He adopted the deep, gruff voice he had used in the raid and made his inquiry, to learn that her condition was unchanged.
This told him nothing, but he dared not press it. More would be known the next day and he would inquire again. There was nothing to do now but drive home. Back to Isabel.
He heard her in the kitchen when he arrived. He went straight up to his room with his briefcase and the green Marks and Spencer carrier bag which contained all the evidence of his crime, including the money, and he locked it all in his cupboard.
Isabel was having dinner in the dining room when he came downstairs, leaving the kitchen for him; they rarely ate together. He opened the door and went in. She was sitting at one end of the mahogany table, a glass of red wine at her side and a large, succulent steak from which the raw juices poured on a plate before her. The wine bottle, half full, was on the sideboard. Her face was flushed. She would finish the bottle this evening.
She looked up in surprise at the intrusion of her husband.
‘The bank was raided today,’ said Robbie, and before she could comment he went on. ‘There was only one robber. He didn’t get away with much – about three thousand pounds. No one was hurt in the bank but he hit some passer-by as he drove off afterwards.’
‘Brute,’ said Isabel.
What would you think, wondered Robbie, if you knew the brute was standing beside you, was married to you?
‘Yes,’ he said, and added, ‘He was armed.’
‘So you didn’t have a go at him,’ Isabel sneered.
‘I was out at lunch,’ snapped Robbie. ‘I came back to find the police at the bank.’
Suppose he went upstairs to his room and donned his disguise, picked up the pistol and threatened Isabel: how would she react then? Would she see through it and tell him not to be childish?
He did not put it to the test.
‘I thought you’d better be told,’ he said, and closed the door upon her and her repast.
In the kitchen he felt like having some more sherry, but the decanter was in the dining room and so were the reserve bottles. However, there was some cooking sherry in the larder and he poured himself out a large glass of that. After drinking it, he opened a tin of duck soup and cut himself a thick slice of bread. This was his meal. Then he went out to his workshop and looked at his stock of wood. He took out a pencil and pad and made a neat sketch, writing measurements down.
Wendy Lomax had no coffee table. He had made several in the past, which he had sold. He’d make her one. He might not actually find the courage to give it to her, but he’d make it with her in mind. He’d got some elm, which might be good for the top. Or why not make it of oak? He spent some time working on various designs and amending them, before deciding on the final pattern.
After Isabel had gone to bed he went into the sitting room and turned on the television but he had missed the news so he did not know if the Blewton bank raid was important enough to feature on the national networks. There was a discussion about battered wives in progress on one channel, and on another there was a film about a pop musician.
Robbie switched off the set and sat in the silent room. He looked at the gold striped paper; the reproduction furniture placed just so on the Wilton carpet; the electric fire with its false coal glow in the hearth. It was like something out of a magazine, and the sitting room in the new house would be an advance upon it. Then he thought of Wendy’s small, rather cluttered room, and of Wendy herself, with her ordinary face, scarcely made up, the dark blue eyes which had looked at him across the counter as he pointed the gun at her, showing fear that was instantly suppressed. Those same eyes had looked at him with an easy, frank gaze as he sipped sherry by her gas fire. He had always thought her a pleasant girl.
He wished that he was with her now, and he wished that the clock might be put back so that none of the afternoon’s events had happened.
He still couldn’t understand how they had.
7
On Thursday morning the raid was reported in some of the daily papers; more prominence was given to the hit and run accident than to the actual robbery, and there were poignant words about the absence overseas of Mrs Jordan’s husband. He had, however, been traced, and was on his way home. Wendy, as the threatened cashier, was not mentioned by name. Detective Inspector Thomas had said they would try to hide her identity, though probably someone would discover it in the end.
Wendy had slept dreamlessly: the sherry, perhaps, she had thought as she ate her Weetabix. She arrived at the bank just after Robbie; he asked her at once if she had felt any ill effects from the day before.
