‘Not as you mean. No question of any criminal act on your husband’s part. After your morning call the vicar was naturally worried, and went to see if there was any suggestion to be found in the church. He found a situation which made him call our department at once. Your husband is dead, Mrs Rainbow. It looks as if he fell to his death from the church tower last night. I’m sorry to be the bearer of such news.’
He’d been right to go ahead bluntly with the fact. And the first thing he saw in her, or was almost certain he saw, was that she had never for a moment considered this possibility. Either that, or she was an actress right out of his experience. Her eyes flared wide open, her face blanched with shock, her hands, which had been bunched into doubled fists a moment before, lay loose in her lap. The second thing he saw, as she stirred slowly out of her stillness, was that she had glimpsed a marvellous light at the end of a long and still suspect tunnel. So that was all! He was dead, and she hadn’t killed him, or even willed his death. Simply, he wasn’t there any more!
‘Are you sure?’ she said in a muted, wary voice, letting the syllables slide out one by one as if they had to carry passports. ‘Arthur’s dead? But how could it happen? Why should he fall from the tower? Why should he even climb the tower? All he wanted was the organ, and the choir to go with it.’ The single virtue Rainbow had possessed hit her suddenly, she knotted her hands again, and rocked like a genuine widow. ‘He did care for music, you know! Only he never really felt it in his bones.’
His bones were in splinters from the waist down, and he was almost excessively dead. George experienced her brief, guilty, unloving pity, and understood it. She didn’t really owe very much.
‘You’ll want to ask me questions,’ she said reasonably. ‘Where is he? Do you need me to – to identify him, or anything?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said George. ‘But you’ll understand that his death presents something of a problem, and we shall have to collect all the information possible that can shed any light on it. For instance, it seems hardly likely that he set out to take his own life.’
‘No, he never would,’ said Barbara positively.
‘The idea of an accidental fall presents difficulties, too.’
‘I understand,’ she said bluntly. ‘You can’t rule out the possibility that someone else had a hand in it. It’s all right, I know where I stand now. The marriage partner is normally the first suspect. You’ll want access to all his papers and accounts. You’d better have the key of his office now, everything in it is just as he left it. And you’ll want a statement from me, about his movements yesterday, and mine.’
‘I’ll send someone later to get a formal statement. Now just tell me. Things were as usual yesterday? He went to choir practice at the usual time? There was nothing out of the way in his manner?’
‘Everything was just the same as ever. He always walked to the church, it’s not far by the side gate. He went out at the usual time, and he told me he’d be late back, because he wanted to get in some practice after the choir left. That’s why I wasn’t worried until around midnight. He could easily have stopped in at the vicar’s afterwards, and sat talking about his plans for the season’s music. He intended some drastic changes. They weren’t too popular with the choir. Some modern music is very ungrateful stuff for voices. I was here alone all the evening, and went to bed without waiting for him. Even when I woke up later, and found he still hadn’t come in, I can’t say I was really worried. He didn’t invariably consult me, or even warn me, before taking off on business at a moment’s notice. And besides, nobody could have started much of a hunt for him in the middle of the night. But when there was no telephone call this morning, and his car was still in the garage, I thought I’d better make some discreet enquiries. That was when I called the vicar, and since then I’ve called everyone I could think of, half a dozen dealers, both the shops, even Charles Goddard in Comerbourne, and John Stubbs down at Mottisham. And then you came. And that’s all. Oh, and I’ll give you his solicitor’s name and number. As far as I know, they hold his will.’
She was perfectly in command of herself and her situation now, and her composure in speaking of such details as her husband’s will was completely detached and impersonal, as though the disposal of his worldly goods had nothing to do with her, and could hardly affect her.
‘And what happens about the funeral arrangements? I suppose there has to be an inquest. And then will they release his body? I suppose I ought to call in a firm to take responsibility, in any case.’
‘It would be wise,’ George agreed. ‘I’d like the addresses of the shops. And I will take the office key, with your permission. We shall probably have to disturb you occasionally during the next few days, but we’ll try not to upset your life more than we have to. You have no servants living in the house?’
‘To vouch for my movements last night?’ she said with a faint, grim smile. ‘No, I’m afraid you’ll have to take, or doubt, my word for it. There are two girls who come in, mornings, and help out if I have a dinner-party. And a woman who comes in twice a week to clean. All from the village. I’ll give you their names, too.’
Nothing could have been more open or more practical. She handed him the freedom of the house and of all her husband’s papers and records, as though they were now nothing to do with her. As though, in fact, she felt the whole load of this house, this business, this association, lifted from her, and was undertaking the final chore of handing over to someone else with the greatest equanimity. The end of an employment. Rather an abrupt end, but the times were such that sudden redundancies were commonplace.
It occurred to him as he was leaving that there was even a note of curious anticipation in her practicality, rather as though the redundancy did not come amiss to her, almost as though she already had some other and more congenial situation in mind. It sent him away wondering how accurate his judgement of her had been, and how good an actress she could be at need. For there was no blinking the fact that Rainbow had not projected the image of a successful marriage so much as that of an efficient working partnership, and the lady had a field of admirers as long as Middlehope itself, besides the outsiders from Rainbow’s world. Now just how do all these hopeful swains stand, George wondered, now she’s a widow?
Sergeant Moon and Detective-Constable Barnes, who was a Middlehope man himself, were making the rounds of the nearest houses to the church, in search of someone, somewhere, who would admit to having seen, or heard, or even thought, anything during the past twenty-four hours. They were both guileful and resourceful men, well versed in the ways of their neighbours, and they made every approach obliquely, with mild deception in every phrase. But neither of them was surprised to find that the news had flown before them, even though no curious onlookers had had to be chased away from the churchyard. However deviously they circled the real reason for their enquiries, just as deviously the interrogated counter-circled, well aware of what had happened to Rainbow, and impervious in the armour of ignorance. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, nobody knew anything.
‘Which could well be true,’ admitted Barnes, comparing notes after an hour’s activity. ‘Because I reckon this was timed well on, round about ten if not after, and it would be dark, and there aren’t any houses so near that one heavy, dull fall, with no after-sounds, would get people rushing out to see what had happened. But no bones about it, the result would be the same if nine or ten of us had seen him shoved over the parapet.’ It was the measure of his entrenched loyalties that even in a police matter he said ‘us’ and not ‘them’, a fact which Sergeant Moon perfectly understood.