by Alan Hunter
‘Did Mrs Selly know you were going to visit her?’
‘Yes,’ Pamela said tightly. ‘I gave her a ring.’
‘No reluctance on her part?’
‘Of course not.’
‘We always went on Tuesdays when we could,’ Diane said.
‘I’d like you to describe this visit to me,’ I said. ‘Just run through it the way it happened – what time you got there, what mood she was in, what you talked about; anything you can remember.’
They looked at each other, then the three of them at Pamela. Pamela had a sulky, withdrawn expression. She looked past me at the sea, her eyes hooded, as though really she was a very long way away.
‘We got there soon after two,’ she said. ‘And we had to leave again at twenty-past four. Well . . . we talked. I don’t know what about. Perhaps Viv was warning us not to talk to strange men.’
‘She was discussing men?’
Pamela shrugged. ‘Isn’t that what women usually talk about? Viv knew about men, how rotten they are. With a husband like hers she should know.’
‘But did she mention any specific men?’
Pamela hesitated, shook her head. I looked at the others: they stared back blankly. Diane had a little flush about her neck.
‘About her mood then. Did she seem happy?’
‘Oh, about the usual,’ Pamela said.
‘She wasn’t depressed?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Perhaps extra-talkative.’
‘Not that I noticed.’
‘Did she mention, for example, that she was looking forward to something – a treat, some money, meeting someone?’
Pamela ran her necklace through her fingers. ‘I don’t remember that,’ she said.
‘She did—’ Diane began, then stopped to blush. Everyone looked at Diane.
‘Yes?’
‘Well . . . talking about men! She said it was up to a woman to get all she could out of them.’
I nodded. ‘She was just talking about men?’
‘Yes . . . you know! It was meant for a joke.’
‘But some specific man had been mentioned?’
‘No! Well, I thought she was talking about her husband.’
I paused to look round the little group. ‘I want to get this very clear,’ I said. ‘Did Mrs Selly mention a man, any man, while you were there with her on Tuesday afternoon?’
‘We’ve told you,’ Pamela said sulkily. ‘She didn’t.’
‘Had she ever mentioned any man of her acquaintance?’
‘No.’
‘She didn’t like men,’ Barbara Mells said. Her face was quite blank. The rest were silent.
I let that remark hang in the air while I struck a fresh light for my pipe. It had come out so casually, so unemphatically, yet everyone present knew the weight of it. Would I pick it up? They were holding their breath. Diane was frowning at a spot near her feet. Barbara Mells now had the faintest of smirks, as though she were secretly proud of what she’d said. I puffed a few times then snapped my match.
‘Very well. Let’s try to take this visit from the beginning. Pamela parked her Mini and you rang the doorbell. What was Mrs Selly wearing when she answered the door?’
They had begun to relax but the question tensed them again. Pamela flicked a look at Barbara Mells.
‘Viv wasn’t dressed.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well . . . I suppose she’d been having a bath.’
‘She was wearing her dressing gown.’
‘Yes.’
‘The lace one.’
Pamela made a small motion with her shoulders.
‘I gave her that,’ Diane said defiantly. ‘It was a birthday present. She liked wearing it.’
‘Viv didn’t dress about the house,’ Pamela said. ‘It was one of her things, that’s all.’
I glanced at the other two, but they weren’t saying anything. Barbara Mells’ expression was mulish. She was a sallow-complexioned girl with lean cheeks and a small colourless mouth.
‘Was Mrs Selly pleased to see you?’
‘Of course,’ Pamela said.
‘She welcomed you – laughed, made a fuss?’
‘No. Viv wasn’t that sort of person.’
‘But she was pleased to see you. You went into the hall. She said something like: “Let’s go up to the sitting-room.” Then you all went up the narrow staircase and turned left into her front room. Who sat on the easy chair facing the window?’
A pause while Pamela fingered her necklace. Then:
‘Look, it wasn’t like that at all! To start with, we went through to the kitchen first. Viv had the kettle on for a cup of tea.’
‘Tea?’
‘Yes – tea!’
‘And later on, no doubt, you washed up the cups for her?’
‘Well, she’d wash up anyway, wouldn’t she?’
I shook my head. ‘She hadn’t washed up anything.’
