A Clubbable Woman (16 page)

Dalziel and Pascoe looked at each other for a long moment after the door had slammed behind Evans. Then they both began to grin, and finally laughed out loud.

It was their first moment of spontaneous shared amusement that Pascoe could remember.

‘Well now, boyo,’ said Dalziel in a dreadful parody of a Welsh accent, ‘you’d better watch your bloody self, see? Telling such lies to an honest citizen.’

‘It might have been his car,’ said Pascoe. ‘White Hillman. I mean, why not? It didn’t seem absolutely out of the question. By the way, we had a phone call.’

‘From?’

‘Connon. He was worried about Arthur. Wanted us to go easy on the thumbscrews, I think.’

‘Did he now? And he asked for you?’

‘Why yes. I expect so.’

‘I see. Thinks I haven’t got any better feelings to appeal to, does he? Well, go on.’

‘There’s nothing to go on with. I assured him we were only asking Mr Evans one or two questions that might or might not be connected with the case. And I suggested he should contact Evans himself for full details.’

‘That was naughty. You didn’t ask then?’

‘Ask what? Sir?’

Dalziel looked pleadingly up to heaven. Pascoe sighed inwardly.

The party’s over then, he thought. Like Christmas, a brief moment of good will and fellowship, then back to normal. You’ve spent your allowance, Bruiser. What’re you going to do at the end of the week?

‘You didn’t ask who he got his information from. About Evans’s being here.’

He’s right. I should have asked. That’s another of his blasted troubles. He keeps on being right.

‘No, sir. I didn’t. Sorry. I’ll get back on to him, shall I?’

‘Don’t bother,’ said Dalziel. ‘if he doesn’t want to tell us (and the minute you ask, he won’t) there’s no way of finding out. From him. But the possible sources aren’t many, are they?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Our bobbies. A couple of nosey neighbours. Or the fair Gwen herself. Who’s got your money, Sergeant?’

Pascoe’s mind was racing.

‘That’d mean, or might mean, that Evans is not altogether wrong. And if he’s not altogether wrong, then Connon suddenly gets a great big motive.’

‘Motive? What motive?’

‘Why, she, Mary Connon that is, finds out.’

‘How?’

‘Accidentally by finding something,’ said Pascoe impatiently. ‘Or is deliberately told. Anonymous friend, a telephone call, that kind of thing. We’ve got one around that doesn’t like Connie much, we know that.’

‘So. She knows. What then?’

‘She tells him, that night. Gets nasty. Says some more unpleasant things about his daughter. Connon sees red. He’s had that crack on the head remember. He grabs …’ Pascoe paused.

‘What does he grab, Sergeant?’

‘How do I know? Something odd enough in shape not to be a normal part of living-room furniture. Something,
anything,
he can use as a club. And swings it at her.’

‘At his own wife? Sitting in his own lounge? Connon?’

Pascoe sighed.

‘I didn’t know the lady as well as you, sir, but she seems in all particulars to have been a pretty clubbable woman.’

‘No, I didn’t mean her. I mean Connon. It’s out of character. You’ve met him. Sudden violence doesn’t fit.’

The fat sod’s fair, thought Pascoe. You’ve got to admit he’s fair. I’m sure he’d like it to be Connon, but he doesn’t try to bend matters.

‘Perhaps the whole thing’s a fake then, sir. Perhaps there was no concussion, no quarrel, no heat of the moment. Perhaps Connon decided he would like to marry Gwen Evans or just unmarry Mary Connon. So he goes quietly home, sits and watches the telly with her a while; then, in the commercial break perhaps, he leans forward, taps her on the head with whatever he has selected for the job, waits a couple of hours, then rings us.’

Dalziel was scratching with both hands, one on his inner right thigh, the other under his chin. One movement was clockwise, Pascoe noted, the other anti. Difficult.

‘That sounds better. But not by much.’

Well, let’s have your ideas, for God’s sake. You’re the great detective!

Pascoe kept back his exasperation with difficulty and put his thoughts as mildly as he could manage.

‘What do you think then, sir? An intruder?’

Dalziel laughed without much merriment.

‘You and your damned intruder. No, be sure of one thing, there wasn’t any intruder, my lad. The answer’s nearer home. Your intruders’ll all turn out to be like that laddo last night. Bit of a disappointment that, eh? Christ, he could talk! Made even you sound like a board-school lad at the pit-face. But he seemed nice enough. He’ll be good company for that kid of Connon’s. He’s not exactly the laughing cavalier, is he?’

