The Mistress of Alderley (20 page)

“The one he bought your dad?”

“Yes. I think Dad saw it as a sign that Bert wanted to keep in touch with his roots, have a foothold in the North. And when the visits became fewer and fewer Dad started ringing him at work—he got the number of the Fleetwood Group somehow or other, maybe just from Directory Inquiries—and he'd chide him about never seeing him, about the fact that he was losing his Yorkshire accent, and so on, and so on. Finally he went too far and Bert snapped and told him a few home truths.”

“Because the house hadn't been his way of keeping in touch, had it?”

“No. It had been a way of buying Dad off. And that was essentially the end. No invitation to the wedding, or the christenings. Simple card at Christmas with just a signature—the
new
name. He used Dad's pestering as an
excuse,
I'm sure. He'd wanted to make a clean break for some time, and that gave him a flimsy sort of reason. Dad was devastated.”

Oddie sat thinking for a bit.

“And was this break total?” he asked finally. “Did it extend to you too?”

“My card was signed ‘Love, Marius,'” she said wryly. “And more recently, ‘Love, Marius, Sheila, Guy, and Helena.' That was after we'd seen each other again, had a bit of a talk.”

“How did you come to meet up again?”

She clearly would have preferred not to talk about it, but she poured them both second cups of coffee and forced herself to.

“Tom, my husband, died three years ago. We'd had a very happy marriage, a son we both loved and got on well with—he's at Harvard at the moment, doing a doctoral thesis on something I barely understand. Tom was a teacher too—a wonderful one, far better than I am…. He got so depressed with the way education was going in this country: the regimentation, the suppressing of everything that isn't strictly utilitarian, the denial of flair and imagination in the teaching profession—above all the grisly farce of the inspections, which skew the whole school for months in advance.”

She left a long silence. Oddie waited.

“During the run-up to an inspection of his school he committed suicide. He felt his work had become a gross betrayal of all he'd ever stood for…. I felt so angry. I sent round a letter to all his friends and relations telling them that his death was suicide and why he had done it. One of the people I sent it to was Bert.”

“And he came straight up to you?”

“No. In one of the old type of Hollywood films he would have, wouldn't he? But it was months after the funeral and the inquest—maybe three months. It was one of those lonely evenings: one eventually gets used to them, but never quite accepts them. There was a ring on the doorbell, and when I opened it, there was Bert. Twenty-five years older than when I'd seen him last, but unmistakably Bert. He just said ‘Hello, Hester,' and my face was on his shoulder and I was crying all over his expensive suit. And he was putting his arms around me and saying that he'd hoped that I was getting over it.”

“What happened?”

“He came in. We had coffee and cakes—funeral bake-meats, belatedly. I had a few little weeps. We talked about Tom—they'd never met—and what a
good
man he was. ‘I've never understood good people,' Bert said. He listened, and he comforted. It was wonderful having him around again, even though I knew it would be brief. He told me about his wife and his children—just normal family stuff, but I was glad that at last I knew something. He didn't tell me about his other women, of course. When he was showing signs of leaving, towards nine o'clock, I came out and asked him to do something for me.”

“Visit his father.”

“Yes. I knew Bert, knew his moods, and this was a good one. I felt sure nothing could go wrong. He knew the house, but I walked with him anyway, and left him at the end of the road. When I kissed him good-bye he said, ‘Aren't you coming with me?' but I don't think he really wanted me to. He knew it would be best with just the two of them on their own. I phoned Dad the next day after school and he was over the moon. Just kept talking on and on about what Bert had said, what he'd told him about his businesses, his family, his houses. I was so glad I'd asked him to do it. I heard afterwards from Dad's neighbor that he'd seen Bert leaving about half past nine, so he wasn't there more than half an hour. But I was so happy for weeks afterwards that he'd made it up with Dad, and that he really felt for me in my loneliness.”

“And then?”

She shrugged.

“Does there have to be an ‘And then'?”

“You didn't rush to contact us when your brother was killed. I don't get the feeling you'll be at the funeral.”

She pondered.

“I want to put this as clearly and simply as possible, but I don't want to seem a complete fool…. I suppose it was naive of me, but I thought his coming to see us would
lead
to something: a bit more contact, a telephone call now and then, even an invitation to stay with him and his family in London. But there was nothing. Just the card at Christmas, signed with the extra names, like I said. The
effect
was cruel rather than kindly—not the intention, I'm sure, but the effect.”

“What do you think the intention was?”

“I don't know. You see, I don't know ‘Marius,' only the young Bert. But I would guess it was just some momentary impulse, one weekend when he happened to be in Leeds and had nothing special to occupy an evening. ‘I'll go and see Hester. She's just lost her husband.' Not a
bad
impulse at all. Something left over from Mum's influence, just a trace left of her standards, her feelings about how one should behave. But incredibly skin-deep. Once he'd done that little bit of his duty, it was just forgotten—nothing followed it, not as far as he was concerned.”

