Mr Wrong (4 page)

After she had sent it, she felt guilty and relieved in about equal proportions. The only way she could justify such behaviour was to make sure of selling the car that weekend. Samantha told her
to put in an ad in the
Standard
for the next day. ‘You’re bound to make the last edition anyway,’ she said. So Meg rang them, having spent an arduous half-hour trying to
phrase the advertisement. ‘Pale blue MG –’ was how it finally began.

Then she had to go to work. Mr Whitehorn was in one of his states. It was not rude to think this, since he frequently referred to them. There was a huge order to be sent to New York that would
require, he thought, at least a week’s packing. He had got hold of tea chests, only to be told that he had to have proper packing cases. There was plenty of newspaper and straw in the
basement. He was afraid that that was where Meg would have to spend her day.

The basement was whitewashed and usually contained only inferior pieces, or things that needed repair. While working, Meg was allowed to have an oil stove, but it was considered too dangerous to
leave it on by itself. Her first job was a huge breakfast, lunch, tea and coffee service bought by Mr Whitehorn in a particularly successful summer sale in Suffolk. It had to be packed and listed,
all two hundred and thirty-six pieces of it. It was lying on an old billiard table with a cut cloth, and Meg found that the most comfortable way to pack it was to bring each piece to a
chaise-longue whose stuffing was bristling out at every point, and put the heap of newspapers on the floor beside her. Thus she could sit and pack, and after each section of the set she could put
things back on the table in separate clutches with their appropriate labels. She was feeling much better than when she had woken up. Not having to face the drive: having put an advertisement into a
serious paper almost made her feel that she had sold the car already: Val had said that she might go to a film with her on Sunday afternoon if her friend didn’t turn up and she didn’t
think he would, so that was something to look forward to, and packing china wasn’t really too bad if you took it methodically and didn’t expect ever to finish.

In the middle of the morning, Mr Whitehorn went out in his van to fetch the packing cases. He would be back in about an hour, he said. Meg, who had run up to the shop to hear what he said
– the basement was incredibly muffled and quiet – made herself a mug of coffee and went back to work. There was a bell under the door-rug, so that she could hear it if customers
came.

She was just finishing the breakfast cups when she saw it. The newspaper had gone yellow at the edges, but inside, where all the print and pictures were, it was almost as good as new. For a
second, she did not pick up the page, simply stared at a large photograph of head and shoulders, and M1 MYSTERY in bold type above it.

The picture was of the girl she had picked up in Hendon. She knew that it was, before she picked it up, but she still had to do that. She
might
be wrong, but she knew she wasn’t.
The glasses, the hair, the rather high forehead . . . but she was smiling faintly in the picture . . .

‘. . . petite, auburn-haired Mary Carmichael was found wrapped in her raincoat in a ditch in a lane not one hundred yards from the M1 north of Towcester. She had been assaulted and
strangled with a lime green silk scarf that she was seen wearing when she left her office . . . Mr Turner was discovered in the boot of the car – a black MG that police found abandoned in a
car-park. The car belonged to Mr Turner, who had been stabbed a number of times and is thought to have died earlier than Miss Carmichael . . .’

She realized then that she was reading a story continued from page one. Page one of the newspaper was missing. She would never know what Mr Turner looked like. She looked again at the picture of
the girl. ‘Taken on holiday the previous year.’ Even though she was smiling, or trying to smile, Mary Carmichael looked timid and vulnerable.

‘. . . Mr Turner, a travelling salesman and owner of the car, is thought to have given a lift or lifts to Mary Carmichael and some other person, probably a man, not yet identified. The
police are making extensive enquiries along the entire length of the route that Mr Turner regularly travelled. Mr Turner was married, with three children. Miss Carmichael’s parents, Mr and
Mrs Gerald Carmichael of Manchester, described their only daughter as very quiet and shy and without a boyfriend.’

The paper was dated March of the previous spring.

Meg found that her eyes were full of tears. Poor, poor Mary. Last year she had been an ordinary timid, not very attractive girl who had been given a lift, and then been horribly murdered. How frightened she must have been before she died –
with being – assaulted – and all that. And now, she was simply a desolate ghost, bound to go on trying to get lifts, or to be helped, or perhaps even to
warn
people . . .
‘I’ll pray for you,’ she said to the picture, which now was so blurred through her tears that the smile, or attempt at one, seemed to have vanished.

