Another One Goes Tonight

10

Massimo Filiput had died in his sleep, according to Dr. Mukherjee, and his wife had fallen downstairs and died. Not the story Diamond had expected to hear. He grappled with the new information while taking a brisk, healthy, cholesterol-reducing walk round Queen Square. Neither death had been suspicious in the doctor’s eyes, but then the doctor wasn’t a detective.

Could Ivor Pellegrini, having researched ingenious methods of murder, have found a way to kill them both? He’d have needed access to the house in Cavendish Crescent. As a friend and fellow railway enthusiast, it wasn’t impossible that he was a regular visitor there. Pushing an old lady downstairs didn’t seem all that clever, let alone perfect, but-if it was murder-it had worked. Olga Filiput’s collection of jewellery and antiques, including the Fortuny gowns, had been inherited by her distracted husband, a soft touch who had stopped breathing six months later, and the gowns had ended up in Pellegrini’s workshop.

Filiput’s death in his sleep had been less dramatic than a fall, but if there had been any wrongdoing, this one might well be styled the perfect murder.

Or was it natural?

One killing? Two? Or no crime at all?

Murder only made sense if Pellegrini had a compelling motive. The most obvious was personal gain. He’d acquired the gowns and hidden them away. He may well have stacked away other valuable items that had once belonged to Olga Filiput. But did he need to steal? Was it worth the risk? Probably not. He appeared to be comfortably off, no doubt on a good pension.

Think of a better motive, Diamond told himself, already on the lookout for a place to sit. The brisk walk round the square hadn’t been such a good idea. His calves were giving him hell. He found an empty bench near a group playing boules.

For some minutes he watched the players, evidently friends who did this regularly. Much noise and joking masked a strong competitive element. The dominant personalities were soon apparent: the deadly serious win-at-all-costs man with the tattoos and earrings, and the joker with the beanie hat who laughed off every throw but was secretly trying harder than anyone.

Could the killings-if killings they were-be down to a driven personality? Extraordinary things are done in the name of self-assertion. The dominant ego is capable of distorting and discarding personal feeling and basic human values. Pellegrini was a man in retirement who had spent his whole career solving problems and no doubt getting satisfaction and self-esteem from the achievement. Now cut off from all that, yet still capable, he needed a challenge. Then why not apply his skills and experience to devising a perfect theft, followed by a perfect murder?

Only in theory, of course.

Until an opportunity arrived to put theory to the test.

Once.

Or twice?

Or about five times?

Taken as problem-solving, plotting a murder could be treated like any other engineering project, constructing a turbine or a tunnel. He’d deal with it in the same detached way, assess the objective, do the research, devise a plan and derive personal satisfaction from pulling it off.

Not bad.

On a bookshelf at home Diamond had a small library of famous crimes and among them was the case of two young Americans from privileged backgrounds who in the 1920s murdered another youth for no more reason than self-aggrandisement. They made mistakes and were caught, but the idea of intelligent students killing just for kicks had shocked the nation. One had claimed they had done it just for the excitement of committing a perfect murder and getting away with it.

How many murders had been carried out by smarter operators who didn’t get caught?

In the case of Ivor Pellegrini, killing as self-expression made more sense than killing for profit. He’d know what he was doing was morally wrong and dangerous, but the compelling assignment would transcend morality. He’d immerse himself in the challenge. It was about achievement and a job well done. Those cremation pots lined up like trophies fitted the scenario.

Diamond gave himself five minutes more and then strolled back to the car.

The first person he saw in the CID room was Keith Halliwell.

“I’ve been trawling the newspapers, guv,” Keith told him. “Those three-the ones in the urns-all died within two years of each other.”

“Yes, but what of?”

Halliwell didn’t give an immediate answer and Diamond knew why. He wanted some credit for his research. “Two of them had short death notices in the Chronicle and the other, Jeremy Marshall-Tomkin, was given quite a write-up. He’d been a county councillor at one time and also played some rugby in his younger days. The interesting bit is that at one stage he edited the Great Western Railway Journal. It’s a quarterly magazine-still selling seventy-odd years after the company closed.”

