Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

Chapter 31

MILL LANE WAS a very different place in July from what it had been in December. Or perhaps it was that Zillah was a different woman, for the weather was cold for the time of year and this was the kind of day when an anticyclone would as likely create a misty chill as it would warm sunshine. She was coming back from the Old Mill House, where she’d left Eugenie and Jordan playing on Titus’s new climbing frame while she went to the supermarket. Jordan was due to go into the hospital for his operation in four days’ time but these days cried only when he fell over. Zillah was dressed in the new natural-colored linen trouser suit she’d bought in a boutique in Toneborough and, though she wasn’t quite warm enough, she knew you had to suffer to be beautiful.

Treading carefully, watching her feet on the flat stones of the ford so as not to wet her narrow-strap sandals, she looked up to see Ronnie Grasmere approaching down the lane, accompanied by an enormous dog like an animated black hearthrug. For a moment she thought the dog was going to leap on her and, more to the point, on her suit. Ronnie, who was carrying a gun, said a quiet but commanding “Sit,” and the animal immediately did so, its forepaws straight, head held high. Zillah was impressed and said so.

“No point in having a dog if he’s your master.”

Zillah nodded. Never before had she known a voice to be so plummy and old Etonian. “And where are you off to, my pretty maid?”

Resisting an impulse to say she was going a-milking, Zillah told him.

“I say, d’you have to do your own shopping? What a shame.”

“Most people do, don’t they?”

His answer was hearty laughter. “Shoot, do you?”

She was more than ever aware of the gun sort of folded over his arm. Broken, did they call it? “I never have.” Sensing it was the kind of thing he’d like a woman to say, she added, “I’d be scared.”

“Not you. I’ll teach you.”

“Would you really?”

“Look, I have to take this great beast walkies, so alas I must leave you. But why don’t you have dinner with me one night? Tonight?”

“I couldn’t tonight.” She could have but playing hard to get was never wrong.

“Tomorrow, then?”

“That would be nice.” It would be her birthday.

Ronnie said he’d pick her up at seven. They’d go to a pleasant little unpretentious place outside Southerton called Peverel Grange. Zillah knew its reputation as the best restaurant in South Wessex. She walked back to Willow Cottage feeling better than she had for months. Annie would probably babysit for her or she’d know someone who would.

None of the neighbors in Holmdale Road had been able to confirm Fiona’s story. They were Londoners and took very little notice of what the people next door or the people opposite did. Their requirement in the neighbors was that they should keep from playing music at night, control their children, and keep their dogs in. Only one couple had even known the Jarveys’ name. All of them knew more about Fiona, whose notoriety came from her having been the murdered man’s partner. But where she had been that Saturday night, home or away, no one could tell. On the subject of cars they were more vociferous. Violent Crimes and Miss Demeanor had nothing to do with motor vehicles, except the ones they drove themselves, and were uninterested in the conduct of users of the two train stations who clogged West Hampstead streets with their parked cars. When would Camden Council introduce residents’ parking was the question four out of five householders asked. Violent Crimes neither knew nor cared. They were no nearer having a clue where the Jarveys and Fiona Harrington had been that night than when they started.

Newspapers had begun asking when the Cinema Slayer would strike again. It would have been easier for them if the two victims hadn’t been such disparate characters, if they’d been, for instance, young women. Then the stories they carried might have included warnings that no girl was safe on London’s streets. But what had a young, good-looking, comfortably situated man in common with an elderly female vagrant, except that neither had any money or owned property? All they knew was that there was nothing rational about this killer, no plan of action, and apparently no particular category of victims he or she targeted. Not politicians or vivisectionists, prostitutes or rich old women, capitalists or anarchists. What did the killer get out of it? No financial benefit, no sexual satisfaction, restored security, or freedom from menaces. Newspapers started calling the murderer the “mindless” or “aimless” killer.

The neighbors in Holmdale Road had known Michelle and Matthew only well enough to say “Good morning” or “Hi” (according to age) and Fiona only as the woman who had lost her fiancé in a very dreadful way. Being questioned as to these people’s movements on the night Eileen Dring was killed changed their attitude to this no longer harmless couple and this no longer blameless young woman.

There was no concerted campaign of ostracism and no dramatic shunning. But the woman whose nephew Fiona had suspected might be a detective began looking the other way when she passed her and the man next door to her, who’d always looked up from his weeding to comment on the weather, now kept his head down. The red graffiti that appeared on Fiona’s gateposts might have nothing to do with the murders, it might be coincidence, but, if it was, the aptness of the graffitist spraying KILL, KILL on the stucco wasn’t lost on her.

