Fete Fatale Page 8

  ‘Other things get involved,’ said McPhail.

  I sat there thinking about that for a while, toying with a piece of lettuce.

  ‘True,’ I said at last. ‘Other things like vanity, hurts to your sense of your own importance. That’s the only way I can make sense of this—as the result of wounded vanity. Some nasty little worm of conceit that couldn’t bear to be defeated and humiliated . . . But I still think that Father Battersby would have been a more likely victim.’

  ‘I was only at the fête briefly,’ said McPhail, ‘but I wouldn’t have thought that Father Battersby was a very get-at-able victim, from what I saw.’

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘He certainly wasn’t.’

  ‘What the police are going to want to know,’ said McPhail, looking at me thoughtfully, ‘is where everyone was.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been trying to think of that myself. What sort of time is it they’re interested in?’

  ‘From about three onwards. Until the time he—’

  ‘Was seen floating. Yes. I understand. The trouble is that it’s all so chaotic in my mind. The fête was beginning to wind down then. I think Mary was still around at about three, but I can’t be sure. Thyrza I hadn’t seen for quite a bit . . . Mr Horsforth was conspicuous by his absence most of the day. Whereas Franchita was conspicuous by her presence. She was lady of the fête, and was here, there and everywhere most of the time. I can’t believe it could be her, because I think we would have noticed if she had let up for the time it would take . . . Timothy and Fiona were swanning it around in their non-stop Bolero, and I kept seeing Timothy with Father Battersby, but I noticed them most during the morning . . . Mrs Nielson sold out and went home . . . The Mipchins were in and out, but the Westons were mostly with the outside games, so I don’t know about them . . . It’s all so difficult.’

  ‘When I said that the police would want to know where everyone was,’ said Harold McPhail carefully, ‘I really meant that you should try to remember where you were.’

  I looked up at him, and suddenly I flushed bright red as a spurt of anger flashed through me.

  ‘Oh, my God! I see what you’re getting at! You mean that the police will see me as the prime suspect! Christ! I only need that!’

  As I marched to the mantelpiece to get another cigarette, Harold McPhail said:

  ‘I didn’t say you would be the prime suspect. But obviously you will be among those that they have to consider. You don’t stand outside the investigation just because you know you didn’t do it.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got the idea now,’ I said, bitterly. ‘In murder cases of a domestic kind, the husband or the wife is always top of the list. You’re quite right: it’s something I ought to be aware of. I just thought that anyone who knew us—’

  The policeman will not have known you. He won’t be a local man. And how many of us really know others?’

  As he spoke the telephone rang. Still flushed and angry, I marched to pick it up. All I needed was to hear, down the line, the hushed tones of Mary Morse.

  ‘Helen? Dear, this is not the time for condolences, but I thought you’d like to know that you’ve forgotten to draw your curtains. A friend just walked past your house, and she commented—’

  ‘God damn and blast you all to hell,’ I said, and banged down the receiver.

  CHAPTER 7

  COLD STEEL

  So livid was I at Mary’s phone call, so anxious was I to get things moving and to worry the police into activity, that I nearly rang them then and there and suggested that I talk to them the same evening. I can’t account for this needling itch for activity, except that I seemed to need it to push the darkness back further. I think, too, that I was saying to myself that as soon as the case was solved, I was going to shake the dust of Hexton-on-Weir off my shoes and depart I knew not where. Anyway, Harold McPhail persuaded me that it would be most unwise: I was too het up, I would say things I would regret later and give the officer in charge a misleading impression. And anyway, he said, the official medics would hardly have put in even a preliminary report by then. That clinched it: I wanted to know exactly what had happened. However, after Harold McPhail had gone, I rang up the Station and fixed a meeting for ten o’clock next morning. I said I was quite willing to go to the Station, having no intention of retreating into the sort of purdah Hexton deems suitable for the first weeks of widowhood. But the Detective-Superintendent on the case said it would be helpful for him to talk about Marcus in his own home, so that was what we arranged. I felt prickles of hostility against the man, convinced he had marked me down already as a prime suspect, but I had to admit that his voice sounded businesslike.

