Constable Evans 03: Evanly Choirs (13 page)

“Yes, we get the picture,” Watkins interrupted. “And it wasn’t like that with Mr. Llewellyn?”

“Oh no, sir. Like I said, I never knew what was supposed to be happening. I’d get there at nine o’clock and they’d still be asleep. I’d be in the middle of my dusting and they’d want breakfast. Sometimes they had lunch at three o’clock in the afternoon and…” she lowered her voice and leaned closer to the two policemen, “they wanted me to use garlic, sir. I told them I’d never seen a need to use that smelly stuff before and I wasn’t about to start now.”

“So the hours were all mixed up. What else? What was the atmosphere like there? Happy?”

“Noisy sir. Awful noisy.”

“Yelling, you mean?”

“Mostly singing, sir.”

Watkins tried not to smile. “Some people actually like that noise, Gladys, but I can’t say I’m one of them myself. I’d rather have the Beatles. So Mr. Llewellyn sang a lot. What about Mrs. Llewellyn?”

“She was moody like, sir. Didn’t say much—of course it was hard to say much when he was around. Sometimes she lay in bed with a book most of the day, then she’d go out for a drive, but she didn’t seem to enjoy life, if you get my meaning, sir.”

“Did she have many friends?”

“Oh no, sir. Nobody came to see her, the whole time she was here, as far as I know. She was on the telephone a lot though. I think she talked to her children. Her face looked quite different when she was on the telephone.”

“But the children weren’t here at all?”

“No sir. We heard that the whole family would be coming, but the children never came after all. Mrs. Llewellyn said she’d left them in Italy. Of course they’re both grown up and able to take care of themselves, so I understand.”

“And Mr. and Mrs. Llewellyn—how did they get along?”

“Not always so well, sir.” Gladys looked uncomfortable, as if she didn’t want to be disloyal to her employer. “In fact when he wasn’t singing he was shouting. There was a lot of shouting going on in that house, sir.”

“So they fought a lot. About what?”

“Oh sir,” Gladys looked shocked. “It wasn’t my business to listen in to their conversations. Besides, they did most of it in English—and the language they used, sir! I’ve never heard a lady use words like that before. I used to go and shut myself in the kitchen when they started.”

Sergeant Watkins jotted in his notebook. “And what about visitors, Gladys. Did they have many?”

“None at all while I was there, except for Mr. Phillips stopping by with some music a couple of times, and Evans-the-Meat delivering—but that was tradesmen’s entrance, not the front door.”

“So nobody came to call in a month?”

“Mrs. Llewellyn told me that Mr. Llewellyn’s doctor told him to get away somewhere peaceful and have a complete rest. He’d been overdoing it, she said, and his blood pressure was very bad. But if you ask me, sir, I don’t think he was helping his blood pressure very much, the way he acted.”

“And did they get many phone calls, Gladys?” Evan asked. “Did you have to answer the phone for them?”

“Oh no, sir. It wasn’t my place to answer the phone.” She leaned closer again. “I’m a wee bit scared of the telephone still, sir. It doesn’t seem natural, sending voices down a wire, does it?”

“So you’ve no idea who might have called them?”

Gladys shook her head.

“Tell the sergeant about last night before you left,” Evan said.

Gladys recounted the story, almost word for word as she had given it to Evan. Sergeant Watkins made notes. “So you didn’t go to the front door and let the person in, Gladys? And you couldn’t tell who it was?”

“No sir. Like I told the constable, I was back in the kitchen with the door shut, making the pie. And when I went to the living room door, I only heard little snatches of the other voice. Mr. Llewellyn did most of the talking as usual, and a lot of laughing, too. But the other voice was much softer—a gentle voice like.”

“Woman or man?”

“That’s what I can’t say, sir. I told Constable Evans. Not a very high woman’s voice, look you, but it could have been either.”

“And when you left to catch your bus, Gladys,” Sergeant Watkins asked, “did you happen to notice any strange cars parked nearby?”

Gladys frowned. Then she shook her head. “I was in a hurry because I was worried the bus might go without me,” she said, “but I think I would have noticed if anyone had parked outside the house.”

Sergeant Watkins got up again. “Thank you, Gladys. You’ve been very helpful,” he said. “Would you mind sticking around for a while? I’d like you to get a look at the room where the cri—the accident—happened. You could tell us if anything had been moved since you saw it last.”

