Seeing is Believing

by E. X. Ferrars

  I wondered what her ideas of a good marriage were. She had tried it three times, I believed, without success.

  ‘I'm sure he'd be good to her after his fashion,’ I said, ‘but whether or not that would be Avril's fashion, I don't know.’

  ‘You realize, of course, that unless she has an abortion, she isn't going to be able to keep her pregnancy secret for very long, and that may alter the way people think of Peter's murder. Someone, and it might be Hugh Maskell, had a motive for killing Peter.’

  ‘Won't it be assumed that the child was Peter's?’

  ‘But I told you … Oh!’ She clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Of course, they don't know anything about that, do they, and they won't unless you tell them. Are you going to tell the police about it? Do you think they ought to know?’

  ‘I think we'd better wait and see. If it turns out that it had nothing whatever to do with the murder, I don't see why we need to enlighten them.’

  ‘I'm so glad that's what you feel. You see, if I'd known anything about Avril having a child, I'd never have told you about Peter's trouble. I only told you, as I'm telling you all this now, because I thought you seemed the kind of person who would help her if she needed it. But I'm sure it will be far the best for her if people assume the child was Peter's.’

  I thought that she was undoubtedly right, though I had hardly begun to take in what this new knowledge did to the case.

  ‘Of course, now I realize why she wants to get rid of the dogs,’ she went on. ‘She'll want to get away from here, whether it's to London or somewhere else, and travelling with three big dogs wouldn't be exactly easy. I wonder what she'll do. And I wonder if it has anything to do with Peter's murder. I can't believe it somehow. It's so easy to deal with that kind of thing nowadays.’

  ‘I'm wondering if Peter himself knew about the pregnancy.’

  ‘What do you think he'd have done if he did?’

  It was a question that made me realize how little I knew the Loxleys. I had thought of them for some time as friends, but the truth was that I knew next to nothing about the emotional side of their natures. I had a moderate understanding of Avril, but Peter I knew hardly at all. Though I had had the feeling for some time that their marriage was not a happy one, I could not have said what seemed to me to be wrong with it, or indeed why I had the feeling. I had a vague sort of idea that the basis of the trouble was their lack of children, that Avril's compensation for this with her dogs was really a considerable annoyance to Peter, and that possibly he compensated for this in ways of his own, for which the flat in Fulham came in useful. But I had not the least evidence for this.

  ‘I suspect it might have depended to some extent on who the father of the child was,’ I said.

  She looked puzzled. Why should that make a difference?’

  ‘Don't you think it would be harder for him to tolerate it, and bring up the child as his own, if the man in question was a friend of his, whom he might have to go on seeing day after day?’

  ‘You're thinking about Hugh Maskell.’

  ‘There are other possibilities besides Hugh.’

  ‘You think it would really be easier for him to take if it was just a bit of random promiscuity?’

  ‘Don't you think so yourself?’

  She was giving me a steady, interested stare as if what I had said surprised her.

  ‘I suppose I do,’ she said at length. ‘It might feel more like simply having an adopted child. All the same, I think he'd have insisted on an abortion or a divorce. But if Avril didn't want the divorce she could bring out Peter's limitation in her defence, and that would be rather humiliating for him.’

  ‘Did she speak to you at all about the divorce she might have had?’

  ‘No. When I raised the question she simply brushed it aside, saying that in any case it didn't arise now, which of course is true. In a way it was a bit queer, the one thing she seemed to want to talk about was money. She said she was going to see their solicitor in the next day or two, to find out if he would advance her money before the whole financial situation was cleared up. I said I was sure he would, but that if she was in any difficulty I'd gladly lend her anything she wanted. Then she took my breath away. She said she wanted ten thousand pounds and she wanted it soon. I promised her I'd let her have it, but it's rather extraordinary, isn't it?’

  ‘It has an unwholesome smell of blackmail to me,’ I said.

