by Oliver Tidy
We pitched up at Goldenhurst a little before late morning. There were two vehicles on the gravel. Neither suggested Mrs Swaine had company of a social nature, unless she’d really fallen a long way off that particular ladder. One was a dented little hatchback that had been improved by at least three models that I knew of since it had rolled off the production line. The other was a pick-up truck full of garden maintenance equipment.
As we stepped out of the car I caught the straining note of a chain saw and the smell of hot tree resin on the air. I thought that Mrs Swaine hadn’t let the deaths of her husband and her brother who weren’t even in the ground yet interfere with her gardening responsibilities. On the other hand, a garden the size of hers would need regular maintenance and the Swaines didn’t strike me as the type to be out in all weathers keeping on top of things. Maybe he was just a regular and this was his day.
***
25
A woman who wasn’t Rebecca Swaine opened the door to us. I took her for the lady that did for the Swaines. Domestically speaking. She was short and plump and I knew her face from the village. She wore an apron and a sour expression. She had the face and eyes of a gossip and that was something to store away for later.
She knew who we were and after another performance of the coat and slipper show she ushered us through to the room with the fire we’d been in already. The room, not the fire. We were heading for that but first we had to spend some time in the frying pan.
Rebecca Swaine was sitting in a floral-patterned armchair in a floral-patterned dress. It made me notice the William Morris floral-patterned wallpaper. Considering there wasn’t a houseplant in sight, it was a very botanical scene. But everything was from different gardens so it wasn’t as amusing or confusing as it might have been. Not that any of us was there for a laugh. I reminded myself that she’d lost a husband and a brother within twenty-four hours of each other. Put like that, she sounded careless. Or dangerous to know.
She pointed to the leather sofa of the old style and asked us if we’d like something to drink. Our backsides renewed their acquaintances with the furniture while our manners and our mouths agreed tea would be nice. I looked forward to seeing what crockery it’d be served in. And the standard of the biscuits. You can tell a lot about a person from the biscuits they offer their visitors.
When Joan, she of the domestic help, had withdrawn to organise victuals, I tried the third of the grieving person’s Holy Trinity: sympathy. I said, ‘How are you bearing up, Mrs Swaine?’ It was a difficult but necessary question, I felt. One couldn’t ignore that herd of elephants trampling about the room.
She still didn’t look like she’d been crying and she still didn’t look like she was about to start, but she did look tired, drawn, pasty and troubled.
‘As I’m sure you can imagine, Mr Booker, it is a very painful time for me. Sigmund and Nigel were the only two real people in my life.’
I wondered what that made Joan. Android?
‘To have lost them both so suddenly and so horribly... well, I’m still in shock. And there is no reason, no explanation that I can cling to. Something to make sense of the tragic wastes of life.’
‘There must be a reason, Mrs Swaine,’ said Jo, a little insensitively, I thought. ‘An explanation. Two people in the same household don’t take their own lives so close together without there being a reason, very good or otherwise.’
‘Of course, you’re right. I understand that. What I mean is: the reason is beyond me.’
‘That’s why we’re here, Mrs Swaine. To find the reason.’
Jo became almost aggressive. I suppose it was the backlash of her recent brush with the Pinocchio Syndrome – being jerked around by the puppet master – and she needed to get some of that out of her system. Assert herself.
‘If you really want me to help you, Mrs Swaine, you’re going to have to be completely candid and honest. I won’t be able to help you if you’re not. It’s as simple as that. If it helps, anything you tell me and anything I find out in the course of my investigation is protected by client confidentiality.’ Mrs Swaine couldn’t help her gaze shifting across to me. Jo noticed and said, ‘That goes for him, too. You have to trust us if you really want to find out why your husband and your brother killed themselves.’
I felt like one half of a good cop, bad cop pairing. I wondered how everyone else felt.
Mrs Swaine had a bit of an inner struggle and then she said, ‘I understand.’
‘And if you decide to employ us then we see it through to the end.’
Mrs Swaine nodded. I thought about that us.
Jo went for what she saw as the throat of the matter, and to remind our hostess, her client, that she was still smarting from her jerking, she said, ‘When you phoned me to let me know your husband was dead you said you wanted me to find out who drove him to it. By the time I called on you a couple of hours later, you’d changed your mind. What happened in between the phone call and my arrival?’
It was a big, fair question and just as Rebecca Swaine opened her mouth to answer there was a loud crash, which made us all start. Joan had put one of her ample hips to good use and barged the door open. We sat in uncomfortable silence as she bustled over to set the tray down on the low table between us. The china looked good. It looked like Suzy Cooper - all cream and crocuses. And it all matched. I made a mental note to sneak a look at the stamp under the saucer first chance I got – it could’ve been a cheap imitation. The biscuits were a disappointment. They were still in the packet and the packet advertised a cheap own brand. And they were plain. How the mighty fall.
‘Will there be anything else, Mrs Swaine?’ said Joan. She made ‘Swaine’ sound closer to ‘swine’.
