The Best Man To Die

Chapter 11

‘Good morning, Miss Thompson,’ Wexford said with a heartiness he didn’t feel.

‘Mrs Pertwee, if you don’t mind.’ She picked up one of the wire baskets that were stacked outside the supermarket and gave him a selfconscious, defiant stare. ‘Jack and me got married very quietly yesterday afternoon.’

‘May I be among the first to offer my congratulations?’

‘Thanks very much, I’m sure. We didn’t tell no one about it, just went off to church quietly by ourselves. Jack’s been so cut up about poor Charlie. When are you going to catch his killer, that’s what I want to know? Not putting yourselves out, I reckon, on account of him being a working fella. Been different if he was one of your upper crust. This capitalist society we live in makes me spit, just spit it does.’

Wexford backed a little, fearing she might suit the action to the word. The bride snapped her toothbrush eyelashes at him. ‘You want to pull your socks up,’ she said relentlessly. ‘Whoever killed Charlie, hanging’d be too good for him.’

‘Dear, oh dear,’ said Wexford mildly, ‘and I thought you progressives were dead against capital punishment.’

She banged into the supermarket and Wexford went on his way, smiling wryly. Camb eyed him warily as he entered the police station.

‘Getting interested in this Fanshawe business, I gather, sir. I met Miss Fanshawe on my way in.’

‘So interested,’ Wexford said, ‘that I’m sending Detective Constable Loring down to find out who’s missing in the holiday towns and it might be worth our while to check with London too.’

Burden had left for Stamford. Stepping into the lift, Wexford decided to do the London checking himself. Young women were beginning to get on his nerves. There were so many of them about, and it seemed to him they caused as much trouble to a policeman as burglars. Now to see how many of them were missing in London. This task was for him somewhat infra dig, but until Burden and Sergeant Martin brought him some information he had little else to do, and this way he could, at any rate, be certain it was well done.

By lunchtime he had narrowed his search down to three out of the dozens of girls missing in the London area. The first was a Carol Pearson, of Muswell Hill, interesting to him because she had worked as a hairdresser’s improver at a shop in Eastcheap. Jerome Fanshawe’s office was in Eastcheap and the hairdresser’s had a barber’s shop attached to it. Hers was also a significant name because she had black hair and her disappearance was reported on May 17th.

The second girl, Doreen Dacres, was like Carol Pearson, black-haired and aged twenty, and his interest was aroused because she had left her room in Finchley on May 15th to take a job in Eastbourne. Nothing further had been heard of her either in Finchley or at the Eastbourne club address.

Bridget Culross was the last name with which he felt he need concern himself. She was twenty-two years old and had been a nurse at the Princess Louise Clinic in New Cavendish Street. On Saturday May 18th she had gone to spend the weekend with an unnamed boy friend in Brighton, but had not returned to the clinic. It was assumed that she had eloped with her boy friend. Her hair was also dark, her life erratic and her only relative an aunt in County Leix.

Young women! Wexford thought irritably, and he thought also of his own daughter who was making him scrape the bottom of his pocket so that at some future possible never- never time she might be able to smile without restraint before the cameras.

The long day passed slowly and it grew very hot. Clouds massed heavily, dense and fungoid in shape, over the huddled roofs of the town. But they did nothing to diminish the heat, seeming instead to enclose it and its still, threatening air under a thick muffling lid. The sun had gone, blanked out by sultry vapour.

To an observer Wexford might be thought only to be sitting, like many other inhabitants of Kingsmarkham, waiting for the storm to break. He did nothing. He lay back by the open window with his eyes closed and the warm breath less air came to him just as in another cooler season heat fanned from the grid lower down the wall. No one disturbed him and he was glad. He was thinking.

In Stamford, where it was raining, Inspector Burden went to a country house supposedly occupied by a man named McCloy and found it deserted, its doors locked and its garden overgrown. There were no neighbours and no one to tell him where McCloy had gone.

Detective Constable Loring drove along the promenades of the south coast towns, calling at police stations and paying particular attention to those clubs and cafés and amusement halls where girls come and go and pass each other. He had found a club where Doreen Dacres had been engaged but where no Doreen Dacres had arrived and this comforted him. He even telephoned Wexford to tell him about it, his elation subsiding somewhat when he heard the chief inspector had also found this out three hours before.

The storm broke at five o’clock.

For some time before this heavy clouds had increased and in the west the sky had become a dense purplish-black, a range of mountainous cumulus against which the outlines of buildings took on a curious clarity and the trees stood out livid and sickly bright. In spite of the clammy heat, shoppers began to hurry, but the rain which fell so readily when rainy days preceded it, now, after a fortnight’s drought, held off as if it could only be squeezed out as a result of some acute and agonising pressure. It was as though the clouds were not themselves mere vapour but impermeable sagging sacks, purposely constructed and hung to contain water.

The first whispering breeze came like a hot breath and Wexford closed his windows. Almost imperceptibly at first the trees in the High Street pavement began to sway. Most of the merchandise outside greengrocers’ and florists’ had already been taken in and now it was the turn of the sun-blinds to be furled and waterproof awnings to take their place. The air seemed to press against Wexford’s windows. He stood against them, watching the dark western sky and the ash-blue cumulus now edged with brilliant white.

