Gallows View (18 page)

“Can you tell me anything about her past?” Banks asked Robin.

“Nothing you couldn’t find out from anyone else, I don’t think. I did realize later, though, when I was old enough to understand, what a fascinating life she’d led, all the changes she’d witnessed. Can you imagine it? When she was a girl cars were few and far between and people didn’t move around much. And it wasn’t only technology. Look at how our attitudes have changed, how the whole structure of society is different.”

“How did Alice relate to all this?”

“Believe it or not, Inspector, she was quite a radical. She was an early struggler for women’s rights, and she even went so far as to serve with the International Brigade as a nurse in the Spanish Civil War.”

“Was she a communist?”

“Not in the strict sense, as far as I know. A lot of people who fought against Franco weren’t.”

“What were your impressions of her?”

“Impressions? I suppose, when I was a child, I was just fascinated with the cottage she lived in. It was so full of odds and ends. All those alcoves just overflowing with knick-knacks she’d collected over the years: tarnished cigarette lighters, Victorian pennies and those old silver three-penny bits—all kinds of wonderful junk. I don’t imagine I paid much attention to Alice herself. I remember I was always fascinated by that ship in the bottle, the
Miranda
. I stared at it for hours on end. It was alive for me, a real ship. I even imagined the crew manning the sails, doing battle with pirates.”

Mrs Allott poured the tea and laughed. “He always did have plenty of imagination, my Robin, didn’t you?”

Robin ignored her. “How did it happen, anyway? How was she killed?”

“We’re still not sure,” Banks said. “It looks like she might have fallen over in a struggle with some kids come to rob her, but we’re trying to cover any other possibilities. Have you any ideas?”

“I shouldn’t think it was kids, surely?”

“Why not?”

“Well, they wouldn’t kill a frail old woman, would they?”

“You’d be surprised at what kids do these days, Mr Allott. As I said, they might not have killed her intentionally.”

Robin smiled. “I’m a teacher at the College of Further Education, Inspector, so I’m no great believer in the innocence and purity of youth. But couldn’t it have happened some other way?”

“We don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to determine. What do you have in mind?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid. It was just an idea.”

“You can’t think of anyone who might have held a grudge or wanted her out of the way for some other reason?”

“I’m sorry, no. I wish I could help, but . . .”

“That’s all right,” Banks said, standing to leave. “I wasn’t expecting you to give us the answer. Is there anything else you can think of?”

“No. I can dig out that portrait for you, though, if you’re interested.”

Out of politeness’ sake, Banks accompanied Robin upstairs and waited as he flipped through one of his many boxes of photographs. The picture of Alice, when he found it, was mounted on mat and still seemed in very good shape. It showed a close-up of the old woman’s head in semi-profile, and high-contrast processing had brought out the network of lines and wrinkles, the vivid topography of Alice Matlock’s face. Her expression was proud, her eyes clear and lively.

“It’s very good,” Banks said. “How long have you been interested in photography?”

“Ever since I was at school.”

“Ever thought of taking it up professionally?”

“As a police photographer?”

Banks laughed. “I didn’t have anything as specific as that in mind,” he said.

“I’ve thought of trying it as a freelance, yes,” Robin said. “But it’s too unpredictable. Better to stick to teaching.”

“There is one more thing, while I’m here,” Banks said, handing the photograph back to Robin. “It’s just something I’m curious about. Do you ever get the impression that anyone at the Camera Club might be . . . not too serious . . . might be more interested in the models you get occasionally than in the artistic side?”

It was Robin’s turn to laugh. “What an odd question,” he said. “But, yes, there’s always one or two seem to turn up only when we’ve got a model in. What did Sandra say?”

“To tell the truth,” Banks said, “I didn’t like to ask her. She’s a bit sensitive about it and I’ve probably teased her too much as it is.”

“I see.”

“Who are these people?”

“Their names?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I know . . .” Robin said hesitantly.

“Don’t worry,” Banks assured him, “you won’t be getting them into
trouble. They won’t even know we’ve heard their names if they’ve done nothing wrong.”

