The Chalon Heads (18 page)

‘Maybe that’s where Keller comes in—the killer waited until Keller was released so that the finger would point at him.’

Helen Fitzpatrick was in her living-room alone with the two dogs, Marianna resting upstairs in bed, Toby Fitzpatrick out. ‘He still doesn’t know what’s happened,’ she said distractedly. ‘He has a friend he usually meets on a Sunday morning, and they walk down to the local for a pint. I tried phoning the pub, but they said he’d just left.’ She ran a hand through her hair as if to wipe away her anxiety. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

The Labradors followed them into the kitchen, keeping a close eye on Kathy.

‘I suppose you see things like that all the time, do you?’ Helen said, filling the kettle, keeping her eyes away from the area of freshly mopped floor. Now that Marianna was taken care of, she was suffering her own reaction. ‘That— that head.’

‘Not quite like that.’

‘It’s so bloody unsettling. When you’ve known someone, to see them like that . . . There’s something so, I don’t know,
uncanny
about it. Horrible.’

Kathy nodded. ‘You’re not a nurse are you, by any chance?’

‘Me? No. Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘The way you took care of Marianna. You seemed to know what you were doing.’

‘Oh.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘I suppose that’s always been my role. Eldest child of a big family or something. I get to take charge in the emergencies. Then fall apart on my own later.’ She reached up into a cupboard for a bowl of sugar and knocked the spoon on the way down, sending it flying to the floor, white crystals spraying across the worktop. ‘Damn!’

‘Don’t worry. Kathy knelt to pick up the spoon while Helen got a cloth to wipe away the sugar. ‘Did you know Eva well?’

‘I don’t know about “well”. Some friends and I play tennis with her from time to time, and I suppose we saw as much of her as anyone else around here.’

‘But you weren’t close friends with her? Or Mr Starling?’

‘To be honest, they don’t have anyone you’d call
close
friends in this area. Most of the people living up here are retired, their families gone, and she was much too young and lively to be interested in them, while he just seemed content to be with her.’

‘He really doted on her, did he?’

Helen looked sharply at Kathy. ‘You’re wondering . . . Actually, yes, he did dote on her. I remember how he was when she first arrived. It was . . .’ Helen Fitzpatrick pursed her lips ‘. . . touching, I suppose, or, at least, it would have been . . .’

‘You mean the difference in their ages?’

‘Yes, I did find that rather hard to accept, I must admit. I’m sorry, that’s not fair, especially now. It probably just shows my age, I suppose. But I did actually find it rather nauseating, a man like that fawning over an eighteen-year-old girl. I mean, what if it had been your daughter?’ She turned away and began spooning coffee into a pot.

‘That was when she first arrived, you said. Did that change?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, really. I mean, after people have been married a while, their relationship becomes more settled. You know what I mean. But he was still very attentive.’

‘Did they argue?’

‘I—I don’t know.’

‘Helen, it’s really important we understand the background to all this. It isn’t being disloyal to tell us what the real situation was. It may be irrelevant, but we do need to know.’

She met Kathy’s eye. ‘I’m not . . . I’m not trying to hide anything. I just don’t know. We really didn’t know them that well. I always felt him to be . . . well, I’m not being snobby, but a bit socially unsure of himself, even though he had all that money. When he brought home his new wife, they were invited everywhere, of course—everyone was fascinated, them being such an unlikely couple. But she just seemed rather bored, and he said almost nothing, and people gave up.

‘We saw more of Eva because of their tennis court. There are three of us who play, and we’d had our eyes on it for years, but we never dared bring it up when Sammy was on his own, before Eva came. But when Eva arrived, we thought this was our chance. We asked if she played, and then suggested we all had a game, so she practically had to invite us to use the court. I’m sure she saw through us, but she didn’t seem to mind.’

‘Was she keen on tennis?’

‘She was good when she wanted to be, but she wasn’t much interested, really. More the pool. She loved the pool, whereas I never saw Sammy go near it.’

‘So you knew Sammy before Eva?’

‘Yes, but not well. He’d already lost his first wife when we moved here.’

‘When was that?’

‘Five years, no, six years ago now. Yes, it was ’ninety-one when they made Toby take the
package—
terrible euphemism that, isn’t it? Like a poisoned Christmas gift.’ She spoke bitterly.

‘Nasty, was it?’ Kathy said.

