One Of Our Jeans Is Missing

by Paul Charles

  I was about to say something – I knew not what, perhaps something to do with I’d never imagined that it would suit Jean’s character for her to run away, something along those lines, and I was struggling for the words when Mary held up the palm of her hand to silence my efforts. Then she raised her empty wine glass with her other hand. I was obedient on both accounts and so she continued.

  ‘The police obviously believe that is exactly what has happened to Jean Simpson. We have to believe that they’ve already checked into her life. There are no drugs, there are no shady characters,’ She stared at me at this point and broke into a warm smile before continuing, ‘well, not too shady. You see, they say that in the majority of murder cases the victim knows their murderer and so the police have obviously checked out all her friends and obviously none of you were behaving suspiciously. There were no reasons for blackmail. And hey, it’s the sixties – we’re in the middle of a sexual revolution, so what’s to stop a beautiful young girl just upping off somewhere to start a new life?’

  ‘Maybe that’s what happened then.’

  ‘Perhaps David, but just for the sake of the discussion I’d have to disagree with you.’

  I raised my eyebrows into a ‘pardon’?

  ‘Well, as you’ve already said, you’d have to think that she’d at least drop a note to her mother,’ Mary, obviously on a roll, continued, ‘if only just to put her mother’s mind at rest. The police are probably ignoring this issue. I imagine they feel that as it took Jean’s mum so long to report her daughter missing, a logical conclusion would probably be that mother and daughter were never very close. Jean’s mum’s actions, or lack of them, would’ve sent out a couldn’t-care-less attitude, you know. Also, I imagine the police probably think only child, maybe even adopted child, so they wouldn’t have expected the bond to have been as tight as, say it is with someone like my mum and me, or even Jean Kerr and her mum.’

  ‘Isn’t that a wee bit hard on Jean Simpson’s mum?’

  Mary closed her lips and smiled a sad smile. ‘A mother’s place is to always be in the wrong,’ she quietly said, ‘that’s what my mum would frequently tell me. But please listen to me, David – once again, I repeat, this is not about Jean Simpson or her mum, it’s about the perfect murder.’

  I took a large sip of wine, hoping it would take the fast track into my blood stream, if only so that I could catch up with Mary; she was definitely getting a little merry.

  ‘Okay,’ I began, after the generous gulp, ‘you’ve got a young girl who may or may not have disappeared. The police seem to think that nothing untoward has happened to her, besides which there are possible reasons why she just might want to disappear in the first place. I’m not sure that I agree with you 100 per cent on those, but I am interested in your method and motive for the perfect crime.’

  ‘Agh, the penny drops, now we’re making progress at last! Okay, let’s address the motive; that’s much easier, isn’t it? Why would someone decide to murder someone?’ Mary asked, pausing at her own question as she took another generous sip of wine.

  My last gulp had started to take effect, so I used the old trick of merely wetting my lips in a vain attempt to appear to keep up with her intake.

  ‘Well,’ I began licking my lips, ‘more particularly, why would anyone want to murder one of our Jeans?’

  ‘You see, there’s a point right there. Perhaps even a clue if you want. Jean Kerr and Jean Simpson are not our Jeans,’ she began indignantly but not, I hasten to add, rudely, ‘we don’t live in the north of England and nor are we related to either of the Jeans. Yes, we both know them. Yes, one of them stole my ex-boyfriend, yes, one of them – the very same one coincidently who stole my ex-boyfriend – has been messing around with my current boyfriend. Yes, the other one of them bonked both my ex-boyfriend and my current boyfriend and, yes, butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth, but then the one of them who stole my ex and was messing around with my current, wanted to more-than-mess-around with my current boyfriend.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Yes David!’

  ‘No Mary!’

  ‘Yes David!’

  ‘I’ve already told you that by the time you and I started dating Jean and I had stopped messing around!’

  ‘Yes, and I believed you! Although I have to say here that it’s not you that I’m worried about.’

  ‘But you know that I’d never–’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she cut in quickly, with hurt now clearly visible in her eyes, ‘I do, David, I do. But you don’t tell me everything.’

  ‘I’d never lie to you,’ I said confidently, not sure where this was going.

  ‘It’s not lying I’m talking about. Sometimes not telling someone everything is actually worse than lying to them.’

  ‘And what exactly are you referring to here, Mary?’

  ‘Exactly what I’m referring to here, David, is the fact that you didn’t tell me that Jean Simpson rang you up and told you that she would dump John Harrison if you’d dump me and go steady with her!’

  I just managed (I hoped) to avoid grimacing. ‘But I said no! I told her no way, that I was totally happy with you!’

  ‘But you never told me about it, David. You never told me.’

  And she was correct. It was true. I mean, it was true that I never told her, and I never told you, dear reader, but it is true that Jean Simpson did ring me up, and it is true that I didn’t admit it to you before either. Well, if I had told you, and Mary, it just would have complicated things, wouldn’t it? I mean, it wasn’t an issue, really. Okay, okay, I’ll tell you exactly what happened, shall I?

