It was not the place to discuss it. ‘Will there be hot water?’
‘We’re not that old-fashioned.’
‘Then, if you’re coming in now, I’ll heat you some soup. And then a hot bath for you, young lady.’
‘Oh?’ she said, raising an eyebrow at my tone and considering my seniority of perhaps eight years.
‘Yes. I’m sure the horse is fine. You can leave him now.’
So she came back with me and sat at the table with a bowl of soup while I went to find the bathroom and put my hand to the cylinder. Then I sat at one end of the table with my own mug of tea, Angela at the other, and we said not a word.
A strange young woman, I thought, prepared to live here on her own, and not really querying my presence. Perhaps she was secretly glad to have someone with her, though she seemed self-sufficient. A tomboy, Timmis had called her. I suppose the modern equivalent would be a junior feminist, though sitting there she looked small and lost against the length of the table. She had thrown off the anorak and sat in a roll-neck sweater, her face dirty and her hair untidy, and she could not have looked more feminine. Once she glanced up, a startled look. I thought she was suddenly afraid, but perhaps she was only measuring me, wondering whether she could trust me.
When she’d finished her soup, she got to her feet, flicked me a small smile, and went off for her bath.
I’d had time to do no more than gain a general impression of the house. Solid and lived-in, with woodwork everywhere. Four bedrooms, I guessed, and I’d peeped into one that ran across the rear. On a clear day you could’ve seen for miles. Windows up to the ceiling, and panelling...a man’s room, probably her father’s.
When Angela came down the day had really finished, and all traces of the tomboy had died with the light. She was wearing a tweed skirt and a blouse, and her hair was now drawn back tidily, making her face look much thinner. And she had a genuine smile for me, now very much the mistress of the household.
‘We haven’t been introduced,’ she said. ‘You know I’m Phil’s wife. They call me Angie.’
‘And I’m Harry Kyle.’
‘Friend of Phil?’ she asked, getting it straight.
I had to be careful how I put it. ‘I’ve had dealings with him — as a detective sergeant. But I’m...kind of on leave just now. That’s why I’ve got the time to stick my nose into other people’s affairs.’
She laughed. ‘You beat me to it.’
‘I thought we’d start off on a basic understanding.’
She considered that, frowning, then she changed the subject abruptly. ‘Is that your caravan out there?’
‘Yes. Theoretically, I’m touring.’
‘Well...it’ll be fine there. I’ll make you up a bed...’
‘You will not, you know. How’d it look — just you and me alone in the house?’
‘There’s nobody to see.’
‘When the weather clears...No — if I can put the caravan in the corner of the yard, that’ll be fine.’
‘If you’re intending to stay.’
‘That was the general idea.’
‘If you’re really going to stick your nose in, you can stay until you’ve found out who killed my father. There’s a tap in the corner of the yard, if you really want to be independent, and an old outside lavatory...’
‘Not that independent,’ I protested, remembering that hot cylinder.
‘But I’ll cook for you. Had you realised we’re halfway through September?’
I tried to capture the sudden change of thought. ‘Not really.’
She threw back her head. ‘And you said you’re touring! Didn’t you know that all the tourist caravan sites shut at the end of the month? You’ll just have to stay on here. Now...you won’t have eaten. I think we deserve a slap-up meal, don’t you?’
There wasn’t any disagreement about that. I allowed myself to be shown into what she called the study, which was a cosy, dark room, all flickering shadows from the log fire she had in there, with brasses over the fireplace and a grand old oil lamp still in operation if I’d put a match to it, and beautifully counterbalanced so that you could reach it down for lighting and raise it smoothly to any desired height into the high, carved ceiling. Until I was called to join Angie in the kitchen, I sat placidly smoking. I’m good at that sort of thing.
She was a splendid cook, and I enjoyed the meal. I hadn’t been eating well of late, but watching her — listening to her — I forgot my lack of appetite.