Pamela jerked the necklace. ‘I can’t help that! Viv made some tea and we took it upstairs. And it was me who sat in the chair by the window – I wanted to keep an eye on my car.’
I shrugged – who wouldn’t? ‘Where else did you go besides the kitchen and the sitting-room?’
‘Nowhere else.’
‘Nowhere?’ I looked at the others: they didn’t answer. ‘So,’ I said. ‘You stayed in the sitting-room. You were there for a little over two hours. That gave you plenty of time to talk – and this took place only two days ago.’
‘We can’t remember everything!’ Pamela snapped.
‘On the contrary, I think you’d’ve remembered this. Your last conversation with your friend.’
‘Perhaps we don’t want to tell you,’ Barbara Mells said.
I stared at this girl (whom I was beginning to dislike); then suddenly, disgustedly, I turned my back on them. I had promised Eyke I would use kid gloves, but what was that getting me except lies and evasions? These kids weren’t innocent, and there was something they could tell me which otherwise we’d have to ferret out by routine: something it was important to know quickly – and I didn’t have to live with Wolmering afterwards. I kept staring out to sea.
‘Now listen! I’ve just come from Mrs Selly’s cottage. Nothing there has been touched since she left it, and I’m an expert at reading evidence. The sitting-room is neat. The bedroom isn’t. That big bed looks as though an army had manoeuvred on it. There are five used glasses on the tallboy, a whisky-decanter and an ashtray spilling butt-ends. And there’s a riding whip lying on the bed and some woven nylon rope knotted to the bed-frame. And in the bathroom there are a lot of soiled towels and both it and the bedroom stink like a harem. If some perverted orgy hasn’t been going on there then the scene was faked by an expert. So are you still going to tell me you were drinking tea in the sitting-room and holding a long conversation you can’t remember?’
I swung back to them. Pamela’s eyes were popping; Diane, strawberry-coloured, was staring at her feet. The boy-like Anne Brundish had gone pale and trembly. Only Barbara Mells was still composed, still smirking.
‘Well?’
Pamela swallowed. ‘All that . . . it could have happened when we weren’t there.’
‘We shall take your prints,’ I said. ‘They’ll match the prints on the glasses.’
‘But we used the glasses,’ Barbara Mells said smoothly. ‘Viv gave us a soft drink just before we left.’
‘And she used them again – without washing them?’
‘Oh, Viv wasn’t too particular.’
I gave Barbara Mells a hard look: she humped her thin back and lowered her eyes. I could see Diane’s hands working. They were balled into fists and pressed to her sides.
‘Don’t any of you care what happened?’ I asked. ‘Did Vivienne Selly mean so little to you? It doesn’t matter that you can perhaps help us catch the person who took away her life?’
Pamela shivered. ‘But we can’t help—’
‘Yes, you can
. You can help me now. I want to know if what happened at the cottage had any connection with her death.’
‘It wasn’t . . . it was nothing . . .’
‘How do you know?’
‘Well . . . I’m certain.’
‘There’s only one way you can be certain.’
Pamela rustled her necklace, was silent.
I turned to Diane. Diane flinched; her fists ground tighter into her maroon skirt. But then suddenly she threw back her flaming head and stared at me with fierce blue eyes.
‘All right – it was us then! Us who did everything you think. Viv didn’t have any truck with other people – and she didn’t have a boyfriend, either!’
‘Thank you, Miss Culpho.’
She couldn’t blush deeper: even her hands were pink and swollen. And the fierceness of her eyes flickered painfully: she looked for a moment lost, very vulnerable.
‘This would be the last of a – number – of occasions?’
‘Yes. And it would have been the last one anyway.’
‘How was that?’
‘We’d been shopped.’ She half-glanced at Pamela. ‘Sweffy knew.’
‘Sweffy . . . ?’
‘Miss Swefling. Our headmistress at the school. Somebody must have dropped her a hint because she had us on the carpet the same day.’
‘When?’
‘Oh, oh!’ Pamela exclaimed. ‘I think you’ve blabbed enough, Di.’
‘When?’ I said.
‘When we got back. She was waiting when we got in.’
