“This is my car,” said Tim, unlocking it. He noted that she was more expansive than when they had first met and, despite her last comment, seemed to have unwound yet further during their short walk across the courtyard. As they began the slow journey to the old lodge gate, he resumed his gentle questioning.
“So she offered you the job after she moved to Helpston?”
“Yes; quite a long time afterwards.”
“You will forgive me for saying that it’s difficult to understand why you accepted the offer. What attraction could acting as the companion of an elderly woman – even a very eminent one – hold for someone who has an established position in a university?”
“I am not her nursemaid, Detective Inspector. I am employed as her secretary-companion, with the emphasis decidedly on the secretary part. I accepted her offer without hesitation because I happen to believe in her life’s work. She has a closely-guarded secret to which only Guy and I are privy. I will tell it to you so that you understand the situation completely, but I must first ask you to respect that it is strictly confidential.”
“I am happy to keep anything that you may tell me secret unless I believe that it will further jeopardise her safety. Or yours, of course.”
Jane Halliwell gave him one of her level looks. She paused, then announced with some éclat:
“Claudia is working on a book which draws together all of her past work, and that of others, to create a comprehensive exegesis of her semantic theory. I am helping her to do it. Her brain is as bright as ever, but, as we’ve already discussed, she rarely leaves the house, so she cannot check references in libraries; and she is too old – and possibly too contrary – to learn how to access library materials through the internet. She doesn’t type, either. My role is therefore that of researcher, secretary, editorial and occasional amanuensis, rolled into one. She doesn’t want anyone to know that she is writing the book, because she wants to spring it on the world as a total surprise. It will be both her swansong and the crowning work of her career. It will also vindicate her and turn the tables on the many establishment figures – men, mostly – who have ridiculed or discounted her writings over the past fifty years and more.”
“I see,” said Tim. He wished that he could think of something more imaginative – more responsive – to the gushing fanfare of Jane Halliwell’s announcement than this terse sentence, but no other words sprang to mind. He could feign no enthusiasm for the project. “Thank you for telling me,” he added.
They had left the grounds of the hotel and were driving sedately along the main road to Helpston, their progress hindered by the inevitable tractor in front. Tim debated whether to ask Jane directly about Dame Claudia’s politics and decided that he would not risk alerting her to his interest in them. He needed more time to consider the implications of her revelation about the book. If indeed she occupied as central a role in Claudia’s work and was as enthusiastic about her theories as she claimed, it was likely that Jane herself held strongly right-wing views. Not that there was any crime in that. But the unease that he had felt at their first meeting was not dissipated by her new-found talkativeness.
“We have not been able to stage a reconstruction of Dame Claudia’s last hours before she vanished,” he said, “because we have no idea what she did after Oliver Sparham left her at about 4 p.m. It would be useful to know how she normally spent her time. Could you describe to me a typical day in her life – in both your lives?”
“I can try. You should be aware that we don’t have a strict routine. I know that many writers religiously devote certain hours of the day to their work. Claudia doesn’t have the temperament for that; she is too undisciplined and disorganised. But she works for quite a long period every day – it could be in the morning, the afternoon, or the evening – and she almost always gets up early, often before 7 a.m. She herself says that this is a legacy from the time when she worked in the desert before the Second World War, when she had to make the most of the early morning before the heat of the sun became too oppressive. But Claudia is quite a romantic and a great mythologiser of her own past. I suspect that these days she gets up early because she doesn’t sleep too well. Her arthritis is severe and plagues her, especially when she is lying down.”
“Her nephew told me that she sometimes sleeps all night in an armchair.”
“That may be true when I’m not there – which is rarely, as you know. When I am there, I usually manage to persuade her to go to bed – though often it is very late when she retires.”
“That must be tiring for you. Do you get up as early as she does?”
“Rather earlier, usually. Depending on the weather, I like to go for a run, or a brisk walk, in the woods before we have breakfast. I’m quite keen on keeping fit and I have little other opportunity for exercise.”
“Do you prepare the breakfast?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes Claudia does it while I’m out. I actually prefer to do it myself because she’s so messy. But she means well, and I don’t like to be unkind when she is willing to make the effort.”
“And afterwards you both begin to work?”
“As I’ve said, Claudia has no regular routine. I certainly always work in the mornings myself. If Claudia is not ready to dictate – she dictates to me two or three pages at each of our sessions on the actual book – she may wish to read parts of her previous works, or those of others, in order to refresh her memory. I help her to do this by taking notes as she requires, or marking certain passages for us to refer back to again. I may even read aloud to her. Sometimes she doesn’t want to work at all. On these occasions, I catch up with the typing or the checking of references. But she’ll then need me to work with her later on. Usually in the afternoon, but occasionally in the evening.”
“What does she do when she isn’t working?”
“When I first came, she was quite active. She would go for short walks in the woods or do some gardening. She could drive the car then, too, though I’m not certain that she’s ever taken a driving test. But I’m afraid that the arthritis has curtailed most of these activities; and, of course, Guy looks after the garden now. She spends most of her free time listening to the radio or to records. She’s got a big vinyl collection. She watches television occasionally, but not very often. She much prefers the radio. And she reads newspapers when we can get them, but no newsagent will deliver so far out, so we are dependent on Guy to bring them when he visits.”
