The car stopped at a five-barred gate on which was a highly-coloured hand-painted board reminiscent of an inn sign. ‘John and Happy’s Shack’ it read. ‘Open all hours.’ The illustration was of a castle embodying some of the features of Windsor.
“Some shack,” said Berger as he got down to open the gate. “Somebody has a sense of humour.”
“Had,” corrected Masters. “We saw some of Melada’s sketches yesterday afternoon. He wasn’t a bad draughtsman.”
The track continued across a small field which was, apparently, the Shack’s garden. Two or three small areas had been cultivated and there were some good-looking crops of vegetables and flowers. Then came a belt of poplars in full leaf and behind them the house. It was of wood, white-painted, and two-storied.
“Tucked well away,” said Green, opening his door and stepping down. As he did so, the front door of the house opened and a little Yorkshire terrier shot towards them, yapping shrilly. It went for Green’s trouser legs, darting in to attack and away again before he could lay hands on it.
“Berger,” he roared. “Get this clockwork mouse off me.”
“He’s taken a fancy to you,” said Berger, coming round to try to pick up the animal. But even he could not catch it, and the game was only over when a nasal voice called: “Goliath! Come here! Goliath!”
The dog stopped, half-crouched for another run at Green, turned its head and then sped off towards the door. Then it leapt, and landed safely in the arms of the young woman standing there.
“Goliath!” muttered Green.
“Of Gath!” murmured Masters as he passed him on the way to the porch.
“With hith helmet of bwath,” added Reed and followed Masters.
“We’re policemen,” said Masters. “Are you Mrs Melada?”
Happy held Goliath in one arm and pushed her glasses back on her nose. She was just as Canning had described her.
“Not actually,” she said. “But I lived with him.”
“I see. What would you like me to call you?”
“Happy will do.”
“And I shall be happy to comply. I expect you know why we’re here.”
“Are you the Scotland Yard men who found John?”
“Yes. May we come in?”
She nodded and turned into the house, leading the way into a large living-room out of which ran the stairs. “I can’t put Goliath down,” she drawled, “because there are no doors on any of our rooms, so I can’t shut him away.”
“Not on any room?” asked Green. “Not even the . . . er . . . bathroom.”
“Nope.”
She gestured to them to sit where they could and they took their choice from a selection of chairs and sofas which, Masters guessed, had been bought at auction sales over the years.
“Now, Happy, Mr John Melada’s death must be a great blow to you,” said Masters. “May I, at the outset, say how sorry we are about it and at having to be here.”
“I guess I’ve got over the worst of it.”
“But his body was only discovered yesterday.”
“I’ve known for a long time that he was dead. A fortnight at least.” She said it without apparent emotion. The four men were silent for a moment, watching her carefully as the little terrier, sensing the tension, put up his muzzle to lick his mistress’s face.
“Known?” said Masters at last. “Not suspected or feared?”
“You’re out for precision, Mr Masters. You’ve got it. I said known and I meant known.”
“I’ll accept your word, Miss Happy, but you must realise your reply prompts me to ask how you came to know.”
“I worked it out.”
“I see. You weren’t present at his death?”
“No. I worked it out.”
“And you didn’t know where his body was?”
“I still don’t know, exactly.”
“You what?” asked Green. “You mean to say they didn’t tell you when they took you to identify him.”
“They said near to St John the Divine’s church in Oakby. That’s not very precise is it?”
Masters was marvelling at her composure.
“Until you had identified Mr Melada’s body there was no point in giving you the details. But afterwards? Didn’t you ask?”
“The constable who drove me back here had no details.”
“I see. Your husband was buried in the churchyard.”
“Buried?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No. I ought to have guessed it.”
“How could you have guessed it?”
“Because I went there to look for him and couldn’t find him.”
Green held up his hand. “Wait a moment, Miss. You say you went there to look for him. When?”
“After he went missing.”
“After you knew he was dead? After you’d worked it out?”
“That’s right.”
Green glanced at Masters to convey that he’d never met anything quite like this before and he wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. Masters, however, was prepared to tackle the situation. “Miss Happy, for you to work out that your husband was dead, you would need some solid fact on which to build. I suppose, too, that intuition came into it?”
“A little. If you can call a woman’s knowledge of her man intuition.”
“May we know the processes and the premises which enabled you to reach the conclusion which was verified as correct yesterday when the body was found?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Please tell us.”
“You knew Johnny was set on buying that old church?”
“We knew that much.”
“But did you know how set on it he was?”
“Obviously not the degree of his. . . .”
“Obsession would be the right word.”
“Please explain.”
“I don’t think I can. As you can guess, I’ve thought about it a lot. Suddenly, one day, we see a church for sale. I guess the word church had never crossed Johnny’s lips, let alone entered his mind, for ten years. And yet on that day he became obsessed with the idea of owning it.”
“As a business venture perhaps.”
