Six Feet Under

by Dorothy Simpson

  “You mean, she didn’t normally have a key when she went there to work during the day?”

  “No. I only know this because on one occasion when Carrie came in here in the evening before going on to the Selbys’ she got into a terrible tizz because she’d lost the key. She found it, in the end. It had fallen out of her handbag when she’d dropped the bag in the hall on the way in. Anyway, I happened to mention this to Marion, later, and she was very surprised—said that she knew Carrie didn’t usually have a key to the Selbys’. It’s the sort of thing next-door neighbours get to know about, especially in a small village. I remember we thought it quite a little mystery.”

  “One to which you never found the answer?”

  “I’m afraid not.” The old man’s eyes were twinkling. “So if you do uncover it, don’t forget to let me know, will you, Inspector? It’s not good for me, in my condition, to be prey to unsatisfied curiosity.”

  Thanet grinned. “So on Monday evening, after leaving you, Carrie would have gone around to the Selbys’?” Why hadn’t the Selbys said so, he wondered.

  But Robert Pitman was shaking his head. “No. She never used to go on the evening Major Selby was expected back.”

  More and more interesting, Thanet thought.

  Marion saw him to the front door. He realised that he had forgotten to mention Miss Cox’s plight to her, and did so. He needn’t have bothered, however. Marion had already arranged for someone to do her shopping for her.

  “I only wish it was as easy to find a replacement for Carrie,” she said, with a worried frown.

  “Try Mrs Gamble,” Thanet said, with a sudden stroke of inspiration.

  “But she’s already got a job, in Sturrenden.”

  “When I saw her last night she looked dead tired,” Thanet said. “It might be worth a try.”

  “It’d be marvellous if she could,” Marion said wistfully. “But I couldn’t pay her anything like what she’d earn in a full-time job.”

  “You never know. She wouldn’t have bus fares and lunches to offset against her earnings You’d have nothing to lose by asking.”

  “Perhaps I will,” she said “Thank you, Inspector. You’re very kind.”

  Social-worker Thanet at your service, he said to himself wryly as he left. It was the old, old problem: how to tread the tightrope between entering too fully into the lives and minds of the people he came across in the course of his work, and remaining too detached from them. He had constantly to be on his guard against the emotional involvement which would, he knew, cripple his judgement.

  Outside, he stood for a moment breathing in the smell of wet earth, the faint fragrance of rain-washed flowers and then he walked thoughtfully down the path, turning at the gate to wave to Mr Pitman who would, he was sure, be watching him in the mirror. Had he imagined the note of relief in the old man’s laughter at the suggested liaison between Ingram and Marion? And if not, what was the reason for it? Had he come close to a truth which Mr Pitman had not wanted him to discover? If so, the implication was that Marion might not be involved with Ingram, but she was with someone else.

  Who?

  Outside the gate Thanet hesitated, unable to give his attention to the question of where he wanted to go next. Perhaps he shouldn’t have talked so freely to the old man. If Carrie had discovered that Marion had a lover, had threatened her with exposure.… Thanet shook his head impatiently. He couldn’t believe that the Pitmans would have been able to find the sort of money Carrie had been raking in. All the same, it was extraordinary the lengths that people would go to, to scrape blackmail money together. Perhaps Marion had come to the end of her resources and, unable to meet Carrie’s demands, had decided to kill her?

  It was no good, he couldn’t believe it. He just didn’t see Marion as a murderer. Nevertheless the annals of crime are well stocked with murderers whose guilt astounded those who knew them best. He would not entirely rule out the possibility. Who might the man be? Someone at the school where she taught, perhaps? Lineham would have to do a little discreet checking.

  Thanet glanced at his watch. Half past two. He had already decided to try to catch Susan Selby as she came out of school at ten to four. So, he had another hour or so in hand. Perhaps he would pay another call on Mrs Selby.

  Those twice-daily visits of Carrie’s, whenever Major Selby was away, intrigued him. He walked briskly along the road and up the Selby’s drive.

