Chapter Eight
At the sight of Sergeant Beamish on her doorstep Primrose Toplady threw her fingers to her mouth as if she were slapping back a scream. Undoubtedly, Beamish reflected, she had something to scream about. At first sight, she was being visited in her home by a man who yesterday evening had given every appearance of being about to ravish her on the corner of Dickinson Road and Bowland Avenue.
She tried to slam her door, but a smart movement of one foot over the threshold is one of the first lessons in the training of all social workers, health visitors, door-to-door canvassers – and policemen. In the same moment, Beamish brought out his warrant card, which he had ready, palmed away in his raincoat pocket. She peered down at it, but he did not think that it was registering.
‘I think you’d better read it carefully, Mrs Toplady. I am Sergeant Beamish, CID, at present working from Bagshawe Broome police station.’
Did even this register? As a more concrete suggestion, he held up the white plastic bag.
‘Don’t you think you’d better ask me in, Mrs Toplady?’
She was still uncertain, but even in her distrust, she lost nothing of her dignity. There was something of the capital ship cleared for action even in a Primrose Toplady who more than half believed that she was on the brink of sexual outrage. But she was not thinking fast this morning.
‘Sergeant –’
She had forgotten his name already – if she had taken it in.
‘Beamish.’
‘Sergeant Beamish. I wish to speak to one of your superiors. I wish to speak to Inspector Mosley.’
‘About last night?’
‘Of course it is about last night.’
‘What time last night?’
‘You know very well what time it was.’
‘Where, last night?’
‘You know very well where. On the corner of Dickinson Road and –’
‘You do not deny, then, that you were in that part of town last night?’
‘You know very well where I was.’
‘Coming out of the grounds of a house in Bowland Avenue. My reason for being here, Mrs Toplady, is to ask you what right you had to be in that house and to bring property out of it.’
She began to moisten her lower lip, and then apparently thought better of doing anything that might suggest she had the fidgets.
‘I need to know whether you had lawful cause to be where you were, doing what you were doing. So might we try to clear that up? We can do it here on the doorstep if you like. Or we could go to the police station, where you might even get a chance to speak to Inspector Mosley; though I did hear him tell someone that he would be out most of the day.’
He won. He knew that she wanted him out of sight of the neighbours at all costs. Leading him like a diminutive drum-major, she showed him to a chair in the sitting-room, which was also a portrait-gallery of young Topladys at all stages of their development.
‘Now, Mrs Toplady. Yesterday evening I saw you coming out of the house called Garth.’
‘I used to work there, Sergeant Beamish.’
‘And you still have authority to enter the house?’
She made no answer.
‘Have you, Mrs Toplady? Have you authority to enter it?’
‘The house is empty, Sergeant.’
‘The house is far from empty. Last night it contained, among other things, a pair of white china dogs.’
This time she could not restrain her lip-moistening.
‘I can explain what I was doing with the dogs, Mr Beamish.’
‘Do that, then, please.’
‘They are my dogs, Mr Beamish. They belong to me.’
‘Indeed? And how do a pair of china dogs belonging to you come to be in Mr Burgess’s house?’
Had she perhaps taken them there at the apogee of her housekeepership to enhance the quality of Henry Burgess’s life? What, Beamish wondered, had he thought of them?
‘I suppose I’ve been rather silly, Mr Beamish. I don’t know whether you’ll ever believe me.’
‘You have two chances, Mrs Toplady.’
‘Mr Burgess used to have two china dogs on his kitchen mantelpiece. They were Staffordshire ware, and had belonged to his wife. He was always telling me how valuable they were.’
‘Not these dogs?’
‘No. I am coming to that. One day I broke one of them – one of Mr Burgess’s – while I was dusting. I simply daren’t tell him, Mr Beamish: he could be very hasty-tempered. So I went out and bought two more. They weren’t really much like the original ones, but Mr Burgess’s eyesight was not all it might be. He never went to the kitchen mantelpiece for anything. I hoped that at a distance he might not notice that anything had changed. And – well – I was lucky – he didn’t.’
‘So you thought you’d go in and get them back?’
‘Well, they are mine. I did pay for them.’
‘And had you repaid Mr Burgess for the breakage?’
Mrs Toplady did not like the question.
‘Tell me how you got into the house, Mrs Toplady.’
She liked that one even less.
‘Come along, Mrs Toplady.’
‘I still had a key.’
‘From when you used to work for Mr Burgess? Did he know that you had kept it?’
‘I don’t suppose he ever thought about it.’
‘Mrs Toplady – I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you –’
Her embarrassment was cumulative. She was blushing now.
‘Mr Beamish – the day I left, I forgot to give it back. I was so flustered. When I did remember, I kept promising myself I’d go round with it. But I kept putting it off.’
Beamish was not satisfied. There was something wrong somewhere. How does a policeman know that a subject is not telling him the truth? It is a print-out from that complex albeit technologically imperfect data-bank that is a policeman’s brain. An unwillingness to look one in the eye; or, in the case of some personalities, an unnatural determination to look one in the eye. A self-conscious tone of voice. A constant fretful touching of chin, nose or knee. Perspiration. Uncalled-for emphasis. Primrose Toplady was not sending any of the standard signals – but she was not at ease.
