‘This bad mood of his — it was because he was going to see his son?’
‘That’s what I guessed.’
‘But my information is that he hadn’t seen him for years.’
‘Which is dead right. Can’t fault you on that.’
‘Why would he be in a bad mood, d’you think?’
‘Wouldn’t you? With Paul running off to the States and hardly ever getting in touch.’
‘You know that?’
‘Uncle Gledwyn told me.’
‘On this trip to Aberystwyth?’
‘Will you let me tell it, for God’s sake! He mentioned it. On the trip. He didn’t sit there like a stone every minute. Paul just turned up in this country and phoned. Phoned, mind you, not even came to Viewlands to see his dear old dad. And then expected dear old dad to come to him.’
‘Strange he didn’t refuse.’
‘Well...he’d want to see him.’
‘And therefore, I gather, this wasn’t just a social visit.’
‘You can guess, Paul wanted something.’
‘What?’
‘How do I know? Uncle Gledwyn didn’t say. All I know is, he didn’t get it. There must’ve been a God-awful row, judging by his face when he came out.’
‘Out of the hotel, you mean?’
‘The Regent. I was waiting in the car park.’
‘So you didn’t go in to see your cousin?’
‘Me? Lord no. Why’d I want to meet that snooty bastard? Why would he want to see me?’
‘But you do know there was a row?’
‘We’d better walk back,’ he suggested.
‘No hurry, is there? You knew there’d been a row, from his face?’
‘And from something he said on the way back.’
‘So he did speak?’
‘One thing. After about ten miles, he said: “Neville lad, you can take it you’ll be hearing something very soon to your advantage.”’
I smiled into the distance. He’d been unable to leave it. It wouldn’t have looked good if he left me with the impression he knew he already had the inheritance. I tried blunting his confidence.
‘But that was a week before he died. There’d have been plenty of time to do something about it.’
‘He was in Blackpool all the next week.’ Neville shrugged. Easy come; easy go. But it hadn’t come. It hadn’t come within a mile of him.
‘Though there was always the chance he’d have gone to a Blackpool solicitor,’ I suggested.
‘Lynne told me he hadn’t. He was still only talking about it on the way back from there.’
‘But she couldn’t have told you that until after he was dead,’ I pointed out.
He stared at me, flicking the cigarette end away negligently. Then he used the same hand to slap me on the shoulder. ‘Hah — you’re cute! I never thought of that. Makes it look bad, don’t it!’ And he grinned.
‘You’re right out of luck,’ I agreed evenly.
Then he was suddenly cheerful. ‘Still, could be worse, I suppose.’
I grinned at him. ‘Yes. You’ve got the Metro — and got Lynne to yourself at last.’
‘Yes...haven’t I?’ And he tossed his head, openly challenging me to make a motive out of that.
I said: ‘You brought him home, that Saturday night, from Aberystwyth. You were late, I understand.’
‘That bloody rain! It’d been on all day, and the Escort’s wipers — he’d done his side of the windscreen with something — something stuck on, you see, only he’d done it on the outside. It meant the wipers kept sticking. Nearly drove me crazy. So we were home later than we expected. Poor old Lynne...’
‘Waiting there. But she said you didn’t go in and see her.’
‘Well — I wouldn’t know. The office is round the side...and where she leaves her car...have you seen? So I assumed she’d gone home. I was in a rotten mood myself by then, anyway, what with the rain and the wipers and him sitting there like a thunder cloud, and assuming I’d missed Lynne. So I took him into the drive—’
‘Not into the yard?’
‘The drive. He said: “The front.” Like I was a soddin’ servant or something, and he’d already got his keys in his hand. I pulled up in front of the porch and he got out — no good night or thank you or anything — and dived for the front door. I thought: bugger you, too, mate, and dug out the Metro, and went home. And d’you know what! It was my birthday. A right day it’d been for me.’
‘And you didn’t see Gledwyn again?’
‘No. Should I have done?’
