floor. Under the sketch, the ink long faded, were the initials—L.B. Well, he was with that one all right. Another of three small birds sitting on a branch with a lean cat eyeing them. Another of a tall woman in evening dress, wearing a tiara, holding a fan in one hand and in the other a dog lead which was attached to a midget-sized man wearing court dress and breeches and a ducal crown on his head, and subscribed Ella D. walking His Grace. Sometimes the drawings obtruded into the text space to show that they had been done before Lady Jean made her entry. One of these was of a steam yacht with the name Lion de Mer surrounded by a crowd of bum boats. As he turned the pages two slips of paper fell to the floor.

  He retrieved them. The first read:

  The contents of this parcel which have been shown to and packed in the presence of Father Ansoldo of the Capella da Senhora da Pé da Cruz, Monchique, and Senhorita Melina Montes, my personal maid, of this address, I bequeath absolutely and utterly to use or to dispose of in any way she wishes to my daughter, Sarah Branton.

  Under their three signatures was a note:

  Sarah, my darling daughter, if ever this comes into your hands, light a candle for me and pray for the redemption of my soul and the forgiveness of my many sins.

  On the other piece of paper was written—My personal diary, intermittently kept, covering a long period of my life, Sarah. I leave the nature of its disposal or use to you. J.B.

  For a moment or two as he slipped the notes back between the pages Farley had a strong feeling of disquiet. Sarah had given him permission to read the diary. Yet, somehow, he felt that the only person who could grant that dispensation was Lady Jean herself. But then, in a sense, she had because she had left the diary entirely at Sarah’s disposal. Even so, a strong sense of probity filled him with diffidence. The diary still resting open on his knees, he looked at it undecided. What point was there in reading it? He had Sarah, loved her, and was beginning to discover a new life with her. A phrase or sentence glanced already here and there on the neatly written pages had signalled to him that Lady Jean had written frankly and indiscreetly—so much so that he knew that he had subliminally already been making up his mind not to read it. Only the sharp, terse line drawings had captured him and made him turn the pages. The dead should have their privacy respected. But if Lady Jean had wished this—why on earth had she left the diary to Sarah? Because she had something to say and wished Sarah to know it? Sarah was his responsibility now and the truth, half-guessed or already known by her about her mother, was surely enough?

  Looking down at the open pages before him he saw what he had already briefly noted; sometimes Lady Jean abandoned making her entries in English and wrote in French or Italian. A paragraph written in French caught his eye.

  Bellmaster a toujours fait ce qu’il a voulu faire pour sa propre tranquillité d’esprit. Il a fini par me prendre au piège, et par faire de moi sa complice pour l’assassinat.

  For some time he sat staring at the entry hardly able to believe his eyes. How could any woman have been so rash as to put such words on paper—and even more words for she went on to incriminate herself by describing the details of the murder of a man called Polidor? She had to have been mad. Then the conviction was suddenly sure in him that there had been no fear in Lady Jean that she could write so indiscreetly in the diary; during her life it must have rested in some secure place. No woman either could have written so frankly without a strong motive—and this was not hard to guess. There had to have been a wild desire for revenge on Bellmaster should she ever predecease him. Though God alone knew how she could ever have thought that it would happen through Sarah. She must have beerrunhinged. No: more likely a gambler. Taking a long chance, hoping to give the Fates an unexpected hold which would ensnare Bellmaster—always hoping that there would be in Sarah some of the nature which was so abundant in her so that she might from pity for her mother move against Bellmaster in some way.

  He closed the diary savagely and stood up. He was never going to let Sarah read it. If he had to lie he would. He would destroy it . . . make all the excuses in the world for its loss. He went to his bedroom and locked the diary in his suitcase. It would be safe there until he decided how to get rid of it. That bastard Bellmaster! First he cheats her mother and then Sarah over the girdle of Venus and then could have come back from her mother’s past to plague her. Staring out of his bedroom window he began to swear quietly to himself.

