‘It’s about when I saw Bernard Lister in Corbury last September,’ she told him. ‘I — I’m quite sure I did see him. I’ll swear to it, if you want me to.’
‘Will you tell us about it as fully as you can?’ Pollard invited. ‘Don’t be put off by Inspector Toye’s taking notes.’ He listened attentively as she described how, when walking up Corbury High Street, she had caught sight of the man whom she had previously studied with such curiosity on a lecture platform in Warhampton. She had stopped and stared at him. He was engrossed by something in the window of Baldwin & Young, the estate agents. Edging nearer, she had stood behind him and looked at the reflection of their two faces in the plate glass. Then, feeling self-conscious and inhibited, she had abruptly turned and continued on her way up the hill without looking back, soon regretting not having made herself known to him.
‘A very clear account, Miss Plowman,’ Pollard said. ‘Can you remember the date when this happened?’
‘Perfectly well,’ Belinda replied, with a sudden change to aggressiveness. ‘28 September. My father was away all that day, down in Cornwall about clay. He didn’t get back till about seven. And he had one of our people from the Pottery with him: Tom Mawkins, he’s called.’
She thrust out her chin as she spoke, reminding Pollard of Shirley Stanton. He refused her challenge, passing on smoothly to another issue.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘All things considered, it seems rather surprising that Mr Bernard Lister was so interested in a Corbury estate agency’s window display. Can you suggest any explanation?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘May I come in here, sir?’
Three heads turned in the direction of Adrian Beresford on the far side of the room.
‘By all means,’ Pollard invited.
‘28 September was the day before Baldwin & Young had a big sale in their auction rooms at Alchester. They’d plugged it in advance all over the neighbourhood, and there would certainly have been a notice of it in the window of their branch office at Corbury. It looks as though Mr Lister went to the sale, because he bought that desk. I had a yen for it myself, but it soon went through my ceiling. I know it’s the same one, because I spotted a chip out of the back when I had a look at it.’
‘There was a poster affair about the sale,’ Belinda volunteered, Adrian’s cooperativeness making her feel slightly ashamed of her recent truculence. ‘I read it. I was interested because a lot of things from Edgehill Court which had been left to my aunt were in it.’
‘Thank you both,’ Pollard said. ‘This could be a useful bit of information. Just one or two more points, Miss Plowman. I understand that you were away from Corbury on 14 December, the date on which we believe Mr Lister disappeared?’
‘Yes, I was. When term ended on the twelfth, I went home with one of the girls I share a flat with. Her name’s Angela Noyes, and she lives in a village called Shipgate, near Norwich.’
‘Did you spend Christmas there?’
‘Oh, no. I went home — to Corbury, I mean — on the nineteenth.’
‘Rather a cross-country journey,’ Pollard remarked. ‘You went by road, I expect. Did you drive yourself?’
He watched her suppress an impulse to look at Adrian Beresford.
‘I don’t have a car of my own. Mr Noyes drove me back here and my father picked me up at the flat.’
‘By car?’
‘Yes,’ she replied a little breathlessly.
‘Well I think that covers everything, Miss Plowman,’ Pollard said after the briefest of pauses, ‘so we needn’t keep you any longer. Thank you for contacting us.’
As he spoke, Adrian Beresford got up and came forward.
‘Fine,’ he said, pleasantly but emphatically. ‘We’re going off to have supper somewhere. Perhaps I could just make a brief report on this job as far as it’s gone, sir? Here’s the car key, Belinda. I’ll be down in a jiff.’
As Toye closed the door behind her, Pollard picked up one of the reconstituted sheets of typescript, suppressing his amusement at the young man’s masterfulness.
‘You’re making headway with this,’ he remarked.
‘I can state definitely that it’s an article on the Corbury charters,’ Adrian told him, ‘based on the research Mr Lister did down at our place. The thing that sticks out is the preamble.’
‘In what way?’
‘It’s pure vitriol. He seems to have hated Corbury like hell, and couldn’t wait to knock their Millenary celebrations.’
Pollard nodded.
‘I’ll be most interested to see the finished product. When will you be through?’
