Maurice laughed at him.
“Give me a break! Remember the makes of cars that pass you in the night? Of course I d—”
“Arrest my ’usband, Inspector, for ’e is ze guilty man,” said a voice from the door, in execrable ’Allo ’Allo French English. Charlie turned and his stomach churned over, along with other physical effects that made him glad he was sitting in a chair with a notebook on his lap. No wonder the advent of Kelly Marsh had been a milestone in the social life of Bly!
“My wife, Kelly Marsh,” said Maurice, getting up and going over to her. “She’s here auditioning for William and Annette, our next year’s prestige mini-series.”
“Ah, that would be William Wordsworth and the French Revolution, wouldn’t it?” Oddie said, shaking the hand that Kelly had free of her baby. “ ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive’?”
“Yes. Wordsworth omitted to mention that by mid-morning you were lucky to be alive,” said Maurice. “God, don’t I sound like Lydia? She was never a friend to revolutions. Yes, Kelly’s auditioning for the part of Annette.”
“I thought eet would be good to breeng my bébé,” said Kelly, smiling guilelessly up at the policeman. “Ze innocent fruit of our illeeecit passion. . . . Who was this prat Wordsworth anyway?”
She was wearing a modest, calf-length woollen dress with lace around the neck, an outfit far from her usual style. However she bundled the baby into Maurice’s arms and perched herself on his desk, raising her skirts to above her knees and aiming them directly at Charlie. His face may have remained impassive but his heart started doing the one hundred metres. He noticed that Maurice was looking at his wife with an expression that could only be described as excited.
“Don’t take any notice of Kelly,” he said happily. “She knows perfectly well who Wordsworth was. She’s got Ordinary Level English—”
“Graham Greene and Chinua Achebe was what we did.”
“—she’s even got an A level—”
“Domestic bloody Science, if you’ll believe it.”
“—but she’d die rather than tell anybody because she’s such a frightful inverted snob.”
“Being a slut suits me,” explained Kelly to Charlie. “Because it’s closest to what I really am.”
“Did you play the slut or the A level student when you met Lydia Perceval?” Charlie asked.
“The slut, of course,” said Kelly with relish, laughing aloud and hitching her skirt an inch or two further up her thigh. “You don’t think Old Mother Starch-in-her-Drawers would be impressed by an A level in Domestic Science, do you?”
“Did you meet in Bly?”
Kelly Marsh smiled, and licked her lips in reminiscence.
“No. Last weekend was my first visit. She came down to Birmingham to do a chat spot on a daytime programme. BBC, of course. Even that was rather beneath her, so she tried to convey, and we felt that she really came down to confirm that Maurice’s choice of wife showed he’d gone irretrievably to the bad.”
“Which you proceeded to demonstrate,” said Maurice amiably.
“Well, the moment the old cow saw me she drew herself up, like a Victorian bishop’s wife who’s found out her son’s married a fallen woman. Anyone would add a few ‘fuckings’ to the conversation, faced with that.”
“And Lydia became glacial,” Maurice remembered. “She had no social devices she could use against that sort of thing. If it had been a child she would have known what to do, but against an adult she was powerless. She just clammed up. She was supposed to go out with us for a meal that night, but she rang later and said she was too tired.”
“Luckily I’d got something in for us,” said Kelly wickedly.
“And was that the only contact you had with her before last weekend?” Oddie asked.
“It was the only contact I had with her full stop,” said Kelly emphatically. “You don’t think I’d go up there to let Lady Sneer look down her long bony nose at me again, do you?” She smiled, with a hint of relish in her smile. “Mind you, I’d have quite liked meeting her in the street, so I could give her the full treatment again in the hearing of the locals. And the locals would have enjoyed it too. But I wasn’t going to climb Mount Olympus to let her condescend to me in her own house. Maurice went on his own.”
“And at the time she was murdered you were in bed, we understand,” Oddie said.
“In bed alone, sleeping prettily like the heroine of a Barbara Cartland.”
“With nobody to vouch for you, unfortunately.”
