by Simon Brett
‘When you say they “went off together”, do you mean as a couple?’
‘If you mean, was there sex involved, I’ve no idea. They used together, certainly, sourced drugs together; maybe stole together to fund their habits.’
‘So you’ve no means of contact?’
‘I’ve got a mobile number for Les. Whether he still uses it, I’ve no idea.’
‘Maybe I’ll try and contact him.’
‘Why?’
‘I want to know what happened to Kerry.’
‘Why?’
‘Partly just out of curiosity, but also there’s an element of self-protection.’
‘Oh?’
‘Listen, Dodge, I was the one who found her body … or a body, I should say. I now know it was the body of someone I knew. It won’t take the police long to find that out. I think it would be better for me if I were to ring them and mention the connection rather than waiting for them to come and accuse me of keeping it secret from them.’
‘I see your point,’ said Dodge.
So that’s what I did. When I got back to the Yeti, I found the card the detective inspector had given me. The name that I’d forgotten was John Prendergast. Detective Inspector John Prendergast. I got a voicemail message.
I identified myself and said that, now I knew the identity of the murder victim, I realized that I had met her before. I didn’t think it would be long before the police got back to me.
TEN
Meanwhile, the work of SpaceWoman had to go on. In the chaos of the weekend, I’d had a call from Dorothy Lechlade, and agreed to go back to Clovelly on the Monday afternoon to meet her and her husband. I’d stayed so long with Dodge that making the two o’clock appointment in Chichester meant missing another lunch, a hardship I was well used to.
Tobias Lechlade was exactly as I had imagined him. Probably in his sixties, crumpled brown corduroy trousers, a tattersall check shirt over which he wore a green woollen cardigan with leather elbow patches, and brown lace-up brogues. His aspiration to look like a scatty academic were let down by a couple of details. The price stickers on the bottom of the brogues showed them to be recent purchases, and the cardigan had been bought ready-elbowed. It was not an old garment whose overuse had necessitated the leather reinforcement.
His fingers, I noticed, were stained from the constant tamping down of his pipes.
Dorothy was as soberly dressed as she had been on the previous occasion. Once again, something familiar about her face nagged at me.
Tobias’s manner with his wife was interesting. Though probably only ten years older than her, he was very much of the ‘don’t you worry your pretty little head about that’ brigade. Also, and I got the feeling it was for my benefit, he was constantly touching her, taking her hand, bestowing little pats on her shoulder or bottom. The gestures seemed to be statements of ownership.
I found this act mildly repellent, but Dorothy clearly lapped it up. I might have thought what an emotionally impoverished life she had had to warm to such behaviour, but I curbed such speculation. What went on inside another marriage was not my business.
‘Dotty’s told me why she called you in,’ said Tobias. I also registered that I would hate to be called ‘Dotty’. ‘Secretive little minx, eh? Going behind my back. When the cat’s away …’
Dorothy, I’m afraid, simpered at this.
‘Still, I’m not criticizing her,’ he went on magnanimously. ‘I know that marriage – even at our advanced age – is a matter of compromise, each partner making concessions to the other in a fair and even-handed way. So, if Dotty feels that changes are needed to my workspace, I am prepared to discuss the issue … so long as she agrees to take up my system of stacking the dishwasher.’
Tobias guffawed. Dorothy tittered. Clearly, the dishwasher had become a private joke between them. I disguised my inward wince.
‘No, I’m a reasonable man. Obviously, I’m not going to sanction any changes that will affect my working methods …’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to, darling,’ said Dorothy, the endearment sounding slightly awkward, as if she didn’t yet feel at ease using it.
‘… but anything that improves my efficiency … well, I’m all in favour of that.’
‘You’ll definitely need to get the leaking roof sorted,’ I said, ‘and I think there’s a significant fire risk from all those papers.’
‘“All those papers”?’ he echoed humorously. ‘How easily my life’s work is dismissed.’
