Old John Veale, who had a bugle on a cord strung round his neck, lit another Woodbine; he’d left his right arm at Gallipoli, but had long since learned to cope without it.
‘Did you see the police car?’ he asked Terry Forbes who had only just arrived.
‘No, Mr Veale. Where was it going?’
‘Harcutt’s place.’
Terry grinned. ‘Indecent exposure, I shouldn’t wonder. Either that or drunk and disorderly.’
‘Ah. You haven’t heard, then?’
‘I soon will.’ Terry was assembling the collapsible flagstaff that carried the Legion’s standard. ‘If you don’t tell me now, my mum will tell me after church.’
‘Must have been between half eight and nine,’ Veale went on, ignoring this. ‘The old woman said Antonia was running across the green – in her nightie, can you believe? She went into the Lincolns’ house. Five minutes later, she came back out with Lincoln and his missus. And they all went back to Harcutt’s place. Haven’t been seen since.’ Veale, knowing that there was no longer any risk of losing his audience’s attention, paused to remove a shred of tobacco from his lip. ‘Maybe twenty minutes later, along comes the police car. Plainclothes men. You know what that means.’
‘Detectives?’
Veale nodded. ‘Something serious going on. You mark my words, young Terry.’
Forbes raised the standard and settled the base of the staff into the sling he wore across his chest. ‘Seems odd without old Harcutt fussing around.’
‘A lot more restful, you mean. That man’s too fond of playing bloody soldiers.’ Veale pulled out his watch. He raised his voice slightly: ‘Time’s getting on. We’d better form up.’
The men shuffled into three lines. Everyone was elaborately casual. Former officers stood side by side with former privates. There was no attempt to put the shortest on the left and the tallest on the right. Veale threw away his cigarette and stroked the bugle as though it were a live thing.
‘By the left,’ he said quietly, almost apologetically. ‘Quick march.’
The Edge Hill branch of the British Legion marched off towards the green. At their head was the standard bearer with his collapsible flagstaff. As they marched, something curious happened: they fell into step and their boots rang in time on the road; no one swung his arms high, but for a few moments they were no longer civilians. No one talked. Behind them were three small boys pretending to march, their demeanour hovering between mockery and respect. Behind the boys came Freddy the dog.
When the marchers reached the green, they swung left towards the war memorial. A moment later, Dr Bayswater’s Wolseley turned into the drive of Chandos Lodge.
Chapter Eight
‘This really won’t do, old man,’ Carn said, scratching his neat little beard. ‘Are you ill or something?’
Charlie Meague stared at the floor. He’d gone back to his perch on the arm of his mother’s chair. His head hurt. He stared up at his visitor who was wearing his brown suit underneath the unbuttoned raincoat. He noticed that Carn had bought himself a tweed cap. He wished the man would go away.
‘So how did it go last night?’ Carn asked for the second time.
Charlie shrugged.
‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,’ Carn said slowly. ‘I’m going to go to Gloucester. There’s a nice little hotel in Westgate Street – the White Boar. I booked a room yesterday. You can phone me there. OK?’
Carn paused, but Charlie still said nothing. Carn thrust his hands into the pockets of his raincoat and sighed.
‘I want the money in cash within two days,’ he went on. ‘That’s being generous to you, isn’t it? If you can’t manage cash – well – it’s not ideal, but I’m prepared to stretch a point. Jewellery, for example. I’m broad-minded. But in that case, you have to get the stuff up to London, and I’ll have to add on a percentage for the inconvenience. But it’s up to you. I don’t mind which way you do it.’
Charlie stared at Carn’s shoes which were brown and highly polished. There was a speck of mud on one of the toecaps. He heard and understood what Carn was saying, but the words lacked relevance; they were an irritant like the buzzing of a bluebottle in a room where you wanted silence. The buzzing varied in intensity and it was making his headache worse.
