Farthing Read online

  "You do know it's illegal," David said now, bringing me back to the present.

  "What? Oh, being Macedonian? Yes, I know. It's a crazy law; they never prosecute."

  "They do sometimes. They do if they want to get someone for something else. They keep the laws on the books as a way of controlling people, making sure everyone does what society wants. So they'd never prosecute Tibs, though he all but openly sleeps with his stableboys. Billy will marry, and Billy, or his son, will inherit the title. If there wasn't any Billy, if they had to force Tibs to marry and produce a son, they could use the laws to threaten him—we could put you in prison for this, they'd say."

  "I won't tell anyone," I said, giving him the reassurance that all this was really asking for. "I haven't told anyone all this time, after all."

  "It's something a man needs to keep very quiet if he has enemies," David said. "And all Jewish people have enemies."

  That reminded me of something. "Would you say Mark Normanby is Macedonian or Athenian?" I asked.

  "He's married," David said. "Macedonian."

  "But they don't have any children. I'd always assumed that too, because really I've always thought he's quite attractive. It's just something Angela said yesterday and Daphne's reaction."

  "Angela accused Mark of being Athenian?" David said, astonished. "Is this the kind of thing women talk about when they're alone?"

  "Not usually, but they were being really vile to each other," I said. "Probably just bitchiness."

  I was going to go on and explain what they'd said, but there was a knock on the door.

  Jeffrey was there. "If it isn't an interruption, madam, Inspector Yately would like to have another word with Mr. Kahn."

  "He'll be down presently," I said.

  I hugged David hard, straightened his tie, and sent him off to the police, which felt rather more like sending him off to the middle of the Colosseum with the lions than I would have liked.

  10

  On top was a note from Sergeant Stebbings, the phlegmatic desk man at the Yard.

  "Aren't you playing in exalted company! This seems to be most of what you've asked for. We're missing reports on a couple of the less well-known guests, which we'll get after in the morning and send down to you. I thought it was better to let this catch the last post tonight. Let me know if we can do anything else for you."

  Carmichael sorted through the documents underneath. Enough to be getting on with, definitely enough to be getting on with. Before he had glanced at more than half the pile, he noticed the thick bond and unusual length of legal paper and dragged that one out.

  "The Last Will and Testament of Sir James Martin Thirkie of Thirkie, Bart," he read. "Prepared by Gillibrand and Stubbs." It was the solicitor's copy, probably their spare copy, knowing Gillibrand and Stubbs, a firm who behaved as if it were still 1810. He was surprised they'd deigned to draw up the will of a mere baronet.

  The will was surprising. It had been drawn up just after Sir James's marriage, and was dated August 6, 1945. The ancestral home of Thirkie, in Yorkshire; Campion Hall, in Monmouthshire on the Welsh border; Thirkie House in Knightsbridge; some other property, named and listed; and all he died possessed but ten thousand pounds, went to "Captain Oliver Sinclair Thirkie, address care of Whites Club, St. James's Street." Ten thousand pounds went to "Angela, Lady Thirkie, unless she should provide an heir, as by the terms of our marriage settlement." Should she provide an heir, he got everything, with Angela as sole guardian in his minority. The marriage settlement had been thoughtfully appended, so Carmichael was able to see that "Angela, née Dittany" had given up control of her own property on marriage, that she would get it back, in addition to the ten thousand pounds, as a widow. If the marriage was dissolved in any other circumstances . . . He skimmed over the provisions—nothing at all for her if she were divorced, a big loss for him if he were. The usual stuff in fact, except for the stuff about the heir. Lady Thirkie must be hoping rather vehemently that the baby she was expecting was a boy, he thought. He wondered if she would smuggle in a boy if it happened to be a girl, as some Queen of France was said to have done.

