The Best Man To Die

by Ruth Rendell

  Last year it had been glass sculpture, a strange green tree, a very Yggdrasil, for Burden’s sanctum, and for Wexford an inky-blue, amorphous pillar that in some lights grossly resembled the human figure. These, too, had been fated, Wexford’s broken by a pretty young woman who was helping him with his enquiries and Burden’s one day inadvertently put out with the rubbish.

  That should have been the end of it. And then, just as the foyer was beginning to take on a shabby, comfortable look, the lift arrived, an elegant black and gilt box with a sliding door.

  ‘It isn’t working yet,’ Wexford said, a shade nervously.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. Been operating since this morning. Shall we try it?’

  ‘I should just like to know what’s wrong with the stairs,’ Wexford exploded. ‘It’s a downright disgrace wasting the ratepayers’ money like this.’ He stuck out his lower lip. ‘Besides, Crocker says walking upstairs is the best exercise in the world for me with my blood pressure.’

  ‘Just as you like,’ said Burden, turning his face away so that Wexford should not see him smile.

  By the time they reached the third floor they were both out of breath. The flimsy yellow chair behind Wexford’s rosewood desk creaked as he lowered his heavy body into it.

  ‘For God’s sake open a window, Mike.’

  Burden grumbled that opening windows upset the air conditioning but he complied, raising the yellow venetian blind and letting in a powerful shaft of noonday sunshine.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘Shall we re-cap on what we know about Charlie Hatton?’

  ‘Thirty years old, born and bred in Kingsmarkham. Two years ago he got married to a Miss Lilian Bardsley, sister of the man he’s in business with. Bardsley’s got his own firm, transporting small electrical goods.’

  ‘Was Hatton a full partner?’

  ‘We’ll have to find out. Even if he was, I can’t see he could get that flush driving loads of irons and heaters up to Leeds and Scotland a couple of times a week. Carter says he had a hundred quid on him, Mike. Where did he get the money from?’

  ‘Maybe this McCloy.’

  ‘Do we know any McCloys?’

  ‘Not that I can recall, sir. We shall have to ask Maurice Cullam.’

  Wexford wiped his brow with his handkerchief and, following Camb’s example, began to fan himself with the morning paper. ‘The philoprogenitive Cullam,’ he said. ‘He had one of his quiverful with him when I found Hatton this morning. He’s a lorry driver too, Mike. I wonder… Hatton had his lorry hi-jacked twice this year.’

  Burden opened his pale-blue eyes. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I remembered,’ said Wexford, ‘as soon as Cullam told me whose the body was. Both times were on the Great North Road and no one was ever done for it. Hatton got knocked on the head the first time but the second time he wasn’t hurt, only tied up.’

  ‘Once,’ said Burden thoughtfully, ‘is fair enough. Occupational hazard. Twice looks fishy. I want to hear what the doctor has to say. And if I’m not mistaken that’s him outside now.’

  Dr Crocker and Wexford had been at school together. Like Jack Pertwee and Charlie Hatton, they were lifelong friends, but their friendship was a casual business and their manner to each other, dry, irreverent, often caustic. Crocker, some six years the chief inspector’s junior, was the only man Burden knew who could get the better of Wexford and match his acid tongue. A tall lean figure with deep lines carved vertically down his brown cheeks, he came into the office looking as cool as he did on a winter’s day.

  ‘I used your lift,’ said the doctor. ‘Very smart. Whatever will they think of next?’

  ‘Pictures are threatened,’ said Wexford. ‘The inspector here is to have a suitable flower piece and I a Constable landscape.’

  ‘I don’t know much about art,’ said Crocker, sitting down and crossing one elegant lean leg over the other, ‘but there’s one painting I would like to have. Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson. Lovely thing it is. There’s this poor devil, this corpse, you see, lying on the table with his guts laid open and all these students…’

  ‘Do you mind,’ said Wexford. ‘I’m just going to have my lunch. You doctors bring your revolting trade into every thing. We can hear your ideas on interior decoration another time. Now I want to know about Charlie Hatton.’

  ‘Perfectly healthy bloke,’ said the doctor, ‘bar the fact that he’s dead.’ He ignored Burden’s glance of reproof. ‘Someone bashed him on the back of the head with a heavy smooth object. I’d say he was dead by eleven but it’s impossible to be accurate about these things. What did you say he did for a living?’

