The car was parked quite close to the public lavatory, and the policeman had been on duty for some hours. He went inside, and as he stood there, mused that the bank employees doubtless had cloakroom facilities of a higher order on their premises.
His gaze flicked across to the cubicles.
After over a week, even public places like this would have been cleaned. The policeman advanced and inspected the cubicles. Porcelain and concrete floor faced him. The cisterns were high, old-fashioned ones with chains.
The place was not busy.
If the thief had used it to change in, there was unlikely to be any evidence now, over a week later. He would note it in his report, however.
He walked out into the daylight and fresh air, and sauntered along the path Robbie had taken. The man was sitting on a bench, gazing into space. Walking past, the policeman thought he looked very dejected.
A few minutes later Robbie stood up and walked back to the bank, arriving just before two. The detective followed, and noted it down.
Robbie went straight home after work that evening. He slowed the car down as he passed Caprice; the shop was closed but the lights were on, which meant that Isabel was still busy. He did not want to find her in the house.
Wendy had behaved towards him, that day, in a perfectly normal manner, the manner that had been custom until just over a week ago. As at the beginning of their affair, he must now, at its end, take his cue from her and must not importune.
He would finish her coffee table. He could still do that for her.
He went into the kitchen and made some tea. His headache, subdued by aspirin, throbbed dully, and he felt exhausted. He had eaten very little lunch in the Copper Kettle – soup and a roll, and coffee, to swallow down his aspirins. Then he had tried to do the crossword but the clues had blurred in front of his eyes and his brain felt clogged. In the end he had given up. He had bought some food for dinner; Isabel might want to eat; he didn’t think he would.
He drank two cups of tea, with more aspirins, and then he went out to the shed.
At first he could not believe it. The door was open, and when he went in he saw that his small stock of timber had gone.
Vandals, he thought at first. Hooligan boys from the town must have broken in, thieving. But his tools were all there and so was the mower. Only the wheelbarrow was missing. Then he realized that Wendy’s table had disappeared.
Robbie stood in the middle of the shed, bewildered. It must have been hooligans. But there was no mess – no graffiti – nothing had been turned upside down. His mind focused on the missing barrow and he blundered out of the shed to look for it. As he walked down the garden, fists clenched at his sides, he suddenly remembered the smell of bonfire smoke the night before, and now he saw the wheelbarrow, standing beside the spot where he burned rubbish. There was a pile of wood ash on the heap. He bent down and ruffled his hand in the grey powdery mass, and found three brass screws.
He had screwed the legs of the coffee table in position, for added strength.
It was quite a long time before he realized that Isabel, not hooligan boys, had destroyed his gift for Wendy.
Detective Inspector Thomas rang Wendy’s bell at half past six.
When she opened the door, she looked startled to see him, and then, he thought, almost dismayed.
‘May I come in a minute, Miss Lomax?’ he asked. ‘I’d just like a word, if you don’t mind. I won’t keep you long.’
‘Of course.’ Wendy stood back, opening the door widely. ‘Sit down, Inspector.’
Thomas sat down in the red velvet chair and once again Wendy took the seat opposite him. She looked very tired.
‘I came to see you last night, but you were out,’ he began.
‘Yes. I went away for the weekend,’ said Wendy.
And she’d had a rough one, Thomas decided.
‘Well, it wasn’t urgent,’ said Thomas. ‘I wondered if you remembered mentioning to anyone – a friend, or maybe your colleagues at work – that Mrs Jordan wasn’t badly hurt.’
Wendy remembered immediately that she had told Robbie. She had told him about the hair from the beard being found in the Renault, and the fragment of fibre, too.
‘It doesn’t matter if you did,’ Thomas added quickly. He knew at once by the sudden closed look on her face that she had told someone. ‘I didn’t ask you to keep it quiet.’
Wendy said nothing.
‘I’d better tell you why I want to know,’ Thomas continued, but all his antennae were out now. There was something here. ‘The calls to the hospital inquiring about Mrs Jordan stopped after that, before we raised our ban on news about her. That was why we relaxed it, in fact. I’m thinking that you – or maybe a nurse at the hospital – may have mentioned it in the hearing of someone who repeated it, until the information finally reached the man we’re after. I think he may be local, because he dropped the money back at a branch of the bank not all that far away.’
‘Oh,’ said Wendy.
That gruff voice, the one in the bank threatening her, and the odd one on the recording that Thomas had played to her: could that really have been Robbie?
‘I may have mentioned it to Mr Robinson,’ she said. ‘We had dinner together one evening, and we talked about the robbery.’
‘I see,’ said Thomas.
Mrs Jordan might have died. Robbie should not go unpunished for that. But he might not have done it. If he were innocent, proving it might cause him so much trouble, and it seemed to Wendy that he had enough, with his marriage, without more, unless it was deserved.
The police would get there in the end if he were guilty, wouldn’t they? Without more help?
15
For the first time in her life, Isabel was afraid. A wig and stockings made sense of a sort: drag gear. It was known that men dressed up as women. But a beard did not match up with that idea, despite how she explained it to herself.