Pascoe stood up.

He’s going to try to get the knife in, he thought. Just a little wriggle this time.

‘Will that be all then? I’d better try to tidy my desk up a bit.’

‘Mind you,’ continued Dalziel, ignoring him, ‘it wasn’t all waste, was it? I mean, Ted Morgan turned out to be a real find, didn’t he? The eyes and ears of the world. You must have leaned upon him pretty hard.’

‘Not really,’ said Pascoe.

Dalziel leered at him across the desk.

‘It’s not a crime to take Jenny Connon out, you know. Eh? Now don’t be offended. Just take care that fancying her doesn’t make you go too soft on the rest of the family, or too hard on anyone else. I glanced at the stuff from young Curtis and the Fernies. Nothing much there, eh?’

Pascoe shook his head.

‘Though the Fernies do seem to be around a lot, don’t you think? And I met Mrs Curtis - she came in to see what it was all about. She’d just got in, and her husband. Do you know them?’

‘No,’ said Dalziel without interest. But Pascoe ploughed on.

‘He’s nothing, a little silent man, not much there, I think. She’s a talker, gab, gab, gab. The Fernies got rid of her when I left and she walked me to the front gate. Made Ted Morgan seem like an amateur. But one thing she did say was that our friend Fernie is going around telling everyone Connon killed his wife. And claiming he knows how.’

Dalziel was now immersed in some papers and didn’t even glance up.

‘There’s always plenty of them, isn’t there?’

‘I wouldn’t know, sir. Is it worth a word with him?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. There hasn’t been a complaint? See him if you want, though, but it’ll be a waste of time.’

He glanced at his watch, opened the top drawer of his desk and swept the papers in.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll be able to get a drink in a moment. You’ll be wanting an early lunch, won’t you?’

‘Will I?’ asked Pascoe, trying to conceal from himself the effort he had to make to keep up with Dalziel down the corridor. ‘Why?’

‘The rugby, Sergeant. Remember?’

‘We’re going to watch?’ asked Pascoe, puzzled.

Dalziel sighed.

‘I might watch. But the game you’re concerned with is Arthur Evans. You heard what he said, his coach goes at twelve-forty-five. So you get round to his house at one. Have a chat. Stop a while. Who knows? Friend Connon might even turn up to keep you company. That’d be nice. You in your small corner, Gwen curled up on the mat and Connon taking his ease in Arthur’s rocking chair.’

The thought obviously amused him. They were out in the street now. Dalziel was well known, hailing and being hailed by nearly every second person they passed, it seemed to Pascoe. Though he noticed there were some who spoke to the superintendent and were completely ignored, while others looked as if they would have preferred to creep past unknown.

Again there came to him a sense of how small a town of some eighty-five thousand people really was.

‘Talking of chairs,’ said Dalziel, ‘there was a report from forensic, wasn’t there, on that chair of Connon’s? Nothing useful, I suppose?’

Pascoe was never quite certain just how genuine his superior’s casual contempt for science was. Had he really not even looked at the report? He felt tempted to find out by inventing a number of startling discoveries made through lab tests on the chair. But instead, as always, he thought, I’ll play the game.

‘No. Nothing. No indication that anyone had been killed in it or done anything else in it but sit in it. It went back to Connon’s yesterday. He made them put it in the garden shed.’

‘Did he now? Bit of degree work for you there, Pascoe! The psychology of the criminal.’

They came to a halt at a busy road crossing. The town was full of Saturday morning shoppers, more than usual even; there was only one more Saturday before Christmas.

‘Sir, what about Hurst and the letter? You mentioned last night …’

‘Did I? No, I didn’t, Sergeant. I’m not senile. Who did?’

Pascoe looked a little shamefaced.

‘Well, Connon actually, on the phone. He asked if anything had been done.’

Dalziel slapped his inside pocket.

‘It’s here. I’ll be seeing him before the match. Any other little reminders to me, Sergeant? Anything else I might have forgotten? No? Then what are we standing here for? Let’s move on before some young copper picks us up for soliciting. Now, where did you say you were going to take me for that drink?’

