Now he knew what they were listening for and a moment or two later they heard it: the faint, rhythmic squeak of a wheelchair approaching.
Then the door opened, on the chain.
‘Yes?’ The segment of face was at waist level.
‘Mrs Chase?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Nothing to be worried about, ma’am. We’re just on a routine enquiry. Police officers.’
‘Why aren’t you wearing your uniforms?’
‘Plain clothes police, ma’am.’
‘I want to see your identification.’
‘Certainly.’ Thanet extended his card and a hand emerged through the crack, plucked it from him. Then the door closed.
Thanet caught Lineham smothering a grin. He didn’t blame him. What if the old lady didn’t open up again? Thanet found himself imagining the farcical scene in which he confessed to the Super that he’d been relieved of his warrant card by an old lady in a wheelchair.
The door opened again, wide, this time.
Mrs Chase was tiny, and painfully thin, the bone structure of face and hands clearly visible beneath the pale, almost transparent skin. Her shoulders were hunched and she had to twist her head sideways and back at an unnatural angle to look up at her visitors. There was a rug over her knees and her face was heavily scored with lines of pain and ill temper—scarcely surprising, Thanet thought. He had heard of people who managed to endure the most horrific lives with sweetness and good humour, had even met one or two of them, but suspected that if he himself were ever to find himself in such a position he would lapse at once into peevishness and self-pity.
She held out his card. ‘You can’t be too careful these days, you know.’
‘Quite right, ma’am. It’s very sensible of you, to take precautions.’
Especially, he thought, in her position. One of the most abhorrent recent manifestations of violent crime was the upsurge of attacks on the most vulnerable members of society, the old and the handicapped, often in their own homes.
‘What do you want?’
‘We’re trying to find Mr Leslie Mathews—your daughter’s fiancé, I believe. He wasn’t at home, so we thought he might be here.’
At the mention of Mathews’ name she had pursed her lips and a look of intense dislike had flitted across her face. Now there was satisfaction in her voice as she said, ‘What’s he done?’
‘As I said, ma’am, this is just a routine enquiry. We think Mr Mathews might be able to help us.’
She squinted up at him and Thanet guessed that she was trying to work out how best to turn this unusual situation to her own advantage.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said at last.
‘If you could just tell us whether or not Mr Mathews is with your daught—’
‘Come in, I said.’ Her sharpness revealed that she was not accustomed to being thwarted. With astonishing deftness she swivelled the wheelchair and set off down the passage. Thanet and Lineham had no option but to follow.
The room into which she led them looked as though someone had taken a gigantic broom and swept all the furniture to the edges of the floor. This was presumably to allow Mrs Chase freedom of movement in her wheelchair, Thanet thought, but the effect was curiously disturbing, as though the stage had been cleared for some major upheaval or confrontation. A gas fire was full on and the atmosphere was suffocating.
‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Chilly out there. Sit down.’ She waved a hand at a settee against the wall and both men complied. At once she manoeuvred her chair into a position squarely in front of them and only a few feet away, thus giving herself the psychological advantage of being able to look down on them. And who could blame her, Thanet thought. He could understand such stratagems becoming second nature to someone in her position.
He decided deliberately to relinquish the initiative, see where she led them. Lineham glanced at him, obviously wondering if Thanet’s continuing silence indicated that he wanted the sergeant to take over the questioning. Thanet gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Lineham sat back.
‘I knew it!’ said Mrs Chase. ‘I knew there was something. As soon as I set eyes on him, I could tell there was going to be trouble. I warned Eileen, but she wouldn’t listen.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘Mooning about like a love-sick schoolgirl. At her age!’
‘How old is your daughter, Mrs Chase?’
‘Thirty-seven. I ask you! She should know better, have some dignity. What’s more, he’s four years younger than she is. Disgusting, that’s what I call it. Engaged, indeed!’
‘When are they hoping to be married?’
‘They haven’t deigned to inform me, yet.’
‘They’ll live here, I suppose?’ What an appalling prospect, thought Thanet. Mathews must be either a brave man or an insensitive one even to contemplate such an idea.
‘So they say. Going to convert upstairs into a self-contained flat. Eileen says it won’t make any difference to me, she’ll be able to do for me everything she does now, but I can’t see it, myself, when she’s got a husband to fuss over.’
And this, Thanet thought, was no doubt the root of the trouble. Understandably. This late blossoming of her daughter’s love-life must have filled Mrs Chase with terror. Thanet couldn’t like the woman, but he could sympathise with her predicament.
‘Why do you want to see him?’ Mrs Chase’s eyes were suddenly avid, alight with the hope that Thanet might be able to throw her a life-line, that her daughter’s romance was about to be still-born.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that … He is out with your daughter, I presume?’ He wouldn’t put it past the old woman deliberately to have led him up the garden path in the hope of extracting information from him.
‘Oh yes, he’s out with her all right. Gallivanting, as usual.’
‘Where have they gone, do you know?’
‘For a walk, that’s all I know. They only left about twenty minutes ago.’
Thanet glanced at his watch. A quarter to two. He suddenly realised that he was hungry. He and Lineham hadn’t yet had any lunch.
