had an iron bell-pull. It rang some chimes. An elderly woman came. She looked sharply at Gently. Setters addressed her as Mrs Clarkson and did his introduction again.
‘Jennifer’s dressing,’ said Mrs Clarkson. ‘You’d better come in, and I’ll tell her. But I hope you’re not going to be here for long. I’m fetching the children from school shortly.’
‘Not for long,’ Gently said. ‘We could come back tomorrow.’
‘It isn’t that, but she really isn’t fit to talk to people,’ said Mrs Clarkson.
She ushered them in through a square hall with a polished parquet floor and into a three-sided, slant- ceilinged room of which the fourth side was a glassed-in veranda. She left them. Setters sat down. Gently moved about the room. The slant-ceiling gave it spaciousness. The furniture was unpolished in a grey-toned wood. The upholstery of the furniture was in off-white and lemon and the carpet was off-white with flecks of black. The walls were papered in a trellis design. There was a piano. There was a record player.
‘What makes a kid from a home like this run riot?’ Setters inquired. ‘I wish I’d been a kid here. I wish I owned a place like it.’
‘When did Lister leave school?’ Gently asked.
‘That’s a point,’ Setters said. ‘It’d be a year ago, wouldn’t it, about the time his old man went. Since when he’s been working as a plumber’s mate for the firm his father was connected with. Starting at the bottom, more than likely. Not a question of money here.’
‘Did Elton work for that firm?’ Gently asked.
‘Yes,’ Setters said. ‘Hailey and Lincon’s. They’re a local firm here in Latchford. They brought in Lister for the overspill project.’
The door from the hall opened. Mrs Lister came in. She was a woman above middle height with a slender waist and wide hips. She had straight-cut gold-brown hair and green eyes and wide cheekbones and under the eyes were blued patches, and the cheeks were pale and a little sagged. She wore a charcoal dress with a bushed skirt. It had a belt. She wore a thin gold chain. She came forward.
‘You wanted to see me again?’ she asked. She held her hand out to Gently.
‘Just a recapitulation,’ Gently said. ‘I’m fresh here, and it always helps.’
‘I want to help you,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘I keep thinking I haven’t helped enough. If Les had been here…’ She stopped. ‘I want to help you all I can,’ she said.
She sat down on a wing armchair, crossing her calves and swinging them slantwise. She laid her hands in her lap. She made a small, hesitant smile for them.
‘I keep hoping it was an accident after all,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to know any more than that. It’s bad enough that Johnny is dead. I don’t think I could bear it if it’s something else.’
Gently nodded. ‘Life can be unkind.’
‘Yes.’ She smiled again. ‘Yes.’
‘And the worst of it is we have to find him,’ he said.
‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘I’m simply selfish.’
‘How did it start?’ he asked. ‘All this business. The motorcycling, the slang.’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘And yet I do. It happened after Les went.’
‘You think that was the cause of it?’ Gently asked.
‘I feel it had something to do with it,’ she said, ‘You see, up till that time Johnny was enthusiastic about his career. But Les going upset him terribly. I think there must have been a connection.’
‘What was his career to have been?’ Gently asked.
‘Building and contracting,’ she said. ‘Les wanted him to be an architect, but Johnny didn’t have the same talent for it. It was the practical side that Johnny was good at. Not just using his hands, but organization. So Les said all right, he’d better not waste time at college, and Johnny went straight into Hailey and Lincon’s. Which is what he wanted to do.’
‘Was he happy there?’ Gently asked.
‘I thought he was,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘He used to be talking about it always. And he went to evening classes in Castlebridge.’
‘Is that how he came to have a motorcycle?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That was mostly the reason. He had a scooter on his sixteenth birthday, but Castlebridge is twenty-five miles from here.’
‘And then what happened?’ Gently asked.
‘Well, he seemed to lose interest,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘He dropped the classes. He dropped a lot of his old friends. He became moody and secretive, bored when he was at home. I thought perhaps there was a girl in it. I tried to get him to confide in me. Then there was this awful slang and the passion for jazz records, and the silly clothes he used to wear. I kept hoping it was simply a phase. He wouldn’t talk to me about it.’
‘He made other friends, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘though not the sort I approved of. He brought them home once or twice, but he soon stopped doing that. I’m to blame I suppose. I ought to have concealed what I thought of them. But I couldn’t help it. They were terrible. I don’t think some of them ever washed. And there they sat, in his room, playing jazz records and smoking. Till the small hours, sometimes. I had to say something.’
‘Do you remember who they were?’ Gently asked.
‘I’m not sure I knew their names,’ she said. ‘But I remember the Elton boy coming. And Elton’s sister. And Dicky Deeming.’
‘Jack Salmon. Frankie Knights.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t remember. Only Dicky. I thought that Dicky was old enough to have known better. But he’s a writer, of course, so he might have been slumming after material.’ She made a face. ‘If you can call this bungalow a slum,’ she added.
‘How old is Deeming then?’
‘Oh, thirty-ish,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He looks younger because he’s boyish, short hair and that. He writes for the little reviews, I’m told, and does book notices and things. He’s our only local author. That’s why I remember him.’
‘And Johnny was specially friendly with him?’
‘Oh, quite infatuated,’ she said. ‘For a time, you know. A spell of teenage hero-worship. Dicky was what Johnny wanted to be. Cool, I think is the term they use. A rebel against all convention, a jazz expert and etcetera. For a time he was always around with Dicky. Then Dicky faded out again.’
‘Was there any reason for that?’ Gently asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘It was around that time, or soon after, that he fell so heavily for Betty Turner. Poor girl. She little knew how it would end, her romance with Johnny. But I think she may have displaced Dicky. I remember thinking so at the time.’
‘He was genuinely in love with her, was he?’
Mrs Lister nodded several times. ‘He was like his father. Fell with a bang. Very like his father, was Johnny.’
‘Did you approve of Betty Turner?’
‘I didn’t disapprove,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have picked her, she’s a sad little trollop. But I thought she was a healthier influence than Dicky. If she’d loved Johnny too.’
‘She didn’t love him?’ Gently said.
‘No,’ said Mrs Lister, ‘she didn’t. It was just a crush on her side.’
Setters shifted in his chair. ‘They were engaged, weren’t they?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They were engaged. But it wasn’t serious with Betty. If you want my frank opinion they wouldn’t have lasted for much longer. She was very pettish just lately. Johnny was much concerned, poor child.’
‘Was Elton the trouble?’ Gently asked.
‘He may have been,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘I know she used to be fond of Elton and sometimes she teased Johnny about him. I’m not sure. She was pettish and listless. She’d just grown tired of Johnny, I think.’
Gently sat silent for some moments. Mrs Lister was biting her lip. The wing of the armchair shaded her face, her eyes were hooded but staring fixedly. Now the sun had gone in. The light in the room was greyer.
‘I’ve seen your statement,’ Gently said, ‘about what happened last Tuesday. But I’d like you to go through it
