‘No idea. I don’t see that this is going to get us any nearer the murderer of Angela Reed.’ He stressed the surname, at the same time deliberately reminding her what was supposed to be the purpose of their collaboration.
She did not react. ‘We’re feeling around in the dark. There’re things to be found out, and Cynthia might know something.’
‘We can but try.’ His voice was neutral and emotionless.
It was as well they had the Range Rover, as parts of the roads were flooded, and at one place a gentle ford had become a torrent. Harry became more and more uneasy as they neared the Brent residence. He felt distinctly at a disadvantage, having to meet an Assistant Chief Constable. Did he call him sir? Did he stand with the fixed attitude of neutral enmity that he’d learned to adopt with the screws in prison? Still, he reflected, it was early afternoon. The ACC would surely not be at home. But wasn’t it true that the big boys in the police, like the big boys everywhere, spent very little time actually working?
He sobered at this thought, and recovered only when the old house, as she turned in at the drive entrance, failed to awe him. He had expected something more grand and showy, and in any event was distracted by the rose beds lining each side of the drive. Harry and roses had an affinity for each other.
‘Can I get out here?’ he said quickly.
‘Are you going to turn and run, Harry?’
‘I’ll walk up. It’ll give y’ time to prepare him for the shock.’
She had the car at a halt. ‘I wish there was some way to tell when you’re joking.’
‘Give me time, then,’ he said, climbing down to the drive.
She grimaced at him, and drove on, parking beside her Mercedes.
Roses are best after rain, if given time to shake free of the weight of their petals. They smell stronger. They also look brighter under a lowering sky when the light is poor, seeming to have stored the last batch of sunlight for this eventuality. Harry strolled the drive, crossing back and forth as he recognized old friends. He could not have explained his delight in roses, which had caused no little derision amongst his fellow cons. The prison psychologist had murmured something about there not having been enough colour in Harry’s life, not wishing to venture into the cliché of opposites attracting each other. Harry told nobody that it was their delicacy that fascinated him. He didn’t want to be taken for a poofter, he told himself. But Harry had never understood any aspects of homosexuality.
Oliver Brent was waiting in the hall, mildly amused that he was being kept waiting. Virginia, not herself certain of the outcome of the meeting, hovered just behind his shoulder. They watched Harry through the open front door. Tara, sitting at her side, polished the parquet with his tail.
Harry mounted the steps into the porch, seeming only then to become aware of them.
‘Harry,’ she said, ‘this is my father. Daddy — Harry Hodnutt.’
Brent offered his hand. Harry only just prevented himself from wiping his palm on the seat of his pants, then engulfed the small, neat hand in his paw.
He wondered how Brent had managed the height regulation. Perhaps he’d shrunk since then. He was two inches shorter than his daughter, stiffly erect to make the best of what he’d got. There couldn’t have been more than ten stones of him, slim and crisp, with the pink and smooth and always clean appearance of a man who expects more of himself than of others. His hair had been chestnut, but was now almost fully grey, though plentiful and tidy. It did as it was told. His eyes matched the greyness, but they were the clear grey of the west sky on a fine morning, his eyebrows still chestnut. The moustache was clipped to precision, every hair regimented. His smile, on which he had to keep a firm rein at the office, had a boyish charm he had never outgrown.
‘I hear I have to thank you for saving my daughter’s life,’ he said, his hand light on Harry’s shoulder and piloting him through the wax-perfumed panelled hall towards the room at the rear.
‘Hardly that. She wouldn’t have fired the thing,’ Harry protested, caught off balance because he hadn’t thought he’d done anything extraordinary.
‘She did fire it,’ Virginia said.
‘I upset her.’
‘That’s true.’
Harry had never entered such a magnificent room before. The ceiling was so high that he could barely make out that the plaster was moulded. He wondered whether the chandelier lit up at night, and decided that paintings were a pleasant change from pin-ups. The soft carpeting made him wonder whether he should have wiped his feet, the upright chairs seemed too delicate even to look at, and the easy chairs were covered in such light, silky-looking material that he wouldn’t dare to relax in one.
