The Strange Attractor

by Cory, Desmond

“You’ve seen our flat. It wouldn’t have done at all for that sort of thing, not on any kind of a regular basis. What with all those other flats around us and people always peering out through the windows. Same would apply to a hotel, anywhere in Cardiff. Besides,” Dobie said, considering a further interesting possibility, “she might have quite liked that room. I know I do. It’s so different to the flat, you see. So warm and dark. And sordid. You often get that with rather finicky girls, don’t you think?… A sort of nostalgie de la boue?…”

  “Oh indeed,” Jackson said. He started to write in his notebook Noss and then crossed it out. “A back-to-the-womb complex, as like as not.” He then chewed the end of his pencil some more, gazing meditatively at Dobie the while. “Is that all you’ve got to say on the matter, Mr Dobie?”

  “Well—”

  “Or are you going on to tell me your wife killed Mr Cantwell?”

  “I can’t say for certain that she didn’t. But I’m reasonably confident she didn’t kill Jane Corder and then hit herself on the back of the head. I doubt very much if she even knew Sammy. But of course it takes two people to make an assignation. I don’t think she was the one Sammy was helping out – as he puts it. Or the one he was expecting to see the morning he died.”

  “So who was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve no idea at all?”

  “None at all. At one time I thought I had, but I was wrong.”

  “You were wrong but you still had some reason to suppose…?”

  “Some reason, yes. But nothing definite.”

  “Did you do anything about it?”

  “Such as what?”

  “Duw, I don’t know. Any of the things you’d expect a husband to do… Ask her about it? Smack her on the hooter? Even try and find out who it was she was seeing?”

  “No,” Dobie said. “I didn’t do anything like that.”

  “And you didn’t say anything about it to us. When you made your statement.”

  “No,” Dobie said. “I didn’t have any facts. Besides, it would have been embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing?… Yes, I can see that.”

  “I suppose at the time I thought it would all blow over pretty quickly,” Dobie said. “Or if it didn’t, that’d be all right, too, because things weren’t going all that well between us anyway. In any case—”

  “In any case the boy friend wasn’t who you thought it was.”

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  “So maybe you’d best leave all that side of things to the police.”

  “Is that what most people do in these cases? I wouldn’t have thought —”

  “I didn’t mean that, exactly.” Jackson in fact wasn’t at all sure what he had meant and decided that that particular issue need be argued no further. What he chiefly wanted to do now was go away and wrap his brains for a while in embrocation-soaked cotton wool; the trouble with Dobie was that, whatever it was he had, it seemed to be catching. “… Well, the boys may be working in the other room for a little while longer but if it’s all the same to you I’ll be off. It looks like being another busy day.”

  “And,” Dobie said, “if you should chance to find any prints there whose presence you can’t account for—”

  “Confidential information, that is,” Jackson said severely. “You’ve stuck your oar in quite far enough, Mr Dobie. From now on, leave everything to us.”

  After he had gone Kate began to collect the breakfast things and pile them in the sink, making, Dobie thought, an unnecessary clatter in the process. He stationed himself in his customary washing-up position and was about to twiddle the hot water tap when Kate pushed his hand away. “No, don’t do that. I’ll manage.”

  Dobie knew what the matter was and felt contrite. “… I sprang it on you, Kate, didn’t I? I really am sorry.”

  “Yes, you damn well did.”

  “But I couldn’t say anything to you until I was sure. How could I?”

  She withdrew her hand, seemingly slightly mollified by this apology. “He may have given you good advice at that.”

  “You think so?”

  “You know what you’ve just done, don’t you?… You’ve given him the one thing he didn’t have before. A motive.”

  Dobie didn’t get it. “What, for killing Sammy?”

  “No, you berk. For killing Jenny.”

  “What, just because…? I wouldn’t have done that. Even if I’d known for sure, and I made it quite clear to him I didn’t.”

  “People don’t always need to know for sure.” She grabbed a coffee-cup as it hurtled from Dobie’s clutching fingers towards the floor. “Look, thanks very much. But you dry.”

