No Laughing Matter

by Dorothy Simpson

  ‘And did it get to the stage where you’d had enough of letting them get on with it?’

  ‘Did I go up there last night and shove him through that window, you mean? No, I didn’t. She had me over a barrel, you see.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Alice thought the sun shone out of him,’ said Landers. He looked bewildered and his tone was almost plaintive as he went on. ‘I could never understand why. But from the moment she first set eyes on Randish she was besotted. I thought, when it first dawned on me that he was knocking her about, that she’d come to her senses. I waited and waited, but no, he could always get her eating out of his hand. And if you love someone, really love someone, you want what’s best for them, however you feel about it. You see my dilemma? If I got rid of Randish – and I’ll admit there have been many occasions when I could cheerfully have thrown him through a window – I’d be depriving her of her greatest happiness, incomprehensible though that was to me. So my hands were tied. No, you’ll have to look elsewhere for your murderer, Inspector. Sorry.’

  ‘D’you know if Mr Randish was playing around?’

  ‘Was he having an affair, you mean? Not so far as I know.’

  But Landers was lying, Thanet was certain of it. The fruit farmer might have been caught out once, but he wasn’t going to hand Thanet another motive on a plate, even if it might point the finger of suspicion in another direction.

  ‘Do you know of anyone apart from Mr Mason who might have had a grudge against Mr Randish?’

  The mention of Reg Mason’s name made Landers scowl. ‘I told you, you can leave Reg out of it. He just isn’t the type to lose his temper and whoever caused that mess up there last night was beside himself with rage, as I’m sure you’ll agree. But no, Zak might have trodden on a few toes, but I can’t think of anyone who’d hate him to that degree.’

  ‘Mr Vintage told us that your son-in-law also made the wine for another vineyard, at Chasing Manor. How did he get on with the people there?’

  ‘The Bentons? Fine, to my knowledge. They’ve known him since he was a teenager and I hardly think James Benton would have let Zak take over the winemaking there if there’d been any problems between them.’

  ‘They could have arisen recently.’

  ‘I doubt it. Anyway, you’ll have to ask him.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we intend to.’

  As they walked to the car, Lineham asked, ‘Are we going to Chasing Manor next?’

  ‘Let’s have a look at the map.’

  They held it out between them.

  ‘As I thought,’ said Thanet. ‘Vintage’s house is on the way. Let’s pay a call on Mrs Vintage first, see what’s going on there. If she was Randish’s current girlfriend I’d like to know.’

  NINE

  The hollow sensation in Thanet’s stomach reminded him that it was a long time since breakfast, so they pulled in at the pub in the village.

  ‘We can check Mason’s alibi, such as it is, at the same time.’

  Although it hadn’t started raining again the sky was still overcast and the air was damp and raw. Thanet shivered as they crossed the car park and decided he would eschew his usual sandwich and have something hot.

  ‘Shepherd’s pie, I think,’ he said with satisfaction, scanning the bar menu. One of his favourites.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Lineham.

  While they were waiting for the food they questioned the landlord. He had been on duty the night before and although he couldn’t be certain of the precise time at which Mason arrived, he confirmed that Landers had later joined him and that the two men had left together about half an hour after that. He also said that although Mason had seemed depressed before Landers arrived, by the time they left he had looked considerably more cheerful.

  ‘Because Landers had offered him the house, presumably,’ said Thanet as they carried their drinks to a table in the corner. ‘All of which confirms what they’ve both told us.’

  ‘Still doesn’t alter the fact that Mason had the opportunity both before and after he was in here.’

  ‘True.’

  When it arrived the pie was excellent, generous helpings with plenty of meat and real, not substitute, potato on top.

  ‘We’ll have to come here again,’ said Thanet.

  While they were eating they discussed the morning’s interviews.

