A Commonplace Killing (12 page)

W
alter Frobisher was the sort of man you would have passed on the street or sat next to on a bus without giving a second glance. He had the unsubstantial, fading quality of a once boyishly good-looking man gone to seed; Cooper disliked him on sight.

“Mr Frobisher? Mr Walter Frobisher?” said Lucas as the battered front door swung open.

“Yes.”

“Do you know a Mrs Lillian Frobisher?”

“I should say so,” said Frobisher, with the slight note of caution that people customarily display when official-seeming individuals turn up unexpectedly on their doorsteps. “She’s my wife.” This was followed with a self-deprecating grin that Cooper suspected he had doubtless cultivated over the years, thinking it would endear him to women, but which had acquired a cringing, pathetic quality in middle age. As far as Cooper could deduce, there was no apparent sign of guilt in the way Frobisher responded.

“Do you know where she is?”

Even before Lucas had asked the question Cooper had noted how the fellow had expressed nothing in the way of surprise, concern or relief upon hearing his wife’s name. That is to say, he had given no indication whatever that he had been wondering about his wife’s whereabouts over the past couple of days. It wasn’t until Lucas introduced them as detectives that Frobisher’s mien, which up until then had even had something cheery about it, was clouded by perplexity.

“Has Lillian had an accident?” he asked, and the fellow, who had seemed so inconsequential on opening the front door, appeared to diminish even further before their eyes.

Cooper left it to Lucas to break the news about the
identity
card and the strangled woman; he did this not because he could not do so himself – he had broken countless pieces of bad news in his time – but because the recipients of bad news often betrayed themselves in the way they reacted to said bad news, and he liked to keep himself alert to any tell-tale signs in their comportment, expression, voice. On learning that his wife had quite possibly been strangled on a nearby bomb-site, Frobisher went quite pale; he clasped his own throat with one hand, and clutched at the doorframe with the other. Then he uttered a faint cry. Cooper did not lack compassion, but he was a copper first and foremost and he suspected everyone – especially the close relations of a murder victim. There was something unmanly in the way Frobisher had responded, which made Cooper dislike him even more; but there was nothing to indicate obvious guilt.

“We can’t be sure, of course,” Lucas was saying. “We shall need a positive identification of the body.”

“Yes, of course you will.” Frobisher replied in a vacant faraway voice, and as he led the way, slowly, into the house, he certainly appeared to be in shock.

There was an old-fashioned hat-rack in the hallway
overladen
with dusty old coats in various stages of decay that they had to push past. The hallway itself smelled of cabbage and dry rot, and was, Cooper noted, lit by gas-light.

“Don’t go in there,” counselled Frobisher as Lucas made to enter the front parlour. “It isn’t safe.”

“Bomb damage?”

“The house opposite took a direct hit; knocked out all the windows and the upstairs ceiling.”

He led them along a dingy narrow passage into a cramped back parlour which opened on to a tiny scullery overlooking the back garden. Across the scullery window a line had been strung, from which a pair of stockings and little scraps of pink silk dripped into a butler sink. A wireless sat on the window ledge, presumably so it could be heard by someone who was in the yard. It was playing dance music: modern dance music. Frobisher didn’t seem the sort to listen to modern dance music. The parlour itself was stuffy and overstuffed: too much
furniture
, too many things. A line of cream-and-blue tin canisters was ranged along the shelf of a dresser which dominated one side. Salt. Sugar. Flour. Tea. Coffee. To the right of the fireplace there was a shabby armchair, with a drab antimacassar draped over its back. A heavily ticking clock stood on the mantelpiece which was cluttered with photographs and dusty ornaments. An empty fruit-bowl atop a lace doily was set in the middle of a half-folded drop-leaf table, which stood square in the centre of the room.

Frobisher had slumped in the armchair in an attitude of abject misery, but he did not forget his manners. He possessed a feeble sort of gentility, which he mustered now, gesturing to them to sit down on the chairs packed tightly around the table. Then he ran his hand over his sandy hair which was, like the rest of him, slowly fading from view.

“Got any brandy in the house, sir?” asked Lucas.

