by Dick Francis
I said, more moderately, ‘There might be ways … if I can find him. At any rate, I’ll do my best. If there’s anything I can do … I’ll do it.’
Jenny looked unplacated, and no one else said anything. I sighed internally. ‘What did he look like?’ I said.
After a pause Charles said, ‘I saw him once only, for about thirty minutes, four months ago. I have a general impression, but that’s all. Young, personable, dark haired, clean-shaven. Something too ingratiating in his manner to me. I would not have welcomed him as a junior officer aboard my ship.’
Jenny compressed her lips and looked away from him, but could not protest against this judgement. I felt the first faint stirrings of sympathy for her and tried to stamp on them: they would only make me more vulnerable, which was something I could do without.
I said to Toby, ‘Did you meet him?’
‘No,’ he said loftily. ‘Actually, I didn’t.’
Toby has been in Australia,’ Charles said, explaining.
They all waited. It couldn’t be shirked. I said directly to her, neutrally, ‘Jenny?’
‘He was fun,’ she said vehemently, unexpectedly. ‘My God, he was fun. And after you …’ She stopped. Her hand swung round my way with bitter eyes. ‘He was full of life and jokes. He made me laugh. He was terrific. He lit things up. It was like … it was like …’ She suddenly faltered and stopped, and I knew she was thinking, like us when we first met. Jenny, I thought desperately, don’t say it, please don’t.
Perhaps it was too much, even for her. How could people, I wondered for the ten thousandth useless time, how could people who had loved so dearly come to such a wilderness; and yet the change in us was irreversible, and neither of us would even search for a way back. It was impossible. The fire was out. Only a few live coals lurked in the ashes, searing unexpectedly at the incautious touch.
I swallowed. ‘How tall was he?’ I said.
‘Taller than you.’
‘Age?’
‘Twenty-nine.’
The same age as Jenny. Two years younger than I. If he had told the truth, that was. A confidence trickster might lie about absolutely everything as a matter of prudence.
‘Where did he stay, while he was … er … operating?’
Jenny looked unhelpful, and it was Charles who answered. ‘He told Jenny he was staying with an aunt, but after he had gone, Oliver and I checked up. The aunt, unfortunately, proved to be a landlady who lets rooms to students in north Oxford. And in any case …’ he cleared his throat, ‘… it seems that fairly soon he left the lodgings and moved into the flat Jenny is sharing with another girl.’
‘He lived in your flat?’ I said to Jenny.
‘So what of it?’ She was defiant. And something else …
‘So when he left, did he leave anything behind?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want him found?’ I said.
To Charles and Quayle and Toby the answer to that question was an automatic yes, but Jenny didn’t answer, and the blush that started at her throat rose fast to two bright spots on her cheekbones.
‘He’s done you great harm,’ I said.
With stubbornness stiffening her neck, she said, ‘Oliver says I won’t go to prison.’
‘Jenny!’ I was exasperated. ‘A conviction for fraud will affect your whole life in all sorts of horrible ways. I see that you liked him. Maybe you even loved him. But he’s not just a naughty boy who pinched the jampot for a lark. He has callously arranged for you to be punished in his stead. That’s the crime for which I’ll catch him if I damned well can, even if you don’t want me to.’
Charles protested vigorously, ‘Sid, that’s ridiculous. Of course she wants to see him punished. She agreed that you should try to find him. She wants you to, of course she does.’
I sighed and shrugged. ‘She agreed, to please you. And because she doesn’t think I’ll succeed; and she’s very likely right. But even talk of my succeeding is putting her in a turmoil and making her angry … and it’s by no means unknown for women to go on loving scoundrels who’ve ruined them.’
Jenny rose to her feet, stared at me blindly, and walked out of the room. Toby took a step after her and Charles too got to his feet, but I said with some force, ‘Mr Quayle, please will you go after her and tell her the consequences if she’s convicted. Tell her brutally, make her understand, make it shock.’
He had taken the decision and was on his way after her before I’d finished.
