Postscript to Murder

‘Only if you let it … I grew up in so much of it I never noticed. But I can see how it might be different for you. All the same, I am more concerned with the death threats. Your reputation is important to you but I don’t want to read about it on a tombstone.’

‘I think that’s one of the nicest things that’s ever been said to me.’

Kemp spoke lightly but the underlying meaning was clear to both of them; when people come together in their middle years the relationship is deepened by knowledge of the fragility of such a merger. They were still holding hands when the doorbell rang.

Daniel Frobisher was not what Kemp expected; he thought of reporters as eager young men in leather jackets. Frobisher was in his fifties and soberly dressed in a grey suit. He was a stocky man of good features. Glasses did not quite conceal a cast in his left eye which gave him a slightly sinister look until one became reconciled to it.

‘Mr Kemp? Of course, I’ve seen you in court. Mrs Kemp, we haven’t met?’ His glance swept briefly over her. ‘Sorry to intrude on your Saturday leisure.’

He was already in the hall. ‘Nice house, this. Glad to see you’ve not altered it. A good period for architecture.’

‘Do come in, Mr Frobisher,’ Kemp told him, rather belatedly. ‘We can talk in the study.’

He led the way into the small room designated as such, though so far unused since the habits of a single man had been already cast off by Kemp, without regret.

Mary hovered for a moment in the doorway.

‘I have to shop, Lennox, or there’ll be no meals in this house today. Nice meeting you, Mr Frobisher.’

‘She’s an American, your wife?’ asked Frobisher as soon as he heard the front door close.

‘Is she?’ said Kemp, pleasantly. ‘I hadn’t noticed … Now, Mr Grimshaw said you had a packet of letters for me.’

‘Sure. Sure. Here it is.’ Frobisher struggled with an inner pocket and produced a brown paper package. Kemp took it from him. It was unmarked, unaddressed and had been originally sealed with Sellotape. He shook out the contents which he recognized instantly: three envelopes postmarked and bearing his address. He was aware of the reporter’s eyes upon him as he carefully scrutinized the letters.

‘All present and correct, squire?’ It was a sobriquet which Kemp particularly deprecated, but here the style bespoke the man: Frobisher was the sort who would see himself as equal in any company.

‘I think so. Will you thank your editor for me? I understand from him you will keep your discretion.’

As if on cue, Dan Frobisher laid a surprisingly well-manicured finger along the side of his nose. ‘Mum’s the word. You can count on me. Is that all, Mr Kemp?’

‘All for now, Mr Frobisher. What else did you have in mind?’

‘I’m a reporter, squire … Just doing my job, like you do yours …’

‘Look, there’s nothing further in this for you – at least for the present.’

Frobisher walked round the big desk, looked down at its bare surface, then transferred his gaze to the bookshelves where Kemp had begun to arrange his literary treasures. ‘H’m … the classics … I’m a great reader myself, Mr Kemp … “A Good Book is the Precious Life-blood of a Master Spirit” … I remember that from my schooldays … You’ve a nice set of Disraeli there … Who do you think wrote them?’

Kemp stopped himself saying, ‘Disraeli, of course.’ He knew exactly what Frobisher was up to – the man must have been studying the techniques of television interviewers.

‘I’ve no idea,’ he said, smoothly.

‘Oh, come on, surely you haven’t got that many disgruntled clients.’

Frobisher turned from his contemplation of the Victorian brown-and-gold bindings, and grinned at Kemp.

There was no doubt here was a man on the make. He had scented a good story, perhaps one of the few to come within the orbit of a small provincial paper, and he had decided to milk it for all it was worth. Kemp was wary of journalists, but they were a breed he had no wish to antagonize.

‘Shall we just say the question is an open one? Your editor has suggested the services of the Gazette might be used … These services at the moment require you to keep your mouth shut, Mr Frobisher. When the writer of these letters is discovered Inspector Upshire will issue a statement. In the meantime I have no comment to make.’

‘Now there’s a phrase sticks like wax in the ears … Mine, I keep ’em open, Mr Kemp. That little item this morning, you may not like it but it’ll get people talking … Stir things up a bit. Might make it easier for the police to get their man …’ He had turned to the bookshelves again, peering at the titles. ‘Lord Lytton, eh? That’s turgid stuff … D’you suppose anybody reads him now?’

