Death of a Perfect Mother

by Robert Barnard

  ‘No! Yes! No! Yes . . . yes . . . yes . . .’

  CHAPTER 17

  HAPPY ENDING

  And that was the end of the Hodsden case. As a case. And it had all worked out as McHale had prophesied—and publicly prophesied at that. He drew Inspector Haggart’s attention to the fact when he cleared up his things at the Todmarsh Police Station.

  ‘You remember I said as much at the time,’ he said, congratulating himself with the air of pinning a medal on to someone else. ‘It’s often the way: these casual muggings lead to killings, and they’re the very devil to clear up. Can’t do much more than wait for the bastard to do it again.’

  ‘The boy confessed, didn’t he?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said McHale, stacking his papers into a neat pile and sliding them into his brief-case. ‘Of course, now he’s got himself a lawyer—at your and my expense—and he’s taken it all back. Just to make things difficult. But he confessed all right, and signed on the dotted line.’

  ‘Did you trace the money, or the brooch?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll have to, if we’re going to make any sort of a case. But luckily that’s not vital. We’ve got a cast-iron case on him with this poor old thing he did in in Cumbledon last night. Vicious little bugger. Makes me livid.’

  Inspector Haggart, standing there in the evening sunlight, thought for a bit. ‘Funny the two different weapons,’ he said. ‘That garrotte thing, and then the cosh. Suggests two different kinds of crime. Two different personalities.’

  ‘Well, naturally he wouldn’t use the wire again, not the next time,’ said McHale impatiently. ‘He’s dim, but he’s not defective.’

  ‘Do you see any pattern in these things, then?’ asked Haggart, with an appearance of deferring, since this seemed the best strategy with McHale.

  ‘Oh yes, I think so. I thought so the moment I heard from one of the sergeants over there what kind of woman his mother was. Same type as Lill Hodsden, that was clear. Ran off with a truck-driver when the boy was thirteen. Came back, but there it is—the damage was done. These killings are a sort of revenge on his mother. These women are surrogate victims, killed because of his love/hate for his mother. He’s revenging himself for his feelings of desertion and neglect.’

  McHale was not an unintelligent man. If he had thought a little he might have come up with something better than this Freud-and-pap. But McHale did not cultivate his intelligence. He cultivated his career. And of course he’d seen how this case would end all along.

  ‘Interesting case,’ said Inspector Haggart, noncommittally. He was a genuinely intelligent man, though it had never got him very far. He seemed to be the kind of man who always said things his superior officers did not want to hear. Now he said: ‘I misunderstood. I thought you said the woman in Cumbledon was a “poor old thing”.’

  McHale shot him a look. ‘Well?’

  ‘Hardly the same type as Lill Hodsden. Or as the mother, by the sound of it.’

  McHale drew his already thin lips still more closely around his teeth. ‘It was nearly dark. Late evening. That’s a minor detail. I tell you, if we can trace the brooch back to him, we’ve got a case. If we don’t find it, we’ll come down on him heavy as we know how on the Cumbledon killing. He’s in for a long stretch, that thug. As far as we’re concerned, the case is closed.’

  The case was closed. Everybody satisfied. Happy ending.

  Well, McHale was happy anyway. He did not see the look on Inspector Haggart’s face that followed him as he stalked out of the room. It was a look that was to be reproduced quite often in his later career, on the faces of both his superiors and his inferiors in the police force. But McHale did not see it, and felt happy. The case was closed.

  He used almost the identical phrase again when talking to Fred Hodsden about the outcome of the investigation, a little later in the day.

  ‘You can rest assured, Mr Hodsden,’ he said, speaking earnestly to cover the contempt he felt, standing in the Hodsden living-room (now so bare of ornament) but poised for flight as soon as the decent civilities were over, ‘that this young thug is the man who did it. That’ll be a weight off your mind, I’m sure. And if we can’t bring your wife’s murder home to him, then we’ll throw the book at him over the Cumbledon one. It’s good to be able to tell you at last that the case is all sewn up.’

  Fred breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You’ve done a grand job, Inspector. A right down grand job. The kids and I can rest in peace now.’

