Gleed pushed the file away from himself so that it lay on the table midway between them.
‘The time is overdue when I would welcome your comments on some aspects of the case that may not have occurred to you.’
The file was pushed another few inches along the standard issue yellow beechwood table.
‘I want to stress, Mr Kenworthy, that this is not a file on you.
It is a file for you – to put you in the picture.’
It looked, from a glance at the first item, as if it were indeed the sort of dossier prepared to brief an officer new to the case. A lot of clerical care had gone into it.
The first sheet was an abstract from the pathologist’s report, shorn of its detail, even of much that might have been of secondary significance. Its principal certainty was that the immediate cause of death had been collapse of the pharynx; that bruising about the throat and at the back of the neck suggested prolonged digital pressure by a strong and medium-sized hand. Depressions in the flesh of the body suggested that it had been manhandled over a long distance, with frequent changes of grip. It seemed likely, but was not certain, that at least two persons had been involved in this transportation: there were faint marks suggesting that heels and ankles had been handled, as well as other parts of the body; but the main effort had been applied under the armpits, and there were abrasions about the lower legs and feet suggestive of their having been dragged a considerable way over rough ground. It was emphasized, however, that the only conclusion that could be categorically maintained was the original cause of death.
Kenworthy grunted with the satisfaction of a man to whom supposedly fundamental revelations come as no surprise. He turned to the second item.
Extract from statement by Vera Scadbolt, née Brightmore, married woman, part-time household help to Mr and Mrs S. Kenworthy.
On Thursday, 12th October, I met Mrs Kenworthy in the Spar Grocery Store, Spentlow, and she told me that because of the work she was doing for the amateur theatricals, sewing and so forth, she had changed her mind about employing me at her rented cottage. I therefore reported for work at about a quarter to ten, to find Mr Kenworthy alone in the house, his wife having gone to Derby to buy make-up for the actors. Mr Kenworthy seemed preoccupied, and I cannot say that he was overjoyed to see me. When I had been there about twenty minutes Davina Stott arrived, and I could see that he had obviously been expecting her. They sat very close together on the settee with her shoulder nuzzled up against his, and I said to myself, ‘Vera, that isn’t the first time they have sat like that.’ They talked about working together to help Mr Kenworthy to learn his part, and I heard one of them say, I cannot be certain which, that it would be a good idea for them to go for long walks together, reciting their speeches.
After this conversation had gone on for some time Mr Kenworthy came to the sink to fill the kettle to make coffee. I could see that I was not wanted there by either of them, and it was at this stage that Mr Kenworthy asked me to leave the room and go and work upstairs. When he said this the girl laughed in what I can only describe as an unpleasant manner. Well, a dirty laugh would be the right word for it.
When I went upstairs I must accidentally have left the door open, because I could hear them talking together in low voices. I could not hear what they were talking about, but when I came down to empty rubbish in the yard they started talking much more loudly, and I was sure that they had changed the subject for my benefit. They were talking about the play again now, and then went on about the country walks they were going to have.
Mrs Kenworthy came back at about half past twelve and I could tell from her tone that she was put out to find the girl in the house. Davina made excuses and said that she had only come here to talk about the play.
The next evening, that would be Friday, I was taking my dog out to do his duty when I happened to run into Mrs Geraldine Cartwright, who had been over at the Hall, and we talked for a few minutes while I was waiting for Nelson to make up his mind to perform. We happened to come past the Kenworthys’ cottage and I could hear their voices. I think they were talking in bed. There seemed to be some sort of quarrel going on. I heard Mrs Kenworthy tell her husband that the girl had a crush on him and that a man of his age ought to know better than to encourage her.
The second statement was corroborative evidence from Mrs Cartwright.
