The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

THE OTHER HALF by Colin Dexter

Recently retired, aged fifty, from Thames Valley Police, with the rank of Detective Chief Inspector, I now styled myself a freelance investigator – and business was bad. The previous week my sole assignment had been to examine the dubious legality of a Bulgarian immigrant keeping a boa constrictor in his council-house bath. I was therefore hopeful of better prospects when the phone rang early on Monday morning.

Mrs Isobel Rodgers introduced herself with a pleasing, slightly husky voice and I guessed the state of play immediately – husband trouble. As I was listening to myself telling her that ninety-five per cent of wives underwent the same affliction, she interrupted me, saying, “Is it my turn to speak now?”

She was, she claimed, almost completely certain of her husband’s infidelity, and was determined to get rid of that “almost”. When I asked if she wanted anything else, she replied simply, “Divorce.” Before I could comment further, she terminated the interview by saying, “It will be worth your while. Come round and see me. You have your diary handy?”

I was in due course ushered into a detached house in North Oxford by this peremptory lady, who was younger than I’d imagined and considerably more attractive, with brown hair framing a pair of startling eyes. Green eyes.

“Drink?”

I shook my head, congratulating myself on not trotting out the policeman’s cliché, whilst she leaned back in a black leather armchair, fondling a tumbler of what looked like water, but most probably wasn’t.

“Cigarette?”

I stoically shook my head once more.

“I’m glad you don’t smoke. My husband Denis is a very heavy smoker.”

“But that’s not what you-”

“What I want to talk to you about, no.” Her eyes arrested mine, and in an unemotional voice she began to recount her suspicions about Denis’ recent philandering. First indictment -those phone calls. “Can I speak to Mr Rodgers, please?” “Who shall I say is speaking?” Line suddenly dead. “Hello, yes?” Line suddenly dead. If Denis answered, only the briefest sotto voce exchanges, “wrong number” being his only reply to subsequent queries.

“And you think-” I began.

“You know very well what I think!”

Second indictment. Denis ran a small publishing business called The Cavalier Press in North Parade in Summertown. A fortnight previously he had thrown an office party to celebrate the awarding of the prestigious Georgette Heyer Prize to one of his authors. A three-book deal was in the offing, soon to be signed by the winner, and Denis was predicting a further upturn in his company’s already flourishing fortunes. It was way after midnight when he had finally come home. He had admitted to being half-seas over and in need of a shower, and had gone to sleep things off in the spare room instead of clambering into the conjugal bed.

“I’m afraid we all occasionally-” I started, but she ignored my interruption.

In the morning she had found two long curly blonde hairs across his jacket. She had reason to believe that they had fallen from the head of Jade, Denis’ newly appointed PA, who preferred to be known as “Blondie”, it seemed – a young woman whom Isobel had not yet met, and most decidedly did not wish to meet.

“Pity you didn’t keep-”

“What makes you think I didn’t?”

Third indictment. The previous week, when her customarily immaculately dressed husband had returned from the office, she had observed something unprecedented about his appearance. He was wearing no tie and the buttons of his shirt were crudely out of alignment. Isobel suggested that even the most inveterate liar would have had trouble coming up with a credible explanation for this state of dress.

Fourth indictment. Isobel pointed to a brown envelope on the coffee table between us. “In there, along with one strand of blonde hair, you will find one half of a letter which was torn in two. I found it in Denis’ wastepaper basket. Just let me know what you think about all this when you come on Friday.”

“But that’s only-”

“Yes, but I know that you can manage it. Same time? And you’ll want this as well.” She handed me a second envelope, a white one, laid a hand on my sleeve, and whispered almost conspiratorially, “Good luck!” Then she showed me to the door.

I called in at The Dew Drop on my way home, and over a couple of pints of Real Ale, I thought of the singular commission given me that morning. And I thought, too, of Isobel Rodgers… I suppose I should have opened the brown envelope first, but I didn’t.

Inside the white envelope I found a cheque made out to me, and I looked and looked again at the middle handwritten line there.

Five hundred pounds

I decided to put the cheque into my account immediately. Whilst I stood waiting in the queue at Lloyds Bank, I looked yet again at the small neat writing and at the signature there.

Isobel Rodgers

As I look back on the following few days, I feel somewhat guilty about having accepted such a generous fee for my services -which amounted to the following.

First I went to the local British Telecom offices to determine if I could get a lead on Isobel’s mysterious phone calls. The patient lady there first explained the various methods for discouraging replacement-window specialists and other persistent unwanted callers. Then she went on to tell me that, unfortunately, the telephone numbers of stalkers and crank callers were generally untraceable, as those callers usually took precautions to make sure that they were. I already knew all this, and I suddenly wondered if Isobel Rodgers knew it all, too. But I figured it had been worth a try.

I spent the whole of the lunch hour on Wednesday in North Parade Avenue, a very narrow thoroughfare off the Banbury Road. At 12:30 p.m. two bonny-looking blondes left the offices of The Cavalier Press and walked along to The Gardener’s Arms. I followed them into that hostelry, then stood behind them as each ordered a spritzer and a packet of plain crisps. A few moments later I took a seat opposite them in one of the spacious alcoves and introduced myself with a carefully rehearsed spiel, telling them I was a reporter from The Oxford Times writing an article on the local literary scene.

