by Anne Morice
Robin brought a note book out of his breast pocket and, after a brief search, began to read aloud:
“One tweed jacket, well worn, two buttons missing, one found in right hand pocket. Nothing else in pockets. Several maps and manuals in the glove compartment, also current A.A. book, log book and insurance certificate; plus highway code and the usual assortment that you find in most family cars, i.e. paper handkerchiefs, half full tin of butterscotch, pair of black gloves, female; spectacle case, empty. There was mud and gravel under and around the seats, leaves and twigs in the luggage compartment at the back. Also in the back compartment traces of wheelmarks. The last two items caused some mystification, but Tessa already had the explanation for one of them, which Mrs Parsons endorsed, and she was also able to account for the second. It seems that when the family went out for an excursion they often took the boys’ bikes along with them in the back of the car.”
“And that was all?” I asked.
“Yes. Nothing very sensational, I’m afraid.”
“On the contrary, I find it full of interest. As much for what it leaves out as for what it includes.”
“Is that so? And what does it leave out?”
I had been thinking mainly of the missing three hundred pounds, but there was another item tucked away in Robin’s list which had set up an entirely new train of thought and I said:
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll need time to think about it.”
Robin and Toby thereupon exchanged what I understand are called meaningful glances and Toby murmured that some actors might retain their youthful powers to a very great age, whereas others, it appeared, became senile in their twenties.
“Which could be one reason for living on as they do,” Robin submitted. “Not wearing themselves out with mental exertion, they have that much more vitality to spare than the rest of us.”
This unkind judgement brought us round in full circle and the subject of Mike Parsons’ death was temporarily shelved.
The memorial service proved to be an impressive occasion, with hardly a dry eye in the congregation. All the women were dressed as for a dull day at Ascot and there was a full quorum of knights and dames. Press and television cameramen thronged the steps and pavement and it was quite a surprise not to see the House Full boards propped against the pillars. Certainly there was hardly an empty seat in the church and it was only by resorting to trickery that Toby managed to snatch one on the aisle, which happens to rank among the prime essentials of his life.
The trickery in question consisted of shoving me ahead of him into a pew which was virtually full, and so obliging the other occupants to shuffle up one by one, like a line of soldiers closing ranks. They did not look particularly cheerful about this, but luckily the poor sufferer who found himself wedged up against me turned out to be my old friend, Peter Bliss the film director, and his outraged glare mellowed a little when he saw who it was under the brown straw hat. By the end of the service, which had us both in tears, his last defences were down and he invited me to take a restorative gin and tonic. The amnesty did not extend to Toby however, which I was glad about for there were one or two searching questions of a confidential nature which I wished to put to Peter concerning the line up of future productions, if any, at A.I.P.
That the winds from this quarter were unfavourable was evinced from the start by the fact that instead of taking me to the Savoy, as I had confidently expected, he grasped my arm and marched me briskly off in the opposite direction. We landed up some five minutes later in a rather dingy pub off St Martin’s Lane, which had puddles of beer on all the tables and where the ashtrays were no doubt emptied with the utmost regularity once a fortnight.
Nor was the tenor of our conversation any more heartening, for according to Peter the native film industry was now practically in its death throes. The producers had pared down the budget on his current film to a record breaking, laughable low, the so-called star rarely if ever drew a sober breath, and he was strongly of the opinion that he personally would never be invited to direct another picture.
Altogether, it gave every indication of going into the files as the most wasted forty minutes of my life, but luckily things brightened up a bit when we moved into the realms of rumour and speculation and Peter provided at least one morsel of more than passing interest. This came when he said:
“You remember Alec?”
“Ferguson? Yes, of course.”
“You’ve heard he’s no longer with us?”
“No. Do you mean he’s dead?”
Peter laughed. “How readily your tiny mind leaps to such conclusions! It must be the company you keep.”
“Not at all. People often do use that kind of euphemism when they mean someone has died, and furthermore one of Alec’s colleagues was picked out of the river a few days ago, as you may have heard, so one is naturally influenced towards that line of thought.”
“Oh, indeed!” Peter agreed. “Perhaps rather more naturally than you realise. The grapevine has it that there is some connection.”
“Why? And what exactly happened to Alec? What does ‘no longer with us’ actually mean?”
“What it says; that he’s alive, though not very well, and living in Pinner, having voted himself three months’ unpaid leave on account of a slipped disc.”
“Oh, how dull! Your silly old grapevine must have been stretched to the limits to make anything out of that. I was hoping for something much more sensational.”
“Then you shall have it, darling. The gossips say he’s actually on the edge of a nervous breakdown.”
“Well yes, that’s a bit more like it; and I can see that if it were true he might prefer to put it about that it was a disc rather than the other thing, especially if he wants his job kept open.”
“It hasn’t occurred to you to wonder why Alec, of all our solid citizens, should be suffering from a nervous breakdown?”
“No, I can’t say it had. There could be all sorts of reasons, couldn’t there? I mean, it must be a fairly demanding job.”