“Who buys it then? They must have an elderly readership.”

“It’s nostalgia for the great days of steam.”

“Right,” he said, without really understanding the appeal.

“The point is that Marshall-Tomkin would definitely have been one of the GWR group,” Halliwell said.

Diamond came up with the required compliment. “You’ve done a fine job here, Keith.” And immediately added, “Can we get more on the other two?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Doing what?”

“There’s a website listing every issue of the magazine and all the articles and their authors.”

“These two wrote for the magazine?”

“No. But there are letters in each issue. I’m hoping their names crop up there.”

“Okay. And now will you answer my first question?”

“What was that?”

“What did they die of?”

“Can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.”

“What’s stopping you?” Diamond’s charitable phases never lasted long.

“There’s a standard wording they use in the paper. He or she passed away peacefully.”

“So what? It’s a cliché.”

“Or sadly or after a long illness or a short illness. That’s all you’re told in at least ninety percent of the notices. Marshall-Tomkin went peacefully, Edmund Seaton the same and Roger Carnforth after a short illness.”

Diamond took a sharp, impatient breath. “No help at all.”

Halliwell shrugged. “The newspaper isn’t going to say they were murdered, even if they were.”

It was a telling point. Diamond had to grin. “Is something wrong with us, looking for evil at every turn?”

“Somebody needs to, guv.”

“Thanks for that. Massimo Filiput is said to have died in his sleep, which would be what…?”

“Peaceful.”

“Yes, peaceful. And we can’t exclude murder. A peaceful death of an old man means there wouldn’t be any call for an autopsy. If there was poison in his system it wouldn’t be found. The doctor had no reason to be suspicious.”

“Poison isn’t used much these days.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s easy to detect, isn’t it?” Halliwell said. “In the past, they used arsenic or cyanide or something similar and sometimes got away with it, but with all the science these days they wouldn’t. And, anyway, the classic poisons aren’t available any more as flypapers or what have you. You aren’t even allowed to buy two packs of aspirin at one time.”

“True, but there are drugs prescribed every day that could kill someone. The average house is stocked with pills and potions I’d think twice about taking, and that’s not to mention rat bait and weedkiller in the garden shed. The stuff is still out there.”

“But would it be a peaceful death?”

Diamond laughed. “Depends. Personally, I’d rather not swallow weedkiller, but some of the other things might do the job painlessly.”

Halliwell still looked unconvinced. “Do you mind if I ask something?”

“Go ahead. It’s your job.”

“You fought hard to save Pellegrini’s life. How will you feel if he turns out to have been a serial killer?”

Deep breath. No one was better than Halliwell at putting the boss on the spot.

“Not great.” He took a moment to frame a better answer. “Look at it this way, Keith. I found him and did what anyone would. No choice.” He shook his head. “It’s pulling me apart. My job as the senior detective is to step back from the detail and take a broad view. I want him to be blameless, but each day that passes brings more evidence. He may have carried out one murder or several or none at all. I can’t rule out anything. To ignore our suspicions would be dangerous, sloppy and wrong.”

“That’s tough.”

“I’d rather not say any more.”

“So what’s the strategy?”

“Same as always. Gather the evidence. Follow up every lead. Miss nothing.”

“Still off the record?”

“Has to be. We don’t have enough to trigger a full-scale enquiry. Georgina would do her nut if she knew I was taking so much of your time and Ingeborg’s. But she did tell me to stay in touch with the fallout of the crash.”

“She’s worried about the IPCC investigation.”

“You bet she is.”

“Are they setting one up?”

“It’s mandatory. This is classed as a death or serious-injury matter.”

“Has someone complained?”

“Not that I’m aware of. Georgina is bricking it that they’ll discover our guys were at fault.”

Mrs. Stratford, the cleaner to the Filiputs, was easy to trace through the electoral register, but difficult to pin down. Her neighbour in the terrace where she lived in Oldfield Park said she was out all day and often didn’t get home until after ten. It sounded as if she was a workaholic.

