The Insect Farm (30 page)

“And it is?”

He paused again, and I saw that he was looking squarely at me, but that the precise direction of his eyes bounced from one of mine to the other, as though trying to weigh up how I would react to what he was about to say.

“There is no easy way to say this to you, Mr Maguire,” he said at last, “but I’m afraid that we think your wife was seeing another man.”

I stared straight back at him and counted five in my head before I spoke.

“What?”

“Like I say, I am sorry that you have to hear it like this. Sorry that you have to hear it at all actually, but we think your wife was romantically involved with another man.”

“And are you saying she has run off with him?”

“No, we’re not saying that. It’s someone you know well, but he swears that he doesn’t know where she is.”

I was thinking hard and fast, and knew that it was dangerous for me to appear to have no clue about Brendan. It might at some point come out that Harriet’s mother had told me of his arrest. I looked at Norris, whose eyes reflected the same sympathy for me as I could see in the face of the detective.

“And is this Brendan?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because five hours ago I got a phone call from Harriet’s mother in Singapore to tell me that Brendan Harcourt had been arrested. I didn’t believe it, partly because
you assured me that I would be the first to hear of any developments.”

Wallace’s expression told me that he could guess what had happened and was dismayed.

“I apologize to you, Mr Maguire. I certainly did not tell her before we informed you. Because of what I might best call the wider interest in this case, we are under strict instructions to keep our boss in touch with any developments. He must have told Mr and Mrs Chalfont without letting me know he was going to do so. I’m not happy about it, and can only say how sorry I am.”

“Thank you,” I said, and assumed that the “wider interest” was Wallace’s way of describing the influence Harriet’s parents were exerting. “But that doesn’t matter now. Are you saying that my wife Harriet and Brendan are lovers?” I laughed, with disbelief rather than with any humour. “Because if so, you are wrong, Sergeant. I can assure you that there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that this could be true.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because there isn’t. For one thing, Harriet and I have only been married for a short while. For another thing, she loves me. And for a third thing, Brendan bloody Harcourt has fancied my wife for years, but I know her well enough to know that she finds him repulsive.”

Wallace and the sergeant looked at each other for a moment, and then Wallace glanced down at the table, apparently with some sadness.

“I am so sorry, Mr Maguire. In my experience, very few men in your situation ever believe that their wives could be unfaithful to them, but many are, and you won’t be the first husband to have been led up the garden path.” It was an old-fashioned expression even then. “But I regret to have to tell you” – he interrupted himself – “may I call you Jonathan?” I confirmed that he could. “I am sorry to have to tell you, Jonathan, that there can be no doubt about it. Harriet’s flatmates have confirmed it. The other musicians – Martin and Jed – have also both confirmed it, and finally, Brendan himself has admitted it.”

I put my head in my hands and sat quite still. By now my focus on acting a part was once again becoming overwhelmed by the shock and grief at the whole run of recent events, and I felt the balance of my mind going out of control. Images of Harriet crowded in, one moment laughing, one moment sad, and at another moment slipping off her dressing gown so that I glimpsed the incredible beauty of her body before she climbed into the bed beside me. I shook my head violently, trying to push out the unwanted pictures, and in an instant I once again found my body wracked with convulsive sobs, the tears falling liberally from my eyes, trickling down my cheeks and landing in a series of splashes on the table in front of me. This was no act. I am not sure if I was grieving for the unfaithfulness of my wife or for the loss of her, or for her murder. Or for the torment of what most probably was lying ahead of me. My mind was still spinning when the
policeman spoke again. I felt a hand on my shoulder and saw that Wallace was standing beside me.

“It seems that your wife Harriet and Brendan Harcourt have been having an affair for a few weeks at least. Your friends confirm what you say about him having been interested in her for a long time, but they say that she only recently gave in to him. However, it seems that he has been much more keen on her than she is on him, and there has been a dispute between them about whether or not she should leave you to be with him.”

Once again my emotions were split. Part of me was trying to take in the news that there was even a question of Harriet leaving me. The other part was trying to react like someone hearing all this for the first time. Fortunately both emotions produced the same monosyllabic expression.

“What?” One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand. “I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it. There must be some misunderstanding. This couldn’t be my Harriet. She wouldn’t.” My words pressed my face into my cupped hands, but now I was regaining control. Of course, I had not anticipated this turn of events, or that things would move so quickly, but I had realized from the moment that Brendan started to lie to me at King’s Cross Station that suspicion might fall on him. My careful hints about the direction they should look in had borne fruit faster than I could have imagined. “But if what you say is true,” I said, “and I don’t believe it is – then where is Harriet? Are you saying that she is staying with him? What is he saying about it?”

“He says he doesn’t know. It seems that he spent the night with her on Monday and walked to the train with her on Tuesday morning. He had to go to a lecture himself, so he says that he didn’t actually see her get onto the train. But he is adamant that she must have done so, which is why she didn’t come down on the train you went to meet on Thursday.”

“But had they had a row then? Why do you think he might know where she is?”

Wallace sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. It was clear that this was the point where what he knew for sure ran out, and that going forward he was into territory he could only guess at.

“It’s only that he was the last person we know of who saw her before she vanished. And we are also told by Martin and Jed and the girlfriends that Brendan was putting a lot of pressure on her to leave you.” Now he sat forward, his elbows on the table in front of him, the palms of his hands cupped together like a child at prayer. “The most probable explanation is that she was in a dilemma, and couldn’t work out what to do. Most likely she has got off the train at a station between Newcastle and London and has checked into a guest house somewhere while she clears her head and works out whether to stay with you or to leave you and go with Brendan. But also” – and now he paused again, separating his palms but keeping the ends of his fingertips together – “it must be possible that she told him that she wasn’t going to leave you, he got mad and something very bad has happened.”

