A Fatal Attachment (17 page)

“There wasn't any argy-bargy in here.”

“Little confrontation—whatever you like to call it. 'Course, I couldn't mention it while that Bellingham man was here. . . .”

Stan Podmore came over and pointed a fat finger at his customer.

“Look here, Jim Scattergood, there wasn't any argy-bargy and there wasn't any confrontation. Bellingham was sounding off about how Mrs Perceval had taken his boys under her wing, and what a good thing it was, and how she'd just been down to talk things over with him, and young Hoddle went over and said something to him. That was all that happened. If you call that an argument you've got an over-vivid imagination.”

“You didn't hear what Hoddle said?”

“No, I didn't. Hardly anything. Bellingham was at the far end of the bar, and I was serving down this end.”

“He got pretty angry, did Bellingham.”

“That's as maybe.”

“Went red, like he was going to choke.”

“He often does. It's blood pressure.”

“Like I said, it's something you should tell the police.”

Stan Podmore shook his head contemptuously.

“What you don't realize, Jim, is that the police and publicans are natural
enemies. You can suck up to them any amount of times, but come the crunch they're your enemies still. I'll tell them if they ask, and that's all I'll do. Nick Bellingham may be a foreigner, but he drinks double Scotches when he's in funds. Show me a policeman as does that and happen I'll go volunteering information to him. Not before.”

• • •

When she had fed her children, home from school, fielded their questions about the murder, told them of the visit of the two policemen, adjudicated in their quarrels, supervised their television watching, boiled milk for their goodnight drinks and got them off to bed, Molly Kegan went around the house doing all the necessary late-night things. Then she took herself off to her lonely bedroom, where she wept herself to sleep, grieving for the only person in her life with wit and strength of purpose, the only woman she had known who had shown her there was something better than the life of drudgery and limited horizons that was what she had known since her marriage. In this house Lydia was mourned.

• • •

And thousands of miles away, at a sparsely attended press conference, the topic of Lydia Perceval's death surfaced too. Robert Loxton presided, with practised good-humour. His expedition had tested U.S. Army survival kit and rations during a four months period, winter to summer, on Mount McKinley. Interest had been high when he gave a press conference in Anchorage, but then there isn't a great deal of interest going on in Alaska. Here the reporters were bored, and were only interested in getting quotable quotes about the survival rations, which had come in for a great deal of criticism from American servicemen during the Gulf War.

“The curry was diabolical,” said Loxton obligingly. “Like stewed Indian socks. On the other hand the goulash was palatable, and we found the dehydrated orange juice a real life-saver.”

“You look pretty fit,” drawled one reporter.

“Of course I'm fit. I've been doing this sort of expedition all my life. And I hope to go on doing them for a while yet.”

The next question came out of the blue.

“Lydia Perceval was your aunt, wasn't she?” asked a young reporter.

Robert Loxton's brow creased.

“Lydia Perceval is my cousin. . . . What do you mean
was
?”

“Came through on the line a few hours ago. She's dead. Been murdered.”

“Murdered?
 . . . You're not serious?”

Several men in the Defense Department room nodded.

“Found murdered in Yorkshire, England,” said one.

“The obits will be in tomorrow's papers,” put in another. “Her books were very well thought of in this country.”

Robert Loxton's face crumpled, and he looked down at the table for a few moments.

“Sorry,” he said, looking up again. “It's a bit of a shock. Lydia was a friend as well as a relation. If there are no more questions. . . .”

T
HE
signpost that said Fieldhay Farm was very old, its wood cracked, but someone had painted over the letters so that they were easily legible. Charlie swung the car into the lane, and they bumped and swayed their way along to the farmhouse. It was a smallish, rickety structure that did not look as if it had ever housed prosperity. They got out and stretched their legs, Charlie feeling like an alien intruder. Mike Oddie went up to the door and banged with the hefty iron knocker. Inside all was silence. They peered through the window of the sitting room.

