The Best Man To Die

Chapter 14

The young Pertwees were honeymooning in Jack’s father’s house. Their own flat wouldn’t be ready for a fortnight and Jack had cancelled the hotel booking. There was nowhere else for them to go and nothing much to do. Jack had taken his annual holiday, so here he was at home. Where else would he be? It was, after all, the only honeymoon he would ever get. Usually in his spare time he did a bit of painting or decorating or went to the dogs or down the Dragon. Marilyn made her dresses and giggled with her girl friends and went to meetings calculated to stir up social strife. These are not occupations for a honeymoon and the young Pertwees felt that to follow their old ways during this period, provided as it were for festive idleness and the indulgence of love, would be a kind of desecration. As Jack put it, you can’t stay in bed all day, so they spent most of the time sitting hand in hand in the little-used parlour. Marilyn was only articulate on the subject of politics and Jack was never talkative. Neither of them ever read a book and they were abysmally bored. Each would have died rather than confess this to the other and they knew in their hearts that their silence was no threat of future discord. Everything would be fine once Jack was back at work and they were in their own flat. When there were his workmates to discuss and the furniture and having her mother to tea. Now they filled their silences with sad reflections, on Charlie Hatton and although this too was no subject for a honeymoon, their shared memory of him expressed in hackneyed and sentimental phrases passed the time away and, because it was selfless and sincere, strengthened their love.

It was thus that Wexford found them.

Marilyn let him into the house, her only greeting a shrug. He, too, could be laconic and brusque and when Jack rose clumsily to his feet, Wexford said only, ‘I’ve come to talk to you about McCloy.’

‘You talk then. You tell me.’

The girl smiled at that. ‘Give us a cig, Jack,’ she said, and she gave her husband a fond proud look. ‘Yes,’ she said, coming up close to Wexford, ‘you give us a lecture. We’d like to know, wouldn’t we, Jack? We don’t mind listening, we’ve nothing else to do.’

‘That doesn’t sound too good on your honeymoon.’

‘Some honeymoon,’ Jack grumbled. ‘You think this is the way I’d planned it?’

Wexford sat down and faced them. ‘I didn’t kill Charlie Hatton,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even know him. You did. You were supposed to be his friend. You’ve got a funny way of showing it.’

A spasm of pain shivered the red from Jack’s face. He took his wife’s hand and he sighed. ‘He’s dead. You can’t be friends with a dead man. All you’ve got is his memory to hold on to.’

‘Give me a piece of your memory, Mr Pertwee.’

Jack looked him full in the face and now the blood returned, beating under the skin. ‘You’re always playing with words, twisting, being clever…’

His wife cut in, ‘Showing your bloody education!’

‘Leave it, love, I feel the same, but it’s no good. It’s…You’ve made up your mind Charlie was a crook, haven’t you? It wouldn’t be no good telling you what he was really like, generous, good-hearted, never let you down. But it wouldn’t be no good, would it?’

‘I doubt if it would help me to find who killed him.’

‘He found us our flat,’ Jack said. ‘D’you know what he did? The bloke that’s got it now, he wanted key money. Two hundred he wanted and Charlie put that up. On loan, of course, but he wouldn’t take no interest. May the 21st it was. I’ll never forget that date as long as I live. Charlie’d been driving all the day before, driving down from the north. But he come here in the morning to say he’d found this flat for us. I was at work but Marilyn got a couple of hours off from the shop and went down there with him. Promised the bloke the money, he did, more like he was her dad than – just a friend.

May the 21st. The day Hatton had ordered his teeth. Just after the robbery that never was. Here was another example of what Hatton had done with the small fortune he had somehow got out of McCloy.

‘I’ll let you have it whenever you want, Charlie said. Just say the word. You should have seen him when we did say the word! I reckon giving things away made him really happy.’

‘This place,’ said Marilyn, mildly for her, ‘well, it’s not the same without Charlie Hatton and that’s a fact.’

Sentimental twaddle, Wexford thought harshly. ‘Where did he get all his money, Mrs Pertwee?’

‘I could ask him that, could I? I could just come out with it like that? I may be common working class but I was brought up right. I’ve got manners. So, for God’s sake, leave me out of it.’

‘Mr Pertwee?’

He would have to answer, Wexford thought. He had said too much and been too self-controlled to plead distress as an excuse this time. Jack put his fist up to his forehead and leant on his elbow.

‘Where did he get it? Two hundred and fifty pounds for his teeth, two hundred for you…’ How it mounted up! ‘Money for his furniture, his wife’s clothes, your wedding present, money going week by week into the bank. He was earning twenty pounds a week, Mr Pertwee. What do you earn?’

