Free The Diamond Rosary Murders by Roger Silverwood Page B

divorce, and it has taken him two years after that to shell out the settlement in full.’
    ‘Oh, well, let’s see how we go,’ Angel said, glad to get down to business. ‘I understand that Mr King was a very good swimmer.’
    ‘He had a cabinet full of silver cups and shields, all for swimming and diving.’
    ‘When you knew him, was he ever depressed or in need of any emotional support?’
    Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Emotional support? Do you mean pills?’
    ‘Not exclusively. It has been suggested that he was worried about something. Was he at all likely to have taken his own life?’
    ‘Huh! No, Inspector. Not the Haydn King I knew. I never saw him like that. He said that if he was worried about something, he would go to where the trouble was and cut it out and destroy it, or pay to have somebody else do it. I think he would be the last person in the world to take his own life.’
    ‘Was he ever at all dreamy … forgetful … as if he had something else on his mind?’
    ‘Never. Are you still talking about Haydn King? Huh. He hadn’t the time or the patience to be dreamy.’
    Angel frowned. ‘May I ask, Miss Savage, what the grounds were for the divorce?’
    ‘Incompatibility. It should have been for mental cruelty, but my barrister said that that was always hard to prove. He was rotten to me. He hadn’t an ounce of love in him. At least not for me. All he loved was his precious business. And that nephew, Vincent. He was the most difficult man I have ever known. And he didn’t appreciate art. And
was
he mean? I had to fight for every penny of my settlement. There were times when I would happily have killed him.’
    She didn’t realize the significance of what she had said. Angel gave her a sideways look, but she didn’t seem to notice.
    He stood up. ‘Well, Miss Savage, I think that’s about all for now,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much.’
    Realizing he was leaving, she also stood up. He held out his hand and shook hers very gently. He turned towards the door, then quickly turned back. ‘Oh, there’s just one small thing, Miss Savage.’
    ‘Yes, Inspector?’
    ‘Just for the record. Where did you spend last evening and overnight?’
    ‘Why, here, of course. I was painting away. I have a collection to get together for my show in April.’
    ‘And who was with you?’
    She smiled and looked at him, with her head tilted slightly and her big eyes as shiny as the Chief Constable’s buttons. She liked him. She liked his strong face, his powerful, athletic body, his even white teeth and his jet black hair. ‘Nobody was with me,’ she said, coming up very close. ‘I was
all
on my own.
All
night.’ She ran her hand tenderly through his hair and whispered in his ear. ‘Like I am now.’
    If Angel had been a philanderer, he might have philandered, but he wasn’t and he didn’t.
     
    It was four o’clock, the sky was dark and the temperature was below freezing when Angel arrived at the station. He went past his own office and along the corridor to the superintendent’s office at the end, where he stopped and sighed as he knocked on the door.
    ‘Come in,’ Harker said.
    Angel lowered the handle and went into the office.
    The room was as hot as the boiler room at Strangeways, also there was a repetitive tinny clanking noise that sounded like a cat desperately trying to withdraw its head from a tin can. He looked around for the explanation, and discovered that Harker had a very old fan heater on the floor by his feet.
    ‘Sit down, lad,’ Harker said from behind his desk, dodging between the heaped piles of papers, reports, circulars and boxes of Kleenex and Movical. The superintendent’s head was shaped like a turnip, Angel noticed, and his skin the colour of the walls in the lavatories in Strangeways.
    Angel wrinkled his nose defensively at the distinctive smell of TCP.
    ‘You’ve come to tell me about Haydn King?’ Harker said.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Of course, I have no absolute