No Birds Sang

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘Nothing, I hope.’

  ‘You mean …’

  ‘I mean that all I’m interested in is who killed Darkie.’

  ‘I wouldn’t waste my time on it if I were you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t?’

  ‘Bloody good riddance. I know that isn’t the thing to say, but I don’t care who hears me say it. Oh, I’ve heard tales.

  I’ve heard enough to tell you what it was like, when they were kids. Darkie was just that little bit older than the other two, big enough to fetch them a four-penny one if they weren’t going his way quick enough. Lard-head: who was Darkie to call his brother names? I wonder Tommy didn’t have a go at him once or twice, from what I’ve heard. Perhaps he would have done if it hadn’t been for Sam. He may not look like a peacemaker to you, but all that Sammy’s ever wanted has been a quiet life.

  ‘Talk about water under the bridge, Mr Kenworthy. Will this water never go under the bloody bridge?’

  Kenworthy stood up, looked out of the window across the turd-spattered lawn, then beckoned to Tabrett who, he hoped, might possibly have learned something in the last hour.

  Sammy still looked uncertain about his immediate future; or perhaps his was simply the look of a man who knows that he is about to be left alone with his wife.

  Kenworthy and Tabrett left them to their quiet life.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kenworthy knew at once that Elspeth had been upset by her interview with Milner. No sooner was he home from his interview with Sammy than she showed by a meaningless answer to a question that she did not want to discuss it in front of Derek and Diana. Also at supper she was far from herself, a false and unsuccessful gaiety in conversation. And as can often happen when a husband and wife are on the verge of disagreement, it seemed unusually difficult for them to come alone together.

  But at last Derek was called to the phone in the hall, and Diana went into the kitchen to put things away.

  ‘Well, what happened?’

  ‘We had a long personal talk, three or four hours of it. Nothing that will bring you any nearer to closing your case.’

  ‘That’s what you said for Derek’s benefit. I can’t think that he was impressed, either.’

  ‘Simon it’s intolerable. That man should never be being held in conditions such as he is.’

  ‘A prison hospital isn’t exactly like being a private paying-patient.’

  ‘I’m not thinking of the actual medical conditions. I expect a patient in there gets all he needs, in course of time. It’s just that he deserves something better than his present company.’

  ‘Perhaps it will help him to have second thoughts.’ It was not that Kenworthy was feeling uncharitable; he was impatient to get down to facts.

  ‘It isn’t that. He’s in the next bed to a man who looks as if he’s spent most of his life committing grievous bodily harm. And the two of them seem to be getting on perfectly, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that Edward Milner ought not to be locked away with criminals.’

  ‘He’s only got to undergo the tiniest change of heart.’

  Elspeth was all nerves. She jumped when they heard Derek put the phone down, had one ear cocked for ‘Diana’s movements in the kitchen. ‘And I couldn’t stand the deceit of it, Simon. I mean, I didn’t have to go in there in disguise, or anything like that. I didn’t have to tell any lies. But Dr Menschel put a white coat on me, and stuck a clinical note-book in my hand. He said that that way I was less likely to arouse any unhealthy curiosity.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d ever really make a detective, Elspeth.’

  ‘You don’t think I have any ambitions in that direction, do you?’ It was not so long since she had been insisting on comparable rank to his in the game that they were playing. He did not remind her.

  ‘I hope, at any rate, you didn’t have to talk to him in the open ward?’

  ‘Oh, no. They put a little consulting room at our disposal. But people were coming and going all day. There’d been an accident in one of the work-shops. A man had driven a bolt through his finger and thumb.’

  Derek came through to say that he was going back to the station for half an hour. Diana finished putting crockery away, came back into the lounge, spotted that there was some kind of unease between the Kenworthys, picked up a knitting pattern and went out again.

  ‘Elspeth, what’s the matter?’

