An Open Window Page 4

  ‘Which one?’ I said, for something to fill the gap. ‘Which one of his children had Walter got in mind? Paul? Clare? Donald?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ she said distantly. My remark had not been in good taste.

  The room was wide and lofty. They built their ceilings high in those days. It had three matching sash windows evenly spaced across the facing wall, overlooking the conservatory and the gardens. To the left was a bathroom, its appointments modern. It had no door into the hall. I went into the room on the right. His bedroom. The bed was an old iron-framed monster with brass knobs and a king-sized mattress. There was a hint of puritanical frugality in the room. He’d used it to sleep in, during which time his eyes would be shut. It therefore needed to possess no aesthetic appeal, and had none. It did have, however, firm bolts, top and bottom, to the door that would have opened into the hall. The bolts were stiff—I tried them—and must have been shot home a great number of years before, and not since touched. Since his wife’s death? That seemed possible.

  So I had to consider a suite of rooms with only one usable door, and that possessing a new and efficient deadlock.

  I returned to that room and examined it in more detail.

  He had clearly used it as a living room and office. There was a good-quality carpet on the floor, and heavy drapes at the three windows. Central heating radiators between the windows looked starkly modern against the Victorian woodwork and fittings. His desk was dark and solid and old, yet held the modern necessities of two differently coloured phones, a desk lamp, and a semi-portable manual typewriter. The four-drawer filing cabinet was in matching dark wood. All the surfaces were tidy. There was no indication that anyone had been through his papers, so perhaps Philip Carne would have to do that later—or had done it and left a neatness behind him that wasn’t reflected in his office.

  If so, he had missed the white plastic carrier bag on the floor beneath the central window.

  Walter had a round table with a stuffed armchair beside it, a standard lamp carefully positioned just behind. On the table surface were a spectacle case and a pair of glasses, beside them was a bulky book, the title of which was: The World of 3-D. To me this meant stereo. The author was J. G. Ferwerda. I flicked a page or two. It did not deal with stereo sound, but with stereo photography.

  Behind me, Mary Pinson said: ‘I fetched that book for him from the library, that Saturday morning. He’d had it on order, and it was in. I’ll have to take it back, I suppose.’ Sadness flooded her eyes as I turned to face her.

  ‘That day,’ I prompted. ‘The Saturday he died, you mean?’

  She was so long in answering that I began to think she was not going to do so. Then I understood why she had been reluctant to bring me here; it saddened and upset her to be in Walter’s room. She seemed to shake her shoulders, then she said: ‘I was confused. It was a…bad day. I brought it up here and put it beside his glasses, just as though he was still alive. I’ll have to take it back,’ she repeated. She looked round in confusion, as though he might appear from either of the side doors at any moment. I would have liked to ask her to leave me alone in the room, but I needed her. There could be questions.

  I went over to examine the central one of the windows. The frames were hooked together with the usual swivel latch, which I swung aside. The lower frame went up very smoothly. He’d probably used it often. At its full height, there was room for me to lean out freely. The sill was level with a point a foot above my knees. I looked down. Directly below was the conservatory, with its hole in the roof exactly in line with my body, should I have wished to lean just a little too far. Or should Mary Pinson have wished to come up behind me and help me on my way.

  I withdrew my head, and turned. She was within a yard of me. ‘The window,’ she said, ‘was wide open when I got back, just the same as it was when I saw him last.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘He liked it wide open, did he?’

  ‘No. Not really. That was what struck me as strange. It was quite cool that day, with a brisk wind. I remember that particularly, because it was blowing the bag around.’ Her lips twitched. Something was amusing her.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The plastic bag,’ she explained, pointing to it, on the floor beneath the window. ‘Now that’s a good indication of what he was like.’

  She spoke as though I had to become fully conversant with Walter’s habits. I prompted her. ‘What was he like? Tell me.’

