Evil Angels Among Them (28 page)

Spring intervened with his muscular shoulder. ‘Not so fast, sir.'

‘You're suggesting that
I
made an obscene phone call?' Quentin Mansfield demanded, suddenly angry. ‘Sergeant, I don't find that very funny!'

‘Not meant to be funny, sir.' Spring stood his ground. ‘And not just one phone call, but a whole lot of them. But this time we've caught you. If you'll just come with us . . .'

The younger policeman spoke at last. ‘Perhaps there's another explanation,' he offered diffidently.

‘Such as?' Mansfield challenged.

Cringing, the young policeman continued. ‘Is there by any chance another man in the house? A butler or some other servant or even a gardener?'

Mansfield shook his head. ‘No one! You've got the wrong house, you fatheads!' He turned for confirmation to his wife, who stood in the shadows, her hand over her mouth and her eyes staring at him in horror. ‘Tell him, Diana!' he demanded. ‘Tell him that I wasn't here!'

‘He wasn't here,' she said faintly from the shadows. ‘And there isn't another man in the house. You must have come to the wrong house.'

Spring stepped forward into the entrance hall. For a moment his attention was caught by the woman, who was beautifully dressed and, while not young, was at least well preserved; her body, under the drapey silk garments, looked firm and supple. In his experience, sometimes these older women were the hottest thing going, and for an instant he allowed himself to imagine the feel of the slithery silk between his fingers, imagine what she would look like without her clothes. Under other circumstances he might have been interested in finding out whether her rich husband kept her satisfied, but this was not the time; he turned back to Quentin Mansfield. ‘Then you won't mind coming to the station with us while we get this all cleared up,' he asserted. ‘And you won't mind telling us where you've been, sir.'

‘None of your damn business,' Mansfield exploded as his right fist shot out and caught John Spring neatly on the jaw.

‘I didn't know where else to turn.' Diana Mansfield, shaking, had been led to a chair in the Rectory kitchen and provided with black coffee, but she still wasn't making much sense. ‘When they took him away, he told me to get him a solicitor. But his solicitor is in London. And then I thought of you. Thank goodness you're still here. You'll come, won't you?'

‘Let me get this straight.' David sat beside her, frowning in concentration. ‘Your husband has been arrested for making obscene phone calls?' He looked around to make sure that Stephen had taken Becca from the room; Lucy caught his eye and nodded.

Diana didn't notice. ‘I don't think so. I think he was arrested for assaulting a police officer. Didn't I say? Quentin hit that policeman – Sergeant Spring, I think he said his name was – so hard that he knocked him to the floor. I think he's in big trouble.'

David covered his mouth with his hand so that Diana wouldn't see his involuntary smile. ‘Assaulting a police officer is a serious offence,' he concurred hastily. ‘But what about the obscene phone calls? Why did they want to question him about that?'

‘They – or at least that Sergeant Spring – insisted that they'd traced a phone call to Walston Hall a bit earlier this morning. But they couldn't have,' she explained in an earnest voice. ‘Quentin wasn't at home. He'd just come in not five minutes before the police arrived.'

‘You're sure about that?' David exchanged a look with Lucy.

‘Positive,' Diana stated. ‘I tell you, he couldn't have done it.' She cupped her trembling hands round the coffee mug and stared into its depths. ‘They must have made a mistake. The call
couldn't
have come from Walston Hall.'

CHAPTER 21

    
That he may bring food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man: and oil to make him a cheerful countenance, and bread to strengthen man's heart.

Psalm 104.15

Needless to say, David's plans to return to London were abandoned. He rang his secretary that afternoon, full of abject apologies and promises to come back as soon as was humanly possible.

Before that, though, he went to the police station to bail out Quentin Mansfield. Since he was representing Becca's interests in the matter of the phone calls, David didn't feel that it would be appropriate to get involved with Mansfield's defence against any possible charges stemming from the traced call, and he had told Diana so, without mentioning any names. But she'd been so distraught that at last he'd agreed to represent her husband when it came to the assault charge.

