Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  “We’re friends of Tim Weaving’s,” Curry said. “We know you were close to him, and it seemed the right thing to do, drop in and see you. We were in this part of London so thought we’d come.”

  “But, if it’s inconvenient…” Suzie began, just as they’d rehearsed it.

  “No … No, please come in,” Her face said she didn’t really want to see them, and her manner, gestures, body language said go away, but they took no notice, went in just the same.

  “Can I get you anything? Cup of tea? Coffee? Though I’ve not got any decent coffee…”

  “We’re fine Miss Tooks,” and as he said it realised that her name allowed for some of his quirky humour: Miss Tooks. The greatest mistook of my life, was saying goodbye to you. He laughed inside, solemn look outside.

  “My friends call me Annie.”

  “Annie,” Curry tried it on for size.

  “Then how are you, Annie?” Suzie asked as they entered the drawing room. Very nice, she thought. Good furniture, modern, deep leather chairs and a long matching buttoned Chesterfield; predominantly green décor, green leather on the chairs and the Chesterfield. The walls papered in an exquisite light green paper with a discrete contrasting design, two shades of green, blending well. Some jade on the mantelpiece, and a couple of large green glass ashtrays on the side tables. Good pictures, four of them, though Suzie couldn’t have named the artists. Though she did note they were chosen for subject, impressions of woods and wide meadows, hint of a windmill on the skyline: Norfolk, she thought.

  It wasn’t until they were actually in the room that Curry started to introduce himself and Suzie. They shook hands and Annie Tooks said how nice it was of them to come, she was grateful. She was lying, that was plain by her manner, the way she spoke and the fact that she was holding her hands crossed in front of her, over her breasts, classic defensive movement.

  Then she came clean.

  “I think I should tell you that I fell out with Tim. Much earlier this year. In the spring. Irreparable. I’m still upset by the news of course, naturally, though I hadn’t even seen him or spoken to him since March, the bastard. He was a bit of a rat with the ladies. Though I wouldn’t have wished his kind of death on a rat.”

  “How did he end? How was he killed?” Suzie asked, waiting. “We haven’t been able to find out.” A cop’s question she had learned from a sergeant when she was on the beat. They had gone one day to break the news of a close relative’s death to a well-known local man and the sergeant had told her she was the one who had to do it. She had obviously been nervous and hesitant, so when she told the man to sit down he immediately said, “It’s alright. I know you’ve come to tell me that my aunt has died.”

  Without a pause the sergeant had said, “How do you know that?” concerned that this may not be a natural death. As it happened, a friend of his aunt had just telephoned him with the news, but Suzie had never forgotten the speed with which the sergeant had asked the question and she had learned from it.

  Now in the Hands Place flat, Annie Tooks said, “Oh, I don’t know the details, but he was murdered. That’s enough isn’t it? Murdered with a woman. I should imagine some jealous husband … Didn’t the papers say she was married to someone who’d been awarded the Victoria Cross?”

  “Yes, but…” Suzie began.

  Curry cut in, “Look, if there’s anything we can do…”

  Annie Tooks lifted her head and it was clear she was beginning to cry, not weeping with sorrow, angry tears now brimming in her eyes. “No, really…”

  “I mean, his parents. We’re in touch with his parents.”

  “I never met his parents,” she said coldly, all but spat, the anger showing now in flushed patches on her cheeks and tears starting to run down, little deltas forming on her skin. “I was supposed to meet them. Several times. We were to announce our engagement.…” Gulping air now. “But it never happened. He never got around to it. It was always just over the horizon…”

  “I’m sorry,” Curry flapped his arms as though saying, ‘what could I do’ and Suzie moved over and put an arm around the woman. One way or another she’d had a lot of practise comforting people.