‘Oh, by tomorrow evening, anyway. Do I leave it here for you or drop it in at the police station with the key?’
‘We’ll let you know about that by mid-morning. Pick up the key at the station again in the morning, will you? Inspector Toye and I are staying on here a bit. Now, we mustn’t keep you from your supper date. Have you known Miss Plowman long?’
‘I met her quite recently, actually,’ Adrian replied with brevity. ‘Good night, sir. Good night, Inspector.’
That chap’s too bloody quick on the ball, he thought, running down the stairs. The sight of Belinda in his car was surprisingly satisfactory.
‘Here goes,’ he said, swinging himself into the driving seat. ‘She’s not a Jag — third-hand actually — but she gets you there.’
As the Mini nosed out into the road, Belinda, suddenly bewildered by the course of events, heard herself announce that she wasn’t hungry.
‘Well, I hope you won’t mind sitting and watching me stoke up,’ Adrian said. ‘I’m ravenous. Nothing but a couple of sandwiches and a coffee since breakfast. I thought we might eat at my pub. Only one-star, and you won’t get a five-course dinner, but I thought it had the right sort of cooking smells when I clocked in after lunch.’
The Black Dog had an unpromising facade on the street, but was unexpectedly roomy and well-found inside. In the dining room Adrian gave to the menu the undivided attention that he habitually devoted to the matter in hand. Finally he ordered ham, eggs, sausages and chips.
‘How about you?’ he asked, looking across the table. ‘One’s got to eat, you know, come hell or high water.’
‘Well, perhaps I could,’ Belinda replied, blushing a little.
‘Jolly good. Twice then, please,’ he told the waitress, and announced that he was going off to collect a couple of beers.
When the food arrived it was hot and appetising, and Belinda tucked in as heartily as her host. The tables were close together and in demand, and their conversation was necessarily general, exploring common interests. In occasional silences she felt guilty at the way in which she was intermittently forgetting her worry about her father. When they had finished their coffee, Adrian suggested a run in the car.
‘The idea isn’t what might commonly be supposed,’ he added, a shade abruptly. ‘We want somewhere quiet to talk.’
‘But oughtn’t you to be getting on with those papers? ... I mean, I seem to be taking an awful lot of your time — I didn’t imagine that was the idea,’ she concluded incoherently.
‘I’ve broken the back of the job,’ he said decisively. ‘Pollard seemed to think it would be O.K. if I finished by tomorrow night. Come on, let’s go. I’m sure you know a peaceful spot somewhere.’
A small pang went through her at the realisation that he might be leaving so soon, followed by a swift realisation that term was practically over, and Alchester was not, after all, very far from Corbury.
The rush hour traffic had abated, and they were soon clear of the suburbs. Adrian took a side road, and presently parked in a gateway. For some moments they sat in silence. Darting a glance at him, Belinda saw that he was deep in thought.
‘I’m trying to think myself into Pollard’s skin,’ he said suddenly. ‘We’re taking it as read that your father didn’t murder Lister, but naturally Pollard isn’t. His job’s looking into means and opportunity and whatever. When d
id you come up for your spring term?’
‘9 January.’
‘Did your father drive you up?’
‘No. I got a lift.’
Belinda forbore to mention that her Warhampton boyfriend of the moment had made a considerable detour to collect her. Not without gratification she sensed a query in Adrian Beresford’s mind.
‘The important point from the Pollard angle,’ he said, slowly and deliberately, ‘could be whether your father might have driven up to Warhampton again, any time between picking you up on 19 December, and the day the university got the police to search Lister’s flat because he hadn’t turned up.’
His cool, objective approach both steadied and stimulated her.
‘The university started the same day as we did — 10 January. I’m absolutely positive Daddy couldn’t have come up here again while I was at home: he wasn’t away long enough. But’ — her voice trembled — ‘Daddy was at home from the fifteenth until he fetched me on the nineteenth.’
Adrian extracted a small diary from a pocket.
‘We’d better have a look at last year’s calendar,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
As he flicked over pages, he held the diary out in such a way that she was constrained to edge a little nearer.
