Sunday Best (24 page)

‘You have a distinctive voice, Mrs Price,' the Superintendent said. ‘It checks admirably with my recording.'

‘I don't know anything about it,' she said.

Well, he could wait. This woman was his quarry. Of that there was no question. He could afford to play with it for a while. ‘Where do you live, Mrs Price?' he asked.

She gave him Mrs Jumble's address because she had to say something. ‘And do you work?' he said.

‘I am Mrs Jumble's housekeeper-companion.'

‘Have you lived in Brighton long?'

‘No,' she said, and gave him the same story she had given to Mrs Jumble, moving him, she hoped, with her widowhood and her reduced circumstances.

The Superintendent was sympathetic. ‘It's hard for a woman alone,' he said gently. ‘D'you mind opening your case?'

She started. She had not considered that eventuality, and had no idea of how to explain its contents. But it was now all beyond her. She knew she could come out bluntly with the whole truth, and perhaps she should, she thought, for her own and desperate good. But in her indecision, as always, Emily clung to her. Emily didn't want to die. She had found a home in her, and her voice insisted in its gentleness. ‘Let me be, let me be,' it told her. ‘We're lost without each other.'

Emily opened the case, and as she did so, she said, ‘This isn't my case. I took it by mistake from Mrs Jumble's.'

The Superintendent laughed aloud. It was such a poor lie coming from an obviously intelligent woman, and he told her so, in friendly fashion. ‘Anyway,' he said, ‘even if it's Mrs Jumble's, let's see what's inside.'

Even the Superintendent, with his supreme optimism, was not prepared for the rich vein of evidence that the opened suitcase revealed. He salivated, taking the clothes out one by one. The check jacket that Mrs Verrey Smith had remembered, the grey trousers. He held them up in front of him. It was not difficult for him to see George Verrey Smith inside them.

‘Well,' he said. ‘Well, well.' He'd been patient long enough. He'd waited long enough. He'd been polite for too long. He banged his fist on the table, making it quite clear to the startled Emily that the courtesies were over. ‘Where is he?' he thundered. ‘What have you done with him?'

‘Nothing,' she stammered. ‘I don't know him.'

‘Mrs Price,' the Superintendent said. ‘I don't have to tell you how much you are already implicated in all this. These clothes belong to George Verrey Smith. Their identification is only a formality. They are in your possession. The clothes of a suspect murderer. That doesn't look too good for you, Mrs Price,' he warned. ‘Where is he?' he shouted. And then, in almost a whisper, ‘Or should I say, where is his body?'

She trembled and opened her mouth with the truth. But Emily stifled her with almost a soprano plea. She shut her mouth obediently. Now was no time to be George Verrey Smith. He was dead, as the Superintendent implied, and probably, in his mind, at the bottom of the sea. He would be there waiting at high tide to identify the washed up body. For him it was only a question of time. But she owed it to Emily to stand by her, to identify herself wholly with what had been hitherto only a name. She had to accept Emily totally. She had to love her. ‘My name is Emily Price,' she said, and it was a declaration of absolute faith.

‘I'm well aware of that,' the Superintendent said, puzzled by this seeming irrelevancy. ‘What I want to know, is the whereabouts of George Verrey Smith.'

‘I have nothing to say,' she said.

‘Then I'll give you time to think of something.' He turned to the clerk. ‘Take this lady to the cells,' he said. ‘If you should change your mind, Mrs Price, about talking, you know, please inform me through your guard. I can wait, Mrs Price. I can wait a long time, and I have a feeling I can wait longer than you.'

She got up without protest and made to pick up her case.

‘I don't think you'll be needing that,' the Superintendent said. ‘It's a valuable piece of evidence, and it belongs, if I may say so, to the police.'

Emily let herself be led out. She was comforted by her reconciliation with herself. She must never be anybody else any more. Emily was her refuge and her strength. She was her dignity too. Poor George. She would never think of him again. He would have to find his own death without her.

