A Clubbable Woman (28 page)

‘Yes. I expect so. He told me he came determined to see us both. He’d been tempted to talk to me for some time, he said. But when he asked where I was, Mary told him I was sleeping it off upstairs. She said I was drunk. She must have been up to see where I was earlier and found me on the bed. She’d undone my collar, I think,’ he added, as though in irritation.

‘Anyway they had a row; or rather, Marcus told me, he yelled and threatened while she just sat and smiled at him. Finally there was a pause and they heard a movement upstairs. I don’t know whether it was me or Stanley.’

‘Stanley?’ said Jenny in surprise. ‘Stanley who?’

‘I’ll explain later, love,’ he said. ‘She got up then and said it was time I came down to hear what my so-called best friend thought of her. She went to the door and opened it, then screamed. Marcus went after her just in time to see someone scuttle across the hall and out of the front door. He’d thrown something down. It was an air- pistol. Marcus picked it up and was going after the intruder, but she stopped him. He said he had a feeling that she thought she knew who it was. If it was Stanley, he was probably right. Well, to cut things short, it all started again. Things got very nasty from the sound of it. Mary suggested they should ring Arthur and ask him what he thought about the affair. Marcus said he was still waving the pistol around. She laughed at him and asked him if he imagined he was a gangster or something. He told me he thought of firing it at her then, but as he lifted it up, he said that the slug came trickling out of the barrel and dropped on the chair beside her. It must have looked a bit absurd. Mary thought it was hilarious. According to Marcus she made a big thing of it, saying things like, “was he going to kill me, then? With his little toy gun?” that kind of thing. She reached out, he said, and lifted the gun up till it rested against her forehead. That’s when I must have come down. Then, Marcus said, still laughing she pressed his finger where it was over the trigger.’

He ran his hand over his face nervously.

‘I’m glad you know,’ he said.

‘But I don’t understand,’ said Jenny. ‘What happened? If there was no pellet in it …’

‘The pistol was of a type that worked by pressing an inner cylinder into the outer one against a very strong spring as well as the resulting air pressure. Even unloaded, the inner cylinder is jerked out with very great force to an extent of about six inches. Pressed hard against someone’s head which in turn was resting hard up against the back of a chair …’

Pascoe didn’t finish, Jenny sat down, her face pale. Antony hovered anxiously over her.

‘Why didn’t you ring the police, Mr Connon?’ asked Dalziel. ‘You still haven’t told us.’

Connon shrugged hopelessly.

‘I don’t know. I wish to God I had. He swore it was an accident, but he asked me how it would sound to the police. Would they believe him? I couldn’t say they would. I …’

‘Go on.’

‘I half didn’t believe him myself. He was my friend, but it was my wife sitting there, dead. I was lost, quite lost. I couldn’t see what to do.’

‘Do you believe him now?’

‘Yes. Yes, I think I do. The pellet helped. I thought of it later, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I doubted him very much. But it turned up among those objects your people found down the chair. I was overjoyed to find it. It makes a difference, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it does,’ said Pascoe, more reassuringly than he felt Dalziel would approve.

‘Marcus said if I changed my mind later, he’d be ready to tell you everything. But he begged me not to involve him now. He wanted us to let the burglar, Stanley that is, be blamed. But I refused to do that. I said we couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t risk anyone else being blamed. I suppose once I started arguing on those lines, I’d really agreed to help him. He agreed in the end and in fact it was Marcus who suggested that we should cover up any traces of the intruder.’

‘He must have realized that if we got on to the burglar there’d be even more chance of us getting on to him,’ observed Dalziel drily.

Connon ignored him.

‘I remembered the bathroom window. We cleaned up the sill and closed the window. Marcus put the gun in his pocket and said he’d get rid of it. I could hardly think straight at all, he had to think of everything.’

‘The prospect of a murder charge concentrates the mind wonderfully,’ said Dalziel.

This time Connon answered.

‘No, I don’t think it was that. I think it was the thought of Arthur Evans more than anything else. Arthur is potentially a violent man. Marcus isn’t. He’s a terrible tackler, always was. Not frightened for himself, so much as frightened of causing damage. I think he was thinking of Gwen as much as himself.’

‘He’s let it all come out in the open now,’ said Pascoe.

‘I know,’ said Connon. ‘I had a letter.’

‘Where? Where from?’ snapped Dalziel eagerly.

