A Clubbable Woman (4 page)

‘You should have seen him, Pascoe. He went round their cover like a downhill skier round a line of snowmen. And he was a big lad, mark you. Still is, of course. But even then. Not one of your bloody Welsh dwarfs, but a good solid-built English fly-half. How we roared! He’d have captained the Lions if we’d been selectors.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Pascoe with the resigned condescension of one certain of the intellectual superiority of Association Football.

‘Graceful, too. Ran upright. Always looking for the quickest way to the line. God, he found it that day. He was picked for the final trial, of course. Nearest thing to a certainty since Lily Jones left Crown Street. Then bang! his ankle went. The week before. No one’s fault. He was overtaken by a loose scrum. Never afraid to mix it, was Connie. Solid defender, sharp attacker. But he never came again after that. Played for another eight years. No difficulty in holding his place in the club. Stood up for the County a dozen times. But never sniffed at a cap again. But he was a great runner with the ball, a great player.’

He nodded two or three times and smiled faintly as though at some pleasant memory.

‘A great player.’

‘Then he could hardly commit a murder, could he?’ said Pascoe, hoping by this irony to recall his superior to the realities of their work.

‘No. Probably not. Or not one like this. He’d use his head, that one. Which,’ added Dalziel, standing up and walking to the window, ‘is what you should do, Pascoe, before wrapping up another of your little ironies for me.’

Pascoe refused to be squashed.

‘Perhaps he is using his head, sir. Perhaps he is, in the sporting idiom, selling us a dummy.’

Dalziel flung up the window with a ripping sound from the parts where the paint had fused, and let in a solid cube of icy air which immediately expanded to fit the room.

‘No one ever sold me a dummy. Point yourself at the man and bugger the ball, you can’t go wrong.’

‘But which man?’ said Pascoe.

‘No,’ said Dalziel, slapping his thigh with a crack which made Pascoe wince, ‘at this stage the question is, which bloody ball? Is that enigmatic enough for your scholarship, eh?’

Pascoe had grown used to jokes about his degree when a constable, but Dalziel was the only one who hung his wit on it now.

The trouble is, he thought, looking at the broad slope of the back whose bulk stopped the light but not the draught, the trouble is, deep down he believes that everyone loves him. He thinks he’s bloody irresistible.

‘What did you make of him last night anyway?’

‘Not much. That doctor of his had pumped him full of dope and was hovering around like a guardian angel when I got there.’

Dalziel snorted.

‘At least you saw him. He was tucked up in bed by the time I arrived. I’d have liked a go at him while the iron was hot.’

‘Yes, sir. The early bird …’

‘Only if it knows what it’s all about, Pascoe.’

Pascoe did not let even the ghost of a smile appear on his lips. He went on speaking.

‘In any case, the iron wasn’t all that hot at eleven. She’d been dead at least three hours, possibly five. The room temperature seems to be a rather uncertain factor. Signs of a big fire, but the place was like an ice-box by the time we got there. That was a sharp frost that set in last night.’

‘Bloody science. All it does is give us reasons for being imprecise. I can manage that without logarithms.’

‘The cause of death’s a bit more exact, isn’t it, sir?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Dalziel rippled through the papers scattered on the desk before him. Pascoe tried to show none of the offence this lack of organization caused him.

‘Here we are. Skull fracture … bone splinters into frontal lobes … blow from a metal implement, probably cylindrical… administered with great force to the centre of forehead … perhaps long enough to permit a two-handed grip. That’s a great help. Found anything yet, have they?”No, sir.’

‘I should bloody well think not, eh? Not if you knew and I didn’t. Where is this man, anyway?’

Pascoe pushed back his stiffly laundered white cuffs to glance at his watch.

‘The car went for him half an hour ago.’

‘Waiting for him to finish breakfast, I expect. Hearty, I hope. He’ll need his strength.’

Pascoe raised his eyebrows.

‘I thought you said …’

‘I didn’t think he’d done it? But I might be wrong. It’s been known. Twice. But whether he did it or not, if it wasn’t done casually by an intruder, he’ll probably know why it was done. He might not know he knows. But know he will.’

‘Have we dismissed the possibility of an intruder, sir?’

‘We? We? You’re not my bloody doctor. No, I haven’t. But if you look at your bloody scientifically based reports, you’ll see that she seems to have been sitting very much at her ease.’

