by Ellis Peters
‘Oh, really?’ said George cautiously. ‘Coming down from the head of the valley, was he? Which car was he using?’
‘The little sports job.’ Her voice was faintly disapproving. The Aston Martin was not what she would have expected of Rainbow. ‘Very handsome,’ she admitted, ‘as a work of art. Not his style, would you think? There was something so – orthodox and cautious – about him.’
Well, that was something definite. She knew the little sports job too well to be mistaken, and she had the incisive mind that is always scrupulous in reporting and accurate in timing. She had something else, too, the shrewdness to note their very slight stiffening, and the brief glance they had exchanged, and that was all it took to make her look again at what she had seen and said, and wonder exactly what had taken Rainbow up the valley towards Wales after choir practice, and above all, what had taken him back to the church at nearly midnight, since that was where he had been found. From that it was but a step to pondering whether the Aston Martin had been left in its garage or taken out again, and whether, in fact, it had actually been Rainbow driving it…
A remote and thoughtful stillness took possession of Miss de la Pole’s noble countenance, out of which concerned and steely eyes studied George and Sergeant Moon, and drew private conclusions.
‘His missus chose the Aston, I fancy,’ said Sergeant Moon with a face of bovine innocence, and paid for his Woodbines. ‘They both drove it, though. Thanks, Gwen, love!’
He led the way out, and George was aware, as he was, of the deep silence of the two women left behind them in the shop. Moon was grinning.
‘Whose side are you on?’ George wondered tolerantly.
‘Well, be interesting to see what results, won’t it? You going to get that pint and bite before you go and tackle the lady?’
‘I am,’ said George, and set course for the ‘Gun Dog’. ‘I’m going to need it!’
CHAPTER FOUR
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Colin Barron’s car was out on the semi-circle of meticulously-raked gravel, a green SAAB, very dark and sleek and reticent; and Colin Barron was sitting in the small drawing-room with a whisky glass in his hand and restrained and chivalrous concern on his brow, looking very correct in the role of a would-be beau come to commiserate with his intended on her sudden bereavement. A very complex role indeed, but he was managing rather well. No doubt the discreet flowers in a vase on the coffee table, lilac and purple tinted, had come from him, the delicate hint of mourning combined with the suggestion of a tentative love-gift. He was a very presentable fellow, and no doubt they would make a handsome couple, if it ever came to that, but he wasn’t presuming on his hopes. When George appeared, Colin rose politely, greeted the visitor with an intelligent acceptance of his official status, as opposed to the social contact they had occasionally shared, cast a wistful glance at Barbara to see what she desired, and read her wishes with resigned good-humour.
‘I just dropped in to say what one does say in this sort of crisis. Not that it can do much for anyone, but at least it goes to show one is there in readiness. Barbara knows she has only to call on me.’ He looked at her again, but got no encouragement. ‘She doesn’t feel any need of me now, and I don’t feel any need to stand around to defend her against you, Superintendent. She’s as good as nodding me out of the door. And since she knows I’ll be back for less than a nod, I’m going.’
‘It was nice of you to come, Colin,’ said Barbara, ‘and I do appreciate it. I’m sure I shall need your help, if it comes to selling up, but it’s early days yet to think of that. But thanks, anyhow. I’ll be in touch.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ said the young man rather ruefully. ‘Don’t I know it! But call me on any pretext, any time. I’ll be glad.’
He knew the place well enough by now to be allowed to depart unescorted, and doubtless he would be back just as informally if she neglected to call him. The silence closed in after his going.
‘Do sit down,’ said Barbara, eyeing George somewhat quizzically, and herself set the example. ‘Whatever it is, you’re never unwelcome, you know. I’d offer you a drink, but I have the feeling you wouldn’t take it, and that would be rather sad. So you speak first, and then we’ll see where the clues lead.’
