The House of Women

by Alison Taylor

  ‘Jesus! You sound like you don’t know yourself.’

  ‘I’m telling you how others view it,’ George said, ‘so I don’t expect to see daylight again in the foreseeable future.’ He rose, his energies uncoiling like springs, and began to pad from one corner of the small cell to another, unshod feet almost silent. ‘Is my room secure? Has anyone been back?’

  ‘Forensics went to check on a few things, and I called in to make sure the door’s been repaired and the lock fixed.’

  George halted suddenly. ‘Why did forensics go back?’

  ‘Mr McKenna sent them, in case the excitement of finding the bracelet made them a bit slipshod looking for other things.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Signs that it was a genuine break-in, and that someone got in while you were away, though I don’t see how they could. No-one’s got a key for the mortice, have they?’

  ‘Ned had one.’

  ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you say so before?’

  ‘I didn’t think last night because the door was kicked in, but I told whoever took my statement when I reported the suspected break-in. You can check.’

  *

  Rowlands sighed. ‘You’ve already had one bollocking for consorting with suspects. Give her half a chance, and Bradshaw’ll put you on a disciplinary charge, so it’s a waste of time even thinking she’ll listen to anything you’ve got to say about keys to George’s room, faked break-ins, and planted evidence. As far as she’s concerned, it’s all over bar the shouting, and as from tomorrow, we’re on other duties. She ripped up the search warrants on Edith’s house.’

  ‘Mr McKenna won’t be told what to do,’ Dewi said. ‘Not when it’s against his better judgement.’

  ‘He might have no choice.’ Looking at the younger man’s eyes, bright with anger, he added: ‘George saying he gave a key to Ned is the same as him saying he was in London last week. We can’t prove it, and we can’t disprove it, so we’re left with balancing the odds.’

  Dewi fidgeted with a ballpen. ‘So why didn’t we find Ned’s letters and other stuff with the conveniently to hand bracelet?’

  ‘Because he got rid of them. The bracelet’s small enough to overlook.’

  ‘We’ll regret this.’ Dewi’s voice was ominous.

  ‘Maybe, and maybe not, and quite frankly, I’m fast losing interest. We’ve got cars to worry about, including hers, which is still somewhere in the wide blue yonder.’ Rowlands smiled coldly. ‘She’s gone home in a little Fiesta. It was all she could get her hands on at short notice.’

  ‘You want to be careful she doesn’t pull her knife out of my back and stick it in yours, sir.’

  ‘Haven’t you figured out yet she’ll have more than one knife? God! You haven’t a clue how life works, have you? You’ve been part of McKenna’s cosy little clique too long, and so has Janet.’

  ‘You sound as if you resent the way we get on together, sir,’ Dewi commented.

  ‘I’m telling you how the situation looks to an outsider. It’s no skin off my nose, because I’m just passing through, but you’re stuck with Bradshaw.’

  ‘I expect she’ll learn to fit in, if she’s staying.’

  ‘First Phoebe Harris, then the unwholesome Iolo, now you!’ Rowlands was exasperated. ‘Is there something in the local water that goes to your head? You seem to think you can turn the world any way you want it.’

  ‘That’s the difference between the leaders and the followers,’ Dewi said mildly. ‘Not that I’d call the professor a leader. Would you?’

  ‘And how d’you rate Bradshaw?’

  ‘We’ll see, won’t we? When push comes to shove.’

  ‘OK then.’ Rowlands grinned suddenly. ‘Let’s give her a shove in the right direction. She flatly refused to let me interview Iolo about Ned’s papers because she’s besotted with the image he and the sulky Solange put over, whereas I think it’s a long way from the reality.’ He reached for his cigarettes. ‘For instance, his income won’t support mortgage, car finance, general living expenses, as well as her clothes and jewellery. His book sales are nothing to write home about, and his lecturing pulled in less than £500 last year.’ He lit the cigarette, his smile lingering. ‘I’ve been busy on the computer.’

  ‘Solange probably gets her clothes cheap. She used to be a model.’

