‘It happens to be against the law,’ pointed out Tait.
‘Then perhaps it’s time that particular law was amended. I’m sure that half the kick that kids get when they start experimenting with soft drugs comes from the knowledge that it’s illegal. And there’s nothing they enjoy more than an opportunity to flout authority.’
‘Arguably. But my job is to enforce the law as it is, regardless of my personal opinion. As it happens, I disagree that pot smoking is harmless. Addiction to cannabis is known to inhibit the user’s sense of responsibility. It makes it much harder for him to resist temptation – sooner or later he’s almost certain to try hard drugs. And if you’d heard as much as I have about people who started on cannabis and ended as heroin addicts, you wouldn’t take such an indulgent view—’
He’d blown his chances completely now, of course: impossible to argue about law and ethics with your hostess at a party, and to point an official finger at one of her friends, yet still expect her to be prepared to go to bed with you. Imprudent, anyway, for a future chief constable to establish a liaison with a woman he knew to be harbouring a suspected criminal offender.
A great pity … Of course, there was now Alison as a possibility, but he’d have to go carefully there. It wouldn’t do to upset the old man, or to let Mrs Quantrill imagine that she could hear wedding bells. Well, perhaps if he tried a different technique with Sally from the garage …
‘Sorry about the lecture, Jasmine,’ he apologized, ‘but do think about what I said, in Smith’s interests as well as your own.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Actually I’ll have to go now – I’m on duty tonight. My boss, Alison’s father, will be calling to take her home.’ He looked for the girl across the room, saw with relief that she had left Smith and was now sharing a bowl of peanuts with Heather Pardoe, caught her eye, pointed to his watch and waved good-bye. ‘Thank you for a splendid party,’ he told his hostess.
She smiled, with only a little less warmth than when he had arrived. ‘I’m glad you could come. And thank you for bringing Alison – I’m delighted to have met her.’
The doorbell rang, and Tait on his way out was able to introduce Quantrill on his way in. He would have liked to be able to drop a hint to the Chief Inspector about the potential awkwardness of the Gilbert Smith situation, but there was no opportunity. Well, if Quantrill met the man he would draw his own conclusions.
But Quantrill was interested only in collecting his daughter, and incidentally taking stock of Jasmine Woods. He saw that Alison was talking happily to a motherly woman, and turned his attention to the writer. From the paragraph of her book that he had read over his wife’s shoulder, he had expected Jasmine Woods to be foolishly soft and blonde and eager and cuddly, a pushover for a practised young man like Tait. He was surprised to find that she looked and sounded quite different.
She insisted on giving him a glass of wine. Quantrill, no wine drinker, commented gallantly on the attractiveness of its colour.
‘Pretty pink plonk,’ sneered a fierce deep voice at his shoulder. He looked down to see a small man with a large head helping himself from what appeared to be his personal bottle. It was two-thirds empty.
Jasmine Woods introduced her cousin, Rodney Gifford. He had a wrinkled forehead, a wide mouth and large ears that protruded through his long wavy gingerish hair, giving him the appearance of a middle-aged leprechaun. He was dressed in a badly fitting suit which, from the narrow cut of the lapels and trousers, must have been at least ten years old; the cuffs of his pale green drip-dry nylon shirt were discoloured with wear. ‘Pretty pink plonk,’ he repeated angrily, gulping it down.
Jasmine Woods raised her glass to the light, as she had done when Alison spoke favourably about the colour of the wine, but this time she gave her own opinion. ‘Pretty, Rodney? Oh no! Come now, you’re a writer – a better writer than I am. And you’re too exact an observer to dismiss this pink as “pretty”. It has too dark an undertone for that. It always reminds me of watered-down blood.’
Douglas Quantrill was surprised. It was not, he felt, a suitable comparison for a romantic novelist to make. Jasmine Woods saw his frown and smiled at him. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but that’s the way my mind works. You mustn’t be misled by the kind of books I write – they’re not the real me at all. I’m not romantic, I’m a realist; that’s why I write romance, because it pays.’
