The Chief Inspector's Daughter (11 page)

Gifford shook his damp hat and mackintosh in the porch, then hung them on the hallstand. He tugged down the cuffs of his pullover, hand-knitted in the same sludge-green wool as his mother's neat cardigan. ‘The papers hadn't come, Mother, it's too early. I'll go for one later.'

‘Thank you, dear.' She led the Chief Inspector into a sitting room crowded with drab furniture. ‘He's a good boy,' she confided. ‘Now, you have your discussion while I make the tea, and then you must tell me how you met Jasmine. Such a charming girl – a good deal younger than Rodney, of course, but there was a big age gap between me and her mother. Jasmine's a writer, too; it must run in the family. Her work is much more frivolous than Rodney's, but she's made quite a success of it in her own way. And although we don't often see her, she doesn't forget us. Jasmine always sends flowers for my birthday, and chocolates for me and whisky for Rodney at Christmas. Not that he really cares for alcohol …'

She hobbled away in the direction of the kitchen, and Quantrill and Gifford stood facing each other across a bulbous three-piece suite, still anti-macassared in memory of the Brylcreem that men smeared on their hair in the days when the furniture was new.

Gifford shrugged away his mother's confidence in his sobriety. ‘Jasmine won't send any more,' he said. ‘That's the last bottle of whisky I've had from her.' He gave Quantrill a narrow look, as if assessing his relationship with Jasmine Woods. ‘She's dead.'

‘I know,' said Quantrill. ‘I didn't want to mention it in front of your mother, but I'm a Detective Chief Inspector in the county police.'

Rodney Gifford sat down more quickly than he had apparently intended, his small body almost bouncing as it hit the metal sprung seat of the armchair. His ears paled; so did the tip of his nose.

‘What are you doing here?' he demanded.

‘I came to Yarchester to break the news to your cousin Heather. As we'd met, I thought I'd call on you on my way back. Tell me, Mr Gifford, how do you know about Jasmine's death?'

Gifford wriggled forward in his seat so as to be able to assume a small man's position of dignity, back straight, feet firmly planted on the floor. He pulled from his hip pocket a torn-off and folded front page of the early edition of the
Yarchester Evening News
, and handed it to Quantrill. ‘Stop press,' he indicated.

Quantrill sat down and read the smudged type:
Jasmine Woods, famous local author, murdered
.

‘I heard someone mention it when I got to the newsagent's,' said Gifford, ‘otherwise I might not have noticed the stop press item. Mother would have seen it, though, she reads every word. That's why I had to lie to her about getting the paper – I must break the news to her gently, poor old dear. She thought the world of Jasmine.'

‘But you were of a different opinion, if I remember,' commented Quantrill drily.

Gifford reddened again. ‘I've always been disappointed by Jasmine's lack of literary integrity,' he said, obviously choosing his words with care, ‘and I believe I had a drink or two at her party, so I might perhaps have expressed myself rather strongly. But I had nothing against Jasmine herself, nothing at all.' He bent forward to retie the double knot in his shoelaces. ‘How was she murdered, may I ask?'

‘She was struck on the head by a blunt instrument,' said Quantrill who, unlike Sergeant Tait, could use standard police phrases without self-consciousness.

‘Death would have been immediate, I hope? I mean, my mother will want to know—'

‘Quite so,' agreed the Chief Inspector with deliberate ambiguity.

Gifford sat up and nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘A burglar, I suppose. Jasmine was mad to keep her collection in the house, I told her that.'

‘You're familiar with her collection, Mr Gifford?'

‘Of course. She is – she was my cousin.'

‘Did you visit her house very often?'

‘No.' Gifford's tongue flicked across his wide lips but he kept his eyes on Quantrill's face. ‘I hardly ever went there – I haven't any transport and it's all of seventeen miles. But she was showing off her jade and netsuke when I arrived with the Pardoes for her party. That was the last time I saw her. Six weeks ago.'

‘I see. Can you tell me what you were doing yesterday?'

Gifford licked his lips again. ‘Why?' he demanded. ‘You surely don't imagine that I had anything to do with her death?'

