A Clubbable Woman (20 page)

The room was in a state of some disorder, but as yet, the little cool area at the back of Alice’s mind told her, no permanent damage had been done.

The evening paper flung aside violently and scattering into its separate half-dozen sheets accounted for a good fifty per cent of the chaos. A coffee cup had been knocked off the arm of Fernie’s chair, but there wasn’t much left in it and the stain would be easily removable. The saucer had broken, however.

A single cushion had been hurled across the room and it lay on the edge of the fireplace. She would have to move it before it singed. It had struck the wall and disturbed a line of three china ducks. The middle one looked as if it had been shot and was going into its final dive. Even as she observed this, it did just that, slithered off the nail which supported it and plunged headfirst into the deep blue of the mantelpiece.

That was no great loss, either. She’d never liked them much; in fact she had only kept them up so long because Mary Connon long ago, almost on her first visit to the house, had been openly patronizing about them. It was a kind of V-sign, ever present, to keep them there.

But now that reason was gone, and the memory that remained of it seemed rather mean and cheap. It was time they were down.

All these thoughts and observations co-existed with the words she was hurling across at her husband.

‘You’ll end up in jail!’ she yelled. ‘Or you’ll be paying damages for the rest of your life!’

‘It’s a free country!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll say what I bloody well think. I’m as good as he is. There’s one law for us all!’

‘You were lucky last time!’ she screamed. ‘He didn’t care for the law. He just worked you over a bit, put you in hospital, big man!’

‘Let him try that! Bloody rugby players! Bloody cream-puff. I’ll take him apart.’

‘Can’t you
see,
Dave? Are you blind? You’ll just get us all in trouble. We’ve had enough. Can’t you leave it alone?’

The note of appeal in her voice was obviously analysed as a sign of weakness.

‘Leave it alone? Why should I, for God’s sake? I reckon the man’s knocked off his wife and he’s getting away with it! Someone’s got to say something. The bloody law won’t!’

There was a brief pause, Alice silent in despair, Fernie for want of breath.

Through the silence rang a bell as if signalling the end of a round in a boxing match.

‘Who the hell’s this?’ snarled Fernie.

Alice didn’t answer. She was moving round the room at great speed for so heavily built a woman. The newspaper resumed its normal shape, the broken duck and the pieces of saucer were dropped in the coal scuttle, Fernie got the cushion back hard in his chest.

The bell rang again.

Smoothing back her hair, Alice went to the front door and opened it.

Pascoe stood there.

‘Hello, Mrs Fernie. I was beginning to think the bell was broken.’

‘Who the hell is it?’ asked Fernie again from the living-room.

Pascoe walked in with a smile.

‘It’s only the bloody law, Mr Fernie.’

Fernie glowered at him, corrugating his eyebrows to aggressive bristles.

‘You’ve been listening at keyholes, have you? What a job!’

‘Dave,’ hissed Alice.

Pascoe was unconcerned.

‘Not necessary, Mr Fernie. Anyone passing could hear you loud and clear.’

‘We’re not worried about what people hear, Sergeant,’ said Alice fiercely.

‘No? You sounded worried, Mrs Fernie. And I think you’ve got cause to worry.’

Alice’s angry flush faded to pale anxiety.

‘Is that why you’re here?’

‘Not primarily, but now it’s come up we might as well talk about it. Mr Fernie, I gather you’ve been making certain allegations about your neighbour, Mr Connon.’

‘Neighbour? He’s no neighbour of mine. Neighbours are on this side of the road only in this street. And what if I have anyway? What’s it to you?’

‘Nothing officially, yet. If we think that what anyone says is likely to cause a breach of the peace, then we’ll act. I gather you have said things in the past which caused a breach of the peace?’

‘Mind your own bloody business!’

‘Dave thought someone was running around with a neighbour’s wife,’ said Alice quietly. ‘He said so. Often. Someone beat him up one night. They never got anyone’

‘But you think it was something to do with the slander?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Slander? What’s this about slander?’

‘Nothing yet, Mr Fernie. Slander normally involves a civil action. If you say a man has killed his wife, you are damaging his reputation and he is entitled to damages which could be considerable. Your only defence would be that you did not publish the slander, which in this case would be very difficult, I feel. Or you might plead that it was not slanderous because it was true. Even this is not always an acceptable defence, I should add. The truth can often be slanderous if it is put in certain ways. But still, it would be your best bet.’

