A Clubbable Woman (19 page)

It was, after all, his job too.

But the past few days
had
been depressing. Things had seemed to be opening up. For a while there had been a feeling that they were asking the right questions and that at any moment the individual answers would shuffle themselves into a significant total. But they remained ragged, unfinished, unproductive. The enquiry’s initial impetus was being lost and now they were all groping. Other matters, important and routine, had arisen. New demands on time and men were being made all the time.

‘Yes, I suppose it will,’ said Dalziel.

‘Will what?’

‘Soon be Christmas.’

‘Thanks,’ acknowledged Pascoe satirically, but for once Dalziel ignored him.

‘Something’ll happen soon. Something pretty big. We’re stretched as it is. Something will happen that will almost snap us. It always does,’ he ended with sour satisfaction. ‘Just before Christmas.’

‘What had you in mind?’

‘Anything. Have you never noticed? Look, there’s good reasons. People need more money at Christmas, even crooks. And there’s more about. In the shops; in the wage-packets; moving to and from the banks. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘And it’s darker. Gloomier. Half the bloody day. Makes it all seem easier. Darkness encourages other things too. Children have to come home in it. Women in lonely places are there more in the dark than at any other time of the year. Or if you want something else, the weather’s rotten as well. Cars crash easier. Trains hit ice on the rails. Planes lose themselves in fog and drop out of the sky into city centres.

‘But most often there doesn’t seem to be any good reason. Things happen just because it’s Christmas. Life showing its arse at the universal party.’

‘It’s the other way round, isn’t it, sir? Things are just more striking if they happen against the background of Christmas. Now I bet if you looked at it statistically …’

The very word, as Pascoe had half intended, was enough to jerk Dalziel out of his reverie back to his normal state of being.

‘Statistically!’ he sneered. ‘If you’re not superstitious yet, son, you bloody well get superstitious. And stuff your statistics!’

‘Up life’s arse at the universal party?’ enquired Pascoe politely.

Dalziel laughed, almost sheepishly for him.

‘I said that? It must be the high-class company I keep. But I mean what I say. Get superstitious. One of us had better get lucky soon.’

Pascoe looked ruefully at the piles of paper which had accumulated since the enquiry started.

‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘I can’t agree. It’s not luck we want now. It’s a computer. The answer, or at least,
an
answer, is in here somewhere.’

‘We’re just waiting for it to rise to the surface are we, Sergeant? Have you noticed in the detective books how there’s always something bothering the private-eye’s subconscious? Some little oddity of behaviour or event which, when he recalls it, will prove the key to the whole problem. But it’s not like that, is it, Sergeant? Nothing is odd because there’s no norm. Or everything’s odd. I mean, look at this lot we’ve got ourselves mixed up with. All of them, known and unknown, thrashing around in uncontrolled sexual activity like midnight at a Roman orgy.’

‘It’s like midnight all right. It’s catching them at it that’s difficult. If only we knew! Is there anything going on between Connon and Gwen Evans? That gives us some kind of motive if there is, but there’s damn’ little evidence. She might have phoned him up when we brought Evans in. It seems likely she did, but we don’t know for sure. He might have gone to see her that Saturday night. Fernie saw him going into the house. Evans says the car was there when he went round. But the only person who could tell us whether Connon was in or not is Mary Connon, and she’s dead.’

‘Gwen Evans isn’t.’

‘No, but she says she was round at the local. The landlord knows her well, but couldn’t remember seeing her that night. He said he’d ask the staff when they got in. He hasn’t contacted me, so I assume no one saw her. But she could still have been there.’

Dalziel took a noisy sip from the cup in front of him and pulled a wry face.

‘It’s gone cold. Carry on Sergeant, do. I’m stuck for something else to do at this minute, so I might as well listen.’

Pascoe inclined his head in acknowledgment of the favour.

Thank you for your enthusiastic reception. Then there’s this letter writer, or rather, these letter writers. We’re no further forward with either. You got no help on the first at the Club, and anyone from a dirty old man to a randy adolescent could have written the others.’

