by Gwen Moffat
“Thank you,” he nodded pleasantly, “you’ve been very helpful.”
When she had gone, he asked: “What would Martin’s duties be after eleven?”
“If there were no emergencies, nothing,” Ted told him, “he could go to bed until seven the following morning.”
“What about telephone calls?”
“They would be switched through to his flat. He has two phones: one is his own line, the other’s an extension from the small switchboard in the secretary’s office.”
“Thank you.” He turned to Miss Pink expansively: “Now ma’am, can you tell me where the warden was after one-thirty on Sunday afternoon?”
“Only for part of the time; for the rest I believed his own account of his movements.”
“Start from one-thirty.”
“Apparently he was looking for his car until after dark when I met him.” She told him about the meeting on the valley road and the conversation in the Goat. The detective’s eyebrows lifted when she came to Martin’s reason for not reporting his wife’s disappearance: that she might return that night, but he didn’t interrupt. She ended with his remark concerning the motive for his search on Sunday afternoon: “I was looking for my car!”
“That could be taken two ways,” Pryce commented, “if true it means he thought more of the car than of his wife, but it also means that he didn’t know where the car was.”
No one said anything. The sergeant flexed his shoulders and stretched cramped fingers. Pryce looked at Ted.
“You and Miss Pink are watching the interests of the Centre,” he said. It sounded like an accusation.
“Martin is no longer on the strength,” Ted reminded him.
“Yes. This is an odd coincidence: him being dismissed within a few hours of her disappearing. We know she was killed first because this lady with the queer name — Polish, is it? Wolkoff, saw the car about three o’clock on Sunday afternoon but Martin didn’t get his marching orders until —” he glanced at Miss Pink, “— after dark anyway.”
“About five-thirty,” she told him.
“So his dismissal could have had nothing to do with her death.” He turned to Ted again. “You’re looking after the Centre’s interests,” he repeated.
“We want to see the matter cleared up as soon as possible, naturally. What are Martin’s chances?”
“Looks bad for him. How many records can a record player take? Would it play long enough for him to get from here to the coast, dispose of the car and body and drive back?”
“He’d need an accomplice and another car,” Ted pointed out.
“Oh yes, he would that,” Pryce beamed at them generally. Miss Pink felt a twinge of horror which was quickly followed by amusement. Sally as an accomplice? In any event, she thought comfortably, they couldn’t both have been away from the building at the same time.
“After eleven,” Pryce said, watching her, and he wasn’t smiling now, “There needn’t have been anyone on duty. It was a risk of course, but as long as no boy comes forward to say the duty instructor wasn’t in his flat, and no one says they telephoned and couldn’t get an answer . . . We can’t prove he wasn’t here, but on the other hand he can’t prove he was.”
“Do you know what time she was killed?” Miss Pink asked.
“Not to within a few hours, ma’am; stomach contents are unreliable at best and this lady didn’t eat much. All we can say is that she’d drunk a lot of whisky, and it’s most unlikely she was sober when she died. But so far as the location of the murder’s concerned, she could have been killed here and disposed of with the help of an accomplice after the place quietened down.”
“You’ve got this transport problem,” Ted reminded him, “She’d left in the Jaguar, and even if she’d come back, where’s your second car to bring back the murderer from the coast? It’s over eight miles. The chief instructor had the Land Rover, Hughes’ car was off the road, and the only other vehicle was a van belonging to Nell Harvey. She was off duty and if she wasn’t out in it, I doubt if she’d leave the keys inside.”
Nell was sent for. When she came in she was wearing a short printed dress and she fairly bloomed with health and vitality. Introduced to Pryce she was attentive but a little reserved. Slade and she were out in her van that evening, she said. They returned about eleven-thirty, she had locked the van and taken the keys to her room.
“You didn’t happen to see the Jaguar,” Pryce mused, looking at the map, “which way did you go?”
“We called at one or two places, finishing at the Saracen’s Head in Bontddu. We didn’t see the car.”
“Wrong direction anyway. When you came back, did you see the warden or any indication of his presence: a light in his room for instance?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. My room, and Slade’s, are in the stable block at the back. The warden’s flat faces in a different direction.”
When she’d gone, Pryce turned to Miss Pink.
“Hughes,” he said, “Rowland Hughes. What’s he like, ma’am?”
She said carefully, remembering that Ted had sketched in the staff for him while she was changing: “He’s older than the others, competent, no great initiative — a family man —” She paused. The significance of Hughes at this moment struck her but she didn’t continue. However, Pryce knew why she had hesitated.
“If he says his wife came home at eleven would you believe him?”
“Nearer eleven-fifteen at their cottage,” she pointed out. “It won’t make any odds. Hughes is a sample soul and, I imagine, a bad liar. You’ll get the truth out of him without any difficulty. You don’t seem in any hurry to stop them communicating,” she added obliquely.
“You mean they’ll be cooking up a story? They’d have done that Saturday night, ma’am.”
“Look,” Ted said, “apart from the obstacle of the murderer trying to get back from the coast with no car, surely the only incentive Sally would have to help Martin would be that she was his mistress. Can you see her husband giving her an alibi in those circumstances?”
