‘I don’t know what you can have to ask me about Mr Hatton’s teeth,’ he said. ‘He didn’t have his own teeth.’
Wexford had come to talk business and yet for a moment he could not. Talk of false teeth in this setting? His eye fell on a set of chessmen ranged on a table in a far corner. They were two armies, one of ivory, one of red jade, and the pawns were on horseback, the white armed with spears, the red with arrows. One of the red knights on a panoplied charger had a contemporary Western face, a raw sharp face which called to mind absurdly that of Charlie Hatton. It grinned at Wexford, seeming to prompt him.
‘We know that, Mr Vigo,’ he said, wrenching his eyes away and fixing them on an eggshell thin service, made to contain jasmine tea. ‘What surprises us is that a man of his means should have such superb false ones.’
Vigo had an attractive, rather boyish laugh. He checked it with a shake of his head. ‘A tragedy, wasn’t it? Have you any idea who could have…? No, I mustn’t ask that.’
‘I’ve no objection to your asking, but no, we’ve no idea yet. I’ve come to you because I want you to tell me everything you can about Mr Hatton with particular reference to any thing you may know about the source of his income.’
‘I only know that he drove a lorry.’ Vigo was still savouring with pride and joy his caller’s astonishment. ‘But yes, I see what you mean. It surprised me too. I don’t know much but I’ll tell you what I can.’ He moved to a cabinet whose door handles were the long curved tails of dragons. ‘Will you join me in a pre-luncheon sherry?’
‘I don’t think so, thank you.’
‘Pity.’ Vigo didn’t press him but poured a glass of Manzanilla for himself and sat down by the window. It gave on to a shadowed court whose centrepiece was an orrery on a stone plinth. ‘Mr Hatton made an appointment with me at the end of May. He had never been a patient of mine before.’
The end of May. On the 22nd of May Hatton had paid five hundred pounds into his bank account, his share, no doubt, of the mysterious and elusive hi-jacking haul.
‘I can tell you the precise date, if you like. I looked it up before you came. Tuesday, 21st May. He telephoned me at lunchtime on that day and by a fluke I had a cancellation, so I was able to see him almost immediately. He’d had dentures since he was twenty, very bad ill-fitting ones, by the way. They made him self-conscious and he wanted a new set. I asked him why he’d lost his own teeth and he said the cause had been pyorrhoea. Knowing a little of his circumstances by this time – at any rate, I knew what his job was – I asked him if he realized this would involve him in considerable expense. He said that money was no object – those were his actual words – and he wanted the most expensive teeth I could provide. We finally arrived at a figure of two hundred and fifty pounds and he was perfectly agreeable.’
‘You must have been surprised.’
Vigo sipped his sherry reflectively. He touched one of the chessmen, a crenellated castle, caressing it with pride. ‘I was astonished. And I don’t mind telling you I was a little uneasy.’ He didn’t elaborate on this unease but Wexford thought he must have been worried lest the two hundred and fifty wasn’t forthcoming. ‘However, the teeth were made and fitted at the beginning of June. About a month ago it would have been.’
‘How did Mr Hatton pay you?’
‘Oh, in cash, he paid me on the same day, insisted on doing so. The money was in five-pound notes which I’m afraid I paid straight into my bank. Chief Inspector, I understand what you’re getting at, but I couldn’t ask the man where he got his money from, could I? Just because he came here in his working clothes and I knew he drove a lorry… I couldn’t.’
‘Did you ever see him again?’
‘He came back once for a check. Oh, and a second time to tell me how pleased he was.’
Again Wexford was becoming bemused by the colours, by the seductive spectrum that caught and held his eye wherever he looked. He bent his head and concentrated on his own big ugly hands. ‘On any of his visits,’ he said stolidly, ‘did he ever mention someone called McCloy?’
‘I don’t think so. He spoke about his wife and his brother-in-law that he was in business with.’ Vigo paused and searched his memory. ‘Oh, and he mentioned a friend of his that was getting married. I was supposed to be interested. because the chap had sometimes been here doing electrical repairs. Hatton said something about buying him a record player for a wedding present. The poor fellow’s dead and I don’t know whether I ought to say this…’
‘Say on, Mr Vigo.’
‘Well, he did rather harp on what a lot of money he spent. I don’t want to sound a snob but I thought it vulgar. He only mentioned his wife to tell me he’d just bought her something new to wear and he tried to give me the impression his brother-in-law was something of a poor fish because he couldn’t make ends meet.’
‘But the brother-in-law was in the same line of business.’
‘I know. That struck me. Mr Hatton did say he had a good many irons in the fire and that sometimes he brought off a big deal. But frankly, if I thought about that at all, I imagined he had some side line, painting people’s houses perhaps or cleaning windows.’
‘Window cleaners don’t speak of bringing off big deals, Mr Vigo.’
‘I suppose not. The fact is I don’t have many dealings with people of Mr Hatton’s…’ Vigo paused. Wexford was sure he had been about to say ‘class’. ‘Er, background,’ said the dentist. ‘Of course you’re suggesting the side lines weren’t legitimate and this may be hindsight, but now I look back Mr Hatton did perhaps occasionally have a shady air about him when he talked of them. But really it was only the merest nuance.’
‘Well, I won’t trouble you any further.’ Wexford got up. It must be his over-sensitive suspicious mind that made him see a relieved relaxing of those muscled shoulders. Vigo opened the carved oak door for him.
‘Let me see you out, Chief Inspector.’ The hall was a largish square room, its flagged floor dotted with thin soft rugs, and every inch of burnished ancient wood caught the sunlight. There were Blake prints on the walls, the Inferno scenes, Nebuchadnezzar with his eagle’s talons, the naked Newton with his golden curls. Stripped of his blue tussore, Vigo himself might look rather like that, Wexford thought. ‘I had the pleasure of a visit from your daughter the other day,’ he heard the dentist say. ‘What a very lovely girl she is.’
‘I’m told she’s much admired,’ Wexford said dryly. The compliment slightly displeased him. He interpreted it as spurious and ingratiating. Also there had been a note of incredulity in Vigo’s voice as if he marvelled at such an old goose begetting a swan.
The front door swung open and Mrs Vigo came in, holding the child. For the first time since his arrival, Wexford remembered that there was another child, a mongol, confined some where in an institution.
The baby which Vigo now took in his arms was perhaps six or seven months old. No one could have doubted its paternity. Already it had its father’s jaw and its father’s athletic limbs. Vigo lifted the boy high, laughing as he chuckled, and there came into his face an intense besotted adoration.
‘Meet my son, Mr Wexford. Isn’t he splendid?’