‘I was mad. What could I hope they could have done? And that’s when I saw the Pascoes scuttling home, with spades and ropes and rods. That’s how I came to think it was they who woke me.’
‘Sally-o! Physio!’
The physio-therapist, a grave girl trying to look casual, had come up with a vacant wheel-chair.
‘There’s no need to go away,’ a nurse said. ‘She’ll be away about an hour. After that, we’ll get her up and you can take her in the grounds, if you like.’
The physio-therapist lifted Sally from her bed with remarkable ease. Sally had learned how to relax when being carried, her face biddably at rest over the white-coated woman’s shoulder while she was swung through an angle of ninety degrees. A nurse bent forward to pull Sally’s nightdress down and lay a blanket over her knees. And in that instant, Kenworthy saw something that turned him physically sick. For Sally’s torso was that of a robust, healthy woman, crowned by the smile and the open-air cheeks that could have been used as an advertisement for wholesome country foods. But from the waist downwards her limbs were wasted by the paralysis, the flesh fallen away from her thighs, the tibia tight as a steel rod under the bed-chafed skin, the kneecaps round and protruding, like those of some starving beggar-child in a charity poster.
Kenworthy looked away.
‘You’ve promised us three steps today, Sally.’
And already someone was stripping Sally’s bed. It would be waiting for her, smooth, cool and geometrically tidy, when she came back from the gymnasium.
‘We shall want to spend much longer here, shan’t we?’ Elspeth said, a confirmation rather than a question.
‘The Almoner, that’s who I’ll go and see, the Almoner. They get to know a lot, do Almoners. And I’d better start for Wiltshire directly after lunch.’
‘I shan’t come with you to the Prudhoes. I’ll stay with Sally till you get back. Somebody had better be with her when she gets to know. I can’t bear the thought of what it will do to her.’
‘The evening papers will do it. Somebody might bring a midday edition into the ward. They’re so keen on racing.’
Elspeth sighed. ‘It’s almost beyond contemplation. I shall tell her myself as soon as I can screw up the courage.’
‘You’d better find us a hotel in town. I shan’t want to drive back to Norfolk tonight. And ring up Diana. I’m sure she’ll forgive us for going absent.’
‘I’ll do that now.’
So Kenworthy went alone to talk to the Almoner, a tall and elegant woman who had retained her youtfulness and remained abreast of the contemporary world, whilst at the same time preserving all the graces of a more formal provenance.
He made no progress with her at all. She knew where the line was drawn according to the book, and with all friendliness, she drew it there. For her, policemen were neither friend nor foe; within certain well defined sets of circumstances, she was their ally. But this did not include off-duty Chief Superintendents, even those whom fate had singled out for passing popularity with the public. Kenworthy had been hoping for some time-saving side-lights on Sally’s background, her family arrangements, the stability of her resources. For a new, and probably finely balanced view on Milner and his visits. But the Almoner retreated impregnably behind professional confidences.
How right she was; and how utterly charming, how invitingly sweet-natured; how hard-boiled with experience in her refusal to play ball.
Kenworthy met Elspeth again in the corridor outside the ward. ‘No dice.’
‘Oh, shame! A stunted harridan?’
‘On the contrary. I could have bullied a hag.’
‘Well, I’ve done rather better than you: a room with a bath at the White Hart. And Di sounded as if she couldn’t care less. Sally won’t be back in the ward yet, and there are one or two things I want from the car.’
Kenworthy turned in the direction of the main entrance, but his wife put a restraining hand on his arm.
‘Not that way.’
‘This is the way.’
‘I’d rather we went round through the gardens. I want to see their roses. They’ve a Fantin Latour: I caught sight of it through a window.’
So they found a side-door and came out from the shadow of the red brick walls into surprisingly warm sunshine, air free from the pervading hospital smells of iodoform and lysol, varied by the occasional whiff of floor polish, cabbage water and coffee.
‘I’m beginning to get cold feet,’ Kenworthy said.
‘Cold feet, Simon? You?’