‘It’s hardly kind,’ Charles said. ‘We’ve been trying to spare her.’
‘You can’t expect Halley to show her any sympathy,’ Toby said waspishly.
I eyed him. Not the brightest of men, but Jenny’s choice of undemanding escort, the calm sea after the hurricane. A few months earlier she had been thinking of marrying him, but whether she would do it post-Ashe was to my mind doubtful. He gave me his usual lofty look of non-comprehension and decided Jenny needed him at once.
Charles watched his departing back and said, with a tired note of despair, ‘I simply don’t understand her. And it took you about ten minutes to see … what I wouldn’t have seen at all.’ He looked at me gloomily. ‘It was pointless, then, to try to reassure her, as I’ve been doing?’
‘Oh, Charles, what a bloody muddle … It won’t have done any harm. It’s just given her a way of excusing him … Ashe … and putting off the time when she’ll have to admit to herself that she’s made a shattering … shaming … mistake.’
The lines in his face had deepened with distress. He said sombrely, ‘It’s worse. Worse than I thought.’
‘Sadder,’ I said. ‘Not worse.’
‘Do you think you can find him?’ he said. ‘How on earth do you start?’
4
I started in the morning, having not seen Jenny again, as she’d driven off the previous evening with Toby at high speed to Oxford, leaving Charles and me to dine alone, a relief to us both; and they had returned late and not appeared for breakfast by the time I left.
I went to Jenny’s flat in Oxford, following directions from Charles, and rang the door-bell. The lock, I thought, looking at it, would give me no trouble if there was no one in, but in fact, after my second ring, the door opened a few inches, on a chain.
‘Louise McInnes?’ I said, seeing an eye, some tangled fair hair, a bare foot and a slice of dark blue dressing gown.
‘That’s right.’
‘Would you mind if I talked to you? I’m Jenny’s … er … ex-husband. Her father asked me to see if I could help her.’
‘You’re Sid?’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘Sid Halley?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well … wait a minute.’ The door closed and stayed closed for a good long time. Finally it opened again, this time wide, and the whole girl was revealed. This time she wore jeans, a checked shirt, baggy blue sweater, and slippers. The hair was brushed, and there was lipstick: a gentle pink, unaggressive.
‘Come in.’
I went in and closed the door behind me. Jenny’s flat, as I would have guessed, was not constructed of plasterboard and held together with drawing pins. The general address was a large Victorian house in a prosperous side street, with a semicircular driveway and parking room at the back. Jenny’s section, reached by its own enclosed, latterly added staircase, was the whole of the spacious first floor. Bought, Charles had told me, with some of her divorce settlement. It was nice to see that on the whole my money had been well spent.
Switching on lights, the girl led the way into a large bow-fronted sitting room which still had its curtains drawn and the day before’s clutter slipping haphazardly off tables and chairs. Newspapers, a coat, some kicked-off boots, coffee cups, an empty yoghurt carton in a fruit bowl, with spoon, some dying daffodils, a typewriter with its cover off, some scrunched-up pages that had missed the waste-paper basket.
Louise McInnes drew back the curtains, letting in the grey morn
ing to dilute the electricity.
‘I wasn’t up,’ she said unnecessarily.
‘I’m sorry.’
The mess was the girl’s. Jenny was always tidy, clearing up before bed. But the room itself was Jenny’s. One or two pieces from Aynsford, and an overall similarity to the sitting room of our own house, the one we’d shared. Love might change, but taste endured. I felt a stranger, and at home.
‘Want some coffee?’ she said.
‘Only if …’
‘Sure. I’d have some anyway.’
‘Can I help you?’
‘If you like.’
She led the way through the hall and into a bare-looking kitchen. There was nothing precisely prickly in her manner, but all the same it was cool. Not surprising, really. What Jenny thought of me, she would say, and there wouldn’t be much that was good.
‘Like some toast?’ She was busy producing a packet of white sliced bread and a jar of powdered coffee.
‘Yes I would.’
‘Then stick a couple of pieces in the toaster. Over there.’
