Some Deaths Before Dying (7 page)

“I’m fine, apart from being miserable without you. But I’ve got piles of work to bring home because Trevor’s had to go into
hospital and Jerry’s told me to go through his desk and sort out anything I can deal with—Trevor’s always behind with everything,
anyway—and that’s on top of all my own stuff, so I haven’t got time to mope. There’s one of Trevor’s files which is bothering
me a bit. I’ll tell you when I see you…and I’m on a crash diet so that I can really hog it with you when you get back. Duck
and champagne?”

“Spot on.”

“They’re not going to change your deadline again?”

“Not without postponing the auction again, which…anyway, if they do, I’ll tell Billy you’re coming over for the weekend, and
they’re giving us time off together, and the company are paying your fare and hotel bill, or I’m chucking it in.”

“You don’t have to, honestly.”

“Yes, I know, but I’ve just about had it with Billy. Anyway, I think it will work this time. He can’t replace me that quick.
It might be a blot on my copybook with the company, but Billy’s riding for a fall in case. It’s more his fault than anyone
else’s that the deal’s got screwed up the way it has, though given the chance he’ll wriggle out of it.”

“As far as I’m concerned Billy could shit for the universe. I’ve got to go now. Same time tomorrow. You’re going back to bed,
I hope?”

“For thirty-nine and a half minutes, I make it. Look after yourself, darling.”

“You too.”

She slammed her finger onto the off-button so hard that she broke the nail, and threw the handset onto the floor. Cursing
at the top of her voice she flung the pillows across the room, ripped duvet and sheets from the bed—almost undisturbed after
a night of sleeping single—swept Jeff’s pile of computer mags off the bedside table and kicked them across the carpet, rushed
into the bathroom, tipped the empty laundry basket on its side and lashed at it with her feet, and finally, satisfyingly,
stood on it, scrunching it flat, and then jumped on it until the wickerwork was splinters. Though nothing like this had happened
for years, she was well aware what was going on. The rage was semi-deliberate, a tantrum, Norma-stuff. (“Now, this isn’t my
sweet little Jenny. This is horrid Norma. I’m not interested in what Norma wants. She isn’t my daughter.”) Meanwhile Jenny
herself—the Jenny people met and talked to and thought chilly and reserved—hovered aside, controlling the fit just enough
to prevent any damage she would later regret. She had long disliked the laundry basket, enforced on Jeff by an earlier girlfriend.

Now, as Norma stood panting amid the wreckage, Jenny whispered in her mind.

“Better stop. I’ve got a client at nine-fifteen.”

She took a deep breath, let it go with a whoosh and was Jenny again. For the moment her main superficial emotion was surprise.
Why now? For years she had known how to control these angers, keep them rational, channel and focus the pressure onto a target—a
jet, not an explosion. Why this sudden loosening? She stared at the wreckage of the laundry basket, sensing it to be an omen,
but baffled how to read it.

Turning to the basin, she caught sight of herself in the mirror, a known face, her mother, just woken but still half drunk.
She’d been crying, she noticed.

“You’re disgusting,” she told the image.

Furious again, but this time with her normal efficient Jenny-anger, she cleaned herself up and dressed in her grey suit, with
pearl earrings and pin. No time for breakfast—she couldn’t have swallowed it anyway. Her briefcase and laptop were ready in
the hall. She slipped a banana into the case and left. After locking the door she paused and gave the inner pillar of the
absurd little portico a pat, a pat for the whole house.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she told it, as if speaking to a pet dog, made anxious by a spat among the humans. “You’re all right.”

B
y dusk there was a chill drizzle slanting from the northeast, more like February than late March. The timer had turned the
lights on, as if the house was doing its best to look welcoming, but this evening that wasn’t enough.

