An Air That Kills (33 page)

Charlie's natural optimism was beginning to return. It might be years before anyone realised there was a body down there. More likely than not, no one would ever find out, because time and the rats and the water would dispose of the evidence. Indeed, it occurred to him that there was no reason for him to run away. All he need do was put Carn down the well. He could fill the well with rubble at his leisure.

If anyone had seen him coming here, Charlie would simply say that Carn had called to say goodbye and left. They would find it very difficult to prove otherwise. They would need a search warrant to find Carn in the well, and why should they bother to look in the first place?

In a flash, the future seemed almost rosy: Carn was out of the way, but Charlie had Carn's money; old Harcutt, if properly handled, could prove a gold mine in the long term, and with no risk to Charlie; and then there was Gloria. Everything was possible, now Carn had gone.

‘Hello! Anyone at home?'

The dream vanished. The voice had come from the house. But there was still a chance that its owner hadn't seen anything. With the spade in his hand, Charlie rushed through the scullery. The door to the street was open. He remembered he hadn't locked or bolted the door since he'd closed it after Carn came in.

On the threshold was Mrs Halleran, her eyes like glistening currants in her pale, doughy face. She wore a pinafore over her dress and a headscarf over her curlers. When she saw Charlie, she raised her bushy eyebrows at the spade and at his bloodstained face.

‘I hope I'm not intruding,' she said, her eyes darting round the room, ‘but I wondered if there was any news about your poor mother.'

Mrs Halleran stopped talking, but she did not close her mouth. Now it was too late. Her eyes had fixed on Carn's body near the fireplace.

There was a finality about this, too, and another absence of choice.

Chapter Eleven

Antonia Harcutt lit another of her father's cigarettes. Her hands were steady, Jill noticed, but she held the cigarette awkwardly and kept glancing at it as though uncertain which end went where. Her self-control was frightening, Jill thought, because it had rigidity without strength: like china, if dropped on a hard surface, it would break.

Thornhill closed the kitchen door, shutting out Mrs Lincoln and the continuous murmur of her voice. He looked irritable and harassed.

‘Do you mind if I ask you some questions now, Miss Harcutt?'

She stared at him and blinked. The smoke was making her eyes water. The skin around her eyes was puffy. ‘Yes, I feel better now. Sorry for making such a fool of myself – I'm not normally like this.'

‘I'm sure you're not,' Thornhill said. ‘These aren't normal circumstances. I'll keep this as brief as I can and you must tell me if you'd like a break. What time did you go to bed?'

Antonia frowned and rubbed her eyes, ‘I'm not sure. Before midnight.'

‘And where was your father?'

‘In there.' Her head bobbed in the direction of Harcutt's room.

‘And the fire was on?'

‘I can't remember.'

‘It was a cold night.'

‘Yes, but I was in here for most of the time, clearing away. I only went in there to give him his tablets.' She hesitated. ‘And say goodnight, of course.'

‘He had some whisky as well?'

She nodded.

‘Were there poppies on the floor?'

‘Yes. I think so. Everything's such a mess in this house. People seem to think it's my responsibility to clear it up.'

‘It must be very difficult for you. But don't worry about that – all I want is to discover what happened.'

As he spoke, he smiled at Antonia. She did not smile back, but for an instant her face brightened. He pushed the ashtray closer to her and bent his head over his notebook. His gentleness surprised Jill. She had expected him to be far more assertive. She noticed that he had made very few notes, and she guessed that he was using the notebook more as a means of punctuating the conversation than of recording it. He looked up, first at Jill and then at Antonia.

‘How did your father seem when you said goodnight to him?'

‘Much as usual. Not that I know him very well, really. I haven't lived at home since I was a child.'

‘Had he anything on his mind, do you know?'

‘He was worried about money. And I think the accident made him realise how fragile he was.' Antonia's eyes flickered, and Jill had a sense that she was nerving herself for an arduous undertaking. ‘He said as much to Jill and Charlotte.'

Thornhill looked at Jill.