‘Posted in town, Superintendent. So it’s no help, I’m afraid. Oh, you’re welcome to see it. He just says they’re going. Tells me to tell it all if I have to, not to worry, but says he and Gwen want a time alone, together, without having to worry and lie.’

‘He needs to worry,’ said Dalziel. ‘We’ll find him.’

Connon gave a sudden smile which lit up his face.

‘I doubt it, Superintendent. Marcus’ll see the papers and read between the lines and, in his own time, he’ll find you. What happens now? To me I mean. I suppose I’ve committed any number of offences.’

Dalziel loomed menacingly over him.

‘You’ve been bloody stupid, Connie. No, it’s no good giving me those nasty looks, Jennifer! He has and he knows it. He’s not a stupid man. He just acts stupid sometimes.’

‘I did it for friendship,’ said Connon. ‘Mary was dead. It seemed to serve no purpose letting my friend be dragged through the courts. But you’re right, Dalziel. I knew you were right the next morning. I was even more certain when that letter came to Jenny. I think another week of it would have broken me down, friendship or none. I’m glad you know.’

‘So am I,’ said Dalziel. ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be no more letters.’

‘What happens next isn’t up to me,’ Dalziel went on. ‘You know that. We’ll need your statement first. Then a full account of the case will have to be studied by the decision-makers. I hope for your sake they’re not soccer men.’

He glowered at Pascoe who said, ‘Whatever happens, Mr Connon, you’ll be here for Christmas if that’s any consolation.’

Connon looked round at Jenny and Antony, who smiled reassuringly at him.

‘Yes. Yes,’ he said. ‘I think it is.’

The Fernies watched the police-car drive away with Connon in it.

‘If you say “I told you so”,’ said Alice, ‘I’ll hit you so hard you won’t be able to sup beer tomorrow, let alone chew turkey.’

‘No, no,’ said Fernie. ‘it’s not that. They haven’t arrested him. Look at those two, Jenny and that lad. They’re looking far too pleased with each other for that.’

‘Now you’re a long-distance psychiatrist too,’ said Alice. ‘Hey, get off! What do you think you’re on? I’ve got work to do.’

‘Mine when, as and how I cared to use it. That’s what you told that policeman, wasn’t it? You wouldn’t like to be got for perjury, would you?’

‘Oh God. This’ll ruin the stuffing.’

‘But you’re right. You’ve as much as she ever had. And it is noticeably younger.’

‘He looks so much happier,’ said Jenny as she drove her father’s car after the police-car towards town. ‘No wonder he was cracking up, with all that on his mind.’

Antony observed her curiously from the passenger seat.

‘What about you, love? All that about your mother, I mean, didn’t it come as a shock?’

‘Not really. I don’t mean I approve or defend her, but whatever she was like, she was like that when I knew her, so I don’t see why I should suddenly change towards her now.’

She accelerated to cross a light at amber while Antony stood on an imaginary brake.

‘I think that she was just jealous. Women do strange things when they’re jealous. You’ll find out when we get back to college. I want a ring, I don’t care if it’s expensive or not, but it’s got to be bloody big! No, she was jealous of Gwen, that’s all. Wanted to control her somehow. She made a friend of Alice Fernie, you see; condescended to her, could control her that way. But with Gwen it had to be something different. Do I sound very cold?’

Antony looked at her face. Her eyes were brimful of tears.

‘No, love,’ he said. ‘Not at all. But if you’re going to cry, pull in to the kerb before you give us all something to cry about.’

Her face broke apart into the Connon grin as the tears overflowed and, glinting in the Christmas lights strung across the streets, rolled down the curve of her cheeks.

‘She was a bitch. Thank God I didn’t know her,’ said Pascoe thickly.

Connon’s statement had taken some time. They had got to Jacko’s party very late, but had quickly made up for lost time.

‘She wasn’t that bad,’ said Dalziel, more clearly, though Pascoe knew he’d taken twice as much drink as himself. ‘Not when I knew her. It depends how you look at them. At least they stayed together.’

He had shown a surprising desire to stick in his sergeant’s company at the party. Pascoe wondered if his inferior rank made him a more desirable auditor of drunken ramblings.

‘Not like the Evanses. She left him a letter. Hey, talking of letters, what did you mean when you said to Connon, there’d be no more?’

