A Clubbable Woman (17 page)

‘Of course. But what are you going to do?’

‘I want to clear out their, his, bedroom. Of Mummy’s things, I mean. I’ve been meaning to do it, he doesn’t seem to have the will, and it’s more my job, I think. All her clothes and everything. I must do it now. He’s been sleeping in the spare room, you see, but when you turned up last night, he moved back in. I think that’s why he was up so early this morning.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Antony. ‘I didn’t realize.’

‘Why should you? Anyway, I’d like to do it. I know he’s been through her papers and that, not that there was much. But the police asked, in case there was anything there to help. So if I can get rid of the rest …’

‘Of course. Well, let’s be on our way. I haven’t really tasted your cooking yet, have I? I mean, I did in fact make my own breakfast. Not at all what I am used to.’

Jenny grinned, that wide, slightly toothy grin which she tried so hard to avoid, and which filled her whole face with an animation and glow that turned Antony’s heart upside down.

He laughed back at her and they left the pub hand in hand.

Dalziel looked meaningfully at Pascoe, but said nothing. Pascoe felt the cold beer fill his mouth and listened to the landlord’s radio distantly above playing ‘White Christmas’.

It was twelve o’clock.

‘Time for another,’ he said.

Gwen Evans wasn’t being very helpful. At least, not in any sense that had any bearing on the case.

But Pascoe found her a great deal of help in restoring his rather worn manly pride. She was not a coquette, he had decided. She did not deliberately set out to make herself interesting to men. There was nothing self-conscious about the way she moved, stood, sat down, or talked to a man. There was nothing suggestive about her, she gave no hints of interest or invitation. She was dressed in a sloppy brown sweater and an old pair of slacks.

Whoever else she might be expecting, he had thought on arrival, it surely can’t be her lover.

But the overall effect of two minutes in her presence had been to fill him with an all powerful sense of her sex.

The beer helped, he assured himself. Three pints heightened most men’s receptivity.

But what the hell! he added. I don’t just want her. I like her! She’s a nice woman. A nice, pleasant, unfairly sexy woman.

But she wasn’t any help at all as far as Evans was concerned.

Yes, she knew he was jealous of Connon.

No, there was nothing in his suspicion.

No, there hadn’t been anything odd about the previous Saturday, either about her husband or about her own behaviour.

She repeated what he had heard already from the lips of Evans. She had decided that her friends had forgotten to pick her up. Had set off to catch the bus. Missed it. Dropped into the local, the Blue Bell, to get some cigarettes. Stayed to have a drink.

No, she hadn’t talked to anyone in there. It had been quite crowded, but she had sat quietly in the corner with a drink.

No, she could not remember who had served her.

‘And what the hell business of yours is all this anyway, Sergeant?’

She spoke without animosity and Pascoe smiled at her apologetically.

‘None, of course, in all probability. We never know what’s our business, and what isn’t, till we get the answers.’

He could afford not to press, he thought. All he had to do to check on her story was to ask at the pub. If she’d been there, no matter how quietly, someone would remember. You couldn’t go around looking like Gwen Evans and hope to remain anonymous.

‘Would you like a drink, Sergeant? Or a coffee?’

The beer was just beginning to turn a little sour in his stomach, and his bladder felt very full. Coffee would help one, but not the other.

‘Coffee would be very nice,’ he said. ‘May I use your bathroom?’

She rose from the furry white armchair which he was sure was her choice. The thing he was sitting in felt hard and lumpy, almost certainly an Evans family hand-me-down.

‘First left up the stairs,’ she said in the hallway and went into the kitchen.

He had just shut the door, locking it from ingrained habit, when the front-door bell rang.

With a longing look at the gleaming white bowl, he hastily opened the door again and stepped on to the landing.

Through the railings overlooking the small entrance hall, he saw Gwen appear from the kitchen. She didn’t even glance up the stairs.

Not much sign of guilt there, he thought. Perhaps it’s just the baker.

He heard the door being opened. All he could see was Gwen’s back from the waist down. It was a sight worth dwelling on, but not much use for present purposes. He wanted to see faces if this were Connon.

‘Hello Gwen.’

A man’s voice. Familiar. But not Connon’s.

‘Hello Marcus,’ said Gwen evenly, with just a touch of surprise. ‘I’m afraid you’ve missed Arthur. In fact I think you’ve probably missed the coach as well.’

