Dear Departed

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Get on with it,’ said Joanna. ‘Spinning it out like that.’

  ‘All right, here it is – I know who Chattie’s father is. Ever heard of Cornfeld Chemicals?’

  ‘I thought it was Cornfield,’ Slider said. ‘There’s that logo of theirs—’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know it,’ Joanna said. ‘I saw something in the paper about them a couple of weeks ago – didn’t read it, because I wasn’t interested, but I noticed the logo: the oval thingy with the picture of a field of waving corn on it.’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Slider. Always reminded me of Ovaltine. I could never fathom what it had to do with chemicals.’

  ‘ I always read it as “Cornfed Chemicals”,’ Joanna said. ‘You know, like “cornfed beef”.’

  ‘You see a picture of a cornfield and read the word underneath and naturally you think the name is Cornfield,’ Slider reasoned.

  ‘Oy,’ said Atherton. ‘You’re spoiling my effect. When I say, “Ever heard of Cornfeld Chemicals?” you’re supposed to gasp in wonder, not witter on about etymology.’

  ‘What’s insects got to do with it?’ Joanna said.

  ‘No, that’s lepidometry,’ Slider said.

  ‘I’ll take my ball away and go home,’ Atherton warned.

  ‘All right,’ Slider said kindly. Are you telling us that Chattie Cornfeld had something to do with Cornfeld Chemicals?’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ Atherton said with dignity, ‘that her father is Cornfeld Chemicals. He owns the thing. He started it, he runs it, he is the chairman and chief exec rolled into one.’ He used his hands as a balance. ‘Dad – Cornfeld Chemicals. Cornfeld Chemicals – Dad. Am I getting the idea across now?’

  ‘You mean,’ Joanna said gravely, ‘she was that Cornfeld.’

  ‘At last,’ Atherton sighed, and topped up the glasses. ‘Well, at least I’ve established that we’ve all heard of the company, even if we didn’t pronounce its name right.’

  ‘Heard of it, yes,’ said Joanna. ‘It’s not exactly a household name but one comes across it. One knows it exists.’

  ‘Those of us who are able to read further through the paper than the health and beauty hints,’ said Atherton, risking his life, ‘are aware that it is a small company, which nevertheless does some important research in its pharmaceutical division and has come up with some cracking new drugs from time to time. Coprylon, for one, which is used to treat epilepsy. And Nuskin, a sterile artificial skin used post-operatively.’

  ‘But Chattie’s mother said she didn’t have anything to do with her father,’ Slider said. ‘How did his owning a chemicals company affect her?’

  ‘I shall tell you,’ said Atherton, magnificently. ‘I had a very interesting talk with Jasper Stalybrass, who knew her pretty well.’

  ‘The horn-player?’ Joanna said. ‘I know him. I’ve played with him on gigs over the years.’

  ‘What did you think of him?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘A bit full of himself, like most horn-players, but okay. A good player. And good company.’ She caught Atherton’s look and realised what was wanted. ‘I think he’s all right, for what my opinion’s worth. He came across as an honest bloke and I’ve never heard anything against him.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Atherton said. Anyway, he’s been having a sort of affair with Chattie.’

  ‘“Sort of ”?’ Slider queried, spreading duck pâté thickly over buttered bread. ‘How can you sort of have an affair?’

  ‘Be accurate, I said having a sort of affair.’

  ‘All right, what’s a “sort of ” affair when it’s at home?’

  ‘He said it was like being good friends with sex added, but with no intention of getting any further entangled than they were.’

  ‘You needn’t say it as if it sounds like heaven,’ Joanna said, with an edge.

  Slider flung her a silencing glance and said, ‘Okay, go on.’

  ‘Well, over that time, they exchanged life stories, and he knew quite a bit about the Cornfeld ménage. Bolstered by a few dates out of Who’s Who, I’m now in a position to give you …’ He paused and then announced in American movie tones ‘… The Cornfeld Story: The Early Years.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ said Slider.

  ‘Our story opens,’ Atherton obliged, but in the same voice, ‘in the small Midwest town of Enfield, Middlesex, England.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Toby or Not Toby?

