Helen nodded wearily, pulling a dark green cardigan around her shoulders. Merrily sat there feeling all wrong in her cassock, like some kind of attendant angel of death. Noting that Helen Ayling’s eyes remained dry, without the hollow shining light that came with real grief. Pain was there and revulsion, but if this had been a marriage made in heaven something in heaven was malfunctioning.
‘The Blackfriars priory,’ Helen said. ‘Monastery. I’ve never even been there. I’m sure my husband never mentioned it. And the… the Preaching Cross. Why…?’
And then Sophie was back, carrying her grey coat and Merrily’s coat and the wet umbrella.
‘It’s the police again. Not Bliss this time, Merrily. It looks as if he’s been relieved by his superior officer.’
‘Howe?’
Sophie nodded. Merrily stood up at once. If it was Howe, better she wasn’t here.
‘Helen, we can probably both wait in the kitchen,’ Sophie said, ‘if we’re quiet.’
‘Please make yourselves some tea. Anything you want.’ Helen crossing the room, head bowed. ‘I’ll let them in.’
At the door, she turned. She looked small and devastated, like a lost child in a department store.
‘Why do they keep coming here? I’m not part of this. He was a public man. Even in… death.’
She went out quickly, almost running, and Merrily followed Sophie into the inner hall leading to the kitchen, the way they’d come in, Merrily looking back once, thinking, yes, in many ways this was the same as her and Sean.
When a man you were supposed to love and didn’t any more came to a sudden and savage end, it messed you up in all kinds of unforeseeable ways.
13
All of Him
Obviously Annie Howe would come in for this one. This was high-profile in every respect. This would be national news. And besides…
‘My father knew your husband for many years,’ Annie Howe was saying. ‘He’s asked me to express to you his—’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘County Councillor Howe? Charles Howe?’
‘Charlie,’ Helen Ayling said. ‘Yes, of course.’
Yes, there was that very useful connection.
Merrily stood listening in the inner hall, with its stained panels and yellowing mouldings. The door to the drawing room wasn’t quite closed. She’d put on her coat and her gloves, and it was still cold, looked cold in the blue-grey light from a single frosted window at the far end.
There was a radiator, but it was off. Evidently not a man to waste money, Clem Ayling. At least, not his own.
Annie Howe said, ‘I spoke to my father this morning. In confidence — he’s an ex-police officer. He asked me to convey to you his regret at what’s happened to your husband.’
His regret that someone killed your husband and cut off his head? The Charlie that Merrily knew would have said far more but, like New York cops on TV who tossed out a cursory ‘Sorry for your loss’ before cutting to the chase, Annie Howe didn’t do warmth. Or even, come to think of it, fury.
Helen said, ‘Charlie was here… I don’t know, some weeks ago.’
‘Mrs Ayling, I’d like to ask you a few more questions relating to your husband’s council work.’
‘I’m afraid he didn’t—’
‘If you could bear with me… the last day you were together, that’s the day before yesterday, you told my colleague your husband was out all day, at meetings. Do you remember precisely which meetings?’
‘The morning, I’m not sure, but in the afternoon I know he had a meeting of Hereforward.’
‘Hereforward — could you remind me…?’
‘It’s where they discuss radical, long-term ideas for the future of the county, with various appointed consultants. Clem always hated going, but he didn’t like the idea of anything like that even existing, unless he was there to monitor it. Bunch of outsiders, he used to say, who couldn’t care less about Hereford. But then he also used to say that about most of the council officials.’
‘He didn’t get on with certain officials? Can you think of anyone in particular?’
‘Not really, Superintendent. He used to say most of them simply saw Herefordshire as a stepping stone to somewhere more important.’
‘But nobody in particular.’
‘I don’t think he singled out… He also thought some of them were giving jobs to their friends who weren’t up to it. As well as having too many parties and drinking sessions. I’m sure Charlie’s told you—’
‘Yes,’ Howe said, ‘but I’d like to hear about it from your husband’s perspective.’
Sophie had appeared in the doorway with a white china cup and saucer, the cup’s contents steaming. Merrily followed her across the passage to the kitchen. All this was no business of hers, but sometimes — and she wasn’t proud of this — it helped to have inside information to trade with Frannie Bliss.
‘God knows, Sophie, I’ve tried to like that woman. Cold, no people skills and she’ll be chief constable before she’s forty — that’s what Bliss says.’ Softly shutting the kitchen door behind her, she unbuttoned her coat, pulled off her gloves. ‘How am I doing for Christian charity so far?’
‘You look starved.’
‘That’s because I haven’t eaten.’
Aching for a cigarette, Merrily sat down at the round central table. The kitchen was lofty and oppressive, all dark wood and high cupboards. She drank some tea and looked at Sophie, who was standing with her back to the stove — a Rayburn, not an Aga.
‘How long have they lived here?’
‘He lived here for over thirty years,’ Sophie said. ‘They were married… ten, twelve years ago?’
‘Not a first marriage, then.’
‘His first wife died. Two grown-up children, both… away.’
‘So how much will Helen…?’
‘Inherit? I don’t know. If she gets the house, she’ll sell it. It’s entirely impractical, just a symbol of Clement’s status. Bought it when his business was flourishing, in the 1970s.’
‘What was his business?’
‘Electrical goods, small chain of discount shops. Lucrative in their time. Gone before you arrived here, I think. His daughters weren’t interested in taking it on.’
‘You don’t think Helen will stay?’
‘I think she’ll be off as soon as he’s buried.’ Sophie came to sit down. ‘It was a dream gone sour. A rather naive dream. I don’t know what he promised her, but she had this vision of an elegant, graceful life in the Cathedral Close. Civilised dinner parties, receptions, nights at the theatre. This is just… just a market town with a cathedral.’
Sophie looked up at the soiled ceiling, wrinkled her nose. ‘All the changes she was going to make to the house and wasn’t allowed to. What’s wrong with it? he used to say, and I think he really didn’t know. Self-made man, you see, his father was a manual worker. Mrs Thatcher — you saw the photo?’
‘Mmm.’
‘His idol. The small-businessman’s daughter. Waste not, want not. He loved it when she was advising us to stock up on tinned food. He’d go to Tesco and come back with nine tins of stewed steak. Also thought — like Mrs T — that the worst thing to happen to the twentieth century was the 1960s.’
Merrily said nothing. If there was a margin between this and Sophie’s own philosophy, it was slender.
‘And she actually didn’t realise any of this before she married him?’
‘He was — I’ve heard this from quite a few people — a very different man when he was away from home. He was always dynamic, in a heavy sort of way, full of a sometimes alarming energy. And away from Hereford he became… expansive. Generous, charming. As if he saw himself as an ambassador. Helen was exposed to the full force of it, at a particularly vulnerable time in her life.’