‘Mind your own damn’ business.’

‘Come on now, love,’ said Pertwee miserably. He looked at Wexford, biting his lip. ‘Bit more than that,’ he said. ‘Bit more in a good week.’

‘Could you lend your best friend two hundred pounds?’

‘My best friend’s dead!’

‘Don’t stall, please.’ Wexford said sharply. ‘You knew what Hatton’s life was, Pertwee. Don’t tell me you never asked yourself where all that money came from. You asked yourself and you asked him. How did Hatton get to be a rich man on May 21st?’

And now Pertwee’s brow cleared. He sighed and there was a tiny gleam of triumph in his eyes. ‘I don’t know. You could ask me from now till Doomsday. I can’t tell you because I don’t know.’ He hesitated. ‘You asked me about McCloy,’ he said. ‘Charlie didn’t get no money from McCloy on May 21st. He couldn’t have.’

Then Wexford questioned him and probed and used all the subtlety years of experience had given him. Pertwee held his wife’s hand, shook his head, answered monosyllabically and at last he dried up.

At the special court held to give his case its preliminary hearing, Maurice Cullam pleaded guilty to stealing one hundred and twenty pounds from the dead body of Charlie Hatton and was remanded in custody. Further charges might be preferred against him, Burden intimated.

He didn’t believe Cullam was a murderer. His house had been searched from top to bottom but no money had been found. Cullam had no bank account and no more than a few shillings in the Post Office. The only effect of the search was the incidental discovery of such savage bruises on the legs of Samantha Cullam as to necessitate her removal into the care of the county authority. Further charges would be preferred against her father, but they would not be in the nature of murder or larceny.

‘What’s your next step?’ said Dr Crocker idly, on his way back from examining the little girl’s injuries. ‘A bastard who’s beat up a kid like that wouldn’t stop at murder, if you ask me.’

‘It doesn’t follow.’

‘The trouble with you lot you’re always looking for complications. Here’s the boss now. I’ve just been asking Mike here if you’ve got a vacancy for me on your staff, seeing how I’ve helped you with your enquiries.’

Wexford gave him a sour look. ‘Cullam’s no killer.’

‘Maybe not. Prefers his victims undersized and female,’ and the doctor launched into a heated tirade against the arrested man.

‘Oh, I’m sick of the whole bloody thing,’ Wexford shouted suddenly. ‘I’ve spent the entire morning trying to pump Pertwee. Sentimental fool! Everyone knows Hatton was a thief and a twister, but Pertwee won’t talk because he doesn’t want to sully the fellow’s memory.’

‘It’s not a bad principle,’ said Burden.

‘Any principle’s bad, Mike, if putting it into practice means a murderer goes free. Hatton did jobs for McCloy and one weekend in May he started squeezing his old employer. He squeezed him pretty hard, I can tell you. Two hundred pounds for Pertwee, two hundred and fifty for Vigo… Oh, I can’t go into it all again.’

‘So you’re giving up?’ said the doctor.

Burden looked deeply shocked and he clicked his tongue old-maidishly. But Wexford said calmly, ‘I’m going to try another line for the present and I’m relying on you to smooth the path. You’re supposed to be a doctor, after all.’

Mrs Fanshawe was alone when they got back to the Infirmary, but she was out of bed. Wrapped in a black nylon negligee – afterwards Crocker called it a peignoir – she was sitting in an armchair reading Fanny Hill.

‘A chief inspector and an inspector and a doctor to see you,’ said Nurse Rose. Mrs Fanshawe tucked Fanny Hill under her new copy of Homes and Gardens. She knew now that Nurse Rose was a nurse and not a maid and that she was in hospital. But that was no reason why the girl should take the attitude that her patient was honoured by this visit. Mrs Fanshawe knew what was due to her. Besides, she was glowing with the self-confidence of someone who, having been distressingly and obtusely disbelieved for days, has now proved her point. Nora was alive; Nora was here, or at least, a couple of miles away in Kingsmarkham. Probably this deputation, sent from whatever authority it was that had stupidly persisted in burying her, had been sent to apologise.

Hastily Mrs Fanshawe grabbed a handful of rings from the jewel case her sister had brought in and it was a lavishly decorated hand that she extended graciously to Wexford.

Wexford saw a discontented face with sagging chin muscles and lines pulling the mouth down at the corners. Mrs Fanshawe’s eyes were hard and bright and her voice acid when she said:

‘I’m not mad, you see. Everyone thought I was insane when I said my daughter was alive. Now, I expect, they’d like to apologize.’

