The House of Women (20 page)

‘
They seem to have disappeared,’ McKenna told her. ‘Like most of his letters.’

‘
How strange! Why should anyone steal them? They’re no use, are they?’ Turning to the back of the album, she showed him a double page of small black and white snapshots. ‘Apart from the baby photos you’ve already seen, I’ve no other pictures of Ned. He had the rest.’

Ned Jones in youth smiled warily at the camera, the shadows of melancholy already about his eyes, and even then, he was thin
and frail. In most of the snapshots, he wore a high-collared shirt, a broad tie, waistcoat and breeches, thick wool knee-socks and hobnail boots, and stood mostly alone, before the farmhouse door, in the courtyard, or beneath the wonderful ancient trees where the golden horses now grazed. Only in two photographs was he in company, beside another young man with a shock of thick unruly hair on his head who was much taller and very plump, and who wore shirt and trousers and shoes wholly lacking in style or distinction.

‘
Who’s this?’ McKenna asked.

‘
His friend from Aberystwyth University. He came visiting once or twice, but I haven’t seen or heard of him for over thirty years. We called him Eddie because he was another Edward.’ She closed the album with a little snap. ‘I think they lost touch. Ned never wrote about him.’

‘
May I see the letters Ned sent you? They might provide some insights.’

‘
I haven’t kept them,’ Gladys confessed. She gestured about the room, where lighter patches on the walls told of pictures once hung there, and indentations in the floor planks and squares of deeper colour on the faded carpet betrayed the shapes of the furniture which had rested there. ‘I’ve given up collecting things. People do when they get old, you know. You tend to keep just what you need, and find the rest a burden.’

‘
That’s not quite true, is it?’ Annie said. ‘You’ve sold an awful lot. I remember the dressers and settles and tables and chairs, and that wonderful Elizabethan buffet which ran the length of the kitchen wall, not to mention tin toys and teddy bears and old china so fine the sun shone through it. All you’ve got left is the junk and broken bits, like that double-handled cup and deep saucer you use for Auntie Gertrude.’

‘
I got a decent price from the sale-rooms in Bala,’ Gladys said. ‘I might be old, but I’m not stupid.’ She turned to McKenna, touching his arm. ‘Before the money ran out from my father’s stocks and shares, we lived well enough, but sheep eat people round here, and the house gobbles up whatever’s left. There’s no point feasting your eyes on pretty pictures while hunger-rats gnaw your empty belly.’

‘
Or chopping up antique chairs to feed the fire,’ Annie added.

‘
You’re a silly child at times, you know. Contrary for the sake of it,’ Gladys told her. ‘Most of the money goes in wages to Meirion and his family, because we’d be in a sorry state without them.’ She smiled at McKenna. ‘You never really escape poverty once it’s come to your door, do you? I can’t tell you how often I’ve longed for one of those little cottages in the village, with central heating and just enough space for Gertrude and me, and not a single sheep to worry about.’

‘
You’d hate it,’ Annie said. ‘And where would you put the horses?’

‘
I can still dream, even at my age.’

‘
Where did the slaves live?’ McKenna asked.

‘
There’s a gate at each compass point in the boundary wall,’ Gladys replied, ‘and you’ll have passed through three on your tour, but the east gate’s so choked with bushes and brambles I doubt it’s been breached since Ned was writing for the Eisteddfod. It leads to a track up the hillside, and the building where the quarry workers lived, which has gone to rack and ruin like the rest. Every so often, the English come, offering me a near fortune, but I can’t sell.’

‘
Uncle Ned said he trudged back and forth in all weathers from the quarry,’ Annie added, ‘trying to imagine he was a black man. He said the quarrymen’s lodgings were no better than a cattle shelter.’

‘
What about the slaves who worked in the house?’ McKenna added. ‘Where did they live?’

‘
In the barns,’ Annie replied. ‘With the other animals.’

‘
You’ve got a bitter little streak in you, child!’ Gladys snapped. ‘And if that’s what socialism does for a body, you want to leave it alone, before it eats into your heart.’

5

The clatter of paint cans and the thump of the decorators’ boots came from McKenna’s office, along with the vapours of paint and white spirit. Diana Bradshaw coughed. Janet coughed too, as if in sympathy, then rose quickly and disappeared along the corridor.

‘
What
is
the matter with that girl?’ Diana demanded.

‘
A stomach upset, I imagine,’ said Rowlands.

‘
It’s lasting rather a long time.’

‘
Can we discuss Polgreen instead, ma’am? We can’t continue to hold him without charge, and as he was in London at the crucial time, I don’t think we can set any store on finding the bracelet in his flat.’

‘
He
says
he was in London, and you’ll hold him until the Metropolitan Police show me incontrovertible proof that he didn’t have the time or opportunity to come to Bangor and poison Edward Jones.’

‘
Edith says he hadn’t been near the house for weeks, and we know the drugs were in food or drink Ned had on Friday.’

‘
We don’t
know
. We’re surmising, on circumstantial evidence, which could be sheer coincidence, or a backup plan if the other one went wrong.’

‘
What other one?’

‘
The other plan Polgreen devised, when he thought up the scheme to report a non-existent break in at his flat, then wreck the flat and have some gullible policeman with him when it was discovered!’ She paused for breath. ‘I’m absolutely furious with Prys! Not content with spending most of the day with Polgreen, he goes out with him for the evening afterwards. Doesn’t he realize people like that can’t be trusted? Professor Williams has the measure of him, even if you don’t.’

Fiddling with one of the many pieces of paper littering his desk, Rowlands said:
‘Ned had boxes of clippings about the professor. We should ask him why.’

‘
You’ll do no such thing!’ Diana snapped. ‘You will
not
pester someone of his standing on account of a half-senile old man. There’s neither rhyme nor reason to Edward Jones’s actions.’

