Death of a Perfect Mother (19 page)

‘Was there not? Certainly if there was cheap stuff he didn't get it from
my
jewel-box. I'd like to think he fobbed her off with something cheap, because it would be so easy to do, but that doesn't seem to fit the facts . . .' She meditated eagerly and came up with the most damaging of all possible explanations. ‘Do you think he could have killed her to get it back?'

‘Hmm,' said McHale, who wasn't happy with a murder for that sort of motive a bare ten minutes after the jewel had been given. ‘I wouldn't want to commit myself. You've certainly provided me with food for thought—and a possible motive for
someone.'

‘I'm glad you think so. You know my husband has been sweating
blood
these last few days.'

‘Really? Well, he won't have to do that much longer. You're sure there's nothing else you have to tell me?'

Mrs Corby squirmed restlessly in her bed, greedy for
the attention and excitement McHale provided her with. ‘I wish there was. But there's nothing. I'm so cut off up here. Day after day, nothing but silence.' She sighed, an April breeze through a willow tree.

‘I should have thought it was remarkable how much you managed to . . . be aware of,' said McHale.

‘Sometimes,' said Drusilla Corby, switching roles, ‘I manage to
totter
to the top of the stairs.'

• • •

A quick trip to the Station put McHale in touch with the forensic people in Cumbledon. He had thought it all out in the car: it was possible Corby had loaded Lill with necklaces or rings, but on the whole McHale doubted it. Necklaces were difficult to explain away, and rings were nastily ambiguous. Natural parsimony would tempt him to get away with less if he could, and on the whole a brooch seemed more the ticket.

It proved a lucky hit. The lab people confirmed that on Lill's pre-Raphaelite green dress, under her leopard-skin coat, were two minute holes that probably were the marks of a brooch pin. It might be worth checking the position of the holes against Lill's existing jewellery.

But all things considered, McHale thought he could go for bust without checking. He chuckled with joy and self-love, sure he was on to something. The constable driving him to the Corby shipyard could feel the self-approbation oozing out of him, and gazed darkly ahead: McHale had not made himself loved in the Todmarsh Station. There was something else too: the anticipation of pleasure, the Achilles heel of a policeman about to grill a suspect. McHale's lips twitched as they pulled up at the yard, for he could see, watching them from the office, the terrified eyes of Wilf Corby. But as he got out of the car the first person who came into his line of vision was Gordon Hodsden. And Gordon—overalled, dirty from sawdust and oil—was obviously wanting to waylay him.

‘Do you think I could have a word, sir?' he asked. The ‘sir' was deliberate and premeditated. McHale responded: he looked towards the office, and smiled at the thought of Wilf Corby waiting inside.

‘Certainly,' he said. He glanced in the direction of a deserted wharf, and together they strolled away from the massive shed where the boats were built. McHale remained courteous but remote, and Gordon placatory rather than worried.

‘I've got to come clean,' he began. ‘I wasn't altogether open with you on Friday.'

‘No,' said McHale. ‘I know you weren't.'

‘It's not easy when it's your own sister.'

‘It's foolish, whoever it concerns.'

‘Anyway, I want to give it to you straight now—'

McHale was not going to let anyone claim virtue on such flimsy grounds. ‘You want to give it to me straight now because you know your grandmother has already told me all she knows.'

‘Fair enough,' said Gordon, looking him straight in the eye. ‘But that's not the whole truth. I couldn't get out of Gran exactly what she said. She was too upset.' He stopped at the end of the wharf and looked sombrely out to sea. ‘No, it's not just that; it's something else . . . I suppose you know the basic facts.'

‘I've guessed. But you tell me.'

‘Mum and Debbie had a row. Debbie got a bit bashed about (not serious—you saw the bruise). She disobeyed Mum, though, and went off to school the next day. Mum was furious with her when she got home, and locked her in her room. We didn't tell you that because we . . . we felt it would give a wrong impression about Mum.'

McHale kept silence. He had a half-sense that Gordon's explanation of their motives for concealment was inadequate.

‘The point is this: the row was about Achituko. The
bloody black who lives along the road. She'd been sleeping with him.'

