The Vital Chain

by Sally Spencer

  Flint knocked on the front door, and though – given his experience with other Conroy gatekeepers – he was expecting the knock to be answered by some kind of servant, it was in fact Lydia herself who appeared at the door.

  ‘Do come in, Chief Inspector,’ she said in a tone that Flint would later describe as “gracious hostess”.

  Flint’s initial impression of the large hallway was that it had been expensively furnished, and that it would have looked perfectly at home in the glossy pages of a magazine like Country Life. The living room gave him the same impression – it, too, was right rather than personal.

  None of this surprised him, though what did come as a surprise was Lydia’s appearance. At the funeral, in her widow’s weeds, she had looked flat-chested and almost boyish. Now, dressed casually – or at least, as casually as anyone can while wearing expensive cashmere – it was clear that she was pleasingly rounded in all the right places.

  ‘It was good of you to find the time to see me,’ he said. ‘This can’t be easy for you.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Lydia admitted. ‘But it has to be done.’ She gestured that he should sit down. ‘Can I get you a drink? Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Flint said.

  He sat down, and unlike my cousin Philip in a similar situation, Lydia sat down, too.

  ‘I suppose the first thing I should ask you, Mrs Conroy, is if your husband had any enemies.’

  Lydia laughed in a way which Flint thought managed to be simultaneously gentle and slightly scornful.

  ‘If you’d known John in life, you wouldn’t have felt the need to ask that question,’ she said. ‘He was … how can I put it? … a completely harmless person.’

  ‘He was a businessman,’ Flint pointed out. ‘He must have rubbed some people up the wrong way.’

  Another small laugh.

  ‘John wasn’t a businessman in any sense you’d recognise. His grandfather bought his company for him, and most of the business he did was with other branches of Conroys.’

  ‘Did he ever talk to you about having disagreements with any of his employees?’

  Lydia shook her head. ‘He didn’t talk much about his work at all. I expect he didn’t think it would interest me.’

  The phone on the table next to Lydia’s chair rang.

  ‘Will you excuse me for a moment?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Flint agreed.

  Lydia picked up the phone.

  ‘Margaret,’ she said, ‘how kind of you to call.’ She covered the mouthpiece with her hand, and turned towards Flint. ‘Margaret Wilson. We serve on several committees together. It shouldn’t take long.’

  ‘I’m in no great hurry,’ Flint told her.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lydia said into the phone. ‘Temporary leave of absence … No, thank you, there’ll be no need for that … I know you’re perfectly capable of taking the chair and it’s very sweet of you to offer, but quite frankly, I think it will be best for me to keep busy … The autumn garden party? No, that will be going ahead as usual. We can’t let our personal grief stand in the way of raising money for those poor little orphans … Well, that’s settled then. I’ll see you soon.’ She slammed down the phone. ‘The bitch!’ she almost screamed.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Flint said.

  ‘She’s wanted to be the chair of the fund raising committee for years,’ Lydia said, calming down somewhat, ‘and with me in mourning, she sees this as the ideal opportunity to snatch it away from me. Honestly, if I thought she’d be any good at it, I’d let her have it. Lord knows, the last thing I want at the moment is to sit through endless meetings.’

  ‘How did you and your husband get on?’ Flint asked.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I should have thought it was plain enough.’

  ‘Are you insinuating that I might be behind John’s murder?’ Lydia demanded.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time a wife had killed her husband, but no, that’s not what I’m saying.’ Flint said calmly, before popping a Nuttall’s Minto into his mouth. ‘Try to understand my position, Mrs Conroy. I’m looking for a motive here, and the more I can learn about the victims – what they were like as individuals, and how they related to other people – the better the chance I have of uncovering that motive. Clearly, then, anything and everything I learn might be of value. And that’s why I asked you about your marriage.’

  Lydia nodded, somewhat mollified. ‘Neither John nor I were what you’d call passionate people,’ she said. ‘The earth certainly didn’t move every time we looked at one another, but we did love each other.’

  ‘I have to ask you this,’ Flint said apologetically. ‘Did your husband, as far as you know, ever have an affair?’

  ‘I think I can promise you that he never looked at another woman after he married me.’

  Flint coughed awkwardly. ‘And what about yourself?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Did you have an affair?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ Lydia said, with just a hint of conventional outrage returning to her voice. ‘I wouldn’t even consider risking my position in this village for the sake of a few cheap thrills.’

  ‘You say your husband has no enemies – is the same true of his brother, Rob? Is he the sort of man likely to work anyone up into a homicidal rage?’

  ‘I’m sure a few of his rivals in publishing hate him,’ Lydia said. ‘That would only be natural, especially after he was named Independent Publisher of the Year two years running. But that’s just speculation on my part, because I can’t honestly say I’ve seen enough of him to form a real opinion.’

  ‘I see,’ Flint said noncommittally.

  ‘He hardly ever comes to the village,’ Lydia amplified. ‘Oh, he’s put in the odd appearance at the family parties – because that’s what old Charlie wanted, and by and large what old Charlie wanted, he got – but apart from that we rarely got together.’

