Once Too Often

by Dorothy Simpson

  It’s essential to keep up appearances in order to maintain confidence in the business. If people saw me selling my house, sending my kids to state schools and driving a Ford instead of a Mercedes the word would go round in no time that I was on the ropes.’

  I see. So what, exactly, are you trying to tell me? That we’re finished, is that it?’

  Yes. I’m afraid so. I’m sorry, Jess.’

  ‘Sorry! I thought we had something special, but no, it sounds as though as far as you’re concerned all it comes down to in the end is money, money, money.’

  ‘That’s not true. Of course it was special!’

  ‘But not special enough. What a fool I’ve been! I was just a nice little bit on the side, wasn’t I? You never had any intention of giving up your wife, your children, your home and life-style for me, did you? Get out. Go on, get out.’

  Jess, don’t be like this. I hoped we could still befriends.’

  Just go, Adam, will you. Now.’

  ‘And I can assure you that, as I said before, she was absolutely fine when I left,’ Ogilvy concluded.

  But if Jessica had gone straight upstairs after opening the door and Ogilvy had followed her and a similar conversation had taken place at the top of the stairs instead of in the sitting room as Ogilvy claimed, it would be only too easy to imagine it ending in disaster.

  ‘Did the telephone ring while you were there?’ said Lineham.

  Ogilvy stared at him. ‘Yes, now you come to mention it, it did. Soon after I got there. But she didn’t answer it, said the answerphone was on.’

  Not surprising that Jessica had considered her conversation with Ogilvy of more importance, thought Thanet.

  ‘Did Mrs Manifest come to the front door with you?’ said Lineham.

  ‘No, she didn’t. Why?’

  ‘Did you shut it behind you?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I must have. Yes, I’m sure I did. Why?’ Ogilvy asked again.

  ‘So,’ said Thanet to Mrs Ogilvy. ‘Where were you while all this was going on?’

  She flinched at becoming the focus of attention. ‘In my car,’ she said with a lift of the chin.

  ‘Waiting for your husband, presumably.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  ‘Why were you waiting for him?’

  ‘Well, obviously because I wanted to hear how he’d got on.’

  ‘Why didn’t you accompany him in his car, then?’

  She bit her lip and glanced at her husband. It was obvious what had happened. Ogilvy had promised her that the meeting with Jessica would be brief and she had followed him to see if he had kept his word.

  ‘I . . . I didn’t make up my mind until after he had left.’

  Her husband came to her rescue. ‘You thought it would be nice for us to go out for a drink together afterwards, didn’t you, darling? Which is what we did,’ he added, turning to Thanet. ‘When I came out I saw my wife’s car and realised she was waiting for me.’

  ‘Where did you go for this drink?’ said Lineham, though they were already pretty certain of the answer.

  ‘To the Harrow. You can check if you like. There weren’t many customers, they’ll probably remember us.’

  ‘Why not the Green Man? Your car was already parked there.’

  ‘We wanted to go a bit further away.’

  In case Jessica or her husband came in, thought Thanet. Ogilvy wasn’t to know that it was to the Harrow that Manifest usually went.

  They had, he said, arrived about 7.45 and stayed until around 8.30. Manifest claimed to have passed the Harrow about 8.15, so it was just as they had thought: he had probably intended to go in but had changed his mind when he spotted Ogilvy and his wife there.

  Ogilvy claimed that they had arrived home at about 8.45.

  ‘Is there anyone who can confirm these times?’ This wasn’t really necessary at this stage but Thanet wanted an excuse for a word with Chantal. Nannies have a pretty good idea of what goes on in a household.

  ‘Chantal?’ said Mrs Ogilvy to her husband.

  ‘I’ll fetch her,’ he said.

  ‘I’d better come with you, to look after the children.’

  ‘Just one more point, Mrs Ogilvy,’ said Thanet quickly as she started to move towards the door. ‘Could you see Mrs Manifest’s front door from where you were parked?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t.’

  ‘And after your husband came out? Did you get out of the car?’

