Last Act of All (21 page)

‘
Oh, that — yes.’ She brushed the query aside, frowning.

Neither
spoke for a moment. Then Tilson reached across the desk to pat her hand. ‘Don’t despair, my child.
Rebus
in
arduis
, remember.’

Frustration
made her tart. ‘Not my strongest point, classical quotations.’

‘
“When the going gets tough, stay cool?” A free translation. And Jane won’t leave it at that, you know. She’s upset, and she’ll put the pressure on somewhere else. I’ll puzzle over what she said — something may come to me.’

Rising,
Frances laughed shortly. ‘I have every confidence that it will. I’m only relieved you’re on the side of the angels. Probably.’

He
pretended shock. ‘Definitely, my dear, when they are such very attractive angels. I’ll show you out.’

She
had been professionally reticent; now, as she was leaving, her guard slipped.

‘
Well, I suppose this has shed a little light, even if the results are negative. There seemed to be a lot of pointers to Jack Daley, but if there’s one thing sure, it’s that Radnesfield won’t exert itself for a Brummie garage owner who only came here a couple of years ago.’

She
was on her way out of the door when she realized that Maxwell Tilson had stopped, and was looking at her strangely.

‘
Oh dear, dear,’ he said gently. ‘The police really do know astonishingly little, don’t they? Why do you suppose he bought the garage in the first place? Jack Daley’s mother was an Ede: he’s related to fully half the village.’

Chapter Twelve

The neat bungalow belonging to the Daleys looked, as Frances waited on the doorstep, subtly uncared-for. It had been well maintained and the paintwork was fresh, but the window-panes did not shine, and at the window by the front door the hem of a curtain was sagging.

Frances
rang the bell, but the sound of the chimes died away without producing a response. Her hand was on the button to press again, when she heard an inside door open, and Daley’s voice shout, ‘Sandra! Where the hell are you? Can’t you even answer the bloody door?’

There
was another pause, then the door opened, grudgingly, and Sandra Daley’s ravaged face appeared round it. ‘Yes?’

Like
Helena, Frances was shocked. Today there was not even a pretence at make-up, and her face was blotchy with recently-shed tears. She did not seem entirely sober, and though it was half-past one, Sunday lunch-time, no comfortable smell of cooking came from the kitchen.

‘
Mrs Daley, I wonder if I might speak to your husband? I’m Sergeant Howarth – you may remember—’

Sandra
’s jaw sagged, and her eyes, heavy under swollen lids, widened as she retreated a step into the hall.

‘Oh my god, my god!’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘It’s come then, it’s come —’

‘
May I come in?’ The request was perfunctory, and Frances pushed the door wider and stepped inside. ‘Mrs Daley, you’re clearly distressed—’

Alerted
by her voice, Daley himself appeared from a room where a television set was relaying the sounds of Sunday sport.

His
reaction was swift, his glance at Frances nakedly hostile. Putting a hand on his wife’s shoulder, he turned her roughly to face him, making no effort to hide his disgust.

‘
You’re drunk again, Sandra. Do me a favour; make yourself a cup of coffee and sober up.’

He
swung her in the direction of the kitchen; she took two unsteady paces, then turned. ‘Jack, oh Jack...’ Tears were pouring, unchecked, down her face.

‘
Just get hold of yourself, all right? Now, if you’d like to come this way...’ As he addressed Frances, his tone was frigidly polite.

She
hung back. ‘I think I might have a word with Mrs Daley.’

‘
I should have thought it was pretty obvious that she’s not in a fit condition to talk to anyone. OK?’

His
voice had risen, and it seemed unwise to try to insist. ‘Very well. But do you think your wife should be left alone? She seems very — disturbed.’

The
kitchen door shut. He sighed heavily, and said, like one explaining to an idiot, ‘She’s on a drinking jag at the moment. She does that when she’s upset, so, even though I’m not a detective, I can work out that something must have upset her. Could it possibly be Lilian getting murdered, do you reckon? For some reason, she seems to be just a little touchy about her friends being rubbed out.

‘
Still, you won’t be keeping me long, will you? Just “one or two routine questions”?’

He
was trying to sound cool, off-hand. Clinically, she observed the fine dew of sweat on his upper lip.

‘
Just one or two questions, as you say, sir.’

