Chapter Seven
SEVEN
Mrs. Devine lived in a small Georgian house on the outskirts of Guildford, down a lane with high hedges concealing the houses of her neighbours.
Behind a beech hedge, her front garden was a mass of bearded irises.
Their sweet, rather heavy scent, brought out by the already warm sun, overwhelmed Alec as he stepped out of the car.
“Monomaniacal gardener?” said Tom, joining him on the pavement in front of the gate.
“She may do the garden herself. It doesn’t look as if there’ll be much in the way of servants for you to talk to. When you’re finished with them, hie thee down to the pub.”
“The Cricketers,” put in Ernie. “That’s the one he used to frequent.”
“Been at the dictionary again, have you, laddie?”
Alec opened the white-painted gate with its black-painted legend: Larches. Looking up, he saw that there was indeed a pair of larch trees in the back garden, their pale green spires towering above the red tile roof.
The three men trod single-file up the brick-paved path. Before Alec reached the dark-green front door, it was opened by a short, plump, grey-haired woman in a black dress.
“Mrs. Devine?”
“No, I’m her sister, Mrs. Webb. You’re the police?”
Presenting his warrant card, Alec admitted, “Yes, I’m—”
“Oh, good. Come in, do. Iris was afraid you might be more reporters, but I said, no, look at the way they walk, they’re policemen.
She doesn’t really want to talk to anyone, but I told her she really must answer your questions if she wants justice for poor Martin.
It’s a sin and a shame that anyone would harm my poor nephew, who never harmed a fly.
In a manner of speaking; if nasty flies get into the house, well, of course one gets the swatter, doesn’t one?
” Mrs. Webb nattered on as she led them to an open door on one side of the hall, at the front of the house.
“I won’t have flypapers in my house. They’re deadly poison, you know, and what if one dropped in the soup, I ask you? ”
It was obviously a rhetorical question, and Alec didn’t attempt to answer.
He nodded Tom towards a door at the back, at the end of a passage, beside the stairs going up to the first floor.
At a guess, the door gave access to the kitchen area.
He didn’t want to interrupt Mrs. Webb by asking. She might yet say something relevant.
Following her, still chatting, into a sitting room overpoweringly decorated in iris-print chintzes, he thanked his lucky star that Daisy didn’t insist on dressing up their house in an excess of daisies.
Someone must once have told Mrs. Devine that she was as beautiful, or elegant, or sweet perhaps, as her namesake and she had taken it to heart.
However, he had often noticed that an abundance of chintz tended to indicate an abundant volubility.
He hoped, in spite of Mrs. Webb’s statement, the two sisters might be alike in this.
They were alike in appearance, at least, the chief difference being that Mrs. Devine’s eyes were red and swollen with weeping in a pale face. She sat in a low armchair, twisting a handkerchief (embroidered—wonder of wonders—with lilies) between restless fingers.
Before Mrs. Webb had finished introducing him, Mrs. Devine jumped up, clasped his hand in both hers, and burst into speech.
“I’m so glad you’ve come at last, Inspector!
When they told me last night—such a pleasant policeman—they say it’s better to know, not to wonder, but there’s always hope, isn’t there?
Until they tell you—You’re quite, quite certain it’s my Martin?
” She looked up at him with a pitiful remnant of hope.
“Quite certain, I’m afraid, Mrs. Devine. May I offer my sincere condolences?”
She burst into fresh sobs. He led her back to her chair and pressed one of his usual supply of fresh handkerchiefs into her hand.
“Now, now, Iris, calm yourself! You know you’ll give yourself another headache. See what you’ve done, Inspector? I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”
“Tea, perhaps, Mrs. Webb? Good and strong and sweet?”
“I’ll ring for—”
“I don’t want any more tea—I don’t like sugar in it, anyway—I’m swimming in tea, already. I want a brandy.”
“It’ll only make your headache worse, Iris. Strong drink—”
“Mrs. Webb,” Alec intervened forcefully, “I think this is the moment for a little brandy if ever there was one. I take it you know where your sister keeps it.”
“Naturally,” she said huffily. “It’s in the buffet in the dining room. But—”
“Be so good as to show DC Piper if you please.” He gave Piper a shadow of a wink, and Piper returned a shadow of a nod.
He would keep the woman talking in the dining room—about the evils of strong drink, if necessary—as long as he could. He herded her out, chattering as she went.
