An Open Window, page 14
‘It’s not what you signalled,’ I told them heavily. ‘It’s what you did it with.’
They were silent.
‘So all right.’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe the company can buy the patents, or acquire them legally, and carry on this process of yours, even with you in Stafford Prison, Chad.’
I turned to the door. ‘Heh!’ he said. I turned back.
But they were still reluctant. I’ve found it easier to prise the truth from tough city louts. ‘Well?’
Heather dropped her eyes. ‘He kept them here. The rulers. Just to signal with.’
It was hopeless. I turned away. The design for the camera was developing on the drafting table. Two lenses, side by side, I saw. I decided I must not give in.
‘What I ought to do,’ I said heavily, ‘is walk out of here, take you both back home, and drive away. And leave you to stew in it. All I’m getting is one set of lies after another.’
‘You’re not—’ began Heather.
I swung round, pointing at the window. ‘Outside that window there is probably a parking area, which anybody can get at from where I’ve left the car. Right?’
Chad nodded miserably.
‘Aloud,’ I said. ‘Pretend we’re taping this.’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly.
‘And there’s a door in the main lab leading out to it. I saw it. I expect you have a key?’
‘Yes.’
‘So that you, Heather, could easily have ridden down here and tapped on this window, and peered in. And if Chad was here…’
Chad pounced in. ‘Now hold on—’
I cut him short with a gesture, turning to Heather.
‘Couldn’t you?’
She was still in a mood to resist, her face pale but purposeful. ‘I could. I suppose.’
‘Suppose? It would be natural. You’d done it before.’
No response. I allowed a snap to reach my voice. ‘Hadn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when you’d done that, Chad would have used his way to let you in?’
‘He’d done that.’ Her mouth seemed stiff, and she slurred the words.
‘So it would have been more reasonable, on that specific evening when Tolchard died, to do exactly that?’
‘If you say so.’
‘I’m asking you, Heather. Wouldn’t it have been more reasonable? It’s for you to say, not me.’
‘Now hold on!’ Chad repeated harshly, moving a pace towards me.
‘Shut up!’ I didn’t look directly at him, but could detect that he’d stopped dead. ‘We’ll come to you…’
He turned away angrily, his hand brushing his head in a gesture close to despair.
‘Wouldn’t it, Heather?’ I persisted, but now quietly.
‘Yes.’ She looked down, and whispered: ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Because I can’t help you unless I get the truth. Can’t you understand that! I don’t want to be involved. If you’re not prepared to tell me the truth, then it lets me off the hook, which’ll be fine by me. Is that clear? Nod once for yes.’
She stared at me, her lips a ghastly colour. ‘It’s dark out there. A bit scary.’
‘Since when did a young woman, going to meet her young man, worry about the dark?’
She bit her lip. I heard Chad’s foot move, but I waved him to silence. Heather nodded once.
‘So we’re getting somewhere. On that evening, it would therefore have been reasonable for you to ride down here. So why didn’t you?’
‘I did,’ she said softly.
‘You came here? You didn’t stop where you told me you did?’ No reaction. ‘You were deliberately lying.’
She said something indistinctly. ‘Pardon? I didn’t catch that,’ I said. She raised her head.
‘It was a Thursday.’
I looked round, hoping no one else was hearing this nonsense. But Chad had put a hand to Heather’s arm and drawn her close to him, his other arm round her waist.
‘We’ll have to tell him.’ His voice was stronger, more firm. ‘Now Chad…’
‘I can’t go on with this any longer,’ said Chad. He turned his defeated eyes to me. ‘We were simply trying to cover up for my father. On Thursdays, he makes up the pay packets.’
Suddenly and blindingly I knew exactly what had happened. But I had to hear it said.
‘Meaning what?’
He shrugged. I could just detect a thin, tired smile. Already some of the stress had run from his face. ‘It’s a fine thing to have to tell you. He’s never got used to computers. Doesn’t trust ‘em. He stays late on Thursday, to check every pay packet. He still,’ he admitted with a strange, proud smile, ‘keeps his old ledgers going.’