  ‘He was a lorry driver,’ said Burden.

  ‘I thought that’s what you said. He’d got a marvellous set of teeth.’

  ‘So what?’ said Wexford. ‘He ought to have had good teeth.’ Rather ruefully he ran his tongue over the two stumps that held in place his upper plate. ‘He was only thirty.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Crocker, ‘he ought to have had his own being a war baby and a cog in the welfare state. The point is he didn’t. What I meant was he’d got just about the finest set of false teeth I’ve ever seen. Lovely ivory castles. Very nifty grinders Charlie, Hatton had, all cunningly contrived to look more real than the real thing. I’d be surprised if they cost less than two hundred quid.’

  ‘Rich man,’ said Wexford ruminatively. ‘A hundred pounds in his wallet and two hundred in his mouth. I wish I could believe he’d come by it honestly, driving his lorry up and down the Great North Road.’

  ‘That’s your problem,’ said the doctor. ‘Well, I’m away to my lunch. Tried the lift yet?’

  ‘In your capacity as my medical adviser, you advised me to walk upstairs. Physician, heal thyself. About all the exercise you get is pressing the button on your automatic gear change. You want to watch your blood pressure, too.’

  ‘I should worry,’ said Crocker. He went to the door where the sunshine showed off his elegant figure and absence of paunch to best advantage. ‘All a matter of metabolism,’ he said airily. ‘Some have it rapid.’ He looked back at Wexford. ‘Others slow. The luck of the draw.’

  Wexford gave a snort. When the doctor had gone, he opened the top drawer of his desk and took from it the contents of Charlie Hatton’s pockets. The wallet was there, but it was empty of money. It was still soaking wet and now Wexford carefully removed from its leather partitions a photograph of Lilian Hatton, a driving licence and a darts club membership card and spread them in the sun to dry.

  In the pocket there had also been a clean handkerchief with a small card caught between its folds. You couldn’t see the card until you unfolded the handkerchief and now Wexford looked at it for the first time. It too was wet and the ink writing on it indecipherable, but it was still recognizable as the pasteboard square dentists use to remind patients of their appointments. On the top was printed: Jolyon Vigo, B.D.S., L.D.S., R.C.S., Eng., Dent. Surg., 19 Ploughman’s Lane, Kingsmarkham, Sussex. Tel: Kingsmarkham 384.

  Wexford held it up in the bright shaft of sunlight.

  ‘The source of the delectable dentures, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Maybe Vigo can tell us where the money came from if Cullam can’t,’ said Burden. ‘My wife goes to Vigo. He’s a good dentist.’

  ‘A fly one too, if you ask me, getting a sharp little customer like Charlie Hatton to part with two hundred for thirty-two teeth. No wonder he can afford to live in Ploughman’s Lane. We’re in the wrong job here, Mike, and no mistake. I’m going for my lunch now. Join me? And then we’ll go and root Cullam out of his domestic bliss.’

  ‘May as well use the lift,’ said Burden with a trace of self- consciousness.

  It was more than Wexford’s life was worth to admit his craven fear of the lift. Although a notice inside clearly stated its capacity to carry three persons, he was secretly afraid that it would be inadequate to bear his vast bulk. But he hesitated for no more than a moment before stepping inside and when the door was closed he took
refuge in clowning.

  ‘Soft furnishings, table linen, cutlery,’ he said facetiously, pressing the button. The lift sighed and began to sink. ‘First floor for ladies’ underwear, stockings… Why’s it stopping, Mike?’

  ‘Maybe you pressed the wrong button.’

  Or it won’t stand my weight, Wexford thought, alarmed. The lift came to rest at the first floor and the door slid open. Sergeant Camb hesitated apologetically on the threshold.

  ‘Sorry, sir. I didn’t know it was you. I can walk down.’

  ‘Three persons are permitted, Sergeant,’ Wexford said, hoping his now very real trepidation didn’t show. ‘Come along.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Not bad, is it? The tribute of a grateful government.’ Come on, come on, he thought, and pictured the three of them plummeting down the last thirty feet into the basement.