‘I need to interview everyone who knew your cousin,' said Quantrill with stolid patience. ‘Is there any reason why you want to avoid telling me what you were doing?'

Gifford sprang up from his chair and made a stand on the hearthrug with his back to the embroidered fire-screen, feet slightly apart, hands in pockets, head up, ears blazing through his pale ginger hair.

‘None at all,' he asserted fiercely. ‘I'm avoiding nothing. Yesterday I followed my usual Sunday practice – my mother will confirm that. In the morning I sat in here reading the
Observer
, in the afternoon I took her by bus to the cemetery to put flowers on my father's grave, and in the evening I sat here with her watching television. Didn't I, Mother?'

He darted forward and helped the old lady manoeuvre a heavy wooden tea-trolley through the door. ‘Didn't you what, dear?' she said.

‘Didn't I sit in here with you yesterday evening watching television?'

‘Yes, of course, you always do on Sundays. He's a good boy,' she informed the Chief Inspector for the third time. ‘He knows that I enjoy television more in his company, but he doesn't like to waste his time on frivolous programmes. He's very serious. He works up in his room every evening during the week, writing his plays, but on Sundays he joins me and we watch BBC2. Sunday afternoons and evenings are our times together, aren't they, Rodney?' She smiled at her son, then turned to the Chief Inspector. ‘Now, Mr – er – do you take milk and sugar?'

Lunchless and thirsty, Quantrill moved to the door. ‘Very kind of you, Mrs Gifford, but I'm afraid I can't stay. I have to get back to work.'

He glanced at her son, who had resumed his proprietorial stance on the hearthrug and was now looking smugly triumphant. He recalled the way Gifford, at the party, had gestured towards his cousin with the long-necked bottle of wine; the way he had looked when he said,
‘A bit of suffering would do Jasmine a world of good.'

But dislike and suspicion could never be enough. The Chief Inspector knew, regretfully, that he had no grounds at all for inviting Rodney Gifford to accompany him to the station to assist with his enquiries.

Alison sat on the edge of her bed, huddled in a pretty quilted cotton dressing-gown. Her eyes were wide, dark with the recollection of horror. Her mother had switched on an electric fire and the room was so warm that WPC Knowles had taken off her uniform jacket, but Alison was white-faced and shivering.

Molly had made a tentative gesture of support, but the Quantrill family were not accustomed to touch one another; Alison almost immediately flinched away from her mother's hesitantly encircling arm. Now Molly sat beside her daughter trying not to feel redundant, listening with horrified fascination while the girl stumbled through an account of the events of the morning.

‘I honestly don't know,' Alison said, trying to answer the supplementary questions that her father had given the policewoman to put to her. She spoke in a lifeless, husky, cried-out voice. ‘I looked at my watch just before half-past ten, thinking that it was time for coffee. I went out of the office a few minutes later to call … to look for … But after that I just don't know what time anything was.'

‘Well, never mind about times for the moment, love,' said WPC Knowles kindly, moderating her normally hearty tone to one suitable for soothing a small child. She turned a page of her notebook. ‘Now, you've told me what happened up to the time when you found the – when you found her. Can you remember exactly what you did after that?'

Alison picked at a loose thread in the quilting of her dressing-gown. ‘I don't know … I was too shocked … I was terrified. It was –
awful
. Awful. Oh God—' She put her hands to her face, trying to shut out the persistent images of blood and dark hair and white splintered bone, of green glass and bruised, splayed limbs. Her mother murmured with sympathetic incomprehension, putting out a shy hand as if to touch the girl and then retracting it quickly.

‘I know, love, I can imagine,' comforted the policewoman, glad – from what she'd heard at division – that she couldn't. ‘Don't think about what you saw, just tell me what you did. I mean, did you try to telephone for help?'

‘No.' Alison let her hands slide down her face and fall helplessly into her lap. She shook her head slowly. ‘I never thought about telephoning – I couldn't think straight at all. I told you, I was terrified …'

Beth Knowles looked up from her notebook, round-eyed, and asked a question of her own. ‘Did you think that the murderer was still somewhere about?'

Molly stiffened, put her fingertips to her mouth and gasped.

