by Alan Hunter
I rocked my shoulders. ‘Why didn’t you mention her before?’
Selly gestured with his head. ‘I wasn’t trying, was I?’
‘But you are trying now?’
He glanced at me sharply, opened his mouth, said nothing.
‘Good. We’ll leave that for the moment.’ I started the recorder going again. ‘What I want now is a little background. Tell me first how you came to meet your wife.’
He scowled at the recorder. ‘That’s bloody simple. We both worked for the same firm.’
‘She worked for Corstophine?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Viv was never out of Brum. I was with Aplan, Rayner in those days – Atherstone Road, Solihull.’
‘They were manufacturing chemists too?’
‘That’s my speciality, isn’t it? I was their rep for South Wales: Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, the lot. Then they went bust and I joined Corstophine, but that was after we were married. A.R. got caught with thalidomide. I could see the crash coming so I cut loose.’
‘What was your wife’s job?’
‘Typist. She was working in dispatch when I met her.’
‘She was living with her parents?’
‘She didn’t have any parents. She was illegit, they’d dumped her in a home.’
‘Why did you marry her?’
‘That’s a bloody good question.’ He linked his short, hairy fingers together. ‘I’m effed if I know. It couldn’t have been sex. She had no more meat on her than a greyhound.’
‘You were in love with her, presumably.’
He writhed impatiently. ‘Not the sort of love you read about in Peg’s Paper. She was rum . . . different. You couldn’t figure her. What was going on behind that face.’ He dragged on his fingers. ‘Perhaps that was it. I wanted to find out what she’d got. The mystery bit: she hooked me with it. Something she had and the others hadn’t.’
‘Did you find out what it was?’
He laughed harshly. ‘A bloody great empty nothing, mate. It was just a trick she had of holding herself back. Once you got past that there was nothing to her.’
‘Yet you lived together for two years.’
‘Maybe it took me that long to find out.’
‘Was she a good wife?’
‘That depends, doesn’t it?’
‘Were there rows, trouble?’
He shook his head. ‘In a way she was a grateful bitch. I reckon she’d had a tough time. She tried. She didn’t want to cross me. She didn’t raise hell about other women. I gave her good house-keeping, personal money. She kept the house nice, fed me well. It might have gone on a hundred years, but hell, it wasn’t marriage. We were just bloody strangers.’
‘Then why did you separate?’
Selly hitched at his fingers. ‘In the first place I met Cathy. She’s a receptionist at the Castleford General, a real woman: the one I’ve waited for.’
‘And in the second place?’
‘Are you kidding?’ He gave me a leer over the fingers. ‘I came home one day and caught them at it. I couldn’t touch her after that.’
‘Who was with her?’
‘Two bints from the school. I didn’t ask for introductions.’
‘Was one a red-head?’
‘One was fair. The other was darker, sallow-looking.’
‘What did you do?’
Selly parted his hands suddenly and made a popping sound with his lips. ‘Kaput. I grabbed a few things and hit the trail. I haven’t been back to Wolmering since.’
I nodded, eyeing him. ‘Now let’s go back to the time when you switched employers. You were appointed to this district by Corstophine. What made you choose to live in Wolmering?’
‘It’s handy for the job. Pretty central.’
‘Surely not as central as, say, Abbotsham?’
‘Abbotsham isn’t on the coast, mate. We wanted a place by the sea.’
‘You had been here before?’
‘Never even heard of it. I rang some estate agents in Eastwich. They gave me half-a-dozen addresses, and this was the one with a sea view.’
‘Had your wife been here before?’
‘If she had she never mentioned it. But it’s bloody unlikely. Rhyl or Blackpool would have been more in Viv’s line.’
‘So you bought the cottage and settled in. You began to make a few friends.’
Selly’s eyes flickered. ‘That’s what you say. You can’t have seen much of Wolmering yet.’
‘But you had to be acquainted with a few people.’
‘Oh sure. I called the butcher Fred. Then there was the milkman and the paperboy. And the buster who read the meters.’
