The End Of Solomon Grundy

by Julian Symons

  If Tissart’s view was accepted – and detailed examination had confirmed him in it – then Grundy had intended to meet Estelle Simpson (to call her by the name she had used in Cridge Mews) on Monday evening. “Same time, same place, same object.” No doubt the object was sexual intercourse, but what about the time and the place? The place might have been Cridge Mews, but if by any chance they had met somewhere else and had been seen, that would be an invaluable piece of evidence. Manners turned to the account of Grundy’s movements on Monday.

  These had been closely plotted by Sergeant Fastness. He had talked to Mrs Langham and Miss Pringle, and also to the newspaper editor, Clacton. It was clear that Grundy had been in a very emotional state on Monday afternoon. Manners himself had talked to Grundy’s partner Werner, in Werner’s large ramshackle flat in Earl’s Court Square. A long-haired languid young woman, who was introduced only as Lily, poured them drinks and then sat with her feet up on a sofa looking at Private Eye.

  Werner was a lively little man, agreeable to talk to. He said that Grundy had been upset by the interview with Clacton.

  “Mrs Langham says that when you got back there was an argument.”

  “For the first time, Superintendent, for the first time we have a quarrel. Generally we are very sympathetic, we are in rapport. That surprises you? We are different types, but we have a good understanding. Sunday afternoon I went to see him, I saw that he was worried, I said, ‘When anything bothers you I know it,’ and that’s the way it was.”

  “But what could have been bothering him on Sunday afternoon? You didn’t see Mr Clacton until Monday morning.”

  “No, but Sol is a temperamental man. When it comes to presenting a new idea, talking about a new series, he is jumpy.”

  The answer seemed inadequate, but Manners didn’t press the point. “And on Monday?”

  “On Monday – well, I have never seen him like it before. He shouted at me, said my drawing was poor, said we must start revising the series straight away. Now, this was foolish and I said so, you understand. To do something like this when you are angry, that is no good, but when I said this he didn’t like it. I turned round and he caught hold of me and pulled my tie. I am a good-natured man, Superintendent – isn’t that so, Lily?” Lily looked up, gave him a dreamy smile, returned to Private Eye. “But at that moment I was annoyed, really angry. I told him to get out, and he did. Then I left the office myself. The next day, well, we said no more about it. But you understand, although I am sorry he is mixed up in this silly business, I do not feel quite the same.”

  “This silly business” – for Werner was sure that Grundy had had no connection with the murder. He had never heard of Estelle Simpson, he knew nothing of any extra-marital affairs that Grundy might have conducted.

  “I do not believe he had such an affair. You know this place where he lives, The Dell?” Werner shuddered, a little exaggeratedly. “For me this kind of living is – well, it is not for me. But Sol likes it.” He looked thoughtful, amended this. “Sol accepts it. Marion likes it.”

  “He hates it,” Lily said unexpectedly from the sofa.

  “He only stays there because of that bloody woman.”

  Werner laughed. “Marion and Lily don’t get on.”

  “I don’t like English frigid bitches,” Lily said, and added, “If Sol’s in trouble I don’t blame him, I blame her.”

  That was interesting but didn’t, Manners reflected, take him much further. At an interview in his office, Grundy had said that on Monday afternoon he had gone drinking in two or three Soho clubs. He had then returned to the office and had stayed there throughout the evening, except for a visit at about half past seven to a pub round the corner called The Wild Peacock, where he had eaten sandwiches. This was confirmed, and there was nothing to disprove his story that he had then returned to the office and stayed there until eleven o’clock – and nothing to prove it either.

  Manners abandoned Grundy, and turned to consider Ryan’s report on Tony Kabanga. Kabanga had no alibi, in the sense that he would have had no difficulty in leaving his Clarges Street club for half an hour, time enough for him to have gone round to Cridge Mews and strangled the girl. But that presupposed a premeditated murder, and everything suggested that the crime had been carried out on sudden impulse. Kabanga’s clubs were well conducted, and appeared to have no association with prostitution. Neither his handwriting nor Werner’s bore any resemblance to that on the postcard. And Kabanga seemed so genuinely grief-stricken by the girl’s death – at one session with Ryan he had broken down in tears – that even the hard-bitten inspector was inclined to think him innocent.