“Honestly, Tessa, what will you say next? He and Sally ran that department like two old ladies knitting up the parish accounts at Little Middling in the Marsh. Even getting the daily call sheets out of them was like asking for the moon.”
“All the same, he had a lot of responsibility. That can be wearing.”
“My darling girl, you’re talking the most arrant piffle. Haven’t I been sitting here laboriously spelling out the catastrophic situation we all find ourselves in? Can’t I get it through to you that anyone who is blessed with a safe job wouldn’t willingly give it up, even on his deathbed? If anyone has his big feet firmly on the ground it’s Alec and he must see that this could easily finish him, so far as A.I.P. is concerned. The chances of getting his job back at the end of three months are such as you would not readily spot under a powerful microscope.”
“All right, then, so what has your precious old grapevine come up with? That Alec hounded Mike Parsons to his death and is now so shaken by remorse that he dare not show his face in public?”
Peter looked at me thoughtfully. “Move up to the top of the class.”
“Oh, honestly! Who’s joking now? I didn’t mean that seriously.”
“No? Then it’s a remarkable coincidence that you got so close to the mark. It was Sally who told me. She’s running the office temporarily until they get a replacement for Alec so I have to see quite a lot of her, one way and another, and yesterday evening she broke down and confessed all. She’s a bit thrown, I must tell you, because naturally she’s all on Alec’s side and it bothers her to think of him suffering in such an unworthy cause.”
“The unworthy cause being Mike?”
“Right. According to her, Alec had been covering up for him for months. He was invariably late on the job, or left early and sometimes didn’t turn up at all. He always made the same excuse and Alec always fell for it. Until recently, that is.”
“Don’t tell me,” I begged. “Let me guess! The excus
e for this erratic behaviour was that his wife was an alcoholic and that in addition to his job he had to take care of her and very often the children and the housework as well?”
“So you know all about it,” Peter said crossly. “Why do I bother?”
“No, I didn’t know, but it wasn’t a particularly inspired guess because it ties up with other things I’ve heard. Tell me this, though: what happened to make Alec change his mind?”
“Did I say so?”
“It amounted to that. You said that he had always fallen for these excuses until recently. Suggesting that he finally saw through them.”
“Oh, that was just my slovenly way of speaking. The impression I got from Sally was that he had never ceased to believe implicitly in Mike, which is precisely why he is feeling so wretched about it now. Apparently, what happened recently was that he’d told Mike he was very sorry for him and all that, and if it was up to him he’d play along indefinitely, but with all the pressures on him just now and the front office breathing down his neck he simply couldn’t cover up any longer. Either Mike would have to make some arrangement for his wife, like putting her in a home or whatever, or else he’d be for the chopper. It seems Mike told him they’d already tried a cure, but it hadn’t worked, so Alec said ‘Well, too bad’, or words to that effect, and Sally believes he’s now convinced that this was the last straw which drove Mike to suicide. Naturally, he doesn’t feel too hilarious about it.”
“No, but do you really mean he expects it to take him three months moping in Pinner to get over it? I thought Alec was made of sterner stuff than that.”
“Oh well, you know what some of these Scots are? Alec has a tough exterior, but there’s a mass of sentiment gurgling away underneath. And he had rather a thing about that Mike. No, I don’t mean what you mean. It was more a terrible kind of Barrie thing really. He has no children, so he probably saw him as the baby son who never was. However, one mustn’t be bitchy because it can’t be nice to live with the knowledge that he was the one to send Mike to his death, as it were.”
“I don’t think that’s at all as it were. For one thing,” I began, and then, since this conversation was taking place before the true cause of death had been made known, I stopped short and attacked the subject from a different direction. “For one thing, not many sons tell their fathers the whole truth and I daresay Mike was no exception. He was a much more complicated character than any of us realised and he operated on several different levels, with a matching face for each of them. For what it’s worth, you can tell Sally from me that Alec has nothing whatever to reproach himself for.”
“I shouldn’t imagine it would even be worth the trip down to her office, and frankly, Tessa, it astonishes me that you should profess to know Mike better than Alec did. He can hardly have been more to you than someone you occasionally ran across at the studios.”
“A little more than that, as it happens, but what matters is that I’ve come to know him rather better since his death. I can’t tell you how.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would involve several other people who’ve told me things in confidence.”
“Well, if you’re going to play it so mysterious, I can’t see how you can expect anyone to take you seriously.”
“Nor do I, really. Not that it signifies. You’ll see that I was right before many days are out.”
“Oh, my darling Cassandra, I don’t believe a word of it. Do you want another drink? No, on second thoughts, I must leave you now, I’ve got a lunch date. Which way are you going?”
“Home. It’s all right, I’ll find a cab. Thanks a lot.”
“Yer welcome!” he said, stressing the American accent.
It reminded me of something and when we were out in the street, scanning the horizon for empty taxis, I said: “By the way, Pete, what’s Alec’s full name?”
