Mask of Innocence

by Roger Ormerod

  He glared at me. ‘He said it’d suit me fine, getting in with the quality, as he called it. Jen being Sir Rowland’s by-blow. That was when I hit him.’

  ‘Thereby,’ I said gently, ‘lending authenticity to the accusation.’

  ‘Now you just listen here, Patton—’

  ‘No, Joe. You listen. You’re building up your own motive.’

  ‘I’m not having anybody—’

  ‘Will you listen, damn you! Chief Inspector Phillips, if he doesn’t manage to keep it all confined to this house, and these people, is going to have to search further, and dig out motives. And from what I hear, he’ll have a field-day of it. There’ll be dozens of people who positively loathed Charlie Pinson.’

  ‘What you gettin’ at?’

  ‘You’ve got no evidence to give him. You saw nothing but feet, and a torch. You saw Pinson, but we know he went in there. There’s nothing you can say that would help the DCI. But if it came to the point of him asking you — then you’d be advised to tell the truth, as you’ve told me.’

  He brightened, then frowned heavily. ‘D’you think he’d believe me?’

  ‘Well, now...that’s a different thing. There was one bit of it...’

  ‘What? Such as what?’ he challenged.

  ‘You being in the habit of driving over here at night, and Jennie walking up that pathway through the wood...and that for a goodnight kiss! I ask you!’

  ‘It wouldn’t be just one.’

  ‘Of course not, Richard,’ said Amelia.

  ‘However many,’ I assured him. ‘Phillips wouldn’t understand that. Laddie, by the time a policeman gets to Chief Inspector, he’s had all the romance knocked out of him. He’d laugh in your face.’

  He couldn’t decide whether I was being serious or flippant. His expression hovered between humour and rejection.

  ‘You understand,’ he said at last, though whether statement or query I couldn’t decide.

  ‘I didn’t make it to Chief Inspector,’ I explained.

  ‘Then I...’

  ‘You sit tight at your little cottage, and if you’ve got any talking to do, you do it to the dogs.’

  He scrambled to his feet. ‘I’ll just have a word with Jen...’

  ‘No, you will not. Don’t be a fool. Keep out of it. I’ll have a word with Jennie later.’

  ‘Yes...well...thanks.’

  ‘Oh...and Joe...’

  He stopped, peering over his shoulder. ‘What now?’

  ‘Yesterday, when we went up to the cottage, you looked at it as though you’d never seen it before. But if you’d been meeting Jennie...’ I left it as a question.

  He grinned. ‘With Jen there, I wasn’t going to be looking at a blasted cottage, now was I?’

  ‘I reckon not, Joe. I reckon not.’

  Then he was out of the door and heading for his car. I got to my feet to go and watch him drive away, praying that Jennie would not be waiting for him. But it wasn’t Jennie, it was Detective Sergeant Tate, leaning against the Citroen and smoking a cigarette. I saw them speaking together, then Tate made a gesture with his hand, and they went together to the front door. Sensibly, Joe seemed to raise no objection.

  It was clear that Chief Inspector Phillips was in complete control of the situation.

  There being nothing to detain us in the kitchen, we went through to the hall to find out what was going on.

  It was safe to assume that Tessa would be up in her room, and that Joe would probably, at that time, be telling his story to Phillips, so I had a fair guess as to where the others would be. A policeman, a DC, was standing placidly at the drawing-room door, the implication being that this was the room that had been lent to Phillips to use for his initial interviews. The DC, seeing my hesitation, asked, ‘Would you be Mr Patton, sir?’

  I said I would.

  ‘Ah. Then, the DCI was asking for you, and somebody said you were in the kitchen, getting some breakfast. But here you are now, and he asked if you’ll make yourself available.’

  ‘I’m available any time.’

  ‘He’s got somebody in with him right now. But the rest are in that room there — I think they call it the library. He’s seen them. If you wouldn’t mind waiting in there, I’ll give you a shout...’

  ‘Don’t shout too loud, then,’ I said. ‘There’re already a lot of shattered nerves around here.’ Just to lighten the mood.

  ‘Is that so, sir?’ he asked blandly.

