‘No. You can do that. When it’s certain.’ I turned away from him, then back. ‘But she won’t believe you. Come on, Terry, let’s go and find Oliver.’
We left him standing with Flora’s lighted window behind his head. She was probably all he had now.
Chapter 12
Brooding and silent, I allowed the car to run slowly down the rutted drive. Twice I got the impression that Terry had glanced at me, but eventually he spoke.
‘Well? Get anywhere, did you?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Dulcie went away with somebody called Joey Payne. Or was thought to have gone away. If Oliver’s guess is anywhere near correct, Dulcie got no further than beneath the floor of the empty house next door.’
He gave that some consideration. Then, ‘And Joey?’ Another pause. ‘You don’t think that’s him — the other skeleton?’
‘I don’t know. Yes I do. If one’s been there fifteen or so years longer than the other —’
‘That hasn’t been confirmed, yet.’
‘Well… it’s hardly likely. I’m coming to the conclusion the one is Rowley Fields, and the other Dulcie.’
‘Yes. That’s the best bet.’
‘She was a real beauty, Terry.’
‘Dulcie?’
‘Yes. And so was Bella, in the photos I saw. The image of her mother, at around the same age. Dulcie the softer beauty, Bella the brighter and sharper.’
‘Whatever that means.’
I didn’t enlarge on it, wanting to think about it before we met up with Oliver. I had to get it straight.
‘There must be more than that,’ Terry said. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’
‘D’you mind if it keeps until Oliver’s with us? Then I’ll only have to say it once.’
‘Sure. Please yourself.’
‘Did Kemp say anything?’ I asked.
‘D’you mind if it keeps —’
‘Idiot!’
We laughed. He said, ‘All I got was a load of grumbles. People visiting the old lady all day.’
‘Was Connaught mentioned?’ I asked. No reply. ‘As one of the visitors.’
‘Well… not so much mentioned as cussed about. That’d be closer to it. They don’t seem to like each other.’
‘That’s part of what I’ve got to tell you both.’
We said no more on the subject at that time, each of us wondering how best to contact Oliver. The interview with Flora Porter had taken less time than it had seemed, so we eventually decided that he hadn’t had time to get really canned, and probably hadn’t covered more than four of the pubs. So the best thing seemed to be to start at the beginning of his list. By the time we had decided this, we were drawing into the town.
‘Can you remember that list of his?’ I asked.
‘Sure.’ He was confident. ‘Next left after the lights.’ He was one of those people who can memorize maps. Very useful, that is
We found Oliver in the noisy public bar of the Unicorn, in a corner with half a dozen other men. No women. What he was after would’ve been confined to men.
For two minutes we stood at his shoulder. His left arm hadn’t yet become tired; it was gracefully lifting a full pint tankard. And already he seemed to be on his way to roaring drunk. His laugh was too loud, his voice blurred. Then he seemed to realize we were there, said something to the others, and they all fell about laughing. But he didn’t draw us into the group, merely used us as an excuse to leave. He got to his feet and groped for Terry’s arm, but once outside he steadied miraculously.
‘Get anything, Phil?’ he asked.
‘I believe so. And you?’
‘Tell you when we get back to the Crown.’
I took the car round into the rear yard, but this time the men stayed with me, taking no chances. Inside, we went no further than the lounge. It was quiet in there, and we were alone at a corner table. Terry went and fetched drinks, Oliver assuring us he was still far from drunk. My gin and lime was very welcome.
‘You first,’ I suggested to Oliver.
He laughed, setting the mood. ‘It was quite a riot,’ he told us, ‘that pool fiddle thing of Rowley’s. They all knew by the Saturday evening, of course, that they’d come up with a first dividend, and on a week when there were only eight score draws. Therefore it had to be worth cheering about. So they started celebrating on the Saturday, and by the Monday they all knew how much money it ought to be. Then the celebration really got going, and you’d never believe — the nerve of the man — Rowley was in there with ‘em, laughing and fooling as he always did, and knowing! The gall of it! For some reason, they all seemed to treat him as a hero and wouldn’t let him pay for a round, and there was Rowley, getting splendidly legless, and knowing the roof was going to fall in on him. And his hand went nowhere near his wallet.’
