A Clubbable Woman

by Reginald Hill

  Marcus, his eyes still fixed on the noisy corner, ran his glass along his lower lip.

  ‘Are you putting forward as a general proposition, Sid, that women with big breasts cause trouble?’

  ‘Not absolutely. Though there’s a bit of truth in it, isn’t there?’

  ‘Mary Connon never caused any trouble down here that I saw.’

  ‘Like I said, after they married, she didn’t get in here so much. Tailed off. That’s an apt phrase if you like. She was six years older than him, you know.’

  ‘Still is, isn’t she?’

  ‘You know what I mean. She’d had her fling down here. Not here exactly. That was in the days before this bloody roadhouse came into being. Remember? We had the tea-hut. None of your polished floors. You could get splinters through your shoes if you weren’t careful. Then over to the Bird-in-Hand. No, Mary did the right thing - for her, anyway. Married someone half a dozen years younger. And stopped coming so much. Nancy Jennings, she buggered off. It’s when they marry someone ten years older than themselves and keep their wares in the shop window that the trouble starts. Here, my lad, if you’re going to have another whisky, pay for the last one first.’

  ‘Sorry, Sid. There it goes; and for this one too. Witnessed?’

  But Sid wasn’t paying attention.

  ‘Here we go,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Here we go.’

  Marcus had never seen anyone whose face was really black with rage, but Arthur Evans was pretty close to it as he pushed through the door. A path opened up before him. It led to the corner where his wife sat. She looked up, flashed him a quick smile, then returned her attention to the youngster who had been talking to her. But he had seen Arthur too and seemed disinclined to talk further.

  With a tremendous effort, obvious to all who watched, which was about three-quarters of those in the room, Arthur turned to the bar. Marcus could almost feel the man’s will forcing his broad shoulders to turn. Then his trunk followed. And finally his legs.

  Quickly Marcus thrust a glass up against the whisky optic. And again.

  ‘Arthur, old son, I’m in the chair. Wrap yourself round this and tell us about your childhood in the green valleys of old Wales.’

  Evans took the drink in one.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  Over his shoulder, Marcus saw Gwen casually disengaging herself from the group in the corner. Exchanging a word here and there as she came, she passed easily across the room till she arrived at her husband’s shoulder.

  ‘Hello, dear. Going to buy me a drink? I’ve got no money and I can’t sponge off your friends all night.’

  ‘Where’ve you been, Gwen?’

  She smiled ironically.

  God, you’re a beauty, thought Marcus. Sid, in an excess of desire to share his admiration of the sight before them, kicked him painfully on the ankle.

  ‘Oh, I got tired of waiting, so I came on by myself.’

  ‘But you were supposed to be coming with Dick and Joy.’

  ‘Was I? Oh, I forgot.’

  ‘They called for you.’

  ‘Then I must have left.’

  ‘To come here? You took your time, didn’t you, girl?’

  ‘Do you want to quarrel, Arthur?’

  She raised her voice just sufficiently to cut into the attention of those immediately adjacent to them.

  Marcus looked at Arthur. Surprisingly, he seemed to be considering the question on its merits. Finally, calmly, ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Then let’s have that drink. Marcus, love, see if you can add a bit of gin to that slice of dried-up lemon which seems to be all that’s left of a once-proud fruit.’

  ‘A pleasure, ma’am,’ said Marcus. ‘A real pleasure.’ He meant it.

  Two hours or so later, just after eleven, he put the lights out in the bar. Outside he could hear the din of departure. Car doors. Impatient horns. Voices. Song.

  As he passed the Gents, the door opened and a large figure fell out. ‘Marcus,’ it said.

  ‘Ted. Christ, you certainly caught up, didn’t you? Come on, old son. We’d better get you home.’

  Arm in arm they walked out into the car park.

  Jenny Connon opened the door to let her room-mate in.

  ‘Hello,’ said the newcomer brightly. ‘Not too early, am I? It’s after eleven.’

  ‘What you really mean is, not too late, you hope. How are you, Helen?’ said Antony. ‘Well, must be off. See you both. ‘Bye.’ Jenny watched him go down the corridor.

