David dropped the petition on to the table. Why did the law have to make such a rigmarole of things when two totally incompatible people belatedly found they could not live together? Why couldn’t it be as simple as getting married was...His thoughts came to a sudden stop. With a sense of shock, he realised the petition had called for the dissolution of the marriage, not a judicial separation. Catalina was asking for a divorce.
With hands that suddenly seemed all thumbs, he picked up the petition, opened it, and hastily reread. There it was, in black and white: she wanted a dissolution of the marriage.
He ran out of the breakfast-room, along to the hall, and up to the telephone. He dialled nought and asked the operator for Thornton Lees three two two. Patricia answered his call after only two rings. “Pat, guess what?”
“David, what on earth has got you so excited this early in the morning?”
“I’ve just received the petition from Catalina’s solicitors. Pat, she’s asking for a divorce, not a judicial separation.” There was a pause. “Oh, David!”
“Isn’t it incredibly wonderful? We can get married and make an honest woman of you. Pat, we’ve got to celebrate. We’ll crack a bottle of bubbly to-night. Or go out and have dinner. Or cut a slice out of the moon.”
“David...You are quite sure it’s a divorce?”
“A hundred and one per cent sure. She’s asking for a dissolution of marriage on the grounds of my frequent adultery with Mrs. Patricia Brakes at divers places.”
“Why?”
“Why the divers places?”
“Why’s she so suddenly changed her tune? Have you promised her a fortune?”
“I offered her three thousand quid and she turned it down. That’s all I know.”
“But it’s not like her. I don’t want to be bitchy, but...”
“Be as bitchy as you like.”
“David, she hates me like poison and she must hate you even more. You’ve made it more than plain you prefer me and she’s the kind of vindictive woman who’ll never let you get away with anything if she can possibly help it.”
“Nevertheless and notwithstanding, she has asked for a divorce. She can have her alimony pending suit, her maintenance, and her secured provision — whatever that is — and I can have you.”
“There must be a hell of a reason.”
“Stop searching for trouble.”
She was silent for a while, then she said: “Perhaps you’re right.”
“Dinner out?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll pick you up as soon after work as I can. By the way, remember that piece about divers places?”
“Yes.”
He chuckled.
“Mr. David Plesence, just what nasty thoughts are passing through your mind?”
“Perhaps I’ll tell you about them later. Good-bye, darling.”
“Good-bye, David. Don’t work too late.”
He replaced the receiver and returned to the breakfast-room. He stubbed out his cigarette, lit another, and reread the petition. There it was, without a shadow of doubt, for all the world to see. Catalina wanted a divorce.
Cathart walked round from the municipal car-park to the main entrance of the Swan Hotel, on Waterground Street. He went in and asked the receptionist if he could see Mrs. Cabbot. The receptionist telephoned the bedroom and relayed the message that Mrs. Cabbot would be down in a moment and would he wait in the lounge.
He sat down in the lounge. The place was decorated with all the dreary lack of imagination that was the hallmark of English provincial hotels. Only one other person was present and he was an elderly man who lay back in one of the battered arm-chairs and was apparently fast asleep. He could have been there for days. With a quick flash of macabre humour, Cathart thought that perhaps he had been there for days, dead but unnoticed.
He lit a cigarette. The Cabbot case was about to come up to the boil: he was certain of that. All the necessary ingredients but one were already present. A husband, trapped in a marriage he longed to escape from, a wife refusing to give him a divorce and determined to nail him for all the money she could, another woman whom the husband loved and was desperate to marry. The missing ingredient was the certain knowledge that Cabbot had been poisoned and poisoned at Frogsfeet Hall. Yet, thought Cathart, with a sudden annoyance, if one was going to be strictly accurate, one should add that there was one ingredient too many — Cabbot. He just didn’t fit in. Since he had turned up out of the blue it seemed reasonable to assume he had been poisoned by mistake and the intended victim had been Mrs. Cabbot. But why had he turned up from out of the blue, what had been the very important and confidential matter he’d wanted to talk about, what had changed his mind between the telephone call and his arrival at the house?
Mrs. Cabbot walked into the lounge, wearing a black frock that was an extremely bad fit. Her face was set in lines that were hard and bitter and there was no suggestion of grief left.
He held out a chair for her to sit down. Once seated, she stared directly at him, in a disconcerting manner.
“I’m sorry to trouble you at a time like this,” he said quietly.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered harshly.
Had he not seen the naked grief that had gripped her at the police station when the death of her husband was confirmed, he would have thought that she was unmoved by all that had happened. “I wondered if you were up to answering a few questions?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“What nationality was your husband?”
She did not answer, but opened her handbag and took out a passport and handed it to him. It was an American passport. “But Mr. Cabbot wasn’t an American by birth?”
“He was Cuban.”
“And he married you when...?”
“Six years ago.”
