A Fatal Attachment

by Robert Barnard

  Liberated at last from supervision, the first thing he did was pure self-indulgence. He went to the Halifax Library to find pictures of George V and Nicholas II without beards. This was not as easy as he had expected. The English king was the problem: he seemed to have been hirsute from puberty on. Finally a librarian found a book of photographs from the Victorian court, with Prince George shortly before he went to sea. There was, Charlie thought, no more than a vague family resemblance between him and his Russian cousin. The shape of the head was similar, the look of the forehead, but the lower part of the face showed them to be not particularly alike. It was the beards that made the resemblance.

  Having satisfied himself on this, Charlie grinned self-deprecatingly at the thought of how short a distance it got him. Beyond the fact that Robert and Jamie Loxton, though very different when clean-shaven, might look very similar with beards, he had discovered nothing. And since both men seemed to have tight alibis, he had got nowhere. Except that there was a man with a beard somewhere in the case, and he needed to be either accounted for or eliminated. Were Jamie and Robert Loxton’s alibis as tight as they seemed? He felt he might be thought by Oddie to have wasted time, and decided to punish himself with a morning of routine. Still, it would do no harm to start it in the village of Kedgely.

  They had already established by a telephone call to the White Rose in Luddenden that the final eaters of dinner on Monday the twelfth paid their bill at 9:26. They had talked to one of the waiters who was on duty that night, and he remembered the fuss over the lost keys, which he thought took up a good three or four minutes after that. He described Jamie Loxton with a fair degree of accuracy. Still, Lydia was not killed until ten—and ten at the earliest. Charlie left his car in a pub yard at Kedgely, which was a village of fifteen or twenty houses along a very minor road. The houses were mostly of stone, poky but attractive. Charlie set out in the direction of the village shop along a pavement so narrow as to be useless. It was in such an environment that Charlie felt at his most alien—a feeling that could be pleasurable as well as unsettling. There was no one in the street, but when he reached the door of the village shop he could hear gossip going on inside. His appearance put a stop to that: the customer smiled nervously and retreated from the shop. Charlie Peace did tend to have that effect on people.

  “You must be the policeman,” said Mary Scully.

  He didn’t have to ask how she knew. Kedgely saw few black people, and Jamie would have told her already that one of the detectives investigating the murder was black. The whole of Kedgely would know that, and would most probably know by now that he was back. It would be that sort of place.

  “Just checking,” he said. “I’m sure you understand that we have to. Now, you left the restaurant about 9:29 or so.”

  “Golly,” said Mary, impressed. “You know more about our movements than we do ourselves.”

  Charlie favoured her with one of his more approachable grins. He liked what he saw. She was a slim, wiry woman in her forties—active, down-to-earth, easy to get on with. Certainly not like any of the media stereotypes of the social worker: batty, bossy or meddling.

  “You then drove straight back here?”

  “Yes, not very fast. Jamie’s car doesn’t do very fast. We got back at ten to ten by the chapel clock.”

  “Anybody vouch for that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried to keep off the subject in the shop, though it’s not easy. But we are a very nosey bunch—I include myself, because I used to be a social worker, and I still like poking my nose in other people’s affairs. I would guess that if you ask around someone will have seen us. They’ll be interested in whether I sleep at the shop or at Jamie’s. Try Mrs Formby in Willow Bank. She’s a widow lady who tends to dart over to the window every time she hears voices or a car. If she wasn’t in bed by then it’s ten to one she saw us.”

  “And you did sleep in the shop that night, and Mr Loxton drove off towards the farm?”

  “Yes—I waved him off in that direction, not the direction of Bly.”

  “But of course he has nothing to back him up on his movements after ten to ten.”

  “Nothing except his obvious unsuitability as a murderer. I should have thought even the police would have seen that as a killer Jamie is a nonstarter.”

  “This is my third murder. I’m keeping an open mind. But I’ve known drug-pushers who were the nicest guys in the world—boys I’d be happy if my sister took up with.”