The Superintendent sat at his desk. This was the best part of a case, when the threads lay there for your assembly. He examined the clothes again. There was nothing in the pockets, and a faint smell of perfume hung about them. He put them back into the case. It was going to be hard on Mrs Verrey Smith, but it was imperative that she identify them. The implications of the uninhabited clothes were terrible. But he would be gentle with her and understanding, as they always were on television. But he had his job to do and, after all, it wasn't such a bad job. Maybe the film business wasn't such a good idea for his son. There was a greater sense of service in the Police. Yes, he'd suggest it.

And immediately, he thought of Washington Jones. There'd been no news from London. The boy's disappearance was the only factor that marred his full enjoyment of having run Mrs Price to ground. He would get on to headquarters right away. He had to contact Mrs Verrey Smith too, but that would have to wait till the morning. He'd go back to his hotel, and let Mrs Emily Price stew. Serves her right for being so respectable.

Joy Verrey Smith and Mrs Whitely waited in the ante-room. Mr Clive Wentworth was a very busy man. His clients came from far and wide, and though it was still early morning, he was already running late. His appointment after Mrs Whitely's had already arrived. She didn't believe in this sort of thing, she told Mrs Whitely, but you had to do something, didn't you. The police were no good. They weren't interested in missing persons unless they'd been kidnapped, or were running away from the Law. Her husband had been gone for three years, and not a word from him. ‘It's not that I grieve any more,' she said. ‘It's just that I'd like to know where I stand. He's got a nice fat life insurance, but they won't pay up until he's gone without trace for seven years, and I could do with the money, I can tell you.'

She held an old vest in her hand, all that stood between her and the insurance. She was crumpling it in her hand, hating it, and all it stood for. ‘You've got to bring something with you, you know, an article of clothing. Have you got something? They need it for the vibrations. I know, because I've been to so many. They all say something different. But this one's supposed to be very good. They come from foreign parts to see him. I'd have brought something else, but this was all he left. He took every stitch of clothing with him.' She was crumpling the vest as she spoke and it probably by now contained more of her vibrations than his, apart from those of the string of diviners through whose hands it had already passed. ‘They tell you not to put it in a paper bag,' she said. ‘It damps down the pulses.'

The word was obviously not part of the woman's normal running vocabulary. It was part of the jargon she'd picked up diviner-traipsing. The woman's fruitless search had a depressing effect on Joy. ‘I told you there was no point in coming,' she said to her mother-in-law.

‘He's got a marvellous reputation,' Mrs Whitely said. ‘Now take his pants out of the paper bag. This lady,' she smiled at the other client, ‘is more experienced in this kind of thing. We can save time if we save the vibrations.'

Joy opened the paper bag and pulled out George's pants. There had been some discussion at home as to what article of clothing they should choose. Joy had thought to herself that one of his Sunday dresses would have been a more reliable barometer to George's pulse. It was Mrs Whitely who had suggested that intimate article, because she felt, though she did not say as much, that there would be an overflow of vibrations in that receptacle. It was a mother talking about her son, without any logic but with total intuition. Joy had deferred to her choice, sensing that she herself understood so little about her husband in that area, that her mother-in-law could not have understood less. So they had lovingly wrapped George's pants in brown paper, and according to this woman had probably already robbed them of all pulse. So Joy rubbed them in her hand as the woman was doing, to erase the torpor of the paper wrapping.

‘Who have you got missing?' the woman said.

‘My son,' Mrs Whitely answered, taking full responsibility.

‘Has he been gone long?'

‘Just over a week.'

‘You're very sensible,' the woman said. ‘I waited for over a year before I came to one of these. The tracks get covered if you leave it too long. And my husband was a wily one. Cunning? He could have given a fox lessons.' As far as she was concerned, her lost husband was strictly in the past tense. She didn't want to find him. All she wanted was her widowhood confirmed. She wanted to know the whereabouts of his body, so that she could drag the insurance agent there to look at it and see for himself. ‘Show us the body,' they had said, ‘and you can collect.' And she was going to find it. He couldn't hide his corpse, cunning though he was.

‘Have you given up hope of his being alive?' Joy said. She didn't like the woman. Her attitudes invalidated any hope that she had of ever seeing George again.

