Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die (8 page)

   ‘Oh, we had a long talk,’ Sheila said airily. ‘I don’t suppose you can understand, but I’m interested in human nature. If I’m going to be a real actress I’ll have to know what makes people tick. I’m getting quite good at summing people up.’

   ‘Bully for you,’ said her father sourly. ‘I’ve been trying for forty years and the margin of error’s still about eighty percent.’

   Sheila looked at herself in her handbag mirror. ‘Mr Vigo’s got a very smooth sophisticated manner. Cool, if you know what I mean. I sometimes think dentists have a very interesting relationship with their patients. They’ve got to be nice, have the right psychological approach, otherwise, you’d never go back to them again, would you? It’s such an intimate thing. I mean, can you think of any other situation, Pop, when a man gets so close to a woman except when he’s actually making love to her?’

   ‘I sincerely hope nothing like that happened.’

   ‘Oh, Pop. . . I was just saying what it was like. I was making a sort of comparison.’ Sheila giggled and twisted a strand of hair around one finger. ‘Although, when I was going he did give me a sort of squeeze and said I’d got the loveliest mouth he’d ever seen.’

   ‘My God!’ said Wexford, getting up. ‘If you don’t mind what you say to your father, you might remember he’s also a detective chief inspector.’ He paused and then said, not realizing the effect his words would have, ‘I may go along and see this Vigo.’

   ‘Oh, Pop!’ Sheila wailed.

   ‘Not because of your lovely mouth, my dear. In pursuance of an enquiry of my own.’

   ‘Well, don’t you dare . . .’

   All this time Mrs Wexford had been placidly eating ginger biscuits, but now she looked up and said calmly:

   'What a silly girl you are. I often think it’s a blessing intelligence isn’t necessary in the interpretive arts. If you’ve finished with your face you’d better take that dog out.’

   At the word dog, Clytemnestra uncurled herself.

   ‘All right,’ said Sheila meekly.

They stood under the willow trees, looking at the river. Anyone who didn’t know them might have taken them for a couple of businessmen out for a Sunday afternoon stroll.

   But almost everyone in Kingsmarkham knew them and knew also by now that this was the spot where Charlie Hatton had been murdered.

   ‘I said we’d have to talk to everyone in the darts club,’ said Burden, stopping down at the water’s edge, ‘and I reckon we have. Funny, isn’t it? Pertwee’s the only one who could put up with Hatton for a moment, but no one’s willing to come out with it. It’s always the others who were daggers drawn with him. The one you’re talking to is all tolerance and forbearance. The farthest he’ll go is to admit a sort of resentment. Does a man do murder because a mate of his riles him in a pub or because he’s got more money than he has?’

   'He might if he was going to get some of the money,’ said Wexford. ‘A hundred pounds is a lot to a man like Cullam. We’re going to have to watch Cullam, see if he does some big spending in the next few days. I’m not at all happy about the way he washed the clothes he was wearing on Friday night.’

   Burden was advancing gingerly across the river, trying not to get his feet wet. He trod on the projecting stones which the water lapped without covering. Then he bent down and said, ‘There’s your weapon.’

   From the bank Wexford followed the direction of his pointing finger. All but one of the stones were furred at their perimeters and partly on their surfaces with green weed.

   Burden was pointing to the only one that looked bare, as if until very recently it had lain with its exposed area embedded in the river’s gravelly floor. He squatted precariously and lifted the stone in both hands. Then he eased himself to his feet and scrambled back to Wexford.

   It was a big stone, not round, but elongated and shaped rather like a mandolin. The side which had lain on the river bed was green and moss-grown and there was nothing about it except for its shape and its anomalous position in the water to show that it might have been used as a lethal weapon. Wexford grasped it in both his hands, raised it high and brought it down hard to meet the empty air. Hatton had been walking along in the dark and someone had waited for him among the willows and the brambles, the stone ready for use. Full of whisky, his thoughts fuddled and far away, Hatton had given warning of his approach. He had been whistling and probably not bothering to tread softly. The stone had been raised high just as Wexford was raising it now but brought down that time on the back of Hatton’s skull. Once, twice, more than that? As many times as it took to kill. Then Hatton had rolled into the water. His killer had rifled his wallet before casting the stone into the stream.

   Wexford thought all these things and he knew Burden was following his thoughts, matching them, so he didn’t bother to say anything. He dropped the stone and it rolled a little before falling into the water with a soft plop.

