The Body of a Woman (19 page)

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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Body of a Woman
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‘Have you got a tree-house?' Z asked and was taken by the younger boy on a voyage of discovery.
‘Ackcherly,' he confided in a patronising tone, ‘it fell to bits, but I'm going to make a new one. Twice as high.' He shinned up an overgrown pear tree and posed like a pirate in the rigging.
‘Can you see far?' Z asked and climbed up to join him.
To one side, across the wattle fencing, was dense woodland. On the other lay the Knightleys' garden partly hidden by the roof of their double garage, but with the terrace, lawn and conservatory in full view.
‘They're out.' Patrick was disappointed. ‘The woman before them used to sunbathe topless. And they gave parties with coloured lights in the trees.' He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. ‘Brilliant nosh. I used to nip over the top of the garage and sneak some back.'
Z smiled. ‘Don't this new lot entertain?'
‘Nuh. Not yet. Except her fancy man.'
The expression was unchildlike, quaintly gossipy. Picked up, she wondered, from his mother or the cleaner? ‘Who's that, then?' She made her voice sound casual.
Patrick spoke over a pear twig gripped between his teeth. The words came out scornfully with a spray of spit. ‘The Frenchy from down the road.'
‘I don't think I've met him.' Still a throwaway line.
‘Pascal. He's got a smashing car. One day I'm going to have one like that, only red. Green's for wallies.'
‘Right.' Z let herself down to the rough grass and brushed off her slacks. She wasn't happy about leading him on. Kids had to be questioned with an approved adult present. But where did idle chatter stop and questioning begin? She hoped Mott wouldn't split hairs over it.
Still Mrs Piggot hadn't returned, so Z thanked the boys for looking after her and escaped to her car. As she went to unlock it the Hadfield Peugeot drew up with Janey at the wheel.
Z followed it up the drive on foot. She noticed Chloe look back towards her with a frown before slipping from the car and disappearing quickly into the house.
‘Sergeant, is there anything fresh? How's Mrs Chadwick?' Janey demanded.
Z explained there was hope of her recovering soon. Standing at the open front door, she heard the girl's furious cry from upstairs, then Chloe came rushing down. ‘We've been burgled!'
Janey stared around in amazement. Nothing seemed disturbed. ‘Where?' she said.
‘My room's trashed.'
‘Shall we?' Janey invited Z grimly. They found the wardrobe doors open, clothes dragged across the floor, drawers pulled out and their contents piled untidily on the bed.
‘What on earth did he think he was doing?' shouted Janey. ‘Where is the bloody man?'
‘Who?' shrieked Chloe. ‘You don't mean Father?'
‘Who else? There was never any break-in.' She was getting herself under control.
‘In my room? How dare he? How dare he? He's gone mad, Janey. Oh, Janey!'
‘Chloe, calm down. I'll help you put everything straight, but just now we'd better find out where he is and demand an explanation.'
There was no mystery as to his whereabouts. He came in shouting from the back garden. It was clear he'd been drinking. ‘Where's the bloody Volvo?' he roared. ‘I went to get it and it's not there! Goddammit, don't say those bloody police have taken that one as well.'
‘The Volvo is Leila's,' Charles Hadfield declared sternly, appearing from the drawing-room.
Knightley blundered past them and started upstairs.
‘My room!' Chloe wailed.
‘He wouldn't be fit to drive, anyway,' Hadfield offered irrelevantly, bemused by the hubbub.
Z put a hand on the girl's arm. ‘Chloë, was there anything in your room he might have been looking for? Will you check if anything's gone missing there?'
On the gallery Knightley turned and beat on the banister rail with both fists. ‘That damn dress. That's what's gone missing. I should have burnt it! What in the name of God did Leila mean by wearing it?'
‘The dress?” Chloë faltered. She took a step towards the staircase. ‘Oh my God!' and she crumpled on the hall tiles.
Z helped Janey carry the girl to a sofa in the drawing-room, Hadfield trailing anxiously behind. Even Knightley seemed sufficiently appalled to come back downstairs and hang over Chloë's limp body. ‘What's the matter with the girl?' he demanded. ‘I never meant to …' Z resisted an urge to flatten him.
‘I think it's better if you disappear,' Hadfield decided, as near as dammit dismissing the man from his own house.
‘I'm all right,' Chloe managed to get out. The faint had only been brief and she was trying to sit up. ‘I need to go and …'
Janey stifled her protests. ‘You're staying right here while I get you a hot cup of sweet tea. You need sugar.' She nodded at Z to stay on. ‘Come along, Charles.'
Given a free rein to talk with the girl, Z was loth to upset her further. ‘I'm afraid your father's under a lot of stress at present.'
Chloë didn't pick up on it.
‘So he was looking for something in your room?'
‘The dress. You heard what he said. But it's not mine.' She clasped her head. ‘And what did he mean about Leila? She never takes things from my room.' The girl closed her eyes. ‘Never took.'
‘Perhaps he's not making good sense at the moment.'
‘He's been drinking.' Chloe herself seemed confused.
