Authors: Alan Hunter
I depressed the studs and dialled a number that seemed to have worn a groove in the gears. I asked for an extension and after a wait I was put through.
‘Gerald?’
‘George. I thought you were making tracks for the West Country.’
‘Gerald, I need some information.’
‘Who rings this number for anything else?’
‘After I left today was any check requested on a Canadian national called Sambrooke? I’m told he’s held at Dornoch. That would be Sutherland County Police.’
‘Sambrooke. Isn’t he a chum of yours?’
‘He was going to marry Colin Mackenzie’s daughter.’
‘Aha. What’s he been up to?’
‘That’s what I’m hoping to find out.’
There followed another wait while Gerald Pagram pursued inquiries with CRO. He came back.
‘Sambrooke’s in trouble. He’s detained in a murder investigation. The victim was a TV actor, Nigel Fortuny. Sambrooke’s being held on an assault charge.’
‘An assault charge?’
‘Need I say more?’
I shook my head. Not to a policeman. It meant only that they hadn’t dotted the last i; perhaps the knife hadn’t turned up yet.
‘What did CRO give them?’
‘Nothing known. He’s pure.’
‘He was nicked at Bow Street for common assault.’
‘What would CRO know about that?’
It wasn’t an indictable offence, but Sutherland would certainly get to know of it. In fact, they would get to know of it from me. I should have to tell them if I went up there. Pagram chuckled.
‘Would I be right in thinking that your West Country trip is off?’
‘I’m in a difficult position. I know the background of the case.’
‘You could stay clear.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘I think I’d better forget you rang me.’
‘I think you better had.’
He chuckled again. ‘Good luck with the natives.’
I hung up and got my notes from the file drawer in the desk. I read them through twice and sat a little longer to scribble a fresh entry. I didn’t know it then, but I could perhaps have solved that case without ever moving from the phone. The critical fact was in the notes. But perhaps it was better the way it went.
I
ATE MY
breakfast at the hour appointed and was on the road by half-past seven. It was a drizzly sort of day, not what one would have picked for a punishing drive. Over breakfast I had scanned the
Telegraph
. It contained a cagey sort of paragraph. Fortuny wasn’t big enough to make a fuss over and Earle was still a man who was helping the police. Sutherland were playing it close, and I drew a sombre satisfaction from the circumstance. It meant that the case wasn’t yet cut and dried and that some small hope might remain for Earle.
I arrived at Verna’s at half-past eight, by which time the rain was pelting in earnest. Verna was waiting impatiently in the hall with a pair of large and swagger suitcases.
‘You’re late. We’ll never get to Inverness.’
‘If you were in such a hurry you could have flown up.’
‘What’s the use of that when I’d have been stuck there?’
‘There are things called hire cars.’
‘It’s a hundred beastly miles.’
I loaded her cases into the boot of the Sceptre, which was my transport at that time. Verna. who couldn’t afford a hire car, was wearing a short-cut classic coat in mink. Beneath it she had on a Hartnell suit in a becoming shade of beige and on her head a matching hat with a romantically swept brim. Her comely features were deftly made up and a diamond-cluster ring sparkled on her finger. She carried a lizard-skin handbag. I felt she was almost too grand to be travelling in the small beer of the Sceptre. She came out carrying a silver-mounted umbrella.
‘George, I’m planning to lunch at Penrith.’
‘We’re not taking that road.’
‘But I’ve booked a table.’
‘That’s too bad. It will be on your conscience.’
She took her seat with a disconcerted air. I pointed the Sceptre towards the A1. We picked it up near Eaton Socon and settled down to the long haul north. I had a great deal to say to Verna but I felt it would do her no harm to stew a while, so I drove silently through the hissing rain and let the miles tick up against the clock. Verna seemed in no hurry to talk either. She sat staring sulkily ahead past the wipers. We put fifty-five miles in the first hour and not a word passed between us. At last she sighed with deep feeling and took a cigarette from the lizard-skin bag. She lit it with the lighter from the Sceptre’s dash and breathed smoke delicately through her nostrils.
‘I suppose it really is too much to expect that you would tell me I’m looking nice.’
I spared her a glance from the road, but she continued to stare haughtily in front of her.