  There remained The Dell. From The Dell had come the statement of Jennifer Paget’s which, if it was true, proved that Grundy was associating with the dead woman. From The Dell also had come statements from a Mr Jellifer and a Mr Clements which placed Grundy’s car near Cridge Mews at about the right time. In the close community of The Dell, Manners felt, lay the answers to many of his questions, but this was no more than a feeling, and in any case what could he do about it?

  To sum up, then: the case against Grundy rested on the handwriting identification, the car identification, and the word of Jennifer Paget. It was not enough. Manners had little doubt that Grundy had killed the girl, but unless some other witnesses came forward, or Grundy made some false move, or it proved possible to link him directly with the dead girl, there was little hope of charging him. After coming to this conclusion Manners put away the file and then, with no particular purpose in mind other than the thought that personal interrogation of Grundy might induce him to make some slip, he telephoned Marion Grundy and announced his intention of calling on her husband that evening.

  Chapter Five

  In The Dell

  It was the belief of those who lived in The Dell, although this was a belief that they would never have been so vulgar as to express openly, that they were upon the whole more intelligent, liberal and humane than the majority of their fellow citizens. Subconsciously they regarded themselves as a fragment of a new élite establishing itself in the big cities of England, an élite not marked by its adherence to an ideal of wealth, class or profession, but simply one attuned, as most people were not, to the realities of life in the middle of the twentieth century. The plate glass windows, the landscaped gardens, the underfloor central heating, the garbage disposers, the rooms that made provision for just so many books and gramophone records, these appeared to them not as desirable adjuncts to comfort, but as the badge of modernity itself. The idea that they might ostracise one of their number would have seemed to Dell-dwellers deeply shocking, yet the groundswell of gossip that linked Grundy to the death of the girl in Cridge Mews changed subtly to a feeling that anybody about whom such gossip could be circulated was not really the right sort of person to be living in The Dell.

  Edgar and Jennifer Paget had told their stories to several people, but these stories had radiated out also through Adrienne Facey and Jill Mayfield and their parents. Adrienne had happened to see the police car draw up outside the Grundys’ on Tuesday evening. In less than an hour it was known that the superintendent in charge of the case had called on Grundy, and within twenty-four hours Jack Jellifer’s identification of Grundy’s car in Mayfair and the police visits to the AdArts office were being talked about. Gossip placed the car not just in Mayfair but in Cridge Mews itself, and the police visit to the AdArts office was transformed into “a thorough grilling of everybody there which went on for hours,” as Felicity Facey delightedly put it. In such matters The Dell was not, after all, very different from any other community.

  On Thursday evening Grundy turned left into Brambly Way and stopped at the garage on the corner to fill up, and make arrangements for the Alvis to be serviced. Sir Edmund Stone stood beside his Mini Minor at another petrol pump. He made no response to Grundy’s greeting, but turned away and spoke to the garage attendant.

  “Just a minute,” Grundy said to the foreman with whom he was talki
ng. He marched across the forecourt and took Sir Edmund by the arm. “I said good evening.”

  Sir Edmund slowly turned. “Good evening.”

  Grundy’s face was brick red. “When I said it before you turned away from me. Deliberately.”

  Sir Edmund’s complexion was completely white, and never showed the faintest touch of colour, but his long nose quivered with emotion. “I did not.”

  “You did. I saw you. He saw you.” Grundy gestured at the foreman, who was watching with interest.

  “You are mistaken. Really, this – this altercation – is most unseemly.”

  “Is it? When I say good evening to someone I know I expect them to answer.”

  “I have already done so. Kindly let go of my arm.”