‘Yes, it was actually. Hit us at the worst time. Anyway, in the end it worked out because we found this place. I used to come to the Hog’s Back when I was a small girl. I had an aunt who lived out here, and I had these wonderful memories of hot summer days with her. So when Toby lost his job, and there was no particular reason to stay where we were, I thought back to those days and started to look for something in this area. It took a lot of time and searching to find something we could afford and still leave enough to—’ She stopped, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear all this. You want to know about Sammy and Eva.’

‘So you first met him six years ago.’

‘Yes. He’d been living up here for some time by then, him and the dreaded Sally, his housekeeper. I remember thinking how funny it was, Mr Starling living in the Crow’s Nest. Later I thought it rather appropriate. Anyway, we hardly saw him at first. He was like a hermit. It was probably a year before we did more than nod as he drove past in the lane.’

The two dogs, who had settled into a watchful sprawl, jumped suddenly to their feet, ears straining. ‘Is that Daddy?’ Helen asked, and opened the back door for them. They hurtled out, returning a few moments later with Toby Fitzpatrick.

‘Oh, hello.’ He hesitated in the doorway. ‘Didn’t realise we had visitors.’

‘Something dreadful has happened, Toby,’ his wife said, rising to her feet. ‘This is Kathy Kolla—you remember, from last night? It turns out she’s a policewoman. A detective.’

His mouth opened, but before he could speak Helen went on rapidly, ‘It’s about Eva, darling, Eva Starling.’

‘Eva?’

‘Yes, Eva.’ She was talking very deliberately to him, holding him with her eyes. ‘The most awful thing. She’s been murdered.’

‘Eva . . . murdered? That’s not possible . . .’

Their conversation was oddly stilted and one-sided, like a nursery teacher talking to a child in front of a stranger. The dogs reinforced this, moving to Helen’s heels and examining her husband’s face as if they knew very well which of them was top dog. Fitzpatrick fiddled with his left ear, worried, frowning with concentration.

‘I saw her, darling,’ Helen went on. ‘I actually saw her—her head.’

‘What?’

‘She’s been decapitated. Her head was lying there in the lane. I saw it.’

Toby Fitzpatrick’s eyes widened, his mouth opened and the colour drained from his face as abruptly as if a plug had been pulled. Kathy moved forward quickly, thinking he might pass out, but he reeled back from her against the kitchen sink, turned, ducked his head into it and threw up. It was almost, Kathy thought, as if his wife had done it deliberately, the brutal phrasing, to shock him, or shut him up. She wondered if he wasn’t very bright. Or was there something else, something about Eva, perhaps, that Helen didn’t want him to blurt out?

He straightened, gasping, and turned on a tap, tugging some sheets from a roll of paper towel and wiping his mouth and face. ‘Sorry . . . Sorry . . .’

‘Poor darling,’ Helen said, going to his side and putting an arm round his shoulder. The dogs moved in too, trying to get between the two of them, and Helen had to shoo them away.

‘That’s appalling,’ he whispered. He stared at Kathy, his face grey. ‘Really? Her head?’

‘Marianna’s upstairs, resting,’ Helen said. ‘She went to pieces. We’ll look after her until she’s herself again.’

‘Who? Oh, yes, I see.’

‘Well,’ Helen went on, brisk now, ‘the coffee’s ready. Let’s go and sit down, if there are other things you want to ask us, Sergeant?’

They sat in the living-room, a coffee table between Kathy and the Fitzpatricks, and on it a fresh bunch of flowers from the garden arranged expertly in one of the glass vases. Kathy recognised it now as an Iittala design, like one the office staff had given a retiring secretary earlier in the year. It seemed to be the only recent thing in the room, everything else comfortably worn and scuffed, twenty-year-old Habitat and Scandinavian beech.

‘When did you last see Eva?’ Kathy said.

‘Two weeks ago,’ Helen said promptly. ‘We had our regular game of tennis with her on that Sunday morning. I’m pretty sure I didn’t see her during the following week, and then last Sunday, when we called again, Sammy answered the door and told us that Eva had gone up to town for a few days. He said we could use the court anyway, which we did.’

‘Was that not surprising, that she hadn’t told you she wouldn’t be home for your game?’

‘Oh, no. That was the way she was. She’d get an idea in her head and just do it. I told you, we weren’t close.’

‘Sammy told you she was at their London flat?’

‘That’s right, in Canonbury.’