It was as though a fresh spark of light had ignited her. She came alive before my eyes, glowing and eager and chattering away a stream of nonsense. I began to worry that she might be seeing too much hope in me, and that I wouldn’t be able to justify it.
‘Tell me about yourself, Harry,’ she said at one point, but I managed to steer round that, and she didn’t really notice, switching to another subject with her habitual ease. The atmosphere was friendly. I could have sunk happily into relaxation if the word murder hadn’t been hanging in the air.
Chapter Two
We ate. Then we retired to the tight, warm study, and there at last we got to the reason Angie thought her father had been murdered. Quite clearly, from what I’d already heard, he’d died in an ordinary motoring accident.
She lit a cigarette and stared at it in her fingers. ‘Phil just will not listen to what I’ve got to say,’ she said tensely.
‘I’m here to listen.’
‘They said my father drove off the road, going very fast, at the traffic lights where they’re going to put a new road.’
‘That’s what it seems like.’
‘What if I told you he hadn’t driven a car for ten years?’
‘I’d say he was driving one that day.’
‘It was night. Particularly, he would never have driven at night.’
‘But he could drive a car?’
‘Oh yes. He could drive. But he hadn’t driven since he killed a man on a pedestrian crossing, ten years ago.’
What she was saying signified nothing. I considered how to put it. ‘I may be wrong...but you were not here, on the night he died.’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘And how long since you’d been to see your father?’
Her eyes snapped. She reached out with a poker and jabbed at a log. It collapsed in a shower of sparks and flame, catching light in her eyes.
‘Too long.’ It was a whisper.
‘How long...please?’
‘Nearly a year. But I kept in touch.’ She raised her chin in defence.
‘But you couldn’t be certain he hadn’t bought a car, or hired one or something, and started to drive again.’
‘He wouldn’t do that.’
‘Do you know he hadn’t?’
She drew in her lower lip and bit it, threw her cigarette angrily into the fire. ‘You’re saying just the same as Phil!’ She had expected better. I should be showing more understanding than Phil.
‘I’m sorry. But we’ve got to get it straight. Did he have a car?’
‘I know now, from what I’ve found out since I’ve been here. My cousin — Neville — lent him one. An old Escort.’
‘Well then.’
‘To experiment with, not to drive.’
‘Experiment?’
A flicker of a smile, but she kept something back behind it. ‘I’ll tell you about it, I promise...but now, I’ll just say it didn’t involve driving. Any driving, Neville did for him, or more often Lynne Fairfax — that’s daddy’s secretary and lab assistant. Was, I mean. No, my father didn’t drive. They both say he didn’t. In any event, it was night-time. My father could not have driven at night, and he would certainly not have driven in the direction of the town, because of the traffic signal, and certainly not...absolutely not...as fast as they said he must’ve been going.’
It’s possible to get a fixation about this sort of thing. Someone close to you dies in tragic circumstances, and it’s something very difficult to accept in any event. Sometimes the
very details of the death are distressing and make the acceptance even more difficult. But most usually the rejection occurs when suicide is involved. Nobody wants to believe their beloved relative has committed suicide, if only because there’s a suggestion that in some way they’ve failed him. But that, as I say, is in respect of suicide. In her case there was no suggestion of suicide — was there? Yet the fixation was just as strong. Angie was not prepared to accept something as ordinary as an accident. It had to be murder.
I eased my way into it cautiously. ‘You were here for the inquest?’
‘Yes.’ There was a dismissive toss of her head. ‘Such nonsense.’
‘He was driving it — that was the evidence, I suppose?’
‘That was what they said.’
‘But...with the law as it is...he’d have been belted in. That is — in the driver’s seat.’
‘That was what they said he was.’
‘But you can’t surely be saying he was strapped in, against his will, perhaps unconscious at the time, and the car was sent down that slope, all just on the chance it’d neatly turn over and...’
She waved me silent, not wanting to hear about the burning.