“Ferguson.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I was wondering if Alec was short for Alexander.”
“Why not? That’s usual, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I believe it is.”
“More mysteries?”
“No, it just occurred to me that there’s another way of shortening Alexander, isn’t there?”
I cannot be sure that he heard this, for he had stepped off the pavement as I spoke and was now gyrating about and snapping his fingers like a pop singer in full cry, as two cruising taxis approached. He did give me rather an enquiring look as he turned, with his hand on the door of the first one, but already regretting having uttered my thoughts aloud I waved goodbye and launched myself at the second.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Not unexpectedly, it was the medical evidence which provided the big sensation at Mike Parsons’ inquest and the verdict, inevitably, was Murder by Person or Persons Unknown.
Having been prepared, unlike most of those present, for these two bombshells, I was able to spare the greater part of my attention for my surroundings, which contained one or two interesting features. Brenda was in court, but her testimony was read aloud and she was not called upon to go into the box. Also she was wearing the black goggles, so it was impossible to tell how much the surgeon’s evidence came as a shock to her and whether she had known in advance that her husband had been suffocated and was dead when he entered the water.
She was accompanied by a middle-aged couple, both in mourning, of whom the female, although stouter and more opulent looking, bore sufficient resemblance to her to make it certain that she was the sister from Halifax. Considering their presence to provide all that was necessary in moral support, I kept well away and seated myself with a handful of other spectators at the back of the court-room. None of these, to the best of my knowledge, were from A.I.P. and, except in one case, it was not possible to tell whether they included representatives from Hill Grove. The single exception was a sallow, sharp featured and slight young man in the uniform of a U.S. Air Force sergeant, seated in the row ahead of mine, but to one side, so that I had a clear view of his left profile. It availed me nothing, however, for he chewed gum throughout the proceedings, causing me to make a mental note of the fact that this is the most effective device of all for concealing emotions, superior even to sunglasses.
Otherwise, from my point of view, there was only one unforeseen development and it came from the coroner’s request for a description of the deceased’s clothing when he was taken out of the river. A police detective listed it as follows: dark blue cotton trousers, blue and white shirt; no tie, dark blue blazer with metal buttons, white or cream socks, canvas shoes.
I was still pondering over these particulars when the hearing broke up and in consequence was not sufficiently quick off the mark in making for the exit. The Air Force sergeant beat me to the door and by the time I reached it the way was blocked by two stout, slow moving females. In the few seconds it took me to squeeze and apologise my way past them my quarry contrived to vanish altogether. Peering around for a likely looking car, I was waylaid by Brenda, who broke away from her protective guard to approach me, although at first too shaken by sobs to utter a single word.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “It must have been a hideous shock for you.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she mumbled, managing to control herself a little. “They told me about it yesterday; but they won’t tell me anything else. They won’t say who they think did it.”
“Well no, it’s a bit early for that, but they’re bound to find out in time.”
“No, they won’t. How could they? Who could possibly want to do such a horrible thing? Can you think of anyone?”
It was hardly the moment to do justice to such a question and also I could see the sister and brother-in-law fidgeting impatiently in the background, so I said:
“Listen, Brenda, let’s talk about it some other time. I think you ought to go home now and rest for a bit.”
“But you will come and see me? Say you will? You’re about the only person I can speak my mind to. Can you come tomorrow?”
&nb
sp; “I thought you were going to stay with your sister?”
“No, the police say I’ve to stop on here for a few days. They say there’ll be things they have to ask me. Everything’s changed now, you see, from what we thought.”
“But can’t your sister stay here with you?”
“Not her! She’s as selfish as they come. Still, they have offered to take Barry and Keith up north with them. It’s best like that and I’d really rather be on my own, specially if I know I can always get in touch with you, if I need to. Well, I’d better go now, or they’ll start fussing, but give me a ring, will you?”
“Will you answer if I do?”
“Yes. The superintendent told me I must. I mentioned about those calls, like you told me to, and he’s going to have the line tapped. So what I’ve got to do if I get any more of them is to try to give them a chance to trace where he’s speaking from. And I shan’t feel so afraid when I know they’re listening in.”
I was tempted to remind her that this clever scheme was likely to fall flat on its face if she continued to broadcast the details on the public highway, but I could see that the selfish sister’s patience was rapidly running out, so having promised Brenda to telephone her between nine and ten the following morning, I made my escape.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was a fortunate chance which had limited the invitations to the party for our fictitious wedding anniversary to only two people, for both of whom it provided a ready made excuse for further communication, and I started as usual with the nut which I anticipated being the harder of these to crack.
Rejecting the telephone for once in my life, nevertheless my first move was to consult the directory. There were numerous A. Fergusons listed, but only one in Pinner, so having cleared this hurdle with practically no effort at all I moved on to phase two.
This consisted of writing him a few lines to say how sorry I was to hear about the slipped disc, adding that in the circumstances we had decided to cancel the party. I did not specify what the circumstances were, judging it best to leave their precise definition to him, but continued as follows: