Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die (4 page)

   They both knew Jack Pertwee by sight. Most Kingsmarkham faces were familiar to Wexford, and Burden remembered seeing him the night before arm-in-arm with the dead man, singing and disturbing decent citizens. A happily married man himself, he had the deepest sympathy for the widow, but in his heart he thought Jack Pertwee a bit of a lout. You didn’t have to tread softly with such as he and he wondered scornfully why the fellow’s face was lard-coloured.

   Impatiently he watched him lumber blindly down the steep narrow staircase and when the bridegroom reached the bottom, Burden said curtly:

   ‘Your father’s told you? Hatton was murdered last night. We want to know the lot, where you’d been and what time you left him.’

   ‘Here, go easy,’ said the father. ‘It’s been a shock. They were old mates, my boy and Charlie.’

   Jack pushed past him into the poky front parlour and the others followed. The wedding flowers had come. Jack had a white rose in his buttonhole and there were two more, their stems wrapped in silver foil, on the fumed oak sideboard. One was for the bridegroom’s father and the other would never be worn. Jack plucked the flower out of his morning coat and closed his fist slowly over it, crushing it into a pulp.

   ‘I’ll get you a drop of whisky, son.’

   ‘I don’t want it,’ Jack said with his back to them. ‘We was drinking whisky last night. I never want to touch it again.’ He pulled his black immaculate sleeve across his eyes. “Who did it?’ he shouted.

   ‘We hoped you’d be able to tell us that,’ said Burden.

   ‘Me? Are you out of your bloody mind? Just show me the bastard who killed Charlie Hatton and I’ll . . .’ He sat down heavily, spread his arms on the table and dropped his head.

   ‘Charlie,’ he said.

   Wexford didn’t pursue it. He turned to the father. “What was it last night, a stag party?’ Pertwee nodded. ‘D’you know who was there?’

   ‘Jack, of course, and poor old Charlie. Then there was all the darts club lot, George Carter, fellow called Bayles, Maurice Cullam from Sewingbury and a couple of others. That right, Jack?’

   Jack nodded dumbly.

   ‘Charlie got there late, Jack said. They left at closing time, split up outside, I reckon. Charlie and Cullam’ll have walked home across the fields. That right, Jack?’

   This time Jack lifted his head. Burden thought him a weak womanish fool, despising his red eyes and the muscle that twitched in his cheek. But Wexford spoke gently.

   ‘I realize this has been a blow to you, Mr Pertwee. We won’t bother you much longer. Did Mr Cullam and Mr Hatton walk home together?’

   ‘Maurice went first,’ Jack muttered. ‘About twenty to eleven it was. Charlie. . . Charlie stayed for a bit of a natter with me.’ A sob caught his throat and he coughed to mask it. ‘He said he wished me luck in case he didn’t get the chance today. Christ, he didn’t know he’d never get another chance.’

   ‘Come on, son, bear up. Let me give you a little drop of scotch. You owe it to Marilyn to keep going you know. It’s your wedding day, remember?’

   Jack shook off his father’s hand and lurched to his feet.

   ‘There isn’t going to be no wedding,’ he said.

   ‘You don’t mean that, Jack, think of that girl of yours, think of all them folks coming. They’ll be getting to the church in a minute. Charlie wouldn’t have wished it.’

   Stubbornly Jack said, ‘I’m not getting married today. D’you think I don’t know what’s right, what’s proper?’ He wrenched off his tie and flung his morning coat over the back of a chair.

   His father, with a working man’s regard for hired finery, picked it up, smoothed it and stood draping it over his arm like an outfitter’s assistant. Bewildered by the holocaust of events, by death that had suddenly changed a world, he began apologising, first to the policemen: ‘I don’t know what to say, his best man to die like that . . .’ and then to his son: ‘I’d give my right hand to have things different, Jack. What can I do for you, son? I’ll do anything you say.’

   Jack dropped his handful of bruised petals. A sudden dignity made him straighten his back and hold his head high. ‘Then get down to that church,’ he said, ‘and tell them the wedding’s off.’ He faced Wexford. ‘I’m not answering any more questions now. I’ve got my grief. You ought to respect my grief.’ Still the old man hesitated, biting his lip. ‘Go on, Dad,’ Jack said fiercely. ‘Tell them it’s all off and tell them why.’ He gasped as if suddenly, at this moment, it had come home to him. ‘Tell them Charlie Hatton’s dead!’

   Oh, Jonathan, thou wast slain in thy high places. . . How are the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished!

‘A best man, indeed,’ said Burden. ‘Everyone’s best man.’

   You callous devil, thought Wexford. ‘Naturally Pertwee’d be upset. What did you expect?’

   Burden made a moue of disgust. ‘That sort of grief, that’s the widow’s province. A man ought to have more self-control.’ His pale ascetic face flushed unbecomingly. ‘You don’t suppose there was anything . . .’

   ‘No, I don’t,’ said Wexford. ‘And why can’t you call a spade a spade? They were friends. Don’t you have friends, Mike? A pretty pass we’ve come to if a man can’t have a friend without being labelled queer.’ He stared aggressively at Burden and declaimed loudly and meaningfully, ‘0 brave new world, that has such people in it!’

   Burden gave a stiff repressive cough and maintained silence until they reached York Street. Then he said coldly, ‘George Carter’s place is down here, old Pertwee said.’

   ‘He’s the Morris dancer, isn’t he? I’ve seen him cavorting about on summer nights outside the Olive and Dove.’

   ‘Lot of affected nonsense.’

   But George Carter wasn’t wearing his cap and bells this morning. From the brilliantined hair and the smart lounge suit, Wexford gathered that here was a wedding guest.

He hinted at the unlikelihood of Jack Pertwee’s being married that day and was inwardly amused to observe that this piece of information - the fact that Carter would be deprived of his cold chicken and champagne - distressed him more than Hatton’s death. The wedding guest did not exactly beat his breast but he looked considerably crestfallen.

   ‘All that money wasted,’ he said. ‘I know, I was making plans for my own wedding, but then you won’t want to know about that. Pity Jack had to be told, really. I don’t seem to be able to take it in. Charlie Hatton dead! He was always so full of life, if you know what I mean.’

   ‘And very well liked, I gather.’

   George Carter’s eyebrows went up. ‘Charlie? Oh well, mustn’t speak ill of the dead.’

   ‘You’d better speak the truth, Mr Carter,’ said Burden, ‘and never mind whether it’s ill or not. We want to know all about this party last night. The lot, please. You can take your time.’

   Like Jack Pertwee and yet utterly unlike him, Carter took off his jacket and loosened his tie. ‘I don’t know what you mean by the lot,’ he said. ‘It was just a bunch of mates having a drink.’

   ‘What happened? What did you talk about?’

   ‘O.K.’ He gave them an incredulous glance and said sarcastically, ‘Stop me if I’m boring you. Charlie come into the Dragon at about half nine, maybe a quarter to ten. We was drinking beer so, of course, Charlie has to make us all feel small by paying for whiskies all round. A crack hand at that, was Charlie Hatton. I made some comment and he bit my head off. This the sort of thing you want to know?’

   ‘Exactly the sort of thing, Mr Carter.’

   ‘Seems a bit mean, that’s all, with the poor geezer dead. Then someone else was telling a joke and he sort of - well, humiliated him, if you know what I mean. He was like that, always had to be top dog. He drank my drink because I said something about all the money he was always flashing around and then he made a dirty crack about. . . Well, that doesn’t matter. It was personal. He got at our chairman too and he left with a couple of the others. Geoff had already gone. There was me and Charlie and Maurice and Jack left and we went when they closed. And that’s the lot.’

   ‘You’re sure?’

   ‘I told you there was nothing much. I can’t think of any more . . . Oh, wait a minute. But it was nothing.’

   ‘We’ll have it just the same, Mr Carter.’

   George Carter shrugged impatiently. ‘I don’t even know what it was about. Nothing, I reckon. Maurice said - it was after the others had gone - Maurice said, “Seen much of McCloy lately, Charlie?” I think those were his words. I know the name was McCloy but it didn’t mean nothing to me. Jack didn’t like it and he was a bit shirty with Maurice. I reckon Charlie looked a bit sick. God, it was all so . . . well, it was nothing. But Charlie’d always rise. I expected him to rise. I don’t know why. He didn’t. He just made a crack about Maurice needing to sleep quiet in his bed. Said it was time he did, meaning that Maurice had so many kids and . . . well, you can get the message.’

   ‘Not altogether,’ said Wexford. ‘Had Cullam suggested that Hatton couldn’t sleep quiet in his?’

   ‘That’s right. I forgot that bit. I wish I could remember his words. Something like “I don’t have nothing to do with McCloy, I like to sleep quiet in my bed”.’

