“It seems that your wife Harriet and Brendan Harcourt have been having an affair for a few weeks at least. Your friends confirm what you say about him having been interested in her for a long time, but they say that she only recently gave in to him. However, it seems that he has been much more keen on her than she is on him, and there has been a dispute between them about whether or not she should leave you to be with him.”
Once again my emotions were split. Part of me was trying to take in the news that there was even a question of Harriet leaving me. The other part was trying to react like someone hearing all this for the first time. Fortunately both emotions produced the same monosyllabic expression.
“What?” One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand. “I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it. There must be some misunderstanding. This couldn’t be my Harriet. She wouldn’t.” My words pressed my face into my cupped hands, but now I was regaining control. Of course, I had not anticipated this turn of events, or that things would move so quickly, but I had realized from the moment that Brendan started to lie to me at King’s Cross Station that suspicion might fall on him. My careful hints about the direction they should look in had borne fruit faster than I could have imagined. “But if what you say is true,” I said, “and I don’t believe it is – then where is Harriet? Are you saying that she is staying with him? What is he saying about it?”
“He says he doesn’t know. It seems that he spent the night with her on Monday and walked to the train with her on Tuesday morning. He had to go to a lecture himself, so he says that he didn’t actually see her get onto the train. But he is adamant that she must have done so, which is why she didn’t come down on the train you went to meet on Thursday.”
“But had they had a row then? Why do you think he might know where she is?”
Wallace sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. It was clear that this was the point where what he knew for sure ran out, and that going forward he was into territory he could only guess at.
“It’s only that he was the last person we know of who saw her before she vanished. And we are also told by Martin and Jed and the girlfriends that Brendan was putting a lot of pressure on her to leave you.” Now he sat forward, his elbows on the table in front of him, the palms of his hands cupped together like a child at prayer. “The most probable explanation is that she was in a dilemma, and couldn’t work out what to do. Most likely she has got off the train at a station between Newcastle and London and has checked into a guest house somewhere while she clears her head and works out whether to stay with you or to leave you and go with Brendan. But also” – and now he paused again, separating his palms but keeping the ends of his fingertips together – “it must be possible that she told him that she wasn’t going to leave you, he got mad and something very bad has happened.”
Abruptly I got up from my chair and walked to the back of the room and stood facing the wall behind me. Wallace was sitting at the table and Sergeant Norris was standing in the corner of the room. Again I put my head in my hands, an involuntary gesture while my brain teemed with a thousand thoughts. At times I could hear Harriet’s voice breaking through, speaking or laughing but expressing nothing intelligible. I turned to face the sergeant, as though he was an independent arbiter, my arms crossed in front of me, protecting my body from further battery.
“I just don’t understand any of it,” I said. “I don’t believe that Harriet was having an affair with Brendan. I quite believe that he was putting pressure on her to leave me and go with him. Hell, he’s been doing that for about five years.” Now I turned back to face Wallace. “The bastard is well known to have had the hots for her ever since we all met. But any of her friends will tell you that she never ever responded to him. She has always tolerated him because they are in the quartet together, but I just don’t believe that she gave in to him. If you knew how many times she has told me that she is not interested in him…”
Wallace was looking back at me, and I saw nothing in his face which expressed anything other than sympathy.
“I know, son,” he said, and it was the first time he had addressed me in that way. “And I’m sorry. But some people can be very convincing, especially when they are ashamed of what they are trying to hide. I’ve seen it a thousand times. You’re down here, looking after your sick brother, and she is up there having an affair with one of your mutual friends. Maybe it’s little wonder that she didn’t tell you the truth about it.”
I wanted to say that my brother wasn’t sick and that Brendan wasn’t a mutual friend, but resisted the urge. Having this policeman’s sympathy in this way was bound to be helpful to me and, to stand back from it, what he was saying wasn’t all that far from the truth. I had been taking care of my brother, and I had been betrayed.
“So what happens now then?” I said. “Can you get officers in the towns where the train stopped to check hotels and guest houses? Is that the next thing to do?”
“It isn’t, I’m afraid,” said Wallace. “As I have mentioned to you before, with no direct evidence that a crime has been committed, it’s not justifiable to commit the resources that that would involve. Like I say, chances are that Harriet is walking on a beach somewhere, throwing stones into the sea and thinking about how to come and tell you that she has been a silly girl. Up to you what you do then, of course. Personally I think that’ll happen in a few days, but until then, we have no direct evidence against Brendan Harcourt. We held him overnight because he had originally lied to us about when he had last seen her, but this morning we will be letting him go.”
I sat down hard again on my chair. The police had arrested a man they suspected of knowing what had happened to my wife and immediately were releasing him. “But Harriet’s parents are flying in from Singapore because they believe the arrest means that you know something.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said Wallace, and I could tell he knew that he would have to expect even more pressure from above to find a solution. “As I say, with no evidence that anything has happened to her, even with her family connections, we just wouldn’t be able to justify a nationwide manhunt for a girl who has been missing for only a few days.”