The lightning was the forked kind and it branched suddenly like a firework and yet like the limb of a blazing tree. As its fiery twigs flashed out and cut into the inky cloud, the thunder rolled out of the west.

Wexford dearly loved a storm. He liked the forked lightning better than the zig-zag kind and now he was gratified by a second many-branched display that seemed to spring and grow from the river itself, blossoming in the sky above the Kingsbrook meadows. This time the thunder burst with a pistol-shot snap and with an equal suddenness, as if at last those swollen vessels had been punctured, the rain began to fall.

The first heavy drops splashed in coin shapes on the pavement below and in their tubs the pink flowers on the fore court dipped and swayed. For a brief moment it seemed that the rain still hesitated, that it would only patter dispiritedly on the dust-filled gutters where its drops rolled like quicksilver. But then, urged on as it were by a series of multiple lightning flashes, it hesitated no more and, instead of increasing gradually from the first tentative shower, the water gushed forth in a vast fountain. It dashed against the windows, washing off dust in a great cleansing stream, and Wexford moved away from the glass. The sudden flood was more like a wave than rain and it blinded the window as surely as darkness.

He heard the car splash in and the doors slam. Burden, perhaps. The internal phone rang and Wexford lifted the receiver.

‘I’ve got Cullam here, sir.’ It was Martin’s voice. ‘Shall I bring him up? I thought you might like to talk to him.’

Maurice Cullam was afraid of the storm. That didn’t displease Wexford. With some scorn he eyed the man’s pale face and the bony, none-too-steady hands.

‘Scared, Cullam? Not to worry, we’ll all die together.’

‘Big laugh,’ said Cullam, and he winced as the thunder broke above their heads. ‘I don’t reckon it’s safe being so high up. When I was a kid I was in a house that got struck.’

‘But you got out unscathed, eh? Well they say the devil looks after his own. Why have you brought him here, Sergeant?’

‘He’s bought that refrigerator,’ said Sergeant Martin. ‘And a room heater and a load of other electrical bits and pieces. Paid cash for them, a couple of quid short of a hundred and twenty pounds.’

Wexford put the lights on and behind the streaming glass the sky looked black as on a winter’s night. ‘All right, Cullam, where did you get it?’

‘I saved it up.’

‘I see. When did you buy that washing machine of yours, the one you washed your gear in after Hatton died?’

‘April.’ As the storm receded and the thunder became a distant grumbling, Cullam’s shoulders dropped and he lifted sullen eyes. ‘April, it was.’

‘So, you’ve saved another hundred and twenty pounds in just two months. What do you get a week? Twenty? Twenty- two? You with five kids and council house rent to pay? You’ve saved it in two months? Come off it, Cullam. I couldn’t save it in six and my kids are grown up.’

‘You can’t prove I didn’t save it.’ Cullam gave a slight shiver as the overhead light flickered off, then on again. A rolling like the banging of many drums, distant at first, then breaking into a staccato crackling, announced the return of the storm to Kingsmarkham. He shifted in his chair, biting his lip.

Wexford smiled as a zig-zag flash changed the gentle illumination of the office into a sudden white blaze. ‘A hundred pounds,’ he said. ‘That’s pathetic payment for a man’s life. What’s yours worth, Sergeant?’

‘I’m insured for five thousand, sir.’

‘That’s not quite what I meant, but we’ll let it pass. You see, an assassin is paid according to his own self-valuation. Never mind what the victim’s life’s worth. If a road sweeper kills the king he can’t expect to get the same gratuity as a general. He wouldn’t expect it. His standards are low. So if you’re going to employ an assassin and you’re a mean skinflint you pick on the lowest of the low to do your dirty work. Mind you, it won’t be so well done.’

Wexford’s last words were drowned in thunder. ‘What d’you mean, lowest of the low?’ Cullam lifted abject yet truculent eyes.

‘The cap fits, does it? They don’t come much lower than you, Cullam. What, drink with a man – drink the whisky he paid for – and then lie in wait to kill him?’

‘I never killed Charlie Hatton!’ Cullam leapt trembling to his feet. The lightning flared into his face and, covering his eyes with one hand, he said desperately, ‘For God’s sake can’t we go downstairs?’

‘I reckon Hatton was right when he called you an old woman, Cullam,’ Wexford said in disgust. ‘We’ll go down stairs when I’m good and ready. You talk and when you’ve told me where McCloy is and what he paid you, then you can go downstairs and hide your head.’

Still on his feet, Cullam leant on the desk, his head hanging. ‘It’s a lie,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know McCloy and I never touched Hatton.’

‘Where did the money come from then? Oh, sit down, Cullam. What sort of man are you, anyway, scared of a bit of thunder? It’s laughable, afraid of a storm but brave enough to wait in the dark down by the river and bash your friend over the head. Come on now, you may as well tell us. You’ll have to sooner or later and I reckon this storm’s set in for hours. Hatton had fallen foul of McCloy, hadn’t he? So McCloy greased your palm a bit to walk home with Hatton and catch him unawares. The weapon and the method were left to you. Curious, you were so mean, you even grudged him a proper cosh.’

