‘Aye, I did. I’m an observant sort of chiel and I see a lot from up the ladder, most of it reflected in the glass so’s folk don’t know they’re being seen. There’s not much else to think about in this line of work. Mind, I’d be round the back of the houses, half the time.’
And, Keith thought, for half of the other half the glass would be obscured by soapy water. But Gus was the best witness he was likely to get. A person mowing a lawn or washing a car sees much less than he thinks he does. ‘Tell me all you can remember,’ he said.
Gus sipped his tea while he thought back. ‘There wasn’t a lot,’ he said. ‘Mr Pollock drove off while I was doing the Beechers but he was back by the time I got to the Kechnies so I knew I’d get paid. His wife had walked away over the wee bridge, you see, but she came back just as I started on the back of her house. She stopped and spoke to Mrs Orton, so I was finished by the time she reached home. Och, but you can’t be wanting all this!’
‘Go on,’ Keith said. ‘This is all useful stuff.’
‘If you say so. Well, then. I mind Mr Albany coming out of the Hendricksons’ gate and going in at his own. I took a wee break after that – it’s tiring, humping they ladders on your own, and Mrs Orton doesn’t like me coming too early in case I give the old body a fright. Next thing, Mr Strathling comes out of his gate and goes into the Albanys’. That was while I waited for Mrs Pollock to arrive home and settle up.’
‘Aha!’ Keith said. He pencilled the fresh information into a print-out of the timetable. ‘Go on.’
‘About then,’ Gus said, ‘Mr Kechnie crossed the road. I thought he went into the McLaing’s gate but it could’ve been the Beechers. The Kechnies and the Beechers are as thick as thieves.’
‘They’re related,’ Keith said. ‘What else?’
‘Well now, the old mannie Rogers was doing the rounds at the same time, collecting milk-money, but of course he was getting round faster than I was. I did the Ortons next and that’s where he passed me, just as I was finishing having a crack with the old body through her window.
‘The Hendricksons and the Albanys only take me once every four weeks and that wasn’t their week, so I skipped across to the Strathlings just as Mr Strathling came back from the Albanys’ and not long before the Beecher laddie went off in his car. Just after that, I heard a bang which must ha’ been the sound of the shot.’
‘Did you notice anything else around that time?’ Keith asked.
Gus looked uncertain. ‘Not that I mind. Except that I caught sight, reflected in the glass, of the old lady waving. I looked back over my shoulder, thinking it was maybe me she was waving at, but she was looking between the houses and I guessed that she was waving to Mr Strathling.’
‘I think she was waving to Kenny Stuart, the farmer,’ Keith said.
‘That’d be likely enough. Anyway, I heard the bang just seconds after, and soon aabody was stravaigning around and wondering what to do next. The police arrived and a doctor – although what good he could do beats me.’
‘Did you follow the crowd round to the Hendricksons’ summerhouse?’
Gus shook his head solemnly. ‘What for would I do that? Time’s money when you’re self-employed. The moment I heard what’d happened I made up my mind I’d not be a witness to anything if I could help it. Not that that’s saved me from the police. I gi’ed them the same as I’ve told you in a tenth of the time.’
Keith took the hint. ‘I’ll leave you to get on with it in a minute. First, go over that morning in your mind. Can you remember anything else? Anything at all?.
‘That’s the whole of it,’ Gus said, ‘but I’ll catch you if anything else comes into my mind.’
‘Thank you,’ Keith said. ‘You’ve been a big help and I’m grateful.’
‘I’ve not landed some poor bugger in the sharn?’
‘Mostly,’ Keith said, ‘you’ve just borne out what they’d already told me.’ He opened his door, admitting the whine of an electric mower, but paused with one foot out of the van. ‘From that ladder of yours, you must see most of what goes on around the town. Did the police ask you whether any of the folk up here were having affairs?’
‘They did,’ Gus said. ‘And I’ll tell you what I told them. There’s yin or two of the men trailing a wing, but none of them’s fool enough to shit on his ane doorstane. Ayont that, I’m not telling. I aye think a window-cleaner’s like a doctor or a minister and maun steik his gab and no’ be blurting his clients’ secrets to the whole town.’
