A Fatal Attachment (16 page)

“Did you see Mrs Perceval in the street when you went to the pub?”

“No—I'd spent a minute or two with the boys before I went out, asked them what they'd been doing and so on.”

“But as far as you know,” said Oddie, turning back to the boys, “she went straight back to the cottage.”

“I suppose so,” said Colin slowly. “As we said, she didn't say she was going to do anything else. I suppose she could have gone to see her sister.”

“Don't be daft,” cut in Ted. “Not with Kelly Marsh there. She said she'd walk miles to avoid bumping into her again.”

“Is there anyone else she might have visited?”

“There's her cleaner, Mrs Kegan. She was very fond of her.”

“But why would she?” asked Colin. “She'd been to the cottage yesterday. She was there when we phoned to say we were going swimming. Why do you think she called on anyone?”

“I don't. I'm just checking. She would only have had time to pop in for a few words at most.”

Colin looked at him, sharp-eyed.

“Does that mean you know what time she was killed?”

“She rang someone just before ten.” Mike Oddie decided to opt for vagueness. Boys' imaginations could make something nightmarish of that last telephone conversation. “We think it was around then that she was killed.”

“Well, whoever did it, hanging's too good for them,” said Nick Bellingham, with that heartiness the bluff Britisher always assumes when hanging or flogging is in question. “She'd been wonderful to the boys—a real saint.”

Oddie doubted it, but didn't share his doubts.

“Well, I think that's all for now,” he said, getting up and making for the door. “Though there'll probably be more questions when we've got the picture clearer in our minds. I'm sorry to have to do this,” he said turning to the boys. “I realise it must be distressing. You must have got fond of her.”

“We did,” said Ted. “It was good to have someone interested in us and what we did.”

“She certainly seems to have been fond of you,” said Oddie. “You know she intended to leave you both some money?”

The boys responded simultaneously.

“Money?” said Ted.

“Intended?” said Colin.

M
ORE
people were talking or thinking about Lydia Perceval in Bly that evening than ever talked or thought about her in life. It seemed there was only one possible subject of conversation, and conjecture ranged from the fantastical to the plain ignorant. The people of Bly were on the whole sensible people, however, and they laughed at the woman who, showing an imperfect grasp of the practicalities, suggested that Lydia had committed suicide. And they were sceptical too of the suggestion that she had been the victim of a fatwah: the reasons adduced, that she was a writer, and had written a book on Lawrence of Arabia, they found unimpressive. None of the people who knew her best doubted it was murder or that it had had one of the usual motives for murder. They talked the matter over in tones that were hushed, uncertain, but not, except in one case, grief-stricken.

Over a late-night whisky, their first of the day, Andy and Thea Hoddle mulled over things yet again, alcohol seeming to illumine more sharply the nature of their dilemma.

“I don't know why we didn't mention their being here,” said Andy, his forehead creased in self-criticism. “It's not as though we talked it over and came to a rational decision.”

“We can say they never asked us,” said Thea.

“We can say that. I don't think they'll buy it. After all the subject of the boys—our boys—came up, and we just said that Maurice worked for Midlands Television. It would have been natural. . . .”

“Yes . . .” Thea looked down into her glass. It was so seldom that they discussed Maurice. “I suppose it was just the thought that Lydia had been murdered, and Maurice had gone out last night.”

“Yes. He said he was going to see if there were any of his old school-friends in the pub. He didn't tell you if he'd met any?”

Thea shook her head.

“No. I suppose he did go to The Wheatsheaf?”

“Please God he did. We can hardly go and ask.”

“It may come up in conversation—there'd have been plenty of men from the village in there. . . . Eventually the police are going to be asking.”

“They're going to be asking about Kelly too.”

“I don't see that Kelly had anything to do with Lydia. The fact that they disliked each other when they met is hardly relevant, since they only met once. As far as we know she was in bed getting her beauty sleep, as she called it.”

“They're going to be asking about us too.”

Thea shook her head.

“And that's going to be just as unsatisfactory. As far as you know I was upstairs reading in bed, at least if she was killed late evening, as the village is saying. And as far as I know you were down here watching the ten o'clock news. We know each other so well we know there's no possibility of the other lying. But
they
don't.”

“The question is,” said Andy, swallowing the last of his Scotch and getting up to pour himself another, “do we go along tomorrow and say: ‘Oh, by the way, we forgot to say our son was staying with us that night'?”

“It's going to look bad,” said Thea. “It's going to look as if Maurice being here was—well—relevant. Something important.”

“It's going to look bad however it comes up,” Andy pointed out. “And it's my guess they know already they were here. You know what Bly is like. And Kelly being in the village was a five-day wonder even before the murder.”

“Maurice didn't say anything on the phone?” Thea asked.

“Just ‘Good Lord!' and later that if he'd been asked he would have said that Lydia would die gracefully at a great age and in full possession of her faculties.”

“But he said he'd come to the funeral?”

“Yes.” Andy grinned. “He also said he thought that Lydia would have agreed to dispense with Kelly's presence.”

“Well, that's true enough . . . though it makes public what they thought of each other.”

“I'm sure everyone in Bly has known that all along. Lydia was not backward in giving her opinion—and neither is Kelly, come to that. . . . It's what Maurice thought of Lydia that worries me.”

“Yes. It's not just his having gone out last night, is it? Or the fact that they
seem to have had some sort of minor quarrel when he went up there. It's that sense of . . . of bottled-up resentment I got whenever we talked of her.”

“Yes. Kelly felt it too, you know.”

“I know. She told me he always goes tense when the subject of his aunt comes up.”

