But he was aware of the shyly encouraging face of Sarah Dickenson, though he studiously avoided looking at her directly. Assuredly she could not know; and if she did not, the others were no doubt also ignorant of the nature of his crime. He wondered how he was ever going to tell Sarah about Celia. He owed it to her, but he felt now that he could not bear to lose her. That was a stupid thought. What had happened to his prison resolution that he was done with women?
He was dealing tonight with the trial and execution of Charles I. It was ironic that he should banish his audience’s concern with this sordid modern homicide by involving them in the public ceremony of that old and famous judicial killing, but the people in front of him did not seem aware of the contrast. They were fascinated rather than appalled by the picture of Cromwell inking men’s faces and making wild jokes as he collected signatures for the vote of guilty.
And the foolish monarch’s rising towards greatness as the shadow of death fell more strongly upon him intrigued them as it had always intrigued him. The story of how his lifelong stammer dropped away, of how his courage and dignity swelled to meet his moment on that Whitehall scaffold, meant that it was not only Sarah’s face that shone with interest. Harry had a good tale, and he told it well, allowing his enthusiasm free rein as he became immersed at last in his subject.
The discussion of the great issues behind the story went well, with most of the group contributing. They brought the usual variety of perspectives and experience that made adult education so rewarding an occupation for him. Long before the topic was exhausted, it was time for them to finish. The adrenalin pumped strongly through his veins, rising with the success he had achieved. A larger than usual group agreed to adjourn to the pub: it was the confirmation of his banishment of those dark trolls that had lurked round the opening of the evening.
Sarah lagged a little behind the others, as had become her custom, so that they could walk the few hundred yards together. He gathered together his notes, allowing his other students time to make discreet exits. He was cleaning his few key phrases off the blackboard when he sensed an alien presence behind him. When he turned, he found Detective Inspector Percy Peach standing silent and unsmiling, just within the room. Behind him, the lofty bulk of DS Collins filled the doorway and remained there, as if emphasising that there was no escape from what they planned for him.
“Time for our little exchange,” said Peach, licking his lips. His hair in the semi-darkness looked blacker than ever around the pale dome of his head; his moustache seemed to bristle with anticipation. Harry thought he looked like a seventeenth-century torturer.
*
Sarah followed the others to the pub as Harry directed. The last glimpse of her anxious white face as she looked back from the corridor was an image which stayed with him for a long time.
Peach did not move immediately to the attack. He said unexpectedly, “Sergeant Collins will take down the details of your movements which we require.” Then he lifted his bottom on to one of the old desks, stretched his short legs straight in front of him for a moment to inspect his shoes, and transferred his gaze to Harry’s face, where he obviously planned to leave it.
Collins said, “We’d like to know about your movements on the night when Thomas Harrison was killed, to start with.” His light, neutral tenor and almost apologetic tone were a contrast to the harsher approach of his chief, so that Harry found himself wanting to be helpful. He wondered if they operated deliberately in this complementary tandem.
“I can’t offer a lot of help, I’m afraid. You’ve already heard that we had one of young Mr Harrison’s house conferences on the night in question. All the residents except old Tom were in there. We finished at about half past nine, I suppose. After that, I sat and read the Sunday paper in our lounge for half an hour or so.”
“Who was there with you?”
“It’s a long time ago now. I think we were all there together for a while.”
“Including the Harrisons?”
“No, they have their own quarters. We were in what Trevor calls the guests’ lounge.” Harry looked nervously at Peach for signs of derision, but the inspector remained watchfully impassive. “Michael Ashby went out for a while, I think for a drink, but I heard him come in at about eleven. His room is next to mine, you see.”
“And by that time you were in your own room?”
“Yes. I went up and read in bed. Fred Hogan and Dick Courtney were watching television, but I heard them come up later. I suppose it would be about half past eleven then, but I can’t be sure at this distance in time.”
“Did you hear anyone moving about after that?”
Harry thought. “No. I think I got off to sleep pretty quickly that night. The next thing I heard was a big crash and the voices which followed.” Collins wrote furiously in his neat, fluent hand. He looked across at Peach, who had never taken his eyes off Harry’s face.
The inspector rolled a small pink tongue speculatively round his upper teeth, knowing the next move was his, orchestrating the tension as the silence stretched in the deserted classroom. “Who slept in the rooms on either side of you?” he said.
“Fred Hogan was on one side, Michael Ashby on the other, in the end room. Dick Courtney was at the other end, nearest to the stairs.”
“And just what did you hear from the rooms on each side of you that night?”
Harry hesitated, long enough for Peach to rap at him, “You’re the only person in the house who has killed before, Bradshaw. It’s in your own interest to tell us everything you can — unless of course you did for the old man yourself.”
Harry decided it was not so much the things Peach said as the enjoyment he so patently derived from them that was so unnerving. In spite of himself, he said defensively, “There were things about my killing. Things even the judge said should be taken into account —”
“Mitigating circumstances,” said Peach. He strung the phrase out, allowing his Black Country accent to become suddenly pronounced, so that the words rang like a jeer round the quiet room. Then he slid off the desk and moved to within a foot of his victim’s face; his squat features loomed large beneath Harry’s astonished gaze and the foul odour of his breath rose into the nostrils above him. “Just remember this, Strangler Bradshaw: anyone who’s murdered before is first choice in my book for the drowning of this cocky little wooftah Courtney. Understand?”
