demand.
‘Have you come to a decision concerning that letter, Mrs Radcliffe?’
‘Yes,’ replied Sadie. ‘I have more or less.’
‘Then I trust that you had the sense to accept. That’s what my wife and I have done and I can speak for Neil Beresford, Shirley’s husband, as well. I talked to him earlier. I also know that Jonah Jenks is sympathetic to the idea because Reuben Harte told me when I went to see him today.’
‘Mr Harte is against it,’ said June.
‘I’ll persuade him,’ said her husband, testily. ‘I rarely fail to win people over to my viewpoint.’ He smiled condescendingly at Sadie. ‘May I take it that you’ll follow where we lead?’
‘Yes, Mr Ingles.’
‘It will simplify everything,’ said June.
‘It will also make it possible to set a date for the funeral,’ added her husband. ‘All I have to do is to get Reuben Harte on our side and the job is complete. The five victims can be interred together, as is only right and proper.’
There was an awkward pause. Sadie wondered if she ought to offer them some refreshment but held back because she felt that their tea service would be markedly superior to hers. When she did speak, she blurted her question out.
‘You’re the ones with the big house in Hayes, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said June, smugly.
‘Agnes told me that you have a garden at the front and the back.’
‘It’s everything we ever wanted, Mrs Radcliffe.’
‘Though, actually,’ said Ingles, ‘we’re about to put it on the market.’
‘We can’t do that, Brian,’ urged June. ‘I love that house.’
‘So do I, my dear, but it’s far too large for our needs.’
‘I’d rather have too much room than too little,’ said Sadie.
‘That’s my feeling exactly,’ said June. ‘Besides, the house holds so many fond memories for us. I’d like to stay there indefinitely. My husband thinks that the place feels empty now that Florrie has died but she hasn’t lived there since she got married.’ She looked at her husband. ‘You never worried about it being too big when Florrie was alive. What’s changed?’
‘Need we discuss this here?’ he said, irritably.
‘I’d just like to know.’
‘Very well — I’ll tell you. What changed are the associations with the house. As you said earlier, it holds fond memories but they’ve been overshadowed by Florrie’s death. As long as we stay there, we’ll be reminded of it. I’m sorry, June,’ he went on, ‘I know it’s difficult for you to grasp but we have to get well away from there and make a fresh start. We have to build our lives anew.’
‘I wish I could do that,’ moaned Sadie. ‘I’d love to be able to sell up and move far away but there’s no chance of that happening. We’re stuck here for ever.’
‘I want to get far away from that confounded factory,’ declared Ingles. ‘And I want a smaller house that’s easier to manage.’
‘It can’t be
‘Leave this to me.’ He stood up. ‘Thank you, Mrs Radcliffe. I’m glad that the journey here has paid dividends. I can go back to Reuben Harte and tell him that he’s the fly in the ointment. He must accept the majority decision.’
‘I agree,’ said June, now on her feet.
‘God willing, I should be able to phone Mr Kennett later this afternoon to tell him what we’ve all decided. The funeral will be a harrowing experience for us all. If the five of them are buried at the same time, however, we can each draw support from others in the same unfortunate position.’
Sadie led the way. ‘I’ll show you out.’
She was relieved to get rid of them. June had been looking around the living room with polite disdain and Ingles had annoyed her by the way in which he’d taken the arrangements for the burial into his hands. Sadie felt that she hadn’t been given free rein to express her opinions. As she watched them going off down the street, she could still hear them arguing about whether or not to sell their house.
‘Who cares about your bloody house?’ she said to herself. ‘In case you forgot, Florrie died in that explosion with Agnes. How can you think about anything else but your daughter?’
Harvey Marmion felt that Leighton Hubbard deserved to know about the emergence of a suspect before he read it in the newspapers the next day. As a courtesy to the landlord, therefore, he and Joe Keedy drove to the pub in search of him. Repairs were still under way and the landlord was watching like a hawk. When the car drew up beside the pavement, he ambled across to it. The detectives got out and surveyed the scene of the bomb blast.
‘It looks very different now, Mr Hubbard,’ said Keedy.
‘They tell me that it will have to look worse before it looks better,’ said the landlord. ‘The scaffolding is there to hold the Goose up. They discovered cracks in the brickwork almost everywhere. The work will cost a fortune.’
‘I take it that you’re insured,’ said Keedy.
‘Yes, Sergeant — the bills will be paid in full. What you can’t insure against is all the heartache we suffered and all the customers we must have lost. It’s been such a trial that there’ve been times when I wished
‘You can’t really mean that, sir.’
‘Everything we loved about this place has been destroyed.’
‘Then perhaps you’d like some news to raise your spirits,’ said Marmion.
Hubbard’s eye kindled. ‘You’ve made an arrest?’
‘We hope to do so before very long.’
‘Who’s the villain? Is it one of my rivals?’
‘He’s not a publican, sir. He works at the munitions factory. Thanks to that list you gave me, I was able to see that he was a patron of yours.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Herbert Wylie.’
‘Do you recall him?’ asked Keedy.
Hubbard nodded grimly. ‘Yes, I do. He’s not one of my regulars.’
‘We’ve seen a photograph of him and I talked to his foreman. It seems that Wylie was not really a sociable type.’
‘He wasn’t, Sergeant. He’d only come into the Goose now and then and never had more than a pint. I could never work out if he was mean with his money or just not thirsty. Anyway, he didn’t mix with the other customers. He liked to sit in a corner and stare into his beer. You get people like that.’
‘What else can you tell us about him?’ asked Marmion.
‘That’s it — excepting that he didn’t stay long. He always slunk off early.’
‘He’s slunk off again. It may only be a coincidence but he hasn’t been seen at work since the explosion. We went to his address but he’d taken most of his things and gone off somewhere.’
‘Wylie is on the run,’ decided Hubbard, scowling. ‘Tell me where he is, Inspector, and I’ll go after him, however far away he might be.’
‘Leave him to us, sir.’
‘Yes,’ said Keedy. ‘His name and description will be in every newspaper tomorrow. Everyone will know that we’re hunting for Herbert Wylie in connection with what happened here. He’ll find it almost impossible to avoid being seen.’
‘Are you certain that it was him?’ asked the landlord.
‘You can never be completely certain in this game.’
‘But we’re confident enough to release his name to the press,’ said Marmion. ‘We’ve linked him closely to one of the women at that birthday party. We know that he’s an expert bomb-maker. We found evidence that he’d been constructing one at the house where he lived. And you confirmed that he drank at your pub and was
