‘You have been a long while, Richard,’ said Ruby.
‘Yes. Sorry about that. But you know, I didn’t get the chance of a word with Helen. You all monopolised her.’
‘And it’s quite upset poor Dennis.’
As indeed it had. The leaving had upset him, and his distress had communicated to Bruce, who was whining softly. I said, ‘We can all visit again.’
‘This evening?’ cried Mellie, who’d missed her vocation, if she could be said ever to have had one. A nurse was clearly her destiny. Or a copper’s wife. My bet, just at that moment, would have been for a nurse.
I drove us back to Flight House. I’d had time to work out what was on the string around Helen’s neck. Colin had been crafty about his activities, one of them being to drive to the hospital, out of hours, and in some way to persuade the sister to allow him to have a word with Helen. For one specific purpose, that would have been—to give her the ring, which I’d conveniently produced for him.
It had been essential to give Helen concrete evidence that everything was as it had been, and the engagement was still on. A long engagement, that would perhaps have been.
But I had to remember that Colin had plans for killing Pierce.
Chapter Thirteen
At Flight House there was complete chaos. Three police vehicles had driven round by the locks, leaving little or no room for parking either the Rolls or Amelia’s car in any position that would maintain the sense of dignity expected by the three darlings. To them, the entrance at the bar lounge was the ‘front’. Now they were offered the small door at the end of the house, which they would consider suitable more for servants than for persons of consequence.
Nevertheless, they had to use that door, and were pleasantly surprised to discover that access from there to the bar lounge was quite simple. Drinks all round were necessary to settle disturbed nerves, and I would have joined them if Gerald had not caught me by the arm.
‘Richard...please...a moment.’
‘Aren’t you interested in finding out what’s going on out there?’ I certainly was.
‘No, I am not interested in police activities. There were things we were discussing, you and I, Richard.’
‘Things? Were we?’
He seemed annoyed that I should not appreciate the importance of this, and that I’d obviously completely forgotten it. ‘I was telling you about my more recent encounter in court with Clare Martin.’
‘So you were.’ But I was unable to work up any interest in it. ‘Surely it can wait.’
‘I don’t think it can.’
Now I eyed him with more interest. I had taken his general attitude as having arisen from our previous evening’s expedition to Brindley Street, but it was not that. There was something he had to deal with, and now. Urgently. There was a possibility that the reappearance of the police had something to do with that urgency.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But where? Outside?’
‘No. Oh...no! They’re outside.’
‘Gerald, out-of-doors is the best place to talk privately. Indoors, ears can be placed against doors. No, Gerald, I was just giving you an example. Outside...although we’ll be surrounded by policemen, nobody would hear a word. They’ll be making their own noises.’ I could hear them doing exactly that. ‘Outdoors, Gerald, and before you take your coat off. It will seem completely natural that we should be there, if only to watch what’s going on. Come along. It could concern you. All of us.’
I held open the swing doors for him, and we walked out to face the locks.
Talk? We were given little chance of that. At the first sign of us, Colin came striding over. He was gesticulating in anger, and yet with a light in his eyes that betrayed a certain amount of pride. After all, it had been his idea, and his success.
Inspector Slater had completely taken over the dragging operation. Colin, by merely standing there and watching, was able to observe how the job should be done.
The team Slater had brought along was dragging all three locks. Twelve officers, four to a lock, were using hooks specifically designed for the job.
‘I was going to get all this going,’ Slater claimed to me. ‘But...’ He glanced balefully at Colin, who was standing there, worriedly watching. ‘But this idiot got in first. Heaven knows what harm he’s done.’
He grunted fretfully.
His attitude was false, designed to cover the fact that he hadn’t, himself, thought of dragging the locks for the murder weapon. That Colin, with his home-made hook, had succeeded in at least producing a possible weapon, and almost at once, had to be frustrating to Slater. But at least there was now demonstrable activity. Colin’s success had been a million to one chance that had come off, and the winding handle he’d rescued was no doubt, at that time, producing frustration at the forensic lab. All the same...Slater was now doing a concentrated sweep. He was certainly succeeding, though not in producing a further possible weapon.
