An open window, p.20
An Open Window, page 20
‘Perhaps you’d like to see the production schedules,’ he said. I shook my head, realising that I’d barely said a word since I’d arrived.
‘Or the order books? We’ve tied up a very handsome order from Germany.’
‘I wouldn’t understand them, Paul.’
‘Orders for enlargers. We make our own projection lenses, you know. I didn’t have time to show you the polishing shop. Also our own colour filters. For the colour enlarging. No?’ He smiled bleakly. ‘There’s no hurry. Perhaps we’ll have more time to discuss things this evening.’
‘Evening?’
‘I’ve been instructed to bring you home. Evelyn is preparing something special…’
‘Mary Pinson will be expecting me,’ I tried desperately.
With a thin smile he played his ace. ‘I phoned Mary, and told her you’ll be back later.’
‘It was very good of you.’
‘Evelyn especially wanted the chance…’ He let it die, watching my expression with anxiety.
What the devil was worrying him? Something had to be said, and he had trouble getting it out. As bad as his sister! Smiling, I asked how Donald was. At least, he’d enquired. They were now certain there’d been no brain damage—his reflexes were operating. He’d had to have his jaw wired, and his ear would never look pretty. He had not lost the sight of one eye.
‘Damned fool,’ said Paul. ‘Borrowing money like that.’
‘All businesses live on credit,’ I observed.
‘Well yes, but he never got a business going, did he?’
It seemed that he himself would never get going. The factory, which had not seemed noisy, now assailed me with its silence. To move things along, I produced my two cuttings from the newspaper.
‘Have you ever seen one like those?’
He looked up, his eyes brightening. ‘Oh yes.’ And obligingly he fetched out his wallet and increased my collection to three. He was so bland about it that I wondered how stupid he might be.
‘You know what it means?’ I asked.
‘It’s obvious, surely. Everybody knew that father was intending to change his will. That ridiculous nonsense about feeling threatened! Well…I ask you! The only thing to do when people get those ideas is to ignore them. The ideas, not the people.’ He flexed his lips in a thin smile. ‘He’d have come round, given time. I wasn’t worried. Not even when he announced he’d traced his niece, and was going to alter his will in her favour.’
‘My wife.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ He seemed surprised that I hadn’t realised that.
‘You said “announced”. How was that done?’
‘The same way everything’s been done lately—by phone. He seemed to think he could run the factory by remote control.’
‘Which of course he couldn’t?’
‘It’s placed a heavy burden on my shoulders.’
‘I’m sure it has. So you knew, at once, that the cutting was intended to inform you that my wife was dead?’
‘Isn’t that obvious?’
‘You received this news with…I couldn’t think how he’d have received it…with equanimity?’
‘It took the worry out of it, that’s for sure.’
‘With relief, then?’
‘Exactly.’ He beamed.
He wasn’t stupid by any means. He’d understood precisely what the cutting meant, with all its implications. Paul was simply a completely self-involved man.
‘But surely,’ I said, ‘it must have been clear to you that the cutting had been sent to you by one of the other interested parties?’
‘You’re way off beam there, Mr Patton.’
‘Am I?’
He had his fingers linked, the result lying on the desk surface like a wad of pink dough. He was watching me with the patience due to an idiot, who didn’t comprehend the simplicity of it. But who were the interested parties? About whom did he think I was speaking? Clare, Donald and himself. Peripherally, Kenneth Leyton, but he could in no way have gained by Walter’s death. With Amelia dead, he would have inherited nothing. With her alive, he was excluded from the will, and by his own wish.
For Paul, I spelled it out. ‘You, Clare and Donald, they’re the interested parties. Surely it must have occurred to you that one of you three must have sent these cuttings to the other two. To take the worry out of it, as you say.’
He rubbed his hand across his mouth, and leaned forward. ‘All I was disputing was that you’re seeing the wrong implications from it. I knew Clare had sent it…them, it now appears. Now…we can’t have you going around with poorly thought-out ideas.’
I got to my feet and went to look out of his side window. The empty car park, apart from a Volvo. Poorly thought-out!
‘But it follows,’ I told him, turning back. ‘Whoever sent you that things must have blown up the caravan. Surely that’s simple enough. Now you’re accusing Clare.’
‘Mr Patton…please.’ He sighed for my stupidity. ‘Don’t you think I’ve given it thought? Whoever attempted to kill your wife—if that’s how it was—had to know where she was located, or expected to be. Right?’
‘I agree.’
‘Father engaged enquiry agents for that.’
‘She was killed. You can’t say she…’
He was shaking his head, tut-tutting. I was receiving a lesson in pure logic. I went to sit down again and began filling my pipe.
‘Who knew first, and most accurately, where you and your wife were expected to be?’ He raised bushy eyebrows, a professor prompting a backward pupil. I said nothing, giving him his head.
‘That same firm of enquiry agents,’ he produced with quiet pride.
He had to be insane! ‘But I just said, that agent died. You must surely realise that.’
‘A mistake.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘But one that could pay off…for the remaining partner. Don’t you think?’
