A Pinch of Snuff (25 page)

'And I peered in.'

She paused again, shaking her head slowly as though still disbelieving. Pascoe said nothing. He was now ahead of her and had no way of gauging the effect of such a shock on the woman's sensibility.

'It was hard to grasp what was going on at first. The light was so dim. It was one of those old-fashioned night-lights they used to leave by the beds of children who were afraid of the dark. Annabelle was there. She was wearing our old nurse's uniform. And she had a cane. Mr Haggard was sprawled across the rocking-horse. He had his pyjamas on, with the trousers pulled down so that his buttocks were exposed.'

She stopped. Her face began to crumble slightly. Pascoe wondered if he should call for Ms Lacewing.

'Please, take it easy, Miss Alice,' he said. 'It must have been a great shock.'

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes. It was a very great shock.'

She visibly shook herself now and sat very upright.

'Understand me, Inspector,' she said in a stronger voice. 'I'm old but I am not innocent. I am not a virgin, you know.'

She glared defiantly at him. Pascoe was speechless. Then she laughed.

'There. I've said it. I wouldn't have been able to say a thing like that before I met Thelma. She's a marvellous girl, don't you think?'

'Marvellous,' said Pascoe.

'And yet,' said Alice thoughtfully, 'I rather think
she
may still be a virgin. Now isn't that odd?'

'Very,' said Pascoe.

'As I was saying,' continued the old woman, 'I have heard of such things. I have always known that Annabelle was, how shall I put it? a rough, hard sort of girl. She should have been a man, really. Our father would have liked it, I think. And as I've told you, I've always found something rather distasteful about Mr Haggard. I cannot understand why they were doing this thing. I abhor pain so much myself, giving or feeling it. But it wasn't that. It was the nursery. That's really all that's left to us of our childhood, those few old things. I often used to go up there and sit there by myself and remember, and wonder how it would have been if I too had had children. There was a boy, but he . . . well, that was many years ago. So, you see, it was a very special room to me. Now it was spoilt, spoilt for ever. Do you understand that!'

'Yes,' said Pascoe. 'I think I do.'

'I didn't think it out then, not in the sense of proper thought. But I suppose what I felt was that he had spoilt my room, so I would spoil his. I knew what I was doing. I'm not trying to say that my mind went blank or anything like that. No. I went through the door into his kitchen and then through the living-room and down the corridor to his study. And then, well, you saw what I did. I scratched and I tore and where I was strong enough, I broke. I still had my scissors with me...’

'Pinking shears,' said Pascoe suddenly.

'Yes, that's right.'

'God.Of course. Those curved edges. I should have guessed! I'm not much of a Sherlock Holmes!'

'I should hope not,' she answered. 'All those drugs. I broke open his desk, I've seen them do it on television, it's really very easy. And I scattered whatever I found all over the place. Some of the things, such filth, I really did begin to lose control and I don't know what I might not have done if the phone hadn't brought me to my senses.'

'The phone.'

'Yes. Suddenly it rang. I was paralysed. Suppose Mr Haggard heard it and returned. I snatched up the receiver. Luckily I realized it would be fatal to speak. My scissors were in my hand, so I snipped the wire. Just like that. For the first time I felt guilty. Wasn't that odd? I suppose in a way it was public property. The rest of the stuff belonged to Mr Haggard, but not the telephone.'

Pascoe smiled inwardly at the distinction, but he had enough sense to keep the smile inward.

'What happened then, Miss Alice?' he asked.

'I went back to our house as quickly as possible,' she said. 'I was very frightened.'

'Oh,' said Pascoe, disappointed. 'Then what? You went back to sleep?'

'No! Do you think I could have slept after such an experience even if Archie hadn't been missing.'

'Archie?' said Pascoe.

'Yes. I love all my cats, Mr Pascoe, but Archie seems to love me best. He follows me everywhere. Sometimes he's so desperate for a cuddle that I think he must have had a deprived childhood. And I thought - suppose he followed me through into Wilkinson House and I'd shut him in there? I had to go back, of course.'

'Because if Haggard saw him, he would guess who had wrecked his study.'

The old woman looked at him as if he were slightly insane.

