The Mistress of Alderley

by Robert Barnard

  “There’s not much more I can tell you at the moment. But there was something else—and I may be reading an awful lot into a simple thing, so just stop me if I’m talking nonsense. Mrs. Fawley mentioned that you were always trying to persuade her not to give up the stage, always to keep her contacts there, not to regard herself as having retired from it.”

  “Ye-e-es.” A loud report and another smell came Charlie’s way. He farts when he’s worried or upset, he thought.

  “I wondered if you knew something—something that suggested to you that Mrs. Fawley’s position was less permanent and settled than she imagined.”

  Sir John opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again.

  “Smart, very smart,” he said appreciatively. “Yes, I’m afraid, very much afraid, that I do.”

  “You never told me!” snapped his sister from the door. A different smell wafted Charlie’s way—that of brandy.

  “Because I didn’t want it all over the village, and in no time at all back to poor Caroline,” snapped her brother, showing backbone Charlie might have guessed he didn’t have.

  “But you think you were right?” Charlie asked.

  “I know I was. I suppose there can’t be any harm in telling you now—all the affairs of poor Marius and Caroline will be round the village by week’s end. You see, I happened to be in Hornsea—” He shot a look at Charlie, then amended his account before he had even started. “No, I’d better be honest, or you’ll only find me out. I’m not used to sharp detectives’ brains. I went to Hornsea specially.”

  “Why Hornsea? Is there someone there who knows about Fleetwood’s past? His record with other women?”

  “Oh no, not at all. I wasn’t snooping—well, not much. Hornsea is where Alf Beck, the former owner of Alderley, retired to. Dear old boy, it was much too big for him alone, and anyway he couldn’t afford to run it, even when his wife was there to rattle around in it with him. I just felt like having a word with him, and though I hadn’t got his address I knew he was as regular as clockwork, and he gave his dog a little walk after breakfast and a good long one after lunch, about two. So I drove over there, had a bite to eat in a pub—”

  “You swine. You haven’t taken me for a pub lunch in years,” said Meta.

  “Why should I, when I see you every minute of every hour as it is? Anyway, I knew he’d be either on the beach or in that little park place, and I heard the dog Laddie barking at the waves before I saw them. Anyway, to cut a long story short—but I’m not, am I?—”

  “Take your time. You never know what may be of use.”

  Sir John looked gratified. Compliments were rare in his life.

  “Well, I brought up the subject of Alderley, and dear old Alf came straight out with it. ‘I’d’ve preferred to sell it,’ he said, ‘and cut all my ties, but Fleetwood’s paying a very fair rent, so I’m quite happy.’”

  “Ah!” said Charlie. “But Mrs. Fawley thinks—”

  “Caroline things that Marius owns it, and it’s left to her in his will. And a substantial sum so she can keep it on.”

  “What made you suspicious?”

  “It had been on the market for a long time. That’s the sort of situation when people consider letting. And to tell you the truth I don’t consider that millionaire businessmen are inclined to hand out whopping sums in their wills to women who’ve been their mistresses. Of course I’ve little or no experience of them, but I’m not entirely naive.”

  Charlie thought for a second or two.

  “When I said he was dead, you were surprised, weren’t you? I suppose you had been expecting some kind of desertion.”

  “Yes, I had. It’s what he’s done to others, by all accounts.”

  “Mrs. Fawley seems to think she was something more special to him than the others.”

  “I know she does, but his mistress is what she is, or was. Before the law, and in his eyes too, I wouldn’t mind betting.”

  “I’ve heard rumors of others—” began Charlie.

  “Scores of them!” said Meta, forgetting her distaste for Charlie in her enthusiasm for scandal. “He was a serial polygamist, was our Marius.”

  “Meta’s exaggerating,” said Sir John, “but still…I wouldn’t want to speak ill of the dead—”

  “This is a murder inquiry,” put in Charlie. “That means you do it sooner rather than later.”