McHale sighed. That was better. That was coming cleaner. ‘That was what I suspected.'

Gordon whirled round to face him and spoke with a low, controlled intensity: ‘The point is, can't you do something about it?'

‘Do?'

‘Get him out of here. Deported or something. Away from her. Have you talked to him yet?'

‘Not yet—all in good time.'

‘You should. He and Mum had a row in the street, couple of hours before she died. He could easily have done her in, for revenge. But what I really want is to get the bugger deported. You could manage that. How long have they been sleeping together? We just don't know. She could easily have been under the age of consent when they started. You could get him on that.'

The idea appealed to McHale. In matters of race he had all the innate liberalism of his middle-middle-class, tax-inspecting background. He hated the bastards, and behaved to them with impeccable courtesy. Cutting short Achituko's so-called study at this local so-called university was a notion of delicious appeal to him.

‘Bit early to speak of deportation,' he said cautiously. ‘Though it's something we could keep in mind. In fact, we could take him in for questioning and on this angle we could definitely give him the works. But I'm not sure what your interest in this is.'

‘What do you think? We're going through a difficult time, but we're a decent-enough family.' Gordon turned his dark eyes broodingly out to sea again. ‘Now Lill's gone most of the responsibility comes back on me. You've seen Fred. I've got to find some way to keep that little—Debbie in order. She's not going round disgracing us by sleeping with blacks, or anyone else at her age. Christ, you must
understand: don't you have a sister?'

‘No—but I understand,' said McHale. Gordon Hodsden was articulating attitudes which lay very close to his conformist heart. You didn't hear them so much from the younger generation. In fact, he was beginning to feel a much greater respect for Gordon Hodsden, though he failed to realize this was because Gordon had changed his performance since the earlier interview. ‘I'll do what I can.'

‘Thanks. I'm very grateful,' said Gordon. And together they trudged up the wharf, watched by supplicating, terrified eyes from the windows of the shipyard offices. As they turned into the yard the eyes disappeared.

When it became clear that McHale was not going away in his nice big car but was coming into the yard proper, Corby oozed out of his office to usher the Inspector in. He was a pathetic sight, but he tickled some little instinct in McHale which made him overlook the pathos: he never disliked the thought of an inquisition, but now he looked forward to this one with positive relish. It was the bonhomous cheeriness of Corby, trying to cover over the beginnings of a piglike sweatiness, that aroused the relish. McHale rationalized it by characterizing Corby in his mind as a savage husband and an adulterer, but he hardly believed the first, and didn't greatly care about the second. It was Corby's craven fear that tickled his inborn relish. He decided to play with him for a bit, catlike.

‘I'm sure you understand why it is I'm here,' he said, sitting down opposite the boss's desk.

‘Oh yes—perfectly.' Corby puffed and glistened as he sat uneasily in his position of authority. ‘You have to follow everything up. I realized you'd want a bit more than just the time Mrs Hodsden left us that evening.'

‘Precisely. Now, you told me on the 'phone that she'd been visiting at your house.'

‘That's right.' Eagerly, with pathetic, transparent mendacity,
he added. ‘Visiting the wife.'

‘Who is I believe an invalid.'

‘That's it. Sees no one as a general rule. Not up to it. Any excitement and—whoof—she might go. That's what the doctor says.'

‘Really? But Mrs Hodsden was a regular visitor, wasn't she?'

‘Aye, that's right.' With that same fatal eagerness. ‘Devoted. Twice weekly. Regular as clockwork.'

‘No excitement from her, then.'

Corby squirmed. ‘No. She was a marvellous sick visitor. Knew just the right tone to adopt. Soothing, like.'

‘Really? Odd. I haven't had the impression of Mrs Hodsden as an exactly soothing figure.'

‘Adaptable. Surprisingly adaptable,' said Corby, oozing another layer of sweat.

McHale sat back in his chair, a dangerous half-smile lurking in the corners of his thin mouth. ‘Tell me, Mr Corby, is your wife's illness a mental one?'

‘Mental? Good Lord no. Well, of course, it involves a lot of mental
suffering
 . . .'

