Shake Hands Forever, page 8
Recalling Angela's fraud and her remark to Paul Craig, and telling himself that birds of a feather flock together, Wexford asked Mr Butler if Robert Hathall had ever done anytlung which could be construed even mildly as on the shady side of the law. Mr Butler looked shocked.
'Certainly not. I've said he wasn't always strictly truthful, but otherwise he was honest.'
'Susceptible to women, would you say?'
William Butler gave another squawk and shook his head vehemently. 'He was fifteen when he first came here, and even in those days he was walking out with that first wife of his. They were engaged for God knows how many years. I tell you, Bob was so narrow and downright repressed, he didn't know there were other women on the face of the earth. We'd got a pretty typist in here, and for all the notice he 8!
took, she might have been a typewriter. No, that was why he went overboard for that Angela, went daft about her like some silly romantic schoolboy. He woke up, the scales fell from his eyes. It's often the way. Those late developers are always the worst.'
'So perhaps, having awakened, he began looking around some more?'
'Perhaps he did, but I can't help you there. You thinking he might have done away with that Angela?'
'I shouldn't care to commit myself on that, Mr Butler,' said Wexford as he took his leave.
'No. Silly question, eh ? I thought he was going to murder that other one, I can tell you. That's just where she had her sit-in, the step you're on now. I'll never forget it, never as long as I live.'
Howard Fortune was a tall thin man, skeletally thin in spite of his enormous appetite. He had the Wexford family's pale hair, the colour of faded brown paper, and the light grey-blue eyes, small and sharp. In spite of the difference in their figures, he had always resembled his uncle, and now that Wexford had lost so much weight, that resemblance was heightened. Sitting opposite each other in Howard's study, they might have been father and son, for, likeness apart, Wexford was now able to talk to his nephew as familiarly as he talked to Burden, and Howard to respond without the delicacy and self-conscious tact of former days.
Their wives were out. Having spent the day shopping, they had adjourned to a theatre, and uncle and nephew had eaten their dinner alone. Now, while Howard drank brandy and he contented himself with a glass of white wine, Wexford enlarged on the theory he had put forward nine: ght before.
'As far as I see it,' be said, 'the only w ~ ~ se count for 85
Hathall's horror - and it was horror, Howard - when I told him about the handprint, is that he arranged the killing of Angela with the help of a woman accomplice.'
'With whom he was having a love affair ?'
'Presumably. That would be the motive.'
'A thin motive these days, isn't it? Divorce is fairly easy and there were no children to consider.'
'You've missed the point.' Wexford spoke with a sharpness that would once have been impossible. 'Even with this new job of his, he couldn't have afforded two discarded wives. He's just the sort of man who'd think himself almost justified in killing if killing was going to rid him of further persecution.'
'So this girl-friend of his came to the cottage in the afternoon . . .'
'Or was fetched by Angela.'
'I can't see that part, Reg.'
'A neighbour, a woman called Lake, says Angela told her she was going out.' Wexford sipped his drink to cover the slight confusion even the mention of Nancy Lake's name caused in him. 'I have to bear that in mind.'
'Well, maybe. The girl killed Angela by strangling her with a gilt necklace which hasn't been found, then wiped the place clean of her own prints but left one on the side of the bath. Is that the idea?'
'That's the idea. Then she drove Robert Hathall's car to London, where she abandoned it in Wood Green. I may go there tomorrow, but I haven't much hope. The chances are she lives as far from Wood Green as possible.'
'And then you'll go to this toy factory place in - what's it called ? - Toxborough ? I can't understand why you're leaving it till last. He worked there, after all, from the time of his marriage till last July.'
'And that's the very reason why,' said Wexford. 'It's just
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possible he knew this woman before he met Angela, or met her when his marriage was three years old. But there's no doubt he was deeply in love with Angela - everyone admits that -so is it likely he'd have begun a new relationship during the earliest part of his marriage ?'