‘I mean about Wiltshire, the Prudhoes …’
‘They’re nobody. Minor land-owners. Probably second mortgaged to the limit.’
‘I don’t mean their social airs. What do you take me for?’
‘Sorry, Simon.’
He could not honestly explain, even to himself, the sudden distaste for the case that had come over him. ‘I mean this whole unofficial status angle. Last night, I was sure I could pull it off. This morning it doesn’t seem so easy. I’m not usually chicken, but a complaint from the Prudhoes wouldn’t be all that easy to side-step.’
He might have felt happier if Elspeth had argued with him; but she put no effort into it. ‘You know best. And is this all because of that Almoner?’
‘Because she was so right, so very right.’
Elspeth stopped walking. They had come across no rose beds yet worth speaking of, though there were a few specimens in view in a grassed bay between the wings of wards. Four young men in wheel-chairs, all wearing bath-robes of striped towelling, were gossiping at an intersection of concrete paths.
‘If that’s how you feel about it, Simon.’
She touched his elbow. ‘About turn!’
‘I don’t get it!’
‘I’m sorry, Simon. It was a monstrous thing I was trying to do to you. I shan’t blame you if you never forgive me for it. All I can plead is that I’ve never tried to interfere before. And this is our holiday.’
‘I still don’t …’
‘You will, Simon.’
And they went back into the building through the door by which they had left it. The heavy antiseptic fumes settled round them again. The floor was so highly polished that it seemed unsafe to walk on it, except in mincing little steps.
And when they reached the entrance hall, Kenworthy saw his name written in chalk on a smearily dusted blackboard. He was to call in the General Office for a telephone message.
‘Again, I’m sorry, Simon. I thought that another half day’s freedom …’
‘Don’t give it another thought. If this means what we both think it does. I’m not as big a man as I thought, you know. I need the system.’
‘It’s the sight of that poor woman that’s upset you, Simon.’
‘Anyway, it’s probably not what we think. Derek probably wants to check his memory on some detail.’
He went to the enquiry desk, and was taken behind the flap with knowing respect.
It was the Yard he had to ring. The Commander actually asked him if he would mind interrupting his leave. The Chief Constable had called for assistance. The officer in charge of the case had particularly requested Kenworthy. The Commander understood that he already knew something of the case. He said that without suggestion of tongue in cheek. Oh, and would Kenworthy keep Special Branch minuted with all major developments?
So that was it: Derek couldn’t possibly have unearthed anything yet to make him change his mind. MI5 must still be stolidly pressing.
Kenworthy rang Derek, had some difficulty in chasing him round the county switchboard.
‘Ah, Simon. Listen, Simon.’
‘Just tell me what’s new.’
‘The sheath, Simon.’
‘Dabs on it?’
‘No. It was out all night in the dews and damps. And mauled about by the army. It’s where it was found that’s new: not thrown away at or near the spot where it was used. Chummy got rid of it while he was in full flight. The lieutenant picked it up within a few feet of
where you and I had been lying doggo—behind us. It couldn’t have been Milner.’
‘Well done, Derek.’
He said goodbye to Elspeth in the car park.
‘End of the only case we’ve ever done together, Simon.’
‘End of it? I’m tickled by your confidence.’
‘End of our team-work, I mean. I know my place.’
‘Your place is with Sally. Look after her, Elspeth. Get her delving deep. Milner’s not off the hook till someone else is on it.’
Chapter Ten
It was almost a relief, Kenworthy would hardly have believed it possible, to be back on the rails again, to know that the rules, old friends to be wheedled sometimes into compliance, were there to be rested on; to know that the system was behind him; the specialists waiting to leap into service before he could lose his temper.
Was this, then, why he had never been promoted to be the lonely man at the top, the man who had to run the system without drawing any sustenance from it?
