The Company She Kept (16 page)

‘How did you come to know her?'

‘Oh, she visited the big house a few times, years ago, with Madeleine Freeman, Mrs Wilbraham's doctor. Why? Was there something suspicious about her death?'

‘What makes you ask that?'

Thomas shrugged. ‘Busy police ... I hardly think you'd be here talking to me if it wasn't something like that.'

‘She was murdered,' Mayo said.

Thomas received the news with another of his unreadable silences before eventually saying, ‘Well, she was all sorts of a fool, Angie, but she didn't deserve that. And you're on the wrong tack if you think I'd anything to do with it.'

‘Don't put words into my mouth, Mr Thomas. When was the last time you saw her?'

‘Good God, you expect me to remember that? At least twelve or thirteen years ago, I'd say, maybe more. Before Kitty went away at any rate.' But something different had entered into his tone, something guarded.

Abigail said, ‘If you knew Angie Robinson, I assume you had social connections with Mrs Wilbraham, as well as working for her?'

Thomas looked at her, took in the coppery hair, the slim, neat figure and long legs, her feet curled around the bottom rail of the stool. He smiled. He had very white, even teeth. His face was very brown and weatherbeaten.

‘Practically every day. Occasionally, I was even invited to dine. I do know which knife and fork to use, you know.' Abigail flushed slightly and a dangerous spark of green lit her hazel eyes. Mayo thought: If that was bait it wasn't worth rising to. There was nothing uncouth about Thomas or his surroundings, nothing uneducated about his speech. He had no doubt the man's beginnings had been very different from the way he lived now, and if necessary these would be gone into, but, for the present, if he chose to live in circumstances likely to be regarded as primitive by the rest of society, that was his business.

‘Then you'd know most of Mrs Wilbraham's friends,' Abigail said crisply, ‘at any rate, those who might have known Angie Robinson. Sophie Lawrence, for instance?'

‘Yes.'

‘You still keep in contact?'

‘Occasionally.'

‘You met on Thursday in Oundle's Bookshop, in fact?'

‘We did?'

‘Come on, Mr Thomas, I saw you there.'

He shrugged. ‘Then there's no point in denying it.'

‘And you still say you hadn't heard of Angie Robinson's death until now?'

‘When Sophie and I meet,' he said, ‘we have other things to discuss.'

Mayo raised a figurative eyebrow at this information, which Abigail had had no opportunity of passing on since recognizing Thomas when he had first appeared in the clearing. If correct, it reinforced the impression he was getting – that the group surrounding the late Mrs Wilbraham had been a tightly integrated one, and that they were now closing ranks. Moreover, it was a group growing in number: Sophie Lawrence, Madeleine Freeman, Angie Robinson, the boy, Felix – and now this man, whom both women had omitted to say they knew, for whatever reason, or to mention as part of the Flowerdew scene. Another man who, he thought, might fit the bill, the ‘he' in Angie Robinson's letter.

Abigail was pressing on and Thomas admitted he had been in Lavenstock on Thursday, but only to order farm supplies, pick up some necessary shopping and slip into Oundle's to meet Sophie. ‘Any reason why I shouldn't? We meet quite often, Sophie and I, when she's in England.'

‘No reason at all, Mr Thomas,' Abigail replied, and went on immediately to ask about his movements on the Tuesday night. He admitted to having no alibi, had been working outside all day and got soaked to the skin so, with the light giving out early, he'd come indoors and had a hot bath.

‘Which is no easy undertaking in a place like this!' The sudden, white-toothed smile crossed his face as he indicated a wooden working surface with a curtain slung underneath, behind which presumably lurked some sort of bathing arrangements. ‘Even though the range gives me plenty of hot water.' After he'd bathed and had his supper, he'd gone early to bed, like the farmer he was. He denied knowing anything at all about Bulstrode Street – and unless he had borrowed or hired a Jaguar it was unlikely he'd been the man who had apparently visited Sophie Lawrence. He didn't possess a car at all. He used his motorcycle when it was in a good mood, otherwise the thrice-weekly country bus.

‘All right,' Mayo said, ‘I'm sure we shall be able to check whatever's necessary. Let's get on to something else. Do you remember a young man, name of Darbell, Felix Darbell?'