  ‘You off to see Mrs Fanshawe, I suppose?’ he said superfluously. The lift floated lightly, steadied and the door opened. Must be stoutly built, thought Wexford, like me. ‘I heard she’d regained consciousness.’

  ‘I’m hoping the doctors’ll have broken the news about her husband and her daughter, sir,’ said Camb as they crossed the black and white checkerboard foyer of the station. ‘It’s not a job I fancy. They were all the family she’d got. She hasn’t a soul in the world barring her sister who came down and identified the bodies.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Mrs Fanshawe, sir? Fifty odd. The sister’s a good bit older. Horrible business for her having to identify Miss Fanshawe. She was, a nasty mess, I can tell you. Face all…’

  ‘I’m just off for my lunch,’ said Wexford firmly.

  He marched through the swing doors in front of the others and Camb got into his car. The stone flowerpots on the forecourt sported bright pink bouquets of pelargoniums, their magenta-splashed faces turned gratefully to the noon-day sun.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Burden.

  ‘Mrs Fanshawe? It’s not our cup of tea. She and her husband were driving home from Eastbourne in Fanshawe's Jaguar. It overturned in the fast lane on the twin-track road on the other side of Stowerton. Their home was in London and Fanshawe must have been in a hurry. God knows how it happened, there wasn’t another thing on the road, but the Jag overturned and caught fire. Mrs Fanshawe was flung clear, the other two killed outright. Badly burned too.’

  ‘And this Mrs Fanshawe doesn’t know?’

  ‘She’s been in a coma since it happened six weeks ago.’

  ‘I remember now,’ said Burden, lifting the plastic strip curtain the Carousel Café hung up in hot weather to keep out wasps. ‘The inquest was adjourned.’

  ‘Till Mrs F. regained consciousness. Presumably Camb’s going to try and get her to tell him just why a seasoned driver like Fanshawe overturned his car on an empty road. Some hopes! What d’you fancy for lunch, Mike? I’m going for the salad myself.’

  ‘Two ham salads,’ said Burden to the waitress. He poured himself some water from a chilled carafe.

  ‘Getting quite transatlantic the old Carousel,’ said Wexford. ‘And about time too. Not so long ago the water used to steam away like a perishing engine on these tables in hot weather. What’s the betting this McCoy’s running a big racket, paying Charlie Hatton to leave his lorry unattended and paying him to keep other lorry drivers occupied when ever the chance presents itself? Lorries are always getting hi jacked. They leave them in these lay-bys while they have a little kip or a cup of tea. Hatton could have done a nice little distracting job there. Fifty or a hundred quid a lorry depending on the load.’

  ‘In that case, why does McCloy kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?’

  ‘Because Hatton gets scared or fed-up and threatens to rat on him. He may even have tried blackmail.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ said Burden, spreading butter on his roll. The butter was almost liquid. Like the rest of humanity, he reflected, the Carousel staff were disappointingly inconsistent.

  Chapter 5

  ‘But my daughter wasn’t in the car.’

  Seldom had Sergeant Camb felt so sorry for anyone as he did for this woman who lay against the piled pillows. His heart ached for her. And yet she was in one of the nicest private rooms in the hospital; she had a telephone and a television; her nightgown was a silly frou-frou of frills and spilling lace and on her thin fingers the rings – diamonds and sapphires in platinum – rattled as she clasped and unclasped the sheet.

  It’s true what they say, money can’t buy happiness, thought the simple sergeant. He had noticed there were no flowers in the room and only one ‘get well’ card on the table by the chair where the policewoman sat. From her sister, he supposed. She hadn’t anyone else now, not a soul in the world. Her husband was dead and her daughter…

  ‘I’m very very sorry, Mrs Fanshawe,’ he said, ‘but your daughter was in the car. She was travelling back to London with you and your husband.’

  ‘They didn’t suffer,’ put in the young policewoman quickly. ‘They can’t have felt a thing.’

  Mrs Fanshawe touched her forehead where the dyed hair showed half an inch of white at the roots. ‘My head,’ she said. ‘My head aches. I can’t remember things, not details. Everything’s so vague.’

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ said Camb heartily. ‘You’ll find you’ll get your memory back in time. You’re going to get quite well, you know.’ For what? For widowhood, for childlessness?