There was a pause.

‘The coach? Oh, damn. I’d forgotten. No, I’m not playing this week. I’d forgotten it was an away game.’

‘Anything I can do?’

‘No. I’ll see him tonight. It was just that, well, I heard he’d been down at the police station this morning. I suppose I’m just being nosey, but I was worried. It’s not nice this business. Anyway, I’d had a drink in the Club, that’s where I heard. They were talking, you know how it is. So I thought I’d call in before Arthur got down there, just to see what was what. And to warn him the long knives were out. Some of them are like a lot of old women.’

‘Thanks, Marcus. But don’t worry. It was nothing at all really.’

It would be diplomatic, I suppose, thought Pascoe, to stay up here till she’d disposed of Marcus. If he sees me here, trouble will be confirmed. And if he is more nosey than friendly, then the rumours will fly. But, as Bruiser might say, if God had wanted me to be a diplomat, he’d have painted pinstripes down my backside. Which he didn’t. So here goes.

He stepped back into the bathroom, pressed the little gleaming chrome lever, and moved hurriedly away from the sound of rushing water.

Gwen looked as if she were about to shut the door.

‘Mr Felstead,’ said Pascoe with a note of surprise more genuine, he felt, than anything Dalziel could produce. ‘How pleasant to meet you again. Not playing today? You haven’t been dropped, I hope?’

God, it sounded bad. Perhaps he wasn’t much better than Dalziel.

‘No, I’m not, Sergeant. But not dropped,’ he added with a grin which made him look like the prototype jovial monk. ‘You’ve got to die to be dropped from our Fourths, and then it’s best to be cremated just to be on the safe side. No, I’m retired, temporarily at least. I’ll leave it to the young men, like yourself. Do you play?’

‘Not rugger. No, I used to kick a rounder ball in a less violent game, but now I’m kept far too busy.’

‘Even on Saturday afternoons?’ asked Marcus, raising his eyebrows quizzically in Gwen’s direction.

‘Even then,’ agreed Pascoe. ‘Though it is not without its compensations.’

Gwen yawned unconcernedly at the compliment. From the kitchen came a high whistle.

‘Coffee,’ she said. ‘Marcus, would you care to step in and take a cup?’

‘Of kindness yet, for the sake of auld lang syne,’ ran absurdly through Pascoe’s mind.

‘No, I won’t, thank you, Gwen. I’ll get along. Cheerio. Cheerio, Sergeant.’

Pascoe followed Gwen into the kitchen.

‘He didn’t seem very interested in why I was here, Mrs Evans.’

She heaped a teaspoonful of instant coffee into a couple of beakers and poured a steaming jet of water on to it.

‘No? Why should he be?’

‘Because he seemed fairly interested in the police when he arrived.’

Silly twit, he thought as she turned to him, faintly amused.

‘So you had a listen, did you? Well, well. It must be second nature.’

He smiled back and shook his head.

‘I’m sorry. But it’s not second nature. No.’

‘No?’

‘No. It required an act of will. In fact, now you’ve rumbled me, may I, would you mind if I postponed the coffee just a few moments more?’

He heard her laughing with real amusement as he went up the stairs once more.

Dalziel wasn’t getting much co-operation either. He seemed to have been elected the most avoidable man in the clubhouse. Willie Noolan gave him a distant wave; Ted Morgan did an almost military about-turn when he spotted him and disappeared through the door; even Jacko Roberts seemed to consider his offer of a drink with more sardonic suspicion than usual.

‘You’ve been found out,’ he said.

‘Found out?’

‘That’s right. The myth of rugby veteran, dirty story teller, hail-fellow-well-met Bruiser Dalziel’s been knackered and they’re seeing you as what you are.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A nasty, nosey, nobody’s-friend copper.’

Dalziel finished his drink and stood up. Peter Hurst had just come into the room, dressed in his track suit though there was some time yet till kick-off.

‘Fat bugger,’ said Jacko to the policeman’s retreating back. Then he wondered if Dalziel had heard, and wished he didn’t care.

Hurst doesn’t look as if he’s very delighted to see me, either, thought Dalziel.

He had always thought he had no illusions about the artificiality of people’s reactions to him, but some must have taken root unaware. Tender young plants as yet, and all the more vulnerable to sudden blasts of cold.