  Quint walked in with a file under his arm, gave Kerslake a brief good-morning, and stood for a moment at the window before turning and setting himself into a well-worn leather armchair and putting his legs up on the window seat. His severe profile was sharply outlined against the pale blue of the May sky. He said without emphasis, “I thought it was time to tell you that if Lord Bellmaster gets the Washington place you’ll be going with him—under his personal direction.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “For what?” Quint’s tone was suddenly sharp and Kerslake from past experience recognised that he was angry.

  “For telling me, sir. I’ve never been to America and——”

  “And, for our part——” Quint interrupted him brusquely, “I’d like you to know that so far as we are concerned we’d like to make it possible that you never do. With Bellmaster, that is. And further that we’d even more like it to be that Bellmaster never goes—but it looks as though we’re not going to be able to stop him. Just for a time, when the Lady Jean stuff cropped up, I thought the gods were going to be kind and we’d get something to stop him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you mean Yes, sir?”

  Stung, Kerslake for the first time ever allowed his resentment to surface. “I mean, sir, that—although I have no facts to go on—I’m sure that Lord Bellmaster’s loyalty to Birdcage was and still is divided. And more that you’ve never been able to prove anything. I’ve read the Polidor file. He killed Polidor. Polidor was a Birdcage man, solid—that’s my bet. And he was on the point of having enough against Bellmaster to finish him.”

  “Yes, well. . .” Quint sounded a little mollified. “That wasn’t hard to come to. They murdered him. Now, my clever little Devonshire dumpling, tell me why.”

  “It’s purely a fancy thing that came to me—the only reasonable projection.”

  “Let’s hear this reasonable projection. If you lack facts there’s nothing wrong with theory—or even a little fiction. Just tell me the story of Lord Bellmaster as you see it.”

  “Well, sir, his most active period here was during the War and just after. He must have been a thoroughly competent, useful man. But, possibly for his own reasons, say money, but more likely some ego thing . . . power, twisted pride or even contempt for this place——”

  “That’s been known, for sure.”

  “——he just started playing a double or even triple game.

  He could have started for the money and when he had it he went on for the sheer excitement. Ego gratification.”

  “That’s a hell of a phrase. He went on because that was his nature. And he’s still going on, and will do at Washington. That’s why we don’t want him there—but you can’t just go to a Prime Minister who’s in his pocket for many favours received and present him with a fairy story. Facts. That’s what second-class minds want before they act. So he killed Polidor. Take it from there again.”

  “Polidor must have got something positive on him. But Polidor didn’t know that Lord Bellmaster knew this, and his lordship wasted no time. He smacked him over
the head with a . . .”

  Quint smiled for the first time. “Belaying pin would fit the fiction, no?”

  “. . . and then capsized the shore-going dinghy. Easily done. I checked the Met. Office for that day in their records. Force Seven south-west wind, gusting strongly. Heavy swell.”

  “Did you, now? Clever boy.” Suddenly Quint was all good humour. “And dear Lady Jean?”

  “She’d been in Lord Bellmaster’s pocket for years. They both knew enough about one another to realise that any break in the partnership would destroy them both. They both liked living. When he cracked Polidor over the head there was nothing she could do without laying her own head on the block. She’d been his creature for too many years. Once she’d supported his story of an accidental death she was even more in his hands. The trouble now is—with her dead—he wants to be a pillar of society and respectability. Genuinely. Wants the past dead. That’s why he got in a tizzy about possible diaries or what-have-you turning up.”

  “Not so. He’ll still go on. It’s like being an alcoholic. No cure. If he does get Washington you stay warm in his pocket and do your damnedest to nail him. Do anything for him—we’ll indemnify you.” Quint sighed loudly. “But . . . above all we don’t want him there.”

  “Isn’t there a simple answer to that, sir?”

  “Of course there is. But it’s too crude, and against the Birdcage ethic for a man of his stature and prolonged peccancies. A quick death is no punishment. Birdcage wants him to suffer . . . long and publicly and with the utmost humiliation. Now you know that you serve very jealous gods here. He’s one of the very, very few in our history who has used us instead of vice-versa. We need the pure balm of a public downfall as a panacea to our wounded pride. That surprise you?”