*
The younger Mrs Orton answered her door to Keith. She was a small and cheerful person with a brisk manner. Although she was dressed for gardening she managed to look so clean and fresh that Keith expected her to smell of starch. She pulled off a leather glove to shake Keith’s hand.
‘Your Deborah will be back soon,’ she said. ‘But my mother-in-law’s expecting you. She’s looking forward to an extra visit and I know she’d like to give you coffee. Would that suit you?’
‘Very much,’ Keith said. ‘But you’re busy.’ He wondered if he dared ask for tea. It would be weeks before he could face a cup of coffee again with any enthusiasm.
‘The tray’s ready. I’ll take you and it up together. She’s old but you’ll find that she’s very much all there.’ Mrs Orton paused and looked unhappy. ‘I only hope you can clear this up. I’ve given up hoping for the police to solve anything, and it’s got us all on edge. Winnie Pollock next door, and . . . and . . .’
She turned away abruptly and fetched the tray. As she led Keith up the stairs he was able to catch a glimpse of Deborah beyond the canal. The smell of money, to which Deborah had referred, was definitely present, and the paintings which hung on the wall were contemporary originals. A man in glasses with his trousers at half-mast passed them on the landing. He was carrying a large tome and seemed to be quite unaware of their presence. The brainy Mr Orton, Keith presumed.
The senior Mrs Orton occupied a huge bed-sitting room at the front of the house. The furniture was old-fashioned, but because the wallpaper was in keeping there was no suggestion that she had been equipped with cast-offs. It was rather that the furniture, which was well matched, had been chosen carefully to suit the taste of the old lady who was perched in a high wing-chair at the window. Mrs Orton waited only long enough to make introductions before hurrying back to her gardening.
Keith pulled over a light bedroom chair and joined the old lady. Even the smell of the room was old-fashioned, he thought, although just as clean and moneyed as the rest of the house.
Old Mrs Orton was small and frail and when Keith shook her hand he could feel knuckles enlarged by arthritis. Her hearing was failing and he had to wait for her to fumble with a modern hearing-aid. But her eyes were bright and she was indomitably cheerful and blessed with a curiosity as insatiable as that of the Elephant’s Child. Before he could turn her attention to Sam Hendrickson’s death he had to accept an unwelcome cup of coffee and undergo a catechism about his own and Molly’s life and health, the prosperity of the shop and the condition of Briesland House and garden which she had known well as a girl. In return, Keith filed away some fascinating and mildly scandalous tidbits concerning the early history of his home.
‘Of course I remember that day,’ she said, when Keith managed to work round to the subject of the late Sam Hendrickson. ‘This is a quiet road. I wouldn’t want it any other way, you understand, but often there are days when I’m glad to see a leaf blowing along the pavement. Saturdays are usually more interesting, with the men at home. But that Saturday was unusually dull. Reading tires my eyes. I have the television of course, but there was nothing but sport on it. I don’t know how you feel, Mr Calder, but I just can’t get interested in anything I’ve never experienced myself. I don’t mind the tennis but I’ve never ridden a racehorse and I’ve never played Rugby football.’ She chuckled at her little joke.
‘You prefer something romantic?’ Keith said.
‘Any day of the week,’ she said stoutly.
‘Romance is something else I’ve experienced for myself.’
‘I believe you,’ Keith said, smiling.
‘Happily married for thirty-five years, but before that I’d been engaged six times. My parents were wondering what would become of me.’ She chuckled again. ‘And I just love a good thriller, although the acting isn’t what it was.
‘But that’s not what you came to hear. I don’t know that I can help you, though. You see, I didn’t hear the shot. My hearing, you know. It’s a curse, especially with the actors on the television gabbling on and mumbling their lines the way they do, and the directors drowning out the most important bits with music or background noise. How do they think a body can follow a complicated plot? Or do they think that we’re just unintelligent creatures who’ll be satisfied with noises and pictures? I’m rambling again, aren’t I?’ She grinned mischievously and slapped the back of her wrist gently. ‘But I certainly remember the day. It’s not every dull Saturday we get a police car and an ambulance up here.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Keith said.