“Only young Piss-my-nappy here,” she said, ruffling the sparse hair on Matthew’s head, as he lay in his father’s arms. “He was in a cot by our bed.”
“Much too young to testify, I’m afraid,” said Oddie, smiling.
“He’d have testified to my absence if he’d woken and cried—which he does all the time—and I hadn’t been there to take him up,” Kelly pointed out. “No, I don’t think I’d risk it, just to kill the woman who had a terrible influence on my husband fifteen or twenty years ago. That’s a terrible motive, by the way: you wouldn’t get away with that even on Murder, She Wrote. Or have you dreamed up something better?”
Mike Oddie had to admit that he hadn’t, and got up to leave.
“I hope the audition went well,” he said politely.
“Pretty well, I think.” She jumped off the desk and clasped her hands together. “I sink I play ze pretty French bourgeoise vairy preetily. Poor leetle muzzer of William’s child, abandonated by ze oh-so-respectable English poet.” She put off the accent with a wave of the hand. “At any rate I think I’ll be through to the next stage, which is the best three or four. And if I get it—goodbye to Sharon the barmaid forever.”
But Charlie thought there was always going to be a bit of Sharon the barmaid about Kelly Marsh.
CHAPTER 18
LYDIA’S funeral was a compromise, of the kind she herself had despised in life. Thea had ruled out a church funeral, knowing that Lydia had had no faith since her late teens. She had arranged to have the—not service, but what did you call it?—ceremony at a crematorium near Halifax. When Lydia’s editor at Magister Books rang to offer condolences and enquire about the state of her final manuscript Thea conscripted him to come up and give an address by assuring him, with Robert’s agreement, that he could take the manuscript away with him. Knowing Lydia had had no taste in music, and having little herself, she contacted Lydia’s library friend at Boston Spa and asked her to suggest something, because she felt a funeral without music would seem odd. But the question of who was to lead the ceremony was the real problem. She didn’t even consider herself or Andy, since their feelings about Lydia were so generally known. Robert was the obvious candidate, but he decisively negatived the proposal. It was as much as he would do to get along to the service, he said: funerals gave him the creeps. In the end Thea accepted the undertakers’ suggestion of using the tame cleric on the books of the crematorium to officiate, so Lydia went to her rest blessed by non-denominational prayers and with bland promises of some kind of after-life that she would have scorned.
Looking around the crematorium’s chapel Thea wished she had gone the whole hog and had a church service. It would at least have had a dignity appropriate to Lydia in life. And perhaps if she had arranged something in the little church at Bly more of the village would have come. As it was the chapel was sparsely filled, and the impression of an occasion unworthy of Lydia was reinforced by the chapel itself: a gimcrack affair built in the sixties with cheap wood and half-hearted suggestions of gothic about the windows.
The music was very grand, though. The “Gloria” from Cherubini’s Coronation Mass for Charles X. Grave, stately, unshowy music, with moments of radiant joy. Dorothy Eccles had been very good and had procured the record herself. Wasn’t it rather long, though? Thea saw the all-purpose clergyman sneak a look at his watch, and the man from Magister Books shuffle his notes. On and on the music went, unwinding in graceful lines, speaking the unhurried certainties of
another age, so that one saw the king and his attendants processing up the endless aisle of some limitlessly extended cathedral.
“At this rate we’re going to keep the next corpse waiting,” whispered Andy beside her.
• • •
Charlie Peace was talking vigorously in the police canteen in Halifax when Mike Oddie touched his hand and jerked his head towards a table near the window.
“See that WPC over there?”
“WPC Bilton. What about her?”
“Her nickname for you is ‘Heavenly Peace’.”
Charlie felt stopped in his tracks.
“Well?”
“You inspire that sort of devotion in the uniformed breast of a WPC, and all you can do is sit there rabbitting on about men with beards.”
Charlie regarded him thoughtfully.
“I suppose it is better than ‘The Peace that Passeth Understanding,’ which is what one of the inspectors at the Yard used to call me. . . . You don’t go much on the man with the beard, do you?”
