‘But you haven’t done that.’
‘Because I’m waiting to see what it’s all about.’
‘So it wasn’t such a shock after all?’
‘What wasn’t?’
‘Serving a sentence. I’d have expected you to be complaining. Bitterly. Make an issue of it, for sympathy.’
‘I explained. No pity.’
‘Sympathy’s different. It implies understanding. I can understand, because I sent a lot of people to prison, and knew a lot who’d come out. Always whining, they were. Always claiming they hadn’t done it.’
‘What in heaven’s name are you getting at?’
‘I’m wondering whether a knowledge of guilt makes it more acceptable.’
He returned his attention to the keyboard, fingering an intricacy that sounded like Bach. He was communing with a friend.
‘I’d rather say’, he told me, finishing with a flourish, ‘that a knowledge of innocence allows you to treat it as an irrelevance. Besides…’ He smiled disarmingly. ‘Besides, I didn’t have it at all bad, considering. It was an open prison. Probably they reckoned I was harmless. They let me use the piano in the canteen whenever I liked, and tune it. It was terrible when I got there. And I got a male voice choir going. They allowed me to compose, too. Oh yes, I write music. Not much good at anything else, but that I can do. Do you realise what that can mean, to somebody like me, Mr…’
‘Patton. Richard Patton.’
‘Mean to me. I’ve never been one to get out and about, and I suppose, looking back on it, I wasn’t much good at looking after myself. They took all that off my hands, all the background day-to-day worries. They gave me a bed and my meals and a piano, and I didn’t have to go out in the rain. D’you know, I think the screws envied me.’
He laughed openly, emphasising it with great, crashing chords that rocked my chair. I could feel the sound tingling my skin.
‘I wrote an opera, Mr Patton, while I was there. Two string quartets, a piano sonata, a symphony—no, two symphonies. And this…’
He launched into a lugubrious yet hauntingly amusing march theme. It mocked itself, mocked its rhythm.
‘D’you know what that is?’ he demanded.
I shook my head. I’d never heard it before.
‘I call it “The March of the Screws”. It’s from a musical I’m working on. Set in a prison. I’m having great fun with it. It’s plotted against the background of a mass break-out, only it’s the screws who are trying to get out, not the prisoners.’
‘An all-male cast, then? It wouldn’t succeed in the West End.’
‘Ah, but that’s the point. Three wardresses get drafted there by mistake. And a replacement doctor who turns out to be a woman, young, curvy. You know. Listen.’
Again his fingers spoke for him. A dance, a boisterous, driving dance in a hoppity rhythm—five-four time would it be?—then breaking and tumbling across other rhythms, echoes of waltzes and minuets, of bouncy, throaty blues and hard, harsh rock.
He could barely see me through his hair when he looked up, laughing now in uncontained enjoyment.
‘That’s the ballet,’ he explained. ‘Second act. In the prison hospital, the first time the new doctor appears. All the prisoners jump from their beds, plastered and bandaged, and the whole stage is full of tumbling convicts, over and under and round the beds, and she in the middle, tossed from one to the other…of course, you’d need a proper ballet troupe…’ He blinked at me. ‘You don’t like it?’
‘I can’t wait to see it.’
‘I’m going to ask Rosemary Trew to put it on.’
Then he sobered abruptly. The mention of her name had brought him face to face with the reason for my visit.
I waited, but he didn’t say any more. He was an emotional and sensitive man who had always found it necessary to withdraw from all with cruel reality. Then they’d tossed him in, and he’d been confined with the harshness of reality at its worst. So he’d retreated even further within himself, the shell thickening and contracting. I wondered whether I dared to crack it. His musical mockery of his experiences was evidence of the distress he’d hidden from.
‘She seems very well,’ I told him. ‘Full of life, confident, a successful woman. She was rehearsing a play.’ To his blank stare, I explained: ‘Well, you didn’t ask.’
He had the grace to blush.
