“Is your mother in?” he asked.
The young man shook his head. “No. She probably will be soon. I should think she’s gossiping on the way home.” Charlie pulled out his ID and put it close to Pete’s face. “Oh, that,” the young man said. He turned without inviting him in, but led the way down the hallway to the living room. It was a small, comfortable room that opened directly into the kitchen. There were lots worse houses to be brought up in, Charlie decided.
“What did you mean by ‘Oh, that’?” Charlie asked him.
“The Fleetwood business,” said Pete Bagshaw. “That is what you’re here for, isn’t it?”
“The murder, yes.”
“Well, there you are. I knew someone at Alderley would have told you about me. That silly girl, probably.”
Pete Bagshaw had sat down. In the afternoon sunlight Charlie got a good look at him. His resemblance to the dead man was striking, but Charlie also noticed that he was moderately tall, and was getting quite bulky. Not that you needed much of that to stab anyone, he thought, but the interim postmortem had spoken of considerable force. Without being asked, Charlie sat down opposite the young man.
“Not the girl, the boy,” he said. Pete looked disappointed, as if there should be honor among computer geeks. “Why did you think it was the girl?”
“She was interested in me, but didn’t get anywhere. I think she’ll be a right little sex maniac in a few years’ time.”
“I think that position in the family is already taken by her sister,” said Charlie.
“Sister? I didn’t know there was a sister. I only saw the one.”
“And you saw the mother, of course. Was it her you really went to see?”
“In a way….” Pete considered, and gave the impression that he’d never really thought the situation through before. “I suppose it was mainly curiosity. My girlfriend had told me about this TV actress living near Marsham—that’s where her flatmate lives. And she’d told me who she was mistress of. My girlfriend only knows I’ve got a father who walked out on Mum and me, not who he was.”
“So what did you decide to do about it?”
“I decided to do some walking in the area, with a sort of cover story about the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which actually I did five years ago. And that’s what happened. All perfectly innocent and legit. I went past the house, and she—Caroline, that is, not the daughter—noticed me. I think she thought I hadn’t seen her in the garden, but I had. I felt sure she had spotted the resemblance. Then I went back, and was invited in, and we both knew who I was—neither of us needed to say anything.”
“You said it was mainly curiosity. What else was it?”
“I suppose…it’s difficult to find a word for it…maybe the nearest is spite. I wanted to tell her how her precious lover had treated my mother. I wanted to say: ‘Watch out. Soon it will be your turn.’ But when it came down to it, I couldn’t. The children being there made it difficult. And she was too nice. My quarrel was never with her. The nicer you are, the more easily fooled, as Mum was. And I sensed she wouldn’t believe me in any case—that she was at the stage where she’d accept anything he told her as gospel, so I’d just be banging my head against a wall.”
“You mention how your natural father treated your mother. What—”
But they were interrupted by the sound of a key in the lock.
“That’s Mum now,” said Pete, getting up. “She’ll tell you.”
The woman who came in had evidently once been very striking—a beauty, perhaps one with a strain of fragility. She had neither now, but Charlie felt drawn to her warm personality as she put an arm round her son’s shoulders. She smiled at the visitor.
“I think I can guess who you are,” she said, but Charlie went through the routine all the same. “I’m Betty Bagshaw,” she said when he had done. “Please sit down.”
“Mum can tell you how Fleetwood treated her,” Pete put in, insistently.
“Yes, but I think we’ll talk on our own,” said Charlie. “One thing before you go: Where were you on Saturday evening?”
“I was here all the time. Partly working, partly watching television.”
Charlie didn’t repeat his scorn at the idea of an intelligent young person watching Saturday-night television. He could have watched it just to be companionable with his mother. Or he could have been doing something else entirely, elsewhere. Betty Bagshaw had blinked during her son’s answer, and looked as though she was committing it to memory.
“I’ve got an early-evening lecture, Mum,” said Pete quietly. “Can you wait my tea till I get home?”
“O’ course.” She waited till he was gone, then sat opposite Charlie. “He’s a good lad.”
“I’m sure. I’m not suspecting him of anything.” Though he was suspecting him of not telling the whole truth about his Saturday evening. “I want to talk to you as much as anything to get background. That’s one thing we lack for Mr. Fleetwood. We’ve had someone tell us how he got started in business up here with Morrison’s, but we know almost nothing about his personal life.”
“Best say as little as possible about that,” said Betty Bagshaw. “But now he’s been murdered I suppose that’s not in the cards.”
“No, it’s not.” Charlie started her gently on the way he wanted her to go. “Tell me how you came to get involved with him.”
She left a few seconds’ pause and then took a deep breath.
“I was very young, just out of school. I was on a traineeship, just probationary—not a trainee for anything grand, just working on the tills. He was older, of course. He was a management trainee—much grander. We met at a disco, and found we both worked for the same firm.” She blushed rather prettily. “I think, in fact, he’d noticed me before we met up.”
“And how long ago was this?”
“Twenty-seven—no, twenty-eight years.”
“A long time.”
