Last Act of All (20 page)

‘
Read my lips, sergeant. On the sofa. I’m going to take it as if I came in from the garden. And time me from when I open the door.’

She
had no alternative. With a shudder of distaste, she laid herself gingerly on her side on the chesterfield, her head in the depression where Lilian’s head had lain, her hair falling forward to half-cover her face. She pulled the rug up to her shoulders, and out of the corner of her eye she could see the cushion, coarse and dusty-looking. She cringed at the thought of its coming down on her face. Coppins would not shrink from realism.

She
could hear him outside the garden door. ‘I’m passing, and I look in the window. See Lilian, and quick as lightning, make my plan.

‘
Start timing. I take out my pocket-handkerchief to turn the handle. Now I step inside, shut it quickly. I hurry over to grab a cushion. Damn!’

She
heard the thud as he blundered into a chair. ‘I can’t see a blind bloody thing. You could be anyone, I’ll tell you that.’

For
a big man, he was light on his feet. She sensed him moving round the back of the chesterfield, and through the strands of her hair glimpsed the cushion coming down.

Behind
him, the door swung open, and after a timid knock the figure of a uniformed constable appeared in the doorway, to gape in horror at the spectacle of a senior officer engaged, apparently, in a copycat killing.

‘
S — sir!’ he stammered.

Coppins
swung round, and Frances, glad of the reprieve, sat up, finding it hard not to laugh at the expression on the young man’s face.

‘
Twenty-five seconds, sir,’ she said, with offensive efficiency. ‘Plus time for any struggle, and getting back out again.’

Ignoring
her, Coppins snapped, ‘Better shut your mouth, constable, or you’ll catch flies. Got some objection to the theory of reconstructing the crime, have you?’

‘
Yes sir, I mean, no sir.’ His accent was broad; he was a bulky, fresh-faced youth, pink to the ears at the moment, whose stability of temperament and sturdiness of physique were more obvious assets than his mental agility.

‘
Well, get on with it, man. What do you want?’

‘
They sent me to report to you, sir. Put me on to local interviews, thinking I might get more out of people, seeing as I come from Swaylings. Well, I told them — they wouldn’t count me as local, stands to reason.’

‘
But that’s — what? Three miles away?’

‘
All of that, sir. So you can see why not.’

Coppins
and Frances exchanged glances, and Frances cleared her throat.

‘Er — even so, constable, you found out something useful, despite the difficulties? I presume they had some reason for sending you up.’

‘
Didn’t tell me a thing, did they? That’s what they sent me up here to tell you.’

Coppins
’s colour was starting to look unhealthy. Frances intervened hastily. ‘And what did you make of that?’

He
beamed, relieved to find at last some sign of intelligence in his betters. ‘Well, it’s funny, isn’t it? Something like a murder, they’d be full of it, you’d expect. They’d come out with all sorts, what the victim said to them last week, who’d had a barney recently, all that stuff. But they all closed up, close as oysters, didn’t they? Didn’t know nothing, weren’t saying nothing. So there you are.’

‘
Where, exactly, am I?’ Coppins’s bellow was only just muted, but the constable stood his ground.

‘
Think it’s one of their own, don’t they. Shielding someone,’ he pointed out, with some pride in his own sagacity.

When
he had gone, they looked at each other. ‘He’s got a point,’ Coppins said heavily. ‘Scrub Jack Daley.’

‘
“The dog that didn’t bark”. I’d better go and talk to Tilson again. He’s my best hope of an inside track.’

‘
Mmmmm.’ Coppins was frowning, and she looked at him enquiringly.

‘
Had a thought, before young Sherlock blundered in. I was the killer; I looked through the window; I saw Lilian. But I was behaving oddly. At a party in someone’s house, you don’t go shading your eyes and peering into the windows of the other rooms. It’s rude.’

‘
Tamara Farrell did.’

‘
So maybe she’s our killer.’

‘
I could think of things that would surprise me more. But otherwise—’

‘
Otherwise, if he came in, he must have known already that Lilian was in here. And that it wasn’t Helena. So he — or she, since you insist — could have come in from either the garden or the hall. And if he came from the hall, he had the advantage that he wouldn’t bark his shins on the bloody furniture.’

So,
at least in theory, they had the answer to the question that she had defined as central, but they were no further forward. She wondered if Coppins felt as helpless as she did, and had her answer when he burst out, ‘Give me a nice messy knifing in a disco, every time. Can’t stand this fairying about with methods and motives.’ He glanced up at the old wall clock, now showing almost twelve o’clock. ‘For god’s sake, Frances, let’s go and see if that miserable bloody pub serves anything resembling a decent pint.’

*

Tilson was at his desk this time, frowning over balance sheets, when she was ushered in by Mrs Thomas in her Sunday purple-flowered crimplene with an apron on top. He pushed the papers aside with alacrity, coming to greet her with hands outstretched.

‘
My dear Frances! You have no idea how much I have been hoping that you would pop in to see me again. After yesterday’s tragic events—’

‘
I’m here officially, Mr Tilson,’ she warned, sitting down on the hard chair opposite his desk and forming with her notebook and pen a barricade against informality.

He
sighed theatrically. ‘Oh dear, that presumably means that I have to talk while you listen, whereas for me it would be so much more interesting the other way round. I find, the older I get, the less that anything I say myself possesses the charm of novelty.’