‘It’s in character,’ I said. ‘He was like that. Worry about it tomorrow. Something might turn up — that was his attitude. It would’ve taken something really drastic to shake him.’
‘This was drastic,’ Oliver assured me.
‘Things happened for him, though. I mean, look at Dulcie. He got her, married her, and he was the least likely… sorry, Oliver. Go on. I’ll tell you later.’
Oliver stared at me. ‘That was years before. Fifteen or so.’
‘It was only an example. I took it out of context. You’ll understand.’
‘Right.’ He raised his eyebrows at Terry. They couldn’t know I was trying to link everything up in my mind. ‘Right,’ he repeated. ‘There was Rowley, just one of a riotous group, until the Thursday. That was the day when the cheque should have come. They’d expected him to be running through the streets, waving it, on his way to the bank. But no Rowley. Then somebody said perhaps he’d gone to one of those presentations where some TV or film star handed over the cheque — but there was nothing like that on the telly that evening, and still no Rowley. So half a dozen went out to the house, but the two girls said they didn’t know where he was.’
‘They’d be getting worried,’ Terry suggested.
‘Yes. Particularly as it was in the newspapers by then. There’d been two winners. Neither of them Rowley Fields.’
‘His garage?’ I asked.
‘It was all shut up. So… on the Friday evening there was a big gathering. In the Unicorn. There was no denying it any more. He hadn’t sent in the coupons. It was the only explanation left.’
He stopped in order to lubricate his vocal chords.
‘And so...’ I prompted.
‘They got to the stage of drunkenness where they became wildly aggressive. They decided he must be hiding at the house. They decided what they were going to do with him, and then the whole group marched — no cars, it’d got to be a march, you see — marched out of town chanting slogans such as, “Death to Rowley Fields!” and, “Hang him by his goolies!” It was as close to a riot as you could get.’
‘The police...’
‘The police, in the person of Detective Sergeant Arnold Connaught, was bloody well leading them.’
‘Ah!’ I said. It would explain why he’d mounted only one rung in the promotion ladder in ten years. ‘And what happened? The girls...’
‘They weren’t there. Maybe they’d heard ‘em coming. Nobody was there, and the front door was unlocked. Strange, that.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Terry. ‘The girls knew Rowley hadn’t been sending in the pools coupons. They must have. And they’d know there would be trouble on its way, and their father had deserted them —’
‘Perhaps,’ said Oliver. ‘In any event, nobody was there. The girls kept out of the way, and to save the front door being smashed in they left it open.’
‘Like cars in the States,’ I told them. ‘So what did the mob do, Oliver?’
‘They rampaged through the house, searching everywhere. They tried the empty house next door. No sign of Rowley. He’d gone. There was talk of burning the house down, but apparently Connaught’d got enough sense left to pu
t a stop to that. Then they all went home. They say.’
Terry ventured, ‘You don’t believe it?’
Oliver shrugged before he could stop himself, and winced. ‘Suppose Rowley was there. Suppose that gang of drunken avengers went too far. Then there’d have to be a conspiracy of silence about the outcome — and there was a convenient place to bury him next door.’
We thought about that until Terry suggested, ‘But if they did kill him, Chief, it’d be in some violent way. Beat him to death or something. And we haven’t heard anything from Forensic about broken bones.’
‘There was,’ I reminded him, ‘mention of a cleft in the skull.’
‘But we don’t know which skull,’ he countered. ‘Hers or his.’
‘Are we,’ said Oliver calmly, ‘talking here about Rowley and Dulcie? Yes, I suppose we are. But there’s no positive evidence yet. Likelihood and no more.’
‘Oh but there is. There’s more.’
We had been so absorbed in each other that we hadn’t noticed we’d got company. The entrance to the lounge was no more than an arched opening, and leaning in this was Detective Inspector Connaught.
‘We should’ve gone to our room,’ said Oliver gloomily.
‘No, no. Perish the thought,’ said Connaught, advancing on us. He hooked a chair across with one toe, no mean feat considering he had a brimming glass of beer in one hand. ‘I’m just pleased to be able to set the record straight.’
‘It was all false then?’ asked Oliver, being polite.