‘You hurt me last night, George. You made me crawl. I had every right to expect support from you. After all, if you were
such
a good friend of Colin’s you should have jumped at a chance of helping his wife.’
‘You think I should have.’
‘Yes I do. It would only have been the decent thing. And I wasn’t asking for so much either. This is right up your street.’
‘You haven’t asked why I’m not at the Yard.’
She looked at me sideways and breathed smoke. ‘That has very little to do with it. I imagine you can always get time off for matters of this sort.’
‘In fact I was about to start a short holiday. I was leaving this morning to visit Somerset. Now instead I am chauffeuring you to the north of Scotland and about to meddle in affairs that are none of my business.’
‘How can you say they are none of your business!’
‘Because that’s what I’ll be told by the police at Dornoch. And furthermore there are long odds that my presence there will prejudice Earle rather than help him.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘You had better believe it. In the first place I am a policeman. I can’t and I won’t bend the facts. If the facts are prejudicial then that’s too bad.’
She breathed smoke fiercely. ‘I don’t think you want to help.’
‘Quite the reverse. I don’t think I can.’
‘You’ve taken against me, George, that’s what.’
‘Verna, I want to know what’s been going on.’
She stuck her chin out at the windscreen and went into her silent sulks again. I drove on placidly. I was determined to be fully briefed before we reached Dornoch. It would perhaps need digging. I suspected that the facts were less than flattering to Verna. But I meant to have them. If I was going to help Earle I had to know exactly how things stood. Verna stubbed her cigarette with venom.
‘George, you’re being quite beastly to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you meant by your last remark. Anyone would think that
I
was responsible.’
‘What was Fortuny doing at Kyleness?’
‘Well! And why shouldn’t he be there?’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. He was the father of Anne’s baby.’
‘So what was he doing there?’
‘In heaven’s name! He went to see Anne and the baby, didn’t he? Surely a man wants to see his own child. There’s nothing sinister about that.’
I shook my head. ‘It won’t do. Fortuny had to know where to find them. And if my reading of Fortuny’s character is near the truth he wouldn’t travel seven hundred miles to visit his bastard.’
‘That’s a filthy word to use for Anne’s baby.’
‘I’m sure Fortuny would have used it himself.’
‘Nigel was a gentleman.’
‘Anything but.’
‘My God, why did I have to pick on you?’
She sat back fuming. When Verna was angry she had an attractive sparkle in her eye and her painted mouth took on a curl so pronounced that it was mildly comic. Now she was breathing in short spurts through her pretty but dilated nostrils. No actress could have given a livelier impression of handsomely justified indignation.
‘Well, I
told
him where to go.’
I paused to overtake a trailer van. ‘You had been keeping in touch with him?’
‘Yes – why not? Isn’t that what any mother would have done? Anne was having his baby. She’d run out on Earle. Obviously it was in her interest to keep up with Nigel. Being an unmarried mother isn’t a joke and she must have been attracted by him in the first place.’
‘Did you consult her?’
‘Anne is twenty-three. At that age a girl doesn’t know her own mind. She needs an older person to look out for her. Naturally, I dropped a hint now and then.’
‘But in so many words . . . she didn’t know.’
‘I thought I’d let her get on with having the baby. That would be the psychological moment, of course. When the baby comes you want a man around.’
‘So she didn’t know. What about Alex?’
‘You know what Alex was like about Nigel.’
‘And Earle would certainly be kept in the dark.’
Her lips tightened. ‘He was out of the picture.’
I indulged in another bout of overtaking. ‘Of course I understand your position,’ I said. ‘Even in these days of social enlightenment there is a stigma about being an unmarried mother. Fortuny was the man responsible and he could regularize the situation. But one thing still puzzles me. How were you going to bring him up to scratch?’
She flicked me a look. ‘Nigel was decent. He agreed to do the right thing.’
‘He made a voluntary offer of marriage.’
‘That’s what it usually means, isn’t it?’
‘Without the smallest pressure.’
‘Of course. I told you he was a gentleman.’
I clicked my tongue. ‘No.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘What do you mean – no?’