  I realised that I’d been indiscreet. This was no rooky constable. He would repeat anything he heard to his officer-in-charge.

  Nodding to him, I turned away, and ushered Amelia ahead of me into the library.

  Apart from Tessa, they were all there, Mary and the three youngsters. I couldn’t prevent myself from thinking of them in that way, as really, apart from Jennie, neither of the other two had matured to adulthood. Jennie was possibly the most stable, this having settled on her from the time her wedding had suddenly become feasible, and not far in the future. Jeremy, I thought, would never mature, and Paul, though more responsible than Jeremy, could be very tricky. But the unstable facets of his personality appeared only when Jeremy entered into his life, and affected the way he wished it to go.

  They were at the table, playing cards.

  Paul lifted his head. ‘They’ve been asking for you.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ I was trying to decide what game they were playing. It was probably something they had adapted, over the years, from another card game. Mary had possibly invented it, when they were very young. I wandered over to the window. Nothing was happening outside. Not much inside, either.

  ‘Has he seen you all?’ I asked.

  Jeremy glanced up. ‘Oh sure. There’s nothing we can tell ‘em, is there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well — stands to reason,’ Paul said, shrugging. ‘It’s nothing to do with us — it was up at the lodge.’

  There was a window seat. I sat on it, but it was low, and my knees stuck up.

  ‘It could still involve the family,’ I told him. Told them.

  Jeremy’s head came up. They were all still, now. Mary had put down her cards. They’d been playing only to keep their minds from it.

  Paul had spoken casually, obviously attempting to cool Jeremy’s aggression, which was becoming habitual. I could understand that Jeremy, now the head of the house, might have been practising the exercise of his new authority, and told DCI Phillips one or two things about the sanctity of the individual and the rights of privacy. If so, I could imagine that it had had absolutely no effect.

  ‘This crime,’ I said, not wishing to use the word murder, ‘was committed in the grounds. Not far in, but nevertheless on Penhavon property. It’s only natural that the Chief Inspector would want to clear the field of the obvious suspects before he spreads his nets further afield.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ demanded Jeremy. ‘Obvious suspects! What’ve any of us got to do with that Pinson creature?’

  ‘Nothing, I should hope,’ I replied equably, smoothing the emotional creases.

  ‘It all seems obvious to me,’ said Paul. ‘He was probably stewed to the eyeballs, staggering up the lane from the Red Lion, staggering home.’

  ‘You know where he lived, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Corrie Lane,’ put in Mary quickly. ‘You remember, Richard. He said that.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. She was protecting her brood impartially.

  ‘And that’s Corrie Lane,’ Jeremy told me. ‘The one at the top of the drive. And why the hell we’ve got to talk about him, I don’t know. It’s obvious to anybody who’s got eyes to see. Obvious to everybody. I bet he had a fight in the Red Lion, and somebody followed him up the lane, and he went into the lodge...why the devil do we have to talk about him?’

  It was he who was doing most of the talking. I eased things along.

  ‘If there was a fight, the police will find out. There’ll be a post-mortem examination, and the pathologist’ll be abl
e to say how much alcohol Pinson had got in him, and find any signs of a fight. It’s all standard procedure.’

  ‘Do we have to talk about this?’ Amelia asked. ‘It’s not very pleasant.’

  ‘And we were playing cards,’ said Paul. ‘Until you came in.’ It was as though I’d ruined the day for them.

  Jeremy threw his cards face up on the table. ‘What’s it matter what we do? Why don’t they go away and leave us in peace?’

  It was at this point that the door opened and the constable from outside said to me, ‘Mr Patton...the DCI would like to see you now, please.’

  In the hall, behind him, was standing Joe. He made a gesture, and Jennie ran forward, beating me to the door. The constable said, ‘If you’d just wait inside the library for a moment...’ Raising his eyebrows to Joe.

  The DCI had been wisely waiting until he had all the statements presented to him, before he allowed anyone to go away. He would by that time know whether he had any contradictions requiring reconciliation, or untied ends hanging around loose.

  I was next. I would be the last.