‘Not as many as read the Newtown Gazette. Did it never occur to you that the reason those letters were delivered to your paper was simply that, to stir things up? The publication of that little item, as you call it, has helped neither myself nor the police to find the culprit.’

Kemp disliked talking to any man’s back so he opened the study door and walked into the hall, leaving Frobisher no alternative but to follow. Eventually he did so, but with reluctance.

‘I like your taste in houses, Mr Kemp, like your choice of books, old-fashioned but very correct. A good image for a solicitor … Can’t afford a blot on the escutcheon. Leatown, wasn’t it?’

If it was meant as a disabling shot it misfired – Kemp was ready for it.

‘A good reporter does his homework, Mr Frobisher, and I can see you’ve done yours. But that story’s been dead for twenty years, and if you’re thinking of bringing it back to life I would remind you of the little matter of difference between libel as a tort and libel as a criminal offence. You’re a well-read man, Mr Frobisher, so I shall detain you no further on the subject – nor on any other.’

‘No offence meant, squire – and none taken, I hope. Homework always was a bind but it had to be done. From what I gathered, you had a rough time of it back then … And you’ve helped put away a few villains since you came to Newtown. Don’t think I don’t appreciate that.’ There was even a hint of admiration in Frobisher’s voice as he flipped out a card. ‘Call me any time.’

‘Thanks.’

Slightly mollified, Kemp took the card as he opened the front door.

‘That’s a fine new bit of timber you’ve got there, but it’s not a patch on the old one,’ Frobisher remarked as he went down the step. ‘Some say we need neighbourhood-watch schemes … Newtown’s always had ’em, neighbours watching robberies like it was television only not so exciting …’

Though cynical, the observation was apt. Kemp had also found the people of Newtown anxious to keep themselves to themselves, like the three monkeys, when it came to cooperation with the forces of law and order, an attitude which did little to diminish the crime figures.

He thought of this, and of other things, as he closed the door and went back to his study to ponder on the interview. Was Daniel Frobisher as smart as he made out, or had he merely picked up a few tricks of investigative journalism with which to dazzle the natives? At his age he should have wider scope than his present job on a local weekly mostly given over to weddings and obituaries, and only occasionally enlivened by reported rows in the council chamber.

‘He was thorough,’ Kemp told Mary over lunch. ‘I’ll say that in his favour.’

‘Thoroughly bad.’ Mary held to a definite opinion. ‘I didn’t like him one bit.’

‘You hardly saw him.’

‘I saw enough. He gave me a passing glance and decided I wasn’t pretty enough to bother with …’

‘He didn’t get as far as your ankles. Anyway, you can’t blame him for simply overlooking you. I wouldn’t want someone like him taking an interest.’

‘Neither would I. It’s lucky for you, Lennox, that you married a plain woman. Those who are fair of face have significance for men, they start wondering where the husband got hold of her and what’s she like in bed.’

Kemp watched his wife as she peeled an apple. Everything Mary Madeleine did she did with the same quiet intentness, as if all that mattered was the here and now. She was the most concentrated person he had ever met. Yet she could let her mind fly, and her words, too, when the fancy caught her as it had just done.

‘Do you know who he’s married to?’ she said.

‘I never thought to ask.’

‘Amy Robsart.’

‘Not Leicester’s love? Shut up in Cumnor Hall so lone and drear?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Mary went on cutting up her apple. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Amy’s the daughter of the Robsarts at the corner shop where we get our papers.’

Kemp had to shift gear to keep up with her.

‘Someone else has been doing their homework … How did you come by this gem?’

‘I was paying our account when Mrs Robsart did a tut-tut about that item in the Gazette. Terrible thing, Mr Kemp getting them poison-pen letters … So I said we’d a Mr Frobisher in the house right now helping us with our enquiries. Don’t they call that a euphemism?’

‘They do, and it’s got nothing to do with euphony, which means harmony.’ He knew Mary’s concern for the niceties of the English language, a topic barely skimmed in her American school – admittedly a fairly low-grade one where her attendance had been erratic. Coming late to academic learning, she was saved from error by natural wit and from pretensions by wide experience of life at ground level. She thought of herself as a slow thinker; in Kemp’s view she could outstrip the field if the stakes were the survival of the fittest.