‘I’m afraid I wasn’t on duty until close to the time Mr Hendrickson must have shot himself. Or been shot. That’s what you’re here about, isn’t it? Anyway, I can’t leap out of bed these days. I have to wait for Jane, my daughter-in-law, to help me get up. She’s a good girl. It’s not as if she’s one of my own, but she looks after me as if I was her own mother. And so does my grand-daughter, when she thinks of it. Anyway, Jane got me up and dressed just in time before the window-cleaner arrived. I like that Gus,’ she added. ‘Jane says that I like all the men, only joking, but there’s a scrap of truth in it. Men don’t say as much as women do, but what they do say is often more exciting. Gus always chats to me through the window from the top of his ladder. He’s always the joker. Sometimes he pretends that he’s trying to persuade me to elope with him. He’d fall off his ladder if I pretended to take him at his word.
‘Gus finished here and moved across the street to Mrs Strathling’s house. Mr Rogers went by, collecting his money. And Mr Strathling must have been visiting Mr Albany, because I saw him go back across the street. A little later—’
‘One moment,’ Keith said. ‘Exactly where did Mr Strathling go? These details can be important.’
‘I didn’t watch, not just then. Something distracted me. But a little later I saw him come back through the gap in the hedge from Mr Hendrickson’s into his own back garden. Then he went back to the Hendricksons’ a few minutes later. And not long after that, the police car arrived.’
‘You didn’t see Mrs Hendrickson and Mr Rogers go up the garden?’
‘How could I?’ she said. ‘Look for yourself.’ She pointed out of the window.
Keith looked and saw that the Hendricksons’ house and the trees planted near its gable effectively screened the garden and the summerhouse from that window. The Kechnies’ end of the road was also hidden, by a clump of hollies in the Pollocks’ garden, although he could see the Beechers’ gate. Keith thought hard. Something was evading him.
‘I often thought of asking the Hendricksons to get those trees pruned,’ she said suddenly. ‘It would only have needed a limb or two removed from that last fir tree and I’d have been able to see the summerhouse. With poor Mr Hendrickson stuck in a wheelchair, he was worse off than I am. He might have been glad to exchange a wave now and again.’
That gave Keith the hint that he needed. ‘What was it that distracted you from seeing where Mr Strathling went?’ he asked.
‘What was it now?’ She looked through Keith with unseeing, very blue eyes. ‘I remember! I saw the farmer on his tractor. He seemed to be looking this way, so I waved and he must have seen me because he waved back. The Beechers’ son went off about then in that nice little car. He’s a good-looking young man. If I were fifty years younger, thirty even, I’d have found some way of going with him. I used to love sports cars, and young men.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ Keith said. ‘You didn’t see Mr Kechnie cross the road?’
‘No. I noticed him coming back from the Beechers’ house, but that was later, after the fuss had died down.’
Suddenly, Keith was burning to go. ‘I mustn’t keep you any longer—’
She gripped his cuff with her frail hand. ‘You’re not keeping me,’ she said. ‘I’m keeping you. At least tell me whether I’ve helped.’
‘You’ve told me where to ask the next question,’ Keith said. ‘If I get the answer I’m hoping for, then you’ve helped a lot.’
‘You can’t give me a hint . . .?’
‘I’m not sure of anything yet,’ Keith said. ‘When I am, I’ll come back and tell you all about it.’
‘I’ll look forward to that.’
He was half-way to the door when he heard her make a sudden exclamation. He turned back. ‘Do you need anything?’ he asked.
‘Bless you, no. It’s just that something came back into my mind, suddenly, for no reason. The trouble is that I can’t even be sure that it was that same morning. And, if it was, it was much too early to be of any use to you.’
‘Tell me anyway,’ Keith said.
‘It’s just that I was woken up very early. You wake easily when you’re my age. Of course, I don’t sleep with this thing in –’ she tapped her hearing-aid and blinked when the sound reverberated in her ear ‘– but in the stillness of early morning there were no other sounds so I could make out what was happening.’
‘What?’
‘There was a car, and it had one of those engines which make a sharp knocking sound.’
‘A diesel?’
