by Anne Morice
One of the men, the elder of the two, was tall, plump and well-fed looking and was dressed in a suit of royal blue. He also had blue eyes, rather a long nose, soft brown babyish hair growing low on his forehead and a receding double chin. I identified him as Osgood, on the very simple grounds that the other man could only possibly have been a plain-clothes policeman.
The woman was youngish, about thirty-five, well-dressed, dark-haired and attractive, in a kind of super-efficient way, not unlike a younger Stella Roxburgh. I assumed from her presence that Osgood was one of those high-powered executive types who always took his secretary with him on trips abroad and also that this one was the type to command instant attention from airline officials and hotel staffs the world over. The real surprise was that Irene should have tolerated the arrangement.
The C.I.D. man had his back to the window and was the first to become aware of my presence.
‘Can I help you?’ he enquired mildly.
Osgood swung round in his chair, flinging one arm over the back of it, and favoured me with a broad smile, which just escaped being insolent by virtue of its friendliness. I saw then that Irene might have other problems to contend with, in addition to good-looking secretaries.
‘Oh no . . . terribly sorry . . . looking for someone . . . must have come to the wrong . . .’ I answered in a great flurry of shy confusion, at the same time backing out of the room and closing the door behind me before any more questions could be asked. I then skipped off down the corridor towards the arrow on the staircase.
The immediate reaction to this encounter was one of pessimism, which had not lifted when I left the hotel some twenty minutes later and started on my way up through the country lanes to Roakes Common. Notwithstanding the temptation to preen myself on having discovered at one stroke the identity of Osgood’s visitor, as well as the sort of man I should be contending with at half-past two that afternoon, there was no blinking the fact that here we had a very smooth character indeed, nor the strong indications that neither I, any more than the local C.I.D., had a ghost’s chance of getting him to part with one single item of information which he might prefer to keep to himself.
2
There was a laundry van, with its motor running, outside the Ropers’ house and Alison was standing at the gate, apparently haranguing the driver. She had an unfortunate habit of browbeating people, usually the wrong people, whether or not she was in the right and, as a result, invariably lost not only her case, but every vestige of sympathy as well. The pattern appeared to be repeating itself now, for the driver abruptly put his foot down on the accelerator and drove off, leaving her open-mouthed and still in mid-flow.
‘Having trouble?’ I asked, winding down my window.
‘You can say that again! It’s getting beyond a joke. Two sheets missing this week and a towel the week before; and half the stuff is torn to ribbons when it does come back. I was telling him, it’s simply not good enough, but he couldn’t care less.’
‘Bad luck! Why not switch to another firm?’
‘Are you joking? How many laundries do you imagine deliver up in this neck of the woods? A launderette would be the answer, but how am I expected to lug all the stuff down to Stadhampton without a car?’
‘Couldn’t Phil take it for you?’
‘Oh, he would like a shot, if I were to ask him, specially now he’s home for the long vac, but it’s not really on for a bloke of his age to be lumbered with all these domestic chores.’
‘Good practice for when he gets married. Is he at home now?’
‘Yes, tinkering about with the old bus, as per. He’s fixing it up with a radio now, that’s the latest craze. And what brings you to these parts? Not on your way to visit his lordship, I trust?’
‘I had thought of calling there, yes. In fact, I was hoping to cadge some lunch.’
‘Then you’re out of luck, my dear. He’s gone up to town for the day. Or so Mrs Parkes told me when I happened to run into her at the butcher’s just now.’
‘Oh, damn! And that probably means he was intending to lunch with me in London. What a fearful breakdown in communications. Oh well, can’t be helped, I suppose.’
‘Can’t even offer you pot luck here, I’m afraid. Phil’s going to put in some rowing practice this afternoon, so he’ll have his main meal this evening and I never bother with lunch when I’m on my own.’
‘Tell you what, then, Alison, why don’t we both go up to the pub and get a sandwich? Come on! Do you good to get out for a bit.’
‘Well, it sounds a nice idea, but you don’t want to be stuck with my boring company.’
This was true, in a sense, but I still had more than an hour to kill and the prospect of spending it on my own at the Bricklayers’ was even less alluring, so I piled on the pressure until she gave in, although this was only achieved on the strict understanding that it should be a Dutch treat.
Predictably enough, the conversation revolved mainly around Phil and over her second glass of barley wine Alison’s obsessive concern for him took an even more confidential turn. She had been telling me how he was still reeling under the blow of Ellen’s defection and how all her efforts to persuade him to go out and mix with other young people had been ignored, and she added,
‘Of course we know it’s a dodgy time, waiting for the exam results to come in, but all he ever wants to do nowadays is tinker about with the old Mini, or else spend hours on his own, sculling on the river. It’s not healthy for a lad of his age, is it?’
‘At his age, though, he’ll soon snap out of it.’
‘That’s all very fine, but I’d like to know how. And he doesn’t confide in me as he used to, that’s another headache.’
‘How do you know he doesn’t?’
‘Well, take yesterday, for example.’
‘What happened yesterday?’
‘He told me he was going up to London to interview for a job at one of those holiday camps. Compères or something, I think they call themselves.’
