An Alibi Too Soon
Page 24
There was a crumbling Victorian house at the junction of the by-pass and a minor road. The council had converted it into an old people’s home, and sold off part of the land for residential development. Maybe they’d planned a whole squat group of bungalows, but only one had been built, and that in the most distant, private corner. The entrance to it was from the minor road, along a narrow lane flanked on one side by the wall surrounding the home, and on the other by a tall, sagging fence. I left the Stag parked out on the road, and walked up the lane.
The snow had partly melted, but was now freezing again. I took the torch from my car and fanned it over the surface. No foot or tyre prints. All right so far. I relaxed a little.
The sky was orange with reflected light, the fence at my elbow just visible. At the end it just gave up, leaving a gap. Kendall’s bungalow sat facing me, low and threatening. No light showed. The traffic was a distant hum, emphasising the silence.
I moved in closer. Snow was hanging raggedly on tired shrubs and tufted grass. The garden, if it’d ever had any attention, was now far gone in rank growth. A few trees stood lank and bare to the right, against the wall, and two cypresses were towering on each side of the bungalow’s front entrance, pleased at the unexpected freedom and throwing themselves at the sky.
I approached from the side. The slabs had lifted unevenly. The first thing I noticed was that the curtains were clean. That there were curtains at all was surprising, because Clive Kendall had been away for eight years. I went on round, fanning the torch through the windows, and in every room it seemed that the furniture was clean, even polished. I didn’t like the look of it. In the living-room grate there was what looked like grey ashes and cinders. I’d have expected soot and mortar dust, after eight years. There was a recess for the side door, and in it I discovered a reinforced brown paper bag, nearly full of Coalite.
I was beginning to feel unhappy about it, and moved round faster. The double bed in the main bedroom was made, the covers drawn up neatly. In the empty second bedroom there was an untidy pile of what looked like sheets, and had probably been dustcovers.
He’d been back! Mind you, the suggestion was of a woman’s touch, but I couldn’t imagine that Rona, his wife, would have returned. She had hardly been the type to face out the situation, and hadn’t been able to get away fast enough. The word was that she’d got herself a judicial separation with all the speed that the law, very sympathetic, had allowed.
It hadn’t been my day. If he’d been there I could’ve backed him against a wall and told him all the dire things that could happen to him unless he disappeared smartly. Then I’d have put a guard round the place until he did, and set a watch on the Clayton brothers. If he was on the loose, then the possibilities were horrifying.
As I turned away from the kitchen window, a variation in the reflection on the glass caught my eye, and I edged round until I got it clearly. Written in the dust with a stubby finger, backwards for reading from inside, but with the esses the wrong way, was printed:
THIƧ FOR YOU — BAƧTARD →
I turned quickly, stabbing the torch in the direction of the arrow.
One of the naked trees had a branch that sprang from the trunk horizontally. A child’s doll, around two feet tall, had been strung from it by its neck with two feet of cord. I approached slowly. The doll was swinging gently, though I could feel no breeze. The noose was carefully made, just as a hangman would have fashioned it. There was a small tuft of black hair stuck to the doll’s chin, and its neck was broken. The tuft had the appearance of having originally been the bristles of a half-inch paintbrush.
I fetched out a penknife and slashed it down. My hand was unsteady. I carried it by the string back to the car, and tossed it onto the rear seat.
When arrested, Clive Kendall had been wearing a small goatee beard, as black as his hair. He’d worn it through the months of preparation and trial, only shaving it off when he went into Long Lartin Prison. It’d begun to look strange, I guess, because his hair had gone completely white.
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[1] Still Life, with Pistol