  Chattie’s father had been christened Heinrich. His parents had come over from Germany in 1936 when he was a year old and, having decided to settle permanently in England, they had changed his name to Henry.

  The Cornfelds didn’t have much money, but Henry was a bright child and ambitious, and he had supplemented his basic education with self-help and library books. His bent and his passion were both for the sciences. When he left school at fifteen he got a job as a laboratory assistant in a private school where, although the pay was poor, he could continue to breathe the fumes, so to speak. When he was twenty his father died, and his mother gave him the proceeds of the life assurance policy so that he could set up his own business.

  ‘I got all this out of a morgue article – one of a series about self-made men,’ Atherton said. ‘Henry started in a small way with what he knew, supplying chemicals to school labs, and built up from there. Soon he was supplying university and hospital labs too, as a middle man, and then he started the manufacturing side. The thing really took off in the sixties, and he branched out into pharmaceuticals, where the rewards are so much greater.’

  ‘The risks, too,’ said Slider.

  ‘Right. But he had the core business to fall back on, to fund the experimental stuff. Anyway, by the time he met Chattie’s mother he was well entrenched and pretty well off.’

  ‘So there was family money after all. But what about wife number one?’ Slider asked, prompted by his tidy mind.

  ‘I only got the bare facts about her from Who’s Who. Name, Mary Rogers. He married her in 1960 when he was twenty-five and struggling, but by the time he divorced her he was rich and important and being invited places, so one can deduce that she didn’t fit in any more.’

  ‘So he ditched her,’ Joanna said indignantly. It was amazing, Slider thought, how they always take the woman’s part, even when it’s a strange woman they’ve never met and never will.

  ‘Presumably,’ said Atherton. ‘There was one daughter from the marriage, a girl called Ruth, born in 1962. He married Stella Smart in 1974. Chattie told Stalybrass that her father gave the first Mrs C the family semi in Enfield while he moved to a more upscale place in Hemel Hempstead with Mrs C number two, which was where Chattie was born in 1975.’

  ‘And the third wife?’

  ‘Ah, that’s where all the acid creeps in. Apparently Stella Smart discovered that he was bonking his secretary and went completely spare. Considering she’d snatched him from wife number one, she shouldn’t have been too surprised, but – according to Jasper, who gathered it from Chattie, who must have gathered it from her mother – she couldn’t stand being superseded by a mere secretary. It was a cliché too far for her, and humiliating to have her husband prefer a common typist. So she confronted him, forced the issue and insisted on a divorce.’

  ‘Now, why do you find that incredible?’ Joanna asked. ‘I can tell from your voice you think she ought to have kept her mouth shut and put up with it.’

  ‘What I think or don’t think has nothing to do with it,’ Atherton said. ‘But I suppose most women would want to hold on to the meal ticket, if he wasn’t agitating to leave.’

  ‘Most women? You really are a—’

  ‘Can we get back to the story, please,’ Slider said quickly. ‘You two can fight later. I want to hear the end before I fall asleep.’

  Atherton resumed. ‘So, acrimonious divorce, and Daddy Cornfeld flew the coop and married the secretary. But it seems he was very attached to Chattie, who was a bright child and very clever, and he kept contact with her, and had her t
o stay in the even smarter house in High Wycombe he could now afford. And in spite of everything that Stella could do to turn her against him, Chattie remained very fond of her father, and was – so Jasper says – intensely proud of him. She was especially proud that he had started with nothing and worked his way up through his own efforts.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Slider, ‘I’m beginning to understand something Jassy said.’

  ‘About Chattie wanting to succeed in her business without help?’ Atherton asked. ‘Yes, I got that from Jasper, too. It was a bit of a theme with our Chattie. He said she was so keen to do it alone like him that she never told people whose daughter she was. Afraid people might do her favours on his account. It was a bit of a pillow-confession to Jasper, and she made him swear secrecy.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Hammick said she never talked about her father,’ Slider remembered.