“Yes. Another world almost. Well, you won’t need me to fill in the gaps, will you? We started an affair, he was a wonderful lover, and always seemed a wonderful person.” She paused. In skating over the early days of her affair with Fleetwood she seemed to have aroused memories that were less than idyllic. “Though the truth is,” she resumed, “I was never entirely easy.”
“Why not?”
“I never felt part of his life, part of his circle, his friends. I never felt I belonged there. Do you sometimes feel that, being black, like?”
“Most of the time,” said Charlie cheerfully. “It has its advantages. Not being on the inside, you don’t accept things—don’t assume your ways and values are everyone’s ways and values.”
“Maybe,” she said skeptically. “But I didn’t like it. It was like I was in a side compartment of his life—in fact, talk about someone’s ‘bit on the side’ always makes me feel uneasy, even now. He didn’t mean to make me feel like that, maybe, but I did. And to add to that, my family never accepted him. They were very straitlaced, Methodist stock, and they regarded Bert Winterbottom—that’s what Marius was called then—as their lovely and promising daughter’s vile seducer, which he was in a way. Mind you, I was never promising in the way they thought I was. I was never going to get anywhere on my own. And in the end the affair just fizzled out. A long period when he got less and less interested, then the end. I was relieved, in a way.”
Charlie pondered the story.
“You say this was twenty-eight years ago when you two met. It must have gone on for a fair while, with your son now twenty-one.”
Betty Bagshaw looked embarrassed.
“Well, no. That was later. I feel such a fool. And I was a great big fool, and everyone who told me so was right.”
“What happened?”
“We met up again, several years after we’d split up. On Leeds station, it was. I’d been visiting my sister in Sheffield, he was off the London train. He’d branched out by then, started his first two supermarkets. We saw each other as we were going towards the ticket insp
ection barrier. Somehow everything clicked again. We both knew it. He marched me straight into the Queens Hotel, booked us into their best suite, and that was it for a couple of nights. Luxury like I’d never seen. He loved pampering and surprising people.”
“I think that stayed with him,” said Charlie.
“I suppose it would. I know that the very first time we—you know—he’d booked this lovely cottage in Northumberland. That wasn’t luxury, it was loveliness: just mountains and moorlands and forests. He was so romantic, in a way.”
“But when the baby came?”
“Oh, he never acknowledged it was his. Said it could be anyone’s. He knew I wasn’t the Sunday school type—and hadn’t been even when I was sixteen. Father could have been anyone, he said. Offered me a sum of one thousand pounds as a one-off gift. No acknowledgment of responsibility on his part.” She smiled as she sighed. “Like a fool I signed on the dotted line. I don’t know that I’d have been any happier if I’d fought him in the courts, but even in 1980 a thousand didn’t go far.”
“I don’t suppose it did,” said Charlie. “These romantics can be surprisingly hardheaded, can’t they?”
Thinking things over on Wednesday lunchtime, after the rector’s devastating visit, Caroline could see no option but ringing Marius’s solicitor and finding out her position from him. It was a Cardiff firm, dating back to the early days of the Fleetwood chain, and she had met the man for a moment when she had been down there for the weekend with Marius. To call him was embarrassing, but she told herself she had to get beyond and above embarrassment. As soon as she had finished a merely toyed-with lunch she rang him.
“Mr. Pritchard, I am very sorry to bother you, but it is rather difficult for me to make plans, not really knowing how I stand. I know the rent on Alderley has been paid up until the end of next month, but beyond that…”
“Yes, yes. I do understand the difficulties of your position, Mrs…. Mrs. Fawley. In fact, Mrs. Fleetwood has instructed me to answer all such questions.”
Caroline didn’t quite like that “all such.”
“That’s very kind of her,” she said.
“Yes, it is. Now, the codicil to the will instructs me to pay rent for a further two months after the period already covered, should that be your wish, and leaves you in addition the lump sum of ten thousand pounds, deductible from the estate.”
His voice faded into silence. That was it, then.
“I see. It’s good of you to make things clear. Now I can begin to make plans,” said Caroline. Then her voice too faded into silence, and she put down the phone.
Oddly enough the thing that rankled most keenly was that “two months.” Why not three, or six? She had never thought of Marius as small-minded, but he certainly thought small when he made wills. Only a petty man could have specified two months. And she knew perfectly well how far ten thousand pounds went in this day and age. No distance at all. Perhaps this was some kind of standard settlement, something Mr. Pritchard always had ready—something Marius had up his sleeve for all his women.
Damn him! she thought.
Meanwhile she had another dilemma, a moral one, and one close to home. Since she had removed the note from the pocket of Marius’s shirt, the whole affair it revealed seemed to have been burning a hole in her brain. She reached for her handbag and took it out again.
OK. Crescent Hotel ca. 8:45. Looking forward to it.
The eternal O
Christ! The eternal O! The human bike, more like. And Marius had…Marius had been on his way to…
She looked at her watch. Three o’clock. She could probably catch Oddie or Peace if she drove to Leeds now. She scrawled a note for Alexander and Stella, took out the keys to her newly restored-to-her car, and got on the road. Her rage did nothing for her driving, but it fueled her determination.
