CHAPTER 7
Not so bad after all in the end, thought Jarvis as he slammed the Fiesta’s door and crunched across the gravel towards the house. He hadn’t been best pleased when Tomkins had come down with food poisoning, leaving him to handle this chore on his own, but the drive out across the hills, not to mention the pint of bitter he’d found time for on the way, had done wonders to bring him round to the idea. As for Tomkins, serve him damn well right. Nothing like a dose of the bloody flux to cure the lad of his addiction to surf ‘n’ turf bars for the foreseeable future.
He climbed the short flight of steps leading to the front door and heaved on the bell-pull. Gentry did well for themselves in those days, he thought, eyeing the massive boot-scraper. Coming home of a morning, their hand- tooled leather clogged with the poor sods they’d ridden roughshod over. Still, even for the riff-raff it must have been some compensation to know what the rules were, and that they wouldn’t change in their lifetime.
Were we really that much better off, when you got right down to it? All depends what you mean by better, doesn’t it? What is truth? What’s it all about, Alfie? Where are the snows of yesteryear? How much is that doggy in the window? Pass, thought Jarvis, whose secret fantasy was to appear on Mastermind (‘Your chosen subject: Accrington Stanley’s line-up, results and week-by-week league position, 1956-1962’).
The door was opened by a lanky man in his mid-forties wearing a blue blazer and white flannel trousers. His long florid face rose to a mat of slicked hair which had receded to the centre of his skull. In his left hand he held a cut-glass tumbler filled with an amber liquid. He peered at Jarvis.
‘Not today, thank you,’ he said, starting to close the door. ‘Nor indeed any other day, for that matter.’
Jarvis flashed a regulation smile.
‘Mr Anderson? I believe you’re expecting me.’
The man eyed him blearily.
‘You may also believe that the earth is flat, for all I know. It doesn’t follow that such is in fact the case.’
Jarvis felt his guts clench as though in the first stirrings of indigestion. Just when everything had seemed to be going so well. He unbuttoned the dark blue overcoat he’d got half-price in the sales, revealing an acrylic-rich suit from which he produced his warrant card.
‘Detective-Inspector Stanley Jarvis, sir. I am calling with regard to Mrs Dorothy Hilda Davenport, nee Cooke, deceased.’
The man squinted at the warrant card.
‘You don’t look anything like the person in this photograph.’
‘I was given to understand that you had been informed of and had agreed to this visit,’ snarled Jarvis, with whom the quantity of weight gained and hair lost over the past few years was a sore point. ‘One of my associates was in telephonic communication with a certain…’
He took out his notebook.
‘…Miss Davis.’
Anderson raised his hands in surrender.
‘Ah, the fair Letitia! That explains everything. Say no more, Inspector! I’ll come quietly, it’s a fair cop, lock me up for my own good, I get these terrible urges, etcetera etcetera.’
He opened the door wide and Jarvis stepped inside. The hall was deep, bare and resonant. A boar’s head projected from a trophy hung high on one wall. Next to the door stood an elephant’s foot hollowed out to take an assortment of sticks and umbrellas. The air was chill and dank, the light dull.
‘This way, Inspector!’
Anderson padded across the flagstones towards a lighted doorway. Hush Puppies squealing underfoot, Jarvis followed. The room they entered was small and windowless and smelt strongly of mould. All four walls were covered in shelving crammed with books of every conceivable size, shape and colour. The furniture consisted of a leather armchair which had seen better days and an antique writing-desk supporting an array of spirit bottles.
Jarvis looked round at the serried spines and titles, most of which were either illegible or incomprehensible. Several were in foreign languages. None seemed to have anything to do with the history or fortunes of Accrington Stanley FC.
‘Like books, do you, sir?’ he remarked archly.
‘How very astute of you, Inspector. One can readily see why you have risen to a position of such eminence.
As you so rightly surmise, bibliomania is indeed one of my principal pleasures, the other being alcoholism.’
He selected one of the bottles from the escritoire and poured a generous quantity into his tumbler.
‘I’d be more than happy to offer you a dram,’ he told Jarvis heartily, ‘but generations of literary coppers saying “Not while I’m on duty, sir” have no doubt made it impossible for you to accept such an offer even if you felt so inclined. Thus are we constrained by fictions.’
Leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece, Anderson fixed his visitor with an expression of polite attention. Jarvis realised it was incumbent on him to say something. He consulted his thoughts. They were empty.
‘This is just a routine visit, sir,’ he declared.
‘That’s what they all say, Inspector.’
Jarvis cleared his throat.
‘Who all?’ he demanded. ‘I mean, all who?’
That didn’t sound right either.
‘Along with refusing a drink because they’re on duty,’ said Anderson, taking a gulp of his whisky.
We’ve got a right one here, thought Jarvis. He inhaled deeply and massaged the bridge of his nose. Accrington Stanley 4, Stockport County 0. Gateshead 1, Accrington Stanley 1.
‘According to the officers called to the scene last Tuesday,’ he said, ‘one of the patients here, a Mrs…’
He glanced at his notebook again.
‘…Miss Rosemary Travis, made certain allegations regarding the circumstances surrounding Mrs Davenport’s death.’
Anderson giggled.
‘Glitches,’ he said.
Jarvis goggled.
‘Witches?’
‘Bats,’ said Anderson, heaving at his whisky. ‘In the belfry. Bugs in the program. If our clients-the preferred term, incidentally-were user-friendly, they wouldn’t be.’
Jarvis got out his pen and executed a doodle in his notebook.
‘Wouldn’t be what?’ he murmured.
‘In loco dientis,’ replied Anderson as though the point were obvious. ‘If they weren’t already loco.’
Catching Jarvis’s expression, he put his glass down and made pantomime gestures indicating insanity.
‘IF ALL THERE, NOT ALL HERE!’
Jarvis assumed an expression intended to impress on Anderson the manner of man with whom he had to do. Catching sight of himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, he decided he just looked constipated.
‘My officers reported that Miss Travis appeared quite rational.’
Anderson shrugged.
‘They were expecting maybe the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor?’
He drained off the last of the whisky and went to replenish his glass.
‘They don’t tear their hair or foam at the mouth, my little gerries,’ he called above the chink of bottles. ‘At some of their other orifices, now and then. But by and large most of them give a pretty fair impression of knowing a hawk from a handsaw, if we are to accept that feat as an adequate criterion of sanity.’
He strolled back to the fireplace and took up his former pose.
‘Appearances, however, are deceptive,’ he went on. ‘You and I may be constrained by fictions, Inspector, but this lot are haunted by them. Nothing more natural, of course. For while we are lashed to the mast of actuality, our eyes fixed firmly on the future, their present is hanging by a thread and they’ve no future at all. It is hardly to be wondered at if they occasionally fall prey to siren voices.’
Jarvis ostentatiously consulted the next page of his notebook. It read:
