“Still—”
“It’s the only body I’ve got,” insisted Matt. “I got outwhile it was still in reasonable functioning order. What do you do?”
“Solicitor, I’m afraid. Frightfully dull, and none of the prestige it used to have. I’ve just joined the family firm in Armley. Dad put me onto these houses—thought they were a good buy. He knows Armley and Bramley like the back of his hand. He’s acted for people in every square yard of them.”
“Really?” said Matt, a twinge of interest pricking him for the first time in the conversation. “Anything notable around here?”
“Oh, Lord, I wasn’t really listening when he told me, old chap. Dad tends to go on and on about the old days. A car accident case—a pileup on the M1. Case doesn’t seem to have got very far, but knowing Dad, he screwed some money out of someone. And an industrial accident one—Dad was a pioneer in that sort of case, so he’s much in demand these days. Seems to have got the family the means to buy one of these houses.”
“Really?”
“But that was a while after the time you’re interested in,” said Jason. He shot Matt a look. “I do listen to the radio, like I said, in intervals of bending the odd ear to my clients’ woes. If I had anything of interest on your dead baby case I’d have told you—and if I get anything of interest in future I’ll bring it straight to you. Rely on me, old chap.”
Matt thanked him and moved away, thinking he’d been “old chapped” enough. The father might just be worth getting reminiscences out of, though. He saw Charlie and Felicity talking to Delphine and Garrett Maylie, with Delphinelooking enthusiastically multiracial, and he decided to leave them to it. Anything of interest would be passed on. He looked around the big dining room and, reluctantly, decided to bite the bullet. Pausing only to refill his glass, he wandered over to where the Cazalets were talking to a couple who earlier had introduced themselves as the Quintons. He, Matt had gathered, was in property. The conversation seemed to be about environmental matters, but that was deceptive: it was really about property values.
“The moment you take out the original windows,” Mr. Cazalet was hissing, “it’s not just your house that loses value, it’s everyone’s around you too.”
“It’s a loophole in the law,” said Mr. Quinton darkly. “The council has no power to stop it.”
“Not that they’re any use when they do have powers,” said Cazalet. “Look at some of the garages that have been put up overnight with not a word said. This is a conservation area! It’s supposed to be only stone or artificial stone. Diabolical!”
They parted to let Matt join them. Mrs. Cazalet was a watery-eyed scrap of endemic disapproval, looking down at her glass of orange juice as if meditating darkly on what artificial additives it contained. The Quintons were slightly more interesting—assertive, inquisitive, and energetic.
“I think our Stephen knows your son Jack,” said Matt.
“That’s right—he’s been round several times. I gather he’s—he’s your partner’s son—is that right?”
“Quite right,” said Matt.
“It’s awfully nice of you to invite us all,” said Mrs. Quinton. “Such a good idea. I’m sorry your partner couldn’t be here.”
“I don’t know when she’ll be back. It seemed a pity to wait.”
“Is she doing something in connection with her work?” her husband asked, clearly drilled in inquisitorial techniques. Matt looked round to see where Isabella was.
“No, it’s family. Private.”
He wasn’t inclined to share the pros and cons of Aileen’s decision to go and nurse her husband, Tom, with a social stranger. Nor, for that matter, the problems of “being in a relationship” with a Catholic.
“Of course, of course. You seem to get on well with the children. Are all the children your partner’s?”
“That’s right. My marriage produced no children. In fact,” he said, in a burst of confidence-giving that he could not account for, “my marriage was so long ago I often forget I’ve been married.”
“Really?” said Mrs. Quinton. “How sad!” Which meant: tell us more.
“Is it sad? I don’t know. I was twenty-two at the time, and she was a rather unlikely upper-crust type I met when I was playing with Aston Villa, mostly with the Reserve team. She did a piece on the club for one of the color supplements.”
“How long did it last?”
“About six months. She walked out saying it wasn’t what she wanted. The way she said it made it sound as if she were returning something to Harrods.”
“Still, footballers have very exciting private lives, don’t they?”
“Do you mean sex lives? I’m not sure I’d want to comment on that. For some footballers sex is confined to the cricket season.”
Mrs. Cazalet was looking at the carpet now, as if it mightbe strewn with used condoms. She was probably wondering what an exciting sex life did for property values.
“But now you’re in radio and television,” said Quinton heartily. “Quite a change. Do you enjoy it?”
“Yes, I do,” said Matt, unable to keep a note of surprise out of his voice. “A lot of it’s routine, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff comes up too, and of course I’m still mad about football.”
“I’m a Radio Four person myself,” said Cazalet, as if someone had asked him his religion. “Do you just read what’s on the—what do they call it?—the prompter?”
“No. Apart from news bulletins I write my own stuff, or make it up off-the-cuff when I’m doing a talk-in.”
“We’ve heard about your item on the Liza Pomfret show,” said Mrs. Quinton. “If only we’d lived here a bit longer we might have been of help.”
“It would have had to be a lot longer, I think. We’re working on the theory that it happened over thirty years ago.”
“Before our time,” said Mrs. Cazalet, as if to dismiss the subject.
