‘Wait till the revolution comes,’ said Bardsley nastily,
‘Oh, shut up, the pair of you,’ Mrs Hatton said shrilly. She turned to Wexford, her controlled dignity returning. ‘My husband did overtime,’ she said, ‘and he had his side lines.’
Side lines, Wexford thought. He got a little overtime and he made it go a long way. The man had colour television, false teeth worth two hundred pounds; he gave his friend a record player for a wedding present. Wexford had seen that glass and teak lamp in a Kingsmarkham shop and noted it had been priced at twenty-five pounds, one and a quarter times Hatton’s weekly wage. When he was killed he had had a hundred pounds on him.
‘If he’s got things like your class take for granted,’ the girl had said, ‘you say he must have nicked them.’ Curious, really, Wexford reflected, watching her huddled now in the crook of Pertwee’s arm. Of course she was very young, probably got a Communist shop steward for a father, and doubtless went about sneering at people better- educated and better-spoken than herself. It was an aggressive type that had even reached Kingsmarkham, a type that talked pacifism and the rights of man and brotherly love without the energy or courage to do anything that might bring these desirable conditions nearer.
And yet he said nothing to provoke her outburst. Neither for that matter had Bardsley beyond hinting that Hatton had been prudent. Had she risen to this intangible slight bait because she knew Hatton’s wealth had been dishonestly come by? If she knew it, green and uncouth as she was, Pertwee would know it also. Everyone in this room but Burden and himself might know it. Not for the first time he reflected on the power of grief. It is the perfect unassailable defence. Pertwee had already employed it the previous morning effectively to terminate interrogation. Mrs Hatton, even more expertly, kept it under a piteous control that only a brute would have the brashness to disregard. She was moving about the room now, balancing painfully but stoically on her high heels, taking empty cups and plates from each of her guests with a gentle murmur for every one of them. Wexford took in the looks that passed to her from each of her visitors, her mother’s merely solicitous, Pertwee’s indicative of deep affection, Bardsley’s shifty, while the thwarted bride leaned forward, stuck out her chin and nodded her utter committed partisanship.
‘Did your husband have a bank account, Mrs Hatton?’ Burden asked as she passed his chair.
The sun was full on her face, showing every stroke and grain of make-up, but at the same time driving expression from it. She nodded, ‘At the Midland,’ she said.
‘I’d like to see his paying-in book.’
‘What for?’
The truculent harsh voice was Pertwee’s. Wexford ignored him and followed the widow to the sideboard from a drawer of which she took a long cream-coloured book. He handed it to Burden and said, apparently inconsequentially:
‘When did your husband get his false teeth, Mrs Hatton?’ Pertwee’s muttered ‘Bloody nosey-parker’ made her flinch a little and throw a desperate glance over her shoulder. ‘He’d always had them. Had them since he was twenty’ she said.
‘This present set?’
‘Oh, no. They were new. He went to Mr Vigo for them about a month back.’
Nodding, Wexford eyed the paying-in book over Burden’s shoulder and what he saw astonished him far more than any of Hatton’s prodigality. Some three-quarters of all the slips in the book had been torn out and with the exception of three, all the stubs had been torn too.
On the most recent remaining stub the date was April and on that occasion Hatton had paid into his bank account the modest sum of five and four-pence.
‘Fourth dividend on the pools that was,’ Mrs Hatton said with a miserable gulp.
The other two stubs were filled in each with amounts of two pounds.
‘Mrs Hatton,’ he said, beckoning her into a corner. ‘The purpose of these stubs in a paying-in book is for the holder to have a record of the amount of money he had deposited in his bank. Can you suggest to me why Mr Hatton tore them out? They must have been filled in at the bank either by Mr Hatton himself or else by the cashier who was attending to him.’
‘It’s a mystery to me. Charlie never talked about money to me. He always said…’ She gulped again and a tear trickled through the make-up. ‘He always said, “Don’t worry your head about that. When we got married I promised I’d give you everything you want and so I will. You name it, you can have it”.’ She bent her head and began to sob. ‘He was one in a million was Charlie. He’d have got me the moon out of the sky if I’d wanted it.’ The girl Marilyn got up and put her arms around her friend. ‘Oh, Charlie, Charlie…!’
