The Casebook of Augustus Maltravers
Page 41
‘Sorry, darling, do you mind? I’m rather tired.’
He turned away and Jennifer Carrington stared at his back in dismay. It was the first time he had ever refused to make love to her. She was suddenly afraid that she was losing control.
3
Five minutes after Charles Carrington left for work the next morning, the telephone rang in Carwelton Hall and Jennifer leapt at it.
‘Thank God! I was just going to call you,’ she said. ‘Charles knows what’s going on.’
‘Are you certain? Has he said anything to you?’
‘He doesn’t need to. I know. Believe me.’
‘Might he do anything before Thursday?’
‘Perhaps, but we can’t move until then can we?’ There was a note of panic in her voice.
‘Of course we can’t, but it’s only a couple of days. Call me if anything happens, but otherwise I’ll see you then. And keep calm.’
‘Will you come and see me before?’ She sounded pleading.
‘No. Charles could be having you watched. Just hang on.’
‘All right.’ She sobbed suddenly. ‘Christ, I never thought it would be this bad. I’m terrified.’
‘Stop panicking, I’ll look after you. You always did need an older man. It’s going to work.’
*
In Brook Cottage, Maltravers wrote up his piece for the Independent, saving the Features Editor several tricky decisions by omitting certain stories which would have caused a number of actors to start screaming dramatically for their lawyers. Malcolm was at work and Lucinda out teaching, so when he finished he drove into Kendal to post his copy and have lunch. He parked in the market square opposite the old Working Men’s Institute, now rather inappropriately painted pink and white, then walked down Stricklandgate to the main post office. As he made his way back up the hill, looking for somewhere to eat, he found he was passing Quintessence and examined the window. Charlotte Quinn’s comments about her stock had been right. What he could see included elegant wooden and silver ornaments, first-class porcelain—thankfully not crafted into impossibly perfect animals, winsome children or nauseatingly lovable tramps—fine woollens and striking fabrics. The shop would have graced Covent Garden, but the prices were considerably less than those demanded and paid in WC2. An old-style shop bell suspended from a curve of sprung metal tinkled as he opened the door and moments later Charlotte Quinn appeared from the back of the premises.
‘I’m sorry, but we’re just…’ She stopped as she recognised him. ‘Oh, hello again. I’m afraid I was about to close for lunch. But if you’ve already decided on something I can let you have it.’
‘No, I was just going to browse,’ he said. ‘It’s the sort of place I ought to bring Tess to. She’s the one with the real taste. I just supply the money.’
‘Your wife?’ she queried.
‘Not yet, but she’s working on it,’ he replied with a grin. ‘I only escaped last Leap Year by being out of the country on the twenty-ninth of February. She’s the actress Tess Davy. She’s due here at the weekend after the play she’s in ends its provincial tour in Chester. Then she’s got a free week before they start rehearsals for London. I’ll come back with her. Anyway, let me buy you lunch. I assume you know a decent place.’
‘I usually go to the Wheatsheaf just across the road,’ she said. ‘Their menu plays havoc with the diet but what the hell? All right, thank you. I’ll be with you in a moment. Turn the sign on the door to Closed, will you?’
He examined a rack of silk ties while he waited, then they left the shop and crossed over Stricklandgate and into the pub. They were just ahead of the lunchtime rush and managed to find themselves a table by the window overlooking the busy main street.
‘According to the book of conversational gambits, I should ask if you enjoyed yourself last night,’ Maltravers commented as he returned from the bar with their food and drinks. ‘However, I think that would be as tactless as asking Mrs Kennedy if she liked her day in Dallas.’
‘Something like that,’ Charlotte Quinn agreed. ‘It was loathsome, but I’ll curb my tongue. Coming from the south, you’re not used to people speaking their minds.’
‘I lived in Manchester for more than a year, so I know something about northern bluntness,’ he replied. ‘And I think you were offended by…the presence of one guest in particular and his connection—how’s that for polite Home Counties euphemism?—with our hostess?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, very circumspect—I said last night you were too clever. You pick things up very quickly. How much do you know about what’s going on there?’