It was unlikely that the locks had been pumped dry in the past 200 years. Many items might, in that time, have fallen from boats in transit, and it was clear that other contributions had been made, but not one of them resembling a possible weapon. Indeed, a new mystery was being presented: how had it all got there?
Three piles of sundry junk were growing in girth and height, each opposite to its own lock, but fortunately Slater had exercised a certain amount of delicacy in this matter and had had it all dumped, not on the side occupied by the house, but on the stretch of grass beyond.
It was indeed interesting, if only in stimulating the speculation.
Pram wheels, two shopping trolleys...Shopping trolleys? How the devil had they got there? No canal user would load a trolley on to his boat; it would be a devil of a nuisance. And no ordinary shopper, too idle to return the trolley to the stores once it’d been emptied, would have walked it at least two miles to reach these locks. An electric fire was there. Two motorcycle wheels, bearing tyres. A child’s tricycle, half a pram, and a good part of a wheelchair. Heavens, had somebody been in it? A length of hose, which emerged like a fearsome snake...‘That’s mine!’ shouted Colin. ‘I wondered where it’d got to.’ A chandelier—a complete chandelier with its crystal danglers apparently intact. A scythe, with half its handle rotted away, two cycle chains...
It all mounted up, and fresh offerings were appearing every minute. Not one item bore any resemblance to anything that could possibly have been the weapon.
Slater was in a dangerous mood. He had known that dragging would be futile, for the simple reason that a weapon for bashing people would most likely be straight, and would therefore craftily evade the prongs of the hooks. This, no doubt, was why he’d been suspicious about the winding handle. It had a straight shank, but with a two-handed grip at a right angle at one end. Possible to use, but unwieldy.
‘The bloody chief super insisted on this,’ he told me tersely. ‘It’s got now to the point where anything could have knocked her out. Oh yes, there was rust in her hair. Her hair! Could’ve come from anywhere. And only a single compressed fracture on her head. She could’ve done it falling in. And how’s a bloody weapon going to help? Anybody could’ve used that bloody winding handle. Nah! I’m not going to make an arrest like that. It’s got to be personal. Motives. And where people were. I tell you, Patton—’
‘I know, I know,’ I said soothingly. ‘Means and opportunity, they’re the same for everybody. So, it’s motives. How’re you doing in that line?’
We were talking as though Gerald, one of the possible murderers, was not standing stiffly at my elbow.
‘Hopeless,’ Slater said. ‘Too many possibilities. She wasn’t liked, you know. Too much of a spitfire, Clare was. Always on the offensive. She’ll have made a lot of enemies.’
‘And friends,’ I suggested.
‘Well yes,’ he said. ‘Yes?’ He was eyeing me cautiously, though most of my attention was still on the dragging operation. ‘You know something?’
‘No. Oh no.’ I gave him a quic
k glance. He was all eagerness. ‘But I thought...there’re people who admire a woman with a bit of fire in her. And determination. And that was Clare, from what I’ve gathered. You know about the sister, do you? Helen...’
‘The one in the houseboat? Yes, I know. And that’s another unpleasant mess. Mustn’t let it distract us, though.’
‘It was Clare who got her tucked in there,’ I told him. ‘Clare who would’ve protected her, nails and knees and whatever came to hand. Now...I admire her. I never saw her, but I’ve heard enough to make me admire her.’
That was not exactly true, but close enough. No it wasn’t—it was a damned lie.
‘You’re saying...’ He clutched at my elbow. ‘You’re suggesting...’
I laughed at him and shrugged myself free. ‘If you’re talking about Helen’s husband—Pierce, his name is—if you think he might’ve done it...well no. I wouldn’t think so. He didn’t need to kill Clare, you see. I don’t think this was a hatred murder. It wasn’t a killing in a burst of anger. Pierce is good at anger, I believe. But it wasn’t that. Do you think it could’ve been, Ted? Do you?’