“Cheerier inside than out,” commented Mike.

They went round to the back of the farm. Hens scratching around in a coop, grunts from a sty some way away. It was a dirty, disorderly, healthy scene, though Charlie Peace thought the smell was something he would not care to get used to.

“Your eyes must be better than mine,” said Mike. “Can you see him anywhere?”

Charlie jumped on an oil drum near the back door of the farm, and scanned the landscape. Rolling green hills in a summer haze. The nearest village, he estimated, must be all of five miles away. Eerie. He concentrated on nearer at hand.

“There's a moving speck on a field over there,” he said, pointing to his left. “If that's still Fieldhay Farm that will probably be our man. But it's ten minutes' walk away.”

“Then we walk,” said Mike, setting out along a well-defined path. “Don't you Londoners ever walk?”

Charlie sighed, jumped off the drum, and followed him.

“ 'Course we do. From the pub to the Underground. And often just changing
lines involves a hell of a hike. If it wasn't for the buskers we'd go mad with boredom.”

When they had got a fair way Mike Oddie registered the speck working in the field, then registered that the speck had straightened and was watching their approach.

“Well, at least he isn't going and lying on the sacrificial slab like Tess of the D'Urbervilles,” he said. Charlie raised his eyebrows.

“What on earth put Tess of the D'Urbervilles into your head, sir?”

“Oh, I don't know: farms, fields, backbreaking work.”

“Yeah, I saw the film. Tess didn't have a beard though . . . Oh! Neither does this bloke.”

The man coming towards them was indeed clean-shaven.

“But it seems this is our man,” said Mike. “And apparently he knows who we are.”

He was wearing an old khaki shirt, decidedly dirty trousers and boots. His body was sliding into plumpness, and his hairline was receding, but it was an open, attractive face. He was fairly tall, but would he seem to a youngster to be fit, Charlie wondered? Perhaps to Jason Wetherby, he concluded. And he suspected that hard, physical work was getting him into the sort of shape he would not have been in a year or two back. He had been harvesting carrots, and Charlie could see them lying in cases. Jamie Loxton could hardly be blamed for the carrots, which must have been sown by someone else, but still Charlie registered that, like most organic produce he had ever seen, they looked knobbly, meagre and dirty. He didn't doubt that they were chock-a-block full of all sorts of things that gave an added zing to life, but aesthetically he preferred the supermarket variety. The man was now upon them, smiling, hand outstretched.

“I'm Jamie Loxton, brother of the more famous Robert,” he said with a grin. “You must be the policemen.”

“I'm Detective Superintendent Oddie. This is Detective Constable Peace. You were expecting us?”

He nodded, the frank smile still on his face.

“Of course. Someone will have told you that Lydia's ex was back in the area. I should think you already know that I went to see her a couple of weeks ago. Now”—he looked around him, sizing things up—“how shall we organise this? Do we need to go back to the house?”

“Not at all,” said Mike. “We don't want to keep you from your work longer than necessary.”

“Right.” Jamie Loxton upended a case and took it over towards the walled border of the field. “I'm quite happy with this, if you two can take the wall.”

It was Charlie Peace's first experience of dry-stone walling as a perch. It was cold, hard, but a solid base. He took out his notebook as Mike Oddie began his questioning.

“To get the obvious point out of the way first: what were you doing on Monday night?”

“Right. Mary and I discussed that—”

“You did?”

“Naturally we did. I may be ‘unsatisfactory,' you know, but you mustn't think I'm completely stupid. My ex-wife is killed shortly after I return to the district—of course you're going to be interested in me, and what I was doing when she was killed.”

“Fair enough. So what were you doing?”

“From about a quarter to eight until about half past nine we were in the White Rose restaurant at Luddenden.”

“That's one of a chain, isn't it—attached to the Micklethwaite brewery pubs?”

“That's right. I drove from there to Kedgely, and dropped Mary off outside her post office shop at ten to ten—she saw it by the chapel clock, which is very reliable, she says. She thinks other people may have seen us too. They're a nosey lot in Kedgely, and there was still a bit of light.”

