‘No, no. It’s fine. Any idea where he could have been going?’
‘To a case, I reckon, sir.’
‘He was off duty on Sunday night.’
‘Then I dunno, sir. But there’s a roadhouse that’s a favourite with him about four miles out, side slip off the new bypass. He’s often there, I hear. I could ask about Sunday, if you like.’
Masters thought for a moment and then told Vanden not to make enquiries at the roadhouse. But he asked for its name—the Nutmeg Tree.
*
Green visited the vicarage. He grimaced at the sight of it. Cora let him in. He asked for Pamela. She had gone out without letting her sister know where she was going. He said to Cora: ‘Did the vicar have a key to the school?’
‘Did nice Mr Masters send you?’
He gulped back an angry retort. ‘Yes.’
‘Then I can tell you. He used to keep it in the middle drawer of the desk, but it’s not there now.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘You can come in and look.’
She showed him into the study. He was by her side when she pulled open the drawer. The key was there, lying apart from the other articles, which had been tidied up. Paper clips, old ball-points, rubber bands and adhesive tape. All tidy. The key sitting alone. Cora said: ‘That’s funny. It wasn’t there this morning. I tidied this drawer to help Pam. I told her it wasn’t here and asked her if she’d got it and she said no. She must have found it later.’
Green said: ‘That’s about the size of it. Do you mind if I take it?’ Before she could answer he picked it up. ‘Well, Miss Parseloe, I won’t keep you. I expect you’re having lots of callers today.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘No?’
‘Only Mr Masters and Dr Barnfelt to see Pam. And you, of course.’
‘I see. P’raps it’s just as well you’re not being kept too busy answering the door. Tidying up’s hard work. So I’ll say goodbye.’
Green was thoughtful. He’d objected to this key lark, but even he had to admit that Masters didn’t often get fanciful ideas. The verger’s key had been taken. Now it appeared that the vicar’s key had at any rate been mislaid. Perhaps that was why the vicar had taken the verger’s key. But it was unlikely that his own could have gone far astray in the two or three days since the builders had borrowed it. He wondered how this knowledge would help. He was still wondering when, following the directions given him by Hutson in the morning, he reached Baron’s house. He found it easily enough. One of the few houses in the High Street with a front garden, alongside which ran the eight-foot leading to the open gates of the mason’s yard. Chunks of marble and granite, grey, white, black and red: ‘In Remembrance’ pots squatting under lids perforated to hold flowers: a few curbed gravestones lined with marble chips. Green wondered what it was like to live so near to the outward reminders of death. He supposed people got used to it. He didn’t think he would.
A woman of about forty-five opened the door. She was plump and fair, with large, pale blue eyes and a smile that Green appreciated. She smiled at him even before she spoke. He wondered why, and then realized she probably smiled at everybody. She was that sort. He thought every headmaster would be wise to pick one like her. She had an apron on. Green liked it because it was not the usual rectangular sort, but a frilly affair, triangular, with the apex at the top. Clean and crisp. Like the white blouse under the blue cardigan. Her legs and feet were neat. Green thought she was quite a dish—the best he’d seen in Rooksby to date. He said: ‘I’m Detective Inspector Green. I wonder if I could see Mr Baron?’
She said: ‘He’s not back from school yet. But I’m expecting him any time after four. Would you like to wait?’
He followed her in. There was a smell of smoked haddock cooking. He guessed it was for Baron’s tea. Green sniffed appreciatively. He liked smoked fillets, kippers and bloaters. Thought them some of God’s better inventions. Thought Mrs Baron must be a good wife to cater so tastily for her husband’s appetite. She showed him into the sitting-room of the front-middle-and-back and switched on a convector. She said: ‘I expect it’s about the vicar?’
Green said: ‘I’m checking up on keys to the school. I understand your husband has one.’
She said: ‘There now! If I’ve asked him to return that key once, I’ve asked him a dozen times. But would he do it? No. Always the same excuse. He could never see Hutson.’
‘Why Hutson? Why not the vicar?’
