Afterwards he had taken her to a restaurant for a bolstering lunch, plus some post-Dutch courage, or as he had first rather smugly put it, ‘post-Baviorum fortitudinem’. Latin being total Greek to her she had not caught the gist of this, but light dawned when the waiter brought a bottle of Möet to the table.
‘If one can’t drink champagne at times of grief and upset, when can one?’ her host had said jovially.
The logic of this escaped her (though did not bother) and together they did full justice to both meal and wine.
Thus fortified, Ida could turn her mind to the last phase of her Suffolk duty: collecting the girl’s clothes from her room at the temporary film studio. In fact, she had no intention of personally collecting the stuff (hauling an additional suitcase all the way to Liverpool Street and beyond was out of the question!), and had detailed British Rail’s freight department to do the job. Nevertheless, it was only right and proper to put in an appearance at the place, supervise a little of the arrangements and to say some gracious words to the girl’s companions. With luck, it shouldn’t take too long.
Thus with lunch over they drove to Southwold, where Vincent dropped her at the gates of the drive while he rushed off late to keep some dental or chiropody appointment. Relaxed by the meal and with the worst over, Ida felt perfectly poised to attend to the matter alone. Thus, adjusting her hat, and composing her features into an expression of benevolent concern, she entered the porch of the big house and tugged the bell pull.
From within there came a loud clanging, but to her slight irritation nothing happened. She waited and tried again. Eventually, just as she was about to yank the rope for the third time, the door opened and she was confronted by a short scraggy woman wearing heels of monstrously stacked elevation and puffing a cigarette. On her jumper was displayed a large label, which said CONTINUITY. The woman frowned.
‘If you’re from the press again, you can forget it,’ she said truculently, ‘we’ve had enough of you journalists asking questions about the poor kid. Some of us have proper work to do, and I can’t spend my time nattering to you lot.’ She broke off, and eyed the visitor more intently, appraising her smart appearance. ‘Although,’ she continued, ‘if you’re from the BBC that might be a different matter. I’ll have to ask His Nibs, but we’re shooting just now and he won’t want any—’
Hastily, Ida explained that she was neither a reporter nor from the BBC, merely a relative of the murdered girl come to deal with her belongings and express condolences.
‘Oh, well,’ the other conceded, ‘that’s different, I suppose. You had better come in.’
She deposited Ida on a wooden bench in the hall and told her to wait while she went to fetch ‘young Hackle’. (Ah, so the name was Hackle, Ida thought. At least she hadn’t got that wrong!) In the far distance she could hear shouts and occasional bursts of laughter, and rather strangely what sounded like a bugle being blown. But in the sparse and rather desolate hall all was sombre and quiet.
Almost quiet. For the silence was punctuated by the ticking of a grandfather clock. And then, in tandem with the clock, Ida could hear something else: a heavy rhythmic breathing from the alcove under the stairs … Oh God, was there somebody lying there drunk! She peered nervously at the recess but could see nothing. Then with a snort and guttural yawn something stirred, and out from the darkness a huge and even darker shape emerged. It lurched towards her, and she froze as it laid its gigantic head upon her lap. For one absurd moment she thought that the champagne had done its worst. I must not drink at lunchtime, she counselled herself hysterically.
The next moment she heard a voice. ‘Ah, Mrs Carshalton,’ Bartholomew Hackle cried, as he came buzzing down the passage. ‘I am so sorry to have kept you waiting! I knew you were coming, of course, but I was horribly entangled with one of the military scenes and everything went rather haywire!’ He stopped, and addressed the head in her lap: ‘That’s quite enough, Pixie,’ he said sternly. ‘I am sure our visitor hasn’t brought any nice sweeties for you.’ He looked at Ida and said, ‘At least I don’t suppose you have?’
Ida confirmed that she hadn’t. The dog must have sensed this for it obligingly removed its head, and with a valedictory wag of its tail lumbered down the corridor.