Harry knew this must be the technique Peach used to frighten petty criminals. He wished earnestly that he could feel less frightened himself. He said, “Of course I understand,” hoping that his tone carried more disdain than he felt it did. “I’m being as helpful as I can.”
“Good. Let’s see how helpful that is then.” Peach’s small grey eyes glared up into his, as though he had already said something incriminating. “Now, what did you hear from the rooms around you? We want to check your story against what we have already heard from the others.”
He made it sound as if Harry were on very thin ice, as though if he said the wrong thing now he would be arrested and charged within the hour. And they hadn’t even got to Dick’s murder yet! Harry told himself that Peach had no doubt tried to frighten the others, in just the same way; he found himself wishing nonetheless that he knew exactly what they had said. He said, “If I say anything that doesn’t tally with what other people have told you, it will probably be because you are asking me to recall what happened several weeks ago now.”
Peach relaxed his features into a slow smile, indicating that he had heard such specious excuses before and was not impressed. The little dusting of chalk in Bradshaw’s unruly hair seemed to confirm how much he had caught him off guard.
Harry tried to look past him at Collins and his notebook, but found the precise recording of his recollections almost as worrying as Peach’s aggression. He said, “I don’t think I heard anything from Fred Hogan’s room. But he was downstairs more quickly than me: I’ve no doubt he just reacted more swiftly than me to the disturbance. In any case, I migh
t not have heard him: Fred normally moves about very quietly.”
“Like the tea leaf he is, you mean? Yes, I can see that: quiet business, petty thieving. You wouldn’t want to draw attention to yourself.”
Harry said firmly, “As I say, I assume Fred moved downstairs quickly and quietly. He was the first person from our floor to reach the scene of the accident.”
“Scene of the death, you mean. Remember, we’re all keeping open minds again now about the cause of death. For what it’s worth, which in my view can’t be much, Hogan says that is what happened. He thinks he was already awake when he heard the crash. He grabbed his coat and slippers and rushed down to help Mrs Harrison.” Peach recited the words as though he were quoting Fred’s words and did not believe them. Then he said heavily, “What about Michael Ashby?” He made it sound as though Harry could put him inside for years if he said the wrong thing.
“That’s easy. Michael slept through the whole thing. He was still snoring after the ambulance had been called and Trevor — Mr Harrison — and Dick Courtney came upstairs.”
“Hear him snoring when you woke up, did you? But chose not to mention it before?”
Peach reminded Harry of the prosecution counsel at his trial for the murder of Celia. “I don’t think I did hear him. But I woke out of a sound sleep, to the sounds of confusion downstairs. I might well simply not have registered Michael’s snoring.”
Peach looked as though he suspected a conspiracy between the two of them. Harry suppressed an impulse to tell him that he and Ashby were not particularly close. Peach said, “When did you first notice this snoring, then?”
“When Trevor and Dick came upstairs. I had gone into the bathroom. I knew what was happening, because I had heard Trevor phoning for the ambulance.”
“So let me get this straight, Bradshaw.” Peach’s broad white forehead furrowed into a deep frown, and he mouthed the words as if he could scarcely believe what they said. “You woke up to the sound of a falling body. You didn’t go to offer any assistance. You went into the bathroom for a pee, and didn’t emerge until you heard the dead man’s son and the lad who is now dead. And through all this cacophony, Ashby was adding his own contribution to the noise by snoring steadily, but you didn’t hear him. Not until the others arrived.” He managed to make it sound so unlikely that it was almost like an admission of guilt on Harry’s part.
“Things were confused. There was a lot going on. I —”
“Is it not possible that Michael Ashby was not snoring steadily throughout those minutes? That he began to produce his snoring noises only in their latter stages?”
“I suppose it’s possible. But I’m not —”
“Habitual snorer, is he, Ashby? Disturbs you regularly at nights?”
Harry was still not sure whether Peach was going for him or Michael Ashby. He said, “Intermittent, rather than regular.”
Peach looked at him quizzically, as if trying to work out what he was attempting to conceal behind this latest prevarication. “Has it occurred to you that Ashby could have slipped back into his bedroom while you were emptying your bladder, and pretended he had been asleep throughout all this mayhem?”
“No, it hadn’t. I suppose it’s possible. Perhaps Fred Hogan could —”
“Fred Hogan couldn’t, as a matter of fact. We asked him.”
Harry wondered if an eagerness to see Ashby in trouble could be interpreted as indicating his own guilt. He said, “Has it occurred to you, Inspector, that even if Ashby was faking his snoring, he could have stayed in his room and pretended to be asleep simply because he did not want to become involved in the drama downstairs? Being a convicted criminal has that effect on one, I find.”
Peach grinned his malevolent goblin grin. “Let us do the detecting, sunshine, there’s a good lad.” Harry was a good five years older than him, but it was the manner Peach adopted when patronising criminals, and he saw no need to introduce fine distinctions into it.
