A Fatal Attachment

by Robert Barnard

  “I gather there’s a sister and a brother-in-law in the village.”

  “That’s right. Thea and Andy Hoddle their names are. Turn right it the bottom of the hill and it’s six houses past The Wheatsheaf. Number sixteen.”

  “I gather they’ve been told, then. How did they take it?”

  “She. One of our constables spoke to the sister. He said she was very shocked, but he also said he felt there wasn’t much grief. He’s just a lad and he got away as soon as possible, but the husband’s home now, and he spoke to us in the village. He knows how she was killed—they both must by now. With the husband we sensed a shock at the nastiness of it, the violence, but again we felt that there was no great grief. But reactions to news like that can be very deceptive, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Certainly. Well, we’ll get on down there as soon as your man comes.”

  They left on guard at the cottage the fresh-faced constable who had broken the news to Thea. He looked as if he had just left school, and made Charlie feel very experienced. In the village there was a low-key police operation: two or three men going from house to house asking if anything suspicious had been noticed the night before, or in the days leading up to it. There were no police cars outside number sixteen, but there was a middle-aged woman standing in the bay window looking out. Mike and Charlie got out of the car and looked at the solid, roomy semi-detached with the token gestures towards Tudorality on the upstairs floor.

  “Not really in the same class as the cottage,” murmured Oddie as they pushed open the gate.

  “It’d do me,” said Charlie.

  The door was opened without their knocking, and they introduced themselves to a substantial-looking woman in clothes that had seen better days. Her eyes were red from weeping.

  “The death has suddenly hit me,” she said, ushering them through. “The manner of it. Andy told me, and it suddenly hit me. So messy and horrible. Lydia would have hated that. She was such a cool, orderly person. This is Andy, my husband.”

  They were in a living room at the back of the house—a light, airy room with comfortable old furniture. Andy Hoddle was an inch or two shorter than his wife, with a bulky frame and veined cheeks and nose. Mike Oddie was rather surprised to find himself impressed by him, by both of them in fact.

  “I’m glad to find you both together,” he said.

  “Thea phoned the school,” Andy Hoddle explained. “Naturally the headmaster agreed I should come home at once.”

  “You’re a schoolmaster?”

  Mike kicked himself that he had failed to keep a note of surprise out of his voice. He’d known alcoholic schoolteachers, and it was perhaps surprising that there weren’t more. The tiniest of smiles crossed Andy Hoddle’s mouth, but it was a bitter one.

  “Yes. A recent recruit.”

  They sat down in capacious armchairs and Charlie got out his notebook.

  “Had you seen Mrs Perceval recently?” Mike began.

  Andy nodded.

  “I took her up a ream of typing paper—when would that be, Thea?—the Saturday before last, I think.”

  “And you?” Mike Oddie asked, turning to Thea.

  “Oh dear—I think it must be nearly a month ago. Maybe more. We met in the village post office. We talked a lot on the phone, of course, but when Lydia was working on a book—writing it, I mean, rather than just researching it—we didn’t see much of her. She knew we were there if she needed anything.”

  “Lydia was something of a local celebrity,” put in Andy. “Her books were very well thought of. In the past we used to do things together—holidays, meals out, that sort of thing. But things change, and it wasn’t really like that any longer.”

  “She thought of herself as something of a celebrity?”

  “I didn’t mean that. She usually shunned things like television appearances. . . . I just meant that she had an awful lot to do. Her work was her life.”

  “I see. . . . There was a photograph of two boys on the bookcase in her study—”

  “That would be Gavin and Maurice,” said Thea, a shade too quickly. Her eyes had gone to the mantelpiece, where the same picture that Lydia had, the man in naval uniform, gazed out with apparent confidence at the world. “Our sons. That was Gavin when he was working for the Naval Attaché in Washington. Lydia was very fond of Gavin and Maurice—naturally, having no children of her own.”

  “Of course. Did she keep contact?”