‘That’s right. A car door slamming had woken me up. That’s about all I remember, except a voice. I couldn’t make out what it said, although my guess would be that it was doing no more than asking somebody to wait for a few seconds, but I remember that it was one of those very penetrating nasal voices, like Ian Paisley without the Irish accent.’
‘And nobody who lives here has a voice like that?’
She laughed like a young girl. ‘Certainly not,’ she said. ‘The residents wouldn’t stand for it. I wouldn’t have liked living near it myself when I was younger, but now I just wish that everybody had a voice like that. Then I might be able to make out what they were saying.’
*
Keith walked back towards the entrance road and approached the next house. The garden showed less sign of constant toil than the Ortons’, but it had been laid down by somebody with an eye for design and a distaste for hard work. The kidney-shaped lawn was shaped for easy mowing in a single, continuous cut while the beds of shrubs, underplanted with rock-plants guaranteed to strangle all but the hardiest weeds, had been crammed around the edges with a variety of bulbs. Keith guessed that the Pollocks would be blessed with flowers for most of the year, without having to do much more than mow the grass and offer an artificial fertiliser and some extra water to all the competing root systems.
Mr Pollock answered the doorbell, overweight and jowly and with a self-important manner. He frowned when he saw Keith. His displeasure did not seem to be wholly accounted for by his having been caught in a paint-stained sweater and the striped trousers from a cast-off business suit. ‘It’s Mr Calder, isn’t it? Your daughter’s with my wife now.’
‘I’d like to speak to your wife for a moment, if I may,’ Keith said.
‘I suppose I can’t stop you. But,’ Mr Pollock said, standing aside, ‘I can’t say that I like all this amateur prying. The sheriff decided that Sam killed himself. Why can’t it be left at that?’
‘The sheriff may not have had all the facts,’ Keith said. ‘I’ve only been asked to discover the truth. If I’m a nuisance, I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all very well. But if Jenny Hendrickson hadn’t asked us herself, I’d be telling you to go and bowl your hoop elsewhere.’
‘If anybody else had asked me to investigate, I’d have told them the same.’
‘Well, all right,’ Mr Pollock said grudgingly. ‘Can’t disob
lige the widow, I suppose, and so charming a lady as well. Come on it.’ He ushered Keith through a door from the hallway and made himself scarce.
In the Pollocks’ living room, Deborah was sitting with Mrs Pollock and nursing a glass of lemonade. It was a room which managed to be gracious without any great expense having been lavished on it. Mrs Pollock was an anxious-looking lady, thin rather than slim. Before offering him a seat, she shook Keith’s hand as if afraid that he would break her arm.
Deborah caught her father’s eye. ‘The extra lady’s explained,’ she said.
‘My cousin,’ Mrs Pollock said quickly. ‘I’d walked across the bridge to see her. I wanted to borrow a recipe. She couldn’t put her hand on it but she gave it to me from memory. After I’d come back here, she found it. So she walked up to give it to me. Simple as that! And quite unnecessary. She just likes to see what we’re getting up to. But, anyway, it was after the police and the ambulance had arrived.’
Keith nodded. He had already lost interest in the extra lady. ‘Who and what did you see as you came back?’ he asked.
Mrs Pollock looked at him as if wondering whether she were under suspicion, but decided to answer the question. ‘I stopped to chat with Jane Orton,’ she said. ‘She was in her garden and the path runs beside it. She keeps the hedge short just so that she can waylay passers-by and see what they’re wearing, although what right she has to criticise other people’s clothes I don’t know, when her husband always seems to have been dressed by Oxfam and about to lose his trousers. She was complaining about the ground-elder and creeping buttercup, but, as I told her, if you want to live near open country that’s the price you pay for the peace and the privacy. Seeds blowing around.’
The last was a subject which Keith could have discussed for hours but he held himself in check. ‘Did anybody come past you?’
‘Not a soul. Not before we’d finished our chat. I could see Gus, the window-cleaner, waiting to be paid. That man hates to have to wait for his money, and my husband gets grumpy if he has to pay something which should go with the housekeeping, so I hurried home.’
The Worried Widow Page 19