She
smiled at that, but was not to be diverted. ‘The party yesterday — I have your statement of course, but—’

He
made a deprecating gesture. ‘I know. Dispiriting, isn’t it? But even excellent Homer nods. Lilian, in the sitting-room, announces to a stunned audience that she is selling Radnesfield House; I am in the hall discussing house prices with an estate agent — it is, don’t you find, always a mistake to talk to an estate agent? It only encourages them. However, there it was. Lilian has a violent altercation with Jack in the garden; I am in the sitting-room. When the deed itself takes place, I am eating a blameless salad in the garden. I couldn’t have avoided the action more comprehensively if I tried, and with your knowledge of my temperament you will recognize that avoiding the action would be sadly out of character.’

‘
What about the reaction to her announcement?’

‘
Oh, waves of shock and lowered voices and tittle-tattle. George Wagstaff beside himself. Edward grim, Dyer amused. Helena — weighed down by the cares of a hostess when I saw her; Sandra Daley disintegrating visibly; the vicar’s wife exuding poison like a tree-frog; Mrs Bateman slicing tomatoes as if she were operating a guillotine...’

She
jotted down his observations with amused appreciation, but said only, ‘You told me, the other day, that you sensed an atmosphere in Radnesfield. In the light of events, is there anything you can add to that?’

‘
Merely intensification of the impression. Today, for instance — well, you’ve probably noticed yourself.’

Thinking
of the vicar, she nodded, managing to suppress a shudder, and he went on, ‘And my dear Jane Thomas for example — well, I would do nothing so crude as to pry, but I know her well enough to see that she is deeply troubled.’

‘
You can’t be more specific? We have a report from a constable who knows this area, saying he thinks they’re shielding someone.’

‘
Actually shielding someone?’ Tilson was startled. ‘Then that would definitely have to be one of their own. They might choose not to become involved, but they wouldn’t protect a stranger.

‘Perhaps — perhaps it might be useful to talk to Jane. She pops in on Sunday, you know, just to see that I have a proper lunch, but I suppose you could catch her before she went home.’

He
made the suggestion in the tones of one forced, by the laws of hospitality, to offer a gift, while hoping still that it may be refused.

‘
Thank you, that would be most helpful.’

When
Jane Thomas appeared, she looked, indeed, ill at ease. She was a big, sturdy woman with a milkmaid’s complexion and an honest blue gaze. But after one startled glance at Frances, she would not meet her eyes, fidgeting with her apron with large, work-roughened hands. She took the chair brought forward by her employer, but sat on its edge, the picture of discomfort.

‘
Jane, my dear, the sergeant has some questions she would like to ask you, and I think, I really do think, that you should be as helpful to her as possible.’

Still
she did not look up, her head bent over the twisted corner of her apron.

‘
I will, of course, leave if you should wish me to.’ Tilson made the honourable offer without real enthusiasm, and looked gratified by the frantic shaking of her head. He sat down, and a little silence fell.

With
a sense of walking on eggshells, Frances began, her low voice warm and persuasive. ‘Mrs Thomas, it’s very hard for you, isn’t it? Strangers moved into your village, and there has been violence and ugliness. No wonder you resent that, as well as the fact that I’m here asking you questions you probably don’t want to answer.

‘
But the problem won’t go away. Mrs Radley went to prison for something we now believe she didn’t do; perhaps if people in the village had come forward to tell us what they knew, that wouldn’t have happened.

‘Oh, I know there was a lot of hostility to Neville and Lilian Fielding — and I can understand why — but someone has killed twice, and there’s no reason why they should stop there. No one’s safe — yourself, your family — Mr Tilson—’

She
paused, hopefully, but only the twisting went on, more savagely.

She
changed the line of questioning as smoothly as she would have modulated into a different key, shading her intonation to make her voice lower, more intimate. ‘It may be there is someone who needs help. Perhaps it’s not doing them a favour, keeping quiet — perhaps?’

Mrs
Thomas’s shoulders jerked convulsively and Frances broke off, instantly.

The
woman looked up at last, made to speak, then faltered. Neither Frances nor Tilson spoke, and flustered by the lengthening pause, she burst at last into speech.

“
Tisn’t right, it isn’t, and so I’ve said. But it’s not up to me to mess after it, that’s the truth, and there’s them as should have spoken up long ago. Things have changed, I said to them, it’s not the same as when Council used to decide right and wrong — and that was before all we was born, mostly. The dead past’s gone, and plenty of it not so good, neither. Maybe we should have them new houses, at that. I never thought to say it, but things has gone wrong about here, things that should have been told have been hid.’

She
was wringing the whole apron in her hands now, and close to tears. Tilson was shifting uneasily in his chair, but Frances hardly noticed him. ‘Mrs Thomas, you can tell me, can’t you?’ She was cajoling, coaxing now. ‘There’s been too much darkness and deceit. Good, honest, plain words — tell me what you know.’

‘
Know?’ she raised her head, and her expression was fierce. ‘I don’t
know
nothing. But there’s them as do, and it’s up to them to tell you.’

‘Them?’ The detective’s voice was as caressing as a mother soothing her child. ‘You can tell me who you mean, can’t you?’

For
just a second it seemed that the siren voice might seduce her; she looked at Frances almost with longing, but then the tears came.

‘
You’re asking me to name names, you are. And I can’t do that — not to
you
.’

She
jumped to her feet and fled from the room, and Frances made no effort to stop her.

‘
Not to me, because I’m a foreigner.’ Her voice was harsh and ragged with impatience. ‘Old loyalties, of course — and who can blame her? But what do I have to do to get through to these people?’ She brought her linked fingers down hard on the desk in front of her in a painful expression of exasperation.

Tilson,
his chin propped on his hands, was studying her narrowly. ‘That was quite a performance,’ he said at last. ‘What they used to call glamourie, I fancy, and you could get yourself burned at the stake. Are you a musician?’