by P. D. James
Rickards asked: 'And you didn't leave the cottage for any purpose during the whole of the evening?'
'Not until after half-past nine when I left for the Blaneys'. But perhaps I could tell the story in sequence, Chief Inspector. At about ten past eight I switched off the machine thinking that there might be an important call for my brother. It was then I heard -George Jago's message that the Whistler was dead.'
'You didn't ring anyone else to let them know?'
'I knew that wasn't necessary. Jago runs his own information service. He'd make sure that everyone knew. I came back into the kitchen and worked on my proofs until about half-past nine. Then I thought that I'd collect Hilary Robarts's portrait from Ryan Blaney. I'd promised to drop it in at the gallery in Norwich on my way to London and I wanted to make an early start next morning. I tend to be a little obsessive about time and didn't want to go even a short distance out of my way. I rang Scudder's Cottage to let him know that I was collecting the portrait but the number was engaged. I tried several times and then got out the car and drove over. I'd written a note to him to slip through the door telling him that I'd taken the picture as arranged.'
'Wasn't that a little unusual, Miss Mair? Why not knock at the cottage and collect it from him personally?'
'Because he had taken the trouble to tell me, when I first saw it, precisely where it was kept and where I could find the light switch to the left of the door. I took that as a reasonable indication that he didn't expect, or indeed want, to be disturbed by a call at the cottage. Mr Dalgliesh was with me at the time.'
'But that was odd, wasn't it? He must have thought it was a good portrait. He wouldn't wish to exhibit it otherwise. You'd think he'd want to hand it over personally.'
'Would you? It didn't strike me that way. He's an extremely private man, more so since the death of his wife. He doesn't welcome visitors, particularly not women who might cast a critical eye on the tidiness of the cottage and the state of the children. I could understand that. I wouldn't have welcomed it myself.'
'So you went straight to his painting shed? Where is that?'
'About thirty yards to the left of the cottage. It's a small wooden shack. I imagine that it was originally a washhouse or a smoking shed. I shone my torch on the path to the door, although that was hardly necessary. The moonlight was exceptionally bright. It was unlocked. And if you're now about to say that that, too, was odd, you don't understand life on the headland. We're very remote here and we get into the habit of leaving doors unlocked. I don't think it would ever occur to him to lock his painting shed. I switched on the light to the left of the door and saw that the picture wasn't where I expected.'
'Could you describe exactly what happened? The details, please, as far as you can recall them.'
'We're talking about last night, Chief Inspector. It would be difficult not to recall them. I left the light on in the shed and knocked on the front door of the cottage. There were lights on, downstairs only, but the curtains were drawn. I had to wait for about a minute before he came. He half opened the door but didn't invite me in. I said, "Good evening, Ryan." He just nodded, but didn't reply. There was a strong smell of whisky. Then I said, "I've come to collect the portrait but it isn't in the shed, or if it is I haven't found it." Then he said, his speech rather slurred, "It's to the left of the door, wrapped in cardboard and brown paper. A brown paper parcel, Sellotaped." I said, "Not now." He didn't reply but came out to me leaving the door open. We went to the shed together.'
'Was he walking steadily?'
'He was very far from steady, but he could certainly keep on his feet. When I said he smelt of drink and his voice was slurred I didn't mean that he was totally incapable. But I got the impression that he had spent the evening in fairly continuous drinking. He stood in the doorway of the shed with me at his shoulder. He didn't speak for about half a minute. Then all he said was, "Yes, it's gone.'"
'How did he sound?' As she didn't reply he asked patiently, 'Was he shocked? Angry? Surprised? Or too drunk to care?'
'I heard the question, Chief Inspector. Hadn't you better ask him how he felt? I'm only competent to describe what he looked like, what he said, and what he did.'
'What did he do?'
'He turned and beat his clenched hands against the lintel of the door. Then he rested his head against the wood for a minute. It seemed at the time a histrionic gesture but I imagine that it was perfectly genuine.' 'And then?'