  ‘She did indeed, but there are models and models. I’m not saying she advertised for punters in a Parisian telephone kiosk, although that could be how she met Iolo, because I imagine he’s got a liking for the gutter. The French call it nostalgie de la boue.’ He grinned again. ‘I checked with immigration. She was a house model for a ready-to-wear clothing outfit in Paris, which is as unglamorous as it gets.’

  ‘Her family could be well-off.’

  ‘Her father managed a small ironmongery before he retired, her mother worked part-time in a wallpaper factory, they’ve got three other children, and live in one of Paris’s poorer quarters. Solange just trolled around various shops and offices before she struck lucky at the clothing factory.’

  ‘So what’s that got to do with Ned?’

  ‘I don’t know, but there’s some connection. Why else would Ned keep all those cuttings and whatnot?’ Inhaling a lungful of smoke, Rowlands went on: ‘Janet said he might’ve hero-worshipped Iolo, but I can’t see it, somehow.’

  ‘We’ve got a potential source of information captive in the cells,’ Dewi pointed out.

  ‘Bradshaw would love that, wouldn’t she? Anyway, George can’t say which of the boxes is the Box of Lies.’

  ‘Phoebe says all the boxes must be full of lies.’

  ‘She doesn’t know any more than George. She’s making an assumption, and assumptions are dangerous,’ Rowlands commented. ‘None the less, Iolo was at Edith’s on Wednesday, so he could have spiked the food.’ He pulled a sheet of paper from a folder. ‘Our problem would be proving he got his hands on some tetracycline. The pathologist checked on everyone with access to the house, and the Williamses have only had penicillin derivatives, although he gets a lot of sleeping pills. Mind you, I’d need sleeping pills if I had to lie next to her every night.’ He handed over the paper, pointing out regular prescriptions for hypnotics in the name of E Iorwerth Williams. Nothing was listed for Jason Lloyd, nor for George Polgreen. ‘I checked up on them,’ he added. ‘Apparently, they’re both disgustingly healthy.’

  ‘So?’ Dewi stretched and yawned. ‘They’ve both got family. What about them?’

  10

  Waiting for a while at the road junction, McKenna watched Robin trudging into the twilight, his hobbling figure shrinking and fading, and as he drifted out of sight around a bend, McKenna realized this landscape would be diminished with his passing. He gunned the motor and went after him, headlights catching the tramp full in the back and casting his shadow huge on the wayside boundary wall. ‘Get in. Your foot looks bad.’

  ‘I won’t argue.’

  ‘And ask the people at the farm for a dab of surgical spirit and a plaster. If that blister gets infected, you’ll be laid up, then Martha won’t get the hole in her roof mended.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Ingram could arrange for it to be done,’ Robin said. ‘Maybe he’ll take his daughter to Ned’s funeral, then the whole world can see them.’

  ‘Will you go?’

  The old man shrugged, staring into the distance. ‘If I’m in these parts when he comes home, not that a funeral makes a difference. The world’s already a colder place for knowing he’s gone from it.’

  *

  Instead of turning in his tracks after leaving Robin by the farm gate, McKenna drove south to Dolgellau, and lingered over dinner in a restaurant packed with tourists, thinking of distances and savouring the horizons and perspectives he had viewed today, for they diminished his own narrow perspectives and blurred the close horizons of his failures. Acknowledging a great unwillingness to relinquish the day, he paid the bill and gunned the motor of Dewi’s car once more.

  In his own,
he would see only what surged into brief life in the headlights, but now, he thought, he was face to face with the night. As the road plunged into Coed y Brenin, the air was awash with the scent of pine, and he heard rustlings and the crackle of branches, then stamped on the brake when a small deer erupted from the trees and shot in front of him. Dense pockets of mist obliterated the road without warning, throwing the glare from the headlights back in his face and chilling his body, and he felt adrift, simultaneously free and in peril, for there was not a soul in the world who knew where he was, except perhaps the old tramp, who could have but an inkling.