Diamond needed an insider’s account of the Filiput household. He couldn’t rely only on Dr. Mukherjee. Normally he would have sent one of his DCs to catch up with the cleaner, but this wasn’t a normal enquiry. Truth to tell, he was finding an escape from his personal conflict by taking on the dogsbody jobs of the sort he’d done long ago as a probationer in the Met.

Late in the afternoon he cornered Mrs. Stratford in a printworks in Beacon Hill, off Lansdown Road. She was bending over a bin-bag, filling it with the screwed-up waste paper that littered the floor, and she was a surprise, not much over twenty, with the figure of a gymnast and thick copper-coloured hair tied back with a scarf. And she was speaking to herself, which wasn’t a good sign. Speaking, not singing. No headset. He couldn’t make out the words except that there seemed to be strong emotion in them, her shoulders flexing with the stress of whatever she was dealing with.

He made a noise deep in his throat and she straightened up and did an about turn as sharply as a sentry.

“Don’t you dare come any closer.”

“Sorry to startle you,” he said.

“I ought to kick you where it hurts most, creeping up on me like that.” They were angry, shaming eyes.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said.

“You shouldn’t be here. This is closed for business now.”

He introduced himself and without giving much away about his real suspicions let her know he was interested in the Filiputs.

She didn’t react the way most people do when a police officer speaks to them.

“You can take a running jump.”

He ignored this. “I was told you worked for them.”

“They’re entitled to their privacy.”

“They’re dead,” he said. He was about to add, “They don’t care any more,” but he stopped himself. This young woman had known the old couple and it seemed she still felt defensive towards them. To him they were only names. “Look, whatever you tell me stays private. I’m police, not press. I need information about their daily routine and I believe you know more than anyone else.”

“So?”

Still defiant. He had to reveal more.

“It’s possible someone was stealing from them-or at least from Mr. Filiput in the last months of his life.”

“And you think I-” She took a threatening step towards him.

“God, no. That isn’t what I’m saying.”

“I’m not a thief.”

“It never crossed my mind.”

“What was taken?” she asked-the first sign of interest and maybe the first crack in the stone wall.

“Certain items of his wife’s, in particular three valuable gowns.”

“She had some nice things.”

He sensed she might be ready to open up. “Do you recall Mr. Filiput saying anything of his wife’s had gone missing?”

“To me, his cleaner? He had better manners than that.”

This was verbal karate, and Diamond wasn’t winning. “I was told he couldn’t keep track of things and felt inadequate.”

“You were told? You already talked to someone else?”

“His doctor.”

“She knows more than I do, then.”

“I got the impression from her that you were more than just the cleaner.”

Her eyes blazed like chip pans. “You bastard. He was old enough to be my grandfather.”

The best he could think of to calm her down was, “Hold on, you’re not reading me right. All I’m suggesting is you went to some trouble to look after the old couple, shopping for them, and so on.”

“Piss off, will you?” she said, giving the sack a shake and moving on. “I’m doing a job here.”

“So am I. I thought just now you were willing to help.”

“Help with what? Their stolen goods? It’s a bit bloody late, isn’t it?”

“You might know if anything else was taken.”

“You lot are more concerned with property than people.”

He let a few seconds pass. “Can we try again, Mrs. Stratford? It’s obvious I caught you at a bad time.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“You thought you were alone here.”

“Talking to myself when you came in?” she said.

“Well…”

“I was speaking lines, if you want to know.”

“You’re an actress?” Something he could work with.

“Actor-or trying to be. Understudying Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

“Maggie who?”

She gave a sharp, angry sigh. “It’s the part I play. I was running through a scene with Big Daddy when you interrupted.”

“I could see it was strong stuff. Is Maggie the Liz Taylor part?”

Her glare almost pinned him to the wall.

He’d said the wrong thing again.

“The role doesn’t belong to her or any other actor. I work from the script and do it my own way.”

“And you were well into it when I interrupted.”

