"It was a political assassination, though not in the way we thought. Mark Normanby wanted to get rid of Thirkie in a way that gave him a chance to capitalize on his death to take power. Angela Thirkie agreed to help with this, because she wanted her husband out of the way. They either waited until she was pregnant or moved their plans forward because she was pregnant. The timing of the houseparty had been planned to coincide with the vote, either because Lady Eversley was a conspirator or because Normanby had put pressure on her. The Kahns were invited along to be scapegoats and set the country against the Jews." Kahn was probably the only Jew Normanby knew well enough to persuade to come to visit.
"Ahead of time, Normanby impersonated Kahn in France in order to get hold of the star. Kahn wouldn't have given his own name and address; someone wanting to implicate him certainly would. We know Normanby has been in France this year." And we know Kahn hasn't, and couldn't have been, if we believe Mrs. Kahn, but Penn-Barkis probably wouldn't accept that.
"Also before they went to Farthing, Angela Thirkie paid Brown to play the trick on Lord Eversley on the Sunday. Lord Eversley may or may not have known about it. Brown was paid to play his 'joke' and set them against the Bolsheviks. If Brown had been told to shoot to miss, it might explain why he didn't do better against a shotgun. On the other hand, that might just be his relative inexperience with his rifle. She also made sure Thirkie brought his dagger with him, and got hold of the lipstick. She may have got her maid to steal it. Her maid seems fairly easy to intimidate; we could almost certainly get more information from her, and probably from the chauffeur as well. She's having an affair with the chauffeur, and it seems likely the baby is his." Talking to Angela Thirkie's servants would be the next thing. He'd have to go up to Yorkshire. It was a pity he hadn't caught her at Campion, but talking to the old lady had been quite sufficiently informative.
"On the night of the murder, Saturday sixth May, Angela Thirkie somehow persuaded Thirkie to sit in the car—I don't know how." He couldn't imagine her doing the dance of the seven veils in the headlights, or Thirkie sitting still for it. It might have been earlier, when it was still light and she might have asked him to pose for a photograph in the car. How long exactly did the poisoning take?
"If she hadn't persuaded him, then Normanby must have threatened him into it, making it technically suicide, but isn't driving someone to suicide an offense?" It should be. Penn-Barkis didn't answer, just kept on looking at him most disconcertingly. Carmichael had seen him like this before at the end of a case. He just kept on.
"Most likely, Normanby threatened to reveal something he knew—probably not Angela's adultery; it must have been some other hold he had over Thirkie, something Thirkie had done that he himself considered shameful. Possibly it was a sexual passage between the two of them, or perhaps something political. In any case, Thirkie died painlessly in the car. After death they took him upstairs and arranged him so as to frame Kahn. Maybe Normanby did this alone, because Angela Thirkie displayed signs of shock on hearing where her husband's body had been found." That had thrown him off, and made him think about two sets of murderers for too long.
Penn-Barkis listened in silence, his eyes fixed on Carmichael's face. "Normanby lied about playing billiards with Thirkie, probably to conceal the time of death, which was earlier than we initially thought. He also arranged to find the body himself."
Penn-Barkis laid his hands flat on the desk and drew a deep breath. "Have you finished?"
"Yes, sir. I can tell you where I have my evidence from, if you like."
"That's not necessary. I'll take it on trust that it's all verified and that you have witnesses or material evidence. You're sure, quite sure, that what you've said is the case?" Penn-Barkis stared at Carmichael without blinking.
"Yes, sir," Carmichael said, feeling as if he had run ten miles.
"Your policeman's itch to find out exactly what happened, which was plaguing you so badly when we last spoke, is entirely satisfied?"
"Yes, sir," Carmichael repeated.
"Then forget all this," Penn-Barkis said. "Put it out of your mind. It may well be what happened, and it's certainly an explanation that covers everything, but the important thing to remember is that Kahn did it."
"But sir!" Carmichael almost jumped up out of his seat.
"When I was a boy, I was told that only little goats butt," Penn-Barkis said, with a thin smile. "Kahn did it, and the reason Kahn did it is because Mr. Normanby is our Prime Minister and thinking these things against him almost amounts to treason."
"Scotland Yard is above politics, and the courts are above politics, and the law—"
"Nothing is above politics, Carmichael," Penn-Barkis said. "I'm so sorry to disillusion you, at your age."
"The law—"
"But you're not above breaking the law yourself when it suits you, are you?" Penn-Barkis asked, gently. "You made a telephone call from your desk here to Farthing yesterday at twelve-thirty. What was the purpose of that call?"