‘That may account for it.' Only it didn't. Knightley had been fully focused on what he was raising the roof about: some dress of Chloë's that Leila had worn? Or vice versa?
‘What dress was it he meant?' Z pursued.
‘I don't know.'
And that, Z saw, was a flat lie. Chloë had already said it wasn't hers. A specific dress that belonged to someone else, then. It all seemed so trivial to be causing a family crisis.
‘Here,' Janey said, arriving to deposit a filled mug alongside the sofa. ‘Drink up and we're going to leave you in peace and quiet. Give a shout if there's anything you need.' She ushered Z out of the room.
‘Well, did she explain what that was about?'
‘No, I think she's more likely to confide in you. I'd better make myself scarce.'
They walked towards the open front door and then Z remembered what Patrick Piggott had told her. ‘Have you met any of the neighbours, apart from nextdoor?'
‘Not formally, though a number introduced themselves at the cricket match.'
‘When was this?'
Janey explained about the two sides of the road and the twice-yearly contest. ‘We met several people there. They seemed very friendly. There was a plump girl called Holly who kept the scoreboard and an eccentric Frenchman. I can't remember his name. And Charles was quite taken with a couple of old codgers sporting school ties to keep up their flannels. The Piggotts weren't there. Maybe they're not into cricket.'
‘A Frenchman lives in Acrefield Way?'
‘Apparently. In one of those old flint and brick cottages, next to poor Hetty Chadwick. What's so special about him?'
Z shrugged. ‘Seemed funny, that's all - a Frenchman at a cricket match. I wonder what he made of it.'
She left Janey staring after her and probably marvelling at her butterfly-brained curiosity. But that would be only one of the kinky things the afternoon had turned up.
Z drove off in the direction of town and slowed to observe the cottage Janey had spoken of. On an impulse she got out, went up the path and knocked. There was no answer, so she walked round the side, peering in the diminutive windows at white, roughcast walls lit in places to warm ochre by the late afternoon sun. They appeared to have coloured sketches attached haphazardly. Three beanbag seats were lined up
opposite as if for an absent audience. At the back door her toe clinked against glass on a flagstone half-hidden under a lavender bush. A note folded in the neck of a milk bottle read, ‘None until Friday, thanks.'
There was also a small triangle of white paper showing under the door's edge. The milk deliveryman's bill? Or some advertising bumf? But it was worth checking. Z risked an index fingernail, scratching to retrieve it. The folded paper was lined and had been torn from an exercise book. On it was written,
I must see you. Please ring me
.
It's urgent.
Chloë.
She slid the note back where she'd found it.
 
Back at base Z found Beaumont in the canteen and learned that the Boss had been called out to Kidlington. For some flak from the ACC Crime, Beaumont supposed. It was easy for these off-stage characters to demand the impossible of troops in the firing line. With a domestic murder Statistics expected a clear-up rate of forty-eight hours. In this case at this rate they'd be lucky to make it in as many days.
Angus Mott was in his office when his two sergeants looked in. He waved them to seats. ‘What's new?'
Beaumont reported on the missing cars. ‘Knightley's was where he said. SOCO were plastic-wrapping it ready to take away when the professor turned up. He went ballistic.'
‘The outcome of which I witnessed at his home,' Z put in. ‘Doubly ballistic when he discovered his wife's car was missing too. He assumed we'd taken it.'
Beaumont beamed. ‘I checked on Piggott's Merc for good measure. It was parked round the back of his betting shop. I put a modest fiver on the 3.30, gave a wink and watched it go into a private pocket. He's a sly dog, that Walter Pimm. Piggott's put him in as manager. I'd rather have his other heavy, Big Ben Carter any day. For the price, Walter didn't give much away. He'd had to pick the car up Monday after it was clamped and removed from a hotel's forecourt in
Regent's Park on Sunday. It seems Piggott had parked it there for safety while he took his family to the Zoo.
‘Next, I pushed the lab for anything on the fibres. They'll be examining a sample of the carpet in Knightley's car to compare with what Littlejohn found between her toes. And Knightley's dinner jacket wasn't responsible for the fluff under Leila's nails. No cashmere in it.'
‘No progress, then.' Mott sounded gloomy.
‘Depends what you're after,' Beaumont comforted him, leering somewhat. ‘I checked on who'd brought the Knightley car in to McIlroy's. It was a woman, name of Ryder, forties to fifty, a bit of a dog. She ordered an engine-oil change and said it would be picked up by the owner.'
‘Where does that get us?'
‘Knightley said he had trouble with the electrics. Maybe we've “trouvéd la femme”. We know he's a womaniser, but he told you a colleague dumped the car off to get a discounted bill. The garage has no such arrangement with the woman, but an apprentice knew where she worked. So I went along to her travel agency and picked up some holiday brochures. Her desk-keys were lying beside her handbag and the silly woman had attached a tag with her address on. It's a semi out on the Sulham road. So I tootled out there for a looksee and had a word with the old biddy next door.'
‘And?' Mott pursued.
