Death of a Perfect Mother (15 page)

‘People's life-styles have changed,' he said, with that horribly unconvincing man-of-the-world air. ‘Nobody thinks twice about that sort of thing these days.'

Not in Todmarsh? said McHale to himself sceptically. He knew his small-town England and its inhabitants. Permissiveness had not reached them, and if it did they would not know what to do with it. He also noticed Brian's use of the phrase ‘life-styles' and thought: pretentious little prig!

Brian's estimate of his mother was less breathlessly admiring than Gordon's (they had agreed that too much of that sort of thing might arouse rather than avert suspicion), but it was equally wholehearted.

‘Of course, she wasn't an educated woman at all,' he said. ‘Probably you would have called her common.' (It was a shrewd shot. McHale would certainly have called her common, and preened himself on that impeccable, inland revenue background that allowed him to do so. He hardly even bothered to gesture a dissent.) ‘But she had more life than a hundred more intelligent people, and she had a wonderful human understanding. Nobody could ever be dull when she was around.' (Thank God, he thought, now I have the right to be dull.) Then he pulled himself up for a suitable summing up of Lill's life and works. ‘She was the sort of mother who influences your whole life. She'll always be with me.'

He never spoke a truer word.

• • •

Debbie Hodsden was another kettle of fish entirely. In some ways even less mature than Brian, still she seemed to nurse some kind of inner confidence which nourished and protected her. At any rate, it was only rarely that the Chief Inspector dented her breezy front. Unlike Brian, who seemed to have shrunk into his jeans and gone too far, Debbie bloomed out of her school uniform, not so much physically, like a younger version of overblown Lill, but emotionally, as if proclaiming that it represented a stage in her life that in reality was past for ever.

She made no elaborate show of grief for Lill. She appeared serious, sober even, but there was no question (as there had been with Gordon) of her being about to burst into tears. Her notion of the proper behaviour was to be sensible and calm, and leave it at that.

‘Mum? What kind of a person? Well, she was very extroverted—big voice, big personality, you know the type. I expect you can guess just by looking at her. I suppose you'd call her common.' (McHale blinked at the repetition. On reflection he decided to feel flattered at being the type of man who inevitably would call Lill Hodsden common.) ‘Well—that's what she was, all right. But a lot of people like that.'

‘You got on with her all right?'

‘Oh yes, we jogged along. Of course, most girls have problems with their mothers —'

‘Oh yes?'

‘Well, they get jealous of their growing up. It sort of dates them, you know. Makes people think they're past it. So we had a few argie-bargies about my wearing make-up, modern clothes, and that sort of thing.'

‘I see. Nothing worse than that?'

‘Oh no. Just the normal.'

‘You say she resented your growing up. Do you mean she liked to think she was still attractive to men?'

‘Well, of course. Naturally. Everyone wants to think
they're still attractive to the other sex. I expect you like women to notice you, don't you?' She launched a provocative smile at him.

‘We weren't talking—'

‘I was. Obviously you wouldn't like women to think you were past it.' McHale choked with annoyance. He had no wish to be compared with Lill, either in age or in inclinations. ‘Anyway, the answer is
yes.
She liked men. She could attract them too—a certain type. No harm in that, so long as Dad was happy.'

‘And was he?'

‘So far as I know. I don't think he even noticed . . .'

‘Was there much to notice?'

‘Well, I'm not saying she was Cleopatra or anything. Still, he could have asked questions about all those visits to the Corbys. And I'd have kept my eye on that Guy Fawcett next door. He's been pinching my bottom since they moved here, and making some pretty direct propositions. Still, what the eye doesn't see . . .'

‘You're quite sure he suspected nothing?'

Debbie shrugged. She felt no inclination to fight for any member of her family. None of them had fought for her. ‘Never gave any sign, that's all I'm saying. Not a great one at registering emotions, my dad.'

McHale decided on the direct approach.

‘You seem to have a sort of mark . . . a little bruise, by your left eye.'

Debbie rubbed it unconcernedly. ‘Yes?'

