Bill Hazard had spent a few busy hours, the outcome of which was the inspector sitting in a parked car in a side-street while his chief talked to Charles Horace Thynne.
Wilma Haven was at her home, Broomwood, playing pop records, Beethoven, and Shostakovich while she made mounds of chocolate fudge from a new recipe she had cut from a French magazine.
The housekeeper at Broomwood, a Mrs Marshall, had been hard-faced and reluctant to talk until she had been invited to reconsider her position in the quietude of a police station back room, which she had declined with no reluctance at all. Possibly because she was the widow of a man who had died in jail of pneumonia after serving three sentences for breaking and entering, the last time with violence on a very cold night. Someone had helped him over the high wall and then when he fell getting back over it, and broke his leg, had made off, leaving him in the cold. His wife had been suspected, but nothing could be proved against her. She had been very tearful in court, and the crusading Wilma Haven had taken pity on her.
Mrs Marshall hadn’t volunteered much, but whenever prompted she had been able to produce a little more. But not to Frank Drury. She had no time for him and didn’t mind showing it.
Big Bill Hazard was a very different proposition. He had even brought a gleam to her frozen gaze and softened that hard expression around her unlovely mouth. At least, it would have been unlovely except for her splendid set of teeth. When she showed them in the beginnings of a smile they altered the entire look of her face. It became three-parts human. Not even Bill Hazard could do very much about those hard eyes, for the gleams he produced died rapid deaths when the official questions came. All the same, Drury had been moved to tell him, ‘With your sex appeal, it’s a damned good thing you’re not in the con racket, or there’d be a lot of rich widows with dwindling bank balances.’
Bill Hazard had been meant to take the words as a joke, one of Drury’s slightly off-beat variety. Instead, he had considered the words as though they were a serious suggestion coming from an expert.
‘That’s certainly an idea,’ he had said. ‘I’ve never got round to considering widows. Never been much for secondhand goods. Not even cars, though I’m told you can pick up a bargain now and then if you know where to look and can pay cash. I even live in a new flat. But widows … ’
He had left it like that when he saw that Drury was wishing he had never started the subject.
‘We think, Mr Thynne,’ Drury said when he considered he had left the undertaker waiting long enough for an answer, ‘that you may be able to help us forestall what could be a serious situation. I can’t explain in detail, but I’m sure you will want to help us if you can.’
Drury felt like a fraud when he produced a smile to go with the words.
‘How? What am I supposed to do? I’ve told you all I know, about her phoning, coming with the cheque, and my agreeing to let her have the hearse at eight o’clock next Wednesday.’
The advert had said on or around Thursday next. Wednesday was twenty-four hours before Thursday; supposing the on or around meant more particularly on or after — possibly Friday, that is — for the jape to continue, then why did she want the hearse a day earlier? Of course, Flora Marshall had told Bill Hazard about the pots of paint that had arrived. Wilma could be planning to jazz up the hearse with a paint brush. That could explain her willingness to pay through her rather attractive nose for the two-day hire of the damned hearse. It was a suspicion Drury felt he was not called upon to share with Mr Thynne, who was now eyeing the Yard man with plenty of his own.
Drury spoke gravely, not very happy in his mind about this part of an interview that never promised to be wholly satisfactory.
‘Mr Thynne,’ he said and paused to add weight to what he was about to say. ‘I’d like you to leak some information to the Press. I can give you a telephone number. It will be that of a news agency. I’ll also give you the name of the editor to ask for. He’s expecting a call from you.’
‘Indeed.’ Mr Thynne was decidedly arch.
However, Drury’s smile came back in full hypocritic measure and he chose to misunderstand with happy ease.
‘Oh, yes, Mr Thynne. The real work has been done for you. All you have to do is pick up your phone and speak. It will be excellent publicity for you and your business. You might even appear on TV. After all, you’ve read Miss Haven’s advert, haven’t you?’