  He grinned, more ferociously this time, and while Mary was formulating the objection that it wasn’t because Jamie was too nice that he was a nonstarter but because, well—Charlie had wheeled around and left the shop.

  Mrs Formby at Willow Bank was, as expected, a most obliging witness.

  “Oh yes, I saw them come back. I was just passing the window when he let her out of the car . . . No, I couldn’t see him very well, but I saw her, and of course I know the car. It was still light, you see, or not quite dark. It was ten to ten by the chapel clock, and I remember thinking: ten to ten and still a bit of light.”

  “Call that thought?” Charlie said to himself, but he smiled his thanks and went back to his car, lodging in the back of his mind the thought that she probably hadn’t seen the driver of the car at all.

  His next stop was the little wood just above Lydia’s cottage. He drove there at a moderate speed for him, and timed himself: twenty minutes. Jamie Loxton (assuming it was him in the car at Kedgely) could have been around Lydia’s cottage by about ten past ten. Which left unaccounted for the man in the woods around twenty past nine, and the man who—person who—interrupted Lydia’s phone call. Charlie drove into the wood and left the car on the lane leading towards the gravel pit. Then he got out and looked around. Somewhere in the undergrowth Jason Wetherby and his girlfriend were petting when the car drove up. He looked at his wristwatch and set off briskly along the path, then down the road to the cottage. Eight minutes. That would get the mystery man on to the scene probably around the time Lydia and the boys had set off for the village. Perhaps he had watched them.

  Charlie had now approached the cottage from a new angle, and once more he stopped to look around him. Jason and his girlfriend had gone their separate ways back to Bly, he by the road down the hill, she by a back path. There was a path along the hedge which skirted the small back garden of the cottage. Charlie began along it. It was broad to start with, twin-tracked, until it led into the cottage’s garage. Then it narrowed to become a normal country path across a tract of barren hillside. Charlie started down it, but frowning to himself. If the man in the woods was nothing to do with Lydia’s murder—say he was the fancy man of someone in the village whose husband was on nights—then this path left him quite as exposed as the road down the hill. He stopped and looked: he could be seen from the kitchens on a little estate of private houses built off the main street of Bly, as well as from most of the houses in that street. He spotted at least three people who were watching him intently now. It was still twilight at half past nine, when the man would have gone down. In fact, he would have been even more exposed on the path, because people who saw him would have wondered why he was taking the path rather than the road. On the other hand, if it was someone with legitimate business in Bly, one who took this short cut to a house at the end of the street, why leave his car in the wood rather than on the road? Why not drive all the way there?

  Charlie continued on down the path, and found that it came out just beside the meagre house of the Bellingham family. He turned and made his way thoughtfully back up the hill and to his car. Then he drove out again on to the road and down to the village. He left his car in the main street. No point in trying to hide the fact that he was back: he was too conspicuous for that, and the whole village had registered his first visit. He made his way to Molly Kegan’s council house, and was pleased to find her in.

  “Yes, I’m free today.” She smiled sadly, ushering him in. “I would have been up at Lydia’s . . . the Bellingham ma
n has asked me to go there, but I’m still thinking about it.”

  Waiting to discover whether one of that family was involved, Charlie thought. He was pleased to see that her eyes were no longer red, and that she seemed to have regained some reserves of fight. He saw on the battered coffee-table by one of the armchairs a prospectus for the Open University.

  “Taking up study?”

  “Yes, maybe. I thought of the awful . . . the awful gap that Lydia’s death leaves in my life—the total lack of stimulus. I thought this might help me to fill it, if they’ll accept me. They’re quite flexible, I believe. It seemed like a good way of ensuring, in a small way, that her influence lives on. Not that I’ll necessarily do History—there seem to be a lot of interesting courses. . . . Was there something you wanted?”

  “Yes. I thought you might be able to tell me which of the ladies in the village is the best gossip.”

  She looked at him pityingly.

  “You’re very young, aren’t you?”

  “No, as a matter of fact I’m not,” said Charlie, offended.

