Dear Departed

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘And Ruth?’

  ‘He did what he thought was right by her. He paid for her to go to a very good boarding school. He wanted her to have an education and the possibility of a career. And in case the career didn’t work out, he thought it would give her polish so she could make a good marriage. But polish didn’t take on her. It only taught her to be resentful, seeing what all the other girls had. For a dull girl, she has a surprising capacity for anger – the slow, smouldering sort. Henry left Mary enough to live on, and a perfectly good house, but Ruth saw the way he lived with Stella, the parties, the important guests, the clothes – Stella was always a clothes horse – and thought she and her mother had been hard done-by.’

  ‘Did Ruth make a good marriage?’

  ‘Better than she might have expected. Henry practically arranged it. A young man called David Cockerell who was up and coming in the company. Ruth thought he was the bee’s knees – handsome, charming, bound to get ahead. Besides, she’d have done anything to get out of working for a living, which she thought degrading. She’d obeyed Henry’s wishes and studied chemistry at school, but she hadn’t the intellect to go far. She ended up as an assistant in a hospital pharmacy – couldn’t pass the exams to become a pharmacist herself. So David came as a saviour to her. As for David, he thought Ruth would be a good handle on Henry’s wealth. And Henry thought David might be a right-hand man for him, take the place of a son in the business. But he soon discovered David’s limitations. He was handsome and charming, but nothing more – though he’s done well enough for himself on charm alone. But he let Henry down very badly. I suppose he felt he wasn’t being appreciated enough, or advancing in the company quckly enough, because he went off and joined GCC – the Global Chemical Company – where he could have a big desk and an expense account and a pension fund. Henry was furious and for a time he wouldn’t have David in the house, which of course spoiled things as far as Ruth was concerned. I patched things up, for appearances’ sake. God knows, at this distance, why we care about such things, but I did, though I don’t think I ever made much difference to the way Ruth felt. To be fair to David, I think he really does admire Henry. They get on all right when David visits him on business. But Ruth only sees the difference in their lifestyle and Henry’s. And so we come to Stella and Chattie,’ she said, with a twinkling look at Slider. ‘You see, you needed to know the state of play at the time.’

  ‘You must tell the story in your own way,’ Slider said neutrally.

  ‘Be sure that I shall,’ said Mrs Cornfeld. ‘You are a good listener, young man, and I don’t have many opportunities to talk without interruption.’

  Slider had not been called ‘young man’ for a long time. ‘Please continue,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Henry and Stella were happy at first, being very social together and having dinner parties and being important. Stella was happy when her picture was in the paper, and she thought all the new contacts she was making would advance her writing career. Have you read any of her books?’

  ‘I flicked through one,’ Slider said, not sure whether he was supposed to admire them or not.

  Not, it turned out. ‘That is all you need to do. All surface and no substance – nothing of worth in them from beginning to end – like Stella herself. But they might have gone on being more or less contented if she had not found herself pregnant. Unlike Mary she was furious. She had never wanted children and it threatened to ruin her carefully planned life as well as her figure. Henry was moderately pleased, however. He thought he was fond of Stella, and he was more secure now, better off, so he didn’t fear the financial consequences. He thought he might quite like to have a son to boast about to his business acquaintances. But of course it was another girl.’ She sighed, but it was a sigh of pleasure this time.

  ‘Chattie was a pure delight from the beginning. She seemed born to smile. Henry adored her, and almost forgot he had wanted a boy, especially when she turned out clever as well as pretty. She had a very masculine grasp of intellectual things – and quite a way with machinery too. He taught her to drive when she was only twelve, on a disused airfield. Anyway, things were very happy for a while. But the business was going through another expansion, and Henry was away from home a lot, and Stella didn’t like being left behind. She was from an old county family, and she felt she had lifted Henry up to a better social class by marrying him. When she didn’t get her share of the parties and being in the papers, she resented it. The last straw was when he went to a reception at 10 Downing Street as a Giant of Industry, or some such nonsense, and she found out that he could have taken her with him. Shortly after that she found that he was having an affair with his secretary and she threw him out; but that was only the excuse. It was Downing Street that did it. She never forgave him for that.’

