Death of a Perfect Mother (16 page)

• • •

Gordon Hodsden met Ann Watson in Todmarsh High Street on Saturday morning, before the first wash of generalized sympathy had totally receded. Not that Ann Watson was affected by tides of sentiment in Windsor Avenue: aloof, remote, she wandered through her daily round never letting herself become part of any community, neither at home nor at the school where she taught. But even she was not quite sure how to behave to Gordon Hodsden. There is nothing for it on these occasions but to take refuge in cliché.

‘I was awfully sorry to hear—' she said, not feeling it necessary to specify. ‘It must have been a terrible shock to you all.'

‘It was,' said Gordon. Hypocrite! he said to himself. Liar! ‘Somehow Mum was the last person you'd expect that to happen to.'

‘Yes, she was,' said Ann Watson. Hypocrite! she said to herself. Liar!

‘Of course I know you had your disagreements with her—'

‘Oh—nothing. A silly little thing. Best forgotten.'

‘—but what I really meant was not that everyone loved her, because I know they didn't, but that she was so bursting with life and energy. And suddenly, just like that, it's all gone.'

Gordon, in his cautious way, was trying to soften down the picture of himself as a fatuous admirer of his mother's talents and charms. Ann Watson did not help him very much.

‘It's particularly bad for you, because you were such a close sort of family,' she said.

Gordon felt he had to take another tentative step towards self-liberation. Oh, I don't know about that.
Pretty much like most, I suppose. We had our ups and downs. Still, give Mum her due: she didn't interfere much. Let us go our own ways.'

‘Oh?' said Ann Watson, with just a trace of upward intonation.

‘I mean in our personal lives and that . . . We went our own ways, got our own girl-friends . . .' Ann Watson blinked twice at that, and confirmed Gordon's suspicions of what the row with Lill had been about. Christ, he thought, if I ever make it with her, it'll be against all the odds. ‘At any rate,' he said, ‘one way or another the neighbourhood's going to miss her.'

‘She certainly made an impression,' agreed Ann. Gordon grinned cryptically, to tell her they really shared the same opinion on his late departed mother.

‘She didn't give the place tone,' he said, ‘but she did give it a bit of life. And Todmarsh could do with all the life it can get.'

‘What will you do now?'

‘Do?'

‘Now she's gone. Will you leave the place?'

With a sudden shock of panic Gordon realized that he had not begun to think in those terms. He had to face it: Lill's death was a beginning, not an end. He felt bewildered, adrift. But he squared his shoulders and made an instant decision.

‘No, I don't plan to move on, not yet awhile,' he said. ‘My roots are here. I expect for a bit we'll go on as we always have. Only we'll have to get used to Mum not being around. It'll take time.'

‘Oh yes,' said Ann. ‘It'll take all the time in the world.'

Somehow that was not the way Gordon had hoped the interview would end. He did not want Ann Watson to compare in her mind his loss of a mother with her loss of a husband.

• • •

Along Windsor Avenue Miss Gaitskell—she whose arse had been so rudely assaulted in words by Lill Hodsden on her last trip down to the shops of Todmarsh—had a satisfying posthumous revenge by inviting Inspector McHale in to have ‘just a
small
glass of sherry' and telling him just about everything she knew about the Hodsdens. The sherry was South African, but the gossip was the real McCoy.

She fussed over him, massive in shape but birdlike in manner, sometimes putting her head on one side as the insidious suggestions flowed out, sometimes bending forward over their glasses and letting fly with the brutal truth.

‘Of course, everyone was always sorry for Old Fred—it's funny, he's always called that, even by his own children I believe—but when it comes down to it, he's a poor fish. I like a man to be a man, I must say. Underneath I think everyone does, don't you agree?' McHale assented confidently. ‘And of course, that's what's intriguing everyone.'

‘Oh?'

‘The
difference.'

‘Difference?'

‘In Old Fred. He's a new man since she died. Well, half a man. He's like an extra who's suddenly been given a line to speak. Why? Do you think that underneath he's relieved?'

‘I've known it like that before with devoted husbands,' said McHale. ‘Though it doesn't usually last.'