Mindful of her reputation, he said:
‘Aren’t we in danger of letting the professor dictate the course of our investigations? And as for Polgreen, if he sues for wrongful arrest and detention, I’d say he has every right. We could be looking at compensation running into six figures.’

‘
Or we could be looking at an immensely devious person who ruthlessly plays the system. He might have got compensation from the Met, but I’m afraid he’ll find out the hard way that I’m not a soft touch for ethnic minorities.’

‘
And I think we’ll find out the hard way that we’re making all the wrong moves for all the wrong reasons,’ he said mildly.

‘
Don’t you dare challenge my authority!’ Her face whitened with rage. ‘Get out of here, and find my car! And take that snivelling girl with you!’

‘
If I do that, ma’am, and neglect a murder inquiry in the process, people might say you’re abusing your power.’

6

Rubbing an aching back, Dewi bent to retrieve the paper which had fallen from one of the hundreds of books, and, grimly fascinated, began to read a recent cutting from one of the broadsheets, which discussed in graphic detail the circumstances where guillotine amputation of a human limb might be necessary.

Peering over his shoulder, Phoebe asked:
‘What’s that?’

All afternoon, helping with the thankless task of sifting Ned
’s artefacts, she had haunted him with memories, relentlessly recreating the dead. The cat, spread along the windowledge, was motionless for long periods, occasionally shifting with the fall of the sun.

She scanned the cutting.
‘Uncle Ned said his legs would have to come off eventually, so he was collecting stuff about amputations and artificial limbs. Dr Ansoni said he was being morbid, as well as mad.’

‘
The pathologist didn’t find anything life-threatening,’ Dewi told her.

‘
That doesn’t mean there never would have been.’

‘
You’re a real prophet of doom.’

‘
I’m a realist.’

‘
Not all the time. I’ll bet you and Ned often had your heads in his Box of Clouds. And talking of boxes, George mentioned a Box of Lies, only I can’t find it. We’ve got five boxes all the same down at the station, and every single one’s full of stuff about the professor.’

‘
Really?’ Phoebe widened her eyes. ‘How peculiar.’

‘
You can’t help, then?’

‘
Maybe it was stolen, like the letters and photos and address book.’

‘
I’m beginning to wonder if any of it ever existed.’

‘
Of course it did! Don’t be stupid! And if you’ve got five boxes like the Box of Lies, they must all be full of untruth, mustn’t they?’

7

Frowning, Rowlands glanced at Janet’s pasty face. ‘You can go home if you want. Nobody need know.’

‘
Ms Bradshaw’s got me under surveillance. Anyway, I’m OK.’

‘
She’s got us all under surveillance.’ He dumped a huge pile of Ned’s papers on her desk. ‘And you look far from OK to me.’

‘
You know, don’t you?’ Janet asked wearily.

‘
I’ve seen it all before. Twice, in fact, and we’ve got two kids to prove it.’

‘
Did your wife have awful stomach ache?’

‘
She had whatever you care to name, and it was hell on earth for both us in the first three months, then everything simply disappeared, and she felt wonderful.’

‘
I can’t wait.’

Glancing at her again, he found her expression as ambiguous as her words.
‘D’you mean you can’t wait to feel better, or you can’t afford to wait to find out if you will?’

He watched a tear trickle from the corner of her eye and come to rest on her cheek like a bead of dew.
‘I don’t know.’

‘
You’re torturing yourself with indecision. Why don’t you make up a balance sheet and see how it works out?’

‘
My father’s reaction would obliterate any credits.’

‘
He’s not the one having a baby, and you won’t get through this by any rules except your own.’ He put another pile of papers on his own desk. ‘And if you’re not making your own rules yet, this is the time to start.’

‘
You don’t know my father!’

‘
Don’t prejudge, Janet. He might be thrilled once the shock wears off.’ Lighting a cigarette, he added: ‘Bradshaw’s prejudging, and it’s going to cost.’

‘
Refusing to bail Polgreen isn’t unreasonable.’

‘
Refusing to ask Iolo Williams why Ned collected reams of paper about him is, though.’

‘
Not necessarily. He might’ve been Ned’s secret hero.’

‘
I’d credit Ned with better judgement. Williams is hardly the stuff heroes are cast from. He’s a weasel sort and his wife’s a harpy, and I still want to know where his money comes from.’

*

As soon as Diana Bradshaw went home, Janet followed suit, leaving Rowlands alone in the deserted offices. The smell of paint grew rancid about him and a mug of coffee cooled at his elbow as he fiddled with the computer controls, trying to reduce the glare of the bright green images flickering on the screen and searching for the secrets which riddled the machine’s guts.

By his own account, George despised secrets, knowing they would sooner or later break through the weight of time and deception like weeds through concrete. Pausing with his finger on the scroll lock button, Rowlands thought of the huge and handsome black man, still incarcerated in the bridewell, and, inconsequentially, of Janet, who, during the morning
’s interview with George had shivered now and then, her sensitivities, heightened by pregnancy, perhaps reacting of their own accord to the man’s exotic atmosphere. In other words, he thought, releasing the scroll lock, she had the hots for him, like Mina Harris, and as data skipped from bottom to top of the screen, he wondered if Solange ever dreamed of those fine black hands and scarred wrists charting her body, then shivered himself as the image of her in lust with her pot-bellied spouse sprang to mind.

Iolo Williams had no record of any delinquency attached to his own name, but accessing the file reference which flanked his address, Rowlands discovered that a Mrs Margaret Williams was twice convicted of theft many years before, and escaped a custodial sentence because her mental equilibrium had fallen foul of her hormones. Her last known whereabouts were on one of the city
’s council estates.