Unfaithfully Yours (31 page)

Above all, of course, she resented the woman who had kept faith with the ‘Beastly Barrister’ for so many years. Nothing is more unpleasant to the totally faithless (and, as I will show, Mrs Goldsmith has been constantly unfaithful to her husband) than faith. Writing a series of letters that not only satirized and provided a crude caricature of a woman whom she had hated for years and also, possibly, might incriminate her in a murder and a series of attacks on innocent local women
²⁴
was a perfect release for a woman consumed with what seemed an unrequited passion for a man who, although almost totally lacking in moral qualities, seems to have been an irresistible magnet for many different types of woman.

I am prepared to admit, after much thought, that Mr Price himself is unaware of his new partner’s history and was certainly totally innocent of any knowledge of the true circumstances surrounding Mrs Larner’s death. All I have to say to him is that he may well, at last, have met his match! Don’t go to bed with the lights off, Gerald!

The evidence, I realize, for ‘Ms Sharpe’’s involvement in these crimes is purely circumstantial. Mrs Larner died over ten years ago. The official verdict on her death was that it was suicide. The only evidence we have for the presence of Mrs Goldsmith at 24 Lawson Crescent on the night of 3 November 2000 is that of an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has been the subject of several court orders for harassment of her neighbours; in fact Mrs Bildeeze, whom I found a charming and co-operative witness, has recently been admitted to Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, suffering from ‘acute dementia and paranoia’.
²⁵

It is impossible to prove. Murder is often impossible to prove. That does not make it any less like murder. I would very much appreciate a response to my letter from all of you who have helped me with my inquiry.
²⁶

Yours truly,

Orlando Gibbons (PIAA)

PS It is also significant that Mrs Goldsmith was ‘away at a conference’ from 14 July – exactly the date of departure claimed by ‘Mrs Price’ in her letter to me.

PPS Mrs Goldsmith has had well-documented affairs with fourteen different men. She has also, by her own admission to an informant who did not wish to be named, had ‘a brief fling’ with Alison Hennehaugh of the
Observer
.
²⁷

From:

Micky Larner

Dental Nurse at

Dimmock Dentistry

‘We Care About Teeth’

24 Beeston Crescent

Putney

16 December

To:

Orlando Gibbons

24 Lawson Crescent

Putney

Dear Orlando,

It’s funny to be writing to my old address – but I think it’s so great that you and Mary have taken up residence there permanently! I am doing so much work with Sam in the surgery that it does seem to make sense for us both to live here. Hope you like my new slogan for the practice! I’m finding dentistry a challenge but I’m really loving being a nurse. I don’t think the exams will be easy but I’m determined to make a go of it. Just carrying the spittoon to and from the chair is thrilling when Sam is moving so purposefully about the surgery, implement in hand!

My gay-animals film has hit a few snags. The Dutch people proved somewhat unreliable, to put it mildly, and Jens seemed more interested in Sam than he was in long-term relationships between male squirrels; Channel 4, who are always chasing the latest new thing at the expense of real, solid value, in my view, say they now think it is a little ‘too niche’ for them.

‘Niche’? Excuse me! Isn’t it important that nobody seems to recognize or, at least, publicly admit to the fact that homosexuality among British mammals is a huge issue? For them and for us. If we cannot acknowledge gay bats or gay sheep, how the hell can we face up to our own sexuality? I tried to deny mine for years – as did Sam, who still, as you know, has something of a problem in this area – and it did not have a good effect on Elaine. Some of the sequences we have already filmed, including a devastating and moving sequence of two male badgers trying and failing to have intercourse on a motorway near Leeds, are among the best things I have ever filmed in forty years as a documentary filmmaker.

I realize I am not getting round to discussing the murder of my wife. My discovery that I was gay is not the only thing in the world. People are dying of starvation, for God’s sake! Although I would say that Channel 4’s attitude is, in my view, fundamentally homophobic!

Pamela. Sorry. Pamela.

