Murder at Swann's Lake (15 page)

“Not really enough to put a rope round his neck, is it?” Woodend asked.

“Nothing like enough,” Rutter agreed.

The phone rang on the bar, and Wally picked it up. “It's for you, Chief Inspector,” he said. “Your wife.”

Woodend made a comical face. “First time in years she considered me worth checking up on,” he said.

He rose to his feet and made his way to the bar. Rutter lit a cigarette, and though he was not consciously listening to the conversation, he couldn't help hearing Woodend's half of it.

“Hello, luv,” the Chief Inspector said. “What's brought this sudden bout of concern on? . . . What? . . . Oh, my God! No—”

Rutter turned round, alarmed. Woodend's strong features had crumpled, and he was gripping the telephone so hard his knuckles had turned white.

“Yes . . .” Woodend was saying. “Yes, I'll tell him.”

Tell
him
, Rutter repeated to himself. He was the only person in Cheshire who Joan Woodend knew, apart from her husband. “What's happened?” he asked. “Has anything . . . has somebody—”

“Two whiskies, quick!” Woodend said to Wally. “And you'd better make them doubles.”

The barman stuck the glasses under the optics, then handed them to Woodend. The Chief Inspector carried them back to the table. “Joan got a phone call from Maria this afternoon,” he said. “She was ringin' from the eye hospital.”

“The eye hospital!” Rutter repeated. “But Maria doesn't even wear reading glasses.”

Woodend put his hand on his sergeant's shoulder. “I'm afraid it's a bit more serious than short-sightedness,” he said. “You're goin' to have to catch the first available train back to London.”

W
oodend made his way up the country lane which led towards the Church of St Mary in Swann's Lake. It had been raining quite heavily earlier that morning, but by half-past ten the clouds had completely disappeared, the hedgerows had lost their glossy sheen, and even the small puddles which had formed at the edge of the road were almost dried out.

The church loomed up ahead. It had been built early in the nineteenth century, the Chief Inspector guessed, before they had got the concept of the Gothic Revival quite right. Now it stuck out like a blot on the landscape – a small church trying to pretend it was a cathedral, a structure which attempted to soar and only succeeded in being a dwarf standing on tiptoes.

There was time for one more cigarette before he reached the churchyard, Woodend thought. He lit a Capstan Full Strength and wondered how his sergeant was getting on. Had he already seen Maria? And if not, what had they told him about her? He wished he could be there with the lad. But he had a job to do and it was time he got on with it. Grinding the half-smoked cigarette under the heel of his right shoe, he strode on towards the church.

A group of mourners had already gathered by the time Woodend arrived. There was the widow – scarcely grieving, but at least appropriately clad in a black dress which covered her attractive legs right down to the middle of the calves. There was Robbie's eldest daughter, Jenny. She was clutching tightly to her husband's arm for support, and from the pained and sympathetic expression on Terry Clough's face, it was obvious that even if Robbie had talked him into marrying Jenny, he truly loved her now. Michael Clough was there, too, wearing his brown corduroy jacket with a black armband and looking, as John Donne had once said, as if the bell also tolled for him. Of Annabel Peterson, there was no sign – but that was probably to be expected.

Woodend let his glance fall on the other mourners. The Green brothers had turned up, looking as shifty and mistrustful as they habitually did, and there were several other faces unknown to Woodend. But there was no tall, blond man with a carefully clipped moustache. Alexander Conway, whatever his connection with the murder, had clearly decided to stay away.

Heads were turning towards the gate, and when Woodend allowed his to follow them, he saw that a shiny black Rolls Royce Silver Dawn had just pulled up in front of the church.

“Well, look what the cat's dragged in,” Doris said to her daughter. “I'd never have thought he'd have put in an appearance. Not in a million years.”

The man getting out of the back of the Rolls was wearing an expensive black mourning suit, which contrasted most attractively with his mane of silvery hair. He was somewhere between fifty-five and sixty, Woodend guessed, but he had the body of a much younger man, with powerful broad shoulders and a barrel chest.

