Cooper sighed. "Call me Cooper," he said. "Most people do. Tommy's more of an embarrassment than a name." He took out a cigarette. "Why do you call Miss Lascelles a child? She's a young woman, Jack. Seventeen years old and legally responsible for her actions. If she's prosecuted she will be dealt with in an adult court. You really shouldn't allow sentiment to cloud your judgement. We're not talking just trinkets here. She took her grandmother for five hundred pounds a month ago and didn't bat an eyelid while she was doing it. And on the day of the murder she stole some earrings worth two thousand pounds."
"Did Mathilda report the money stolen?"
"No," Cooper admitted.
"Then Sarah certainly won't."
Cooper sighed again. "I guess you've been talking to a lawyer, told you to keep your mouths shut, I suppose, and never mind what Hughes does to anyone else." He struck a match and held it to the tip of his cigarette, watching Jack in the flaring light. Anger showed itself in every line of the other man's face, in the aggressive jut of his jaw, in the compressed lips and the narrowed eyes. He seemed to be exercising enormous self-control just to hold himself in. With a flick of his thumbnail Cooper extinguished the match and plunged the car into darkness again. Only the glow of burning tobacco remained. "Hughes is working to a pattern," he said. "I explained as much of it as we have been able to find out to your wife this morning. In essence-"
"She told me," Jack cut in. "I know what he's doing."
"Okay," said Cooper easily, "then you'll know how important it is to stop him. There'll be other Ruths, make no mistake about that, and whatever he's doing to these girls to force them to work for him will get more extreme as time goes by. That's the nature of the beast." He drew on his cigarette. "He does force them, doesn't he?"
"You're the policeman, Cooper. Arrest the sod and ask him."
"That's exactly what we're planning to do. Tomorrow. But we'll have a much stronger hand if we know what to ask him about. We're stumbling around in the dark at the moment."
Jack didn't say anything.
"I could get a warrant for Miss Lascelles's arrest and take her down to the station. How would she stand up to the psychological thumbscrews, do you think? You might not have realized it but she's different from the other girls Hughes has used. She doesn't have parents she can rely on to protect her."
"Sarah and I will do it," Jack said curtly. "We're in loco parentis at the moment."
"But you've no legal standing. We could insist that her mother was present during questioning and if it's of any interest to you the only thing Mrs. Lascelles was concerned about last night was whether her daughter's expulsion had anything to do with Mrs. Gillespie's murder. She'd break Ruth for us if she thought it would help her get her hands on the old lady's money."
Jack gave a faint laugh. "You're all piss and wind, Cooper. You're too damn nice to do anything like that, and we both know it. Take it from me, you'd have it on your conscience for life if you added to the damage that's already been done to that poor kid."
"It's bad then."
"I'd say that was a fair assumption, yes."
"You must tell me, Jack. We won't get anywhere with Hughes if you don't tell me."
"I can't. I've given my word to Ruth."
"Break it."
Jack shook his head. "No. In my book a word, once given, cannot be taken back." He thought for a moment. "There's one thing I could do, though. You deliver him to me and I'll deliver him to you. How does that grab you as an idea?"
Cooper sounded genuinely regretful. "It's known as aiding and abetting. I'd be kissing goodbye to my pension."
Jack gave a low laugh. "Think about it," he said, reaching for the handle and thrusting open the door. "It's my best offer." The smoke from Cooper's cigarette eddied after him as he got out. "All I need is an address, Tommy. When you're ready, phone it through." He slammed the door and loped off into the darkness.
Violet Orloff tiptoed into her husband's bedroom and frowned anxiously at him. He was swathed in yards of paisley dressing-gown and reclined like a fat old Buddha against his pillows, a mug of cocoa in one hand, a cheese sandwich in the other, the Daily Telegraph crossword on his knees. "She's crying again."
Duncan peered at her over his bifocals. "It's not our business, dear," he said firmly.
"But I can hear her. She's sobbing her heart out."
"It's not our business."
"Except I keep thinking, suppose we'd done something when we heard Mathilda crying, would she be dead now? I feel very badly about that, Duncan."
He sighed. "I refuse to feel guilty because Mathilda's cruelties to her family, imagined or real, provoked one of them into killing her. There was nothing we could have done to prevent it then, and as you keep reminding me, there is nothing we can do now to bring her back. We have alerted the police to possible motive. I think we should leave it there."
"But, Duncan," Violet wailed, "if we know it was Joanna or Ruth, then we must tell the police."
He frowned. "Don't be silly, Violet. We don't know who did it, nor, frankly, are we interested. Logic says it had to be someone with a key or someone she trusted enough to let into the house, and the police don't need me to tell them that." The frown deepened. "Why do you keep pushing me into meddling, anyway? It's almost as if you want Joanna and Ruth to be arrested."
"Not both of them. They didn't do it together, did they?" She grimaced horribly, screwing her face into an absurd caricature. "But Joanna is crying again, and I think we should do something. Mathilda always said the house was full of ghosts. Perhaps she's come back."
Duncan stared at her with open alarm. "You're not ill, are you?"
"Of course I'm not ill," she said crossly. "I think I'll pop round, see if she's all right, talk to her. You never know, she might decide to confide in me." With an arch wave she tiptoed off again, and moments later he heard the sound of the front door opening.
Duncan shook his head in perplexity as he returned to his crossword. Was this the beginnings of senility? Violet was either very brave or very foolish to interfere with an emotionally disturbed woman who had, quite clearly, loathed her mother enough to murder her. He could only imagine what Joanna's reaction would be to his wife's naive assertions that she knew more than she'd told the police. The thought worried him enough to force him out of his warm bed and into his slippers, before padding downstairs in her wake.
But whatever had upset Joanna Lascelles was destined to remain a mystery to the Orloffs that night. She refused to open the door to Violet's ringing and it wasn't until the Sunday at church that they heard rumours about Jack Blakeney returning to his wife and Ruth being so afraid to go home to Cedar House and her mother that she had chosen to live with the Blakeneys. Southcliffe, it was said, had asked her to leave because of the scandal that was about to break around the Lascelles family. This time the furiously wagging tongues centred their suspicion on Joanna.
If Cooper was honest with himself, he could see Dave Hughes's attraction for young middle-class girls. He was a personable "bit of rough," handsome, tall, with the clean, muscular looks of a Chippendale, dark shoulder-length hair, bright blue eyes and an engaging smile. Unthreatening was the word that leapt immediately to mind, and it was only gradually in the confined atmosphere of a Bournemouth police interview room that the teeth began to show behind the smile. What you saw, Cooper realized, was very professional packaging. What lay beneath the surface was anyone's guess.
Detective Chief Inspector Charlie Jones was another where the packaging obscured the real man. It amused Cooper to see how seriously Hughes underestimated the sad Pekinese face that regarded him with such mild-mannered apology. Charlie took the chair on the other side of the table from Hughes and sifted rather helplessly through his briefcase. "It was good of you to come in," he said. "I realize time's precious. We're grateful for your co-operation, Mr. Hughes."