The Worried Widow

by Gerald Hammond

  They worked on. The labour kept them warm despite a cool breeze which found its way between the azaleas.

  ‘Dad,’ Deborah said suddenly in a very small voice, ‘Dad, you didn’t mean what you said, did you, about Mike Hendrickson having something to do with his father’s death?’

  ‘I don’t think I suggested that he had anything to do with it,’ Keith said carefully. ‘Just that he might have questions to answer if his sister stays determined to drop him in the clag.’

  ‘She’s a bitch,’ Deborah said.

  ‘Perhaps. That would have nothing to do with whether she was telling the truth or even whether she’ll blurt out something stupid in the wrong quarter. The inspector,’ Keith said, keeping his eyes firmly on what he was doing, ‘hinted that young Mike had been seen near here at about the time his father died. Anyway, if he was safely in Edinburgh it can’t arise.’

  Another few plants were lifted and the trailing roots of the couch grass removed.

  ‘He wasn’t,’ Deborah said miserably. ‘He came through on his motorbike to meet me.’

  ‘Motorbike?’ Keith said. He looked up in spite of himself. Deborah was faintly pink. ‘Gowrie didn’t say anything about one of those.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he knew. Mike only bought it a few days before that, so I don’t think it’d be on the records at the computer-place yet. He’s been keeping it secret because his mum’s terrified of motorbikes. His people weren’t expecting him, so he didn’t go home. He went back in time for the birthday party. There!’

  ‘I see,’ Keith said. He went on working without looking up.

  ‘You guessed?’

  ‘I knew there was something, from the way you looked at each other. And you changed the subject in a hurry when I brought Mike into the conversation, the day we lunched with Mr Enterkin. You could have told us you were meeting him, you know. We try never to ask where you’re going at the weekends, but you could have told us.’

  ‘I expect so.’ Deborah sat back on her heels and looked at the sky. ‘It’s just not the kind of thing you want to tell parents. Not because of anything wrong, I don’t mean that, but because if it was talked about it wouldn’t be quite so special any more. You know how Mum would go on. And he’s a bit shy about getting his leg pulled, because I’m still at school.’

  ‘Hoy!’ Keith said. ‘Don’t stop working. It’s all right, Toots. I know exactly what you mean. So you can give your boyfriend an alibi.’ His own concern, he was surprised to find, was less over the possibility of a romantic entanglement than the picture of that fragile body on the pillion of a motorcycle. He was at one with Mrs Hendrickson on that subject.

  ‘I hoped I wouldn’t have to say anything,’ Deborah said in a choked voice. ‘Mike didn’t get on with his father, but he didn’t have anything to do with killing him. I know that for a fact, and anyway he wouldn’t. He’s the gentlest person I know. But the police know that he was near here and . . . and Beth will say something awful, and if I have to back him up I didn’t want it to come at you out of the blue. And, if you don’t mind, I’d really rather you didn’t tell Mum unless and until it’s absolutely necessary,’ Deborah finished quickly. She fell to work energetically, to the ruination of several plants.

  Keith considered his next words carefully. It would be so easy to say the wrong thing. ‘You do realise,’ he said gently, ‘that if you have to help him to account for his movements, you’ll have to go into rather more detail than that.’

  ‘I suppose that means that you want to know what we were doing?’

  ‘Don’t get on your high horse,’ Keith said. He tried to keep the amusement out of his voice. ‘I don’t want to know anything you don’t want to tell me. And that isn’t because I don’t care, it’s because I do. We try to remember that you’re not a child any more. But you’re not an adult woman yet either. We hope for the best for you, but we’ve never tried to overload you with predigested ideas about morality. There are some things you have to make up your own mind about, when your time comes.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I’m going to empty the trug.’ He got up stiffly. While he made the journey to the compost heap, he did some more worrying. He had always known that some day he would have to face the fact that he had a daughter who would be a temptation to any man. He knew that form of temptation only too well although as the years had passed his lapses from grace had become fewer and fewer. Molly, who had been his mistress long before she was his wife, would be of little help. Her first priority would be that her daughter should arrive virginal at the altar. Keith would prefer the same, although inwardly he questioned their right to impose rules which they themselves had not obeyed. He knew, moreover, that an unreasoned embargo might only add the gloss of the forbidden. But surely, he told himself, the time for worry was not yet.