She had plainly been relaxing after a bath when Barron arrived. The glow was still on her, she was without make-up, and swathed in a loose gown of heavy Indian cotton in a sumptuous flower-print in red and greens on black, with a padded yoke and voluminous sleeves. Her hair was a cloud about head and shoulders, coiled and moist from steam. She had a marvellously serene beauty. Maybe this was the first time Barbara had been alone, in the sense of her own person and responsible only to herself, for a long time.
‘I just wondered,’ said George mildly, ‘if you’d like to amend your story about how you spent yesterday evening.’
‘I wouldn’t really like to,’ said Barbara reasonably, and still smiling with that distant composure in which he had so little part, ‘but I can see I’d better.’ And the smile suddenly warmed into genuine intimacy. There was mischief in it, and sympathy. She was positively inviting him to connive at a friendly compromise.
Naturally, Moon’s guess had been right. Miss de la Pole had telephoned her as soon as the police were out of sight. Not taking sides, simply informing a possibly threatened neighbour of the accidental information lodged against her. How marvellous was the working of the conscience of Middlehope! And how simply, almost inadvertently, it had absorbed within itself this blatantly alien body. George respected the instinct that worked within so idiosyncratic a community, but reserved his options. Even Middlehope could be wrong.
‘Then suppose you tell me,’ he said, ‘as if we hadn’t been over this ground before, exactly how you spent yesterday evening.’
‘I did lie to you,’ she said, quite softly and serenely. ‘I told you I was home all the evening, waiting for Arthur. I wasn’t. I was here until he went off to practice, and he’d told me he was staying late, and I was here cooped up on my own, and that’s something I don’t always choose to be. About nine I took my car and went out for a drive. It was a nice, mild night, I knew he wouldn’t be back for some time, and I felt like being out and alone. And frankly, I didn’t care if he got back first. It wouldn’t have troubled him at all, you know. I had functions, and I performed them. He wasn’t worried about what I did on the side. I went quite a long way. It can’t have been far off midnight when I got back. He wasn’t home. I took it then that he wasn’t coming, but he had his keys, anyhow. I went to bed. And the rest is just as I told you.’ She reached for her drink with a hand steady as a rock. ‘And that’s all,’ she said, and looked him firmly in the eye.
‘You mean you were driving round for a matter of perhaps two and a half hours, alone?’ said George mildly.
‘I suppose I must have been.’
‘Nothing else to tell me?’
‘Nothing.’
And whatever he might think of that, it seemed to be agreed that she had driven in at the gates here at about a quarter to midnight, well after the probable time of her husband’s death, though not after the limit of possibility. And from the opposite direction. Driving someone else back out of the danger zone before returning home herself? The timing made it possible that she had guilty knowledge, even that she could have assisted at Rainbow’s demise, or at least connived at it, even if it seemed unlikely that she managed it alone. Rainbow had seemed to value her simply as one of the most advantageous of his investments, but there were plenty of other men who showed every sign of putting a very different value upon her. Which of them, if any, could she have been running home, or at least to a place of safety, up the valley?
‘And you didn’t call in anywhere for a drink?’
‘No. Nor drop in on any friend. Nor even call for a paper of chips,’ she said with a fleeting smile, ‘though I do remember Charlie had been frying. No, I didn’t stop to speak to a soul, and I doubt if anyone noticed me passing.’ She made no mention, n
aturally, of Miss de la Pole; she understood the rules of the game by instinct.
‘It won’t do, you know,’ said George simply.
‘It will have to, won’t it?’ she said just as simply, and smiled at him.
He was sure then that there was someone else involved, and Barbara had no intention of letting him – it had to be him! – be drawn into a case. Not only would she deny his existence, she would probably warn him off, whoever he was, from coming near her until this affair blew over. Did that mean there was any guilt involved? Not necessarily. Just that she was well aware there could be suspicion of guilt.
‘All right,’ said George equably.‘ That’s your story. If you ever decide to change it, call me.’
She went out to the forecourt with him. There was a chill wind blowing between the sheltering trees. ‘Do go in,’ said George, remembering she was fresh from the bath. ‘You shouldn’t risk catching cold.’
