Fate Worse Than Death (20 page)

But that was before she knew that Sandra had been found dead. Before she'd heard her husband telling a completely different story about Tuesday evening to the police. She had longed to challenge him about it last night, but she realized that if he knew anything about Sandra's death – not that he would have, could have, been personally involved, but if he
knew
anything – he wouldn't tell her. She wasn't even sure that she wanted to know.

Phil had certainly been edgy when a customer had looked into the pub just as they were closing after lunch yesterday to tell them that the police were working their way through the village making enquiries.

‘Nothing to worry about, love!' her husband had exclaimed as soon as they were alone, although his habit of fingering his catfish moustache into shape when he was agitated was a complete giveaway. ‘No need for you to be pestered by the fuzz, though. You go and put your feet up, and leave the talking to me.'

So she'd left him to it; but she'd listened from behind the lobby door. And of course Phil was good at talking. The fuzz had turned out to be a ridiculously young-looking detective, no match for a former Fitted-Kitchen-Salesman-of-the-Year, and he'd happily written down the lies Phil told him. Her husband had often said that all policemen were as thick as two short planks, and Lois hoped that he was right.

But the boy detective had sharp eyes. He'd spotted the gnome that Lois had cleaned up and left ready to be returned to Beryl Websdell, and he'd asked when and where it was found, and by whom. Her husband hadn't known. Lois, forgetting that Phil didn't know that she'd been listening, had immediately gone to his assistance. While the detective was writing down her answers, Phil had given her a peculiar look – at once annoyed, guilty and anxious for her support. But he ought to realize by now, after fourteen years of marriage, that however much she disapproved of his lies, however alarmed she was by them, she would never let him down.

Lois hoped, of course, that the police would not come back. When they did, just on closing time at two-thirty on Thursday afternoon, her stomach tightened with anxiety. Phil had been serving behind the bar again that lunch-time, but when the detectives arrived he happened to be down in the cellar disconnecting an empty beer cask and connecting a full one. Lois was glad he was out of earshot. She intended to confirm the statement he had made, but she thought she might find it easier to lie for him if he wasn't there to hear her.

This time it was not the boy detective who came, but the dark-haired woman sergeant with the scar on her forehead who had made enquiries when Sandra first went missing. With the sergeant was a middle-aged chief inspector, a big man with a slow Suffolk voice and a patient manner, but unnervingly watchful green eyes.

The sergeant gave Lois a pleasant enough greeting, and explained that they were puzzled about some facts that didn't seem to match. ‘For instance, our information is that you yourself, Mrs Goodwin, were alone behind the bar from at least six-thirty to seven-thirty on Tuesday evening. And during the whole of that time you had only two casual customers. Is that right?'

Oh God. So they knew that Phil had lied.

Lois swallowed nervously. The air in the bar room was unbearably stuffy now that the front door was closed. Her forehead and upper lip felt damp, but she thought it unwise to be seen to mop her face. ‘Yes!' she said, trying to sound brightly co-operative. ‘Yes, that's right.'

‘And where was your husband at the time?'

Lois gripped the edge of the counter to hold herself steady. ‘He was here,' she said. ‘At home, in our private quarters.'

The chief inspector stared at her. ‘Our information,' he said, ‘is that you told a customer that your husband was out.'

Oh
God
. So it was the fair-haired young man who'd given them the information. He'd come to the Flintknappers for brandy for his aunt, Mrs Schultz. And now she came to think of it, Lois could remember having heard Beryl Websdell mention that Mrs Schultz‘s nephew was a detective …

‘Yes – yes, I did say that,' Lois babbled, stretching her lips in what she hoped would look like a smile. ‘I thought my husband was out because he'd had to go to Breckham Market to see his accountant, and I had no idea that he'd already returned. But in fact he'd slipped indoors without my knowledge. In the late afternoon. About five o'clock, I believe. And when I happened to go upstairs about half-past seven I found him fast asleep on the bed.'

It sounded feeble, but it was the best she could do. The detectives said nothing, but looked at her as though they didn't believe a word of it.