‘I’m sure Ellen wasn’t dismissing it,’ said Dorothy. The slight anxiety in her voice suggested to me that Tobias had a temper on him when he was crossed in anything. There had been a joking tone in his words, but I suspected his supply of bonhomie might be finite.
‘Anyway,’ he said suddenly, clapping his hands together, ‘let us go and see the extent of my shortcomings, and what SpaceWoman can suggest to improve my life.’ There was a lot of scepticism in the way he spoke my company name. He rose from his kitchen chair. ‘There’s no need for you to come with us, Dotty.’
When I was alone with Tobias Lechlade in his attic glory hole, I was made very much aware of the fact that we were a man and a woman alone in a room together. It’s a familiar situation to all of my gender. Nothing so overt as a grope or a fumble, just a consciousness of the sexual potential. The man is probably conscious of it first, but his consciousness of it makes the woman very quickly aware of it.
Tobias’s manner was immediately different to the one he’d displayed with his wife present. There was overt flirtatiousness in his words as he said, ‘So, are you going to put me over your knee and spank me for my untidiness?’
‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ I said, as icily as I could.
‘Very well.’ He moved through to the inner sanctum of his office, and casually gestured towards the shelf of books by T.J. Lechlade. Equally casually, he said, ‘I don’t know if Dotty showed you these when she did the Grand Tour …’
‘Yes, she did.’
‘All my own work.’
‘She told me.’
‘About my specialist subject, the Wars of the Roses.’
‘She mentioned that too.’
‘My minor contribution to that particular field of endeavour,’ he said with spurious humility. ‘My legacy to historians of the future.’
I made no comment. I had, amid the turmoil of the weekend, checked his publisher out online. It was one of those who offer to ‘help you fulfil the dream of publishing your own book’. In other words, money would change hands between author and publishers, and the books would be print-on-demand.
Which meant that the works of T.J. Lechlade were unlikely to have been read by any other historians, and would certainly not appear in university libraries. His history writing, his whole career, was a vanity project.
Which, of course, raised the question of how he funded his very comfortable lifestyle. I got the impression that, as well as Clovelly, Tobias Lechlade’s parents had left him quite a substantial private income.
But I wasn’t there to speculate about his financial situation. I looked around the chaos of his study. ‘The question really is, how much you do.’
‘How much …?’
‘Decluttering. By how much could these piles of papers be reduced?’
‘These “piles of papers”, as you describe them, do represent a lifetime of study. I would have to go through them in great detail to find which ones are no longer pertinent to my work. You see, it may look like chaos to you, but I know absolutely to the last detail where everything is, Ellen.’
As he spoke my name, he stood far closer to me than was necessary. I moved away towards the corner where the rain had come in. ‘Shifting this lot would be my first priority. I’m sure any roofer you get is going to need to inspect the inside to see where the leak is. They’ll need access.’
‘Yes, I’m sure they will,’ said Tobias Lechlade airily. ‘I don’t get involved in practical things like that. I let Dotty
sort them out.’ Presumably, when she’d been alive, he’d delegated ‘practical things like that’ to his mother. I was trying to restrain the annoyance that was building within me. Tobias Lechlade seemed to have led such a cushioned life. In his own tiny universe, he was the planet around which everything else orbited. I didn’t envy Dorothy the marriage she was now stuck in.
Tobias’s next words didn’t endear him to me any further. ‘I’m a free spirit, actually. Would you believe that the recent one, to Dotty, is my first marriage?’
‘Yes,’ I replied with some edge, ‘I don’t have any difficulty believing that.’
‘Not that there haven’t been other people who wanted to marry me in the past …’ The only comments I might have made would have been offensive, so I said nothing. ‘But, in the words of the old saying,’ he continued, ‘why buy a book when there’s a thriving lending library in the town?’