  ‘No. He came across to speak to me.’

  ‘Which way was your car facing?’

  ‘Towards the village.’

  ‘So you had to turn around, to drive to the Harrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did you turn?’

  ‘I backed into the road leading into the estate.’

  ‘Did you happen to notice then if the door of Mrs Manifest’s house was open?’

  ‘No. I was watching that I didn’t back into some traffic cones that were in front of her house.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’

  Lineham waited until they had gone, then said, ‘He must have been crazy, to run the risk of losing all this, those lovely children and that nice wife of his.’

  ‘Yes, I liked her too. She doesn’t trust him, though, does she? Following him like that to Jessica’s house. And I’d say she wouldn’t put it past him to have shoved Jessica down the stairs.’

  ‘I agree.’ Footsteps could be heard on the staircase and Lineham lowered his voice. ‘I wonder when she found out about them.’

  Ogilvy came back in with Chantal. ‘There’s no need to be nervous,’ he said to her. ‘Just answer whatever questions the Inspector asks.’ He sat down on the sofa as if to underline the fact that he had no intention of leaving.

  Thanet could have insisted, but decided not to make an issue of it at the moment. He could always come back later if necessary. He suspected Chantal wasn’t too keen on her employer, which could prove useful. She quickly confirmed the times of departure and arrival Ogilvy had given them and they left it at that.

  ‘All very well,’ said Lineham when they were back in the car, ‘but I’d say he definitely goes on our list. We’ve only his word that Jessica was alive when he left.’

  ‘Quite. Put Bentley on to investigating his background. Mrs Ogilvy’s, too.’

  ‘You don’t suspect her, surely?’

  Thanet shrugged. ‘Just being thorough. They could be covering up for each other.’

  ‘So, where now, sir?’

  ‘I think it’s time we had another go at Desmond, don’t you? He’s got rather a lot of explaining to do.’

  EIGHT

  They consulted the map to work out the most likely route for Ogilvy to have taken to get to the Manifests’ house in Charthurst and discovered that it went past the Harrow.

  ‘Explains why they chose that particular pub,’ said Lineham. ‘It was the first one they came to on the way home. And he must have passed it many times.’

  Thanet agreed. ‘Might as well call in, as we’re going by. It’s past opening time, the landlord should be there now.’

  ‘Though I still don’t get it,’ said Lineham as he started the engine. ‘Just think about it. You know your wife is expecting her lover so you obligingly go out. When you get home the front door is open and you find her dead at the bottom of the stairs. Then you learn someone rang for an ambulance from your own number. I mean to say, what would you think?’

  ‘You forget, he was confused. He’d seen Ogilvy in the Harrow with his own wife only ten minutes before.’

  ‘It doesn’t take much intelligence to work out that Ogilvy’d have had plenty of time to visit Jessica first, though, does it? I really can’t see why he didn’t put us on to him straight away. Especially as it would have let him off the hook himself!’ Lineham shook his head. ‘I just don’t understand him.’

  ‘I’ve a feeling there’s a lot we don’t yet understand
about him – or about Jessica either, for that matter.’

  At the Harrow the landlord confirmed that Manifest was a regular customer, calling in two or three evenings a week. ‘Though Des isn’t exactly what you’d call a big spender. Only ever has one drink and makes it last more than an hour, usually. Not surprising, really, being as he’s on the dole. I don’t mind, he’s a good bloke.’

  ‘What about last night?’ said Lineham.

  ‘Ah, now that was very peculiar. He started to come in through the door then turned around and went straight out again!’

  ‘What did you think?’

  A shrug. ‘That he’d seen someone he didn’t want to meet, probably. It happens.’

  ‘Any idea who?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘About a quarter past eight? Something like that.’

  ‘And were you busy at the time?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘So do you remember if there was anyone in at the time who wasn’t a regular customer?’

  ‘A few, yes.’

  ‘Who, for instance?’

