‘No, I’ll repeat you,’ he said. ‘You just confirm. It’s a question of making sure we’re talking the same language. Now, you came straight back after the funeral arriving … when?’
Connon looked at his daughter.
‘Quarter to twelve,’ she said. ‘I put the radio on. There was a time-check.’
Then she added, almost apologetically, ‘I wanted a noise in the house. Something lively.’
Pascoe looked at her sympathetically. She didn’t avoid his gaze but stared back till he looked away.
‘You picked up the letter as you came in, but didn’t open it immediately?’
‘No,’ said Jenny. ‘I thought it’d be just another condolence note or card.’
‘Anyway, you made a pot of tea, brought it through to your father who was sitting in here, then you opened your letter?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And?’
‘And what? I showed it to Daddy.’
‘And I,’ cut in Connon, ‘decided we ought to get in touch with you instantly.’
‘Quite right too, sir.’
‘Well, Superintendent, what next?’
Dalziel looked around with the kind of heavily underlined hesitance that could be clearly marked in the back row of the gods. Pascoe watched in awe.
He invites them to join in his games, he thought. That’s the secret of his success. He reduces it all to the level of a pantomime.
‘I wonder,’ said Dalziel, ‘I wonder if I could perhaps have a word with you alone, sir?
Connon looked doubtful.
If he’s not careful, he’ll be playing. If he’s not playing already.
‘My sergeant can be taking a statement from Miss Connon while we’re talking,’ added Dalziel.
That’ll be nice, thought Pascoe, trying to keep any trace of the thought off his face.
Jenny Connon did not seem to think it would be particularly nice at all and made little effort to keep her thoughts off her face. But she turned readily enough and went to the door.
‘We’ll go into the lounge, then,’ she said. Connon nodded. Dalziel wondered if he detected a hint of relief.
The chair had been moved, Pascoe noticed. He didn’t suppose anyone else had sat in it since Mary Connon had relaxed to watch television on Saturday night. Then he laughed inwardly and changed his mind. The chair probably hadn’t come back from County Forensic where Dalziel, despite the scorn he poured on Science and all its works, had sent it. The boys down there, their work once finished, would have no compunction at all about sitting in it.
‘Well,’ said Jenny, ‘are you just going to stand there, all hawk-eyed, or are we going to get on with this statement? What would you like me to state?’
‘Yes, the statement.’ Pascoe fumbled in his pocket for his notebook. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘In my own home, I prefer to issue the invitations. Please sit down, Sergeant.’
Only the remembrance that her mother had died in this room not a week earlier stopped Pascoe from grinning.
He sat down.
‘The words in that letter were printed, of course, but even printing is sometimes recognizable. Did the writing remind you of anyone’s you had seen before?’
Jenny shook her head.
‘No.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Can you think of anyone who would send such a letter to you?’
‘Yes.’
Startled, he ceased his pretence of making notes.
‘Who?’
‘The man who killed my mother.’
He shook his head slowly.
‘Now why should he do that?’
‘To divert suspicion from himself.’
‘How can he hope to do that when we don’t know who wrote the letter?’
‘But you do know who you’re suspicious of.’
Of whom you are suspicious, Antony might have said. But it sounded a little clumsy for Antony. He never let his passion for correctness trap him into clumsiness. In any field.
She noticed that this time Pascoe had let his grin show through. She felt like grinning back, whether at Pascoe or at the thought of Antony she wasn’t sure. But she didn’t, for at the same time she felt guilty, as she did whenever she found herself acting normally, as if her mother hadn’t been done to death, here, in this very room, last week, on an ordinary Saturday evening with the television set babbling uncaringly on in the background.
The thought had stopped the grin even if her willpower had failed. But even now she recognized how diluted the emotional shock of remembering had already become.
I could go out tonight, she thought. Have a drink and a laugh, no bother. I know I could. I feel I shouldn’t be able to, but I could. They’ve got to catch him soon, they’ve got to, I’ll make sure they do, he deserves it, he must be caught. Must.
That’ll be an end of it then, some more distant part of her mind whispered.
Dear God! the most conscious level replied, aghast. Is that it, then? Is that what the pursuit of vengeance is - not the instinctive reaction of deep and lasting grief, but an attempt to compensate for shallowly felt grief, to give it body, to make testimony to it?
Confused, she became angry. Angry at herself for thinking like this. Angry at the police for making no progress. Angry at Pascoe for talking to her here while the real interview was taking place in the next room.
‘Let’s stop this farce, shall we?’ she said.
‘Farce?’
‘Yes. You don’t want a statement from me. What the hell can I state that’s any help or even needs recording? All you want is me here so that disgusting Dalziel can chat Daddy up by himself.’
Pascoe’s face relaxed again at her choice of adjective and this time an answering smile almost broke through.
‘Now why should we want that?’ he asked politely.
She turned away from him.
‘So that he can ask Daddy if what the letter says is true, I suppose. About me not being his child, I mean.’