‘I don’t know. If you say you want to help, surely that’s one of the things to find out.’
I sighed. ‘If,’ I said, ‘someone wished to kill your father and cover it as an accident, and he had not driven for ten years, wouldn’t it be strange if a driving accident was used to fake it with?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Not with those roadworks there, so convenient, and that traffic signal there. That traffic signal! Have you seen it?’
I nodded, puffing out smoke.
‘It’s only got two colours. Green and red.’
‘Yes. They don’t need the amber because it isn’t a crossing.’
‘Well then. If it could be assumed that my father was driving — and it has been assumed he was — then that would be just the place to fake an accident. Particularly at night. Particularly him.’
‘If you say so. But why?’
‘Because my father was colour blind on green and red.’
I realised, then, that she’d led me into it, gradually building up the background until I fell into the trap. The normal traffic signal sequence is red, red and amber, green, amber, red. This is a help to the colour blind, as they get a clue from the sequence. With a traffic signal using only red and green, that clue is missing. It was, as she’d said, just the place to fake his accident. But equally...
‘You’ve just said it yourself. You’re implying it’d be just the place where the traffic lights would confuse him. So why shouldn’t it have been a genuine accident?’
‘Because,’ she said, her voice loaded with the deep suffering of a person plugging desperately at stupidity, ‘he’d know about the signal, and if he had to drive for some reason — some emergency nobody knows about — he’d drive with care. They said he must have been driving fast. Very fast! It’s completely ridiculous.’
I sat back and gave it some thought. She was, fortunately, the sort of person who is not afraid of silences. She watched me, though, ready to pounce on any rejection.
There was something in what Angie said. Given a person with the background of her father, there was at the very least a considerable amount to be discovered before I could confidently say he’d driven himself to his death. But to suggest the facts fitted murder...that was a different proposition altogether. Murder would have been too awkward and difficult in that way, too uncertain.
‘This colour blindness,’ I said, stalling. ‘Tell me about it. I know so very little...’
Then she smiled, and her face became radiant. She knew she’d got through.
‘It’s not really a good phrase. Colour blindness. Only a very tiny percentage of people are fully blind to colour. Those are the ones who see things only as black and white and grey. Like cats. That’s all they see. But what’s usually meant by colour blindness is the fact that they don’t use all three of the primary colours in their vision.’
‘Red, yellow and blue,’ I put in, to show I wasn’t completely ignorant.
‘No,’ she declared, denting my ego. ‘That’s pigments. We’re talking about light, and pigments take away light, not add to it. Light. Red, green and a purply blue, roughly. And the most usual difficulty is between red and green.’
‘What’s happened to yellow?’
‘You’ll see, because it’s light we’re talking about. Put an electric torch in each hand, one red and one green, and shine them on a white wall, and where they overlap you’d see yellow. You would see yellow. A person who’s colour blind on red and green can usually see something they call yellow, but to match that up with the two torches they’d have to dim one of them, in some cases switch it off altogether. That’s how my father was. Traffic signals he could handle, but it took a bit of concentration on the sequence. One wet and rainy night his concentration lapsed for a moment, and he ran down a man on a pedestrian crossing that happened to be controlled by a traffic signal.’
‘Was he prosecuted?’
‘That’s the ridiculous thing about it. Witnesses said daddy was in the right, and drove through a green. But he blamed himself. He said he wasn’t sure — and he didn’t ever drive again.’
‘That would be difficult for him, surely. This place isn’t exactly a short walk from the nearest supermarket. A car would be absolutely essential to him.’
Angie drew up her left knee and linked both hands around it. She began to rock gently back and forward in the easy chair, her eyes going distant and dreamy, her voice falling to a soft tone with husky hints beneath it. I pretended to be casual, but I was concentrating on her, waiting for another little trap, hoping to avoid falling into it. She was clever, and subtle with it, and what she had in mind was based on intuition, her knowledge of her father, her love for him and her understanding. She’d work very hard to put that across to a stranger, now that she knew I was all she had to depend on.