“But it did have consequences, didn't it—for your Dad?”

“I thought you might have guessed that. You've known people going towards senility, haven't you?”

“Yes,” said Oddie, his face twisting. “My mother.”

“I should emphasize that you saw him today at something approaching his best. On other days he can just drift in and out of consciousness and hardly says anything with any grasp of reality—those are the days when he's at his worst. But Bert's visit was towards the beginning of the process, and he was so overjoyed by it that it was the start of this fantasy: Bert was a good son, he came back regularly, they went to sporting fixtures together, he said things that Dad could quote to people, he even used to claim that Bert consulted him about business affairs.”

“And, in fact, there was nothing between that one visit and his death?”

“Nothing. But the fantasy cheered Dad up no end, and I never tried to disabuse him of it. I did ring Bert once in the years since his visit. It was when Dad was taken into the nursing home, about six months ago. I found his number by Dad's phone, and I rang him to tell him what had happened and why.”

“How did he react?”

“He was quite brief and businesslike about it. I explained that I wanted to keep my job, and couldn't nurse him during the day, and he said he understood, that he was too busy to talk, but I was to send the bills for the nursing home—the part that was not covered by his pension—to him and he'd see to them. And that was it.”

“You were disappointed, I imagine.”

“Yes, I was. Again,” she added wryly. “The bills weren't the reason I'd rung him. I thought about it, but in the end—I'm a teacher, and there are no rich teachers—I did send the bills to him. They were always paid. But I felt I was doing things on his terms, that he had enclosed me in a world run by his values. And I wondered whether people around him always had to do that.”

“I rather think they did,” Oddie said. He began to shift in his chair. “Is there anything else about your brother that you'd like to tell me?”

“No, I don't think so.” She got up, and they began walking toward the front door. In the hallway she stopped and turned to him, and surprised him with a question.

“Did you know D. H. Lawrence was called ‘Bert' at home?”

Oddie shook his head. That was one odd fact that he had not learned from his wife.

“No, I didn't know that.”

“David Herbert Lawrence, known to his family as Bert.”

“I think I'd go for ‘David Herbert' myself.”

“And when he met his sisters later in life, years after he'd flown the nest, and they still referred to him as ‘our Bert,' he didn't like it at all. ‘I'm not their Bert,' he said, ‘and I never was.'”

Oddie stood on the doorstep and looked at her.

“You feel you didn't know him, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“And that you never knew the real man.”

“Yes. I feel that as a boy he must always have been playing some kind of game or charade with us, waiting to get away to become the real him…. I told you, didn't I, that I knew some of his girlfriends—the ones he had while he was still a boy?”

“Yes, you did.”

“They were all strong people—independent, intelligent girls, with a good future in front of them, if they worked and fought. He left them miserable, uncertain, unsure of themselves and their capabilities.”

“That's interesting. There may be some kind of pattern in his chosen women.”

“And maybe he met someone too strong to be used like that.”

When Charlie arrived at CID on Saturday morning, his boss was just finishing a phone call.

“Yes—that was rather what I suspected. The other information was interesting, but I can't really see it as having any bearing on the case—unless our view of it changes drastically. I'm grateful to you for your time. I know you must be pretty stressed out at the moment.” He put the phone down. “That was the manager at the Fleetwood Group's headquarters.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows.

“What's our interest there?”

Oddie spread his hands.

“When a rich man is murdered we can't ignore the fact of his riches. We need to know what's going to happen to the boodle. And there are other ramifications, such as whether there were any of his rivals who obviously would like him out of the way.”

“A bit mafioso that, isn't it? I don't often want to sound complacently English, but I don't think firms here usually go around getting their rivals put permanently out of business.”

“Nor do I, but who knows? There's a school of thought that says we're being taken over by the Russian mobsters. Anyway, the truth as sent down from headquarters is that he was planning a cautious, exploratory expansion into the North—hardly a threat to the dominance of the big boys in this area. And that will go ahead in any case: his death changes nothing—the group is too big for that. And his fortune all goes to his wife.”

Charlie chuckled.

“His marriage was far from over, then.”

“We suspected that. I wonder if he'd tried that one on lots of his women, or if it was a new one specially framed for Caroline Fawley. I think his marriage and his affairs represent a rather eighteenth-century sort of arrangement. There is the regular mistress, but the wife is the one of real importance. I think at the Fleetwood Group they would like Sheila to take on an important role. Apparently she is something of a whiz at getting things done in the arts organizations she chairs, and also good on the PR side. I gather from my contact that she is insisting that until the baby is born, she can't make any decisions like that, and they'll have to appoint a stopgap chairman. Maybe what she is trying to do is make sure nothing permanent is decided until Guy grows up a bit.”

