Death of a Perfect Mother (12 page)

Thought is perhaps too definite a word for what went on in Fred's head: impressions, feelings, vague impulses and desires floated through his brain like skeletal autumn leaves, driven by the vaguest breeze, slow, wanton, uncatchable. Fred could never have verbalized one of these thoughts, still less could he have argued for any of his opinions. Still, there was this low heat in his belly, this smouldering excitement, that made him, today, more than usually self-conscious, awake to everything going on around him. In the road outside a police constable got out of the car and leaned heavily over the top of it, looking towards the house. They're waiting for me, thought Fred. He straightened his tie, dusted a speck of dirt from a sleeve, then walked round the double bed and left the front bedroom he had shared for nearly thirty years with Lill.

In the car Fred was silent. What was appropriate conversation for a man whose wife has just been garrotted in a public thoroughfare to make with the policeman who is driving him to the police station for questioning? Fred's was not an inventive mind. As he got into the car he hazarded a ‘Looks like rain, don't it?' but thenceforth he held his peace; blew, in fact, on those little coals of excitement in his guts. He was head of the household, going—the
first
to go—to talk to the man investigating the murder of his wife. Made you think.

Awkwardness made him shuffle when he was led into the presence of McHale, but then he told himself that that was stupid, and took his eyes from the brown lino on the floor. The sight of McHale, poised elegantly and impressively over an unnaturally tidy desk, confirmed Fred's impressions of earlier in the day. Good-looking chap. Good class of chap, too. Well spoken, clean, a natural leader. Ambitious, capable. Fred respected that kind of chap. Voted for them—the Conservatives—in local elections. You could trust a chap like that to get things done.

He said: ‘You've got to get him, that bastard. Must have been some kind of crazy mugger, eh? Christ, you wonder what the country's coming to in this day and age, don't you? Bombs, assassinations, and now this.'

McHale, though he was not inclined to see Lill's murder in a national context, did in general terms agree with Fred: the murderer was probably some stray maniac. Last year there had been, in the Cumbledon area, that nasty business of the gay ripper. He had not, as it happened, got very far—being so unlucky as to choose for his second rip a fair-haired, angelic-looking judo black belt. But the case had impressed McHale (who had not been on it) with a sense of meaningless, perverse horror. It had confirmed, for no very obvious reasons, some odd feelings he had about the moral health of the nation. The garrotting
of Lill Hodsden seemed to him to bear the same hallmarks. But of course, as he told himself, his mind was very much open.

He said: ‘You may well be right. And believe me, I've got a whole troop of people working on those lines—' As if to confirm what he said the telephone now rang. He snapped a couple of ‘yes's and a ‘no' into the mouthpiece and then slammed it down. ‘But of course,' he went on, ‘until we can be sure we've got to fill in the picture as far as your wife is concerned—just as a matter of routine. I'm sure you understand that.'

‘Oh aye,' said Fred.

I hope you do, thought McHale. He took hold of a handbag that was lying on his desk, a plastic affair that made only the most half-hearted attempt to imagine itself leather. Its red-brown colour was clearly designed to tone in with Lill's hair. At the sight of it in McHale's hands, two little tears squeezed themselves out of the corners of Fred's eyes, and ambled down his cheeks. He wiped them off with an earthy handkerchief.

‘Sorry,' he said: ‘brought her back to me, like.'

‘Quite natural,' said McHale briskly.

Fred—hesitantly, as if expecting to hear the upbraiding voice of Lill asking him what he thought he was doing—took the bag in his work-rasped hands and began to rummage inexpertly around in it.

‘Can you spot anything missing?' asked McHale unhopefully.

‘There's nowt as far as I can see,' said Fred. ‘But then I wouldn't really know. I've never been one to go poking around in my wife's things.'

‘No, of course not,' said McHale. ‘But you would know if she'd been accustomed to carry anything valuable around with her?'

‘Can't say she had anything valuable,' said Fred. ‘We're plain folks, like I said. 'Course, there was the engagement
ring . . .' Thirty-five bob, he remembered, back in Festival of Britain year, bought with a modest treble-chance win that had also run to a plaice and chips lunch at the Odeon cafeteria. He'd been happy that day. He did not see the sneer on the face of McHale. McHale had seen the ring too.