“I’d be happy to, sir,” Gladys said. “The next bus doesn’t go until ten anyway. I’ll pour myself another cup of tea, if you don’t mind.”

Evan followed the sergeant out into the bright sunshine. “Very interesting. He fought with his wife. She wasn’t very happy.”

“But she also wasn’t there,” Evan said. “She only just got back from London when we were there, remember?”

“We can easily check up on that, can’t we?” Watkins asked. “London can be a very convenient alibi. I think we should go and talk to her now, before any word gets to her that we’re looking on this as a suspicious death.”

They walked up the village street. “Lovely day isn’t it?” Evan said.

Sergeant Watkins frowned at him. “Don’t rub it in. I’d promised my wife and daughter that I’d take them to the
eisteddfod.
Our Tiffany’s keen on seeing the dancing competition. Why do these things always happen on fine days—and on my days off, too? I was looking forward to hearing you sing tonight!”

Evan gave him a look that stopped the grin. “I don’t know if we’ll be doing it now. Ifor was the one thing that made us sound halfway decent. Some of the men want to go ahead as a sort of tribute to Ifor, but I suppose it will all be up to Mostyn.”

“He seemed to be taking it very hard last night,” Sergeant Watkins said. “I can’t imagine he’d want to be up there in front of people today with his star performer dead.”

“Probably not,” Evan nodded thoughtfully, “although there was little love lost between those two. I can’t say Mostyn would grieve over Ifor Llewellyn’s death.”

Sergeant Watkins looked up expectantly. “Are you hinting at something?”

Evan laughed. “Oh no, I’m not hinting that Mostyn might have killed him. He was certainly angry enough the night before when Ifor threatened to join another choir, but I don’t think he’s the type to go coshing people over the head, do you?”

Watkins smiled, too. “You’re right about that. Positively green he looked last night, didn’t he, poor little bugger. And I don’t think he could reach Ifor’s head, unless he got a stepladder!”

“There’s no way Mostyn would have killed off his star performer,” Evan said. “He actually thought we had a chance for the gold medal with Ifor singing the solos. He’d have waited until after the
eisteddfod
to do anything to him.”

“That’s probably true,” Watkins agreed. “You don’t give up your one chance for a gold medal, do you?”

“Anyway, he couldn’t have killed Ifor, even if he’d wanted to,” Evan pointed out. “He was down in Harlech waiting for us when we arrived last night. He’d been there all evening with some of his pupils from school. And Ifor was still alive and singing when the last of the choir members drove out of the village.”

“Oh? They heard him, did they?” Sergeant Watkins looked with interest at the group of villagers still hanging around the crime scene. “Are any of them here now?”

“Most of them,” Evan said. “Harry-the-Pub and Evans-the-Meat said they’d heard him.”

“Maybe we should talk to them on our way past, while we’ve got them together here. We’ll be able to pin down the last time he was seen or heard alive, and who knows, someone might just have noticed something important.”

“They don’t miss much around here,” Evan agreed.

“Good. Then why don’t you start asking the questions?” Watkins patted him on the arm. “They’re liable to tell you more than me. And you know my Welsh is a little rusty. I’ll just go in and check on the lab boys.”

He ducked under the white police tape that now blocked off the driveway, passed the van that was parked outside the house, and disappeared into the building. The Llanfair locals crowded expectantly around Evan.

“What’s going on then, Evan
bach?
” Charlie Hopkins asked, nodding in the direction of the house. “What’s all the fuss about?”

“They’re just trying to make sure of all their facts before they make a press statement, I’d imagine,” Evan said evasively. “You know how newspapers always get the wrong end of the stick.”

“Either he hit his head or he didn’t,” Evans-the-Meat said belligerently. “I don’t see what’s so hard that they need to send up half the county’s experts wasting good taxpayer money.”

“It’s all routine procedure in cases like this, Gareth,” Evan said. “When someone winds up with a bloody great hole in his head, we have to check it out thoroughly.” He moved closer to the group of men, who were standing a little apart from other small groups of women, children, dogs, and bikes.

“One of the things we need to do is to establish what time he died,” Evan said. “You said you heard him singing when you left Llanfair last night, Gareth?”

