10     

The house which Robert Hathall had bought at the time of his first marriage was one of those semi-detached villas which sprang up during the thirties in their thousands, in their tens of thousands. It had a bay window in the front living room, a gable over the front bedroom window, and a decorative wooden canopy, of the kind sometimes seen sheltering the platforms of provincial railway stations, over the front door. There were about four hundred others exactly like it in the street, a wide thoroughfare along which traffic streamed to the south.

‘This house,’ said Howard, ‘was built for about six hundred pounds. Hathall would have paid around four thousand for it, I should think. When did he get married?’

‘Seventeen years ago.’

‘Your thousand would be right. And now it would fetch eighteen.’

‘Only he can’t sell it’ said Wexford. ‘I daresay he could have done with eighteen thousand pounds.’ They got out of the car and went up to the front door.

She had none of the outward signs of a virago. She was about forty, short, high-coloured, her stout stocky figure crammed into a tight green dress, and she was one of those women who have been roses and are now cabbages. Ghostly shades of the rose showed in the pretty fat-obscured features, the skin which was still good, and the gingery hair that had once been blonde. She took them into the room with the bay window. Its furnishings lacked the charm of those at Bury Cottage, but it was just as clean. There was something oppressive about its neatness and the absence of any single object not totally conventional. Wexford looked in vain for some article a hand-embroidered cushion maybe, an original drawing or a growing plant, that might express the personalities of the woman and the girl who lived here. But there was nothing, not a book, not a magazine even, no paraphernalia of a hobby. It was like a Times Furnishing window display before the shop assistant has added those touches that will give it an air of home. Apart from a framed photograph, the only picture was that reproduction of a Spanish gypsy with a black hat on her curls and a rose between her teeth, which Wexford had seen on a hundred lounge-bar walls. And even this stereotyped picture had more life about it than the rest of the room, the gypsy’s mouth seeming to curl a little more disdainfully as she surveyed the sterile surroundings in which she was doomed to spend her time.

Although it was mid-morning and Eileen Hathall had been forewarned of their coming, she offered them nothing to drink. Her mother-in-law’s ways had either rubbed off on her or else her own lack of hospitality had been one of the traits which so endeared the old woman to her. But that Mrs Hathall senior had been deluded in other respects soon showed. Far from keeping ‘herself to herself’, Eileen was ready to be bitterly expansive about her private life.

At first, however, she was subdued. Wexford began by asking her how she had spent the previous Friday, and she replied in a quiet reasonable voice that she had been at her father’s in Balham, remaining there till the evening because her daughter had been on a day trip to France, sponsored by her school, from which she hadn’t returned until nearly midnight. She gave Wexford her widowed father’s address which Howard, who knew London well, remarked was in the next street to where Mrs Hathall senior lived. That did it. Eileen’s colour rose and her eyes smouldered with the resentment which was now perhaps the mainspring of her life.

‘We grew up together, Bob and me. We went to the same school and there wasn’t a day went by we didn’t see each other. After we got married we were never apart for a single night till that woman came and stole him from me.’

Wexford, who held to the belief that it is impossible for an outsider to break up a secure and happy marriage, made no comment. He had often wondered too at the attitude of mind that regards people as things and marriage partners as objects which can be stolen like television sets or pearl necklaces.

‘When did you last see your former husband, Mrs Hathall?’

‘I haven’t seen him for three and a half years.’

‘But I suppose, although you have custody, he has reasonable access to Rosemary?’

Her face had grown bitter, a canker eating the blown rose. ‘He was allowed to see her every other Sunday. I used to send her round to his mum and he’d fetch her from there and take her out for the day.’

‘But you didn’t see him yourself on these occasions?’

She looked down, perhaps to hide her humiliation. ‘He said he wouldn’t come if I was going to be there.’

‘You said “used”, Mrs Hathall. D’you mean this meeting between father and daughter has ceased?’

‘Well, she’s nearly grown-up, isn’t she? She’s old enough to have a mind of her own. Me and Bob’s mum, we’ve always got on well, she’s been like another mother to me. Rosemary could see the way we thought about it—I mean, she was old enough to understand what I’d suffered from her dad, and it’s only natural she was resentful.’ The virago was appearing and the tone of voice which Mr Butler had said would always remain in his memory. ‘She took against him. She thought it was wicked what he’d done.’

‘So she stopped seeing him?’

‘She didn’t want to see him. She said she’d got better things to do with her Sundays, and her gran and me, we thought she was quite right. Only once she went to that cottage place and when she came back she was in an awful state, tears and sobbing and I don’t know what. And I don’t wonder. Can you imagine a father actually letting his little girl see him kiss another woman? That’s what happened. When the time came for him to bring Rosemary back, she saw him put his arms round that woman and kiss her. And it wasn’t one of your ordinary kisses. Like what you’d see on the TV, Rosemary said, but I won’t go into details, though I was disgusted, I can tell you. The upshot of it was that Rosemary can’t stand her dad, and I don’t blame her. I just hope it won’t do something to her mentality the way these psychological people say it does.’

