by Joan Smith
‘OK, start in there,’ he said, directing his team into the sitting room. Then he turned to where Loretta, Robert and Colin were silently waiting. ‘I’ll just take a look at the – deceased, and then I’d be grateful if you’d all accompany me to the station.’ He gave a cool nod and began to move towards the door.
‘Wait a minute, Chief Inspector.’ Colin’s voice succeeded in being at once smooth yet insistent. ‘Will that really be necessary? I think I’d better introduce myself – Colin Kendall-Cole, MP for Oxfordshire South-East. I don’t want to be a nuisance, but can’t we get the formalities over here?’
The detective gave him a measuring look; Loretta had the feeling he was personally unimpressed by Colin’s status, but aware of its potential as a complicating factor.
‘Well, sir, it’s usual to get everyone away from the scene of the crime, as I’m sure you know. My men have a job to do, and I’m sure this young lady’ – he glanced at Loretta – ‘would feel happier down at the station.’ Loretta looked at Bailey in surprise, disconcerted by this unexpected concern for her welfare. Or was it merely a clever ploy on Bailey’s part?
‘I understand all that, Chief Inspector.’ Colin’s tone was equally reasonable, but it was clear a battle of wills was taking place. ‘But these are not normal circumstances. We’re nowhere near the station – I take it you mean Headington – and it’s getting late. Can’t you take our statements here? I’m sure Miss – er – wouldn’t mind.’ He glanced at Loretta in a manner that commanded her agreement. She hadn’t time to protest before he played his trump card. ‘Look, Chief Inspector, I don’t want you to think I’m pulling rank. My problem is that I’ve got a meeting with the ...’ – he glanced round the hall and lowered his voice – ‘the minister in the morning, first thing. You know how busy these people are.’ His tone suggested that the detective was a colleague, as familiar as he with the schedules of government ministers. He looked briefly at his watch. ‘It’s well after ten already. I’ve got to be in Whitehall at eight. This has been the most terrible shock Mrs Wolstonecroft was a very old friend. If you could relax the rules for once ... I’d be most grateful.’
Bailey looked at his own watch for a moment, his face impassive. Then: ‘As you wish, sir. We’ll use the kitchen. But I’ll have to get it dusted for fingerprints first. If that’s all right with you?’ It was impossible to tell whether the final sentence was intended to be deferential or sarcastic.
Colin chose to believe the former. ‘Of course. Go ahead.’
The small group waited in the hall while one of Bailey’s men, recalled from the sitting room, made an examination of the kitchen.
‘Right, then,’ Bailey said as his man reappeared. He addressed Loretta. ‘You found the body, Miss ...’ – he glanced at his notes – ‘Miss Lawson. Better have you first. On your own, were you?’
Afterwards, Loretta couldn’t imagine why it was only at this point that the most obvious and terrifying part of the puzzle became clear to her. As she moved obediently towards the kitchen door, her mind went through a series of logical steps: yes, she had been alone when she entered the sitting room; no, she hadn’t seen or heard anyone else in the house; and in that case –
‘Where’s Peggy?’
She stood stock still in front of the kitchen door, her words cutting across the various low-voiced conversations taking place in the hall and sitting room. Bailey, Robert, Colin, the woman detective, they all stared at her.
‘Where’s Peggy?’ She spoke on a rising note of panic: in her imagination, she could already see the girl’s body sprawled across a bed, her dyed blonde hair matted with blood. Or was she in one of the bathrooms, senseless on the floor while the very people who should be helping her wasted time looking for minute clues? Loretta started for the stairs, only to find her way blocked by the detective.
‘Wait a minute, miss. Who’s this Peggy?’
Loretta could have cried with frustration. ‘She was here, I saw her–’
‘When? Tonight?’ Bailey was suddenly alert.
‘No, no, not tonight, that’s the point. She should be here and she isn’t. She –’
‘You mean someone is staying here? Clara didn’t mention her when she spoke to me this afternoon.’