  Jean Simpson rang me at work five days before she disappeared, saying that she wanted to see me, she wanted to meet up with me again. I said, and this is the absolute truth, I said that I didn’t think it was such a good idea for us to meet up again. I didn’t mention Mary Skeffington, neither did Jean. Now I could have just said no, couldn’t I? But I didn’t. In circumstances such as those I’ve just described, we don’t, do we? Why is that? I know it would have been easier to say no; I know by saying ‘I don’t think it’s such a good idea’ I was, to some extent, leaving the door open. Jean Simpson obviously saw the open door because she continued; she said she had something she wanted to talk to me about. I was about to say, ‘Look, why don’t you just say what it is you need to say on the phone now?’ when my boss came into the office and started to give me the old evil eye about being on the phone. So that was when I reluctantly said to Jean Simpson, ‘Okay, let’s meet up at the Alex for a quick drink.’

  So we did, okay? We did meet up at the Alex, that is, later that evening. She was dressed in her favourite tartan skirt and duffle coat and, as always, looked absolutely fabulous. We small-talked about groups, the Marquee Club, movies, and then I said I was really sorry but I didn’t have much time. Then she just blurted out this thing about wanting to get back together again. She said she would split up with John Harrison if I’d get back with her. She implied that we wouldn’t have to keep messing around the way we had been doing. She said that if we were going steady, we should live together and sleep together.

  In all of this she never once mentioned the word love. She never once said that she cared for me, nor did she ask me if I loved or cared about her. I said that I was sorry, but I was already with someone. She asked me, was it because she was too late? I said no, it had nothing to do with that; it had to do with the fact that I had met someone. I also told her that she should leave John only if it wasn’t right for her to be with him and not because it would make her more attractive to me or to someone else. I said she would meet someone else because she was special. She asked me if it was a definite no. She asked me if I would ever go back with her. I said, ‘No, I’m sorry I can’t, I really want my new relationship to work.’ Then she packed away her stuff, rippled my hair with her hand and said she felt that she had let me slip through her fingers. She said that it was her own fault that she had lost me – she just hadn’t realised at the
time how special it had been between us.

  And then she was gone.

  There were no tears, nor talk of love, not even a goodbye kiss, nor even just a peck on the cheek; none of that.

  We’d never, ever kissed, not even as friends.

  As I watched her walk out of the crowded Alex, I perhaps realised why Jean didn’t entertain kissing me. Or even need to kiss me. It had nothing whatsoever to do with our relationship. It would have been too affectionate, too tender, and what we had, what we enjoyed; had nothing whatsoever to do with affection or tenderness. Music, in fact, was one of the things – maybe even the only thing – that genuinely held us together, in that it allowed us to be together without being ‘together’.

  I’d also come to realise that I was really only a pawn in Jean Simpson’s erotic endeavours, her need to experiment safely.

  ‘That’s all you’re getting for now,’ she had once said, after an apparent accidental flash. But when I thought about her words later I realised it had been a plan, her plan all along. At first I wondered what was so magical about me that she had chosen me for her little series of erotic adventures, or our encounters as she called them. But when I came to really focus on our relationship, I realised that she could’ve picked anyone to be her lust-buddy, anyone really would have done, just so long as they were clean and obedient. I knew she wasn’t really going to be cut up about us not seeing each other again, because she certainly wasn’t in love with me. In fact, she might not even have been attracted to me. She was most certainly attracted, or even addicted, to the lust, and I was most certainly helping her in her endeavours in that direction. People can’t be preoccupied all the time about the big S. In order to truly live our lives we need to clear our mind and think and deal with the other things, ordinary things that come our way. Jean Simpson was behaving as if she’d time for nothing other than our carnal encounters. It seemed to me as if she was continuously preoccupied with her lust and, now that I think about it, she did look a bit like a junkie while in the throes of our passion. Yes, that was exactly it: she looked exactly like a junkie who was about to get their fix, every time we’d meet for one of our adventures.

  But the body has to have other self-preserving qualities. The fact that we hadn’t actually made love had, she said, meant that she would always lust after me; our fantasies were our bond, our special bond in lieu of some kind of love, as it were. So I felt it was really more a kind of drug for her. It was certainly a very successful drug for her, because it worked every single time, she got high every single time. So did I, for that matter. But her lust, no make that our lust, took her to where she needed to go. And you know what, if we had talked more about it, discussed it more than we did, that would only have served to weaken the grasp this illusion of attraction we were creating held over the both of us.

  She disappeared through the crowd in the Alex and then five days later she disappeared altogether.

  So perhaps you’re thinking that maybe it didn’t end there. Perhaps the conversation turned ugly and she threatened to tell Mary about all of our messing around – you know, how much, exactly how, where and, most importantly, when. You see, I knew you’d think that. And what’s more, I knew Mary would think that as well. And that’s why I didn’t tell either of you.

  ‘How did you know?’ I asked Mary while trying to regain my composure.

  ‘I found out from John.’

  ‘You found out from John. When were you talking to John?’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘But you just said that you were!’

