“Earlier?” Charles had collapsed on the pavement outside the Thornhills’ house in Victoria Road a little after seven-thirty. “Surely you mean later?”
Quale shook his head. “It was about a quarter-past six.”
“I expect he looked in at the shop on the way home.”
I said goodbye and joined the queue at the bus stop. Charles had never worked in the evening. I was standing there, turning over in my mind what Quale had said, when there was a loud tooting from the other side of the road. It was Marina Harper in her little two-seater. She drove across the road and pulled up at the bus stop.
“Hop in, Anne. I’ll give you a lift.”
I was tired, and it was beginning to rain. Otherwise I might have tried to find an excuse. I never knew quite what to make of Marina. She had fair, coarse hair and a high-coloured face with small, pale eyes. She was comfortably off — her father used to own the local bus company. We had known each other since we were children but we weren’t particular friends. And I was old-fashioned enough to feel that a wife should live with her husband.
Marina talked unceasingly as she drove me home. “I’ve just had a couple of days in town.” Her husband worked in London. He and Marina had a semi-detached marriage: his job kept him in London while she preferred to live in Lydmouth. “...And you’ll never guess who we met at a party last night. Elizabeth David — yes, really. Absolutely wonderful. Such style. She looks how she writes, if you know what I mean.”
“Elizabeth who?”
Marina raised plucked eyebrows. “Elizabeth David. The cookery writer. You know, she’s always in Vogue. And she’s written this super book about Mediterranean food. Why don’t you come to lunch tomorrow? We can try one of the recipes.”
Marina dropped me in Chepstow Road. After lunch, I went into the dining room. Charles kept cheque books and other documents relating to money on the top drawer of the bureau. I settled down and tried to work out how the money ebbed and flowed and ebbed again in our lives. I found the most recent bank statement among the pile of business letters which I had left on the hall table for Nigel. I wished he were here now.
At the date of the statement, our personal account had not been overdrawn, but it now was. In the week before his death Charles had made out a cheque for one hundred and eighty-nine pounds, nineteen shillings and eleven pence.
I leafed through the cancelled cheques enclosed with the statement. The cheque in question had been made out to H. R. Caterford Ltd and paid into a branch of Barclays Bank in Cardiff.
Feeling like a detective, I put on my hat and coat, walked to the telephone box on the corner of Victoria Road and consulted the telephone directory. H. R. Caterford Ltd was a jeweller’s in the Royal Arcade. Suddenly the solution came to me: Charles must have bought me a present. The dear man knew I had been a little low since coming out of hospital in September. (Knowing one will never have children is a little depressing.) But in that case, where was the present? Christmas was two months away. He would hardly keep it until then.
On impulse I dialled the number in the directory. The phone was answered on the second ring, which was just as well as I was beginning to get cold feet about the whole business.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “May I speak to Mr Caterford?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Mrs Butter, from Lydmouth. Mrs Charles Butter. I believe my husband—”
“Mrs Butter. How pleasant to hear from you. You’re well, I hope?”
“Yes, thank you. I was wondering—”
“Oddly enough, I was just thinking of you. Only yesterday afternoon the lady who sold us the brooch came in with the matching ring. Platinum and opal. Said she didn’t want that either, because her daughter had told her that opals are unlucky unless you’re born in October. Not that you need to worry about that, of course.”
“Oh?”
“As you’re one of the favoured few.”
“Oh yes.”
“It’s rather a lovely ring. The opals are a perfect match for your eyes, if I may say so. Anyway, would you like to have a word with Mr Butter about it? Then perhaps he could telephone me. I’ll hold it for a day or two. It’s always a particular pleasure to oblige an old customer.”
“Yes, thank you. Goodbye.”
I put down the phone and walked home. A platinum and opal brooch. Charles knew I didn’t like platinum. Then the opals: unlucky unless the wearer had been born in the month of October. My birthday was in March. And how could opals match my eyes? They are brown. Finally, Mr Caterford had spoken to me as if he knew me. But until this afternoon I had never heard of him.
The following morning, I found the rat. The rat-catcher had warned me this might happen. “That’s the trouble with rats, look,” he had said. “You can never tell where they’re going to pop up.”
The rat was lying on the path that led from the old stable to the road. It was dark, with a long tail. There had been a frost in the night and its fur was dusted with droplets of ice, like sugar. Actually, it looked rather sweet. Because of the frost, the ground would not be easy to dig, so I decided to bury it after lunch — my lunch with Marina Harper.
Marina lived in Raglan Court, a block of modern flats overlooking Jubilee Park. The place looked very nice, I’m sure — if you like hard, modern furniture and American gadgets. There was a lounge-cum-dining room with a huge picture window overlooking the park and a serving hatch to the kitchen. The place stank of garlic.
“I’ve just made dry martinis,” Marina said. “You don’t mind if I put the finishing touches to lunch, do you? We can talk through the hatch.”
As she poured the drinks, light glinted on a silver brooch she was wearing. Rather a pretty brooch with opals set in it.
Not silver: platinum?
“That’s a lovely brooch,” I said.
“Yes, it is pretty, isn’t it?”
“Aren’t opals unlucky?”
Marina laughed, a gurgle of sound like water running out of a bath. “Not if you’re born in October. Then they’re lucky. Now why don’t you sit here while I finish off in the kitchen?”
I watched her through the frame of the hatch — the flash of a knife, the glint of platinum — and all the time she talked.
“I thought we’d have filet de porc en sanglier. It’s one of my Elizabeth David recipes. Pork that tastes like wild boar. The secret is the marinade. It has to be for eight days. And you can’t skimp on the ingredients either — things like coriander seeds, juniper berries, basil. There’s a little shop in Brewer Street where you can get them. I think it must be the only place in England.”
Black market ingredients, I thought. Pork and all. The bitch. The cow.
While Marina talked, the rich, unhealthy odours of the meal wafted through the hatch into the living room. My hands were sweaty on the cold glass. In my nervousness, I finished the drink more quickly than I should have done.
“Can I get you a refill?” Marina called.
I stood up. “I wonder if I might — is it along here?”
“Second on the left.”
In the hall, I opened my handbag and took out Charles’s Yale key. Holding my breath, I opened the front door. I slipped the key into the lock and twisted. The key turned.
I drew it out of the lock, closed the door quietly and darted into the sanctuary of the bathroom. Marina was wearing the brooch. The jeweller in Cardiff had thought that Marina was me, had thought that she was Charles’s wife. So they must have been in Cardiff together, and acting as if they were a married couple. The key in Charles’s pocket fitted Marina’s door. There could be only one explanation for all that.
It is strange how in a crisis one finds reserves of strength one did not suspect existed. Somehow I went back into the living room and accepted another dry martini. Somehow I made myself eat the ghastly, overflavoured pork which Marina served up with such a triumphant flourish that I wanted to throw the plate at her. I even complimented her on her cooking. She said that she would give me the recipe.