‘Here we are. 14 December was a Thursday. You say your father went back to Corbury on the fifteenth and came up to Warhampton to collect you on the nineteenth. So that would only leave three clear days for another Warhampton trip, and one of them was a Sunday. Don’t you think it would have come out in general chat at home if he’d been away again so soon?’
‘Yes, I do!’ Belinda exclaimed, with a degree of relief which he found disquieting. ‘I’m certain Mummy would have said something about it. She fusses so when he’s away, even for a day.’
Adrian returned the diary to his pocket.
‘I don’t think you have to worry about this,’ he said, hoping that Belinda would miss the ambiguity. ‘We may have a sticky patch ahead, but it won’t last for ever.’
If this is falling in love, he thought with considerable astonishment, it’s a much more comprehensive affair than one ever realised. Not just feeling out of this world, but a sort of joint taking-on of life
Belinda turned her head slowly, and their eyes met.
‘We?’ she queried, as if echoing his thoughts.
‘Yes, quite definitely we.’
‘Too much is happening all at once. I just can’t take it in.’
‘Not to worry,’ Adrian reassured her. ‘One step at a time. Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow, for a start. You’ll be at your College place in the morning, won’t you?’
‘Actually I cut everything today. I couldn’t get down to things, somehow.’
‘There’s nothing we can do until we know Pollard’s next move, you know. Better to carry on as usual in the meantime, don’t you think? Let’s get hold of some sandwiches, and go and eat them in a park or somewhere.’
He sees things as a whole, she thought, admiration not untinged with slight alarm. I just get caught up with whatever’s on.
‘I’ll fix some eats,’ she said. ‘We only met each other about two hours ago, you know.’
‘What of it? Hours — days — centuries. It’s what happens in a time unit that makes it significant,’ Adrian replied grandiloquently. His tone changed abruptly. ‘I say, Belinda, you do like me a bit, don’t you?’ he asked, youthful and anxious.
Her murmur of assent was muffled in the sleeve of his pullover.
‘More comfortable like this,’ he suggested, slipping his arm round her shoulders, trying to gauge the appropriate degree of support and pressure.
Silence descended. After an interval he looked down to find that her eyes were shut, and saw the dark rings of sleeplessness under them. Some chaps, he thought with amusement, would be decidedly hipped. A quarter of an hour later, in spite of a cramped arm, he felt infuriated by the driver of a tractor which roared and clanked past and woke her. He announced firmly that he was driving her back to her flat to get a decent night’s sleep.
On the way they decided on a time and place for their picnic lunch the next day. When they arrived at the flat, Adrian helped her out, saw her to the door and kissed her lightly.
‘Sleep well, and not to worry,’ he adjured her, and left.
Feeling dazed, Belinda let herself in. To her intense relief both her flatmates were out. She was tired beyond the capacity to think at all clearly, and once in bed fell asleep almost immediately.
At the Black Dog Adrian sat over a beer in the private bar until past closing time. He then retired to his bedroom, where he continued his efforts to reduce his thoughts to some degree of order.
With a struggle he wrenched them away from Belinda herself, and tried to focus on Lister’s murder. Without a doubt, Pollard was checking up meticulously on old Plowman. Would he get on to the pot case? If he did, he’d soon see a possible motive for violent hostility towards Lister on Plowman’s part. And the Corbury police had probably told him already about the family row in the past.
Adrian shifted his position in bed, and stared blankly into the darkness. Suppose Plowman had slipped down from London on 14 December, meaning to beat up Lister, and it had ended in Lister being knocked out, and fatally fracturing his skull by landing on a fender or something? There still remained the problem of how he could have got the body down to Corbury. Was it psychologically — or even practically possible, that he collected it when he picked up Belinda on 19 December?
He fell asleep with the question unanswered.
When he woke it was broad daylight. He got up hastily and, having breakfasted and paid his bill, drove round to the police station for the key of Bernard Lister’s flat. Here he was handed a message to the effect that Superintendent Pollard would be out of Warhampton all day. Would Mr Beresford kindly hand in the papers at the police station before leaving for Alchester?
