The House of Women Read online

  The woman who came to the front door was a breastless, two-dimensional shape clad in black from head to foot, her face a pale mask beneath a cap of jet black hair. Body bejewelled even so early in the day, her slightly wattled neck sported a glitter of gemstones beneath the hard line of her jaw. Her voice was husky and heavily accented. ‘My husband is not at home. He is busy.’

  ‘Is he not in?’ McKenna asked.

  ‘He is busy.’

  ‘I won’t keep him long, but I’d like to speak to him.’

  She shrugged, pulled the door wide, then clicked along the scuffed tiles of the hall floor, high heels elongating her body. Standing behind her as she knocked at a wide panelled door, McKenna detected the perfume Janet favoured, sickly in the heat, and mingled with a pervading smell of tobacco.

  As the door swung open, Williams snapped: ‘I told you not to disturb me, chérie!’

  ‘There is a policeman to see you.’ She walked away, and left the two men facing each other. Slightly hunched, thin and pot-bellied, clad in socks and sandals and unpressed clothing, Williams scowled at his visitor, eyes narrowed behind half-moon spectacles slipping down a nose greasy with sweat. His hair was sparse and greying, the hairline yellowed with nicotine stains.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, professor,’ McKenna said. ‘I understand you’re friendly with Mrs Harris.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘I’m investigating Edward Jones’s death.’

  ‘Why?’ His eyes, McKenna thought, looked slightly bloodshot, the irises muddied. ‘Edith said it was a heart attack.’

  ‘Did she?’ McKenna smiled. ‘At the moment, we’re not sure. It could be suicide.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Then you’d better come in.’ He stamped across the room to a swivel chair beside the desk, motioning McKenna to an armchair.

  The study reminded McKenna of the derelict house at the end of his street, and smelled worse, the deep casement windows tightly closed, the burgundy velvet curtains discoloured with dust. Ashtrays overflowed on desk and window-ledge, unwashed plates and cups decorated other surfaces, their contents rotting and curdling.

  Williams followed his gaze. ‘The cleaner’s on holiday, and the cook won’t do any cleaning. Bloody woman! I should sack her.’ Swinging from side to side in the chair, he said: ‘So Ned wasn’t crying wolf this time? He finally got round to killing himself. He’d been threatening long enough.’

  ‘Had he?’

  ‘About twice a month, according to Edith. He made life very difficult for her. She’s a bag of nerves.’ He pulled a cigarette from an open pack on the desk, and rooted around for matches.

  As McKenna held up his lighter, he noticed the professor’s quivering fingers. ‘How well d’you know the family?’

  Williams puffed smoke towards the dirty window. ‘We knew her husband, so we kept an eye on her after he went. That’s all.’

  McKenna tried to place the alien intonation in the man’s voice. ‘What happened to her husband?’

  ‘I thought you wanted to talk about Ned. If you want to know about Edith’s affairs, ask her.’

  Lighting his own cigarette, McKenna asked: ‘Why did Mr Jones threaten suicide so often?’

  ‘Because he was mentally ill, I imagine. He was in and out of Denbigh Hospital like a yo-yo.’

  ‘He was also in considerable physical pain, I understand.’

  ‘So he said.’ Contemplating the tip of his cigarette, Williams added: ‘But the doctors never found anything really wrong with him. He probably invented his aches and pains for sympathy. He was very manipulative, you know, very sorry for himself.’

  ‘He had a gift for writing at one time. Perhaps his problems arose because he couldn’t realize his potential.’

  ‘One swallow doesn’t make a summer,’ the other man observed. ‘And one Eisteddfod trophy doesn’t make a bard. He never amounted to much because he frittered away his time on his own crazy ideas. The whole family’s peculiar.’

  ‘What ideas?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never cared to get involved.’

  ‘Mrs Harris mentioned a student. Was Mr Jones supervising a thesis?’

  ‘You must be joking!’

  ‘D’you know the student? He’s called George.’

  ‘Yes, I know he’s called George.’ Mashing the cigarette in one of the ashtrays, scattering more dirt on the desk, Williams said: ‘George Polgreen is reading philosophy, and if you want my inexpert opinion, he’s no more compos mentis than Ned was, which would explain why they hit it off.’ He smiled, exposing stained and yellowed teeth, and the vestige of a boyish charm which would once have made him attractive. ‘Still, lunacy’s probably a prerequisite in his discipline.’