Mike Oddie had been doing some calculations.

“Bly is—what?—ten to fifteen minutes from here?”

“Easily fifteen in my car, and along those roads,” said Jamie Loxton. “If you're toying with the idea I could do it in under ten, try doing it yourself. I take it village gossip is correct, and Lydia was killed around ten?”

“I didn't say that. Any back-up to your account of when you left the restaurant?”

Loxton smiled.

“Mary thinks the staff may remember. We were the last to leave, and they were willing us to go. Monday night's hardly lively in a place like that. Then after we'd paid the bill I couldn't find my car keys, and I got into a great flap. Typical Loxton cock-up—but I love Muriel, my old Volksie, and I didn't want to leave her in their car park overnight. It's the sort of car young layabouts think they have a right to commandeer and crash.”

“I had a meal in a White Rose restaurant the other night,” put in Charlie.
“Army surplus steaks and soggy vegetables. But the chit when I paid had the time on it. Probably that's standard equipment throughout the chain.”

He launched at Jamie Loxton one of his ferocious smiles, but Jamie just nodded calmly.

“Good. That'll be the best confirmation.”

“And after you dropped your girlfriend off?” Mike asked.

“Drove straight here, did one or two late-night things around the farm, then went to bed. I can't imagine there will be anyone to confirm any of that.” He gestured around with his hand at the rolling landscape. “Nothing here to observe me—just the odd crow having a sleepless night.”

“Right. Well, I think that covers all we need to know about Monday night.” Mike Oddie observed his man, still sitting as relaxedly as was possible on the upturned wooden crate. “Let's get on to other things. Why did you come back to this district, sir?”

Jamie Loxton grinned.

“Easy. My girlfriend has kept the shop in Kedgely for the past year. Escapee from chronic overwork, due to government cuts in grants to local authorities. I was looking for a farm, so I looked in this area.”

“It didn't bother you, that you would be coming back to live near your ex-wife?”

“It didn't bother
me.
I went to see her, and she said it didn't bother her. I'm a Yorkshireman, and I know this part of Yorkshire well, from childhood visits. It's a perfectly natural place for me to settle.”

“And you had lived with your wife in Bly while you were married?”

“Nearby, but very briefly. We had a tiny flat in London while I had my job in the City. When I lost it her parents let us live in an equally tiny cottage they owned near Bly. While I was ‘finding my feet,' they said. It soon became obvious that Lydia did not believe I ever would find my feet. She certainly made it clear that she wasn't going to help in the search. She suggested over supper one evening that the marriage wasn't working, and I obliged her by moving out.”

“I see . . . What kind of marriage was it, sir?”

“Short.”

“You think she needed a . . . stronger personality as a husband?” Jamie grimaced.

“The received wisdom then was that she married me because she couldn't get Robert, my brother. There may be something in that. Certainly it's true that she liked decisive men, who knew what they wanted and went after it.”

Mike Oddie nodded, and looked at Charlie.

“Yes, that was rather our impression of her. And on your side, sir?”

Jamie frowned, and for the first time looked uncertain.

“You mean why did I marry her? That's a tough one . . . I suppose I sort of fell into it, like I've fallen into most things in my life. She was always so bright and funny and determined as a child—really a vibrant personality. There was a will of iron there too, but I don't know if I understood that. Perhaps I did, and thought that was what I needed. But it didn't work out like that. She didn't transfer some of her strong will to me. She just made me feel inadequate. Lydia was good at making people feel inadequate.”

“You say it was short,” Oddie said. “How long?”

“Just a few months. It's all a bit of a haze, really—from being in a clinch with her on a river-boat going up the Thames, to marrying her in a Registry Office, to being shown the door.
She
married
me
—and then unmarried herself. I don't, to be honest, remember all that much about being married to her, and I suspect Lydia would have said the same. A piece of adolescent folly.”