“But she didn’t keep to the arrangement, Mr. Parry. She must’ve returned some time this afternoon. Can you suggest any reason for that — any reason at all?”
“No, I can’t … but evidently she changed her mind.”
“Without telling you?”
A harassed look came into Parry’s washed-out blue eyes. He said, “Maybe she tried to phone me and I was out.”
“If you were, would there be no one here to answer the telephone?”
“Not after one o’clock. That’s when Mrs. Gregg leaves.”
“And who is Mrs. Gregg?”
“Our daily woman. She comes at nine and goes about one.”
“Every day?”
“Except Sunday.”
“If, by any chance, your wife did phone, surely Mrs. Gregg would have told you?”
“She’d gone by the time I got back.”
The slightly puzzled look on Elvin’s face cleared. He said, “Ah, now I see. But wouldn’t Mrs. Gregg make a note of the call and leave it beside the phone?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“You don’t sound very sure, Mr. Parry — not very sure at all. Hasn’t she had instructions to write down any phone calls received while you and your wife are out?”
“Oh, yes … and she always does.”
“So we can take it” — Elvin’s voice dropped half a tone — “that no call was received. In other words, your wife didn’t phone.”
Michael Parry played with his hands while he thought. At last, he said, “She might’ve done between the time Mrs. Gregg left and the time I returned.”
“When did you return?”
“About half-past three … I think.”
“So for roughly two and a half hours there would be no one in the house?”
“Yes. And that’s when” — Michael’s face brightened — “that’s when my wife probably tried to ring me.”
Inspector Elvin shook his head. In a tone of reproof, he said, “No, Mr. Parry. I doubt it — I doubt it very much. She must’ve set out from Wood Lake before one o’clock to get here during the afternoon. She had to get to Woking … take a train to Salisbury … a bus from Salisbury to Blandford … and then some form of transport from there to Castle Lammering.”
“But she might —”
“There’s no might about it, Mr. Parry. That sort of journey takes time. If she intended to return home earlier than arranged she’d have had to make her decision long before one o’clock … and your Mrs. Gregg would still have been here.”
Something new showed behind Elvin’s smooth courtesy as he asked, “Do you follow my line of reasoning?”
Parry agreed a little too hastily. He said, “Oh, yes … yes, I do. But I’ve already told you I just can’t explain it — any of it.”
With artificial sympathy, Inspector Elvin said, “It is a problem — quite a big problem. However, I’m sure we’ll find the answer if we go about it the right way. So let’s start from the beginning. What time did you leave home this morning?”
“About eleven o’clock. I had some shopping to do …” Parry left the rest in mid-air.
“Where did you go — Blandford? There aren’t any decent shops much nearer than that, are there?”
“Well, actually I went to Poole. Needed a haircut and I like to use the same barber …”
He looked across at the bed where the eiderdown trailed almost to the floor. His face stiffened as he went on, “I thought I’d spruce myself up a bit because Adele” — he faltered — “because my wife was coming home and I wanted to look my best.”
“How long did you stay in Poole?”
“A couple of hours or so. After I’d had a haircut I bought some odds and ends and then I had a bite of lunch.”
As though he wanted to change the subject, he added, “Good shopping centre is Poole. Not many places round here where you can get bow ties — I mean the kind you tie yourself, not those ready-made-up horrors that are all right for the peasants.”
Downstairs the phone rang and Quinn heard Sergeant Taylor talking briefly. Elvin waited, his eyes fixed on Parry’s face, until the bell tinkled again.
Then he asked, “Did you come straight home, Mr. Parry, after you’d done your shopping and had lunch?”
“No, I called in at some pub or other, met a bunch of sociable fellows, and got chatting. You know how it is.”
“Yes, of course. Time does tend to pass quickly when you’re having a drink with friends. Always a lot to talk about — even when you’ve met only the other day.”
The implied question left Parry with no choice. He said, “Oh, they weren’t friends. I’d never seen them before. But when you pop into a strange pub you have to be sociable, haven’t you?”
Once again, Elvin said, “Yes, of course. What time did you leave this pub?”
“Two-ish, I’d say.”
“And yet” — the inspector looked no more than politely surprised — “you didn’t get back here until half past three? Surely that must be wrong?”
“I don’t see —”
“Come now, Mr. Parry! It’s only fifteen or sixteen miles from Poole. That couldn’t have taken you an hour and a half, could it?”
Michael Parry’s manner underwent a sudden change. In an angry voice, he said, “Look, we seem to be getting off the point. I don’t have to account to you for every minute of my time. Where I went and what I did and how long I took to do it is my business. I’m not going —”
“Just be patient,” Elvin said. “Bear with me a little longer. I’m merely trying to ascertain if it’s possible that your wife did phone. Before we eliminate the possibility we must have an accurate time-table. You see that, don’t you?”
Quinn wondered if Parry would believe anything so obviously false. But maybe it wasn’t obvious to him. Elvin had the right approach.