Now she let her eyes sink again, though her feet were planted apart: somehow defiant. But she was waiting for the axe to fall, for the full weight of my punitive authority. Pamela had a drag-mouthed expression, her eyebrows raised as though in distaste. A little extra pressure and she’d probably become hysterical for all her pose of being the spokeswoman. It was Barbara Mells who was the tough one. Quite calmly she was studying my expression. Then, wholly casual, she reached for Pamela’s wrist and turned it so as to see her wrist-watch.
‘I think it’s time we were getting back.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I haven’t finished.’
‘But we mustn’t be late. Not after Tuesday.’
‘You are helping the police.’
Barbara Mells smirked.
I turned to Diane again. ‘So Miss Swefling knew. Who did she say told her?’
‘She didn’t,’ Diane said, not meeting my eyes. ‘She just said she was shocked and that we’d have to stop it.’
‘She was angry?’
Diane didn’t answer.
‘She threatened to expel us,’ Barbara Mells smirked. ‘It was rather funny. It so happens that we leave at the end of this term anyway.’
‘She gave us extra duties,’ Diane said.
‘As though they mattered,’ Barbara Mells sneered.
‘And she was going to talk to Viv – report her to the police if she didn’t stop seeing us.’
I looked at Pamela. ‘Were you included in this lecture?’
‘Oh yes. I was nabbed before I could drive off. But Sweffy couldn’t give me extra duties, could she, and anyway she thinks I’m completely depraved.’ She jingled the necklace. ‘I’m the cad of the Sixth. I spend my breaks reading Henry Miller.’
‘For the rest of the evening – you three were in school?’
‘We had to take junior prep,’ Diane said.
‘And you, Miss Rede?’
‘At home, naturally. Junior prep isn’t for day girls.’
‘You were with your uncle and aunt?’
‘Well . . . not all the evening. I went for a spin in the Mini. But I didn’t call on Viv, if that’s what you’re hinting. Not after that splendid lecture by Sweffy.’
‘It didn’t occur to you to warn her.’
Pamela hesitated. ‘Well, I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I went for a run to Maidensmere, and called in at the Half Moon there for a cider.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That’s very definite.’
‘It’s what you’d call an alibi,’ Barbara Mells murmured.
I treated Miss Mells to a second stare and she had the grace to erase her smirk.
‘One further point and then you can go. It concerns Mrs Selly’s dog. As you probably know, we’ve been looking for it. Did you see it in her house on Tuesday?’
They exchanged looks as though fearing a trap.
‘She kept it in the kitchen,’ Anne Brundish said, doubtfully.
‘I think I heard it,’ Diane said. She flushed directly. ‘We didn’t go in the kitchen.’
‘Did anyone else see it?’
They murmured negatives, perhaps wondering what my interest in the dog could be. It was called Rags, Anne Brundish volunteered, a wire-haired terrier; but they really hadn’t noticed it on Tuesday.
And so I dismissed them, and they trailed off quietly through a gap that gave access to the Town Green. I watched them cross it: Pamela with Barbara Mells, Anne Brundish tagging close to them, Diane at a distance. Four girls. They reached a red Mini and I heard a spurt of nervous laughter. Then they piled in, all limbs, and gunned the engine and rocketed away.
What more did I know . . . ?
I turned to watch a long-shore boat ploughing its track through the gentle swell. The low sun was lighting the face of its helmsman: yellowing the gulls that sailed in its wake.
CHAPTER TWO
SOME NOTES.
Vivienne herself. My acquaintance, as usual, was post-surgical. But there were good photographs, and Eyke had summarised a description from statements of witnesses. 5’3”, slim build, dark hair, pale complexion, brown eyes, cleft chin, Midlands accent, age 34.
That’s the diagram. Filling it in, she had slightly flattened, Creole-type features, eyebrows slanted, chin pointed, cheekbones high but not prominent. The eyes were dark brown and glittering. The hair, worn shoulder-length, was coarse and straight. She was fine-boned, had long-fingered hands, long limbs and narrow hips; spoke in a low, husky voice as though suffering from a permanent sore throat.
An exotic-looking woman.
None of the photographs showed her smiling.
A typical expression showed half-parted lips and eyes de-focused, faintly ecstatic. (Incipient heart-disease? No mention of this in the P.M. report.)
Asocial: the four girls appeared to have been her only acquaintances. Husband left her about twelve months earlier (coincident perhaps with her meeting the girls). She’d have a drink in the Pelican or one of the other pubs but rarely joined in conversation. Apparently unattractive to men. Not ‘on terms’ with her neighbours.