‘You haven’t been to see her?’ I asked, knowing he hadn’t.
‘There are certain restrictions.’
‘And she hasn’t been here?’
For a moment he eyed me uncertainly, then he dashed the hair aside and took the expression with it. And he relaxed.
‘Rosemary has her own life. What did you want to see me for? More questions? Isn’t anybody going to let me forget it?’
‘Will you tell me about that evening—when your uncle died.’
‘I’ve been over this…’
‘I know. A hundred times. But once more—please.’
He shrugged, the shoulder remaining motionless but his head jerking sideways. ‘I went to Uncle Edwin’s party. No, that’s not strictly correct—I was there for a week, and he decided to throw a party. His flop frolic, he called it. Good old Uncle Edwin, barmy to the last.’
‘Is that how you see him, insane?’
‘Barmy’s a different word. Around here it means gently eccentric. Mind you, gently isn’t a word I’d choose for him. He could be wild when he liked. Crazy wild. But anyway, I was there for the party.’
‘These visits—did you do that often?’
‘Two or three times a year. Call ‘em script conferences, if you like.’
‘He conferred with you?’
‘Will you let me tell it!’ He waited for my gesture. I made a mental note to pick up on it later. He went on: ‘I was there. Five or six other people came along. Me, I’m not one for parties, and in any event, I’d been trying to get a word with Uncle Edwin all that day.’
‘You hadn’t found time, during the previous days?’
‘He was hardly ever there. Back and forth to London. There was a panic on, his latest play failing. You must know all about this.’
‘Some. You said you were trying to get a word with him…’
‘Yes. Of course, he brushed me off. If there was anything he didn’t want to talk about, it was money, and that was exactly what I wanted to talk about. Then there was this stupid idea he had about going out for more drinks. Most of them had had enough, anyway, and there seemed to be plenty left. Anyway, he made quite an issue about it. One of the others tried to stop him, joking you know. Pierson, I think. Uncle nearly went at him. So we let him go.’
‘Go?’ I asked. ‘Actually go?’
‘His car wouldn’t start. It was down there, parked in front of the garages.’
‘His car, you’re talking about? Rosemary’s was inside one of the garages, I understand.’
‘Yes. The wrong garage, as it turned out. That was my fault. I’d left it there, that afternoon. Why should I care which garage was which?’
‘But you knew the doors were radio operated?’
‘Oh yes. Like a kid, Uncle Edwin was, with his toys.’
‘And you’d parked Rosemary’s nose-in, inside the wrong garage?’
‘Yes. You know all this,’ he said accusingly.
‘I’d like to hear it confirmed.’
‘I drove into Chirk for some cigarettes. Frankly, I just wanted to get out of the way, Rosemary getting ready for that stupid party, and everything in chaos.’
‘Cigarettes, you say? You’re not smoking now.’
‘I gave it up. Inside.’
‘I thought you got a tobacco allowance.’
‘We did. I sold mine. I had to pay for my own music paper. It’s expensive. Can I go on?’
I nodded, amused at his aggression.
‘I wasn’t going to switch the cars round for him. To tell you the truth, I’m not much of a driver. Didn’t even have a licence, if you must know.’
<
br /> ‘I’ll bear it in mind, if I need something to fall back on. You’d left the garage door open?’
‘I don’t know. Well, yes. I remember trying the button on the wall, but it didn’t work.’
‘But you knew that the radio in your uncle’s car would operate that door?’
‘Does this matter? Yes, I knew. I’d had it all explained, before. But it wasn’t a big thing, whether the door was up or down. Why should I worry, the wretched car was safe. Where did I get to?’
‘Your uncle’s car wouldn’t start.’
‘That’s it. He came stamping back to the house and told Rosemary that it…’
‘I thought she’d gone down with him, still trying to persuade him not to go.’
He thought about it, his right hand toying with scales. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he decided. ‘I can see it now. She came back for the keys.’
‘You used the word stamping.’
