‘I’ve just got you and Mrs McKay,’ said Royle, raising his voice to the bull-bellow he habitually used with his children: ‘I say I’ve only got you and Mrs McKay to go, and then I’ve had a word with everyone of importance, I think.’
‘Nice to be important, of course,’ shouted Mrs Lullham from the kitchen, where she was fussing around and putting Royle’s glass on a tray of all things, ‘but really neither Joan nor I had met the old chap before, so I don’t think we’ll have much to add that’ll be of any use.’
‘That’s what I guessed,’ said Royle, relaxing further into his armchair, which was really almost as comfortable as if it were old, ‘but of course one simply has to see everyone in a case like this — the rule book does insist on that. Otherwise you can see how it would appear to the others involved, can’t you?’
‘Would you like me to ring Joan McKay and get her over here now?’ said Peggy Lullham, coming back to the living-room with a dewy glass of the nectar of the Australian Gods. ‘She’s only the next property, as you know, so she could be here in half an hour.’
Royle reflected for a moment. It wasn’t the right procedure, but then, these two hens weren’t going to be able to give him anything. Peggy Lullham had a generous soul and a guilty conscience, whereas Joan McKay was known to be on the near side. The McKays’ Scottish ancestry came out in some odd little ways: they took their holidays in the Far East instead of Europe, and pretended an interest in Asiatic culture which wouldn’t have deceived a koala bear. With a bit of luck, Royle thought, he’d be well set here for another couple of beers and a pleasant, undemanding chat. He made up his mind.
‘OK, that sounds fine, if you would,’ he said. ‘Tell her I’d be obliged, as a special favour . . .’
Mrs Lullham went into the hall, and Royle heard her say that he was being ‘charming’, in a voice that was obviously intended to carry back to him. He was being buttered up.
One and a half glasses later Mrs McKay arrived, and Royle took the opportunity of Peggy Lullham’s going to let her in to have a really good belch — one of the rafter-ringing variety he entertained his family with on those rare occasions when he stayed at home of an evening. Thus relieved, and feeling several trouser-sizes smaller, he positively sprang to his feet when the ladies came in — he’d seen it done somewhere, though he didn’t see the point of it himself — and ushered Joan McKay into a chair with as much aplomb as if he owned the place. Peggy Lullham had to repress one of the sarcasms she reserved for the uppity. After all, she was in his debt, and in view of the cost of the coat, was likely to remain so for some considerable time.
‘Of course, I’m not really investigating you ladies, in any way,’ began Royle, to get things straight. ‘As I’ve said to Mrs Lullham here — ’ proprietary wave of the hand as if they had never met before — ‘I realize you and the old gent were meeting for the first time, and that you two good ladies can’t have much idea about motives, and that sort of thing. But it will be really interesting to hear what you made of the party, how you thought things went.’ He paused for a moment, not used to speaking for such a length of time, but rather thinking he wasn’t going to get much chance once these two got together. ‘Of course, I have spoken to the academics, and to Miss Tambly, but they’re not quite . . .’
‘Ladies?’ said Mrs Lullham with a nervous little laugh.
‘Miss Tambly isn’t what I’d call a woman at all,’ said Mrs McKay. ‘Did you notice her legs, Peggy? More like a footballer’s than a woman’s, I’d say. And those shoes!’
Royle slid further down into his chair, perfectly relaxed, and let it all slide over him.
‘No wonder people are a bit chary about sending their girls to that dumpy school,’ agreed Peggy. ‘Not that it’s as bad, somehow, as with boys. Still, I can’t say I’d want a daughter of mine coming home looking like an armoured tank.’
‘And behaving like one,’ said Mrs McKay.
‘Yes, it’s not as though she has any social manner to set off her size, is it? She just barges in and says what she thinks without a by-your-leave, and heaven help you if you contradict her.’
‘She does make me feel a bit as if she’d been one of the Belsen guards, or something.’
‘Well, of course she was, in a way,’ said Peggy Lullham, ‘or at least a prison governor somewhere here, which is much the same thing. I believe that’s why they gave her the job. But it’s a bit thick of Lucy Wickham expecting one to meet her. I must say, I can never decide how I’m to talk to her, I mean, what sort of voice to use to her, and that sort of thing.’
