Seeing is Believing

by E. X. Ferrars

  ‘There'd be the problem of her dogs,’ I said. ‘She's got three dogs, all rather large. I don't know if she told you that.

  ‘Oh yes, those dogs. She did tell me about them. But couldn't she board them in some kennels somewhere?’

  ‘I dare say she could if someone persuaded her to do it. Now what about some sherry? May I give you some?’

  Thank you, yes.’

  I went to the cupboard to get out the bottle and glasses.

  ‘But how did you know she'd be staying here?’ I asked.

  ‘From a policeman next door,’ she answered. ‘The taxi actually put me down there, and I could see that there were several policemen in the house. So I asked one if he knew where Mrs Loxley was and he said to the best of his knowledge she was staying here.’ She took the glass I had given her and sat down in a chair near the fire which I had just switched on. ‘Am I terribly in the way? Do please go ahead with anything you meant to do. For the moment, this drink is all I need.’

  I sat down in a chair facing her. ‘I don't know what there's any point in doing as I don't know where everybody is. I don't know how many people I'm supposed to be cooking for.’

  ‘Oh, don't cook for anyone,’ she said. ‘Come down and have lunch at the Green Man with me. I booked in there on my way here. If the others have come home before we go, they can come with us; and if they haven't got back, you can leave a message for them telling them where to join us. By the way, what literate taxi-drivers you have. When I said I wanted to be taken to Raneswood, he didn't say, “Oh, that's where they've had a murder.” He said, “That's where they're doing a production of Romeo and Juliet, isn't it?” Then to my surprise, he said that he didn't like Shakespeare. I thought that was awfully brave of him. After all, everyone has to like Shakespeare; you can't say you don't.’

  ‘Did he recognize you?’

  ‘I don't think so; or if he did, he was too polite to say so. After all, he might not like me. Not everybody does.

  Frances, about those dogs of Avril's, are they really and truly hers, or were they actually Peter's?’

  ‘D'you know, I've never asked myself that question,’ I said. ‘I've always taken for granted they were hers. In fact, that they were her substitute for not having had children.’

  ‘You never wondered if they were Peter's substitute?’

  It was a fact that I had never done so. She was watching me with something peculiarly intent in her blue eyes, it might almost have been something mocking. I had a feeling that she was taking me for some kind of simpleton and I did not much like the feeling.

  ‘I don't think I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘Did Peter want children very badly?’

  ‘Avril's never talked to you about that?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  She looked down into her glass of sherry and I was glad to be freed from her searching stare.

  ‘And of course you've always taken for granted that their failure to have children was Avril's fault,’ she said. ‘But it wasn't, you know, it was Peter's.’

  ‘You mean he refused to have them?’

  ‘No, no, simply that he couldn't. At first, when a child didn't come, they took for granted it was something wrong with Avril, and she went to I don't know how many doctors to see if it could be put right. But they all said there was nothing the matter with her and that she was perfectly normal. So at last it was Peter who started going to doctors and the answer was that it was he who couldn't have children. There was nothing wrong with him sexually, you understand, but he was — I suppose the word's sterile. Avril told me all that at lunch yesterday and I expect I shouldn't be handing it all on to you, but now that Peter's dead I somehow can't keep it to myself. I don't mean that it's got anything to do with the murder, but I think Avril may need a friend who knows the truth about what she's been going through. She was so loyal to him when he couldn't give her the one thing she wanted.’

  Those words roused a curious echo in my mind. It was of Jane Kerwood saying to me that Peter had been an unhappy man because he couldn't have the one thing in life he wanted. But had she meant simply that he could not have a child, or had it been that he had been unable to give Avril the one thing that would make her happy? Had he feared that sooner or later she was likely to leave him?

  Wondering if it had been from him that Jane had learnt the truth about the Loxleys’ relationship, or if it had been from Avril, I said, ‘It's a very sad story.’

