by Jill McGown
She looked a little dubious at the honour. ‘I don’t know anything about art,’ she said. ‘You want Lloyd for that.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I want you.’ He nodded to it. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘See what you think.’
With a slight shrug, she crossed the room. He watched as she walked round the easel; he saw her look of polite expectation vanish, saw her eyes unwillingly move over it before she turned her head away.
‘Does it disturb you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I hope you’re typical,’ he said.
Her eyes moved back to it. ‘Who buys a painting like that?’ she asked.
Sam smiled. ‘You wouldn’t fancy it hanging in your sitting-room?’ he asked.
‘Would anyone?’
He shook his head. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘A collector might buy it, or a gallery. If my reputation survives the critics.’
‘Turner’s did,’ she said.
‘I thought you knew nothing about art?’
‘I’m being taught.’ Another look at the painting. A slight frown. ‘Poor Mrs Hamlyn,’ she said, and left.
Sam looked at it. Just coloured marks on canvas. An optical illusion. He smiled. He had told himself people would cry for his slot machine; the sergeant hadn’t cried, but it had touched her, all right. And one was all you needed.
Philip ate alone. Caroline had never returned to relieve him of Sam’s art class, and her attempts to save Sam from himself fell apart when the next class was refused entry to the art room, and she hadn’t been around to organise cover. It had been sorted out, eventually, with classes doubling up. Sam had emerged after Sergeant Hill had seen him, only to shut himself in his room. When Philip had left the flat for the canteen, Sam’s snores had followed him to the front door.
Treadwell had abdicated responsibility for the whole affair, and Philip had no intention of involving himself, so the rest of the day would presumably be as chaotic as the morning. Though not as chaotic as it might have been; the normally packed canteen was quiet, with so many of the pupils taking an unscheduled break, and the doubled-up classes were not much larger than the normal ones.
Philip looked up as someone came in at the other end of the long room. He half-rose, trying to catch her attention, then realised that it was the sergeant. He had thought, for a moment, that it was Caroline. He sat down again, his heart pounding.
Sam had planted the idea last night. Deliberately, maliciously. He had been able to ignore it then, but now . . .
He watched as Chief Inspector Lloyd joined the sergeant at the counter, his eyes never leaving them as they chose their meals, and sat down in a corner. The chief inspector was doing all the talking; she just sat, and toyed with her food like Philip himself.
Then Caroline really did come in, not stopping to pick up food, but coming straight to where he was, sitting down, her eyes shining with excitement. ‘You’ll never guess,’ she said.
‘I won’t try, then,’ he said. Seeing her made him feel better, and he actually began to eat.
‘I’ve been offered a joint headship,’ she said. ‘With Mr Dearden. They think they should have a woman head teacher because of the girls coming next year.’ She smiled. ‘No interviews – nothing. A straight appointment.’
Philip stopped chewing.
‘Isn’t it great?’
Philip didn’t know which aspect of it he found least entrancing. He looked round the huge canteen, with its odd groups of people eating. ‘Are you sure anyone will be coming next year?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I’ll get it going again,’ she said confidently. ‘The way it ought to be.’
Philip smiled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if anyone can do it, you can.’
She put her hand on his. ‘I know I can,’ she said.
‘I just don’t think that this place is for me.’
‘It won’t be this place! They’ve all gone, Philip. Or they’re going. The Hamlyns, Sam – Treadwell.’
‘It’s still the same school,’ said Philip.
‘But it’s not their school any more,’ she said. She sat back a little. ‘But if you feel you have to leave, then I’m coming with you,’ she said.
Andrew’s voice. ‘If you’ve got to leave now, I’ll have to drive you.’ Andrew’s voice, his face. Even his car. He could see it all now. A warm sunny summer day. An open-top car. ‘Everything’s gone wrong. Caroline can’t get back, and it seems that Treadwell’s sacked the bloody driver.’ Getting into the car, Andrew irritated because Philip wasn’t going to meet Caroline after all. ‘Found him in the potting-shed with the maths teacher’s wife, would you believe?’ he had said, as they drove off. The potting-shed. He’d called it the potting-shed, in fun. That was what had made him think that there was a garden. ‘I’ve told Caroline she’s got Diana Hamlyn to thank if I get led astray by the bright lights.’
