by Anne Morice
“Usually it is, but not this year.”
“Oh Lord!”
“Never mind. You don’t have to give me a present. I can wait until October for that.”
“I would rather give you the Hope diamond than play host at the kind of party you have just described.” Recalling with faint misgivings that it was exactly one week to the day that Mike Parson’s had also arrived home tired and dispirited after the long day’s grind and had shortly afterwards walked out of it again, never to return, I made haste to put aside the depressing prospect of the party and to seek out sunnier topics.
Apparently I did not entirely succeed, for having allowed me to prattle on for about five minutes, he finally came out of a reverie and interrupted me in mid-sentence: “By the way, Tess, I have some news for you too.”
“Good news?”
“You may think so. They’ve found your friend’s car.”
“Mike’s? Honestly? Where was it?”
“In a road called the Strand. Not the London one, this is a cul de sac on the outskirts of Reading, a few miles below the bridge.”
“When was it found?”
“If you mean when was it traced to the owner, the answer is this morning. I’d asked the local branch to keep me informed as a personal favour and they did.”
“But they don’t know how long the car had been there?”
“Right. Although it was certainly not less than three days. It was parked a few yards from where the road comes to a full stop at the river. There aren’t many houses around because for most of its length on one side the Strand borders the cemetery of a Roman Catholic church, but there’s a little pub called the Angler’s Rest on the opposite side. Naturally, there’s no through traffic, but there are nearly always a few cars parked there at various times of the day and night, quite often a dozen or more at this time of year with so many holiday-makers around. You see, there’s a small landing stage and a man who hires out boats in a modest way, so anyone taking one of those out would naturally park as close as he could get to the river. Not much chance of anyone noticing that one particular car had been left there for several days running.”
“Nevertheless, someone did notice, I gather. Was it this boatman?”
“No, he only has his business there, doesn’t live on the premises and didn’t know a thing about it. At least the only item he did come up with doesn’t appear to have any relevance.”
“What was it?”
“One of his punt poles is missing, apparently. Past experience has made him careful to take all the paddles and cushions in at night, but this was the first time that anyone had helped himself to a punt pole. It’s hard to say how there could be any connection between that and the abandoned car.”
“Well, who did notice the car?”
“A man called Jackson, who is the publican at the Angler’s Rest. The brewer’s dray called on Thursday morning with deliveries and the driver had a bit of trouble turning round when it was time to leave because this particular vehicle made it doubly awkward for him. No one was particularly bothered by that because it happens all the time, but it did focus Jackson’s attention on the car and when he found it was still parked there right through the weekend he reported it.”
“Any clues inside the car?”
“I haven’t had full details yet, but there were a couple of odd features for all to see.”
“Do tell me.”
“A man’s tweed jacket on the front seat and the keys in the ignition. It was a miracle the car wasn’t stolen.”
“Perhaps it was intended to be. I mean, if you think of it, Robin, the jacket could have been left there as a bait. So that anyone of dubious morality who happened to pass by and take a look inside would immediately see it and then moving in to take a closer look would see the keys too, and away we go!”
“But what reason could he have had for wanting it to be stolen?”
“Well, I’ve always thought his first move would be to dispose of the car, and he probably thought this way would be less risky than trying to sell it.”
“Rather an expensive way out of the problem, don’t you think? They tell me the second-hand value is around five or six hundred pounds and even if he was willing to drop that amount in order to cover his tracks, why throw in the jacket as well. Why not just cut his losses and abandon the car somewhere where it wouldn’t be so easily found?”
“I think I have an answer for that,” I said.
“Somehow, I thought you might.”
“He may have wanted the car to be stolen, so that there was a chance of its eventually getting back to his wife more or less in one piece. If it had been locked up and left in some lonely place all sorts of disasters might have befallen it before the police came around. I mean, like the battery and wheels being pinched and that kind of thing. By making it so easy and accessible he may have been trying to ensure that it would still be in reasonable condition when it was restored to his wife. Assuming he was feeling guilty about leaving her virtually penniless, it would have been some consolation to know that she would have the car or, to put it another way, the means of raising five or six hundred pounds. Tell me something, though: were the log book and insurance certificate in the car, by any chance?”
“Yes, they were. In a pocket of the jacket.”
“Well, doesn’t that prove my point?”
“No.”
“Oh, really?” I asked sadly. “What have I overlooked?”
“Well, to be fair, I think your theory is all right up to a point, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.”
“Then take it a little further for me, please.”
“Well, if you think back to what I told you about the Strand, you’ll realise that abandoning the car in that particular spot gives strong indications that his intention was suicide. The landing stage juts out into fairly deep water, naturally, so where better to dive in if you’d made up your mind to finish yourself off that way?”
“But, of course! You must be right and in some ways suicide does seem so much more . . .”
“In character?”
“Exactly. More in character than leaving home for another woman. How nice to find that psychology has its place, after all. Is that what the police believe did happen?”