‘Lucinda and Malcolm have told me a good deal,’ he admitted. ‘I know that Jennifer Carrington and Duggie Lydden are having an affair…and something about yourself and Charles.’
‘Yes, but you don’t know all of it.’ Maltravers followed her gaze out of the window to where a shop with Lakeland Interiors above the window stood on the opposite side of the road next door but one to her own. Charlotte Quinn kept looking at it as she continued.
‘Three years ago that place nearly went to the wall. The bank was about to foreclose when Duggie Lydden went crawling to Charles for help. They knew each other through the Masons but they go back further than that. Charles put up twenty thousand pounds and saved him. Duggie has paid very little of it back. And how does the little sod show his gratitude? By screwing his wife and then going to his house to laugh in his face in front of his friends.’ She turned back to Maltravers. ‘Any more questions?’
‘Why did you accept the invitation?’
‘I’ve known Charles an awfully long time and, dear God, I’ve done my best to accept Jennifer, despite what I think of her,’ she said. ‘I’ve kept going to Carwelton Hall since the marriage because of my feelings for him. But I didn’t know Duggie was going to be there last night. I don’t know how I controlled myself.’
‘You did it very well,’ Maltravers assured her. ‘And from what I’ve been told, Jennifer is just one of a small crowd. It seems that any woman who isn’t green with two heads has a chance with Duggie.’
‘That’s about it,’ Charlotte confirmed. ‘He made a play for me once, but I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to join his collection of easy lays. By the time I’d finished, I’d verbally castrated the randy little bugger.’
Maltravers felt certain that Charlotte Quinn’s acid tongue would have made a comprehensive job of the operation.
‘How long have you known Charles?’ he added.
‘Nearly twenty years. When I was married, we all used to go on holiday together. I remember how he nursed Margaret while she died of cancer by inches. Christ, that was terrible. Then David was killed and Gillian was destroyed by drugs—do you know anything about all this?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Charles seems to have been a very unfortunate man.’
‘And it’s still happening to him,’ she said bitterly. ‘Jennifer set out to get him and nothing could stop her. He was dreadfully vulnerable and didn’t stand a chance. Some of us tried to warn him, but he was besotted. It’s the most stupid thing he’s ever done.’
She finished her wine at one swallow. ‘Can I have another please? No, I’ll pay if you’ll collect them. Here you are.’
She took a purse from her handbag and gave Maltravers the money. While he was waiting at the bar to be served, he decided he may as well probe her feelings further; she was obviously in the mood to talk.
‘As far as I can work it out, there must have been about ten years between Charles’s wife dying and when he met Jennifer,’ he said as he sat down again. ‘Were you divorced at that time?’
‘I was divorced in 1975.’ She sighed wearily. ‘And yes, that’s what really hurts. You don’t have to be a genius to work that out. I loved him very much—I still love him—but somehow I just couldn’t…I don’t know. I just messed it all up.’
They had finished their meal and she accepted a cigarette when he offered his packet, looking at her thoughtfully.
She exhaled smoke slowly, as though trying to explain it to herself.
‘Last night I wanted to scream,’ she said finally. ‘What was happening in that house was sick and I had to go through the pretence of behaving as though nothing was wrong. It’s been building up inside me all morning and my assistant’s off today so there was nobody I could talk to. If I hadn’t met you, I’d probably have blurted it all out to some customer in the shop. Sorry to use you like a member of the Samaritans. I only hope I’ve got it right that I can trust you.’
‘Completely,’ Maltravers assured her. ‘None of this will go any further. I’m glad we bumped into each other.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Charles may have been stupid over Jennifer, but he’s still an intelligent man. Do you think he knows about the affair—or at least suspects something?’
She shrugged as she stubbed out the hardly smoked cigarette. ‘I often wonder about that. He’s never said anything to me to indicate that he does, but I can’t believe he could be so unaware—although there’s no fool like an old fool is there?’