She gazed at him for a moment with an unreadable face, and then suddenly smiled at him, and turned and went back into the house without a word, and closed the door softly between them.
Rainbow’s solicitors were a Comerbourne firm, a fanfare of four resounding names, not one of which survived in the company. The man George wanted was a Mr Bowes, middle-aged, thin and spry. Yes, he held Rainbow’s will, and yes, he fully understood the significance it might hold for the police investigation. ‘Cui bono’ is still sound sense. Until after the inquest and the release of the body for burial, he remained the sole custodian of Rainbow’s testamentary dispositions, but he made no bones about divulging them to the officer in charge.
‘It’s a very concise affair. There are small legacies to his assistants in both shops. Abbot’s Bale House is left to his wife, with all its contents. But the residual legatee, who gets his businesses, all his holdings in banks and stocks, the lot, is the manageress of his Birmingham shop. A Miss Isobel Lavery.’
It was a shock, and yet it probably should not have been. The partnership with Barbara, on any but the most superficial examination, bore all the marks of a business arrangement, a mutual benefit alliance.
‘And I take it that the residue will amount to a pretty considerable fortune? Judging by his way of living – and I never heard that he gave anyone the impression of being a bad financial risk?’
‘Anything but,’ agreed Mr Bowes frankly. ‘There’ll be not far short of a quarter of a million to come to Miss Lavery.’
Enough to provide an added incentive, supposing a wife who repented of her bargain felt the urge to break free; always supposing, also, of course, that she didn’t know she wasn’t going to get it! But undoubtedly by the same token Miss Lavery represented another possibility to be taken into account. And if she occupied so confidential a place in Rainbow’s life as to come in for the lion’s share of his property, the odds were that she, at least, not having the security of a wife, would need to know very well what was in his will. Businesswomen can usually take care of their own interests. She might, of course, be the exception.
‘Have you met Miss Lavery?’
‘Once or twice, on Mr Rainbow’s business. No doubt you’ll have to see her. You’ll be able to make your own assessment.’ Clearly he had made his, if he wasn’t willing to share it. ‘I haven’t yet been in touch with her, but I believe Mrs Rainbow has. In view of what’s happened, I suppose she may have decided to close the shop. You’d better have her home address, too, just in case.’
As it turned out, however, Miss Isobel Lavery took a sternly business-like view even of death. The shop in Birmingham, a narrow but expensive frontage leading far back through several well-furnished rooms, proved to be open for business as usual. A young girl at a fragile Regency desk came forward to enquire his interest, and opened her eyes wide when he asked for the manageress. She vanished into the mysterious rear regions, and came back a few minutes later to lead him into a small, plain office. The elaborations were kept for the showrooms, though this austere workroom was elegant enough in its own way.
Miss Lavery could have been called many things, handsome, decorative, even sumptuous, but not elegant. She was a tall, full-breasted blonde with an excellent figure, and a great casque of lacquered hair in pale, silvery gold. Light blue eyes artistically shadowed with darker blue gazed coolly and shrewdly out of a clear-featured face that erred only slightly on the side of coldness and hardness. She had, he thought, added a few funereal touches of black jewellery and a knotted georgette scarf to the black dress she habitually wore in the shop. She was not broken-hearted, but she was observing the conventions of bereavement. There was even a handkerchief, large, silken and expensive, and bordered two inches deep with black, grey and silver lace, deployed ready on her desk.
It was easy to see why, though for this setting and this purpose she was manifestly right, she would have been hopelessly wrong as hostess to the eccentric aristocracy of Middlehope, and chatelaine of the country house at Abbot’s Bale. Rainbow had believed in horses for courses.
‘Yes, Mrs Rainbow telephoned me with the news yesterday afternoon,’ she said. Nearly all the Brummie had been ironed out of her voice, but not quite all; she was of the city. ‘It was a terrible shock, as you can imagine. I thought he would not have wanted me to close the shop. He was completely professional. If you invite the public to do business with you, you must remain available, or they have a legitimate complaint. I wanted to do what he would have wished.’