“That’s why you got a mouthful. I can’t simply switch off.”

“Understood.” He’d humoured her enough about the acting. Much more and she’d be asking him to speak the Big Daddy bits. “So you double up your theatre work with some cleaning?”

“If you really want to know, the cleaning is my mainstay. I’d be a fool to pack it in.” She was starting to speak in a more measured way now.

“Were you in a production while you worked for the Filiputs?”

“The occasional walk-on at the Theatre Royal. Not much learning of lines.”

“That’s why you could be generous with your time, I expect.”

She nodded. “They were sweet, both of them. They let me fit my cleaning around all the read-throughs and rehearsals.”

He wanted to talk about Massimo Filiput. “He was rather lost after she died, I believe.”

“Well, it was so sudden, an accident. She fell downstairs, as you probably know.”

“Were you there at the time?”

“No, but I saw him next day. The shock was all too clear. He was crying, on and off. I did what I could to help out, took him to see the funeral director and the register office, stuff like that.”

“He had friends, didn’t he?”

“His railway buddies, you mean?” She rolled her eyes. “I called them his choo-choo chums. They were at the house the afternoon of the accident, a bunch of goofy old men who used to meet in each other’s houses and talk about trains.”

“When you say a bunch…?”

“Never more than four or five. Personally I can’t think of anything more boring than old trains, but Max enjoyed it and after Olga died the meetings kept him going, really.”

“Do you remember their names?”

She shook her head. “There was a gay couple. At least, I thought they must be gay because they arrived together and had a rapport that was fairly obvious. Max probably told me their names, but I had no reason to memorise them. I have enough of a job learning lines.”

“Gay men, you mean?”

“Women are daft about a lot of things, but they aren’t daft about trains.”

“Another of the railway people would have been Ivor Pellegrini,” he tried prompting her. “Grey-haired, clean-shaven, average height and build.”

“They all looked like that to me.” Which closed that avenue.

“Did he have any other regular visitors after his wife died?”

“There was Cyril who played Scrabble with him and Cyril’s housekeeper, Jessie, who did the driving as well as a bit of cooking for them while she was there.”

This was helpful, chiming in with earlier information. “The doctor mentioned Cyril, said he was a teaching colleague, retired.”

“Yes, he definitely wasn’t one of the railway lot. Nice old boy. We often had a joke. He liked teasing me about all the leading men I was supposed to have been with: ‘Didn’t I spot you last night in that commercial with George Clooney?’ sort of thing.”

“And Jessie was Cyril’s housekeeper? That’s an old-fashioned term.”

“His word for it. I was meant to get the message they lived together but didn’t share a room. I didn’t want to know about his living arrangements, thanks very much. What old men get up to in private is their business.”

“Was Jessie his age?”

“Quite a bit younger. Forties, maybe. I guess he employed her to take care of him. That’s the deal with a housekeeper, isn’t it? And of course she acted as chauffeur as well on the days they visited. He’d given up driving. She was always nicely dressed, short brown hair with blonde highlights, and fun to be with.”

“Are they still about?”

“I haven’t seen them since Max’s funeral. They aren’t from Bath.”

“So you got to his funeral? That was nice. Who else was there?”

“Very few apart from the ones I just mentioned. It was a low-key event, quite short, at Haycombe cremmy. Non-religious. No hymns or prayers. Cyril got up and said some nice, witty things, but respectful. The main bit I remember was while the curtains were closing they played a number by The Kinks called ‘Last of the Steam-Powered Trains.’ There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Oh, and there was a wreath in the shape of a train.”

“From his railway friends? They were there?”

“To a man. And we all went back to Cavendish Crescent and shared some bottles of prosecco. They didn’t last long.”

“Going back a bit, you said you weren’t at the house on the day of Olga’s accident.”

Suddenly she was back in her Tennessee Williams role. “Don’t you believe me? What are you hinting at, Mr. Policeman? Do I have to scream to make myself understood? I wasn’t there when the old lady died. End of.”

“But the railway club were. What about Cyril and Jessie?”