‘Best bet? But there isn’t a case, is there? He wouldn’t dare!’

‘Why are you so certain of this, Mr Fernie? What proof have you got of your allegations?’

There was a long uncomfortable silence in which Pascoe noticed the missing duck, the broken china in the scuttle, and Alice noticed him noticing.

‘You have no proof, do you, Mr Fernie?’

Fernie said nothing. Alice put her hand over his.

‘You have nothing more than a dislike of Mr Connon and a very nasty twist in your mind which is going to get you into very serious trouble indeed. If I hear of one more occasion on which you make these allegations I shall feel it my duty to pass them on to Connon myself. Do I make myself clear?’

Fernie still said nothing.

‘Very clear, Sergeant,’ said Alice quietly.

Pascoe ignored her.

‘I say you have no reason other than a dislike of Connon, Mr Fernie. I hope this
is
your only reason for wanting to accuse him?’

Fernie shifted uncomfortably. The anger seemed to have gone out of him.

‘It stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ he argued. ‘I mean, her, with her always flaunting herself.’

‘What other reason, Sergeant?’ asked Alice. ‘What other reason could there be?’

‘Mrs Fernie, I’d like to speak to your husband alone if I may.’

Alice looked from Pascoe to Dave, her face tense with worry.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘What’s this then, Sergeant?’ said Fernie.

‘I won’t go,’ said Alice, with sudden determination. ‘We’ve got nothing to hide from each other.’

Pascoe shrugged.

‘All right. Mr Fernie, you said that Mary Connon was always “flaunting herself’. Those were your words, I think?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What did you mean?’

‘Mean? Well, I meant she was, well, always showing herself off, you know, putting on the style. Mutton dressed as lamb.’

‘Was that all?’ asked Pascoe.

Fernie looked around the room, not quite focusing on anything. Alice felt a little knot of fear tying itself in her belly.

‘Yeah, that’s all. What else?’

Pascoe reached in his pocket and pulled out a notebook.

‘Mr Fernie, Detective-Constable Edwards who interviewed you on the morning after Mrs Connon was killed, said in his very comprehensive report that you had noticed the police arrive the previous night. You knew something was up.’

‘That’s right. Make enough bloody noise, don’t you?’

‘To the best of my recollection, very little was made that night. In any case, according to Edwards, reference was made to you standing looking out of your front window for some time. Is that true?’

‘No. Well, yes. I don’t know. What’s some time? I can look out of my own window, can’t I?’

‘Of course. What were you looking at? Or waiting for?’

Alice Fernie had taken enough of this. She leaned forward angrily.

‘Come on, Sergeant. What are you getting at? Are you trying to suggest Dave
knew
something was going to happen?’

‘Did you, Mr Fernie? Did you know? Or were you just hoping for something?’

Fernie was obviously in some distress. He looked at his wife, then at Pascoe, picked up the newspaper and began fiddling with it.

‘Know? How could I know? Of course not. No, it was just that…’

Suggest an accusation of the larger to get an admission of the smaller, thought Pascoe smugly. But never forget, he admonished himself, that this is no proof that the larger isn’t accountable also.

‘Something to do with Mary Connon? Flaunting herself,’ he prompted.

Fernie was now talking to his wife, rapidly, with just a hint of pleading.

‘It was just that a couple of times I’d been looking out, or I’d just glance up as I passed, and, well, I’d seen her there. The light blazing, curtains not drawn. Well, Christ, of course I looked. What man wouldn’t? I mean you could see everything. Everything. I’d have said something to you, love, but she was your friend.’

Alice just looked at him speculatively.

‘Not very nice, really,’ said Pascoe. ‘Being a peeping Tom.’

Fernie grew indignant.

‘Peeping Tom nothing! All I did was look. I wasn’t hiding or anything. And make no mistake about it, she knew I was there. She knew she had an audience. That’s what I meant by flaunting. She’d yawn, you know, like they do to show off, stretch her arms right back so that her …’

He glanced anxiously at his wife.

‘Breasts?’ she suggested amiably.

‘… stuck right out. Right out,’ he repeated.

‘She had a big figure,’ said Alice, as though some explanation was needed.

