The Strange Attractor
Page 18
“She was a bloody terrifying woman,” Kate said, stabbing viciously at the roll of bandage with a safety-pin. “And I’m glad she’s dead. That beastly knife… Out of my own kitchen was where she got it from. The bitch.”
“That’s as may be and I can understand your strength of feeling. But,” Jackson said, “that doesn’t tell me quite what I—”
“You’ve got that letter, haven’t you?” Dobie said. “You’ve read it?”
“Yes, but that’s not… I mean it’s a fake. Not a real confession.”
“She had to tell a lot of the truth, though, in order to make it convincing. They were stealing the stuff from Corder all right, she and Sammy between them. And Jenny was running it out to France and selling it there. Sammy did get cold feet when he got caught and so Wendy killed him. Jenny didn’t know about that, in fact I doubt if she knew that Sammy was involved at all. She thought Wendy was getting all this material off her own bat. Wendy was working there, after all, and what’s more was the boss’s daughter. Jane’s daughter as well, of course. As we’ve noticed.”
“Yes,” Jackson said, surveying Kate’s handiwork and moving his arm experimentally up and down. “Nice job, doctor. Thanks very much. But killing your own mother, now, that’s a real nasty thing to do. That’s the part as I don’t seem to be quite able to grasp.”
“Oh well, she hated her mother. And as far as I can see the feeling was just about mutual.” Discreet bumping noises could be heard from the passageway outside, where other of the boys in blue were supervising the carting away of Agatha’s mortal body. Dobie listened drowsily to the oddly comforting sound of receding footsteps… Bump. Bump. Bump. Bump. Bump… and woke to find Inspector Jackson’s better hand on his shoulder, shaking him quite roughly. “Don’t go to sleep now, Mr Dobie.”
“Oh yes. Sorry. Take the point.” Heavy weights now seemed to be glued to Dobie’s eyelids but he struggled gamely to continue. He took the point. What was it?… Ah yes. “The point is that Jane didn’t know a thing about the industrial espionage business but she did find out that Sammy was lending his room to Jenny and Wendy two or three evenings a week, for purposes she could guess at all too easily, and she was pretty furious. Jane was rather a jealous sort of person, after all. Jealous of her friends. She must have suspected that Jenny had made friends with her in the first place just to have a chance of speaking to Wendy and I suspect that was probably quite true. So she thought of it as some kind of a betrayal, I suppose. She was going to let me know all about it and she spoke to Sammy about it, too. She told him to stop lending Wendy the room and that was a mistake because Sammy of course told Wendy so Wendy knew that Jane knew…”
Oh God, Dobie thought, I feel so tired…
“And so of course Jane had to be stopped from talking in the same way as Sammy. Wendy wouldn’t have been worried about the lesbianism thing because in this day and age who cares a damn? – but if the security people at Corders ever got to make a connection between her and Jenny and Sammy, then the whole thing would be finished and that’s why they were so concerned to keep their meetings here a secret, Jenny even wearing that blonde wig and all. I don’t know if you follow what I’m saying?” His voice seemed to be wandering all over the place, going up and down and sideways in a most disconcerting way. He was on the down phase now from the Benzedrine, as was obvious. “… Because the crazy thing is that Wendy wasn’t really in it for the money. Those trips to Paris were just to keep Jenny excited and interested and feeling she was in on something naughty. Sammy was the only one who wanted money. Wendy didn’t. All she wanted, at any rate to start with, was her own back.”
Jackson’s voice came to him from a long long way away. “Who on?”
On whom, a small answering voice said from the back of Dobie’s brain. The voice, which was that of a former college pundit, had also gone a long long way away and could now be ignored. “On Alec. I can’t help feeling that if you give that letter to one of your police psychoanalyst blokes he’ll be a whole lot more than mildly interested. She hated her mother and conversely, she felt herself drawn towards her father but she knew that what he’d really wanted was a son and though she tried her very hardest she knew she’d never be able to live up to his expectations in that respect. I wouldn’t be surprised if that isn’t what got her into that lesbian kick, sex role confusion or something like that. But Wendy was a very jealous person, too. Just like Jane, in fact. Daughters are often like their mothers mentally as well as physically… which is something else that Susan Strange told me.”
“Who is Susan Strange? You mentioned her before.”
“Oh, she’s Alec’s other daughter. Illegitimate, apparently. You could say that Susan started the whole affair when she came to live in Cardiff… in the same way you could say that Grimwade finished it. Without knowing anything at all about it. Because Alec started visiting her often and spending his free time in her house, I think he enjoyed her company and that isn’t hard to understand because she seems to be a very nice person. Uncomplicated. Straightforward. Which, whatever else you can say of her, Wendy isn’t. Or wasn’t. She was like I said – jealous. Really badly miffed about it all. She knew Alec was in line for a peerage if his new hearing-aid devices got off the ground and she reckoned that if she could put a spoke in that little wheel it’d just about serve him right. So she set about doing just that. Childish, I suppose you could call it. But then she was childish. She liked playing games. Dressing up. Acting rôles. All that kind of thing.”
Outside the door now there was only silence. Jackson grunted and pushed his chair back a little. “I doubt if they’ll get that much out of the letter. You’re going to have to get it all down in a statement, Mr Dobie. But you know that already.”
“Yes, that was childish, too. The confession, I mean. No way it could have been Kate, I’m not that short-sighted.”
“No,” Kate said, returning from the washbasin where she’d been scrubbing the blood off her hands. “He’s quite accurate at close range, I can vouch for that.”
“But then Wendy didn’t know I’d rumbled her great impersonation act. Or more exactly, that the computer had. I’m glad,” Dobie said, “it was Sammy who worked it all out and not me. It makes me feel he’s evened the score a bit. I don’t know why.”
He was aware that both Jackson and Kate were regarding him now with a certain curiosity. Or maybe it was concern.
“I think I’ll go to bed now,” Dobie said.
Kate tucked him in nicely and stood back to look at him. She still had, he noticed, much the same expression on her face.
“You won’t mind,” Dobie said, “if I don’t ask you to join me? Till a little later?”
“I don’t see how I could possibly object to such a gentlemanly proposal. Or even,” Kate said, “to its implications. Are you comfortable?… That’s the main thing.”
“Yes, I am. I like it here. What I’ll do is, I think I’ll sell the flat.”
“Good,” Kate said. “Then you can get that thing on to working out our income tax figures.”
Dobie wasn’t too sure about that. It might be a little tricky. Something that he’d need to give a lot of thought to. Not now, of course. A little later.
No. Much later.
Dobie slept.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Synopsis
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
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