  I spent a night during which sheer exhaustion sometimes sent me off into a fitful sleep, but which otherwise was a matter of tossing and turning, grieving and wondering, and most of all a tormented nagging the subject over in my mind which got me nowhere, but left me exhausted and fretful. The next day dawned like a yawning hole—the loneliness, the purposelessness opening up before me in all their blank horror. I was alone.

  And the police were coming. I boiled an egg, and ate it with bread and butter. I lit a cigarette, but after a few puffs decided I wasn’t going to go down that road, and stubbed it out. I put on some coffee for myself and the policemen. I thought they probably would in fact prefer instant, and then I cursed myself for such a snobbish, Hexton thought. Whatever happened, I was not going to become Hexton.

  When the Detective-Superintendent on the case arrived, accompanied by a local Inspector, I greeted them soberly but (I hope) sensibly, ushered them into the drawing-room and brought them coffee (they took it black). Inspector Parkin I already knew, but the Superintendent I had not seen before. His name was Coulton, and he had been sent from Leeds. He was a man of about fifty—perhaps not over-imaginative, but with a face that was drawn, and either sad or tired. Not a man, I suspected, who had ever been particularly happy in his job, or one who had particularly enjoyed many of the things it had forced him to do. But no doubt he had done them. And however much I might have been disposed to like him in other circumstances, I was wary of him in these. Very wary.

  He sat down on the sofa when I did, all of us very sober, and me rather tense, and he looked around the room, giving no sign on that impassive face of whether he approved of our taste in pictures or not. Both he and Parkin had notebooks, in which they made very occasional jottings. When both of them had had a sip or two of the coffee, Coulton started straight in.

  ‘Mrs Kitterege,’ he began, ‘I believe you became aware of your husband’s death—’

  ‘When I saw him floating down the river,’ I interrupted, in a metallic voice that surprised me. I lowered it. ‘It’s not a very nice way to learn you’re a widow.’

  ‘No. It must have been quite horrifying. When did you last see your husband?’

  I had to suppress irrelevant associations with Victorian historical paintings.

  ‘Just before I took my lunch-break. That was quite late. About two, or a bit later, I think. Mrs Nielson may remember more accurately. I’d been waiting for Mr Horsforth, whom I shared the junk stall with, to come back. When he did, I took off with Mrs Nielson, who had the jam stall opposite.’

  ‘And did you talk to your husband outside, by the Test Your Strength machine, which I gather he ran?’

  ‘No—he’d come in, and had been chatting with me by my stall. Colonel Weston was filling in outside, and Marcus said that he was hoping to go home for a longish break around three-thirty. I’m afraid when Mr Horsforth turned up, I just took off.’ Tears welled up as I thought of the briskness of my last leave-taking of Marcus, but I suppressed them. ‘I was afraid he’d disappear again, and we’d never get any lunch.’

  ‘And you and Mrs Nielson were together the whole time during lunch?’

  I tried not to tense up, or become obviously wary.

  ‘No. We went to a corner of the meadow to eat our sandwiches. Then her dog demanded a proper walk, so she went off, and I just stayed
there for a bit.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes, alone . . . Though anyone could have seen me there. I didn’t want to go back to the tent at once. I felt I’d rather been taken advantage of by Mr Horsforth.’

  ‘But you did eventually go back. How long had you been alone in the meadows by then?’

  ‘About fifteen minutes, I suppose. Quite long enough to murder my husband.’

  The tired eyes raised themselves from the pad on which Coulton was making a note of those fifteen minutes. They looked at my flushed face, as if they had been through all this before.

  ‘We don’t know when your husband was murdered, Mrs Kitterege, but the indications are that it was decidedly later than the time we are talking about at the moment. We are just trying to get our picture of the whole afternoon straight. So—you will have got back to the tent when?’

  ‘I really don’t know. But somewhere about twenty to three, I imagine.’

  ‘And you didn’t talk to your husband outside the tent?’

  ‘No. I didn’t see him. Colonel Weston was running his game. Which is odd, because it was certainly nothing like three-thirty. Perhaps Marcus had gone to do something special—or just gone to the loo, perhaps.’