  ‘I know now what it’s all about. Edward told me.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It isn’t as easy as all that, Simon.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to say you struck some sort of silly bargain with him.’

  ‘Not a silly bargain, Simon.’

  ‘Please don’t misunderstand me. Any kind of bargain with a man in Milner’s position would be injudicious.’

  ‘Professionally, for you. My circumstances were quite different.’

  ‘I see. We’re not in partnership any longer?’ Kenworthy felt himself becoming dangerously angry.

  ‘My position is that I went there at Dr Menschel’s request because, as he put it, he thought that I could get the floodgates open.’

  ‘Which you did?’

  Evidently Elspeth did not much like the metaphor as applied to something that she had actually experienced.

  ‘You’ve told Menschel the outcome of all this?’

  ‘In substance.’

  ‘But you’re not going to tell me?’

  ‘Let me explain, Simon.’

  ‘Before you go into all the complexities, just answer me one question. Do you now know who killed Darkie Pascoe?’

  ‘No.’

  Kenworthy felt some sense of relaxation. He didn’t mind Elspeth playing out her psychological games, as long as there was nothing concrete behind them.

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘But I do know who might have a motive.’

  ‘And you’re not going to tell me?’

  ‘Do, please, stop trying to jump into the middle of the story, Simon. Let me begin at the beginning.’

  He became stiffly silent. She could have the telling of it her own way.

  ‘Edward made me make a promise. He didn’t try to make me say I wouldn’t tell you. He wants me to tell you. But in some way, he wants me to choose the moment, he doesn’t want me to tell you until I can be certain that the information concerned will never come to the knowledge of Sally Hammond.’

  ‘And don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Simon, I know you’d do a lot of heart-searching …’

  ‘And not find one, you suppose?’

  ‘Simon, as things stand at the moment she would have to know. Edward is sure that it would kill her. I don’t go all the way with that—but I think it could do her inestimable harm.’

  ‘So, I suppose, I would simply ring for transport and hare off to tell her?’

  It was Elspeth who succeeded in entrenching herself behind a rampart of patience. ‘No, you wouldn’t. You most certainly wouldn’t. But you wouldn’t be able to offer any guarantees.’

  ‘Because I’d have to chase up this motive?’

  ‘Don’t try to pump me, Simon. Otherwise I shall simply have to refuse to discuss it.’

  Kenworthy got up and went and looked out of the window: a neighbour was spraying a rose that had not been planted more than a few weeks; another was upbraiding a salesman about a scratch in the door-panel of a mustard yellow brand new Viva that had just been delivered to his drive. From one of the houses a decent looking adolescent couple were setting out from the girl’s home. A May evening; open-forecourt planning; green lawns, botanical tulips, fussy, and looking a little windswept.

  Bloody women. Kenworthy felt a sudden surge of rage. Only three or four times in his life had he really lost his temper. He knew what it was like; he frightened even himself. It was a pattern he had learned to imitate, when the lie of the case suggested it. The last time it had happened for real had been all too recently: with Emma Pascoe. He felt the onrush of blood pressure and adrenalin that coul
d take command of body and mind.

  All his life he had been against colleagues taking casework home to their wives, though he had regularly himself ignored his own precepts. Elspeth was different: and he genuinely believed that. She had never cracked a case for him, had never even tried to pretend she had. She had never tried to interfere. There had been times, especially when he had been up against unlikely feminine quirks, when he had been glad to ask her opinion. And she had always given it objectively, sometimes with honest uncertainty. Sometimes she had been right and he had been wrong, but she had never exploited it beyond a strictly private pleasantry. It was as if, though never actually believing in masculine superiority, she had gone through all the motions of respecting it.

  But now he had given her her head and see what she had made of it! Didn’t she realise that this was murder they were up against? Didn’t she know that this was a case? That the papers did not stop at Chief Superintendent level? That Top Brass, government solicitors, defence counsel would be combing out every innuendo from every sub-paragraph? That a provincial force would be watching, hyper-critical, jealous? Didn’t she know that however deeply she had been involved in things, she had to be outside them at the final count?