‘It wasn't the result of some . . . quarrel?'

‘Good Lord no. What makes you think that? I was bending down in the bathroom to pick up the toothpaste, and when I straightened up I caught my head on the edge of the bathroom cabinet. It hurt like hell.' She laughed. ‘I told them at school I'd been fighting with Mum. It made a good story.'

McHale felt a spasm of frustration pass through him.
The cunning little minx! Covering herself in advance in every direction! But he'd pin her down soon enough.

‘Ah, I see,' he said easily. ‘You were upstairs, weren't you, when the news of your mother's death was brought to your dad. Had you been there all evening?'

‘That's right. I was doing my homework. I had a French essay to write.'

‘And it took you all the evening? You didn't go down for a snack? Or to watch something on the telly—there was a Francis Durbridge on.'

‘The television?' Debbie queried, as though she were rebuking him. ‘No. I don't watch much television. That's mostly for old people.'

‘Ah! That puts me in my place, doesn't it? So you stayed in your bedroom all evening. And then your dad came
up,
didn't he, and told you about your mum. He didn't call you down. That seems a little odd, doesn't it?'

‘Well, naturally, he wouldn't want me to hear in front of all those coppers, would he? What's odd about that? Did you think my dad wouldn't have that much delicacy?'

She had neatly checkmated him. There was no possible follow-up to that put-down. In spite of which, clenching his teeth, McHale told himself that Debbie was not a girl of any great intelligence.

• • •

McHale had made a home-life for himself that was hygienic and orderly. His house —'sixties neo-Queen Anne—on the outskirts of Cumbledon was rather more pretentious than his income at the time of acquiring it had warranted: it had been bought in the expectation of that promotion which, in its unduly laggardly way, had eventually arrived. By now its garden was stocked with evenly trimmed box hedges, like plump guardsmen; its paths were as if drawn with a schoolboy's geometry set; its flowers flourished and faded in the appropriate seasons—or else.

His wife was an admirable helpmate. She admired him very much. She entertained the right people when he suggested it, and served better wine than they were used to with conventional dishes she knew they liked. The children were well disciplined, and taught to be demonstrably affectionate to their father when he came home. If they said cute things during the day, Sheila McHale taught them to say them again in the evening to their father, so that he felt he was the first to hear them, and could repeat them next day on duty. As a housewife she fulfilled all the expectations he had had when, after due consideration, he had asked her to marry him. The house was always spotlessly clean and seemed to run itself, and she had a wonderful repertory of meals suitable for a man who came in at all hours and needed to feel cherished.

When he arrived home that night he went upstairs to kiss the kids goodnight (they woke up specially), and then he settled down to a good casserole which somehow was not overdone. Afterwards he expanded on the sofa, a brandy on the table by his right hand, his wife snuggled temperately up beside him.

‘How's this new case?'

‘Oh—' he paused for due consideration—‘not over-exciting, perhaps. But interesting in its way. Ordinary housewife, cheap as dirt; middle-aged, but still something of a looker. Lively—something of a hot-pants too.' He smiled apologetically to emphasize that he was using the language of her world, not of theirs. ‘The question is: was it someone who knew her, or was it just plain murder in the course of robbery?'

‘Did she have much on her?'

‘Don't know yet. That's one of the interesting points. In any case, if it was a sort of mugging, it's not likely the murderer would know. She made a bit of a show, in a cheap and nasty kind of way. He may have been taken in by appearances and expected more than he actually got.'

‘Not enough for murder, though, you'd have thought?'

‘You just can't say these days. They're kinky, these young people: they start in on someone, then they go the whole hog. Not like the old days, when they had the fear of the rope in front of them.'

McHale always talked of ‘the fear of the rope' rather than ‘hanging'. It had a poetic ring.

‘Is that what you think happened?'

