The Body of a Woman (18 page)

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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Body of a Woman
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‘Janey, I can't …'
‘You don't have to.' The older woman turned to Yeadings. ‘Leila's husband - I've told you already - there was always some girl. It seemed he couldn't keep his hands to himself
that way. Leila knew. We all knew, and did nothing to help. Charles would have taken it up with him but I begged him not to. She would have hated it. I think she forbade him to say anything. It was a sort of family truce. We all pretended to be blind. For the sake of peace and quiet.'
‘But he wouldn't have hurt Leila. Not physically,' Chloë begged.
‘Not unless he was driven into a corner,' Janey admitted. ‘I'd thought at first he wouldn't, because I didn't believe his feelings could be that deep, not for any young girl. I think he's one of those men who need women and rather hate them for it. But then, if he was desperate to have someone and she was holding out - for marriage, say, and Leila could block a divorce - who knows how crazy it might have driven him? He can get very angry. The male menopause they call it, don't they? He could have been out of his mind.'
‘But she wasn't holding out,' Chloe shouted, then clapped her hands to her mouth.
Yeadings hid his excitement. The girl was appalled at what she'd given away. It was clear she knew the identity of her father's present lover. Maybe he should leave it for now and hope to extract the name less painfully through Janey later.
But it seemed not. ‘Who then?' the older woman insisted. ‘Do you mean you know who he was — was -'
‘Was shagging,' Chloë said in cold fury. ‘I do, and I'm not telling anyone.' She stopped abruptly and her face hardened. ‘But if she had anything to do with what happened to Leila, I hope you do catch her. Whoever did it, I just wish they'd bring hanging back!'
Such passion, Yeadings thought. The child - she wasn't much more - burst into a storm of crying. No tears, but a terrible dry, racking sound that he'd only heard before at gravesides. He had to leave her to Janey and just go.
In the hall he ran into Charles Hadfield at a total loss what to do. ‘If you've threatened her …' he began.
‘Dear God, that's the last thing …' Yeadings lifted his hands in exasperation.
‘It's catching up with her,' the man said wretchedly. ‘She's been too controlled up to now. Holds it all in. Can't do her any good. D'you know what she said last night? “I'm on my own now. I'm in the front line.” And now this other shock, the accident …'
‘She'll be all right. Your wife's with her.'
‘My - ? Oh yes. Quite. Very decent woman, Janey Practical, you know.'
Yeadings offered his hand and the older man grasped it. ‘Anything at all I can do?'
‘Back-up. Just be there for them both.' Lord, Lord, Yeadings muttered silently as he got into his car: why hadn't he left this to Mott, to Z, even to Beaumont. He was a paper-shuffler himself and should stick to the Olympian desk he'd been promoted to.
Clumsily he'd brushed against the rearview mirror on getting in. Now as he straightened it he saw Knightley approaching from the drive. He wound down his window expecting abuse.
But the professor had recovered his dignity. He had also used the intervening time to shave himself. ‘If you are returning to - er, to base, perhaps …'
‘You're still without transport, Mr Knightley?'
‘Quite so.' He was covering embarrassment with a sort of pompous bonhomie, a poor parody of Charles Hadfield. ‘Struck me I should have another word with your Inspector Mott. Save him a further journey out here.'
For a brief moment when Yeadings waved towards the nearer rear door he stood undecided. Perhaps the memory of travelling so with Mott brought back the sense of being in police hands. He gave a little barking laugh, walked round the car and climbed in beside Yeadings.
All buddy-like, the Superintendent thought; on equal terms, in case anyone was watching.
Yeadings left Professor Knightley to cool his heels - or work up a hot flush - on a bench overlooked by the duty sergeant, while he wandered off to find Mott. He found him in the CID office reading printouts from the Incident Room's computers.
‘Coffee?' the Boss enquired. ‘You can bring those along with you.' They settled into his office where Yeadings removed his tie, eased his collar, refilled the percolator and invited Mott to bring him up to date.
‘These are all negative,' Angus said in disgust. ‘Interviews with the assistants from the PARTY FUN shop, the Mardham newsagent, her previous neighbours back at Caversham. It seems Leila Knightley kept her nose clean and wasn't the confiding sort.
‘Her staff said she was a decent boss, fair to them about swapping duties, but she kept her distance and was strict about politeness to customers: no personal chat while any were in the shop.'
‘Discipline,' Yeadings approved. He remembered her warning glances at the blonde assistant who was nattering on about her boyfriend.
‘The only mentions of any private life came from Leila's hairdresser, who must practise the same technique my barber tries on. But those referred to purely family occasions.'
‘Which were?'
‘In her last three weeks she'd had a hairdo for a Saturday outing with her husband: Trooping the Colour, viewed from Carlton House Terrace. They went as guests of the Royal Society. Then a repeat shampoo and blow-dry a few days later for Ascot. Her uncle had bought a share in a racehorse.'
