Deadly Petard (4 page)

‘Come into the warm,’ she said abruptly.

They went into the sitting-room, where a large wood and coal fire was burning.

‘What will you drink?’ she asked.

‘Nothing for me.’

Her astonishment was obvious.

He jammed his hands in the pockets of his trousers and stood with his back to the fire. He looked directly at her. ‘You know I often have a flutter on the horses?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ she answered, as she crossed to a chair and sat.

‘Of course you do,’ he snapped. ‘Normally, I reckon to make a couple of fivers or if the worst comes to the worst, break even, but recently the bloody nags I’ve fancied have been running like hobbled donkeys . . . Cutting a long story short, I’ve ended up owing a bloke a packet and he’s the type who gets nasty if he’s not paid sharp on time. You know the score. A broken arm to jog the memory.’

She was frightened by the mental picture of his being beaten up. ‘Then you need some money?’

‘Nothing like that. I’ve enough to keep him sweet.’ He tapped the breast pocket of his very sharply cut sports jacket. ‘The trouble is, seeing him to pay what I’ve got and persuading him to agree to wait a bit for the rest. He’s only available at night. But Babs doesn’t like being left on her own after dark and she’s always wanting to know where I’m going . . .’

Perhaps Babs wasn’t such a blind fool after all, she thought.

‘I told her this evening I was coming to see you because I’ve heard you’ve had the ‘flu and were feeling all depressed and I reckoned to cheer you up a little. She agreed that was a good idea, provided all the doors of Middle Manor were double locked. But Babs can be . . . I don’t want to sound disloyal, but she can be unnecessarily suspicious and she might just take it into her head to ring and check I’m here. If she does that, will you tell her I’ve been with you right up until five minutes before, when I took off for Petercross to try and buy you some aspirins, you having run out of ‘em? Will you do that for me?’

‘Frankly, I don’t like it.’

‘Knowing the kind of person you are, Gertie, I’m sure you don’t. But please, to help me, just this once . . . I’d hate like hell to end up in hospital.’

‘All right.’

‘You’re wonderful, plain bloody wonderful . . . Tell you what. Just to prove I’m human, I’m going to change my mind. Can I have that drink after all?’

As she stood, she thought that he must be under an even greater strain than she had first judged. But then he’d always been terrified by the prospect of physical pain.

After she’d finished a painting, she always knew a period when she was so dissatisfied with the work that she considered destroying it. ‘That damnable gap between intellectual intention and artistic execution.’ Self-honest to a degree—except where her emotions were involved—she could always see how far short of her aims she had fallen because, however successful in a commercial sense, she was not brushed with genius.

She was mooning around the house, trying not to think of the painting on the easel upstairs, unable to concentrate on anything for long, when West drove into the yard. He parked by the wooden shed that was the garage, walked down to the garden gate, and continued on round the brick path to the front door.

When she saw the expression on his face, she drew in her breath sharply because it was obvious that something had severely shocked him. What in God’s name had happened the previous night when he’d met the man to whom he owed all that money . . .?

‘Gertie . . . Oh, Christ!’ he said hoarsely.

‘How much does he want? I can help. I can draw it first thing tomorrow morning.’ She gripped his right arm, almost pulling him into the house.

He was bewildered. ‘What the hell are you talking about? It’s Barbara. She’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ she whispered.

‘When I got back home last night . . .’ He gulped.

She cradled him against herself and murmured words which barely made sense, but were merely intended to soothe. ‘How ghastly! How terrible! Poor Keir! Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Come and sit down.’

They went into the sitting-room and she poured him out a brandy which he drank quickly and without pleasure. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘At first, I thought she was just asleep . . .’

‘Don’t talk about it unless you want to.’

‘I’ve got to tell someone or I’ll go mad.’ He turned away so that she should not see his face. He spoke in a low voice. ‘I didn’t get back home until just before midnight. I locked up, set the alarms, had a bit of a nightcap, and then went upstairs. I thought she might still be awake, so I looked into her bedroom . . . We’ve been using different bedrooms for a while now. She’s not a good sleeper.’

She hated herself for knowing a moment’s pleasure at the knowledge that they had slept in different bedrooms.

