He heard her talking after she had gone downstairs again.
‘He’s surfaced. Give him five minutes. He was up all night.’
Kenworthy took one sip of his coffee, then went downstairs in his dressing-gown. The man who was waiting for him was young and trendy: shirt with wide stripes and a large unshapely collar, hair in an outgrown Beatle cut.
‘Sergeant Cottier.’
‘Kenworthy.’
‘I’m here about your complaint.’
Complaint: his suspicions about Noakes’s death ranked officially as a crime complaint. There was some humming and ha-ing, the sergeant coming in with cross-questions because Kenworthy was going too fast. As can happen in the most efficient of forces, especially a big one, there had been a near snarl-up. This man had left his HQ this morning with the Kenworthy assignment on his clip, two other jobs to do first, and no knowledge of the other report that had come in from Spentlow.
‘Sorry, Sergeant. I’m usually able to make myself clearer than this, I hope. I think you’d better slip down the road and see your Chief Inspector Gleed, before we get any lines crossed.’
‘Gleed? What’s Gleed doing here?’
Kenworthy told him. The sergeant shut his book.
‘Where am I likely to find him?’
In the early afternoon Kenworthy, shaved and dressed, tried to settle on the sofa with the third of his novels: a paperback that had been runner-up for a national award. After the first three pages he threw it across the room. Elspeth suggested that a walk would do him good, but he said that he could not leave the house with Gleed likely to arrive at any moment. Supper was already on the table when the Chief Inspector came.
He still looked younger than his years, which made his real years look light for the rank that he carried. He apologized for coming at a meal-time.
‘There are one or two points.’
‘Fire away.’
‘According to your statement, you were talking to Davina Stott for close on an hour after rehearsal.’
‘That would be about right.’
‘And earlier in the evening you had put in a crime complaint.’
‘In the public interest.’
‘Suggesting that the death of Colonel Noakes was not accidental.’
‘I am sure it was not. I have prepared a statement of my full reasons for thinking so.’
‘Presently. You did not make your phone call until after the Colonel had actually died.’
‘When I rang I did not know he was dead.’
‘Previously, you had rung a colleague at Scotland Yard with information about a character called Kevin O’Shea. I may say that, as is only right and proper, the Met. passed your item on to us for comment. What I am trying to say is this: if you’ve been privateering on our pitch, that’s a matter between your bosses and mine. But it’s got to be cleared up before I can go any further.’
‘I am not and have not been privateering. I have no commitments here. I am here for relative solitude and rest.’
‘So where does O’Shea come into it?’
‘I heard him mentioned as prominent in a commune that has been squatting here in Spentlow Grange since the spring. I happened to have heard his name and description at the Yard – canteen talk. I can’t even remember the context, but I know that my friend Detective Inspector Clingo badly wanted to question O’Shea.
The description fitted. So I passed on what I’d heard.’
‘And the Stott girl was involved with O’Shea?’
‘I don’t know. I know she had got in with the crowd at the Grange. How deeply, and with which individuals, I can’t say. I saw enough of her to know that if there was a spurious minority setting up shop on her doorstep, she’d at least take a look.’
‘Is that what you were talking to her about late last night?’
‘No. I was bullying her. There had been so many incidents connected with the vicar’s play that I thought there was a prima facie case for suspecting sabotage. I believe that Colonel Noakes died as a result of one of those incidents.’
‘You’d better give me the details.’
Kenworthy did. And Gleed listened without expressing an opinion.
‘And you believed that the girl was involved?’
‘I thought it was worth a probe. She was unmoved by the Colonel’s death.’
‘You accused her – by implication, at least?’
‘She saw which way my mind was working.’
‘Pushing it a bit, weren’t you?’
‘If I’d been on duty, I fancy I’d have played it about the same.’
‘If you’d been on duty, you’d have lost no time in informing her mother of her death.’
‘On the contrary, I’d have done just what I did: put the security of scene of crime first.’
Gleed was not being hostile. But his questions were incisive.
‘You questioned Mrs Stott yesterday afternoon, I believe.’
‘”Questioned” is pulling the angle a bit. The girl had asked me in to meet her.’
‘Why should she do that?’
‘Part of her habit of dramatizing everything. Chief Inspector, I have been helping out with a part in a play – in an emergency created by the Colonel’s accident. The girl and I played a number of major scenes together. She was an intelligent child with something of a flair for the stage. She was able to give me a good deal of help, things I’d missed from previous rehearsals. She’d also talked to me about some of her personal worries; particularly a cooling-off of her father’s attitude to her.’
Kenworthy summarized everything that had passed between him and Davina. Gleed had to keep slowing him down so that it could all go into his notes.
‘Tell me again the circumstances in which you actually said goodnight to her.’
‘I think she was more angry than shaken at what I’d actually said to her. She said she wanted to go in. I walked her up to her gate and left her there. I heard her go up the path to the house, but by the time she had reached it I was well up the lane.’
‘You did not hear any banging, as if she’d been locked out?’
‘There was none. I can be sure of that.’
‘No scene outside her mother’s bedroom window?’