  When he returned Deborah was still on her knees, picking away at the weeds. Even in jeans and a duffle coat, and even to her own father, she was visibly on the way to becoming an unwitting man-trap.

  ‘You made sure that I knew all the facts,’ she said, head still down. ‘And about diseases and babies and things.’ She looked up suddenly. ‘Uncle Ronnie says that you were a devil of a lad in your day.’

  ‘This is my day, Toots,’ Keith said. ‘Yours hasn’t come yet. And your Uncle Ronnie talks too much.’

  ‘He does,’ Deborah admitted. ‘But I suppose it’s true, what he said. Mum hinted at the same thing.’

  ‘They exaggerate.’ It was the only time he lied to his daughter. ‘I wish I’d known then what I know now.’

  Deborah dropped the hand-fork and looked at her father. ‘But that’s the point,’ she said. ‘You usually talk to me about the important things. What do you know now?’

  Keith met her eye and suddenly he knew what he wanted to say. ‘Nowadays, the doctors have taken away the fear of disease. At least, they had until this new one came along. And because the State will provide, there isn’t the stigma that there used to be about one-parent families. So people are more promiscuous. But, despite all that, we’ll always come back to one-for-one relationships, because they’re the best.’

  ‘But tell me why,’ Deborah insisted. ‘Dad, people keep making me learn rubbish at school which can’t really matter very much, but these are the important things and nobody will talk about them. I can spend my whole life finding out by making mistakes, or you can tell me now and I can go on from there. Are you talking about love?’

  ‘Perhaps I am, although it’s not a word I’m much given to using. Isn’t it a bit early in your life to be filling your head with these things?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Some day, if I’m lucky, I’ll be alone with a real charmer. He’ll be saying sweet things and coaxing me along. What do you think I’m going to say? “Keep the mood going while I phone my dad and find out what he was on about”?’

  Keith shrugged. Her questions were sensible; indeed, there could have been a lifetime of wisdom in her words instead of a few short years. ‘Keep your voice down,’ he said. He paused and looked around. He would not have liked to find Molly behind him when he came to his peroration. ‘Whatever you set out to do, Toots, try to be very, very good at it. If, which God forbid, you decide to become a whore, try to be a brilliant one. Nature gave us certain lusts, so that the species would continue. Sex. And sex can be a wonderful event or an embarrassing mess which leaves bad blood behind it. A one-night stand may gratify the urge for the moment but it’s messy and confusing and it doesn’t mean anything in the long run, because sex is at its best when it’s entered into not to take pleasure but to give it. Then, believe me, Toots, it is marvellous beyond belief. But that demands a lasting relationship, each studying how they can please the other. That, I suppose, is what we mean by love. Try always to think of sex as the nicest possible way of saying, “I’ll always love you” and you won’t go too far wrong. You may even come to understand a little of what I mean.’

  ‘I think I do understand,’
Deborah said softly. ‘Thank you. When my day comes, I’ll remember. You may care to know that it hasn’t come yet. Really not.’ She paused and met her father’s eye squarely. ‘Mike’s kissed my cheek once or twice in a big-brotherly way. That’s all and it’s enough for now. I like him a lot. If we’re still in touch in a few years . . .’

  ‘I’m glad. Any time you have any more questions, don’t hesitate, ask your mother. And don’t practise your wiles on Mike,’ Keith said. ‘You could get him into serious trouble.’

  ‘That much I do know. It’s getting him out of trouble that bothers me at the moment,’ Deborah said. She got to her feet.

  ‘Hold on a moment,’ Keith said. ‘You’ll have to help me up. I’m getting too old and stiff for squatting on damp ground.’ She pulled him up and he kept his grip on her hand. He put aside the thought that perhaps she had understood him too easily. He had a feeling that she wanted to say more. ‘You’d better tell me what you were doing, if you weren’t having a cuddle in the bushes. Just so that I’ll know what not to say.’

