Full Fury (21 page)

Amelia
was now sitting very upright on her seat, her eyes darting from face to face. ‘Do you remember all this, Richard?’ she asked.

‘
Yes. I remember it.’ And the more we spoke it, the faster the memories were flooding back.

Connie
perched herself on the very edge of her seat, both of the dogs having by now approached to consider this guest. I should have asked Mary to keep them away, as I wanted nothing distracting to intervene. But Connie was clearly a dog person. She fussed each one until they both moaned with ecstasy. Amelia sat and watched, but said nothing. Neither she nor the dogs seemed perturbed. Indeed, Amelia was now smiling.

‘
It’s what I missed so much,’ Connie explained. ‘In prison. Dogs. I’ve always had at least one dog, from the time I was a little girl. I had two cocker spaniels when they arrested me. My husband—you remember Harry…’

I
nodded. I remembered Harry Martin very clearly. An accountant, he’d called himself.

‘
What about Harry?’ I asked.

‘
He had them put down,’ she said in a flat, cold voice.

‘Oh…’
Amelia whispered.

‘
So I’ve decided,’ went on Connie, ‘that when you’ve sorted it out for me, and I’ve got the time to spare, I’m going to have
him
put down. Harry. Put down. I can’t get those two words out of my mind. Put down. Such a cold, blank statement. But I’ve found out all sorts of interesting information. I mean…you meet all sorts of women, inside. And I’ve got three names and addresses from three of my friends in there. Men friends of theirs, who would do a bit of putting down on my behalf…when I’ve got together enough money to pay for it. You’d be surprised how much they charge.’

‘
Now hold on, here!’ I put in briskly, glancing at Amelia to see how she was taking this. Her eyes were bright, unblinking, two fingers to her lips to intercept any indiscreet words that might be struggling to get free. Or even laughter.

‘
I missed the dogs,’ Connie explained emptily. ‘Just taking them for a walk. They’d got dogs there, you know, at the prison, lovely Alsatians. But only for show. Patrolling, they called it. I asked if I could take one of them for a run, but they wouldn’t let me. Thought I might steal it, I suppose.’

‘
No,’ I said, staring at my cold pipe, at anything that wasn’t Connie’s face. She was so solemnly calm about it, brought it out so naïvely, that I had to assume she was telling the truth. ‘They wouldn’t,’ I added.

‘
Lovely Alsatians,’ she repeated moodily. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘
Go ahead,’ I said, reaching into my pocket for my lighter.

Then
Mary—and I hadn’t realised she was still in the room—fetched the three-legged small round table from across in the far corner, placed it between Connie’s chair and my own, and put one of our glass ashtrays on it. Connie turned her head, smiled up at Mary, and said, ‘Thank you.’ Then she began to root around in the floppy shoulder bag she had with her, and produced a gold cigarette case and gold lighter. I watched as she lit her cigarette.

‘
You didn’t use that case and the lighter in prison?’ I asked. ‘Surely not?’

‘
Heavens, no! They’d have had them off me in ten seconds.’ She grimaced as she recalled her experience. But I’ve been home…
my
home, I still call it, in my mind, only it looks and feels all different. My son, Philip—did you ever meet him? Oh, of course you did, but he’s twenty-six now, and he’s got a live-in girlfriend there. In my home! You’d remember her. It’s the same girl he was going around with at that time. Penny, her name is. Anyway, when I got home, there they were. And…d’you know…I felt I wasn’t welcome in my own home. But I’ll sort all that out. The bungalow is mine, you know. My father gave it to me. But of course, you know that. It’s mine, and I can do what I like with it.’

Yes,
I knew all about her bungalow, but I was trying to keep her on the same subject. ‘Your son and the girl…what of them?’

She
waved a hand; wiggled her fingers. ‘The girl seems all right to me. Not a slouch, you know. Got a good head on her shoulders, and I’ll say this about her, she’s kept the place clean and tidy. And all I need is a room and a bed, to lay my head down. And—of course—your help, Richard. May I call you Richard?’

‘
You may.’ But I wasn’t so sure about my help.

I
watched as she drew deeply on her cigarette, then she leaned over, and, with the tips of her thumb and first finger, she nipped off the red, glowing end, only a fraction of an inch from burning herself.

She
looked up into my face, and laughed at my expression. ‘I’ve always done that,’ she told me.

‘
Don’t you ever burn your fingers?’

She
shook her head, pouting. ‘Oh no. You just have to guess it right. Then, you see, you don’t waste anything. And it was so useful, inside. If you tamp out a cigarette, it all crumples up, and you can’t afford to waste anything like that, inside. Inside…inside…I can’t get that word out of my mind. But…no waste if you pinch them out.’

I
glanced at Amelia. She merely lifted her eyebrows at me. Clearly, she was completely baffled.

‘
And why have you come here?’ I asked Connie.

‘
Surely that’s obvious.’

‘
Not to me,’ I assured her, though in fact I did have an idea, and I wasn’t pleased with it. Definitely not.

She
looked at Amelia, gave a little shrug at her lack of response, and concentrated once again on me.

‘
Because you’re the one who collected all the facts,’ she explained. ‘The evidence, I suppose you’d call it. So you’re the obvious one to put it all together again, and investigate it once more, to see where you went wrong.’

‘
Now hold on—’

She
completely ignored my interruption. ‘And then, when you’ve got it all sorted out, with all the
new
evidence, we’ll take it to my solicitor and we’ll have another trial, only this time with the person who really killed that bitch my husband had tucked away. Sylvia Thomas. It wasn’t me, so I suppose it has to be somebody else. With
that
person in the dock, this time. And I’ll be able to claim damages, great loads of damages, for wrongful detention, and you can have some of it, for your trouble, though why you would deserve it I can’t imagine, you being the one who got me put away.’ She took a deep breath. But all the same, I’ll give you a quarter of what damages they award me. Now…how does that sound to you? And this time it ought to be easier for you to get the right answer.’

