Nor All Your Tears (12 page)

I didn't know what he meant, although that he had meant something was plain from his tone. He walked out of the room and led me into the box room. It, too, was a bit chintzy for my taste – all pink and satin and frilly bits – and it had also been the object of someone's search. He turned to me and said, ‘Yvette Mangon's lodger supposedly slept here.'

His voice was heavy with sarcasm.

‘Where is he now?'

‘
She
is at Mayday mortuary. Her name is Marlene Jeffries.'

EIGHTEEN

I
arrived back at the practice just before it was time for evening surgery. I was standing in the small staff room by the reception area looking at the list of my patients who were going to seek my help and advice, sifting them into those who were relatively infrequent visitors and those who were regular attendees (and subdividing these into the ones with problems that were more medical, and the ones with problems that were more social), when Sheila came in. ‘Your father phoned.' Her voice held amusement and her cheeks contained a smirk, although they were clearly struggling to keep it confined. ‘He says he's going to be working at home tonight. He wants you to go and see him there.'

‘He said it like that?'

She nodded. ‘Oh, yes, Dr Elliot. He sounded a little bit terse.'

I arrived at my father's house at just after seven thirty to find him in his garden, watering assorted vegetables and fruits. The air still held the heat of the day, a wet warm embrace that didn't seem to have much time for clear thinking or cool temperament. Certainly my father seemed a little on the steamy side. ‘Lance,' he greeted me. Before I could do the decent thing and respond, as one is supposed to do, he continued, ‘George Cotterill is dead.'

His announced this as if it would be news to me and I was about to assure him that I already knew when I realized my faux pas; I had completely forgotten to tell him. ‘Dad, I'm sorry . . .'

‘Why the hell didn't you tell me, Lance?'

He wasn't just angry, he was hurt; quite rightly, too. ‘I completely forgot. What with all the excitement about your announcement last night, it just went from my mind.'

‘How could you, Lance? It was such a shock to see an item about it in this morning's paper.'

‘Yes, I know I should have told you but . . . it was just that the news of your engagement to Ada was such a surprise . . . such a joyous surprise . . . that I didn't want to spoil it, not last night. I should have phoned you this morning but, as I say, I forgot. I'm sorry.'

Considerably mollified, he nodded, accepting my explanation whilst I struggled with a not inconsiderable amount of guilt at my massaging of the truth of how Max and I had received the news of Elliot Senior's impending nuptials. ‘Yes, well, I understand now.'

And we were left with his grief at the loss of a friend. He asked, ‘What was it? Do you know?'

‘His heart, I think. I don't know what the results of the post-mortem are yet.'

His head bobbed up and down slowly, his face a thing of sad reflection. ‘He'd been having angina. I told him to get it looked into, but he wouldn't.' It was an epitaph that could have been written on a million tombstones. He picked up the watering can – rather a fetching red one – and resumed drowning some ants who had innocently been doing ant-like things at his feet.

Intending to show interest and concern, I asked, ‘Have you and Ada told her family yet?' He ran out of water just as I asked this and yet he didn't seem to notice, which was odd; he just stood there, looking at something just in front of the onions, as if mesmerized. ‘Dad?'

He came to, pulled himself out of a slight slump of his shoulders. ‘Yes, well, that didn't go quite according to plan,' he said.

And although his voice was not overtly sad, it held a wistfulness and a tone of puzzlement that were together a paradigm of melancholia. He clearly needed some form of therapy so I asked, ‘How about a pint?'

It has to be said that Thornton Heath was not overly endowed with public houses to which could be applied the terms ‘friendly', ‘cosy' or ‘welcoming', but the Horseshoe, on the corner of Thornton Road opposite the pond, came fairly close, thanks in large part to Vernon, the landlord. He was one of my patients, but out of necessity, not habit; Vernon, you see, was dying.

‘Hello, Doctors,' he said with a grin that I swear was in danger of meeting on the far side of his head and thus splitting it into two perfect hemispheres; that his head was completely hairless only seemed to add to this illusion. I had noticed before that sometimes – only sometimes, mind – people who were dying were genuinely, deeply cheerful; it was something that, every time I met it, left me feeling inadequate, insignificant and totally worthless. ‘What can I get you?'

