The Dark Room

by Minette Walters

  ‘What’s your explanation for the incident on Sunday, sir?’

  ‘It was an accident,’ he said. ‘Door blew shut. Goebbels was on to it like a shot. Me, too, for that matter. Hauled her out of the garage and she was right as rain in no time.’

  ‘The silly old fool nearly killed himself,’ said Mrs Clancey fondly. ‘Jinx is no lightweight in all conscience.’

  Fraser nodded again. ‘Did she give you an explanation after you got her out of the garage?’

  ‘Just agreed it must have been an accident,’ said the Colonel, ‘then begged Daphne to stop fussing. “I’m all right,” she said.’

  Fraser had observed the outside of the garage when he arrived. Like the Clanceys’, which was separated from it by a narrow pathway beside the four-foot wall that divided the properties, it was part of a two-storey side elevation at the rear of the house with access from inside. The front doors faced each other under discreet porches halfway between the corners of the houses and their garages, leaving an enviable stretch of ground between the gates and the front elevations. Jinx’s was full of shrubs and small trees, masking the ground floor of the house from the road; the Clanceys’ was rather more formal with rose beds around a small area of lawn. After all, thought Fraser, it wasn’t surprising Tuesdays and Fridays were given over to its care. A view of the back garden through their sitting-room window showed an area of equivalent size.

  ‘Did Miss Kingsley drive off in her car after you rescued her?’ he asked Colonel Clancey.

  ‘Not immediately.’

  ‘But she did go out?’

  He nodded. ‘She made a phone call first, then shooed us out, saying she was fine.’

  ‘Who was she phoning?’

  ‘No idea. Made the call from her bedroom. Whoever she was going to visit, presumably, needed to explain why she was delayed.’

  ‘Do you think it was wise to let her drive in the circumstances?’

  ‘Matter of fact, no, but there wasn’t much we could do to stop her.’

  ‘Did she come back later?’

  The Colonel looked at his wife. ‘Couldn’t say, to be honest, but I would imagine so. She wasn’t one for staying out.’

  Fraser tugged one of Goebbels’s ears. ‘So were the garage doors bolted or unbolted when you went to see why Goebbels was barking?’

  ‘Unbolted,’ said the Colonel.

  ‘Oh, Eric!’ scolded his wife. ‘Where’s the sense in lying? It won’t help Jinx. They were bolted,’ she told Fraser. ‘Eric looked through the garage window, saw what was happening, and came to me for the spare key. Frankly, it’s a mercy she hadn’t bolted the front door as well, otherwise he’d have had a terrible job getting in.’

  The old man pushed himself out of his chair and moved across to gaze out over the garden. ‘Known Jinx since she first moved in here with Russell,’ he said shortly. ‘Thirteen, fourteen years, give or take a year. She’s a fine woman, a little remote, perhaps, too independent sometimes, thinks she can do anything a man can do, then finds she’s not as strong as she thought she was – rescued her once from under a bag of cement because it was too damn heavy for her.’ He paused on a low chuckle. ‘Wedged under it like a great floundering crab – haven’t laughed so much in years.’ He paused again. ‘Saw her through that terrible business over Russell, watched her put her life back together again and make a success of her photography. And with no help from her father, I might add. She wouldn’t have it. “I’ll make it on my own, Colonel, or not at all.” That’s what she said.’ He turned round with his beetling white brows drawn together in a ferocious frown. ‘Woman like that doesn’t commit suicide, or even think about doing it. And if she did, she’d do it right. She’d have run a hosepipe from the exhaust and plugged the gaps in the window where it came in. Wouldn’t rely on the fumes in the garage to kill her.’

  ‘Perhaps she wanted to be rescued,’ suggested Fraser.

  The Colonel snorted derisively. ‘Then she’d have wept her heart out afterwards and told us how unhappy she was,’ he argued. ‘Seems to me, the important question is why. Before anyone knew Leo and Meg were murdered, the police latched on to Jinx’s unhappiness at losing Leo as the reason. Two suicide attempts when you’re depressed make some sort of sense.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘But what’s your thinking now that you know Leo’s dead? You suggesting she knew about the murders and tried to kill herself afterwards?’

