Devices and Desires (32 page)

He asked: “You keep house for your brother, Miss Mair?”

“No, I keep house for myself. My brother happens to live here when he is in Norfolk, which naturally is for most of the week. He could hardly administer Larksoken Power Station from his flat in London. If I’m at home and cook dinner, he usually shares it. I take the view that it would be unreasonable to demand that he make himself an omelette merely to affirm the principle of shared domestic responsibilities. But I don’t see what relevance my housekeeping arrangements have to Hilary Robarts’s murder. Could we, perhaps, get on to what happened last night?”

They were interrupted. There was a knock at the door and, without an apology, Alice Mair got up and went through to the hall. They heard a lighter, feminine voice, and a woman followed her into the kitchen. Miss Mair introduced her as Mrs. Dennison from the Old Rectory. She was a pretty, gentle-looking woman, conventionally dressed in a tweed skirt and twin set, and was obviously distressed. Rickards approved both of her appearance and of the distress. This was how he expected a woman to look and behave after a particularly brutal murder. The two men had got up at her entrance, and she took Oliphant’s chair while he moved one for himself from the kitchen table.

She turned to Rickards impulsively: “I’m sorry, I’m interrupting, but I felt I had to get out of the house. This is appalling news, Inspector. Are you absolutely certain that it couldn’t have been the Whistler?”

Rickards said: “Not this time, madam.”

Alice Mair said: “The timing’s wrong. I told you that when I rang early this morning, Meg. The police wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been the Whistler.”

“I know that’s what you said. But I couldn’t help hoping
that there’d been a mistake, that he’d killed her and then himself, that Hilary Robarts was his last victim.”

Rickards said: “In a sense she was, Mrs. Dennison.”

Alice Mair said calmly: “I think it’s called a copycat murder. There’s more than one psychopath in the world, and that kind of madness can be infectious, apparently.”

“Of course, but how horrible! Having started, will he too go on, like the Whistler did, death after death, no one feeling safe?”

Rickards said: “I shouldn’t let that worry you, Mrs. Dennison.”

She turned to him almost fiercely. “But of course it worries me! It must worry us all. We’ve lived so long with the horror of the Whistler. It’s appalling to think that it’s started all over again.”

Alice Mair got up. “You need coffee, Meg. Chief Inspector Rickards and Sergeant Oliphant have declined, but I think we need it.”

Rickards wasn’t going to let her get away with that. He said firmly: “If you’re making it, Miss Mair, I think I’ll change my mind. I’d be glad of a coffee. You too no doubt, Sergeant.”

And now, he thought, there’ll be a further delay while she grinds beans and no one can talk above the noise. Why can’t she just pour boiling water on coffee grains like everyone else?

But the coffee, when it did come, was excellent, and he found it unexpectedly comforting. Mrs. Dennison took her mug in her hands and cradled it like a child at bedtime. Then she put it down on the hearth and turned to Rickards.

“Look, perhaps you’d rather I went. I’ll just have my coffee and then go back to the rectory. If you want to talk to me I’ll be there for the rest of the day.”

Miss Mair said: “You may as well stay and hear what happened last night. It has its points of interest.” She turned to Rickards. “As I told you, I was here the whole of the evening,
from half past five. My brother left for the power station shortly after seven-thirty, and I settled down to work on my proofs. I switched on the answerphone to avoid interruptions.”

Rickards asked: “And you didn’t leave the cottage for any purpose during the whole of the evening?”

“Not until after half past nine, when I left for the Blaneys’. But perhaps I could tell the story in sequence, Chief Inspector. At about ten past eight I switched off the machine, thinking that there might be an important call for my brother. It was then I heard George Jago’s message that the Whistler was dead.”

“You didn’t ring anyone else to let them know?”

“I knew that wasn’t necessary. Jago runs his own information service. He’d make sure that everyone knew. I came back into the kitchen and worked on my proofs until about half past nine. Then I thought that I’d collect Hilary Robarts’s portrait from Ryan Blaney. I’d promised to drop it in at the gallery in Norwich on my way to London, and I wanted to make an early start next morning. I tend to be a little obsessive about time and didn’t want to go even a short distance out of my way. I rang Scudder’s Cottage to let him know that I was collecting the portrait, but the number was engaged. I tried several times and then got out the car and drove over. I must have been there within fifteen minutes. I’d written a note to him to slip through the door telling him that I’d taken the picture as arranged.”

