“You’re blocking my view,” Julie told him. “I’m trying to turn the car.”
“Clear road.” He let her concentrate on the U-turn. Once they were heading in the right direction, he leaned so close to her that the brim of his trilby touched her hair. “What do you think?”
“I thought Mr. Billington had an alibi. He was in Tenerife with his wife until after the murder.”
“But did we check it?” He turned away and pummeled his thigh with his fist. “Did we check it at the time, Julie?”
She said, “I wasn’t there.”
Diamond was talking rhetorically. “We had this statement that the Billingtons returned-when was it, two days after?-and discovered the body. The whole shebang started from there. Did I have their flight schedules checked? Or the hotel register? I honestly don’t think I did. You’ll say it was negligent. I’d say the same. But Billington was never seriously considered.”
“As a suspect, you mean?”
“What a cock-up.”
“Why would he kill her?”
“Anger, because she refused to come across. We heard from Marcus Martin that Billington fancied Britt.”
“Finding excuses to give her presents of flowers and chocolates,” said Julie.
He nodded. “The flower connection, you see.”
“Mrs. Billington insisted that the roses couldn’t have come from their garden,” Julie pointed out.
“That was obvious to anyone who’s ever grown roses,” he said as if he constantly carried a pair of pruning shears in his pocket. Julie wasn’t to know that he’d acquired his horticultural wisdom from Mrs. Billington herself. “They were definitely imported roses from a florist. The salient point is that he’s the only one of her admirers who liked to say it with flowers.”
They turned left at the Viaduct to go up Brassknocker. While the Escort was making heavy work of the curving incline, Julie commented over the engine noise, “It takes some believing. I mean, would Billington kill her in his own house and report it to the police himself?”
“Yes, because that’s smart,” said Diamond. “The dumb thing to have done was dump the body somewhere else. Bodies are hellish to dispose of. They won’t burn well, or stay under water for long and digging a grave is a job for a professional. No, it looks as if Billington brazened it out four years ago and I believed him.”
“You seem to have made up your mind.”
“Not at all.” He gave her a sharp look. “I’m weighing the possibilities.” He weighed them a little longer before adding, more tentatively, “The wife’s behavior was instructive. I’m sorry you weren’t there. Where were you?”
Julie reminded him, “Chatting up the crusties.”
He tried to break out of the despondent mood by being boisterous. “Well, if you will insist on keeping that sort of company…”
The car began picking up speed at the top of the hill. “You see,” he went on, “Mrs. Billington didn’t really want me to interview Billington. She was sheilding him, yet I got the feeling that she wasn’t doing it out of loyalty or affection. She spoke about him in a detached way, almost disdainful.‘You’ll get nothing out of Winston,’ but said in a tone that made me think she’d got nothing out of him.”
A little later, she asked, “What’s Mr. Billington like? Did you interview him at the time of the murder?”
“I saw them together then, and she did most of the talking. He was civil, unassertive, a quiet bloke, but they often are.”
“How do you see it, then?” Julie asked as they began the long descent into Bath.
“Assuming Billington did it? The middle-aged man lusting after the pretty young lodger who appears to share her favors widely, but won’t include him, for all his overtures with sweets and flowers. He comes back early from his holiday in Tenerife-maybe some family emergency, or a crisis at work-at any rate, some excuse he concocted-and leaves his wife to follow him in a day or two. This is the opportunity he’s waited for. A night alone in the house with Britt. He buys a dozen red roses at the airport and gets home around eleven.”
“At the airport?”
“There are always flowers at airports.”
“G.B. didn’t say the man he saw was carrying flowers,” said Julie.
“He could have hidden them inside his coat. He wouldn’t want the neighbors to see them, or Britt, until he was ready to surprise her.”
“And she was supposed to melt at the sight of a dozen roses?” said Julie skeptically.
“There are women who would.”
“It sounds as if you’re speaking from experience.”
He said bitingly, “We’re talking about Billington. He goes to her room, gets the brush-off and goes berserk. Stabs her repeatedly. Then stuffs the flowers in her mouth.”
“And leaves her like that? For two days?”
“Certainly. He wouldn’t stick around. He’d clear off fast to somewhere else, ready to claim, as he does, that he actually traveled back from Tenerife with his wife and got back two days after the murder. He had to persuade her to back him, of course.”
“Cover up for a murder?” said Julie in disbelief.
“That’s not uncommon.” Now he gave her the benefit of his years in the murder squad. “The wife who shops her husband is rare indeed, Julie. From her point of view there’s always an element of doubt. A murderer doesn’t admit to his wife that he’s taken someone’s life. She has a vested interest in believing he’s innocent. She’ll clutch at any straw. After all, it’s a criticism of her if he fancies other women. And then to be the wife of a killer, stared at by other people, hounded by the press-that’s not a pleasant prospect. So, yes, Mrs. Billington stood by him and supported his alibi. She may have believed he was innocent at first, but I get the impression four years have changed her opinion. She’s not going to blow the whistle on him now, but she can’t disguise the contempt she feels for him. Pity you didn’t meet her.”
