Sylvester gave a cynical snort. ‘Thrilled! Huh!’
Marion frowned. ‘Anyway, that was what she did. And when she’d finished the course she stayed on, got a job in Oxford for the rest of the time he was there. I think she took it pretty much for granted that they’d be married when he’d taken his degree. So you can imagine how she felt when at the end of his final term he told her out of the blue that he wasn’t ready to settle down yet. His year in the Far East had made him realise that he wanted to be a travel writer and if they were to have any future together she must understand that he had to be free to travel, whenever and for as long as he wished. So in a few days’ time he would be leaving on a trip to China and planned to be away at least a year, perhaps longer. Imagine, all the arrangements were already made and he hadn’t said a word about it till then! Well, that was the last straw! That was when she first broke off with him.’
‘So that would have been in – let me see – June ’89.’
‘Right,’ said Sylvester.
‘Yes,’ said his wife. ‘Mind, I think she was sorry later that she’d acted quite so hastily. Particularly, I remember, when she realised she was going to miss the College Ball. It’s such a very special occasion and I think she thought he wouldn’t go at all if he couldn’t take her. Also, I suspect she thought he wouldn’t manage to find another partner. Girls are always in short supply in Oxford and most were already fixed up with partners by then. But no. She discovered later that Max had immediately got in touch with Linda, of all people, and invited her instead! Linda was in her first year at Bristol by then. He’d never looked twice at her before and never did again, to my knowledge, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers and he just wanted to show Tess she wasn’t the only girl in the world.’
‘Did it to spite her, more likely,’ said Sylvester.
Marion sighed. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. Anyway, as I say, Tess was especially upset about that. I think she thought he’d beg her to go with him, this one last time.’
‘Max wasn’t exactly the begging type.’
‘That’s not true! He certainly begged her in the end, didn’t he, when she was –’
Sylvester cut in swiftly. ‘I told Tess at the time, “You’ve only got yourself to blame. You told him you didn’t want anything more to do with him, and he obviously took you at your word.” ’
Thanet suspected that Marion had been going to say, ‘When she was engaged to Gerald’. Interesting that her husband had stopped her from doing so. Did Sylvester seriously think that the police wouldn’t find out about that?
‘Anyway,’ Marion went on, ‘off he went to China and he was gone for over a year, didn’t come back until, when? The end of November, wasn’t it, Ralph? He just turned up on the doorstep as if he’d never been away and nothing had ever gone wrong between them! I couldn’t believe it! What a nerve!’
‘I told her then, she ought to have nothing more to do with him,’ said Sylvester. ‘But would she listen? Oh no, not Tess.’
‘But you know how miserable she was all the time he was away, Ralph. She nearly drove me mad, moping about the house. And I was worried, too. She was off her food for so long I was afraid she was getting anorexic. So although I was cross with Max, when he just turned up like that, I was so relieved to see her happy again I could have forgiven him anything.’
‘Until the next time,’ said Sylvester,. ‘It was all very well while he was living at home writing his book, but the minute it was finished he was off again!’
Lineham’s frown of concentration told Thanet that the sergeant, like him, was having problems keeping up with all these comings and goings. ‘That would have been when, exactly?’
‘The following June,’ said Marion. ‘June ’91. And that I do remember because it was just after Tess’s twenty-first. We planned a big party for her and I know she was convinced that Max was going to propose that night. She knew his book would be finished by then and she thought it would be a sort of double celebration. But he didn’t. The very next day, in fact, he told her he was planning another trip. She was, well, devastated, wasn’t she, Ralph? That was when I realised that the situation was never going to change, that that was the way Max was, and if she wanted him, sooner or later she was just going to have to accept it. And that was what I told her. But she just couldn’t. Accept it, I mean. Not then, anyway. Well, I suppose at that age you’ve got all these romantic notions. You think you’ve got to come first with the one you love, don’t you? So this time Tess said that was it. Absolutely and finally it. She told Max that if he did go off again it was goodbye Tess. And he went. Finito.’