‘Quite a social round. This makes her sound rather more than the down-trodden housewife.'
‘Vicky - that's the hairdresser - thought Leila regarded the
Royal Society lunch as a duty. But she'd been excited about the races. Her uncle took her once to a steeplechase at Auteuil when she was a teenager, but this time it had the extra cachet of the Royal Enclosure.
‘That's all I've got. We really need some gossip from that cleaner, who's still
non compos
.'
‘Well, let's hope Z gets lucky with the boy snooper nextdoor. By the by, I've left Professor Knightley out front for you. I went to see young Chloe and he was acting surplus to requirements. He wants a word with you, but don't feel obliged to rush at him. It seems he still hasn't his own wheels. Did you get anything on his car?'
‘That's probably what he wants to talk about. Odd, this scarcity of cars in that neighbourhood. On Sunday evening Piggott was without his too.'
‘And then suddenly there's one nobody needs - running down Hetty Chadwick; though young Chloe claims the driver was out to get her.'
‘Why's that?'
Yeadings explained about the idling engine she recalled just beyond her gateway. ‘But I think she's wrong. The driver made no move while she was walking down to the cottage; then revved up as both women were coming back. Of course, it might have been that he didn't see her clearly until she was facing that way'
‘M'm.' Mott tapped his pen on the printouts in his hand, reached for his coffee and drained it. There was no doubt in his mind that the driver had been a tearaway in a stolen car. ‘I doubt it had anything to do with the murder. Let's leave it for the present. Guess I must let Knightley have his say now.'
He rose, stretched stiffly and reached the door before turning back. ‘There's one thing, Boss. I hadn't realized Charles Hadfield had only just gone to Scotland. He must have been around here recently because he took Leila to Ascot. We could have overlooked his importance. I'll see to it.'
 
 
‘Is that necessary?' Knightley said testily as Mott's DC slid a tape into the recorder.
‘This isn't an interrogation,' Mott told him blandly, ‘but we need to be sure that any item of information you offer isn't overlooked. You might, unknowingly, mention something that could give us a lead. So we date and collate everything.
‘We've only just heard, for instance, that your wife accompanied you to a Royal Society lunch recently.'
‘I was invited for the Trooping ceremony. Didn't see much of it myself. Too busy consulting with colleagues.'
‘And your wife?'
‘She —' He waved a hand airily.‘- circulated. Socialized.'
‘With whom?'
‘I have no idea, but it can have no connection with a random attack on her nearly two weeks later. You'd do better to check on local thugs and vagrants.'
‘Believe me, sir, we are doing so. But your wife's interests interest us. Did you accompany her later to Ascot?'
‘Yes, but that was Charles's outing. Horses don't really appeal to me. I'm not a compulsive gambler.' He smirked and something made Mott wonder if this was true. ‘I deal in facts, Inspector; practicalities.'
‘A scientist, yes.' Mott observed Knightley's smug acknowledgement. ‘Perhaps,' he said, ‘you could fill us in a little more about your wife. The sort of person she was. We're short of a detailed description.'
Knightley, seeming more exasperated than grieving each time her name was mentioned, took off his spectacles, held them up to the light and started to polish them rapidly on a square of chamois he took from his breast pocket. It gave him time for a shift of perspective. His reply, when he'd prepared it, was waspish.
‘The reason you haven't a good description is that she didn't
leave much impression. She was quiet; never took much of an initiative.'
‘Reclusive, then?'
Knightley bridled. ‘I wouldn't say that. As I explained, she could do the social thing, talk to people, so long as it all stayed at a mundane level. Just as well she did really, since I never could suffer fools gladly. Leila did. She even seemed to like them, no matter how boring.'
‘Not being an academic like you.'
‘Quite. More of a homely little woman.'
‘Not in the American sense, surely. She appeared quite exotic on the night she was found.'
That startled him. ‘Leila? Exotic? But I - I saw her, in the mortuary.'
He meant naked except for a body sheet. Mott decided on shock tactics. ‘You were never shown the scene-of-crime photographs? I'm going to fetch you one now.' He rose, nodded to the DC and left the room.
‘I came in simply to explain about the car,' Knightley complained irritably to the young detective, who said nothing beyond a murmur into the tape before switching off. He watched coldly as the man patted a folded handkerchief across his sweating upper lip.
Mott came back with a large manila envelope from which he slid a number of glossy 8 by 10s. He made a card-player's fan of them.
‘This one, I think.' He lifted it out and pushed it across the table to Knightley, who stared in disbelief.
‘You see?'
‘That's - my wife? Macabre! What's that bird thing on her face?'
‘A carnival mask. Didn't she ever show it to you? How about the dress?'
The colour drained from Knightley's face. He looked transfixed. ‘But that's not …'
‘Not her style?'
‘Certainly not. It's - vampish.'