  “Gavin is dead.” She said it in the flat tone she always had when announcing the fact to strangers. “Maurice works in television in the Midlands, and he keeps in touch with her.”

  “I see. Now, you say you talked a lot to your sister on the telephone. Had anything of note happened in the last few weeks of her life?”

  Andy and Thea looked at each other.

  “Her husband had come back,” said Andy.

  “Our cousin, Jamie Loxton,” Thea explained. “He’s taken a farm near Kedgely.”

  “I see. Did this upset her in any way?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t talk to her about it. I don’t see why it should. He didn’t mean anything to her any longer. It was a very brief marriage.”

  “How did she learn he was back?”

  “He went to tell her. That was rather considerate of him, I think. I know because he dropped in briefly here to say hello when he was in the village a few days ago. It was nice to see him again, though he and I were never close. He said he and Lydia were perfectly polite, and that was that. He’d just thought he ought to tell her he was around again, so she didn’t learn it from someone else or run into him accidentally.”

  “I see. . . . Was there anything else in recent weeks?”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “There were the Bellingham boys,” said Andy carefully.

  “Yes, we’d heard about them,” said Oddie, “Who were they exactly?”

  “Boys from the village. Boys who go to my school actually. Their mother is sick—likely to be so for some time, too, if she really does have M.E. Lydia was giving the boys a meal in the evenings, and generally looking after their welfare.”

  “I see. Was there any particular reason why she should do this? Was she a close friend of the family?”

  “Oh no. They’ve only recently moved to the village. Somehow or other she’d got to know the boys before their mother’s illness was diagnosed.”

  “Lydia was good with young people,” said Thea, again a shade too quickly.

  “Well, that solves one mystery,” said Oddie. “There were three sets of crockery and cutlery in the dishwasher. Two full sets and some odd plates.”

  “Probably a full meal for the boys and a snack for herself. Lydia went to Boston Spa yesterday. She has a friend called Eccles in the library there. They may have eaten together.”

  “Yes, they did. We’ve talked to Miss Eccles. Tell me, what sort of a woman was your sister?”

  Thea was clearly prepared for this question.

  “She was a scholar. Very cool, dispassionate. And she loved writing, loved shaping her sentences well, her books well. She was always bookish, even at school, and she got great happiness from her ability to write books herself.”

  It was hardly what Oddie was interested in. Lydia Perceval’s killing could hardly be a result of her scholarship.

  “What about her personal life?”

  “You could say her books were her personal life,” said Thea. “At least in recent years.”

  “Yet she’d been married?”

  “Briefly, as I said. Jamie was a nice enough boy—man—but he was never very satisfactory.” Thea smiled. “Went through jobs like other people go through paper tissues. Andy and I always felt she married him because she couldn’t get Robert, his brother.”

  “You’ll find Robert is her heir,” said Andy. “She never stopped admiring him.”

  Something clicked in Oddie’s brain.

  “Robert Loxton—shouldn’t that ring a bell?”

  �
�He’s a . . . well, a sort of explorer,” said Andy. “Adventurer, if you like. Expeditions, climbs, treks, endurance tests, that sort of thing. Sometimes two-man affairs, with his partner Walter Denning, sometimes altogether more elaborate businesses. He’s just finished one in Alaska.”

  “Right,” said Oddie, pleased that the name had meant something to him. “That explains it. Well, you’ve certainly given us plenty of people we ought to talk to, even if a motive seems still a long way off. Would you say there was anyone—yourselves apart—that Mrs Perceval was especially close to? Someone with whom she might have talked over personal matters?”

  They sat thoughtfully for a few moments.

  “I think Molly Kegan is as likely a person as anyone,” said Thea. “She cleaned for Lydia—but she’s very intelligent. She worshipped Lydia—admired her very much. And Lydia set a lot of store by her grit and determination. I think she would probably have talked to Molly if she talked to anyone.”