‘Have you ever been there?’

‘No! We weren’t friends like that. I never went with Eva on her London trips.’ Helen slid her hand into her husband’s. ‘All right now, darling?’

He nodded and reached forward for his coffee cup, still looking dazed. He stopped before his hand reached the cup and said, ‘But why? Why would anyone do a thing like that?’

‘We don’t know, Mr Fitzpatrick,’ Kathy said. ‘Do you have any ideas?’

‘Me?’ He looked horrified.

‘I mean, are you aware of anyone who had a grudge against the Starlings?’

‘Oh . . . Oh, I see. God, no, no. We don’t, do we, darling?’ He looked to his wife for help. She shook her head.

Kathy said to her, ‘Did Sammy say how long she’d be away?’

‘I don’t think so. He said something about this Sunday, I think, that she’d be back for her game this weekend.’

‘Did she discuss her London trips with you? What she did?’

‘She said she went shopping and watched foreign movies.’ Helen shrugged.

‘Did you believe her?’

‘Well, we had no reason not to. I mean, she never gave any hint that there might be a boyfriend or anything like that.’

‘That idea did occur to you, though.’

‘Oh, only as a thought to brighten up our boring lives, Sergeant. I mean, she was very pretty, and young . . . So it’s something you’re considering?’

Kathy didn’t respond to that. ‘And she would disappear for three or four days at a time.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she never mention a name, someone she bumped into in London, someone who went shopping with her?’

‘No, no one. We tried to pump her, but she didn’t chat with us like that. It’s hard to describe. We were never intimate in that way. She was totally uninterested in the kind of things we talked about, and didn’t share with us what she did.’

‘Sounds frustrating.’

‘It was, actually. Hard work, wasn’t it, darling?’

Fitzpatrick nodded obediently.

‘Do you mean that she didn’t settle here, like Marianna?

Was she homesick?’

‘I don’t think it was that. It was more a generation thing. We were all old enough to be her parents. She just didn’t open up with us.’

‘Weren’t there any younger people around that she could talk to?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘What about you, Mr Fitzpatrick?’

‘Me?’ He looked startled.

‘When did you last see her?’

‘Oh . . . I don’t know, really. Not for ages.’

‘It would have been at the Randolphs’, wouldn’t it, darling? Their cocktail party at Easter? The Starlings were there.’

‘Yes, yes, you’re probably right.’

Kathy looked at her watch. It occurred to her that Helen Fitzpatrick might be getting more out of this than she was—grist for the tennis-club rumour mill. ‘The thing we’re most interested in at the moment,’ she said, ‘apart from Eva’s recent movements, is any sightings of strangers in the area in the last few months.’

‘Yes, I was thinking about that,’ Helen said. ‘We do get people walking in the woods up here, up to the cairn on the hilltop, especially at this time of year, although usually they take the bridle path up the ridge rather than coming along Poacher’s Ease. We have our regulars—an elderly couple from Guildford, the scouts from Aldershot . . .’

‘The bird-watcher chap we kept seeing last year, with the moustache,’ Fitzpatrick offered.

‘I don’t remember, darling.’

‘Yes, you do! He talked to you about the roses on the front trellis. Said the soil was too acid or something.’

‘I’m interested in anyone like that,’ Kathy said. ‘I’d really appreciate it if the two of you could think about this and write down notes of anyone you can recall— descriptions, times, conversations, and so on. I’ll call back tomorrow and go over it with you.’

Kathy got to her feet to leave. The front door opened directly into the living-room, and just inside it were a row of coat pegs on the wall, a walking-stick stand, and a small table covered with the Sunday papers. Kathy stopped dead when she noticed among them the title of a magazine, partly obscured by junk mail.
The Philatelist.

‘You collect stamps, Mr Fitzpatrick?’ she asked, picking it up and studying it.

Again that startled, vaguely confused look came over his face, and his wife answered for him. ‘Yes, he does. It’s your hobby, isn’t it, Toby? Like the garden is mine.’

‘I’m interested in stamps,’ Kathy said.

‘Are you?’ He looked incredulous.

‘Yes. Why not?’

‘Well, you’re . . .’

‘You’re far too sensible!’ his wife broke in. ‘It’s the most boring hobby devised by man.’

Kathy looked at her, seeing the alertness in her expression. Helen caught her look and immediately backed off, smiling blandly.