‘Of course the academics are like that in a way too. I’m never sure about them either.’
‘Oh, I agree. The district has definitely gone downhill since they came, as we were saying the other night. You remember what a nice little circle we were in the old days, all like one big family as it were, even if we did have our disagreements now and then’ (she had remembered inconveniently that she and Joan McKay had once gone eleven years without speaking to each other). ‘But when I go to people’s homes these days I keep seeing people I don’t know. One can’t be sure whether they’re academics or real people, so I don’t know whether to be friendly or just — kind.’
‘I do so agree,’ said Mrs McKay. ‘I’ve seen so much of that Uni crowd, and been so disgusted that I’ve almost made up my mind not to send my Daphne there. You know, she’s very literary — you can hardly get a word out of her when the Woman’s Weekly arrives on Wednesdays. But then to think of her among all those weird types — well, no mother would welcome it, in my opinion. The trouble is, what else are we to do with her? We thought of a finishing school, possibly Switzerland, you know. But then the Nolan girl came back from France married to the kitchen boy, and I’ve had to think again.
‘Of course they say he’s a Count,’ said Peggy Lullham, ‘but you can still smell the onion on him.’
‘You notice how the academics didn’t mix the other night,’ said Mrs McKay. ‘They just collected together in a corner and talked about their own affairs — syllabuses or something as far as I could hear. They hardly exchanged a word with the rest of us.’
‘But when they did, you wished they hadn’t,’ said Peggy Lullham. ‘I told you about my Encounter, didn’t I?’
‘No. Do give.’
‘Well, it was awfully stuffy in there, with all those cheap cigarettes and that bad wine, so I went out into the garden for a breather. You know I can never stand a fug after an hour or two.’ (Mrs Lullham was famous for taking her secateurs to parties and thieving cuttings of other people’s rarities.) ‘Well, I was just admiring Lucy Wickham’s roses when what do you think I saw on the other side of the rose-bed?’
‘Don’t know. What?’
‘Just as near to me as you are this moment. That dirty, drunken man — what’s his name? — Day, isn’t it? One of Wickham’s staff. And he was urinating on a rose bush.’
‘He wasn’t!’
‘He was. Bold as brass. I shouted: “Don’t do that; that’s a Dusky Maiden.” And he said: “First time I’ve ever heard it called that.” I could have sunk through the ground. I didn’t know where to look.’
‘It’s funny, isn’t it? You wouldn’t expect academics to be so crude, would you? But they are!’
‘Oh, they are, most of them. Not the old boy, of course. Quite a different type of person altogether.’
‘Yes, yes. More the old world type. You could imagine there might be breeding there somewhere.’
‘Oh, you could see that.’
‘He was bored stiff, like the rest of us.’
‘Even Lucy wasn’t making much headway with him after a time. He was hardly noticing her.’
‘And usually she’s so good like that. I’ll give her that — she can make people feel at home, if she tries. I suppose it’s a necessary virtue if you’re so . . . undiscriminating in who you entertain. I’m sorry for her, though, in a way. That husband of hers isn’t much help to her. A bit of a nonentity, I�
�d say.’
‘Yes, just like old Turberville. It’s not much encouragement to a woman, especially if she’s obviously breaking her back to push herself forward.’
‘As Lucy Wickham is.’
‘Her trouble is she doesn’t know what she wants. Half the time she wants to get in with the graziers, and with our lot in general; half the time you can see that at heart she despises us — because really all she wants is for that husband of hers to get a job in Sydney or Melbourne, not that I can see it happening.’
Nor can I. After all, they must have some standards in Universities like that.’
Miraculously they paused for breath, and Peggy Lullham caught sight of Inspector Royle’s empty glass. She grabbed at it and Royle started forward and grunted, giving every sign of waking up from a discontented doze.
‘Much obliged to you, ma’am,’ he said as she bustled out to the kitchen to refill his glass. ‘Then I’ll have to be going.’