  ‘Had a nice time?’ asked Helen.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jenny noncommittally as she closed the door. She hoped she had done the right thing.

  ‘The time is ten minutes past eleven,’ said the announcer with evident relief. ‘You are watching …’

  Alice Fernie switched him off in mid-sentence and yawned.

  ‘Well, I’m off to bed. Coming?’

  Behind her, her husband stood in the small bay of the window looking out into the front garden.

  ‘No, dear. You go on. I’ll be up in a minute.’

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘Nothing. I thought I saw that bloody black and white cat from next door digging up my lawn. Off you go.’

  ‘All right, then. Good night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  And over the road, Sam Connon stood pale-faced and trembling in the darkened hall of his house, the telephone in his hand.

  Behind him in the lounge, stretched out in the high-backed chair he would never want to call his own again, was his wife.

  She was quite, quite dead.

  Chapter 2

  Superintendent Andrew Dalziel was a big man. When he took his jacket off and dropped it over the back of a chair it was like a Bedouin pitching camp. He had a big head, greying now; big eyes, short-sighted, but losing nothing of their penetrating force behind a pair of solid-framed spectacles; and he blew his big nose into a khaki handkerchief a foot-and-a-half square. He had been a vicious lock forward in his time, which had been a time before speed and dexterity were placed higher in the list of a pack’s qualities than sheer indestructibility. The same order of priorities had brought him to his present office.

  He was a man not difficult to mock. But it was dangerous sport. And perhaps therefore all the more tempting to a Detective-Sergeant who was twenty years younger, had a degree in social sciences and read works of criminology.

  Dalziel sank over his chair and scratched himself vigorously between the legs. Not absent-mindedly - nothing he did was mannerism - but with conscious sensuousness. Like scratching a dog to keep it happy, a constable had once said within range of Dalziel’s very sharp hearing. He had liked the simile and therefore ignored it.

  ‘You should have seen him, Pascoe. He went round their cover like a downhill skier round a line of snowmen. And he was a big lad, mark you. Still is, of course. But even then. Not one of your bloody Welsh dwarfs, but a good solid-built English fly-half. How we roared! He’d have captained the Lions if we’d been selectors.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Pascoe with the resigned condescension of one certain of the intellectual superiority of Association Football.

  ‘Graceful, too. Ran upright. Always looking for the quickest way to the line. God, he found it that day. He was picked for the final trial, of course. Nearest thing to a certainty since Lily Jones left Crown Street. Then bang! his ankle went. The week before. No one’s fault. He was overtaken by a loose scrum. Never afraid to mix it, was Connie. Solid defender, sharp attacker. But he never came again after that. Played for another eight years. No difficulty in holding his place in the club. Stood up for the County a dozen times. But never sniffed at a cap again. But he was a great runner with the ball, a great player.’

  He nodded two or three times and smiled faintly as though at some pleasant memory.

  ‘A great player.’

  ‘Then he could hardly commit a murder, could he?’ said Pascoe, hoping by this irony to recall his superior to the realities of t
heir work.

  ‘No. Probably not. Or not one like this. He’d use his head, that one. Which,’ added Dalziel, standing up and walking to the window, ‘is what you should do, Pascoe, before wrapping up another of your little ironies for me.’

  Pascoe refused to be squashed.

  ‘Perhaps he is using his head, sir. Perhaps he is, in the sporting idiom, selling us a dummy.’

  Dalziel flung up the window with a ripping sound from the parts where the paint had fused, and let in a solid cube of icy air which immediately expanded to fit the room.

  ‘No one ever sold me a dummy. Point yourself at the man and bugger the ball, you can’t go wrong.’

  ‘But which man?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘No,’ said Dalziel, slapping his thigh with a crack which made Pascoe wince, ‘at this stage the question is, which bloody ball? Is that enigmatic enough for your scholarship, eh?’

  Pascoe had grown used to jokes about his degree when a constable, but Dalziel was the only one who hung his wit on it now.