‘I noticed you’re interested in roses,’ said Brent, walking over to the tall windows. ‘More of them out here.’
The rear garden was terraced, had sunken walkways, a distant formal pool, and raised flowerbeds confined by miniature walls. Roses flared and flamed everywhere, climbed over pergolas, spread over mounds, flaunted themselves in bowers.
‘Past their best, I’m afraid.’
‘Not really,’ said Harry, recovering his breath. ‘The second flush…I hope you can keep up with the dead-heading.’
‘It’s quite a job.’
‘Noticed a trace of magnesium shortage along the drive,’ Harry observed.
‘Shortage? But I use Tonks formula.’
‘Ah!’ said Harry. ‘There y’are then. In the spring, do you get the new buds leaning over at an angle? Not drooping, growing like that?’
Brent stared at him in surprise. ‘Well yes.’
‘Magnesium shortage.’ Harry nodded. ‘Epsom salts. A good dose of Epsom, nothin’ like it.’
Virginia was watching them with amusement. She was aware of the weight of the pistol in her shoulder bag, worried whether to surrender it to her father and have to endure explaining its presence.
‘If you two will excuse me,’ she put in, ‘I want to take a shower, and change.’
‘Oh yes, yes,’ said Brent, not attending. ‘To be sure.’ Then he stood back, his policeman’s eyes surveying Harry critically. ‘Your clothes are wet.’
‘Nearly dry now.’
‘I can lend you a dressing gown…’
‘No…no. I’m all right,’ said Harry, appalled. ‘I only called in. Ought to be off…’
‘Nonsense. I’m not having it. You’ll come with me…’ He paused. ‘Have you had lunch?’
‘A sandwich.’ Even going dutch, it had emptied his pocket.
‘We eat at seven-thirty. You can use my bathroom, and I’ll find you my longest dressing gown. Probably hardly come below your knees, but no matter. Ada will dry and press your slacks and do whatever’s necessary with the rest. Is that jacket real leather?’
‘Yes.’ Harry prayed he wouldn’t ask where it’d come from.
‘Then she’ll have to be careful. Afterwards, we’ll have a drink and a few of her tiddly-bits to keep your strength up till dinner, and we can have a good long chat. Was that magnesium or manganese?’
‘Magnesium. The indications for manganese are different.’
Harry felt himself trapped. He couldn’t see how he was going to return to the luxury of his private barge unless Virginia agreed to drive him. But Brent, when set on a purpose, was not to be denied, as many a Chief Super had discovered. Harry was led up a staircase that swooped round one side of the hall and along a corridor, mildly protesting.
Virginia, stepping from her shower, heard them walk past her door.
‘Where did you learn about roses?’
‘Inside. You get masses of time to read. I was in charge of the Governor’s garden, but he didn’t think much of roses.’
‘Passed the time for you, though.’
‘It just fled.’
‘I’ll remember that. Encouraging words for our customers.’
The voices faded. She hid the pistol beneath her underwear in the bottom drawer of her dressing table, first making sure that the safety ca
tch was on.
Later, she managed not to laugh at Harry, barefoot and with half a yard of muscular legs protruding from beneath the hem of her father’s maroon dressing gown, delicately sipping sherry and trying not to wince. Tara was showing an interest in his hairy shins. She was intrigued by his strange dignity when Ada draped his dried clothes over his arm, Ada already awed by the size of the clothes she had dried and pressed, now over-awed by the man who was to wear them, terrified when Harry tried his smile on her.
‘If I can use your bedroom again, sir,’ said Harry in a stiff voice, having rehearsed the words in his mind, the sir at the end slipping out before he could trap it.
‘Where else, my dear chap? Not here, certainly.’
After dinner (Harry a fraction behind because he had to watch which cutlery came when) Brent mentioned that he could use a chap like Harry around the garden. Harry’s heart sank. They were devouring him. His life was to be taken up, shaken around, and replaced in tidy, compact patterns. His independence was to be stolen. His sense of dignity was to be assaulted. A crust was to be tossed, and he, ex-con as he was and therefore a no-hoper, was to be grateful.