   Across the meadows he could see the flats of the council estate, the sun striking their plate-glass windows and making them blaze as if the whole place was on fire.

   ‘Since we’ve come so far,’ he said, ‘we may as well have another chat with Mrs Hatton.’

Her mother was with her and three other people. Jack Pertwee sat on the smart-checked tweed sofa holding the hand of a girl with a monumental pile of black hair and eyelashes like shoe brushes. Mrs Hatton and her mother were both in black, smart unseasonable black relieved with a great deal of showy costume jewellery. The window’s suit looked brand-new and Wexford couldn’t help wondering if she had actually been out the previous afternoon to buy it. She wore a white blouse with an ostentatious frilly jabot and a big paste spray on one lapel. Her stockings were dark and her shoes, though also apparently new, the outdated, stiletto- heeled, pointed kind of gleaming black patent. She looked as if she were about to set off for a provincial cocktail party, an office party of female executives.

   At first Wexford felt a curious distaste and then he thought about the dead man and what he knew of him. This was the way Charlie Hatton would have liked his widow to look, brave, defiant, bedizened. The last thing a cocky little man like Hatton would want was a kind of spiritual suttee.

   He surveyed the rest of the company. Plainly they had interrupted a mourning tea party. The girl on the sofa must be the bride whose nuptials Hatton’s death had deferred. And the other man?

   ‘My brother, Mr Bardsley,’ said Mrs Hatton. ‘Him and Mum came to keep me company. This gentleman is Mr Pertwee.’

   ‘We’ve met,’ said Wexford graciously.

   ‘And Miss Thompson,’ said Mrs Hatton. She spoke in a low dutiful voice. Her eyes were swollen under the thick green and black make-up. ‘They were all very fond of Charlie. Would you like a cup of tea? You can if you want. You’re welcome.’

   ‘We won’t, thanks, Mrs Hatton.’

   ‘Well, sit down then, there’s plenty of room.’ She said it proudly, indicating the several empty chairs. They were good chairs, upholstered and cared for, not the uncomfortable dining seats with hard backs a less affluent hostess would be obliged to offer latecomers. Looking at the branched hanging lamp of teak and smoky glass, the velvet curtains and the big colour television set, Wexford decided that Hatton had done his wife proud. Cullam and he were both lorry drivers, both lived in council accommodation, but that was all they had in common. He glanced at Bardsley, the brother, a fair rabbity man, like his sister but less well-favoured, and he observed his suit. It was very likely his best suit - today of all days he would surely wear his best suit - but it was a cheap off-the-peg affair.

   ‘Please forgive me, Mrs Hatton, if I ask a few routine questions,’ he said. She gave him a pleased earnest nod. ‘You and Mr Hatton were in business together, I understand, Mr Bardsley?’

   ‘That’s right.’

   ‘Was it a full partnership?’

   Bardsley put his teacup down and said in a melancholy voice, ‘I was thinking of taking him into partnership, but business hasn’t been that good lately. As it was, he just worked for me.’

   ‘Would you mind telling me what wages you paid him?’

   ‘Well, I don’t know. . . I don’t rightly like to.’

   ‘Of course he don’t,’ Jack Pertwee suddenly interrupted belligerently. ‘What’s it got to do with what happened on Friday?’

   ‘That’s right, Jack,’ murmured the girl and she squeezed his hand.

   ‘You can see Charlie did all right for himself. You’ve only got to look around you.’

   ‘Don’t make trouble, Jack,’ Mrs Hatton said with that peculiar intense control of hers. ‘The officers are only doing what they have to.’ She fingered her brooch uneasily. ‘Charlie usually brought home a bit over twenty pounds a week. That’s right, isn’t it, Jim?’

   Jim Bardsley looked unhappy about it and his voice became aggressive. ‘I’ve been lucky to make that much myself lately,’ he said. ‘Charlie was one of the sort that make a little go a long way. I reckon he was careful.’

   Marilyn Thompson tossed her head and a lock of hair drifted from the elaborate structure. ‘He wasn’t mean, anyway,’ she flared, ‘if that’s what you mean by careful. There’s not many men who aren’t even relations that’d give someone a record player for a wedding present.’

   ‘I never said he was mean, Marilyn.’