Oddie and Charlie were both busy when she arrived at Millgarth, and it was nearly five o’clock before she found herself sitting in Oddie’s office, with Charlie standing by the door and Oddie behind his desk. Her wait had tensed her up psychologically, and her mixture of emotions suddenly found an outlet.
“I feel disgusted with myself.”
Oddie looked at her compassionately.
“You haven’t done anything disgusting yet.”
“No, but I’m going to.”
“Do you want us to be discreet about the source of any information you’re about to give us?”
Caroline’s chin went up.
“No. I definitely don’t. If I’m behaving badly it’s because they nauseate me with their—with their farmyard behavior!”
Oddie continued to look sympathetically at her. By the door, Charlie’s expression was more cynical. Caroline rummaged in her bag.
“I was…going through my wardrobe, and found that I’d put one of Marius’s shirts there by mistake. I found this in the pocket. It’s been washed with the shirt, but it’s still readable.”
Oddie read the note, then called Charlie over and handed it to him.
“It’s an assignation note,” Oddie said finally.
“Yes.”
“For Saturday, probably.”
“I looked in the Leeds directory. There’s a Crescent Hotel there, near the theater.”
“Oh, we know all about the Crescent. And the handwriting is your daughter’s, I take it.”
“Yes. Without a doubt…. There is a long period in the opera when her character is offstage.”
“I know. Luckily I saw a performance. Before I did I’d assumed your daughter was out of the picture. In fact, she has nothing to do from around eight-thirty to around ten. A long time with nothing to do.”
“Oh, Olivia will always find something to do. She’s well known in the profession. No one would think of going to her dressing room in the course of a performance. She says her voice needs it…. Oh God! I’ve not been a good woman, not by old-fashioned standards, not even by my own, but I can’t think what I’ve done to account for my daughter being a nymphomaniac who thinks nothing of stealing her mother’s man.”
“I have to say, so you don’t feel too guilty at bringing this in to us, that I’d guessed about this assignation before you came,” said Oddie.
She looked at him, her forehead furrowed, her mind working.
“I think, you know, I’m not feeling guilty at landing my daughter in it. She landed herself in it. What I feel guilty about is producing such a rapacious horror of a woman!”
She leapt to her feet and ran to the door. Charlie ran after her to escort her from the building. With prompting from him she made it to the staircase, then down and through the outer office, where Charlie let her through the electronic doors into the public area.
Sitting there was a smart, intelligent-looking woman of maybe forty-something, regarding them both. Caroline didn’t see her and was blundering through toward the main door. The woman got up, however, and went over to her.
“Hello. It’s Caroline Fawley, isn’t it? I’m Sheila Fleetwood.
Chapter 14
Widows Together
“Are you all right?” Sheila Fleetwood asked.
“Yes. Yes—I’ll be fine.” Caroline was doing the plucky little wife. It had been a frequent role for her, but her choice was ironic in the circumstances. “The drive home will do me good.”
“You should not drive in this state. It would be asking for another tragedy. Look, I was thinking of going back to my hotel for tea. Why don’t you come along and share it with me? You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, but I always find that tea and scones work wonders.”
Caroline nodded miserably. She had no particular desire to go with this woman, or to like her. But somehow it already felt as if she had known her for a long while.
Sheila had obviously registered the taxi rank just around the corner from the police headquarters, and she bundled Caroline into the back of the first waiting one. She was staying at the Queens, and when they got there she gave careful orders for their tea at the desk an
d took Caroline up in the lift without pestering her with talk or fussy attentions. Her suite on the third floor turned out to be rather grand.
“Marius always insisted on the best. Part of the image, part of selling himself. Actually, I think he used to bring totty to this place from time to time.”
The old-fashioned word seemed to unite them, but Caroline looked around uneasily, sensing a weight of adultery in the walls and furnishings of the suite.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Things ought to be so difficult between us. The wronged wife always seems to have moral right on her side, but being the wronged mistress doesn’t pack much moral clout.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Sheila. “It depends on what you were told.”
“Told?”
“By Marius. What kind of assumptions you lived under. It’s many years since I had any illusions about my place in his life, so I ran out of indignation and grievance long since. You, I suppose, have only just learned the truth about him.”
“Well, yes, that’s true. But that wasn’t entirely what upset me, made me rush out of the police station like that.”
“What was it?”
“Olivia.”
Probably Sheila could guess what was coming from that hint, but she thought it would be salutary for Caroline if she was forced to spell it out.
“The great singer in the making?” she asked.
“Great whore, more like,” said Caroline bitterly. “Oh, I feel so—so soiled. That they could do this to me.”
“She and Marius?”
“Yes.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of tea. Little sandwiches, bread and butter, toasted tea cakes, scones, fruitcake, and biscuits. Caroline hadn’t known that afternoon tea still existed outside the tea shops in places like Harrogate or Cheltenham. She would have said she had no appetite at all, but when she began on the large tray she found quite soon that she was tucking in, and that the array of old-fashioned favorites was genuinely restorative. Sheila was tucking in with an equal heartiness.
The Mistress of Alderley Page 15