“Oh, I go on him. I’d like to know who he was, what he was doing there. But I’m not going to place him so much in the front of the picture that I lose sight of Maurice Hoddle or Colin Bellingham, or any of the others.”
Charlie Peace made a dismissive gesture.
“Colin Bellingham could never have done it. A boy of thirteen wouldn’t have the strength.”
“What about if both the boys were in it, and one of them held her? . . . All right, I don’t seriously think that’s what happened, but I’m not ruling it out and neither should you. You’re in danger of getting tunnel vision.”
“All right. Point taken. Totally open mind . . . but one last thing before we leave him.”
Oddie groaned.
“Go on.”
“We have a bearded man on the scene whom nobody in the village knows anything about. Now, you can be damned sure with that village that this means his business was up the hill, because if it had been down someone or other would have known. So we have a bearded man on the scene at about the time that Lydia Perceval was killed. That’s all I’m saying.”
“And it’s something I’m not denying. Let’s go up and see if anything’s come through from the Anchorage police. That way we can at least rule out Robert Loxton. Smile at WPC Bilton as you go by. Smile beatifically.”
“Beatifically’s not in me. And Kelly Marsh has spoiled me for WPCs. Why didn’t I transfer to Birmingham?”
• • •
The noble choral music drew with agonising slowness to an end. A tear fell down Dorothy Eccles’s cheek. Such splendour, such vision! She had been right to choose it. It provided a fitting tribute to Lydia. If she had had an ear for music, this was the sort of sound she would have appreciated. Noble music.
When the clergyman, suppressing a sigh of relief, rose to speak Dorothy Eccles looked at him critically. A very nondescript little man. Not somebody Lydia would have given a second glance at.
“We are here to pay a last tribute to a writer whose work has given pleasure to millions.”
Dorothy Eccles sniffed. He could have been talking about Barbara Cartland! The point about Lydia’s books was not that they gave pleasure but that they were works of scholarship. They enlarged our understanding of people and events.
She shot a quick glance to her right. That must be the nephew who had disappointed Lydia so grievously. No sign of his wife, whom Lydia said was so appalling. Altogether not many people here at all . . . .
She shifted her head a little to the left and then a little to the right, trying not to give the impression that she was counting. Really a very meagre attendance for someone of Lydia’s distinction. No doubt the sister was to blame. She had never appreciated what Lydia had done for her and her boys. She was much to blame: as sister she should have made more effort to see that a respectable number paid tribute to Lydia in death.
It did not occur to her to wonder why effort should have been necessary.
• • •
“Herself the descendent of one of this country’s prime ministers—and, sadly, one who was also tragically slain in his prime . . . .”
Thea Hoddle looked down into her lap and grinned. She had given the vaguely reverend gentleman this tidbit when she had spoken to him about the service, but she had always had her doubts about Lydia’s claim. She had come up with it in her late teens, when she was more romantic and ancestral than historically meticulous. She thought it was more in the nature of a guess or a hope than a fact. It was, when she came to think about it, the central fact about Lydia that the clear gaze she cast on other people’s characters and lives faltered when she came to her own. She imposed an order on her life, but only through fabricating legends. She was, like most people, thoroughly self-deceived. Had one of her self-deceptions led to her death?
• • •
When Mike and Charlie got to their temporary office in the Halifax police headquarters they found a report from Anchorage—a lengthy piece that showed that their contact there had done his job properly. Robert Loxton had been at Karen Paulson’s flat from Friday night until late on Monday evening, when he had flown to Washington. Occasionally he had gone to collect messages from the Hilton; he had prepared for and given his press conference on Monday morning; otherwise he had been satisfying those needs which are not catered for in U.S. Army Emergency Rations. His presence in the flat was vouched for by several residents of the flat complex where Karen Paulson lived, and by the proprietors of a newsagent’s and a liquor store in its vicinity, where he had bought newspapers and wine.
“Makes Anchorage sound a bit like Bly,” said Charlie. “Watched by a thousand eyes.”