‘I’ve also read what the papers say and an article on her in I Spy. At least, I think it was in I Spy. My wife doesn’t like me reading it, so I try not to upset her by taking it home. Babs — that is, Barbara, my wife — she’s a very sensitive woman.’
So sensitive she listens in to your dream-talking to yourself without telling you what you said, Drury reflected as he nodded in what was meant to imply agreement.
‘Of course,’ Mr Thynne was continuing, ‘in this profession we do not invariably welcome publicity. I mean, publicity for us has to be of the right kind, dignified you understand, to be commercially helpful, if I may put it that way.’
‘Put it any way you like — or any where you like, Mr Thynne,’ Drury said, standing up and feeling the farce shouldn’t be allowed to continue in time paid for by exploited taxpayers, ‘but ring that number and speak to that man, and do me one other favour. Ten o’clock for the hearse. Not eight. Eight is a bit too early for reporters. Despite what you may have heard and read they’re a lazy lot of bastards, my word for it. Ten o’clock would be about right. They’ve got to drive down with their cameramen, and they’re even lazier. So ten.’
‘What shall I tell Miss Haven?’
‘Anything you like. You overslept, the engine broke down, your wife failed to set the alarm, or the cat had made off with your black tie. I leave that to you. But ten.’
Mr Thynne sat woodenly in his chair, a round little man who looked as though a purgative might have done him a power of good.
‘I’ve eight black ties,’ he said almost in a whisper, so that Drury wasn’t sure the words were meant for his ear. ‘God knows where they came from. But eight. Babs is always ironing the damned things.’
‘Here, Mr Thynne.’
Drury had taken from his wallet the piece of paper on which he had already written the phone number and the news agency editor’s name. He put it on the undertaker’s desk. At the bottom he had written: ‘Remember, ten o’clock, please. Not eight.’
While Mr Thynne was still staring at the piece of paper Drury rose and walked out. He didn’t bother to say goodbye because he had a feeling he would be back, but he wasn’t looking forward to it.
‘Let’s call at Broomwood again, Bill,’ Drury told Bill Hazard when he dropped into the seat beside him and the inspector promptly started off down the side-street.
‘How did Thynne take it?’
‘Very well, considering. He’s got her money and so he’s acquired a small bit of conscience. But he’ll perform. My guess is he’s on the blower now. Step on it, Bill. I want the Haven girl to know the Press will be coming.’
‘She could guess that, and some have already tried to crash in. That’s why she’s got those guards on the gate,’ Hazard reminded him.
Not that Drury needed to be reminded. The couple of heavyweights who had tried to stop him seeing Flora Marshall had been sufficiently undiplomatic as to grab Drury’s arms. One had been put on the ground by Hazard, and he had remained there while Drury explained the penalties for attacking a police officer in the execution of his duty.
‘How were we to know?’ asked the aggrieved pug left standing on his feet.
‘Ignorance is no defence in law,’ Drury told him, ‘as I’m sure your counsel has told you on many occasions.’
‘He never did. All I was ever told — ’
‘Shut up, Biff,’ said the man smart enough to remain in a horizontal position when the wind blew from the wrong quarter. ‘You talk too damned much.’
The pair had not been in evidence when, forty minutes later, the two Yard men had driven away.
Out of a lengthening silence Hazard asked, ‘Think she was making all that chocolate fudge for Biff and his pal? Just to sweeten them up.’
‘Not your best, Bill,’ Drury said with no warmth. ‘She could have known Jeremy Truncard’s got a sweet tooth and wants him to have a sweet memory after the Russian Roulette.’
‘If it’s played out.’
‘I think that’s her intention.’
‘To commit suicide?’
‘No, I’m not prepared to go that far. But I think she could have given someone else an idea. Firearms in the hands of the wrong people often promote bad ideas. I’d be happier if I knew what was in the envelope she gave friend Porter.’
‘My guess is it’s part of the act. A lot of nothing, probably in bad taste.’
