“Oh good,” she said brightly (she hardly ever spoke now at meals, and never initiated a conversation). “It’s Simon’s passport.”
There was immediate silence, and Mrs. Forrest got up. She had been feeling guilty about the brutal cutting of her fellow guest, because she was not a vicious woman.
“Oh, what a good likeness,” she said, looking at the first page of the stiff blue booklet with the royal arms on the cover.
“Yes, a friend took it, and we insisted the main thing was the likeness. Travelling in Europe is pretty problematic still, and Simon still isn’t sure where he wants to go. Ah — they’ve got everything right: ‘Webber, Simon Marius, born 11th March, 1928.’” She looked up at her fellow lodgers. “All absolutely correct. Simon will be pleased.”
Mrs. Forrest retreated, feeling somehow ashamed. Later, when she knew Cynthia (as she now again called her) had gone out, she talked the matter through with Major Catchpole and Miss Rumbold.
“It’s the fact that it’s a passport,” she said. “A ration book or a driving licence wouldn’t be at all the same. There wouldn’t be a photograph for a start, and they’re easily forged or transferred. But a passport. Everyone knows they don’t make mistakes with those. It’s as clear as clear, he is her son.”
“They’re very careful about passports,” agreed Miss Rumbold, “as they have to be. All those Poles staying on after the war, and all those displaced persons coming from Central Europe. The riffraff of the world wants to come here. The authorities need to be careful, and they are.”
Miss Rumbold’s radicalism, if it ever existed, did not run to showing the hand of friendship to foreigners. She even distrusted the Welsh.
“And when it comes down to it, the ‘evidence’ was very thin,” conceded Major Catchpole, who had always exercised a restraining influence. “The woman could have had a migraine, and the boy was getting her aspirins.”
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Forrest. “I’ve been very foolish.”
“Not at all, not at all. But I think, on the whole, Mrs. Phipps would have done better to hold her tongue. But we should have thought that older women with lovers—”
“Let’s say men friends.”
“—with men friends half their age and less are not frequent, not in this country. I believe such... liaisons were common in France between the wars, and very probably are still common today. We do things differently here.”
And so opinion swung round. Mrs. Forrest was crucial, since she had been the first one Mrs. Phipps confided in. Everyone agreed it was a storm in a teacup. Mrs. Phipps, however, was wistful about the change and said she was never going to be quite sure.
The change in atmosphere did not alter the decision of Mrs. Webber, who had not at all liked the days of ostracism after her weeks of preeminence. She went to Mrs. Hocking and said they would be leaving the next day, though they had paid up to the end of the week.
“I have no idea what silly story was put around,” she told the temporary manager, “and I don’t want to know. But I do know that for nearly a week we couldn’t get a civil word out of anyone. I’m not used to such foolishness, and the fact that they’ve had second thoughts does not change my mind one little bit. I’m not used to mixing with people so feeble-minded that they alter with every change of wind. Ah — my ration book—” and indeed Mrs. Hocking was handing it to her with a wistful expression, clearly wondering when next she was going to be able to let the suite. “Please don’t think I have anything to complain about with you. You may put any story about you like.”
So the next day, while Simon was stacking the suitcases in the car, the story was going round that Cynthia’s father-in-law, who had never recovered from his son’s death, was very poorly indeed, and they were anxious to see him one more time before...
On their way down towards Derby, where they had booked two single rooms, there was, for a time, silence in the car.
“I was not deceived for one moment by the little party waving us fond fare-wells,” said Cynthia eventually, knowing Simon was thinking of the same things. “One or two of the wavers must have been the ones that started it all off.”
“Of course they did. I couldn’t stand the atmosphere at the place, whether they were with us or against us.”
“They were a poor lot,” agreed Cynthia. “Sheep led by donkeys. With hindsight we were bound to find the company unsuitable: Narrow people with attitudes stuck in the Victorian age gravitate to little one-horse towns like Pixton.”
“They certainly could be vicious, though,” said Simon.
“Ignorance is always vicious. I certainly didn’t go through the business of doing away with your father to be treated by them as a scarlet woman.”
Simon laughed.
“They never even made up their minds, though — never took a line and stuck to it. One minute we were mother and son, next minute a middle-aged woman and her much younger lover.”
Cynthia laughed merrily.
“Typically provincial,” she said. “It never occurred to them that we could be both.”
Copyright © 2010 Robert Barnard
Heard at One Remove
by Nagaoka Hiroki
Translated from the Japanese by Beth Cary
The following story by Nagaoka Hiroki was the winner of the 2008 Mystery Writers of JapanAward. One of the judges for the award commented that it could be classifiedas a mystery, a “family story,” or a “humanist story” — for the personal life of the female police detective and her relationship with her daughter figure centrally in the tale.
1.
As she exited the ticket wicket and passed by some already shuttered kiosks, she could see several cardboard shelters come into view at the edge of the concourse.
There were five in all. One had been added about a week ago.
Sunken cheeks and unshaved chin. Age just shy of sixty. A rather tidy appearance...
Hazumi Keiko hurried along as she imagined what the new homeless man must look like.
She passed by a businessman at the exit from the concourse. He held a small mobile phone to his ear. It being the mid 1990s, more and more people carried these devices.
Maybe I should get a mobile phone. No, I don’t need to pay for one myself; the department will eventually provide one. Then I won’t need my pager anymore...
With such thoughts filling her mind, she walked for several minutes. She was nearly at her house when she noticed a disturbance.
A police van was parked in front of the old house on the alley, where there were few street lamps. It belonged to the crime-scene investigation unit. There was also a sedan, an unmarked patrol car belonging to the burglary section.
Some seven or eight bystanders stood at a distance, watching as the crime-scene investigators busied themselves.
It was Hazumi Fusano’s house.
Identifying herself to the uniformed police officer on guard, Keiko stepped toward the entryway. At the sound of her footsteps, the investigator dusting the front door with aluminum powder turned around. She didn’t recall his name, but recognized his face.
He stood up and raised his hand to the brim of his cap. “Detective, why are you here?”
“My house is nearby, right behind this one.”
“Is it?... Oh, the name here is also Hazumi, isn’t it?” he said, pointing at the ground. “Is it a relative of yours?”