… Yet you can see which way the wind blows. He’s going to get Michael into a corner where there’s no way out and then use the chopper on him …
Michael Parry said, “A time-table of my movements can’t have any bearing on what my wife may, or may not, have done. But if you must know I stopped at the Bird-in-Hand in Castle Lammering on my way back. Got there about —” He gave the inspector a sour look. “You want me to be exact, I suppose?”
“As exact as you can be,” Elvin said.
“Then I’d say it was something between two-fifteen and two-twenty.”
“And you left when … ?”
“Close on half past three. I know it was nearly twenty to four when I got home.”
Inspector Elvin bobbed his head and looked pleased. He said, “Thank you, Mr. Parry. We’re getting along famously. Now take your time and think — think very carefully. What did you do when you entered the house?”
“I came straight upstairs to this room.”
“Any indication that your wife had returned home?”
“None at all.”
“Was that” — Elvin pointed — “her bed?”
The numb look settled again on Parry’s puffy face. He said, “Yes.”
“Do you remember if it was in that disarranged condition then?”
“No, I wasn’t paying any attention.”
“Surely you’d have noticed —”
“There’s no surely about it,” Parry said. His voice was too loud. “You asked me and I’ve told you. I don’t know what state the bed was in. It was a hot day and I’d had a couple of drinks and I wanted to put my feet up for an hour or two. Anything wrong with that?”
“No, of course not. You mustn’t —”
“It never struck me that my wife might be home … if she was. How was I supposed to know she’d changed her mind without telling me?”
Inspector Elvin said gently, “How indeed? So you lay down on the bed and fell asleep. Is that right?”
“Yes. I dropped off almost at once.”
“Anything disturb you — anything at all?”
“Not a thing. I slept like a log until�
� — he looked at Quinn — “until Miss Stewart and my friend here arrived. It was the ringing of the door-bell that wakened me.”
“What time was that?”
“Half past seven.”
“So you’d slept for nearly four hours?”
In an unpleasant voice, Parry said, “Is it a crime for a man to sleep as many hours as he likes in his own home?”
Elvin looked apologetic. He said, “I didn’t suggest that anyone had committed a crime. All I want is to clear up the mystery of your wife’s return home. Did she take any luggage with her when she left last Monday?”
“Yes, one case.”
“Have you seen anything of it?”
“No, it wasn’t downstairs. And” — Parry’s eyes made a tired survey of the room — “it doesn’t appear to be here.”
“Is this where you’d expect it to be if she’d been going to unpack?”
“Yes.”
“Where would the empty case go?”
“In the spare room where we keep trunks and cases and things like that.”
“We’ll go along there shortly and have a look,” Elvin said. “Meantime would you mind if I searched this room?”
“No, of course not.” Parry’s resentment came to the surface and then as quickly subsided. “Why should I mind?”
He watched the inspector glance under the twin beds, look behind the dressing-table, slide back a door in the fitted wardrobe. Quinn didn’t think Michael Parry was very interested.
There were shoes on a floor rack, eight or nine suits on a rail. Elvin didn’t bother to open a set of drawers running from floor to head height.
In the centre compartment he found nothing of interest, either. It was when he pushed back the right-hand door that he stopped and looked over his shoulder at Parry and asked, “Did you say something?”
Parry said, “That’s the case I was talking about — my wife’s travelling case. What’s it doing in the wardrobe?”
Inspector Elvin brought it out, laid it on the floor, and unfastened the catches. When he raised the lid, he said, “What indeed? Doesn’t look as if she even started to unpack.”
The case was full of neatly folded items of clothing held in place by two elastic straps. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed.
Elvin said, “This affair becomes more and more peculiar the further we go. Your wife would seem to have returned home, carried her bag upstairs, and put it in the wardrobe. After that she lay down on her own bed — for how long, we don’t know.”
He stared up at Parry and added, “If you were going to say we know singularly little about anything you’d be quite right.”
Parry said, “It’s not my place to comment. Won’t help you if I keep on saying I’m completely baffled.” He seemed unable to take his eyes off the suitcase.
“That’s hardly surprising,” Elvin said. “Her behaviour was certainly very odd … to put it mildly. Some time later she appears to have got up, taken a glass of brandy — heavily doped with some kind of barbiturate — and carried it into the nursery. There she swallowed enough of the drug to kill herself. If anyone” — his eyes travelled from Parry to Quinn — “can put forward an explanation, I’ll be glad to hear it.”
Quinn said nothing. After a couple of false starts. Parry said, “Don’t ask me. I haven’t a clue. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re quite right. It doesn’t make sense — none of it. Above all, why did she come home secretly to commit suicide? Why didn’t she do it at this place, Wood Lake? Eh, Mr. Parry?”
“Maybe she forgot to take the sleeping pills with her when she went away,” Parry said. He didn’t sound very confident.
“And so she came all the way back determined to take her own life?” The inspector shook his head. “I’ve dealt with one or two suicides — and I’ve also read quite a bit on the subject — and I can tell you that the circumstances here don’t follow the established pattern.”
He bent over the suitcase as though looking for something. When he straightened himself again, he went on, “People nearly always commit suicide on impulse. In the majority of cases it’s done on the spur of the moment. If it fails — or if anything intervenes to stop the attempt — most of them don’t try again … at least, not for the time being.”
