The Body of a Woman: A Superintendent Mike Yeadings Mystery (Superintendent Mike Yeadings Mysteries)

by Clare Curzon

  They took chairs on the far side of the room. Yeadings looked at the girl’s father. ‘Mr Knightley?’ He indicated the door. Knightley stood his ground, affronted.

  ‘Chloë has chosen a responsible adult to be present, as required.’ Yeadings nodded again towards the door, saw an unwilling Knightley through and closed it firmly after him.

  ‘What did you want to ask me?’ Chloë challenged. Whatever sedative they’d given her, she was fighting it off.

  Yeadings wandered back and stood leaning with both hands on a chairback. ‘I’m not altogether sure. I just have the feeling you can help me if you will. It’s a question of observation really.’

  ‘You know about last night’s accident?’ Janey demanded.

  ‘It’s disgraceful what these young hooligans get up to. Can’t you police do more to stop it?’

  Yeadings treated the question as rhetorical and expressed his sympathy. ‘Chloë, I’m afraid we need to trouble you for an account of what happened.’

  She sat straight-backed and spoke in a cold, controlled voice. ‘I told the policeman at the hospital. We were run down by a car. It turned its headlights up and came straight for us. I guess Hetty was dazzled. I know I was. She’d got a bad foot and stumbled. I tried to pull her to the side but she fell and that made me let go. I’m so sorry.’

  She shook her head, took a deep breath and went on. ‘It was only a glancing blow on me but she - she hit the bonnet and then sort of bounced off and disappeared. When I got up I couldn’t find her. She must have been on the opposite side, but I don’t remember getting to her. A neighbour - a man I hadn’t seen before - came rushing out of his house and then there was quite a crowd. I must have blacked out then and came to for a while in the ambulance. It’s no good asking if I saw the driver. It all happened too fast, and I was blinded by the headlights.’

  ‘You had no impression of the driver’s age or sex?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘And the make of car?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that. It was big. Powerful. I got the impression it was pale: maybe white. Not a Volvo anyway.’

  Yeadings stiffened. ‘How can you be sure of that?’ ‘Because a Volvos’ lights come on with the ignition. And I remembered afterwards I’d had this impression of an engine idling when I came out of the house to go to Hetty’s cottage. There was a car parked at the far end of Piggotts’ front, near where the wood begins. I suppose it didn’t mean anything to me then because couples sometimes park there with the lights off, but usually later at night.’

  ‘Thank you, Chloe. There’s nothing else you remember? A familiar engine sound?’

  ‘Nothing. It revved up like a racing car. I’ve never heard an engine roar so, except on TV.’

  ‘I see. Well, if you think of any other detail later, please ring me or Inspector Mott.’ Trust the formality of the words to reduce the tension, he thought. From Chloë’s description it would seem the hit-and-run had been no accident, but he was unwilling then to suggest to the women why the older victim might have been targeted.

  As if she read his mind, ‘It was deliberate,’ the girl said shakily. ‘He meant to kill us. One of us, anyway.’

  ‘How is Mrs Chadwick?’ Janey asked quickly.

  ‘Her condition’s unchanged. Still critical, but there is hope.’

  ‘I feel responsible. If I hadn’t sent Chloe with a message to her none of this would have happened.’

  ‘You asked for her to come to Knollhurst?’

  ‘Yes, but at her convenience. We need more help in the house. I thought we should discuss it.’

  ‘It was Hetty’s idea to come right away,’ Chloe said. ‘So nothing was planned. Whoever ran at us wouldn’t have been expecting to see her. He was just waiting about on the off-chance.’

  She stared at Yeadings with fear in her eyes. ‘Right by our house. That’s why I think it was me he went for. To kill me.’

  It might appear so to her, and there was logic in her reasoning, but he couldn’t accept that. She’d been away at the time of her stepmother’s death. It was the cleaner who had been on the spot as observer. This was an attempt to silence a witness.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he countered. ‘As you say, the driver wouldn’t have expected you. You’ve heard about the joyriders, I’m sure. I think we may find it was someone like that. But there’s another way you can help me if you will. Again it’s a question of observation, and you’re good at that. Sometimes adults don’t realize just how much the younger family members are picking up from their actions.’