Cullam said again, ‘It’s all a lie.’ He twisted down into the chair, holding his head and keeping it averted from the window. ‘Me bash Charlie on the head with one of them stones? I wouldn’t have thought of it… I wouldn’t…’

‘Then how did you know it was a river stone that killed him?’ Wexford pounced triumphantly. Slowly Cullam raised his head and the sweat glistened on his skin. ‘I didn’t tell you.’

‘Nor me, sir,’ said the sergeant.

‘Jesus,’ Cullam said, his voice uneven and low.

The black clouds had parted to show between them shreds of summer sky turned sickly green. Against the glass the unremitting rain pounded.

Stamford police knew nothing of Alexander James McCloy. His name was on the voters’ list as occupying Moat Hall, the small mansion Burden had found deserted, but plainly he had left it months before. Burden plodded through the rain from estate agent to estate agent and he at last found Moat Hall, listed in the books of a small firm on the outskirts of the town. It had been sold in December by McCloy to an American widow who, having changed her mind without ever living in the place, had returned it to the agent’s hands and departed to spend the summer in Sweden.

Mr McCloy had left them no address. Why should he? His business with them had been satisfactorily completed; he had taken his money from the American lady and disappeared.

No, there had never really been anything in Mr McCloy’s behaviour to make them believe he wasn’t a man of integrity.

‘What do you mean, “really”?’ Burden asked.

‘Only that the place was never kept decently as far as I could see, not the way a gentleman’s house should be. It was a crying shame to see those grounds neglected. Still, he was a bachelor and he’d no staff as far as I know.’

Moat Hall lay in a fold of the hills perhaps a mile from the A.1. ‘Was he always alone when you saw him at the house?’ Burden asked.

‘Once he had a couple of chaps with him. Not quite up to his class I thought.’

‘Tell me, were you taken all over the house and grounds to make your survey or whatever you do?’

‘Certainly. It was all quite above board – none too clean, but that’s by the way. Mr McCloy gave me a free hand to go where I chose, bar the two big outhouses. They were used for stores he said, so there was no point in me looking. The doors were padlocked anyway and I got what I wanted for my purpose from looking at the outside.’

‘No stray lorries knocking about, I daresay?’

‘None that I saw.’

‘But there might have been in the outhouses?’

‘There might at that,’ said the agent doubtfully. ‘One of them’s near as big as a hangar.’

‘So I noticed.’ And Burden thanked him grimly. He was almost certain that he had found him, that he could say, ‘Our McCloy was here,’ and yet what had he achieved but dredge up a tiny segment of McCloy’s life? The man had been here and had gone. All they could do now was to turn Moat Hall upside down in the forlorn hope something remained in the near-derelict place to hint at its erstwhile owner’s present refuge.

‘Are you going to charge me with murdering him?’ Cullam said hollowly.

‘You and McCloy and maybe a couple of others when you’ve told us who they are. Conspiracy to murder, the charge’ll be. Not that it makes much difference.’

‘But I’ve got five kids!’

‘Paternity never kept anyone out of jail yet, Cullam. Come now, you wouldn’t want to go inside alone, would you? You wouldn’t want to think of McCloy laughing, going scotfree, while you’re doing fifteen years? It’ll be the same sentence for him, you know. He doesn’t get off any lighter just because he only told you to kill Hatton.’

‘He never did,’ Cullam said wildly. ‘How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know this McCloy?’

‘A good many times before I’d believe you. Why would you kill Hatton on your own? You don’t have to kill a man because he’s got more money and a nicer home than you have.’

‘I didn’t kill him!’ Cullam’s voice came dangerously near a sob.

Wexford switched off the light and for a moment the room seemed very dark. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed, he saw that it was no darker than on any summer evening after heavy rain. The light had a cold bluish tinge and the air was cooler too. He opened the window and a light fresh breeze clutched at the curtains. Down below on the forecourt the tub flowers had been flattened into a sodden pink mush.

‘Listen, Cullam,’ he said, ‘you were there. You left the bridge ten minutes before Hatton started. It was twenty to eleven when you said goodbye to Hatton and Pertwee and even walking none too fast you should have been indoors at home by eleven. But you didn’t get in till a quarter past. The following morning you washed the shirt you’d been wearing, the pullover and the trousers. You knew a river stone had been used to kill Hatton and today you, who get twenty pounds a week and never have a penny to bless yourself with, spent a hundred and twenty quid on luxury equipment. Explain it away, Cullam, explain it away. The storm’s blowing over and you’ve nothing to worry about except fifteen years inside.’

Cullam opened his big ill-made hands, clenched them and leant forward. The sweat had dried on his face. He seemed to be having difficulty in controlling the muscles which worked in his forehead and at the corners of his mouth. Wexford waited patiently, for he guessed that for a moment the man was totally unable to speak. Terror had dried and paralysed his vocal chords. He waited patiently, but without a vestige of sympathy.

‘The hundred quid and his pay packet,’ Cullam said at last. His tone was hoarse and terrified. ‘I… I took it off his body.’