The inquest on Adele Parry took place Monday morning. It lasted three-quarters of an hour and the coroner returned his verdict just after a quarter to twelve.
Then Quinn asked someone, “Is there a pub round here where the beer isn’t luke warm?”
He was told to try the Wheatsheaf. “… It’s along there to your left. You can’t miss it.”
Quinn said, “If I do there must be something wrong with my homing instinct …”
The lounge of the Wheatsheaf had a half-moon bar, a quiet atmosphere, and a barmaid who knew how to pull a good pint of bitter. He was thinking of ordering a second when Inspector Elvin came in and joined him.
Elvin looked at the empty glass and asked, “Can I buy you another?”
“That’s the best invitation I’ve had so far to-day,” Quinn said. “You’ve arrived just in time. I’ll be glad to drink your health.”
“My pleasure. I owe you more than just a beer.”
“Well, if you feel that way you can go on buying them until the debt’s paid off.”
“No, I’m serious,” Elvin said. “You’ve been most helpful.”
Quinn waited until the barmaid had served them. When she went away, he said, “I think you’re right. My humble efforts did help to speed the course of justice. Incidentally, I don’t mind drinking beer with you but I wouldn’t sit down to a game of poker.”
“I never play cards,” Elvin said.
His silver hair was immaculate, his lean face remote and thoughtful as ever. He wore a tie in keeping with his discreet grey suit.
Quinn said, “Maybe you don’t. But you know how to work a very slick bluff. Even I fell for that story about Miss Wilkinson.”
Inspector Elvin looked down as though admiring the shine on his well-polished shoes. With a faint smile, he said, “You fell for something a lot more important.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. Dr. Bossard didn’t see Ford walking by himself in the direction of the Bird-in-Hand. If I hadn’t persuaded the doctor to tell a little white lie I’d never have proved that Mrs. Ford wasn’t with her husband around twelve o’clock yesterday.”
In the recesses of Quinn’s mind, Ariadne Wilkinson was talking again like a voice out of the far distant past. “ … I’m going to teach you a lesson in good manners. Next time you won’t be so abrupt with a lady.”
He said, “Now you mention it, I did wonder about that. Of course, it shouldn’t have been necessary. If I’d been a little more civil to Miss Wilkinson on the phone that business at Rose Cottage would never have happened.”
“You appear to be a man with a conscience,” Elvin said. “Take my advice and don’t let it get out of hand. Some things are destined to happen. I think it was Shakespeare who wrote: ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.’ Remember it?”
Quinn said, “I remember another saying … but it doesn’t always seem to apply: ‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’ In Bossard’s case he’s managed to get away with it.”
“You shouldn’t say that. We still can’t prove there was anything wrong in his relationship with Adele Parry.”
“Why can’t we? His wife threw him out because she discovered … oh, I forgot. You don’t know he’s married, do you?”
Elvin played with his glass and smiled. He said, “Yes, I do. Sorry to appear omniscient. I can assure you I’m not. But I have known for some time that Dr. Bossard had a wife in the background. This weekend I made inquiries and learned that she was Miss Stewart.”
“And so now they’ll live happily ever after,” Quinn said. The taste had gone out of his bitter.
Very gently, Elvin asked, “Jealous?”
As though that one-word question acted as a catalyst for all his conflicting emotions, Quinn felt suddenly better. When he’d taken a long drink, he said, “Yes, I am … or, at least, I was. They say that confession is good for the soul, don’t they?”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Elvin said. “But I hope it brings some good to Mrs. Ford.” He was no longer smiling.
“How much has she told you?”
“Just about everything. She had a showdown with Mrs. Parry who offered her a substantial amount of money if she’d divorce her husband. Mrs. Ford pretended to agree, they sealed it with a drink which she doped with Pembrium, and then she helped Mrs. Parry to take her case upstairs. There the drug began to take effect … but by that time it was long after three o’clock.”
“And Michael might come home and find his wife before she was dead … so she had to be carted into the nursery,” Quinn said.
“Yes. The first plan to leave her in the bedroom with a brandy glass by her side had to be cancelled. Soon as Mrs. Parry was unconscious, Irene Ford removed her shoes — so as to avoid making scratches on the parquet floor — and dragged her into the nursery where things were made to look once again like a case of suicide.”
“Those shoes ought to have put me on the right lines much sooner,” Quinn said. “Standing them neatly side by side under the foot of the bed was the kind of thing that a woman would be most likely to do.”
“Particularly a woman like Irene Ford. After talking to her last night I came away with the impression that she’s got an almost pathological love of tidiness.”
“Next to her love for Neil Ford,” Quinn said.
Inspector Elvin put down his glass and slid both hands into his jacket pockets, thumbs outside. He said, “I’m not sure I’d call that love in the accepted sense — more pride of possession. Until she met him she’d considered herself one of those women who seem born to be old maids … as they used to be called. After he married her she never ceased to marvel at her good luck.”
“Which enabled him to go off on the side whenever he fancied a bit of fresh,” Quinn said.
With a distasteful look, Elvin said, “I don’t admire your choice of expression … but that, broadly speaking, was the situation between them —”
“Before he got on intimate terms with the rich and beautiful Adele Parry. That wench must’ve had an insatiable appetite for that there … to coin a euphemism.”
“You mean a vulgarism,” Elvin said.
Quinn finished his pint and rapped on the bar. When the girl looked round he gave her a nod and held up two fingers.
She said, “If that means you want the same again I’ll attend to you as soon as I can. If it’s meant to be a rude gesture I’ll have you thrown out … and that can be arranged much quicker.”
When she turned to speak to a man at the other end of the bar, Quinn said, “Somehow there’s always one wherever I go … You didn’t need to be told why the light was on in the nursery, did you?”
“No … but I had to ask all the same.” A smile touched Elvin’s tight-skinned face. “When did you guess the answer?”
“As soon as I realised that lights are only switched on if it’s dark — not while the sun is shining. It wasn’t dark when Miss Stewart and I arrived at the house: it wasn’t dark when Michael left to go to Blandford. But it got dark shortly before Mrs. Ford screamed like a banshee and threw a faint at the top of the stairs. So I guessed that she’d put the light on to provide herself with an excuse for going into the nursery.”
“She also needed a light to make sure that Mrs. Parry was dead.”
“Yes. And if you want my opinion the scream that she let out was no fake. I’d say she got one helluva turn.”
Inspector Elvin said, “It’s difficult to go on hating somebody who’s dead … even if you hated the person enough to cause her death.”
The barmaid brought them two more beers and Quinn paid her. When she went away, he said, “Instead of philosophising, you might give some thought to my problem. Where do I go from here?”
“Not too far. We’ll need you on Wednesday.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have to give evidence at the other inquest.”
“And then the rest of my so-called holiday is my own?”
“Of course. You can go where you like and do what you want.”
“Thanks. There’s one thing I won’t do.”
“What’s that?”
“You won’t catch me going to a party without a personal invitation,” Quinn said. “And it’ll have to be in writing.”
THE END