Sunday Best (21 page)

‘We have it on good information, Mrs Verrey Smith, that the late Mr Parsons had a fiancée in Brighton. It is too much of a coincidence to be ignored.'

‘He went to Brighton because it's near London. That's the only reason he went to Brighton.'

‘So is Ipswich, so is Bournemouth, so are a hundred other places. I don't wish to upset you, Mrs Verrey Smith, but you do your husband no good by hiding information from us. If your husband is innocent, and he may well be innocent, then we have to find him so that he can prove it. You understand, don't you?'

She nodded. What about Tommy's story? she thought. Was that information too? She decided to keep quiet about it. That too was an opinion, Tommy's opinion, like George's mother's; neither could be construed as fact.

As she opened the door for the Superintendent to leave, the net curtains were dropped again, and she wanted to go into the street and kill everybody. Had some such outrageous provocation prompted George with Mr Parsons, and she realized with horror, that with this thought, she had accepted her husband as a murderer.

As she was shutting the door on the Superintendent, the phone rang. Quickly he put his foot back inside. ‘Why don't you answer it?' she said. ‘Then you can be quite sure, can't you.'

‘It's your telephone, Mrs Verrey Smith,' he said.

‘It's yours too. At the station. So you might as well answer it here.' She desperately wanted someone to answer it. It might be George, and he would have the sense to put the phone
down if a man answered it. And if it were George, and she answered it, what could she say? Yet she dreaded that the phone would stop. Neither made a move.

‘If it's an important call,' the Superintendent said, ‘they will ring off if I answer it. Whoever is calling wants to speak to you, Mrs Verrey Smith.'

She could stand the bell no longer and she picked up the receiver. Suddenly the Superintendent was close behind her.

‘Hullo?' she said.

‘Mrs Verrey Smith?' It was a small boy's voice.

‘Speaking.'

The Superintendent was now so close that she was forced to share the receiver with him.

‘I seen your 'usband's photo in the papers,' the little boy said, ‘an' it wasn't 'im wot did it, 'cos I saw it.'

Mrs Verrey Smith and the Superintendent looked at each other.

‘Who are you?' she said frantically. ‘What's your name?'

There was a silence the other end. The Superintendent grabbed the receiver. ‘Who are you?' he shouted, then more gently, as he collected himself. ‘Tell me your name, laddie.'

They heard the click of the receiver.

‘There's another lead for you, Superintendent,' Mrs Verrey Smith said. Suddenly she felt free, as if George had been totally acquitted. ‘You heard that, Superintendent? Why don't you do something about that,' she said, ‘instead of wasting your time in Brighton?'

‘We follow every lead, Mrs Verrey Smith. But don't pin your hopes too highly on that call,' he said. ‘Whenever a murder is committed lots of cranks come up with stories.'

‘But that was a child,' she said. ‘He would have given me his name if you hadn't interfered. Now he won't contact me again.'

The Superintendent knew she was right. He had acted hastily, ‘He will contact you again,' he said, without conviction. His Brighton feelings were threatened. He couldn't afford to ignore any piece of information, especially from a frightened child. He had to find Verrey Smith. Even if it didn't lead to a conviction, he had to find him.

‘Mrs Verrey Smith,' he said. ‘We must somehow appeal to your husband to come home. If you perhaps would agree to make a plea on television, I could arrange the time. Who
knows, he might see it, or be told about it. It couldn't help but move him.'

The idea startled her, and in it she sensed that the Superintendent had changed his track. He had been thrown by that telephone call. She would co-operate. For the first time she felt that it might be in George's interest, and she would be glad to do something to counteract the terrible message from George's mother.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘But I'll do the words myself.'

The Superintendent was surprised at her ready agreement, ‘Of course, of course,' he said. ‘Then I shall make the necessary arrangements.'

