The House of Women

by Alison Taylor

  ‘That was kind of her!’ McKenna snapped.

  ‘And she said we’re to leave off the cars and concentrate on finding out who laced his food with poison,’ Dewi added.

  *

  Janet knocked on the office door as McKenna finished the last mouthful of a Cornish pasty.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be seeing your doctor?’ he asked.

  She sank into a chair. ‘It’s too late now, and I’d rather wait to see the woman GP. She’s on leave this week.’

  ‘Is that such a good idea?’

  ‘Pregnancy isn’t an illness, sir.’

  He tried to discern the differences in her face so clear to Annie; but saw only an unseasonal pallor and smudges under her eyes. ‘If you feel up to taking statements this evening, you and Rowlands can interview Professor Williams and his wife.’ He drained his tea. ‘I want to find George Polgreen.’

  ‘When shall we interview Edith and the girls? Edith may well have done more than tidy Ned’s shirt and tie. The SOS bracelet isn’t in the room, and the only drugs we found were an almost full bottle of nitrazepam and a few antihistamines in his bathroom cabinet. There was an uncashed script for more antihistamine on his desk.’

  ‘Everyone knew about the bracelet, so what’s the point of hiding it?’ McKenna said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Have you brought back all the financial records?’

  ‘We removed all the papers apart from the books and manuscripts. They really need an expert opinion.’

  ‘George Polgreen should be able to help there.’ He stubbed out the newly lit cigarette. ‘I’m sorry, Janet. I’ll try not to smoke in front of you.’

  She smiled wryly. ‘I went through a whole pack last night. I’m finding it hard to sleep.’

  ‘Can’t you see a woman doctor at the family planning clinic? You shouldn’t keep putting it off.’

  ‘I won’t.’ She rose, gathering up handbag and pocket-book. ‘You didn’t say when we’re to interview Edith.’

  ‘We’ll wait until she’s retreated from the edge a little bit, otherwise we’ll push her right over.’

  *

  Before leaving the office, he called Annie, to say the four Harris women must be available for interview the following day.

  ‘Phoebe’s a minor, so she must have someone with her,’ Annie pointed out. ‘Apart from Mama or me. We must be suspects.’

  ‘You said you hadn’t been at the house since the Wednesday.’

  ‘But you’ve only got my word for that, haven’t you? I’ll call our solicitor.’

  *

  Dewi protested when McKenna dumped on his desk the large boxes overflowing with Ned’s papers and personal effects. ‘What am I supposed to look for?’

  ‘Motive.’ McKenna explained the provisions of the tontine. ‘Money, to or from the deceased. Things which don’t add up, literally or metaphorically. Love letters. Hate letters. The names of friends, acquaintances, enemies.’

  Blowing at the silvery residue of fingerprinting powder which lay on the documents, Dewi said: ‘Why are we sure Ned was murdered, sir? It seems like a bloody great leap in the dark to me.’

  ‘We aren’t sure,’ McKenna said. ‘We’re proceeding on the assumption, based on the pathology, without entirely discounting suicide or accident until we have more information.’

  ‘As long as we’re not just dancing to Phoebe’s tune.’ Dewi placed an untidy pile of paper on the floor beside his desk. ‘Are you getting a search warrant for the house?’

  ‘Only if Edith won’t co-operate.’

  ‘She probably will, because if she’s clever enough to dream up a killing like this, she won’t leave the evidence around after.’

  9

  The young man who opened the door to the attic flat of the house on Baptist Street was also the blackest person McKenna had ever seen, but hardly the ‘jungle bunny’ of Iolo Williams’s bigoted view. George Polgreen was tall, his face and body beautifully proportioned, his skin like polished ebony, and McKenna could understand why Mina found him so entrancing.

  ‘Phoebe said you called earlier,’ George said, inviting him in. ‘I was down at the police station, strangely enough, because I thought someone had been in here while I was away, but nothing seems to be missing, so nothing’s being done about it.’

  ‘Does your landlord have keys?’