  ‘It just happens that for Peter and Avril it was,’ Lynne said. ‘For some people it wouldn't have mattered so very much. I've always been thankful that I haven't had children, but then I'm not very clever at choosing husbands, and children would have complicated things so much. You see, I think that once you've got them you've got to put them first. You don't know what I've seen in Hollywood of children going wrong out of the sheer missing of that in so-called one-parent families. Or perhaps I mean too many parents, who keep changing. But you've no children yourself, have you? Has it mattered to you very much?’

  ‘I suppose it did for a while long ago,’ I answered. ‘But Malcolm was really all I ever wanted … Oh, I think they're here.’ For I had heard the squeak our gate always gave when it was opened and footsteps on the path to the house. I went on hurriedly, ‘Are you planning to tell the police what you've just told me about Peter, Lynne?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘It can't have anything to do with his murder. And you won't tell them either, will you?’

  I heard myself promising not to, but with a feeling that to bind myself in any way just then as to what I told anyone about anything was a mistake. Lynne had certainly been talking too much, telling me what had been told to her in confidence, but that did not seem to have occurred to her. I thought that probably she would tell it all to the next person with whom she found herself alone.

  The door opened and Malcolm and Brian came in.

  I introduced Lynne and they expressed great pleasure at seeing her, wanted to know, as I had, what had brought her, and heard of her learning about Peter's murder from television. Then they helped themselves to sherry and Malcolm said that of course ynne was staying for lunch.

  ‘Oh no, you're all coming down to have lunch with me at the Green Man,’ she said. ‘But tell me, where's Avril?’

  ‘And where have you been?’ I asked.

  ‘Only for a bit of a walk,’ Malcolm said. ‘We thought we'd get home before you got back from Otterswell.’

  ‘We both felt an overpowering desire to go somewhere where we wouldn't be able to see a single policeman,’ Brian said. ‘We've been up on the Downs.’ He was looking at Lynne with deep interest, as if she were of a species that he had never encountered before. Yet Granborough parents were such a mixed lot that I was sure he must have met and entertained at least a few actors and actresses, some of them almost as famous as Lynne, as Malcolm and I had in our time. ‘I realize we ought to have left a note for you to tell you where we'd gone,’ he went on. ‘I'm sorry if you were worried.’

  ‘I wasn't specially worried about you two,’ I said, ‘but as Lynne just asked you, where's Avril?’

  ‘She went to call in on Jane,’ Malcolm answered. ‘Jane's had the idea that Avril might move in with her as a lodger, at least for a time. Avril seemed to like the idea. And she set off to discuss it with her, of course taking the dogs. It's very kind of you to invite us to the Green Man, Mrs Denison, but I think we ought to wait till Avril gets back.’

  ‘Lynne,’ she said.

  ‘Lynne,’ he responded with a smile. ‘Though I could try phoning Jane to see if Avril's started back already, and if she hasn't, I could tell her perhaps to meet us at the Green Man.’

  ‘Yes, do that,’ Lynne said.

  Malcolm went out to the telephone in the hall and I heard him speak for a minute or two, presumably to Jane, but when he came back into the room he shook his head.

  ‘She's left Jane already, so we'll have to wait for her,’ he said. ‘She should be here in a few mi
nutes.’

  As he spoke, I heard the squeak of the gate, and a moment later Avril came into the room with the three dogs thrusting their way in ahead of her, and scenting a stranger in Lynne, investigating her with a mixture of hesitant growling and little yelps of pleasure.

  As soon as she saw Lynne, Avril threw herself into her arms. The two of them clung together, and tears began to stream from Avril's eyes.

  ‘Oh, Lynne, you shouldn't have … You can't do anything … You can't help … It's all so awful, but you shouldn't have come.’ The broken sentences came from Avril between choking sobs. ‘But I'm so glad to see you.’

  ‘I know I can't do anything, but I couldn't think of you here alone,’ Lynne said. ‘I know you've got good friends, but it isn't the same thing. Now, we're going out to lunch at the Green Man. You've got to face other people sooner or later, so we may as well get it over now, or would you really very much sooner stay here?’

  Avril withdrew from the embrace of her cousin and mopped her eyes.