She
stopped, splayed her palms, and smiled ruefully at Amelia.

‘
Why easier?’ I asked cautiously. Amelia moved uneasily on her seat.

‘
Because you can eliminate one suspect, to start with.’

‘
Who’s that?’

‘
Well…me, of course. Oh…you
are
slow. Of
course
me.’

‘
There’s no “of course” about it,’ I told her. ‘You probably picked up this idea inside. You’d be surrounded by women a darned sight more experienced than you, when it comes to twisting the evidence around and blurring the issue. Probably, they’d know all about that in their early teens—’

‘
You won’t have to twist anything,’ she assured me, blandly interrupting. ‘You had your go at blurring the issue at the trial, and now I want it all laid out. Crystal clear. I want you to prove that I didn’t do it. If the only way to do that is for you to produce the one who did, then that’s what you’ve got to do.’ She nodded emphatically. So there!

‘
Got to?’ I asked, very quietly.

‘
You owe me that.’

‘H
mm!’ I said.

The
truth was that it was to myself that I owed it, assuming that I had got it all wrong, the first time. I would need to reach very deeply into my memory, and attempt to discover a completely new scenario in which to place the death of her husband’s mistress, Sylvia Thomas, and then eventually I would be in a position to shout out to all who might be interested: ‘I was a clumsy, stupid oaf, who bungled it the first time.’ It was not a pleasant prospect to have to contemplate.

The
only thing I could think of which might persuade her that she was proposing an impossible task for me, was to remind her of a selection of the points of evidence against her. And first, I had to locate her at the scene of the murder of Sylvia Thomas. We both had to think back ten years.

‘
Your car was seen on that parking patch.’ This was a try-on. Nobody had claimed that they had seen her car.

‘
No, it wasn’t,’ she said sharply. ‘And anyway —think back to it. I’d bet anything you like that nobody could’ve even
seen
that parking patch from the houses. Don’t you remember the weather, Mr Patton? Don’t you? The visibility.’

I
smiled. Yes, I remembered it. And she was quite correct. It had been a terrible day, and an even more terrible evening, once it became really dark. And Connie had claimed that, although her intention had been to visit Sylvia Thomas, to introduce herself as Harry’s wife and to warn her off, the weather had prevented her from carrying it through. We didn’t believe her. She had said she had driven off the road and on to that terrible parking area, when there was a proper lay-by only a couple of hundred yards away, which she could have used. And that she had tried to park her Beetle on the extensive earth patch used for parking, and had trouble with the muddy surface. She hadn’t dared to stop, she had claimed. We didn’t believe her. The visibility, I recalled, was perhaps four or five feet, with pelting rain, and not a light penetrating that rain curtain, anywhere. But she
could
, with determination, have parked only a hundred yards from Sylvia Thomas’s house, rain and muddy conditions notwithstanding, if she had already driven there—although the appalling weather would have made it very difficult.

All
this had been brought up at the trial, and she had not been believed. There seemed no point in arguing about it now, so I tried another angle.

‘
There had been cigarettes smoked in Sylvia Thomas’s kitchen. And your husband, Harry, didn’t smoke cigarettes. Sylvia did, yes, but not Harry.’

‘
He does now.’

It
was irrelevant. ‘They were the brand you smoked, Benson and Hedges. That was the point I wished to make.’

She
lifted her head. The smile she offered was one of complete confidence. But she had had a long while to think this through, and had prepared herself for anything I might query.

‘
So did she,’ she claimed. ‘His mistress—she smoked them, too.’

‘
And how do you know that?’ I asked, very casually because it was a trick question. She had claimed that she had never come face to face with Sylvia Thomas, had only seen her across the saloon bar in sundry pubs. Perhaps she had seen Sylvia smoking there.

‘
Because,’ she said, so demurely and so confidently, ‘my precious husband pocketed a full pack of my cigarettes, on the evening when he said he was going to his office to finish checking an account—the liar. I phoned his office half an hour later, giving him time to get there, and got no reply. From either of them. He’s got offices in Bridgnorth and Wolverhampton, you know. Damn it, Mr Patton, it was the insult in it, the insult to my intelligence. He treated me as though I was stupid. As you’ll no doubt remember,’ she continued, after she had mastered a severely bubbling anger,
‘he
smoked a pipe, the same as you. But did you pick up that point? You did not. No…let me say this.’ She held up a palm. ‘Once and for all. He had the utter gall to take my cigarettes for that mealy-mouthed bitch. Certainly not for himself, that’s what I’m trying to get across to you.’

‘
All right. All right.’ We were wandering far away from the point at issue, which was whether I was prepared to look into the case again, and it was beginning to seem that I was already trapped into conceding. And in fact there had been the remains of three Benson and Hedges cigarettes in an ashtray at Sylvia Thomas’s home. I could see them now.

My
memory is not at its best for words or numbers or facts; it is mainly visual. Sitting at my desk and reporting a motor vehicle accident, I could recall a clear picture of the scene. But the names and addresses of the people involved—no. For that I would have to resort to my notebook.

And
now, my memory recording an image of that ashtray in Sylvia Thomas’s kitchen, I knew I would have to go along with Connie’s wishes, much as I might detest the idea.

‘
Very well,’ I said to Connie, laying on a tone of reluctance. ‘I’ll have another look at it.’

‘
The whole case?’ asked Connie eagerly, because she hadn’t expected to be able to persuade me. I caught Amelia’s eye, and registered her disapproval, then turned back to face Connie.