  ‘And he married the secretary?’ Slider said, to get her along.

  ‘Susan Hatter, her name was. He wouldn’t have married her, except that she got herself pregnant and he was in the news quite a lot and he thought it would look bad. It was another daughter, of course – Jasmine. Oh, that girl!’ She gave an exasperated roll of the eyes. ‘He bought a house in High Wycombe and installed Susan there with the child, and by now he could afford staff so it didn’t matter that Susan hadn’t the first idea of how to run a house or host a dinner party.’

  ‘And what about Stella and Chattie?’

  ‘Stella kept the house – the houses Henry leaves scattered behind him! – and Henry paid her alimony, of course, so she ought to have been all right. But all right was not what Stella thought she was owed. She would have kept Chattie away from Henry if she could, to punish him, but he had visitation rights. And of course he was rich, and Stella loved money. So Chattie went to visit. She loved her father obsessively, and was heartbroken when he left. She’d have been about five or six. He had her to stay whenever he could, and visited her at school, and they were always the best of friends. He arranged her education, and as she grew up she became very like a son to him, with her cleverness and her masculine mind and her determination. They were very close.

  ‘Well, the marriage to Susan was always a mistake and it didn’t last, though he was away so much it didn’t seem necessary for him to divorce her at once. When the time came, he took charge of everything. Susan didn’t want a divorce at all, but she was a very weak-minded woman and easy to bamboozle. He sold the High Wycombe house and bought this one, and moved Susan and Jassy into a small house in St Albans, gave them enough to live on, and forgot about them.’

  ‘And Chattie?’

  ‘Oh, he went on seeing Chattie. When he bought this place I came to live here to run it for him, so it was easier, because we could pretend to Stella she was coming to see me rather than him. Once Chattie was eighteen she could do as she liked, though she pretended for her mother’s sake she never saw Henry. Poor Stella fell on very hard times. She had always been fond of gambling, and after Henry went, she turned to it for solace, I suppose. She was a hard drinker, too, and she liked the high life, and expensive clothes, and when she found she couldn’t afford it all, she had to attach herself to really very unsatisfactory men to make up the difference. In the end, Henry refused to pay her debts, so she had to sell the house and move into a horrid little box and pay them off. It’s another thing she’ll never forgive him for.’

  ‘She told me she had always paid her own way in life,’ Slider said.

  Mrs Cornfeld chuckled. ‘Yes, Stella would like everyone to believe she owed Henry nothing and he owed her everything. She’s a woman who lives in a world of make-believe. What she wants to be true, is true.’

  It explained a lot, Slider thought. ‘And Chattie went to music college,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. That was a disappointment to Henry. He liked music but couldn’t see it as a career. But when she finished college she decided she didn’t have the talent to go to the top, and she didn’t want to be second-rate – which was an attitude he could understand. So she did an apprenticeship in the commercial si
de of the music business, thinking she might be an agent. And then she had the idea for her own business.’

  ‘Was he pleased about that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, on the whole. He didn’t see that it would ever amount to anything, but he thought the experience could be applied to some other field later on. He assumed she would not be content with a small business, though I think he may have misunderstood her there. Chattie cared about other things than money and success. Anyway, he encouraged her and believed in her. He was only sorry she wouldn’t let him give her money to set it up. She said, “You built up your business from nothing, and so will I.” I pointed out to her that in fact I had given Henry two thousand pounds to set up; and she said that he had given her a hundred thousand when she was seventeen, so it came to the same thing.’

  ‘Did he never give anything to the other girls?’

  ‘He gave Ruth a lump sum when she was married. And he gave Jassy money all the time. She’s a bad lot, that one. The Lord knows how she gets through so much money. Apart from the car she ruined, I don’t know what she spends it on. Drugs, I suppose. After the car, Henry told her no more, enough is enough. But I suspect that cheques get posted off every week or so, after one of her impassioned phone calls. The difference from Chattie could not be greater. She invested the money Henry gave her in property and shares and turned it to good account. He was so proud of her.’

