‘No, we’ve had our tea, m’duck. Only one of them microwaved lasagnes, I’m not up to doing much cooking yet, but it wasn’t bad, considering, never mind what Joe thought of it.’ Remembering Mayo’s stringent comments on microwaved food, too, Abigail wondered if all men didn’t share her superior officer’s opinion. ‘But I’d rather have something like that than have to depend on my daughters, they both have jobs, you see, though they’ve been golden over all this, bless their hearts.’
Joe came in with a tray on which were two mismatched cups and saucers, a teapot without a cosy. The milk, however, was in a jug. Abigail guessed he wouldn’t have dared go so far as to leave it in the bottle. ‘You won’t want me for a bit,’ he announced. ‘I’m off down the Legion.’
‘I might be in bed when you come in, Joe. It’s been a long day.’
‘Orright,’ Joe said and left them.
‘It embarrasses him when folks are poorly.’ Mrs Totterbridge evidently felt some apology for her graceless spouse was called for. ‘Doesn’t rightly know how to cope, see. He’s old-fashioned that way. Sooner I’m back to rights, the better, and that shouldn’t be long, seeing I’m mending so nicely. Now, what can I do for you, lovey?’
Keeping her opinions of men like Joe Totterbridge to herself, and her own fresh embarrassment at having come here without previous warning, or giving enough thought as to how disruptive such a visit might be at such a time, Abigail said gently, ‘I really think it might be better if I came back later —’
‘Don’t you think of it, m’duck! A bit of different company’ll do me a power of good. My Kath’s coming round at eight but until then I’m on my own.’ She drew breath and gave Abigail a speculative look. ‘It’s about Mr Wetherby’s murder you’ve come, isn’t it? I knew, when I told that policeman in the hospital I worked for them, that somebody would want to see me – you always do, don’t you?’ she said, her opinions of how murder investigations were conducted evidently coloured by TV police dramas. ‘How is he, then, the copper? Nice chap.’
‘Oh, he’s mending, too, thanks. Yes, it’s about Charles Wetherby I’m here, or rather Mrs Wetherby.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Totterbridge said thoughtfully, pouring tea and passing Abigail a cup. ‘Though to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have fallen over backwards if I’d heard it was the other way round – that she’d been the one to be murdered, and you wouldn’t have had far to look for who’d done it! But there, I shouldn’t have said that, should I?’
‘You mean because of the way he treated her?’
The old lady eyed her speculatively, but seemed relieved that she didn’t have to explain what she’d meant. ‘I couldn’t understand it, to tell you the truth. My Joe’s not much of a one for the lovey-dovey stuff, but he’s never raised a finger to me, nor ever would. He knows he wouldn’t see me for dust if he ever tried anything like that on! But as for Hannah – oh, I don’t know … if she’d been one of my own daughters I’d have given her a good talking to, but somehow, I never could get near her, if you know what I mean. She was nice enough to work for, always pleasant to me, but not like my other lady, that’s Miss Lockett, Dorrie Lockett down Kelsey Road, who I’ve known ever since she came back home to look after her old father. And was he grateful? Was he heck, miserable old sod! But best not say too much about that, eh, lovey, what’s past is gone.’
For all the old lady’s garrulity, Abigail’s heart warmed to her. ‘How long have you worked for Mrs Wetherby?’
‘Hannah? Ever since he got the job at the school. I never saw him do anything to her, mind, only had the evidence of my own eyes, when I saw her poor arms bruised, and sometimes marks on her neck. Mind you, I don’t think she always let him get away with it – I’ve heard them having words, more than once, and she can be a bit sharp-tongued herself. But she had plenty of provocation – I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had wanted to get her own back. Though it’s daft to think she’d have killed him!’ she added hastily, as though afraid she’d said too much. ‘I mean, she’d have left him before it came to that, wouldn’t she?’
‘Why do you think she didn’t? Leave him, I mean.’