Seemingly unaware that all eyes were on him, the man in the mourning suit made his way straight to the widow, bent down, and kissed her on the cheek. “My deepest condolences, Doris,” he said.

“It was good of you to come, Sid,” the widow replied.

Woodend's plain Lancashire Methodist background had ensured he'd not been inside many Anglican churches, but even from his limited experience this one seemed much more ornate than the average. Certainly, it was not somewhere he would have felt comfortable worshipping in. He wasn't comfortable with the vicar, either. The Reverend Wilfred Cunliffe Jones, now standing at the lectern, was a florid man with an aquiline nose and a superior tilt to his chin – the sort of fashionable priest who went down well in some of the more prosperous areas of London, but would have been laughed out of the East End.

The vicar cleared his throat, and gazed down on his congregation with a look which may have contained compassion, but seemed awfully close to disdain. “I did not know Mr Robert Peterson long,” he said in a plummy voice. “Indeed, he was a comparative newcomer to this area. But by all accounts he was very happy here and made some good friends in the time he spent amongst us. I'm sure those friends will miss him deeply.”

Is that it? Woodend wondered.

Was the funeral oration going to be no longer than the message on the back of one of those comic picture postcards people sent when they were staying at the seaside? Apparently it was. The vicar nodded his head solemnly and stepped down.

The doctor was a short man, and his small, tired steps along the never-ending hospital corridors seemed infuriatingly slow to the man who had been pacing the waiting room for what had felt like an eternity.

“Try not to get her too excited, and if she appears to be getting tired, tell her you'd better go,” the doctor said.

“Why won't you tell me exactly what the situation is before I see her?” Rutter asked. “It would help to assess how I should deal with her.”

“Believe me, I'd like to give you the information,” the doctor replied, “but there are rules governing these matters. She can tell you what she likes, but we're only allowed to reveal her medical status to close relatives.”

“I'm going to marry her,” Rutter pointed out. “You don't get much closer than that.”

“Hmm,” the doctor said.

Rutter stopped walking, took the doctor by the shoulder and swung him round so they were facing each other. “And what's that ‘hmm' supposed to mean?” he demanded angrily.

“I'm sorry,” the doctor replied. “I'm exhausted. If I hadn't been without sleep for the last forty-eight hours, I probably wouldn't have said that.”

“But you
did
say it,” Rutter insisted. “And now I want to know what you meant by it.”

“I'm sure that you're a fine young man and that you love my patient very much, but—”

“But what?”

The doctor sighed. “I've seen scores of young men in your situation,” he said. “They know they're in love, and they're sure they can cope with whatever fate throws at them. And then they think about it. I mean
really
think about it. They ask themselves what their lives will be like in five years' time. In ten years' time. In
twenty
years. And in the end, they decide that love is simply not enough to sustain them through such a difficult existence.”

“Take me to my fiancée,” Rutter said, through gritted teeth. “Take me to her now.”

The doctor sighed again, as if such shows of determination were nothing new to him. “As you wish,” he said.

The burial was over, and the mourners began to drift away from the grave. The vicar bestowed a few platitudes on the widow, told her that his door was always open should she need comfort, then turned and walked rapidly towards the vicarage, where he would just have time for a small sherry before lunch. He did not get far. Standing between two lines of graves – and effectively blocking his path – was the big man in the hairy sports jacket he'd noticed in church earlier.

“I'm Chief Inspector Woodend,” the big man said. “Could you spare me a couple of minutes, Mr Jones?”

“Cunliffe Jones,” the vicar corrected him.

“Could you spare me a couple of minutes Mr
Cunliffe
Jones?”

The vicar glanced down at his watch. “I have got rather a busy day ahead of me,” he said irritably.

Woodend nodded. “Of course you have,” he agreed. “What with buryin' the dead and visitin' the sick, you must be run off your feet. Tell you what, I'll come round to the vicarage tonight. Would nine o'clock suit you?”

It wouldn't suit him at all, the Reverend Cunliffe Jones thought. And it wouldn't suit the guests at his wine and cheese party, either. “You said you only wanted two minutes?” he asked.

