“You mean you would have kept stolen goods?” asked Agatha.
“What else could I have done? I wouldn’t have turned her over to the police.”
Said Agatha, “I gather she left you comfortably off. How did she manage to amass so much money?”
“May as well tell you, now she’s dead. When she was only a teenager, she was gorgeous-looking. She went on the game. Got picked up by a rich businessman who kept her in a flat in Chelsea. When he got tired of her she threatened to tell his wife and so he paid her off. He’d put the flat in her name and she sold it. Then she decided she wanted marriage and kids. By that time I was married to Dawn, so she married Jimmy, who had a good bit of cash and left it all to her when he died. She went back on the game and got herself another rich man. He was the kind who thinks criminals glamorous. He took her to Marbella and she met Charlie Black there. Fell hook, line and sinker, she did, especially when he promised to bring up Jimmy’s boy, Wayne, as if he were his own. But she’d got to know a stockbroker and had invested her money and she was too canny to let Charlie get his hands on it. She went off him after a bit and kept complaining she’d left a rich man for him. So he planned the jewel theft. Silly bugger got caught.”
“Where’s Dawn living?” asked Harry.
“Why?”
“Just thought we might want to tell her the news as well.”
“Here.” Cyril took out a notebook and scribbled down an address. “Thanks for giving me the news, but if there isn’t anything else…”
“No, we’ll go now,” said Agatha, wishing she had not sunk so far down into the feathery cushions of the sofa. But when she rose, there was no pain. All I need is more exercise, she thought. I’m damned if I’m getting a hip replacement. No ageing.
Outside in the car she said to Harry, “Let’s look at this address. If it’s in Lewisham, I’ll give up for the day.”
She read the note. “No, it’s here in Swindon.”
“I saw a newsagent’s a few streets away,” said Harry. “I’ll nip in and buy an
“Flat five, Wemley Court, Burford Street.”
At the newsagent’s Harry bought a street directory and studied it. “Other side of town, but we may as well go while we’re here. I’m starving.”
“Let’s see Dawn first and then we’ll eat.”
Wemley Court turned out to be a block of council flats. Flat five was mercifully only one floor up because the lift was broken, its inner walls covered in graffiti.
Dawn opened the door to them. She seemed to have aged and her face was bare of make-up. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “What do you want?”
“May we come in?”
“If you must.”
The flat smelt of stale food and unwashed clothes.
“How did you end up like this?” asked Agatha. “Isn’t Cyril obliged to give you some money?”
“He beat the hell out of me,” said Dawn, “and said unless I settled for nothing, he’d kill me.”
“My dear girl, get yourself to the Citizens Advice Bureau, get legal aid and sue the pants off him.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?” demanded Agatha.
“I’m afraid of him. Leave me alone. Why did you come?”
Agatha told her about Archie Swale.
“Good for him,” said Dawn, lighting a cheap cigarette. “I’ve often wanted to kill her myself.”
“Would Cyril have killed her?”
“Him? He thought the sun shone out of her fat arse.”
“Look, here, Dawn, when he beat you up you should have gone straight to the police.”
She hugged her thin body with her skinny arms. “I just want to forget about the whole thing.”
“One more thing. If Cyril had asked Geraldine to meet him on the beach in the middle of the night, would she have gone?”
“Sure, she would.”
“Did he leave the room that night?”
“I told the police he didn’t, but the fact is I’d had a lot to drink and then I took sleeping pills.”
They could not get any more information out of her and left.
“Food!” said Harry, “and lots of it.”
After a substantial meal they decided to leave calling on Fred until the following day.
Back in Carsely, Agatha fussed over her cats and then returned to studying Harry’s file. Cyril was the prime candidate. He must have known Geraldine meant to leave her money to him. Now he had ruthlessly got rid of poor Dawn and had found a pretty little Chinese girlfriend.
Agatha planned to return to Dawn in the near future and see if she could do anything for her. Maybe she would get her a good lawyer.
She could almost sense the presence of James Lacey next door, distracting her from concentrating on the file. For the first time, she hoped he would keep away from her. Her intelligence told her it would be madness to go down that obsessive road again. Her emotions nagged at her, mourning the loss of that very obsession.
What could she say to Fred Jankers to prompt some sort of lead? Perhaps the best idea would be to ask him questions about Cyril and to take him back over the night of Geraldine’s murder. Maybe he remembered something now that he had not told the police.
The doorbell rang, making her jump nervously. She went quietly to the front door and peered through the spyhole. She saw the face of James, distorted by the glass of the spyhole.
She reached out for the doorknob and then drew her hand back.
Agatha retreated to her desk. The doorbell went again. She nervously lit a cigarette.
Then she faintly heard his footsteps retreating and her shoulders relaxed.
The phone rang. She stiffened up again, waiting until the ringing stopped. After a few minutes she went and picked up the receiver. She was told there was a message for her, press one. She pressed one. “You have one message,” said the voice of British Telecom. “Message received at ten twenty-five p.m.” James’s voice started to speak. “Agatha, I know you are home. Why …” Agatha held the phone away from her ear so that she could just hear when he had finished speaking without hearing the rest of the words. When he had finished, she pressed button three on the receiver to cancel the message in case she might be tempted to listen to it later.
Agatha silently cursed James as she and Harry drove off the next morning. He was invading her thoughts, and already part of her brain was wishing she hadn’t cancelled that message.
“Penny for them,” said Harry.
“I was just wondering what to ask Fred,” Agatha lied.
“Maybe ask him about Cyril,” suggested Harry. “That might get him to open up a bit.”
“Good idea,” said Agatha, just as if she hadn’t thought of it already. “Mind you, it might have been a better idea to phone him first. It’s a long way to Lewisham and now the working week has started, the traffic will be hellish. What if he’s not at home?”
“Then we’ll just need to hang around until he comes back,” said Harry cheerfully.
Fred Jankers was not only at home but seemed glad to see them. “Come in,” he hailed them. “I get a bit lonely these days.”
His house appeared much cleaner than when Harry had last seen it. Fred fussed around, making them tea and producing a plate of biscuits. When they were all settled, Agatha began.
“We went to see Cyril Hammond yesterday.”
Fred’s face darkened. “That shyster! Getting all Geraldine’s money.”
“Just as well you got the insurance,” said Agatha.
“Geraldine told me she was leaving everything to me. She even showed me the will.”
“Have you got that will?”
“No, she took it away again. Said she was leaving it with the solicitor.”
“Maybe the will leaving everything to Wayne and then to Cyril if Wayne died was an old one?”
