by Ruth Rendell
‘I’m not mad, you see. Everyone thought I was insane when I said my daughter was alive. Now, I expect, they’d like to apologize.’
‘Certainly, Mrs Fanshawe. We all apologize.’ Apologies cost nothing. He smiled blandly into the petulant’s face and suddenly he remembered what this woman’s daughter had told him. How her father had paid her mother to let him have his women in the house. ‘No one thought you were mad,’ he said, ‘but you’d been in a serious accident.’ She nodded smugly and Wexford thought, She’s no madder than she’s ever been. But what did that amount to? She had never, he considered, been very bright.
Nurse Rose scampered in with two more chairs and she bridled, giggling a little, when all three men thanked her effusively.
‘You can get me another cushion,’ said Mrs Fanshawe. ‘No, not a pillow, a proper cushion. And then you can ring my daughter.’
‘In ten minutes, Mrs Fanshawe,’ said Nurse Rose, tired but bright as ever.
‘Just as you like.’ Mrs Fanshawe waited until she was gone and then she said pettishly, ‘This is supposed to be a private room, not that anyone would think so the cavalier treatment you get. Half the time you ring the bell they don’t come.’
Wexford said dryly, ‘You don’t find it as comfortable as the Princess Louise Clinic?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I understand you were in the Princess Louise Clinic in Cavendish Street in London last year.’
‘You understood wrong then. The only time I’ve ever been in hospital was when my daughter was born.’ She sighed impatiently when the door opened and Nurse Rose entered with tea for four. ‘I thought you were under-staffed? These gentlemen are officials. They aren’t paying a social call.’
But Dr Crocker said, ‘Thank you very much, my dear,’ and he ogled Nurse Rose outrageously. ‘Will you be mother, Mrs Fanshawe, do the honours?’
The rings clinked as she poured the tea. She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Well, my daughter’s alive,’ she said, ‘and I’ve never been to the Princess Louise Clinic. What else d’you want?’
Wexford just glanced at Burden and Burden said, ‘Your daughter’s alive but there was a dead girl lying by the wreck age of your car. Any idea who she could be? The name Bridget Culross mean anything to you?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘She was a nurse.’ Mrs Fanshawe’s sniff told him eloquently what she thought of nurses. ‘She was twenty-two and a girl who might be she who was dead in the road with your husband.’
‘She was never alive in the car with my husband.’
‘Mrs Fanshawe,’ Wexford said carefully, ‘are you quite sure you gave no one a lift from Eastbourne, from Eastover?’
‘I am sick of this,’ said Dorothy Fanshawe. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve told you. There was no one else in the car.’
He looked at her and he thought, Would you tell me? Are you ashamed that your husband flaunted these women at you, paid you? Or is it that you don’t care any more, haven’t cared for years, and there really was no one in the car?
Dorothy Fanshawe watched her rings winking in the sunlight. She avoided meeting the eyes of these tiresome men. They thought her stupid or a liar. She knew very well what they were getting at. Nora had been talking to them. Nora hadn’t the decency and the discretion to keep silent about Jerome’s nasty habits.
How stupid these men were! Their faces were all embarrassed and prudish. Did they really suppose she cared what Jerome had done? Jerome was dead and buried deep. Good riddance. All the money was hers and Nora’s now, more money than all those foolish-looking men would earn between the lot of them in their lifetimes. As long as Nora didn’t do anything stupid like marrying that Michael, there was nothing in the world to worry about.
Dorothy Fanshawe drank her tea and put the cup down with a sharp tap. Then she rang the bell and as the door opened, said:
‘We shall want some more hot water.’
She had been going to say please, but she cut the word off and swallowed it. Suddenly Nurse Rose, so plump and pink and young, had looked just like that maid Jerome used to paw about when she was making the beds. She smiled a little, though, for Jerome was dead and there were no maids or nurses or soft young flesh where he had gone.
‘Exhumation!’ Burden exclaimed. ‘You couldn’t do it.’
‘Well, I could, Mike,’ said Wexford mildly. ‘I dare say we could get an order. Only she’s been dead so long and the face was in a mess then and… God, I could wring Camb’s bloody neck!’
