A Species of Revenge

by Marjorie Eccles

  By the time she got to it, the telephone had stopped, probably having been ringing for some time before they’d heard it and Simon having lost patience. She stood undecided, debating whether or not to ring him back, when there was a knock on the door, and when she opened it, there was the dark-browed Fitzallan on the step. He’d come downstairs from his attic eyrie to ask permission to have a bonfire in the garden, he informed her abruptly.

  ‘A bonfire? There’s a spot at the end of the garden that Dermot was using the other day, if you must – but I have to tell you I regard bonfires as extremely antisocial.’

  He looked at her as he digested this, saying nothing for a while. ‘Perhaps I should find some other way of disposing of my rubbish.’

  ‘Perhaps you should.’

  They stood looking at each other. He finally spoke. ‘Look. Please don’t be uptight with me. I apologize for the other day. I’d had a right old morning, unexpected meeting called, when all hell was let loose. No excuse, none whatever, but please – let’s be friends.’

  He obviously couldn’t exactly bring himself to smile, but equally obviously, in his own way, he meant to charm, and she was at least appeased, despite herself. She always found it faintly ridiculous to take umbrage, anyway, and he seemed to be wanting to make amends for his behaviour on her first day here. ‘What is it you want to burn, Mr Fitzallan?’

  ‘Fitz. It’s James Fitzallan, but Fitz is what everyone calls me. Come and see for yourself how much there is before you allow me to commit it to the flames – and incidentally, you can take a look at that view – though I warn you, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’

  She followed him upstairs and there was the famous view, from the famous window.

  You could see the Rotunda, just – if you were pointed in the right direction and told what to look for. Otherwise, what you saw was a panoramic view of sky, and the tops of trees just below, and beyond them, between lights winking palely in the early evening, the seemingly endless, undulating landscape of houses, factories, blocks of high-rise flats and roads leading towards several blobs on the horizon, one of which he said was the Rotunda.

  And behind her, on the walls of the room, a continuing cyclorama, in the paintings which covered them: the great sweep of skies and trees portrayed on the canvases hung, stacked and laid flat on the floor, all of them unframed.

  ‘Do you do this for a living?’

  ‘Good God, no! I’m not a professional, as you’ll see only too well, if you look closely. I run a design consultancy. You could call this a hobby, if that’s a word you’d use, though I wouldn’t. Let’s just say it’s served its purpose.’ She looked quickly for that flash of raw pain which had struck her before, but his face was closed. ‘Obsessive as to subject matter,’ he went on, ‘but it’s the only thing I can do. I’d like to try a human figure, but I’m not sure ... At any rate, I think I’ve painted myself out of this as a subject by now, hence the bonfire.’

  She was shocked. ‘You can’t!’

  His brilliant eyes lit with something which might possibly have been amusement as he followed her glance to the scores of canvases. ‘As a painter. I’m a damned good designer. But maybe burning them is a trifle Draconian, what do you think? No.’ He held up a warning hand. ‘Don’t answer that. I’d honestly rather not know.’

  She wanted to laugh, having a suspicion that he’d never had any intention of putting all his work on the bonfire, it was simply a contorted way of arriving at an apology. ‘It’s no good asking me, anyway, I’ve no qualifications to judge. You should ask my – the man I work for,’ she amended hastily. Bringing Simon into this was, she realized, the last thing she wanted to do, only she’d been thrown by James Fitzallan, his change of attitude. She’d written him off, but now, against all odds, she found she might be warming to him.

  ‘What about you? What sort of work do you do?’ he was asking. ‘Sit down, if we can find you somewhere among all this, and I’ll make some coffee while you tell me the story of your life.’

  When she left half an hour later, she realized this was more or less what she’d done, while he’d skated the surface and she’d learned practically nothing about him.

  6

  Rodney Shepherd’s mood couldn’t be described as best pleased when he woke up the next morning to find the strange car still blocking his entry, when he was expecting customers and deliveries. He picked the telephone up and rang the police in a rage, ordering them to come and tow away this sodding BMW that was blocking his entry, or he wouldn’t be responsible for the consequences.