‘Didn’t you join anything – say the golf club?’
‘Squire, I didn’t even try. After I’d looked the natives over I decided Wolmering was just where I slept. They weren’t me, compris? And I wasn’t going to spend much of my time in the town. This place is just a bloody side-show, a lurk for the Old Folks at Home.’
‘But your wife was here all the time.’
‘True. But Viv was no mixer.’
‘Neither she nor you made a single acquaintance?’
He spread his hands. ‘That’s about it. If we wanted a show, a meal, we used to slip into Eastwich. What knocked me most about the girls was that Viv had ever managed to pick them up.’
‘You saw them just that once.’
He nodded.
‘It was a surprise to you.’
‘You’re not kidding.’
‘Then if she’d concealed that acquaintance from you, isn’t it possible she had concealed others?’
Selly scowled. ‘I’m not saying it isn’t, but I’m bloody sure I don’t know who they are. Look, I’ve been trying to tell you, Viv wasn’t an easy person to read. She was a quiet, broody sort of bitch, never let much past her face. I didn’t really know her, that’s the truth, and in the end I didn’t want to. What I did know shook me: there could have been plenty more.’
‘And you can offer no suggestion?’
‘No. But you’d better start looking further than me.’
I stared. ‘We never stop looking.’
His eyes were tight. I stopped the machine.
CHAPTER FIVE
FRIDAY, SHORTLY BEFORE lunch. I did what I should have done earlier: inspected the aspect of the town as it faced towards the Common. I drove down over the Town Green to the T-junction at the bottom, made a sharp turn right and cruised at a walking pace along the boundary road.
The first stretch included the car park, which was simply a wide verge shaded by oak-trees. The houses opposite were the end houses of two streets connecting with Town Green: Georgian, meaning they hadn’t been provided with an outlook towards the rude country. A hedge divided road and car park from the Common but it was breached by a stile and several gaps, from which departed tracks through the shag-grass and thickets of yellow gorse. At this point the Common swelled gently so that the view was not extensive, but the gorse gave the impression (quite illusory) that beyond stretched a tangled and perhaps impenetrable wilderness.
The road climbed. Within a hundred yards you reached a more comprehensive view-point, and from there you could see the clean sweep of the Common and its smooth decline to the marshes. It was open and grassy, with shallow undulations and only occasional islands of gorse, stretching westward an indefinable distance to a vague conclusion of trees. Northward the fringe of trees was closer, and among them one saw the pale walls of the school; and further right the plebeian roofs of the houses outside the town. The road to the upper harbour, bumpy and unfenced, crossed the foreground of the scene, passing a concrete water-tower (a discordant feature) and, lower down, a modest sports pavilion.
I cruised further. Now the style of the houses was changing. By their witness, it must have been early in the present century when Wolmering began developing fashionable pretensions. First a small, then a large half-square of terraces passed on my right, architecturally complex and embellished with every or
nament of art nouveau. The effect was pleasant. They were scrupulously maintained. Each barge-board and dormer was fat with paint. Near the angle of the larger half-square stood a crisp granite church with a rectory of the same style and material adjoining it. And these houses necessarily fronted the Common: they had been sited, with just that purpose in view. Any one of the cars now standing before them could have been driven in a straight line to where we’d found the body.
The road bent sharply around the second half-square but the superior terracing continued beyond. It was cut by the road to the upper harbour, which was also my return route to town. I parked near the junction and continued on foot. The last half-dozen houses butted directly onto the Common. They would have rear access, with their garages behind them, but you stepped out of their front gates straight on to grass. They ended abruptly at an unpaved lane along which also the town’s social line clearly ran: so that the last house presented the same blank wall to it as the Georgian end-houses did to the Common. Across the lane stood a red-brick cottage, hiding its clown’s face behind over-grown shrubs; then a stretch of allotments, looking similarly neglected, and finally the decisive boundary of the creek. Practically, Wolmering’s approaches to the Common were entirely occupied by the affluent and accepted.