‘Well, there was little harmony in the Robsart household when Mr Frobisher seduced their youngest a few years back. Apparently he fought shy of fatherhood but Mr Robsart’s an ex-boxer himself so the nuptials duly took place. Naturally, it’s no good word they’re saying of their son-in-law.’

‘How did you get all that out of Mrs Robsart? She’s always been pretty taciturn with me.’

Mary considered it for a moment, then she said: ‘People in Newtown don’t know how to place me – in the English sense – so, because I’m ordinary, and nothing much to look at, they take me as one of themselves … They like to talk and I’m a good listener.’

And you have the common touch, thought Kemp. Loving her as he did, he meant nothing derogatory, rather that it was an attribute too rarely given the place it deserved. He had had it once himself when he had been struck off by the Law Society and the only job he could get was as an enquiry agent in the East End of London. He wouldn’t have survived for long in Walthamstow had he lacked the common touch.

‘And I got more …’ said Mary, as she piled the plates neatly, one on top of the other. ‘I was asking Mrs Robsart about the times her boys deliver the papers in the morning, and she told me one of the lads saw a person at our door last Thursday about half past seven but they scuttled off so fast he couldn’t say whether it was man or boy, or even a girl … What it is, there’s a bit of rivalry in the paper rounds, the newsagents from up in the town trying to butt in. The Robsarts get up in arms if they think there’s poaching on their ground so the paperboys are told to report back if they see anything …’

‘Why the hell didn’t they tell the police?’

‘Oh, Lennox, when will you ever learn? They don’t talk to the police. Some of the lads, they’ll be underage … But they’re desperate for the job.’

‘All the same, I’ll pass the word … Might get a description. Boys have bright eyes.’

‘They’ll keep them skinned in future; Mrs Robsart, she’ll see to that. All this one got was a glimpse of a flapping raincoat and a cap pulled down over the ears.’

‘Still, it’s better than nothing. Tell your tale to John when he comes this evening, and I’ll give him those letters handed over by our friend, Frobisher.’

‘Let me have a look at them when I’ve finished the washing-up.’

‘They’re not the most dangerous,’ she decided, when Kemp had spread them out on the study table. Nevertheless, she shuddered. ‘I hate to think of that Paul Pry reading them, especially that bit …’

She pointed to it:

You was found wanting once before. Sticky fingers in the till, wasn’t it? You got six years for that. Nothing to what you’ll get from me one dark night …

‘Might be worse,’ said Kemp, grimly. ‘Whoever the mischief-maker is who dropped them in on the press he probably hoped they’d print the lot … Make people think I’d gone to prison for a six-year term … Thank God Grimshaw has a healthy respect for the laws on libel.’

‘And Frobisher?’

‘He checked up on my record, of course. Well, it’s his job. I’m only angry that my colleagues at the office had to find out about the letters this way. I should have told them earlier …’

They had all been on the telephone that day, and Michael Cantley had called round. He was appalled when he saw the contents of the three letters.

‘Are they all like this?’ he asked.

Kemp nodded. ‘Some of the others were more specific about the way I should be dealt with. What do you think, Mike, of the letters themselves?’

Cantley read them again, carefully.

‘Someone who goes back a fair way. A case that went wrong, the injustice thing comes through. Real bitterness … But, I don’t know, Lennox, there’s something funny about the actual phrasing, the vagueness … I’d like to have studied them all. Why on earth didn’t you tell us?’

‘They were too personal. It’s only the more recent that hinted at a slur on reputation … It was then I began to think of damage to the firm … And now there’s this item in the Gazette.’

‘Oh, we can ride that one out, though I don’t think the paper should have printed anything without checking with you first. If you like I’ll have a word with the local Law Society … See whether we should issue a disclaimer.’

‘I’d be glad if you would, Mike; it would be better done through the firm. I’ve got photocopies of the others, by the way – these are originals.’

‘You got these from Dan Frobisher? I know him. He’s a bit cocky but he’s a good reporter, does most of the court stuff for the Gazette. I think he’ll be discreet if there’s something in it for him in the end. He’s been around Newtown longer than you have, Lennox, though I can’t imagine why he stays … He and Nick Stoddart used to be thick, possibly still are now that Nick’s back.’

‘That’s a combination I can well do without.’ Kemp sighed. ‘But it’s time I stopped getting paranoic about everyone I meet.’

