This was how she earned her keep: the neat, rapid pulling together of strands. Once or twice she had been able to pluck them out of the air, like floating spider threads, and had woven them into a noose strong enough to snare a villain. But she was too close to this one. She needed an objective overview, but here she was down groping in the mud.
His flair, however, was for taking out of her synopsis more than she knew she had put in, so she began, hesitantly.
‘The first problem, as I see it, is the confusion of identity. Helena’s jacket, same haircut, face buried in the pillow. So did he think he was killing Helena, or Lilian? Lilian had just upset a large number of people, but then, I was worried about Helena because she knew she wasn’t guilty.
‘In practical terms, given the darkness inside and the element of risk in every second it took — it could easily be mistaken identity. On the other hand, wouldn’t you check, before you actually killed someone?’
He pounced. ‘An opportunist, you think? No plan of any kind?’
‘Could be. Or else, someone knew Lilian was going to lie down — overheard Helena and Lilian talking in the hall—’
‘Proof?’
She riffled through her files to Helena’s statement, pulled a face.
‘Possible, even probable, but hopeless to substantiate. People were going to and fro in the hall all the time. We can question them specifically on that point, but even if they all remembered who was behind them, they won’t know for sure what they heard, or if they noticed Helena taking Lilian through.’
‘So — it’s Lilian he wants to kill. Who is he? Quick, off the top of your head, Frances.’
‘Jack Daley.’
She surprised a laugh out of him with the promptness of her reply. ‘Got the handcuffs ready, have you? Are you going to pamper me with some proof, or is this just more woman’s intuition?’
She bristled. ‘If I were a man, you’d call it subconscious logic. He’s the obvious candidate — impulsive nature, blistering row with her beforehand. And just for the sake of argument, if he did kill Fielding, he’s got the same motive this time round. Public humiliation is nasty enough, but when it’s sexual as well... He was implicated in that weird business the night before Fielding’s death, wasn’t he?’
‘The burning in effigy? Barely credible, that, in the twentieth century. I seem to remember they questioned him, but I’m not sure they got a lot of joy. We let it go at the time, but maybe we shouldn’t have. Though I daresay we have to keep in mind the wide range of Fielding’s unpopular activities.’
‘In any case, I would suggest that Daley has a high profile on all counts.’
‘OK, OK, we’ll put your inspiration down a triumph of subliminal analysis — isn’t that what they like to call it these days? Right. Now it’s Helena — do it again.’
‘That’s much harder. Since Lilian was my hot tip as murderer until yesterday, nothing comes to mind. It could be someone like Dyer — clever enough to calculate that the best time to dispose of Helena would be when all the other suspects were around.’
‘But of course, you’re looking for the same person in either case.’
‘Sorry?’ She was puzzled; there were, in her mind, two conflicting perceptions of what had taken place, with separate solutions, depending on whether the murder had been done to preserve the status quo, or change it.
‘Doesn’t actually matter, does it? Come on, Frances! Unless you’re suggesting a second “homicidal maniac” — and you were a bit sharp about that yesterday — Neville Fielding’s killer has killed again, and who he thought the lady was is one of your fancy academic points.’
He was looking smug. She recognized the force of his argument, only adding carpingly, ‘Or she. Sir.’
‘Fine, we can be feminist about this. Or she. Only snag about this brilliant piece of deduction is, we’ve already investigated Fielding’s murder and come up with the wrong answer.’
Frances muttered something about processes of elimination, but lapsed into silence at a glare from her chief.
‘This one’s fresher, at least. So let’s go through the practicalities. Alibis?’
Frances laughed shortly. ‘That’s a joke, at a drinks party — groups forming and breaking up all the time, nobody in one place for more than ten minutes.’
‘And no forensic wizardry to get us off the hook. Fingerprints a mass of smudges, and we know the rest of what they can tell us already. Time of death: only half an hour between the waitress leaving her asleep and the kid finding her dead. Now you see her, now you don’t. Means of death: a cushion left helpfully in place in case we weren’t bright enough to figure it out.’