‘What time will they be back?’
‘Half past three, they said. But they’re usually late.’
Thanet could understand why. With Mrs Chase’s hostility waiting to ambush them the moment they stepped through the front door, there could be little incentive to be punctual.
‘Your daughter has been at home all over the half-term holiday?’
‘If you can call it being at home, yes. Spent most of it up in her bedroom. I was looking forward to having a bit of company for a change, but no, all over the weekend she was going around looking as though the world had come to an end. To tell you the truth, I thought they might have split up. No such luck, unfortunately.’
‘She didn’t see Mr Mathews at all, over the weekend?’
‘No. Wouldn’t tell me why, either. Just said he was away and she didn’t want to discuss it. And then, on Monday night he turns up, large as life, at ten o’clock at night.’ Her nose wrinkled in disgust. ‘He’d been drinking, too. I could smell it the minute he walked into the room. But her … she’s got no pride. When the doorbell went she couldn’t get there quick enough. And when she came back in with him … you’d have thought someone’d given her the crown jewels.’
‘Did Mr Mathews say where he’d been, over the weekend?’
‘I didn’t wait to find out. As soon as I saw the condition he was in, I made Eileen put me to bed.’
Her look of gloating satisfaction told Thanet that Mrs Chase would have prolonged this process as much as possible, in order to keep the lovers apart.
‘Is that what you want to know?’ she said eagerly. ‘What he was doing over the weekend?’
Thanet stood up. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Mrs Chase.’
‘You’re not going?’
‘We must, I’m afraid.’
Why was it that this sort of person always brought out the worst in others, Thanet
wondered, as he experienced a brief and shameful sense of satisfaction at her disappointment.
‘But you’ll come back, at half past three?’
‘Possibly.’ But he had no intention of allowing himself to be manoeuvred into interviewing Mathews in the presence of this woman. He and Lineham would wait outside, catch the couple as they returned home. And if the man was innocent of any involvement in Charity’s death, well, Thanet only hoped that by coming here he hadn’t handed Mrs Chase another weapon with which to make her daughter’s life a misery. One of the unfortunate results of a criminal investigation is that its effects spread outwards, like ripples on a pond, disrupting the lives of the innocent as well as the guilty.
He and Lineham had something to eat at a little sandwich bar on the edge of Sturrenden—it was too late, by now, to go to a pub—and by a quarter past three were in position, parked a little way up the road, where Mrs Chase would not be able to see them.
At twenty to four Lineham nudged him. ‘There they are.’
Walking slowly towards them was a youngish couple, holding hands, feet dragging like children facing a particularly unpleasant day at school. They were talking, engrossed in each other, and as they drew nearer they saw that the man was wearing pebble-lensed spectacles.
Thanet and Lineham got out of the car and went to meet them.
‘Mr Mathews?’
The intrusion was a shock and they stopped, startled, surprise changing to apprehension when Thanet introduced himself.
‘We’d like a word with you in private, if we may.’
Mathews and Eileen Chase edged closer to each other, as if Thanet were threatening to rip them apart by force.
‘My fiancée and I have no secrets from each other.’
Mathews fitted the description: medium height, fair hair, thinning at the temples. His clothes were nondescript—fawn cords and a green sweatshirt.
Thanet shrugged. ‘As you wish. Is there somewhere quiet nearby, where we can talk?’
Mathews looked questioningly at Eileen and she said quickly, ‘There’s the park.’ She was small and slight with a high, bony forehead and slightly protruding eyes. Her shoulder-length hair was caught back in an Alice band, in a style which gave her a curiously immature, little-girl look, an impression heightened by her dress, a shirt-waister in green and white checked gingham.
She and Mathews led the way to a pair of wrought-iron gates a little distance away on the other side of the road. Apart from some children playing on the swings in the recreation area, the place was deserted.
‘Over there will do,’ said Thanet, indicating a small paved area backed by hedges, where two wooden benches were set at right angles to each other.
They all sat down, Mathews and his fiancée watching Thanet apprehensively.
‘I won’t beat about the bush, Mr Mathews,’ said Thanet. ‘We are investigating the murder of Charity Pritchard and we understand that you and she travelled down from London together on Monday night.’
This was no news to Eileen, Thanet noted. She merely looked calmly at Mathews, waiting for his reply.
‘No! Yes … well, not exactly.’
‘Oh come, Mr Mathews. Either you did or you didn’t.’
‘Well, we did travel down on the same train, but it was purely a matter of chance. We just happened to get into the same compartment at Victoria.’
‘You sat together?’
‘Yes … Well, it seems silly, if you see someone you know on a train, not to sit with them, doesn’t it?’
‘Depends on whether you want to sit with them, surely,’ said Lineham. ‘I know some people I’d run a mile to avoid.’
‘I didn’t have much choice about it. She came and sat opposite me, and I could hardly have moved away without being downright rude.’
‘Rather awkward,’ said Thanet.
‘Quite.’
‘I mean, I suppose you really have to be very careful, a man in your position.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, a male teacher in an all-girls school,’ said Lineham. ‘And an unmarried one at that … Bound to be the occasional schoolgirl crush to fend off, surely?’
