Vintage Crime

by Martin Edwards

  He chuckled. “Gone back to their nests. Give ’em a choice, they like to die in their own beds – just like us, eh?”

  I paid the man. He wanted to stay and gossip – in my experience, men are far worse gossips than women – but luckily we were interrupted by the ring of the front doorbell.

  It was a telegram. My heart lurched because telegrams usually mean bad news, apart from those connected with births and weddings; and I had nothing to do with either…I tore it open.

  BOAT DOCKED LATE LAST NIGHT. COMING DOWN TODAY. ROOM BOOKED AT BULL. SEE YOU FIVEISH. NIGEL.

  That was typical of my brother-in-law. Nigel was so thoughtful. When Charles was alive, of course, Nigel used to stay at the house. But now Charles was dead, the situation was different. Lydmouth wasn’t London. If Nigel and I were alone at night under the same roof, tongues might wag. People might even remember that before I had become engaged to Charles, I had seen a good deal of Nigel.

  By half-past four I was as ready as I could be – the lounge fire burning brightly, the brasses in the hall gleaming, the water near boiling point in the kettle, the tea tray laid. As I sat waiting, all sorts of foolish thoughts about Nigel chased through my mind. What if? What if?

  He rang the doorbell at twenty-three minutes past five.

  “Anne – wonderful to see you.” He swept me into his arms. “I’m so sorry about Charles.” He hugged me tightly, then stood back. “Sorry I’m late. Train was delayed. Nothing works properly in this country.”

  Nigel was taller than Charles had been, and age had been kinder to him. As a young man, he had been gawky and had difficulty in talking to a girl without blushing. The war had changed all that. I brought the tea in and we chatted for a while – mainly about Charles.

  “You must be wondering about the money side,” Nigel said. “No need. As far as I am concerned, you can stay in the house for as long as you like. You own fifty per cent of it now, anyway. And Charles’s share in the shop comes to you, so that should give you a decent income, even if we have to pay out a bit more in wages.”

  I asked him how long he was staying in Lydmouth.

  “Only a couple of nights, I’m afraid. I’m popping over to Paris on Thursday.” He grinned at me. “I’ll see if I can find you some perfume.”

  “It’s a shame you can’t stay longer.”

  His eyes met mine. “I’ll be back.”

  “I wonder – could I ask you to help me with Charles’s things? His clothes, for example. And I’ve not really been through the business papers in the bureau.”

  “Of course. When would suit you?”

  “Come to lunch tomorrow – we can sort everything out afterwards.”

  He hesitated.

  “I’ll see if I can do something interesting,” I said brightly. “I’ve been experimenting lately. I love Elizabeth David. Her recipes are mouth-watering.”

  “Yes.” He glanced at his watch. “Elizabeth David, eh? You’ve been acquiring cosmopolitan tastes in my absence.”

  “I try.” I smiled at him. “Even with the shortages, there’s no excuse not to be a little adventurous in the kitchen.”

  Nigel stood up and tossed his cigarette end in the fire. He ran a fingertip along the spines of the Kipling edition in the bookcase. I shivered. He turned to face me.

  “Oh – by the way: I owe you some money.”

  “Really?”

  “I asked Charles to pay a debt for me. He mentioned he’d done it in his last letter. A hundred and ninety-odd pounds.”

  A hundred and eighty-nine pounds, nineteen shillings and eleven pence?

  I felt as if a horde of insects were crawling across my skin. “I’d noticed the cheque. To a jewellers, wasn’t it?” With immense effort I forced a smile. “Who was the lucky lady?”

  Nigel’s cheeks darkened. The young man I had known before the war was suddenly not so very far away. “I – I suppose I’d better tell you. I hope you won’t be shocked. The thing is, in the last few years, when I’ve been in Lydmouth, I’ve had a sort of on-and-off friendship with a woman. A special friendship.”

  “And Charles knew?”

  He nodded, took out his cigarette case and fiddled with the catch. “But I went to Paris on a business trip in the spring, and I met Ghislaine. One thing led to another – well, in fact she and I are getting married in the new year.”