My name is Geraldine Cartwright and I first met Mr Kenworthy when he came into the Village Hall about a week ago. I do not know why he had come in, curiosity I think, but seeing him at a loose end I asked him if he would stand in at rehearsal for Colonel Noakes, who had failed to appear. He acted a scene with the vicar, and then one with Davina Stott. It was a scene of amusing intimacies, at a low level of comedy, and they both thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The producer had to tell them not be too realistic about it. They got on well together at rehearsals, and when not required on stage would often sit apart from the rest of the cast on the edge of the Boys’Club vaulting-horse. On such occasions they always seemed to be talking intensely, and sometimes had to be reminded that they had missed a cue to make an entrance. I do not know what they were talking about.
On the night that the poor girl was killed I had been at the Hall, and was late helping to finish some curtains, when I ran into Mrs Vera Scadbolt, who was exercising her dog. We exchanged a few words and chanced to pass the cottage that the Kenworthys have rented. It is not my habit to listen in to other people’s conversations, but I could not help overhearing this one, as their voices were raised. Mrs Kenworthy was annoyed with her husband over the way he had walked with the girl across the Green after that night’s rehearsal. She said that they were like a couple of lovers out of Thomas Hardy, and she quoted a line of poetry to him. I cannot now remember what it was.
Extract from statement by Mrs Doreen Malkin, housekeeper, Spentlow.
On Friday, 13th October, I had gone over to the Village Hall to carry a message to Mr Dunderdale, and I stayed on to watch some of the rehearsal. Afterwards I saw Mr Kenworthy set off with Davina Stott across the Green. I heard him say to her, ‘I will walk you home.’ She did not seem very keen on this at first, but then he said he had not been able to make much progress with her under the eagle eye of Mrs Scadbolt. Then they both laughed and she took his arm and rested her head against his shoulder. They went off together.
Extract from statement by Alfred Malkin Allsop, milk roundsman, Spentlow.
Last Friday night, between ten and half past, I went to the Spentlow Village Hall, to meet my girl-friend, Lorraine Scadbolt, who had been practising for a crowd scene in the vicar’s play. As we were crossing the Green together, we passed a couple in the dark and I recognized the two voices as Davina Stott and the London detective Kenworthy. I could not hear all they were saying, but it was something about not getting on very well with physical contacts, and I thought to myself, ‘Oy! Oy! Well, you’re in the right company to learn a few lessons tonight, brother.’ And then I think they must have known there was somebody else about, because they started talking loudly, something about a hat-stand in Scarborough, and cracking on they were still practising part of the play.
Extract from statement by Alice Everett Brightmore, married woman, Spentlow.
At about half past nine on Friday last I went down to Colonel Noakes’s cottage to see to his Labrador. There was no arrangement that I should do this, but I normally look in three days a week to help to keep the place tidy for him, and I thought that somebody ought to be looking after the animal. I was coming out of the lane, towards the Green, as people were breaking up from the Hall, and two people passed me on their way down to Sidi Barrani. I recognized Davina Stott’s voice but did not know the man, though I now suppose it to have been the London detective Kenworthy. He asked her how she had liked playing the love scenes with Colonel Noakes, and she said she much preferred playing them with him.
Extract from aide-memoire of conversation between Chief
Inspector M. Gleed and Mrs E. Kenworthy, Mond
ay 16th October. (N.B. This is not a voluntary statement, is not guaranteed to be an accurate record of the dialogue and has been recorded and included purely as a personal mnemonic)
Q: You weren’t seriously concerned about your husband’s relationship with this child, were you?
A: No, not seriously concerned. He’s a wise and experienced man.
Q: But all the same you did not want him to get too closely involved?
A: He knew better than to get himself involved, but I do know that a man, any man, can be flattered by an attractive girl who appears to be singling him out for attention.
Q: And she was singling him out?
A: It was the way they were thrown together in this silly play. And they talk about a man being at a dangerous age, don’t they? Don’t get me wrong: I’ve never had the slightest reason to be worried about Simon. But I’ve never supposed he’s fundamentally different from any other man. What I’m trying to say is, I’d trust him in the Arabian Nights, but I’d have better peace of mind if he weren’t there. It isn’t a question of trust. It’s all tied up with position and discretion.
