“I repeat,” said Nevada, “very convenient.”
“What about his voice?” I said.
Opal looked at me, suddenly unsure of herself for the first time since she’d strode into the pub and joined us. “His voice?”
“Yes. She didn’t get a good look at him, because he took great pains to make sure she didn’t. But she must have heard his voice.”
“I didn’t think to ask her that,” said Opal. She took out her phone. For a moment I thought she was about to call Esmeralda, but instead she typed in some text. “I must make a note to ask her next time I speak to her.”
Nevada gave me a look. I said, “You’re still in touch with the barmaid?”
“Yes,” said Opal.
“That could be very useful.” I made a mental note of my own to draw up a list of questions for Esmeralda Paynton. Opal put her phone away. I said, “Did anyone else have access to the whisky? After she accepted the bottle from the mystery man?”
“In goggles,” added Tinkler.
“After she accepted the bottle from the mystery man in goggles,” I said patiently, “and before she left it in the room, as a present for Johnny and your great-grandmother?”
“No. No one else could have tampered with the bottle.”
“You’re sure of that?”
Opal nodded vigorously. “As soon as he gave it to her, she took it down to the cellar. And when she was sure no one would see her, she decanted half the bottle.”
“She did what?” said Nevada.
“Decanted it. It means to transfer it from one bottle to—”
“I know what it means. Why did she do that?”
“To keep it for herself,” I said.
Opal nodded again. “It was very good whisky, and very scarce in wartime. She wanted to keep some for herself. It was understandable.”
“It was theft,” said Nevada.
Opal immediately flew to the defence of her friend. They must have really bonded during that cemetery walk. “It was totally understandable. It was wartime, a time of scarcity and shortages. She felt she was entitled to something nice when it came her way.”
“Entitled, eh?” said Nevada.
“She felt that everyone should share and share alike. It was a time of national emergency.”
“Didn’t they notice that it was half empty?” said Tinkler. “Didn’t Johnny Thomas—I love that name—and your great-grandmother, didn’t they notice their gift bottle was half empty?”
Opal shook her hand. “No. She filled it up again with a much cheaper, inferior brand of whisky they used at the pub.”
“How generous of her,” said Nevada.
Opal shot her a look. “She said she felt she was generous leaving them half.”
But Nevada wasn’t listening. She was frowning thoughtfully. She looked at me. “It was topped up with whisky from another source.”
I said, “Which means we no longer know where the drug—if there was a drug—where it came from. It could, as we first believed, have got there in the bottle from the mysterious stranger…”
“With goggles,” said Tinkler. Opal giggled. Tinkler beamed, and Nevada shot him a sardonic look.
“The mysterious stranger with goggles,” I said wearily. “Or, on the other hand, it could have been in the whisky which Esmeralda used to top up the bottle.”
“The replacement whisky.”
“Right. We can’t be certain which one was doped.”
“Oh, no,” said Opal. “We can certainly be certain! Esmeralda told me they continued to serve the replacement whisky to the customers in the pub, and no one ever had any ill effects. Even the landlord drank it, and he was fine. And besides…”
“Besides, what?”
“She tried some of the good stuff.”
“You mean the stolen whisky?”
Opal seemed to have trouble accepting this word in connection with her friend Esmeralda. It was a little odd that she’d conceived such a strong attachment to someone who, after all, had been complicit, however unknowingly, in the murder of her great-grandmother. But she nodded.
“She drank some right after she finished her shift that night. A ‘stiff tot’, she called it. And woke up, very disorientated, twelve hours later with a terrible headache.”
“Serves her right,” said Nevada.
Something else occurred to me. “That’s why he woke up.”
They all looked at me. “What do you mean?” said Opal.
“Johnny Thomas. He woke up and found the girl—your great-grandmother, sorry—dead in bed with him. And he tried to dispose of the body. And he almost got away with it. He might well have done if he hadn’t had such bad luck.” Some of the worst bad luck any human ever had, it seemed to me.
“So?”
“So he might well have wrecked the plans of whoever was trying to frame him—I think we’re all pretty certain someone did frame him. And Johnny almost spoiled their scheme when he woke up like that. He wasn’t supposed to wake up until the following morning. Late in the morning, if the barmaid’s experience based on her stiff tot was anything to go by. Probably he would have been found in bed by the pub staff when they tried to rouse him. Apparently dead drunk and, tucked beside him, the dead girl.” It was hard to imagine a more incriminating scenario. The half-empty whisky bottle, Johnny groggily coming to consciousness, staring at the aghast face of whoever woke him, with Gillian’s dead body beside him, silk stockings in a terminal ligature around her throat. I don’t remember doing it, honest. I don’t remember anything after we drank all that whisky.
“But by substituting the cheaper whisky she’d inadvertently diluted the stuff in the bottle,” I said.
“And reduced the effect of the drug,” said Nevada.
“That’s right. So he woke up. Which was definitely not in the game plan.”
“Yes,” said Nevada. “But whose game? And what plan?”
I looked at Opal. “Why didn’t she turn up for the trial? The barmaid—Esmeralda, or whatever her real name was.”
