by Clare Curzon
In the drawing-room the low voices continued, the words lost to him. Chloë was having the most to say; Janey’s voice a mild murmur briefly punctuating the flow. He strained his ears but could get no meaning from it.
Z came downstairs with a man’s plastic-wrapped suit over one arm, went out, and he heard her locking it into her car boot. She had just returned as Janey came to the drawing-room door. ‘Chloë’s ready to see you,’ she said, and the two detectives followed her in.
The girl looked defensive. The older woman’s face was unreadable.
Yeadings sat opposite them, addressing Chloë. ‘There’s a possibility,’ he said cautiously, ‘that your stepmother was caught up in the unsavoury business of some new acquaintance she didn’t know very well.’
It was pure guesswork. All he had to go on was intuition fed by Z’s impression that Leila’s cleaner scented fresh scandal.
He had caught their attention. They seemed to be waiting for more. Right: he’d wade further in.
‘Even something illegal.’
‘Leila’s not like that,’ Chloë protested quickly.
‘So what is she like? Tell me. We need to understand. It could lead us to discover who might want to harm her.’ He had followed her into the present tense and the girl hadn’t noticed.
‘Nobody would. She - she’s gentle. She doesn’t let people rattle her. She puts up with almost anything rather than make a fuss.’
His eyebrows twitched. ‘Won’t complain? More tolerant than you, perhaps?’
‘Too damn true! She lets people —’ Chloe fought to contain herself, fists clenched and tight-lipped.
‘Walk over her?’
‘Lets people get away with things.’ The words came out reluctantly.
So much anger, he thought; but already she was beginning to retreat, wouldn’t give much more away without being shocked into it.
‘Yet someone deliberately killed her.’
Chloe stiffened, her eyes shut, and he watched the colour drain from her face. She couldn’t speak.
‘So these people she never complained about, who are they?’
‘Just people.’ As she forced out the whispered answer her face burned and she turned away from him.
Answer enough: she meant her father. And perhaps sometimes herself?
‘People are so - bloody - awful, if you don’t stand up to them.’ She spoke with passion.
‘They certainly can be. Thank you, Chloë. I’m sorry I had to probe.’
The hands in her lap turned helplessly palms upward. ‘It’s your job.’ She appeared reluctant to allow that much, but relieved that his words sounded final.
‘That’s all for the present, then. But I may need to bother you again. Later on.’
Chloe nodded, rose and made for the door. There she stood with her back to him and fought against tears, took a deep, sighing breath and ground out, ‘She was so nice, a really good person. You have to know that.’ And she was gone, not waiting for Janey.
Leila submissive and a peacemaker? That wasn’t the impression given by the body found in Shotters Wood. Leila Knightley had fought like a tiger for her life.
Just before Chloë’s arrival there’d been a call on his mobile from Forensics. They’d analysed something further: under Leila’s fingernails microscopic flecks of black suiting, wool and cashmere mix, luxury quality. And Forsyth, the expert on fabrics, had said they were lucky it hadn’t been pure wool super 120-twist, or the fabric’s surface wouldn’t have scratched off.
Which was why Yeadings had had Z take out Knightley’s dinner jacket in its plastic cover, to send on to the lab for comparison.
Janey - he already thought of her as that - stood regarding him, dumpy but strangely impressive. She waited until he acknowledged she was still there.
‘So you got what you were after. Leila was the family shock-absorber. All right; the learned Professor is a bully and lives only for himself. But you’re wrong if you assume he was the one who killed her. He hasn’t the bottle. Aidan is just a womanising wimp.’
She turned away and the scorn had left her voice. ‘It’s a less civilized world now. There’s little kindness left.’ She looked suddenly crumpled. Then she left.
Kindness? What had kindness to do with the case? Yeadings asked himself. Yet she was right: we live in an age of anger. With more kindness there’d be less rage. Only where is this kindness suddenly to spring from? There has to be security first. Peace of mind: there wasn’t a lot of that about either.
And if Leila Knightley had been kind, what good had it finally done her?
