A Little Local Murder

by Robert Barnard

  ‘I really don’t follow you, Mrs Leaze,’ said Jean, embarrassed at for some reason no longer being the passive recipient of news but the expected provider of it. She chose the Wensleydale and prepared herself for a quick dash round the other shelves and a hasty exit. ‘I’m sure I haven’t got any news about anything you won’t have heard already. I’m home all day, you know.’

  Mrs Leaze almost wailed with disappointment. ‘Oh, Mrs Jimson, don’t go all clammy on me! I’ve been waiting for you to come in and tell me for certain one way or another. I just can’t stand the strain any longer, not with my ’art. And being a neighbour it stands to reason you must know.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know at all, Mrs Leaze,’ said Jean coldly. ‘In fact, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Well, about Mrs Mailer, of course,’ said Mrs Leaze, coming unpleasantly close. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Is what true? What’s she done now?’ said Jean, careful not to show any great interest.

  ‘What’s she done? You mean you don’t know?’ shrieked Mrs Leaze, convinced at last and preparing to switch roles to that of imparter of information instead of wriggler out. ‘She’s dead, that’s what.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Done in. She’s been and got ’erself done in.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Jean. One never does believe one’s friends are dead, unless they are the dying type. ‘It must be nonsense. I saw her only yesterday.’

  ‘Did you, Mrs Jimson, did you?’ panted Mrs Leaze. ‘’Ow did she look? Did she look as if she knew it was going to ’appen? Threatened, like – or ’aunted?’

  ‘She looked just as she always does,’ said Jean firmly. ‘I’m sure you’ll find it’s just a lot of silly gossip based on nothing. Or else it’s a really nasty joke. Some people round here have a very unpleasant sense of humour.’

  ‘But it’s not, Mrs Jimson, it’s not. She’s been found – in the bluebell woods, some say, or in that field near you with the fancy name. Nobody’s quite sure, but she ’as been found. And ’er ’ead was all bashed in – an ’orrible wound it was, they say.’

  Jean had to pause. She could hardly believe that Alison was dead, yet she had no hard reasons for thinking she was alive. And she remembered the bustle next door.

  ‘Who says?’ she asked.

  ‘Mrs Brewer was full of it – she come in round about ’uppast ten, so was Miss Potts when she come in at ’er usual time, it’s going all round the village. Only nobody seems to know anything for certain, ’ardly.’

  ‘What about Cressida?’ said Jean.

  ‘’Oo?’ asked Mrs Leaze.

  ‘Cressida. Mrs Mailer’s daughter.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about ’er, Mrs Jimson. I don’t know anything about anything.’

  ‘I must go and see them,’ said Jean, a vision of the calm, serious, pretty little girl rising before her. ‘She should come in with us. She can’t just be left in the house. Here, take that, Mrs Leaze. I’ll come back for the change later.’

  And she thrust into Mrs Leaze’s hand a pound note, and began off up the hill in the direction of home, as fast as the push-chair would allow her. But not fast enough to get out of hearing of Mrs Leaze’s supplicating voice, she having shuffled to the shop door in order to shrill after her:

  ‘Be careful, Mrs Jimson, ’cos you never know, do you? Would you give me a tinkle when you’ve been there? Won’t take a minute. Just so’s I know you’re all right.’

  Jean left her youngest sleeping in his push-chair on the front lawn. As she walked between her and Alison’s so different houses a complex tangle of emotions took possession of her mind – doubt, anxiety, and a feeling of unreality. But eventually, gaining on them, came a feeling that such things did, after all, happen, that there was no reason why her life should be immune from them. And that Alison Mailer was not, in fact, an absolutely inconceivable murder victim, even though she had never considered her anything worse than aggravating and foolish. Her disbelief flooded away from her when she saw a policeman standing at the front door.

