The Dying of the Light: A Mystery (11 page)

Anderson drew Jarvis to one side.

‘You’re not starting to take her seriously, I hope?’ he murmured. ‘If so, let me slip you a quick
verb. sap.
Letty may be a foul-mouthed slag who might be compared to a brick outhouse to that edifice’s advantage, but believe me, she has this lady’s number. Like all those who deceive themselves before practising on others, it’s a tangled web Miss Travis weaves. Should you become ensnared in it, Inspector, you would become the laughing-stock of your colleagues and superiors.’

‘I’ll thank you to allow me to carry out my duties as I see fit, sir,’ Jarvis replied stiffly.

Anderson shrugged.

‘Very well!’ he sighed.

He refilled his glass and slouched out, closing the door with an exaggerated care in pointed contrast to his sister’s abrupt exit.

‘Now I
do
hope you’re not going to allow yourself to be deceived into suspecting the staff,’ Rosemary told Jarvis. ‘Even discounting those purists who would exclude such a solution on principle, it seems safe to assume that any suspect whose guilt seems as blatant as the Andersons in the present case is bound to be a red herring.’

Jarvis grasped the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. Give me strength, he thought. Don’t let me hit an old lady.

‘May I remind you, Miss Travis,’ he said, ‘that this is real life, not some thriller?’

‘Thriller?’ Rosemary queried acidly. ‘My dear Inspector, I hope you don’t think for a moment that I would concern myself with any such rubbish. My only interest is in the classic English detective story, with its unique blend of logic and fair play. There is no room for sloppy guesswork or vulgar sensationalism. If you observe the rules, spot the clues and make the appropriate deductions, you should be able to arrive at the correct solution.’

‘In real life,’ Jarvis continued implacably, ‘poison is the least common method of murder, accounting for less than six per cent of all cases.’

‘Of the cases that come to light, perhaps. But who is to say how many homicidal poisonings are successfully passed off as illness, accidents or – as in the present instance – suicide?’

Jarvis struck his forehead with the heel of his hand.

‘For the love of …!’

He stared into space for some time, running over the results and league positions for January 1958. Eighteen thousand turned out to watch them draw one all at Bury. Happy days!

‘I am a police officer, Miss Travis,’ he declared at last.

‘I know that,’ Rosemary replied brightly.

‘As such, I cannot conduct an investigation on the basis of hearsay, innuendo, rumour or fantasy. I require evidence. And as I have already said, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Mrs Dorothy Davenport did not take her own life.’

‘But why should Dorothy go to such pains to disguise the lethal combination of drugs mixed into her cocoa and medicine?’

‘I don’t believe she did.’

‘Exactly!’ Rosemary exclaimed triumphantly. ‘Then who did?’

‘You.’

They confronted each other for a long moment. Then a smile of pure pleasure lit up the woman’s frail, wrinkled features.

‘Do you know, Inspector, you’re not such a fool as you look! How clever of you to notice that I had deliberately excluded myself from the list of suspects.’

Jarvis hid his face in his hands. I don’t believe this, he thought.

‘I don’t believe this,’ he said.

Rosemary frowned.

‘We can’t afford to exclude any possibilities at this stage, however unlikely they may appear. Even George Channing’s innocence should perhaps not be taken for granted. One might argue that the very fact that his alibi seems unbreakable in itself constitutes grounds for suspicion, and his room is of course next door to the victim’s. Secret passages are always a tendentious topic, but I think one might be regarded as permissible in a house such as this. On the other hand, the hideous injuries which Channing sustained might seem to preclude …’

‘What injuries?’

‘… and of course his motive is a good deal less obvious than, say, the Andersons’.’

Jarvis felt the way he had on the never-to-be-forgotten day when Accrington creamed Stockport 4 nil to stay in the promotion race, and his dad let him drink the sediment out of his bottles of White Label. The pitch was tilting, the goalposts moving, the ref nowhere to be seen.

‘Who is this Channing?’ he demanded truculently. ‘What happened to him?’

Rosemary waved vaguely.

‘Don’t let’s get off the point, Inspector. The only aspect of poor Channing’s ordeal which need concern us is that it might appear to give him a perfect alibi …’

‘What happened to him?’