  ‘Blackmail,’ she said thoughtfully, still with that intent look fixed on my face, searching and curious. ‘What could anyone blackmail her for? She can't have had anything to do with Peter's murder. She was in London with me.’

  ‘Suppose she had an accomplice, who now wants to be paid off.’

  ‘The man in the red wig?’

  ‘It isn't impossible, is it?’

  ‘In that case, it wouldn't have been Hugh Maskell, would it?’

  ‘No. I can imagine Hugh committing murder for passion, but not for money.’

  ‘But you aren't serious about this, are you? Why commit a murder when divorce is so easy? I don't think that ten thousand pounds was blackmail. I think it was because she's all in a hurry to set up a new life for herself, and actually, at the moment she isn't capable of thinking about anything clearly. And ten thousand pounds won't go so very far these days. If she wants to make the flat in London suitable for a child, and if she wants to have it privately, not on the NHS, which is quite likely, it'll soon dwindle away. No, I think you can put the thought of blackmail out of your mind. Now, I'd better be going.’

  At that moment the doorbell rang.

  I went to answer it, and found Fred Dyer on the doorstep.

  He was about the last person I was expecting, and I suppose I showed it. He looked irritated.

  ‘If this is inconvenient for you, I can come some other time,’ he said abruptly, ‘but there are some things I'd like to talk over with you.’

  ‘No, it's all right. Come in,’ I said and took him into the sitting room.

  Lynne had stood up and looked as if she was just preparing to take her leave. I introduced them to one another. She looked at Fred with her searching, inquisitive stare. He looked at her with his usual appearance of studying something much further away than she was.

  ‘I didn't think of your having a guest,’ he said. ‘As I said, I can go away and come back some other time.’

  ‘I'm just leaving,’ Lynne said. ‘Don't worry about me.’

  ‘Going to the Green Man?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  But she did not leave. She sat down on the arm of a chair and gave Fred one of her most charming smiles.

  She murmured, ‘“Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”‘

  He smiled back; his not unfriendly but impersonal smile.

  ‘That's what I've been asking myself in recent times,’ he said. ‘Of course, I wouldn't have been if Juliet had been anyone but Sharon.’

  ‘She persuaded you to take the part?’ Lynne said.

  ‘Yes, and it was just because of her own shyness. She's dead scared of most of the people here.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I thought she was scared of something.’

  It surprised me that Lynne had had the same impression of the girl as I had had.

  ‘But now, of course, it isn't going to happen,’ he said. ‘The show. And that's a relief to me. I'm no sort of an actor.’

  ‘I wonder if that's true,’ Lynne said. ‘I wonder very much. Anyway, I think it's a mistake to have cancelled the thing. Going on with it, if not quite immediately, might have helped the community here to get back to normal.’

  They'll do that anyway, as soon as the press move on to other things,’ he said. ‘As long as they're around it keeps up the excitement. And that's partly your fault, I believe, Mrs Denison. Murder with a film star thrown in is a good deal more exhilarating than murder pure and simple.’

  She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. ‘You may be right, but the film star is going back to London tomorro
w. I don't like to hear murder called exhilarating. That's going a little far for me.’

  ‘Well, don't we hear about it on television nearly every night?’ he said. ‘We're a pretty blood-soaked generation. I suppose it doesn't quite keep up with what it would be in wartime, but we do our best.’

  ‘I don't think I like you,’ she said, but she had still a faint smile on her face. ‘Even if you aren't the man whom Mrs Chance saw at the gate next door, I don't think I'd ever trust you very far.’

  ‘I've been used to that for some time,’ he answered. ‘I've come to expect it. But they haven't lost much time, have they, in telling the story of my murky past,’

  ‘You mean what happened in Edgewater?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I've been told you were suspected of three murders, without there being any real evidence against you, and that you came here to get away from the atmosphere of suspicion. But that doesn't seem to have worked, does it? Suspicion has reared its ugly head again.’

  ‘Yes, it's definitely a mistake to have red hair. In the next place I move on to, I'll get a dye job done. What d'you recommend? Black hair or a bleach?’

