At Death's Door (21 page)

Myra had done very nicely for herself.

All of which did bring up the question of Cordelia and Pat.

There was no evidence that Cordelia knew she had been disinherited. She had a cast-iron alibi: She was down on the beach around 9:30, toiling up from it around 9:50. Even if the shot had been a blind, she would be out of it. Pat, on the other hand . . .

Pat McLaughlin had no alibi whatsoever; he had no alibi from the time he slipped out of the bar—say, around ten to nine—to the time Sergeant Flood went down to the tent to fetch night gear for Cordelia—around eleven o'clock or a bit after. He saw nobody, and was seen by nobody. Not surprising in a rural environment, but it left him wide open to suspicion.

He could have murdered Myra as part of a conspiracy with Cordelia, or he could have done it independently, expecting her to inherit. He could even have done it to rid Cordelia of her mother obsession, though this was the kind of speculation Meredith was inclined to dismiss out of hand as fanciful.

Could one accept any of these possibilities psychologically? Meredith considered Pat: remote, uncommunicative, self-sufficient. He did not know Pat, but more: He did not know anything
about
Pat. He had got nothing from him beyond a sense of apartness. The point was, one could not
reject
any of those possibilities psychologically.

And yet . . . And yet, there
was
a lot against them.

First, though it was maybe true that neither of them knew that Cordelia had been disinherited, still given Myra's character, it was a fair guess that she might have been. Would Pat—either independently or in collusion—kill Myra in the
hope
that Cordelia was still her heir? If they were after her money, would they not have made some effort to placate her? In fact, their every move was designed to do the reverse. This was a much stronger argument than Cordelia's refusing a share in Myra's wealth
after
the murder, which could have been prompted by self-interest and a desire to shield herself from suspicion.

Again, if the killing was not financially motivated but emotionally motivated, it stretched belief. Cordelia might kill Myra in the heat of the moment—had indeed committed violence on her. But to
plan
to do it, in cold blood, and then to use somebody else—this did not seem to be in Cordelia's makeup, and Meredith did feel he had learned quite a lot about her in their two sessions together.

Of course, when she had left Myra, she could have met up with Pat, maybe on the cliffs; there she could have poured out the story of the quarrel, persuaded him to kill her. Then what? Had Pat gone back to the tent on the Rectory lawn to fetch the gun, run back to the Red Lion? No, it really didn't make sense. Why would they have a gun with them? Any impulse Pat might have to kill Myra would have cooled off long before he got to her bedroom in the Red Lion.

Benedict Cotterel was an only child . . .

Meredith's thoughts swerved violently and came back to the novelist and his family. In particular to the great man himself, senile, powerless, lying on his bed dictating wills and leaving his yacht to a sister who never existed.

Benedict Cotterel was out of it. That was for sure. The Maudsley doctor had attended him throughout the long years of his terrible sickness. He was quite categorical that there was no fraud, no imposture. Cotterel was as sick as he appeared to be, was mentally in a twilight world. But if Ben Cotterel was out of it, there was still his family: his son, his daughter-in-law, and that strange, disturbed daughter.

Isobel Allick was on drugs, he was sure of that. Not heroin, certainly, but something more fashionable and slightly less deadly. He could imagine all sorts of reasons why she should have let herself become hooked: She was bored, underemployed, she had a failed marriage, a repulsive son, all sorts of ambitions and neuroses working away inside her. She had also a resentment—a remarkably long-lasting resentment—against her father. She had tried (though she denied this) to go and live with him in London when she had left school, but he had turned down the idea. Who knew what feelings of rejection this might have aroused? It had not escaped Meredith that this could have been around the time that Benedict Cotterel was having his affair with Myra Mason.

