The Mistress of Alderley (11 page)

Sir John roared with laughter.

“You've come to the wrong man to find that out! I haven't been in Leeds for fifteen years or more. When I last went there, there was Schofield's and John Lewis's and the Classical Record Shop, and the men in the market called everybody ‘love' and ‘my darling.' Now I hear it's all wine bars and restaurants I couldn't afford to go to, and probably political correctness reigns in the market as well.”

“No, it doesn't,” said Charlie. “But lots of the old stalls have gone because the holders couldn't afford the rents, and you get mobile phone stalls and video stalls instead.” He got up to go. “Well, I'd better be getting back to Leeds to see what my boss has come up with.”

“Oh, there is someone senior in charge of the case, is there?” asked Meta. “I'm glad of that.”

Charlie smiled at her sweetly and turned back to Sir John.

“If anything you haven't mentioned comes back to you, or if you hear anything that you think is relevant, however small it is, will you give me a call at this number?”

Sir John took the card.

“I will. I'm glad we've had this chat, because I might have been agonizing over whether to mention my worries to the police. Oh, and thank you too for telling me about the rector. He's not a bad man, but…” He shrugged.

“He's not a very good one either,” said Charlie, grinning. “Thanks for talking to me.”

As the door shut he lingered on the step for a moment and heard Meta saying, “Well, you made a great fool of yourself, telling that nigger how sharp he was, and practically fawning over him as if—” Charlie didn't wait to hear more, but went on his way, smiling. It is always pleasing to have one's judgments confirmed.

Back in Leeds Charlie found that Oddie had had a day of mixed fortunes. An attempt to blanket interview the inhabitants of the new block of flats overlooking the murder scene had yielded only patchy results. Sunday was a bad day for witnesses, and many of the single residents of the CASPAR flats were obviously home with Mummy, or elsewhere with girlfriends or boyfriends. Those who were interviewed had seen nothing of interest, but nevertheless Oddie had scheduled Monday evening for a second attempt to get a reasonable-percentage coverage.

Where he had had better luck was in ferreting around in Fleetwood's background. Here Sunday proved a blessing. He had walked up to the Merrion Centre Morrison's, found a deputy manager in charge for the day, and told him of the murder. Local news bulletins being sparse on Sunday, this was a complete surprise, and, feeling in some way privileged, the man was cooperative.

“Of course we know about Fleetwood. It's a
name
in the retail trade, and everyone knows he started with us. I'm too young to have had anything to do with him, and so is my boss here. But there
is
someone…someone who trained with him….” Eventually it came to him. “Cranmer. Dick Cranmer. He's at the Shelf branch.”

“Any chance of his home phone number?”

“I should be able to find it. He's a right old gossip, so he won't be bothered about my giving it to you.” He rummaged in his desk and pulled out a dirty and dog-eared little book. “Here we are: it's 01422 341 060.”

Back at the station Oddie had got his approach ordered in his mind. He suspected that Cranmer would already have got warning of his interest (the deputy manager's words had suggested one young gossip recognizing his elder and better), and he was right.

“Leeds police, eh?” said a fruity voice at the other end. “Well, I've been waiting for you to ring. So old Marius has got his comeuppance, has he? I'll not pretend I was expecting it, because I wasn't. You don't, do you? People like him don't get murdered, except maybe casually by maniacs in the street. Now then, what was it you want to know?”

“I gather you were trainee managers around the same time.”

“That's right. There was no trainee managers' school or anything like that, but we met up pretty often for special sessions and for pooling our experiences and observations. So I did get to know him, up to a certain point. Marius—he was Bert then—was a star, and no two ways about it. You knew he was going to the top, and in his own way and as head of his own company. People here sometimes say we trained him and then he took all we'd taught him and used it for his own purposes. Well, true, but again only up to a point. Everyone knew he wasn't going to be with us for very long, but it was exhilarating having a business brain like his around, and frankly, he gave in new ideas as much as he took from us.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, early seventies. His last year with us he was deputy manager in one of the less important Leeds stores. They didn't want to give him one of the more important places because there might be too many ideas and practices around for him to take with him. When he took off, around 1975 or 6, he took a lot of our principles and policies with him, but he was very fair: he set up his stores in the South, where we don't operate. And with a different clientele, any ideas he took with him he had to adapt. I believe Fleetwood stores nowadays have a lot more organic produce, every one has a delicatessen counter, the London stores keep the ethnic mix very much in mind, and so on. He has the reputation of being fair, but very smart.”