I’m showing my age, Yeadings thought. I should leave the armchair philosophy to others. Our job’s keeping the peace. Or at best grabbing wildly as it fast goes down the plug hole.
To the team he often summed up his first impression in a single word. For Janey he chose ‘pragmatic’. Now for Leila he had been offered ‘kind’. From the brief sight he’d had himself of her alive, she probably had been.
He looked up to see Charles Hadfield standing again in the hall. He hobbled forward, leaning heavily on his stout blackthorn. ‘I just can’t believe it,’ he confessed.
The weathered face, with its fine broken veins over the cheekbones, showed an underlying pallor. Despite the bluff voice, body language said something else. Leila’s death had truly shaken him.
‘No one who knew my niece could ever want to harm her.’
‘So you think it must be a stranger who attacked her?’
‘Was she … I mean - A man, was it?’
‘She wasn’t raped. The attack wasn’t sexual.’
The policeman’s crudeness shocked him, even as he took comfort from the knowledge.
‘Sit down, Mr Hadfield,’ Yeadings invited.
‘I’m not a bloody cripple, Superintendent.’ But he took the chair indicated and stretched one leg out painfully. The ankle was heavily bound with crepe bandage. ‘Went north for the heather and a good malt whisky. Both conspired to bring me down.’
Yeadings nodded, almost smiling. ‘I’m hoping you can help us. We know nothing of the family. Except that Mrs Knightley was your niece.’
‘I’m her only blood relative. She was my sister’s daughter. Her parents are dead, lost in their yacht off Agadir. She came to me as a little girl. Knightley was a recent widower when they married. That would be nine years back, when Leila had done a year at university. Both children are her husband’s. Leila was a wonderful mother to them.’
Good: brusquely informative, he was co-operating. But then, why shouldn’t he? Possibly because by nature he was an awkward cuss; had long chosen that role and revelled in it; lived it as a private joke. Yeadings had met his kind before.
‘Tell me what your niece was like.’
Hadfield thought for a moment. ‘She was a good girl, dignified, dutiful. Too dutiful. There wasn’t much juice in that marriage.’
A curious phrase. It seemed even to faze the man who’d used it.
‘I mean - she gave all she had. He was an unmitigated bastard.’
‘Was? Do you think he’s dead then?’
Hadfield was silent, the blue eyes hooded. He rested his chin on thickened knuckles grasping the blackthorn’s carved knob. The stick was planted firmly upright, less as a prop than a device to explode him to his feet. Despite the closed eyes his whole pose was spring-loaded. This was a very angry man.
‘You didn’t like him,’ Yeadings prompted.
Hadfield opened burning eyes. ‘I hated his very guts. If he hasn’t killed himself already, I’ll be first to claim the honour.’
So, speaking apparently without collusion, the family had a single opinion, that Leila was more sinned against than sinning. Yet who ever knew what went on in a marriage beyond the couple themselves? And even they could find it a right old conundrum.
‘I was responsible for her upbringing,’ Hadfield admitted. ‘I was a middle-aged bachelor when she was sent back from Africa, an orphan. Never had any children of my own, tha
t I know of. So I sent her to boarding school and saw her briefly in the holidays. That’s if she didn’t go off camping or pony trekking, or something of the kind.
‘When Janey first moved in with me she gave me no end of a telling-off; said I’d deprived the child of a sense of family. So she took it on herself to act the surrogate mother.
‘I think now it may have been too late by then. Why else would Leila have taken on a disagreeable husband with a couple of ready-made children, the first man who ever showed any real interest in her?’
‘Perhaps she was in love with him.’
‘She thought she was. But once the knot was tied she seemed to—’
Yeadings was good at waiting. He found that the longer the silence drew out, the greater the compulsion for it to be filled. But the man opposite him wasn’t holding anything back. He simply found it hard to find the right words.
‘It was like one of those dimmer switches. Her light didn’t go right out, but she wasn’t the same. She would laugh less, and her smile never reached her eyes. She’d been so animated before.