  ‘Don’t seem to have made much progress, do we?’ Lineham was uncharacteristically gloomy.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think we’re getting there, slowly.’ A picture of Randish was, Thanet felt, gradually beginning to emerge: a man whose driving ambition had been forged by his deprived childhood, who saw even his wife, perhaps, as a means to an end; a man powerless to prevent himself repeating in his own marriage the pattern of violence which Thanet suspected Randish’s ‘drunken lout’ of a father had inflicted upon his ‘pathetic, downtrodden’ mother; a man, Thanet was beginning to believe, for whom other people’s feelings did not exist. Well, it looked as though he had trampled on someone else’s sensibilities once too often.

  Enough of the case, for now. Thanet laid down his fork and patted his pockets, feeling for pipe, pouch, matches. Out of consideration for Lineham he waited until the sergeant had finished eating before lighting up. Then he sat back, puffing contentedly. ‘How’s Louise getting on?’

  Lineham’s wife was a trained nurse and until the children came along had been a staff nurse at Sturrenden General. She had then devoted herself to full-time motherhood and had found it a great strain. Eventually she had taken a part-time job, looking forward to the day when Richard started school and she would be free to resume her career. But like so many women, when that day finally arrived she found that she had lost her confidence. Eventually she had been persuaded to take a retraining course for working mothers and she was now halfway through it.

  ‘Fine,’ said Lincham. ‘Progressively better and better, as a matter of fact, as she gets her confidence back. The course is very well designed, she has one day in the classroom and one in the wards, and she’s expected to do half a day’s studying as well. And the hours are so convenient, especially tailored to the needs of mothers with children at school. If only we could get Richard sorted out everything in the garden would be lovely.’

  ‘But I thought he’d seen the – what did you call her? The dyslexic support teacher? – and had an assessment and a special programme worked out for him.’

  The previous year Lineham’s son Richard, now aged eight, had been diagnosed dyslexic. Lineham and Louise had been worried about him for some time, realising that something was wrong but unable to put their finger on the problem. The diagnosis had been a shock but there had also been a measure of relief: at least now, they thought, something constructive could be done, at once.

  They were wrong.

  Help was theoretically available, but in practice, they discovered, it took a long time to arrive. Kent County Council was getting itself increasingly organised to provide specialised tuition for children like Richard, but resources were as yet inadequate to provide the degree of help each child needed. Richard had had to take his place in the queue and for three months nothing had happened while his application was being ‘processed’. There was only one dyslexic support teacher for the entire area and she was grossly overworked. At last, however, she had seen him for his assessment and Lineham and Louise had had high hopes of the results.

  ‘Yes, she did see him, and he is working on the programme she set up for him.’

  ‘So why the gloom?’

  ‘Guess how much special tuition he’s getting.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. A couple of hours a week?’

  ‘Try again,’ said Lineham grimly.

  ‘One hour, then.’

  ‘And again.’

  ‘Not less than an hour, surely.’

  ‘He gets, believe it or not, twenty minutes a week.’

  ‘Twenty minutes a week! But that’s hopeless!’

  ‘Quite. The trouble is,
there just aren’t enough special support teachers around. There are thirty-two between eighty-five schools. And Richard’s dyslexia is apparently not as severe as some, so he doesn’t qualify for as much help. Another problem is that because the dyslexia provision has only been set up relatively recently there’s still a backlog of children who were late being diagnosed and are desperately behind, so they naturally come first.’

  ‘So there’s nothing you can do?’

  ‘We’ve tried everything, believe me. But it’s like banging your head against a brick wall. The school takes the attitude that it’s doing its best, but that if the help simply isn’t available, there’s nothing to be done about it.’

  ‘Have you taken it up with the Education Authority?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s the same old story. It takes for ever to get any kind of response, and when we do they simply say that everything that can be done is being done, but that they simply haven’t the funding to provide adequately for every single child with special needs. There is a very good special unit, at the Malling School near Maidstone, but children can’t go there until they’re eleven, even if they’re lucky enough to get in. It’s so frustrating!’

  ‘How’s Richard reacting to all this?’