  The offending car was removed from behind his premises by the police with a speed which satisfied even Rodney.

  The details having been input in to the National Computer, within minutes it was found to be registered to a Philip James Ensor, with an address in Solihull. The keys in the pocket of the man who had died at the Colley Street allotments were found to fit the car, and his prints corresponded with those all over the inside. A jacket was neatly folded on the back seat and his wallet was locked in the glove compartment. Jubilation all round at Milford Road Police Station was tempered by a telephone call Abigail made to his home which disclosed the presence of a wife who had thought he was still abroad on a business trip. Lord.

  ‘I’ve made an appointment with Mrs Ensor over at Solihull,’ she told Mayo. ‘I’m taking Martin Kite with me, OK?’

  She was impatient to be off. She’d convinced herself that she’d done all that was possible, and felt that the trail had gone cold, and now here was the break she’d needed, out of the blue.

  ‘That’s it, you stick with it, now that you’ve got a lead,’

  Mayo advised crisply. ‘Get over there as quickly as you can the wife doesn’t know yet?’

  ‘Wish she did – but I didn’t think it was the sort of thing to tell her over the telephone.’ He nodded his understanding. Apart from breaking it gently, in a case like this, you had to take advantage of the situation to grasp anything that might give a possible clue as to why someone had taken Ensor’s life.

  ‘What kept us?’ Abigail asked, inside half an hour later, as Kite eventually slowed down and began to thread his way competently through the built-up suburban areas on the outskirts of Birmingham. She’d have preferred to do the driving herself, but Kite was a Class One police driver, and proud of it, and she decided it wasn’t worth trampling on his masculine ego this time. She relegated herself to navigating from the map spread across her knees.

  ‘No point in hanging around.’ Kite’s watchword. He should channel his energies into getting his inspector’s exams, she thought. But Kite insisted he was happy where he was, and he was a damn good sergeant, very like Mayo, in that things moved when he was around. He ran his cases competently, without the need for flourishing trumpets.

  It was a change, working with him, rather than the lugubrious Sergeant Carmody, who usually doubled up with her when she needed partnering. He was at present on leave, no doubt bored to death on the Costa Brava with his wife and his mother-in-law, counting the days until he got back to work.

  ‘You’re too used to plodding along with old Ted,’ Kite said, picking up her thoughts. ‘When’s he due back? Another week? God, it’d bore me stiff, sitting around the poolside with the ma-in-law for company.’

  ‘Don’t suppose Ted’s too happy. He’d swap the Costa Brava any day for what we’ve got on. Hang on, we’re nearly there.’

  Another turning, and they’d reached their destination, a smart house on one of the new estates that were spreading out and stretching ever nearer towards Stratford-upon-Avon.

  Judith Ensor was a woman in her late twenties, slim, small, with a gorgeous figure and a cloud of dark hair, a heart-shaped face, big grey eyes fringed with thick lashes, which she was inclined to flutter. She had a very slight, but attractive, lisp. She was ready for work, her clothes and make-up immaculate. Had Abigail been asked to hazard a guess as to what that work was, she’d have plumped unhesitatingly for beauty coun
sellor, hairdresser, fashion consultant or some allied occupation, but she would have been wrong. Mrs Ensor worked at a car-component factory as an industrial nurse. She might well constitute an industrial hazard herself, if she walked through the factory looking like that.

  She sat very still when she was told the news. Under the pearly make-up it was impossible to see whether she had paled, but her eyes looked slightly unfocused and her lips were stiff when she spoke.

  ‘I knew something would happen one day.’

  ‘Would you care to elaborate on that, Mrs Ensor?’

  ‘What?’ She blinked several times in rapid succession. The big grey eyes were lustrous with what might have been tears. ‘Oh, oh just – his car, you know – he drove it so fast.’

  ‘I don’t think you can have understood. It wasn’t a car accident. I’m afraid.’