  “It might be wise. I do seem to manage a rather high breakage rate.” Dobie changed places with her, temporarily assuming command of the dishcloth. “I do need to know for sure. Knowing for sure is my metier, so to speak. Or let’s say establishing parabolas of reasonable certainty.”

  “It’s just as well you didn’t tell Jackson that. It hurt a lot, didn’t it? It must have.”

  “You mean Jenny’s being unfaithful? Oh well, I’m sure people don’t use that expression any more, either.”

  “Perhaps they don’t. But that doesn’t affect the way they feel about it. What I really meant, though, was telling him about it. After all… you didn’t have to.”

  “I did,” Dobie said. “That’s the thing about syllogistic chains.” He stooped to retrieve the shattered remnants of a saucer from the floor. “They’re so beautiful you just can’t keep it to yourself if you hit upon one. You could almost call it a crime. Sorry about that, it was sort of soapy.”

  “That was the natural result of its having been immersed in detergent liquid. Look, Dobie, why don’t you sit down and let the plates get nice and dry all by themselves? And what’s a sillo what-you-said? I forgot to swallow my after-breakfast dictionary this morning.”

  Dobie accepted this demotion resignedly and sat down once again at the kitchen table. “It’s a way of explaining something that’s happened when the odds against it happening seem to be astronomical. Like those jars of peanut butter in the wardrobe. If you or Jackson or anyone else had found them there, they wouldn’t have meant anything at all. In fact they were found by maybe the only person in the world who might realise their significance, so to speak. And yet the sequence is perfectly syllogistic, once you follow the pattern. It could hardly have happened any other way.”

  Kate sloshed hot water around the inside of a frying-pan. “I still don’t understand. What pattern?”

  “Simple cause and effect. If Sammy hadn’t lent his room to someone, he wouldn’t have been killed. If he hadn’t been killed, I wouldn’t have gone to the inquest. If I hadn’t gone to the inquest, I wouldn’t have met you. If I hadn’t met you, you wouldn’t have brought me here when I was in a bit of a jam. If you hadn’t brought me here, I wouldn’t have found the peanut butter. It all links up.”

  “Like that for-want-of-a-nail thing.”

  “Exactly.”

  Kate stacked the frying-pan on the dripboard and began to wipe her hands. “It’s certainly what Sherlock Holmes would have called a singular train of events.”

  “Who?… Oh, Sherlock Holmes…” Dobie’s forehead unfurrowed in recollection. “I don’t think I’ve read those stories since I was at school. How does it go? You know my methods, Watson?”

  “That’s it. Not that yours are even remotely similar.”

  “They are in a way. Syllogistic chains go on for ever and ever. They don’t change according to social fads and fancies. You can work them out forwards, backwards, sideways. The problem is establishing a few links to work from in the first place, but once you’ve done that you should be able to find the provenance of any other event on the same chain if you go on long enough. Any event or any agent. Like who it was Sammy lent his room to.”

  “You know,” Kate said, “I think I can add just one little silly wotsit.”

  “What’s that?”<
br />
  “Jane Corder. You know, when I saw her in the autopsy room I was sure I’d seen her before but I couldn’t remember where?” She moved across to the kitchen window, looked fixedly out of it. “I remember now. She was here, too.”

  “Here?”

  “Outside. Down in the street. I saw her there once. I was looking down… No, I wasn’t. I was downstairs, in the clinic. Looking out the window. That’s how it was.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “Nothing. Just standing there. Looking back towards me. I thought she might have been waiting for somebody, for one of the patients. It would have been about a fortnight ago.”

  Dobie rubbed his chin. “A three-pipe problem, I would say.”

  “An evening session. Round about half-past six.”

  “… Unless she was doing exactly that.”

  “Waiting for one of the patients?”

  “Yes.”

  “She could have been.”

  “Yes. It’s a nice little chain,” Dobie said, “but there’s a link missing somewhere. I’ll have to find it.”