She took him once more to the door, and the Superintendent left a distinct air of retreat behind him. For the first time since George's disappearance, Mrs Verrey Smith had hope. She wanted to tell somebody about the phone call. She wanted her hope confirmed by somebody else. But she would give the Superintendent time to get back to the station. Then she would phone Mrs Johnson, and he would have to hear it once again, and this time, laced with her triumph. While waiting, she would content herself with telling Spit and Polish. It seemed that her life was going back to normal. Already she was beginning to put the nightmare behind her. It was now only a question of George's certain return, and dealing, one way or another, with his stupid mother. She recalled the purple message, and tried not to let it shake her hope. Then she saw with horror that she had left it lying open on the kitchen table. She put her head in her hands, and trembled with a criminal's terror of not knowing what was known.

Mrs Verrey Smith senior, or Mrs Whitely, as she stressed she had been promoted to, arrived the following morning, with thankfully no warning of her coming, either by wire or telephone. She simply knocked on the front door.

‘God be with you,' she said, before even checking on the recipient of her blessing. Then seeing her daughter-in-law, whom she had never closely examined, she said, ‘Joy, isn't it?'

They had not seen each other for over ten years, and it was clear that each had found the other, in memory at least, faintly resistible.

‘That's right,' Joy said, asking her in. They went into the front room, and Joy went to the window to watch the neighbouring curtains drop. Opposite, a woman was too late, and Joy waved at her. The woman mouthed something, clearly to the effect of ‘brazen hussy', and turned away.

‘Well, where is he?' Mrs Whitely asked, sitting herself down. ‘And what's the trouble?'

Joy was dumbfounded. ‘You don't know?' she said. ‘Don't you read the papers?'

‘Newspapers,' Mrs Whitely scoffed. ‘All lies. The Devil's work. What's happened? What's happened to George?'

‘But your letter,' Joy said. She had to settle that first. ‘Confess, it said. To what? What did it mean?'

‘You mean there's someone else? He's killed someone else?' Joy sat down. She didn't know which one of them was mad. And the Superintendent – if he'd seen that letter, God knows what fruity evidence he'd unconsciously collected. Apparently homicide was her husband's hobby. ‘What did you mean in your letter?' she tried again. ‘Confess to what?'

‘I can't tell you about that. That is something between George and his Maker. Now tell me what has happened.'

So Joy told her the bare facts, adding nothing to what the papers had already divulged. And having given her the whole
story, as if in total confidence, she demanded in exchange, an account of George's former trespass, as she had a right, as his wife, to know.

Mrs Whitely was not impressed by her claim. ‘One has nothing to do with the other,' she insisted. ‘Though once set on the downward path, there is little hope of turning back without the help of our Lord. And he never sought that help, though the dear Lord will witness that every week I implored him to seek absolution.'

Well, that at least explained those weekly missives. But the matter of the vital confession remained a mystery to her, and Mrs Whitely was giving away nothing. She thought her mother-in-law showed more curiosity than concern, and that her trip was no doubt of an evangelical nature that was only triggered off by her son's disappearance.

‘I don't suppose you have ever encouraged him into the church,' Mrs Whitely said.

‘I do a lot of church work. George's religious feelings are not my business.'

‘Of course they're your business,' Mrs Whitely said, ‘and part of your duties too.' She was all but telling her that she was responsible for the second murder at least. ‘Now what are we going to do about it? We have to find him,' Mrs Whitely said, in her best practical manner.

‘I don't know what more I can do. I've no idea where he could have gone. I can only hope that he's still alive.'

‘We must go to a diviner,' Mrs Whitely said.

‘A diviner?'

‘You've heard of a water diviner, my dear,' Mrs Whitely said, trying to be patient. ‘Well there are people diviners. They tell you the whereabouts of missing persons.'

‘But how?'

‘Well you give them a description of the person who's gone, and then they hold something belonging to them. A piece of clothing or a watch or something. They can at least tell you if he's alive or not.'

Joy shuddered.

