‘Second most expensive,’ Mrs Wheatstone said. ‘The most expensive is the Princess Beatrice, but unfortunately that was already occupied.’ She paused. ‘But God, even if it was a hole in the ground, it’s so good to be back in town.’
‘Do I take that to mean you don’t like living in the countryside?’ Crane asked.
‘Do I take that to mean you don’t like living in the countryside?’ Mrs Wheatstone repeated, pulling a face as she spoke. ‘What kind of sentence construction was that? Listen, lad, you’re allowed to be posh and live up here, but it’s got to be northern posh, which means that you say what you want to say without taking us for a trip round the houses.’
‘I’ll try again, then,’ Crane said. ‘So the countryside gets up your nose, does it?’
‘It gets right up my nose!’ Mrs Wheatstone said approvingly.
‘So why do you live there?’
‘Why did I live there, you mean, because there’s no chance of me going back – but there’s no need to tell the insurance that.’
‘I won’t,’ Crane promised. ‘So why did you live there?’
‘I lived there because I thought it might help save my marriage.’
‘It must have been very hard for you, married to a man like that,’ Crane said, sympathetically.
She gave him a hard stare, as if suspecting he was laughing at her, then, deciding he wasn’t, she said, ‘Arthur called that thing between his legs “Excalibur”, and, credit where credit’s due, it was a mighty weapon. He tried to get his end away with every passing woman – but there are fewer passing women available in the countryside.’
‘You thought about killing yourself, didn’t you?’ Crane asked.
‘How the …?’
‘When I said your husband had been found hanged, you said straight away that it had to be murder, because he could never have reached the beam without a ladder.’
‘Yes, well, that’s obvious.’
‘No, it isn’t. My inspector’s a very practical man, and he thought he could do it until he actually tried it.’
Mrs Wheatstone bowed her head.
‘It seemed like an easy way out for me,’ she said. ‘I put the ladder against the beam and I threaded the rope through.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t make the noose. I never got that far.’
‘What stopped you?’
‘I think it was the thought of letting him win. You see, it wouldn’t have stopped him if he’d come home and found me hanging there. He’d have felt guilty for a while, and then he’d have shrugged it off.’
‘So you got rid of the ladders, just in case you ever felt the urge to do it again?’
‘Yes.’ She sighed. ‘As I was climbing the ladder, I think I still loved him. When I came down, I knew I didn’t. With love gone, it just became a game. I did all I could to stop him, not because I was jealous any more, but because I knew it would make him miserable. And I at least got the satisfaction of knowing I was better at the game than he was.’
And now I’m about to take even that away from you, Crane thought – and I’m so sorry.
‘We need your permission to search your husband’s potting shed, Mrs Wheatstone,’ he said.
‘What potting shed?’
‘The one on his allotment.’
‘I think you must have the wrong person,’ Mrs Wheatstone said. ‘Arthur wasn’t the man who grew the lettuces – he was the randy little rabbit who nibbled at them when no one was looking.’
Crane shook his head. ‘He had an allotment on the Old Mill Road site, and he put a potting shed on it.’
Mrs Wheatstone’s expression changed from puzzlement to understanding – and then to blazing anger.
‘The devious little bastard,’ she said. ‘There was me thinking I was running rings round him, and all the time he was running rings round me. God, I don’t think I’ve ever hated him so much. Do you know what’s in that shed?’
‘Not for certain – but I think we can both guess,’ Crane said.
SIXTEEN
One of Irene Clark’s earliest childhood memories was of the next-door neighbour, Mrs Edna Cowgill, tapping on the kitchen window and then – without waiting for an answer – opening the door and stepping into the kitchen itself.
She’d been a very thin, angular woman, and whenever she was spreading salacious gossip about the other neighbours – which is to say, whenever she was awake – she would wave her hands extravagantly through the air, and her pointy little elbows went in and out like pistons.
Irene hadn’t known at the time why she disliked Edna so much – she didn’t need reasons, she was a kid, and it was enough that she did – but later, when she was studying for her degree in sociology, she realized the problem had been that she’d resented Mrs Cowgill invading her space. Now, a graduate and a young mother, she was resolved to be a good neighbour who would willingly help out, but only when requested to.
It was working from this premise that made her try to ignore all the noise that was drifting across her small garden from the house next door.
It was probably a play on the radio, she told herself. Then she recognized Roger Pemberton’s voice, and she was forced to accept that unless Roger had gone into acting without telling anyone, he and Rosemary were probably having a row.
This theory gained more credence when she heard a banging sound that could possibly have been furniture being thrown around, but maybe that was how Roger let off steam.
And it wasn’t going to lead to anything more violent, was it? After all, they were both highly educated scientists for God’s sake!
Though she wasn’t deliberately looking, her kitchen window overlooked the Pembertons’ back door, so it was almost inevitable that she’d see a furious looking Roger storming out of the house and going straight to his car. And again without being a latter-day Edna Cowgill, she could not fail to observe that he had left the kitchen door ajar, which was not common, even in a nice community like this one.