The
lounge was dusty and untidy. She followed him in, taking her seat on the edge of a deep mock-leather settee. He snapped off the set and threw himself into the chair opposite, one leg over the arm in a pantomime of ease.

‘
I suppose you’re going to tell me I had a quarrel with Lilian yesterday.’ It was an aggressive opening; he waited for her response, but she said nothing, and he went on, ‘Well, why not? She just throws this at me, OK? Thought we were mates, and she makes a decision like that without a word to me — well, stands to reason anyone would be hurt.’

‘
Hurt?’

‘
OK, well, angry, then. But you’d spend your life stepping over bodies if every time someone had a tiff with one of their friends they did them in.’

He
showed no grief for the death of the woman whose lover he had been, not even the most formal expression of regret. Had she been no more than a means to some dark revenge, his affair with her only a punishment for his erring wife? Or had he killed Neville, to find that even murder was not enough to obliterate his shame?

‘
You described Lilian Fielding as a friend of your wife’s. Were she and Mrs Daley close friends?’

‘
Yeah, well, women, you know — always a bit of rivalry—’ He faltered under her steady regard, then scowled. ‘Oh, don’t tell me. The gossips have all crawled out from under the flat stones. OK, so Lilian and I had a bit of a thing going. But it was only a bit of fun — didn’t mean anything — and Sandra and me, well, we’ve got a modern marriage. Got to be a bit broadminded these days.’

‘
Mrs Daley doesn’t give me the impression at the moment of being a happily broad-minded wife.’

There
was no mistaking his unease. ‘She’s got a bit of a problem with the bottle, like I told you...’

‘
And of course, she was very close to Mr Fielding as well, wasn’t she?’

His
face flamed with temper. ‘God, you make me sick, with your piddling little mealy-mouthed hints. Why can’t you come right out and say she was one of his bits on the side? No doubt all the old cats have been happy enough to tell you that as well.’

‘
What can you tell me about the burning in effigy, the night before Neville Fielding’s death?’

The
change of tack threw him off balance, and he stammered, ‘Wh — what do you mean? If anyone’s said anything, said I did anything, they’re a liar, that’s all.’

Frances
made a pretence of consulting the notebook at her side. ‘You were seen in the village that night, weren’t you?’

He
stared at her for a moment, his face scarlet, then, with a short laugh, said, ‘Oh well, if they’re starting to name names, I can give you a list. Vic Ede, Dave Bateman, George Wagstaff — and plenty of others just along for the ride. But that was just a bit of fun, see if we could scare him, give him a little hint about how we felt about him.’

‘
And how was that? Violent?’

He
shrugged, and fell silent. She had a useful admission there, something to work on later. She tried a new line.

‘
Your wife — she can’t have been too pleased when Fielding married again after his divorce?’

She
sensed his rigidity. ‘Why should it bother her? Like I said, we’re not old-fashioned in our ideas.’

‘
So she didn’t mind too much?’

‘
No, not too much.’

‘
And you? Mr Daley, just how much did you really mind all this very
modern
behaviour on the part of your wife?’

The
question had been intended as a knife thrust, slipping in under his guard. So why should his fingers, previously digging into the arm of his chair, now have unclenched?

‘
Well, I suppose you could say it was a bit of a dent to the image — the old lady fancying another guy.’ His grin was almost jaunty; she had missed something there. But relief made him incautious, and he added, ‘Oh, I might have a bit of a blow-up with him, shout a bit, maybe, but I’ll be honest with you — we didn’t have such a good marriage it was worth killing for.’

That
confession held a depressing ring of truth, but she pounced on the indiscretion.

‘
A blow-up with Neville Fielding? When, exactly, was this?’

She
had the satisfaction of seeing uneasiness return. He was licking his lips nervously when they heard the crash and the cry.

He
was on his feet at the same instant as she. ‘Sandra!’ he yelled, wrenching open the door and crossing the narrow hall in three strides. He threw open the door to the kitchen.

Behind
him, Frances could hear a hideous, bubbling, gasping groan; over his shoulder, saw the figure that was blotting out the light.

Sandra
Daley, a fine rope about her neck and her head lolling horribly sideways, was hanging from the old-fashioned pulley from which, incongruously, some airing clothes still hung. The kitchen stool kicked over on the floor told its own story.

