‘After that, I'll want to see the dead girls’ families – which will need a woman's touch. I'll take Mary Carmody with me for that.’
All that should give him excuse enough to avoid the main witnesses for another day or two. Still worried that Maureen might expose to Llewellyn the family connection to Nigel, Rafferty was anxious to impress on him the need for discretion. He told Smales to change out of his uniform and to wait for him in the car park. When the young officer had left, Rafferty turned to Llewellyn. He was unsure quite how to tackle the issue. Llewellyn could be prickly. But it had to be done. Should Llewellyn mention Nigel's full name to Maureen she would immediately say, ‘Nigel Blythe? If you mean the Nigel Blythe whose original name was Jerry Kelly, then he's my cousin. Mine and Joseph's.’
If Llewellyn learned of the relationship then the chances of someone making the connection between him and the Nigel at the dating agency parties would be far greater. Alarmed by the danger inherent in such a connection,Rafferty felt he had no choice but to remind his sergeant of the need for confidentiality. Expecting Llewellyn's facial landscape to take on the appearance of frozen tundra on which Arctic terns could happily nest, Rafferty was astonished, once he'd stumbled through his awkward reminder, when Llewellyn's expression remained pleasingly temperate and his only comment was mild.
‘I hope I've always respected the confidential nature of the work we do. I'm not the type of officer who returns home after work and bandies suspects’ names about over the anti-pasta. I thought you knew that.’
‘Well yes, of course, I do. It's just that with a new wife, pillow-talk – that kind of thing,’ Rafferty tailed off lamely.
‘Pillow-talk?’ Llewellyn repeated. He sounded more amused than offended. ‘You can rest assured, Sir, I don't do ‘pillow-talk’ about work matters. Maureen and I have many shared interests, but murder isn't one of them.’
Rafferty was glad to hear it. He managed a muttered, ‘That's all right, then,’ before he hurried off to find Timothy Smales in the car park.
Rafferty's
journey up to York with Smales was uneventful. It was fortunate that he'd been able to ‘borrow’ Smales from uniform. A more experienced officer would certainly question Rafferty's determination to speak to the women alone. But Smales, being still apprentice-green, could, without argument, be despatched on tea-seeking duties or some such. He hadn't even expressed astonishment when told he could drive, but had simply taken the car keys with alacrity, as if scared Rafferty might change his mind. But as Rafferty told himself as he eased into the passenger seat, even Smales's driving had to be safer than his spectacled efforts. And it was less likely to wrap the car round a lamp post.
And when, some hours later, as they pulled up in the hotel forecourt of the modern concrete and glass architectural monstrosity that was the four star House of York, the hotel where the two women had agreed to meet him – being understandably reluctant to have him come to their homes – Rafferty began to believe the fates had relented and would treat him kindly.
For once, this optimistic belief wasn't disappointed. But then he had decided to help it along a little. His assurance that Nigel was an innocent whose identity had been stolen encouraged both women to back up Nigel's alibis. He had downplayed deliberately, certain that if they learned otherwise both women would retract. But his reassurance gave them confidence that their husbands would never discover how faithless they were. It had been a masterstroke.
He had interviewed each woman separately. Kylie Smith, all bleached blonde curls and short, hot pink skirt suit – for all his high pretensions, in his love-life Nigel had reverted to type – seemed unable to speak in anything other than the clichéd phrases of the born estate agent and when Rafferty had pressed her for firm answers, she had done her best to convince him that her and Nigel's little liaison had been completely innocent.
‘Nigel and I did have a little drinkette, Inspector after dinner on the Saturday night. And although I admit I went up with him to his splendidly proportioned bedroom and we were there till almost midnight, it was only to look at his laptop and see how his property agency has designed their website.’
