by Clare Curzon
Knightley looked dazed, as if the full truth of the killing had just come home to him. ‘I saw a paragraph in the Times. It simply said the body of a woman had been found in woodland near my new house. There was nothing to make me think then that it might be - anyone I knew. It was Charles Hadfield who broke it to me when I got home.’
‘Back from where, Mr Knightley? Don’t you think it’s time you came clean about that?’
Knightley’s back straightened. ‘Clean? I resent your implications, Inspector. When I spoke to you earlier, I was distraught - at news of my wife’s death. I hardly knew where I was. Otherwise I would have explained fully. I have no taste for obfuscation.’
Mott waited.
‘This is a delicate matter. The fact is that I have been extremely busy at the university, terminating my connections, both professional and personal. That is to say, with my colleagues. In addition I have been at some pains to deal with a rather embarrassing situation which arose from a stupid misunderstanding.’
‘This involves a woman?’
There was a brief silence. Then, ‘In a way. Yes.’ An icebox voice.
Mott listened sceptically while the man ploughed through the sort of excuses that he’d heard used so often. There was one minor variation - it was a misunderstanding by the mother of a young student in whom he’d taken a purely academic interest. Then the need to placate a Fury, which necessitated staying on until the matter was satisfactorily cleared up. And he was adamant now that naming the family would be an unpardonable breach of their right to privacy.
The DI was unimpressed. Such discretion sounded foreign to Knightley’s social code. ‘When we do identify the young woman, as we certainly shall, you may regret not having been totally open. Now, about your missing car, sir.’
‘Yes, yes. That’s what I came to tell you. It was sent by a colleague to Mcllroy’s garage on South Road, Reading, where he has a discount account and suggested I make use of it. I shall be picking it up today. If that is all, Inspector, I really must be on my way.’
Mott left him with the DC, ostensibly to await an official stamp before initialling the tape-recording - a fictional requirement, but Knightley wasn’t familiar with police procedure.
It did, however, allow Mott time to phone and prevent the car’s release from Mcllroy’s until SOCO could inspect it. He needed a specimen of its carpet fibre. Not that that would fix the killing on Knightley. A third party could have driven it to the wood to dump Leila’s body, with or without his knowledge.
Knightley’s shock at sight of his wife’s party get-up had been convincing enough. He was actually more shaken than Mott had expected. Which made him a poor prime suspect. His bumbling attempt to gloss over the sexual ‘misunderstanding’ showed he’d never win a Best Actor Oscar.
Mott returned to the interview room convinced that at their next meeting Knightley would be rescinding much of the garbage of the present statement. All these petty evasions just made the job harder, piling on the need to chase up false trails.
When they began to put pressure on, Knightley would need to produce a genuine alibi, if he possessed one, because no way had he spent time at the university sorting his ‘misunderstanding’. Not short of starring as the Invisibe Man.
With the professor sent on his way, albeit carless, Mott returned to his office to find a note on his desk from the lab. A second, more detailed examination of blood spots taken from the mask had produced evidence of a second type differing from the dead woman’s. Although in the same AB general group this was rhesus negative whle Leila Knightley’s had been rhesus plus.
When Rosemary Zyczyinski looked in again at Wycombe Hospital to drop off Hetty Chadwick’s things she found that although the patient was still unconscious her prognosis was more favourable. The absurdly boyish houseman hoped that she would be coming round within a matter of hours. She was, he said, an exceptionally tough old bird.
From there Z drove out to Acrefield Way and parked at the foot of Piggott’s drive. After some twenty minutes the two boys appeared on foot, Duncan bowed under a bulging backpack; Patrick, less laden, kicking a crumpled lager can along the gutter. She waited while the older boy produced a latchkey on a cord from round his neck and opened up the house. It seemed that Mrs Piggott was not at home.
Patrick streaked indoors but Duncan stood in the doorway as Z approached. ‘Detective-Sergeant Zyczynski,’ she announced.
‘Yes. I remember you. Ma’s out, though.’
‘I’ll wait then. Will she be long?’
He thought not. They went through the house, leaving all doors open, circulating the stale air, and arrived in the back garden. Patrick was already swinging crazily in a rubber tyre suspended from an ash tree.
