She took the letter out and spread it on the table. It was written in an ominous purple. The address was given again on the top righthand corner, printed this time, but underlined in purple ink. The message was short. Great pains had been taken with its layout; the margins between the florid purple were equal, and the whole message was central to the page. As a piece of calligraphy it was pleasurable to view, until you came to the matter of the message, which was, to say the least, alarming, ‘CONFESS, CONFESS’ it read, ‘my son’, half of it in bold capitals, and the rest, which carried less confidence, in small purple letters. That was all. She read it many times. Backwards and forwards, even up and down, the message was the same, and all ways, abundantly clear. So George had done it, and somehow his mother knew. George was Parsons’s murderer, and a mother was pleading with her son to give himself up. She had to see her. They had had no contact since Mrs Verrey Smith had moved to Ireland on her remarriage. But they were not on non-speaking terms. She had to find out what George’s mother knew about Parsons, how she had found out, and what story lay behind it all. How could the mother be so sure that George was a murderer? She had to see her. But she couldn’t go to Ireland. The Superintendent would be suspicious of the move, and besides, she couldn’t leave the phone. No, Mrs Verrey Smith, or whatever she was now called, was going to have to come to her. She could send her a telegram. She didn’t want to do it over the telephone. It would be checkable, and in any case, she couldn’t be too sure that her phone was not tapped. The Superintendent had come to visit her every day, and he had not mentioned Brighton. Had he heard the call, he would surely have gone there. But she could not be too sure. She would go to the Post Office. She hated leaving the phone, so she took off the receiver. George would ring again. She didn’t want him to think that the house was empty, or he might feel utterly betrayed. So she hurried, and at the Post Office counter she thought for the first time how to word the telegram. ‘George in desperate trouble,’ she tried. ‘Come at once.’ But it sounded by way of an order, and she wanted more of a plea. So she amended it a little. ‘George in desperate trouble,’ she decided. ‘He begs you to come at once.’ Such a message, she felt sure, could not be denied. She handed it furtively over the counter, but there was no untoward reaction from the assistant. Not even a nod of sympathy, and Joy Verrey Smith was glad of it. She hurried home and replaced the receiver. For the first time, she noticed how dirty the house was and, prompted by the possible visit of her mother-in-law, she decided that, George or no, she must clean it up. She went about it with an energy that surprised her. She polished the bird cage till it shone, and Spit and Polish gratefully offered a Te Deum. When it was all done, she saw to herself. She bathed and changed, and tried to feel much better. She was pinning all her hopes on George’s mother to unravel the mystery, but it nagged at her that, when all was said and done, she had married a murderer.
When the front doorbell rang, she supposed it was the Superintendent, and she feared that she might have been followed to the Post Office, and her message discovered. But it was a woman’s shadow, which turned out in substance to be Mrs Johnson.
Joy Verrey Smith opened the door, but made no gesture of inviting her in. Mrs Johnson, on her part, was rather surprised, since she had come merely as a neighbour to offer what help she could. She obviously did not know of Tommy’s tales, or she dared not have come. Mrs Verrey Smith hesitated. Perhaps there was no truth in it at all, and here was a woman, herself in mourning, come to console her. She asked her in, glad now that the house was clean, and they went into the kitchen.
‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Mrs Johnson said. ‘If there’s anything I can do. You were so good to me in my trouble.’
‘How’s Tommy?’ Mrs Verrey Smith asked. She still had a nagging concern for her possible stepson, though he did tend to look like the late Mr Johnson. She looked closely at his mother and wondered what, if anything, George had seen in her. She was much too tall for any practical purpose, and much too angular to be called attractive. ‘Did you know George well?’ she asked.
She noticed that Mrs Johnson did not flinch at the question.
‘Not well,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see very much of him, except occasionally on his way to school in the mornings. Did he have any close friends?’
