Hard Evidence

Lambert had by now found his keys. He went up to his car but Miss Hammond showed no sign of budging. She went rattling on. ‘It’s an old cottage, Victorian. It was modernized – after a fashion – back in the year dot. A lot of people would be put off by the state it’s in but I know it will be very attractive when I’ve finished with it. I’m looking forward to it all tremendously. I’ve never owned a property before.’

‘I’ve never owned one at all,’ Lambert said.

‘I’m going to see about plans for an extension. Then there’ll be all the repairs and improvements, it’s going to be very exciting.’ She pulled a face. ‘You’d be astonished at how much it’s all going to cost. I know I was. It’s only when you actually get down to it that you realize what prices are these days.’

Lambert mustered his patience as best he could. ‘I dare say you can get it added on to your mortgage,’ he suggested.

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Mortgages are not for me. I wouldn’t want to be saddled with one at my time of life. Cash on the nail, that’s the only thing at my age. I won’t be taking a holiday this year, I’m devoting all my time to the place.’ She jerked her head. ‘I’ve started going to salerooms and auctions. I’ve bought a few odds and ends, just the bare minimum to start with. I’ve got them in store, ready to move in. I want to get old furniture as far as I can – not real antiques, of course, they cost the earth, but you’d be surprised what nice little cottagey pieces you can still pick up cheap. I’ve been reading up about old houses, old furniture, the different styles and periods.’ She grinned. ‘They’re getting to know me at the public library.’

Lambert tossed his keys into the air and caught them again. Olive ignored the hint. ‘Are you fond of gardening?’ she asked.

He tossed the keys again. ‘I can take it or leave it.’

‘I’ve had a look round the garden centres and shops but the plants and shrubs cost a small fortune. But I’ve thought of a way of getting round that.’ She made a pleased little face. ‘I intend cadging cuttings and plants from Luke Marchant. I can slip him a few bob – much cheaper than buying them.’ She raised a cautionary finger. ‘Mum’s the word, of course. No need for His Nibs to know anything about it.’

Lambert’s patience came suddenly to an end. ‘I must be getting along,’ he told her brusquely.

Still she stood immovable. ‘I’m going to be all alone at the cottage after I move in. It’ll be quite a change, after living in a hotel for the last four years.’ She looked up at him. ‘It’s going to feel very strange.’

‘You should get yourself a pet. A dog. Or a cat. Very good company.’

She shook her head at once. ‘They’d take too much looking after.’

‘A bird, then.’

‘A bird,’ she echoed on a note of lively interest.

‘Get a budgie,’ he suggested. ‘Teach it to talk.’

She smiled. ‘I might just do that.’

He took a step forward. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’ He gestured at the car door. ‘I really must be off.’

She moved reluctantly aside. As soon as he had got in and closed the door she stooped and rapped on the window. He wound it partway down. She seized hold of the top of the glass and stuck her face in at the opening. ‘You’ll have to come over and see the cottage. You and your young lady.’

Lambert switched on the engine. ‘She’s not my young lady. I just happened to come across her today. I won’t be seeing her again.’

‘Then come by yourself. Any time you’re in the neighbourhood, do call in. The cottage isn’t on the phone yet but no matter about that, you can just drop in, take me as you find me. I can give you a cup of tea – something stronger, if you like. I can always rustle you up a meal.’

‘Very kind of you.’ He managed a smile of sorts. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

She began to rattle out hasty directions for finding the cottage. He made to start winding the window up again and she was forced to withdraw. She was still calling after him as he pulled out without further ceremony. He was off and away, down the drive, out through the gates, heading for Cannonbridge.

All at once the day took on a totally different complexion. In no time at all he would find himself giving the chief inspector an account of his wasted morning. Not a prospect he relished.

Before he had put a couple of miles behind him all thought of Olive Hammond and her cottage had gone from his mind.

CHAPTER 4 (#)

The cuckoo had barely uttered his first hollow notes when the spring weather turned abruptly fickle, with gusts of rain, showers of sleet and hail, followed by a succession of grey, damp days, giving way all at once to another spell of cloudless skies and warm breezes. Horse chestnuts blossomed white and pink along the avenues, lilac and laburnum bloomed in suburban gardens, hanging baskets of lobelia and trailing geranium sprouted from lampposts; floral clocks appeared in municipal flowerbeds.

Bank holidays, agricultural shows, festivals and carnivals. Children danced round maypoles. Grown men dressed up as Cavaliers and Roundheads and fought pitched battles over stretches of harmless countryside. The cuckoo was in full voice.

In the DIY stores staff worked overtime. Gallons of paint, acres of wallpaper, were loaded into the boots of cars. Householders erected scaffolding and climbed up ladders.

