Steam was escaping through a pan lid on the gas ring, causing it to rattle.
Angel noticed it as he closed and locked the back door.
‘Mary,’ he called. He turned the gas down as he passed the oven on the way to the fridge.
‘Mary!’
She appeared out of the pantry carrying a drum of Saxa.
‘Oh. It’s you,’ she said.
He was taking a beer out of the fridge. He stopped, stared at her and said, ‘Who were you expecting, George Clooney?’
She gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Wash your hands and sit down. It’ll be ready in ten minutes.’
He poured the beer out into a tumbler, took a sip, removed his coat, loosened his tie and collar, and washed his hands under a running tap. He reached out for a teatowel. Mary headed him off, snatched it away and pushed a hand towel at him.
‘Ta,’ he said. ‘Did I tell you that that scruffy boarding house on Sebastopol Terrace had no dog kennel in its back yard?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Once last night and twice this morning.’
His eyebrows shot up. He sniffed, handed her the towel, picked up the tumbler and strode into the sitting room.
Mary looked at the pan of leeks and turned them up.
After a few moments he came back. ‘Any post?’
‘The gas bill.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Somewhere around. I don’t know.’
He pulled a mildly annoyed face, muttered something then said, ‘I’ll find it.’
‘I’ve got something to ask you,’ Mary said. ‘Been bothering me all day.’
He frowned. He’d had trouble all day at the station. He didn’t want any more at home. He stood in the doorway, gripped the tumbler tight, tightened the muscles round his jaw, set his eyes on her and said, ‘Aye, what is it?’
‘It’s been troubling me. I nearly rang the vicar.’
His eyes flashed and stayed open wide. ‘The vicar?’ he said. ‘What is it?’
‘I should know, but I can’t remember. It’s for that competition I’m doing. That quiz.’
He gave a small sigh. His face relaxed. ‘Oh that.’
‘Don’t be so disparaging. It’s for £50,000.’
He remembered the gas bill. It would certainly come in handy. He smiled and then took a gulp of the beer.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘From which mountain top did Moses bring down the tablets of stone on which the commandments were inscribed?’
He looked up, frowned and said, ‘Mount Sinai, I think.’
‘Mount Sinai! Oh, yes. That’s right,’ she said as she opened the oven door and peered inside. ‘I’ll put that in.’
‘You’ll never win it.’
‘You don’t know that. Don’t be such a wet blanket.’
‘Even if you get all the answers right, there’ll be hundreds of others you’d have to share with.’
‘Not if I’m the only one. Are you going to set the table or not?’
He reached into the kitchen drawer, found the table mats and began picking out knives and forks. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he began tentatively.
She closed the oven door, turned and looked at him.
He licked his lips and said, ‘You know how lavender, violets, some roses and perhaps other certain other flowers are used to give off a pleasant, fresh smell around clothes, bedding, people and so on?’
‘Yes?’ she said giving him a strange look. She was wondering where the question was leading to.
‘Well, do parsnips have any special quality other than being a vegetable for eating? I mean, might someone have good reason to put them among clothes or in a potpourri, or in a vinaigrette or in a cupboard, for some misguided, maybe, or perhaps little-known, reason?’
She shook her head patiently. ‘Not that I know of, Michael. And you’ve asked me that before. Several times, actually, in the past two days.’
‘Have I? Sorry, love.’
‘Now look here,’ she said determinedly. ‘That’s work and it’s six o’clock almost and you’re home now. Forget about parsnips. There’s plenty of time tomorrow to worry about them.’
He blinked. He knew she was right. She was absolutely correct in what she had said.
‘Yes, love,’ he said. He resolved immediately to stop tiring himself out needlessly. He wasn’t even going to think about work. He was going to have dinner, a few beers and watch television. He thought it was the night for Bad Girls.
Mary turned back to the oven.
He nodded, then ambled into the sitting room.
