by Gwen Moffat
‘Were Evans’s prints on it?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘You took a long time before you told me that.’
He shrugged. ‘If the killer put Judson’s prints on the gun, it stands to reason he’d press Evans’s hand on the cooker.’ He folded the map carefully. ‘There’s the question of motive,’ he said.
She stiffened. ‘Yes, motive.’
‘Evans suspected that Lloyd killed the dog—’
‘Just a minute.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt—’ she didn’t sound in the least apologetic, ‘—but couldn’t we consider the motive in general terms—at least for the moment?’
‘Go on.’ He could have been humouring her.
‘Leave the dog out of it because, rightly or wrongly, no one except Evans considered that shooting the dog was a crime. But, assuming that Judson was killed on Saturday night—which seems likely because he didn’t report his car stolen on Sunday—then was Evans getting close to the murderer, at least inadvertently?’
‘You’re coming back to the dog.’
‘Not really. Certainly Evans was after the killer of the dog but could he have stumbled on something else? Not something concerning the dog’s killer but Judson’s. I mean, we know they’re different. Young Bart shot the dog; he didn’t—I reckon he didn’t—shoot Judson. Now Evans didn’t know that Judson was dead but could he have come across something significant without realising its significance? Evans had the—attributes for that. He was extraordinarily determined, inquisitive, and very stupid.’
‘A murder of elimination,’ Williams suggested.
‘Could be,’ Pryce admitted. ‘Then you come to the motive for Judson’s death. Did you know that he was pestering the girl, Seale?’
‘It was obvious.’
‘And that she responded?’
‘No! I don’t believe it. Who told you that?’
‘She did.’
Miss Pink flushed. After a while she said coldly: ‘Are you going to give me the details?’
He appeared not to notice her tone.
‘I think we can do that, not that we didn’t have some trouble getting it out of her. They’re a fine crew: those boys and Lloyd and Seale; you’ve got to fight for every inch of ground. And the girl’s the worst of the lot; she doesn’t resist you, she’s continually pretending to miss the point of the question.’
Miss Pink stared stonily at the ferny bank outside the car. She didn’t remind him that where the boys were concerned, she’d done the work so far.
‘This morning,’ Pryce went on, ‘at first she would say only that she thought someone was in these woods on Friday morning. It wasn’t until some time later that she told us she wasn’t alone at that moment. She was with Judson. When I say “with” I don’t mean it in any irregular manner. He had come down to her camp to try to persuade her to—ah, well, you might say it was irregular.’
Miss Pink refused to rise to the bait. Williams had turned his back on them and was staring through the windscreen. She sighed and Pryce looked peevish.
‘He was trying to persuade her to go away with him.’
Miss Pink looked bored.
‘She drove away,’ he said coldly, ‘and Judson followed. They went down to the coast and had lunch together. Then she left him and walked along the sea cliffs but they met later at Ebeneser where she was giving a lecture that evening. After that she sent him packing. It looks as if they had a fight. At all events they split up and she didn’t come back to her camp site, thinking he’d be waiting for her, but spent the night in her van in some woods down the main valley. That’s her story.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘There’s no corroboration.’
‘There’s no need for any. It’s not important. Judson returned to Parc that night and nothing happened to him until Saturday. All she did was have lunch with the man. Are you suggesting that she went to the cottage with him that afternoon?’
‘I hadn’t considered it. But according to her he did want her to spend the weekend with him—and he never gave up. He was at her camp again on the Saturday shortly before he left the valley. She says, brazen as you please, that although she refused to go with him, he was convinced that she’d follow. You see her slip: if she followed then she knew where the cottage was. She recovered herself nicely: said he’d given her directions how to reach it but she hadn’t listened because she wasn’t interested. Not interested when she had lunch with him on Friday?’
‘Why not? She felt like eating a good meal and he wasn’t bad company when he set himself out to be—presumably, or she wouldn’t have gone to a restaurant with him. Most philanderers have charm.’
‘What about Lloyd?’