Rebecca Swaine smiled thinly, and I was struck with the notion that she’d heard ‘swine’ too and didn’t like it.
‘No, thank you, Joan.’
There was definitely something missing in the mistress/servant relationship. If I had to guess, I’d say its name was ‘respect’.
When Joan had bustled back out to the sound of nyloned-thigh-friction, Mrs Swaine bent forward to play mother. ‘I told Sigmund I was going to have Nigel’s death investigated. He became distinctly agitated. He was very upset over Nigel’s death. He begged me to change my mind.’
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t say. If he had, I wouldn’t need you.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because it seems obvious to me that whatever worried him so over Nigel’s suicide and my intention to have it investigated was something he knew about and was something he must have been involved in. Can’t you see that?’ Mrs Swaine looked like she was thinking she’d made a mistake with Jo.
‘I see that’s how it looks, Mrs Swaine. But things aren’t always how they first appear.’
Mrs Swaine’s features relaxed a little. We sipped our tea. It wasn’t very nice or hot. No one had taken a biscuit.
‘Your husband didn’t leave a suicide note?’ said Jo.
‘None was found.’
‘He hanged himself in the middle of the night?’
‘Yes, as I told you before.’
‘I’m just recapping important information. What time did you notice he was missing?’
‘In the morning. About eight o’clock. He should have left for work well before that. His briefcase was still in the hallway. I looked for his car in the garage just to make sure he hadn’t simply forgotten his case. I searched the house and when there was no sign of him Sigmund and I searched the grounds and then the woods. I think I already told you Sigmund found him.’
‘Why did you search the woods?’
‘After the house and the garden there was nowhere else he could have been. He might have had an accident while out walking.’
‘Was he in the habit of walking in the woods in the middle of the night in winter?’
’He liked to walk in the woods.’
‘In the middle of the night?’
A pregnant paus
e. ‘He never mentioned it.’
‘And you didn’t notice it? Mrs Swaine, I’m just trying to build a picture of how things were.’
‘No. I didn’t notice it.’
‘How had he been? What I mean is, had he been acting strangely at all? After he’d hanged himself did you think back to how he had been in the last few days and see something that could have contributed to his state of mind?’
Mrs Swaine gently shook her head. ‘There was nothing. It was such an incredible shock. It was so out of character.’
I had to agree with her even though I’d never met the man. Habits made character. And one couldn’t generally make a habit of suicide. For most who were serious about it, it was a one-off experience.
‘How had your husband been the previous evening?’
‘Just like any other evening.’
‘And how was that?
‘He got in from work about seven. Had something to eat, spent some time with Sigmund and went to his rooms.’
I didn’t think much of his normal evening. Wedded bliss it didn’t sound like.
‘You didn’t share a bed with your husband?’
I don’t think either of them saw me wince at that.
‘We did not share a bed. Or a room. Of late we had been husband and wife in name only.’
‘You were married about eighteen months ago, weren’t you?’
There was an ugly moment, like bad breath on a first date.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I’m a detective, Mrs Swaine. Did you know he’d had trouble with work?’
‘No. What sort of trouble?’
‘Hudsons let your husband go.’
Mrs Swaine fought valiantly to hide the shock of the news. She said, ‘Nigel didn’t like to discuss work at home.’
‘I’d like to see his mobile telephone and his computer, if he had one here.’
‘Why?’
‘Something tipped him over the edge. It must have been news to him and most news comes through technology these days.’
Mrs Swaine sat a little more erect and said, ‘I’d like a guarantee from you before we go down that route.’
‘What guarantee?’ said Jo.
‘A guarantee that anything you discover in the course of your investigation, no matter what the nature of it, remains confidential between us, unless I give express permission for the sharing of it with any outside agency.’
When Jo didn’t immediately answer, Mrs Swaine said, ‘I have no idea what, if any, secrets you might uncover if you start going through their things. But I do need your assurance that my word will be final on whether they remain secret or not.’
I could understand why Mrs Swaine would ask such a thing and if Jo didn’t agree for both of us then I could also understand we’d soon be leaving.
‘Like I said, Mrs Swaine, customer confidentiality. It’s as solid as doctor/patient, lawyer/client and priest/confessor. If I were to get a reputation for breaking that understanding I’d be finished. You would be my employer in this. The final word for everything comes from you.’
Mrs Swaine seemed placated. She took us through to Nigel Tate’s rooms. He had enjoyed the privacy of a small lounge, a small bedroom and a small bathroom. It looked lived in. Jo didn’t ask exactly how long they’d been living apart under the same roof and I was glad.
His phone was on his desk next to his laptop. The laptop was off and the phone had run out of battery. We plugged the phone into the charger and were asked for a password. We turned to Mrs Swaine. She shrugged that she didn’t know it. We fired up the computer and were asked for a password. We turned to Mrs Swaine. She shrugged that she didn’t know it. Someone skilled in these things might have worked some magic but for normal people like Jo and me that avenue of an enquiry had just turned into a cul-de-sac. The last time I’d held my breath for a laptop to see if it was password protected I’d got lucky. I was reminded that you can’t win ‘em all.