And blast him, insane or not, it was beginning to fit neatly. I shook my head. I didn’t want this. ‘And Clare?’ He seemed reluctant to explain this. ‘How does Clare come into this?’
‘Clare was known to them, that’s how. It’s natural she’d be the one to be approached.’
‘In what way known?’
‘Didn’t you know? I’d have thought it was all round the town. She’d had Aleric investigated. Damn it, she wanted to see the back of him. I think she was hoping he’d been seeing somebody…I mean, why else his two evenings a week in Birmingham?’ He laughed, a shishing sound through his teeth. ‘Dear Clare, what could she expect? God knows how many men she’s had since they were married. Thought she was entitled, I suppose. Spoilt rotten, Clare was. You can tell.’
I could. I could also have told him that, according to Clare, Aleric would not have been hunting for women in Birmingham. Men perhaps. Impotency is not necessarily bilingual, or whatever the word is.
‘So Clare would be approached,’ I conceded cautiously. ‘Presumably there’d be some money in it—for the remaining partner?’
‘Don’t you see? I thought you policemen were good at this sort of thing. If father thought your dear wife was alive, and made a new will, then it wouldn’t change things, because she wouldn’t be.’
‘Eh? But she was…is…alive.’
‘But my dear friend…’ I’d become his friend. ‘Nobody would know that. How could they? You’d be buzzing around in your little caravan, and it’d be assumed she’d died in the explosion. That sort of knowledge could be worth something.’
I very nearly walked out on him. Did he really think that Philip Carne, faced with the death of a beneficiary who’d been alive the week before, would let it go at that? He’d demand a death certificate. And there I’d been, admiring Paul’s logic!
‘I think,’ I said politely, ‘that you’re over-simplifying.’
‘But all the same…’ He waited for me to accept something, even one tatty corner of his logic.
‘Clare?’ I asked.
He stared at me. He waited for me to say it.
‘She might have sent you that cutting?’
‘You could say that.’
He seemed content to leave it at that, and slapped his palms on the desk surface, preparatory to rising. There was an air of relief about him. He’d managed to achieve what he’d intended.
They were a clever lot, the Manns. Clare with her feral deviousness, Donald with his naïve brilliance, and Paul with his self-seeking cunning. Paul had very nearly succeeded. All he’d been doing was trying to point me at Clare. I knew that now, and could even admire the way he’d wrapped it up. He was doing this, not because he believed in her involvement, but simply to make trouble for her. He hated his sister. Possibly he even blamed her for the position he now found himself in. If she hadn’t come on the scene, and absorbed his father’s attention, he might well have been able to demonstrate his basic potential, which certainly wasn’t management.
He hated her, and assumed I’d be able to involve her in some way. What he didn’t know was that Clare, had she wanted a divorce, already had grounds. Her marriage hadn’t broken down, as the law demanded for a divorce. It hadn’t even started. She could have annulled the marriage on the grounds of non-consummation.
He was saying: ‘Evelyn will be expecting us.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll lead and you follow. Better stay close when we get into town.’
Closely linked, then, we fought our way through the going-home traffic that clogged the centre of the town—ten minutes to get over the bridge—and eventually turned out of it into quieter streets, finally driving into the arc of a driveway and stopping in front of a very respectable town house, which could well have been Regency.
It turned out to be a terrible evening. Not that Evelyn didn’t try. Her meal was excellent. Paul would expect that of her. The conversation flowed. There was no laughter. Two children, a boy and a girl of ten and eight with eager eyes and puckish faces, would have played hell if I hadn’t been there, but were severely restrained by Paul’s cold eye. Afterwards, they disappeared into a television room, and Evelyn excused herself. Paul and I retired to his study, a cosy place, heavy with furniture and brooding with masculine pomposity, where we sank into soft chairs with a decanter between us, and he droned on endlessly about the operation of the factory. If I’d listened carefully, I could have taken over the place in the morning. But I didn’t.
The decision I had to make was whether to phone Amelia that evening, and risk this second call in one day indicating that I had a fear for her safety, or not to phone, and risk her assuming I had no concern for her safety. There was no in-between. His persistent voice robbed me of initiative, and inertia took over. Besides, I was very tired. I might have dozed. His voice ceasing brought me back to attention. He was looking at his watch.
It was ten o’clock. I said I was sorry, I’d kept him up late. He said surely I wasn’t leaving, and we played around with that theme for a few moments, before he went to unearth Evelyn, and I could at last get away.
Mary was waiting for me, a brighter, more active Mary, now that Donald was on the mend. I said I’d been stuck at Paul’s. She told me Evelyn had phoned to tell her that. They’d had a friendly chat, and Evelyn had been worried about Donald.
‘You told her he was improving?’
‘Yes, of course. But she’s always had a soft spot for Donald. What she’s worried about is what happens afterwards, when he’s on his feet.’
I scratched my chin. ‘I rather thought he’d be found a position in the factory.’
She shook her head. ‘He’d refuse.’
‘I don’t think so. I’d beat him up myself if he refused.’
She touched my arm. ‘I knew you’d think of something.’
I went to bed, leaving her to lock up.
Wednesday morning. I awoke thinking: Clare, Clare! When I should have been thinking: Amelia, Amelia.