‘I said my friend had left his BMW there earlier to be picked up. So I got chapter and verse from her. It seems he's done it before at weekends. This time there'd been a terrible row there Friday night when madam came home and found her daughter entertaining a man upstairs. Eventually the man drove his car off with the daughter in as passenger. She took an overnight bag with her.
‘This worthy Mrs Crane said the couple came back the following evening. The mother let them in and that's when she first saw the man properly. Her description sounded exactly like the prof, and he was carrying an enormous bouquet of
cut flowers. The car stayed there overnight. Next morning - we're into Sunday now - the man and young Beryl - definitely not Mrs Ryder - went off in her Fiat, while she was out in the garden hanging up some washing. That on the sabbath, to Mrs C's horror.
‘Knightley's BMW was left in the drive. Mrs Ryder drove it out after lunch that day, coming back after dark. Then she left in it on Monday morning half an hour earlier than she usually went to work.
‘This confirms what McIlroy's mechanic said about the car being dropped off there at 8.30am.'
‘Useful neighbour, this Mrs Crane. Is she reliable?'
‘Without doubt. A widow, living alone: I'd say she gets her kicks from peeping through net curtains. Probably makes diary entries on her neighbours' doings. It helps that she disapproves of the Ryders who “let down the neighburhood”.
‘Sorry, Guv; but it seems that Knightley had more on his mind this weekend than murdering his missus. Or, if he did, he took the Ryder girl along with him to share the entertainment. We can at least fill her in as his present love interest.'
Mott grunted. His DS's account seemed to square with the professor's quoted ‘misunderstanding'. If the mother had caught him out in a spot of nooky with the daughter that could have sparked the ‘terrible row' the neighbour overheard. But by the following night all had apparently been smoothed over and Knightley stayed on. The car-swapping on Sunday sounded complicated but there was probably a reason for it. Perhaps Mrs Ryder had wanted to impress a third party with the BMW. So had Knightley actually talked her round and bought her compliance by lending it to her?
‘Does this totally eliminate Knightley from the murder?' Z asked.
‘Possibly,' Mott said heavily. ‘We'll have to check times and places for the whole alibi. I already had my doubts. His reaction to the crime-shot in Shotters Wood was genuine shock. He'd not seen her geared up like that before. He was
knocked back, doubted who was under the mask. It's all on the interview tape.'
‘Geared up?'
‘In that dress. He called it “vampy”.'
‘Dress,' Z echoed. ‘I have some follow-up on that.' She told them of the scene after Knightley searched Chloë's room, and the girl passing out at mention of what he was after.
‘Write it all out,' Mott ordered. ‘I want it verbatim. We could have something here.'
He sent Z off while he and Beaumont re-ran the taped interview with Knightley.
‘Stop it there,' Beaumont suddenly hissed. ‘Knightley was starting to say something and you cut him off.'
Mott wound back and replayed the words; his own voice prompting —‘How about her dress?' Then Knightley: ‘That's not …'
‘You see?' Beaumont insisted. ‘That's when you suggested, “Not her style?” and Knightley lapped it up. But suppose he'd been going to say, “It's not her dress,” meaning he thought it was Chloë's. He had seen it before and remembered, because it was quite unsuitable for a kid. Like he said, it's vampish.'
Mott thumped the desk. ‘Then from seeing the murder-scene photo and finding we'd taken his car, he went straight back home and trashed the girl's room - looking for the dress he'd seen earlier on Chloe. He couldn't find it and now he thinks his wife had taken the dress from the girl's wardrobe'.
‘I want the Boss to hear all this,' Mott decided. ‘I'll ring Kidlington and have him drop by before he goes home.'
‘Is it all that important?' Beaumont doubted. ‘Don't mothers and daughters swap clothes all the time?'
‘Not the way Z tells it. Let's wait for her write-up, but I thought she said that Chloë denied it was hers.'
‘Right, so it was really the mother's, but she'd hidden it from her husband. It was sexy and pricey, after all. Something to fascinate the lover with.'
‘There's something I don't get. When had Knightley seen it before? And why did he still expect to find it in his daughter's wardrobe when he'd just learnt that Leila was killed wearing it?'
Mott looked up as Z came in with a printed sheet in her hand.
‘I know,' she admitted. ‘It's a labyrinth. While you're reading this through I'm going for three doughnuts. As Janey would say, we all badly need sugar.'
 
Superintendent Yeadings took longer to get in touch because the message he received from Headquarters switchboard was ambiguous: ‘DI Mott would like you to drop in on your way home, sir.'
Since the DI's flat lay on his route and the uncurtained windows showed lights, he pulled into the space before Mott's garage. When he rang at the door it was opened by Paula, looking gorgeous.
He remembered then that tonight was scheduled for an emotional workout and he could find himself stepping in as unintentional referee. It was even more embarrassing since she appeared appalled to see him. ‘Mr Yeadings! Is something wrong?'
She'd mistaken him for the bearer of bad news! ‘No,no. Angus is fine. He's not here then?' Obviously not: he was making a thorough sow's ear out of this.
‘I'm sorry, Paula. Our paths seem to have crossed, mine and his I mean.'
She looked relieved. ‘Well, come in anyway. I've just put some supper out.'

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