  Shock took people differently. It was possible she hadn’t taken it in when Abigail had told her how her husband had died. But Abigail didn’t have the impression she’d been thinking of a car accident when she made that initial response. A quick recovery, though, if it had been a slip of the tongue. Judith Ensor began to interest her.

  ‘Is there a relative or anyone you’d like us to contact, to be with you?’ Abigail asked. ‘Your children?’

  ‘We have no children.’ It was stated matter-of-factly, but with enough neutrality to show that it might seriously matter, and Abigail again shifted her perspective of the woman. Clumsy of me, she chided herself, you could never tell, and I should’ve noticed this isn’t a family home. The room they were sitting in was as immaculate as its owner’s person, furnished like a colour supplement, with all the material possessions of a successful, childless couple. There were holiday souvenirs from abroad. A conservatory out of House & Garden added to the back. Mrs Ensor’s own smart car was in the drive, this year’s model. Yet there was something wrong, something empty about the set-up, and it wasn’t only the lack of children.

  ‘When did you last see your husband?’ she asked. Judith Ensor sat back and crossed her pretty legs, shown off by the close-fitting short skirt she was wearing. Her expression hardened. Abigail, looking more closely, upwardly readjusted her assessment of her age by something like ten years.

  ‘I saw him last a fortnight ago,’ she said. ‘He was supposed to be in Cologne, on business. I wasn’t expecting him back until after the weekend.’

  Philip Ensor, it turned out, had been the senior sales representative for a freight-forwarding firm based in Bletchley, a job which had necessitated him travelling all over the world on occasions, though his journeys were mainly restricted to Europe.

  ‘It may have been business, then, that took him to Lavenstock last Saturday night?’ Abigail asked, adding the name of the firm to her careful, methodical notes.

  ‘Lavenstock?’ It might have been on another planet and not simply a town in the next county. ‘I don’t know. What makes you think I’d have been told, anyway? As far as I was concerned, he was supposed to have been in Cologne, wasn’t he?’ The pretty hand with the immaculately lacquered nails was taut on the chair arm.

  ‘Might he have been visiting someone there he knew?’ Abigail suggested.

  ‘Look, he didn’t know anyone here! He wasn’t the sort to socialize. We’ve lived here nearly a year and he scarcely knew the neighbours either side, he was away so much.’ There was a bitterness in her voice she didn’t trouble to hide now. ‘That’s why we moved here from Bletchley. With him away so much, at least here I’d be near Lew and Avis – that’s my brother and his wife.’

  Abigail’s next question seemed by now unnecessary, but the answer couldn’t be taken for granted. ‘Forgive me, but were relations between you and your husband friendly?’

  She laughed shortly. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘So it’s possible he went to Lavenstock to see another woman?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ She’d sounded absolutely dead certain, but Abigail pressed on. ‘All the indications were that he’d been involved in a fight, just before his death. If he’s been seeing someone else, Mrs Ensor, it could have been with a jealous husband.’

  ‘He didn’t go there to see another woman,’ she repeated flatly.

  ‘That sounds pretty categoric.’

  ‘So it should; I haven’t been married to Phil for fourteen years without knowing him that well. And another thing – he’d never get involved in a fight. Never.’ Her mouth twisted, marring the symmetry of the perfect oval face. ‘Running away was more his style.’

  If so, this time Ensor hadn’t run far enough, poor devil. His wife may have been shaken, but her life didn’t appear to have fallen to pieces on receiving the appalling news. She wondered what sort of life they’d led together, that Judith Ensor accepted the manner of his death so unquestioningly. But she’d said all she was going to say. Her lips were firmly pressed together, with the look of a woman who wouldn’t be persuaded into saying what she’d determined not to.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Kite, ‘there’s the question of identification. We shall need someone to do it – you say your brother lives near. Would he be prepared to do the necessary?’

  Her grey eyes turned a curiously assessing look on him, but she shook her head and spoke decisively. ‘No. I don’t want him bothered. I’m quite capable of doing it myself.’

