“Mrs. Peacock took us to McDonald’s and then to a movie,” said Eugenie. “We saw Toy Story 2. And please don’t say you shouldn’t go to the cinema when the sun’s shining because we did and we loved it, didn’t we, Jordan?”
“I cried.” He dug his fingers into his mother’s neck till she winced.
“I must owe you a lot of money,” Zillah said to Mrs. Peacock.
“Yes, you do, rather. I’ll just have another Bristol Cream and then we’ll tot it up, shall we?”
Zillah paid Mrs. Peacock double her usual rate as well as for the cinema and the lunch. Somewhat unsteady on her feet by this time, she meandered into the lift. Zillah shut the front door. Where was Jims? With Leonardo, no doubt. Or had he gone down to his constituency? Most likely he was in Fredington Crucis and had Leonardo with him. She wondered how on earth she was going to pass the weekend. It was as bad as being in Long Fredington. Because there was no Annie or Lynn here, no Titus and Rosalba, it was worse.
The body of Jeffrey John Leach lay on the floor of the cinema, on the right-hand side between rows M and N, for nearly two hours before it was discovered. No one leaving a cinema looks along an empty row even if the lights are on. The next performance of The House on Haunted Hill was due to begin at six-ten and there would be a final screening, the most popular, at eight forty-five. But the six-ten showing was fairly well attended-or would have been if the two eighteen-year-old girls hadn’t entered row M at a quarter to. They told no one what they saw. They screamed.
Immediately the cinema was cleared and patrons’ ticket money refunded. An ambulance came, but it was too late for that. The police arrived. Jeffrey Leach had taken a little while to die, it came out later at the inquest, as his lifeblood seeped away into the carpet. Police noticed the blood all over one of the seats, as if the perpetrator had wiped the weapon on its upholstery. It was at this point that the whole cinema, not only this particular theater, was closed to the public.
Within an hour they knew that Jeff had died between three and four-thirty. None of the staff remembered who had sat in that row nor any patron leaving early. One said he thought he recalled a man leaving around five and another vaguely remembered a woman slipping out at ten past. Both were unable to describe these people or even make a guess at their ages. The cinema was searched for the weapon, a long, sharp carving knife. When that yielded nothing, the search was extended and Edgware Road closed from Marble Arch to Sussex Gardens, causing the worst traffic jam in central London for ten years.
The body was removed. The bloodstained seat and those on either side of it were also taken away for DNA testing, in case the perpetrator had left behind a hair, a flake of skin, a drop of his or her own blood. The police might have saved themselves the trouble. All the hairs that ever fell from Minty’s head came out when she washed it, as she did once or twice a day, and disappeared down the plughole. Any flakes of skin had been scrubbed off with a nailbrush and a loofah in hot soapy water. She left no more DNA behind her than would a plastic doll fresh from its manufacturer’s. The principle that every murderer leaves something of himself behind at the crime scene and takes some trace of it with him, Minty had disproved.
When it got to nine and Jeff hadn’t come home, Fiona was so worried she went next door. Not because Michelle or Matthew would know any more than she did, not that they could give her any advice she couldn’t give herself, but simply for their company, for the comfort and reassurance they might give her. To have someone else with whom to share her anxiety. Long before, she’d canceled that dinner reservation, made herself tea, and tried unsuccessfully to eat a sandwich.
Afterward, when they were in bed, Matthew and Michelle confessed to each other that they’d both had the same thought: that Jeff had deserted Fiona. Of course, they said not a word of this at the time. When a woman is out of her mind with worry you don’t tell her that maybe the man she met only eight months before and of whose past history she knows nothing has walked out on her. You don’t say he’s obviously a villain and a conman who’s alarmed by the prospect of marriage. You give her a brandy and tell her to wait a little and then you’ll start phoning hospitals.
Fiona went home twice just to check he hadn’t come back in the meantime. She returned to the Jarveys twice, by now shaking with fear. It was past ten. If that man’s somewhere with another woman, thought Michelle, I’ll find some way to punish him. Never mind his teaching me to slim, that was me, not him. I didn’t have to take notice of what he said, but I will make life hard for him if he’s betrayed her. I will find him and tell him what I think of him. I will set a private detective on his track, I will. Her unaccustomed vindictiveness alarmed her, and she forced herself to give Fiona an encouraging smile. Should she make tea? Another drink? Fiona stood up and threw herself into Michelle’s arms. Michelle hugged her and patted her shoulder, and held her against her big, soft bosom while Matthew phoned the Royal Free and the Whittington, and half a dozen other hospitals. Then he phoned the police.
They knew nothing about a Jeff Leigh. Matthew spelled the name for them.
“You said Leigh, not Leach?”
“No, Leigh.”
“There’s been no accident to anyone of that name.”
For by now they knew whose was the body they had on their hands. In the breast pocket of its linen jacket they found a bloodstained driving license in the name of Jeffrey John Leach, of 45 Greta Road, Queen’s Park, London NW10. It had been issued nine years ago and a long time before new British driving licenses were required to contain their holder’s photograph. Also in the pocket were a photograph, in a plastic pack, of a long-haired young man with a baby in his arms, a bloodstained letter from a woman called Zillah, a door key of a common kind and unnumbered, £320 in £20 and £10 notes, a Visa card in the name of Z. H. Leach, and a half-used packet of Polo mints.
It took no more than a few hours to establish that Jeffrey John Leach was married to Sarah Helen Leach, née Watling, who also had a driving license and lived at an address in Long Fredington, Dorset.
Chapter 16
ARRIVING IN HIS parliamentary constituency late on Friday afternoon, Jims had first had a meeting with his agent, Colonel Nigel Travers-Jenkins, and then, accompanied by him, gone as guest of honor and principal speaker to the annual gala dinner of the South Wessex Young Conservatives at the Lord Quantock Arms in Markton. Contrary to Zillah’s belief, Leonardo wasn’t with him. While he was speaking, on the subject of the Party’s future hope and inspiration being in the hands of its youth, whose idealism and fervor had already been manifested to him that evening, Zillah was sitting in the Abbey Gardens flat watching a Rugrats video with the children, Jordan grizzling on her lap.
Jims, who had been casually fond of her for years, had always used her rather as a screen for his natural activities than as a friend. She was the kind of woman whose appearance led the South Wessex Conservatives to put her down as a female of loose morals. Any Fredingtonian seeing him call at Willow Cottage, particularly in the evenings, believed-again in their phrase-the worst. But they were the sort of people who held to a double standard, condemning the woman in this situation but attaching no blame to the man. Rather the reverse, as Jims well knew, for someone had reported back to him that Colonel Travers-Jenkins had been overheard calling him “a bit of a lad with the birds.” For this reason, though he used her, he had always felt grateful to Zillah and persuaded himself this was affection.