Fiona thought it was the police back again when the doorbell rang on a Saturday morning about ten. She felt like telling them to arrest her and have done with it. A point had been reached when she was beginning to understand how people made false confessions of murder so that they would be left alone and have a little peace. She opened the door to a woman about her own age. It wasn’t Miss Demeanor but someone of similar build, age, and dress. Another police officer?

“Good morning,” the woman said. “My name is Natalie Reckman. I’m a freelance journalist?”

Fiona said, rudely for her, “What do you want?”

“They’ve made a real mess of your gateposts, haven’t they?”

“They’re brainless morons. I don’t suppose it’s personal.”

“No? May I come in? I don’t want to talk about Jeff’s murder or who did what to whom. I was once his girlfriend too.”

“When?” Fiona’s mouth had dried. She felt a frisson of terror.

“Oh, long before you. Don’t worry. A woman from Kensal Green came between me and you.”

Fiona had to know. She couldn’t resist it. “Come in.”

Though the feature on the women in Jeff Leach’s life had been shelved, Natalie hadn’t been able to put it into the back of her mind as she had hoped. It kept surfacing. And one morning, when she woke after a dream in which she was hunting for the missing Jims Melcombe-Smith in Guatemala, the name of her predecessor came back to her. There it was, absolutely clear as if her memory had never mislaid it: Nell Johnson-Fleet and she’d worked for a charity called Victims of Crime International, or VOCI. Of course, Johnson-Fleets are not exactly thick on the ground, and Natalie soon found her address and number in the phone book.

Perhaps something was telling her the time had come to concentrate on this story. She made herself recall that last conversation she’d ever had with Jeff. In Christopher’s in Covent Garden it had been and when she’d asked who came after her he’d said, “A funny little thing who lived opposite Kensal Green Cemetery. I don’t think I’ll tell you her name. I called her Polo…” Knowing Jeff as she did and in possession of this limited information, had she a chance of finding this woman? For a start, he probably hadn’t meant she lived precisely opposite the cemetery but on the other side of Harrow Road in one of the streets that lay behind it. Natalie got out her London atlas and turned to page 56. There was a positive web of little streets in that hinterland. Instead of making a list of them, she photocopied the atlas page. At a cost of £200 you could buy access on the Internet that would give you the names, addresses, and a dossier of every single citizen of the United Kingdom. Or so she’d read in some cyberspace magazine. But would it help? She thought she still preferred the old-fashioned electoral register.

Why would he have called the woman Polo? He had that peculiar addiction to Polo mints, chewed up a tube of them every couple of days, so this woman must have had something in common with them. Incongruously, she remembered Jeff’s funeral and the wreath of white rosebuds his father and the person called Beryl had sent. It had looked just like a mammoth version of a mint with a hole in it. Mint, she thought, mint, hold on to that, as she consulted the voters’ list for the London Borough of Brent.

A woman called Minton was perhaps what she was looking for. Could you be called “Peppermint”? She turned page after page. Those eligible to vote were listed in the electoral register according to street, not name. If she was very young or a lunatic or a peer she wouldn’t be listed, but she couldn’t be under eighteen, could she? Jeff had surely never gone for very young girls. If she wasn’t a British citizen she wouldn’t be there either. Natalie thought that a distinct possibility as she ran her finger down the side of the pages. A lot of immigrants settled in this area, many of them waiting for naturalization. Surely, when he’d briefly talked of “Polo,” said where she lived and that he owed her money, he’d have mentioned that she was Asian or African or from Eastern Europe.

She’d started a long way back, almost as far as North Circular Road, the borough limit, and now she’d come close in her search to Harrow Road and the cemetery. Only Lilac Road remained after Syringa and then she’d have to acknowledge that this line of investigation had failed. Her finger on the left-hand margin stopped. Here, at number 39, was something. Knox, Araminta K. No one else in the house, apparently. Just this one single woman.

“Minta,” she probably called herself. That would be a gift to Jeff, who would immediately have thought of his Polos. She could hear him saying it. “I shall call you Polo.” Polo, Polo, the rick-stick Stolo, round tail, bobtail, well done, Polo. She lived alone, so very likely owned her house. Natalie remembered Jeff trying to make her take out a second mortgage on her flat to start some business he enthused about. By then she knew him well enough to be quite sure he’d do no such thing, but spend the money on horses and other women. Was that how he came to owe this Polo a thousand pounds? Because he’d got her to mortgage her house?

It was a bit farfetched, perhaps. Certainly a woman living in that neighborhood, in Syringa Road, wouldn’t be well-off; she wouldn’t be able to afford to lose such a sum.

