‘Medic came that afternoon, patched me up.’
He laughed soundlessly.
‘Worried I might die on them. Wouldn’t look good, he said. Got the wind up about old Dawers, too.’
‘Mrs Davenport?’
The bandaged hand beckoned. Jarvis bent down over the pillow and the man’s humid breath billowed in his ear.
‘Wall’s like paper. Hear every word.’
Jarvis nodded.
‘The morning they found the body, before the police got here, I heard Anderson talking to someone in there,’ Channing went on in a sibilant whisper. ‘Couldn’t make out the other voice, but it must have been…’
His eyes swivelled towards the figure in blue overalls standing by the window, ostentatiously not listening.
‘Anderson was in a bit of a panic. Man’s a dipso, of course. Always go to pieces at the first sign of trouble. Kept wittering away about how the police would be there any minute. Then something about getting rid of something at all costs. Miss Davis must have asked him where, and Anderson says, “In a bloody haystack.”’
‘A haystack?’ repeated Jarvis.
‘Then she said something else, and he said, “Well, we’ll just have to make sure they don’t get a chance to speak to her.” Then he laughed and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll handle them. The police are such clods.” ‘
The man lay back on the pillow, exhausted. Jarvis stood up.
“Thank you,’ he said.
He pointed to the wrist and ankle restraints.
‘I don’t really think those are necessary any more,’ he told Miss Davis.
‘Not if he’ll be good,’ she shrugged. ‘Will you be good, George?’
Jarvis took her arm.
Tm sure he will,’ he said, guiding her to the door.
‘What did he say?’ Miss Davis demanded as soon as they were outside.
Jarvis shrugged negligently.
‘Oh, nothing much. This and that. You know.’
This could be it, he thought as they started along the corridor. The one he’d always dreamed about, the one that got you on TV telling some prat in a mac how it felt. He imagined opening his morning paper to find a headline reading ‘HELL HOME HORROR – Exclusive Pictures and Interview with Detective Chief Superintendent “Accrington” Stanley Jarvis’. Then he blinked, and the next moment the whole thing looked as insubstantial as the world- shattering insights Tomkins tended to come out with after the fifth bottle of Bud or Schlitz or whatever it was that week.
No way, Stan, he told himself. The last thing he could afford to do was chance his arm on something that could blow up in his face and leave him without a leg to stand on if it subsequently turned out that he’d put his foot in it. This Miss Davis might come across with a bit of flattery, but her brother was considerably less of a soft touch, and well-connected with it. You couldn’t risk going up against people like that on the basis of a few ambiguous overheard phrases and the melodramatic fantasies of the dead woman’s best friend.
Jarvis was no longer totally convinced that Rosemary Travis had adulterated the cocoa and morphine syrup herself, but that didn’t mean she was someone you could put in the witness-box if you wanted to reach retirement age with your reputation intact. Reluctantly he let the dreams of fame and fortune fade. In his heart he had always known that he was not destined for such things any more than the football club after which he had been named. Accrington fans regarded titles and cups as slightly swanky, suitable for folk in Blackburn or Burnley, but not their style. Like them, Jarvis knew his place.
They had almost reached the landing when they heard Anderson yelling ‘Letty! Letty!’
Miss Davis broke into a run, with Jarvis close behind. As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Anderson appeared from his office. He pointed to the front door, which was wide open.
‘Hargreaves is loose!’
Miss Davis’s eyes narrowed.
“The bitch. I’ll fucking spay her.’
Anderson smiled urbanely at Jarvis.
‘Sorry about this, Inspector! A minor domestic crisis, such as will happen from time to time in even the best- regulated households.’
The smile vanished as he turned to his sister.
‘You take the north side, I’ll check the paddock. She can’t have gone far.’
The front door clacked shut and footsteps scurried away over the gravel. Jarvis paused to check his appearance in the mirror at the foot of the stairs. He’d have been perfect on TV, too, he thought with a twinge of regret. He looked the part: solid, sound, dogged but fundamentally uninspired. People would have trusted him. That Jarvis, they’d have said, he’s all right. Shame there aren’t more like him in the force.
‘We’re ready for you, Inspector.’
He spun around to find Rosemary Travis looking at him from a doorway near by.
“This way!’ she said.
Jarvis walked past her into the lounge. The other residents were all in their places: Weatherby sitting by the fireplace reading The Times, Charles Symes and Grace Lebon bent over a jigsaw puzzle, Samuel Rossiter muttering into the telephone, Belinda Scott lightly touching the keys of the piano, Purvey nodding over his book.
‘So, here we are,’ Rosemary remarked brightly, ‘gathered together in the lounge of this isolated country house to face the detective’s probing questions. One of us is guilty, but which? Can the sleuth succeed in unmasking the murderer before he-or she-strikes again?’
The seven faces gazed expectantly at Jarvis.
‘Yes, well…’ he said.
He licked his lips.
‘The thing is…’ he said.
He consulted the marble clock on the mantelpiece, which read ten past four.
‘I’d like to ask you each a few questions,’ he said.
He pointed at the skinny woman bent over the keyboard of the piano, her shrivelled body hinting at vanished beauty like the chrysalis of a butterfly condemned to live its brief life backwards.
‘I’ll start with you,’ said Stanley Jarvis masterfully.
CHAPTER 1O
By the time Anderson reappeared in the lounge some twenty minutes later, Jarvis had spoken to all the residents except the errant Mrs Hargreaves. With the exception of Alfred Purvey, who was definitely a few stamps short of the first-class rate, they proved to be considerably less gaga than Jarvis had feared. Unfortunately it was Purvey who had come up with the only substantive piece of new information, which virtually destroyed its value as evidence.
Surrounded as he was by formless, menacing uncertainties, Purvey left nothing to chance in those aspects of his life which he could control. His ‘jabs’ were the most significant of these. The regular regime of insulin injections had come to provide a certainty on which not only his life but also his sanity to some extent depended, and he was fanatically precise about everything relating to it. On the other hand, he was convinced that his tenure at Eventide Lodge was entirely dependent on the goodwill of his ‘hosts’, and he was therefore very reluctant to make any fuss about what was in any case a very minor matter: the disappearance of his syringes at some point in the course of the previous week.
If true, this removed the basic stumbling block to Rosemary Travis’s theory of murder, which she herself, for all her much-vaunted prowess in the matter of detective stories, had completely overlooked. If Dorothy Davenport had not intended to kill herself, she would have taken no more than the prescribed dose of her medicine, and even in combination with alcohol and sleeping tablets this was not sufficient to cause death. What it would do was