‘Jim wouldn’t have returned a brass farthing to the vicar these last six months.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
She seemed to realize she’d said more than enough. Appeared anxious to get him out of the house. ‘Is it just the key you want?’
He nodded.
‘I’ll get it for you.’
She was away for some minutes and then returned. He thought she looked more bedworthy than ever when flustered. ‘It’s not there.’
‘Where?’
‘In the little drawer in the dressing-table. It’s been there ever since Christmas.’
‘Perhaps your husband moved it.’
‘I’ve looked everywhere. It’s gone.’ She saw the gravity of his heavy features. She said: ‘Oh, my God. What does this mean?’
‘Probably nothing. Let’s hope so. But remember a murderer got into the school and somehow managed to unlock and lock a classroom door without doing any damage.’
‘You mean he had a key.’ It was a quiet, despairing statement. Green nodded. She asked: ‘How many keys were there?’
‘Three other masters. The builders, Hutson and the vicar each had one besides your husband. Now don’t get upset. There may be a simple explanation for its disappearance.’
She sighed, and sat down opposite him. He noticed she sat with her knees and feet neatly together. She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘I do wish Jim would hurry up.’
Green offered her a Kensitas: lit them both. He said: ‘Don’t let the fish burn, will you?’
‘It’s cooking very slowly. Oh, I’m forgetting. Perhaps you’d like a cup of tea.’ She left him before he could reply. He liked the memory of her back view, too. He’d always thought of headmasters’ wives as nosy old bags. Now he was altering his opinion. She was back inside two minutes with a butler’s tray which he opened and set up for her. He stood so close to her he could smell the faint fresh odour of baby soap. He’d never believed grown women used it. But this baby did. And very nice, too, he thought.
The tea was strong. He liked it like that. He’d had two cups before Jim Baron’s key was heard in the door. She called: ‘In here, darling.’ He came in with a handful of books: dropped them in a chair. She said: ‘This is Inspector Green, Jim. He’s come for your key to the school, but I can’t find it.’
He kissed her and said: ‘I’ve got it here.’ He took it from his jacket pocket. Green studied him. Balding slightly, with a dark widow’s peak. Clear grey eyes. Slight jowls, giving an ugly strength to a jaw already faintly stubbled. Dark sports jacket and trousers. Blue shirt. Brown shoes. Hands clean and well manicured with a whiteness of chalk dust round the cuticles. Green said: ‘Why are you carrying it with you?’
‘To return it to Hutson, the verger.’
‘When?’
‘If I’d seen him I’d have given it to him today.’
‘You’ve had it for a couple of months. Why take it out today?’
His wife handed Baron a cup of tea. She smiled nervously.
‘I thought I’d better give it back, and then decided to keep it.’
‘Why?’
He set down the cup and lit a cigarette. ‘In view of what happened in the school on Sunday night. I’m not a fool. I knew the police would make enquiries about the keys.’
‘And your first thought was to get rid of yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘But on second thoughts you decided to hang on to it. Why? Because you thought it would look fishy, off-loading so soon after the event?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Why don’t you tell me why you and the vicar didn’t get on these last few months?’
Mrs Baron said: ‘Oh, that’s not fair. You asked me . . .’
‘Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m not here to trap your husband. But somebody got hold of a key to the school on Sunday.’
‘The vicar had one himself,’ Baron said. ‘Couldn’t he have let the murderer in?’
‘He could have. But the murderer couldn’t have locked the door behind him, leaving the vicar’s key in his cassock pocket, could he?’
‘Oh, my God. Tell him your key was still here, Jim.’
‘It was. In the dressing-table drawer.’
Green said: ‘Fair enough. Now tell me why it was there and not returned as it should have been.’
‘Pure laziness on my part. Nothing more.’
‘But you weren’t very friendly with the vicar.’
‘Tell him, Jim. Don’t make a mystery of it. Tell him about the rotten way you were treated.’
