Gift Wrapped (9 page)

‘So why are you feeling so uncomfortable?' Yellich asked quietly and then glanced quickly around the room. It was, he found, pleasantly furnished with prints of rural Yorkshire hanging on the wall as decorations. It had a window which, like that of Clarence Bellingham's office, looked out across St Leonard's Place, though it did so from two floors lower in the building. At that moment part of the window was partially open, allowing fresh air to ingress but also allowing the ingress of the sounds of the traffic in the street below.

‘Well, I mean ... wouldn't you?' March was dressed soberly and probably appropriately for an accountant in a dull grey suit with an inexpensive brown tie over a white shirt. He wore a wristwatch but no wedding ring. His feet were encased in unseasonal and heavy-looking highly polished black shoes. He was, Yellich guessed, in his mid-fifties.

‘Only if I had something to hide,' Yellich replied promptly. ‘Have you got something to hide, Mr March?'

‘No ... nothing, nothing at all,' March replied equally promptly. ‘Nothing that the police would be interested in, anyway.'

‘We'll take your word for that.' Yellich smiled. ‘So ... please tell us about James Wenlock. All that you know about him.'

‘Yes, I understand that you believe him to have been murdered?' March spoke flatly.

‘Yes ... yes, we do,' Yellich replied. ‘We still have to confirm his identity but all indications are that the skeleton we found is that of Mr Wenlock ... his earthly remains.'

‘James ... he just vanished,' March began. ‘Just vanished.'

‘So we understand. We are told that you knew Mr Wenlock quite well?' Yellich asked.

‘Yes,' March continued to speak in a monotone but seemed to be growing less fearful, ‘I knew him.'

‘Well?' Yellich pressed. ‘Did you know him well?'

‘A bit. We liked each other as colleagues but we didn't go out together for a drink in the evening after work like some men do in here. I never visited his house and he never visited mine. But we got on well in the office during the working day.'

‘I see, so just a couple of colleagues who liked each other?' Yellich confirmed.

‘Yes.' March nodded. ‘That is about the long and the short of it.'

‘Just in the office?' Yellich asked.

‘No, not just in here, not just in the office – we'd go out for lunch together on occasions, take a pub lunch or go to a café.'

‘Not unusual,' Ventnor commented.

‘Not at all,' March explained. ‘You see, if you didn't return smelling of alcohol or fall over between the desks the partners didn't mind. Alcohol isn't an issue with me. I was brought up a Methodist ... I don't drink at all. James would occasionally wash his haddock and chips down with a pint of beer; even then it was low alcohol beer, so it wasn't a problem – the going out at lunch, I mean, and we only did it once or twice a week. We never fell asleep in the afternoon.'

‘I see. So what can you tell us about James Wenlock around the time he disappeared?' Yellich asked.

‘I can certainly tell you that he wasn't a happy man,' March replied in a matter-of-fact manner, ‘I can tell you that.'

‘Really?' Yellich raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes,' March continued, ‘he was not at all happy at home. In fact, he was very unhappy; he said quite often that the spark had long since left his marriage.'

‘That is interesting.' Yellich glanced to his left at Ventnor, who nodded in agreement. ‘Most interesting.'

‘I can also tell you that he was seeing someone outside his marriage as I believe some people do if they have an unhappy home life.'

‘He was having an extra-marital affair!' Yellich could not contain his interest. ‘He had a lady friend?'

‘He once told me,' March explained, ‘that he told his wife he was having to work late on a big account which was in a mess, masses of unpaid tax going back years ...'

‘But in fact ...' Yellich probed.

‘But in fact he left Russell Square each day as early as he could and drove away in his Audi with its alloy wheels and its tinted windscreen; he was going to meet up with his lady friend.'

‘And he told you this?' Yellich asked. ‘I mean, what he had said to his wife?'

‘Yes ...' March looked down at the carpet. ‘He told me because he asked me to lie for him. He asked me to alibi him ... I mean, he asked me to provide an alibi. He wanted me to say that I was with him, to say that we were together one evening when in fact we were not.'