  She unlatched the wrought-iron gate and walked a little unsteadily up the drive. She took in the brilliantly even and weed-free front lawn and the decorously blooming flower beds. A sense overwhelmed her of the triviality of Alison’s life, the pettinesses on which it had been frittered away, so that now she seemed no longer even aggravating, merely pathetic. It seemed to her that she had bartered her reality for a colour television and a leather Scandinavian lounge suite. When she got up to the front door she found her eyes inexplicably filling with tears, and she had to brush them away. The constable on the door, sturdy and running to fat, was Fred Lockett, the oldest of the town’s policemen. Jean knew his wife.

  ‘Hello, Fred,’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t go in, Mrs Jimson,’ said Fred Lockett. ‘I’ve got very strict instructions.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said Jean. ‘Does this mean it’s true?’

  Fred reacted slowly. He was not used to this kind of thing, and though Inspector Parrish had impressed upon him slowly and clearly what he was and was not to do, he was better at doing what he had always done before than he was at doing what he was told. He had to put his head on one side and think for a bit.

  ‘I don’t know as I can say anything about that, Mrs Jimson. In any case, I don’t know what folks are saying.’

  Jean decided not to circle round the subject. She didn’t want Constable Lockett to think of her as one of the Twytching Gossip Ring, on the ferret for information.

  ‘I’m worried about Cressida,’ she said. ‘The little girl. Is her father here now, or not? She shouldn’t be alone in the house, and perhaps it would be best to get her out of it, anyway. I thought I could take her in with me.’

  This Constable Lockett understood at once. He was a kindly man, and none of Inspector Parrish’s instructions could override his concern for the wide-eyed creature who was somewhere inside. He had heard no crying, but he had been standing there trying to imagine what it must be like for her.

  ‘Now that would be kind,’ he said. ‘She’s all alone there, you see, because they haven’t made contact with the father yet. They think he went by train to London today as usual – Tuesday is his day, you know. Would you like to slip in and get her now? She was in the living-room when the inspector left.’

  Jean went into the hall, feeling a mixture of guilt and dread. She shouldn’t be here, she didn’t want to be here, yet she was here. She felt almost like an accomplice of Mrs Leaze. How difficult it was to get one’s thoughts in order when someone you disliked had died. It was still more difficult, somehow, when you were in her house. The big hall, with everything neatly shut away in cupboards, with no signs of the humans who had come in and out, and the arty wallpaper at the far end which somehow gave you the idea you were losing your balance. The house was like Alison herself: it made you feel at less than your best. Jean paused at the doorway to the sitting-room.

  Cressida Mailer was sitting at the table, writing. As always there was a quiet, self-contained air about her, and Jean was struck with it more than ever at such a time. She looked up as Jean came into the room. Her eyes were slightly red, but there was no sign of exaggerated grief. This gave Jean an odd feeling that she was exaggerating the matter, or that nothing had really happened in spite of Constable Lockett’s presence outside. Cressida’s eyes were dark, deep, hooded by self-concealment, which perhaps had become habitual with her. She was twelve.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Jimson,’ she said, with something of her mother’s composure. ‘It was nice of you to come.’

  ‘Are you all right, Cressida?’ asked Jean, not quite knowing what to say at such a time. ‘I’ve come to take you next door. It’s wrong for you to be here alone.’

  Cressida smiled a sad little smile. ‘I’m quite all right, thank you, Mrs Jimson,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘It’s nice of you to invite me, but I won’t come round. Daddy should be
home any time now. They’re fetching him from London, and he’ll expect me to be here.’

  ‘I’m quite sure he won’t expect you to be here, Cressida, or want you to be,’ said Jean briskly. ‘He would be far happier if you were round with us being looked after.’

  ‘He’ll want me here when he comes back,’ repeated Cressida with a trace of obstinacy, ‘and really I don’t need looking after. But it’s awfully kind of you.’

  She looked down at her writing, unconsciously seeming to say, ‘If there’s nothing else, would you please go and let me get on with what I was doing.’ Jean felt almost nonplussed, as she had always been after some of Alison’s more outrageous remarks that she could not think of an immediate answer to. She had a sudden feeling that the child, never having aroused maternal instincts in Alison, inevitably suppressed any such feelings in other women whenever there was danger of their being aroused. But she had to try again.