‘Stop putting him down,’ Maltravers told her. ‘He deserves better than that from you. I think he may at least have guessed about Lydden, but if he hasn’t then somebody who says they care for him ought to tell him instead of carrying a torch and wallowing in their own misery.’
Charlotte Quinn’s face flashed angrily, then she looked remorseful.
‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘That hurt. You did learn to call a spade a spade in the north didn’t you? You’re quite right of course, but I’ve been through that hoop lots of times. I persuade myself that I don’t want to hurt him, then my conscience tells me that I’m deceiving him as well by staying quiet. But perhaps it’s really because I don’t trust my own motives. If I break up the marriage, am I doing it for him or me? Shakespeare said that conscience makes cowards of us all.’
‘In the occasional gaps in an active sex life, Shakespeare managed to say something about virtually everything,’ commented Maltravers. ‘But I don’t think deathless verse is of much help at the moment. None of this is my business, but you should talk to him. Whether he suspects or not, you can’t lose anything and it’s the least he deserves from you.’
‘Perhaps.’ Charlotte Quinn shrugged in indecision then smiled apologetically. ‘And you just came into town for a quiet lunch, not to have some inadequate woman unburden her soul to you. Sorry.’
‘Now you’re knocking yourself,’ he said. ‘Don’t. You’re not inadequate.’
‘Aren’t I?’ she replied cynically. ‘Tell me about it. If I’m not inadequate, how did I lose a husband and then fail to get the one man I wanted and could have made happy? Let’s face it, Gus, I was seen off by another woman and a much younger one at that. I must be very stupid.’
‘No,’ Maltravers corrected. ‘Charles may have been stupid in fact it looks very much as if he was—but that wasn’t your fault.’
‘I’d like to think that.’ Charlotte Quinn appeared unconvinced as she stood up. ‘Thanks for lunch and for listening, but I must get back.’
They parted outside the pub with Maltravers promising to return to Quintessence with Tess. He watched Charlotte Quinn cross Stricklandgate and unlock the shop door then went back to his car and drove out into the Langdale Valley. He parked by the pub at the foot of Stickle Ghyll and walked up the rough path of boulders laid alongside the beck as it tumbled down in a series of bubbling, foaming waterfalls from the tarn in the hills. Drained now of all rain, the sky was a translucent autumn blue with drifting meringue clouds casting slow-moving shadows over the wide plain of the valley and the air was clean and cold. As he sat on a rock by crashing white water, Maltravers thought about the dinner party. It might not need Charlotte, or anyone else, to talk to Charles Carrington; if the odd incidents he had noticed really meant anything, the situation at Carwelton Hall would resolve itself one way or another.
*
‘Is anything the matter, darling?’ Jennifer Carrington put the question cautiously as her husband sat opposite her reading the paper that evening.
‘Should there be?’ The paper was not lowered as he replied, but she instinctively knew he was listening to her carefully.
‘No, you just seemed a bit…distracted,’ she said. ‘I thought something might be on your mind and we could talk about it.’
The newspaper rustled as Carrington turned the page but remained behind it.
‘Nothing for you to worry about.’
In the silence that followed the dismissive reply she returned her attention to the television, watching its images without seeing or listening. Duggie had told her about the conversation the previous evening and she felt nervous. Carrington’s rejection of her in bed, now coupled with his obvious determination not to talk to her, had destroyed her confidence that she could always mould him the way she wanted. And that was something she had to keep doing. She had to stay calm while she completed the last stages of her part in his murder. She realised that she had finally used the word in her mind; before it had always been ‘dealing with Charles’ or just ‘doing it’. Now that she had grasped the proper word herself, it somehow seemed less terrifying, an acceptance of the inevitability of what had been planned.
‘I’m going shopping in Manchester on Thursday,’ she said casually. ‘I could try in Sherratt & Hughes for that Kingsley Amis novel you want.’
She felt relieved as he folded the paper and finally looked at her.