  Grundy’s hand was in fact still touching Sir Edmund’s arm. He let go and marched back across the forecourt to his car. The foreman looked at him sideways, but made no comment. He arranged for the servicing of the car and drove out of the garage, revving up unnecessarily as he did so.

  When he got home Marion was upstairs. She came slowly into the living-room. Her manner was composed, but she did not look well. “Superintendent Manners telephoned. He is coming at eight o’clock to see you.”

  “Sod him. He’s been talking to Theo, asking all sorts of questions.” He took the evening paper out of his briefcase, tossed it over to her. “Shall I tell you something? That clot Stone tried to cut me this evening. At the garage. He didn’t do it, though. I made him say hallo.”

  “You quarrelled with him?”

  “How can you quarrel with a dummy?”

  “You don’t understand. You simply don’t realise what people are saying, how awful things are for me.”

  “They’re not too cheerful for me, either, but I’m very sorry.” He tried to embrace her. She stood with statuesque immobility and said:

  “Please.”

  “Christ, now you’ve turned into a dummy too. All right, if that’s the way you want it. What are we eating?”

  “I’ve telephoned Daddy.”

  “Your father?” He looked at her in astonishment.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t feel I can go on. I must go away. Or at least I must ask Daddy’s advice. He’s very – wise, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. He’s a bloody old bore, that’s what your father is. Now I’ll tell you something. If you go away now, at a time like this, you needn’t come back, do you understand?” He advanced across the room and she shrank back. When he touched her she gave an experimental scream.

  “Don’t come near me. Don’t dare to come near me.”

  He dropped his hands in a gesture of despair. Marion ran upstairs again.

  The scream was distinctly heard next door by the Faceys. Felicity was making a raffia lampshade and her husband was looking at, rather than reading, a book about art by Sir Herbert Read. Adrienne, who had been denied a television programme on the ground that it would affect her parents’ concentration, was sulking upstairs.

  Felicity paused and let a long string of raffia dangle like spaghetti towards the floor.

  “Bill, did you hear that?”

  Bill Facey was small, thin and weedy. He had heard, but he did not wish to acknowledge. “What?”

  “That scream. It was Marion. You must go in.”

  “Oh, no.” Bill looked desperately at Herbert Read for help. “I couldn’t. I mean, you can’t interfere.”

  “We don’t know what he may have done. He may be murdering her.” There was a silence, heavy with the implications of the words.

  “You’ve no right to say such things.” But Bill Facey said it feebly. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind that Felicity was the dominant partner in their marriage.

  “Listen.” They listened, but heard nothing. “You ought to go in.”

  “No, really Felicity, you can’t do things like that.”

  “Very well. I shall go myself.” She rose, vigorous and mannish, and moved towards the door. Her husband sheepishly watched her go, and then returned to his book.

  Grundy looking, as she afterwards said, really wild, opened the door. With a casualness obviously assumed she said that she had run out of milk and wondered whether Marion could lend her a little. Grundy went away and came back with a pint bottle, which he thrust at her.

  “Are you sure you can spare this? Is Marion sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps I should just ask her.”

  He glared at her, teeth showing in a sort of grin that, as she said afterwards, frightened her. “She’s gone to bed.”

  “Oh, really. I thought—”

  “Got a bad headache.” Now there could be no doubt of it, he was grinning at her. He made a small mock bow before closing the door. He was, she thought – to use a favourite word of hers – a most obnoxious man. She saw the police car drive up a few minutes later.

  Manners could adopt when he wished a severity of tone that was often disturbing to suspects under questioning. He used this tone now in talking to Grundy, and his manner without being in the least impolite conveyed clearly enough his certainty that Grundy knew more than he was telling. Sergeant Fastness chipped in occasionally with a question pointed to the edge of rudeness. Beneath this barrage of questions about his movements on Monday evening and his knowledge of the dead woman the suspect remained commendably, if that was the word, unperturbed. He still denied ever meeting her except at the party.