‘But?’ I urged, secretly pleased because I’d guessed correctly.
‘But even so, it’s getting a bit beyond him. And there I was, talking about the factory taking on more processes and new business! More staff. More complications. Me not thinking what it would mean to him…’
I glanced towards Heather, who took it up. Defeated, stubborn, she jutted her lower lip, and in true lawyer’s style made what she could of it. ‘Chad would often stay late, but always on Thursdays. He could see his father’s window. There’s a skylight, and if Ken’s lights were on late…oh hell, he’d go up to help him out.’
‘Not that I was much good at it,’ said Chad modestly, pathetically making a dry joke out of it.
‘And you?’ I asked Heather.
‘On Thursdays,’ she said, ‘I’d ride round to the bottom drive, out there, and if he wasn’t in here I’d know where he was, and I’d ride back there and pip the horn. So you see, it wasn’t really a lie.’
I didn’t take her up on that, but asked Chad: ‘You’d hear it, and know?’
‘I could hear, up in dad’s office. If we were nearly through I’d go along the corridor and signal her. At the end window.’
‘With your two damned rulers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which you hadn’t been using down here to draw your cameras and what-have-you?’
He rubbed his hair into a tangle and made an embarrassed gesture towards his drafting table. It said it all.
‘So you brought me into this office, calmly assuming I’m too stupid to realise? By God, I ought to kick your—’
‘I forgot. Sorry about that.’
‘But you did take a couple of round rulers along with you?’
‘From dad’s office, yes. He’s got no end of them. He’s a bit old-fashioned.’
‘I saw for myself. Antiquated’s more the mark.’ You can tell I was disturbed, or I wouldn’t have said that.
Chad drew himself up. ‘He’s talking about putting in his resignation.’
‘For God’s sake!’ I said, hearing my voice rising. ‘What d’you think’s going on? I don’t want any damned resignations. We’re talking about a man’s death here, and you’ve been making up stories.’
They stood side by side, her fingers groping for his. I sighed.
‘Now let me reconstruct,’ I said wearily. ‘That evening, you, Chad, had gone up to your father’s office to help him out. You would leave the lights on in here, to make it look as though you were still at your own work. Heather arrived, you heard her signal, and you went along to the end of the corridor.’ I pointed in the general direction. ‘And signalled with your two stupid rulers. All right so far?’
Their heads nodded. I went on:
‘Which entailed only a walk along a straight corridor from one end of the building to the other? Right. Your father heard a scream, or heard an owl and thought it was a scream, and followed you quickly, and discovered Tolchard dead at the foot of the stairs. Meanwhile, you, Chad, had heard nothing, or had heard a scream and put it down to the owls. Your father shouted, and you ran back to him. Is that basically correct?’
They mumbled that it was.
‘But don’t you understand…if you had come from down here in the research section, you could hardly have missed seeing Tolchard, if he’d been lying at the foot of the stairs at that time. But you didn’t come from here. You walked along the corridor at the top of the stairs, so you could easily have missed seeing him at the bottom. I suppose you’d been up with your father…how long?’
‘For over an hour, it’d be.’
‘So…any time in that hour Tolchard might have died. There need not have been a human scream. You idiot—you pair of unadulterated idiots—why did you have to hide all this?’
‘Would anybody have believed the truth?’ Chad asked fiercely.
‘I’m believing it. Certainly it’s better than what I heard before.’
‘And we had to think about dad…’
‘If the truth came out,’ Heather said firmly, ‘in open court, he’d have been the laughing-stock of the whole town.’
‘And now Chad stands a good chance of being sent for trial.’
‘Don’t I know it!’
‘So what did you intend to do about it?’ I asked her, interested.
‘We’ll tell the truth,’ she said proudly, as though it hadn’t been forced from them. ‘What you’ve heard. If it comes to it.’