CHAPTER 5

John Upshire set off for dinner at No. 2, Albert Crescent in the mood of a man with nothing better to do on a Saturday night. It was preferable, marginally, to eating a takeaway meal in front of the television. He was uneasy, however, at the prospect of again meeting Kemp’s wife who he still thought of as Mary Madeleine Blane because of the file on her he had once received from the New York Police Department. That nothing in that file had ever been proceeded with had come as a relief to Inspector Upshire who had no wish to get embroiled in matters best left to the American authorities.

In the event the case had been satisfactorily dealt with by some tricky footwork on the part of Lennox Kemp, the legal complexities of which the inspector did not wish to know, and would not have understood if he had. All the same, Kemp did not have to go and marry the woman …

As Upshire strode through the streets of Newtown he made up his mind that he would distance himself from the new Mrs Kemp. Although this might be construed as resentment at the marriage, it was more a question of how he felt about her as a person. Upshire was not given to analysing his feelings; all he knew was that tonight he had the hump.

Halfway through dinner he realized that he was enjoying himself as he had not done for years. The atmosphere was relaxed, there were no signs of tension between them (he was the only guest), the conversation was agreeable and the food delicious.

John Upshire was amazed to find himself talking to Mary about Betty’s last illness, a thing he had never spoken of before. Mary had nursed many such patients and understood. She listened with quiet sympathy but a calm detachment, showing that her interest was in him rather than the circumstances since his wife’s death had happened some seven years ago.

It was not that becoming Mrs Kemp had changed Mary Madeleine’s appearance. Upshire had considered her a plain, unprepossessing woman the first time he met her, and she still had the same too-wide brow, a narrow, rather stubborn chin, and a general colourlessness which did not make for beauty. But she gave a straight look from her pale grey eyes, and she smiled a lot … It’s the Irish in her, thought Upshire, who was well aware of her parentage, and he admired the way her soft brown hair was cut in a bob so that it swung out like a bell when she turned her head.

She had forbidden any mention of the letters during the meal.

‘My cooking would not be getting the full attention of your mouths if I allowed it,’ she said. ‘Taste first, you can talk afterwards.’

‘Take your port into the study like gentlemen,’ she told them as she began clearing the dishes. ‘I’ll be bringing coffee in a while.’

Kemp spread the letters out on the table, smoothed the brown paper they had been wrapped in, and added his photocopies of the others.

Upshire studied them all closely.

‘I’ve sent a man to fingerprint the Gazette staff – though Mr Grimshaw says only the office boy who took it from the box, himself and Dan Frobisher actually handled the package. It was Frobisher who opened it. And I’ve got a transcript here of the note he took of that phone call. Apparently whoever it was asked for him.’

‘Asked for Frobisher himself?’

Upshire shrugged. ‘It’s well known he’s their crime reporter. He sees to it he gets his by-line …’

‘You know him, John?’

‘Over the years, yes. He’s in and out of the station – that’s his job. Never given us any trouble, though … My men get on with him … Doesn’t badger us, like some … He’ll push for a story if he thinks there’s anything in it …’

‘He’s already tried pushing me,’ said Kemp, grimly.

He told Upshire about the reporter’s visit, at which the inspector raised his eyebrows, sceptically.

‘But that’s a dead duck. Why’d he bring it up now?’

‘Presumably because our secret scribbler has already done so.’ Kemp pointed out certain parts in the letters.

‘H’m … they only hint at something … But surely anyone could find out?’

‘If they thought it worth their while … So far as my profession is concerned, it’s over and done with long ago. But the slur is there … If they had been specific it could do less harm.’

‘I see what you mean.’ The inspector looked again through the letters for a moment. ‘You think this chap’s clever? I think he’s a nutcase.’

‘I’ll not be agreeing with you there, John,’ said Mary Kemp as she brought in the tray. ‘I wish I could … If a person is mentally deranged, they’d give themselves away by doing other crazy things than just writing letters. It’s the sane I’m afraid of.’

‘Mary thinks they could be written by a woman,’ said Kemp.

Upshire shook his head. ‘Looks more like a man to me.’