‘I’ve got that letter,’ he said as jovially as he could manage.

‘Oh yes.’

‘Yes. Shall we go into the committee room?’

Hurst looked reluctant to go anywhere.

‘Look, Superintendent,’ he began.

‘Andy,’ interrupted Dalziel. ‘We’re in the Club, aren’t we? This is unofficial.’

‘That’s it,’ said Hurst. ‘What I said to Connie last night was unofficial as well, between the two of us. I’d no idea you were listening.’

‘Listen, Peter,’ said Dalziel sympathetically, ‘if you’ve got any information, you’ve got to give it to me. It’s your duty.’

‘Suddenly it’s become official again, has it?’

Hurst’s voice had risen a little, but he dropped it again as he realized that several pairs of eyes were watching them with interest.

Dalziel’s mind gave the equivalent of a shrug.

These people never realize that I can stand a row better than any of them, he thought. They think a bit of sound and fury against me confirms something. It’s like water off a duck’s back.

‘Mr Hurst,’ he said formally, ‘I have reason to believe you can help me with an enquiry. Now you can do that now. Or you can do it tonight. Or you can do it next week. But be sure of one thing. If you want to be out on that pitch when the referee blows his whistle, you’d better do it now.’

‘Andy. Peter. For heaven’s sake! Remember where you are!’

It was Noolan, attracted by the waves of interest emanating from all sides of the room.

‘The committee room?’ said Dalziel with a smile.

He put his arm over Hurst’s shoulder as they went through the door, but removed it before the door was quite closed.

‘Now, Mr Hurst,’ he said. ‘You wanted to look at the letter Jenny Connon received the day before yesterday. I have that letter here. Before I show it to you, however, I want to know your reason for wanting to see it.’

Hurst looked angrily at him, then questioningly at Noolan who had followed them in.

The bank manager nodded.

‘Tell him, Peter.’

‘So,’ said Dalziel. ‘Another in the plot? Don’t say you’ve taken to concealing information as well, Willie?’

‘No, Andy. Peter saw me last night after you’d left. Peter. Tell him.’

Hurst played with the zip on his track-suit top, moving it up and down.

Like a nervous tart on her first job, thought Dalziel. “Will the man never start?

‘It’s nothing really,’ said Hurst, it’s just that a few days ago I heard one of our members say something about Connie. It was just after we’d heard about Mary. We’d been saying how awful it was, how sorry we were for Connie. And this chap said we might well be sorry for Connie, but not to overdo it. He said that there were things about Connie that he wouldn’t like his daughter to know.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing really. We’d all had a few drinks. Someone said there were things about himself he wouldn’t like his wife to know, we all laughed and went off happy. It kind of broke the gloomy atmosphere.’

‘Exit on a joke. Is that
all!’

‘No. On Wednesday after the selection committee meeting, I realized I’d left my fountain pen in here. I came in to get it and found this same person using it. He finished off quickly as I came in, apologized when he realized it was my pen, and that was an end to it. But I got a distinct impression he didn’t want me to see what he was writing. He folded it up and tucked it away very quickly.’

‘Again, is that all? It’s not much, is it? And why do you want to see the letter?’

Hurst obviously did not like what was happening. But he feels he ought to dislike it even more than he does, thought Dalziel. Jesus, it’s all do-it-yourself public relations now. Everyone’s sweating on their image.

‘Whatever he was writing,’ said Hurst slowly, ‘he was writing in block capitals. I saw that much.’

‘One block capital looks much like another, upside down, from a distance,’ sneered Dalziel. is that all?’

‘No. It would be written with my pen, you see, if it was that letter. And that day my pen was filled with green ink. I’d run out and borrowed some from my boy. You know what kids are. Anything exotic. It happened to be green.’

Carefully Dalziel reached into his inside pocket and took from it a large envelope. Out of this he drew a Cellophane packet. Framed in it they could see a letter. He held it up to the light to give a clearer view.

The ink was black.

Hurst sighed deeply.

‘I’m glad,’ he said.

‘Who was it you saw?’ asked Dalziel.

‘Why? Is that necessary,’ he asked, turning to Noolan.

‘You’d have named him if he seemed guilty. It seems odd not to do so when he is innocent. Eh, Willie?’

‘It was Arthur Evans that Peter saw. We heard he was down at the station this morning. Peter wondered …’