An Open Window Page 6

  ‘You can hear the lions from here,’ she told me. ‘On a still night.’

  I wondered how many still nights she’d spent there. ‘Really?’

  ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ called a voice from the hall.

  We advanced towards it, Heather urging me to the front. This had to be Kenneth Leyton, Walter’s lifelong friend, though I saw that this could not be the literal truth, as Walter would have been in his sixties, and Leyton must have been eight or ten years younger. Or had worn well. He stuck out his hand.

  ‘So here you are. Heather said she’d bring you.’

  No, he hadn’t worn well, I realised, as he backed beneath the hall light. His hand was dry, and showed traces of arthritis. His clothes hung too loosely, his shoulders were rounded. But he was an accountant, wasn’t he, living bowed over a desk. And bowed down by his responsibilities, perhaps. Fully erect, with his shoulders back, he would have been a powerful man. He had been handsome, and might still seem so in better circumstances. Better? I asked myself. This was his home, where a man might be expected to relax. Yet his eyes were tired and worried, deep-set, the flesh loose on the strong bones of his face. I reminded myself that he would be under strain, his son having been accused of murder.

  ‘I didn’t get a chance to refuse,’ I told him, and now it seemed that the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes owed something to humour, though it would be a quiet humour, gentle, I thought. ‘You’ll be Kenneth Leyton. Miss Pinson has spoken of you.’

  ‘Kindly, I hope.’ But he said that with a shade of anxiety. ‘Come along through, Mr Patton. This is very good of you, at such short notice.’ He looked beyond me at Heather as she closed the front door. ‘You’ll want to tidy up a bit, Heather, I’m sure. Your hair, dear.’

  ‘My hair will do very well, and I don’t intend to miss a word.’

  The corners of his mouth moved, and he glanced quickly at me. These two, I guessed, maintained a constant war of words, as might be expected of a father with his son’s young woman, but each taking secret delight in it. ‘My son’s in the kitchen,’ he told me.

  But he wasn’t, entirely. A door at the end of the hall opened, and appetising smells wafted around me. A younger version of Kenneth, taller, his slimness that of fitness, stood in the doorway, wearing an apron. ‘Be with you. I daren’t leave this.’

  Heather hesitated, caught Kenneth’s eye, and called out: ‘I’ll come and help.’

  It was mutually understood that Leyton would want a prior word with me alone. He led me into the front room, putting on the lights, and gestured vaguely. I had a choice of either of the ancient and battered armchairs, one each side of the fireplace. The evenings were becoming cool, and he had a small log fire going. Gas and electric fires throw out heat; a real fire projects comfort. It was a square room, the furniture having crept into its own arrangement with time. No one had rushed round to prepare for my visit, and deprived it of its humanity. I sank into one of the chairs. The springs creaked, but took my weight.

  ‘Would you care for a sherry?’

  I said I would. We sat with glasses in our hands, a round, low table between us. I waited. He seemed uncertain how to get going.

  ‘I wanted you to see Walter’s house, and speak to Mary first,’ he said at last. ‘It’s just a stroke of luck that you happen to be an ex-policeman.’ He put down his glass and was massaging his fingers. I’d given him no clue as to my attitude, and he was finding it difficult to lead himself in.

  ‘That matters, does it, that I’m ex-police? Heather told me something—relating to your son, and about Aleric Tolchard. But you’re speaking now about Walter Mann’s house.’

  He considered me for a moment, then nodded.

  ‘About Walter’s death, in fact,’ I amplified.

  Now he was eager with his advance. ‘The local police, not understanding the background, they were only too anxious to see Walter’s death as an accident. But you, an outsider, I thought you might…well…have other ideas.’

  I needed time. I wanted to stall. ‘D’you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Heavens no. An ashtray? Hold on a sec.’ I’d flurried him. He wanted no interruptions, and scurried across the room in a frantic search. I filled my pipe. Everybody wanted to get me involved, but I’d come here to listen to young Chad’s difficulties. All right. Don’t tell me. At any time that day I could have turned away from it. It’s this damned curiosity of mine.

