A huge gold sun hung low in the sky as Chief Inspector Kelsey and Sergeant Lambert set off at a quarter to eight next morning for Furzebank Cottage. The greater part of the journey was made in almost unbroken silence.
As the road straightened after a bend Lambert saw the little general store come into view on the other side of the road.
‘The shopwoman’s son,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten about him.’ The Chief made no reply, sunk deep in his own thoughts.
‘Robin, she said his name was,’ Lambert went on. He allowed the car to slacken pace. ‘I wonder if he remembered anything. She was going to ask him.’
The Chief registered the car’s loss of speed. He gave the sergeant an abstracted glance.
‘Bit of a long shot,’ Lambert added. ‘Robin wasn’t even in the shop when Mrs Lorimer called in for cigarettes.’ He let the car slow almost to a halt. ‘Still, one never knows.’ He directed a questioning glance at the Chief.
Kelsey gave an irritated grunt. What was uppermost in his mind was pressing smartly on to Furzebank Cottage, tackling the Lorimers–in particular Enid Lorimer–yet again. The last thing he wanted right now was to find himself submerged in a stream of inane chatter from a woman who had difficulty identifying the day of the week–and her no doubt equally exasperating son.
He opened his mouth to instruct Lambert to drive on. But old training and long habit were too much for him. ‘All right,’ he conceded with deep reluctance. ‘Pull up. Let’s get it over with.’
The shop was empty but the woman came promptly through from the domestic quarters at the sound of the bell. The Chief had no time to utter a syllable before she burst out: ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector! I wondered if you’d be calling in again.’ She gave him a broad, delighted smile. ‘I did talk to Robin as soon as he came home after the last time you were here. I asked him if he remembered anything about Mrs Lorimer coming in for the cigarettes, as I promised you I would.’ She gestured towards the doorway at the rear of the shop. ‘You can speak to him yourselves. He’s eating his breakfast before he gets off to school. You’d better come through.’
She took them into a cosy, comfortable kitchen where her son sat at the table attacking a plateful of bacon, sausage, egg, fried potatoes, baked beans, tomatoes. A rack of toast stood close by. An open textbook was propped against a jar of marmalade.
Robin glanced up as they came in and at once set down his knife and fork, pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet. A tall, thin lad in school uniform, very clean and neat, very well groomed. An intelligent, studious face, a courteous, friendly manner.
His mother had barely made the introductions when the ping of the shop bell summoned her back to serve a customer. ‘Give the officers some coffee,’ she instructed her son as she left the kitchen.
The Chief declined the coffee and waved Robin back into his seat. ‘We don’t want to delay you any more than we have to,’ he said as he sat down facing him. ‘You can get on with your breakfast as we talk.’
Far from breaking into a tiresome stream of confused chatter, Robin answered his questions simply, sensibly and concisely–while contriving at the same time to tackle his breakfast with efficiency and despatch.
When his mother told him of their previous visit, of her difficulty in deciding if it was on the Wednesday, Thursday or Friday evening that Mrs Lorimer had called in for cigarettes, Robin had sat down there and then and given the matter concentrated thought.
His recollections were clear and he wrote them down without delay, in case the Chief Inspector should call again. He excused himself while he went to fetch his notes from a desk in the sitting room.
‘It was definitely the Friday evening when Mrs Lorimer came in for the cigarettes,’ he told them on his return. ‘Friday, November 13th.’
Kelsey sat back in his chair. ‘Tell us exactly what you recall,’ he said easily. ‘You can show me your notes afterwards.’
‘It was around a quarter past five,’ Robin began. ‘I know for certain it was the Friday, I was going out to play with the rest of the group at the Folk Club.’ The group only ever played there on a Friday evening, once every four weeks.
He was studying hard for his exams, he went out little in the evenings. He had been out only one other evening that week, on the Tuesday, and that was at a later time, around seven-fifteen; he had attended a practice session at the home of one of the group. Both the Tuesday and Friday dates were recorded in his pocket diary; there was no possibility of his having confused the two evenings.
Furthermore, at the time he saw Mrs Lorimer he had just wheeled his motorcycle over to the open doorway of the shed attached to the side of the shop, and Friday was the only evening that week that he’d used the motorbike–on the Tuesday a member of the group called for him, gave him a lift in his jalopy to the practice session.
