by Burke, John
“Sorry.”
Brigid said: “I’d still like to know…”
“We’re not quite ready to move,” Martin said to Eric. “Not yet. We’d like to have a housewarming party in our nice new flat before we decide to leave it. It could be, old son, that we’ll be happy there. Any objections?”
“And who’s talking of moving?” demanded Brigid.
“Nobody. The paint’s not dry yet.” Mrs Hemming must have been close enough to hear a large part of this. “It’s all right.” She set herself firmly before her son and Brigid. “I don’t want you to worry. You’re not to let yourselves fret while you’re away.”
“Mum, nobody’s going to fret.”
“I’ll be out of there before you get back. I don’t want you to think I’ll be round your necks the whole time. It wouldn’t be fair. It’s not right for a young couple…”
Brigid’s father appeared suddenly and steered Mrs Hemming away. He gave her another glass of champagne.
Brigid was about to turn back to Martin and ask what on earth they had been talking about, insisting on getting a straight answer, when she noticed a heavy, broad-shouldered man come into the room. He was too large to be unobtrusive, but he was doing his best to be tactful.
It was Detective-Sergeant Campbell. He trod slowly round the room, looking quietly preoccupied, like a detective hired to keep a discreet eye on the wedding presents. Without drawing attention to his presence he edged behind three women and reached Brigid’s father.
He spoke. It could have been only a few words, but they were enough to make Mr Johnson go pale.
Brigid instinctively began to hurry across the room towards her father. From another corner, moving in at a tangent, came her mother.
The body of Peter Blythe had been found.
He could not quite be called the skeleton at the feast, since there was still flesh on his bones; but that flesh, Campbell intimated, had suffered from being immersed in sea-water and rasped against the iron, barnacle-encrusted girders of the pier.
“Lodged in the girders,” said Campbell quietly, “below high water mark. The speedboats haven’t been running this last week because of the weather, or the body would have been spotted sooner. It was only a few yards from the pleasure trip landing-stage.”
“Accident?” said Arthur.
“Could be.”
But Nell found little comfort in Campbell’s answer. He conceded the possibility; but she sensed that he was not readily going to accept it.
She said: “He could have fallen over?”
“Might have done. But there’s a pretty secure rail there. You’d have to try hard to chuck yourself off. And he wasn’t a kid — not the sort who’d be skylarking about and climbing all over the place.” Martin crossed the room and joined Brigid. Nell glanced up at the clock above the door of the room. The two of them would soon have to go and change if they were to leave on time.
“He could have been pushed,” said Campbell. “Or knocked out and dragged down the steps to the speedboat platform.”
“Are you accusing anyone?” asked Arthur.
“Not yet.”
“Weren’t there any witnesses?”
“It’s holiday time,” Nell added. “There must have been people about.”
“It’s been mighty blowy out on the end there. Late in the evenings there aren’t many who’d want to go out on the pier. Plenty of opportunity for rough stuff once it got dark.”
“If people wouldn’t want to go along there, why should he have gone? He … he comes from a southern climate” — Nell knew she was talking too much, and at random, but could not stop herself — “and he’d be the last one to go out gulping in great mouthfuls of an English gale.” Detective-Sergeant Campbell shrugged. “We don’t know. Don’t see how we can know, right now. We’ll have to question people, that’s all. A lot of people.” He stared dourly into the arduous future.
“There’s a lot of questioning we’ll have to get down to.”
“Starting right here?” said Arthur.
The two men weighed each other up. Neither smiled, and neither looked away.
Nell said: “Look, Brigid and Martin have to go. They’ve got a train and a plane to catch. You don’t need them hanging about here, do you?”
“It struck me,” said Campbell deliberately, “that with a wedding on, they might be dashing off. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t one of these secret honeymoon addresses — lost to the world, that sort of thing.”
“You don’t think they had anything to do with … well, this awful business?”
“I’m not allowing myself to think anything yet. But Peter Blythe was a bit of a nuisance to your family, I’d say, and you’re the only ones in Lurgate who know much about him.”
“Precious little.”
“You’ve had more to do with him than anyone else. You’re the only ones with any reason for…”
“For what?” snapped Arthur.
“For any disagreement. Sorry, Mr Johnson, but I do have to find out, you know. It’s my job. And I do have to check where all the family is — and where it’s going to be.”
“Malta,” said Martin tersely. “That’s where we shall be. Nothing secret about it. I can give you the name of the hotel.”
Campbell looked dubious. “Going abroad?”
“Not exactly abroad.” Arthur’s temper was fraying. Nell knew the symptoms. It was only at such times that he was liable to grow sarcastic. “It’s in the sterling area. George Cross, bags of British loyalty and all that. A sort of Mediterranean Isle of Wight — can’t we count it as home waters?”
The detective allowed his gaze to wander slowly over the guests. Already heads were turning. Mrs Hemming showed signs of coming over, then swung round and presented the group with a view of her back. She dissociated herself from any further scandals and horrors. She had had enough.
“There’s no reason,” said Nell, “why they shouldn’t be allowed to leave now — is there?”
“Well…”
“If there is, say quite clearly what it is,” said Arthur.
