The Mistress of Alderley (13 page)

“Basically I just wandered around,” he said when Charlie got down to the matter of what he had done on Saturday night. “Seeing what it was about Leeds and its club scene that everyone says is so fantastic.”

“And did you find out?”

“Not really. I think it only takes off when the pubs close, and we had to leave too early for that. I saw a lot, had the odd drink in the sort of place where they don't ask any questions about age, but that was about it, really. Anyway, I'm not sure I'm ever going to be a clubber.”

He's practically asking to be asked, Charlie thought.

“You say you saw a lot. Anything in particular?”

“Well…” If there was any desire to string it out longer, the desire lost. Alexander had found one occasion when broadcasting a secret was better than hoarding it. “Can we go forward a bit?”

“Of course, if it will help.”

Alexander sat for a moment, putting his thoughts in order.

“The next morning, Sunday morning, I had to get up early to go to the loo. I was on the landing when I heard a noise downstairs. There were no lights on, but there was enough light to see by coming through the hall windows. I saw Guy come in from the door to the back garden, lock it, then go into the kitchen with keys in his hand—two keys.”

“I see. And what do you make of that?”

“Yesterday Mum noticed that the shed for the garden tools had been opened and not shut properly. It's a stroppy old padlock, and you have to really click it in to lock it securely.”

“I see. So—again—what do you make of that?”

“Right. Go back to Saturday night. I was going around, just looking, seeing where the popular clubs were, casing the pubs where the younger people hang out. That was interesting, because a lot of the pubs are down little alleyways—ginnels or snickets, I think they call them. And you can hang about in the darkness outside and watch.”

Charlie sat there wondering who he had seen. Marius Fleetwood? Guy? His sister Olivia? No, of course she'd been onstage, or in the theater anyway.

“Go on,” he said.

“I saw Guy, working his way in with a group of six or seven young people. I think he'd had somebody pointed out to him. Because after a bit he started trying to work this chap out of the group. He seemed rather older, this chap, closer to thirty than to twenty. They got a bit aside, and were talking low. Like they were negotiating. Then the other one looked at his watch, nodded his head in the direction of the gents', and left the pub. Ten minutes later Guy headed in the direction of the loo, and a minute or two after that the chap came back to the pub and went straight to the gents' as well.”

“You're suggesting a drug transaction?”

“That's what it looked like.”

“Half the young people in central Leeds will be taking something on a Saturday night.”

“I'm looking at it in conjunction with the early-morning trip to the garden. It wasn't something he was going to take himself. It was something he was going to
hide.
He was already in the car when Stella and I got back to it. We got there five minutes early, from different directions. He was there, comfortably in the driver's seat, looking as if he'd been there for some time. He wanted to be sure he could put something in the boot or the glove compartment—no, that would be too dangerous—without our seeing. It must have been the boot, so he went and retrieved it next morning, in case the car was used, and rather than keep it in his bedroom, he concealed it in the garden shed. There's a lot of old sacks and packets of compost and stuff, and nobody ever gardens while Marius is down. There was no chance of its being found—and anyway, if it was he'd have denied all knowledge of it.”

“That's easy enough to check, isn't it?” said Charlie. “I take it you and your sister didn't much like Guy.”

“Condescending git,” said Alexander, without a great deal of obvious animosity. “Shows off the fact that he's got all the right clothes, all the right software, all the right everything except brain. But it's not that. We want to find out who did this. Otherwise it will be hanging over Mum for the rest of her life. It will be difficult enough to persuade her to put Marius behind her without an unsolved murder holding her back.”

“That makes sense,” said Charlie, mentally reserving his judgment. “I take it, then, that you'll want to pass on any other information you might have—so that we can look at it, decide whether it has any relevance to the murder.”

“Yes. Yes, I would,” said Alexander, with increasing conviction. “I can't say I've got any
information.
I mean, Stella and I had had our suspicions about Marius. He was the great love of Mum's life, but was she the great love of his? He was a serial adulterer, and we thought Mum was going to turn out to be just one more episode. But you'll be thinking along those lines too, I suppose.”

“We're keeping the possibility in mind. Was there anything else you wanted to tell us?”

“Well, there was something. Not something secret or anything, but I bet Mum won't have told your boss about it.”

“Why would she want to keep this thing secret?”

“Because she doesn't want anyone connected with him to be the murderer. She doesn't want that sort of hatred to have any place in her beautiful picture of Marius. I expect she hopes it will have been done by some passing tramp—or passing schizophrenic's more likely these days, isn't it? But, in fact, everyone says it's usually somebody close.”

“Usually. Close in one way or another. Who are we talking about?”

“A boy. His name is Pete Bagshaw, and he's about twenty or so. He came here three or four weeks ago. Mum invited him in, fed him, let him have a bath…. The thing is, he looked exactly like Marius. A young Marius.”

Charlie digested this.

“Let me get this right. A young man—someone none of you had ever met before, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“—came here, and your mother invited him in and so on, and—well, did they discuss Marius and his resemblance to him?”

“Not while we were there, and I don't think before that. I suspect
he
saw she registered the resemblance, she saw he realized this, and the whole subject was not raised openly. But as he was leaving Mum suggested he come again, when Marius was here. And he said ‘Better not,' or something like that.”

“That's pretty bizarre.”

“Well, maybe. But she raised it later with Marius, and he said he'd never lived in Leeds, but he'd had a scapegrace brother who did—now dead.”

Charlie blinked, then tried to keep his face neutral. Was this another of Fleetwood's lies?

“I see. This young man lives in Leeds, does he?”

“Yes, Armley.”

“Anything else you know about him?”

“Doing a computer course at Leeds Metropolitan University. Mother works in a supermarket. He's got a bit of a thing about her. How she's slaved away for a pittance for years, and how he wants to get a good job, earn loads of dosh, so she can live in comfort.”

“I see. Well, thanks for all the information. Maybe it's time I went to have a look at the garden shed. Perhaps it would be best if you pointed it out to me and found me the key, then made yourself scarce. Guy Fleetwood is supposed to be arriving this afternoon, isn't he?” Alexander nodded. “Best if he doesn't associate you with any find we might make. Ah—is that the living-room door?”

They all went out into the hall. Caroline was emerging from her interview. She smiled at Charlie waterily as she walked through and up to the bathroom. Charlie put his head around the door of the living room.

“Could you come with me for a moment, sir?”

Oddie nodded, and together they went to the back door. Alexander came out of the kitchen with a key, pointed to a shed at the far end of the garden, then scuttled off.

“Get anything out of her?” asked Charlie, as they walked across the lawn.

“A lot of stuff about her beautiful relationship with the deceased. I wouldn't call it sub–Barbara Cartland, but it wasn't more than a notch or two better. I got a detailed account of everything that happened on Saturday night, though, and that could be useful. What are we expecting to find here?”

Charlie opened the padlock with some effort.

“Wait and all will be revealed. Now—nothing visible to the naked eye, but that wasn't to be expected. But these sacks and plastic bags look as if they have been moved around a bit, don't they? Carefully does it….
There.
I think that must be what we're looking for.”

There, wrapped in plastic, exposed by the removal of several smelly packages, was a white block—solid, substantial, and very valuable. They were just about to move closer when Oddie's eye was caught by a movement on the lawn. He turned back to the door, and saw a young man approaching at a fast rate. When Charlie too appeared in the doorway he registered their presence and pulled up sharply, then turned and began to run. He only noticed PC Hargreaves a second before the burly policeman, who had followed him through the house, appeared in the back door. It was too late, and he was brought down by an efficient rugby tackle just as Oddie and Charlie ran over.

“Guy Fleetwood, I presume?” said Oddie, standing over him.

 

“You can knock off for the night,” said Oddie to Charlie, when Guy Fleetwood was safely locked up in a custody cell. “Go home and play tickle-toes with young Carola.”

“Young Carola is way, way beyond playing tickle-toes. She is already weighing up her various career options.”

“No chance of her choosing the police force, if she's as intelligent as you claim.”

“Not a chance in hell…. What are you planning to do?”

“I'm going up to the Grand Theatre. Margaret is there for
Forza,
so I know the eldest Fawley is there. I thought she might be willing to talk to me, either at interval or after the performance. Then we can say we've done all the Fawleys, at least for the moment.”

But when he put the same request to the stage doorkeeper the man raised his eyebrows, then scribbled the request on a bit of paper and sent his junior off with it.

“Bit of a tartar when the fancy takes her,” he said, with a wink to Oddie. “I didn't want her blasting my ear off down the phone with you standing by listening. Between ourselves, I don't give much for your chances before the thing ends at ten-fifteen or so. The talk is she likes to have it off with someone in interval. Says it does wonders for her voice. Someone said Dame Nellie thought the same, but she had to pay them or lasso them. This one doesn't have to. Quite tasty for an opera singer.”

Oddie heard the five-minute warning bell when the boy came back with the expected response: she would see him after the opera, and definitely not at interval time. He nodded to the stage doorkeeper, and on an impulse went round to the main entrance, where the last stragglers were hurrying to their places in the stalls. He flashed his ID at the woman on the door and the woman selling programs.

“It's the Marius Fleetwood murder inquiry,” he said.

“
Really!
We wondered if you'd want to quiz us!” said one.

“Everyone's talking about it,” said the other.

“Saturday night, the first night: You were here then?”

“Oh yes! Very exciting. Best first night in a long time” was the collective response.

“Were you around here when Mr. Fleetwood left the stalls?”

“Oh yes, if we've got the right one. Very smart man, well setup, someone you'd notice. He hurried down the corridor, smiled at us, then out towards the street. We commented on what a shame it was when tickets were at a premium. We didn't know of his…connection, you might say, with Miss Fawley.”

“And did anyone else leave, maybe soon afterwards?”

“No one else left,” the program seller said emphatically. “Not from the stalls, nor from the circle or gallery. We've been talking about it among ourselves. If anyone left it would have to have been during interval, and I doubt anyone did. No one spotted empty seats in the second half. It was such an exciting night, everyone stayed.”

“Well, I hope tonight's the same,” said Oddie, calculatingly. “My wife's there.”

“Would you like to stand at the back?” asked the program seller. “You being police it would be perfectly all right.”

So Oddie let her lead him up the corridor, then through the door into the stalls. As he took up his position he could feel the excitement in the house, become part of it, even though the overture was still being played. And when the dumb show finished and the scene started, he shared in the thrill of hearing a gorgeous voice: fresh, expressive, of seemingly limitless power. He was no expert, but no expertise is necessary to respond to the human voice in full flood. By the time the scene ended with Don Alvaro's flagrant disregard of elementary firearms precautions, a dying father, and the lovers escaping separately into the night, Oddie was hooked on the opera, on the voice.