Authors: Anthony Price
He nodded. ‘That’s what the DI thinks, and I can see no reason to disagree.’
‘Nobody saw anything?’
‘Not a thing, so far. Each of the houses backs on to woods—he almost certainly came in that way, specially here, with the long drive. Plenty of cover at the back, and it’s only half a mile from the side road to Winslow. Most likely a local boy with local knowledge.
So … nothing to worry you, Mrs Fitzgibbon.’
She smiled at him. ‘I think you’re right, Mr Geddes.’ To one smile add a small sigh and a pinch of resignation. ‘But I shall have to go over the place all the same.’
He cocked his head interrogatively, not quite frowning. ‘Is that really necessary, in the circumstances?’
‘Probably not, in the circumstances. But Colonel Butler is engaged in extremely sensitive work and we haven’t been able to contact him yet. So … he’s entitled to the full treatment.’
There wasn’t much he could say to that, still less object to. Every service looked after its own vulnerable next-of-kin, and their service particularly, as a matter of security as well as routine commonsense enlightenment. And when something was actually amiss the job couldn’t be skimped, he should know that.
All the same, there was no percentage in seeming to teach him to suck eggs, a woman who did that in a man’s world only encouraged chauvinism. A little calculated femininity paid better dividends.
She spread the smile. ‘Besides, the Colonel’s by way of being my boss most of the time. When he sees my signature on the release he’ll talk to his housekeeper, and if I haven’t impressed her with my devotion to duty I shall be cast into the outer darkness.’
‘Ah! That does make a difference—I take your point, of course.’ The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘I didn’t know that you were … acquainted with the lady.’
Frances regarded him curiously. ‘I’m not.’
‘You’re not? Ah … well, then—‘ he gestured towards the house ‘—I’d better not keep you from your duty, Mrs Fitzgibbon.’
He hadn’t produced any of the reactions she’d expected, thought Frances as she walked beside him to the iron-studded mock-Tudor door in the mock-Tudor porch. In fact, except for the momentary twitch, he hadn’t produced any reactions at all, expected or unexpected.
The heavy door was ajar, opening for her at the touch of his fingers on it. Beyond it, the entrance hall was high and spacious, with a great carved oak staircase dominating it, and gloomy in the November overcast except for the high-gloss polish of the parquet floor and the stair treads, which reflected a daylight hardly apparent outside. Frances corrected her first impression: not so much mock Tudor as Hollywood Tudor, art imitating art.
All it needed for an echo of
Rebecca
was the beautiful Mrs Butler on the staircase. But the woman on the staircase certainly wasn’t the beautiful Mrs Butler.
Frances stood her ground as Nannie—it could only be Nannie—advanced toward her. It struck her as odd that she should feel she was holding her ground, but that was how she felt.
Then, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she knew that it wasn’t odd at all, her instinct had simply been ten paces ahead of her eyesight.
Nannie wasn’t much above average height, and she wasn’t fat either, but she was … solid. Her battleship-grey twin-set matched the colour of her hair, and her hair matched the colour of her eyes. A large nose dominated her face: she levelled the nose at Frances and stared down it with all the friendliness of a gamekeeper come upon a poacher in the covert.
Frances opened her mouth in the hope that the right words would come out of it.
‘I have absolutely nothing to say to you,’ said Nannie pre-emptively. The grey eyes flicked up and down Frances once, then nose and eyes swung towards Detective-Sergeant Geddes. ‘You gave me to understand, constable, that you would not tell the local newspaper anything about this.’
‘Yes, Mrs Hooker -‘
‘Indeed, you promised. You gave a positive undertaking -‘
‘I’m not a reporter,’ said Frances.
The nose came back to her. Nannie peered towards her, sighting her at point-blank range. ‘No? Well, you are exactly like the young woman who misreported me at the last parish council meeting.’ She scrutinised Frances’s face again, then her suit. ‘You still look like her … but you are better dressed, it’s true … Hmm! Then if you are not a reporter—what are you?’