‘None,’ she said cheerfully.
Robbie wondered what she would say if he asked her out one evening. There was a new trattoria in Bury Street that was supposed to be good: chianti and candlelight. He was so much older than she that he thought she might look upon him in a different way than a man nearer her age, and the fact of his being married might not matter.
He played with the idea during the day. It was better than thinking about the injured woman. He had telephoned the hospital on the way to work and the words of the night before had been repeated: condition unchanged, but a restful night. There was little solace in that.
The robbery was the topic of the day among the staff. Had it been a long-planned job? What if the bank had been busy at the time – would the robber have used his gun? Would the police catch the thief? Betty Fox reported that her husband thought they would not try very hard as the amount stolen was, by some standards, not large, and no one was hurt.
‘They were. That woman, Mrs Jordan – she was hurt,’ said Wendy. ‘And I’m sure the police will try very hard to catch the robber.’ She was certain of this, after Thomas’s visit the night before. But she did not mention that he had been round to see her.
‘It was probably some layabout afraid of doing a decent day’s work,’ said Philip Grigson. ‘On social security, most likely, and now he’s set up for months.’
‘It might be an ex-convict,’ suggested Robbie, and was amazed at his ability to discuss the matter as though he was not connected with it. If that woman had not been hurt, how would he feel now? Triumphant, because he had taken the money and got away with it?
But he had never meant to take the money. Something had gone wrong when he entered the bank, some devil had taken him over.
Mr Duncan from head office came down in the morning and spent some time talking to Philip Grigson in the manager’s office. They sent for Robbie, and consulted him about general morale among the staff. Robbie said that everyone seemed remarkably calm and undismayed by the incident.
‘It would take more than a petty thief to upset Wendy Lomax,’ he said.
‘Hardly a petty thief, Mr Robinson, since he was armed, and took over three thousand pounds,’ said Mr Duncan reprovingly.
Mr Duncan took Philip Grigson off to lunch at the Red Lion, and among other matters they discussed sending flowers from the bank to Mrs Jordan in hospital. In the end they decided not to do so for the present, as she might be too badly hurt to notice. If she died, a wreath was to be sent and someone from the bank must attend the funeral.
‘Mr Robinson,’ suggested Mr Duncan. ‘He would be appropriate.’;
Philip agreed, and looked smug when Mr Duncan commended him on his handling of the affair. The evening had gone well, too: Dawn Smyth’s mother had thought it terrible that he should have had such an experience that afternoon. Philip had implied that he had had direct contact with the armed raider and had been instrumental in calming the resulting staff hysteria.
After lunch, Mr Duncan returned to head office, and Philip drove back to the bank confident that it would not be long before he became a manager.
That evening, as they left the bank, Robbie offered once more to drive Wendy home, and she accepted, though she said it must take him out of his way.
They walked together round the corner to his car.
‘The red Renault was picked up here last nigh
t,’ she told him. ‘It’s a wonder you didn’t see it, when you were coming back yourself.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Robbie. ‘But I was just walking along in an ordinary way – I’d have thought nothing of it if I had seen it. Probably I was too late.’
‘Probably,’ said Wendy.
Robbie wondered how she knew about the car; he decided not to ask her. It might have been in the paper. Instead, he suggested dinner.
‘But haven’t you got to go home, Robbie?’ Wendy asked. ‘Aren’t you expected?’
‘My wife’s always out on Thursdays,’ said Robbie. ‘She goes to her other shop and has something to eat with the woman who manages it, after they close.’
So Wendy accepted. Robbie said he would come back and collect her at seven o’clock.
He wanted to go home to change his shirt and shave, and to telephone the hospital again.
‘There was a raid at Robbie’s bank yesterday,’ Isabel told Beryl.
‘Was that Robbie’s bank? I read about it in the Mail,’ said Beryl. ‘Did he have a go at the robbers?’
