Bloodhounds (28 page)

"After the meal, he walked me back to the Paragon. It was raining, and he had an umbrella, and he asked me to take his arm while he held it over both our heads. I was extremely happy. As we approached the house, he said he hated mixing business with pleasure, but he had a couple more papers for me to sign. I half knew it was just an excuse for him to come inside, but I wanted the excuse. I don't condone my behavior."

"It's all in the past," said Diamond.

She lowered her eyes. "You won't need telling what happened. I was a willing participant, and I have to say that he was considerate. Gentle and understanding. People's attitudes to such things have undergone a revolution since then, but by the standards of that time, we were wicked. That evening I didn't care. He didn't stay for more than an hour, I suppose. If I'm honest, I was relieved he didn't spend the night with me. I don't think I was ready to sleep with a man, literally sleep with him, I mean. He left before midnight, and I sank into my bed and slept until quite late next morning, when I woke and felt like a scarlet woman. These days the only thing that makes a young woman feel guilty seems to be eating a bar of chocolate."

He gave an encouraging smile. To make a remark even faintly resembling a joke, she must have been feeling calmer.

"That evening wasn't the only occasion," Miss Chilmark went on. "He came to the house at other times in the weeks,, that followed. He was usually there on some pretext. A letter about my bank arrangements, or something. I have to say that I invited him as often as he suggested coming. We would go to my bedroom, and . . . he never stayed long. We didn't really go out together, and I suppose that made me suspicious that there was a reason why he didn't want to be seen with me in public. I didn't really want to admit it to myself, I wanted so much to keep him. Then the inevitable happened. I discovered that I was pregnant."

So honest was the recollection that Diamond's image of the solid middle-aged woman opposite had been supplanted by a mental picture of the desperately vulnerable twenty-six-year-old she had been. He remembered those times, and the moral climate and the pains and blunders of young love.

"Of course it was a shock, a tremendous shock, but in a way I'd been hoping something like this would happen. He'd always been vague about our future together. This was going to force us to a decision. I saw it as my chance to bring him to the registry office, if not the altar."

She shook her head, sighing deeply. "When I told him, his whole manner toward me changed. He told me to get rid of it. Those were his actual words. 'It'—as if the child inside me was an object. I was horrified. I said something about getting married, and he told me quite brutally—as if I should have realized already—that he was already happily married with two children of his own. As I say, I'd guessed it really, but refused to admit it to myself. I was his mistress. He regarded my pregnancy as my mistake, a hazard that you have to face. We'd taken no precautions. I don't know if you can understand this, but I would have felt that birth control in any form would have made me into a loose woman."

"So you had the child?"

She nodded. "Alone. He refused to have anything more to do with me. His attitude was that if I wasn't willing to go to an abortionist, it was my bad fortune. So I made my own arrangements. I confided in a cousin, a woman who lived in Ex-mouth and worked in a private nursing home. We'd spent holidays there sometimes, and I'd got to know her quite well. She was the only person I could think of asking. I said I wanted to have the baby, but I wouldn't be able to keep it. I couldn't face the shame of bringing up a fatherless child. So my cousin Emma told me she knew of women who were desperate to adopt and had been turned down for some obscure reason by the adoption agencies. If I was really willing to give up the child within a short time of the birth, she could arrange it. So that's what happened. When I got toward the end of the pregnancy— when it was getting obvious, I mean—I went away to Exmouth. The child was born. I suckled him for a week or two, and then Emma took him away. He was registered as someone else's child, you see. It was highly illegal, but he was legitimized. Part of the understanding was that I should not be told the identity of the couple who were given him. I came back to Bath and resumed my life. I've never had another serious relationship."

"Did you name him?"

"No. It was thought to be better if the adoptive mother gave him a name."

"And you were not to have any more to do with them?"

"That was the understanding."

"Hard, I'm sure."

