Day for Dying

by Dorothy Simpson

  Without a word of acknowledgement Barbara Mallis turned on her heel and left. Below them a door softly closed. Sylvester turned and went back into the sitting room, but not before Thanet had glimpsed his face. It was grim.

  ‘Well, well, well!’ said Lineham. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Quite. What did you make of it, Mike?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It sounded as if Mrs Sylvester was almost afraid to ask.’

  They started to descend the stairs, keeping their voices down.

  ‘And, more to the point, as though Mrs Mallis had the power to refuse,’ said Thanet.

  ‘As if she was the one with the upper hand. In fact,’ said Lineham slowly, ‘almost as if she’s got some sort of hold over her.’

  ‘My thought exactly.’

  ‘But what?’ Lineham grabbed Thanet’s elbow. ‘Sir, look at that!’ They were halfway down the stairs by now and through one of the glass panels which flanked the front door they had a clear view of Barbara Mallis driving off in the BMW convertible which Lineham had admired earlier. ‘It can’t be hers, surely!’

  ‘Not exactly the sort of car you’d expect a housekeeper to drive,’ said Thanet. ‘Let’s go and find out.’

  Ralph Sylvester was still in the sitting room, standing at one of the front windows, gazing out.

  Thanet joined him and was just in time to see the BMW turn out of the drive on to the road, giving him a convenient opening. ‘Nice car.’

  A brief conversation elicited the information he needed. According to Sylvester Mrs Mallis had bought the car the previous year with money inherited on her father’s death.

  ‘Think that’s true, sir?’ said Lineham, when they were outside.

  ‘We’ll look into it. If it’s not, of course, we have to ask ourselves where she did get the money from. It’s not just the car, is it? That flat is over the top for a housekeeper and she must spend a pretty penny on clothes. In fact, Mike . . .’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Blackmail?’ said Lineham.

  ELEVEN

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past her, would you?’ said Lineham as he started the car. ‘And by the look of it, it’s Mrs Sylvester she’s blackmailing. I wonder what she’s got on her. Er . . . where now, sir?’

  ‘Gerald Argent next, I think.’

  Lineham glanced at his clipboard of names and addresses. ‘He lives on the Ravenswood estate.’

  This was one of the new estates which had mushroomed around the edges of Sturrenden despite the Green Belt policy supposedly followed by successive governments.

  ‘I was wondering earlier,’ said Thanet as Lineham put the car into gear and moved smoothly off down the drive, ‘why Mrs Mallis had stayed so long in this job. I shouldn’t have thought it was quite her cup of tea, being stuck out here in the country. I thought perhaps it was Roper who was the attraction, as we suggested earlier.’

  ‘Well, he is a good-looking guy, and Mrs Mallis does seem to have an eye for the opposite sex, as we saw last night!’

  Thanet studiously ignored the reference. ‘But now I’m wondering . . . If she’s got something on Mrs Sylvester and is getting her to pay up for keeping quiet about it, well, she’s on to a good thing, isn’t she? She wouldn’t leave without good reason.’

  A couple of hundred yards down the lane they saw the Sylvesters’ gardener, Fielding, strolling towards them. Equipped with binoculars and briar stick he was obviously out for a Sunday afternoon walk. Thanet raised a hand in greeting and briefly envied him the freedom to enjoy it. But not for long. It was a lovely day, true, a typical March spring day with blustery winds, fluffy clouds and fat buds about to burst on every tree and hedgerow, but at the moment there was nothing he would rather be doing than pursuing this investigation. The process of delicately feeling his way into a whole new mesh of relationships was the part of his work which interested him most of all. People fascinated him and despite the long years of police work he still on the whole liked them, enjoyed meeting them and trying to understand what made them tick. And this particular case promised a rich harvest.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Lineham suddenly, ‘it’s Mrs Sylvester who’s having an affair with Roper! She’s a pretty sexy type, isn’t she, and they must see a lot of each other, living under the same roof day in, day out. And Mrs Mallis found out about it, threatened to tell Mr Sylvester.’

  ‘Could be. Did you see Sylvester’s face, in the hall, after that incident between his wife and Mrs Mallis? He knows something’s going on, that’s for sure. And Mrs Sylvester is definitely trying to hide something, wouldn’t you agree? So perhaps that’s what it is, an affair with Roper. As a matter of fact I was wondering why Roper has stayed so long, too. It must be a pretty soul-destroying job.’