‘Come and look at my website’ must be the modern version of inviting a girl to look at one's etchings, Rafferty reflected. He'd have expected Nigel to have a more original chat-up line. But whatever his cousin lacked in originality was more-than-made-up for by his choice of one-night-stands. And as Rafferty realized that, as with Kayleigh Jenkins, Nigel's other alibi supplier, the time-scale Kylie Smith mentioned made it impossible for Nigel to have returned to Elmhurst to commit murder, he sent up a silent thank you. Because as he pocketed the two hand-written statements, he knew that Nigel was officially off the suspect list.
Fearing that even the bashful Smales would by now have managed to attract the attention of one of the four-star hotel's supercilious waitresses, place the tea order and return to make the astonishing discovery that Nigel Blythe wasn't at the top of their suspect list at all, Rafferty hastily drew the second interview to a close. With effusive thanks for her time, he ushered Kylie Smith from the room and went in search of Smales.
The
drive back from York was the leisurely one Rafferty insisted upon. Unfortunately, it was also one with something of an ‘atmosphere’. Because, even though he had again allowed Smales to drive, this had done little to mollify the young officer's pique at being excluded from the interviews; neither had Rafferty's terse instruction to be quiet as he needed to think. After that, Smales had retreated into a sulky silence. It worried Rafferty because not only had his now silent companion become worrying inquisitive, he had also questioned Rafferty's handling of the interviews, even going so far as to point out that he should have been present at both.
He was right, of course. Shame he hadn't realized just how much Smales had come on in the last few months. It was unfortunate that Smales's nous hadn't developed sufficiently for him to realize that questioning a senior officer's conduct of a case was unlikely to win him brownie points.
The only pleasing aspects to their return journey from Rafferty's point of view was that it provided more time both for his beard to grow and for the witnesses’ memories of ‘Nigel’ to fade.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Back at
the station, Rafferty quickly dismissed Smales. Anxious to avoid Llewellyn and receive another third-degree about Nigel's alibis, he broke all records in typing up the notes of the York interviews that concealed as much as they revealed, and was about to head back out when he saw Llewellyn's message.
The first item on this lengthy epistle told him another thing he'd rather no one knew he knew; namely, that Isobel Goddard had returned from her parents’ home and could be interviewed without Rafferty having to drive to Suffolk.
Why was it, Rafferty wondered, that whenever Llewellyn tried to be helpful, he invariably upset his own cunningly laid plans? Clearly, Llewellyn expected him to turn up at the dating agency offices. As this didn't suit Rafferty at all, he scribbled a brief note to the end of Llewellyn's, to the effect that he would be unavailable as he was interested to learn what Isobel's parents could tell him about the reason for her flight.
By now, as a quick perusal of the rest of Llewellyn's note revealed, the team, with minimal hands-on input from him, had managed to whittle the suspect numbers down by half. Isobel Goddard was still numbered amongst them.
With the discovery that Isobel had not been able to supply a verified statement as to her exact whereabouts for the approximate times of the two murders, Rafferty felt more need than ever to try to find answers to questions he had about the girl. After what he had learned about her at the first dating agency party he doubted her reason for returning to her parents’ home after the murders provided the complete answer or even the real one. He hoped her parents might be able to shed some light.
It
was a pleasant drive up to Suffolk. The Goddards’ home, Latimer Court, was north of Ipswich and as traffic was surprisingly light he made good time until he tried to find the house itself. Latimer Court wasn't on a main road and even though he had rung Charles Goddard and obtained directions these had turned out to be totally confusing. So it was early evening before he finally noticed the sign for the house. Obscured by a privet hedge badly in need of a trim, it was only when a timely breeze raised the obscuring foliage that the worn lettering ‘Latimer Court’ was revealed and he realized he had already passed the place three times.