“Yes,” muttered her husband. “We knew Mr. Farson, of course—”
“Though he kept himself to himself,” resumed his wife. “As we do.”
“Quite. But we never knew the lady he bought the house from. So really, we’re no use to you at all.”
“You didn’t know the Basnetts in Dell View?”
“No. Never heard the name.”
“Or the Armitages in your own house?”
“Oh, no. It wasn’t them we bought it off. I seem toremember there were Armitages at our church about that time, though.”
“Which church is that?”
“The Methodist Church in Town Street.”
“They didn’t have a boy called Eddie, did they?”
“They had a boy. Quiet type. But the boy stopped coming, and I think the parents moved away.”
“You did know them, though?”
“Just to greet on Sunday morning. The congregation isn’t large, you see, and wasn’t then. We knew everyone, but just by sight.”
The Quintons had moved away, and Matt felt no compunction about doing the same, leaving the Cazalets to themselves, as they so obviously preferred. He was turning round to see if anyone he hadn’t spoken to had arrived when he felt his arm touched, and he was then led away by the Goldblatts. They took him over to the other side of the room, where Isabella, if anything too hospitable, plied them with unwanted refills.
“Lovely eats,” said Mr. Goldblatt in a party voice. “Someone has imagination.”
“And what an . . . interesting plant,” his wife said. But Isabella had lunged away at the sight of an empty glass, so she took her tone down to a more normal level and said: “We heard you talking about the Armitages. And there was something—just a little scrap—that we have dredged up, that we were intending to tell you.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said her husband.
“No, don’t. I suppose the Cazalets didn’t know about this—they’re not the sort that gossip reaches—”
“Keep themselves to themselves,” said Matt with a grin.
“Yes. I
sn’t it incredible that so many of the English regard that as a virtue? Anyway, this is just some snippet that we remembered and thought might be of use. It came quite casually from Mr. Farson’s son.”
“Oh? Actually he said he’d just drop in tonight, but I haven’t seen him.”
“Well, it was when he came to see us after he’d persuaded his father to go into a home. We got talking about the fact that people are living a lot longer these days, but that this means more and more spend their last years as victims of Alzheimer’s or one of those conditions.”
“True,” said Matt in heartfelt tones. “May I die at seventy.”
“When you’re a bit older you’ll probably add five to that,” said Mr. Goldblatt.
“And another five when you’re older still,” said his wife. “Anyway, he said: ‘We’re all just coming to accept it in the old. Sad but common. And mental illness isn’t the disgrace it once was. The people next door in Linden Lea when my father moved here had a son who’d had a mental breakdown. They moved away and eventually left the area entirely because they couldn’t stand the talk.’ I’m quoting from memory, of course. That would be the Armitages, wouldn’t it?”
“It could be. I haven’t got the chronology altogether straight yet. This is all news to me. I suppose they must have moved away at about the time Farson bought the house, or a bit later. The boy, Eddie, would still have been quite young then—perhaps still a teenager. But teenagers do have breakdowns. And eventually he committed suicide. . . .”
“It’s all beginning to sound like a sad little story,” said Mr. Goldblatt.
“It is. Oh, there’s the bell—”
But Isabella, he saw, was marching to the front door, and his way was stopped by Jason Morley-Coombs, his bimbo-who-dared-not-speak-her-name in tow, both of them looking as if they’d taken advantage of every refill Isabella had proffered in their direction. Jason’s walk had developed a slight stumble, and as he waylaid Matt his speech had a definite slur.
“I shay, I’ve jusht thought of shomething, old chap.”
“Excellent,” said Matt.
“I do know shomeone—well, barely know him, jusht to nod to—shomeone who ushed to live in these houses.”
“Really?”
“Name of Rory Pemberton. My dad ushed to be his solicitor, before he made the big time. Still ushesh him now and then on local mattersh. One of the original whizz-kid yuppiesh in the city, got the drink habit along with the eighteen-hour working day. Came back up here with hish loot, and still cleansh up nichly on anything going, know what I mean? Wish I had hish eye for a surefire quick profit. Now Rory Pemberton—”
“I know of Pemberton,” said Matt, trying to avoid a long session of learning what he already knew. “Used to live in Ashdene.”
“Did he? Only know he ushed to live here somewhere—Dad told me, of coursh. Well, I bet I could get hish addresh for you.”
“It’s twenty-seven Chalcott Rise, just off the A650, this side of Bingley.”
“Oh, I shay, old chap, you have been the great detective, haven’t you? And they tell me that our dark-skinned friend over there is your tame policeman—”
“If you’ll excuse me,” Matt said, and made his escape toward the front door, where Isabella was just bringing through someone he recognized from their brief encounter at the estate agents’ as Carl Farson. He was pushing sixty, his hair silvering nicely, with an air of authority about him. Matt dimly remembered being told he was manager of a big supermarket, one of a chain.
“Hello,” said Matt, holding out his hand. “Good of you to come.”
“A pleasure. This house seems to have become quite famous locally in the last couple of weeks. It’s certainly looking sprucer and more lived-in.”
“Didn’t it seem lived-in when your dad was here?”
“Not really. It was as if he were camping out. He had no one to make it into a home for him.”