  ‘No, let's go.’

  I thought of my uselessly peeled potatoes in the bowl in the kitchen sink, but on the whole was glad that I had no need to go on and prepare the rest of the meal. Avril at first was unsure what she should do with the dogs, but with a little persuasion from Malcolm, decided to have them tied on their leads to a pole in the garden that was used for supporting the line that took the washing. Their whines of protest followed us as we set off down the lane.

  Avril and Lynne went ahead, talking quietly and confidentially to one another. Brian chose to walk by himself. Malcolm and I stayed a few yards behind them. At first, while we were passing the police cars, we were silent. I wanted to talk, to tell Malcolm what Lynne had told me about Peter, but I remembered that I had promised not to tell this to the police, and I was not sure if that really meant strictly the police or if it included everyone else as well. But I thought that anyone who knew us would know that Malcolm and I were one identity, that we had no secrets from one another, and that telling one of us something was the same as telling it to us both. Not that Lynne knew us, but I felt she ought to have taken it for granted.

  With my arm through his, I said, ‘Malcolm, Lynne told me a rather surprising thing before you got home.’ And I went on and told him what she had told me of Peter's inability to father a child.

  He was less interested than I had thought he would be.

  ‘I don't know what that woman's come here for,’ he muttered. ‘It'll only bring the press down on us. Is that why she came, d'you think? Did she think that being connected with a murder would be useful publicity?’

  ‘I should have thought it would be very bad publicity,’ I said.

  ‘You can't tell nowadays,’ he said. ‘Haven't you noticed how the news on television, night after night, consists of violence of some sort or other. Civil wars, terrorism, riots, assassinations, road accidents and probably a homely murder or two, like ours. Good news isn't news, apparently, or does nothing good ever actually happen? I wish she hadn't come.’

  ‘But I'm sure it was just out of good nature,’ I said. ‘You could see how glad Avril was to see her.’

  ‘Avril started life as an actress, didn't she, even though she never got anywhere with it?’

  I looked at him in surprise.

  ‘D'you mean you didn't believe she was glad to see Lynne?’

  ‘I felt a touch of doubt.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don't know, I don't know,’ he said irritably. ‘It was just a feeling I had for a moment. Probably quite wrong. But what you've been telling me about Peter doesn't really have any connection with the murder, does it? You might say, I suppose, that it gave Avril a possible motive for killing him, but wouldn't a divorce and remarriage really have done as well? Or she could simply have left him and found herself a boyfriend.’

  ‘Yes, she could have left him,’ I said, ‘but she may have been worried about money. Except for that attempt to be an actress, I don't think she's ever had any sort of job and I don't suppose he'd have kept her supplied if she'd simply walked out on him. He may have refused a divorce, and I don't suppose he'd ever given her grounds for going ahead with one on her own, so I don't believe he'd have had to pay her anything. But now that he's dead I suppose she'll inherit all he had — his share of that company Loxley Matthews, for instance.’

  ‘Anyway, she was in London when he was killed, so she can't have had anything to do with it.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He gave me a sidelong look.

  ‘Are you really beginning to get suspicious of her, Frances?’

  ‘I'm a little bit suspicious of almost everybody, I find, and at the same time nobody. Oh, I don't know what I think, and I don't suppose you do either. I'd like to think about something quite different — those celandines, for instance.’

  They were in the grass at the base of the hedgerow down the other side of the lane, gaily yellow and full of the spring. On the other side of the lane, where the houses were, we had passed the cottage where the two sisters lived, and who at that time were in the South of France, so there was no sign of life there. But in the garden of the next house, where the Askews, the young couple with the two small children lived, the whole family was out, doing some weeding of the flowerbeds, and also keeping an eye on what was going on in the Loxleys’ garden. When they saw us they waved to us and we waved back. They had not been in the village very long and we did not know them well, though we had been for drinks in each other's houses and I liked what I knew of them. But now a curious thing happened. The young man, Ernest Askew, who had been stooping over a bed of wallflowers, plucking out weeds, straightened up and stood for a moment, rubbing his back as if it were aching and I saw that he was wearing gardening gloves. I also saw that he was tall, slim, well-built and wide-shouldered, and for a moment, I had a singular vision of him as red-haired, when in fact his thick, curly hair was a dark brown. But with a red wig covering the dark brown, he could quite easily have been the figure that I had seen at the Loxleys’ gate, which I had taken for Fred Dyer.