‘No—the ring was still on the—she was still wearing it,' he said. ‘And your son said she wouldn't have been carrying much money . . .'

‘Don't know what
he'd
know about it,' grumbled Fred, as if loath to share the limelight. ‘We wouldn't know, would we? She might have had money from anywhere.'

‘Really?' McHale jumped in, leaned imposingly forward and looked Fred in the eyes. ‘You think she could have had money you know nothing about?'

Fred jumped. That was coming it rather fast.

‘I didn't question her about money,' he said, his mouth set in an obstinate line. ‘Just gave her the housekeeping and let her get on with it.' (The housekeeping, be it said, was all but a quid or so of Fred's weekly wage.)

‘But you think she could have got money from somewhere else?'

‘Could have,' said Fred, still mulish.

‘Where, for example?'

‘How would I know? I tell you, I didn't ask questions.'

‘But it was you who made the suggestion, Mr Hodsden.'

‘I didn't make any suggestions at all. All I'm saying is, with Lill you never knew. She was a smart one, was Lill.'

McHale was bewildered. He was not sure how carefully he needed to tread. How besottedly stupid was Fred Hodsden? Or was he a complaisant husband? He dipped a toe in the water.

‘Your wife had been out visiting, hadn't she? At a Mr . . . Hamilton Corby's.'

Fred, it seemed, regarded this as a change of subject, and shifted in his chair so he did not have to see the red-brown
handbag. ‘That's right. Well, Mrs Corby really, of course. She's an invalid. She'd been very good to her, my Lill had. Visited her twice a week, regular as clockwork. She'll miss Lill will Mrs Corby, poor soul.'

McHale raised, fractionally, a silver-blond eyebrow at the cretinous obtuseness of mankind. From a glance at Lill's dead body he could have told that she was no devoted sick-room visitor. ‘Would there be any reason,' he asked, treading warily over Fred's stupidity like a super-power edging its way into a Third World country, ‘why Mr Corby should have paid her a sum of money last night?'

Fred looked at him blankly: ‘No, not as I know of . . . Mind you, he was a generous man: found a place for our Gordon when he came out of the army, even though work's scarce in the yards. But what would he give her money for?'

‘Or jewellery, perhaps? A present of jewellery?'

At last the idea got through to Fred. He struggled forward in his chair, spluttering and coughing. ‘Here, what do you mean? What are you trying to say? Ruddy cheek! There's no one can say my Lill was one of that sort!'

‘You misunderstand me,' said McHale with a patient smile. ‘I merely meant he might have given her something, some token, as a thank-you . . . for her care of his wife . . . Perhaps some trinket of his wife's that she had no more use for—after all, I gather that she's bedridden.'

Fred sank back into his chair, apparently somewhat mollified. ‘Oh well, if that was all you were implying, that's all right. I suppose he might have. But it hadn't happened before, not to my knowledge.'

‘You took me up very sharp there, Mr Hodsden,' said McHale, super-smooth, in a way that made Fred sweat. ‘Is there something you're keeping back? About your wife's relationships with other men, for example? Did she have—friendships?'

Fred, having once exploded, seemed now to be working on a longer fuse. ‘She was a real character, my Lill. Everybody knew her in this town. She was everyone's friend. Brightened up the place as soon as she came here. Ask anyone. Ask 'em at the Rose and Crown. 'Course she had friendships.'

‘With men?'

‘Men and women. And I expect there's dirty-minded people round the town who might have talked about it. I don't mean you—you're paid to snoop. But people do talk. Any road, they'd've been wrong. Lill wasn't like that. She was just—outgoing. But at heart she was a family person . . . She was a wonderful mother.'

A memory of the Hodsden daughter, her eye bruised, wafted through McHale's mind. He lowered his head and made a little note on his writing-pad.

‘Of course, I'll be talking to your family,' he said. ‘And then there are the friends you mention. Who would you say were your wife's greatest friends?'

Fred drew a finger round the collar that loosely spanned his scraggy, contracting neck. ‘Well,' he said, ‘there's Mrs Fawcett next door, but I wouldn't say she was a particular . . . And then there's Mrs Corby, of course; they were devoted . . . But I'm out all day, so I . . .'