  He paused, looking at me, waiting for congratulations. I couldn’t speak.

  “But there was still this – this other lady. That had to end, obviously. But I wanted to get her something as a keepsake. Unfortunately, I had to go to Tanganyika…”

  He managed to open the case at last. He took out a cigarette and rolled it around in his fingers. Crumbs of tobacco dribbled down to the hearthrug.

  “So I asked dear old Charles to buy her a present. It was while you were in hospital. A piece of jewellery – something quite decent. I gave him a rough idea of how much I wanted to spend and left him to get on with it. We were going to settle up when I got home. I – I do hope you don’t think too badly of me.”

  Nigel looked at me. I shook my head, which seemed to satisfy him. Men are so easily satisfied.

  “It wasn’t serious,” he said, as if that excused it. “Just a bit of fun. Men tend to sow a few wild oats before they settle down. Women are different.”

  Were they? If all women were different, how on earth could the men sow their wild oats?

  He looked at his watch again. “Oh lord, I must go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  We went into the hall. He bent towards me and his lips brushed my cheek.

  “You’ve always been a good pal. You’re not shocked? Charles thought you would be.”

  “Don’t be silly.” I smiled up at him. “Boys will be boys.”

  I closed the door behind him. There was nothing left of Nigel in the lounge except crumbs on a plate, a puddle of tea at the bottom of a cup and golden flecks of tobacco on the hearthrug. I ran my finger along the spines of the Kiplings. I tried to think about Ghislaine but she was too abstract, too foreign for me to grasp. She wasn’t flesh and blood like Marina. Marina, I thought idly, would be home by now.

  One of the books was a little out of line. It was Stalky and Co, those silly schoolboy stories which had been Nigel and Charles’s favourite. Boys will be boys. A buff-coloured slip of paper protruded from the pages, presumably a bookmark. I took out the book, suddenly curious to re-read the story about the dead cat and the smell. I glanced at the bookmark. It was a telegram.

  For a moment, I thought that Nigel’s telegram to me must have found its way into Stalky and Co. But that telegram was still propped up on the mantelpiece behind the clock. This one was addressed to Charles. It was dated in September, while I was in hospital.

  YOU’RE WELCOME OLD BOY. WHILE THE CAT’S AWAY. HAVE FUN. NIGEL.

  I sat down in the chair that was still warm from Nigel’s body. I read and re-read those eleven words. Nigel had sent the telegram from Suez, when he was on his way to East Africa. Suddenly many things were clear. Nigel, Charles and Marina – they had all betrayed me in their different ways, even Nigel.

  Nigel worst of all.

  It was growing very cold. I stood up and put more coal on the fire. A Book of Mediterranean Food was on the sideboard. I riffled through the pages, looking for a suitable recipe for tomorrow. Something with a strong flavour. I knew that, whatever I cooked, whatever it tasted like, Nigel would eat it with apparent relish because he felt guilty.

  A little later, I went outside. It was a cold night, with stars like diamonds. Frost gleamed on the path to the stable. I opened the door. Moonlight streamed across the floor and showed me the untouched saucer in the corner. I picked it up and left the stable.

  As I was walking back to the house with the saucer in my hand, I heard the sound of an ambulance. The bell drew closer and closer. It was c
oming down Victoria Road from the direction of Raglan Court and Marina’s flat.

  In the freezing night air, I stood still and listened to the ambulance as it slowed for the junction with the Chepstow Road. It turned left and sped towards the hospital.

  What if? What if?

  Nowhere to be Found

  Mat Coward

  The last word he said to me was ‘topography’.

  When the phone rings late at night I always look at the clock first and then answer the phone. A sign of chronic pessimism, according to my last girlfriend – always anticipating bad news. Well, there’s an obvious retort to that.

  “Jerry? You’ve got to come and get me. How soon can you get here?”

  Seven minutes past two in the morning. It was November, and big winds were herding hailstones against my bedroom window. “Alan? What do you mean, come and get you? Where are you?”