Although it was hard to imagine Phil shining very brightly in this role, I considered that the urge to try it was a promising sign, but when I mentioned this she said:
‘Oh granted, and I was pleased as Punch when he told me, you can bet your bottom dollar on that. But it wasn’t the real reason he went to London. He never said a word about it when he got home, and when I asked him how he’d got on he just went off into one of his quiet moods.’
‘So what did he really go for? Did you discover?’
‘It’s not cricket to discuss him behind his back, really,’ Alison replied, which was rather a startling observation in view of the fact that she scarcely ever did anything else. ‘But it’s been worrying me more than somewhat,’ she went on, having overcome her scruples with another fortifying intake of barley wine, ‘and I’d jolly well like to get to the bottom of it. I dare not ask Phil outright. He’s so touchy these days, he’d probably blow his top, but you’ve met this chap and you may have a clue about what’s behind it.’
‘Behind what? What chap?’ I asked, greatly mystified.
‘That actor who used to be a friend of Ellen’s. Desmond something or other.’
‘Desmond Davidson? But what’s the connection between him and Phil? I didn’t know they’d even met.’
‘Oh, I think Phil may have come across him once or twice when Ellen brought him down here to stay with her father, although he tried to keep out of their way as much as he could, poor old dear! Still, that doesn’t explain why they should be meeting each other in London and Phil not telling me a word about it, does it?’
‘No, it doesn’t, but how did you find out?’
‘Well, it was bad luck on Phil really. He hadn’t left the house above ten minutes when the phone rang and it was this Desmond asking for him. I told him Phil had gone up to London and he said it was too bad because they’d got an appointment to meet at some pub in Soho and he was going to be late getting there, or something of the kind. I forget the details. I was so taken
aback I could hardly take in what he was saying.’
‘But he told you who he was?’
‘No, he didn’t and he rang off without giving me the chance to ask him; but I knew all right. Holiday camp officials don’t interview their applicants in Soho pubs, for a start. Besides, there’s no mistaking that voice, is there?’
This was true, for Desmond’s gravelly voice, with its occasional, carefully cultivated break, was one of his principal charms.
‘Someone took me to see a play he was in at Oxford not long ago,’ Alison explained, ‘and he’s been on the box dozens of times, so I knew who he was all right. Trouble was, I was caught on the hop and I couldn’t collect myself fast enough to ask what it was all about. I suppose you haven’t any idea?’
‘Not really. The only explanation that occurs to me is that Phil feels he has more in common with Desmond than anyone else just now. You know, two lonely hearts broken by the same girl kind of stuff. It would make a bond, I suppose.’
To my relief, she seized on this theory and began enlarging on it and finding means to make it more credible, ignoring or oblivious of the fact that Desmond was far too conceited to place himself on the same level as an obscure young man like Phil, or to view their situations as in any way comparable.
However, I encouraged her to work away on this solution, considering it wiser, both for her sake as well as Phil’s, that she should be spared an inkling of what had struck me as the true explanation as soon as the subject had been broached. It had brought back the memory of a conversation I had had with Phil at the wedding reception, and of the puzzled and mutinous expression on his face as he insisted on there being something bogus and potentially sinister about one of the waiters. The latest revelation suggested that he had come to the same conclusion as Ellen as to whose death by poison had really been plotted and by whom, and had set out to do a little private sleuthing on his own.
‘If I were you, I’d let it ride,’ I told Alison, who had temporarily run out of comforting theories of her own invention. ‘This friendship, or whatever, will soon fizzle out and in the meantime it will be no end of a boost to Phil’s morale to suffer in such illustrious company.’
Her next words would have startled Jez far less than they did me, for they merely proved that whatever guards you may put on your tongue, you cannot control the thought waves and E.S.P.s, which continue to hop around in the atmosphere in the most unbridled fashion. She said,
‘Of course it’s been a difficult time all round, with that dreadful business of Irene coming on top of all the other trials. It hasn’t been too pleasant having the police invading the place, without any warning, to go nosing through her room and pester us with more questions. They ought to realise by now that there’s nothing more we can tell them. At least, that is . . .’
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s funny, and I wouldn’t have expected anyone but me to have noticed, but once or twice I’ve caught Phil with that look on his face which usually means he’s going to blurt something out which will send us all up in smoke; but it never happened. If he has got something on his mind, he’s keeping it to himself and it wouldn’t be any use my asking him about it.’
‘All the same, I’d have a go,’ I advised her. ‘If there’s any single thing, however tiny, that he knows and the police don’t, he really ought to pass it on.’
‘All very well to say that and I dare say you’re right, but he lacks confidence, that’s always been Phil’s trouble, and he’d be scared of making a fool of himself.’
‘Oh, but that’s nonsense, it really is. You can quote me, if you like, Alison, because I do know that when the police are working like this, more or less in the dark, every scrap of information is pounced on as though it were pure gold, and he needn’t be afraid they won’t take him seriously, even if it does turn out to be irrelevant.’