He turned the car left and edged gingerly up a drive cratered with potholes and lined with knee-high weeds. Lancelot Bliss had said the place needed a lot of money spent on it. But even as Rafferty drove nearer to the house and saw its run-down state, he recognized that Latimer Court had once been a beautiful place and could be again. Elizabethan, laid out in the traditional ‘E’ design, it had the tall chimneys that were a feature of that era. Built of red brick mellowed to harmonious shades of rose, broken up by the many large creeper-clad casement windows, it was a romantic-looking house – at least from a distance. Though as Rafferty got nearer, he noticed the peeling paint on the woodwork, the dullness of the glass in the windows and that the chimneys, far from being engagingly picturesque, were in reality dangerously unstable. He guessed from the stains on the walls that the place also had a problem with damp.
Whatever might be wrong with the rest of the house, the front door looked as sturdy as the day the carpenter had fitted it. Huge, it was of silvery-grey oak with a knocker half as big as Rafferty's head. The woman who answered its reverberating summons turned out to be Mrs Goddard, Isobel's mother.
Eve Goddard must have been lovely in her youth. Tall and willowy, she retained the good bones of true beauty, though Rafferty suspected the beauty was on the outside only. It wasn't age that had scored lines from nose to mouth and made those little puckering lines above her top lip that, in her case, surely betokened discontent rather than age.
Her greeting was cool. She led him to a room at the back of the house that he assumed had once been the library and left him there while she went to find her husband.
The room was as shabby as the rest. A large bookcase took up most of the wall opposite the windows. Half the shelves contained nothing but dust-balls and dead flies and the other half housed a collection of dun-coloured books that looked as though no one had opened them for half a century or more. In the centre of the room, eight chairs upholstered in cracked burgundy leather were set around a long table, all laced together by cobwebs; Rafferty half expected Dickens’ Miss Havisham to appear, still in her tattered bridal dress.
Even though it was a bright day and the library had four floor-to-ceiling windows, the room was dim. He saw that the windows all had a thick film of grime made up of rain splatters, pigeon droppings and time's unwashed detritus. And as he peered through this misty miasma he glimpsed a secret garden that time – and the gardener - had long since forgot. It was all matted shrubs and roses strangled by the heavy embrace of bindweed. Beneath it all, he could just pick out what he thought must be part of the original herb garden. It was as choked and uncared for as the rest. He turned as he heard a hesitant footfall behind him.
‘Inspector…em…? My wife said you were here.’
It was clear Charles Goddard had already forgotten his name, so Rafferty repeated it.
‘How can I help you?’
Charles Goddard was surely no more than in his mid-fifties, but with his grey, rapidly balding hair, vague manner and scholarly stoop, he looked ten years older. In his dark green cardigan that was missing buttons and had holes in the elbows he appeared as uncared-for as his home. He peered uncertainly up at Rafferty through spectacles held together with Sellotape.
Rafferty said. ‘I wanted to speak to you about your daughter Isobel, sir.’
‘My daughter's not here, inspector.’ Eve Goddard appeared behind her husband. ‘She's returned to her flat in Elmhurst. I drove her there myself.’
Rafferty nodded. ‘It was you and your husband I wanted to speak to. I wondered whether your daughter told you what had prompted her to return here?’
‘I'd have thought the murders in Elmhurst would be prompt enough for any sensitive young woman, Inspector,’ was Eve Goddard's sharp response.
Charles Goddard added, more gently, ‘They upset her so much that she could barely bring herself to talk about them at all. Not to me, anyway. She was closeted with her mother for most of the time she was here. I hardly saw her.’
‘I asked because your daughter was apparently convinced she had been the intended target both times. Do you have any idea why that was?’
Charles Goddard gaped at him. ‘Isobel? Surely not? You must have misunderstood her, Serg– er, Inspector.’
It was clear to Rafferty her father was the last person Isobel would confide in. He turned to Mrs Goddard. ‘Did your daughter confide in you?’
‘Confide?’
Her voice was sharp, her manner verging on the hectoring. Rafferty began to understand why her husband should appear so beaten down and defeated.
‘Isobel had nothing to confide. As I have already told you, it was natural for her to return home in the circumstances. My daughter's a sensitive girl and had managed to convince herself she was next on the list of some psychopath.’