“What you’re saying —”
“I’m saying nothing,” Elvin said. “I’m merely thinking aloud. And these are my thoughts. In your wife’s case she had time to change her mind. Furthermore, I can’t believe that anyone who needed even an occasional sleeping pill would go away for several days without taking them with her.”
Michael Parry might have tried to hide the look of mingled fear and bewilderment that came into his eyes but he failed. As though all the strength had gone out of his legs he sat down on the edge of the nearer bed and slumped forward, his hands dangling between his knees.
In a wooden voice, he said, “Now I’m lost, utterly and completely lost.”
Then he looked up at Quinn and asked, “Why do you just stand there like part of the furniture? Why don’t you say something? Are you afraid to open your mouth?”
Quinn said, “This isn’t my party. I never poke my nose into a police investigation. Anyway, I was ordered not to interfere.”
Inspector Elvin made a little apologetic noise in his throat. He said, “Not ordered, Mr. Quinn, merely requested. A man of your experience knows” — Quinn saw him staring at the table between the twin beds — “knows that a three-handed discussion often confuses the issue in an affair of this kind. Confining it to two people avoids the risk of being side-tracked, of losing sight of important points.”
He was talking for the sake of talking as he walked across to the table and bent down and reached under it. When he stood up again he was holding a transparent plastic bag with printing on it.
Michael Parry had turned his head to watch him. The inspector asked, “Is this yours?”
“Yes. It’s what my shirts are wrapped in when they come back from the laundry.”
“So I thought. The name of a laundry in Blandford is printed on it. Any idea how it came to be behind that table?”
“No. Probably fell on the floor when I took out a clean shirt.”
In sudden irritation Parry got up and said, “What difference does it make? Honestly, Inspector, you baffle me with some of the questions you ask. It’s just a polythene bag — the kind that’s used by a thousand laundries every day of the week. Why should you be interested in the way my shirts are wrapped?”
“Because I have an inquiring mind,” Elvin said. “May I keep this bag?”
“Of course. I’ll give you a dozen more if you’re collecting them.”
Parry laughed without any trace of humour. Then he asked, “Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Just one thing. Had your wife recently been receiving psychiatric treatment?”
Once again a look of withdrawal came into Michael Parry’s faded blue eyes. In a cautious voice, he said, “Not to my knowledge.”
“That isn’t a very satisfactory answer, Mr. Parry. Wouldn’t she have told you if she had consulted a psychiatrist?”
Michael Parry made a little sound of disdain. He said, “If my answer wasn’t very satisfactory, your question is positively daft. Did my wife tell me she was going to commit suicide? Did she confide in me that she was in the mood to do something terrible like this? Did she ever, in fact, have the slightest respect for me? Now go ahead and pick the bones out of that lot.”
Inspector Elvin said, “I will, Mr. Parry, I certainly will. My first thought, naturally, is that you and your wife weren’t very happy together. Would you agree?”
“This is becoming farcical,” Parry said. “If she’d been happy would she have killed herself? Now, if you’ve no objection, I’m going downstairs to get something to eat. My last meal was at lunch time and I’m damned hungry.”
He went out and pulled the door shut with more force than was necessary. As his footsteps
marched aggressively towards the top of the stairs, Quinn said, “And that’s that — the gesture of the little man in the face of authority. Mind if I go now?”
Elvin looked at him absentmindedly and then asked, “Where are you off to?”
“I still want that drink I was going to have when you talked me into staying up here.”
“You could have had it long ago if you hadn’t let Parry talk you into keeping him company. Why did you?”
“Mainly for your sake.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. I thought you’d like me to be present in case he made a liar of himself.”
“And why should he do that?”
“He’d have a good reason if he were responsible for his wife’s death,” Quinn said.
Inspector Elvin nodded and went on nodding while he turned to look at the disarranged bed again. Then he said, “You are a man of ideas, Mr. Quinn. How would you force or persuade or fool someone into taking a lethal dose of barbiturate?”
“Might not be all that difficult. If the stuff hasn’t got an unpleasant taste, or if whatever taste it has could be masked by the liquor, then I’d slip it into the lady’s brandy.”
“Do you happen to know if Pembrium tastes nasty?”
“Never tasted the stuff, so I can’t say. Why don’t you ask Dr. Bossard?”
“I intend to,” Elvin said. “Rest assured I intend to.”
He folded the plastic bag twice, turned it over to study it back and front, and then asked, “Do you ever watch television, Mr. Quinn?”
“Occasionally. Why?”
“Oh, I just wondered if you’d seen that Ministry of Health thing about keeping polythene bags out of the reach of children and domestic pets. Know the one I mean?”
Quinn said, “Yes. And I also know what you’ve got in mind.”
With a smile in his eyes, Elvin said, “That’s very clever of you.”
“Not really. In the world where I earn my living, two and two always make four.”
“All right. Tell me.”
“You think that polythene bag might’ve come in handy if Adele Parry had taken too long to die,” Quinn said.
Inspector Elvin retired behind his smile. In a tentative voice, he asked, “And what do you think?”
A Slightly Bitter Taste Page 10