  ‘I think he’s coming to believe more and more that he’s just plain stupid. And how can we convince him otherwise, when as far as he’s concerned all the apparent evidence is to the contrary? To make matters worse, he’s just gone up a form and from what he tells me I suspect his new teacher is one of the old school, who privately thinks dyslexia is just a fancy label to hang around the neck of a pupil who is really either stupid, lazy or just plain difficult.’

  ‘I thought that attitude had gone out with the Ark.’

  ‘Unfortunately, no, it seems. Old habits die hard, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It must be very depressing for you, not finding any way of doing something constructive to help him.’

  ‘You can say that again! And we’re not alone, believe me. You wouldn’t credit the number of times we’ve heard this story over and over again from other parents of dyslexic children. Still, we haven’t given up yet. At the moment we’re enquiring about private tuition. The trouble is, there are so few people qualified to give it.’

  Outside it had started raining again and they had to make a dash for the car. As he drove Lineham was unwontedly quiet – brooding, Thanet suspected, on Richard’s predicament. Thanet had always been grateful that Bridget and Ben had been normal healthy children, and the courage and devotion of those parents who were not so fortunate never failed to arouse his heartfelt admiration. Would he have been able to find such reserves of strength in himself, had he been called upon to do so? He doubted it. But then, perhaps one never knew, unless one was actually put to the test. Richard, of course, appeared in every way a perfectly bright healthy child, but in one respect this made things even more difficult: people were less inclined to make allowances for him.

  Usually Thanet enjoyed a drive through the countryside but this afternoon there was little pleasure in it. The foliage was beginning to turn colour and on a sunny day the woods and hedgerows would have been splashed with gold, streaked with scarlet, but the blanket of lowering cloud and flurries of driving rain cast a pall over everything. There were puddles in the furrows of newly ploughed fields and tree branches drooped, heavy with the weight of water in their sodden leaves.

  It took about fifteen minutes to get to Vintage’s house. This was a much more modest set-up. There was a simple signboard announcing ‘AMBERLY VINEYARD, WINES FOR SALE’, and a short drive up to a pretty weather-boarded house. Looking about him, though, Thanet could see the potential of the place: ample space for a big car park and two substantial barns for storage. The neat rows of vines had a well-tended air.

  ‘I think I’m in the wrong job,’ said Lineham. ‘How big did he say this place is?’

  ‘Thirty acres.’

  ‘And how much wine a year did he say could be produced off ten? Thirty to forty thousand bottles, wasn’t it?’ Lineham screwed up his face, calculating. ‘So on thirty acres that’s – no, wait a minute, I’m getting lost in all the noughts …’

  ‘Mike! We’re not here to do mental arithmetic. You can amuse yourself with that when you’re off duty. Anyway, don’t forget what he said. The main problem is selling it.’

  Thanet was pleased to see that there was a car parked in front of one of the barns, an old green Morris Traveller. Mrs Vintage was probably in, then. The house, however, had a neglected air. The windows were dirty, streaked with grime from the morning’s rain, and some of the curtains were drawn, some not. There was an accumulation of leaves around the front door as though it hadn’t been used for some time. Perhaps it hadn’t, thought Thanet as they knocked. Farming people often habitually use the back door because of all the mud that is carried in. Someone was in, anyway: inside a radio or television set was blaring out, almost but not quite drowning another sound, that of a baby crying.

  No reply.

  They knocked again, harder; still no response. Thanet was becoming uneasy. There was something wrong here, he could sense it.

  Lineham evidently felt the same. ‘Don’t like the look of this, sir.’

  ‘Perhaps she hasn’t heard because of the noise.’

  ‘Do we go around the back?’

  Thanet nodded.

  On the way past the window to the right of the door he stooped to peer in between the half-drawn curtains. This was the room with the television set. It stood in the corner beside the fireplace and opposite, at right angles to the window, slumped on a settee, was a woman, her profile masked by her hair. Thanet tapped at the window, but she gave no indication of having heard. He knocked harder and called Lineham back, knocked again, still with no response.

