“The chief witch?”
“Well, don’t ask me what’s going on there, Superintendent. That woman’s so damned twisted it’s a wonder she can pull her stockings on. But these three tried to call a protest meeting to get something done about Ned Suddaby’s. Said they wanted it for a playing-field. What do we want in Marldale with a playing-field? And especially on Ned Suddaby’s? If they tried to play football there, the uphill team would have to wear crampons. And as for cricket, I doubt whether they could find a wicket from which the batsman could see the bowler. Anyway, nobody went to this meeting except those three, and the convalescent home deal looked as if it was going to go through. Till Madame Cater discovered that here was an act that she wasn’t in on. So she started bruiting it abroad that the sale of Ned Suddaby’s had never been put out to tender in the proper way. She wanted to put in a bid to build a hostel on it, so that she could move in all that rag, tag and bobtail who are living in squalor in the old military detention camp down in Lower Marldale. And I must say, I can’t think of a more appropriate place for them than a glasshouse. I don’t know where she thought she was going to raise the money. She talked about getting a grant from the Arts Council, a contribution from Shelter and God knows where else. I’d like to think that nobody would offer her a penny. But the Council had to take her seriously, because there was some doubt on a technicality as to whether this tendering business had been done quite according to Hoyle. So although nobody believed for a moment that she was going to raise the funds for her damned hostel, she gummed up the works as far as the sale to the insurance company was concerned—at least for the time being.”
“And for that matter, I suppose, she gummed up the playing-field?”
“Nobody cared two hoots about the playing-field, except Priscilla Bladon and company.”
“So Miss Bladon really has gone over the top, as the saying goes.”
“You could put it that way.”
“I’d better have a little chat with Miss Bladon.”
“Well—take a tip from me, Supertendent. She’s a difficult woman—very difficult indeed. And she has a stronger hold over a lot of people in this place than you’d think. Before you go and see her, have a word with a friend of yours. He’s been handling her for years.”
A friend of his? Grimshaw waited for it with introspective dread. Was it possible for him to move anywhere among these hills without someone implying an invidious comparison between himself and Mosley—his underling? He waited for the name to be uttered.
“It’s funny: everything I’ve just said to you, I said to Jack Mosley an hour ago,” Hindle said.
“An hour ago?”
“Oh, yes—an early riser, Mosley. He bought a walking-stick, too.”
Chapter Seven
Grimshaw came back down the hill known as Tinkler’s and stood for a moment looking up and down the Upper Marldale High Street. It was a sunless day, but not an oppressively grey one: a day without highlights—but also, effectively, without shadows. And it was a day with marginally more activity than yesterday afternoon. A knot of four women who had finished their shopping had remained to confer on the pavement outside the supermarket. The man whom Grimshaw had seen wheeling a rabbit-hutch on his bicycle was now coming from the opposite direction, apparently taking his hutch elsewhere.
Grimshaw looked up and down in search of Mosley. Mosley was in this village somewhere, sitting with his raincoat on in the armchair of someone overjoyed to see him; someone who would be pouring vital information into his ears. Grimshaw had not forgotten that by rights Mosley ought to be functioning in Bradburn at this hour. The collation of questionnaires and the logging of the town’s nightbirds ought to be complete by now. Mosley ought to be combing through their statements for suggestive discrepancies. Or—Grimshaw had known it to happen—he might be sitting in the refreshment bar on Bradburn bus-station accidentally overhearing one man say to another something innocent and unintentioned that would send him strolling in leisurely fashion among the back-streets to make an arrest.
Grimshaw had not been to his office this morning, and wondered what might have happened in Bradburn last night. Would there have been another mugging? They did not happen every night, but when they did, they generally happened in threes, in different parts of the town. The description of the attacker was always the same, for he wore the shiny plastic mask of a festival clown, and the evil, expressionless mirth in his painted eyes was almost always the cruellest part of the trauma in the sick memories of his victims.