'No, I see that. Does it have to be someone he'd met at work? Why not a friend he'd met socially or the wife of a friend ?'
'Because he doesn't seem to have had any friends, and that's not so difficult to understand. In his first marriage, the way I picture it, he and his wife would have been friendly with other married couples. But you know how it goes, Howard. In these cases, a married couple's friends are their neighbours or her woman friends and their husbands. Isn't it probable that at the time of the divorce all these people would have rallied round Eileen Hathall? In other words, they'd remain her friends and desert him.'
'This unknown woman could be someone he'd picked up in the street or got talking to by chance in a pub. Have you thought of that ?'
'Of course. If it's so, my chances of finding her are thin.'
'Well, Wood Green for you tomorrow. I'm taking the day off myself. I have to speak at a dinner at Brighton in the evening and I thought of taking a leisurely drive down, but maybe I'll come up to darkest Ally Pally with you first.'
The phone ringing cut short Wexford's thanks at this offer. Howard picked up the receiver and his first words, spoken cordially but without much familiarity, told his uncle that the caller was someone he knew socially but not very well. Then the phone was passed to him and he heard Burden's voice.
'Good news first,' said the inspector, 'if you can can it good,' and he told Wexford that at last someone had come 87
forward to say he had seen Hathall's car driven into the drive of Bury Cottage at five past three on the previous Friday afternoon. But he had seen only the driver whom he described as a dark-haired young woman wearing some sort of red checked shirt or blouse. That she had had a passenger he was sure, and almost sure it had been a woman, but he was able to fill in no more details. He had been cycling along Wool Lane in the direction of Wool Farm and had therefore been on the left-hand side of the road, the side which would naturally give him a view of the car's driver but not necessarily of the other occupant. The car had stopped since he had the right of way, and he had assumed, because its righthand indicator was flashing, that it was about to turn into the cottage drive.
'Why didn't this cyclist guy come forward before ?'
'He was on holiday down here, he and his bicycle,' said Burden, 'and he says he never saw a paper till today.'
'Some people,' Wexford growled, 'live like bloody chrysalises. If that's the good news, what's the bad ?'
'It may not be bad, I wouldn't know. But the chief constable's been in here after you, and he wants to see you at three sharp tomorrow afternoon.'
'That puts paid to our Wood Green visit,' said Wexford thoughtfully to his nephew, and he told him what Burden had said. 'I'll have to go back and try and take in Croydon or Toxborough on my way. I shan't have time for both.'
'Look, Reg. why don't I drive you to Croydon and then to Kingsmarkham via Toxborough ? I'd still have three or four hours before I need to be in Brighton.'
'Be a bit of a drag for you, won't it?'
'On the contrary. I don't mind telling you I'm very keen to take a look at this virago, the first Mrs Hathall. You come back with me and Dora can stay on. I know Denise wants her
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to be here on Friday for some party or other she's going to.' And Dora, who came in ten minutes later, needed no encouragement to remain in London till the Sunday.
'But will you be all right on your own ?'
'I'll be all right. I hope you will. Personally, I should think you'll perish with the cold in this bloody awful air-conditioning.'
'I have my subcutaneous fat, darling, to keep me warm.'
'Unlike you, Uncle Reg.' said Denise who, coming in, had heard the last sentence. 'All yours has melted away quite beautifully. I suppose it really is all diet ? I was reading in a book the other day that men who have a succession of love affairs keep their figures because a man unconsciously draws in his stomach muscles every time he pays court to a new woman.'
'So now we know what to think,' said Dora.
But Wexford, who had at that moment drawn his in consciously, wasn't brought to the blush which would have been his reaction the day before. He was wondering what he was to think of his summons by the chief constable, and making a disagreeable guess at the answer.
IO
The house which Robert HathaU had bought at the time of his first marriage was one of those semi-detached vitas which sprang up during the thirties in their thousands, in their tens of thousands. It had a bay window in the front living room, a gable over the front bedroom window, and a decorative wooden canopy, of the kind sometimes seen sheltering the platforms of provincial railway stations, over the front door. There were about four hundred others exactly like it in the street, a wide thoroughfare along which traffic streamed to the south.
