‘How was he when he came in?’
‘In himself, d’you mean? He’d had his sickness back, he said, and he’d had to stop a couple of times on the road. He’d have been back earlier if he hadn’t stopped. He wanted to get back earlier, you see, to surprise me.’ Emotion over came her and she breathed quickly, fighting back the tears. ‘I… He… he said it was stifling in the lorry and he’d had to get a breath of fresh air on the Stowerton By-pass. He walked in the fields a bit where it was cool.’
‘Think carefully, Mrs Hatton. Did he say he had seen anything of interest while he was in those fields?’
She looked at him in bewilderment. ‘No, he only said it had done him good. He felt fine, he said, and I could see he did. On top of the world he was that night, a different man. He was having his meal and we talked about Jack’s wedding.’ Her voice grew hoarse and she leant heavily against Jack’s arm. ‘Charlie wanted me to have a whole new outfit, dress, coat, hat, the lot. He said – he said I was his wife and he wanted me to be a credit to him.’
‘And you always were, love. Charlie was proud of you.’
‘What happened the next day?’ said Wexford.
‘We had a bit of a lay-in.’ She bit her lip. ‘Charlie got up at nine and then he phoned a fellow he knew who was leaving his flat. Charlie’d said he’d come down and look at it when he’d had his breakfast and that’s what he did. You tell it, Jack, it’s your turn.’
Jack eased away his arm and patted the widow’s hand.
‘Charlie came down to the works but I couldn’t get away. I was off doing the wiring in them new houses over Pomfret way. He said he reckoned he’d found us a flat and I said, take Marilyn with you. I can see him now, old Charlie, pleased as punch and grinning like he always did when he was going to do something for you. Bobbing up and down he was like a monkey on a stick.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Old Charlie,’ he said.
Impatiently, Wexford turned to the wife. ‘You went with him?’
‘Yeah, he came down to Moran’s.’ Moran’s was Kingsmarkham’s biggest draper’s. ‘That old bitch, that manageress, didn’t want me to go at first. Not that there’s much trade to speak of on a Monday morning. I’m leaving in a month anyway, I said, and if you don’t like it you can give me my cards and I’ll go now. Straight out I said it. I’d made her look real small in front of Charlie and she never said another word. Well, me and Charlie we went to look at this flat and there was this geezer who was leaving, a right queer if you ask me, wanted two hundred quid key money before he’d let us have it. I could have smacked his face then and there. In a dressing gown he was. There’ll be forced labour for his sort one of these fine days and I was just going to come out with it when Charlie said that was all right and we’d find the money somehow. He could see I was dead keen on the place.’
‘He paid over the money?’
‘Don’t be so daft. He said something about consulting with Jack, though if I wanted it Jack’d want it too all right, and then we went. I was fuming. I’ll put up the money, Charlie said when we was outside, and you can pay me back when you’re rolling. How about that, then?’
‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘how about that?’
‘Did Hatton take you back to the shop?’
‘Of course he didn’t, he wasn’t my keeper. He walked up with me as far as the Olive and then he said he’d got to make a phone call. He went into that box outside the Olive and I never saw him again for a couple of days.’
‘Why would he make a phone call from a box when he had his own phone at home?’
The married pair were thinking what he, under other circumstances might have thought. A married man with a phone of his own makes calls from a box to his mistress. Mrs Hatton looked innocent, subdued, armoured by her memories. Then Marilyn laughed harshly. ‘You’re crazy if you’re thinking what I think you are! Charlie Hatton?’
‘What do you mean, Marilyn?’ the widow asked.
‘I’m thinking nothing,’ said Wexford. ‘Did your husband come home for his lunch?’
‘About half-past twelve. I asked him what he was going to do with himself in the afternoon and it was then he said he was going to get his teeth seen to. He kept getting bits of food under his plate, you see. He was very ashamed of having false teeth was Charlie on account of being so young and all that. And on account of me… He thought I minded. Me mind? I wouldn’t have cared it… Oh, what’s the use? I was telling you about getting his teeth fixed. He’d often said he’d see about getting his teeth fixed. He’d often said he’d see about getting a real good set when he could afford it and he said he thought he’d go to Mr Vigo.’
‘I’d sort of recommended him, you see,’ Jack put in.
‘You?’ Wexford said rudely.
Jack lifted his face and flushed a deep wine colour.
‘I don’t mean I went to him for my teeth,’ he muttered. ‘I’d been up at his place once or twice doing electrical work and I’d sort of described what the place was like to Charlie. Sort of about the garden and all the old things he’s got up there and that room full of Chinese stuff.’
Mrs Hatton was crying now and she wiped her eyes, smiling reminiscently her tears. ‘Many’s the laugh Charlie and Jack used to have over that,’ she said. ‘Charlie said he’d like to see it. Like to have a dekko, he said, and Jack said Mr Vigo was rolling in money. Well, he’d have to be a good dentist to make all that, wouldn’t he? So Charlie thought he was the man for him and he phoned then and there. You’ll never get an appointment for today, I said, but he did. Mr Vigo had a cancellation and he said he’d see him at two.’
‘And then?’
‘Charlie came back at four and said Mr Vigo was going to fix him up with a new set. Mr Vigo was as nice as pie, he said, no side to him. He’d given him a drink in this said Chinese room and Charlie said when he was rich he was going to have stuff like that, rooms full of it and vases and ornaments and – and a little army of chess men and… Oh God, he’ll never have anything where he is!’
‘Don’t, Lily, don’t, love.’
‘When did Mr Hatton give you the key money for this flat of yours?’
‘It was a loan,’ said Marilyn Pertwee indignantly.
‘Lend it to you, then?’
‘He came round with it to Jack’s dad’s place on the Wednesday.’
‘That would have been the 22nd?’
‘I reckon. We handed it over to this bloke as had the flat the next day.’ Jack Pertwee stared hard at Wexford. The dull eyes were glazed now, the face pallid yet mottled. Wexford could hardly suppress a shiver. God help the man who murdered Charlie Hatton, he thought, if Pertwee gets on to him before we do.
‘Isn’t it about time we got shot of that thing?’
Sheila removed Clytemnestra from her father’s chair and contemplated the mass of hairs the dog had moulted on to the cushion. ‘I’m getting a bit fed up with her myself,’ she said. ‘Sebastian’s supposed to be coming for her tonight.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘All right if I have the car to take him to the station?’
‘What, is he scared to cross those fields alone?’ Mabel, dear, listen here, there’s a robbery in the park… ‘I may want the car. He’s young and healthy. Let him walk.’
‘He’s got a verruca,’ said Sheila. ‘He had to walk here and back when he brought her a fortnight ago. I’d be meeting him now’ – she gave her father a disgruntled look – ‘only you’ve always got the car.’
‘It is my car,’ said Wexford absurdly, and then, because it was a game that he and Sheila played, ‘It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it…’
‘For a wilderness of verrucas! Oh, Pop, you’re a honey really. There’s Sebastian now.’
Mrs Wexford began calmly laying the table. ‘Don’t say anything about his hair,’ she said to her husband. ‘He’s got peculiar hair and you know what you are.’