Ruth Rendell - The Best Man To Die

‘Leave it to us, Mrs Hatton,’ said Inspector Burden. ‘We’ll tell Mr Pertwee. Bailey Street, is it? We’ll tell him. There’s your front door bell now. I expect that’ll be your mother.’

‘Mum,’ said Lilian Hatton. ‘What am I going to do, Mum?’ The older woman looked past her, then put her arms around the shaking shoulders. ‘Marilyn said I shouldn’t wear green to a wedding, she said it was unlucky.’ Her voice was very low, a slurring mumble. ‘I bought that green coat just the same. I never got as far as the wedding, Mum, but it was unlucky, wasn’t it?’ Suddenly she broke into a terrible, loud and demented scream. ‘Charlie, Charlie, what am I going to do, Charlie?’ She held on to her mother, clawing at the lapels of her coat. ‘Oh my God, Charlie!’ she screamed.

‘I never get used to it, you know,’ said Burden quietly.

‘Do you think I do?’ Wexford had amiable, sometimes distinctly fond feelings for his subordinate, but occasionally Burden made him impatient, especially when he instituted himself keeper of the chief inspector’s conscience. He had a smug, parsonical face, Wexford thought unkindly, and now his thin mouth turned piously, down. ‘The worst is over anyway,’ he said crossly. ‘The bridegroom won’t go into transports of grief and you don’t put off your wedding because your best man’s been done in.’

You callous devil, said Burden’s look. Then the neat, well-modelled head was once more averted and the inspector re-entered his silent, respectful reverie.

It took only ten minutes to get from the Hatton’s flat to Bailey Street where, at number ten, Jack Pertwee lived with his widowed father. The police car stopped outside a tiny terraced house with no garden to separate its front door from the pavement. Mr Pertwee senior answered their knock, looking uneasy in a too large morning coat.

‘Thought you were our missing best man come at last.’

‘I’m afraid Mr Hatton won’t be coming, sir.’ Wexford and Burden edged themselves courteously but firmly past him into the narrow hall. ‘I’m very sorry to tell you we have bad news.’

‘Bad news?’

‘Yes, sir, Mr Hatton died last night. He was found down by the river this morning and he’d been dead since midnight or before.’

Pertwee went pale as chalk. ‘By gum,’ he said, ‘Jack’ll take this hard.’ His mouth trembling, he looked at them both and then down at the knife-edge creases in his trousers. ‘D’you want me to go up and tell him?’ Wexford nodded. ‘Well, if that’s the way you want it. He’s getting married at eleven-thirty. But if I’ve got to tell him, I suppose I’ve got to tell him.’

They both knew Jack Pertwee by sight. Most Kingsmarkham faces were familiar to Wexford, and Burden remembered seeing him the night before arm-in-arm with the dead man, singing and disturbing decent citizens. A happily married man himself, he had the deepest sympathy for the widow, but in his heart he thought Jack Pertwee a bit of a lout. You didn’t have to tread softly with such as he and he wondered scornfully why the fellow’s face was lard-coloured.

Impatiently he watched him lumber blindly down the steep narrow staircase and when the bridegroom reached the bottom, Burden said curtly:

‘Your father’s told you? Hatton was murdered last night. We want to know the lot, where you’d been and what time you left him.’

‘Here, go easy,’ said the father. ‘It’s been a shock. They were old mates, my boy and Charlie.’

Jack pushed past him into the poky front parlour and the others followed. The wedding flowers had come. Jack had a white rose in his buttonhole and there were two more, their stems wrapped in silver foil, on the fumed oak sideboard. One was for the bridegroom’s father and the other would never be worn. Jack plucked the flower out of his morning coat and closed his fist slowly over it, crushing it into a pulp.

‘I’ll get you a drop of whisky, son.’

‘I don’t want it,’ Jack said with his back to them. ‘We was drinking whisky last night. I never want to touch it again.’ He pulled his black immaculate sleeve across his eyes. “Who did it?’ he shouted.

‘We hoped you’d be able to tell us that,’ said Burden.

‘Me? Are you out of your bloody mind? Just show me the bastard who killed Charlie Hatton and I’ll…’ He sat down heavily, spread his arms on the table and dropped his head.

‘Charlie,’ he said.

Wexford didn’t pursue it. He turned to the father. “What was it last night, a stag party?’ Pertwee nodded. ‘D’you know who was there?’

‘Jack, of course, and poor old Charlie. Then there was all the darts club lot, George Carter, fellow called Bayles, Maurice Cullam from Sewingbury and a couple of others. That right, Jack?’

Jack nodded dumbly.

‘Charlie got there late, Jack said. They left at closing time, split up outside, I reckon. Charlie and Cullam’ll have walked home across the fields. That right, Jack?’

This time Jack lifted his head. Burden thought him a weak womanish fool, despising his red eyes and the muscle that twitched in his cheek. But Wexford spoke gently.

‘I realize this has been a blow to you, Mr Pertwee. We won’t bother you much longer. Did Mr Cullam and Mr Hatton walk home together?’

‘Maurice went first,’ Jack muttered. ‘About twenty to eleven it was. Charlie… Charlie stayed for a bit of a natter with me.’ A sob caught his throat and he coughed to mask it. ‘He said he wished me luck in case he didn’t get the chance today. Christ, he didn’t know he’d never get another chance.’

‘Come on, son, bear up. Let me give you a little drop of scotch. You owe it to Marilyn to keep going you know. It’s your wedding day, remember?’

Jack shook off his father’s hand and lurched to his feet.

‘There isn’t going to be no wedding,’ he said.

‘You don’t mean that, Jack, think of that girl of yours, think of all them folks coming. They’ll be getting to the church in a minute. Charlie wouldn’t have wished it.’

Stubbornly Jack said, ‘I’m not getting married today. D’you think I don’t know what’s right, what’s proper?’ He wrenched off his tie and flung his morning coat over the back of a chair.

His father, with a working man’s regard for hired finery, picked it up, smoothed it and stood draping it over his arm like an outfitter’s assistant. Bewildered by the holocaust of events, by death that had suddenly changed a world, he began apologising, first to the policemen: ‘I don’t know what to say, his best man to die like that…’ and then to his son: ‘I’d give my right hand to have things different, Jack. What can I do for you, son? I’ll do anything you say.’

Jack dropped his handful of bruised petals. A sudden dignity made him straighten his back and hold his head high. ‘Then get down to that church,’ he said, ‘and tell them the wedding’s off.’ He faced Wexford. ‘I’m not answering any more questions now. I’ve got my grief. You ought to respect my grief.’ Still the old man hesitated, biting his lip. ‘Go on, Dad,’ Jack said fiercely. ‘Tell them it’s all off and tell them why.’ He gasped as if suddenly, at this moment, it had come home to him. ‘Tell them Charlie Hatton’s dead!’

Oh, Jonathan, thou wast slain in thy high places… How are the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished!

‘A best man, indeed,’ said Burden. ‘Everyone’s best man.’

You callous devil, thought Wexford. ‘Naturally Pertwee’d be upset. What did you expect?’

Burden made a moue of disgust. ‘That sort of grief, that’s the widow’s province. A man ought to have more self-control.’ His pale ascetic face flushed unbecomingly. ‘You don’t suppose there was anything…’