‘Why should she?’ Loretta turned on Colin angrily. ‘You’re the last person she’d tell – you and your stupid bill!’ She turned and cast Bailey a pleading look. ‘She’s from the peace camp. She was staying here for a few days because ...’ Loretta paused, wondering whether she should tell Bailey about Mick.
‘Has anyone checked whether anything’s missing?’ Colin asked abruptly. Loretta stared at him, not immediately taking in his meaning.
‘Well, it’s the obvious thing, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you say, Chief Inspector?’ He appealed to the policeman, man to man. ‘I had a brief chat with Mrs Wolstonecroft this afternoon about these so-called peace women. I didn’t like her involvement with them, didn’t like it at all. I tried to make her see what a risk she was taking – after all, nobody knows a thing about these women, I gather a lot of them don’t use their real names. Aliases by the dozen. Isn’t that so, Chief Inspector? And now Mrs Wolstonecroft’s dead, and one of them is missing. I’m simply making the obvious inference.’
‘You’re not suggesting Peggy had anything to do with this?’ Loretta was wide-eyed with astonishment. ‘Of all the –.’
‘Wait a minute, this is getting us nowhere,’ Bailey interrupted, looking from Loretta to Colin as if to make plain he wasn’t taking sides. ‘What we have established – correct me if I’m wrong – is that a young woman from the, er, camp has been staying in this house and hasn’t been seen since this afternoon. Right?’
‘Yes,’ said Loretta, in an agony of impatience.
‘So the logical thing is to have a thorough search of the house – I assume PC Wilkins had a quick look round before I got here?’
‘No, he didn’t!’ Loretta took a deep breath.
‘I don’t think he had time,’ Robert said, coming to the man’s defence.
‘OK, I’ll deal with that later. Wise, you take downstairs.’ The woman detective headed for the door of the downstairs bathroom. ‘Lucas!’ A uniformed constable appeared from the sitting room. ‘You come with me.’
Loretta watched the two men climb the stairs, her fists clenched so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. She forced herself to take deep, calming breaths, but her heart went racing on nevertheless. DC Wise came out of the bathroom, shaking her head. Loretta watched her make for the long corridor at the front of the house which, she remembered, led to the music room.
‘Heard one of your pieces on the car radio the other day,’ Colin remarked to Robert. ‘Radio Three. Short piano piece, now which one would that have been?’
Loretta’s nerve snapped.
‘How can you stand there talking about music? With all this going on.’ She waved a hand towards the stairwell, from which echoed the sounds of cupboards being opened and closed. ‘After what you’ve said about Peggy! How could you? You don’t even know her! The idea that she – oh, it’s just ridiculous! What do you know about peace camps? I bet you’ve never been near one in your life! Or if you have, it’ll be on some Ministry of Defence briefing!’
‘I–’
‘And if it comes to that, what were you doing here tonight? Clara was furious about your stupid article! Don’t tell me you were making a social call!’
The MP stiffened. ‘As a matter of fact, Clara asked me to come round. I’ve already told you that. It wasn’t very convenient, but I felt I owed it to her – as an old friend. She wanted to talk to me about the peace camp, on which, as you so rightly say, our views differed. I believe she had got into an emotional state about the base, and hadn’t thought through the consequences of what she was doing. No doubt she was hoping to change my mind. The discussion would have almost certainly been fruitless, but I felt I had a duty.’
‘And that, m’Lud, closes the case for the prosecuti
on!’
‘Loretta!’ Robert placed a restraining hand on her arm, his shocked tone showing he thought she’d gone too far.
‘It’s all right, Herrin, I can see she’s overwrought. Oh, and by the way, I’m a solicitor, not a barrister.’
‘Miss Lawson, can you come up here for a moment?’
Bailey was standing at the top of the stairs. Loretta’s entire body was suddenly cold as stone. She climbed the stairs slowly, as if preparing for the worst.
‘You’ve found her?’ Her words were little more than a whisper.
‘No. Do you know which room she was staying in?’
‘That one.’ Loretta pointed to the door half-way down the corridor that led to Clara’s study.
‘I thought so. There’s a pair of trousers and a shirt rolled up under the bed, and the bed’s obviously been slept in. But nothing else. She must have had a bag – something to keep her things in?’