“No, they don’t.”
“Well, for God’s sake, Robin!”
“They have to operate without your special kind of insight, remember, but from the meagre evidence at their disposal, they incline to the view that he intended everyone to believe that he had committed suicide, but had not in fact done so.”
“Well, that’s sophistry, if you like! Why the hell make it so complicated?”
“Because of the very point you overlooked earlier. If he really went to all that trouble to ensure that his wife got the car back in good condition, why not just have left it in the garage and killed himself in some other way? And why draw out the full balance in their joint account? If his aim was suicide he could achieve it just as efficiently without three hundred pounds in his pocket.”
“It might have been pinched from the pocket of his jacket which they found in the car?”
“Yes, darling, so it might,” Robin explained with deep and unflagging patience, “and most likely the jacket was left there to give precisely that impression, but I repeat: if he was suicide bent, why draw it out at all?”
“Yes, I see all that, I’m not a complete imbecile,” I replied crossly. “But he could have changed his mind, you know. Supposing, having decided to leave Brenda, he’d then become absolutely sickened by the idea? Once he’d actually made the break it might have come over him that although there was no future for him with her there was no future for him on his own either. Perhaps the suicide idea was just a sudden impulse? Who knows what desperate ideas might take hold of someone in that situation?”
“Who indeed? And if you’re right and he is dead we shall never have the faintest inkling about his state of mind during the last hours, so it is really useless
to speculate.”
“All right then, to consider it on the practical level: if he did drown, how long will it be before he is found?”
“And that’s the hardest of all to answer,” Robin admitted. “Presumably, it could be never and it could on the other hand be tomorrow, when some small boy fishing from the bank gets his line entangled with a human foot. So much would depend on weeds and currents and that kind of thing.”
“But since the police tend to discount suicide, what will they do next about tracing him?”
“Ah, an easy one at last! The answer is nothing.”
“What, nothing at all?”
“No, nothing at all. Why should they? As I’ve tried to make you understand, he’s committed no crime. The money he took was his own property and in this country, thank God, a man is still entitled to privacy. I suppose they might get him for leaving his car unattended on a public thoroughfare but it would hardly be worth the trouble and if he wishes to hide himself away there is nothing whatever to stop him.”
Given time, I might conceivably have found a flaw in this argument, but the opportunity was denied me because it was at this point that Sally rang up to give me Chloe Masters’ address.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She lived at Old Lock Cottage, Warmenham, which, being situated between Cookham and Marlow, was one very good reason for not finding her in the London directory. Presumably the cottage had originally been one of the lock keeper’s perks, and the prefix had been tacked on to its name when this function became outdated. The present incumbent was housed nearby in a square red brick villa, with neat rows of runner beans in the garden adjacent to it, a glorious show of salvias surrounding the patch of lawn which separated it from Warmenham Lock, and the numerals 1931 carved into the brick work above the door for the benefit of anyone who hadn’t already guessed.
Chloe’s cottage, which predated the other by a couple of centuries, was fifty yards further down river and set back by the same distance from the bank, although no attempt had been made to profit by the extra space, for the garden was a sad tangle of weeds and starved looking shrubs.
With her usual efficiency Sally had supplied me with the telephone number, which was Warmenham 441, but I had not made use of the information. For one thing, I knew the area well and had no need to apply for directions. Warmenham, which consists of a hamlet, several large farms and a few plushy mansions dotted around on the perimeter, is not very far from Storhampton, where Robin and I had spent the first year of our marriage, and only ten or twelve miles from Roakes Common and the home of my cousin Toby.
Another and distinctly more cogent reason for giving no advance warning of my visit was the suspicion that, in the unlikely event of Chloe’s being at home to answer the telephone, she would certainly find some excuse to fob me off. Were I to succeed in breaking through this barrier too, the chances of finding any remaining traces of a missing sound recordist would have been rendered very slim indeed.
At first sight it appeared that these precautions had been as superfluous as I had secretly feared, for there were numerous indications that the cottage was at present uninhabited. There was a low, unpainted wooden gate, opening on to a gravel path to the front door and beside it a brick and flint barn, which had been subdivided so as to make one half into a garage, but the doors were wide open and the interior empty.
By contrast, I saw as I walked up the path that not only the front door but all the windows on that side of the cottage were shut. There was no bell or knocker so I banged on the door as hard as I could, but no one came and there was no sound from within. After a minute or two I gently lifted the latch and gave the door a push, but it must have been locked or bolted from inside for it would not budge.
Balked at the outset, I stepped to one side and peered in at one of the ground floor windows, but the pane was smudged and I could not make out much of the interior. At first sight it appeared to be a dining room, for I could see a bowl of oranges on a sideboard against the wall facing me, but when I had got my face practically flattened against the glass and had brought my hands up to form side shields, I could see that beside the right-angled wall to my left there was a camp bed, unmade but recently used apparently for the bedclothes were untidily pulled back.