She had thought that being in the dead girl’s room might be mildly unsettling. As it was, after her encounter with Pixie the place felt almost like a sanctuary. She removed her hat, sat on the bed and took stock.
To her relief there didn’t seem to be much there: the wardrobe door was open revealing a couple of dresses slung on hangers, a raincoat and a crimson jacket. Stockings, a pair of Capri pants and an assortment of blouses were draped over the back of the only chair; in one corner was a muddled heap of plimsolls and stilettos, and on top of a rickety table was a hairbrush plus a conglomeration of make-up items, mainly lipsticks and nail varnishes. Magazines of the ‘glossy’ type littered the floor.
Ida suspected the room might have held more things originally but that they had been taken by the police. She vaguely recalled one of the officers at the mortuary saying something to that effect and assuring her the articles could be reclaimed. (Goodness, why should she want to do that? Wasn’t there enough to deal with already?)
She gazed at the two dresses in the wardrobe. How small they seemed. Rather pathetic, really … No, she thought grimly, not pathetic – far from it: for one so slight Tippy Tildred had produced great disquiet! And with that in mind she opened the bigger suitcase and started to fill it.
She had almost finished when there was a knock on the door and a young man came in bearing a cup of tea. He held it out to her. ‘Bartho said you might like this. But he hopes you don’t take sugar because there isn’t any: Pixie has eaten it.’
Ida thanked him for the kind thought, inwardly wincing at the pallid milky fluid. Its one redeeming feature was surely the lack of sugar, but she had no desire to put it to the test. Instead she placed the cup and saucer on the windowsill, smiled at the hovering youth and enquired his name.
He said it was Frank, and she asked him if he was one of the cast.
‘Oh no,’ he grinned, ‘you wouldn’t catch me doing that acting stuff! I am the best boy,’ he informed her proudly.
She must have looked startled for he went on to explain that it meant he was the principal grip.
‘Oh really?’ Ida replied in her best MP’s wife’s voice. ‘And what is it you have to grip exactly, the props I suppose?’ (Perhaps he would be handy in removing the suitcases to the hall.)
Frank sounded slightly put out. ‘No, that’s the job of the scene-shifters,’ he said dismissively. ‘I do all the lighting and electricals with Charlie. He’s my assistant, but I’m number one: like I said, best boy to the gaffer – that’s Fred.’
‘How splendid,’ Ida enthused, ‘so you are an absolute vital cog!’
‘Well, you could say that,’ he agreed modestly, flushing with pleasure.
‘I trust Tippy realised that,’ she couldn’t resist saying. ‘The poor girl wasn’t always discerning of others’ talents. Still, she was a very lively person; you must all miss her.’
He agreed sombrely that she had been fun (though whether that meant she was missed, Ida wasn’t sure). The young man added awkwardly: ‘It must be sad – I mean, you being her aunt and all that.’
‘Oh, very sad … although of course I wasn’t her “full” aunt, a sort of partial one: she was the child of my stepsister.’
‘Yes, but she liked you – thought you were very funny, you and Mr Carshalton.’
Ida was taken aback, but any latent pleasure was quickly dashed.
‘Oh yes,’ Frank went on, ‘in fact she kept telling Charlie and me that she had a hilarious story about you both, which she might tell us one day if we were good.’
Ida regarded him intently, looking for signs of malice or mirth. She couldn’t detect any. ‘And were you good?’ she asked casually.
‘Of course not! We’re never good, Charlie and me!�
�� He beamed cheerfully.
Ida gave a reciprocal smile, while inwardly thinking: Hell, if that wasn’t typical of the little beast!
Thus death duties completed, courtesies exchanged with the moviemakers and her niece’s belongings packed ready for removal, that evening Ida relaxed on her host’s sofa and took a long sip of Scotch. My God, she had earned it! The whisky was a particularly good blend from Adnams; and despite (or perhaps because of) being served in the Sassenach way – strong yet with ice and soda – to Ida it was bliss.
She adjusted a cushion behind her head and smiled at Vincent Ramsgate. ‘Ah,’ she sighed, ‘only the funeral now and then we can put our feet up.’
