Shallow Grave (21 page)

There, in the peaceful kitchen, Slider heard the whole story. Lady Diana had fallen in love with David Meacher more or less at first sight. As the youngest of the family and everyone’s pet, she had remained at home long after the others had married and/or moved away. Even her eldest brother, the heir, was living in a flat in Chelsea and running an interior-design shop jointly with a schoolfriend from Eton.

‘I suppose I’d never really grown up,’ she mused. ‘I was happy just going on doing what I’d always done at home – dogs, horses, parties, the family. I had lots of friends, and I’d always had plenty of boyfriends, but I’d never been serious about any of them. I suppose I thought I might marry one day, but I wasn’t in any hurry. When you’re pretty and popular,’ she said frankly, ‘you don’t feel the same pressure as other girls. I was approaching my thirtieth birthday, but I was still the baby of the family and Daddy’s pet.’

Bessie, who had fallen asleep with her head pillowed on the old dog, groaned in her sleep, rolled over and stretched out, exposing her swollen nipples to the cooler air from the window.

‘But David was so different. I suppose I fell in love with him because he was different. And he seemed determined from
the beginning that he was going to have me. He was always single-minded like that about anything he really wanted.’

He courted her hard, and she was flattered and fascinated. She had started seeing him regularly, but it was not until she announced that she meant to marry him that her family had become alarmed. ‘They simply never imagined I could be doing more than amusing myself with him, because – as Bob, my brother, said – he just wasn’t one of us. I was furious. I was desperately anti-snobbery in those days and, in any case, as I was always pointing out, David had been to a decent school and everything. It wasn’t as if he ate peas with a knife or wiped his nose on his sleeve. The more the family argued, the more I was determined to have him. And in the end Daddy said I was old enough to make my own mistakes, and made everyone else shut up.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course I found out they were right about David and I was wrong, but it was too late by then. I was married to him and that was that.’

‘You never thought about divorce?’

She shook her head. ‘Pride, at first. I couldn’t have admitted my wonderful love affair was a fish story. And, of course, I did love him. Later I suppose it was just stubbornness. I wouldn’t be beaten by him. And fear, too.’ She looked at him sidelong. ‘I’m not used to being on my own. I don’t think I’d like to have to go out there again as a single person.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d stay single for long,’ Slider said.

‘Very gallant of you.’

‘No, just the truth.’

She moved away from the compliment. ‘But to have to start again, go out and meet people, all that dreadful who-are-you and what-do-you-do business – ghastly enough at sixteen, but at fifty-eight? No, I don’t think I could go through that again. So we go on as we are. A
modus vivendi
has been reached. I ignore his infidelities and pay his bills. He plays the dutiful husband on public occasions for the sake of my cheque book.’

‘But doesn’t he make a living? Didn’t you say he was a good estate agent?’

‘He is, but he’s a lousy businessman. He’d have done better to stay with a firm like Jackson, but of course he was ambitious and wanted his own company. What man doesn’t? And I was ambitious for him. I set him up, and I bailed him out whenever
he made a bad decision, which was often. I suppose that was part of the trouble.’

‘How’s that?’

‘All the money in the marriage is mine. Daddy made a large settlement on me when I married – fortunately, very well invested. David knew that. He married me at least partly for my money – no, please, don’t protest.’ She stopped Slider with a lift of a muddy hand. ‘The trouble is that he’s an old-fashioned creature underneath and thinks a man ought to wear the trousers and bring home the bacon. He has affairs to put me in my place, and the worse his business does, the more women he flaunts in front of me. It’s his way of asserting his masculinity.’

‘It must have been very hard for you,’ Slider said gently.

She looked at him nakedly. ‘I’m crazy to put up with it. That’s what my family says. But I married him. You can’t just shrug off responsibility because it’s inconvenient, can you?’

‘No,’ said Slider uncomfortably.

‘And they don’t really mean it, anyway,’ she went on. ‘Bob’s wife drinks, for instance, and sometimes she steals things, but he’ll never leave her. Not just
noblesse oblige.
Either you’re that sort of person, or you aren’t – don’t you think?’

‘I used to,’ Slider said. ‘Lately I’ve wondered whether everything isn’t changing.’

‘I know what you mean.’ She nodded rather glumly, and then said, ‘Is there any more coffee?’

He took her mug and went to refill it, and her voice followed him across the room in a puzzled way. ‘I was right, you are a strange sort of policeman. Dangerous, too.’

‘Dangerous?’ he said, amused.

‘Look how much I’m telling you. Why should I do that?’

‘Because I’m interested.’

‘Exactly.’ She tried for a lighter tone. ‘I imagine all the young policewomen are nuts about you.’

He came back with the coffee. ‘They don’t even notice me. They think I’m dull and safe.’

‘I bet they don’t.’

‘Tell me what Jennifer Andrews was like,’ he said firmly.

‘Haven’t you seen her?’ She seemed surprised.

‘I never met her alive,’ he pointed out. ‘What was she like as a person?’

‘Pretty, smart, lively. Rather obvious. Vulgar, of course. And she was man mad.’

‘What did your husband see in her?’

‘She was a conquest,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if you know women like her, but she was very mannish in some ways – brassy, confident, at home in pubs, handled her drinks and cigarettes like a man, liked to drive fast, took the lead in conversation. Women like that are a challenge to some men.’

He nodded. ‘And what did she see in him?’

She shrugged. ‘Another scalp on her belt.’

‘Is that all?’

She hesitated. ‘I have a theory that women like that are really not interested in men at all. What they are trying to do is get their own back on women. She wasn’t taking David
for
her, she was taking him
from
me.’ He stirred a little restlessly at this advance into the psycho-Saharan dunes without a water-bottle, and she noticed it. ‘They always go after married men, you notice,’ she justified her argument. ‘What they’re really trying to do is to take their father away from their mother. They’re scoring off Mummy.’

