Ruth Rendell - The Best Man To Die

‘He entered the by-pass where at that time of night and during the week, the road was comparatively clear. Now he wouldn’t dare drive too fast – no one could open a car door and throw a body out at any speed – so he kept to the slow lane.’

‘What then?’

‘Things went according to plan. He drove along at twenty or thirty miles an hour and when there were no other vehicles in sight, he shot the girl out and she landed as he had expected with her head well over into the fast lane…’

‘Wait a minute,’ said the doctor sharply. ‘That’s not possible. It can’t be done. We tried it and…’

‘Wait a minute by all means,’ said Wexford, and in execrable French, ‘Pas devant les infirmieres.’

‘Tea, coffee, Ovaltine or Horlicks,’ said a bright voice whose owner had tapped on the glass panel in the door.

‘Ovaltine would be very wholesome,’ said Wexford blandly. ‘Thank you kindly.’

‘A chiel’s among ye, taking notes,’ said Wexford. ‘In other words, Charlie Hatton.’ He sipped his Ovaltine with an inscrutable expression. ‘He had parked his lorry in the lay-by just over the brow of the hill and was taking the air in the field on the other side of the hedge.’

‘You mean he saw Vigo push a girl out of his car and did nothing about it?’

‘Depends by what you mean by nothing. In my experience the Charlie Hattons of this world aren’t over-anxious to get involved with the police even as indignant observers. Hatton did something. He blackmailed Vigo.’

‘Can I have a couple of your grapes?’ said the doctor. ‘Thanks. The only grapes I ever taste are the ones I nick from my patients.’ He put one in his mouth and chewed it, seeds and all. ‘Did he know Vigo?’

‘By sight, I daresay, or else he knew the car. You’ll get appendicitis.’

‘Rubbish, old wives’ tale. Anyhow, I’ve had it. What happened next?’

Wexford took another Kleenex and wiped his mouth.

‘Hatton went home to his wife. Five minutes later Jerome Fanshawe came along, driving like the clappers, spotted the girl in the road too late and shouted out, “My God!” She was lying, remember, with her body and legs in the middle lane and her head over the fast lane. Fanshawe swerved. Wouldn’t it be instinctive in those circumstances to avoid the head at all costs? So he swerved to the right, mounted the turfed centre section and crashed into a tree. That, I think, sums up the entire intervention of the Fanshawes into this case. For once in his life, Fanshawe was the innocent victim.’

Burden nodded agreement and took up the tale. ‘On the following morning,’ he said, ‘Hatton mulled over the whole business. He made his telephone call about the flat for Pertwee and then went down to see it with the girl Marilyn.

Immediately there was a call on his purse. The tenant of the flat wanted two hundred pounds key money.’

‘And that clinched it,’ said Wexford. ‘He left Marilyn at the Olive and Dove and she saw him go into a phone box. We may be sure he was phoning Vigo, making an appointment for the afternoon.’

‘I thought you said he made the appointment later from his own home?’ said the doctor.

‘He phoned again from his own home. That was just a blind for his wife. You may be sure he’d already made it clear to Vigo what he wanted and that he would phone again as if legitimately asking for an appointment. Of course it happened that way. If it hadn’t, do you suppose Vigo would have agreed to an appointment that same day, only an hour afterwards? He’s a busy man, booked up weeks in advance. Charlie Hatton wasn’t even a patient of his. I’ve no doubt that in the morning Charlie told him he wanted hush money out of him and he’d have the best set of false teeth Vigo could provide. Free of charge, of course.’

‘It must have been a hell of a shock to Vigo,’ said Crocker thoughtfully. ‘The night before he’d taken a risk and acted on the spur of the moment. The chances then of its coming out were fairly high, I’d have thought. But Fanshawe’s crash was an unforeseen stroke of luck for him. Seeing it in the morning paper and seeing that the girl had been identified as Nora Fanshawe made him safe. By the time the real Nora turned up things would be so confused, the truth would very likely never come out. Who would have imagined his actions had been seen?’

‘Naturally he paid up,’ said Wexford. ‘Paid and paid. My guess is that when he phoned the first time Hatton asked him to draw a thousand pounds immediately from his bank, a sum which he was to give to Hatton, and did give him, during his visit to Ploughman’s Lane that afternoon, the afternoon of May 21st. Must have been rather bizarre, mustn’t it, that consultation of Hatton’s? The mind boggles, as they say. You have to picture the blackmailer lying back in his chair with his mouth open while his victim, desperate, at bay, if you like, probed about, measuring him for his new teeth.’

‘On the following day, May 22nd, we know Hatton paid five hundred pounds into his own account, keeping two hundred for the Pertwees’ key money and the remaining three hundred for incidental expenses, furniture, clothes and other frivolity. The weekly payments of fifty pounds a time followed at once. I reckon Hatton got Vigo to leave the money in some prearranged hiding place down by the river on Friday nights somewhere along the route Hatton took on his way home from the darts club. And one Friday night…’

‘Yes, why that particular Friday?’

‘Who can say at what point the victim of blackmail reaches the end of his tether?’

‘Mrs Fanshawe,’ put in Burden unexpectedly. ‘You see, that wasn’t quite right, what you said about the Fanshawes’ intervention having come to an end. Mrs Fanshawe regained consciousness the day before Hatton was killed. It was in the morning papers, just a paragraph, but it was there.’

‘You’ve got something there, Mike. Nora was still missing, but once Mrs Fanshawe could talk, Vigo might believe she’d tell us the girl’s body couldn’t be that of her daughter. Hatton was an important witness with someone else now to back up his story. Once he’d had all he wanted out of Vigo…’

The doctor got up, stood for a moment staring at Wexford’s flowers and then said, ‘It’s a good story, but it’s impossible. It couldn’t have happened that way.’ Wexford smiled at him. Crocker said irritably, ‘What are you grinning like that for? I tell you there’s an obvious flaw. If anyone throws a body out of a car, even feet first, it’s going to fall well over to the left. Vigo would have had to be driving right on the grass section itself for the girl’s head to have been in the fast lane. And as to that theory of yours about the head being on his lap to stop bloodstains getting on the passenger seat, it’s nonsense. That way her feet would have been in the fast lane and Fanshawe would have swerved to the left to avoid her head.’

He stopped and gave a defiant snort as the nurse came back with a sleeping pill.

‘I don’t want that,’ said Wexford. He slid down in the bed and pulled up the covers. ‘I’ll sleep, I’m tired.’ Over the top of the sheet he said, ‘Nice of you two to come. Oh, and by the way, it’s a foreign car. Left-hand drive. Good night.’

‘Electrician,’ said Jack Pertwee on the doorstep. ‘You’ve got a switch that wants fixing.’

‘Not me,’ said the girl. ‘I only work here. Wait a bit… Is this it?’ She fumbled among some loose sheets of paper on a table beneath the mullioned window and her face reddened with indignation. ‘You was supposed to come last week.’

‘I was off last week. This is my first day back. Don’t work yourself up. I’ve been here before. I can find my own way.’