  I rubbed my chin, which was bristly. Hopefully, after this interview, I might get time for a bath and shave, then I’d feel a bit more human. Now, I walked inside with what confidence I could muster.

  12

  Phillips had made himself at home. He was lounging back in one of the bigger chairs, legs spread out in front of him, and smoking a cigarette. There was a low table to one side of him, on its surface an ashtray and a used cup and saucer. On his other side was a larger table, scattered with the reports that had already come down from the lodge. And there was a tape recorder.

  Beyond the table, and occupying a prime position on the glorious rug in front of a barely red fire, were the two suitcases. They had not been opened, or if they had — just to check — they had been closed again.

  ‘Sit down, will you, Mr Patton.’

  I took the seat opposite to him. He gestured towards the tape recorder. ‘We move on, Mr Patton. Things will have changed since your time, no doubt. Technology triumphs. A few more years and I’ll be redundant, and electronic probes will search your brain in order to sort the truths from the lies and evasions. Aren’t you glad you’re out of it?’

  ‘It’d save manpower,’ I agreed. ‘And leave you chaps free to concentrate on motorists.’

  ‘For an ex-copper, you’re a bit anti-police.’ He frowned. ‘Or so it seems to me.’

  I stared at my pipe, turning it in my fingers. ‘More violent deaths on the roads than off it,’ I commented. I didn’t know why we were talking about this. ‘Everybody driving about in their own lethal weapon these days. Lots of scope there for you.’

  He twisted his lips sourly, but his cool grey eyes were intent. He was simply playing himself in, deciding how best to tackle me, wondering where my sympathies leaned. His face was tracked with lines of fatigue. It was quite possible that he’d been on duty for twelve hours already, and once settled into this new case he knew he’d have to see it through. You can’t pass on impressions to a relief officer; you can’t explain feelings. It’s not very often that a senior officer finds himself faced by simple facts. Nothing is ever simple, nothing obvious, in a murder case.

  ‘You’ll have noticed the tape recorder isn’t switched on,’ he said flatly. From his tone, I could tell he wasn’t happy about using it at all. ‘They’re going mad on taping, now. Future evidence, that sort of thing. How tough we might have been — how suggestive. I tell you, I don’t like it.’

  He left that hanging, perhaps for my observations on the subject. I said, ‘There’s nothing like the odd note scribbled on a shirt cuff. And anyway, the recorder doesn’t record your thoughts. Unless,’ I suggested, ‘you confide your inner thoughts to it.’

  Nothing entered his face that might be described as an expression. I’d intended it as a pleasantry.

  ‘So you can see my difficulty.’ This was not a question. ‘Once I switch it on, that’s an interview. It goes on paper, later on, for those of us who can still read. That’s why we’re here, chatting and wasting time. You can help me. Shortcut things for me. I don’t want to make it formal, that’s the point. Okay with you?’

  He was quite casual about it, looking away as he pressed the end of his cigarette to extinction in the ashtray. Then he looked back at me sharply. ‘You’ve been here — how long?’

  ‘Yesterday. We arrived here, Miss Pinson, my wife and myself, just about midday. Have you spoken to them?’

  ‘I haven’t had the time. I doubt it’ll be necessary. Visitors. Go on. You came for the reading of the will, I understand? Wills!’ he said with disgust. ‘Trouble follows on their tails. But I can’t see how this thing connects with the will. Anyway, you carry on.’

  ‘The will,’ I said, ‘of the late Rowland Searle. Sir Rowland Mansfield Searle, Baronet.’

  ‘I know. And the whole thing sounds crazy to me. This to one, that to the other, and no logic to it. And now this character called Joe...’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Can’t remember his other name. You get my point about written notes?’

  ‘I can’t help you. I don’t remember hearing his surname.’

  ‘Anyway...this Joe comes to me with some fantastic tale about hanging around for Jennie — after eleven at night — for a goodnight kiss, heaven help us. And the rest...the stories they tell! It’s all got to be true. It’s too stupid to be otherwise. Everything’s chaotic, random, disorganised. It’s got to be the truth, and it leaves me nowhere.’

  He was silent, morose.