  ‘Regarding what exactly?’ She didn’t quite trust his change of subject.

  ‘How happy they are, or worried, or lonely.’

  Chloe looked down at the twisted hands in her lap, suddenly darted a glance at Janey and said, ‘You mean Leila. I don’t see how she can have been particularly happy. None of us made enough of her. I guess she felt really lonely inside.’

  ‘I know too that I let her down,’ Janey confessed in a rush. Yeadings looked out of the window, his back to them. ‘As we all feel when anyone dies: because it’s too late. Guilt over not having done enough: kinder things we might have said or done; begrudging, when we might have smiled and offered help. I’ve had all that, when my own father died.’

  ‘But Leila didn’t just die!’

  He turned back at the protest in the girl’s voice. ‘You’re right. However unbelievable, someone wanted to take her life. How can that be?’

  ‘Some madman.’

  He watched her with pity, unhappy that he must push her further. ‘You said your stepmother might have felt lonely. Is it possible she found someone to fill that gap in her emotional life?’

  ‘You mean a man, a lover. No; she wasn’t like that.’ Chloë was scornful.

  Janey sighed and shook her head. ‘Leila didn’t set great store by men. The only two she came close to condemned her to triviality, Aidan regarding her as an airhead, Charles by setting her up in the shop. She was worth more than that. There was nothing trivial about her mothering of the children.’

  ‘No despairing lover, then? So we’re left with Chloë’s “madman”. Or could she have been seen as a threat to someone, because of what she’d seen or knew?’ he suggested. ‘You see why it’s essential for me to understand how she seemed in those last few days; where she went; who she spent time with.’

  Chloe was looking puzzled.

  ‘Can you suggest any circumstances in which she might have seemed a threat to another person?’ Yeadings probed. ‘No? A barrier, then, preventing some course of action?’

  All the blood drained from the girl’s face and she started to tremble. Janey put out a hand to her. ‘They’re going to find out, Chloë. Maybe know already.’

  ‘Janey, I can’t …’

  ‘You don’t have to.’ The older woman turned to Yeadings. ‘Leila’s husband - I’ve told you already - there was always some girl. It seemed he couldn’t keep his hands to himself that way. Leila knew. We all knew, and did nothing to help. Charles would have taken it up with him but I begged him not to. She would have hated it. I think she forbade him to say anything. It was a sort of family truce. We all pretended to be blind. For the sake of peace and quiet.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have hurt Leila. Not physically,’ Chloë begged.

  ‘Not unless he was driven into a corner,’ Janey admitted. ‘I’d thought at first he wouldn’t, because I didn’t believe his feelings could be that deep, not for any young girl. I think he’s one of those men who need women and rather hate them for it. But then, if he was desperate to have someone and she was holding out - for marriage, say, and Leila could block a divorce - who knows how crazy it might have driven him? He can get very angry. The male menopause they call it, don’t they? He could have been out of his mind.’

  ‘But she wasn’t holding out,’ Chloe shouted, then clapped her hands to her mouth.

  Yeadings hid his excitement. The girl was appalled at what she’d given away. It was c
lear she knew the identity of her father’s present lover. Maybe he should leave it for now and hope to extract the name less painfully through Janey later.

  But it seemed not. ‘Who then?’ the older woman insisted. ‘Do you mean you know who he was — was -’

  ‘Was shagging,’ Chloë said in cold fury. ‘I do, and I’m not telling anyone.’ She stopped abruptly and her face hardened. ‘But if she had anything to do with what happened to Leila, I hope you do catch her. Whoever did it, I just wish they’d bring hanging back!’

  Such passion, Yeadings thought. The child - she wasn’t much more - burst into a storm of crying. No tears, but a terrible dry, racking sound that he’d only heard before at gravesides. He had to leave her to Janey and just go.

  In the hall he ran into Charles Hadfield at a total loss what to do. ‘If you’ve threatened her …’ he began.

  ‘Dear God, that’s the last thing …’ Yeadings lifted his hands in exasperation.

