A Fatal Attachment (25 page)

Charlie felt stopped in his tracks.

“Well?”

“You inspire that sort of devotion in the uniformed breast of a WPC, and all you can do is sit there rabbitting on about men with beards.”

Charlie regarded him thoughtfully.

“I suppose it is better than ‘The Peace that Passeth Understanding,' which is what one of the inspectors at the Yard used to call me. . . . You don't go much on the man with the beard, do you?”

“Oh, I go on him. I'd like to know who he was, what he was doing there. But I'm not going to place him so much in the front of the picture that I lose sight of Maurice Hoddle or Colin Bellingham, or any of the others.”

Charlie Peace made a dismissive gesture.

“Colin Bellingham could never have done it. A boy of thirteen wouldn't have the strength.”

“What about if both the boys were in it, and one of them held her? . . . All right, I don't seriously think that's what happened, but I'm not ruling it out and neither should you. You're in danger of getting tunnel vision.”

“All right. Point taken. Totally open mind . . . but one last thing before we leave him.”

Oddie groaned.

“Go on.”

“We have a bearded man on the scene whom nobody in the village knows anything about. Now, you can be damned sure with that village that this means his business was up the hill, because if it had been down someone or other would have known. So we have a bearded man on the scene at about the time that Lydia Perceval was killed. That's all I'm saying.”

“And it's something I'm not denying. Let's go up and see if anything's come through from the Anchorage police. That way we can at least rule out Robert Loxton. Smile at WPC Bilton as you go by. Smile beatifically.”

“Beatifically's not in me. And Kelly Marsh has spoiled me for WPCs. Why didn't I transfer to Birmingham?”

• • •

The noble choral music drew with agonising slowness to an end. A tear fell down Dorothy Eccles's cheek. Such splendour, such vision! She had been right to choose it. It provided a fitting tribute to Lydia. If she had had an ear for music, this was the sort of sound she would have appreciated.
Noble
music.

When the clergyman, suppressing a sigh of relief, rose to speak Dorothy Eccles looked at him critically. A very nondescript little man. Not somebody Lydia would have given a second glance at.

“We are here to pay a last tribute to a writer whose work has given pleasure to millions.”

Dorothy Eccles sniffed. He could have been talking about Barbara Cartland! The point about Lydia's books was not that they gave pleasure but that they were works of scholarship. They enlarged our understanding of people and events.

She shot a quick glance to her right. That must be the nephew who had disappointed Lydia so grievously. No sign of his wife, whom Lydia said was so appalling. Altogether not many people here at all . . . .

She shifted her head a little to the left and then a little to the right, trying not to give the impression that she was counting. Really a very meagre attendance for someone of Lydia's distinction. No doubt the sister was to blame. She had never appreciated what Lydia had done for her and her boys. She was much to blame: as sister she should have made more effort to see that a respectable number paid tribute to Lydia in death.

It did not occur to her to wonder why effort should have been necessary.

• • •

“Herself the descendent of one of this country's prime ministers—and, sadly, one who was also tragically slain in his prime . . . .”

Thea Hoddle looked down into her lap and grinned. She had given the vaguely reverend gentleman this tidbit when she had spoken to him about the service, but she had always had her doubts about Lydia's claim. She had come up with it in her late teens, when she was more romantic and ancestral than historically meticulous. She thought it was more in the nature of a guess or a hope than a fact. It was, when she came to think about it, the central fact about Lydia that the clear gaze she cast on other people's characters and lives faltered when she came to her own. She imposed an order on her life, but only through fabricating legends. She was, like most people, thoroughly self-deceived. Had one of her self-deceptions led to her death?