“That's interesting. I wouldn't rule it out, but I rather suspect that this murder has got nothing to do with the business side of his life.”

“You never know, though. They do talk about cutthroat competition, don't they?” A fruity laugh at this tasteless joke came down the line.

“Heart,” said Oddie.

“
Really?
Anyway, what you want is more personal stuff, I take it?”

“Yes—in fact, anything about his private life that tells us about the man.”

There was a pause.

“He was one for the ladies, that's for sure. I expect you know that already. Mind you, we all were, the trainees: we were the age to be a bit randy. But he was more than most.”

“Any names?”

“Oh, some of the other trainees served as one-night stands, but they weren't more than that, and I'm certainly not giving you their names. There was a mistress, and rumor has it a child, by someone in Leeds, but by then we'd lost touch, because I was in an equivalent job in Bolton.”

“Know anything about his family background?”

“Not much. Father was a train driver, lived in Pontefract. There was him and a sister. Give him his due, he'd come a long way, hadn't he? Millionaire, chain of stores with a first-class reputation, nice mistress tucked away in a classy village in South Yorkshire. I wouldn't mind being in his shoes.”

“You know about the mistress?”

“Oh yes—Caroline Fawley. Used to be in one of those fairly funny sitcoms whose name I can't remember. Gossip gets around, you know. He may not still be with Morrison's, but he's remembered, and he's still—
was
—in the trade.”

“You mentioned he was called Bert when you knew him. What was his full name?”

“Bert Winterbottom. You couldn't make much of ‘Winterbottom's Superstores' as a selling name down south, could you? He did right to change it.”

When Charlie got back later that afternoon, Oddie gave him a full summary of all that he'd learned. At one point Charlie's brow furrowed.

“You say he worked in the Leeds area for a time, during which he seems to have acquired a mistress and a child.”

“Apparently.”

“Caroline Fawley says he never worked in the Leeds area. It's not necessarily important—”

“Not necessarily a red herring, either. At the very least we might get some clues about how he treated women.”

“And at best a discarded mistress and a twenty-something child with long-standing grudges,” said Charlie, his eyes lighting up.

Caroline found it impossible to settle. She told herself that this was the predicament of bereaved people through the ages: What could be important enough to
do,
that it could displace the real duty of grieving? She wandered around the house, registering so many things that had memories of Marius, so many places where she could remember standing with him, or sitting, or making love—all
with him.
It was as if her weekdays without him had been dream interludes, and reality had come only with his arrival on Friday evenings. When Mrs. Hogbin came and started in on a routine that centered entirely on how she had heard the news, how she was gob-smacked, what she had said to her daughter, and what her daughter had said to her, Caroline called on her powers as an actress: the monologue made her want to escape rather than cry, but in the event, she did both by turning on a display of theatrical waterworks and bursting out of the house.

I'm naughty, she thought, as she wandered round the garden, but really the thought of being immured in Alderley, the shrine to the love of Marius and herself, and having to listen to Mrs. Hogbin's inanities was more than she could bear. What use was theatrical training if it couldn't come to one's aid at such a time? The garden began to work its cure on her. She was glad the children had decided to take the bus to school as usual. Both of them went to state schools in Doncaster—very good ones. She and Marius had had this in common too—an aversion to using private education for their children. Marius had just said tersely that he didn't like the product. What they would have done if there had been no good state schools in the vicinity, Caroline couldn't imagine. But the children had, without saying anything, gone down to the bus stop, and Caroline didn't blame them: no reason why they should take the death of Marius as hard as she had.

Guy had returned to London to comfort his mother, with the promise to come back on his way up to belatedly take up his place at St. Andrew's. Leaving her, gratefully and blessedly, on her own—apart, for the moment, from Mrs. Hogbin.

The garden had always been hers to tend and develop, but it held as many memories of the man she had lost as the house did. Marius had loved wandering in it, being shown the new shrubs and flowers she had planted, the little forgotten nooks she had found a purpose for. “I'll pay for any help you need,” he used to say to her, with a cheeky grin that was the only remnant of his working-class upbringing, “so long as you don't expect me to work here myself. I'm a destructive force as far as gardens are concerned.” And she had been quite happy with that arrangement. The blissful weekends with him were not times to be spent toiling in flower beds with rakes and hoes.