‘And very pretty feet you have, if I remember correctly,’ he said gallantly, and gave a large wink.
They spent a convivial evening laughing, gossiping, reminiscing about things over and done with … And at one point, inevitably, speculating about Tippy Tildred’s murderer.
It was, they decided, the deed of some deranged tourist with an unhealthy dislike of girls with cropped blonde hair. ‘Alternatively,’ Ramsgate suggested, ‘it might have been Hackle, the producer fellow. With a name like that he could be capable of anything!’
Further suggestions were made and jokes exchanged. During this time the host drank moderately, the guest excessively.
The following day in the train returning to London, and with a crashing headache, Ida wondered if she had been too careless in her remarks the previous evening. Perhaps her allusions to the activities of a mutual friend had been a trifle indiscreet … well, more than that, really. After all, Tommy had told her he had the information on good authority. So presumably it was ‘kosher’, and he would be furious if he thought she had breached that confidence. As a politician’s wife, Ida knew that it was a deadly sin to repeat things of a delicate nature, and apparently this item had been strictly ‘under wraps’. By divulging it to Vincent the wraps were less firmly tied.
She sighed, annoyed with herself. Normally, she was pretty good at keeping her mouth shut regarding inside information, but last night she had been thoughtless. She put it down to the strain she had been under having to cope with the tiresome aftermath of the child’s demise! Fortunately, when she repeated to Vincent what Tommy had confided, he had laughed and seemed unimpressed. ‘My dear,’ he had said, ‘how simply fascinating – but I suspect that as so often with these things, there is plenty of smoke and not a single spark of fire. You’ll see, it will be just one of the Home Office’s perennial panics: sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing.’ He had filled her glass and they had moved on to other topics.
By the time the train neared Chelmsford and she espied the familiar Marconi building against the skyline, her head was eased and any qualms regarding her indiscretion fast fading. It would be good to alight onto the platform at Liverpool Street and re-embrace the capital’s grime and clamour. Coastal Suffolk was all very well and beautiful, but it was in London where real life began!
Hailing a porter and securing a taxi, she drove to their flat in Westminster eager to hear from Tommy how the party conference had gone and what further chances he had seized to secure his rightful office. She smiled, took out her compact and powdered her nose.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The girl’s death – an enigma, that’s what it was, Jennings told himself as he demolished the remains of his ham sandwich. Almost as big an enigma, he reflected, as that rum film they were making up on the East Cliff.
Having failed to get a coherent answer from the cameraman, he had asked that Alicia Gorringe person what it was all about. ‘Oh, it’s obvious, darling,’ she had replied, ‘the tyranny of existential angst and barren illusion. Just up your street, I daresay.’ She had then roared with laughter – though whether at the film’s theme or at himself, he couldn’t be sure. Both, he rather suspected.
Well, he thought sternly, there was nothing barren and illusory about the corpse on the dunes; and as a puzzle it was much more intriguing than the stupid film!
Jennings was currently off duty and he had cycled back to Walberswick to catch the afternoon sun and to eat his lunch at a spot near the jetty watching the ferry and the gulls. He liked doing that as it straightened his mind and gave a pleasant respite from the acrid fumes of Nathan’s pipe. He had once offered to buy his boss a sweeter brand of tobacco, but the suggestion had been met with a bemused grunt and a blank stare. Responses that he had taken to be a negative. Oh well, it had been worth a try …
It wasn’t that he disliked his superior, but his phlegmatism could be an irritant (Jennings liked the word phlegmatism, almost as much as opaque); but then, he supposed, that was a trait of the elderly – or at least the nearly elderly – a sort of wry complacency, an assumption of worldly wisdom, which, in his view, didn’t always cut the mustard.
No, it did not! This Tippy girl, for example: it was unlikely to have been a crime of passion as Nathan had seemed to assume. From what he had read (via Agatha Christie and his psychology manuals) such things were generally brutal: killings executed in a burst of sudden fury. And of course, given the personal nature, by a sole assailant.