A subdued-looking John Spring, nursing a nastily bruised jaw, greeted him at the station. ‘Dave – I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see you,' he said. ‘You've got a finger in everything that goes on in that blasted village, mate. The local blokes don't get a look-in with you around.'

David composed his face to a suitable expression of concern. ‘I was really sorry to hear what happened, John.'

‘He decked me,' Spring admitted, rubbing his jaw ruefully. ‘I'd like to lock the bugger up and throw away the key. But seeing as he's a client of yours, I suppose I'll have to let him out.'

‘Once I get him sorted out,' suggested David, ‘how about a drink? You haven't had lunch yet, have you? I'll buy you a sandwich and a pint – it seems like the least I can do.'

‘Too right.' Spring grimaced. ‘It's a deal, Dave. Nether Walston? The Crown and Mitre?'

‘It's a deal.'

Once again John Spring waited for David in a booth at the Crown and Mitre; his early arrival meant that he'd already had time to check out the local talent, and he had evidently found it wanting, as his face was buried in his pint when David arrived.

Unusually for him, Spring was subdued, drinking his beer and munching his sandwich in silence. David resolved to draw him out; he wanted to know whether the police had any evidence, or indeed any suspicion, that would link the phone caller and the murder. ‘Funny thing, those phone calls,' he remarked conversationally.

Spring acknowledged the statement by looking up at David. ‘So you don't reckon that we've got the right bloke, then?'

‘I'm afraid not.' David shook his head. ‘Quentin Mansfield may be a hot-tempered so-and-so, but he certainly didn't make the call that was traced. His wife's evidence puts him in the clear. He didn't get home until nearly thirty minutes after that call was made.'

The sergeant touched his discoloured jaw with a grimace. ‘Hot-tempered is putting it mildly, Dave! No one's ever done that to me before. And you don't think his wife could be lying?' he added. ‘I really fancy putting this bloke behind bars for a long time.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘That's what I was afraid of,' said Spring morosely. ‘And to tell you the truth, Dave, the wife's not the only one who puts him in the clear. The constable has been back to the house and had a word with the daily. She says he was away last night and she heard his car in the drive just a few minutes before the police car arrived.'

‘Ah.' David looked thoughtful. ‘And she wouldn't have any reason to lie, no reason to protect him. Not like a wife might.'

‘Which leaves us right back where we started, mate. With two nutcases on the loose in Walston, and us no closer to catching either one of them than we were before. Who'd be a policeman, I ask you?' Spring scratched his head. ‘And speaking of the wife, Dave, what do you make of her?'

David deliberately misunderstood him. ‘Diana Mansfield seems a very nice woman.'

‘And a damn good-looking one,' Spring added with a lascivious grin. ‘I wonder if she plays around? She looks the type to me – all proper on the outside and a real tiger in the bedroom. I'd like to find out for myself.'

‘She's a respectable married woman, Sergeant,' David reminded him. ‘With a husband who packs a pretty powerful punch, I might add.'

Spring groaned. ‘You're telling me, mate!'

The publican arrived at the table with David's sandwich, which he delivered without ceremony and which David received without enthusiasm. The bread seemed to have reached its prime of life some days earlier, and the filling, which was meant to be beef, was almost unrecognisable as such, composed as it was of large slabs of unappetising white fat with tiny brown bits in between. ‘Almost enough to turn me vegetarian,' he muttered to himself. ‘At least there's not too much they could do to cheese.'

‘Don't be too sure about that, mate.' Spring grinned, more like himself again now that the stirrings of lust had reasserted themselves, and lifted the corner of his sandwich to reveal shrivelled scrapings of a luridly orange cheddar. He laughed and raised his glass. ‘Never mind, Dave. At least the beer is drinkable.'

‘No one ever said that we came here for the food,' David admitted.

‘Too right.' Reminded of his reasons for patronising the Crown and Mitre, Spring looked around the bar.

Right on cue, as if she were conjured up by his thought processes, the dark-haired girl named Cynth came through the door, dressed quite differently from the last time they'd seen her, in jeans and sweatshirt and with her hair pulled back and bunched together in a pony tail. She spotted them right away and headed for their booth. ‘John!'