‘The aunt was so sure,’ Burden said.
‘We’d best get that Lewis girl down from the Princess Louise Clinic, show her the clothes. But if the girl was Bridget Culross, what was she doing in Fanshawe’s car with Fanshawe’s wife?’
‘I believe Mrs Fanshawe, sir.’
‘So do I, Mike. So do I.’ Wexford said it again to convince himself. ‘I think Fanshawe was capable of taking the girl to his bungalow and sleeping with her while his wife was there. I believe Mrs Fanshawe would have stood it. As to the girl – well, we don’t know enough about her to say. But Nora Fanshawe knew nothing of it and Nora Fanshawe was with them until the Saturday. They thought she was going to stay on. So where does Culross come in? And where was she stowed away on the Friday night?’
‘It’s very disgraceful,’ said Burden and he made a face like someone who had been shown a disgusting mess of offal.
‘Never mind that. Leave the ethics and concentrate on the circumstantial evidence. The more I hear of them the more I go back to my old idea.’
'Which is?’
‘In the light of our fresh information, this: Bridget Culross never knew Fanshawe. His wife was never a patient at the Princess Louise Clinic, therefore he isn’t Jay. Probably she went to Eastbourne or Brighton with Jay, rowed with him and tried to get back to London on her own. Maybe she hitch-hiked. A lorry driver put her down on the Stowerton By-pass, she thumbed a lift from Fanshawe – maybe she stepped out into the road, he couldn’t stop, hit her head and crashed. How’s that?’
Burden looked dubious. ‘That means to thumb her lift she would have had to be standing on the soft verge between the two carriageways.’
‘And any normal hitch-hiker stands on the nearside and waits for someone coming down the slow lane?’
‘Mm-hm. On the other hand we do know that Mrs Fanshawe heard her husband call out “God!” just before the crash; in fact, that was the last thing he ever did say.’
‘I hope,’ said Wexford, ‘the cry was heard by Providence and interpreted as a plea for forgiveness.’ He chuckled sourly. ‘So he sees the girl standing on the road, cries out, swerves, hits her. Why did she have only a little loose change in her handbag, no keys, nothing to identify her? Why would a lorry driver put her down on the by-pass instead of in the town?’
‘It’s your theory, sir.’
‘I know it is, damn it!’ said Wexford.
But he kept thinking about that lorry driver. Charlie Hatton had passed that way a quarter of an hour before the accident. He couldn’t have seen the accident. Could he have seen the girl waiting to thumb a lift? Or could he have been the driver who had left her there? The trouble was Charlie Hatton had been driving in the other direction.
It had been May 20th and on May 21st Charlie Hatton was a rich man. There must be a connection. But where did McCloy come into all this?
Every police force in England and Wales was now looking for Alexander James McCloy, light brown hair, medium height, aged 42, late of Moat Hall, near Stamford in Lincolnshire; because of Burden’s recent discoveries; they were looking for him in Scotland too.
This time it was Mr Pertwee senior who admitted him into the house. Still hand-in-hand the honeymooners were watching television.
‘Christ, do we have to?’ Marilyn said crossly when her husband got up and switched off the party political broad cast. ‘What d’you want this time?’
Wexford said, ‘In November of last year your friend Hatton
arranged to have the lorry he drove for his employer Mr Bardsley hi-jacked. When I say arranged, I mean he did so under the instructions of his other employer, Alexander James McCloy. Hatton got a little tap on the head and they tied him up, just to make things look more realistic. Fortunately, Mr Bardsley was insured. He wasn’t, though, when it happened again in March. That time he had to stand the loss himself, unaware, of course, that a good percentage of it was finding its way directly into Hatton’s pocket.’
He stopped and looked into Jack Pertwee’s pale face. Jack returned his stare for an instant and then dipped his face down into his hands.
‘Don’t you admit nothing, Jack,’ said Marilyn fiercely.
‘On the 19th of May,’ Wexford continued, ‘Hatton drove up to Leeds. He’d been ill and he took it slowly, returning on the next day, Monday, May 20th. While he was in Leeds or on the road he encountered McCloy. He encountered him or discovered something about him to McCloy’s disadvantage. Enough, anyway, to put him into a position from which he was able to blackmail McCloy to the extent of several thousand pounds.’