  ‘Cressida, you do understand that Mummy is dead, don’t you?’ she said, coming closer.

  ‘Yes, Mother’s dead,’ said Cressida. ‘The policeman told me. It’s terrible. I’ve got to think of Daddy first of all now.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but you must see that it’s wrong for you to be here on your own. Your father will be very upset, and will have to talk to the police. It wouldn’t be right for you to be around while all that’s going on.’

  ‘Why?’ said Cressida, and paused a second before continuing. ‘I know Daddy will want me here. I shan’t come, Mrs Jimson. But thank you very much for asking me.’

  It was the blankest of dismissals. Jean muttered something about Cressida knowing she could always come round if she needed help, and Cressida nodded – smiling seriously, but obviously wanting to get rid of her. Jean retreated, puzzled and dissatisfied with herself, to Constable Lockett, whose bulk was still blocking the front door.

  ‘She won’t come,’ she said. ‘I wish she would – it seems so ghastly her being alone in the house like this, with all Alison’s things around her and so on. But I don’t think she’s been crying too much.’

  ‘Poor little thing, she must be weeping inside, though,’ said Constable Lockett, whose mental horizon could not be widened to include a little girl who felt no grief for a dead mother. ‘I know the inspector would like her out, and that’s a fact. I’ll tell him when he comes that you’re willing to have her.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jean. ‘I’ll be in all day.’ And she was about to take her leave when she saw a police car draw up in the street outside and Arnold Mailer get out.

  His face was grey-white, like grimy plaster, and his mouth was slack, as if he had lost control of his face muscles. The slackness seemed to have affected his whole body, and he looked fifteen years older than when Jean saw him last. For a moment as he got out of the car it seemed as if he did not know where he was. Inspector Parrish came round the car, a worried, sympathetic look on his face, and jogged his arm to start him up the pathway. Then Arnold seemed to collect his thoughts, as if he really was taking in the news for the first time, and with a giant effort he co-ordinated himself and hurried towards the house.

  As he passed Jean he seemed dimly to register who she was, and muttered, ‘Must see Cressida. Damned shame I wasn’t here when she heard,’ and pushed his way through the front door. Jean had time to catch a glimpse of haggard, haunted eyes, and hair that seemed to have been torn into by frantic hands, hair that seemed to have greyed overnight. Then he was gone.

  Jean looked up at Inspector Parrish, who had followed Mailer more slowly up the garden path.

  ‘I tried to get the little girl away,’ she said, conscious of some absurdity in the description, ‘but she wouldn’t come. She simply refused.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Parrish, with his air of country consideration. ‘But we can’t force her. That might be worst of all.’ He turned to Constable Lockett. ‘I’m going to be unprofessional – I’ll give them half an hour together. They’ll need it. I shan’t get any sense out of him till he’s sure she’s all right. Keep an eye on them as far as you can while I’m gone.’

  He and Jean turned to go down the drive. Through the window of the sitting-room Jean had a brief picture of Arnold and Cressida. They were both on their feet, he suddenly seeming immensely tall as he stroked her hair and bent to kiss her. Cressida had buried her head in his chest. Jean wondered whether her eyes were still dry, and hoped not. She turned away, almost ashamed, as if she had been caught watching an indecent act. Displays of emotion were rare in Timothy Jimson’s house.

  • • •

  ‘You should have got her in here,’ said Timothy later in the day. ‘It would have been interesting to see how she was reacting.’

  Jean could hardly believe her ears. She looked hard at Timothy to see if he meant to be as heartless as he sounded. He bridled visibly and put on a front of pomposity.

  ‘To me. As a writer,’ he said.