  As he sat down again, I said: ‘You ought to be quite clear on one point, Mr Leyton. I’m here on my wife’s behalf, as a residual legatee.’ I wasn’t sure how much he knew, as he’d been very close in Walter’s confidence. ‘Theoretically, all I need to do is hang around until the will’s read, then go away again. My interest in this is purely selfish. An inheritance, and the legal necessities involved.’

  I said this as coolly as I could, wondering how easily he might be discouraged. He treated it as a challenge.

  ‘If you hadn’t been personally interested you wouldn’t have come to see us, whatever Heather said.’

  ‘She bullied me.’

  ‘You don’t look like a man who’s easily influenced, Mr Patton. She can’t even bully me.’ He said this seriously, as though she often tried. But nevertheless I was getting the impression that Leyton, frail and vulnerable as he might seem, had a reserved indestructibility about him. He would bend to force, but not break, would simply continue in his own quiet way, certain it was right and true.

  ‘What brought me here was a reference to your son,’ I told him. ‘But now you’re talking about the death of your friend, Walter.’

  ‘Don’t you think they’re connected?’

  ‘I don’t know enough to form an opinion. You got me here, so you tell me.’

  ‘Ah! I see. You want to get down to business. That’s obvious.’

  ‘I’m a guest here, Mr Leyton. I just wanted to make it clear that you’re talking in conundrums. Aleric Tolchard, who was Clare’s husband, fell down a staircase at the factory and broke his neck. Until Heather told me so, I had no idea the police thought it was murder. Now you’re saying this death’s linked with Walter’s—’

  ‘Obviously it was. Immediately after that, Walter locked himself away. He thought Tolchard’s death had been aimed at himself.’ Almost Mary’s words.

  ‘It’s only what he thought. Are you saying Walter was there at the factory at that time?’

  ‘Walter always liked to be last out. That dates back to the very beginning. Tolchard…has anybody told you about him?’

  ‘Only that he existed.’

  ‘Then I’ll sketch him in for you.’ He leaned forward. As he spoke, from time to time his knuckles rapped the table for emphasis, his arthritis forgotten. ‘He came to us, to the firm, ten years ago, and married Clare soon afterwards. Walter wanted a research manager who knew optics. That’s what we do, you know. Optics as related to photography. Walter had dreams…’ He smiled, a wistful, fond smile. ‘Anyway, Tolchard came, and he wasn’t quite what we needed, even though he’d got his doctorate with a thesis on optics and camera lenses. It was just that he didn’t fit. Not to my mind. We’ve always been a friendly sort of business, no pressure, no fuss. Tolchard was all push and authority, one of your dark and intense types. He completely dominated Clare, and was all set to do the same at the factory. If Walter would’ve let him.’

  ‘They had disputes?’

  His hand flapped a negative. ‘I gave you the wrong impression. Tolchard was boss of research and development, but he tried to spread his influence. Walter had to be firm. Tolchard even put his nose into my department—accounts and production control.’

  ‘And Walter intervened?’

  He compressed his lips. ‘I did. I told him, when I put a foot in his department, then he could do so in mine.’

  I could just see it, but suppressed a smile. ‘So he was a nuisance?’

  ‘Mainly on the board. Walter told me about it. You’ll have to understand that I was with Walter from the beginning. He was eight years older than me, and started the business in a shed more than thirty years ago. We had four employees, and I came in as wages clerk, straight from school. I had to do a night school course to keep up.’

  His version of evening classes. He was eyeing me aslant, almost ashamed of the admission.

  ‘And it grew from there?’

  ‘We started off making mounts and frames for photographs. Now it’s anything related to photography. But as time went on, Walter formed a private limited company. A hundred shares. On my twenty-first birthday he gave me ten shares. It was a bit of a joke, really, but that was when the company was incorporated, and he said there had to be a second shareholder. “All I can give you, Ken,” he said. They were worth next to nothing then.’

