‘So it’s in Gloria’s own interests to insist he couldn’t have committed suicide? Her financial interests?’ said Molly Treasure to her husband over the breakfast table. They were in the kitchen of their house in Cheyne Walk.
‘Yes. If he carried life insurance, which he probably did,’ Treasure replied, spreading Gentleman’s Relish on his final piece of toast. ‘And if his wife’s the beneficiary under the policy. But she won’t get anything if he did himself in.’
‘I should have realized that. But if his death had been an accident, or from natural causes?’
‘Or murder.’
‘Murder?’ Molly looked up sharply.
‘Well, if he died of strychnine poisoning and it wasn’t suicide, there’s no chance it was natural causes and very little that it was an accident. Anyway, I’m sure it’s just wishful thinking on his wife’s part not to accept it was suicide.’
‘Even though everyone was saying he was the most unlikely person to take his own life? More coffee?’
‘Please.’ He pushed his cup towards her. ‘I think he was under enormous pressure.’
‘Anyway, I can’t believe Gloria was trying to condition me into believing he was … well, murdered, I suppose.’ Molly smoothed the heavy gold chain she was wearing on top of her black polo-neck sweater.
It was just before eight, and scarcely light yet outside where the sky was deeply overcast after a night of rain. Both the Treasures were dressed ready to leave, he for the bank soon, and she later for a dress fitting in Knightsbridge. ‘After all, I don’t have any influence on insurance companies,’ Molly continued. ‘Oh, I suppose she might think because you are—’
‘On the board of one I could get the rules on suicide waived?’ he interrupted with a chuckle. He was the nonexecutive chairman of Regal Sun Assurance. ‘No, I expect she was voicing a genuine if self-interested conviction.’
‘Didn’t you say Berty would be paying one and a half million to buy back the Eels? Gloria will get that, won’t she?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. It’ll become part of Bims’s estate. The general opinion is that his liabilities will hugely exceed his assets. Mark you, that’s supposition, not fact.’
Molly pulled a face. ‘I’m pretty sure Gloria is counting on getting the Eels’ money.’
‘She mentioned it?’
‘Yes. But not how much it would be.’
Treasure drank some coffee. ‘You evidently revised your first opinion of the lady during your time together. Revised it upward.’
‘Yes. And not just because she became a widow at the beginning of the evening either.’
‘Which was something that didn’t seem to affect her that much?’ the banker questioned.
‘No, it didn’t. Nor did she pretend it did. Not to me, anyway. There’s so much more to her than one could have guessed from first meeting.’
‘And the clothes she was wearing?’ he questioned wryly. ‘Those colours?’
Molly shook her head. ‘Purposely overstated, of course. For a good reason. You know her husband insisted she appear like that? For the party afterwards. To show she was rooting for the Eels as hard as he was supposed to be.’
‘But she must have designed the outfit?’
‘Sure. Only as fancy dress, though. She regarded it as a joke, rather.’ Molly hesitated. ‘I grant you she’s not the greatest designer, but she’s better than that.’
‘And I suppose what she was wearing would have got the photographers at the party concentrating on Bims’s Hugon Road interests. As opposed to those in the Cayman Islands. Of course, since there was no party and no photographs, simply the death of the chairman …’ He completed his comments with a dismissive shrug.
‘And all his own doing. It does seem inexplicable.’ Molly was adding slices of banana to a small bowl of muesli. ‘I still can’t get over how marvellous Gloria was, coping with the Bodworski eruption,’ she said.
‘Seems to me you both did pretty well.’
‘Oh, it was a lot easier for me. I wasn’t being pinioned by a burly Polish footballer, and drunk with it. Mark you, it was tragedy reduced to farce in the end. The way he let Gloria go and rushed out as soon as I’d told him his wife was in hospital.’
‘And then rushed back, you said, because you hadn’t told him which hospital.’
‘And for the second time when he found his car had a flat tyre.’
