Sydney Tamm was by contrast a short man with a furrowed brow. He drove the garden fork into the ground between the row of potato plants in his front garden and looked at Yellich.
‘Police?’
‘Aye.’
‘About?’
‘Marcus Williams.’
‘Aye. Sitting up and taking notice at last, are you?’
‘Should we?’
‘Aye. Mind, I can’t tell you anything that’s not known, isn’t known…well, you’d better come into the house.’
The closest description that Yellich could find for Sydney Tamm’s house was ‘refuse tip’. It even smelled like one. The accumulated tabloids revealed that it probably hadn’t been cleaned for the last five years. The house was probably difficult to live in in the winter but the summer heat made the smell near unbearable to Yellich. Many flies buzzed in the window or flew in figure-of-eight patterns in the air above the table on which remnants of food remained on dirty plates, themselves on newspaper which served as a tablecloth.
‘I’m not proud of my house. I’m not ashamed of it.’ Tamm sat in an armchair. ‘You can sit in that chair there, if you want, but most of my visitors choose to stand.’
‘I’ll stand.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Tamm reached for a packet of cigarettes, and taking one, lit it with a match, putting the spent match back in the box. ‘She’d turn in her grave if she could see her house.’ He nodded to a photograph of a bonny-looking woman which stood, in a frame, on the mantelpiece.
‘You were the church warden of St Mark’s?’
‘Was. Don’t qualify…not a Christian any more, am I? Can you imagine a Christian living in a house like this? Cleanliness is next to godliness. I had religion all my days, and then my Myrtle took cancer…if there was a God, He wouldn’t have let a good woman like her suffer like she did. I buried her decent like, but then I told the vicar I wanted no more of his cant. I spend my days down the Dunn Cow now with the rest of the old lads of the village…it’s the only pub around here for the fogies, all the rest is for the young ’un’s, all that music, them machines with their weird sound and the flashing lights. But the Cow, it’s still as a pub should be.’
‘You don’t use the Sun with the angling club?’
Tamm looked at Yellich, as if surprised at his knowledge of Little Asham. ‘No…no, I don’t use the Sun.’ Said as if there was a story…a fall-out with the publican, a row with the anglers. Something had happened. ‘The Cow’s all right and all those boys who have never had religion have all been right all along, and the vicar and me have been wrong all along. The vicar, he calls from time to time, but less so now, he’s giving up on me…his lost sheep is gone…devoured by the wolf at the Dunn Cow.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘The smell is terrible.’
‘It’s not so bad, a good clean, plenty of disinfectant, you could get on top of your house again in no time.’
‘Cancer. The smell of cancer. It’s a terrible smell. It’s one of those smells…smell it once and you’ll never forget it…it stays in your nose. Myrtle…she had it on her skin…started out as a mole…then it was all over in the end, all over her. Her skin looked like…poor Myrtle…even now, five years this November, I can still smell the smell. I sleep downstairs, the smell hasn’t left the room where she died. Not properly…I won’t open a window, nor the door.
Do you want to go up and smell it?’
‘No…I don’t think so.’
‘If you did, you’ll never go near those canting priests and their steeple houses again.’
‘Again, all I can say is I’m sorry.’
‘Aye…look, I don’t get my pension for a day or two, I don’t suppose you could let me have the money for a beer, only there’s a darts match at the Cow?’
Yellich took his wallet out and laid a ten-pound note on the sideboard. ‘Tenner OK?’
‘Thanks…I can go out tonight.’
‘So, Mr Williams?’
‘Aye, there’s still rumours about yon. I saw a young man driving through the village on the day he died, the Sunday. I’d locked up the church after Evensong, that would be at seven-thirty. I was walking home when the car passed me, going quite fast for the narrow road. Saw the driver, young man…’
‘He was driving away from Oakfield House?’
‘Yes. He came to the village and took the York road. It goes through Malton, but if he was going to the coast, there’s another road he’d take which would avoid Malton. It’s a fair bet he was heading to York, in that direction, anyway. I didn’t recognize him, he was a stranger. But I saw him just once again…he was a mourner at Mr Williams’s funeral; being a church warden, I was at the funeral…making sure everything was where it ought to be, and he was there, same young man, then he was in a naval officer’s uniform.’
Yellich returned to Malton, and parking his car in front of the police station, ensuring that the ‘police’ sign was in the windscreen, he set off on foot, seeking the firm of Ibbotson, Utley and Swales. He amused himself by looking for it, rather than enquiring as to its location. Exercising logic, and the benefit of previous observation, he confined his search to the older part of Malton where he found one solicitors’ office, then another, then an estate agent’s, then beyond that, the building occupied by the firm of Ibbotson, Utley and Swales.
‘Our juniors never let up, not allowed to.’ Julian Ibbotson reclined in his chair in an oak-panelled room which reminded Yellich of Ffoulkes’s office in the Yorkshire and Lancashire Bank in York, the same solid, timeless quality. ‘Every ten minutes has to be accounted for. Not like that when I started, I doubt I could stand the pace. I belong to a different era, thank goodness. Too fast-paced for me, even in sleepy Malton. Retirement beckons, oh my, how it beckons.’
‘You have plans for your retirement, sir?’
‘Oh yes…plans, plans and yet more plans. But enough, I understand that you wish to see me about a client of ours?’
‘Ex-client. Marcus Williams.’
‘Oh yes…Oakfield House, open verdict…eight, ten years ago?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘If you want to access the documents you’ll need a warrant, but I wish to help and so I’ll answer any questions as accurately as I can.’
‘Why do you wish to help?’
‘The open verdict. I’m a lawyer, you are a police officer, we both know what an open verdict means.’ Ibbotson smiled, a thin smile from a long face.
‘A piece of the puzzle is missing?’
‘Yes…his death was no accident, he wasn’t the suicidal type…he had a physical condition which may, nay, certainly would have taken some coming to terms with, but once he’d made the adjustment he had a lot to live for. Foul play cannot be ruled out.’
‘It can’t?’
‘And a police officer from York, not our local branch of the North Yorkshire Constabulary, what, I ask myself is this to do with the double murder of Mr and Mrs Williams of which I read all agog in the Yorkshire Post a day or two ago?’
‘Much,’ said Yellich. ‘Possibly. We are pursuing a line of enquiry, more than one, in fact. Can I ask you who benefited from Mr Marcus Williams’s estate?’
‘His brother. The now also deceased Mr Max Williams.’
‘Quite a sum was involved?’
‘About six million pounds. And that was after death duties. Later he came into another half-million pounds when Oakfield House was sold to those who have come to save us. They and their oxen.’
‘Yes…’
‘Confess I’m more than a little surprised that Mr Max Williams should be living in such a modest bungalow when he died. I saw the photograph in the Post and I nearly fell off my chair. Can you tell me if it was by choice or necessity that he lived in such a small house?’
‘Necessity.’
‘That takes skill.’ Ibbotson fixed Yellich with steely eyes.
‘Getting rid of six million pounds in ten years is an act of consummate skill.’
‘Any other beneficiaries?’
‘Scanner appeal at the hospital in York, plus a charity for disabled persons, quite generous, I suppose, in comparison to the usual donations they receive,, but neither sum made a dent in his estate.’