‘Well…she was angry. At him and his stubbornness. I’d still got her car keys in my pocket, see. I handed them over. She said something about not knowing what’d got into him, and went back with them.’
‘You were where, at that time?’
‘On the terrace.’
‘And she went down, over the lawn, and round the line of bushes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And at that time, where were the rest?’
‘Heaven knows. All over the place. Somebody was rushing round, trying to get them all together for their childish games.’
‘So you were there, alone, on the terrace?’
‘I was there,’ he said heavily, ‘all alone on the terrace.’
‘Then Rosemary came back.’
‘She came round the rhodos and made a gesture.’
‘There’s lots of gestures.’
‘This was kind of disgust and triumph, all mixed. She waved.’
‘Was it dark?’
‘Heavens, you do jump about. Yes, I suppose it was dark. The sun’d gone down behind the mountains…oh, ages before.’
Detecting his impatience, I spoke placidly. ‘Just trying to get the picture. Dark or not, you saw her wave?’
‘Yes.’
‘Against the background of the car’s lights?’
He thought. ‘Well, no. There was light from all those windows behind me. Whatever it was, I did see her. And anyway, I wouldn’t have seen the car’s lights—it was nose-in.’
‘True.’ I, too, paused for thought. ‘She was walking up towards you?’
He nodded. ‘At what point—where had she reached—when you heard the car engine start?’
‘Lord, you do ask some tricky things! How can I remember that?’ He shook his head. ‘When she came round the bushes, I suppose. Maybe a bit later.’
‘But she could see you?’
‘I was standing there. Anyway, why else would she have waved? Is this important?’
‘I think so. And exactly when did he drive away?’
‘Exactly? You’re an optimist.’
‘When did you hear the engine sound fade?’
‘No…let me think. She came up to me, and said something about: “He’s off.” And…yes, she said she hoped I’d left enough petrol in. Then she walked off across the terrace. At that time the engine was still running.’
But Rosemary had stated that the engine sound had died away almost at once. Trying not to sound as though it mattered—could be critically important—I said: ‘You’re sure of that?’
A nerve in the corner of one eye jerked. ‘Sure? I suppose so. The engine went on running, and I can remember thinking: what now? It got me wondering if I’d done something wrong—even if he was sitting there and watching the petrol gauge, and maybe I had left it nearly empty. It’s all coming back. Yes…I was getting really worried, it’d been so long.’
‘How long? Can you remember that?’ I couldn’t keep the interest out of my voice, and he sensed it. He played three notes, plink, plonk, plunk, and looked across at me again.
‘Three minutes, easily. Then the engine faded off, and I was relieved, I can tell you.’
‘And you were alone at that time?’
‘I don’t think so. Somebody had come out on to the terrace. Mildred…that’s Miss Niven, she was just behind me.’
‘And did she hear the engine sound die away?’
‘She must’ve done, because she said: “Well, he’s got off at last.” Something like that.’
I had been holding my breath. He could not have known what I was aiming at, but he’d just given himself a very neat alibi for the murder at the earlier time. The snag was that he’d destroyed any alibi Rosemary might have had. I breathed in deeply. ‘You mind if I smoke?’
‘No. I thought we’d finished.’
‘I rather believe we’ve only just started.’
‘You want to hear all about me hanging around, waiting for him to come back?’
‘Not particularly. You wouldn’t have started this hanging around for quite a while, I suppose?’
He had become bored with it, now that we appeared to have passed the bit that’d interested me. ‘Maybe getting on for three-quarters of an hour later I went down, back up, down again. I can’t remember how many times. This is making my head ache.’
‘But finally, you were standing there in front of the garages, and you heard a faint humming sound stop?’
‘You know how it is. I was standing there, in front of the garages, as you say, and the sound changed. I looked round, and all of a sudden I knew. You get a nasty, prickling feeling down your back.’
He shuddered. The chord he played softly did the same to me.
‘This humming…had it been there…’ I rephrased it. ‘Can you say how long it’d been going on?’