“It happens the other way round.”
“You mean women giving husbands alibis because they’ve murdered mistresses. This is rather more involved. What you’re suggesting is the husband alibi-ing his wife who’s helped murder her lover’s wife!”
“Similar thing,” Pryce said phlegmatically, “let’s have him in.”
“I’ll go,” Ted said, looking as if he was glad to move.
No one said anything until he returned with Hughes. The man was expressionless.
After some innocuous questions about his position at the Centre, Pryce asked pleasantly:
“How did you spend Saturday night?”
Hughes frowned: “I was off duty,” he said, “I watched television.”
“What time did you go to bed?”
“About eleven.”
“When did your wife come home?”
“About quarter past.”
“How do you know?”
“I was reading and I didn’t like her coming home so late. I was mad, if you want to know.” He was suddenly angry: “She’d done too much for Martin, always standing in for him, running all the admin. side, and here she’s taken over his Saturday evening duty just because he was feeling ill. Ill! He’d got a hangover from the night before and Saturday he just got drunk again. A whole bottle of whisky, she said: empty on the floor when she went in.” He paused.
“What was the weather like?”
“Eh?”
“The weather on Saturday evening?”
“I — What’s that got to do with it?”
“Raining?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t go out.”
“But Mrs Hughes would be wet when she came in, wouldn’t she? Her hair would be damp?”
“Not really, she wears one of those plastic hood things when it rains.”
“What time did it start raining?”
“I’ve no idea, I tell you.”
“Well, we can f
ind that out easily enough. So she wasn’t wet when she came in?”
“I can’t remember.”
Pryce raised his eyebrows. Hughes shifted uncomfortably. Miss Pink felt frightened. There was something wrong here — or was Hughes like many weak men: always frightened of police questioning? Most people had something to feel guilty about. To her surprise Pryce dismissed the man.
Slade and Wright were left but they were both off duty and not in the building. Miss Pink guessed that they’d deliberately made themselves scarce but she didn’t say so. Pryce asked permission to address the boys, when he would suggest that if any of them had information that might be useful they could see him in private.
The directors exchanged glances and nodded. They had little choice. It was stipulated only that the boys should have their supper first and that either Miss Pink or Ted should be present at any subsequent interviews. Pryce agreed. Ted went to find the duty instructor.
“How soon do you expect Martin?” Miss Pink asked.
“I’m waiting for a phone call: to say they’ve located him. But then it’s quite a journey: five or six hours.”
“They’ll bring him straight away, without a night’s sleep?”
“Oh yes,” he started to fold up the map, “straight away.” In a different tone he went on: “There’s not much more we can do here after I’ve spoken to the lads. I’ll hang around for a while in case someone’s got anything to tell us but I don’t set much store by it.”
*
By nine-thirty Miss Pink was exhausted. Pryce had addressed the boys in the assembly hall but no one had approached him afterwards although the Centre hummed with excitement like a swarm of bees. A call had come through from London to say that Martin was on his way. The directors returned to the Goat feeling flat and dispirited, torn between speculation concerning Martin’s guilt, and the suspicion that something was wrong in the Hughes’ household. So far as Martin was concerned Miss Pink felt that bewilderment and wretchedness would be as likely felt by a man who’d murdered his wife as by one who’d been cuckolded and deserted, but that in the former case there’d have been horror as well, and this was absent when she talked to Martin on Sunday afternoon. But she was too tired to defend him strenuously and both were too tired to eat more than a little of the soup and cold fowl which Olwen served reproachfully — for she now knew about the murder, and knew that the others had known when she served their tea.
After supper Miss Pink excused herself and went to her room. She bathed luxuriously, deeply grateful that she hadn’t to meet anyone else that night, happy that she’d taken one of the few rooms with a private bathroom so that she didn’t now run the risk of meeting Olwen or even Ted in the passage. With the bedside lamp glowing softly in the warm room and the bed turned down, with the latest novel by her current favourites: Sjowall and Wahloo, on the table, she kicked off her slippers — and someone knocked at the door.
She sighed and put on her slippers again.
It was Sally. Miss Pink stared at her, and turned back to find her spectacles.
“I couldn’t get away before,” Sally said. She sounded not quite natural. “It’s about the future arrangements.”
Miss Pink invited her in and shut the door.
“Sit down. Won’t you have a drink?”
“No, nothing, thank you.”
“Yes.” Miss Pink sat on the edge of the bed since her visitor had the only easy chair. “Now what’s worrying you?”
“How much do we tell the boys?”
“No more than they’ve been told. It won’t hurt them; they didn’t really know her. I don’t think the horror will get through to them. If it does, I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”
“And — Martin?”
“Will they know he’s here? I suppose they will if the Press see him. I can only suggest you stick to facts and don’t speculate. Everyone’s innocent until they’re proved guilty.” Sally looked at her quickly. “The best thing, the only thing to do, is to continue as usual: keep to the timetable. Of course there will be a lot of gossip: among the boys, kitchen staff, tradesmen. We have to accept it. And now that’s disposed of, tell me what the real trouble is.”
