An Air That Kills (34 page)

‘Oh, really?' Thornhill said. ‘That must be Charlie Meague's mother.'

‘Had to see him this morning, as a matter of fact. Why are you interested?'

‘Lydmouth is much smaller than it seems, isn't it? Everyone seems to know everyone else.'

‘That's not an answer.'

‘According to Miss Harcutt, both the Meagues worked at Chandos Lodge before the war. Mrs Meague was a charwoman and Charlie worked as a gardener's boy. They both left rather suddenly in May 1939.'

‘Do you know what Mrs Meague said last night?' Bayswater asked. ‘Something about poor Miss Tony. And then she said, “It wasn't you, Charlie, was it?”'

The two men looked at each other.
It wasn't you, Charlie, was it?
Thornhill guessed that Bayswater had seen the possible implications or at least some of them. The doctor relit his pipe for the third time.

‘Listen, Thornhill. This rather changes things, doesn't it? I see what you're driving at – it's that Templefields business, eh?'

Thornhill had opened his mouth to reply when he heard the sound of a door opening behind him. He turned. The young constable was leaning out of the police car, his face shiny with excitement.

‘It's headquarters, sir,' he said, stumbling over the words in his haste to get them out. ‘They think it's a murder.'

Chapter Fourteen

‘The policemen seem to be getting very excited down there,' Jill said. ‘I wonder if something's happened.'

The remark wasn't the most tactful that Jill could have made, but she was feeling harassed. Antonia seemed to be in the process of developing a doglike devotion for her, the sort of schoolgirl crush that demanded a positively saintlike patience on the part of the adored. When Jill spoke, Antonia raised her head with a jerk and glanced towards the window.

‘Are they?' she said hurriedly. ‘The police do a lot of rushing around, don't they?'

She appeared to lose interest in the policemen and directed her attention back to her clothes. She already had pulled most of them out of her suitcase and draped them over her bed. The effect reminded Jill of a stall at a Bring and Buy Sale.

Antonia stared doubtfully at her wardrobe and, with an air of quiet desperation, picked out a pale green cardigan. Jill noticed a maroon photograph album on the eiderdown underneath. Antonia laid the cardigan against a tweed skirt which was the colour of tinned peas.

‘Do you think they go together? I've never been quite sure.'

Jill cast a rapid eye over the rest of Antonia's wardrobe and decided that on this occasion tact and expediency should have priority over truth. ‘They look very nice.'

Antonia began to undo her dressing gown. ‘Are you sure Charlotte won't mind having me to stay?'

‘Of course not. Otherwise she wouldn't have asked you.'

‘I don't know.' Antonia gave an unlovely wriggle. ‘People sometimes do things because they feel they ought to rather than because they want to. I thought it might be like that with her.'

This was getting dangerously close to the truth. ‘Well, it isn't. After all, she knew you at school.'

‘Yes, but we weren't friends. She terrified me, in fact.'

Jill smiled. ‘She must have liked you more than you realised.'

She turned away, partly in the hope of ending this potentially awkward conversation and partly because she was curious about what was happening outside. Down in the drive. Bayswater was climbing into the Wolseley. There was a huddle of foreshortened policemen with Thornhill in their centre; he seemed to be giving instructions. As she watched, the group broke up. Thornhill opened the door of the police car and glanced up at the window of Antonia's bedroom. Jill drew back into the room, hoping that he had not seen her prying.

‘I'll just go and wash my hands,' Antonia said coyly. ‘I won't be a moment. You will stay, won't you?'

Jill said she would. Antonia scuttled out of the room, leaving the door open. Jill wandered across to the bed and picked up the heavy maroon volume.

She turned the black pages slowly. People were full of surprises – she would not have thought that Antonia was the type to enjoy the doubtful pleasures of nostalgia.