  “We’re going to see Mrs Kegan now,” said Oddie, getting up. “She found the body.”

  “Yes, so Andy tells me. How awful for her! Luckily she’s a very strong, self-reliant sort of person.” They were at the front door, and Thea pointed across the main street of Bly to a small, rather dreary estate of houses. “She lives over there—third house in.”

  Mike Oddie thanked them, said their talk had been useful, and that he would very likely be back to them in the course of the investigation. Then he and Charlie walked off in the direction of the Estate.

  “Interesting,” said Oddie.

  “Very,” said Charlie. “You say he’s been unemployed, but apparently they’re reconciled to getting nothing in the will. You’d think they’d at least have hoped for something, and you’d think it would be a kindness in Lydia Perceval to leave them something—if relations between them were as normal as they say.”

  “He apparently has a ‘drink problem,’ as that genteel librarian at Boston Spa calls it. Somehow I don’t get the impression that Lydia Perceval would have had much sympathy for a weakness of that kind.”

  “Then there’s the question of the boys, or of Maurice,” said Charlie Peace, slowing down to a snail’s pace.

  “Yes. That was interesting. We know he was up for the weekend, and we know that he went to see Lydia, yet nothing was said about it. Only that they ‘kept in touch’.”

  “But you didn’t take them up on it?”

  “I decided not to—or some instinct told me not to. After all, they could just have shrugged and said that they didn’t think it was of importance. On the other hand, if we bring it, up next time we talk to them, then we may very well know more about the man and his visit to Lydia, so we may well get more out of them. I bet they’re already wondering whether it was wise not to mention the fact that he was here over the weekend.”

  “Then there was Gavin,” said Charlie.

  “Ah—you noticed something there?”

  “Well, it’s just that if you’re talking about an old person you can say ‘he’s dead’ and leave it at that, but if you’re talking about a young person you’d generally give some sort of explanation: road accident, the illness he was suffering from, or whatever. Unless perhaps it was suicide, or if it was AIDS.”

  “Right. If we rule out those two, then what are you suggesting?”

  “That there was some sort of tension or disagreement between them and Mrs Perceval about the boys. Perhaps that they were competing over them. The photograph in both houses. . . .”

  “Right. And you must have noticed how Mrs Hoddle claimed that she talked a lot on the phone to Lydia, and it was only because she was writing that they hadn’t seen each other, but she didn’t learn about the husband’s return from Lydia but from the man himself later. Anyway, that’s all speculation. Here we are.”

  Once again they were expected. The door of the standard, stone-dashed house had a miserable slab of concrete over it. It was open, and in the doorway stood, once again, a woman who had been crying. If Mike Oddie had been forced to put his finger on the difference between the two women he would have said that Thea Hoddle had been crying over what once had been, whereas Mrs Kegan’s grief was a present, open wound. She led them through to a pleasant, shabby family living room.

  “I’m sorry to be like this,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m not a weepy sort of person, not as a rule. But I can’t get over the shock of finding her like that.”

  They sat down in easy chairs. Molly Kegan gave a determined gulp and a last dab at her eyes.

  “Quite understandable,” said Mike. “It was a horrible sight.”

  “It’s not my day for going up there. Mondays and Thursdays I go as a rule. But I had my first raspberries from the garden, and Lydia always loved them, so I took her some up, for her and the boys’ dinner. . . . In a way I’m glad I found her. Otherwise it would have been the boys, wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and certainly not on anyone young.”

  “That would be the Bellingham boys you’re talking about, would it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Would they have a key to the cottage?”

  “Oh yes. It had become like a second home to them, because of their mother. You’ll have heard about all that from the Hoddles, I expect. Probably a bit slanted. Lydia just loved young people, enjoyed their company, knew she could give them so much. When their mother was ill she naturally shouldered some of her responsibilities. It was the sort of generous thing she would do.”

  “You admired her very much?”

