Ruth Rendell - The Best Man To Die

‘Why would he make a phone call from a box when he had his own phone at home?’

The married pair were thinking what he, under other circumstances might have thought. A married man with a phone of his own makes calls from a box to his mistress. Mrs Hatton looked innocent, subdued, armoured by her memories. Then Marilyn laughed harshly. ‘You’re crazy if you’re thinking what I think you are! Charlie Hatton?’

‘What do you mean, Marilyn?’ the widow asked.

‘I’m thinking nothing,’ said Wexford. ‘Did your husband come home for his lunch?’

‘About half-past twelve. I asked him what he was going to do with himself in the afternoon and it was then he said he was going to get his teeth seen to. He kept getting bits of food under his plate, you see. He was very ashamed of having false teeth was Charlie on account of being so young and all that. And on account of me… He thought I minded. Me mind? I wouldn’t have cared it… Oh, what’s the use? I was telling you about getting his teeth fixed. He’d often said he’d see about getting his teeth fixed. He’d often said he’d see about getting a real good set when he could afford it and he said he thought he’d go to Mr Vigo.’

‘I’d sort of recommended him, you see,’ Jack put in.

‘You?’ Wexford said rudely.

Jack lifted his face and flushed a deep wine colour.

‘I don’t mean I went to him for my teeth,’ he muttered. ‘I’d been up at his place once or twice doing electrical work and I’d sort of described what the place was like to Charlie. Sort of about the garden and all the old things he’s got up there and that room full of Chinese stuff.’

Mrs Hatton was crying now and she wiped her eyes, smiling reminiscently her tears. ‘Many’s the laugh Charlie and Jack used to have over that,’ she said. ‘Charlie said he’d like to see it. Like to have a dekko, he said, and Jack said Mr Vigo was rolling in money. Well, he’d have to be a good dentist to make all that, wouldn’t he? So Charlie thought he was the man for him and he phoned then and there. You’ll never get an appointment for today, I said, but he did. Mr Vigo had a cancellation and he said he’d see him at two.’

‘And then?’

‘Charlie came back at four and said Mr Vigo was going to fix him up with a new set. Mr Vigo was as nice as pie, he said, no side to him. He’d given him a drink in this said Chinese room and Charlie said when he was rich he was going to have stuff like that, rooms full of it and vases and ornaments and – and a little army of chess men and… Oh God, he’ll never have anything where he is!’

‘Don’t, Lily, don’t, love.’

‘When did Mr Hatton give you the key money for this flat of yours?’

‘It was a loan,’ said Marilyn Pertwee indignantly.

‘Lend it to you, then?’

‘He came round with it to Jack’s dad’s place on the Wednesday.’

‘That would have been the 22nd?’

‘I reckon. We handed it over to this bloke as had the flat the next day.’ Jack Pertwee stared hard at Wexford. The dull eyes were glazed now, the face pallid yet mottled. Wexford could hardly suppress a shiver. God help the man who murdered Charlie Hatton, he thought, if Pertwee gets on to him before we do.

‘Isn’t it about time we got shot of that thing?’

Sheila removed Clytemnestra from her father’s chair and contemplated the mass of hairs the dog had moulted on to the cushion. ‘I’m getting a bit fed up with her myself,’ she said. ‘Sebastian’s supposed to be coming for her tonight.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘All right if I have the car to take him to the station?’

‘What, is he scared to cross those fields alone?’ Mabel, dear, listen here, there’s a robbery in the park… ‘I may want the car. He’s young and healthy. Let him walk.’

‘He’s got a verruca,’ said Sheila. ‘He had to walk here and back when he brought her a fortnight ago. I’d be meeting him now’ – she gave her father a disgruntled look – ‘only you’ve always got the car.’

‘It is my car,’ said Wexford absurdly, and then, because it was a game that he and Sheila played, ‘It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it…’

‘For a wilderness of verrucas! Oh, Pop, you’re a honey really. There’s Sebastian now.’

Mrs Wexford began calmly laying the table. ‘Don’t say anything about his hair,’ she said to her husband. ‘He’s got peculiar hair and you know what you are.’

Sebastian’s hair resembled Clytemnestra’s, only it wasn’t grey. It hung on to his shoulders in shaggy curls.

‘I hope the Swoofle Hound hasn’t been too much of a bore for you, Mr Wexford.’

Wexford opened his mouth to make some polite denial but Clytemnestra’s transports at the sight of her owner made speech impossible for a while. She hurled herself at his long legs and plummeted her body against his jacket, a garment which Wexford incredulously identified as part of the full dress uniform of a commander in the Royal Norwegian Navy.

‘You’ll stay and have a meal?’ said Mrs Wexford.

‘If it isn’t too much trouble.’

‘How was Switzerland?’

‘All right. Expensive.’ Wexford was beginning to nourish the unkind thought that the holiday would have been even more costly had he had to pay boarding kennel fees, when Sebastian disarmed him by producing from his haversack a large box of chocolates for Mrs Wexford.

‘Suchard!’ said Mrs Wexford. ‘How kind.’

Encouraged, Sebastian made short work of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, occasionally reaching under the table to fondle Clytemnestra’s ears.

‘I’ll drive you to the station,’ said Sheila and she gave her father a confident smile.

‘That’d be great. We might take Clytemnestra into that Olive place. She likes beer and it’d be a treat for her.’

‘Not in my car, you don’t,’ said Wexford firmly.

‘Oh, Pop!’

‘Sorry, sweetheart, but you don’t drink and drive.’

Sebastian’s expression combined admiration for the daughter and a desire to ingratiate himself with the father. ‘We’ll walk down.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s such a hell of a way to your station, though.’ He eyed the banana custard. ‘Yes, thanks, I will have some more. The trouble is I’ll have to walk Sheila back, unless she goes home by the road,’ he added unchivalrously. ‘We heard about your murder even in Switzerland. Down in those fields at the back, wasn’t it?’

Wexford seldom talked shop at home. Probably this young man wasn’t pumping him and yet… He gave a non-committal nod.

‘Odd,’ Sebastian said. ‘I went to the station that way a fortnight ago, across the fields.’

Wexford intercepted his wife’s glance, deflected it, said nothing. Sheila said it for him.

'What time was it, Seb? About ten?’

‘A bit after that. I didn’t meet a soul and I can’t say I’m sorry.’ He ruffled the dog’s curly coat. ‘If I hadn’t jumped smartly Out of the way, Clytemnestra, you mightn’t ever have seen your papa again. Big American car nearly ran me down.’

‘They do nip into that station approach,’ said Sheila. ‘Station approach, nothing. This was in the fields. In that lane that leads up to the stile thing. Great green car swept in at about forty and I practically had to dive into the hedge. I took the number actually but what with all the kerfuffle about my holiday I lost the bit of paper I wrote it on.’

‘A courting couple?’ said Wexford lightly.

‘Could have been. I was too busy taking the number to look and I was scared of losing my train.’

‘Well we won’t go by the fields this time, and I’ll trail all the way back by the road if it makes you happy, Pop.’