• • •

When Mike and Charlie got to their temporary office in the Halifax police headquarters they found a report from Anchorage—a lengthy piece that showed that their contact there had done his job properly. Robert Loxton had been at Karen Paulson's flat from Friday night until late on Monday evening, when he had flown to Washington. Occasionally he had gone to collect messages from the Hilton; he had prepared for and given his press conference on Monday morning; otherwise he had been satisfying those needs which are not catered for in U.S. Army Emergency Rations. His presence in the flat was vouched for by several residents of the flat complex where Karen Paulson lived, and by the proprietors of a newsagent's and a liquor store in its vicinity, where he had bought newspapers and wine.

“Makes Anchorage sound a bit like Bly,” said Charlie. “Watched by a thousand eyes.”

The policeman who had done the investigation and the report had also faxed them the account in the
Anchorage Observer
of the news conference. It was a page-long piece with picture, and the inspector had marked the place where the date and time were mentioned. Oddie stared closely at the picture.

“That's him all right,” he said, getting his eyes close to the bearded figure sitting alone at a long table on a platform. “Quite definitely him. If you had any idea it might be his mate standing in for him you can give it up. Robert
Loxton is out—no question of that. . . . Well, I'm just nipping out for some cigarettes and chocolate, then I've got to prepare a report for the Chief Super—”

But he closed the door without a response from Charlie. Something had clicked in his mind—or rather, it was more physical than that: something in his stomach had turned over. Odd that something so physical should be the consequence of a revelation. He sat by the desk, staring at the fax sheets from Alaska.

• • •

Robert Loxton sat in the cheap and nasty little chapel hating every moment of it. This was the last funeral he was ever going to go to. Probably the last anyone would expect him to go to: apart from Jamie he had no close family and no close ties. That was how he liked it.

Lydia's editor was talking bilge about the beauty of her manuscripts, and how he never needed to change anything, “even had I dared.” Actually he remembered Lydia holding forth one evening in a restaurant about the decline in editing, and how manuscripts were sent straight to the printers with all their manifest errors and absurdities uncorrected. Like almost everything else in the modern world, according to Lydia, editing had sadly declined.

“Passionately committed to truth, eager against error . . . .”

What crap! Lydia had her illusions like the rest of us, and they had blinded her to truth. . . . But passionate—yes, once. The word suddenly released another memory of Lydia. She was with him in bed—it must have been in the Pimlico flat, some time in the late fifties—and he had just told her that for him marriage was simply not on the agenda. Her face had creased with fury, and she had turned to him and battered her fists repeatedly on his bare chest. Then she had lain back exhausted on the pillow, and after a time had said: “I expect you're right.”

Funny how things had worked out.

• • •

When Mike returned with the cigarettes and chocolate he found his constable with a smile of pure triumph on his face. He didn't remember ever seeing Charlie in that state, irony and merry cynicism being much more his line.

“We forgot,” said Charlie, turning to him, “the other man with the beard in this case.”

“The other? God protect me! A third?”

“First Jamie Loxton, who has something close to an alibi if Lydia was killed at ten. Second Robert Loxton, who has a perfectly wonderful alibi whenever she was killed . . . .”

“And?” said Mike Oddie, frowning.

“And Walter Denning.”

“Who? Never heard of him.”

“Walter Denning, the man who spent four months on Mount McKinley with Robert Loxton.”

“But why?—”

“Remember when he talked to us about the press conference in Anchorage? He said ‘We had a press conference starting at ten.' But look at that picture. Where's his partner? You'd expect him to be there, wouldn't you? But he isn't. You can see the whole table Loxton sat behind. He was on his own.”

“Does the report say anything about him?”

“He's named at the start of the report. Later someone asked what kind of person went in for these endurance feats—interesting question!—and Robert Loxton said: ‘Loners, and people interested in the human body and what it can take.' Then someone commented that for a loner he gave a pretty good press conference, and he replied that it was a skill he'd learnt over the years. ‘My partner doesn't like this sort of thing at all,' he said.”

“ ‘My partner.' Sounds as if they'd done several of these expeditions together.”

“That's what I thought.”

“Still, you haven't got a motive worth a bean.”

Charlie spread out his hands eloquently.