Both Jade and Sadie (as they introduced themselves) appeared quite happy to answer my questions. The Cavalier Press was doing fine – yeah! – especially after the recent big thrill of having the Heyer prize awarded to one of its authors. And Mr Rodgers had thrown a party to celebrate. “Great wasn’t it, Sadie?” And there’d been a super article in The Bookseller on Eddie Young, the prize-winner, who wrote under the nom de plume Virginia Stirling.

“A lot of these women are men, you know!” Jade giggled. “And Eddie’s going to sign an exclusive three-book deal with us. Great! Mr Rodgers is over the moon, isn’t he, Sadie?”

My eyes shifted to the slimly curvaceous Sadie, the quieter of the two, who nodded slowly, then finished her spritzer. I got to my feet and insisted on ordering further spritzers for my blonde informants. Jade’s pin-straight hair was cut quite short, while Sadie’s wonderfully curly locks were shoulder length. Sadie’s hair was a better match for the strand Isobel had found. If this race turned out to be of the two-horse variety, it would appear that Isobel had placed her bet on the wrong filly.

On Thursday morning I called in at A Cut Above for a long overdue haircut, then, following my usual custom, I went home immediately afterwards to shake out the hairs from inside my shirt and rub my back with a towel. As I fastened my shirt buttons, something clicked in my sluggish brain about Isobel’s wayward husband and his mismatched buttons. But what of the letter? Each evening I had pondered on that handwritten piece of paper, torn vertically down the middle.

il our weekend

citing thing that’s ever

fe, and the thought of

ours being spent with

ed makes me the most

ver,

die

rling!

Certainly there were plenty of suggestive possibilities down the torn edge of the note: “exciting”, “life”, “hours”, “bed”, “lover”, “Sadie”, “darling”. But the more I studied things, the more I convinced myself that this could just as easily be interpreted as a wholly innocent missive. In the end, I typed out both versions, the innocent and the not-so-innocent, aligning the joins as neatly as my primitive keyboard skills would permit.

I was determined to be fairly honest with Isobel the following morning, but there were three matters on which I determined to remain silent. First, I would not mention the fact that on Wednesday night I had experienced a mildly erotic dream about her. Second, I wouldn’t tell her that I had composed another possible – no, quite probable – left-hand half of the letter, written this time by Sadie. Third, I would not confess that fairly early on I’d had strong suspicions that the handwriting on the letter was extremely similar to that on the cheque Isobel had given me, especially those ‘d’s and ‘r’s, and that I now felt certain that Isobel, for some strange reason, had written the letter herself.

She smiled at me winsomely that Friday morning when I asked if a drink was still on offer, and if she’d mind if I smoked whilst I recounted my findings.

She said nothing when I told her of my unproductive trip to the British Telecom offices. And when I gave her a truncated account of my encounter with the two blondes, she ventured just a single comment: “So you’re saying the hair wasn’t Jade’s?” When I nodded (hallelujah!) she did betray some surprise for once.

My proffered explanation of the shirt re-buttoning incident occasioned little reaction, and in reply to my question she admitted that Denis had been for a haircut about that time, yes.

There remained the final hurdle, though. The letter. I could, of course, have shown her my alternate version, in which “Sadie darling” figured as the happy valediction. But I instead handed Isobel my original reconstruction, then watched her closely as she read it.

“This is the best you could come up with?” she said dismissively.

“Yes,” I said, somewhat defensively. “It would have been another matter if you’d managed to find the other half.”

“And what makes you think I haven’t?” she said as she dipped one elegant hand into her Louis Vuitton handbag. “I found the left-hand half only yesterday – very careless of Denis!” Here she passed me two halves of a typewritten letter cellotaped together.

“But… but those are typed-” I began.

“Yes, they are. And they are the originals. I made a handwritten copy of the half I had found because I am not a computer person, I have no access to a photocopier, and I wanted to keep the original safe. Do you understand?

“Yes, I understand.”

“I’m a little surprised and, to be honest with you, just a little disappointed that you hadn’t noticed the similarities between the writing on the cheque and that on the letter. I’m also surprised that you put your money on Denis’ prize author. But go on! Read it!”

As I read the letter, I was conscious of Isobel’s green, green eyes upon me, and perhaps I succeeded in showing a wholly bogus surprise – bogus, that is, until I read the office nickname at the bottom: Blondie, aka Jade. Isobel had been right all along then, and I had been wrong. She had correctly guessed the winner of a two-horse race, while I had backed an outsider and lost. As we walked to the front door, I resisted the temptation to defend my ratiocinative powers (after all, the hair couldn’t have been Jade’s). Looking at Isobel for the last time, I wished that… well, that things had turned out differently.

Three weeks later I received a handwritten letter with no salutation and no valediction. It was no matter, though. I recognized the writing instantly. It read:

“Denis and I have agreed upon an amicable separation, so divorce is no longer my dearest wish. I would like you to come and have dinner with me this coming Friday – just the two of us.”

Oh dear! I had already been invited out to dinner at The Randolph on Friday evening by an attractive Anglo-Indian lady with deep dark-brown eyes. She had asked me to mediate in a squabble with her neighbours over her chatterbox of a parakeet from Paraguay, which she had somehow imported into the UK during the bird flu crisis.

In any case, I’ve always preferred dark-brown to startling green.

Well, that’s what I told myself.