The House of Women (3 page)

5

Janet stared.
‘I
am
honoured!’ Head swathed in a bluey-green towel, body in a matching bathrobe, she smelled, Dewi thought, of mountain streams and sun-warmed heathers.

He hovered on the doorstep.
‘I’ve been to Glamorgan Place.’

‘
Then you’d better come in.’ She walked towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve just made a pot of tea.’

He followed, peering through open doorways.
‘You’ve made the place very nice.’

She filled two mugs, then sat at the kitchen table.
‘Not a bit like the manse, is it? No velvet drapes, no velvet sofas, no litter of ornaments, no knick-knacks on every surface.’

‘
And no parents,’ Dewi added, looking around the bright room.

‘
Quite.’ She lit a cigarette, and watched him through the smoke. ‘Did you want to tell me something about Edward Jones? I was on my way to bed.’

‘
A stroll down the pier would do you far more good. It’s a gorgeous evening, there’s sure to be a little breeze off the sea, and you’re beginning to look like a plant that’s been shut in a cupboard.’

‘
I’m tired.’ She clasped the mug, and smiled gently. ‘So say your piece, then I can get some sleep.’

‘
Phoebe Harris thinks it was foul play.’

‘
I told you that this afternoon.’

‘
But you didn’t take her seriously, did you?’

‘
Because there was no reason why I should. Sick old man drops dead. It happens every day.’

‘
He was fifty seven. That’s not exactly old.’ Dewi stirred his tea, then dropped the spoon on the table. ‘And according to Phoebe, he was much sicker in the head than he was in the body.’

‘
Then maybe he committed suicide.’

‘
She says not.’

‘
She’s not the fount of all wisdom,’ Janet said irritably. ‘She’s overweight, overwrought and over-imaginative!’

‘
She could still be right.’

6

The street where McKenna had made his home since the collapse of his marriage, in a rented three-storey house, more resembled a slum, Dewi realized, each passing week. A nasty smell hung in the air, from torn plastic bags spilling rubbish in the gutters, smears of dog dirt on the pavement, and the patches of dark green mould daubed on the once white walls of the terrace opposite, where purple loosestrife and dusty weeds sprouted from fissures in the chimney stacks. At the end of the street, rusting tyreless wheels squashing the weeds which burgeoned between cracks in the pavement, two derelict cars had been dumped outside the empty house from where, last Christmas Eve, the police had evicted a group of squatters.

McKenna opened the front door, bright yellow rubber gloves on his hands.
‘What a stroke of luck!’

‘
What is, sir?’

‘
You are. I could do with another pair of hands.’

‘
For what, sir?’

Shunted down the stairs and into the basement kitchen, Dewi found himself holding the gloves and a sponge, a bucket of steaming sudsy water at his feet.

‘It’s that stain by the cooker,’ McKenna said. ‘It won’t come out, even though I cleaned underneath the carpet. It comes back like Rizzio’s blood in Holyrood House.’

‘
Serves you right for putting a carpet in the kitchen, if you don’t mind my saying, sir.’ On hands and knees, Dewi began to scrub.

‘
It’s kitchen carpet. It’s supposed to repel stains.’ McKenna watched. ‘And I put it down because slate floors get ice-cold in winter.’

‘
So what did you spill?’ Sweat began to glisten on the younger man’s face.

‘
Bolognese sauce.’

Dewi sat back on his haunches and brushed hair from his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘You’re probably stuck with it, then. Tomato stains worse than blood.’

‘
Fancy a drink?’ McKenna asked.

‘
I’ve just had a cup of tea at Janet’s flat, but something cold would be nice.’ Wringing out the sponge, he brushed away the froth of suds, and surveyed the damp patch. ‘It’s not as bad as it was, but that’s not to say it’s gone for good.’ He stood up. ‘Who’s Rizzio?’

‘
Mary Queen of Scots’ secretary, and allegedly her lover. Some of her nobles had him stabbed to death one supper-time.’ He filled two tumblers from a large bottle of cider, and sat at the kitchen table.