‘But she never said she was unhappy. Of course, I’d warned her beforehand not to give up her freedom, her own academic aspirations. You should always be prepared for marriage going sour on you. Not that we knew then of his unsavoury reputation.’
Hadfield beat against the floor with his blackthorn. ‘How he is allowed to work among impressionable young people I’ll never understand. I suppose it’s overlooked because of his exceptional qualifications. Some people only see what they want to see. And he’s well thought of in his speciality.’
‘Which is what precisely?’
Hadfield waved a hand vaguely. ‘Physical Chemistry; Biophysics. These distinctions are all a bit beyond me. That’s what he likes, of course: dazzling lesser mortals with his science.’
‘You’re speaking of him now in the present tense. Does that mean you have changed your mind? He hasn’t done away with himself?’
Hadfield nodded slowly. ‘I have to admit: suicide isn’t his line. He’d never see himself sufficiently in the wrong. And whatever he did know he was guilty of, the arrogant bastard would always expect to ride it out.’
Through the open windows there again came the sound of a car engine followed by men’s voices. Z left her post and went through the hall to check on it. Not one but two taxis had drawn up by the kerb and the constable on duty was endeavouring to block a double dose of demands for information.
From the first cab the Piggott family spilled out to stare in amazement at the incident tape and the police presence. Z recalled that they’d left on the previous day in a new-looking white Mercedes; so what had become of that?
The parents seemed aghast, but the prospect of new excitement was bringing the boys out of their subdued state. The zoo visit, like yesterday’s trip to Brighton, hadn’t proved one of unalloyed pleasure.
Taken up with observing their reactions, Z was slow to remark the smaller man who slid from the second cab and stood staring fiercely at the doorway behind her.
She turned to see that Charles Hadfield had limped out, leaning heavily on his stick. From fifty feet apart the two men confronted each other like stags at rutting.
The defiantly upthrust goatee beard, the gingery hair and pinched features were familiar from a portrait in the study. This newcomer was the missing Professor Knightley, alive and clearly in anything but a co-operative mood.
He advanced on the older man, fists clenched. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded.
Chapter 13
Piggott stared at the two angry men through slitted eyes. His fingers, biting into Madeleine’s arm, made her gasp. ‘Who’s that?’ he demanded.
Her head was bent over her purse, locating her house keys. She screwed round to look. ‘Which one?’
‘The little ginger runt who’s just arrived.’
‘That’s my new neighbour.’
‘The professor?’ He put into it all the scorn he felt for the over-educated. And something else besides.
‘That’s right.’ Madeleine hooked out the keys and became aware of him paying off the cabbie. That was strange, because he normally turned tail the minute he’d dropped the kids off.
‘You’re not coming in again.’ It was somewhere between a question and a protest.
‘We have things to settle.’ He scowled at the boys. ‘You two clear off down the garden.’ He aimed a swipe at Duncan as he passed.
Madeleine looked affronted at the way her husband appeared to be settling back in. He needn’t think she was going to offer him coffee. On the other hand her own nerve ends were shrieking for caffeine, and with her hands busily occupied she’d feel less vulnerable.
They went straight through to the kitchen and, relatively secure on her own ground, she opted for frontal attack. ‘I’ll be needing more money for the school holidays. There’ll be outings and fresh clothes for Dunkie even if I pass his old ones on to Patrick. It costs twice as much as in school term.’
His little currant eyes went meaner. ‘You’ll get same as usual. It’s more than ample. And if either boy gets a new outfit it’ll not be that dickhead Duncan.’
She knew it was hopeless trying to explain how the younger boy manipulated his brother into the wrong. Jeff would only say you shouldn’t let anyone make a fool of you. Yet that’s what he was doing. Or else he enjoyed egging Patrick on in his mischief-making. And if she defended Dunkie, Jeff’d start shouting about her turning him into a mummy’s boy; why didn’t she go ahead and let him do the cooking?
