The Sleeping and the Dead

There was a pause. Porteous could sense Phillippa’s impatience but still Stout held the stage and she didn’t dare move. When Stout spoke at last he was cheerful, a jolly surrogate uncle who should have been invited to the wedding too.

‘You said you got a good price for Balk Farm. You’ve made a lovely place here, a real family home. Why was the price so low? A payment was it, for backing up Alec’s story all that time ago?’

Lord stood up. At first Porteous thought Stout had succeeded in provoking him into losing control, but he held it together. All the taunting and bullying as a child had held him in good stead.

‘I think you’d better take your sergeant away, Inspector, before he says something else you’ll both regret. You’re welcome to search the house if you don’t believe me about Alec. Phillippa and I will be working in the office. We’ve wasted enough time already.’

The team searched the house but Porteous left them to it. He could tell it would be futile. He had to get Stout back to the police station, find some way to deal with his disappointment. In the car the sergeant sat mute, shaking his head. He didn’t speak until they were in Porteous’s office.

‘I played it all wrong. But I don’t know what else I could have done.’

‘Perhaps he was telling the truth.’

Before Stout could answer the phone rang. Porteous listened, said little, replaced the receiver.

‘You’ll need those sandwiches of Bet’s after all,’ he said. ‘Reeves’s neighbour contacted the Yorkshire lads. She thinks he came home last night.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

Reeves lived in a tidy bungalow at the end of a cul-de-sac of similar houses. Porteous parked at the end of the street and they walked down, but still he was aware that they were being watched. Not from Reeves’s place. The curtains there were still closed. But in the other bungalows neighbours were twitching behind the Venetian blinds and the bleached fancy nets.

‘The old lady next door said it was very late when he got in. One thirty at least. Though according to the local lad who spoke to her she’s as deaf as a post and he didn’t think a car would wake her.’

The car, a red Metro, was parked on the drive, pulled right up to the garage door.

‘She says it must have been late when he got here or he’d have put the car away. He always kept it in the garage. Security conscious. Head of the neighbourhood watch.’

‘A model citizen,’ Stout said sneering.

They knew there was no way out from the back of the bungalow. A thick leylandii hedge separated the garden from a railway embankment. Occasionally high-speed trains roared past, making conversation impossible. Porteous rang the doorbell. They stood back and waited. Nothing happened. He rang the bell again, then tried the door. It opened.

They stepped into a wide hall with a door on either side, and a corridor ahead which led, Porteous presumed, to bedrooms and bathroom. There was a pale grey carpet on the floor, a small table with a telephone.

‘Mr Reeves?’

There was no answer. He opened the right-hand door into a kitchen. A yellow roller blind covered the window, but let in enough light to show empty workbenches, a spotless tiled floor. There were no plates or cups draining by the sink and the dishcloth folded over the mixer tap was dry and hard. Porteous looked in the fridge. It had recently been defrosted and was empty.

‘He must have gone straight to bed,’ Stout said. He couldn’t stand still. He was fidgeting like a kid. ‘Let’s wake the bastard up.’

But Porteous shook his head. He went back into the hall and opened the opposite door into the living-room. The bay windows were covered by thick velvet curtains and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. Stout came up behind him impatiently and switched on the light. The room was lit by two lamps on the walls. They had bulbs like imitation candles and heavy fringed shades. The central light was operated by another switch and didn’t come on, but it was a chandelier with similar fittings. It must have been more substantial than it looked, because it supported the weight of Alec Reeves, who hung by a noose of blue nylon rope, twisted around the chain which fixed the chandelier to the ceiling. A kitchen stool, overturned, lay on the floor beneath him.

Stout was about to go into the room but Porteous pulled him back.

‘There’s nothing we can do. It might be a crime scene.’ He wondered why he wasn’t more surprised. Had he been expecting this as soon as he realized the door was open?

‘What are you talking about? He knew we were on to him and he topped himself.’ Stout was almost weeping with frustration. This wasn’t the way it should have ended. He still had things he wanted to say to Mr Alec Reeves.

‘Perhaps.’

‘What do you mean, “perhaps”? He came in last night and killed himself.’

‘Why didn’t he lock the door?’

‘What!’ It came out as a scream.