'That never crossed my mind,' she said. 'Poor Archie would be so terrified if he found himself alone in a strange place. Of course I had to fetch him. I tiptoed back up the stairs and through the door . . .'

'Was Mr Haggard still in the nursery?' interrupted Pascoe.

'I didn't care to look again,' said Alice primly. 'But there was still a light showing through the door, so I guessed he was. I went straight to the study, but Archie wasn't there. When I saw what I had done, my heart sank. We do terrible things to each other, don't we, Mr Pascoe?'

'I'm afraid we do,' said Pascoe gently. 'Did you find Archie?'

'Not a sign. I looked through the whole house

'You mean you went downstairs?' asked Pascoe, incredulous at the thought of this old lady tiptoeing through the dark empty house.

'Of course. Archie gets lost very easily. I had to make sure. Then while I was in the little cinema part, I heard the front door open. I was more frightened than I have ever been, Inspector. It was worse even than the munitions factory during the war.'

'Factory?'

'Yes. I made bombs. I mean, I did something to something which went inside a bomb and one day there was a fire. I was in the canteen, quite safe really I suppose. But when the alarm went, they couldn't get the emergency exit open and I thought I should die of terror. But this was worse. I heard footsteps. They paused outside the cinema door. I was down on my hands and knees between the seats, looking for Archie. I held my breath. The door opened. I am not a very devout person, Inspector, but I prayed. It was, I recall, a rather general kind of prayer, taking in most of the accepted religions. I don't know which of them is the True Faith, but one of them worked. The footsteps went on up the stairs. I wonder what Thelma is doing with your tea?'

The bathos was too much for Pascoe who got up from the desk and took a turn round the room.

'What happened then, Miss Alice?' he demanded.

'I told you,' she said, surprised. 'He went upstairs.'

'No, I mean to you. You were still trapped. In the dark. Hiding. What did you do?'

'Oh, I see,' said Alice. 'I went out of the front door and into our front door. It was quite a mild night and I was only in the open for a few seconds.'

'You carry a key in your dressing-gown?' said Pascoe.

'Of course not. But we always leave one in a hiding place by the front door in case we ever lock ourselves out. And ever since the munitions factory, I have refused to have bars or chains on any door.'

'I see,' said Pascoe weakly. 'And that was that?'

'Not quite. There was one thing more. Do you know, when I got into my bedroom, there was Archie, asleep on my pillow!'

Pascoe tried to look suitably astounded at this irony.

'Just one other thing, Miss Alice,' he said. 'When the front door opened, Mr Haggard's front door I mean, what kind of noise did you hear? Was it just an ordinary noise, like someone using a key?'

'I suppose so,' said the old lady. 'What else might it be? Why would he not use his key?'

'He? You mean you saw who it was?'

'Of course I did. I may be a frightened old woman, but I was not going to crouch there with my eyes shut while someone came towards me! No, I saw him clearly in the doorway.'

'Who?' asked Pascoe.

'Mr Arany, of course.The foreign gentleman who works for Mr Haggard. You don't think I would have refrained from telephoning the police if I had reason to think there were burglars in the house?'

On this note of civic indignation, Thelma Lacewing returned with the tea-tray.

'How's it going?' she said lightly. 'I see no manacles yet, Alice.'

'It's going fine,' said Pascoe, taking his tea. 'Why are you telling me this, Miss Alice? Or rather, why have you waited so long?'

'I was frightened,' said the woman simply. 'I lay awake all that night. I heard the fire-engine and the ambulance and wondered what on earth was happening. Then you called next morning and I thought you'd come to arrest me. That's why I acted so stupid - it's a defence mechanism, I think you call it. When I learned that Mr Haggard had been attacked and killed, I must admit there was some relief mixed with my shock. How awful that sounds. But at least it seemed as if my sister's relationship with that man need never come out.'

'But you have brought it out now,' said Pascoe gently.

'Yes. I had to,' she said firmly. 'It took me some while to realize what I must do. But a man has been murdered. I have no right to stand in the way of justice.'

'It was a brave decision,' said Pascoe sincerely. 'And a right one. Have you told your sister you were going to talk to me, Miss Alice?'