I was wholly sincere in handing out this advice, but the urgency with which I strove to impress it upon Alison was more for her benefit and Phil’s than to smooth the path of justice. I was convinced that life would be a lot safer for both of them if they would only follow it.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘So we meet again!’ Osgood said, half-rising from his chair in the restaurant, which was the most that the space between his and the next table would allow. ‘What a pleasant surprise. Do come and join us.’
I had been directed to the dining room, which was crowded as usual, but had found no difficulty in picking him out, for Osgood evidently knew his way around and he and his presumed secretary were occupying one of the most sought after tables by the window, commanding a fine view of the garden and weir. They were drinking coffee and liqueurs and I accepted the first and declined the second, having already gone slightly over my quota while listening to Alison’s tale of woe. On this occasion, however, abstinence did not pay off, for nothing less than a treble brandy could have inured me to the shock of his next remarks, which were as follows:
‘This is Mrs Price, dearie,’ he said, addressing the female companion, ‘who’s been good enough to come all the way down here to tell us about poor Irene. Mrs Price, my wife!’
Since he had specifically referred to Irene, there could be no question of mistaken identity and it was lucky for me that that waiter had already arrived with my coffee, enabling me to get through the next couple of minutes in a twitter of indecision as to whether to drink it with or without milk. At the end of this breathtaking performance, I got yet another reprieve, for dearie pushed her chair back, saying,
‘If you two will excuse me, I think I’ll go and take a nap. Don’t think me rude, but I know you have things to discuss which don’t entirely concern me and it’ll maybe make it easier for both of you to have me out of the way.’
The counter protestations and jumping around which ensued gave me ample opportunity to regain total sang froid and I seated myself once more, fully able to return Osgood’s bland and knowing smile with the requisite coolness.
‘Anything wrong?’ he enquired, obviously much amused.
‘Absolutely nothing, thank you.’
‘Coffee just as you like it?’
‘Yes, thanks, everything’s fine. Well no, why should I keep this up? I obviously didn’t fool you for one minute. The truth is, I was really knocked sideways when you introduced . . .’
‘Jay.’
‘As your wife.’
‘Well, why not? She is my wife.’
‘Forgive my saying so, Mr Lewis, but I’m rather puzzled. Are you a Muslim or something?’
‘No, we were married in a Christian church, if that’s your worry.’
‘It isn’t. What worries me is what you might call the time factor. You can’t have been a widower for more than twenty-four hours.’
‘Wrong. I’ve never been a widower,’ he replied in his gentle, languid voice, ‘I was divorced for a year or so, but that was a long way back. Jay and I have been married almost three years. We have an eighteen-month-old son to prove it.’
‘You’re not pulling my leg? You really are saying that you weren’t Irene’s husband anymore? But she never told us! When she cabled that she was coming over for the wedding she simply said she’d be on her own because you were tied up.’
‘Which was substantially more accurate than many of the things she said, you have to admit?’
‘She also said that you sent your regards.’
‘So I did, and where’s the harm in that? Look, how about changing your mind and having that brandy, after all? I’m going to order another for me and I hate drinking alone.’
Without waiting for my reply, he raised his left hand by about three centimetres and a waiter arrived at the gallop.
‘I used to have to see Irene from time to time,’ he explained when the order had been given. ‘For one thing, she was in constant need of advice over her financial affairs or pretended to be. The real truth was that she hated to let go, poor girl, and she considered that I had an obligation to get her out of each and every j
am. I suppose it was justified in a way because if I hadn’t given her the money in the first place she wouldn’t have found so many ways of losing it.’
‘Alimony, do you mean?’
‘No, I’m referring to a fairly substantial sum I settled on her when we were first married and she could have asked for the moon and got it, if she’d cared to. There was never a question of alimony. At that time she didn’t need it and furthermore I was the one to start divorce proceedings.’
‘On what grounds? Or is that an impertinent question?’
‘No, it’s very pertinent, but I thought you’d come here to tell me things, not to ask them?’
‘I know, but you must realise that the situation is so different from what we’d all been led to believe. Still, it’s no business of mine, I agree.’
‘Now, now! Stop being prim with me and drink up your brandy,’ he said, giving my hand a friendly pat. ‘If Jay were here, she’d tell you that I never can resist teasing people I like and I certainly don’t have any objection to telling you why Irene and I came unstuck. It’s down in the records as incompatibility, mental cruelty and a few other things, but the main reason was that she always refused to have a child. It didn’t seem to matter in the early days, but later on, after the glory had faded and she’d begun sleeping around, there was really nothing to hold us together.’
‘Why did she refuse?’
‘She claimed it was on her doctor’s orders. Even in my infatuated period I took that with a grain of salt, since having Ellen didn’t seem to have done her any harm, although she kept it from me for as long as she could that she already had one child. I suppose the real reason was she was scared of losing her figure.’
‘It doesn’t sound as though you had many illusions about her,’ I remarked. ‘Which is no particular surprise. What I don’t understand is why you troubled to come here at all. No one could have compelled you to, in the circumstances.’
‘Well, don’t run away with the idea that it was sheer altruism. I have various business interests in Europe, so it’s never hard to find an excuse to fly over. And Jay’s always been promised a trip to Paris as soon as the boy was old enough to be left with her parents. We’ll probably spend a week there before we go home.’