  ‘Aren’t you going to switch it on?’ I asked.

  ‘What? Oh — the recorder. No. Not yet. What’d be the point? You’ve already rehearsed this Joe person on what he should say, and you’ve probably warned the rest.’

  ‘Joe asked for my advice.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘If you asked, to tell you.’

  ‘And where did that get me?’

  ‘I don’t know what you asked him.’

  ‘All right. I’ll tell you, Patton. I’m convinced that what he told me is true. He couldn’t have invented it. So he saw someone with a torch at the cottage. Right. I believe it. And that person with the light, the one who was there first, he was the one who killed Pinson, when he arrived later. Nothing could be more straightforward.’

  ‘Why don’t you switch it on?’ I asked again.

  ‘Because you’ve got nothing to tell me, nothing that I don’t already know, and you’ve had time to get yourself acquainted with these people, and you probably know all about Charles Pinson’s place in their various lives, and you wouldn’t want one of them — any single one of them — to be charged with the murder of Charles Pinson, and...’ He took a breath. ‘And you’d lie to me with the experience your police service has given you in lying, and I’d get nothing anyway. Nothing.’

  ‘And you certainly wouldn’t dream of asking for my advice?’ I suggested.

  ‘Certainly not.’ He hesitated. ‘Not on tape, anyway.’

  ‘Off it, though?’

  My experience, since I’d retired, had been that serving police officers tended to treat me with suspicion, and resented suggestions. They took it as a criticism of their abilities, and I can’t say I blame them. But this man was different, or he used a different version of crafty technique. With all the known facts already before him, he would know that I dared not deviate from the truth, anyway. Yet he sincerely recognised that I had a lead on him, and this could be his method of digging out my thoughts.

  His offhand attitude was a complete sham. He was baiting a trap.

  Then he said, quite sincerely, ‘I don’t want your advice. I want...will you listen...can you visualise that scene last night, as the Joe person told it? The light in the cottage, the torch probably lying on the floor, Pinson walking in on it — whatever it was. Can you see it, Patton?’

  ‘Very clearly,’ I assured him.

  He sighed. Then he burst out, ‘Facts, facts, evidence, statement
s! Christ, I get nothing else. And nobody tries to imagine anything. It’s not real enough for them. D’you think I’m in the wrong job, Patton? I’m beginning to wonder about that. And here I am now, waiting for a fact. One fact. Then I think I’ll have a clear picture. There’s something wrong, Patton. Wrong. And I can’t visualise the situation clearly enough to spot it.’

  ‘It’s no good telling me.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ He paused. Stared at the ceiling. ‘Nice carving,’ he observed. Then he lowered his eyes and stared at me. ‘Inspector Thomas is on leave,’ he told me. ‘Works with me, usually. He sees things.’

  ‘He gets hallucinations?’ I asked blandly, wondering about Phillips’s own mental stability. But he didn’t react.

  ‘He can imagine things — how things were. But he’s not here.’

  ‘And I am?’

  ‘Precisely. And Tate’s useless at this. I was just wondering if you get the same picture as I do. Because mine doesn’t make any sense. Ah...’ He twisted his head at a tap on the door, and nodded as Sergeant Tate entered. Not glancing at me, Tate handed a sheet of paper to the Chief Inspector.

  ‘That what you wanted, sir?’

  Phillips glanced at it. ‘Seems like it. Thank you, Sergeant.’

  Tate at last looked at me. I was not supposed to seem so relaxed. I flicked him a smile, a twist of the lips, but he failed to respond.

  ‘That’s all, Sergeant, thanks.’

  Tate went out. Phillips waited until the door was shut, then he said, ‘This is what I’ve been waiting for.’

  ‘So we can have the tape on?’ I asked.

  ‘By no means.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to record the two of us doing this visualising act?’

  ‘Would it record it? A mental image? Nah! Leave the thing switched off. Now...’

  I waited quietly as he read the report carefully, then he looked up, grinning. It changed his face completely. It came alive. The tiny, sunken cheeks crept out and climbed towards his eyes, pouching them, and they flushed. The eyes gleamed at me from their reluctant slits.