The Chief Inspector's Daughter (15 page)

‘And Lord knows how I'm going to get her out without a faithful Quasimodo lurking near, but no doubt our hero – hell, there's someone at the back door. It's only ten to twelve. Roz and Jonathan are coming for drinks but I didn't expect them as early as this. Oh well, don't go away Ali, I'll get back to you after they've gone.'

Alison could hear it again, word for word, with every nuance clear: the wry amusement of the asides, the serious competence of the narrative, the easy affection of the ‘Ali dear'. And it was at that point that she had switched off the recorder to put a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter, checked her watch and decided that it was time Jasmine appeared with coffee.

She had waited a few minutes longer, pondering the best source of information about the approximate weight of one of the Notre Dame bells – the Dean's office at Yarchester Cathedral? the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
at the county library? the French tourist office in London? – and had then realized how quiet Yeoman's was. Too quiet. She had hurried to the hall, called Jasmine's name, then opened the sitting-room door. At first it was gloomy because the curtains were still drawn, and that in itself surprised and alarmed her. She had pulled them back, flooding the room with April morning sunshine of the kind that is too brilliant to last the day; she had turned from the window and then she saw …

What she had seen was etched on her mind's eye, engraved as though with acid. Every detail was so appallingly vivid that she could cope with it only by trying to shut it out of her consciousness. The policewoman, Beth Knowles, had asked her for details; had suggested that she might remember more when she got over the shock. But that was naïve. Alison could remember it all, now. She doubted that she would ever forget it. Her problem was to keep it away, to keep a shutter pulled down over it.

But it kept coming back. If she left her mind unguarded even for a moment, the shutter would fly up; once again she would turn from the window to look at the room, lit up like a stage set. Something was wrong, she had known that at once, even though from where she stood she could not see the alcove that contained the wrenched-open display cabinet, or the sofa behind which—

Something had been wrong with the room. Jasmine had invited her to stay for supper on several occasions, and they had usually had the meal in the sitting-room – an omelette or a salad, with a glass of wine, eaten from trays on their knees while they listened to records or talked about every subject that came into their heads. And so Alison knew the room quite well.

Because she was a working woman, a best-selling author preoccupied with writing and proof-reading and business correspondence and accounts and fan mail, Jasmine Woods had no time to spend on rearranging her sitting-room; things were always kept in the same place. And because Alison always sat in the same armchair, close to the window from which she had turned that morning, the roomscape was almost as familiar to her as that of her own bedroom.

And there had been something wrong with Alison's bedroom. She had known it the first morning after she returned from London, sitting up in bed and looking with sad adult eyes at the relics of her childhood and adolescence that decorated the room. Each of her possessions lived in its particular place, and when she left home she had instructed her mother that nothing must be changed. But Molly had accidentally broken something while she was dusting the room ready for her daughter's return, and had not thought it worth a confession.

It was not that Alison cared greatly, when she noticed her loss, because she had already decided to send most of the things to a children's home and to redecorate her room; but she did not fail to notice. Ridiculous that among so many fubsy animals in wool and felt and fur and wood and glass she should spot the absence of one small pink china rabbit …

Something, she knew – apart from the treasures in the cabinet – was missing from its accustomed place in Jasmine Woods's sitting-room. If she thought about it, she knew that she would remember what it was. But thinking about it – about the room, about Jasmine – was precisely what she did not want to do.

Perhaps the missing object was significant; no doubt WPC Knowles would have been glad to have some information, however marginal, to pass on to the Chief Inspector. Perhaps it would help her father to find Jasmine's killer.

But what good would that do Jasmine? Alison was not interested at that moment in either justice or retribution. Nothing could bring Jasmine back or undo what had been inflicted upon her … the horror of what had been done to her … or take away the memory of that sight, the head, the limbs, the blood—

Molly, listening anxiously at the foot of the stairs, heard her daughter retching in the bathroom. She waited until she heard Alison return to her bedroom, then went upstairs with the offer of a cup of tea.