The information made Adrian uneasy. An absence of a whole day suggested a visit to Corbury. Suppose he’d gone down with a warrant for Plowman’s arrest in his pocket? Where the hell would one go from there?
It took considerable willpower to concentrate properly on reassembling Bernard Lister’s acid article on the Corbury charters.
Chapter 9
As the front door of the flat shut behind Adrian Beresford, Pollard twitched an eyebrow at Toye.
‘Fast worker,’ he remarked. ‘What’ll you bet that they first met about half an hour ago, when young Belinda came round looking for us, and chanced on him instead? There’s a strong whiff of the knight-errant about him at the moment.’
‘Looks to me like love at first sight,’ Toye replied solemnly. ‘It wouldn’t come amiss, either. The poor kid could be wanting a knight-whatsit.’
Pollard surveyed him with mock concern.
‘Romance is getting a grip on you, old son. How come? It must be the insidious effect of the movies, if they have that sort in these explicit days. Gone is your old manly preoccupation with thundering hoofs and the quick draw.’ He subsided into a deep armchair. Toye, who relished his ragging, grinned and enquired what he had made of Belinda Plowman.
‘I think she saw Lister all right on 28 September. The date really clinches it, after what Catchpole told us. And she’s too intelligent to lie about her old man being offstage: it can be checked up on so easily. So, what did Lister make that detour for?’
‘To see Mrs Stanton?’
‘Let’s have another look at these reports that have come in,’ Pollard said. ‘Yes, beyond any doubt Mrs Stanton was in Corbury on 14 December, so couldn’t have murdered Lister up here. Of course, she could have been an accessory if her husband did, and then brought the body back in his car. But these Warhampton chaps have checked and doublechecked his movements here, and they’ve been confirmed in every detail. There simply wouldn’t have been time for him to meet Lister, work up a row and finally murder him. That couple from Longstaple are unshakeable about Stanton getting home at fiv
e past eight. Thomas says the Colonel wanted his dinner, and had his eye on the time.’
‘Could it have been Stanton that Lister came to Corbury to see on 28 September, then?’ Toye suggested. ‘If they’d been in touch, they might have met by appointment on 14 December. On the road back to Corbury perhaps?’
Pollard crossed his long legs, clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.
‘It’s theoretically possible. On the other hand, this report of Thomas’s on the Stantons is pretty comprehensive, as we asked. There’s no evidence whatever of their having been in touch with Lister, either over the years or recently. Gerald Stanton is considered a shrewd businessman, but his reputation as a solicitor and as Town Clerk is excellent. His wife is now a wealthy woman and a leader in local good works and whatever. The only adverse criticism seems to be that they’re flying a bit high socially since they moved to Edgehill Court. I’m not saying that any of this is conclusive evidence against their being involved in Lister’s murder, but a case against them does look improbable alongside this unconvincing alibi that Mark Plowman has put up. Let’s look at the notes we brought back from the Yard.’
They went once again through the reports compiled by a team of investigators and now somewhat expanded. Mark Plowman had undoubtedly attended the conference of ceramic manufacturers on 14 December, but none of the attendants in the Pottery Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum remembered a visit from him in the late afternoon or recognised his photograph. Taxi drivers from a rank close to the Waterbury Hotel had been humorous at the Yard’s expense when asked if they could remember taking a fare to Paddington at about 3.30 p.m. on 14 December. Enquiries at steakhouses and news theatres in the Tottenham Court Road area had been equally unproductive. Most unfortunately, the barman at the Hamilton Hotel, who knew him from previous visits, and who could have confirmed the time of his return, had died recently.
‘Maddeningly inconclusive,’ Pollard said. ‘Let’s try working from this end, assuming for the moment that Plowman did come down and kill Lister after the meeting. We now know that he had a perfectly legitimate reason for coming up here on 19 December. This house was empty. Everything we said to Tresillian and Parr about backing a car up to the front door holds good for Plowman. I think it would have been a practical, if risky, possibility to collect Lister’s body, if it hadn’t been found in the meantime by a cleaner or someone.’
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