Drury nodded, but added nothing to his previous comments. Bill Hazard drove the rest of the way to Hever without talking, and picked his way down the curving lane leading to the iron gates in the high brick wall of Broomwood, a pleasant Queen Anne manor-house that had been made over and enlarged in the mid-nineteenth century, and was obscured by trees from the road.
The two pugilistic types were at the gates when the police car arrived. They were arguing with the occupants of another car. When Hazard and Drury were recognised the brawny Biff began grabbing arms again. It seemed to be his speciality.
‘Out of the way, boys. Here comes the law.’
After Hazard had driven through the gates they were slammed again in the faces of the two protesting reporters.
At the end of the drive was a Post Office delivery van. As Hazard drove up the van’s driver came from the house with a dark red canvas bag he had emptied inside. Wilma Haven’s mail had grown alarmingly. The advertisement was bringing results.
The girl herself stood in the doorway watching as the Yard men climbed out and walked towards her. Drury noticed that the postman’s face was working as though his mouth was chockfull. Chocolate fudge was his guess.
‘I heard you’d been pestering my housekeeper,’ Wilma Haven said with a beaming smile as she shook her long silken hair. ‘Now it’s my turn.’
Behind the girl someone moved across the hall. Probably Flora Marshall, Drury thought. She saw us and tipped her off.
‘Your turn to tell us about Jeremy Truncard, Miss Haven,’ Drury said, coming to stand in front of the girl, who made no move to invite them into her home.
She pouted. ‘Oh, I thought you were interested in the advertisement I put in the papers.’
‘Jeremy Truncard,’ Drury repeated. ‘We don’t really bother about newspaper advertisements, Miss Haven.’
‘I refuse to feel snubbed,’ she said brightly, ‘but I’ll play it your way. What about Jeremy?’
‘He’s disappeared.’
Her eyes widened. For a moment there was no expression on her face save that wide-eyed wonder.
‘You’d better come inside,’ she suggested, and turned to go in and lead the way, but changed her mind and came to a halt. Looking round, she asked, ‘Do either of you like chocolate fudge?’
Drury looked at Hazard, who stared back.
Both Yard men shuddered.
Chapter 4
Jeremy Truncard crushed out his filter-tipped cigarette in the dirty ashtray six inches from his emptied coffee cup. He wouldn’t have come into such a sleazy café if he had not felt the need for a final consideration of what he planned to do. As soon as he had sat down with the cup of lukewarm coffee he knew he was merely trying to fool himself. There was no room for any further final considerations. He had made the really final one when he had left Nuneaton. It was no use pretending there was still room for any consideration.
There wasn’t.
By this time the security bouncers would be trying to pick up his trail and if he let them clap a hand on his shoulder before he had finished what he had to do he wouldn’t be given another chance.
Not that he had been given this one. He reminded himself of this forcibly, like a man split in two, one half of him waging mental war on the other half. It wasn’t comfortable and it didn’t get anyone anywhere.
He looked around and felt for a fresh filter tip. Unless, he mocked himself, one admitted the obvious. It had got him into this place. A mire. A place of dirt and meaningless noise and bad odours.
He smiled tightly around the cigarette he had fitted into his screwed-up mouth like a key into a lock. He flicked on his lighter, considered the spearhead of gas flame as though he had never seen it before, then lit his cigarette slowly, very deliberately, like an old-time priest setting a lighted brand to a sacrificial fire.
His tight smile twitched a little.
He was thinking the damnedest things. Priests. Sacrificial fires. Well, maybe he was a sacrifice at that. To what? To whom? The sound of the short questions in his mind spun his thoughts away at a crazy tangent, and he closed his eyes and saw an owl. To wit, to woo. Owls. Not to what, to whom. He knew to whom.
Damned right he knew.
Wilma.
But not to woo. No, not now. That was all over. That was why he was there. He had to ring her.
Wring her, he thought with that split type of stupid thinking in which he indulged secretly. Wring her neck. What the hell would a psychiatrist make of this thinking? He’d be declared bonkers. Not plain, but pretty fancy bonkers. The worst kind, thinking of death and wrung necks.