  The trouble is, he thought, looking at the broad slope of the back whose bulk stopped the light but not the draught, the trouble is, deep down he believes that everyone loves him. He thinks he’s bloody irresistible.

  ‘What did you make of him last night anyway?’

  ‘Not much. That doctor of his had pumped him full of dope and was hovering around like a guardian angel when I got there.’

  Dalziel snorted.

  ‘At least you saw him. He was tucked up in bed by the time I arrived. I’d have liked a go at him while the iron was hot.’

  ‘Yes, sir. The early bird …’

  ‘Only if it knows what it’s all about, Pascoe.’

  Pascoe did not let even the ghost of a smile appear on his lips. He went on speaking.

  ‘In any case, the iron wasn’t all that hot at eleven. She’d been dead at least three hours, possibly five. The room temperature seems to be a rather uncertain factor. Signs of a big fire, but the place was like an ice-box by the time we got there. That was a sharp frost that set in last night.’

  ‘Bloody science. All it does is give us reasons for being imprecise. I can manage that without logarithms.’

  ‘The cause of death’s a bit more exact, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Dalziel rippled through the papers scattered on the desk before him. Pascoe tried to show none of the offence this lack of organization caused him.

  ‘Here we are. Skull fracture … bone splinters into frontal lobes … blow from a metal implement, probably cylindrical… administered with great force to the centre of forehead … perhaps long enough to permit a two-handed grip. That’s a great help. Found anything yet, have they?”No, sir.’

  ‘I should bloody well think not, eh? Not if you knew and I didn’t. Where is this man, anyway?’

  Pascoe pushed back his stiffly laundered white cuffs to glance at his watch.

  ‘The car went for him half an hour ago.’

  ‘Waiting for him to finish breakfast, I expect. Hearty, I hope. He’ll need his strength.’

  Pascoe raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I thought you said …’

  ‘I didn’t think he’d done it? But I might be wrong. It’s been known. Twice. But whether he did it or not, if it wasn’t done casually by an intruder, he’ll probably know why it was done. He might not know he knows. But know he will.’

  ‘Have we dismissed the possibility of an intruder, sir?’

  ‘We? We? You’re not my bloody doctor. No, I haven’t. But if you look at your bloody scientifically based reports, you’ll see that she seems to have been sitting very much at her ease.’

  ‘Could it have been from behind? With, say, a narrow-headed hammer. That way you’d get the force …’

  ‘Pish and cobbles, Pascoe! Didn’t you see the height of that chair-back? And she was sprawling in it at her ease. You’d need arms like an orang-outang. No, I think it was someone she knew pretty well.’

  ‘And how narrow does that make the field?’

  Dalziel grinned lecherously.

  ‘Not as narrow as you’d think. Twenty years ago there were a hell of a lot of people down at the Rugby Club who knew Mary James pretty well. I’ve had a bit of a nuzzle there myself. And that kind of acquaintance doesn’t get forgotten all that quickly.’

  ‘You make her sound like a professional.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, son. She wasn’t that. Not even an enthusiastic amateur. She just liked the gay life.

  There’s one in every club. Where the booze is strongest, the dancing wildest. The girl who doesn’t flinch when the songs get dirty. Who can even join in. It’s the gay crowd she likes, not the slap and tickle in the dark corners. But her image demands she has a large following. And she’s bound to be overtaken from time to time.’

  ‘Was Connon an overtaker?’

  ‘Oh no. He was taken over. Your old stager begins to smell danger when the gaiety girl passes the quarter-century with no strong ties. Your young lad’s easy meat, though. Easily frightened too.’

  ‘Frightened?’

  ‘They got married at a dead run. Their girl appeared eight months later. Premature, they called it.’

  Pascoe listened with distaste to the rasp of laughter which followed.

  ‘But you’ll find out all about that, my lad. Have a walk down there this lunchtime. They always get a good crowd in. Have a chat with one or two of them. See if anything’s known. They’ll all be eager to natter. Here, I’ve scribbled out a list of who’s who down there. It’s not definitive by any means, but it’ll tell you whether you’re talking to a mate of his - or hers - or not.’