  “Come now, I have a witness who saw you with her on Saturday evening. You went into Kabanga’s house with her.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “We have a positive identification. Do you still deny it?”

  “Absolutely.” Grundy’s big hands rested placidly on his knees.

  “And your handwriting on the postcard has been identified too.” That was Fastness. “You slipped up badly there, you should have taken it away. Silly to sign it with that little figure too. Guffy McTuffie.”

  “Rubbish.”

  Fastness laughed unpleasantly. “Did you think we wouldn’t be able to identify the writing just because you didn’t sign it?”

  “I didn’t write the postcard.”

  Fastness was confidential. “From you we just want the details, that’s all. You save us trouble, you’ll save yourself a hard time.”

  “Sergeant.” Manners’s voice was sharp, his tone to Grundy apologetic. “There’s no need to talk like that. It’s just that we feel sure you haven’t told us everything you know. It will be in your own interest to amend your statement now rather than later on.”

  “Nothing more to say.”

  The most difficult suspect to deal with is the one who answers questions so briefly. Manners felt his temper slipping slightly. “Where’s Mrs Grundy?”

  “Lying down upstairs. She’s got a headache.”

  Manners debated whether or not he should ask to speak to her, and decided against it. What could she say that she had not said before? He said a curt good night. Outside, in the car, Sergeant Fastness said, “He keeps his mouth zipped tight, doesn’t he sir?”

  “Yes. We just have to find something that will unzip it.”

  They drove away. Felicity Facey watched them. “They haven’t taken him,” she said to her husband.

  “Oh, really, Felicity.”

  “It’s poor Marion I feel sorry for. I hope he hasn’t done her an injury. I shall go and see her in the morning.”

  “I don’t think you should interfere,” he said without conviction. He knew that he was fighting a lost battle.

  The alarm clock which should have wakened Grundy had remained unset. When he woke and looked at his watch the time was nine o’clock. In the other bed Marion lay sleeping still, curled like a child, her face unlined and young. He woke her, washed, cut himself shaving, dressed hurriedly. When he came downstairs he found her standing in the dining annexe beside the toast and coffee.

  “I heard what they said last night, the detectives.”

  “I
thought you’d gone to sleep. You had your eyes shut when I got upstairs.”

  “I wanted to think.”

  He opened the paper, looked for news of the murder, read that police inquiries had taken them to a high-class residential estate called The Dell.

  “You did it, didn’t you?”

  He looked up from the paper. “What?”

  “I think I’ve known it ever since Tuesday evening, when you showed me her picture in the paper. But don’t worry, a wife can’t give evidence against her husband, can she? And anyway, I wouldn’t if I could. I blame myself as much as you. If we’d had a properly integrated relationship you would never have needed to—”

  Grundy was not listening. He was staring in astonishment at the Rover that had just drawn up outside the house. Out of it stepped the burly figure of Mr Hayward. He looked at Marion.

  “I told you I’d spoken to Daddy.” In her voice there was a note of appeal or regret. She went to the door. Grundy furiously thrust a piece of toast into his mouth, washed it down with coffee, crumpled the napkin in his big hand, stood up.

  “A very good run up,” Mr Hayward was saying as he came in. “An hour and a half, door to door. I took that short cut just after Crawley.”

  “The one by Sumpter’s factory?” Marion broke off, looked nervously at her husband.

  “Solomon. This is a bad business.” Mr Hayward was grave as a publican at a funeral.

  “What are you here for?”

  “Because my little girl asked me to come, because she’s worried. And she’s frightened, Solomon, frightened.”

  “Dad. Don’t talk about it.”

  “Frightened of me, you mean? She thinks I killed this girl, she’s just told me so. She said we hadn’t got a properly integrated relationship, and do you know why we haven’t? Because she’s been able to run to Mum and Dad all the time and discuss the fifteen different routes to Hayward’s Heath.” His voice had risen to a shout. “Why don’t you keep your nose out of our affairs?”