The Fourth Bear полностью

“I’m very relieved to hear it.” Sherman Bartholomew shook their hands with a firm grip and offered them a seat in his office. He was that rare thing in politics, a freethinking and radical MP who wasn’t sidelined by his party to the anonymity of the back benches. He was an asset to the city and took his job seriously. The constituency hours took place once a week in the council offices, and Jack and Mary had managed to jump the line of disgruntled bears and other assorted citizens who sat grumbling in the waiting room. Bartholomew, in keeping with the strongest parliamentary tradition, shunned the possibility of any kind of scandal and agreed to see them straightaway. “Perhaps you might tell us what you know about Goldilocks, Mr. Bartholomew?”

He didn’t answer and instead drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. “It’s a situation of the utmost delicacy,” he said without making eye contact.

“Was she investigating you about something?”

“No.”

“Extortion?”

“No!”

“Blackmail?”

“No, no—it was nothing like that.” He stood up and paced nervously back and forth behind his chair.

“Sir,” said Jack, this time more forcefully, “I have to tell you that this morning we positively identified the remains of a woman we found up at SommeWorld.”

Bartholomew looked at Jack with a pained expression. “Goldilocks?”

“Yes.”

“I need to sit down, if you don’t mind,” he mumbled, and sat heavily in his chair.

“We know,” continued Jack, “that you dined with her the evening before she vanished. If you have been involved in any sort of parliamentary impropriety that Goldilocks was investigating, it will almost certainly come out in the fullness of time.”

He looked at them both and rubbed his forehead. “We were lovers,” he said in a quiet voice.

“What?” exclaimed Jack with undisguised astonishment. He was expecting any explanation but this one.

“Lovers,” repeated Bartholomew. “Goldilocks and I. For more than a year now.”

“Wait, wait,” said Jack in a state of some confusion. “You were, to great fanfare, Westminster’s first openly gay MP and have remained a vociferous mouthpiece for all kinds of minority-rights issues for the past twenty-five years, and now you’re telling me… you’re straight?”

Bartholomew covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders shook with a silent sob.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he said miserably, “living a lie. I’ll be ruined and disgraced if this gets into the papers. My parliamentary career will be finished and my hard-fought pink credentials in tatters.”

“What about Douglas?” asked Mary, equally shocked by Bartholomew’s confession. “Your long-term relationship and much-publicized adoption of two children has always seemed so… perfect.”

“I did it for appearance’s sake,” he mumbled sadly. “Doug knows what I am and will stand by me if any of this gets out.”

Jack and Mary looked at each other as Bartholomew massaged his temples and stared at the blotter on his desk, as though the dark smudges might reveal some sort of answer to his dilemma. He blew his nose and tried to compose himself.

“Mr. Bartholomew,” said Jack after a pause, “it won’t be the first time I’ve had to investigate a potential crime that has involved sensitive issues of a strictly personal nature. But you must understand that our prime consideration at this point is to find out what happened to Goldilocks.”

“Potential crime?” he said, looking up at him. “What do you mean?”

“We don’t know precisely how she died.”

“Are you saying she might have been… murdered?”

“No, I’m saying we don’t know precisely how she died. I need to know more about the circumstances surrounding Miss Hatchett’s death before we can decide one way or another. I’m not here to ruin anyone’s career.”

Jack meant it. Bartholomew was a good MP, and Jack didn’t want to see him ousted over something as meaningless as his utterly orthodox sexual orientation. Bartholomew served Reading well and represented quite a few of the nursery figures that Jack worked with. In many ways, the concerns of Jack’s were Bartholomew’s, too.

“I think I knew deep down something terrible had happened to her,” said Bartholomew unhappily. “It was unlike her not to be on the end of the phone. The police’s involvement was predictable, too—but I must confess I was expecting a more—how shall I put it?—conventional branch of the service. No offense meant.”

“None taken. There appears to be a Nursery Crime angle to this.”

“Ah,” said Bartholomew, “bears. I knew my support of them might be my undoing.”

“Bears?” echoed Jack. “I never mentioned anything about bears.”

“I think you’ll find that Goldilocks and bears are inextricably linked, Inspector. It was bears that brought us together, in July of last year. Since all the anthropomorphized animals in Reading are my constituents, I have a duty to promote their interests in Parliament—I met Goldilocks when she came to my office to press for a law to allow lethal ursine self-defense.”

“The ‘right to arm bears’ controversy?”