The Wigmaker (7 page)

Angel rubbed his chin. It explained why he could smell paint. ‘And has everything been done?’

‘No. He’s building a gazebo in the grounds so that he can look out on Lord and Lady Tiverton in their garden and see what they’re up to. At least that’s what Jimmy Lyle says it’s for. And there’s going to be a marble fountain in the square at the front. It’s going to be huge and will spout water all day out of a fish’s mouth. It’ll cost eighty thousand pounds. What do you think to that, Mr Angel?’

He frowned. He didn’t know what to think of it. He pondered a moment. There were times when he would have liked to have shown his great passion and love of his dear wife, Mary, but it could never have amounted to anything like eighty thousand pounds. And he remembered that he would have to get that gas bill paid first.

‘Would you like to start by showing me the kitchen?’ he said.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

‘I
enjoyed that, Mrs Symington. Thank you. It’s got rid of that smell of paint.’

‘Put your cup in the bottom of the sink. It can go in the dishwasher later.’

‘Have the painters finished?’

‘Yes. Finished yesterday.’

‘Is everything else done?

‘Just about. My staff have finished bleach washing the bathrooms and in here. Can’t you smell it?’

He thought he could, but it wasn’t obvious. The smell of paint was predominant.

‘The laundry has come back,’ she said. ‘The dry-cleaning is back. There are men still steam-cleaning the carpets in the guest bedrooms. They should have finished the other day but they are nearly through. Where would you like to start? What exactly do you want to see?’

‘I don’t know, Mrs Symington. Everything, I suppose. I only know when I see it.’

She showed him the downstairs rooms, which were – as he’d come to expect – outrageously luxurious. He saw the patio with the Spanish outdoor furniture and the colourful parasol by the side of the swimming pool. She was directing him through the front hall where there was a big log fire in full blaze. As he passed it he felt no warmth from it at all.

He returned to it and stared at the flame flickering from the artificial logs and the red glowing cinders.

She watched him and smiled.

After a moment Angel said, ‘I thought it was the real thing.’

‘Everybody does.’

‘Does it get hot at all?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘There’s a thermostat up here.’ She pointed to a dial on a small control box hardly visible at the side of the chimney breast. ‘If you turn the thermostat at the side here, real gas flames come up, it’ll warm the place up a bit, but, of course, it isn’t intended to burn anything. And we always seem to feel warm enough in this house.’

Angel nodded.

‘If you follow me, we can take a look round upstairs,’ she said.

He nodded.

It was as sumptuous, spotless and magnificent as it was downstairs. The Chanceys’ dressing-room, off their bedroom, had wardrobes stuffed with clothes. When she opened Katrina’s wardrobe Mrs Symington pointed to the vast array of shoes. ‘Mr Chancey went really wild, you know,’ she said. ‘He threw all her old shoes away. Every pair. These are all new. Look at them. He knows that she is really crazy about shoes. Shortly after she went away, he came up here and took all her shoes.’

Angel blinked. ‘All of them? Well, how many pairs were there?’

‘I don’t know, but a lot.’

‘What did he do with them?’

‘Threw them away.’

He sighed.

‘She would sometimes change her shoes six times in a day. He knew that. He went out and bought thirty-six
new
pairs of shoes, just like that. Some of them are famous names. Cost the earth.’

Angel leaned forward and picked up a red leather shoe from a pair. He bounced one of them thoughtfully in his hand. He looked inside. He saw a figure ‘3’. He put it back, then picked up a single black shoe, similar to the red. He bounced that in the same way and looked inside. He blinked as he read off the figure. It was a ‘6’.

Mrs Symington saw him react. ‘What’s the matter, Inspector.’

‘Different size.’

She frowned. ‘Different size?’ she said, taking it from him and looking inside it.

‘Yes,’ he said leaning down to the other new shoes on the shoe rail on the wardrobe floor. He kept picking up a shoe, checking inside for its size, calling out its size, discarding it and picking up another.

Mrs Symington joined in and was calling out numbers in the range from ‘2’ to ‘8’.

‘They do make pairs, I believe,’ she said.

He agreed. ‘Yes, but they won’t all fit Mrs Chancey, that’s for sure.’ He put the last shoe down and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Beats me,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘Whatever was Mr Chancey thinking about?’

He turned to Mrs Symington and said, ‘Is there anybody who deals specifically with her clothes?’

‘Yes. Of course, Inspector. There’s Maria.’