‘It is bloody-well coming to it. Do you—all three of you—intend to get up in court, heads high and noble, and try to impress the magistrates with your honesty and rectitude by admitting you told lies before? I suppose you’ll explain that you told the last lot of lies to cover up the fact that every Thursday Chad and his father stayed late to check that the computer hadn’t nodded off from boredom!’ But they hadn’t shared Leyton’s little joke.
‘We can but try…’
‘And can you see ‘em?’ I demanded. ‘This bench…listening to this pitiful codswallop…glancing at each other and wondering what this new lot of lies has been made up for!’
Chad groaned. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’
‘It’s all right, Chad,’ said Heather.
‘And you!’ I said to her. ‘You’re a solicitor. Going to be one. And you’ve made yourself a party to this—’
‘D’you think I’d let him down!’ Heather flared, not specifying which him.
‘So now you’ve got to go to your brother,’ I told her. ‘He’s the solicitor preparing the brief. You’ll have to tell him you lied to him. That you all did. That he’s got to admit this to your barrister, who’ll probably refuse the brief now. And you, Heather…I suppose you’ve already given evidence on this in the magistrate’s court?’
The harsh overhead lights stripped the flesh from her cheeks. She nodded numbly.
‘Then you, proposing to qualify as an officer of the court, will have committed perjury. Godalmighty, woman, don’t you know what you’ve done?’
‘I was willing to take the risk,’ she said quietly.
‘You had no right to take risks with your own life, and with the lives of others.’ She put her hands to her face and lowered her head. ‘And tears aren’t going to help. Not now, not at the adjourned hearing. It would look as though you’re beaten, caught out in another load of lies. Tolchard…are you listening, both of you…Tolchard could well have slipped and fallen by accident. It would have been a theory worth using, to cast doubt. But now…come out with a story such as I’ve been hearing, and what’ll they think? I’ll tell you. They’ll think it’s a new lot of lies, thought up to cover something a damned sight more serious than staying late at the office. They’ll assume it’s to cover murder.’
I allowed this to penetrate, watching their faces for enlightenment. Uselessly. Chad’s only defence was a stubborn dignity.
‘It’s a pity,’ I said, ‘that you had to admit to carrying a ruler at all.’
‘But I didn’t know, then, that they reckoned on a ruler as the weapon.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ I soothed him. Something, at last, had a ring of naïve truth. ‘Let’s get back to the car, shall we?’
He tilted his head. ‘You’re not mad at us?’
‘Thirty years in the police force tends to make a man cynical. I don’t expect anything, so I’m not disappointed. And you get to spot lies.’
I smiled to soften it. Yet if we now had the truth, why did he squeeze her fingers when she opened her mouth to add something? And why did they glance meaningfully at each other? ‘Can I explain my design for the camera?’ Chad asked meekly. ‘Not now, I think.’
‘The shutter design’s rather neat.’
‘Your father’ll be waiting.’
We left the research section, Chad switching off and locking up as we went. At the head of the iron staircase, at first unnoticed because of the deep shadows, somebody was waiting. Not Leyton. I reached the landing. The only light was from the overspill of the floodlights filtering through the windows.
It was Paul.
‘I heard you were here,’ he said flatly, in the tone of a man who has rehearsed it, and then felt his nerve faltering as he stood at centre stage.
‘Yes, we’ve—’ I was smiling, if he could’ve seen it. He cut me short, advancing into slightly better light. To the attack.
‘I think you might have waited before taking over. Damn it, the will was only read this morning.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘The correct thing,’ he said formally, ‘would have been to ask me to show you round. Not some young…It was thoughtless of you, Chad.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong, Paul,’ Chad protested, but I touched his arm and said quietly: ‘Why don’t you two wait in the car?’
They glanced at each other, then went to the lift. When the doors closed, I turned back to Paul.
He had the air of a man who was angry, but not to the point of letting go. There was no righteousness to back it up; he was tentative. But he’d have been justified in using a dignified disapproval. He was afraid, though, even in expressing this. I could see it there in the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the recoil mechanism being poised. Like a faltering champion being urged from behind to the attack, he was too aware that I had the authority.