She answered questions readily. No, she had had no communication with Mr Rainbow on the day of his death, or the day previous to it, and she knew of nothing that could possibly shed light on what had happened to him. The last time she had spoken to him, by telephone, was two days earlier, when they had discussed the lots to be bid for at a forthcoming sale, and she had carried out his suggestions and bought the pieces he wanted. There had been no suggestion of anything unusual or disturbing in the conversation or his manner. The last time she had seen him was a week before that, when he had come down and stayed in town overnight, and they had had dinner together.
Ten days might be quite a long abstention. Had Barbara taken it for granted that he had gone into town to join his mistress, the night he died? It made sense, in the light of her reactions.
‘Thank you, Miss Lavery, you’ve been very helpful,’ said George truthfully, when she had poured out her willing confidences, and wondered almost convincingly what was to happen to the business now, and whether Mrs Rainbow would wish things to continue in the old way. ‘I’m sure you’re right to keep the place open and functioning, and wait for instructions. Your position can hardly be threatened in any way.’ That was bait, and in spite of herself she rose to it. He saw the brief, cool flame of triumph in her eyes, before she reached for the handkerchief and hid them behind it. She knew, all right, who owned the business from now on.
‘Just a formality,’ he said, remaining seated when she was sure he was about to rise and go, ‘I’m sure you won’t mind telling me what your own movements were on Thursday night?’
After the almost reverent tone of their interview, she should have been visibly shaken by this sudden descent to earth, but she was not even ruffled. She had expected it, and she knew why. Oh, yes, she knew how much her hold on Rainbow had been worth, and she was prepared now for the resultant enquiry. And though anything she said would have to be checked, he knew then that it would be time wasted. She knew she was in the clear, and nobody and nothing could get between her and that quarter of a million.
‘I understand’ she said, ‘that you have to ask everyone connected with him. I was at home all the evening, after I left the shop at six. I had a little bridge party, we meet on Thursdays at seven when we’re all free, at each flat in turn, and this time it was at my place. I’ll give you all the names, I know you have to check.’ And she did; two of them women, single like herself, the fourth a man in attendance on one of the girls; and George knew that they would check out without blemish, as in the event they did. ‘We broke up about eleven-th
irty. We all live fairly close, you see.’
He saw, and more than she was recommending to his sight. He saw a woman quite prepared to stake her body, somewhat resignedly, against future profits, but rather preferring, if truth were told, the small local bridge four, and the cosy coffee-evenings in city flats, without penalty. Now she could be both respectable and rich.
She went out with him to the street, which was a concession that betrayed her unease, not about her own immunity, which was absolute, but about something more subtle and vulnerable, her whole new situation. She thought she was on the verge of bliss, of fulfillment in riches, and yet some hidden part of her was nervous of the change. In anticipation it was unshadowed gain, now on the threshold she was seeing those little bridge parties shrivelling into ashes, the old friends dropping off, the horizon abruptly extended into frightful distances of challenge? Or was this dread he felt in her only that something might yet loom between her and Rainbow’s money?
‘I suppose there’s bound to be some delay about probate, in the circumstances,’ she said almost wincingly, at parting. ‘But there won’t be any serious difficulties, will there? I mean, I have the business to manage in the meantime, I ought to know how I stand as soon as possible.’
‘I’m sure everything will proceed normally,’ said George with resigned tolerance. ‘Whatever dispositions Mr Rainbow made about his property will be observed. Subject, of course, to the obvious innocence of all legatees in the circumstances leading to his death. The inquest shouldn’t be a great obstacle.’ He could feel her subdued tension sending out ripples through the air, and he understood the passion with which the hardworking poor – for what else was she, with inflation at this level? – look forward to almost unimaginable wealth. He didn’t blame her very much. Pretty obviously she had provided with very limited reward what was now to be repaid in full at last.