  ‘And now?’

  He grimaced, and changed it to a smile. ‘Paul would give me twenty-five thousand for them. But no. They’re for Chad and Heather, when they get married.’

  ‘Heather says she doesn’t want marriage.’

  ‘Heather says all sorts of things. But I was saying…as the years went on, and Walter’s children grew up, he gave all three thirteen shares each, so that finally he was left with his majority of fifty-one. It was still his company. Then along came Tolchard. Clare gave him a legal authority to vote her shares, so he had a seat on the board.’

  ‘Along with Walter, Paul and Donald? And you?’

  ‘I never wanted that. Administration’s not for me. Damn it all, Mr Patton, it’s been all I can do to keep on top of my own job. It’s grown. It gets more and more complicated. All computers and print-outs now. You’d never believe it! We feed in the parts lists and the order quantities, and out it pops, a bit of paper with details of how to load each machine and operative. We talk to a set of damned screens. It’s…it’s immoral, that’s what it is. At one time, I’d put up the wages packets, and if there was a query I could explain the figures, and if I’d made a mistake I could put it right. Now the computer prints out the pay slips. Get a query, and I have to punch in the clock number and type something like: why increased social security contribution? And the screen prints it out: because it’s changed. I tell the man that, and he says: how has it changed? I punch that in, and up it comes on the screen: tell him to bugger off. Well…I mean…’

  I refused to smile. He had been leading round to something, and found himself unable to face it. I didn’t press him. ‘You were saying—board meetings.’

  ‘Tolchard was always pressing for more money for development, to chase up his grand schemes. Chad can tell you about that, because he was Tolchard’s senior research assistant. And Tolchard, as I said, was always trying to ease his way into other sections. Paul had row after row with him, for trespassing on the shop floor.’

  ‘Paul, I take it, is works manager?’

  ‘Exactly. Good guess. So…on that Thursday evening, late, Walter was waiting to do his final rounds, and Chad, as usual, was stuck in some research work or other, and Tolchard hadn’t gone home. He reckoned it was his job to lock up the research section, which is kind of separate from the rest. Walter reckoned it was his.’

  ‘Now wait a minute,’ I cut in. ‘You’re not going to tell me that Walter shoved him down a staircase…’

  ‘What nonsense! Walter believed that whoever did it—if anybody did—they’d mistaken Tolchard for himself. It was dark where it happened. It was Walter who could have been expected to do the rounds, and he came running down the stairs from his office. I heard him doing that, when he wouldn’t have had time to get up there. If you get what I mean.’

  ‘I’ve registered the fact that you were there. You didn’t mention that.’

  ‘Oh—didn’t I? Sorry. I was stuck there late, as usual, struggling with the wages.’

  ‘Walter hadn’t chased you off home?’

  ‘He didn’t include me in that.’

  Walter, it seemed to me, had been well aware that the job was getting on top of his friend Kenneth, and had given him a free hand to fight it on his own.

  ‘But you seem certain of the time of Tolchard’s death?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said brightly. ‘I heard it, you see. The scream. Distant, but that floor was quiet. I went running and, as I told the police, I heard Walter clattering down from his office and saw Chad running from the research lab…’

  Running from, I thought. But didn’t say. ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Somebody else must have been in the building. Must have.’

  ‘Would that be possible?’

  He smiled again. When he did that you’d believe every word he said. ‘We’re not on high-security work, you know. The research block has special locks, but the rest…’ He shrugged. ‘More sherry? No? I expect they’re waiting for us in there.’

  But his physical attitude indicated no hurry to move. He sat back, limp and resigned, as though he’d said all he dared, and now cringed from my expected questions. So I complied. ‘Did your son have a special motive for killing Tolchard?’

  ‘There were terrible rows. He’ll tell you.’

  ‘All the same…rows hardly justify murder.’

  ‘The police seem to believe they do. There’s the possible promotion, too.’

  ‘All right. But earlier on you were suggesting that Walter’s death is linked with Tolchard’s.’