Jenny and Antony looked at each other, brown eyes unblinkingly fixed on blue, over the rims of their upraised pint pots.

‘Umh,’ said Antony appreciatively, putting his glass down and nodding his head, ‘not bad at all. Unpretentious, with a pleasant touch of wit, should travel quite well. There is perhaps a slight tendency towards making one drunk.’

They were sitting near a huge open fire in the lounge of a pub of that kind of indeterminate oldness which is the sign of constant use and development over many years. The fireplace was obviously very old indeed. It was large, and had once been larger. The table they sat at was wrought iron, with a bright brass guard-rail running round the top of it, more of a danger to glasses than anything else. In the ceiling there was visible what might have been an original oak cross-beam, but it had been unceremoniously distempered with the rest.

‘I like it here,’ said Antony. ‘They have attempted neither to freeze the past, nor anticipate the future. Nor indeed to impress the present upon us with framed photographs of actors and actresses, cricketers and jockeys, the semi-famous sub-world, with duplicated scrawls of spurious well-wishings stamped across their corners.’

‘I just like the beer,’ said Jenny.

‘It was nice of your father to chase us off together as he did,’ said Antony.

‘He’s a nice man.’

‘Yes, I’m sure he is. Well, Jenny, now we have got over the initial emotionalism of our reunion, perhaps one or two points might be clarified for me. Your father has extended to me the hospitality of his house for as long as I care to take it, or until he grows sick of the sight of me.

It did not escape my notice, however, that you were accompanied last night by a rather large, rather muddy man who, I gathered from hints dropped from various quarters, had been your escort that evening. Competition I do not mind. I thrive on it. But we Wilkeses were never dogs in mangers. A word will be enough.’

‘Which word is that?’ asked Jenny.

‘If you don’t know it, then I shall not teach you it. Good. I’m glad that’s out of the way.’

‘I didn’t know it was.’

‘Well, isn’t it?’

‘Of course, you fool. Didn’t you get a good look at him? I was after information, that’s all.

‘Information?’

Quickly Jenny explained about Ted Morgan. At least it started off as a quick explanation, but almost without noticing, she was soon telling Antony everything she had felt or feared in the past week.

He listened gravely without interrupting her. When she finished, he went to the bar and refilled their glasses.

‘There are evidently some very nasty people in this little town of yours,’ he said reflectively.

‘And some very nice ones,’ said Jenny with instinctive indignation.

He grinned at her and took her hand.

‘But what goes on on the terraces seems to be very simple and almost harmless compared with that Rugby Club of yours.’

The look of strain which had been missing from Jenny’s face most of the morning returned.

‘You think it’s all something to do with the Club too, do you? Daddy does, I’m sure. And I think fat Dalziel does too. Oh, I wish it was something simple, some burglar, a tramp or something, who broke in and did it. It would still be as horrid, but it’d end there at least. Instead of which it seems to be going on and on and I’m finding myself going round playing at stupid amateur detectives. And what it’s doing to Daddy, I just don’t know.’

‘Hey, cool it, baby.’

The shock of hearing such an expression in the accents of Hollywood gangsterese come from Antony’s lips pulled her up sharply. He was smiling at her, but there was concern in his eyes.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I was going on a bit.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Of course you’re concerned about everything. But there’s nothing wrong with playing games to ease your concern, whether it’s playing detective or playing rugby. That’s what games are, recreational. They give us a space in the business of life to re-create ourselves. Don’t you think I would teach R.E. extremely well? And talking of detectives, aren’t those two gentlemen, who have just come in like Laurel and Hardy, of that ilk?’

They were Dalziel and Pascoe. They looked around the room.

‘See that? All good detectives look around the room,’ murmured Antony. Jenny giggled and kicked his ankle.

Dalziel saw them and waved. Pascoe glanced over and nodded almost imperceptibly.

‘You know,’ said Antony, ‘I think that Laurel there fancies you.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ replied Jenny, feeling the fringe of a blush caressing her cheek.

‘Silly? Am I then so esoteric in my taste as to be the only man in the world who fancies you?’

Jenny finished her second pint with a swallow that reminded Pascoe, who was watching her surreptitiously through the bar mirror, of Jacko Roberts.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get home and make the dinner.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘And this afternoon?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I wondered if you’d mind going out with Daddy. Get him off to the rugby match or something.’