‘That’s true, sir.’
‘So would you mind explaining to me how I can justify using the entire resources of my CID department on an exercise that could turn out to be a complete waste of time?’
Thanet noticed an involuntary twinge of jealousy at the word my, and his determination to win his skirmish hardened. But what ammunition did he have? None. Except … ‘Doesn’t it rather turn on the word “could”, sir?’
Draco’s thick black eyebrows suddenly clamped together like two hairy caterpillars overcome by passion. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, sir, we have to acknowledge that, equally, it could turn out that she was murdered. In which case, if we had just let the matter drop after only twenty-four hours, when there were still obvious lines of enquiry to follow up … The Saldens were pretty big fish in the business world down here, and were getting bigger all the time, I gather. It seems to me that you could put that question another way: Can we afford not to pursue the matter, for at least a little while longer?’
Draco gave Thanet a penetrating stare, pinged the elastic band a couple of times, then tossed it on to the desk. He steepled his hands beneath his chin. ‘Convince me,’ he snapped.
Thanet recognised the first sign of capitulation and breathed an inward sigh of relief.
‘Well, to begin with, it’s difficult to see how she could have fallen through that gap in the parapet by accident …’
Thanet reiterated all the conclusions he and Lineham had reached and Draco listened intently, black eyes glittering. He then asked Thanet for details of the lines of enquiry he would follow up today if further investigations were made. Finally he said grudgingly, ‘Well, I suppose it won’t do any harm to carry on for a bit longer. When’s the PM?’
‘We’re trying to fix it for this afternoon, sir.’
‘Right. We’ll review the situation again tomorrow morning.’ He raised a hand as Thanet started to get up. ‘There is just one other thing.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘The media. Press, television and so on. We had TVS around yesterday afternoon, claiming an appointment with you. You weren’t here.’
‘It wasn’t exactly an appointment, sir, I just said …’
‘Never mind what you said. It’s important to keep the press sweet, Thanet. It’s good for our image.’
‘Yes, I know, sir. And TVS is particularly helpful. But you know what’s it’s like on this sort of enquiry, it’s very difficult to say you’ll be in a given place at a given time …’
‘I’m aware of that. That is why I have a suggestion to make.’
Thanet waited.
‘On enquiries like these I suggest that you find time, each day, in the late afternoon, to report to me, either in person or by phone, and I can make the appropriate response to the media.’
So Draco was publicity hungry, too. That was fine by Thanet. ‘Right, sir.’
Draco reached for a file and opened it.
Thanet took the hint. He was dismissed. He hurried back upstairs still seething with resentment. If he was going to have to face this kind of hassle every morning before he could get on with his work, he’d find himself applying for a transfer before long.
ELEVEN
Mrs Pantry showed them into the big sitting-room. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’
While they waited Thanet wandered around, struck once again by the unsuitability of the furnishings. His work took him into many private houses and he firmly believed that a person’s home said much about him. This room baffled him. Marcia Salden had obviously been hard-working and ambitious. She had made a resounding success of her business and had fulfilled her childhood dream of owning this house. Why, then, had she not made an effort to furnish it in an appropriate manner? He thought of the gracious room across the hall, downgraded to office. Surely, in a place this size, some other room could have been utilised for such a mundane purpose?
Was it insensitivity, he wondered, that had caused her to treat the house she had yearned for with so little respect? It could have been ignorance, of course, but then she would have been able to afford the best of advice, had she chosen to seek it. Perhaps she simply couldn’t be bothered? But that didn’t fit in with what he had learnt about her so far. She sounded a woman who paid meticulous attention to detail. Could it perhaps – unpleasant thought – have been a kind of contempt, exercised to demonstrate to the local community how little she valued what they prized so highly, the most beautiful and imposing house in the area? Or perhaps it was simply that it was her work alone that really mattered to her and it was computers and office equipment, rather than carpets and curtains, which monopolised her attention.
What had she and Salden done in here? Thanet wondered. There was a television set, true, and the hideous cocktail bar, but none of the clutter which gives a room a lived-in appearance – no books, magazines or newspapers, no photographs apart from the one of Salden shaking hands with Princess Anne, and virtually no ornaments either. What sort of life had she and Salden led together?
The door opened and Salden came in. Thanet guessed that he had put on the first clothes that had come to hand – formal grey worsted trousers that looked as though they belonged to a suit, green open-necked shirt and a navy sweater with a pattern of blue and white diamonds and a logo of crossed golf clubs. He seemed to have aged ten years overnight. If Thanet had met him for the first time today he would have put him in his late sixties. His plump cheeks sagged, his eyelids drooped and below his eyes the pouches of slack skin betrayed the fact that after the sedative wore off he must have spent a sleepless night. But it was his eyes that revealed most clearly his state of mind. They were dazed, veiled. Salden had understandably hidden himself behind the invisible barrier erected in self-protection by those who are trying to survive the aftermath of sudden death.
