Ahead, there was an arbour, a circular space of close-clipped grass, this again surrounded by the ubiquitous box hedging. In that circle there were two benches, facing each other across it. In the centre was a basin on a pedestal, a fountain tinkling into it.
We sat. I did not admit to the relief this was.
‘You said…Oliver, you said—this was the nearest, to bring me.’
‘Yes. The boundary—the hedge boundary to the field—it leads straight up to here from the tent. You understand, they wanted you out of the crush. Out of sight. It was like a football crowd down there. And the super wanted you relaxed and quiet. What’s your point, Phil?’
‘I saw a shape…the flicker of a shape, just the other side of that hedge.’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t sound impressed. ‘It’d be the only escape route for…whoever it was.’
I thought about that, not being able to prevent myself from lifting my head and looking round me, as though this person might be hidden near, crouched amongst the roses.
‘But there’s something you don’t understand, Oliver.’
‘Don’t worry yourself now.’
‘Will you please listen! It wasn’t her chair. In the tent, I took her chair. She commented on it. So the chair she was—the chair she used—that was the customer’s. The client’s. Mine.’
It had seemed a colossal effort to say all that, and to be able to hold on to the thought before I lost it or confused it.
‘Phil?’ His tone held anxiety, no doubt for my sanity.
‘I’m not imagining things. That was how it was. Just think, a previous client or visitor—they would know which of the chairs…Oh hell, Oliver, work it out for yourself.’
Now I was developing a headache. As I stared at it, the image of the fountain swayed. For pity’s sake! I wasn’t going to pass out again, surely. I took in several deep breaths, and the fountain steadied. As did my brain, and I remembered. There had been blood…
I jerked out my right arm, but somebody had cleaned it. There were spots of blood, though, on the short sleeve of my blouse. I shuddered, about to say something, but my teeth chattered.
‘Are you all right?’ Oliver asked anxiously.
‘Yes, yes. There was blood, all over my arm.’ I was cold. There seemed to be no warmth in the sun.
‘Yes. We washed that away,’ he said quietly.
‘Thank you.’
‘Your mind seemed to be rambling, miles away.’
‘I’m trying to concentrate. That’s all.’ And what an effort it was! ‘My mind’s getting clearer every second. What I’m trying to get into your thick head is that the knife was intended for me. For me, and all you can do is sit there with your mouth open.’
‘It is not open. I just can’t believe…Damn it, Phil, you’ve harmed nobody.’
‘Perhaps I’ve frightened somebody. How very strange. I never thought I could really scare anybody. Me!’
‘You scared me,’ Oliver admitted. ‘I can tell you that. When you wouldn’t come round…and you were so white.’
‘Silly.’
He stared at the fountain, but his hand was resting on mine. Then, because he had to offer something, he said, ‘They—he or she—could have heard what you were talking about, inside the tent.’ He took his hand away, and wiped it down his face.
‘Of course they could, with no more than a thickness of canvas in between.’
He turned back to me, so that he could take both hands in his, the more to impress me with his earnestness. ‘But how could it have been that? Something you and Alice were discussing, I mean. Even if this person might have been interested in what was being said, I can’t imagine it would be somebody who just happened to be carrying a kitchen knife around, just on the off-chance of being able to find a use for it—in the middle of a field!’
I slid my hands free and laid them in the middle of my lap, talking down to them quietly, but each word carefully chosen.
‘I don’t think you’re being honest with me, Oliver. You think my mind’s not up to it, and I’m making issues out of it that don’t exist. I don’t have to be comforted like that—but I thank you for the thought behind it. No—please. Let me say this. I thank you—if it’s that. But you were using your big masculine know-all voice, the one you use for calming the weak and feeble females, such as you’d like me to be, pouring scorn on my silly little brain because I’ve had a shock and I oughtn’t to be troubling my poor and inadequate female mind with serious matters, which only you great oafish louts of men can handle. And if you think…’
I raised my head and turned to face him. He was smiling his big, happy smile.