The Folk Club meeting was held in a neighbouring village hall. It started at seven and the group normally arrived at six-thirty. On that particular Friday, however, they arrived earlier. They had written some new numbers, had decided to include them in the programme at the last moment and wanted to get in a final run-though. They arranged to meet at the hall at five-thirty. Robin produced his diary for the Chief’s inspection. Kelsey gave an approving nod as he looked at the entries; everything set down in a clear, businesslike fashion, times carefully noted.
‘I’d just stepped outside to take a look at the weather,’ Robin continued. ‘I was standing under the canopy.’ This was a wooden overhang running along the entire frontage of the premises, providing a degree of shelter for both shop and shed. ‘I could see out along the road, as well as the front of the shop.
‘I heard the shop door open and I saw Mrs Lorimer come out, I saw her clearly in the light shining out from the shop. She turned in the doorway and called something back to my mother, some remark about the weather. She didn’t see me, she didn’t glance my way. She went off in the opposite direction and got into the car.’
‘Car?’ Kelsey echoed.
‘Yes. It was parked a few yards off, facing my way. It started up and a minute or two later it came past me.’
‘In the direction away from Furzebank Cottage?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Going towards Cannonbridge?’
‘Yes. Mrs Lorimer was in the passenger seat. Her husband was driving.’
Kelsey jerked up in his chair. ‘You’re certain of that? Lorimer was in the car with her?’
‘Quite certain. I saw them both clearly. The car hadn’t had time to pick up any speed.’
‘Did either of them see you?’
He shook his head. ‘I’d stepped back into the doorway. They were both looking straight ahead.’
His mother came back into the kitchen and sat down nearby. The Chief barely registered her presence. ‘You’re certain about the time you saw the Lorimers drive past?’ he pressed Robin.
‘Quite certain. It was going on five-fifteen. I looked at my watch as I went back into the house to pick up my crash helmet. I didn’t want to be late getting to the hall.’
‘We had a bit of an argument when Robin came back in,’ his mother put in with a smile. ‘I asked him if he didn’t think he’d better take a torch, in case they had another blackout.’
‘Blackout?’ Kelsey queried.
‘Yes, we’ve had quite a few in this area over the last three of four months. The Electricity Board say it’s a fault in a sub-station. They don’t seem able to trace it properly, though they keep on trying.’
She jerked her shoulders. ‘Mostly it’s of no consequence, it only lasts a few minutes, but once or twice it’s lasted well over an hour, and that can be pretty inconvenient when you’ve got a business to run.’
‘And there’d been a blackout on some previous occasion at the Folk Club?’ Kelsey directed his question at Robin but his mother answered before he could speak.
‘Yes, the time before. The electricity didn’t come on again for some time and there they all were, stumbling about in the dark, looking for matches and candles, flicking cigarette lighters–a good way to have a nasty accident. That’s why I wanted Robin to take the torch with him, in case it happened again.’
She shook her head. ‘But he didn’t want to take it. He said it would be a bit too much of a coincidence if they had a blackout two Folk Club Fridays on the trot.’ She grinned. ‘In the end he did take it, though, to humour me, so he could get off.’
The Chief asked if either could recall what Mrs Lorimer had been wearing that Friday evening. The woman couldn’t remember but Robin answered at once. She had worn a jacket and trousers, a headscarf. Further pressed, he thought the jacket and scarf were light in colour, the trousers dark.
The Chief asked if he could describe the car he had seen. He gave a description that tallied with the vehicle Kelsey had seen at Furzebank Cottage. ‘It was definitely the Lorimers’ car,’ Robin added. ‘I know it by sight.’ He recollected another detail. ‘It has a rack.’ Kelsey sat motionless. ‘A white ladder-rack.’
‘Does the car normally carry a rack?’
‘It always used to. It certainly did that evening. But the last few times I’ve seen it, there isn’t any rack.’
His mother couldn’t say if the car usually carried a rack or not. ‘But you can bank on what Robin tells you,’ she added stoutly. She made a face. ‘Mr Lorimer’s been getting through a lot of cigarettes lately. One or other of them’s in every day now for cigarettes, sometimes twice in the one day.’
She glanced up at the clock and the Chief got to his feet. ‘We won’t keep you any longer,’ he told Robin. He expressed his gratitude to them both, adding that there was one last favour he’d like to ask. He had a number of phone calls to make. Would it be possible to use their phone?
Certainly it would. The woman took them into the sitting room. ‘You’ll be quite private in here,’ she assured them as she went out, closing the door behind her.