  He waited anxiously. If she refused, their old intimacy was over.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said at last. She pulled him to the seat which stood under the sycamore. ‘Rest your weary old bones,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Thank you.’ He took a seat. She perched on the further arm. ‘Before you begin,’ he said, ‘tell me one thing. Mrs Hendrickson suspected that somebody was fetching funny cigarettes to her husband. Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘It wasn’t me and it certainly wasn’t Mike,’ she said quickly. ‘Listen. You remember, last October, you let me go beating on the Dawburn Castle estate?’

  ‘I remember. You wanted to make some extra pin-money. You didn’t stick it very long.’

  ‘You said I wouldn’t like it and you were right. I only went twice. The money was useful but the keeper’s a pig. Mike went too. I introduced him. Mr Beecher’s a member of the syndicate and he used to give us a lift there and back. Mike wanted to make some money towards the bike – his father . . . kept him pretty short,’ Deborah said after a brief struggle with herself. ‘You’re not to think too much of that.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Mike stuck it longer than I did, because of wanting his bike. It’s not easy to get in with better shoots, where beaters and pickers-up tend to stay all their lives.

  ‘Anyway, the other beaters were talking about Mr Gregor, the keeper. They’re plagued with foxes over there, so he has to keep a line of snares going right through the season. But the beaters were saying that as soon as Mr Gregor gets paid on the Friday he’s away to the pub. Maybe that’s why he was always so bad-tempered on shoot days,’ Deborah added, as if making a discovery.

  ‘Very likely.’

  ‘They were saying that he never visits his snares on Fridays or Saturdays and not often on a Sunday. That’s bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very bad. Also illegal.’

  ‘And they said that he didn’t usually bother with the foxes he caught, just threw them into the midden, because the pelts weren’t the keeper’s perk. If he sold them, the estate claimed the money.’

  Keith caught on suddenly. ‘You mean that you’ve been taking that poor boy poaching fox-pelts on non-shooting Saturdays?’

  Deborah nodded. She looked happier, now that her guilty secret was out in the open. ‘I had to show him how to skin them. He turned green the first time but after a bit he got very good at it. That Saturday was the last time. The foxes were beginning to lose their winter coats. Up to then, Mike had been getting us good prices in Edinburgh. Dad, if I have to alibi Mike, are we in trouble?’

  Keith kept his face straight. His daughter was a chip off the old block. ‘The police couldn’t prosecute,’ he said. ‘The estate would have to do it, and they certainly wouldn’t want to go into court and testify that their keeper had been leaving his snares unvisited.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Deborah said. ‘Otherwise I might have had to say that we were having what you so charmingly called “a cuddle in the bushes”,’ she finished in disdainful tones.

  Having put her father firmly in the wrong she wandered off. But she was back in a few minutes. ‘Dad . . .’

  Keith looked up from the weeding which he had resumed. ‘Yes?’

  ‘If I saved up a whole lot of the best pelts, would you have them made up into a coat for me, like Mum’s?’

  ‘No I ruddy well wouldn’t,’ Keith said sternly. ‘You pay for it by selling the lesser skins, just as I did.’

  Chapter Eight

  A new week began – the second week of Wallace’s absence, the second Monday morning of early rising to face imprisonment in the shop.

  Keith was already slightly late and angry, mostly with himself, when he pulled the jeep up in the Square. Two vans had stopped on the yellow lines and were delivering to Kechnie’s grocery, but they had managed to hide the gun shop and to obstruct its entrance while leaving most of the grocery’s frontage clear.

  Matters were only worsened by the arrival, after a few minutes, of a van from Huddersfield, carrying among other goods the cartridges which Keith had ordered from Mr Salmont. The driver, understandably anxious to get on with his journey, was not prepared to wait for the space to clear. One glance was enough to establish that the other vans could not pull far enough forward to let the new van in without closing off the entrance to the yard which housed the local taxis and a firm of undertakers.