“Where?”
“My hometown, Terre Haute.”
“Where precisely is that?”
She looked surprised and then slightly contemptuous that he should not know. “Indiana.”
“Had you known him for long before you were married?”
“We were introduced at a party. He was very polite and very cultured. I’d never before spoken to anyone who knew so much about the world as he did.” She spoke as if reciting facts about someone who had been all but a stranger to her. “He talked like a man who’d been wealthy all his life and I thought he was really rich. I loved him very much, even if it was only a few days after we’d met, and I accepted at once when he proposed. My mother was alive then and she said George was just a well dressed hobo. I wouldn’t listen to her and we had a terrible row before George and I were married. Right then, I had almost ten thousand dollars in U.S. Savings Bonds and over five thousand in General Motors, apart from some other stocks. I’d saved all my working life because I guess I’ve not had much else to do with my money. George spent everything inside a year and it wasn’t until he’d used it all that I really realised he’d no money of his own. Like my mother said, he was just a well dressed hobo. But I loved him.” Just for a second, the mask slipped and her face registered intense grief, then all signs of this were once more gone.
“When did you come to England?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“At whose suggestion?”
“George said we needed a holiday.”
“He gave no other reason?”
“That’s all he said.”
Cathart was certain she was lying. “If you were as short of money as you’ve said, wasn’t it difficult to make the trip?”
“George found enough money.”
“Where did you stay when you first came to England?”
“In London, at the Hilton.”
“The Hilton?”
“That’s right.”
“But that’s a very expensive hotel.”
“George was used to the best.” She said that simply, as if there was nothing contradictory in her story.
“Did you know he was coming down her
e to Boris-ham?”
“No.”
Once again he was certain she was lying. “He never mentioned coming down here?”
“No.”
“Did he ever talk about Mr. Plesence?”
“No.”
“When did he leave London?”
“On Sunday. The day before he died. He caught the eleven o’clock train.”
“And he didn’t say where he was going?”
“That’s right.”
“You didn’t ask him?”
“I did not.”
“Is there anything more you can tell us that will help? Anything that might explain why your husband went to see Mr. Plesence?”
“No.”
“He felt completely baffled. “I’m sorry to have troubled you, Mrs. Cabbot.”
“It’s been no trouble.”
He stood up. “Will you be staying here for long, d’you think?”
“A while yet.”
“Would you let me know if you suddenly remember some reference your husband may have made about Mr. Plesence or Borisham?”
“I’ve told you — he never spoke of them.” She looked up at him. “He was poisoned, wasn’t he?”
Cathart shook his head. “I can’t answer you yet, Mrs. Cabbot. We still don’t know what killed him.”
She looked away and stared at some distant point.
CHAPTER VI
David was in the main cow-shed of Frogsfeet Farm when the telephone in the small adjoining office rang. He went along a passage, past the dairy, and into the office. The head cowman was already there, taking the call.
The other lowered the receiver. “Your secretary’s asking for you, Mr. Plesence.”
“Thanks.” He took the receiver.
His secretary spoke in her plummiest voice. “Detective Inspector Cathart is here and would like to see you, Mr. Plesence. Will it be convenient, or shall I ask him to come some other time?”
“He’ll come along.”
David rang off. He spoke to the cowman: “Still no trouble with the automatic cut-off units?”
“None. We’ve done as you said, not changed round and used the same ones continuously, and they’re still working perfectly.”
“What’s the incidence of mastitis?”
“One case and it’s mild. A tube of fifty thousand units of penicillin in each quarter will cure it.”
“It’s damned odd. We’re getting all too many reports of failure in the cut-off units and resultant high incidence of mastitis.”
“Have you thought about bad fitting? I noticed the other day that if you’re in a hurry it’s easy to be too quick and fit the unit just a shade off true centre. It still works. Maybe that starts things off?”
David rubbed his chin. “In the tests, we’ve never been rushed for time. Tell you what, Ted, you may have hit the nail square on the head. I’ll have a word with Ray on this one and see what he says.”
David left the cow-sheds, walked along to his car, and then drove to the factory. If the cowman had solved the problem of the faulty unit, it was only one more example of practice proving to be worth a hell of a lot of theory.
Cathart was waiting in David’s office, watched closely by Miss Bryanstrom who believed it possible of any caller to be a thief, no matter what his standing in life.
The two men shook hands. “Sorry I’ve been a time,” said David. “I was down at the farm.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Plesence, it’s my fault for dragging you away. You’ve had a word with one of my chaps, but I just wanted to check one or two more things myself.”
“Have you any idea yet what caused Cabbot’s death?” Cathart didn’t reply until he was sitting down. “We haven’t had confirmation yet, but it’s almost certain it was some kind of poison.”
“Which he must have taken when he was in my place?”