‘No such thing. I could not have missed it.’
‘Your impression is, then, that she went into the house?’
‘I had no reason to think otherwise. I did not give it any thought. Certainly it did not occur to me that she might have been locked out. If you’d asked me, I’d have said she had her own latch-key.’
‘She did not call up the lane after you?’
‘I’d be bound to have heard her.’
Gleed went on in a matter-of-fact tone: one professional sharing material fact with another.
‘She was locked out. Her mother had bolted and chained the door, and, as far as we can tell, had gone to bed in a virtual coma.’
‘I can believe that. But I have no idea how the girl reacted. I doubt whether it was the first time it had happened to her. I don’t know what sheds they have –’
‘None.’
‘Then she must have remained quietly under the eaves of the bungalow, waiting for me to be out of earshot.’
Gleed looked at him sharply.
‘Why should she do that?’
‘Partly so as not to prolong conversation on an awkward topic. Also perhaps so that I would not know what was to be her next port of call.’
‘Do you think that bothered her?’
‘I think she was a girl with all sorts of guilt mix-ups.’
‘You wouldn’t have expected her to call on your help?’
‘Well, anyway, she didn’t.’
Gleed nodded.
‘A precocious child.’
‘Very,’ Kenworthy said.
‘In the sexual sense?’
‘She had that reputation and gave that impression. But then she was a child who lived on giving impressions, some of them simply capricious.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘You suffer much from insomnia?’
‘At times of stress.’
‘I don’t have to apologize for asking, as you know very well. But I apologize all the same: last night was a time of stress – before the vicar called you out?’
‘Because I’d too much turning over in my mind: the play, the difficulty I was having in learning my part, the Colonel’s death, whether I was bothering you people for nothing –’
Gleed had stopped taking notes.
‘Yes. I’ve lost sleep in my time, too. But if I hadn’t put the question, someone might have wanted to know why.’
Chapter Ten
Elspeth had tried not to be irritable on the journey up here. She had tried to make light of the rain, the cold, the wreck of a holiday, the incarceration in a grey cottage with once Sunshine Yellow walls. For some months before their departure for the North-West she had been struggling with mid-life, hadn’t yet found the right drugs to balance the hormones. Her greatest of horrors was of becoming a bore with her symptoms; not too difficult because Simon was rarely at home. Now, with Simon involved, much of her difficulty seemed to fall away – for the time being at least. When Simon had long hours of silence, she knew how to help.
‘Nil nisi bonum,’ she said. ‘That’s all you can expect to hear in the village until the dust has settled. But I know, and you know, that she disgusted you. The fact that she’s dead doesn’t change that.’
‘It does. The fact that she’s dead suspends certainty. Therefore I know nothing.’
‘That’s because you’re human as well as professional. You’ve always hated evil – I mean, true evil, not crime – too much for a vocational policeman.’
‘In my early days, I didn’t always distinguish between the two. But when I suggested she was evil, you queried it.’
‘Of course I did. Don’t you query every bit of evidence that comes your way? Isn’t that your job?’
‘But now you can come up with a firm answer?’
‘Of course. How old was she? Fourteen? At that age a girl like that is capable of anything that any woman is capable of – any woman, of any age.’
‘That’s pitching it strong.’
‘No stronger than I see it. Maturity might have taught her more efficient techniques, but her motives were already as strong as they’d ever be. I believe what you said about her having to destroy. And once she’d confirmed what you were made of, you’d have been next on her list. There’s no greater challenge than integrity. Don’t let her destroy you from her present range, that’s all I ask you.’
‘She’ll not destroy me. I have confidence in Gleed.’
‘That isn’t enough, Simon. In the early stages Gleed might suspect you, but that’s just because he’s doing his job. Clearing yourself is the least of your worries. What I mean is, don’t go getting black marks for indiscretion.’
‘I shall be doing nothing indiscreet. And as in my present position anything I did would be indiscreet, I propose to do nothing at all. I am at Gleed’s disposal. I shall answer his questions – truthfully. I shall avoid any of the obvious associations of a guilty conscience. Above all, I shall let him see that I’m not hankering to do his work for him. He looks to me like a capable man.’
‘You can afford to meet him halfway. He’s not as capable a man as you are.’
A few minutes after this conversation, Dunderdale came to the cottage. It was advanced evening. Supper had been delayed by Gleed’s visit. Dunderdale chose to be in hearty mood, but with shadows not far beneath the false bonhomie.
‘Come along, Kenworthy. I’d hoped to find you poring over your script.’
‘Script? Surely that’s a thing of the past? Won’t this add another year or two to the Gabbitas century?’
‘Not on your life. We’ve just come to the end of the longest committee meeting in the history of the festival. In favour of going on with Gabbitas Week by seven votes to six.’
‘You can’t do it.’
‘Don’t say that you’ll let us down?’
‘It isn’t a question of letting you down. It’s a question of what’s feasible and decent. What would you do for a Gertrude?’
‘Christine.’
‘Christine? Horrocks’s girl-friend? The one who looks like a superannuated scarecrow?’
