Colin Watson: Lonelyheart 4122

Lonelyheart 4122

Colin Watson

Chapter One

Arthur Henry Spain, butcher, of Harlow Place, Flaxborough, awoke one morning from a dream in which he had been asking all his customers how to spell “phlegm” and thought—quite inconsequentially: I haven’t seen anything of Lilian lately.

He nudged his wife.

“What do you reckon’s up with Lil?”

“Up with her? What do you mean?”

“Well, she’s not been round for ages.”

“She suits herself.”

“I’ve not seen her in the shop either.”

Mrs Spain pondered a moment. Then she shrugged away whatever thought had wriggled into her mind. “Oh, you know what Lil is. Probably taken the huff about something.”

“I’ll ask Mrs Maple.”

“Just as you like.”

Mr Spain did ask Mrs Maple. He had a word with Doris Bycroft, too. Then with the window cleaner from Cadwell Avenue. Quite casually, in the way of daily business. But none of them remembered having seen Mrs Lilian Bannister during the past two or even three weeks. Mr Spain resolved to call at her house on his very next early closing day.

He went there straight from the shop, thinking that lunch time would be the best occasion to find his sister-in-law at home; she was a stickler for her meals routine still, after nearly two years of widowhood.

He walked up the path of the small, semi-detached house in Cadwell Close and rang the bell. He waited and rang the bell again, this time without hope. Nothing happened. Mr Spain pushed back the flap of the letter box and peered in. A stair-post, shiny brown lino, an oak hall stand—all neat, clean and rather depressing.

Mr Spain unlatched the side gate and made his way to the back of the house, glancing through the windows of the sitting room, with its cold, bulgy leather suite; and of the kitchen, that looked designed for the preparation of tinned salmon sandwiches and bedtime Horlicks and nothing else; until he arrived at a door porched within a little glasshouse.

Here he experienced his first wave of real alarm. Ranged tidily beneath a slatted wooden bench were more than a dozen bottles of milk. The contents of those at the back were flocculent and tinged with a watery green.

He tried the door, found it locked as he had expected and went back to the front.

A woman stood on the path, gazing up dubiously at the bedroom windows. She was a very ordinary looking woman, middle-aged, dumpily dressed, bespectacled and hatted.

“Yes?” Mr Spain growled at her. He hadn’t meant to sound hostile, but the sight of the milk bottles had upset him.

The woman smiled nervously, then looked back at the house. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone in.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“I’ve called several times.” A touch of complaint was in her voice; it annoyed him.

“What for?”

“Well, to get in. It’s mine—or it will be on the 25th. That’s what I...”

“Yours?” Mr Spain’s small eyes were nearly swallowed in a scowl of incredulity.

“Yes, we’ve bought it. Me and my husband.”

It was true. Mr Spain went round to the estate agent whose name, like scriptural authority, the woman had quoted in final answer to his questioning. The agent confirmed that Mrs Bannister had asked him a couple of months ago to sell the house; he understood that a contract had been signed and that possession was to be given within the next few days.

“What on earth is the woman up to?” Mr Spain asked his wife over a delayed and somewhat acrimonious lunch. “She never said anything to us.”

Mrs Spain cut savagely into a suet pudding.

“What did that agent have to tell you about it?”

“Nothing, really. They don’t care, once the thing’s off their books.”

“No, and I don’t suppose he cares that there’s nearly a hundred pounds of ours in that house.”

“Well, he ’d not know about that, would he?”

“Who’s the solicitor? She’d have to do it through a solicitor?”

“Scorpe, probably.”

She nodded imperatively. “You can go and see him this afternoon.”

“Yes, but...”

“Go and see him.”

Somewhat to Mr Spain’s surprise, Mr Justin Scorpe obviously found his visit welcome. He was, he admitted, a trifle anxious about Mrs Bannister. One or two minor matters in connection with the sale remained to be cleared up, but his client did not seem to be available. No doubt Mr—ah—Spain was calling on his sister-in-law’s behalf.

No, said Mr Spain, he wasn’t. He just wanted to know where Lilian was hiding herself.

Mr Scorpe frowned. Hiding is not the word for which solicitors much care.

“But I know of no reason,” said Mr Scorpe, “why Mrs Bannister should not be continuing to live at home until the date of completion. That is still a fortnight distant.”

“I don’t even know why she’s sold her house. No one does.”

Mr Scorpe examined him carefully for a moment over the top of heavy, blackframed spectacles.

“As a matter of fact,” said Mr Spain, “I was rather hoping that you might have some idea.”

“Of her whereabouts?”

“Not only that. We’d like to know what she had in mind—what put her up to this business.”

“I cannot recollect her saying anything about reasons or intentions.”

“The fact is, my wife’s a bit worried. I am, too. I mean, there’s that milk. A whole lot of it. She’s not taken it in.”

Mr Scorpe’s bushy brows registered recognition of a classic forensic symptom. After a thoughtful silence he leaned a little closer to Mr Spain.

“Tell me,” he said, “would you say that Mrs Bannister had been faced recently with some kind of—ah—financial obligation?”

Mr Spain shook his head.

“There is one point about this sale,” said the solicitor, “which I think in the circumstances I ought to mention. It is this—though of course you must regard it as strictly confidential. When the contract was signed, I made an advance to your sister-in-law—at her request—of four hundred pounds against the purchase price. It is sometimes done, you know, provided we have confidence in the parties concerned. And in this case everything was straightforward—no outstanding mortgage or anything.”

Mr Spain swallowed. “Actually, that’s not quite true.” He saw the solicitor stiffen with alarm and raised a reassuring hand. “No, what I mean is that when Jack died I lent Lilian enough to clear what she still owed the building society. About a hundred. We’ve not asked for it back.”

“I see.”

“But it makes things even more queer. I’m absolutely certain that Lilian wouldn’t try to dodge. She’s the kind who’d be round to pay a debt the same day as she got the money.”

Neither spoke for several seconds. Then Mr Scorpe cleared his throat portentously.

“I don’t much care for the sound of those milk bottles,” he said.

Mr Spain listened obediently, then realized what had been meant.

“No.” He got up. “I think I’d better...” Mr Scorpe nodded, his lips pursed most judiciously.

If Detective Inspector Purbright found Mr Spain’s tale a little lacking in circumstantial drama, he gave no sign of impatience. Relatives, he knew, were never inclined to credit odd propensities in those who had become as unexcitingly familiar as hatstands. Family loyalty seemed to anaesthetize imaginations that would transform the homes of neighbours into bordellos and put a Crippen behind every other shop counter.

He just soldiered on, courteous and tactful.

“Now, what sort of friends had your sister-in-law, Mr Spain? Would you know anything about that?”

“Friends? Well, no one special, really. One or two of the women round about, I suppose.”