He had retained at least some vestiges of normal publicanism, though, so he didn't offer to give us the pints on the house and pocketed my pound note, providing only a two-pence coin in return. Dad tutted under his breath as we took our seats by the window. ‘I remember when you could get change out of a crown when you bought two pints of bitter.'

‘And go from here to Trafalgar Square on the trolley bus for sixpence?' I asked.

‘Thruppence,' he corrected and, following a sip, asked of the world in general and no one in particular, ‘Why did they have to get rid of the thruppenny bit just because we went decimal?'

‘Because three doesn't divide into ten with any elegance?' I suggested.

He snorted, then sighed. ‘Ten's a rubbish number,' he declared, undermining with a single sentence of four words and six syllables some thousands of years of civilization.

‘I've always thought it fairly reasonable.'

‘It's only got two divisors,' he said incredulously, as if this were the arithmetic equivalent of halitosis.

‘At least it's not prime.'

He brightened at that. ‘Yes, you're right,' he agreed, then lapsed into reflection before admitting, ‘As I said, the announcement didn't
quite
go as I'd expected.'

‘No?' I'd already guessed as much.

He was frowning deeply, perhaps even wincing as he went on, ‘Mike had only just got home – he works nights, you know – and perhaps he was still feeling tired.' He spoke as one trying to explain matters to himself, and not for the first time, either.

‘He wasn't pleased?' I guessed.

‘Um . . . no, he wasn't.' He considered. ‘“Not pleased”.' A nod, then, ‘I think that would be a fair way of describing his reaction. Yes, that about sums it up.'

As uneasy as I was at the prospect of having Ada as my mother-in-law, the last thing I wanted was to see Dad unhappy, and I felt for him; I said nothing, feeling it better to let him talk as and when he wanted to. It didn't take long. ‘I must admit that we don't really know each other.'

‘It was a shock, obviously,' I sympathized. ‘I own to having been a tad surprised myself.'

‘Yes . . .' His tone told me that there was something he had yet to tell me. I didn't remain in ignorance for long. ‘And, of course, you'd known about Ada for a long time, even if you hadn't actually met . . .'

It took a moment for me to catch on and, when I did, I was stunned. ‘Ada's son didn't know about you?'

‘He knew about me, obviously,' he corrected. ‘But he didn't appreciate, I think, the
nature
of the relationship.' He shook his head sorrowfully, took a sip of bitter, then explained, ‘Ada didn't seem to think there'd be a problem and it's not been easy arranging to meet, what with his job and everything.'

This all sounded distinctly odd to me, but I didn't say as much. ‘But there's a problem?'

‘He doesn't like the idea. Said so in no uncertain terms. He even went so far as to call me a “toe-rag”'. I've never been called one of those before.'

‘What's the problem? Does he think you're after his inheritance?'

‘He wasn't particularly specific about his objections. He just said she was a stupid old woman; after that he became slightly incoherent . . . Ada assured me it was just because he was tired because he'd been working hard, but I wonder if he was also drunk. I'm told the pubs around Fleet Street have opening times to suit the journalists and printers.'

‘He struck me as rather a testy individual when I met him.'

‘He's not always like that.'

I frowned. ‘How would you know?' I asked before I could stop myself; I think I might have struck a little close because he looked momentarily disconcerted.

‘That's what Ada's told me, anyway,' he mumbled after thinking about it.

We had nearly finished our drinks and so I rose to fetch two more. When I sat back down, I asked, ‘What are you going to do?'

‘Ada said she'd work on him. She's certain that he'll come round.'

‘And what about her grandchildren, David and Joanna?'

He pursed his lips. ‘Difficult to say, really. Ada says that Joanna's been pretty subdued recently – probably puberty or something, I suppose. David's his usual self; he seemed to think his father's reaction was quite funny, actually.'

