‘Me.’
‘Well, from what I hear she’ll never tell anyone anything, so I don’t stand a chance. But she knows you and — ’
‘Where do you think that’s going to get me? Queenie might be in extremis but you don’t imagine that’s going to make the slightest difference to her attitude, do you?’
‘No. But what I was going to say was — and you know her. You’ve got her measure. You’ll know if she’s holding out on you; you won’t be distracted by — um …’
‘Finer feelings? Thanks. You’ve still not convinced me we can run with this.’
‘No. But that’s what you’ll find out when you see her.’
Confronted by such politely self-contained optimism, Hunter wondered why he had the feeling — not for the first time — that he’d painted himself into a corner.
*
Hunter had said there was no urgency, and when he finally turned up at the Woodhall Hospice, its enveloping gentleness slowed the pace of everyday concerns. He explained himself to the manageress, assuring her, ‘I won’t keep her long.’ ‘Oh, don’t bother about time, it doesn’t matter here. Stay as long as you want, she doesn’t get visitors. When she wants you to go, you’ll know about it.’
In a spotless room, colourful with bouquets, he found the buxom, forceful woman he had once known reduced to a framework of wrinkled skin, yellow as ancient parchment, a near-bald head and bloodshot eyes; the scent of the many flowers could not mask the smell of the wreckage of a body approaching its corruption.
And he had been right, she had not changed, she had simply pared down to essentials — ‘Whatever you want, Mr high-and-mighty Hunter, you’ll get sod all out of me.’
‘Is there anything I can do for you, Queenie?’ he said patiently, safe in the knowledge that there could be nothing — or, if there were, she would not ask him.
She gave him, venomously, her opinion of his capabilities and how he could dispose of them. He made the occasional, unruffled response, listened attentively. Her old sharpness was a habit that was dying with her, she could no more divest herself of it than do handstands; but it was undermined by wandering moments and sudden, bewildered pauses.
He had better use for his time than sit and exchange insults and said so, cheerfully. ‘I want you to tell me about Tracy Lyons.’
She looked away. ‘Who? Who’d you say?’ Was her deafness the genuine failing of age and sickness — or was it one more desperate weapon in an armoury becoming ever more depleted? ‘Ah, her memory’s going,’ he said softly to himself.
‘There’s bugger all wrong with my memory. You ought to have one so good, you’d do your job better.’
‘True enough. What about Tracy?’
‘Poor little cow,’ she said, with pathos, and proceeded to paint a picture of a pitiable social reject who meant no harm and deserved better but never had a chance …
‘Hang on, Queenie, I’ll get my violin out. You’re the only one so far who’s had a good word for her.’
‘All right for you. What’d you know about being deprived? Nowt. Them of us as had it hard — ’
‘Come off it, you weren’t deprived. It’s me you’re talking to. I knew your mam and dad, remember? Respectable working people. You wanted a good time, anything rather than a steady job.’
‘Got it, too,’ she said, abandoning her claim of sisterhood with the unfortunate Tracy. ‘That young slag’d never made owt of herself, no idea. Fit for nuthin’ ’cept getting herself topped. Me, I done all right.’
There was something sly in her complacency, an air of being not only superior to a lost, dead girl but, more importantly, clever enough to put something over on him. He regarded her with a steady look that she was free to interpret as reluctant admiration. Her response was unmistakable; in the old days when she had the reflexes to dissemble he would have had to be quick off the mark, not now, now her preening self-congratulation was evident.
He calculated — the wrong guess could lose him everything. ‘You know, don’t you? Who he was.’
‘I don’t know nuthin,’ she said, immensely pleased.
‘Hey, come on. You talked, amongst yourselves, you working girls, afterwards. I mean, one of your own — ’
‘Own be buggered. We had nowt to do with a bit of a snotnose like that. Had no respect for her betters, she hadn’t … ’ She went on in a vein of maundering reminiscence, congratulating herself on professional encounters always squalid, at times appalling, until he brought her back. His mind retained a hint too fugitive for words: something affronted, something vengeful.