I am not talking about my issues with Channel 4 because I am trying to deny Pamela. Although I detest homophobia, in whatever form it takes, I should say that Pamela is, or was, the mother of my children and, although we had some difficult times (the last fifteen years were very difficult indeed), I still have moments of intense fondness and sympathy for her. And yet, in a way, I was relieved when she died. A part of me would not have been unduly bothered if she had been thrown under an electric train or dismembered by wild animals.

But that is not the point. She was a person. Not an easy person. But a person. In many ways a despicable person. Sometimes a person you would like to strangle. Or choke to death. Or asphyxiate. I realize this may sound tasteless, given that, as far as I can see from your excellent report, she was actually asphyxiated. By a woman with whom I have been on holiday! But she was someone who could, quite easily, provoke you into holding a cushion or a pillow over her face and holding it down, hard, until her screams died away to whimpers and her limbs, after threshing uncontrollably for what seemed like an eternity, twitched their way into lifelessness.

I hated her, Orlando.

I have never hated anyone the way I hated Pamela. She was so boring! And the way she went on and on and on about her mother. My God! Her mother was boring but Pamela going on about her was even more boring. She went on and on, actually, about just about everything. ‘Why do you leave your underpants on the floor?’ ‘Oh, you’re not going to do a funny French accent again, are you?’ ‘Another film about fish? Who needs it?’ Living with her made me feel physically sick. We had a memorial service for her after she died and I can tell you people were really scratching around for something nice to say. I will be honest with you, Orlando. Life is a lot simpler without her.

That being said, obviously murder is wrong and we have to think what to do about the revelations with which you have provided us. I want to thank you, by the way, for being so careful and patient with your enquiries.

What we do about it is anybody’s guess. There seems to be, as far as I can make out, no way of definitely proving that
la
Goldsmith did it; although I must say your theory, which I suppose it is, rather than definitive proof, at this stage, sounds horribly plausible to me. Barbara is the Wicked Witch of the West and, in my view, if she had actually been operating in Oz during the period when Judy and the Munchkins were following the yellow brick thingy they would all have been strewn over it as roadkill before you could say Liza Minnelli. Murder is obviously wrong. Maybe Pam had already swallowed however many of whatever it was she swallowed and was going to croak anyway – but you’ve got to admire her, haven’t you? I mean, what a bitch!

Actually, knowing Babs, I think it entirely probable she forced them down Pam’s throat!

I love her style, actually. I mean, the old bag must be sixty if she’s a day but she still wears those pencil skirts because she has the hips for them, and those blouses that reveal a positively embarrassing amount of tit. When she tosses her hair around, which is, I have to say, even if she did asphyxiate my wife, her best feature, everyone but everyone sits up and takes notice because she has style in a big, big way. She has passion. She has the kind of intensity you used to see in Maggie Thatcher when someone tried an awkward question. When she looks straight at you – which she always does – you are rooted to the spot. I remember her in Spain, sitting at the breakfast table and smouldering over a freshly squeezed orange juice. Dressed to kill at 08.45. Dear Johnny G. was never, ever able to handle her, was he? And the Beastly Barrister – who is, let’s face it, a dish even if we hate him – has probably finally met his match.

I think probably the best thing is to leave it there. Nothing will bring Pamela back. Thank God. That sounds awful but in a way I think she is probably much better off where she is. She did not enjoy life. I do feel, at last, that my curiosity has been satisfied as to how she met her end and that I can get on with my life with Sam, which is the most important thing for me at the moment. I am glad to say that there is a strong possibility that Barnaby may be released from jail very soon; he is hoping to return to Putney and perhaps get some work experience in the media. Leo and I are getting on like a house on fire and I have had some very nice notes from Milly, so things are looking good.

Thanks again for all your hard work, Orlando. We will all meet very soon, I am sure, and I enclose a cheque for £2,056 in recompense for your labours.

Love from

Mike Larner

From the desk of

Gerald Price QC

112 Heathland Avenue

Putney

18 December

To:

Orlando Gibbons

Detectives Are Us

12 The Alley

Putney

Dear Mr Gibbons,

Do not be confused by the address at the head of this letter. This is Barbara Goldsmith speaking to you from what used to be the Price marital home. I am sitting in dear Elizabeth’s study surrounded by unreadable Latin and Greek poets and even more unreadable books written about them by very dull scholars.

