Wigfull gave a slight, embarrassed shrug.
“Do you or don’t you?” demanded Diamond.
“I said it doesn’t bother me. I only mentioned CATCH-EM in case you wanted to see how the Strand case measured up.”
“CATCHEM!”
“I’m sorry I mentioned it.” Wigfull let go of the chair and took a step backward. “I’d better get back to the center of operations.”
“COMA,” said Diamond.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Center of Operations, My Arse. Never mind, John. You get back to it. I’m sure it’s all action there.”
Alone again, he spread more ointment over his itchy thumb. Wigfull had made him restless. The files wanted studying, yet he was going to find concentration difficult now. He reached for a folder and opened it, turned a couple of pages and stopped. He lifted the phone and pressed out a number on the keys. “Is that Mrs. Violet Billington? Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. I’m speaking from Bath Central Police Station. My name is Diamond. Is your husband home?… No? Well, I wonder if I could trouble you? There are some questions relating to the late Miss Britt Strand. Won’t take long, if I could call on you in, say, twenty minutes? How very kind.”
In the corridor, he fell in behind Commander Warrilow in earnest conversation with a slim young woman with her hair in a thick, dark plait that scarcely moved as she walked, her gait was so smooth. He might have taken her for a ballet dancer were it not for the army greatcoat and boots she was wearing. The back view intrigued him so much that he followed them into the main computer room hopeful for a sight of her full face.
Luckily for Diamond, one of the computer operators had something to report and Warrilow cut across the room to look at the screen, leaving the young woman gazing uncertainly after him. She was pale, with the dark marks of tiredness around the eyes in a face that was not conventionally good-looking, but watchable-thin in structure, with a small, thin mouth and long jaw.
“Any idea who that is?” he asked Charlie Stiles, an old chum who for some arcane reason had joined the keyboard tappers.
“The lance corporal? Isn’t she the one who reported Mr. Tott’s daughter as missing? They live in some kind of squat in Widcombe.”
“That’ll be Una Moon, then. What’s she doing here, I wonder?”
“Keeping Warrilow up to the mark, I reckon. She’s a one-woman pressure group.”
“In that case, I won’t ask to be introduced.”
It was one of those narrow, one-way streets in Larkhall with cars parked on one side from end to end. Diamond left the Escort on a yellow line outside the post office and walked back.
There was a FOR SALE board by the front gate. Houses where murders have occurred are too commonplace these days to justify demolition or the renaming of the entire street, as was sometimes the case in times past. But it is interesting to discover what happens to them subsequently. The market value may decline somewhat, yet for every fifty potential buyers who are put off by the history of the address (if it is revealed to them before contracts are exchanged) there is usually one who has no qualms. Unfortunately for the Billingtons, that one had not yet materialized, so they were still in occupation.
Mrs. Billington, who admitted Diamond, seemed still to be affected by the tragic event. At any rate, her manner was nervous. Short and plump, with softly permed silver hair and eyes of the palest blue conceivable in a creature not a cat, she had the door open before Diamond touched the bell, and summoned him inside in an urgent whisper. “Come into the back. We’ll talk there.”
The last time he had visited this place, the hallway had been decorated in some darker shade. It was emulsioned in pale pink now, the stairs painted white. Previous visits had taken him upstairs, to the top floor, where Britt Strand had lodged and been stabbed. This morning he was ushered swiftly to the Billingtons’ kitchen/diner on the ground floor, a cozy room with a wood-burning stove, oatmeal-colored walls and a dark brown carpet. A white cat was asleep in front of the stove. A collection of small dolls dressed in national costumes was ranged along the shelves of a teak dresser.
“Forgive me for hurrying you in like that,” Mrs. Billington said in a normal voice after the door was closed. “My new lodger is upstairs, a student. I’d prefer it if she wasn’t told the history of the house.”
“Is she local?” Diamond asked.
“From Nottingham. Studying chemistry at the university. In her first year. Is it dishonest not to tell her or is it considerate?”
“Students are pretty tough-minded, I find,” said he, “particularly if the rent is reasonable. I don’t need to go upstairs. I called to let you know that Mountjoy is at large, unfortunately.” She gave him a look that showed no gratitude. “I know that.”
“Frankly this is the last place he’s likely to come back to,” he told her, “but we’re notifying everyone connected with the case. Do you have a safety chain? Better use it until he’s back behind bars, which shouldn’t be long. Did you ever meet him?”
“No. The only time he visited the house I was away in Tenerife.”
“I remember. Horrible shock for you on your return.”
“Ghastly.”
“It was your husband who found the body, right?”
“Yes. Winston still has nightmares over it. He’s been on tranquilizers ever since.”
“Remind me what it was that made you suspicious.”
“When we got back from Tenerife, you mean?” Mrs. Billington drew her arms across the front of her lilac-colored blouse and rubbed them as if she were cold. She was playing the silver-haired old lady even though she was scarcely ten years older than Diamond. “She had an order for milk, and there were two bottles on the step. And she hadn’t collected the mail from downstairs. First of all we didn’t think it justified looking into her flat. We tapped on her door and there was no answer. She could have gone off for a few days on some reporting job to do with her work. She wrote for magazines.”
“I know.”
“We put the milk in our own fridge the first evening. Then during the night I found myself wondering if perhaps she was ill upstairs and hadn’t been able to get to the door. How dreadful if we did nothing to help. So I asked Winston to take a look, and he came out looking as pale as a sheet and told me to ring the police and tell them Britt was dead. We didn’t get any more sleep that night.”
“Nor did I. How long had she been living here?”
“Quite some time. Three years, at least. She was an excellent tenant. Very reliable with the rent. We were quite fond of her.” Put like that, it said as much about the Billingtons as Britt Strand.
“She had her own key?”
“Oh, yes. To the front door and a separate one for her flat. As you know, the access was through our part of the house and if she was ever late she would creep upstairs like a mouse.”
“I must have asked you this before. Did anyone else possess a key to the house?”
“Apart from ourselves and Britt? No.”
“Did she have visitors?”
“From time to time. That large woman who took the photographs for her came sometimes.”
“Any men? I’m sure we’ve been over this, Mrs. Billington, but my memory is hazy.”
“She gave us no cause for complaint. I don’t recollect anyone staying the night. I’m not old-fashioned about morals, but as a landlord you always have a dread of a partner moving in when the place is let to a single person.”
Diamond explained that he wasn’t asking just about overnight visitors.
“Oh, there were callers from time to time. I’d have been surprised if there weren’t. She was an extremely good-looking girl.”
“Try and remember them, particularly any toward the end of her life.”