The Mistress of Alderley

by Robert Barnard

  “Right. We drove around, and finally found somewhere to park down near the law courts. Then we separated and went off to do our own things.”

  “And what was your thing?”

  A tiny shadow crossed her face and was gone.

  “Well, farting around for the first hour or two. Just looking at places, seeing what was going on. You can’t actually get into anything much if you’re only fourteen.” She looked at them with a hint of provocativeness. “I can look a lot older if I try, but Ghastly Guy sprang it on us, this trip to Leeds, so I didn’t have the time I needed. Anyway, I walked around, had a coffee and a bite to eat, caught my brother smoking up one of those ginnels—little passageways—off Briggate, had a horrible cheeseburger down near the station somewhere, then got rather fed up with the time I still had to waste. I made my way up to the Grand Theatre, though I’d intended to keep away from there. The interval was well over, so knowing Mum was in the stalls I slipped up to the dress circle and told the attendants there I was Olivia’s sister. One of them said I had the look of my mother, and she let me slip in with her at the back of the circle and watch for a bit. Olivia wasn’t on, but her Colm was, with a baritone. It really wasn’t bad. I thought Colm was dishy when he came to Alderley, and he looked marvelous onstage. Olivia goes through them like paper handkerchiefs. I don’t think she notices whether they’re dishy or not. They’re just notches on a stick for her.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Oh, twenty minutes maybe. I think it was about quarter to ten when I went out again. I decided Leeds wasn’t much fun for someone my age, so I just went to the Odeon and sat through a bit of a film till it was time to start back to the car. I didn’t even see the end of the film—not that it mattered, because it was dead boring.” She perked up a fraction. “But I can tell you the plot, roughly, to prove I was there.”

  “Do you read detective stories?” asked Charlie.

  She drooped. “Yes. Is it that obvious?”

  “Let’s just say it wouldn’t be much use you telling us the plot, since Mr. Fleetwood probably died in the early part of the evening, so far as the preliminary report would suggest.”

  “So he was already lying there?…Poor old Marius. He was a bit of a bullshitter, but he didn’t deserve that.”

  “What was your opinion of Mr. Fleetwood?”

  “Well, let’s just say that if your colleague is talking to my mother, he should be taking several pinches of salt: knock off the halo she puts around his head, throw a few handfuls of mud at the pure whiteness of his robes, then the picture might be closer to the truth.”

  “In what ways did he pull the wool over your mother’s eyes, do you think?”

  “She was just his bit on the side.” She made an attempt to look worldly wise, and came within an inch of succeeding. “He was accustomed to having one, and she was his latest. She wasn’t the center of his life, and she’d have been dropped the moment he was tired of her. He set her up in this place because he liked a bit of luxury and elegance. He wouldn’t have wanted to spend his weekends in an old semi—quite apart from the fact that Acton, where we used to live, would have been too close to home for him.”

  “Have you any evidence of all this?”

  “No. But would you care to bet on it?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. What about his son?”

  “Ghastly Guy? He was back at the car when I went back to the law courts. I don’t think he’d found the swinging Leeds scene as riveting as he’d hoped.”

  “I meant what did you think of him?”

  She paused before replying.

  “You’d better ask Alexander about Guy. He knows a lot more.”

  “But you must have an opinion.”

  “I think he’s a pathetic little twerp.”

  “It was love at first sight,” said Caroline. “I know that sounds corny. All this is going to sound corny. That’s how it was, though.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I was eating in an Italian restaurant with a friend. Female. I’d just been in an awful comedy that flopped in the West End—taken off after only three weeks. The friend had to leave early to get to the theater—she was in a quite successful transfer from the National. I was on my own, just ordering coffee, when this man came over, said he was sorry about the play, that I deserved better, and could he order both of us a brandy and could he drink his with me.”

  “And after that?”

  She shrugged, and smiled tearfully.

  “After that the next thing I knew was he was in bed with me, and I wished we never had to leave it.”

  Oddie wondered how many women had similar stories about Marius Fleetwood.

  “And then quite soon after that you were here at Alderley, and the arrangement was an established thing?”

  “That’s right. Within a month or two. That’s nearly a year and a half ago. I still had some television work to do, but I could commute, and one of the things was Heartbeat, which is filmed here in Yorkshire, so it all worked out beautifully.”

  “But now you’ve given up your career—I suppose that was your own decision?”

  “Oh, very much so. I think Marius would have quite liked it if he was associated with someone who was on the television a lot of the time. But as soon as I saw this place, and got settled in, I thought, This is it. Being with the children all the time, there when they needed me. And having Marius come up every weekend. Those days were just—I can’t explain—wonderful! The crowning point of my life. They made me feel that all those years as a moderately successful actress had been a waste of time.”

  “And it didn’t worry you that you were—to put it bluntly—a weekend mistress, and he also had a five-days-a-week wife?”

  “No. It had become a marriage only in name: they lived entirely separate lives. But he never tried to run Sheila down, make her ridiculous in my eyes or tell nasty, demeaning stories about her. He was tender towards her, and concerned about how I should regard her, and I thought that was nice, chivalrous. It said a lot about how he regarded women, how he thought they should be treated.”

