Last Post (20 page)

“Oh, I hadn't thought about that. No, of course you can't. Even though I was in Australia at the time.”

“We know that, and have checked. That's not really in question, but you could be a vital witness, and giving you a job while the investigation is ongoing—well, all things considered, we'd better wait.”

“And I should put on hold any inquiries I've been making?”

“I can't see that we can have any objection to investigation by you of your mother's early life. If anything comes up about that, you have the best possible contact with us. But Rani won't talk to you about the investigation we're conducting, and I'm sure you won't try to get anything out of him.”

“No, of course not. On the whole I think it's thoroughly healthy if he and I try to talk exclusively of other things.”

Eve tried to follow her own resolution on the journey home, and as she threw together a few things for a meal. She tried to think about her future life, about whether, if she got the job with the West Yorkshire Police Headquarters, it would provide the sort of change she ought to be aiming for. On the whole she thought it would. On the other hand, she would be working with Rani, even if he was very low down in the chain of responsibility there. If things didn't work out between them, this could prove to be a negative aspect. Except that she couldn't think of Rani in terms of a thorn in the flesh, or of ever being on bad terms with him.

She was thinking about him, as she very often did, when the front doorbell went. It was what she was beginning to think of as his ring—a firm ring lasting for about a second. When she opened the door, he was standing there in open-necked shirt, jeans and with his jacket over his shoulder.

“Rani! Come in. I've just had supper, but I can put something together for you.”

“I'm not hungry.” His voice shook with uncertainty. “I won't come in till you've said yes to me.”

“That sounds like blackmail.”

“There is only one thing I want you to do for me. I want you to come to bed with me and make love all night.”

He had hardly finished the sentence before she said “Yes! Oh, yes please!” and threw herself on him and kissed him in the well-lit porch of the house. Then she dragged him inside.

Eve lay in bed, watching Omkar dress. She felt a happiness that she did not think it was possible to put into words. She had thought she was happy with her father in Sydney, but that was nothing to this—nothing like this. But as he slipped on his shirt and looked around for his jacket, the words suddenly came to her.

“I love you so much.”

He looked around and smiled—a happy but somehow shy smile. He came and kissed her good-bye on the forehead.

“I thought you were still asleep.”

“I was pretending to be, for the pleasure of watching you. In the end the words just came out. Simple but true.”

“Simple is best.”

“Why did you come to me last night?”

“Because I wanted to, and at last I could. Sanjula has left what we call ‘the family home.' Taken my beautiful daughter, but I faced up to that before it happened. I shall
see her often—they are remaining in this country. We have started the divorce action, and she will marry a boy of her own age from her home village in India. I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders . . . What are you going to do today?”

“Walk around hugging myself at my unbelievable good fortune. Oh, and there is someone, an old teacher of my mother's generation, who I might try to have a talk with, if I can come down from cloud nine and get my feet firmly on the ground.”

“Until next time.”

“Definitely until next time. What are you going to do?”

“That depends on Superintendent Collins. I think he is probably going to send us to scout around Autumn Prospect.”

“Sorry, I shouldn't have asked that. Collins emphasized that your lips are to be sealed on the subject of the investigation.”

Rani grinned.

“A bit late for that. We seem to have talked it over a hell of a lot already.”

“Well, you'd better get the lip glue. The last thing I'd want is to be any hindrance to your career with the police. Though now I come to think about it, most of our talk was before it became a case.”

“Don't think too much about it. Treat it as one of those ritual warnings that people seem bound to give in all sorts of situations these days.”

“That's for fear of future lawsuits. I will try to be careful. I could so easily let slip something that only you could have told me.”

“Don't lose sleep over it. And who knows? This could be a case that is solved almost before it becomes a case. A lot of murders are like that, though you wouldn't think so from watching the television.” He came back and kissed her. “I love you so much,” he said. “I finish at four. Shall we meet up then?” It was a question that hardly needed an answer.

Eve lived the first part of the morning in an ecstatic dream. Everything in the house and garden seemed to have taken on a new shine, gained a deeper interest for her. Was this where she was again going to live? She had no doubt that they could. She wished Omkar had told her more about what happened at the end of his old life, the married life. He had been in a hurry, but she had no doubt he wanted, perhaps subconsciously, to say as little about it as possible. And she wanted to avoid the appearance of pressuring him. She too felt the impulse to live for and enjoy the moment, to avoid looking at any problems or drawbacks fair and square. Reality would come, probably in the shape of Omkar's parents. But why hasten the process?

About half-past eleven she looked up George Wilson in the telephone directory, then put on walking shoes and made her way through the village. She hoped that her inner feelings of ecstasy did not make themselves too plain on her face. George was living in a large bungalow with neat paths and beds, and he greeted her cheerfully.

“George, are you busy?”

“I'm never busy. I'm a retired old schoolteacher. I'm also a widower, which means there are plenty of things I can either do or leave undone. Mostly I'm happy to leave
them undone. Dusting and hoovering are options, not imperatives. Who'd bother themselves winning brownie points from the dead? What have you in mind?”

“A pub lunch, on me. Is there anywhere in the village that does a good one?”

“Oh, the Speckled Cow does a very acceptable one, if you're not after anything fussy. But I suppose you've gone over entirely to Indian food now, have you?”

Eve's eyes narrowed, but she was not nonplussed.