  That settled the question of who benefited by his death. She did if she had a boy; if not, she did to some extent and his cousin Captain Thirkie inherited. Carmichael scribbled a note to investigate Captain Thirkie. He wondered if Sir James would have changed the will had he lived. As it was, if the child was a daughter she would be portionless. Surely that would have occurred to one or the other of them now that Lady Thirkie was pregnant? "If you die and it's a girl, she'll have nothing," Lady Thirkie might have said. What would he have answered? "By Jove, yes, I'd better get onto the solicitor chappies." Or would he never have spared it a thought? He wasn't an old man, or sick, to worry about dying.

  Carmichael turned to a neatly typed sheet, Scotland Yard's report on Sir James Martin Thirkie, Baronet.

  "Born, 19 June 1909, Thirkie, West Yorkshire."

  If he'd lived, he would have been forty in six weeks. Carmichael was surprised he was so young. He'd have guessed from five to ten years older, from the corpse, and from the man's standing in the country.

  "Parents, Sir Robert Martin Thirkie, Bart, 1880–1917; Lady Letitia Harriet Thirkie, née Francis, 1885–."

  Father killed in the trenches, mother still alive, though she must be getting on. He did a quick calculation. Sixty-four. She'd have seen it in the papers, if nobody had thought to tell her. It would be a terrible shock.

  "Siblings, one, decd., Matthew Thirkie, 1907–39."

  Older brother killed right at the start of the second war. Presumably Captain Thirkie was the son of Sir Robert's brother.

  "Married (1) 1932, Lady Olivia Jane Larkin, 1914–40. No issue."

  Nobody could call them a fortunate family.

  "Married (2) 1945, Angela Mary Dittany, 1924–. No issue."

  She was ten years exactly younger than his first wife, and fifteen years younger than him. No issue wasn't precisely right; issue pending, more like.

  "Educated, St. Crispin Preparatory School, 1916–22, Eton 1922–28, Magdalene College, Cambridge, 1928–31."

  About what he'd have expected. Sent away to school at seven, poor blighter, and his father killed the year after.

  "Degree: B.A., Second Class Honours in Mathematics, 1931. M.A., (Cantab), 1935. College rowing blue."

  Maths, eh? An unusual choice for someone of his background. A predisposition in that direction? But second class, not first. And he rowed for his college?

  "Elected Conservative MP for Monmouthshire, by-election 1932."

  Of course, while his brother lived he'd have been capable of being elected to the Commons.

  "Re-elected in General Election of 1935. Served in Chamberlain's National Government as Junior Health Minister, and later as a deputy to the Foreign Secretary. In November 1939, on the death of his brother, he ascended to the Lords, where he became Foreign Spokesman for the Chamberlain and later the Churchill Governments. In May 1941, he dealt with the Hess Mission, and went back with Hess to Berlin, returning on June 1 with negotiated peace terms that ended the war. He became Foreign Secretary after the 1942 'Victory' election, in which capacity he served until the 1946 election. From 1946–47 during the Charlton government he was Shadow Foreign Secretary. Since the 1947 election he has served as Minister for Education."

  Yes, yes. Carmichael skimmed over the paragraph. He knew all that.

  "Closest political associates the 'Farthing Set,' Lord and Lady Eversley, the Earl of Hampshire, Mark Normanby MP. Political enemy: Sir Winston Churchill, who frequently abuses him in conversation, calling him a traitor. Thirkie's relations with Eden and other leading figures in his own party are occasionally stormy but generally amicable. Thirkie is widely respected for his noted personal integrity."

  Churchill couldn't have killed him. He wasn't here.

  "Sir James Thirkie is also generally hated by the Jews and other refugees from Europe who dislike the peace they consider him responsible fo
r."

  Yes, very well, and painting his chest red was an attack on the well-known Farthing robin, and there was the star. But why now?

  "Current political program: Thirkie was sponsoring two bills in the House. One was the Higher Education Bill, expected to pass this session, limiting access to Higher Education to those educated in Preparatory and Public Schools. The second was the School-Leaving Age Bill, presently in committee in the Lords, lowering the school-leaving age to eleven in rural areas."

  Not the kind of thing that would encourage anarchists to climb into your bedroom window and kill you, those. Carmichael sighed.