I did as she said, while she ran some water into an electric kettle and dug into a cupboard for butter and marmalade. The butter was a half-used packet still in its torn greaseproof wrapping, the centre scooped out and the whole thing messy: exactly like my own butter packet in my own flat. Jenny had put butter into dishes automatically. I wondered if she did when she was alone.
‘Milk and sugar?’
‘No sugar.’
When the toast popped up she spread the slices with butter and marmalade and put them on two plates. Boiling water went on to the brown powder in mugs, and milk followed straight from the bottle.
‘You bring the coffee,’ she said, ‘and I’ll take the toast.’ She picked up the plates and out of the corner of her eye saw my left hand closing round one of the mugs. ‘Look out,’ she said urgently, ‘that’s hot.’
I gripped the mug carefully with the fingers that couldn’t feel.
She blinked.
‘One of the advantages,’ I said, and picked up the other mug more gingerly by its handle.
She looked at my face, but said nothing: merely turned away and went back to the sitting room.
‘I’d forgotten,’ she said, as I put down the mugs on the space she had cleared for them on the low table in front of the sofa.
‘False teeth are more common,’ I said politely.
She came very near to a laugh, and although it ended up as a doubtful frown, the passing warmth was a glimpse of the true person living behind the slightly brusque façade. She scrunched into the toast and looked thoughtful, and after a chew and a swallow, she said, ‘What can you do to help Jenny?’
‘Try to find Nicholas Ashe.’
‘Oh …’ There was another spontaneous flicker of smile, again quickly stifled by subsequent thought.
‘You liked him?’ I said.
She nodded ruefully. ‘I’m afraid so. He is … was … such tremendous fun. Fantastic company. I find it terribly hard to believe he’s just gone off and left Jenny in this mess. I mean … he lived here, here in this flat … and we had so many laughs … What he’s done … it’s incredible.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘would you mind starting at the beginning and telling me all about it?’
‘But hasn’t Jenny …?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose,’ she said slowly, ‘that she wouldn’t like admitting to you that he made such a fool of us.’
‘How much,’ I said, ‘did she love him?’
‘Love? What’s love? I can’t tell you. She was in love with him.’ She licked her fingers. ‘All fizzy. Bright and bubbly. Up in the clouds.’
‘Have you been there? Up in the clouds?’
She looked at me straightly. ‘Do you mean, do I know what it’s like? Yes, I do. If you mean, was I in love with Nicky, then no I wasn’t. He was fun, but he didn’t turn me on like he did Jenny. And in any case, it was she who attracted him. Or at least …’ she finished doubtfully, ‘… it seemed like it.’ She wagged her licked fingers. ‘Would you give me that box of tissues that’s just behind you?’
I gave her the box and watched her as she wiped off the rest of the stickiness. She had fair eye-lashes and English rose skin, and a face that had left shyness behind. Too soon for life to have printed unmistakable signposts; but there did seem, in her natural expression, to be little in the way of cynicism or intolerance. A practical girl, with sense.
‘I don’t really know where they met,’ she said, ‘except that it was somewhere here in Oxford. I came back here one day, and he was here, if you see what I mean? They were already … well … interested in each other.’
‘Er.’ I said, ‘have you always shared this flat with Jenny?’
‘More or less. We were at school together … didn’t you know? Well, we met one day and I told her I was going to be living in Oxford for two years while I wrote a thesis, and she said, had I anywhere to stay, because she’d seen this flat, but she’d like some company … So I came. Like a shot. We’ve got on fine, on the whole.’
I looked at the typewriter and the signs of effort. ‘Do you work here all the time?’
‘Here or in the Sheldonian … er, the library, that is … or out doing other research. I pay rent to Jenny for my room … and I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’
‘It’s very helpful.’
She got to her feet. ‘It might be as well for you to see all the stuff. I’ve put it all in his room … Nicky’s room … to get it out of sight. It’s all too boringly painful, as a matter of fact.’
Again I followed her through the hall, and this time on further down the wide passage, which was recognizably the first-floor landing of the old house.