‘Not that I knew of,’ Joy said. ‘He was very secretive, you know.’ For some reason, she felt herself warming towards the woman, possibly because of their common bereavement, but she envied Mrs Johnson the finality of her loss, and the stainless reputation her husband had managed to take with him. ‘He couldn’t have done it,’ she said suddenly. ‘George wouldn’t hurt anybody.’
‘He struck me as being very kind and gentle,’ Mrs Johnson agreed, though it was contrary to all the reports of him that Tommy brought home from school. But she cared not to reveal that she had had personal experience of his kindness. She wondered whether Mrs Verrey Smith knew, and whether that accounted for her initial hesitation at the front door. ‘It’s a terrible mistake,’ she said. ‘The fact that he disappeared at the time of the murder doesn’t mean anything. People disappear every day. Don’t let’s talk about it if you don’t want to, dear.’ She put her hand on Joy’s arm.
‘No, it helps to talk about it,’ Joy said. ‘But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know anything about anything, except that he isn’t here and that he’s been gone for over a week, and there hasn’t been a word from him.’
‘You’ll hear, I’m sure you’ll hear. He must be alive, or you would have heard by now. Try not to worry. I know it’s easy to say. It’s a terrible nightmare. But it will pass.’
They sat for a while in silence. Joy wondered whether she should bring up the Tommy business, but she decided against it. If it were not true, then it need not be spoken about, but if Tommy were her stepson, she did not want it known that she knew, for she would have to affect a reaction that might change her whole life. In any case, it was best to wait for George’s return, and at that thought, she shivered.
The Superintendent came while they sat there, and asked to see Mrs Verrey Smith privately. Mrs Johnson took her leave, with promises to return with a cooked supper.
‘You have good neighbours,’ the Superintendent said when she was gone. Having made a polite beginning, he thought he might as well come straight to the point. ‘You promised to be in touch with me if you heard anything, Mrs Verrey Smith.’
She trembled. They were tapping her phone. She gave herself time to count her luck that she had gone to the Post Office to send the wire to Ireland. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.
‘About a week ago, you had a phone call from Brighton, Mrs Verrey Smith. Your telephone is monitored at the station.’
‘Why?’ she said angrily. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘You have given me little cause,’ he said. ‘What are you trying to hide? My men are in Brighton now. We shall find Mrs Price, Mrs Verrey Smith, I assure you. But you owe it to us to give us any information. Have you heard from your husband since, or from Mrs Price, by letter, perhaps, or a message? Think carefully. Have there been any letters that might give us a clue?’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I haven’t heard anything from Mrs Price or my husband.’
‘It was clear from the conversation that you do not know Mrs Price,’ the Superintendent said. ‘These women your husband entertained in his study. Did you know any of them?’
‘No,’ she said. It was true, because there had never been any.
‘I don’t want to intercept your letters, Mrs Verrey Smith,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m hiding nothing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t tell you about the phone call because I’m concerned first of all with my husband’s safety. Even if he is with another woman. When you find Mr Parsons’s real murderer, my husband will come back, and I don’t know why you’re wasting your time here or in Brighton for that matter, when the real murderer has probably left the country by now.’ She was glad to have got it off her ches
t.
‘Your husband is suspect number one. I think you ought to know that, Mrs Verrey Smith, and since he disappeared there are other leads that have come to light that have only served to confirm our suspicions.’ He would give her a run for her money. He would say no more.
‘What leads?’ she whispered.
‘At the moment, I cannot divulge that,’ he said, ‘for they may come to nothing. But if by chance your husband does communicate with you, in some form or another, or perhaps Mrs Price, it would be well if you could let them know that the net is closing.’
She crumpled in her chair.
‘Now, Mrs Verrey Smith.’ He stood over her. ‘Are you still keeping some information from me?’
‘I have nothing,’ she said. The letter from his mother was no information. It was only an opinion, an opinion that tallied only too well with the Superintendent’s. ‘Nothing at all. But tell me what the leads are,’ she shouted. ‘I’m entitled to know. I’m his wife.’