‘Was he very drunk?’
‘Fairly. He was quite maudlin while we were waiting for the taxi to take him to the Fulham Cross. That was over Bims’s death. He kept telling Gloria he’d forgive her dead husband for dropping him from the team.’
‘How did he come to think he’d been dropped when he hadn’t been? Not according to Harden, the manager.’
Molly swallowed some food and touched her mouth with her napkin. ‘It was something he’d heard on the radio after lunch,’ she said. ‘A rumour they reported. He’d tried to check it by phone with Mr Harden, who equivocated. Said he wasn’t sure if Bodworski would be in the team.’
‘Which made Bodworski mad?’
‘Yes, so mad, he told us, he slammed the phone down on Mr Harden.’
‘Other people reported hearing that broadcast. Someone suggested it was Bims who leaked the story,’ said Treasure. ‘Curious that Bims didn’t tell Ian Crayborn he was having Bodworski dropped. Apparently he never referred to it on their way back from lunch with Berty. Come to that, he never mentioned it to Berty either.’
‘It was a shame Joyce Bims had the announcement of her engagement fall so flat,’ said Molly, changing the subject. ‘In the circumstances, I mean. You know, she seemed more moved over her ex-husband’s death than Gloria was?’
‘She was probably more fond of him than Gloria was,’ Treasure responded drily. ‘I imagine it can sometimes turn out that way. She was certainly in a state of shock after finding him in that dressing-room. I’m glad it wasn’t you went in first.’
‘Me too.’ She wrinkled her patrician nose. ‘Is Ian Crayborn well off?’
Treasure looked doubtful. ‘The opposite, Berty says. The partnership he was in was dissolved during the recession. He’s been on his own for some time, and I don’t believe he’s got many clients. Or any big ones.’
‘He’s a director of the Eels?’
‘That pays nothing. Being their accountant will be more important to him. Because of the fee. He’s no financial catch for Joyce, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought that was the biggest consideration,’ Molly replied a trifle loftily. ‘I’d say they were drawn together by much higher motives.’
‘You asked the question,’ he responded, pushing his plate away and picking up The Times.
‘They’re so suited in every respect.’
‘Both rather dull, you mean?’
‘That’s unfair. They don’t scintillate perhaps, but they’re both on their own, and both nice people. Genuine. They deserve each other.’ She paused, then nodded an inward affirmation. ‘Still, it’s a pity Joyce doesn’t have money either. Not from what she was telling me last night.’
‘Well, she’s probably better off than he is,’ Treasure replied absently, studying a front page picture of Princess Margaret smiling stoically while reviewing a Scottish regiment in a snowstorm.
Molly hesitated, then got up and began to clear the breakfast things. ‘It seems to have been a rather whirlwind romance,’ she said.
He looked up from the paper. ‘Are you sure? I thought they’d known each other for donkey’s years. Berty says Crayborn was Bims’s accountant when he had the do-it-yourself business.’
‘Oh, they’ve known each for a long time. He’s been her private accountant since … since her divorce. But love didn’t walk in till the night before last. When it did so with a vengeance apparently.’ She licked the honey spoon clean, waiting to see if he’d ask to know more. When he didn’t, she went on despite his irritating lack of interest: ‘He was staying the night after they’d been to the theatre together. In Guildford. All quite proper, I expect, but that’s when it happened. She was quite starry-eyed when she told me. Refreshingly romantic, don’t you think?’
‘Why was it quite proper? You mean she didn’t say they’d slept together?’
‘No, and I certainly didn’t ask.’
‘Much as you wanted to,’ he commented with a grin.
‘Darling, you really do have a knack of reducing everything to its crudest level.’
Treasure looked mildly chastened but continued in a less than penitent voice, ‘All right, so it was a beautiful meeting of two souls, if not bodies. So far as we know. I wonder why it took so long? Did something important happen on Tuesday to precipitate this chaste consummation?’