‘Doesn’t matter what you thought of her, you knew what was what. You could describe him, his car, you had a name — it might not have been his own — ’
‘Told your lot.’
‘You told us bugger all.’
‘And that’s all there was.’
‘Right. What it’s difficult to understand,’ he went on, conversational, confiding, ‘is why a man like that would go for Tracy. I mean, look at his background — ’
‘His fucking background. What’s a big posh house and posh old battleaxe of a grandmother to any feller wanting to get it off?’
Not there yet. On the way. ‘How do you know, Queenie?’ he said casually.
‘What? What?’ Her gaze swivelled. ‘Read it in paper.’
‘Oh, it said that? He had a big posh house and his grandmother was a battleaxe. What paper would that be?’
It wasn’t that Queenie always enjoyed a fight, it was that she had no idea how to live otherwise than by hostility and obstruction — and she was still acute enough to know she had slipped up. Perhaps she had done it on purpose, she was perverse enough.
‘Come on, Queenie,’ he said
She gave him a poisonous look. ‘Oh, owe you, do I?’
‘No. But maybe you owe yourself something.’
A screech. Amusement? Derision? ‘And what might that be, Mr Hunter? Do your job for you?’
‘No. Finish yours. They’ve still got away with it, haven’t they?’ (the they deliberately ambiguous). ‘You’re the only one who really knows, aren’t you?’
She had made trouble wherever she could throughout her life, he had after all given her something — one last chance to strike out. Queenie could not resist.
‘Course I do. Course I knew who he were. Told me his name was John and he lived in Nantwich. He were sly, and quick. And posh. You have to watch posh ones, they know how to get the better of you. Not allus. If you know what you’re about you can put one over. Looked in his wallet, didn’t I? No, I didn’t take nothing. You don’t take from reg’lars … ’
(That was it — pride, revenge. Tracy had poached on her territory.)
‘ … they bugger off elsewhere. Best hang on to ’em, they’re less trouble, you know where you are with them. Told me he was important — well, they all says that. But I didn’t know he was to do with the Toddies, invented them, or summat. I didn’t know he was that important, not till later, when they got famous. I like them.’
‘If he was your regular,’ Hunter said sceptically, ‘how come he was with Tracy?’
‘Because it weren’t his usual night, always come Wensdays. This was Toosday. I was at our Vera’s in Blackpool. Just his luck he picked up that little cow — or the other way round, more like. I can’t see him having the bottle to go for a young one. He had that much trouble managing it — well, that’d give her a laugh, probably try to charge him more for the extra hassle — be just like her. That’ll be it, take it from me. He lost his rag, went for her. He were always edgy trying to get it up; I had a few nasty moments meself till I knew how to handle him. But her — she’d just make him feel ridiklus. And he’d never do with that. Always full of hisself, bigheaded twat. No, he did it, all right, and I knew it were him. And I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. Justice.’
‘Justice,’ Hunter repeated, knowing perfectly well that she was too immersed in herself to hear. She told him how she got back from her
sister’s the next day and heard about Tracy — ‘People couldn’t talk about nuthin’ else — and I knew. Knew it had to be him. And I didn’t waste no time, I can tell you. I was on train and straight out to that posh Clerewhatever … ’
Ironically, literally days ahead of the police, Hunter reflected.
And she found him; using cunning, greed and tenacity she found her way to Ferns. It was a working day, Alfred could not at that time be assured of an income from the television series and was still employed in local government, so he was at his office. Grandmother Georgina Lynchet was alone in the house. The thought of the confrontation of two such implacable women left Hunter momentarily dazed.
‘She knew,’ Queenie said. ‘Minute she opened door, looked at me. Oh, yes. And I told her, made no bones about it. “I were aware he diverted hisself.” That’s what she said. Yes. Wouldn’t credit it, would you. Diverted hisself. Is that what you call it, Lady Muck? Weren’t surprised, neether. She’d got it all out of him when he got home night before. Mind, she was sort as could get owt out of anyone. I’ve never come across such an old battleaxe, I can tell you, and I’ve met all sorts. Looking down her nose at me. “I suppose you’ve come for money, woman?”’