‘The bed’s not far from the door and so although there wasn’t a light on in the room, the light from the passage reached the bed. She was lying on her back, facing the ceiling and I decided she was fast asleep. I was just about to close the door again when I realized her face was shiny in a way I’d never seen before. So I went right in and when I got close I saw . . . I saw that there was a plastic bag right over her head.’

‘Oh my God!’

‘I tore it off and tried to hear her heart. I thought I could. I started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. When that didn’t do any good, I phoned the doctor. When he came, he said she was dead.’

‘Oh, Keir,’ she whispered, wishing there were some sacrifice she could make that would ease his sorrow.

He suddenly stood, crossed to the window, and stared out at the winter-sodden garden. ‘The doctor told me she’d been dead some time before I got back. We found a note. She said she knew she was dying from cancer of the womb and couldn’t bear to face the agony, so she was taking some of her sleeping pills and then killing herself with a plastic bag . . . But she didn’t have cancer of the womb: the doctor tried to assure her of that a couple of weeks ago. But she wouldn’t believe him or the gynae specialist. If only I’d realized just how terrified she’d become. But she’d so often believed she was suffering from something that I’d reached the point where I didn’t take nearly as much notice as I should . . . She was always seeing the doctor with new pains. One day he asked her if her marriage was unhappy. The bastard!’ He swung round. ‘Of course, she told him it was perfectly happy. No one could have been happier than we were.’

He walked back to the nearest chair and slumped down on it. I thought it was the end of the world. Nothing could be more terrible. And yet . . .’

‘What, Keir?’

His voice became harsh. ‘You know Mavis?’

Just for a moment she couldn’t think who Mavis was. Then she remembered the 63-year-old battle-axe of a woman who’d first worked at Middle Manor as a scullery maid between the wars, immediately after leaving an orphanage. ‘What about her?’

‘She accused me of murdering Babs.’

‘That’s impossible!’

‘When she turned up at half past eight I told her what had happened and she almost fainted. So I helped her into the kitchen. The next thing was, she was shouting that I’d murdered Babs.’

‘She was hysterical.’

‘She meant it. She really believed I’d murdered Babs. She told the police that.’

‘Oh my God!’ She tried to find the words which would enable him to understand how this had probably happened. ‘Keir, you’ve got to remember that she went straight from the orphanage to Middle Manor so the place became a kind of home to her: and Barbara’s mother, so someone told me, was wonderfully kind to her. In a way, she must have felt herself part of the family—it’s the kind of relationship which just can’t happen these days. Barbara was the last member of that family, so when Mavis heard she’d just died it must have felt almost like having a daughter die.’

‘All right, so she had a shock. But why start shouting to the police that I murdered her when she must have known that I wouldn’t touch a hair of Babs’s head?’

Obviously, he hadn’t begun to understand what she’d been trying to tell him, but perhaps in the circumstances it was ridiculous to have expected him to do so. ‘When she gets over the shock, she’ll realize she’s been stupid.’

‘That’s all very fine, but in the meantime I’ve got the police asking questions.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘They’re trying to discover if maybe I did murder Babs.’

‘But you can’t have done. You said she left a note saying she was killing herself.’

‘I know. It’s vicious. As if I hadn’t suffered enough. But I’ve had a detective in the house for over two hours, asking questions, taking away things he says will have to be examined by experts. I’ve had a pathologist examining . . . examining Babs. And there was another policeman taking photos. All this because of that stupid bitch, Mavis.’

‘Oh, Keir,’ was all she could find to say.

He looked across at her, his expression haggard. ‘The detective wanted to know where I was last night at ten. That’s when they think she . . . died. He was trying to check up on me.’

‘Then all you had to do was tell him about seeing that man and he’ll know Mavis’s accusation is ridiculous.’

He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t find the bloke. He wasn’t in any of his usual places.’

‘But lots of other people must have seen you?’

‘No one I knew, so I can’t name anyone.’

For the moment, she was nonplussed.