‘No. Very wisely put. He'll be as dim and lost as ever within six weeks. Or married again to the same type. Still—intriguing. Then there's the Other Man in her life.'

‘Ah yes-'

‘You know already, I see. How, I wonder? The family told you, perhaps? Who? The boys? Gordon knew it couldn't be kept under cover, I suppose. Well, Corby's been looking like death warmed up since Thursday. He's
talking of closing the yard and retiring to a cottage. A cottage not too far from a pub, I imagine. You've talked to him already, I expect?'

‘Just on the 'phone—about when she left the house that night. I'll be going back to him, inevitably, when I've pinned down exactly what sort of relationship there was between him and Mrs Hodsden.'

‘You could ask him about the colour TV the Hodsdens have—and probably lots of other things she'd screwed out of him that we haven't heard about. She told someone she was thinking of getting a car, and you can be sure it wasn't Hodsden money was going to buy it. There is no Hodsden money, I know that for a fact. They blew what little they had buying that lump of a son out of the army.'

‘Were there any other boy-friends, would you say?'

‘Hmmm. Probably. But I've no evidence. If a guess is any use to you I'd say try Achituko and that Guy Fawcett.'

‘Akki-?'

‘Achituko. From the Coponawi Islands—Pacific, you know.' Her big body softened, as if she became sentimental at the thought of Todmarsh's token black. ‘He's a nice boy; exceptionally polite. Still, you wouldn't expect good taste from someone like that, not our taste, would you? And I'm sure there's
some
thing with him and the Hodsdens. Fawcett's only moved into the road in the last year. The sort of man who makes respectable women itch to have a good wash. Put that type next door to a Lill Hodsden and the result is as predictable as strikes next winter.'

‘I'll certainly keep them in mind,' said McHale, fixing her with his gaze of professional appreciation. ‘Is there anyone who had cause to hate Lill Hodsden, would you say, around here?'

‘Well, we none of us liked her. None of us had cause to.' Miss Gaitskell blushed slightly as the insult to her posterior came back to her mind. ‘When she was in a
good mood she was tolerable for five minutes. When she wasn't—we scattered! I know for sure she had a row with Mrs Carstairs.'

‘Oh yes?'

‘Because she was muttering to me about it next day. We were comparing notes. She'd had Lill Hodsden up to the ears. But she wouldn't make it clear what the row was about.'

‘Anyone else who hated her?'

Miss Gaitskell's eyes sharpened, as she hazarded a guess that had nagged at her mind all day: ‘You could try the family,' she said.

But McHale did not bite. ‘I've seen the family,' he said. ‘At the moment I'm more interested in the neighbours.'

So Miss Gaitskell filled his glass, and resuming her birdlike stance told him more and more about the neighbours, though she would dearly have liked to wonder aloud about the Hodsdens. But at the end McHale was well satisfied with his morning's work. He could not have picked his informant better. Obviously an ex-postmistress had ways peculiar to herself of finding things out.

• • •

Guy Fawcett, home at midday and looking for all his burly frame oddly gaunt, turned out of his front gate and walked along Windsor Avenue to the brown painted house two doors down. Uncertainly, for him, he trailed down the stone-dashed side path and knocked tentatively on the back door. He wasn't looking forward to this. Mrs Casey, square, black and off-putting, opened the door and eyed him sourly.

‘Yes?'

‘Oh, er, Mrs Casey, we haven't actually met, but I'm Guy Fawcett from number eight.'

‘I know,' muttered Mrs Casey sepulchrally, as if the lack of formal introduction had not stopped her marking him down for damnation in her little black book.

‘I wondered if we could just have a little talk about a certain matter . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘Could we go inside, do you think?'

‘I've nothing to say that can't be said on my own doorstep.'

‘Yes, well, I have. Please . . .' She gazed at him with the flames of hell lividly present behind the arctic grey of her eyes. Then she stood silently aside. Guy scuttled past her into the kitchen, and wedged himself gracelessly into a kitchen chair. Mrs Casey stood by her back door and waited.