“Doesn’t it distract you if she’s listening to the radio when you’re trying to work?”
“I usually work in the conservatory when Claudia doesn’t need me. She stays in the sitting-room most of the time now.”
“Does she ever work without you? When you were in Norway, for example, would she have carried on writing a little by herself or would she have simply planned to take a break until your return?”
“She wouldn’t have done any actual writing without me,” Jane said, a little emphatically, Tim thought. “But she may have done some reading. She might even have made some notes – though she would have been more likely to have used her Dictaphone.”
“That’s interesting,” said Tim, his tone conveying the opposite. He was racking his brains, trying to conjure up a complete picture of Claudia’s sitting-room. Dictaphone? He was sure that he would have remembered if one had been found. The SOCOs would certainly have recorded its presence if it had been there and taken any tapes away for analysis. He would check their inventory and also double-check the cottage himself when he and Jane arrived.
“Tell me,” he said, “how much of the book is there still left to write? I appreciate that it is a weighty work and will be taking a long time to complete. You have been working on it for – how long? Five years now?”
“About four years,” said Jane. “There was a lot of planning to do and information to track down, before we started. But if you’re thinking that we must be near to
publication, you are correct. The book is three-quarters finished now. Of course, there will still be a lot of checking and proofing to do when the first draft is completed.”
“Is the publisher Dame Claudia’s usual one? The MacLachan Press, I believe?” Tim was indebted to Juliet for this piece of information.
“Not . . . exactly.”
“Oh?”
“We may offer it to a commercial publisher eventually; and as you say, the MacLachan Press has first refusal on her work. But initially the plan is to print it ourselves, for private circulation only. Publishing is much easier and cheaper these days, since the invention of digital printing and e-books.” Jane contrived rapidly to climb out of a tense moment by offering this airily expansive general observation.
“Indeed. But it seems a pity to deny this work – Dame Claudia’s magnum opus, no less – to the world at large.”
“Her work is caviar to the general, Detective Inspector, as her critics have proved,” said Jane Halliwell briskly. “Ah, here we are. It would seem that some of your colleagues have arrived before us.”
Despite the fact that of course he knew that he had taken the turn-off to Claudia’s cottage, Tim had not been paying attention to the last leg of their journey. He followed the direction of Jane’s line of vision and saw Patti Gardiner’s small white van parked neatly at the side of the road.
Jane got out of the car slowly and smoothed down her coat. She took an almost theatrically deep breath and grimaced deprecatingly at Tim. He felt impatient at what he recognised as feigned apprehensiveness, but managed to conjure up a brief smile of encouragement.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Apart from the unpleasant smudge on the hall wall, which you know about, and some residual mess from the fingerprint dusting, I’m pretty certain that the place is much as you left it.”
She nodded, reciprocating with an equally wan smile of her own, and followed him up the path. He knocked on the door of the cottage to ask to be admitted. One of the SOCOs – not Patti – opened it. The electric light in the hall was switched on. Jane hung back.
“Come on,” he said again, more gently. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to do this.”
Jane nodded again, and stepped over the threshold. She turned immediately to fix her eyes on the wall.
“My God!” she said precipitately. “I feel sick!”
Tim would have bet money that she would make such an exclamation. Patiently, he took her arm and led her in the direction of the kitchen. “Let’s just get past it,” he said. “Then I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Privately, he thought that the trajectory was much less evil-seeming now that it had darkened from red to deep brown. He doubted that it could really have produced such a distressing effect on a rational woman like Jane. The lady with the vapours act did not suit her.
“Would you like some water?” he asked, indicating the bottles and plastic cups that had been placed on the kitchen table by the SOCOs. She shook her head.
“You’ll find the kitchen less untouched than the other rooms. We’ve left the dirty crockery in the sink and on the work surface, as we found it, but the SOCOs finished here quite quickly. Besides Dame Claudia’s, the only prints we found in here were your own, Mr Maichment’s, and Oliver Sparham’s. All quite legitimate.”
“Why do you say that Oliver Sparham’s were legitimate?” she asked sharply.
“Because he told us that he had come in here to make himself and Dame Claudia a cup of tea and this is corroborated by the two cups that we found in the sitting-room, one of them bearing his prints only, the others those of both of them. Do you know Mr Sparham?” he added.
“Not personally, though I’ve seen photographs of him. I know that he was one of Claudia’s disciples when he was young. I understand that subsequently he drifted away from her, though. He decided to play safe and opt to support more conventional theories than hers – in fact, to support no theories at all. Nowadays Oliver Sparham is what I would call an empiricist: he will have no truck with anything except the scientific evidence produced by digs.”
“Speaking as a historian, I would say that seems a sensible approach.”
“It’s a very desiccated approach,” said Jane Halliwell with vehemence. “And actually not one that’s well supported by historians. Look at the Marxist interpretations of the English Civil War, for example, and the fascinating books that were written because of them.”