‘Fruit juice?’ Duncan offered. He brought out a tray with a full jug bobbing with ice cubes, and three plastic tumblers. Patrick flung himself ostentatiously on to the grass, performed a parachutist’s roll and joined them on the terrace.
‘Nice garden,’ Z commented.
A horticultural gem it wasn’t, being totally child-centred and harbouring several heaps of what an adult might write off as scrap. Sheets of corrugated iron formed a stockade in one hollow, its walls bristling with aggressively outward-pointing lengths of lead piping to represent machine guns.
‘Have you got a tree-house?’ Z asked and was taken by the younger boy on a voyage of discovery.
‘Ackcherly,’ he confided in a patronising tone, ‘it fell to bits, but I’m going to make a new one. Twice as high.’ He shinned up an overgrown pear tree and posed like a pirate in the rigging.
‘Can you see far?’ Z asked and climbed up to join him.
To one side, across the wattle fencing, was dense woodland. On the other lay the Knightleys’ garden partly hidden by the roof of their double garage, but with the terrace, lawn and conservatory in full view.
‘They’re out.’ Patrick was disappointed. ‘The woman before them used to sunbathe topless. And they gave parties with coloured lights in the trees.’ He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. ‘Brilliant nosh. I used to nip over the top of the garage and sneak some back.’
Z smiled. ‘Don’t this new lot entertain?’
‘Nuh. Not yet. Except her fancy man.’
The expression was unchildlike, quaintly gossipy. Picked up, she wondered, from his mother or the cleaner? ‘Who’s that, then?’ She made her voice sound casual.
Patrick spoke over a pear twig gripped between his teeth. The words came out scornfully with a spray of spit. ‘The Frenchy from down the road.’
‘I don’t think I’ve met him.’ Still a throwaway line.
‘Pascal. He’s got a smashing car. One day I’m going to have one like that, only red. Green’s for wallies.’
‘Right.’ Z let herself down to the rough grass and brushed off her slacks. She wasn’t happy about leading him on. Kids had to be questioned with an approved adult present. But where did idle chatter stop and questioning begin? She hoped Mott wouldn’t split hairs over it.
Still Mrs Piggot hadn’t returned, so Z thanked the boys for looking after her and escaped to her car. As she went to unlock it the Hadfield Peugeot drew up with Janey at the wheel.
Z followed it up the drive on foot. She noticed Chloe look back towards her with a frown before slipping from the car and disappearing quickly into the house.
‘Sergeant, is there anything fresh? How’s Mrs Chadwick?’ Janey demanded.
Z explained there was hope of her recovering soon. Standing at the open front door, she heard the girl’s furious cry from upstairs, then Chloe came rushing down. ‘We’ve been burgled!’
Janey stared around in amazement. Nothing seemed disturbed. ‘Where?’ she said.
‘My room’s trashed.’
‘Shall we?’ Janey invited Z grimly. They found the wardrobe doors open, clothes dragged across the floor, drawers pulled out and their contents piled untidily on the bed.
‘What on earth did he think he was doing?’
shouted Janey. ‘Where is the bloody man?’
‘Who?’ shrieked Chloe. ‘You don’t mean Father?’
‘Who else? There was never any break-in.’ She was getting herself under control.
‘In my room? How dare he? How dare he? He’s gone mad, Janey. Oh, Janey!’
‘Chloe, calm down. I’ll help you put everything straight, but just now we’d better find out where he is and demand an explanation.’
There was no mystery as to his whereabouts. He came in shouting from the back garden. It was clear he’d been drinking. ‘Where’s the bloody Volvo?’ he roared. ‘I went to get it and it’s not there! Goddammit, don’t say those bloody police have taken that one as well.’
‘The Volvo is Leila’s,’ Charles Hadfield declared sternly, appearing from the drawing-room.
Knightley blundered past them and started upstairs.
‘My room!’ Chloe wailed.
‘He wouldn’t be fit to drive, anyway,’ Hadfield offered irrelevantly, bemused by the hubbub.