  ‘I’ll get his address from the academic registrar,’ McKenna said. ‘Unless you know where he lives.’

  ‘In term-time, probably in one of those student rat-holes in Upper Bangor, but his family home is a township in South Africa.’ The teeth appeared again, but without the charm. ‘He’s the blackest person I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty. A real jungle bunny!’

  McKenna rose. ‘Thank you for your time, professor.’

  As he walked towards the door, Williams turned in his chair, its joints squealing gently. ‘Will there be an inquest?’

  ‘When it can be arranged.’

  ‘And will the funeral be delayed?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  With the light behind him, Williams was a dark, slack shape. ‘Ned’s family will want him buried on home ground, I imagine.’ He turned the chair again, his back to McKenna, and reached for another cigarette. ‘Edith can let us know, when the time comes. Goodbye.’

  4

  Janet’s car was outside the Harris house when McKenna turned into Glamorgan Place. He parked behind, and walked to the wide-open front door. Phoebe materialized in the hall, the cat by her feet. ‘Mama’s talking to your detective. I’m not supposed to disturb them.’

  She led him towards a door at the rear of the hall, the cat padding behind, and when they reached the kitchen, it leaped on to a chair between a green, unlit Aga, and a gleaming enamel gas cooker, staring at McKenna. As he reached out to stroke its ears, Phoebe snatched his hand away. Her flesh was cool, and felt immensely clean. ‘He might scratch! He’ll come to you when he’s ready.’

  ‘It’s a pity they can’t be trained like guard dogs, isn’t it?’

  She grinned, the bruise on her face rosy and shiny. ‘Clyde’s got a guard dog, or so he says.’

  ‘Is he really called Clyde?’

  ‘He’s called Jason Lloyd. She might end up as Minnie Lloyd.’ Opening the refrigerator, she said: ‘There’s some fresh lemonade, half a bottle of wine left over from last night, or you can have tea. Or coffee.’

  ‘Tea’s nice on a hot day.’

  She filled the kettle, took mugs from a cupboard, dropped four tea-bags into a pot, and leaned against the worktop while the kettle boiled, arms folded across her chest. She was dressed today in a long white man’s shirt and khaki cotton trousers, her feet in laced sandals. Her hair curled damply around her face. ‘D’you know why Uncle Ned died yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you don’t know about his funeral?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Auntie Gladys phoned last night, but she won’t come here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The kettle boiled, and Phoebe made the tea. ‘She can’t drive. Uncle Ned couldn’t, either.’

  ‘She could get a bus.’

  ‘She’s old, and, more to the point, she doesn’t get on with Mama.’ Stirring the brew, she added: ‘Anyway, Annie’s going again later in the week. She’s always kept an eye on them, so Uncle Ned wouldn’t worry too much.’

  ‘I take it she does drive?’

  ‘She learned as soon as she was old enough,’ Phoebe said admiringly. ‘She had a new car not long ago. Jason got it off a mate at trade price.’

  ‘What does he do for a living? Is he at college?’
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br />   ‘Don’t be funny! He’s thicker than Minnie. He does security work. Any moron can do that, can’t they?’

  He took the tea she poured for him. ‘How old is Annie?’

  ‘Old enough to be my mother! Nearly thirty-one.’

  ‘And is she dark, like you? Mina’s blonde, isn’t she?’

  ‘Darkish.’ Phoebe picked up her mug. ‘Minnie’s dark, too. Her blonde comes out of a bottle, as I expect Jason’s found out.’

  ‘How could he?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ She grinned at his confusion. ‘Mama says I’m in danger of being obsessed with you-know-what, and she went ballistic when I asked her if old people get grey pubic hair, or if it just falls out.’

  ‘It’s a sign of your age.’

  ‘Mama says it’s sheer nosiness, but Uncle Ned said I should always find things out for myself instead of relying on second hand stuff.’ She sighed. ‘I miss him an awful lot. It hurts more every day.’ She looked at the cat, now asleep on its chair. ‘I couldn’t bear it if Tom died, too.’

  ‘There’s no reason why he should.’ McKenna put his cigarettes and lighter on the table. ‘And I know you can’t help grieving for Ned, but don’t let his death make you forget all the happiness you had with him.’