"Very—but I understood the thinking behind it. Over the years I've had times when I've wept a little, and times when I've wondered just what my son was like, but I kept my side of the bargain. I made no attempt to trace him. Fortunately I couldn't, not even knowing his name."

She paused. She had shredded the paper tissue in her lap. She picked up one piece and dabbed the corner of her eye.

Diamond prompted her. "You said you kept your side of the bargain, as if someone else did not. Did the father—your lover, I mean—did he know of these arrangements?"

"No. He had nothing more to do with me."

"So it was someone else."

She nodded. "About two years ago, I received a letter from someone who clearly knew a great deal about what had happened. He mentioned the date of birth, the place and the name of my cousin Emma, who died in 1990. He asked to meet me at a stated time by the west door of the Abbey. It wasn't exactly a threatening letter, yet there was so much in it that only I could have known. So I decided to go along."

"A blackmailer?"

"No."

"But you paid money. You've been making regular payments." She had been frank, and so would he.

"He's not a blackmailer. He's my son."

"Your
son?"

"I couldn't refuse him, could I?"

"Are you certain?"

"Absolutely."

"How do you know?"

"A mother's instinct. Whatever one thinks of him—and I know he has taken advantage—that first meeting outside the Abbey was a revelation. He wanted to know what his own mother was like as much as I longed to see him. It was genuine, I swear to you. We went for a coffee together and for a long time simply looked at each other. An opportunity I never expected to have. A miracle. We weren't breaking faith with anyone, because he'd long since left his adoptive family."

"What's his name?"

She shook her head. Her expression tightened. "I'm not going to say and you can't make me. What has happened between us is strictly private. It isn't illegal. I'm allowed to support my own child, for heaven's sake."

Diamond sighed. "When did he tell you he needed money? Right at the start?"

"It was obvious. He's thirty-two. He should be making his way in the world, but these are dreadful times for his generation. He was sent to a good school. It ought to help, but he's been unable to get regular work. I had more, than enough money, so I gave him some. He was living in Radstock, with no prospect of employment, so I persuaded him to come here— to Bath, I mean. There are more opportunities here."

"What does he do, then?"

Miss Chilmark clicked her tongue. "You won't get it out of me that way. Can't you be satisfied with what I've told you already?"

Diamond tried some gentle persuasion. "Look at your situation. In a couple of years you've gone through most of your fortune for this man. You sold your family home to stay in credit with the bank. You must have realized you were running through the money—or, rather, he was. You came here because you can't bring yourself to tell him it's the end of the line for this particular gravy train. You ran away. Are you going to be able to pay the hotel bill?"

She covered her eyes.

He asked, "Do you have any idea where all the money has gone?"

No answer.

He said, "If what he's been doing is legal, we can't touch him." More tenderly, he said, "I'm going to arrange for Inspector Halliwell to drive you back to your home. You can't run away from your son. You haven't the funds. You've got to tell him you're almost skint. Or I have. I'm willing to talk to him. I think I know who he is, you see." He paused. "Would his name be Ambrose Jason Smith?"

Miss Chilmark gave a cry as if of pain and thrust her face more deeply into her hands. She wept uncontrollably now, for her son, and her mistakes and the cruelty of fate.

Chapter Thirty-five

Keith Halliwell was in his car having a nap when a heavy tread across the gravel alerted him. He woke instantly, like a dog expecting a walk.

"Any joy, Mr. Diamond?"

"Joy
isn't the word I'd use," said Diamond. "Anyway, she's packing her case up there. Going home. I've offered you as chauffeur."

"Right, sir. And a message came through from Sergeant Filkins. That Bradford on Avon enquiry. He spoke to the people. The, em . . . ?"

"The Volks."

"Yes. And it's quite definite that Rupert Darby's beret was marked with paint before the art gallery party. They say he actually complained about it when they met him at the Saracen's Head."

Diamond's interest quickened. "Rupert mentioned it himself, did he?"