‘There was only one of them, and of course he didn’t. Can you imagine it?’ answered Isabel. ‘He was out at lunch so he missed the whole thing. Typical.’
Beryl loved the evenings when Isabel came to dinner. She planned the menu carefully, and kept a record, so that particular dishes were not repeated too often, shopping for special delicacies. Isabel was not deceived by the nonchalance with which these meals were served; she knew the care and thought that had gone into their preparation and she thoroughly enjoyed the results. It was very pleasant to sit by Beryl’s open log fire with a stiff gin and tonic, talking over the day. Both women knew a lot about the private lives of their regular customers; much could be learned from the impulsive purchase of an expensive outfit as an antidote to depression. There were bad payers among the most respected members of local society, and well-to-do ladies who returned a dress a week after buying it, with the complaint that their husbands had not liked it, when the garment showed by traces of powder that it had been worn; the function for which it was bought was now over and the dress of no more interest.
‘I’ve never understood how you and Robbie came to get married,’ said Beryl. ‘He can never have been much to look at.’
‘He was rather pathetic,’ said Isabel. ‘He seemed to need looking after. I felt motherly towards him. It wore off.’ She did not like to recall their intimate moments before it had. She had tolerated his inexperienced overtures at first as one would endure the affectionate scufflings of a puppy, but soon his diffident ardour had become wearisome. Sex was greatly overrated, in Isabel’s opinion. ‘His mother died when he was just a child,’ she added.
‘If you’d had children –’ Beryl hazarded.
‘Robbie couldn’t even do that,’ said Isabel.
‘But what was my wife doing in Blewton? I don’t understand.’
James Jordan sat in Detective Inspector Thomas’s office at Blewton Central Police Station, tired and worried after his hasty flight home and the journey in a police car to the hospital, where Helen had opened her eyes to look at him in a bewildered way and then immediately relapsed into unconsciousness.
‘You don’t know?’ asked Thomas.
‘It’s a mystery to me,’ said Jordan. ‘She took me to the airport and I thought she was going straight to the studio.’
Thomas and Detective Sergeant Briscoe glanced at one another. Helen Jordan’s employers had already told the police that she had asked for Wednesday off. She had put in a lot of extra time lately and was quite entitled to it. There was an obvious explanation: her husband was out of the country and she was making the most of it.
‘You’ve no family at home, Mr Jordan,’ stated Thomas.
‘No. My daughter’s in Paris with a family, learning French, and my son is in Canada,’ said James Jordan.
‘So with you away, your wife would have no household duties to keep her at home.’
‘No – no, but if she wasn’t going to work for some reason, she’d have told me,’ said Jordan. ‘And she doesn’t know anyone in Blewton.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
Thomas thought he would leave the other man to find out for himself that a wife could have friends her husband knew nothing about, as he had discovered himself in the most painful manner.
‘She’ll soon be well enough to explain,’ he said. The solution to this domestic puzzle was unlikely to lead to the capture of the bank raider. ‘We hope she’ll be able to tell us a bit about this villain we’re after. She may have had a look at him.’
‘She won’t have seen any more than the people in the bank, will she?’ asked Jordan.
‘Possibly not – but there may have been something,’ said Thomas.
‘I can’t understand her leaving the keys in the car,’ said Jordan. ‘She’s not usually so careless.’
But she was behaving out of character already, in being in Blewton at all, thought Thomas. At least she was lunching alone in the Copper Kettle; that had been confirmed by the waitress.
‘You’d be surprised how many people do it, Mr Jordan,’ he said. ‘She may have just forgotten that one time.’
‘It’s automatic, locking the car and taking the key,’ muttered Jordan.
‘To some people,’ said Thomas. ‘Hasn’t your wife ever rushed back into the house when you’ve been going out somewhere to make sure she’s switched off the iron, or the stove? Of course, she has. That’s automatic, to her. The car keys less so, perhaps.’