If Gledwyn had marched straight through the house and across the yard, yes, I’d have expected Neville to see him.
‘Did you put away the Escort straightaway?’ I asked, at last allowing him to walk me back towards the cars.
‘What? That minute, d’you mean?’
‘That minute.’
‘I suppose...you want details...Gledwyn didn’t smoke, and he didn’t like me lighting up in the car. I was dying for a ciggy. I reckon — yes, I remember now. I lit up and sat there while I finished it, cussing him and the weather. Does it matter?’
‘I don’t suppose so.’
Yet somehow it did, though I couldn’t quite work it out. I could imagine Neville, in a rotten mood, digging out his Metro from the garage, where he’d surely have left it. But I couldn’t see him putting away the Escort. More likely he’d drive out the Metro, glance at the parked Escort and the rain, and think bugger him, he can put it away himself. That would seem a joke to Neville, making Gledwyn accomplish that bit of driving, at least.
‘And the following morning,’ I said, ‘Lynne drove him to his Convention at Blackpool, so that you didn’t see him alive again?’
‘That’s about it. Would you like to see our new theodolite in action?’
‘Thanks, but I think we’ll get back.’
Angie had stayed in the Rover, I thought because she’d not wish to stand out there and distance herself too obviously. Neville had not noticed who was with me. He came up to the car, and said: ‘Hello...it’s you, Angie. Howie things going?’ She nodded and smiled, and I climbed into the driving seat. Their conversation seemed to be over, so I backed and edged the car round with some difficulty and we drove away. I glanced at her. Neville, apparently, was not one of her favourite people.
‘Seems he’s upset you,’ she said. ‘You look harassed.’
‘It’s through standing face on to the wind. It’s quite keen.’
‘Neville was his usual difficult self, I can see it in your eyes.’
Now how the devil could she do that? I’d thought there was a weakness in his features; one he recognised and played on. But he hadn’t been difficult, rather too open, really.
I slowed to negotiate a particularly deep stream-bed. The car rocked. I was worried about Neville Green. He’d had time to prepare his attitude, and he’d known I’d be wanting to meet him. Had his openness really been secretive?
‘What would you say,’ I asked, ‘about somebody who happily admits he’s been fawning round your father for what he can get out of it, and grabbing up all he can get his hands on, and at the same time speaks about him with scorn? Come on. You know Neville better than I do.’
She glanced at me. ‘The wind seems to have made you facetious.’
‘I caught it from him.’
‘I don’t know him all that well. Perhaps he was being deliberately facetious.’
‘He chose a strange time to display it, then.’
‘Or maybe,’ she suggested in a neutral voice, ‘he’s oversensitive, and I never noticed it before.’
‘Good Lord!’
‘Too sensitive to risk showing an affection for my father, so he has to cover it, even if he’s clumsy about it, by being too outspoken. And too sensitive about accepting presents, so he pours scorn on the giver. Does that make sense?’
I took time out to look at her suspiciously. ‘Of a sort. But he came up with a very poor lack of motive, and I hadn’t
even mentioned murder.’
‘What was that?’
‘Your father was intending to leave Neville his money — as you know. Our friend back there knew about the intention a week before Gledwyn died. If he’d had reason to believe the will had been altered legally in his favour, that could well have been a good motive for killing his uncle.’
‘It’s strange,’ she said acidly, ‘how you calmly come out with these things, as though we’re talking about objects instead of people.’
‘It’s why it’s called objectivity. You mustn’t consider it in an emotional way, Angie, or you get so upset you can’t see past the personalities.’
She was distant. ‘You were saying?’
‘Only that he had no reason to think the will had been changed. Gledwyn was in Blackpool. It was a social event, and hardly a time he’d trouble to go into legal matters. Neville had been expecting something to happen about the will for a long while, and his fiancée, Lynne...’
‘Fiancée? She hasn’t said a word...’