  Fraser thought about this for some time, his eyes searching the old man’s face closely. It was a good point, he admitted to himself. There was an inherent paradox if the first suicide attempt happened before Meg and Leo were murdered, because it was a peculiarly complicated psychology that led you from suicidal despair to murderous anger and back to suicidal despair again.

  He cupped his hands around the little dog, turned him over and set him on his feet on the floor, then he picked up his notes and sorted through them. ‘I spoke to her yesterday,’ he told them. ‘She talked about her car crash, said she didn’t think she’d been trying to kill herself.’ He isolated a page. ‘She said: “It seems very out of character.” Then she went on: “If I wasn’t trying to kill myself, someone else must have been trying to kill me.”’ He looked up. ‘Did you see anyone come to her house that Sunday? Did you hear anyone? Did you notice anything when you let yourself in through the front door?’

  Colonel Clancey shook his head regretfully. ‘No,’ he admitted.

  Fraser felt oddly disappointed. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘then let’s move on to Monday, June the thirteenth.’

  ‘I did,’ said Mrs Clancey, with a faraway look in her eyes. She drew them back from whatever memory she was observing to gaze with fixed concentration on the Sergeant. ‘I did,’ she repeated. ‘How very strange, I’d forgotten all about it. I was so worried about Eric having a heart attack when he was pulling Jinx out of her car that it quite went out of my head.’ She leaned forward, her pale old eyes suddenly alight with excitement. ‘Goebbels went into the house with Eric,’ she said, ‘and I could hear him barking his little head off. Well, of course, I thought he was with Eric, but the next thing I knew he was rushing up the path from the back garden, barking and snarling as if he were looking for someone. Well, you know the noise dogs make when they’re after an intruder. He must have jumped out of the window in the drawing room, and that means,’ she said firmly, ‘that someone had jumped out before him, probably when Goebbels first raised the alarm. Certainly the drawing-room window was open when we took Jinx inside. I closed it myself when she was making her phone call.’

  ‘Well done, old thing,’ said the Colonel approvingly. ‘Bound to be what it was all about. Some bastard was trying to do away with her. Nothing else makes sense.’

  ‘Then why didn’t Jinx tell you that?’ said Fraser reluctantly. ‘She wasn’t suffering from amnesia then.’

  ‘Made a big fuss of Goebbels, you know, after I told her he was the one who alerted us to what was happening. Nearly squashed the poor little bugger.’

  ‘Still . . .’ The whole scenario was idiotic, Fraser told himself, but he felt drawn to continue. ‘Look, you don’t put a conscious person in a car and start the ignition in the hopes of them being silly enough to sit there until they die? She’d have to be unconscious.’

  ‘She said her head was hurting.’

  ‘Then someone must have hit her first. So why didn’t she report it to the police?’

  There was another silence.

  ‘Because,’ said Mrs Clancey stoutly, ‘she knew the person very well and couldn’t believe they had meant to hurt her. No harm had come to her, after all, and Eric went on and on about it being a silly accident. It’s human nature to assume the best, you know.’

  ‘Or,’ said Colonel Clancey reflectively, ‘she had more important things to do than answer police questions. As I said, very independent woman, Jinx. Probably thought she had the situation under control. I mean, who was the telephone call to? Seemed perfectly straightforward at the time, but now – well worth looking
into, I’d say.’

  Fraser made a note. ‘When did you next see her?’

  The old man looked at his wife. ‘I don’t remember seeing her again. The next we knew the police were banging on our door on the Tuesday, telling us she was in hospital.’

  Fraser eyed them both thoughtfully. ‘Your neighbour tried to commit suicide and you didn’t check up on her?’

  ‘Suicide wasn’t mentioned until the Tuesday,’ said the Colonel sharply. ‘Far as we knew, it was a silly accident. Kept an eye out, naturally, but there was nothing untoward happening. Weren’t going to make a nuisance of ourselves when the poor girl probably felt like a prize ass.’

  Harris and Hennessey, Soho, London – 12.30 p.m.