‘Of course. He was a student who hung around here one summer, used to give me a hand with the garden. Good worker. Why do you want to know? He wasn't particularly friendly with Angie.'

‘Do you know where Mr Darbell is now?'

‘Good Lord, no! Why should I?'

Again Mayo felt a pricking in his thumbs. ‘It was an odd set-up here, wasn't it, an old woman like Mrs Wilbraham, and all those young people?'

‘I don't see anything peculiar about that – she was always one to have young folks around her.'

‘Well, maybe she felt like that, but what about the rest of you? Didn't you ever get bored? It's very quiet out here – nothing much to do of an evening – very tempting to try and liven things up with, say, a bit of fortune-telling, table-tapping or whatever – join in those séances, did you?'

‘Séances? Me?' Thomas laughed shortly. He looked at Mayo with patent scorn. ‘Do I strike you as the sort to go in for that sort of rubbish?'

No, thought Mayo, sensing the hostility building up once more, but he did strike him as being nifty enough to sidestep the truth when it suited him. Nevertheless, the time had come to call a halt. He knew when he'd got as much as he was likely to get from a witness for the time being. He remarked, on the point of leaving, not really expecting to gain anything fresh from the answer, ‘Presumably you're paid for looking after the house and grounds, Mr Thomas? Through Mrs Wilbraham's lawyer?'

‘Through her lawyer? Well, I don't see what damn business it is of yours, but no, Kitty pays me herself. She's not ga-ga yet.'

With a feeling that something solid had given way beneath him
– bloody hell!
– Mayo stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned further back against the sink. ‘What do you mean by that? She sends you the money?'

‘Sends it? Why the devil should she? No, I go and touch my forelock and she gives me a cheque.'

Abigail said carefully, ‘We were told she'd gone to live in Tunisia.'

‘So she did.' Mayo was aware of Thomas's cool, amused appraisal of the young woman. ‘And came back about three months ago.'

‘Where is she living?'

‘At Flowerdew. Where else?'

‘In that case,' Mayo said, ‘we'd better get ourselves over there and start asking her some questions.'

Thomas gave a laugh, and this time it was one of pure pleasure. ‘Go by all means, but she won't see you. She doesn't see anyone. She lives alone with Jessie Crowther, her housekeeper, and if you can get past her, you're a better man than I am. And if you do manage it, don't rely on what she tells you. Half the time she's OK but the other half she doesn't know the time of day.'

Trudging back along the edge of the field towards the big house, they walked in silence, trying to digest the implications of what they had just learned.

The news that Kitty Wilbraham was still alive had knocked Mayo temporarily off-balance. He should not have assumed she was dead so easily, though granted, everything had pointed to it. But he had become so accustomed to thinking her dead and that her death constituted the motive for Angie Robinson's murder that he was having trouble adjusting his thoughts, and his only answer when Abigail spoke to him was an abstracted grunt. Presently, it occurred to him that she had spoken. ‘Sorry, what was that you said?'

‘I was only saying I'd better check out with that college where he taught.'

‘Thomas? Yes, do that, Abigail. See what it was that caused him to leave – or be chucked out.'

‘Chucked out?' She threw him a swift look. ‘What did he say to make you think that, sir? Something I missed?'

‘It wasn't what he said, it's what he didn't say. He's a damned sight too cagey for my liking, and too clever by half. All right, I don't blame him, I'd do the same in his position. First principle of self-preservation: never volunteer information! But I had the feeling he was laughing up his sleeve, and that I neither like nor trust. He knows what all this is about, just as Sophie Lawrence and Dr Freeman do. They're as tight as clams, but I'll have it out of them before I'm finished, Abigail, by God I will!' He was becoming more and more sure that the three of them were involved in some sort of conspiracy of silence. More than that: they were very likely taking him for a fool, though that didn't greatly dismay him. Rather the opposite. That way one or other of them would sooner or later be bound to crack.

They very soon came to a small gate let into the wall and passed through it into a dank courtyard where the sun could rarely have penetrated. The paving stones were mossy and slippery with algae, many of them cracked. Beyond the yard was a glimpse of disused stables and tumbledown outhouses.

