“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You didn’t have a boyfriend who was murdered in a cinema?” Natalie never minded what she said to anyone. She couldn’t, not in her job. “Jeff Leach or Leigh?”
“My fiancé died in the Paddington train crash,” said Minty and shut the door much more sharply than Nell Johnson-Fleet had.
It was possible she was on the wrong track. Natalie remembered that she’d assumed this was the right woman only because Jeff had said she lived near Kensal Green Cemetery and had called her Polo. Polo was a mint and the one person in the whole area with the right kind of name was Araminta Knox. But he might have called her Polo for any number of other reasons. Because she liked those mints he ate, for instance, or even played polo. Just the same, she rang the bell of the gaudy house with the pink front door.
The occupant was a big, handsome woman in a tight black skirt and scarlet shirt, technically black but in fact almond-colored with a Roman nose and full lips. Natalie said who she was and what she wanted.
“Would you mind telling me your name?”
“Sonovia Wilson. You can call me Mrs. Wilson.”
“Have you ever heard of a Jeffrey or Jeff or Jerry Leach or Leigh?”
“No. Who is he?”
“Well, I thought he’d been your neighbor’s boyfriend.”
“She’s only had one and he was called Jock Lewis. Or so he said. He said, or someone did, that he died in that train crash, but he never did and I know that for a fact. What d’you want him for?”
“I don’t want him, Mrs. Wilson. It wouldn’t be much use if I did, seeing he’s most likely the Jeffrey Leach who was murdered in the Marble Arch Odeon. J. L., you see, it was always J-something and L-something with him. May I come in?”
“You’d better talk to my husband. He’s in the force.”
In a quandary, Laf didn’t know what to do next. What to do at all, come to that. He and Sonovia watched Natalie Reckman cross the road and get into her car.
“It’s only what she thinks,” Laf said. “We’ve known since the beginning Jock Lewis wasn’t killed in that train crash. The only evidence she’s got for thinking Minty’s friend was this Jeffrey Leach is that they’ve got the same initials.”
“Well, not really, Laf. She seems to know Leach had a girlfriend who lived round here that he called Polo.”
“Jock Lewis never called Minty Polo, so far as I know.”
“We could ask her,” said Sonovia. “I mean, I could. I could say something casual, like ‘Didn’t you tell me Jock was fond of Polo mints?’ or get the conversation on to pet names and ask if he had one for her. And then, if she came out with it, I’d tell her. I mean, she ought to know, Laf, you’ve got to admit it.”
Laf turned away from the window, sat down in an armchair, and motioned Sonovia to another, with the masterful gesture and wearing the steady frown he used only on the very rare occasions when he thought his wife had worn the trousers long enough. “No, I’ve not got to admit it, Sonovia.” He called her by her full name only in his severer moments. “You’re not to say a word to Minty. Is that understood? This is one of those times when we’ve got to heed Daniel. You remember what he said? It was the last time you asked if she should be told about Jock. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t.’ You told me yourself what he said. Now when our son became a doctor of medicine I made up my mind I’d take his word on medical matters like I take Holy Writ. And you’ve got to do the same, right?”
Meekly, Sonovia said, “Right, Laf.”
Dressing to go out on her fifth date with Ronnie Grasmere, Zillah thought it was the babysitter when the doorbell rang. She zipped up her new black dress-tight but not too tight, low-cut, flattering-slipped her feet into her Jimmy Choo shoes, and ran downstairs. Two men were on the doorstep. Even if one of them hadn’t been in uniform she’d have known they were police officers-she could detect them from a distance now. Immediately, with a lurch in her Lycra-controlled stomach, she concluded that they were here to arrest her for bigamy.
“Mrs. Melcombe-Smith?”
One thing that phony marriage had done for her: everyone assumed it had been genuine. “What is it?”
“South Wessex Police. May we come in?”
They’d found Jerry’s car. The boneshaker. The twenty-year-old Ford Anglia. That was all it was about, his old banger. In Harold Hill.
“Where?” said Zillah.
“It’s a place in Essex near Romford. The car was parked by the side of a road in a residential area where there are no parking restrictions. A resident called us to complain about it. He said it was an eyesore.”
Zillah laughed. “What am I supposed to do about it?”
“Well, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith, we thought you might know how it came to be put there.”
“I don’t know but if you want my opinion, Jerry-I mean, Jeffrey-dumped it there because at last he’d found a woman with a nice car who’d let him have unlimited use of it. For the first time in his life, probably.”
They exchanged glances. “He didn’t have any particular associations with Harold Hill?”
Eugenie had come into the room. “Who’s Harold Hill, Mummy?”
“It’s a place, not a person.” Zillah said to the policeman who’d asked, “He never mentioned it to me. I should think he just used it as a rubbish dump. He was like that.”
“Who was like that?” Eugenie asked after they’d gone and the babysitter had come. “Who used a place as a rubbish dump?”
“Just a man,” said Zillah.
Neither child had once referred to their father after Eugenie first asked and got no reply. Accomplished at putting off unpleasant things until tomorrow or next week, Zillah sometimes wondered if she would ever need to tell them any more. Or did Eugenie already know from the newspapers, from gossip, from words overheard? If she did, had she told Jordan? Zillah certainly wasn’t going to say anything in front of the babysitter, a woman who hadn’t yet got above herself as Mrs. Peacock had. This time, when the doorbell rang, it was Ronnie Grasmere.
“I don’t like him very much,” said Eugenie as Zillah got up to let him in. “You’re not going to marry him as well, are you?”
Minty didn’t think much about the woman who’d called once she was gone. Maybe she’d been from the police and knew Minty went to the cinema a lot. She hadn’t noticed that the woman had gone next door and she went to call on Laf and Sonovia herself to ask about the shower man. Although they’d been out in the garden, having a glass of wine and a late snack, they’d heard the bell. Laf plied her with Chilean chardonnay and Duchy Original ginger biscuits, and seated her in one of their white patio chairs-the fourth one was occupied by Mr. Kroot’s old cat-but she thought they’d given her funny looks. She asked Sonovia about the shower man and Sonovia said he’d promised her to come at the beginning of next week.
“When it’s builders,” said Laf, “the beginning of the week is Thursday morning and the end of the week is next Monday.”
Sonovia laughed but Minty didn’t like it much. Jock had been a builder and Laf ought to have remembered. Still, she told them about her search for his grave. They might have some advice.
“What makes you think he’s in Brompton?” Sonovia asked in the kind of smiley way she talked to her four-year-old granddaughter.
“I had a feeling. Not voices telling me, it wasn’t that. I just knew.”
“But you didn’t know, my deah. You just thought. I don’t trust these feelings. It’s the same with premonitions. Nine times out of ten what you’ve felt isn’t true at all.” Laf gave Sonovia a warning cough but she went on just the same. “You have to find out these things for sure. With certificates and-and things.”