  Josh Hennessey, who, despite his threats on Meg’s answer phone to withdraw from the partnership, was still working to keep the business alive, greeted Sergeant Fraser with little enthusiasm. ‘I’ve already told you everything I know,’ he said, ruffling his hair into a crest and staring sourly at the man in front of him.

  Fraser explained the purpose of his visit. ‘If you have a business diary,’ he suggested, ‘it might speed things up a little. I need as accurate a timetable of Meg’s movements as possible.’

  With bad grace Hennessey took a book from his desk drawer and rustled through the pages. ‘OK, these are Meg’s appointments. Monday, May thirty: nothing. It was a bank holiday, Tuesday, May thirty-one: blank. But it’s crossed through with a blue pencil so that means she’ll have been working in her office.’

  ‘Do you remember her being here, sir?’

  ‘No,’ said Josh curtly. ‘It was three weeks ago and Meg and I have worked together for years. How am I supposed to remember one day amongst thousands? In any case, if I was out I wouldn’t have known.’

  ‘Were you out?’

  He glanced at the diary. ‘According to this I was in Windsor, recruiting.’

  ‘Are the blue lines reliable? Would she cross a day through even if she hadn’t been in the office?’

  ‘Yes, if it suited her.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Wednesday, June one: ten o’clock, Bill Riley, 12 Connaught Street. All day meeting. Thursday—’

  ‘One moment, sir,’ Fraser broke in. ‘Did she keep that appointment?’

  ‘It’s crossed through which, in theory, means it was dealt with.’ He shrugged. ‘OK, yes. Considering the amount of time I’ve spent since on that one customer, she was probably there until midnight sorting out his personnel problems. Mind you,’ he admitted grudgingly, ‘it’s keeping us afloat at the moment. Precious little else is.’

  ‘Fair enough. Thursday,’ he prompted.

  ‘Thursday, June two: blank in the morning, meeting with bank manager at three-thirty. Both crossed through.’

  ‘Would that be the partnership’s bank manager or her personal bank manager?’

  ‘Probably the partnership’s. We’ve been through a rough patch during the recession and Meg has fairly regular meetings with the bastard who holds our loans. Had,’ he corrected himself bleakly. ‘I keep forgetting she’s dead. Friday, June three: blank but crossed through. Monday—’

  ‘I’m sorry to keep interrupting, sir, but have you any idea what she did over the weekend of the fourth and fifth?’

  ‘We had a business relationship, Sergeant, as I explained the last time I spoke to you. What she did at weekends was a closed book to me, unless it involved the partnership. Monday, June six: ten o’clock, Bill Riley again. Crossed through. Tuesday—’

  ‘Perhaps it would be easier if I just made a photocopy,’ said Fraser. ‘I suspect it’s a waste of both our time to go through it like this if there’s nothing you can add to the written entries.’

  Hennessey pushed the book across the desk. ‘There’s nothing. I checked after the last time you lot came, and bar a couple of meetings with Riley and the bank manager’s demands for a business plan on the tenth, she seems to have spent most of that week skiving. You’re farting about in cloud-cuckoo-land, frankly, if you think there’s anything I can tell you.’

  ‘You’re being very unhelpful, sir,’ said Fraser mildly. ‘Do you not want your partner’s murderer found?’

  Josh reached for a pack of cigarettes at the side of the desk. ‘I thought I’d kicked this fucking habit until all this happened. Now I’m back with a vengeance.’ He lit a cigarette and tossed the match into an ashtray, gazing moodily at the twists of smoke that rose from the spent head. ‘I don’t know what I want, Sergeant. Meg was a good friend. Jinx is a good friend. Heads you win, tails I lose.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because I can read,’ said Josh curtly. ‘The newspapers are full of it and, unless they’re way off beam, you’re aiming to arrest Jinx or her father because of the way Russell died.’

  ‘Did you know Russell?’

  ‘Not very well. Jinx brought him to the office a couple of times when Meg and I were still with Wellman and Hobbs.’

  ‘Did he ever come to see Meg without Jinx?’

  Josh shook his head. ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘Did you know she was having an affair with him?’