Sally stared at her.
“You didn’t come here at this time of night to ask me how the staff should treat the boys; you know as much about adolescents as I do. You’re worried about someone — Rowland or Charles?”
There was no beating about the bush.
“I’m afraid Rowland’s been rather silly,” Sally admitted, “you see, it’s difficult to describe Bett to anyone who didn’t know her, who hadn’t seen her with her hair down. She was usually on her best behaviour with the directors — that is, until Saturday. She wasn’t very bright but she had an eye to the main chance and she was lazy. Charles was her meal ticket — and security too, of course. So she was careful during directors’ weekends and she managed to keep him sober too. I think she frightened him into it. But the rest of the time she didn’t even attempt to hide her feelings.”
“Towards whom?”
“Everyone. Men and women. I said she didn’t hide her feelings but I don’t think she had any besides self-pity. It was odd in a woman of her age. You meet elderly women like this, and their lives revolve round themselves, and everything in life is wrong. Bett was like the Ancient Mariner: she got you in a corner, literally and metaphorically, and poured out her problems. I think she judged people by their capacity as listeners. We all came in for it one time or another.”
“Really,” Miss Pink looked interested, “but why was she like this? She wasn’t unattractive.”
“No —” Sally said doubtfully, “but she seemed incapable of having a lasting relationship with anyone. She didn’t hit it off with her husband but she didn’t with anyone else either. There was no boy friend. I don’t think men mattered to her. I think her basic trouble was boredom, and she had this dreadful tendency to carp at everything so that if there was nothing to moan about she invented it.”
“I see,” Miss Pink said untruthfully, “but where does Rowland come in?”
“Well, he wasn’t as wily as the rest of us. He didn’t know how to avoid her, and he was sorry for her. He’s a bit dim where women are concerned: rather chivalrous and soft — and once she got your attention she became quite subtle: claws inside a velvet glove. So she poured it out and Rowland soaked it up and saw himself as a kind of counsellor, and I think she came to look on him as a father figure. It sounds a bit odd but she was rather retarded and Rowland — well, there wasn’t that much difference between her and Jennifer.”
Miss Pink refrained from pointing out that Sally’s daughter wasn’t retarded and in any case there was a great deal of difference between fifteen and thirty.
“Where did they meet?”
“It only happened once or twice. They went to pubs.”
“Well, that seems quite above-board. I suppose he’s worried that someone will come forward who’s seen them together?”
“Yes.” She hesitated Miss Pink saw that there was more to come.
“Did they meet on Saturday evening?” she asked.
“No,” Sally said evenly, “she wanted him to. But there was a programme on television he wanted to watch. He didn’t go.”
“That was sensible, and of course, although you weren’t in your house, the children were.”
Sally smiled.
“No, they’d gone into town with a party to the cinema. Rowland was alone.”
“That’s not so good.” Miss Pink was feeling a little light-headed. The conversation was like a game: retreat and thrust, retreat . . .
“It doesn’t make any difference,” Sally was saying, “He rang me at the Centre twice because he was so furious about my not coming home.”
“What time did he ring?”
“Just after supper — about seven-thirty, and again about ten.”
Miss Pink thought: two and a half hours?
“I rang him at nine to remind him to switch th
e electric blankets on,” Sally said, “I always do that.”
Chapter Nine
He sat hunched over the table drinking black coffee. He was smoking and his fingers shone with nicotine and sweat. It was warm in the dining room.
Miss Pink, astonished and appalled, stopped beside him.
“Good morning, Charles,” she said quietly.
He took one elbow off the table and leaned back to focus on her. For a moment there was no recognition even as he returned her greeting.
“Please accept my sympathy,” she said, and meant it for, murderer or not, he was obviously in need of compassion.
“Miss Pink.” He announced her name as if he were relaying the information. “That’s kind of you,” he added more naturally.
“Would you like me to sit here?” she asked.
There was a pause.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I would.”
She sat down, making a business of it, settled herself and looked out of the window.
“A better morning,” she murmured.
“They let me go,” he said in the same tone in which he would have told her it looked like rain.
“When?”
“I don’t know. I’ve lost count of time but it couldn’t have been long ago.”
“Have you had any sleep?”
“No. They said I could sleep today.”
There was another pause.
“How long were you with them?”
“Some time.” He made an attempt to calculate. “We left London, I suppose about eight last evening. We must have arrived some time after midnight. I’ve been with them several hours.”
Olwen came in, stared at Miss Pink in consternation and ignored Martin.
“Mr Roberts said to tell you he’d gone with the police, mum.”
Miss Pink would have liked to question her but felt this would be tactless in Martin’s presence. She ordered coffee and toast. She could eat only a token breakfast when she was surrounded by tobacco smoke but in the circumstances she hadn’t the heart to protest. He lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last. There were deep pouches under his eyes and the flesh of his face appeared to have sagged. The suggestion of a tan which he had possessed had faded, leaving his skin an unhealthy yellow.