‘Prostituting yourself to a genre,’ growled Rodney Gifford fiercely. His cousin shrugged, smiled at Quantrill and moved away to talk to someone else. Gifford refilled his glass. ‘Contemptible, don’t you think,’ he demanded of Quantrill, ‘to write books she despises simply for the sake of money?’
Quantrill had come to the party prepared to dislike Jasmine Woods, but he found that his dislike was rapidly being transferred to her sozzled cousin. ‘We all have to earn a living,’ he pointed out, ‘and a lot of us find ourselves doing it in ways that can be distasteful. I wouldn’t dream of criticizing your cousin for what she does – and I most certainly wouldn’t do so at her party. What’s more—’ he sipped his wine cautiously, found that it didn’t mix with the half-pint of Adnams he’d had at the Plough and Gull on his way through Thirling, and crunched a couple of cheesy biscuits to take away the taste ‘—I’m damned if I’d drink her wine and sneer at it.’
But Rodney Gifford seemed not to hear. He waved his almost-empty bottle. ‘It’s deliberate, you know,’ he said belligerently, ‘giving us this pink swill. It’s a calculated insult to our judgement, just like the new book she expects us to celebrate. After all, she could be a proper writer if she tried. She’s got the ability to write real novels, but she doesn’t because she knows they wouldn’t make her enough money. She’s not prepared to write about real life because she’s not prepared to be poor. She’s a hedonist. She’s never suffered, that’s her trouble.’ He made a sudden, vicious gesture with the bottle. ‘A bit of suffering would do cousin Jasmine a world of good.’
Quantrill stared down at him with distaste. ‘Do you live far away?’ he demanded.
The man blinked and swayed. ‘Yarchester. Why?’
‘Because you’re obviously not fit to drive home.’
Gifford laughed, with anger rather than amusement. ‘Drive, me? How in heaven’s name do you imagine I could afford to run a car? I’m the beggar of the family – a better writer than Jasmine, as she so kindly says, and an honest one. I always write what I believe in, and so I don’t make money. I’m here only because Jasmine arranged for the Pardoes to give me a lift. Ducky of her, wasn’t it?’
Quantrill looked at the long-necked bottle which Gifford was upending unsteadily above his glass. Jasmine Woods was right, he decided, as he watched the last few drops trickle out; the wine did look remarkably like watered-down blood.
‘At least you’ll get something out of the evening,’ he said coldly, ‘even if it’s only a headache.’ He turned away and accidentally jolted a woman’s arm, spilling her wine over her hand; he began to apologize for his clumsiness, and offered his handkerchief, but she declined it and flicked the wine off carelessly.
‘No gallantry required,’ advised Jasmine Woods, who had been talking to the woman. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, Roz?’
She introduced him to Roz Elliott, a big square handsome woman in her late thirties with thick, rough-cut auburn hair. She wore shabby leather knee-boots, a billowing dun-coloured calf-length skirt, and a patterned blouse that looked like an Indian peasant’s cast-off. Quantrill would not have been able, if asked, to define ethnic, but in terms of dress he recognized it when he saw it.
Alison, having heard her father’s voice, joined the group. Jasmine Woods repeated the introduction.
‘Are you Mrs Jonathan Elliott?’ the girl asked. ‘I met your husband a few moments ago.’
Roz Elliott’s strong-boned unpainted face looked disapproving; her untrimmed eyebrows rose to conceal themselves under her wilting-chrysanthemum fringe. ‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘I am not Mrs Jonathan Elliott.’
‘Certainly.’ She had a richly beautiful voice; a striking woman, Quantrill thought, if only she were not determined to make the worst of her appearance. ‘And if I hadn’t been a committed feminist before, I’d have become one as soon as I discovered that I had a romantic novelist as a neighbour.’
‘You don’t seem to mind coming round to see me, much as you dislike my books.’
‘That’s because I haven’t entirely given up hope of persuading you to join the women’s movement.’
