Fete Fatale (10 page)

The attack on Marcus was probably unexpected. I had got that far. Yet how small a way that really was. Because Marcus would never suspect anyone of murderous designs on him. Short of the killing occurring in the middle of a stand-up fight with knives, Marcus would not conceivably have anticipated being killed. And
I didn't think he had got into any fight with knives. I thought he had got into a conversation with one of the upright burghers of Hexton, and in the course of it had been killed. What had it been done with? How had the weapon come to be so readily to hand? And what had the talk been about?

As I chomped hungrily through the large steak, the Marcus-sized steak, I projected a scene on to the screen of my mind. On the way home, walking along by the river—but why
that
way home? The longer way?—Marcus meets one of our pillars of the community. They engage in conversation, and in the course of it Marcus upbraids him (her? almost certainly
her)
about the happenings of that afternoon. The conversation becomes rancorous, and the other person—

There my invention lagged. And in any case, re-running the scene in the cinema of my mind, I found it less than satisfying, or rather less than convincing. Though Marcus had been apprehensive about the fête, in the event it had gone off swimmingly from his point of view. Would he then, in his euphoria, willingly open up the subject with any member of the opposition? Would he so gratuitously cause an ‘unpleasantness'? That went quite against Marcus's nature, his habits of conciliation. Of course if the other party had opened up the subject . . . Then it would have to be someone so stupid as to be insensible to the shame and ridicule that the afternoon's fiasco had brought on them . . . There were candidates for that role.

Then there was the question of opportunity. There the mind began to boggle. That I had remained aware of the comings and goings in the tent earlier in the day was true, but by the time Marcus must have been killed, things were becoming very hazy indeed. And even though the fête tent was becoming less crowded, it was still perfectly easy for someone to be there without my knowing. Mr Horsforth, for example, when he wasn't at the stall (as he mostly wasn't), could have been down by the tea-and-coffee table, or outside around the Test Your Strength games, and thus have a perfectly good alibi that I could know nothing about. It was going to be difficult enough for the police to establish alibis in a setting of constant comings and goings, and it was quite impossible for me to. There was nothing to be gained by thinking along those lines as yet.

I was startled by a ring at the door. It was Harold McPhail, come back to see how I was. I led him through into the dining-room, and when he saw the nearly-eaten steak on a plate the dear man did not even raise an eyebrow. But I, new in that twilight world of the newly-widowed, felt the need to excuse myself.

‘I somehow needed to get back to normality,' I said. ‘Or to some version of it.'

‘You don't have to explain to me, Helen. I haven't been a doctor for twenty-five years without knowing that people find their own ways of coping with sudden death. There's nothing unnatural about being hungry, whatever the circumstances. But some people prefer sedation, I can assure you, and there's nothing unnatural about
that
either.'

‘I'm sorry. You think me arrogant. Perhaps the sedation will come later,' I said, more humbly.

He sat himself down at the dining table.

‘I don't know the details, Helen, but he was killed.'

‘Of course he was killed,' I said abruptly. ‘Sorry. But there was no other possible explanation, was there?'

‘You don't mean you know who might have done it?'

‘Good God, no. I meant that he could hardly have got in there accidentally. And if there's one thing I know about Marcus, it's that he was not the suicidal type. That's ruled out both by temperament and by religion. Someone killed him—but as to who had motives . . . Of course, there's been all this unpleasantness recently about the appointment of Father Battersby, but I find it difficult . . . After all, it's all so
trivial
, isn't it?'

Harold McPhail smiled.

‘I can imagine you would think so. You're not really a wholehearted churchwoman, are you, Helen?'

‘I'm an agnostic, converted by marriage rather than reason,' I admitted. ‘Still, even if I were passionately involved, I can't see myself getting
that
het up about one kind of vicar rather than another. I mean, you'd have to be a pretty funny kind of Christian to murder for your point of view, wouldn't you?'

‘Other things get involved,' said McPhail.

I sat there thinking about that for a while, toying with a piece of lettuce.