  ‘I won’t, but it’s awfully hard.’ She stood up to take an ashtray from the cupboard. ‘I loved talking to him, you know. We talked about almost everything, and he even told me about being in Denbigh Hospital. Me and George are the only ones who know what he went through in that place. He called it a human warehouse.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I keep wanting to rush upstairs to tell him something, and I can’t, and I won’t ever be able to again, and it’s so unfair, because there was so much he loved in the world!’

  McKenna pulled a cigarette from the pack, then flicked his lighter, wondering about her mercurial changes of mood and the depths they obscured. ‘People have said he often spoke of suicide.’

  ‘Which people? Mama? The professor?’ Her voice was derisive. ‘He might’ve talked about it, but he’d never do it!’

  ‘Then what would he actually say?’

  Phoebe picked up her tea, and drank slowly, a frown creasing her forehead. ‘He had a lot of pain, and he used to say killing yourself is the only way to get away from pain like that, especially when you know there’s more to come.’ She paused. ‘And he said being depressed was like having a war of attrition with yourself, only I never quite understood what he meant.’

  ‘He probably meant that it wore him down.’

  ‘I suppose.’ She nodded, and buried her face again in the mug of tea.

  ‘So perhaps,’ McKenna said gently, ‘it’s not unreasonable to suggest he killed himself.’

  ‘He was trying to explain how it could make you suicidal, not how it would.’ She paused again, then said: ‘There’s a whole world between them, and I knew exactly what he meant, ’cos I’ve thought about what might make me kill myself, and I’d never do it, not even if Tom died.’

  The door suddenly flew open, and Edith twittered: ‘What a surprise! I could smell cigarettes, so I thought Phoebe’s Uncle Iolo had arrived!’

  Phoebe stood up and went to the sink to rinse her mug. ‘He’s not my “Uncle Iolo”. He’s not anybody’s “Uncle Iolo”.’ Slamming the mug on the draining board, she snapped: ‘And I won’t call him “Uncle Iolo”, even if Minnie does. Simpering cow!’

  ‘Will you behave yourself?’ Edith shrieked. ‘Heaven knows what our visitors are thinking!’

  ‘Why don’t you ask them?’ Phoebe countered, her face mutinous.

  ‘You’re a rude, naughty child! Go to your room! This instant!’

  McKenna intervened. ‘Phoebe’s distressed about Mr Jones’s death, Mrs Harris. They were very close.’

  ‘It’s his fault she’s like this!’ Edith insisted. ‘All this talking! All these questions! It’s not right at her age.’

  ‘Mama wants to shut the door on an empty stable,’ Phoebe said, ‘but she can’t.’

  McKenna looked at her. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘She was too wrapped up with my snotty sister to give me attention, and now she feels guilty because Uncle Ned looked after me when she should’ve done it.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Edith shrieked again. ‘Go to your room!’

  Grabbing the cat, Phoebe rushed through the door and thundered up the staircase, then the windows rattled as she slammed a door.

  Sinking into a chair, Edith rested the back of her hand on her forehead, and began to gulp air.

  ‘Who’s “Uncle Iolo”?’ McKenna asked.

  Showing the whites of her eyes, she gasped, and subsided over the kitchen table, her body wracked with sobs.

  ‘Shall I make her a cup of tea, sir?’ Janet sidled into the room. ‘I could stay for a while.’

  McKenna rose. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing in particular. It’s delayed shock, I expect.’

  ‘I’d better have a word with Phoebe.’

  As McKenna fidgeted by the door, Edith looked up once more, her face ravaged, and said, between choked sobs: ‘I can’t cope!’

  ‘You and Phoebe are just overwrought,’ Janet comforted.

  ‘I can’t cope with her!’ There was an edge of hysteria to Edith’s voice.

  ‘Couldn’t Annie come over for the evening?’ McKenna asked. ‘Or better still, couldn’t Phoebe go to Llanberis for a few days?’

  ‘Oh, no! Mina wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Janet asked.

  ‘She’d have to stay in to look after me, and that’s not fair when she’s been working all day. Anyway, she’s arranged to go to a nightclub with Jason.’

  ‘It won’t hurt Mina to put her family first this once,’ McKenna said. ‘She can go clubbing another time. DC Evans will ring Annie, and see what can be arranged.’