“Meeting him will be more interesting,” said Julie.
“Well, it’s already laid on for this evening.”
“What time?”
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “We’ll have a bite first. In fact, if you take the next turn on the right, there’s a country pub where I’m always well treated.”
This evening proved the exception. The place was not as he remembered it. For one thing, there were rows of tables covered in red cloths, with places set for dinner and plastic flower arrangements. For another, the barmaid-or waitress- asked if they had booked.
“It’s supposed to be a pub, isn’t it?” he said combatively. “We can have a drink and a snack.”
“You can have a drink, by all means. No bar snacks in the evening, sir, apart from crisps. And peanuts.”
After he’d given his opinion of crisps and peanuts, they drove on to a public house Julie knew. It had a log fire and tables where you could sit without having a menu thrust in front of you by a young woman in a white apron. They ordered filled jacket potatoes at the bar.
He was still muttering about crisps and peanuts when they were seated. “That other place won’t see me again. Cheers.”
“Round here, pubs are changing their clientele in the evenings,” Julie remarked. “There’s more money to be made from running them as restaurants.”
“Everything’s changing,” Diamond complained, mounting one of his favorite hobbyhorses. “Look at Bath. Carwar- dine’s gone now, a coffee shop of character. Owen, Owen, that nice big department store in Stall Street where I used to buy my socks and shirts. What do I see there now-a Walt Disney shop. That’s American. Just down the street there used to be a Woolworth’s. Gone. My earliest memory is being lost in Woolworth’s. Not in Bath, I mean. Another town. Woolie’s is part of our heritage, Julie.”
“It’s American,” she said. “Woolworth was an American.”
He said huffily, “You don’t need to tell me that.” With a shift of thought that was quite reasonable in his own mind, but he couldn’t expect Julie to under
stand, he asked, “Is there a phone here? I can call my wife while the food is coming.”
In their basement in West Kensington, Steph had been watching an Australian soap. The theme tune was going in the background. “I was wondering if we were still talking,” she remarked. “What’s the state of play? Shall I see you tonight?”
“Doubtful,” he answered. “Tomorrow looks more likely. However, I think I’m about to button up the case.”
“So long as you don’t stitch it up.”
She couldn’t know how wounding that remark was.
She said, “Are you still there? I hope they appreciate what you’re doing.”
He laughed cynically. “Some hope of that!”
She said, “Because I’m not sure if I do. I’ve had the supermarket on the phone this evening, wanting to know why you missed two days of work. What could I say, except that you got called away suddenly?”
“You could say the police came for me.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Joke.”
She said, “Speaking of jokes, it looks to me as if you might be modeling for the art class after all.”
This time his laugh was more hollow. It came home to him how much better he had felt doing police work again, even when it turned up old mistakes.
And Steph, with her well-practiced capacity to read his thoughts, said in all seriousness, “Why don’t you stay there as long as they need you? They may come to their senses and want you back-even that man you had the row with. Tott.”
He said, “I got stung this morning.”
“By Mr. Tott?”
“By a bee. On my hand.”
“That’s all right, then.”
“What?”
“I said, are you all right, then? Did you put something on it? “
Yes. I survived.”
“Teach you to be careful where you put your hands.”
He used this as the cue to say something personal that may not entirely have made up for his delay in phoning, but definitely pleased Steph. They exchanged some frivolous and private remarks before he hung up.
More mellow than he had felt all day, he went back to where Julie was sitting and said, “Don’t you have a phone call to make?”
She shook her head.
He was sorry, because she wore a wedding ring.
“Separated?”
She smiled and shook her head. “He’ll be at work. He’s in the police.”
The jacket potatoes arrived and Diamond tested one of his, risking the heat on his fingertips to feel for the cracking of rusty skin. “I like them baked the old-fashioned way, not turned into mush in a microwave,” he explained. “These will do. A well-cooked potato beats pasta or rice or anything. I was once told that if you had to survive on only one food, you’d better choose potatoes, because they contain some of all the nutrients we need. What is more, they aren’t fattening.”
“The butter is,” said Julie, noting the large chunk he was slotting between the halves.
“Don’t lecture me on diet,” he said as if she were the one holding forth about potatoes. “This is better for me than chips. When I was younger, I practically lived on chips, but then I was burning up the calories playing rugby.”
“You were a rugby player?”
“Played prop.”
“Who for?”
“The Met.”
“Metropolitan Police. That’s a good team, isn’t it?”
“It was. These days they’re languishing in Division Five South.” He sprinkled chopped ham over the potato and tried some. “I needed this. Do you want to hear a rugby story? In the mid-seventies, we were drawn away against a Welsh team in the cup. Swansea, I think it was. We had a South African playing in the second row for us. He was on attachment to the Met for six months, doing some sort of course on dog training. An enormous fellow. Bit of a bullshit artist actually. Played a lot of rugby in South Africa. Bruce was his name. Can’t remember the surname. Something Afrikaans that didn’t sound the way it was spelt. Anyway, four of us were driving to Wales in a Ford Anglia. No team buses then.”