The past reached out clammy fingers, smelling of damp and must. There was something sad about these blurred snapshots and elaborate studio photographs. They recorded what was now a vanished culture, sahibs and memsahibs frolicking decorously in an alien land. There were no children on display – whatever had they done with the children? Everyone looked stiff and rather serious. None of the faces had a dark skin.

Jill paused at a photograph near the end of the album: it showed Harcutt in regimentals with a woman, presumably his wife, in a long evening dress; she was clasping his arm and looking up at him in a manner suggesting that she was only doing so because the photographer had asked her to. They were not a handsome couple, but they radiated the self-confidence of people who are content with their position in life, which they know on the best authority to be somewhere near the peak of creation.

It wasn't easy to equate the man in the photograph with the Major Harcutt whom Jill had briefly known. She looked at the woman, too, curious to discover whether there was any trace of Antonia in her, and wondering what sort of woman could have borne to marry a man like Major Harcutt. The putative Mrs Harcutt had dark hair and a plain, rather stern face. There was a strong suggestion of plumpness about her waist and hips. Her dress exercised a restraining influence on the flesh beneath.

‘Not very interesting, are they?' Antonia said from the doorway. Her fingers fiddled with a button of her blouse. ‘Just a holiday in India.'

‘You don't mind my looking?'

Antonia reddened. ‘Of course not.'

Jill began to close the book. As she did so, she noticed that Mrs Harcutt was wearing what looked like a silver brooch. It was pinned to the bosom of her dress, and it was in the shape of a true love's knot.

Chapter Fifteen

‘By the left. Quick march.'

The thirty-two men of the Edge Hill branch of the British Legion tramped along the north side of the green. As they turned on to the main road, a police car appeared at the gates of Chandos Lodge. It cut in front of the column, forcing the marching men to come to an unscheduled halt. The car drove off at high speed towards Lydmouth.

‘By the left,' Veale ordered, for the second time. ‘Who do they think they are? Quick march.'

The men marched on towards their headquarters.

‘Legion branch, halt.'

The column shuffled to a standstill.

‘Legion branch, dismiss.'

The column turned to its right and, as it did so, dissolved into thirty-two men.

Terry Forbes began to fold up the flagstaff. ‘For a moment, I thought they were giving us a police escort,' he said to John Veale.

‘Stupid buggers,' Veale said, drawing deep on his Woodbine. ‘Could have knocked us all down. No respect, have they? Not even the bloody police.'

‘There's gratitude, Mr Veale,' Terry Forbes said.

Chapter Sixteen

Gloria had noticed before that there was a strange synchronisation about the laborious and prolonged bowel movements of her husband Harold and her stepdaughter Jane: it was like women in a nunnery having the curse at the same time.

There were two lavatories in the private quarters of the Bathurst Arms. Just before opening time on Sunday morning, she discovered that both of them were in use. This was irritating, because her own need was urgent. There was nothing for it but to go outside.

Gloria tucked the newspaper under her arm and opened the back door. The town was wrapped in its Sunday morning calm. Seagulls squealed over the river and somewhere a bell was ringing. She walked unsteadily on high heels across the cobbled yard to the lavatories reserved for customers. The door of the cubicle reserved for ladies opened directly into the yard. She went inside and bolted the door.

Christ, it was cold. The wooden seat was freezing and the draught swirled round her ankles. The only thing between her and the outside world was a door with a nine-inch gap between it and the concrete floor. Such gaps were essential, Gloria had discovered, to ensure that customers did not use the lavatories for purposes they were not designed for. She folded open the
News of the World
, and prepared to make the best of it.

She had hardly started when she heard footsteps in the yard. Someone had come through the wicket gate from the alley which led up to Lyd Street. Now Gloria came to think of it, it was strange that she had not heard the footsteps coming down the alley too. So maybe someone had been lurking in one of the outbuildings. The footsteps crossed the yard, hesitated and then walked slowly towards the door of the cubicle.

Oh my God, thought Gloria, that's all I need: a bloody pervert.

There was a silence. She guessed that the man would be bending down to peer under the door. Quickly she stood up and pulled down her dress.

