by Colin Watson
Lonelyheart 4122
( Flaxborough - 3 )
Colin Watson
Right at the bottom of the column, it was. Something for which she had not dared to hope. Not in remote, prosperous, hard-headed Flaxborough. A matrimonial bureau. Two women have disappeared in the small market town of Flaxborough. They are about the same age, both quite shy and both unmarried. As Inspector Purbright discovers the only connection between them appears to be the Handclasp House Marriage Bureau, but what begins as a seemingly straightforward missing persons case soon spirals out of control as Purbright encounters deceit, blackmail and murder. Lonelyheart 4122 is the fourth in Colin Watson's Flaxborough series and was first published in 1967.
'Flaxborough, that olde-worlde town with Dada trimmings.' Sunday Times
'Watson's Flaxborough begins to take on the solidity of Bennett's Five Towns, with murder, murky past and much acidic comment added.' H. R. F. Keating
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 th
e 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.”
“You can’t think of anyone with whom she might have gone to stay for a few days.”,
“I can’t. Nor can the wife. She’s no relations that I know of except for us and some people in Kirby Street and I happen to know she’s not been there.”
“How old is she? No, of course, you told me.” Purbright glanced at the notes on his knee. “Forty-three. What’s she like? You know—good-looking? Active?”
Mr Spain shrugged. Combining chivalry with accuracy was not going to be easy.
“I’d not call her a beauty, exactly. Quite nice, though. Quiet, but quite nice.”
That, reflected Purbright, was how Landru had liked them. And Mr Smith, with that bath of his. Aloud he said: “You don’t think Mrs Bannister had any intention of marrying again?”
“Oh, no.” The butcher seemed to find the possibility faintly indecent.
“She hasn’t a friend who might have been expected to...” The inspector spread one hand in elegant inquiry, looked at Mr Spain’s face and promptly changed tack.
“This money, now, Mr Spain. Do you suppose Mrs Bannister might simply have taken it into her head to go off on holiday, something a bit extravagant, perhaps? That is sometimes a sudden temptation to people who haven’t had much excitement and feel maybe they should take the chance and say nothing. After all, she had no ties.”
Mr Spain looked dubious. “I had wondered, actually. But Lilian’s always been so methodical. It’s that business of the milk I can’t get over. And I’m sure she would have let next door know.”
“You asked them?”
“Sort of. Just casually. I didn’t want to set anything off. You know.”
Purbright rose. He was very tall, but a slow amiability of manner prevented his height from being intimidating. Rather did he have the endearing ungainliness of some outsize domestic animal.
He clipped together the notes he had made and smiled down at Mr Spain.
“Perhaps we should let it ride for a few days longer. She must know that she will have to be back in time to prepare for the other people moving into the house. Of course, if she still hasn’t turned up by then we shall have to see what can be done to trace her.”
“You don’t think I’m making too much of all this? Mr Scorpe said...”
“No, you’ve been very sensible, Mr Spain. If you do think of anything else I’d be glad to hear from you straight away. Oh, and a photograph—that would be particularly helpful.”
As soon as his visitor had gone, the inspector opened a drawer of the desk and took out a folder. Inside the folder were two sheets of typescript and, attached to them, a photograph of a woman of between thirty-five and forty. He reached for a cup of half-cold tea and sipped it thoughtfully while he read first the typewritten pages and then the notes of what he had been told by the anxious butcher of Harlow Place.
Chapter Two
Whenever Inspector Purbright was faced with a seemingly intractable problem, he took it to the chief constable, Mr Harcourt Chubb. For one thing, it was only proper, professionally, that he should. “The correct channels” were much revered by Mr Chubb and as long as he believed his subordinates were sailing them he could be relied upon to keep safely on shore.
The other reason for consultation—and again aquatic simile is useful—was that the chief constable had the sort of mind which, because it was so static, aided reflection. By dropping facts, like pebbles, into it and watching the ripples of pretended sapience spread over its calm surface, Purbright was enabled somehow to form ideas that might not otherwise have occurred to him.
So, when the final day of Mrs Bannister’s legal occupancy of her house had brought no sign of the missing vendor, Purbright took himself to the chief constable’s office.
This was a large, cool room, the rather grand fireplace of which had been preserved as a suitable leaning place for Mr Chubb. The chief constable had never been known, save in the most intimate domestic circumstances, to sit down.
“I’m afraid, sir,” Purbright began, “that another lady has disappeared.”
Mr Chubb frowned. The connotation of “another” eluded him and he felt rather guilty about it.
“You’d better have a chair, Mr Purbright. That’s right. Now what have you come to tell me?”
Purbright recounted Mr Spain’s story, together with what he had been able to learn himself during the past few days of Mrs Bannister’s history and associations. This amounted to very little.
“The last that anything was seen of the woman seems to have been around the end of last month. A window cleaner remembers calling and getting paid. He’s been twice since then and he has the impression that everything in the rooms has stayed exactly as it was.”
“You mean he looks in?” Mr Chubb made it sound like an aberration.
“He’s a very perceptive window cleaner, sir.” Purbright did not think it necessary to add that the man was a notable opportunist, too, being reputed to carry a mattress in his van for the accommodation of conquests.
“You’ve checked the hospitals, I suppose?”
“We did that last week. And Sergeant Love has covered the travel agencies. I’m having the woman’s picture circulated and we’re making inquiries at the railway and bus stations. Just as we did for Martha Reckitt.”
“Ah, yes,” said Mr Chubb. He was relieved of his fear that Purbright was going to leave him cluelessly clutching for the implications of that “another”.
“We didn’t get very far with that, Mr Purbright, did we?”
“We didn’t get anywhere.”
“No.” Mr Chubb stroked his cheek and directed his sad, elder statesman gaze out of the window.
Purbright waited a moment and said: “You’ll have spotted the rather interesting parallels between the two cases.”
“Parallels. Yes...”
“Both about the same age. Both rather retiring, without close friends, lonely perhaps. One a spinster—I use the word technically, sir; it’s not one I like—and the other a widow...”
“I don’t like that one either,” broke in Mr Chubb gamely. “Weeds.” He wrinkled his nose.
“Quite. What I’m getting at, though, is that perhaps the most significant thing they had in common—apart from some ready money—was availability.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Mr Purbright. I would have thought them both pretty moral, from what you say. Martha especially; her mother was a very decent soul.”
“I mean matrimonially available.”
Mr Chubb nodded. “I’m with you. Go on.”
“A woman who keeps a reputation for respectability in Flaxborough for forty years is not easily lured. I mean, she isn’t going to run off with the first man who knocks on the door and tells her he wants her to do some modelling. She would need to be offered a solid proposition, however romantic the trimmings. You will say that lust seethes within the most maidenly bosom”—none knew better than Purbright that Mr Chubb would say nothi
ng of the sort—“and you will be right. But always there is this prime regard to security.”
“You talk of luring. We don’t really know about that, though, do we?”
“The only alternative is that Miss Reckitt and Mrs Bannister went off on their own initiative, without a word to anybody, leaving their belongings and obligations.”
“Such things do happen.” Mr Chubb pouted, wondering how to redeem what he realized was a somewhat shallow observation. “Change of life, you know,” he added mysteriously.
“Both a little young for the menopause, surely, sir?”