‘I’m not one for the country,’ said Harry, and though he tried not to seem brash, he noticed that they glanced quickly at each other. The subject was dropped.
Even later, coffee and brandy having been disposed of, it was suggested that Harry should stay the night.
‘Must get back to my place,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he added. ‘Somebody might move in,’ he explained in apology.
‘I’m a little tired…’ Virginia began.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll walk down to The Cross, and get a bus.’
She lifted her chin. ‘I’ll drive you, Harry, if you insist on leaving. We mustn’t forget you haven’t even got your bus fare left.’ Brent, glancing from one to the other, raised his eyebrows, and said nothing.
She drove him into town in the Mercedes. He insisted she should drop him in the square.
‘You’re a stubborn man, Harry Hodnutt,’ she said, as she drove down the hill from the house.
‘I can walk from there. You can’t take this car into Hanger Lane.’
‘You know I didn’t mean that.’ She was impatient, not understanding him. ‘What’s the harm in taking a job when it’s offered? A room over the garages…’
‘Your father’s a fine man,’ he said with apparent irrelevance.
‘I’m glad you realize it. The offer was made in all sincerity.’
‘I know that.’
‘A job you would have enjoyed, too.’
He mumbled something. ‘Pardon,’ she said. ‘Speak up, Harry.’
‘When this thing’s done.’ There was a trace of anger in his voice. ‘When I know where I stand.’
She parked in the square, which was quiet at that time, and sat back. ‘Explain that, please.’
He almost shouted: when I know who you are, and what you’re after. He said carefully: ‘You might eventually decide that I killed Angela after all, and then how could you kill me, in your father’s rose garden?’
‘She was still alive when you were arrested,’ she said, her teeth barely separating.
‘And nobody thought of that?’
‘You could just have raced straight from the lay-by into the police trap,’ she qualified.
‘Ah.’ But he was satisfied he’d distracted her from his true concern.
‘I shall,’ she told him, ‘pick you up here at ten tomorrow morning.’
‘For a briefing?’
‘We have matters to discuss with Cynthia. I have matters to discuss. If you’re not here, I’ll assume you’ve lost interest.’
He climbed out of the car, said goodnight, to which she didn’t answer, then raised his arm in salute in case she was watching him in the rearview mirror.
Then he walked home to Hanger Lane and his barge. It occurred to him that he would like to be in ACC Brent’s garden during the following spring. Would love to. But he shrugged aside the thought as a weakness. They were offering him a handout. Poor old Harry!
Having worked up a grand mood of opposition to change, Harry, who was unused to alcohol in glasses of less than a pint, and had therefore taken too much, wandered morosely down Hanger Lane. It was so dark that he failed to notice the figure in the doorway. But he paused, lifting his head and sniffing. Apart from the rank odour of the canal itself, there was something different. An acrid smell. And ahead on the wharf, at that moment not directly in his angle of vision, there was a red glow.
He broke into a stuttering run, burst clattering on to the wharf, and saw that his home was on fire. The run became a gallop, but steps behind him faltered his purpose.
A voice called out: ‘I wouldn’t, Harry. The gas cylinder…’
The cylinder exploded to make the point. Harry watched the roof of his cabin lift, releasing a fountain of flame, and then the blast and the heat hit him and almost had him off his feet. He could almost hear his eyebrows frizzle, and ducked his head behind his arm. The flames roared for a further minute, then they sank into the water with a sullen hiss. The surface boiled and throbbed, until there was silence.
Vic Fletcher was at his elbow. ‘Good job you weren’t two minutes earlier, Harry,’ he said.
‘Was that you?’
‘Don’t be a fool. As though I would.’
‘A fine guard you are.’
‘Only just got here, Harry.’
Harry stared at the spot where his barge had rested. Three good outfits had gone down with it, but hardly anything else of value. He looked round. Behind him the lane was empty and silent. In all directions the craggy outlines of derelict buildings jutted against the sky. Silence. In this district an explosion would attract no more reaction than a head ducked lower and an ear afflicted with deafness.
They both stared at the canal. Its surface had ceased to surge.