  He passed the gate where he had parted company with Robin, and saw Trawsfynydd power station in the distance, blazing with energy of its own making and casting its brilliance across the poisoned lake. About to take the Porthmadog turning, he changed his mind, and set out for the Crimea Pass, slate tips as big as mountains on either side, headlights bouncing off the broken walls and blind gables of wayside cottages and lighting the eyes of wandering night creatures. As he reached the high ground, a pair of Tornado jets streaked overhead, red and green lights flashing on wingtips and tail, and glancing westwards, he saw them bank steeply, flame shooting from the afterburners, then heard engines screaming above the whine of the slipstream. One after the other, they pursued him the length of the Pass, a pinpoint of heat from the laser sights hovering between his shoulder blades and boring into the back of his skull, until he slid from view beneath the densely wooded slopes overhanging Betws y Coed.

  His own car, dull creature that it was, was neatly parked a few yards from his front door, with Dewi asleep in the driver’s seat, a dreamy expression on his face. His back and shoulders aching, McKenna roused him. ‘You should’ve gone home.’

  Dewi glanced at his watch. ‘I only left work half an hour ago. We’ve been paperchasing again.’ He checked his car for signs of injury, set the alarm, and followed McKenna into the house.

  The cats shot into the kitchen as soon as McKenna opened the back door. He left it open, to dissipate the heat of the day trapped in the small room, and set about feeding and watering his animals, while Dewi sat by the kitchen table, yawning. When the kettle screeched, he rose to brew the tea. ‘That stain’s coming back on your carpet, sir. I told you it would.’

  ‘So I must ask myself,’ McKenna said, rinsing his hands, ‘if you’re ever wrong.’

  ‘Not often.’ He yawned again. ‘And if I am, I keep quiet about it.’ He splashed milk into two mugs. ‘However, Ms Bradshaw’ll find it harder to cover up her blunders, ’cos they’re bigger. People are taking against her already, so she’s getting a hard time. She’d been called back twice before I left.’ He poured the tea. ‘Some yobbos from Gwalchmai thought they’d have a free bus ride to Bangor, and the driver very bravely chucked them off at the next stop, so they started heaving bricks at his windscreen.’

  ‘Nothing new,’ McKenna said, searching for an ashtray. The cats looked up, irritated by his restlessness.

  ‘And there was another fight outside Kentucky Fried Chicken. A patrol car got its window kicked in ’cos the mob was trying to get at the prisoners in the back seat.’

  Ashtray located, McKenna subsided into a chair. ‘Pressure works both ways, and when she starts pushing back, you’ll learn a lot about the human pecking order.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘The lower down you are, the nastier it gets.’

  ‘As you say, sir, it works both ways, as I told Mr Rowlands earlier.’ He smiled. ‘How was the car?’

  ‘Very exciting, but I gave Robin Ddu a lift, so it might need fumigating.’ He laughed at the expression on Dewi’s face. ‘For once, he was quite clean, even if he is still full of strange ideas and tall stories.’

  ‘So are you any the wiser for your trip to the back of beyond?’

  ‘Annie Harris was there. She and Gladys fleshed Ned out a little, and filled a few gaps in the family history.’ He fell silent, remembering. ‘But there’s clearly no property worth killing for. The house is a near ruin.’

  *

  After an hour of tossing and turning and thumping pillows in search of a cooler patch on which to lie, McKenna gave up the unequal struggle and went downstairs.

  The cats were asleep on the hearthrug, twitching now and then in their dreaming, as Gertrude Jones twitched in her dim world. He opened the back door to the fragrant night, then sat at the parlour table playing solitaire, and, in the midst of the pointless turning of cards, was awestruck by the possibility that all human endeavour was an involuntary assault on life’s naturally recurring tedium. Even this futile activity, he realized, flicking the stack again, held no satisfaction if it resolved itself without effort. Exposing the Queen of Hearts, he placed her neatly atop the King of Spades: red on black. The Queen of Clubs lay with the King of Diamonds: black on red. In the next row, the Queen of Spades sneered at him, defying resolution. Sneering back at the cold, two-dimensional figure which so resembled Solange Williams, he obliterated her contemptuous face with the Knave of Diamonds, almost pitying the professor.

  FRIDAY, 24 AUGUST

  1

  ‘WHAT’S ALL THIS?’ Diana Bradshaw demanded, jabbing a finger at the sheets of paper strewn across McKenna’s desk. ‘Have you nothing better to do?’