‘I don’t think I can help you much,’ I said abruptly. ‘You need to discuss with Dorothy what you actually want to do with this space. If the conclusion you reach, between the two of you, is that you need the services of a declutterer, get back in touch with me.’
I moved towards the door. Tobias held out his arm in such a way that I could not get past him without physical contact. He grinned a grin that has infuriated women since records began, a look of atavistic gender superiority.
And then he had the nerve to say, ‘Oh, come on, Ellen. I know you find me attractive, and I know you’re wearing a wedding ring and all that … I don’t wear one, incidentally. It might curb my activities a bit.’
He lowered his arm in such a way that his hand brushed against my breasts. It could have looked accidental, but it wasn’t. I hated the idea of those tobacco-stained fingers being anywhere near me.
Raising his arm again to block my exit, he went on, ‘Maybe we could meet up for lunch on a Friday in London …?’
He was spared the fusillade of responses that was building up in me, simply by the fact that my mobile rang. I looked down at the screen. Detective Inspector John Prendergast.
‘I’ll have to go and take this,’ I said.
‘Suppose I don’t let you go …?’ asked Tobias, delusionally secure in his own magnetism. Why a man with flaking skin, yellowed teeth and hair cultures in unlikely places round his nose and ears should think himself attractive was way beyond me.
‘It’s the police,’ I said.
Amazing how quickly his arm dropped then. Probably he had no reason to fear the police, it was just an instinctive reaction.
By the time I got to the front door, I had decided that was to be my last visit to Clovelly. I felt desperately sorry for Dorothy Lechlade, but what needed doing in their marriage was way outside my job description. I hoped the scales would quickly fall off her eyes and within six months she would be securely divorced.
Once in the Yeti, I was about to call back Detective Inspector John Prendergast, when the mobile in my hand rang. I answered it.
‘It’s me. How’re you doing, Ellen?’
I knew the voice immediately. He’d always said, ‘It’s me’ on the phone and I’d never really worked out whether that was endearing or a sign of arrogance, assuming that everyone he spoke to knew who he was. His voice no longer gave me the frisson it did in my teenage years, but it was good to hear him. My first boyfriend, husband of my best friend.
‘Philip. How’re things with you?’
‘I asked first,’ he said.
‘All fine here.’ It was instinctive, and a much better response than embarking on the details of the things in my life that weren’t fine (like having recently found a murder victim and – worse at that moment – having been come on to by a self-deluding academic in his sixties).
‘Good to see you yesterday,’ I went on.
‘Yes.’ There was a silence before he said, as I knew he would, ‘It’s about Hilary.’
‘She seemed in good form. Looking as gorgeous as ever.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorted out your medical emergency, have you?’
‘Which medical emergency?’
‘The one for which you had to rush back to London yesterday.’
‘Oh, sure, that’s all right. Though something else has come up now.’
‘Same old Philip.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Only that you’ve always had workaholic tendencies.’
‘I’m not attempting to deny it. But at least it’s good work.’ There was a winsome appeal in his voice that I recognized from long ago.
‘I’ve never questioned that, Philip.’
‘No.’ The conversation became becalmed.
‘So?’ I prompted. ‘About Hilary …?’
‘Yes. You know about this research she’s been doing with lifers from Gradewell?’
‘I know in outline what she’s up to, yes. She obviously doesn’t talk to me about individual cases.’ Which wasn’t strictly true, as of recently. But true enough.
‘She hasn’t talked to me about it in detail. But, about that body you found in the flat in Portsmouth …’
‘Mm.’
‘Lots of speculation in the press.’
‘I’m sure there is.’
I hadn’t actually looked at the paper that morning. But when I thought about the situation, I wasn’t surprised that there had been press conjecture about Kerry Tallis’s death. Journalists couldn’t actually write that Nate Ogden was the prime suspect in the crime, but they could legally state that the body had been found in his mother’s house and publish photographs of him. Mention that he had been serving a sentence for killing another young woman. And leave the scandal-ravenous British public to make their own conclusions.