Isobel had been seen—indeed, she had made herself very noticeable—in the group around Granville Ashe when Mrs. Goodison had been trying to persuade him to go upstairs and investigate. But that was some minutes after the shot. No one seemed to have noticed her in the bar at the time when the shot was heard. If she was hyped up with drugs, this might suggest the possibility of an impulse killing, perhaps some mad revenge for a slight. But the gun? If she had brought it with her, this would suggest a
very different sort of killing. Unless, of course, she carried it everywhere with her. Did she, Meredith wondered, have some kind of persecution complex in addition to her other problems and oddities?

The fact remained that she was one of the people who could not be vouched for at the time of the shot. But then, so were her brother and sister-in-law, if what was wanted was
independent
witnesses.

The time of the shot . . .

Meredith shook his head violently. He was beginning to go around in circles. What he needed was a cup of coffee. He stuffed his papers back into his briefcase and stood up. The game of Trivial Pursuit was still going on at the other end of the room. His elder daughter was currently agonizing over the largest Spanish-speaking country outside Spain.

“I'll say Mexico,” she said at last.

“Wrong! It's Argentina!” said Mark triumphantly.

Meredith came over and put his hands on his youngest daughter's shoulders. His love for Cathy was painfully strong, so strong that he hoped none of the others sensed it or felt slighted. In fact, Cathy herself was the only one in ignorance of it. She sat there, fair, lithe, and with five little triangles in her piece, to the others' four each.

“What are you doing, letting the baby beat you?” he demanded of them.

“It's all
luck
, Dad,” explained Mark with a touch of irritation, which probably came from wounded pride. “Some of the questions are dead easy, some are impossible.”

He moved his piece on to a pink square.

“TV and Entertainment,” announced Cathy. “Right—this one
is
dead easy: ‘Who were the stars of TV's
The Good Life
?' ”

“Richard Briers and Wendy Craig,” said Mark happily.

“Wrong!”

“No, I'm not.”

“It's Felicity Kendall. Wendy Craig was in
Butterflies.
”

The game went on. But Meredith was no longer following. Because something had clicked in his mind for the second time, and this time it had stayed there. His brain whirled. But that was—if that was true . . .

His mind raced over the various possibilities. One thing was certain, though: If this was any sort of revelation, he had been barking up some very wrong trees indeed.

T
HE HOUSE, NOW,
was not in the best part of Merton. All around it the three-story dwellings had been dissected into flats and bed-sitters, and signs of neglect and decay were not difficult to detect. This one, number 37, had been meticulously restored at some stage to its late-Victorian substantiality. It was solid, four-square, and well-maintained. Behind the wide bay window could be seen heavy brocade curtains, and one did not doubt that behind them the furniture would be good and completely in keeping. Only some slight traces of peeling paintwork suggested that the work of restoration and cherishing was now some time in the past.

Meredith stood inconspicuously on a street corner some way away and considered his best course of action. To go and talk to people in the neighboring houses seemed a bad idea. He might be seen, and in any case they probably held a migratory working population that would not be in at this time of day and would know little if they were. Whether it was true that London people could live for
decades side by side with neighbors without exchanging a single word, Meredith did not know. He did know that bed-sitterland in any town was lousy as far as extracting information was concerned: young people, uprooted people, too concerned with their own lives and problems to take any interest in other people's.

There was a sandwich bar, a kebab takeaway, and a launderette, all within easy reach of number 37. They were all possibles. On the whole, though, the best bet was the pub. It was one mitigating factor of a policeman's lot that the best bet for information so often was the pub. Even in soulless, comfortless London, people were inclined to chat in their local.

It was eleven o'clock—an ideal, quiet time. The pub was called the Hare and Hounds—some reminder of days when red-coated gentlemen and ladies tallyhoed across the green fields of Merton, or more probably an unconsciously sick joke on the part of its Victorian builders and proprietors. At any rate there's no music, Meredith thought as he pushed his way through the door into its brassy and mirrored interior.

“Lovely day,” he said as the landlord fetched him his pint. “Everywhere looks better in the sun, doesn't it?”