  “I’m at home, of course. Wake up, Jerry. I really need your help here, man. I’m leaving Jackie, right now, and I…are you awake, Jerry?”

  “I’m awake, calm down. You and Jackie are splitting up? What’s happened?”

  “I’m leaving her, you’ve got to come and get me. You should be here in under two hours if you put your foot down. OK?”

  He rang off. I sat there thinking for a while, feeling slightly sick from a combination of the sudden awakening and the beer I’d drunk the night before. Then I had a shower, got dressed, and set off for Wiltshire.

  The drive down from London took me just over three hours door to door, in terrible weather and over unfamiliar terrain. Alan was hopping by the time I arrived.

  “Where have you been, Jerry? I’ve been leaving messages on your bloody machine for the last hour and a half.” He didn’t shake hands, or smile, or even say hello. He’d been waiting for me outside the cottage, at the far end of what was little more than a mud lane. I was impressed with myself for having found the place; I’d only been there once before, when I’d helped Alan and Jackie move in.

  “Got here as quick as I could, mate,” I said, opening the car door but not getting out – I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to get out or not. “So, what’s the plan? Got any luggage?”

  “Yeah. Wait here.” He turned and walked back up the path towards the cottage. His back was as soaked through as his front. He looked freezing cold, but he also looked as if he was unaware that he was freezing cold.

  Just as he reached the cottage door, I called after him. “Alan?”

  He paused without turning, his irritation visible even through that weather. “Yeah?”

  “Good to see you, mate.”

  “Just wait there, OK?”

  I waited there, the car radio playing, the motor thrumming, for five minutes before I eventually thought Sod it, the least I’m due is a slash and a cigarette. I got out of the car, walked up the path and knocked on the door. Cup of tea and a piece of toast wouldn’t hurt, either.

  Jackie opened the door. She yanked it towards her as if it was sticking from flood damage, then let her hand slide off the doorknob as she turned and walked away. She didn’t look at me.

  I followed her into the kitchen, at the back of the house. She was wearing a dressing gown over a pink nylon nightie. Blue nylon slippers. The general air of someone who has realised that giving up smoking all those years earlier did not, after all, placate the gods sufficiently that they would evermore keep sadness from her hearth. Her face was grey, except where it was red. If a half-decent paramedic had turned up at that moment, he’d have prescribed a dozen full strength fags and a pint of vodka. Then breakfast.

  “Sorry to intrude, Jackie,” I said, from the kitchen doorway. She sat at the table, her back to me. “I just wanted to…obviously, I don’t know what’s going on here, that’s your business. I just wanted to use the loo, if that’s all right?”

  She didn’t answer, but then it was a pretty daft question. No matter how much someone’s life is falling apart, they’re hardly likely to respond to such a request with: “No, you bastard! Go and do it on the compost heap!”

  I had a pee, a bit of a wash and brush up, drank some cold water from the tap in cupped hands; I didn’t reckon a pot of tea and a plate of scones were going to be appearing in that kitchen any time in the near future.

  I could hear Alan still moving about upstairs, so I sat down at the kitchen table. Eventually Jackie did look at me, but she needn’t have bothered: there was nothing in the look that said anything.

  “Well,” I said. “This is a bad day.”

  She began crying, silently, her eyes fixed on mine. Now that she’d started looking at me, it seemed, she couldn’t stop.

  “Do you know where I’m taking him to, at all?” I asked. “Because I don’t.”

  She shook her head, very short, surprisingly careful shakes, and wrinkled up her face and cried some more. I’d thought she wouldn’t speak, but I realised now that she couldn’t speak. Another gulping of sobs caught her by surprise, like sudden vomit. She clamped two fingers over her lips, as if fearful that if she allowed her mouth to fall open even a crack, all her vitals would slip-slide out and pool around her feet.

  I reached over and patted her arm, which didn’t seem to help enormously. I didn’t know what else to do – I hardly knew the girl, for God’s sake, I’d only met her once before. Twice, maybe.

  Footsteps clattered on the carpetless stairs, and Alan appeared. He was carrying nothing but a duffel bag. “What are you doing here? I said wait in the car.”