‘Don’t be old-fashioned. Lunching with one man doesn’t preempt the relationship with another. Probably she didn’t sleep with Lloyd until Saturday night anyway.’
‘And did she then? Or did she go and join Judson on the moors?’
‘No,’ Miss Pink said firmly. ‘Because her fingerprints weren’t found there.’
‘That’s debatable. It’s unlikely that anyone other than Judson spent considerable time in the place last weekend, but someone else was there: the person who wore gloves, the person who almost certainly killed him.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe that’s suicide, not without we can find a feasible explanation for those prints having been wiped off. It could have been the girl, you know.’
‘But where’s the motive? You don’t kill a man because he refuses to take no for an answer. Where murder’s concerned the opposite is the case: the man kills the woman.’
‘After rape, or in conjunction with it. Quite. I agree: it’s not that kind of case, but Lloyd could have followed her to the cottage. He hated Judson’s guts. He’s trying to conceal it now but he hasn’t a hope of hiding his real feelings. He’s not a devious fellow.’
‘I don’t see him as a cold-blooded murderer.’
‘By the time Seale told him about Judson’s pestering he could have been pretty hot-blooded, more so since he’s keen on the girl himself.’
‘I doubt if she told him. She’d consider it unimportant.’
Williams turned to face them.
‘He had a motive, miss. Judson was gunning for him, determined to drive him out of the valley: all over this old friction about him riding through the Reserve and his dogs running loose, frightening the animals and such.’
‘Have you charged him?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Pryce put his hand on the door. ‘We’ve got nothing to charge him with, nor her. He’s got an alibi for the Saturday night, such as it is: the girl, of course. She alibis him from Saturday morning until last evening, so that covers Evans too. If you believe her she was with him right through the critical times. And where would you say that leaves us, bearing in mind your contention that this is a sex crime?’
‘Who said that? I didn’t.’
‘Didn’t you? I beg your pardon.’
He was all innocence but Miss Pink was on the alert.
‘How many people knew about this cottage on the moors?’ she asked.
‘There was Anna Waring.’
‘And she was forced to tell me about it because Judson’s body must surely be found eventually—and she’d left her prints there.’ She returned Pryce’s stare, and enlightenment dawned. ‘She couldn’t have known Judson was there!’ She paused. ‘But maybe she suspected he was; she might even have driven out there and found him dead. The door wasn’t locked.’
‘Or Waring could have gone, if he hadn’t been out there already: on the Saturday night.’
‘I don’t think Waring cares so passionately about his wife that he would commit murder for her.’
‘What about Anna? Did she care?’
She remembered the woman’s expression as Judson accosted Seale in the river room after the lecture.
‘Not love,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Possessiveness, pride—hurt pride, yes, Anna would feel ve
ry deeply about that. She’s vain … But she was in Chester.’
‘Not far away,’ Williams said. ‘Time enough to slip back Sunday, even overnight. Hotels have fire exits, flat roofs. Can she prove she was in her room all night?’
A car was coming up the lane. It stopped abreast of them. Cross was in the front with Bowen driving. Seale and Lloyd were in the back. They stared bleakly at Miss Pink.
‘When you’ve dropped your passengers,’ Pryce said equably to Bowen, ‘come back to this spot. I’ll be waiting.’
‘We’ll walk from here,’ Seale said. ‘We need the air.’
She looked pointedly at Miss Pink and they got out the other side of the car and walked up the lane. In a moment they had climbed the bank and disappeared into the trees. Miss Pink was put in mind of a couple of animals released to the wild.
‘I’ll leave you too,’ she said, adding, with a thin smile: ‘with a little less hostility.’
‘None, I trust.’ Pryce was shocked.
‘The trouble is,’ she said, holding the door, ‘I like all of them; at least I don’t dislike any of them enough to wish—’
‘And you on the Bench, ma’am! Think of the cooker going over, and the rope round his neck. Think of that shot gun pushed up against a man’s face. Don’t forget the victims.’
