Constable Evans 03: Evanly Choirs (19 page)

“Bron!” he called.

Her face lit up as she spotted him. “Evan! I didn’t think you’d be here, after all the goings-on in the village.”

“They didn’t need me anymore. D.I. Hughes has taken over,” Evan said.

“Taken over what?” Bronwen looked puzzled.

“You hadn’t heard. It wasn’t an accident at all. Ifor Llewellyn was killed and afterward it was made to look like an accident.”

“Well, I never!” She sounded like Mrs. Williams. “Was it a robbery?”

“No. Nothing was taken. There was nothing worth stealing. They had left all their good stuff in Italy.”

“Do they have any idea who might have done it? And, more to the point, do you have any idea who might have done it?”

“I’ve got some ideas,” Evan said. “The D.I.’s inclined to go along with the Mafia theory at the moment. It makes him feel important to keep getting calls from Interpol.” He grinned at her and she smiled back. “I’m glad you’re still here,” he said. “I thought you would have had to take the children back home by now.”

“One of the fathers took them back in his van,” she said. “I wanted to stay a little longer and get a look at the exhibits for myself … and listen to some of the singing.”

“Don’t expect too much from our choir,” Evan said. “We’re not exactly Covent Garden material without Ifor.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve brought my earplugs,” she said, smiling.

“Do you want to get something to eat after we’ve finished,” he asked, “and walk around a little?”

She nodded. “I’d like that—if you’re not planning to meet Betsy at the rock concert.”

“Rock concert? That’s too tame for us. We only go to raves,” Evan said. Then he grew serious. “Look, I’m sorry about Betsy. I just didn’t want to hurt her feelings. You know that.”

“Yes. I know that. Evan the Boy Scout.”

“I’m getting better. I just told Mrs. Powell-Jones to pipe down and behave herself.”

“Evan, you didn’t!”

“I certainly did. Enjoyed every moment of it, too.”

Bronwen slipped her arm through his. “Are you heading for the choir pavilion right now?”

“I should be. We’re on soon. Mostyn will get in a state if I’m not there.”

“I’ll walk over with you.”

The crowd was thicker here in the middle of things. People streamed from one marquee to the next as new events started. A children’s dance troop had just finished performing in one of the main pavilions. They came running out, twelve little girls all dressed in white with flowers in their hair, like little angels from a Renaissance painting.

“Now can we get hot dogs?” they demanded of their chaperon.

Evan and Bronwen exchanged a smile.

“I’m sorry I overreacted about Betsy,” she said. “I must be an insecure person. It comes from a failed marriage, I suppose.”

“You’ve no reason to feel insecure,” Evan said. “I’m a reliable kind of chap who—”

A loud scream made him break off in midsentence. “Evan Evans! Oh my goodness. It is you!” A young woman flung herself into his arms and kissed him full on the mouth.

Chapter 16

“Maggie!” Evan gasped when the girl finally released him. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m helping a friend with her dance troop,” she said, still beaming up at him delightedly. “She wanted someone to help chaperon the children so I said I’d come along for a bit of a lark. Makes a change from Swansea, doesn’t it? And who knows, I might even get interested in culture.” She ran her fingers through dark curls. “So where are you these days? You’re not still in that godforsaken little village, are you?”

“That’s right. Still in the same place.”

“I couldn’t believe it when your mother told me that you’d gone back to North Wales. Whatever for, I said. There’s nothing but rain and sheep up there—and people who look like sheep.”

Evan felt a light tap on his arm. “Would you like to introduce me, Evan?”

“Oh Bronwen. Of course. This is Maggie Pole. We knew each other down in Swansea.”

“We knew each other very well, down in Swansea,” the girl said, eyeing Bronwen’s long hair and swirling cloak. “Are you performing here?”

“No, just a supporter.”

“Oh, I thought because of the costume.” She herself was wearing jeans and a Swansea Rugby Club sweat shirt saying
FOR RUGBY PLAYERS A TRY IS A SCORE
.

“This is Bronwen Price,” Evan said quickly. “She teaches at the village school in Llanfair.”

“A schoolteacher?” Maggie shook her head. “I reckon you deserve a medal, having to put up with the little brats every day. One trip up in the bus was enough to convince me that children and I don’t get along.” She smiled up at Evan. “So do you have time for a chat? My little angels have just gone off to get food so I’m free for a while and I’d love to give you all the news from back home. Have you heard about the rugby club? It’s gone pro. They’re paying their best players now. How about that—if you’d stuck around, you could have quit being a policeman and made your fortune at rugby.”

