Almost Love (20 page)

Jane got out of the car slowly and smoothed down her coat. She took an almost theatrically deep breath and grimaced deprecatingly at Tim. He felt impatient at what he recognised as feigned apprehensiveness, but managed to conjure up a brief smile of encouragement.

“Come on,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Apart from the unpleasant smudge on the hall wall, which you know about, and some residual mess from the fingerprint dusting, I’m pretty certain that the place is much as you left it.”

She nodded, reciprocating with an equally wan smile of her own, and followed him up the path. He knocked on the door of the cottage to ask to be admitted. One of the SOCOs – not Patti – opened it. The electric light in the hall was switched on. Jane hung back.

“Come on,” he said again, more gently. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to do this.”

Jane nodded again, and stepped over the threshold. She turned immediately to fix her eyes on the wall.

“My God!” she said precipitately. “I feel sick!”

Tim would have bet money that she would make such an exclamation. Patiently, he took her arm and led her in the direction of the kitchen. “Let’s just get past it,” he said. “Then I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Privately, he thought that the trajectory was much less evil-seeming now that it had darkened from red to deep brown. He doubted that it could really have produced such a distressing effect on a rational woman like Jane. The lady with the vapours act did not suit her.

“Would you like some water?” he asked, indicating the bottles and plastic cups that had been placed on the kitchen table by the SOCOs. She shook her head.

“You’ll find the kitchen less untouched than the other rooms. We’ve left the dirty crockery in the sink and on the work surface, as we found it, but the SOCOs finished here quite quickly. Besides Dame Claudia’s, the only prints we found in here were your own, Mr Maichment’s, and Oliver Sparham’s. All quite legitimate.”

“Why do you say that Oliver Sparham’s were legitimate?” she asked sharply.

“Because he told us that he had come in here to make himself and Dame Claudia a cup of tea and this is corroborated by the two cups that we found in the sitting-room, one of them bearing his prints only, the others those of both of them. Do you know Mr Sparham?” he added.

“Not personally, though I’ve seen photographs of him. I know that he was one of Claudia’s disciples when he was young. I understand that subsequently he drifted away from her, though. He decided to play safe and opt to support more conventional theories than hers – in fact, to support no theories at all. Nowadays Oliver Sparham is what I would call an empiricist: he will have no truck with anything except the scientific evidence produced by digs.”

“Speaking as a historian, I would say that seems a sensible approach.”

“It’s a very desiccated approach,” said Jane Halliwell with vehemence. “And actually not one that’s well supported by historians. Look at the Marxist interpretations of the English Civil War, for example, and the fascinating books that were written because of them.”

“A bit before my time, I’m afraid,” said Tim. “I’m a post-modernist myself – which is how I guess Oliver Sparham might also describe himself. But are you saying that he has shown hostility towards Dame Claudia?”

“Not personally, no. But he has failed to endorse her work in his writings, even though it was she who gave him his first start in life.”

“Has he actively criticised her?”

“No, not as such. I suppose he has some conscience left. It’s what he doesn’t say that counts. In fact, he hardly mentions her at all in any of the stuff that I’ve read by him. And there are no half-measures with Claudia’s thesis: you either accept it or you don’t. Personally, I see his behaviour as a betrayal. Claudia took – takes – a more lenient view. Of course, she still thinks of him as a young man who has his way to make in the world, whose own ideas are barely formed.”

“Indeed.” Tim smiled as he recollected the silver-haired and rather urbane and distinguished figure whom he had met and interviewed at Welland Manor. “May I take it that you don’t see anything out of place in the kitchen? If so, would you come into the conservatory?”

The conservatory was reached by what had originally been the back door of the cottage. It had been built against the back wall of the house, so that it was more of a glorified lean-to than a structure in its own right. Like the sitting-room, it faced east. It was cold and, for a room that consisted of glass on three sides, dark in the winter. Like the rear sitting-room window, it was overshadowed by the yew hedge that grew just a few feet beyond it. It contained two rattan chairs that had seen better days and a modest table with a wooden chair tucked beneath it. The table bore a telephone extension and what Tim recognised to be a fairly old-fashioned PC. He gestured towards them.

“Is this where you work?” he asked.

Jane Halliwell nodded. “Yes,” she said. She shivered. “It’s cold in here – I’m the only person who uses this room, so I suppose that it hasn’t been heated for a while. I have an electric radiator that I use in the winter. It makes it quite cosy.”

“I don’t see it now. Nor any of your books and papers. Where do you keep those?”

“All the research materials are replaced in the sitting-room when I’m not using them, so that Claudia can find them easily. I gave her the radiator to use while I was away so that she would still be warm if neither she nor Guy managed to light the fire.”

“I see. Well, we haven’t found anything in this room: almost all the prints are yours. It seems quite bare, though. Is there anything missing?”

“Nothing. I don’t like a cluttered room to work in. In fact, I can’t stand clutter at all.”