‘It's just that your wife tells me that she never in her life set eyes on Mrs Hodsden.'

Corby exploded into weak man's rage, and shambled to his feet clutching his collar. ‘Tells you? When—? How—?' He sank back in his chair, as if exhausted by all the tension. ‘The bitch. How did she—?'

‘Never mind that, Mr Corby. I think I'll do all the asking of questions. Perhaps you'd better decide to answer them truthfully this time, eh?'

Corby settled muttering in his chair, and looked at the inkwell, a picture on the wall, anywhere but into McHale's face. ‘You'd no call to go behind my back and talk to her first,' he muttered, as if there were some obscure cricketing rules attached to police investigations.

‘I'm very glad I did,' said McHale, that half-smile now
more openly decorating his handsome, heavy face. ‘Though frankly it doesn't seem as if your relations with Lill Hodsden were any great secret. Half the town seems to have known.'

‘Oh, if you listen to the gossips—'

‘Are you denying there were sexual relations between you?'

‘Denying? 'Course I'm denying it. You've seen my wife: she's no companion to a man. Lill Hodsden came round to see me to chat—give me a bit of womanly sympathy.'

‘Frankly, my impression is that womanly sympathy was no more Lill Hodsden's line than soothing invalids. You're not ringing true, Mr Corby.' McHale leaned forward and started raising his voice. ‘You certainly paid well for this womanly sympathy, didn't you?'

‘Paid? Who said anything about paying?'

‘I did. I don't just mean money, either. That we might have difficulty tracing. But that colour TV—that'll be child's play to track back to you. And then there was talk of a car—'

‘I bought her no bloody car.' Corby looked at his inquisitor with anguished indignation. ‘If you ask me, a second-hand colour TV wasn't much to pay for all her kindness.'

‘And if you ask me I'd say that brooch you gave her was a good deal too much.'

Corby jumped six inches out of his seat. ‘Brooch? Who said anything about a brooch?'

McHale sighed, as if Corby were an antagonist unworthy of him. ‘Mr Corby, I know you gave Lill Hodsden a brooch from your wife's jewel-case not an hour before she died.'

Wilf Hamilton Corby's pudgy, heavy face was brilliant with sweat by now, and he seemed on the verge of crying. He began twisting his shoulders in anguish as if trying to find a physical answer to the question of which way to
turn. ‘Well—what if I did? It was just a trinket—nearly worthless.
She's
never in a condition to wear them now.'

‘How do I know it was worthless? Since it's disappeared we can't check that.'

‘Disappeared?' Wilf Corby seemed outraged. McHale kicked himself. He should have tested Corby to see if he knew it was not on the body. As always with lost opportunities in his investigations, he smoothed it over, hid it even from himself.

‘No doubt we can check that with your wife. She—I suspect—will know exactly what was in the jewel-box, and how much the missing piece was worth.'

‘You'd believe her? Any old cracked bit of china's a family heirloom if you listen to her. And she'd say it was worth a fortune if she thought it'd land me further in the shit.'

‘She's been very helpful so far, at any rate. It would save all of us a lot of trouble if you described the brooch yourself.'

‘Hardly noticed, tell you the truth. Just grabbed something to calm her down. Sort of peacocky design—bird, silver I think, glass in the eyes and the tail. Dressy sort of stuff, if you know what I mean.'

‘And you gave her this to—to calm her down.' McHale leaned forward with a nasty sneer on his face. ‘Had you been getting her unnaturally excited, then?'

‘Nothing to do with me.' Corby went scarlet, and for once in the interview McHale believed him. ‘She arrived all het up. She'd had an argy-bargy with her daughter. Been sleeping with that black student or something. Makes your hair curl what girls will do these days, doesn't it? Then she'd met the bloke himself in the street, and had a showdown. He's the chap you ought to be grilling, you know. Anyway, she was really put out when she arrived. Started going on about this and that —'

‘Like getting you to marry her, for example?'

Corby let out a mystified yelp of anguish. ‘Are you joking? With both of us married already?'

‘It's easy enough these days. If you wanted to, it could have been arranged.'

‘Who wanted to? I certainly didn't.'