‘Never. I don’t believe in quarrelling with the source of my income.’
‘And that’s what’s so infuriating about you! If you were stupid enough to believe in what you write, I wouldn’t mind so much; but you know perfectly well that it’s rubbish. That means that you’re deliberately exploiting your readers.’
Quantrill stared uneasily at Roz Elliott. He had never before been at a party where the guests seemed to regard it as a duty to insult their hostess. He thought that it was time he took his daughter home, but she was engrossed in the duologue; like a Wimbledon spectator at a Centre Court rally, she hardly dared to blink for fear of missing something.
It was apparent to Alison that, with the Elliotts as neighbours, Jasmine Woods must come under regular verbal attack. Her hostess seemed to enjoy it, and to be perfectly capable of defending herself, but on hearing Roz Elliott denounce the Jasmine Woods canon as rubbish, Alison intervened.
‘The books aren’t rubbish!’ she said indignantly. ‘They’re interesting and colourful and exciting … I enjoy them.’
Jasmine Woods gave her a friendly smile. ‘Thank you for that unsolicited testimonal. You see, Roz? Alison doesn’t feel in the least exploited.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake—’ Roz Elliott pushed her hair off her forehead in a gesture of exasperation. She gave the girl a stern glance, but spoke to Jasmine Woods. ‘Isn’t this exactly the trouble with the great majority of women? They’re so conditioned to accept their traditional role in society that they’re incapable of questioning, let alone challenging, your kind of fiction. I loathe romantic novels because they perpetuate so many silly myths and give impressionable girls so many false expectations. It’s completely cynical of you, Jasmine, to encourage girls to believe that love is the answer to everything, and that getting married solves problems by automatically ensuring a happy ending.’
The verbal battle continued, with Roz Elliott vigorously reinforcing her assertions about social conditioning, much of which she blamed on the influence of romantic novelists, and condemning the oppression of women, for which she appeared to hold Jasmine Woods personally responsible.
The writer defended herself with weary good humour, pointing out that the immemorial propensity of young people to fall in love and get married could hardly be blamed on romantic novels. People do, after all, she said, grow up in and among families; they see for themselves how difficult family relationships can be, and how many marriages fail. And yet they persist in getting married, because they believe that things will be different with them. Hope, she asserted, of an eventual happy ending is the supreme motivation without which life for many women might not seem worth living.
It was, quite clearly, ground which the two of them had covered before.
As soon as he could decently interrupt, Quantrill made getting-away noises. Jasmine Woods walked with him to the hall, explaining that she had arranged for Alison to see her the following day to discuss the possibility of a job. Quantrill was delighted. Having taken against Jasmine Woods sight unseen, he now found himself liking her; the more so as the other guests he had met had behaved so bitchily. She made him feel protective. Besides, he agreed with her about the importance of hope; in his job, he saw too often how the loss of it could ruin lives, and not just those of women.
While Alison was putting on her coat, the bell rang. Jasmine Woods opened the door. A couple stood on the step, an attractive fine-featured blonde girl in her mid-twenties, dressed in high boots and a long suede fur-lined coat, and a man a few years older.
‘Hallo, Jasmine,’ said the girl in a quick, light, slightly breathless voice.
Jasmine Woods looked completely surprised. ‘Anne – my dear. How lovely to see you.’
Alison recognized the girl immediately as the writer’s ex-secretary and felt, ridiculously, the pinch of jealousy. She had already begun to imagine herself in that role, and she was afraid that Anne Downing might have come to reclaim her job.
Jasmine Woods seemed to be equally unsure of the purpose of Anne’s visit; she looked pleased to see her, but wary. She stepped back, inviting the couple in, and Anne drew her escort forward. He was tall and broad and tweedy, with a healthy red outdoor face. When he took off his flat cap he revealed a high, prematurely balding forehead that was in strangely white contrast to his weathered cheeks. A farmer, Quantrill guessed. He looked honest and shy and proud and pleased, and a little bewildered.
