Spider Light(48)
‘That sounds as if you think I’m an old lag, Miss Weston.’ It was lightly said, but Antonia’s eyes flew upwards to his face. ‘You’d better have a glass of brandy first, though. Antidote to shock.’
He poured the brandy, and then checked an address book and made the call, merely saying that there were signs of a break in at Charity Cottage and that the cottage was presently occupied by a lady living on her own. He listened to the voice at the other end for a moment, and then said quite sharply, ‘Yes, I do think you should send someone out at once. I don’t know if anything’s been taken, but Miss Weston’s presumably got to sleep in the cottage tonight and if the prowler’s still around…’ There was a pause, and then he handed the phone to Antonia. ‘They’re sending someone out to take a look round and get statements in about half an hour, but they’d like more details from you first. It’s Sergeant Blackburn.’
He left her to it, going into one of the other rooms–presumably his bedroom because he took the suitcase with him–but even though he closed the door Antonia thought he could probably hear what she was saying. Infuriatingly, relayed to the stolid-sounding sergeant, the two incidents sounded like the delusions of a neurotic female: the first ridiculously trivial–the cat got in without my seeing how or where; the second over-dramatic. A hangman’s noose tied to a beam in the kitchen, left there for her to find.
Yes, she had said a hangman’s noose. Yes, she was sure. No, she had not touched anything, she had simply got out of the cottage as fast as—Well, presumably the thing was still there, unless the person had sneaked back in and removed it in her absence. ‘I should think that’s perfectly possible, shouldn’t you, Sergeant?’
Sergeant Blackburn said cautiously that anything was possible when you were dealing with the workings of a disturbed mind, madam, and passed on to the question that Antonia had known would come at some point.
‘You said you were here on holiday, Miss Weston, is that right? In that case, I’ll need a note of your permanent address. Oh, and a phone number.’
Antonia gripped the phone tightly, and said, ‘I haven’t got a permanent address–I’ve been away for a long time.’ But this sounded so absurd and so redolent of nineteenth-century lunatics locked away for years and the truth covered up with euphemisms, that she gave the sergeant the hospital address, and said he should record it as care of Jonathan Saxon, head of psychiatry.
‘Psychiatry?’ said the voice at the other end with a suspicious edge, and at the same time Antonia was aware of a sudden stillness from the adjoining room.
‘My boss,’ she said, into the phone, and this time there was an edge of authority in her voice she had not known she could still summon. Either this or Oliver Remus’s brandy gave her sufficient confidence to add, ‘Thank you, Sergeant Blackburn. I’ll see you at Charity Cottage in half an hour,’ and to hang up before any more difficult questions could be asked.
As they walked back across the park, Professor Remus had the air of someone who wanted to get a necessary task over so that he could get back to more important things. Antonia found this depressing and annoying in equal portions. But as they turned into the walkway between the old yew hedges, he suddenly said, ‘You did tell the police that someone had put a hangman’s rope in the kitchen, didn’t you? I did hear that right?’
‘Yes.’
He half turned his head to look at her. ‘How extraordinary.’
‘That’s one word for it.’
‘The front door’s open,’ he said, as they rounded the curve in the path and the cottage came into view. ‘Did you leave it like that?’
‘Yes. I ran out of the place as soon as I saw the–the rope. I wasn’t thinking about locking up, and anyhow the intruder had already got in so it didn’t seem to matter about keys and locks and things.’
‘I wasn’t criticizing. That looks like the police driving up now. We’d better wait here and let them go in ahead of us, I should think.’
Sergeant Blackburn was very much like his voice: large and a bit ponderous. He introduced a young PC who was with him, and said this sounded like a strange business so they would go inside on their own first, just to see what was what.
‘We’ll wait here,’ said Oliver. ‘All right, Miss Weston?’
‘Never better.’
The police search took quite a long time. Antonia sat down on the little low wall that surrounded part of the cottage’s gardens, and tried not to shiver too noticeably. Lights were switched on inside the cottage, and there were sounds of doors being noisily opened, and of the two policemen calling to one another. When they eventually came out, Antonia’s heart skipped a few beats, but she said, ‘Well?’
‘You did say the rope was in the kitchen, Miss Weston?’
‘Yes. You can’t miss it. It was hanging down from the ceiling,’ said Antonia. ‘You’d walk smack into it if you didn’t know it was there.’
Sergeant Blackburn exchanged a glance with his constable, and looked at Oliver Remus. ‘There’s nothing there,’ he said. ‘The kitchen’s perfectly normal–no rope, no signs of one anywhere.’
The constable added, ‘And there are no signs of any break in.’ He glanced at the sergeant, who studied Antonia for a moment and then said, ‘Can you think why anyone would put a hangman’s noose in your kitchen, Miss Weston?’