'I said to him, "Hadn't we better telephone the police? We could do it from here if your telephone is working. I've been trying to get through to you but it's always engaged." He didn't reply and I followed him back to the cottage. He didn't invite me in, but I stood in the doorway. He went over to the recess under the stairs and then said: "The receiver isn't properly on. That's why you couldn't get through." I said again, "Why not telephone the police now? The sooner the theft is reported the better." He turned to me and just said "Tomorrow. Tomorrow." Then he went back to his chair. I persisted. I said, "Shall I ring, Ryan, or will you? This really is important." He said, "I will. Tomorrow. Goodnight." That seemed a clear indication to me that he wanted to be alone, so I left.'
'And during this visit you saw no one other than Mr Blaney. The children weren't up, for example?'
'I took it the children were in bed. I neither saw nor heard them.'
'And you didn't discuss the Whistler's death?'
'I assumed George Jago had telephoned Mr Blaney, probably before he rang me. And what was there to discuss? Neither Ryan nor I were in a mood for doorstep chatting.'
But it was, thought Rickards, a curious reticence on both their parts. Had she been so anxious to get away and he to see her go? Or, for one of them, had an event more traumatic than a missing portrait driven even the Whistler temporarily out of mind?
There was a vital question Rickards needed to ask. The implications were obvious and she was far too intelligent a woman not to see them.
'Miss Mair, from what you saw of Mr Blaney that night, do you think he could have driven a car?'
'Impossible. And he hadn't a car to drive. He has a small van but it has just failed its MOT.' 'Or ridden a bicycle?'
'I suppose he could have tried but he'd have been in the ditch within minutes.'
Rickards's mind was already busy with calculations. He wouldn't get the results of the autopsy until Wednesday but if Hilary Robarts had taken her swim, as was her custom, immediately after the headlines to the main news which, on Sunday, was at 9.10, then she must have died at about half-past nine. At 9.45 or a little later, according to Alice Mair, Ryan Blaney was in his cottage and drunk. By no stretch of the imagination could he have committed a singularly ingenious murder, requiring a steady hand, nerves and the capacity to plan, and been back in his cottage by 9.45. If Alice Mair were telling the truth she had given Blaney an alibi. He, on the other hand, would certainly be unable to give one to her.
Rickards had almost forgotten Meg Dennison, but now he looked across to where she sat like a distressed child, hands in her lap, her untasted coffee still standing in the hearth.
'Mrs Dennison, did you know last night that the Whistler was dead?'
'Oh yes. Mr Jago telephoned me too, about a quarter to ten.'
Alice Mair said: 'He probably tried to get you earlier but you were on the way to Norwich station with the Copleys.'
Meg Dennison spoke directly to Rickards: 'I should have been, but the car broke down. I had to get Sparks and his taxi in a hurry. Luckily he could just do it but he had to go straight on to a job in Ipswich, so he couldn't bring me back. He saw the Copleys safely on the train for me.'
'Did you leave the Old Rectory at any time during the evening?'
Mrs Dennison looked up and met his eyes. 'No,' she said, 'no, after I'd seen them off I didn't leave the house.' Then she paused and said, 'I'm sorry, I did go out into the garden very briefly. It would be more accurate to say that I didn't leave the grounds. And now, if you'll all excuse me, please, I'd like to
go home.'
She got up, then turned again to Rickards: 'If you want to question me, Chief Inspector, I'll be at the Old Rectory.'
She was gone before the two men could get to their feet, almost stumbling from the room. Miss Mair made no move to follow her and, seconds later, they heard the front door close.
There was a moment's silence, broken by Oliphant. Nodding towards the hearth he said: 'Funny. She hasn't even touched her coffee.'
But Rickards had a final question for Alice Mair. He said: 'It must have been getting on for midnight when Dr Mair got home yesterday night. Did you ring the power station to find out if he'd left or why he was delayed?'
She said coolly: 'It didn't occur to me, Chief Inspector. Since Alex is neither my child nor my husband I am spared the compulsion of checking on his movements. I am not my brother's keeper.'
Oliphant had been staring at her with his sombre, suspicious eyes. Now he said: 'But he lives with you, doesn't he? You do talk, don't you? You must have known about his relationship with Hilary Robarts, for example. Did you approve?'
Alice Mair's colour didn't change, but her voice was like steel.
'Either to approve or disapprove would have been as presumptuously impertinent as was that question. If you wish to discuss my brother's private life, I suggest that you do so with him.'
Rickards said quietly: 'Miss Mair, a woman has been brutally done to death and her body mutilated. She was a woman you knew. In the light of that outrage, I hope you
won't feel the need to be oversensitive to questions which are bound to seem at times both presumptuous and impertinent.'
Anger had made him articulate. Their eyes met and held. He knew that his were hard with fury, both with Oliphant's tactlessness and her response. But the grey eyes which met his were less easy to read. He thought he could detect surprise, followed by wariness, reluctant respect, an almost speculative interest.
And when, fifteen minutes later, she escorted her visitors to the door he was a little surprised when she held out her hand. As he shook it, she said: 'Please forgive me, Chief Inspector, if I was ungracious. Yours is a disagreeable but necessary job and you are entitled to co-operation. As far as I'm concerned, you will get it.'
Even without the garishly painted sign no one from Norfolk would have been in any doubt about the identity of the local hero after whom the Lydsett pub was named, nor could a stranger fail to recognize the admiral's hat with the star, the much-decorated chest, the black patch over one eye, the pinned-up, empty sleeve. Rickards reflected that he had seen worse paintings of Lord Nelson but not many. This made him look like the Princess Royal in drag.
George Jago had obviously decided that the interview should take place in the saloon bar wrapped now in the dim quietness of the late afternoon doldrums. He and his wife led Rickards and Oliphant to a small pub table, wooden-topped and with ornate cast-iron legs, set close to the huge and empty fireplace. They settled themselves round it rather, thought Rickards, like four ill-assorted people proposing to conduct a seance in appropriately ill-lit seclusion. Mrs Jago was an angular, bright-eyed, sharp-featured woman who looked at Oliphant as if she had seen his type before and was prepared to stand no nonsense. She was heavily made up. Two moons of bright rouge adorned each cheek, her long mouth was painted with a matching lipstick and her fingers, blood-tipped talons, were heavy with a variety of rings. Her hair was so glossily black that it looked unnatural and was piled high in the front in three rows of tight curls and swept upwards and secured with combs at the back and sides. She was wearing a pleated skirt topped with a blouse in some shiny material striped in red, white and blue, buttoned high at the neck and hung about with gold chains in which she looked like a bit-part actress auditioning for the part of a barmaid in an Ealing comedy. No woman could have been less suitably dressed for a country pub, yet both she and her husband, seated side by side with the brightly expectant look of children on their best behaviour, looked perfectly at home in the bar and with each other. Oliphant had made it his business to find out something of their past and had relayed the information to Rickards as they drove to the pub. George Jago had previously been the licensee of a pub in Catford but the couple had moved to Lydsett four years ago partly because Mrs Jago's brother, Charlie Sparks, owned a garage and car-hire business on the edge of the village and was looking for part-time help. George Jago occasionally drove for him leaving Mrs Jago in charge of the bar. They had settled happily in the village, took a lively part in community activities and appeared not to miss the raucous life of the city. Rickards reflected that East Anglia had accepted and absorbed more eccentric couples. Come to that, it had absorbed him.
George Jago looked more the part of a country publican, a stocky, cheerful-faced man with bright, blinking eyes and an air of suppressed energy. He had certainly expended it on the interior of the pub. The low, oak-beamed saloon bar was a cluttered and ill-arranged museum devoted to Nelson's memory. Jago must have scoured East Anglia in his search for objects with even a tenuous relationship with the Admiral. Above the open fireplace was a huge lithograph of the scene in the cockpit of the Victory with Nelson romantically dying in Hardy's arms. The remaining walls were covered with paintings and prints, including the principal sea battles, the Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar; one or two of Lady Hamilton including a lurid reproduction of Romney's famous portrait, while commemorative plates were ranged each side of the doors and the blackened oak beams were festooned with rows of decorated memorial mugs, few of them original to judge from the brightness of the decoration. Along the top of one wall a row of pennants spelled out what was presumably the famous signal and a fishing net had been slung across the ceiling to enhance the general nautical atmosphere. And suddenly, looking up into the brown tar-tangled netting, Rickards remembered. He had been here before. He and Susie had stopped here for a drink when they had been exploring the coast one weekend in the first winter of their marriage. They hadn't stayed for long; Susie had complained that the bar was too crowded and smoke-filled. He could recall the bench at which they had sat, the one against the wall to the left of the door. He had drunk half a pint of bitter, Susie a medium sherry. Then, with the fire blazing, the flames leaping from the crackling logs and the bar loud with cheerful Norfolk voices the pub had seemed interestingly nostalgic and cosy. But now, in the dim light of an autumn afternoon, the clutter of artefacts, so few of them either genuine or of particular merit, seemed to Rickards to trivialize and diminish both the building's own long history and the Admiral's achievements. He felt a sudden onrush of claustrophobia and had to resist an impulse to throw open the door and let in fresh air and the twentieth century.
As Oliphant said afterwards, it was a pleasure to interview George Jago. He didn't greet you as if you were a necessary but unwelcome technician of doubtful competence who was taking up your valuable time. He didn't use words as if they were secret signals to conceal thoughts rather than express them, nor subtly intimidate you with his superior intelligence. He didn't see an interview with the police as a battle of wits in which he necessarily had the advantage, nor react to perfectly ordinary questions with a disconcerting mixture of fear and endurance as if you were secret police from a totalitarian dictatorship. All in all, he pointed out, it made a pleasant change.
Jago admitted cheerfully that he had telephoned the Blaneys and Miss Mair shortly after half-past seven on Sunday with news that the Whistler was dead. How did he know? Because one of the police on the inquiry had telephoned home to let his wife know it was all right for their daughter to go alone to a party that night and the wife had telephoned her brother Harry Upjohn who kept the Crown and Anchor outside Cromer and Harry, who was a friend of his, had rung him. He remembered exactly what he had said to Theresa Blaney.
'Tell your dad they've found the Whistler's body. He's dead. Suicide. Killed himself at Easthaven. No need to worry now.'
He had phoned the Blaneys because he knew that Ryan liked his pints at nights but hadn't dared to leave the child
ren while the Whistler was at large. Blaney hadn't come in that evening but that didn't really signify. With Miss Mair he had left the message on her answering machine in much the same terms. He hadn't telephoned Mrs Dennison because he thought she would be on her way to Norwich with the Copleys.
Rickards said: 'But you did ring her later?'
It was Mrs Jago who explained. 'That was after I reminded him. I was at half-past six Evensong and afterwards I went home with Sadie Sparks to settle arrangements for the autumn jumble sale. She found a note from Charlie to say that he'd been called out on two urgent jobs, taking the Copleys to Norwich and then fetching a couple from Ipswich. So when I got back I told George that Mrs Dennison hadn't driven the Copleys to the train and that he ought to phone her straight away to tell her about the Whistler. I mean, she'd be more likely to get a good night's rest knowing he was dead than wondering if he was lurking in the rectory bushes. So George rang.'
Jago said: 'It was close on 9.15 by then, I reckon. I would have telephoned later anyway expecting she'd be back by half-past nine.'
Rickards said: 'And Mrs Dennison answered the phone?'
'Not then she didn't. But I tried again about thirty minutes later and got her then.'