The Dark Lady (15 page)

“I am a Catholic,” Gretchen Müller said.

“With respect, madam, I don't really see what that has to do with anythin'.”

They had reached the bus stop. The woman came to a halt, turned to face Woodend, and deliberately looked him straight in the eye.

“I believe it is a sin to lie,” she said, “and I swear to you now, by all I hold holy, that I know with complete and utter certainty that my husband did not kill Gerhard Schultz.”

There was the sound of a vehicle engine somewhere in the near distance. Woodend looked over his shoulder, and saw that a red North-Western single-decker bus was approaching.

He turned his attention back to Gretchen Müller. “I didn't ask you to swear any oaths,” he said. “My question was simply, were you with your husband at the time when Schultz was killed?”

The bus pulled up, and the woman mounted the first step. “I know that the answer I have already given would be good enough for my God,” she said. “It should certainly be good enough for you.”

Woodend stood at the stop and watched the bus head down the lane. He believed Gretchen Müller when she said her husband hadn't killed Gerhard Schultz. So why the bloody hell hadn't she given him a straight answer to a straight question?

Constable Horace Greenwood of the Southampton police ordered a Woodendian-sized fried breakfast, and sighed with contentment as he began to attack it mercilessly with his knife and fork.

“So you went to school with Mike Partridge, did you?” Rutter said.

“That's right. Only we didn't use to call him Mike – we called him ‘Womme'.”

“Why Womme?”

“His favourite phrase was, ‘Wo' me, miss'. You must have been to school with kids like him yourself – kids who don't mind doing wrong but are buggered if they're going to be punished themselves as long as there's some other poor devil around to take the blame.”

Rutter nodded, thinking of a boy in his class in school who'd been just like that.

“So you didn't get on?” he said.

“Not then. Nobody liked him at school. I didn't like him much after he left school, either – at least not at first. He got a job down at the docks, and ended up married to a lovely girl from up our street who went by the name of Dora May Fielding and—”

“I didn't know he was married,” Rutter interrupted.

“Well, he's not now, is he? Anyway, you'd have thought he'd have been happy with that – a steady job, a nice little house, and a pretty wife who had a bun in the oven before they'd been married a year. But it wasn't enough for Womme. He started knocking about with a barmaid he'd met in one of pubs down by the docks. Everybody was scandalised, but it didn't bother Womme in the least – he was having his fun, and that was all he cared about.”

“When was this?”

“Just before the war.” Constable Greenwood smirked. “You'll have been a baby at the time.”

He wasn't trying to be offensive, Rutter thought. He was just stating an obvious fact.

“You said you were in the same unit in the army. Did you join up at the same time?” he asked.

“No, I signed up straight after Poland was invaded, but Womme didn't seem too keen on the idea, and because he was in what they called ‘vital war work', he could probably have sat out the whole war in Southampton if he'd wanted to. He told me later that he didn't sign up because he couldn't bear to be separated from his wife and child – and to be fair to him, he did seem very fond of the little kiddie – but if you ask me, his real reason was that he wanted to be near his fancy piece down at the docks.”

“But he did join up eventually?”

“Oh yes. Straight after his family was killed.”

“They were killed? How?”

“The Germans dropped a lot of bombs on Southampton during the Blitz – important seaport, you understand – and one of them fell on Womme Partridge's house.”

“I thought all the women – or at least all the children were evacuated from high-risk areas.”

Greenwood shook his head. “They all had the
opportunity
to go – and most of them did – but it wasn't compulsory. Anyway, like I said, Mike joined up – and you should have seen the change in him.”

“I imagine he was shattered,” Rutter said.

“Oh, he was, there's no doubt about it. But that's not what I'm talking about. It was like the Womme I'd known had never existed. This new bloke didn't try to shirk his responsibilities like Womme had done; he looked for new ones. If anybody needed a shoulder to cry on, they could always go to good old Mike. If you were short of a few bob, he'd help you out – even if it meant leaving himself short. And when it came to D-Day, he was a real tower of strength.”

