The Garden Party Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.’
    â€˜Well, in that case I reckon you have just lucked in,’ Montgomery sneered.
    â€˜We have?’ Yewdall replied coldly.
    â€˜Reckon so, I reckon so,’ Montgomery explained, then paused, ‘but this geezer, Roy Cole, he’s not in no trouble is he? I don’t want to go grassing anybody up.’
    â€˜No . . .’ Ainsclough said calmly, ‘he’s not a suspect.’
    Yewdall remained silent but she could not help but glance at the small hut in the adjacent field. For some reason she couldn’t identify, the small wooden structure seemed suspicious; in fact, she thought it was sinister. Even the jet-black crow which lighted upon the roof as she looked at the shed seemed appropriate.
    â€˜Only I don’t want to finger no one.’ Montgomery seemed to the officers to be very wary. ‘There could be comebacks for me.’
    â€˜There’ll be no comebacks,’ Ainsclough spoke reassuringly, ‘no comebacks at all.’
    â€˜OK. Well, he’s living in Pilgrims Hatch.’
    â€˜Where on earth is that?’ Yewdall returned her attention to Alexander Montgomery.
    â€˜Just ten minutes’ drive to the north of here.’
    â€˜Suits us.’ Ainsclough opened his notebook. ‘What is the address?’
    â€˜Two brothers they were . . . still are . . . one went to Spain and the other, he wouldn’t be dragged from England, wouldn’t even be dragged from Greater London. “I don’t need to travel because I have already arrived”, that’s his take on life.’ Montgomery sat forward. ‘Reckon I would feel the same; just know where my roots are.’
    â€˜So do you have his address in Pilgrims Hatch?’ Ainsclough began to grow impatient.
    â€˜Not his address, just his phone number. I never phoned him, never needed to, but when we kept getting business for him I’d give the folk his number, though not for some years now. These days I just tell folk looking for the builders that they have ceased trading.’ Alexander Montgomery turned to his right and opened an ancient card filing box which Ainsclough thought dated from the 1930s, recalling a similar one in the home of a very elderly relative when he was a child in northern England. Montgomery extracted a card from a drawer. ‘Got a pen, governor?’ he asked.
    â€˜We did all right me and young Tony, mustn’t grumble. There’s only a year between us but he was always “young” Tony. But mustn’t grumble; never did anyone any good grumbling didn’t, not ever . . . ever . . . ever.’ Roy Cole had revealed himself to be a tall, sinewy man with a silver beard that reached down to his chest and which he stroked thoughtfully and lovingly when speaking to Ainsclough and Yewdall, with his long, slender fingers. His hair, also silver, had receded totally, leaving just a narrow band which ran from behind one ear, round the back of his head to his other ear, and which he had allowed to grow long so that it hung well over his collar. He could, thought Yewdall, who had rapidly warmed to the man, be taken for an artist or a sage in a university, rather than the retired builder he actually was. Roy Cole received the officers on the veranda of his house which projected from the front of the building. He sat in an inter-war period chair made of wicker and of the type which Yewdall had only ever observed in the bathrooms of elderly homeowners. Yewdall and Ainsclough accepted the invitation to sit on a wooden bench which was surfaced with faded varnish, and which also occupied a place on the veranda, but on the opposite side of the front door to where Roy Cole’s chair stood. The veranda looked out on to the front garden of the bungalow, which the officers noted to have become overgrown in what seemed to be an accepting of nature in a generous-minded attitude. It was not uncontrollably overgrown, nor was it manicured to a lifeless