I could imagine that; David had struck me as someone who would think that tying a firework to a donkey would make great family entertainment. ‘And Ada's daughter-in-law?'

He sighed. ‘Well . . .' He looked uncomfortable. ‘It may come as a surprise to you, but I don't think Ada and Tricia get on very well.'

I thought back to the parents' evening at the school but didn't say that Max and I had the impression that the relationship between Ada and her daughter-in-law had been akin to that of Stalin and Hitler around the time of the siege of Leningrad. ‘It's a common problem,' I said in a voice that was as anodyne as I could make it.

He agreed glumly and then there was silence while he presumably rued his misfortune and I pondered what Dad was potentially getting into; the more I heard of the Clarke clan, the more they seemed to me to be a right load of herberts. Ada might have been a God-fearing Christian (and was there any other kind?), but her descendants and her daughter-in-law seemed to inhabit a very different world and I wasn't entirely convinced I could see Dad fitting into it; I was as sure as sugar I couldn't see myself feeling entirely at home on planet Clarke, and was desperately trying not to think of Christmases to come when we might all have to congregate around a roaring log fire and play Scrabble together.

Suddenly he seemed to brighten, drawing in a long breath through his nose, and doing it with so much force he actually seemed to disturb some of the taller foliage around him. ‘Still, I'm sure Ada will sort it all out.'

I managed to place a smile on my face although, I confess, there wasn't one in my heart.

NINETEEN

‘
W
e have a visitor.'

In all the time I'd known Max, I'd never heard her speak like that; she hissed this at me, sibilance lurking just behind her teeth, where it held hands with anger. I had just come in, and was feeling the effects of the heat, a day's work and a couple of pints of bitter and, perhaps because of this, wasn't feeling totally up to pace. ‘Do we?'

Looking back on it, this might not have stood up well amongst the great ripostes of history and, in retrospect, it was a fair way inferior to, ‘You will, Oscar, you will' or ‘My dear, I don't give a damn' (with, as is
de rigueur
, emphasis on the wrong word). Certainly, Max was unimpressed. ‘Yes.'

‘Who?'

‘Your Sergeant Abelson.'

I was unaware that I had come into possession of a police person, so this came as something of a surprise. ‘What does she want?' I enquired, making my way into the kitchen to pour a beer.

‘She said it was to take a statement from you.'

I couldn't see why Max seemed to be so worked up about things; after all, Masson had said that I would have to give a formal statement regarding George Cotterill's death, yet Max's implication was that the comely Sergeant was here with an ulterior motive. ‘Fair enough,' I said, in what I thought was a placatory tone; oddly, Max snorted, glared at me and then snarled, ‘Well, I'm going for a bath,' as if this were the ultimate weapon to deploy.

In the sitting room, Sergeant Abelson was standing in the bay window, looking out at the comings and goings. ‘Something to drink?' I asked her, realizing that Max had inexplicably failed in her duties as a hostess.

She turned and smiled. ‘Some water would be nice.'

I fetched it for her, then we sat down and got to the business at hand. It only took fifteen minutes, at the end of which I asked, ‘What are the results of the post-mortem?'

She nodded. ‘It was his heart, as you suspected.'

It was quite nice to be proved right by an autopsy for once; it didn't always happen, which could sometimes be a blow to the professional ego. ‘A natural death, then.'

‘Whatever the cause, it doesn't look good when people die in custody. People tend to talk.'

I couldn't resist pointing out, ‘And he wasn't even guilty, was he?'

It was quite interesting to see how she went into standard constabulary defensive mode. ‘We have yet to determine that.'

I did a bit of gaping at this brazen bit of stonewalling, before asking, ‘Do you know something I don't?' Looking back on it, this was a question that was not one of the most perceptive that has ever been asked; it was highly likely that she knew something about the case that was at that moment hidden from my not-quite-all-seeing gaze.

‘Probably,' was her quite reasonable reply and which left me slightly bereft of where to go next.

I decided not to argue. ‘Just who was Yvette Mangon?'

Without any hint of irony, she answered. ‘She was a maths teacher at Bensham Manor.'