  He passed over a scruffy sheet of foolscap, one corner of which looked as if it had been used for lighting a cigarette.

  ‘You’re best at this stage. If we haven’t sorted this lot out in a couple of days, I’ll drop in for a social drink myself. The tension’ll have gone by then and they’ll all imagine they’re pumping me for information.’

  Whereas you pump stuff into barrels, not out of them, thought Pascoe.

  Dalziel turned to the window again and took a couple of deep breaths. His fingers drummed impatiently on the sill.

  ‘Anything in from house-to-house yet?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘They’ll all be in bed. Christ. Bloody Sundays!’

  There was a long pause. Then …

  ‘Here he comes,’ said Dalziel, slamming the window shut with even more violence than he had used to open it. ‘Anything you want here, laddie?’

  ‘Well, no; I mean yes,’ said Pascoe in puzzlement.

  ‘Grab it and go, then. What’s the matter? Did you hope to see the master at work?’

  ‘No. But I thought that as you know him - I mean, you are a vice-president of the Rugby Club and something of a friend …’

  ‘A friend?’ said the superintendent, twisting his fingers in one pouchy cheek so that his big mouth was dragged sinisterly out of shape. ‘You’ve jumped to conclusions, Sergeant. Perhaps I better had let you watch the master some time. He’s a great player, but I never said I liked him. Nor he me. Oh no, I never said I liked him. Push off now. We’ll save you for later if need be.’

  Quickly Pascoe gathered a couple of files and some papers together and made for the door. There was a knock and it opened just as he reached it.

  ‘Mr Connon, sir,’ said the uniformed sergeant standing there.

  ‘How are you, Mr Connon?’ said Pascoe looking at the pale-faced man who stood a pace or two behind the sergeant.

  Solid. Yes, he looked solid all right. Still firm. No flabbiness in the face. Just the paleness of fatigue. But what is it that has drained your blood, Mr Connon? Grief? Or …

  ‘Please come in, Mr Connon.’ The loud voice broke his thoughts. He glanced round. Dalziel, his face a mask of sympathy so obviously spurious that Pascoe shuddered, was advancing with his hand outstretched. He stood aside to let Connon enter, then stepped out into the cor
ridor leaving them together.

  ‘He’s like Henry Irving,’ he said to the sergeant, shaking his head.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Which one? I don’t know. Perhaps both. I’ll be in here if I’m wanted.’

  And for all his resentment at his dismissal, he found he wished that he had been wanted.

  ‘It might be nice to see the master at work.’

  The sergeant turned round, but Pascoe had closed the door of his temporary office behind him with a bang.

  The sergeant went back to his desk whistling, ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’.

  It was, after all, Sunday.

  ‘Sorry to get you out of bed, Mrs Fernie,’ said Detective- Constable Edwards.

  ‘Don’t apologize,’ interjected Fernie. ‘I told her this might happen last night.’

  ‘Last night? Why was that, Mr Fernie?’

  ‘Well, I happened to notice your cars pull up outside Connon’s house …’

  ‘Happened to notice!’ sneered Alice Fernie, pulling her nylon housecoat closer round her. ‘You must have been stood at that window for half an hour or more.’

  Fernie started to reply but the constable interrupted them.

  ‘The important point to ask both of you is, did you notice anything earlier on?’

  ‘Anything? What kind of thing? How much earlier?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Anything at all concerned with the Connons or their house. Any time yesterday.’

  ‘Well, no. I was over there in the afternoon …’

  ‘Over there?’ The constable leaned forward.

  ‘Did you know the Connons well, then?’

  ‘Mary Connon, I know - knew her very well. We were friends,’ said Alice; then, ‘We were friends,’ she repeated softly to herself, as though the import of the comment was just beginning to sink in.

  ‘And how did Mrs Connon seem to you then?’

  ‘Oh fine, fine. Just the same as ever. Nothing out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Did she say anything that struck you as unusual?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were there any phone calls? Any callers?’