Two minutes later, Mary called, ‘It’s ready, Michael! I’m serving it out.’
But he didn’t hear her call. He was concentrating on a piece of paper he was holding. He had found the gas bill and with a stub of a pencil from his pocket he had drawn something on the back of it. He was turning it round to observe it from different positions. The drawing looked remarkably like the outline of a cream-coloured root vegetable.
‘Michael!’ she bellowed.
He hurriedly stuffed the paper into his pocket.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Come in, Ron.’
‘I saw Professor Wayman, sir. He didn’t think there was anything at all fishy with the shells. He confirmed that they were fired from the same gun, and that it was a .32 calibre and probably a Walther PPK/S. That’s all he could say.’
Angel rubbed his chin. ‘So there was nothing peculiar about the gun.’
‘He was pretty confident about it, sir.’
‘Right. That makes the way Pleasant was shot straightforward. Nothing else about this case can be said to be that. Are you expecting to go out this morning?’
‘No sir. I’ve a lot of paperwork to catch up on.’
‘I might have got a job for you.’
‘I’ll check with you if anything crops up, sir.’
‘Right.’
The door closed.
The phone rang. It was Taylor.
‘About those shares and bonds from Pleasant’s files at home, sir.’
‘Yes, Don?’
‘The shares certificates were for old issues of good shares that had had their names changed for some reason and were now valueless. New certificates to replace them would have been issued at the time; the old ones are now just so much paper. Pleasant’s stockbroker said that he had sold all his holdings over the years.’
‘Really?’ he said, frowning.
‘Similarly, the bonds had all been cashed, sir. The banks and building societies didn’t actually call for the actual bond certificates to pay out on redemption. The owner’s signature, clearing bank branch address and account number is enough for them to pay out.’
‘That’ll be a shock to Jazmin Frazer.’
‘There’s something else, sir. On checking through Pleasant’s bank statements, sir, seems to me there’s a regular debit order of £800 a week being paid out to an account simply called Hellman.’
Angel looked up, eyebrows raised. ‘Oh? And who or what is Hellman?’
‘No idea, sir. Thought you might like to know straightaway.’
He nodded. It could be a perfectly legitimate payment for something, repayment of a loan, hire purchase or even rent. Or it could be blackmail money.
‘There’s no attempt at concealment, Don?’
‘No, sir.’
‘When did the payments start?’
‘The cheques are itemized on all the statements I’ve got and they go back a year.’
‘Right, lad. Sounds innocent enough, but find out what Hellman is and what the money is for and get back to me.’
‘Right, sir.’
He replaced the phone.
He scratched his chin. Hellman? Who the hell was Hellman?
Then he remembered that he had been about to make a phone call before Gawber had interrupted him. It would have been to send Ahmed up to SOCOs for the Great Northern Bank’s security tapes. But now he was considering that that also could wait.
There was something niggling him about Emlyn Jones and his son. They were a couple of prime criminals, and Angel was as passionate about criminals, as chocoholics were about chocolate. Ever since Stanley Jones had shown him that photograph of Harker and Emlyn Jones, taken by himself in the ballroom at 4.30 on that Sunday afternoon, Angel had been suspicious. Something had been bothering him. Something impossible to describe, but he knew that they were, or had been, up to no good, and he intended finding out what it was. He knew that Emlyn Jones and his son were concealing something, and it was much, much more than mere parsnips.
He decided he would make some feathers fly. It was the only way. He reached out for the phone and sent for Gawber.
‘I want you to go on a bit of old-fashioned following. Are you up for it?’
His face brightened. ‘Of course, sir.’
‘Has your car a full tank of petrol? You might need it.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Push off, get it filled up and get your car checked off and meet me back here ASAP.’
Gawber grinned and rushed out. The door closed.
Angel rubbed his chin.