  It did not occur to Kenworthy in the heat of the moment that this might be precisely what she was trying to bring about.

  What was it Menschel had said: ‘let him fall in love with her for a couple of hours’?

  Well, Kenworthy had known clearly enough at the time what that implied. But he had not thought that the boot was going to be on the other foot. Blast Menschel, and blast everyone else who ever monkeyed with the rules. Now Menschel’s cause was served, for all the good that did anyone, and he, Simon Kenworthy, did not get a look-in.

  He swung round on Elspeth. By God, this was one lesson that she’d have to learn. She was married to a copper and when you were married to a copper, there were loyalties that took precedence over some hard-luck story that you had heard from a stranger on a park-bench, even a hospital park-bench. When you were married to a copper with a reputation, that was something that you didn’t put at risk for the sake of not hurting the feelings of an amiable eccentric who thought integrity meant the same thing as obstinacy.

  He turned and saw Elspeth, and there was none of that loveliness, almost a bio-chemical trigger, that had saved them in the past when he had been irritated with her over some comparative trifle. She was without loveliness because she was beside herself with misery. Unhappiness and beauty were mutually exclusive. He remembered how she had described the look on Sally’s face, when the news about Milner had broken.

  Elspeth was full of unhappiness; but she was nowhere near to tears; she was taking too firm and well thought-out a stance for that.

  He struggled to control himself, broke just about even. ‘There is one man who could save this situation, if he’d only act sensibly.’

  ‘I’d like to think, Simon, that if you were in the position that Edward Milner finds himself in, you would be behaving just as he is.’

  ‘Aren’t you getting your strings rather crossed?’

  ‘In fact, Simon, I know you would. Always assuming that you’d let yourself get in such a spot in the first instance.

  Which you wouldn’t.’

  The saving clause was enough, just, to hold back the flood another vital second.

  ‘Let’s get this straight,’ he said. ‘I’m not pumping you. I know that would be a waste of time. But I must see the shape of the record. You now know what was on this paper that the Pascoes cornered?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And it has nothing to do with a land-deal involving the Prudhoes and Sally’s father?’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘I see. And this issue is something that the Pascoe boys understood at first sight?’

  ‘No. They didn’t know till they’d got the documents home. Tommy and Sammy never did know the whole truth. It took the old woman to see that. And she was ill-advised enough to tell Darkie.’

  ‘I see.’ Kenworthy managed to smile, conscious that it was more like a baring of his teeth, that it was nearer a grimace, the sort of cheap-jack leer he reserved for suspects, a moment before he refashioned their words into a noose for their necks. It wasn’t the way he wanted to smile at Elspeth at all. He put his hand momentarily before his face, then tried again.

  ‘In that case, I shall have to find out for myself, shan’t I?’

  ‘Yes. And you will, Simon. It will be better that way. Better for us all.’

  So how illogical could a woman get?

  A clever answer occurred to him. Better for us all, you say; but don’t you see that we don’t count?

  He suppressed the thought. Elspeth was over-wrought. She had let herself get over-tormented by other people’s sufferings, thinking in her innocence that there was something she could do about them. Well; that was Elspeth. There was no changing her. And he was damned sure he was not going to alienate her for just another case. Another forty-eight hours, and he’d have it sorted out. He went to the hall for his hat and coat.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Wiltshire,’ he said quietly.

  ‘It will be well after midnight, one o’clock at the earliest, before you get there.’

  ‘People are at a low ebb when you get them out of bed in the middle of their first sleep. More amenable to wearisome repetition.’

  ‘But what about yourself? How many broken nights have you had on the trot?’

  ‘How much sleep do you think I shall get if I stay here?’

  ‘You know best, Simon.’ That was her most diabolical weapon. He walked to the lounge door, opened it, stood alone for a moment in the empty hall.