  12

  There was no sign of the little gnome of a gardener today, but someone—Mrs Selby, he presumed—was in. Music floated down the drive to meet him. A piano recital on Radio Three, he decided as he approached the front door, listening with pleasure to the great arching ripples of sound. Then, with his hand on the knocker, he became quite still. Had that been a wrong note? Could it possibly be Mrs Selby who was playing? Almost at once there was a crashing discord, as if someone had brought his hands down with despairing anger upon the keyboard. Thanet stood motionless, listening. Silence.

  Eventually he knocked at the door and waited, knocked again and then a third time. If she didn’t answer, he decided, he would go around and try the back door. Just as he was about to turn away, however, he heard footsteps and Mrs Selby opened the door, blinking at him as though she had never seen him before. Her clothes were just as expensively elegant as yesterday—a pale green woollen dress with softly draped skirt and long full sleeves—but there was an indefinable difference in her. Thanet studied her closely as he spoke, trying in vain to pinpoint it.

  She was clearly reluctant to let him in but she did, standing back and setting off down the hall without a word. Once again she led the way to the conservatory. In the big drawing room the grand piano stood open and there were sheets of music scattered around on the floor. The grate had not been cleared and the room looked untidy, neglected. Clearly, Carrie’s absence was making itself felt.

  Warmth and the damp, slightly musty odour of plants growing in a confined space enfolded them as they stepped into the conservatory.

  “Sit down, won’t you,” said Mrs Selby, waving him into one of the cane armchairs. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

  Without waiting for a reply she left, crossing the drawing room towards the hall with a purposeful yet curiously hesitant stride. Thanet watched her out of sight, frowning, then strolled around the conservatory while he waited, thinking once again how Joan would have loved it. The plants which climbed the walls and scrambled along the roof, filtering the light, imparted to the little room an air of natural grace, and created an atmosphere of restfulness which soothed the spirit. Thanet had never been in a room quite like it before yesterday and he felt that he could now understand the Victorian addiction to such places. A green oasis such as this would provide its owner with a unique solace.

  The plants in this one were many and varied in shape, size and habit, but all of them had one thing in common: beautiful foliage. Gold and silver, plain and variegated, delicate, feathery or heavily sculptural, they stood stiffly upright, arched or scrambled according to their nature. It was early in the season and there were as yet few flowers, but there was one plant in bloom and Thanet strolled towards it.

  He had noticed it the other day. It was trained against the wall and had now reached head height. Its foliage was graceful, trilobate and stippled in random patterns and speckles of yellow on green. The flowers which adorned it were unlike any Thanet had seen before: bell-like, their petals were of palest apricot, fragile as tissue paper. Delicately, Thanet put up a finger, tilted one to look inside and was astonished to see that depending from one of the petals was a tear-drop. He touched it with a fingertip and it rolled on to his skin, but sluggishly. Not water, then? He bent his head, cautiously put out his tongue. Honey! No, he corrected himself. Not honey, nectar. He licked again. This, then, was the food of the Gods.

  He stooped once more, to see if all the flowers had this extraordinary quality and it was at this point that he caught the glint of glass in amongst the dense foliage at the base
of the shrub. He bent down and parted the leaves. It was a bottle, three-quarters empty. He picked it up, looked at the label: gin. Beside it, planted in the moist, warm earth, was a glass. We’re teetotal, I’m afraid, Major Selby had said.

  It was one of those moments when the tumblers whirr and everything clicks into place. If Mrs Selby was a secret drinker, perhaps even an alcoholic …

  Hearing the tap of her heels in the hall he wheeled around, sat down hastily in the chair she had indicated. He observed her closely as she entered the room, watching with new eyes that careful pacing, the tic beneath her eye, the beginnings of disintegration in her face.

  “Forgive me for asking,” he said as she sat down, “but was that you, playing the piano as I came up the drive?”

  He had thought to put her at her ease by introducing a neutral topic and was astonished at her reaction. Those surprisingly large, capable hands—pianist’s hands, he could see it now—curled involuntarily into fists and she closed her eyes briefly, as if in pain. Her smile, as she replied, was little more than a grimace. “I’m afraid so, yes.”