‘I was living at home then,’ she told me, ‘and we were very close. We both assumed I’d always be around to look after him, so I could drive him where he wanted to go. As it happened, it was the same for both of us. We were commuting to Aberystwyth — don’t you hate that word...commuting? He was a my second year. Daddy had it all planned. A PhD for me, in his footsteps. Even the same subject. You see, he’d always specialised in vision and light and colour. He lectured on the physiology and psychology of sight.’
‘You’re a doctor of philosophy?’
She laughed. There was just a hint of regret behind it, but she trapped it before it became obvious.
‘I never finished the course. Daddy killed that man on the crossing, and though I could drive him in every day, if he wanted, he became obsessed. In the end he resigned, and came back here to set up his own laboratory — I’ll show you in the morning. Then he devoted himself to research on colour blindness.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘How sad.’
She leaned forward, frowning at what she thought was my sarcasm. ‘Sad? But he’s been very happy.’
‘Sad for you, I meant. If you had to give up...’
‘Oh no! You mustn’t believe that. There were other reasons I didn’t go on for my degree.’
I nodded solemnly. It mattered. ‘Sorry.’
‘There was my mother, you see, and later I met Phil. And that was the end of everything.’
It was an unfortunate way of putting it. I waited. She looked suddenly shy.
‘Or the beginning,’ she amended thoughtfully. Phil Rollason had never struck me as the romantic type. Mind you, he’s good with engines...
‘So he researched,’ I reminded her, keeping my mind on the subject. ‘In his own laboratory.’
Angie smiled vaguely. ‘At first, I worked with him. But he really needed someone who could type, and things like that. So he took on Lynne, who’s been just marvellous. You must give her that. Marvellous. And there was Phil.
..’
She paused. A year or perhaps more unfolded itself in her memory but remained unexpressed. The struggle there must have been over leaving her father, which was indicated only in a ruffle that crossed her brow. She tapped her teeth with her thumbnail. I stared at my pipe.
‘The house,’ said Angie gently, ‘was very big for the two of us. When mother died and Paul went away...my brother, Paul — you’ll perhaps meet him...after that the house seemed empty. Even more when my father spent twelve — fourteen — hours a day in the lab. There’s so much unexplored in the field of colour blindness, you know. He wanted to help people afflicted in the same way he was. He treated it as an affliction, though with most people it’s no more than a slight disability...I’m wandering off the point. I’m sorry. What was I saying?’
‘The house was empty all day,’ I said. ‘And there was no place for you in the lab.’
‘Did I say that?’ Large, startled eyes, suddenly challenging me.
‘That’s what I thought you meant.’
‘No. I had plenty to do. Riding. The orchard...I used to play in it as a child, but it became a responsibility. They don’t just grow, you know.’
‘What was your father trying to do?’ I prompted. ‘To help.’
‘Towards the end — and he wrote to me regularly — he was experimenting with vacuum-coating spectacle lenses, trying to produce a stronger contrast between red and green. You can see the point.’
I grunted, and nodded.
‘And he’d had some success in that way. So he wanted to try it with an actual car windscreen. That was why he borrowed my cousin Neville’s old Escort. Or bought it, I suppose. It wasn’t worth much.’
‘Vacuum-coated a whole windscreen?’ He’d need very special equipment for that sort of job. ‘Surely...’
‘Only a very small area of it — or so he wrote to me.’
‘Now hold on a second. Surely you’re not telling me he’d treated part of the driver’s side of the windscreen, and that he’d taken the car out that night...’
Then again I saw she’d caught me. She was smiling. She had already bounced all this off Phil, and found him unresponsive. She had made an assessment of the official police attitude and had prepared her assault on me with all the objections in mind. I was getting the revised version, the interpretation most likely to influence me.
Seeing Red Page 2