‘If you don’t do as I say,’ Carn went on softly, taking a gold cigarette case from his jacket pocket, ‘then we have to consider the alternative. It’s really not very nice, Charlie. You wouldn’t like it, and nor would I. Let me give you an idea. Take your dear old mum, for instance. A delightful lady, I have no doubt. But perhaps a trifle overweight in places? These old dears often are.’ He took out a cigarette and tapped it on the case. ‘Now when the dear old Bard of Avon talked of a ‘pound of flesh’ sliced from a human body, he actually meant it literally, you know. It’s perfectly possible. Imagine it, Charlie – like something from the butcher’s. But in a case of this nature there’d be an interesting technical problem, wouldn’t there? Because the flesh would have to be cut from a living body.’
It wasn’t the words, it was the buzzing. Charlie stood up. His mouth was closed, but he made a tiny, inarticulate sound.
Carn stopped talking and dropped his cigarette. He backed away, his pale eyes alert and his right hand digging into the pocket of his raincoat.
Charlie flung himself at Carn. The cigarette case fell to the floor with a clatter. The thought at the top of Charlie’s mind was that he could not afford to let the man take his other hand out of his pocket. So he put his arms round Carn and squeezed.
Carn tried to drive his knee into Charlie’s crotch. Charlie twisted his legs and covered the target just in time. Carn pulled his head back and smashed his forehead into Charlie’s mouth. The pain was intense and the blood tasted salty. Charlie squeezed harder and pushed Carn towards the wall. In a struggle of this sort, Charlie had the advantage because he was taller, heavier and younger.
Carn tripped over the hearth rug and fell backwards, dragging Charlie down with him. Charlie did not let go because he knew that if he did, Carn would be able to get his hand out of his pocket.
Carn’s head was resting on the stone hearth. His new cap had fallen into the pile of ashes that spilled from the grate; his breath was warm on Charlie’s face and it smelled unpleasantly musty. Neither of them said anything. Charlie raised himself until he had one knee pinning down Carn’s right arm and the other on Carn’s chest. He looked into Carn’s waxen face and Carn looked back.
There was a finality in all this, an absence of choice. Charlie seized Carn’s head by its ears and banged it repeatedly and with all his strength against the hearthstone.
Chapter Nine
Sergeant Kirby paused in the open doorway of Harcutt’s room. ‘I thought you were talking to Miss Harcutt, sir.’
Thornhill looked up. He was crouching by the bureau and examining the contents of the wastepaper basket. He thought there had been a hint of criticism in Kirby’s tone.
‘She wants a friend to be with her. I’ll wait till then.’
‘Do you want me to have a go?’
‘If I’d wanted you to have a go, I’d have asked you.’
‘Just mentioning it, sir. Can’t afford to waste time, I thought.’
Thornhill stared at Kirby. ‘At present I’ll make the decisions, Sergeant. All right? Come and have a look at this.’
Kirby flushed and reluctantly came into the room, closing the door behind him. His eyes were hot and angry. Thornhill guessed that the younger man was keyed up by the excitement of robbery and sudden death, that he was hungry for drama and that above all he wanted to do something.
Thornhill pointed into the wastepaper basket. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘They’re his medals, aren’t they?’
‘Seems rather odd to throw them away.’
‘Might have been an accident.’ Kirby waved at the poppies on the carpet. ‘Maybe he tripped, or something, and knocked the medals and the poppies off the bureau
.’
‘Maybe. It seems odd that the medals should fall so neatly into the wastepaper basket, though. That’s the Military Cross, isn’t it?’
Kirby nodded, his expression puzzled; he could not see the relevance of Harcutt’s achievements. ‘Do you think he turned the gas on – and couldn’t manage to light it? Or maybe he was so pissed that he thought he had.’
Thornhill didn’t answer. He got up and stretched. He was conscious that he did not want to look unnecessarily at the dead meat in the armchair. But why should a human corpse be more disturbing than a pig hanging in a butcher’s shop? How terrible it would be if the fairy tales were true after all – if Harcutt were witnessing the humiliating treatment meted out to him after death. Thornhill moved to the fireplace and stared at the photograph of the little family.
