‘They died. I moved up to London.’
As usual, nobody thought to ask for dates.
How long had she known her fiancé? Turned out he’d been having a word with old Mrs Whatsit down in Putney so that suddenly a run-of-the-mill Death by Dangerous Driving was shaping up into a nice little murder inquiry.
‘He wasn’t my fiancé.’ She gave the word a tiny lick of French polish. The way Suzy always said it.
Oh yes he was.
Oh no he wasn’t.
‘Oh yes he was. Your flatmate says he was.’
Did she now? Thank you, Suzy.
And then he pulled a small green leather box out of his pocket. There was a dark stain on one side.
‘This was found on the deceased.’
The detective flicked the box open with his bitten thumb and held it out to her, tilting it from side to side, trying his best to make the stones twinkle in the dead fluorescent light, as if offering her three thousand a year plus five bedrooms and a garage in Putney.
Jane stared at the ring with its dirty blue and white stones. It would go nicely with the bracelet. Gin was good for cleaning jewellery.
Doreen’s engagement ring was very cheap-looking. A nine-carat Princess setting for a dull ruby and two tiny chips of rose-cut diamond. They’d had one just like it in the window of the pawnshop in Croydon. You could see it wasn’t worth two bob but Doreen always wore it swivelled to the inside of her hand just the same – in case somebody took a fancy to it. She used to twitch it round by flicking it with her little finger which always had scratches on the knuckle from the crudely-made claws holding the stones.
Carol’s was no better. ‘Illusion-setting solitaire’, she called it, but there was more setting than diamond with shiny white metal bits all round the crappy little tenth of a carat to make it look flashier than it was.
Johnny’s ring wasn’t like that. A bit old-fashioned but good stones. His mother’s probably – her mother’s even. Jane glanced down at the ringless fingers in her lap, unconsciously fanning them out to imagine sapphires against the navy grosgrain, but the effect was spoilt by a big blob of fingerprinting ink under one of her Persian Pink nails. She’d need turps to get that off. Fingerprints, honestly. Blue-satin evening gloves and a red velvet steering wheel cosy and the berks were looking for fingerprints.
So. Had she and her fiancé quarrelled? He wasn’t her bloody fiancé, how many more times? He obviously didn’t believe her. She’d met the mother? Yes. Seen the house? (He knew those big houses in Putney.) A twopenny-halfpenny mannequin like her wasn’t going to turn down a public-school meal ticket like John Frederick Hullavington. Of course she bloody said Yes. What had the row been about? Had she ever driven a left-hand drive before? Left-hand what? A foreign car. A car where the steering wheel was on the left-hand side. She looked dimly back at him. Where was it supposed to be?
They left her on her own for a while and she put her head down on the table. She woke up when the door clicked open again and she looked up at the man who came in. Her face was flushed with sleep and her wristwatch had left a funny pattern on her cheek. It was a new policeman: not married; smarter suit; posher voice; better barber. Jane swivelled slightly in the chair so that the ladder in her stocking wouldn’t show.
He was a Detective Inspector – sounded like two jobs. He sat down opposite, eyeing her up, but she couldn’t hear any clarinets playing. He didn’t swallow hard or check his tie. Nothing. Without her face on she was invisible – like Mrs Kowalski. Being old must be like this.
‘So. What is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’
That old line again. The matron, MacDonald her name was, settled back on the bench like an old dear up the pictures. All she needed was a bag of sherbet lemons. She loved it when they sweet-talked them first.
He leaned forward, his eyebrows repeating the question. He didn’t half fancy himself. She tried to imagine him in a nice eleven-ounce navy worsted but he would never clean up as well as Tony – not with those teeth.
The detective inspector leaned back in his chair again and looked her over with squinty eyes the colour of dogfood.
‘We know it wasn’t you behind the wheel, Suzy. What did your friend and her fiancé quarrel about?’
Whoops. Wrong room.
There was a sharp sniff from matron but he took no notice.
‘Our witnesses know it wasn’t you. The downstairs neighbour is willing to swear that it was you, not your friend Jane, in the passenger seat.’
You could almost feel sorry for the poor, stupid sod. The matron gave a warning cough – she even coughed in a Scotch accent – but it was far too late by then. He’d got the wrong room and the wrong girl. He opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it.
‘Excuse me a moment.’ He picked up the telephone. ‘Tell Cotton I need to speak to him downstairs. If you could keep an eye on Miss, er . . .’
‘James.’ Jane supplied the missing surname in a carefully flat voice.
‘On Miss James, matron. I shouldn’t be too long.’
That little fiasco, plus the fact that their other key witness, Jim the porter, had previous form for perjury, seemed to take the wind out of the detective inspector’s sails. The deceased’s mother was no bloody help, crying and carrying on. Yes, her son had been about to get engaged. Nice gel. Very well turned out. Dark hair. Name? Definitely not an Amanda. Jenny? Jilly? Yes, it might have been Suzy. The girl in the other detention room, whatever her bloody name was, the posh one with all the lipstick, not only swore blind she wasn’t driving but insisted that she had seen the deceased step in front of the car – which given the amount of alcohol in his blood was a distinct possibility. The inspector had felt quite optimistic about the posh girl at first – no actual form but she was ‘known to the police’. Unfortunately she was also known to a bloody good solicitor who’d kicked up a right stink and dropped hints about friends in high places. They’d have to let her go without charge. Their only hope had been a confession and there was fat chance of that now the DI had shown his hand.
It was daylight outside and a fried-bacon smell was sidling up from the canteen. Someone brought Jane a cold cup of stewed tea that left nigger-brown tide marks on the inside of the cup as she drank it. There was a very old cheese sandwich on the tray. She left the bread out of habit.
The superintendent had told his men not to waste any more time but they strung her along for another hour or two, filling in forms, before the smarmy detective inspector grudgingly conceded that Miss James was free to go – for the time being. He did his best to make it sound like a threat and muttered something about not changing her address. He held the door of the interview room open but Jane just sat glumly in the chair. The matron thought the tears in her eyes were delayed shock but it was just Jane remembering the last time she’d had to make her way through Mayfair in a model gown in broad daylight. The ladder in her stocking was all the way down to her shoe and she didn’t have the price of a cab in her little beaded bag. The copper (the married one this time) gave her a tissue and said he’d find a car to run her home. An unmarked car.
Chapter 26
Relax in your bath tub and try to imagine
yourself in different difficult situations.
The Volvo was under a tarpaulin waiting to be towed away and a man from the station with a clipboard and a measuring tape was drawing a plan of the accident when the police car pulled up in the forecourt of Massingham House. Mrs Kowalski’s curtain twitched but there was no one behind the front desk.
The flat smelled of stale cigarette smoke from the evening before but there was no sign of Suzy, no sign of anything belonging to Suzy. The hangers in her wardrobe were all empty and the only stitch of clothing she’d missed was her navy and beige reversible swing coat in the hall cupboard and the fuchsia-pink Harry Popper suit which was still hanging on the back of the kitchen door where Annie had left it. No sign of Annie either and no answer to the maid’s room telephone. Jane lifted the receiver on the phone by the sitting-room window and laid it down on the side table.