  ‘He was kind and considerate…and vague. Always thinking of something else. That could be irritating at times. I know—though I’ve never been there—but I know that if he was asked to make a decision at the factory in, say, a week’s time, he was absolutely hopeless. Hivvering and hovering around, you wouldn’t believe, and just incapable of making his mind up. But ask him for a snap decision, and he’d come right out with it. Take shopping days…now there’s a good example. I’d come up here to see if there was anything he wanted, and there’d be ten minutes of trying to decide, and in the end: “No, I don’t think so, Mary,” he’d say. And by the time I’d got down and got my clothes on he’d have thought of half a dozen things. And d’you think I could get past the conservatory! Never once, I do believe. Of course, from the back door to my Mini in the garage I had to come past here, beneath that window, and it’d be: “Oh, I’ve just thought, Mary…” Then a whole list of things.’

  ‘Which involved the plastic bag?’

  ‘Things for me to take. Like a library book or two, or his shoes to be mended. All last-second thoughts. He’d put them in that bag and lower them to me.’

  I looked again. There was a length of string fastened to the handles of the bag.

  ‘Rather like the maiden, locked in a tower, hauling up her food in a basket,’ I observed.

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t like that! I brought him all his meals on a tray…Oh, I see. It was a joke. You shouldn’t look so solemn when you say things like that, Mr Patton.’

  I grinned at her. Her mood was now completely gone. ‘But I was thinking serious thoughts, I assure you. This was why you had the key, I take it? His meals…’

  ‘But no,’ she corrected me sharply. ‘I would come up and call out: “It’s Mary.” And he’d let me in. With a tray or the cleaner, or to make his bed and keep him tidy. I never used the key, not once, but he made me promise to keep it with me—always. I remember, the man came to fit the lock and gave Walter two keys. I had one, as I say, to keep for emergencies. If something happened, I’d need to get in.’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘An accident, so that he couldn’t get to the door. A stroke. A heart attack.’

  ‘So there was medical history…’

  ‘Oh, you will not understand! I was just giving you examples.’

  ‘Sometimes I’m a bit slow,’ I admitted. ‘So you had the key, and you kept it with you all the time.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Under your pillow at night?’

  ‘Now you’re doing it again.’

  ‘Now I’m being serious. Don’t you realise, Mary, that it could be very important! The whole point is that this door, which was in effect the only one, was locked. It matters about the keys.’

  She looked disturbed. I had diverted her into thinking this was no more than an interesting interlude, and now I’d told her it was not. She walked past me and slammed the window shut with a show of vigour, then spoke with her back to me, her hands supporting her on the sill. Her voice was quiet.

  ‘Walter was serious about the key, so I did as he asked. Nobody could ever have touched my key, and I had it with me when I left to go shopping, that Saturday morning. He had his own, and he used to lock the door behind me the moment I left. His own key…he wore it. Wore it on a gold chain round his neck, hanging inside his shirt like a medallion. He locked the door after me…that last time. I heard him do it. He wouldn’t have opened it, except to me, or to Kenneth Leyton. Walter was very meticulous.’

  She turned to face me, ha
lf seated now on the sill. ‘So you see, Mr Patton, whatever strange ideas you might have that Walter’s death wasn’t an accident, no one could have entered this room unless they were invited in.’

  Standing there, the sun sideways from behind her and caught in her hair, her face half-shadowed and softened, I could see she had probably been a very beautiful young woman. She had been speaking with a strange and mature authority, completely unlike anything one would expect from a housekeeper. There was no servitude in her tone. I could imagine that Clare’s immature resentment would have bounced impotently from that placidly remote personality.

  ‘You’re saying,’ I said quietly, ‘that the ones he wouldn’t invite in here would be his sons, Paul and Donald, and his daughter Clare?’

  Her shoulders moved in a discreet shrug. ‘Why else the lock?’

  ‘But…you mentioned someone called Kenneth Leyton.’