That certainly appeared to be what Philip was doing. ‘It seems,’ he went on, ‘that the main suspect was one of the lifers Hilary had been working with.’
‘Yes. Early days in the investigation, but I can see how people might think that. What the police are thinking, where they’ve got to on the case, of course I have no idea.’ I didn’t mention that I was about to speak to the chief investigating officer.
‘I’m just worried, Ellen, about what Hilary may be getting herself into here.’
‘She’s not getting herself into anything different from when she started the project. She knew then that she was dealing with murderers. That was the whole point of the research.’
‘Yes, and I know how pleased she was to have got the funding for it. Hilary’s always been amazingly ambitious, I don’t need to tell you.’ I wondered if perhaps he did need to tell me. I’d always put her driven nature to having high standards rather than ambition. Perhaps, in her case, the two were the same thing.
‘When she started it,’ Philip went on, ‘she told me the project was going to be all-consuming and I said that was fine. You called me a workaholic, but I’m not in Hilary’s league. We respect that in each other. It’s the basis of our marriage, if you like. We both have careers that totally absorb us, but we always make time for just the two of us. But her murderers project …’
‘Are you suggesting that that’s taking her away from you?’
‘No, no, there’s nothing wrong with the marriage.’ I felt relief. Given my position as confidante for both of them, marital problems there could put me in an uncomfortable situation. ‘What I’m saying, Ellen, is that I didn’t realize the level of danger in what Hilary was going to do.’
‘She’s very well protected when she goes into Gradewell. She’s been going in and out of there for the past two years.’
‘I know. Also, the lifers she was dealing with, she assured me, were people who’d committed their crimes a long time ago. From the few things she did let slip about them, they sounded a pretty harmless bunch. But now one of them’s got out and immediately killed again.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘Seems pretty likely.’
‘I’m sure, when the police make an arrest,’ I said, uncharacteristicall
y formal, ‘they will make an announcement.’
‘Perhaps. But from things Hilary’s said to me recently, she was clearly doing a lot of concentrated work with Nate Ogden.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I sort of lied.
‘Because he was about to be released. The focus of her thesis was on prisoners at that particular, unique moment in their lives.’
‘Ah. She didn’t tell me that,’ I continued sort of lying. ‘We’re both very good about confidentiality in our work.’
‘Well, I’m worried about her.’
‘Don’t be, Philip. Just give Hilary a call and I’m sure she’ll be able to put your mind at rest.’
‘I’ve tried phoning her, Ellen. She’s not picking up.’
‘Probably in one of her discussion groups.’
‘I’ve been trying since six thirty this morning.’
‘Oh.’
‘Ellen, I don’t know where she is.’
Philip sounded childlike in his helplessness.
ELEVEN
I tried Hilary’s mobile. It was no more responsive to me than it had been to her husband. No voicemail message, either. It could have run out of charge. She might be anywhere.
I sat in the Yeti and made a few more calls before I got back to Detective Inspector John Prendergast. I had a feeling I could be in for a long session with him. Other things needed to be sorted before I plunged into it.
I didn’t know whether Les, the ex-con Dodge had mentioned, had been at Gradewell during Hilary’s research there. But he might know others who’d had contact with her. Also, I wanted to talk to him about Kerry/Celeste. His phone rang but was no more communicative than Hilary’s. His, however, did have an answering message, so I left my number, mentioning the Dodge connection and asking him to call me. I wasn’t very optimistic of getting a result.
I phoned Queenie – I’d been hoping to pop in later in the day to see her – to say it didn’t look likely to happen. Her deflation at the news, as ever, made me feel guilty.
I’d also been intending to visit Ashleigh, so I called her too. She didn’t sound too bothered by the prospects of a no-show. She said Zak was fine, though I could hear him screaming above the music which, once again, was being played too loud. Still, nothing I could do about it at that moment.