Mosley ought to be in Bradburn—and he was somewhere in Upper Marldale, leaving his Bradburn flank exposed. This time Mosley had overdone it. This time, when Grimshaw got hold of him, there was going to be no compromise. It was going to be a disciplinary board for Mosley.
But Mosley was nowhere in sight. Grimshaw scanned the High Street again, now in search of Sergeant Beamish. Beamish, Grimshaw had told himself, in an epigrammatic moment that he had had no one to share with, was the nearest approach to a detective that he had in his force. Beamish was abrasive, conceited, impossibly well-informed about techniques in use in other forces, always regretting the lack of computerized devices that Bradburn could not afford. Beamish clearly believed that most of the appointments between his own and that of the Chief Constable were filled by men with straw in their hearts, cotton-wool in their craniums and water in their veins. Beamish wore out senior officers to whom he was attached. But Grimshaw prided himself that he knew how to handle him.
Beamish was eager. Beamish took it as a sign of weakness to be given an order which he could not say he had already carried out. And the moment the instruction reached D Division that he was to report to Upper Marldale, he would be halfway there. But the young man getting out of the green vintage MG which he had just parked prettily in the miniature square turned out not to be Beamish.
Then Grimshaw had an inspiration—one of those subtleties of approach that mark out the leaders from the plodders. The obvious thing to do next was to call on Miss Priscilla Bladon. But men did not become Detective-Superintendents by dropping mindlessly into the obvious. Miss Bladon was clearly as strong a character as she was misguided, and Grimshaw knew, when the truth was crystallized out, virtually nothing about her. Moreover, it was more than likely that Mosley was closeted with her at this very moment. Well Mosley could wait. Grimshaw’s best plan would be to enter the witches’ coven at a level lower than the top, to get his first scrapings of information from one of the less dominant characters. That would enable him to tackle Miss Bladon from a position of strength.
There was Ms. Deirdre Harrison, social worker, but it was hardly likely that she would be in Upper Marldale in the middle of the morning. She would be out somewhere—probably down in the old military detention camp, persuading the undeserving to apply for supplementary benefits that the country could not afford. That left Mrs. Susan Bexwell, housewife, married to an industrial research chemist, and very probably involved in the Bladon set-up only through the desperate boredom of having been brought to live in this world’s end. Grimshaw went into the small sub-post-office and asked to see the Electoral Roll: another of the hallmarks of senior experience. He knew that to ask for Mrs. Bexwell by name would be to set up rumours that could make her life misery for weeks: Grimshaw was excelling himself this morning.
The Bexwells lived in one of the newer, detached houses for the prosperous that Grimshaw had observed yesterday. Its garage door was up and over, and he saw that it had its own inspection pit and that the work-bench and tool-rack alongside one wall were the acme of orderliness, with the space for each implement marked with Dymo tape. Two kayak-type canoes were strung up to the rafters. Paddles and an outboard motor were neatly lashed to the wall. Grimshaw also took note of a Flymo, a grass-edge trimmer, a lawn-spiker and every attachment to an electric drill known to DIY man.
From within the house, he heard music—or, at least, the thumping bass accompaniment to music: such melody-line as penetrated to the outside w
orld was too thin to be discernible. Susan Bexwell came to the door: a woman in her late twenties with straw-blonde hair drawn tightly on top and clipped into a pony-tail that hung to her waist. She had on a roll-necked maroon mohair jumper and her legs were encased in white twill trousers that fitted so tightly that it must have been a daily contortion putting them on.
The hall was littered with pull-along, push-along toys, tricycles, a milkfloat four feet high, a model filling-station and two children under five. The melody was more than audible now. It appeared to consist solely of the words Out of bed, out of mind, repeated in machine-gun fashion by a voice that reminded Grimshaw of the old one about the man who fell off Sidney Harbour Bridge.
“Detective-Superintendent Thomas Grimshaw, Police Headquarters, Bradburn.”
“Yes?”
No element of surprise, even less of welcome; one might say a total lack of interest.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”
“I can’t think what about.”