‘True,' I said at last. ‘Other things like vanity, hurts to your sense
of your own importance. That's the only way I can make sense of this—as the result of wounded vanity. Some nasty little worm of conceit that couldn't bear to be defeated and humiliated . . . But I still think that Father Battersby would have been a more likely victim.'

‘I was only at the fête briefly,' said McPhail, ‘but I wouldn't have thought that Father Battersby was a very get-at-able victim, from what I saw.'

‘No,' I admitted. ‘He certainly wasn't.'

‘What the police are going to want to know,' said McPhail, looking at me thoughtfully, ‘is where everyone was.'

‘I know. I've been trying to think of that myself. What sort of time is it they're interested in?'

‘From about three onwards. Until the time he—'

‘Was seen floating. Yes. I understand. The trouble is that it's all so chaotic in my mind. The fête was beginning to wind down then. I
think
Mary was still around at about three, but I can't be sure. Thyrza I hadn't seen for quite a bit . . . Mr Horsforth was conspicuous by his absence most of the day. Whereas Franchita was conspicuous by her presence. She was lady of the fête, and was here, there and everywhere most of the time. I can't believe it could be her, because I think we would have noticed if she had let up for the time it would take . . . Timothy and Fiona were swanning it around in their non-stop Bolero, and I kept seeing Timothy with Father Battersby, but I noticed them most during the morning . . . Mrs Nielson sold out and went home . . . The Mipchins were in and out, but the Westons were mostly with the outside games, so I don't know about them . . . It's all so
difficult.'

‘When I said that the police would want to know where everyone was,' said Harold McPhail carefully, ‘I really meant that you should try to remember where
you
were.'

I looked up at him, and suddenly I flushed bright red as a spurt of anger flashed through me.

‘Oh, my God! I see what you're getting at! You mean that the police will see me as the prime suspect! Christ! I only need that!'

As I marched to the mantelpiece to get another cigarette, Harold McPhail said:

‘I didn't say you would be the prime suspect. But obviously you
will be among those that they have to consider. You don't stand outside the investigation just because you
know
you didn't do it.'

‘Oh, I've got the idea now,' I said, bitterly. ‘In murder cases of a domestic kind, the husband or the wife is always top of the list. You're quite right: it's something I ought to be aware of. I just thought that anyone who knew us—'

The policeman will not have known you. He won't be a local man. And how many of us
really
know others?'

As he spoke the telephone rang. Still flushed and angry, I marched to pick it up. All I needed was to hear, down the line, the hushed tones of Mary Morse.

‘Helen? Dear, this is not the time for condolences, but I thought you'd like to know that you've forgotten to draw your curtains. A friend just walked past your house, and she commented—'

‘God damn and blast you all to hell,' I said, and banged down the receiver.

So livid was I at Mary's phone call, so anxious was I to get things moving and to worry the police into activity, that I nearly rang them then and there and suggested that I talk to them the same evening. I can't account for this needling itch for activity, except that I seemed to need it to push the darkness back further. I think, too, that I was saying to myself that as soon as the case was solved, I was going to shake the dust of Hexton-on-Weir off my shoes and depart I knew not where. Anyway, Harold McPhail persuaded me that it would be most unwise: I was too het up, I would say things I would regret later and give the officer in charge a misleading impression. And anyway, he said, the official medics would hardly have put in even a preliminary report by then. That clinched it: I wanted to know exactly what had happened. However, after Harold McPhail had gone, I rang up the Station and fixed a meeting for ten o'clock next morning. I said I was quite willing to go to the Station, having no intention of retreating into the sort of purdah Hexton deems suitable for the first weeks of widowhood. But the
Detective-Superintendent on the case said it would be helpful for him to talk about Marcus in his own home, so that was what we arranged. I felt prickles of hostility against the man, convinced he had marked me down already as a prime suspect, but I had to admit that his voice sounded businesslike.