‘Gloria,' Charlie said, his voice low and husky.

She snapped back the bolt and pulled open the door. ‘What the hell are you doing?'

‘I wanted to see you.'

He smiled at her, his teeth very white in his dark, unshaven face. Gloria, who was expert at assessing men's smiles, felt immediately wary. He had been in a fight – his lips were cut and swollen. He looked as if he'd slept in his clothes and hadn't washed for a week. He also made her feel dangerously warm inside.

‘In ten minutes' time,' she said, ‘you can come in the front door and buy yourself a drink. But I don't want you round here. What am I going to say if someone sees you?'

‘Gloria – can you do me a favour?'

‘I doubt it.'

She began to walk towards the back door. He skipped in front of her. She stopped, feeling a not unpleasurable thrill of menace because he was much larger than she was. Despite herself, she found his urgency was exciting.

‘Just hear me out,' he said.

‘Are you mad? Harold could look out of the window at any time.'

‘Bugger him. You weren't meant for Harold. You were meant for me.'

She stared angrily up at him. ‘A girl can't wait for ever. You had your chance and you lost it. Now, will you get out of my way?'

He didn't move. ‘You and Harold have got a car, haven't you?'

‘What if we have?'

‘I want to borrow it.'

‘Don't be stupid. Harold would go crazy.'

The muscles were working under Charlie's skin as though there was something trying to get out. ‘This is important.'

‘So is Harold's car.'

‘He doesn't have to know. All I need is the key. It's parked at the front – I can just drive off.
Please
.'

Against her better judgement she said, ‘What's this all about?'

‘I need to get away from Lydmouth. That's all. I won't damage the car, I promise. I'll go to Bristol, or somewhere, and leave the car in the station car park. I'll send you a wire so you know where it is. Or phone you.'

In his urgency, he laid his hand on her arm to stop her from going into the house. She saw a rusty stain on the inside of the index finger and the thumb.

‘What's that?'

He glanced at the hand. ‘I cut myself on a tin. Gloria, if you help me now, we've got it made. You and me.' He let go of her arm and took something from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Look at this.' He opened his hand, and there in the palm was a roll of notes.

Gloria was a good judge of hard cash. He had at least a hundred pounds there, almost certainly considerably more.

‘Where did you get that sort of money?'

‘There's more where that came from,' he said. ‘You can have anything you want. Cars, houses, holidays, furs.' He dropped his voice and said huskily, ‘I'll treat you like a film star, I swear it.'

Gloria's eyes slid away from the roll of banknotes and up to the blank windows of the Bathurst Arms.

‘You'll get me the key, Gloria? And maybe a bit of food? I'm starving.'

He loomed over her. He smelled sour. For the first time since his arrival, she was frightened. Part of her enjoyed that. Harold never made her feel scared. She smiled at Charlie.

‘Of course I will,' she said. ‘Wait there.'

She ran past him. Everything was in slow motion. Her high heels made her awkward. She reached the back door, opened it and looked back. He was standing where she had left him.

‘I'm sorry, Charlie, but I can't.'

Still he did not move. ‘We're something special, Gloria. You know that. For old times' sake.' His voice was very gentle and it seemed to come from a long way away.

‘We were something special,' she said harshly. ‘But that's all over.'

She slammed the door, bolted it and leant against it. She was trembling. A moment later, she nerved herself to look out into the yard. It was empty. Her eyes felt hot and sticky. She needed to make sure her make-up was undamaged.

Upstairs someone pulled the chain of one of the lavatories. The first roar of water was almost immediately joined by a second. Harold and Jane even pulled the chain at the same time.

Harold was a kind man who left her alone for most of the time: and he had money in the bank.

Gloria began to climb the stairs. A girl had to look after herself. After all, no one else would.

Chapter Seventeen

‘My dear,' Charlotte Wemyss-Brown said, rising to the occasion like a trout to a fly, ‘you must think of Troy House as your home for as long as you like.'