  ‘It’s catching up with her,’ the man said wretchedly. ‘She’s been too controlled up to now. Holds it all in. Can’t do her any good. D’you know what she said last night? “I’m on my own now. I’m in the front line.” And now this other shock, the accident …’

  ‘She’ll be all right. Your wife’s with her.’

  ‘My - ? Oh yes. Quite. Very decent woman, Janey Practical, you know.’

  Yeadings offered his hand and the older man grasped it. ‘Anything at all I can do?’

  ‘Back-up. Just be there for them both.’ Lord, Lord, Yeadings muttered silently as he got into his car: why hadn’t he left this to Mott, to Z, even to Beaumont. He was a paper-shuffler himself and should stick to the Olympian desk he’d been promoted to.

  Clumsily he’d brushed against the rearview mirror on getting in. Now as he straightened it he saw Knightley approaching from the drive. He wound down his window expecting abuse.

  But the professor had recovered his dignity. He had also used the intervening time to shave himself. ‘If you are returning to - er, to base, perhaps …’

  ‘You’re still without transport, Mr Knightley?’

  ‘Quite so.’ He was covering embarrassment with a sort of pompous bonhomie, a poor parody of Charles Hadfield. ‘Struck me I should have another word with your Inspector Mott. Save him a further journey out here.’

  For a brief moment when Yeadings waved towards the nearer rear door he stood undecided. Perhaps the memory of travelling so with Mott brought back the sense of being in police hands. He gave a little barking laugh, walked round the car and climbed in beside Yeadings.

  All buddy-like, the Superintendent thought; on equal terms, in case anyone was watching.

  Chapter 19

  Yeadings left Professor Knightley to cool his heels - or work up a hot flush - on a bench overlooked by the duty sergeant, while he wandered off to find Mott. He found him in the CID office reading printouts from the Incident Room’s computers.

  ‘Coffee?’ the Boss enquired. ‘You can bring those along with you.’ They settled into his office where Yeadings removed his tie, eased his collar, refilled the percolator and invited Mott to bring him up to date.

  ‘These are all negative,’ Angus said in disgust. ‘Interviews with the assistants from the PARTY FUN shop, the Mardham newsagent, her previous neighbours back at Caversham. It seems Leila Knightley kept her nose clean and wasn’t the confiding sort.

  ‘Her staff said she was a decent boss, fair to them about swapping duties, but she kept her distance and was strict about politeness to customers: no personal chat while any were in the shop.’

  ‘Discipline,’ Yeadings approved. He remembered her warning glances at the blonde assistant who was nattering on about her boyfriend.

  ‘The only mentions of any private life came from Leila’s hairdresser, who must practise the same technique my barber tries on. But those referred to purely family occasions.’

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘In her last three weeks she’d had a hairdo for a Saturday outing with her husband: Trooping the Colour, viewed from Carlton House Terrace. They went as guests of the Royal Society. Then a repeat shampoo and blow-dry a few days later for Ascot. Her uncle had bought a share in a racehorse.’

  ‘Quite a social round. This makes her sound rather more than the down-trodden housewife.’

  ‘Vicky - that’s the hairdresser - thought Leila regarded the Royal Society lunch as a duty. But she’d been excited about the races. Her uncle took her once to a steeplechase at Auteuil when she was a teenager, but this time it had the extra cachet of the Royal Enclosure.

  ‘That’s all I’ve got. We really need some gossip from that cleaner, who’s still non compos.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope Z gets lucky with the boy snooper nextdoor. By the by, I’ve left Professor Knightley out front for you. I went to see young Chloe and he was acting surplus to requirements. He wants a word with you, but don’t feel obliged to rush at him. It seems he still hasn’t his own wheels. Did you get anything on his car?’

  ‘That’s probably what he wants to talk about. Odd, this scarcity of cars in that neighbourhood. On Sunday evening Piggott was without his too.’