   ‘It makes me sick. What you want to do is find who killed him.’ The girl’s hands trembled and she clenched them. ‘Give us a cig, Jack.’ Her hands enclosed Pertwee’s wrist as he held the lighter and they were no more steady than his. ‘You lot,’ she muttered, ‘you lot don’t reckon nothing to a working man. If he hasn’t got a nice home you call him a layabout.’ She glared at Wexford, pushing back her hair. ‘And if he’s got things like your class take for granted you jump right on him, say he must have nicked them. Class, class, class,’ she said, tears trembling on the brush-bristle lashes. ‘That’s all you think about.’

   ‘Wait till the revolution comes,’ said Bardsley nastily,

   ‘Oh, shut up, the pair of you,’ Mrs Hatton said shrilly. She turned to Wexford, her controlled dignity returning. ‘My husband did overtime,’ she said, ‘and he had his side lines.’

   Side lines, Wexford thought. He got a little overtime and he made it go a long way. The man had colour television, false teeth worth two hundred pounds; he gave his friend a record player for a wedding present. Wexford had seen that glass and teak lamp in a Kingsmarkham shop and noted it had been priced at twenty-five pounds, one and a quarter times Hatton’s weekly wage. When he was killed he had had a hundred pounds on him.

   ‘If he’s got things like your class take for granted,’ the girl had said, ‘you say he must have nicked them.’ Curious, really, Wexford reflected, watching her huddled now in the crook of Pertwee’s arm. Of course she was very young, probably got a Communist shop steward for a father, and doubtless went about sneering at people better-educated and better-spoken than herself. It was an aggressive type that had even reached Kingsmarkham, a type that talked pacifism and the rights of man and brotherly love without the energy or courage to do anything that might bring these desirable conditions nearer.

   And yet he said nothing to provoke her outburst. Neither for that matter had Bardsley beyond hinting that Hatton had been prudent. Had she risen to this intangible slight bait because she knew Hatton’s wealth had been dishonestly come by? If she knew it, green and uncouth as she was, Pertwee would know it also. Everyone in this room but Burden and himself might know it. Not for the first time he reflected on the power of grief. It is the perfect unassailable defence. Pertwee had already employed it the previous morning effectively to terminate interrogation. Mrs Hatton, even more expertly, kept it under a piteous control that only a brute would have the brashness to disregard. She was moving about the room now, balancing painfully but stoically on her high heels, taking empty cups and plates from each of her guests with a gentle murmur for every one of them. Wexford took in the looks that passed to her from each of her visitors, her mother’s merely solicitous, Pertwee’s indicative of deep affection, Bardsley’s shifty, while the thwarted bride leaned forward, stuck out her chin and nodded her utter committed partisanship.

   ‘Did your husband have a bank account, Mrs Hatton?’ Burden asked as she passed his chair.

   The sun was full on her face, showing every stroke and grain of make-up, but at the same time driving expression from it. She nodded, ‘At the Midland,’ she said.

   ‘I’d like to see his paying-in book.’

   ‘What for?’

   The truculent harsh voice was Pertwee’s. Wexford ignored him and followed the widow to the sideboard from a drawer of which she took a long cream-coloured book. He handed it to Burden and said, apparently inconsequentially:

   ‘When did your husband get his false teeth, Mrs Hatton?’ Pertwee’s muttered ‘Bloody nosey-parker’ made her flinch a little and throw a desperate glance over her shoulder. ‘He’d always had them. Had them since he was twenty’ she said.

   ‘This present set?’

   ‘Oh, no. They were new. He went to Mr Vigo for them about a month back.’

   Nodding, Wexford eyed the paying-in book over Burden’s shoulder and what he saw astonished him far more than any of Hatton’s prodigality. Some three-quarters of all the slips in the book had been torn out and with the exception of three, all the stubs had been torn too.

   On the most recent remaining stub the date was April and on that occasion Hatton had paid into his bank account the modest sum of five and four-pence.

   ‘Fourth dividend on the pools that was,’ Mrs Hatton said with a miserable gulp.

   The other two stubs were filled in each with amounts of two pounds.

   ‘Mrs Hatton,’ he said, beckoning her into a corner. ‘The purpose of these stubs in a paying-in book is for the holder to have a record of the amount of money he had deposited in his bank. Can you suggest to me why Mr Hatton tore them out? They must have been filled in at the bank either by Mr Hatton himself or else by the cashier who was attending to him.’