Z put a hand on the girl’s arm. ‘Chloë, was there anything in your room he might have been looking for? Will you check if anything’s gone missing there?’
On the gallery Knightley turned and beat on the banister rail with both fists. ‘That damn dress. That’s what’s gone missing. I should have burnt it! What in the name of God did Leila mean by wearing it?’
‘The dress?” Chloë faltered. She took a step towards the staircase. ‘Oh my God!’ and she crumpled on the hall tiles.
Chapter 20
Z helped Janey carry the girl to a sofa in the drawing-room, Hadfield trailing anxiously behind. Even Knightley seemed sufficiently appalled to come back downstairs and hang over Chloë’s limp body. ‘What’s the matter with the girl?’ he demanded. ‘I never meant to …’ Z resisted an urge to flatten him.
‘I think it’s better if you disappear,’ Hadfield decided, as near as dammit dismissing the man from his own house.
‘I’m all right,’ Chloe managed to get out. The faint had only been brief and she was trying to sit up. ‘I need to go and …’
Janey stifled her protests. ‘You’re staying right here while I get you a hot cup of sweet tea. You need sugar.’ She nodded at Z to stay on. ‘Come along, Charles.’
Given a free rein to talk with the girl, Z was loth to upset her further. ‘I’m afraid your father’s under a lot of stress at present.’
Chloë didn’t pick up on it.
‘So he was looking for something in your room?’
‘The dress. You heard what he said. But it’s not mine.’ She clasped her head. ‘And what did he mean about Leila? She never takes things from my room.’ The girl closed her eyes. ‘Never took.’
‘Perhaps he’s not making good sense at the moment.’
‘He’s been drinking.’ Chloe herself seemed confused.
‘That may account for it.’ Only it didn’t. Knightley had been fully focused on what he was raising the roof about: some dress of Chloë’s that Leila had worn? Or vice versa?
‘What dress was it he meant?’ Z pursued.
‘I don’t know.’
And that, Z saw, was a flat lie. Chloë had already said it wasn’t hers. A specific dress that belonged to someone else, then. It all seemed so trivial to be causing a family crisis.
‘Here,’ Janey said, arriving to deposit a filled mug alongside the sofa. ‘Drink up and we’re going to leave you in peace and quiet. Give a shout if there’s anything you need.’ She ushered Z out of the room.
‘Well, did she explain what that was about?’
‘No, I think she’s more likely to confide in you. I’d better make myself scarce.’
They walked towards the open front door and then Z remembered what Patrick Piggott had told her. ‘Have you met any of the neighbours, apart from nextdoor?’
‘Not formally, though a number introduced themselves at the cricket match.’
‘When was this?’
Janey explained about the two sides of the road and the twice-yearly contest. ‘We met several people there. They seemed very friendly. There was a plump girl called Holly who kept the scoreboard and an eccentric Frenchman. I can’t remember his name. And Charles was quite taken with a couple of old codgers sporting school ties to keep up their flannels. The Piggotts weren’t there. Maybe they’re not into cricket.’
‘A Frenchman lives in Acrefield Way?’
‘Apparently. In one of those old flint and brick cottages, next to poor Hetty Chadwick. What’s so special about him?’
Z shrugged. ‘Seemed funny, that’s all - a Frenchman at a cricket match. I wonder what he made of it.’
She left Janey staring after her and probably marvelling at her butterfly-brained curiosity. But that would be only one of the kinky things the afternoon had turned up.
Z drove off in the direction of town and slowed to observe the cottage Janey had spoken of. On an impulse she got out, went up the path and knocked. There was no answer, so she walked round the side, peering in the diminutive windows at white, roughcast walls lit in places to warm ochre by the late afternoon sun. They appeared to have coloured sketches attached haphazardly. Three beanbag seats were lined up opposite as if for an absent audience. At the back door her toe clinked against glass on a flagstone half-hidden under a lavender bush. A note folded in the neck of a milk bottle read, ‘None until Friday, thanks.’
There was also a small triangle of white paper showing under the door’s edge. The milk deliveryman’s bill? Or some advertising bumf? But it was worth checking. Z risked an index fingernail, scratching to retrieve it. The folded paper was lined and had been torn from an exercise book. On it was written, I must see you. Please ring me. It’s urgent. Chloë. She slid the note back where she’d found it.