Sergeant Norris said goodbye to me, and Wallace showed me the way out to the foyer. I noticed that he had put his hand on my shoulder as we walked. It was not the hand of a policeman arresting a suspect, but that of a man of experience and wisdom supporting a younger man who was just finding out some sad and unfortunate aspect of the real world. I walked with my head down, playing my role in the mini-drama, which was that of cuckolded husband, idiot lover, deceived spouse. What it was not, thank heavens, was the posture of a husband who has killed his wife and is on the brink of being discovered. Once out on the street, my stride lengthened into a jog and then into a run, and then I was sprinting down the pavement, filling my lungs with the deep breaths of relief and release.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Connaught Hotel is not a place where people like me stay when they come to London. It’s a place where people like Harriet’s parents stay. The kind of place where they assume that you are unable to open a door for yourself and that you are willing to pay some inflated gratuity to someone for hailing you a taxi and seeming to be very subservient.
I have been to many more places and seen more things since the events I am now relating took place, but in 1974 I felt that hotels like the Connaught were designed, in part, to make people like me feel uncomfortable. My own parents had not had cause to frequent hotels, and if and when they had, it was more likely to be at the guest-house end of the market. No liveried flunkey to salute and open the swing doors at the Pentewan Hotel in Salcombe where we used to stay for our annual holidays when Roger and I were kids. Seven years in a row we stayed there, largely because the owner, Mrs Burrows, was very welcoming and in particular always seemed to be very pleased to see Roger, who was equally pleased to see her.
But that was ten years earlier, and now, as I walked a
long Carlos Place approaching the Connaught, the doorman caught my eye but gave no impression that he thought I was about to enter the hotel.
“Morning, sir,” he said finally, and saluted smartly as he pulled open the door. The flag above his head snapped in the wind. I can’t say if he was actually looking me up and down, but he may as well have been.
There were half a dozen people waiting, and I was not sure which desk to queue at, or whether it would be appropriate to ask any of the men in various levels of what looked like paramilitary uniform where I could find Mr and Mrs Chalfont. I waited for a while, long enough to take in the old masters of galleons on the staircase and the deep leather of the armchairs. Eventually I noticed a young man of about my age wearing a grey uniform and a pillbox hat.
“I want to speak to some people who are staying here. Do I have to queue, or can someone else give me their room number?”
“Follow me, sir,” he spoke with a strong East End accent which was trying to be posh, and led me to a corridor to one side and pointed to a row of telephones. “Easiest fing is to call the operator and ask to be put through to the room.”
I was not fully prepared for the meeting I was about to have with Harriet’s parents. Partly this was because I felt that I did not really know them at all or how they would be reacting, but much more of course it was because I was the man who had murdered their only daughter. How does one even begin to come to terms with something like that? No doubt they were distressed already, and would become even more so whichever way events were about to unfold. I, and only I, knew the information they were in search of and I, and only I, was responsible for the heartache they were going through now and would go through in the future.
I forced myself as best I could to put those thoughts to one side, and to organize in my mind the practicalities of the situation. I had no way of knowing how much they may have heard about Harriet and Brendan before all this happened. Certainly Harriet’s mother had seemed to be more familiar with Brendan’s name than I would have expected had he been only a run-of-the-mill friend of Harriet’s. Yet somehow I doubted that she could name many of her other friends. The switchboard operator called the room, and then I heard Harriet’s father say, “Please send him up to room 324.” Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm I detected in his tone was more in the way I heard it than the way he said it.
I took the stairs, up and round and up and round again the huge atrium, and made no sound along the thick carpeted corridors. Eventually I knocked and wondered if they would make use of the spyhole before admitting me. The door was opened by Harriet’s mother, who might have embraced her daughter’s husband, but who instead retreated into the suite. I went in to be met by both of my in-laws, standing as though they had rehearsed our meeting.
“Hello, Jonathan,” said Harriet’s father, as I shook hands with both of them. “Bloody awful business this.” It was not a question.
I was shocked at the sight of both of them. No doubt the long journey with little sleep, and also the worry about their daughter, had made their contributions, but both seemed to have aged a decade since I had last seen them less than three years ago. It occurred to me only now that I could see nothing of Harriet’s features in either of them, and for a second I found myself considering if in fact Harriet had been their biological daughter. The thought had never occurred to me before, but I wondered if it explained what I had always felt was their unusual level of detachment from her.
“Never mind about that, Geoffrey,” said Harriet’s mother. “Let Jonathan tell us whether there has been any developments since we last spoke. Jonathan? Has anything further happened?”