‘Hello, sweetheart.' He gave her a welcoming leer and moved over to make room for her.

She slid in beside him. ‘I've been hoping you'd be back,' she said, with a dazzling smile directed at the policeman.

David realised that he was once again surplus to requirements. ‘What can I get you to drink?' he offered lamely.

‘Just a soft drink,' Cynth grimaced. ‘Lemonade and lime will do fine. With ice, ta very much. I'm on my lunch hour,' she explained to John Spring in David's absence. ‘Can't drink on my lunch hour or I'll sleep all afternoon. Ta,' she repeated when David returned with her drink, without taking her eyes off Spring.

‘What do you do, sweetheart?' the policeman asked.

Cynth favoured him with another smile. ‘I work at the agricultural processing plant,' she said. ‘Most people in Nether Walston do – there's not much else going.'

‘That sounds . . . interesting,' David attempted.

She turned to him for the first time. ‘Dead boring,' she said succinctly. ‘If you want to know the truth, what I do is pluck turkeys. It's horrible – the feathers get everywhere, and it's the very devil getting them all out. But it's a living, and, as I said, about the only one going in Nether Walston.'

Spring whispered in her ear, a suggestion for where he might later look for stray turkey feathers. Cynth giggled. ‘Oh, you are naughty.' She fumbled in the pocket of her jeans for a cigarette and held it out for Spring to light.

‘Your friend isn't with you today?' David asked, then was immediately sorry; he didn't want either of them to get the idea that he was interested in Lisa.

But Cynth took the question at face value. ‘No, Lisa doesn't come to the pub at lunchtime – she goes home to feed her bloody baby. She's no fun at all these days,' she complained, drawing on her cigarette. ‘Nothing but bloody Janie, day in and day out. It's all I can do to get her to come out with me in the evening once in a while.'

David thought that Lisa's shouldering of responsibility for her baby daughter was admirable. ‘Janie's father isn't . . . around? To help Lisa with the baby?'

Cynth gave a cynical laugh and blew smoke out through her nostrils. ‘Fat bloody chance of that.' She lowered her voice to a confidential whisper and leaned across the table towards David. ‘To tell you the truth, I don't even know for sure who Janie's father is. I have my suspicions – I wasn't born yesterday, you know – but she won't tell me. Me, her best friend! She won't tell
anyone –
says he'd be in big trouble if people found out. I don't know why she's so bloody keen to protect him after he went and got her in the club like that, then took off.'

‘But what about Social Services?' David asked. ‘Aren't they involved?'

‘Oh, Lisa had herself a bloody interfering social worker all right.' Cynth shrugged, unconcerned. ‘But then she went and got herself killed, didn't she? Lisa's in a right state about that, I can tell you.'

Lucy told Becca that, in view of their extended visit, she would prepare the meal that evening. It was no reflection on Becca's cooking, she emphasised, but it was the least she could do; she would enjoy it, she added, and it would give her something to do to feel useful. Becca protested half-heartedly, but in truth her repertoire of vegetarian dishes had been stretched to the limit over the previous week, and she welcomed the break.

‘Just relax. Put your feet up and have a cup of tea,' Lucy instructed her in a motherly way, setting off for the village shop. She didn't hold out very high hopes that she would be able to find all of the ingredients she needed to prepare even a moderately interesting meal amongst Fred Purdy's stock, but David had not yet returned with the car and until he did the village shop would have to be the extent of her shopping expedition.

She found Marjorie Talbot-Shaw at the counter chatting with Fred while he totalled her purchases. Rather, Marjorie was listening to Fred, who didn't seem to find any difficulty in talking non-stop as he punched the prices out on the old-fashioned till. ‘She never let on a thing,' he was saying as Lucy came through the door. ‘I don't know how long it's been going on, but you would have thought she might have said something.'

‘
I
certainly would have,' Marjorie agreed.

Fred turned to Lucy. ‘We were just talking about your friend, young Becca,' he filled her in. ‘I suppose you know about the phone calls. Someone's been bothering that poor young girl with nasty calls. The news is all over the village – Quentin Mansfield has been arrested, but his wife says that he didn't do it.'