‘That,’ said Sylvester, ‘was when I stepped in. Rather than face the prospect of having Tess drooping around the house like a wet fortnight for God knows how long, I thought it would do her good to do a bit of travelling herself, might help her to get Max out of her system. We’ve got various relatives dotted around the globe, so to start with I put together a package with a few frills like first-class air travel thrown in, and off she went, to Australia and New Zealand, to begin with.’
Thanet could see that Lineham was thinking, And very nice, too! It’s all right for some! ‘And did it work?’
The Sylvesters consulted each other with a glance. Then Marion shrugged. ‘To some extent yes, I think so. It took Tess’s mind off Max and certainly gave her a taste for travel herself. The trouble is, travel to Tess means staying in comfortable hotels, eating gorgeous food, going shopping and sightseeing, whereas so far as I can gather Max prefers to rough it, go native, if you like. So there’s never been any suggestion she should go with him.’
‘I imagine he feels that that kind of travel is more likely to give him interesting experiences to write about,’ said Thanet.
‘Perhaps. I can’t see the appeal myself. Give me a bit of comfort, any day! Anyway, for the past few years both Tess and Max have been away quite a bit and when they did come home they seemed to miss each other. Tess came home for Christmas that first year, ’91, but Max was still away in South America. Then he came home the following May, for the publication of his book.’
Thanet’s antennae twitched. There had been a subtle alteration in Marion’s tone there. Why?
‘I’m getting confused,’ said Lineham. ‘I thought Mr Jeopard came back from South America last Christmas.’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘And he’d been away two years?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So why did he go back there for such a long period of time when he’d already done one lengthy trip out there?’
‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ said Sylvester. ‘Because he hadn’t quite gathered all the material he needed. But he was away much longer than he’d intended the second time. In fact, at one point his mother hadn’t heard from him for so long that she was afraid something dire had happened to him. And it had. We heard later that he might well have died. He’d fallen seriously ill while in the Amazonian jungle and been taken in by natives who looked after him for months until he was strong enough to be transported to the nearest hospital, which was some distance away. Even then it was some time before he was fit to travel.’
All good copy for the book which would now never be written, thought Thanet.
‘Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, when he came back in ’92 for the publication of his book, Tess had gone off to the States. But would you believe, the first thing he did was to come around here looking for her?’
By now this didn’t surprise Thanet in the least. However many ups and downs there had been in the relationship between Max and Tess, clearly there had existed between them some magnetism which they were powerless to resist.
‘Just turned up on the doorstep again, didn’t he, darl?’
Marion nodded. She stood up abruptly and began to clear away the coffee mugs. ‘Anyone fancy another cup?’
‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind,’ said Sylvester.
Thanet and Lineham shook their heads. Thanet was watching Mar
ion closely. Her husband didn’t seem to have noticed anything, but for the last few minutes she had been very quiet. Thanet was convinced that something had occurred to her which had had the effect of disrupting the earlier steady flow of reminiscence. What could it be?
‘If I’d been here I’d have sent him packing,’ said Sylvester. ‘Anyway, it was soon after that he took up with Anthea. Now that was a new one. He’d never shown any interest in her before. Though like my wife says, she’d always thought that Anthea fancied him. Trouble was, by then Anthea was living with Hartley.’
‘Ah.’ So it had been that serious between Hartley and Anthea, thought Thanet. How must Hartley have felt, when Max waltzed home from wherever he’d been and in default of Tess being around, stole Hartley’s girl from right under his nose? ‘How did that happen?’
‘It was at the party Mrs Jeopard gave to celebrate the publication of Max’s book, I believe,’ said Sylvester. ‘Thanks, darl.’ He took the fresh cup of coffee Marion had produced for him. ‘We were invited but we didn’t go, did we? I thought he had a bloody cheek asking us, after the way he’d treated Tess. Not that it should have surprised me. He had the nerve for anything, if he wanted it. I suppose that as Tess’s parents he was hoping to get us on his side again. Anyway, if that was what he wanted he was disappointed. And the next thing we heard, Anthea and Max were being seen everywhere together.’
