A Clubbable Woman (8 page)

‘I mean escaping. If he did it.’

‘If he did it? What makes you say that? You should watch what you say, Maisie. That kind of talk could get you into trouble.’

Alice found herself speaking with greater vehemence than she’d intended, but once more Maisie greeted the affront with a smile.

‘Well, if I’m in trouble, I won’t be the only one. There’ll be lots of company,’ she said smugly.

Alice’s heart sank.

‘Who do you mean?’

‘Why, your Dave for one.’

Oh God, she thought. Was he still at it? In spite of the row last night? He’d say it to someone who mattered sooner or later. And then, then the law would have its course with David Fernie. Alice knew nothing of the law of slander. But she knew how much compensation she herself would demand for being falsely accused of murder.

She tried to speak casually.

‘Dave? What’s he been saying to you?’

To you. Maisie Curtis. Queen gossip of the Woodfield Estate. Which meant of the town.

‘To me? Nothing. Your Dave doesn’t pass the time of day with me. No, it was our Stanley he was talking to.’

This was worse. Maisie Curtis’s Stanley was a direct channel to the Rugby Club. The only one Dave had, probably. And, equally probably, he’d know it. There’d be gossip enough at the Club. Bound to be. Suppose Stanley, young, bumptious, keen to impress … lived nearly opposite the murder-house … next to a key witness.

Witness! To what?

Like that time in Bolton. That was a few years ago, but her memory was longer than her husband’s. The law had been brought in then, but only to ask why anyone should have wanted to break Fernie’s jaw and kick three of his ribs in.

But Mr Connon was a different kettle of fish. It wouldn’t be the law of the jungle this time. Gossip was one thing. Innuendo, knowing winks, impudent questionings. But someone saying he
knew
was quite different; someone saying he was certain.

Dave Fernie, big Dave Fernie. He knew. He always bloody well knew. Not even God Almighty was as certain about things as Dave Fernie.

‘What’s Dave been saying, then?’ she asked as calmly as she could, shredding her ticket with meticulous care.

‘Well, according to my Stanley, your Dave says he knows how he, Mr Connon that is, killed his wife. And he knows why.’

Maisie nodded as affirmatively at this point as if she had been Fernie himself.

Soul-mates, thought Alice. They’re soul-mates. Born under the same star.

‘Was that all?’

‘All? Wasn’t it enough? It quite upset our Stanley, it did. That’s how I got to hear of it. I could see something was bothering him. And he’s not been in the best of health lately, had a few days off work with one of his tummy upsets. So I asked him and he told. He’s always looked up to Mr Connon, you see. Well, I mean, they all do, down at that Club. He’s on the selection committee as well, you see.’

Alice didn’t see, because she’d stopped listening. To think they said that it was women who had the vicious tongues. There’d been one or two near things since Bolton. One or two unpleasant moments. One or two lost friends.

But this could mean the law.

‘Alice! Are you not getting off, then?’

The pressure had gone from her flank. Maisie was standing in the aisle, looking down at her.

‘Yes, of course.’

They set off down the main road together, Maisie chattering away about other matters now. She was unoffendable herself and never considered for one moment that anyone could be hurt or angered by anything she might say.

After fifty yards they turned left into Boundary Drive.

It was quieter here, away from the main course of traffic. The private side of the road was lined with trees which, even though stripped for winter, added something to the peacefulness of the scene. The trees which should have been on the other side of the road had been swept away at one fell swoop, without warning, when the Corporation bulldozers had moved in at the end of the war. An act of civic vandalism, the residents had called it, complaining even more when they realized they would have to pay road charges now the council was making up the road-surface. But the trees had gone beyond recall, and their absence accentuated as much as the architecture the differences between the old and the new.

Still, the trees and the pleasant outlook over to the more solid and architecturally varied private houses had made Alice glad that they had been offered a house here rather than in the middle of the estate.

Up till now.

Maisie’s voice suddenly rose so sharply that it penetrated the confused web of her own thoughts.

‘That’s them, isn’t it, Alice? In that car. I thought I recognized them.’

