The Paying Guests(132)
Lilian stared at him in that mesmerised way, but shook her head: ‘No.’
He pressed her. ‘No idea at all?’
She turned away. ‘No! None of it makes any sense to me. It’s like a horrible dream, that’s all.’
He sat back, it seemed to Frances, as if not quite satisfied with what he’d heard, but with an air of patience, of calculation, of being prepared to accept it for now… Or perhaps she was imagining things. How much could he know? How far could he guess? He had being speaking confidently, even complacently; but his account of the case had been a muddle of fact and fantasy, sometimes approaching the heart of the matter, more often veering wildly away from it. As for all his talk about the man, the grudge, the score to settle —
She suddenly absorbed the implication of his words, and for the first time in days she felt a lifting of anxiety, like a drop in the pressure in her brain. She and Lilian had failed to pass off Leonard’s death as an accident: all right. But wasn’t this the next best thing? The inspector could search for his man for ever. He couldn’t catch someone who didn’t exist…
She came out of her own thoughts, to find him talking about the inquest. It was to be opened tomorrow morning at the coroner’s court, but would be a relatively brief affair, he said, with the case having turned into a murder inquiry; he would request an adjournment from the coroner, Mr Samson. But they would still appreciate it if Mrs Barber would attend – ‘and you and your mother, too, Miss Wray, I’m afraid’ – in case Mr Samson wished to interview them. He was sorry to say that they must be prepared for a certain amount of newspaper interest in Mr Barber’s death, and he hoped that that wouldn’t prove troublesome. Mrs Barber must be sure to let him or Sergeant Heath or one of his constables know if any reporters made a nuisance of themselves.
‘Now that you’re feeling a little better,’ he said to her, rising from the easy chair, ‘I’d just like to run over your statement with you, and clear up a few other points we’re still unsure about. I’d also like your permission to look through your husband’s things – the pockets of his clothes, for example; any personal papers or boxes.’
He waited. Lilian looked up at him. ‘You want to do all that now?’
‘We’d be very grateful. Perhaps there’s another room we might go to, to save troubling your family? Oh, and there’s one other matter,’ he added as, uncertainly, she got to her feet. ‘Rather an intimate one; I’m sorry. But I think I might have mentioned Mr Barber’s overcoat? It’s been with the analysts at Scotland Yard, and they’ve found a number of hairs on it, not all of them from Mr Barber’s own head. I dare say the strays became attached just in the general way of things, but since there seems to have been a tussle before your husband died it’s possible that one or two of them came from the head of his attacker. It would help our inquiry if we could rule out the ones that must have got on to the coat while it was here in the house. Could I ask you to provide me with a sample of hairs from your own head? Just half a dozen from a comb or a hairbrush will do.’ Then, unexpectedly, he looked across at Frances. ‘Could I ask the same thing of you, Miss Wray? The hairs in question are all brown or black, so we needn’t trouble your mother, I think.’
She couldn’t answer for a moment. The question had called up a shock of memories in her muscles and her skin: the digging of Leonard’s fingers into her armpit, the push and weight of his body as the two of them staggered across the carpet – this carpet, right here, with the stains of his blood still on it. She blushed, and felt her face blaze where his cheek had rasped against hers. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. She put down her head and left the room. But then she stood at her chest of drawers with the hairbrush trembling in her hand. She didn’t want to do it. They couldn’t make her, could they? She had to force herself to tug free the hairs from the tangle caught in the bristles. And when, out on the landing, she handed the hairs to Sergeant Heath, he had an envelope waiting for them, with her name already on it; and that made her tremble again.
Back in the sitting-room, the women looked at her, impressed.
‘Scotland Yard!’ said Mrs Viney. ‘Would you ever have believed it, Miss Wray! Isn’t it wonderful how they can put it all together? But just fancy them going through Lenny’s bits and pieces like that. Murder or no murder, I shouldn’t want them poking about in my husband’s things – should you, Netta?’ She cocked her head. Lilian had taken the men into her bedroom and was murmuring with them there. ‘Still, they’ve got to do it, I suppose, if it helps their investigations. Oh, but didn’t it turn you right over, hearing all that talk about poor Lenny’s brains!’
The little girl had returned, in a cloud of eau-de-Cologne. Dumping a wriggling Siddy into his mother’s lap, she said, ‘What did they say about Uncle Lenny’s brains?’
Mrs Viney pulled a sad face. ‘They said there was a great big bruise on them.’
‘How do they know?’
‘The doctors saw it.’
‘How did they see it?’
‘Well —’
Vera was reaching for her cigarettes. ‘They cut his head open, didn’t they?’
Min squealed. Netta protested. The little girl looked appalled and delighted. ‘Did they, Mum? Did they, Nanny?’