‘There’s no reason why I should keep quiet,’ Baron said. ‘You’ll be able to check what I say. You know I was headmaster of the Church School until it closed down at Christmas?’
‘Yes.’
‘Parseloe, as vicar, was chairman of the management committee. Three years ago, when his wife died, he decided he’d have his elder daughter, Pamela, come back to Rooksby to teach, and to keep house for him. Privately I thought it was so that she could bear most of the financial burden. But that’s beside the point. He came to me and said he was arranging to have her appointed to my staff. I’d already got a full complement. I was satisfied with their work, and as far as I knew none of them was contemplating leaving me. I told Parseloe there was no room for his daughter. He suggested that I should engineer a vacancy.’
‘Engineer? You mean make a bad report to the Management Committee about one of the teachers so that she would get the push?’
‘That’s right. Parseloe had already told Pamela he wanted her back in Rooksby. That didn’t fit in with her plans. She didn’t want to come. She preferred a freer life in Peterborough. So she’d already been to me and asked me not to find a place for her. I’d no intention of doing so, because Pamela was not my cup of tea. I’d rather have been a member of the staff short than have her in the school. She has a bit of a reputation, you know, in Rooksby.’
Green nodded.
Baron went on: ‘So I reassured her, and when he came, told her father I’d have nothing to do with his scheme. Told him it was the sort of game I wouldn’t be party to, and that if he attempted to interfere with my staff in any way I’d have the N.U.T. on to him before he could say “let us proceed in peace”.’
‘What happened?’
‘I heard no more about it. Then, last summer, the staff for the new Comprehensive was appointed. I’d applied for the headship, and as the sitting tenant, was fairly sure of getting it. But because the new school was replacing the Church School, the vicar had been appointed to the new Management Committee. When the appointment of the headmaster was discussed, Parseloe opposed my application. And he carried the day. The Committee was not made up of locals, otherwise it might have been different. They came from as wide a catchment area as the school serves, and they didn’t know Parseloe. And when the man you’ve worked for for umpteen years says he’s dissatisfied with you—says, among other things, that you’re unco-operative, it doesn’t do your chances much good. I didn’t get the job.’
‘How d’you know he did you dirt?’
‘I was told. There’s not the slightest doubt it’s true.’
‘Then what?’
‘I was going to be out of a job at Christmas. I got a post as assistant head at the village school in Towton. Took the place of a man who had been lucky enough to be appointed to the new Comprehensive.’ Baron sounded bitter. Green could understand why. Wondered if this example of Parseloe’s particular brand of Christianity had led to murder.
He asked: ‘Where’s Towton?’
‘Five miles east of here. It’s an easy run in the car along a secondary road. I leave myself a quarter of an hour for the journey.’
Green got to his feet. He said: ‘I’ll keep the key.’
*
All four of them met in Masters’ room at the Goblin. It was six o’clock and dark outside. Inside the lights were on, the curtains drawn, the room was warm, and out in the corridor was the good smell of sage and onion farce cooking inside the duckling Mrs Binkhorst was preparing for dinner.
Masters and Green brought each other up to date. Then Sergeant Hill said: ‘We’ve seen the workmen. Four of them. Pieters the joiner and his labourer; Smith the brickie and his paddy.’
‘Get anything out of them?’
‘Well, Chief, they’re a pretty dumb crowd. They’d been working there a week. Each night they’d used that same classroom for locking up their tools. The brickie didn’t have anything of much value—trowels, a couple of hammers, plumb, level—that sort of thing. Pieters had much more. One of these portable electric saws with all its bits and pieces besides a bag of valuable planes, a bolt setting tool, hand saws, brace and bits—the lot. It was a haul worth having, but evidently it was too heavy for toting to and fro on a bicycle. So they left it locked up on the site. I asked them if they didn’t think it could be pinched. They said they didn’t think so. So I asked them if anybody knew it would be there over the weekend, and they just said they supposed everybody in Rooksby who thought about it would know.’
‘Had they lost anything at all during the week—not just at the weekend?’
‘Nothing. Of course we couldn’t check, but that’s what they said.’