“They sit there, bivouacked in the snow and ice, and they talk about what they're going to do next, how they're going to raise the money for it. Robert Loxton is getting older, he's been at this sort of thing quite a while. Even when Maurice Hoddle was growing up he said that some of Loxton's expeditions didn't amount to a great deal. The present one didn't. And they sit there, these two schoolboys who somehow never grew up, and they plan one last, grand expedition. And Robert Loxton says: ‘I'm my cousin Lydia's heir. If only she would die. . . .' ”

“It's very flimsy and totally conjectural.”

“And when they come back to Anchorage and book into the hotel they're nominally
staying at, they find among the mail Lydia's letter with all the family news. And among the news she says casually: ‘There are two boys from the village that I've got interested in . . . .' And they both wonder how long Robert will remain her heir.”

• • •

The editor was still droning on, having conspicuously failed to edit his own speech.

Ted Bellingham thought: my first funeral. I'd have expected it would have been Grandma Bellingham or one of the uncles or aunts—someone I didn't care much about. But I did care about Lydia Perceval. Whatever her faults, whatever she would have done if she'd lived, I did care about her. Things are never going to be the same again, not quite the same. In a way I've grown up. . . . And things between me and Colin are never going to be the same.

Colin Bellingham thought: that must be the cousin who gets the loot. Lucky bugger! Look at that phoney eyes-fixed-on-a-distant-prospect look. I wonder if he's homosexual. A lot of these explorers and loners are. Perhaps it might be worth while going up to talk to him afterwards. . . .

“Above all,” said the editor, who seemed to be responding to some sign from the undertakers at the back of the chapel, “Lydia was a perfectionist. Her life, like her books, had clarity and shape. It is that shape which was so hideously destroyed by the person who killed her.”

Is he here today? all but one of the congregation wondered.

• • •

“What have you done so far?” asked Mike Oddie, after considering for some moments.

“I rang a friend in a travel office in Leeds,” said Charlie. “She said anyone flying from Anchorage to Britain would almost certainly come via Seattle. She gave me the names of the airlines who ran direct or near-direct flights from Seattle to Britain that weekend. I figured that he might use a false name on an internal U.S. flight, but unless he had a false passport already prepared he'd use his own name on the inter-continental one.”

“You've contacted the airlines?”

“Yes, I'm just waiting for them to ring back. They were all very helpful. Apparently with computers it's a relatively straightforward thing to check.”

Oddie shook his head.

“Of course, it doesn't prove anything, even if he did fly back that weekend.”

“It would be interesting though, wouldn't it? You'd expect him to enjoy a few days resting, a bit of hotel luxury, maybe have a girl lined up like Robert Loxton.”

“Maybe. On the other hand maybe the two couldn't stand each other by the end of the four months, and all this Walter Denning wanted was to put a distance between himself and Robert Loxton. Or maybe these endurance freaks don't think like the rest of us—that would figure . . . I wonder if these two really were regular partners. What had they done together before?”

“Who would know?” Charlie pondered. “Robert Loxton is a York-shireman. The
Yorkshire Post
may have monitored his activities more closely than a national paper would.”

“I hope you'd have phrased that differently if you'd been talking to one of their reporters,” said Oddie, slipping over to the office's second desk. “They think they
are
a national newspaper. I'll ring Frank Wiggins. He's a good friend, and he'll get any info he doesn't have to hand. I'll use this phone so as to leave that one free for your airline.”

And in fact while he was talking to Frank Wiggins at the
Yorkshire Post
Charlie's phone rang, and he saw the young man taking down details with a smile of intense satisfaction on his face.

• • •

When Thea had asked Dorothy Eccles to organise the music she had stressed that Lydia had not been a Christian. This had put Dorothy in a quandary, because she felt that the congregation (she had imagined something very much larger than had actually assembled) should have something to
sing.
How else could one pay tribute to the dead one? And when it came down to it there wasn't much else a mass of people could sing except hymns. After all, they did that even at the Cup Final.