Sergeant Lambert’s landlady was afflicted, as every year, by her own variety of spring fever. With her it took the form of prodigious exertions in the garden, a sustained attack upon the contents of cupboards and drawers: sorting, discarding, cramming into cardboard boxes to be piled outside the back door and borne off by the dustmen.

At the end of May a nasty virus made its stealthy appearance, insinuating its way into the country from abroad by means of the aeroplane, cutting a swathe through the population and certainly not minded to spare the main Cannonbridge police station.

Sergeant Lambert endured an attack of average ferocity but Detective Chief Inspector Kelsey was very unwell indeed. He struggled back to work earlier than he should, unable to endure any longer the tedium of an invalid existence alone in his flat – he had lived on his own since his divorce years ago.

He dragged himself up the station steps. A big, solidly built man with craggy features, green eyes normally bright and sharp but heavy now and lacklustre; a head of thick, carroty hair, devoid today of its usual shine and spring.

Outside the windows the season swept joyfully on but the Chief knew none of it, huddled glumly in his office, wheezing, reeking of liniment, sucking lozenges powerfully fragrant with menthol and eucalyptus.

One morning in the middle of June Sergeant Lambert ventured to suggest to the Chief that what he needed was a holiday. The sergeant was still not in top form himself. He had already booked his own holiday for September – he was going to Greece with friends – but he had a couple of weeks in hand. If the Chief decided to take himself off for a break, Lambert wouldn’t at all mind fixing himself some leave at the same time, very convenient all round. He could go and stay with his sister and her family in Sussex or with married friends in Wales.

The Chief didn’t bother to give him any kind of rational reply, he merely dismissed the notion with a shake of his head. He had so far made no plans for any leave; he was never attracted by the vision of long days of leisure; holidays always served to emphasize his aloneness.

A day or two went by and still the Chief felt no better. What I need is a really good, strong tonic, he decided. Something stronger than he could buy over the counter. He went reluctantly back to the doctor who came up with precisely the same remedy that Sergeant Lambert had proposed: ‘What you need is a holiday.’

The Chief shook his head stubbornly. ‘All I need is something to make me feel a bit livelier.’

But the doctor could be equally stubborn. ‘I am giving you something,’ he countered. ‘I’m giving you sound advice. Instructions, if that makes it any easier for you to swallow. Take a holiday. Now.’

As he closed the door behind him, Kelsey shook his head slowly and with determination. On his way back to the station he went into a health-food shop and bought himself a large bottle of a fiendishly expensive herbal elixir, brewed in the back yard of some monastery in the Balkans. The moment he got back into his car he took a long swig from the bottle. He immediately felt so hideously unwell that he knew beyond doubt it must be doing him good.

He said nothing of all this to Sergeant Lambert.

On June 21st the Chief awoke in a sourly irritable frame of mind. He felt no better. If he must be honest, he felt worse.

Sergeant Lambert greeted him at the office with a reminder that it was the first day of summer, a remark that did nothing to lift the Chief’s spirits. He tackled without enthusiasm the pile of mail awaiting him.

Before long he came upon a letter written in a slow, shaking hand. It was from a Mr Eardlow, with an address in a hamlet a few miles from Cannonbridge.

Eardlow apologized for writing instead of coming over to the police station in person, but his circumstances made a visit difficult. He and his wife were advanced in years and suffered from various health problems. They no longer owned a car and public transport in the area was very limited.

They were worried about a young relative. They had been trying to get in touch with her for some time but hadn’t been able to make any contact, nor, indeed, to discover her present whereabouts. They would be most grateful if an officer could call on them; they would supply him with full details.

Kelsey sighed and shook his head. Eardlow hadn’t even given the name of the missing relative. No doubt it was another case of an inconsiderate, harebrained youngster taking it into her head to abscond temporarily for the most trifling of reasons, sometimes for no reason at all, never giving a thought to the anxieties of family and friends.

He tossed the letter across to Sergeant Lambert. ‘Better get over there and have a word with these folk,’ he instructed. ‘I doubt if there’s anything in it.’

In the afternoon Sergeant Lambert drove over to the hamlet, having first phoned the Eardlows to fix a time. They were nervously awaiting him in the spotlessly clean parlour of their little cottage. The furniture gleamed, the brass shone. A table was set with an elaborate lace cloth and what were undoubtedly their best china cups.

Mrs Eardlow had the kettle already on and she brewed the tea right away. She moved slowly and with difficulty. Her husband walked with the aid of a stick, his hands were swollen and knobbed. In Lambert’s estimation neither of them would see eighty again. He felt a pang at the thought of all the painful domestic activity on the part of this frail old couple that must have taken place in the little dwelling after his phone call.

He didn’t ask questions to start with, he didn’t press them in any way. Over an excellent tea they began to relax. They stopped treating him as if he were minor visiting royalty and began to unload their worries.