‘So do a lot of other people now.’
‘Suppose you’re right, considering.’
Hall was relieved to get to the one-constable police house at Four Marks, which was the closest to the Lomax mansion. He was early but Harry Elroyd was already waiting in a front parlour with chintz loose covers on the furniture and long ago photographs of the man stiffly upright in army sergeant’s uniform. Elroyd sat nervously with a tattered, yellowing notebook on his knee. With him was Paul Hughes, the police inspector whom Hall had confronted over the press intrusion and who had been called before Mr Justice Jarvis. A third, narrow-faced man very formally offered a card attesting that Derek Peterson was a solicitor at law.
‘Protecting the interests of the Constabulary,’ declared the man.
‘Do they need protecting?’
‘We’ve no indication of the purpose of this meeting.’
The personal curiosity went far beyond the professional but there wasn’t the awe of the hospital and Hall was glad. He recited the same explanation he’d given the pathologist and at once Peterson said, ‘Are you alleging professional negligence or incompetence?’
‘No. I simply want to talk to Constable Elroyd to understand a few things more clearly.’
‘Whom do you represent?’ asked the solicitor. ‘I can’t let this proceed unless I am sure you are representing someone.’
‘Mrs Jennifer Lomax, who is the unencumbered heir to the estate of Gerald James Lomax,’ said Hall, matching the formality.
Peterson nodded, the reluctance obvious. Mrs Elroyd came hesitantly in with coffee and biscuits on a tray. She was so intent upon Hall that she jarred the tray against the table edge, spilling the coffee, and hurried out muttering apologies. She was a lot fatter now than she’d been in the wedding photographs on the sideboard.
The irritation at the solicitor’s attitude was fleeting. If there were oversights in the investigation into Jane Lomax’s death – and Hall was becoming increasingly convinced there had been – then this man was responsible. Was there anything after so long to learn from a portly, rubicund country policeman who could probably spot an illegally shot pheasant through thick canvas but miss an inconsistency that might have led to a murder charge? ‘Did you know Mrs Lomax, before you went to the house that afternoon?’
‘Knew who she was,’ said the man, the voice blurred by his local accent. ‘She and the mister. They’d made themselves well enough known since moving in…’ He looked uncertainly at the senior officer. ‘Not, perhaps, as much as the new Mrs Lomax, though. I hope she’s going to be all right.’
‘So do we all,’ said Hall. ‘But let’s stay with the first Mrs Lomax. What sort of things did you see her at?’
‘Village show. She was high church so she worshipped in Alton but she gave a lot of money, over?1,000, to the church roof appeal here in the village. Even attended services there sometimes.’
‘So she was well liked?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘What about the pub?’
‘Pub?’
‘There is a local pub, isn’t there? Did she ever go there?’
‘No. They never did things like that.’
‘You hear a lot in a village like this, a man in your position?’
Elroyd smiled, proudly. ‘Keep my ear to the ground. Eyes open.’
If only, thought Hall. ‘Did you ever hear that Mrs Lomax drank?’
‘I never did. That’s what surprised me that day, all that drink around.’
‘Not enough to mention it to anyone? A senior officer, maybe?’
Peterson stirred.
‘I didn’t know she had an illness: that she shouldn’t,’ protested the man. ‘What people do in their own house is their business, as long as it’s not breaking the law, isn’t it?’
‘That sounds perfectly satisfactory to me,’ said Hughes, in quick support.
It did, conceded Hall. ‘I know what you found in the kitchen and in the bedroom but what about the rest of the house? Was it tidy or untidy?’
‘Very tidy. Mrs Simpson was the housekeeper then. She’s a very neat person. Her cottage is a picture.’
‘Mrs Lomax was in her nightdress, in bed, when you entered the bedroom?’
‘Dr Greenaway and the ambulance people were trying to revive her.’
‘This is all in Constable Elroyd’s statement,’ reminded Peterson.
Hall ignored the interruption. ‘What about the clothes Mrs Lomax had been wearing, before she changed into her nightdress. Was there any sign of them around the bedroom?’
Elroyd shifted, uncomfortably, squinting down into the ancient book. Looking up doubtfully he said, ‘I haven’t made a note here of any day clothes.’
‘Would you have done?’ asked the inspector, irritatingly ahead of Hall.
‘I think so, sir. I was very careful that day. I realized how important it was.’
No you didn’t, thought Hall. ‘So what’s the answer, Constable?’
‘There couldn’t have been any visible in the bedroom.’
‘So Mrs Lomax must have put them away before getting into bed?’
‘Presumably,’ said the policeman, even more doubtfully.
‘Is there any importance in whether or not Mrs Lomax left her day clothes lying around?’ said Peterson.
Again Hall ignored the solicitor. To Elroyd he said, ‘What about underclothes?’
The constable visibly blushed. ‘I’ve no note of any, sir.’
‘And you would have done, if you had seen any?’
‘I took a careful note of everything.’
‘Like the sleeping pills, the temazepam, in the bath-room medicine cabinet?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the constable, brightening.
‘Did you take a note of the chemist who dispensed the sleeping pills?’ He felt a quiver of excitement at something that occurred to him from Gerald Lomax’s written statement and wondered if he was interpreting it correctly: if he were, this could be the most vital question of the day. It could also be, he realized, the most damning for Jennifer.
‘Hemels, Bury Street, EC3,’ read out the man, triumphantly. ‘And the date of dispensing. June thirteenth.’
‘Thank you,’ said Hall, sincerely. ‘That was most helpful. And there was the empty wine bottle in the kitchen wastebin? You even recorded what wine it was, Margaux?’
The plump man checked his notes. That’s right, sir. Margaux.’ He mispronounced it, stressing the X.
‘Apart from the Margaux bottle having been put in the bin, would you describe the rest of the kitchen as messy?’
‘Only the table. There were even food scraps on the table. But everything else was in its proper place.’
‘Do you intend trying to reopen the inquest, upon some new evidence?’ demanded Peterson.
‘I’m not sure there would be sufficient. Certainly not now that Mr Lomax is dead,’ said Hall. ‘I don’t even intend seeing the coroner.’
‘What, then, is the point of all this?’
Hall hesitated. ‘I’m not sure yet whether Mrs Lomax shared the housekeeper’s love of tidiness: I intend to ask her. But I don’t understand why Mrs Lomax would have discarded an empty wine bottle in a wastebin but left the rest of the dinner – even food scraps – uncleared on the table. Or why she went to the trouble when she got upstairs – still, it would seem, with a glass of brandy in her hand – presumably to hang up her clothes. Or why some insulin ampoules were properly thrown away in the bathroom – where the temazepam was neatly in a medicine cabinet – but others on a bedside table-’
‘… From my reading of the inquest evidence Mrs Lomax was clearly drunk,’ broke in Hughes. ‘Drunken people do inconsistent things.’
Which was unarguably true, Hall cautioned himself. He still wasn’t sure if there was the remotest chance of his achieving anything with what he was doing – insane idea for an insane situation echoed in his head – but he had to be careful against turning discrepancies into incontestable facts. ‘Had you been involved, inspector, wouldn’t those inconsistencies have prompted you to question Gerald Lomax a little more closely than he was?’
‘No,’ said Hughes, at once. ‘Mr Lomax wasn’t there. How could he have helped us beyond telling us how he found his wife?’