  Flint smiled. ‘You didn’t like the family parties much, did you, Mrs Conroy?’ he asked.

  Lydia waved her hands in a gesture of dismissal. ‘Oh, I suppose they went as well as could be expected, considering they were made up a group of people who had nothing much in common apart from blood ties.’

  ‘Tell me about Philip Conroy,’ Flint suggested.

  ‘There’s nothing to say except that he’s spent his whole life trying to be a bigger playboy than his father.’

  ‘And what about your father-in-law, Edward Conroy?’

  ‘We didn’t have a lot to talk about. I like to entertain a great deal, and he was a solitary soul by nature, especially after his wife died, but I certainly never argued with him, and I don’t think anyone else did, either.’

  Flint stood up. ‘I’ll not take up any more of your time, Mrs Conway, and don’t bother getting up because I’ll see myself out.’ He walked to the lounge door, then suddenly swung round. ‘Were you here in the village the night before your husband died?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Then where were you?’

  ‘I was at a health farm. It’s part of my regular routine. I go for the full treatment twice a year.’

  ‘Do you always go to the same one?’

  ‘No, I like to vary it.’

  ‘And where was the one you were staying at the night before the crash?’

  ‘It’s called the Middleton Health Spa. It’s outside Bath.’

  ‘In other words, it was very close to where your husband spent his last night alive.’

  ‘Don’t you think that hasn’t crossed my mind, too?’ Lydia said with some emotion. ‘Can you appreciate how dreadful it is to realise that, instead of him spending his last few hours alone, I could have been with him?’

  ‘Yes, it must be a very hard cross for you to bear,’ Flint said. ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Conroy.’

  ****

  As he walked down the lane that led back to the village, Flint took out his phone and dialled Sergeant Matthews’
number.

  ‘How are things going at your end, Matthews?’ he asked when the sergeant picked up.

  ‘There’s very little to report, sir,’ the sergeant admitted. ‘We’ve got the results of the post mortems and there were traces of alcohol in Tony Conroy’s system, but according to the doc not enough to impair his driving. Other than that, there’s nothing worth commenting on – no trace of poison, no evidence of serious illness. It was the crash that killed them, pure and simple.’

  ‘What about the Bristol police?’

  ‘They’ve made a general appeal for anybody who might have seen something in the garage that night, but there’s been no response.’

  ‘John Conroy’s wife says she spent the night before the crash at the Middleton Health Spa, near Bath,’ Flint said. ‘I want you to drive down there and find out if she did.’

  ‘Do you suspect her?’ Matthews asked.

  ‘I suspect no one – and everyone,’ Flint said in an Inspector Clouseau voice. ‘No, she’s not a prime suspect. She doesn’t look particularly devastated, but everyone reacts differently to death – but then again, we’d look complete bloody idiots if she did turn out to be the murderer and we hadn’t even tested out her alibi.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ Matthews agreed.

  ****

  If I had really been the murderer’s intended victim, I thought as my train slowed down to enter Warrington railway station, then I was safer in Cheshire than I would have been in Oxford, where it was likely that my unknown enemy lived. But was I really safe anywhere? The killer had managed to reach us in Bristol, why should the village I’d been brought up in present him with any insurmountable difficulties? The only sensible course would be to go into hiding, but I had too many questions needing an answer to even contemplate that.

  The train journey up had done my injured body no good at all, and when I put a little weight on my left leg as I walked towards the ticket barrier, shooting pains travelled from my knee up to my hip.

  I stepped out into the forecourt. Once upon a time, either my father or my brother would have been waiting for me, but now they were both dead, and I hailed a taxi.

  The trip to the village was just over eight miles. The first part of it was through the outskirts of the town. Then, after we had crossed the Manchester Ship Canal and passed by the golf course, we were in open countryside and I found myself thinking of a summer day just like this one – though an eternity ago – when Jill paid her one and only visit to the village.

  ****

  It had been the long vac at the end of our first year – and though we didn’t know it, our last year – at college. We’d agreed that she should spend some time with her own parents before she met mine. When we made the arrangement it had seemed perfectly reasonable, but the second I was back in the village I found myself wishing the weeks would melt away so I could get my ordeal over.

  And an ordeal was what I expected it to be, because I had no idea what Jill would think of my family, I fretted, as I tried to perceive them with the eyes of an outsider.

  The closer her visit drew, the more I worried about her reactions. I told myself I was being stupid – if she married anyone it would be me, not the family – yet I couldn’t suppress the fear that her meeting them would cause her to see me in a new light.

  The day finally arrived. I picked Jill up from Warrington railway station, and drove her back to the village along the country lanes in which the hedgerows were a glorious summer green and young birds, celebrating their new mastery over life, swooped joyously in the sky above.

  ‘Are you always this nervous behind the wheel?’ asked Jill, who had never seen me on anything but a bicycle before.

  ‘I’m not nervous,’ I said, surprised. ‘Why would you think I was?’