  ‘Your sister’s been able to supply us with most of the details we need.’

  They had been close, Mrs Fanshawe and Mrs Browne, and there wasn’t much about the Fanshawes Mrs Browne hadn’t known. From her they had learned that Jerome Fanshawe had a bungalow at Eastover between Eastbourne and Seaford and that he and his wife and daughter had driven down there for a week’s holiday on May 17th. The daughter Nora had left her post as an English teacher in a German school before Easter. She was between jobs, at a loose end, Camb had gathered, otherwise nothing would have induced her to accompany her parents. But she had accompanied them. Mrs Browne had been at their Mayfair flat and seen them all off together.

  They had left Eastover days earlier than had been expected. Mrs Browne couldn’t account for that, unless it had been because of the wet weather. Perhaps no one would ever know the reason, for Jerome Fanshawe’s Jaguar had skidded, crashed and caught fire five miles from the hospital where the sole survivor now lay.

  ‘I won’t bother you for long,’ Camb said gently. ‘Perhaps you can’t remember much about the crash. Do you think you could try and tell me what you do remember?’

  Dorothy Fanshawe had forgotten who these kind though tiresome people were, just as she had again forgotten where she was. Her sister had been to see her and made her very tired and various strangers had moved her and pummelled her in a familiar manner that made her angry. Then someone had told her that Jerome was dead and had waited for her to cry. Mrs Fanshawe had twisted her rings – they were a great comfort to her, those rings – and said:

  ‘Then it’s all mine now, mine and Nora’s.’

  They thought she was wandering and they went away. She was glad to see the back of them with their interfering ways and their lack of respect. There was only one person she wanted to see and that was why she stared so searchingly into the young pretty face of the policewoman. But she had been in a coma, she wasn’t mad. She knew very well this wasn’t the right face. ‘Am I in London?’ she asked clearly and briskly.

  ‘No, Mrs Fanshawe,’ said the sergeant, thinking how quavering and weak her voice was. ‘You’re in Stowerton Royal Infirmary, Stowerton in Sussex.’

  ‘You seem very well-informed,’ said Mrs Fanshawe, pleased because she had succeeded so well in pulling herself together. ‘Perhaps you can tell me why my daughter doesn’t come to see me? Haven’t they told her I’m here? Nora would want to know. She’d come home.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Fanshawe…’ The policewoman sounded very wretched, almost distraught, and catch
ing her eye, Sergeant Camb gave her a sharp reproving glance. Better leave it, the look said. Maybe it’s more merciful this way. Let her learn about it by degrees. The mind has its own way of softening blows, he thought sententiously.

  ‘Now back to the – er, accident,’ he said. ‘Just try and see if you can tell me what happened when you left Eastover. It was getting dark and there wasn’t much traffic on the road, it being a Monday. It had been raining and the road was wet. Now, Mrs Fanshawe?’

  ‘My husband was driving,’ she began and she wondered why the man’s face wore such a sloppy expression. Perhaps he had noticed her rings. She slid them up and down her fingers, suddenly remembering that the five of them were worth nearly twenty thousand pounds. ‘Jerome was driving…’ What a silly name it was. Like Three Men in a Boat. That made her giggle, although the sound came out like a harsh cackle. ‘I sat beside him, of course, and I was knitting. I must have been knitting. I always do when Jerome drives. He drives so fast,’ she said querulously. ‘Much too fast and he never takes any notice when I tell him to go slower, so I do my knitting. To keep my mind off it, you know.’

  Mean and selfish Jerome was. A man of fifty-five hadn’t any business to drive like a crazy teenager. She had told him that, but he had ignored her like he ignored everything else she ever said. Still, she was used to being ignored. Nora never took any notice of what she said either. When she came to think of it, the only thing she and Jerome had ever agreed about was what a difficult, trying and utterly maddening creature Nora was. It was exactly like her to go away and not get in touch with her parents. Jerome would have something to say about that… Then there swam pleasantly into her muddled mind the recollection that Jerome would never have anything to say about anything again, never drive at eighty-five or pick on Nora or do those other terrible and humiliating things. Tonight, when she felt better, she would write to Nora and tell her her father was dead. With Jerome out of the way and all that money for them selves, she felt they would have a much happier relationship…