The Man Whose Dream Came True

by Julian Symons

  ‘Know anything about boats?’ Dimmock shook his head. ‘No more did they. Bought her from me, Foster did, just because his wife wanted it. Like buying a kid a toy. Not but what she learned a bit. How to start the engine.’ He laughed, and Dimmock realised that this was a joke. ‘Now she wants me to sell the boat for her.’

  ‘What sort of man was Foster?’ He asked it to keep the conversation going, not because he was interested.

  ‘Thought the sun shone out of her backside. Bloody old fool if you ask me. I’ve seen her sort before, out for what they can get. Gold diggers, we used to call ’em.’ Clynes finished his tea. ‘Interested in cricket?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Hopefully, like a man excusing himself, he said, ‘My son plays.’

  ‘Local cricket club. I’m the president. Like to take some?’ He pushed a book of raffle tickets across the table. Dimmock bought the whole book, twenty at a shilling each. He would charge them to expenses, but suppose he won a prize what would he do then?

  Clynes did not show satisfaction, but Dimmock knew that he was pleased. ‘Right then, let’s go and have a look at her, shall we?’

  He put on an oilskin and then squelched across the yard with the rain pouring down. Dimmock quite distinctly felt mud surge up round his left sock.

  The boat was just about what he had expected. Clynes jumped in and Dimmock followed him more circumspectly, stumbling a little so that Clynes’ hand had to support him. The boat builder pointed out features. ‘Evinrude motor, pull starter on it easy to work. Steering wheel. Oars to use if the motor packs up. Nice little cabin, sleeps two if they’re not over six foot, calor gas cooker, even a baby fridge. And that’s it. She’s a pleasure boat, not for serious sailors.’

  ‘If you were taking it away from the place where it was tied up and didn’t want to make a noise, you’d use the oars.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Dimmock poked about. There was nothing to see. ‘I suppose the police searched it thoroughly.’

  Clynes stroked his chin. ‘They took a look. Not a long one. Didn’t expect to find anything, you won’t either.’

  Dimmock went into the cabin, got down on the floor, peered under the two bunks, even put his hand under, more for the sake of appearances than anything else. Nothing. Half a dozen paperback novels stood on a small ledge above the bunk, and he read the titles idly. A small kettle was on the cooker and in an access of idiocy, disturbed by the figure of Clynes in the doorway watching, he lifted the lid. Bits of kettle fur rattled about inside.

  ‘What you looking for, poison?’ Clynes guffawed slightly. Dimmock responded with a wan smile. He was reluctant to go out again into the rain, but it had to be done. Outside again he squatted down and heard the bones crack in his knees. I shall be lucky if I don’t get pneumonia, he thought. There was a little water in the bottom of the boat but to take the ache out of his knees he knelt down.

  Something was attached to one of the rowlocks, if that was what you called the things in which you put the oars. You could not see it when you knelt, but he could feel something at the bottom of the rowlock. He called to Clynes, who came and bent down beside him. Dimmock gently removed the thing, a tiny piece of fabric. It was about two inches one way by an inch the other. One side was check, the other a muddy brown. It was made from some rubberised material.

  ‘You saw me find it. I didn’t put it there.’

  Clynes nodded. ‘We haven’t cleaned her out yet. If we had done we’d have found that bit of stuff. Thrown it away most like.’

  ‘I didn’t put it there.’

  ‘Course you bloody didn’t. Think it’s important?’

  The discovery seemed to have changed Clynes’ view of Dimmock. His stare held something approaching respect. It was unlikely that the fabric was of any importance at all, but Dimmock shrugged. He felt the heavy dampness of his topcoat.

  They squelched away.

  ‘Might be a bit of mackintosh. Just what you could do with.’ Clynes guffawed. ‘Come in. I’ll give you a tot of rum.’

  They returned to the office. Dimmock drank the rum and wrote out a brief statement about the way in which he had found the bit of fabric. Clynes signed it as witness. Dimmock was a man who believed in the value of routine.

  With the statement in his pocket he got into his car, removed his soaking hat and coat and drove away. It was good to have the wet things off, but there was no heater in the car and within five minutes he began to shiver.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Today’s the big one then,’ one of the prison officers said to him in the van that morning. ‘You want to look all bright and shining, doesn’t he, Bill?’ The other man said that was right, get into that box and show ’em, good turn-out, bags of swank, rather as if he were going on parade in the army. One of them offered him a little pocket mirror so that he could adjust the knot of his tie. They were very friendly chaps. He had tried once or twice to tell them what his defence was, what had really happened, but they always cut him short and said that it was not their business.

  He had expected to be nervous, but once he had taken the oath swearing to tell the truth (and after all he was going to do just that) and had begun to answer Newton’s questions, he did not feel nervous at all. And a quick look at the jury – Bill the prison officer had told him that it was a good thing to look at them sometimes as long as you didn’t overdo it – showed him that they were paying attention. Blue Rinse had abandoned her nails and was looking at him with her lips slightly parted, Pretty But Fatuous was evidently attentive, oh yes he had them on the alert as he rode the gentle swell of the questions, answering them rapidly and with firmness in a consciously clear voice. He was rather pleased with the way in which he disposed of the name business. Why had he called himself Bain-Truscott?