Queenie’s story, and the relish with which she told it, contained the tragic elements of an ancient Greek drama — and yet it was rooted in the commonplace, the everyday instinct for survival of two unyielding women.
‘So she bought you off? There and then?’
‘No, old bitch. Said if she give me money I’d throw it around and draw attention to meself. What with your lot snooping around, and all that.’
So they had to horse-trade. Hunter, mentally prepared for the details of the transaction, was jolted off course.
‘Then that sister of his — Nell summat — come home from work, unexpected, not well. What the old bag called a “megrim”. I found out what that were, after. Course, that sort has to have fucking megrims — headache’s good enough for the rest of us. Old bat saw her off. “Go and lie down, Nell — Nellie, whatever. I’m occupied. I’ll come up shortly.” Off she went, meek as meek, poor specimen of a thing she was.’
Queenie mimicked the whole scene with reluctant admiration. Some of it might be true; however much or little, there was one vital circumstance: Nella was there.
‘Did the old girl say who you were?’
Queenie stared at him blankly. What had the social niceties of introductions to do with her?
‘Explain you in some way?’
Queenie gave him a pitying look. ‘Her sort never explain nuthin’. Gets rid of this Nellie, fast as spit. Then tells me to sit there while she thinks. Gets out some paper and writes summat down. And I’m sitting there like a lemon in this bloody great cold room, with her mad royal highness, scribbling, smiling to herself … ’
Queenie began to wander, became vicious — but for all her confusion, Hunter had little doubt that at some time she had been in Ferns, in that daunting, shadowy room he had sat in with Nella.
‘So?’ he prompted, after a pause.
‘She says, “We will come to an arrangement. I will give you instructions.” Yeh, can you credit it? “Instructions, my arse,” I says. “S’pose they collars him.” Course, she didn’t understand, I had to tell her — her sort has no common sense. She says, grand as a bleeding duchess, “I will see he is not apprehended.” “Oh, alter the course of justice, can you?” I says. “Yes,” she says … ’ Carried along by her narrative, Queenie halted for a moment, nonplussed. She had, for once, come up against a woman of such implacable certitude, she recalled the moment with something like respect.
‘And what was the arrangement?’ Hunter asked, beginning to guess.
Queenie glared at him. ‘I knew nowt about what she had in mind. I’d never have … That sort, they’re no different nor us, turn on their own kind … ’
The story came out in fits and starts, embellished with denials and claims of ignorance, but the truth, eventually — if it was the truth — was that once the two women had measured each other’s ruthlessness, nothing would divert them from their purpose.
*
Hunter walked through the hospice’s gardens, thinking deeply. By the time he got into his car he had made up his mind. With luck, Annette and Collier would still be at Clerehaven police station. He reached for his car phone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘You haven’t got a date this evening, have you?’ Annette asked Collier.
‘You’re obsessed with people having dates.’
‘I have my reasons,’ Annette said darkly: when they had interviewed Inez’s friend Sam she had begun to feel distinctly in the way. ‘The boss wants us to meet him about eight thirty at somewhere called the One-eyed Rat. It’s a Frog and Nightgown by the sound of it. Apparently Inez and her friend Dora go there Mondays,’ Annette explained. ‘Plus the armadillo.’
The bewildered Local Information Officer, listening, went off muttering, ‘And you think our lot’s mad.’
‘What are we supposed to be doing there?’ Collier asked.
‘Talking to them, informal stuff. Hunter wants to get as much as he can on Alfred.’
‘Ah … does that mean — ’
‘Shut up, before I forget. He said they’re a bit knockabout when you get them together, but they’re intelligent and observant and between them know just about everyone. The important thing is to find out, without showing our hand, if anyone had any inkling of the business about Alfred’s being a murder suspect.’
‘Hunter doesn’t think so.’
‘Well, there was no reason for it to get about. By the time we picked up his trail he was a goner. There’d have been no point in enquiries. One visit from Chatfield CID would be all it would take to establish that, and if it happened at a quiet time, to one of those big houses up at High Town — who’d know anything about it? The family wouldn’t need to explain anything.’
