Devices & Desires

'She used those precise words?'

'And a good few others which I can't exactly remember.' 'What I mean is, Mrs Jago, Miss Robarts was the one making the threats?'

For the first time Mrs Jago seemed uneasy, then she said: 'Well she always was the one making threats, wasn't she? Neil Pascoe wasn't suing her.' 'What happened next?'

'Nothing. Miss Robarts got into the car and drove away. Amy lugged the kid into the caravan and slammed the door. Neil looked so miserable I thought he'd burst out crying, so I thought I'd say something to cheer him up.'

'What was that, Mrs Jago?'

'I said she was a vicious evil-minded bitch and one day someone would do her in.'

Jago said: 'Not very nice, Doris. Not on a Sunday.'

Doris Jago said complacently: 'Not very nice any day of the week, but I wasn't far wrong, was I?'

Rickards asked: 'What happened then, Mrs Jago?'

'I got on with delivering the magazines, didn't I? First of all I went to the Old Rectory. I don't usually call there because the Copleys and Mrs Dennison are usually at morning service and collect their own magazines, but they weren't there yesterday and I was a bit worried. Thought something might be wrong. But it was just that they were too busy packing to attend. The Copleys were off to stay with their daughter in Wiltshire. Nice for them, I thought, and it'll give Mrs Dennison a bit of a rest. She offered me a cup of tea but I said I wouldn't wait because I could see she was busy getting on with their high tea. But I did sit in the kitchen with her for five minutes and had a bit of a chat. She said that some of the staff at Larksoken had given some very nice children's clothes for the jumble which might fit the Blaney twins and she wondered whether Ryan Blaney would be interested. She'd price them up and then he could have his choice before they were taken off for the sale. We've done that once before but we have to manage it very tactfully. If Ryan thought we were offering charity he wouldn't take the clothes. But it isn't a charity, is it? It's in aid of church funds. I see him when he comes into the pub and Mrs Dennison thought that the suggestion might come better from me.'

'And after calling at the Old Rectory?'

'Then I went on to Martyr's Cottage. Miss Mair has a bill enclosed with the magazine every six months so I never bother to collect the ten pence. Sometimes she's busy and sometimes she just isn't there so I usually just put the magazine through the letter box.'

'Did you see whether she was at home on Sunday?'

'I never saw skin nor hide of her. Then I went on to the last cottage where Hilary Robarts lived. She'd got home by then, of course. I could see the red Golf outside the garage door. But I don't usually knock with her either. She isn't the kind of woman who'd welcome you in for five minutes' chat and a cuppa.'

Oliphant said: 'So you didn't see her?'

'I'd already seen her, hadn't I? If you're asking whether I saw her again the answer is no, I didn't. But I heard her.'

Mrs Jago paused for effect. Rickards asked: 'How do you mean you heard her, Mrs Jago?'

'I heard her through the letter box, didn't I, when I was pushing the magazine through? And a fine old argument she was having with somebody. I'd say it was a real row. The second of the day for her. Or, maybe, the third.'

Oliphant asked: 'What do you mean by that, Mrs Jago?'

'Just wondered, that's all. It struck me when she arrived at the caravan she was pretty wrought up. High colour. Edgy. You know.'

'You could tell that just by looking at her from the caravan door?'

'That's right. Call it a gift.'

Rickards asked: 'Could you tell whether she was speaking to a man or a woman?'

'Could be either. I only heard the one voice and that was hers. But she had someone in with her for certain, unless she was shouting at herself.'

'What time would this be, Mrs Jago?'

'About four, I reckon, or a little after. Say I got to the

caravan at twenty-five past three and away by twenty-five to four. Then there was the quarter of an hour at the Old Rectory which would bring me up to five to four, and then the ride across the headland. It must have been soon after four.'

'And after that you went home?'

'That's right. And I was back here soon after half-past four, wasn't I, George?'

Her husband said: 'You might have been, dear. And then again you might not. I was asleep.'