  Now, close to Annie Tooks, Suzie saw that the corduroy skirt she wore was an expensive garment, tailored, the material a crushed raspberry colour, the twin-set of a similar shade, yet the clothes looked dowdy on her and Suzie realised they were uncared for, creased, dirty, stained. She also wore no make-up and her hair needed attention, possibly some more of whatever she used to turn it into the light golden colour. Clothes were difficult enough these days with rationing, ‘to provide a fair distribution of available supplies’ though most women she knew tried to keep what they already had, mainly pre-war garments, in good, and smart, condition. Suzie remembered when clothes rationing had come in, over the Whit weekend of 1941. The plan had been kept so secret – to avoid panic buying – that, when the ration was announced as sixty-six coupons worth a year, there were no coupons available and clothes shops initially took margarine coupons instead.

  Harrods advertised that now clothes were on the ration a sewing machine was almost as good a weapon as a spade. But by now, Christmas 1943, it had become increasingly difficult to look bandbox smart. Most people were either in uniform or shabbily dressed. Annie was more than shabby and Suzie remembered her mother saying of a woman who’d started to look down at heel, ‘that woman’s letting herself go’. At the time she’d thought that a strange expression. Now looking at Annie Tooks she saw how apt it was.

  Annie wept at full bore now, while Curry was trying to talk her down from fast approaching hysteria.

  “Annie, listen to me,” Curry managing the paradox of firm and gentle. “We’ve only just met. You need to talk, Annie. Talk to us. Come on now, it’ll do you good…”

  “Problem shared…” Suzie added.

  Slowly the raging fury subsided and was reduced to quiet sobs. “I’m … I’m crying … for him…” she managed. “I loved him so much.”

  Oh Lord, Suzie thought, how melodramatic are we going to get?

  “He let you down?” Curry asked, bringing about a fresh tide of howling tears.

  You can discover much by guile, Elsie had counselled.

  “Talk about it,” Suzie added. “Spill it out, Annie.” Oh God, I feel like someone in a bad film, ‘Spill it out, Annie’. In her head she heard it with an American accent.

  But Annie did. Spilled it out: how Tim Weaving had made the sun shine every day, how he’d asked her to marry him and she, trusting, had felt that the offer having been accepted, immediately opened the bedroom door.

  “I gave him everything … Did everything he wanted … Made myself available in every possible way.” The tears again drizzled, a rallentando of sobs, degenerating to lento.

  Bloody hell, Suzie said silently, is this going to get even more melodramatic? Her eyes caught Curry’s and she had to look away.

  “Let it all out, Annie,” Suzie muttered, still with her arm around the woman, fingers clawed about her shoulder. “Tell it all.”

  “I suppose I fall in love too easily,” she said.

  Jeeroosaalem. How old is this woman? I fall in love too easily. Crikey.

  “I met Tim Weaving at the house of a friend: Sylvia Picket, girl I was at school with; you can imagine the nicknames. She was in the middle of a little run around with one of Tim’s officers.”

  “Which one?” Curry asked, as though it didn’t matter a damn to him.

  “Wilson Sharp. Captain Sharp.”

  “Sure,” Curry smiled.

  The saturnine young captain. Suzie kicked it around in her head. Countryman, walked loosely, behaved as he would strolling down a village street. She thought of him as tough, as though he had confidence enough for the whole regiment. He was tall, tanned face, dark-hair, floppy dark hair. Sharp had given Tommy a hard time about the morals of men and of war.

  “Wilson Sharp,” she said aloud. “Wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of old Wil
son Sharp on a dark night.”

  Annie stopped crying, took a long sniff of air through her nose. “No. No you wouldn’t. Some civvies tried to pick up Sylvia in a pub, Lord Nelson out near Wantage. Young civilian chaps, working locally I think. Wilson Sharp saw them off. Went for them like a bloody bulldog. Sylvia told me they turned and fled. Wouldn’t have minded Wilson for myself really.”

  “But you had Tim, Colonel Tim Weaving.”

  “For a while. ‘Till he found someone else and didn’t even tell me … Julia … Sylvia and Wilson are engaged and I hear it’s serious. Wants to marry her quickly it seems.”

  “Richardson,” Suzie added. “Julia Richardson.”

  “That’s the girl.” Pause. Could have heard a bomb drop in the silence, or a pin for that matter. “I’m sorry.” She relaxed, body sagging, then another intake of air through the nose, the back of her hand across her eyes, getting rid of the tears. “I’m so sorry … I think I’ve had a stupid bit of the hystericals…”

  “He treated you badly,” Curry told her.