Sitting in the other chair, Dewi said:
‘This could be my last visit, sir, because you can’t drink with the lower orders when you’re promoted. You’ll have to do your mixing elsewhere, like the golf club, or even the Lodge.’

‘
If
. Not
when
.
’

‘
It’s a foregone conclusion, sir. Inspector Tuttle said so before he went on leave yesterday.’

‘
And he said the same to me when I went to relieve him of his cat-sitting duties, but we’ll see what Monday brings, shall we?’ He smiled. ‘Mind you, Eifion Roberts said the chief constable was being extraordinarily nice to me today.’

Pushing an ashtray within McKenna
’s reach, Dewi said: ‘Shouldn’t you think about moving house, then? This street’s really horrible.’

‘
If I wait a bit longer, it might get gentrified.’

‘
Who by? The locals haven’t got that kind of money, and all the English want to be on Anglesey. What happened to the old folk across the road?’

‘
One’s gone to see out her days in a rest home, and the other two were carried out feet first in early April.’

‘
A lot of people die in the spring, don’t they?’ Dewi asked. ‘Maybe they have to see the world turning again before they can leave it behind.’ He drank half the cider without stopping. ‘Then again, people die all the time. Janet was called out to a sudden death this afternoon, at one of those big detached houses in Glamorgan Place, and I’ve been back this evening.’

‘
Why?’

‘
Just to check things are sorted until the autopsy result comes through. The doctor couldn’t certify cause of death, but it looks like natural causes.’ Draining his glass, he added: ‘It’s a weird household. The dead man lodged with this relative called Edith Harris, and she’s got three daughters, but there’s no sign of a husband or other visible means of support.’

‘
So perhaps her lodger was filling the voids, as it were. It wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘
Oh, I don’t think so, sir. He was fifty-seven.’

McKenna grinned.
‘A year younger than Eifion Roberts, and you should have seen him leering at the girls on Llandudno beach. Still, you can’t blame him, I suppose. They don’t leave much to the imagination these days.’

Dewi flushed slightly.
‘One of Mrs Harris’s girls is quite fetching. The youngest is so ugly I felt sorry for her. How they came out of the same pod is beyond me.’

‘
What about the third?’

‘
I didn’t see her. She lives in Llanberis.’

‘
And the mother?’

‘
Neurotic, irritating, and prone to asking questions you can’t answer.’

‘
She was probably in shock. It takes people different ways.’

‘
She struck me as being near hysterical most of the time.’ He uncapped the cider bottle and refilled his glass. ‘And Phoebe, the ugly sister, said her Uncle Ned was supposed to be crazy, but she also reckons he was bumped off, so maybe they’re all crazy.’

‘
Why should she think he was murdered?’

‘
I had a chat with Mrs Harris after forensics went and things had quietened down a bit, and she says Phoebe’s probably in denial. Ned Jones moved to Glamorgan Place before she was born, and they were very close.’

‘
Ned Jones?’ McKenna frowned. ‘Where did he come from?’

‘
A village called Penglogfa, not far from Bala. The family had a farm and his sisters still live there.’ Quaffing cider, Dewi went on. ‘Ned came years ago to lecture at the university, but they retired him because he was forever ill. His room’s stacked from floor to ceiling with old books and papers, but nobody seems to know if he was doing anything constructive with them. Mrs Harris kept saying: “It’s such a shame when that sort of thing happens, isn’t it? Such a terrible waste of his talent, wasn’t it?”, which is what I meant about the questions, because I hadn’t a clue what she meant.’ As McKenna rose to go to the parlour, he added: ‘Phoebe says the farm’s called Llys Ifor.’

‘
I know.’ Rummaging through the books on the shelves in the chimney alcove, McKenna found what he wanted, then handed it to Dewi, open at a page of photographs. ‘See anyone you know?’

Dewi stared with undisguised amazement.
‘It’s you, isn’t it, sir?’

