The House of Women (26 page)

‘
Who is “Eddie”?’ McKenna asked, almost holding his breath.

‘
Professor Williams.’

‘
His name is Iorwerth.’

‘
That’s his second name. We knew him as Eddie.’

‘“We”?’

McKenna could almost see the other man shrug. ‘Me. Us. We were at university together.’

‘
I didn’t know,’ McKenna said, reaching for another cigarette. ‘Did you by any chance know Edward Jones, too?’

‘“
Ned-soft-in-the-head”, Eddie called him.’ He laughed. ‘He disappeared off to hospital nearly every full moon, but it never seemed to make a difference. He was such a melancholy person. Eddie visited his home a few times, somewhere in the back of beyond, and he reckoned the whole family was doolally.’

‘
He none the less won a major prize at the Eisteddfod.’

‘
And if he hadn’t been so unstable, who knows what else he might have done? But it’s water under the bridge, isn’t it? And what you intend doing with these manuscripts is not only a waste of time and public money, but it could well be seen as an attack on Eddie’s reputation, and on ours.’

‘
I trust you’ll regard the matter simply as a necessary part of our investigations,’ McKenna said. ‘And at least, you’ll have the provenance for your own benefit.’

‘
We don’t need it.’

‘
Who first saw the manuscripts?’

‘
I did. Eddie came back from Vienna with a whole load of stuff he was pretty excited about, but when I saw those, I was ecstatic, and I asked my uncle to look at them. He was the top Celtic scholar of his day, and he’d be as proud as punch to see how Eddie’s taken over his mantle.’

‘
I’m sure he would,’ McKenna said, a grim smile on his lips.

*

‘Women enjoy being inconsistent,’ Rowlands commented. ‘They think it keeps us in our place.’

‘
Diana had to agree to our interviewing Iolo,’ McKenna said.

‘
Eddie,’ Rowlands corrected him. ‘You didn’t need to ask for the photo after all, and if we’d had our wits in gear, the “E” before his name on the path lab printout would’ve alerted us.’

‘
Well, it didn’t!’ McKenna snapped. ‘We had to rely on a suspect and a gullible old mate to point us in the right direction.’

‘
It’s like a mountain fog anyway. Ned’s papers are in such a mess they could mean anything or nothing, and the manuscript scam was up and running over thirty years ago.’

‘
We don’t know the manuscripts are fakes,’ McKenna reminded him.

‘
So why the cover-up, if not to hide the truth? Or, as George says, to create a new truth? Why didn’t Iolo own to being Ned’s old pal? He’s had plenty of opportunities.’

‘
We’ll ask him, when I’ve asked the first Mrs Williams if she can fill in a few blanks.’

‘
D’you think Edith’s been economical with the truth, as well? Surely her woman’s intuition would have detected their relationship?’

‘
Not if it was sabotaged by the drugs,’ McKenna said, tidying his desk. ‘D’you know something? You badger me the way Dewi does. You must share his dog-with-a-bone mentality.’ He locked his briefcase and pulled on his jacket. ‘By the way, Diana’s staying at the hospital until there’s some news about Janet. Let me know as soon as she calls.’

5

Driving slowly through the council estate in search of Margaret Williams, McKenna realized for the first time that the inadequates who passed through police hands with such depressing regularity were identifiable by the filth and neglect which marked out their addresses. Wondering briefly if the world might be a better place should some of them perish in the womb, he pulled up outside the spick and span dwelling where Iolo’s first wife now lived.

Pristine double-
glazed windows caught the afternoon sunlight, the front door and garden gate gleamed with fresh paint, and, bright with more paint, little stone animals foraged her garden; rabbits in herbaceous borders, a squirrel transfixed at the foot of an ornamental tree, a frog teetering on the edge of a tiny pond, and a cat crouched on the doorstep. Smiling despite himself at her whimsies, he walked up the path and rang the bell. Inside the house, a little tune chimed out.

An old man opened the door, smiling.
‘Lovely day again, isn’t it? What can we do you for?’

Showing his identification, McKenna said:
‘I’d like to see Mrs Williams.’

‘
You took your time about it, didn’t you?’ Beckoning him to follow, the man trudged along the hallway, carpet slippers almost soundless on a thick pile carpet. ‘We’ve been expecting you ever since word got out about Ned Jones.’

Shunted into the back parlour, McKenna found himself face to face with the wife who preceded the sombre Solange in the Williams
’s marital bed, and thought the professor might have come to rue the substitution, for even in age, this Mrs Williams had colour and vibrancy. She smiled, extending a plump pink hand. ‘Iolo asked the other day if you’d been to see me,’ she said, her voice soft with the residues of a Valleys’ accent.

‘
Did he?’ Taking the offered seat, he added: ‘I didn’t know you were still in touch.’

‘
They aren’t, in the way you mean,’ the old man told him. He padded to the door. ‘I’ll make the tea, then leave you to it. Maggie doesn’t need me to hold her hand.’