She stopped by one of several huts in the garden, the one where the tools and implements were kept. She frowned. The rusty old padlock was defective, and it needed to be pushed in firmly to lock. It hadn't been, and it was now hanging loose. Yet she was quite sure it had been securely locked by her when she had last gardened. She tried to remember when that was. Wednesday, she thought: three days before Marius had died…
been killed.

She became aware of shouting. It was Mrs. Hogbin calling from the kitchen door. Running closer she caught the words “It's that Guy.” It seemed no time since she had driven him to Doncaster to catch the early train to London. Now it was one o'clock—he would be well home. She hurried through the kitchen into the hall. “Mr. Fleetwood's son,” explained Mrs. Hogbin. Well, she hadn't thought it was Guy Fawkes or Guy Ritchie.

“Hello, Guy.”

“Hello, Caroline. Just to tell you I'm home.”

“I thought you would be by now. The trains are bad, but not that bad.”

“Yes, well, Mum's taking it very well, and I thought you could tell the police that I can be back there tomorrow or Wednesday if they want to talk to me like they said they would to all of us.”

“Right, I'll tell them. I believe they're busy in Leeds today, but Sergeant Peace said they wanted to ‘do' us, if that's the word, as soon as possible. Shall I phone them and give them your home number?”

“Yes, please.”

“I'm sure it's just a formality.”

“Yes…. Oh, one more thing. My mother said she'd like a word—is that all right?”

Caroline, in her surprise, left a second's pause, and wished she hadn't.

“Yes, of course it is.”

Sheila Fleetwood had obviously been standing right by the phone, because she came on at once.

“Mrs. Fawley?”

“Caroline, please. And Marius always called you Sheila to me.”

“Yes, he always does. I know it's too early to talk about the funeral, with the police and the coroner and so on involved, but I just wanted to say, Caroline, that I do hope you will come.”

“That's very kind.”

“I didn't want there to be any embarrassment about it.
Of course
you should be there. He would have wanted it, we both know that. I shan't actually be ringing anyone else, I mean any of his earlier girlfriends, because I wouldn't want it to become a sort of circus, but we'll expect to see you.”

“Thank you. Perhaps the children would like to come too—I don't know.”

“Alexander and Stella will be very welcome. I feel I know them already.”

Caroline thought she needed to make some kind of return gesture.

“How are you coping?” she asked.

“Just about. It's so totally out of the blue, isn't it? And there's the complication of the baby on the way. I feel I'd like someone adult around the house, at least until it comes. Some really competent au pair, perhaps. Not like me to feel so nervous and uncertain.”

“It's totally understandable.”

“And then there's the daunting thought of bringing it up without a father…. I'll get used to all these things before long, but at the moment…Well, I expect you can guess how I feel.”

“Yes, I think I can—something of it, anyway.”

“Anyway, I must go. So sad that this has spoiled your excitement over
Forza.
It sounds a fabulous debut. I'm determined to see it, but I think it will have to be on tour in Nottingham or Hull now.”

“Good. I hope you enjoy it. I thought she was very good, but then I would, wouldn't I.”

When she had put the phone down Caroline felt rather dissatisfied with the conversation. Going through it as she might go through a play script she realized she had first felt unease when Sheila had said “He always does,” which was compounded when she had mentioned that she wouldn't be ringing any of her predecessors as Marius's bed partner. Perfectly reasonable things to say, but both things bringing it home to her rather brutally that she was the latest in a long line. Well, she was, wasn't she?

No, she wasn't. She was special. Though, trying to be fair, she could understand that Sheila might not want to see it like that.

Then there was the bit about bringing up the new baby without a father. Well, she had been planning to bring it up without its real father before that, even if she'd been unaware that Marius was not sure he was willing to treat the baby as his own. Perhaps she hadn't realized how much Marius had told her. But why bring it up at all?

Caroline wished she hadn't
thanked
Sheila for saying she would be welcome at the funeral. She wished she had just gone.

“Was that Guy's mother?” asked Mrs. Hogbin from the kitchen passage.

“That's right. Marius's wife.”

“Mr. Fleetwood's
widow.
You could have been that.”

Big deal, thought Caroline.