It was some time before she would admit the real meaning of her find.
Robbie couldn’t have robbed the bank. It just wasn’t in him to do such a thing. For one thing, he was fond of it, although he felt he had been treated badly in the promotional sphere. Isabel didn’t blame the bank for that; Robbie wasn’t worth promoting. To think when she married him that she thought she was making herself secure. Well, there would be a pension, but she made enough in the shop to snap her fingers at that.
Whoever had robbed the bank had returned the money. That was like Robbie. And whoever had robbed the bank had made a mess of things, running down that woman. That, too, was like Robbie.
At lunch time she went home, and went again to his room. His bed was unmade and there was a heap of dirty clothes in a corner. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. He’d been late home and late going to work; all his behaviour lately had been untypical. On impulse she picked up his soiled shirt from the floor and sniffed it, then his pyjama jacket. There was nothing unusual about them; the faint odour of clean male flesh could just be discerned. Isabel noticed his dressing gown amid the muddle of dishevelled sheets and she pulled it out.
A definite scent arose from it: feminine, unmistakeable, from Dior: she smelled it often enough in the shop, assisting customers in the changing rooms.
Robbie had been with a woman over the weekend.
He must have taken the money so that he could spend it on her, his fancy woman, then lost his nerve and returned it.
Blinding rage filled Isabel as she flung the dressing gown down. She did not want Robbie in any sexual way; she never had; she had merely endured that for the first months of their marriage, then pushed him away so that he very soon ceased to want it. Had he been doing this all along? Had women all through the years? He’d never been off with one before, that was certain, but now he was at an age when men, always foolish in Isabel’s view, often behaved stupidly.
Isabel did not intend to be the object of pity in Harbington. Robbie was going off with no woman. She opened the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers and took o
ut the objects she had seen the day before: the wig, the beard, the cap and the dark glasses – and the stockings. Fool, leaving them here where they could be found if by any chance the police did suspect him. He was so incompetent he might have left other clues around, and he was so stupid that he might think returning the money would wipe out his crime so that the police would abandon the task of trying to solve it.
It was no good putting the things out with the garbage, and there wasn’t time, now, to burn them. Isabel picked up one of the polythene bags she had left in the room for Robbie and stuffed them into it. It was transparent, and the red hair of the wig looked very bright to her as she carried the package downstairs.
She took it out to the car and put it under the front seat to deal with later; she could not leave it in the back for all to see.
Charlie’s mother saw a man in a short leather jacket at the door of 49 Claremont Terrace during the afternoon.
She did not go to tell him that Mr and Mrs Robinson were both out; he might be a burglar. But Detective Sergeant Briscoe rang her doorbell and asked where Mrs Robinson was, showing her his identification.
Charlie’s mother explained that Isabel would be at Caprice. While they talked, the toy pistol was on the table behind her. Briscoe saw it but made no comment; there were plenty of such toys about. He drove into town, to the shop.
Men seldom entered the premises of Caprice, except at Christmas; very few accompanied their wives on shopping sprees. Isabel sailed forward to greet this intruder who did not look like a customer.
‘Detective Sergeant Briscoe, Blewton CID,’ he said showing her his card. ‘Could I have a word with you, Mrs Robinson?’
Silently Isabel led the way out to the back, behind the shop, where there was a kitchenette and cloakroom and a flat-topped desk where she kept business papers.
Briscoe confirmed that Isabel was, indeed, the wife of Gilbert Robinson who worked at the Blewton bank which had been raided twelve days earlier.
‘Has your husband been ill lately?’ Briscoe inquired.
‘No,’ replied Isabel.
‘Has he acted strangely?’
‘No, not at all.’ The lie came instantly.
‘Where was he on the evening of Tuesday last week?’
‘Tuesday – Tuesday?’ Isabel frowned. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said, and was going to add that the detective had better ask Robbie himself, when warnings sounded in her head. The detective would trap Robbie. At the same time she remembered that the first and third Tuesdays in the month were choral group nights. ‘Wait!’ she exclaimed, though Briscoe was going nowhere. ‘It was his choir evening.’
‘He’d be late in, then?’ Briscoe asked.
‘He always goes to the Crown, afterwards,’ Isabel said. ‘I don’t know what time he came in.’
‘He was at home this weekend?’ asked Briscoe.
‘No.’ It was useless to lie if the lie could so easily be proved. The man had only to ask that wretched little boy next door if Robbie was at home. ‘He was away,’ Isabel admitted. She thought of the woman’s scent that had clung to his dressing gown. Her lips primmed. ‘Visiting friends,’ she said.
‘The address, Mrs Robinson?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ Isabel asked.
‘We think he may be able to help us establish the identity of the bank robber,’ said Briscoe smoothly. Thomas’s latest instructions had been to put the frighteners on; no more. He reckoned he’d done it by now.
‘Well, I know nothing about that,’ said Isabel firmly. ‘Better ask the people who saw the robber. My husband didn’t. He was at lunch.’
Any last hopes of Robbie’s innocence left Isabel as she spoke. He had done the raid in his lunch hour and had thought he’d get away with it. Well, it still needed to be proved.
