After a long pause Carmel nodded.
“Now, I’m not going to get you into trouble, or to blame you in any way. I just want to know about the last weeks of my father’s life. Do you understand?” Another nod. “Now, this little group has been going round to newcomers in the village, singing outside their houses, shouting through their letter boxes and so on, haven’t they? Haven’t you?”
“We didn’t mean no harm. It was just fun.”
“Not much fun for the Nortons, I’m told, nor for anyone else you’ve targeted. But like I say, I’m not here to blame. Newcomers are a bit of a soft target, I suppose. You never got on to us, though.”
“Your husband’s a policeman. Otherwise Anne says we would’ve.”
“I can imagine. But instead of us you picked on my dad.”
Again a pause, and then a nod.
“Now, you went up there one evening, about a week ago, didn’t you?”
By now the obstinate expression had softened.
“Yes . . . We all knew who he was. People pointed him out.”
“They did, I know. Then you all gathered outside his bungalow, didn’t you, in the dark?”
Carmel suddenly became almost voluble, caught up in the excitement.
“That was the part we liked. It was wonderful. Like we were just dark shapes if he looked out the window, just inside his gate.”
“And you sang the song from The Tempest, didn’t you?”
“Yes. That’s just right—really nasty-sounding, though none of us really knows what it means. It’s ever such an old play. Then we sang the song that Anne made up to the tune of ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’ It starts: ‘Go back where you came from.’ ”
“Charming. What happened next?”
“There was a light came on in the hall, and there was this shape coming toward the door.”
“What did you do?”
“Ran out the gate and scattered. That’s what Anne had told us to do, and what we’d always done. Then even if they realize it was children outside they can’t iden . . . i-den-ti-fy which children. So we waited, all separate, down or up the street. The door opened. But it was different to the usual, and we heard voices, and then we realized that Anne hadn’t run away.”
“No. She stayed there and talked to my father, didn’t she?”
“Yes. And then the door shut, and Anne still didn’t come out. So we all went home, because it was nearly nine o’clock. But we were worried in case he’d done something horrible to her. He hadn’t though. She turned up at school the next day, so it was all right.”
“What did she say happened?”
Carmel by now was well into her narrative stride.
“Wouldn’t say. Said the silly old git . . . sorry—the old man thought we were carol singers. Pretty funny carol, ‘’Ban, ’ban, Ca-Caliban.’ ”
“My father was tone deaf,” said Felicity.
“What does that mean?”
“That you can’t tell one tune from another. Just like some people are word blind—they can’t manage words, and others can’t manage numbers. Music just meant nothing to my dad.”
“I can’t do arithmetic, or hardly,” said Carmel.
“There you are, you see. So my dad got it wrong and thought you were only on a friendly visit to sing carols. So did you ever hear what happened after Anne went inside?”
“No. She just said we wouldn’t be going there again.”
“What did you think happened?”
“Some of us thought they went to bed together, but I didn’t, not with an old man like he was. I think they just liked each other, because they were talking together at the carol service.”
“That’s quite likely.”
“Anyway, I expect Anne got something out of it.”
“Something out of it? What sort of thing?”
But though she wheeled and threatened, Felicity never got a straight answer as to what Anne got out of her encounters. After a time she just said, “I must take my black child home,” and left.
CHAPTER 11
A Bought Peace
That evening Charlie came off duty at eight, and drove home for a late steak and chips, followed by an account from Felicity of her conversation with Carmel Postgate and her mother. He was slumped out on the sofa and looking forward to coffee (wondering, at the same time, whether it was too early to go to bed), when the doorbell rang.
“Must be Chris,” he shouted to Felicity in the kitchen. “Who else would call so late?”
But when he went to open the front door he found it was a couple of whom he had no memory.
“Mr. Peace?” began the man. “You don’t know me but you—”
“Mr—ah!—Norton. Mr. Norton from the Hatton Homes estate.”
“You recognized the voice. I can tell you’re a policeman. Mr. Peace, I don’t want to intrude, because I know you and your wife have suffered a bereavement—”
“No, no. Come in,” said Charlie, standing aside. “I’d be interested to hear how things have gone since we talked. Here is my wife. Felicity, this is the Nortons.”
He ushered them in, sat them down on the sofa, and Felicity went to the kitchen to fetch coffee, taking care to leave both doors open. They were an appealing-looking pair—pleasant rather than distinguished in any way. In their early sixties, Charlie guessed, and now much more confident and relaxed than when he had spoken to Mr. Norton on the phone. He and his wife were both looking around them, interested in the house, and hardly at all tensed up.
“I’d make a guess and say you’ve come through the business with the children and it’s now all quiet on the Norton front—am I right?” said Charlie.
The Nortons both grinned.
“Well, that’s about right. I’m Richard, by the way, and the wife’s Carol. Yes, we have come through.”
“Good. I’d be interested to hear how.”
“That’s partly why we’re here—to tell you. The truth is, you see, that we’re getting about in Slepton Edge a lot more now, talking to people in shops, going to the pub now and then, and what people are talking about at the moment is the death of your—father-in-law, was it?”
