A Fatal Attachment (12 page)

“I think so. And if it was dinner they left early, Or perhaps they murdered her, faked a forced entry, then took their leave.”

“Unlikely, since their finger-prints would be everywhere,” said Charlie. “You could hardly keep your gloves on all evening. And that faked forced entry—”

“Yes?”

“Doesn't seem to have gone to a lot of trouble over it, does he?”

“No,” agreed Oddie, “There's a ridge of earth on the top of the sill, as if he'd just raised a boot from inside the house and wiped it down.”

“Proving it wasn't an arthritic pensioner anyway.”

“Was he pushed for time? Was he half-hearted about it because he thought there was no way this could be brought back to him? Or is there some other reason why he hardly bothered to make it convincing?”

“In other respects he was so careful: he put back the phone, turned the milk off on the hot-plate.”

“We don't
know
he did either of those things,” Oddie pointed out, congenitally cautious. “She may herself have forgotten to turn the milk on. It would be a sensible precaution in the murderer to turn it off, if he didn't want the body found too soon: there could have been a minor fire. And the idea that she was on the phone is just an assumption.”

As if on cue the phone rang. Mike Oddie raised his eyebrows at Charlie and picked it up.

“Yes?”

There was a moment's silence at the other end.

“Who is that?” an uncertain female voice asked.

“This is the police.”

“Oh, don't say it's true!” The woman's voice cracked with anguish. “She's not dead, is she?”

Oddie registered the concern bordering on hysteria. So this woman whom they had been dissecting as cool, self-contained, was capable of inspiring affection, was she?

“Would you mind telling me who I'm talking to?”

“Dorothy Eccles. I had lunch with her only yesterday!”

“With?—”

“With Lydia. Lydia Perceval. Someone just came on duty here and said they'd
heard on the car radio that she was dead, and foul play was suspected. It was a bit fuzzy and they weren't quite sure it was Lydia. Is it true?”

“I'm afraid Mrs Perceval is dead. The circumstances point to murder.”

Self-stranglings and accidental stranglings being rare, he said to himself.

“Oh God! Poor Lydia. Was it some intruder?”

“Things are in their early stages as yet. We've come to no conclusions. You say you had lunch with Mrs—was it Mrs?”

“She'd been married, but she reverted to her maiden name. She called herself Mrs Perceval, if pressed.”

“You had lunch with Mrs Perceval yesterday?”

“Yes. So happy she was.”

“You are?—”

“A librarian. At the British Museum at Boston Spa. We mostly do inter-library loans and international ones, but there is a small readers' area which was very convenient for Lydia. She used to come over at least once a month.”

“I see. You say she was happy.”

“Yes. Happy in her personal life. There were two boys she had become interested in.”

Oddie's antennae twitched.

“Relations?”

“Oh no, I don't think so. No, she'd just got to know them. Local boys—from the village, I think.”

“You don't remember their names?”

“Oh dear . . . Colin was one. The other was something very ordinary. Lydia was greatly taken with them. Talked about leaving them something in her will.”

“Really?”

“Yes, she was. She intended calling in on her solicitor in Halifax on the way home. I gathered it was all arranged.”

“Her solicitor—you don't remember his name?”

“I don't think she told me. I do remember she mentioned Halifax.”

Mike Oddie mouthed “solicitor” at Charlie, and pointed towards the filing cabinet. They had already noted that various sorts of correspondence were stored there under a variety of business-like headings.

“You don't know anything about her relatives?”

“She had a sister in the village—a sister and a brother-in-law.”

“Really? Do you know their names?”

“Thea is the sister. . . . I don't remember the surname, but something rather
comic-sounding. . . . The brother-in-law-is, well, unsatisfactory. Unemployed, I think, and he has a drink problem.”

Why don't you just say he drinks too much, Mike wondered?

“You can't remember anything else?”

“She'd had a visit from her nephew over the weekend. Thea's son. He was one of the boys who . . .” She seemed to catch herself up. “Well, Lydia was always very fond of her two nephews. The other one is dead, and she said Maurice was being dragged down by a very common wife. Lydia had very high standards—for herself, but also for others.”