‘Apparently he'd had a drink in Breckham Market,' she plunged on. ‘Rather more than one, I expect. And then with all this hot weather …'

‘I don't mind admitting that I didn't feel too good! So I sneaked in, as my wife's just told you, and tried to sleep it off without her knowledge. Some hope!' Phil, who must have heard what she was saying, took the cellar steps at a run and came to join Lois behind the counter. Out of sight of the detectives, his arm slipped round her waist. She would have been glad of that simple act of support, but he chose to supplement it by squeezing her bottom; she pushed his arm away, hating herself for lying and hating her husband for handling her so conspiratorially.

‘Quite honestly,' Phil added to the detectives, moving verbally into top-salesman gear, ‘I'd better tell you that I'd fibbed to my wife about having to see my accountant –' He proceeded to explain that he found Fodderstone a dreary hole, the customers primitive, and that he sometimes felt the need to spend a few hours in civilization. ‘Just walking on pavements, looking in shops, having a drink here and there. And now I've confessed to that, I'm in the dog-house as far as Lois is concerned. Aren't I, love?'

He gave his wife another squeeze. Lois moved out of his reach and busied herself by putting clean glasses on the shelf, turning her back on the detectives to avoid their sceptical eyes.

‘Nothing wrong with taking a few hours off,' said the chief inspector, ‘though Mrs Goodwin may well feel aggrieved that you lied to her. But why did you lie to the detective constable who took your statement yesterday? What was your reason for telling him that you were here behind the bar, if you were really upstairs in your pit?'

‘I'd have thought that was obvious,' exclaimed Phil with a smile. ‘I may not like this place, but it's my only source of income and I don't want to lose my licence. Your young detective was writing down everything I said. I wasn't going to have him putting it on record that I was too drunk to serve my customers at opening time! Have a heart, sir and madam …'

Phil was laughing now, inviting the straight-faced detectives to laugh with him, trying to jolly them along. Lois glanced at them, and knew that her husband was doing the wrong thing. She sidled up to Phil and tried to nudge him surreptitiously into silence.

‘Your licence to sell alcohol is of no interest to us, Mr Goodwin,' said the chief inspector sternly. ‘And the death of a young woman is no laughing matter.'

‘Of
course
not!' Sobering immediately, Phil expressed sorrow over Sandra Websdell's death and assured the detectives that he knew nothing whatever about it. But the trouble was, thought Lois as she listened to his fluency, that once people had taken a dislike to Phil they disbelieved everything he said. She could see that the detectives assumed that he was lying again.

For herself, though, she felt a lightening of her heart. As he spoke of his sorrow, Phil had taken off his tinted spectacles in an unconscious gesture that she recognized as a sign of sincerity. She was right about him, then, thank God. And for a moment she was so relieved that she forgot that his absence on Tuesday evening was still unexplained.

But the chief inspector pursued her husband with questions. Why had he alleged that four of his customers were in the bar with him on Tuesday from opening time onwards?

Phil put on his spectacles again. ‘Because they're regulars. I naturally assumed they'd have been here.'

‘But they weren't. Do you know where they were?'

‘Do
I
know? Of course not! I went out to get away from them.'

‘Ah yes: you don't like them, and you have nothing in common – you've already told us that. But each one of them stated, when he was interviewed, that he came here just after six o'clock and that you were serving behind the bar. They all tried to provide you with an alibi, Mr Goodwin, just as you tried to provide alibis for them. So it seems to me that you do have something in common after all. What is it? Where were the five of you on Tuesday evening?'

For once in his life Phil was wordless. Lois could sense that he had sagged, body and spirit. Heaven knew what kind of a mess her husband had got himself into … but she knew that there were limits to his follies. She gripped his hand and appealed to the sergeant; a woman detective – particularly one who wore a diamond eternity ring on her wedding finger and therefore had an emotional attachment of her own – would surely understand.