There was a silence, a long one for Mrs Totterbridge. ‘Well, you know, us women, we’re funny that way, aren’t we? Who knows what makes us put up with what we do? It might just have been because she still loved him.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Well, it was a funny set-up. She didn’t have many friends to speak of. Moped around the house most of the time, she did. But she had her compensations, I suppose. He didn’t beat her up all the time, and the way he treated her in public, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He never kept her short of money – and can she spend it! Beauty treatments and hair-dos are the least of it – and she must keep them mail order firms going, the stuff she orders! You should see the catalogues that come through the post, parcels arriving every day! I’ve teased her about it, but you have to be careful. As I said, she can be a bit sharp at times. Like last week, when this heavy box comes. “What’ve you been ordering this time, then, lovey? Feels like a hundredweight bomb!” I said. “You don’t want to joke about things like that, Eileen,” she says, “it’ll only be those shoes I ordered.” Hobnailed boots, they must be, then, I thought to myself, but it turns out later it was a new pair of kitchen scales with brass weights, just like my old mum used to have, though what was wrong with the others I don’t know.’
‘You say she hadn’t many friends, but she was quite friendly with John Riach, the Assistant Bursar, I gather.’
‘Yes, and friendly’s all it is! She wouldn’t look twice at him, not when —’ She stopped abruptly and busied herself with the teapot. ‘Another cup, lovey?’
‘No thank you. What were you going to say?’ Mrs Totterbridge shook her head, looked flustered, and Abigail supplied, ‘Not when there’s someone like Sam Leadbetter around?’
‘Don’t you go thinking there’s anything going on there, either! I’ve let my tongue run away with me again. It’s these pills they’ve given me, must be. I wouldn’t say a word against Sam, not if you strung me up I wouldn’t! I’ve known him since he was a baby, and a nicer chap never drew breath. All that was over before he left to go the South Pole, and I can’t say I was sorry. Nothing could’ve come of it.’
18
When Mayo had a problem, he walked. Tonight, he had several, and one of the most pressing was Angela Hunnicliffe. She was becoming a source of intense frustration to him, mainly because of the feeling that he didn’t know quite what they were dealing with here, he couldn’t pin her down, or the circumstances of her murder. Apart from her name, her identity as an American citizen and wife of Brad Hunnicliffe, he still didn’t have any idea what sort of woman she’d been. She appeared to have made no contacts, other than with people she’d met at the school through her husband’s work there. They had found her pleasant, bland, and unmemorable. The only surprising thing about her was that she’d had an affair with Wetherby.
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. A line he’d read somewhere, God knows where, a leitmotif that kept running through his head, so that every time he heard its notes, he thought of that third person who was still alive, in the form of – who? Who had killed the other two, Wetherby and Angela, what had happened between the three of them to cause it? Something trivial, a small twist of fate, a few angry words, one thing leading to another? As banal as that? Or had there been some deadlier intention, on the part of the one who still held the secret?
He couldn’t, as his daughter Julie used to say, get his head round it. Odd, that, he felt more in charge of himself than he had been for weeks. He felt himself rested, complete, whole, returned to being a member of the human race. Reunited with Alex. Two weeks apart, then a peaceful weekend, a walk in the country, a dinner at their favourite restaurant, and his life was suddenly back in clearer perspective than it had been since the Fermanagh affair. A salutary little lesson to be learnt there, that his entire outlook on l
ife depended so entirely on the naturalness and rightness of their being together. He didn’t know why it worked out like that, but he wasn’t going to knock it.
Walking homewards through the sodium-lit streets on Monday evening, leaving behind the busy main thoroughfares, he found a desire to see for himself the house where Angela had lived, though he’d been assured she had left no legacy of her tenancy other than a pair of pyjamas, a toothbrush – and her luggage, of course, which had been examined and found to contain no clue as to why she’d ended up, dead, in the River Kyne, rather than in Boston where she’d obviously intended to be.