Anyone coming new to the house would have noticed only—as Jenny herself had, first time—the Ashford Road roaring and stinking
by, and then, once inside, would have been mainly impressed by the view across the Weald, with the roofs of oast houses poking
above the treetops. One large defect, one medium asset, the little house a sort of null value in between. It had taken Jenny
herself several weeks of living in it to appreciate the quirky personality to which she had spoken so affectionately that
morning. The line of the road must have been changed after it was built, but before the terrace of basic nineteen-twentyish
houses to its right, so that it stood at an obstinate slant both to them and to the bramble-tangled belt of scruffy woodland
to its left. And it even more emphatically asserted its indifference to their respective regularity and wilderness because
its builder had apparently been determined to cram all the stock ornamentation he could onto its frontage—a kind of flattened
portico, with barley-sugar pillars; above that an iron balcony too narrow to stand on; at the southeast corner a squat spire
with an elaborate lightning conductor, and best of all, the pairs of cherubim on either side, apparently supporting the upper
windowsills. They had sulky expressions as if the weight gave them headaches. (Jeff, of course, hadn’t bought it for any of
that. It had been what he could then afford, because of the road.)

This evening Jenny’s affection wasn’t enough. She couldn’t summon up the personality. The house was dead, empty, because Jeff
wouldn’t be home for almost a week. She had spent most of the day on Trevor’s leavings, and had brought her own work back
to fill the dismal hours, but that would make them no less dismal. And worse, she would spend them thirsting for a drink.
She and Jeff usually had a couple of glasses of wine each with their supper and she was now habituated to that, but she had
long ago recognised in herself the risk of going the same way as her mother—it was in her genes, she thought—and had made
and kept an inner promise that she would never drink alone. She would keep it still, tonight, and for the next five nights,
but it would be hell.

Numbly she let herself in, switched off the alarm and went upstairs. The bedroom was a strewn chaos. She’d forgotten that
she’d left it like that, but clearing it up was something to do. She changed into jeans, but had hardly started on the mess
when the doorbell rang.

She went down, put the front door on the chain and opened it a crack.

“Mrs. Pilcher?”

She recognised the voice at once.

“Oh, it’s you. You called this morning. I’m sorry, but I’m really not interested. The pistol doesn’t belong to me, and I know
the owner doesn’t want to sell it.”

“I’m not trying to buy it. Please. I just want to talk to the owners.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been asked not to talk to anyone about it. I should never have taken it to the show, but I didn’t know.”

“Please, if I could explain to you, then at least you could pass the message on. May I come in?”

“I don’t let people I don’t know in, especially at night. Sorry.”

She started to close the door. He resisted.

“Stop. Please. You’ve got to talk to me. Thing is, I’ve got the other pistol. And the box and all the trimmings.”

“You’ve got them with you?”

“They’re in the bank. Listen, I’m absolutely with you about not letting strangers in if you’re on your own. I’ve been waiting
for you over at the pub. Suppose I went back there. Would you come and join me for a drink? Ten minutes only.”

Oh, Jesus, a drink, and not alone!…Jenny merely pretended to hesitate.

“Oh, all right. Ten minutes. I’ve got work to do.”

“That’s OK. I’m truly grateful. What’ll you have?”

“Draught stout, if they’ve got it.”

(The wine would be dire, and spirits risky.)

“It’ll be waiting for you.”

She closed the door and ran upstairs to check that he was crossing the road and not lurking in ambush for her behind the forsythia.
He was still on the near pavement, waiting for a gap in the traffic, a large man who carried himself well. He was wearing
a Barbour and tweed cap. The look was horsey country gentry, easy for a con man to fake, if he was one.

She counterdressed, for the hell of it, keeping the jeans but changing into her “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”
sweatshirt and butterfly earrings, and left without hurrying, nearly ten minutes after he had.

She and Jeff weren’t regular pub-goers, though there was a pleasant little one a couple of miles across the fields, along
footpaths, to which they would sometimes walk out at weekends. The Frenchman across the road was not of that kind. Even out
of season there was often a coach or two in its park. There was a bouncy castle behind, and it advertised itself with a gross
cartoon of a grinning sausage in a chef’s hat serving sausages and mash to a family of salivating sausages.

