‘Thank you.’
Colbeck knew that he was just trying to change the subject. In an office as tidy as his, Haygarth would know exactly where everything was. He’d instituted the false search because he’d been knocked off balance. Colbeck exploited the weakness.
‘Is it true that you haven’t been to Spondon for decades, sir?’
‘Yes, it is. I told you so.’
‘Then you must have a twin, Mr Haygarth. I have reliable reports that someone looking remarkably like you attended the funeral of Mrs Peet.’ He gave a quizzical smile. ‘Have you any idea who that might have been?’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The situation was intolerable. They both felt that. Lydia Quayle and Beatrice Myler still had their meals together but they were ordeals rather than occasions for pleasure. They were conducted largely in silence and what conversation they did manage was brief and brittle. Blaming herself for what had happened, Lydia kept more and more to her room, the one place in the house where she didn’t feel that she was intruding. Beatrice, too, often sought privacy. Yet even though they were physically apart, they felt each other’s presence keenly. When they did move about the house, it was as if they were walking on eggshells, each afraid that she might accidentally bump into the other. Mutual love and understanding had perished.
Unable to stand it any longer, Lydia came to a decision. When she found her friend in the drawing room, she tried to sound as pleasant as possible.
‘I think that we need some time apart, Beatrice,’ she said.
‘Yes, I’ve been thinking the same thing. Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, I fancy that you do, Lydia.’
‘Truly, I don’t.’
‘You want to go there, don’t you?’ said Beatrice, accusation hanging on the air. ‘In spite of everything you promised, you intend to go home.’
‘That’s not the case at all. I simply … don’t want to be in the way.’
Beatrice made no reply. Lowering her eyes, she sat in silence. The tension between them was almost tangible. For several minutes, they wrestled with words that refused to come out of their mouths. It was only when Lydia was about to move off that her friend recovered her voice.
‘How long will you be away?’
‘How long do you want me to be away?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘But you’d value a break from me, is that it?’
‘We’d both profit, Lydia.’
It was gone. The ability that each of them had had to read the other’s mind had vanished. They were like strangers, meeting for the first time, unable to get beyond a surface politeness, bereft of any affection. Lydia suddenly noticed what a plain and unbecoming woman she was and, by the same token, Beatrice was struck by the fact that there was so little about her companion to interest her. Neither would believe that they had lived together so agreeably.
‘Are you still reading that book about Venice?’ asked Lydia.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘And you still want to go there again?’
‘I need a holiday.’
‘Would you need one if I wasn’t here?’
Mildly put, the question had explosive power. Beatrice recoiled.
‘I didn’t say that, Lydia.’
‘Would you?’
‘I haven’t thought about it.’
‘I’ll wager that you’ve thought about nothing else.’
‘All right,’ conceded the other, ‘it has crossed my mind.’
‘In other words,’ said Lydia, grasping the nettle and speaking more forcefully, ‘you’d be better off without me.’
‘I might be.’
‘Why can’t you be honest about it?’
‘Why can’t you be honest about your plan to go home?’
‘I don’t have a plan.’
‘Yes, you do, I can see it in your face. It’s been fomenting in your mind ever since Sergeant Leeming and that woman came here. Their visit changed your attitude towards your family somehow.’
It was true and Lydia was unable to deny it. Her conversation with Madeleine Colbeck had altered her perception of the world she’d left behind in Nottingham. While she didn’t feel a strong urge to return, she did view her family with less bitterness than hitherto. Attuned to her moods, Beatrice had been aware of it at once.
‘They ruined everything,’ she said, abruptly. ‘Until they came here — until that vile man and that interfering woman arrived — we’d always enjoyed peace and contentment, but not any more.’
‘You can’t blame the sergeant and Mrs Colbeck. They’re trying to solve a murder and must take whatever steps are necessary.’
Beatrice spoke with coldness. ‘That’s the other thing.’
‘What is?’
‘Most people in my position would find it intolerable,’ she said, giving full vent to her anger. ‘When you came to London, you drifted from one hotel to another. I offered you a place of sanctuary and you brought murder into my house. Yes, I know,’ she went on, quelling Lydia’s protest, ‘it wasn’t your fault that your father was killed. That’s not the point. The simple fact is that you are inescapably linked to a heinous crime. Some people would find that highly embarrassing in a lodger yet I was ready to accept it and to support you through a difficult period. In the name of friendship, I did everything humanly possible to offer you succour. When I did that, of course, I was unaware that you’d started a correspondence with your brother.’
Full of pain and recrimination, the words poured out of her but Lydia heard only one of them. It was enough to wound her deeply. Beatrice had described her as a ‘lodger’. The older woman had invited her to move in as a dear friend yet Lydia’s status was now that of someone who merely rented a room.
‘I’ll leave immediately,’ said Lydia.
When they met at the hotel, they had a lot of information to exchange. Colbeck told him about the second visit to Melbourne and about his clash with Donald Haygarth. The acting chairman had shrugged off his question about the funeral.
‘He claimed that it did not constitute a proper visit to Spondon because he was so preoccupied with the service that he saw nothing of the village.’
‘Why was he there in the first place?’ asked Leeming.
‘It turns out that he’s a friend of Mr Peet and went out of courtesy.’
‘Mr Haygarth could have told us that before.’
‘I think that there are lots of things he could have told us, Victor. One by one, I suspect, we’ll go on finding them. But what do you have to report? Did you follow Hockaday to Duffield?’
‘He didn’t go there, Inspector.’
Leeming explained what had happened and how he had met an old man who confided that he was Jed Hockaday’s father. Where the cobbler had gone, he didn’t know because Hockaday had given the sergeant the slip.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Colbeck. ‘He may not even have known that you were following him. You’ve always been adept at shadowing people.’
‘I felt cheated, sir. He shook me off.’
‘Then he’s cleverer than we gave him credit. On the night of the murder, he was in Duffield, as he told us, but he only called on Mr and Mrs Verney at the end of the evening. Where had Hockaday been beforehand?’
‘I’ll tackle him about that.’
‘What else have you discovered, Victor?’
‘Oh, I had a surprise, sir,’ said Leeming. ‘Stanley Quayle came here to see you. He wasn’t very pleased to deal with me instead but we had an interesting talk. That was the surprise. He may have looked down his nose at me but he’s not the ogre you took him for when you first met him.’
After listening to an account of the conversation between the two men, Colbeck was sorry to have missed Stanley Quayle. Some valuable information had been gleaned and the most telling fact concerned the murder victim’s whereabouts in the hours leading up to his death.
‘His appointments diary was stolen by the killer,’ decided Colbeck, ‘because it would have told us where he would have been.’