‘No, Mum! For goodness sake stop trying to force food and drink down me! I'm not convalescent, I just want to be left alone.'

Molly tried not to look hurt. ‘Would you like to go back to bed then? Another sleep would do you good.'

‘No! If I sleep I'll dream, and that's the last thing I want to do. I might go for a walk—'

‘But it's getting dark. And anyway, I don't think that would be wise, dear. A reporter from the local paper called about an hour ago, wanting to talk to you. I said you were asleep, to put him off. Your father wouldn't like you to talk to anyone outside the police about what's happened.'

‘Do you think I
want
to talk to anyone about it?'

‘Well, you'll have to talk to your father. He thinks you might be able to remember something that will help him. He rang a little while ago to ask how you were, and said he'd come to see you as soon as he could.'

‘Oh no …' Alison could imagine how it would be: her father, kind, patient, intolerably persistent, forcing her to turn again from that window at Yeoman's and look minutely at every detail of the murder scene … forcing her not only to look, but to describe … ‘No, I can't do it! I won't, he can't expect it of me! She wasn't just my employer, she was my friend—'

‘But you'll
have
to talk to him,' said Molly earnestly. ‘It's your father's job to find out as much as he can.' She frowned, her eyes soft with anxious sympathy. ‘I suppose Martin Tait could do it instead, if you'd prefer that. Would you rather talk to Martin, dear?'

Alison flung herself face down on her bed, thumping her pillow with anguished frustration that her mother understood so little of what she was going through. ‘No! Oh God, can't you get it into your head that I don't want to think about it or to talk about it to anyone? Haven't you any imagination?'

‘But Alison, it's a police matter. It's official, you must realize that.'

‘I don't care. I don't give a damn about the police. What can they do to bring Jasmine back?'

‘Ssh, dear, ssh. You rest here quietly, and later on I'll bring—'

Alison rolled over and sat up. Her eyes were feverishly bright, her fists clenched. ‘Just leave me alone,' she said in a low, angry

voice. ‘Do you hear? That's all I want, from any of you. For God's

sake leave me alone.'

‘This antique dealer we're going to see, George Hussey – isn't he one of the men you met at Jasmine Woods's party?' Quantrill asked.

‘Yes, and one that I didn't take to: overdressed and smarmy and patronizing. The type who makes such a point of being a ladies' man that you automatically suspect that he dislikes women.'

‘Oh yes? What was his attitude to Jasmine Woods?'

‘Effusive. Apparently she'd been a customer of his from way back, and he'd sold her most of her netsuke – before they started shooting up in value. He'd know exactly how much her collection was worth. He was open enough about it; told me that she'd enriched herself at his expense but that he valued her custom and friendship too much to bear any grudge … or words to that effect.'

‘Har,' said Chief Inspector Quantrill.

The country road circled a walled churchyard, and was immediately transformed into the village street. Lest there should be any doubt as to its identity, a plaque erected by the district council bore the name The Street. This was doubly superfluous, since there were no other streets at all in the village. The remainder of Thirling consisted of outlying farms and former farms, like Yeoman's.

But although it was a small village, Thirling took itself seriously. The Street was no cottage-y, flower-bowered picturesque straggle, but a double line of buildings in an interesting mixture of ages and sizes and styles and functions; a proper, business-like place, with a garage, a pub, a butcher's shop and a general shop-cum-post office interspersed among the houses. Most of the buildings fronted directly on to the pavement and were faced, if not entirely constructed, with brick or stone. One of the larger houses, Regency, in grey brick with a central bow window surmounted by a delicate ironwork veranda, was lettered discreetly ‘Antiques'.

Tait parked at the side of the road a few yards beyond the shop, and the policemen walked back to it. Dusk was gathering, and the lights were on in the display room. The antiques, seen through the window, appeared to be distinctly up-market: a few carefully chosen and presented pieces of furniture, chiefly in mahogany or rosewood. There were some smaller inlaid wooden items – portable writing desks, jewel boxes, tea caddies – and against the Wedgwood green walls stood two display cabinets containing porcelain and silver.