She did not know how long it was before the implications, both practical and sinister, crept into her mind. But they did, and she realized that they had, because she began to shiver violently
– in spite of feeling quite warm – and fright was prickling her spine up to the back of her neck.

Mystery Murders. If Mr Turner was not the murderer of Mary, then only one other person could be responsible. The horrible man. The way he had talked of almost nothing but awful murders . . . She
must go to the police immediately. She could describe him down to the last detail: his clothes, his voice, his tinted spectacles, his frightful smell . . . He had been furious with her when she had
put him down at the service station . . . but, one minute, before that, before
then
, when she had let him out on the shoulder where the lorry was, he had taken ages to come back into the car
– had walked right round it, and then, when he got in, and she had questioned him about the girl, and described her, he had become all sweaty, and taken ages to reply to anything she said. He
must have
recognized
the car! She was beginning to feel confused: there was too much to think about at once. This was where being clever would be such a help, she thought.

She began to try to think quietly, logically: absolutely nothing but lurid fragments came to mind: ‘a modicum, and sometimes, let’s face it, a very great deal of fear’; the girl’s face as
she stood under the light on the island. Meg looked back at the paper, but there was really no doubt at all. The girl in the paper
was
the same girl. So – at last she had begun to sort
things out – the girl
was
a ghost: the car, therefore, must be haunted. He certainly knew, or realized, something about all this: his final words – ‘I’m far from sure
that
I
trust
you
’ – that was because she had said that she didn’t trust him. So – perhaps he thought she
knew
what had happened. Perhaps he had thought
she was trying to trap him, or something like that. If he
really
thought that, and he was actually guilty, he surely wouldn’t leave it at that, would he? He’d be afraid of her
going to the police, of what, in fact, she was shortly going to do. He couldn’t
know
that she hadn’t seen the girl before, in the newspaper. But if he couldn’t know, how
could the police?

At this point, the door-bell rang sharply, and Meg jumped. Before she could do more than leap to her feet, Mr Whitehorn’s faded, kindly voice called down. ‘I’m back, my dear
girl. Any customers while I’ve been away?’

‘No.’ Meg ran up the stairs with relief that it was he. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘Splendid notion.’ He was taking off his teddy-bear overcoat and rubbing his dry, white hands before the fan heater.

Later, when they were both nursing steaming mugs, she asked: ‘Mr Whitehorn, do you remember a mystery murder case on the M1 last spring? Well, two murders, really? The man was found in the
boot of the car, and the girl –’

‘In a ditch somewhere? Yes, indeed. All over the papers. The real trouble is, that although I adore reading detective stories,
real
detective stories, I mean, I always find
real-life crime just dull. Nasty, and dull.’

‘I expect you’re right.’

‘They caught the chap though, didn’t they? I expect he’s sitting in some tremendously kind prison for about eighteen months. Be out next year, I shouldn’t wonder. The law
seems to regard property as far more important than murder, in my opinion.’

‘Who did they catch?’

‘The murderer, dear, the murderer. Can’t remember his name. Something like Arkwright or James. Something like that. But there’s no doubt at all that they caught him. The trial
was all over the papers, as well. How have you been getting on with your marathon?’

Meg found herself blushing: she explained that she had been rather idle for the last half hour or so, and suggested that she make up the time by staying later. No, no, said Mr Whitehorn, such
honesty should be rewarded. But, he added, before she had time to thank him, if she
did
have an hour to spend tomorrow, Saturday morning, he would be most grateful. Meg had to agree to this,
but arranged to come early and leave early, because of her advertisement.

