The Water Clock

Tuesday, 6th November

18

Dryden loathed the doorsteps of the recently bereaved. He knew that as he knocked on the door of Camm House it would, this time, not be empty. The night’s search parties along the river had found no trace of Reg Camm. The pathologist had meanwhile matched his dental records to the corpse retrieved from the Lark. In the morgue at eight o’clock the previous night Paul Camm had formally identified the body of his father. And here, twelve hours later, was Dryden. His professional objectives were clear: a brief interview with the widow and – the main priority – a picture of the deceased. He knocked again and saw the net curtains twitch.

Peggy Camm answered the door. The cameo brooch this time held a silk scarf in place. Otherwise she was in black; a deep velvet black which sucked in what little light the house enjoyed. The dismal hallway reeked of white lilies. Dryden was mystified by the use of such a flower to witness death, it radiated a sickly sweet medicinal aroma. From a back room came the gentle tinkling of the teacups of condolence. Upstairs a child cried in that confused way reserved for the first encounter with death.

They sat in the front room, an old-fashioned parlour in perfect keeping with the house’s post-war gloom.

She looked at him kindly. ‘I remember now. Your father. I’m sorry about your mother. Last year, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. Thanks. You’ve got a good memory. I was eleven when Dad died. You haven’t changed.’

She smiled. ‘She was a good friend. I’m afraid I wasn’t. I faded away after your father died. I’m sorry.’

Dryden shook his head. It didn’t matter now.

‘And I’m sorry about having to sit in this antiques shop,’ she said, brushing down her black velvet skirt. ‘Reg loved this room – he remembered it from childhood of course. I think he saw it as a representation of continuity. The children hate it, too stuffy and you can’t run round can you, not with all this stuff just waiting to topple to the floor.’ She adjusted a small porcelain figurine by her elbow.

The accent was more finishing school than Fens.

‘Frankly, that’s why we’re in here. The children – the boys – don’t think I should be speaking to you. I think they are angry about Reg’s death, confused perhaps. But Reg rather liked The Crow, I think he’d want me to talk to you.’

Thanks a million, thought Dryden, feeling unclean. Did he have some horribly apparent disease? He wanted to ask a few questions and put Reg Camm’s picture in the paper; the family would be ringing up later that week to pay for an obituary notice. He was doing them a bloody favour.

Her hand twitched again at the brooch. ‘We imagined you’d like a picture as well.’ She touched a brown envelope stiffened with cardboard on the table between them. Inside was a large black and white print of a man at the wheel of a pleasure cruiser. He had a shock of corn-blond hair and the slightly ruddy skin of someone who has spent a lifetime out of doors. Dryden suppressed the image of the body of the Lark victim, and the blood-dripped corn-blond head which had looked out with a fish-dead eye.

‘Thank you. I am really very sorry to be butting in just now, it must have been a shock.’

She fiddled absentmindedly with the brooch. ‘No. No. I wouldn’t have said a shock. Murder we didn’t expect of course… I’d rather you didn’t put this in the paper…’

Dryden hoped the tabloids didn’t get to her, they’d eat her alive.

‘Reg had been unhappy for several years and had, well, tried to take his own life as a result. It’s not nice but there it is. I think failing to succeed, even in that, made it even worse. The last attempt was quite serious and we were all rather fearful of the future. He was a determined man.’

Dryden looked suitably confused.

‘Debts,’ she said.

Money, thought Dryden, but said: ‘I thought he inherited the boatyard from his father? It’s a well-established business…’

‘It could be a thriving one. But Reg mortgaged it in 1980. My husband could run a boatyard, Mr Dryden, but he couldn’t run a business. I’m afraid he panicked. We needed money rather quickly you see. Our first son, Paul, had leukaemia as a baby and the doctors said he’d have a much better chance going to a specialist at a London clinic – the Princess Grace. Rather expensive even then. A fortune in fact, and no credit accepted, at least not the kind we could offer.

‘Reg had friends, rather bad friends as it turned out, and he went to one of them to organize everything. He was duped: quite blatantly in fact. There’s no way that this business will ever make enough money to meet the repayments. But then we have our son. So who can say if he made that much of a hash of things. I think Reg thought he had failed his family, not just us, but his parents and grandparents. The boatyard was his inheritance and he felt that all he was leaving for Paul and James was a burden.’

Dryden leant forward in the old armchair, his knees cracking loudly in the silent parlour. ‘Can I ask you a question about your husband’s past? About the time before he met you?’

Was that fear in her eyes? ‘Yes. Yes, of course. There were no secrets you know, not between us. Reg had rather a wild youth – letting off steam. He was very lucky: he was the only child and the business was very lucrative. He went to a private school in Cambridge, foreign holidays, everything he wanted really. I often think he felt he lived the rest of his life in penance for having wasted such opportunities. He had no need. But there it is.’

‘You met?’

‘In 1968. Our first date was at the Picture Palace. A Man For All Seasons. It had won an Oscar.’

Dryden cut the reminiscences. ‘Did he ever mention friends from his past – Tommy Shepherd?’

‘That was the man they found on the cathedral roof, wasn’t it?’ She took silence for yes. ‘He knew Tommy I think. Reg was a modest teenage rebel: Mods and Rockers, that kind of thing. There was a whole crowd of them. I think Reg’s money helped – otherwise I don’t think they would have given him the time of day. I got the impression that they did a lot of betting, horse racing. Reg got an allowance but when he was in trouble, which was pretty often, it was stopped. That’s when he needed another source of income. It was all over by the time we met, but I think it had been a bit of a, well, passion.’

She blushed. Perhaps not the only passion.

‘Reg was, in some ways, quite a weak person. Easily led is too trite – but it can’t be far from the truth. Perhaps they went a bit far. Anyway he dropped them, all the old crowd. He said he wanted to start again – that was good enough for me. His father paid off his debts. It was a difficult time for both of them – but it was a new beginning.

‘His reputation wasn’t good though. My parents tried to stop the marriage. I met Reg at night school – at the college. I was doing teacher training. Your mother was a lecturer in fact. Reg was doing business accounting, trying to show his father that he was serious about taking on the yard.’

‘Have you any idea who killed your husband, Mrs Camm?’

She shook her head and stood.

‘You said there were no secrets, Mrs Camm, none at all do you think? Tommy was involved in a robbery before he disappeared. Could your husband have got involved in that?’

‘I think… I believe, that my husband told me everything. Nothing he told me would warrant his murder. That is enough for me.’

Within thirty seconds Dryden was standing on the doorstep. Would she, he wondered, have married someone involved in the Crossways robbery? If she found out, what would have been her reaction? Betrayal perhaps. Anger.

He paused on the doorstep. ‘Was Mr Camm insured, Mrs Camm?’

She didn’t miss a heartbeat. ‘I think that’s a family matter, Mr Dryden. Will you drop the photograph back?’

‘Of course. Thank you.’

He was talking to a closed door.