  The photographs displayed around the home were enough to leave no doubt that Philip Ensor was indeed the man last seen lying on the mortuary slab at his autopsy. But formal identification was a necessity in any sudden, unexplained death, when anyone had been unlawfully killed, one of the more harrowing experiences which had to be gone through. Not, however, one which most wives willingly undertook.

  ‘It might be an idea to have a word with your brother, all the same. He may know something about your husband’s –’

  ‘If Phil didn’t confide in me, he certainly wouldn’t in Lew! I might as well tell you they didn’t exactly get on. But last Saturday, in case you’re getting the wrong idea,’ she added ironically, ‘we – my brother and sister-in-law and myself – were at a family wedding over at Sutton Coldfield, and the celebrations went on until well after midnight. You’d be wasting your time.’

  ‘Let’s have his address, all the same,’ Kite said.

  She shrugged and gave it.

  ‘When are we likely to find him in?’

  ‘Most of the time. He’s unemployed.’

  Abigail considered briefly. ‘Sergeant Kite will drive you over to Lavenstock and bring you back while I see your brother.’ If Kite was surprised at this, he said nothing. ‘In the meantime, would you mind if we took a look at your husband’s belongings? It might give us some ideas where to start, help us to get a better picture.’

  She readily gave permission. ‘Go ahead, what there is. He wasn’t a man for keeping things.’

  Which proved to be absolutely true. Philip Ensor might have been a man living in a hotel, for all the personal possessions he’d left behind him. Some clothing, good but unexceptional. A few expensive but unused toiletries, the varying brands suggesting they might have been given to him as presents. An innocuous choice of books and C D discs, revealing nothing but a mediocre taste. The personal papers in the shared desk were only insurances, tax papers, documents relating to the house. He’d had a mortgage he could well afford, contributed to a pension fund that would leave his wife in comfortable circumstances – though not suspiciously so. His bills were paid. He’d evidently lived a life so blinding in its ordinariness that it was in fact quite extraordinary.

  Lew Walker hadn’t done anything like as well for himself in life as had his sister.

  Not only was he unemployed, he lived in an undistinguished terraced house in a narrow, shabby street leading off the main Birmingham road, about as far a cry from Yorkfield Avenue as you were likely to get. He’d missed out on his share of the family good looks, too, though what he had would undoubtedly have been improved by a shave and a haircut, and
less of a scowl. Sullen and uncommunicative, he reeked of cigarette smoke and left the television horse-racing blaring in the spotlessly unimaginative living room, while waiting for Abigail to state her business. In the background his wife hovered, a tired-looking, colourless woman, with bulging, thyroid eyes, dowdy and depressed. Abigail would have felt the same, married to Walker.

  ‘Do you mind?’ She had no compunction in going to the set and turning down the sound. The man stared at her, but said nothing. The woman’s eyes flickered.

  It took Abigail about two minutes to realize Judith Ensor had been right. She was wasting her time here. The shocking news she had to pass on seemed to have no more impact than if the victim had been some unknown politician who’d been assassinated at the other side of the world, rather than their brother-in-law. No expressions of sorrow or surprise escaped their lips. Not even a dear me.

  She pressed on, feeling frustrated. The decision to spend time here she could ill afford, while Kite ferried Mrs Ensor to and from Lavenstock, had been prompted by a hunch that Judith Ensor didn’t want her brother to talk to the police. She’d evidently boobed, and was now going to have to hang around at the pub where she’d arranged to meet Kite. Neither of the Walkers had anything relevant to contribute to the sum of her knowledge about Philip Ensor, much less the mystery of his death. Mrs Walker opened her mouth to speak only once, and looked at her husband for permission before she did. Abigail had posed all the questions she could think of, and was about to leave, when the woman surprised her by speaking directly to her, and for the first time meeting and holding her eyes.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I have to go to work. Down the road at the Shangri-la café on the corner. They don’t like us to be late.’ She left the room, a moment later the front door banged, and after a few more unproductive words with her husband, Abigail, leaving him to light yet another cigarette, followed suit.