Angel walked through the open doorway of The Old Curiosity Shop. It wasn’t yet busy. There were no customers. Two young ladies in smart blue dresses were standing behind glass display counters at opposite sides of the shop. They were doing nothing in particular and trying not to look bored. They watched Angel approach a small Victorian table which converted into a sewing basket; next to it was a doll which had a pincushion for a stomach with twenty or thirty eight-inch, ten-inch and twelve-inch long hat pins with various pearl, Whitby jet or pretty coloured glass ends sticking out of it.
Suddenly, from behind a large bookcase, a shiny young man in a shiny blue suit appeared and made a beeline for him. It was Stanley Jones. His black hair was oiled down and shone in the bright white shop lights, and his chin was jutting out. He had an angry look about him. His eyes stood out like bilberries on stalks. He came right up close to Angel and whispered in his ear.
‘You shouldn’t come in here. Not in shopping hours. Not when customers are around. It’ll give the shop a bad name.’
Angel pulled away from the hot breath and said, ‘But you have no customers, Mr Jones. The shop is empty; haven’t you noticed?’
He moved further into the shop, passing a gathering of teddy bears of various prices, ages and conditions. Stanley Jones followed close behind, all the while becoming more agitated.
Angel stopped at a shelf of large interesting glass vases, gold fish bowls and colourful antique chamber pots all filled with water. Each also had a red rubber ball in the water; some of the balls were floating, some were sunk and some were in between.
He hovered there a few moments.
Stanley Jones edged closely up to him again. ‘What do you want,’ he said breathily, then looked round at the two shop assistants to see if they had heard him.
One was yawning, the other about to yawn.
‘What is the purpose of the balls in the water,’ Angel asked mischievously.
The young man stuck out his chin belligerently. ‘To check that the vessels are sound, of course,’ he snarled.
At that moment, Angel heard the little door to the tiny office under the stairs behind them close, and the unmistakable fruity loud Welsh voice said, ‘We couldn’t sell a leaking Victorian chamber pot to a wealthy American, Inspector Angel, now could we?’
Angel turned round. Emlyn Jones was standing there in a shiny black velvet suit, smiling as always, with his hand on the door knob. Jones waved a gently dismissive hand at Stanley who glared at Angel, before turning away and slowly walking to the other end of the shop to disappear round the back of a bookcase of old leather-bound books.
‘Youth is so beautiful, Inspector, don’t you think?’ Jones said. ‘So much future ahead of them. So much time to achieve whatever they want. Yet they are always in a hurry. You see them running hither and thither without a moment to lose, pushing past you on the pavement, in the shops, overtaking in a car, but you never see them arrive anywhere, do you?’
‘No,’ Angel said politely.
He looked at the man, pursed his lips and wondered what he was really thinking. What secret was behind that oily smile. After twenty-one years of marriage, Charles Pleasant had taken Jones’s wife from him only four short years earlier, providing the man with a most powerful motive. But Jones had the most perfect alibi, the absolutely indisputable alibi, in wonderful photographic colour. So had his son, Stanley, who also had a motive. Stanley had taken that crucial photograph. So his alibi was sound. They positively had both been there. In the ballroom. At 4.30. Harker had confirmed it. Superintendent Harker had positively confirmed it.
Angel rubbed his chin.
Jones said, ‘Now then, did you want to see me about something particular, Inspector? Would you like to come into my office? It is private and very quiet in there.’
He opened the door of the little cubbyhole under the stairs.
Angel nodded and went inside. Jones sat behind the little desk and Angel sat opposite him.
‘Isn’t this cosy?’ Jones said with a grunt of a laugh. ‘It is almost coffee time. Or would you like something a little stronger?’
‘Nothing for me, thank you,’ Angel said.
‘No? Well, what is it I can do for you, Inspector?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you, Mr Jones. It’s like this. You know my business. I have a murder to solve. Perhaps you can help me.’
‘I don’t know why you’ve come to me, Inspector. But I’ll try. Always willing to help the law in any way I can. You know that.’