  Oddie changed the subject.

  “There hasn’t been any problems with people in the village? I would guess there would have been plenty, twenty or thirty years ago.”

  “Probably there would have been. I don’t think the swinging sixties made much of an impact in places such as Marsham. But over the years, almost without people noticing it, things do change, and attitudes. I’ve been made very welcome, and the children too. My big friend in the village is Jack—Sir John Mortyn-Crosse, a lovely man. He tells me your sergeant has already talked to him. I hope he didn’t regard him as some sort of rival for my affections, who stabbed Marius in the middle of a quarrel over me.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Because we’re just good friends. There’s another whopping cliché for you. But we really are.”

  “I gather from my sergeant that there had been some talk recently between you and Mr. Fleetwood as to whether things should go on quite as they have been doing.”

  “You mean Sheila’s pregnancy? I have to admit that that did come as a bolt from the blue. I mean, knowing how things were between them, and not knowing her age: I’d assumed she was about Marius’s age, that is, probably beyond childbearing, and if not that, then too sensible, if you get my meaning. It’s all a bit of a mystery, who the boyfriend is. But we decided—at least for the moment, but probably long term as well—to let things go on as before. The present setup…sorry, the setup as it was until Saturday, suited us, suited our lives and routines. So in the circumstances it didn’t seem to us that something that we had nothing to do with needed to change it. The baby actually coming, and Marius not wanting to be its nominal father, might have made a difference, but somehow I don’t think either of us thought that would happen, or if it did that it would alter things. We so wanted things to continue as they are…were. They were so perfect.”

  Without the slightest sense
of any snake in the Eden undergrowth, Oddie thought. And PC Dutton was barely able to keep the skepticism she felt from showing on her face.

  Alexander came into the little study, rather nervous, rather uncertain, but also rather, under the surface, pleased with himself. He’s got something for us, Charlie thought. Whether he’s going to give it up easily, or only after I’ve played him for hours, is another matter.

  “Basically I just wandered around,” he said when Charlie got down to the matter of what he had done on Saturday night. “Seeing what it was about Leeds and its club scene that everyone says is so fantastic.”

  “And did you find out?”

  “Not really. I think it only takes off when the pubs close, and we had to leave too early for that. I saw a lot, had the odd drink in the sort of place where they don’t ask any questions about age, but that was about it, really. Anyway, I’m not sure I’m ever going to be a clubber.”

  He’s practically asking to be asked, Charlie thought.

  “You say you saw a lot. Anything in particular?”

  “Well…” If there was any desire to string it out longer, the desire lost. Alexander had found one occasion when broadcasting a secret was better than hoarding it. “Can we go forward a bit?”

  “Of course, if it will help.”

  Alexander sat for a moment, putting his thoughts in order.

  “The next morning, Sunday morning, I had to get up early to go to the loo. I was on the landing when I heard a noise downstairs. There were no lights on, but there was enough light to see by coming through the hall windows. I saw Guy come in from the door to the back garden, lock it, then go into the kitchen with keys in his hand—two keys.”

  “I see. And what do you make of that?”

  “Yesterday Mum noticed that the shed for the garden tools had been opened and not shut properly. It’s a stroppy old padlock, and you have to really click it in to lock it securely.”

  “I see. So—again—what do you make of that?”

  “Right. Go back to Saturday night. I was going around, just looking, seeing where the popular clubs were, casing the pubs where the younger people hang out. That was interesting, because a lot of the pubs are down little alleyways—ginnels or snickets, I think they call them. And you can hang about in the darkness outside and watch.”

  Charlie sat there wondering who he had seen. Marius Fleetwood? Guy? His sister Olivia? No, of course she’d been onstage, or in the theater anyway.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I saw Guy, working his way in with a group of six or seven young people. I think he’d had somebody pointed out to him. Because after a bit he started trying to work this chap out of the group. He seemed rather older, this chap, closer to thirty than to twenty. They got a bit aside, and were talking low. Like they were negotiating. Then the other one looked at his watch, nodded his head in the direction of the gents’, and left the pub. Ten minutes later Guy headed in the direction of the loo, and a minute or two after that the chap came back to the pub and went straight to the gents’ as well.”

  “You’re suggesting a drug transaction?”

  “That’s what it looked like.”

  “Half the young people in central Leeds will be taking something on a Saturday night.”

  “I’m looking at it in conjunction with the early-morning trip to the garden. It wasn’t something he was going to take himself. It was something he was going to hide. He was already in the car when Stella and I got back to it. We got there five minutes early, from different directions. He was there, comfortably in the driver’s seat, looking as if he’d been there for some time. He wanted to be sure he could put something in the boot or the glove compartment—no, that would be too dangerous—without our seeing. It must have been the boot, so he went and retrieved it next morning, in case the car was used, and rather than keep it in his bedroom, he concealed it in the garden shed. There’s a lot of old sacks and packets of compost and stuff, and nobody ever gardens while Marius is down. There was no chance of its being found—and anyway, if it was he’d have denied all knowledge of it.”

  “That’s easy enough to check, isn’t it?” said Charlie. “I take it you and your sister didn’t much like Guy.”