‘That room,’ she said, pointing at doors, ‘is Jenny’s. That’s the bathroom. That’s my room. And this one at the end was Nicky’s.’
‘When exactly did he go?’ I said walking behind her.
‘Exactly? Who knows? Some time on Wednesday. Two weeks last Wednesday.’ She opened the white painted door and walked into the end room. ‘He was here at breakfast, same as usual. I went off to the library, and Jenny caught the train to London to go shopping, and when we both got back, he was gone. Just gone. Everything. Jenny was terribly shocked. Wept all over the place. But of course, we didn’t know then that he hadn’t just left her, he’d cleared out with all the money as well.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Jenny went to the bank on Friday to pay in the cheques and draw out some cash for postage, and they told her the account was closed.’
I looked round the room. It had thick carpet, Georgian dressing chest, big comfort-promising bed, upholstered armchair, pretty, Jenny-like curtains, fresh white paint. Six large brown boxes of thick cardboard stood in a double stack in the biggest available space; and none of it looked as if it had ever been lived in.
I went over to the chest and pulled out a drawer. It was totally empty. I put my fingers inside and drew them along, and they came out without a speck of dust or grit.
Louise nodded. ‘He had dusted. And hoovered, too. You could see the marks on the carpet. He cleaned the bathroom, as well. It was all sparkling. Jenny thought it was nice of him … until she found out just why he didn’t want to leave any trace.’
‘I should think it was symbolic,’ I said absently.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well … not so much that he was afraid of being traced through hair and fingerprints … but just that he wanted to feel that he’d wiped himself out of this place. So that he didn’t feel he’d left anything of himself here. I mean … if you want to go back to a place, you subconsciously leave things there, you “forget” them. Well-known phenomenon. So if you subconsciously, as well as consciously, don’t want to go back to a place, you may feel impelled to remove even your dust.’ I stopped. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to bore you.’
‘I’m not bored.’
I said matter-of-f
actly, ‘Where did they sleep?’
‘Here.’ She looked carefully at my face and judged it safe to proceed. ‘She used to come along here. Well … I couldn’t help but know. Most nights. Not always.’
‘He never went to her?’
‘Funny thing, I never ever saw him go into her room, even in the daytime. If he wanted her, he’d stand outside and call.’
‘It figures.’
‘More symbolism?’ She went to the pile of boxes and opened the topmost. ‘The stuff in here will tell you the whole story. I’ll leave you to read it … I can’t stand the sight of it. And anyway. I’d better clean the place up a bit, in case Jenny comes back.’
‘You don’t expect her, do you?’
She tilted her head slightly, hearing the faint alarm in my voice. ‘Are you frightened of her?’
‘Should I be?’
‘She says you’re a worm.’ A hint of amusement softened the words.
‘Yes, she would,’ I said. ‘And no, I’m not frightened of her. She just … distracts me.’
With sudden vehemence she said, ‘Jenny’s a super girl.’ Genuine friendship, I thought. A statement of loyalties. The merest whiff of challenge. But Jenny, the super girl, was the one I’d married.
I said, ‘Yes,’ without inflection, and after a second or two she turned and went out of the room. With a sigh I started on the boxes, shifting them clumsily and being glad neither Jenny nor Louise was watching. They were large, and although one or two were not as heavy as the others, their proportions were all wrong for gripping electrically.
The top one contained two foot-deep stacks of office-size paper, white, good quality, and printed with, what looked like a typewritten letter. At the top of each sheet there was an impressive array of headings, including, in the centre, an embossed and gilded coat of arms. I lifted out one of the letters, and began to understand how Jenny had fallen for the trick.
Research into Coronary Disability it said, in engraved lettering above the coat of arms, with, beneath it, the words Registered Charity. To the left of the gold embossing there was a list of patrons, mostly with titles, and to the right a list of the charity’s employees, one of whom was listed as Jennifer Halley, Executive Assistant. Below her name, in small capital letters, was the address of the Oxford flat.