A Death to Remember (13 page)

‘
You’ll be wanting terms?’ he asked doubtfully, after I’d told him I liked it. He’d noticed the “ex” bit in the paper. People without jobs can’t afford to get into debt.

But
my voluntary retirement had brought me half of what I would have received if I’d stayed on to the age of 6o; half because I’d done half my expected service. So I had a half pension, which meant a quarter of my salary, and I had also received half of my gratuity. There was a little capital in my bank.

After
I’d told Tom Oddie these interesting details, we got along fine.

‘
When can I have it?’ I asked.

‘
Now,’ he said. ‘Give us an hour to service it. The tax is good for six months, and the insurance...’

‘
The insurance on the Volvo covers me.’

So
it was that easy. An hour. I walked in the park, then went back, and there it was, a deep, glowing red. I looked in the boot. Nothing. Oddie slapped my shoulder, laughing, and I drove it away.

On
the way past, I dropped in at Aunt Peg’s to tell her where I was going, just in case Mr and Mrs Michael Orton asked me to stay for an evening meal. Fat chance.

‘
Do you think you should meet her?’ she asked.

‘
It’s all right, auntie. I’m safe now. She’s married.’

‘
You’ll never be safe from her.’

As
this was something I’d already considered, I didn’t argue.

You
’ll need to know something about my ex-wife, Valerie, before you meet her. I’ll try to be unbiased, but I suppose I’ve always been biased where Val’s concerned. Most people seem to see only her hard and practical side. I find I can admire it. Val always understood money for what it is, a bedrock from which she could survey the world, with not a little contempt for its perpetual struggle to acquire the stuff. Val never had to fight for it; it fell in her lap. There to enjoy, so what the hell! But there were a hundred other facets to the jewel that was Val.

I
first met her in Michael Orton’s office. At that time I’d been a year on the Inspector’s job, and still felt a bit green, yet knew I had to show no weakness to opposition. Later, I took things easier and never gave a thought to the warrant in my pocket, but just at that period I hadn’t acclimatised myself to the fact that a Government official is not really welcome in anybody’s life. It annoyed me to meet those blank and unresponsive faces, when I was making only reasonable requests. One of the difficulties was obtaining a sight of records when I needed to see them. Come tomorrow, they’d say. The wages clerk’s on leave. Or, in the case I was chasing up: the books are with my accountant.

Usually,
this made life easier. An accountant recognises the necessity for the Inspector’s request, and is anxious to help.

Why
not? Everything should be in perfect order. But phonecalls to Orton’s office had met polite stalling, and later, not so polite stalling. I could have served on him a notice to produce, which would have left him no option, but I tried to keep a cool breeze moving. I decided to try a personal, unannounced visit. In his office his secretary politely intercepted me. ‘May I help you, sir?’

This
woman, I decided, could help me at any time, simply by smiling at me. I explained, and she phoned through to him. Orton came out from the back. It was the first time I’d met him.

I
suppose suspicion is part of an accountant’s life. As they have to rise above it, it’s not surprising that they have an air of superiority. So it was with Orton. He was slim and straight-backed, a severe looking man in his early thirties, about my age, but it was carving channels in his personality. He wore his hair too long, flaunting its early greyness like a flag. It framed craggy features and a grim mouth. He was sleekly dressed in expensive fawn slacks and a brown leather jacket, hardly suitable for an accountant I’d have thought, but on him it merely indicated that he was a style-setter and therefore a man who’d be right on the ball with every new development in accountancy. He lifted his head at me, staring down his long nose.

‘
What the devil’s this about?’ he asked.

I
explained that I merely wanted access for ten minutes to the books he was holding for Emmett Industries.

‘
It’s not convenient. After lunch...’

‘
I’d prefer to clear it before.’

This
seemed to amuse his secretary. He swivelled his head at her, frowning.

‘
It
is
lunchtime,’ she pointed out.

Perhaps
some signal passed between them. He gave a short laugh. ‘Then take my secretary to lunch, and see them afterwards.’

She
was reaching for her handbag. I felt they’d done the same sort of thing before. It would give him a clear hour.

‘
Suppose I see the books now,’ I suggested. I glanced at her. ‘You don’t mind waiting for ten minutes?’

She
pouted at me. Amusement was still in her eyes. She shook her head, and there was an impishness about her that told me she was deliberately annoying her boss. ‘I can wait,’ she told me.

Orton
simply looked at her in a way that should have shrivelled her. Then he turned away, and the fact that he left his door open I took to be an invitation. I winked at her, and followed him.

Whatever
he might have feared, I found nothing wrong with the wages records. In five minutes I’d spotted the discrepancy that was worrying the computers our end, and how it had come about.

‘
Thanks,’ I said.

‘
So perhaps we can now go to lunch,’ he said sourly, and clearly he meant himself and his secretary. But I wasn’t going to lose out on such a chance. I went out to where she was waiting and said: ‘Let’s go.’ She laughed out loud.

Her
name was Valerie Marchant. As soon as I heard the name I understood the relationship between her and Orton. Henry Marchant was the town’s biggest industrialist, and also her father. She would have no need to work. But you know what it’s like these days; they want independence. So poppa had farmed her out. No doubt Orton was his firm’s accountant, and it would have been easy to persuade him to take her on. But don’t get the impression she was a drag on Orton’s efficiency. Val had taken secretarial courses. She could play sweet music on any computer you placed before her, and electronic typewriters almost bowed to her.