  He went upstairs, passed the glowing stained glass window on the landing, and turned right, to find himself facing the sealed door to Ned’s room. Retracing his steps, walking again through the puddles of colour below the window, he passed a bathroom, carpeted in pink, and went towards the door at the far end, behind which Phoebe spilled out her heart to the only friend she had left. He knocked, and waited, listening to Edith’s fretful tones in the kitchen, and Janet’s soothing voice, then knocked again.

  ‘Go away!’ Phoebe wailed. ‘Leave me alone!’

  ‘Your mother’s downstairs, Phoebe.’

  He heard rustling and shuffling, another protest from the cat, then she opened the door, standing wearily in a shadow that was like a pool of her own misery, her face blotched and swollen with tears.

  ‘Janet’s asking Annie to come over,’ he said. ‘I suggested you go and stay with her for a while.’

  Phoebe sighed. ‘Mama won’t let me. She doesn’t like being alone with Minnie.’

  ‘Aren’t you rather over-egging the pudding? You’re all very tense, and could do with a break from each other.’

  ‘I’ve told you! Mama’s scared of her.’ Seeing the impatience on his face, she said: ‘I thought you were brighter than most people.’ She pointed to her bruise. ‘I’m not the only one who gets thumped.’

  ‘She’s hit your mother?’

  ‘Yes, only Mama won’t admit it.’ Retreating into the room, she sat on the bed, and began to stroke the cat. ‘Minnie played a horrible trick on her, and when Mama didn’t find it funny like she was supposed to, Minnie got hysterical, and Mama had nasty scratches on her face afterwards.’

  ‘What did Mina do?’

  ‘You haven’t seen Uncle Ned’s room yet, have you? It’s three rooms, really. He had his meals downstairs, but he had his own bedroom, and a little bathroom, so he never used our toilet.’

  ‘And?’ McKenna prompted.

  ‘Our toilet seat doesn’t get put up very often.’ The cat rolled over and stretched out, front claws kneading her pillow, and she pulled him away. ‘You know, we go in there, sit down, and use it.’

 
; ‘Yes, Phoebe, I get the picture.’

  ‘So that bitch thought it’d be funny to put cling film under the seat and over the pan, because that’s the sort of nasty thing she finds amusing.’ She paused, her hand on the cat’s back. ‘She probably hoped I’d go in there first, but it was Mama, and she was absolutely mortified. She had to have a bath, and wash her clothes, and she kept scrubbing the floor because she thought it still smelled, even after she’d bought a new carpet.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So you understand why I can’t go to Annie’s, don’t you?’

  ‘Couldn’t someone else stay here if Annie can’t? Uncle Iolo perhaps? Whoever he is.’

  ‘That’s the professor,’ Phoebe said. ‘Professor Williams. Mama always calls him Iolo. It’s short for Iorwerth.’

  ‘I know.’

  She smiled, a grotesque gesture on that tragic face. ‘His wife can’t get her tongue round Iolo, so she calls him “Ee-oo-low”. It’s hilarious. She can’t say Iorwerth very well, either. Uncle Ned said French people can’t manage some of the sounds in Welsh.’

  ‘I met her briefly today, but I wasn’t introduced. What’s her name?’

  ‘Solange. Uncle Ned called her a “trophy wife”, probably because the professor picked her up on his foreign travels, along with all the honorary doctorates and whatnot for being so clever.’ Phoebe grinned. ‘In my opinion, she’s more of a booby prize.’

  ‘You don’t like him very much, do you?’

  ‘I don’t like being made to like him. He’s Mama’s friend, not mine.’ She picked up the cat and draped him over her lap. ‘Anyway, he treated his first wife very badly, Uncle Ned said. She left him in the end. He chases other women, or at least, he did then.’

  ‘Professor Williams told me he knew your father.’

  ‘So did Uncle Ned. I don’t really remember him, and Mama never talks about him.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘According to her, it was one of those tragedies only grownups can understand.’

  ‘I should go, Phoebe. Will you be OK if Janet stays until Annie arrives?’

  ‘I’ll manage.’ She smiled again. ‘Getting a row is nothing new. Mama says we go round and round in the same circles. Will you be seeing George? He wants to talk to you.’