  ‘How could it be otherwise?’

  ‘Walter’s was an accident. Why couldn’t Tolchard’s have been an accident? A simple slip on the top step…something like that.’

  ‘Walter’s was not an accident.’

  ‘He’d locked himself away.’

  ‘But you’d know about such things.’ He’d stated it as a fact, but he was exploring my potential, his forehead creased with anxiety.

  I shook my head. What was he trying to get across to me? ‘It’s got all the indications of an accidental fall from his window through the conservatory roof.’ He said nothing. ‘In any event, who would stand to gain? Except my wife and myself, and we were in Wales at the time. He’d changed his will. Everybody else stood to lose by his death.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Well…wouldn’t they? Hasn’t Heather told you about the provisions of the new will?’ It was a gentle trap.

  ‘Heather will say nothing.’

  Good girl. ‘But you knew?’

  ‘Walter and I had long arguments, up there in his room. I didn’t like what he was doing, not at all. Disinheriting his family…’

  ‘And disinheriting you, too?’

  He inclined his head. ‘I insisted on that. Otherwise—consider my situation. I’d be accused of using my influence.’

  ‘As you were.’

  ‘But for them, though. Even so, I could foresee a great deal of unpleasantness. So I insisted. Threw it at him. Shouted at him. I can see his face now. We’d never raised our voices to each other before. But he did it—excluded me. I knew that, when I was asked to witness it. He smiled at me when I took up the pen.’

  He shook himself, dragging his mind from the memory. ‘But the original will included you?’

  He nodded soberly. ‘To the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds.’ So Mary Pinson had been wrong about that.

  ‘And it was you who had the job of telling the family they’d been cut out of his will?’ I knew otherwise, and waited for his confirmation.

  ‘He told me he’d do that. Couldn’t wait. By phone, he said.’

  ‘And yet, he was still locking himself away. Afterwards.’

  ‘Ah, but you see, he’d expected anger and dismay. Or I assume he had. Sometimes he could be quite close. But there wasn’t any trouble. None I heard about. Nobody went rushing round to the house. So I assume that made him suspicious. It would, wouldn’t it!’

  ‘Nevertheless, if he told them, then his death, if not accidental, couldn’t have been related to money…to the will. They, at least, would know they could gain nothing.’

  He seemed surprised at that. It was a point he hadn’t considered, which I found strange. ‘Well of course. I do believe you’re right.’

  ‘Yet you still consider the two deaths are connected?’

  ‘I’m certain of it.’

  I considered him seriously for a moment, then looked down at my pipe. Up again when I had my thoughts organised.

  ‘Mr Leyton,’ I said, ‘you have just gone to some lengths to explain to me that your friend Walter Mann thought his life was in danger, and that his money and his control of his factory were the reason. No…let me say this. You believe that Aleric Tolchard’s death was in fact an attempt on Walter’s life. You’ve told me that Walter took measures to protect himself, by locking himself away and changing his will. You’re certain he informed his family about that change. And yet you come to me for help for your son.’

  He stirred uncomfortably. ‘I don’t see…’

  ‘Because you haven’t thought this through. If, as you say, Walter would have wasted no time in telling his family about the new will, then none of these would have any reason to kill him, even if that room had been easily accessible. But you still believe that Walter’s death and Tolchard’s death are linked. You do say that?’

  ‘I believe they are.’ But his voice was uncertain. I’d shaken him.

  ‘Then we’d have to look for someone who didn’t benefit from Walter’s original will. Someone who didn’t kill Tolchard by mistake, but simply because he was Tolchard. Someone who might have gained access to Walter’s room because he would not be suspected of offering any danger. Perhaps someone whom Walter had realised was the murderer of Tolchard.’

  ‘You’re not to say…no, I won’t have it.’

  ‘Damn it all, you’ve brought me here to prove your son killed Tolchard.’

  He slapped his hands on the arms of his chair, and seemed about to fly at me, but Heather put her head round the door.