Molly was emptying the coffee percolator into the waste-bin. ‘Her first husband died the next day, of course,’ she said thoughtfully, then added quickly: ‘No, I know that couldn’t have had anything to do with it.’ This had been to pre-empt Treasure saying the same thing. ‘It might have been a sort of augury, I suppose,’ she ended.
‘A pretty ghoulish one, if it was.’ He turned a page of the paper. ‘Come to think of it, Bims’s death just could have a favourable impact on his first wife’s fortunes.’
‘Surely he’s not likely to have left her much?’
‘Or even anything. Except, if I’ve got the dates right, it could be—’ Whatever he intended to say was interrupted by an insistent ringing on the front doorbell.
It was Molly who went to open the door. She returned shortly afterwards shepherding a breathless Andras Linkina in front of her.
The barrel-chested pianist was clad in a brown tweed topcoat with a shoulder cape, and was carrying a narrow-brimmed hat in the same material. He lifted a hand in greeting to Treasure, then slumped down at the table where Molly had been sitting. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, looking from the banker to Molly, then back again. ‘Oh dear. It’s a calamity,’ he continued, in his deepest, guttural voice. He blew out a breath, then hit his chest twice with his fist in a mea culpa gesture.
‘D’you want to take your overcoat off before or after you tell us about it, Andras?’ said Treasure.
The other man looked down at his coat in surprise, as if he had been unaware that he was still in street clothes. ‘My apologies,’ he said, ‘for breaking in on you. Unannounced. It is unforgivable.’ He raised his arms in capitulation, an action that served to lift the edges of the cape so that he looked a little like a large bat about to take wing.
‘You’re forgiven. Would you like some coffee?’ Molly asked.
‘Coffee, no, thank you. I have come from the Fulham Police Station.’ Linkina made the last pronouncement sound like a qualification of the first—as though attendance upon the Fulham police precluded the ingestion of coffee for an indefinite period afterwards.
‘And you’ve walked all the way here?’ said Molly in surprise.
‘My flat is half way, you know? I was going back there. Then, it seemed to me I should come to you. Without delay. And here I am.’ The speaker paused, lifting his snowy white head, but he still made no move to divest himself of his overcoat. ‘You see, they have taken Stanislaus Bodworski,’ he completed, in the same ringing tone that a Polish forebear might have used to announce the Mongol invasion of 1241.
‘You mean they’ve arrested him?’ said Molly. ‘What for? Surely not for breaking into Bims’s house last night? Gloria said she wouldn’t bring charges.’
‘It is for the murder of Sir Ray Bims. It is not an arrest. Not yet. They are questioning. Interrogating.’ The Slavonic ‘r’s were being rolled with more than usual gusto to underline significant issues. ‘But soon it will be an arrest. It’s certain. Unless we act.’ He looked sharply at Treasure.
‘When did they pick him up?’ asked the banker.
‘Last night. At the hospital. At the bedside of his wife where he had arrived out of … solicitude.’ Linkina slowly laboured each syllable in the final word, then gave a loud and disparaging tut before continuing. ‘And because he was drunk, they said, they kept him overnight in a cell. They started to question him this morning.’
‘But why do they say Bims was murdered?’ Molly pressed.
‘It is because they have proved he could not have taken the strychnine from Edingly’s office. There was no opportunity, it seems. He was … under observation through all the relevant hours.’ Linkina’s hands rose skywards again despairingly. ‘When they first find this out they interview Edingly himself. They are quick to do that.’
‘Yes, I remember that Inspector was questioning him when we were both there, after the match,’ said Treasure, ‘but—’
‘No, no. This was later,’ the other man interrupted. ‘At the police station. More serious.’
‘You mean they suspected Edingly of being the murderer? Of … of staging the burglary himself?’
‘They don’t say. Not to me. Only to Bodworski who tells me. But they let Edingly go when his rifle is found in the boot of Bodworski’s car. In Mulberry Grove. Where the car was left last night.’