‘That's correct,' she said, wondering why she sounded so formal. ‘But of course I don't know how he was usually.'

‘I appreciate that.' It seemed that formality was catching. ‘Miss Harcutt, can you take me through what happened this morning?'

Antonia stubbed out the cigarette. ‘I woke up late – I'd taken a couple of my father's tablets because I slept badly the previous night.' She looked across the table. ‘That was your suggestion, wasn't it?' she said to Jill, and added in a rush, ‘And I was jolly glad I did.' She turned back to Thornhill. ‘I knew there was something wrong as soon as I came out of my bedroom. I could smell gas. And when I came downstairs, I saw that things were missing from the dining room and the study.' Her voice was picking up speed. ‘All the doors were open and they were closed last night when I went to bed. And I ran down the hall, and went into my father's room and then I saw him.' Antonia reached for the cigarette packet. As she fumbled with the cigarettes, she sucked her lower lip. ‘He was such a funny colour,' she said. ‘I've never seen anyone that colour before.'

‘The fire was unlit – and was the gas still on?'

‘Yes – I heard it hissing.' Antonia tried to light her cigarette. She failed, and Jill took the matchbox from her. Antonia went on, ‘I opened the window. That's what you're meant to do, isn't it?'

‘You did absolutely right, Miss Harcutt,' Thornhill said.

Jill struck a match and held it out for Antonia to light her cigarette. She saw dandruff at the roots of Antonia's hair. The sight disgusted her, but she knew her disgust was disproportionate and due to more than dandruff. She badly wanted all this to be over, not just for Antonia's sake, but for her own.

‘I can't believe he's dead.' Antonia massaged her forehead with her fingertips. ‘He
is
dead, isn't he? There's no possible doubt about it?'

‘I'm afraid there isn't,' Thornhill said. ‘May I ask you something else? Have you any idea who might have burgled the house?'

Antonia shook her head.

‘This may seem a strange question, but can you tell me if a woman called Mrs Margaret Meague ever worked here? Or her son Charlie?'

Antonia licked her lips. She picked up the cigarette. She looked from Thornhill to Jill. But her face had lost its dazed expression. The muscles twitched beneath the blotchy skin.

‘Oh, yes,' Antonia said softly. ‘They both worked here before the war.'

Then, at last, the tears began to roll down her cheeks.

Chapter Twelve

In church, the congregation stood in an approximation of silence. Near the back a woman was crying softly. A man coughed. A child whispered urgently to his mother.

‘Private George Andrews, the Gloucestershire Regiment,' the vicar read out from the pulpit. ‘Able Seaman Frank Bannerman, RN Division, Lieutenant Philip Browne, Royal Artillery, Private Walter Evans, the South Wales Borderers . . .'

The vicar was an old man with a tired voice. He read slowly through the names of the twenty-seven men who constituted the parish's dead in two world wars. The last name on the list was Flight Sergeant Albert Veale, RAF.

When the vicar had finished. John Veale raised his bugle and filled the church with at least some of the notes of the Last Post. His playing wavered in pitch and volume. Even in his brief, two-handed prime, John Veale had never been much of a musician.

‘It is important to remember,' the vicar told them in his address, ‘because it is dangerous to forget.'

Chapter Thirteen

‘Belt and braces job, if you ask me,' Dr Bayswater said. ‘Not that it signifies.'

‘What do you mean?' Thornhill said.

Bayswater took his time over lighting his pipe. The weather was cold, but dry, and Thornhill was glad of an excuse to be out of the house. The sky was clear and somewhere upwind and out of sight was a bonfire. It would have been a good day, Thornhill thought, for a walk in the forest.

The two men were standing on the gravel outside the front door of Chandos Lodge. The doctor's Wolseley and the police car were parked side by side. A young constable was using the radio in the police car and keeping a wary eye on Thornhill.

‘Don't quote me,' Bayswater went on, ‘but I imagine the postmortem will suggest that the old boy slugged himself with whisky and barbiturates and then turned on the gas to finish off the job. There are worse ways to go.'