Frobisher shook his head. He reached across and took down a pipe from the mantelpiece, knocking it out against the surround. Lucas took out a cigarette and shared a match with him. Smoke mazed across the room.

“What happened?” Frobisher asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, sir,” said Lucas. “When did you last see your wife?”

Frobisher fumbled with the bowl of his pipe and Cooper tried to assess whether he was buying himself some time.

“Saturday.”

“What time?”

“About six o’clock. Half past. It might have been a little later. No, it was after the news. After half past six.” There was a little hesitation in the course of which Frobisher appeared to scrutinise the pattern in the lino. “Oh God,” he said in a small absent voice. Then: “Oh no! Oh no! Oh God! Lillian! Oh God!” He clasped his hands together in front of him as if in prayer, and lay his indistinct head upon them. “Oh God! Poor old girl! Poor old girl!”

Lucas and Cooper exchanged a brief look.

“Why don’t I make you a cup of tea, sir?” said Lucas. He stood up and went through to the scullery. It was a good opportunity to find out who was listening to the wireless in the garden.

“So you haven’t seen your wife since Saturday early evening…” Cooper asked.

“No.”

“Weren’t you concerned when she didn’t come home?”

Frobisher gave his sad little smile; meant to ingratiate, it had the opposite effect.

“We had a bit of a row,” he said. “You know how it is. She said she was going to her sister’s in Jaywick Sands.”

“Has she done that before?”

“She’s gone off…”

“To Jaywick?”

“She stayed there during the war…”

“I see.” Cooper peered hard at the fellow. It was all a bit queer, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t sure that Frobisher was lying to him. Not yet.

“Can you think of any reason why anyone should have wished to harm your wife?”

Frobisher blinked at the detective and shook his head. It was clear that the idea had never occurred to him.

“Apart from visiting her sister in Jaywick, is there anywhere else she liked to go – anywhere nearer to home, as it were?”

“She likes the pictures. She goes every Saturday – pictures or the Empire. She likes…” Frobisher stopped and swallowed hard. “She read all those papers about film stars. She knew them all. And she was very clever with her hands. Made all her own clothes. She always looks very smart…” His voice trailed off and he began to cry again.

Cooper regarded him now with embarrassment. He tapped his forefinger on the table impatiently and waited for Frobisher to compose himself.

“Did she take a lot with her?” he asked with a trace of annoyance when he could wait no longer. “Only we didn’t find anything – not even a handbag, as a matter of fact…”

Frobisher sighed heavily.

“We had a row,” he said. “She went off in a bit of a huff…”

“Did she take a suitcase or vanity case or anything of that sort, as far as you know?”

“Oh, God!” exclaimed Frobisher, “I’ve been a bloody fool…”

“Haven’t we all.”

There was a photograph on the mantelpiece: a fellow in uniform smiling broadly, sergeant’s stripes proudly displayed. Cooper took out his own pipe from his jacket pocket and pointed the stem at the picture.

“Been away at the front, eh?” he said.

Frobisher nodded.

“Bloody nightmare, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“You know how it is…” Frobisher’s voice trailed off and he lay his forehead once again upon his clasped hands as if imploring for mercy. Cooper was feeling a twinge of pity; he tried to imagine how it would feel to go through all of that only to return to this: a couple of damp rooms in a half-bombed house. He wondered if disappointment was enough to lead a man to murder.

“I remember coming back from the last lot,” he said. “Everything seemed so different somehow.” Frobisher had removed a large white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and was wiping his face with it. “Makes you wonder what you came through it all for.” It was always awkward, acknowledging one’s battle experiences with another man, beyond the raising of eyebrows over a pint, or some other subtle display of common feeling. With Frobisher, however, the effect was quite different: he seemed momentarily to swell. Blowing his nose determinedly with the handkerchief, he assumed a sort of military air.

“Doesn’t it, though,” he said, pulling his shoulders back. He had been perfectly well spoken before, but now he sounded like the King, or Neville Chamberlain. “We’ve reached a situation where the ordinary law-abiding citizen no longer feels safe in his own home. People have lost sight of the difference between right and wrong.” His bland features were twisted with an
ill-suppressed
fury, and he gripped his pipe tightly, jabbing at the air about him with the stem. “Hooliganism is ruining this country!” he declared. “Spivs, wide boys… I fought in a war – twice – for this country. And look where it’s got me!”