‘You
must
believe my husband when he says he knows nothing about Sandra! He would never have harmed the girl – he isn't that kind of man. Please believe me.
Please
,'

The sergeant shook her dark head reproachfully. ‘How can you expect us to believe you, Mrs Goodwin, when you haven't been honest with us? Your story about your husband being asleep upstairs wasn't true, was it? You lied to us to protect him. But if he knows nothing about Sandra's death he doesn't need any protection. Does he?'

Anguished, Lois bit her lower lip. She tried to think what to say next, but the only words that came into her head were,
Oh God what are we going to do?

Beside her, Phil kept licking the second finger of his right hand and nervously pressing down each alignment of his moustache, as though it was a false one that might drop off at any moment. He still said nothing; but he returned his wife's grip.

The chief inspector gave each of them a hard green look. ‘We'll leave you to think it over,' he said. ‘Next time we come, we shall want the truth from both of you.'

As the detectives reached the door, the sergeant glanced over her shoulder and gave Lois a smile of sympathy and understanding. It was so completely unexpected that Lois felt unnerved. For a moment she longed to call the sergeant back, sit down with her over a cup of tea and tell her everything she knew – except of course that she knew nothing …

Phil, having locked and bolted the door behind their visitors, was coming back to her with a look of gratitude and triumph on his face. He praised her and thanked her. ‘If we both stick to our story,' he insisted, ‘everything will be all right. And everything
will
be all right – things are going to be better for us in the future, I promise. Trust me!'

Lois wished that she could. But at least he had taken off his tinted spectacles again, and that token of sincerity was a small comfort.

Before going to interview the Goodwins at the Flintknappers Arms, Chief Inspector Quantrill had directed all the police officers at his disposal to make a thorough search of Stoneyhill wood.

The searchers – some uniformed, some in civilian clothes, all shirt-sleeved and sweating in the humid air – worked their way through the wood looking for huts or shelters where Sandra Websdell might have been held captive. They made slow progress. Stoneyhill wood had been neglected for years and was rank with undergrowth and booby-trapped by fallen boughs too rotten to bear a man's weight. The police officers were clawed at by brambles and stung by nettles, and each one was accompanied by a living, buzzing, biting halo of flies.

Eventually they converged on an open area in the centre of which were the ruins of a small house, probably once a keeper's cottage. The house was plainly built of grey brick, and the reason for its ruined state was immediately obvious: the walls were partly blackened, partly scorched pink by some long-ago fire. Most of the roof had been destroyed, and elder trees growing inside the ruins had forced their way towards the light until they sprouted out at the top.

What must once have been the garden, all round the house, was now elbow-high with vicious vegetation. The police had armed themselves with sticks, and after their struggle through the trees it would have been a comparatively straightforward job for them to hack their way through the nettles and giant thistles to reach the house. But instead of moving forward they lingered at the edge of the open area, panting and sweating and smarting and swearing, and surveyed the greenery with disgust.

There was no need for them to go any further. No one could have made use of the ruined house without beating a path through the vegetation, and they could all see that it was pathless. Frustrated, they sat down at the edge of the clearing – the non-smokers edging near the smokers in the hope that newly lighted cigarettes would drive away the flies – and awarded themselves a ten-minute break to lick their wounds and grumble.

The loudest grumbler was Detective Constable Ian Wigby. Having to his annoyance been recalled from London, he was further disgruntled to hear that in his absence the job of checking Desmond Flood's alibi had been passed over to the Saintsbury division. To add injury to the insult, he had been sent out with the search team as soon as he reported back, and had ripped his trousers on a bramble in Stoneyhill wood. And all for nothing.

No, not for nothing. That was what really made Wigby feel riled. He'd been required to search the wood for the benefit of Detective-bloody-Inspector Tait who, it seemed, had flown over in his aeroplane – his
own
bloody aeroplane – and had thought from on high that this looked a likely place. So Wigby had damaged his clothes, been scratched, stung, and eaten alive by flies, just to satisfy Mr Martin Tait … The beefy detective constable smoked and scowled and tried to think of a suitable way of getting even.