“Quite. Well, I’m afraid that inspecting the sitting-room won’t be as easy to accomplish. As I’m sure you know, it contains quite a lot of . . . things. I need you to work through them as carefully as you can, to try to see if anything is missing. Or, for that matter, if there is anything new among the items that you haven’t seen before.” Tim decided that ‘clutter’ was too pejorative a word, even though Jane Halliwell had used it herself. “And I’m also afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to step through the hall again. But you know that already.”

Jane nodded and passed back through the kitchen and the hall with some speed, ostentatiously averting her gaze from the stain on the hall wall as she went.

Patti Gardiner, wearing a white SOCO suit, was crouching on the floor of the sitting-room when they entered. She was working through the deep pile of the black and grey hearthrug, parting the tufts painstakingly with her latex-gloved hands. She had her back to them and did not look round immediately. “I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ve just found something that might be interesting. Got you!” she added, pouncing with a pair of tweezers. She extracted something from the rug, and placed it in a small plastic bag, deftly sealing the grip-lock fastening in a continuation of the same motion. She stood up slowly, massaging the small of her back, and turned round.

“I’ve been crawling about on the floor for too long,” she said conversationally. “It plays havoc with my . . . Detective Inspector Yates!” she said, as she saw that it was Tim standing there. “I’m sorry. I thought that you were Jo. I didn’t know that you were coming today.” She flushed.

There was a slight pause. Patti had been Tim’s girlfriend very briefly when he had first joined the South Lincs force. It had not been a serious relationship as far as he was concerned, but they were both aware that Patti had felt differently. She bore him no grudges, but conversations between them were usually quite strained. She shifted her gaze from Tim to Jane Halliwell, who, Tim noticed, was taking in the situation with some curiosity.

“No, I spoke to Jo. I’m sorry – I should have asked her to tell you.” Then, in a more conversational voice, he said, “Patti, this is Ms Jane Halliwell. She is Dame Claudia’s secretary-companion. Ms Halliwell, this is Patti Gardiner, who is heading up the Scene of Crime Officers team in this case. She is looking for any forensic evidence – of an intruder, for example.”

Jane extended her bird-like hand again. Patti removed her glove to shake it.

“I am indebted to you,” said Jane, rather haughtily. “Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing.”

Patti shrugged. “It’s what I get paid for. And I like my job.”

“What did you say you had just found?”

“It’s a hair. A silver hair. Not the only one I’ve found here, but the only one like that. I’ve collected quite a few of what I’m fairly certain are Dame Claudia’s hairs and your own – I’ve matched them to the hairbrushes in your rooms – but this one is different. It probably has nothing at all to do with the case – it could have been there for months – but it’s worth checking.”

“I suppose so,” said Jane Halliwell. She sounded doubtful, almost scornful.

“I’ve brought Ms Halliwell to look through the rooms in the house to see if she can notice any missing items, or any new ones, since she was last here. Will we be in your way if she comes in here next? And should we be wearing white suits? I’m sorry – I thought you’d probably be finished inside the house now. When I talked with Jo yesterday she said that she’d started on the garden.”

“Yes, she has, and I’ll be joining her shortly. I just wanted to give this room one last going over, because it is so clut . . .” – Patti looked at Jane Halliwell – “because there is so much in here that I wanted to be sure that I hadn’t missed anything. I’ve nearly finished – if you could just give me another ten minutes that would be great. And no, you don’t need to wear suits now. As I’ve said, there’s virtually nothing left to do here.”

“Of course I am happy to wait,” said Jane Halliwell. She turned to Tim. “If the forensic search of the house is more or less complete, does that mean that I can return home?”

“Not yet, unfortunately,” said Tim. “We shall need to wait for the analysis of the SOCO team’s work first. If we find evidence that one of the rooms in the house may indeed be a crime scene we may have to preserve it as it is, in the hope that the criminal will be apprehended and brought to trial. In such a case the trial judge may wish to bring the jury to visit it.”

“I see,” said Jane crisply. “But it could take years to apprehend the criminal – or they might never be caught. Would that mean that I could never come home?”

Tim smiled.

“I see that you are somewhat sceptical of police capabilities,” he said. “But the answer is no. We may preserve the cottage as a possible crime scene for a reasonable time, but not indefinitely. And Patti’s work may yield nothing further, though there is still the bloodstain to explain. Despite it, we are still hoping, like you, that Dame Claudia may return safely – though it would be misleading of me to deny that the likelihood of that diminishes with every day that passes. If she is safely found, of course you may return here immediately. If she isn’t, I can’t give you an answer at present.”

Jane Halliwell nodded with a resigned air. She’s forgotten to look sad, Tim thought.

“In that case, may I take some clothes with me when I leave? As I think I’ve explained, I have very little with me at the hotel that is suitable.”

Tim looked at Patti.

“I don’t see why not,” she said. She smiled at Jane. “Your room has been dusted for prints and I can’t find anyone’s there except your own, nor any evidence of anyone else’s having been in there except you – not even Dame Claudia. You should be able to take away what you need now.”

“Thank you,” said Jane. “Perhaps I might do that immediately, while I am waiting for you to finish here?”

Tim nodded. Jane left the room with some alacrity. Her footsteps could be heard mounting the polished wooden stairs. Tim would have liked to see her reaction as she passed the bloodstain again but not much of the hall was visible from where he was standing.