‘Thank you, Mrs Robinson.’ Briscoe decided he’d got enough. She’d go back home and tell her husband what had happened, and he’d get rattled. That was what the guvnor hoped for. Better move in, Briscoe thought, with a warrant. They’d find something, if this was matey.
‘What did he want?’ Isabel’s assistant wanted to know when Briscoe had gone.
‘Oh, some nonsense about security,’ said Isabel.
‘From Blewton?’
‘Harbington comes under Blewton,’ said Isabel.
For once she was totally out of her depth. The police force was not something to be tackled lightly. Isabel knew that a wife need not give evidence against her husband in law. She would not send Robbie down; she would do a great deal to save him, to prevent scandal; and after that, from gratitude, he would be even more surely in her power. There would be no more women.
She still could not believe that there had been one at all, despite the evidence.
She took her time packing up the shop at the end of the day. She liked it then, empty of customers. The cleaning woman came in, and Isabel watched her vacuum round, then dust. Once a week the counter tops were polished. Isabel ran her hand along the row of dresses that hung all down one side of the shop; silks and cottons for spring, and light wools for cooler days; polyester and nylon for easy care; she stocked them all. If Robbie was caught, she would survive; people would be sorry for her. But she did not want pity; she had earned her own security, and from Robbie she wanted the appearance of respectability. She would go to some lengths to preserve it.
Robbie’s impulse after discovering Isabel’s bonfire had been to retaliate. He had wanted to storm round the house pulling all her possessions out of cupboards and drawers and set fire to the lot.
He went up to his own room. Usually the first thing he did when he came home was to go upstairs and change out of his business suit into slacks and a sweater, but this evening he had gone straight out to the workshop after his two cups of tea.
He had forgotten that this morning he had rushed out to work without making his bed and tidying up.
Robbie sat down on the unmade bed and put his aching head between his hands. He rocked to and fro like a child needing comfort. Bloody woman Isabel: no words that Robbie knew were bad enough for her. He cursed her aloud, using them all.
After a while he got up and slowly began to put the room to rights. When the bed was made he collected up his dirty clothes from the corner where they lay; he might as well put them in the linen basket. His eye fell on the heap of polythene bags which he had not noticed before. How had they got there?
He realized that Isabel had been into his room, and he understood that the bags were for his packing.
She’d burned his wood and the table for Wendy. What else had she done?
Robbie opened the drawers of the chest quickly, one after the other. The toys were there, the soldier and the other things for Charlie. But the wig and the rest of his disguise had gone.
Isabel knew.
He looked at his watch. She’d be home soon.
Robbie took his keys out of his pocket and opened the door of his cupboard. He felt at the back of it. The gun was still there: so her prying curiosity hadn’t discovered all his secrets.
He took it out, then felt in the shoe for the cartridges. He loaded both barrels; then he slipped the others into his pocket in case he needed an extra one or two to finish the job.
He decided to wait for her in her bedroom.
Robbie heard Isabel’s car. She revved the engine before switching it off. Then came the sound of the door banging. Now she would be walking towards the house.
She always came upstairs promptly, either to change if she was going out, or to do things to her face and put on a different pair of shoes. Sometimes she called in at the office downstairs on the way, if she had brought papers or samples home. She depended on him to produce food for the evening meal, even if he no longer always cooked hers. If she went into the kitchen now she would see his shopping in the refrigerator: chops, though there were probably plenty left in the freezer. He wondered irrelevantly how she planned to move the freezer and its contents. Well, she’d be doing none of that now.
He tightened his grip on the gun and stood up, moving over to stand behind the door so that she should not see him when she entered.
He heard her heavy footsteps on the stairs. Then the door opened and she walked in, setting a parcel down on her bed. She stood up, her back to him.
Robbie raised the gun to his shoulder. He was trembling. He had only to pull the trigger and she would be gone for ever. He could not miss her. The barrel of the gun was only a few feet from her back.
Before he could do it, Isabel turned. She took an instinctive step backwards and came up against the bed. If she retreated further, she would collapse upon it. Robbie’s face was intent, one eye closed as he peered down the length of the gun. It wavered in his grasp.
‘What on earth are you doing, Robbie?’ Isabel’s voice was steady, but this was a nightmare.
‘I hate you,’ Robbie croaked. ‘I’m going to kill you.’ He took a step forward. The end of the gun was inches from Isabel’s chest now. ‘You burned Wendy’s table. You spoil everything.’
‘Robbie, you’re being very foolish,’ Isabel said. ‘You don’t want to go to prison, do you? You will, if you shoot me.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Robbie. ‘You’re hideous. You’re too evil to live.’
‘You’re the evil one, Robbie. Who robbed the bank?’
But Robbie didn’t care about the bank now.
‘You said it was my fault about the children. That we hadn’t any. It wasn’t. It was your fault. That was very wicked of you, Isabel.’
Isabel was very strong, and she brought her right arm up fast. It caught the barrel of the gun and knocked it sideways.
The sound of the explosion was deafening.
Death on Account Page 13