“We haven’t got that far yet. You know that, sir. I just came round to tell you the news…”
“And to see how we took it? All right, you’ve seen. Now these youngsters are going to change and get out of here.” Brigid glanced at Martin. He nodded almost imperceptibly. Nell felt a sad twinge of jealousy. All at once Brigid had moved a long, long way from her. Already, she thought: already Brigid and Martin were close enough to communicate without words, to understand and share and react as one person — a person made up from the two of them.
So soon. So irrevocably.
Brigid said: “Daddy, we can’t leave now. If anything crops up…”
“Go and change, my dear.” Arthur put his arm round her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “You’ll have to get a move on if you’re going to catch that train.”
“But with all this going on…”
“Do as your father tells you,” said Nell.
“Wait a minute.” Martin smiled, but his left elbow jutted forward a few inches as though to take the brunt of an attack. “I’m the boss now.”
“Oh.” Upset as she was, Brigid could not help answering his smile. “Out of the frying-pan…?”
“All right,” said Nell. “What do you think she should do?”
“Just what her father says. Get a move on and come away with me. Now!”
“But leave that hotel address,” said Detective-Sergeant Campbell.
There was a lull. Nell, tingling with a hot irritation like a couple of viruses fighting something out in her bloodstream, thought that Campbell could at least have gone away for half an hour and come back later. But he simply stood politely to one side and pretended not to watch. He managed to be both discreet and monstrously obtrusive.
When Brigid and Martin reappeared, it was all over too quickly. Nell did not want a big emotional scene, but somehow she had expected the tempo of the farewells to be more
leisurely. She wanted to hold Brigid back just for a few minutes longer; wanted there to be a slow, gentle parting rather than a brutal snap. The noise and laughter welled up, Brigid threw a sprig of blossom to someone, Mrs Hemming burst into tears, all the occupants of the room surged towards the door as though at a signal, as though a fire alarm had begun its clamour in all their heads.
“Goodbye, Mummy. Bless you.”
And it was over. Martin kissing her, Brigid hugging her father, everyone shouting silly, meaningless things. And they were gone, almost thrown out.
Guests began to leave. Nell shook hands with three young men who might or might not have been friends of Martin. Others smiled and waved, a couple of women dabbed at their eyes and said it had been wonderful. The room was emptying. Two girls came in and started to clear away the litter from the table. There was a percussive clatter as plates were stacked and removed.
Mrs Hemming decided to join forces with the Johnsons after all. She oozed hostility towards Campbell.
Again doubts stirred within Nell, stronger this time. Now there was a corpse to add to the insoluble equation, and this meant that there must also be a killer. Whatever she might say to Campbell, Nell did not really believe in an accident.
Betty Hemming … or Arthur?
It could not possibly be Arthur. She would have known. He couldn’t have kept it from her.
Mrs Hemming said: “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
Campbell raised an eyebrow. Nell was tempted to tell him the whole story of Mrs Hemming and her ancestry. Let him see, then, who had the strongest motive for murder.
Arthur said: “I think Mrs Hemming ought to know the full story — remember what happened to Martin. It must all tie in somehow.” As Campbell hesitated, he said: “A glass of champagne, Sergeant?”
Campbell accepted a drink and, for the second time, told briefly of the discovery under the pier.
Mrs Hemming’s face seemed to shrivel in on itself. She might have been in acute pain. “Is it going to go on like this?” she whispered. “On … and on?”
Then the lines softened and she gave a harsh, abrupt laugh. “No. Of course not. That … that creature’s dead, you say? So that settles it.”
“Not quite,” said Campbell softly. “We still want to know who killed him — if anyone was involved.”
“He was drunk.” Mrs Hemming’s confident contempt was grotesque. “All that money … I told you it’d be squandered. Drank himself into a stupor — fell in the water. Just what I’d have expected.”
“Charming, Mrs Johnson.” Mr Hadow bobbed up suddenly before them. “Such a delightful couple. A delightful afternoon.” He shook hands with Nell and then with Mrs Hemming. He was so mild and twinkling and benevolent that he threatened to topple over into a caricature of himself. “It must be a great joy for you ladies. And you, Mr Johnson.”
The two ladies made suitable noises, Arthur walked to the door with the vicar, and Campbell took a leisurely sip at his drink, waiting for Arthur to return.
Nell said: “How long was he … it … under the pier?”
Arthur came back within range, and Campbell said: “A week … ten days. Difficult to establish within a few days because of the — um — state of the body. Taken a bit of a battering, like I told you.”
“So he could have been dead the evening Martin was attacked. Or alive, which would mean he could have been the attacker.”
“Dead — or alive,” Campbell agreed. “Neater if he was alive. But it still don’t tell us how he finished up the way he did.”
“Accident,” said Nell.
“Drunk,” said Mrs Hemming. “Serve him right.”
Campbell studied the two women in turn, and then raised an enquiring eyebrow at Arthur. Arthur did not speak.
Nell burst out: “I know what it’ll be like. There’ll be a nice little story going round the town. My husband’s following in his father’s footsteps — that’s it, isn’t it? Killing a Blythe — pushing Walter Blythe’s grandson off the pier.”