“That’s right. Felicity’s father.”
“We were very sorry to hear about it, because we’re so grateful for what you did for us.”
“I did nothing that did any good,” said Charlie. “The story of quite a lot of a policeman’s life. But I did try.”
“The truth is that people are gossiping rather than just talking. You know how gossip always magnifies everything, and links up all sorts of things that aren’t connected. Well, people were talking in the pub at lunchtime, and they were linking up the death of Mr. Coggenhoe—my wife has read some of his books, enjoyed them very much—linking his death up with the drama stream at Westowram High. Is that right?”
“I believe so,” said Charlie cautiously. “Not that there’s anything in it, necessarily. They’re talking because a radio play that the drama kids did in class and then gave a public performance of had in it a man pushed over a cliff.”
“Doesn’t seem much of a connection.”
“Pushed over by the boys in his class.”
“Even so . . . But I’m not a literary type, and not a detective either.”
“If you had asked us a couple of weeks ago,” put in Carol Norton, “we’d probably have said that we wouldn’t put anything past that nasty little gang. Things are a bit different now.”
“So I gather,” said Charlie. “Tell me what happened.”
Felicity had come in with the coffee, and started to hand it round. Richard Norton waited till everyone had a cup, then took up his story.
“Well, it was about five days after I spoke to you on the telephone. There was a ring on the doorbell about four o’clock in the afternoon. It wasn’t yet dark, but it was getting that way, so I opened the door a bit cautiously. And there was this girl—young woman, it almost seemed—standing there bold as brass.”
“You rec
ognized her?”
“Not to say recognized. You see, they’d always come at night, and I’d only seen them by peering through our bedroom window. Sometimes a streetlight caught one of their faces, but not often. But I thought it was one of the two elder girls—I think her name is Anne Michaels.”
“And we weren’t in doubt for long,” put in his wife.
“No, we weren’t. Because she simply said, without so much as a hello or telling me her name: ‘Can I come in? I’ve got a proposition to make to you.’ ”
Charlie’s eyebrows hit the roof.
“I wasn’t expecting that.”
The couple nodded.
“Nor were we, I can tell you,” said Richard Norton. “Anyway, I wasn’t happy about her coming into the house, and I hesitated, but she just pushed past me and marched into the lounge. I protested, but . . . well, I’ve never been a very forceful chap, and she took no notice.”
“I was already in the lounge,” said Carol Norton, “listening. She came straight in, didn’t even nod to me, and sat down in one of our easy chairs. And when Richard got back into the room she looked at him and said, ‘I suppose you’d like an end to these visits from the children, wouldn’t you?’ And before Richard could reply I said, ‘We would.’ I didn’t want any macho stuff from him, posturing-like, because the truth was I wanted to do anything she asked us to do, just to get rid of them.”
“As if I could manage a macho posture if I tried!” protested Richard. “Anyway, she grinned an evil grin—such a shame, because she is naturally such a lovely looking girl—and said, ‘It can’t be nice having a pack of kids shouting and singing at you. I expect you’ve always liked children, haven’t you?’ And I said, ‘I used to.’ She liked that, and grinned still more.”
“I’m still puzzled,” said Felicity. “I still don’t have any idea of what she was after.”
“Oh, it didn’t take long for that to come out,” said Carol. “She took up Richard’s last remark straight away—she seems to be a very quick-witted girl. She said, ‘You could start liking them again, I should think, if you got rid of us.’ ”
“I said maybe,” said Richard. “Because at that moment it seemed like she’d changed my view of children for life.”
“She took that up too, didn’t she, Richard? She said, ‘We’re not the usual run of snotty-nosed kids, you know. We’re out of the ordinary.’ And Richard said, ‘You’re certainly that.’ I sat there hoping that was the last of his smart-aleck remarks, because I was afraid she would take offense and leave.”
“Well, she didn’t,” said Richard. “She’d come with a purpose, that was obvious, and she was determined to get it before she left. I said, ‘What will it take for you to leave us alone?’ And she said, ‘What will it cost is really the question.’ I thought, I can’t believe this is just a common-or-garden piece of blackmail. But that’s what it was.”
“It would be interesting to know if you’re the first to be stung like that,” said Charlie thoughtfully. “Has she had a whole line of victims? Sorry—go on.”
“Well, she was sitting there, smiling like a Cheshire tiger, and I just said, ‘How much?’ And she paused, licked her tongue around her lips and said, ‘Twenty pounds.’ You could have knocked me down with a feather. I was expecting five times as much.”
“I said, ‘Done!’ ” said Carol. “I got up, went to Richard’s wallet, got out a note and handed it to her.”
“Did she look disappointed?” asked Charlie. “As if she wished she’d asked for more?”
“No,” said Richard. “If she was, she didn’t let it show. She gave a little smile of satisfaction, put it in the pocket of her school blazer and got up. ‘Nice to have done business with you,’ she said, and as she went through the door, ‘We won’t be back.’ ”
“Well,” said Charlie, stretching back in his chair and taking a deep breath, “I’m as flabbergasted as you are. As a policeman I can’t approve of giving way to blackmail. Still, I’d have to admit that you got off lightly. It seems so out of character. Do we put it down to a child’s ignorance of money—twenty pounds seeming an awful lot to her?”
