No Laughing Matter

by Dorothy Simpson

  Lineham said nothing, just set his lips, stubbornly.

  ‘Oh come on, Mike, admit it. These hunches of mine often turn out to be worth following up.’

  ‘True,’ Lineham said grudgingly.

  ‘And it’s not as though we’d be neglecting something we really ought to be doing, is it? There are no promising leads we urgently need to follow up.’

  ‘There was one thing. This came in this morning.’ Lineham picked up a report and handed it to Thanet. ‘Fester said he didn’t go out on Friday night.’

  Thanet scanned it quickly. A woman who lived opposite Giles Fester reported seeing him leave the house and drive away at around 7.15 that evening.

  ‘So he was lying. Interesting,’ said Thanet. ‘I agree, we’ll have to see him again. Well, if you’re really keen to do that, we can split up. I’ll go to Plumpton, take someone else with me, Wakeham perhaps …’ Thanet knew Lineham wouldn’t like this suggestion and he was right. The sergeant immediately capitulated.

  ‘No, no, Fester isn’t going anywhere either, after all. We can see him later.’

  ‘True. If we leave for Plumpton straight after the morning meeting we can be back by early afternoon.’ Thanet glanced at his watch and jumped up. ‘And talking about the morning meeting … If the Super is on form again he’ll expect us to be there on the dot.’

  As Thanet hurried down the stairs he felt thoroughly disgruntled. He was annoyed with Lineham and annoyed with himself for being annoyed. The truth was that despite his own doubts he had really been hoping that Lineham would fall upon this idea with enthusiasm. He knew he was being unreasonable. Both he and Lineham were used to the other playing the devil’s advocate, it was a useful way of seeing if a theory held water. But this time, for some reason, it had got under his skin. Perhaps it was because underneath, despite all the arguments against it, he just felt he was right. There was something about Elaine that had left him feeling uneasy and he wasn’t sure why. He remembered now his impression that she had been relieved at the end of the interview, that there was a question he should have asked, and hadn’t. Now he wondered: was it relief that her previous connection with Zak – if there was one – hadn’t come out?

  For his own satisfaction he had to know and a trip to Plumpton was the only answer.

  He decided not to mention any of this at the meeting in case it came to nothing. After all, even if he were right and there was a connection between Elaine and Randish’s former landlady, it might have absolutely nothing to do with Randish’s murder.

  At the bottom of the stairs he ran into Inspector Peter Boon of the uniformed branch, his long-time friend and colleague.

  ‘Thirty seconds to go!’ said Boon with a grin.

  They hurried along the corridor to the door of Draco’s office and as Thanet knocked Boon stood ostentatiously gazing at his watch whispering a count-down. ‘Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve …’

  ‘Come in!’

  Thanet and Boon grinned at each other. It was a relief to hear something of the old vigour back in Draco’s voice. ‘Sounds in good form today,’ said Thanet.

  Draco glanced at the clock and waved a hand at them. ‘Sit down, sit down.’

  Chief Inspector Tody was of course already there, clipboard at the ready.

  One look at Draco was enough to tell Thanet that the news about Angharad must indeed be good. Her husband’s appearance had over the last two years acted as a barometer of her progress. Draco was a fiery little Welshman of barely regulation height, with dark Celtic eyes, sallow skin and wiry black hair which in his livelier moments seemed almost to crackle with electricity. During the first year of his wife’s illness Draco had lost all his bounce and restless vigour, his eyes had dulled and even his hair had become limp and lifeless. During the second year there had been a slow, almost imperceptible improvement and today the transformation was complete. Draco’s shirt collar was crisp, his tie tightly knotted, his trouser creases sharp as a knife, his shoes burnished to a gloss which even a sergeant major on parade would have found difficult to criticise.

  Thanet was amused to find himself straightening his tie and running a hand over his hair.

  ‘Right,’ said Draco. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  The murder was still the most important investigation in hand at the moment and in view of Draco’s previous absence, Thanet’s report was lengthy and detailed. Draco listened intently and at the end peppered him with questions.