Vivienne’s dog. The witness Lake couldn’t remember if she’d seen it with Vivienne. Granted, witnesses are notorious for blind spots and it may have been with Vivienne just the same. She may have let it off the lead when she reached the Guns (a very likely hypothesis), and then unless she was ostentatiously swinging the lead there would be no indication she had a dog with her. But the dog was missing, and if Vivienne hadn’t taken it with her, when and how had it disappeared? This was Thursday evening and no report of it yet.
Conjectures about the dog. If she’d left it at home then someone had released it before ten a.m. on Wednesday (this was the time the police had visited the cottage following identification of the body). Cottage not broken into but the murderer could have used Vivienne’s key (object: to remove incriminating evidence? No sign of the cottage having been searched). The key, if used, had been returned to her handbag.
Alternatively: if she’d taken the dog with her and it had escaped the notice of witness: why, supposing the murderer had made away with it, had he bothered to conceal the corpse? It could tell us nothing. He might as well have left it with Vivienne on the Common. (Some imponderable factor here, like the murderer being psychotically affected by dogs?)
Lastly (and unfortunately possible) witness could have mistaken her identification. Meaning we would have no knowledge at all of Vivienne’s movements at the critical time on T
uesday evening. This would throw us back to around four p.m., when the girls left the cottage. Very discouraging thought: Eyke now searching for additional witnesses.
I continued to follow the footway. After skirting more houses it dipped abruptly to the lower promenade, where there was a bench and where a few small boats lay higgledy-piggledy on the concrete. A discreet, sea-watching spot. The cliff and the steep paths damped out all land sounds. The bench was niched into the cliff and out of sight of the lower promenade. I prowled around. The boats looked neglected and were dogged with sand and dried seaweed. Somebody had been eating fish-and-chips and had thrust the wrappings into the tamarisks. Somebody else had waited for quite a while to judge from a scatter of matches and cigarette-butts. And somebody else had halted briefly while their dog deposited faeces behind the bench.
Vivienne. . . ?
I smile sourly to myself. Perhaps I should have the faeces dated! Yet there they were, temptingly suggesting a verification were much needed. That the dog had been with her, with the added bonus of a reason for Mrs Lake’s uncertainty: here, Vivienne had detached the lead in order to proceed with greater dignity. It fitted prettily because the Guns were only just above, on the diff. The dog could have been still about its business when Vivienne encountered witness. Then perhaps the lead or Vivienne’s turning her head had half-suggested the presence of a dog to Mrs Lake, though not strongly enough for her to be positive of it when she came to make her statement. Yes: pretty. Only the faeces of a dog are not yet a rarity in the urban scene . . .
So I left them, and went on up the steep, short ascent to the cliff-top, to a suddenly-presented view of the feature known as the Guns. The Guns were no myth. They were a row of six eighteenth-century naval cannon, mounted on massive oak carriages and pointing bravely out to sea. Apparently the Dutch in their naval heyday had once the temerity to bombard Wolmering, in consequence of which these six iron monsters had been stationed on the cliff, to remain there ever after. Impressive monuments. I walked to the nearest and knocked out my pipe on the carriage. Then I climbed astride it, like a kid, and surveyed the spot from which Vivienne had vanished.
It was another example of those greens which gave a distinctive flavour to Wolmering, in this case about an acre of sweet-smelling meadow with a bit of bramble and gorse in the corner. One angle shaded away to the Town Green, with a glimpse of the road and the houses beyond it, but the immediate background was occupied by three fortunate houses which (I had been told) were the most expensive in Wolmering: to the east they faced the sea, to the west the Common and the marshes of the Wolmer river. Eyke had cast his net here but had taken no fish. The largest house, of red brick, was empty. Its two neighbours, one a period cottage, one a crisp modern house in the style of the thirties, were a little hidden by their own shrubs and by the island of bramble and gorse. At the far end of the green, beside a white-painted flag-pole, stood a look-out post belonging to the coastguards, but this had not been manned on Tuesday evening (it appeared empty now). All very charming: but it might have been a stage set, so very lifeless did it seem. The last of the sun was fading from it and the sea’s murmur from below was nearly inaudible.