  ‘No, David, I said I found out from John – I meant indirectly, of course. He rang my mum’s house asking to speak to me and he told Mum about Jean wanting to go back with you and Mum told me.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, wondering whether or not to believe her.

  ‘But let’s not get bogged down in this, David. I trust you 100 per cent and so does my mother. No, that’s not what we’re discussing here; what we were talking about was developing a method and a motive for a murder, a perfect murder, in fact. So, with regards to the motive, if we continue down our little road and this tale of woe of me & you, and me & John, and John & Jean, and Jean & you, and then you & the other Jean, and then the other Jean & John.’

  She started to laugh, softly at first, but quickly breaking into an infectious ripple. She was definitely getting a quite squiffy. I don’t think I’d ever seen her that drunk before, or since in fact.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I was just thinking there that fact really is stranger than fiction.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, when I was going through that list, as in who’d been with who in the biblical sense, if you read that in a book or saw it in a movie, well, you quite simply wouldn’t believe it, believe all of it was possible! However, because we’ve all been involved in this five-ringed circus, we know it’s not fiction. It’s very much the truth, because John lay with Mary, who lay with David, who lay with Jean K, who lay with David, who lay with Mary, who was set upon by Jean K, who lay with John, who was betrothed to Jean S, who completes the circle by messing around with David. Am I missing anyone?’ she finally concluded, still looking – after all that she’d admitted to – like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, happy that we had appeared to cut at least one particular potential problem off at the pass. I was equally intrigued as to where we were going with this.

  ‘Instead of establishing a quartet of motives, let’s focus, if you will, on me. I have a situation where I lost my husband-to-be to Jean Simpson, who had no doubt been offered more than a little assistance by Jean Kerr. I get over that loss; admittedly you were there to help me pick up the pieces. Now I find that Jean Simpson is actively chasing my current boyfriend. It doesn’t matter that he’s saying he’s not interested; she’s proven in the past that she’s not prepared to give up.

  ‘So, I care about you, I care about you a lot and I don’t want to lose you. Despite you saying no to Jean’s advances, she’s obviously not going away, she still wants you; maybe she’s so fickle she only wants you because you are with me. I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter but, from my point of view, you have to accept that she’s already been successful in her previous endeavours to steal a boyfriend of mine, so here’s my question, David: What could I do to stop her? What would I do to make her go away?’

  The bluntness of her question stopped me in my tracks.

  Up until then I’d just considered that we’d been sitting around having a drink and chatting away, all very matter of fact. And now, if I’m not mistaken, she’d just admitted her motive for murdering Jean Simpson.

  I needed another drink, anything rather than let my suspicions run away with her.

  ‘So,’ she continued, as if she’d just been discussing the weather, ‘I suppose now we need to come up with some kind of method of murdering Jean Simpson.’

  ‘Well, that’s the bit that gets me you see, Mary,’ I offered, slipping into the devil’s advocate role just a wee bit too easily, not to mention a tad too quickly. ‘How could you just disappear somebody? I mean, it’s not that simple.’

  ‘Really?’ she said quietly, as she raised her eyes, but not her head, to gauge my reaction.

  Chapter Forty.

  ‘If I show you how it could have been accomplished, will you promise to let this – this Case of the Missing Jean – rest for once and forever?’ she asked.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, not entirely sure of where this was going.

  ‘Well,’ Mary began expansively, ‘the first thing you need to do is to be sure of your intentions.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, you need to be aware that once you have done it, once you have murdered someone, you can’t undo it.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You say “of course”. And you say it very quickly, but it’s not nearly as simple as that. Let’s just stop and think about it for a minute: you are changing the c
ourse of your life and the course of the lives of all of those around you. You’re not exactly going to be invited to all the best dinner parties if you or your partner is a convicted murderer.’

  ‘Oh, in these celebrity-worshipping days I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ I offered quietly, ‘everybody wants to be famous for something or other; they’ll try anything that will guarantee them their five minutes of glory. However, if your murder is the perfect murder, then no one is going to find out about it, so there’s not going to be much glory, is there?’

  ‘Absolutely. No one is ever going to know about it, so there’ll be no glory nor guilt,’ Mary agreed and then stopped to consider before continuing, ‘but do you think you could murder someone and your lover not be aware of it?’

  I couldn’t work out whether what she was actually trying to say was, would I know if she had killed someone? Or maybe would she know if I’d killed someone? Could you sleep with a killer and not be aware of it? Are there things that killers do that give them away?

  I didn’t think so, and certainly not in every case.

  As we’ve discussed before, I wasn’t so sure that all killers had cold, dark, stony stares. I didn’t have a mental picture of someone frothing at the mouth. Perhaps that was just because, personally speaking, I had already come up with a scenario where I could have accidentally killed Jean Simpson, you know, like I told you a few minutes ago? If Jean had come around to my flat and made advances towards me and I’d got mad at myself and pushed her away, and she’d fallen and hit her head – remember that? Would that make me a different person? You know, it’s as easy to push as not – would you change as a person in that split second that you decided to push?