“No accounting for what people will say,” said Campbell smoothly.
“More hints and nudges. And no chance of answering back.”
Arthur answered Campbell’s steady gaze. “Why should I have had anything to do with it, Sergeant?”
“I’m not saying you did, sir.”
“Not in so many words. But theoretically, if I really were involved — what motive? Any ideas?”
“You might have wanted to stop him cashing the cheque.”
“I could have stopped it at the bank.”
“Then he’d just have come back for more, wouldn’t he? No point in giving it him in the first place, sir, if you weren’t going to let him cash it. Unless…”
“All right, all right.” Arthur brusquely accepted this.
“The cheque!” cried Nell. “Was it on the body?”
“No.”
“And the key of his room?” asked Mrs Hemming.
“No key, either. We carried out a thorough examination. His pockets were in a bit of a mess — all waterlogged. But no cheque and no key. Could be at the bottom of the sea, of course.”
At the inquest on Peter Blythe an open verdict was returned.
“Another case of ‘not proven’,” said Nell bitterly.
The cloud was darker than the one which had hung over them after the discovery of Walter Blythe’s corpse. It was heavier and closer and would take a long time to blow away.
Arthur had been called to give evidence regarding the arrival of Peter Blythe in Lurgate and his own contacts with the young man up to the time of his disappearance. He was not himself on trial; but where there was no charge, there could be no acquittal.
In silence they drove home. It was not until he turned off the ridge that Arthur, glancing back over the roofs of the town, said:
“It’d be good to get out of here. Turn our backs on the blasted place once and for all.”
“Is that what you want?”
“There are some big scheme brewing up North. The centre of gravity in this country is shifting, and about time, too. They’ve got some real projects up there. Real. Jobs you could get your teeth into.”
He was driving steadily but seemed not to be watching the road. He saw something far ahead, a long way off; saw a challenge he wanted to accept. Something he could get his teeth into, thought Nell. He had been loyal and conscientious too long. She said levelly:
“Darling, if you want us to go, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. We’ll only be suffocated if we stay here.”
He drove up to their garage and leaned across Nell to open her door for her. She got out. When he had put the car away he came slowly, ruminatively into the house.
“It’d be too much like running away,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to stick it out. We’ll leave when the whole thing is cleared up.”
“If it ever is. Think of old Blythe — or his widow, Serafina or whatever she was called. She didn’t stay. She must have got tired of being goggled at, jeered at, suspected of God knows what. She upped and cleared out. Why not us?”
“Do you suppose she was easy in her mind, afterwards?”
“That’s something we can’t even guess at.”
“Peter wasn’t very informative about that aspect, but I did get the impression that she harboured a lot of bitterness.”
“We can’t know,” Nell insisted. “And it wouldn’t be the same for us, anyway. There’s the two of us. If you want to go, we go. No regrets. Never mind what the rest of them say.”
“You’re wonderful,” he said shakily.
They sat down together and he put his arm round her. She rested her head on his shoulder. In spite of the turmoil he had suffered since this wretched business began she was still conscious of his basic, unshakable strength. He was still the staunch one; still loving and protective. She was the one who ought to be giving support and reassurance, but selfishly she was content just to lie against him and close her eyes.
&
nbsp; “I hope Brigid’s happy,” she said. “I hope it works for her, all of it, as marvellously as it’s always worked for me.”
“For us,” he said. The strain and the worry had gone from his voice.
The sun through the slatted shutters cast a dappled pattern on Martin’s shoulder. Brigid kissed the warmth of it. He rolled lazily yet purposefully towards her.
“We ought to get up, I suppose.” She yawned contentedly. “The sun’s shining.”
“It’ll keep shining. The travel brochures guaranteed that. We’ll demand our money back if there’s any slackness.”
His hand wandered possessively over her. When they talked, they found themselves often not finishing the sentences. Their hands explored greedily and lovingly, saying more than words could have expressed.
“Perhaps this afternoon…”
“Never mind the afternoon. We haven’t used up the morning yet. My love…”
“So warm…”
“Come here. Come on, come here when I tell you.”
Martin made love as though revenging himself for all the frustrations, the waiting, the upsets of the last few weeks. But it was a loving revenge; and with it he showed also a tenderness which made her feel shielded, safe, sheltered.
Brigid said: “When we get back…”
“Don’t talk about getting back. We’re here!”
But by the third day they found themselves, inevitably, talking about Peter Blythe and Brigid’s parents and Mrs Hemming. They ought to be talking about their own future, but that couldn’t exist until the past had been tidied up.
“Your mother never gave you any idea about … well, about your grandfather: Not until that day when it all came out?”
“Not a word. And it still means nothing to me. I don’t feel like Walter Blythe’s grandson. I feel like me.”
“Yes,” she said, touching him. “You do. Tell me when you feel like me.”
“Right now.”
They dismissed thoughts of Lurgate and all the questions that couldn’t be answered; but infuriatingly the questions kept coming back.
Brigid tried to talk about the two of them only. About themselves, apart from the others who crowded in on them. Detached, separate, self-sufficient.