‘Well no.’
‘Then what?’ I asked, just to find out exactly what his thoughts were.
‘I think it was a necessity. She had to die.’
‘Ah!’ I said. ‘Yes,’ I said.
And one of his teams broke up the discussion by shouting, ‘Another of those damned winding handles, Inspector.’
‘That’s the fourth,’ he told me gloomily. ‘And from the look of them, they’ve all been there a hundred years.’
‘Quite possible,’ I said. ‘Quite. Even two hundred.’
And they would have rusted almost to total disintegration, but all the same, Colin would welcome them with enthusiasm. The trawling exercise might be said to have justified itself.
‘And they can’t lift prints from the one they’ve got,’ Slater said gloomily. ‘Nor from the thumb impressions on her neck. I’ve got that to fall back on.’
‘Oh yes? And how can you use it?’
‘Size,’ he said. ‘Size of thumb. Shape. I’ll get everybody to press their thumbs into wads of putty.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very clever. But Ted—you know, I think you’re on the wrong track for a murder weapon.’
‘Oh? You think that? Well now, we’ve got to hear this.’ He spoke somewhat tersely.
I grinned at him. His temper was wearing thin.
‘It’s just this,’ I said. ‘All the fuss about winding handles as a weapon, and all the other rusty rubbish you’re dragging up...But—why?’
‘I’ll tell you why—’
‘It’s because of the rust in her hair,’ I guessed. ‘Go on—admit it.’
‘Well...yes. Of course.’
‘There’s no of course about it,’ I told him. ‘There’s a bit of rusty old chain, down by that pound she was found in. Now—isn’t it possible she got rust in her hair from that? It seems very likely to me. If she’d been pushed in...oh hell, Ted, imagine it for yourself.’
‘Well all right.’ But he wasn’t pleased to concede the point. ‘All right, but we’ve got a rusty winding handle—’
‘And why have you got it? Simply because it was taken from the pinion it was keyed to. The one down by the bottom pound. The body in there, the winding handle removed and thrown in a lock! It’s a gift. But what say—just a suggestion, Ted—what say she was knocked out with something entirely different? A chunk of wood, a broken tree branch...heavens, there’re masses of things like that around here. But what if she was? Wouldn’t it be a neat little trick to throw away the winding handle, just to distract attention from the real weapon?’
‘Tcha!’ Slater was disgusted. ‘So now—what d’you expect me to do? Hunt for weapons that weren’t—and then that proves they could’ve been? Hell, you’d drive anybody crazy.’
I smiled happily at him. Then, because Gerald’s fingers on my sleeve were becoming more imperative, I allowed him to draw me away. Once he thought we were far enough from Slater, he spoke in a tensed, hushed voice, almost stumbling over his own tongue.
‘That was very clever of you, Richard.’
‘Was it?’ I stopped, turned and stared at him. I couldn’t remember being clever. ‘How? In what way?’
‘The way you presented your case to him in such a convincing manner, yet you gave nothing away.’
‘Heh, heh!’ I said. ‘Easy. You don’t want to get the idea that there are different objectives, theirs and ours.’
‘You’d have made a splendid lawyer,’ he said blandly; he hadn’t even been listening.
‘Gerald,’ I said carefully, ‘you ought to realize that there are no sides in this: them and us. You’re virtually presenting your family as enemies of law and order. Yes—I know. After my behaviour with Arnold Pierce, I’m in no position to talk about law and order. But I’m willing to stick my head out and take my chances. No...please let me finish this. You’re taking an unnecessarily defensive attitude to this thing. A death has occurred. Everybody ought to be offering what information they can give to help sort it out.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ he protested.
I eyed him suspiciously, but couldn’t help smiling. ‘Maybe not, Gerald. But it was in your attitude. Up to now, Slater’s been very easy on the whole household. But that’s because he thinks he’s got a better way of getting at it than harassing your family. After all, the canal’s almost a right of way. And the tow-path.’