Elton Street ran at a sloping angle off the main road, a short terrace of small houses that was the only one left of dozens of similar terraces built on a grid system around the turn of the century. Sooner or later it, too, would be pulled down, presumably for space to build more of the same sort of pretentious but, when it came down to it, tacky detached houses which spread out below it, unless the council got there first and built more of the high-rise flats which stood out like sore thumbs and ruined the skyline above Elton Street. Meanwhile, it stood alone, dwarfed but unbowed among its more brash neighbours, several of its houses sporting fresh paint, new front doors and window boxes.
Cleo had set up her small PC with her back to the window. Consequently, she didn’t see his arrival. It was the knock on the door that made her lift her eyes from the screen and then reluctantly get up to answer it.
Oh, damn! she muttered, saving the file and blanking the screen. She hoped it wasn’t Daphne, calling for a chat on the first totally free day she’d had since she’d seized the chance to quit working for Maid to Order. It had become evident that the chickenpox epidemic had run its course, children were going back to school and mothers returning to work at MO … Val Storey had been generous enough to thank her for helping out (though Cleo feared she was just being polite) and given her an extra tenner in her wages – to help out in case she did decide to move to London.
Which was still not certain.
It had taken some doing the other day, to convince herself it wasn’t simply self-righteousness that was prompting her to make the first move. She reminded herself that Jenna had said sorry once, hadn’t she? When she, Cleo, had been too hurt, too furious with her sister to listen. So now it was her turn. When she’d finally psyched herself up to dial Jenna’s number, it had been continuously engaged. She gave it up at last and immediately, her own phone rang. Jenna. Her first words were, ‘I hope it’s not you who’s paying for all those calls you’ve been having, or you’ll have a bill like a Third World Debt! I’ve been trying to get you all evening.’
Neither of them was in any way surprised at this evidence of telepathy, this tuning in to their personal hotline. It happened all the time, it always had.
Jenna rarely allowed herself to show excitement, but her cool tones had sounded appreciably less so than usual. She began before Cleo could get a word in. ‘I’ve found you a job.’
‘Oh, Jen, not you as well! I’ve had this out with Mum more times than –’
‘Not that kind of job, Cleo. Listen, I met this woman who runs Emu Publishers. Have you heard of it?’
‘Yes, I have,’ Cleo said cautiously, after a moment’s thought. As far as she could recall, it was a small but reputable publishing house with an interest, though not wholly so, in women’s fiction, not yet taken over by one of the big conglomerates.
‘When I say the job is yours, naturally she wants to see you first. But she’s looking for someone, and she was very interested. Especially when I told her about Bough of Cherries.’
There was a long, fraught silence. ‘Did I hear you properly, Jenna Atkins?’
‘Don’t get uptight, she wants to read it. There’s a chance she might publish it!’
‘You’d no right even to mention it!’ Apart from herself, Jenna was the only one who knew what she’d been doing during the months she should have been working for her exams. Not even Toby had realised the extent of what he called her scribbles.
‘Of course I’ve a right, I’m your twin, aren’t I?’ It occurred to Cleo that this was Jenna apologising again, and her fury subsided. ‘You should do something about it,’ Jenna went on. ‘It’s never going to be published, sitting in a drawer or whatever!’
Not in a drawer, but its equivalent. Stuffed into an old briefcase for six months, her first, precious, unpublished novel. Twice she’d taken it out and read it through, and afterwards felt her heart beating with excitement and possibilities. Yes! It was good. It did have something fresh and new about it. It wasn’t as naive as she’d thought. Twice she’d put it back, telling herself she wasn’t in a position to judge it objectively, there was too much of herself in it, how could she have the nerve to think anyone would want to read what had, admit it, been done before, and better …
‘This woman’s name is Laura Boyd. She’s going to write to arrange an interview. It isn’t in the bag yet, but you can’t turn that sort of chance down, Cleo – it’s something a lot would give their eye-teeth for. Decent salary, and you won’t be too pressurised. Plenty of time to write in your spare time.’
‘There’s a little matter of where I would live, of course.’