“Wasn’t that a little unusual, Miss Mair? Why not knock at the cottage and collect it from him personally?”

“Because he had taken the trouble to tell me when I first saw it precisely where it was kept and where I could find the light switch to the left of the door. I took that as a reasonable indication that he didn’t expect, or indeed want, to be
disturbed by a call at the cottage. Mr. Dalgliesh was with me at the time.”

“But that was odd, wasn’t it? He must have thought it was a good portrait. He wouldn’t wish to exhibit it otherwise. You’d think he’d want to hand it over personally.”

“Would you? It didn’t strike me that way. He’s an extremely private man, more so since the death of his wife. He doesn’t welcome visitors, particularly not women who might cast a critical eye on the tidiness of the cottage and the state of the children. I could understand that. I wouldn’t have welcomed it myself.”

“So you went straight to his painting shed? Where is that?”

“About thirty yards to the left of the cottage. It’s a small wooden shack. I imagine that it was originally a wash house or a smoking shed. I shone my torch on the path to the door, although that was hardly necessary. The moonlight was exceptionally bright. It was unlocked. And if you’re now about to say that that, too, was odd, you don’t understand life on the headland. We’re very remote here and we get into the habit of leaving doors unlocked. I don’t think it would ever occur to him to lock his painting shed. I switched on the light to the left of the door and saw that the picture wasn’t where I expected.”

“Could you describe exactly what happened. The details, please, as far as you can recall them.”

“We’re talking about yesterday night, Chief Inspector. It isn’t difficult to recall the details. I left the light on in the shed and knocked on the front door of the cottage. There were lights on, downstairs only, but the curtains were drawn. I had to wait for about a minute before he came. He half-opened the door but didn’t invite me in. I said, ‘Good evening, Ryan.’ He just nodded, but didn’t reply. There was a strong smell of whisky. Then I said, ‘I’ve come to collect the portrait, but it
isn’t in the shed, or if it is I haven’t found it.’ Then he said, his speech rather slurred, ‘It’s to the left of the door, wrapped in cardboard and brown paper. A brown-paper parcel, Sellotaped.’ I said, ‘Not now.’ He didn’t reply but came out to me, leaving the door open. We went to the shed together.”

“Was he walking steadily?”

“He was very far from steady, but he could certainly keep on his feet. When I said he smelt of drink and his voice was slurred, I didn’t mean that he was totally incapable. But I got the impression that he had spent the evening in fairly continuous drinking. He stood in the doorway of the shed with me at his shoulder. He didn’t speak for about half a minute. Then all he said was ‘Yes, it’s gone.’”

“How did he sound?” As she didn’t reply he asked patiently, “Was he shocked? Angry? Surprised? Or too drunk to care?”

“I heard the question, Chief Inspector. Hadn’t you better ask him how he felt? I’m only competent to describe what he looked like, what he said and what he did.”

“What did he do?”

“He turned and beat his clenched hands against the lintel of the door. Then he rested his head against the wood for a minute. It seemed at the time a histrionic gesture, but I imagine that it was perfectly genuine.”

“And then?”

“I said to him, ‘Hadn’t we better telephone the police? We could do it from here if your telephone is working. I’ve been trying to get through to you, but it’s always engaged.’ He didn’t reply and I followed him back to the cottage. He didn’t invite me in, but I stood in the doorway. He went over to the recess under the stairs and then said: ‘The receiver isn’t properly on. That’s why you couldn’t get through.’ I said again, ‘Why not telephone the police now? The sooner the theft is reported the
better.’ He turned to me and just said, ‘Tomorrow. Tomorrow.’ Then he went back to his chair. I persisted. I said, ‘Shall I ring, Ryan, or will you? This really is important.’ He said, ‘I will. Tomorrow. Good night.’ That seemed a clear indication to me that he wanted to be alone, so I left.”

“And during this visit you saw no one other than Mr. Blaney. The children weren’t up, for example?”

“I took it the children were in bed. I neither saw nor heard them.”

“And you didn’t discuss the Whistler’s death?”

“I assumed George Jago had telephoned Mr. Blaney, probably before he rang me. And what was there to discuss? Neither Ryan nor I was in a mood for doorstep chatting.”