  He hesitated just a moment, permitting himself just a hint of his smile. ‘Snobbery, I have to admit. I did it to impress people.’

  ‘There was no other reason?’

  Firmness at this, smile vanishing. ‘None at all.’

  It had been raining most of the morning, but now suddenly for a quarter of an hour the sun shone through the window, casting a lean knife shadow across the Court which moved slowly in the direction of the man in the box, away from the barristers in their wigs and gowns. There were one or two moments of drama, like the one when Newton asked if he had ever met the dead man.

  ‘Never.’ Very firm, head up showing the clean line of the chin. Sunlight was strong on his face.

  ‘But you talked to a man who called himself by that name.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘He was an impostor?’

  ‘I understand that now.’

  ‘Do you know now who that man was?’

  ‘It was Mortimer Lands.’

  Later he admitted that he had agreed to take part in disposing of what he believed to be Foster’s body.

  ‘Are you ashamed of your conduct?’

  Low voiced, but still firm. ‘I am.’

  ‘Can you explain what made you do it?’

  He would have liked to look at Jenny, to search her out with his eyes, but she was not in Court. He stared boldly at the jury instead. ‘I was infatuated with Mrs Foster. I thought she was in love with me.’

  They went through the tale of the drive in the car, the burden dropped out of the motor launch. ‘At the time you believed this to be Foster’s body.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you think now?’

  ‘It must have been some kind of dummy already prepared.’

  ‘I don’t want there to be any mistake about this. You were prepared to play your part in this wretched enterprise?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘You are not trying to deny that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you think of any word that would fit your conduct?’ He said again that he was ashamed. ‘When did you first learn that you had been taking part in a masquerade, that the whole thing was a sham?’

  ‘When the detective
at the airport showed me a picture of the real Eversley Foster.’

  Newton repetitiously made the thing clear. ‘This was a man you had never seen in your life?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘And you had no part whatever in his death?’

  ‘Absolutely none.’

  After his evidence in chief was completed the Court adjourned for lunch. Tony felt that he had done well and had impressed the jury. He ate a good meal. The prison officer with him watched him with surprise.

  At just about this time Dimmock, fifty miles away, discovered the piece of fabric.

  The line of defence had been fairly clear after the cross-examination of Mrs Foster, but still it seemed hardly credible, Hardy’s junior Gordon Baker said to him over their chump chops and pints of bitter that such a line should be seriously advanced. Hardy smiled faintly, with the air of superiority that made him so irritating, and said that if his client insisted on the story then Newton was stuck with it.

  ‘Yes, but I mean there are limits.’ Hardy looked at him interrogatively. ‘They must have given him a hint of what he was in for.’

  Hardy had eaten half of his chop. He looked at the rest of it and pushed away his plate. ‘And if they did?’

  ‘Well then, surely–’ Baker was at a loss how to go on.

  Hardy delivered himself of one of those apothegms that made him very little loved. ‘A counsel is no better than his client. Especially,’ he added with the faintest gleam of a smile like sun on ice in winter, ‘When the counsel is Newton.’

  After Jerry Milton had gone to work Mortimer Lands felt terrible. He thought of ringing Jenny at her hotel, but he knew that she would not want to speak to him. He felt physically unable to go to Court again, although he was still worried about the man who had called at the farm. Just after midday he thought that it might do him good to go out. This proved to be a mistake. He went into a pub and felt impelled to start a discussion about the case in which he maintained that Jones might be innocent. Fortunately he did not reveal his identity, but when he left the pub he had had too much to drink and nothing to eat.

  He went back to the flat and fell asleep. On waking he still felt terrible.

  Genevieve Foster woke early, had her usual breakfast of orange juice and Melba toast, and then went shopping. Or rather, she went into shops and looked at clothes. She did not buy anything because she thought that it was too soon after Eversley’s death for that to be wise. She had already decided that when it was all over she would not marry Mortimer. She was not worried about him, because after all he could say nothing about her which did not implicate himself, but he was a weak man and she found weakness unsympathetic. When the case was over she would tell Mortimer that what had been between them was over too and go away for a time, perhaps to one of those Greek islands that people talked about.

  Looking at the round immature body of an assistant in one shop, and at the girl’s equally round soft face she felt the stirrings of desire, and wondered if she were basically a Lesbian. Perhaps on the Greek island there would be a chance to find out. When she came out of the shop she took a taxi and had lunch in a salad bar. Then she took another taxi to the Old Bailey and was in Court when Hardy rose to begin his cross-examination. As Tony entered the box again she was struck by his good looks, as she had been when she first saw him. It was a pity that he was such a fool.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was not much to do at the Villa Majorca, but Sarah Russell had said that she would go in that day and in she went, cleaning and dusting as usual. Mrs Foster had told her that she might be leaving Southbourne after what had happened, but while she was there the place had to be kept clean. She put on a kettle for a cup of tea, looked at the rain shuttering down outside and thought about the Fosters. He had been a perfect gentleman, although rather old and pernickety and set in his ways, but Mrs Foster now… There was something that she had never quite liked about Mrs Foster, although she couldn’t have said what it was, except that she never had a chat with you as in Sarah’s view an employer should chat with her daily help.