‘It didn’t last that long,’ said Marion, rejoining them at the table. ‘Max took off again in the autumn for that second trip to South America – would have gone earlier, in my opinion, if it hadn’t been for the fact that his mother was ill and even he couldn’t bring himself to be that callous.’
‘So what happened with Anthea? Did she go back to Hartley?’
Marion shook her head. ‘No. And to my knowledge Hartley’s never had another girlfriend, before or since. I felt really sorry for him, I can tell you. Though I must say it did surprise me when he first took up with Anthea. I wouldn’t have thought she was his type, I’d have said she was too, well, flamboyant. But there’s no accounting for taste, is there?’
‘And what about Anthea?’
Sylvester gave a cynical little laugh. ‘From what happened last night, I gather she’d counted on Max coming back to her.’
‘What did happen, exactly?’
Sylvester and his wife glanced at each other. She gave a little nod. You tell it.
He took a sip of coffee and narrowed his eyes in thought, remembering. ‘Well, Anthea arrived late.’
‘Wanted to make an entrance, probably,’ said Marion, unable to resist joining in, ‘make sure her little exhibition had the maximum effect.’
‘What time exactly, do you know?’
Sylvester frowned, thought. ‘Sorry, no.’
‘Could you say if it was before or after nine o’clock?’ Thanet was still anxious to find out if this little episode had taken place before or after the note was handed to Max.
‘No, I’m afraid not. All I know is that most of the guests had arrived by then and there was quite a crowd. I was in the same room as Max and I saw Anthea appear at the door. I happened to be facing that way but in any case you couldn’t really miss her, of course, in that red Chinese outfit she was wearing. She stopped in the doorway for a minute, glancing around as if she was looking for someone – Max, I realised, because as soon as she spotted him she marched straight across to him, elbowed her way into the little group of people he was talking to, and put her hands on her hips. It was obvious she was out to make trouble and almost before she’d said a word everything went quiet.
‘“Hullo, Max darling,” she said. Then she stepped forward and quite deliberately slapped his face, really hard. It sounded like a pistol shot, and if there was anybody in the room who hadn’t been aware of what was going on, they knew about it now. You could have heard a pin drop. “You bastard!” she said. “I wish Tess joy of you.” Then she swung around and stalked out. You should have seen Max’s face! The shock! He couldn’t believe she’d actually done it!’ Retrospectively, Sylvester was clearly enjoying Max’s discomfiture.
‘What did he do?’ Thanet was genuinely interested. What did people do, in embarrassing situations like that?
Sylvester shrugged. ‘Pretended to laugh it off. Rolled his eyes, grinned around at everyone and said, “Wow!” They laughed, of course, as he’d intended them to, and gradually conversations started up again. No prizes for guessing what they were talking about, of course. I was livid, I can tell you. I didn’t know which of them I was more angry with, Anthea for making such a scene at Tess’s engagement party, or Max for messing around with one of Tess’s friends in the first place.’
‘But why did she wait until last night?’ said Lineham. ‘I assume there would have been plenty of other opportunities for her to tackle him before then?’
‘Of course there would!’ said Marion. ‘Max has been home since Christmas, that’s three whole months. That’s why we were so furious with her. She’s just an exhibitionist, that’s all.’
‘And I suppose she wanted to cause him maximum humiliation,’ said Sylvester. ‘It wouldn’t have been enough to do it in private.’
‘Well she might have thought of Tess!’ said his wife. ‘She is supposed be Tess’s friend, isn’t she?’
‘I know, I know. Don’t get cross with me, darl, I agree with you, for God’s sake!’
‘And do you know,’ Marion said to Thanet, ‘she even had the nerve to stay on at the party, afterwards!’
‘We didn’t want to cause more unpleasantness by asking her to leave,’ said Sylvester.
Thanet said, ‘I’m surprised, in the circumstances, that you asked her to sit with your daughter while I talked to you, last night.’ Though Marion had been against it, he remembered.