  It was only momentary. I had no reason to imagine that Ernest Askew would shoot Peter Loxley. Yet he could so easily have been the man at the gate. And for all I knew, he and Peter might have had some violent quarrel. But I had no reason either to imagine that Fred Dyer would shoot Peter, and I realized that if I was not careful I should be seeing possible Fred Dyers everywhere. As we walked on, I tried very hard to recall exactly what that figure at the gate had been like. Had it been Fred? There had been something wrong, it seemed to me now, about the red hair. It had been a little too brilliantly red and a little too thick and bushy, in fact, just the sort of hair that someone wearing the wig from the cupboard in the village hall would have appeared to have. The more I thought about it, the more convinced of this I became, but I did not speak of it to Malcolm. I would tell Detective Inspector Holroyd about it when next I saw him, which I supposed would be fairly soon. We walked on past Hugh Maskell's house and into the road that wound through the village. Hugh was tall, well-built and wide-shouldered and just possibly had a motive … I did my best not to think of that as we approached the Green Man.

  It was a long, gabled building, mostly covered in cream-coloured rough-cast and built in Victorian times. It had a large car park behind it and next to it, with only a narrow alley between them, was a pleasant-looking modern house with a roof of grey pantiles and painted a pale green, in which Lucille and Kevin Bird lived. It was Kevin's work and fairly successful. There was a narrow strip of lawn in front of it, with no fence between it and the road. The very handsome garden that Lucille had created was at the back of the house. She and Kevin were just coming out of it and making their way to the entrance of the Green Man as we approached.

  Malcolm introduced Lynne to them and she gave them the smile that had enchanted thousands. Kevin looked as if he would have wagged his tail if he had had a tail to wag. Lucille greeted her stiffly.

  ‘We are honoure
d,’ she said gravely, the pleasure she took in meeting a celebrity evident in her tone. She led the way in at the door. The room inside was long with a bar at one end of it, and several mirrors and framed advertisements hung on the walls. A number of the tables were placed close together and a good many of these had been taken so that the place already seemed full. ‘You'll join us,’ Lucille stated. ‘Kevin and I often come in here for Sunday lunch.’

  None of the tables was big enough to take seven people, but we pushed two together and seated ourselves on benches round them.

  ‘Their steak and chips is really very creditable,’ Lucille went on. ‘But what will you have to drink? Kevin, you'll get us our drinks. Mrs Denison, you must be quite American by now; you'd like a cocktail, I'm sure, but I advise you against anything more ambitious than a gin and tonic. Or would you prefer whisky? Scotch on the rocks, what about that? … No? Sherry? Frances, I know you will have sherry and Malcolm will have whisky and water without ice. Mr Hewlett, what will you have?’

  Brian chose whisky with water without ice, and as Kevin set off to the bar to collect the drinks, Brian followed him to help him bring them to the table. Lucille herself and Kevin both had sherry. By the time that Kevin and Brian returned to the table, a young woman in jeans and a T-shirt had planted a menu on our table and left us, and when she came back to take our orders, we all seemed to feel that Lucille had decided what we were to eat and obediently asked for steak and chips, though I have a liking for fish and chips myself, as they do them at the Green Man, but I lacked the courage not to conform.

  Looking at Lynne with stiff graciousness, Lucille said, ‘You've chosen an unfortunate time to come to Ranes-wood, Mrs Denison. You must be finding the atmosphere very different from what you expected.’

  ‘Oh, I knew what had happened here before I came,’ Lynne answered. ‘In fact, it was what brought me. I thought I might be able to take Avril back to London with me. But she seems to have managed to make arrangements here for herself.’