The Last Detective (21 page)

We had not taken a couple of steps when a scene of pure melodrama unfolded. From the still-open door of the house came a voice in shrill protest: 'You can't walk out on me, for Christ's sake! Come back!' Then a woman with long, loose red hair appeared in the porch and dashed after the man, catching up with him as he opened the car door. She must have been some years older than he, with a face that was still pretty, yet with a strained, stretched look to the skin.

All this happened as Matthew and I passed the front of John Brydon House. I didn't like to take too obvious an interest, particularly as the woman was barefoot and wearing a pink silk dressing gown open to the thighs. I need not have troubled. The actors were too caught up in the drama to care about who was watching. The woman reached out and got a grip on the gold chain at the man's throat. She was trying to stop him from getting into the car. She cried out, 'Don't go, Andy, you can't do this to me! Come back in, please, please! What do you want me to do, get on my knees and beg?'

The man called Andy didn't answer. He was prising her fingers one by one from the chain as if he didn't want to risk snapping it. by thrusting her away from him. Meanwhile she clutched a mass of his blond hair with the other hand, but that didn't appear to trouble him. Having succeeded in saving the necklace, he gripped her wrists, forced her to her knees and then toppled her off balance with a light, contemptuous push. She cried, 'Bastard!' as her shoulder made contact with the gravel, but a stronger shove could have made it a lot more painful.

By the time the woman was on her feet again, Andy had got into the car and slammed the door. He started up the engine. She drummed her fists on the window and cried, 'Andy, I didn't mean that!' The Volvo crunched on the gravel, swung into the road and headed towards Bath. The woman ran as far as the entrance and watched it go. She was sobbing.

Matthew and I had raised our walking pace from a stupefied shuffle to a quick march towards our own car, which fortunately was parked in the opposite direction from the route the Volvo had taken. We got in and closed the doors.

'Who do you think they are?' Matthew asked.

I told him I hadn't the faintest idea.

'It's the right house.'

'I know. Phone books aren't always up to date. Maybe your professor sold it to these people and moved somewhere else. Anyway, I don't propose to knock on
that
door.'

'What was she shouting about?'

'It's none of our business. Something private.'

'Like sex, do you mean?'

'Matthew, that's enough.'

'She wasn't wearing anything under that dressing gown. Was she a prostitute, Ma?'

'Don't be ridiculous.' I started the car.

'I was only asking. You hardly ever talk to me about sex.'

Liberated youth! At his age, I almost died of shame when my mother told me what to expect - without once mentioning the reproductive organs by name.

I reversed the car and drove past the house. The woman had gone and the front door was shut. We drove down into Bath and parked in one of the spaces opposite the Orange Grove. I was glad to have the distraction of the other promise I'd given to Mat - the visit to the local history section in the central library. I took him downstairs and we passed a quiet half-hour taking books off the shelves and looking for references to Gay Street. We discovered it was named after someone called Robert Gay, who had owned the land on which it was built. 'Big deal!' said Mat. But we managed to compile a list of former residents and visitors that included John Wood, Tobias Smollett, Josiah Wedgwood, Jane Austen and William Friese-Green. Matthew wrote down the names and said he hadn't heard of any of them.

'You've got to find out. That's the purpose of the exercise,' I told him, trying to generate some enthusiasm. 'We'll walk to the reference library now and I'll show you where to look.'

I left him making notes from the
Dictionary of National
Biography
and went to buy a fresh parking card. When I got back to the car a large, familiar and not too welcome figure was waiting beside it.

Molly Abershaw greeted me by saying that the fellows on the taxi rank had spotted my car and suggested that I wouldn't be long in returning to it. Today she was in a multi-coloured poncho that she had probably bought from the Latin-American craft shop, i thought you'd like an early copy.' She handed me an
Evening Telegraph.

The main story was headed
PROFESSOR'S RESCUE
PLUNGE.
I read it rapidly. Clearly Mat and I could have saved ourselves some trouble if we'd picked up a telephone instead of peering over the wall of John Brydon House. Professor Jackman was confirmed as the hero of Pulteney Weir.

