Village Affairs (27 page)

“I see,” said Carmichael, nodding. “So, although you knew about the relationship, you didn’t actually meet Mr. Bingham until recently?”

“That’s right. It was about a month ago, I think. They came to our house in Bucks for dinner, and it was a great success. We both quite liked Charlie, didn’t we, dear?”

“Oh, yes.” Evanston nodded. “He was a very amusing chap—we were both very sorry when we heard the news, for our own sake as well as Joan’s. We’d been looking forward to seeing him again.”

“And how would you describe their relationship?” asked Carmichael.

“To tell the truth,” said Sarah confidingly, “I was desperately hoping we would like Charlie once we did meet him, because he was so clearly good for Joan. Quite soon after she began seeing him, she seemed to settle down into a placid sort of serenity, if you know what I mean. Very unlike Joan, it was, but just what she needed. I think she’d been very lonely ever since Gene died.”

“She was hardly placid or serene while Gene was alive,” protested Evanston.

“Oh, no,” agreed Sarah. “They loved each other quite madly, but they weren’t at all good for each other. But he did leave an enormous hole in her life when he went.”

Carmichael exchanged a brief glance with Gibbons before asking, “So would you say that she and Mr. Bingham were quietly happy together?”

Sarah nodded at once. “Yes, that describes it very well,” she said, and Evanston concurred.

It was the same thing they had heard from all their other witnesses, and Carmichael sighed a little as he proceeded with his questioning. As a situation for murder, it was not very promising.

Evanston and Dame Sarah had little more light to shed; they had only met Bingham that once, though there had been plans for him and Joan to come out to Bucks over Sunday and Monday next. They had both been in America last week, and so had missed the news of Bingham’s death, only hearing of it when they returned on Saturday.

Dame Sarah volunteered that she had spoken to Joan just before leaving for the States; her friend had complained about not having the time to see Bingham last week, but had been looking forward to their plans together over this weekend, and to their trip to Bucking-hamshire next week. Sarah had noticed nothing amiss.

“And so say all of us,” muttered Carmichael as he and Gibbons left. “I told you, didn’t I, that’s just what all the theater people said, once I managed to track them down this afternoon? That Miss Bonnar had been very cheery and pleasant all through their rehearsals as well as after the production went up, and no one had noticed any change in her over the last few weeks or days.”

“Well,” said Gibbons, “she is an actress, after all, sir. Perhaps she was just putting up a good front.”

Carmichael merely snorted.

“Here,” he said, “I can’t stand the thought of those traffic photos without a good meal inside me. Let’s splurge, shall we, Gibbons? My treat—there’s a very nice little restaurant ’round over this way, if I remember rightly.”

Gibbons, no more eager for the traffic photos than his superior, agreed with enthusiasm.

Richard Tothill was back in his old cassock and brown tweed jacket. With his wife he stood at the edge of the graveyard, surveying the wreckage. They had seen a drained, exhausted Eve Bingham off once the last guests had left, and had then set to clearing away the leftover cakes and biscuits and doing the washing up. Now they stood ready to tidy up the churchyard.

Bingham’s grave had been filled in and covered over with fresh turves by the sexton, but he had had no time, he explained, to clear up the litter. He had sounded quite aggrieved about it, and the vicar had decided that the wisest course might be for him to lend a hand himself. That, of course, was before he had actually seen the graveyard.

It was amazing how much litter a crowd could leave behind, but it was not only that. The grass was trampled and dug up in places, the gravel of the path was spread everywhere but where it belonged, and, worst of all, two of the oldest gravestones had been toppled by people attempting to stand on them.

“I can see what Harry meant,” said Tothill, referring to the sexton.

“Well,” said Leandra, sighing, “if we pick up the litter, Harry will probably do the rest. We’d better make a start.”

She produced a large plastic bin bag and moved forward purposefully. “God,” she said, bending to collect several cigarette ends, “I’ll be glad when this is over.”

“It’s more or less over,” said Tothill, following her example. “Eve is leaving tomorrow or next day, and then things will begin to settle down.”

Leandra shook her head. “No,” she said, “it won’t be over ’til they find out who killed Charlie. If they ever do,” she added glumly, pitching an empty soda can with unnecessary force into the bag.