Mike Oddie raised his eyebrows. He could guess what having high standards for others meant: snobbishness and censoriousness.

“I see,” he said neutrally. “There's nothing else you can remember?”

“No.” The voice broke, as if the fact of the murder suddenly caught up with her again. “It's so dreadful . . . I'd like to give all the help I can. . . . We didn't as a rule talk about personal things, you know. Not family or things like that. I knew Lydia as a writer. I used to help her in her research—just in my humble way, of course. I was never a research assistant or anything grand like that. But what we usually talked about was whatever subject she had on the stocks at that moment.”

“Charles the tenth.”

“Charles the tenth, at this particular time. Oh dear, that's a book that never will be finished. And it was going so well.”

“Well, you've been very helpful, Mrs—”

“Miss.”

“Miss Eccles. I may need to talk to you again, and if I do I can get in touch with you at the library, I suppose?”

“Yes . . . Such a loss. It's like a light going out.”

Mike Oddie heard her gulp and put the phone down. He shook his head and turned to Charlie, who was brandishing a file.

“Oliver Marwick, of Marwick, Chester and Jones. It's Halifax 271463.”

Mike was already dialling as he spoke.

“Good morning, this is the police. I need to speak to Oliver Marwick urgently . . . Mr Marwick? West Yorkshire CID here. I believe you had a visit yesterday from Mrs Lydia Perceval.”

“No, as a matter of fact she didn't make it.” The voice at the other end of the line was cool and lawyerly. Clearly he had not been listening to his radio.

“Do you know why not?”

“She failed to turn up. She got caught up in her research. It's the only thing that can make Lydia unreliable. But why?—”

“How do you know she got caught up in her research?”

“Because she rang me last night. Look, before I answer any more questions, why are you asking me about this?”

“Mrs Perceval was found dead this morning.”

“Dead!”

Mike felt he was in a play, and effortlessly hauled up the clichés.

“Foul play is definitely suspected. What time did she ring you last night, Mr Marwick?”

“Just before the news. A minute or two before ten. I know because I was rather—oh, my God!”

“What?”

“She . . . rang off, you see. The line went dead. And I was rather glad, because there was something I wanted to hear about on the news—compensation for haemophiliacs given blood infected with AIDS. I thought she might ring back, but she didn't, and I saw the item. I thought . . . well, I just thought someone had come in.”

“I see. Was that likely? Would someone just come in like that to the cottage?”

“Well, I imagine they might. We aren't—weren't personally friendly, but I know she has a sister living in Bly. Thea Hoddle, her name is. I just thought someone like that had dropped in.”

“Mr Marwick, how exactly did the phone call end?”

“I'm trying to remember. . . . She seemed to be about to make a new appointment. She said something like ‘When can we meet?' ”

“Yes?”

“Then . . . then there was a pause . . . I'm trying to remember. She said ‘What's that?' as if she was surprised—perhaps by a noise. Then she said ‘But'.”

“ ‘But'? As if she was surprised by something she saw or heard?”

“Yes. Surprised, or perhaps uncertain. Bewildered, maybe. The she said something like ‘Rob'.”

“ ‘Rob'?”

“Yes. With a sort of question in her voice. The voice going upwards, uncertainly. I took it to be a person, but perhaps it was ‘robbers' or something like that.”

“Yes. Anything more?”

“No. That's when the line went dead.”

And Lydia Perceval too, not long afterwards, thought Mike Oddie grimly.

W
HEN
she was told by a fresh-faced constable of the death of her sister Thea Hoddle swayed, and had to steady herself by clutching at the door jamb. “Are you all right?” the constable asked, not used to conveying such messages, and almost as uncertain and upset as Thea herself. She nodded.

“There'll be a detective along later,” said the young man, retreating. “I'd make myself a cup of tea if I were you.”