No matter; there was a certain satisfaction in him as he drove over a spur of the Cotswolds, then down amongst the chalk-soil valleys. There was a kind of satisfaction, spiced with the threat of perhaps entire defeat, that he knew at the beginning of every big case. Except that he was no longer at the beginning of this one; he was well into it already. He knew the elements: that doomed woman with the blithe but precariously balanced spirit. He knew that Sally Hammond had upset him: she had rocked him more than he would ever have dared allow, if he had been in on the case within the meaning of the act. He knew that the Pascoes were nothing: filth, dregs, the rot in the bone that could work havoc on surrounding tissues. And Milner? An eccentric, a superior eccentric, situation prone; a giant manqué, but fated for ever to end up involuntarily creating mischief?
And he knew that he had to have authority behind him to approach the Prudhoes.
One of them was the father of Sally’s son. So why hadn’t she married him? Because he wasn’t free, perhaps, or couldn’t (or wouldn’t) make himself free? Or perhaps she had turned him down. Perhaps her pride, or judgment, had been stronger than the threat of circumstances. Perhaps at one time she had passionately loved the man she called Brian; certainly he must have loved her, to the exclusion of considerations that would have outweighed most other things with many men.
Kenworthy approached the Prudhoes without anticipating that he might possibly like them. And here, too, at the cost of time he could ill afford, he abided meekly by the rules. It was as if he had suddenly become neurotic about the need for orthodoxy. He kicked his heels for a long time waiting for an interview with a local Chief Superintendent who was out showing his silver stars and crowns at an agricultural show.
‘The Prudhoes? Father and son; bachelor establishment. They have a married couple, by no means youngsters, to cook and devil for them. Farmers: but not on a large scale. Two hundred acres or so: no cash crops, and very little run of the mill marketing. Prize herd of Herefords, and some pigs; pedigree stud. They brought someone over from Norfolk with them, who manages the place from a farm-house on their outer edges. Quiet chap, who doesn’t show himself much, and does as he’s told.
‘They don’t do much of the work themselves, but it has to be done their way. The old man’s well into his eighties, still what you have to call active, but that doesn’t extend to productive work. The son goes very lame: Commando major during the war—Dieppe, Anzio, Normandy—wounded somewhere in Europe. Walks very badly, with a heavy stick. Looks as if it gives him a lot more pain than he’d care to admit.
‘They entertain very little: a neighbour or two, once or twice a year. Nothing like the scale on which they used to live in Norfolk, so I’m told. I gather that out there the old man was very much lord of the manor. Nothing like that here. He was a county justice from sometime in the 1940s until he reached retiring age, and the son has followed him on the Bench. But they take things very quietly. What’s your interest? May I ask? I gather there’s been a bit of a barney, out amongst the heather.’
‘Information, that’s all. Case with roots.’
‘I should think they’ll do you rather well in an old-fashioned way. Drop in here for a drink this evening, if you’re coming back this way. I’d like to be kept posted.’
The house was Victorian Gothic, perhaps on an earlier foundation. There was a bay window along the western elevation that might have been Tudor; but it had been mucked about with: crenellations, gargoyles, devices in mock heraldry that didn’t co-ordinate with anything. The ground-plan was curiously octagonal, top-heavy, like a biscuit tin from the Great Exhibition. Behind the house stretched steadings that could spell out to a trained eye the history of stock-breeding into the age of technology.
Mervyn Prudhoe was letting out his bailiff as Kenworthy rang: a short, middle-aged, spare man, with an expression that defied definition; or perhaps there were no feelings there, no opinions, no self-doubt; a dirty felt hat, jammed tight over his forehead, a trench-coat, tightly and untidily belted.
‘You’ll speak to Coveney in the morning, then? Come in, Chief Superintendent.’
The house was full of antique pieces arranged without much sense of display; newspapers of the day and letters for the post lying on a refectory table. The rooms were high; there had been no interior decoration done for a very long time. One had the impression of great, cold, cubical spaces. For some time afterwards, Kenworthy was puzzled to put his finger on the source of his feeling of aggressive discomfort until it occurred to him that there was a striking lack of cushions. The only ones they seemed to have were those, drab and compressed, on which they were actually sitting. The curtains were long, heavy and colourless.