Carmichael blushed hotly. "I rang to tell Mrs. Kahn there was new evidence and to expect me," he admitted. "I didn't tell her to run."
"I've heard what you both said, and I think a court would agree that you came sufficiently close to make no difference," Penn-Barkis said. "We record all police priority calls, as a matter of course. Didn't you know? We don't want that privilege being abused. But it isn't only that. You told Royston to allow a false description to go to the press."
Carmichael could say nothing. He couldn't believe Royston had betrayed him, but he must have.
"Oh yes, Royston told me," Penn-Barkis went on. "He believes you've been led astray by being a little in love with the Kahn woman, but I know better, of course. It's not likely that you'd be in love with any woman, is it Carmichael? We know about your relationship with your . . . servant. 'Long-term companion' is what they say in the obituaries, isn't it, about relationships of that nature, when the participants are of the same class." Jack. They knew about Jack. Carmichael shut his eyes for a moment. This meant ruin. Why was death so much easier to face than ruin?
"If you were prosecuted you would both receive a prison sentence, and a rather harsh one." Penn-Barkis steepled his fingers again. "I suppose it's possible that if it were to become a criminal matter you might not be convicted—such cases are notoriously hard to prosecute when nobody complains and there isn't any public indecency. Proof is challenging, and the courts do insist on it. But even if you were to be acquitted, you could hardly continue to live together. Also the general knowledge, or even suspicion, of your proclivities would severely inhibit your career, not to mention your esteem in the eyes of your colleagues. I imagine Sergeant Royston for instance would be rather less eager to work with you if he knew. Sergeant Stebbings too would be disgusted, but then he holds an old-fashioned prejudice against people like you."
Did Stebbings know already? It was general belief at the Yard that Stebbings knew everything anybody knew. He could imagine the look in Royston's eyes, the turning away, classing him with those who molest children, with Normanby and the traffic of Charing Cross Underground.
Penn-Barkis was waiting. "Well, Carmichael? You hold the law so high that nobody can break it with impunity except you?"
"No, sir," Carmichael said, woodenly.
"But you agree you have broken the law when it suited you?"
"Yes, sir," Carmichael said.
"Then I'm sure you'll agree that Kahn did it," Penn-Barkis said.
The devil's bargain was laid out plainly. Carmichael could tell him to go back to hell and take the consequences, but it wouldn't achieve anything. Without Penn-Barkis, without the apparatus of the law, he was nothing, could achieve nothing to bring Normanby to justice. One man alone could not put the Prime Minister in the dock, even for murder. If he held by the truth he would gain nothing but the satisfaction of knowing himself right. It would be a cold comfort when it was all he had to face the future, when he went to prison for abusing his police privilege or for
homosexuality. On the other hand, he could damn himself and live his life, keeping quiet, doing what good he could. On the one hand, Kahn and prison (and justice, he added); on the other, himself, Jack, and his career. It was no choice, but if it was no choice, why was his tongue like lead in his mouth?
"Yes, sir," he said, too quietly.
"Eh?"
"Yes, sir," he repeated.
"Very good. We need men like you in the Force," Penn-Barkis said. "Men who won't rest until a case is solved, but who can let it go if that's what's necessary."
"What about old Lady Thirkie, sir?" Carmichael asked.
Penn-Barkis frowned at him. "That really isn't your business. However, if she's prepared to keep quiet about what she imagines she knows, Izzard will very likely foil a Jewish-terrorist plot to blow her little castle up tonight."
"Thank you for telling me, sir," Carmichael said. He didn't know whether he hoped she would keep quiet as he had when faced with the same choice, or whether she would hold on to her integrity and be blown sky high. He remembered the way she had wept for her son, and expected the latter. He thought of warning her, but he could not. He had given her Izzard. Now she was his first betrayal. How long before they sent him off to blow up brave old ladies?
Penn-Barkis looked at his watch. "My goodness, it's almost six o'clock. Do you have dinner plans, Carmichael?"
"Yes, sir," Carmichael lied once more. The thought of eating with the Chief, of breaking bread with him over their devil's bargain made him feel sick.
"Well I mustn't keep you from them then," Penn-Barkis said. He stood up and put out his hand. Carmichael shook it, automatically, by reflex, not even thinking what he had done until it was over. Then he went down in the elevator, went to the bathroom, and stood there shaking. He did not actually throw up. He drank a little water.