‘She did a year at RADA before opting for the communal life. John says she’s good, and in that sphere even a wife wouldn’t fool him. And she’s not far off knowing the part. Between you and me, I think she’s been the brains behind the production as it is.’
‘You’ll have to count me out,’ Kenworthy said.
Dunderdale looked downcast, like a schoolboy, not believing in the rain on the morning of a treat.
‘You can’t do it,’ Kenworthy said. ‘With that girl having been found done to death – the whole village knowing it –’
‘So we must teach them that there are limits to sentimentality. Life must go on –’
‘An end put to a child’s life – and you talk about sentimentality?’
‘It might help you and your colleagues,’ Dunderdale said. ‘The opponents of Gabbitas Week may strike again. We may draw their fire.’
‘No!’
Dunderdale remained crestfallen, but he was a resilient man.
‘There’s one other possible solution –’
‘If you can find one, that’s your business. Count me out. You just have to. Personal feelings apart, I can’t afford any further commitment.’
‘Feel like coming over to the Sergeant for a noggin?’ Dunderdale asked, as if a bright change of subject neutralized any impression that he might have harboured ill-feeling.
‘Are there press-men about?’
‘A few.’
‘I’ll say no to that too, then.’
‘I have a full bottle of Rémy Martin at home.’
‘That does tempt me.’
He needed no second persuasion to take a look at Dunderdale’s quarters. The vicarage was one of those vast old houses designed for full quivers. What bachelor needed twenty-six bedrooms? Most of them were sealed off. Dunderdale took him into a warm and welcoming study, something of a museum of his own life: intellectual – books, more about the social sciences than theology; athletics – undergraduate trophies for discus and javelin; devotional – a prie-dieu and a semi-abstract of Calvary in oils, which clearly had a real meaning in his everyday life. A guitar, too, with a small stack of beginner’s albums, well thumbed: God-Rock, where Gabbitas had used Hob.
He had connoisseur’s brandy glasses, and made their coffee in battered metal filtres that looked as if he had filched them from a boulevard.
‘I must say, I had never expected you to go on with the show.’
‘I am determined to foil that child, albeit posthumously. She intended to wreck it.’
‘You still think so?’
‘We all feel distressed about it,’ Dunderdale said. ‘We are bound to. But let’s keep our heads and face facts.’
‘Yes, let’s. What facts?’
‘I’ve been talking to some of the kids. They’re all bending over backwards to speak nothing ill – especially since none of them liked her. But some of them are getting guilt complexes from what’s on their minds.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Such as that a girl can’t take a fox-terrier for a walk between school and rehearsal, and then come home without him, without someone noticing.’
‘You mean she snared the animal herself and left him exposed overnight? It could fit very well. Have you told this to Gleed?’
‘Not yet. I only found out this evening. I’ve written him a memorandum. Gleed strikes me as the kind of man it would be best to stay abreast of.’
‘My opinion, too. But why should she do
it? Why dish a play that was going to be the making of her name?’
‘If you don’t understand that, Kenworthy, then you can’t have come near to understanding the girl.’
‘And you did understand her?’
‘We vicars were psychoanalysing centuries before Vienna invented the term.’
‘She used to talk to you a lot?’
‘Can’t you imagine? When other ways of gaining distinction failed or palled, she could always crave audience. And let’s be fair to the child, she did have problems.’
‘Which had foxed the Child Guidance people?’
‘Oh, you did discover that bit of her history? Do you know why they had to take her to the clinic? She’d have told you sooner or later. She couldn’t keep that sort of secret for ever.’
‘You tell me.’
‘Because from the age of about six and a half onwards, she became obsessed with preventing her parents from having sexual intercourse.’
Kenworthy’s filtre was clogged with grounds, and Dunderdale came to his aid with the handle of an apostle spoon.
‘It started at primary school. She was taught the facts of life – biologically. What she was not taught – and I doubt whether it can be taught at that age – was the nature of passion. Her phobia arose partly out of misinformation, partly out of animal selfishness. It’s three years ago that she sat where you are sitting, and told me about it in those very terms. That was her favourite weapon, a veritable bludgeon, her shattering honesty about her own wickedness. I use that word because it was her own term for it: wickedness. In her days at the junior school she connected sexual relations solely with childbirth. She thought that one must inevitably be followed by the other. And, frankly and simply, she was horrified by the thought of a rival in the family, but I think that’s later rationalization. It went deeper.’
Dunderdale went through the proper motions of appreciating the bouquet of the brandy.
‘She described to me very graphically the nightmares that she had at this time. But the period of misapprehension was brief. It was not long before she learned to subdue those nightmares: and to manipulate them. Of course, this was a story that she had had ample opportunity to polish in the telling. She was quick to spot what evidently gave them great satisfaction in the clinic. Her case history had to be endured by whoever happened to be her selected confessor of the moment. And she was a girl who always had to have a confessor. I cannot believe that you would have been free of the incubus much longer. But it was not absolution she wanted: it was the chance to shine. I hope this doesn’t sound too much like nil nisi malum?’
The Anathema Stone Page 9