  She smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t know – probably the fact that you’re driving so slowly.’

  And I realised that she was right – I was driving slowly.

  I was behind the wheel of my uncle’s Jaguar X-J.

  ‘Take it ,’ he’d urged me . ‘You’ll soon learn, Rob, that nothing impresses the totty like a big powerful machine being put through its paces.’

  And maybe I would have put it through its paces with anyone else as my passenger, but Jill was different. I didn’t want to impress her. I wanted, with every ounce of my being, to protect her and keep her safe – to lay down my own life for her, if that was what it took.

  We had tea with my parents, who were as shy and withdrawn as usual, then walked down the narrow street which led to the church, and from there down the hill to my grandparents’ house.

  It was Grandmother who answered the door. ‘So you’re Jill,’ she said. ‘Well, you’re even prettier than I imagined you’d be.’

  I grinned at my girlfriend’s discomfort, but in fact I was feeling vaguely uneasy because, though I told myself I was being irrational, I had my strongest misgivings about Jill meeting my grandfather.

  The problem was that I’d come to value the old man's opinion over the years. And now I was frightened that he might disapprove of Jill. Or more to the point, if I’m being honest, I was afraid he’d spot in her some fatal flaw which I had previously overlooked.

  Grandmother made us a second tea despite our protests that we’d already eaten, and out of politeness we had to make a show of picking at it as we sat in the lounge and talked. The conversation flowed freely, but most of it passed between Jill and my grandfather. I had never realised before what a good listener Grandfather really was, nor how interested he could be in the answers. He treated Jill as if she were the most important person in the world, which of course – to me – she was.

  When it was finally to time to go, Grandfather hoisted himself slowly to his feet and gave Jill a kiss. ‘It’s been a delight to meet you,’ he said, ‘and you’re welcome to visit us any time.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Jill told him, and from the sideways glances they both gave me, I knew the meeting had been a great success.

  Afterwards – when it was all over – I looked back on the two weeks Jill stayed with us as the golden period of my life. The weather helped – it was one of those idyllic summers which is not too hot and not too cold, when the air smells so fresh and the breezes are caressingly gentle. But it was Jill who made those days for me, just as I knew she would make my life for me. We walked in the woods. We swam in the mere. Sometimes we seemed to be continually talking, and at others we said nothing much at all. It didn’t matter what we did, or where we went. We were together, and that was the only important thing.

  At the end of her holiday, I delivered her to the same station from which I had picked her up just two brief, wonderful weeks before. We didn’t speak much in the car. We were both, I think, contemplating the future – the short-term one before the university year began again, and the longer one which stretched into the vague distance.

  The short-term future was very clearly laid out. I was to work for my father for a few weeks to compensate somewhat for the cost of putting me through an expensive education. Jill, for her part, had accepted a job supervising underprivileged kids on an adventure holiday in Cornwall.

  But after that? In the long term? That seemed clearly laid out, too. Though we had not discussed it, we both understood that as soon as we had completed our degrees we would get married. And though we would not have children right away, they would be the perfect seal on the love we felt for each other.

  I parked my father’s modest Allegro in front of the station, and took Jill’s case out of the boot.

  ‘I can handle it, Robbie,’ she told me.

  I laughed. ‘But I don’t want you to handle it. I’ll carry it for you.’

  ‘I want to say goodbye now,’ she told me, and I could see the tears forming in her eyes. ‘No long drawn-out farewells. Just a clean break.’

  ‘But only for a few weeks,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Only for a few weeks.’

  We kissed, and though both of
us were reluctant to let go, she finally broke away.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve struck out on your own,’ she said seriously.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re doing an English degree. I’m glad you want to become an academic.'

  I smiled. ‘What made you say that just now?’

  She gave a shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s just … Your family’s not the right place for you, Robbie.’

  I should have been expecting that, I suppose – I had been expecting it before she arrived – but the two idyllic weeks we’d spent together had lulled me into a false sense of security.

  ‘You don’t like them,’ I said, sounding almost hurt.

  ‘It’s not that,’ she protested. ‘Your grandparents are lovely.’

  ‘What about my parents?’

  ‘I don’t feel I really got to know them,’ Jill admitted. ‘They mean well, but maybe because your mother isn’t in the best of health they live in their own little world – very much a nation of two.’

  Jill wasn’t wrong, I thought. My mother’s health had started to deteriorate when John and I were very small and my father, who loved her as much as she loved him, had focused most of his emotional concern on her.

  It wasn’t that he never showed his two sons any affection but, as Jill had said, so much of it was being absorbed by Mother that he very rarely had much to spread around. In a way, I suppose, my mother and father abdicated from parenthood with my mother’s first illness, and it was Grandmother and Grandfather who took up the slack.

  ‘I like John, too,’ Jill continued. ‘He’s a little strange, partly, I think, because he can’t really accept himself for who he really is, but he’s got a good heart and he’d die for you without a second’s hesitation.’

  ‘I’d do the same for him,’ I said.