thirteen

Rex arrived back at Helen’s house five minutes before the inspector rang at the door carrying a bottle in a brown paper bag twisted at the neck.

“I stopped by the offie. A Shiraz. I hope it’s okay,” Fiske said.

Helen stepped into the hall drying her hands on a tea towel. “Perfect. Julie likes white, but I prefer red wine with beef.” Tantalizing aromas of roasting meat and potatoes wafted from the kitchen. She gave the bottle to Rex to open. “I thought drinks in the garden first might be nice as it’s such a beautiful day, but lunch is just about ready. Perhaps we can have coffee and dessert outside afterwards.”

The inspector proffered his crooked smile. “It’s nice to see you again under more pleasant circumstances, Helen.”

At that moment, Julie made an appearance on the stairs in a short yellow summer dress and wedged espadrille sandals. Evidently, she had been taking advantage of the sunny weather to cultivate a tan. Her hair, which Rex had known in various shades of brown to blonde, was currently as bleached as he had ever seen it. He made the introductions.

“Just Mike,” the inspector amended. “Lovely to meet you, Julie.”

“Why don’t you both go through to the dining room,” Helen suggested. “Rex will bring in the wine.”

Rex decided to have a Guinness instead, and the inspector opted for one too, saying he was technically on the job and needed to keep his alcohol intake light.

“Well, this is a bit decadent,” Helen said with a laugh when they were seated at the oval gateleg table, except for Rex who stood carving the roast at the sideboard. “Here I am with a bottle of red all to myself, while Julie has hers of white!”

“Och, I’ll help you finish the red tonight,” Rex assured his wife.

“And white keeps for weeks in the fridge,” Julie chimed in, smiling at the inspector.

Rex doubted wine lasted that long in Julie’s fridge, but kept that thought to himself. He distributed the plates of meat. “Too rare?” he asked Fiske, who had expressed his preference for less well-done beef.

“Not at all. Just pink enough. And Yorkshire pud. Oh, my.”

Helen bid her guests serve themselves to the potatoes, vegetables, and gravy. Bowls were passed around the table, which was decked in a fresh floral-pattern cloth with matching napkins. Rex sat down with his plate.

“Julie teaches geography at my old school,” Helen told the inspector in a conversational manner. “Plus, we’ve known each other for ages.”

He took up his fork. “So, you’re a fellow teacher of Penny’s?” he asked Julie, who nodded. “Do you know her well?”

“Penny’s been at Oakleaf Comp less than a year. She was teaching in Paris before that. If I were her, I would have stayed over there. Derby is so boring.”

“Well, maybe compared to Paris,” Helen conceded.

“Have you been to Paris?” Fiske asked Julie.

She slumped dispiritedly in her chair. “Not since uni. Lucky you, moving to Edinburgh,” she said to Helen.

“Julie will be living here and keeping an eye on the house,” Helen told the inspector.

“Well, that’s a good arrangement. It’s a nice place you have here, Helen. This is delicious, by the way. Sunday dinner is one of the things I miss most about being married.”

That did not bode well for Julie, who could scarcely boil an egg, Rex could not help but remark to himself.

His wife reached out and touched the inspector’s sleeve. “I’m so glad you could come, Mike. Truly. And I’m sure you need a short break from the case.”

The inspector dabbed at his mouth with his flowery napkin, which looked incongruous in his large hands. “It has been a bit consuming these past few days. I was seconded to the case due to its sensitive and potentially complex nature. The pressure from the media to solve it is intense.” He turned to Julie. “I don’t believe I saw you at the community centre on Friday.”

“No, I was on a blind date. Horrid waste of time. He was a drummer in a crummy local band and had arms like a gorilla.”

Fiske chuckled.

“I did try to warn you,” Helen murmured.

Julie tilted her head coquettishly as she looked over at the inspector, her hand fingering the base of her wine glass. “I was supposed to go to the play last night but, naturally, it was called off.”

“I was at the community centre this morning when you called,” Rex said to Fiske. “More vegetables?” He offered him the tureen of peas and carrots.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Fiske helped himself and ladled gravy from the white china sauce boat that was part of the dinner service.

“I ran into the caretaker,” Rex continued telling the inspector, “and he informed me a bicycle had been stolen on Friday night. Did the police happen to recover one?”

“No. Whose was it?”

“It belongs to Timothy Holden, who plays Father Brown. When he went to retrieve it on Friday night to ride home, it was gone.”

Inspector Fiske glanced around the table with a humorously diabolical grin, which was facilitated by his lopsided mouth. “The getaway vehicle?”

“Not sure,” Rex replied. “But it is a coincidence it went missing that particular night.”

“Indeed,” the inspector said.

“Another funny thing,” Rex told him. “Helen received what might have been a prank call this morning.” He relayed how a sobbing male voice had confided to him that he was the cause of Cassie’s suicide for not having wanted to marry her; but that, having spoken with Ada Card and Trey Atkins later that morning, he’d discovered Trey had not been north of Derby, the location of the pay phone from which the call had been placed. Nor had Trey admitted to making the call. “Now, I spoke to him on Friday night and gave him my card with my mobile number on it,” Rex added, “so why he would ring Helen’s number is peculiar, especially since he doesn’t know her. And why use a public phone? Presumably he has a mobile.”