His hands trembled, and he had to make an effort to still them.
He should have had some breakfast, especially as he had missed a meal last night. Too scared to eat. Too scared and too sick, but food would have settled his stomach, and that would have been the only thing about him that was settled, he cut in with that other thought process, still mocking himself.
He hadn’t settled anything about the baby.
And there was Gladys.
Wilma had to know. She had to realize this last piece of nonsense she had dreamed up wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She had had all the fun she was getting out of him. That’s why she had to be told the score.
He was through. This time for keeps. But he was prepared to take on the baby. After all, he was the father, and Gladys knew. She had agreed it was the only thing he could do if he wanted peace of mind. And, godless though he thought of himself, he wanted a peace of mind and soul that surpassed all understanding.
Certainly his own.
Anything his science-trained mind could understand wasn’t going to be enough throughout all the years of his life, though that was a piece of very simple arithmetic he couldn’t figure without the future being reasonably assured, and there was no future while Wilma —
He stopped it.
Coldly, deliberately, and with brutal shock to his system he stopped thinking at all. In place of thought there was a sort of cloudy awareness, and it included what he had to do, and this was as final and sure as though he had spent hours thinking it out. He was even a little scared by this awareness. Because he didn’t know who was responsible for providing him with it and he had a feeling he hadn’t. In fact, he felt rather like a thief.
Feelings!
Hell, his training, his way of life, even his thinking when he didn’t give it free rein like some blasted poet, every part of him rejected feelings as a guide to anything in this modern day. Feelings belonged in books and courtrooms, in hospital wards and prison cells, not in a grubby little back-street café, where he had ducked for a reason, not a feeling.
He had seen a police constable parading down the street on his beat, and the eyes under the helmet had been quick and intelligent, and the man in the blue uniform had been using them, earning his pay and allowances and boot money and whatever else a stupid bloody society gave its human watchdogs whose job was to watch and presumably howl if they saw anything — anything like Jeremy Truncard where he shouldn’t be, and about to do something his chiefs would never approve of, only Gladys, who would approve because she loved him, and love was a feeling, and there it was in his mind again and the who
le bloody mess was something short of awareness, and that was a feeling too.
His head was beginning to ache.
He crushed out the remains of the fresh cigarette that was smouldering away between his fingers, staining them the colour of that Eurasian girl’s flesh, the one who used to be with Wilma. He remembered her eyes, burning like coals in a grate when daylight dies in winter.
Why the hell should he think of her? Vicki. Yes, that was her name. It sounded Austrian, not a name from somewhere around the Ganges or the Hoogli. Well, she could have been part Austrian at that. She could have been part anything. Part snake.
It was she who had spoiled Wilma, spoiled her by changing her, and Wilma hadn’t been aware of the rot setting in. Only he. And he had left it almost too late. Maybe actually too late, because there was the baby.
He rose.
The pain in his head was a dull throbbing. It came more often these days. He had thought he would be all right after he had faced up to the truth about himself and Wilma and then about himself and Gladys. Only psychiatrists were liars and charlatans. They worked to no rules. They refused to be pinned down. They proved nothing that applied like an axiom. So they never dealt in truths. Only near-truths at best. They didn’t even know in which direction to set off to find truth. Which was damned funny, too.
You had to go down. That was the direction to go to find truth, down, down a well. Truth and pussy, both of them down a damned well, humming with sound most likely because cats can’t keep silent for long, and they can’t remain alive for long down a well either, and when they’re dead they stink like anything else that has been alive and suddenly isn’t, so there was stink down the well, stinking up the truth so that truth stank like a dead cat.
He heard himself laughing and felt mildly shocked as well as surprised.
I’m mad.
He thought that slowly and, he hoped, objectively, but somehow he couldn’t believe it. Because, after all, he did have feelings and through feelings came that awareness. But he wasn’t sure.
Hire Me a Hearse Page 4