And when, fifteen minutes later, she escorted her visitors to the door he was a little surprised when she held out her hand. As he shook it, she said: 'Please forgive me, Chief Inspector, if I was ungracious. Yours is a disagreeable but necessary job and you are entitled to co-operation. As far as I'm concerned, you will get it.'
Even without the garishly painted sign no one from Norfolk would have been in any doubt about the identity of the local hero after whom the Lydsett pub was named, nor could a stranger fail to recognize the admiral's hat with the star, the much-decorated chest, the black patch over one eye, the pinned-up, empty sleeve. Rickards reflected that he had seen worse paintings of Lord Nelson but not many. This made him look like the Princess Royal in drag.
George Jago had obviously decided that the interview should take place in the saloon bar wrapped now in the dim quietness of the late afternoon doldrums. He and his wife led Rickards and Oliphant to a small pub table, wooden-topped and with ornate cast-iron legs, set close to the huge and empty fireplace. They settled themselves round it rather, thought Rickards, like four ill-assorted people proposing to conduct a seance in appropriately ill-lit seclusion. Mrs Jago was an angular, bright-eyed, sharp-featured woman who looked at Oliphant as if she had seen his type before and was prepared to stand no nonsense. She was heavily made up. Two moons of bright rouge adorned each cheek, her long mouth was painted with a matching lipstick and her fingers, blood-tipped talons, were heavy with a variety of rings. Her hair was so glossily black that it looked unnatural and was piled high in the front in three rows of tight curls and swept upwards and secured with combs at the back and sides. She was wearing a pleated skirt topped with a blouse in some shiny material striped in red, white and blue, buttoned high at the neck and hung about with gold chains in which she looked like a bit-part actress auditioning for the part of a barmaid in an Ealing comedy. No woman could have been less suitably dressed for a country pub, yet both she and her husband, seated side by side with the brightly expectant look of children on their best behaviour, looked perfectly at home in the bar and with each other. Oliphant had made it his business to find out something of their past and had relayed the information to Rickards as they drove to the pub. George Jago had previously been the licensee of a pub in Catford but the couple had moved to Lydsett four years ago partly because Mrs Jago's brother, Charlie Sparks, owned a garage and car-hire business on the edge of the village and was looking for part-time help. George Jago occasionally drove for him leaving Mrs Jago in charge of the bar. They had settled happily in the village, took a lively part in community activities and appeared not to miss the raucous life of the city. Rickards reflected that East Anglia had accepted and absorbed more eccentric couples. Come to that, it had absorbed him.
George Jago looked more the part of a country publican, a stocky, cheerful-faced man with bright, blinking eyes and an air of suppressed energy. He had certainly expended it on the interior of the pub. The low, oak-beamed saloon bar was a cluttered and ill-arranged museum devoted to Nelson's memory. Jago must have scoured East Anglia in his search for objects with even a tenuous relationship with the Admiral. Above the open fireplace was a huge lithograph of the scene in the cockpit of the Victory with Nelson romantically dying in Hardy's arms. The remaining walls were covered with paintings and prints, including the principal sea battles, the Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar; one or two of Lady Hamilton including a lurid reproduction of Romney's famous portrait, while commemorative plates were ranged each side of the doors and the blackened oak beams were festooned with rows of decorated memorial mugs, few of them original to judge from the brightness of the decoration. Along the top of one wall a row of pennants spelled out what was presumably the famous signal and a fishing net had been slung across the ceiling to enhance the general nautical atmosphere. And suddenly, looking up into the brown tar-tangled netting, Rickards remembered. He had been here before. He and Susie had stopped here for a drink when they had been exploring the coast one weekend in the first winter of their marriage. They hadn't stayed for long; Susie had complained that the bar was too crowded and smoke-filled. He could recall the bench at which they had sat, the one against the wall to the left of the door. He had drunk half a pint of bitter, Susie a medium sherry. Then, with the fire blazing, the flames leaping from the crackling logs and the bar loud with cheerful Norfolk voices the pub had seemed interestingly nostalgic and cosy. But now, in the dim light of an autumn afternoon, the clutter of artefacts, so few of them either genuine or of particular merit, seemed to Rickards to trivialize and diminish both the building's own long history and the Admiral's achievements. He felt a sudden onrush of claustrophobia and had to resist an impulse to throw open the door and let in fresh air and the twentieth century.
As Oliphant said afterwards, it was a pleasure to interview George Jago. He didn't greet you as if you were a necessary but unwelcome technician of doubtful competence who was taking up your valuable time. He didn't use words as if they were secret signals to conceal thoughts rather than express them, nor subtly intimidate you with his superior intelligence. He didn't see an interview with the police as a battle of wits in which he necessarily had the advantage, nor react to perfectly ordinary questions with a disconcerting mixture of fear and endurance as if you were secret police from a totalitarian dictatorship. All in all, he pointed out, it made a pleasant change.
Jago admitted cheerfully that he had telephoned the Blaneys and Miss Mair shortly after half-past seven on Sunday with news that the Whistler was dead. How did he know? Because one of the police on the inquiry had telephoned home to let his wife know it was all right for their daughter to go alone to a party that night and the wife had telephoned her brother Harry Upjohn who kept the Crown and Anchor outside Cromer and Harry, who was a friend of his, had rung him. He remembered exactly what he had said to Theresa Blaney.
'Tell your dad they've found the Whistler's body. He's dead. Suicide. Killed himself at Easthaven. No need to worry now.'
He had phoned the Blaneys because he knew that Ryan liked his pints at nights but hadn't dared to leave the children while the Whistler was at large. Blaney hadn't come in that evening but that didn't really signify. With Miss Mair he had left the message on her answering machine in much the same terms. He hadn't telephoned Mrs Dennison because he thought she would be on her way to Norwich with the Copleys.
Rickards said: 'But you did ring her later?'
It was Mrs Jago who explained. 'That was after I reminded him. I was at half-past six Evensong and afterwards I went home with Sadie Sparks to settle arrangements for the autumn jumble sale. She found a note from Charlie to say that he'd been called out on two urgent jobs, taking the Copleys to Norwich and then fetching a couple from Ipswich. So when I got back I told George that Mrs Dennison hadn't driven the Copleys to the train and that he ought to phone her straight away to tell her about the Whistler. I mean, she'd be more likely to get a good night's rest knowing he was dead than wondering if he was lurking in the rectory bushes. So George rang.'
Jago said: 'It was close on 9.15 by then, I reckon. I would have telephoned later anyway expecting she'd be back by half-past nine.'
Rickards said: 'And Mrs Dennison answered the phone?'
'Not then she didn't. But I tried again about thirty minutes later and got her then.'
Rickards asked: 'So you didn't tell any of them that the body had been found at the Balmoral Hotel?'