‘He wants to marry her. Let me finish. Lynne would have told him if and when there was any new will. So he’d surely wait to be certain, if he’d got anything drastic in mind.’
‘But they’re most unsuited!’ she declared.
‘I put to you a proposition...’
‘You’re right, of course.’
I tested her attention. ‘About what?’
‘There’s no real motive there. Looking at it objectively, that is. But looking at those two as personalities...can you see them as man and wife? Really, now. Seriously.’
‘It seems to have been his target for some while,’ I ventured.
‘Lynne’d make him a wonderful wife, I’ll grant you that. Devoted to his needs, and organising his domestic existence.’
‘Would he like to be organised?’
She nodded her emphasis. ‘It’d take the embarrassment out of accepting, and make a formality out of what he had to offer. That would suit Neville splendidly.’ She delivered this cool assessment with confidence.
I could see the town below me now, the street lights flicking on. We were on better surfaced roads. I relaxed.
‘Do women think of marriage in such a way? You surprise me, really you do. Such a cold and dispassionate consideration of all the pros and cons.’
‘Women take seriously matters of birth and marriage. We leave the men to be dispassionate about death.’
I grunted. ‘You’re too clever for me. I wish I hadn’t brought it up.’
I drove steadily into and through the town. Again I took the route past the roadworks, and she made no protest.
‘If,’ I said at last, ‘you say that marriage would make a formality out of what Neville has to offer, then there can’t be much happiness in store for Lynne.’
‘I told you — they’re quite unsuited.’ She was determined to get the last word. She added to it: ‘unless, of course, it’s quite untrue that he’s over-sensitive. In that case, it’d mean he’s completely cold and calculating — as I’ve always thought — and marriage for Lynne to Neville would be disastrous.’
There seemed no point in trying to cap that. I drove into the yard beside Viewlands and found she’d left the side door unlocked. On the kitchen table there was a note: Angie. Can you pop over for an hour? My parents would be pleased. — Evan.
Evan would, too, I had no doubt. Angie looked at me, frowning.
‘I ought to go.’
‘Of course.’
‘Can you cook...’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘Make yourself at home,’ she said, the eagerness to be off already nudging the words. ‘The big room at the back of the house...you’ll find it. There’re records and books...’
‘You run along. I’ll be fine.’
When she’d gone — after a dash upstairs for a quick change and to check that her face was still there — I phoned Phil Rollason, and arranged to meet him the next day.
Chapter Eight
It was not so much that I had any positive progress to report, as that I now believed the matter was drifting into deeper and deeper shades of domestic crisis, and I was best out of there. I couldn’t say too much about it over the phone but told him there were things I needed to know that would best come from him. This was true enough.
‘There’s a café in Shrewsbury,’ I suggested, and told him how to find it. It was just about the one place I knew in Shrewsbury, and it spread the journey between us.
He agreed. ‘Is she there?’
‘She’s visiting.’ I decided to be diplomatic. ‘The next door neighbour, a farmer called Morgan Rees.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve met him.’
I’d tried to be off-hand with him, but you could hear the worry in his voice. I returned to the kitchen, feeling disturbed, and hammered three eggs into submission.
Afterwards I went out and raided the lab for one of those glass discs from the bench, and, being alone, had a closer look at the arrangements. Lynne had left her desk tidy. Well, it would be, as there’d been nothing for her to do since Gledwyn’s death. Nevertheless, she’d found odd tasks that drew her there from time to time.
In the filing cabinet was the work Gledwyn had accumulated on vision, colour, and colour blindness. I fetched out one or two folders and looked at them, but they were very technical indeed, far beyond my understanding. And there were perhaps two hundred of these folders, all neatly annotated and carefully kept. Lynne’s work, that. There’d been some disparagement of his scientific success and authority, but this seemed to me to be a considerable body of work, and quite an accomplishment for a man working alone and without a trained assistant, however enthusiastic Lynne might have been.
