An Air That Kills (10 page)

‘Come on, Meague,' Evans said. ‘Be your age. As far as I'm concerned, you've had your last chance. This is real life – you're not a bloody child any more. If there's a next time, you'll be out on your ear.'

Chapter Four

Edge Hill lay on the road north, the road for Ross and Hereford, Worcester and Birmingham. On Thornhill's prewar Ordnance Survey map, it was marked as a separate village about two miles to the north of the centre of Lydmouth. Nowadays, however, the village was linked to the town by ribbon development stretching along both sides of the road, mainly semidetached, pebble-dashed houses built in the nineteen thirties.

The wide, straight road encouraged drivers to go too fast. Thornhill would have missed the village altogether if he had not glimpsed the church. He was almost too late to stop. He braked and pulled over to the left without signalling, a manoeuvre which earned him a volley from the horn of the lorry thundering along on his tail.

The church was at the apex of a triangular green with a war memorial. Thornhill identified Chandos Lodge without any difficulty. It stood at one end of the side of the triangle which was furthest away from the church, separated from the green by the main road. The house was L-shaped and clad with stucco, with the main façade at right angles to the green. It was certainly large – the number of bedrooms might well run to double figures – but in calling it white, Mrs Wemyss-Brown had erred on the charitable side. The white had long since given place to a variety of other colours: greys, browns, greens and even blacks.

Thornhill locked the Austin and walked across the grass. The wind had blown back many of the clouds exposing a blue sky, and the sun was out. It was astonishing how a little sunshine could make a man feel more cheerful. He allowed a few drops of optimism to seep into his mind: with time, all things were possible: Williamson might mellow with further acquaintance or – perhaps more plausibly – be incapacitated by illness and forced to retire; Edith would revert to her old self; he would have more time to spend with her and the children.

He had to wait to cross the road because of the traffic. Although Chandos Lodge stood within its own garden, the house itself was surprisingly close to the road; when it was built, in the high noon of railway prosperity, no doubt the noise of traffic had not been a consideration.

There were two entrances from the road: wrought-iron gates, one leaf of which was propped open, led to a short carriage drive to the front door; and further down the road in the Lydmouth direction there was a pair of wooden gates with the roof of what looked like a coach house behind it.

Thornhill crossed the road and walked carefully up the drive, skirting the occasional pile of dog turds. Once, it had been covered with gravel, but now its surface was scarred with ruts and potholes and dotted with tussocks of bright grass and puddles gleaming with the brilliant blue of the sky.

The nearer he got to it, the worse the house appeared. Some houses were beautiful, even in decay, but Chandos Lodge had been ugly from the start. Now, in what might be politely described as the evening of its life, it was becoming steadily uglier. Some of the tall, ground-floor windows had been boarded up. Those huge expanses of glass hinted at enormous rooms behind, and the place must be the devil to heat. The large garden had become a wilderness of long, lank grass and overgrown shrubs and trees.

Before driving to Edge Hill, Thornhill had tried to telephone Major Harcutt from the police station. Harcutt proved not to be on the phone. Thornhill assumed that this was because he was old-fashioned; but Chandos Lodge suggested that the reason might be that he couldn't afford it.

A dog was barking inside the house. The barks became more frenzied as he went up the three steps leading to the front door which was recessed between a pair of squat pillars. There was a bell pull of the kind designed to communicate by means of wires with invisible servants. He tugged it, but heard nothing, and the pull itself felt suspiciously slack. There was no knocker, so he rapped briskly on the door with his knuckles. These attempts to announce his presence were, he felt, mere formalities whose ostensible purpose was irrelevant: the dog's barking must have been audible on the green.

Without any warning, the front door swung open. An old man, hunched over a stick, stared at Thornhill. He wore corduroy trousers, leather slippers and a baggy tweed jacket over what looked like several jerseys. There was a poppy in the lapel of the jacket. The dog, a border collie with a mad gleam in its yellow eyes, barked continuously and strained towards Thornhill. The old man had what Thornhill hoped was a firm grip on its collar.

