Ellis Peters - George Felse 02 - Death and the Joyful Woman (8 page)

It was just four o’clock, and Dominic was walking up Hill Street on his way to the bus stop. Since he had to pass the main police station it was his habit to call in, on days when he hadn’t biked to school, on the off-chance that George might be there with the car, and ready to go off duty; and sometimes he was lucky. To-day George picked him up at the corner and took him to the office with him while he filed his latest report; then they drove home together.

“One little call to make,” said George, “and then we’ll head for our tea. You won’t mind waiting a minute for me? It won’t take long.”

“And then you’ve finished for the day?” Dominic’s anxious eyes were searching his face surreptitiously, and trying to read the mind behind it. He would have liked to ask right out if anything positive had turned up, if Kitty was safely and irrevocably out of the affair; but how could he? They had had a family code for years in connection with George’s work, governed by rules none the less sacred for being unformulated; and once already to-day he’d been warned off from infringing them. One did not ask. One was allowed to listen if information was volunteered, and to suggest if participation was invited, but never to ask; and a silence as inviolable as the confessional sealed in all that was said within the framework of a case. He contained the ache within him, and waited faithfully, but it hurt.

“Don’t know yet, Dom, it’ll depend on what I get here.” He was turning into the empty parking-ground of The Jolly Barmaid. “If my man’s here I shan’t be five minutes, whatever the outcome may be.”

But it did not take even five minutes, for Turner was sitting in the curtained public bar, cigarette on lolling lip, devouring the racing results, and it needed only one good look at Leslie Armiger’s photograph to satisfy him.

“That’s him. That’s the young bloke who come asking for Mr. Armiger. Stood on the doorstep to wait for him, but I saw him in a good light when he first come in. Different clothes, of course, but that’s him all right, I’d know him anywhere.”

“You’d swear to him?”

“Any time you like, mate. About five to ten he walked in, and Mr. Armiger come out to him, and that’s the last I saw of ’em.”

“Thank you,” said George, “that’s all I wanted to know.”

He pocketed the photograph and went back to the car thinking grimly: Home by ten, were you, my lad! So you’ve solved the problem I’ve always wanted to get straightened out, how to be in two places at once. Now I wonder if you’ll be willing to tell me how it’s done?

LESLIE ARMIGER WAS not a happy liar. There was almost as much relief as fright in his eyes as he looked from the photograph to George’s face and back again. Jean came to his side, and he put his arm round her for a moment, with a curiously tentative gesture of protection, as though he had wanted to clasp her warmly, and either because of George’s presence or his own predicament or her aloofness he could not.

“The best thing you can do now,” said George sternly, “is tell me everything. You see what happens when you don’t. You, too, Mrs. Armiger. Wouldn’t it have looked infinitely better if you’d told the truth in the first place, rather than leave it to come out this way?”

“Now wait a minute!” Leslie’s sensitive nostrils were quivering with nervous tension. “Jean had nothing to do with this. She hasn’t got a time sense, never did have. She merely made one of her vague but confident guesses, saying I was in by ten.”

“And picked on a time and a few details that matched your story word for word? That tale was compounded beforehand, Mr. Armiger, and you know it as well as I do.”

“No, that isn’t true. Jean simply made a mistake—”

“So you backed up her statement rather than embarrass her? Now, now, you can do better than that. Have you forgotten that your statement and hers were made at the very same moment, something like a mile apart? My boy, you’re positively inviting me to throw the book at you.”

“Oh, Christ!” said Leslie helplessly, dropping into a chair. “I’m no good at this!”

“None at all, I’m glad you realise it. Now suppose we just sit round the table like sensible people, and you tell me the truth.”

Jean had drawn back from them, hesitating for a moment. She said quietly: “I’ll make some coffee,” and slipped out to the congested kitchenette on the landing; but George noticed that she left the door open. Whatever her private dissatisfactions with her husband, she would be back at his side instantly if the law showed signs of getting tough with him.

“Now then, let’s have it straight this time. What time did you really come home?”

“It must have been about ten to eleven,” said Leslie sullenly. “I did go to that pub of his, and I did ask to see him, but I give you my word Jean didn’t know anything about it. All she did was get worried because of the times, because there was three-quarters of an hour or so unaccounted for. But I never told her where I’d been.”

George had no difficulty in believing that; it was implied in every glance they cast at each other, every hesitant movement they made towards each other, so wincingly gentle and constrained. It was clear that they knew how far apart they stood, and were frightened by the gap that had opened between them. That fiery girl now so silent and attentive outside the half-open door was suffering agonies of doubt of her bargain. Had he, after all, the guts to stand up to life? Was that disastrous appeal to his father only a momentary lapse, or was it a symptom of inherent weakness? George thought they had fought some bitter battles, and frightened and hurt each other badly; but now he was the enemy, and they stood together in a solid alliance against him. He might very well be doing them a favour just by being there.

“Then you’d better tell her now, hadn’t you?” he said firmly. “It’ll come better from you than from anyone else. And she may be a good deal happier about knowing than about not knowing.”