"Apparently there was an incident at the Lansdown Arms, his local. He went in with his dog early in the evening, his usual time, for a quick drink. On the way out, some merchant banker was playing about with what Rupert took to be a tin of hairspray."

"Merchant banker?"

"Rhyming slang, sir. Rupert's expression."

After a moment's thought, Diamond responded with a distinct note of affection, "I can hear him saying it in his plummy accent, too."

"Some of it got on his beret. Later he found it was paint."

A low rumbling like a growl came from deep in Diamond's throat. "I wish we'd known this earlier. What about this character with the spray? Is there a description?"

Halliwell shook his head. "Rupert had nothing to say about him."

"Well, it tells us one interesting thing: Rupert didn't recognize the bugger."

"Is that useful?"

"It is if we're dealing in murder here. It eliminates just about all our suspects."

"You think Rupert was murdered, sir?"

"I can't rule it out."

"Shoved over the bridge and hanged?" Halliwell sounded skeptical. "That wouldn't be easy, would it? It would take some strength to get the noose around his neck and heave him over the railing."

"Two people could do it."

"No question . . . but where are we going to find
two?"

Diamond turned and looked Up at the window of the room he'd just left. "Be patient with the old girl, Keith. She's had some shocks."

"I'll treat her like my own mother, sir."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"What's next for you, Mr. Diamond?"

"A little culture." He ambled across to his own car and started up.

* * *

For once he didn't curse when he saw the usual queue for the roadworks beginning to form on the London Road approaching Bath. He was in a more positive frame of mind. A pretty demanding investigation was coming to its climax. Mysteries that had seemed impenetrable had been solved by— what?—steady detective work, or brilliance? Either way, he had now disentangled the problems of the locked room puzzle, the riddles, the paper bag, and Miss Chilmark's secret payments. There remained only the unmasking of the killer.

Or killers.

This was when the likes of John Wigfull would run to their computers and start keying in information in the expectation that a mighty buzz from the megabytes would produce a perfect offender profile. "Your murderer is a writer of verse in possession of a ladder and window-cleaning materials and a car or other means of transport, with access to a computer and printer, possessing also a twisted sense of humor, a better than average knowledge of philately, detective stories, padlocks, and the topography of Bath. Now arrest the bastard, you dim plods."

The solution to this one, Diamond had long ago decided, wasn't going to come out of a computer. It required deductions on a more sophisticated level, an understanding of the strange workings of the human mind, fathoming why such a bizarre series of crimes and murders had been necessary or desirable. The sequence of events had almost certainly started with some weirdo wanting to score points, whether from frustration, a grudge, or just a wish to impress someone else. The Bloodhounds had been picked as the patsies. Then the thing had erupted into violence, into murder. Was the first murder always part of the plan, or an unwished-for consequence? And was the second, the killing of Rupert—if murder it was— made necessary by something Rupert knew, or was it cynically carried out to derail the investigation? The latter, surely. It seemed inescapable that the staging of the "suicide" was an attempt to frame Rupert as the conscience-stricken killer of Sid Towers. In other words, to draw a line under the case.

And it hadn't worked.

Ten minutes later, he walked into the Walsingham Gallery, only to be told by a young woman with cropped blond hair that it was Jessica's day off. He was also informed with just a hint of a smile that AJ. wasn't expected in today either.

"Any idea where I can find them? It's important." He showed his ID card.

"You could try the house. You can phone from here if you like."

With maddening inevitability, an answerphone message came down the line from Jessica's.

He turned to the blond woman. "Do you have a number for A.J.?"

She shook her head. "They could be out for a walk. They walk by the canal sometimes."

"It's a bloody long canal."

He tried Barnaby Shaw's business number with a little more success. Barnaby thought Jessica had spoken about going to the framer's. An artist had delivered a picture with a chipped frame, and she wanted a new one for it.

"Which framer?"