Any lessons? I stood in the sun with the smell of warm grass in my nostrils. From here, from any point along the terraces, one could pick out the tuft of holm oaks with a pair of glasses. If Vivienne had died in one of these houses then the distance of the Common would be beckoning irresistibly to her murderer, offering ready concealment for the body without the risk of, say, a trip to the harbour. The far side of the Common had few visitors and the body might remain undiscovered for weeks. The murderer, whoever he was, knew nothing of the fisherman who used the Common as a shortcut to the harbour. This man, Wicks, had been cycling home from a night-fishing soon after dawn on the Wednesday morning, so that Eyke, receiving a call from him, was at the scene only a few hours after the body had been placed there. But that could not have been anticipated: the murderer had acted free of this consideration: for him the Common must have appeared a safe solution, directly available, remote from witnesses. At one of those windows, now, he might be watching: seeing the detective standing in the sun.
And if this were so, our murderer had emerged a few more steps from his shadows. He was, or passed for, a man of some substance, of good background and education. He was probably married, because he had vulnerability such as Vivienne could recognise and exploit; and he was very likely an older or retired man, with a standing in the community to lose.
If this were so!
Once more, I was venturing on the tightrope of logical probability.
Yet always, somewhere down the line, the guessing begins to fit the guessed.
Lunch at the Pelican. They had given me a table in one of the big windows. Comfortably seated, I could watch Wolmering go by just on the other side of my plate and napery. At this hour the elite had retired to leave their High Street to shop-girls and visitors; and they must have been frying down the road, because the girls kept passing with newspaper packets. Soon this traffic ceased too, and the little market-place fell quiet. Out there it was a splash of brilliant sun, in contrast to the polite gloom within.
I drank my fruit-juice and quizzed the customers. Across the room I could see Selly. He was sitting at a table with a smartly-dressed woman who I assumed was Mrs Bacon. She was tall and lean-featured but she had large, calm eyes; Selly was chatting busily to her and she was listening silently, without change of expression. Then, still without change of expression, she looked at me, and Selly broke off to dart me a glare. She turned away. Selly muttered something quickly and began shredding a roll into his soup.
I smiled to myself. There were other lunchers who appeared to be finding my presence interesting. I caught the eye of a thick-set, blunt-chinned man who sat with his lady at a table to my left. He was about sixty-five and had a fresh complexion and hair worn en brosse; he tried to stare me down, and when he failed, screwed a gold-rimmed monocle into his right eye. His companion, straight-faced, her hair rinsed blue, gave me a hard look before turning her shoulder. Then there was a solitary luncher who smiled: it took me a moment to place him as the painter, Reymerston. He was wearing a grey tussore jacket and a pale green shirt, and nobody now would mistake him for a fisherman. He nodded towards a table near the service door. There sat two gentlemen angling for attention. One wore a bright mauve shirt, one a bright pink shirt; but I failed to see them. The Press.
Lunch proceeded. I had the plaice, followed by stewed raspberries and cream, and Gruyère. Excellent; I didn’t hurry myself. The dining-room was empty when I rose. Across the hall, in the lounge, on a mock-Regency settee in the bow-window, I took my coffee and graciously conceded a pseudo-statement to the two reporters. Selly and some of the others had come into the lounge also, but they were sitting at a distance. Reymerston was there, taking cognac with his coffee, and the monocled gentleman (though not his wife). I saw off the reporters and poured more coffee. I was watching Selly in my peripheral vision. He was talking to Mrs Bacon in a lowered voice and occasionally favouring me with a sharp glance. Reymerston, too, I caught studying me amusedly, but the monocled gentleman was gazing into his cup; so I was taken unawares when suddenly he put the cup down firmly, rose, marched stiffly to my settee, ducked his head, and sat. We observed each other for a moment or two. He put the monocle in his eye.
‘Sir. Aren’t you the fellow they’ve brought down from London?’
