Cobweb (5 page)

A plumply well-groomed individual opened the door – after leaving me waiting for a good half-minute or so – and I was ushered within and into the living room. I recognized one of the latest fragrances for men which, when lavishly sprayed upon Patrick recently in Harrods by a languid beautician, successfully ambushing him for possibly the first time in his life, had driven him straight into the Gents' to wash it off. A printable and politically correct translation of what he said afterwards would be utterly impossible.

‘Coffee, Miss Langley?' du Norde enquired, his tone suggesting he would rather I refused.

‘Oh, yes please,' I replied chummily, sitting down without being invited to and getting a notebook and pen from my bag.

‘Oh, yes, and write me out a cheque while I get it, will you? Otherwise we might forget.'

He disappeared, giving me a chance to examine my surroundings, which I was staggered to see were what I can only describe as resembling a set for a Miss Marple film, an overwrought chintz nightmare. I almost expected a corpse to appear, drawbridge-style, from one of the gloomy alcoves on each side of the phoney fireplace. Well, his mother couldn't have designed it for him and he hadn't dared change it: that steel-cold Rhinemaiden was almost certainly into minimalist chrome and white-painted concrete toilet-roll holders. I wrote out the cheque.

‘Sorry it's instant,' said du Norde when he reappeared with a single mug and handed it to me. ‘I've run out of the real stuff.'

It looked like the bathwater of a Ten Tors competitor who had fallen into Fox Tor Mire.

I sized him up, literally: probably measuring more around the equator than he did from pole to pole; light-brown receding hair, large blue eyes, a pale complexion with slightly coarse features – he oozed self-satisfaction in a floppy, running-to-seed kind of way. Something warned me, though, that, if crossed, he might turn very nasty indeed. Murder, though?

Fishing for reactions, I said, ‘I was very sorry to hear about your stepfather.'

He sort of congealed and then said poisonously, ‘It's not public knowledge that Giddings was a relation of mine. Who told you?'

‘A policeman friend.'

Overplaying being affronted, he grated, ‘I hope whoever it was didn't send you along to ask questions!'

‘Of course not,' I replied with a big smile, adding in pure revenge, ‘but no doubt he will be shortly.'

‘I've already been questioned at length.' He seemed keen to impress this on me. ‘But I was away the night it happened, in Birmingham on business.'

‘But
surely
the police can't suspect you,' I gushed, after taking a sip of the sludge-coloured coffee. He must have had it in the cupboard for years.

‘There was a rather public difference of opinion,' du Norde went on, ‘between me and Giddings, at their house one evening recently. He'd had too much to drink and picked a row. You know how it is, how people get. Others overheard and someone must have mentioned it to the police.' As he spoke, his podgy fingers wove together like sausages fighting.

‘Did he have a drink problem?' I asked innocently.

‘Not to my knowledge,' du Norde said. ‘He was just a loudmouth' – and then changed the subject abruptly, wanting to know how he could help me.

Ten minutes later I realized that I was wasting my time all round, learning nothing that couldn't be garnered from
The ABC Book of Interior Design
for the Under Tens
. I was wondering how I could escape gracefully – even when with graceless folk you still have to behave yourself – when my mobile rang. I apologized and rose to walk over to the window, which overlooked the garden at the front, to answer it.

‘Not been nobbled by a troll yet then?' said Patrick's voice.

I ignored the implied criticism of my courage. ‘Where are you?'

‘Parked right outside where you are,' he answered in a Neddy Seagoon voice.

So he was.

‘Do you want reinforcements?' he went on to ask.

‘Well, since you've come all this way …' Without putting a hand over the phone I said to du Norde, ‘It's my policeman friend. Is it convenient for him to ask you a few questions?'

‘No,' said the designer. ‘It isn't.'