‘But why doesn't it signify?'

Bayswater appeared not to hear the question. ‘We know that Harcutt had a certain amount on his mind.' He held up his hand like a teacher in front of a restive class and raised a finger for each point. ‘One, his wretched dog dies. Two, he suddenly realises he's getting old, that he needs help. Three, he hasn't got any money. Four, he's lonely. He was a fool in many ways, but you could argue that that was one of his more sensible choices.'

‘Then it's a shame he didn't leave a note,' Thornhill said.

‘But natural enough.'

‘It does help when people make their intentions clear.'

‘Either it simply didn't occur to him or he wanted his death to seem like an accident. Perfectly understandable.'

‘A note would have made things a little less confusing for those he left behind.' Thornhill suspected that Bayswater was taking pleasure from being contrary. ‘Anyway, you still haven't explained why it doesn't signify.'

‘Eh?' Bayswater chewed the stem of his pipe. ‘Well, if there's nothing to show whether he intended to leave the gas unlit or whether it just happened by chance, and if it doesn't matter a hoot in any case, why not let it be accident? No point in upsetting people.'

‘Being diplomatic isn't the purpose of my job.'

‘It isn't the purpose of mine, either. But sometimes there's no harm in it. This world is bloody awful enough as it is. One doesn't have to make it worse.'

Thornhill felt himself flushing. ‘Once you start bending the truth, there's a risk that you end up getting bent yourself.'

Bayswater ignored this and concentrated on relighting his pipe. ‘Say it turns out to have been an accident,' he continued as though Thornhill hadn't spoken, ‘and it probably will, then at least it'll serve some useful purpose.'

‘I'm afraid you've lost me.'

‘Because it would be yet another example of the folly of handing out barbiturates as though they were as harmless as humbugs. They're doing it all the time up at the hospital. Pill happy, those quacks in uniform. And they're not the only ones. They know damn well that the margin of safety with barbiturates is very narrow, but they won't act on it. It's easy to overdose. And giving barbiturates to a heavy drinker like old Harcutt is just asking for trouble. Alcohol enhances their effect.'

Bayswater paused and glared triumphantly at Thornhill. He had the air of a man who has put an unanswerable case; its irrelevance seemed not to have occurred to him. Thornhill disliked the doctor's arrogance and found it interesting that he hadn't mentioned the third possibility – that Harcutt's death had been neither accident nor suicide.

Thornhill slipped in a question from an unexpected direction. ‘Was Antonia Harcutt ever pregnant?'

‘What? What a thing to ask.'

‘I wouldn't ask if I didn't need to know. Was she?'

Bayswater hesitated. ‘There's the ethical question to be considered.'

‘We're talking about a man's death. I'm trying to establish what caused it.'

‘Well, even if I could tell you, I doubt if I would.' Bayswater lowered his voice. ‘In any case, Antonia Harcutt hasn't lived in Lydmouth since before the war. She was just a child then.'

‘Yes, I know.' Thornhill stared up at the façade of the house. He thought he saw movement behind one of the upstairs windows.

Bayswater peered at Thornhill. ‘You realise what you're implying?'

‘An underage pregnancy.'

Bayswater glanced at the house and said, choosing his words carefully, ‘The Harcutts weren't my patients – they were my father-in-law's. That means you'd be out of luck whatever happened. The poor old boy shouldn't have been allowed to practise in the last few years of his life. He was going senile. And it's no use asking to see the records. There aren't any records worth speaking of.'

‘But you knew the Harcutts before the war, didn't you? Socially, I mean.'

‘Yes – I knew a lot of people. I remember playing tennis here once or twice. The odd cocktail party. Harcutt used to entertain a good deal before his wife died.'

Thornhill switched the direction of his questioning again. ‘Does the name Meague mean anything to you?'

‘Of course it does,' Bayswater snapped. ‘It's a local surname. There's a village on the other side of town where every other person is called Meague.'

‘I understand you've got a few Meagues on your list.'

‘One of them died of pneumonia last night.'