Tothill sat back on his heels and gazed at her, thinking, as always, how lovely she was, even stooping in an old brown coat to pick up garbage. He was a sensitive man and, as his wife’s happiness meant a great deal to him, he naturally paid attention to her thoughts and feelings. He could not protect her from feeling sorrow at Charlie’s death, any more than she could protect him, but for the first time he began to sense that the tragedy had affected her more deeply. They had both liked Charlie and he did not think Leandra felt the loss more than himself, but she seemed more troubled by the manner of the man’s death. She had, now he considered it, been on edge ever since they had heard it was murder. That was terrible, of course, the more so in a small village like this, but in truth Tothill did not think it very likely that any of the villagers had murdered gregarious, well-liked Charlie. Perhaps, he thought, still gazing at his wife, women were more sensitive to any kind of violence.

“Richard,” said Leandra sharply, “we will never get on if we don’t both work at it.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, moving into action again. “I was thinking about how charming you look. Have I mentioned today that I love you?”

She laughed at him. “I would be better pleased if you would prove it by helping me pick this stuff up. Talk is cheap, you know.”

“Righto,” he said, tossing a chewing gum wrapper into the bag.

The weather was turning colder. Bethancourt tightened the belt of his cashmere coat as he stood in the gardens of Stutely Manor and peered about in search of his dog. They had stayed out in the wooded hills rather later than Bethancourt had intended and it had grown dark by the time they had reached the gardens, making it easy for Cerberus to slip off to investigate an interesting scent without his master noticing until it was too late.

Bethancourt sighed and began to whistle when he was interrupted by the ringing of his mobile phone. He dug it out of his pocket and examined the number on the back-lit screen, flicking the phone on at once when he recognized Gibbons’s number.

“What cheer?” he asked, hoping for news.

“Not much,” came the answer. “Carmichael decided we needed a decent meal if we were going to spend the night searching through traffic photos, so we’re waiting for a table. He decided to ring his wife and I said I’d ring you.”

“I’m glad I rate so high,” said Bethancourt, “but I’m sorry about the traffic pictures. There was nothing new, then?”

“Nothing,” affirmed Gibbons in gloomy tones. “Nobody could place the Morris in the square that night, and everyone we’ve talked to all day long has agreed with the Benson twins and Mrs. Potts: Joan and Charlie were a very quiet, happy couple.”

Bethancourt considered this as he lit a cigarette. “That’s somehow not what I’d expected,” he said slowly. “Still,” he added more cheerfully, “outsiders never know everything that goes on in a relationship.”

Gibbons snorted. “That does me a lot of good,” he said. “That just breaks the case wide open, that does.”

“Well, it’s true,” said Bethancourt, rather hurt.

“It may be, but it’s also unprovable,” Gibbons said, and then sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m tired and hungry, that’s all. Oh, look, there’s the waiter. Sir? Yes, yes, we’re just coming.”

“You’d better ring off,” said Bethancourt. “Have a good meal.”

“Yes, thanks. Sir, the table’s ready … no, I’ll get that—”

The phone went dead in Bethancourt’s hand.

He replaced it in his pocket thoughtfully, and blew a long stream of smoke out into the chill evening air. He had been thinking to himself earlier that the Bensons and Martha Potts were unreliable witnesses where Joan Bonnar was concerned, and that it was entirely possible that her relationship with Bingham had begun to go sour. He had known of other cases where the decision to marry had ultimately resulted in a decision to break up. But Gibbons’s report shed new light on that theory: was it truly reasonable to suspect several different witnesses who all said the same thing? And despite what he had told his friend, was it any more reasonable to suppose that no hint of a trouble so deep that it had led to murder had come to anyone’s notice?

Bethancourt smoked pensively, hardly noticing that his fingers were becoming chilled as he paced slowly up and back along the gravel path. It was possible, he supposed, that Bingham had attempted to back out of the marriage. In someone sufficiently egotistical, pride could be a powerful motivator, and for all the turbulence of her previous affairs, Joan Bonnar had always been the one who left the men in her life, not the other way around.