  The man frowned. He was big and beefy and didn’t look as though he’d have much trouble controlling difficult clients. ‘Couple of American tourists, a businessman on his way home, a commercial traveller asking if we had a room for the night . . .’

  ‘No one else?’

  ‘Well, there was Mr Ogilvy, the estate agent. He’s not exactly a regular, I suppose, but he’s not a stranger either.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘With his wife. At least, I assume it was his wife, hadn’t seen her before, he’s usually by himself. A real looker, blonde hair, blue eyes.’

  ‘Did Mr Ogilvy see Mr Manifest?’

  ‘Don’t think so. He was sitting sideways on to the door.’

  ‘What time did Mr Ogilvy and his wife arrive?’

  Another shrug. ‘I don’t time people’s arrivals and departures, you know!’

  ‘Approximately, then.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. They’d been here a little while before Des looked in, anyway.’

  ‘What d’you mean by “a little while”? Five minutes? Ten?’

  ‘No. Half an hour, more like.’

  This fitted what they had been told.

  ‘You didn’t happen to notice if he came by foot or by car, did you?’ It had occurred to them that if Desmond had borrowed Jessica’s car this would have altered the time scenario considerably.

  ‘On foot, as usual.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Positive. Like I said, things were quiet and I thought it was so peculiar he hadn’t come in I went across to the window to see what he was doing. The car park’s around the back, as you know, but he was walking off in the direction of Charthurst.’

  ‘You could see him clearly? It was pitch dark.’

  ‘We’re well lit up, at the front. And he always wears one of those fluorescent safety straps. It was him all right.’

  Lineham left it there.

  ‘So,’ said Thanet when they were back in the car, ‘neither Manifest nor Ogilvy made that phone call.’

  ‘There are only three possibilities,’ said Lineham. ‘Either someone else had a key and let himself in . . .’

  ‘Unlikely, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Or, Jessica was alive when Ogilvy left, as he claims, and she later opened the door to someone else.’

  ‘Possible.’

  ‘Or Ogilvy did in fact kill her but didn’t shut the door properly and someone else got in, found the body and made the phone call.’

  Thanet sighed. ‘I think you’d better stop, Mike. It seems to me there are an infinite number of possibilities and at the moment we haven’t a hope in hell of proving any of them.’

  In any case, they had arrived. Allowing for the stop at the pub the drive to Willow Way had taken thirteen minutes.

  ‘Looks as though the parents have gone,’ said Thanet. The red Datsun was no longer there.

  ‘Mmm.’ The hole in the road in front of the Manifests’ house was still roped off and Lineham was peering into it. ‘A day’s work for two men and it still looks exactly the same! How do they get away with it?’

  ‘If it annoys you so much why don’t you complain to the Council? Come on, Mike,’ said Thanet as he approached the front door. ‘We haven’t got all day. I really have to finish my speech for Saturday tonight.’ He rang the bell.

  Lineham was grinning as he hurried up the path. ‘I’m looking forward to hearing it.’

  ‘I’ll remind you you said that, when Mandy gets married!’

  Amanda, the younger of Lineham’s two children, was nine.

  ‘I’m not going to start worrying about that yet!’

  ‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that. The expense is unbelievable!’

  ‘I took out an insurance when she was born,’ said Lineham smugly.

  ‘Mike, has anyone ever told you that sometimes you are completely and utterly insufferable?’

  ‘You have, sir.’

  Grins gave way to solemnity as the door opened.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Manifest with weary resignation, standing back to let them in. He was wearing the same clothes as this morning and still hadn’t bothered to shave. Thanet wondered what he had been doing all day. It was always difficult in a case like this to tread the tightrope between suspicion and sympathy. If Manifest had had nothing to do with his wife’s death and was genuinely in mourning for her, he deserved every consideration, but they couldn’t afford to allow compassion to cloud their judgement and let a possible murderer off the hook.

  There was an appetising smell in the hall and Manifest walked ahead of them into a cramped kitchen which was furnished with a cheap range of units, a huge refrigerator and a flap table neatly laid for one against the wall. With three men in the room there would have been no room to move and Lineham hovered in the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry if we’re interrupting your supper,’ said Thanet.