The red flush on her skin was high now and her eyes flashed. And now, as her bosom rose and she tossed her head, she had something in common with the gypsy on the wall.

‘He didn’t like it. He begged her to see him, wrote her letters and God knows what. Sent her presents and wanted to take her away on holiday. Him as said he hadn’t got a penny to bless himself with. Fought tooth and nail he did to try and stop me getting this house and a bit of his money to live on. Oh, he’s got money enough when he likes to spend it, money to spend on anyone but me.’

Howard had been looking at that single framed photograph and now he asked if it was of Rosemary.

‘Yes, that’s my Rosemary.’ Still breathless from her outpouring of invective, Eileen spoke in gasps. ‘That was taken six months ago.’

The two policemen looked at the portrait of a rather plain heavy-faced girl who wore a small gold cross hanging against her blouse, whose lank dark hair fell to her shoulders, and who bore a marked resemblance to her paternal grandmother. Wexford, who felt unable to tell an outright lie and say the girl was pretty, asked what she was going to do when she left school. This was a good move, for it had a calming effect on Eileen whose bitterness gave way, though only briefly, to pride.

‘Go on to college. All her teachers say she’s got it in her and I wouldn’t stand in her way. It’s not as if she’s got to go out and earn money. Bob’ll have plenty to spare now. I’ve told her I don’t care if she goes on training till she’s twenty-five. I’m going to get Bob’s mum to ask him to give Rosemary a car for her eighteenth birthday. After all, that’s like being twenty-one nowadays, isn’t it? My brother’s been teaching her to drive and she’ll take her test the minute she’s seventeen. It’s his duty to give her a car. Just because he’s ruined my life, that’s no reason why he should ruin hers, is it?’

Wexford put out his hand to her as they left. She gave him hers rather reluctantly, but her reluctance was perhaps only part and parcel of that ungraciousness which seemed to be a feature of all the Hathalls and all their connections. Staring down, he held it just long enough to make sure there was no scar on the relevant finger.

‘Let us be thankful for our wives,’ said Howard devoutly when they were back in the car and driving southwards. ‘He didn’t kill Angela to go back to that one, at any rate.’

‘Did you notice she didn’t once mention Angela’s death? Not even to say she wasn’t sorry she was dead? I’ve never come across a family so nourished on hatred.’ Wexford thought suddenly of his own two daughters who loved him, and on whose education he had spent money freely and happily because they loved him and he loved them. ‘It must be bloody awful to have to support someone you hate and buy presents for someone who’s been taught to hate you,’ he said.

‘Indeed it must. And where did the money come from for those presents and that projected holiday, Reg? Not out of fifteen pounds a week.’

By a quarter to twelve they were in Toxborough. Wexford’s appointment at Kidd’s factory was for half past, so they had a quick lunch in a pub on the outskirts before finding the industrial site. The factory, a large white concrete box, was the source of those children’s toys which he had often seen on television commercials and which were marketed under the name of Kidd’s Kits for Kids. The manager, a Mr Aveney, told him they had three hundred workers on the payroll, most of them women with part-time jobs. Their white-collar staff was small, consisting of himself, the personnel manager, the part-time accountant, Hathall’s successor, his own secretary, two typists and a switchboard girl.

‘You want to know what female office staff we had here when Mr Hathall was with us. I gathered that from what you said on the phone and I’ve done my best to make you a list of names and addresses. But the way they change and change about is ridiculous, Chief Inspector. Girls are crazy to change their jobs every few months these days. There isn’t anyone in the office now who was here when Mr Hathall was here, and he’s only been gone ten weeks. Not girls, that is. The personnel manager’s been with us for five years, but his office is down in the works and I don’t think they ever met.’

‘Can you remember if he was particularly friendly with any girl?’

‘I can remember he wasn’t,’ said Mr Aveney. ‘He was crazy about that wife of his, the one who got herself killed. I never heard a man go on about a woman the way he went on about her. She was Marilyn Monroe and the Shah-ess of Persia and the Virgin Mary all rolled in one as far as he was concerned.’

But Wexford was tired of hearing about Robert Hathall’s uxoriousness. He glanced at the list, formidably long, and there were the names, the sort of names they all seemed to have these days, Junes and Janes and Susans and Lindas and Julies. They had all lived in and around Toxborough and not one of them had stayed at Kidd’s more than six months. He had a horrible prevision of weeks of work while half a dozen men scoured the Home Counties for this Jane, this Julie, this Susan, and then he put the list in his briefcase.

‘Your friend said he’d like to have a look round the works, so if you’d care to, we’ll go down and find him.’

They found Howard in the custody of a Julie who was leading him between benches where women in overalls and with turbans round their heads were peeling the casts from plastic dolls. The factory was airy and pleasant, apart from the smell of cellulose, and from a couple of speakers came the seductive voice of Engelbert Humperdinck imploring his listeners to release him and let him love again.

‘A bit of a dead loss that,’ said Wexford when they had said good-bye to Mr Aveney. ‘I thought it would be. Still, you’ll be in plenty of time for your dinner date. It’s no more than half an hour from here to Kingsmarkham. And I shall be in time to get myself promptly hauled over the coals. Would you like me to direct you round the back doubles so that we can miss the traffic and I can show you one or two points of interest?’