“He does, but we have it,” the inspector informed him. “We’re checking the calls and messages on it. Perhaps he misplaced your card and got Helen’s number from a mutual acquaintance, maybe Penny Spencer, so he could get hold of you that way?”

“The caller rang on my landline,” Helen told Fiske. “My friends usually call my mobile, which is the number I give out. I don’t really know why I’ve kept the house phone.”

“Perhaps he got the number through Directory Enquiries?” the inspector proposed.

Helen shrugged in a way that showed she was unconvinced. “If he knew my surname, which I suppose he could have got from someone. My maiden name, that is. I’d still be under d’Arcy in the book. But if it was Penny, she would have given him my mobile number.”

“Perhaps I should check with Penny,” the inspector concluded. “And I’d like to speak to Trey to find out why he would pretend not to have rung you, if he did,” he said, turning to Rex.

“Unless Ada is covering for him, he could not have made the call from the pay phone,” Rex restated. “So, who did? Someone impersonating Trey and trying to throw me off the scent?”

“Which begs the question, why?” Fiske noted.

“Do you think you will get the postmortem results tomorrow?”

“All being well. Dr. Hennessey is highly reliable. Ladies, I hope you don’t think me rude for talking shop at table.”

“No, you’re all right,” Helen assured him. “Anyway, it was my incorrigible husband who brought it up.” She directed an impish smile at Rex.

“Regardless of who brought it up, we’re just as interested as the next person to know what happened to the young actress,” pronounced Julie, who was slowly making her way through a meagre meal, having eschewed the Yorkshire pudding as being too stodgy, which meant all the more for Rex. “And Penny wants the case wrapped up quickly.”

“She does,” the inspector agreed. “As does everybody.”

“Did you get the DVD from her?” Rex asked.

“I did, and watched it this morning. Not really my cup of tea, but it was clever of Ms. Spencer to come up with the plot. She is single, is she not?”

“She’s got a thing for the play’s director,” Julie jumped in to answer. “Tony something-Italian. She confided in me one day in the staff room after she thought he’d blown her off.”

“I think it might be on again,” Rex remarked. “They looked quite cosy yesterday morning at her house.”

Julie gasped. “You mean he spent the night?”

“No, I just meant they seemed close, maybe just united in their grief. They weren’t holding hands or anything. Tony doesn’t seem very expansive for a man with Italian blood in his veins.”

“It’s probably diluted,” Julie said. “Third or fourth generation.”

At that moment, the inspector’s mobile went off on his person. He read the screen. “Yes, Dan,” he said into the phone, and listened for a minute. “Be right there.” He looked over at Helen. “Duty calls,” he apologized. “A domestic to attend to. Sorry to have to break up the party.”

“Do you have time for desert? Julie brought us a treacle tart.”

“One of my favourites, but I really can’t stay, more’s the pity.”

“Why don’t I find a Tupperware so you can take a piece with you?” Helen suggested, ever practical.

“I wouldn’t say no.” He smiled at Julie. “And thank you.”

“I didn’t make it,” she confessed with a sheepish grin. “It’s from the local bakery.”

“I will enjoy it nonetheless,” Fiske said gallantly, rising from the table as Helen got up and left the room.

“I almost forgot,” Rex told him, following into the hall, where he picked up the bag from Oxfam and handed it to the inspector.

Fiske pulled out the purple corduroys. Rex explained how he had come by them and what he had found on the right leg.

“Yes, I remember Susan Richardson wearing these, and very nice she looked in them, too,” Fiske murmured as Julie passed in the hall carrying the wine glasses. “I’ll get this stain checked out.” He bundled the garment back into the bag and, after accepting the plastic container Helen gave him, bid them all a final goodbye and departed out the front door.

“That went well, I thought,” Rex said, returning with his wife to the kitchen. “But he does not seem any further along in the case than I at this point. Unless he’s playing things very close to the chest.”

“I like him.” Helen started loading crockery into the dishwasher. “What did you think?” she asked Julie, who was hand-washing the glasses.

“Quite attractive in a rugged sort of way. Yes, very manly.”

“I meant his personality,” Helen insisted, with a conspiratorial wink at Rex.

Julie removed the primrose yellow rubber gloves. “Dependable? Courteous. Though I bet he can be quite intimidating when he wants to be.” She turned around from the sink. Through the window behind her a cloudless blue sky beckoned. “I thought about giving him my number when he was leaving but lost my nerve. In any case, he’s got his hands full right now. If he’s interested, he can always get it from Rex.”

Julie’s voice came across as matter-of-fact, but her narrow face betrayed a hope that the inspector might want to see her again. Although Helen’s age, she dressed far younger than her years, and her maturity level was more on a par with the teenagers she schooled in geography. Rex rather wished she might find a good man to take care of her, so she would be less dependent on Helen emotionally. Julie was one of the reasons Helen had delayed making the move to Edinburgh. But he doubted Fiske was the man.

The women decided to change into their swimsuits and have desert on the back patio. Rex, not much of a sunbather, took his treacle tart into the sitting room to ponder his next move in the case.