‘My, Phil, but you’re a grand one for recovering. Full strength again, and I’m not laughing and not condescending. I know what you’re getting at.’
At this moment Clare appeared, bearing a tray. ‘You’ll be better out here, I think. Better than indoors—all this fresh air…’
‘And your wonderful roses. Oh, thank you, Clare.’
She had placed the tray on the bench between us, Oliver sliding sideways nimbly. There was a pot of tea, protected by a cosy, a plate of sandwiches cut as triangles, ham and cheese it seemed to me, and a plate of small cakes, sugar in a bowl and a jug of milk. Whoever had arranged matters, Glenn I now knew, had catered very adequately for Clare’s return.
‘Peaceful here,’ she said, smiling. ‘You can relax. It must have been quite terrible.’ The smile became a grimace of distaste. Then she turned, and walked away briskly.
Oliver poured the tea. He now knew exactly how much sugar and milk I took. I didn’t feel like eating. He offered me the plate, and suddenly I did. The sandwiches were splendid, the tea a divine experience. There’s nothing like a shock for sharpening the perceptions.
We were both silent for a few restorative moments. Then Oliver said, ‘I suppose, in that tent, you were discussing the terminated pregnancies around about September six years ago?’
‘We were. Amongst other things.’
‘But of course, and I’m sure of this, the stabbing wouldn’t have been related to what was being said.’ He paused. He chewed and swallowed. ‘At the time of the stabbing…what was being said at that time?’
I thought about that for a moment. The fountain tinkled.
‘I don’t get your point, Oliver.’
‘Look at it like this—whatever information was being passed over .
‘No information was being passed over, Oliver. No names were mentioned. She was no help at all.’
‘Well then.’
‘I still don’t understand. Explain, Oliver, please.’
He picked up another sandwich, held it up and stared at it, and said, ‘What good would it have done anybody to kill one of you, simply because some awkward or even damning evidence was being passed on? Only one of you could have been killed, so it couldn’t possibly have guaranteed secrecy, because the other one of you would know what it was. In fact, now that I come to think of it, it would draw attention to what secret and what name were being discussed at that time. And who’s going to arm themselves with a kitchen knife, and walk off into the field on the chance of keeping some secret or other still a secret? That’s crazy.’
‘That knife. Probably filched from the refreshments tent.’
‘Of course. Clever Phil. Who, then, would filch a knife, as you put it, when killing one of you wouldn’t help a little bit?’
I poured us both another cup of tea. ‘Not one of us, Oliver. Me. It was intended for me. I told you about the chairs.’
‘If you say so, Phil.’
‘I do say so.’
‘Well then…that means, if you were the real target, then the intention had to be to prevent you from passing on some vital information to Alice Carter—to the police, in effect—not to prevent Alice Carter giving information to you. Then the preparation of taking along a knife begins to make sense, and then you can just about imagine the eavesdropping until the moment when the dreaded secret is just abou
t to be revealed. This makes some sense, because I managed to get a word with Ralph after all, and he told me that Alice and he had never been satisfied that Clare killed Harris.’
‘Ah!’ I said, peering into the pot to see whether another cup of tea might be squeezed out of it. It might, and I did. Oliver waited. ‘That point we covered,’ I said. ‘If I remember correctly, she as good as admitted it. And the whole rigmarole—the tent and the gypsy business—that had always been no more than an excuse for reaching for information.’
‘But they—she and Ralph—never got anywhere?’ Oliver asked.
‘So it seemed. They’re a canny lot round here, and they weren’t fooled. Madame Acarti was still a policewoman, fishing for information—so she got nothing. But why’, I asked, suddenly realising, ‘are we talking about Alice? What she knew, what she said! Oliver, I’ve explained: that knife was meant for me.’
‘Now Phil…’
‘For me—and I don’t feel very good about it. And, if you consider that the knife was brought there deliberately, it wasn’t in any way related to what was being said.’
‘I thought we’d agreed on that.’
‘It had to be related to what wasn’t said,’ I said emphatically. ‘In other words, to something I knew. Something obviously very important.’