Q: You thought he was being indiscreet with Davina Stott?
A: Not actually indiscreet.
Q: What, then?
A: Oh, heavens, Chief Inspector, you ought to be able to project yourself into his position.
Q: This is not a position in which I have ever found myself. You give me the distinct impression that you were worried.
A: In that case, I wish I had not allowed this conversation to take place. I was not worried, not worried at all. All I was doing was counselling prudence – exaggerated prudence, if you like – and that’s something that he normally applied himself without having to be told by me or anyone else.
Q: But this time his behaviour was exceptional?
A: You must not read that sort of meaning into my words.
Q: The meaning is there, surely?
A: No, it is not. Things were relaxed because of the nature of the play. They could not help but be.
Q: And you thought that this relaxed atmosphere was dangerous for him?
A: No more than might make me say, more as a kind of a joke than anything else, ‘Watch it, Simon!’
Q: And did he watch it?
A: Latterly, he was convinced that Davina had been the one behind the sabotage of the play – and behind the Colonel’s death. That put him in a different relationship with her altogether.
Q: Self-appointed private investigator?
A: Not at all. He was just trying to make up his mind whether it was worth bothering you people or not.
Gleed had left him alone to read and told him to call him when he was ready to make his comments. Kenworthy put this off and put it off again, read through the file a second and a third time, and certain of the statements several times more.
Then, alone in that standard issue interview room, Kenworthy thumped the table. And as he thumped, Gleed came in, Gleed with one hand in his pocket, Gleed with his hair short yet unruly about the crown of his head.
‘Well, Superintendent?’
‘This is monstrous. When did you question my wife?’
‘I did not question her. We had an informal conversation whose gist I noted down immediately afterwards, because it was clear it was too precious to risk forgetting. You’re not going to tell me I was outside my rights – or that you’d have done otherwise yourself? And I have made you free of my notes.’
Kenworthy’s anger did not immediately subside, but he suppressed the incipient eruption.
‘It all makes sense,’ Gleed said.
‘It makes sense only the way I tell it.’
‘Granted. And all this is perfectly compatible with your statements. You have omitted nothing of this.’
‘But these witnesses take everything out of context. And you yourself have removed most of what context was left.’
‘I told you, it is a file for you, not on you.’
‘The original statements must be available to anyone working on the case.’
Kenworthy paused for a difficult moment.
‘Has Clingo seen any of this?’
‘Clingo? What do you take me for? Clingo’s gone, thank God. Clingo’s walk-on part in this case is over. If you ask me, Clingo’s demands upon Clingo will never overwork the man.’
‘He told me he has Kevin O’Shea. A couple of days ago in Nuneaton.’
‘That’s right. Clingo’s angle was that he had heard O’Shea’s name and description, in a different place and different company, in connection with an illegal immigrant transit line. There was very little in it. O’Shea is a self-portrait of the Wild Irish Rover: feckless, glib, and a small-scale opportunist. Somewhere back along the line he came across a family of illicit Pakis on the move and for a small consideration found them temporary accommodation in a cantonment he knew of. There’s no evidence that he made a habit of it – or that there was any opportunity to repeat the performance at Spentlow Grange. He was only a transient member of this company. Kevin O’Shea doesn’t advance our case at all. Should we need him, he’s remanded in custody. And of course, he is one up to Clingo. Clingo was very pleased with himself.’
Gleed flicked through the file.
‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at, as far as I’m concerned,’ Kenworthy said.
‘Just letting you know the score.’
‘This isn’t a score. These are just punters’notions.’
‘And it all rings so true that I don’t disbelieve a word of it. Of the total version, I mean – your version.’
‘I must say you’ve arrived there by roundabout means.’