  In any case, it was a beautiful morning. The lark was on the wing, the snail was on the thorn, the fingerprint team was busily at work and only Detective-Inspector Jackson was notably pissed off, though possibly even he was feeling better now. Dobie drove down the long chasms of the Cardiff side streets, their murky depths illuminated by brilliant patches of sunlight, and finally emerged into the full glare of the open spaces round Roath Park. Pentycoed Road ran the length of the rise to the east of the lake and it was still a beautiful morning when Dobie got there.

  Parking his trusty Fiesta at the top of the rise, he was able for a minute or two to enjoy an almost uninterrupted view of the lake’s bland and unrippled surface and of the dark leaf-foliage mirrored upon it before transferring his attention to no. 51 Pentycoed Road, which also presented to his gaze a bland and unruffled surface; neat red-tiled roof, cream-colour stipple plaster, bow windows with heavy velvet curtains and all those other trappings of earnest respectability that proclaim a site to be a suitable location for a spot of mildly stimulating middle-class adultery. If the Stranges weren’t prominent members of the local key club they had, Dobie decided, no business to be living in a place like that. He left his car parked on the opposite side of the street to indicate a proper respect for established custom and marched through the white-painted wrought-iron gate and up the crazy paving to the front door, feeling, though certainly not looking, like Philip Marlowe calling on General Sternwood. Confronted with a bellpush which said, archly but almost inevitably, PUSH ME, he pushed it. After an interval, brief but long enough to be suggestive of the hurried adjustment of bedspreads and wraparound peignoirs, Mrs Strange duly appeared, clad, however, in knitted skirt and an unseasonably thick woolly jumper. “Oh,” she said, apparently by way of greeting.

  “Mrs Strange? My name’s Dobie.”

  “You’re the one who rang?”

  “I’m the one who rang, yes, that does put it in a nutshell.”

  “I’d expected an older person. You’d better come in.”

  Dobie, on the other hand, had expected a younger. Mrs Strange was of agreeable aspect enough but certainly on the wrong (from the male viewpoint) side of thirty. She had, nevertheless, very blue eyes and very fluffy blonde hair and moved around the place in a bouncy sort of way. The movements in question mainly involved steering Dobie into a very, very low armchair as a sheepdog might expertly have penned a recalcitrant sheep and then backing away from him nervously, as if confounded by this unexpected success. “… So you’re a friend of Alec’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps you’ll appreciate his double malt. Or would you prefer tea? Or coffee?”

  “Perhaps a very short whisky…”

  “Then I think I’ll join you,” Mrs Strange said. “Just this once.”

  Neither of them were particularly short ones, Dobie noted. Churlish to refuse, though. Or even to object. That business with the whisky had always been easy to explain. Alec had loads of the stuff lying around. Wash out the decanter and the glass, slosh in a refill, and all the while Dobie’s peacefully asleep. Eh?… Wake up, Mr Dobie. “This is very nice,” he said. “I must come here more often.”

  “Why not? I don’t get to meet Alec’s friends. Not as a rule.”

  She sat down facing Dobie and crossed her legs. Even in his newly-bereaved state Dobie could not help but observe that these appendages were long and shapely. A tall girl, almost as tall as Jane. Alec being of somewhat Napoleonic build, kneehigh in other words to a bumble-bee, his tastes perhaps ran in that direction. Of course, Alec… It would be better, Dobie thought, to come clean and let it all hang out, if that was the proper expression.

  “Alec doesn’t know I’ve come to see you. In fact, if I were you I shouldn’t want to talk to me at all. I ought to make that quite clear now because it probably won’t seem quite so clear when I’ve finished drinking this whisky. Cheers.”

  “I must say I like a man who goes so far out of his way to set my mind at rest. Why shouldn’t I want to talk to you?”

  “Oh, I’m not a journalist,” Dobie said hurriedly. “Or anything like that.”

  “No, you’re a professor of mathematics and that’s exactly what you look like.”

  Dobie was only briefly taken aback by the accuracy of this apparent act of clairvoyance. “Ah. I see. You called Alec.”

  “Of course. And my husband. And they both said it would be quite okay so they don’t seem to share your misgivings.”

  “You phoned your husband?”