I saw what I had not noticed before — that Lynne had her own private door to the office. It opened onto the space where she always left her car. Here was more evidence of the way she distanced herself from the house. She had to prove she was devoted only to his scientific work. But prove it to whom?
The door was locked. She protected her own province, yet Angie had left the lab doors open at the front.
Then I went indoors and prowled around the house. Gledwyn had owned no television set, but his radio and record-playing equipment, which I found in the long rear room, were of the highest quality. And, judging by his record collection, his blindness did not extend to colour in musical composition. Richard Strauss, Mahler, Bruckner, Stravinsky, Bartok, as well as the more usual classics. His choice in books — and he had a large collection of fiction — extended from Chandler to Priestley, and indicated that he was not so unworldly as people seemed to consider.
The room was long, taking up nearly the whole of the rear of the house, and clearly matched the large bedroom above. But for all its length, I found the proportions elegant, and it had been furnished with period pieces showing excellent taste. Three french windows matched the bedroom’s set, and were hung from floor to ceiling with sweeping velvet. I felt happy there, accepted.
Therefore, with a Mozart symphony on the turntable, and a bound collection of Punch for 1972 on my lap, I sat contentedly on a settee that would have taken three more, and waited for Angie.
She returned at eleven. I heard his voice at the side door, but Evan didn’t stay, and she came in on me all bright-eyed and walking with the stiff-legged gait people use when they’re trying not to dance.
‘I do apologise,’ she burst out. ‘Whatever must you think of me! I hope you got yourself something to eat.’
‘I made myself at home.’
But Angie, restless, had turned away. ‘Mozart? Is that number forty?’
‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘I see you own a good collection of records. All the Beethoven symphonies and concertos...And wonderful equipment.’
She whirled round, flaring her skirt, partly to show it off, I guessed. ‘But where will it all go?’ she cried, abruptly aware that she did indeed own it all. ‘If you saw the size of the flat...’ She laughed, bit her lip, and lo
oked out at the night from the tall, dark windows. I had not drawn the curtains.
The speakers, I’d already observed, were matched to the dimensions of the room. They talk of eigentones at hi-fi shops, the longest wavelength of sound you dare aim for being calculated from your wall dimensions. These speakers, with that amplifier, would shake down the ceiling of a flat and blow out the gas fire. Angie had realised something like that in a flash of despair.
‘The equipment could be sold,’ I suggested, ‘and more appropriate stuff bought. The records you’d keep.’ And play them with the din of the garage filtering from below?
‘Yes,’ she said dully, turning slowly, fingering the curtains that swept up so sumptuously in magnificent folds, her head averted. ‘Yes, I could keep the records.’ And yet her eyes dwelt on the solid, old furniture that her mother had polished, and her mother’s paintings on the walls.
Then she seemed to tear her mind free and was at once relaxed, swinging herself into the far corner of the settee.
‘Tell me about yourself, Harry,’ she said brightly. ‘I know nothing...’
When they say things like that, with another man claiming their thoughts, it’s no more than subtle flattery, and even more subtle denigration. She wanted to line up Evan’s qualities against any meagre ones I might produce; she wanted to use me to calm the disturbing feelings that haunted her.
‘There’s nothing to know,’ I said shortly.
‘A friend of Phil’s, and I don’t know you! Oh...come on.’
‘Hardly a friend.’ I decided to discourage her. ‘I met him as a detective sergeant, when I was investigating a series of car thefts.’
All thoughts of Evan Rees evaporated. I can be efficient when I try. ‘You can’t mean...you suspected Phil?’
‘The facilities were there. But you don’t want to hear about it.’
‘You can’t say a thing like that, and just drop it. Tell me, Harry, please.’
I shrugged. ‘He offered me inducements. Bribes to you. Not actual cash. He wouldn’t be so crude, and besides, we were friends. Remember? The slap on the shoulder and the: “Come off it, Harry, you know me.” But the bribe was dangled. Now...can’t we drop it?’
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