  “Well, then, apparently he had had mistresses before, quite a string of them. Did Caroline think he bought them all big houses and provided them all with assured incomes?”

  “Have you ever put this to her?”

  “No. Couldn’t bring myself to. Couldn’t burst the bubble. She was so happy—the happiest she’d ever been, she often said. All I could do was urge her to keep the acting—her stage and television contacts—in the background as an option.” He shook his head. “I don’t think she ever understood why I was so persistent about it.”

  “I don’t think she did,” agreed Charlie. “Unless there was some little cranny in her mind that registered that you were skeptical about her dreamboat man. Maybe we should hope that there was. Then the reality may come as less of a terrible shock.”

  “Remember, we don’t know,” said Sir John. But he and Charlie caught each other’s eye, and both of them thought they did know.

  “Well, all that this amounts to is that Caroline is a bloody fool,” announced Meta. “And I don’t think that’s any great news bombshell. Whoever expected an actress to be an Einstein? I tried to tip the wink to that hopeless son of hers, but I don’t suppose he had the gumption to pass it on.”

  “Did you like Mr. Fleetwood?” asked Charlie, turning back to Sir John.

  “Yes…. Yes, I did.”

  “Did you trust him?”

  “No. Not that. I’m not sure I always believed what he told me, even on small, quite unimportant matters.”

  “Would you have any idea where he might have gone to fill in time—two or three hours—in the evening in Leeds?”

  Sir John roared with laughter.

  “You’ve come to the wrong man to find that out! I haven’t been in Leeds for fifteen years or more. When I last went there, there was Schofield’s and John Lewis’s and the Classical Record Shop, and the men in the market called everybody ‘love’ and ‘my darling.’ Now I hear it’s all wine bars and restaurants I couldn’t afford to go to, and probably political correctness reigns in the market as well.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Charlie. “But lots of the old stalls have gone because the holders couldn’t afford the rents, and you get mobile phone stalls and video stalls instead.” He got up to go. “Well, I’d better be getting back to Leeds to see what my boss has come up with.”

  “Oh, there is someone senior in charge of the case, is there?” asked Meta. “I’m glad of that.”

  Charlie smiled at her sweetly and turned back to Sir John.

  “If anything you haven’t mentioned comes back to you, or if you hear anything that you think is relevant, however small it is, will you give me a call at this number?”

  Sir John took the card.

  “I will. I’m glad we’ve had this chat, because I might have been agonizing over whether to mention my worries to the police. Oh, and thank you too for telling me about the rector. He’s not a bad man, but…” He shrugged.

  “He’s not a very good one either,” said Charlie, grinning. “Thanks for talking to me.”

  As the door shut he lingered on the step for a moment and heard Meta saying, “Well, you made a great fool of yourself, telling that nigger how sharp he was, and practically fawning over him as if—” Charlie didn’t wait to hear more, but went on his way, smiling. It is always pleasing to have one’s judgments confirmed.

  Back in Leeds Charlie found that Oddie had had a day of mixed fortunes. An attempt to blanket interview the inhabitants of the new block of flats overlooking the murder scene had yielded only patchy results. Sunday was a bad day for witnesses, and many of the single residents of t
he CASPAR flats were obviously home with Mummy, or elsewhere with girlfriends or boyfriends. Those who were interviewed had seen nothing of interest, but nevertheless Oddie had scheduled Monday evening for a second attempt to get a reasonable-percentage coverage.

  Where he had had better luck was in ferreting around in Fleetwood’s background. Here Sunday proved a blessing. He had walked up to the Merrion Centre Morrison’s, found a deputy manager in charge for the day, and told him of the murder. Local news bulletins being sparse on Sunday, this was a complete surprise, and, feeling in some way privileged, the man was cooperative.

  “Of course we know about Fleetwood. It’s a name in the retail trade, and everyone knows he started with us. I’m too young to have had anything to do with him, and so is my boss here. But there is someone…someone who trained with him….” Eventually it came to him. “Cranmer. Dick Cranmer. He’s at the Shelf branch.”