“Hardly,” Evan said awkwardly. “I was never that good.”

“You were bloody good and you know it,” Maggie said. She looked past Evan to Bronwen. “He always was too modest. That was one of his very few deficiencies, wasn’t it, Evan love?”

“Look, Maggie, I’d love to talk but my choir is about to sing and the choir director will have a fit if I don’t show up.”

“Singing? You? That’s a new one!” Maggie laughed loudly. “The only time I heard you sing was in the bus on the way home from rugby games and you couldn’t sing those songs at an
eisteddfod,
could you?” She looked around then leaned closer to Evan. “What a bloody boring thing this is, isn’t it? All in Welsh, too, and you know how bad my Welsh is. I mean—”

“Look, Maggie. I’m sorry but I have to go,” Evan interrupted. He could feel Bronwen’s eyes boring into him.

“You won’t be singing that long, will you?” Maggie asked. “Let’s go for a drink afterward. They’ve got decent South Wales beer, I notice. You, too, if you’d like, Miss Price,” she added.

“Oh, that’s okay, thanks,” Bronwen said. “I should be getting back home. I’m sure you and Evan have a lot to talk about.”

“Don’t go Bron,” Evan said but she shook her head solemnly. “I think this is one case where three is definitely a crowd.” She moved off into the crowd before Evan could stop her.

“Oh dear, have I upset her?” Maggie asked, turning big surprised eyes on him. “I didn’t mean anything—only I was so surprised to see you and I have to hear how you’re doing. I’ll meet you at the beer tent shall I?”

“If you like,” Evan said.

He could feel the sweat trickling down the back of his neck as he went into the choir pavilion. Of all the people in the world, why did she have to be here tonight?

*   *   *

“Here he is now,” Evan heard muttered in the darkness as he joined his choir backstage.

“Sorry, Mostyn. I got waylaid by an old friend,” Evan said. “How are you doing?”

“I am not sure I can go through with this,” Mostyn said. “This has been a great shock to me. I really don’t know…”

“You’ll be fine, Austin Mostyn,” Evans-the-Meat clamped a big hand on the fragile shoulder of the choir director. “We’re going to get out there and give a slap-up performance as a tribute to our old friend Ifor. Right men?”

Evan didn’t think the reply sounded overenthusiastic.

“But what are we going to sing?” Young Billy Hopkins asked nervously. “Ifor sang all the solos, didn’t he? We can hardly have big gaps where we hum.”

“We’ll have to go back to our old program, won’t we?” Roberts-the-Pump said.

“No, we’ll stick to the songs we have practiced,” Mostyn said, as if every word was a great effort for him. “I’ll take the solos myself.”

He straightened his bow tie then motioned them to follow him into the wings.

Evan could feel the tension around him and he felt tenser than most. He wished that they’d canceled their performance tonight. If he hadn’t been here he would never have known that Maggie Pole was in North Wales. He still felt clammy and in shock. He could picture her so clearly—same bubbly personality, unruly dark curls, big dark eyes, talking a mile a minute—was it possible that he still had feelings for her after all this time, after all that had happened?

Rubbish, he said to himself. He would go and have a quick drink with her and tomorrow he’d tell Bronwen the whole story. He should have told her sooner. They had been wrong to keep so much of their pasts hidden from each other.

The choir before them ended with a rousing rendering of “All Through the Night.”

“And now,
annwyl gyfeillion,
dear friends,” the announcer’s voice boomed through the large tent. “The Côr Meibion from Llanfair under the direction of Mr. Mostyn Phillips.”

They filed out onto the stage, hair slicked down, black boots shining, faces shining with sweat. Evan took his place in the back row. Mostyn raised the baton and they started to sing.

They opened as planned with the drinking song from
La Traviata.
Their voices resonated, loud, clear, and rich in the packed marquee. Evan thought they had never sounded so good. Then Mostyn’s voice took up the solo part. He had sung through passages for them before during practice, to show what he wanted but Evan had never heard his full voice before. Obviously neither had any of the other choir members. They forgot that they were supposed to be staring straight ahead and glanced at each other or gave each other subtle nudges. Mostyn had a nice voice—not of the power or quality of Ifor’s but a high, sweet tenor.

