After the spasm he looked vaguely at Mrs Pargeter, as if seeing her for the first time. “What do you want?” he asked blankly.
“It’s more a matter of what you want,” she answered, drawing the second half-bottle of whisky out of her raincoat pocket.
His eyes registered the familiar shape and he reached for it. Mrs Pargeter put it back out of sight. “I want to talk about Theresa…”
The name triggered no reaction at all.
“When did you last see Theresa?”
He shrugged, uncomprehending. The semi-lucid phase had passed; he was now drifting, outside time and reality.
“Do you know how long it is since you left Smithy’s Loam?”
“Left where?” The shaggy head shook slowly. “Left…? I don’t know…”
“Your home. Where you had a wife,” Mrs Pargeter prompted.
“Had a wife…” This sparked some recollection for him. “Had a wife, yes. Married.” He nodded. “Married a long time ago…”
“How long?”
This question was too hard. “Years…?” he hazarded blearily. “Five…ten years…?”
It sounded genuine. Mrs Pargeter could not believe that this human wreck was capable of acting its bewilderment. Nor, come to that, could she believe that it had been capable of executing the carefully planned murder of Theresa Cotton.
But she had to check, had to get something more positive. “Two and a half weeks ago, the Monday of the week before last,” she began firmly, “where were you?”
He looked at her as if she had suddenly started speaking in a foreign language. “Huh?”
“Did you go to Smithy’s Loam two and a half weeks ago?”
He turned his head in slow confusion. “I don’t know. I was here…I think. I’m always here. Always round here…always round about…When I’m not in prison…Or hospital…” He tapped his grubby plaster. “Hospital…”
“When did you break your arm?” Mrs Pargeter asked.
“Broke it. Broken…my arm. Then…I don’t know…Fell down…” His eyes focused for a split-second. “Where’s the bottle?”
“In a moment.” Mrs Pargeter signalled to Truffler Mason, who was seated on a bench a few yards away, maintaining his surveillance over the top of a newspaper. He nodded, taking in the instruction. Casually, he reached into his pocket for a Polaroid camera, rose to his feet and ambled past the two on the opposite bench. As he came level, he took a close-up photograph of the tramp beside Mrs Pargeter. Rod Cotton gave no sign of having noticed what had happened. He seemed to have sunk into a kind of coma.
“When have you got to go back to the hospital?” Mrs Pargeter asked.
He looked at her blankly.
“For your arm…?”
He did not appear to understand this, either. Mrs Pargeter tried more questions, but all of them were met by the same vacant incomprehension. His eyelids were heavy. He looked as if he were about to doze off.
Mrs Pargeter knew she wouldn’t get much more out of him. She beckoned Truffler Mason across. “Did you get a decent shot?”
He showed her the picture, and she nodded. “Better go now, I think.”
She hesitated for a moment, and then withdrew the second whisky bottle from her pocket. She looked down at the comatose wreck of humanity beside her. “Do you think I should give it to him? I said I would.”
Truffler shrugged. “Don’t think it’ll make much difference. He doesn’t look long for this world, anyway.”
“No…” Still she hesitated.
“It’d give him a happy hour or two,” said Truffler.
She nodded and, still uncertain, held the bottle out.
The engrimed hands instantly reached across and snatched it away. The metal top was unscrewed in one movement and a heavy slug of whisky poured through the discoloured lips. Then the bottle was closed and tucked safely into the greatcoat.
Rod Cotton’s shadowed eyes looked up at her pitifully. “Have you got any money?”
“If I gave you money, you’d only spend it on more drink.”
He shook his head. “Not drink,” he said childishly. “Not drink.”
“Food…?”
“Not drink,” he asserted once again.
Mrs Pargeter looked for advice to Truffler Mason, but all she got was another shrug. She’d have to make up her own mind.
And she wasn’t the sort of women to resist the pathetic appeal in Rod Cotton’s eyes. Impulsively, she unclasped her handbag, reached into her purse and pulled out a fifty-pound note. Then she added another and held them out to the sad figure on the bench.
Truffler Mason looked away as the money was secreted in the filthy recesses of the greatcoat. Rod Cotton gave a slight grin, then his eyes closed, his mouth fell slackly open and he snored, his breath steaming in the cold air of Embankment Gardens.
“God,” murmured Mrs Pargeter. “Isn’t there anything we can do to help him?”
Truffler Mason shrugged miserably. “Only if he wants to help himself.”
“Mm.”
“And from what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t say he does want to help himself. I’d say he wants to destroy himself – and as quickly as possible.”
“Yes,” said Mrs Pargeter, suddenly overwhelmed by the bleakness of this undoubted truth. “Yes, I’m afraid you’re right.”
∨ Mrs, Presumed Dead ∧
Thirty
They picked up the car again in Northumberland Avenue. Gary had been given instructions to circle round until they were ready. Mrs Pargeter and Truffler got into the back of the limousine in silence. The customary cheerfulness was gone from her face, and his looked even more lugubrious than usual.
Mrs Pargeter gave terse instructions to the chauffeur, who took them on a tour of the London hospitals. At each one, Mrs Pargeter stayed in the car, while Truffler, the professional investigator, went into the Casualty Department with his Polaroid photograph.
He struck lucky at the third hospital. The sister he encountered had been on duty when Rod Cotton had been brought in with his broken arm. She recognised the face in the photograph instantly.
Yes, it had been a fall. He had been brought in with advanced DTs, and they’d had to dry him out a bit before they could set the arm. As a result, he had spent three days in the hospital, before discharging himself. No, he had given no name, and appeared to have no address.
She was gloomy about his prospects. They had plenty in like that, and most of them would come in more than once. Falls, walking into lamp-posts, stepping in front of cars. The hospital patched them up, tried to counsel them to change their habits, and, with little optimism, sent them out again into the world they hated, to repeat their accidents. Until one day there was a more serious accident and what arrived in Casualty was a body.
She answered all of Truffler’s questions as economically as she could, and then went off to deal with that day’s catalogue of human disasters.
He got back into the car, and Mrs Pargeter told the chauffeur to drive her back to Smithy’s Loam. They would drop Mr Mason off at a Tube station on the way.
“Well?” she said, when the limousine was in motion.
Truffler gave her all the details that he had elicited from the sister.
“And when was this?” asked Mrs Pargeter.
He gave her the dates. She smiled with grim satisfaction. Rod Cotton’s accident had happened on a Sunday evening, nineteen days before. Dead drunk, he had fallen down a flight of steps on Hungerford Bridge and broken his arm. He had been admitted to the hospital at half-past ten that night.
And, since he was kept in there for three days, there was no way that he could have been at Smithy’s Loam the day after the accident, murdering his wife.
♦
Just as Mrs Pargeter was tipping her chauffeur back at Smithy’s Loam, Sue Curle’s car screeched to a halt opposite, and its owner scrambled out in high fury. She was met at the door by Kirsten and, after a muttered consultation, the two children were hurried out of the house into the back of the car and all four drove off at speed.