  “Condescending git,” said Alexander, without a great deal of obvious animosity. “Shows off the fact that he’s got all the right clothes, all the right software, all the right everything except brain. But it’s not that. We want to find out who did this. Otherwise it will be hanging over Mum for the rest of her life. It will be difficult enough to persuade her to put Marius behind her without an unsolved murder holding her back.”

  “That makes sense,” said Charlie, mentally reserving his judgment. “I take it, then, that you’ll want to pass on any other information you might have—so that we can look at it, decide whether it has any relevance to the murder.”

  “Yes. Yes, I would,” said Alexander, with increasing conviction. “I can’t say I’ve got any information. I mean, Stella and I had had our suspicions about Marius. He was the great love of Mum’s life, but was she the great love of his? He was a serial adulterer, and we thought Mum was going to turn out to be just one more episode. But you’ll be thinking along those lines too, I suppose.”

  “We’re keeping the possibility in mind. Was there anything else you wanted to tell us?”

  “Well, there was something. Not something secret or anything, but I bet Mum won’t have told your boss about it.”

  “Why would she want to keep this thing secret?”

  “Because she doesn’t want anyone connected with him to be the murderer. She doesn’t want that sort of hatred to have any place in her beautiful picture of Marius. I expect she hopes it will have been done by some passing tramp—or passing schizophrenic’s more likely these days, isn’t it? But, in fact, everyone says it’s usually somebody close.”

  “Usually. Close in one way or another. Who are we talking about?”

  “A boy. His name is Pete Bagshaw, and he’s about twenty or so. He came here three or four weeks ago. Mum invited him in, fed him, let him have a bath…. The thing is, he looked exactly like Marius. A young Marius.”

  Charlie digested this.

  “Let me get this right. A young man—someone none of you had ever met before, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “—came here, and your mother invited him in and so on, and—well, did they discuss Marius and his resemblance to him?”

  “Not while we were there, and I don’t think before that. I suspect he saw she registered the resemblance, she saw he realized this, and the whole subject was not raised openly. But as he was leaving Mum suggested he come again, when Marius was here. And he said ‘Better not,’ or something like that.”

  “That’s pretty bizarre.”

  “Well, maybe. But she raised it later with Marius, and he said he’d never lived in Leeds, but he’d had a scapegrace brother who did—now dead.”

  Charlie blinked, then tried to keep his face neutral. Was this another of Fleetwood’s lies?

  “I see. This young man lives in Leeds, does he?”

  “Yes, Armley.”

  “Anything else you know about him?”

  “Doing a computer course at Leeds Metropolitan University. Mother works in a supermarket. He’s got a bit of a thing about her. How she’s slaved away for a pittance for years, and how he wants to get a good job, earn loads of dosh, so she can live in comfort.”

  “I see. Well, thanks for all the information. Maybe it’s time I went to have a look at the garden shed. Perhaps it would be best if you pointed it out to me and found me the key, then made yourself scarce. Guy Fleetwood is supposed to be arriving this afternoon, isn’t he?” Alexander nodded. “Best if he doesn’t associate you with any find we might make. Ah—is that the living-room door?”

  They all went out into the hall. Caroline was emerging from her interview. She smiled at Charlie waterily as she walked through and up to the bathroom. Charlie put his head aroun
d the door of the living room.

  “Could you come with me for a moment, sir?”

  Oddie nodded, and together they went to the back door. Alexander came out of the kitchen with a key, pointed to a shed at the far end of the garden, then scuttled off.

  “Get anything out of her?” asked Charlie, as they walked across the lawn.

  “A lot of stuff about her beautiful relationship with the deceased. I wouldn’t call it sub–Barbara Cartland, but it wasn’t more than a notch or two better. I got a detailed account of everything that happened on Saturday night, though, and that could be useful. What are we expecting to find here?”

  Charlie opened the padlock with some effort.

  “Wait and all will be revealed. Now—nothing visible to the naked eye, but that wasn’t to be expected. But these sacks and plastic bags look as if they have been moved around a bit, don’t they? Carefully does it…. There. I think that must be what we’re looking for.”

  There, wrapped in plastic, exposed by the removal of several smelly packages, was a white block—solid, substantial, and very valuable. They were just about to move closer when Oddie’s eye was caught by a movement on the lawn. He turned back to the door, and saw a young man approaching at a fast rate. When Charlie too appeared in the doorway he registered their presence and pulled up sharply, then turned and began to run. He only noticed PC Hargreaves a second before the burly policeman, who had followed him through the house, appeared in the back door. It was too late, and he was brought down by an efficient rugby tackle just as Oddie and Charlie ran over.

  “Guy Fleetwood, I presume?” said Oddie, standing over him.

  “You can knock off for the night,” said Oddie to Charlie, when Guy Fleetwood was safely locked up in a custody cell. “Go home and play tickle-toes with young Carola.”

  “Young Carola is way, way beyond playing tickle-toes. She is already weighing up her various career options.”

  “No chance of her choosing the police force, if she’s as intelligent as you claim.”

  “Not a chance in hell…. What are you planning to do?”