Pascoe seemed to be trapped like a disembodied spirit somewhere in the room where he could see and hear an unemotional policeman, disguised as himself, ask in an absolutely even voice,
‘And is it?’
‘The question’s purely biological, I presume, Superintendent?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re interested in the narrow question of whether I am physically the girl’s father, rather than in my attitudes towards her?’
Christ! another talking like a Sunday Supplement article. Pascoe’s bad enough and at least the bugger’s on my side. But this … cold fish, Connon. He’d work out which side your balls were hanging before he made his sidestep.
‘That’s right, Mr Connon. I think. I mean, was young Jenny born as a result of you having intercourse with your wife?’
Connon shrugged. He looked very tired.
‘I think so.’
‘Think!?’
Dalziel took a rapid command of himself so that though the word began as a roar it ended as an almost gentle interrogative.
‘I have never had any positive evidence to the contrary. At the same time, I can’t point to any proof positive on the other side. There have seemed to me and others to be physical resemblances, but parents and relations in general are notoriously blind in these matters.’
‘So you admit that it’s possible the terms of the letter could be accurate?’
‘Not all of them, Superintendent.’
Hair-splitting now. Don’t answer. Let the sod go on in his own sweet time.
‘It’s a question of faith, I suppose. I suppose it always is.’
‘And you didn’t have that faith?’
‘Once. But it went. Too late to matter as far as Jenny was concerned, I’m glad to say.’
‘Why did it go? Was there anything in particular, talk, anything like that? Gossip?’
‘No. Probably. I never heard, but then I wouldn’t. More in your line.’
The truth of this simple statement half surprised Dalziel. He ran his mind back over the narrow little track signposted ‘Mary Connon’, but came across no landmarks of interest.
‘Well, then …’he said.
‘She told me.’
‘She what?’
‘Told me. Several times. She wanted me to give up playing almost from the start. Said it was too much to expect her to cope all week with a baby and then to be left to herself on Saturdays as well. I daresay there was something in it.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘You know I didn’t. I went on. Every Saturday from September to April. It was important.’
‘To you?’ said Dalziel very softly. He didn’t want to disturb his man. He thought he recognized the beginnings of that half-dreamy inward-looking state in which a thought-monologue could easily lead to a confession.
But his soft interjection seemed to blast into Connon’s mind like a hand-grenade.
‘To me?’ he said, laughing. ‘Of course. But that sounds selfish, doesn’t it? The outskirts of a motive. No, important to us all, the three of us, my wife and child, as well as me.
‘But you said she told you. What?’
‘She told me that I might as well keep on going to the Club. At least that way I might run into Jenny’s father.’
‘She said that!’
I’d have broken her neck, thought Dalziel. Motive? What better? I’d have broken her bloody neck!
But the thought went on against his will: perhaps that’s why she told you by telegram, perhaps that’s why you ended up standing stupefied in the lobby of your little semi-detached, reading and re-reading the jumble of words on the buff form. He’d often thought since of his wife in some post office writing those words down, then passing the form to some clerk to count them up. Had he said anything? Had there been an expression on his face as he counted? Was there a query perhaps?
It must have cost her a packet.
But, he thought now, with a self-irony which had only developed of later years, but, he thought as he looked down at his tightly clenched fist, it had been money wisely spent.
‘When was this?’
‘Too long ago for a motive. Fourteen, fifteen years.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I forget.’
Dalziel let this pass for the moment.
‘Did she ever say more?’
‘She repeated the claim, twice I think, both times at moments of great anger.’
‘Did you believe her?’
Connon shrugged.
‘I’ve told you, it’s a matter of faith. I knew she’d been with other men before we married. But I believed she loved me. So I had faith.’
‘And?’
Connon looked at Dalziel with the self-possession the detective found so irritating.
‘No “and”, Superintendent. I think I’ve said as much as I want to say.’
Dalziel infused a threatening rasp into his voice, more from habit than expectation of producing any result.
‘You’ve either said too much or too little, Mr Connon. I need to know more.’
‘Or less.’
‘I can’t unknow what you’ve told me.’
‘No. But you can reduce it to its proper proportions surely. Many years ago my wife implied to me that I was not the father of her daughter. She later withdrew the implication. It’s doubtless the kind of nasty thing husbands and wives shout at each other fairly frequently when they’re rowing. It didn’t worry me, at least not too much. And less as time went on. I never thought of it. Jenny was mine, my daughter, my responsibility, even if you could have proved Genghis Khan was her father. So why should I be bothered? Now my wife’s dead and my daughter’s had a vicious letter. Now I’m bothered. I’m telling you all this in the hope it might be some help to you to catch the writer of that letter.’
‘And your wife’s murderer?’
Connon nodded wearily.
‘If you like. Though I don’t see how. And his bit of harm’s done, isn’t it? This boy’s got his still to finish.’
Dalziel rose ponderously and belched without effort at concealment. Connon remained seated, looking up at him.