  ‘I’ll ask Colonel Weston. And did you leave your stall again before—before you went out and saw your husband’s body?’

  ‘No. I’ve thought it over. Mr Horsforth never came back to relieve me after my lunch-break.’

  I felt like adding, ‘So if you want to pin the murder of Marcus on me, you’ll have to fix it much earlier than you thought.’ I suppressed it, because I’d had one unwise outburst already; but the tired eyes were on me, and I suppose he recognized that we were both thinking along the same lines. I said:

  ‘When do you think it happened?’

  ‘We don’t know. We are obviously going to have to do a lot of interviewing, testing of people’s memories, because of course the medics won’t be able to pinpoint it at all exactly. The trouble is, at a fête, people don’t keep looking at their watches the whole time.’

  ‘I did,’ I said. ‘But I suppose you don’t if you’re just attending and enjoying yourself. But what makes you say that you think the . . . the crucial time was later?’

  The eyes sharpened as they looked at me.

  ‘We’ve made no absolute decision about the likely time of death, you understand.’ (Meaning, don’t think you’re off the hook, my girl.) ‘And we haven’t even begun to interview people systematically. But we have had one sighting of your husband volunteered, and that was quite a bit later than your lunch-break.’

  ‘How much later?’

  ‘Shortly after half past three. The witness says she saw your husband leaving the meadows, heading in the direction of the town square—presumably on his way home.’

  ‘She?’ I inquired.

  ‘Yes.’ He consulted his notes. ‘A Miss Mary Morse.’ A quick glance at Inspector Parkin showed that he’d been informed that Mary was one of the town busybodies.

  ‘And did Miss Mary Morse claim to have exchanged words with my husband?’ I asked, unable to keep a barbed quality out of my voice. The Superintendent flicked back through his notebook.

  ‘She claims that he said: “It’s gone very well so far, hasn’t it?” And that she replied: “Very well indeed.” ’

  I reflected. Robbed of the undertow and the tones of voice, the conversation sounded innocuous. No wonder Mary reported it. But I couldn’t rid myself of the idea that there must have been more to Mary’s burst of public spirit than met the eye.

  ‘At what time did Miss Morse come to you and volunteer this information?’ I asked.

  ‘At about nine-thirty last night.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And what else did she volunteer?’

  Superintendent Coulton looked at me, quite sharply.

  ‘Why do you think she volunteered anything else?’

  ‘Because I snapped her head off on the phone shortly after nine. If she came along to you about nine-thirty, it will have been to get some sort of revenge, though I’m sure she told herself she was only doing her civic duty. Treat what she said with caution.’

  ‘I treat all the information I get with caution,’ said Superintendent Coulton, and though he was looking at me meaningfully as he said it, I thought it was probably true, and felt the better for it. Hexton was not easily going to put it over on him. He leaned back in his chair. ‘Mrs Kitterege, were you happily married?’

  He was telling me, quite informally, of the tendency of Mary Morse’s other ‘information’. My blood boiled, but I tried to answer as simply and directly as possible.

  ‘Yes, we were. Very happily married. We loved each other very much.’

  ‘Tell me what sort of a man your husband was.’

  Well, you know how I saw Marcus. I talked about him for some time, telling the Superintendent the sort of things I would probably never have said about Marcus to his face. In the sharpness of my sense of loss, I probably enthused about him, and perhaps this was unwise, perhaps almost suspicious. The Superintendent’s eyes were hooded; the Inspector stopped taking notes (the character of the deceased was not ‘fact’, perhaps). After a few minutes I ground to a halt, and had to suppress a sob. The Superintendent repeated:

  ‘And you were perfectly happily married?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve said so.’

  ‘You did not, either of you, go in for . . . extra-marital adventures?’

  ‘We did not,’ I said. ‘Whatever Mary Morse may have said.’

  ‘I would ask some such question to any wife whose husband had been murdered,’ said Coulton.