‘Certainly, Mrs Fanshawe. We all apologize.’ Apologies cost nothing. He smiled blandly into the petulant’s face and suddenly he remembered what this woman’s daughter had told him. How her father had paid her mother to let him have his women in the house. ‘No one thought you were mad,’ he said, ‘but you’d been in a serious accident.’ She nodded smugly and Wexford thought, She’s no madder than she’s ever been. But what did that amount to? She had never, he considered, been very bright.

Nurse Rose scampered in with two more chairs and she bridled, giggling a little, when all three men thanked her effusively.

‘You can get me another cushion,’ said Mrs Fanshawe. ‘No, not a pillow, a proper cushion. And then you can ring my daughter.’

‘In ten minutes, Mrs Fanshawe,’ said Nurse Rose, tired but bright as ever.

‘Just as you like.’ Mrs Fanshawe waited until she was gone and then she said pettishly, ‘This is supposed to be a private room, not that anyone would think so the cavalier treatment you get. Half the time you ring the bell they don’t come.’

Wexford said dryly, ‘You don’t find it as comfortable as the Princess Louise Clinic?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I understand you were in the Princess Louise Clinic in Cavendish Street in London last year.’

‘You understood wrong then. The only time I’ve ever been in hospital was when my daughter was born.’ She sighed impatiently when the door opened and Nurse Rose entered with tea for four. ‘I thought you were under-staffed? These gentlemen are officials. They aren’t paying a social call.’

But Dr Crocker said, ‘Thank you very much, my dear,’ and he ogled Nurse Rose outrageously. ‘Will you be mother, Mrs Fanshawe, do the honours?’

The rings clinked as she poured the tea. She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Well, my daughter’s alive,’ she said, ‘and I’ve never been to the Princess Louise Clinic. What else d’you want?’

Wexford just glanced at Burden and Burden said, ‘Your daughter’s alive but there was a dead girl lying by the wreck age of your car. Any idea who she could be? The name Bridget Culross mean anything to you?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘She was a nurse.’ Mrs Fanshawe’s sniff told him eloquently what she thought of nurses. ‘She was twenty-two and a girl who might be she who was dead in the road with your husband.’

‘She was never alive in the car with my husband.’

‘Mrs Fanshawe,’ Wexford said carefully, ‘are you quite sure you gave no one a lift from Eastbourne, from Eastover?’

‘I am sick of this,’ said Dorothy Fanshawe. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve told you. There was no one else in the car.’

He looked at her and he thought, Would you tell me? Are you ashamed that your husband flaunted these women at you, paid you? Or is it that you don’t care any more, haven’t cared for years, and there really was no one in the car?

Dorothy Fanshawe watched her rings winking in the sunlight. She avoided meeting the eyes of these tiresome men. They thought her stupid or a liar. She knew very well what they were getting at. Nora had been talking to them. Nora hadn’t the decency and the discretion to keep silent about Jerome’s nasty habits.

How stupid these men were! Their faces were all embarrassed and prudish. Did they really suppose she cared what Jerome had done? Jerome was dead and buried deep. Good riddance. All the money was hers and Nora’s now, more money than all those foolish-looking men would earn between the lot of them in their lifetimes. As long as Nora didn’t do anything stupid like marrying that Michael, there was nothing in the world to worry about.

Dorothy Fanshawe drank her tea and put the cup down with a sharp tap. Then she rang the bell and as the door opened, said:

‘We shall want some more hot water.’

She had been going to say please, but she cut the word off and swallowed it. Suddenly Nurse Rose, so plump and pink and young, had looked just like that maid Jerome used to paw about when she was making the beds. She smiled a little, though, for Jerome was dead and there were no maids or nurses or soft young flesh where he had gone.

‘Exhumation!’ Burden exclaimed. ‘You couldn’t do it.’

‘Well, I could, Mike,’ said Wexford mildly. ‘I dare say we could get an order. Only she’s been dead so long and the face was in a mess then and… God, I could wring Camb’s bloody neck!’

‘The aunt was so sure,’ Burden said.

‘We’d best get that Lewis girl down from the Princess Louise Clinic, show her the clothes. But if the girl was Bridget Culross, what was she doing in Fanshawe’s car with Fanshawe’s wife?’

‘I believe Mrs Fanshawe, sir.’

‘So do I, Mike. So do I.’ Wexford said it again to convince himself. ‘I think Fanshawe was capable of taking the girl to his bungalow and sleeping with her while his wife was there. I believe Mrs Fanshawe would have stood it. As to the girl – well, we don’t know enough about her to say. But Nora Fanshawe knew nothing of it and Nora Fanshawe was with them until the Saturday. They thought she was going to stay on. So where does Culross come in? And where was she stowed away on the Friday night?’