Her eyes focused ahead. A black saloon had just driven by them. She remembered seeing it in the cemetery car park. She watched with trepidation as it slowed down further along the street. For a moment of heart-sinking shock, she thought it had pulled over to stop in front of her own house. But the driver was merely giving himself enough room to swing round to the left, over the pavement and into the Connons’ drive.

‘I wonder what they’re after?’ asked Maisie, increasing her pace.

Alice didn’t wonder. She didn’t care. As long as they weren’t after Dave. She’d have to talk to him again. She’d have to make it quite clear that he was worrying her silly with his slanderous gossip. She’d have to get him to realize that he could get himself into very serious trouble with these terrible accusations against Mr Connon. Very serious trouble.

Unless …

It was curious that the thought had never entered her mind before.

Unless they were true.

She began to lengthen her stride to keep up with Maisie Curtis.

‘“Dear Miss Connon,

‘It must be terrible for you to find that your mother is dead and to realize your father is a murderer. Nothing can bring your mother back. But it may be some comfort to you to know that the man you think is your father is not. Your mother married him only so that her baby (you) would have a name. What a name! It is a murderer’s name. Think yourself lucky he is nothing to do with you.’”

‘No signature.’

‘Let me see,’ said Dalziel.

Pascoe handed over the letter. The superintendent took it carefully by the same corner that Pascoe had used and glanced down at the writing.

‘At least it’s clean,’ he said.

‘That’s little consolation,’ said Connon, who was standing with his arm protectively over Jenny’s shoulders. To Pascoe the girl did not look particularly in need of protection. In fact she had the same rather dangerously angry look he’d seen wrinkle her brow after the funeral.

‘Let’s get this clear …’ Dalziel began.

Connon interrupted him.

‘I presume that means you want me to repeat myself.’

Clever sod, thought Dalziel. Clever-clever. I’m beginning to hope you did it, clever Connie.

‘No, I’ll repeat you,’ he said. ‘You just confirm. It’s a question of making sure we’re talking the same language. Now, you came straight back after the funeral arriving … when?’

Connon looked at his daughter.

‘Quarter to twelve,’ she said. ‘I put the radio on. There was a time-check.’

Then she added, almost apologetically, ‘I wanted a noise in the house. Something lively.’

Pascoe looked at her sympathetically. She didn’t avoid his gaze but stared back till he looked away.

‘You picked up the letter as you came in, but didn’t open it immediately?’

‘No,’ said Jenny. ‘I thought it’d be just another condolence note or card.’

‘Anyway, you made a pot of tea, brought it through to your father who was sitting in here, then you opened your letter?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And?’

‘And what? I showed it to Daddy.’

‘And I,’ cut in Connon, ‘decided we ought to get in touch with you instantly.’

‘Quite right too, sir.’

‘Well, Superintendent, what next?’

Dalziel looked around with the kind of heavily underlined hesitance that could be clearly marked in the back row of the gods. Pascoe watched in awe.

He invites them to join in his games, he thought. That’s the secret of his success. He reduces it all to the level of a pantomime.

‘I wonder,’ said Dalziel, ‘I wonder if I could perhaps have a word with you alone, sir?

Connon looked doubtful.

If he’s not careful, he’ll be playing. If he’s not playing already.

‘My sergeant can be taking a statement from Miss Connon while we’re talking,’ added Dalziel.

That’ll be nice, thought Pascoe, trying to keep any trace of the thought off his face.

Jenny Connon did not seem to think it would be particularly nice at all and made little effort to keep her thoughts off her face. But she turned readily enough and went to the door.

‘We’ll go into the lounge, then,’ she said. Connon nodded. Dalziel wondered if he detected a hint of relief.

The chair had been moved, Pascoe noticed. He didn’t suppose anyone else had sat in it since Mary Connon had relaxed to watch television on Saturday night. Then he laughed inwardly and changed his mind. The chair probably hadn’t come back from County Forensic where Dalziel, despite the scorn he poured on Science and all its works, had sent it. The boys down there, their work once finished, would have no compunction at all about sitting in it.