‘That letter,’ said Dalziel solemnly. ‘That letter to Jenny Connon. It was written in green ink.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Pascoe puzzled. ‘What’s that signify?’

‘It signifies Arthur Evans wrote it. My copy was in black ink. That signified he didn’t.’

Pascoe digested this in silence for a while.

‘I see,’ he said finally. ‘What does all that signify?’

‘It signifies,’ said Dalziel, ‘that men do bloody stupid things when they’re worried about their wives. I spoke to him. He listened to me. He listened to the advice of experience.’

‘His wife still left him.’

‘He’s still in the Club.’

‘I suppose that’s some compensation,’ said Pascoe doubtfully. ‘Better than her being in it, eh, sir?’

They laughed raucously.

‘Was she a bitch? She left him. Connon’s wife seemed a bigger bitch, but she didn’t leave him. Are those the bigger bitches, do you think? Isn’t it better to get a letter?’

‘My wife,’ said Dalziel slowly, ‘my wife sent me a telegram.’

Pascoe shifted uneasily, suddenly rather more sober. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to be cast in the role of Dalziel’s confidant. Christmas comes but once a year, the jingle tripped incessantly through his mind.

He tried to divert the conversation on to fresh tracks.

‘There’s a silly game called “Telegram”,’ he said brightly. (Christ! my brightness is more hammy than even his performances!) But neither his brightness nor his attempts at diversion seemed to be noticed. They would be registered, however; that he was certain of. Dalziel’s mind might get as soggy as a damp bran tub, but sometime, somehow, he would grope around in the clart and come up with these moments clear and sharp as a policeman’s whistle.

‘Words too harsh to be spoken,’ said Dalziel. ‘Words too bloody violent to be heard. Things she couldn’t say to me, face to face. Me. Her husband. She wrote them down. On a bit of paper. Gave them to a counter-clerk to count.’

(Which of course is what a counter-clerk ought to be doing, thought Pascoe. Or he might have said it. He couldn’t tell which one second later.)

‘A stranger read them. They were copied. Printed out. Despatched. All those people knowing what I didn’t know.’

Please God, prayed Pascoe, let him stop. I’m an ambitious man. I don’t want to hear him. Besides I’m sure Noolan’s wife fancies me. Not so old either. But if I don’t move soon I’ll have to join a queue.

Somewhere in the house a clock chimed midnight. For a moment everyone was still. Most of the Rugby Club lot, the elders at least, were there. He saw them all it seemed as he glanced round the room. He felt almost fond of them.

He fumbled in his pocket and produced a small cylinder of gay Christmas paper. He hadn’t known till now whether he would dare give it.

‘Merry Christmas, sir.’

‘What the hell’s this? Apple for teacher?’

That was better.

‘Just a little gift. Christmas. And end of case.’

Dalziel carefully unwrapped the large expensive cigar and sniffed it appraisingly.

‘It’s not ended yet,’ he said. ‘We’ve still got to find Felstead.’

‘What’ll happen?’

‘God knows. Manslaughter? At least, I should think. But let’s catch him first.’

‘Tomorrow, Boxing Day. He’s an amateur. And he’s got Gwen Evans to attract attention. Five bob they have him in forty-eight hours.’

Dalziel shook his head gloomily.

‘I won’t take your money, lad. Thanks for this, though.’

He put the cigar in his mouth and lit it.

‘Not a bad party,’ he said. ‘Hey, Willie. Where’ve you been hiding? Take me to Jacko’s brandy bottle.’

Kids, thought Pascoe. Big kids. Like Jenny Connon, and Antony, and Stanley, and Sheila. Little kids.

He started to cut an efficient path through the crowd towards the ample, mature charms of Mrs Willie Noolan.

It was a cold, hard January day, the last Saturday in the month. The weather delighted the hearts of thousands who by car, foot, and train were making their way towards Twickenham.

Connon let himself be swept out of the station by the steady onward flow of the crowd. A loudspeaker warned him that the official programme was on sale only in the ground.

As usual, the police seemed to have invented a new system of pedestrian diversion since his last visit and the route they followed afforded him several tantalizing glimpses of the stands before the final approach.

Even so, there was still half an hour to go before kick-off when he reached the ground. He joined a small queue for an official programme, another for an official cushion. Then he joined a larger queue winding its way into the urinal, and smiled to hear someone say, ‘Someone’s pissing in my pocket.’ He always smiled at that.