Molly Abershaw beamed and said, 'I must admit I'm quite chuffed with it. This has been my story from the beginning. It's really satisfying when you can follow it up like this.'

'So you spoke to the professor yourself?'

'After Mat put me on to him, yes. He's a bright lad.'

'Do you mean Mat?'

Molly Abershaw quivered with amusement. 'Both, I assume, but I did mean Mat, yes.' It was clear from the way she continued to smile that she had something else to raise. 'You didn't mind me speaking to Mat?'

'How could I object?' I said reasonably. I refused to be lured into saying anything controversial. 'He answers the phone if I'm out.'

'Very capably, too. Most kids his age speak in monosyllables. I'm sure the school makes a difference.'

'Possibly.' I was wary. I didn't want the school mentioned in the paper again and nor did Mat.

'May I ask, will you be going to see Professor Jackman to thank him personally?'

This was where Mat would have blurted out a graphic account of the incident at John Brydon House. Thanks to Mr Fortescue and his history assignment, however, the press was denied a salacious story. I answered with well-chosen words, 'We'll find some way of expressing our thanks, certainly.'

'I knew you would, and I can arrange it for you.'

'Oh, that won't be necessary,' I said quickly.

'You do want to meet him?'

'Yes, but -' My poise was gone.

'Shake his hand and all that?'

'Well, I expect so.'

'He's going to be at Waterstone's bookshop tomorrow. There's a signing by Ted Hughes and all the local literati are invited.'

'I couldn't possibly go.'

'Why not? It's open to the public. That's the point of these parties. It's all about selling books. You and Matthew-can sidle up to the professor and have a quiet word with him over a drink. Much easier than calling at his house or going up to the university.'

I wavered. It did sound painless.

Molly Abershaw added, 'And Mat won't have to take any time off school.'

'He's quite busy with services on Sunday.'

'In the afternoon?'

I conceded that on balance no better opportunity was likely to present itself for expressing thanks to Professor Jackman. Fickle creature that I am, I found myself wondering what to wear.

'I'll probably see you there, then,' said Molly Abershaw.

THAT SUNDAY LUNCHTIME, WATERSTONE'S BOOKSHOP in Milsom Street was teeming with people wanting a glimpse of the Poet Laureate, or his autograph. Just out of the scrum, Mat and I were at a temporary standstill between the fantasy and crime sections. We were keeping watch for another distinguished man.

Mat, under heavy protest, was in his red and white striped school blazer, grey trousers, white shirt and tie. I'd told him he couldn't turn up to an occasion like this in his usual Sunday choice of teeshirt and jeans, which the choir wore under their cassocks at the Abbey services. He'd grumbled to me that if any of his form-mates spotted him walking up Milsom Street in school uniform, his life would be hell next time he saw them. I'd pointed out that I could expect some flak myself from the taxi drivers if they saw me in a skirt.

'That's him!' Matthew said suddenly.

'Where?'

'In that group on the far side, close to the books.'

'There are books all around us.'

'Against the wall, under the
fiction
notice, just in front of the woman with the green hat. He's with the tall black man and that bald man with a bow tie.'

'Is that him?' I said. 'I imagined he was taller when I saw him on the television.'

'That's him all right,' Matthew insisted. 'He
is
quite tall.'

'Well, yes. It does look like him. You're right.'

Professor Jackman was talking animatedly to the people with him. With the black moustache and darting eyes and the hands vigorously reinforcing what he was saying, he looked more like a gondolier haggling over a fare than an academic. A communicator, obviously. No doubt his lectures were worth attending. I found myself wanting to get closer to hear what he was saying. Yet I was petrified by the prospect of interrupting him to introduce my son and myself. His reaction was impossible to predict.

Matthew, too, shrank from seizing the opportunity now that it had come. 'His hair is standing up more than when I saw him,' he said to me, blatantly marking time. 'Of course, it was wet. And he wasn't wearing a jacket.'