Alec sat down uninvited in the matching chair next to Mrs. Devine’s. It was too low, so that his knees rose at a sharp angle. He wondered whether Martin Devine, of somewhat above average height according to the autopsy, had constantly struggled with his mother’s taste in furniture.
“Thank you, Inspector,” she said, her sobs stilling. “Lily is an Abstainer—I’ve been longing for a brandy—just a drop—it helps my head—she wouldn’t let me—Martin and I used to have a—he called it a tot—my late husband, too—after dinner on Sundays.”
“There’s no harm in a drop of brandy. I hope it will make you feel better. Do you feel able to talk to me now?”
“Whatever Lily may say, I’m sure I have always been ready to talk to the police about—the first policeman—he was a Guildford man—Lily did say you’re from Scotland Yard, didn’t she?”
“I am. Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher.”
“I thought so, but she—chief inspector? I’m so glad someone is taking his disappearance seriously at—But it isn’t just a disappearance now.
He’s dead, isn’t he? They came last night and told—I just can’t accustom my mind to—The first policeman said young men, even the steadiest—Martin was very steady.
He always told me where he was going and when he’d come—so it was nonsense to say he’d probably gone off to have a fling! ”
“Martin was very steady, was he? You must miss him terribly. Tell me about him, Mrs. Devine.”
“He wanted to be a clergyman, you see. Then the War started, just as he finished school. He volunteered at once, of course—the Territorials—they didn’t take volunteers into the regular army yet, not till—I’m not quite—sometime in 1915, I think, or was it ’16?
As soon as they did, he—and then he was sent to France.
Or he volunteered to go. Must you know exactly? ”
“That’s all right, it doesn’t matter.” And, if necessary, could be looked up in the records. “Don’t worry about the date. Do you know which regiment, or battalion, of the Territorials he was in?”
“Regiment—no. Did they have regiments, like the proper army? Does it matter? I thought they were all—But they didn’t all go to France.
Mesopotamia and India—but he transferred to the army in France.
I wish he hadn’t! When he came back, he said he couldn’t be a clergyman because the Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and he had killed two men.
Or three—he wasn’t sure. It was the third—For some reason, that one worried him most but he never really—”
Alec decided not to press her about which unit her son had joined in France. Not unless they couldn’t work it out from the records. “Never really…?”
“Explained. So he articled as a solicitor in my brother-in-law’s firm—Lily’s husband—very good to him.”
“He lived with you all this time, Mrs. Devine? Since he was demobbed, I mean.”
“Yes. He never seemed interested in—We lead—led a quiet life—bridge, tennis—I don’t play tennis but he was quite keen, though he didn’t care for golf, though I encouraged—and cricket.
I know what they say about widowed mothers but I wasn’t clinging!
I wasn’t! I just wanted him to be happy.
” She broke down again, and Alec fished for another hankie.
Mrs. Webb bustled in, her face a study in outrage. “Have you been bullying my sister, Inspector? I shall—”
“No, no, Lily. The chief inspector has been all that is kind, only—If I could just have—”
Piper, having followed the sister, pressed a glass tumbler with half an inch of amber liquid into Mrs. Devine’s shaking hand, then guided her hand as she attempted to raise it to her lips.
“There you go, madam,” he said soothingly.
She sipped, and a little colour came into her cheeks. She bestowed a grateful glance on Piper. “Thank you.”
“Just a few more questions, Mrs. Devine,” said Alec, “if you’re feeling better.”
“Of course. I want to give you all the help I can.” A telephone bell rang somewhere, but she ignored it, as did her sister. It stopped after a couple of rings, presumably answered by a domestic. “What else do you want to know?”
“Did Mr. Devine play tennis at a club, or with friends?”
“With friends, at private—I can give you their names,” she said doubtfully, “but they’re very nice people. Perfectly respectable. Not at all the sort who—”
Nice and respectable or not, Alec wanted names. Piper took them down, and those of the Devines’ bridge partners. Concentrating on these details further calmed the bereaved mother.
“Any others he associated with regularly?” Alec asked, “besides at the office.” Mackinnon was at the solicitors’ now. The senior partner, telephoned at home, had promised to go in, though he usually spent his Saturday mornings at the golf course, leaving any urgent business to underlings.
Mrs. Devine frowned in thought. “I don’t—I can’t think of—”
“The public house!” Mrs. Webb’s mouth managed to remain a thin line even as she pronounced these condemnatory words. “My nephew frequented a public house. Goodness only knows what sort of low company he kept there.”