‘It's this business of what went on . . . what you saw the other day . . . Tuesday . . . in the garden,' said Guy Fawcett, stumbling over his words and becoming even sweatier and nastier than usual. He hadn't behaved or felt like this since his headmaster had been more than usually insistent on hearing precisely what he had been doing with little Sally Foster in the boys' lavatories after school-time. Mrs Casey, like his headmaster, had an impressive line in silence, and gave him not an inch of leeway.

‘Of course it didn't mean anything . . . what you saw. Just a bit of silly fun. Meant nothing at all. But I'd be glad if you didn't mention it to the police.'

‘Oh?'

‘You see, people misinterpret that sort of thing.' Something like a malevolent laugh escaped Mrs Casey. ‘And I'm a married man—a good husband too, very fond of my wife. You understand, I wouldn't want her to get hurt. And she'd take it very hard if it got round to her that . . . that . . .'

Mrs Casey sniffed, which seemed to mean that she very much doubted whether Mrs Fawcett would care a jot.

‘And then there's your daughter—that was. I don't suppose you'd want to blacken the reputation of your own daughter—'

‘She blackened her own.'

‘Well, even if that were true, which I don't own, you'd have to be a funny mother to want to blacken it further.'

‘I can't compromise with the truth.'

Guy's voice rose. ‘I'm not asking you to compromise with the truth, I'm asking you to keep your trap shut when the police question you.' He was getting both irritated and querulous, as he always did when things went against him. It was one of his least attractive moods. ‘We all know this thing was done by a mugger. But that won't stop them raking around in your daughter's private life if they feel like it. And if they do that they might find more dirty linen than even
you
would like to see hung out in public.'

‘Oh? You think so?'

‘I know so. You take it from me.' He slowed up, and began to alter his tone. ‘And you'd better remember that if you say anything about me and her to the cops, I'll be the first to spill the beans.' Mrs Casey seemed for the first time to falter in her adamantine stance by the door, like a guardsman about to crumble at the knees. Guy sensed his advantage and weighed in. ‘Like the details about Debbie and that Achituko, for a start. There's more dirt in that family than just Lill's dirt.'

Mrs Casey flinched, and looked as if she would demand what he meant. But that would have been stooping to his level, and Mrs Casey never stooped. Her mouth was working, with an expression of distaste: she seemed to find his presence in her kitchen repellent, demeaning. Miss Gaitskell was right about Fawcett's effect upon respectable women. Mrs Casey closed her eyes, thought hard and long, and then said:

‘If they asked me a question, I'd have to tell them. Being police. It wouldn't be right otherwise. But if they don't ask, I'll let the matter be.'

Guy Fawcett breathed out, summoned up a greasy
smile, and made straight for the door. ‘That's all I wanted,' he said. Unable to leave without reasserting his masculine advantage he added with an attempt at satire: ‘Just so long as you don't regard it as compromising with the truth, of course.'

• • •

Passing briefly in Snoggers Alley in the early afternoon sun, Debbie and Achituko paused, just momentarily, as if for condolences.

‘Wednesday?' muttered Debbie.

‘If Mrs Carstairs goes out,' muttered Achituko. ‘I think she suspects. Will they let you?'

‘Who's to stop me now?' said Debbie with a smile of new-minted triumph, and went on her way.

• • •

‘I hear my
friend
Mrs Hodsden has been murdered.'

His wife's words from the bed caused Wilf Hamilton Corby to give a start worthy of a sneak villain in a silent film, and almost to drop his wife's lunch tray, which he was carrying downstairs.

He had, after all, made sure that Friday's
South Wessex Chronicle
held no word of Thursday night's event. His wife never listened to the radio, so she could have heard it on no local bulletin. The cleaning lady had not been in since Thursday morning. He himself had said, and intended to say, nothing.

But Drusilla Corby spoke the literal truth. Todmarsh—boring, moribund Todmarsh—was speaking of nothing else. And lying on her bed, reading her never ending supply of books from Cumbledon Public Library (‘I can read anything,' she would declare, ‘except love stories,' and she would look viciously at her husband as she said it), she had had the gossip of two shrill-voiced neighbours wafted in by the breeze through the open window.

‘You never told me,' she pursued, dangerously feline, ‘about the death of my good friend.'