Body Politic (30 page)

Lambert
had not taken his gaze from Moira’s face; their eyes held each other’s steadily, as if connected by some invisible beam. He did not look at Dermot even as he said, ‘Then I suggest you begin by telling us about why you lied to us about your movements on Christmas Eve, Mr Yates.’

‘
Christmas Eve? My movements?’ It was always a sign of guilt when they repeated the question, thought Hook: it meant they were playing for time, that they had no answer ready. Dermot Yates’s broad, open face looked suddenly shifty as he said, ‘I told you. I went to the Humes’ house, just down the road. I was there for three or four hours. From about half past three until about seven, I think. I’m pretty sure George Hume could confirm that I—’

‘
Mr Hume wasn’t home until half past five, was he? And his wife tells us that you were missing from the house for a considerable period immediately before that: possibly as much as one and a half hours.’

Yates
must have been expecting this, but nevertheless it hit him hard. He raised a hand pointlessly to his mouth, then let it drop limply back to the arm of his chair. ‘I—I’m sure it wasn’t quite as long as that, Mr Lambert. And I don’t quite see how—’

It
was Gerald Sangster who cut in smoothly with an attempt at rescue. ‘I hardly think Doris Hume can be completely reliable, Superintendent. She’s a nice woman, but you must have noticed that she’s getting on in years. And she must have been busy with other guests at the time you mention.’

‘
Mrs Hume is entirely reliable, Mr Sangster. We’ve checked her recollections with some of those other guests, you see. Incidentally, she also told us that you don’t drink at all. Whereas you went out of your way to tell us that you had been drinking heavily here on Christmas Day, before you walked home late in the evening. A clumsy lie, that. And a pointless one, in the event.’

Sangster
looked at them, his hands still steady on the arms of his chair. Whereas Yates had been immediately ruffled, he seemed to be calmer, to be gathering strength in the crisis. ‘All right. I admit I was stone-cold sober on Christmas night. I walked home, exactly as I said. I could have driven over to Keane’s place—I was perfectly fit to drive and do anything else I thought fit. But you may have difficulty in proving that I did that.’

‘
We should find it impossible. As you anticipated. You knew that we’d find out from someone that you didn’t drink; you could even have let it slip yourself, if necessary. But you didn’t go over to Keane’s cottage that night, or at any other time in that period. You were simply setting up a false trail for us. That is a serious offence, and you may find yourself charged with it in due course. What concerns me at this moment is why you attempted to divert us.’

Moira
Yates, her nyloned legs still elegantly crossed as she sat slightly side-on to them on the sofa, smiled a wide smile, perfectly motionless, still perfectly assembled in the pose she had chosen for herself when she came into the room. Then she delivered the words she had also prepared for the occasion. ‘This insight into police procedure is all quite fascinating, Superintendent Lambert, particularly so for innocent people like us. But you have already told us that you believe Mr Sangster had nothing to do with this crime. May we ask what is the point of your detailed investigation into Mrs Hume’s Christmas Eve celebrations?’

Lambert
regarded her steadily for a moment, willing her to more speech. She seemed again keyed up for this meeting, though whether the adrenaline was natural or drug-assisted he had no idea. To his disappointment, she said no more. He turned abruptly back to the unhappy Dermot Yates. ‘You left the Humes’ house within half an hour of your arrival. You were away for the best part of an hour and a half. What did you do in that time?’

Yates
ran a hand through hair that was now tousled, then looked at his palm as if it enjoyed a facility to move on its own, without his approval or control. ‘I didn’t think I was away that long. I came back to check on Moira. I knew she’d been excited and upset before I went, you see, and I wasn’t happy about leaving her.’ He looked desperately at Moira for support, for some confirmation of the fact that she had been in this room and in need of his help, that he had come back to give it on that fateful afternoon.