  Josh drew heavily on his cigarette. ‘Not at the time. I heard about it afterwards.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  Josh didn’t answer immediately. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said flatly. ‘Either Meg or Simon, I should think.’ He seemed to make up his mind. ‘It was Meg. She was really cut up about Russell’s death, kept bursting into tears for no apparent reason, so I asked her why and she told me.’

  Fraser didn’t believe him. ‘I think it was Miss Kingsley who told you.’

  Josh looked at him for a moment. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said again. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  Fraser gave a pleasant smile. ‘It’s not particularly important, but we’re trying to tie up a few loose ends. Can you recollect how soon after Russell’s death she told you?’

  ‘Look, I haven’t said it was Jinx, OK?’ Fraser was fascinated by Hennessey’s hands, which seemed to have a life of their own, twitching, plucking, always fidgeting.

  ‘Understood. Can you remember when you first heard about it, sir?’

  ‘I think it was after she lost the baby.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Fraser easily. ‘I don’t need to keep you much longer. I’d be grateful if we could just run over the last conversation you had with Meg, which I believe was the telephone call to your home on Saturday, June the eleventh. According to what you told us before, she said Leo and Jinx’s wedding was off, that she was going to marry him instead, that they were leaving for France on the Tuesday but that she would pop in before then to bring you up to date with office affairs.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Fraser consulted the business diary. ‘Yet, according to this, she returned to the office on the Friday afternoon following an appointment with the bank manager. So why didn’t she tell you then? That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Too bloody right, it’s odd,’ he growled. ‘Dammit, I get this phone call out of the blue saying she’s pissing off to France, leaving me to hold the fort till she gets back. I gave her absolute hell and told her I’d swing for her if she didn’t get in here and sort her desk out before she left.’

  ‘So it was your idea and not hers that she come in on the Monday?’

  Josh frowned as he thought back. ‘Probably. I was damned angry about her leaving me in the lurch without any warning. Who the hell’s going to have confidence in a business where one partner buggers off at the drop of a hat? I sank every cent I own into this sodding venture.’ He shook his head. ‘Does it make a difference?’

  ‘It might,’ said Fraser. He paused to think about it. ‘Perhaps you made her feel guilty enough to keep them hanging around longer than they meant to.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Meg made all her phone calls on the Saturday morning,’ said Fraser slowly. ‘I wonder if the idea was to make the announcements and then
leave for France immediately. Let’s face it, she knew better than anyone what had happened to Russell Landy.’

  ‘Are you saying they’d still be alive if I hadn’t laid a guilt trip on her?’ asked Josh harshly.

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I think we need some idea of where they were on the Monday before we come to any conclusions. I mean, it’s you who put pressure on them to delay their departure.’ Fraser looked at the other man closely before continuing. ‘And as things stand, I only have your word for it that she and Leo didn’t come here as promised.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Wednesday, 29 June, 53 Lansing Road, Salisbury, Wiltshire – midday

  FLOSSIE HALE EXAMINED the newspaper clipping of the Franchise Holding emblem. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘no question, that’s the key-ring all right.’ Next she turned her attention to the grainy faxed photograph of Miles and Fergus Kingsley in the members’ enclosure at Ascot and, after a brief hesitation, planted her finger on a face. ‘That looks like him, but it’s not a very good picture, is it, love? I don’t recall his hair being as dark as that. The jacket’s similar.’

  ‘What about the man next to him?’

  She held the page away from her, half-closing her eyes, as if looking at an impressionist painting. ‘The trouble is you don’t look at their faces much, not when they’re punching you. You’re too scared. Yes,’ she said with sudden decision, stabbing at Miles again, ‘that’s him all right. Little bastard. I said butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Who is he then?’

  ‘His name’s Miles Kingsley.’ WPC Blake retrieved the photograph and tucked it into her bag. Samantha Garrison had also picked out Miles and, if neither woman had been quite as decisive as Blake would have liked, she put it down to the poor quality of the photocopy and postponed her niggling concerns over whether or not this could ever result in a successful prosecution. If Flossie had been more co-operative at the start, allowed them in to dust for fingerprints or let them take swabs, they would have had something more concrete to work on.

  ‘Well, I don’t understand it,’ the older woman was saying. ‘How’d you turn what I told you into a blooming photograph of someone with the initials MK?’