“In what way?”

“You have to have been getting ready to go into battle yourself to know what it felt like,” Greenwood said. “We were all scared, but there's different ways of showing it. Some of us just had a dull ache in our bellies, a bit like indigestion. But there were others were really shitting themselves. The lads with the bellyache tended to look down on the others. But not Mike. He talked to them for hours. He kept promising them they'd come through all right – and because it was him talking, they believed it.”

“But not all of them did, did they?” Rutter asked.

“Course they didn't. It was complete bloody carnage on them Normandy beaches. Mike got shot himself.” Greenwood paused to sip his tea. “I remember the last time I saw him. I went to visit him in the field hospital. He looked terrible. ‘It's my fault they're dead,' he said. ‘You can't blame yourself,' I told him. ‘There's a war going on.' But he wasn't having any of that. ‘It's my fault,' he kept saying, just like it was some kind of chant, ‘and I'll never forgive myself.' That was the last time I ever saw him. By the time I got back to Southampton, he'd been discharged from hospital and moved away.”

“Whatever happened to the woman he was going out with?” Bob Rutter asked.

“Oh, her! I don't really know, to tell you the truth. She's certainly not still around here or I'd have seen her. I mean, you couldn't really miss her, could you. So maybe she moved back to her own country.”

Couldn't really miss her? Moved back to her own country?

“Are you saying that she wasn't English?”

“Didn't I make that clear earlier on?” Greenwood asked, sounding surprised. “No she wasn't English. Must have come on one of the ships from Africa or the Caribbean or somewhere like that.”

“You mean, she was coloured?”

“That's right,” the constable agreed. “She was a real darkie.”

T
he Maitland Temple School of Riding stood in the centre of a large paddock. As far as Woodend could make out as he was approaching it, the entire property consisted solely of a wooden stable and an ancient caravan which had had its wheels taken off and been put up on bricks.

The chief inspector reached the caravan and saw that the word “office” had been written on the door in green chalk. He knocked. The woman who answered the knock was around forty-five years old. Her greying hair was tied back in a tight bun, and her face was reddened by much exposure to the open air. She was wearing a woollen sweater – which did little to hide her large breasts – and tan jodhpurs which served to emphasise her formidable rump.

She ran a critical – though totally asexual – eye over him. “It'll have to be one of our bigger horses if it's going to carry your weight,” she said. “Still, it looks like you might have a good seat. Have you done any riding before?”

Woodend smiled, shook his head, and showed her his warrant card. “I'd like to ask you a few questions about Luigi Bernadelli,” he said. “Assumin', of course, that I'm talkin' to Mrs Maitland Temple.”

“Yes, I'm Polly Maitland. But it's Miss, not Mrs.” The woman frowned. “Is this anything to do with the murder up at Westbury Park? Because if it is, you're barking up the wrong tree by asking questions about Lou. I've seen the way he works with my horses. You can tell a hell of a lot about a man from the way he handles animals. Certainly enough for me to say with absolute confidence that Lou wouldn't even tread on an ant if he could help it.”

“I'm askin' questions about all the men who saw Gerhard Schultz just before he was murdered,” Woodend said. “It doesn't necessarily mean I suspect any of them. So if you'd just spare me a few minutes of your time, Miss Maitland, I'd really appreciate it.”

The woman turned the idea over in her mind. “All right,” she agreed finally. “If answering your questions will eliminate Lou Bernadelli from your inquiries, then I suppose I can find the time. Come into my parlour, as the spider is supposed to have said to the fly.”

Woodend followed her into the caravan. Inside it were crammed a battered desk, an equally battered filing cabinet, two straight chairs and two overstuffed armchairs.

“Take one of the comfy seats,” Polly Maitland told Woodend. “But watch out for the loose springs.”

While the chief inspector was gingerly lowering himself into the armchair, Miss Maitland went over to the desk and produced a bottle and two glasses from the desk drawer.

