Ruth Rendell: The Best Man To Die

‘No, I don’t,’ said Wexford. ‘And why can’t you call a spade a spade? They were friends. Don’t you have friends, Mike? A pretty pass we’ve come to if a man can’t have a friend without being labelled queer.’ He stared aggressively at Burden and declaimed loudly and meaningfully, ‘0 brave new world, that has such people in it!’

Burden gave a stiff repressive cough and maintained silence until they reached York Street. Then he said coldly, ‘George Carter’s place is down here, old Pertwee said.’

‘He’s the Morris dancer, isn’t he? I’ve seen him cavorting about on summer nights outside the Olive and Dove.’

‘Lot of affected nonsense.’

But George Carter wasn’t wearing his cap and bells this morning. From the brilliantined hair and the smart lounge suit, Wexford gathered that here was a wedding guest.

He hinted at the unlikelihood of Jack Pertwee’s being married that day and was inwardly amused to observe that this piece of information – the fact that Carter would be deprived of his cold chicken and champagne – distressed him more than Hatton’s death. The wedding guest did not exactly beat his breast but he looked considerably crestfallen.

‘All that money wasted,’ he said. ‘I know, I was making plans for my own wedding, but then you won’t want to know about that. Pity Jack had to be told, really. I don’t seem to be able to take it in. Charlie Hatton dead! He was always so full of life, if you know what I mean.’

‘And very well liked, I gather.’

George Carter’s eyebrows went up. ‘Charlie? Oh well, mustn’t speak ill of the dead.’

‘You’d better speak the truth, Mr Carter,’ said Burden, ‘and never mind whether it’s ill or not. We want to know all about this party last night. The lot, please. You can take your time.’

Like Jack Pertwee and yet utterly unlike him, Carter took off his jacket and loosened his tie. ‘I don’t know what you mean by the lot,’ he said. ‘It was just a bunch of mates having a drink.’

‘What happened? What did you talk about?’

‘O.K.’ He gave them an incredulous glance and said sarcastically, ‘Stop me if I’m boring you. Charlie come into the Dragon at about half nine, maybe a quarter to ten. We was drinking beer so, of course, Charlie has to make us all feel small by paying for whiskies all round. A crack hand at that, was Charlie Hatton. I made some comment and he bit my head off. This the sort of thing you want to know?’

‘Exactly the sort of thing, Mr Carter.’

‘Seems a bit mean, that’s all, with the poor geezer dead. Then someone else was telling a joke and he sort of – well, humiliated him, if you know what I mean. He was like that, always had to be top dog. He drank my drink because I said something about all the money he was always flashing around and then he made a dirty crack about… Well, that doesn’t matter. It was personal. He got at our chairman too and he left with a couple of the others. Geoff had already gone. There was me and Charlie and Maurice and Jack left and we went when they closed. And that’s the lot.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I told you there was nothing much. I can’t think of any more… Oh, wait a minute. But it was nothing.’

‘We’ll have it just the same, Mr Carter.’

George Carter shrugged impatiently. ‘I don’t even know what it was about. Nothing, I reckon. Maurice said – it was after the others had gone – Maurice said, “Seen much of McCloy lately, Charlie?” I think those were his words. I know the name was McCloy but it didn’t mean nothing to me. Jack didn’t like it and he was a bit shirty with Maurice. I reckon Charlie looked a bit sick. God, it was all so… well, it was nothing. But Charlie’d always rise. I expected him to rise. I don’t know why. He didn’t. He just made a crack about Maurice needing to sleep quiet in his bed. Said it was time he did, meaning that Maurice had so many kids and… well, you can get the message.’

‘Not altogether,’ said Wexford. ‘Had Cullam suggested that Hatton couldn’t sleep quiet in his?’

‘That’s right. I forgot that bit. I wish I could remember his words. Something like “I don’t have nothing to do with McCloy, I like to sleep quiet in my bed”.’

Very interesting Wexford thought. Far from being popular, Hatton had evidently had a host of enemies. He had spent less than an hour in the Dragon and during that time he had succeeded in needling at least four men.

‘You mentioned all the money Hatton used to flash around,’ he said. ‘What money?’

‘He always had wads of it,’ said Carter. ‘I’ve known him three years and he was always flush. But he’d had more lately. He bought four rounds of double scotches last night and it didn’t even make a hole in what he’d got.’

‘How much had he got, Mr Carter?’

‘I didn’t count it, you know,’ Carter said with asperity. He blew his nose on his clean white wedding handkerchief. ‘He’d got his pay packet, but he didn’t touch that. Then he had this roll of notes. I told you I didn’t count them. How could I?’

‘Twenty pounds, thirty, more?’

Carter wrinkled his forehead in an effort of concentration. ‘He paid for the first round out of a fiver and the third with another fiver. He’d got two fivers left, then. As well as that there was a wad of oncers.’ He indicated with two parted fingers a quarter of an inch. ‘I reckon he was carrying a hundred quid besides his pay.’

By lunchtime Wexford and Burden had interviewed all those members of the darts club that had been present at Jack Pertwee’s stag party with the exception of Maurice Cullam, but none of them had been able to do more than confirm that Hatton had been aggressive, vain and malicious and that he had been carrying a great deal of money.

They returned to the police station, passing the parish church on whose steps a June bride and her attendants were being photographed. The bridegroom moved out of the throng and Wexford felt a strange sentimental pang because it was not Jack Pertwee. Then he pulled himself together and said, as they mounted the station steps under the concrete canopy:

‘Now if we were cops inside the covers of a detective story, Mike, we’d know for sure that Hatton was killed to stop Pertwee getting married today.’

Burden gave a sour smile. ‘Easier to kill Pertwee, I’d have thought.’

‘Ah, but that’s your author’s subtlety. Still, we aren’t and he wasn’t. The chances are he was killed for the money he was carrying. There was nothing in his wallet when I found him.’

The foyer of the police station enclosed them. Behind the long black sweep of counter Sergeant Camb sat fanning himself with a newspaper, the sweat dripping down his fore head. ‘Wexford made for the stairs.

‘Why not use the lift, sir?’ said Burden.

The police station was not yet half a dozen years old, but ever since its completion the powers that be, like fussy housewives, had been unable to let well alone, adding innovation after innovation, perpetually trying to improve their handiwork. First there had been the stone tubs on the fore court, a constant temptation to vandals who got a more than commonly satisfying kick from ravishing these particular flowers. Then came the consignment of houseplants for the offices, tradescantia and sanseveria and ficus elastica that were doomed from the start to dehydration and ultimately to have their pots serve as repositories for cigarette ash.

Last year it had been glass sculpture, a strange green tree, a very Yggdrasil, for Burden’s sanctum, and for Wexford an inky-blue, amorphous pillar that in some lights grossly resembled the human figure. These, too, had been fated, Wexford’s broken by a pretty young woman who was helping him with his enquiries and Burden’s one day inadvertently put out with the rubbish.