‘You knew her quite well?’ he suggested noncommittally.

‘Not well, but better than I wanted to.’

‘How did David meet her?’

‘Oh, that was through Frances Hammond. I suppose you know David was friendly with her husband?’

‘I understand they were at school together.’

‘Yes, though not in the same year. Gerald was three years older than David, but I suppose he saw a kindred spirit in him. They became great chums after they left school, at any rate. The four of us spent quite a lot of time together – David, Gerald, Frances and I – though really it was more for David’s sake than mine, because they weren’t really my sort of people. Then after Gerald left, David set himself up in a sort of avuncular role to Frances, listening to her problems and offering advice. One of the things he advised her to do was to get herself involved in local affairs, as a way of taking her out of herself. Be more like Diana, he told her: I don’t suppose she liked that any more than I did. But she joined the parish council, anyway, and met Jennifer Andrews, and at some point introduced David to her. I expect he bumped into her at the Rectory.
Then Jennifer said she wanted a part-time job, and David took her on.’

‘Was it a genuine job?’

‘Oh, yes, I think so. At first, anyway. She’d done that sort of work before. I expect she wangled the meeting so that she could ask him for a job; and David, of course, always liked taking on more staff. That was why his business failed. But at least Jennifer knew what to do, unlike some of them.’

‘But then at some point they began to …?’

‘What a delicate pause. Yes, they “began to”. I don’t know exactly when – he did
try
to be discreet, though not very hard – but I don’t suppose they lost much time about it, when there was so much goodwill on both sides.’

‘I’m sorry, this must be very painful for you.’

‘I don’t care any more.’ She eyed him with a hard, defiant look. ‘No, really. I used to, but there comes a point when it all just stops. He can do as he pleases, as long as I don’t have to know about it.’

‘But you did know about Jennifer Andrews.’

‘Yes, and now that she’s dead, I suppose it will all be dragged out into the open for people to paw over.’ She sighed. ‘I must say you were a pleasant surprise compared with what I’d expected.’

‘A uniformed constable with big boots who licked his pencil?’

‘Come, I’m not as out of touch as all that! I thought it would be a callow youth with a moustache and an attitude, who’d look around this house with a serves-you-right expression.’

‘What would he think served you right?’

She looked at him slightly askance for a moment, and then said, ‘No, don’t play games with me. It doesn’t suit you. You know she came here that evening, so why not ask me about it straight out?’

Long experience kept Slider’s face impassive. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘What time did Jennifer Andrews arrive here on Tuesday night?’

‘It must have been about nine o’clock. I heard the car drive up and the dogs started barking. I thought it was David coming back. I was upstairs, in my bedroom – I’d just gone up to look for my reading glasses. I went and looked out of the window
and saw her getting out of the car. She has a red sports car with a personalised number-plate.’

He noted the incipient scorn in her voice on the last words, and said diffidently, ‘Your husband has one, too, hasn’t he?’

‘I imagine that’s where she got the idea. I suppose they were alike in some things – a taste for the meretricious and showy. Perhaps that’s what they saw in each other.’

‘What was she wearing?’

‘Wearing?’ The question seemed to surprise her. She thought a moment. ‘A navy dress, sleeveless, with a red belt. And a red silk scarf over her hair. She pulled it off as she got out of the car and it hung round her neck.’ She looked to see if that was enough and then went on with the story. ‘I went downstairs and opened the door to her. She was in a temper and she’d been drinking – I could smell it on her breath. She demanded to know where David was. I said I had no idea, and she screamed, “Liar!” at me. I saw no reason to put up with that sort of thing so I started to close the door. She shoved her foot in the way of it. The dogs were barking their heads off and I told her she’d better move it before it got bitten, and she laughed in a sneering sort of way and said she knew all about the dogs and how they wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ Her eyes filled suddenly, shockingly with tears. ‘That was the moment when it really came home to me. This dreadful woman knew all about my dogs. She probably knew everything about me and my home and family. He’d
told
her. She and David had discussed me and my private affairs together. It made me feel – quite
sick
for a moment.’

Slider nodded with painful sympathy. ‘It must have been a dreadful shock. What did you do?’

‘I told her David wasn’t there, and that if she was so desperate to see the inside of my house she could come in and search for him if she liked. She said she’d already seen the inside of my house. She said that she and David had – had made love here once when I was out.’ Her hands were trembling slightly, he noticed. She saw him looking at them, and put down the cutting she was holding and folded them together to keep them still. ‘I said she was an unprincipled slut and told her to go away. She said she’d go all right when I’d told her where David was, because he’d stood her up. She’d been waiting for him for nearly an hour in Romano’s – the Italian
restaurant at Baker’s Wood, just up the road from here, do you know it?’

‘I know the one.’

‘It’s a dreadful place.’ She met his eyes. ‘It was the first glimmer of light for me, thinking of her sitting in there alone all that time waiting for him. David and I went there once in desperation when there was a power cut at home. There was mould on the salad and the lasagne felt like rubber and smelt like sweat.’

‘God, yes, I know what you mean.’ Slider remembered his earlier thoughts about the flowers and the businessman’s assignation. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings? ‘And where was David, in fact?’

‘I said I didn’t know, and I didn’t. Do you think I would stoop to lie to a woman like that?’ He looked at her steadily. ‘He went out to the office that morning and I hadn’t seen him or heard from him since; but that was quite usual. We lead our own separate lives for most of the time.’

‘Had you been in all day?’

‘No, I was out several times, shopping in the morning, to the bank early in the afternoon and to take the dogs out later. He could have been home while I was out, if that’s what you mean.’

He nodded. ‘What happened next with Mrs Andrews?’