‘Thank you. I never seem to have time to get it in Lancaster. Are you spending the whole day in town?’
‘Probably,’ she replied. ‘What time will you be back from Carlisle?’
‘Midnight at the latest. The meeting should be over about ten.’
‘Then I’ll probably call and see Angela before coming back, but I’ll be home before you. I’ll wait up.’
‘There’s no need. Excuse me, there are some papers I must look at.’
As he walked out of the room, Jennifer Carrington became apprehensive again. The tone of his voice belonged to the office, not to their home and their life together. She stood up and turned off the television then stood in front of the fire, arms folded defensively across her chest as she thought. However strong Charles’s suspicions about Duggie were—and everything pointed to them being very strong indeed—it was still all right as long as he didn’t come straight out with it. And in two days, he would not be able to do anything.
In the library, Carrington unlocked his briefcase and took out several pages of notes in his precise handwriting. A lifetime as a lawyer had ingrained the practice of putting everything into words on paper. He still had the diary he had kept when his first wife was dying; now, for very different reasons, he was doing the same thing with Jennifer. But the language of the law was detached and unemotional, helpless to capture love, unable to embrace grief, too controlled to express fear. And the rule of the law demanded proof before anyone was guilty. Until that proof came—and he knew that he kept putting off pursuing it—then Jennifer had to be innocent. The law said so.
*
Duggie Lydden violently punched the buttons on his calculator again to see if entering the figures in a different permutation would somehow miraculously conjure up a less horrendous answer. When the same result inevitably appeared, he swore and looked resignedly at the account books spread across his desk in the office at the back of his shop. The disastrous five numbers were only black on the calculator’s display; his bank manager would regard them as being in the deepest red.
Among the documents was his latest credit card demand which included the bill for a hotel in York. Adding on the entry for the necklace he had bought as well, he reckoned the weekend had cost him over a hundred pounds for each time he had coupled with the highly cooperative student from the wine bar. Her insatiable enthusiasm and sexual inventiveness appeared to have been
a very costly indulgence; her suggestion that she now thought she might be pregnant was all he had needed. The choice between maintenance or the cost of an abortion was academic; he could afford neither. His best hope there was suggesting that someone else was the father. He kept crudely telling other customers in the wine bar that more men had been up her than Helvellyn.
Lydden picked up his latest statement to check what he already knew; the chances of repaying Carrington by the end of the month were non-existent. At his last tetchily polite meeting with the bank manager, the spurious promise of an anticipated contract for refurbishing a cottage in Grasmere bought by a Kensington yuppie as a second home had postponed certain consequences. Now that his over-priced tender had been rejected, there were no delaying tactics left. He was trapped between a grossly exceeded overdraft arrangement and Carrington’s ultimatum.
He pushed the papers away peevishly and again wondered about the unspoken but palpable motives behind Carrington’s conversation with him after dinner. Having the power to bankrupt your wife’s lover would be an attractive situation to any husband. But the answer could now be within his reach. When he had spoken to Jennifer on the phone that morning, she had appeared less unwilling than before to go along with the plan; at least she had said she would think about it. Lydden had always been convinced that a woman ready and willing to start playing around only months after her wedding-day was not going to care overmuch about what else she did to her ageing and malleable husband. And if they succeeded there would be no problems—apart from the minor matter of then getting rid of her. The number of women who could be deceived with a constant stream of facile promises had long since ceased to surprise him. As he thought, the telephone on his desk rang.
‘Duggie? When are you coming? I told you Ivor is due back from Sweden tomorrow. I was expecting you hours ago.’
‘Sorry, got held up by something. I’m on my way.’
Lydden rang off, put away the books and turned off the lamp before going out through the back door of Lakeland Interiors into the small walled courtyard where he parked his car. He stopped at an off-licence for a bottle of wine then drove out of Kendal towards Windermere and an isolated, exclusive house set in the hills. Three on the go at the same time, he reflected; it was certainly a personal best.