‘Oh no. True enough, as far as I heard it. Most of ‘em were in a murderous mood. At the very least, Rowley would’ve finished up with a lot of broken bones. But I’d tipped him off, you see. I’d guessed the truth, and as I could make it an official police request I contacted the pools people, and they told me they had no such person as Rowland Fields on their list of subscribers. So I had to plan for contingencies.’
‘You led them!’ I burst out.
‘Of course. It was the best way to control the outcome. I led them, so I had charge of events. Or there’d have been criminal damage — God knows what. The girls had made themselves scarce, obviously, so it was just a matter of saving the house and its contents.’
‘And Rowley,’ I asked, ‘never returned?’
‘That’s how it was.’ Connaught took a draught of his beer. ‘Sensible of him.’
‘But at that time,’ I said, ‘he had no choice. He was dead.’
‘Ah!’ He cocked a finger. ‘You’re guessing.’
‘I’m guessing, yes. But by now you’ve surely heard more from Forensic.’
He grinned. He could be quite attractive when he did that. ‘I have more. That’s why I’m here, to tell you good people.’ His eyes flicked round our three faces, not one of them eager, each of us suspicious of his approach. Then he got down to it.
‘The male skeleton… there was a partial denture. Upper. We’ve traced the dentist who made it. His records show it was made for Rowland Fields. That ties that one down. Rowley disappeared ten years ago. Forensic say there was a small deterioration of the bones. The female skeleton, based on the figure of ten years for Rowley, they reckon had been in the ground somewhere between twenty and thirty years. That’s as close as they’ll commit themselves. Bella was four when her mother disappeared, so that fits in nicely. No special details in the female skeleton. Only one broken bone, in fact, and it’s a bit of a miracle we found it, the thing’s so small. The hyoid bone.’
‘So she was strangled,’ said Oliver quietly. He had seemed very subdued. Of course, the decision that Dulcie must be the female skeleton would be no surprise to him, but the strangling had to be.
Connaught said, ‘Well...’ He put his empty glass on the floor beside him and got to his feet. Thoughtless. Leave someone else to pick it up. ‘I just wanted to tell you that. It’s late. Reckon I’ll get along home.’
We said nothing. No goodnights. Silently, we watched him stroll away. Connaught was beginning to assemble himself as a person in my mind, not simply a policeman. I would have liked to know where he lived, whether he was happy or disillusioned, whether he was still suffering the pangs of having lost Dulcie. Yet he had chatted casually, even callously, about the female skeleton and her broken what’s-it bone.
Oliver suggested we should finish it off upstairs. Terry took the four glasses back to the bar, and we trooped up the stairs. Oliver asked, ‘Your room or ours?’
‘Ours,’ said Terry quickly. He nodded to me. ‘Bella’s probably in yours, Phillie.’ It made a convincing excuse.
One was needed, because Oliver had clearly over-taxed his strength. We had located him early on his tour of the pubs, but if we hadn’t he’d have forced himself onwards to complete his list.
Once in the room, he slumped into the fake Queen Anne chair, making no attempt now to hide his exhaustion. I asked if he’d kept up with his tablets. He said he had, and Terry suggested there was no harm in having an extra one, so that was done, and Oliver closed his eyes. When I sat on the bed to relate my interview with Flora Porter I thought he’d fallen asleep. But whenever I paused he’d open one eye and say, ‘Carry on.’
Which I did, ploughing on to the end and attempting to reassemble Flora’s narrative for them. At the conclusion, though, Oliver came fully awake and alert. He was a rapid recoverer.
‘So what did you make of it, Phil?’
‘I’d like to get hold of that Edith Payne she mentioned. Her son was the one with the grand passion — and Flora said it was the same with her Dulcie. It was Joey Payne Dulcie was going to go away with. Now it seems she didn’t go anywhere, only beneath the house next door. But what happened to Joey? If I could get hold of Edith Payne… I’d like to hear from her whether she’s kept in touch, where he is, and what he’s doing.’
‘We could certainly do with finding out about that,’ Terry agreed, but without enthusiasm.
‘And there’s something I doubt we’ll ever get the answer to,’ I went on, ‘and that is — who was Bella’s real father...’