Patti replaced her glove, wiggling her fingers until it became a second skin. She waited until Jane Halliwell could be heard moving about in the room immediately above them and pushed to the door of the sitting-room. She moved closer to Tim and whispered, “I don’t trust her.”

“Neither do I,” Tim whispered back. He was rather pleased by the naturalness of this gesture, Patti’s professional interest in Jane apparently having dispelled her customary awkwardness. “What makes you say it, though?”

“Just a hunch,” said Patti. “She doesn’t seem worried enough, somehow.”

“Have you found a tape-recorder in here? I understand that Dame Claudia sometimes uses one when she is working, but I don’t recollect having seen one when I was here before.”

“No,” said Patti. “No, I’m sure there isn’t one here now. We’d certainly have found it.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Tim escorted Jane Halliwell back to the Welland Manor Hotel in time for her to keep the hair appointment which she had told him about.

“Thank you,” she said as she got out of the car. Tim had read somewhere that society women were trained at finishing schools to swivel themselves round on their buttocks when emerging from a car, in order to be able to stand up elegantly and to allow their skirts to fall immediately into place. Whether or not this was true, it was certainly a talent that Jane Halliwell had perfected. Tim remained in the driver’s seat for a minute and then realised that she was waiting for something.

“May I have my bag?”

“Oh, of course,” he said. “I was forgetting.” Jane had packed a large leather holdall while he had been talking to Patti. “Let me help you with it.”

“There’s really no need,” she said in her gracious voice. “I can easily run for the hotel porter.”

“I’ll carry it to the reception area for you,” said Tim levelly. “The porter can take over from there.” Of course she had intended that he should do this. Not for the first time he found her disingenuousness irksome.

The bag was heavy. She must have stuffed it very full of clothes. He wondered what she had put in it. It had crossed his mind at the time to ask Jo or Patti to accompany her when she was packing it, but he knew that she would certainly have objected to this and it was important to keep her on side, at least for the moment. Patti had searched her room thoroughly before her visit and said that it contained nothing but clothes and books. If there had been something incriminating in the bag, only she would have understood its significance. But I’m being absurd, thought Tim. There is no reason to think that she was implicated in Dame Claudia’s disappearance. She hadn’t even been in the country at the time. She had a cast iron alibi. Maybe that had been the whole point of the Norwegian excursion?

“You’re looking very disapproving, Chief Inspector,” said Jane lightly. “I suppose you think it is frivolous of me to want to have my hair done at such a time. But the fact is I’ve been brought up to take care of my appearance and I’m certain that the newspapers are going to catch up with me sooner or later. I don’t want to be photographed looking like a fishwife. Oh, you needn’t worry – I won’t tell them anything that you don’t want me to. Besides,” she added in a lower voice, “even if it is frivolous, it’s a diversion. It helps to take my mind off all of this.” Tim thought he saw her lip tremble.

Despite the play for sympathy, he took his leave of her rather brusquely.

“I’ll leave the bag here,” he said, as they reached the hotel entrance. “Thank you for coming to the cottage today. I know that it must have been difficult for you. I realise you didn’t think anything was missing or out of place, but something may come to you later. If it does, please get in touch. You have my card?”

She nodded.

“Goodbye, then. Of course, we’ll let you know if there are new developments or if it is decided that you can return home.”

Jane Halliwell nodded again and disappeared into the hotel, leaving the bag outside the door. Tim turned to see the porter emerge to retrieve it as he walked back to his car.

Tim looked at his watch. It was not quite four-thirty. It had been his intention to go back to the office to see if Juliet had made any progress, but he realised that, unless she’d had a breakthrough, she would have left for the day by the time he arrived. He sat in the car and called her number.

“Juliet? It’s me. I’m at Welland Manor. I’ve just dropped Jane Halliwell off. What? No, no help at all. I’m calling because I wanted to know if you’d got anything more out of Forensics. Tomorrow? Are you absolutely certain about that? Well, I’d hoped for something today, but I suppose we’ll just have to wait. What about the ferry company? Tomorrow as well? OK, well, thank you. And well done,” he added, belatedly aware that Juliet would blame herself for disappointing him.

“There is one other thing, sir.”

“Oh?” She could hear Tim sounding hopeful.

“It’s nothing to do with the case. In fact, it’s personal to you, sir, so if you think it’s none of my business, just stop me. It’s about your wife.”

“Katrin? Has she been in touch with you?”

“Not intentionally. She called you shortly after you left. She seemed very upset about something. I suggested that she left a message on your mobile, but of course you will know whether she did or not.”

“I haven’t checked it for messages,” Tim said. “I’ll do it now.”

He rang off, leaving Juliet uncertain whether or not he was grateful for her interference. He dialled 1 for his mobile voicemail service. There were no messages. He speed-dialled Katrin’s mobile number, then thought better of hitting the green button. He needed to see her. Whatever it was that was upsetting her it had been going on for too long now. He decided to go home and make her talk to him about it. If he drove straight there now he and she would probably arrive more or less together.