  ‘She might also have been afraid people would tap her for money if they knew she had a rich dad,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Don’t be cynical. But, look here,’ Slider said, ‘Jassy called Chattie a hypocrite because in fact she did receive money from her father. She said that Chattie was given lots of things while she, Jassy, got nothing.’

  Atherton nodded. ‘Yes, Jassy came up quite a bit in the conversation. Jasper had no time for her – called her a self-pitying little parasite and an inveterate ligger. He had a brush or two with her at Chattie’s house. She was always borrowing, and when that wasn’t enough she stole. Found her going through his wallet one day. He said Chattie was far too lenient with her. As to Chattie having everything and Jassy nothing, it seems that the bone of contention from Jassy’s point of view was that Daddy Cornfeld gave each of them a lump sum when she reached seventeen. Chattie used hers to buy a one-bedroom flat in an up-and-coming part of Shepherd’s Bush, which she sold in 1998 for a big profit. A very smart buy – it tripled in value. This happened to be just the time when Jassy was given her lump sum, so to start with she got it into her head that she hadn’t been given as much as Chattie.’

  ‘But—’ Joanna began indignantly.

  ‘I know,’ Atherton anticipated, ‘but with a chip as large as Jassy’s, there’s no room for logic or common sense. Anyway, Jassy blued her lump sum on a fancy sports car, which she wrapped round a lamp-post soon afterwards, having omitted to get insurance for it. Daddy sorted out the fine for driving without, but he was so furious with her he wouldn’t give her the money to replace it, so Jassy was left with nothing but a feeling of resentment and a determination to get as much out of teacher’s-pet Chattie as she could.’

  There was a silence when he stopped talking. Joanna refilled the wine glasses and took some grapes. ‘So,’ she said at last, ‘it explains how she got the house.’

  ‘But not how she funded the lifestyle,’ Atherton said. ‘The income from her business wasn’t enough. So we come back to the question: where did she get the rest of the money from? Did she deal coke? Did she accept “presents” from her many menfriends?’

  ‘Code language for prostitution, I gather,’ said Joanna.

  ‘There are numerous other possibilities we haven’t uncovered yet,’ Slider said. ‘It’s all very interesting, but I’m not sure it gets us much further forrard. The question we come back to is who killed her, and why?’

  Atherton called on Toby Harkness early on Saturday morning, to be sure of catching him in. He had a flat in Aynhoe Road, just off Brook Green, one of six in a small block that had been put up where a large house had been demolished in the council-vandalism days of the seventies. The block was showing its age, with cracks in the concrete facing, several slipped tiles on the roof and the windows in dire need of replacement. It was often a problem with such places, that they tended to be occupied either by the young or the old, neither of which groups was ever keen on spending money on communal upkeep.

  There was an entry-phone, and Atherton buzzed long and hard, then waited, listening to a blackbird in a nearby plane tree trying to pretend this was countryside. He was about to ring again when there was a click and a rusty voice said, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Atherton from Shepherd’s Bush police station. I’d like to have a little chat with you about Miss Cornfeld. Would you let me in, please, sir?’

  There was a pause, and then the voice said, ‘I don’t—’ and broke off in a bout of coughing.

  ‘Press the buzzer, please, sir,’ Atherton said. ‘I can’t discuss things through the intercom like this.’

  There were some amplified clicks and bumps, and then the buzzer went off, and Atherton pushed the door. There were three flats to a floor, and Harkness’s was upstairs. When he reached the top of the flight Atherton saw him at the door to his flat, holding it open. He was naked from the waist up, showing a rather undeveloped white torso, with a few dark, flat moles scattered here and there, and a hairless chest, hunched round at the moment as if its owner was feeling the cold. Below the waist he was crammed into a pair of tight jeans that looked rather the worse for wear, as if he hadn’t been out of them for a few days. His feet were bare, his toenails dirty, and he stood on one leg and used the right foot to scratch the top of the left. His face was unshaven and bleary, his eyes red, his dark hair standing up in a mad bush, and even from the distance of six feet Atherton could smell the booze coming off him in waves.