  I had noticed that while they were talking, Fred's local accent had entirely disappeared. A public school and Oxford or Cambridge seemed to be the most probable background for him.

  ‘But are you thinking of moving on, Fred?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, wouldn't you, if you were me?’ he said.

  ‘And will Sharon go with you?’

  ‘I don't know. You'll have to ask her.’

  ‘Of course you do know, and you don't mean to take her with you,’ Lynne said. She stood up. ‘Anyway, I must be going. I suppose you came here to talk to Mrs or Mr Chance and I've been getting in your way. I hope that Romeo and Juliet goes ahead and that you stick to your part, Mr Dyer. I think you might make a success of it. Goodbye for now, Frances. Perhaps we'll meet again before I leave for London.’

  I saw her to the door.

  When she had gone, I returned to the sitting room and found Fred still standing where I had left him. He gave me a grin.

  ‘I didn't make much of a hit there, did I?’ he said.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I thought you did,’ I answered. ‘It's just her way of putting things. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Now, that would be really nice,’ he said.

  ‘Sherry or whisky?’

  ‘Whisky, please.’

  I went to the cupboard and got out whisky for him and sherry for myself. As I did so, I listened to the sound of Malcolm's typewriter. I could hear it ticking away quite rapidly, so I gave up the thought that I had had a moment before that I would fetch him down to hear what Fred had to say. Malcolm was always irritable if he was interrupted when the work was going nicely.

  ‘I suppose I might have offered to take her down to the pub in my van,’ Fred said, ‘but it seemed to me it would be tactless. She might not like driving alone through the dark with someone who may have committed a number of sex murders. And after all, Edgewater may not have been the beginning of it. I may have been getting away with it for years.’

  I gave him his drink.

  ‘Welt sit down, Fred,’ I said, ‘and tell me why you came to see me.’

  We both sat down, and Fred contemplated the drink he held for a little while, before he started to speak. When he did, it was an abrupt question.

  ‘Mrs Chance, do you believe I shot Mr Loxley?’

  I met his look which seemed so direct, yet was in fact so evasive.

  ‘Suppose I do, Fred,’ I said, ‘I've told the police what I saw, or thought I saw, so things are up to them now, aren't they? What I believe isn't really important.’

  ‘What you thought you saw,’ he said. ‘You've some doubts about it, haven't you? You aren't sure it was me whom you saw at the gate.’

  ‘No, I'm inclined to think it wasn't. I think whoever it was, was wearing a wig, and it seems strange for a red-haired man to choose a red wig if he wants to disguise himself. And he was wearing gloves, which I've never seen you do. And he'd walked up to the house instead of coming in your van, as you usually do. And he arrived just at the time which you'd know was the time when Mrs Henderson would be leaving the house. You'd have known you'd only got to be ten minutes later and she wouldn't be there to identify you. That I came along just then was something that you couldn't have expected, but it isn't really important. It's what Mrs Henderson saw that counts. And she was very struck, as I was, with your uncharacteristic behaviour, keeping turned away from her so that she never saw your face. Well, does it sound as if I believe you shot Mr Loxley?’

  He sipped his whisky.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You've put it very plainly and you've taken a great load off my mind. Have you yourself ever had the experience of being suspected of horrible things that you haven't done?’

  ‘No, I don't think I have.’

  ‘You should try it some time. It does peculiar things to you.’

  ‘You're thinking of the Edgewater crimes.’

  ‘Of more than that. No, that isn't quite what I mean. But the feeling that the suspicion that hunted you down is never going to let go of you turns you into someone who doesn't seem like yourself. You start seeing yourself with other people's eyes. Have you ever asked yourself, Mrs Chance, where I came from before I came to Raneswood?’

  ‘Actually, I never thought much about it,’ I said, ‘until Mr Hewlett told us you'd come from Edgewater, and what happened to you there.’