  "It is expected that in the coming government reshuffle, those of the Farthing Set, including Thirkie, would have been given more prominent positions. Thirkie was widely tipped for either the Home or the Foreign Secretaryship."

  Well, that might be something. Who might get the job if he didn't? Anyone here? Carmichael put the sheet down and rubbed his head. He noticed a cooling cup of coffee beside his left hand and took a gulp of the unpleasant substance.

  Who next? Kahn? No, stick to politics for a little while. Mark Normanby was next. Foreign Minister, lots of travel, especially to Europe, also America in the last year. He'd been at Eton with Thirkie, and also gone on to Cambridge with him, though he'd been a Trinity man. He'd got his first in Law, and gone on to be called to the bar before going into politics at the 1935 election. He'd been a step behind Thirkie then, but he was overtaking him now. He was tipped to be Chancellor at the reshuffle, with the hope of becoming Prime Minister later. Thirkie couldn't have hoped for that, any more than Lord Eversley could. They might lead their party but not the country; they were in the Lords. The very highest offices, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, always went to men who had been elected. It was the one advantage England gave to the commoner.

  If it had been the other way around, he could have believed Thirkie killing Normanby out of jealousy, even if he was his brother-in-law. By all accounts they were close though, going upstairs together and waking him in the morning. They'd married sisters. Might there be some sexual element in the friendship? Possibly. It would be a good idea to talk to Normanby himself and get a feeling for that. He had married "the Hon. Daphne Alice Dittany" in 1936 when she'd been eighteen—Carmichael wondered when she'd taken to staring out of windows and smoking. No issue, in fourteen years. There could be something wrong there. But even if there was, it wasn't necessarily connected with the murder. Unless it was something Thirkie could use to blackmail Normanby, and then Normanby could have killed him to stop it. Half the murders that weren't spouses killing each other were blackmail victims killing blackmailers. Dangerous profession, blackmail.

  There was no report on Daphne. The one on Angela was perfunctory, giving no real information. The one on Lord Eversley was four pages thick, and he was hesitating over it when the door opened, revealing Inspector Yately, in a neat and pressed uniform, looking very pleased with himself.

  "I have the report," he said.

  "Any surprises?" Carmichael asked.

  "Oh yes." Yately's smile broadened. "Strangulation, didn't you think?"

  "You mean it wasn't?" He couldn't have been stabbed after all. His face was suffused, and there hadn't been any blood. It came to him at once. "Carbon monoxide poisoning?"

  Yately's smugness faded a trifle. "Yes."

  "There was a gas fire in the room, but I doubt the doors are airtight."

  "There's a fitted carpet that goes underneath them." Yately spread his hands suggestively.

  "Maybe it was suicide all the time."

  "But the lipstick—the star!" Yately objected.

  "He might have wanted to kill himself and frame his political enemies."

  "Why would he want to kill himself?" Yately looked perplexed.

  "I don't know of any reason. And you forgot to mention the thing that really stops it being suicide—the knife. A man could conceivably dress up in a way that would embarrass his enemies, but he can't stab himself with his own dagger after he's already dead."

  "No . . ."

  "Unless he had someone to help him with that."

  "Are you joking, sir?" Yately asked.

  "I was keeping my mind open to the possibilities," Carmichael said, gravely. "Does Green's report give a time of death?"

  "Early, he says." Yately looked uncomfortable. "In fact, if we didn't know he was alive at one, Green would have guessed even earlier than that, like ten or eleven. But in any case, sometime soon after he went to bed, definitely not in the morning when people were getting up and going to church."

  On the whole, Carmichael was pleased to hear this. It gave them a definite time and excluded a lot of possibilities. It almost made up for the gassing, which let back in all the women that strangling might have excluded. "Get someone to check the room for draftiness," he said. "Check with Normanby as to whether there was a smell of gas—I can't see how he could have avoided mentioning it before if there was."

  "There wasn't even the slightest whiff of gas when we arrived," Yately said. "The window was open, but if there had been enough gas to kill a man, I'd have expected to smell something."