‘Every contact leaves a trace. That’s what they always said at forensic lectures.’
‘I could generalize too, if someone paid me a fat bloody salary to sit in a lab all day. I’ll show you how many traces you need to leave. On to the sofa, Frances.’
‘Oh, you’re not really going to do this, sir—’ He had gone to a talk on empathy, once, which in her opinion had done considerably more harm than good, putting into his head the idea that if he played murderer and she victim he could get inside the villain’s head. She hadn’t liked it before, and she wasn’t going to like it now.
‘Read my lips, sergeant. On the sofa. I’m going to take it as if I came in from the garden. And time me from when I open the door.’
She had no alternative. With a shudder of distaste, she laid herself gingerly on her side on the chesterfield, her head in the depression where Lilian’s head had lain, her hair falling forward to half-cover her face. She pulled the rug up to her shoulders, and out of the corner of her eye she could see the cushion, coarse and dusty-looking. She cringed at the thought of its coming down on her face. Coppins would not shrink from realism.
She could hear him outside the garden door. ‘I’m passing, and I look in the window. See Lilian, and quick as lightning, make my plan.
‘Start timing. I take out my pocket-handkerchief to turn the handle. Now I step inside, shut it quickly. I hurry over to grab a cushion. Damn!’
She heard the thud as he blundered into a chair. ‘I can’t see a blind bloody thing. You could be anyone, I’ll tell you that.’
For a big man, he was light on his feet. She sensed him moving round the back of the chesterfield, and through the strands of her hair glimpsed the cushion coming down.
Behind him, the door swung open, and after a timid knock the figure of a uniformed constable appeared in the doorway, to gape in horror at the spectacle of a senior officer engaged, apparently, in a copycat killing.
‘S — sir!’ he stammered.
Coppins swung round, and Frances, glad of the reprieve, sat up, finding it hard not to laugh at the expression on the young man’s face.
‘Twenty-five seconds, sir,’ she said, with offensive efficiency. ‘Plus time for any struggle, and getting back out again.’
Ignoring her, Coppins snapped, ‘Better shut your mouth, constable, or you’ll catch flies. Got some objection to the theory of reconstructing the crime, have you?’
‘Yes sir, I mean, no sir.’ His accent was broad; he was a bulky, fresh-faced youth, pink to the ears at the moment, whose stability of temperament and sturdiness of physique were more obvious assets than his mental agility.
‘Well, get on with it, man. What do you want?’
‘They sent me to report to you, sir. Put me on to local interviews, thinking I might get more out of people, seeing as I come from Swaylings. Well, I told them — they wouldn’t count me as local, stands to reason.’
‘But that’s — what? Three miles away?’
‘All of that, sir. So you can see why not.’
Coppins and Frances exchanged glances, and Frances cleared her throat.
‘Er — even so, constable, you found out something useful, despite the difficulties? I presume they had some reason for sending you up.’
‘Didn’t tell me a thing, did they? That’s what they sent me up here t
o tell you.’
Coppins’s colour was starting to look unhealthy. Frances intervened hastily. ‘And what did you make of that?’
He beamed, relieved to find at last some sign of intelligence in his betters. ‘Well, it’s funny, isn’t it? Something like a murder, they’d be full of it, you’d expect. They’d come out with all sorts, what the victim said to them last week, who’d had a barney recently, all that stuff. But they all closed up, close as oysters, didn’t they? Didn’t know nothing, weren’t saying nothing. So there you are.’
‘Where, exactly, am I?’ Coppins’s bellow was only just muted, but the constable stood his ground.
‘Think it’s one of their own, don’t they. Shielding someone,’ he pointed out, with some pride in his own sagacity.
When he had gone, they looked at each other. ‘He’s got a point,’ Coppins said heavily. ‘Scrub Jack Daley.’
‘“The dog that didn’t bark”. I’d better go and talk to Tilson again. He’s my best hope of an inside track.’
‘Mmmmm.’ Coppins was frowning, and she looked at him enquiringly.
