Troth came back, looked at Stephen’s arms as if he had done something disgusting, exposed himself perhaps, and opened the window. Malm sat down.
‘Mrs Morgan had a Volkswagen,’ he said. ‘A small yellow Volkswagen which she left parked on the Jackley road. Did you see that car while you were out?’
‘Yes.’
‘And touched it. Your fingerprints were on the driver’s door.’
Malm nodded to Troth and Troth pounced on him with a question. How had he got Ann Morgan to stop? Had he waved her down or had she recognized him? Stephen knew they suspected him but he was still shocked to be accused as directly and as insolently as that.
‘I didn’t even see her. I didn’t get her to stop.’
‘She got out of that car for someone she knew.’
‘She stopped and you spoke to her and then you opened the car door for her,’ said Malm.
‘The car was empty when I opened the door,’ said Stephen.
‘Go around opening car doors, do you, when the fancy takes you?’
They went over and over that for a long time. The room grew stifling hot, in spite of the open window. Sweat was running down his sides from his armpits. The same man came back with more coffee and cheese and piccalilli sandwiches. Stephen watched a shadow that was creeping across the floor as the sun began to pass overhead and he thought there was no reason why the table and chairs shouldn’t be moved into this shade, but no one suggested doing it.
After they had eaten the sandwiches Malm said he expected Stephen would like to stretch his legs. Stephen took that to mean he would like to go to the lavatory and it did, but Malm and Troth also took him outside and showed him a car, a Volkswagen of the same model as the yellow one, though this one was green, and got him to demonstrate how he had opened Ann Morgan’s car door and what he had done. He was sure they didn’t believe him and he felt they were humouring him towards something.
Back in the room with the table and the bentwood chairs Malm started on Marianne Price. It was a coincidence that Stephen had been associated with both girls’ deaths, had found Marianne’s body and then had found Ann Morgan’s car. Stephen said it wasn’t odd when you considered how often he was out walking on the moor.
‘Maybe too often,’ Malm said.
Stephen had never been able to deal with innuendo and he couldn’t now. He sat dumbly under that one while Troth went away and a man he had never seen before came in, a thin, quiet man who stared at him. Malm asked him why he had lost a day’s work to join the search party. What concern was it of his? Had he expected to find Ann Morgan’s body?
‘It was because I know the moor,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d be more useful than people who’d never set foot outside Hilderbridge.’ Inside him, deep down, was a small voice that whispered, because it’s mine, because I need to know what goes on there, I need to control it, that’s why.
‘Did you often have your lunch at the Market Burger House?’
‘I’ve been there once or twice.’
‘So you knew Marianne Price worked there?’
‘For the Lord’s sake! Everybody knows she worked there.’
The other man said softly, lightly, ‘What did you do with their hair?’
Stephen jumped up and pushed his chair back and it fell over with a clatter. ‘If this is going on I want my lawyer!’
‘Have you got one?’ Malm said dryly, but even he seemed to think the other man had gone too far, and before any more was said Manciple was back and they were reverting to the car and the time Stephen went out and the time he got back.
He knew he gave identical accounts each time he retold what he had done on Sunday evening. When he had told them four times they seemed to give up trying to extract a confession from him. Three cups of tea were brought in and a plate of shortcake biscuits. The room was in full shade now but it was still hot and stuffy. For the fifth time Stephen recounted how he had seen the car with its window half-open and seen the scarf and the sweater, and had opened the door and closed it again.
Manciple asked him how he had come to get a scratch on the side of his neck.
‘Brambles when I was out with the search party,’ Stephen said, and he turned his head and pulled down his shirt collar so that they could see.
‘Or a woman’s fingernail,’ said Malm.
Stephen shrugged wearily. It was too ridiculous. They said no more about the scratch but talked about the car again. At five they told him that was enough for today and he could go home, they wouldn’t keep him any longer. If he didn’t mind waiting five minutes they would take him home by car. Stephen said angrily that he did mind, he wouldn’t wait, he would walk home.
‘I’d keep off the moor, though, if I were you,’ said Malm. ‘If you insist on walking seven or eight miles when we’re perfectly willing to take you, you stick to the road. And give the moor a wide-berth for a bit, right?’
Standing by the desk, talking to the duty officer, was the girl from the Three Towns Echo who had interviewed Stephen in April. She looked very different, prettier, in her summer dress and pale blue cardigan. A chiffon scarf, blue, green and white, was tied round her head and knotted at the nape of her neck. She came up to him as he went towards the swing doors.
‘Is it you who’ve been all day helping police with their inquiries?’
Stephen attempted a light laugh. ‘Lord, yes, I suppose so.’
‘I’ve phoned it over to the PA.’
‘What might the PA be in plain language?’
She looked incredulous. ‘The Press Association. I thought everyone knew that. It’ll be in all the nationals, there’s been a man helping police with their inquiries into the moors murders.’
‘Not my name, though?’
She shook her head. They walked out into the street together. It was warm and sunny, the sky cloudless. ‘They have to be careful of libel,’ she said. ‘You might sue them.’
‘I certainly should!’
‘Would you mind telling me what they’ve been asking you?’
It was wonderful to be out in the fresh air again, the sunshine. It had felt like prison in there, or as if he could only be let out of that stuffy room into prison. Remembering jargon he had read somewhere, he said joyfully, ‘I’ll give you an exclusive story!’
They had walked into Market Square. The Market Burger House was the obvious place to go for a cup of something and a biscuit, but Stephen felt he had had enough cups of something and enough biscuits to last him a lifetime. The Kelsey Arms was just opening. Feeling extremely daring, Stephen held the saloon bar door open for her.
There were two customers in there already, a man and a woman, no one else. Stephen fetched himself and the girl two halves of lager. She told him her name was Harriet Crozier. It pleased him that she remembered he was an expert on Vangmoor and that she seemed to have forgotten the trade by which he earned his living. She referred to him as a nature writer. On an impulse, a little breathlessly, he told her whose grandson he was.
‘Can I use that?’
‘Oh Lord, it might be better to say “descendant”.’ He was thinking of Uncle Stanley making a fuss. Uncle Stanley read the Three Towns Echo very thoroughly. There was often something in it about himself. ‘Say “descendant”, and you could say some of his — well, his talent’s been passed on to me, something like that.’ Stephen began telling her about the two occasions on which he had spoken to Ann Morgan, though he left out the bit about covering the settee, how social conscience had led him to join the search party.
Harriet took it all down in what she called speedwriting but which looked to Stephen like ordinary words with the vowels left out. She had drunk her lager very quickly, and suddenly, announcing that she was terribly hot, she couldn’t stand that thing on her head any longer, she couldn’t stand it whatever the risk, she pulled off her scarf.