  “When you’re a bit older you’ll know that the best gossips are always men. I think it’s to their credit: women are too interested in themselves to be first-rate gossips. What’s the time? Twelve o’clock. Go along to The Wheatsheaf and you’ll find Jim Scattergood nursing a half of bitter in a corner. He’ll be a hundred times more reliable than her in the post office.”

  “Right,” said Charlie, trusting her judgment. “I’ll go and have a chat with him.”

  “Oh, and by the way, Stan Podmore the licensee was heard to say the other day that he’ll tell the police something or other when they start buying double whiskies like Nick Bellingham.”

  “Thanks for telling me. I’m not into whisky, but I’ll order one of those non-alcoholic wines. The profit margin on them is even steeper.”

  Charlie recognised Jim Scattergood the moment he walked into The Wheatsheaf. He was not an old man—sixty perhaps—but he had sharp eyes in sunken features. He was sitting by the fireplace as if it was winter. It was obviously his favoured position, his by right, and good both for seeing and hearing. Charlie’s eyes met his, and he went over to him.

  “What are you having? Another half?”

  “Very kind. It’s the Theakston Special.”

  Charlie ordered it, and a hideously expensive non-alcoholic wine, and told Stan Podmore to keep the change. When he took them over to the table by the fireplace Jim Scattergood had a smile playing around his thin lips.

  “What do you want to know then, lad?”

  Charlie asked, to test him: “Who’s young Jason Wetherby’s girlfriend?”

  “Oh, that’d be Julie Holmroyd,” said Jim immediately. “None of t’parents knows, because they don’t keep a watch. They go up to t’woods for a bit of the usual. Were they up there on t’night of t’murder?”

  “Never you mind.”

  “Any road, I think young Julie’s losing interest. That young Bellingham is a lot better looking—and a lot brighter too.”

  “I see. . . . What is it that the landlord could tell us but hasn’t got around to telling us yet?”

  “Oh that. Well, he says it’s nothing, but I say every little thing’s important in a murder case.”

  “You’ve been watching Poirot on Sunday nights.”

  “Never watch telly. It’s got nothing on life, hasn’t telly. Well, as I were saying it were only words. But I’d say young Hoddle were pretty worked up. Intense—that’s the word I’d use.”

  “I see. And when was this?”

  “Night of t’murder it were. That’s why folk remembers it. Night of t’murder, around ten.”

  “Could you be more exact?”

  “No, I couldn’t. You don’t keep looking at t’clock when you’re enjoying a pint of ale, ’cept if it’s near closing time.”

  “What exactly happened?”

  “Well, Bellingham come in, and he were being a bit of a blabbermouth as usual. Folk here don’t think a lot to him—he’s a foreigner, from down South somewhere. He’s just tolerated, like. Any road, he were standing over at t’bar—over there, far end—and going on about Mrs Perceval, what an interest she were tekking in his boys, the amount of work she were doing to stand in for their mother, and so on, and so on. Well, o’ course, unbeknownst to him, young Hoddle had come in for a pint ten minutes or so before him, and were stood just feet away from him, down t’other end of t’bar. I reckon they didn’t know each other be sight, Bellingham having only moved here a matter o’ months sin’. Any road, young Maurice, after a minute or two, he went down to Bellingham’s end of t’bar, and started talking to him in a low voice—quiet-like at first.”

  “But not after a time?”

  “Well, Bellingham’s a thick-skulled bloke. Kept repeating how good Lydia Perceval had been, what a weight she’d tekken off his shoulders, and all that. Any road, young Maurice were gettin’ more and more worked up. Till finally . . . But you’d better ask Stan there what he said. He were closer than me.”

  “Right, I will. Did you live in Bly while the younger Hoddles were growing up?”

  “Oh aye. Lived here all me life.”

  “Tell me about it—when I’ve got you another half.”

  When he came back with two glasses he asked: “How was Lydia Perceval seen in the village?”

  Jim Scattergood drank, then wiped his lips.