'That one is tailor-made, by the look of it,' I murmured. 'He must be hot.'

'So am I,'said Mat.

'There's a woman serving orange juice over there,' I said. 'Shall we see if it's for everyone?'

We'd not moved a couple of steps when I felt my arm touched and held. The air was warmer and there was a clank of metal jewellery. Molly Abershaw had found us.

'You're heading in the wrong direction, my loves. He's over there. My, you're looking smart, Mat. Come on, I'll introduce you.'

She cleared a route across the room, with Mat and me following like foot soldiers after a tank. The group around the professor was still listening keenly to his conversation.

'Professor Jackman?'

'Yes?' He turned, eyebrows raised at being interrupted in mid-flow.

'My name is Molly Abershaw. We spoke on the phone yesterday morning. I'm from the
Evening Telegraph:

The muscles at the edge of his mouth tightened. 'I thought it was agreed, Miss Abershaw, that I don't have any more to say to the press.'

The tank might have stopped advancing in one sense, but in another it trundled on. 'Relax, Professor. I'm not asking for a statement. I just want to introduce somebody to you - well, it's more of a reunion than an introduction, in point of fact. Remember young Matthew?' She placed her hand on Mat's shoulder as if there might be some uncertainty in identifying him. 'You can say your piece,

Before Matthew opened his mouth, Professor Jackman said tersely, 'There's no need.'

This is his mother, Mrs Didrikson,' said Molly Abershaw. 'They've come here specially to meet you.'

The bald man with the bow tie said, 'What's this, Greg -your past catching up with you?'

Molly Abershaw took a tighter grip on Matthew's shoulder and pushed him closer to the professor, saying at the same time, 'Stand back, Mrs Didrikson.'

Then a fresh voice said, 'Professor, would you look this way please?'

A camera flashed.

It was unexpected by everyone except the photographer and Molly Abershaw. In the mass of people I hadn't seen a camera until that moment. I was furious. The whole thing had been set up like an ambush and Mat and I appeared to he parties to it.

Professor Jackman said, 'What the hell is going on?'

'Hold it like that. One more,' said the photographer, a tall and bearded youth in a pink shirt.

The professor moved fast. He stepped forward, reached across the bookcase that the photographer was standing behind, grabbed him by the wrist and told him to open the camera and expose the film.

'I can't do that.'

'If you can't, I will.' He forced the hand and camera upwards.

'You'll damage it!' the photographer said.

'Do it, then.'

Molly Abershaw said, 'Hey, you've no right —'

'Correction,' the professor said without relaxing his grip.
'You
had no right. Bloody nerve you people have got. This is a party for Mr Hughes, not a football match.'

Heads were turning and conversation had ceased around us.

'All right, let go of my arm,' said the photographer.

Professor Jackman released his grip.

The photographer pulled the release to open the camera.

'Take out the film and give it to me,' the professor ordered. 'Yes, I want the film.' He pocketed it and turned away, looked at some people, said, 'Incident closed', and returned to the group with whom he had been in conversation.

He had his back to us. I couldn't possibly speak to him now and nor could Matthew. I was mortified and angry, more for Mat's sake than my own. It was a horrid outcome to Mat's decent wish to express his thanks, and Molly Abershaw was to blame. Not the professor. His angry reaction was understandable. We had been cynically used, all of us.

I glared across to where Molly Abershaw was conferring with the photographer.

'Leave it, Ma,' said Mat.

He was right. There wasn't any point in another scene. We left it.

A Pain in the Head

IN MANVERS STREET POLICE STATION, Diamond handed Dana Didrikson a mug of coffee and told her that a message had just come through about her son. Young Matthew had been delivered to his school boarding-house by a police patrol and they had left him watching the Benny Hill Show with some of his friends. 'So now you can relax,' he told her with a slight smile that conceded the absurdity of the suggestion, even if it was kindly meant.