‘
Many moons ago.’ Retrieving the book, McKenna pointed to another face, hollow-eyed and melancholy. ‘And that’s Ned Jones, when he won the essay prize at the National Eisteddfod.’

Dewi scanned the text.
‘And you got second prize. Why did you never tell anyone, sir? You could’ve been quite famous.’

‘
Because I would have preferred to be
very
famous,’ McKenna confessed. ‘I felt like strangling him. He came from nowhere and snatched the glory right out of my hands.’ Seated on his old chesterfield, he cradled the Eisteddfod yearbook on his lap. ‘That year’s essay theme was “Identity in Crisis”, so I wrote about my family’s ruptured identity and cultural dislocation, and how I’d renegotiated myself out of an Irish past to a Welsh present.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I suppose it was a bit precious, but everyone expected me to win.’

Dewi sat beside him.
‘And what was Ned’s contribution about?’

‘
Guilt and atonement and visitation by the sins of the fathers.’ McKenna lit the cigarette. ‘His family owned other properties besides Llys Ifor, and huge tracts of land and a slate quarry, and because all that wealth came from the proceeds of slave-trading, he said he owed his existence to the black people his ancestors exploited.’ He paused, drawing on the cigarette. ‘He’d trawled the family records for biographies of some of the slaves, and described what he called their atomized private identities, how and where they died, what happened to their children, and so on.’

‘
Heavy stuff,’ Dewi observed. ‘Did it deserve the prize?’

McKenna nodded.
‘I wanted to weep with envy.’

‘
Well, it’s all swings and roundabouts in the end, sir. You’re going from strength to strength, while the one-time Bard of Bala’s in a drawer in the morgue.’

‘
Having died a bare stick, as the Chinese say.’

‘
That’s another way of saying he had no offspring, is it?’

‘
And no wife.’

‘
That we know about.’

McKenna closed the book and put it on the floor.
‘I think I might go to his funeral, and pay my last respects.’

‘
Mrs Harris was wittering about that, as well. She asked if we’d let Ned’s sisters know when the body can be released.’

‘
She can tell them herself. They’re her relatives.’

‘
I got the impression they’re not on good terms.’

‘
Then she can ask her solicitor, or bank manager, or whatever. It’s not our job.’ Noting the disappointment on Dewi’s face, McKenna said: ‘And you’re not doing favours on the quiet in your time off. You weren’t by any chance planning to ask the comely daughter to guide you through the wilds of Meirionydd to Penglogfa, were you?’

Dewi blushed from his feet to the roots of his hair.

McKenna sighed. ‘You should find yourself a steady girl. She’d neutralize some of that testosterone galloping through your veins.’

The blush deepened.

‘There are times when it interferes with your judgement,’ McKenna went on. ‘You get side-tracked too easily, waylaid by a pretty smile or a buxom figure.’

‘
I’m not promiscuous, sir.’

‘
I know you’re not.’

‘
But I can’t find anyone who doesn’t disappoint me, sooner or later.’ He chewed his thumbnail, then added: ‘And I’ve probably disappointed a few, as well.’

‘
It’s a matter of trial and error, but at some point, you might have to settle for a compromise. Most of us do.’

Cheeks still pink, Dewi summoned a smile.
‘Maybe I’ll be another bare stick.’

‘
I hope not. That would be rather a waste.’

‘
There’s plenty about. You’ve only got to look at the lonely hearts columns in the papers. There’s even one in
The
Times
.’ He grinned. ‘D’you think Janet reads it?’

‘
I don’t know what she does. Why did you go to her flat? Is there something going on I don’t know about?’

‘
I just called in because she didn’t seem very well earlier. In fact, she’s been pretty miserable since she came back from Italy.’

‘
So perhaps she’s pining for the handsome Latin she dallied with for a while on the shores of the Mediterranean.’

‘
D’you think so?’ Dewi pulled a face. ‘I wouldn’t’ve thought a holiday fling with some dago was quite her scene.’