As soon as the questioning began again in earnest, she seemed, to Rose’s disappointment, to swiftly regain control of her emotions.
‘I can’t remember where I bought them, not a clue,’ she said. ‘And I’m afraid I paid in cash.’
‘Why in cash, Constance?’ asked Rose. ‘They’re over a hundred quid a pair. That’s a lot of cash to be carrying around spare, even for a woman like you.’
Constance shrugged. ‘If I hadn’t paid cash for the boots I would certainly never have used them again after the first time, just in case they could be traced back to me in some way,’ she replied. ‘I read Patricia Cornwell, Detective Chief Inspector. I may have acted like a fool in more ways than one, but I am not an unintelligent woman.’
And that, Rose had thought, was part of the problem she had about the whole scenario. Constance Lange certainly was not unintelligent. There was so much that did not add up.
On Colin Parker’s suit jacket, made of the kind of wool and polyester mix to which tiny fragments of material are inclined to adhere, forensic had found traces of wool fluff which might have come from the gloves of the murderer. But without the gloves themselves that was no help. Constance said that she had banked on the tide taking care of everything when she had thrown all that might incriminate her into the sea, and more than likely she would prove to be right. It was all so plausible and yet almost too neat for Rose’s liking. Her mind just would not stop racing.
Yet again questioning Constance Lange took the case no further. Her story never varied. She never added anything to it either.
Her appearance and charging at the magistrates’ court — the last case of the day before proceedings were shut down for Christmas — was a brief formality. Rose drove her own car to the court, and, with Constance charged and on her way to Eastwood, the policewoman was able to go off duty at last. But she realised that she could not stop. Not yet.
Behind the wheel of the Scimitar she made a quick decision and headed out of the city towards the M5. She couldn’t wait any longer before visiting Chalmpton Peverill and seeing the rest of the Lange family for herself.
Peter Mellor had been one of the team who had already made enquiries there, and had reported back to her fully. Somehow it made no difference. She knew she had two big faults, as her senior officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Titmuss, had told her often enough — she was reluctant to delegate and she had a disconcerting tendency to go off on her own, to be a maverick.
Off she was going again, she thought to herself, an hour or so later as she pulled her car to a halt outside the Lange family farm. She opened the car door. There seemed to be no press around. It was dark, perhaps they had got all they wanted during the daylight hours. Perhaps they had simply gone home to celebrate Christmas. She presumed that even hacks and snappers did that.
The church bells were sounding. She was in the middle of a sleepy Somerset village on Christmas Eve. Yet what secrets did this place hold?
William Lange, a bucket in each hand, emerged from one of the loose boxes in the stable yard next to the house as she stepped out of the motor. She could hear the sounds of horses contentedly munching behind him. Presumably he had been giving the animals their evening feed. It was now almost 6.30 p.m. and growing very cold. The yard was brightly lit. William was wearing a heavy quilted jacket over corduroy trousers tucked into workmanlike boots. A layer of thick sock showed at their tops.
She thought how boyishly good-looking he was. And there was something about his face which indicated that once upon a time he had laughed a lot. Not any more, she reckoned.
He greeted Rose without much interest or concern, but with a slight air of impatience, more as if she were a commercial traveller about to try to sell him something he didn’t want than a senior police officer investigating a series of murders to which his mother had recently confessed.
‘You’d best come into the house,’ he said without enthusiasm.
He did not offer her tea or coffee. His manner made it clear that he was busy, that he was fed up with being interrupted. And she found that talking to him was a bit like talking to a stuffed dummy. His face was set. His responses were automatic and inhuman, almost as if he had programmed himself to behave and react in a certain way. It seemed that he was simply refusing to have anything to do with what was going on, as if he were pretending, almost, that it wasn’t really happening. Rose already knew from Peter Mellor how resolutely William was carrying on with his day-to-day life regardless of all that was unfolding around him. She recognised that he was probably in deep shock — nonetheless she found his behaviour disconcerting.
‘I’d like to talk to you about your mother,’ Rose began.
‘I have no mother,’ he told her coldly.
It was not an easy interview, and it occurred to Rose how alike mother and son were, not so much in appearance but in every other way. Their eyes had the same shutters on them, she thought obscurely.
The village, which she found even more uncomfortable and claustrophobic than she might have expected, was every bit the hotbed of gossip which Peter Mellor had described to her. And the welcome she was given at Church Cottage was very different to that which she received at the farm. Marcia Spry was not so much warm as downright eager.
‘’Course us knew there was summat wrong with ’er, knowed that for years,’ said the old woman.
She was yet again keen to detail the doubts she said she had always had about Constance, but praised William, whom she described, with considerable edge, as ‘a true Lange’.
‘He took it all so calmly, ’is own mother arrested for murder and all,’ Maria said. ‘He must have been shocked to bits, but ’e never showed it. Just got on with running that farm, ’e ’as...’
But it was when Marcia touched upon the relationship between William and his mother that Rose decided it might be worth interviewing the young man once more before leaving the village that night.
‘They was always thick as thieves them two. Not lately though, he’s ’ad no time for her lately, and seems he was a good judge too...’ rambled the old lady.
Rose was thoughtful as she strolled slowly back to Chalmpton Village Farm. She was not in a hurry to get away. Christmas this year filled her with little more enthusiasm than she imagined it did any of the Langes.
Rose had not gone back to Simon after walking out on him three days earlier and neither had he asked her to. They had met only once — when she returned briefly to the bungalow to pick up some things — and he had been frosty and uncommunicative. She had moved into a police section house until she had the time to sort out something more permanent — or even time to think about what she really wanted. The next day, Christmas Day, she planned to spend the morning at Staple Hill — work on this one wasn’t going to stop for Christmas, not as far as she was concerned — and was then due to have Christmas dinner with her sister and her family in Weston-super-Mare, where they had recently returned to run a guest house. Her mother would be there too, which filled Rose with dread. The Christmas Day arrangement had been made some time ago, and had, of course, included Simon. Rose had somehow not got around to contacting her family to tell them that Simon would not be with her. Let alone why. She had already contemplated calling her sister and backing out of the whole thing, using the murder investigation as an excuse. In the long term, though, she reckoned that would cause her more bother than simply turning up Simon-less tomorrow and facing up to the inevitable barrage of questions. Particularly from her mother.