Yet from what they had ascertained, the girl’s body had most probably been deposited on those dunes post-mortem. In which case there must have been more than one person involved. Nobody, except some Neanderthal titan, could have lugged the body to that spot unaided. And given the gun and the neat shooting, it must have been something premeditated, surely, not done in a rash moment.
Jennings lobbed a macerated crust at a lurking gull. He missed, but the bird leapt upon it with predatory greed. Watching the performance, it occurred to him that perhaps that had been the motive: avarice. The girl had a swish background and the aunt was married to that fashionable MP Tom Carshalton. Perhaps she had had money – or most likely had been in line for a legacy or inheritance, which, should she die prematurely, would have devolved elsewhere.
He frowned, dwelling upon the possibility. Certainly, the mercenary element featured strongly in the Christie novels (and there was a woman who knew a bit about human nature, all right!) so could that be the case here? Was there some crazed relative Tippy had supplanted as legatee in a family will and who had been desperately seeking reinstatement? It wouldn’t be the first time. After all, money – its need and love of – was an age-old goad. Yes, well, that was something that could be checked easily enough. A quick enquiry of solicitors and family members should do the trick.
But if that were done and nothing found, what then? Jennings pondered, and picking up a piece of driftwood threw it aimlessly at nothing. It fell in the mud, the action stirring his inspiration not one jot.
Gradually, however, other ideas did begin to form: if not for money or thwarted love, then how about revenge? A wronged wife, perhaps. (By all accounts the girl had been pretty free with her favours, actual or hinted.) But that too would have entailed an accomplice; a woman on her own could hardly have engineered the shifting of the body. But then why should anyone share in such a dangerous risk simply to pander to another’s vanity or hurt feelings?
No, it had to be something else: something potent, something that had necessitated her disposal. Jennings stared unseeingly at the fishing boats.
And then for some absurdly illogical reason the title of a favourite novel slipped into his mind (not an Agatha Christie but by another literary hero), and he saw its shabby red cover and worn spine jostling with other titles on the shelf above his bed. For a brief moment the random image of Eric Ambler’s classic Journey into Fear filled his mind and eclipsed all else.
Fear! Yes, that could be it! Somebody, or some persons, had been fearful of Tippy Tildred, and the only way they could destroy that fear was by destroying its source. In killing the girl the threat (whatever it was) had been stilled, and the fearful made safe.
In mild triumph Jennings selected a small pebble, hurled it at another gull and instead hit a passing fisherman on the shin. Head down and face averted the assail
ant made off swiftly towards the bridge, with the anguished protest of ‘Bloody hooligan!’ ringing in his ears.
Early that evening and in buoyant mood, he returned to the station eager to mull over his conclusion with Nathan. After a few cheery exchanges with the duty officer he walked along the passage towards the chief inspector’s room. The air, normally redolent of pipe smoke, seemed unusually mild, and for a wild moment Jennings wondered if Nathan had broken the damn thing or been persuaded to take the smokers’ pledge.
He knocked on the door but had no reply, and on gingerly turning the handle found it locked. He was surprised and felt a pang of disappointment.
He returned to the reception desk. ‘Where’s the chief inspector?’ he asked the clerk. ‘Wednesday isn’t his night off.’
‘Oh yes it is – leastways, this Wednesday is. It’s his birthday and he’s taken his missus to the pictures in Lowestoft.’
‘Huh,’ Jennings snorted huffily, ‘he would, wouldn’t he! And just when I’ve got something important to tell him.’
‘Ah well, I expect it’ll keep till the morning. But meantime he’s given me these for you to do. They are the files on the Blyford burglary case. He wants you to go through them again and make any adjustments.’ The constable handed him a thick set of dossiers. ‘He told me to say that they shouldn’t take you too long but to be sure to have them ready first thing.’ The constable gave a cheerful leer and Jennings scowled.
As directed, the following morning Jennings presented his boss with the dossiers neatly stacked and duly checked.
Shot in Southwold Page 12