‘So what’s going to happen now?’ she asked, her confidence now visibly on the ebb.
‘That I can’t tell you. I shall make my report to Inspector Mosley, but the ultimate decision will be made by the superintendent.’
‘I haven’t committed any crime.’
‘Technically you have, in my belief. But I can’t see anyone taking a very serious view of it.’
Mosley had wanted Mrs Toplady to be disturbed and contrasts could help by confusing her. Beamish decided to give her a short respite.
‘We shall have to get this all down on paper presently: but I would not let it worry you. I can’t help thinking that retrieving you own property won’t be treated as the crime of the century.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t stand the shame of having to go to court. I shan’t have to go to court, shall I?’
‘Not necessarily. The superintendent has broad discretion in cases like this. He could let you off with a caution.’
Beamish began to take a benign interest in the pictures with which the room was over-embellished.
‘A large family you have, Mrs Toplady.’
‘Well, yes – we’ve enjoyed watching them grow up. And every one a credit to us, though I say it myself. But what are they going to think? Will it get into the newspapers?’
Beamish got up and picked up a frame that was standing on the television set.
‘Which one is this?’
‘That’s Eric. The eldest. He teaches French in Lincolnshire. He has two children – one doing his A levels this year. Doesn’t time fly?’
‘It certainly does. And this one?’
‘That’s Charles. He’s the sporting one of the family. He had trials for Preston while he was still at school, but his father managed to persuade him that football
is better as a hobby than as master. The young lady with the ’cello is Grace, our only girl. She’s librarian with a symphony orchestra. Then there’s Bruce. He does research in leather dyes. He has a chemistry degree from Leeds university.’
‘There’s one here standing on his head.’
‘That’s Brian. We always call him the family stand-up comic. There’s never a dull moment when Brian’s around. Mr Beamish – could we come back to what we were talking about just now?’
‘By all means, Mrs Toplady.’
‘I think I may have been a little stupid, but I’ve never robbed anybody.’
‘I really wouldn’t worry too much. Just wait and see what happens. Perhaps nothing will. How many children had you altogether?’
‘Six. Including, as I told you, just the one girl.’
Beamish looked round the walls and ledges again with some puzzlement.
‘Funny. I may be making some mistake, but if you asked me, I’d say I can only count five.’
She stood up, came and looked round herself, as if it puzzled her that there should be a puzzle.
‘Ah, yes – I see what you mean. It’s Kevin. He always disappears when he sees anybody with a camera, does Kevin. He’s done that all his life. He’s our youngest – and I’m afraid everybody spoiled him – especially his sister. Look – he’s in this one.’
Kevin was barely discernible in a group in an enlargement of a badly conceived snapshot: a boy of about ten, screwing up his eyes against direct sunlight.
‘What’s Kevin doing now?’
‘He’s the unlucky one. He wasn’t allowed to finish his degree. His college cut down on numbers at the end of his first year. I don’t think that was at all fair, do you?’
‘It certainly leaves a youngster high and dry, without much standing in the job market.’
‘Oh, he’s got a job, thank God, at a time when so many young people haven’t.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s in market research. Only knocking on people’s doors, asking them what brand of detergent they use, or whether they like drinking lager. But a job’s a job these days.’
‘Do you think we might get down to business again, Mrs Toplady?’
The recording of her statement required patience on both sides. Beamish applied himself painstakingly and slowly. It gave him the opportunity to bring her mind back to the offences for which she might be charged. As one inexorable sentence after another went down on paper, she was becoming more and more convinced that she could not avoid an appearance in the dock.
I had no authority to enter the premises –
I know that I should have handed back the key when I left Mr Burgess’s employ –
I did not take anything except the two dogs that belong to me –
I did open the doors of one or two rooms, just out of curiosity –
Beamish ceased to provide her with any crumb of hope or comfort, writing down her statement as a continuous prose answer to his ruthless leading questions. By the time she came to read the document before he let her sign it, she was a frightened woman again.
‘It looks terrible, put down in black and white like this, Mr Beamish.’
Beamish let it be seen that he had no personal feelings in the matter.
‘But that’s how it happened, isn’t it, Mrs Toplady? There’s nothing you feel you want to add or change?’
‘I only wish I’d gone nowhere near the house. I wish I’d never heard of the place.’
And when Beamish was about to leave, she seemed to fall under the compulsion to detain him. Although he was clearly likely to be the instrument of her downfall, there had grown up a personal relationship between them. It was as if she wanted to cling to him.
‘Mr Beamish – when am I going to be able to speak to Mr Mosley?’
‘That’s hard for me to say, Mrs Toplady. Mr Mosley is a busy man. I don’t know his exact programme, but he expects to be away from Bagshawe a good deal in the next few days.’
She sighed. It was the suspense that she could not bear, the waiting for vital decisions to be made by soulless strangers in cold, distant offices – days, perhaps even weeks hence.
‘What you want to tell Mr Mosley, you could of course tell me,’ Beamish said.
She could not make up her mind about this.
