More Deaths Than One (25 page)

“Her?” Mayo said quickly.

There was a measurable silence. Jenny Platt's hand remained poised over her book. Salisbury suddenly picked up the despised, now cold tea and drank it off at one swig. “Georgina,” he said. “Georgina Fleming.”

Mayo sat back. “So, you and Mrs. Fleming were in this together.”

“No, we were not!” Stung, Salisbury's voice had risen. “Not like that, not as you put it!”

“How would you put it, then?”

“I know nothing about this murder ... at first, when I heard about Fleming – when you told us it was supposed to be Fleming who'd shot himself – I rang Georgina to offer my condolences.” His prominent pale eyes were wary. “We used to know each other rather well some time ago, and though we hadn't seen each other for ages, I felt it was the least I could do.”

“Very commendable, sir.” And no doubt he had also wanted to know how the land lay, what line the police were taking and how much they knew and what his own course of action ought to be. “And I suppose you talked about the Volkswagen.”

“Of course we did. I wasn't too happy, to put it mildly, at the idea of leaving it where it was under the circumstances.”

“And Mrs. Fleming?”

“She knew nothing about it, until I told her. She was as mystified as I was as to why her husband was there messing about with that old banger when he had a perfectly good car of his own. And then, when he was found dead in the Porsche ... well, whatever, I didn't want the VW leaving where it was, and Georgina saw my point. I told her I'd dispose of it and we both agreed it would be better all round to say nothing to anyone else about it. And I might say,” he added bitterly, “I paid that scrapyard over the odds to do the same.”

“Shouldn't be so trusting. And afterwards, when you learned it
wasn't
Rupert Fleming, but another man who'd been killed?”

“I realized then, of course, that he'd probably been trying to get away, but the car had been destroyed by then so there was no point in saying anything at that stage.”

“Not even when we put out an appeal for information on the Volkswagen?” Salisbury said nothing and Mayo's gaze on him was hard. “I wonder if you're telling us the whole truth?”

Salisbury's face was stiff with dislike. “I'm not in the habit of lying –” He broke off, looking discomfited, as if wondering whether evasion came under the same heading and then deciding to brazen it out. “Take it or leave it, I've told you what happened. If you don't choose to believe me, that's your pigeon.”

“I don't think you quite realize the situation you're in. What you've been at pains to show as nothing more than a bit of an argument with Fleming might well have been something much worse. On your own admission, you had a gun with you. Fleming was in a vicious mood that night, he may have just killed one man and he'd nothing to lose by having a go at another. Are you quite sure he didn't? Have a go? Or try to take your Range Rover, and did you then perhaps use your gun? Is that perhaps why he hasn't been seen since?”

Salisbury scraped back his chair and stood up. “I think you're exceeding your authority, Chief Inspector,” he said, hauteur in his bulging blue eyes, gathering his forces but by no means as confident as when he'd first come in.

Mayo could see what was coming and before Salisbury had the chance to invoke friends in high places – the name of the Chief Constable was hanging tangibly in the air – he stood up, too. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Salisbury,” he said. “We'll be in touch. I shall want to see you again.”

The two detectives sat for some time in silence after the door had closed behind Jenny Platt, who had escorted Salisbury downstairs to where his statement would be prepared for signature.

His departure left behind a sense of anti-climax. It wasn't within the character of either man to want to admit that Fleming had got away, but a realistic assessment of the situation had to allow that it was possible he had – for the time being. To think of him permanently free, cocking a snook at them from somewhere out there, was untenable to a degree. Finding him and bringing him to justice was a top priority. A man who was capable of committing two murders of such brutality had forfeited any right to freedom. Mayo was short on sympathy for Fleming and others like him. He'd seen too much of the other side.

“We know the car
was
in the coppice at any rate,” Kite said, “and we also know Fleming didn't get away in it as he'd planned. I suppose it's safe to assume he was in Coventry two days later, because of the letter being posted there.”