She found a phone hanging conveniently on the wall in the dressing-room. She picked it up and summoned a young woman to the master bedroom. She introduced her and told Angel that in more normal times, Maria worked part-time. She attended to Mrs Chancey’s clothes, and cleaned and maintained the upstairs rooms and bathrooms. However, during the last two weeks she had put in many extra hours, as everybody else had, to accommodate Mr Chancey’s wish to make everything spotless, clean and shiny in preparation for his wife’s return.

‘Did you put these shoes here in the wardrobe, Maria?’ Angel said.

The young woman gaped down at the heap of untidy shoes on the floor. She wasn’t pleased.

‘Here, what you been doing with all them Miss Katrina’s shoes?’

‘What size is Mrs Chancey?’ Angel said. ‘These sizes are over the place.’

‘I noticed that,’ Maria said. ‘I don’t know what happened there. It was a delivery from Hemingford’s. You knows that, Mrs Symington?’

Hemingford’s was a luxury department store in Leeds. The Chanceys were frequent customers of the establishment.

‘That is so,’ Mrs Symington said. ‘They all came together in one carton. Mr Chancey told me thirty-six pairs of shoes were to be delivered. He said they were to go straight into his wife’s wardrobe, so when their van delivered it, I got Mr Lyle to bring the box upstairs, and I told Maria, and that’s all I know.’

Maria said: ‘And that’s all I know too. I opened the box, put the shoes in the wardrobe properly, in pairs. There were thirty-six pairs, and I took the empty boxes down to the paper-recycling bin in the back kitchen. What’s wrong with that?’

Angel rubbed his chin, dropped his head on one side, looked at Maria and smiled. ‘Nothing, Maria,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. I have to ask these questions. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s my job. All right?’

She shrugged.

Angel said: ‘Were you here when Mrs Chancey packed to leave for Rome?’

‘No,’ Maria said. ‘That was on a Saturday. Must have been late. I finish at noon on Saturdays. Sorry.’

‘Do you know what clothes she took?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I checked it against what she left behind. She must have packed in a hurry. She took three suits … they would be very hot in Rome, I would have thought, at this time of year, though, some blouses, tops, silver brush and comb set, almost all her make-up, and her silver sandals.’

Angel pursed his lips. ‘Anything else?’

‘Well,’ Maria said with a grin. She looked down at the carpet. ‘I don’t know if I should mention it…’ She put a hand in front of her mouth.

Mrs Symington’s eyes shot up and then down again quickly.

‘What’s that?’ she snapped.

‘Well, she didn’t take no underwear, nor any nightdresses,’ Maria said, her big eyes glancing from the house-manager to the policeman and back.

Mrs Symington glanced at Angel to see how he had taken this potentially embarrassing intelligence.

Angel’s face was as straight as a bobby’s truncheon. It wasn’t difficult. There was very little left to surprise him. He couldn’t care less what Katrina Chancey wore or didn’t wear in bed, on a catwalk or anywhere else. But he was not a happy bunny. Although he now accepted that Katrina Chancey hadn’t gone to Rome, he was no nearer finding out where she
had
gone, with whom and, indeed, where she was at that present time.

‘There’s no evidence, sir,’ Angel said. ‘That’s the problem.’

Harker sniffed, withdrew the white plastic menthol inhaler from out of his colossal red nose, replaced the cap, thrust it into his pocket and said, ‘Because, according to her gormless maid, a woman didn’t take the clothes which were appropriate for a holiday in Rome in April, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she didn’t go there.’

Angel sighed and said: ‘Well she didn’t arrive at the Hotel Leonardo Quincento in Rome, where her husband had booked for her; she didn’t fly on flight 183A from Leeds/Bradford to Heathrow and catch flight 221 Heathrow to Rome, which her husband had bought tickets for; and we are unable to discover any local taxi service, private hire car, bus, or friend who collected her from the house and delivered her to the airport that Saturday morning.’

Harker’s face changed. ‘Oh? You’ve checked it all out?’

‘Everything, sir. And according to her husband, her own car was still in the garage at the house. So she didn’t drive herself.’

‘Well, there’s only one conclusion to be drawn then, isn’t there? She’s hopped off with a boyfriend and is living it up in some love-nest or discreet hotel somewhere.’

Angel frowned and bit his bottom lip.

‘Aye,’ Harker continued. ‘And somewhere where the climate is not as hot as in Rome.’

Angel wasn’t at all sure about that, but he had a murder case to deal with, and while he was messing about looking for the wife of a friend of the chief’s, a killer was running around scot free.

‘Are you happy to tell the chief that then, sir?’

Harker pulled a face. Angel could see he was far from happy about it. Mind you, he would have said that it was difficult to remember anything Harker had ever been happy about. He watched him. He really was an ugly man. He could have modelled masks for Halloween.