“Including Bruce?”
“Including Bruce. He was a pain about his rugby. He reckoned the standard of play was much higher in South Africa and he couldn’t wait to get started and show us how brilliant he was. Now, the guys in our team were great practical jokers and when we were getting close to Wales on the M4 one of them had the lovely idea of asking Bruce if he’d brought his passport with him. You should have seen his face. He said he didn’t know it would be needed. Of course we wound him up then, saying how strict the Welsh were at the border crossing point and that he should forget about playing rugby that afternoon. We’d better drop him off on the English side of the Severn Bridge and pick him up on the way home. He was shattered, totally taken in by all this.
“Then someone suggested that we put Bruce into the boot and cover him over with tracksuits and shirts and things and drive across the bridge. He was touchingly grateful. So we stopped at Aust services on the English side and watched this massive South African climb in and try and make himself inconspicuous.”
“Rotten lot!”
“We closed the thing and drove across and stopped the car just beyond the tolls and walked around it pretending to be a border patrol, tapping on the bodywork.”
“Then did you let him out?”
“Not until we’d driven another ten miles. And then nobody let on, because when the match was over and we were driving back, we did the whole thing again.” He shook with laughter, remembering it. “Well, he had scored a couple of jammy tries.”
Julie said, “That’s so mean! Men’s humor is a mystery to me.”
One of the first people they saw on returning to Manvers Street was Chief Inspector John Wigfull, officious as usual, issuing orders along the corridor to some hapless civilian clerk who had rashly stepped out of her office.
“There you are,” he said when he’d done with her, pointing toward Diamond and Julie as if they needed to account for themselves. “Can I have a word?”
“What about?” asked Diamond.
“Mrs. Violet Billington. You interviewed her this morning, I believe.” The tone was definitely accusing.
“I did.”
“Alone?”
Diamond said, “Yes,” trying to sound unflustered while his thoughts careered both backward and forward seizing on alarming possibilities. Surely the old biddy hadn’t made a complaint. He’d treated her fairly, for pity’s sake. Once before in this place where protocol was holy writ he’d been carpeted on a trumped-up charge of assault. That was the occasion when he’d thrown up the job.
“How was she?” asked Wigfull.
“What’s this about?”
“Mrs. Billington. I’m asking how she was.”
He shrugged and spread his hands. “All right.”
Wigfull said, “Because we’ve got her downstairs. She’s battered her husband senseless. Any idea why?”
Diamond shook his head, lost for words.
Wigfull went on to explain that less than an hour ago an emergency call had come in from the house in Larkhall. The student lodger had returned from college to discover her landlord, Winston Billington, lying unconscious in the hall bleeding from head wounds. Assuming that someone had broken in, the student had rushed through to the kitchen to see whether Mrs. Billington had also been attacked. She had not. She had been sitting at the table drinking vodka. She had admitted to the student that she was responsible for the assault and had agreed that as her husband still appeared to be breathing they had better call an ambulance.
“Where is he?” Diamond asked.
“In intensive care at the RUH. We’ve got a man at the bedside in case he recovers.”
“He’s that bad?”
“They say the injuries are severe. She used a plastic bag filled with copper coins. They kept it by the door and put their excess change in it to dole out to people collecting for charity. Two poundsworth of coppers can ma
ke quite a dent in someone’s skull.”
“And is she talking?”
“At this minute, no. She’s in the toilet, throwing up. Too much vodka. Don’t worry. WPC Blinston is with her.”
Diamond turned to Julie. “You’d better get down to the hospital.”
Wigfull said, “Didn’t you hear? There’s a man at the bedside already.”
“I want Julie there.” Momentarily it threatened to become a clash of wills. In a rare act of conciliation, Diamond confided, “We’ve got new information on his possible involvement in the Britt Strand murder. We were all set to interview him. If he should come round, anything he says could be vital.”
Julie left for the hospital.
Diamond joined Wigfull in an interview room, across a table from Mrs. Violet Billington, the self-confessed husband-beater. Dressed in a faded green and white cardigan that made Diamond think of overcooked cabbage, she was almost as pale as the box of tissues in front of her, yet the blue eyes conveyed the same contempt she had shown earlier in the day.
However, she was prepared to talk.
Having recited the formal preliminaries of a taped interview, Wigfull asked the tense little woman whether she was willing to describe what had happened to her husband.
She summed it up in a sentence. “He came home and I hit him.”
“There must have been a reason.”
After a pause: “He’s a monster-that’s the reason.”
“You’d better explain what you mean by that, Mrs. Billington.”
Wigfull received the full force of the withering stare. “Why ask me? You know perfectly well that he murdered our lodger.”
Considering the explosiveness of this statement, Diamond exercised commendable restraint as he took over the questioning. “You’re speaking of Britt Strand? We must have it confirmed for the record.”
“Who do you think I mean-the Queen of Sheba?”
“Britt Strand?”
“Oh, come on-of course!”
“Has he told you this himself?”
“No. But he didn’t have to,” said Mrs. Billington. “I know. And you know, too. You were coming for him this evening.”
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