"The Meltone Gallery, in Powlett Road."

"Can you find me the number?"

There, the trail went cold. Mel, of Meltone, hadn't seen either of them all day.

It was Keith Halliwell, back at Bath Central, who got the inquiry back on course. Spotting Diamond as he stomped in, the frustration writ large, he reported that Miss Chilmark was now installed at the Paragon again. "She blubbed a bit, but I did my best with her, and she cheered up no end when she got back. There was a nice note from someone saying he'd call later. I went out and got her a box of Mr. Kipling's."

"Jesus Christ."

Halliwell went white. "Did I do wrong?"

"Did this note say what time?"

"I don't know. Teatime, I suppose. That's why she wanted the cakes. What is it now?"

It was ten to four. Diamond actually ran out of the building to his car. He drove white-knuckled, at the limit of his nerve, bucking two sets of traffic lights on the way to the Paragon. Leaving the car to create the mother and father of all tailbacks in the homeward traffic, he dashed across the pavement and down the basement steps.

A.J.. had not yet arrived. The disappointment showed when Miss Chilmark opened the door. She had changed into one of her high-necked oriental dresses and restored the makeup in lashings. She would be in thrall to that extortionist for as long as he cared to trouble her.

Diamond told her he would wait inside.

She protested, "But I'm expecting a visitor."

He said, "That's who I want to see." Then he banished her to the kitchen at the back.

Ten minutes went by, Diamond just to the left of the door, trying to be invisible through the frosted glass while squeezed behind the foliage of a tall benjamina.

About four twenty, someone descended the steps to the basement in a businesslike way. The doorbell rang. Diamond stepped out and flung open the door. The uniformed police constable standing there started to say "Is that your car parked out. . . ?" Then he practically choked as he recognized Diamond.

Miss Chilmark came eagerly from the kitchen, saw the policeman, and said hysterically, "Oh, my God, what's happened?"

"This officer has come to tea—that's what's happened,"

Diamond told her through gritted teeth, tugging the man inside and slamming the door. "Give him his Mr. Kipling, and I'll see to him later."

A short time after came the visitor Miss Chilmark was expecting. Upon seeing Diamond, AJ. did a double take, turned about, and bolted up the stairs, but Diamond's large right arm groped through the iron railing, grabbed a leg, and pulled the man off balance. He fell heavily and gashed his hand on the edge of the bottom step.

"Looks like you're nicked."

The emergency was not over. Before relieving the traffic chaos outside, Diamond called Bath Central and had a message radioed to all units. He wanted Jessica Shaw brought in. She might be heading away from Bath in a new white Peugeot 306. He gave the registration.

Back at Manvers Street, AJ. was waiting in an interview room, stroking the fresh Band-Aid on his hand. He had recovered his composure enough to tell Diamond, "I don't know what the fuck this is about. You're going to pay for this."

"Save it." Diamond ignored him, and fiddled with something on the desk. His cackhandedness defeated him. "Someone's got to get this bloody contraption working for me." He walked out again.

A further twenty minutes passed before he came back with a sergeant, who attended to the tape recorder. "You'll have to wait, squire," Diamond now informed AJ. "They're bringing in Mrs. Shaw. Like I thought, she was heading out of town in the car." He grinned. "Luckily, there's still one hell of a snarl-up on the London Road."

He went down to the canteen for sausages, eggs, and chips. It was half a lifetime since he'd eaten. Casting around for a vacant table, he glimpsed a large mustache topped by a pair of tired, red-lidded eyes. Eyes that made contact. John Wigfull gestured to him to come over. Difficult to ignore. Promising himself that he would soon escape, he carried his tray across.

Wigfull actually came to life and pulled out a chair. "You've cracked it, I hear. Pulled in Mrs. Shaw and her boyfriend."

"I really need this," said Diamond. "Haven't eaten since breakfast, and that was cold toast and marmalade."