“That's right,” said the landlord, putting aside his copy of the
Telegraph.
He was a fat, comfortable man with a sharp eye that promised well. “You new around here? The population's that shifting that you never quite know who you've seen before and who you haven't.”

“Not exactly round here,” said Meredith casually, sipping at his beer as he launched into untruth. “Just bought a new house out Wandsworth way. Old house, rather. In the nature of a speculation. Come to see a chap about restoring it in period style—aiming it at the yuppy market.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Chap who did some work for me a few years ago. So many cowboys in that business I thought I'd look him up again. Doesn't seem to be around at the moment. Name of Goodison.”

The landlord looked at him and shook his head slowly. “Oh, dear. You are out of luck.”

“On holiday?”

“Dead. Dead these eighteen months or two years past.”

“Well!” said Meredith, calling on all his native Welsh powers of acting and setting down his pint. “I
am
shocked. I had no idea. What did he die of?”

“Heart. Coming on for some time, but he wasn't the type to take care. 'Course, he wasn't a young man.”

“That's true. Come to think of it, I should have realized he mightn't still be around. I remember he was quite a bit older than his wife.”

“Ten years or more, I'd say.”

“Charming woman. What I'd call a real lady.”

The landlord laughed. “You wouldn't say that if you heard her in here sometimes. Talk about swear like a trooper—I've never heard a woman to beat her.”

Meredith's whole body breathed a great sigh. He had been on the right lines. It had all been a meticulously managed stage show! A wonderful, glowing feeling of euphoria flowed through him; it was a moment of revelation, or triumph. He felt like an angler who has landed an enormous fish, a footballer who has scored the perfect goal.

“Must have been on her best behavior when I met her,” he said when he'd caught his breath.

“Could be. Being an actress . . .”

The landlord left the sentence there. Anything, apparently, could be expected of an actress. Meredith registered another hunch that had been proved correct.

“That's right,” he said. “I'd forgotten she was an actress. Can't say I've ever seen her in anything.”

“Oh, she's on the box now and then. Selena Maddison, that's the name she goes under. Of course in here we get to know all about it when she's going to be on, this being very much her local. She makes sure we watch, and it
does
give you a special feeling, knowing the actress. . . . Not that she's been on that much recently. She had a bit part in the wartime series five or six years ago:
The Oaken Heart.
Ladylike sort of part. That's the sort of thing they've tended to ask her to do: your traditional English gentlewoman. Oh well, if Michael Caine can play a university professor . . .”

“Not like that?”

“Not like that at all. Bit of a hell-raiser, bit of a fire-eating type, if the truth be known. Some of my regulars are a bit wary of her, I can tell you. Mind you, you may not have realized it, but the husband was much the same. They've had some ding-dong shouting matches in here, I can tell you. Basically they were the same type: daredevil, living life to the full.”

“Naturally that wasn't the side he showed me,” said Meredith. “But I seem to remember he'd had a good war.”

“That's right, Commando training, undercover agent in France—that kind of thing. Never really reconciled himself to civvy life. Liked the whiff of danger. Even the business side of him. Always buying properties that everyone else had written off and then trying to get them back into shape. He won some and lost some, so I've heard.”

“A good shot, I seem to remember.”

“That's it—rifles, pistols, you name it. Take a pot at anything that moved, would Charles Goodison. If someone offered him a go at grouse or deer or whatever, he'd down tools and take him up on it. Take the wife with him, as well, as often as not. She couldn't down tools so easily, being an actress, but she wasn't always in work, not by a long chalk.”

“Dicey profession,” said Meredith.

“That's it. I get the impression she doesn't find it so easy, now he's gone. She's not in here so much—occasional visitor rather than a regular, if you see what I mean—and when she's in, she nurses her tipple. I know the signs. I'm sorry for the lady. Probably gets her booze from the supermarket, going for the special offers. It's a bit of a comedown, because they were always free spenders.”