Ruth Rendell - The Best Man To Die

They were sitting in Lilian Hatton’s flat, Wexford con fronting the three people on the sofa. Mrs Hatton wore a black cotton frock and all the jewellery Charlie had ever given her. Her face was white and tense, still stained by the tears she had shed when Wexford had revealed her husband’s source of income. Was it a revelation or had she always known? Wexford couldn’t make his mind up about that. For all her short skirt and her make-up and the equipment in her kitchen, she was essentially at heart a Victorian wife, help less, clinging, accepting all her husband’s quirks with unquestioning passivity. She would no more have asked Charlie if the brooch she wore was brought with ill-gotten money than her nineteenth-century counterpart would have asked her lord and master to admit that his presents to her were the result of cheating at cards. Hers not to reason why, hers but to accept and praise and adore. Now, as he faced her, Wexford wondered how this anachronism would fend for herself in the world Charlie called a battlefield.

‘He always talked about fighting for what you wanted,’ she had said wretchedly, ‘about being one up on the next man. Planning his – his stra… His stra – something.’

‘Strategy?’

‘That’s it. Like as if he was a general.’

A soldier of fortune, Wexford thought, a mercenary.

The other two knew all right, the young Pertwees. They had finally admitted as much and now Marilyn said sullenly, ‘He was getting back at the big nobs. What does losing a load mean to them? They’re all robbers, anyway. Capitalism’s organized robbery of the working classes. Charlie was only taking back what was due to him.’

‘Having his revenge on society perhaps, Mrs Pertwee?’

‘Yeah, and why not? When we’ve got a real people’s government in this country, folks like Charlie’ll get their fair shares and there won’t be no crime. Or what you call crime. When we get real socialism.’

‘Charlie always voted Conservative,’ said Lilian Hatton. ‘I don’t know, Marilyn, I don’t think…’

Wexford interrupted them. There was no room for laughter in this flat, yet he wanted to laugh. ‘Let’s postpone the political discussion, shall we? Mrs Hatton, you’ve had time to think now and I want you to tell me all you remember about your husband’s departure for Leeds on Sunday, May 19th and his return on the 20th.’

She cleared her throat and glanced hesitantly at Jack Pertwee, waiting perhaps for more masculine directions and more masculine support.

‘Don’t you worry, Lily,’ said Marilyn. ‘I’m here.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what I’d do without you. Well… Well, Charlie’d been ill and I didn’t want him to go but he would insist.’

‘Was he worried about money, Mrs Hatton?’

‘Charlie never bothered me with things like that. Oh, wait a minute though… He did say the doctor would have to wait to get paid. I remember him saying that. D’you want me to go on about that Sunday?’ Wexford nodded. ‘Jack and Marilyn came in the evening for a three-handed solo.’

‘That’s right, said Marilyn, ‘and Charlie rung you from Leeds while we was here.’

Mrs Hatton looked at her admiringly. ‘So he did. Yes, he did.’

‘What did he say to you?’

‘Nothing much. It was mostly – well, asking me how I was and saying he missed me.’ She sniffed and bit her lip. ‘We didn’t like being separated. We couldn’t sleep away from each other.’

‘More like sweethearts than man and wife they were,’ said Jack and he put his arm around her shoulders.

‘Did he say he was still feeling unwell?’

‘Bit under the weather. He’d have come back that night else.’

‘Did he sound pleased, excited?’

‘Down in the dumps, if anything.’

‘Now I want you to be very exact about this. Precisely what time did your husband come home on the following night, the Monday night?’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘Ten on the dot. He’s said ten the night before and I’d made him a chicken casserole. Charlie’d bought me a kitchen timer back in March, but it went wrong and had to go back to the shop, and that was the first time I’d used it. I set it for ten and it just started pinging when Charlie put his key in the door.’

‘How was he when he came in?’

‘In himself, d’you mean? He’d had his sickness back, he said, and he’d had to stop a couple of times on the road. He’d have been back earlier if he hadn’t stopped. He wanted to get back earlier, you see, to surprise me.’ Emotion over came her and she breathed quickly, fighting back the tears. ‘I… He… he said it was stifling in the lorry and he’d had to get a breath of fresh air on the Stowerton By-pass. He walked in the fields a bit where it was cool.’

‘Think carefully, Mrs Hatton. Did he say he had seen anything of interest while he was in those fields?’

She looked at him in bewilderment. ‘No, he only said it had done him good. He felt fine, he said, and I could see he did. On top of the world he was that night, a different man. He was having his meal and we talked about Jack’s wedding.’ Her voice grew hoarse and she leant heavily against Jack’s arm. ‘Charlie wanted me to have a whole new outfit, dress, coat, hat, the lot. He said – he said I was his wife and he wanted me to be a credit to him.’

‘And you always were, love. Charlie was proud of you.’

‘What happened the next day?’ said Wexford.

‘We had a bit of a lay-in.’ She bit her lip. ‘Charlie got up at nine and then he phoned a fellow he knew who was leaving his flat. Charlie’d said he’d come down and look at it when he’d had his breakfast and that’s what he did. You tell it, Jack, it’s your turn.’

Jack eased away his arm and patted the widow’s hand.

‘Charlie came down to the works but I couldn’t get away. I was off doing the wiring in them new houses over Pomfret way. He said he reckoned he’d found us a flat and I said, take Marilyn with you. I can see him now, old Charlie, pleased as punch and grinning like he always did when he was going to do something for you. Bobbing up and down he was like a monkey on a stick.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Old Charlie,’ he said.

Impatiently, Wexford turned to the wife. ‘You went with him?’

‘Yeah, he came down to Moran’s.’ Moran’s was Kingsmarkham’s biggest draper’s. ‘That old bitch, that manageress, didn’t want me to go at first. Not that there’s much trade to speak of on a Monday morning. I’m leaving in a month anyway, I said, and if you don’t like it you can give me my cards and I’ll go now. Straight out I said it. I’d made her look real small in front of Charlie and she never said another word. Well, me and Charlie we went to look at this flat and there was this geezer who was leaving, a right queer if you ask me, wanted two hundred quid key money before he’d let us have it. I could have smacked his face then and there. In a dressing gown he was. There’ll be forced labour for his sort one of these fine days and I was just going to come out with it when Charlie said that was all right and we’d find the money somehow. He could see I was dead keen on the place.’

‘He paid over the money?’

‘Don’t be so daft. He said something about consulting with Jack, though if I wanted it Jack’d want it too all right, and then we went. I was fuming. I’ll put up the money, Charlie said when we was outside, and you can pay me back when you’re rolling. How about that, then?’

‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘how about that?’

‘Did Hatton take you back to the shop?’

‘Of course he didn’t, he wasn’t my keeper. He walked up with me as far as the Olive and then he said he’d got to make a phone call. He went into that box outside the Olive and I never saw him again for a couple of days.’