  "Check the fire, too. It might be possible to see when it was last used, or if it has been left on."

  "I suppose he could have been gassed somewhere else and moved back to his room."

  "He was a big man," Carmichael said. "Still, it's certainly possible. But they'd have been risking someone seeing, even in the small hours. And why would they do that, when they could have left him wherever he was?"

  "Depends where he was."

  "Get someone to check all the gas fires in the house." Carmichael made a note.

  "That would be a job," Yately said.

  "It's your job—make sure it gets done." Carmichael wasn't in any mood to let Yately do things his way. "Also check all the cars."

  "The cars?"

  "One of the commonest forms of carbon monoxide poisoning is sitting in a closed garage with the car engine running. People kill themselves like that all the time."

  "But that would be an accident," Yately said. He was biting his lip and clearly only one step from rubbing his head.

  "You mentioned moving the body. It's possible this may have been an accident, or suicide, which someone else then came along and took advantage of for their own purposes. Or murder even, for that matter."

  "You mean somebody might have killed him and then somebody else might have moved him and dressed him up like that?"

  "It's possible," Carmichael said. "Check the cars. I expect it'll prove to be that he was gassed from the fire in his room, but it won't do any harm to check everything out." Yately was about to go, when Carmichael remembered the other thing. "We need to issue a press release," he said. "I'll have to go down and give it to them. They expect Scotland Yard in a case like this. But you can write it. Tell them what we know so far."

  "What we know? What, everything?"

  "No, just what we want them to know. That Sir James was killed by a person or persons unknown and that we are investigating." Carmichael sighed again. "Never mind, I'll deal with it."

  "Thank you, sir," Yately said, looking immensely relieved.

  Carmichael turned back to the papers, then looked up again as Yately was leaving. "You know, if they did move the body, whether it was the murderer who did it or an accomplice, it wipes out all the advantage we have of knowing the time of death. We still need to know movements up to the time of discovery."

  "Yes, sir," Yately said, and scurried out, doubtless before Carmichael could load any more work onto him.

  Carmichael considered throwing something at the door, but couldn't see anything suitable. He picked up the next sheet.

  Manningham, Sir Thomas, turned out to be a self-made industrialist who had recently been made a baronet. He controlled business interests and owned factories in England, France, and Germany. He traveled on business fairly often. His wife, Catherine Barbara, was the daughter
of a country clergyman. Carmichael wondered why they were here, and being given ringside seats by staying for the whole weekend. Being courted by the Farthing Set, he thought. Industrialists and magnates were part of the Set. They were a party within a party, not really a democratic organization at all. Sir Thomas Manningham didn't have any political power, but he had money, and there would be things he wanted that money couldn't buy—laws against strikes and trade unions, perhaps.

  Dudley, Earl of Hampshire, was considered to be firmly one of the Set, but not a great originator of policy. He deferred to both Lord and Lady Eversley. He was Lady Eversley's first cousin. He was a widower with three grown but unmarried children, Lord Timothy and Lady Edwina, who were here, and Lord William, who was not. Lord Timothy bred racehorses. He had a seat in Parliament and apparently voted as his father told him. Lady Edwina had recently broken off an engagement to the heir of the Duke of Stirling. Carmichael was always seeing her picture in the papers, "sharing a joke" as they put it. The Earl of Hampshire was very rich, most of the money in land or in coal, he didn't take much personal interest in it.

  Even straining hard, Carmichael couldn't think of any reason why any of the three of them might have wanted Thirkie out of the way. He'd have to interview them to see if they'd seen or heard anything, but if they wanted to go home today they could. The same, he supposed, applied to Sir Thomas and Lady Manningham, though he'd ask them all to keep in touch with the police in case he wanted to speak to them again.

  He picked up the thick file on Lord Eversley again, and put it down. He drew a clean sheet of paper towards him and took out his fountain pen. "May 7, 1949: Press Release," he headed it. He took another sip of his coffee, which was now stone cold, and began to write as clearly and concisely as he could.