‘I wish him dead,' the woman said. At least she was being honest. ‘I was like you,' she went on, ‘hoping and hoping. But in the end, whether he's dead or alive, he's got to be dead for you. You can't go on, hoping and hoping.'

The consulting-room door opened, and a man came out, clutching a silk petticoat. He'd obviously mislaid his wife and by the sombre look on his face, he had received small clue as to her whereabouts. As he closed the door, a bell rang, obviously the signal for the next client. ‘Wish you luck,' the woman said as they went inside, and she screwed up the vest in her hand, and idly began to chew it.

Mr Clive Wentworth was wearing a white coat, for he looked upon his profession as a branch of science. He got up from his desk to greet them, carefully stepping over a large map of Asia spread out on the floor. It had obviously met the needs of the last client whose wife had apparently had inclinations to the Far East. Mr Wentworth asked them to be seated while he rolled up his map. Then he himself sat down behind the desk and looked at them. ‘Who is the spokesman?' he said.

Joy Verrey Smith and her mother-in-law looked at each other. It was Joy's priority, of course, but she would have happily relinquished it to Mrs Whitely. The latter responded by opening her bag and taking out her rosary. If there were any mumbo-jumbo around, it would be as well to lay one's hands on any old tool to exorcise it.

‘I'm his wife,' Joy said, ‘the wife of the man who has disappeared, and this is his mother.' She was plainly putting the decision in his hands.

‘Then perhaps Mrs – er – '

‘Verrey Smith,' she gave him.

‘Then perhaps, Mrs Verrey Smith, junior, you had better tell me the whole story. But before you start,' he said, ‘could you give me that garment?'

She passed it over the desk, and he laid it out flat on the palm of his hand. ‘Now begin,' he said. Mr Wentworth made notes with his other hand. Occasionally he would ask her to stop, while he closed his eyes, trembled and made a note on his pad with a pen containing invisible ink. These pauses threw Joy somewhat, and then Mrs Whitely would cue her. But Mrs Whitely's interruptions threw Mr Wentworth, and he was on the point of asking her to leave, but she begged his pardon with the old timidity that Joy remembered.

Joy was very forthcoming, and Mr Wentworth asked very few questions. She told him everything that was already publicly known, and added the telephone call from Mrs Price in
Brighton. She would have told him about Tommy as well, but for the presence of her mother-in-law. The Tommy affair was strictly private, but she would have told Mr Wentworth about it because there was an aura of safe anonymity about him. When she had come to the end of her story, Mr Wentworth asked her if he could hold her hand for a while. Mrs Whitely gasped at the sexual overtones of the request, and frantically counted her beads. Joy held out her hand, and he held it over his head. ‘Now tell me again,' he said, ‘the name of your husband, his age, his profession and what he was wearing when you saw him last.'

Joy obliged once again. Mr Wentworth's eyes were closed, and as she spoke, he placed George's pants over their locked hands. Joy shivered and he let her hand go. Then he went over to his cupboard and took out a large rolled map. This he unfurled on the floor. It was a map of England in great physical and political detail. Having set it out, he asked them to leave him and to wait in the ante-room. He would call them when he was ready.

And so once again, they joined the insurance-seeker, chewing on her obstacle as if in prelude to total consumption. They sat down opposite her. She stopped chewing. ‘Any news?' she asked.

‘We have to wait,' Mrs Whitely said.

‘What did he do? Did he hold your hand?'

Joy nodded. She didn't particularly want to enter into a conversation. For some reason she had faith in this man, and she didn't want him spoken about by a tepid believer. She felt that he was divinely and therefore temporarily inspired and that, as soon as she was gone, he would forget the name of George Verrey Smith and all his story. She decided to believe in him, whatever he had to offer. But if, on the other hand, he located George's corpse – she shuddered at the thought – then of course, the man was an impostor and a fraud.

‘I went to a man once,' the woman was saying. ‘Told me my husband was in the south of France. Well I told the police, but they weren't very interested, and I couldn't go down myself to find out. I mean, I didn't want to spend all the insurance money in advance, and in the end not get it because the bastard's still alive.' She took to her chewing again.