  Manifest stooped to turn off the oven on the electric cooker. ‘It’s all right. I’m not hungry anyway. My mother insisted on preparing it, but . . . Let’s go back in the other room, shall we?’

  In the sitting room Thanet came straight to the point. ‘Why didn’t you tell us about Mr Ogilvy?’

  Manifest blinked, then sighed. ‘Didn’t take you long to find out, did it?’

  ‘That’s beside the point! Witholding information in a possible murder investigation is a serious matter! If someone did push your wife down those stairs, don’t you want to find out who it was?’

  Manifest said nothing, merely hung his head like a schoolboy being reprimanded by the headmaster and stared glumly down at his clasped hands.

  ‘You knew he was expected last night, didn’t you, Des?’ said Lineham. ‘And you didn’t go into the Harrow for a drink because when you arrived you found he was already there. And you couldn’t understand it. That was why you said, “Why was he there? He should have been here”, wasn’t it? We actually asked you about that this morning. So why didn’t you tell us?’

  There was a long pause and then Manifest raised his head and held the gaze of first one then the other. ‘If your wife had been having an affair,’ he said, ‘would you have found it easy to say so to a bunch of policemen?’

  So, it was partly loyalty to Jessica which had held him back, thought Thanet, and partly a desire to hold on to the last vestiges of his privacy. If you have just received a mortal blow the last thing you want to do is expose yourself to further humiliation. ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said. ‘I’d have hated it. On the other hand, you must see that if we are to make any progress we have to be in full possession of the facts. And we’ve wasted a great deal of time finding out what you could have told us in the first place.’

  ‘I suppose I should have realised it would only be a matter of time before you did find out. Jessica wasn’t exactly . . . discreet. I just wanted to give myself a
bit longer to think things over.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘To try to understand it all.’

  ‘What happened last night, you mean?’ said Lineham.

  Manifest shook his head and sat back in his chair. ‘Oddly enough, not that so much, no. More what went wrong between us.’

  Thanet wasn’t surprised. He had seen this before – how someone who had suffered a catastrophic blow sometimes tried to avoid thinking about it by obsessively raking over the past. The psychiatrists probably had some jargon to describe the process – displacement activity, perhaps? Nor did it surprise him that Manifest apparently wanted to talk. If what the Bartons had said was true – and Thanet could see no reason for them to lie – Manifest must have been humiliated beyond measure by her openly taking her lover to bed while he himself was in the house. Thanet didn’t think Manifest would have confided this to anyone and doubted that he would do so now, but in the long, dragging days of unemployment he must have spent many an hour brooding on the situation. Now that Thanet and Lineham knew about his wife’s infidelity maybe the urge to talk about it at last was irresistible. ‘And did you come to any conclusions?’ he said.

  Manifest rose, walked across to the window and stood gazing out as if to get a clearer view of the past. ‘Only that it was mostly my fault,’ he said.

  ‘Oh come on, Des,’ said Lineham. ‘It’s never just one person’s fault.’

  ‘Mostly, I said.’ He turned around to face them, and leaned back against the windowsill. ‘I mean, look at this.’ His gesture took in the cluttered room, the cramped little house, the neighbourhood. ‘She didn’t expect this when she married me, did she?’

  ‘But she did promise for better or for worse,’ said Lineham.

  ‘And she stuck to me when it all fell apart! She never gave up hope, you know, that it would all come right again.’

  Thanet wondered whom he was trying to convince. Himself, probably. Thanet’s own guess was that Jessica had been preparing to abandon ship with Ogilvy, an altogether better prospect. He thought that in Jessica’s eyes her husband had probably become irrevocably a loser. He wondered if Desmond really had been a battered husband (but again, why should the Bartons lie?) and if so, whether the abuse had begun early in the marriage when Manifest was still a success or whether it had been born of Jessica’s anger and frustration at the disastrous turn of events.