‘Mr Fernie,’ said Pascoe, ‘do you ever use the phone-box outside in the street?’

Fernie looked puzzled.

‘Yes, I’ve used it. I phoned your lot from it the other night. Why?’

‘Did you ever ring the Connons’ house from it?’

‘No,’ said Fernie. ‘Why should I?’

He looked even more puzzled but Pascoe could see from Alice’s face that she was beginning to get the picture.

‘Did you ever write a letter to Mrs Connon?’

‘No. Never. What the hell’s all this about?’

‘Sergeant,’ said Alice, ‘had someone been phoning Mary? And writing to her?’

Pascoe nodded.

‘Phoning her perhaps. Writing to her certainly. Did she ever say anything to you?’

Alice put her finger to her brow in the classic pose of thought. It did not look affected on her.

‘No, nothing,’ she said. ‘But are you trying to say that Dave here might have been the man writing?’

Fernie’s face lit up with amazement, followed by red indignation.

Could anyone really be that slow on the uptake? wondered Pascoe. Even complete innocence? Perhaps complete egotism could.

Fernie was on his feet now.

He’s going to shout again, thought Pascoe.

‘Now listen here, you, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I don’t have to sit in my own house and …’

‘Sit down and be quiet, Dave,’ said Alice.

He obeyed instantly.

‘Thank you, Mrs Fernie,’ said Pascoe.

‘Sergeant,’ she said. ‘These letters. Do you have them with you?’

‘Not the originals,’ he said. “They’ve got to be carefully looked after and tested. Ink, paper, that kind of thing. Fingerprints. I’d like to take your husband’s prints if I may. I’ve brought the stuff.’

He knew that only a few not very helpful smudges had been found after Mary Connon’s prints, taken from the dead woman’s fingers at the post-mortem, had been eliminated. But it was always worth putting a scare into people.

Fernie looked as if he was ready to explode again, but Alice nodded and he subsided.

‘I’ve got a photostat copy of one of them, though,’ he went on. ‘Why?’

‘May I see it?’ she asked.

He looked dubiously at her.

‘I’m a big girl now,’ she said. ‘I stopped reading fairy tales years ago.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Here you are.’

He handed it over. She read through it quickly once. Then more slowly a second time.

To his surprise a smile began to tug at her cheeks and when she finished the second reading she laughed aloud as though in relief.

‘Is there something funny?’ he asked politely.

‘Not to you, Sergeant. But to me. It’s the thought of my Dave writing this.

‘I’m no psychiatrist but I’ll tell you one thing. That letter was written by some poor, unhappy, twisted, frustrated man with a rather scanty knowledge of women. My Dave may be a bit short on mouth control, he may talk too much, he may not know how to make friends and influence people …’

‘Alice!’ interjected her husband, outraged. But she went on as if he wasn’t there.

‘… but whatever else he is, he’s not frustrated. If he sees a woman undressing in a window, he’ll stop and have a look. Who wouldn’t? You would!’

Oh yes, thought Pascoe, yes, I would.

‘Especially if she’s like Mary Connon. She was a big woman. But I’m no nymphet myself,’ she said proudly. ‘Anything she had, I had too, and it was thirteen years younger, and readily available to my husband as, when, and how he liked to use it. Any man can be unfaithful, but it takes special circumstances to write a letter like that.’

She finished, slightly flushed, but looking him defiantly straight in the eye. Fernie was regarding her with some awe.

‘You may be right, Mrs Fernie,’ said Pascoe. ‘Now, if I can just take your prints, Mr Fernie, I won’t bother you any more.’

‘Do you think whoever wrote those letters killed poor Mary?’ she asked as she saw him out of the door.

‘Perhaps,’ said Pascoe.

‘You can cut Dave right out,’ she said with a smile. ‘He couldn’t hurt anyone. He goes queasy at those doctor programmes on the telly.’

Pascoe felt inclined to agree with her as he drove along Boundary Drive. Still, it was as well to keep an open mind. But all that had really happened that evening, he thought, was that he had developed something that was very nearly envy of Dave Fernie.

Dalziel’s superiors would not have been happy to see him. He had already been seen once that day. A progress report had been requested. He had asked if what was wanted was a detailed account of the whole course of the investigation so far or a brief statement of what was known.