  ‘You mentioned drugs?’

  The face became stern. ‘Jassy turned up here one day very much the worse for wear. I was shocked. Young people getting drunk now and then is natural, I can understand it, but not this other thing. Thank God Henry wasn’t here. I sent her away, told her never to come here like that again.’

  ‘Does Chattie take drugs?’

  ‘No,’ Mrs Cornfeld said, shocked. ‘She hates them as I do. She hardly even drinks, just wine with meals. She says she hates the feeling of not being in control.’

  ‘We found a large quantity of cocaine in her house. More than one person would take. The sort of quantity a person might have if they were supplying it to others.’

  She stared a moment, and then laughed. ‘Oh, ludicrous! You thought my Chattie was a drug-dealer? No, no, put it out of your head. If there were drugs in the house, it was Jassy or one of her friends who put them there. I know Chattie’s mind on the subject. You see …’ she hesitated, and then went on in a low voice ‘… You see, there was a time when Stella was smoking marijuana. I think she may have tried other things as well. It was when Chattie was, oh, fourteen or fifteen, and away at school. Sometimes she came home and found Stella the worse for wear, and it shocked her very much. But she never told Henry, so please do not you, either. Poor child, so many secrets she had to keep, holding her tongue when her mother abused her father, keeping her mother’s exploits from her father. Chattie knew about the other men, you see, Stella’s other men, and if Henry had found out, he could have stopped her alimony. So Chattie was caught between two hard places, poor child.’

  ‘Did Chattie never want to get married?’

  ‘It was the thing that made me most sad, that Chattie would never fall in love. I suppose, after her mother’s behaviour, and seeing how her father had gone on, one wife after another and then all the women he has had since, she felt that marriage could never work. And she loved Henry so much. When Henry asked her if there was anyone, she always said, “Only you, Papa.” She couldn’t take young men seriously. They had to match up to her father and, of course, they never did. I think,’ she added, with a world of sadness, ‘she would have found someone one day, when she was older, maybe when Henry was dead. But now she never will have the chance. She was a girl with so much love to give, and no-one to give it to – not the right one, anyway. Maybe that’s why she was so patient with Jassy. Too much love to keep to herself.’ She turned her head away towards the garden, where birds were making cheerful noises in the bushes and trees. ‘Who could kill such a girl? So much life, so much love, all gone. Snuffed out. It shouldn’t be so easy.’

  Slider left a small silence for her, and then said, ‘There is one more thing I’d like to ask you, if you don’t think it an impertinence.’

  She sighed, and turned her head back, ready to do her duty. ‘What is it? About money, I suppose?’

  ‘Why do you think that?’ Slider was intrigued.

  ‘It is the obvious thing. Henry is a rich man. You want to know how he leaves his estate.’

  ‘Well, yes. In case there might be a motive that way for removing Chattie.’

  ‘Removing! Such a word! But Henry has never told anyone, not even me, who he means to leave things to. He says he doesn’t want anyone to have reason to wish him dead.’

  ‘Has he made a will?’

  ‘I don’t know. If he has, he keeps it secret.’ She gave a snort of laughter. ‘Perhaps all will go to Kylie.’

  ‘I believe Cornfeld Chemicals is a public company. Do any of the family hold shares?’

  ‘Oh, yes. When we floated, I and each of the children had ten per cent, and Henry kept twenty. That way the family kept overall control. That was before David left to join GCC, of course, otherwise he would never have given Ruth any. When that happened Henry bought another share, just to be on the safe side. Of course, I always let Henry exercise my vote. He knows what’s best for the company. I would not think of anything else – unless it was a matter of principle, but since I brought him up, I should hope his principles are the same as mine.’

  Slider smiled at her little joke, and at that moment the willowy Kylie reappeared, with a professional smile that was at war with her attempt to convey heartfelt regret.