Mathews cast a panic-stricken glance at Eileen and her grip on his hand tightened. Thanet wondered how much the girl knew, whether it would be worth trying to question her alone. It would probably be a waste of time, he decided. Her loyalty to Mathews was patent.
‘Did Charity have a crush on you, Mr Mathews?’ he said softly.
There was a brief silence. Mathews and Eileen did not look at each other, but Thanet was aware of the current of sympathy and strength flowing from the girl to her fiancé through those linked hands. She may not have looked a force to be reckoned with, but Thanet knew that a woman who falls in love for the first time relatively late in life will probably be prepared to fight tooth and nail to keep her lover.
Mathews leaned forward slightly, his eyes so magnified by the lenses of his spectacles that Thanet found it impossible to read their expression.
‘What, exactly, are you implying, Inspector?’
It was a good try at indignation, but it lacked that note of conviction imparted by genuine innocence. Up until this moment Thanet had been uncertain of the precise nature of the relationship between Mathews and Charity. He was well aware that Mathews could have been telling the truth, that he and Charity had met by chance on that train, and that Mathews’ nervousness might have been based on nothing more than the knowledge that this unfortunate coincidence might appear to implicate him in the murder of a girl who had been no more to him than one pupil among many.
But now, suddenly, he was certain: Mathews and Charity had had a sexual relationship and, what was more, Eileen Chase had known about it.
‘Not implying, merely asking, Mr Mathews.’
It would be best, now, if Mathews were left wondering just how much the police knew. Thanet changed tack.
‘I understand that you were away for the whole weekend?’
Mathews shifted uneasily on the seat. ‘That’s right.’
‘Would you mind telling us where you went?’
For some reason, this was the wrong question. Mathews relaxed a little. ‘By all means. I was walking. In the Chilterns.’
What was the question he should have asked? Thanet was frustrated to find that he didn’t know.
‘Alone?’
‘Yes. I was camping out. I do, from time to time. Does you good to get right away from civilisation.’
Especially with problems like yours, thought Thanet. ‘Can you think of anyone who might remember seeing you—when you stopped to buy food, whatever?’
‘Not offhand.’
It was pointless to waste time trying to get the man to come up with verifiable details at this point. This was clearly a no-danger area for Mathews. ‘Perhaps you could think about it, give us a ring … And now, if we could just go back to Monday evening again …’
‘I really don’t see what else I can tell you. As I said, we met by accident, travelled down in the same compartment, and that’s it.’
‘You left the train together,’ said Thanet.
‘Well, naturally …’
‘And left the station together,’ said Lineham.
Thanet leaned forward. ‘Of course, what we’re really interested in, is what happened then.’
‘Happened?’
So far Eileen Chase had not said a single word throughout the entire interview. Now, the strain was beginning to tell. The taut muscles of her jaw betrayed the force with which her teeth were clamped together.
‘What did you do, when you left the station?’ Lineham took up the questioning at Thanet’s signal.
‘I went to see my fiancée.’ Mathews glanced at Eileen for confirmation and she gave a quick, taut nod.
‘Arriving at her house at what time?’
‘About …’ Mathews stopped.
Would the temptation to lie, give himself a false alibi, prove irresistible, Thanet wondered.
Mathews turned to the girl. ‘What time was it, darling, did you notice?’
She hesitated. Then, ‘Ten o’clock,’ she said, looking straight into his eyes.
The message was clear. Tell the truth as far as possible, she was saying. Of course, there was Mrs Chase to take into account. Would Eileen have lied, if she lived alone, Thanet wondered.
Mathews looked back at Lineham. ‘If Eileen says it was ten, then it was.’
‘So what were you doing in the meantime? The station is only ten minutes walk from here.’
‘I stopped at a pub, had a drink or two. Any law against that?’
‘None. Which pub?’
Mathews hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I don’t make a habit of going to pubs. I’ve no idea what most of the pubs in Sturrenden are called. I just happened to be passing this one and felt like a drink, so I went in.’
‘Where was it?’
‘Somewhere between here and the station.’
‘You really can’t be more precise than that?’
‘No … I wasn’t feeling well.’
‘You were ill?’
‘Not exactly. Just a bit under the weather … Well, if you must know, I was trying to make up my mind about something.’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. It’s a private matter.’
Some unspoken communication passed between him and the girl, and Thanet saw her fingers tighten on his again. She was backing up his decision not to speak. There was no point in pressing the matter.
Lineham had understood this. He raised his eyebrows at Thanet. Shall I push him?
No, Thanet returned.
‘How long did you stay in this pub, Mr Mathews?’ said Lineham.
‘I’m not sure. But if I left the station about nine and didn’t get here until ten it must have been three-quarters of an hour or more.’
‘Did you see anyone you know?’
‘Not that I can recall.’
‘And how many drinks did you have?’
‘Two, three perhaps.’
‘Beers?’
‘Whiskies.’ Mathews lifted his chin defiantly, as if defending his right to drink whatever he wanted.
Close Her Eyes Page 17