“Can Isabella get you a drink?”
“I’ve already ordered a small martini.”
“I expect you know most of the people here.”
“Some of them,” he said, looking cautiously round as if there were some he was happy to meet again, some not.
“Actually, your name has already come up tonight,” said Matt.
“Oh?”
“The Goldblatts told me that you’d mentioned the Armitages to them—the son’s mental problems.”
“I believe I did. Nice people—the Goldblatts, I mean. The Armitages too, actually . . . I imagine this is in connection with the baby business, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I suppose the police have been on to you.”
“They have—the chap over there, in fact. And the West Yorkshire Chronicle as well. But there really wasn’t anything I could tell them. And if the year 1969 is right, that was years before I knew the Armitages.”
“That doesn’t mean the dead baby and the mental illness weren’t connected.”
That seemed to be a new idea to him.
“No-o-o. Well, it was when Dad moved here that I got to know them slightly. Dad was still working—you worked till you were sixty-five then, none of this early retirement—and I and my sister did most of the organizing for him. The Armitages were next door in Linden Lea, and they kept a key to this place, to let in gas men, electricity men, and so on. I never saw the son: he was in a mental hospital—they told me that in hushed voices.”
Matt nodded. This was something he remembered himself. Mental illness, like babies born out of wedlock, was unmentionable in some households.
“You got the impression they were somehow ashamed of his mental problems?”
“Well, that was the way I accounted for their attitude. Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t particularly interested, and didn’t think about it much, but they told me at one point they were intending to put their house on the market, and I decided they regarded such things as somehow shameful—perhaps a mark of their own lack of success as parents—and they wanted to move farther away, to somewhere they weren’t known.”
“They didn’t give any other reason?”
“Well, they said their son hated these houses. It didn’t seem very likely, a lad of eighteen or so. . . .” He pulled himself up. “But I suppose, knowing what we now know—”
“It could just be the truth.”
Carl Farson nodded his head in agreement. Soon after that he slipped away from the party.
Talking to Charlie and Felicity when all the other guests had made their farewells, Matt said, “I’d like to know all you’ve got on Eddie Armitage. Date of his suicide, details of the inquest, any relative living at the time—just anything at all.”
“Charlie will get them for you,” Felicity assured him. Charlie raised a humorous eyebrow.
“You can take the word of my chief superintendent,” he said.
CHAPTER TEN
Half-Seas Over
Matt did his usual thing and left his car at a distance from Rory Pemberton’s desirable residence. Thinking it over, and remembering that this was the second time in a few days that he had done that, he would have justified it by saying that his Volvo was old, a machine for transporting children and dog, and that if the residents of the two habitations in question had looked out their windows, they would have decided in advance that its driver was not worth talking to. He was conscious of being in the sort of area where people might do just that.The houses on Chalcott Rise (which did actually rise) had been built, judging by appearances, for the at least comfortably well-heeled. Like the Otley Road house they were thirties-spacious, with similar gently curved bows and fresh-painted white plaster. Presumably it was a style Pemberton felt at home in—more airy, more cosmopolitan than the grimmer air of the stone terraces in Houghton Avenue. The garden, when he got to number 27, wascustom-gardened—everything cut back neatly, everything in place, with wood chips to keep down the weeds. Already before he got to the gate he was hearing through an open downstairs window loud orchestral music—he was no expert
, but he thought it was the “Ride of the Valkyries.”
“Turn down that fucking music, for chrissake!”
It was a female voice from inside the house—Rory’s current discontented bimbo, presumably. By the time Matt got to the front door the music had changed to something he dimly remembered as the music for a big film about space. Presumably this was a CD of classic hits from the silver screen, or in other words loud music one could just about recognize. It hadn’t been turned down.
He rang the bell. The music continued blaring. Nobody came to the door. He rang again, keeping his thumb on the button for five seconds or so. The music thundered on, but this time he heard the voice again, yelling over the din, “Are you going to fucking answer that? It won’t be for me.”
Seconds later footsteps could be heard down the hall, and a chain being taken off the door.
“Yes?”
The man who opened the door was fortyish, plump to the point of fatness, with red, puffy cheeks and bleary eyes. He had in his hand a tumbler full of nearly dark brown liquid, and he smelled like a distillery.
“Hello. Mr. Pemberton?” The pouchy cheeks wobbled as the man nodded. “My name is Matthew Harper. We knew each other as children.” This was met with a blank stare. “There’s a small matter I’d like to have a chat about, if you could spare the time.” The small matter being a dead baby, Matt thought.
The man’s eyes blinked wetly. Matt thought it wastouch and go whether he said “Get lost” or invited him in. After a few seconds he stood uncertainly aside and said thickly: “Come in.”
He led the way down the tall-piled carpet of the hallway, then into a large, plumply furnished room, where the music was still scaling the hemisphere from an ostentatious unit on the far wall. Rory went straight over to the drinks cupboard, looked at his own glass and seemed rather puzzled that it didn’t need a refill, then remembered he had a guest.
“Want a drink?”
“Thank you. I’d like a beer.”
“Plenty of scotch.”
The Bones in the Attic Page 10