The trouble with that theory was that he could not come up with a time when Bingham could have told Joan of his doubts. If it had occurred the weekend before his death, why should he then have gone to see her—in a cheery mood, according to Peg Eberhart—the next Sunday? And if he had made up his mind to tell her on the day he died, it was ridiculous to suppose Joan Bonnar would have resorted to her sedative to do away with him on the spur of the moment. Quite apart from the difficulty of administration, poison was not the weapon of choice for a
crime passionel.

He sighed and ground his cigarette out beneath his heel. He did not think the massive quantities of beer he had imbibed with Astley-Cooper after the funeral were doing his thinking processes any good. Or possibly, he thought with more confidence, there was something they were missing.

Along the rear facade of the manor, the outdoor lights went on, momentarily blinding him, just as Cerberus came bounding up, panting happily. Looking down, Bethancourt could just make out that the dog had found a patch of mud somewhere; his paws were leaving a black trail behind him.

“Clarence will never let you into the house like that, old boy,” Bethancourt told the dog, who wagged his tail. “You’ll have to have a paddle in the fountain to clean you off. Come on, let’s get in.”

All was quiet at the old farmhouse. Watkinson had returned to town that afternoon, but Joan had elected to stay on. Dinner had been a strained and silent meal, with Joan looking red-eyed and wan, and the twins unusually quiet. There was a feeling in the air that once again Joan’s unrestrained love affairs had brought unwelcome upheaval into their lives. Joan herself was not insensitive to this and retired upstairs after dinner with a bottle of whisky. The irritant of her presence removed, Mrs. Potts was determined not to let Julie and James continue to sulk. She cleared the dishes away and left the washing up ’til later. Instead, she retraced her steps to the study where the twins were whispering together on the sofa.

“How about a game of Scrabble?” she asked, smiling cheerfully.

They glanced at each other.

“It’s not a bad idea,” said Julie slowly.

“All right,” said James. “I’ll get out the board.”

They settled around the old card table, while James produced a dictionary and a pad and pencil.

“There we are,” he said, pulling out a chair. “All set.”

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Potts, shaking the bag vigorously before selecting her tiles. “This is just what I wanted after all the fuss today—a nice, quiet evening.”

“She’ll have to go back tomorrow,” said Julie, “and then things will get back to normal.”

“I just hope she doesn’t volunteer me to drive her,” said James.

“I doubt that,” said Mrs. Potts calmly. “You know your mother likes to drive—always has. Are you ready yet, Julie?”

“Mmm.” Julie shifted a tile and then looked up at them, a pleased twinkle in her eye. “I’m ready,” she said, and laid out all her tiles on the board.

“Oh, God,” said James. “Not a seven-letter word first thing. I can’t stand it.”

Julie merely giggled and looked triumphant.

“‘Loiters’,” spelled out Mrs. Potts resignedly, taking up her pencil and adding the fifty-point bonus to the total. It was a discouraging start to the game, especially since Julie usually won anyway, but Mrs. Potts didn’t care. It was the first time in days that she had seen either of the twins look so cheerful.

Gibbons arrived home very late and in a thoroughly depressed mood. He had been rather looking forward to getting a pint at his local pub before retiring, but it was long past closing by the time they finally found a photo of Bingham’s Morris and he was allowed to go home. They now had proof that Bingham had been in London on the day of his death, and in the general neighborhood of Joan Bonnar’s town house. It did not feel like much of a triumph.

His flat was a small one, but he had bought some new furniture for it over the past summer, when he had thought it would not be long before he would have a different kind of life awaiting his return from a long day’s work. That he would have had a larger, more comfortable home was not among his foremost regrets, but at times like this, even that loss loomed large, perhaps because it was an easier one to deal with than the remembrance of the woman he had once thought would be here to welcome him.

He tried, as he did most every night, to put all that out of his mind. He removed his jacket and hung it up carefully, as if domestic tidiness might make up for complete failure as a detective and as a man. He switched on the standing lamp beside his armchair and was just on the point of sitting down when he remembered that there was a nearly full carton of butter-pecan ice cream in the freezer. Armed with this and a spoon, he returned to the sitting room and switched on the television, flicking through the channels until he found a rugby game in progress. Gibbons did not much care for rugby—football and cricket were his games—but he watched the game doggedly until its finish. By that time, the ice cream was gone.