‘That’s bad,’ said Treasure quietly.
‘But Bodworski did not steal the strychnine, nor does he know how the rifle got into the car,’ protested the pianist. ‘It’s a frame-up.’
‘Have they any other evidence against him?’ questioned the banker.
‘Circumstantial only. Like they say he killed Bims because Bims dropped him from the team.’
‘That’s hardly a reason for cold-blooded murder,’ put in Molly hotly.
‘But of course,’ Linkina scoffed. ‘Also they say that Bodworski knew his wife was having a love-affair with Bims. It was Edingly who discovered this.’
‘Edingly?’ Treasure questioned in disbelief.
‘Yes. And the police say he told Bodworski. They both deny it, but Edingly couldn’t deny he had told others the same thing. Like Trisall. Edingly was deeply shocked at what he called Bims’s sinful conduct.’ Linkina paused, breathing heavily, while lids with several folds of skin blinked over narrow eyes like the opening and closing of niched curtains. ‘He is known to be a very religious man. All … all fire and brimstone, as they say.’ He shrugged to indicate his failure to understand why they said it, then he continued: ‘At first the police thought he might have struck Bims down in retribution for the adultery.’
‘But they wouldn’t have thought it for very long,’ said Treasure.
‘That is true,’ Linkina agreed. ‘Not after they found the rifle. They say Bodworski knowing about the affair, whoever told him, is why he beat up his wife. After he poisoned Bims.’
‘It’s all nonsense, of course,’ said Molly. ‘If he’d killed Bims, why would he have been in the man’s garden last night waiting for him to get home? And if Bodworski had assaulted his own wife, why did he rush off to see her when I told him she was in hospital? If the police are right, his actions were quite illogical.’
‘Not, I suppose, if he was spreading a smoke screen. To suggest his innocence,’ commented Treasure, but with doubt in his voice.
‘That is exactly what the Fulham police are saying,’ the pianist growled. ‘That yesterday he was playacting. In the Bims’s garden and also at the hospital.’
‘Was Bims really having an affair with Mrs Bodworski?’ asked Molly.
‘The police say so, in front of me. That she’s admitted it. Bodworski tells me, in Polish, it’s true. That Bims seduced her. She was flattered by the attentions of a man she considered so important. It is how she got the Eels’ marketing job. She met Bims first when she worked for another football club. The police were not intending to tell Bodworski about the affair, but he found out from his wife at the hospital.’
‘She confessed to him?’ asked Treasure.
‘Yes. I do not know why.’ True mystification showed on Linkina’s face.
‘I expect she thought he’d find out anyway,’ said Molly, matter-of-factly. ‘And preferred to tell him herself.’
‘It’s possible.’ Linkina nodded a doleful agreement. ‘Bodworski now thinks it was because of his wife that he too was bought by the Eels. It doesn’t please him.’
‘How come they let you in to see him, Andras? At the police station?’ asked Treasure.
‘He pretends his English is bad. That he needs a translator. They say there’s no translator available so early. He says there’s me. So they telephone. At six this morning. Felix Harden also comes to the police station. Later.’
‘They sent for him too?’
‘No, Mark. I did. We both protest at the injustice. Nobody takes any notice, of course.’
‘Bodworski is entitled to a lawyer.’
‘Yes. I get Charles Wigtree for that. At seven o’clock,’ Linkina affirmed with some satisfaction.
‘Is he a criminal lawyer?’ asked Treasure, already knowing the answer.
‘No, but he’s a director of the Eels and he knows Bodworski. He’s with him now. Me, they send away when some official Polish translator arrives at eight.’ Linkina ran both hands through his hair in the familiar movement he made before the start of every concert performance. ‘Mark, you are the man of affairs,’ he said solemnly. ‘Stanislaus Bodworski is innocent. That I can swear. You must find the murderer who has framed my poor compatriot.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We all help you, of course,’ he added, magnanimously.