‘Well, it's better to know the worst, that's what I think.' Mrs Whitely's tardy re-marriage to the church, and the grand issue she was making of it, seemed to absolve her of all feelings. Dogma would take care of everything. Joy wondered what kind of man was Mr Whitely, and whether he too was
totally accounted for in the creed. She found this diviner mumbo-jumbo hard to reconcile with the altar phraseology that dripped from her mother-in-law's lips, and she ventured to suggest that such a pursuit was faintly pagan. ‘The police use them, you know,' Mrs Whitely was quick to defend herself. The fact that the Law availed itself of such a facility, made it slightly more kosher. There used to be a Mr Wentworth. Lived in Stamford Hill. He'd be in the phone book if he's still alive. Clive Wentworth, that's it. George's father, God rest his soul, used to know him. He used to be quite famous. We could ring him up for an appointment.'

‘No, not the phone,' Joy interrupted her, and she explained why her telephone was unusable. So it was arranged that Mrs Whitely should go to the Post Office and phone him from there, if he was still alive. But before she left, she asked to see her room so that she could unpack a few things, which, as Joy watched her, turned out to be very little clothing, but an abundance of church gear. She had even brought her own hammer and nail for her crucifix, which she proceeded to hang on the wall above her bed. Next came a do-it-yourself altar, plastic and painted by numbers. This she set up on the bedside table.

She was obviously relieved to have thus unburdened herself. A holdall was no place for instant religion. She looked around her room and sighed with satisfaction. Now she was ready to face whatever vicissitudes her wayward son had landed her in.

When she had gone, Joy went back into the front room and sprayed it with Fresh-air. Mrs Whitely had brought the mustiness of the church with her, both on her person and in her holdall. Joy Verrey Smith wondered how long she was going to stay.

She heard a car draw up outside, and from the raising of curtains opposite, she knew that something was afoot in the street. It was probably the Superintendent again with questions pertaining to the confession letter. She did not care any more about the Superintendent. Since the phone call from the little boy, George had, in her mind, been acquitted of one murder at least. The other was possibly a figment of his mother's imagination.

She went over to the window to investigate. It was a large van, and the Superintendent's car was parked behind. It was
a feast for the neighbours. She opened the door to the Superintendent and the men and their equipment followed him inside.

‘This won't take very long,' the Superintendent was saying. ‘Shall we do it here?' he said, pointing to the front room. ‘Now you just relax, Mrs Verrey Smith. We can discuss what you'll say, while they're getting everything ready.' The Superintendent had taken over the role of director. ‘I thought perhaps you would prefer to talk to a reporter, rather than straight to the camera.' He himself was itching for a part in the production, but there was no valid role for him to play. So he busied himself in seating Mrs Verrey Smith and the reporter, checking with the director from time to time as to their positions. After some discussion and much shifting of lights, it seemed that they were ready. The camera-man suggested a little powder on Mrs Verrey Smith's chin to take off the shine, and the director, who had once, many years ago, made a ‘B' feature and, apart from the odd day, had been out of work ever since, readily agreed with him, for there was no reason why the interview, though a straightforward piece of reporting, should not be of artistic value. All this set him off on repositioning the lights, so that Mrs Verrey Smith in profile would look rather fetching. ‘After all,' he explained to the Superintendent, who by now was getting rather restless, ‘here is a woman in distress, appealing to her husband to come home.' Once again, he saw himself in the studios, under the great arc lights, the sound and camera crews hanging on his every word. ‘She should rest her chin on her hand, I think,' he said. ‘Let me see that position, Mrs Verrey Smith.' He looked through the eye-piece, and found his star satisfactory.

The Superintendent thought the director was overstepping himself. ‘It's only an appeal,' he said. ‘We're not making a Hollywood spectacular.'

The director ignored him. As far as he was concerned, the Superintendent was a mere clapper-boy and only served to reinforce the atmosphere of crew versus director tension, which, after all, obtains on any production. He motioned the Superintendent to stand behind the camera, or otherwise cast his shadow over the whole proceedings. He then relit the whole scene as for a feature, and after much rearrangement of mikes, lights and camera-positions, he announced himself ready to shoot.

Then the doorbell rang. The Superintendent, knowing his
cue, crossed over the set, and in doing so, tripped over one of the cables, bringing a lamp crashing down, and narrowly missing the camera.