‘Could it have been from behind? With, say, a narrow-headed hammer. That way you’d get the force …’

‘Pish and cobbles, Pascoe! Didn’t you see the height of that chair-back? And she was sprawling in it at her ease. You’d need arms like an orang-outang. No, I think it was someone she knew pretty well.’

‘And how narrow does that make the field?’

Dalziel grinned lecherously.

‘Not as narrow as you’d think. Twenty years ago there were a hell of a lot of people down at the Rugby Club who knew Mary James pretty well. I’ve had a bit of a nuzzle there myself. And that kind of acquaintance doesn’t get forgotten all that quickly.’

‘You make her sound like a professional.’

‘Don’t get me wrong, son. She wasn’t that. Not even an enthusiastic amateur. She just liked the gay life.

There’s one in every club. Where the booze is strongest, the dancing wildest. The girl who doesn’t flinch when the songs get dirty. Who can even join in. It’s the gay crowd she likes, not the slap and tickle in the dark corners. But her image demands she has a large following. And she’s bound to be overtaken from time to time.’

‘Was Connon an overtaker?’

‘Oh no. He was taken over. Your old stager begins to smell danger when the gaiety girl passes the quarter-century with no strong ties. Your young lad’s easy meat, though. Easily frightened too.’

‘Frightened?’

‘They got married at a dead run. Their girl appeared eight months later. Premature, they called it.’

Pascoe listened with distaste to the rasp of laughter which followed.

‘But you’ll find out all about that, my lad. Have a walk down there this lunchtime. They always get a good crowd in. Have a chat with one or two of them. See if anything’s known. They’ll all be eager to natter. Here, I’ve scribbled out a list of who’s who down there. It’s not definitive by any means, but it’ll tell you whether you’re talking to a mate of his - or hers - or not.’

He passed over a scruffy sheet of foolscap, one corner of which looked as if it had been used for lighting a cigarette.

‘You’re best at this stage. If we haven’t sorted this lot out in a couple of days, I’ll drop in for a social drink myself. The tension’ll have gone by then and they’ll all imagine they’re pumping me for information.’

Whereas you pump stuff into barrels, not out of them, thought Pascoe.

Dalziel turned to the window again and took a couple of deep breaths. His fingers drummed impatiently on the sill.

‘Anything in from house-to-house yet?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘They’ll all be in bed. Christ. Bloody Sundays!’

There was a long pause. Then …

‘Here he comes,’ said Dalziel, slamming the window shut with even more violence than he had used to open it. ‘Anything you want here, laddie?’

‘Well, no; I mean yes,’ said Pascoe in puzzlement.

‘Grab it and go, then. What’s the matter? Did you hope to see the master at work?’

‘No. But I thought that as you know him - I mean, you are a vice-president of the Rugby Club and something of a friend …’

‘A friend?’ said the superintendent, twisting his fingers in one pouchy cheek so that his big mouth was dragged sinisterly out of shape. ‘You’ve jumped to conclusions, Sergeant. Perhaps I better had let you watch the master some time. He’s a great player, but I never said I liked him. Nor he me. Oh no, I never said I liked him. Push off now. We’ll save you for later if need be.’

Quickly Pascoe gathered a couple of files and some papers together and made for the door. There was a knock and it opened just as he reached it.

‘Mr Connon, sir,’ said the uniformed sergeant standing there.

‘How are you, Mr Connon?’ said Pascoe looking at the pale-faced man who stood a pace or two behind the sergeant.

Solid. Yes, he looked solid all right. Still firm. No flabbiness in the face. Just the paleness of fatigue. But what is it that has drained your blood, Mr Connon? Grief? Or …

‘Please come in, Mr Connon.’ The loud voice broke his thoughts. He glanced round. Dalziel, his face a mask of sympathy so obviously spurious that Pascoe shuddered, was advancing with his hand outstretched. He stood aside to let Connon enter, then stepped out into the corridor leaving them together.

‘He’s like Henry Irving,’ he said to the sergeant, shaking his head.

‘Which one?’

‘Which one? I don’t know. Perhaps both. I’ll be in here if I’m wanted.’

And for all his resentment at his dismissal, he found he wished that he had been wanted.

‘It might be nice to see the master at work.’