‘Oh yes.’ Loretta cast her mind back to the previous evening, when she’d taken Peggy up to the peace camp to collect her belongings. ‘A barrel bag, you couldn’t miss it, it was bright pink.’
‘What’s a barrel bag?’
‘One of those long round ones, like a tube. About this long.’ Loretta held her hands about three feet apart.
‘All right, miss. If Wise hasn’t found anything downstairs, I’ll send her up to the – the peace camp. It’s conceivable your friend’s gone back there. And I’ll organize a search of the garden.’
He stood back so she could lead the way downstairs. Instead, Loretta moved closer to him and spoke rapidly in a low voice.
‘Look, Inspector. What he suggested, Kendall-Cole I mean, it just isn’t possible. I know Peggy. She would never have hurt Clara. She was grateful to her for taking her in. Her husband beat her up, that’s why she was staying here. He followed her to the peace camp and tried to make her go home. It was Clara who stopped him. I was there when it happened.’ She willed the policeman to believe her.
Bailey thought for a moment, head sunk on chest. Then he looked up.
‘All right, I’ll bear that in mind. But there’s another way of looking at it, you must see that?’
Loretta stared at him, not understanding.
‘Your Peggy may have been in league with her husband, have you considered that?’ He paused, then went on. ‘They set up the scene at the camp, hoping Mrs Wolstonecroft would bring Peggy back to the house. Then tonight he comes here, she lets him in. He starts helping himself – there’s a lot of nice stuff in the house – and Mrs Wolstonecroft disturbs him. He panics, kills her, and they take off together.’
‘But there’s no evidence – nothing’s been taken!’ Loretta protested.
‘Oh, but it has,’ said Bailey, moving past her down the stairs. He turned half-way down, and looked back at her. ‘From the state of Mrs Wolstonecroft’s bedroom, it’s a fair bet that someone – and I’m not saying it’s this Peggy – has made off with the best part of her jewellery. Excuse me, I’ve got a search to organize.’
The next hour was a nightmare for Loretta. More police arrived and began searching the garden; she was asked to provide keys to the cottage and to her car. Colin, who had parked in the lay-by in the lane next to the house, surrendered his car keys with a surprising lack of fuss. One by one they were searched, Loretta by a specially summoned WPC. Shortly after this DC Wise returned from the peace camp with the news, overheard by everyone in the hall, that Peggy had not been seen there since the previous day. Then Bailey, who had been here, there and everywhere during these grim proceedings, came to a halt before Loretta and said he was ready to interview her.
‘Sorry we couldn’t get this over earlier,’ he said, as he and the WPC followed her into the kitchen. Tour information about this woman Peggy gave us a lot to do. Have a seat.’
They settled themselves at the kitchen table, the WPC ready to write on a clipboard in front of her.
‘Now, can we start with the routine stuff – name, address, that sort of thing? WPC Baker here will take down what you say, and we’ll ask you to read it through and sign it afterwards.’
Loretta complied, supplying in answer to Bailey’s questions a brief account of how she came to be staying in Keeper’s Cottage. Then he took her through a minute-by-minute account of how and when she’d found Clara’s body, ending with the arrival of the first police car. The detective, who had been making odd notes of his own, sat back and chewed the end of his pen. Then he put it down and leaned towards her across the table, his hands clasped in front of him.
‘That was admirably clear, Miss Lawson. You’re an excellent witness. What I don’t understand is why you, and Mr Herrin, presumably, didn’t hear anything.’
‘You mean ... anyone arriving at the house? Or leaving? But the cottage – there aren’t any downstairs windows facing the house.’
‘I didn’t mean that so much,’ Bailey said, leaning back and tapping his pen on the table. ‘No, I was wondering about the shots.’
‘Shots?’
’Why, yes. As you were the one who discovered the body, I assumed you knew Mrs Wolstonecroft had been shot. Twice, as a matter of fact. Through the heart.’
Loretta swallowed several times, suddenly feeling sick.
‘But there wasn’t any blood...’