‘It’s a little complicated, Mr Jones, but I’ll try to keep it simple. There is a man, you see … a married man … been married twenty-one years. To a beautiful woman, and they had a son. Now four years ago, his wife left him to go to live with another man, a very rich man.’
Jones’s eyebrows shot up. He dropped the smile and rubbed a hand across his mouth. ‘You’re getting very close to home, Inspector,’ he said quietly. ‘Where are you going with this … this story?’
‘The rich man is murdered and the first thing the ex-husband does is have his son present a photograph to me, taken by him, of his father sitting with a senior police officer with a clock showing the crucial time. The photograph … you might say … is the pictorial representation of the absolutely perfect alibi.’
‘Yes. Well what’s wrong with that? It must make your life simple in one way, Inspector. It makes for eliminations, doesn’t it? The photograph obviously and simply means that we … my son and I … could not have murdered Charles Pleasant.’
‘It does. But it means more than that, Mr Jones. Much more. It means that you knew the day and the time the murder was planned to take place.’
‘No. No. I see how it may look, now. But it’s obviously a coincidence. It’s a coincidence, pure and simple.’
‘There was nothing pure and simple about it, Mr Jones. You and your son Stanley are accessories before the fact. As more evidence comes out, it is possible that you will be charged and, if found guilty, you could be awarded a custodial sentence.’
Jones’s face changed. ‘What? Aaaah! Not again! I couldn’t stand it!’ he shrieked uncontrollably. Then his eyes slid slyly in Angel’s direction to see how he had reacted to the telltale outburst.
Angel had missed nothing. ‘I know all about that business in your car with that … girl,’ he said.
Jones’s eyes flashed. ‘She told me she was 18, I swear it.’
Angel acknowledged the reply with a non-committal wave of a hand.
Jones played with his bottom lip, nipping it gently as his mind assimilated all that was happening around him. After a few seconds, the smile returned and, slapping the flat of his hand on the top of the desk, he said: ‘This is ridiculous! You would have to prove it first, Inspector, and you could never do that because it simply isn’t true. It’s a coincidence, that’s what it is. A pure coincidence. Any right thinking, God-fearing jury would see that.’
‘I would not put money on it, Mr Jones. If I uncover any evidence to show that you were involved in the murder of Charles Pleasant in any way at all, any God-fearing jury would inevitably believe that there would simply be too many coincidences for you not to be involved in the murder!’
The Welshman’s eyes flashed again. ‘That would be very unjust. It cannot be true. No. No. No. God knows I am as innocent as a newborn babe. I must go to the chapel and light a candle. Six candles. My life is an open book. A dedication to the Ten Commandments, which I reiterate daily and endeavour to keep. I made a little mistake in the past, but I was tempted. Tempted by a serpent … in a skirt. You should read the psychiatrist’s report on the woman. It was in no way my fault.’
Angel didn’t believe a word he said. Jones might just as well have been talking to a tin of corned beef. After a calculated pause, he leaned forward in a confidential manner and quietly said, ‘Of course, there may be a way … this unpleasantness could be … minimized.’
Jones’s eyes opened wide for second, then he leaned forward. ‘Minimized?’
‘Very simply,’ Angel said with a nod.
Jones leaned even nearer. ‘Simply? How?’
‘Simply tell me who murdered Charles Pleasant.’
Jones jumped back. ‘I have no idea,’ he bawled. ‘Absolutely no idea. On my sainted mother’s grave, I tell you Inspector Angel, I have not the slightest notion. Fancy you thinking I knew anything about that.’
Angel was satisfied with the interview. It had proceeded pretty well as he had expected.
He took his leave of a worried and irritated Jones, came out of The Old Curiosity Shop, walked round the corner out of the possible sight of the shop windows, took out his mobile and tapped in a number. It was promptly answered.
‘I’ve just come out of the shop, Ron. He should be leaving any minute now.’
‘Right, sir.’