I spent a night during which sheer exhaustion sometimes sent me off into a fitful sleep, but which otherwise was a matter of tossing and turning, grieving and wondering, and most of all a tormented nagging the subject over in my mind which got me nowhere, but left me exhausted and fretful. The next day dawned like a yawning hole—the loneliness, the purposelessness opening up before me in all their blank horror. I was alone.

And the police were coming. I boiled an egg, and ate it with bread and butter. I lit a cigarette, but after a few puffs decided I wasn't going to go down
that
road, and stubbed it out. I put on some coffee for myself and the policemen. I thought they probably would in fact prefer instant, and then I cursed myself for such a snobbish, Hexton thought. Whatever happened, I was not going to become Hexton.

When the Detective-Superintendent on the case arrived, accompanied by a local Inspector, I greeted them soberly but (I hope) sensibly, ushered them into the drawing-room and brought them coffee (they took it black). Inspector Parkin I already knew, but the Superintendent I had not seen before. His name was Coulton, and he had been sent from Leeds. He was a man of about fifty—perhaps not over-imaginative, but with a face that was drawn, and either sad or tired. Not a man, I suspected, who had ever been particularly happy in his job, or one who had particularly enjoyed many of the things it had forced him to do. But no doubt he had done them. And however much I might have been disposed to like him in other circumstances, I was wary of him in these. Very wary.

He sat down on the sofa when I did, all of us very sober, and me rather tense, and he looked around the room, giving no sign on that impassive face of whether he approved of our taste in pictures or not. Both he and Parkin had notebooks, in which they made very occasional jottings. When both of them had had a sip or two of the coffee, Coulton started straight in.

‘Mrs Kitterege,' he began, ‘I believe you became aware of your husband's death—'

‘When I saw him floating down the river,' I interrupted, in a metallic voice that surprised me. I lowered it. ‘It's not a very nice way to learn you're a widow.'

‘No. It must have been quite horrifying. When did you last see your husband?'

I had to suppress irrelevant associations with Victorian historical paintings.

‘Just before I took my lunch-break. That was quite late. About two, or a bit later, I think. Mrs Nielson may remember more accurately. I'd been waiting for Mr Horsforth, whom I shared the junk stall with, to come back. When he did, I took off with Mrs Nielson, who had the jam stall opposite.'

‘And did you talk to your husband outside, by the Test Your Strength machine, which I gather he ran?'

‘No—he'd come in, and had been chatting with me by my stall. Colonel Weston was filling in outside, and Marcus said that he was hoping to go home for a longish break around three-thirty. I'm afraid when Mr Horsforth turned up, I just took off.' Tears welled up as I thought of the briskness of my last leave-taking of Marcus, but I suppressed them. ‘I was afraid he'd disappear again, and we'd never get any lunch.'

‘And you and Mrs Nielson were together the whole time during lunch?'

I tried not to tense up, or become obviously wary.

‘No. We went to a corner of the meadow to eat our sandwiches. Then her dog demanded a proper walk, so she went off, and I just stayed there for a bit.'

‘Alone?'

‘Yes, alone . . . Though anyone could have seen me there. I didn't want to go back to the tent at once. I felt I'd rather been taken advantage of by Mr Horsforth.'

‘But you did eventually go back. How long had you been alone in the meadows by then?'

‘About fifteen minutes, I suppose. Quite long enough to murder my husband.'

The tired eyes raised themselves from the pad on which
Coulton was making a note of those fifteen minutes. They looked at my flushed face, as if they had been through all this before.

‘We don't know when your husband was murdered, Mrs Kitterege, but the indications are that it was decidedly later than the time we are talking about at the moment. We are just trying to get our picture of the whole afternoon straight. So—you will have got back to the tent when?'

‘I really don't know. But somewhere about twenty to three, I imagine.'

‘And you didn't talk to your husband outside the tent?'

‘No. I didn't see him. Colonel Weston was running his game. Which is odd, because it was certainly nothing like three-thirty. Perhaps Marcus had gone to do something special—or just gone to the loo, perhaps.'