Evelyne countered this by telling Hugh he was behaving like a foolish eighteen-year-old, and making himself the laughing stock of the village with that Gladys. And as for her nephew! He was a pig-eyed, sweaty, revolting youth, it ran in the family. Wallop! She got another stinging blow and she backed away, scared; she had not seen Hugh so angry for such a long time.
Hugh started on about David — all that show about her going to Cardiff to find the boy she loved, the boy of her dreams. It must have been all fantasy because she came back with a face like a nun’s, and a tongue so sharp no one could speak to her.
‘What happened, Evie? Did he turn you down? Can you blame him, look at you, you act like an old woman … dear God, gel, what are we doing, what are we saying? Come here, for the Lord’s sake, come here.’
Evelyne went into her father’s arms as if he were a long-lost lover. He held her, rocking her, kissing her hair, her neck, and saying sweet, soft things, taking back everything he had just said. She found herself kissing him back, she was so in need of love, so in need of physical contact that she was bursting inside. They were held suspended, staring into one another’s eyes.
The crash of the door-knocker brought them round, and Gladys’ voice, high-pitched and hysterical. Hugh let her in. It was Willie, he’d not been home since tea, and now it was one in the morning and she was worried stiff. No one seemed to know where he was.
On hearing that Willie was missing, Evelyne said that he had gone to the picture house to see the jazz film. ‘Perhaps he met a girl there, Da? Wait, I’ll come with you.’
She ran down the street after Hugh and Gladys, who were calling out Willie’s name along the way. Lights were coming on in the houses, heads popped out of windows. Soon there was a trail of people behind them, like the children following the Pied Piper, everyone looking for Willie. Evelyne’s heart hammered in her chest… ‘Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let him have met someone and gone walking.’ Anything but what she dreaded.
Gladys began to shiver with cold and Evelyne took off her greatcoat and slipped it round Gladys’ shoulders, forgetting the newspaper clippings in the pocket.
By the time they reached the picture house the village bobby was wobbling along beside them on his bike. Evan Evans asked over and over what the fuss was about and slowly pieced the story together in his thick brain. ‘The lad’s missing, is that so? We’ll get a search party out.’
‘What the hell do you think this is, mun? That’s what we’re doing.’
The manager of the cinema, Billy Jones, lived in the house next to it. They woke him by hammering on his door.
‘All right, I’m comin’, I’m comin’ …’ He stood on the doorstep in his dressing-gown as they explained the problem to him, then fetched a torch and a huge bunch of keys. With everyone rushing him he had trouble finding the right keys to open the door. He took so long that Hugh wanted to belt him.
‘There was not a soul left in the theatre, I’m telling you, unless he went to the gents’.’
Gladys, panicking now, wanted to know if Billy had definitely seen Willie.
‘Yes I did, he was here nine o’clock just before the start of the film, It’s the Jazz, Man — best houses I’ve had for weeks.’
Eventually he got the door open and they spilled into the auditorium, calling for Willie.
‘Now, everyone, keep back, this is police work.’
Ignoring Evan Evans, Hugh bellowed for Willie, while Billy tried to light the gas lamps.
‘Which bugger’s got me torch? I can’t see to light the lamps.’
As they walked around peering along the rows of seats, the lights came on. Billy, up on a ladder, looked down and screamed hysterically, pointing. Hugh pushed his way through to where Billy was pointing, looked for a moment and then turned, ‘Stay back, Gladys, Evie. Don’t come up here, any of you … Evan, get the doctor.’
Gladys screamed and screamed, then fainted in a heap at Evan’s feet. Evelyne moved cautiously between the seats.
‘Aw, Christ almighty … Holy Mother of God …’
Willie lay between the seats. Blood from an open wound on his neck had formed a thick, dark pool which had already congealed. It was obvious from his open, staring eyes that he was dead.
Next morning the village was in an uproar. There’d not been a murder since 1905 when Taffy Ryse hammered his mother’s head in, but then he was funny upstairs. Who would have wanted to kill Willie? They could all understand why Taffy had beaten his mother to death, she had been a right bitch, but Willie?
Doc Clock was limping badly from yet another car accident, and he was also getting old. He examined Willie’s body and muttered that he was dead all right, which got everybody shouting at once that they’d already told the soft bugger he was dead — what they wanted to know was when it had happened. Doc Clock shrugged.
‘How the bloody hell do I know — I’ve not been to the pictures since last year.’
Evan Evans was buzzing around with his notebook and a blunt pencil which he had to keep on licking. Doc Clock said he would give himself lead poisoning if he carried on. Poor Evan was out of his depth and was very swiftly pushed aside when a motor vehicle arrived with three uniformed police and a plain-clothes officer from the main station in Cardiff. They were all banned from the cinema and poor Billy was beside himself. He’d only got the film on lease and he had to send it back; if he couldn’t let his customers in then how was he going to run his business?
The police searched for the murder weapon and drew chalk marks around the body before it was removed. They began questioning everybody who was known to have been in the picture house the previous night, and put out a request for any person not on their list who had been in the cinema or in the vicinity to come forward. A lot of folk, who were interested in the proceedings rather than having anything useful to say, couldn’t wait to be interviewed. One of the harassed police officers was heard shouting, ‘No, no, we’re not interested in the week before the murder — just if you were in the picture house itself on that specific night or if you happened to pass it.’
Billy hovered and moaned as they closed the cinema, and begged to be allowed to open up before he went bankrupt. The police eventually conceded, and Billy opened up with a broad, white ribbon carefully hooked around five seats in two rows. He had never done such business in the whole time the place had been open. He played three shows a day with a Charlie Chaplin short in between for half-price. Not that anyone was watching the film, they were all agog at the bloodstained seat and took turns to sit close, whispering and pointing out to each other the bloodstains and the chalk marks around the spot where the body had lain. Mabel Hitchins, the pianist, drummed her fingers to the bone playing along with the films. Her neck was at a permanent angle from twisting round to tell the kids to leave the ribbons alone, they were police property.
For the three days that the murder investigation was centred in the village, Evelyne stayed indoors. She knew the police had questioned the gypsy men, and in fact seemed to have talked to everyone in the village. They mentioned nothing about the murder being one of the ‘revenge killings’, but there was an undercurrent of emotion among the villagers and the blame was laid on the ‘gyppos’. The police were very firm, warning that there must be no vendetta between the miners and the gypsies. The law would handle the case, and once they had completed certain inquiries they would return to the village.
Hugh came home with the local newspaper and read aloud to Evelyne while she darned his socks. ‘It’s the gyppos, the police have been over the camp, got to be one of them, must be, police say there’ll be an arrest any time now.’
The paper also stated that the murder had to have taken place during the second half of the last showing of the picture. This was because Mrs Dobson remembered selling Willie a toffee-apple. She remembered Willie very clearly because he had demanded his money back as the apple under the toffee had been rotten. The police placed the killing between nine thirty-five and ten fifteen. They also believed the weapon was similar to the one used to kill the boys in Cardiff: a thin blade, perhaps even a cut-throat razor. The gypsy camp had been searched, but they had found nothing.