‘Legally...’
‘Yes, I know. People use it as they please, yet legally, it all belongs to those three old dears. Whatever’s been done, it’s been done on their property. But it’s a practical fact that the public’s got access, and the public includes a hell of a lot of people.’
‘Are you trying to tell me something, Richard?’
Yes, and it was proving very difficult to get through to him. We were standing well back, now, still able to watch what was going on but out of hearing.
‘As I said,’ I went on, ‘Slater’s got another direction from which he can approach it. There’s her flat, you see. And what it might reveal. There’re friends she might have had, and not simply amongst her colleagues.’
Ray, at least, would qualify as more than a colleague, and he had been desperately worried about Clare’s probable intervention in his engagement party. Certainly, I didn’t dare use this as an example to Gerald. Worried, Ray had been, but not desperate, surely, not murderously desperate. Colin had considered himself as engaged to Helen, but had wanted to keep it a secret. Murder, though, was a little too permanent for the keeping of such a secret. It would take it into the realms of fantasy.
‘You were saying?’ Gerald asked politely, and I knew I’d been thinking it over for too long.
‘Yes. Sorry. I was just saying that Clare could have had friends, or ex-friends—or even bitter enemies—all of whom Slater might care to chase up when they get through examining her flat, and sifting the contents.’
‘That is what I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said mournfully, ‘if you’ll let me get a word in, Richard. I’m one of them, you see.’
‘You...what?’
‘You haven’t let me tell you,’ he protested. ‘You’ve put me off whenever I’ve tried to tell you about it.’ He said this in a voice of deep injury, as though I’d shunned him.
‘Well...I’m sorry, Gerald. I didn’t realise.’
‘So now I’ll tell you. And it’s been weighing on me so heavily that I’ve near as dammit gone insane. I told you...I did tell you how I managed to get a laugh out of the court at her expense. Or to her benefit, look at it how you like.’
I didn’t like looking at it from any direction. ‘But your client was surely found guilty, anyway,’ I reminded him.
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ he said impatiently. ‘But that’s not the point.’
‘Then what is?’
He glanced around, to make sure we couldn’t be heard. ‘She and I were on opposing side
s, and you can say we were, in every sense, adversaries. Yet...we understood each other, there across the courtroom. It was our own little secret. Shall we say...we respected each other.’
I looked at him doubtfully. He was being at his pedantic best. ‘From two minor episodes in court?’
‘Yes—that. I felt it. I thought she felt it, too. And in the lunch interval, after our second encounter, we chose the same café. She was at a table alone.’
‘You mean you chose the café you’d watched her enter?’
‘If you wish to put it like that,’ he conceded reluctantly.
‘And you joined her at her table, to make sure she didn’t feel too friendless?’
‘Yes. And it grew from there.’
‘What grew from there?’ I asked, patiently, casually, and deeply troubled.
‘Our relationship. We met in court again, after that, of course. Many times. We respected each other, as I said, but we fought our different sides—and the mutual respect grew to something, well, special. Do you know what it means to find somebody you understand completely, and somebody who can understand you? When mutual admiration enters into it, and complete trust—’
‘Yes, I know,’ I interrupted, but gently.
‘I don’t believe you can, Richard. Not as I encountered it.’
‘Just as you say, Gerald.’
‘And it grew.’
‘To greater things,’ I suggested brightly, though I was feeling distinctly depressed.
‘At my age, Richard! With two grown-up children, and she about Colin’s age...it sounds quite absurd, I know.’
‘Not at all,’ I lied politely.
‘You understand?’
‘Completely,’ I encouraged him. Because I did.
‘Yes. Well...’ He had the grace to look embarrassed. I had realized he was leading me away from the police activity, the better to express his excitement at the experience, as though he had personally discovered, or invented, this situation. We were now on the tow-path, wandering slowly along the gentle curve of it.
‘It’s happened before,’ I told him. ‘By no means unique.’
Stone Cold Dead Page 21