  ‘That must make you very popular with the recently bereaved. In this case, I suppose that Mary’s little chat has ensured that you come here with your mind already made up,’ I said, unable to suppress the bitterness I felt. ‘Has the good Miss Morse also kindly supplied you with a name to pin these extra-marital activities on to?’

  I saw what Mary had been trying to do: distract police attention from the major cause of strife in Hexton over the last few weeks—her own activities. On the other hand, I did wonder who Mary could have picked on for Marcus’s covert love-life. It’s not that there was any lack of attractive women in the country around Hexton, but in Hexton itself everyone for one reason or another had a faint air of unlikeliness about them. Mary must have had to think quickly to find anyone, and I wondered who on earth she had picked.

  ‘You really mustn’t put my questions down to Miss Morse, and I assure you that my mind is not made up.’ The Superintendent had a good line in patience, giving me the impression that he might be the father of a brood of rather tiresome children. ‘However, there has been one name mentioned. Tell me, how friendly was your husband with Lady Godetia Peabody?’

  For the first time since Marcus’s death I giggled, and the giggle swelled to a yelp of laughter. Mary really had been scraping the bottom of the barrel. When I recovered, I said:

  ‘You may think that I was in the dark over Marcus’s sexual habits, and I’m sure a lot of wives are. But I assure you I do know something about his tastes. You’ll be wasting your time if you start investigating the possibility of an affair between Marcus and Lady Godetia.’

  ‘She was heard to say he was “madly attractive”.’

  ‘I’m sure she did. I can imagine Lady Godetia saying that about almost anyone: Denis Thatcher, Ronald Reagan—anyone a degree or two more attractive than Yassir Arafat. Whether anyone would ever be attracted to her is another matter. Are there men who are turned on by that Anna Neagle manner?’

  I could see our local Inspector Parkin was shocked. Widows did not make jokes of that kind—or perhaps he considered Anna Neagle sacrosanct. He marked me down, if he had not done so long ago, as a sharp-tongued bitch. Well, I had no complaint about that.

  ‘We won’t pursue that,’ said Coulton, with a sigh.

  ‘I bet you do. But you’ll be wasting your time. You know what Mary’s trying to do, don’t you?�
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  ‘Well—’ Superintendent Coulton threw a look at the Inspector.

  ‘She’s using anything to hand—and clutching rather desperately, I may say—to divert attention from her own recent activities.’

  ‘Right. Then let’s get on to them. Now first of all, tell me about your husband’s position in the town.’

  ‘His position? Well, as you must know, he’s a vet. Was a vet. He served on the town council for a bit—just a couple of years.’

  ‘Why not longer?’

  ‘He was sort of squeezed out. There wasn’t any room for Independents any longer. Party politics took over, and they all started calling themselves Conservatives. That’s what Marcus was, but he drew the line at calling himself one. So most of his community activity these last few years has been through the Church.’

  ‘Why the Church?’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked defensively. After all, even I had to admit that there was nothing either perverse or absurd about being a Christian. ‘He’s always been involved in the Church since he was a boy. He was one of the churchwardens at St Edward the Confessor’s. Where, as I suspect you have already heard, there’s been a lot of fur flying these last few months.’

  ‘Yes, I had heard. And as an outsider I find it rather difficult to understand. What was your husband’s position in it all?’

  ‘His function was to smooth ruffled feathers. That was always Marcus’s function. He would go around trying to convince people that they were making a lot of fuss about nothing. They were, but mostly he didn’t convince them.’

  ‘Among the ruffled feathers were Miss Mary Morse’s?’

  ‘Pre-eminent among them were Mary’s. With Thyrza Primp’s a good second. Thyrza is moving away, otherwise she would have been more active. When he failed to soothe, Marcus had reluctantly to take a stand—just as a matter of common sense and good manners, and it was then that he couldn’t avoid rousing people against him. The bone of contention was Father Battersby, who is apparently too High Church for Mary and her gang, and celibate to boot. For some reason Mary conceives a vicar’s wife to be the pivot and mainstay of the parish, though God knows the precedent of Thyrza Primp might make most people hope for a few years’ respite from vicars’ wives.’