Grimshaw wondered if in the isolation of her family life it was possible that she had not heard what had happened in the Old Tollhouse.
“You know Beatrice Cater, I believe.”
“I have met her.”
“You have not heard what has happened to her?”
“I have heard what is said to have happened to her. It’s hardly likely that anyone in Upper Marldale has not heard that by now.”
She could hardly have been less moved if Readers’ Digest had selected her to receive six lucky numbers.
“I would like to talk to you about Mrs. Cater, please.”
“I don’t see to what purpose. I hardly knew her.”
“And about one or two other matters.”
She resigned herself to his insistence.
“I take it that you have some ID?”
He produced his warrant card, the contents of which she read twice.
“You’d better come in, I suppose.”
It was an L-shaped living-room, one wing of which was a dining-area. The floor was laid out with traffic intersections on printed cloth and a fleet of miniature model cars was lying about all over the place. A fairly new baby was tightly wrapped in a carry-cot on a sofa. Mrs. Bexwell had evidently been working at the table. She had books open on it, a pocket calculator with recondite scientific facilities and a pad of A4 refill paper on which she had been doing sprawling calculations. Grimshaw had sufficient nodding acquaintance with higher mathematics to recognize the differential calculus. Another acute case of Open University?
“I’m sorry to interrupt your studies,” Grimshaw said.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m only trying to keep my hand in.”
Out of bed, out of mind—
She went over and turned the volume down a little.
“I really can’t think why you should come to me.”
“Has anyone else been to see you this morning?”
Fishing for Mosley—
“No. Why should they?”
She looked genuinely puzzled. Despite her aggressive manner, she was nervous.
“What can you tell me about Mrs. Cater?”
“Nothing. But nothing.”
There was a framed enlargement on the wall of a young woman shooting rapids in a slalom.
“You did tell me you’d met her.”
“As I’ve also met the man who reads the electricity meter. I could tell you nothing at all about his immortal soul.”
“Were you surprised to hear this morning’s news about Mrs. Cater?”
“Surprised? Yes: I suppose I was. I’d be surprised if you told me it was half past eleven when it’s only half past ten. Sorry—yes. Of course I was surprised. I’d go so far as to say shocked. I’ve never before lived in circles where people either hang themselves or get themselves hanged.”
“But don’t you feel involved?”
“Definitely uninvolved.”
Out of be-e-d—out of mi-i-i-ind—
There was an outbreak of infantile civil warfare in the hall. Mrs. Bexwell showed no thought of going to intervene.
“Mrs. Bexwell, I’ll not beat about the bush. It has been mentioned to me that you have been concerned, with one or two other ladies in the village—”
“Oh, that—strictly for amusement only, Mr. Grimshaw. That’s what palmists and crystal-gazers have to say about themselves on fairgrounds, isn’t it?”
“Some people call it witchcraft. Mrs. Bexwell.”
“I know. Pathetic, isn’t it? We are within the law, Mr. Grimshaw. We are not fraudulent mediums. I do not think there is anything else that you could get us for.”
“Mrs. Bexwell, I know perfectly well that you and your friends have done nothing that is not susceptible of a rational explanation.”
“I should bloody well hope you do. Otherwise I would wonder why you occupy your present position. And I’m afraid this escapes me: what have the minor amusements of three women on Friday evenings got to do with an unhappy, disorientated, not to say neurotic old woman who created her own half-baked fantasy then couldn’t live up to it?”
That, of course, Grimshaw knew, was the key question. That was what he was here to find out—and it was clear that this spitfire mathematician was not going to tell him. But it was not lost on him that in her bad temper she had just come out with a promising mouthful about Mrs. Cater that he was going to have to get her to develop. But before he could start reasoning with her, the doorbell rang again and she got up suddenly from her chair—nerves again—and trod painfully on a vintage Brooke Bond tea van.
“Bugger it!”