Anne Downing stood with her left hand tucked possessively through the crook of his arm, and the light from the hall winkled out flashes of brilliance from the half-hoop of diamonds and sapphires on her finger. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes shone. ‘This’, she announced, ‘is my fiancé, Oliver Buxton. We knew each other years ago, then lost touch. But we met again last month, and we’re getting married at Easter.’
‘Married – how wonderful for you!’ Jasmine Woods stretched out her arms to take the girl by the shoulders and give her a warm, impulsive kiss. Anne released her fiancé for long enough to return her ex-employer’s embrace, and then immediately seized his arm again as though it were a lifebelt.
‘Oliver farms in Norfolk,’ she said, ‘and I’m staying with him and his parents at the moment, so I probably shan’t see you again before the wedding. We drove over this evening to have dinner with Oliver’s uncle in Breckham Market, and as we were so near I simply had to call. You’ll get a proper invitation to the wedding, of course, but I wanted to tell you about it in person. You’ll come, I hope?’
‘If I can, certainly. I do wish you both every happiness.’ Jasmine Woods offered her congratulations to Buxton, then spoke again to his fiancée. ‘I’d like you to meet Alison Quantrill and her father. Alison may well be taking your old job—’
Introductions over, the women began to talk to each other in rapid, heightened voices as women do, Quantrill thought, when discussing emotional subjects like weddings. He turned to Oliver Buxton who stood tongue-tied, milking his cap with bucolic hands.
‘Well, congratulations,’ said Quantrill heartily. Despite his own imperfectly rewarding experience, he was not cynical about marriage as an institution. ‘She’s a very attractive girl.’
‘Isn’t she?’ Buxton’s high-rise forehead had become pink and sweaty with joyful embarrassment. ‘I can hardly believe my luck, I can tell you. I just hope that she’ll be happy with me on the farm. I know that she misses her job here already, but it’s much too far for her to travel every day.’
At that moment Alison, having said good-bye to her hostess, ran up and – unusually – caught at her father’s arm. Her eyes, like Anne’s, shone with happiness. ‘I’ve got it!’ she whispered exultantly. ‘I’ll still have to come and see Jasmine tomorrow to finalize it, but from what she’s told Anne there isn’t much doubt that I’ve got the job!’
Chapter Eight
On Monday 6 April, at approximately 9.25 a.m., Alison Quantrill arrived on her bicycle at Yeoman’s, Thirling, near Breckham Market, where she worked as secretary to the novelist, Jasmine Woods. Alison Quantrill had been employed in this capacity since the 20th February. She cycled daily from her home, 5 Benidorm Avenue, Breckham Market, and it was her usual practice to leave the bicycle in one of the outbuildings near the drive gate, and then to walk up to the house, ring the front-door bell t
wice, and go straight in.
On the 6th April she followed this practice, leaving her coat in the downstairs cloakroom and then going to the office, which was also on the ground floor. She was not aware of anything unusual. Sometimes her employer would already be at work in the office, but if she were not there Alison Quantrill would continue with whatever audio-typing or proof-reading she had on hand.
At approximately 10.30 a.m., at which time Jasmine Woods usually made coffee for them both, Alison Quantrill became concerned that her employer had not appeared. She went into the hall, called and listened, but could hear no sounds from any other part of the house. She opened the door to the sitting-room, and found that the curtains were closed over the windows. This was unusual. She drew back the curtains and knew immediately, without consciously noting why, that the room had been disturbed in some way. Then she saw some clothing scattered on the floor. She went towards it, and saw the body of her employer.
Jasmine Woods was lying on the floor behind a sofa. The body was partly clothed and on its side, with one knee drawn up. The right side of the skull had been crushed, and a broken Loire wine bottle lay eighteen inches away. A further bottle, intact, had been used as an instrument of rape.
A 999 call was made from the Yeoman’s number. The caller was male. He declined to identify himself. The call was logged by the police at 11.24 and a patrol car reached the house at 11.32.
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