After breakfast, I phoned her. Amelia, not Clare.
Improvement was being maintained. ‘I’ll be out of here in a week,’ she told me with determination.
‘They wouldn’t let you.’
‘I can’t just lie here…’
‘Is he still there, your policeman?’
‘A different one. He’s rather good-looking, really.’
‘I’ll have a word with him, on the way in.’
‘Don’t you dare, Richard!’
‘To see if he’s noticed you’ve got your eye on him.’
It lightened the mood. ‘You’re coming today, then?’
‘Got to pick up a change of clothes from the caravan.’
‘I hate you.’
‘I thought I might find time to pop in to see you for a second.’
A pause. ‘That’s your nonchalant voice, Richard. You sound pleased with yourself. Does that mean it’s finished?’
‘Well…no. It’s not. But there’s progress.’ What progress, you fool?
‘This afternoon?’
‘I want to call in at Bridgnorth on the way, but I’ll be with you.’
Bridgnorth being closer to Wales than Boreton.
‘None of your speeding, now.’
‘Of course not, my dear.’
We hung up.
You can see why I had to stop off at Bridgnorth. There might not have been one atom of sense in Paul’s ideas, but Burns could well have been the one to circulate the newspaper cuttings. Burns had been eager to avoid me. He owed me an explanation for that, at least.
So I drove to Bridgnorth, not really optimistic about my chances of seeing him. I mean, enquiry agents make their money going out and enquiring, not sitting in the office. But on the way my thoughts were not on him. Hammering away in the back- ground was the name: Clare.
It could well have been her. She was sufficiently cold and vicious to have pushed her father through an open window.
Believing Amelia to be dead, she would have had a motive. By heavens, yes, she would have had motive. For the house alone, she would be capable of murder. And when you considered her advancing share holdings…
Her own 13 shares, the 13 her husband had bought from Donald, plus the 17 she might expect from her father—already she would hold 43. Add to this the possibility that Donald might be persuaded to sell her his expected 17 shares (as I knew he’d hoped to do), then she would be riding high with a controlling holding of 60 shares.
I’d not considered her position in that light before. Of course, those luscious plans had disappeared, Amelia not having died. But abruptly and horribly I saw that Clare’s manoeuvring the previous day had not been a mere toying with sex-play words. She had genuinely intended to put across the idea that our mutual future could be enlightened if Amelia were to be killed. By me? By her? It wouldn’t even have mattered to her, as long as it was done. And as soon as possible.
I found that I was, after all, driving fast.
Bridgnorth is very like Boreton, in that it exists on both sides of the river. But most of it is on one side, in two halves. Low Town and High Town. They’re separated by a great sandstone mass, towering above the river. Pedestrians can use a cliff-side lift, but it doesn’t take cars, so I had to wind up the steep right-hander from Low Town to High Town, park by a miracle nose in on the main street, and hunt out Burns and Rafton on foot.
They occupied the first two floors of a narrow house squeezed between a pork pie shop and a jeweller’s. A card in the window stated: Burns and Rafton. Discreet Enquiries. The door opened at a push. The one on the right from the hall had a sign: Office. Please Enter. I did.
He was there. No receptionist. Just Burns. He grunted at the sight of me.
‘Wondered how long it would be, Mr Patton.’
19
He seemed no more cheerful than when I’d seen him last. Business appeared to be slack.
‘Just wanted a word,’ I said, taking a seat he hadn’t offered.
‘Well?’
‘Have you done work for a Mrs Clare Tolchard?’
It surprised him. ‘Well now!’ He sat back and thought about it. ‘What if I have?’
‘I wondered if you’d care to discuss it.’
‘You know I can’t do that. Where would my professional reputation go?’
He was still considering what I’d said. I was presenting something he hadn’t expected.
‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘I ask questions, and you simply nod or shake your head?’
‘You can do that. I might decide to do neither.’
‘Right.’ I took out my pipe and fondled it. He frowned. I put it back. ‘You made enquiries for her, relating to a possible divorce?’
He nodded. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and turned one round in his fingers. Trying to give them up, I guessed.
‘You were asked to follow him on his trips to Birmingham?’
He nodded.
‘You followed him there…’
He shook his head.
‘You didn’t? Then what? For God’s sake, you can’t cover everything with a nod or a shake.’
‘He went to Kidderminster.’
‘All right. To play squash there?’
He shook his head.
‘A woman?’
He shook his head.
‘So you didn’t get your evidence?’
He nodded, then shook his head.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It wasn’t a woman, but it would’ve got her a divorce, I reckon.’
‘Then what…’ I stared at him. ‘A man?’
He nodded.
‘Don’t start that again, now you’ve opened your mouth. He had a man friend? Oh, lovely. How long ago?’
‘Three years. Sure to be.’
‘But she’s done nothing…’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘You’d have been called as a witness.’
‘I meant she didn’t go for a divorce. What she did about it is what I don’t know.’
She’d felt free to find her own man, that’s what. I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter. The point is, you knew her.’ No change in expression. ‘Well enough, perhaps, to send her one or two copies of a newspaper cutting, for distribution, in the hope of some reward…’