   Very interesting Wexford thought. Far from being popular, Hatton had evidently had a host of enemies. He had spent less than an hour in the Dragon and during that time he had succeeded in needling at least four men.

   ‘You mentioned all the money Hatton used to flash around,’ he said. ‘What money?’

   ‘He always had wads of it,’ said Carter. ‘I’ve known him three years and he was always flush. But he’d had more lately. He bought four rounds of double scotches last night and it didn’t even make a hole in what he’d got.’

   ‘How much had he got, Mr Carter?’

   ‘I didn’t count it, you know,’ Carter said with asperity. He blew his nose on his clean white wedding handkerchief. ‘He’d got his pay packet, but he didn’t touch that. Then he had this roll of notes. I told you I didn’t count them. How could I?’

   ‘Twenty pounds, thirty, more?’

   Carter wrinkled his forehead in an effort of concentration. ‘He paid for the first round out of a fiver and the third with another fiver. He’d got two fivers left, then. As well as that there was a wad of oncers.’ He indicated with two parted fingers a quarter of an inch. ‘I reckon he was carrying a hundred quid besides his pay.’

By lunchtime Wexford and Burden had interviewed all those members of the darts club that had been present at Jack Pertwee’s stag party with the exception of Maurice Cullam, but none of them had been able to do more than confirm that Hatton had been aggressive, vain and malicious and that he had been carrying a great deal of money.

   They returned to the police station, passing the parish church on whose steps a June bride and her attendants were being photographed. The bridegroom moved out of the throng and Wexford felt a strange sentimental pang because it was not Jack Pertwee. Then he pulled himself together and said, as they mounted the station steps under the concrete canopy:

   ‘Now if we were cops inside the covers of a detective story, Mike, we’d know for sure that Hatton was killed to stop Pertwee getting married today.’

   Burden gave a sour smile. ‘Easier to kill Pertwee, I’d have thought.’

   ‘Ah, but that’s your author’s subtlety. Still, we aren’t and he wasn’t. The chances are he was killed for the money he was carrying. There was nothing in his wallet when I found him.’

   The foyer of the police station enclosed them. Behind the long black sweep of counter Sergeant Camb sat fanning himself with a newspaper, the sweat dripping down his fore head. ‘Wexford made for the stairs.

   ‘Why not use the lift, sir?’ said Burden.

   The police station was not yet half a dozen years old, but ever since its completion the powers that be, like fussy housewives, had been unable to let well alone, adding innovation after innovation, perpetually trying to improve their handiwork. First there had been the stone tubs on the fore court, a constant temptation to vandals who got a more than commonly satisfying kick from ravishing these particular flowers. Then came the consignment of houseplants for the offices, tradescantia and sanseveria and ficus elastica that were doomed from the start to dehydration and ultimately to have their pots serve as repositories for cigarette ash.

   Last year it had been glass sculpture, a strange green tree, a very Yggdrasil, for Burden’s sanctum, and for Wexford an inky-blue, amorphous pillar that in some lights grossly resembled the human figure. These, too, had been fated, Wexford’s broken by a pretty young woman who was helping him with his enquiries and Burden’s one day inadvertently put out with the rubbish.

   That should have been the end of it. And then, just as the foyer was beginning to take on a shabby, comfortable look, the lift arrived, an elegant black and gilt box with a sliding door.

   ‘It isn’t working yet,’ Wexford said, a shade nervously.

   ‘That’s where you’re wrong. Been operating since this morning. Shall we try it?’

   ‘I should just like to know what’s wrong with the stairs,’ Wexford exploded. ‘It’s a downright disgrace wasting the ratepayers’ money like this.’ He stuck out his lower lip. ‘Besides, Crocker says walking upstairs is the best exercise in the world for me with my blood pressure.’

   ‘Just as you like,’ said Burden, turning his face away so that Wexford should not see him smile.

   By the time they reached the third floor they were both out of breath. The flimsy yellow chair behind Wexford’s rosewood desk creaked as he lowered his heavy body into it.

   ‘For God’s sake open a window, Mike.’

   Burden grumbled that opening windows upset the air conditioning but he complied, raising the yellow venetian blind and letting in a powerful shaft of noonday sunshine.

   ‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘Shall we re-cap on what we know about Charlie Hatton?’

   ‘Thirty years old, born and bred in Kingsmarkham. Two years ago he got married to a Miss Lilian Bardsley, sister of the man he’s in business with. Bardsley’s got his own firm, transporting small electrical goods.’

   ‘Was Hatton a full partner?’