  “Any chance of his home phone number?”

  “I should be able to find it. He’s a right old gossip, so he won’t be bothered about my giving it to you.” He rummaged in his desk and pulled out a dirty and dog-eared little book. “Here we are: it’s 01422 341 060.”

  Back at the station Oddie had got his approach ordered in his mind. He suspected that Cranmer would already have got warning of his interest (the deputy manager’s words had suggested one young gossip recognizing his elder and better), and he was right.

  “Leeds police, eh?” said a fruity voice at the other end. “Well, I’ve been waiting for you to ring. So old Marius has got his comeuppance, has he? I’ll not pretend I was expecting it, because I wasn’t. You don’t, do you? People like him don’t get murdered, except maybe casually by maniacs in the street. Now then, what was it you want to know?”

  “I gather you were trainee managers around the same time.”

  “That’s right. There was no trainee managers’ school or anything like that, but we met up pretty often for special sessions and for pooling our experiences and observations. So I did get to know him, up to a certain point. Marius—he was Bert then—was a star, and no two ways about it. You knew he was going to the top, and in his own way and as head of his own company. People here sometimes say we trained him and then he took all we’d taught him and used it for his own purposes. Well, true, but again only up to a point. Everyone knew he wasn’t going to be with us for very long, but it was exhilarating having a business brain like his around, and frankly, he gave in new ideas as much as he took from us.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, early seventies. His last year with us he was deputy manager in one of the less important Leeds stores. They didn’t want to give him one of the more important places because there might be too many ideas and practices around for him to take with him. When he took off, around 1975 or 6, he took a lot of our principles and policies with him, but he was very fair: he set up his stores in the South, where we don’t operate. And with a different clientele, any ideas he took with him he had to adapt. I believe Fleetwood stores nowadays have a lot more organic produce, every one has a delicatessen counter, the London stores keep the ethnic mix very much in mind, and so on. He has the reputation of being fair, but very smart.”

  “That’s interesting. I wouldn’t rule it out, but I rather suspect that this murder has got nothing to do with the business side of his life.”

  “You never know, though. They do talk about cutthroat competition, don’t they?” A fruity laugh at this tasteless joke came down the line.

  “Heart,” said Oddie.

  “Really? Anyway, what you want is more personal stuff, I take it?”

  “Yes—in fact, anything about his private life that tells us about the man.”

  There was a pause.

  “He was one for the ladies, that’s for sure. I expect you know that already. Mind you, we all were, the trainees: we were the age to be a bit randy. But he was more than most.”

  “Any names?”

  “Oh, some of the other trainees served as one-night stands, but they weren’t more than that, and I’m certainly not giving you their names. There was a mistress, and rumor has it a child, by someone in Leeds, but by then we’d lost touch, because I was in an equivalent job in Bolton.”

  “Know anything about his family background?”

  “Not much. Father was a train driver, lived in Pontefract. There was him and a sister. Give him his due, he’d come a long way, hadn’t he? Millionaire, chain of stores with a first-class reputation, nice mistress tucked away in a classy village in South Yorkshire. I wouldn’t mind being in his shoes.”

  “You know about the mistress?”

  “Oh yes—Caroline Fawley. Used to be in one of those fairly funny sitcoms whose name I can’t remember. Gossip gets around, you know. He may not still be with Morrison’s, but he’s remembered, and he’s still—was—in the trade.”

  “You mentioned he was called Bert when you knew him. What was his full name?”

  “Bert Winterbottom. You couldn’t make much of ‘Winterbottom’s Superstores’ as a selling name down south, could you? He did right to change it.”

  When Charlie got back later that afternoon, Oddie gave him a full summary of all that he’d learned. At one point Charlie’s brow furrowed.

  “You say he worked in the Leeds area for a time, during which he seems to have acquired a mistress and a child.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Caroline Fawley says he never worked in the Leeds area. It’s not necessarily important—”

  “Not necessarily a red herring, either. At the very least we might get some clues about how he treated women.”