But
the pulley had never been intended to take such sudden weight. It had dipped to that side, so that instead of dangling, her toes touched the brightly-patterned vinyl of the kitchen floor, and scrabbled for a firm foothold in an instinctive fight for the life she had tried to squander.

Daley
grabbed his wife in his arms, lifting her to take the tension off the rope. Frances, looking swiftly about, saw a block of knives on the kitchen surface and seizing the most dangerous-looking, slashed through the strands of what appeared to be a length of clothes-line.

It
was only seconds before they had her flat on the floor, her bruised throat labouring to snatch the precious air back into her lungs. Her face was bluish-purple, and she was semi-conscious, though breathing of her own accord.

Frances
knelt down beside her, removing the rope and loosening the collar of her blouse, checking her mouth to make sure the air passage was clear. ‘Doctor,’ she snapped, and Daley disappeared.

With
returning consciousness, Sandra’s head began to move restlessly; her eyes flickered open, focused on the other woman’s face briefly, then closed again.

But
she was coming round. Frances spoke reassuringly. ‘Everything’s all right, Mrs Daley. You’re quite safe.’

Tears
began to seep from under the closed eyelids. ‘Useless,’ she muttered. ‘Useless.’

Frances
had to bend close to hear. ‘Useless?’ she said softly, slipping a thin foam cushion from a nearby chair under her head. ‘Why useless?’

‘
Useless, he said — right, wasn’t he?’ The voice was thready, the words incoherent and punctuated by long, painful breaths. ‘Couldn’t even — kill myself. Got that wrong, too.’ Her eyes opened again, and her hand groped at Frances, who took it in a firm clasp. ‘Please — take me — take me instead. Worthless, not like him. Started it all.’ She coughed, painfully.

Medically,
perhaps, she should be stopped, but Frances was not a doctor. ‘Take your time,’ she said, patting her hand.

‘
Flattered, you see, him being a big star. All my fault. All my fault.’ She was crying again, drearily and hopelessly. ‘Not Jack, you can’t blame Jack, you can’t! Any man would — all my fault! And now — turned him into a monster.’

The
harsh, raw whisper changed to aching sobs, and Frances said slowly, ‘You mean, your husband—’

A
sound made her turn her head. Jack Daley had come back and was standing behind her, his face a mask of pity and horror.

‘
Sandra, you silly cow, you don’t think I killed them, do you?’

He
pushed Frances out of the way, kneeling down by his wife and taking her hand. She gazed up at him, her face still tortured.

‘
No good, Jack. Saw you – going up the hill—’

He
was taken aback. ‘Oh god, you saw me, did you? And you never said. Maybe we should talk to each other occasionally. Well, listen to me now, and let’s get this straight, OK?

‘
Sure, I went up the hill. I got there just after the daughter left — saw her crossing to Wagstaff’s farm. I’d had it up to here with big-shot Fielding. Our marriage was falling apart because of him, and somehow it was worse when there were all those others too. We’d given him a nasty turn the night before, but I still wanted to look the bastard straight in the face and spit in it. I did, too; he couldn’t stop me, and I told him the only reason I didn’t hit him was because I didn’t want to dirty my hands. He was scared, right enough, but he was certainly alive when I left.’

He
took a deep breath. ‘But then, you see, when they arrested Helena, I didn’t reckon she’d done it either. I thought it would have taken a woman with a lot more nerve—’

Her
eyes widened, and she tried to lift her head; the movement gave her acute pain, and he gently restrained her.

‘
You thought it was me – oh Jack Daley, you stupid sod,’ she croaked, and then there was a strange, rasping sound that was Sandra Daley trying to laugh.

*

Frances met the doctor at the front door. ‘She’s perfectly all right,’ she assured him, ‘but it’s pure luck she didn’t manage to kill herself.’

‘
I’ve got an ambulance coming anyway. We can refer her for psychiatric treatment.’

‘
That may be a wise precaution, but I suspect you’ll find it’s unnecessary.’

In
the kitchen, Sandra was sitting up, propped against her husband’s shoulder with her hand clasped firmly in his. They were both looking sheepish, and Frances told them crisply that she would send someone tomorrow to take their statements, then left them with the doctor.