  “Oh yes, I’ve got one of those. He’s in Swansea right now on business, but I caught him at his hotel. Of course he’d never heard of you. But Alec had.”

  “And what did Alec say?”

  “Well, he seemed a bit confused at first. But he told me who you were and so on. I gather that some people think you killed your wife but he doesn’t think you did and of course somebody killed Jane, too, and it’s all very complicated and awful and there’s lots about it in the newspapers and you’re both having a bad time and I’m sorry. I don’t know what I can do to help, but I’ll try.”

  “Did you know Jane?”

  “Oh no. We never met.”

  “I suppose not.” Dobie shook his head. “Right now I’m a bit confused, too, because I thought I’d have to do a lot of explaining about things it seems you know about already, if you follow my drift. And then again… you said you phoned your husband… Does that mean he knows about Alec?”

  “Of course he does. He’s always known. What I don’t understand is how you come to know about it, Mr Dobie, because Alec says he didn’t tell you. I know it’s silly, but he has got this thing about keeping our relationship a secret… And in fact it’s not so silly because he has his reasons.”

  “Jane would have been one of them, no doubt.”

  “The chief one.”

  “But now she’s dead.”

  “Which is probably why he said it would be all right for me to talk to you. It doesn’t matter any more. Or anyway, not so much. I think it’s all been getting on top of him lately, he’s been working so hard… And now all this. I’d really like to help him, if I can.”

  “He’s never had much time to spare, ever since I’ve known him,” Dobie said.

  “But he used to manage a couple of evenings a week when he’d finished work. Not any more. He’s hardly been round to see me at all this past month. And that’s a pity because it relaxes him so much. Or so he says.” Dobie could well believe it. “I was getting quite worried about him. Max was, too.”

  “Max?”

  “Max, my husband. He’s in insurance.”

  Dobie had expected the Strange household to reveal something pretty outré in the way of life-styles but the de Maupassantish element in all this was leaving him decidedly bemused. He could detect no reflection of it in the accoutrements of the living-room where he sat, which, apart from a preponderance of pott
ed plants and a John Bratby roofscape over the mantelpiece, seemed to be determinedly contemporary-provincial. “How long has Alec, er… been coming to see you?”

  “Ever since we came to Cardiff. About a year ago. We’d always lived in Leeds before, you see. That’s where Max’s head office is.”

  “Ah,” Dobie said. “Well, I’m afraid they know all about it in Alec’s office. The security man there ran a check on you, all in the ordinary line of business as I suppose. And that’s how I got to hear of it. Apparently there’s been a certain amount of, well… Gossip.”

  “Gossip?”

  “Or let’s say speculation. About Alec’s having a lady friend somewhere.”

  “Lady friend?”

  Probably, Dobie thought, that term wasn’t in current usage, either. A series of (surely) unpalatable alternatives chased through his brain. “… Or whatever the current expression is.”

  “Oh my God,” Mrs Strange said.

  “You see they’ve been having some security problems—”

  “Is that what they think?”

  To his further surprise and partial consternation, she emitted a sudden little scream of bubbling laughter. “… Well, it serves him right, it serves him bloody well right. I always told him that if he wasn’t careful…” She went into another and even more prolonged fit of the giggles. Then, as though becoming aware of the perplexed opacity of Dobie’s gaze, “Oh, I’m sorry. But it’s not like that at all. I’m not Alec’s lady friend. I’m a youthful indiscretion.”

  “A what?”

  “I’m his daughter, for heaven’s sake.”

  This idea Dobie could at once dismiss as preposterous. “Daughter?… You can’t be. He’s got one. I know her. He hasn’t got a… Daughter? Impossible. He’d know about it. Or rather I would. Or someone would. It’s ridiculous.”

  “We know about it,” Mrs Strange said, restraining her hilarity with some difficulty. “Alec and I and Max. Yes, Wendy’s his legal daughter and I’m sure she’s a very sweet girl, she certainly seems to be. But I’m much older than she is, as you can see, and I’m not the least bit legal. Or I am in the sense that I’ve got some legal parents of my own and very nice ones, too. But Alec is my real dad. Biologically speaking.”