‘Yes. . so they cut her up so much it just seems the right thing to do is to cremate her. She won’t rest at peace with her insides cut open. She was neat like that. Liked things just so, did our Edith.’
‘Have you anybody to keep an eye on you, Mr Hemmings, to look in on you at a time like this?’
‘At a time like this I am best on my own, but thank you very much for your concern. Best back to work in my brown smock. . but again, thank you for your concern, Miss. I appreciate it,’ he added with a weak smile.
Carmen Pharoah let herself out of the house and walked slowly back to where she had parked her car, feeling a strange sense that she had visited emptiness.
‘He’s right.’ Terry Selsey, proprietor of The Hunter’s Moon, leaned on the highly polished bar of the pub, having handed a coffee each to Yellich and Webster. ‘It’s the recession, you see. This is a struggling pub at the best of times. It struggled when I opened for seven days a week, when folk had money to spend, and I just kept my head above water, but only just. Then customers stopped coming in and the hard times began. I had to let staff go, one by one, and now me and the wife run it between us. Just the two of us. We tried everything to lure the punters in, put on food but nobody had the money to eat out. Lowered the price of the beer until we were virtually selling it at cost but still nobody came in. So now we don’t open until eight p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday and even then it’s like this most of the time.’ He nodded to the empty chairs and to the silence. ‘I’d even welcome a fight to break up because that would mean there were customers in the place. . that it should come to thinking like that.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Yellich stirred his coffee.
‘Do you?’ Selsey snarled. ‘You with your security of employment, early retirement at fifty-five years, inflation-proof pension. . do you know what I mean?’ Selsey’s eyebrows knitted. He was clearly, thought Yellich, a man with a short fuse.
‘I meant,’ Yellich replied calmly, ‘I knew what you meant about wanting a fight to break up because that meant you had customers in the pub.’ He thought Selsey to be like many publicans he had met. He was a man with a ready smile, superficial joviality, but with the ability to turn and growl at the slightest provocation. It occurred to Yellich that a change in attitude on Selsey’s part might generate a little more business for The Hunter’s Moon. ‘So, the Canadian?’ Yellich asked.
‘Yes,’ Selsey glanced to one side. ‘He came in a few times, when we were busier; this is going back a couple of years mind. He went into the Black Bull further up the street as well but in the end he seemed to prefer this pub. The Bull is also a weekend-only shop now. Never caught his name but he seemed a likeable bloke, friendly when you talked to him, wore a wedding ring, but he definitely had an agenda.’
‘An agenda?’
‘Yes, by that I mean he wasn’t on holiday or on vacation as he might have said. The Canadian, he was a man with a mission. He liked his English beer, though, drove away well over the legal limit but he could handle it. He had to go back to Malton.’
‘Malton?’
‘Yes, he said that once at about nine thirty one evening and he sank his pint in a hurry, as though he was under time pressure. I thought then that it was a good thirty minutes drive. . so he had to be home by ten, wherever “home” was, as though he was staying at a guest house which locked the doors at ten p.m. sharp.’
‘All right. That’s interesting. Did he ever indicate to you or anyone that you know of, did he ever hint at his purpose? I mean did he indicate the nature of the agenda you mention?’
‘No. . not to me though he was apparently interested in the old house out of the village, the crumbling mess occupied by an old boy called Beattie. You can’t miss it.’
‘Yes, we have visited Mr Beattie. He also mentioned the large, well built man looking at his house but he thought that the Canadian, being the man in question, was more interested in the occupants than he was interested in the house itself.’
‘Occupants? Since his wife died the old boy is the sole occupant, the old boy who is rumoured not to feel the cold. . they say he sleeps in his kitchen.’
‘Oh, he feels it all right,’ Yellich replied, ‘he feels it, he just has a different attitude towards it than do the rest of us. We believe that when the Canadian was in the vicinity he, that is Mr Beattie, had a live-in help. . a lady. . as a domestic assistant. We believe that she was the object of the Canadian gentleman’s interest.’
‘Ah. . of that I know nothing. He said nothing about that when he was drinking his beer.’
‘I see. Did he talk to any other customers in the pub?’
‘Anybody who talked to him but he preferred his own company. He came in for a few beers, not idle chat. He was that sort of man.’
‘Did you find out anything about him, anything at all?’
‘Came from Barrie, he said. He did tell me that.’
‘Barrie?’
‘Confess I had never heard of the place, but it’s north of Toronto. I could name Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver as Canadian cities but never heard of Barrie. . spelled with an “ie” at the end, not a “y”.’
‘Well, you got closer than anyone, physically closer, that is to say, and so we’d like you to help us construct a photofit of the man, or rather a computer generated image. What time would suit you?’
Selsey gave Yellich a sour look, ‘If you could manage to avoid weekend evenings I’d appreciate it.’
‘Later today perhaps?’ Yellich suggested. ‘Would that be convenient?’
Carmen Pharoah drove away from Stanley Hemmings’s house and then parked her car and walked back the 200 yards and knocked on his neighbour’s door. Her knock sounded loudly and hollowly within the house. As she waited for the knock to be answered she glanced at Hemmings’s house. She did not see him and thus was relieved that he clearly had not seen her. If he had noticed her it would not have mattered, but on balance, she preferred him not to have seen her. It made things easier somehow. The door was eventually opened by a late middle-aged woman, short, with a pinched face, who met Carmen Pharoah with a cold stare and clear dislike of Afro- Caribbeans.
‘What?’ She demanded. ‘What is it? What do you want? Who are you?’
‘Police.’ Carmen Pharoah showed the woman her ID.
‘Oh?’ The woman seemed to relax her attitude a little, though she still demanded ‘What?’ for a fourth time.
‘May I come inside? I’d like to ask you some questions.’ Carmen Pharoah asked calmly.
‘About what?’
‘Your neighbour.’
‘Which neighbour?’
‘Mr Hemmings.’
‘Oh. . those two?’ The woman sniffed disapprovingly.
‘Yes, those two.’
The woman stepped nimbly to one side and allowed Carmen Pharoah to enter her house. Carmen Pharoah read a neat, well kept, clean but spartan home; hence, she realized, the echoing quality to her knock, there being little to soften the sound. ‘Second on the left,’ the woman said, closing the front door behind her.
Carmen Pharoah entered the living room which had upholstered furniture and a table covered in a brown cloth. Of daffodils in vases and a small television set in the corner of the room on a small table. A modest coke fire glowed dimly in the hearth. The window of the room looked out over a small but well tended rear garden and the wooden fence which divided her property from Stanley Hemmings’s property.
‘Well, sit down,’ the woman spoke snappily, ‘the chairs don’t bite.’
‘Thank you.’ Carmen Pharoah settled on the settee and opened her notepad. ‘Can I ask your name, please?’
‘Winterton. Amelia. Miss.’
‘Occupation, please.’
‘Schoolteacher, retired recently, a few months ago. Still don’t know what to do with all my free time.’
Carmen Pharoah shuddered internally. She felt she knew the type of schoolteacher Winterton, Amelia, Miss, had been, acid-tongued, short-tempered. She had survived just one such teacher in her primary school on St Kitts.
‘So, you are enquiring about the couple next door?’
‘Yes. . yes, we are.’
‘She disappeared I heard. . it’s the talk of the street.’