Chapter 12
The Press had discovered Dinas. Already, on the short return to the inn, Miss Pink had encountered a car carrying three men who showed more interest in her than tourists would have shown in an elderly and apparently nondescript woman. But evidently they knew whom they were looking for and she didn’t correspond with the image they had in mind. They surveyed her briefly as she stood on the grass verge to let them pass, they nodded an acknowledgement but they didn’t stop.
It was a respite, but only a brief one, although she had one consolation. She knew that Pryce had as yet said little to the Press and the implication of what he had released was that both Judson and Evans had committed suicide.
Seale and Lloyd had been smuggled in and out of the Police Station without the reporters’ knowledge—but obviously the Press had got wind of where Evans’s body had been discovered. The car bearing the three strangers had been going slowly, not speeding up the combe to Lucy’s or Joss Lloyd’s cottage. They were looking for the pool. That much they knew, or had deduced: that the pool was close by; what they didn’t know was the degree of involvement of this large lady in spectacles who stood aside to let them pass. And between Miss Pink and the Media stood a number of local residents. Those, she thought thankfully, would keep them busy for a while.
To her surprise there was only one strange car in front of the Bridge and only one customer in the river room. The other residents, laudably uninterested in violent death, had taken packed lunches and departed in pursuit of innocent pleasures.
Waring stood behind the bar, neatly turned out in blazer and regimental tie, but for a moment Miss Pink, accustomed to regard the man as ingenuous, was unable to define his mood. That she found intriguing.
He served her with sherry and introduced the customer as Tudor Davies.
‘Manchester Evening Express,’ the man murmured, as if presenting credentials.
‘One of many,’ Waring observed to Miss Pink. ‘So Mr Davies informs me; the others being at the cottage where the suicide occurred.’
‘A shocking business,’ she said. ‘Have you been to the cottage, Mr Davies?’
He was a small, sallow fellow with greasy hair, eyes that bulged a little giving him a permanent air of surprise, and a nose like an ant-eater’s snout.
‘No,’ he said, then, as their attentiveness forced him to qualify that: ‘The Express is not a tabloid.’
Miss Pink chuckled. Waring said artlessly: ‘More like The Times?’
Davies shot him a troubled look.
‘We’re not in the same league as far as the features are concerned,’ he admitted. ‘And of course The Times readers are better educated than ours.’
‘No doubt,’ Waring said. ‘But good taste is the rule, eh? Pornography and naked women and Andy Kapp are out? You write for a middle-class public, I take it.’
‘Oh, but it’s the middle classes that demand the porn,’ Davies assured him. ‘They’re repressed. It’s the working classes and the aristocracy who are honest. They live how they like; they don’t need porn.’
‘Rubbish!’ Waring flushed angrily. ‘And you’ve come to the wrong place to talk about class. There’s none of that in Wales. We’re a classless society.’
‘Good for you.’ Davies sounded morose. ‘How did the village get on with Judson then?’
Waring had been fussing with beer mats as he wiped the counter. Now he was still for a moment, staring at the hand that held the cloth, then it started to move again: round and round in the same place. Miss Pink and Tudor Davies sipped their drinks idly, as if they’d all run out of conversation, as if no question had been asked.
At length Waring said slowly, having given his answer considerable thought; ‘I wouldn’t say that any of us knew Mr Judson in depth.’
‘Who does? Know anyone in depth, I mean.’ Davies smiled at Miss Pink.
Waring moistened his lips.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it’s the last thing one would know, not being on intimate terms—but—’ he glanced towards Miss Pink as if for help or confirmation of what he was about to say, ‘—he was a heavy man, what used to be called a good trencherman, and he in-d-dulged in strenuous activities. He r-rode—a horse—’ He was tripping over his words and he was sweating. He paused, drew a deep breath, and continued harshly: ‘He was an excellent horseman but he rode big, powerful horses. They had to be, to carry him; he was over-weight and he wasn’t a young man. You need a lot of energy to control a horse. When I heard the news I can’t say I was altogether surprised. In fact, I’d never have been surprised to hear he’d suffered a stroke. I’ll lay odds that at the inquest his doctor will tell the coroner his blood pressure was dangerously high.’
