When Harton returned with drinks, Mr Rothermere unobtrusively handed him one of the three prints fabricated by Mrs Robinson.
“That should solve your little problem.”
Harton stared stonily at the photograph for some seconds, his mouth tight. A muscle at the side of his jaw twitched. High in the cheek a patch of skin flushed darkly.
“This man,” expounded Mr Rothermere, “is probably the finest photographic technician in London. He did the Kennedy assassination picture that beat the news agencies by eight minutes—and without leaving his studio.”
Harton frowned, questioning.
Airily, very rapidly—as if anxious not to insult his hearer’s intelligence by too clearly articulating the obvious—Mr Rothermere murmured: “Computerised filing system, three buttons— who— where— what— then advanced montage technique...not difficult, not to this man.”
Harton looked at him. “Did you get her to pose like this?”
“Now look, you must be absolutely objective...”
“Did you?”
“I think she was a little intoxicated at the time. It was all quite impersonal, anyway.”
Harton’s grin—the boyish one—was suddenly there. “My dear chap, I’m not criticising. This is just right. Great.”
“Our mutual employer,” said Mr Rothermere after a pause, “is concerned, I understand, that you should get your divorce as quickly and cleanly as possible. That is how that Charles fellow put it, anyhow; he didn’t seem to see any contradiction between cleanliness and fake adultery.”
“It’s a very sensitive field, dog food,” said Harton. “I mean, hell, I couldn’t care less, but here’s a market that can go up or down by a million at the wag of a tail on television. Customers of that kind are terribly fussy about morals.”
“Your wife would readily settle for reasonable alimony. Wouldn’t that be less complicated? Less risky?”
“Christ! I know her ‘reasonable’. She’s cunning enough to have worked out her own estimate of what value Cultox puts on the fair name of its executives. She’d bleed us white.”
Mr Rothermere drummed his fingers on the side of his tankard and ruminatively inspected its depths. “I rather fancy,” he said, “that I could name a likely figure.”
“Don’t tell me the bitch got you to come here and bargain for her.”
“Not at all. She believes precisely what I was engaged to persuade her to believe.”
At once, Harton gestured with open hand. “That her poor sod of a husband was going to be framed for knocking her off. She’d believe that, all right. And love it.”
“As a general rule,” said Mr Rothermere, “I counsel against complicated plots. In this case, it seemed that something elaborate—a little bizarre, even—was more likely to appeal to your wife’s particular mentality. I have been proved right. But now that she has responded as planned, my advice is that she be offered prompt accommodation.”
“I don’t follow you, friend.” The slightly pained brow above the open smile bespoke a desire to understand.
“In short,” said Mr Rothermere, “I suggest you settle at once. You have the lever you wanted—the photograph, which Mrs Harton has not seen, incidentally, but which I am sure she would not care to have to contest in court—so you can afford to be generous.”
“Generous to what extent?”
“Listen, I think she would accept fifteen thousand. Offer twelve and I’ll work from there. I do have some little experience in the mediation business, as you know.” Mr Rothermere gave a small self-deprecatory shrug. “At least I shouldn’t have gelignite or Arabic idiom to contend with on this occasion.”
Harton took a couple of seconds to allow the image conjured by the latest of Mr Rothermere’s potent non-sequiturs to clear. Then he scowled and leaned forward. Slowly and emphatically, he said:
“That woman was prepared to see me dragged into court on a murder charge and quite possibly be put away for life. The only accommodation, as you put it, that I’m prepared to offer her is what she wanted me to have—a prison cell.”
Almost before Harton had finished speaking, Mr Rothermere was pouting disagreement and shaking his head. “No, no, no, no. You have misread the situation. I’m sorry, but you really have. She would never have persevered with that absurd pretence. It was a game, nothing more, and she knew that.”
“She is a murderous bitch.”
“Oh, come now...”
“She is a murderous bitch. And we are going to see that she is recognised and treated as one. Right?” The brittle politeness of Harton’s smile proclaimed, for the first time in the interview, the relationship between employer and hired man.
Chapter Twelve
“I don’t care what she’s done, inspector. I just want her home again. If she’s in trouble—well, we’ll have to see what can be done to help her. Nothing’s so desperately bad that human beings can’t get together to try and put it right.”
“How true, sir,” said Purbright, never one to dispute a worthy sentiment. But he added, before Harton had time to express another, that he would be interested to hear what he supposed the “trouble” encountered by Mrs Harton was likely to be.
The interview was taking place in the drawing-room of the Hartons’ house in Oakland. It was Saturday morning, a time which normally would have been at Purbright’s disposal for shopping with his wife or mending a fence or changing library books or indeed any of the ordinary weekend activities that bring even policemen in Flaxborough back into circulation as citizens and neighbours. But that could not be helped. Julia Harton was the daughter of a headmaster and a J.P. and the wife of a substantial employer. Her vanishing was a matter that demanded the immediate attention and attendance of a senior officer.
“Trouble?” Harton repeated the word as if putting it up for examination. He considered, then shrugged. “Yes I think we must assume that she is in trouble. She would not otherwise go off without explanation of any kind.”
“But doesn’t it seem unlikely that she has gone? In the sense of taking a journey, I mean. Her car is still at the factory.”
“That is true. But there are other means of going away. Public transport, such as it is. A lift with a friend.”
“You make it sound as if you believe your wife left deliberately, sir.”
“Well, I do. Yes.” Harton looked surprised. “What else should I believe, inspector?”
“Do you rule out forcible abduction?”
“Kidnapping? Oh, no; surely not. Not in Flaxborough.” Harton shook his head. “To be quite honest, I could wish that were the explanation. Then it would simply be a matter of money.”
“Demands are sometimes very extravagant—especially when someone such as an industrialist is involved.”