‘Had a thought, before young Sherlock blundered in. I was the killer; I looked through the window; I saw Lilian. But I was behaving oddly. At a party in someone’s house, you don’t go shading your eyes and peering into the windows of the other rooms. It’s rude.’
‘Tamara Farrell did.’
‘So maybe she’s our killer.’
‘I could think of things that would surprise me more. But otherwise—’
‘Otherwise, if he came in, he must have known already that Lilian was in here. And that it wasn’t Helena. So he — or she, since you insist — could have come in from either the garden or the hall. And if he came from the hall, he had the advantage that he wouldn’t bark his shins on the bloody furniture.’
So, at least in theory, they had the answer to the question that she had defined as central, but they were no further forward. She wondered if Coppins felt as helpless as she did, and had her answer when he burst out, ‘Give me a nice messy knifing in a disco, every time. Can’t stand this fairying about with methods and motives.’ He glanced up at the old wall clock, now showing almost twelve o’clock. ‘For god’s sake, Frances, let’s go and see if that miserable bloody pub serves anything resembling a decent pint.’
*
Tilson was at his desk this time, frowning over balance sheets, when she was ushered in by Mrs Thomas in her Sunday purple-flowered crimplene with an apron on top. He pushed the papers aside with alacrity, coming to greet her with hands outstretched.
‘My dear Frances! You have no idea how much I have been hoping that you would pop in to see me again. After yesterday’s tragic events—’
‘I’m here officially, Mr Tilson,’ she warned, sitting down on the hard chair opposite his desk and forming with her notebook and pen a barricade against informality.
He sighed theatrically. ‘Oh dear, that presumably means that I have to talk while you listen, whereas for me it would be so much more interesting the other way round. I find, the older I get, the less that anything I say myself possesses the charm of novelty.’
She smiled at that, but was not to be diverted. ‘The party yesterday — I have your statement of course, but—’
He made a deprecating gesture. ‘I know. Dispiriting, isn’t it? But even excellent Homer nods. Lilian, in the sitting-room, announces to a stunned audience that she is selling Radnesfield House; I am in the hall discussing house prices with an estate agent — it is, don’t you find, always a mistake to talk to an estate agent? It only encourages them. However, there it was. Lilian has a violent altercation with Jack in the garden; I am in the sitting-room. When the deed itself takes place, I am eating a blameless salad in the garden. I couldn’t have avoided the action more comprehensively if I tried, and with your knowledge of my temperament you will recognize that avoiding the action would be sadly out of character.’
‘What about the reaction to her announcement?’
‘Oh, waves of shock and lowered voices and tittle-tattle. George Wagstaff beside himself. Edward grim, Dyer amused. Helena — weighed down by the cares of a hostess when I saw her; Sandra Daley disintegrating visibly; the vicar’s wife exuding poison like a tree-frog; Mrs Bateman slicing tomatoes as if she were operating a guillotine...’
She jotted down his observations with amused appreciation, but said only, ‘You told me, the other day, that you sensed an atmosphere in Radnesfield. In the light of events, is there anything you can add to that?’
‘Merely intensification of the impression. Today, for instance — well, you’ve probably noticed yourself.’
Thinking of the vicar, she nodded, managing to suppress a shudder, and he went on, ‘And my dear Jane Thomas for example — well, I would do nothing so crude as to pry, but I know her well enough to see that she is deeply troubled.’
‘You can’t be more specific? We have a report from a constable who knows this area, saying he thinks they’re shielding someone.’
‘Actually shielding someone?’ Tilson was startled. ‘Then that would definitely have to be one of their own. They might choose not to become involved, but they wouldn’t protect a stranger.
‘Perhaps — perhaps it might be useful to talk to Jane. She pops in on Sunday, you know, just to see that I have a proper lunch, but I suppose you could catch her before she went home.’
He made the suggestion in the tones of one forced, by the laws of hospitality, to offer a gift, while hoping still that it may be refused.
‘Thank you, that would be most helpful.’