‘It’s very disgraceful,’ said Burden and he made a face like someone who had been shown a disgusting mess of offal.

‘Never mind that. Leave the ethics and concentrate on the circumstantial evidence. The more I hear of them the more I go back to my old idea.’

'Which is?’

‘In the light of our fresh information, this: Bridget Culross never knew Fanshawe. His wife was never a patient at the Princess Louise Clinic, therefore he isn’t Jay. Probably she went to Eastbourne or Brighton with Jay, rowed with him and tried to get back to London on her own. Maybe she hitch-hiked. A lorry driver put her down on the Stowerton By-pass, she thumbed a lift from Fanshawe – maybe she stepped out into the road, he couldn’t stop, hit her head and crashed. How’s that?’

Burden looked dubious. ‘That means to thumb her lift she would have had to be standing on the soft verge between the two carriageways.’

‘And any normal hitch-hiker stands on the nearside and waits for someone coming down the slow lane?’

‘Mm-hm. On the other hand we do know that Mrs Fanshawe heard her husband call out “God!” just before the crash; in fact, that was the last thing he ever did say.’

‘I hope,’ said Wexford, ‘the cry was heard by Providence and interpreted as a plea for forgiveness.’ He chuckled sourly. ‘So he sees the girl standing on the road, cries out, swerves, hits her. Why did she have only a little loose change in her handbag, no keys, nothing to identify her? Why would a lorry driver put her down on the by-pass instead of in the town?’

‘It’s your theory, sir.’

‘I know it is, damn it!’ said Wexford.

But he kept thinking about that lorry driver. Charlie Hatton had passed that way a quarter of an hour before the accident. He couldn’t have seen the accident. Could he have seen the girl waiting to thumb a lift? Or could he have been the driver who had left her there? The trouble was Charlie Hatton had been driving in the other direction.

It had been May 20th and on May 21st Charlie Hatton was a rich man. There must be a connection. But where did McCloy come into all this?

Every police force in England and Wales was now looking for Alexander James McCloy, light brown hair, medium height, aged 42, late of Moat Hall, near Stamford in Lincolnshire; because of Burden’s recent discoveries; they were looking for him in Scotland too.

This time it was Mr Pertwee senior who admitted him into the house. Still hand-in-hand the honeymooners were watching television.

‘Christ, do we have to?’ Marilyn said crossly when her husband got up and switched off the party political broad cast. ‘What d’you want this time?’

Wexford said, ‘In November of last year your friend Hatton arranged to have the lorry he drove for his employer Mr Bardsley hi-jacked. When I say arranged, I mean he did so under the instructions of his other employer, Alexander James McCloy. Hatton got a little tap on the head and they tied him up, just to make things look more realistic. Fortunately, Mr Bardsley was insured. He wasn’t, though, when it happened again in March. That time he had to stand the loss himself, unaware, of course, that a good percentage of it was finding its way directly into Hatton’s pocket.’

He stopped and looked into Jack Pertwee’s pale face. Jack returned his stare for an instant and then dipped his face down into his hands.

‘Don’t you admit nothing, Jack,’ said Marilyn fiercely.

‘On the 19th of May,’ Wexford continued, ‘Hatton drove up to Leeds. He’d been ill and he took it slowly, returning on the next day, Monday, May 20th. While he was in Leeds or on the road he encountered McCloy. He encountered him or discovered something about him to McCloy’s disadvantage. Enough, anyway, to put him into a position from which he was able to blackmail McCloy to the extent of several thousand pounds.’

‘It’s a filthy lie,’ said Jack in a choking voice.

‘Very well, Mr Pertwee. I’d like you to come down to the police station with me, if you please…’

‘But he’s just got married!’ interrupted the father.

‘Mrs Pertwee may accompany him if she chooses. The situation has arisen that information is being deliberately withheld in a murder enquiry. Are you ready, Mr Pertwee?’

Jack didn’t move. Then the hands that clutched his forehead began to tremble. Marilyn put her arms around him protectively, but not gently, and her lips twisted as if she would have liked to spit in Wexford’s face.

‘Blackmail?’ Jack stammered. ‘Charlie?’ He took his hands away and Wexford saw that he was weeping. ‘That’s crazy!’

‘I don’t think so, Mr Pertwee.’

‘He couldn’t have,’ Jack said, mouthing something Wexford didn’t quite catch.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said, he couldn’t have. McCloy’s inside. You’re a copper, aren’t you? You know what I mean. McCloy’s in prison.’