“That’s right. Warming up his voice, the way he always did.”

“You could hardly miss it, could you?” Harry-the-Pub added. “Not the way he belted it out.”

“And what time was that?” Evan asked.

The men looked at each other. “The six o’clock news had already started, I know that much,” Harry said. “But we were down in Harlech and parked just before seven, and that trip has to take forty-five minutes, so I’d have to say about six-ten, wouldn’t you, boys?”

The other men who had ridden with Harry nodded. “Must have been six-ten, six-fifteen,” Evans-the-Meat concurred. “And we were the last to leave, I think. Your van had already gone, Charlie.”

“Yes, we left around six, but it took me longer to find a parking space,” Charlie said.

“Did you hear him singing, too, Charlie?” Evan asked.

“I can’t say I did, but maybe I’m so used to all the noise by now that I didn’t even notice,” Charlie said. “It’s not easy living next door to it, you know, Evan
bach.
Morning, noon, and night, singing and fighting, fighting and singing.”

“You didn’t hear any fighting the last couple of days, did you?” Evan asked.

“The last time was when the missus called you,” Charlie said. “After that it’s been real peacefullike, apart from the singing.”

“Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten about that incident the other night,” Evan said. “Did you happen to overhear what was going on when your missus called me?”

“I can’t say I was that interested,” Charlie said. “I just turned up the sound on the telly. She was the one who always got upset.” He looked across at a tight knot of women standing at the Hopkins’s cottage door. “Mair, remember that night when you called the constable?” he asked. “Did you happen to hear what they were fighting about?”

“Which night was that then?” Mair Hopkins asked as the group of women parted for her. “There have been so many, haven’t there.”

Evan went across to join the women. “You called me one evening last week, Mrs. Hopkins. Ifor was yelling at a strange man.”

“Ooh yes, that’s right. I remember now. Very sinister it was, too. I pulled back the curtain and got a look at him—ooh, and he looked like a very shady character.” She hugged her arms to her and gave a dramatic shudder. “All dressed in black and dark flashing eyes and hadn’t shaved. I said to Charlie, what’s the betting he’s one of those Mafia who’s tracked Mr. Llewellyn down here? Charlie told me I was talking nonsense but he looked like a gangster to me right enough. And he spoke foreign, too. Not English, I mean, but real foreign.”

“And you didn’t happen to hear anything that was said?”

“Only Mr. Llewellyn yelling that he wasn’t scared. The whole street heard that, I’d imagine.”

Several women nodded.

“And he drove a foreign-looking car, too,” one of the women said. “I heard the yelling as well, when I was putting our Gwen to bed.”

“What about last night,” Evan said. “Did any of you see or hear anything going on at the Llewellyns’ house? Any visitors? Anything unusual?”

There was silence, then Mair Hopkins shook her head. “I can’t say I noticed anything at all out of the ordinary, like. I saw him outside putting things in his car about five-thirty, it would have been. I heard him doing his singing exercises when I was in the kitchen peeling potatoes for dinner. That would have been after six.”

“How much after six?”

“Let’s see. I went in the kitchen right after Charlie left with the lads from the choir. It could have been as late as six-thirty before I went back into the living room to see the weather forecast on the telly. I don’t know why I bothered. They’re never right, are they? I always say to Charlie, I wish I could get paid for a job where I was wrong most of the time—”

“So Ifor was alive and singing at six-thirty,” Evan interrupted her discourse on the weather-forecasting profession. He looked around the crowd. “Did anyone happen to see or hear him at any time after that?”

Another silence. Several people shook their heads.

“Anyone seen leaving his house after that or any strange cars driving down the street?”

More silence then Harry-the-Pub said, “Here, that are you getting at then? There’s something more to this death than just a man falling and hitting his head, isn’t there?”

“See, what did I tell you, I knew it,” Evans-the-Meat said triumphantly. “I said they wouldn’t make all this fuss over an accident. Someone bashed him on the head.”

“It was that Mafia man, of course. What did I tell you?” Mair Hopkins yelled back.

Evan could feel the whole situation slipping away from him.

“Hold on a minute, everyone,” he said in a voice to rival Ifor’s. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions. When the lab technicians have given the place a thorough going-over, maybe we’ll know a little more. Right now we’re just trying to work out exactly when he died and who was the last person to see him alive.”