An amazed thought shot through Evan’s mind—they might just make it to the final after all! Then suddenly, abruptly, Mostyn stopped singing.

“I’m sorry,” he said, both to choir and audience. “It’s no good. I can’t do this. A very great man was supposed to be singing this solo … he was struck down unnecessarily, before his time—I was stupid to think that I could ever fill his shoes. Please excuse us…” He fled into the wings, leaving the choir to march offstage alone, amid the rising murmur of the audience.

The announcer quickly took over the mike and explained the full details of the tragedy. “We understand what Mr. Phillips and his choir must be going through right now. They have our deepest sympathy. The music world and Wales in particular have lost a giant in the field.”

Evan followed the other choir members out into the open air. The sun had now set and lights were twinkling from half-open tents and booths. The sound of sweet children’s song, of harps and flutes and drums, the smells of wood smoke and roasting, the glow of fires and the fluttering of flags gave the whole scene a distinctly medieval feel that contributed to Evan’s sense of unreality.

He didn’t see Sergeant Watkins until the latter grabbed his arm. “Too bad,” he said. “I was looking forward to hearing you sing.”

“What are you doing here, Sarge?” Evan asked, shaking himself back to reality and the present.

“Looking for you. I thought you’d like to know that the wife has confessed. She’s down in Caernarfon with the D.I. right now.”

Evan stood rooted to the spot. “Mrs. Llewellyn? She’s confessed to the murder?”

Watkins nodded. “She turned up in Caernarfon, cool as a cucumber. ‘I have decided to come forward and straighten this whole mess out before my family and friends are dragged into it.’ She said. ‘I want you to know that I killed my husband.’”

Evan gave Watkins a stunned look. “She’s certainly a cool customer, isn’t she?”

“And a good actress, too. I would have bet my pension she didn’t do it, even though she had the motive and the opportunity.”

“Me, too,” Evan agreed. “I could imagine her putting a neat little bullet into her husband or poisoning him slowly, but bashing him over the head? Has she told you what she used as the weapon?”

“She hadn’t told us anything by the time I left. She probably won’t if the D.I. uses his subtle methods of interrogation. Did you come here in your own car?”

“Yes, but…”

“You can follow me then.”

“You want me down at HQ in Caernarfon? Surely the D.I. hasn’t requested my presence?”

Watkins chuckled. “No, but I have. I told him you’d been the one who knew the most about her, so it made sense to have you there. He wasn’t very interested either way. He’s still onto his Mafia theory. Now he’s trying to prove she had Mafia connections and hired a hit man—don’t laugh—that’s his current line of thinking. He’s dying to fly to Europe to testify in an international case.”

They had reached the perimeter of the field. “See you down there,” Watkins said. Evan headed for his own car, his heart beating fast. So it was Mrs. Llewellyn after all! Why hadn’t he suspected it? He’d felt all along that she was tense and hiding something, but her visit to her “friend” would have explained that. They would have accepted that explanation, too. In the absence of the murder weapon, they’d have had a hard time pinning the crime on her. So what would have made her come forward and confess voluntarily?

Evan drove out of the car park and headed across the toll bridge, spanning the estuary to Porthmadog and the less mountainous route to Caernarfon. He wasn’t entirely sure that he was doing the right thing, butting in on the D.I.’s interrogation. Sergeant Watkins might want him there but he was pretty sure the D.I. would tell him to bugger off. But he had to admit that he was very curious to hear what Mrs. Llewellyn had to say.

*   *   *

Police HQ in Caernarfon had that empty, out-of-hours feeling as their feet echoed along a half-lit hallway. Watkins tapped on the interview room door. Detective Constable Mathias came out. “You needn’t have rushed,” he said, closing the door swiftly behind him. “She’s had second thoughts. She talked to her lawyer and he told her not to say any more until he drives up from London. He’ll be here in the morning. The D.I.’s sending her home for the night.”

As he saw Evan register surprise he went on, “It’s okay. She posted bail. She’s not going anywhere and we’ve no cells suitable for someone like her, have we?”

“Are they going to build a high-class jail when she’s convicted?” Watkins asked dryly. “So there’s no point in Evans having a chat with her, is there?”

“The D.I. suggested he could drive her home, since he’s going that way. Who knows, she might get more friendly in the car.”