‘Were they telling the truth?’
‘I think so.’
‘Were they worried?’
‘A bit. You see they’ve got hold of several stories. One says somebody got into the school and the vicar saw whoever it was going in or saw a light shining and went in to see what was going on.’
‘Somebody who’d gone in to pick up what he could find?’
‘That’s the point, Chief. They’re equally torn between the idea that a thief went in on spec and that he went in on purpose to pick up their tools. If it’s the second they’re feeling sorry for themselves. Think they were the indirect cause of the murder.’
Masters lit his pipe. Brant, sharing the edge of the bed with Hill, said: ‘And as for seeing anything, you’d think they’re all blind.’
‘In what way?’
‘I asked ’em all separately to describe how the body was lying and got four entirely different stories. I know we don’t expect all stories to tally exactly, but this! Over a simple matter of how a body was stretched out.’
Masters said: ‘Who found it?’
Brant said: ‘Pieters. He had the key. Two of them were already waiting when he arrived. The fourth came a minute or two later. After the others had opened the classroom. They all agreed they’d got right into the room before Smith noticed the body.’
‘Pieters leading?’
‘He opened up and led the way in.’
‘What about the boards nailed over the hole in the wall?’
‘Some of them had been moved. They said they thought kids had broken in for a lark.’
‘They weren’t worried?’
‘Not a bit, apparently. They said kids break in everywhere these days.’
‘Did they touch anything in the classroom?’
‘They said not. Pieters told them to leave everything as it was and sent his labourer for P.C. Crome. They stood around outside until Superintendent Nicholson told them they could take their tools to another job.’
‘Is that all?’
‘That’s the lot, sir.’
‘Right. Well you’ve just time to jump in the car, drive out to the Nutmeg Tree, which you’ll get to just before you reach the by-pass, and make some enquiries about Dr Peter Barnfelt.’
Green said: ‘You’re considering him, then?’
‘I’ve got to. He was scudding around Rooksby footloose on Sunday evening. You told me the vicar’s key reappeared during the day, and he was the only caller at the vicarage other than ourselves. It is possible he brought the key back, because Pamela Plum-Bum was definitely not ill when I was there this morning, although that was the excuse for his visit.’
‘I get you. I’d had something like that at the back of my own mind.’
‘What d’you want to know?’ Brant asked.
‘Whether Peter Barnfelt was there on Sunday evening. If so, times and occurrences. Don’t be obvious. He already suspects I’m chasing him. Diplomacy—casual acquaintance role—recommended to call by the doctor etcetera, etcetera. And don’t stay long. Be back here for dinner.’
‘I’m not missing that duck for anything,’ Hill said.
The sergeants left. Masters walked over to the washbasin. Green lit a Kensitas and said: ‘I don’t like it. Not knowing the weapon, I mean. When are we going to get round to sorting that out?’
‘Why don’t you have a bash at it?’ Masters said.
Green thought this was typical. Whenever an insoluble part of a problem came up for discussion, he was asked to have a go. Keys, weapons, projectiles. That was the sort of thing he was always told off to investigate. Masters just sat around and talked. And then got the kudos. He said: ‘So you agree it’s important?’
‘Obviously.’
‘I began to think you were prepared to ignore little trifles like weapons.’
Masters dried his hands. ‘No. I try not to ignore anything. And with you around to keep reminding me, I rarely do. Got any ideas about the gun?’
‘None.’
‘Then you’ll be starting cold, won’t you? And that’s what we’d all have been doing if we’d concentrated on it from the start.’
‘You’re talking as if we’d already got somewhere.’
Masters said mildly: ‘I think we have. For one thing we’ve established that nearly everybody we’ve spoken to had a grudge against Parseloe at one time or another. So we’ve got a few suspects. Four or five. That’s not bad going in twenty-four hours, is it?’
Green stubbed his cigarette. ‘As long as you’re satisfied,’ he said. ‘When are we going to sort them out?’
Death After Evensong Page 10