‘Such as what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know what you know?’
‘Precisely.’
‘But suddenly, when something clicks in that pretty little head of yours, it may come to you?’
‘You’re finally getting the point, Oliver. I’m a walking threat to somebody.’
‘Then we’ll have to make sure we stay together, Phil.’
‘Hmm!’
‘Don’t you agree?’
‘I was just thinking, Oliver, that there’s still a shotgun missing. What good would it do if we shared a barrelful of shot?’
He half laughed, then stifled it. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you? But Phil, that’s rather too fanciful. I’ll bet there’re dozens of shotguns in the village, so why that specific one?’
‘Symbolic, perhaps.’
‘You’re stretching it.’ But his voice was still jocular.
‘I’m considering all the possibilities, that’s all. I don’t want you trying to take a shotgun from somebody—never again.’
‘Then I shan’t try. Phil, don’t you think we ought to hunt out Glenn and his mates, and get them to lift out your car? He said they could do it. Then we’d be out of it. What’s the matter?’
I was staring at him, trying to control my feelings. ‘You must be crazy!’
‘Now what?’
‘If you think I’m going to be frightened away…if you think I’d dream of leaving here when I know that I know something that matters…oh no. Thank you very much, but not when the answer’s so close it’s almost touching me. I can feel it.’
‘What you might feel could prove fatal next time, Phillie, and you know that.’
‘But now I’ll be watching out. What time’s sunset?’
‘Oh…hours yet. Half-past nineish.’
‘Then there’s time.’
‘Are you sure your mind’s working all right?’ He looked at me with his head tilted. ‘Time for what?’
‘To clear it up, so that we can relax for the fireworks.’
He looked worried. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand you.’
‘Enigmatic, it’s called. It’s linked with sex appeal.’
‘Hell, you’ve already got more than your share. I couldn’t stand any more.’
‘Let’s go and look for that super of yours,’ I suggested.
‘Better not be enigmatic with him. If it’s the same one—Bristow, his name was.’
‘Haven’t you seen him, if you were down…there?’
He shook his head. ‘I was too involved with you to trouble about superintendents. Let’s go and have a quiet sit-down in the house. Out of the sun for a while. I’ll be like a lobster tomorrow.’
I’m lucky in that way. It’s something to do with pigmentation. I become tanned rather than burned, and I’ve always wondered why people go to great lengths to achieve this. A tan doesn’t go with my hair.
The rose garden proved to be at the side of the house, which explained why I hadn’t observed it earlier. At first, I couldn’t see any obvious way into the house, and wondered how Clare had brought the tray to us.
But there was a tailored gap in the box hedge which led directly on to the lawn, where they’d been playing croquet earlier. All the hoops had gone, and the French windows were wide open. By now, the sight of those windows open sent a chill through me. Yet the terrace was still brilliantly lit by the sun. No shadows had yet reached the lawn. Nothing sinister about it.
Then I realised that Charlie Green had kept his promise, and speedily, too. He was returning Clare’s guns, even, I found out later, the one with which she had supposedly killed her husband. My mind no longer hesitated on that score. Previously, I had been sure she hadn’t done so, because she hadn’t seized on a possible way out for her when a second shot had been suggested. But now I knew it. Alice Carter had died because she wasn’t me. So somebody feared what I knew, and was no doubt strung tight with nerves, wondering how long it would be before I put something I knew against something I ought to know, and had at last a sight of the truth. And that person couldn’t be Clare, because she had already been tried for it, and thus had nothing to fear.
Charlie Green was being very cautious not to offend. He had a gang of men and, I had to assume, a van full of guns out at the front. But he wasn’t going to have them marching through the house and soiling Clare’s parquet. He was having them carried round, and directly in through the French windows.
Clare, I could hear, was supervising. ‘Not there! This one here. And that’s a pair, not three. You can’t get three in one showcase! Easy now. Careful. Don’t throw them around, damn it.’