I nodded and murmured my name.
‘Major Rede, sir. Late of the Borderers.’
He shot out his hand. I felt compelled to take it. He administered a brisk pump, at the same time staring into my eyes as though searching there for a secret sign.
‘Any connection with the Berkshire Gentlys, sir?’
‘If so I am unaware of it.’
‘You have the features, sir. Our old Colonel was Lionel Gently, and he had the same cut of the jib.’
‘But I know of no family ties with Berkshire.’
‘I find that very odd, sir. I’d say there was kinship somewhere, if you took the trouble to make it out. Had you heard of the Colonel?’
‘No.’
‘He was a very charming fellow. People sneer at the term these days, but the Colonel was a true gentleman.’
I inclined my head.
‘In the best sense, sir. It showed in his handling of a tricky situation. Always seemed to know the right thing to do, the proper course of action. The men loved him. And you’re the same stamp, sir; I was telling my lady wife at lunch. No doubt why you were sent along. There are still a few up there who know what they’re doing.’
I bowed again; the Major nodded sternly.
‘And you agree, sir – the situation is tricky?’
‘Of course, we’ll try to be tactful.’
‘The very word, sir. Precisely the word the Colonel would have used.’ He gave his monocle an admonitory touch. ‘Suppose you know my position in all this?’
‘I believe so.’
‘I’m in loco parentis, which is a very awkward thing to be. I daren’t put the girl over my knee, though that’s what she richly deserves. Daren’t do it. She’d be off in a flash, and sharing a flat with some long-haired johnny. What do you do these days? The world’s in a mess. I don’t know what will happen to Pamela.’
‘When did you learn of her acquaintance with Mrs Selly?’
‘When, sir?’ The Major’s monocle glinted. ‘Of course, I knew she’d taken up with the woman, her and her friends from the school. Never made any secret about it – they don’t, you know, these days. Just look you in the eye and tell you they’re going to the devil at seven.’
‘You perhaps saw no harm in the association.’
‘Aha, I don’t know about that. True, it wasn’t a fellow, but then it wasn’t the sort of person I’d want a daughter of mine taking up with. Her husband had cut her, you know,
and there’s usually brimstone about then. And perhaps you’ll call me a damned snob, but she had the speech and manners of a street-woman.’
‘You knew her, then?’
‘What? Well yes, I made it my business to. You can’t stand in loco parentis to a young girl without vetting the friends she makes. Never actually met the woman, of course: I know how to be tactful too. Just asked a question here and there and took notice of what I saw and heard.’
‘But you mentioned her speech.’
‘I heard her talking in a shop. I entered the shop for that very purpose.’
‘You were keeping her under surveillance.’
‘No, I didn’t say that, sir. My intention was to form an opinion of her character.’
‘And you do that with all your niece’s friends?’
The Major coloured delicately at the ears. ‘I think, sir, you will allow this was a special case in which I had a duty to act as I did. Pamela’s school-chums are unexceptionable girls. They wouldn’t be at Huntingfield if they were not. But Mrs Selly was a person of equivocal character and I had no hesitation in learning what I could about her.’
‘You already knew her character was equivocal?’
‘I knew she had been abandoned by the fellow down the room. And between ourselves I had observed him in the bar here, and I liked his character no better than hers.’
He sent a contemptuous stare towards Selly, who was now sitting alone, sullenly watching us.
‘So you formed your opinion of Mrs Selly’s character.’
‘Yes sir. She was singularly worthless.’
‘Then what do you think attracted your niece to her?’
‘I think that woman set out to seduce her.’
‘Have you grounds for thinking so?’
The Major’s cheek twitched. ‘She was a bad one. It was written all over her. Not safe with a man or a woman. Just had to look at her and you could see it.’
‘You could see what?’
‘Well . . .’ His hand lifted. ‘Something they have . . . an air. Like a cat’s. Feel you just have to stroke them and they’ll be all over you, anything you like. Sort of sweating temptation.’