It was kindly-meant advice, and Thea took it, going through the motions in a daze. Pictures of the mature Lydia warred in her mind with pictures of Lydia with her and Andy, on holiday in France, sitting outside a gay little café in Rheims or toiling up Mont St Michel. Emotions were so difficult to disentangle, it was so impossible to say what she felt about her sister.

No, it wasn't. She hated her.

But that was now, and there had been another time, and another Lydia.

Or had that been an illusion, and had there been slumbering inside that gay, sophisticated outside a malignant little beast that was planning to one day steal from her what she valued most?

She drank her tea, standing against the kitchen sink, not wanting to sit in case she broke down. Then she went to the phone and rang the school. Her voice quavering, she told the school secretary what had happened and asked that a message be given to Andy. Then she went into the living room and waited.

She had never wanted more the comforting presence of her husband. But what were they going to say to each other?

• • •

Before they left Hilltop Cottage Mike Oddie contacted the Halifax police and spoke to Inspector Harkness, the policeman who had been on the scene when they arrived from Leeds, and who was organising the back-up.

“I'll need someone to guard the cottage,” Oddie said.

“I'll have someone there in ten minutes.”

“I gather there's a sister and a brother-in-law in the village.”

“That's right. Thea and Andy Hoddle their names are. Turn right it the bottom of the hill and it's six houses past The Wheatsheaf. Number sixteen.”

“I gather they've been told, then. How did they take it?”

“She. One of our constables spoke to the sister. He said she was very shocked, but he also said he felt there wasn't much grief. He's just a lad and he got away as soon as possible, but the husband's home now, and he spoke to us in the village. He knows how she was killed—they both must by now. With the husband we sensed a shock at the nastiness of it, the violence, but again we felt that there was no great grief. But reactions to news like that can be very deceptive, as I'm sure you know.”

“Certainly. Well, we'll get on down there as soon as your man comes.”

They left on guard at the cottage the fresh-faced constable who had broken the news to Thea. He looked as if he had just left school, and made Charlie feel very experienced. In the village there was a low-key police operation: two or three men going from house to house asking if anything suspicious had been noticed the night before, or in the days leading up to it. There were no police cars outside number sixteen, but there was a middle-aged woman standing in the bay window looking out. Mike and Charlie got out of the car and looked at the solid, roomy semi-detached with the token gestures towards Tudorality on the upstairs floor.

“Not really in the same class as the cottage,” murmured Oddie as they pushed open the gate.

“It'd do me,” said Charlie.

The door was opened without their knocking, and they introduced themselves to a substantial-looking woman in clothes that had seen better days. Her eyes were red from weeping.

“The death has suddenly hit me,” she said, ushering them through. “The manner of it. Andy told me, and it suddenly hit me. So messy and horrible. Lydia would have hated that. She was such a cool, orderly person. This is Andy, my husband.”

They were in a living room at the back of the house—a light, airy room with comfortable old furniture. Andy Hoddle was an inch or two shorter than
his wife, with a bulky frame and veined cheeks and nose. Mike Oddie was rather surprised to find himself impressed by him, by both of them in fact.

“I'm glad to find you both together,” he said.

“Thea phoned the school,” Andy Hoddle explained. “Naturally the headmaster agreed I should come home at once.”

“You're a schoolmaster?”

Mike kicked himself that he had failed to keep a note of surprise out of his voice. He'd known alcoholic schoolteachers, and it was perhaps surprising that there weren't more. The tiniest of smiles crossed Andy Hoddle's mouth, but it was a bitter one.

“Yes. A recent recruit.”

They sat down in capacious armchairs and Charlie got out his notebook.

“Had you seen Mrs Perceval recently?” Mike began.

Andy nodded.

“I took her up a ream of typing paper—when would that be, Thea?—the Saturday before last, I think.”

“And you?” Mike Oddie asked, turning to Thea.

“Oh dear—I think it must be nearly a month ago. Maybe more. We met in the village post office. We talked a lot on the phone, of course, but when Lydia was working on a book—writing it, I mean, rather than just researching it—we didn't see much of her. She knew we were there if she needed anything.”