  ‘His friend. His dear friend. He could trust Kenneth. They virtually built up the factory between them. He was always welcome, always here. That last fortnight, he was here most days…evenings. Keeping Walter in touch with what was going on at the factory. To talk about Kenneth…’

  ‘Then we’ll forget him,’ I said gently, determined not to. ‘Which would leave only yourself, Mary.’ She thrust herself from the window sill. ‘If we’re to assume he’d admit no one else…’ I lifted my eyebrows at her.

  ‘I take it this is another of your jokes.’

  ‘I get these flippant moods.’

  ‘If you’ve seen enough…’ She lifted her head and stared around the room. ‘If you’ve gone far enough…’

  ‘There’s the window, you see.’

  She turned at the door. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying.’

  I gestured towards it. ‘The window that was open. He opened it as you were leaving, and it was still open when you returned.’

  ‘He fell out of it. How could he have shut it after…’ She bit her lip.

  ‘You spoke of a sharp wind. He wouldn’t, surely, have left it open for long.’

  ‘Perhaps it stuck.’ Her voice was now flatly dismissive. She’d lost sympathy with my eccentricities.

  I shook my head. ‘It moves very easily.’

  She made her impatient little ticking noise again. ‘You’re not very bright, are you? But I never thought of policemen as bright. I explained. He threw up the window and called down, asking me to pick up a book they’d got for him at the library. That book.’ Pointing to the table. ‘But of course I’d need his library ticket, one of those plastic computer things they use now. So he couldn’t just throw it down, because it might’ve landed on top of the conservatory. Am I getting too complicated for you, Mr Patton?’

  I shook my head. She was very graphic.

  ‘So he put it in his plastic bag and lowered it to me. But because it was blowing all over the place, he put a book in with it that he’d decided could be returned, and lowered it like that. Though he had to do his pendulum thing. The conservatory’s quite wide. He’d swing the bag from side to side until he’d got it going, then let out the string. So I got his library ticket and book, and he hauled it in. Must have done, because he…because…oh dear Lord!’ She put her hand to her face.

  ‘What is it?’

  She sank into the easy chair. After a minute she looked up. Now the light wasn’t kind. ‘I’ve thought—assumed—that that was the time he fell out. Pulling the bag up again. I’d collected his post, you see, from the hall, and put it all in the bag, to give it a bit of weight. But it wasn’t much, all told. Oh, I should have waited, but I just hurried away. He’d made me late. The bag was blowing around. I assumed, later, when I was thinking how it could’ve happened, that it’d got caught in the guttering, and when he was trying to get it free…I thought he’d leaned too far out. But…’

  ‘But?’ I prompted, my fingers on her shoulder, feeling the shaking and trying to still it.

  ‘But the bag was here, where it is now. It’s me who’s stupid!’ she declared violently. ‘He did manage to pull it up, so it wasn’t then that he fell out.’

  I gave her a few moments, walking away from her and stuffing my pipe. Too firmly, it wouldn’t draw. I looked out of the window. A young woman was walking in the garden. At last I said: ‘There’s also the point that if he’d fallen then, only a minute or so after you’d left, you’d have heard it. I can tell you, it would’ve made an almighty crash.’

  When I turned round she was watching me with large, terrified eyes. ‘You’re right, of course. Oh, poor, dear Walter.’

  ‘So we have to assume he closed it at that time, having brought in his bag. There’d have been no reason to leave it open then, so he’d close it. And he opened it again later.’ I glanced at her. ‘Or somebody else did.’

  ‘No…please…’

  ‘Somebody he did allow in, despite what you say.’

  She came to me and put a hand on my arm. ‘You’re intending to say this at the inquest?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s only conjecture.’

  She nodded. ‘Because if you did, I’d have to give evidence against you myself.’

  I smiled down at her. ‘That won’t be necessary. What evidence, for instance?’