“That might mean a very long wait.”

“It might indeed. Anyway, all this is interesting, but not really for us, I don't think.”

“Nor do I. What do we do now? Pause for breath?”

“I think so. Do stocktakings, like prime ministers do: call together the cabinet and say, ‘Where are we at, and where are we going?'”

“And the answer in politics is ‘nowhere' as a rule,” said Charlie. “We haven't got a cabinet, though, have we? Hargreaves is a good, solid bloke, but his brain is never going to solve any of the mysteries of the universe. Troops are thin on the ground.”

“We could call in Rani,” suggested Oddie. “He did a lot of the bystander-witness interviewing, and he's just been talking to Walter Fairlie, who did the work at the Crescent. But mostly he could be useful as an outsider, a sounding board, if you like: someone who knows the circumstances of the murder but not all the psychological network behind it. Having him here will force us to go over all the details, maybe get a new perspective.”

So twenty minutes later they were seated with a bemused but distinctly flattered Rani, with a flask of coffee, some sandwiches, and a whole case to survey.

“If we begin at the beginning,” said Oddie, “then it has to be with the dead man. There's still a possibility of a random slaying, but we've uncovered enough dirt, enough possible motives, to let us put that on the back burner, at least for the moment. Who was Marius Fleetwood?”

“Bert Winterbottom, for the first twenty-odd years of his life,” Charlie pointed out. “And by your account a good son in a solid, working-class family.”

“But one with upwardly mobile impulses,” said Oddie. “Mostly but not entirely centered on the mother. Dad apparently never had much trouble mixing with any class of person. Was it the upward-mobility impulse that made Bert itch to get on? That does come over strongly from my talk with the sister.”

“I know how he felt,” said Rani.

“Do you?”

“And how. Families are stronger in Asia, as are Asian families here. You really have to fight if you want to get away from the life they've earmarked for you.”

“And you wanted to come into the police force,” said Oddie with gentle irony.

“I wanted to do something different, and I didn't want to spend three or four years in higher education. I made it—I'm not standing behind the counter of a you-name-it-we've-got-it shop—but it was a struggle.”

“Interesting. But with Bert Winterbottom it was rather different: they were behind him all the way. I have the impression they recognized that the family had produced a boy who was definitely exceptional. They were proud as Punch that people who knew him realized he was, even at a young age, someone who was obviously going to make a splash.”

“So when he kicked the ladder from under him, it was a piece of real ingratitude,” said Charlie.

“Yes. OK, his father was pestering him a bit. He could have been dealt with firmly. Instead his sister is convinced that the pestering was used, brutally, as an excuse to cut the bonds entirely.”

“Right,” said Charlie. “So now we have Bert Winterbottom metamorphosed into Marius Fleetwood, successful and respected businessman. And deservedly so, by all accounts.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Oddie. “Straight, responsible, responsive—founder of a chain that in quite a short time developed a bond of trust with its customers, as the old Marks and Spencer did, though it took them much longer to do it. Fleetwood's supermarkets got themselves an instant reputation: they gave value, they told the truth, they were responsive to environmental and ethnic concerns, they were model employers.”

“But in private he was a lying two-timer, is that right?” asked Rani.

“That's about it. Seems like he had to let off his immoral steam somewhere, and he did it in his private life. We're not talking here just about him having a wife and a mistress. He seems to have slipped into the convenient lie like a duck into water. He tells his mistress his marriage is effectively over, and when his wife gets pregnant he tells her it's by some younger lover. And when a young look-alike enters the stage who was born and grew up in Armley, he tells her he's never lived in Leeds, but he had had a younger brother who did, a tearaway, and he'd slept around like there was no tomorrow—the said brother being a spur-of-the-moment invention. I could go on. The charming liar personified.”

“With a basic contempt for the women he was charming and making fools of,” said Rani.

“That could be a much longer list than we know about,” said Charlie. “And we know about his wife, his current mistress, and a long-ago lover in Armley. Add to them his own children, who did or could have had grievances against him—Guy and Helena, and even perhaps the Fawley children and certainly Peter Bagshaw. That's a pretty good list to start with.”

“And you can add to those his own family back in Pontefract,” said Oddie. “I agree with you it's a formidable list, but I don't think we should include Sheila Fleetwood among the women he fooled. Once, maybe, but not for years. They perfectly understood each other, apparently, and she stayed with him on his terms. Comparisons with Hillary Clinton and Mary Archer spring to mind. She knew, I imagine, about all his sexual liaisons. She may well have a motive, but it surely has to be something other than his womanizing—something we haven't uncovered yet.”