  ‘And before Edgewater? And haven't you ever asked yourself what a man like me is doing, earning his living by doing odd jobs around a village?’

  ‘Suppose I take the second question first. Yes, I've wondered about that, but perhaps I've thought less about you than you think. Villages have a way of harbouring oddities. One rather takes them for granted. And there's been a rumour around, as I expect you know, that you're a poet, and if it's true, then doing odd jobs while you write away seems a sensible way of keeping going.’

  ‘A poet — good God!’ he said, and gave a harsh little laugh. ‘And you believed it?’

  ‘I really didn't think about it much, Fred,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean. It's just that I've been altogether too egotistic. I've thought people were wondering about me when actually they weren't bothered about me at all. Well, let me tell you, I've never written a line of poetry in my life. So that's cleared up. Now to go back to my other question. What was I doing before I came to Edgewater? You'll tell me, I suppose, that you never thought about that either.’

  ‘I don't think I ever did. I think, once Mr Hewlett told us he'd known you there, I just assumed you belonged there. Probably had been born and bred there. But that isn't so?’

  ‘It certainly isn't.’

  I could see that it irked him that so little thought had been given to him, that it had taken a crime in which he might or might not be involved, to make him to some extent a centre of attraction. His pride was hurt when he found that we had not all been thinking a great deal of him.

  Then where did you come from?’ I asked in as interested a tone as I could, wanting to placate him. I did not like the feeling that there was anger in him only just below the surface.

  ‘London,’ he answered. ‘But I didn't go straight from there to Edgewater. There was a certain interval of a few years; not the happiest few years in my not very successful life, but perhaps the most influential. They've cast their shadow over everything I've tried to do since.’

  ‘Are you telling me that they were spent in prison?’

  ‘That's right.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Oh, not for strangling girls and tying black plastic bags over their heads. But still, I've got blood on my hands. I deserved what I got.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you did. That's what you want, isn't it? You want to tell me what you did.’

  He made a small gesture with his hands as if he were offering me al
l that they held.

  ‘One has to talk sometimes,’ he said. ‘It might as well be to you as to anyone. You've got a good deal of power over me at the moment, so you might as well know the worst. I and a friend had a habit of pinching cars and going joy-riding. On the whole, it wasn't very serious. When we were tired of it we'd leave the car somewhere and get home by bus, and the owner would probably get it back next day. But one day things went wrong. I'll never forget it. We were going along much too fast and overtook one of those damned great lorries and couldn't see what was ahead of it till we'd almost passed it, and what was there was a crossroads with a gang of children waiting to cross the road until the thing had gone by, and another car was coming towards us. To avoid being smashed by it, we swung in to the left, trying to get ahead of the lorry, and didn't see some lights had just changed, and it had just stopped, and the kids were starting to stream across the road. We went slam into them, killed one and injured several more. It was manslaughter and we both went to prison.’

  ‘Were you driving?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, but that didn't make much difference. If my friend had been driving, he'd have done the same sooner or later. They gave him a year less than me, but that was all. Well, I did my time and was out and then my real troubles began. Because who was going to give a job to someone with a record like mine? If it hadn't been children it might not have been so bad, but as soon as it came out what I'd done, there was no job, thank you, it had already been filled. So naturally, I changed my name. I did it more than once. But you don't stand much of a chance of getting a job if you've no references. So I decided to go down a bit in the world, get rid of my classy accent, and take anything that was going, from window-cleaning to washing cars and gardening. It worked surprisingly well. If you don't care how small a job is, there are plenty going, and you get paid in cash, so there are no worries about income tax. I've always been a pretty good mechanic and I'd get a reputation in a district as a useful sort of character to know. Then I drifted into a job in a garage in Edgewater and stayed there for some time. I liked it. I liked the feeling of stability it gave me for a change. I picked up with a nice girl and though I didn't intend to stay there for long, I believe I could have stayed for quite a time. And then that bloody business about those three murdered girls blew up, and for no reason at all, I got suspected.’