‘We think she was bound for a party. Or possibly had been to one earlier.'
‘This is the first I've heard of it. You might have …'
‘At the time you weren't available for us to inform, Mr Knightley. And since then you have never asked for details. Which strikes me as curious - your being incurious.'
Knightley looked dazed, as if the full truth of the killing had just come home to him. ‘I saw a paragraph in the
Times
. It simply said the body of a woman had been found in woodland near my new house. There was nothing to make me think then that it might be - anyone I knew. It was Charles Hadfield who broke it to me when I got home.'
‘Back from where, Mr Knightley? Don't you think it's time you came clean about that?'
Knightley's back straightened. ‘Clean? I resent your implications, Inspector. When I spoke to you earlier, I was distraught - at news of my wife's death. I hardly knew where I was. Otherwise I would have explained fully. I have no taste for obfuscation.'
Mott waited.
‘This is a delicate matter. The fact is that I have been extremely busy at the university, terminating my connections, both professional and personal. That is to say, with my colleagues. In addition I have been at some pains to deal with a rather embarrassing situation which arose from a stupid misunderstanding.'
‘This involves a woman?'
There was a brief silence. Then, ‘In a way. Yes.' An icebox voice.
Mott listened sceptically while the man ploughed through the sort of excuses that he'd heard used so often. There was one minor variation - it was a misunderstanding by the mother of a young student in whom he'd taken a purely academic interest. Then the need to placate a Fury, which necessitated staying on until the matter was satisfactorily cleared up. And he was adamant now that naming the
family would be an unpardonable breach of their right to privacy.
The DI was unimpressed. Such discretion sounded foreign to Knightley's social code. ‘When we do identify the young woman, as we certainly shall, you may regret not having been totally open. Now, about your missing car, sir.'
‘Yes, yes. That's what I came to tell you. It was sent by a colleague to Mcllroy's garage on South Road, Reading, where he has a discount account and suggested I make use of it. I shall be picking it up today. If that is all, Inspector, I really must be on my way.'
Mott left him with the DC, ostensibly to await an official stamp before initialling the tape-recording - a fictional requirement, but Knightley wasn't familiar with police procedure.
It did, however, allow Mott time to phone and prevent the car's release from Mcllroy's until SOCO could inspect it. He needed a specimen of its carpet fibre. Not that that would fix the killing on Knightley. A third party could have driven it to the wood to dump Leila's body, with or without his knowledge.
Knightley's shock at sight of his wife's party get-up had been convincing enough. He was actually more shaken than Mott had expected. Which made him a poor prime suspect. His bumbling attempt to gloss over the sexual ‘misunderstanding' showed he'd never win a Best Actor Oscar.
Mott returned to the interview room convinced that at their next meeting Knightley would be rescinding much of the garbage of the present statement. All these petty evasions just made the job harder, piling on the need to chase up false trails.
When they began to put pressure on, Knightley would need to produce a genuine alibi, if he possessed one, because no way had he spent time at the university sorting his ‘misunderstanding'. Not short of starring as the Invisibe Man.
With the professor sent on his way, albeit carless, Mott returned to his office to find a note on his desk from the lab. A second, more detailed examination of blood spots taken from the mask had produced evidence of a second type
differing from the dead woman's. Although in the same AB general group this was rhesus negative whle Leila Knightley's had been rhesus plus.
 
When Rosemary Zyczyinski looked in again at Wycombe Hospital to drop off Hetty Chadwick's things she found that although the patient was still unconscious her prognosis was more favourable. The absurdly boyish houseman hoped that she would be coming round within a matter of hours. She was, he said, an exceptionally tough old bird.
From there Z drove out to Acrefield Way and parked at the foot of Piggott's drive. After some twenty minutes the two boys appeared on foot, Duncan bowed under a bulging backpack; Patrick, less laden, kicking a crumpled lager can along the gutter. She waited while the older boy produced a latchkey on a cord from round his neck and opened up the house. It seemed that Mrs Piggott was not at home.
Patrick streaked indoors but Duncan stood in the doorway as Z approached. ‘Detective-Sergeant Zyczynski,' she announced.
‘Yes. I remember you. Ma's out, though.'
‘I'll wait then. Will she be long?'
He thought not. They went through the house, leaving all doors open, circulating the stale air, and arrived in the back garden. Patrick was already swinging crazily in a rubber tyre suspended from an ash tree.
‘Fruit juice?' Duncan offered. He brought out a tray with a full jug bobbing with ice cubes, and three plastic tumblers. Patrick flung himself ostentatiously on to the grass, performed a parachutist's roll and joined them on the terrace.
‘Nice garden,' Z commented.
A horticultural gem it wasn't, being totally child-centred and harbouring several heaps of what an adult might write off as scrap. Sheets of corrugated iron formed a stockade in one hollow, its walls bristling with aggressively outward-pointing lengths of lead piping to represent machine guns.

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