believe it unless it was Arthur Bellbrook. He knew her. He fits all round, darling.’
If Arthur had killed her, why would he go back later and find her body?’
‘Darling, are you sure it wasn’t Arthur Bellbrook?’
‘Positive.’
‘Oh dear. All right then, darling. You want me to start those phone calls tomorrow but definitely not before ten o’clock, and to go on all day until I’ve reached everyone? You do realise, I hope, that I’m playing in a sort of exhibition bridge game tomorrow evening?’
‘Just keep plugging along.’
‘What if they’re out, or away?’
‘Same thing. If nothing happens and we get no results, I’ll phone you on Monday evening.’
‘Darling, let me go to Quantum with you.’
‘No, definitely not.’ I was alarmed. ‘Joyce, promise me you’ll stay in Surrey. Promise!’
‘Darling, don’t be so vehement. All right, I promise,’ She paused. ‘Was that old bugger in good nick when you last saw him?’
In excellent nick,’ I said.
‘Can’t help being fond of him, darling, but don’t bloody tell him I said so. Can’t go back, of course. But well, darling, if there’s one thing I regret in my life it’s getting that frightful man West to catch him with Alicia. If I’d had any bloody sense, darling, I’d have turned a blind eye and let him have his bit on the side. But there it is, I was too young to know any better.’
She said goodbye cheerfully, however, promising to do all the phone calls in the morning, and I put the receiver down slowly.
‘Did you hear any of that last bit?’ I asked Malcolm.
‘Not a lot. Something about if she’d had any sense, she wouldn’t have done something or other.’
‘Wouldn’t have divorced you,’ I said.
He stared incredulously. ‘She insisted on it.’
‘Twenty-seven years later, she’s changed her mind.’
He laughed. ‘Poor old Joyce.’ He spent no more thought on it. ‘Moira didn’t doodle on notepads that I know of.’
‘I dare say she didn’t. But if you were a murderer, would you bet on it?’
He imagined it briefly, i’d be very worried to hear from Joyce. I would think long and hard about going to Quantum to search for the notepad before she told the police.’
‘And would you go? Or would you think, if the police didn’t find it when Moira was first murdered, then it isn’t there? Or if it is there, there’s nothing incriminating on it?’
I don’t know if I would risk it. I think I would go. If it turned out to be a silly trap of Joyce’s, I could say I’d just come to see how the house was doing.’ He looked at me questioningly. ‘Are we both going down there?’
‘Yes, but not until morning. I’m jet-lagged. Don’t know about you. I need a good sleep.’
He nodded. ‘Same for me.’
‘And that shopping you were doing?’ he eyed the several Fortnum & Mason carrier bags with tall parcels inside. ‘Essential supplies?’
‘Everything I could think of. We’ll go down by train and…’
He waved his cigar in a negative gesture. ‘Car and chauffeur.’ He fished out his diary with the phone numbers. ‘What time here?’
Accordingly, we went in the morning in great comfort and approached Quantum circumspectly from the far side, not past the eyes of the village.
The chauffeur goggled a bit at the sight of the house, with its missing centre section and boarded-up windows and large new sign saying: ‘Keep out. Building unsafe.’
‘Reconstructions,’ Malcolm said.
The chauffeur nodded and left, and we carried the Fortnum & Mason bags across the windy central expanse and down the passage on the far side of the staircase, going towards the playroom.
Black plastic sheeting still covered all the exposed floor space, not taut and pegged down, but wrinkled and slack. Our feet made soft crunching noises on the grit under the plastic and there were small puddles here and there as if rain had blown in. The boarded-up doors and the barred stairs looked desolate, and far above, over the roof, the second black plastic sheet flapped like sails between the rafters.
Sad, sad house. Malcolm hadn’t seen it like that, and was deeply depressed. He looked at the very solid job the police had made of hammering the plywood to the door-frame of the playroom and asked me politely how I proposed to get in.
‘With your fingernails?’ he suggested.
I produced a few tools from one of the bags. ‘There are other shops in Piccadilly,’ I said. ‘Boy scouts come prepared.’
I’d thought it likely that I wouldn’t be able to get the plywood off easily as I understood they’d used four-inch