‘We have it on good information, Mrs Verrey Smith, that the late Mr Parsons had a fiancée in Brighton. It is too much of a coincidence to be ignored.’
‘He went to Brighton because it’s near London. That’s the only reason he went to Brighton.’
‘So is Ipswich, so is Bournemouth, so are a hundred other places. I don’t wish to upset you, Mrs Verrey Smith, but you do your husband no good by hiding information from us. If your husband is innocent, and he may well be innocent, then we have to find him so that he can prove it. You understand, don’t you?’
She nodded. What about Tommy’s story? she thought. Was that information too? She decided to keep quiet about it. That too was an opinion, Tommy’s opinion, like George’s mother’s; neither could be construed as fact.
As she opened the door for the Superintendent to leave, the net curtains were dropped again, and she wanted to go into the street and kill everybody. Had some such outrageous provocation prompted George with Mr Parsons, and she realized with horror, that with this thought, she had accepted her husband as a murderer.
As she was shutting the door on the Superintendent, the phone rang. Quickly he put his foot back inside. ‘Why don’t you answer it?’ she said. ‘Then you can be quite sure, can’t you.’
‘It’s your telephone, Mrs Verrey Smith,’ he said.
‘It’s yours too. At the station. So you might as well answer it here.’ She desperately wanted someone to answer it. It might be George, and he would have the sense to put the phone down if a man answered it. And if it were George, and she answered it, what could she say? Yet she dreaded that the phone would stop. Neither made a move.
‘If it’s an important call,’ the Superintendent said, ‘they will ring off if I answer it. Whoever is calling wants to speak to you, Mrs Verrey Smith.’
She could stand the bell no longer and she picked up the receiver. Suddenly the Superintendent was close behind her.
‘Hullo?’ she said.
‘Mrs Verrey Smith?’ It was a small boy’s voice.
‘Speaking.’
The Superintendent was now so close that she was forced to share the receiver with him.
‘I seen your ’usband’s photo in the papers,’ the little boy said, ‘an’ it wasn’t ’im wot did it, ’cos I saw it.’
Mrs Verrey Smith and the Superintendent looked at each other.
‘Who are you?’ she said frantically. ‘What’s your name?’
There was a silence the other end. The Superintendent grabbed the receiver. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted, then more gently, as he collected himself. ‘Tell me your name, laddie.’
They heard the click of the receiver.
‘There’s another lead for you, Superintendent,’ Mrs Verrey Smith said. Suddenly she felt free, as if George had been totally acquitted. ‘You heard that, Superintendent? Why don’t you do something about that,’ she said, ‘instead of wasting your time in Brighton?’
‘We follow every lead, Mrs Verrey Smith. But don’t pin your hopes too highly on that call,’ he said. ‘Whenever a murder is committed lots of cranks come up with stories.’
‘But that was a child,’ she said. ‘He would have given me his name if you hadn’t interfered. Now he won’t contact me again.’
The Superintendent knew she was right. He had acted hastily, ‘He will contact you again,’ he said, without conviction. His Brighton feelings were threatened. He couldn’t afford to ignore any piece of information, especially from a frightened child. He had to find Verrey Smith. Even if it didn’t lead to a conviction, he had to find him.
‘Mrs Verrey Smith,’ he said. ‘We must somehow appeal to your husband to come home. If you perhaps would agree to make a plea on television, I could arrange the time. Who knows, he might see it, or be told about it. It couldn’t help but move him.’
The idea startled her, and in it she sensed that the Superintendent had changed his track. He had been thrown by that telephone call. She would co-operate. For the first time she felt that it might be in George’s interest, and she would be glad to do something to counteract the terrible message from George’s mother.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I’ll do the words myself.’
The Superintendent was surprised at her ready agreement, ‘Of course, of course,’ he said. ‘Then I shall make the necessary arrangements.’