‘Well,’ said Sylvester, wearily, ‘last night we were all so shell-shocked we weren’t thinking straight. I just suggested the first person who came into my mind and it happened to be Anthea. She’s been around so long she’s practically part of the family.’
‘Which is what makes her behaviour all the worse,’ said Marion, ‘I’m only thankful Tess wasn’t actually there to see it. It would have been so humiliating for her.’
‘Maybe if she had been, Anthea wouldn’t have done it. Maybe she checked first, and picked her moment,’ suggested Sylvester.
But Marion was obviously not inclined to give Anthea the benefit of the doubt. ‘You’re too good-natured by half, Ralph.’
Thanet thought there had been enough discussion of Anthea. ‘There’s one person in that group photograph we haven’t mentioned yet,’ he said. ‘I believe it must be Gerald Argent. I understand your daughter was engaged to him before Max?’
They exchanged dismayed glances. ‘Yes, she was,’ said Sylvester. ‘But what’s that got to do with it?’
‘Oh come, Mr Sylvester, don’t pretend to be so naïve! Your daughter is engaged to one man. She breaks it off and becomes engaged to another, who is then found dead in a swimming pool on the night of their engagement party.’
‘You’re not suggesting Gerald had anything to do with Max’s death, are you?’ said Marion.
‘That’s utterly preposterous!’ said Sylvester.
‘Is it? Is it, Mr Sylvester? Just think about it.’
‘It is if you know anything about Gerald!’ said Sylvester.
‘Gerald wouldn’t hurt a fly!’ said Marion.
If the general public knew how often this was said about those who had committed the most atrocious acts, they would ban the phrase for ever, thought Thanet. ‘How long was your daughter engaged to him?’
They exchanged glances. I suppose we’ll have to tell him. ‘Six months,’ said Sylvester reluctantly.
‘But they’d been going out together for ages before that,’ said Marion, apparently anxious not to make Tess seem too fickle. She turned to her husband. ‘When did they start?’
He frowned, and they worked it out between them. Since Tess finally broke it off
with Max the day after her twenty-first birthday, they had not seen each other until three months ago, when Max came home at Christmas. Tess had spent a year in America before finally returning home in the spring of ’93. Not long afterwards she had begun to go out with Gerald and her parents had heaved a sigh of relief, believing what they wanted to believe, that their policy had worked and Tess had finally got Max out of her system. The previous autumn, when Gerald had been promoted to managerial status at the bank in Sturrenden where he worked, they had become engaged. A June wedding had been planned and everything had gone smoothly until Max’s return at Christmas, when yet again he had tried to take up with Tess. But this time, to the Sylvesters’ relief, Tess had said she didn’t want anything to do with him. Unfortunately he had refused to take no for an answer. He had at once launched into a single-minded campaign to win her back. Letters, flowers and presents arrived daily, and on one occasion he had even hired a light aircraft to float a banner, with ‘Tess, I love you’ written on it, across the sky. But still she had resisted.
Then, for the first time, he proposed.
‘When was that?’ said Thanet.
‘About ten days ago,’ said Sylvester grimly. ‘Marriage had never been mentioned before.’
‘I think it had dawned on him that this was his last chance,’ said Marion, ‘that if he didn’t get Tess now he would lose her for good. I tried to tell her that this didn’t mean he had changed, but I could see she was weakening. “He must have,” she said, “or he wouldn’t have asked me to marry him.” I told her I meant he would still go off on his travels when he wanted to, that I really didn’t believe she would be able to stop him. And d’you know what she said? She said, “It’s no good, Mum. I’ve come to realise that a bit of Max is better than no Max at all, and if that’s what I have to settle for, then I shall.” “What about Gerald?” I said. And she just shook her head. “Oh, Gerald,” she said. “He’ll be hurt, of course, and I’m sorry. But between the two there just isn’t any choice. I’ve never loved anyone but Max, and I don’t think I ever shall.” ’
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