  ‘Only for the latch lock.’ George pointed to the door. ‘I put the deadbolt on myself. I’m afraid our rooms get done over quite often.’ He hovered over McKenna, the light through the dormer window casting a long dark shadow. ‘Would you like a drink? It’s still so bloody hot, isn’t it?’ Graceful and elegant as a big cat, he went to the kitchenette and stooped to pull out two stone crocks from under the sink. ‘Cider or lemonade. Take your pick.’

  ‘Cider shandy, please,’ McKenna said.

  He took two tankards from the cupboard, and carried crocks and tankard across the room. ‘Ned gave me these,’ he said, showing McKenna the ancient crocks and their stone stoppers. ‘They came from the farm.’ He sat down opposite, in an armchair draped with a brightly woven throw, the tankard in his hands.

  Like the chair and its cover, the room was spotlessly clean and immaculately tidy, books and papers in racks and rigid plastic files, a computer neatly aligned on the desk below the window. A small digital cat chased smaller digital mice across the blanked out screen of the monitor, each mouse turning paws up as it was napped.

  ‘You don’t have curtains,’ McKenna said, into a lengthening silence.

  ‘I don’t need them. They’re untidy things, anyway.’

  ‘Why did you think someone had been in?’

  ‘Just a sense of disturbance, I guess. Things not being exactly where they should be.’

  ‘Yes, you’d notice.’ Sipping the frothy brew, McKenna said: ‘As you can imagine, we’re having problems sorting through Ned’s effects.’

  An expression of near anguish passed over the fine face. ‘What happened to him? Phoebe said he was poisoned with a drug.’

  ‘Can I smoke?’ McKenna asked. George nodded, and he went on: ‘We can’t completely rule out suicide or accident, but both are remote.’ As he lit the cigarette, the smoke was snatched by a gentle draught from the open window. ‘Although we were told Ned didn’t have an enemy in the world, he wasn’t exactly loved by some people.’

  ‘Edith and that ghastly Mina.’ George stood up, to pass McKenna a small earthenware bowl for his ash. ‘Edith’s a headcase. Civil and even smarmy one minute, screaming at you to get out the next. God knows how Phoebe stayed sane! If Ned hadn’t been there, she probably wouldn’t have.’

  ‘And Mina?’

  ‘Potentially more of a headcase than Edith, in my opinion. I don’t like her, and she knows it.’

  ‘Edith said you make eyes at Mina.’

  George smiled briefly, showing perfect, white teeth. ‘She’d be so lucky! I’ll admit to looking at her, but that’s all.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘You haven’t met her yet, have you? When you do, you’ll see for yourself what a puzzle she is. She looks drop-dead gorgeous at first sight, but she’s got a funny atmosphere.’ He frowned, searching for the right words. ‘She makes you feel odd; uncomfortable, even, but you can’t tell why, and it’s not to do with sex.’

  ‘D’you know her boyfriend?’

  ‘Clyde? I had a run-in with him once. He told me to leave her alone, and I said I wouldn’t touch her with a barge-pole.’

  ‘He’s not called Clyde,’ McKenna said.

  ‘I know, but Phoebe’s views stick, don’t they? They have unconscious validity, so they’re powerful.’ He took a long drink. ‘Phoebe’s powerful, actually. Annie is too, but not so much. I think having Bethan tempered her.’

  ‘And Ned?’

  ‘I’m a better person for knowing him.’ He fell silent, then said: ‘He got right under your skin, and I’m going to miss him. So will Phoebe. She’s changing already, from the child I knew to a person learnin
g to be alone.’

  ‘Ned could have engendered hate in an equal measure,’ McKenna pointed out. ‘Phoebe seems to have adopted his persona, and I can see how she must rile some people.’

  ‘Like him, she’s direct, uncompromising, naïve, and incapable of dissembling, which truly creative people usually are. The force of their inner life stops the ego-self developing.’ He fell silent again, thinking. ‘People thought Ned was mad because his mind was open to any possibility, any idea, any influence, and sensitive to everything. He seemed balanced and unbalanced at the same time, which is very threatening to people whose mental processes generally revolve around themselves and the fears induced by conditioning and experiences of probability.’

  ‘You’re losing me.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Phoebe told me about your excursion into the world of eisteddfoddau.’

  ‘Are you Welsh speaking?’

  George nodded. ‘I took my first and master’s degrees in Celtic languages and cultures.’