‘Or I suppose there could have been an interruption in the gas supply,’ Kirby went on. ‘Nothing to do with him.’
‘I wondered that. The mains inlet is in the scullery.’
Kirby’s head jerked up in surprise. ‘Do you mean . . .’
‘At this stage I’m just keeping an eye on all the possibilities.’ Thornhill looked down at the poppies and remembered when he’d seen them on the floor here before. They reminded him that he’d never got round to asking Harcutt to explain how he had known that the brooch they found at Templefields was made of silver. It was too late to ask him now. In all probability the major had simply assumed or guessed that it was silver; either that or Jill Francis or Charlotte Wemyss-Brown had mentioned it to him after all.
‘But if someone turned off the gas at the mains,’ Kirby said slowly, ‘and turned it on again, knowingly, I mean, that would amount to . . .’
There were footsteps outside. The door opened and Bayswater peered into the room. ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘What have you got for me?’
PC Lincoln arrived. ‘I tried to make him wait, sir. He just wouldn’t listen.’
‘That’s all right, Lincoln.’
Bayswater put down his bag and rubbed his hands together. With his head thrust forward, he moved towards Harcutt’s body.
‘And the lady’s turned up, too,’ Lincoln went on. ‘Miss Francis.’
‘Damn,’ Thornhill said, and for an instant he felt dizzy. ‘Before you do anything else, Doctor, I wonder if you’d see Miss Harcutt. I want to know if she’s well enough for me to talk to her.’
Bayswater turned and raised his eyebrows. ‘Shock?’
Thornhill shrugged. ‘You tell me. I’ve arranged for her to have a friend with her. She’s just arrived. Kirby, take Dr Bayswater along to the kitchen. I’ll deal with Miss Francis.’
He tried to keep his voice cool and succeeded in sounding bored and on the verge of yawning. He ushered the other men out of the room and shut the door behind them. He told Lincoln to stay on guard until Kirby returned.
Jill Francis was waiting at the foot of the stairs. She was wearing a long fur coat and hugging herself to keep the cold away. He had forgotten that she was so attractive – or rather, he’d tried so hard to forget in her absence that he’d almost succeeded. Her pale face with its blue eyes seemed to float in the gloom of the hall. He caught himself wondering what a woman like this could have seen in a great bear of a man like Yateley. It embarrassed him that he had seen her cry and that he knew about her lover and her lost baby. It seemed to him that the knowledge was a form of intimacy acquired in an underhand way. He also felt illogically irritated with her: she couldn’t have chosen a worse moment to appear before him – he was in the middle of his first major case in Lydmouth and among colleagues he neither knew nor trusted. He wished she were a hundred miles away.
‘I’m sorry to drag you out like this,’ he said stiffly.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She took a step towards him. ‘How’s Antonia?’
‘It’s been a great shock, naturally. The doctor’s with her now. We’d better wait until he’s finished. I’ll take you in, and if he says it’s OK, I’d like to try to ask her a few questions.’
‘Can I ask what’s happened? The man on the phone just said her father had died suddenly.’
‘That’s true as far as it goes.’ Thornhill hesitated. ‘Could I ask you to keep this confidential?’
‘Of course.’
‘He seems to have died in his sleep. But we’re not sure what caused it. There may have been a gas leak.’
‘And she found him? Poor kid.’
‘And there’s another consideration. There appears to have been a burglary here last night. All in all, it’s a very confused situation.’
He ran out of things to say. Jill waited, apparently composed. He felt that she had no right to make him feel like this; it was an imposition. He wondered how on earth she could have wanted to have Yateley’s child.
He cleared his throat and said, ‘I hope you hadn’t got plans for this morning.’
‘Nothing important. I was going to church with the Wemyss-Browns. Incidentally, Mrs Wemyss-Brown said she would come along after the service. She thought Antonia would be glad of her support.’
Her eyes met Thornhill’s. For an instant, there was a shared hint of amusement. The moment was so brief and the hint so hard to pin down that immediately afterwards Thornhill thought he’d imagined the whole thing.