‘Wouldn’t be. Small-bore gun, close range. Just two neat holes, with a bit of blackening round them. You’re not telling me you didn’t see them?’ His tone was disbelieving.
Loretta felt a cold anger.
‘Inspector, I haven’t seen many dead bodies in my lifetime. Finding the body was – the most dreadful shock. I didn’t know Clara well, but I liked her very much. I could see she was dead, but I didn’t stop to think about how or who’d done it. You may think that’s – inadequate. Perhaps it is. But it’s the truth.’
The detective bowed his head.
‘I’m sorry, I have to ask these questions. But you’re sure you didn’t hear the shots? The doctor can’t be certain yet, of course, but he thinks Mrs Wolstonecroft was killed not long before you found her.’ He sounded less accusing, and Loretta had the impression her little speech had impressed him. Or perhaps he was just relieved that she hadn’t started to cry. She gave his question her full attention.
‘I really can’t – oh! I know what must have happened! I was listening to some music when Robert arrived – some Puccini. Turandot. It’s very noisy in places.’
‘I know it,’ Bailey said.
‘Robert turned it up for a while towards the end. I remember wondering if we were disturbing Clara ... I don’t think we’d have heard anything from outside while it was turned up.’ She sighed, feeling she’d somehow let Clara down. Though by the time the shots had been fired, Clara had almost certainly been beyond help.
‘Where did the gun come from?’ she asked suddenly, trying to summon up her mental picture of the scene in the drawing room and wondering why she hadn’t spotted it.
‘We won’t know much till we get the ballistics report,’ Bailey said, ‘the gun itself being missing. We don’t even know what type it was yet. I’m glad to say we didn’t find it when we searched your cottage,’ he added, a fleeting smile passing across his austere features. ‘Which inclines me to think you and Mr Herrin are probably in the clear.’
Loretta looked blankly at him; it hadn’t occurred to her that she and Robert were suspects.
‘Don’t worry, miss, at the moment you’re well down my list. Now, what can you tell me about your friend Peggy?’
Loretta was about to protest Peggy’s innocence again but decided it might antagonize Bailey; she was also very tired. She told the detective what she knew, which didn’t really amount to much – she realized she didn’t even know Peggy’s surname or where she had lived in London. But she was able to give full descriptions of both the girl and her husband, not forgetting the tattoo on Mick’s forearm; Bailey cheered up considerably on hearing this detail, and said something about getting the Met on to it.
<
br /> ‘Right, then ... if you’ll just read through your statement and sign each page at the bottom – if you agree with it, that is...’
Loretta took the long, hand-written statement and examined it page by page. The sentences were short, inelegant; even so, she had to admire the way in which the policewoman had succeeded in reducing Loretta’s occasionally disjointed narrative into a concise account of her part in that evening’s events. She signed her name half a dozen times, and returned the clipboard to WPC Baker.
‘You can go.’
Loretta started to get up. Bailey held up a hand.
‘No, I meant WPC Baker.’
Loretta sat down again, wondering what was coming next. Bailey waited until the other woman had left the room, then leaned back with his hands behind his head.
‘So – who d’you think did it?’
Loretta blinked. Until this moment the detective’s manner had been neutral, occasionally accusing, not one to invite confidences. She remembered the exchange at the top of the stairs and, without further thought, rapped out two words.
‘Not Peggy!’
‘That’s why I’m asking you. You’re obviously convinced this girl’s innocent – why?’
‘I – it’s just ... not in character. I told you – she was grateful to Clara for taking her in... It’s just – impossible.’
‘So we go back to my original question. Who d’you think did it?’
Loretta sat in silence, unable to think of anything to say. She realized, surprised, that she’d hardly considered the question. It was as if, from the moment she discovered Clara’s body, she had taken to living in the present tense. The evening seemed to have stretched backwards in time until it occupied most of her recent life; she was aware of a protective numbness in her brain which had excluded all but the demands of each long moment. She shook her head slightly, seeking to dislodge the film that seemed to have grown over her mind. Bailey, observing her, appeared to understand the process.