  He knew that Elspeth had to win. It was a stupid decision he was making. And by taking away all her opposition, she had thrown it all back on to him. He came back into the room.

  ‘They’ll still be there tomorrow,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Kenworthy did leave it till tomorrow. He left it till the fag-end of tomorrow, taking Sergeant Tabrett with him with the curt announcement that there was no longer any need to maintain an Incident Office. And by the time the day was out, Sergeant Tabrett was in a position to contribute with feeling to the volume of stories that are told of Kenworthy by the men who have been out with him on assignments.

  They took their time. They dropped off at Sally’s hospital, taking her a packet of Turkish Delight which Kenworthy, having camouflaged it inside a carton of tissues, personally hid in her bed-side locker.

  ‘Just to show how utterly irresponsible I am.’

  They talked to her for half an hour about nothing in particular: about a television play last night, which Kenworthy had not seen, but which he discussed with informed enthusiasm; about today’s runners at Kempton, about which Tabrett found his expertise intriguing; and about the chances of a current M. C.C. tour, about which Sally’s lore of averages and personalities came as an equal surprise.

  ‘You really do take your cricket seriously, don’t you?’ Kenworthy asked her.

  ‘Have to,’ she answered, ‘I’m not given any choice.’

  But she was laughing at herself. She had clearly recovered from the worst of the shock that Elspeth had brought her, but was balanced on a knife-edge of patience waiting for the outcome. ‘How much longer, Mr Kenworthy?’

  ‘I don’t know, perhaps by the time I pass this hospital again, which is likely to be in the middle of tonight. I’ll drop a note in at the porter’s lodge. You’ll get it first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Really?’ Her face lit up in a way that made Tabrett blame him very bitterly for raising her hopes.

  ‘No, not really,’ he said enigmatically. ‘But I happen to be enjoying an optimistic day, so why shouldn’t you?’

  ‘Seriously, though.’

  ‘Seriously, I’m trying to set myself a target, just as you do when you walk three steps at physio—and pretty soon it’ll be half the width of the g
ym, won’t it?’

  ‘By next Tuesday,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Just by thinking hard about it. And I’ve been thinking hard about other things as well, about how nice it would be to get this polished off tonight.’

  ‘And do you think you can?’

  He leaned forward confidentially over her bed, having first looked round the ward for spies. ‘One or two bits of information lacking, some of which I think that you can probably tell me.’

  ‘There can’t be anything about Yarrow Cross that I haven’t told somebody already, two or three times, most of it. But try me out.’

  ‘In those early days, I mean going back now to summer and Christmas 1940, when you were still getting to know Mervyn Prudhoe, how well known was all this in the village?’

  ‘How could you keep a secret in a place like Yarrow Cross?’

  ‘Yet I don’t think your mother cottoned on in the early stages, did she? Otherwise she mightn’t perhaps have come down quite so heavily when she did find out.’

  ‘She didn’t go out much, didn’t meet many people. I didn’t go out of my way to tell her.’

  ‘And how about Emma Pascoe? Did she know?’

  ‘Emma Pascoe knew everything.’

  ‘Try and get it down to finer detail.’

  And a sudden memory dawned in Sally’s eyes, one of those things, forgotten since the moment of impact, that can sometimes come back years later with shattering vividness. ‘It was at Christmas, the day after I’d met him on his horse. We went walking, and we met her. We ran into her along one of the lanes.’

  ‘He had his arm round your waist?’

  ‘God! Were you there, too? She used to wander round the countryside a lot like that, all on her own. And I can remember the odd way she looked at us, just as if I could see her now. And when we walked past her she turned round and stood still, staring at us from behind. We laughed about it, we couldn’t help it. And we were a bit frightened, in case she thought we were laughing at her for the wrong reason, you know? But if there is such a thing as the evil eye, it was on us that afternoon. We both said the same thing.’