“All right.” Robin took a deep breath. “Geoff Welling and Barry Scott are the ones who spring to mind. They seem decent enough sorts, but they hardly ever turn up and I’ve never seen any examples of their work.”

“Thank you,” Banks said, writing down the names. “What do they look like?”

“They’re both in their late twenties, about my age. Five-ten to six feet. Barry’s got a bit of a beer belly but Geoff seems fit enough. What’s all this about? That Peeping Tom business?”

“Robin!” Mrs Allott shouted from the bottom of the stairs, “Can you come and take your dad up his tea and biscuits?”

“Coming,” Robin yelled back, and followed Banks down the stairs.

“Another cup of tea, Inspector?” Mrs Allott asked.

“No, I won’t if you don’t mind,” Banks said. “Have to get home.”

As he walked the short distance back home, Banks tried to pinpoint exactly what it was that Robin had said to increase his uneasy feeling about the Alice Matlock killing.

Apart from the immediate shock, which had made her scream, Sandra felt very calm about her experience. One minute she had been undressing for bed, as she had done thousands of times before, absorbed in her own private rituals, and the next moment that world was in tatters, would probably never really be the same again. She realized that the idea of such permanent ruin was melodramatic, so she kept it to herself, but she could think of no other way to express the complex sense of violation she had experienced.

She wasn’t scared; she wasn’t even angry after the shock had worn off and the adrenalin dispersed. Surprisingly, her main feeling was pity—Harriet’s compassion—because Sandra did feel sorry for the man in a way she found impossible to explain, even to herself.

It was something to do with the unnaturalness of his act. Sandra had always been fortunate in having a healthy attitude towards sex.
She had neither needed nor wanted the help of manuals, marital aids, awkward positions or suburban wife-swapping clubs to keep her sex life interesting, and it was partly because of this, her own sexual healthiness, that she felt sorry for the pathetic man who could only enjoy sex in such a vicarious, secretive way. Her pity was not a soft and loving feeling, though; it was more akin to contempt.

That Sunday morning as she rang Selena Harcourt’s doorbell, which played a fragment of “Lara’s Theme” from
Doctor Zhivago
, she thanked her lucky stars for the hundredth time that she had managed to persuade Alan not to report the incident. It had gone against all his instincts, and the task had required all of Sandra’s rhetorical expertise, but she had done it, and here she was, about to fulfill her part of the bargain.

“Oh, hello, Sandra, do come in,” Selena said in her cooing voice. “Excuse the mess.”

There was, of course, no mess. Selena’s living-room was spick and span, as always. It smelled of pine air-freshener and lemon-scented disinfectant, and all the souvenir ashtrays and costume-dolls from the Algarve, the Costa del Sol and various other European resorts simply glowed with health and shone with cleanliness.

The only new addition to the household was a gloomy poodle, called Pépé, who turned around slowly from his spot by the fireplace and looked at Sandra as if to apologize for his ridiculous appearance: the clippings and bows that Selena had inflicted on him in the hope that he might win a prize in the upcoming dog show. Sandra duly lavished hypocritical praise upon the poor creature, who gave her a very sympathetic and conspiratorial look, then she sat uneasily on the sofa. She always sat uneasily in Selena’s house because everything looked as if it were on show, not quite real or functional.

“I was just saying to Kenneth, we haven’t seen very much of you lately. You’ve not been to one of our coffee mornings for simply ages.”

“It’s the job,” Sandra explained. “I work three mornings a week for Dr Maxwell now, remember?”

“Of course,” Selena said. “The dentist.” Somehow or other, she managed to give the word just the right shade of emphasis to imply that although dentists might be necessary, they were certainly not desirable in respectable society.

“That’s right.”

“So what else have you been up to since we last had a little chat?”

Sandra couldn’t remember when that was, so she gave a potted history of the last month, to which Selena listened politely before offering tea.

“Have you heard about this Peeping Tom business?” she called through from the kitchen.

“Yes,” Sandra shouted back.

“Of course, I keep forgetting your hubby’s on the force. You must know all about it, then?” Selena said as she brought in the tray bearing tea and a selection of very fattening confectionery.