‘Which wouldn’t have been helped by heavy drinking,’ Miss Pink contributed.
She could have sworn that Davies’s nose quivered but probably it was merely the effect of his nostrils distending as he drew a deep breath.
‘And his friend, Evans: did he have high blood pressure?’
‘Friend?’ Waring was affronted. ‘Evans was his employee, a handyman—and a poor one at that. I’d never have hired the fellow myself, but then in a place like this—Of course,’ he went on smugly, ‘you can get good staff if you provide the right conditions and pay decent wages. We’re served well enough ourselves. I understand Mrs Judson had some difficulty in keeping servants.’
‘So they were left with the execrable Evans?’ Davies mused and, in the face of Waring’s silence, pushed it: ‘Yes?’
‘And his wife.’
‘Execrable too?’
‘That depends where you stand,’ Miss Pink put in crisply, unable to bear Waring’s squirming longer, squirming because he refused to admit that he didn’t know the meaning of a word. ‘Objectively the Evanses are ordinary village people; he was a handyman, his wife is a cleaner.’
‘Ordinary enough,’ Davies agreed. ‘What makes a handyman commit suicide? From an objective viewpoint?’
‘Inbreeding,’ she told him promptly. ‘There’s a lot of it about.’
‘I come from these parts myself.’ She smiled in sympathy. ‘You mean Evans wasn’t all that bright,’ he continued doggedly. He was a stayer.
‘Exactly. How many suicides have you covered in Wales?’
‘I’ve never covered one like Evans’s. It’s wild. There was a fellow jumped off a high-rise in Liverpool after tying himself to the fridge, but there’s no going back from the tenth-floor balcony. This one had only a few feet of air and a few feet of water. I have visions of the poor devil changing his mind when he hit the water.’ He stared at Waring in horror. ‘Can you imagine that?’
‘There are no high-rise buildings here,�
�� Miss Pink reminded him. ‘One has to make do with what’s to hand.’
‘He must have been mad.’
‘Well, it takes all sorts,’ Waring observed. ‘Can I serve anyone before I go for my lunch?’
Davies pushed his glass across but Miss Pink said something about being hungry and went to the dining room. Waring followed her when he had pulled the beer.
Davies remained alone with his half pint, looking and feeling as if he had been abandoned to the quietude of the river room. Below the lawns the oakwoods climbed the slope like tiers of spectators. He had the feeling that he was observed although there was no one in sight, and no sound in the kitchen. Perhaps it was the absence of sound that was menacing. He had a ridiculous thought concerning peepholes. It was small wonder that anyone should choose to commit suicide in this place, he told himself, staring with cold hostility at those lush slopes beyond the river that could hide a multitude of sins.
He started to prowl round the room, glass in hand, occasionally glancing across the terrace, unwilling to believe that any country could be as empty as this appeared. There were no cows visible, no sheep, not even a crow. It was one o’clock and the temperature must be eighty in the shade. He was about to step outside when he paused; his sharp eyes had detected a flash of movement on the far side of a hedge that ran down to the river. Two boys were approaching the back of the hotel and the fact that they were on the far side of the hedge and had come from the woods gave them, to Davies’s mind, a furtive air. Besides, they were something to take an interest in, a change in the pattern.
He gulped the remainder of his beer and, lifting the flap in the counter, walked to the back of the bar. The door to the kitchen was closed. He tensed as heels clacked across the hall, and his hand went to the beer pump. The sound changed direction; now it came from behind the closed door. He heard a voice and put his ear to the crack.
‘… salad.’
‘… she hungry?’
There was no response to that. The sound of heels reversed themselves to the dining room, there was a distant murmur of voices, then suddenly, from the kitchen: ‘Good God! Don’t you ever make me jump like that again, Bart Banks! D’you want me to drop down dead?’