“That could be.” Plesence was not afraid to ask the questions, thought Cathart. That could mean anything or nothing, depending on his character. One of the reasons that he, Cathart, had made this visit was in order to meet Plesence and try to get an idea of his character.
“It would have to be a very quick acting poison?”
“Very.” Cathart waited, but nothing more was said. “I gather that on Monday morning Mr. Cabbot telephoned you and said he had something very important and confidential to discuss?”
“That’s right.”
“You had an idea what he was talking about?”
“None.”
“You must have wondered, though, with this coming out of the blue?”
“I wondered, but just shrugged my shoulders and said I’d see him. I’ve had some odd meetings since I’ve started this business and a couple of them have turned out to be very profitable so that’s why I don’t refuse to listen to people, however odd they sound. Farmers are some of the few individualists left in this country.”
“When he turned up at your place in the evening he said he’d made a mistake and he couldn’t even indicate what it had all been about?”
“That’s the way it went.”
“This must have struck you as more than just a farmer’s individualism?”
“Of course it did.”
Cathart smiled. “I have to ask these questions, even if I know they’re as obvious as you find them.”
“Of course.” David noticed that the smile had not spread to the detective inspector’s eyes. They remained coldly watchful.
“Cabbot said nothing, nothing at all that might help to explain things a bit?”
David shook his head. “He had a drink, a cocktail straw, and then he left. And that’s all I know about it.”
“Did you hand him the cocktail straw?”
“Did I? Darned if I know whether it was Catalina or me.”
“Could you think back and try to be certain?”
David thought back to the Monday. Catalina had arrived unexpectedly at the house. To begin with, she had tried to conjure up a spirit of romantic recall, dwelling on the fateful Caribbean cruise. When that failed, she’d become mean and vicious, refusing him a divorce at any price, abusing Patricia in terms that only someone completely immature emotionally would or could have used. He’d gone upstairs to look for her pearl ear-rings and then Cabbot had arrived. She had demanded a drink. Later, she had asked for a celery straw and had then rushed forward and got the tin. “My wife asked for a straw. I said I didn’t think there were any left, she was certain there were. She went to the cocktail cabinet and got the tin. She offered it to Cabbot and had one herself.”
“Had this tin been long in the house?”
“I’ve no idea. Catalina used to buy them.”
“You didn’t have a straw?”
“No.”
“Any particular reason?”
“I can’t stand celery and never have been able to since my schooldays.”
“What happened to the tin afterwards?”
“I suppose Catalina put it back in the cocktail cabinet. All I can tell you is that I didn’t.”
“I suppose you know one of my men got the tin from your housekeeper?”
“No, I didn’t. Mrs. Yarrow’s very good at forgetting anything but the latest scandal.”
Cathart took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. “Mind if I smoke, Mr. Plesence?”
“Of course not. Here, have one of these.” David pushed a silver cigarette box across the desk.
“Thanks.” Cathart dropped the packet back into his pocket and accepted a cigarette from the box. “I gather, Mr. Plesence, your wife is unfortunately asking for a decree of judicial separation?”
David had an instinctive reluctance to talking to anyone about his own private affairs and this reluctance was all the greater over so personal a matter as his marriage. “I’m sorry, I don’t think that concerns you.”
“Suppose I say it does?”
David merely shook his head and Cathart did not press the subject. The D.I. had no difficulty in judging the other to be a
man who, once he had made up his mind, stuck by his decision no matter what. A man, continued Cath-art’s thoughts, who knew himself to be right. A man prepared to make certain, no matter what, that he was right?
“That’s about it, then, Mr. Plesence. Many thanks for your help.” He gestured towards the window. “You’ve quite a factory here. I’d no idea it was the size it is.”
“We keep expanding so the place keeps growing. I don’t like to see it get too big and too far away from what it was originally, but these days it seems to be a case of expand or get out.”
“What exactly is your system?”
“The parlour-shed? A way of combining the speed of the milking parlour with the increased production that comes from the individual attention cow-shed milking gives.”
“And how’s that managed?” Cathart noticed the look on David’s face. “My father was a milk farmer. Only he used to milk into a bucket.”
“Our system hinges on two things: an electronic cut-off which stops the vacuum when the cow is milked dry and a hydraulically operated top to a pit which runs the length of the cubicles. The cows are fed in the cubicles, the operator lifts the pit flap, gets into the pit and puts the teat cups on the complete row of cows and it doesn’t matter whether there are ten or a hundred, since the only difference is the size of the vacuum pump. The moment each cow is milked out, the cut-off unit comes into operation and stops the vacuum operating that unit. The cowman’s free to work at whatever speed he likes. When he’s ready, he goes along the line removing the teat cups and putting them on the cleaners ready for automatic cleaning. The milk goes along the lines to a bulk tank. Finally, the cowman lowers the hydraulic flap and that’s it.”
A Deadly Marriage Page 6