  ‘You’re telling me! Those paintings!’ Lineham shuddered. ‘If that’s what the inside of Carey’s head feels like I wouldn’t wish his state of mind on my worst enemy. And Roper is shut up with him month after month. I don’t know how he stands it! I wonder if he ever gets a break.’

  ‘Oh, I should think so. He’d be entitled to holidays like anyone else, I imagine. But on a day-to-day basis . . . He hasn’t even got the company of colleagues to make it bearable. So he must also have a pretty powerful reason to have stuck it as long as he has, and it could be one of the women who’s the attraction. Yes, I think we need to take a closer look at both Roper and Mrs Mallis. We’ll put DC Martin on to it. He enjoys digging into people’s backgrounds.’

  They were silent for a while, mulling over what they’d heard so far today. At the beginning of a case there was so much to take in it was difficult to assimilate it all.

  ‘Bit of a tangle, isn’t it, sir,’ said Lineham eventually. ‘A real game of musical chairs. I’ve been trying to work it out. Let’s see if I’ve got it straight. First it was Tess and Max, on and off, then it was Hartley and Anthea, then Max and Anthea, then Tess and Gerald, then Max and Tess again. Is that right?’

  Thanet laughed. ‘I think so. You’re right, it is a tangle.’

  ‘Mind,’ said Lineham, ‘I think I can understand why Max kept on backing off like that. Sounds to me as if when they were younger Tess was a bit too clinging. I suspect he felt stifled and it made him want to escape.’

  ‘And he finally succumbed when he realised he was in danger of losing her for good.’

  ‘And when he felt she’d got the message that he wasn’t going to be tied down too much. That’s the way I see it, yes.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what all this reminds me of. The Alicia Parnell case, remember?’I

  ‘Yes I do. As I recall, that also involved a group of young people who’d been inseparable in their teens. Yes, you’re right.’

  ‘It seems to happen sometimes, doesn’t it. You get a group of teenagers with a certain, what shall I call it, chemistry? between them and it seems that whatever happens in later life they never quite break away from each other, not entirely anyway. And there’s often one person around whom the others seem to pivot. In that case it was the lad who committed suicide, if you remember. What was his name? Paul something? And in this, it seems to be Max Jeopard.’

  ‘Yes. People like him seem to expect the world to revolve around them and blow me, it does!’

  Thanet grinned. ‘Sickening, isn’t it!’

  ‘Too right it is! No, but seriously, I’d say Mr Sylvester wasn’t far off the mark when he said Max was spoilt rotten. You could tell by the way his mother talked about him that she thought the sun shone out of him. And people like that, well they seem to go through life behaving as though they’ve got a divine right to have their own way. And what gets me is the fact that they usually do! I mean, look at the way he waltzed in and pinched his brother’s girlfriend from under his nose! And it wasn’t even as though he was serious about her, he was just amusing himself because Tess wasn’t around. Imagine how Hartley must have felt! It would have been bad enough hearing his mother sing Max’s praises all his life without that happening! And then, a couple of year
s later, he does exactly the same thing to Gerald! If you ask me it’s not surprising he ended up in someone’s swimming pool!’

  ‘You are getting hot under the collar, Mike.’

  ‘Yes, well, people like that get up my nose.’

  They had reached the outskirts of Sturrenden now and Thanet fell silent to allow Lineham to negotiate the big roundabout and edge his way into the one-way system. When they were moving smoothly again he said, ‘We mustn’t forget Anthea, either. It’s obvious she expected to take up with Max where they left off before he went away on his last trip. And you know what they say about a woman scorned.’

  ‘Yes. “Hell hath no fury” as la Mallis says. I’m quite looking forward to meeting her, aren’t you, sir? She sounds a real little spitfire. I have the feeling she really enjoyed making that scene at the party. I bet she’d rehearsed it over and over until she’d got it just right.’

  ‘She certainly has a powerful dramatic instinct. I imagine it had all the more impact because she said so little. It’s interesting that that brief incident brings her into such sharp focus. I don’t know about you, but I already have a very clear picture of her. Whereas Gerald is a much more shadowy figure.’

  ‘Though according to Mrs Mallis he still had enough gumption to cut Max dead in public, at the party.’

  ‘True. And I’m sure she was right when she called him Mr and Mrs Sylvester’s blue-eyed boy. I’m certain they would much have preferred him as a son-in-law. They’d have kept Tess close to them then, seen their grandchildren grow up . . .’

  ‘And he’s got a nice steady job as bank manager. I don’t blame them. I know which I’d have chosen as a son-in-law myself.’

  ‘Whereas if she’d married Max he’d have whisked her off to London and given her a good deal of heartache into the bargain.’

  ‘So what are you saying, sir? That you think it might have been Sylvester who shoved him into the pool?’

  ‘Well, we only have Mrs Mallis’s word for it so far but she did say she saw Max making a pass at more than one girl at the party. Sylvester might not have been too pleased about that.’

  ‘I bet Jeopard thought himself irresistible!’ Lineham was peering out of the window and now he swung left, entering the Ravenswood estate. Serried ranks of newly-built houses marched off in all directions. The developer had attempted to introduce variety by using half a dozen different designs and setting them back at varying distances from the road, but the effect was still depressingly uniform. Perhaps, thought Thanet, they would look better when the trees and shrubs reached maturity. At the moment there was little to soften the expanses of raw new brick.

  ‘Maybe he was. It sounds as though he had an eye for the women. I even got the impression that Mrs Mallis was hinting he’d made a pass at her. The point is, Mike, if Sylvester saw Max flirting with other girls, saw that Tess was hurt by it, maybe he decided to tackle him about it. Say he took him into the pool house to talk because he knew they wouldn’t be disturbed in there. Then they argued, it came to blows and, well, he may not have intended to push him into the pool but when it happened he certainly wasn’t going to fish him out.’

  ‘Oakleaf Crescent,’ muttered Lineham. ‘I’m sure it’s along here somewhere. Ah yes, there it is.’ He signalled and turned right, then glanced at Thanet. ‘You’re not suggesting the note was from Sylvester, sir? A bit unlikely, don’t you think? Wouldn’t he have been much more likely to have a word in his ear?’

  ‘Not necessarily. He may have thought Max would refuse. So he might have resorted to subterfuge, sent a note which pretended to be from a woman, suggesting an assignation, on the assumption that Max would probably turn up through sheer curiosity.’

  ‘Yes! Now that is a possibility. Though for that matter, anyone else could have done the same.’

  ‘True. Let’s hope Wakeham manages to track the note down.’

  ‘Here we are. Number twenty-one.’ Lineham pulled in neatly alongside the kerb.

  Tess’s erstwhile fiancé lived in a tiny mid-terrace box which looked as though it wasn’t much more than one room wide and one deep.

  ‘Bachelor pad?’ said Lineham as they took the two strides which covered the concrete path to the front door. He rang the bell, which immediately burst into a truncated version of ‘Home Sweet Home’.

  Thanet winced. He hated doorchimes. ‘Looks like it. Mrs Mallis did say he and Tess were house-hunting before Max arrived back on the scene.’

  ‘I expect Daddy was putting up the cash,’ said Lineham ‘After all, he wouldn’t want his little girl to have to live in a style to which she was not accustomed.’

  ‘Oh come on, Mike. Argent must be earning a decent living. Bank managers aren’t exactly paupers and I believe bank employees get preferential rates on mortgages.’

  Lineham rang the bell again. ‘Looks as though he’s out.’

  ‘What a pain! We’ll have to come back later.’ They returned to the car and Thanet glanced at his watch. Four-fifteen. ‘Where does Anthea live?’

  Lineham consulted his clipboard. ‘Donnington.’

  So they’d have to retrace their steps. Thanet groaned. ‘Stupid of me. If I’d had any sense I’d have checked before we left the Sylvesters’ and we could have gone there first.’

  ‘My fault too. I did think of suggesting it.’

  ‘Ah well, back we go then.’

  But Thanet wasn’t really too put out. They could have rung Argent first, to make an appointment, which would have avoided the risk of wasting time, but early on in a case Thanet often preferred to keep people guessing. Besides, the time was never entirely wasted; it was often quite useful to have a short breathing space. It gave you the opportunity to step back a little and reflect and it was always useful to get some impression of a witness’s lifestyle. Argent’s chosen career had indicated that in all probability he was a steady, careful type and to Thanet’s mind his house had confirmed that predictably he was both unostentatious and prudent, the sort of man who would never run before he could walk and who would bide his time until he could achieve what he truly desired. How would such a man react when his patience apparently paid off and then his prize was snatched away from him? Was it possible that as Lineham would no doubt put it, the worm had turned? According to Barbara Mallis, Argent had originally refused the invitation to the engagement party – scarcely surprising in the circumstances. But then he had changed his mind and turned up. Why? Was it a purely masochistic impulse which had driven him to attend, or had he had something more sinister in mind than a mere snub?

  Fortunately, as it was Sunday, the traffic was light. Ten minutes later they were back in Donnington. The village was small, consisting chiefly of one main street and a few clusters of cottages on little side-turnings to left and right. The motor car was gradually turning far too many villages into little more than dormitories, thought Thanet; there was no village shop and even the pub looked as though it had seen more prosperous days.

  Wistaria Cottage also looked as though it had come down in the world. The owner – Anthea? Her parents? A landlord? – was obviously either hard up, lazy, incapacitated or indifferent to the deterioration of his property. It was a typical Kentish cottage, mellow red brick to the first floor and tile-hung above, separated from the pavement by a rickety picket fence which badly needed a coat of paint. The two tiny patches of earth on either side of the uneven path sported a fine crop of weeds. Grimy window panes, peeling paint and rusting door knocker all added to the general air of neglect.

  The woman who answered the door was wearing black leggings and a loose multicoloured tunic top in panels of different materials sewn together with blanket-stitch. The effect was as off-beat as the cheongsam last night and for a fleeting moment Thanet thought that it was Anthea. Then he registered the lines on the woman’s face, the texture of skin from which the bloom of youth had faded and he realised that it must be her mother. The likeness was remarkable but this woman was in her forties.

  When he told her wh
o they were her eyes flashed. ‘I don’t know why you’re bothering. We should be hanging out the flags, that the world has one bastard fewer in it today.’

  ‘We have to make enquiries, Mrs Greenway. May we come in?’

  She cast a defiant glance up and down the road as if to say to the neighbours, Yes, it’s the police. So what? Then she turned. ‘Suit yourself.’

  They stepped straight into a small square sitting room. It struck chill and dank, as if it were rarely used and was, Thanet thought, quite the most cluttered room he had ever seen. Every available square inch of surface on mantelpiece, windowsills and table-tops was jammed with an extraordinary collection of objects ranging from ornaments of every possible description, some broken and some intact, to shells, stones, pebbles and bits of driftwood. There were so many pictures and prints crowded together on the walls that there was virtually no wall-surface to be seen, and even the ceiling was partially concealed by bunches of dried flowers of all colours, shapes and sizes, some in woven baskets, suspended from hooks screwed into the beams. There was an all-enveloping smell of cats and Thanet counted at least three, curled up on the chairs. Lineham wrinkled his nose in distaste at Thanet as one of them jumped down and followed its mistress into an equally cluttered kitchen and finally into a glass structure built right along the back of the house, too ramshackle to be called a conservatory. Here too the windowsills were crammed with objects, this time interspersed with potted plants. A steamy warmth gushed forth to meet them, emanating from an oil convector heater. The windows were running with condensation and in here the smell of cats was overpowering. Thanet found that he was breathing through his mouth and seeking the source of the stench he traced it to several litter trays, some of which he noted to his distaste had been used more than once. Mrs Greenway was evidently of the school which considered the great outdoors to be anathema to her pets.

  Restraining an impulse to rush to the door and fling it open, he forced himself to look around, realising at once that for the second time today he was in a studio. Unlike Carey Sylvester Mrs Greenway worked in watercolour; a large table loaded with pots of brushes, boxes and tubes of paint and all the other accoutrements of a watercolourist stood in front of the window. Nearby was a smaller table with a still life set up on it, a carefully arranged group of kitchen objects on a harlequin-patterned cloth – a stainless steel kettle and saucepan, some dessert spoons and three silver eggcups.