The drawer was open, Hatton’s cheque book exposed. Wexford leafed through it and saw that Hatton had paid twenty-five pounds for the lamp on May 22nd. Thirty pounds had been paid to Lucrece Ltd., High Street, Kingsmarkham (his wife’s wedding outfit?), and another thirty in the same week, the last week of May, to Excelsior Electrics, Stowerton (Pertwee’s record player?).
Then came three blank stubs, lastly one filled for fifty pounds cash. There was no stub for Vigo, the dentist. Hatton must have paid for his teeth in cash.
He put the books back in the drawer and stood waiting for Mrs Hatton to recover. Her mother and brother had departed to the kitchen from where Wexford could hear their muted whisperings and the funereally careful clink of cups.
The widow’s eye make-up had transferred itself to Marilyn Thompson’s handkerchief. ‘I keep breaking down,’ she said. ‘I can’t seem to stop myself.’
‘Yeah, but just reckon what you’ve been through, love.’
‘I don’t know what I’d do without you two.’
Pertwee said nothing but his baleful pugnacious look was absurd in its intensity and Wexford was almost embarrassed. He said lightly, ‘Does the name McCloy mean anything to you, Mr Pertwee?’
That it meant nothing, less than nothing, to Mrs Hatton he was sure at once. Of Pertwee and the girl he was less certain. The latter’s lower lip stuck out and her eyes flickered. For an instant she was a primitive creature looking for a hole to hide in. Pertwee had reddened, possibly only with anger at Wexford’s persistence.
‘Sounds Irish,’ was all he said.
‘Doesn’t it also sound familiar?’
‘Not to me, I don’t know any McCloy. Never heard of him.’
‘Strange then that you should have discussed this Mr McCloy with your friends in the Dragon on Friday. Is he a local man?’
‘I told you I’d never heard of him.’ Pertwee bit his lip and looked down at his knees. Wexford watched him feel for the girl’s hand, but she was occupied with Mrs Hatton, dabbing at her face and smoothing her hair. Forsaken, deserted, the hand came up to Pertwee’s brow and pushed into the greasy black waves. ‘Can’t you leave us alone now?’ he pleaded and Wexford felt impotently that once again the man was enclosing himself within the unimpregnable defence of grief.
‘I never knew what went on on the lorries,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t Charlie’s only friend. He had hundreds of friends. Ask Jim Bardsley, ask Cullam.’ Pertwee’s eyes were glazed and dull. ‘Let someone else do dirt on his memory.’
Jim Bardsley had an apron tired round his waist. He moved gingerly about the kitchen, putting away crockery, as if he were afraid his touch might damage or contaminate the pristine glory of its equipment. The Hatton flat and the Cullam house had one thing in common, an automatic washing machine. Mrs Hatton had plenty besides mixers, electric tin openers, a steam iron as well as the huge scarlet refrigerator and the cooker with eye-level grill.
‘You transport this kind of stuff, don’t you, Mr Bardsley?’ Burden asked. ‘I suppose Mr Hatton got it wholesale.’
‘I daresay,’ Bardsley said cagily.
'Irons, electric fires and so on, was that the load you lost when Mr Hatton’s lorries were hi-jacked?’ Bardsley nodded unhappily. ‘Doubtless you were insured?’
‘Not the second time, not in March when they knocked it off at Stamford. I had to stand the loss myself.’ Bardsley untied his apron and hung up the tea cloth that appropriately enough in this flat, was a large linen facsimile of a pound note. ‘Set me back, I can tell you. I reckon poor old Charlie was glad I hadn’t taken him into partnership. Mind you, they found the lorry both times. It wasn’t damaged, just the stuff gone, that’s all. That second time Charlie’d pulled into a lay-by and gone to sleep at the wheel. The villains didn’t harm him, thank God. Just tied him up and put a gag in his mouth.’