  ‘And then suddenly there’s one nobody needs - running down Hetty Chadwick; though young Chloe claims the driver was out to get her.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Yeadings explained about the idling engine she recalled just beyond her gateway. ‘But I think she’s wrong. The driver made no move while she was walking down to the cottage; then revved up as both women were coming back. Of course, it might have been that he didn’t see her clearly until she was facing that way’

  ‘M’m.’ Mott tapped his pen on the printouts in his hand, reached for his coffee and drained it. There was no doubt in his mind that the driver had been a tearaway in a stolen car. ‘I doubt it had anything to do with the murder. Let’s leave it for the present. Guess I must let Knightley have his say now.’

  He rose, stretched stiffly and reached the door before turning back. ‘There’s one thing, Boss. I hadn’t realized Charles Hadfield had only just gone to Scotland. He must have been around here recently because he took Leila to Ascot. We could have overlooked his importance. I’ll see to it.’

  ‘Is that necessary?’ Knightley said testily as Mott’s DC slid a tape into the recorder.

  ‘This isn’t an interrogation,’ Mott told him blandly, ‘but we need to be sure that any item of information you offer isn’t overlooked. You might, unknowingly, mention something that could give us a lead. So we date and collate everything.

  ‘We’ve only just heard, for instance, that your wife accompanied you to a Royal Society lunch recently.’

  ‘I was invited for the Trooping ceremony. Didn’t see much of it myself. Too busy consulting with colleagues.’

  ‘And your wife?’

  ‘She —’ He waved a hand airily.‘- circulated. Socialized.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘I have no idea, but it can have no connection with a random attack on her nearly two weeks later. You’d do better to check on local thugs and vagrants.’

  ‘Believe me, sir, we are doing so. But your wife’s interests interest us. Did you accompany her later to Ascot?’

  ‘Yes, but that was Charles’s outing. Horses don’t really appeal to me. I’m not a compulsive gambler.’ He smirked and something made Mott wonder if this was true. ‘I deal in facts, Inspector; practicalities.’

  ‘A scientist, yes.’ Mott observed Knightley’s smug acknowledgement. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you could fill us in a little more about your wife. The sort of person she was. We’re short of a detailed description.’

  Knightley, seeming more exasperated than grieving each time her name was mentioned, took off his spectacles, held them up to the light and started to polish them rapidly on a square of chamois he took from his breast pocket. It gave him time for a shift of perspective. His reply, when he’d prepared it, was waspish.

  ‘The reason you haven’t a g
ood description is that she didn’t leave much impression. She was quiet; never took much of an initiative.’

  ‘Reclusive, then?’

  Knightley bridled. ‘I wouldn’t say that. As I explained, she could do the social thing, talk to people, so long as it all stayed at a mundane level. Just as well she did really, since I never could suffer fools gladly. Leila did. She even seemed to like them, no matter how boring.’

  ‘Not being an academic like you.’

  ‘Quite. More of a homely little woman.’

  ‘Not in the American sense, surely. She appeared quite exotic on the night she was found.’

  That startled him. ‘Leila? Exotic? But I - I saw her, in the mortuary.’

  He meant naked except for a body sheet. Mott decided on shock tactics. ‘You were never shown the scene-of-crime photographs? I’m going to fetch you one now.’ He rose, nodded to the DC and left the room.

  ‘I came in simply to explain about the car,’ Knightley complained irritably to the young detective, who said nothing beyond a murmur into the tape before switching off. He watched coldly as the man patted a folded handkerchief across his sweating upper lip.

  Mott came back with a large manila envelope from which he slid a number of glossy 8 by 10s. He made a card-player’s fan of them.

  ‘This one, I think.’ He lifted it out and pushed it across the table to Knightley, who stared in disbelief.

  ‘You see?’

  ‘That’s - my wife? Macabre! What’s that bird thing on her face?’

  ‘A carnival mask. Didn’t she ever show it to you? How about the dress?’

  The colour drained from Knightley’s face. He looked transfixed. ‘But that’s not …’

  ‘Not her style?’

  ‘Certainly not. It’s - vampish.’

  ‘We think she was bound for a party. Or possibly had been to one earlier.’

  ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it. You might have …’

  ‘At the time you weren’t available for us to inform, Mr Knightley. And since then you have never asked for details. Which strikes me as curious - your being incurious.’