  Suzie said, “You’re entitled to the Harry hysteriers.” Everyone had started to use the military affectation of Harry in front of words and ’ers on the subject – Harry crashers, Harry brokers. Her widowed brother-in-law, Vernon Fox now a Royal Marine Commando Lieutenant had told her that when he was at Deal they had an imaginary Marine Harry Flakers because they were all tired out at the end of a strenuous day.

  “Let me get us some tea,” Annie stood up, eyes red-ringed and cheeks stained; but now she was invested with a terrible calm. They followed her through the hall into her small kitchen knowing that sudden calm in people prone to severe emotional fits was not a good sign. Sometimes an unusually tranquil mood following high drama signified deeper problems.

  She filled the kettle and put it on a gas hob, slipping the whistler onto the spout. She was collecting cups from the small Welsh dresser that took up almost an entire wall when Suzie saw her lean forward grasping at the edge of the dresser, her knuckles showing white.

  “You okay?” Suzie beside her, ready to hold on if she seemed about to collapse.

  The girl nodded, teeth clenched. “The bastard,” she muttered again, then got control of herself, straightened and continued preparing the cups, asking who wanted sugar, pouring the milk.

  “It really is amazing,” she finally said as she was warming the pot with water from the almost boiling kettle. “Amazing how one man can wreak such devastation on a woman. I thought I was almost over him, but I’m not nearly in the clear yet.”

  “What actually happened?” Curry asked. He was good at making questions sound casual and lacking in importance.

  “More or less what I told you. We were ridiculously happy – I was anyway, and I thought he was. Making plans for the future, though he wasn’t happy about getting married before the end of the war. I wanted a quick wedding. Soon. He wanted to wait, said once we made a move into Europe it’d be over quite quickly.” She made the tea, pouring the boiling water into the pot, stirring as she did so, her hand steady as her voice. “I must say I wondered about that. Other people I knew, quite senior people, would tell me that it certainly wasn’t all over once the second front began, and I knew that. I know the Germans have a great well-trained army. They’re good and fanatical fighters. Am I right?”

  Suzie looked at Curry who said that she was certainly right. “If, and it’s a pretty big if, we do open a second front in Occupied Europe it’ll be a hard battle and I wouldn’t like to put money on the outcome. If we get a toehold somewhere on the continent it could take months to fight our way through. On the other hand a lot of people believe that the round-the-clock bombing’s killing the Nazis will to go on; knocking out their armament industry, smashing their lines of supply, certainly demoralising their civilians.”

  Annie had put the cups on a tray and they followed her back into the drawing room. Setting the tray down she made a little tutting noise, said she looked a fright. “I’ll just go and splash some water on my face.”

  Suzie was back on her feet. “I’ll do the same if you don’t mind.”

  Annie gave a gentle laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to do myself an injury. You’re welcome to come with me. I’m a bit flattered.” And she strode off quite briskly.

  Back downstairs again, five minutes later, Annie, now clean of the traces of tears, leaned back in one of the comfortable armchairs, looked at Curry, then Suzie and back to Curry again. “You’re the police, aren’t you?” Stating rather than asking.

  Curry calmly told her no. “We’re not the law, Annie, but we are investigating Tim’s death. Was it so obvious?”

  “It was Miss Mountford being so attentive. Just an idea. I said to myself, these people’re too good to be just ordinary friends.”

  “It’s not desperate. Tim was a good man, a fine soldier. We’re just tying up some frayed ends.”

  “May have been a fine soldier but he wasn’t a good man. Good men don’t play fast and loose with women’s emotions.”

  “You were telling us what actually happened…” Curry prompted.

  She eyed them both; more coldly this time. “Yes I was. Where had we got to?”

  “You were very happy,” Suzie told her. “And you thought he was. But he wanted to wait until this unpleasantness was over.”

  “Yes. Well, I was deeply in love with him – I expect that makes me sound like a sixteen-year-old girl instead of a woman of twenty-six…”

  “Not at all,” Curry said, and Suzie shook her head.