Deciding the baby would benefit from a little fresh air, she took him out of his cot and carried him to the small back garden, from where she could observe the Pemberton’s kitchen door (should she wish to). She stayed there for around five minutes. Then she went back inside, took some clean clothes out of the tumble dryer, fed some dirty clothes into the washer, and got out the ironing board.
With any luck, she thought, she’d be able to snatch half an hour with her romantic novel.
She felt a little ashamed that a woman with her education should be reading such obvious trash, but having given birth to an organism whose only interests seemed to be shitting and puking, she needed all the escape she could get.
The arrival of the four plain clothed police officers and the two civilian SOCOs at Arthur Wheatstone’s potting shed caused something of a stir among the allotment holders.
‘You’ll not find him in,’ one old man shouted across three or four allotments, his words not quite as distinct as they might have been since he always took his false teeth out when he was gardening. ‘I’ve only seen him go in there the once, and he must have had it for over two years.’
Ah, but that was because he was a rabbit, rather than a farmer, Crane thought.
‘Right, let’s get this done,’ Paniatowski asked.
One of the SOCOs stepped forward, and placed his bolt cutters over the shackle of the padlock on the door.
Paniatowski caught the padlock as it was falling to the ground, and bounced it reflectively up and down in her hand.
‘It’s not had much weathering, this,’ she mused, almost to herself.
‘I didn’t quite catch that, boss,’ Beresford said.
‘Does this look new to you?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘And by new, I don’t mean just newish – I mean not in use until two or three days ago.’
‘Hard to say,’ Beresford told her.
‘Get it checked out by the lab,’ Paniatowski said, dropping it into an envelope, and handing it to him. ‘Now let’s see what delights the potting shed has t
o offer us.’
The first thing they noticed when they opened the door was the large brass bed which took up perhaps two thirds of the space. Then there was the small dressing table with a mirror. The top end of the shed had been separated from the rest by a Chinese silk screen, and when Beresford moved the screen aside, he revealed a toilet and wash basin.
The wash basin had buttons on top of the taps, and when Beresford pressed one, water came out of the tap.
He stood looking at the toilet for a quite a while before turning the handle.
It flushed.
‘How did Wheatstone manage that?’ he wondered.
‘The man was an applied scientist,’ Meadows said. ‘He designed aeroplanes. A simple pumping and waste disposal system can’t have put too much strain on his brain.’
‘Probably not,’ Beresford agreed. ‘I suppose what I really meant was why did he manage it – it seems a bit unnecessary.’
Meadows laughed. ‘That’s a typical man’s reaction, sir,’ she said, and, as usual, the ‘sir’ was tacked on as something of an afterthought.
‘And what do you mean by that, exactly?’ demanded Beresford – who never learned!
‘Women expect more out of this than men,’ Meadows said. ‘To the women Wheatstone brought here, it won’t have been a quick screw in a shed, it will have been a liaison with their lover – and that kind of fantasy can’t be sustained if they have to nip outside for a quick pee between the foreplay and the main event.’ She turned to Paniatowski. ‘Back me up on this, boss?’
‘Don’t go dragging me into it,’ Paniatowski said, with a bitter laugh. ‘I live the life of a nun.’
And the moment the words were out of her mouth she thought, Oh God, did I really say that?
‘The problem is that, if there’s no more to this place than there seems to be at first glance,’ she continued quickly, ‘then all we’ve done is confirm what Mrs Wheatstone said – and several other people have hinted at. So we know for a fact that he was a randy little bastard – it doesn’t get us any closer to finding out who murdered him, now does it?’
The baby had finally fallen asleep, and Irene Clark was looking forward to slipping into the magical world of Regency bucks with leather boots and horsewhips, and Regency ladies with big hair and beauty spots. But before she could – in all conscience – pick up her book, there was something she needed to check up on, and with that end in mind, she opened the door and stepped into her back garden.
The kitchen door to the Pemberton house was still open, which was slightly worrying. Irene really had no desire at all to be a nosy neighbour, but perhaps on this occasion, it wouldn’t do any harm if she …’
She crossed the tiny lawn and stepped over the low fence that separated their property from the Pembertons’.
She came to a halt at the door.
‘Is there anybody there?’ she called.
No answer.
‘Are you there, Rosemary?’
Still nothing.
She took a step inside, and looked around. The kitchen was clean and tidy – not as clean as hers, of course, but more than passable.
‘Rosemary?’ she said again, and this time she heard a noise. It was no more than a dull thump, but it showed she wasn’t alone in this house.
‘I’m coming into the lounge now – I’m unarmed, so hold your fire!’ she said.
She giggled, partly because she thought she had been quite humorous, and partly because she was nervous.
She stopped giggling the moment she saw the lounge, because that was no laughing matter.
The mirror over the fireplace had been smashed – seven years bad luck for somebody! – two of the armchairs had been overturned and one of the upright chairs lay in splinters in the hearth.
‘Rosemary?’ Irene said, and now there was a tremble in her voice.
She heard the thumping sound again. It seemed to be coming from somewhere upstairs.
She stepped into the hall.
The noise was definitely coming from upstairs.
That was when she saw the bloodstains on the stair-carpet.