Howard said he would, so his uncle instructed him how to find the Myringham Road. They went through the centre of the town and past that shopping precinct whose ugliness had so offended Mark Somerset and where he had met the Hathalls on their shopping spree.

‘Follow the signs for Pomfret rather than Kingsmarkham, and then I'Il direct you into Kingsmarkham via Wool Lane.’

Obediently, Howard followed the signs and within ten minutes they were in country lanes. Here was unspoilt country, the soft Sussex of undulating hills topped with tree rings, of acres of fir forest and little brown-roofed farms nestling in woody hollows. The harvest was in, and where the wheat had been cut the fields were a pale blond, shining like sheets of silver gilt in the sun.

‘When I’m out here,’ said Howard, ‘I feel the truth of what Orwell said about every man knowing in his heart that the loveliest thing to do in the world is to spend a fine day in the country. And when I’m in London I agree with Charles Lamb.’

‘D’you mean preferring to see a theatre queue than all the flocks of silly sheep on Epsom Downs?’

Howard laughed and nodded. ‘I take it I’m to avoid that turn that says Sewingbury?’

‘You want the right turn for Kingsmarkham, coming up in about a mile. It’s a little side road and eventually it becomes Wool Lane. I think Angela must have come along here in the car with her passenger last Friday. But where did she come from?’

Howard took the turn. They passed Wool Farm and saw the sign Wool Lane, at which the road became a narrow tunnel. If they had met another car, its driver or Howard would have had to pull right up on to the bank to allow the other’s passage, but they met no cars. Motorists avoided the narrow perilous lane and few strangers took it for a through road at all.

‘Bury Cottage,’ Wexford said.

Howard slowed slightly. As he did so, Robert Hathall came round from the side of the house with a pair of garden shears in his hands. He didn’t look up, but began chopping the heads off Michaelmas daisies. Wexford wondered if his mother had nagged him into this unaccustomed task.

‘That’s him,’ he said. ‘Did you get a look?’

‘Enough to identify him again,’ said Howard, ‘though I don’t suppose I shall have to.’

They parted at the police station. The chief constable’s Rover was already parked on the forecourt. He was early for his appointment but so was Wexford. There was no need to rush up breathless and penitent, so he took his time about it, walking in almost casually to where the carpet and the coals awaited him.

‘I can guess what it’s about, sir. Hathall’s been complaining.’

‘That you can guess’ said Charles Griswold, ‘only makes it worse.’ He frowned and drew himself up to his full height which was a good deal more than Wexford’s own six feet. The chief constable bore an uncanny likeness to the late General de Gaulle, whose initials he shared, and he must have been aware of it. A chance of nature may account for a physical resemblance to a famous man. Only knowledge of that resemblance, the continual reminders of it from friends and enemies, can account for similarities of the one personality to the other. Griswold was in the habit of speaking of Mid-Sussex, his area, in much the same tones as the dead statesman had spoken of La France. ‘He’s sent me a very strongly worded letter of complaint. Says you’ve been trying to trap him, using unorthodox methods. Sprang something about a fingerprint on him and then walked out of the house without waiting for his answer. Have you got any grounds for thinking he killed his wife?’

‘Not with his own hands, sir. He was in his London office at the time.’

‘Then what the hell are you playing at? I am proud of Mid-Sussex. My life’s work has been devoted to Mid-Sussex. I was proud of the rectitude of my officers in Mid-Sussex, confident that their conduct might not only be beyond reproach but seen to be beyond reproach.’ Griswold sighed heavily. In a moment, Wexford thought, he would be saying, ‘L’état, c’est moi.’ ‘Why are you harassing this man? Persecuting is what he calls it.’

‘Persecuting,’ said Wexford, ‘is what he always calls it.’

‘And that means?’

‘He’s paranoid, sir.’

‘Don’t give me that headshrinkers’ jargon, Reg. Have you got one single piece of concrete evidence against this chap?’

‘No. Only my personal and very strong feeling that he killed his wife.’

‘Feeling? Feeling? We hear a damn sight too much about feelings these days and at your age you ought to bloody know better. What d’you mean then, that he had an accomplice? Have you got a feeling who this accomplice might be? Have you got any evidence about him?’

What could he say but ‘No, sir, I haven’t’? He added more firmly, ‘May I see his letter?’

‘No, you mayn’t,’ Griswold snapped. ‘I’ve told you what’s in it. Be thankful I’m sparing you his uncomplimentary remarks about your manners and your tactics. He says you’ve stolen a book of his.’

‘For Christ’s sake … You don’t believe that?’

‘Well, no, Reg, I don’t. But have it sent back to him and fast. And lay off him pronto, d’you get that?’

‘Lay off him?’ said Wexford aghast. ‘I have to talk to him. There’s no other line of investigation I can pursue.’

‘I said lay off him. That’s an order. I won’t have any more of it. I will not have the reputation of Mid-Sussex sacrificed to your feelings.’