Cooper let him have his say. It was the least he could do, or rather it was all he could do; but he was taken aback by the sudden outburst, and the possibility that this cringing pathetic little man was capable of rage, perhaps even violence, made an impression upon him.

“Do you know?” Frobisher continued. He was calmer now, less splenetic; clearly something, some deep measure of frustration, had been relieved. He was brooding upon the empty grate. “I’ve applied for thirty-two jobs. Thirty-two. I was in insurance before the war, but that’s all Freemasonry. Thirty-two letters and only two replies. After fighting and winning a war – two wars – the best this country can offer me is forty-five bob a week National Assistance.”

“That really is too bad, old man,” said Cooper. “I hope you find something soon.” It was a stupid thing to say to a man who had just been widowed in terrible circumstances.

“I’ve never had to ask for a hand-out in my life!” Frobisher spluttered.

“No. No. Of course not,” Cooper said, putting out his hand in a gesture of appeasement. Once again he noted the sudden rage. “I apologise. Mind me asking what it is you do now?”

The fellow stiffened again in the cod military fashion.

“I’m a commissionaire,” he said, though from the manner in which he said it, one might be forgiven for assuming
commissionaire
was a synonym for prime minister.

“A commissionaire?” Cooper tried to sound impressed as this was clearly what was required.

“At Gamages.” Again, the tone of ineffable
overestimation
, which struck Cooper before the full significance of what Frobisher had just told him sunk in.

“Gamages? You mean the store?” He tried to keep the surprise from his voice.

“Yes, you know, up in Holborn.”

Cooper swallowed hard.

“Tell me about the quarrel with your wife,” he said.

Frobisher retreated back into his diminishment; he was once again the pathetic little man upon whom self-pity sat rather heavily.

“Lillian suffers with her nerves,” he said, drawing
thoughtfully
on his pipe. “It isn’t easy being with a woman like that…”

“No, I can imagine…”

“There’s madness in her family, you know. She’s very highly strung. Her sister is an hysteric. And the mother is completely senile.” Frobisher stopped abruptly and buried his head in his hands. “Oh God! Poor old girl,” he cried, and then over and over again, “Poor old girl. Poor old girl…”

Cooper asked himself whether he was witnessing grief, remorse, or guilt.

Lucas came back into the parlour and selected the
canisters
marked Tea and Sugar from the dresser shelf, making a little nod in the direction of the scullery window. Cooper waited for the wild sobs emanating from Frobisher to subside into something more like a hiccup, and then asked him if there was anyone else in the house.

“Why yes,” he said, looking up in surprise. “Miss Wilkes is in the back garden.”

“Miss Wilkes?”

“Yes… my wife’s cousin…” Cooper noted a telling hesitation. “But she doesn’t have anything to… She helps Lillian with her mother. She rents the attic from us.” Frobisher seemed
unaccountably
uncomfortable recounting these seemingly
innocuous
details, and Cooper had the strongest impression that, in between bouts of apparent grief, the victim’s husband was displaying the unmistakeable impression of guilt. But as to the derivation of that guilt, he could not be certain.

“Was Miss Wilkes here on Saturday evening?”

Frobisher nodded, his red-rimmed eyes turned on Cooper now had something rather desperate to them; something pleading.

“And would it be possible to have a word with her?”

Frobisher hesitated for a moment, before standing up and moving towards the scullery as if he were made of lead.

“Evelyn!” he called. “Evelyn, come here – something’s happened to Lillian.” His voice cracked. “Something awful.”

A young woman came clacking into the parlour, her heels catching in the torn linoleum. She stood in the scullery doorway, limned by the early-evening light, hands on hips.

“What’s going on?” she demanded. She was looking about the parlour with experienced, mascaraed eyes, a wartime product, about twenty-two, twenty-three; blonde; pretty, in an obvious, rather cheap way. She was dressed in sandals and a wide-brimmed sunhat and the scantiest bathing suit Cooper had seen in a long while. She pouted her full mouth, giving her face a somewhat puckered, spoilt impression. She was certainly very common, and, Cooper thought, shiftless.