‘Good day to you, Mr Connon. Please contact us instantly should any further attempt be made to contact your daughter, by letter or any other means.’
‘Other?’
‘This kind of thing can become a habit. I should try to get to the telephone first in future, for instance.’
As if at command, the phone rang.
Connon looked startled, the first unguarded emotion he had shown, then moved rapidly across the room and out into the entrance hall.
Pascoe was standing there with the phone in his hand.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Hello.’
Jenny was in the doorway of the lounge. So he can think too, thought Dalziel.
Pascoe put the receiver down.
‘No answer. It must have been a wrong number.’
‘Surely,’ said Dalziel. ‘Well, we’ll bid you good day, Mr Connon. Jenny.’
He moved to the front door. Behind him he heard Pascoe say in a low voice, obviously not intended for Jenny’s ears, ‘Just one thing further, Mr Connon. Could you let us have a list of the TV programmes you think your wife would have been likely to want to see on that Saturday night? It might help.’
‘Might it?’ said Connon. ‘But not two lists, surely? I passed that information to your office at Mr Dalziel’s request yesterday.’
‘And,’ said Dalziel, smiling smugly as they walked to the car together, ‘I’d have let the girl get to the phone first if I could have managed it. It was probably the only chance we’ll ever get of listening in.’
‘If it was our man.’
‘Oh yes. I’m sure of that.’
Across the road, the curtain fell back into place in a bedroom window.
‘He asked me if it was true.’
‘Me too.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘What I told you when you asked.’
Outside they heard the car start up. There was the familiar slap as it brushed against the laburnum tree, then it was on its way. Jenny put the chain on the door and the simple action filled Connon’s heart with the grief he had not yet felt.
He had been telling nothing less than the simple truth when he said that his love for Jenny was in no way dependent on his being her father. But he saw that his own indifference was not shared and he regretted now that he hadn’t been absolutely affirmative with her.
What has she done that she must share my doubts? he thought. What have I done that I can expect her to understand my certainties?
The urge to tell her it made no difference was strong in him once more, but he knew it would be a mistake. She must find for herself how little difference it did make. Now all that was necessary was to remind her she wasn’t facing a stranger.
‘Jenny, love, what about a pot of tea?’
‘If you like.’
She was pale. Her face had the shape which could take paleness and make it beautiful, but she was too pale.
Connon hated the writer of that letter which had taken his daughter’s colour away.
‘Will they find him?’
The question slotted so neatly into his thoughts that he was slow in formulating a spoken reply.
‘I don’t know. He’s out there somewhere. Out there.’
‘At the Club?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’
‘Have you any idea?’
He moved back along the hallway to the dining-room door. He spoke suddenly with a new resolution in his voice.
‘There’s a committee meeting tomorrow night. I think I’ll go. Will you mind?’
She smiled and his heart split with love and anger.
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll come with you. It’s a long time since I showed my face there. ‘
‘Right then.’
‘Right.’
Conno
n turned from the dining-room and moved across to the door opposite.
‘We’ll have tea in the lounge, shall we?’ he said casually.
‘All right.’
‘Then a quiet night. Save our strength for tomorrow.’
‘Right.’
Again he hesitated, looking for words.
‘Jenny, I miss your mother. More now somehow. More than I thought.’
Then he stepped into the lounge for the first time since Saturday night.
In the kitchen Jenny whistled softly as she made the tea.
Chapter 4
They were dancing in the social room. A record-player shuffled a few simple chords violently together, then dealt them out with heavy emphasis. The upper reaches of the room were vague with cigarette smoke, the lower reaches voluptuous with long legs and round little bottoms.
Dalziel watched with awful lust as the girls twisted and jerked in total self-absorption. A hand squeezed his knee.
‘Watch it, Andy, or you’ll be spoiling your suit.’
Dalziel laughed but didn’t turn his eyes to the speaker.
‘It’s as if they were being rammed by an invisible man,’ he said.
The music stopped and now he gave the newcomer his full attention.
‘They weren’t like this in our day, Willie,’ he said.
Willie Noolan, small, dapper, grey, bank manager and President of the Club, smiled his agreement.
‘They were not. We had to earn our wages in those days.’
‘The wages of sin, eh? Not that it was always difficult, if you knew where to look. Do you recall a little animal called Sheila Cripps? Eh?’
Noolan smiled reminiscently. These two had known each other for well over thirty years, meeting first at school and then finding their paths crossing again and again as they shifted with their respective jobs, till finally they had both come back permanently to the town they started from.
‘She’s a dried-up old stick now, Andy. Sings in the Methodist choir. I can’t believe my memory when I look at her.’
‘Ay. They don’t weather like us, Willie. Even when the shape goes,’ he said, slapping his belly, ‘the spirit remains constant. It’s a question of dedication. But I’m sorry that little Sheila’s been a backslider.’
A Clubbable Woman Page 7