At length Harker sighed and rubbed his hand across his mouth.

Angel said: ‘I’ve still got a murder case on my hands, sir. That wig maker. I need to get back to that. I don’t want it going cold on me.’

‘Aye. All right. All right. I’ll tell him. I don’t know quite what I’ll tell him, but I’ll tell him.’ He sniffed and rubbed his bony chin.

‘You can tell him that without a ransom note, or a witness of foul play or her dead body, we can’t do—’

‘All right. All right. If I want a bloody scriptwriter, I’ll hire one.’

Angel came out of the superintendent’s office and stormed down the green corridor. Harker always managed to make him angry; he must have had a degree in cussedness and taken extra lessons in annoyance. Anyway, Angel was relieved to be able to concentrate on finding Peter Wolff’s murderer.

As he passed the CID room Ahmed saw him whiz by and ran behind him all the way to his office.

At the door, Angel turned round, saw him and said: ‘Now Ahmed, what is it lad?’

‘Came in the post, sir,’ Ahmed said, waving an envelope. ‘Addressed to you.’

Angel took it and opened it while still on the move into his office. He nodded to Ahmed to close the door.

Inside the envelope was a postcard-size photograph of a suit of armour. Angel’s head came up; he had forgotten all about Lord Tiverton’s missing suit of armour, so much had happened. He turned the photograph over: it was perfectly blank. He turned it back again; the armour looked very heavy, black and cumbersome.

‘Ahmed. Get that copied and distributed to all forty-three forces. Send a copy to my mate at the Art and Antiques unit, DI Matthew Elliott. With the caption, ‘stolen last month’, and a note to say that if anybody knows anything about it to contact me at any time and give my mobile number. All right? If it’s on the market, looking for a buyer, it’ll turn up.’

‘Right, sir,’ Ahmed said and turned away.

Angel called him back. ‘Ahmed! Find DS Crisp for me. I don’t know where that lad gets to.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ahmed said, and rushed out.

Angel sighed and rubbed his chin. He looked round and began to wonder where to begin.

The phone rang. He picked it up. ‘Angel.’

It was a young PC on reception.

‘SOCO are here with a filing cabinet for you, sir. They say it’s very heavy. Full of papers. They want to know where you want them to put it.’

Angel looked round his little office. In the corner by the stationery cupboard was an ordinary police-issue chair, used only when he had more than one visitor at a time. He could soon sling that out. ‘Bring it down here,’ he said. ‘In my office. I’ll show them where.’

He replaced the phone, rubbed his chin, picked the phone up again and dialled a number.

‘Mac? Michael Angel. How you doing with that post mortem on Peter Wolff?’

‘The practical’s done. Just got to tidy up my notes and have them typed out.’

‘I’ll come round.’

After he’d had the filing cabinet safely delivered into his office Angel drove across the town to Bromersley general hospital. And found his way to the mortuary.

It was a brightly lit, white tiled mausoleum behind locked doors. Although he had been there many times he never got used to the smell of ammonia and body fluids, the hum of refrigeration motors and regular rattle of metal fan belt covers, the sound of flushing water, cisterns filling and the minions in green overalls and masks flitting silently around with buckets and hosepipes. It was not the stagey glamour and sophistication seen on television.

He made his way across narrow drains and wet tiled floors to Mac’s tiny office.

‘Come in, Michael,’ the Scotsman said.

‘Thank you, Mac,’ Angel said. He tugged the long switch-cord for the fan as he passed it. ‘No objection to fresh air, have we?’ He nodded up at the Vent-Axia in the sloping glass ceiling high above them.

‘I get used to it.’

Angel’s nose wrinkled up. He never would.

‘Sit down. There’s not much to tell.’

Angel took the chair and waited.

Mac reached out for a file. He opened it and began to read.

‘Peter Wolff. Height: Five feet, eleven inches tall. Weight: eleven stones, two pounds. Age: thought to be between forty-five and fifty years.’

‘What did he die of, Mac?’

‘Gunshot wound to the heart.’

‘How many shots?’

‘Just the one. A .202. A handgun, I should think, fired only a few inches away. His chest, the quilt and sheet covered in powder.’

‘Any signs of a struggle? Any other wounds?’

‘No. None. It looks as if he was unaware of the approach of any intruder. He was shot, and died instantly.’

‘Nothing else? Anything interesting under his fingernails, for instance?’

‘Fragments of cheese. He seemed to have had a cheese sandwich or something with cheese in it four to six hours before death.’