The sergeant turned round, but Pascoe had closed the door of his temporary office behind him with a bang.

The sergeant went back to his desk whistling, ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’.

It was, after all, Sunday.

‘Sorry to get you out of bed, Mrs Fernie,’ said Detective- Constable Edwards.

‘Don’t apologize,’ interjected Fernie. ‘I told her this might happen last night.’

‘Last night? Why was that, Mr Fernie?’

‘Well, I happened to notice your cars pull up outside Connon’s house …’

‘Happened to notice!’ sneered Alice Fernie, pulling her nylon housecoat closer round her. ‘You must have been stood at that window for half an hour or more.’

Fernie started to reply but the constable interrupted them.

‘The important point to ask both of you is, did you notice anything earlier on?’

‘Anything? What kind of thing? How much earlier?’ asked Alice.

‘Anything at all concerned with the Connons or their house. Any time yesterday.’

‘Well, no. I was over there in the afternoon …’

‘Over there?’ The constable leaned forward.

‘Did you know the Connons well, then?’

‘Mary Connon, I know - knew her very well. We were friends,’ said Alice; then, ‘We were friends,’ she repeated softly to herself, as though the import of the comment was just beginning to sink in.

‘And how did Mrs Connon seem to you then?’

‘Oh fine, fine. Just the same as ever. Nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘Did she say anything that struck you as unusual?’

‘No.’

‘Were there any phone calls? Any callers?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘What time did you leave?’

‘Shortly after four. I don’t know exactly. I came back to get Dave’s tea ready.’

‘What were Mrs Connon’s last words?’

‘Last words?’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound … what did Mrs Connon say as you left?’

‘Well, nothing really. Cheerio. And something about getting Mr Connon’s tea ready, if he got home in time for it.’

‘What did she mean by that?’

‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘I’m not sure …’

‘Come off it, Alice,’ said Fernie. ‘She meant that if he didn’t get home on time he’d get his own tea. She was a stickler for that, you’ve often told me. And he didn’t get home on time either.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I saw him. About half past six. And I’ll tell you something else.’

‘Dave!’ said Alice with real annoyance in her voice.

‘What’s that?’

‘He was drunk. Could hardly stand.’

The constable scribbled assiduously in his notebook.

‘You’re certain of that?’

‘Dave!’ said his wife again.

‘Oh yes,’ said Fernie, looking at his wife. She ignored his glance.

‘If you’re finished with me, I think I’ll go back to bed,’ said Alice, standing up so that her housecoat fell open revealing her thin nightdress.

‘Thank you very much, Mrs Fernie,’ said Edwards. ‘You’ve been most helpful. We might want to see you again.’

‘I’ll be ready.’

She went out, leaving the constable smiling and her husband scowling.

‘Now, Mr Fernie. What exactly happened when you met Mr Connon last night?’

‘So that’s all you can tell me, Mr Connon?’

‘That’s right, Superintendent.’

‘You got home about half past six. How positive is that time?’

‘I don’t know. Pretty approximate.’

‘That’s a help. You say the television was on when you stuck your head into the lounge?’

‘That’s right. I see what you mean. There was some variety show. Dancers, girls, not much on. Dancing behind a singer. Big youth, rather Italianate, singing something about flowers.’

Dalziel smiled sardonically.

‘So you were out for four hours?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Nasty that. What’d your doctor say?’

‘I don’t know what his diagnosis was. He just seemed concerned with getting me to bed.’

‘You’ll be seeing him again?’

‘Of course.’

‘I wonder if you’d mind if our man cast his eye over you while you’re down here? It might save your McManus a crisis of conscience.’

Connon smiled wanly.

‘Again I see what you mean. I have no objection.’

‘Good. Good. But first, there’s one thing that puzzles me. You felt sick in the kitchen. You end up by passing out on your bed. Why not be sick downstairs? The kitchen-sink. Or if your notions of hygiene are so strong, why not use the downstairs toilet? I noticed you had one.’

Connon spoke the words of his reply very slowly and distinctly as if learned by rote from a linguaphone record.

‘I did not wish to disturb my wife.’

Dalziel crossed his legs cumbersomely and started prying into his nostrils with thumb and forefinger.

‘Tell me, Mr Connon, Connie, I always think of you as Connie, do you mind?’