‘Yes? What is it?'

‘Good morning, sir. I'm looking for Major Harcutt.'

‘You've found him.'

‘I'm Detective Inspector Thornhill.' His promotion was still recent enough for the rank to give him a thrill of pride. ‘I wonder if you could spare me a few moments?'

‘Those bones, eh?'

‘As a matter of fact, yes. How did you know?'

The old man didn't answer. He was younger than Thornhill had at first thought – in his late sixties, perhaps. Small blue eyes peered out of a face hatched with broken veins. He shuffled back from the doorway, leaving Thornhill to come into the house, shut the door behind him and follow his host.

The hall stretched the height of the house. A dark-stained pine staircase rose into the gloom. As Thornhill breathed out, his breath condensed in the still air. Major Harcutt looped the dog's lead around the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. On the floor beside the post was the bottom half of a tarnished silver soup tureen filled with water, with a khaki blanket in a heap next to it.

‘Sit,' Harcutt snapped.

The dog stared at him.

The major smacked the dog's nose. ‘Sit, miss! Sit, I say!'

The dog slowly lowered its hind legs until it was almost, but not quite, sitting on the blanket. Its baleful eyes swung back to Thornhill.

‘Good dog. Good Milly.'

The major set off down a passage on the left of the hall. Thornhill kept his overcoat on because Harcutt had made no move to take it. As he trudged across the tiled floor after his host, he felt sand or grit beneath his shoes.

‘Can't beat a dog, eh? She's my daughter's, actually. Know where you are with dogs.'

Harcutt turned right under an archway. The tiles gave way to linoleum. He opened a door and, again without a backward glance, went into the room beyond. Thornhill found himself on the threshold of a square, low-ceilinged room which was a little less cold than the hall. A high-backed sofa had been drawn close to the fireplace. With a shock, Thornhill realised that Major Harcutt had company.

As he came into the room, the heads of two women turned towards the doorway. Two pairs of eyes stared at him over the back of the sofa.

‘Ah – Inspector Thornhill,' said Mrs Wemyss-Brown; she was wearing a hat and what any well-trained CID officer would have recognised as a mink coat. ‘We were only just in time.'

The other woman said nothing. She looked gravely at Thornhill.

‘Good morning, Mrs Wemyss-Brown.' He struggled to remember the other woman's name; the brief lapse of memory flustered him.

‘And – and Miss Francis. I hope I haven't called at a bad moment. I could always come back another day. I tried to telephone ahead but—'

‘But, of course, Major Harcutt isn't on the phone.' Mrs Wemyss-Brown interposed smoothly. ‘That's why we're here.' She flashed a smile at Harcutt who by now was standing over the gas fire and trying to warm his hands. ‘Having set the police on to you, Jack, it seemed the least we could do was to let you know.'

‘That's all right,' Harcutt said ambiguously; he smoothed his moustache and stared at the floor.

Thornhill turned his hat between his hands. Jill Francis was still looking at him. Not staring – she wasn't that sort of woman – but he knew her attention was on him; no doubt she was wondering whether he always acted so gauchely.

‘Well,' he said to no one in particular. ‘If you're sure it wouldn't be inconvenient?'

‘Not at all, Inspector.' Mrs Wemyss-Brown beamed at him, taking his words to herself. She stood up amid creaks and rustles. ‘We must be getting back. We were on the verge of leaving when you arrived.'

Jill Francis followed suit. Last night, Thornhill hadn't realised what lovely eyes she had. Still, they didn't make up for the fact that she was so remote and arrogant. Not that it mattered. Neither her personality nor her appearance had anything to do with him.

The two women moved towards the doorway. Harcutt detached himself from the gas fire and followed them.

‘Goodbye, Inspector,' Mrs Wemyss-Brown said, inclining her head towards him. The coat came down to her thick calves. Her perfume swept over him.

He mumbled goodbye. His attention was on Jill Francis, who gave him what he thought was a very cold, small smile, the bare minimum that civility required. She said nothing to him, nor did he to her.