“It seems she received some threats.”
“Threats?”
“Yes,” said Opal, “I suppose it was only natural.”
“Really?” said Nevada. “What was natural about it?”
“Well,” said Opal, “during its day the Silk Stockings Murder was quite a cause célèbre.”
“Ah,” said Nevada, who tended to take a proprietary, not to say possessive, view of any Indo-European tongues other than our own. She was the language expert around here and didn’t like anyone else infringing on her turf. “A cause célèbre. Of course.”
“So she got these threats, and then someone sent her some money, on the condition that she made herself scarce. It was enough money that she could drop out of sight and start again. And she decided this was a good idea.”
“Someone sent her some money,” I said.
“Yes. Through the post.”
“An anonymous someone.”
“Yes.”
I said, “Like the anonymous someone who gave her the whisky.”
There was silence at our table for a moment. Then Tinkler clapped his hands so loudly that Albert looked up from his sudoku behind the bar. “My god, that’s brilliant,” said Tinkler. “And you researched all that yourself?”
Opal nodded modestly. “Yes.”
“You’re really great at what you do,” said Tinkler fervently.
Opal inched closer to him. “Why, thank you!” She smiled up into his face.
I looked at Nevada. Nevada looked at me.
“What did she do with the rest of it?” I said.
Opal blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“The rest of the whisky. What did she do with it?”
“Oh, she poured it away. Down the drain.”
“She did what?”
“I know,” said Opal, her face and voice grave. “And with it she poured away forever any chance of Johnny Thomas being proved innocent and spared the gallows.”
“That’s a classy sentence,” said Nevada. “You should use it in your dissertation.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
“I think it’s a great sentence,” said Tinkler.
* * *
We all walked back from the pub together. I walked beside Nevada, and Tinkler beside Opal. Before we reached my bungalow Tinkler insisted on taking a detour to the garage we’d rented and having a look at Opal’s van. “I’ve never really seen it properly,” he said. “I’ve only ever been able to admire it from afar.”
“Really? You admired it? What did you admire about it?”
“Ah, the duality, the brilliant notion of the sun on one side, and you know, the moon on the other. That kind of thing.”
So we all crowded into the damp little concrete cubicle and stared at the van under the buzzing glare of the flickering fluorescent light. “And you did the paint job yourself?” said Tinkler, walking around the vehicle like a general inspecting his troops. “That’s amazing. You’re so multi-talented.”
“Thank you,” said Opal demurely. “You can’t really appreciate the colours in this artificial light. You need to see them in daylight.”
Tinkler squinted and nodded. His serious look. “No, true, the lighting conditions in here don’t begin to do justice to your work. I definitely need to see them in daylight.”
“I can take you for a ride,” said Opal, looking at Tinkler.
“I would like that, that would be fantastic, I like it, hey let’s do that,” said Tinkler, more or less coherently.
“Sometime,” said Opal, in a qualifying way.
Nevada and I looked at each other again and said nothing. We locked up the garage and all trooped back to the house for a coffee. Normally I would have said we were night owls. But on this occasion we were sitting around yawning and longing to get to bed for what seemed like endless hours while Opal and Tinkler chatted away, showing no signs of tiring.
Finally, thankfully, they ordered a taxi to take them back to Tinkler’s house in Putney. “Opal wants to hear my hi-fi.”
“Of course she does.”
The phone rang to announce the arrival of the taxi and we said goodnight and they left. We finally went to bed. Opal had a key so she could let herself back in when she returned.
* * *
But she didn’t return. Staring into her empty room the next morning Nevada said, “You don’t suppose she and Tinkler…”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Really? Have they? Have they really?”
But I was more concerned with trying to ring Joan Honeyland. I still hadn’t been able to reach her, and I was becoming seriously worried by now. I made my morning coffee and carried it straight into the living room and sat down with it beside the phone.
She answered on the first ring and I felt a warm plunging sensation of relief. After some small talk I got around to the first of the questions that had really begun to gnaw at me over the last few days.
I said, “You remember when you were run off the road?”
“Yes. All too well. It was shortly after we first met, wasn’t it?”
“Was it by skinheads? I mean, the men in the car. Were they skinheads?”
There was absolute silence on the line. Then she said, “Yes, they were. How did you know?”
“Why didn’t you mention it at the time?”
“Well, it hardly seemed relevant. Also, I suppose, it would have seemed like I had some sort of prejudice against… some particular segment of society. Which I don’t. At least I hope I don’t. You didn’t answer my question.”
I said, “What question?”
“How did you know?”
It was my turn for silence on the line. I said, “Can we meet?” There were some things I preferred not to talk about over the telephone.
Most things, in fact.
“And discuss it in person?” said Miss Honeyland in her efficient, clipped way. “Absolutely. I was just about to suggest that.”
We arranged a time and she hung up.
25. BACKFIRE
I was getting ready to go out when the doorbell rang. “Dozy trollop has forgotten her keys,” remarked Nevada. But it was Tinkler. He came in looking relaxed and happy, beaming at us.
“Opal stayed the night,” he said. “At my place.”
“So we surmised.”