“Well, not more than ten, anyway,” Woodend said cheerfully.

The vicar gave in to the inevitable. “What would you like to ask me?”

Woodend rested his right hand on the nearest gravestone. “You didn't like Robbie Peterson much, did you?” he said.

The vicar looked vaguely offended – but only vaguely. “Mr Peterson was one of my parishioners, and as such—” he began.

“I'm investigatin' a murder,” Woodend told him. “I go a lot by impressions, an' most of the time I'm spot on. An' I get the definite impression that you didn't like Robbie Peterson much. Are you goin' to say I'm wrong this time?”

The vicar hesitated for a second. “Perhaps it would kinder to say that I was not used to his city ways,” he conceded. “After all, as you will have seen for yourself, we are largely a rural parish here.”

“Did he often come to church?”

“He attended quite regularly when he first arrived in the village. It would be misleading to say he has worshipped with us recently.”

“Have you any idea what made him stop?”

Again, the vicar hesitated. “When he'd been here for a few months, he came to see me at the vicarage.”

Woodend could well imagine it. He could see Robbie, perfectly at home and in control in any of the tougher areas of Liverpool, looking totally lost as he knocked on the vicar's door. He could picture Cunliffe Jones, too – smug and superior. “I expect you offered him a sherry, did you?” he asked.

“If memory serves, I did.”

Woodend grinned. “Bet it wasn't your good stuff, though. You'd never waste any of that on somebody like Robbie. I'd guess you fobbed him off with some Australian plonk.”

“If I remember rightly, it was a perfectly acceptable Cyprus sherry,” the vicar said huffily.

Woodend assumed a look of mock-contrition. “Sorry to have interrupted you,” he said. “You were tellin' me Robbie came to the vicarage. What did he want to see you about?”

“He'd noticed our church roof appeal fund hadn't been as successful as we hoped. He offered to make a substantial contribution.”

“Which, of course, you readily accepted.”

The vicar frowned. “At first I did. Just as, at first, I accepted his offer to cater for the Sunday school picnic.”

“But then?”

“Then it became plain to me that Mr Peterson was not being purely philanthropic.”

“Strings attached, were there?”

“Indeed.”

“He wanted you to co-opt him onto the parish council, did he?” Woodend asked.

Cunliffe Jones's mouth dropped open in surprise. “However did you know that?”

“What else could you have had to offer that he'd want?” Woodend replied. “Anyway, I imagine you told him the answer was no.”

“I put it to the sitting members,” the vicar said defensively.

Woodend grinned again. “Backed with your own strong recommendation that they agree to let him into their exclusive little club?”

“I'm not sure I care for your tone, Chief Inspector,” the vicar said. “Try to understand our position. We have retired army officers on the parish council. There are headmasters, solicitors and justices of the peace. They reflect the community they live in.”

“An” Robbie Peterson wouldn't have, would he?”

The vicar looked at his watch again. “Mr Peterson wasn't really one of us. I think, despite what I said in my funeral oration, that he would have been happier back in Liverpool. With people of his own kind. And now, if you'll excuse me . . .”

As the vicar turned and walked away, Woodend became aware of a slow, methodical clapping sound. He turned and saw that the noise was coming from the broad, silver-haired man who'd arrived in the Rolls Royce, and now was standing a few feet to his left.

“Well, you really showed that pompous bastard up for what he was, didn't you?” the man asked. He stepped forward and held out his hand. “Sid Dowd.”

“Charlie Woodend,” the Chief Inspector replied, taking the proffered hand. “I've heard a lot about you, Mr Dowd.”

Dowd grinned. “All good, I hope.”

“You'd be surprised if I said yes, wouldn't you?” Woodend asked.

“Surprised? I'd be bloody astounded,” Dowd admitted. “Look, I've got a bit of time to spare before I go back to Liverpool. Don't you think you an' me should have a little talk?”

“It might be a very good idea,” Woodend agreed. “I'll see you in Robbie's office in ten minutes.”