Crooked Herring (8 page)

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s none of my business. I’m probably just being tedious.’

‘On the contrary,’ she said. ‘It’s good to have somebody to talk to in an open and grown-up manner. Until I can buy a couple of cats, it’s great to have human company of any sort, even another crime writer. Why don’t you stay for dinner? You can help me finish up some of this wine. Crispin left quite a stash of it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I need to get back.’

I paused, wondering why I had said that. I had nothing to go back to. Not even a cat. Maybe there were some good wildlife programmes on television. But it seemed right. Under the circumstances.

‘Let me know if you hear from Crispin,’ I said.

‘OK. And I’ll pass on …’ She checked the covers. ‘
Murderous Sussex
and
The Book of the Gun
.’

I slightly regretted the loss of the latter book – an illustrated history of firearms up to 1900 – but they gave me an excuse to go back if I needed one.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘My pleasure,’ she said. ‘I suppose I can always spend the evening washing up.’

She didn’t show me out.

It was a miserable journey home. Sometimes the rain was so heavy I could scarcely see where I was going. Every now and then, I glanced in the rear-view mirror. Occasionally a car would follow me for a few miles at a distance of twenty yards or so. Sometimes I would deliberately slow down and the car would then swish past in a cloud of spray. Sometimes I would speed up, leaving the following vehicle way behind. Not once did anyone show any sign of responding to my change of pace. I was as certain as I could be that nobody had either followed me to Brighton or tailed me on the way back. Whoever was planning to kill me was frankly doing a shit job.

‘Where are you now?’ asked Elsie.

‘Back in West Wittering,’ I said. I’d been explaining over the phone what I’d found out at the Vynall residence. Elsie was no more impressed than she needed to be.

‘Why didn’t you stay for dinner?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘If she was drinking as heavily as you say, then she’d have let slip a few things as the evening went on.’

‘I don’t think that would have been very fair.’

‘What’s fair got to do with anything?’

‘It’s just that I didn’t drive all the way to Brighton in order to behave in an underhand manner.’

‘Actually – and this point has only just occurred to me – why
did
you go over to Brighton? You could have talked to her on the phone and saved yourself two hours’ driving along the A27.’

‘I just thought it would be better to talk to Emma face to face.’

There was a long pause as the person with whom I was not talking face to face did some thinking.

‘You do actually fancy her, don’t you?’

‘Elsie, we are not in the playground and I’m not thirteen years old. Random assertions that I fancy somebody are juvenile.’

‘True. Bet you do, though. And you knew Crispin wouldn’t be there. Nice work, Tressider, other than your screwing it all up at the end by not staying for dinner. Actually, she’s exactly your type – blonde, quite tall, a bit bossy – probably head girl at her school.’

‘Is that right?’ I’m not as good at sarcasm as Elsie is, but I try from time to time. On this occasion, though, what I intended as a put-down came out as a simple question.

‘You know it’s right. Think back to all your previous wives and girlfriends. Were they or were they not blonde? Did they or did they not call the shots? Who did they have more respect for – you or the fluff under the sofa? Are you sure you didn’t sleep with her in Harrogate?’

‘I’d scarcely forget that I’d slept with her.’

‘How sweet and old-fashioned of you. You’d have probably written her a thank you note the morning after. Well, that would explain Crispin’s antipathy towards you if he thought you had been shagging his missus. That would be worth a few one-star reviews.’

‘But I hadn’t. And Emma says it would have made no difference. So there must be some other reason why Crispin wrote the reviews.’

‘Just because Emma says it, it doesn’t make it true. Any of it.’

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘what’s really interesting is that Crispin had moved out well before New Year. On New Year’s Eve he went to the Old House at Home from the residence of his teenage mistress and then, quite possibly, returned to it afterwards.’

‘Or, if he didn’t return, his teenage mistress doesn’t seem to have noticed yet. Possibly she’s focussing on her GCSE retakes.’

‘He still hasn’t been reported missing,’ I said.

‘Precisely. When Agatha Christie vanished, back in the twenties, the hunt was on within hours. Nobody has seen fit to report him lost.’

‘Which suggests that he isn’t lost, but is alive and well – with whichever woman he went to.’

‘Or that crime writers are worth less than they used to be.’

‘That too,’ I said.

‘And Emma Vynall gave you no name?’

‘No.’

