Ruth Rendell - The Best Man To Die

‘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.