And if he got killed? Philip’s eyes rose slowly to Caroline’s.
‘Philip? We don’t have to stay. I just thought it would be good, because we wouldn’t have to find somewhere that we could both work. We could do it right – teach them to stop and smell the roses.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘But it really doesn’t matter, Philip. We’ll go. We’ll find something else.’
He looked at her, then let his eyes move towards the sergeant. Dark, slim. It could have been you, he’d said to her, when she had asked.
The figure that he had glimpsed on the fire-escape; the figure that hadn’t been there any more when he got to the top. Caroline had been there.
The police had suspected Sam because he had changed his clothes. Caroline had been changing her clothes.
But he looked at her, and he knew he didn’t care. He couldn’t leave without her, and he couldn’t take her away when she was so enthusiastic about the job. He smiled, and shook his head.
‘We’ll stay,’ he said. And he would be with her, whatever happened. They were a team.
‘Are you deep in thought or in a huff?’ Lloyd asked.
Judy put down her knife and fork and stopped pretending to eat. ‘Neither,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘Oh – I almost forgot. It seems that single-handedly you managed to flush Sam out of his bolt-hole. He came out just after you left, apparently, and you are fast becoming a folk-hero.’
Judy managed a smile, but she couldn’t get that picture out of her mind.
‘Did he say something?’ Lloyd asked, his voice angry. ‘Because if he did—’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, he was fine.’ She looked at Lloyd. ‘I think maybe he was even nice,’ she said.
‘Waters?’ was Lloyd’s only comment.
She hadn’t told Lloyd about the painting. He would only make fun of her.
‘If you’re not going to eat that, could we take a walk round?’
Judy looked out at the weather. Long spits of rain streaked the windows down one side of the hall, as the afternoon grew greyer and wetter. ‘A walk round,’ she said.
‘A walk round to the car, then, if you’re frightened of a bit of weather.’ He pushed his chair back. ‘Come on,’ he said.
Matthew Cawston, alone, as usual, came in as they were leaving, his blazer spotted with the quickening rain, running a hand over wind-tousled hair. Polite. Pleasant. Debonair, even in his school uniform, as he had been the first time she met him. Not the vulnerable boy she had seen on Friday night, that she had been conned into thinking she saw in Michael. She felt foolish every time she thought of that. Sometimes, she knew just how lucky she was to have Lloyd. She ought to tell him that some time. They walked through the lane to the car park, and they sat in the car as the wind grew wild.
‘Both Newby and Treadwell think it has to have been that nice Mr Waters who was with Diana,’ Lloyd said.
Judy groaned. ‘Oh, Lloyd. Aren’t we in enough trouble? Don’t keep going after Sam. Why would he want to kill Diana Hamlyn?’
‘I don’t think he did,’ said Lloyd.
The wind murmured round the car, r
eady to let rip again.
‘You think Treadwell caught them together,’ Judy said, a little wearily. ‘But that doesn’t make sense.’
They had been through his theory on Treadwell; why, Lloyd had wanted to know, had Diana run away from him this time? She hadn’t before. She had laughed, made a joke of it. So why run this time, unless he was chasing her with murderous intent? Which would have been fine, except that Freddie had just half an hour ago quite unequivocally confirmed that the golf-club was indeed a niblick, and the murder weapon. End of theory. It hadn’t so far produced any more clues as to who had wielded it. All Freddie could tell them was that it had been wrapped in some sort of plastic, probably a bag.
Lloyd tapped the steering-wheel thoughtfully. ‘Logic,’ he said. ‘You’re fond of that.’
‘All right,’ said Judy. ‘Let’s look at it logically.’
‘Let’s.’
‘We now know that the golf-club is the murder weapon.’
‘Check.’
The wind suddenly blustered, rattling the window. Judy shivered, and Lloyd switched on the engine, putting the heater on full.