The worst of having had that apparently comforting talk with Mr Whitehorn was that if they
had
already caught the man, then there couldn’t be any point in going to the police. She
had no proof that she hadn’t seen a picture of poor Mary Carmichael; in fact, she realized that she might easily have done so, and simply not remembered because she didn’t read murder
cases. Going to the police and saying that you had seen a ghost, given a ghost a
lift
in your car, and
then
seen a picture in a newspaper that identified them, would just sound
hysterical or mad. And there would be no point in describing the horrible man, if, in fact, he was just horrible but not a murderer. But at least she didn’t have to worry about him: his
behaviour had simply seemed odd and then sinister,
before
Mr Whitehorn had said that they had caught the murderer. There was nothing she needed to do about any of it. Except get rid of a
haunted car.

After her scrambled eggs and Mars Bar, she did some washing, including her hair and her hair-brush, and went to bed early. Just before she went to sleep, the thought occurred to her that her
mother always thought that people – all people – were really better than they seemed, and her father was certain that they were worse. Possibly, they were just
what
they seemed
– no more and no less. In the morning, second post, she got a letter from her mother full of anxiety and advice. The letter, after many kind and impractical admonitions, ended: ‘and you
are not to think of getting up or trying to drive all this way unless you are feeling completely recovered. I do wish I could come down and look after you, but your father thinks he may be getting
this wretched bug. He has read in the paper that it is all over the place, and is usually the first to get anything, as you know. Much love, darling, and take
care
of yourself.’

This made Meg feel awful about going to Mr Whitehorn’s, but she had promised him, and letting down one person gave one no excuse whatsoever for letting down another. Samantha had promised
to sit on the telephone while Meg was out, as she was waiting for one of her friends to call.

When she got back to the flat, Samantha was on the telephone, and Val was obviously cross with her. ‘She’s been
ages
talking to Bruce and she is going out with him in a
minute, and I said I’d do the shopping, but she won’t even say what she wants. She’s a drag.’

Samantha said: ‘Hold on a minute – six grapefruit and two rump steaks – that’s all,’ and went on listening, laughing and talking to Bruce. Meg gazed at her in
dismay. How on earth were people who had read her advertisement and were
longing
to ring her up about it to get through? The trouble about Samantha was that she was so
very
marvellous
to look at that it was awfully difficult to get her to do anything she didn’t want to do.

Val turned kindly to Meg and said loudly: ‘And your ad’s in, isn’t it? Samantha – you really are the limit. Meg, what would you like me to shop for you?’

Meg felt that this was terribly kind of Val, who was also pretty stunning, but in a less romantic way. Neither of the girls had ever shopped for her before; perhaps Val was going to become her
friend. When she had made her list of cheese, apples, milk, eggs and Nescaff, Val said, ‘Look, why don’t we share a small chicken? I’ll buy most of it, if you’ll do the
cooking. For Sunday,’ she added, and Meg felt that Val was almost her friend already.

Val went, and at once, Samantha said to the telephone: ‘All
right
: meet you in half an hour. Bye.’ In one graceful movement she was off the battered sofa and stood running her hands through her long, black hair and saying:
‘I haven’t got a
thing
to wear!’

‘Did anyone ring for me?’

‘What? Oh – yes, one person – no, two, as a matter of fact. I told them you’d be in by lunch-time.’

‘Did they sound interested in the car?’

‘One did. Kept asking awful technical questions I couldn’t answer. The other one just wanted to know if the car could be seen at this address and the name of the owner.’ She
was pulling off a threadbare kimono, looking at her face in a small, magnifying mirror she seemed always to have with her. ‘Another one . . . ! They keep bobbing up like corks! I’ve
gone on to this diet not a moment too soon.’

An hour went slowly by: nobody rang up about the car. Samantha finally appeared in fantastically expensive-looking clothes as though she was about to be photographed. She borrowed 50p off Meg
for a taxi and went, leaving an aura of chestnut bath-stuff all over the flat.

The weekend was a fearful anti-climax. On Saturday, three people rang up – none of them people who had called before; one said that he thought it was a drophead, seemed, indeed, almost to
accuse her of it not being, although she had distinctly said saloon in her ad. Two said they would come and look at the car: one of these actually arrived, but he only offered her a hundred pounds
less than she was asking, and that was that. On Sunday morning Meg cooked for ages, the chicken and all the bits, like bread sauce and gravy, that were to live up to it. At twelve-thirty Val got a
call from one of her friends, and said she was frightfully sorry, but that she had to be out to lunch after all.