‘
I met him in Tesco’s,’ she said. ‘Trundling around with a trolley full of liquor. Solange said they were stocking up early for Christmas, which was just an excuse, of course.’ Regarding him brightly, she asked: ‘Did he give you my address?’

‘
No,’ McKenna admitted. ‘He’s never mentioned you.’

‘
He’s ashamed of me because I got into trouble, and ashamed of himself because I divorced him. So did you get my address off your files?’ When McKenna nodded, she went on: ‘Should I still be there? I mean, aren’t convictions wiped off the records after a while?’

‘
They are, yes.’

‘
So why am I still there? It was a long time ago.’

‘
You’re quite right. I’ll look into it.’

‘
Not that it matters. I never made a secret of it. It was the only lapse I’d had, up to then.’ She giggled. ‘And since then, I haven’t stopped!’

‘
Take no notice of her,’ the man said, standing in the doorway. ‘She likes to think she’s a bit of a hell raiser.’ He grinned at McKenna, his face a web of wrinkles. ‘We never married, you see, and she still gets a kick out of living tally, even after all these years.’

‘
Don’t the neighbours suspect?’ McKenna asked.

‘
No reason why they should. I’m another Williams, and Maggie wears a ring. Mind you, we’d have wed if we’d been blessed with children, because it’s not right to raise them the other way.’

As the kettle screeched in the kitchen, and her companion disappeared, she said:
‘Harry would’ve made a lovely dad.’

‘
I’m sorry to be personal,’ McKenna said, ‘but our files mentioned a hormonal disorder at the time of the offences, and I assumed it was the menopause. Wasn’t that before you met Harry?’

She nodded.
‘The doctors thought the same, but they were wrong. It was Iolo. I’d stopped eating because I couldn’t stomach food, so I lost a lot of weight, and got very run down, and my periods just stopped. I looked like an old hag, and felt worse.’ She sighed. ‘And as soon as I left him, everything changed.’

‘
Was he violent?’ McKenna remembered the raised hand and vicious temper Phoebe provoked.

‘
He never hit me, but I was still afraid of his moods, and what he
might
do. And he was forever running me down, sneering about my voice and my clothes, and my lack of proper education. Iolo’s not a nice man, you see. He’s weak and selfish and spiteful, but I can’t help feeling a tiny bit sorry for him now, because I’m so happy, and he’s stuck with that Solange. She won’t leave him while he can keep her in fancy clothes and trips abroad.’

Harry reappeared, with afternoon tea for two on a shiny silver tray.

‘Stay,’ Maggie told him. ‘Mr McKenna won’t mind. Get yourself a cup and saucer.’

‘
You won’t be telling him anything I haven’t heard, and more than once, and I want to finish weeding that border in the back garden.’ Turning to McKenna he said: ‘This heat’s doing no good for my roses, but the weeds don’t seem to care they’ve had no rain for nearly six weeks. They keep coming, bigger than ever.’

‘
There was an item on the news about a water shortage,’ Maggie said, ‘and a big demo at the Welsh Water place.’

‘
There’ll be trouble to be sorted, then,’ Harry commented. ‘Folk like an excuse for mayhem.’ He shuffled from the room, and, as Maggie stirred the tea and poured milk in the cups, McKenna heard the sounds of garden tools being dragged along paving.

‘
He loves gardening. He used to keep the parks for the council.’ Lifting the teapot, she added: ‘That was before the drunks and addicts took them over. There’s nowhere now for a rest and a chat.’ She passed him a cup. ‘Help yourself to sugar, and have a scone. I baked them fresh this morning.’

He was spending another afternoon in the company of age, he thought, raking over the embers of the past, some cold, others which flared into new
life as the oxygen reached them. As he bit into a crumbly scone topped with rich Welsh butter and strawberry jam, he tried to imagine the woman opposite in her earlier guise. ‘Where did you meet Professor Williams?’

‘
I worked in one of the university libraries.’ She smiled again, licking butter and jam from her fingers. ‘After a while, we started going out together.’

‘
And?’ McKenna took another scone.

‘
He fancied me, and I fancied him, even though he was quite fat.’ She laughed. ‘I was on the bonny side myself, because I’ve never been like Solange. I call her one of those X-Ray people. You can almost see the bones.’

‘
And when did you marry?’

‘
When Iolo realized I wouldn’t go to bed with him otherwise, and of course, as soon as he got me where he wanted me, he didn’t want me any longer, and that was when the rot set in. He said I’d trapped him, and I wasn’t the sort of wife he needed.’ She sipped her tea. ‘Fool that I was, I kept hoping things would get better, especially after we first came to Bangor. My mother said you have to work at marriage, so I slaved away, and he despised me all the more.’

‘
How long were you together?’

‘
Depends on what you mean by together. He’s getting on for fifty-six now, and he’d had his thirtieth birthday a week or so before our wedding. I was a year younger, and still a virgin.’ The smile returned, teasingly and fleetingly. ‘The divorce came through on my thirty-eighth birthday, and it was the best present I’d ever had.’