‘Oh, good. Only I want to explore with you in some depth how the surrealists have affected design, artists like Magritte and Ithell Colquhoun. And then perhaps we could go on to talk about abstract impressionism. I mean, have you seen Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals at Tate Modern and not wanted to surround yourself with such stunning ideas? Not only that—'

Du Norde had held up an imperious hand. ‘No. Wait. Perhaps I ought to talk to this officer after all. If I don't, he'll only return when it's even more inconvenient.'

A couple of minutes later I celebrated my stratagem by consuming another teaspoonful of coffee while he answered the door. All I had to do now was work out how I was going to avoid having to politely leave. I need not have worried.

It immediately became apparent that the visitor was in a very bad mood. Worse, it seemed that only wringing the nearest person's neck would restore him to a sunny disposition. I am Patrick's wife and knew he was only play-acting, but when he is like this he is too big, too close and too damned dangerous. He gave me a tight smile and proceeded to stalk the room like a Balrog on an over-long leash.

I gathered up my bits and pieces and moved to leave.

‘You could stay, if he doesn't mind,' du Norde said hopefully to me, one eye on the new arrival. ‘I – I mean, he's a friend of yours, isn't he? You'd like to chat with him afterwards …?' His voice ran down as though it needed rewinding.

‘We could have lunch,' I said to Patrick winningly.

He appeared to consider. ‘OK,' he said, going on to bark, ‘But what passes between du Norde and me is absolutely confidential. Understand?'

‘Of course,' I murmured, and settled myself down again.

‘How did you get to hear of your stepfather's death?' was Patrick's first question. He had remained standing, obviously a man of little education, picking his teeth. Put simply: rough as rats.

The other cleared his throat, his discomfort having duly gone up a couple of notches. ‘My mother rang to tell me.'

‘When you were in Birmingham?'

‘No, when I got back. She was furious with me as she'd left several messages when I wasn't here that I hadn't yet accessed as I'd got home very late. She ended up phoning at five thirty the next morning.'

‘Don't you have a mobile?'

‘Yes, but I've never given her the number.' Du Norde smiled in sickly fashion. ‘She'd ring me all the time if I did.'

‘Don't you get on well with her?'

‘I don't see what that has to—'

‘Please answer the question.'

After a short pause du Norde replied, ‘It's all right between us for most of the time. She's always been a somewhat domineering woman. I was an only child and I'm afraid that, sometimes, she still treats me like one.'

‘And your father?'

‘Sir Cedric du Norde. He was – is – an architect. My mother divorced him when it became obvious there was another woman in his life.'

‘What was your reaction when she said she was marrying Giddings?'

‘That's none of your confounded business!'

Even I jumped when Patrick moved with horrible speed to lean over du Norde in his chair, a hand resting on either arm of it. ‘My business is murder!' he shouted. ‘I want to know if the person who disembowelled a man before or after cutting off his head then went on to be responsible for the deaths of two police officers who were working on the case. Answer my questions or I'll take you straight down to the nick.'

I felt that du Norde would either burst into tears of self-pity or lose his temper. Amazingly, it was the latter.

‘All right, I told her she was raving mad!' he yelled, struggling to his feet and thereby forcing Patrick to step back. ‘He was an ineffectual, strutting, ten-a-penny idiot who behaved as though he was God's gift to the party and actually took pride in retaining a safe seat in a by-election after the death of a man whose name will go down as one of the best back-bench politicians in recent history!' Du Norde strode over to the window and smashed a hand on to the small moth that had been fluttering against it, brushing the resultant silvery mess from his fingers. Turning and speaking in a furious whisper, he went on, ‘He was a perverted, disgusting little
shit
to get himself killed in those revolting circumstances.'

‘So it's true then, he was homosexual?'

The other bit his lip. ‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn't it? Why else would he be there – in that park?'

Eyebrows raised, Patrick said in amazement, ‘The man might have merely been taking a short cut.'

‘No, all right, I had heard gossip about him. Apparently the place is notorious after dark. I understand he drank in the pub nearby, so it was impossible he didn't know of the area's reputation.'

‘The Green Man – is that the pub you mean?'

‘I think that's what it's called. I don't really know. I don't go into pubs. My mother might have mentioned it.'