“It got really late, so we just thought, you know.”
“Of course. We know.”
“And she’s going, ah, to stay with me, um, for a few days. So I came over to collect her stuff.”
“Yes!” said Nevada, punching the air. “Here, Tinkler old fellow, let me help you gather up the little darling’s belongings.”
They went off to the spare room together and emerged a few minutes later with Opal’s pink backpack, bulging and full. “I swear, Tinkler,” said Nevada, “you’re wandering around the place like Turk after she’s caught a pigeon. All puffed up and proud of yourself.”
“Can you blame me? Do you know how long it’s been since I last had sex? I’ll give you a hint. They were knocking rocks together and inventing fire.”
Nevada held up both hands in front of her, as though warding off an invisible assailant. “I don’t want to hear about it.” She went back into the erstwhile guest room, presumably to carefully inventory her stock and make sure nothing was missing. Tinkler wandered into the living room to join me.
He addressed me confidentially, in a man-to-man way. “Oh my, she’s naughty.”
“I’m very happy for you,” I said. “But I don’t particularly want to hear about it, either.”
“Oh, yes, you do.”
“Was she impressed with your hi-fi?”
“She certainly was,” said Tinkler. “She also loves my collection of folk records.” I laughed. “Why are you laughing?”
“What folk records?”
“I have folk. I have John Martyn. I have Cat Stevens. Sorry, Abdullah Ibrahim. I mean Yusef Lateef.”
“You mean Yusuf Islam,” I said. “You see? You don’t even know his name.”
“They’re all fine musicians. And devout theologians. In any case, Opal loves folk music, and she happens to think that I have a very impressive collection.”
“You mean the box of LPs you acquired by accident when buying job lots of rock and blues and now keep permanently stashed away in the cupboard under the stairs?”
“Well, it’s not stashed away under the stairs any more. And Opal loves those records. We have the Incredible String Band, we have Lindisfarne, we have Fairport Convention.” I noticed his use of ‘we’ and wondered how long it would take for this romance to crash and burn. Perhaps I was just being cynical.
“Is she listening to them now?” I said.
“No, I left her using the CD player in the kitchen. John Martyn Live at Leeds.”
“Are you sure she’s satisfied with that?”
I saw a shadow of doubt and alarm cross his face. “Of course she is.”
“Perhaps even now she’s switching on the Thorens, dropping the needle onto a record without using the damping device…”
“Stop it, you varlet. Stop playing on my deepest fears.”
“Anyway, I’ve got to go out now. I have an appointment in town. Are you ready to go?”
“Sure. Do you want a lift? I could drop you at Putney station. It will save you some time.”
“It will save me some time if we don’t hit traffic.”
“And it will give us a chance to talk,” said Tinkler.
“All right, but no sexual boasting. I’ve already had a visit from Stinky Stanmer this week.”
* * *
Since I was going into the West End anyway I decided to drop in at Styli. The shop did still occasionally surprise me by turning up some interesting records, so it paid to keep an eye on them. Today was a case in point. They had a great collection of Jasmine reissues on vinyl, classic British jazz of the 1950s including Dizzy Reece, Tony Kinsey and Victor Feldm
an. But I already owned copies of all of them, indeed in some cases I was blessed with the originals. And there wouldn’t be enough margin to make them worth reselling. So I reluctantly left them there for some other lucky customer.
I wandered through the maze of smaller thoroughfares near Harley Street, paralleling Oxford Street but avoiding the crowds of shoppers. A high, clean blue sky stretched over London. There was fresh air mixed in there somewhere among the traffic fumes. I strolled along Cavendish Place feeling pleasantly detached from everything. At the last possible moment I turned left, crossing Market Place and finally, having delayed it as long as I could, entered the bustling maelstrom of Oxford Street. A moment later I was in the quiet back streets again. I walked towards Soho, heading for Miss Honeyland’s mews.
I was crossing Great Marlborough Street when I saw him.
To my eyes he instantly stood out from the passing crowd, with his look of someone up from the country and out of place in the big city. He was wearing his green waxed-cotton jacket again, his familiar face peering out over it with a kind of goggle-eyed bafflement. E.T. with a beard, I thought.
It was our ferret-faced local historian, Jasper McClew.
He saw me and immediately turned and started walking briskly the other way. I hurried after him. I called his name. He ignored me and increased his pace. I increased mine.
We hurried across Poland Street into Noel Street and turned right into Berwick Street Market, where I finally caught up with him outside a tattoo parlour and touched him on his elbow. “Hey,” I said. He turned around and stared at me, eyes blinking, feigning mild surprise.
“Oh, hello there.”
“I was calling you.”
“Were you? I didn’t hear you. Sorry.” He started walking again and I fell in step beside him. I tried to maintain our conversation on the move, although he seemed far from anxious to talk to me.
“Why did you hurry away when you saw me?”
“I didn’t hurry away. I didn’t see you.”
“This is the second time I’ve bumped into you around here.” We had turned off Berwick Street and were now very close indeed to the mews where Miss Honeyland lived. Coincidentally, my destination. Or perhaps not so coincidentally.
Victory Disc Page 24