“I suppose so.” But he didn’t sound convinced yet, he was too puzzled and wretched to know which way to turn. He swallowed the humiliation of being lectured, and began to talk.

“All right, I went out to post my letters, and then I kept going, and went straight to the pub and asked for my father. I didn’t want to go in, I just stuck at the door until he came out to me. And I didn’t happen to see anybody I knew—the waiter was a stranger—that’s why, when this thing blew up this morning, I was fool enough to think I could just keep quiet about being there. But you mustn’t blame Jean for trying to help me out.”

“We won’t bring your wife into it. Why did you go and ask for this interview? To make another appeal to him?”

“No,” said Leslie grimly, “not again. I was through with asking him for anything. No, I went to get back from him something of mine that he’d taken—or if I couldn’t get it back, at least to tell him what I thought of him.” He was launched now, he would run. George sat back and listened without comment to the story of the first appeal, and the answer it had brought, the cruel and gloating gift of the old inn sign as a memento of Leslie’s defeat and his father’s victory. He gave no sign that he was hearing it for the second time that day.

“Well, then just two weeks ago something queer happened. He suddenly changed his mind. One evening after I got home old Ray Shelley turned up here positively shiny with good news. I knew he’d done his best for me at the time of the bust-up, he was always a kind soul, and he was as pleased as Punch with the message he had for me. He said my father’d thought better of what he’d done, come to the conclusion that though he’d still finished with me it had been a dirty low-down trick to needle me with that present of his. Said he now saw it was a mean-spirited joke, and he withdrew it. But being my father he couldn’t come and admit it himself, he’d given Shelley the job. He was to take back the sign, and he’d brought me five hundred pounds in cash in its place, as conscience money—not forgetting to repeat that this was positively the last sub. we could look for. He said he couldn’t leave me to starve or sink into debt for want of that much ready money, but from now on I’d have to fend for myself.”

Jean had brought in the coffee and dispensed it silently, and because her husband in his absorption let it stand untasted at his elbow she came behind him and touched him very lightly on the arm to call his attention to it. She could not have ventured contact with a complete stranger more gingerly. He started and quivered at the touch, and looked up at her with a flash of wary brown eyes, at once hopeful and wretched. The shocks that passed between them made the whole cluttered, badly lit room vibrate like a bow-string.

“Go on,” said George peremptorily. “What did you say to his offer?”

“I refused it.” He was taking heart now from the very impetus of his own feelings, remembering his injuries and recovering his anger. The guarded voice warmed; there was even a note of Armiger’s well-tuned brazen music in it when he was roused. “I’d had it, I was done with the whole affair, it could stay as it was. It’s a pity it was poor old Shelley who got the blast, after all he’d tried to do for me, but there it was. So the old boy went off very upset. He even tried to get me to accept a loan out of his own pocket, but even if I’d have taken it in any case, and I wouldn’t, I couldn’t from him. I know him, even with all he makes he lives right up to his income, sometimes over it. We tried to soothe him down as well as we could, because, damn it, it wasn’t his fault. He said he hoped we wouldn’t cut ourselves off from him completely, couldn’t he come down and see us sometimes, he’d like to be sure we were all right, and of course we said come any time, if he could bear the place we’d be glad to see him. And we gave him all the gen, because the old bag downstairs objects to having to answer the door for our visitors, though she never misses taking a good look at them, in case there’s anything fat in it to shoot over the garden fence to the other harpy next door. She leaves the front door on the latch while she’s in, so that anyone who comes to see us can walk right up. And we even told him where to find the key of our room, in case he ever called a bit too early and wanted to wait for us. I know,” said Leslie, catching George’s faintly puzzled and inquiring eye. “You’re wondering if all this detail is really relevant. It’s relevant, all right! The day before yesterday, while we were both out in the afternoon, somebody got into this room and pinched my father’s letter.”

“The
letter
! The one accompanying the gift of the sign? But why should anybody want to steal that?”

“If you can think of more than one explanation you’re a better man than I am. There
is
only one. Because my father really wanted that sign back. That was why he sent Shelley on his errand. He wanted it, and it was even worth five hundred pounds to him to get it. And when that attempt flopped his next move was to remove the only proof that he ever gave it to me. Without that, its ownership would be a matter of his word against mine, and where do you think I’d be then?”

“That’s not quite true, you know,” said George reasonably. “Miss Hamilton typed that letter, she knows exactly what was in it, and has already told me all the facts about that gift. There would also be the testimony of the people who packed and delivered it to you. So it wouldn’t have been a matter of your unsupported word.”

Leslie laughed, with some bitterness but even more honest amusement. “Really, you don’t know the kind of set-up he had with his staff, do you? Hammie may have been beautifully open with you now he’s dead, but if he’d been still alive she’d have done and said whatever he wanted, she always did, it’s the cardinal point in her terms of reference. She wouldn’t have remembered anything that could make things awkward for him, don’t you think it, and neither would the lads in the office, or the bloke who drove the van. Oh, no,
that
wouldn’t complicate things for him. The letter was the only evidence in black and white. My father wanted that thing back, he was prepared to give five hundred to get it, and when that failed he started to clear the ground so he could claim the thing anyhow, even though I hadn’t seen fit to part with it.”