When Jane Thomas appeared, she looked, indeed, ill at ease. She was a big, sturdy woman with a milkmaid’s complexion and an honest blue gaze. But after one startled glance at Frances, she would not meet her eyes, fidgeting with her apron with large, work-roughened hands. She took the chair brought forward by her employer, but sat on its edge, the picture of discomfort.
‘Jane, my dear, the sergeant has some questions she would like to ask you, and I think, I really do think, that you should be as helpful to her as possible.’
Still she did not look up, her head bent over the twisted corner of her apron.
‘I will, of course, leave if you should wish me to.’ Tilson made the honourable offer without real enthusiasm, and looked gratified by the frantic shaking of her head. He sat down, and a little silence fell.
With a sense of walking on eggshells, Frances began, her low voice warm and persuasive. ‘Mrs Thomas, it’s very hard for you, isn’t it? Strangers moved into your village, and there has been violence and ugliness. No wonder you resent that, as well as the fact that I’m here asking you questions you probably don’t want to answer.
‘But the problem won’t go away. Mrs Radley went to prison for something we now believe she didn’t do; perhaps if people in the village had come forward to tell us what they knew, that wouldn’t have happened.
‘Oh, I know there was a lot of hostility to Neville and Lilian Fielding — and I can understand why — but someone has killed twice, and there’s no reason why they should stop there. No one’s safe — yourself, your family — Mr Tilson—’
She paused, hopefully, but only the twisting went on, more savagely.
She changed the line of questioning as smoothly as she would have modulated into a different key, shading her intonation to make her voice lower, more intimate. ‘It may be there is someone who needs help. Perhaps it’s not doing them a favour, keeping quiet — perhaps?’
Mrs Thomas’s shoulders jerked convulsively and Frances broke off, instantly.
The woman looked up at last, made to speak, then faltered. Neither Frances nor Tilson spoke, and flustered by the lengthening pause, she burst at last into speech.
“Tisn’t right, it isn’t, and so I’ve said. But it’s not up to me to mess after it, that’s the truth, and there’s them as should have spoken up long ago. Things have changed, I said to them, it’s not the same as when Council used to decide right and
wrong — and that was before all we was born, mostly. The dead past’s gone, and plenty of it not so good, neither. Maybe we should have them new houses, at that. I never thought to say it, but things has gone wrong about here, things that should have been told have been hid.’
She was wringing the whole apron in her hands now, and close to tears. Tilson was shifting uneasily in his chair, but Frances hardly noticed him. ‘Mrs Thomas, you can tell me, can’t you?’ She was cajoling, coaxing now. ‘There’s been too much darkness and deceit. Good, honest, plain words — tell me what you know.’
‘Know?’ she raised her head, and her expression was fierce. ‘I don’t know nothing. But there’s them as do, and it’s up to them to tell you.’
‘Them?’ The detective’s voice was as caressing as a mother soothing her child. ‘You can tell me who you mean, can’t you?’
For just a second it seemed that the siren voice might seduce her; she looked at Frances almost with longing, but then the tears came.
‘You’re asking me to name names, you are. And I can’t do that — not to you.’
She jumped to her feet and fled from the room, and Frances made no effort to stop her.
‘Not to me, because I’m a foreigner.’ Her voice was harsh and ragged with impatience. ‘Old loyalties, of course — and who can blame her? But what do I have to do to get through to these people?’ She brought her linked fingers down hard on the desk in front of her in a painful expression of exasperation.
Tilson, his chin propped on his hands, was studying her narrowly. ‘That was quite a performance,’ he said at last. ‘What they used to call glamourie, I fancy, and you could get yourself burned at the stake. Are you a musician?’
‘Oh, that — yes.’ She brushed the query aside, frowning.
Neither spoke for a moment. Then Tilson reached across the desk to pat her hand. ‘Don’t despair, my child. Rebus in arduis, remember.’
Frustration made her tart. ‘Not my strongest point, classical quotations.’
‘“When the going gets tough, stay cool?” A free translation. And Jane won’t leave it at that, you know. She’s upset, and she’ll put the pressure on somewhere else. I’ll puzzle over what she said — something may come to me.’
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