‘Got anywhere to stay the night?’ Fletcher asked.
Harry stared at his feet. ‘No.’
‘Better come to my pad, then.’
Harry stared at the shadowy face. ‘Yours?’
‘Why not? Only got a chair, but it’s softer’n cobbles.’
‘And have you slit my throat in the night?’
‘Nah!’ His shadow moved in rejection. ‘When the times comes, I’d want y’ to know, Harry.’
‘The time could be now.’
Fletcher laughed softly. ‘You givin’ in? No more suspects to check on?’
Harry said: ‘Right. I’ll take yerrup on it. Lead on, I’m at your heels.’
‘Not shoulder, Harry?’
Harry gave the canal one last glance. ‘You’re callin’ the tunes, you lead.’
But nevertheless, by the time they’d weaved their way between the old warehouses and come to a road with a streetlamp, they were shoulder to shoulder, Harry stumping along stolidly, Fletcher moving with loose-limbed and effortless stride.
Baldy? wondered Harry. Had he struck so soon? Or, in spite of his denial, Vic Fletcher himself? But, if Vic Fletcher, why? Surely he hadn’t forced an opportunity to offer friendship.
They were now in an area where at least there was movement, if furtive. Two pubs, close to closing, were beginning the routine chucking-out. A fish and chip shop was open late for the staggerers on their way past. (‘You hungry, Harry?’ ‘Lord, no.’) They walked on. A street where prostitutes glanced, moved, resettled at their lack of response. A street with moving traffic, with hurrying pedestrians, and finally a side street of ancient and forgotten dignity. Three yards of front garden to each, with stairs plunging to basements, mullioned windows with crumbling stonework, tiny porches with doors still boasting one or two of their original stained-glass panes. Every house was converted to flats. Ground floor cost the earth, second floor only a hemisphere. Vic Fletcher had a basement.
‘This is it,’ he said, opening the door into a damp passageway. ‘Livin’ room here, bedroom next, kitchen opposite. Class, this is, Harr
y. Good address. Cars parked nose to nose in the street.’
The cars, Harry had noted, were mainly wrecks, drifting away as rusty water down the drains. He didn’t know how to class Fletcher’s pad. The only thing he could say for the place was that there might not have been water just below the floorboards. Fletcher ushered him into the living room, reaching past him for the light switch, and it was at once evident why he had brought Harry there, and might even have started the fire to bring it about.
A woman had been there, that was certain. The curtains at the high-placed window were chintz, certainly not of Fletcher’s choice. The shelf over the fireplace, its throat stuffed with newspaper, was lined with ornaments of a quality that did not suggest Fletcher. Two framed pictures on the wall indicated careful selection, a row of hard-backed books in a low, two-shelved bookcase bore titles that would be way out of Fletcher’s world, which probably ceased at comics. The chair that Harry was probably intended to sleep in was soft and well-padded, and nearly new. There was an order about the room. There were vases that had clearly been used for their intended purpose and had boasted flowers. Not recently, perhaps. The rest of the room remained untouched, carefully swept round and dusted, but preserved. Carefully? Lovingly. A woman had made this room, and that woman had been Angela.
Harry crossed to the framed photograph above the dormant fireplace. He remembered her at once, though the dancing hair was motionless. Those large, innocent and mocking eyes, the wide mouth and chin, the laugh. Oh yes, Harry wouldn’t easily forget those. He was surprised to find that, although he’d thought there was a resemblance, nothing in her face now reminded him of Virginia.
Angela was laughing in the arms of Vic Fletcher. The picture gave the impression of having been taken on a seaside promenade. Both were laughing at the camera, she with her head against his chest and both arms round him, he standing with one arm round her shoulders, his head tilted so that his cheek rested on her hair.
Harry knew that photographs could be faked, but surely not to this perfection.
Hanging from Fletcher’s free shoulder, his thumb hooked in the strap, was Angela’s shoulder bag. Except that it was the same bag that Harry had last seen hanging from Virginia’s shoulder. It had then been carrying a .45 automatic pistol.
The Second Jeopardy Page 12