‘I mean that you know and I know that Fortuny wasn’t that much of a gentleman. He was an old-fashioned cad. All other accounts of him agree on that. His first reaction on being taxed with a bastard would be to deny it and ring his lawyer.’
‘That just isn’t true!’
‘I want facts, Verna.’
‘You’re the most insulting man I’ve ever met. You’re a pig. You’ve mixed for so long with criminals that you don’t know how to behave with honest people.’
She turned her head violently to stare through the side window. I kept my face straight and went on vith my driving. We had passed Newark; the rain was easing, and soon I would be able to switch off the wipers.
‘I bribed him, of course,’ Verna snapped at me peevishly. ‘It’s the only way with men like Nigel.’
‘How much?’
‘You go to hell!’ She turned her head again to put out her tongue. ‘These days I’m quite well off, you know. Aunty Vi left me a packet. Well, there was a block of shares in Imperial Tobacco that had taken a knock through the cancer scare. It wasn’t much skin off my nose but it must have looked a lot to Nigel.’
‘Who else knew about this?’
‘Nobody. Unless he blabbed.’
‘Have you taken any steps to transfer the shares?’
‘I’m not a mug. He had to marry her first.’
I slipped by a transporter. ‘What made you think she’d have him?’
‘Well, she never mentioned Earle in her letters. And after all Nigel was the father. He had only to play his cards right.’
‘Did you honestly think he would make a good husband?’
Verna sniffed. ‘It’s a gamble anyway. You never know how they’re going to turn out when the honeymoon’s over and you turn off the glamour. Men are all the same underneath. It’s just that you have to kid some more than others. So you might as well pick a good-looker and you couldn’t fault Nigel on that.’
‘Isn’t it possible that love meant a little more to Anne?’
‘Anne is too like her father for her own good. But she’ll get out of it. With Nigel on the spot I was pretty certain she’d see the light.’
I drove silently for a stretch. ‘Where would you say it leaves matters now?’
‘It’s tragic of course. It only needed this to convince the little goose that she’s still in love with Earle.’
‘Perhaps she always was.’
‘I don’t see it matters. The point is that she is now. She’ll marry him all right, if he’ll accept the child. And that surely is the least he can do after this.’
‘After murdering Fortuny.’
‘No! I’m certain that all that is a piece of nonsense.’
‘But meanwhile he’s sitting in a cell.’
‘Which is exactly what you’re going to get him out of.’
She lit another cigarette. We swirled through a roundabout and accelerated into the Doncaster Motorway. I was beginning to form a clearer picture of what must have happened yesterday at Kyleness. Fortuny had been there pressing his suit, with a fat block of shares to ensure his persistence. I had no doubt that Anne had rejected him or that he had responded by stepping up his efforts. This in itself was a foolhardy course if Anne enjoyed the protection of the Clan Mackenzie, but it became tantamount to suicide when Earle appeared on the scene. They had met; there had been violence, and seemingly a knife had been introduced. Fortuny had finished up at the bottom of a cliff and Earle in a station cell at Dornoch. The situation was desperate. Unless the knife was Fortuny’s the case against Earle was a pure formality, while even if Fortuny had pulled the knife a manslaughter verdict would be a close-run thing.
‘Who told Earle that Fortuny was up there?’
Verna’s mouth was sour. ‘Alex.’
‘Who told him?’
‘He had to know. I couldn’t suddenly spring it on him after they were married.’
‘Didn’t you realize that he would tell Earle?’
Her expression was stubborn. ‘No, I honestly didn’t. We hadn’t been seeing much of Earle, in fact he hasn’t been to Blockford since last year. Anne didn’t want to see him and he took against us because we wouldn’t tell him where she was. He’s been shifted from Alex’s department. I thought Alex had dropped him altogether.’
‘You knew very well how Alex felt about Fortuny.’
‘That was a stupid misunderstanding. Nigel could have done Alex a lot of good. His marrying Anne would have helped Alex too.’
‘Alex couldn’t have been expected to see it that way.’
‘I still didn’t think he would run to Earle.’ She bit her lip. ‘That was unforgivable. At least he could have given me warning.’
‘Alex is much to blame.’
Verna flashed me an unfriendly look. She took fierce puffs at her cigarette and I noticed that it was trembling.