‘Was there anything else you wanted to know, Inspector?’ asked Joan McKay, obviously under the impression that they had been answering questions from him for the past hour, and that he had been listening. Royle tried to give the impression that he had, but was not quite sure how to, since he had been far away for the last five minutes in dreams he would hardly like to describe in polite company.
‘I’m not sure, ma’am,’ he said, reaching greedily for his new glass, and sinking greedily into it. ‘Most of what I wanted to know, I’ve got by now, I think.’ And he drew his blue-shirted arms gratefully across the ring of foam around his mouth, stopping guiltily half-way, suddenly realizing this was not supposed to be the thing.
‘I imagine you’ve got your ideas of who it was, haven’t you?’ asked Peggy Lullham.
‘Oh yes, ma’am,’ said Royle with childish cunning. ‘We definitely have got our ideas. Of course, one doesn’t want to be premature, but I think I can say we’ve got our eye on someone, yes, ma’am.’
‘I just hope it’s one of the academics,’ said Mrs McKay. ‘I’d put my money on that new one — that spotty little creep just out from Oxford — what’s his name?’
‘Now that’s most interesting, ma’am,’ said Royle, without the slightest suspicion of a guilty conscience that he might be playing foul by his new ally. ‘You’d plump for him, would you? Why would that be, now?’
‘If you’re still spotty at that age, there must be something wrong with you.’
‘You’re right there, Joan,’ said Peggy Lullham sagely. right-angled back roads until he got to the police station, ‘Mentally wrong, physiologically wrong.’
Royle downed his beer and stood up. Women’s intuition didn’t seem likely to come up trumps this time.
‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘When did you ladies get home? On the night of the party, that is?’
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Peggy. ‘I drove Joan. Her husband was to fetch her, but he was doing a business deal in town. We rang Beecher’s from the Wickhams’, but he was still busy, so we drove home together.’
‘When would that make it you left, then?’
‘Well, about ten minutes after the old boy, so far as I remember,’ said Joan McKay.
‘Arriving home . . .’
‘About a quarter to twelve, give a quarter of an hour or so either way,’ said Peggy. ‘Can’t say I looked at the clock. Anyway, I gave Joan the car, and she drove on.’
‘Anybody vouch for you?’
Both ladies looked somewhat affronted.
‘Vouch for us?’ said Peggy. ‘Well, the Wickhams saw us leave — they came to the road to wave.’
‘That’s not quite what I meant, ma’am. Was your husband awake when you arrived home?’
‘He was not, Inspector. My husband gets up at seven to see to the property. He was fast asleep when I got back.’
‘And you, ma’am?’ pursued Royle, turning to Joan McKay.
‘Well, there was no one there when I got home. All the servants were in bed, of course. No, I’m afraid I’ll have to be unvouched for, as you call it, Inspector.’
‘Oh well,’ said Royle philosophically. ‘I don’t suppose it matters. It’s just a matter of form. Thanks for the grog. I don’t reckon I’ll be needing to trouble you ladies again.’
He shook hands all round with a smarmy smile, hoping to re-establish himself in the ladies’ favour after this ruthless bout of questioning, and lumbered off through the front door in the direction of his car. Peggy Lullham and Joan McKay went hesitantly towards the window and watched him go. He started off with a burst, adding a thick cloud of dust to the already dusty atmosphere. The two women watched until the car became a mere speck, seeming a little uncertain of themselves, as if they both wanted to say something to the other, but weren’t quite sure how to approach the subject. Finally, as they turned back into the lounge, they caught each other’s eyes, and Joan McKay said quickly in a burst:
‘Was your husband in when you got home, Peg?’
‘No. What about yours?’
‘He didn’t get in all night. And I can’t get a thing out of him — can you?’