Thanet experienced a twinge of self-disgust. It was going to be his job to break that barrier down. This particular type of interview, with a bereaved husband or wife who was also a suspect, was the one he hated most of all. At times it had even made him consider changing his job. If Salden were innocent, he deserved the utmost sympathy; if not, sympathy could get badly in the way. Thanet had to walk the tightrope between compassion and inexorability, knowing that whatever the outcome a human being least able to cope with life was having his defences stripped away.
‘Good morning, Inspector …’ Salden shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘Thanet. And this is Detective Sergeant Lineham.’
Salden walked slowly across to the wing chair – he was still wearing slippers, Thanet noticed – and lowered himself into it. He waved a hand at the settee opposite. ‘Please …’
Thanet complied, but Lineham retreated to the matching armchair, moving it back a little and turning it slightly so that he was at right angles to the other two and out of Salden’s direct line of vision.
‘Have you found out what happened?’ said Salden. The dazed look was still there, but behind it was a spark of animation. The process was beginning.
‘We think so. We believe she fell through the gap in the parapet of the bridge in the village, where the lorry crashed into it.’ Thanet was watching Salden’s reaction closely. Was that alarm, or simply surprise?
‘But that’s not possible, surely? The gap was roped off, and there were warning lights …’
‘You saw them when you went through the village that night.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Salden shook his head in apparent puzzlement. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I agree, it does seem odd. Obviously, we’re trying to find out exactly what happened … You said you went for a walk that evening?’
‘That’s right, yes.’
‘What time did you leave your mother-in-law’s house?’
The brief flare of interest had burned itself out and there was a pause before each answer now as if remembering were a process only to be achieved by will-power.
‘Let me see �
�� Somewhere around half-past eight, I should think.’
‘Which way did you go?’
‘Through the village. I went for a drink at the pub first, then I carried on, over the bridge towards the Sturrenden road.’
‘The warning lights and rope barriers … They were all in position then?’
A long pause, this time. ‘So far as I can remember, yes. I think I would have noticed, if they hadn’t been. But I was rather preoccupied. I was thinking about my mother-in-law. We …’ He turned his head aside and took in a deep breath, held it. ‘We were very fond of each other and it always upset me, to see her as she was that night.’
‘Yes, I can imagine. I’m sorry, you’ve had a really bad time over the last few days.’
The words of sympathy penetrated Salden’s fragile defences and his eyes filled with tears. He blinked several times in rapid succession and brushed a forefinger across each eye. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise, please.’ Remember, a man is innocent until he is proved guilty. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask you all these questions, but we’ve been trying to talk to everyone who was out and about in the village that night … We understand you didn’t get back to your mother-in-law’s house until about half-past ten. It must have been quite a long walk.’
‘Well, I wasn’t walking all the time. As I said, I went into the pub for a while, twenty minutes or half an hour, perhaps, then I strolled along as far as the junction with the Sturrenden road and back.’
‘That would have taken how long?’
Salden shrugged. ‘I wasn’t walking very quickly. I wasn’t looking for exercise, just fresh air and a chance to think.’
‘About anything in particular?’
Salden frowned. ‘Not really, no. Look, Inspector, I’m sorry, but I don’t quite see where all this is leading.’
‘I assure you that everyone in the village is being asked similar questions.’
‘That may be so. But the point is, why are they necessary, if you already know how the accident happened?’
Thanet said nothing, just cast a deliberate glance at Lineham.
Salden’s face changed, its slack lines firming up into much more positive contours. His eyes narrowed as the glazed look finally disappeared and he leaned forward.
Thanet could predict what was coming next. He had heard it so many times before.
‘You’re not suggesting …? My God, you are, aren’t you?’
‘Suggesting what, Mr Salden?’
‘That Marcia … That it wasn’t an accident?’
‘We’re treating this as a suspicious death, Mr Salden, that’s all. Before we can dismiss it as an accident we have to consider all the other possibilities. Suicide, for example.’
Salden was shaking his head vigorously. ‘Marcia would never have committed suicide.’
‘You’d be surprised how many of the relatives of suicides say just that.’
Salden waved a hand. ‘Ask anyone you like … The housekeeper, Mrs Pantry … Edith Phipps … the Vicar … Anyone who knew her. I don’t think you’ll find a single person who’d countenance the idea for one second. Marcia really just wasn’t the type. She had too much to live for.’
‘I must admit that that was the impression I had already gained from talking to people. So in that case, you see, we must at least consider the third possibility.’
Salden shook his head again. There was a beading of sweat on his upper lip and he was hugging himself as if to stop himself falling apart. ‘I can’t believe it. Who would want to do such a thing?’
‘Have you any suggestions?’
Salden frowned, thinking.
There was a knock at the door. Salden appeared not to have heard. Thanet and Lineham exchanged irritated glances. Should they ignore it? But it could be important. ‘Come in,’ called Thanet as Salden, simultaneously, said, ‘There’s only –’
Edith Phipps put her head around the door. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you’d want to know … The Vicar’s on the phone, about the arrangements for Mrs Carter’s funeral, and he’s got to go out, you won’t be able to ring him later.’
Salden glanced at Thanet. ‘Sorry, Inspector … Would you excuse me for a moment?’
Thanet had no choice but to agree.