She didn't respond, except to pass a slow glance around the interview room, its acoustic walls stained with coffee, cigarette-burns, hair-grease and undetermined substances. Over the past hour she had given a fair impression of a co-operative witness, recalling her first encounters with the Jackmans in a frank, dignified manner, as if the escape bid earlier in the evening had never happened, and it had always been her prime intention to talk to the police. Looking at her childishly small left hand as it rested quite flat on the wood table, apparently free of tension, Diamond was encouraged to think that Dana Didrikson was at peace with herself. Was it too much to hope, he wondered, that she had now resolved to confess to the murder and would presently explain in her unruffled style exactly how and why she had done it?

'Shall we go on?' he said, impatient to bring the interview to its climax.

Another tape was switched on, and John Wigfull, observing the letter of the law as usual, went through the ritual of assigning it with its number and stating the time and date.

'Let's take it from the party at Waterstone's, then,' Diamond cued her. 'You were obviously embarrassed by what had happened there.'

'Mortified.' She shook her head, remembering, and then explained how later that same day she had plucked up the courage to phone Jackman at home. He had been out, and Geraldine had answered, been perfectly charming and invited her over the same evening to a barbecue. It had seemed a good opportunity of speaking to the professor, without any obligation to stay for long. Better still, when she had got there she had been met outside by Jackman himself. He had suggested driving to a pub and over a couple of drinks they had ironed out all the misunderstandings.

Wigfull, chose to comment, 'So you two got on well when you were one-to-one?'

She declined to answer, and no wonder, Wigull's interruption, in Diamond's estimation, was about as well-judged as three cheers at a funeral. This wasn't the time to probe her relationship with Jackman - not when she was just getting into her narrative stride again.

Leaving a distinct pause as the remark sank away, Mrs Didrikson continued, 'He told me about the exhibition he was organizing in honour of Jane Austen, and the problems he was having collecting exhibits. Somehow the talk led on to Jane Austen's aunt, who was had up for shoplifting in Bath. Greg told me the story and funnily enough that rang a bell in my head, although I said nothing at the time. Oh, and he generously said he'd like to meet Mat again. He offered to take him swimming in the university pool.'

This time Diamond himself interrupted her, flagrantly doing the very thing that had caused him to glare at Wigfull.'Tell us about Jane Austen's aunt.'

'The shoplifting episode?'

'No. The reason it rang a bell.'

She took a sip of coffee first, and still the hand was remarkably steady. 'Well, you have to know that her name was Mrs Leigh Perrot. I think I told you about Mat and his history homework, and how I took him to the library to look up the famous residents of Gay Street.'

'The aunt lived there?'

She shook her head and betrayed some slight irritation. 'I'm trying to tell you, if you'll give me a chance. We started in the local history section in the basement at the main library, as I mentioned. The shelves were stuffed with books about Bath and Bristol and the towns round about, as you would expect, and while we were looking along the titles my eyes lighted on one that looked as if it had strayed from the zoology section. At a quick glance, I thought the title was
In Search of the Parrots.
When I picked it up, I realized my mistake. The word was
Perretts,
and it was by a George Perrett, a local man who had written this book about his family history. It didn't help our Gay Street researches, so I returned it to the shelf, but later, when Greg told me the story of Mrs Leigh Perrot, I privately decided to go back to the library and have a closer look at the book. It was just possible that I might discover something of interest to him ... and I thought how marvellous it would be if I could find out something he didn't know, something that might be of use in the exhibition, just as a mark of thanks for rescuing Mat.'

'You didn't say anything to Professor Jackman at the time?'

'No, there was no certainty that the book would mention Mrs Leigh Perrot.' And then Dana Didrikson pressed her hands together, locking her fingers tightly, slipping the reins of her composure as she recalled the moment. 'But it did,' she said with satisfaction. 'Tucked away in the middle was a paragraph pointing out that many of the Perrett family weren't considered worthy of mention in the various archives and what a pity it was that they had been so law-abiding, or they might have rated a mention somewhere,
like a certain Mrs Leigh Perrot,
who had been tried at Taunton in 1800 for shoplifting.' Her eyes dilated like a baby's. 'The name leapt out at me. It had to be Aunt Jane! And - even more exciting - the author added that there was a bundle of papers in the Wiltshire County Record Office containing an account of the trial and a letter signed by one of the Leigh Perrot family.'