‘That’s odd too. I mean, a woman chucks a man out of the house – it’s usually for something specific – she’s discovered her best friend’s knickers in the glove compartment of the family car, for example. She may be misguided. She may be wrong. She may have had one bottle of red wine too many. These things happen to all of us. But she will have a
reason
. She will have got a name out of her husband if nothing else, because that’s something women can do.’

‘I think she said Crispin had left
her
. She didn’t tell him to go.’

‘Even then, wouldn’t he say, I’m leaving you for so-and-so? Or, if not, wouldn’t she ask? There’s a strange lack of curiosity on her part. He leaves. She gets permanently drunk and considers buying a cat. But she never tries to find out who he’s left her for.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that, on all of the generally accepted scales of weirdness, this scores seven and a half to eight.’

‘Is that high?’

‘It’s out of ten. It means it’s difficult to credit. Your not having had sex for two years scores one and a quarter.’

‘That’s helpful,’ I said.

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘She did give me one name,’ I said. ‘Mary Devlin Jones.’

In the silence that followed, I wondered if I had been wise to mention this at all. It was a long time ago and had no relevance.

‘She used to be with Atkins and Portas?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘But they dropped her. I remember that.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘There were rumours floating around that her first book was plagiarised. It did her a lot of damage. Atkins and Portas weren’t happy, since it would have been a clear breach of contract. It also caused problems with her agent.’

‘It wasn’t plagiarised, exactly,’ I said. I retold the story as I had heard it from Emma.

‘Sounds like plagiarism to me,’ said Elsie. ‘She didn’t write it herself.’

‘Emma may not have got it quite right.’

‘You have other inside information that contradicts Emma’s version?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not really.’

‘Are you sure? There’s this strange note in your voice that happens only when you are lying.’

I said nothing.

‘So you are basically bullshitting, then.’

‘I thought I’d made a lying noise, not a bullshitting noise.’

‘They are very similar,’ said Elsie. ‘So, what will you do next?’

‘I need to see Henry to report back. It is, after all, Henry’s lost weekend that I’m supposed to be investigating, rather than Crispin’s current whereabouts.’

‘Unless Henry killed Crispin.’

‘Yes, but I don’t think he did.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, the lack of any possible motive, for one thing. And if he had killed him, I honestly don’t believe that he would forget about it. And if he remembers killing him, why get me to investigate?’

‘But he was the last person to see Crispin alive,’ said Elsie.

‘Crispin’s not dead.’

On the other hand, there was the photograph. I wouldn’t tell Elsie at the moment. She was apt to jump to false conclusions, and even I had no idea what to make of it yet. Perhaps I should ask Henry. I needed to do some shopping – the supermarket in East Wittering would still be open. I could call in on him on my way back.

‘It’s not one you’d want to use as your author photo on the inside of the book jacket,’ I said.

Henry squinted at the picture and held it out at arm’s length. ‘I agree that it’s not exactly flattering, but I’m clearly not trying to avoid having my picture taken. The flash made me jump – that’s all. You can’t read much into it. Still, it does show that I was at that pub on New Year’s Eve. Thank you.’

‘But you don’t remember the picture being taken?’

‘Not really. Was that the only shot I was in?’

‘There was just the one photo of you, which you now have, and none of Crispin. I guess that shows he had already moved on elsewhere.’

‘And the landlord didn’t notice you had taken this away?’

‘He may see that it’s gone and put two and two together – the pub wasn’t exactly crowded. But I doubt he’ll call the police to investigate. He can presumably print another one off. And it will be sometime before I’m in Didling Green again, if ever. I’d hesitate to say I’d committed the perfect crime, but it’s pretty close.’

‘And you also went up the hill?’ asked Henry.

‘Yes. There was a track leading up onto the Downs, more or less as you described it. But, in the end, there’s not much up there, to tell you the truth – just a muddy track and a wood and then a footpath over the Downs. There are plenty of brambles around – if you’d tripped, say, you’d have ended up with all sorts of scratches. So that fits too. Could you have just taken a wrong turning after you left the pub, got out for some reason?’

I paused. It sounded unlikely. If you drove up there on a
rainy night, thinking perhaps that the track led somewhere, wouldn’t you just turn round and go back down once you saw it was a dead end? Or might you need to get out and see if you had enough space to turn in, scratching yourself on some brambles in the dark?

‘I’m not absolutely sure I went up there at all,’ said Henry.

‘Not many people do – at least at this time of year. I met a woman walking her dog. She seemed to think it was pretty odd I was up there on my own.’

‘She said that to you?’

‘More or less, though the dog took most of the flak.’