They banged hard on the back door, as advised, and waited. ‘Otherwise she'll never hear you, she's as deaf as a post,' Thomas had warned. ‘And maybe won't answer anyway, if she doesn't choose to. They're two for a pair, Jessie and Kitty, keep themselves bolted in like two old nuns in a convent, which is just as well, considering how isolated the house is. They won't hear of having someone younger to live in and look after them. I keep a weather eye on them, though,' he added laconically, ‘get their groceries in and so on.'

Jessie Crowther must have been in a good mood. They were allowed to enter after she'd examined them through the kitchen window, heard them yell who they were through the letter-box and been told three times that Tommo had sent them. Minutes later, the door opened with a grinding of bolts, after which the old woman led them along a dark passageway, through a gloomy scullery and finally into an equally gloomy kitchen. But, having let them in, she resolutely refused to allow them to see Mrs Wilbraham. A crafty look crossed the weathered old face when she heard their request. ‘She's too old to be bothered with all that,' she said evasively. Jessie herself must have been in her early seventies if she was a day. ‘What's he sent you here for then – Tommo?'

The question was clearly a matter of form: there was an old black telephone on a shelf in the corner and Thomas, for all his alternative lifestyle, had possessed one, too.

‘Perhaps you'd better sit down, Miss Crowther,' Mayo suggested. ‘This may take a bit of time.'

‘
Mrs
Crowther,' she corrected sharply. A little round body of a north-countrywoman, there appeared to be little wrong with her physically, apart from her deafness, which didn't seem to bother her unduly, now that she could watch their lips move with her sharp, bright-eyed stare.

‘Sit yourselves down, then. You'll join me in my elevenses,' she announced, in a tone brooking no argument. Waving them to seats at the table, she filled the electric kettle at a huge ceramic sink, chipped and stained with age and use, busying herself at the cupboards and presently slapping down on to the table three mugfuls of hot chocolate and three plates, each containing an awesome-sized piece of Yorkshire parkin.

The kitchen was a cavernous place where enormous cupboards and a bulbous fridge of ancient vintage loomed, with dark corners where the heat from the Aga could never conceivably reach. And that was the reason, Mayo assumed, for the cosy corner which had been arranged as near as possible to the stove and the black iron fireplace, having on its hearth a two-bar electric fire. On a faded rug in front of it stood a couple of basket chairs, one occupied by a red cushion, a piece of knitting and a tortoiseshell cat. Most likely the rest of the house was shut off and unused. It smelt overpoweringly of damp, and perhaps mice. No wonder the cat looked so satisfied. Mayo looked speculatively at the second chair, wondering how much time the other occupant of the house spent here, if any – or whether, considering her great age, she spent most of her time in bed. Or even (which did not seem so improbable) if she were simply a ghost in everyone's mind.

‘Help yourselves.' Jessie Crowther sat herself down, waved to their plates. The unasked-for chocolate and sweet-stuff at this time in the morning was a novelty Mayo wasn't sure he wanted but he followed Abigail's example and got on with it, finding the hot drink surprisingly welcome. And was able to say with authority that the parkin was genuine: crunchy with oatmeal, sweet with black treacle and spicy with ginger.

‘Things you hear about nowadays!' Mrs Crowther commented when she heard what they had to tell about Angie Robinson. ‘You never think it'll happen to somebody you know.'

‘I'm sorry we've had to bring you such bad news.'

‘Oh well, as to that, can't say as I knew her enough to be upset ... All right, is it?' she asked Abigail, who had a hearty appetite but was finding some difficulty in disposing of such a substantial portion.

‘Very tasty, Mrs Crowther. Lovely.'

‘Like another piece? You look as though you could do with feeding up – you young women, thin as a match with the wood scraped off, and still not content!'

Regretfully, Abigail smiled and shook her head, swallowed the last of the crumbs and slid her hand inside her shoulder-bag for her pocketbook. ‘Delicious, but I couldn't eat another morsel.'

‘Suit yourself, I know somebody who'll finish it up. Always had a sweet tooth and very partial to my parkin, she is.'

Mayo brought the conversation back to where they'd left off. ‘Did Miss Robinson visit here often, Mrs Crowther?'