‘Dulcie’s mother pressured Rowley into marrying her,’ Oliver reminded me. ‘But that doesn’t have to mean anything but the obvious — that he’d fathered the expected child.’
I shrugged. ‘Perhaps she’d gone past the teasing stage, and it could have been… well, literally anybody. Flora would look around, and Rowley might well have been the only one who could’ve been conned into marrying her.’
Oliver stirred. ‘Conned? Damn it, Phil, Dulcie was a local beauty. All the local lads would be queuing up. It was me! No, it was me!’
‘You think so?’ I pursed my lips, trying to work out the logic of it. ‘But with all that adulation heaped on her and all those young men after her, she could choose. She could take her time. And she wasn’t going to surrender that perfect body of hers to anybody who —’
‘Don’t get all flowery, Phil,’ Oliver grumbled.
‘I’m trying to get her straight in my mind, Oliver. It would explain all that teasing — she was hesitating to commit herself. And when she did, it would have to be with the one she shared the grand passion with. Who was Joey Payne. And perhaps Flora, who seems to have been in complete control of Dulcie’s life, grand passion or not, wouldn’t want Joey Payne as a husband for her wonderful Dulcie. Perhaps she disliked him Joey. And preferred Rowley.’
‘Phil, Phil!’ Oliver protested. ‘This is nothing but theory. It takes all the gloss out of life. Cold and distant.’
‘Analytical,’ murmured Terry.
‘All right. So — for you two romantics — I’ll put it like this: the weight of evidence suggests that Dulcie got herself pregnant with Joey Payne, that Flora wouldn’t hear of her marrying Joey, so Rowley was chosen, partly because he’d be the most compliant. I can’t imagine Tudor Kemp being pressured into marriage when his father would consider it unsuitable, and Arnold Connaught… damn it, he’s the sort who’d dig in his heels simply because he was being pressured, however much he might’ve wanted Dul
cie himself. Especially if he knew he wasn’t the father. No, not our Arnold. He’d want her… but not to marry.’
‘And where’s our Dulcie in all this?’ demanded Oliver. ‘You talk about her as though she was a tennis ball, passed to and fro across the net between the randy racquets.’
‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ I said briskly, ‘but twenty-five years ago a pregnant young woman thought herself lucky if she could marry at all. And with a mother like Flora… Oh, hell, I’m wasting my time. Put it like this, from what I’ve heard about Dulcie, she wouldn’t care who she married. Her life was full of available men. Rowley would be the one she happened to live with.’
I was aware of my cynicism in this, aware I’d perhaps taken it too far. Oliver raised an eyebrow.
‘So poor Rowley got elected.’ He pondered over it, still not persuaded.
‘Poor Rowley?’ I asked. ‘What about poor Joey? The evidence is that we’ve got a two-way passion there. Dulcie and Joey.’
‘A passion that lasted five years?’ Oliver wasn’t intending to be convinced about anything. Perhaps that was the way he always worked, using scepticism to press his team to greater efforts. ‘If that passion of his was there before Rowley married Dulcie, and we’re to understand that Joey Payne was planning to go away with her at a time when Bella was four years old...’ He stopped, frowning.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, because somehow I found the concept appealing, in that it lightened my assessment of Dulcie, ‘it was a grand and abiding passion. They fought against it, tried to live without each other, then realized they couldn’t go on without...’
‘That sounds like something you’ve read in a sloppy book,’ said Oliver, going all pragmatic on me, with not a hint of sentiment leaking out. ‘These grand passions are just another bout of sex, all tarted up in fancy words. Quite simply, when she married, Joey would look elsewhere for it.’
‘Oh, you great big romantic buffoon, you! People do —’
‘I know, I know!’ He sounded irritated, perhaps with himself.
‘And Flora did tell me that Joey was planning to go away with Dulcie. She’d heard that from Dulcie herself. And what happened to that passionate flight? I got the impression that he was returning, in order to take her away. Perhaps he’d left the district when she married, and life wasn’t showing much promise for him, either. He had to have his Dulcie with him. There’s your grand passion, Oliver. Would you have done that for me? Would you return after five years to take me away from my lawfully wedded husband?’
Bury Him Darkly Page 17