Her heart was galloping, and her vision was blurred. For a moment she was tempted to turn and run, and yet there was another force – like a powerful magnet – drawing her onwards.
As she climbed the stairs, she kept saying the other woman’s name – ‘Rosemary, Rosemary, Rosemary, Rosemary’ – as if she were an exorcist and the name would keep the devil at bay.
She had reached the landing. ‘I’m not alone, you know,’ she said in the loudest voice she could muster.
Thud … thud … thud.
The noise was definitely coming from the master bedroom.
‘Come on, Cedric, let’s go in there, and find out exactly what’s going on,’ she said.
Cedric!
Whatever had made her choose the name Cedric?
Why couldn’t she have called her imaginary companion Brett or Hugo, because if you wanted someone to save you, Brett and Hugo were your men.
Anybody called Cedric would probably be whimpering in the corner.
Thud … thud … thud.
The noise was coming from the wardrobe. Irene rushed into the room and flung the sliding door open.
Rosemary was in the wardrobe. Her ankles and wrists were taped together, and there was gaffer tape over her mouth. The lower half of her face was covered in a mixture of mucus and blood, and the area around both her eyes was starting to turn blue.
To put it in medical terms – it looked as if she had been hit by an express train.
SEVENTEEN
‘Chief Inspector Paniatowski would like to talk to you, but if it becomes too much of a strain you must tell her,’ the ward sister said.
‘I want to know the full extent of the damage, please,’ Rosemary Pemberton told her.
‘Now, now, we don’t need to think about that, right at this moment, now do we?’
‘Don’t we?’ Rosemary asked. ‘I do. I’m a scientist, and I want to know the full extent of the damage.’
‘I think you’d probably better tell her,’ Paniatowski advised.
The sister shrugged. ‘You’ve got extensive bruising almost everywhere it’s possible to have bruising,’ she said. ‘Your collarbone is broken, so are two of your ribs. Another two ribs are cracked. Three of your toes have been crushed – we may have to amputate one of them. There now, do you really feel better for knowing all that?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ Rosemary said. ‘It’s always better to know the truth.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you, then,’ the sister said. ‘Remember, Rosemary, if you feel it’s too much, you only have to say.’
‘Don’t worry, I will,’ Rosemary promised, and when the nurse had gone, she said, ‘I’m sure the sister means well, but I’m not going to play the compliant child just to keep her happy. In fact, I’m not going to play by anybody else’s rules ever again, because this is what happens to you when you do.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Yes, as long as I can do it in my own way.’
‘Take your time.’
‘When I married Roger, I was very much in love with him. In those days, he was full of ambition. He was going to get his doctorate in record time and produce some amazing research. He thought he could outstrip me.’
‘And could he have?’
‘I wouldn’t have minded if he had. As I said, I was very much in love with him.’
‘That wasn’t the question I asked,’ Paniatowski reminded her. ‘Could he have outstripped you?’
‘No,’ Rosemary admitted. ‘He’s not a stupid man by any means, but his scientific vision and instinct are pedestrian, at best. He’s perfectly competent to do his present work, but that’s as far as he’ll ever go.’
‘And did he realize that eventually?’
‘I think so. He says he decided there was more to life than work, and so I think he must know.’
‘He p
ays all the bills, doesn’t he – and it all comes out of his salary,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Good God, how do you know that?’
‘My sergeant thought you were living below your means.’
‘And she was right. Roger pays the mortgage, Roger buys all the food and cleaning stuff. It makes him feel as if he’s the provider.’ Rosemary paused, as if thinking over what she’d just said. ‘Well, I suppose he is the provider, though quite unnecessarily so.’
‘What happens to your salary?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘It goes into our joint bank account. I think Roger likes to pretend we haven’t got it.’
‘My sergeant also commented on your personal appearance,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Your sergeant doesn’t miss much, does she? I used to be quite an attractive woman—’
‘You still are,’ Paniatowski interrupted. ‘Well, not at the moment, it’s true, but I’ve seen the pictures and you were – and will be again.’
‘It started with little things at first.’
‘What did?’
‘That will become clear as we go along,’ Rosemary rebuked her.
‘Sorry,’ Paniatowski said.
‘He’d be annoyed when I put on some of my nicer clothes. He wouldn’t say why – just that he wished that I wouldn’t wear that dress tonight, not where everybody could see us.’
Not where everybody could see us, Paniatowski repeated silently.
‘Then he started to veto all the new dresses I wanted to buy, and suggest I get ones that looked like potato sacks. He got angry when I went to the hairdressers, and when I coloured my hair at home, he went crazy. What did I want to do that for, he demanded. Why couldn’t I let my hair be its natural colour? And it occurred to me that what he really wanted was for me to be unattractive to other men.’
‘But you weren’t unattractive, were you?’ Paniatowski guessed.
‘No, I wasn’t. I don’t know if many other men were attracted to me, but Arthur Wheatstone certainly was.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Let me tell you about Arthur. He could pretty much have any woman he wanted, not because he was particularly handsome or well-built, but because he loved women – and they could sense it.’
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