‘And it was stolen last December,’ she said, caught in a blast of cold air from the heater. Why were car heaters cold to start with? Other heaters weren’t. That never seemed entirely logical to her.
‘Check,’ said Lloyd again.
Judy was aware that she was being manipulated in some way; he was making her go through his theory for him, whatever it was, so that she couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. It had to be a Lloyd special.
‘So,’ she said carefully, hanging on to the logic. ‘Either it was somewhere that the murderer just happened to find it when he needed it, or . . .’
‘Or it was stolen for the purpose?’ Lloyd supplied the alternative, unable to wait for her.
‘And that’s simply not possible,’ Judy said firmly. ‘You said yourself it wasn’t. No one knew that Mrs Hamlyn was going to see Matthew stealing that pen. No one knew that she was going to leave the Hall when she did.’
Rain started to fall steadily, blown almost horizontal by the wind, drenching the car, streaming down the windscreen, blotting everything out.
Judy took out her notebook, flicking through the pages. Eighteen months, she kept reading. Eighteen months, she thought. She had written it down so many times. She frowned. ‘Eighteen months,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I keep hearing it.’ She pointed to the places in the notebook as she spoke. ‘The stealing started eighteen months ago,’ she said. ‘The odd-job man was sacked eighteen months ago. Newby’s accident was eighteen months ago.’
‘That isn’t coincidence,’ said Lloyd. ‘His accident happened because the odd-job man was sacked. And Andrew Knight was killed in the accident,’ he said.
Judy looked up from her notes.
‘Everyone thought Mrs Knight was the thief,’ said Lloyd. ‘Because the thefts began at about the same time. And she was having some sort of breakdown.’
‘Yes.’
‘So everyone thought she had stolen the golf-club, presumably,’ he said.
Judy confirmed that with a nod.
‘But because she didn’t take the other things, everyone’s discounted her. Yet she was the only other person who knew it was there. If Treadwell didn’t take it on the off-chance of finding Diana with another man . . .’ He sat back. ‘Sometimes things are just the way they seem. Mrs Knight did take the golf-club.’
‘Why?’
‘To murder Mrs Hamlyn,’ said Lloyd. ‘Your friend Sam Waters gave me some advice last night. Remember?’
‘Whoever murdered Mrs Hamlyn would have had a hell of a job doing it when she hadn’t just been screwing someone.’
Judy remembered. She hadn’t written it down.
‘The sex had nothing to do with it,’ said Lloyd. ‘It doesn’t matter who she was with in Newby’s car. It doesn’t matter who discovered her. She was going to be murdered. She was always going to be murdered.’
‘By Caroline Knight?’
Lloyd nodded.
‘But if the golf-club was stolen in order to murder her, then it has to have been planned,’ said Judy doggedly. ‘And it couldn’t have been.’
‘Oh, yes, it could. It was. The murder was planned. The whole evening was planned.’
Judy’s eyes met his. ‘By Caroline Knight,’ she said slowly.
‘She planned everything. She arranged the date of the ball, and then she arranged to babysit rather than attend. She arranged to go to this midnight movie thing with Sam, so that Diana would have to leave early, and walk across the playing-field just when she did.’ He looked at Judy. ‘She happened to be running away from Treadwell, but that doesn’t alter the fact that she was crossing the playing-field exactly when she would have been anyway.’
Judy was looking through her notebook again.
‘But Sam almost spoiled it,’ Lloyd said. ‘He wasn’t supposed to come until eleven o’clock, and there she would have been, all ready to be escorted to her midnight movie. As it was, he came early, and she had to get rid of him so that she could wait for Diana crossing the field. She kills her, and then goes back up the fire-escape. Newby saw someone who just disappeared, remember. That’s because she went in the door on the balcony. And he said it could have been you. Caroline Knight looks like you, Judy.’
So she had been told. Judy turned the pages.
He looked up in the general direction of the Hamlyns’ bedroom window, though nothing could be seen through the windscreen but the blurred shape of the building.