  ‘We were trying to work out what Ned wrote on his chest, and how.’ He picked up one of the sheets to show her. ‘As you can see from the note on the top, this is how “FE” looks written with the left hand. And this is how, it looks written with the right.’ Shuffling the pile, he found another example. ‘This is —’

  She held up her hand to silence him. ‘Who did these?’

  ‘Dewi Prys, ma’am. We sat him in a chair and pinned the paper to his chest.’

  ‘That’s hardly replicating the circumstances in which Edward Jones scratched himself, is it? And whether he wrote “FE” or “EF” is irrelevant. Neither means anything.’

  ‘It’s possible he intended to write ferch.’

  ‘But you’ll never know, so you’re wasting time.’

  ‘Point taken, ma’am.’

  A tiny breeze, risen off the sea during the night, swirled hot draughts and the stench of paint about the room, disturbing the sheets of paper. Diana moved a chair nearer to the window, and sat with her face in shadow.

  ‘Was there something you wanted?’ McKenna said, into a lengthening silence.

  ‘Not particularly. I presume you heard about last night’s hooliganism? Some of it was rather unpleasant.’

  ‘Legal recreation’s hard to come by for youngsters without cash in their pockets, so they resort to anything that might alleviate the tedium of hopeless poverty.’

  ‘You sound like a book at times.’ Humour flickered briefly in her eyes. ‘In my opinion, the sociological view of criminals as victims is dangerously misguided. Not only do they make victims of others, but life is actually much simpler. The Welsh have a reputation for trouble-making, which they earned by drinking to excess, settling their differences with fist-fights, and pandering to notoriously over-sexed women, and that’s why the cells are full this morning.’

  ‘They’ll empty before the day’s out, one way or another.’ He massaged his shoulder, his body haunted by the memory of being thrown from a horse. ‘Local miscreants apart, we must make a decision today about George Polgreen. I can’t support a charge against him, because there are too many others with an interest in Ned, and too much we don’t know about his background.’

  ‘Finding out about his background was supposedly the reason for going to wherever it was you spent all yesterday.’

  ‘I had to eliminate certain possibilities,’ he said. ‘The terms of his father’s will could provide motive for despatching any member of the family, only there’s no property worth getting out of bed, let alone killing for.’

  ‘Then I think the case should go on the back-burner, don’t you?’

  ‘And the search warrant on the Harris house?’

  She shifted uneasily. ‘Is it really justified?’
/>
  ‘The magistrate thought so when it was issued, and he isn’t easily convinced.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ She rose, smoothing her skirt. ‘And I’ll decide about Polgreen when I’ve reviewed the evidence.’

  ‘Don’t leave it too long,’ McKenna warned. ‘He has a good lawyer.’

  *

  ‘She ripped up the warrant,’ Rowlands said. ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘I can always get another,’ McKenna pointed out. ‘Have you asked the pathologist about scripts for the Lloyds and Polgreens?’

  ‘I left a message.’

  ‘Then while we’re waiting, we’ll have a proper look at those papers on the professor.’

  ‘Why? They don’t make any more sense than they did before Dewi finished sorting them.’

  ‘We’ll look. Where is he, anyway?’

  ‘Getting ready to go with uniform to a demo at Welsh Water. Joe Public’s voicing objections to a rumoured drought order.’

  ‘And where’s Janet?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘You tell me.’

  Dewi had rationalized the welter of paper in the five old shoe boxes into neat bundles, each indexed, and fastened with a coloured clip. Culled from newspapers and journals published in Britain, Germany, France, Austria and America, and beginning with the first announcement of Williams’s discovery of the mediaeval manuscripts, the huge wad of press cuttings ran through to a very recent review of his latest academic paper. In a slimmer bundle, McKenna found copies of the originals in Middle Welsh, attached to articles about the age-old practice of copying and recopying, with translations into English, French and German, some in the rather spidery hand he recognized from Ned’s workbooks.

  ‘Ned was more of a linguist than I realized,’ he said, comparing a German translation with the original.

  ‘Can you read German?’ Rowlands asked.

  ‘Not well enough to know if Ned improved on the other. How about your French?’

  ‘It’s quite good, but as I can’t read Welsh at all, I wouldn’t know tit from tat.’