‘Gertie, I told the detective that I was with you all evening.’ His voice sharpened. ‘You’ve got to back me up. You know it’s crazy to think I could have begun to hurt Babs. If you tell the police I was here until just before midnight, they’ll realize Mavis has to be out of her mind and Babs really did kill herself. Please, please, you’ve got to do that for me. I just can’t stand any more of their filthy questions . . .’

‘Yes, of course.’ she said immediately.

‘God, if only you could know how much that means to me!’

Detective-Constable Cullon was a few years younger than she and three inches taller: he had a rugger player’s shoulders: his hair was light brown and sufficiently curly to prevent any brush or comb bringing much order to it: he had deep blue eyes set above a hawkish nose: his mouth was firm and tilted towards laughter: he looked a man who was conscientious and determined, but who knew how to enjoy life when given the chance: he also looked tired.

‘Sorry to bother you, Miss Dean,’ he said as he stepped into the hall of Queenswood Farm. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing anything?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Good.’ His tone altered. ‘Have you heard the very sad news about Mrs West?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘I understand you’re a friend of the family?’

‘I am, but I know Keir very much better than I ever knew Barbara.’ He could make what he liked of that, she thought: in any case, having met her, he was not very likely to imagine there had been a passionate liaison between Keir and herself. He wasn’t to know how things had been years ago . . .

‘Mr West said you’d known each other since you were children?’

She suddenly realized they were standing about in the hall and she suggested they went into the sitting-room.

He stared appreciatively at the inglenook fireplace, then up at the beamed ceiling. ‘You’ve a lovely old house here, Miss Dean.’

‘But hardly to be compared to Middle Manor,’ she retorted.

‘Middle Manor is like something out of a film set. But this house is . . . Hope you don’t mind me saying this, but it’s much more down to earth. I can imagine myself one day owning a place like this, given a bit of luck. That makes it more attractive to me . . . Now, you won’t want to be bothered with me any longer than’s absolutely necessary.’ He brought a notebook out of the right-hand pocket of his sports jacket, flipped it open, and looked down at it. ‘I know it’ll be distressing to discuss Mrs West’s death, but I can assure you that it’s necessary. There are just one or two points which have to be made clear.’

‘Because of what Mavis said?’

‘Among other things.’

‘She was hysterical.’

‘Quite possibly. But you’ll understand, Miss Dean, that whatever the mental state of the person concerned—up to a point—when an accusation like this is made we have to investigate it. Did you happen to see Mr West at any time yesterday?’

‘He was here during the evening.’

‘At about what time?’

‘He arrived around six: either a little before or a little after.’

‘And can you say when he left?’

‘Roughly midnight.’

‘And was he here, in this house, all the time in between?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was there anyone else present?’

‘No.’

‘So you can offer no corroboration?’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’

‘God forbid!’ He looked up and grinned. ‘Sorry if I sounded that rude. The trouble is, we have to double-check everything and sometimes forget what that sounds like to other people.’ He brought a ballpoint pen out of his breast pocket and wrote briefly in the notebook. He looked up again. ‘I’d be grateful for a few impressions. Would you say Mr and Mrs West had a happy marriage?’

‘As far as I know, it was perfectly happy.’

‘Mrs West came from a very old family, didn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t suppose Mr West is from quite the same background?’

She was silent.

‘Where did he live when you first knew him?’

‘In Wealdsham.’

‘Which part exactly?’

‘A road near Brick Lane: I don’t remember the name.’

‘That would be east Wealdsham, wouldn’t it: beyond the river?’

He obviously knew that Brick Lane had been then, as it was now, on the edge of the slums.

‘You’ve kept in touch from time to time?’

‘Yes.’

He studied what he’d written, then snapped the notebook shut. ‘Thanks a lot for all your help, Miss Dean.’

She went with him to the front door and watched him walk along the brick path and out of sight around the corner of the house. He must be a fool, she thought, to place the slightest credence in Mavis’s ridiculous accusation.

Two weeks passed before she saw West again and during that time various rumours reached her, largely through Mrs Randall who came three times a week to do the housework. According to these rumours, Barbara had been murdered by gypsies, had not died but had been revived in hospital, had been murdered by West who had been arrested and confessed, had committed suicide, and Mavis had been arrested for making wild accusations . . .