"Letting them stew, are you? Want some brown sauce?" Wigfull glanced around for some, but Diamond didn't seem to care. He had already started eating. "It did cross my mind more than once that two people had to be involved." Wigfull was clearly expecting a rundown on the case. "And when Darby was strung from the bridge, it really had to be them working together."

Diamond spoke between mouthfuls. "Wise after the event, John?"

"No. I don't mind admitting I was confused up to that point. But the hanging clinched it, to my mind. Just about impossible for one person to hang a man. You'd have to be exceptionally strong—or the victim feeble. And this plot was always too complex to have been masterminded by one individual. They're an odd pair, those two. Too clever by half. Milking the old lady's bank account, weren't they?"

A nod from Diamond— "That's how the art gallery kept going."

"And the smart new Peugeot she was driving?"

"I expect so."

"Surprising, really, that the husband didn't object."

"To the gallery being funded like that? He didn't mind." Against his inclination, Diamond found himself being drawn into a dissection of the case. "To Barnaby, A.J. was just a third-rate artist with a private income. If he wanted to throw money at Jessica, fair enough."

"I meant the relationship," Wigfull explained. "Why didn't he object to A.J. screwing his wife?"

"Because it wasn't happening. This is the whole point. They aren't lovers. Barnaby convinced me of that. Intellectual flirting, he calls it."

"Get away," said Wigfull.

"Straight up. Their relationship is nonsexual. They got their kicks in other ways. The courtship display stops short of the act itself. These two are games players. That's their turn-on. It's like a grown-up version of truth, kiss, or dare, ultimately leading to destruction. The crimes arose out of A.J.'s need to impress her. He's given her most of the money he creamed off from Miss Chilmark, but that wasn't enough. He planned a spectacular stunt."

"Stealing the Penny Black and having it turn up at the Bloodhounds' meeting? That was spectacular, no question. It proved he was smarter than any of them. The riddles. The business with the padlocks. Bloody clever."

"Yes, but it went wrong," said Diamond. "He didn't reckon with Sid. Here was a bloke who was a Dickson Carr buff with an interest in locked room puzzles, so naturally he was fascinated by what had happened. He drove out to look at the narrowboat and came along the towpath while AJ. was in the act of replacing the padlock. I think AJ. heard him coming and hid inside the cabin, grabbing a windlass for a weapon. Everything had worked brilliantly up to then. He'd almost got away with a perfect crime. He was angry and scared at the same time, and he panicked. He cracked Sid over the head, probably meaning to knock him out, no more, but it killed him. You can never tell with skulls until you give them a bash." He forked up some more chips. "And everything after that was done to cover up."

Wigfull had been over that scene a thousand times in his mind and never pictured it so vividly before. He tried to sound casual. "So when did Jessica come into it?"

"After Sid was killed. She suspected AJ. was responsible, and she didn't want us to find out. With luck, he'd get away with it. There was a chance that everyone would assume Sid had stolen the stamp and staged the locked room trick."

"And we did," said Wigfull.

"Well, it fitted the facts. After all, he was the Dickson Carr expert, and he had plenty to prove to that lot who thought him thick because he didn't ever have much to say for himself. This theory was an ideal cover for A.J. It meant anyone at all— not just someone in the know—could have been on the tow-path that night and attacked Sid. Tidy. It let A.J. off the hook. And then the writing on the paper bag seemed to confirm that Sid had written the riddles."

"Jessica did that."

"Yes. She admitted it to me. She was covering up for A.J. To be fair, I don't think he'd told her anything. She's not slow, that woman. She worked out that he'd done it. Later it all began to unravel, of course. So Plan B was devised to frame Rupert and fake his suicide."

"They were both in on that?"

"By this time, yes. This killing was not accidental. It was planned in cold blood. They staged the graffiti incident, making sure Rupert was well sprayed first. It was simple to surprise him coming out of his local. A.J. must have done that. Rupert hadn't met him."