  ‘The door was locked. I had to open it for the policeman who came. If Walter did admit anybody, he would have locked the door behind them at once. It was habit. So how d’you explain the fact that Walter still had his key when they went to him? It was still on its chain round his neck.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  She patted my arm, as if to say, clever boy, you’re seeing sense at last. ‘So we’ll go down and I’ll make another pot of tea.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  I noticed that she carefully locked the door behind us.

  So there we had it, the classical situation of the locked room. Walter had locked himself in. No key was available to anyone who had plans to push him from his open window, and the door was still locked when he was found, his own key still on its chain round his neck. So how could it have been anything but an accident? Suicide, perhaps? No, I couldn’t accept that.

  But of course, it’s obvious how it could have been done. You’ll have seen it before I did. But you wouldn’t have said anything to Mary Pinson, seeing how upset she was already. If you’d observed her carefully, of course, because it wasn’t obvious, she who controlled her emotional responses so proudly. In her own domain, that square and rather drab kitchen, not particularly relieved by the array of modern equipment, she was soon bustling and crashing around. I watched her quietly, trying to get my pipe going.

  It seemed clear to me, in spite of Mary’s certainty, that Walter must have admitted one of the people he suspected of trying to kill him. But these people, if Walter was to make any sense at all out of changing his will, must surely have been told he’d changed it, so that it had then been too late to do any good by killing him. Think about it, and you could see that this might have been the reason he would feel safe in admitting them. But one of them at least, Clare, had shown indications that she did not know of a new will.

  This problem I felt to be more difficult to solve than the question of the locked room.

  I wondered who was the young lady I’d seen in the garden.

  ‘I noticed,’ I observed, ‘that you call him Walter.’ I’d noticed other indications, too.

  We were going to get cake with our tea this time, a cake she’d cooked herself. She waved the knife under my nose.

  ‘Lacking in imagination, too,’ she said severely. ‘Can’t you see the position I was in when their mother died? Just try to understand the effect it had on the two elder ones, Kathleen dying like that. There’d been so little time, you see, for her to use any influence on Paul and Clare, even if she’d had any to use. What she had done, between you and me, hadn’t been for the best. Clare, you see, had had all the attention, with Paul, who was never a happy lad, getting more and more sullen. Then—Kathleen was gone. Walter, at that
time, was almost completely absorbed…no, obsessed would be closer to it…obsessed with this business of his. Struggling to get it going. It must have been a strain, but he tried. Give him credit for that. Tried to find some time with the children.’

  She was quite determined to be as fair as she could. I nodded. I now had my slice of cake. Caraway seed. Years since I’d had any of that. I nodded, mouth full.

  ‘But he was always so exhausted, and he felt the loss of Kathleen so terribly. Virtually, I brought the children up myself, a nanny as well as a housekeeper. All right, say I failed if you like. But you haven’t met the two boys yet. Perhaps Kathleen would have made a better job of it, but I was having to contend with three children growing up without a mother. I tried to take her place. But how could I do that?’

  She was being more open with me than I had any right to expect. Perhaps she needed my sympathy; she obviously felt her failure strongly. No, I decided, what she felt strongly was that any failure might be attributed to her, when she had had to carry an unfair burden alone.

  I said: ‘Walter expected too much from you.’ It was an exploratory remark.

  She moved a hand in a tiny, dismissive gesture. ‘It’s not that. Walter had hardly noticed Clare when Kathleen was alive, but in no time at all, after her death, Clare became his favourite. That was only natural…I suppose. He saw in her the wife he’d lost. There was nothing he could refuse her. And Paul watched it happening. I could see him resenting it. How do you deal with jealousy? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s built-in with some people. It’d been there from the time of Clare’s birth. Up to then he’d had the full attention of both parents. But to Kathleen, Clare was no more than a pretty doll she could play with and dress and coo over. Paul looked to his father. He loved him, Mr Patton. Loved and admired. But Walter didn’t see that. Even so young, Paul would have loved to be taken down to that shed—that’s all the business was, at first—and just left to watch and help. But Walter didn’t see that.’