  ‘Right,’ he said eventually. ‘You seem to be doing a pretty good job, as usual, Thanet. If there are problems or queries, of course, you know where to find me.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Draco’s praise was so rarely given that it invariably produced a warm glow in the recipient. Thanet was amused to notice that he himself was no exception and Boon’s ironic twinkle showed that he too was aware of what they privately called ‘The Draco Effect’.

  Draco squared up the piece of paper on which he had been making notes in the dead centre of his immaculately tidy desk. ‘Right, gentlemen, I think that’s about all for today …’

  This was the signal for them all to rise and they were doing so when he said, ‘Except …’

  They subsided, each of them optimistic that Draco was now going to give them the news they were hoping to hear. Briefly, Thanet’s mind flashed back to a similar scene two years ago, but then Draco’s demeanour had been lack-lustre, his voice dull with despair.

  I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but … I’m afraid, however, that it looks as though I am going to have to make somewhat heavier demands than usual upon you …

  And then had come the bad news.

  Now, Draco’s voice was full of barely suppressed joy, his Welsh accent more noticeable than usual. ‘As you know, my wife has just had another test, as she has every two months over the last two years. What you may not have realised was that this was an especially important one, the last of that series. From now on, the interval between tests will be greater. And so far, the prognosis is good. She is still in remission. We’ve got a long way to go yet, but we seem to have cleared the first and most important hurdle.’

  The other three all started to speak at once.

  ‘That’s great news, sir …’

  ‘Wonderful news, sir …’

  ‘That’s terrific, sir …’

  Draco was beaming, his face split almost in two by an enormous, delighted grin. ‘Thank you, thank you … I haven’t said anything until now about her progress because I had an almost superstitious dread that if I did something would go wrong. And I must emphasise that even now we are far from out of the wood …’

  According to Mallard, by at least three more years, thought Thanet.

  ‘But I felt that I owed it to you all to tell you what was going on.’ Draco paused, picked up an elastic band and began to fiddle with it, winding it around his fingers. ‘I have never actually said so before, but I want you all to know just how much I appreciate your support over the last two years. You’ve often had to carry my workload as well as your own, and it can’t have been easy. But not once, by word or gesture, have any of you complained.’

  Thanet saw to his horror that Draco the fierce, Draco the fiery, the Welsh Dragon as they had called him behind his back when he first arrived, was on the verge of tears. He sent up a silent prayer: Don’t let him cry! And then reproached himself. Why shouldn’t men cry, if they wished? No one could ever, under any circumstances, call Draco unmanly, and certainly none of the three men here this morning would think any the worse of him for it.

  But Draco was mastering his emotion. He shook out an immaculately laundered white handkerchief, which would have been a superb advertisement for any washing powder, and blew his nose loudly. ‘Angharad has especially asked me thank you too on her behalf. She says that it has helped her enormously to have me there when she needed me, and she knows I couldn’t have done that without you.’

  ‘We were glad to be able to help, sir,’ said Tody.

  Thanet
and Boon were nodding.

  ‘Yes, maybe,’ said Draco with a twinkle. ‘But this business isn’t over yet, remember. I hope you can still say that in a couple of years’ time.’

  ‘I’m sure we shall, sir. And allow me to say …’

  Tody was overdoing it as usual, thought Thanet.

  ‘… and I’m sure I speak on behalf of everyone in your sub-division, how delighted we are. Please give your wife our good wishes for her continued progress.’

  ‘Thank you, Tody. All being well, of course’ – Draco stood up and the others followed suit – ‘the demands upon you should now diminish somewhat.’

  ‘Great!’ said Boon, outside. ‘We’d better go and spread the good news.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll need to do much spreading,’ said Thanet.

  And it was true. By the curious osmosis endemic to small communities, the news seemed to have permeated the entire building already. It showed in the tone of voice of snatches of conversation, in a burst of laughter here and there, in a general liveliness which seemed to pervade even the corridors. There was no doubt about it, the influence of the man at the top was crucial to an establishment of this size, thought Thanet. Like a school whose tone is set by the headmaster, so much depended on the superintendent of a sub-divisional headquarters. Thanet would never have believed, when Draco first burst upon them in all his missionary fervour, that he could ever have felt like this about the man. And even now, of course, he had to admit that despite the affection and respect he felt for him, there were times when Draco drove him up the wall.

  He gave Lineham the good news and they set off for Plumpton, calling briefly at the vineyard on the way to pick up the address of Randish’s former landlady. Curious to see if his memory was playing tricks on him, Thanet also collected the cardboard box of photographs. Back in the car he put it on his lap and began to shuffle through them. It didn’t take him long to find the one he wanted. ‘Got it. Yes, this is the one I was thinking of, definitely.’ Though he had to admit that the resemblance wasn’t as striking as he remembered. The girl was smiling into the camera, leaning against a five-barred gate, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was tied back in a pony-tail and she didn’t look a day over twenty. If Thanet was right, she had at that time a daughter of ten or eleven and must have been least twenty-four or twenty-five, minimum. Was it possible that he was wrong after all, and this was a wild-goose chase? Well, if so, at least he would be satisfied that he had found out for certain.

  He waited until they were on a straight stretch of road empty of traffic and held the photograph up so that Lineham could risk a quick glance at it.

  ‘I can’t really tell, without a proper look,’ said Lineham.

  ‘Take my word for it. The resemblance is there,’ said Thanet, aware that he was trying to convince himself as much as his sergeant. Because, glancing through the other photographs, he also had to admit that Lineham’s suggestion was equally feasible and it could simply be that Elaine was the same physical type. The girls were, without exception, small and slight, their height often betrayed by the scale of their surroundings. The one who perhaps was Elaine’s mother, for example, couldn’t have been more than five feet tall; the top rung of the five-barred gate was just below her shoulder.

  Slipping that one photograph into his wallet Thanet sat back to enjoy the drive. It was, he thought, one of the loveliest in the south-east. Via Cranbrook, Hawkhurst, Etchingham and Burwash the road ran through beautiful rolling countryside which at this time of year was a glorious patchwork of autumn colour.

  ‘Louise would love this,’ said Lineham as they came into the pretty village of Burwash, with its tree-lined pavements and picturesque old houses.

  ‘Bateman’s is only a little way further on,’ said Thanet. ‘Rudyard Kipling’s house. We had a family outing down this way once, there’s lots to see.’

  ‘We’re hoping to do more of that sort of thing when the children are bigger. They’re a bit young yet.’

  Soon after Ringmer they passed the Glyndebourne turning and the bare sweeping curves of the South Downs reared up on their left.

  Most of the way the sun had been shining but as they drove down the long hill into Lewes Thanet noticed a heavy bank of cloud ahead. The bursts of sunshine became shorter and shorter and at less frequent intervals.

  ‘Looks as though the heavens are going to open,’ said Lineham.

  ‘I hope not. I haven’t got my raincoat.’ In his hurry to get to work this morning Thanet had forgotten it.

  ‘There’s an old anorak you can borrow in the boot, if the worst comes to the worst.’

  ‘Thanks. Turn right, up the High Street, and right again, at the top.’

  Lineham concentrated while he negotiated the heavy traffic through the centre of the old town then said, ‘Actually, sir, I was thinking. We really should have rung, first. If she’s out we’ll have a wasted journey.’

  ‘I thought of that. But even if she is out I thought we could make some inquiries, talk to neighbours.’ The truth was that he hadn’t wanted there to be a reason for not going. He wanted to fill in another blank in Randish’s life, see the place where he had spent a number of years, talk to more people who had known him.

  ‘She might have moved away.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Or even be dead.’

  ‘In the normal way of things, the odds are that she isn’t. I worked it out and she’s probably in her mid sixties.’

  Soon afterwards Plumpton was signposted.

  ‘Turn left here,’ said Thanet. ‘It’s only a couple of miles, now. I don’t suppose it’s a very big village. We shouldn’t have too much difficulty in finding the house.’

  A rash assumption, he soon realised. Not long afterwards they came to a sign saying Plumpton half a mile. They passed a pub, then the Agricultural College on the right. Then came a couple of houses, then open countryside again. Lineham slowed down. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  Plumpton, they discovered, was a very scattered community with no proper centre and after asking directions they got lost twice before eventually managing to find Jasmine Cottage, which was not as picturesque as its name. It was Victorian and semi-detached, built of ugly red brick, with a square bay window to the left of the front door.

  As they got out of the car it started to rain, huge coin-sized drops which spotted the road surface.

  ‘I’d better borrow that anorak, Mike.’

  Thanet raised his eyebrows at the garment Lineham produced. It was not just old but distinctly tatty, with stains down the front and a long tear in one sleeve.

  ‘Sorry, sir, it looks even worse than I remembered. I keep it to use in emergencies – you know, for changing tyres in the rain and so on.’

  ‘It looks like it!’

  ‘Borrow my raincoat,’ said Lineham magnanimously, beginning to take it off.

  ‘No, no. Give me the anorak, quickly.’ The rain was coming down steadily now. ‘I’ll just put it over my head.’

  The front gate was broken, propped open with a brick, and the garden was neglected: the lawn was shaggy, the narrow flower borders choked with weeds. The long new season’s growth of a rambler rose beside the door had not been tied in and thorns clutched at Thanet’s sleeve as he rang the bell.

  ‘Did it work?’ said Lineham. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’ He turned his collar up against the increasing downpour.

  Thanet lifted the letter-box flap and banged it a few times. The sound reverberated through the house but there was still no response. The front door of the cottage next door opened and a woman came out, peering suspiciously at them from beneath an umbrella with two broken spokes.

  ‘What d’you want?’ She was middle-aged and grossly overweight, her legs and ankles so swollen that the flesh hung over the sides of her shoes.

  Lineham stepped away from the shelter of the house, hunching down into his collar. ‘We wanted to talk to Mrs Wood.’ He fished his warrant card out of
his pocket and held it up.

  She reached across the dilapidated picket fence which divided the two gardens, took it from him and peered at it. ‘Just a minute.’ She waddled off indoors.

  Lineham shrugged at Thanet. ‘Looks as though Mrs Wood still lives here, anyway.’ The rain was tipping down now and for shelter the two men huddled as close to the house wall as they could get – an unwise move, for a moment later without warning a blocked gutter above them overflowed, and water cascaded down upon them.

  As they jumped back Thanet noticed that the net curtain at the bay window behind Lineham was moving. A small round blob had appeared at the bottom and one corner of the curtain was being raised a few inches. ‘Look behind you, Mike!’ he hissed.

  Lineham turned, but the curtain had dropped and there was nothing to see. ‘What?’

  The blob had been the end of a walking stick, Thanet guessed. Which meant that Mrs Wood was probably immobilised and couldn’t reach the curtain any other way. Hence the care being taken by her neighbour.

  The woman had come out again. ‘You can’t be too careful these days!’ she said as she handed Lineham’s card back.

  ‘Quite right!’ said Thanet.

  Mrs Wood, it appeared, was bedridden with severe arthritis. The key to the front door was kept under an upturned flower pot nearby, so that regular visitors could get in.

  ‘Not exactly the most original hiding place,’ said Lineham as he retrieved it. ‘It’d be the first place a burglar would look, especially if he knew a key was left out.’

  They let themselves in and stood, dripping, on the doormat just inside. The house struck chill and the narrow hall was gloomy, with dark red floor tiles and brown paintwork on doors and banisters. Ahead, a passageway beside the staircase led to another door.

  Thanet shivered. ‘Better take our coats off.’

  They draped them over an old-fashioned hall-stand to the right of the door.

  ‘It’s freezing in here!’ said Lineham. ‘And my feet are soaking.’

  ‘Stop grumbling, Mike. Look at me!’ The anorak had afforded little protection. Thanet’s trouser legs and feet were also wet and he had an uneasy feeling that the water had run down and soaked the bottom of the back of his jacket, too.