  “I needed to use the loo,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t offered him an explanation at all. The rude, ungrateful bastard! It wasn’t even as if we were close friends. We were old friends, certainly, known each other forever, and I loved him like a brother. But your brother isn’t usually your closest friend, is he?

  We went out and got into the car. Neither of us said goodbye to Jackie, and she didn’t speak to, or look at, either of us. It was still raining. People often say, “I must be mad to do this,” but at that moment I really did wonder if I was actually mad. Or if one of us was, anyway.

  “Is that all you’ve got? One duffel bag?”

  Alan looked down at the duffel bag between his knees. “That’s it,” he said. He didn’t seem inclined to say more, so after a brief pause to search for loose cigarettes in the glove compartment (there weren’t any), I fired up the motor and headed off in what I hoped was the direction of the motorway.

  “You got any smokes, Alan? I ran out on the way down.”

  He shook his head. “I packed it in.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll stop somewhere. Anyway, be breakfast time soon, right?”

  He wasn’t talkative – he wasn’t in fact saying anything, which is untalkative by anybody’s standards – but that didn’t surprise me. He’d been with Jackie a good few years, on and off, and any break-up that occurs in the early hours of the morning is, by definition, a sudden break-up.

  I couldn’t keep silent, though. Not on a journey of that length. Not with no sleep, no breakfast and no cigarettes. Time dragged. So did distance – I didn’t know my way around there, the weather was no better, I was driving slowly.

  Every minute or so I’d say something like “Well, this is a bad night,” or “Maybe things’ll look better in a day or two”. But I had to be careful what I said; careful not to sound too disapproving. Because the truth was, I did disapprove. I didn’t know the ins and outs of this particular situation, obviously, but I couldn’t help feeling that a man like Alan, who’d had three wives before he was thirty, was more often than not likely to be the author of his own misfortunes.

  And he knew I disapproved. Which is why I tried to keep things light.

  “So where is it I’m taking you?” I said, after a few more silent miles, and with the bloody motorway still playing hide and seek in the country darkness. “Back to my place, is
it? Because that’s fine if it is, goes without saying, my floor is your floor. Might even find you a spare pillow if you’re good.”

  “Stop here,” said Alan, and I was so shocked that I obeyed him immediately. He started struggling with the seat belt. Its release catch had always been dodgy.

  “What’s the matter? You feel sick?”

  “You can drop me here,” he said.

  I peered out of the windscreen. I couldn’t see much because of the weather, but I got the impression that there wouldn’t be much to see even on a clear day. Just hedges and fields. No houses for miles around. “Alan, we’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re on a road with no pavements, for God’s sake. We’re on a road with no pavements, it’s raining and we’re Londoners.”

  He freed himself from the death-trap seat belt, and started struggling with the door handle. A deeply non-mechanical man, Alan; never learned how to ride a bike, let alone drive a car.

  “Look, Alan, I don’t feel happy about leaving you here. I mean, at this time of night, in this weather – what are you going to do, hitchhike? I can take you where you want to go.”

  He got out of the car, slung his duffel bag over his shoulder, and ducked his head down to speak to me. He started with a half-smile, the nearest thing to a friendly face I’d seen all night. “No, don’t worry, Jerry, I’m not hitching. I’ve got a friend lives just near, I’ll crash there for a day or two while I sort myself out.”

  I’d never seen anyone lie so obviously in all my life, but what could I do? “What’s this place called, then?” I asked, trying for a tone somewhere between sceptical and jokey.

  Alan shook his head. “I don’t know it by name, exactly, I just recognise the topography.” He began walking in the opposite direction to the one in which the car was pointing. Within a very short time he was invisible.

  I called after him, “I can drive you to your friend’s house, that’s no problem,” but I don’t know if he heard me.

  What could I do? You can’t force a grown man to stay in a car, no matter how hard it’s raining. As I leant over to close the door that he’d left ajar, I spotted a cigarette, bent but unbroken, under the passenger seat. So I sat and smoked that, and after a while the sky became lighter and I was able to find my way back to the motorway and home.