  CHAPTER VII

  CONSTABULARY DUTIES

  When the police photographers had taken the body (lying in an unaccustomedly inelegant posture) from every possible angle, and then taken two or three more for luck, and when the pathologist had done his work, the ambulance men, supervised by the police surgeon, gingerly lifted the body on to a stretcher, and drove off with it to the morgue at Barstowe. Something of its usual rural quietness returned to the scene, though it was a quietness only maintained by dint of a police guard stationed a hundred yards or so away from the body’s position in both directions along the lane to the bluebell wood. Inspector Parrish, his friendly, comfortable body having taken on something of a new purpose and firmness already, still stood way back from where the body had lain, looking at the ground and pondering. Inspector Parrish had a highly rural ponder, and none of his inferiors interrupted one lightly. Sergeant Feather and Sergeant Underwood stood by watching him and waiting, the latter now and then patting down her skirt a little nervously. She had never before been on a murder case, and – Twytching being what it was – this one could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. She didn’t want to disgrace herself by some foolishness of word or deed, and since the men at the station mainly kept her on cases of lollipops purloined in the school playground and pets who had absconded from old-age pensioners, it wasn’t easy to decide how to behave. She had already concluded that her best cue for the moment was silence, and she was right. Eventually Inspector Parrish raised his head and spoke.

  ‘Can’t see that the ground around tells us much,’ he said. ‘Too dry, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘No signs of dragging, though,’ said Sergeant Feather. ‘There would be if she had been, dry as it is.’

  ‘True,’ said Parrish. ‘True enough. But where does that get us?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you could say it tells us that if a woman did it, she probably did it right here. I’m pretty sure a woman couldn’t have carried her here.’

  ‘Most women couldn’t,’ said Parrish cautiously, and wondered why a mental picture of Mrs Withens rose to his mind. ‘But why in God’s name should she be carried here at all? It’s not as though the body was hidden – it was right by the side of the path. Just waiting to be found.’

  ‘She was only wearing a cardigan,’ said Sergeant Underwood tentatively. ‘It was quite a thick one – natural wool, I think, and very smart. But still, it doesn’t seem very much to have on for a cold night like last night.’

  Inspector Parrish considered for a moment, but finally he shook his head. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But that sort of woman thinks about effect first of all. Think how some women waltz around a freezing ballroom with all their arms and shoulders and what-have-you bare as the day they were born. Daft I call it – but you wouldn’t even guess they were slightly chilly from the look of them. Mrs Mailer was very much that type, so far as I knew the lady. If she thought she looked good in her cardigan, she’d wear it, willy-nilly.’

  ‘Do you think she was meeting a man, then?’ asked Stephen Feather, who always spoke to Parrish as to a fat
her, though slightly more respectfully.

  ‘Now how should I know, lad?’ said Parrish impatiently. ‘We haven’t the first idea as to why she was here, if she was here, or who she was meeting if she was meeting anyone. In any case, I’d say she was the sort who was just as likely to dress up to meet another woman as to meet a man, wouldn’t you, Betty?’

  ‘More,’ said Sergeant Underwood briefly.

  ‘Certainly she looked smartly turned out to my unpractised eye,’ said Parrish. ‘Isn’t that so, Betty?’

  Sergeant Underwood nodded. ‘Really well-cut skirt, very smart blouse – Harrods, or that type of shop. Good things, and fresh on – clean apart from the dust and so on.’

  She shuddered briefly, as she remembered looking closely at the collar and shoulders of the blouse.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Parrish. ‘Then again, what does it tell you? I never saw Mrs Mailer looking any other way. There’s some women always look like a Daimler ad even in their own homes, so I’m told. Even put on special make-up to go to bed at nights – isn’t that so, Stephen?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, sir,’ said Sergeant Feather, rather stiffly. He was a rather stiff young man.

  ‘Out of your class, eh?’ said Inspector Parrish, wheezing happily to himself. ‘I suppose so, on your salary. Anyway, the poor creature looked good to the end, which I imagine would have pleased her. Rather a funny position she’d got herself into, but otherwise a credit to the town. Apart from the back of her head.’ He walked gingerly to where Bert Carrington, on his way that morning to play truant in the bluebell woods, had found Alison lying face down in the dust and dirt, with the very nasty wound in the back of her head. Parrish’s sharp eyes darted around and about the spot for the twentieth time, but they lighted on nothing. ‘Almost too orderly somehow,’ he said.