“The old Volks could only have been a means of getting away in the first place. He must've had better arrangements in view for later.”

“And if that was kaput, he'd either have to thumb a lift into Lavenstock, or maybe the opposite direction, or walk, before getting himself over to Coventry one way or another. Or even sleep in the car until next morning and then do likewise.”

“Leaving behind, fortunately for us, his holdall, his typewriter, his briefcase and the things he'd been at so much trouble to steal from Lois French ... it won't do, old lad, it won't do.”

Kite thought for a moment. “He has to be somewhere around still.”

Considering the situation, Mayo sat back, physically relaxed, but with an expression on his face with which Kite was familiar, that he knew boded no good for anyone on the wrong side of him. Stubborn, bloody-minded even, it also reflected his own inclinations at that moment.

“There is, however,” Mayo said suddenly, “another alternative.” And ten minutes of conversation later, he pushed the telephone across the desk to Kite.

It was half past three when Kite rang Culver Dixon Associates, and when he asked to speak to Mrs. Fleming he was told she had already left. It was her night at the squash club, but she'd asked her secretary to cancel the game she'd arranged to play, saying she had another appointment.

“Never mind, Martin.” Mayo pushed back his chair with a sudden access of energy and shrugged himself into his jacket. “It won't matter in the long run, will it?”

“ 'Tis time to die when 'tis a shame to live.”

“YOU WANTED TO SEE ME. Well, here I am, Father.”

“Come in, girl, come in to the front.”

In the cave of his study, Culver poked the fire to a blaze before lowering himself into his old wing chair while Minty, still wary of Georgina, turned around several times before curling on the hearthrug at his feet. She was a one-man dog, Culver's and no one else's. She'd been brought to Upper Delph as a puppy seven years ago, a few weeks after Georgina had gone, never leaving his side since. She would take neither food nor orders from anyone other than him.

So little had anything changed in this room that Georgina felt she might have been back in her childhood, on this dark afternoon of flickering firelight – watching Andy Pandy on the television maybe, or later, when she was older, toasting crumpets at the fire with the long-handled brass fork, and her father puffing at his old pipe in the chair opposite. She was surrounded by objects well loved and familiar from her childhood ... the wall clock, the Victorian watercolour she'd always loved of the house, and the old brown sofa that was a piece of her life. She remembered cuddling into the sofa's soft velvety comfort to read, or to watch her father draw pictures for her. Remembered too, hiding her face against the back and fighting to control tears she mustn't ever show.

“Don't ever let anybody know what you're thinking or feeling, girl. That way you'll always have the advantage.
” That's what he'd drummed into her, so that although they were never physically very far apart, he never knew what she really felt and thought as she was growing up – about him, about Rupert. He'd taken it for granted that since he'd always been careful to show an interest in what she did, had been there for advice and encouragement, and since she'd never gone materially short of anything, she must be happy. And she
had
been happy, or at least she hadn't been unhappy. Until she met Rupert, and found out what unhappiness really was.

Don't cry. Don't show it when you're hurt. Control yourself, even when you fed you're going to burst with happiness, and love ...

“God, you're a cold-hearted bitch!” Rupert had accused her, not having the nous or the sensitivity or whatever it needed to see that she couldn't, however she tried, lay herself open by admitting how he could set her on fire.

But now the dam had burst. The murky waters of emotion boiled and swirled around her. She felt she was drowning in them and had to fight to come to the surface. She'd begun to shiver, uncontrollably, feeling premonitions of further disasters to come, and she said suddenly, “I'm so cold, I'll make some tea. Do you want some?”

“I'd rather have hot cocoa.”

It was a funny old time of day for cocoa. But yes, why not? What did the usual conventions matter? “Yes, cocoa, that's a good idea.”