She
spoke, but what she said filled her brother with horror. ‘Dermot didn’t commit your murder, Superintendent Lambert. And neither did Gerry. But I expect you know that. You seem to have worked most things out.’

Sangster
had started forward at last to the edge of his armchair with her words, and Dermot shouted, ‘Moira, don’t! You mustn’t—’

‘
Oh, but I must, Dermot!’ She turned her dazzling, unreal smile from Lambert to her brother, and it softened into a genuine affection. ‘You’ve done everything you can for me. Both you and Gerry. But it’s time to stop the protection now. I’m not having the two of you getting yourselves into more trouble on my behalf.’ She was as masterful as a mother taking charge of troublesome children.

And
she had the same effect as a mother upon her charges. The two resourceful, intelligent men to whom she spoke were cast into immediate defeat and dejection by her words. Their shoulders slumped, their heads dropped, they stared in dull defeat at the carpet by their feet. Their controller turned her attention back to the two CID men opposite her. ‘Dermot left that drinks party on Christmas Eve because he saw his car drive past the Humes’ window. When he came home, he found that I had been at the wheel of it.’

Dermot
made another feeble effort to check her, raising both arms, then dropping them hopelessly as she stilled him with a slight, imperious gesture of her slender hand. Lambert said quietly, playing to the central figure in this drama, ‘Tell us where you went in your brother’s car, please, Miss Yates.’

‘
I think you know that. I went to Raymond Keane’s cottage. Though why you should suspect an agoraphobic of going out, I still don’t know.’

‘
Because we have trained ourselves to be suspicious. Because you were described to me as “a classic case” when I outlined your symptoms to a medical man. Too classic, perhaps, especially when I discovered you had trained as a psychiatric nurse. Perhaps you simulated the symptoms almost too well.’

She
pursed her lips, smiled a small, regretful smile. ‘It was genuine enough at first, you know. When Raymond ditched me so suddenly, I just didn’t want to leave the house. Couldn’t leave it, for a week or two. Then I thought to myself, “You can use this, girl. He’s brought you to this state, and now you can use it to get back at the bastard.”’

She
turned to her brother, who was still staring at her aghast, fearing what was to come, yet powerless to stop her. ‘I’m sorry, Dermot. I didn’t want to deceive you, but I had to, if you weren’t to be involved. And you too, Gerry. You were both so concerned about

the agoraphobia that there were times when I longed to tell you what I was about, but I knew I mustn’t.’

Lambert,
pointing her back the way he wanted her to go, said, ‘None of the doors were damaged at Keane’s cottage. That pointed to someone who had a key to the place.’

‘
Which I had, of course. I returned all his presents in high dudgeon at the time when we split up, but I found the key two months later, when I was well into my plan. It seemed like a sign to me.’ She nodded to herself at the recollection, seemingly contented.

Hook
recalled how they had talked of Joe Walsh shutting himself away in his own private world, losing touch with reality, creating the personality which might do abnormal things. This woman had shut herself away from reality just as firmly, with a more awful result.

Lambert
said, ‘Was the cottage empty when you got there?’

‘
Yes. Rather to my surprise, it was. I hadn’t expected the opportunity to fall into my hands as easily as it did. I took my car down the road and parked it under some trees, where it was invisible from the house. There had been vehicles there before; you could see the tyre marks.’

Not
vehicles, thought Hook, but a vehicle. Joe Walsh’s van. Strange how these two people who had never met each other had made up a combination of which neither of them had been aware. Speaking for the first time, he said, as if merely checking the details of a minor burglary, ‘What time would this be, Miss Yates?’

‘
About quarter past four, I should think. It was a bright frosty day, but already going dark. I let myself in with the key I’d taken with me. It was curious being back in there. Nothing much seemed to have changed. I looked into the lounge and the dining room. Listened to the messages on his answerphone, as a matter of fact, then wiped it. The kitchen was neat and tidy—I expect Mrs Brownlow, the cleaning lady, had been in on the Thursday, just as she used to do in the old days.’