She went through the hall, speaking impatiently to one of her children who was in her way. Grimshaw heard a man’s voice at the front door, and Mrs. Bexwell was greeting him in a very different tone than she had used up to now.
“Why, hullo—do come in—”
Mosley—Mosley taking off his homburg, revealing the few long strands that he tried to keep plastered across his bald dome. Mosley—by God, no!—actually taking off his raincoat. Mosley in that disgusting navy-blue suit whose pockets were so full that by keeping it buttoned he made himself look like something off a kids’ Fifth of November trolley.
“I dare say that you know Mr. Grimshaw,” Susan Bexwell said.
“We have met.”
“Mr. Mosley will forgive my surprise at seeing him here,” Grimshaw said. “I was under the impression that he was in danger of being overworked in Bradburn.”
Mosley affected not to have heard that.
“Coffee, Mr. Mosley?”
“I’d love some.”
“And you, Mr. Grimshaw?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“By the way, Sue,” Mosley said. “You can tell Andrew that I tried a packet of those caviare-flavoured crisps. Not bad. Not bad at all. Mind you, he can’t lose, can he? How many crisp-eaters know what caviare tastes like? It’s lumpfish roe you get in the little pots in the delicatessen.”
He turned to inform his superior officer.
“Susan’s husband works for Flavour Control. They supply synthetic essences for exotic foodstuffs. Crayfish Crunchies. Squid Nibbles. Shark’s Fin Licks. That sort of thing. Sweet things, too—Passion Fruit Suckers.”
“Sounds to me as if it’s the public who are the suckers.”
“Oh, I don’t know. People are getting to try stuff that they’d never had put their tongues to in a lifetime. Think of the extension of the public taste,” Mosley said. “It’s going to be interesting to see whether all this leads to demands for the real thing.”
Was Mosley’s sense of proportion really such that he thought events in Marldale warranted a protracted conversation about Passion Fruit Suckers and Squid Nibbles? Mrs. Bexwell went to make the coffee, and—poor woman!—Mosley announced that he would help her. Grimshaw heard the pair of them laughing in the kitchen; And then the hatch rattled up and Mosley was looking into the room at him like something out of a comic puppet sho
w.
“I’ve forgotten how you like yours, Tom.”
Tom. Mosley and Grimshaw belonged to an old school, and over two lifetimes, it had only been on rarely emotional occasions that Mosley had used his Superintendent’s first name. What was he trying to do? Impress this Bexwell woman?
They came back into the living-room. Susan Bexwell now looked relaxed. For the first time, Grimshaw saw that she was an extremely attractive woman.
“I’m sorry I missed your coven yesterday,” Mosley said. “I got tied up with a bit of bother they’ve been having in Bradburn. How did things go?”
“Very well. Four of the general public turned up. We put on quite an impressive little act for them.”
“And what else is cooking?”
“We’re going to have a go at Herbert Garside.”
“About time too.”
Mosley laughed; and then thought he ought to condescend to put his D-S into the picture.
“Herbert Garside is a farmer who has tried to close a footpath that’s been a right of way since the twelfth century. The Parish Council got it open again, of course, but now he’s re-routed his cows from the pasture to shippon and has taken to hosing down the track before and after they’ve passed, so that the path is virtually unusable anyway. So you think you’ve found a way of getting at old Herbert, do you, Susan?”
“Yes. Hadley Dale Sheep Dog Trials, next Saturday. He stands to win with Sal’s Lad, but he isn’t going to. In fact he’s going to be made to look an ass.”
“That’ll hit him where it hurts. But watch it, Sue. No harm to animals.”
“There’ll be no harm to animals, I promise you. And Mr. Mosley—pass the word on where you can, will you? You know what publicity means to us. Everybody’s got to know that we’ve forecast this one.”
“I’ll do my best. And now, Mrs. Susan Bexwell—to more serious matters.”
“Yes, Mr. Mosley.”
“You’ll have heard what happened to Beatrice Cater?”
Mists Over Mosley Page 4