Ten minutes later Rickards and Oliphant left.

George and Doris watched the police car until it turned the corner of the road and went out of sight.

Doris said: 'I can't say I took to that sergeant.'

'I can't say I took to either of them.'

'You don't think I was wrong, George, telling them about the quarrel?'

'Had no option, did you? This is murder, Doris, and you were one of the last people to see her alive. Anyway, they'll probably get it, or some of it from Neil Pascoe. No point in keeping back what the police will find out in the end. And you only spoke the truth.'

'I wouldn't say that, George, not the whole truth. I may have toned it down a bit. But I didn't tell them any lies.'

For a moment they contemplated this nice distinction in silence. Then Doris said: 'That mud which Timmy smeared on Miss Robarts's trousers, it came from the patch under the outside tap. Been like that for weeks. Be funny, wouldn't it, if Hilary Robarts was murdered because Neil Pascoe couldn't fix a new washer?'

George said: 'Not funny, Doris. I wouldn't exactly say that it was funny.'

Jonathan Reeves's parents had moved from their small terraced house in south London to a flat in a modern block overlooking the sea just outside Cromer. His appointment at the power station had coincided with his father's retirement and the idea had been that they would return to a place that they had known and liked on past holidays and, as his mother had said, 'to provide a home for you until the right girl comes along'. His father had worked for fifty years in the carpet department of a large store in Clapham, starting at fifteen straight from school and rising eventually to be head of the department. The firm let him have carpets at less than cost price; the off-cuts, sometimes large enough for a small room, he got for nothing, so that from childhood Jonathan had never known a room at home which wasn't carpeted from wall to wall.

Sometimes it seemed that their thick-pile wool and nylon had absorbed and deadened not only their footsteps. His mother's calm response to any event was either 'very nice', equally appropriate to an enjoyable dinner, a royal engagement or birth, or a spectacular sunrise, or 'Terrible, terrible, isn't it? You wonder sometimes what the world's coming to', which covered events as diverse as Kennedy's assassination, a particularly gruesome murder, children abused or violated, or an IRA bomb. But she didn't wonder what the world was coming to. Wonder was an emotion long since stifled by Axminster, mohair, underfelt. It seemed to him that they lived together in amity because their emotions, debilitated by under-use or undernourishment, couldn't cope with anything as robust as a row. At the first sign of it his mother would say 'Don't raise your voice, dear, I don't like rows.' Disagreement, never intense, was expressed in peevish resentment which died through lack of energy to keep it going.

He got on well enough with his sister Jennifer, eight years his senior but now married to a local authority officer in Ipswich. Once, watching her bending over the ironing board, her features set in their familiar mask of slightly resentful concentration, he had been tempted to say, 'Speak to me. Tell me what you think, about death, about evil, about what we're doing here.' But her reply was predictable. 'I know what I'm doing here. Ironing Dad's shirts.'

To her acquaintances and to those she might have called friends, his mother would always speak of her husband as Mr Reeves. 'Mr Reeves is very highly thought of by Mr Wainwright.' 'Of course, you could say that Mr Reeves is the carpet department of Hobbs and Wainwright.' The store represented those aspirations, traditions and orthodoxies that others found in their profession, in their school, regiment or religion. Mr Wainwright senior was headmaster, colonel, their high priest; their occasional Sunday attendances at the local United Reform Chapel merely a gesture to a lesser God. And they were never regular worshippers. Jonathan suspected that this was deliberate. People might want to get to know them, involve them in mothers' meetings, whist drives, Sunday-school outings, might even want to visit On the Friday of his first week at secondary school the form bully had said, 'Reeves's dad is shopwalker at Hobbs and Wainwright. He sold my mum a rug last week,' and had minced across the room, hands obsequiously clasped. 'I know madam will find that mixture extremely hardwearing. It's a very popular line.' The laughter had been sycophantic but uneasy and the teasing, for lack of popular support, had quickly died. Most of their fathers had even less prestigious jobs.