  And that evening, down at the Yachtsman (for Fred went out much more often of a night, now) Fred said to his mates: ‘They’re a grand body of men, the police. Brains like razors. You don’t want to believe what you read in them Sunday newspapers. You wouldn’t hope to meet anyone sharper or straighter than that McHale.’

  And everyone round the table nodded, because isn’t that what everyone wants to believe?

  So the case was closed. Everyone in Todmarsh accepted that, though one or two (such as Miss Gaitskell, who had poured sherry and information into the Chief Inspector, and had her own ideas on the matter) were a mite surprised at the outcome. It was now no longer a matter of uncertainty how to treat the Hodsdens—they fell neatly back into place: they were a brave, bereaved little family, not quite up to par socially. Everyone behaved accordingly.

  So everything was quite satisfactory. A happy ending. Well, happyish. Happy endings only occur in books, and then only in books written long ago. But certainly the Hodsden family settled down into a peaceful enough routine. Brian got his scholarship levels, not brilliantly, and got a holiday job in a bookshop over the summer. He and Gordon sometimes went out together in the long warm evenings. They acquired a taste for good food, and sampled the three or four better restaurants in Cumbledon, turn and turn about. They talked about a holiday in Italy next year.

  I should feel free, thought Brian often. Eventually I will feel free.

  So they were both busy, especially as Gordon was running an intricate love-life at the same time. Brian wondered at the number of the girls he had, and speculated that the murder had rendered him even more attractive. But he never went out with Ann Watson, never. In spite of the bustle of their lives, both the boys were good to Gran next door. Mrs Casey was at the same time vigorous and failing. She gave her opinions as unsparingly as ever, but sometimes now those opinions did not seem to make sense. Her mind seemed more lurid than ever with hell-fire and burning rocks, though she still enjoyed her creature comforts.

  At home Gordon was able to rule with an easier rein. Fred was off out most evenings, and that was all right by Gordon. If he would never do them any credit, equally he would never disgrace them. Everyone would have said it was a happy ending for Fred—though Fred himself would have denied it, and said that he missed Lill painfully. Debbie too was quiet enough. The strong-arm tyranny of Gordon’s early days in command seemed to have paid off. She rarely disobeyed him, perhaps thinking him, in comparison with Lill, the lesser of two evils.

  Debbie then was happy? Perhaps. And broken in? Hmm. Did Debbie Hodsden give you the impression of being easily broken in?

  A busy, sunny, active (especially for Gordon) summer shaded gracefully into autumn. Brian started at the University of South Wessex, doing History. The History Department was not a very good one: it was staffed by trendy publicists who spent their time reviewing unread books for Kaleidoscope, with a sprinkling of incompetent youngsters engaged because they were cheap. Still, Brian began to make new friends, to get himself into a circle. Not a fast set, but a quiet, cosy circle. All in all he was not unhappy, though he was now and then listless, now and then restless.

  So that’s how things worked themselves out for the Hodsdens. And things were just as predictable for all the other men and women who crossed Lill Hodsden’s path in the last week of her mortal life. Perhaps we could take the sphere of their lives and slice it through at one day, just to see how they are getting on. Let’s say, at random, Saturday October 18th.

  On Saturday October 18th, ne
arly six months after Lill’s death, most of the people who knew her best were, by coincidence, in Cumbledon. There was a disco-dance at the University Union, the biggest event so far in the student term. A group called Scarlett O’Hara was coming over from Bristol. Brian hadn’t intended going along, but Gordon had urged him, and it had ended with his taking Gordon along as his guest. Oddly enough, he felt decidedly proud of Gordon. Gordon had force, even a sort of magnetism—which his student friends certainly did not have, though they recognized it in him. He had lived, where they were merely peering cautiously over the tops of their nests. What was more, he knew how to behave with them: if the conversation went above his head, he had the sense not to try and join in it, and was equally impressive silent.