  ‘I thought you were reading philosophy?’

  ‘I’m doing a doctorate.’

  ‘Perhaps I misunderstood Professor Williams.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Then why isn’t he supervising your thesis?’

  ‘Because his qualifications aren’t up to it, so he sees me as personifying his inadequacy, which wouldn’t even be tolerable if I were white. He’s the most arrogant bigot I’ve ever met, hence the picture he painted for you.’ He leaned down to uncap the crocks, and refilled the tankards. ‘The head of the Welsh Department’s my supervisor. He was the one who put me in touch with Ned.’

  ‘I’m surprised to hear about Williams.’

  ‘Academic fraud isn’t confined to students, you know. He’s no scholar, in the real sense of the word. All he can lay claim to is unearthing a few early texts, and he’s ridden on that. He entered the Eisteddfod year after year, and never even got a mention.’ Wiping a smear of froth from his lips, George added: ‘And he’s so gratuitously nasty I’m hard pushed at times not to shove his remarks back down his throat.’ He balled his fists, the knuckles gleaming. ‘When he interviewed me for the doctorate, he said in his experience, which was considerable, black people are the dark side of man’s psyche, and being black is a congenital disease, which in a way it is, but not quite on a par with syphilis, as he believes.’

  ‘That rubbish was put about by an American psychiatrist called Benjamin Rush, and a very long time ago,’ McKenna said. ‘How come you were accepted in the face of such hostility?’

  ‘I complained to the Principal, so he sent me to the Welsh Department.’

  ‘Wasn’t that a bit risky?’

  ‘What? Complaining? Oh, you learn by experience.’ George held out his hands, palms up to show the ugly scars defacing his wrists. ‘London coppers use handcuffs held together with a rigid bar, which can break your bones with the slightest pressure, and after they’d banged me up for the fifth time and smashed several bones in my wrists, I sued for false arrest and personal injury, and got enough compensation to pay off my parents’ mortgage and finance my doctorate.’

  ‘And why were you arrested?’

  ‘Because I’m black and I was there. To a lot of London coppers, we’re all jungle bunnies, which could be why so many of us act like savages.’

  ‘What will you do with your Ph D?’ McKenna asked.

  George smiled, eyes gleaming, and McKenna sensed in him the same swift, disconcerting changes of mood so characteristic of Phoebe. ‘Become an upwardly mobile nigger!’

  ‘What do your parents do?’

  ‘My dad works the railways, like a lot of black people, and my mother’s a house-slave, like a lot of women.’

  ‘You’re becoming a bit tedious.’ McKenna lit a cigarette, watching the other man through a drift of smoke. As the sky beyond the window faded into summer twilight, and the room grew darker, he became like a shadow.

  ‘You’ll still be able to see my teeth and the whites of my eyes,’ George said.

  ‘I have some idea of the way immigrants feel.’ McKenna’s voice was tetchy. ‘It’s a hangover of the empire mentality.’

  ‘And nothing to do with skin colour. The English blame us for losing it all. You’re as white as the whitest white trash, and you probably have more problems than I do, because you don’t expect them.’

  ‘I came to talk about Ned, not myself,’ McKenna said. ‘Who were his friends? Who loved him?’

  ‘Phoebe. Annie. Me.’ George paused. ‘And perhaps that tramp they call after the Prophet of Bangor. He’s known Ned’s family since the year dot.’

  ‘You mean Robin Ddu? Black Robin?’

  ‘That’s him, but he’s not black. He’s an unwashed white man.’

  ‘The last time I saw him was when he tried to smash Burton’s window for some new gear, so we locked him up for the night.’

  ‘Did you delouse the police station afterwards?’ McKenna smiled. ‘And itched for days, wholly unreasonably.’

  ‘It’s a measure of prejudice, isn’t it?’ George commented. ‘Edith wouldn’t have him in the house, so he and Ned used to get together in a pub.’

  ‘Did Ned ever go away?’

  ‘Occasionally, but only to the farm. He found travelling stressful and uncomfortable and frightening because it reminded him of the enforced journeys to Denbigh Hospital, which is what I meant about conditioning and experiences of probability. When outer life intrudes on inner life, it can change your mental climate from fair weather to foul, and, as Ned couldn’t trust that a journey intended to end somewhere else wouldn’t terminate in Denbigh, he did most of his wandering within touching distance of base.’