“Maybe—I don't know—maybe it's a feeling that Lydia
used
them, him and Gavin. I wish it was something he was willing to discuss. He pretended on the surface to be so relaxed about her—rather cynical and seeing through her. And yet underneath I got the feeling that he . . . well, hated her.”

“Yes. Perhaps that's how he's felt since Gavin's death.”

“Perhaps it's something he feels on his own behalf.”

• • •

In the bedroom of number six, High Street, which Ted had occupied since the move North the boys were talking in hushed, urgent tones. They had heard the front door shut minutes before, as their father returned from The Wheatsheaf. He had not been able to resist being the centre of attention as one of the last to speak to the dead woman.

“You really blew it,” said Ted scornfully. “You're a right plonker!” He threw his voice into a bitter imitation of his brother. “ ‘Intended?' ”

“I don't suppose he noticed,” muttered Colin.

“Of course he noticed. He's a policeman.”

“Anyway he was bound to find out that we knew. We've talked about it at school.”

“
You
talked about it. I never cared about the money.”

“Says you!”

“I didn't! I wished we'd never heard about it. I wasn't going up there for that.”

“Oh no? Ten thousand quid, and you ‘weren't going up there for that'.” He produced his own imitation of his brother's tones. “Who is going to believe that?”

“It's the truth.”

“Well, I was, I tell you straight.”

“You did a good job sucking up to her.”

“Yes, I did.”

“She thought you were the brightest of us.”

“And she was dead right.”

“Oh yes? Then how come the moment the cop mentions the legacy you let out the fact that you knew about it?
Intended!”

Colin, his face red with rage, turned on his stomach and began maniacally punching the pillow.

“Yes—not so bright after all, are you?”

“I'm punching that stupid cow's head! I'm punching her because she never signed that bleeding will!”

• • •

Jamie Loxton sat on the sofa in Fieldhay Farm near Kedgely, his arm around his fiancée, the pair of them companionably warm and close. Mary Scully still slept most nights over her little shop, and she still hadn't named a date for marriage, but more and more they were emerging from, in cant phrase, “having a relationship,” and were becoming a pair. The living room of Fieldhay Farm was evidence of how well they went together. The rest of the old farm was cheerless and run-down, just as Jamie had taken it over, but this room, on which they had really worked, was bright and inviting: red and orange cushions, warm-coloured rugs, posters and pictures around the walls. No great expense had been incurred, and nothing done to prevent it being the living space of a working farmer, but already it felt to them like a real home. Jamie, for once in his life, felt that this was a place in which he belonged.

“I'm glad I saw Lydia once before she died,” he said. “It seems in a way to have rounded things off.”

“Yes . . . I hope the police will see it like that.”

“Well, it was a perfectly amiable meeting. I don't believe Lydia would have told anyone anything to the contrary.”

Jamie Loxton had a habit of ignoring unpalatable facts which could explain his blithe progress from disaster to disaster. His fiancée was trying to cure him of it.

“You did say she was trying to niggle you all the time,” she said.

“She was. But that's not likely to be something she'll have confided in anyone else, is it? Especially as I conspicuously refused to be niggled. I've learnt to live with my past.”

“That's because it is a past,” said Mary, the ring of confidence in her voice. She was very conscious that Jamie was potentially one of her successes. “You've come through all that. This really is a new start.”

“Yes . . . I sometimes wonder how far it was Lydia made me what I was. I'd never lost a job when I married her.”

“Blame isn't a very productive emotion.”

“Stop lecturing! Leave me some illusions! . . . But you're right, of course. You're wasted on me, you know. You should he exercising your wisdom on a wider circle.”

“I've done that. I'll settle for you . . . I'm glad we were out together last night. And I'm glad we were
seen.
The police wouldn't have been very impressed if we'd just been here together alone.”

“No . . . But I wish we knew when she was killed.”

“Well, Mrs Wetherby says it was around ten.”

“What Mrs Wetherby says isn't evidence. It isn't even usually true. You always say that with half the gossip she passes on she gets the wrong end of the stick.”

“Village postmistresses are not infallible. But the police have talked to her, so I think this is true.”

“I hope so, that's all. I don't fancy being suspected. With my sort of record the less attention I get from the police the better I like it.”

“You've no actual police record.”

“I must have had special protection from God, rather as He is said to protect drunks.”

“Anyway, you dropped me off at the shop at ten to ten. That clock on the Methodist Chapel is never wrong. There's no way you could have got to Bly by ten, not on these roads.”

“That's all very well, but there's only your word that it was ten to.”

“I wouldn't be so sure. If a car comes through Kedgely at night everyone rushes to the window to see who it is. It's that kind of place. Anyway, we came straight here from the White Rose. They'll remember when we left.”

“Why on earth should they?”

“We were the last ones in the restaurant, and you made that frightful fuss when you thought you'd lost your car keys.”

“Oh, that's right. It's incredible how you can look in a pocket for your keys, and then eventually find they're there after all.”

“It's all the other junk you've got in there as well.”

“Anyway, I felt a right noodle.”

“People do it all the time. You've got to get out of the habit of thinking of yourself as a noodle.” She put into her voice a ring of confidence that was
stronger than she actually felt. “You'll see: everything will check out. The police will see that you couldn't have done it.”

“You're so good for me.”

“We're good for each other.”

She smiled up at him, and brushed her lips tenderly against his clean-shaven cheek.

• • •

In The Wheatsheaf it was well past closing time, and the last of the regulars were nursing the last of their pints of beer. Stan Podmore, the landlord, was busying himself with a succession of closing-down tasks, obviously and noisily.

“Are you going to tell the police about last night?” Jim Scattergood shouted from the other end of the bar, more to delay going home than because he wanted an answer.

“What about last night?”

“About the argy-bargy in here.”