‘I see,' said McHale. ‘Well, I'll ask your daughter. I expect she's more likely to know.'

He preened himself on his sharpness when he saw Fred's reaction. His concrete-grey face went rose-pink, and again he bent forward, choking: ‘Well, Debbie's away all day too, you know, at school,' he said, and then it seemed to strike him that anything he said might make things worse, and he trailed off into silence.

‘Still, women talk to their daughters, don't they?' said McHale, in his most molasses voice. ‘Or is it more your sons your wife was close to? I seem to have heard . . .'

‘Oh aye,' said Fred, leaning back in his chair with relief
and now seeming to have no jealousy of sharing the spotlight with his sons: ‘Gordon and Brian worshipped the ground she walked on. Couldn't do enough for her. Yes, you talk to Gordon and Brian.'

‘Mr Hodsden,' said McHale, again leaning forward and looking impressive, ‘there is one thing I have to ask you: where were you and the rest of the family last night?'

‘ 'Course you have to ask it: I understand. It's easy, anyway. Debbie and I were both home, and Brian and Gordon were down the Rose and Crown.'

‘I see. So you and—Debbie, is it?—can vouch for each other, can you?'

‘Oh aye. She was in her room and I was watching telly.'

‘Well, that's not quite vouching for each other, as we understand it. Did you see much of each other during the evening—she came down now and then, I suppose?'

‘No, no—she didn't come down.'

‘Not once?'

‘No—but I know she was up there . . .' Fred pulled himself together, backing away from the brink of telling how he knew Debbie was up in her room, and finished lamely: ‘I'd've heard if she'd come down or gone out.'

‘But you might have nodded off. People do.'

‘Oh no. No. Lill was very . . .' Again he pulled himself up and shook himself, as if bewildered by the web of deception he was entangling himself in. ‘Lill didn't like me falling asleep. Said it was dangerous, 'specially if I had my pipe in. No, I definitely didn't fall asleep.'

‘I see. But that means nobody can vouch for you, I suppose. Nobody came to the door, or anything?'

‘No—not as I mind. It's all become a bit of a blur, like, after hearing about . . . it. Still, it doesn't do to give way, does it? Life's got to go on, and there's the family to see to.' Fred seemed suddenly to become conscious that he was rambling into matters irrelevant to the police investigation, and asked: ‘Was there anything more?'

‘No, nothing for the moment, I think. Of course, the police will be around your place quite a lot in the future, I'm afraid. So if there's anything else crops up I want to ask about, I can contact you there.'

‘Yes, I see,' said Fred. ‘Well, we all want to help you, you can bank on that. The main thing is, you catch the bugger who done it.' He got up and shambled to the door, but once there he hesitated, as if thinking hard. Then he turned and said: ‘Still, you want to be careful what you say about my Lill and other men. That's libel, that is. You ought to watch your tongue!'

‘Mr Hodsden, I was implying nothing—'

‘Well, you ought to watch it. I nearly fetched you one then, I did!'

• • •

As Fred Hodsden fumbled his way out of the room, McHale smiled a thin smile like winter sunshine on Northern waters. He did not see Fred Hodsden as a murderer. In fact, he held to his opinion that none of the Hodsdens looked like murderers. Still, there might be some amusement to be got out of them on the way.

Dominic McHale was born and brought up near Bristol. His family was doubtless Scottish from way back, but there was nothing of the border ruffian or the highland savage left in their blood. They had obviously been respectable for centuries. His father was a tax official, and one who brought a good deal of cold enthusiasm to his job. His mother was local president of the Mothers' Union, and wonderful at organizing bazaars. Dominic had been a superior child: at school he was good at games and held his own in academic subjects, but he was aloof, and less than popular. The High School girls went with boys who were less good-looking but more forthcoming. He was sure he would get into Oxford, and he very nearly did: he was on the borderline, but in the end the commoner's place went to a boy from a Northern
comprehensive, to make the intake tables look more respectable. ‘If my father had been a bloody miner I'd have got in,' he remarked bitterly to his contemporaries. A tax-inspector father was neither fish nor fowl as far as admissions committees were concerned, and could never swing a vote in his favour.