  As the kettle boiled the bell rang. A little man – medium-sized really, but somehow he looked small – was outside the door, and he was obviously very wet. His hat and raincoat were thoroughly sodden. ‘Miss Sarah Russell,’ he said, and raised the sodden hat.

  The gesture touched her. Very few men had ever raised their hats to her, and he looked pathetic in his wet clothes. She had no doubt of his respectability, somehow the age of the car outside certified that, and Dimmock did not even have to produce one of his cards to get into the house. She sat him down in the kitchen, hung his wet coat in front of the electric fire and put his hat beside it. She made him take off his shoes, commented on the wetness of his trousers. Dimmock felt that she would have been quite prepared for him to take them off as well. He put them close to the fire and they steamed.

  ‘Thank you very much.’ The words came out as a crow-like croak, but the hot tea soothed his throat. ‘I hope I shan’t infect you. I’ve got a cold coming on.’

  ‘You ought to be in bed.’ She spoke angrily. She seemed a formidable old battleaxe.

  ‘Tomorrow I shall be. Home in Wembley. And I can tell you I shan’t be sorry.’

  ‘Wembley,’ she cried. Her brother and his wife lived there. Friendship was cemented, and it was not until he had had a second cup of tea and eaten a biscuit that she said, ‘You’re not a reporter, are you? I’ve had some of them round.’ He shook his head and sneezed. ‘Bless you,’ said Sarah Russell.

  He produced his card and told her that he was gathering in-formation for the defence. She stared.

  ‘You’re too late, aren’t you? The trial’s half-way through. And there’s been someone here already.’

  ‘Did you tell him anything?’

  ‘There was nothing to tell.’

  Dimmock said that she knew how it was, he had been given this job to do. What use they made of any information he found – he lifted his shoulders.

  ‘Funny the way they go on,’ Sarah said, and added sharply: ‘Something’s burning. Your socks.’

  His feet certainly were near the fire, and he withdrew them. ‘My husband used to burn his socks.’ In fact it came to her now that this little man reminded her of the husband who had been dead for twenty years. He too had always raised his hat to ladies. ‘Do you do this all the time? Going round and talking to people, it seems a funny way to make a living.’

  ‘I suppose it is. I don’t always get so wet.’ It might have been her husband John sitting in the chair opposite. And because John too had sometimes made incomprehensible jokes she was not disconcerted when he said, ‘When my feet are very wet I sometimes get into a pet.’ He looked at her and said, ‘But not today. You’ve been very kind.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well, anything – anything odd. Out of the way, you know.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something that is funny, something I’ve remembered.’ At another time and in other circumstances, perhaps even if the sun had been shining, she might have sent him away with a flea in his ear. As it was she told him the something funny she had remembered and then looked with interest at the bit of material he produced, which she recognised at once as resembling Mrs Foster’s raincoat. She looked for the raincoat but it wasn’t where she would have expected it to be, in the hall cupboard. When they found it eventually, tucked away with some old bedding in a tiny junk room, Dimmock knew that for the first time in his life as an operative he had discovered something of importance.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When Tony returned to Court after lunch he saw Jenny immediately. She sat in the row reserved for witnesses, pale and calm. He knew that in her presence it was more than ever important that he should do well.

  Hardy opened quietly, almost amiably. ‘Would you call yourself a truthful man?’

  ‘On the whole, yes.’

  ‘As truthful as most people?’

  ‘I think so.’
>
  ‘Let us see.’ He consulted or pretended to consult his notes, looked up. ‘You called yourself Bain-Truscott when working for Mr Foster, but that is not your real name.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you also used the name of Scott-Williams?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And other names too?’

  ‘I’ve explained, I did it to impress people. I didn’t like the name of Jones.’ Just a hint of his smile there and a glance at the jury. One of them looked angry. Perhaps his name was Jones?

  ‘Very well. Now, when you produced your references for this job, were they true or false?’

  ‘I’d written them myself. Again, it was just to impress people.’

  ‘The references were false?’

  ‘They weren’t genuine.’

  ‘They weren’t genuine. Very well again, since that is the phrase you prefer. Now, you will remember when you took the cuff links and pin to Mr Penny. What did you say to him?’

  ‘I asked what they were worth.’

  Hardy raised his hand into the air, then lowered it in a wearily patient manner. ‘But how did you describe them? Let me remind you. Did you say they were a family heirloom?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘True or false?’ As Tony hesitated Hardy’s voice rang out for a moment, clear and beautiful as a rapier blade. ‘True or false, Jones?’

  ‘It wasn’t true,’ he said sullenly. All this was not what he had expected, and it seemed to him unfair.

  ‘It was not true,’ Hardy repeated. ‘Now, turn your mind for a moment to the time when you were interrogated at London Airport. You said you had a job in Caracas. True or false?’

  He looked appealingly at the judge, who must surely understand that nobody could be expected to tell the exact truth in such circumstances, but found no help there. And Hardy was going on without waiting for his answer.