‘Why would I be appropriate to discuss equality?’ he pressed.
‘You are a man, Mr Stroud.’ Radhika didn’t crack a smile but everyone else sniggered.
‘Wouldn’t you say the financial world belongs primarily to men?’ Heather said, lightly enough to more or less mask an argumentative trend. ‘You’re in finance.’
‘So are many women.’
‘But the balance is … well, that’s not the point. Women can no longer be considered less intellectually capable than men, don’t you think?’
Alex watched the exchange between Heather and Harry, which didn’t go anywhere, and wondered if Heather saw herself as an intellectual.
‘I don’t think we can do this now,’ Radhika said. She pulled a small, lace-edged handkerchief from her purse and held it to the bridge of her nose. ‘We should be helping search for Pamela. Making telephone calls. Asking questions.’
‘When Radhika first came here, Pamela took her in until she could find a place,’ Mrs George said. ‘I agree, we should do something useful.’
Alex kept watching Harry who shuffled his notebook back and forth between his hands. Could they assume he had nothing to do with what happened to Pamela? Would he just walk in here as if nothing had happened – if he had been responsible for her death?
Credible actors weren’t that rare, she supposed. Most of his healthy color had drained away and he kept his gaze on the table.
‘We could call everyone in the village to find out if she’s been seen in the last day or two.’ Radhika turned to Harry. ‘Could I use your notebook, please?’
‘She was gone three days,’ Alex said and instantly wished she’d never come to sit with these people.
‘How do you know?’ Harry leaned forward, stared at her. ‘Does that mean she’s back now?’ He swallowed loudly.
‘Why didn’t you tell us at once?’ Vivian took her wine glass in a shaky hand and swallowed deeply. ‘You can see how upset we all are. What’s the matter with you?’ Her voice rose enough to produce another lull in conversation among the bar patrons. ‘Where is she?’
Alex closed her eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have come. Bad judgment on my part. I knew the police wouldn’t want me blabbing before they question anyone.’
‘Have they found her?’ Harry stood up, his body rigid. ‘Tell me now.’
‘Pamela’s dead.’
EIGHT
Conversation in the bar remained subdued but Tony could tell this was because the clientele could hear what was happening in the up-room.
Alex was under siege.
Quickly, he found Lily and gave her instructions before making a rapid path through the bar. Harry Stroud bumped into him on the way to the door. The man looked ghastly.
When Tony reached the area where the group sat, Alex was wide-eyed and silent. Several of the other women were crying openly.
‘We’re being called,’ he said, sidestepping to get to her. ‘We’d better not keep the police waiting.’
‘The police?’ Radhika cried. ‘What happened to Pamela?’
Tony took Alex’s elbow as she rose and felt a tremor running through her. Bogie promptly jumped from Radhika’s lap and followed.
‘There you are,’ Lily said when they reached her in front of the snug. ‘Should I bring some coffee?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alex muttered.
Tony smiled at Lily and said, ‘We’ll give a call if we need anything.’
He barely stopped himself from taking a backward step when he saw O’Reilly and Lamb. They must just have arrived and were tossing their coats and hats aside.
‘Let’s get on with it,’ Bill Lamb said. ‘We’ve got rooms here tonight and the sooner I get to mine, the better.’
‘Sit down, please,’ Dan O’Reilly told Alex. ‘You’ve had a time of it. Let me buy you a drink.’
Alex’s indecision showed and it looked as if she would refuse, then thought better of it. ‘A glass of Sauvignon Blanc would be lovely,’ she said and when Dan looked questioningly at Tony he added, ‘I’ll have a half of Old Sodbury Mild, please.’
Dan went to the small, frosted glass window that opened into the bar to place their order.
When they were settled with their drinks – both Bill and Dan had beer – Dan leaned back in his chair and stared at the table where he made damp circles with the bottom of his glass.
‘What are you thinking?’ Tony asked. ‘How difficult was it to get Pamela out?’
Alex made a small sound but it was quickly muffled when she drank some wine.
‘You are the one with all the questions,’ Bill said after a gulp of beer, his eyes skewering Tony.
‘Reasonable enough,’ Dan said. ‘It was a problem but we’ve got some gifted people. You’d understand we wanted to move the body – or rearrange it – as little as possible, but photography wasn’t as easy as we’d like. When this gets out we’ll have to make sure people stay away from the crime scene, and it’s a big one.’
Tony thought of the two reporters in the other bar but saw no reason to mention them. The detectives must be accustomed to the media crawling all over their patch.
Dan O’Reilly leaned back in his chair. ‘Now I want to go over everything that happened as far as you two were concerned, and anything else you think may be useful.’
‘Anything you know at all, in other words,’ Bill said, but there was nothing antagonistic about the way he asked.
It seemed to take a long time to sketch in all the details of going to see if Tony might have seen a face in the bushes and what happened afterward.
Dan and Bill didn’t interrupt once.
‘It’s going to haunt me forever that I didn’t stop that night, regardless of what I did or didn’t see, just to make sure,’ Tony said.
‘Who knows why we make split decisions,’ Alex said, and her earnest belief in him showed. It gave him strength. ‘My mother thinks she saw Pamela hurrying away from the pub that same night. Mum called out. Whoever it was didn’t answer but my mum still feels it was Pamela Gibbon. Mum thinks she’s somehow responsible for what happened. How can she be? How can you be, Tony?’
‘Your mum thought she saw her?’ Dan said, making a note.
‘Yes.’ Alex didn’t seem bothered by making the announcement but both Dan and Bill made another entry in their notebooks.
‘What did you think of the gear in the tower?’ Dan said. He began to work a paper bag out of his trouser pocket. ‘Did you think it was cheap?’
He felt around in the bag and produced a sticky sherbet lemon which he popped into a cheek. The rest of them declined his offer of a sweet.
‘It’s expensive stuff,’ Alex said. ‘We could probably track it all down to Broadway or Bourton-on-the-Water, or Burford. You can get all that stuff in Burford. Some high-quality products available there – or Chipping Campden.’
‘So, not cheap tack a teenager might come up with,’ Bill said.
‘If the teenager had money – or borrowed the stuff from home, it could be.’ Dan moved his sweet from one cheek to the other. Bogie had sidled up to sit beside him and watch his face with a look that meant he was trying to remember if this was friend or foe. Dan ruffled the dog’s head.
‘Tell me who was up there at the tête-à-tête when we came in?’ Dan said. ‘Sounded a bit subdued.’
‘That’s because I just got myself into a stupid corner and told them Pamela was dead,’ Alex said. She crossed her legs, and her arms, and rested her chin on her chest. ‘I walked right into it.’
‘That’s unfortunate.’ She got the full, uncanny effect of Bill Lamb’s innocent, pale-blue stare. ‘Did you tell them the location of the body, or—’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Dan interrupted. ‘Time to stir the pot anyway. Did you get anything that might be useful? From their reactions?’
‘I didn’t say anything other than Pamela’s dead. They were all upset. Several of them cried. Harry looked devastated.’
‘He walked out,’ Tony said.
‘Looked like hell.’
‘I didn’t see anything but shock and sadness,’ Alex said.
Dan took a long draft of his beer. ‘To be honest, Alex, I have to think of you as a potentially hostile witness. I think you’d be very reluctant to point the finger at anyone in Folly without a lot of evidence. Not that I’m saying I suspect Harry Stroud.’
‘I can’t believe this is happening again, in this little place. Do you think there’s a connection?’
Dan settled his eyes on Alex. He smiled and replied, ‘I don’t know – yet. But it’s definitely something to consider when there is another apparent murder in a place as small as Folly-on-Weir. We have to look for a connection between the last crime and this one.’
Bill studied his glass, took a swig and set it down. ‘We felt there were holes in what happened last winter. It all tied up too neatly. But we’d be fools not to look for connections.’
‘Connections?’ Tony wanted to take the man by the throat. ‘Alex nearly died. We were all lucky to get out of that mess alive. And what do you mean by holes? Why would you wait to mention any of this?’
Bill stared at Dan who surprised Tony by avoiding everyone’s eyes. ‘Let’s see how things boil down this time.’
‘Are you looking for Pamela’s relatives?’ Tony asked. ‘I don’t think I’ve heard anyone mention them.’
Letting out an irritated sigh, Bill said, ‘You don’t think looking for relatives is the first thing we do?’
‘Of course.’
‘They’re on that in Gloucester,’ Dan said. ‘Did you move anything when you went down after the victim?’
‘Probably her collar,’ Tony said. ‘Checking for a pulse. From all the blood I knew she’d taken a while to die but I doubt she moved much. I didn’t see any blood on the lowest rungs in the wall. If she’d reached for them, there would have been. There had to be broken bones and probably internal injuries. With any luck, she was unconscious.’
‘Post-mortem should tell us all that,’ Dan said. ‘They’re backed up but they’ll get to it as soon as they can.’
‘Did you see the glass? Some of it was in her face.’
‘Reckon we can just go home and leave this case to the good doctor, boss.’ Bill looked pleased with himself.
Alex half-stood up. ‘Why are you so nasty? It infuriates me when you talk to Tony that way. I thought we got over all that.’
An unexpected shade of rose pink spread over the detective sergeant’s cheekbones but he didn’t attempt to mollify either of them.
‘We know about the glass,’ Dan said. He gave Bill a warning glance. ‘What did it look like to you, Tony?’
‘It was pretty thin. Looked as if it just about exploded. Couldn’t have been a big piece to start with – at least, I don’t think so. The torch would have been a good size, though – businesslike. I didn’t really take a lot of time studying the stuff.’
Someone tapped on the door and Dan called, ‘Come in.’
A man, probably in his mid-forties, of average height and thin stepped through the door and closed it. He looked around the four faces staring at him.
‘This is a private meeting,’ Bill said.
‘Someone called me.’ He ran a hand over straight brown hair combed straight back. He appeared perfectly comfortable. ‘I only live in Cheltenham, so I came right over. I must say I’m impressed with how efficient you people are. You give the public new faith in our police force. Not that I can suppose the officer didn’t hit it lucky when she found me. That policewoman on the phone said you were staying here so I thought I’d see if you were still up and about. Detective Chief Inspector O’Reilly and Detective Sergeant Lamb?’
The two detectives grunted.
‘I’m Jay Gibbon, Charles Gibbon’s son by his first marriage – his only child. Pamela Gibbon was my stepmother.’ He crossed himself when he said her name.
NINE
Wind buffeted Tony’s Land Rover on the way up the hill to the area at the top where both he and Alex had houses, in a shallow, bowl-shaped valley known as the Dimple. Light rain on the windscreen made the wipers squeal.
‘They could hardly wait to get us out of there,’ Alex said, laughing a little. ‘I don’t think Dan cares that much. He sees us as on the side of right, but Bill seems to want to brand us as Potential Enemy Number One.’
Tony pulled a chamois from the cubby and wiped condensation from the inside of the windscreen. ‘Don’t be fooled. Neither of them wanted us there after Jay Gibbon arrived. Strange none of us knew he even existed. Did you think it was funny for him to rush over like that when he obviously had no bond with Pamela? That’s a rhetorical question, I could be wrong but don’t you think the man could be sniffing around in case there was a provision for him after Pamela’s death?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see how things line up. Maybe we should ask a few questions about Pamela’s relationship with her stepson – who looks older than she did.’ She twisted toward him in her seat. ‘If there is something significant for him in the will – either left over from Charles Gibbon’s estate, or directly from Pamela’s will, if she made one. You know what that could mean.’
‘True.’ Tony glanced at her. ‘Sounds like a case for Duggins and Harrison.’ He laughed. ‘We should probably stay out of it or we’ll have our detectives on our backs.’
Settling her head back, Alex considered what had happened so far. ‘I know I should be tougher, but this scared me. It feels as if there are things moving where I can’t see them. It’s hard to explain. I don’t think this is going to turn out to be anything simple. Do you?’
He took his time answering. ‘Uh uh. I don’t, but like you, I have no idea why. We could step back and just answer the questions they’re bound to ask.’
‘Surely we could. We’re going to do that – more or less. I won’t suggest we overstep the bounds – not too much, anyway – but this all came our way and we can’t pretend we don’t have a responsibility to help if we can.’
Tony didn’t say anything and when she glanced at him she was surprised to see him grinning. ‘What? What’s funny?’
‘Nothing except I think I read you very well. You’d have shocked me if you’d said anything else. But there’s a lot here that could be very dangerous. This is murder. I want it to be the only murder in this case.’
Alex drove her clenched hands into her middle. ‘Me too.’
‘Then we have to be careful. And I don’t want you scared, love. I’ll make sure you’re OK.’
Oddly, all he had to do was say he was in charge and she felt better – which amused her. ‘We’ll look out for each other,’ she said. ‘That’s fair.’ Women’s equality being sabotaged from the inside? Not at all. She was an independent person who happened to enjoy the notion of a big, strong, take-charge bloke … occasionally.
They passed the entrance to Lime Tree Lodge, its tall gateposts topped by griffons. Alex had bought the big, plain house when she’d first returned to Folly-on-Weir after her divorce. The grounds had been the most attractive feature but she’d done a lot to make the inside of the house charming.
When she first came back to Folly-on-Weir she also bought Corner Cottage for her mother who had always loved the place. They remained happy with their choices.
‘Are you sure it’s not too late for me—’
‘Absolutely sure,’ Tony cut in. ‘And you promised. I know you don’t break promises.’
She didn’t, but … ‘Tomorrow could be a really difficult day for both of us.’
The Land Rover slowed a little. ‘Would you prefer to go home, Alex? I don’t want to think I forced you to come with me.’
Alex knew how she felt and why. ‘I’m coming with you and you’re not forcing me. I think it’s about time we worked out a few things about ourselves – or us, I suppose, the two of us. I want to be with you. It just seems funny somehow and I’m a chicken about uncertain situations.’
He settled back to a regular speed and didn’t say an
ything for several moments. ‘I think we should have … sheesh, we’ve taken a hell of a long time to give ourselves a chance to see if we’re ever going to be more than friends. Not that I’m complaining,’ he finished in a hurry. ‘And you’re anything but a chicken, about anything.’
She leaned across to rest her head on his shoulder. ‘I’m not complaining either. But who wants to pass up a chance for – cripes, I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’d better shut up. Let’s just get home and warm up. You wouldn’t think it was almost spring.’
‘Sounds good to me, especially the things you say that include both of us. If you don’t fall asleep on me, I’d like us to discuss us.’
Alex straightened in her seat again. ‘We’re both gun-shy, Tony. And why wouldn’t we be? What we have is good. I don’t want to lose it and … I don’t know what to say. Except I’d hate to think of losing your friendship.’
‘I don’t think you could. Not if we make a pact to be friends whatever happens. Let’s face it, we’ve got some pretty strong stuff that binds us together.’
He was right about that but she didn’t say so. ‘Your house doesn’t have a name.’ They turned in at the entrance to the most beautiful gardens in the area as far as Alex was concerned. ‘Ever thought of coming up with something brilliant?’
‘No.’ He drove down the driveway and swept around in front of the very large building. ‘I still wonder why I bought such a big place. I know I love the grounds but they are a pain to maintain and I can only find time to do just so much myself.’
‘I love the gardens,’ Alex said. Then she closed her mouth and held her hands tightly together in her lap.
Tony turned off the engine, removed the key and started opening the door. ‘You OK?’ He leaned in to see her face and put one hand over hers. ‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were scared of something.’
‘This is so calculated,’ she muttered. ‘We’re going to see if … if we would be good lovers.’ She slapped a hand over her mouth and felt as if she’d cry.
Tony put a hand around her jaw and turned her face toward him. ‘I don’t know where we’re going. I honestly don’t. But we won’t know until we give the idea a whirl. Could we just get inside with the dogs and follow our instincts?’ He held up his other hand. ‘I promise not to be pushy. Yes, this is strange, but at least we seem to be able to face it head on. We’ll know what comes next and if you walk in and want to go home, I’ll take you home.’
Out Comes the Evil Page 6