‘They did suggest a combination of experience and athleticism,’ smirked Dalziel. He must have caught a shade of disapproval in his sergeant’s poker-face for he added, ‘Don’t be so strait-laced, Sergeant. They’re just so much pornography and none of us turn up our noses at a bit of that now and then. They probably haven’t anything at all to do with the case. And if it’s that girl you’re thinking of, forget it. They’re tough nowadays. You heard her. It’s a bloody permissive society.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Pascoe. But he could not dismiss the thought of Jenny Connon so easily. He had never been short of girl-friends, not at university anyway. But he had discovered that joining the police had, for one reason or another, cut him off very largely from his old source of supply. The reaction of several members of his old student circle had surprised him. There had been nothing dramatic, no great debate, just a lot of jokes and heavy irony to start with, then a gradual, gentle separation.

Plus, of course, he admitted to himself wryly, the fact that the hours and the work don’t make me the ideal boy-friend, let alone husband. Still, there’s always that little bit of vitality Sheila whatsit, Lennox, that’s it, down at the Club. Now she’d shown an interest. Young perhaps. But Jenny’s age at least.
And
enthusiastic. If Dalziel found out he’d laugh for seven days.

‘To get back to the letters, sir,’ he said.

‘We’d left them had we? Daydream on your day off, will you.’

‘Sir. Well, I’ve read them pretty closely and though there’s no date or any positive indication in them of the order in which they were written, there does seem to be a progression of a sort. I mean, two of them seem as if they are referring back to something which has happened since the first two.’

Dalziel was interested.

‘You mean, they’d met. Or something like that?’

‘No, nothing as positive as that. It’s as though the show had become somehow more spectacular. All the time he’s writing as if he’d seen her undressing, but there’s something just a bit more theatrical about the last two.’

‘You’re being vague again, Sergeant. We’ll get no further on with vagueness. We need something positive.’

There was a knock on the door and the station sergeant stuck his head round.

‘Excuse me, sir. There’s a Mr Wilkes here to see Sergeant Pascoe.’

‘Is there now? Wheel him in here, then.’

‘And there’s a telephone call for you, sir. From a Mr Roberts.’

‘Christ, I ask for something positive and they come shooting at us from all angles. Right, Sergeant, you take your boy elsewhere and I’ll see what jolly Jacko, the life and soul of the party, wants.’

Pascoe got up and went out. He saw Antony standing talking animatedly to a rather bewildered looking police constable who looked relieved to get away.

‘Hello there, Sergeant,’ he said brightly. ‘I was just enquiring of that officer whether in fact he was formally trained in deliberateness of manner. Perhaps you as a graduate in Social Sciences
and
a policeman could tell me?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you, sir,’ said Pascoe woodenly.

‘There you go!’ said Antony. ‘And the reason why I asked to see you rather than your superintendent was that you looked capable of rising above it.’

‘What did you want to see me about, Mr Wilkes?’

‘I’m sorry. Have I been offensive? It’s just sheer nervousness, I assure you. It’s like coming into a hospital.’

Pascoe looked closely at the smiling youth. Suddenly he believed him. He was nervous. No one could appear as self-confident as this boy and not be nervous. Almost no one.

‘Come in here,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

‘Here’ was an empty interview room.

‘What do you want to say to me?’

Antony perched himself comfortably on the edge of the table.

‘It’s about the letters. A piece of impudence on my part, really, but I have a strong sense of civic duty. Mr Connon when I arrived told me about the letter Jenny received and also about your warning to him that there might be phonecalls also. This made me think. I wondered if perhaps the letters Mrs Connon had received could have been associated with phone-calls as well.’

Pascoe sighed at the arrogance of youth in general and this youth in particular.

‘The thought had occurred to us, sir. There’s little chance of checking up on it. We did ask Mr Connon if he recalled any unusual telephone calls - any that he answered, I mean, when the caller just rang off. He said no. And it would be curious if Mrs Connon took one while he was there and said nothing of it.’

‘Or even when he was not there. But she hadn’t mentioned the letters.’

‘No, sir. Well, if that’s all …?’

He moved to the door.

‘Oh please, Sergeant. I would not presume to try to do your job. No, I haven’t come down here with suggestions - that would be presumptuous - but with information, or what might be. This chap had obviously been watching Mrs Connon in her bedroom, from the street almost certainly, or the garden. When I was waiting at the Connons the other night before you all so efficiently arrested me, I had occasion to use the phone-box almost opposite the house. I rang my parents to say where I was. I also took the opportunity of giving them Mr Connon’s phone number so they could contact me if they wished. To do this, I had to look in the directory.’