‘From what I’ve heard of them they wouldn’t feel it necessary to explain themselves ever. If he’s going after this, do you think it means he’s been to see Queenie?’
‘If he has he didn’t say. And we’re doing this in our own time — so is he. You know he won’t commit resources to anything unless he’s sure — well, he can’t anyway, with Superintendent Garrett breathing down his neck about the cost of major incidents.’
‘He’s keeping something up his sleeve, isn’t he?’
‘I hope so, James. Hell and death, suppose it’s all about nothing — I mean, we started this, didn’t we?’
*
‘Mr Hunter told us about this place. We had to come and see it,’ Collier lied charmingly to Dora and Inez.
‘It’s super,’ Annette said. ‘I’m going to steal that inn sign.’
‘People do,’ Dora said. ‘They’re on about the eighteenth.’
They were sitting in a corner, shielded from the next table by a high-backed settle from beneath which came the tearing sounds of the armadillo on his fourth crackly bag. While they talked generally, Annette satisfied herself it was unlikely they could be overheard, and when Inez asked how the investigation was going their voices became quieter, more confidential.
Collier said impressively efficient things about making progress, then: ‘As a matter of fact, you might be able to help us with a bit of background. If you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Try and stop us,’ Dora said.
‘It’s not been all that easy, building up a picture of Jaynie. Nothing in her life points to what’s happened — respectable, affluent, social, but … It would help if we could find someone she was close to.’
He paused, registered — without appearing to notice — the infinitesimal withdrawal, the briefly exchanged glance. After an embarrassed hiatus Annette leant forwards, said gently, ‘Don’t feel guilty, with all the enquiries we’ve had to make, we’re bound to pick up vibrations. You didn’t like her.’
‘She didn’t have friends because she wasn’t a nice person. It’s so awful to
say that now,’ Inez murmured.
‘Yes, maybe for you. But I can tell you, there’s someone a great deal more open about it. Ms Nella. What is it about Jaynie and the Lynchets?’ Annette, primed by Hunter, firmly brought the conversation around to the right direction.
They explained Jaynie’s obsession about a family connection, somewhere in the past, with the Lynchets. Dora said, ‘There’s nothing in it, and it doesn’t matter a damn, anyway. The thing is, when Jaynie moved here she needed something to occupy her. She’d always been in awe of the snob value of the Lynchets and she decided to — attach herself to it. And by that time there was only Nella, and she was a sitting duck.’
Inez said, ‘Well, there she was, lonely, plain, how could she help being dazzled? Because it was Jaynie who made all the running. Invitations, shopping together, dropping in at Ferns.’
‘Honestly, I think it’s the one and only girly friendship Nella’s ever had. It was sad, really,’ Dora said. ‘And it couldn’t last.’
‘No, it couldn’t,’ Inez agreed. ‘Came the great betrayal, only I wasn’t here at the time. It happened during the year I did a teaching exchange in America.’
‘Well, that’s what you claimed,’ Dora said. ‘You were gold panning in the Yukon, weren’t you?’
‘Certainly not. I was dancing in a saloon.’
‘Oh, course, you’ve still got the dress, haven’t you?’
Almost diverted, Collier stuck to the point. ‘You can’t leave it there. We may be coppers but we’re only human. What was the great betrayal?’
Dora said, ‘Nella fell down the back steps.’
Annette stared. ‘Jaynie pushed her?’
‘No,’ Inez said. ‘I’ve wanted to often enough, though.’
Dora explained patiently that it was an icy, slippery day and Nella was carrying shopping through the back door because it was nearest the garage. She slipped on the steep steps, broke her wrist and a couple of ribs, knocked herself out. ‘Just a little later, luckily, Jaynie turned up. She really did cope wonderfully. Rang for an ambulance, covered Nella with a blanket, stayed by her, followed her to the hospital in her car … For a few moments no one spoke then Dora said unhappily, ‘This is unchristian.’
Death Out of Season Page 11