  Keith managed to divide his time between serving a few early customers and helping the Huddersfield driver to carry the heavy cartons across the road while keeping an eye on the shop’s door as best he could. His ire was further aggravated by an impression that the deliveries of groceries seemed to include nothing heavier than potato crisps. To complete his chagrin, the grocery vans departed within minutes of his own delivery being finished.

  The heavy labour of stowing away the new stock kept him busy for a while. Then, dusty and sweating, he had time to make a telephone call. Mr Kechnie, he was told, was not in the shop. Keith left a strongly-worded message, inviting the grocer or his shop-manager to call round for a discussion.

  The invitation bore no fruit until the afternoon of the following day. Then Mr Kechnie walked into the shop and waited, tapping with his foot, while Keith dealt hurriedly with the only customer in the place.

  ‘You wanted to see me. Well?’ Kechnie snapped. He was an older man than Keith, small and lean with a full head of white hair and a bristling, white moustache. His manner was impatient, and Keith knew that his staff lived in terror of his temper.

  Keith kept his own temper and thanked the other politely for coming in. ‘I’ve wanted a word with you for a week,’ he said, ‘and especially since yesterday morning when you had two simultaneous vans blocking my shop off and making lightweight deliveries to you while I was left to hump boxes of heavy cartridges across the street.’

  Mr Kechnie’s moustache twitched above a cold smile. ‘They could only block you off one at a time,’ he said.

  Keith bit back a reference to the picking of nits. ‘They were simultaneously outside here at the kerb,’ he said, ‘and one of them was hiding my shop and blocking the door. Is that clearer?’

  ‘And what do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘You could try staggering your deliveries,’ Keith suggested, ‘and, if you left orders that the first van was to pull forward until it was almost at the archway, customers could get into my shop and visitors might be able to see where it is.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Kechnie said.

  ‘You’ll do it?’

  ‘No. I’ll tell you what I’ve told your partner a dozen times. As long as the drivers observe the law and obey the police, I’m not going to interfere with them and get charged extra for it. I don’t owe you any favours.’

  ‘Can you look me in the eye and say that you haven’t told them to park in front of my shop instead of yours?’

  ‘I could, but why the hell should I? If you’
re fool enough to get your deliveries while I’m stocking up for the new week . . .’

  Keith held on to the ragged edges of his temper. ‘We try to get our deliveries on Fridays,’ he said, ‘when you’re usually running down stocks for the weekend. But we can’t always dictate to our suppliers.’

  ‘I see,’ Kechnie said. ‘So you can’t dictate to your suppliers but I’m to dictate to mine?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying and you know it.’ Keith could hear the rawness in his own voice. ‘I’m only asking you to try to keep my frontage as clear as you can.’

  To judge by the glint in his eye, the signs that Keith was nearing flashpoint only seemed to delight the grocer. ‘You’ve a funny way of looking for favours,’ he said. ‘You haven’t cared what muck you’ve stirred up and now you act surprised when we don’t all go out of our ways to make life easy for you.’

  That did it. Keith sneered back. ‘What were you trying to hide?’ he asked.

  Kechnie made no effort to hide his triumphant smirk. ‘You’ll never know,’ he said.

  ‘That I will.’ Keith pointed with a furious finger. ‘It was you. You phoned up and threatened me and you sent a thug to warn me off.’

  ‘Did I indeed. And why would I bother to do that?’

  ‘You hated Sam Hendrickson,’ Keith said. ‘You, more than anybody, wanted him dead. Well, your threats didn’t work. I’ve set the police working again. Whatever skeletons you’re hiding in your cupboard, you’d better get them out and bury them deep.’

  ‘I may bury you deeper. You watch your back, laddie, I’m not through yet. And I’ll tell you something else, for nothing. I didn’t want Sam Hendrickson dead. I loved having him alive. Whenever I met him being wheeled along by that wife of his, I tipped my hat to him just so that he’d remember that I was having the last laugh.’ As he turned about and left the shop, Kechnie was having the last laugh again. His cackle drifted back on the still air.

  Keith looked around for something inexpensive to kick. He had set out to sue for a favour but he had let himself be provoked into saying too much too soon and he had made a fool of himself.