‘And?’

‘And it was heavily underlined.’

Pascoe’s mind was racing so fast he had to make an effort of will to bring it under control. Two or three small elements on the edge of the puzzle seemed to be coming together. But whether they were related directly to the main body of the puzzle was not yet clear. But it was a possibility. But that’s all it is, he told himself. A possibility has been suggested to you. Nothing more. A theory.

But he could hardly wait to get rid of Antony so that he could test it.

‘It seemed odd at the time,’ the youth went on, unconscious of his sudden undesirability. ‘Why should anyone want the telephone number of a house only twenty yards away?’

‘I can think of a dozen good reasons,’ smiled Pascoe. ‘But I’m very grateful to you, Mr Wilkes. Thank you for coming. If there’s ever anything else you would like to tell me, please call in.’

‘Do I detect a note of irony?’ asked Antony cheerfully. ‘Then I will be off. I am a sensitive plant. Like asparagus, I take a long time to grow and am easily killed off.’

‘But you have a most delicate flavour all of your own,’ said Pascoe as he ushered him out.

‘Saucy,’ said Antony. “Bye!’

Dalziel was still on the phone. Pascoe began sorting rapidly through the papers on his desk.

Dalziel put the phone down with a ping that rippled violently across the room.

‘Roberts,’ he said.

‘I know,’ said Pascoe.

‘Tell me, why do I have to pay my informants a quid or more a time while you have snouts who could buy and sell both of us and who rush to buy you drinks whenever you appear?’

‘Beauty,’ said Dalziel. ‘I have a beautiful soul. What’re you doing?’

‘Just reading a report.’

Quickly he told Dalziel what he had just learned from Antony and of the train of thought this had started in his mind.

When he finished Dalziel nodded appreciatively.

‘I like that,’ he said. Then, almost modestly he added, I’ve got a little something too. Perhaps there is a God.’

He rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

There isn’t a God, thought Pascoe. No one capable of creating kangaroos could have resisted hitting him in the face with a divine custard pie.

‘What did he give you?’

‘Nothing much, really. Some odds and ends. But one interesting thing about a gentleman we may have overlooked. Mr Felstead.’

‘Tubby little Marcus?’ laughed Pascoe. ‘Well, he is overlookable.’

‘Don’t underestimate him. He’s a man of parts, used to be a very nippy little scrum-half, and he’s still a very enthusiastic wing-forward.’

‘Was,’ amended Pascoe. ‘He seems to have given up. That’s what he said on Saturday. What about him anyway?’

‘Well, his best service to the Club at the moment is perhaps in the club-house. He’s not married, he’s keen, reliable, and he has a lot of time. So he helps a hell of a lot. With the bar, that kind of thing.’

‘So.’

‘He was on the bar the night Mary Connon was killed.’

‘I know. It’s in here somewhere.’

Pascoe struck his papers with the palm of his hand. A little dust drifted up.

‘So was Sid Hope.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, from his own graphic account of the exit and re-entry of Evans that night, was Ted Morgan. But you never asked him why.’

‘Well, he did begin to go on about it being unusual for him to be that side of the bar, but I told him to get on with it.’

‘Not bullying him, I hope, Sergeant,’ he said reproachfully.

It was Pascoe’s turn to roll his eyes at the heavens.

‘Anyway,’ said Dalziel, ‘Morgan was on because Felstead was off.’

‘Off?’

‘For almost two hours. Off. No one knows where.’

He stood up and reached for his hat.

‘What’s worse, no one has
asked
where.’

Pascoe stood up too.

‘Would you like me to …?’

‘No thank you, Sergeant. I’ll have a chat. Tonight. You’ll be out yourself, won’t you? Drop in at the Club later and exchange notes.’

He put his hat on, flung his coat over his arm and went to the door.

‘And Sergeant,’ he said, as he closed it behind him.

‘Marcus Felstead has a car. A cream-coloured Hillman. See you later.’

Dave Fernie was shouting at his wife. Alice Fernie was shouting at her husband.