‘What, specifically? She’s an unusual woman.’
‘Her attitude to David Rogers, for a start.’
‘In particular?’ said Slider.
‘Well, she’s driven by his womanizing into divorcing him, but she doesn’t make him pay alimony. It shows an unhealthy lack of desire for vengeance.’
‘Unless she’s trying to make it seem that she has no desire for vengeance. Or for his money.’
‘You think she could be guilty?’
‘Anyone could be guilty. I’m sure she’s not telling us everything.’
‘What she said did seem inconsistent,’ Atherton agreed. ‘She complains about her lifestyle but didn’t want his money. She’s confident he’d tell her if he got married, but says she doesn’t know where he’s been working. I think that there was more contact between them than she’s letting on.’
‘Probably. But why hide it?’ Slider said.
‘Because she’s guilty?’
‘I don’t know,’ Slider mused. ‘She obviously still had feelings for him. A mixture of sentiment and bitterness. And she really seemed shocked by his death.’
‘Could be shock that we’d come to her so soon. And you admit the bitterness.’
‘Hmm. But they’ve been divorced for ten years. Wouldn’t she need a more recent motive to want to do away with him?’
‘She seemed to be deliberately distancing herself from him and his money,’ Atherton said. ‘But wouldn’t it be interesting if it turned out he’d left everything to her? That would answer a lot of questions. “He shamed me but I’ve had the last laugh.” Revenge eaten cold and so on.’
‘I wonder what she is living on? This agency of hers? I suppose we’ll have to check if it’s pukka.’
‘It would be a brilliant front if it wasn’t,’ Atherton said. ‘So utterly worthy you’d feel like a complete shit asking questions. And she obviously didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘But equally, if she’s a genuine philanthropist she wouldn’t want to talk about it. That would be blowing her own trumpet.’
‘You always have to see both sides, don’t you? Well, and what about old Mellors coming in? Did she blush! Old friend, indeed – and he went straight upstairs. She’s shacking up with him.’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘It looks as if she has a bit of a thing for horny-handed sons of the soil. OK –’ he forestalled Slider – ‘Rogers was a doctor, but he started out with coal dust in his hair.’
‘Greasely, not Greaseborough,’ Slider said, for the second time of what he was afraid would be many. ‘Different sort of place entirely.’
‘Still, she seems to like sinning below her station.’
‘Did you catch the smell from Frith when he came in?’ Slider pondered.
‘We don’t all have a hooter like yours. What was it?’
‘Horses.’
Atherton didn’t know what to make of that bit of information. They had reached the car. The gritty wind, rollicking unchecked across Ealing Common, slapped a greasy sandwich paper against the side window, just missing his sleeve. He peeled it off with flinching fingertips. The homeward-bound traffic was pouring across the junction into Hanger Lane and backing up, like water pouring into a jar. Dusk had come, and it wasn’t any warmer, and he still didn’t have an overcoat on. He shivered, and his mind turned naturally to crackling fires, old oak beams, naff crimson carpets and the sultry gleam of horse-brasses.
‘Fancy a pint?’ he asked.
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Slider said, unlocking the door.
FOUR
They Tuck You up, Your Mum and Dad
As Slider was trying to get his key into the lock, the door opened, and his father smiled a welcome at him.
‘Joanna not home yet?’ he divined.
‘She’s on her way,’ Dad said. She had been doing a concert in Norwich, a repeat of the one in Harrogate. ‘She rang from her mobile – said they were stopping in The Red House for a pint.’
Slider nodded. He understood how they had to ‘come down’ from a performance; and also that in a freelance world it was the clubbable people who got the jobs, all other things being equal.
‘She’ll only have the one,’ his father went on. Slider was amused that he should defend her. Or was he reassuring him? In the early days he had worried all the time when she was out on her own in her car. Not that she wasn’t a good driver – she was excellent – but she carried so much of his love with her it made him vulnerable. And he was a policeman – he knew what road accidents looked like.
‘I know,’ he said.
Dad looked past him at Atherton. ‘Hello, Jim. You another orphan? Emily’s away, isn’t she?’
‘Covering the Irish elections.’
‘I was always the same when Bill’s mother was at the WI. Home’s not home without the woman. Well, come in, don’t stand on the doorstep. You both look cold. I thought this morning Bill should have taken a coat. And I see you’re no better, Jim. Can’t trust March sunshine, you know. I lit the fire.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘Lunch,’ Slider said, remembering with an effort. It seemed so long ago.
‘Sandwich, I dare say,’ Dad said. ‘You want something hot this weather. I made a bit of stew and there’s plenty left. It’s in the slow oven, just in case. You go in to the fire and get warm and I’ll serve it up.’
‘All serene upstairs?’ Slider called after him as he went away.
‘All serene,’ Dad said, looking back. ‘I give my boy his supper, we had a little play together, then bath and bed, one story, and he was off like a lamb. There’s nothing like routine, if you want a happy child. You were just the same. Never had an ounce of trouble with you, bedtimes.’
He was gone. ‘He must like it here,’ Atherton said, following Slider down the passage. ‘I’ve never known him so chatty.’
‘I feel guilty because he does so much,’ Slider said. ‘He’s taken care of the baby all day and into this evening, and then he’s made supper as well.’
‘He enjoys it,’ Atherton said, with the wisdom of not being involved.
‘And he gave up his home and his garden and everything. The garden here’s a fraction the size.’
‘Flagellate away,’ Atherton said. ‘I know you need it. Just remember he was all alone, day after day, stuck out there in the middle of nowhere—’
‘Essex,’ Slider corrected.
‘Same thing – hardly seeing a soul.’
‘Oh, thanks. Now I feel guilty about neglecting him before. Make yourself comfortable. I’m just going to pop up and see George.’
He trod up the still-uncarpeted stairs, trying not to echo like a mastodon in a drill hall. The house did not yet feel like home, but his senses were soothed by the Edwardian proportions, and the fine detailing which, miraculously, had not been ripped out in the dread days of the seventies’ home improvement. The house had been quite a stroke of luck, for even with all Dad’s money it was not easy to find a place with a separate flat or ‘granny annexe’ attached, in the right place and at the right price. It had been a probate sale: an old lady who had lived there most of her married life and died alone, with only a son in New Zealand who wanted the money rather than the property. The separate quarters were in an extension added in the eighties to be let separately and create an income, but which latterly had been occupied by the old lady’s companion-stroke-housekeeper.
It needed a certain amount of updating and decorating, but they couldn’t afford to do that yet. They couldn’t even afford properly to furnish it. It was so much bigger than Joanna’s one-bedroom flat, where he had been living with her; and the family furniture from his marriage with Irene had been disposed of long ago. So there was too little in it yet to make it cosy. But they had done their best with the sitting-room, buying a Turkish-style carpet to cover the bare floorboards, opening up the fireplace and arranging Joanna’s saggy old sofa and two disreputable armchairs around it.