So she went down the familiar draughty passage to the kitchen Mrs. Stretton had left neat as a new pin and boiled milk and made some in the old blue jug, putting mugs on a tray and carrying it back carefully. A physical comfort that could do nothing to allay the rapidly mounting terror inside. That they should sit calmly drinking cocoa while the catastrophic happenings of the last few days hung between them was as unreal as everything else about the afternoon, irrational as the things one did in dreams. But this was a nightmare from which she would never wake up.

Without looking directly at him, she was aware of him observing her from under his heavy brows, his knotted hands busy with his pipe. When she'd seen him the other day on his birthday after so long an interval, she'd been shocked and dismayed to see how old he looked, how gaunt the intervening years had made him. But he'd lost none of his disciplined severity, and knowing that she was still, as always, overawed by his forcefulness, she had to make herself speak.

“You know – about Rupert, Father, don't you?” She couldn't bring herself to be more plain, but there, it was out. And his answer, when it came, was as indirect as her question. He reached into his pocket for his rubber pouch, refilled and lit his pipe, his actions deliberate and unhurried, before he spoke, calm and apparently unworried.

“It's all one now. Water under the bridge. Don't worry, we'll make out, yet.”

We
. The two of them, together again, but now linked by death. What had she done, what had she brought on them? She knew by her father's face that
he
knew – and didn't blame her for it, either.

“I think we have to talk,” he said. “Get things straight between us. It'll soon be too late.”

She felt no shock because she'd become used to the idea of what must be during the last few days, but she did feel a sudden, overwhelming revulsion at the thought of facing it. Already regretting what she'd started, panicking, she put down her mug so fiercely that what remained of its contents splashed over the top, and stood up, startling Minty, who growled and got to her feet too. “No, I don't want to talk. That's something we should've done years ago. It's too late now. I think I'd much better go home.”

“Sit down, Georgina. Sit, Minty.”

And such was the habit of obedience they sat down, the woman and the dog.

The mellow old clock chimed a quarter to the hour. The dog was restless, knowing it was time for her walk. “I'd better take her,” Culver said. “It won't take long. But before I do, I want you to listen to me.”

“Don't leave me, Father. I'll come with you.” Anything was better than sitting here alone.

“No!” The old man's voice was harsh. “You'll wait here, girl.” He stroked the bitch's restless head until she settled on the rug again, then looked at his daughter, his face creased with the effort to find the right words. Lamely, for him, he said, “Everything will be all right, Georgina,” then drew on his pipe and began to speak.

Outside, rain spattered briefly against the windows and then stopped. Inside the quiet room, his harsh voice rose and fell and soon, mingling with it, her swift, clipped accents.

Hours later, it seemed, though it was barely half an hour, she heard the sound of tyres hissing on the wet tarmac of the drive. It was with a sense of inevitability that she looked through the window and saw the police.

She took them into the study, resenting their intrusion into this private place, but having nowhere else other than the kitchen. The two men and the pretty, confidently efficient young policewoman seemed tall and menacing in the close confines of the small room, especially the Chief Inspector, whose grey eyes, steady and watchful, never left her face.

How, she wondered, was she going to get through this, knowing what she did and being more than a little frightened of him, of that sense of pent-up energy that was no less formidable for being kept severely in check. She wondered if he'd any idea how he affected people, or perhaps it was only those who were guilty who felt as she had at their previous interviews, as if she hardly dare speak for fear of having her words pounced on and only too correctly interpreted.

“Where's your father, Mrs. Fleming?” were his first, hardly intimidating, words.

“He's taken Minty for her walk. He won't be long.”

“Then perhaps we can take the opportunity of a few words with you until he gets back.”

“I thought we'd said all we have to say.”

“Oh, not by a long chalk,” he said easily. “And I think you know that, don't you? Are you going to be honest with me, now that you've had time to think it over?”

She knew that she'd no other choice, after her talk with her father, and after a short struggle with herself, recalling her promises to him, she finally relinquished her defences and gave up. And having given up, it suddenly seemed easier. She asked tonelessly what it was he wanted to know.