‘It’s a filthy lie,’ said Jack in a choking voice.
‘Very well, Mr Pertwee. I’d like you to come down to the police station with me, if you please…’
‘But he’s just got married!’ interrupted the father.
‘Mrs Pertwee may accompany him if she chooses. The situation has arisen that information is being deliberately withheld in a murder enquiry. Are you ready, Mr Pertwee?’
Jack didn’t move. Then the hands that clutched his forehead began to tremble. Marilyn put her arms around him protectively, but not gently, and her lips twisted as if she would have liked to spit in Wexford’s face.
‘Blackmail?’ Jack stammered. ‘Charlie?’ He took his hands away and Wexford saw that he was weeping. ‘That’s crazy!’
‘I don’t think so, Mr Pertwee.’
‘He couldn’t have,’ Jack said, mouthing something Wexford didn’t quite catch.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, he couldn’t have. McCloy’s inside. You’re a copper, aren’t you? You know what I mean. McCloy’s in prison.’
Chapter 15
The news from Scotland came through at almost exactly the same time as Jack Pertwee’s revelation. Alexander McCloy had been sent to prison for two years on April 23rd, having been found guilty with two other men of organizing a break-in at a supermarket in Dundee on early-closing day, and stealing goods to the value of twelve hundred pounds. A caretaker had been slightly injured during the course of the robbery and McCloy would have received a heavier sentence but for his unblemished record.
‘So while Hatton was in Leeds that May weekend,’ said Wexford in the morning, ‘McCloy had already been safely locked up in Scotland for a month.’
‘It looks that way,’ said Burden.
‘And that not only means he wasn’t available to be black mailed, but also that Hatton’s source of – well, I was nearly going to say legitimate, income was cut off. In fact, in May Hatton found himself shorter of money than probably at any time since he was married.’
‘Mrs Hatton said that when he was ill during the previous week he hesitated about sending for the doctor privately. By that time he’d presumably spent whatever he’d made when they nicked Bardsley’s lorry in March.’
‘At his rate of expenditure,’ Wexford cut in, ‘he probably had. It must have given him quite a nasty feeling. Panicked him, I daresay. Can’t you imagine him, Mike, looking to the future when he wouldn’t be able to stand all those rounds in the Dragon or take his wife frittering on a Saturday after noon or cut a fine open-handed figure at his friend’s wedding?’
‘I imagine he quickly looked round for another source of supply.’
‘We’ll go up to the Stowerton By-pass,’ Wexford said, getting up, ‘and to do some reconnoitring. Our two cases are converging, Mike, and unless I’m mistaken, they’re soon going to bump.’
‘There was no suitcase,’ said Sergeant Martin, ‘but I want you to look at the clothes she was wearing. They’re in a bad way, Miss Lewis. You must try to keep calm.’
She was a nurse and trained to control herself. Martin took her into another room where the burnt torn clothes lay like rubbish heap rags on the table. Each blackened tattered garment lay separate from the others and there was some thing in this arrangement that suggested a parody of a draper’s window.
The bodice of the coat and of the dress were charred fragments, although their skirts were almost intact and patches of orange and yellow showed between the scorch marks. The dead girl’s brassiere was an ellipse of wire from which every shred of cotton and lace had been burnt away. Margaret Lewis shuddered, keeping her hands behind her back. Then she touched the orange shoes, the white lace stockings as wide-meshed and fine as a hair-net, and she began to cry.
‘I gave her those stockings,’ she whispered, ‘for her birthday.’
Their tops only were charred, but a long brown mark ran down to the knee of one of them where a flame had licked. Martin put his arm under the girl’s elbow and led her away.
‘I’ll tell you everything I can about Bridie,’ she said and she gulped the tea Loring had brought her. ‘And everything she told me about Jay. She met him in October while she was nursing his wife. The wife was in a long time on account of having a threatened toxaemia and Bridie used to go out with him after he’d visited her. She’d come off duty at eight-thirty, you see, and he’d just about be leaving.