  “I saw him every weekend, and sometimes during the week if he could get up to town. In the beginning he showed incredible respect. I suppose I offered everything to him on a plate, but he refused: said he wanted to wait. But … well … we didn’t wait of course, and I felt it was terribly daring and very wonderful. Two people becoming one is wonderful: Christmas morning every day.” She said nothing for a few moments. Then, “Isn’t it? Or am I being a stupid inexperienced girl?”

  “Love can be incredible,” said Suzie without much conviction.

  “You regarded yourselves as being engaged?” Curry asked.

  “Of course. I was supposed to meet his parents and have a big engagement party, but it never materialised.”

  “Then?”

  “Then one weekend he went back to Brize and said, ‘I’ll see you next week my darling. Love you.’ And that was it. Never saw him again. Next thing I knew he was announcing his engagement to Julia Meg Richardson. In the Times and the Telegraph. They had a little story about him in the Daily Mail as well. Bastard. I could have killed him. Still could actually, if he wasn’t already dead.”

  “Come on Annie,” Suzie began. “We all say that when someone really…”

  “No, I mean it. I absolutely mean it. One of my brothers also wanted to do him over. The one who came and saw me, dropped in the day I saw the announcement and had tried to ring him at Brize, got turned away.” She put on a hoity-toity voice, “‘I’m sorry, ma’am, the Colonel’s flying at the moment, won’t be in the office for some days.’”

  Curry asked her for the name and address of the brother and she refused it with a shake of the head. “Any policemen been to see you yet?” he enquired.

  “Are they likely to?”

  “I think highly likely.” Suzie raised her eyebrows. “There should be a smooth old bugger called Livermore. How about him? Tommy Livermore? He’ll be round.”

  “Anyone else you can suggest?” Curry asked. “Anyone else didn’t like him?”

  “Yes, of course. Husbands of girls who’ve gone off into the haystacks with Tim. Husbands and boyfriends. I should imagine they litter the Home Counties. I also know at least one of his officers that Tim was scared of.”

  “Which one?”

  “Well, two actually. Major Hutt and old Bomber Puxley.”

  “One more and he’ll have a full house.” Suzie said inaccurately.

  “Bomber Puxley’s a bit of a card, actually. Squeezed
my bum as we went into the mess.”

  “Thought Tim Weaving was an officer and a gentleman,” Curry said almost to himself.

  “Thought they’d follow him into the jaws of hell, such a good officer.” Suzie slid back into her chair. “What Wilson Sharp told us, anyway.”

  “Nobody’s criticising his behaviour as an officer.” Annie flushed again, but no tears. “It’s the gentleman bit that doesn’t quite work.”

  Curry looked at Suzie with just the trace of a smile; his face saying, we’re on the right track it’s one of three people. Out loud he said, “Hutt, Puxley and Sharp. Are you saying one of those officers could have…?”

  “Killed him? Certainly.” Annie Tooks, perky now and assured, but with the anger still sizzling away.

  “You ever met the new CO? Colonel Belcher?”

  “Barney Belcher?” Annie looked surprised.

  “That’s the one.”

  “He had cause. Just cause. Tim pinched his wife. Couple of years ago when they were at Ringway. They had a real set-to the pair of them, outside the mess. It’s an old story and I think it was Wilson Sharp who told me.”

  “Where is Mrs Belcher now?”

  Annie shrugged, “Not a clue. They split up last year. Tim used to say she was a bit of a bicycle. Unfaithful to Barney only once – with the Glider Pilot Regiment. That was Tim’s kind of humour.”

  “I thought you had names to give me,” Curry smiled at her, trying his charm.

  “I couldn’t possibly remember all the names,” Annie smiled back. “No names no pack drill, eh?”

  Later as they were driving towards Curzon Street, on the way to see Julia Richardson, Curry said he thought Annie talked a lot of tosh. “Bitter woman ruled by jealousy, that girl. Case of give a dog a bad name, I’d say. Don’t believe half of it about Colonel Weaving.”