“No. They came on different days. Max used to say steam and Scrabble don’t mix.”

“Where do they live?”

“Cyril and Jessie? Somewhere this side of Salisbury in the Wylye valley. They’re decent people. You can cross them off your list. I’m less confident about the choo-choo lot. After Max’s funeral they were like vultures sorting through his photo collection and the old posters.”

“Didn’t anybody try and stop them?”

“Far from it. There was a po-faced woman there from the solicitors who arranged the funeral and she told everyone the bigger, more collectable items would go into a sale, but Max had said in his will that things like posters and timetables and old photos should be distributed among his railway cronies. She didn’t know their worth and wasn’t able to share them out so she suggested they helped themselves. It was mayhem after that, really distasteful.”

“Collectors aren’t going to miss an opportunity like that.”

“It was insane. Jessie had a mug of coffee knocked out of her hand. She should have put in a claim for a new skirt, in my opinion.”

“Was she wearing black?”

“Purple wool, and it showed. I made sure she sponged it with white vinegar in the kitchen, which is what you do, but there was still a mark.”

“I hope he offered to pay.”

“He did apologise at the time. She didn’t want to make an issue of it. She had to put on one of the overalls I used for work and she was too self-conscious to show herself again. I had to go back to the room where it happened and collect her handbag. She and Cyril left not long after.”

“I’ve got ahead of myself, asking about the funeral,” he said. “Would you mind telling me about the morning you found him dead?”

“Why?”

Not easy to answer without giving more away than he planned to tell her.

“I’m piecing together the last months of his life.”

His answer seemed to satisfy her. “It came as a shock, but you can’t prepare for anything like that.” She shook her head, remembering. “I turned up at the house as usual and rang. Sometimes he wasn’t up in the mornings, but there was a key I knew about so I let myself in. He wasn’t downstairs, so I made a start on clearing up the kitchen. I say that, but it wasn’t a mess. He generally left it tidy before going to bed. After twenty minutes or so, he still hadn’t appeared, so I made him a coffee and took it up to the bedroom. The door was closed. I knocked, spoke his name, got no response, opened the door a little and saw there was no movement from the bed. He was face up, eyes closed, mouth gaping and it was obvious he wasn’t breathing. I called Dr. Mukherjee and she was there inside ten minutes. She was very good, understood I was shaken and sent me to make a fresh cup of tea.” She paused and her eyes were moist with the memory-or good acting. “We agreed he’d found the best way to go, at home, in his own bed.”

“You said there was a key you knew about. What did you mean by that?”

“His back-up key. He used to worry about locking himself out, so he kept a spare near the front door behind a drainpipe.”

“Not the best security.”

“You can’t tell ninety-year-olds how to run their lives. You can try, but they won’t listen. Everything in that house was done as it had been all his life, right down to the loose tea that was the bane of my life. He had something against teabags. He collected all his tea leaves and dried them off and I was supposed to crush them to powder and sprinkle them over the carpets and wait ten minutes before I did the vacuuming. Have you ever heard of that?”

Diamond shook his head. “It must be a generational thing. I may look old to you, but I’m not ninety. What was the point?”

“He reckoned they absorb odours, so they freshen the carpets in some way. Grass works just as well, he said.”

“Do you mean grass as in lawns, or cannabis?”

She rolled her eyes in scorn. “Grass clippings from a mower. He was spaced out enough, without smoking pot.”

“It might work.”

“But we always had plenty of tea leaves, so we never tried grass. Have we finished? I’ve got loads to do here and I want to get home some time.”

I see in the paper that some committee or other has been looking into the problems of old men living alone. They’re giving cause for concern. In the next fifteen years the numbers are due to rise by 65 percent. They’re not as good as women at managing. When an old man is widowed, he can’t adapt. His social life shrinks and he deteriorates mentally and physically and he’s unlikely to seek help, poor old soul. The way I see it, I’m performing a service, saving them from misery and the state from a lot of extra expense. Do enough, and I might even make the honours list.