'No. I'm afraid I funked that,' said the old woman. 'I came and spoke with Thelma, whose advice was that I should speak with you. But now, of course, I must inform Annabelle of what I have done.'

'I've assured Alice that Annabelle is in no way involved in anything illegal, Inspector. And that there can be no repercussions and should be no publicity,' said Ms Lacewing.

Now who's beginning to have a bad conscience? thought Pascoe.

'No repercussions certainly. And I shall be discreet,' he said, rising. 'Thank you both for your help and cooperation.'

Miss Alice offered her hand. He took it and pressed it with both his own. Ms Lacewing smiled insolently at him, tongue moistening her wicked little teeth.

Pascoe grinned amiably back at her. If Alice's estimate was right, Ms Lacewing knew nothing of the waters she was fishing in. She would have to make a better cast than that to get another rise out of him.

Chapter 20

Pascoe arrived back at the station to find that Dalziel had just gone out but Wield had come in. Quickly he filled the sergeant in. 'Things are beginning to fall into place,' he said. 'We're beginning to get some idea of where everyone was and what they were doing.'

'You reckon Arany for it now, do you?' asked Wield.

'You sound unhappy about it,' said Pascoe.

'Well, I can't see any motive, sir. I was happier at the thought of Blengdale caning him, then going over the top for some reason.'

'That's out anyway.' Pascoe glanced sharply at Wield. 'You're not thinking Miss Annabelle might have . . .'

Wield shrugged.

'Nothing's impossible. Not after what I've just heard anyway.'

'Whatever happened, we need to talk to Arany. No more pussyfooting either. I want him here and I want him cautioned. You see to that, will you, Sergeant? Toms will have to wait. I'm going after Mr Dalziel to put him in the picture. Besides, I quite fancy seeing him operate on Blengdale!'

Blengdale's yard was fairly central, situated on the west bank of the old canal which ran its deep straight line alongside the shallow curving river. In the flooding which followed the great thaw of 1963 the two waterways had joined up, but the banks of both had been strengthened since then and a new line of trees planted on the isthmus between so that a nature-lover strolling through the park on the east bank of the river was hardly aware of the monuments to industry only a couple of hundred yards away.

Not that they too lacked their lovers. Beauty was in the gut of the beholder, thought Pascoe, and though the old wharves, warehouses and barges couldn't give him the kick that he derived from a single stunted tree on a naked fellside, yet there was something in these relics of industrial capitalism which caught at the heart. Perhaps it was pride in the illimitable energies of mankind, and despair at their direction.

Blengdale's yard had originally been nothing more than that - an open space between a mill and a warehouse with its own canal frontage and a kind of Dutch barn to protect the stored timber from the worst of the weather. Economy and antiquity had brought about the closure of the mill in the early sixties and it had lain derelict till Godfrey Blengdale had breathed new life into the family timber business and diversified into ready-to-assemble whitewood furniture. He had bought the mill for a song (so they said) and (so they said again) sold what remained of the old-fashioned looms and other machinery to a variety of industrial museums for rather more than he had paid for the building. Now, where generations of women had laboured for very little in an atmosphere full of fluff and fibre, men moved at half the pace for half the time at fifty times the wage, and the air was full of wood-dust and complaints.

The nearest Pascoe had been to the yard before was some years earlier when Blengdale had celebrated something (his first ulcer, perhaps) by holding a party there. The bar had been on a barge strung from bow to stern with Chinese lanterns, and a dance band had played among the stacks of timber while the guests gyrated on the wharf. Pascoe had travelled slowly by in a police boat and felt the disdainful superiority of the guardian to the guarded.

This time he approached by road and the first thing he noticed was Dalziel's car parked outside on a double yellow line. Pascoe squeezed in behind him and entered the building, stepping into an atmosphere heavy with noise and sawdust. He presumed there was order here but his first impression was of utter chaos. He approached a man who seemed to be in some perturbation of spirit about the relative lengths of two pieces of wood he was carrying.

'Mr Blengdale? Right over there. Up the stairs. Them's his offices.'

'Them' were a line of windows at first-floor level in the high-ceilinged building. There were figures within, but he couldn't identify anyone at this distance. As he moved away he heard the man with the planks mutter, 'Centi-fucking-metres! I told him, centi-fucking-metres!'