'The Wiltshire CRO. That would be Trowbridge,' Wigfull put in stolidly, just to air his erudition, so far as Diamond could judge, but it sounded like a real dampener.

Thankfully Mrs Didrikson was too hyped up by the memory of these events even to pause. She went on to describe how she had gone to Trowbridge at the first opportunity and put in her application for the papers. To be honest, it was quite an anticlimax when they were put in front of me. The letter had been written by someone called John Leigh Perrot, and when I eventually deciphered the handwriting I found nothing of interest. And the account of the trial was very dull. I had a word with the assistant there, just in case they happened to have anything on file about Aunt Jane. He looked through a card index and consulted a computer, and found nothing. I was about to give up when one of the more senior people, an archivist, I think, came over and asked which name I was researching. I told her and she looked up the details of the acquisition of the papers I'd seen. She said one of her colleagues had been involved. Well, to cut it short, she made a call and this person on the end of the line was able to confirm that quite a stack of Leigh Perrot family letters had been offered for sale to the Record Office back in the 1960s, or whenever, and they had taken only a representative sample. Whoever had dealt with it had been unaware of the connection with Jane Austen. But they had the name of the man who had offered the letters, a Captain Crandley-Jones, from Devizes.'

'And you traced him?'

'Eventually. It took longer than I hoped. He wasn't in the phone book.'

'Meanwhile Professor Jackman had no idea you were on the trail of these letters?'

She shook her head. 'I didn't say a thing about it. It might so easily have come to nothing.'

'Then you contacted this man in Devizes?'

'His son-in-law. The captain had died, but I was given the address of his executor, the son-in-law, who lived on the Isle of Wight. I wrote to him and heard nothing for over two weeks. I thought the trail had gone cold, and of course there were only a few days left before the exhibition opened. Then one evening in the first week in September he phoned me. He said he'd been going through the captain's papers, and he'd found a receipt for the sale of a collection of sixty-three Perrot family letters. Sixty-three! The purchaser had been a stamp dealer in Crewkerne, named Middlemiss. He'd bought the lot in 1979 for £150. Naturally I drove down there the next day, and this time I was in luck... more luck than I could have dared to hope for. Mr Middlemiss still lived at the same address, and he still had the bulk of the Perrot letters. He'd bought the collection because some of the letters bore early postage stamps, which he'd sold at a good profit, I gathered. Then he'd put the rest into a box file and hadn't touched them since. He brought out the box and let me examine the contents.' Mrs Didrikson squeezed her eyes shut for a second. 'I can't begin to convey the excitement I felt going through those dusty old letters. They were in various hands and I suppose they covered a period of about eighty years. Some of' them had squares cut out, where postage stamps had been. Fortunately the ones that interested me would have been written before stamps came into use, whenever that was.'

Like the bright boy in school, Wigfull supplied the date: 1840.

But Dana Didrikson was too gripped by her story to notice. 'Imagine how I felt when I found two short letters dated as early as 1800, addressed to Mrs James Leigh Perrot, at The Warden's House, Ilchester Gaol, and signed
Yr
affectionate niece, Jane.
I'd struck gold.'

'Did Middlemiss realize their significance?' Diamond asked.

'I'm afraid I didn't tell him.'

'Naughty.'

She took it as a serious rebuke. 'I could never have afforded the price he'd ask. As it was, he wanted thirty pounds for them, and he thought I was just researching my family history. I paid cash and left. Was that dishonest?'

'No, it's fair game,' Diamond commented. 'The first rule of the open market: an object is worth no more and no less than your buyer is willing to pay for it. He was pitting his knowledge against yours. You were smart enough to know it was worth a bit and he didn't. You'd have been a fool to enlighten him. You needn't lose any sleep over it, except that you could probably have knocked him down to twenty-five pounds. They expect you to haggle.'