Jo asked if Mrs Swaine would mind her having a look around. She said she didn’t but she wouldn’t stay. She’d be in the lounge when we’d finished. I don’t think she liked being in her husband’s rooms.
I stood by and watched as Jo rummaged in all the obvious places for something that might take her interest. She found nothing and looked disappointed. She checked out the bedroom and the little bathroom. Nothing.
Just as she was preparing to leave, I said, ‘Where’s the briefcase?’
That got me a brownie point. We looked for it. Everywhere a briefcase could fit. We couldn’t find it.
We made our way back to the lounge. Mrs Swaine was sitting quietly. Doing nothing. Just waiting.
Jo and I took our seats.
‘What happened to your husband’s briefcase, Mrs Swaine?’ said Jo.
‘Isn’t it in his rooms?’
‘No.’
‘I have no idea then.’ She looked genuinely puzzled. ‘I can ask Joan. Perhaps she put it somewhere.’
‘The police didn’t take it?’ I said.
Jo snubbed that thought with a quick shake of the head. ‘Why would they? Can we talk about Sigmund now?’
The change of topic and the subject of it seemed to startle Mrs Swaine, like she’d completely forgotten her brother had just died. For a fleeting moment her shields were down and there was something vulnerable and very sad about her. She gathered herself and rallied her features into something more stoical. I think that the empire must have been built on bones like hers.
‘How did you know Sigmund had left the house last night?’
‘I heard the front door bang.’
‘Where were you?’
‘In here.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where had Sigmund spent his evening?’
‘In his rooms. He works, worked, better in the evenings.’
‘Worked? What did he do?’
‘He was an artist.’
I interrupted: ‘What sort?’
‘The painting sort, Mr Booker.’
‘I mean what sort of paintings did he produce? Still lifes, portraits, landscapes, seascapes? Oil, watercolours, pen and ink?’
Mrs Swaine regarded me with some interest. ‘Are you a painter, Mr Booker?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.’
‘And what do you like?’
‘I’m very fond of Miro, his later stuff, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, that sort of thing.’
Mrs Swaine looked disappointed. She said, ‘Shapes.’ Then she said, ‘Sigmund worked predominantly as a watercolour landscape artist. He also liked to paint the sea and the sea wall at Dymchurch.’
‘Like Nash,’ I said. ‘I’d love to see some of his work.’
‘Another time, if you don’t mind.’ And there was something of a rebuke in her tone. I considered myself reminded of why we were there.
Jo said, ‘Did he paint for a living or a hobby?’
‘He was good enough to exhibit but his confidence in his work was not high. He was far too self-critical.’
‘Do you have any idea what happened to make him leave, to go into that stormy night, run across the fields, seek refuge in a church and then when we arrived jump to his deliberate death?’
Momentarily, Mrs Swaine looked like she’d been hurt physically. She said, ‘I have no idea.’
‘How had he been during the day?’
‘I hadn’t seen a great deal of him. As I said, he had been very upset by Nigel’s death.’ I was suddenly glad that someone in the family had been. ‘I’d learned to leave Sigmund alone when he was in one of his moods. Besides, I had my own grief to deal with.’ I made a note to ask Jo what she thought of that statement later.
‘Did Sigmund know your husband was being blackmailed?’
‘Not from me.’
‘How did they get on, both living under the same roof?’
‘They were very good friends. It was Sigmund who introduced me to Nigel. They’d known ea
ch other from college.’
‘So it was possible that your husband had told your brother about the money demand?’
‘It’s possible.’
I butted in again: ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way, Mrs Swaine, but was Sigmund all right in the head?’
She stared at me for a long uncomfortable moment before saying, ‘He had some personal problems – his demons.’
‘Was he on medication? Was he receiving professional help?’
‘No to both. Why do you ask?’
‘In the church he acted very strangely, like someone needing their meds. There was something manic about him. I just wondered if that could have contributed to him taking his own life the way he did.’
‘What did happen?’ said Mrs Swaine. ‘I’d like to know. I have the right to know, I think.’
I turned my head to look at Jo, thereby shifting responsibility for that joy onto her. It was her case, after all. And I owed her one from her own employment of the tactic when we’d had the police round.
She said, ‘When we entered the church, Sigmund attacked us. He had a weapon. It seemed defensive, like he felt threatened by us. He seemed terrified of us, or something. He was very upset. Hysterical, I’d say. He climbed up into the gallery, then onto the railings and threw himself off. It was quite deliberate and he made no attempt to minimise his potential injuries. He knew what he was doing, Mrs Swaine.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘Nothing I could understand.’
Because Sigmund had hated mobile phones, computers, technology in general, had had no friends other than Nigel Tate, didn’t watch television or listen to the radio, Jo’s avenues for investigation were about as abundant as Easter eggs at Christmas.
***
26
We crossed back onto the Marsh and the security of the familiar flat landscape rolled out before us, like something Wim Wenders might have given a second look. I said, ‘I didn’t know you were legally bound by that client confidentiality crap.’