The two men sat on either side of an open chimney piece, in the middle of which was set a small red glowing electric heater, from which Kenworthy felt no benefit. Both of them had been reading: the old man from a middle volume of Toynbee’s History; his son from Pendennis.
Mervyn kept within hand’s reach, as the local police chief had said, a heavy walking-stick. He walked with great unease, halting and resting perceptibly at every swing of his stiff leg.
The old man was fleshless, dry and deliberate in movement, likely it seemed to achieve his century by the stringent economy of his movements. It was not lost on Kenworthy that his son made no attempt to introduce their caller.
‘In fact, you’ll be concerned in this murder in the Breckland. I read it in this evening’s Standard. There won’t be many mourners behind a Pascoe cortege, I fear. Though in all fairness, it’s a long time since I heard of Tom or Sammy in any trouble.’
The younger man’s tone was matter of fact; no offer of humour; but no pomposity; no suggestion, either, that he was particularly interested.
‘Though, if I may say so, it surprises me to see you so far afield as this.’
‘For information at the fountain-head.’
Prudhoe looked across in some surprise. ‘I don’t see that we shall be able to help very much.’
‘Who better to talk about Yarrow Cross in the years when most of the seeds seem to have been sown?’
‘I’m afraid we’re going to disappoint you, Chief Superintendent. We hear a little information, from time to time. But it’s usually months old, rarely reliable, and even more rarely interesting.’
‘You don’t go back there?’
‘Never. We own no more land in Norfolk. And the Broads and coast have been ruined.’
‘Does the name Edward Milner mean anything to you?’
Mervyn Prudhoe made it clear that he was going to be slow to answer this. ‘Drink, Kenworthy?’
It was a long process, his movement across the room and back. And yet Mervyn Prudhoe was neither old nor ill-preserved. The pattern of his war-time service would put him in his early fifties, and there was a strikingly boyish look about him. His hair was black, short, frequently cut and fastidiously styled.
He brought his father, without asking his taste, a small glass of white wine. And while he
was bringing his own and Kenworthy’s whisky across, the old man spoke. His voice was neither faint nor cracked, but slow and unemphatic, consistent with the impression of niggardly husbanding of effort.
‘It says in the paper that you’re holding a man for this unpleasant business on the Heath.’
‘I was asking your son about him. Edward Milner.’
‘You’ll have to speak up. I can’t hear people as well as I used to.’
Mervyn took up the conversation. ‘You’re actually holding Milner, are you? A psychopath?’
‘No,’ Kenworthy said firmly.
Prudhoe examined the rim of his glass. ‘Perhaps I’m using the term loosely. A pathological case, at any rate.’
‘He has an obsession, certainly.’
‘If Milner has been charged, it isn’t obvious to me what an officer of your calibre …’
‘How much do you know of Milner?’ Kenworthy inter rupted authoritatively.
‘Only what I’ve read, and happened to remember, of stories in the newspaper. He’s the man, isn’t he, who trespasses inanely?’
‘And who has formed an attachment for Mrs Hammond.’ And how was Prudhoe going to take that?
‘I did know that,’ he said, without emphasis.
‘And that isn’t something that you read in the papers.’
‘No.’ It seemed, for seconds, as if Prudhoe were going to be difficult. But after a short hesitation, he resumed. ‘You haven’t after all, Kenworthy, yet asked me all the questions that you have in mind. Nor have I volunteered all you might like to know. I am not, I confess, at the present stage convinced of the relevance …’
Kenworthy leaped a gap. ‘You’ve visited Mrs Hammond in hospital?’
‘Once.’
‘Recently?’
‘Not recently.’
Was he unco-operative, embarrassed, or indifferent? As if to answer this very point, he held his glass obliquely away from him in a sort of rhetorical gesture and made a rather solemn statement.
‘For the record, Chief Superintendent, I have acknowledged my obligations. There is a long-standing settlement, dating from before the lady’s marriage to her present husband. I would be the last to claim it is ideal. It would be arrogant of me to call it generous. But by material standards you would have to agree that it is acceptable. I accept the status quo, I think we both do, with some regret, but nothing livelier.’
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