The policeman who had done the investigation and the report had also faxed them the account in the Anchorage Observer of the news conference. It was a page-long piece with picture, and the inspector had marked the place where the date and time were mentioned. Oddie stared closely at the picture.
“That’s him all right,” he said, getting his eyes close to the bearded figure sitting alone at a long table on a platform. “Quite definitely him. If you had any idea it might be his mate standing in for him you can give it up. Robert Loxton is out—no question of that. . . . Well, I’m just nipping out for some cigarettes and chocolate, then I’ve got to prepare a report for the Chief Super—”
But he closed the door without a response from Charlie. Something had clicked in his mind—or rather, it was more physical than that: something in his stomach had turned over. Odd that something so physical should be the consequence of a revelation. He sat by the desk, staring at the fax sheets from Alaska.
• • •
Robert Loxton sat in the cheap and nasty little chapel hating every moment of it. This was the last funeral he was ever going to go to. Probably the last anyone would expect him to go to: apart from Jamie he had no close family and no close ties. That was how he liked it.
Lydia’s editor was talking bilge about the beauty of her manuscripts, and how he never needed to change anything, “even had I dared.” Actually he remembered Lydia holding forth one evening in a restaurant about the decline in editing, and how manuscripts were sent straight to the printers with all their manifest errors and absurdities uncorrected. Like almost everything else in the modern world, according to Lydia, editing had sadly declined.
“Passionately committed to truth, eager against error . . . .”
What crap! Lydia had her illusions like the rest of us, and they had blinded her to truth. . . . But passionate—yes, once. The word suddenly released another memory of Lydia. She was with him in bed—it must have been in the Pimlico flat, some time in the late fifties—and he had just told her that for him marriage was simply not on the agenda. Her face had creased with fury, and she had turned to him and battered her fists repeatedly on his bare chest. Then she had lain back exhausted on the pillow, and after a time had said: “I expect you’re right.”
Funny how things had worked out.
• �
� •
When Mike returned with the cigarettes and chocolate he found his constable with a smile of pure triumph on his face. He didn’t remember ever seeing Charlie in that state, irony and merry cynicism being much more his line.
“We forgot,” said Charlie, turning to him, “the other man with the beard in this case.”
“The other? God protect me! A third?”
“First Jamie Loxton, who has something close to an alibi if Lydia was killed at ten. Second Robert Loxton, who has a perfectly wonderful alibi whenever she was killed . . . .”
“And?” said Mike Oddie, frowning.
“And Walter Denning.”
“Who? Never heard of him.”
“Walter Denning, the man who spent four months on Mount McKinley with Robert Loxton.”
“But why?—”
“Remember when he talked to us about the press conference in Anchorage? He said ‘We had a press conference starting at ten.’ But look at that picture. Where’s his partner? You’d expect him to be there, wouldn’t you? But he isn’t. You can see the whole table Loxton sat behind. He was on his own.”
“Does the report say anything about him?”
“He’s named at the start of the report. Later someone asked what kind of person went in for these endurance feats—interesting question!—and Robert Loxton said: ‘Loners, and people interested in the human body and what it can take.’ Then someone commented that for a loner he gave a pretty good press conference, and he replied that it was a skill he’d learnt over the years. ‘My partner doesn’t like this sort of thing at all,’ he said.”
“ ‘My partner.’ Sounds as if they’d done several of these expeditions together.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Still, you haven’t got a motive worth a bean.”
Charlie spread out his hands eloquently.
“They sit there, bivouacked in the snow and ice, and they talk about what they’re going to do next, how they’re going to raise the money for it. Robert Loxton is getting older, he’s been at this sort of thing quite a while. Even when Maurice Hoddle was growing up he said that some of Loxton’s expeditions didn’t amount to a great deal. The present one didn’t. And they sit there, these two schoolboys who somehow never grew up, and they plan one last, grand expedition. And Robert Loxton says: ‘I’m my cousin Lydia’s heir. If only she would die. . . .’ ”
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