  At last, as they peered in together, to Thanet’s intense relief, the woman stirred. Slowly she turned her head to look at them. Her eyes were blank, incurious, and although she couldn’t have been more than a few feet away, the sight of two strange men peering in at her initially produced no reaction whatsoever.

  ‘Mrs Vintage?’ Thanet called. ‘Police.’ He fished out his warrant card and held it up to the glass.

  She continued to stare at him as if he were speaking in a foreign tongue and then slowly, very slowly, as if she were walking through water, she rose and approached the window. She was wearing a dressing gown, Thanet realised, and slippers. She’d been ill, perhaps, or still was. She was very pale, with dark circles beneath her eyes, and her long brown hair hung lank and greasy as if it were long overdue for a wash.

  She was now close enough for them to speak to her. They had arranged that this time Lineham should take the interview and he also pressed his warrant card against the windowpane. ‘Could we have a word, Mrs Vintage?’

  Thanet half expected her to say no or at least to indicate that she would dress, first. It seemed to take a few moments for Lineham’s request to penetrate but then, without a word, still with that curious trancelike motion, she turned and left the room through a door at the far side.

  Thanet and Lineham looked at each other, eyebrows raised, mouths tugged down at the corners.

  ‘Drugs?’ said Lineham.

  They returned to the front door but when there was no sound from inside hurried around to the back. She was waiting for them, leaning against the edge of the half-open door, a tabby cat weaving around her bare legs.

  ‘What is it?’ she said. Her voice was hoarse, as if she had a cold, and she cleared her throat.

  ‘We’re inquiring into the death of Mr Randish,’ said Lineham. ‘And we wondered if we could have a few words with you.’

  She frowned, and again it seemed to take several moments before the meaning of what he had said penetrated.

  Definitely drugged, Thanet decided. Tranquillisers, he suspected.

  ‘Mr Randish? Dead?’ The news seemed to have shaken her into a greater awareness and she stood back, held the door wider. ‘Come in.’
/>   But why the surprise? Thanet wondered. Why hadn’t her husband told her the news before he left for the vineyard this morning?

  Inside she glanced about her as if becoming aware of her surroundings for the first time. ‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ she said vaguely, but without real concern.

  And that was an understatement if ever he’d heard one, thought Thanet. Every square inch of surface was piled high with opened tins, dirty dishes encrusted with food and used saucepans. The floor hadn’t been swept or washed for some time and there was a row of empty saucers beside which the cat had stationed itself, watching its mistress with an optimistic stare. Someone, however, had been at work recently: a huge pile of washing up had been left to drain beside the sink, and on the filthy cooker, standing in a pan of water, stood a baby’s bottle full of milk. Two more bottles were lined up nearby. The child must be due for a feed, thought Thanet. Inside the house the noise of its crying was much louder and it sounded frantic. Mrs Vintage, however, made no move to turn on the heat under the saucepan.

  ‘We’ll go in the other room.’ She led the way. The baby was upstairs and in the hall the noise it was making intensified. How could any mother ignore such a desperate appeal for attention? Thanet wondered. Lineham, he could tell, was thinking the same.

  In the sitting room she made no move to turn down the volume on the set, simply returned to her seat and sat down, tugging the edges of her dressing gown together across her bare legs. The shoulders, Thanet noticed, were encrusted here and there with little patches of dried vomit, where the baby had brought up wind.

  ‘Do you mind if we have the TV off, ma’am?’ said Lineham.

  She shook her head.

  The sound of the baby’s cries seemed magnified in the ensuing silence.

  ‘We don’t mind waiting, if you want to attend to the baby,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘He’ll be all right for a few minutes.’

  Then, shockingly, she got up and shut the door, reducing the sound to a distant wail. She returned to her seat.

  Thanet and Lineham exchanged glances. What could they do? You couldn’t force a mother to look after her baby.