‘My name is Fitzgibbon -‘
‘You are not a policewoman. You are far too little to be a policewoman.’
Detective-Sergeant Geddes cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Hooker -‘
‘You are not too young to be a policewoman—and you are not that girl who misreported me, I can see that now, she was much younger…’ Nannie conceded the point on the basis other own scrutiny, not on their denials. ‘You are older than you look too. It’s in the eyes, your age is. Old eyes in a young face, that’s what you’ve got. And also—‘ She stopped suddenly.
‘Mrs Hooker, this is Mrs Fitzgibbon, from London—from the Colonel’s department.’
Geddes seized his chance. ‘She’s the person we’ve been waiting for, that I told you about.’
‘What?’ Nannie frowned at him, then at Frances.
‘I’m a colleague of Colonel Butler’s,’ said Frances.
Disbelief supplanted the frown. ‘A colleague?’
‘A subordinate colleague,’ Frances softened the claim.
Nannie transferred the disbelieving look to Geddes. ‘You didn’t say it would be a woman,’ she accused him. ‘I expected a man.’
Like master, like housekeeper, concluded Frances grimly: Colonel Butler and Mrs Hooker had the same ideas about the natural order of things. Perhaps that coincidence of prejudice had been an essential qualification for the job nine years ago, when he had been casting around for someone to take charge of his motherless girls.
So now, although Nannie obviously disliked having policemen tramp over her highly-polished floors almost as much as she hated thieves, she might just have tolerated one of her employer’s colleagues—any of his colleagues except this one, who added insult to injury by being the wrong shape and size.
Hard luck, Nannie,
thought Frances unsympathetically. But more to the point, hard luck, Frances. Because here was an unfair obstacle on the course, the only clue to which had been that twitch of the detective-sergeant’s just half a minute before it had loomed up in front of her. And more than an obstacle, too, because obstacles could be removed, or climbed, or jumped, or avoided.
Nannie was watching her intently, no longer with naked hostility, but without either approval or deference. And that was the problem: somehow, and very quickly, Mrs Hooker must approve of and defer to Mrs Fitzgibbon.
Small smile.
‘Sorry, Nannie. But I’m afraid I’m the best they could manage at short notice. You’ll have to make do with me.’
‘Nannie’ was a risk, but she had to take a short cut to some degree of familiarity. And also, at the same time and without seeming too pushy—too unfeminine—she had to assert herself.
She turned to Geddes. ‘Who else is here?’
‘Inspector Turnbull and his DC, madam. And the uniform man.’ Geddes gave her a glazed look. ‘I think they are out the back somewhere, in the garden.’
She wanted them all out. She wanted Nannie to herself, without interruptions.
‘Then would you be so good as to tell the Inspector that I’m here, please?’ No smile for Detective-Sergeant Geddes. ‘Don’t let him stop what he’s doing. I’d just like to have a word with him before he goes … before you all go… will you tell him?’
‘Very good, madam.’ Geddes moved smartly towards the door.
‘And wipe your feet when you come back in,’ admonished Nannie to his back.
‘Yes, madam.’ He sounded happy to be getting out of her way. What was more important, however, was that the foot-wiping admonition offered one possible short-cut to Nannie’s heart: the sooner Mrs Fitzgibbon got rid of the police, the better for Mrs Fitzgibbon.
‘Now, Nannie… I take it the Colonel hasn’t phoned, or anything like that?’ She padded the question deliberately.
‘No, Miss Fitzgibbon.’ Nannie declared neutrality.
‘Are you expecting a call from him? Does he call home regularly when he’s away?’
Frances decided to let the ‘Miss’ go uncorrected for the time being.
‘No, Miss Fitzgibbon.’ Armed neutrality.
‘I see… Well, we’re doing our best to get in touch with him.’ Not true. ‘It’s only a question of time.’
Nannie stiffened. There’s no call to worry him.’ Frances wondered how much Nannie knew about the nature of her employer’s work. Probably not a lot, the Official Secrets Act being what it was, though enough to accept that a break-in at Brookside House could never be treated at its face value.