‘
I thought you were married for much longer,’ McKenna said, picking up his own teacup.

‘
Well, thank God we weren’t, else I’d have thrown myself under a train! Up to then, I’d never understood what people meant by depths of despair, but those days were like a night without end.’

‘
What was he doing when you married?’

‘
Lecturing and promoting himself, like now. He’s still everyone’s golden boy because of those papers he found, isn’t he?’ Pouring more tea, she added: ‘That happened long before we met, though. My family moved to Aberystwyth less than a year before I got married. My dad’s great aunt left him a small boarding house, so he chucked his job at the mine, and we left the Valleys for something better.’

‘
And was it better?’

‘
Well, Iolo said you’d be hard-pressed to find anything
worse
than where we’d come from, but he was always a terrible snob. His sort usually are.’

‘
What’s his sort?’

‘
The sort that thinks they’re a cut above the working classes, when they aren’t. His dad was a steelworks clerk, and his mother came from Swansea, then his father was sent to South Africa for a few years, and they were like nobs come back from the colonies afterwards. His mother’s still alive, and I swear she’s got more side to her than a double-decker bus. Iolo gets all his big ideas from her, I’m sure.’

‘
Then he could be a victim of parental ambition.’

‘
Are you trying to be funny?’ she demanded. ‘The only thing pushing him around is his own weakness. He lets some people push
him
, because he’s scared of them, then he has to push somebody else, to make himself feel better. I was his stooge, and now he’s Solange’s whipping boy, so I expect he’s taking it all out on some other poor fool. People who despise other people really despise themselves, and they can be quite dangerous.’ She pushed the plate of scones towards him, saying: ‘Have another. You look like a good meal wouldn’t hurt.’

‘
I was always thin. My mother used to be afraid the welfare people would think she was starving me.’

‘
You’re lucky, really. Harry says I’ve only to look at a cake and he can see it on my hips. Not that he minds, you understand.’ The eyes twinkled, and her mouth curved in a smile. ‘I’ve often thought being fat was really all I had in common with Iolo. Solange must half starve him, you know, because he’s lost ever so much weight since they got together.’

‘
How long ago was that?’

‘
You ask some questions! I think about twelve years since. He met her in France.’

‘
Did you always know him as Iolo?’ McKenna asked, swallowing the last of his scone.

She frowned.
‘What d’you mean?’

‘
He used to use his first name, Edward.’

‘
Did he? Well, when I met him, everybody called him Iolo, or Iorwerth. Or even “sir”, at times, which he liked best.’

McKenna put his lighter and cigarettes by his saucer.
‘Did he use sleeping tablets? And you say he drinks a lot now. Was he a heavy drinker then?’

‘
There’s an ashtray on the dresser behind you,’ she said. ‘Harry smokes, but I don’t, and Iolo wouldn’t have cigarettes in the house, let alone drink or tablets. Shows what a bad influence Solange is, doesn’t it?’ She sighed, and frowned again. ‘I was the one needing help to get me through in those days. I was more in the doctor’s surgery than out. I had anti-depressants during the day, and sleeping tablets every night. I was like a zombie, but I didn’t care, because it stopped me feeling, and there was so much pain to be felt. People say a marriage gone bad hurts like the ends of a broken bone rubbing together.’

‘
D’you still take drugs?’

‘
Good heavens, no! I didn’t need them after I left him, did I?’

Turning round in his seat to get the ashtray, McKenna said:
‘How well did you know Ned Jones?’

‘
I didn’t.’

Ashtray in hand, McKenna found himself gaping again.

‘I’d heard of him of course, but I’d never met him,’ Maggie went on. ‘There was no reason why I should.’

‘
How did you hear of him?’ McKenna asked, lighting his cigarette. ‘Through Iolo?’

‘
Why d’you keep asking me about Iolo? I thought you wanted to talk about Edith. I knew about Ned because he lived with her.’

‘
Why should I want to discuss Edith?’

‘
Because of what happened between her and Iolo,’ Maggie said. ‘I divorced him because of it, too. I felt gutted at the time, but she did me the biggest favour anyone’s ever done.’ Watching the expression on his face, she added: ‘Don’t you know? Oh, dear!’

‘
Did Edith have an affair with him?’

‘
If you want to make it sound like something worth having, I suppose you could call it that. He said he was in love with her, and I think she believed he was, too.’ Memory extinguished the sparkle in her eyes, and she flushed. ‘We had a
terrible
row, and I told her she was the sort who’d let the whole world rub up against her thighs, and never mind if a man was married.’ She sighed again. ‘To be fair, my marriage was over long before Edith came on the scene, and hers must’ve been, else she wouldn’t have needed to look elsewhere. She thought Iolo’d look after her, the way Harry looks after me. Poor woman! She wasn’t so lucky, was she? He left her in the lurch with a vengeance, and I’m not surprised she’s been on pills ever since. He seems to do that to women.’