  “Aah! Rather like t’lady of t’manor. That were how she went on, in a way. ’Course o’ late years we hardly saw her. Ten year sin’ we had a butcher and a baker here in t’village, and she’d walk down and shop here. Now there’s nothing but an itty-bitty general store an’ one or two poncy antique shops and the like. She must ha’ driven somewhere to shop. Any road, we seldom saw her. Boasted of her, now an’ then, wi’ strangers, but seldom saw her. Even ten, fifteen year ago, when the Hoddle boys were growing up, what we saw were the boys going up there.”

  “So there wasn’t a lot of toing and froing between the adult members of the family?”

  “Happen there may have been once. Years and years before, when t’boys were little. Holidays abroad an’ suchlike. But then Mrs Perceval became—well, almost famous, and very busy. And then t’boys started going up there. Every day it would be home from school then straight up to Aunt Lydia’s. Sometimes they’d eat up there, sometimes they come home, but every day they’d go up there.”

  “What did the Hoddles think about it?”

  “What do you suppose they thought? They said nowt, neither Thea nor Andy. But it were like it were a pain they couldn’t discuss. Thea aged—you could see it ’appening. Andy had a good job then, wasn’t drinking like he did later, but he . . . well, he resented it. You could see he did. Wouldn’t you? Losing your boys just when a father feels he has most to offer them.”

  “Did feelings ever come out into the open?”

  “Never. They come from that class—respectable manufacturing folk—as liked to keep personal things under wraps. Nearest were one year when Mrs P. wanted to take the boys away on holiday. That French valley wi’ the castles. The Hoddles had already booked—Portugal or wherever. That got around because the boys so wanted to go wi’ their aunt. Made no secret of it. And we thought the aunt made it some kind o’ trial o’ strength.”

  “Who won?”

  “The parents, for once. She were unwise, you see, was Lydia. The parents had t’cards stacked in their favour: they were the parents, when all’s said and done, and the boys were still under age, and t’holiday had been booked. The boys went wi’ their parents—God knows what kind of a time they gave them, but they went wi’ them. But it were thought in t’village that Mrs P. lost more than just that round.”

  “Oh?”

  “It were thought—we could ha’ got it wrong, o’ course—that from that time Maurice went up rather less to his aunt’s. Gavin were still dead keen, they were planning his naval career an’ all, but we thought as Maurice stayed home more. Could ‘a’ been ju
st homework, o’ course. Maurice were more of a plodder than Gavin. But we thought that just maybe he’d seen the pain they’d caused their parents. Seen how they’d been sort o’ stolen, in an underhand, roundabout sort o’ way.”

  “And Gavin—he never saw?”

  “Oh no—Gavin were his aunt’s boy, right up to t’time he died. Used to write her great long letters from Washington—postcards to his parents. . . . And Andy loved that lad . . . Andy and Thea both. But Andy worshipped the ground he walked on. And if Gavin gave him the time o’ day, that were as much as he did give him.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “ALL I heard was the end of it,” Stan Podmore insisted, polishing a glass after Charlie bought his third non-alcoholic wine, something he considered over and above the call of duty. “I was down the other end of the bar and I heard nothing, though of course I could guess what they were talking about.”

  “How?”

  “He’d been boasting how good Mrs Perceval was being to his boys, and everyone in the village knew about her and the Hoddle boys.”

  “Did you know how Maurice Hoddle felt about her now?”

  “No, we didn’t. That’s why we were interested in him going over to talk to Bellingham.”

  “What sort of conversation did they seem to be having?”

  “Looked to me like young Hoddle was warning Bellingham against his aunt. And like he was pooh-poohing the idea.”

  “Right,” said Charlie. “So then you went close?”

  “The till’s at that end, see. And I heard Maurice Hoddle say: ‘She stole us from our parents, destroyed all our love and respect for them, and killed my brother.’ ”

  “Pretty damning.”

  Stan Podmore nodded sagely.

  “It’s what’s been said in the village all along. Mind you, I don’t think he got through to Nick Bellingham. Once he gets an idea into his head he doesn’t give up easily.”

  “Thick?”

  “Two planks.”