‘It’s different for men,’ said Wexford.
‘How did you guess? At any rate, for once my parents presented a united front. After my mother had obligingly betrayed all my confidences to him in my hearing, he said he would find the man – Michael, that is – and compel him to marry me. I couldn’t stand any more, so I locked myself in my bedroom and in the morning I went to Newhaven and got on the boat. I parted from my mother just about on speaking terms. My father had gone out.’
‘Thank you for unbending, Miss Fanshawe. Have you been suggesting that the dead girl might have been your father’s mistress?’
‘You think it impossible that my father would drive his wife and mistress together to London? I assure you it’s not unlikely. For him it would simply have been a matter of bringing the girl along, telling my mother she was coming with them and paying her handsomely for the hardship occasioned.’
Wexford kept his eyes from Nora Fanshawe’s face. She was as unlike his Sheila as could be. They had in common only their youth and health and the fact, like all women, of each being someone’s daughter. The girl’s father was dead. In a flash of unusual sentimentality, Wexford thought he would rather be dead than be the man about whom a daughter could say such things.
In a level voice he said, ‘You gave me to understand that as far as you know there was no woman at the time but your mother. You have no idea who this girl could be?’
‘That was the impression I had. I was evidently wrong.’
‘Miss Fanshawe, this girl clearly could not have been a friend or neighbour at Eastover whom your parents were simply driving to London. In that case her relatives would have enquired for her, raised a hue and cry at the time of the accident.’
‘Surely that would apply whoever she was?’
‘Not necessarily. She could be a girl with no fixed address or someone whose landlady or friends expected her to move away about that particular weekend. She may be listed some where among missing persons and no search have begun for her because the manner of her life showed that occasional apparent disappearances were not unusual. In other words, she could be a girl who led a somewhat itinerant life in the habit of taking jobs in various parts of the country or moving about to live with different men. Suppose, for instance, she had spent the weekend in some South Coast resort and tried to hitch a lift back to London from your father?’
‘My father wouldn’t have given a lift to anyone. Both he and my mother disapproved of hitch-hiking. Chief Inspector, you’re talking as if everyone in that car is now dead. Aren’t you forgetting that my mother is very much alive? She’s well on the way to recovery and her brain isn’t affected. She insists there was no one in the car but my father and herself.’ Nora Fanshawe lifted her eyes and her voice lost some of its confidence. ‘I suppose it’s possible she could be having some sort of psychological block. She wants to believe my father was a changed man, that no girl was with them, so she’s convinced herself they were alone. That could be it.’
‘I’m sure it must be.’ Wexford got up. ‘Good night, Miss Fanshawe. Thank you for the coffee. I take it you’ll be staying here a few days?’
‘I’ll keep in touch. Good night, Chief Inspector.’
The next step, he thought as he walked home, would be to investigate the missing persons list in the holiday towns and London too, if those proved fruitless. That was routine stuff and not for him. Why, anyway, was he following this road accident that wasn’t even properly his province to distract his mind from the urgency of the Hatton affair? Because it had features so distracting and so inexplicable that no-one could simply explain them away?
Of course it would turn out that the dead girl was merely someone Jerome Fanshawe had come across that weekend and who had taken his fancy. Nothing so dramatic as Nora Fanshawe had suggested need have happened. Why shouldn’t Fanshawe just have said to his wife, ‘This young lady has missed her last train and since she lives in London I said we’d give her a lift’? But in that case Mrs Fanshawe would hardly deny the girl’s presence.
There was more to it than that. There was the handbag. Camb had searched that handbag and found in it nothing but make-up and a little money. That wasn’t natural, Wexford reflected. Where were her keys? Come to that, where were all the other things women usually stuff into bags, handkerchiefs, dress shop bills, receipts, tickets, pen, letters? The things which were there were anonymous, the things which were not there were the objects by which someone might be identified.
Wexford let himself into his own house and the dog Clytemnestra galloped to meet him.
‘What would you do,’ Wexford said to his wife, ‘if I brought a young girl home and offered you a thousand pounds to let her stay?’
‘You haven’t got a thousand pounds,’ said Mrs Wexford.
‘True. There’s always a fly in the ointment.’
‘On the subject of young girls and money, Mr Vigo has sent a whacking bill for your daughter’s tooth.’
Wexford looked at it and groaned. ‘Pleached walks!’ he said. ‘Chinese Chippendale! I just hope one of my customers pinches his orrery, that’s all. Is there any beer in the house?’
Suppressing a smile, his wife stepped over the now recumbent form of the knitted dog and went into the kitchen to open a can.
A pewter tankard at his elbow, Wexford spent the next couple of hours studying Hatton’s log book and Mrs Hatton’s engagement diary.
It was the week immediately preceding May 21st which interested him. On the 22nd Hatton had paid five hundred pounds into his bank and two days prior to that had either been in possession of a large sum of money or confident of acquiring it, for on the 21st, a Tuesday, he had ordered his new set of teeth.
Mrs Hatton’s engagement diary was a calendar in the shape of a rectangular book. The left-hand pages bore a coloured photograph of some English beauty spot with an appropriate verse, both for the picture and the time of year, while the right-hand pages were each divided into seven sections. The days of the week were listed on the left side and a space of perhaps one inch by five was allowed for brief jottings.
Wexford opened it at Sunday, May 12th.
The photograph was of Kentish fruit orchards and the lines beneath it from As You Like It: ‘Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May while they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.’
Not true of the Hattons, he thought. Now to see how Mrs Hatton had occupied herself during that particular week.
Nothing for Sunday. Monday May 13th: C. left for Leeds. Mother to tea. Tuesday May 14th: Rang Gas Board. C. home 3 p.m. Pictures. And here in Hatton’s log book was the Leeds trip confirmed. He had stopped twice on the way up, at Norman Cross for lunch at the Merrie England café, and at Dave’s Diner near Retford for a cup of tea. His room in Leeds was with a Mrs Hubble at 21 Ladysmith Road, and on the return journey he had stopped only once and again at the Merrie England. There was nothing in the log book at this stage to make Wexford even pause. Hatton had done the journey in the shortest possible time, leaving no possible spare moment for undercover activities. He turned back to the diary.
Wednesday, May l5th: C. off work. Rang doctor. Mem, N.H.S., not private. Interesting. Hatton had been ill and at that time apparently not in funds. Thursday May 16th: C. summer flu. Ring Jack and Marilyn put off dinner. There was no entry for Friday May 17th.
Saturday, May 18th: C. better. Doctor called again. Jim and mother came.