‘Well, he dropped her after his wife left the clinic and I thought that was the end of it. But it wasn’t. He turned up again in May and the whole thing was on again. Bridie started talking about marrying him. Oh, it was awful, really, and I didn’t used to listen much. I wish I had now.’
‘Did you ever see him, Miss Lewis?’ Martin asked.
Margaret Lewis shook her head. The colour had come back into her cheeks and she wore no make-up to smear when she dabbed at the lids with a spotless handkerchief. ‘We weren’t working in the same department, you see. Lots of people must have. You’ll have to ask the other girls. Bridie said he was quite old, lots older than her, and that was the one thing that made her – well, hesitate, if you know what I mean.’
‘So you wouldn’t know if this is him?’ And Martin showed her a photograph of Jerome Fanshawe. It had been taken by flash at a company dinner and the face was hard, confident, heavily jowled, but because of its arrogance and its strength and despite its age, not unattractive to women.
She looked at it with the distaste of the very young and, not answering him, said, ‘I told you they went to Brighton on the 18th of May?’ Loring nodded. ‘Bridie was going to be met by him at Marble Arch. I saw her go off in that yellow coat and dress. She said she’d have to amuse herself during the daytime because Jay would be at his conference. That’s why he was going, you see, to be at this conference.’
Loring gave another encouraging smile. This was the sort of thing Wexford wanted. Then he remembered his search through the clinic’s patient list.
‘The man we had in mind,’ he said carefully, ‘we couldn’t find his name among the clinic’s patients, you know. His wife denies she was ever in there.’
The girl touched the photograph and looked up at him in bewilderment. ‘How old is she, for goodness’ sake?’
‘The wife? Fifty, fifty-five.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Margaret Lewis blushed. ‘I think this has been my fault. Jay’s wife was in the maternity department. They’re always separate, you know, the general and the maternity departments in hospitals. Always. Bridie had done her midwifery and she was nursing Jay’s wife when she was ill before the birth and while she was having the baby.’
Burden was driving. With the accident plan Camb had given him on his lap, Wexford looked up and said:
‘Park in the next lay-by, Mike, and we’ll walk.’
An ancient milestone which had always stood on the bank since this highway was the coaching road to London, by c
hance pin-pointed the crash spot. From it a slow incline wound down into the valley.
The northbound and southbound sections of the by-pass, opened a year before, were separated by a strip of grass on which grew clumps of thin birch trees. Fanshawe’s Jaguar had struck one of these trees, overturned and caught fire. Wexford and Burden waited for two cars and a van to pass and then they crossed the road to the centre strip.
A large area of this grass had been burnt but by now new growth had replaced it and there was nothing but a ragged black stump to show where the crash tree had been.
‘First,’ said Wexford, ‘we’ll work on the assumption that the girl was in the car with the Fanshawes, she was Jerome Fanshawe’s fancy piece and he was driving her back to London. Who sits where? Mrs Fanshawe in the back and her supplanter next to Don Juan or vice versa?’
‘Surely there must have been some amount of pretence, sir,’ said Burden, wrinkling his fastidious nose. ‘It can’t have been all open and above-board. The girl would have sat in the back.’
‘It’s the seat on the driver’s left that’s called the suicide seat, Mike, and whereas the girl died, Mrs Fanshawe is still alive. If the girl was there at all, she sat in the front.’ Wexford made a sweeping gesture with his right hand. ‘Up comes Fanshawe, driving like a maniac he was at eighty or so. Now there’s no evidence of a burst tire and the windscreen didn’t shatter. What did Fanshawe see that made him cry out “God!” and pull the wheel over?’
‘Something in the road?’
‘Yes, but what? A big piece of metal or a wooden box? He’d have sailed right over cardboard. Anyway, they didn’t find anything in the road afterwards.’
‘A dog?’
‘Fanshawe wouldn’t have crashed for the sake of a dog. And he didn’t hit one because there was no body.’
‘Then he saw the girl herself,’ said Burden carefully, ‘stepping out of the centre section to wave him down.’
‘But we’re assuming the girl was in the car. Don’t you agree with me now that she can’t have been?’