‘She also said that Antonia was welcome to come and stay at Troy House,’ Jill went on. ‘She can’t stay here, can she?’
‘Probably not. By the way, there was something I wanted to check with you and Mrs Wemyss-Brown. Do you remember when you first came here to see Major Harcutt? On Thursday morning – I turned up while you and Mrs Wemyss-Brown were here.’
Jill looked at him gravely. ‘I remember it very well.’
‘Mrs Wemyss-Brown said she wanted to warn Major Harcutt that I might be coming to see him. I expect she told him that some bones had been found at Templefields. Did either of you happen to mention the other things I showed you?’
‘The bit of newspaper? The brooch?’
‘That’s it. Did you?’
‘I don’t think so. There really wasn’t time. We’d only been there for a couple of minutes before you turned up.’
‘Neither of you told him that the brooch was silver, I suppose?’
‘I told you – I don’t think either of us mentioned the brooch at all. You can ask Charlotte, but I’m pretty sure she’ll say the same. Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m not sure. Just one of those little details.’
There was another uncomfortable hiatus in the conversation – uncomfortable as far as Thornhill was concerned at least. Jill stared down the hall in the direction of the kitchen.
‘You’ll treat Antonia gently, won’t you, Inspector?’
‘Of course we shall.’ He felt, and sounded, indignant.
‘Sorry,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘It’s just that she’s very vulnerable at the best of times.’
The kitchen door opened and Bayswater came out. As he walked along the hall, he gave Jill a cool, assessing stare and then ignored her.
‘You might as well talk to her,’ he said to Thornhill. ‘It might do her good to get it off her chest. I want to have a look at the body now.’
‘I’ll arrange for Kirby to stay with you.’
‘Just to make sure I don’t tamper with the evidence, eh? Well, I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t waste my time.’
‘The feeling’s mutual,’ Thornhill said. ‘So I’ll leave you to it.’
Chapter Ten
What do you do with about a hundred and forty pounds of flesh and bone? There wasn’t an easy answer.
Charlie sat in his mother’s armchair and smoked one of Carn’s cigarettes while he thought about the problem. The blood dried on his face. It hurt to smoke because his lips were sore and swollen. The world had contracted to this cold little room he had known all his life. Gradually he stopped shivering. He had never killed someone before, even in the war. It was a strange sensation. He didn’t want to think about wha
t made Carn now different from Carn then.
He briefly considered the possibility of going to the police. He imagined himself walking into the police station in the High Street. ‘I’ve just killed Genghis Carn. What are you going to do about it?’ Everything would be sorted out for him, and there would be no more decisions.
The idea revolted him. They wouldn’t believe him when he told them what Carn had threatened to do. If they didn’t hang him for killing Carn, they would put him inside for most of his life. If the police got him, Charlie thought, he was finished; he might just as well have killed himself. So in that case, he had absolutely nothing to lose by trying to escape. Maybe he could go abroad. Maybe he could slip into another identity.
Charlie got up and knelt beside Carn’s body. The little man was still lying on his back with his head on the hearthstone and his beard pointing towards the ceiling. From the front he looked undamaged – indeed, he might have been asleep. Charlie, obeying a reflex he had not known he possessed, had closed the dead man’s eyes to stop them looking at him.
He went through Carn’s pockets, beginning with those in the jacket and the raincoat. He emptied them methodically and put what he found on the seat of his mother’s chair. The trouser pockets were more difficult. Charlie nerved himself to push his hands into the pockets at the side. He felt the hard thigh beneath the layers of clothing. The pockets were still warm with the heat of the living man.
Carn had been carrying a bunch of keys, a wallet, a letter from a woman named Sylvia, a grubby white handkerchief, a handful of small change, a box of matches, two penknives and a cut-throat razor. The wallet contained a driving licence, three stamps and a ten-shilling note. There was also the gold cigarette case which Carn had dropped on the floor.
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