“On the force, indeed!” Sandra thought. Selena knew damn well that Alan was a policeman—in fact, that was the only reason she had ever talked to Sandra in the first place—and her way of digging for gossip was about as subtle as a Margaret Thatcher pep speech.

“Not much,” Sandra lied. “There’s not much to know, really.”

“That Dorothy Wycombe’s been having a right go at Alan, hasn’t she?” Selena noted, with so much glee that the lah-de-dah inflection she usually imposed on her Northern accent slipped drastically around “having a right go.”

“You could say that,” Sandra admitted, gritting her teeth.

“Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“That the police aren’t doing much. Now, you know I’m no women’s libber, Sandra, but we do get treated just a teeny bit unfairly sometimes. It is a man’s world, you know.”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, though, they’re doing quite a lot. They’ve brought in a psychologist from the university.”

“Oh?” Selena raised her eyebrows. “What’s he supposed to do?”

“
She
helps tell the police what kind of person this peeper is.”

“But surely they know that already? He likes to watch women undress.”

“Yes,” Sandra said. “But there’s more to it than that. Why does he like to watch? What does he do while he’s watching? Why doesn’t he have a normal sex life? That’s the kind of thing the psychologists are working on.”

“Well, that’s not much use, is it?” Selena observed. “Not until they’ve caught him, anyway.”

“That’s what I came to see you about,” Sandra said, forging ahead. “They’re worried that he might not stop at looking—that might be just the beginning—so they’re really stepping up the investigation. They’ve already got enough information to know that he checks out his areas before he strikes, so he knows something about the layout of the house. He probably finds out when people go to bed, whether the woman goes up alone first, that kind of thing. So I suggested that it would be a good idea if we all kept our eyes open for strangers, or anyone acting strangely around here. That way we could catch him before he did any real harm.”

“Good lord!” Selena exclaimed. “You don’t really think he’d come around here, do you?”

Sandra shrugged. “There’s no telling where he’ll go. They’ve not found any rhyme or reason to his movements yet.”

Selena’s hand shook slightly as she poured more tea, and she bit her bottom lip between her teeth. “There was something,” she started. “It was last week—Wednesday, I think—it startled me at the time but I never really gave it much thought later.”

“What was it?”

“Well, I was walking back from Eloise Harrison’s. She lives on Culpepper Avenue, you know, two streets down, and it’s such a long way around if you go right to the main road and along, so I cut through the back here. There’s a little snicket between the houses in the next street, you know, so I just go out of our back gate into the alley, then cut through the snicket, cross the street, do the same again, and I’m right in Eloise’s back garden.

“Coming back on Wednesday, it was quite dark and wet, a nasty night, and when I cut into our back alley I almost bumped into this man. It was funny, I thought, because he looked like he was just standing there. I don’t know why, but I think if we’d both been moving we’d have really bumped into each other. Well, it made me jump, I can tell you that. There’s no light out there except what shines from the houses, and it’s a lonely sort of place. Anyway, I just hurried on through the back gate and into the house, and I never really thought much more of it. But if you ask me, I’d say he was just standing there, loitering.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?”

“I’m sorry, dear, I really didn’t get a good look. As I said, it was
dark, and what with the shock and all I just hurried on. I think he was wearing a black raincoat with a belt, and he had his collar turned up. He was wearing a hat, too, because of the rain, I suppose, so I couldn’t have seen his face even if I’d wanted to. It was one of those.. . what do you call them? Trilbies, that’s it. I think he was quite young, though, not the dirty-old-man type.”

“What made you think that?”

“I don’t know, really,” Selena answered slowly, as if she was finding it difficult to put her instincts and intuitions into words. “Just the way he moved. And the trilby looked too old for him.”

“Thank you,” Sandra said, anxious to get home and make notes while it was all still fresh in her mind.

“Do you think it was him?”

“I don’t know, but the police will be thankful for any information about suspicious strangers at the moment.”

Selena fingered the plunging neckline of her dress, which revealed exactly the right amount of creamy skin to complement her peroxide curls, moon-shaped face and excessive make-up. “If it was him, then he’s been watching us. It could be any of us he’s after. Me. You. Josephine. Annabel. This is terrible.”