Following the path round the side of the cottage I emerged into the tangled, overgrown back garden. From this point I could see glimpses of the river and the lock keeper’s new house, although both were partially screened by half a dozen ancient and barren-looking apple trees. Two of these had been used as props for a clothes line and they cannot have been so fragile as they looked, for it was festooned down the whole of its length with washing, including sheets and towels and an assortment of men’s clothing.
The sight had an instant and chastening effect. All at once the role I was playing manifested itself as somewhat despicable, and Robin’s words about the individual’s right to privacy came home to me with a shattering jolt. If Mike wished to leave his rather shrewish little wife and set up house with Chloe, it was surely his own business and how on earth, I wondered, forgetting now about the two sad little boys, had I allowed myself to be coerced into creeping about and spying on him? Mortified and ashamed, my instinct was to remove myself from the scene as fast as possible, but simultaneously there came another sensation, a prickling at the back of my neck, which partially paralysed movement. Remaining on the same spot, I turned very slowly to face the cottage again, thus breaking the record for unpleasant frissons by getting my second in the space of a minute. Through the closed panes of a ground floor window beside the back door a white cadaverous face was staring out at me, evidently transfixed by pain and terror. Seen through glass, it took on a swimmy, disembodied quality, so that I had the impression of looking at a ghost or a corpse, and this was intensified by the fact that as I watched it misted over and slowly receded from sight, as though a wave had passed over and covered it.
At that moment there was nothing that Lady Macbeth could have told me about her disagreeable sensations when Banquo’s ghost turned up at the dinner party and I raced back to the front of the house and down the garden path with only one object in view, which was to fling myself into the car and drive away at eighty miles an hour.
The decision had come too late, however, although it was not the supernatural which intervened this time, but the presence of a little orange mini car drawn up behind mine. Just as I reached the gate the driver emerged, looking very cool and composed in her pink linen dress, and I found myself face to face with Chloe Masters.
CHAPTER EIGHT
She was carrying a whacking great pile of cardboard folders, with her white bag precariously balanced on top, and I automatically unlatched the gate and then stepped back to allow her to pass through. She thanked me, with a wide and friendly smile, and then said:
“Were you just leaving? What a bit of luck I caught you!”
Somewhat fazed by the choice of words, I brought an envelope out of my bag and said, with no enthusiasm at all:
“I only called to deliver this. It’s an invitation to our party and I happened to be passing, so I thought I might as well drop it in. Save postage and all that.”
Realising, if only from her amused expression, that this explanation left something to be desired, I went on:
“I couldn’t make anyone hear when I knocked and I was just going to push my card under the door when it occurred to me that you might be in the garden, so I went to look, but of course you weren’t there either and . . .”
“Won’t you come inside and tell me the rest sitting down?”
“Oh no, thanks awfully, Chloe, I’m sure you’ve got masses to do.”
“No, I haven’t. All I’ve got to do is read your card and tell you whether I can come to the party or not, thereby saving myself some postage too. Besides, these scripts weigh a ton. My arms will drop off if I don’t put them down soon.”
“Shall I carry some of them for you?” I asked, bowing to her superior control of the situat
ion.
“No, I can manage. If you’d just be an angel and unlock the door? The key’s in my bag.”
“I suppose you always have to lock up when you go out and leave the house empty?” I asked in what was supposed to be an innocent voice, as she preceded me into the tiny hall. It was a waste of innocence, however, for she either did not hear or chose to ignore the question and walked ahead of me into a room on the right, twin brother to the one I had peered at from outside. It was a low ceilinged, untidy but comfortable looking sitting room, with an inglenook fireplace and a welter of blackened oak beams.
“What would you like?’ she asked, dumping her load on to a gate legged table in the window, which already held a typewriter, telephone and pile of books. “We’ve no booze in the house, I’m afraid, but I can offer you some coffee or a soft drink?”
I had noticed that she did not seem particularly surprised to see me and, being in the mood to come straight to the point, I said, when she returned from the kitchen with the coffee tray:
“You don’t seem particularly surprised to see me?”
“No, Alec warned me that you were on my trail.”
“Warned you?”
“Well, that doesn’t sound very polite, I admit; but there was something rather sly in the way he put it, if you know what I mean? Not exactly winks and nods and verb saps, but as though he meant me to infer something and be on my guard. I can’t imagine why.”
“But I thought you’d stopped going to the studios for the time being?”
“So I have, but the script department is being very decent and they let me have stacks of stuff to read at home. It’s a frightful chore, as you can imagine, and it doesn’t pay very well, but it’s better than nothing and I hate to be idle. It was when I went over to fetch this new batch that I ran into Alec.”
She had been opening my envelope while explaining this and now continued without a change of tone,
“Well, that’s very civil of you! Do you want an answer now?”