“Mr. Peace, we have grandchildren,” said Carol Norton. “These days kids have a very good idea of what money is worth and what it will buy. And I’m sure this particular young woman has a much better idea than most.”
“Come along, Carol, it’s getting late,” said her husband, standing up. “We’ve done what we came to do. I just hope it’s useful, if there is a connection between the children and your dad’s death, Mrs. Peace.”
“I do think there’s a connection,” said Felicity.
“I wish there was a way we could say thank you,” said Mrs. Norton. “It was so good to have someone who was on our side.”
“Aren’t you a baker?” Charlie said to Mr. Norton. He nodded. “It would be good to have a nice loaf of bread, baked by someone who really knows what he’s doing. We’ve tried more than once, but the results are always dismal.”
“Even when Charlie is kneading,” said Felicity, “and bashes the living daylights out of the dough.”
“Oh, you have to do it with love,” said Mr. Norton. “Aggression is no good with bread. You’ll have one of my best farmhouses, and a brown one too, and it’ll be our pleasure.”
When they had gone Charlie and Felicity chewed over the cud provided by the Nortons.
“I’m sure Norton is right about Anne Michaels. She is the sort of young lady who is bound to be on the ball where money is concerned. So why did she call off the persecution and settle for so little?”
“You’d been to school and read the riot act,” said Felicity. “She could have seen her glittering career stymied from the start by a police investigation.”
“I wish I’d been so effective,” said Charlie. “I didn’t get that impression at the time. There is a rather mundane explanation that occurs to me. I guess that the drama pupils are a lot busier than most of the children at Westowram High: rehearsals and special classes after school, in addition to all the usual schoolwork and homework. Time to—let’s say amuse themselves—must be limited. Maybe they wanted to be off with those not particularly interesting (to them) people as quickly as they could because they’d got a more interesting and potentially profitable victim in view.”
“My dad?”
“Yes. This was probably about the time they targeted him and I heard them singing when I came home from work.”
Felicity thought.
“Or a slightly different interpretation,” she said. “They’d already been there by the time Anne called on the Nortons. Anne had been invited in, and had had the idea for a new sort of blackmail, something much more subtle, which didn’t involve a posse of young children.”
“Rather demeaning in the long term for a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old, you think, to run around with a children’s gang, even if she was the leader?”
“Exactly. She gets a sum she can share among her little army, tells them she’s too busy with The Tempest to do anything for a bit and then embarks on establishing a relationship with Dad. After a time she starts making the connection with him a bit more public.”
“At the carol service, for example.”
“At the carol service. Where, alas, she was helped by me. Not to mention that poor old dad fell for it like a sucker.”
“I never thought of your dad as a sucker. More of a predator.”
“Yes, with Mum he was, capitalizing on her devotion. And anyone else who enjoyed being a doormat. But he never knew how the mass of ordinary people thought or reacted. That made him very vulnerable.”
“What you’re saying is that Anne intended to capitalize one way or another on the suspicion and shock ordinary people would feel at a close relationship between an elderly novelist and a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl.”
“I can’t think of a better motive for her getting involved with him. She was aiming to create the sort of shock that swept through Coombe Barton. Anne’s parents h
adn’t felt it by the time that Dad died, but their slowness could have been prodded by Anne herself, with well-calculated ‘revelations.’ ”
They left it there. Charlie found it hard to envisage Rupert Coggenhoe as a victim, but it did seem plausible that Anne Michaels should have intended making him one.
* * *
The next morning, before he went to work, he had a phone call from Ben Costello. It was not very satisfactory.
“Inspector Peace? I’m ringing about the autopsy on your father-in-law.”
Charlie made no comment on the “Inspector Peace,” but instead kept his cool, conspicuously.
“Do you want to speak to Felicity?”
“No, I think it will be better to talk to you first. As far as the initial findings are concerned, they’re inconclusive. As I think we said was likely to be the case, there were so many injuries to the body as it fell from the upper path to the bottom of the quarry that distinguishing any particular blow by a human hand was extremely difficult. But of course, work is continuing on that.”
“I see. Rather as I expected.”
“As I did too. Now my boss, Superintendent Trench, is keen to get possible DNA material from the clothing and send it for analysis. Mr. Coggenhoe was wearing an old sports jacket that would respond. But I must say I don’t see the point of all that if we have no suspicion of foul play.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“Well, say we get material that connects this Anne Michaels to him, or for that matter connects your wife to him; would it tell us anything we don’t already know? They were both close to him, and could well have handled his clothing. But I’m not the one in charge. All I’m doing is telling you a possible step that we may take in the future. And as you know it could involve a long wait.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Charlie feelingly.
“You might like to make your feelings known to Superintendent Trench, who’s in charge of the case.”
“No, I wouldn’t. My motto in such cases is to tread softly. It’s his business entirely, so far as I’m concerned. I’ll get Felicity. This is her loss and her problem, so her views are the ones you want.”
A Fall from Grace Page 13