  “Oh, I did. She had . . . well, I’d say distinction is the word. Going up to work for her felt different, somehow. Mind you, the other woman I work for regularly hasn’t any conversation except about the telly. Her idea of heaven would be for the BBC to repeat every episode of All Creatures Great and Small from beginning to end. You can’t have a conversation with a woman like that. You just think your own thoughts and say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ occasionally. With Lydia you always had to be on the alert—we’d joke, quarrel even, but we really got on like a house on fire.”

  “She told you her personal business?”

  “On occasion. I wouldn’t expect her to, but she might.”

  “You knew her husband had come back to the area?”

  “Oh yes.” She smiled a sad, reminiscent smile. “You might say I picked up the pieces.”

  The two policemen pricked up their ears.

  “Really? What exactly do you mean?”

  Molly swallowed and spoke carefully.

  “The night he came to see her, after he left, she got into a furious rage, throwing things around the room, breaking glass, that kind of thing. A sort of release, I suppose. It was typical of Lydia that she didn’t try to clean up, to hide it.”

  “Why should she be so . . . enraged about her husband coming back to the area?”

  “It hadn’t been much of a marriage.”

  “I gathered that—short and unsatisfactory, Mrs Hoddle implied. All the odder that she should fly into such a rage, surely?”

  Molly Kegan thought for a moment.

  “Lydia didn’t like failures. And she didn’t like failure. I think she saw the marriage as a failure of her own, and a humiliating one.”

  “She sounds rather merciless.”

  “Maybe. But merciless to herself as well.”

  “Do you know the husband?”

  “I’ve had him pointed out to me in the village. Everyone knows everyone here, and he doesn’t live far away. Of course people are interested because he used to be married to Lydia. Looked a pleasant enough chap—young for his age. I’ve never spoken to him.”

  “You said earlier that I’d get a slanted view of Lydia and the Bellingham boys from Mrs Hoddle. Why did you say that?”

  Mrs Kegan for the first time appeared hesitant. There seemed to be a consciousness that this was something that did not reflect well on Lydia.

  “Well, there were their boys, you see.”

  “Gavin and Mau
rice?”

  “Yes . . . I don’t want to be unkind. Thea Hoddle is a perfectly nice woman, and she’s had her problems. . . . But of course the boys worshipped their aunt. Naturally they found there the sort of stimulation bright boys need, more than they could get at home.”

  “But the Hoddles struck me as intelligent people.”

  She looked at him incredulously.

  “But you couldn’t compare them with Lydia! Lydia was a writer, she was universally admired! She could rouse the boys’ interests, channel them—they blossomed when they were with her.”

  “I see. Were you working for her then?”

  “Oh no. Only the last ten years. But I was living here. And of course all the village knew how fond they were of Lydia, how much they used to go up there.”

  “I can see this must have upset the parents.”

  “Yes. They couldn’t hide that. They made it a sort of competition, which was silly.”

  “Was it so silly? If they felt their children slipping away from them?”

  “It was silly because they couldn’t win,” said Molly Kegan brutally. “Lydia had so much more to offer.”

  It was a subject, clearly, which Molly Kegan was never going to see in a balanced way. Oddie shifted ground.

  “What about the Bellingham boys?”

  “What about them? They gave Lydia a very happy last few weeks of her life, I know that. She loved helping them, bringing them on.” She added, as if scoring a debating point: “And the father was as pleased as punch about it.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was boasting in The Wheatsheaf last night about how his boys had been made quite pets of by the ‘writer lady up the hill.’ Said she’d been down to talk to him about them.”

  “Really? Last night, you say? How do you know?”

  “How does anyone know anything in a village? Someone told me. Someone whose husband was there.”

  “Obviously we’re going to have to talk to the Bellinghams,” said Mike Oddie, getting up and signalling to Charlie that the interview was at an end. “The boys probably saw more of her in recent days than anyone else. Oh, by the way, the nephew was up over the weekend, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh yes. And his wife. She caused more interest in the village than he did.”