“And did she have an opportunity?” said Rani. “Living in London?”

“She was at a board meeting of the Gordon Craig Theatre trustees in Stevenage until about five o'clock,” said Oddie. “But let's stick with motive for the moment. We haven't discussed yet his new situation, of starting up a liaison with the daughter of his mistress. That was an entirely new factor.”

“If it wasn't just a one-night stand,” said Rani.

“There was the matter of the newly decorated fantasy room at the Crescent, which he was to have the use of for three weeks—which is about the length of the rest of the current opera season at the Grand.”

“Walter Fairlie tells me he'd done one or two similar jobs—part of the process of wooing women who later became long-term mistresses. On the other hand, it could have been a one-night stand on Olivia Fawley's part,” said Rani.

“That's quite true. And in that connection we have to remember that Olivia brings with her into this case a long list of lovers from her recent past and present.”

“And also a father who was ambitious to cling to her skirt-tails if her career takes off as people expect,” said Charlie.

“That's right. A decidedly unsavory character, Rick Radshaw. We only have his word for it that she gave him the brush-off at the post-performance party. It could have been earlier.”

“What about Caroline Fawley?” asked Rani. “She could have one of the best motives of all. She's woken up to Marius now, she says, but can we be sure she didn't suss him out much earlier?”

Oddie and Charlie thought.

“No, we can't be sure,” said Charlie. “By all accounts they were pretty careless, Fleetwood and Olivia. There could have been mounting anger on Caroline's part as she realized they were panting for each other, and that it was going to climax, in every sense of the word, on the first night of
Forza.
”

“But then opportunity really
does
present a problem,” said Oddie. “But before we get on to opportunity, just one observation: as his sister said—and she's one herself—he really went for strong, independent women. He deceived them, he played with them, he brought them down, and he wouldn't have had half so much fun if they'd been gorgeous birdbrains. I'd say that applied to Caroline Fawley just as much as to the others—though we've thought all along that she was a bit of a fool to be taken in. So, at one time or another, had Sheila Fleetwood, Mrs. Bagshaw, and a whole lot more.”

“Maybe the only one who wasn't was Olivia Fawley,” said Charlie.

“Fair point. But she wasn't in the market for a long-term relationship. She's only interested in ships that pass in the night. A totally different agenda. His agenda, apparently, was long term, hers short.”

“Maybe that was the problem,” said Rani. “Maybe that was the undoing of him.”

 

“No, no,” said Caroline into the phone. “I couldn't think of dragging you out here. In any case it's rather tricky to find. I'll come to the theater. I very much want to see it again, and I haven't been backstage at all…. Oh, I agree about the potential, provided we can find the sort of repertoire that suits the size of the theater and suits the patrons too. We'll have to see what's available from outside, as well as initiating productions ourselves, of course…. Yes, I'm glad Mrs. Fleetwood recommended me, and please: you don't have to be embarrassed about it. We're not embarrassed, why should you be? When shall we say, then?…No, Monday isn't too early. Ten o'clock. That's fine. Oh, and by the way, if you
do
find that I suit, and if we can come to an agreement, I shall need to find a house near Doncaster itself—something quite modest, because I shan't have the children with me that much longer. Do please keep your eyes open…. You are terribly kind!”

She put the phone down, confident that they would find that she suited them. Philip Massery, the chairman of the trustees of the Little Theatre, had been trying to suppress his drools at the prospect all through the call. Caroline wished she could remember what it was that she and Marius had seen there. It had made little impression at the time. Luckily she kept a diary, and could well have noted the title of the play. If the performance was undistinguished, all the more chance for the new broom to improve things.

She had not wanted Massery to come to Alderley. She was very conscious of the sort of spectacle she now made, posed against the backdrop of the house: the mistress, set up in a solid, impressive establishment, suddenly finding herself about to be turned out into the cold. It was not quite like the Lady of the Camellias coughing herself to death in a denuded apartment, but it was along the same lines. She had been deserted by Marius in his hour of death, just as any of her predecessors would have been if his death had coincided with their period of tenure as his accepted mistress. The
special
place she had imagined for herself in this line had been a figment of her own imagination. She would have hated it if Philip Massery had come to see her amid the ruins of her hopes and aspirations. He might have appointed her to lead the Little Theatre of Doncaster out of
pity.
She wanted to go there in hope, make the place the center of her life, and succeed there, both as actress and as administrator.

The sound of an elderly motor car aroused her from her reverie. She knew it was Jack—his first visit since the murder, though they had talked more than once on the phone. As she opened the front door Alex came out of his little computer room and started up the stairs to the lavatory. Caroline had intended to kiss Jack, in thanks for his visit and his tender care of her while she was Marius's mistress, but now she gave him no more than a formal peck, and still got suspicious looks from her son.