“Are you suggesting that Mr. Shelley was a party to this trick?”

“
No
! At least, not consciously. God, I don’t know! I’ve never known how far he was aware of the uses Dad made of him. It went on all the time, whenever he needed a nice, benevolent front that would soften up the opposition. You must have seen them in action.
Can
you be totally unaware when you’re being used as a cover man? For years and years? Maybe he shuts his eyes to it and hopes for the best, maybe he really doesn’t see. Naturally he didn’t simply go back and say: Easy, old boy, you just walk in, the door’s on the latch, and they keep their key on top of the cupboard on the landing. Nothing like that. But he told him, all the same, consciously or unconsciously, because there’s no other way he could have known. And he came, he or somebody else for him.
Somebody’d
been here, and the letter was gone.”

“You didn’t ask Mrs. Harkness if she’d seen the caller? She must have been in, or the street door would have been fastened.”

“She was in, and I bet she knows who it was who called, but what’s the good of asking her? She’d simply deny any interest in my visitors, and get on her high horse and turn nasty, because she knows damn’ well I know she’s always got her kitchen door ajar snooping and listening. I couldn’t even begin to ask her.”

“Yes, I see it would be easier for us to do it. Though probably no more effective. And then another question arises. I notice you haven’t mentioned the sign itself. If he was removing the evidence of the gift, why not remove the gift at the same time?”

“He couldn’t, it wasn’t here. I got sort of interested in the thing. It’s been overpainted so many times you can’t tell what may not be underneath, and there’s something about the shapes and proportions of the painting itself that isn’t nineteenth century by a long chalk. It isn’t that I think it’s worth anything, not in money, but I should like to know something about its history, and see if there’s something more interesting underneath the top layers. So I talked to Barney Wilson about it. He said how about that dealer who has the gallery in Abbey Place, the other side of town, he thought he’d be willing to have a look at the thing for us. So I got him to take the sign over to him for an opinion, and it’s still with him now.”

“When did you send it to him? Before the letter was abstracted, obviously. Was it also before Mr. Shelley came to see you?”

Leslie visibly counted days; colour had come back into his cheeks and something like excitement into his eyes. “Yes, by God, it was! Shelley was here on Thursday evening. Barney took the sign away with him in the van on Monday morning, three days before.”

“Suggestive, you think?”

“Don’t you? I’d had the thing six weeks, and Dad had shown no further interest in it. Then it’s deposited with this dealer, and three days later Dad opens a campaign to recover it. Wouldn’t you say there’s a connection?”

“You think he got a direct tip from the dealer that it might be of value after all?”

“Well, I don’t know that it need mean that, actually. It might be enough if it got to my father’s ears that I’d asked for an opinion on it. If he thought he’d accidentally given me something valuable and turned the joke on himself it would just about kill him.” He shied at his own choice of words, the sharp realisation of his position coming back upon him with a painful jolt.

“All right, leave it at that,” said George equably. “The letter vanished. What then?”

“Well, then, last night, as I said, I suddenly set off to tackle him about it, without saying a word to Jean. I didn’t want to go home to see him, and last night I knew exactly where he’d be, and I suppose I was in the mood to pick a fight, too, smouldering mad. Not that mad, though,” he amended with a wry grin, meeting George’s measuring eye. “I never touched him. I suppose I got there a bit before ten, and asked this waiter of yours to ask him if he could spare a minute. I didn’t give a name because I thought if I did he wouldn’t come, but most likely he would have, anyhow, the way it turned out. He came out bouncing and laughing when he saw me, and banged me on the back as though I was the one thing wanted to make his evening complete. He said he’d just leave his friends a message and then he’d be with me, and then he shoved me out of the side door and said go on over and take a look at the barn now, see if you recognise the old dump. Walk in, he said, the door’s unlocked, I was going over there in any case a bit later on.

“And I went on over, just as he said. I could guess what he wanted with me over there, but I wanted privacy for what I’d got to say to him, so it suited me, too. You’ve seen the place, I take it, you know what he’s done to it. In a few minutes he came bounding in, bursting with high spirits, with a magnum of champagne under his arm. ‘Well, what’d you think of your ideal home now, boy,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t it shake you?’ But I hadn’t come to amuse him, and it was all rather water off a duck’s back. I let fly with what I had to say, told him what I thought of his dirty tricks, and accused him of stealing the letter. He just laughed in my face and denied everything. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said, ‘why should I want to steal my own letter?’ I suppose I hadn’t expected any sort of satisfaction except just in getting the load off my own chest, so I unloaded. I told him what sort of lying, cheating devil he was, and swore I’d fight him to the last ditch, over the sign, over my career, over everything.”