‘… intended to divert suspicion from the real culprit, who has cleverly covered his – or her – tracks by …’

‘FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WOMAN, WHAT HAPPENED?’

Rosemary Travis threw up her hands in exasperation.

‘Oh really, Inspector! Since you persistently refuse to listen to my advice, you can jolly well go and find out for yourself.’

CHAPTER 9

‘Tell you the truth, I rather fancied a career in the police myself at one time,’ said Miss Davis, leading the way upstairs.

‘And I’m sure you would have been a great credit to the force,’ Jarvis replied gallantly.

Miss Davis tittered.

‘Either that or the Army,’ she went on as they reached the landing. ‘It was not to be, however. As the runt female of the litter, I let myself be talked into taking up the teaching game instead.’

She barked a laugh.

‘Not that it made much difference in the end. The parents apparently thought of education as a suitably ladylike activity, like being a nurse, only more genteel. Maybe it used to be, too, when there was proper discipline at home and the kids came to you already broken in. These days the only thing you have a hope of teaching most of them is that you
don’t fuck with the system
.’

‘Well this is it,’ murmured Jarvis.

‘And though I have no wish to brag,’ Miss Davis went on, ‘I turned out to be a natural.’

They came to a doorway opening into what looked like a walk-in cupboard.

‘The only thing I really missed was the uniform,’ she concluded reminiscently. ‘That and being able to go all the way. Know what I mean?’

Inside the narrow cubicle were two plywood doors with cheap gilt handles. Miss Davis opened the one to the left and ushered Jarvis inside. An expanse of flowery-patterned wallpaper rose to an inordinately high ceiling. A grimy sash-window overlooked an overgrown walled garden where a large dog was secured by a length of orange rope. The air was as cold and still as marble.

‘That’s where she breathed her last,’ Miss Davis remarked, pointing to a metal bed-frame in the opposite corner. ‘Choked, rather. Messy business, but all part of a day’s work round here. And guess who has to get down on her bended knees and do the necessary? God forbid my precious brother should sully his fingers. I mean pul
eeease
!’

Jarvis surveyed the personal effects gathering dust on top of the chest of drawers. He picked up a small bevelled cone of polished stone, which proved on closer inspection to be a souvenir of Land’s End. Rosemary Travis had warned him that if he asked to speak to George Channing directly the Andersons would claim that he wasn’t well enough to receive visitors. She had therefore suggested that he tell them he wished to search Mrs Davenport’s room, as was only natural in the circumstances, and then find some pretext for going next door.

Despite his reluctance to take advice from outsiders on professional matters, Jarvis had been forced to concede the wisdom of this. The last thing he wanted to do was to get on the wrong side of someone like this Anderson, who was related to the local MP and reportedly had the ear of various big noises on the council. He put the statuette down beside a set of miniature bottles in a wooden case and ran one finger along the top of the chest of drawers, tracing a straight line in the gathering dust. A long hair looped up and curled itself about his finger, glinting in the dull light. He brushed it away with a shudder. He’d seen the police photos and even attended the PM, yet it was only now that the fact of Dorothy Davenport’s death came home to him.

In the centre of the room, Miss Davis was going through a brief but energetic workout, stretching and bending alternately to either side. Jarvis pointed to the dead woman’s possessions.

‘Aren’t you going to clear this stuff out?’ he demanded brusquely. ‘Move in another paying customer?’

‘Only wish we could,’ Miss Davis puffed.

Jarvis opened the wooden case and took out a tiny replica of a green gin bottle. He unscrewed the top and turned it up. A drop of brackish water fell to the back of his hand.

‘Recession biting?’ he suggested sarcastically. ‘Bottom fallen out of the caring market, has it?’

Miss Davis laughed.

‘You must be joking! We’ve got people practically beating the door down, they’re that desperate to get rid.’

Jarvis replaced the miniature in its case and picked up a dusty bouquet of dried poppies.

‘The problem is William,’ Miss Davis panted, scissoring her arms from side to side. ‘He was spoilt rotten as a child, needless to say. No spunk, no gumption.’

One of the dead flowers, disturbed by Jarvis’s probing finger, broke free of the bouquet and fell. Borne on currents of air created by the flurry of activity at the centre of the room, it drifted laterally in a series of twirling spirals before coming to rest near the head of the bed.