‘We shall have to get together,’ I said placidly. ‘You and I. There’s so much to be ironed out. But not now, please.’
Seizing on what he thought to be a weakness, he plunged in. ‘You’ve got no right to come creeping round here. No seat on the board, no appointed post. It’s…it’s completely unethical.’
At the end of this speech his voice had been faltering.
‘Everybody,’ I said lightly, trying to make it sound like a joke, ‘seems to go wandering round in the middle of the night.’
‘I do not intend to bandy words with you,’ he told me. ‘Now please leave.’
Considering I’d obviously been about to do that, he had nothing to lose. I eased it along.
‘It’s not your precious factory I’m interested in, you know. It’s Aleric Tolchard’s death. You haven’t forgotten that, I hope. It happened just about on this spot.’
‘How could I have forgotten—’
‘You weren’t, by any chance, wandering around on that evening? As now.’
He stared at me. I shrugged. ‘If not, you were just about the only member of the management who wasn’t,’ I told him.
‘Of course I wasn’t. What do you mean to imply?’
I put my finger on the lift button, calling up the means of escape. ‘Nothing really. It’s just that you’re taking such an interest, when I was having a look at the scene of Tolchard’s death.’ The lift door opened. ‘Good night, Paul. I’ll see you at the inquest.’
The door shut off his startled face.
Heather and Kenneth Leyton were waiting silently in the car, Chad just by the office door, waiting to lock up. Nothing was said. I got in the car, expecting at least something from Leyton, if only an apology for his own lies. But from him, nothing.
I backed up to the car park and reversed round. We paused at the gate to hand back the keys, then I drove them back to Leyton’s. At last they spoke, but only to say goodnight. Then I drove away.
Headlights followed me at a discreet distance.
13
It was very late when I returned to The Beeches and parked my car in front of the garages. The key Mary had given me was to her rear door, so I made my way round there, and found I didn’t need it. The kitchen lights were on.
‘Mary,’ I said, trying not to be too severe about it, ‘you’re up late.’
‘I like to lock up safe and sound.’
Perhaps she’d caught it from Walter, but this was not the reason she’d waited up. I didn’t press her.
‘You’ll be hungry,’ she told me.
I denied this.
‘A cup of tea, then?’
To this I agreed, because she clearly wanted to talk. I sat at the table.
‘Is Donald back?’ I asked, turning my head to watch her because I couldn’t bear all that banging behind me.
‘Long ago. He’s in his room.’
‘Asleep, I suppose.’
‘By now, he’s sure to be.’
‘I’ll have to speak to him. In the morning, d’you think?’
‘He’ll be going to the inquest.’
‘Me too.’
We batted this conversational ball back and forth, testing the strength of the opposition, playing ourselves in. She took the seat opposite to me, as she’d done before, cradling her mug—this time it was mugs—as she’d done with her cup and saucer.
‘I had a good long talk with him,’ she told me.
‘To save me the trouble? It’s very good of you.’
‘He wouldn’t have said anything to you, anyway.’
‘I’d have beaten it out of him.’
She smiled thinly. ‘He’s never been able to keep anything from me.’
‘Of course not. Did he tell you all about his money troubles?’
She inclined her head, and put the mug to her lips.
‘Which you are now going to elucidate?’ I pressed.
‘Elucidate!’ she said, smacking her lips round it. ‘I like that. Yes, I’m going to tell you.’
‘Somehow, I guessed that.’
‘You’ll need to know more about the family. Oh, I know, I’ve told you some of it, but not the important bits. Paul, now. The eldest, and he expected to be the boss of the others. What chance did he get with Clare spoiled rotten, and Walter always on Clare’s side? Poor Paul, he adored his father and wanted to be around him, always. He’d sit outside in the garage, watching Walter taking a car to pieces…that was always Walter’s thing, you know, motor engineering. It was really what he wanted to do, but somehow it drifted into other things. Lawn mowers, he wanted to make lawn mowers. Have you ever heard of such a thing!’