‘So you think the sole reason for his being in Woodhill itself that night was to pick up a man?'

‘Yes, that is what I think. And probably not for the first time either.'

‘You had a quarrel with him shortly before he died,' Patrick said. ‘What was that about?'

‘It was my mother's – Honor's – fault. If she hadn't been so heavy-handed with the booze that night, having drunk a bit too much herself until she didn't know how much neat gin she was actually pouring into everyone's glasses, it wouldn't have happened. Everyone was sloshed. If whoever it was who blabbed to the police had used their sense, they'd have known it was only the drink talking.'

‘What did you row
about
?'

There was quite a long silence before du Norde said, ‘Money. He'd been paying me an allowance as business wasn't good – told me it would have to stop, as his funds weren't too healthy. He was lying.'

‘Oh?'

‘They'd just come back from a month's trip to New Zealand, for God's sake.'

‘That might have been why he was broke,' Patrick observed drily.

‘No, my mother's loaded – and she gets a huge salary.'

‘She's a pathologist, I understand.'

‘Lectures most of the time now.'

‘And obviously doesn't give you a handout now and then.'

I thought du Norde would start shouting again, but he merely muttered, ‘He wouldn't let her.'

Or perhaps the lady now famous for her right hook was furious with herself for not having drowned her offspring at birth.

‘Word has it you threatened him,' Patrick said silkily.

‘As I said just now, it was the drink talking.'

‘You told him he'd be sorry – to make sure he locked his door at night.'

Du Norde swallowed hard and said, ‘Look, I didn't kill him. I couldn't do anything like that.'

‘You could have paid someone else to.'

‘No.' He was shivering now. ‘For one thing I couldn't afford to. I'm practically broke. That's why I got so upset with him over the allowance.'

With a horrid smile Patrick said, ‘He despised you.'

‘Yes.' This was uttered in a whisper. ‘But I didn't kill him. I swear I didn't.'

‘I want full details of your trip up north,' Patrick said briskly. ‘Now. All the hard evidence you can lay your hands on. Did you go by train?'

‘Yes, I did.'

‘OK. Tickets, credit-card slips and hotel receipts, as you must keep that kind of thing for your tax returns. Car hire, restaurants – everything. I'll wait while you trot off and find it all.' Seemingly happy at last, he turned to me and said, ‘Your place or mine?'

On the way out I picked up my cheque from a side table and said to du Norde, ‘What a pity we were interrupted when we'd hardly started. Perhaps we'll make it another time.'

‘D
id you
have
to make me look like your bit of totty on the side?' I said ten minutes later, but aware that it was revenge for my huffiness the previous day.

Patrick grinned, then said, ‘What did you make of him?'

‘He's dodgy, hated Giddings, is a bit of a creep and kills insects with his bare hands but probably wouldn't have the bottle to commit that kind of murder.'

‘Unless he drank too much again and was with someone who had the nerve and who owed him a favour.'

We had found a sandwich bar not far away, near Olympia, Patrick making rapid inroads into a ‘house special', a triple-decker creation that looked as though it had half the contents of the establishment's fridge and most of the garden inside it.

I said, ‘It doesn't quite fit, somehow. But you could have asked him for a list of all his past clients.'

He grunted, mid-munch.

‘Do wealthy crooks employ someone to tell them which wallpaper and curtains to buy?' I wondered aloud. ‘They must do. Anyway, why did you really come over here this morning?'

‘I spoke to Erin Melrose first thing – asked her everything she could remember about working with Gray on the Giddings case. He interviewed du Norde first time round and Erin went with him. They both thought him, as you say, dodgy, but it didn't appear that he'd ever actually got into trouble with the law. I thought I'd come over and see for myself.'

I told him what Maggie had said about him.

‘It sounds as though he might have threatened her,' Patrick commented. ‘Told her not to make any waves after pinching her client. And who's this character she mentioned who was restoring the house in Richmond and got up everyone's nose?'