But it was, thought Rickards, a curious reticence on both their parts. Had she been so anxious to get away and he to see her go? Or, for one of them, had an event more traumatic than a missing portrait driven even the Whistler temporarily out of mind?

There was a vital question Rickards needed to ask. The implications were obvious and she was far too intelligent a woman not to see them.

“Miss Mair, from what you saw of Mr. Blaney that night, do you think he could have driven a car?”

“Impossible. And he hadn’t a car to drive. He has a small van, but it has just failed its MOT.”

“Or ridden a bicycle?”

“I suppose he could have tried, but he’d have been in a ditch within minutes.”

Rickards’s mind was already busy with calculations. He wouldn’t get the results of the autopsy until Wednesday, but if Hilary Robarts had taken her swim, as was her custom, immediately after the headlines to the main news, which on
Sundays was at nine-ten, then she must have died at about half past nine. At 9.45 or a little later, according to Alice Mair, Ryan Blaney was in his cottage and drunk. By no stretch of the imagination could he have committed a singularly ingenious murder, requiring a steady hand, nerves and the capacity to plan, and been back in his cottage by 9.45. If Alice Mair was telling the truth, she had given Blaney an alibi. He, on the other hand, would certainly be unable to give one to her.

Rickards had almost forgotten Meg Dennison, but now he looked across to where she sat like a distressed child, hands in her lap, her untasted coffee still standing in the hearth.

“Mrs. Dennison, did you know last night that the Whistler was dead?”

“Oh yes. Mr. Jago telephoned me too, about a quarter to ten.”

Alice Mair said: “He probably tried to get you earlier, but you were on the way to Norwich station with the Copleys?”

Meg Dennison spoke directly to Rickards: “I should have been, but the car broke down. I had to get Sparks and his taxi in a hurry. Luckily he could just do it, but he had to go straight on to a job in Ipswich, so he couldn’t bring me back. He saw the Copleys safely on the train for me.”

“Did you leave the Old Rectory at any time during the evening?”

Mrs. Dennison looked up and met his eyes. “No,” she said, “no, after I’d seen them off I didn’t leave the house.” Then she paused and said, “I’m sorry, I did go out into the garden very briefly. It would be more accurate to say that I didn’t leave the grounds. And now, if you’ll all excuse me, please, I’d like to go home.”

She got up, then turned again to Rickards: “If you want to question me, Chief Inspector, I’ll be at the Old Rectory.”

She was gone before the two men could get to their feet, almost stumbling from the room. Miss Mair made no move to follow her and, seconds later, they heard the front door close.

There was a moment’s silence, broken by Oliphant. Nodding towards the hearth, he said: “Funny. She hasn’t even touched her coffee.”

But Rickards had a final question for Alice Mair. He said: “It must have been getting on for midnight when Dr. Mair got home yesterday night. Did you ring the power station to find out if he’d left or why he was delayed?”

She said coolly: “It didn’t occur to me, Chief Inspector. Since Alex is neither my child nor my husband, I am spared the compulsion of checking on his movements. I am not my brother’s keeper.”

Oliphant had been staring at her with his sombre, suspicious eyes. Now he said: “But he lives with you, doesn’t he? You do talk, don’t you? You must have known about his relationship with Hilary Robarts, for example. Did you approve?”

Alice Mair’s colour didn’t change, but her voice was like steel.

“Either to approve or disapprove would have been as presumptuously impertinent as was that question. If you wish to discuss my brother’s private life, I suggest that you do so with him.”

Rickards said quietly: “Miss Mair, a woman has been brutally done to death and her body mutilated. She was a woman you knew. In the light of that outrage, I hope you won’t feel the need to be oversensitive to questions which are bound to seem at times both presumptuous and impertinent.”

Anger had made him articulate. Their eyes met and held. He knew that his were hard with fury, both with Oliphant’s tactlessness and her response. But the grey eyes which met his were less easy to read. He thought he could detect
surprise, followed by wariness, reluctant respect, an almost speculative interest.

And when, fifteen minutes later, she escorted her visitors to the door, he was a little surprised when she held out her hand. As he shook it, she said: “Please forgive me, Chief Inspector, if I was ungracious. Yours is a disagreeable but necessary job and you are entitled to co-operation. As far as I’m concerned, you will get it.”