For
a moment, she seemed to have been stopped by the memory of those old, contented days, when she had thought that Raymond Keane and she were going to live happily ever after. Then she said harshly, ‘I didn’t go upstairs, though. I expect the new woman’s night things might have been in the bedroom we used to use. If she wore any.’

Lambert
said, ‘Did you take the cord with you?’

‘
Yes. I’d made it up weeks earlier, with the wooden bits at the end to tighten it. I kept it in the underwear drawer in my bedroom upstairs. I used to practise with it in front of the mirror up there sometimes, when Dermot was out.’ She turned to the armchair beside her, saw her brother weeping silently in the face of this awful image, reached out her hand to touch his temple as gently as if to a baby, and said, ‘Sorry. Don’t cry, brother.’

‘
And you decided to wait for him in the pantry,’ Lambert prodded her forward relentlessly.

‘
Not really. I mean, it wasn’t as planned as that. I heard his car coming. That big Jaguar. For a moment I lost my nerve—I thought I’d just scream abuse at him, tell him just what I thought of him, and run away. Like a hysterical female. Then I could hear him using that very phrase, and I hid. I found myself in the old pantry, looking up at the fuse-box. And it seemed like a sign again, as if events were conspiring with me, you see.’

‘
You just stood in there and waited?’

‘
Waited until it went dark, yes. It was already almost dark in the pantry. As it was designed to preserve food in the days before fridges, it’s on a north wall, and there’s only one tiny high window. I just shut the pantry door and waited behind it. I heard him come into the kitchen and put on the central-heating boiler. I watched the circle on the meter begin to revolve as the pump started. Then I heard him walk down the hall and into the lounge and switch on the big standard lamp. It was just like the old days. I could almost see him reading his paper in his big armchair by the fireplace, as he used to do.’

But
this cosy domestic scene had induced no mercy in the woman who pictured it, thought Hook. Lambert said, ‘How long was it before you made your move, Moira?’ It was the first time he had ever used her first name: they were united now by this oldest, most primitive of crimes.

‘
I don’t know. It seemed a long time to me as I waited, but it probably wasn’t more than ten minutes. I watched the little window at the top of the wall beside me until it seemed quite dark outside. Then I reached up and put off the main electricity switch. I heard Raymond curse, then come stumbling down the hall and into the kitchen. I could hear his breathing as he fumbled for the handle of the pantry door. My eyes were quite accustomed to the darkness, and his weren’t. I stayed behind the door as he opened it, then slipped the cord round his neck, as he reached up to the fuse-box.’

She
paused, looked at them as if to see whether they had any questions, then went calmly on. ‘I was surprised how easy it was to kill someone like that, how quickly he died as I twisted the wooden handles at the end of the cord. I had my gloves on, of course, and it didn’t even seem to need as much pressure as I’d expected. I don’t think he ever knew who it was who was killing him.’

It
was not clear from her even, matter-of-fact tone whether or not she would have preferred Keane to know who it was who was twisting away his life. Moira Yates stared straight ahead of her, recreating in her mind’s eye the last moments of the man she had once loved. When they thought she had ceased to speak, she said reflectively, ‘It’s strange how easily and how completely love can turn to hate.’

It
was as though she was commenting on someone else’s story, drawing generalizations from particular events from which she was now detached. Lambert drew her quietly back to the tale she had almost concluded, the tale which would see her locked away for years. ‘What did you do next, Moira?’

‘
I checked he was dead, that there was no pulse in the carotid artery. I put the power back on. Then I went and switched off the central heating boiler and the lights he’d switched on in the lounge. I had a last look at him before I left the house, but I didn’t touch him again. I went out of the front door and pulled it to behind me. There was still no one around. I drove home as quickly as I could in Dermot’s Cavalier. I thought with a bit of luck he’d still be at the Humes’ and no one would have known that I’d even been out, but that wasn’t to be.’