  He went down well with the girls, that was for sure. Practically the whole of the student population was there, as well as a sprinkling of staff, and the clothes ranged from sequins to sackcloth just as the behaviour ranged from courtly to rural. As the evening wore on and the boys of Scarlett O’Hara played wilder and wilder (going periodically behind the scenes for something or other) Gordon spread himself around (his big, looming body tastefully, almost conventionally dressed, with a stupendous splash of colour in the tie) first among the three or four rather dim little girls that had come along with Brian and his group, then with some who had caught his eye, then—it seemed—making joyous efforts to dance with the entire female part of the university. He even danced with a Professor of Microbiology, and took her off to a dark corner afterwards.

  • • •

  Back in Todmarsh three of the circle who had known, or known of, Lill Hodsden and perhaps would have liked to murder her were at home. Ann Watson put her daughter to bed, marked some exercise books, made herself cocoa, all in a dream, from which she would not wake for years yet. Drusilla Corby, alone, sat before the television in her living-room, having got up as soon as her husband left the house. Made up to the nines, in a sequined evening gown from the late ’fifties, she hugged a whisky bottle to herself. This was the life! She should have done this before! One of these days she might actually go out. Lill Hodsden’s death, somehow, seemed to have liberated her.

  She took another swig. And though it was only an old movie, and an old Bob Hope movie at that, she sat there on the sofa, giggling helplessly, perfectly happy.

  Not half a mile away, at home and in her own bed, Mrs Casey lay—as so often nowadays—not wakeful, but hideously torn between consciousness and sleep, racked with dreams that seemed not so much dreams as visions of hideous prophecy. She went to bed early these days, but her nights were always thus, and her mornings hagridden. Once she had been near to asking her doctor for a prescription for sleeping tablets, but she had finally put aside any such display of human weakness. So she tossed, and turned, and moaned, and sometimes there would ring out from the sleeping form some phrase or other, some fragment drawn from her reading. She cried one now:

  ‘And the dogs shall eat Jezebel . . . all but the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands.’

  Her forehead wrinkled in puzzlement in her sleep.

  • • •

  In a tiny, nasty cinema in Cumbledon, once a section of a large, nasty cinema, part of a chain, Guy Fawcett went through the usual motions with a seventeen-year-old dolly bird he’d bought for a whisky and ginger ale and the price of admission. He grunted and she giggled, and the ten or twelve other people in the cinema shifted uneasily in their seats.

  ‘I think you’re wonderful,’ the witless creature said breathlessly. ‘So virile. Will you buy me a vodka and Coke afterwards?’

  Guy’s life seemed to have reverted to normal. Guy was happy.

  • • •

  About quarter to eleven, still tirelessly dancing, it occurred to Gordon to wonder about Debbie. And being Gordon he had to do something about it. When the music ended for a moment he excused himself and went over to the table where Brian was sitting alone with Eric, one of his new university friends. Gordon said: ‘I think I’ll ring Mrs Dawson, see Debbie’s all right.’

  Mrs Dawson was mother of Debbie’s friend Karen, with whom she was spending the night.

  Brian felt a bit embarrassed at this display of old-time patriarchy on the part of his brother and in front of his friend. ‘Oh don’t, Gordon. You’ll make her ashamed. It’ll look as if you’re checking up on her.’

  ‘Well, I am. No reason to be ashamed if she’s not doing anything.’

  And Gordon swung off confidently in the direction of the telephones. Brian turned to Eric in renewed intimacy.

  ‘It’s since Mother died,’ he said. ‘Gordon feels he’s responsible for the family. He’s a good chap.’

  ‘Great,’ agreed Eric, a fair, stocky lad from Torquay. ‘Still, you don’t want to let him overdo it.’

  ‘Overdo it?’

  ‘This head of the household business. After all, you’ve got to lead your own life, haven’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ agreed Brian readily. But a sudden wave of depression came over him. Would he ever lead his own life? Could he? After a while Gordon came back, happy again.

  ‘Did you talk to her?’

  ‘No, she was out with the dog for a last walk. But Mrs Dawson said it was all right.’

  • • •

  In a little coppice on the farthest extreme of the University’s grounds (sold to the fledgling body in 1960 by a squireling at a sum so exorbitant that he was still busy squandering the money at casinos in the South of France) Debbie Hodsden lay ecstatically happy under a body much larger than her own, enjoying pleasures all the sweeter for having been in abeyance for some months.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of your brother finding out?’ the body said.