“Brandy,” she announced. “Says it's French on the label, but at the price I paid for it, I'd be surprised if it had been anywhere closer to France than Algiers. Still, it's good enough for this time of the morning. Not too early for you, is it?” she concluded, giving Woodend a look which suggested that this was more a test of his manliness than a casual enquiry.

“It's never too early for a spot of
eau de vie de turpentine
,” Woodend told her.

The woman raised a surprised eyebrow. “So you speak French, do you, Chief Inspector?”

“A smatterin',” Woodend said. “I picked it up durin' the war. Bit of German, an' all.”

“Well, you
are
an unusual policeman,” Polly Maitland said. She poured two shots of the brandy, handed one to Woodend, and plopped down in the chair opposite with a healthy disregard for the loose springs which she'd warned him about. “So what do you want to know about Luigi?” she asked.

“How long has been workin' for you?”

“Strictly speaking, he doesn't work for me at all. Oh, I slip him the odd pound or two now and again—”

She stopped suddenly, as if she realised she'd said something she shouldn't have.

“It's all right,” Woodend assured her. “I'll not tell the taxman.”

Polly Maitland smiled gratefully. “You really are an unusual policeman. But as I was saying earlier, it's not the money which brings Luigi here.”

“So why does he come? Because he loves horses?”

“Yes, that's right,” Polly Maitland agreed.

But she had hesitated for the briefest of moments, and that hesitation was not lost of the chief inspector.

“What's his other reason?” Woodend asked.

Polly Maitland laughed. “Oh I suppose there's no harm in telling you of all people,” she said. “You see, Luigi's a bit like a horse himself. Or, to be more exact, I suppose he's a bit like a stallion. Can't resist chancing his arm with the women when the opportunity arises. Even made a pass at me a few years back – and God knows, I'm no oil painting.”

“You're sayin' he comes to the ridin' school because it gives him the chance to sleep with women.”

“I've no doubt that's what he'd like to do if I let him. As it is, he has to content himself with letting his hands rove a bit when he's helping them on to their horses. Most of them don't seem to mind – he's a big handsome man, after all – but if one of them does complain, as happens from time to time, I tell her she must be imagining things, then give him a tap on the head with my riding whip to remind him that I'm not running a stud farm.”

An idea too tentative even to be called a theory was starting to form in Woodend's mind.

“You wouldn't happen to have a list of all your clients, would you, Miss Maitland?” he asked.

Suspicion darkened the woman's eyes. “Now why would you ask that?” she said,

“Because if you have a list, I'd like to have a quick glance at it.”

“I'm not sure I should show it to you,” the woman said dubiously.

Woodend shrugged. “Why not? What harm can it do? There's no law against people takin' ridin' lessons, is there?”

“True,” Miss Maitland agreed. “And after all, you are a policeman with a smattering of French.”

She went over to the desk and returned with a leather-backed ledger. “This contains a record of all the people who've had lessons. It includes their names, addresses, telephone numbers and how many lessons they've had. But I'm afraid it only goes back two years.”

“That should be long enough,” Woodend said. “I don't think the person I'm lookin' for will have been havin' lessons for more than the last few months.”

Then he opened the ledger, ran his eyes down the list, and saw almost immediately that was right.

The carefully tended gardens which surrounded the large detached house were so extensive that they almost qualified for the term “grounds”, and Bob Rutter was finding it an extremely pleasant experience to wander through them with the white-haired man who carried himself so erectly.

“A large part of the Battle of Britain was fought in this area,” the man said. “There might have been dog fights in the skies right above this house, for all I know. I could even have been in one – you don't look down to admire the scenery when you're in the enemy's sights.” He sighed. “I think that's probably why I bought this place – so I could stay close to those scenes of glory. And they were glorious, you know.”

“I'm sure they were, Wing Commander,” Rutter said, conscious, once again, of his relative youth.