‘Did you?' Yellich asked. ‘Did you provide the alibi?'

‘No.' March shook his head sluggishly. ‘No, I told him that I would not do that. I told him that apart from anything else I would not make a convincing liar ... even at the best of times ... I suppose it's the old guilt thing which comes from a Methodist background. I understand that there exist folk who can hold eye contact and lie through their teeth but I am not one of them.'

‘Well ... good for you,' Yellich replied, and did so with a ready smile. ‘Good for you on that score, Mr March.'

‘Yes ...' March looked at Yellich. ‘I wouldn't at all want to be that sort of person. I really do think that it would be a most unhealthy frame of mind. I definitely wouldn't be able to fake a pass at a lie detector test.'

‘Again, good for you. In fact,' Yellich relaxed in his chair, ‘the only person that could lie and still pass a lie detector test is a psychopath. The Americans can keep the wretched machines.'

‘I never thought of it like that.' March shrugged.

‘Please carry on,' Yellich continued. ‘James Wenlock ...'

‘Oh, yes.' March shuffled in his chair. ‘James had apparently set this girl, or woman, up in a little flat. He called it “a little love nest”. It was only a rented bedsit ... inexpensive rent and he was well able to afford it.'

‘Yes, so it seems ... the house, the Audi ...' Ventnor growled.

‘Yes, you know, it's funny you mention the Audi.' March turned slowly to Ventnor. ‘That was a bit of a mystery ...'

‘Oh,' Yellich queried, ‘in what sense?'

‘A car like that and a house like that on a certified accountant's salary,' March explained. ‘A cheap bedsit is one thing, but buying and running an Audi, and a top of the range model at that – well, he had to have had a separate source of income.'

‘We know he had a portfolio of stocks and shares,' Yellich commented. ‘That might explain it.'

‘Yes, but even allowing for that ... I thought he was probably moonlighting, you know – I thought he was taking private clients. Some accountants do that but it seems that James was in a kind of mid-life crisis.' March continued to speak in his near monotone. ‘I have read about men refusing to surrender to middle age and going out and buying sports cars and taking young mistresses. It won't happen to me, though.'

‘No?' Yellich smiled. ‘You think not?'

‘Apparently not, because people who know me tell me that I was born middle-aged. They tell me I left school and then waited for my generation to catch up with me.' March shrugged. ‘If that's so I won't have a mid-life crisis, will I?'

‘Probably not, if that is the case,' Yellich replied. ‘It is a bit of an unfair thing to say, though.'

‘If enough people tell you or you're told something often enough, you come to believe it,' March complained. ‘I was apparently stuck in my ways by the time I was seventeen.'

‘I am sure you were nothing of the kind ... but James Wenlock?' Yellich pressed the man.

‘Oh, yes, James. Well, like I said, he would leave Russell Square as early as possible at the end of each working day. He'd drive off to visit his young lady and then return home and tell his lady wife that he'd been working late on the very important account which was in a dreadful mess. So,' March continued, ‘one day, at one of our pub lunches, he confided in me that he was frightened of this lady's husband.'

‘She was married?' Yellich gasped. ‘He was having an affair with a married woman?'

‘She must have been married if he was frightened of her husband,' March replied.

‘Of course, but I assumed she was single for some reason ... probably your reference to middle-aged men taking young mistresses,' Yellich stammered, ‘but please continue.'

‘I also think that they were both in the same boat,' March explained. ‘Both trapped in loveless marriages, both feeling their youth slipping away, both frightened of old age, both seeking some sort of youthful passion and thrill and excitement ... and then they found each other. I'm no white-coated psychologist but that's how I saw it.'

‘All right. Now,' Yellich spoke softly, ‘her husband begins to interest me. If James Wenlock became frightened of her husband, the husband must have found out about the affair, or she confessed to him.'

‘He found out about it,' March explained flatly. ‘I don't know how, not for definite, but he did and he was, and probably still is, a large, powerfully built man. I think he was a man who was prone to violence ... and James, he was an average-sized pen pusher ... I think he had very good reason to be afraid. Any fights between them would have been one sided, a very one-sided affair indeed. I wouldn't have liked to witness it. I do not like violence. I care not at all for it.'

