A Death Left Hanging (18 page)

‘In what way?'

‘Folk became quite proud of the fact their vicar could have had a much better life – if he'd wanted to. That he'd made his sacrifice for
them
.'

‘So why did you say he only
could
have been happy?'

‘Because of
Mrs
Jeffries. Edith Jeffries was never any good at being a vicar's wife. She went through some of the motions – attending weekly meetings of the Women's Institute, judging cake competitions, having church workers round for afternoon tea – but her heart wasn't really in it.'

‘Why do you think that was?'

‘Because it wasn't what she'd been expecting out of life when she married Mr Jeffries.'

‘Did she tell you that?'

Clara Trotwood laughed. ‘Of course she didn't tell
me
! I was only a servant. But I used to hear her arguing with her husband. I couldn't have avoided it, even if I'd wanted to. She'd say that if he'd stayed in his old job they could have retired to a villa in the south of France after a few years. She'd complain that it wasn't fair on Margaret. “How's our daughter ever supposed to meet the right kind of young man in a place like this?” she'd say. “Margaret's still a child,” the vicar would point out. “But she won't always be a child,” Mrs Jeffries would complain. “She'll grow up in time – but we'll still be stuck in this hole.” That's what she called Blakebrook – “this hole”! Never in public, of course – but everybody knew that's how she felt. She looked down on us. She wouldn't even let Margaret attend the local school, for fear that something unpleasant would rub off on her.'

‘So did she send her daughter away to boarding school?'

‘I expect she would have done, if she could have afforded to. But it just wasn't possible on a country clergyman's salary, so Mrs Jeffries educated her at home.'

‘And yet Margaret still won a place at Oxford!'

‘Not just a place at Oxford,' Clara Trotwood said. ‘A
scholarship
. And that was just as well, wasn't it, because when her parents died they left her practically nothing.'

‘When, exactly,
did
they die?'

‘Her mother had been getting headaches even when Margaret was still living at home. She passed on in the middle of Margaret's first year at university. The doctor did an autopsy on her, and found a brain tumour the size of a duck egg. Mr Jeffries took it much worse then I'd ever have imagined that he would. Even at his wife's funeral, I could see that a part of him had already died, too. One year later, the new vicar was burying
him
.'

‘Tell me about Margaret,' Paniatowski invited.

‘I'm not sure there's much I can tell you,' Clara said. ‘She was a very quiet child. Well, she didn't have much choice, did she, since her mother wouldn't let her play with other children.'

‘She didn't ever confide in you?'

‘No.'

‘I'm surprised at that.'

Clara Trotwood chuckled. ‘You've been reading too many romantic novels,' she said. ‘You can picture it all, can't you? The cruel, indifferent mother! The beautiful, sad little girl who finds her only true friend in a kindly servant! It wasn't like that at all. Margaret was not a snob like her mother, but she didn't spend hours pouring out her heart to me. She didn't need to. Mrs Jeffries wasn't a bad mother, by her own lights. She was always prepared to listen to Margaret's worries. And to give her daughter lots of advice – even when she didn't ask for it.'

‘What kind of advice?'

Clara Trotwood chuckled again. ‘I knew that a smart girl like you would be able to sort the wheat from the chaff, and ask the right questions,' she said. ‘It was marriage that Mrs Jeffries mostly talked about.'

‘Marriage?'

‘Almost from the time they moved in, until Margaret went away to university, it was Mrs Jeffries' favourite subject. “Don't marry a man already set in his ways,” she'd said. “That's what I did, and look where it's got me. Find yourself a husband who you can mould – a husband you can make something out of.” And as far as I can see, that's exactly what Margaret was trying to do when she went and married Rob Hartley. But, in a way, she made just as big a mistake as her mother had. Mrs Jeffries married a man already moulded, Margaret married one who was not made of strong enough clay
to
mould.'

Paniatowski shook her head in admiration. ‘Did Margaret tell you all this?' she asked.

‘There you go – back to the romantic novels,' Clara Trotwood said. ‘Margaret no more confided in me when she came back from university than she did before she went away. But you mustn't think that because I live all of seven miles away from Whitebridge I know nothing of what goes on there. I knew the Hartley family, and if Margaret
had
asked me – which she didn't – I'd have told her that Rob was a nice enough lad, but he'd never amount to much.'

‘What about his sister Helen?' Paniatowski asked.

‘She was a different kettle of fish altogether. She had more than her share of the family's backbone, did Helen.'

‘And Fred Dodds?'

‘I can't help you there. He didn't even come to Whitebridge until he was in his twenties.'

‘Do you think Margaret would have been capable of killing him?'

‘I'll say this about the Jeffries women. They were all, in their own ways, very determined characters. Edith couldn't dissuade her husband from entering the Church, but she did everything she could to see that Margaret didn't suffer what she saw as the consequences of it. And just look at Jane! I was reading in the paper that she's one of the most important lawyers in England. You can't tell me that she got to that position without sheer hard work and determination.'

‘You haven't answered my question,' Paniatowski said.

‘That's because I don't know how to, exactly,' Clara Trotwood said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘If you asked me whether she had a natural inclination towards violence, then I'd have to say no. But if you asked me if she'd kill to get something that had become really important to her, well then I'd be less sure of my ground.'

Paniatowski glanced down at her watch. ‘You've really been very helpful, Miss Trotwood.'

‘Is that it?' the other woman asked, surprised.

‘Well, yes, I think it is.'

‘I wouldn't have thought a smart girl like you would leave without asking me
one
more question.'

Paniatowski smiled. ‘And what question might that be?'

‘Why didn't you ask me about Margaret's relationship with her father?'

A good point, Paniatowski thought uncomfortably. She certainly
should
have asked, and it wasn't like her not to. Was she starting to develop a blind spot to father-daughter relationships?

‘I suppose I didn't think I needed to ask,' she said, explaining her reasons to herself as much as she was explaining it to Clara Trotwood. ‘After all, you've told me about how the mother and daughter got on, and about how the mother and father got on, so I assumed––'

‘And you think it's as simple as that, do you?' Clara Trotwood asked, with an amused twinkle in her eye. ‘Do you really believe it's just like drawing a triangle? Do you imagine that, because you can already see two of the lines on the page, all you have to do is join up the unattached ends in order to be able to see the third side?' She shook her head. ‘
Human
relationships are more complicated than that, my dear.
Much
more complicated.'

‘I know,' Paniatowski said humbly. ‘Or at least, if I don't, I certainly should. What kind of relationship did Mr Jeffries and his daughter have, Mrs Trotwood?'

‘They didn't talk much, because they knew that would only be causing trouble,' Clara Trotwood said. ‘But they understood each other. He loved her – and she
worshipped
him.'

M
ost of the early morning traffic was flowing from the suburbs into downtown Toronto, so the man in the unmarked police car travelling in the opposite direction had no excuse for clamping a siren to his roof – even though he really wanted to.

Sergeant Bill Paxton enjoyed being a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He liked the work, and he liked the power that it gave him over other people. What he
didn't
like was being introduced to new people and watching the shit-kicking grins form on their faces as they invariably said, ‘A Mountie always gets his man.'

A Mountie always gets his man!
What kind of half-assed motto was that, for Christ's sake?

Leaving aside the fact that it simply wasn't true – as the wanted notices pinned up on the station-house notice-board amply proved – it conjured up all the wrong kinds of images. Say ‘Mountie' and people thought of policemen on horseback, men who crossed frozen wastes and hunted down guys who wore furs and had bottles of moonshine whiskey in their pockets. That wasn't how Paxton saw himself at all. He was a
Dragnet
man, a
Naked City
man – a street-smart, hard-boiled city cop who couldn't build a shelter in the snow to save his life, but who sure-as-hell knew how to get the better of any suspect who wore a suit and necktie.

The prosperous-looking house was located on a quiet, leafy street, surrounded by other prosperous-looking houses. The front yard had the appearance of being professionally cared for, and there were two cars in the garage.

People who lived in houses like these never pulled an unwanted night shift, Paxton thought sourly. They never had to answer to their superiors for the complaints that members of the so-called ‘public' had filed against them. They had it easy – real easy.

As he got out of his car, he knew he was scowling, and didn't care. After all, what the hell else was a hard-boiled cop like him supposed to do, but scowl?

He walked up to the front door of the target house and rapped imperiously on it with his knuckles. In a place like this he would not have been the least surprised if his knock had been answered by some kind of uniformed flunkey, but in fact the door was opened by a man wearing a silk dressing gown.

‘Yes?' the man said, stifling a yawn.

He loved these early morning calls, Paxton thought happily as he reached into his pocket for his identification.

The other man examined the document, then handed it back. ‘What's this all about, Sergeant?' he asked.

‘I need to speak to Mr Cuthburtson,' Paxton said in a voice that
almost
came close to the one that Jack Webb used when he was playing Sergeant Joe Friday.

‘
Need
to speak to Mr Cuthburtson?' the man in silk dressing gown asked. ‘Don't you mean,
would like to
?'

He was trying to sound self-assured and in control, but he didn't quite make it. Paxton turn his steely-eyed cop gaze full on the man. Mid-forties. Limp pale hair carefully brushed over to disguise a bald patch. Weak chin. Slow twitch in right eye. Intimidation quotient? Low to non-existent! This was going to be fun!

‘No, I wouldn't
like
to see him,' Paxton said. ‘I
like
to see my friends. But as an officer of the law, I
need
to speak to him.'

‘Concerning what?' the other man asked defeatedly.

‘Official business,' Paxton snapped. ‘Is he in?'

‘
I'm
Mr Cuthburtson.'

‘Maybe you are
a
Mr Cuthburtson, but it's the chairman of Cuthburtson Import-Export I want to see.'

‘That's me.'

He didn't look like he had the personality be the chairman of
anything
, Paxton thought. Besides, he was too young to be the man that the long cable from Lancashire had inquired about. Still, there was no harm in milking a little bit more out of the game, was there?

‘You're Mr Benjamin Cuthburtson?' Paxton asked sceptically.

‘No. That was my father.'

‘Was?'

‘He's been dead for over three years now. I'm Ernest Cuthburtson.'

‘Then I suppose you'll have to do,' Paxton said offhandedly. ‘Mind if I come in?'

‘Well––' Cuthburtson began.

‘Thank you,' Paxton interrupted, barging past him.

Paxton disliked men he could dominate almost as much as he disliked men who could dominate him, and the fact that Cuthburtson's lounge was furnished so obviously expensively made him even more inclined to give the other man a rough ride.

Sitting down – uninvited – he pulled out his notebook and shot Cuthburtson a hostile gaze.

‘You weren't born in this country, were you?' he asked accusingly.

‘No, I––'

‘Are you a Canadian citizen now?'

‘Yes. Yes, I am.'

Damn, Paxton thought. Non-citizens were always more insecure, and hence easier to bully. Not that he thought he'd have much of a problem bullying this particular chinless wonder.

‘What made you emigrate to this country?' he asked.

Cuthburtson gave him a weak smile, as if he still considered it possible to get on Paxton's good side. ‘I didn't have much choice in the matter. I was only a child at the time.'

‘All right! What made your
father
emigrate?'

‘It wasn't a question I thought to ask,' Cuthburtson said, looking away.

‘How old were you when you came to Canada? Twelve?'

‘Yes.'

‘And a twelve-year-old boy didn't “think to ask”? Who do you think you're trying to fool here?'

‘If I did ask, then I've forgotten the answer.'

Leaving aside the obvious lie as something he could go back to later, Paxton consulted his notebook again.

‘When you lived in England, your father was in partnership with a Fredrick Dodds in a town called Whitebridge, Lancashire,' he said. ‘Are all those details correct?'