She took him once more to the door, and the Superintendent left a distinct air of retreat behind him. For the first time since George’s disappearance, Mrs Verrey Smith had hope. She wanted to tell somebody about the phone call. She wanted her hope confirmed by somebody else. But she would give the Superintendent time to get back to the station. Then she would phone Mrs Johnson, and he would have to hear it once again, and this time, laced with her triumph. While waiting, she would content herself with telling Spit and Polish. It seemed that her life was going back to normal. Already she was beginning to put the nightmare behind her. It was now only a question of George’s certain return, and dealing, one way or another, with his stupid mother. She recalled the purple message, and tried not to let it shake her hope. Then she saw with horror that she had left it lying open on the kitchen table. She put her head in her hands, and trembled with a criminal’s terror of not knowing what was known.
Chapter Eight
Mrs Verrey Smith senior, or Mrs Whitely, as she stressed she had been promoted to, arrived the following morning, with thankfully no warning of her coming, either by wire or telephone. She simply knocked on the front door.
‘God be with you,’ she said, before even checking on the recipient of her blessing. Then seeing her daughter-in-law, whom she had never closely examined, she said, ‘Joy, isn’t it?’
They had not seen each other for over ten years, and it was clear that each had found the other, in memory at least, faintly resistible.
‘That’s right,’ Joy said, asking her in. They went into the front room, and Joy went to the window to watch the neighbouring curtains drop. Opposite, a woman was too late, and Joy waved at her. The woman mouthed something, clearly to the effect of ‘brazen hussy’, and turned away.
‘Well, where is he?’ Mrs Whitely asked, sitting herself down. ‘And what’s the trouble?’
Joy was dumbfounded. ‘You don’t know?’ she said. ‘Don’t you read the papers?’
‘Newspapers,’ Mrs Whitely scoffed. ‘All lies. The Devil’s work. What’s happened? What’s happened to George?’
‘But your letter,’ Joy said. She had to settle that first. ‘Confess, it said. To what? What did it mean?’
‘You mean there’s someone else? He’s killed someone else?’ Joy sat down. She didn’t know which one of them was mad. And the Superintendent – if he’d seen that letter, God knows what fruity evidence he’d unconsciously collected. Apparently homicide was her husband’s hobby. ‘What did you mean in your letter?’ she tried again. ‘Confess to what?’
‘I can’t tell you about that. That is something between George and his Maker. Now tell me what has happened.’
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br /> So Joy told her the bare facts, adding nothing to what the papers had already divulged. And having given her the whole story, as if in total confidence, she demanded in exchange, an account of George’s former trespass, as she had a right, as his wife, to know.
Mrs Whitely was not impressed by her claim. ‘One has nothing to do with the other,’ she insisted. ‘Though once set on the downward path, there is little hope of turning back without the help of our Lord. And he never sought that help, though the dear Lord will witness that every week I implored him to seek absolution.’
Well, that at least explained those weekly missives. But the matter of the vital confession remained a mystery to her, and Mrs Whitely was giving away nothing. She thought her mother-in-law showed more curiosity than concern, and that her trip was no doubt of an evangelical nature that was only triggered off by her son’s disappearance.
‘I don’t suppose you have ever encouraged him into the church,’ Mrs Whitely said.
‘I do a lot of church work. George’s religious feelings are not my business.’
‘Of course they’re your business,’ Mrs Whitely said, ‘and part of your duties too.’ She was all but telling her that she was responsible for the second murder at least. ‘Now what are we going to do about it? We have to find him,’ Mrs Whitely said, in her best practical manner.
‘I don’t know what more I can do. I’ve no idea where he could have gone. I can only hope that he’s still alive.’
‘We must go to a diviner,’ Mrs Whitely said.
‘A diviner?’
‘You’ve heard of a water diviner, my dear,’ Mrs Whitely said, trying to be patient. ‘Well there are people diviners. They tell you the whereabouts of missing persons.’
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