Nobody would kill him. Killing him would raise questions and coercing him was so much easier. Killing him made him a corpse beyond questioning; coercing him gave them a tool, a useful tool to their hand. He remembered a few years ago talking to colleagues in the Milice and the Gestapo over a case of an international smuggling gang, and finding them nice chaps. He had wondered how they could live with themselves and do some of the things they were expected to do. Now he knew. Lady Thirkie. Agnes Timms. He dashed water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. Same old Carmichael, same nice bland English face, no outward changes.
He walked out of the Yard. Stebbings was talking on one of his black telephones. He gave him a nod and a wave as he went by.
Carmichael wanted to go home; he wanted terribly to go home and see Jack, and close the door and shut the world away and find, within his own small space, what security and comfort he could. But there was something he needed to do first.
He walked, leaving the car on the meter. Let the police move it and see it was one of their own. Let Scotland Yard and the Mets argue over it. Now the case was over it wasn't assigned to him any longer. He could still have used it; he didn't want to.
Walking relieved some of his energy. Up Southampton Row, past Russell Square, and Tavistock Square, up through Bloomsbury, passing shops pulling down their shutters for the night, and streetwalkers just beginning their working hours. Several of them solicited him. He looked at their overpainted faces and tightly pulled shirts in revulsion. Even for those who were attracted to women, what a parody of femininity they were. Some of them were very young, and he knew that almost none of them had a choice about their profession. He pitied them, even when they abused him for ignoring them. He passed houses that had once been grand and were now almost abandoned to many tenants or none. The rich had moved on to other parts of London, or to the country, like crabs that leave their shells behind to be inhabited by other fish. A light rain began to fall as he reached King's Cross station; he turned up his collar against it. It should have been dark, he thought, or it should have been raining the way it had been the night he and Royston had gone to Bethnal Green.
A church clock struck seven as he came into Camden Town. There was a rhyme about the church bells of London, but he didn't think Camden Town came into it, unless St. Martins might be there. He thought it was more probably the inappropriately named St. Martins in the Fields down by Fleet Street. After all these years in London, he still didn't really know it. He made his way through the side streets where children were chalking on the pavement and chasing after each other. He thought about Lancashire where he and his brother had played on the moor, damming streams and intimidating sheep. London wasn't good for children. But Lancashire wouldn't be any safer, nowhere would, safety was now in compromise, doing what he was told, making sure he was on the right side not of the law, or of justice, but of expediency.
He knocked on the door. It was a small door, belonging to a small house that belonged to a landlord. Who knew what pressures had been put on Royston, economic and otherwise. It was Elvira who opened the door, as usual. "Who's there?" he heard Royston calling from inside.
"Hello, Elvira," he said.
"Hello, Uncle Carmichael," she said, then called, "It's Uncle Carmichael!"
Royston came to the door and stood behind the child. "I'm sorry," he said.
Carmichael ignored him. "It's you I've come to see," he said to Elvira. "The case is over."
"So you're going to give me a present?" she asked, wriggling with excitement.
"The Chief asked me directly," Royston went on.
"If I hadn't done it, you wouldn't have had anything to tell them," Carmichael said, without looking up at him. He fished in his pocket. "Here, Elvira, do you know what this is?" He tossed it to her. The coin flashed as it caught the light, first the King's head and then the perky robin, as she caught it.
She examined it for a moment. "It's a farthing," she said, in deep disappointment. It was the shiny new farthing he had picked up from beside Brown's body.
"Do you know what it's worth?" Carmichael asked.
"Four-farthings-make-a-penny," she recited, in the singsong tone of a nursery rhyme. "A quarter of a penny."
"And what can you buy for a farthing?" Carmichael asked.
"I really didn't mean to—" Royston said.
"Not very much," Elvira said.
"Whatever you meant, you heard what Agnes Timms said, sergeant," Carmichael said, over her head to Royston. "You knew Kahn was innocent as well as I did."
"What did you find out today?" Royston asked.
Carmichael looked at him for the first time, and saw only the same honest Sergeant Royston he had always known. He sighed. "I found out that Kahn did it, whatever the evidence looks like and however much of it I had. I found out that I'm the kind of person who can compromise and keep on going. And last, but definitely not least, I found out that a farthing doesn't buy very much."
"Sir—" Royston protested.
"Here, Elvira," he said, and slipped her a pound note. "You'll find that buys a little more. Good night, sergeant."
Carmichael waved once to the child and walked away up the dirty London street.
Jo Walton, Farthing
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