The man was waiting without apparent impatience in a fake Victorian alcove in the saloon bar. The drinks were already on the
table. His was Perrier. He rose and waited for her, smiling. Presumably he recognised her from the TV programme. His face
was as military as his bearing, clean shaven, with an outdoor ruddiness. His grey hair, sparse but not balding, was cut short.
His eyes were pale blue, with the stony, unimaginative look of a caste accustomed to command. They didn’t, to Jenny, seem
in keeping with his voice, gruff and level but, she thought, too deliberately affable. She didn’t respond to his smile. He
read the blazon on her bosom and grinned. She maintained the professional chill of her mien, but he didn’t seem put out.

“I’m sorry about this,” he said. “I know it’s an intrusion, Mrs. Pilcher. It’s very good of you to spare me the time. My name
is Dick Matson, by the way.”

He produced a card and gave it to her. He worked, apparently, for a firm in Devon which dealt in agricultural feeds. His home
address was near Tiverton. Jenny would have placed him in a considerably posher line of business.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I’ve got a few minutes. What do you want?”

“Well, it’s a bit tricky, so I’d better make it clear that I’m not making any accusations. This is just something I want sorted
out.”

He picked up a brown envelope that had been lying on the table, took out a photograph and gave it to her. It was an eight-by-six,
black and white on matte paper, and looked fairly old, but the focus was spot on, with every detail exact, the two pistols
nestling into their fitted box with tools and paraphernalia around them. There was no mistaking the silver initials on the
butts.

“That certainly looks like it,” she said. “How did you get hold of this?”

“My mother took it,” he said. “Ages ago. She gave my father the pistols just after the war some time. She’d no idea how good
they were—bought them for the initials, same as his, you see—but then Dad did a bit of research and found out about Ladurie
and all that.

My interest is that Dad left them to me in his will, and then he had a couple of strokes, pretty bad, but he hung on for a
couple of years not knowing much about anything, and when he finally snuffed it they’d disappeared. My mother’s still with
us, but she’s past it too now, poor old thing, and whenever I’ve asked her about the pistols she’s thrown a wobbly, so I’ve
been waiting till she passed on before I did anything about it. They were supposed to be in the bank, like I told you…”

“You said you’d got the other one.”

“Did I? Well yes, but you weren’t giving me much chance to catch your attention. Sorry about that, but you’ll see why my eyebrows
went up when you showed up on the box toting one of Dad’s pistols?”

“I suppose so, if that’s what it is. I mean, are you sure that one of yours is missing? If you haven’t actually seen them.
I mean…”

“Well, no, I can’t be dead sure, but I’d bet my boots there aren’t any others. Ladurie didn’t make that many guns and his
order-books still exist—Dad went into all this—and ours are there just as a single pair. The entry’s marked J. M. You see?”

“All right. I’ll accept that. Now, before we go on I’ll need to know how you got hold of me. The people at the programme promised
us total confidentiality, and I’m careful about that sort of thing.”

“I was afraid you’d ask that. It’s a bit awkward. I’ll put it like this. Programme comes from Bristol, right? Well, it just
so happens that there’s someone there who owes me a considerable good turn. I called them—notice I’m not saying if it’s a
man or a woman—and said—”

“Had you called the programme first and found out that they weren’t going to tell you anything?”

“Not how I do things. If you know someone in the business, you get straight onto them. Networking, don’t they call it these
days? So I didn’t think anything of it till this whoever got back to me and said they’d got what I wanted but I mustn’t let
on how I’d found out or they and a good friend of theirs would be really in the shit. Of course if I’d known that’s how it
was in the first place, I’d never have asked them. You see?”

“In that case, I’m afraid—“

“Hold it. Hold it a moment. As far as I can see we’re in much the same boat. We’ve both got hold of something the other one
thinks we’ve no right to, and neither of us is willing to say how we got it. The difference is—now, don’t get me wrong, I’m
dead sure you’re doing it in all innocence—but the difference is that all I’ve got is a name—I looked your number up in the
book—it had to be somewhere near the Maidstone and there’s not that many Pilchers around—the difference is that what you’ve
got is worth quite a lot of money, once the pistols are back together again, which they bloody well ought to be in any case,
and one way or another, Mrs. Pilcher, I intend to see that it happens. I don’t want to have to go to law over it, if I can
help it. Bloody expensive, lawyers are, in case you don’t know…”

“I’m one myself.”

“Are you now? Are you now?”