  ‘He won’t,’ giggled Debbie. ‘I’ve got Mrs Dawson squared. She thinks he’s a tyrant, and she said she’d lie for me. He’ll never find out, not Gordon. Give Mum her due: she was a good deal brighter than our Gordon.’

  The other body muttered with satisfaction, and pressed himself closer in his pleasure. The leg of his trousers, protruding from the coppice, slid up over his sock. The skin underneath it was smooth, gleaming, and black.

  • • •

  Wilf Hamilton Corby, in a cosy little semi-detached on the outskirts of Cumbledon, was enjoying a companionable glass of something strong with a widow he had met by answering an advertisement. ‘Companionship,’ it had said, was the end in view. And certainly he seemed to find her soothing. She listened very well indeed, and rarely tried to tell him about herself.

  ‘Of course, I’m the last one to complain,’ he was saying, ‘but being tied to an invalid wife all these years has been no joke.’

  ‘I’m sure it hasn’t,’ said his widow.

  ‘Particularly one of her disposition,’ said Wilf resentfully.

  ‘Tell me about her,’ said the widow.

  And Wilf got down to doing just that. Odd that he hadn’t noticed the determined set of the widow’s jaw, or the glint of contempt for him in her eyes. Had he done so, might he not have thought of frying pans and fires?

  • • •

  Watching Gordon out on the dance floor again, still smart and precise in his dress, yet spreading his vitality around him like shock treatment, Brian found himself unable to throw off that slight cloud of depression. All that energy, that zest, that animal enjoyment of life.

  ‘I wish—’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said his friend Eric, bending close.

  ‘I wish . . . looking at Gordon, out there, dancing . . . He’s so alive, so . . . electric. He’s got something I haven’t got. I wish . . . I wish I could give pleasure like that . . . or feel it.’

  ‘I expect you will one day,’ said Eric, looking at him.

  ‘When I go out there . . . and dance with a girl . . . I can’t do it, not with my whole body, not like Gordon. It doesn’t do anything to me. Look at him now. That girl, she’s quite an ordinary girl, but Gordon’s all bright, like she was plugging him into the mains . . . I never fe
el like that.’

  ‘That’s because you’re different, made different,’ said Eric.

  And with a strange, secret shock of pleasure Brian felt Eric’s hand, under the table, reach out for his, and take it in his own warm one, comfortingly.

  • • •

  Eve Carstairs, at a business dinner-dance with her husband, danced the last waltz, holding him closely to her. He was pot-bellied, tired, resentful of her energy, but she closed her eyes and transformed him in her mind into something else again—taller, stronger, younger, and of quite another colour.

  Fred Hodsden, drinking his last half pint after the darts tournament he had helped to win (his game was much improved these days, by practice) sank into a sea of well-being and became quite loquacious, for Fred. He talked about Lill, what a wonderful mother she’d been, how he’d like to flay alive the young bastard who did it, and what a wonderful little family he’d got, thanks to Lill.

  ‘I’d best be getting back, soon as you’re ready,’ he said, looking around the team. ‘The boys are at a dance, but I reckon they’ll be home and wanting their suppers before long.’ He sighed contentedly. ‘It’s a big responsibility, bringing up a family on your own.’

  ‘You should be looking about you now, Fred,’ said one of his mates. ‘You’re the marrying type.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Fred. ‘I’d thought of that.’

  • • •

  ‘I need the loo,’ said Brian, after he and Eric had sat at the table, silent amid the din, for a very long time. It had seemed there was no group, no amplifiers, no dancers. Only a still world, suddenly remade.

  ‘So do I,’ said Eric. ‘I’ll join you.’

  They made for the door, but Brian said nervously: ‘I expect Gordon will be back soon.’

  ‘What if he is?’ said Eric. Brian, as though treading on uncertain ground, cast his eyes back nervously at the dance floor, at the bright clothes and the drab, at the sweaty faces red from drink, the matt faces glazed from drugs, those vile bodies. He could see no Gordon among them.