‘Only a psycho could actually
enjoy
this work,’ Miss Davis grunted, ‘but what the hell, it’s a living. Don’t kill the golden goose is the way I look at it. But William can hardly wait.’

As Jarvis bent to pick up the poppy, a gleam caught his eye. He extended two fingers and grasped the slithery scrap of torn plastic.

‘And what will become of you?’ he murmured. ‘Back to teaching, is it?’

There was some black lettering on the plastic. Holding it up to the window, Jarvis read ‘50 ml disposable syr.…’

‘Over my dead body!’ snorted Miss Davis.

Jarvis put the scrap of plastic into his wallet.

‘If you still fancied a job with the police,’ he said, ‘something might be arranged.’

Miss Davis ceased her exertions.

‘Really?’ she breathed.

‘We’re always on the lookout for people with the right mentality,’ Jarvis told her. ‘You can teach everything else, but you can’t teach that. You’ve either got it or you haven’t.’

Miss Davis’s eyes grew wider.

‘And you think I have?’

Jarvis winked.

‘I feel it. In my bones.’

Miss Davis blushed.

‘Cor,’ she said.

‘Now let’s just have a quick look next door,’ Jarvis went on briskly. ‘In case there’s a secret passage.’

Miss Davis looked flustered.

‘Secret passage?’

‘I think one might be regarded as permissible in a house such as this,’ he announced airily, heading for the door.

Miss Davis caught him up.

‘You can’t!’

‘Whyever not? You haven’t got anything to hide, have you?’

She stared at him in silence for some time, then shrugged.

‘I’d better ask William.’

Jarvis tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger.

‘Rule Number One,’ he said. ‘What your superior officer doesn’t find out didn’t happen. Right?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘Right?’

Miss Davis nodded.

‘Right,’ she said.

Jarvis opened the door and stepped inside. At first sight, the room seemed a mirror image of the one next door: the same miscellaneous assortment of third-hand furniture, the same oppressive volume of chilly grey light, the same sense of desolation and decay. The only difference Jarvis noticed at first was that the lower pane of the window had been replaced by a rectangle of plywood. Then he heard a low moan, and realized with a shock that what lay on the bed was not just a mattress but a man, bound to the frame at the wrists and ankles.

‘Doctor’s orders,’ Miss Davis explained, hurriedly undoing the webbing which bound the man to the bed-frame. ‘Wouldn’t lie still, would you, George? Kept reopening his wounds, so we had to restrain him.’

The elderly man moved his arms and legs feebly, groaning through his clenched, toothless gums. A series of long shallow cuts extended from the temple to the chin on one side of his face, while on the other there were two deep gashes which had been stitched. His hands and arms were heavily bandaged. The rest of his body was concealed by the covers.

‘What happened?’ Jarvis asked.

Miss Davis took up a position at the head of the bed.

‘Had an accident, didn’t you, George? Tripped and fell out of the window.’

Ignoring her, Channing turned his head to look at Jarvis.

‘They set the dog on me,’ he said.

‘We never!’ shouted Miss Davis.

She bent over the bed, fist raised. Jarvis grasped her arm and led her away.

‘If you’re to be any use to us in the police,’ he hissed, ‘you must learn never to interrupt an officer when he’s interviewing a witness!’

‘But the old bastard just fibbed himself!’

Jarvis nodded earnestly.

‘You don’t think I
believe
him, do you?’ he whispered.

Miss Davis gawked. Jarvis gave her a playful nudge.

‘Rule Number Two is let ’em talk. The more he says, the easier it is to spot the inconsistencies and trap him in his own contradictions.’

A smile spread slowly across Miss Davis’s face. Leaning back slightly, she punched Jarvis on the shoulder.

‘Oooooh, you are a one!’ she said.

Surreptitiously rubbing his aching shoulder, Jarvis sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘Now then,’ he said, ‘what was that about a dog?’

A scornful smile appeared on the man’s ravaged face.

‘Jerry couldn’t hold me in ’44. Got as far as Ostend that time, and would have made it back to Blighty if I hadn’t been turned in by some bloody Belgian. Whistling in the street, you see, hands in pockets. Not done
sur le continong
, it seems.’

He pointed one bandaged hand at the broken window.