‘I’ve shown you all this so you’ll know why I can’t give you a watching brief, not even unofficially. This has been upstairs. Obviously, it had to. And we have Elder Statesmen who wouldn’t wear it. Having said which, may I quickly add that I know your work well – have always taken good care to.’
He paused, and let his eyes drill into Kenworthy’s. Both men had irises of a particularly brilliant blue.
‘If I might use you as a sounding-board?’ Gleed asked.
‘Sound ahead. Bugger the Elder Statesmen. They are paid to be cautious. Perhaps it’s as well that someone is.’
‘As I see it, Kenworthy, the night Davina Stott was locked out, she went to one of three places. And I accept without hesitation your theory that she let you get out of earshot because, for fair reason or foul – perhaps just out of her perpetual self-dramatization – she did not want you to cotton on to her destination. She went either to Dunderdale, or to Jesse Allsop, or to the Beaker Folk.’
Kenworthy gave no sign that he had any reservations. He simply sat and listened.
‘Let me develop those possibilities one at a time. On several levels of probability, I’d be ready to plump for Dunderdale. She was persona grata at the vicarage at all reasonable hours, and, in case of emergency, could have got away with unreasonable ones. We have Dunderdale’s own statement that he was up late. He was accustomed to hearing her complex confessions, both real and affected. But Dunderdale was by now coming round to the belief that Davina Stott was the one who was trying to capsize his Gabbitas Week. Though he’d not yet heard from the other youngsters how she had returned without her dog, the evening the Colonel slipped. We, by the way, have impeccable statements on that point. Also, in the Stott girl’s belongings, amid the fluff at the bottom of her school satchel, we have found a three-inch hacksaw blade from whose teeth Forensic have identified filings from the spotlight bracket. And behind the Stotts’bungalow we have found a small trowel about which all we can say is that it has been recently used, abraded against stone and wiped clean. But don’t let me leap about. Dunderdale, that Friday night, had no such evidence. He only suspected. Gabbitas Week meant everything to him. Suppose she did call on him late. Suppose he accused her. After all, less than an hour previously, you yourself had done the same thing. Perhaps she said something circumstantial that hit him on the ra
w. Perhaps she started slinging her sex at him. The last straw had to come sooner or later.’
He looked at Kenworthy for encouragement; and got the poker face.
‘So Dunderdale loses his temper, goes for her. He’s big enough and strong enough to choke her single-handed. He’s powerful enough to have carried her under his cloak all the way to Dogtooth. He lays her on the Anathema doorstep – to befog the whole issue. And the choice of spot is in keeping with his obsessions.’
‘Don’t forget,’ Kenworthy said, ‘that the pathologist thought that two people carried the body.’
‘The pathologist thought that two people might have. But let’s move on to Jesse Allsop. A strange man. An unbalanced mixture. A vicious spiral of vicious spirals. And the deeper he’s retreated within himself, the harder it’s been for him to escape. I’ve talked to Jesse Allsop a lot – and listened to him. Whether he had any part or not in Davina Stott’s death, it’s an event that has purged him. Picture the sort of friendship he had with her: the pound-pinching recluse with his hankerings after other things; the precocious schoolgirl befriending him, to meet a dare and to see, within her own pathological twists, how far she can push him. Jesse Allsop’s not articulate about it. We can’t expect him to be. My own guess is that she threw so much sex at him that he stopped her visits to protect himself. But if that’s how they broke up, is it conceivable that she would suddenly call at his house again, ‘knock him up in the night?’
‘Entirely conceivable. She had some very convenient characteristics. One of them was the ability to forget anything that interfered with the purpose of the moment.’
‘And you think she might have provoked him intolerably?’
‘If she did, we shall never know more about it than Jesse might tell us.’
‘So let me come finally to the Beaker Folk. I was up half the night with three of them, and have ended up with a single charge that would hardly be worth a notch under Clingo’s barrel.’
The Anathema Stone Page 13