‘And Newby went up after her, and watched her changing. We said whoever it was had to have changed, and we know she did. We’ve known all along. And why was she changing? Sam wasn’t taking her anywhere.’
‘But why?’ Judy asked. ‘Why would she kill her?’
‘An Inspector Calls,’ said Lloyd.
Judy frowned.
‘It’s a play. By a man called J. B. Priestley. It shows you that everything you do has consequences, some you might regret. Treadwell mentioned it – now I know why. He said he felt responsible for Andrew Knight’s death, Caroline’s illness – and everything.’
It was hot and stuffy now; Lloyd switched off the heater, and sighed.
‘Because Diana Hamlyn chose to seduce Treadwell’s driver, Andrew Knight died. Because Andrew Knight died, Caroline had a nervous breakdown. And now Diana Hamlyn’s dead. That’s what “and everything” meant. It all goes back to the accident. Eighteen months ago.’
‘But why would she steal the golf-club?’
‘Why not? Someone was stealing anyway. Chances are if she used something of her own it would get traced back to her. But if she stole something in the middle of a spate of thefts – something she had no intention of using for two months . . .’ He spread his hands. ‘Any real investigation would prove she hadn’t stolen the other things, and no one would connect her with the golf-club. And that’s exactly what happened.’
That wasn’t what Judy had meant; she let it pass, as she read her notes.
‘And remember what she was like when we saw her that night?’ asked Lloyd. ‘She was surprised when we said we thought Diana Hamlyn had been raped. Surprised – and worried.’
Judy found what she was looking for.
‘She disposed of the club in the boiler room,’ Lloyd went on. ‘And retrieved the head on Saturday.’
There were more efficient murder weapons than an old golf-club, thought Judy. And Caroline Knight had got rid of Sam because she didn’t want his company any more. She had changed because she wanted to see the film, simple as that. And she had been surprised at the rape, just like everyone else, because Diana Hamlyn was anybody’s. And she was worried about the rape, just like all the women living in the school were worried. But Judy didn’t voice her opinion, because that was all it was.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Say something.’
He moved slightly, inadvertently touching the horn. The sudden n
oise made Judy start, and she remembered something. Something relevant, but not something she had written down. She had facts – one that she had just remembered, with the sudden noise of the horn.
‘Caroline Knight didn’t go in by that door,’ she said, almost absently.
Her logic took her through the notebook, ticking things off. Facts. Things she had seen. Heard. Incidents, like Jim Lacey turning up. Little things that she had puzzled about. Because a lot of things had seemed odd, to her. Not any more. As usual, it took Lloyd on one of his flights of imagination to make her see it. Because Lloyd always picked up the things that mattered; he would throw them down in a corner for her to sort out, and now that’s what she was doing. Why entertain her lover in the back of a car? Who would want to steal a golf-club? Difficult, to change your clothes when everyone’s in formal dress: people would notice. Sometimes, things are just the way they seem. What about her shoes?
‘There’s the window,’ Lloyd said impatiently. ‘She would use it to open the door.’
Judy looked up. ‘I am the crime prevention officer,’ she said. ‘I know about sophisticated tricks like that.’
‘Then why couldn’t she have done it?’
‘She could have,’ said Judy, delighted as she always was when she could pick Lloyd up on his use of the language. ‘I simply said she didn’t. Or Philip Newby wouldn’t just have heard footsteps, would he? He would have heard the door opening. It, if you’ll pardon the expression, would waken the dead.’ Not quite; Hamlyn had slept on in his fume-filled garage, when Mary Alexander had opened the door on to the balcony to tell them she had found the suicide note.
Lloyd stared at her. ‘Yes,’ he said, with the puzzled frown that he always had when his theories bit the dust. ‘Yes.’ The frown went, to be replaced with a slight defiance. ‘Newby’s covering for her. Maybe he was in on it. He was hurt in the accident, wasn’t he?’
Now, she gave him her look.
‘Oh, all right,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask you a question. It’s your own question.’
‘Go ahead,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘You look like a gun-dog. Who am I to argue when you look like a gun-dog? You are invariably pointing in the right direction.’