‘When Michael Cantley read them,’ said Kemp, slowly, ‘he thought there was something odd about the phrasing. The same thing had struck me. It’s as if ideas had been tossed about before being committed to paper, like people do when there’s two of them working on a script …’

‘You think there’s two of them?’ exclaimed Upshire.

‘That’s it,’ said Mary, eagerly. ‘A man and a woman. That would account for the use of phrases that don’t seem to me to quite match up.’

‘You’ve got me out of my depth.’ John Upshire accepted a cup of coffee, piled sugar into it, and drank. ‘When the analysts have done with them, mebbe a shrink should have a look … There’s some nasty threats in there, Lennox, and I don’t mean the ones about revealing your murky past. It’s your immediate future I’ve got in mind …’

He got a grateful glance from Mary for that.

‘It’s what I’m always telling Lennox. If this person, or these persons, really want to harm him, then he’s in danger. That stuff put through our letterbox …’

She told the inspector about what the delivery boy had seen, and he promised to look into it without upsetting the Robsarts. Then he turned to Kemp.

‘That accident to your car, Lennox, we haven’t a hope in hell … The London Road on a wet night, people are skidding all over the place … and you never got a proper look at the van. No, what I have to concentrate on is the theft of your briefcase, and how that ties in with the letters being leaked to the Gazette.’

‘Goes with my theory that there’s more than one person involved … If their object is just to cause me embarrassment, maybe lose me a few jittery clients, they’ve picked the wrong man. I’ll not be done to death by slanderous tongues …’

Mary smiled at Upshire. ‘That’s the wine speaking out of him,’ she said. ‘He’s started on his quotes …’

But Upshire, more perceptive now, saw the disquiet in her eyes as she went on: ‘Yet I don’t like to hear the word death on anyone’s lips …’

‘Don’t you worry, Mary …’ It was the first time the inspector had used her name. ‘In my experience real killers don’t send letters about what they’re going to do. You can take my word for that. And we’ll catch this joker before he does any more damage. You can count on me …’

As he left the Kemps’ house John Upshire wished he could be as confident as he hoped he had sounded. He hated cases like this where there was nothing really to get hold of; burglary, theft, attempted arson, these were run-of-the-mill petty crimes in Newtown … And, digging deeper, he had no doubt that there were families in the town with enough hatred in them to conspire at mailing poison-pen letters like those his friend was getting – John Upshire would put nothing past some of the crooks he’d known.

Dismissing such thoughts from his mind – for surely an examination of them and some slogging by his own men would bring up something – he walked with a lighter step than he had earlier in the evening. Whatever her past, Mary Kemp was a pleasant woman of more than ordinary gifts, and he could understand now why Kemp had married her.

Watching her moving about in the big old-fashioned drawing room which, despite its spaciousness, she had contrived to make cosy, he had seen how, when their eyes met, she and her husband had the glowing look of people in love. Upshire felt a pang, a memory of something long forgotten. As the evening had gone on, and he knew he had been accepted not only as Lennox’s friend but as hers also, his unease had vanished. When she assured him on leaving that he would always be a welcome guest in their house he knew she was not simply mouthing civilities.

John Upshire was a policeman, not given to much introspection. In his job he felt he was like the soldier, his not to reason why, his priority to investigate the crime, search out the criminal and hand him or her over to the law, for he was neither judge nor jury – though often he questioned the decisions of both, but only in the privacy of his own mind. He was well aware of the limitations imposed by his work, the lack of social life, the occasional distrust of acquaintances …

So, he was all the more grateful tonight to find himself quite uplifted. Wine, good food, congenial company – and friendship – he valued them for they were rare in his experience.

Having accepted their marriage, he wished well for the Kemps.

CHAPTER 6

It was Tuesday evening. Mary Kemp turned from the dressing table and looked at her husband.

‘Glum-face,’ she said, ‘you’re not really wanting to go to this party, are you?’

‘I suppose not. I’m not easy with the people in the office at the moment. There’s an awkwardness between us because of the letters – the way they found out. It’s only natural, they have the firm to think of and their own careers. Mike Cantley’s all right, and probably Belchamber … he takes the broad view, and, having been a barrister, he’s never taken by surprise. For the rest, well, I simply don’t know … Tony Lambert of course is up on cloud nine because of his love life, but I’m sure that nasty item in the paper shook him, he’s very conventional, our Tony. Because he always does the decent thing he expects everyone else to do likewise.’