‘I’m sure there isn’t,’ she agreed gently. ‘But the rules say that we have to, for everyone’s protection. So you must look on me as just part of the rules, Nannie.’
Nannie thawed by about one degree centigrade. ‘Very good. Miss Fitzgibbon.’
It was going to be hard work.
‘At least I can get rid of the police for you, anyway,’ she offered her first olive branch with a conspiratorial grin. ‘There’s no need for them to hang around now that I’m here.’
As an olive branch it was not an overwhelming success: Nannie simply nodded her acceptance of the lesser of two evils.
More than hard work, decided Frances. ‘In the meantime, perhaps we could go somewhere a little less … public?’ She looked at her watch: it was two o’clock already.
‘Somewhere where there’s a telephone?’
Nannie glanced at the telephone on the table at the foot of the staircase, then back at Frances.
‘There is a telephone in the library,’ she admitted grudgingly, indicating a door to Frances’s right.
Frances followed her to the door. There had to be a bridge between them somewhere, or a place where the bank was firm enough to construct a bridge. Or even a ford where she could cross over to Nannie’s side without drowning in the attempt.
The library really was a library: a long, high room entirely walled with books from floor to ceiling except for its two immense mullioned windows. The wooden floor shone with the same high gloss as that of the hall, but here there was no smell of polish, only the dry odour of accumulated knowledge on paper, compressed between old leather and matured over dozens of years. At the far end was an immense mahogany desk, in the direct light from one of the windows. All its drawers were open, one of the top ones pulled out so far that it rested at an angle on the one beneath it. A silver-framed photograph lay on the floor, face down.
Frances heard Nannie draw in her breath sharply beside her.
Suddenly Frances remembered how hot her own dear Constable Ellis had been on the subject of burglary—
* * *
‘
But I
’
ve nothing worth taking, Mr Ellis. I might just as well leave the cottage unlocked.
They wouldn
’
t find anything, no matter how hard they looked.
’
‘
Don
’
t you believe it, Mrs Fitz. They
’
d take something you wouldn
’
t want to lose, even if
they left
empty
-
handed.
’
‘
Now you
’
re being too clever for me, Mr Ellis. Shame on you!
’
‘
Oh no. If it happens to you, you
’
ll know sure enough. And it
’
ll make you sick, too. Because
breaking into a woman
’
s house
—
goin
’
through her private things, like the flimsy t
hings she
wears next to her skin, if you
’
ll pardon me, like her knickers and her silk slips an
’
suck
-
like
—
that
’
s almost like rape when a stranger does it. So
…
breakin
’
into a house is like raping it.
Raping its privacy, you might say. It isn
’
t chan
ged, not really. But it isn
’
t the same, even if they
don
’
t take a thing.
’
* * *
Frances looked at Nannie. ‘Have the Police been through here?’
‘Yes.’ Nannie continued to stare at the desk.
‘Right, then.’ Frances walked across the library to the desk. First she fitted the displaced drawer into its runners and pushed it back into its proper place, and then slid back the other drawers, one after another (very neat and tidy was Colonel Butler; his letters held together with elastic bands, still in their original envelopes; his receipted bills in their appropriate folders—
School Fees
was the topmost folder in one drawer.
Insurance
in another; a place for everything, and everything in its place, that was Colonel Butler). Then she methodically straightened the desk diary and the pen-holder and the leather-bound calendar. And last of all she set the silver-framed picture in its proper place, on the left. The photograph was of Nannie herself and the three children at the seaside; judging by the size of the largest child it dated from the early 1970s.
‘It’s all right now—everything’s all right. He—they were only looking for money, Nannie. The picture glass isn’t broken.’
‘There wasn’t any money in the desk,’ said Nannie, not to Frances but to the library itself, as though the thief was still hiding in it.
But then, of course, she was right: the thief was still hiding in it. A different thief, yet one who knew what she was after even if she didn’t know what she might find. Not a conventional thief, who would take the water-colours off the walls and leave the drawers gaping, but certainly a thief within Constable Ellis’s definition.