‘Yes ... again, good for you, Mr March,' Yellich replied. ‘And you don't know how the lady's husband found out about the affair?'

‘I think that she managed to get a message to James, from her hospital bed, which might explain things.'

‘Her hospital bed?'

‘Oh, yes, I told you her husband was violent.' March shrugged. ‘He put her in hospital when he somehow found out about the affair between her and James. James was suddenly scared stiff that he was to be next on her husband's “to do” list. His wife apparently asked a nurse to smuggle a letter out for her. She wrote a quick note and addressed it to the bedsit he had rented, their little “love nest”. He must have found it when he went there to see her.'

‘She had to smuggle it out of hospital, you say?' Yellich queried.

‘It appears so,' March explained. ‘The husband was apparently a very controlling gentleman – James told me that. When he visited he would check the drawer by her bed for writing materials. She was to have no communication with anyone apart from him, her husband, but she became pals with a nurse who wrote a letter for her. She dictated it and told James what had happened, and the nurse put it in an envelope, stuck a stamp on it and posted it.'

‘I see.' Yellich stroked his chin. ‘Did you see the note?'

‘No.' March shook his head slowly. ‘He told me that he had found it, like I said, waiting for him when he went round to the bedsit. He told me he tore it up out of fear and then he gave up the rental on the bedsit. He believed, or assumed, that the bruiser knew his identity, that he had battered that information out of his wife, and James was anxious to cover his tracks. It was around then that he vanished off the face of the earth.'

Yellich paused, then said, ‘And you didn't come forward with that information, Mr March?'

‘I did,' March pleaded. ‘Well, at least, I thought about it, of course I thought about it, but by then he was already passed over.'

‘And you knew that!' Yellich raised his voice.

‘In my heart of hearts I knew that ... no body was found ... so what good would it have done?'

‘It would have enabled us to solve a murder and saved your colleague's family ten years of anguish – that's what good it would have done!' Yellich spoke angrily.

‘But there was no body,' Nigel March pleaded. ‘You can't have a murder inquiry without a body.'

‘That's not true. It's difficult but not impossible.' Yellich took a deep breath as he tried to calm himself. ‘That's not the point anyway; you withheld evidence, Mr March.'

‘No ...' March raised a long, bony finger. ‘I beg to differ. I concede that I might have withheld suspicion but I did not withhold any evidence at all. If his body had been found then I would definitely have come forward. Now it seems that his body has been found, and what am I doing now but giving information?'

Yellich sighed. ‘Do you know his name – the husband, I mean? Do you know the name of Mr Wenlock's lover's husband?'

‘No.'

‘What about her name?' Yellich pressed, still fighting to control the anger that he felt towards Nigel March.

‘Muriel.' March smiled triumphantly. ‘Her name was Muriel.'

‘That's a great help, Mr March.' Yellich could not disguise the sarcasm of his answer. ‘A great help.'

‘Bond,' March added. ‘Her name was Muriel Bond.'

‘Address?' Yellich snapped. ‘Do you know where she lives?'

‘I don't know,' March replied, ‘but she was hospitalized into York District Hospital, I can tell you that, and they'll have records going back ten years to about the time that James Wenlock went missing.'

The man angrily paced up and down the living room of his house and then stopped as he stood in front of the window, which looked out on to his back garden. ‘So how on earth did they manage to find him?'

‘A fox?' his wife suggested, sitting in her chair by the fireplace. ‘Or a badger ... ?'

‘Not after ten years.' The man spoke in a controlled but yet still angry voice. ‘No ... a fox or badger would have dug him up when he was a fresh corpse, so who would dig a hole there at random? No one. They knew where to dig so they had to have been tipped off. Who'd do that?'

‘I really don't know, darling,' the woman replied meekly. ‘But you have fully covered every angle; there's nothing to tie you to him. So keep calm, let it all blow over.'

‘You're right ... I must, we must keep calm ... Did you do what I told you to do?'