She got rid of Mrs. Hogbin eventually, explaining that she couldn't drive her to the bus stop because the police had put a seal on the garage and the car. This was news to Mrs. Hogbin, who opened her eyes wide and then looked ominous. She obviously was conceiving the idea that the police were about to arrest
someone
in the house. The thought made her day, and she trotted off to make the most of this information in Marsham, and then in her home village.

When the children came home from school Caroline told them about the phone call from Sheila, and when she mentioned the funeral they said they'd think about whether they wanted to go. That means no, she thought. What child or adolescent
wants
to go to a funeral? A thought struck her.

“Have either of you been using the garden toolshed?”

“No,” they both said.

“Only, I found the padlock hanging open, and I know I locked it securely when I last put tools away.”

“Alex has probably been using the toolshed to smoke in,” said Stella.

“Sneak!” shouted Alexander. “How did you know?”

“I saw you up a dark alleyway in Leeds. I thought you were peeing, but you turned out to be smoking. I expect you've been skulking out to have a quick drag in the garden shed for months, haven't you?”

Caroline felt obliged to chip in.

“Alexander, I
am
disappointed in you! Smoking is so bad for the voice, you know.”

“Mother, I'm not thinking of becoming an actor or a singer.”

“Well, no, I don't suppose you are. But what a habit to take up nowadays! So old-fashioned!”

“Mum, don't you ever look at young people? We're all smoking these days. It's a way of living dangerously. But I haven't been smoking in the toolshed. I'd probably set fire to something and get myself incinerated. Anyway, it hasn't rained for ages, so I've just gone to the little bit of lawn under the apple trees, where you can't be seen from the house.” A look passed between brother and sister that was not one of hostility. “I think you should tell the police about it.”

“The police?” said Caroline. “Oh, surely not. It can't have anything to do with Marius's murder. It was probably just some rough-sleeper finding shelter for the night.”

“The rough-sleeper would have had to get into our kitchen and find the key if you really shut it properly.”

“I'll ask Mrs. Hogbin if she's been out there for something. Or perhaps Wilks has been up while we've been out. He sometimes borrows tools from us for his other gardening jobs.”

“Mum—
tell the police,
” said Stella.

 

PC Omkar Rani was used to getting racial abuse in his job. He got more than if he were working in a corner shop, though rather less than if he had been a traffic warden. Words like “wog,” “blackie,” and “Paki” (this last no longer geographical, merely a synonym of the others) could be heard in the police canteen as well as in the street, in spite of all the pious words and intermittent efforts of chief constables. In this matter Detective Sergeant Peace had been his role model, though Rani had not always found his advice easy to follow. “Just smile, as if you thoroughly enjoy being racially abused,” he had said when Rani had asked him how he coped. “Then, if the opportunity arises, thump him in the bollocks as hard as you're able. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

PC Rani had asked what he should do if it was a woman, and was told it was perfectly possible to thump a woman in the bollocks, metaphorically speaking.

“And remember, you'll probably only be able to do it to one in five of the bastards who've abused you, but the feeling is so sweet you can forget the other four you've had to let get away with it.”

But that Monday night Rani's problem was quite different. He was one of the team trying to do blanket coverage of the people in the CASPAR flats, and the woman he was currently talking to was just too nice for words, pressing coffee on him, talking as if he were her oldest friend, praising his courage in going into the police, and generally trying to make him feel he was the answer to all the country's ills and woes. She has a problem with me, he said to himself. If I was white she would treat me politely, but she would be cool and businesslike. Her name was Rhoda Moncrieff, and she was the third tenant he had interviewed on the floor he had been allotted after the team had penetrated the wire gates and got past the staff security men. Miss Moncrieff was assistant manager of one of the big stores in Briggate, and Rani wondered what it was like to be black and one of her counter assistants.

“Just tell me what you want, give me time to think because I only heard of this awful thing today, and I'll try to tell you what you need to know.” The gush was less in the words than the manner, and she capped it with a winning smile from her end of the long white leather sofa. “I want to do my best for Mr. Fleetwood, because really we were both in the same trade.”

“Saturday night,” said PC Rani. “From seven-thirty onwards. What were you doing?”

“Right,” said Rhoda Moncrieff, and she really did think. Then she reached over to a coffee table and took up a copy of the
Radio Times.
“I'm ashamed to say I ate a risotto off my lap watching
Blind Date.
Are you a bachelor? Can you understand?”