Henry looked again at the photo, then stuffed it casually into his pocket. If I’d been hoping for praise I might have to wait a little longer. Some things clearly didn’t change.

‘Then I went over to Brighton to talk to Crispin’s wife,’ I said.

‘Good grief! What did you do that for? I thought you’d already phoned and got as much information as you could?’

‘I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t telling me where Crispin was. I needed to check where Crispin had been that evening.’

‘And you told her that I thought I might have killed her husband?’

‘Of course not. I scarcely mentioned your name.’

‘Scarcely? So, you did mention it?’

‘Only in passing. If it helps, she said that she thought you and Crispin only ever met at conferences. She doesn’t know you and he were out on New Year’s Eve. She actually thought that the two of you didn’t get on that well, though
she did say she thought you both confided in each other.’

Henry’s expression showed that he would rather I hadn’t mentioned his name at all.

‘You know that Crispin and his wife have split up?’ I asked. ‘I mean, I’m assuming he confided that much?’

‘I’d heard something,’ he said.

‘He didn’t talk about it on New Year’s Eve?’

‘No. Why should he? I knew already.’

‘He didn’t say who he was staying with?’

‘Not a word.’

‘Really? That’s odd. He didn’t let slip a name or anything?’

‘Ethelred, on my honour, not once that evening did he mention where he was staying. And I didn’t feel it necessary to ask. Do you want me to swear an oath on the Bible?’

I conceded that that might be excessive. ‘You met him at the Old House at Home … did he leave his car there, by the way?’

‘No. We drove to Chichester in my car because he hadn’t got his. I think he said it was in Brighton.’

‘Then he probably walked to the pub. If so, there’s a good chance he was staying close by.’

‘I suppose he could have been. This may or may not be relevant, Ethelred, but a bus stops right outside the pub and there would have been plenty of taxis.’

This was true. I should have thought of it myself. I drive past the pub often enough. Buses pass every half-hour or so in each direction. They run until almost midnight.

‘It’s just odd the way he has vanished without trace,’ I said. ‘It’s also odd nobody at all has reported him missing. Wherever he was staying, somebody should have alerted
the police if he’d failed to show up after going out for a quick drink on New Year’s Eve.’

‘And?’

‘And that means he probably did show up wherever he was supposed to be. It’s just that none of us knows where that is. Though there’s another thing that’s slightly odd, now I think about it.’

‘What?’

‘Well, Emma says Crispin cleared off to his mistress. But on New Year’s Eve he was clearly trying to pick girls up at the club.’

‘That’s Crispin for you.’

‘So, had he dumped this new woman too?’

‘Could be.’

‘In which case, she might not be too happy with him either?’

‘Lots of women weren’t.’

‘That’s what worries me. I’m beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t report Crispin missing ourselves. Let’s see if the police can trace him.’

‘You just said he’s probably alive and well.’

That was true. I had said that. But what if I was wrong? A writer is last seen staggering drunkenly across a car park. Then he vanishes and fails to answer any calls or respond to voicemails. How many days was it now?

‘You could be right,’ I said. ‘But even so …’

‘Maybe hold off another twenty-four hours? We could look a bit stupid if he did show up. It probably counts as wasting police time or something.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘But—’

‘Anyway,’ said Henry, ‘you’re meant to be concentrating
on what I did, not on Crispin. Tell me again about Didling Green. Where exactly did you search?’

I described my investigations as best I could to somebody who said they had no knowledge of the area.

‘I think I should go and take a look myself,’ said Henry.

‘I thought the whole point of sending me was so that you didn’t have to?’ I was aware of a note of irritation in my voice. There was again an implication in Henry’s proposal that I was not a competent investigator, that I was wasting Henry’s precious time. But I’d done my best. It wasn’t my fault that he hadn’t left a body up there.

‘Best to be thorough,’ he said.

I tried not to show my annoyance more than I had to. ‘I’ll lend you my map, if you like.’

‘I have satnav, Ethelred. It’s you that I need – to show me where you looked and where you didn’t.’

‘You’ll find it from what I’ve told you.’

‘I’d be really grateful if you’d come along too. Really grateful. And it would be good if you could drive me.’

I looked into his eyes to see if I could discern what form that gratitude might take. He was certainly anxious that I helped him. So maybe …

‘Bring a stick,’ I said.

I arranged with Henry we should go the following day. To be quite honest, I’d pretty much given up on the idea that I might get any recognition of my selfless acts on his behalf.

But I was wrong.