“Nothing helpful,” I said. “I went down to the police station after you called me and spoke to Detective Sergeant Wallace, who is handling the case.” All three of us were still standing, as though the urgency to hear the latest news outweighed normal courtesies. “Harriet still hasn’t turned up anywhere so far as they know, but he did tell me something which, to be honest with you, knocked me sideways.” It seemed that I had already imparted the only thing they regarded as urgent, and that they knew that the next part was uncomfortable territory. Mrs Chalfont gestured towards two chairs and a hideous Regency sofa which were crammed uncomfortably in the bay window. We all sat.
“Mrs Chalfont, may I ask you,” I said, “did you know about Harriet and Brendan?”
She was pouring tea from a bone-china pot which seemed far too small for the purpose into cups which were also inexplicably miniature. Plainly they had ordered room service in anticipation of my arrival. She added tiny splashes of milk before responding to my question.
“Harriet told me some time ago that there was a young man who had shown an interest in her for a very long time, and that her marriage to you had had no effect of reducing the enthusiasm of his advances.”
“He’s has fancied her for a very long time, that’s for sure,” I said, and I watched them both wince slightly at the expression, “but she always gave me the impression that his feelings were not returned.”
“I think that would be right,” she said. By now Mr Chalfont was half turned and looking out of the window, as though disengaged from the conversation. “But if I am not mistaken, in the last few weeks the pressure from him has been growing, and I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that, partly in respect of the long periods apart from you, she might have let her guard down just a little.”
The quaintness of her expression seemed to be straight out of a romantic novel, and I realized immediately that Harriet must have told her everything. That she had finally conceded to Brendan’s long-term advances. I doubted, however, if she had told her mother that sleeping with Brendan was her “jazz” in comparison to my “blues”. I felt sick at the thought.
“So now the police are saying that they think it’s possible that Brendan might have been pushing her to leave me, and that they quarrelled. He obviously lied to them about what he knew, and so they arrested him and kept him overnight. However, in the absence of any evidence that any harm has come to Harriet, this morning they have had to let him go.”
“What?” It was the first time that Geoffrey Chalfont had spoken since greeting me, and he seemed genuinely surprised by this news. “But he is the last person to have seen her. What the devil do they think they are playing at?” He seemed to be asking his wife as much as he was asking me, and neither of us had any clear idea of the answer.
“Presumably if there is no direct evidence that a crime has been committed,” I said finally, “they have no choice but to let him go. They seem to think the most likely thing is that Harriet got off the train on the route, checked into a local hotel, and is walking along the beach somewhere contemplating her options.”
“After a week?” said Mr Chalfont. “They must have taken leave of their senses. Obviously I know less about what is going on in my daughter’s mind than my wife does.” He turned to me, his eyes meeting mine for the first time since I entered the suite. “I knew nothing of all this with Brendan, by the way. Clearly I have been treated to information only on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. Bloody awful for you, and I am sorry for it. Don’t know what the girl is thinking of.” Now he resumed his original point. “But I do know her well enough to know that she would realize that by this time we would all be worried sick, and she would have let us know she was all right. Something has happened to her. There can be no doubt of it.”
“I agree,” I said quickly. “It’s enough of a shock for me to find out about Harriet and Brendan. Obviously I thought I knew her better than I do, but I am sure that I know her well enough to know that she wouldn’t just take off without telling anyone. Apart from anything else, she would know that you two would be worried half to death.”
My little speech seemed to thaw some of the frost between the three of us, and it was almost as though we were accepting for the first time that we were all on the same side, all worrying about the same thing. Harriet’s mother turned to me.
“I am so sorry
for this, Jonathan. It must be terrible for you. Whatever else has happened, I know that you love Harriet, and I also know that she loves you. This is just an awful business, but I am sure it will turn out all right and that she will be back with you soon.”
I put down my cup and pressed my face into the upturned palms of my hands. It was not a contrived gesture or an act. As before, I was finding the reality of what had happened, combined with the sympathy of those I was seeking to deceive, very difficult to cope with. And again, not for the first time, I found myself responding more like an aggrieved and worried husband than as a killer.
Plainly uncomfortable at any show of emotion, Mr Chalfont stood up and began to pace the room. For a moment I thought that Harriet’s mother was going to touch me, a gesture of sympathy or support, but she did not.
Mr Chalfont said that he was going to make some phone calls and see if he could “get someone cracking a whip”. I thought about Wallace and Pascoe back at King’s Cross police station and about how welcome that would be. Harriet’s mother said that they planned to take a nap to get over the journey, and wondered if I would like to come back later to have some dinner with them.
“It’s very kind of you Mrs Chalfont,” I said, “but I want to stay around the flat as much as possible just in case Harriet rings me there, or in fact turns up. Besides, I have to be there for most of the time to take care of Roger.”
Her face was a picture, the perfect transition from recollection to distaste.
“Ah yes, Roger. How is the dear chap? So brave of you to take care of him.”
The Insect Farm Page 24