“I don’t want to hear this,” Fiona said, wishing she’d never asked this Reckman woman in and determined not to mention Linda Davies.

“Well, no, it’s not very pleasant for me, either. I was fond of Jeff myself. But I knew what he was.”

Like a child being told frightening things, Fiona covered her ears. Not usually timid or shy, she found this woman overwhelming. The trouble was that even with her hands over her ears she could still hear.

“It was a thousand pounds. He told me himself. As I’m sure you know, he had lunch with me on the day he was killed. I’m certain this Araminta Knox couldn’t afford to lose that amount. Not living in a little back street in what’s practically Harlesden. Did he have money off you?”

“We were going to be married!”

“Well, hardly, my dear. He was married to Zillah Melcombe-Smith, aka Watling, aka Leach. I’ll tell you frankly that while he was with me I paid all the bills and let him have the use of my car. And gave him pocket money. He called it loans but I was never under any illusions of that sort. I suppose it was the same thing with you. When did you think your wedding was going to be, may I ask?”

“August,” said Fiona, “and no, you may not. I’d like you to go now, please.”

Natalie was quite willing to comply. She’d got a great deal: the furnishings of the house, the carpets and paintings, Fiona’s clothes and her general appearance, as well as a lot of admissions as to her feelings for Jeff. “You really ought to be gratified,” she said as a parting shot. “He must have left this Araminta for you, you know.”

“For my money,” said Fiona bitterly and then wished she hadn’t.

Once Natalie had gone, she began to cry. Ever since Jeff’s death, her illusions-as that woman called them-had gradually been stripped away. She would soon be left with nothing but her bare love, bruised and scarred as it was. After a while she dried her eyes, washed her face, and looked for Araminta Knox in the phone book. There she or someone called Knox was, at 39 Syringa Road, NW10. Why are we such inquisitive beings that even in great despair and sorrow curiosity impels us to seek answers that probe into old wounds?

She went next door, passing, of course, the offending gateposts on her way out. The informality of using the back door was gone, she was sure, forever and she was back to ringing the bell. They still kissed, she and Michelle, lips not quite touching cheeks. “I really came to ask you both to come in and have a drink with me. There’s something I have to tell you. Do come.”

They hadn’t done so for a long time. Not since, like a crass fool, she’d said that stupid thing to the police about their disliking Jeff. Michelle hesitated. Perhaps there was something in Fiona’s face, a look of beseeching, of tears hardly dried, that made her say, “All right. Just for half an hour.”

The first thing Michelle noticed when she came into Fiona’s living room was that there was something different about the mantelpiece. An expensive-looking alabaster and silver urn had joined the clock and the candlesticks. She said nothing. Fiona had put champagne on ice. “Is there something to celebrate?” Michelle asked.

“Nothing. When you’re feeling really down, you put out more flags, don’t you?”

Matthew extracted the cork skillfully, without spilling a drop. Raising her glass, Fiona said, “I want to ask your advice.” She told them what she knew of Araminta Knox.

“Have you told the police about her? Have you told them about the one who wrote you the begging letter?”

Fiona looked at Matthew in surprise. “Why would I do that?”

“It’s another suspect, isn’t it? Someone else for them to persecute instead of us.”

“I did what I told you I’d do about Linda Davies. I sent her the money. And it made me feel better, a bit better.”

Looking down at the glass in her hand, watching the bubbles rise, Michelle said, trying to keep her tone equable, “You sent her a thousand pounds? You sent her a check?”

“I thought she might not have a bank account so I sent notes, fifty-pound notes, packed into a padded bag. And I felt I was-well, righting the wrongs Jeff did. I’d begun to do that. I know what he was now, you see. I know he preyed on women”-she used Linda Davies’s expression, her voice rising-“and had no compunction about it. Rich women and poor women, it didn’t much matter to him so long as they kept him and put a roof of their own over his head. His death was a lucky escape for me, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, Fiona, I’m so sorry…”

“Perhaps that was my motive for murdering him. What do you think? A means of escape I hadn’t the courage to take any other way. The trouble is I still love him, just as much as I did when I thought he was honest and decent.”

After they had gone Fiona sat for a long while staring at the urn on the mantelpiece. She had thought of scattering Jeff’s ashes somewhere nearby, perhaps on Fortune Green, but these latest revelations about his life had changed her mind. The urn had cost her a small fortune, which was quite funny, really, if you were in the mood to be amused. She took it off the mantelpiece and, crawling on all fours, put it at the back of the dark cupboard under the stairs.