  “Afraid so? But you play wonderfully well,” Thanet said, sincerely.

  “You should have heard me when …” Abruptly she stopped. “But you obviously haven’t come to talk about my prowess as a musician, Inspector. What did you want to see me about?”

  On the alert, now, Thanet could detect the meticulous enunciation of the secret drinker. She was holding herself under a tight rein, every muscle stiff with tension. He had no doubt, however, that her self-control would hold. She had a long way to go before she reached the stage when she would fall apart. He might as well come straight to the point.

  “I understand that when Major Selby was away, Miss Birch used to call here morning and evening.”

  Once again, her reaction surprised him. Almost at once she rose, her movements curiously stiff, as though she were a marionette. She walked jerkily to the windows overlooking the garden and stood looking out, her back to Thanet. Was it that she didn’t trust herself to look at him, for fear of what he might read in her face?

  “Yes, that is so,” she said, and her voice had a waiting quality. He could hear the dread in it.

  “Major Selby was away on Monday,” he said. “I wondered if Miss Birch had called in here on the way home from the Pitmans’?”

  “Oh,” she said, turning around, lightness in her voice now, face transformed. “I see. Oh … no, of course not. We knew that my husband was expected home that evening, so there was no need.”

  “No need?” he said, seizing the opening he had hoped for.

  Had he imagined the flash of panic in her eyes? She crossed the room in a sudden, unsteady flurry, sitting down in her chair and gripping the armrests as if she were clinging on to them for safety. Then suddenly, bewilderingly, her manner changed. She looked coyly down at her lap, positively fluttered her eyelashes at him.

  “It’s my husband,” she said confidingly. “He fusses so. When he’s away.… He just likes to be sure that someone is keeping an eye on us … on our safety, that is. Susan’s and mine. A house like this, you know, such a temptation to burglars …”

  Thanet listened incredulously. A more unlikely watchdog than Carrie he could not conceive of.

  “Oh, I can see what you’re thinking,” Mrs Selby went on. “You’re thinking Carrie wouldn’t have been much protection. And it’s true, of course, she wouldn’t. But my husband had given her instructions to ring him immediately if she suspected that there was anything wrong. He always made sure she knew where to contact him. As long as there’s an outside person keeping an eye on the place he can go away with an easy mind, he says.” She stopped, looked at him hopefully and he could almost hear her thinking, Does he believe me?

  And of course, he didn’t. He could see, of course, that there was some kind of sense in what she was saying, but it wouldn’t have been necessary for Carrie occasionally to stay up to an hour if she had only been checking to see that Mrs Selby and Susan were safe. A knock at the door and a moment’s conversation would have told her that. No, Thanet now had a much more credible explanation of Carrie’s visits. But one thing was certain: if his theory was correct, Mrs Selby was never going to admit it.

  “Yes, I see,’ he said, watching the relief in her face with compassion. Irene Selby would never have made an actress. “And you’re certain she didn’t call in last Monday?”

  “No, she didn’t. I told you, Henry was due back on Monday evening. There would have been no point.”

  “Thank you then, Mrs Selby,” Thanet said, rising. “I’m sorry to have troubled you again.”

  Relief made her almost gay. “That’s quite all right, Inspector. I know you have to get to the bottom of this awful business and anything we can do to help … any time …”

  Through the dusty drawing room, down the hall to the front door her voice flowed on, babbling platitudes. Thanet left her with relief. It was now almost half past three; time to be on his way, if he wanted to catch Susan on her way home from school.

  En route he thought about the Selbys. Major Selby must be worried sick about his wife’s problem. He was the kind of man to whom position, status in the community, would matter very much indeed. So, where did Carrie come in? Working in the house as she did it was more than likely that she had long ago discovered Mrs Selby’s secret. The point was, how had she used that knowledge? From what he knew of her and of Major Selby, Thanet could not imagine the subject ever having been directly broached between them; but he could see how, by hints and sly glances, Carrie could have communicated her understanding of the situation to her employer.