Jordan did not reply to this observation, and Thomas went on.
‘Well now, Mr Jordan, we want to keep quiet about your wife’s condition. If this villain we’re after thinks she’s critically injured, he may panic and do something silly which will help us to find him. He’d be facing a manslaughter charge, at best, if she’d been fatally hurt.’
‘It’s no thanks to him that she wasn’t,’ said Jordan angrily.
‘Quite, and I mean to catch him,’ said Thomas. ‘Don’t forget, he held up a woman in the bank with a gun, too. We don’t want to have him around, ready to do it again.’
‘I’m glad to hear you talk like that, Inspector,’ said Jordan. ‘Everyone’s too soft with these people, nowadays.’
‘Well, first we’ve got to find him,’ said Thomas. ‘So will you help in our little deception? Just keep quiet about your wife – say that her condition’s unchanged. That should do for friends.’
‘What about my son and daughter?’
‘Do they know about her accident?’
‘Not yet. I was going to telephone them. They might see a report in the paper – I don’t know if they see the English papers very often, but even if they don’t, someone else might read about it and tell them.’
‘That’s true. Well, would you explain? Tell them she’s all right and will soon be fit to go home but that we’re keeping that to ourselves for the moment.’
‘Very well.’
‘You’ll be spending the night in Blewton?’
‘Yes – I suppose so. I hadn’t really thought,’ said Jordan. ‘I suppose I can have the car back?’
‘Not yet, Mr Jordan, I’m afraid. The lab has still got it – they’re working on it. We should be able to let you have it soon, though – maybe tomorrow. We’ll run you to a hotel – there are several in town, I think you’d find the Royal suitable. It’s very central.’ He stood up. ‘I’m very sorry about all this, Mr Jordan.’
‘So am I,’ said James Jordan. ‘So am I, Inspector.’
Wilfred Hunt reported the loss of his shotgun on Thursday. In the opinion of the Harbington police, the cowman’s son Barry was the obvious person to have taken it. He knew of its existence; he knew that the house was often left unlocked. He could have found the keys, if he had time to search without fear of interruption. Some people would pay well for such a weapon; it might be in London by now.
There were no fingerprints to prove that
Barry had done it. There were Wilfred’s, on the drawer and the keys; no one else’s. Wilfred thought it strange that his secretary’s were not on the drawer; even Robbie might have opened it, looking for paper clips or the stapler, which were kept there. It seemed to prove that the thief had come after Robbie’s visit on the Saturday.
‘I tell you, I don’t know anything about it,’ said Barry, grilled by a sergeant while a constable took down a report of their interview.
They searched his room. Barry made no protest; it was no use, they’d soon get a warrant.
‘You’ll not find it,’ he said.
‘You’ve passed it on – sold it, most likely,’ said the sergeant.
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ Barry repeated.
‘You knew Mr Hunt had it?’
‘Course I did. Everyone knows farmers has guns,’ said Barry. ‘For the vermin.’
‘You like shooting. You’ve got an air rifle.’
‘Well? What about it?’
‘Not much good for hares and that, is it?’
‘You don’t go shooting hares now,’ said Barry with scorn. ‘Not when they’re mating.’
‘Look son, tell us what you did with it and we’ll play it cool,’ said the sergeant, dropping the tough tack.
‘I can’t, when I didn’t do a bloody thing,’ said the boy.
In the end they had to let him go. He went straight out to the yard and picked up a large stone which he aimed at the windscreen of Wilfred’s Land-Rover. But he did not throw it. He walked down the path with the stone in his hand and threw it at the farm kitchen window instead. It landed on the table, knocking off a bowl and two cups that May had been using for baking, and giving her a bad fright.
Helen Jordan had come to Blewton for a funeral. She had seen the notice of Hugo’s death in the paper on Monday, and had decided to go. James’s trip abroad made it easy for her to take the day off and go down to the country without his knowledge.
Death on Account Page 6