  ‘Mr Harkness?’ Atherton said, not because he was in any doubt, but to get things moving.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I don’t—’ He broke off, and a sweat suddenly sheened his face, which had turned greenish white. ‘Oh, God,’ he said, hunching, and put his hand up to his mouth.

  ‘Bathroom, quick,’ Atherton barked, and caught the door as Harkness turned and fled. Atherton stepped in and shut the door behind him as the sounds of retching came from somewhere out of sight. The door opened straight into the living room, with the kitchen immediately on the right, and the bedroom and bathroom presumably down a small passage that led off beyond the kitchen. There was parquet flooring in the area just inside the door, which disappeared under fawn carpeting in the living room area, but it was neglected, very scratched and bereft of polish, yea, these many years, if Atherton was any expert. The air smelt stale, even leaving aside the fact that Harkness was evidently a smoker. A quick glance into the kitchen revealed a chaos of young epic proportions, with used plates and mugs piled everywhere along with fragments of food and empty takeaway cartons, some of which looked as though they needed carbon dating. The tiles on the floor were stained with food and grease and liberally sprinkled with crumbs, and the peel of a satsuma and a lone chip lay near the gas stove, mutely begging lenience.

  The living room was likewise a mess of clothes, books and papers, used crockery and more empty food cartons, empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays. The curtains were still drawn over the window, but inefficiently, so that sunlight was streaming in through a foot-wide gap and heating up the composite smells towards combustion point. Atherton went across, drew them back and fought the window open – the metal frame had warped – before he expired from lack of oxygen.

  In the bathroom the sounds of vomiting had been superseded by a lengthy micturition, then flushing, and now the trickle and splash of water being, he hoped, dashed on the face. Harkness reappeared at last, wiping his mouth, the hair round his face damp, missed drops and dribbles running down his chest.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he croaked. He coughed long and hard, then resumed in a sort of gruff mumble, his eyes never meeting Atherton’s, ‘Bit of a heavy night last night. You know. Trying to cope. Not doing very well,’ he added, with a deprecatory half-smile, which did not seem to know what to do with itself and wandered off his face as he looked around the room as if searching for something. ‘Time is it?’

  ‘It’s a quarter to nine,’ Atherton said. ‘I’m sorry to call on you so early but I wanted to catch you before you went out. I wasn’t sure if you were working today.’

  ‘Not today,’ Harkness mumbled. ‘Maybe never work aga
in.’ He wandered into the living room and slumped on the sofa, his hands hanging uselessly between his legs.

  Fried to the tonsils last night, Atherton thought. Slept on the sofa – passed out, rather – and still not fully sober. ‘If I make you some coffee, do you think you’ll keep it down?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks,’ Harkness said, staring at the floor.

  Atherton left him, and went, reluctantly, into the festering kitchen, where he unearthed and filled the kettle and switched it on. While he waited for it to boil, he tried to calculate from the debris how many days were represented by it. Chattie had been killed on Wednesday morning and Harkness would have heard about it, at the earliest, on Wednesday evening, if Marion had rung round straight away, or Thursday morning if not. Two and a half days at most. But the plates, mugs and cardboard cartons had been accumulating here for a lot longer than that. Either Harkness was congenitally untidy, or he had had something serious and depressing on his mind for the best part of two weeks. Atherton knew which option he’d like to go for.

  He found instant coffee in a cupboard, washed a mug and spoon and, finding no tea towel he’d be willing to touch without protective clothing, sighed and dried them on his clean handkerchief. In the fridge there were horrors beyond description. Bung a fork of lightning through that lot, he thought, and you could start evolution all over again. There was a cardboard carton of milk but the contents were completely solid to the external touch so he didn’t even bother to open it. Black would be better for him, anyway.

  When he returned to the living room, Harkness was sitting in the same position but had recovered enough to light a cigarette, and the smoke was curling up into the bars of sunlight and wavering when it hit the air from the window.

  ‘Coffee,’ Atherton said, putting the mug down on the edge of the coffee-table in front of him.

  ‘Thanks,’ Harkness said. ‘I’m sorry about …’ He waved his hand, presumably to indicate the vomiting. ‘Had a load on last night.’

  ‘Just drink, was it?’