‘I don’t know whether –’
‘I can pass anything on to Mr Mosley for you. I can always get a message to him, wherever he is.’
May God forgive him for such fantasy –
‘I don’t find it very easy,’ Primrose Toplady said. ‘You see, Mr Mosley already knows what it’s about.’
‘I’ve read the case-notes, Mrs Toplady. Mr Mosley always keeps me abreast of what’s going on in his mind.’
By God, he was in inventive shape this morning! If he could only keep her teetering on the edge like this, she’d probably blurt out the beginnings of it involuntarily. Then the rest would follow. They had reached the front door. Beamish waited. Too much obvious persuasion at this stage, and she probably would wait until she could see Mosley.
‘It seems so silly, when you look at it one way,’ she said.
‘I’d be very surprised if there was anything silly about it. Sometimes it clears one’s mind, to talk to other people.’
‘Have you the time, Mr Beamish? I promise I won’t go on and on.’
They went back into the sitting-room. Mrs Toplady fiddled nervously with a knitting stitch-counter that her fingers had encountered under her cushion.
‘It’s to do with why I left off working for Mr Burgess, Mr Beamish.’
‘Yes. Mr Mosley did mention something about that.’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t tell Mr Mosley everything.’
‘No?’
‘Well, you see, the real reason seems so silly. You’ll think I am out of my mind.’
‘It’s unlikely I’ll think anything of the sort. You strike me as a woman very firmly in command of her mind.’
She looked very satisfied to hear that.
‘But I wasn’t firmly in command during the last few weeks before I left Garth, Mr Beamish. You see, the place had got so weird. The house was weird. Mr Burgess was behaving weirdly.’ She halted, seemed not to know where it was best to go next.
‘Of course, these old houses often do seem spooky,’ Beamish said.
‘I’ve never been one to fill my mind with that kind of thought – but Garth was never a nice house – so big, so cold and empty. There were so many rooms that no one ever went into from one year’s end to the next. There were so many shadows, so many electric light bulbs missing. When you opened a door, you had the feeling that you did not know what you were going to find the other side of it. There were noises, too. The noises were the worst of all. Mice. Loose doors and windows. Bad plumbing. Timbers that creaked for no reason at all. And there were other sounds that there was no accounting for – sounds that you could not be really certain you had heard, because however hard you strained your ears, they didn’t come again.’
‘Of course, once you let that sort of thing start playing on your nerves –’
‘Yes, but what really started to get me down was when I saw that something was getting on Mr Burgess’s nerves too. He had never been bothered by anything like that all the time I had known him. He had never noticed anything weird about the house. It was a subject I’d never have dared to bring up in conversation with him: he’d have been down my throat in a second. The only things Mr Burgess had ever believed in in his life were things that he could see and count.’
‘And then he started hearing things too?’
‘He’d prick up his ears and make me listen.’
‘And did you hear things?’
‘Never so as to be sure about them – not those times when he’d heard something. Not to be absolutely sure.’
‘What sort of things did he think he’d heard?’
‘Voices, sometimes. People talking in other rooms. Music – faint mus
ic.’
Faint music?
‘Did you ever hear music yourself, Mrs Toplady?’
‘No, I didn’t. Not once. Except that when Mr Burgess was making me listen hard, I got into the state where I didn’t know what I could hear and what I couldn’t.’
‘Did either of you ever go and look?’
‘Often. I wasn’t scared – not really scared – not scared, I mean, of going into rooms that I knew were empty. It wasn’t that that frightened me. It was my thoughts that did that.’
Beamish considered.
‘If this sort of thing was going on when you were in the house, Henry Burgess must have been getting himself pretty worked up when he was alone.’
‘You could see what it was doing to him. He was losing weight. He would jump if a coal fell in the grate. I remember once he thought he heard someone talking in the breakfast room – a dark and damp little room that hadn’t been used since Mrs Burgess’s time. It was all making him shorter-tempered than usual. I couldn’t stand it, Mr Beamish. I reached the stage where I couldn’t stand another day of it. I told Mr Mosley that I left because of all the cycling across town in all weathers. But it wasn’t that. Not only that, anyway. I couldn’t stand to go into that house again.’
Now that she had come to the end of it, she did not seem as relieved as he would have expected her to be. She was still tense. Her colour was still high. She looked at Beamish, expecting some sort of support.
‘You’ll tell Mr Mosley all this?’
‘The moment I see him. Mrs Toplady – do you think that at this period, a little over two years ago, there was actually anyone living in Henry Burgess’s house?’
‘Only Mr Burgess.’
‘I was thinking of squatters. Could anyone have managed to hide themselves in the house? Did you ever make a systematic search of the whole place?’
‘We never did anything like that. It would never have crossed our minds. I don’t believe that either of us seriously believed there was really anyone there. I don’t believe that, even now. I don’t see how there could have been. It was just the way the place was playing on our nerves.’
‘And the way you were playing on each other’s nerves, perhaps. But stranger things have been known to happen, Mrs Toplady. Did you ever find anything that might have suggested there was someone else on the premises?’
What Me, Mr Mosley? Page 6