'Jim doesn’t like me smoking, but an occasional one doesn’t hurt and it sure as hell helps.' She laughed and for the first time I thought I could see a trace of her sister Gloria in her face. 'You want to ask about Gloria’s lover.'
I nodded, relieved she’d broached the subject.
'Yes.'
'It always comes down to that in the end doesn’t it? Sex.'
'It’s a powerful force.'
'Is that what you call it?… He was very hush-hush, Gloria’s amour.' Sheila pulled a brown-edged leaf from a bush and crushed it between her fingers. 'They never found him you know. It wasn’t for the want of looking.' She opened her palm, looked at the crumpled leaf and then let it drop to the ground. 'He’s never said so, but I know Jim thinks Gloria just made a lover up to make life a little more exciting.'
'And what do you think?'
'I think he was probably married.'
The rain that had threatened all day started to spit; Sheila and I moved back indoors, she glanced at her watch and I got the sensation that our interview was drawing to its end. I asked, 'If there was a lover do you think that Gloria would have left her husband?'
Sheila looked at me.
'I don’t know and I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. That day has coloured everything since, even when I met Jim there was the shadow of it hanging over us. I used to think that she would have, but as I’ve got older I’ve wondered. She was devoted to Billy and his father wouldn’t have let him go easily. Maybe if it was the love of her life, maybe then, but the maternal bond is the strongest one of all; I think it would have taken a lot of persuasion for her to jeopardise it.' She nodded towards a dresser where a group of framed photographs crowded together. 'I should know, I’ve got two of my own.'
I glanced at the photographs: two nondescript boys in school uniform, flanked by the graduation photographs of two nondescript young men, followed by the formal portraits of the same boys/men, balding now, wearing dark suits reminiscent of their school blazers. I wondered how many more pictures it would take to complete the set. To the right of the arrangement in a chased silver frame was a studio portrait of Gloria Noon.
I said, 'Do you mind?'
Sheila nodded her permission and I picked it up.
'She was a beautiful-looking woman.'
'Not just to look at, she was beautiful inside too.' She gave me the smile that was like Gloria’s. 'It sounds silly, but sometimes I imagine that she’s on a long journey around the world. I can picture her in Egypt or Turkey… Marrakech; always somewhere exotic, somewhere sunny.' She took the photograph from me and for the first time since we’d met I thought that she might cry, but instead she gave a short laugh. 'You know, if she came back now and said she’d just been on an extended holiday I might kill her myself.'
I watch Sheila’s slim hands replace Gloria’s portrait on the dresser and a second framed photograph caught my eye. I reached over and lifted it, keeping my voice as casual as I could.
'A family friend?'
'What made you say that?' Sheila’s smile was warm. 'That’s my husband, Jim.'
'Mr Bowen?'
'Bowen was my first husband’s name. He died two years before Gloria vanished.' She shook her head. 'Myeloid leukaemia, he lasted six months after the diagnosis. Gloria going would have hit me hard whatever happened but after Frank’s death…’ She shook her head, remembering. 'Well you can imagine, I thought that was going to be the end for me too.
Then along came Jim.' She smiled again. 'He was part of the investigation team. I think deep down the rest of them just thought Gloria was an immoral woman who’d left her husband. Those were different times. But Jim never believed that. He kept on pushing and that was when I fell in love with him.' She smiled. 'I kept the name Bowen over the shop, Frank’s grandfather was the founder and it would have been wrong to change it.' She smiled. 'That was how I knew that you were phoning about Gloria. No one calls me Bowen any more. I’ve been Sheila Montgomery since I married Jim.'
My mind was full of what might have happened had James Montgomery come home early and found me in his front room interrogating his wife. Part of me wished he had.
What could he do with her there? But a larger part was relieved to escape.
I walked as swiftly as I could away from the Montgomery house, cursing suburbia’s open streets, not daring to catch a train back in case I passed him en route to his home.
Eventually I found a parade of shops and managed to catch a bus that would take me out of the district.
Back in central London I used a public email telephone to check my VeritableCrime inbox. Technology might have moved on but people were still pissing in phone boxes. I held my breath and tried to work out how to use the machine. The connection was painfully slow and I had time to read the details of a dozen women eager to dance, massage or generally entertain me. I wondered if they knew the risk they were taking.
The Viagra people had got back in touch and so had Drew Manson. He was keen to meet and had left a mobile number.
He answered on the third ring. I explained that I was heading off to a publishing conference tomorrow but would love to see him before I went, was he free for a late lunch?
Mr Manson was free. He suggested a gastropub somewhere near Farringdon. I’d taken a dancer there once. The food had been expensive and she’d gone home for an early night saying she had to keep fresh for the next day’s show. I hoped I’d have better luck with Mr Manson.
Drew Manson’s author photograph showed a man in his thirties wearing spectacles of the kind favoured by David Hockney and an intense stare under a shock of dark hair styled in a manner popular with young intellectuals in the sixties. Manson looked up from the typewriter on his desk with a mixture of surprise and intellectual rigour on his blunt face, his right hand frozen above the keys in mid-strike as if he’d been surprised in the act of writing a very big word.
The clues were there in the sixties styling, the lack of computer and the publication date on the inside cover of the library book in my bag. But I wasn’t prepared for the balding man in his sixties who walked into the pub, even though he was wearing the same glasses, or a close relative of them. I let him stand in the doorway for a second, looking around the pub with the controlled anxiety of a man who has attended many disappointments, but still harbours some hope, and then I stood up and went to meet him.
'Mr Manson?'
'Yes.'
His accent was how I imagined old-school Cambridge would sound and I was glad I’d decided to try for an intellectual look by wearing my own specs.
'William Wilson, thanks for agreeing to see me at such short notice.'
Manson looked self-consciously writerly. His trousers were a deep chocolate jumbo cord, his tie bore a monogram I didn’t recognise, but would probably signal something to the initiated, and his tweed jacket was patched at the elbows. I wondered if he was the real thing or an old fraud. I started to go through the spiel about the new line in crime books that my very small, very newly established publishing house was hoping to reprint with updates on any developments since the original publication.
'I’m interested in the Gloria Noon case because of the recent murder of her son Bill.'
Manson nodded and made a hissing noise, sucking the air between his teeth like a man giving something serious thought.
The waitress came with our menus and Manson began studying his with the intensity of a shortsighted don assessing a borderline exam script. When the waitress returned he ordered, 'Steak, rare, with a green salad and a bottle of Barolo. I’ll have a glass of Pouilly Fumé while we’re waiting.' He watched as the girl bobbed off to the kitchen then turned to me, smiling patiently.