But they’d all, or nearly all, been thrown around with considerably less care, six years before.
Watching this procession across the lawn, apparently with a critical eye, was a woman I hadn’t met. She was taller than me, nearly as tall as Oliver, and was, even in this weather, dressed in a smart grey two-piece and a light blue shirt, top button open. But she seemed not to feel the heat. When she turned to me her skin was dry, her face rather thin and much wrinkled round the eyes. As though she laughed often, I thought, though there was no sign of this now. Her eyes were a piercing grey, her hair dark brown with grey lurking in it, plainly cut, neat and tidy. Her bosom was almost flat, which drew attention to the clip and the bulge at her breast pocket.
She must have heard our voices approaching closer, but it was only at the last second that she turned to face us directly, to face me, rather.
‘You’re Philipa Lowe?’ she asked. Her voice was quite deep for a woman.
‘Yes. That’s me. And this is—’
‘I know. Hello, Oliver. How’s the arm?’
‘Improving all the while. You’re moving up fast, Gloria. Plain Inspector, in my time.’
‘It happens.’
‘And…Bristow?’
‘Transferred out. I guess he was persuaded to. We all think that, anyway. I mean, he didn’t make too good a job of this case, six years ago. Clare Steadman went down…but it wasn’t a strong case. Too many leading questions. Casts doubts.’
‘And you’re doubtful?’ Oliver asked.
‘Shall we say…I’d hope to do better with the same facts. He never covered the question of the third shot.’
‘The shot at nothing?’ I asked, just to show that I knew what they were talking about.
‘That one. It was never explained.’
‘If there was an explanation.’
‘Oh,’ put in Oliver, ‘you haven’t been introduced. Detective Superintendent Gloria Vosper. And you know this is Phil.’
She looked at me blandly, but I had the impression that those
grey eyes were searching around right inside my head, poaching my brain.
‘I think there was a third shot,’ she said at last. ‘Always thought so. I mean—why would she invent one?’
I said nothing. Her eyes slid sideways to Oliver again.
‘Do you know, Oliver?’
‘Not really. Clare’s a strange woman.’
‘So I gather. And now, I discover from Inspector Green, there’s a gun missing.’
So Charlie was an inspector.
‘He’ll never live it down,’ I suggested. ‘He couldn’t have lost one?’
‘Oh no. But he ought to have checked the inventory. Now we have an unexplained third shot and a missing gun. How very interesting.’
Then she compressed her lips into a straight line, and it was only from the eager twinkle in her eyes that I realised she was actually anticipating that she was going to enjoy this new murder. And I didn’t think she was viewing it objectively and only as a puzzle, but rather that she so desperately wanted—had to have—the arrest of the killer of Sergeant Alice Purslowe. It was a special challenge, and arose from a personal fondness.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I need to talk to you, Philipa Lowe. Only one L in that, is there? Right. I knew your father, so I know that I don’t have to tell you the rules and regulations. This is an informal talk, otherwise I’d have somebody with me. If I switch this thing on…’ She indicated what had to be a tape recorder in her breast pocket. ‘It’s only my method of taking notes. Later, it’ll be on paper. Any objections?’
‘Not one.’
‘Very well.’
She switched it on, and in that instant everything changed. She became intensely and inflexibly professional, though nothing in her face reflected that. It was an interview, nothing more, and I had to be scavenged for facts.
‘Here?’ she asked.
‘Why not?’
And there it was, in the middle of the lawn.
10
I was aware, as I braced myself—why was I bracing myself?—that someone was watching us. I half turned. It was Ralph Purslowe, standing quietly in a far corner of the lawn, standing like a planted rock, waiting. He would have been excluded from all aspects of the investigation, and was poised now, watching his senior officer, waiting for any indication that she might need something, anything at all, which he might be able to supply, from a match for her cigarette to sharpening her pencil—or changing the batteries in her recorder. Waiting for anything at all not official with which he might further the investigation without, in any way, intruding in it. I wondered whether she was aware of his presence.
A Shot at Nothing Page 16