‘Oh Lord…’
‘Could it have been there before, when you went down for one of your earlier trips?’
He was silent for so long that I thought he didn’t intend to answer. But when his eyes met mine I understood. Distress clouded them.
‘Are you telling me’, he whispered, ‘that I might’ve, if I’d been smarter…could have saved him?’
‘I doubt that.’
‘But you’re saying—you are saying, aren’t you—that he could’ve been in that garage a long while.’
‘I’m suggesting that.’
His mind made the leap that included our discussion on the time Edwin was supposed to have left. ‘You’re saying he never even left!’ he accused me, angry that he had to face that thought.
‘There’s evidence supporting that.’
‘Then I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ His hair whipped about as he shook his head in despair.
Before he saw all round and through it, I hurried him on. ‘You couldn’t raise the door?’
‘Can’t you let me think!’
‘The door.’
‘I tried the button on the garage wall, but it didn’t work. Then I thought of the radio in the other car, but that didn’t work, either. So I ran for help, and they all came running down, and somebody managed to lift the door…’
‘Somebody?’
‘Drew Pierson, I think.’
‘And you went inside…’
‘Not me.’
‘You knew he was dead?’
‘Why d’you have to remind me? What came out—a great waft of heat and fumes and stench! Nobody could’ve lived in that.’
‘So you didn’t see the beer and the rest on the rear seat?’
‘As though I’d trouble!’
‘What if I tell you that I can show that the beer, and probably the rest of the drinks on that rear seat, didn’t come from any local pub. The evidence is that your uncle didn’t drive away from the garage at all. As he couldn’t have closed the doors himself, somebody else did it. He was certainly killed, but not at the time the police believed. What was done to bring it about must’ve taken place at the time you heard the engine sound fade. What you heard was the door closing down on the car.’
&n
bsp; ‘Dear God, let me think!’
‘I’ve already done the thinking. If he couldn’t have operated the door himself, and the beer wasn’t fetched by him, then it must have been put there to make it appear that your uncle had driven away, and later returned. The only reason was to create an alibi.’
‘I need a drink.’
‘So the beer must’ve been taken there for that purpose…’ I paused. This was the point that was a bit rocky. Where had the drinks been? ‘It was booze that must have been available, and quite close.’
He was on his feet, gesturing. ‘Will it stop you if you’ve got a drink in your hand?’
‘Possibly.’
He reached behind him for the bottom of the bookshelves, and produced a bottle and two glasses. I might have guessed: a drink to Duncan was sherry.
‘It’s rather dry,’ he said doubtfully, desperately reaching for the norm. I sipped.
‘It’s fine.’ Then I waited.
‘The drinks you’re talking about’, he said, ‘were probably the stuff from the boot.’
‘Say that again.’
‘I had a flat tyre that day, and had to change the wheel. Heavens, I’d never changed a wheel in my life. But when I opened the boot to look for the spare, there was all this drink. I had to lift it out, ‘cause the wheel was underneath. I wondered what it was doing there.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Fancy that.’ My mind was racing.
‘Never gave it another thought.’
So now I had it. Somebody had hidden the drinks in the boot of the Dolomite. The keys were normally left in the car, otherwise Edwin wouldn’t have been so annoyed when Duncan took them away in his pocket. All I had to find was who had done that, borrowed the car, bought the drinks…
‘Who’, I asked, ‘could’ve put it there?’
I’d been speaking to myself, and was therefore surprised at his violent reaction. A look of horror clouded his face, and the sherry in his glass shook so much that it nearly spilled. He tried to say something, seemed to choke, and then managed to say: ‘It was Rosemary’s car.’
‘Wait a minute. That drink happens to have been bought in this area. I didn’t tell you that.’
The glass banged down on the piano, spilling and probably ruining the polish. His eyes were wild. ‘I’m not having it…you’re throwing around your accusations…’
An Alibi Too Soon Page 10