  “And at best a discarded mistress and a twenty-something child with long-standing grudges,” said Charlie, his eyes lighting up.

  Chapter 10

  Monday

  Caroline found it impossible to settle. She told herself that this was the predicament of bereaved people through the ages: What could be important enough to do, that it could displace the real duty of grieving? She wandered around the house, registering so many things that had memories of Marius, so many places where she could remember standing with him, or sitting, or making love—all with him. It was as if her weekdays without him had been dream interludes, and reality had come only with his arrival on Friday evenings. When Mrs. Hogbin came and started in on a routine that centered entirely on how she had heard the news, how she was gob-smacked, what she had said to her daughter, and what her daughter had said to her, Caroline called on her powers as an actress: the monologue made her want to escape rather than cry, but in the event, she did both by turning on a display of theatrical waterworks and bursting out of the house.

  I’m naughty, she thought, as she wandered round the garden, but really the thought of being immured in Alderley, the shrine to the love of Marius and herself, and having to listen to Mrs. Hogbin’s inanities was more than she could bear. What use was theatrical training if it couldn’t come to one’s aid at such a time? The garden began to work its cure on her. She was glad the children had decided to take the bus to school as usual. Both of them went to state schools in Doncaster—very good ones. She and Marius had had this in common too—an aversion to using private education for their children. Marius had just said tersely that he didn’t like the product. What they would have done if there had been no good state schools in the vicinity, Caroline couldn’t imagine. But the children had, without saying anything, gone down to the bus stop, and Caroline didn’t blame them: no reason why they should take the death of Marius as hard as she had.

  Guy had returned to London to comfort his mother, with the promise to come back on his way up to belatedly take up his place at St. Andrew’s. Leaving her, gratefully and blessedly, on her own—apart, for the moment, from Mrs. Hogbin.

  The garden had always been hers to tend and develop, but it held as many memories of the man she had lost as the house did. Marius had loved wandering in it, being shown the new shrubs and flowers she had planted, the little forgotte
n nooks she had found a purpose for. “I’ll pay for any help you need,” he used to say to her, with a cheeky grin that was the only remnant of his working-class upbringing, “so long as you don’t expect me to work here myself. I’m a destructive force as far as gardens are concerned.” And she had been quite happy with that arrangement. The blissful weekends with him were not times to be spent toiling in flower beds with rakes and hoes.

  She stopped by one of several huts in the garden, the one where the tools and implements were kept. She frowned. The rusty old padlock was defective, and it needed to be pushed in firmly to lock. It hadn’t been, and it was now hanging loose. Yet she was quite sure it had been securely locked by her when she had last gardened. She tried to remember when that was. Wednesday, she thought: three days before Marius had died…been killed.

  She became aware of shouting. It was Mrs. Hogbin calling from the kitchen door. Running closer she caught the words “It’s that Guy.” It seemed no time since she had driven him to Doncaster to catch the early train to London. Now it was one o’clock—he would be well home. She hurried through the kitchen into the hall. “Mr. Fleetwood’s son,” explained Mrs. Hogbin. Well, she hadn’t thought it was Guy Fawkes or Guy Ritchie.

  “Hello, Guy.”

  “Hello, Caroline. Just to tell you I’m home.”

  “I thought you would be by now. The trains are bad, but not that bad.”

  “Yes, well, Mum’s taking it very well, and I thought you could tell the police that I can be back there tomorrow or Wednesday if they want to talk to me like they said they would to all of us.”

  “Right, I’ll tell them. I believe they’re busy in Leeds today, but Sergeant Peace said they wanted to ‘do’ us, if that’s the word, as soon as possible. Shall I phone them and give them your home number?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “I’m sure it’s just a formality.”

  “Yes…. Oh, one more thing. My mother said she’d like a word—is that all right?”

  Caroline, in her surprise, left a second’s pause, and wished she hadn’t.