Harry had sat down behind the table on which his document case and notes from his teaching still lay. Peach now took his eyes off him for the first time and walked away from him. Harry thought he was going over to the window; instead, he walked round Harry and his table twice, with the second circle a little tighter than the first. Then he made a quick dart towards the face of the seated man, like a fencing move, and said, “Right. Let’s leave the death of Thomas Harrison, accidental or otherwise, and move on to the death of Richard Courtney, which was cold-blooded bloody murder in anyone’s book.”
He paused, raising ridiculous hopes in Harry’s breast that he was debating his tautology. Then he said, as though he were delivering an epée thrust, “Where was Strangler Bradshaw on Monday night then?”
Harry was getting used to Peach’s tactics now. He made himself think, “What a tiresome little man!” before he answered, to give himself confidence. Then he said calmly, “I was in my own room at Westhaven.”
“Witnesses?”
“None. As you would expect. We have our own rooms.”
Peach’s smile was wide enough to reveal what Harry now thought of as his canine gaps. “Pity, that. From your point of view.” He walked over and looked down for a moment over Collins’s shoulder at the sergeant’s neat lines of script. His voice was like oiled silk as he said, “What would you say if I told you that you were seen leaving the house at around half past eleven that night?”
Harry felt his heart thumping, so violently that he thought for a moment that it must be obvious to others. He gathered his resources, timing his reply like the amateur actor he had once been, forcing into his voice the calmness that the role demanded. “I should say that your witness was mistaken. Or a liar.”
Peach came and sat opposite him. “So you’re saying we shouldn’t put you in the frame, Harry.” It was the first time he had used the first name, and his victim found it more unnerving than all his abuse. “So who could have killed the little shit? He was a shit all right, wasn’t he?
“No comment.”
“Oh, come on, Harry. I’ve talked to the others. He was a nasty little bugger. Or were you bedding him too?” He tossed in the last, carefully calculated, idea as if it had just occurred to him and opened his eyes to the obvious.
Harry, struggling for control, wondered if the man had used the same ploy with the others. How would they have reacted to it? He made an immense effort to speak calmly. “Dick was not generally liked. I don’t think anyone in the house was of the same sexual persuasion.”
“Oh, not ‘of the same sexual persuasion’. I like that.” His wild mockery told that he liked it not at all. But he was rattled: Harry had won a small victory. Peach put his face very close to his to say, “So who do you think drowned the little shit, Harry? Assuming you’re not going to give us a confession.”
“I — I’ve no idea.”
“You didn’t hear anyone go out? Or come back in?”
“No.”
“Who was the last person you spoke to on that evening, Harry?”
“Ros Harrison. I met her in our kitchen when I was making a cup of tea to take up to bed.” He was aware that his reply had come too quickly, showing that he had had it ready, been expecting just that question. Well, he had been at the very centre of a murder enquiry before: they should expect him to anticipate a few things. Last time, he had confessed; but then, there had been little alternative, and he had never wanted to deny the crime.
Peach weighed him for a moment before he said, “We’re very fair-minded, us policemen; the system says we have to be. The Harrisons are as much in the frame as you lot. What can you tell us about them?”
Harry shrugged. Curiously, Peach’s aggression seemed to have helped him in the end to gather confidence. “Virtually nothing. Ros wasn’t normally around our section of the house at that time of night. The Harrisons are very good about allowing us our privacy.”
“Oh, I’ll bet they are. So why was she in your kitchen on that night?”
“She had come to bor
row a few tea bags: the family had run out of them, apparently.”
“You didn’t suspect she might be there for some other reason? Or see her go out of the house?”
“No. I went up to bed, read for a little while, then put out the light. There were a few movements on our corridor and in the house below. Nothing unusual. Nothing I could identify. I must have been asleep by midnight or very shortly afterwards.” Again it had the ring in his own ears of a prepared statement.
“How very tidy. You didn’t hear the famous Ashby snoring on this occasion?”
“If I did, I cannot remember it now.”
“Right. We shall no doubt come back to you in due course, Harry. When we have compared your statement with the others, and found just where they disagree. We shall be arresting someone from Westhaven, in due course.” He had no intention of revealing that Frankland was in the frame as well; keep the pressure on the bastards whenever you can. “Don’t leave the area without telling us, Harry. You know why.”
“Where am I going to go?”
“Precisely. Just remember that.”
Peach nodded briefly to Collins, who shut his notebook and followed his chief as the shorter man moved with short brisk steps to the door. Neither of them looked back at the man behind them, though he heard Peach call something to the caretaker as they left the now-deserted building.
Harry found that his ordeal had ended as abruptly as it had begun. His legs felt unsteady and his brain refused to focus as he made his way to the pub. He was surprised to find how long he had been with the policemen: there were no more than ten minutes to closing time.
He wondered if anyone would have told Sarah what he had so feared to tell her himself. In a small town, one cannot keep sensational secrets indefinitely. Now that Dick’s death had turned the spotlight upon the group at Westhaven, the details of the backgrounds of its residents would soon pass round.
Who Saw Him Die? (Inspector Peach Series Book 1) Page 17