'This house,' said Howard, 'was built for about six hundred pounds. HathaU would have paid around four thousand for it, I should think. When did he get married?'
'Seventeen years ago.'
'Four thousand would be right. And now it would fetch eighteen.'
'Only he can't sell it,' said Wexford. 'I daresay he could have done with eighteen thousand pounds.' They got out of the car and went up to the front door.
She had none of the outward signs of a virago. She was about forty, short, high-coloured, her stout stocky figure crammed into a tight green dress, and she was one of those women who have been roses and are now cabbages. Ghostly shades of the rose showed in the pretty fat-obscured features, the skin which was still good, and the gingery hair that had once been blonde. She took them into the room with the bay
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window. Its furnishings lacked the charm of those at Bury Cottage, but it was just as clean. There was something oppressive about its neatness and the absence of any single object not totally conventional. Wexford looked in vain for some article, a hand-embroidered cushion maybe, an original drawing or a growing plant, that might express the personalities of the woman and the girl who lived here. But there was nothing, not a book, not a magazine even, no paraphernalia of a hobby. It was like a Times Furnishing window display before the shop assistant has added those touches that will give it an air of home. Apart from a framed photograph, the only picture was that reproduction of a Spanish gypsy with a black hat on her curls and a rose between her teeth, which Wexford had seen on a hundred lounge-bar walls. And even this stereotyped picture had more life about it than the rest of the room, the gypsy's mouth seeming to curl a little more disdainfully as she surveyed the sterile surroundings in which she was doomed to spend her time.
Although it was mid-morning and Eileen Hathall had been forewarned of their coming, she offered them nothing to drink. Her mother-in-law's ways had either rubbed off on her or else her own lack of hospitality had been one of the traits which so endeared the old woman to her. But that Mrs Hathall senior had been deluded in other respects soon showed. Far from keeping 'herself to herself', Eileen was ready to be bitterly expansive about her private life.
At first, however, she was subdued. Wexford began by asking her how she had spent the previous Friday, and she replied in a quiet reasonable voice that she had been at her father's in Balham, remaining there till the evening because her daughter had been on a day trip to France, sponsored by her school, from which she hadn't returned until nearly mid- night. She gave Wexford her widowed father's address which
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Howard, who knew London well, remarked was in the next street to where Mrs Hathall senior lived. That did it. Eileen's colour rose and her eyes smouldered with the resentment which divas now perhaps the mainspring of her life.
'We grew up together, Bob and me. We went to the same school and there wasn't a day went by we didn't see each other. After we got married we were never apart for a single night till that woman came and stole him from me.'
Wexford, who held to the belief that it is impossible for an outsider to break up a secure and happy marriage, made no comment. He had often wondered too at the attitude of mind that regards people as things and marriage partners as objects which can be stolen like television sets or pearl necklaces.
'When did you last see your former husband, Mrs Hathall ?'
'I haven't seen him for three and a half years.'
'But I suppose, although you have custody, he has reasonable access to Rosemary ?'
Her face had grown bitter, a canker eating the blown rose. 'He was allowed to see her every other Sunday. I used to send her round to his mum and he'd fetch her from there and take her out for the day.'
'But you didn't see him yourself on these occasions?'
She looked down, perhaps to hide her humiliation. 'He said he wouldn't come if I was going to be there.'
'You said "used", Mrs Hathall. D'you mean this meeting between father and daughter has ceased ?'
'Well, she's nearly grown-up, isn't she 7 She's old enough to have a mind of her own. Me and Bob's mum, we've always got on well, she's been like another mother to me. Rosemary could see the way we thought about it - I mean, she was old enough to understand what I'd suffered from her dad, and it's only natural she was resentful.' The virago was appearing and the tone of voice which Mr Butler had said would always
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remain in his memory. 'She took against him. She thought it was wicked what he'd done.'