“A bit before my time, I’m afraid,” said Tim. “I’m a post-modernist myself – which is how I guess Oliver Sparham might also describe himself. But are you saying that he has shown hostility towards Dame Claudia?”
“Not personally, no. But he has failed to endorse her work in his writings, even though it was she who gave him his first start in life.”
“Has he actively criticised her?”
“No, not as such. I suppose he has some conscience left. It’s what he doesn’t say that counts. In fact, he hardly mentions her at all in any of the stuff that I’ve read by him. And there are no half-measures with Claudia’s thesis: you either accept it or you don’t. Personally, I see his behaviour as a betrayal. Claudia took – takes – a more lenient view. Of course, she still thinks of him as a young man who has his way to make in the world, whose own ideas are barely formed.”
“Indeed.” Tim smiled as he recollected the silver-haired and rather urbane and distinguished figure whom he had met and interviewed at Welland Manor. “May I take it that you don’t see anything out of place in the kitchen? If so, would you come into the conservatory?”
The conservatory was reached by what had originally been the back door of the cottage. It had been built against the back wall of the house, so that it was more of a glorified lean-to than a structure in its own right. Like the sitting-room, it faced east. It was cold and, for a room that consisted of glass on three sides, dark in the winter. Like the rear sitting-room window, it was overshadowed by the yew hedge that grew just a few feet beyond it. It contained two rattan chairs that had seen better days and a modest table with a wooden chair tucked beneath it. The table bore a telephone extension and what Tim recognised to be a fairly old-fashioned PC. He gestured towards them.
“Is this where you work?” he asked.
Jane Halliwell nodded. “Yes,” she said. She shivered. “It’s cold in here – I’m the only person who uses this room, so I suppose that it hasn’t been heated for a while. I have an electric radiator that I use in the winter. It makes it quite cosy.”
“I don’t see it now. Nor any of your books and papers. Where do you keep those?”
“All the research materials are replaced in the sitting-room when I’m not using them, so that Claudia can find them easily. I gave her the radiator to use while I was away so that she would still be warm if neither she nor Guy managed to light the fire.”
“I see. Well, we haven’t found anything in this room: almost all the prints are yours. It seems quite bare, though. Is there anything missing?”
“Nothing. I don’t like a cluttered room to work in. In fact, I can’t stand clutter at all.”
“Quite. Well, I’m afraid that inspecting the sitting-room won’t be as easy to accomplish. As I’m sure you know, it contains quite a lot of . . . things. I need you to work through them as carefully as you can, to try to see if anything is missing. Or, for that matter, if there is anything new among the items that you haven’t seen before.” Tim decided that ‘clutter’ was too pejorative a word, even though Jane Halliwell had used it herself. “And I’m also afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to step through the hall again. But you know that already.”
Jane nodded and passed back through the kitchen and the hall with some speed, ostentatiously averting her gaze from the stain on the hall wall as she went.
Patti Gardiner, wearing a white SOCO suit, was crouching on the floor of the sitting-room when they ente
red. She was working through the deep pile of the black and grey hearthrug, parting the tufts painstakingly with her latex-gloved hands. She had her back to them and did not look round immediately. “I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ve just found something that might be interesting. Got you!” she added, pouncing with a pair of tweezers. She extracted something from the rug, and placed it in a small plastic bag, deftly sealing the grip-lock fastening in a continuation of the same motion. She stood up slowly, massaging the small of her back, and turned round.
“I’ve been crawling about on the floor for too long,” she said conversationally. “It plays havoc with my . . . Detective Inspector Yates!” she said, as she saw that it was Tim standing there. “I’m sorry. I thought that you were Jo. I didn’t know that you were coming today.” She flushed.
There was a slight pause. Patti had been Tim’s girlfriend very briefly when he had first joined the South Lincs force. It had not been a serious relationship as far as he was concerned, but they were both aware that Patti had felt differently. She bore him no grudges, but conversations between them were usually quite strained. She shifted her gaze from Tim to Jane Halliwell, who, Tim noticed, was taking in the situation with some curiosity.
“No, I spoke to Jo. I’m sorry – I should have asked her to tell you.” Then, in a more conversational voice, he said, “Patti, this is Ms Jane Halliwell. She is Dame Claudia’s secretary-companion. Ms Halliwell, this is Patti Gardiner, who is heading up the Scene of Crime Officers team in this case. She is looking for any forensic evidence – of an intruder, for example.”
Jane extended her bird-like hand again. Patti removed her glove to shake it.
“I am indebted to you,” said Jane, rather haughtily. “Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing.”
Patti shrugged. “It’s what I get paid for. And I like my job.”
“What did you say you had just found?”
“It’s a hair. A silver hair. Not the only one I’ve found here, but the only one like that. I’ve collected quite a few of what I’m fairly certain are Dame Claudia’s hairs and your own – I’ve matched them to the hairbrushes in your rooms – but this one is different. It probably has nothing at all to do with the case – it could have been there for months – but it’s worth checking.”
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