I have received some amusing letters in my time but I thought yours was a classic of its type. I am assuming it is intended humorously. Gerald and I were highly entertained. I read it to him in the bed he and Elizabeth shared for so long, and we laughed and laughed and laughed.

My personal favourite was Mrs Bildeeze. There is someone like that, I am sure, in every road in Putney and, as a piece of comic invention, she is mouth-watering, even if perhaps a little too sharply drawn to ever be anything but caricature. I was particularly struck by the image of me clambering over the side entrance of 24 Lawson Crescent, a place I last visited in 1984 in order to retrieve one of my sons. I cannot recall which one but as they are virtually identical that doesn’t really matter. I think they were restaging some sequences from
Return of the Jedi
with the aid of a few plastic light sabres.

What I do know is that I made a resolve, at the time, never to go anywhere near the place again. Pamela Larner, as I am sure your research, if we can dignify it by that name, has taught you, was a very difficult woman indeed. I have only recently become aware that Gerald had an affair with her – a lapse of taste that he ascribes to the particular difficulties he experienced in his marriage. I certainly did not roam the streets of Putney, with or without a blunt instrument, in order to peer at what the husband of a woman with whom I was, at the time, friendly was doing.

I had heard some rumour that Mary Dimmock was sure that she was assaulted on the towpath by an unknown woman. It may be true – although Mary Dimmock, as I am sure you are aware, since you seem to have made the mistake of becoming sexually involved with her – is a notoriously hysterical female. Her hold on reality is tenuous to say the least.

I was intrigued by the notion that I would impersonate Elizabeth Price’s prose style in order to incriminate her, or at least suggest that she was somehow involved with Mrs Larner’s death. It may be, for all I know, that she was. We are all capable of murder, especially someone with as heavy an investment in being a nice person as poor Elizabeth. What is certain is that I do not have the time or the inclination to go through such a ludicrously complicated routine of deception. You also make some completely ill-founded and laughably inaccurate remarks about my sex life, which is, Mr Gibbons, nobody’s business but mine. If you insist on making any of the allegations in your letter public, I will sue you for criminal libel; and, from the look of you, Mr Gibbons, I can afford a rather better lawyer than you can.

I trust you have not actually contacted poor Alison Hennehaugh. I am pretty sure you have not and that that part of your letter is pure invention. As far as I know, Alison is now working in an Australian university. It is true to say that she did not like one of my novels; but then, if you write novels, how can you stop some idiot saying publicly that they dislike them – and being paid to do so! It goes with the territory, Mr Gibbons. It is only their opinion. They have a right to their opinion. Many people, I am glad to say, find my novels amusing, which is why I continue to write them.

The names of Gerald’s conquests are all, clearly, inventions. Gerald and I particularly enjoyed Dominique von Finkelkraut-Smith. I hope I am spelling that right. Gerald says to pass on his compliments and he thinks it is the name of a Senegalese hurdler who was third in an Olympic race some years ago.

That was the principal purpose of my letter and I am assuming that neither Gerald nor I nor anyone else will ever hear anything more of you or your ridiculously half-baked theories. If they are half baked and not intended as a deliberate piece of satire on all of us suburban monsters. I suspect there is a deeper purpose to your letter – for on the few occasions when I have met you, you have struck me as not at all stupid. I am baffled as to what it may be. Perhaps Mr Larner did not pay you properly. He is, or was, notoriously mean.

I suspect, however, that your letter does not really propose a theory at all. It tells a story, although I have not yet quite grasped why you wanted to tell it that way. Or, indeed, what it is all about.

It may be as well, however, to try to give you an idea of how and why I behaved as I did. Life is full of inventions and absurdities. As a novelist I try to invent stories that are palpably untrue in order to make a truthful, and I hope helpful, point about the real world. When individuals start to use their narrative skills to make lies seem truthful and real, for whatever reason, I think it is time for novelists to stand up for the truth.