He heard Mrs Wemyss-Brown talking to Major Harcutt as the three of them walked down the hall: ‘You must come and have a bite of lunch with us, Jack. It's been ages since we had you at Troy House.'

The major muttered something indistinguishable in reply. The dog gave an experimental yap.

Harcutt yelled, ‘Sit down, miss!'

Thornhill stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat and wandered towards the window which overlooked a cobbled yard and part of a high stone wall. An archway in the wall gave a view of the garden, a sunlit wilderness. He would have liked to throw open the window and let in the pale winter sunlight and the fresh, cold air.

He walked up and down, partly to keep himself warm, and partly to get an idea of the major from his belongings. The room smelt like a spit-and-sawdust bar in a pub – of tobacco, stale alcohol and unwashed bodies. It seemed smaller than it was because it was crowded with furniture – a large dining table covered with papers, chairs, a large bureau which was probably eighteenth century, two sofas and several tall, glass-fronted bookcases. Apart from the gas fire, there appeared to be no form of heating. It was possible that Harcutt slept in here as well: there was a nest of grubby blankets and eiderdowns on the other sofa. Horsehair was oozing out of the armchair closest to the fire. One wall was brown with damp and the plaster near the ceiling was beginning to lift off. The tiled surround in front of the fireplace was littered with ash and cigarette ends. There were dog hairs everywhere.

Perhaps this had once been the housekeeper's room. That would explain why the furniture looked so out of scale – Harcutt would have brought in pieces from the main reception rooms. Thornhill glanced at the bureau. It was closed, but on top of it was a tray of poppies and a collecting tin. There was a difference, he told himself to salve his conscience, between active eavesdropping or prying on the one hand and merely being observant on the other.

A Second Empire clock, its hands at ten to seven, gathered dust on the mantelpiece. Beside it, in a battered silver frame, was a photograph showing a much younger, pipe-smoking Harcutt with his left arm round a stout woman and his right arm round a little girl with a pigtail dangling across her chest. They were standing like a row of dolls along the wooden railing of a verandah with the light behind them and their faces in shadow. All three of them were smiling, but there was something curiously rigid about their pose. Though the photograph was obviously a snapshot, and not a very good one at that, it had a formal quality.

There was movement in the hall and Thornhill turned quickly towards the door as Harcutt bustled into the room. He had a sense of purpose about him which had not been there before.

‘Phew. Thought she'd never go.' Harcutt moved towards the bureau which stood against the wall to the right of the fireplace. ‘Later than I thought.' He glanced at his watch, as if to verify this. ‘Care for a drink? I usually have a spot of something before lunch myself.'

‘Not for me, thank you, sir.'

‘Oh, yes, of course. Mustn't corrupt the constabulary.' The major's surliness had vanished. He rubbed his hands together. ‘I find it helps the digestion. Gives one an appetite.'

With sudden urgency, he opened the flap of the bureau, revealing a mass of old newspapers, files and letters. He reached behind the pile and brought out a bottle and a glass. The glass already contained half an inch of whisky. Thornhill turned away and pretended to study the photograph on the mantelpiece. He heard the chink of glass against glass and the gurgle of liquid spurting from the bottle.

‘Ah, that's better.' Harcutt came to stand by the fire. ‘Do sit down, my dear fellow. I'd keep your coat on if I were you.'

Thornhill sat on the sofa, in the place where Jill Francis had been sitting. Harcutt turned up the gas and the fire hissed as the flames rose higher. That was one advantage of being so near the road, Thornhill thought: the gas company must have extended the gas main to Edge Hill when the semidetached houses had crept along the fields from Lydmouth.

‘We've got a problem with the central heating,' Harcutt went on. ‘Something to do with the boiler, I understand. The engineers seem to take an age to sort it out. Costs an arm and a leg too. It's all the same these days. They don't care what sort of a job they do, they just want your money. And the more the better.'

He swallowed another mouthful of whisky and wiped his moustache with the back of his hand.

‘It's not like the army, you know. In the old days, I'd just get on the phone and someone would have been round in a jiffy. When I was in Egypt, I remember old . . .'