‘Oh no.' Alison managed to focus her eyes on the policewoman. She sounded surprised. ‘No, as a matter of fact that didn't occur to me … I was just terrified of – of her – of how she looked. Too terrified to stay in the house. I panicked and ran away, out into the garden. I screamed, I can remember that, once I got outside. I don't know what I was screaming, but I know that I hoped Gil would come.'

‘Gil?'

‘Jasmine's friend, Gilbert Smith. He lives above the garage, and does the garden for her. He's nice. I knew that he'd take care of things for me, if I could find him.'

‘And did you find him?'

‘Not at first. I couldn't run straight, any more than I could think straight. I tried everywhere, the greenhouses and the outbuildings and the orchard, but I could hardly see where I was going and I kept bumping into things and falling down and crying. I went up to his flat but there was no answer the first time. Then I found that his motor bike was still in the garage so I knew he must be somewhere about. After that I just hammered on his door until he answered. He'd been asleep, so he hadn't heard me the first time.'

The policewoman raised her eyebrows, which were several shades less golden than her hair. ‘Asleep, at that time in the morning?'

‘Yes. Well, he was a friend more than a gardener. Jasmine didn't mind what hours he kept. Anyway, I told him what had happened – what I'd found. He was very shocked and upset, of course. But then he said that he'd do what was necessary.'

‘You mean, telephone the police?'

‘Well, he couldn't do that right away. There's no telephone in his flat. He wasn't properly awake at first, and I don't suppose he could think straight either, but he put his head under the tap and then he hurried up the drive to the house.'

‘What time would that be?'

‘I've no idea …'

‘Did you go up to the house with him?'

‘No. No. I couldn't face it. I left it all to Gil.'

‘And did you see anyone else? Any tradesmen, or passers-by on the road?'

‘No. No-one except Gil.'

‘About how long was he in the house, would you say?'

‘I don't know … I just wandered away into the garden. I was too upset to know where I was or what was happening. I didn't see Gil any more, after he went down the stairs from his flat and up the drive. I think I heard his motor bike starting up, a bit later, so he must have gone to fetch help. Soon after that the police cars began to arrive, and then Dad came to find me.' The girl drew a long, shuddering breath. ‘And that's all I know.'

WPC Knowles was disappointed. The Chief Inspector wasn't going to like this. He had most particularly wanted her to establish the timing of Alison's movements, and those of anyone she had spoken to. But there were limits to the amount of pushing you could do to a girl who had gone through such an ordeal.

‘That's fine, love,' she said briskly sympathetic. ‘Now there are three more things I have to ask, and then I'll leave you in peace. First, did Jasmine Woods say anything to you, when you last saw her, about what she intended to do yesterday?'

Alison shook her head. ‘She didn't mention the weekend at all. She must have worked most of the time, because there were some tapes waiting for me to transcribe this morning.'

‘I see. Second thing, then – can you recall anything about the house or the sitting-room that seemed unusual this morning? Anything that could possibly give us a lead to the murderer?'

‘I've told you … I've told you as much as I can …'

‘All right, love. Last question: have you any idea why anyone would want to kill your employer?'

‘
Want
to kill her? How
could
anyone want to kill Jasmine? It must have been done by someone who was trying to steal from her.'

‘Um,' commented WPC Knowles. ‘You don't know of anyone who hated her?'

‘No! No, of course not. That's absurd, no one could possibly have hated Jasmine. Some people disliked her books, and some envied her money, but no one actually hated her. How could they? She's – she was—'

‘I know. I understand.' Beth Knowles put away her notebook and stood up, longingly anticipating the taste of cigarette smoke. ‘Sorry I had to bother you – you've been a great help. And you'll probably remember a few more details later, when you've had time to get over the shock.'

Alison shuddered, and hid her face in her hands again. Her mother gave her knee an uncertain pat.

‘There, there …' Molly cast about for a more positive way of expressing her concern, and remembered the tea tray. She had brought it up as soon as the policewoman had called downstairs to tell her that Alison was awake, but the girl had left her cup untasted and the milk had formed a skin on the surface of the liquid. Molly lifted the knitted tea-cosy and touched the lukewarm pot with an expert hand.