  ‘What’s the subject of your thesis?’

  ‘How, when and why the Welsh diaspora came about, and its effects.’

  ‘As when Madog ap Benfraes allegedly discovered America long before anyone else knew the place existed?’

  ‘And left a tribe of Indians speaking Welsh to prove it.’ Emptying his tankard, George added: ‘Ned was helping me with the cultural impact of Welsh emigration for people on the receiving end, and the inward movement which arose as a consequence.’

  ‘The family slaves,’ McKenna said.

  ‘The men worked the slate quarry, and the women tended the house and farm. Quite a lot of them are buried in the village churchyard, but one had a granite headstone in that sea of slate because he was a free man by the time he died. He wouldn’t be cowed in death by the slate which enslaved him in life.’ Rising to go to the kitchenette, he said: ‘I’ll make coffee.’

  Standing with his back to McKenna, waiting for the kettle to boil, he put sugar and cream on a tray and spooned instant coffee into mugs. ‘You know, Ned understood concepts most of us don’t even know exist, and not only because he was at odds with normal society. Until he went to university, he’d never set foot outside his home territory, never seen the sea or a city, never moved beyond that huge massif between here and where he came from. Those mountains were an impenetrable barrier, both physically and psychologically, defining the psychological distances of Wales and the nature of the psychological landscape, and once he went beyond them, he became a refugee.’ He poured boiling water on the granules of coffee, and returned to his chair, setting the tray on the floor. ‘He taught me to look at the solid world in its metaphysical sense and see the endlessness of possibilities and connections, and in the broadest sense, the infinite impacts of human interaction.’

  ‘So, that’s one legacy we know of.’ McKenna picked up his mug. ‘Even if it’s intangible. We’re having problems with his physical leavings. Could you help us sort his books and documents? They haven’t been touched so far.’

  George nodded. ‘I don’t think he owned anything of real value. He lost most of the good stuff in a fire, and what’s left of his share in the farm reverts to the rest of the family.’ He paused. ‘The farm’s well named, isn’t it? Ned said it was poetic justice.’

  ‘You’ve lost me
again.’

  ‘In a famous mediaeval poem, there’s a house called Llys Ifor which falls into ruin. Ned reckoned the memory of all that’s happened in a place survives, so as the Jones’s Llys Ifor housed the family’s greed alongside the slaves’ misery, he thought it only right the house should eventually collapse under the weight of negative emotion.’ He paused, coffee mug half-way to his lips. ‘His ideas took on a life of their own, you know. My head must be as full of his thoughts as Phoebe’s.’

  ‘She was desperately anxious we shouldn’t try to open the Box of Dreams and the Box of Clouds. D’you know what’s in them?’

  ‘Dreams and clouds, I guess. I don’t think they can be unfastened, anyway. They’re sealed right around with brass straps.’ George smiled. ‘Did you find the Box of Lies, too? I know that opens, because I often saw Ned sticking bits of paper in there.’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘It’s an old shoe-box, made from that thick, brown, old-fashioned cardboard.’ George smiled again, teeth gleaming. ‘He had another one like it, which he said was for pieces of paper with dark intentions, but I don’t know if that had a name, as well. He was obsessed with paper.’

  ‘I gathered that from the state of his room.’

  ‘Edith called it a germ’s paradise, and said it was no wonder he was never well. She’d stand at the door sometimes, clucking and fidgeting, almost begging Ned to agree to a good clear out, but he wouldn’t, of course. He once told her everyone’s history is written down somewhere, including all her deepest fears and secrets, and psyched her up so much I thought she’d collapse.’

  ‘That wasn’t very kind, and it could be construed as blackmail.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ George taunted. ‘Ask Iolo Williams how crucial paper is: his whole career’s built on a few scraps of it.’

  10

  Hazy streaks of pink and purple, the lingering remnants of the day, lit the sky to the west as McKenna locked his car and went through the back entrance of the police station, the harsh white interior lights dazzling his dark-adapted eyes.