So
there we were in Nancy’s restaurant, and the more I discovered about her, the more sure I became that I should have taken her to somewhere more grand. Later, I realised that would have been a mistake. She could always fit in neatly with any situation; she was so used to money that she didn’t even consider what it was buying, like the millionaire who can afford to wear baggy trousers and a torn sweater, because he no longer has to make an impression.

Sadly,
I didn’t work this out until after we were married, and after her father’s death. What I had taken to be her flirtation with independence was no more than a rejection of the polished and empty personalities of the young men who clung to her father’s coat tails in the hope of preferment. She was looking for a man who didn’t have to crawl.

That
lunch was the first of many, of dinners and concerts and theatres. I barely had time to realise that the Cliff Summers who whirled her around was not the man who had walked into Orton’s office.

I
’ve mentioned the opposition I’d encountered in my job. I suppose I’d developed a surface personality to oppose it. A smile achieved more than a scowl. It was an insincerity that had leaked into my life without my realising it, and perhaps I presented this face to Val. We laughed together like idiots. Each was drunk on the other’s personality, and basically it was all false. She courted me, and I courted her. Were we going to do that by exhibiting our hidden faults?

Early
on I realised that Orton himself had his eye on her. This became obvious when I began to call too often for her at his office. He snarled at me silently, his hatred in his eyes, and I smiled back at him. I could afford to.

Talking
about affording, this wild and forceful affair of ours was costing me more than I could manage. It was almost in desperation that I asked her to marry me.

‘
I can’t afford to go on like this,’ was what I said.

She
laughed at me. I know now that she didn’t understand what I meant. She knew the job I did, and that the salary would be in much the same bracket as hers with Orton. She simply assumed that both jobs would be abandoned and we’d live together on her income from shares in daddy’s company. I simply assumed we’d live on our combined salaries. That’s perfectly true. I had thought of her wealth as a drawback when it came to trotting her around in the manner in which she clearly intended to remain accustomed.

During
the three months that this courtship lasted I realised that Orton had developed into an enemy. He didn’t come to the wedding. This was one of those huge society affairs, in which I just happened to be a minor component. Her father had barely spoken to me. All her life, Val had had what she wanted. Now she wanted me, so he handed her over. Literally, he gave her away. Then we went to live in the house on Woodstock Heights he’d bought us as a wedding present. Correction – bought her. The house was in Val’s name. We had a honeymoon on Corfu, and returned to that wonderful house, and our marriage fell apart.

We
relaxed, you see. We were seen by each other as we were, and it wasn’t pleasant for either of us. She had not realised that I’d taken annual leave for our honeymoon. She had assumed I’d resigned. I hadn’t realised that from that moment I was expected to do nothing, nothing but parties and bridge evenings and trips to the Med on Hector’s yacht. Nothing. I wanted to
do
something. Had to. It was what life was all about. You’ll say that in the Civil Service I
was
doing nothing – well...nothing you could hold up and say: I did that. So maybe that was why I liked the Inspector’s job. Anyway, I insisted on carrying on with it.

Oh
...the fury! Then why had she worked at Orton’s office, I demanded, believing it to be a true analogy. She sneered at me. I was nothing, she told me, and didn’t ever want to be anything. I shouted at her. And so on...

She
wanted to buy me a BMW 525. ‘At least
look
like somebody.’

I
went and bought the Volvo, looking like somebody, and yet still my own self. Or so I thought.

During
the following six months I began to wonder who exactly that self was. What I wanted was to be with Val every minute of the day, which I could well have done if I hadn’t been so stupidly stubborn. The snag was that Val’s life didn’t fit into my pattern. Her day began with our evening meal, which more often than not was taken at someone else’s home, and went on with assorted roistering through to the small hours. This treatment gradually wore me down, until I became no use to the Civil Service during the day, and not a bit of use to Val during what was left of the night.

It
was at this stage of my deterioration that her father collapsed at his desk from a heart attack, and was dead before they got him to hospital.

Suddenly,
Val’s considerable income as a minor shareholder became a huge one as a director and major shareholder. My continuing to work became purely stupid. No longer was it necessary to use Hector’s yacht; we had one of her own. I could have gone about my inspectorate duties in a chauffeured Rolls, if I’d liked. Great fun that would’ve been, putting in a claim for travelling expenses on a Rolls plus chauffeur. I very nearly tried it, just to watch Claud Martin’s face when I put the claim under his nose. But refrained. I’d been careful to keep any outward evidence of Val’s money away from the office. Nevertheless, there was resentment. I could feel it in the atmosphere. They knew, you see.

Yet
still I went on with it. Stubborn, that was me.

‘
I don’t care about your silly job,’ said Val one day. ‘I’m taking the yacht round the Grecian islands next month, and we’ll be away for at least six weeks. So...do what you like.’

There
was no possibility of taking six weeks’ leave. I decided to let her get on with it. By that time, the issue had grown to the point where our whole future relationship rested on my decision. I refused to go.

She
went. It was a blessed period of rest for me. During that six weeks I again had cause to request Michael Orton to produce a client’s books. He wasn’t at his office. It was firmly closed. He’d gone to the Med on Val’s yacht. Not her sole guest, mind you, as there were eight or ten of them, along with a crew of captain and three crewmen. But all the same, I knew we were coming to the end of it.

She
returned, slim, bronzed, her teeth white against her skin, her hair crisp in a style I hadn’t seen before. Very Greek. It suited her black hair. I asked had she enjoyed it. She said she had. She made no comment that I’d moved into another bedroom.