Back at base Z found Beaumont in the canteen and learned that the Boss had been called out to Kidlington. For some flak from the ACC Crime, Beaumont supposed. It was easy for these off-stage characters to demand the impossible of troops in the firing line. With a domestic murder Statistics expected a clear-up rate of forty-eight hours. In this case at this rate they’d be lucky to make it in as many days.
Angus Mott was in his office when his two sergeants looked in. He waved them to seats. ‘What’s new?’
Beaumont reported on the missing cars. ‘Knightley’s was where he said. SOCO were plastic-wrapping it ready to take away when the professor turned up. He went ballistic.’
‘The outcome of which I witnessed at his home,’ Z put in. ‘Doubly ballistic when he discovered his wife’s car was missing too. He assumed we’d taken it.’
Beaumont beamed. ‘I checked on Piggott’s Merc for good measure. It was parked round the back of his betting shop. I put a modest fiver on the 3.30, gave a wink and watched it go into a private pocket. He’s a sly dog, that Walter Pimm. Piggott’s put him in as manager. I’d rather have his other heavy, Big Ben Carter any day. For the price, Walter didn’t give much away. He’d had to pick the car up Monday after it was clamped and removed from a hotel’s forecourt in Regent’s Park on Sunday. It seems Piggott had parked it there for safety while he took his family to the Zoo.
‘Next, I pushed the lab for anything on the fibres. They’ll be examining a sample of the carpet in Knightley’s car to compare with what Littlejohn found between her toes. And Knightley’s dinner jacket wasn’t responsible for the fluff under Leila’s nails. No cashmere in it.’
‘No progress, then.’ Mott sounded gloomy.
‘Depends what you’re after,’ Beaumont comforted him, leering somewhat. ‘I checked on who’d brought the Knightley car in to McIlroy’s. It was a woman, name of Ryder, forties to fifty, a bit of a dog. She ordered an engine-oil change and said it would be picked up by the owner.’
‘Where does that get us?’
‘Knightley said he had trouble with the electrics. Maybe we’ve “trouvéd la femme”. We know he’s a womaniser, but he told you a colleague dumped the car off to get a discounted bill. The garage
has no such arrangement with the woman, but an apprentice knew where she worked. So I went along to her travel agency and picked up some holiday brochures. Her desk-keys were lying beside her handbag and the silly woman had attached a tag with her address on. It’s a semi out on the Sulham road. So I tootled out there for a looksee and had a word with the old biddy next door.’
‘And?’ Mott pursued.
‘I said my friend had left his BMW there earlier to be picked up. So I got chapter and verse from her. It seems he’s done it before at weekends. This time there’d been a terrible row there Friday night when madam came home and found her daughter entertaining a man upstairs. Eventually the man drove his car off with the daughter in as passenger. She took an overnight bag with her.
‘This worthy Mrs Crane said the couple came back the following evening. The mother let them in and that’s when she first saw the man properly. Her description sounded exactly like the prof, and he was carrying an enormous bouquet of cut flowers. The car stayed there overnight. Next morning - we’re into Sunday now - the man and young Beryl - definitely not Mrs Ryder - went off in her Fiat, while she was out in the garden hanging up some washing. That on the sabbath, to Mrs C’s horror.
‘Knightley’s BMW was left in the drive. Mrs Ryder drove it out after lunch that day, coming back after dark. Then she left in it on Monday morning half an hour earlier than she usually went to work.
‘This confirms what McIlroy’s mechanic said about the car being dropped off there at 8.30am.’
‘Useful neighbour, this Mrs Crane. Is she reliable?’
‘Without doubt. A widow, living alone: I’d say she gets her kicks from peeping through net curtains. Probably makes diary entries on her neighbours’ doings. It helps that she disapproves of the Ryders who “let down the neighburhood”.
‘Sorry, Guv; but it seems that Knightley had more on his mind this weekend than murdering his missus. Or, if he did, he took the Ryder girl along with him to share the entertainment. We can at least fill her in as his present love interest.’