Abruptly I got up from my chair and walked to the back of the room and stood facing the wall behind me. Wallace was sitting at the table and Sergeant Norris was standing in the corner of the room. Again I put my head in my hands, an involuntary gesture while my brain teemed with a thousand thoughts. At times I could hear Harriet’s voice breaking through, speaking or laughing but expressing nothing intelligible. I turned to face the sergeant, as though he was an independent arbiter, my arms crossed in front of me, protecting my body from further battery.

“I just don’t understand any of it,” I said. “I don’t believe that Harriet was having an affair with Brendan. I quite believe that he was putting pressure on her to leave me and go with him. Hell, he’s been doing that for about five years.” Now I turned back to face Wallace. “The bastard is well known to have had the hots for her ever since we all met. But any of her friends will tell you that she never ever responded to him. She has always tolerated him because they are in the quartet together, but I just don’t believe that she gave in to him. If you knew how many times she has told me that she is not interested in him…”

Wallace was looking back at me, and I saw nothing in his face which expressed anything other than sympathy.

“I know, son,” he said, and it was the first time he had addressed me in that way. “And I’m sorry. But some people can be very convincing, especially when they are ashamed of what they are trying to hide. I’ve seen it a thousand times. You’re
down here, looking after your sick brother, and she is up there having an affair with one of your mutual friends. Maybe it’s little wonder that she didn’t tell you the truth about it.”

I wanted to say that my brother wasn’t sick and that Brendan wasn’t a mutual friend, but resisted the urge. Having this policeman’s sympathy in this way was bound to be helpful to me and, to stand back from it, what he was saying wasn’t all that far from the truth. I had been taking care of my brother, and I had been betrayed.

“So what happens now then?” I said. “Can you get officers in the towns where the train stopped to check hotels and guest houses? Is that the next thing to do?”

“It isn’t, I’m afraid,” said Wallace. “As I have mentioned to you before, with no direct evidence that a crime has been committed, it’s not justifiable to commit the resources that that would involve. Like I say, chances are that Harriet is walking on a beach somewhere, throwing stones into the sea and thinking about how to come and tell you that she has been a silly girl. Up to you what you do then, of course. Personally I think that’ll happen in a few days, but until then, we have no direct evidence against Brendan Harcourt. We held him overnight because he had originally lied to us about when he had last seen her, but this morning we will be letting him go.”

I sat down hard again on my chair. The police had arrested a man they suspected of knowing what had happened to my wife and immediately were releasing him. “But Harriet’s
parents are flying in from Singapore because they believe the arrest means that you know something.”

“That’s unfortunate,” said Wallace, and I could tell he knew that he would have to expect even more pressure from above to find a solution. “As I say, with no evidence that anything has happened to her, even with her family connections, we just wouldn’t be able to justify a nationwide manhunt for a girl who has been missing for only a few days.”

Sergeant Norris said goodbye to me, and Wallace showed me the way out to the foyer. I noticed that he had put his hand on my shoulder as we walked. It was not the hand of a policeman arresting a suspect, but that of a man of experience and wisdom supporting a younger man who was just finding out some sad and unfortunate aspect of the real world. I walked with my head down, playing my role in the mini-drama, which was that of cuckolded husband, idiot lover, deceived spouse. What it was not, thank heavens, was the posture of a husband who has killed his wife and is on the brink of being discovered. Once out on the street, my stride lengthened into a jog and then into a run, and then I was sprinting down the pavement, filling my lungs with the deep breaths of relief and release.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Connaught Hotel is not a place where people like me stay when they come to London. It’s a place where people like Harriet’s parents stay. The kind of place where they assume that you are unable to open a door for yourself and that you are willing to pay some inflated gratuity to someone for hailing you a taxi and seeming to be very subservient.

I have been to many more places and seen more things since the events I am now relating took place, but in 1974 I felt that hotels like the Connaught were designed, in part, to make people like me feel uncomfortable. My own parents had not had cause to frequent hotels, and if and when they had, it was more likely to be at the guest-house end of the market. No liveried flunkey to salute and open the swing doors at the Pentewan Hotel in Salcombe where we used to stay for our annual holidays when Roger and I were kids. Seven years in a row we stayed there, largely because the owner, Mrs Burrows, was very welcoming and in particular always seemed to be very pleased to see Roger, who was equally pleased to see her.

But that was ten years earlier, and now, as I walked along Carlos Place approaching the Connaught, the doorman caught my eye but gave no impression that he thought I was about to enter the hotel.

“Morning, sir,” he said finally, and saluted smartly as he pulled open the door. The flag above his head snapped in the wind. I can’t say if he was actually looking me up and down, but he may as well have been.

There were half a dozen people waiting, and I was not sure which desk to queue at, or whether it would be appropriate to ask any of the men in various levels of what looked like paramilitary uniform where I could find Mr and Mrs Chalfont. I waited for a while, long enough to take in the old masters of galleons on the staircase and the deep leather of the armchairs. Eventually I noticed a young man of about my age wearing a grey uniform and a pillbox hat.

“I want to speak to some people who are staying here. Do I have to queue, or can someone else give me their room number?”

“Follow me, sir,” he spoke with a strong East End accent which was trying to be posh, and led me to a corridor to one side and pointed to a row of telephones. “Easiest fing is to call the operator and ask to be put through to the room.”

I was not fully prepared for the meeting I was about to have with Harriet’s parents. Partly this was because I felt that I did not really know them at all or how they would be reacting, but much more of course it was because I was the man who had murdered their only daughter. How does one even begin to come to terms with something like that? No doubt they were distressed already, and would become even more so whichever way events were about to unfold. I, and only I,
knew the information they were in search of and I, and only I, was responsible for the heartache they were going through now and would go through in the future.