CHAPTER XIV
DARK INTERLUDE
THE RELIEF with which Royle realized that he had now interviewed all the people at the party for Belville-Smith was tempered by the thought that he had ‘got’ nothing out of any of them. The non-violent method of interrogation had its drawbacks, as he had always suspected but had never hitherto had a chance to test. One might say that there had emerged from the interviews hints, impressions, suggestions — one might, but as far as Royle was concerned it would not be true, because none of these things had fastened themselves on to his own consciousness. That delicate amalgam of feelings and intuitions which in most detective stories seems to take the place of solid evidence, or at any rate to precede it, was not a chemical process likely to take place in the mind of Royle. Some of those interviewed he had liked (in the sense that he knew how to deal with them); others he had disliked (in the sense that he did not know how to deal with them, and that they were the objects of his prejudice). He was quite willing to believe that those whom he liked were improbable murderers — at least of elderly Professors from England — and that those whom he disliked were probably the killers, or that one of them was. But beyond that lay a great blankness, and he knew that before the case could even get to court he was going to have to get a lot more to go on than that. In fact, he was going to have to back up his prejudices with some hard evidence, and of that he had not a scrap.
It was consciousness of this that soured his temper on the drive home from the Lullhams’ rather down-at-heel property. As more and more estates assumed a neglected and unpromising aspect, due to the drought, Royle sensed a drying-up of potential income. He belched beery smells into the hot, stuffy car, and thought dark thoughts. He threaded his way, still at fifty miles an hour, among the right-angled back roads until he got to the police station, and pulled up outside with a screech — because like a child he still thought that was the only impressive way to stop a car. He slammed the door when he got out, but walked slowly and morosely up to the front door of the building, a low, rambling old house whose new officialdom sat lightly on it. It had once belonged to one of the city’s mayors who had, in the nineteen-twenties, bankrupted himself (and nearly done the same for the city) in the building of it. As he pushed his way into the large waiting-room which was immediately inside the front door, a room full of imposing posters about regulations which nobody obeyed and wanted men whom nobody expected to catch, he heard the usual sounds of cards being shuffled in the little off-duty room nearby. He also heard the scarcely less usual sound of somebody being beaten up somewhere down at the other end of the building.
‘Tell ’em to keep it a bit quiet, can you, Jim,’ he snapped to the sergeant on duty who was shuffling papers at the desk. ‘They don’t need to stop — just shove a gag in or something.’
‘Right-ee-ho,’ said the sergeant. ‘Feeling under the weather? I’ve never known you to
have a hangover.’
‘ ’Snot that. It’s this bloody murder. I’ve got to sit down and have a real good think.’
The sergeant was immensely impressed.
‘Gee, that’s tough. Well, best of luck.’ And he went off in the direction of the screams and thumps.
Royle gave a grunt of self-pity, and was just proceeding in the direction of his office when he felt his shirt-sleeves being tugged from behind. Sensing an affront to his cloth, he turned and was annoyed to see a thin, old, tiny aboriginal woman. He had noticed and not noticed her as he came in, in the way that one does notice and not notice old aboriginal women. She had been sitting over by the door, but now she had come up to him. She was looking straight into his red, blotchy face, and seemed fairly used to the sort of stench that he emitted from his mouth. It momentarily flashed through his mind that there could be no reason for the way his wife flinched at the smell of his beery breath.
‘That’s my son,’ said the old woman, pointing towards the room at the back of the house.
‘Is it, now?’ said Royle unsympathetically. ‘Well, he’ll know better in future, won’t he?’
‘He ain’t done nothing,’ said the woman.
‘If he’s innocent he has nothing to fear,’ said Royle. It was a phrase he had read somewhere and thought might be useful. A scream from the back room immediately proved him wrong. Apparently Royle’s mates were having a last fling before giving him his peace for meditation, for immediately afterwards silence descended.
‘You make them stop doin’ him over and I tell you sumpen,’ said the old woman urgently.
‘What could you tell me, for Chrissake?’ said Royle, looking at her with contempt and trying to shrug her off. His present investigation gave him an immense disgust for the world of petty Abo crimes which had previously occupied his time and skills. But she kept her fingers on the sleeve of his shirt.
‘That ther murder,’ she said. ‘I can tell you sumpen about that.’
‘What murder?’ said Royle. ‘Has there been another knifing down at the reserve? Anyway, if there has, I don’t want to know about it. Tell the sergeant here, when he comes back. I’ve got my hands full at the moment, thank you very much.’
Death of an Old Goat Page 13