“Perhaps. It had everything going for it as far as Johnny was concerned. Things to do—design, decorate, furnish, install heat, light and water, clear the graveyard. An endless list of things he could have used up his energy on. He wanted that. He wanted something of his own for the first time in his life.”
“Surely, this house. . . .”
“Is rented. Johnny wanted a stake. But it couldn’t be an ordinary house. It had to be a monument. Something that had stood for years and just waiting for him to put the finishing touches to: something that was unique and different from anything anybody else had. Johnny had to be different, that’s why we’ve got no doors here, not even on the loo.”
“The church would not have made as nice a home as this house.”
“It wasn’t to be a home. It was to be a studio to be let to artists of various sorts.”
“Simply that? No other plans for it?”
“I guess not. I accused Johnny of wanting to turn it into a porn shop. He was capable of just that. It would have appealed to his sense of humour. I still reckon I was right. But he denied it and nobody can prove what he would have done now. So let’s just say he’d got this obsession.”
“And what did you feel about the place?”
She pushed her glasses up her nose and stared straight at Masters. “It scared the pants off me. I walked round that deserted graveyard and I found it spooky. In broad daylight. I was there for half an hour on my own and I didn’t like it.”
“So you tried to dissuade Mr Melada from buying it.”
“Yeah. But Johnny was a clever old cuss. He told me I could fix the price he offered.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Not if you don’t want to lose a guy who’s obsessed by a church, it’s not. Fix it too low an’ he’ll have you
for causing him to lose it. Fix it too high and you’re a pauper enjoying love on a shoestring, and I don’t think.”
“Difficult for you. What did you do?”
“Did the only thing possible with obsessionists. I fixed it at the maximum possible consistent with keeping out of the poor house and gave him the reasons for what I’d done so as he’d know how I’d arrived at it.”
“Was he satisfied?”
“Not satisfied. But it was what he offered.”
“May we know about it? Your proposals and his reactions at the time?”
“Why?”
Green said: “Look, lass, your old man got clobbered. We want to know what went on. You ask the Superintendent why. And the answer to that is a lemon. We suck it and see. A lot of what we hear is of no use to us. But we don’t know that until after we’ve heard it. So come on. When did you explain to John Melada how you’d decided what he could pay for the church?”
“The next morning. The day after we’d seen the church.”
“It must have been early. He went to see Brigadier Alton that morning.”
“Yeah! It was at breakfast time.”
“What were you eating?”
“Me? Muesli, like I always do.”
“And Johnny?”
“He was eating a plate of cold stew left over from the night before.”
“For breakfast?” asked Berger in disbelief. “Cold stew?”
Happy looked solemnly—over her glasses—at the young sergeant.
“It’s not to everybody’s taste, but he liked it.”
“Just watching him eat it would be enough for me.”
“I didn’t watch him. I was reading the Guardian.”
Green came in again. “Did he ask you what you’d decided?”
“Yeah. He said, well? and I asked, well what? and he said, the price I can pay, and I said two thousand pounds.”
“What did he do then?”
“What he always did. He laughed and said he couldn’t get a cowshed for that and I was expecting him to offer it for the church and two acres of ground. So I asked him what value was two acres full of graves and he said, come on, Happy, how did you get that figure.”
“And?”
“I told him that two thousand was the amount mentioned by the vicar and he said to hell with that because it only went to show that the church would be cheap but not that cheap.”
“What did you say to that?”
“That I had worked it out. I’d added up what I reckoned he’d get for the internal furnishings—the pews and things—and doubled it. He asked if I thought that the fabric and land were only worth the same amount as the pews but I didn’t answer that one. I told him I’d looked at our savings and that between us we might just raise two thousand if we emptied my Building Society book and cashed our National Savings.”
“He accepted you’d done your best?”
“I told him I hadn’t tried to limit him in any way as I’d given him everything we’d got. He made some snide comment to the effect that everything we’d got just happened to coincide with the figure the vicar had mentioned and the figure I’d worked out before I’d added up our assets.”
“He had a point.”
“He made it. I told him it was fate and he said he couldn’t accept that. So I said, lover, if you really want to know the value I put on that church it was nothing, zero, rien, sweet-fanny but, seeing we can scrape up two thousand . . . and I left it at that.”
“He was satisfied at last?”
“It’s obvious you didn’t know Johnny. He said, OK, two thousand as a deposit it is, and I said two thousand top price, deposit ten per cent of that. Then he said oh, come on, Hap, when I said you could fix the price I expected you to be realistic. So I read him a lecture. I told him people shouldn’t buy what they don’t need if they can’t afford it. And we didn’t need a church and couldn’t afford more than two thousand, so that was that.”
“And that was the end of it?” Green was at his best. Masters had left it to him, and he was determined to show his colleagues how such interrogations should be conducted.
“Johnny started to talk about it being an investment and I asked him if he got the church for two thousand what return would we get on it. He said, as it stands, nothing. But after it was done up, a lot. So I asked how much would doing up a church cost and after a bit of argument he agreed that the church itself would cost another two thousand and to clear the churchyard and dig a septic tank another thousand.”