Due to yesterday’s lost trainer he’d had a miserable time today breaking in a stiff pair of new shoes. His skin was sensitive and he tended to get blisters. But the trouble had started long before Dunkie acquired his limp. It was when Jeff drew up at Regent’s Park with the Merc’s wheels half on the pavement.
‘I suppose it’s all right to leave the car here?’ Madeleine had doubted.
‘There’s nothing to say we shouldn’t.’ Nevertheless her uncertainty reminded Piggott of the car’s value and its recent purchase. It would be a blow if some marauding kids fancied it for joy-riding. A customer last week had had his brand new Porsche wrapped around a lamppost after a police chase.
‘I’ll just shove it in over there.’ Piggott opted for safety by reversing the Mercedes into the forecourt of a sizeable block of flats with the name Flambard Court above the impressive doorway.
The zoo part of the day went fairly smoothly, irritation being mainly avoided by the party splitting into three. Madeleine found a shady spot and some magazines to keep her entertained, while Jeffrey mooched off to appreciate the mandrills’ coarser activities. The boys stayed mainly together, Duncan circulating in his normal amiable haze while Patrick, having tired of banging on the bars outside the big cats’ enclosure and having been repulsed by a spitting camel, experimented with pieces of discarded sandwich and various animal droppings as ammo in his spud gun. This kept him out of worse mischief until a keeper observed him firing near the penguin pond and he was compelled to beat a hasty retreat.
They reassembled for lunch, which wasn’t a bad meal and left them, at least temporarily, glazed and less antagonistic. By 3pm Jeffrey considered his duty done and rounded up the others for the journey home. It was then that he found the Mercedes was no longer parked in the forecourt of Flambard Court.
A tight-lipped approach to the duty porter brought him out to observe the empty parking place. The man allowed the heated flow of complaint to wash over him with the air of one accustomed to being misunderstood, before pointing out the notice warning: vehicles not displaying the Flambard permit were likely to be wheel-clamped and removed.
‘But it’s Sunday,’ Piggott roared.
‘Yes,’ the man agreed mildly. ‘We get a lot of it on Sundays.’ Piggott wasn’t going to lose face in front of the others by chasing up where the car had been taken. He had minions for that, and tomorrow was another day.
They straggled along the p
avement to a bus stop and waited in surly silence. Decanted twenty minutes later at Baker Street Underground station, Jeffrey felt the last of his patience snap and he hailed a passing taxi.
By the time he had its passenger door open wasn’t Madeleine, stupid cow, queuing for train tickets. The boys were even further ahead.
‘C’mon, dithers,’Patrick shouted, standing by the down-escalator. Duncan hopped obediently on. He’d been carried five or six stairs down when Patrick’s crowing laughter reached him. He spun round and stared up at his exasperated mother, and his redfaced father gesticulating towards something outside.
His heel twisted painfully as he turned. He lost balance, falling against a fat man trying to pass alongside. Both went staggering for a yard or two, grabbing at the moving handrail. At the foot of the stairs the man held him at arm’s length, bitingly sarcastic.
Duncan tore himself free and made for the up-escalator.
When he arrived at ground level his mother hauled him off like a two-year-old.
In Baker Street the cab driver was fuming and a traffic block building. As Duncan made to get in the cab Jeffrey reached out and struck at him with the back of one hand. Duncan felt the slash of his signet ring and warm blood start running down his cheek.
‘Bloody imbecile!’ his father roared. ‘You’ve been nothing but a fucking disaster all weekend!’
And a disaster it had been for everyone, Madeleine agreed now as with shaking hands she started filling the kettle. And Jeff hadn’t really taken notice of her demand for holiday cash. There was something else eating at him.
‘This professor.’ You couldn’t miss the contemptuous pause before the title. ‘What did you say his name was?’
‘Knight, I think. No, Knightley. They delivered his post here by accident once, so I saw it. We’ve never actually met.’
‘Knightley.’ Nearly another bloody title. You could see the little shit thought he was God’s gift to the universe. A small man. They often behaved like that. Pompous little squirt. Well, it wouldn’t take much to puncture his balloon. And with the police on his doorstep it could be that trouble was catching up already.