When Salden had left, Lineham burst out, ‘He was just going to give us a name!’
Thanet nodded. ‘Yes, but I bet you anything you like it was going to be Greenleaf’s.’
Lineham pulled a face. ‘Probably.’
Thanet got up and strolled across to the window. Earlier on the sky had been overcast but now the cloud cover was beginning to break up and patches of blue were appearing. Thanet leaned forward to look diagonally across to the right at the smudge of trees that was Harry’s wood. It was foolish to ignore the obvious. Greenleaf had the only discernible motive so far for killing Marcia Salden. He would almost certainly have had opportunity, too. He was accountable to no one for his movements and could well have been in the right place at the right time without anyone being the wiser. Yes, a visit to Harry was high on their list of priorities. Thanet half turned, propping one elbow on the window ledge, so that he could see Lineham’s face. ‘Well, what d’you think now you’ve had the chance of a second look at Salden? Still think he might have done it?’
‘Might have. I don’t think we’re any further forward, to be honest.’
‘I must admit he intrigues me, Mike.’
‘Why? He seems a very ordinary sort of bloke to me.’
‘But that’s precisely it! What makes a man like that tick, Mike? He is ordinary. So ordinary that he practically disappears into the wallpaper.’
‘The last person you’d suspect of murder, in fact.’
‘Exactly.’
Lineham grinned. ‘According to all the detective novels, then, he’s bound to be our man.’
‘Not such a joke in fact, Mike. Think of all the quiet little men who have upped and killed their spouses when they’ve had enough.’
‘You think Salden had had enough?’
‘Not necessarily, no.’
‘If he did do it, it looks as though he killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, doesn’t it? I’d guess she was the one who was the driving force behind the health food shops and all this.’ Lineham waved a hand to encompass the Manor, the grounds outside. ‘Not that it would matter too much, I suppose. There should be a tidy little sum to keep him in comfort in his old age.’
‘Not necessarily, Mike. For all we know they could be mortgaged to the eyeballs. We’ll have to look into it. But there’s no doubt that at the moment Salden’s a prime suspect. He’s the only person we know of so far who was definitely in the right place at the right time.’
‘So far.’
‘True. But – and it’s a big but – if his motive wasn’t financial it’s difficult to see what it could be.’
‘Does he need one, sir? As the music-hall comedian would say, he was married to her, wasn’t he?’
‘Don’t tell me you’re becoming a cynic in your old age, Mike.’
‘I was only kidding. No, the point I was trying to make is that, as you’ve said so often yourself, no one really knows what goes on between a married couple but the two people themselves. And in this case, well, they’re an odd pair, you’ll agree.’
‘True. Though they must have got on reasonably well to have worked in the same business under the same roof for twenty years or so.’
‘They weren’t exactly under each other’s feet, were they, in a place this size?’
‘Maybe not, but they’d only been here eighteen months, remember. I bet that for years they were tripping over each other all day and every day in some poky little flat above the shop.’
Across the hall a door slammed. Thanet strolled back to his seat.
‘Sorry I was so long. There was a lot to discuss.’ Salden was moving more briskly, as if making decisions had nudged him one step further back towards normality. He sat down, frowning. ‘What were
we saying?’
‘I’d just asked if you could think of anyone with a grudge against your wife,’ said Thanet.
‘Ah, yes … Well, as I was going to say, there’s only Harry Greenleaf. I suppose you’ve heard about him?’
‘We have, yes. In fact, we arrived yesterday just as the bailiffs were about to evict him. I hope you don’t mind, but I took it upon myself to delay the eviction. I thought you wouldn’t want all the fuss and commotion that would follow. A lot of the villagers turned up, you know, and formed a protest line. They’d have had to be removed bodily before the bulldozer could have got through to the hut.’
‘Really? Good grief. I didn’t know that. Edith – Miss Phipps – told me you’d sent the bailiffs away. Thank you. A minor riot was the last thing I’d have wanted on my hands yesterday.’
‘What will you do now, about Greenleaf?’
Salden shrugged. ‘Let him stay on, probably. If the local people feel as strongly as that …’
‘It was your wife who was so keen to get rid of him?’
Salden looked embarrassed. ‘Yes. I never did understand why. Still … although, as I say, he’s the only person I can think of who could be said to have had a grudge against her, I really can’t believe he would have gone to the sort of lengths you’re suggesting. He’s always struck me as being a quiet, gentle sort of chap, the kind who wouldn’t squash a fly without having qualms about it. He’s always taking wounded animals under his wing and patching them up before releasing them into the wild again, that sort of thing.’
Thanet decided to backtrack a little. ‘To get back to your walk … Even allowing for your time in the pub, it wouldn’t have taken you an hour and a half to stroll as far as the Sturrenden road and back.’
‘There’s a footpath running alongside the river, on the other side of the bridge, and a bench or two here and there. I went and sat on one for a while.’
‘It was freezing, that night.’
‘I was well wrapped up … Look, Inspector, all this interest in my movements … I’m not stupid, I can see where it’s leading …’
Thanet said nothing. He was interested to see how Salden would deal with this.
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