'I know - but I couldn't have stood the suspense.'

'So you got out fast.'

'And drove home picturing the moment when I would hand them over to Greg.'

'You were still in touch with him at this time?'

Mrs Didrikson hesitated, gripped the edge of the table with both hands and eased back, as if she sensed a trap in the question. 'I'd seen him on several occasions when he took my son swimming.'

'And to the cricket and the balloon festival,' Wigfull prompted her with sledgehammer subtlety.

That did it: frigidly, she remarked, 'You seem to know everything already.'

After an uncomfortable interval, Wigfull attempted to repair the damage. 'What I meant was that Professor Jackman went out of his way to be kind to your son.'

'Well, yes,' she conceded.

'Which gave you even more reason to make him a present of the Jane Austen letters.'

Diamond asked, 'When did you hand them over - the same evening?'

Again she paused before answering. Her fluency had gone and Diamond knew who to blame. 'Not that evening,' she answered eventually. 'A couple of days later.'

'On the eve of the exhibition, I heard,' said Diamond. 'What made you leave it so late?'

More unease showed in the way she grasped at her hair and flicked it off her shoulders. 'I, em ... When I got back from Crewkerne, there was, em ... an ugly scene with Geraldine Jackman. To my utter amazement, she was in my house, sitting in my living room drinking coffee.'

'Alone?'

'No. What happened was that while Mat was swimming with Greg up at Claverton, somebody phoned the Jackman house from Chawton - that's the cottage in Hampshire set up as a kind of Jane Austen museum - to say that permission had been given for Greg to borrow several extra pieces for his exhibition. Understandably, he was keen to go down to Chawton straight away, so he asked his wife to run Matthew home in her car, which she did. Out of politeness Mat thought he'd better invite Geraldine in for a coffee, and she accepted like a shot, which explains what I walked into. What I cannot explain is the vicious and quite unprovoked attack that woman made on me almost the moment I stepped into my own living room.'

Diamond briefly locked eyes with Wigfull in case he was moved to interrupt again. 'A physical attack?'

'No, I don't mean she hit me, but the force of it was almost physical. This was the first time we'd actually met, you understand. We'd spoken on the phone some weeks before, when she invited me to her party, and she'd sounded quite charming. I couldn't believe this was the same woman. In fact, I didn't know who she was for a moment. She just bombarded me with abuse.'

'What sort of abuse?'

'Do I have to repeat it?'

'Everything you can remember, please.'

Dana Didrikson fingered her hair again and looked down into the coffee mug, speaking in a low voice. 'She began by asking me who I thought I was kidding by driving around in a Mercedes when I was really the town bicycle.'

Wigfull asked, 'The what?'

'For Christ's sake, John,' Diamond rounded on him. 'Carry on, Mrs Didrikson.'

'I was more surprised than offended. I asked who she was and she said she happened to be married to the man I was currently humping. This was in front of my son, a twelve-year-old.' She looked up, her face creased in distress at the memory. 'Can you imagine? I asked him to leave the room. Poor child, he looked blitzed. And before he was through the door she launched into an accusation so twisted in its logic that I couldn't believe she meant it. She said I'd used Matthew as bait, to catch her husband. Having discovered that Greg was childless, I'd dangled Mat in front of him - those were the actual words she used - knowing how much he wanted a son of his own.'

'What did you say to that?'

The truth - that she was talking bloody nonsense and I'd never slept with her husband. Then of course she did her best to justify her crazy notions by bringing up the times I'd invited Greg in for coffee after he'd brought Mat home from the pool. I mean, a coffee and a biscuit in my kitchen isn't grounds for divorce, and I told her so. But in Geraldine's eyes everything was part of this web I'd spun -the swimming, the days out, the drink I'd bought Greg in the Viaduct . .. someone had seen us, of course. There was no shaking her. In the end I just stopped protesting and let her carry on in the hope she'd get it all out and go. That's what happened. She hadn't come to listen to my point of view. She just wanted to let off steam, and by God, she did. Finally she stormed out.'