  ‘Oh, Inspector Slider, Mr Cornfeld is very sorry, but his call has taken longer than he expected, and now he has to go straight out to a meeting. He sends his regrets, and his thanks for your time in coming here.’

  ‘Oh, really, how deplorable not to come himself. And I was just saying that I brought him up!’ Mrs Cornfeld said lightly. ‘Kylie dear, you must tell him when you see him that I am very cross with him. Now, Inspector, won’t you stay for lunch with me, to make your long journey worthwhile?’

  Slider was already on his feet. ‘You are most kind, ma’am, but I really have to get back.’

  ‘Yes, of course, what was I thinking? I have enjoyed so much talking to you that I was forgetting.’ The light went out of her face and her eyes became bleak. ‘You have important work to do. You must find who did this thing. I only wish that there was still capital punishment in this country. I am not a vindictive person, but I would like whoever did this to Chattie to die,’ she said seriously. ‘I would like very much that they should die.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Barn to be Wild

  ‘Exciting things have happened here while you’ve been away,’ Atherton said, sitting catty-corner to Slider at the canteen table, his legs elegantly crossed, his fingers drumming lightly on the table top in a way that told Slider it was not random but the accompaniment to some music going on inside his head. Joanna did it too, on the dashboard, when he was driving. Atherton was one of those rare individuals blessed with perfect pitch. Joanna said perfect pitch was when you got the viola into the skip first throw.

  Slider had given Atherton the précis of Mrs Cornfeld’s exposition. Now he was forking in a hasty shepherd’s pie and beans (no chips, no gravy) by way of lunch, and wondering what he would have got at the Cornfeld house. A delicate consommé, foie gras, roast duck and green peas? He sighed and swallowed. The meat in the shepherd’s pie tasted of gravy browning and the potato had that slippery, embarrassed texture of instant mash that knows it isn’t fooling anybody.

  ‘Exciting things always happen in places where I’m not,’ he said. ‘I ought to hire myself out to bored people not to be anywhere near them.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s a flaw in your reasoning somewhere,’ Atherton said. And how can you eat that stuff?’

  ‘I’ve seen the alternatives. Get on with it – what happened?’

 
‘Oh, right. A bloke came in, who not only had seen Running Man but had seen his face. Name of Alan Maltby. He was just about to turn in at the park gates on his way to the station – his usual route going to work – when Running Man shot out and he had to sidestep sharply not to get knocked down.’

  ‘Why hasn’t he come forward before?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I asked him that. He seemed quite indignant. Said he works on weekdays. Now it’s Saturday he’s come straight in to tell us and all he gets is abuse. He’s got a good mind to turn round and walk right out again – which is about all the good mind he’s got in my opinion.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him that?’

  ‘What do you take me for? Anyway, for a brief but telling moment, Running Man’s face is inches from his and he gets a really good goosy at the famous phizog – so good that he’s prepared to sit in on a photofit.’

  ‘Blimey, our luck has changed,’ Slider said, pushing his plate aside. ‘Shove my pud over, will you?’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘What? I like jelly and blancmange.’

  ‘You’ve got retarded tastebuds, that’s your trouble. Anyway, you might not say that when you’ve heard all.’

  ‘Might not say what?’

  ‘That our luck has changed.’

  ‘Oh, Nora, what now?’

  ‘Well, friend Maltby had a good look at chummy’s face, as I said. Said he was sweating, eyes popping, every sign of agitation, so we all got terribly excited. And he was holding a mobile phone, the same sort of Motorola as Chattie’s, though Maltby didn’t see any blood or a knife. But when he had okayed the photofit, we compared it with the photo of Darren we got from Jassy, and there was no resemblance. And when we showed the photo of Darren to Maltby, he was confident it wasn’t the same man.’

  ‘You had to tell me that. You had to spoil my afters. And it was pink blancmange as well – my favourite.’

  ‘Look, it needn’t be as bad as that. After all, Darren could still be the murderer. It could still have been him who was standing talking to Chattie. We don’t know that that person and Running Man were the same.’