‘Well, on the whole, yes. And if that's the case, there's not much we can do but wait till he tries it again—apart from chasing up all the possibles on our books and keeping an eye on them.' His good-looking face crinkled in thought, and he took a sip of brandy. ‘But it would be fatal to rule out the other possibilities. You've only got to look at the body—' his hands sketched vulgar curves, and his wife smiled sympathetically. ‘There's no mistaking the type. Something of a handful: dyed scarlet hair, bags of make-up, slapped on, dirt under the nail varnish.' Sheila McHale shivered dutifully. ‘Exactly. I wouldn't employ her as a char. But she'd be attractive to some. And she'd know how to work on them, get what she wanted. I'm on to one of them already—though the poor bloody fish of a husband seems not to have caught on, and it's been going on for years. There may have been others.'

‘Sounds a nice type.'

‘Mmm. By the look of her she'd be something of a troublemaker, to boot: I'd be very surprised if she wasn't cordially loathed by the neighbours.'

‘What about the family? What you'd expect?'

‘Pretty much. Hubby works in the parks, eldest son works at the shipyard. Not a good class of murder at all.' He smiled as if he had made a joke. ‘And they were all well and truly under her thumb.'

‘You don't see them as suspects?' She was very good at knowing the track of his thoughts and following them; she was accessory after the fact to all his wrongful arrests, and
there had been one or two. McHale screwed up his mouth.

‘Hardly. Dim as hell, frankly, and spineless into the bargain. And mostly they've got alibis of a sort—not watertight ones, but the sort of natural, normal ones that are better in a way.' He suddenly had a thought. He should have asked Fred details of the television programmes he said he had watched between eight-thirty and ten. Before he had a chance to talk to anyone else. He put the thought from him.

‘Well,' said his wife. ‘It sounds rather a sordid little murder.'

‘Oh, it is,' said McHale. ‘Still, it is my first, apart from the odd manslaughter where there was no reasonable doubt. I should be able to get some mileage out of it. I'm looking forward to getting in with the neighbourhood. I bet there were some suppressed hatreds at work there. Lill Hodsden would have put some backs up, that I'm sure of.'

He smiled in anticipation. His wife, looking at him, thought how handsome he looked. She did not see that touch of heaviness in the face that had made Brian Hodsden pronounce McHale a stupid man. She would never see it.

‘Yes,' her husband repeated. ‘I think I'll enjoy talking to the neighbours.'

A murder in one's immediate vicinity is a sort of test: a test of the dead person; a test of the family of the corpse; a test of the neighbourhood. Suddenly, dormant characteristics are highlighted, rugs are snatched away to reveal
the dust that has been shovelled beneath them over the years.

In Windsor Avenue and the surrounding streets, in the houses of plywood tudor and the bungalows of super-beachhut design, first reactions were to whisper about it over back-garden fences: ‘Isn't it terrible?' or ‘I couldn't believe my ears when I heard.' The last of these was true enough: no one expects murder in the vicinity, unless they live in the hinterlands of savagery, in Kampala or New York. But ‘terrible' was to be interpreted loosely: ‘shocking', or ‘stunning'—not anything implying grief, or that Lill's end was undeserved.

That was the immediate reaction. It was quite soon superseded by the question of what one said about the family, or—more vitally—how one behaved to them. At first people said: ‘It must be awful for
them,'
rather as if it hadn't been awful for Lill. But when they thought about things, weighed up all the circumstances, they rather wondered about the Hodsdens. It wasn't a
nice
thing to have a murder in the family—‘nice' to be interpreted as respectable, or socially acceptable. And then—of course Lill must have been killed by one of these muggers you're always reading about, and why wasn't something done about them? . . . On the other hand, if she hadn't . . .

After the first couple of days, people who met one or other of the Hodsdens in the street tended to gabble quick condolences, and hurry on.

This tendency was increased when Chief Inspector McHale and his subordinates came among them, probing, prying, asking about Lill, about the Hodsdens, and about their own relationships with the afflicted family. It was exciting, everyone would have been affronted to be left out, but there again, it wasn't really respectable. You had to pretend you'd found it unpleasant. After a while opinion on the point definitely hardened: they remembered that the Hodsdens, after all, were foreigners. And
one and all they had always said that they were a funny family . . .