“Five thousand in all.”
“That’s right, and I told Johnny it seemed a low figure but asked him what he’d get as a holiday home. He went on about it being a studio or a place for groups to rehearse and I said he wouldn’t be able to let a stone-cold church in that place in winter. In the summer months, perhaps, I told him. Say twenty weeks a year at—if he was lucky—an average of forty pounds a week. He said average fifty, so I accepted that and told him he’d gross a thousand a year, of which about three hundred and fifty would be tax. Of course he said he didn’t pay tax and usually he didn’t. But this wouldn’t have been one of his private little cash deals. He’d have to advertise for custom and people would want receipts. And there’d be rates and maintenance. So I reckoned he wouldn’t make more than four hundred a year on an investment of five thousand, to say nothing of the work he’d have to put in. I told him it would take thirteen or fourteen years to get his money back and he’d make more by putting it in to a building society to compound—if he’d got it to put in, that is.”
“That wasn’t the end of the matter, I’ll bet. If I’ve got your Johnny right, he’d say he could raise the three thousand somehow.”
“You’re right. He did. So I asked what we were arguing about. He could still bid two thousand for the church. He laughed and said he wouldn’t get it for that and I said that was what I was counting on because even at that price he’d be in deep water and if he went any higher he’d be in dead trouble. So he said it was obvious I didn’t want him to have it and I said I’d never disguised that fact but I’d kept my promise and fixed the price.
“Knowing it won’t be accepted, he said, so I asked him straight out why he was so dead-set on acquiring an empty old church in the middle of nowhere and he asked why I was so keen to stop him.”
“Why were you?” asked Green.
“I told him I didn’t want to buy trouble, but he didn’t answer my question. He just said he wanted it, again and again.”
“But you knew different?”
“I reckon—as I told you—he’d got an idea to set it up as a studio all right—a film studio for blue films, and a centre—a porn centre. I reckon he thought people—kinky people—would pay big money for the kick of having sex in a church and I know he was keen to break into the porn book market.”
“Did you tell him this is what you thought?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He laughed and said it would rake in the bread. So I told him not to be daft because we knew the police had their eye on him ever since he got off that drugs charge. And besides, I wasn’t for getting into that sort of thing.”
“Was that it?”
“More or less. He still said he wanted it just for a studio and I told him I was frightened of that church, I was frightened by the deal, and I was frightened by what he was going to do. And that’s why I said he could have everything we’d got, but not a penny more. He said I knew he wouldn’t get the church for that and I said, that’s right, you won’t get a cowshed for that price.”
Green sat back. “Thanks, love. That was very clear. Would you like a fag?”
She shook her head and then looked down at Goliath who was simulating sleep in her arms. Masters said gently: “But Mr Melada nearly did get his church.”
“Yeah! He was so confident, he came home and told me he had got it. He was like a dog with two tails for the next fortnight while he waited to hear, and when he saw those notices posted
he was sure. I told him—because I wanted him not to get it—that he was counting his chickens, but as I say he was obsessed. He took Rex Belton to look over the place and made all sorts of plans.”
“We saw his rough sketches.”
“He did those that first night.”
“They were very good.”
“He was sort of artistic. He was a good photographer, too. That’s what frightened me. You see, Johnny had knocked about for years, doing deals, and he’d really got nothing to show for it. I knew he wanted to make a killing and his obsession showed me that he thought this was his big chance.”
Masters nodded to show he understood. “Now,” he said quietly, “we come to Mr Melada’s disappearance and how it came to dawn on you that he was dead.”
She put the dog down and got to her feet. “Would you like coffee?” she asked.
“I’m sure Sergeant Berger could get it for us. He’s a very good coffee maker and being a good detective I feel sure he’ll be able to locate the necessary items in your kitchen.”
Green looked across at Masters as though he mistrusted the tone the Superintendent had used. The girl had been talking for long enough. It was natural she should need a break which making coffee would afford her. But Masters wasn’t for letting her off the hook. As far as Green knew, Berger had never made coffee. So what was going on? Berger, however, took the hint as an order and made his way into the adjoining kitchen. As there was no door it wasn’t difficult to find.
“When did Mr Melada not come home?” asked Masters.
“Two nights after he spoke to the Brigadier and was told his bid for the church had been bettered by somebody else.”
“Were you surprised?”
“Not particularly.”
“Why not? Was he in the habit of staying away overnight without letting you know?”
“It happened. But always before—if he hadn’t let me know—he’d arrived home in the middle of the next morning.”
“Did he say where he’d been on these occasions?”
“He didn’t have to. He was always shamefaced and laughing, apologetic perhaps but insincere, and he never bothered to supply anything but the lamest of excuses.”
“You suspected other women?”
“With Johnny? Always. He drank very little and he never gambled on horses or cards, so what could he have been up to?”
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