“That was unworthy of you, George. But it at least means your snouts are keeping you well informed.”

“You're getting the police jargon already. I hope you're grateful. So far as I can see, you owe it all to me.”

“I am and I do.”

“I'll just get my jacket and we'll be on our way.”

The Speckled Cow was only five minutes away, and they ordered gammon and chips, Timothy Taylor's Landlord bitter and an orange squash, then looked for a table. The Cow, at just after twelve on a weekday, was not bustling with activity, and they found a distant table where they could be alone.

“It's information I want,” said Eve.

“Of course it is, my dear. And how was Australia?”

She shot him a quick glance.

“Hmmm. I suppose all business in Crossley is anyone's business. Well, it was pretty much like it looks in the soaps. And my father is alive, was delighted to see me, and if I'd known him all my life, I suspect I would love him as girls mostly do love their fathers.”

“And did he tell you why he left—but I mustn't pry . . .”

He busied himself with his pipe, but a sharp eye was looking at her. Eve shook her head.

“And you wouldn't get anywhere if you did. I suppose you heard about Evelyn Southwell's death?”

“I did. And I heard the announcement last night that there were suspicious circumstances. I must admit I was surprised.”

“Oh? Why?”

“I think with any murder—if that's what it was—you look at the character and circumstances of the victim, don't you? To get to the
why
? And I can't see any
why
in the case of old Southwell. Oh, she was showy, prickly, faintly ridiculous, and nobody was important in her world except herself. But if you killed off all the prickly and self-important people working in our schools, there'd be a severe teacher shortage. And besides, she'd been retired for twenty-odd years. What could there be about her that provoked murder after all these years of blameless retirement?”

“Good point. George, when we talked at the funeral, you didn't mention the name of Jean Mannering.”

George Wilson screwed up his face.

“Ah! Well, why would I? You may remember I wasn't particularly keen on the idea of you raking up your mother's past.”

“I remember very well.”

“But of course that didn't stop you. Has it brought you happiness?”

“It's brought me a great many things, including a father.”

“So we've said, and I'm glad you're grateful.”

“But so far as my mother was concerned, I wasn't looking for happiness. I was looking for . . . well, let's call it enlightenment. And I think I'm getting it, gradually. But you haven't answered my question.”

Their food arrived. The gammon was dry and the chips half cold. George Wilson tucked in with relish, and Eve answered “lovely” to his inquiries. Her mother had told her that the truth should always be told except on social occasions, when lies are better than embarrassment for all. Looking over her mother's life Eve felt that, like most parents, May had not always lived up to her own precepts.

“Well?”

“Of course we knew about Jean Mannering, all those of us on the staff at Blackfield Road. And we said at the time—or rather
speculated
—in the same vein as everyone else: were they lovers, and so on. After all, we were teachers. We may not have been masterminds, but we weren't weakest links either. We had rough ideas about a whole range of sexual preferences; we knew, or thought we did, about the Sapphonics club in Halifax, so we thought we knew all about Jean Mannering and where
her
tastes lay. And this was a village, where nearly everyone knew nearly everyone else. We didn't
know
if what was going on was an affair. Why would May have a lesbian affair when she was, so far as we knew, a happily married young woman with a new baby who made both her parents very happy.”

“So the general feeling was that there was no affair?”

“Ye-e-es. General but not universal. What opinion is?”

“And what did the other opinion say?”

“That John and your mother had been married quite a
long time, that she—and, for that matter, he—could be bored, that they were relieving the boredom by trying out new things. They were, in fact, several years late for the seven-year-itch, which came up rather often in the conversations.”

“I must say I hadn't thought of that. So Jean was notorious at least by village standards?”

“Pretty much so. When the friendship with May broke up, there was another almost immediately, and that
was
an affair, no question.”

“Right . . .” She thought for a moment. “Would you say you had followed Jean's life?”

“No. How could I, with her and her parents both moved away from the village? I've followed what I've read in the paper, which would be her public life. And I've heard village gossip, which I certainly never assume to be reliable. And in any case, since her parents moved away and there was nobody else to ask about her, there hasn't been the same interest in her.”

“They moved a fair way away?”

“Down to be near their son in Peterborough.”

“Tell me what you know about her public life.”

George thought and ate on, with enjoyment. His standards had probably slipped since he'd become a widower.

“It's been an odd life. Directionless—or rather, with too many directions. Or perhaps the point has been the relationships, and I don't know much about those except in general. She was working in the local tax office when she and May met, but she soon moved into local industry—there was still a textile industry then—and of course she
wasn't on the factory floor, she was at managerial level. It was quite an innovation at that time, appointing a woman to an important job in industry. People talked about it a lot, and plenty of them shook their heads. It wasn't the sort of thing people around here liked.”

“Was it successful? My father says she was bossy by nature and turned everybody into underlings.”

“Did he say that?” He put his knife and fork back on his plate and looked ahead of him. “You know, it's like hearing someone from the dead, you quoting him like that. He was quite right, but that didn't make her unsuccessful. Quite the reverse. You might say northerners are used to little Hitlers—the inheritance of the industrial revolution, when factory owners—the bad ones—were little better than slave drivers. So once they got used to a woman boss, things went well, and Jean got results while she worked in Halifax, though she couldn't buck the national trend: textiles were a declining industry, in fact a doomed one.”