‘Well,’ said Jenny, ‘are you just going to stand there, all hawk-eyed, or are we going to get on with this statement? What would you like me to state?’

‘Yes, the statement.’ Pascoe fumbled in his pocket for his notebook. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘In my own home, I prefer to issue the invitations. Please sit down, Sergeant.’

Only the remembrance that her mother had died in this room not a week earlier stopped Pascoe from grinning.

He sat down.

‘The words in that letter were printed, of course, but even printing is sometimes recognizable. Did the writing remind you of anyone’s you had seen before?’

Jenny shook her head.

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘Can you think of anyone who would send such a letter to you?’

‘Yes.’

Startled, he ceased his pretence of making notes.

‘Who?’

‘The man who killed my mother.’

He shook his head slowly.

‘Now why should he do that?’

‘To divert suspicion from himself.’

‘How can he hope to do that when we don’t know who wrote the letter?’

‘But you do know who you’re suspicious of.’

Of whom you are suspicious, Antony might have said. But it sounded a little clumsy for Antony. He never let his passion for correctness trap him into clumsiness. In any field.

She noticed that this time Pascoe had let his grin show through. She felt like grinning back, whether at Pascoe or at the thought of Antony she wasn’t sure. But she didn’t, for at the same time she felt guilty, as she did whenever she found herself acting normally, as if her mother hadn’t been done to death, here, in this very room, last week, on an ordinary Saturday evening with the television set babbling uncaringly on in the background.

The thought had stopped the grin even if her willpower had failed. But even now she recognized how diluted the emotional shock of remembering had already become.

I could go out tonight, she thought. Have a drink and a laugh, no bother. I know I could. I feel I shouldn’t be able to, but I could. They’ve got to catch him soon, they’ve got to, I’ll make sure they do, he deserves it, he must be caught. Must.

That’ll be an end of it then, some more distant part of her mind whispered.

Dear God! the most conscious level replied, aghast. Is that it, then? Is that what the pursuit of vengeance is - not the instinctive reaction of deep and lasting grief, but an attempt to compensate for shallowly felt grief, to give it body, to make testimony to it?

Confused, she became angry. Angry at herself for thinking like this. Angry at the police for making no progress. Angry at Pascoe for talking to her here while the real interview was taking place in the next room.

‘Let’s stop this farce, shall we?’ she said.

‘Farce?’

‘Yes. You don’t want a statement from me. What the hell can I state that’s any help or even needs recording? All you want is me here so that disgusting Dalziel can chat Daddy up by himself.’

Pascoe’s face relaxed again at her choice of adjective and this time an answering smile almost broke through.

‘Now why should we want that?’ he asked politely.

She turned away from him.

‘So that he can ask Daddy if what the letter says is true, I suppose. About me not being his child, I mean.’

Pascoe seemed to be trapped like a disembodied spirit somewhere in the room where he could see and hear an unemotional policeman, disguised as himself, ask in an absolutely even voice,

‘And is it?’

‘The question’s purely biological, I presume, Superintendent?’

‘Pardon?’

‘You’re interested in the narrow question of whether I am physically the girl’s father, rather than in my attitudes towards her?’

Christ! another talking like a Sunday Supplement article. Pascoe’s bad enough and at least the bugger’s on my side. But this … cold fish, Connon. He’d work out which side your balls were hanging before he made his sidestep.

‘That’s right, Mr Connon. I think. I mean, was young Jenny born as a result of you having intercourse with your wife?’

Connon shrugged. He looked very tired.

‘I think so.’

‘Think!?’

Dalziel took a rapid command of himself so that though the word began as a roar it ended as an almost gentle interrogative.

‘I have never had any positive evidence to the contrary. At the same time, I can’t point to any proof positive on the other side. There have seemed to me and others to be physical resemblances, but parents and relations in general are notoriously blind in these matters.’

‘So you admit that it’s possible the terms of the letter could be accurate?’

‘Not all of them, Superintendent.’

Hair-splitting now. Don’t answer. Let the sod go on in his own sweet time.

‘It’s a question of faith, I suppose. I suppose it always is.’