‘You could share with me, I’m moving to a place of my own.’ She went on impulsively, as if afraid she might not say it at all if she didn’t say it quickly, ‘Toby’s gone to India, he won’t be back. Not into my life, anyway. What do you say?’
Silences between them were not usual, but here was another, in the space of a few minutes. ‘Cleo?’
‘I’ll think about it. And Jen – thanks a mill. For the flat-share offer, too.’
Afterwards, she’d read through the manuscript once more. Bough of Cherries charted a young girl’s progress into adulthood, her first love. Yes, it was autobiographical, to some extent, in the way they said all first novels were. She felt herself light years away from the girl who had written it. The serious, intense person who’d believed Toby was equally serious. India! She hoped he’d found enlightenment there. She laughed.
And because she’d been able to laugh, she didn’t put the book away again. A little stab of hope pierced her and she’d left it lying on her desk. Right up until this morning, when she’d decided to give it a final editing and reprinting, just in case …
She knew he was a policeman as soon as she opened the door. He was stamped with it in some indefinable way, like her father, though anyone less like George she found it hard to imagine. Perhaps it was something in the eyes, that looked straight at you as if trying to read your mind. A big, sober-looking man with dark hair going grey at the temples, and those matching dark grey eyes with crinkles at the corners. Which showed he could probably smile if the occasion warranted it, and that the smile might be nice.
He told her pleasantly that he was Detective Superintendent Mayo, as if she hadn’t already guessed it, an ex-colleague of her father’s, and please could she spare a few minutes of her time? She’d been right about the smile. It quite transformed him.
She was wary, all the same. She’d heard about Mayo, that you were safe if you played fair and worked at least half as hard as he did, that he didn’t make waves unnecessarily, but that you were wise to reach for your life-jacket when he did. What did he want with her?
Only to talk about that gun she’d seen, or so he said.
Oh, crikey, that gun! That bloomin’ gun. She wished she’d never set eyes on it.
No, he said (his eyes did crinkle up), he didn’t want her to repeat herself, just to read this through and tell him if that was exactly what she’d told Inspector Moon. He unzipped the leather document folder he was carrying, and handed a paper to her. ‘I should pull your curtains,’ he advised, ‘you’re on view to anyone outside.’
She thought for a moment he was being paranoic, acting like someone from MI5.
‘That’s just what my mum says,’ she answered. Sassy. Saying she could take care of herself, thank you very much, and he saw t
hat although she was nothing like her mother to look at, she had something of Daphne’s spirit. He could imagine them clashing.
‘Then your mum’s right,’ he told her, amused but slightly irritated. No one nowadays sat in a lighted room that faced directly on to the street, its contents on view to any passing villain, not if they’d any sense. Didn’t she realise she was a sitting target, in front of that window, an open invitation, if only to any delinquent who might want nothing more than that PC she’d been working at? She still looked rebellious but she did draw together the thin, unlined, flowered curtains which he saw immediately weren’t going to make things much better. There would still be that young, defenceless head silhouetted against the light.
He refused with thanks her offer of coffee, and watched her, assessing her while she read, aware also of the impact of the glowing room, the decorating of which had been young Gilchrist’s unsustainable alibi for the time of Wetherby’s murder. He looked particularly at the painted window in the alcove, acknowledging its cleverness, and saw why Tony Gilchrist’s artistic ability had been reckoned outstanding at school, but thinking, with a wry smile, that the effect of the intended deception was lessened by its depiction of sunny skies when the night outside was black as your hat. A false window like that also ought to have curtains which could be drawn over it at night.
‘Yes, that’s what I told her,’ Cleo agreed, handing Moon’s report back when she’d read it. ‘And I really don’t remember anything more.’ She looked at him candidly. She seemed, as George had said, to have her head screwed on. A pair of amazing blue-green eyes, a firm chin. Pretty girl. Pity about the hair.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘I know you think we’re being a pain over this but I’d like you to tell me again, if you can, exactly what happened when you spotted the gun in the drawer.’
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