'So she stopped seeing him?'
'She didn't want to see him. She said she'd got better things to do with her Sundays, and her gran and me, we thought she was quite right. Only once she went to that cottage place and when she came back she was in an awful state, tears and sobbing and I don't know what. And I don't wonder. Can you imagine a father actually letting his little girl see him kiss another woman? That's what happened. When the time came for him to bring Rosemary back, she saw him put his arms round that woman and kiss her. And it wasn't one of your ordinary kisses. Like what you'd see on the TV, Rosemary said, but I won't go into details, though I was disgusted, I can tell you. The upshot of it was that Rosemary can't stand her dad, and I don't blame her. I just hope it won't do something to her mentality the way these psychological people say it does.'
The red flush on her skin was high now and her eyes flashed. And now, as her bosom rose and she tossed her head, she had something in common with the gypsy on the wall.
'He didn't like it. He begged her to see him, wrote her letters and God knows what. Sent her presents and wanted to take her away on holiday. Him as said he hadn't got a penny to bless himself with. Fought tooth and nail he did to try and stop me getting this house and a bit of his money to live on. Oh, he's got money enough when he likes to spend it, money to spend on anyone but me.'
Howard had been looking at that single framed photograph and now he asked if it was of Rosemary.
'Yes, that's my Rosemary.' Still breathless from her outpouring of invective, Eileen spoke in gasps. 'That was taken six months ago.'
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The two policemen looked at the portrait of a rather plain heavy-faced girl who wore a small gold cross hanging against her blouse, whose lank dark hair fell to her shoulders, and who bore a marked resemblance to her paternal grandmother. Wexford, who felt unable to tell an outright lie and say the girl was pretty, asked what she was going to do when she left school. This was a good move, for it had a calming effect on Eileen whose bitterness gave way, though only briefly, to pride.
'Go on to college. All her teachers say she's got it in her and I wouldn't stand in her way. It's not as if she's got to go out and earn money. Bob'll have plenty to spare now. I've told her I don't care if she goes on training till she's twentyfive. I'm going to get Bob's mum to ask him to give Rosemary a car for her eighteenth birthday. After all, that's like being twenty-one nowadays, isn't it? My brother's been teaching her to drive and she'll take her test the minute she's seventeen. It's his duty to give her a car. Just because he's ruined my life, that's no reason why he should ruin hers, is it ?'
Wexford put out his hand to her as they left. She gave him hers rather reluctantly, but her reluctance was perhaps only part and parcel of that ungraciousness which seemed to be a feature of all the Hathalls and all their connections. Staring down, he held it just long enough to make sure there was no scar on the relevant finger.
'Let us be thankful for our wives,' said Howard devoutly when they were back in the car and driving southwards. 'He didn't kill Angela to go back to that one, at any rate.'
'Did you notice she didn't once mention Angela's death 7 Not even to say she wasn't sorry she was dead? I've never come across a family so nourished on hatred.' Wexford thought suddenly of his own two daughters who loved him, and on whose education he had spent money freely and happily because they loved him and he loved them. 'It must
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be bloody awful to have to support someone you hate and buy presents for someone who's been taught to hate you,' he said.
'Indeed it must. And where did the money come from for those presents and that projected holiday, Reg? Not out of fifteen pounds a week.'
By a quarter to twelve theywere in Toxborough. Wexford's appointment at Kidd's factory was for half past, so they had a quick lunch in a pub on the outskirts before finding the industrial site. The factory, a large white concrete box, was the source of those children's toys which he had often seen on television commercials and which were marketed under the name of Kidd's Kits for Kids. The manager, a Mr Aveney, told him they had three hundred workers on the payroll, most of them women with part-time jobs. Their white-collar staff was small, consisting of himself, the personnel manager, the part-time accountant, Hathall's successor, his own secretary, two typists and a switchboard girl.