No one was in the lighted room, but as the men approached the door a car nosed out of the arched gateway at the side of the house. It was a big BMW with a Belgian registration, driven by a man with a cigar in his mouth. He gave a perfunctory glance left and right, snapped his headlights full on and zoomed up the street as though he had never heard of speed limits.

‘Get him?' said Quantrill; it was not speed he was concerned about.

‘Got him,' said Tait, scribbling in his pocket book. He hurried back to his car to radio a message to county headquarters, and then rejoined the Chief Inspector. There was a discreet ‘Closed' notice on the main door leading to the display room, and so they walked through the gateway to the side door. A slim young man with a bush of curly hair and tinted metal-framed glasses stood in the doorway, pulling a short leather jacket over his thin black sweater.

‘We
have
just closed,' he said, in tones that suggested that it might be no trouble at all to re-open. He looked the policemen over with interest.

‘We're not customers,' said Quantrill.

‘Pity. Personal for Mr Hussey, then?' He smiled at Tait, opened the door a little wider and called, ‘George – couple of fellas to see you.'

‘Coming,' said a plummy voice from inside the house. George Hussey's well-tailored paunch sailed towards them down the passage with a following breeze of aftershave. ‘Good-night, then, Christopher. Thank you for staying on while I was busy.'

‘No trouble. Any time, George, you know that. ' Bye.' The young man, Christopher, smiled again at Tait. ‘You must come earlier another day, and I'll give you a conducted tour.'

‘It wouldn't be worth your while,' said Tait equably.

Christopher laughed, swung himself into a small open car that stood in the cobbled courtyard, and waved at the three men as he began to roll past them.

‘See you tomorrow,' Hussey called.

‘Looking forward to it.' Christopher's car disappeared through the arch into the street.

‘My assistant,' Hussey explained. ‘He did tell you that we're closed?'

‘We're not customers,' Quantrill repeated with brisk distaste. He had been a policeman in the days when homosexual relationships, even between consenting adults in private, were illegal. He had no wish for the reintroduction of that particular law – in his experience it had been a blackmailers'charter – but he was too old a copper to shed his prejudices easily and he was confident that he knew a couple of queers when he saw them. He introduced himself and his sergeant. ‘May we come in?'

Hussey backed away from the policemen, his small mouth opening with evident alarm. His dark-rimmed glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose, but he adjusted them quickly. ‘Well … yes, come in, but I can assure you—'

He retreated reluctantly down the passage, which led to a semi-circular inner hall. A delicate staircase with no visible means of support curved up against one wall. From a niche at the foot of the stairs, a plaster bust lettered
Homer
stared blindly towards a bust in another niche, an equally sightless Cicero. The hall was furnished with an early nineteenth-century Grecian sofa; Hussey motioned half-heartedly towards it, but Quantrill preferred to stand.

‘We're interested in netsuke, Mr Hussey. Netsuke and Chinese jade.'

The antique dealer smoothed back his already smooth hair. He was standing directly under a wall light which gave his dark hair an oddly matt appearance; dyed, Quantrill decided with pitying contempt.

‘Netsuke …' repeated Hussey uncertainly. ‘Well, I think I have a few I can show you, but they're rather poor specimens, I'm afraid. One doesn't often come upon good netsuke now, more's the pity. And I haven't any jade at all.'

‘Has anyone tried to sell you any netsuke or jade today?' Quantrill asked.

‘Today? No … why should they?'

‘Haven't you heard about Jasmine Woods?' said Tait.

Hussey's head jerked round. ‘Jasmine? Of course, the village has buzzed with the news. I believe that one of your policemen was making enquiries earlier today, but it was Christopher who saw him. I was out. Yes, poor Jasmine – a terrible tragedy.' He stared at Tait through his thick lenses. ‘Aren't you a friend of hers? Didn't I see you at her last party?'