  And then?

  A meek request for higher wages, perhaps, granted by a secretly fuming Major Selby. How he would have hated being in the power of a nonentity like Carrie Birch.

  And those visits while he was away? Thanet could see the situation having arisen in which, much as he would have loathed being beholden to Carrie, Major Selby could have decided to turn Carrie’s knowledge of his wife’s secret to his own advantage. Those business trips must have been a source of tremendous anxiety to him, for how could he keep his eye on his wife from a distance? Carrie must have seemed the perfect watchdog.

  Thanet grimaced in distaste as he imagined Carrie, with licence to search, ferreting about for undetected bottles. In such a situation, Irene Selby could have swung violently between humiliation and anger; nothing infuriates an alcoholic as much as having his supplies taken away from him.

  Suppose, then, that after leaving Robert Pitman on the night she died, Carrie had for some reason—misunderstood instructions, perhaps?—gone to the Selbys’ despite Major Selby’s return? Suppose that she had found Mrs Selby belligerently drunk and had tried to remove her store of alcohol … Here, indeed, was a potentially explosive situation. Thanet could imagine the whole distasteful scene, picture only too well Carrie’s sly satisfaction, her sense of power as her employer pleaded with her. Driven by desperate need, Irene Selby might well have attempted to seize the bottle by force; might have struggled with Carrie, knocking her over perhaps and causing her to bang her head as she fell. And then, aghast at what had happened she might have panicked …

  And this was where the theory foundered, thought Thanet. He could visualise everything up to this point, but he could not then imagine Irene Selby picking up the nearest cushion and cold-bloodedly finishing Carrie off. Why should she? She would have achieved her object, retrieved her bottle.… Unless, of course, her hatred of Carrie had by then been such that the opportunity to get rid of her for ever had been irresistible?

  He was now driving past the tall hedge which marked the boundary of Sturrenden High School. In a moment he would come into sight of the main entrance. Rounding the bend in the road he was relieved to see that he was in good time. A long line of parked cars stretched down the drive and out on to the road: mothers, waiting to ferry their daughters home. Sturrenden High was a single-sex school, fee-paying and with an excellent academ
ic reputation. Some of its pupils boarded but most came daily, travelling sometimes quite considerable distances from outlying villages. Thanet parked on the opposite side of the road, on the bus-station side of the school. From here he had a good view of the school gates and a reasonable chance of catching Susan as she went by.

  A bell rang somewhere inside the building and almost at once the tranquil scene became one of swarming activity. The trickle of girls issuing from the building became a stream, then a flood. The cars crept steadily forward, picking up their passengers and then sweeping around the curve of the one-way drive to emerge on to the road some fifty yards away. Thanet began to worry in case Susan had had a lift or was perhaps staying on for some after-school activity. It was stupid of him, perhaps, not to have come earlier and asked for her to be brought out of lessons for an interview. But he hadn’t wanted either to alarm her or to cause gossip. For the nth time in his career he told himself that he was too soft, that he would have to toughen up, stop being so ridiculously considerate of other people’s feelings.

  Then he saw her. By now the flood had dwindled to a trickle again. She was with two other girls, but even from this distance she was unmistakable. That silken curtain of blonde hair, the eye-catching figure and elegant, swaying walk—she would stand out anywhere. Susan Selby, Thanet reflected, would be able to earn a living as a model any day. As soon as the girls turned out of the gates he started the engine, pulled across the road and into the kerb a little way ahead of them. Then he got out of the car and stood waiting.

  She recognised him at once and her step faltered. Then she said something to the other girls and they smiled, nodded, flicked their fingers in economical gestures of farewell and walked on without her, casting inquisitive glances at Thanet as they passed.

  “I wondered if you might like a lift home,” he said, smiling at her as she came up to him.

  “The third degree in comfort?” she said, arching her eyebrows. She gave a slight shrug. “OK.”