“It was a terrible mistake,” she said, as she showed them into her living room. “Really. I don’t know what came over me.”
Ramsay had stopped in Otterbridge to read her statement and understood a little of what she meant.
“The dating agency?” he asked gently.
She nodded, horrified.
“Why don’t you explain?”
“My husband left me ten years ago,” she said, as if that too was a matter of shame. “For his nurse.” Then, seeing that they were confused: “He’s a dentist with a practice in the town centre. Symons and Miller.”
Ramsay nodded encouragingly.
“It was a shock,” she said. She was a little, small-featured woman, attractive in a neat, contained way. “Unexpected. I had thought we were settled. Happy even.”
Ramsay nodded again. She continued, gaining in confidence.
“I’d never worked. We married early before I’d decided, really, on a career. I had O Levels, of course, and one A Level but no training, nothing useful in the way of skills. I’d thought marriage would be enough. Marriage and children.” She paused, then continued in a rush: “There was one baby. A little girl. Helen. But she died. A cot death, you know. She’d be a teenager now. There weren’t any more.”
She stared blankly ahead of her.
Hunter had been expecting quite a different sort of woman, someone blowsy and sexy, like his favourite barmaid, but even he was moved. Almost to tears. Christ, he thought, I must be getting soft in my old age.
She went on matter-of-factly: “When Russell left I knew I’d have to get a job of some sort. To support myself. His new wife very soon had a baby and I couldn’t expect him to give me money when they had financial commitments of their own. But I wasn’t qualified for anything and I’d lost any self-esteem I’d had with the divorce. So I went for shop work. I didn’t think that would be too demanding. I got taken on by Hawkins.”
Ramsay nodded. He recognized the name.
Hawkins was an old-fashioned, family-run department store.
“I enjoyed it. I progressed through the business and became a supervisor. Then I was approached by Mr. Jones who has the shoe shop in the square. He wanted to retire and he needed a manager. He thought I’d do. It was rather flattering to be asked. And the money was good. A commission on top of the salary. I built up the business and did rather well.” She paused again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “None of this is relevant to your enquiry. I’m afraid I’m wasting your time. But I’m trying to explain how I went to the agency.”
“The work had given you confidence,” Ramsay said.
“Yes,” she said, pleased that he knew what she meant. “And I thought: if I can be quite successful in work, why not in my private life? It wasn’t so much that I felt lonely. But incomplete. I don’t suppose you understand
Ramsay understood very well.
“I never met men,” she explained. “Except in the shop and that was no good. I tried the usual things evening classes, clubs. That got me out of the house but I only met other women, or occasionally a happily married man. I had the feeling that time was running out. It sounds awful but I thought: soon I’ll be in competition not only with spinsters and divorcees but with widows too. I suppose I was getting desperate.”
“So you decided to try a more direct approach?”
She nodded. “One of my regular customers had been to the agency. She didn’t hide it. She even turned it into a joke. And suddenly she seemed so well and alive. She’d met such a nice man, older than her, a retired bank clerk, a widower.”
She stopped short. “I’m losing track,” she said. “You don’t want to hear all this. I don’t very often have the opportunity to talk about myself.”
“Go on,” Ramsay said. “We’re in no hurry.”
Speak for yourself, Hunter thought. He wanted his tea and a few pints before closing time.
“So I plucked up courage and thought: why not? Why not give it a go at least? To see if I could find someone nice like my customer. Perhaps it sounds ridiculous at my age but I wanted that excitement, you know, of falling in love. Just once more.”
“You went to the agency in person?”
“Yes,” she said. “I made a telephone appointment first and then I went. I’d been expecting an office, something official, but it was run by a young woman, a young mother actually who couldn’t get out to work, from her own home.”
“And she introduced you to Mr. Bowles?”
“Not directly. She showed me a file of application forms. I read through them and chose three, put them in order of preference. Mr. Bowles was my first choice.” Her voice was flat.
“Had the manager of the agency met him?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t think she can have done.” She shivered slightly. “She seemed a very honest woman. I don’t think she would have recommended him if she’d met him.”
Ramsay let that go. They would come to Mrs. Symons’s meeting with Ernie Bowles in time.
“Were you the first woman to be introduced to Mr. Bowles?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I rather think I was.”
“What was it about Mr. Bowles’s application form which led you to choose him?”
She paused, considered. “To be honest I expect it was wishful thinking,” she said. “The form wasn’t very well written, you know, and at the time I even saw that in a positive light. Russell, my husband, had always been very superior about his education. It was the farming, I suppose, which attracted me, and the fact that he’d never been married. I’ve always been a fan of Thomas Hardy and I imagined Mr. Bowles as one of his heroes: uneducated perhaps and shy, but close to nature, gentle.”
“And Mr. Bowles didn’t live up to those expectations?”
“No,” she said. “But to be honest no one would. I see that now.”
“How did you arrange to meet?”
“The agency gave him my telephone number. He phoned me up.”
“When was that?”
“At the beginning of the week. Monday morning.”
“You weren’t put off by his phone call?”
“No,” she said. “He sounded a little… rough, but I’d expected that. I’ve never been a snob, Inspector.”
Hardy again, Ramsay thought. Hunter, who’d never heard of Thomas Hardy, thought she’d been turned on by the idea of doing it with one of the working class.
“Tell me about Saturday night,” Ramsay said. “What happened?”
“We arranged to meet in the lounge of the Ship. He said he would buy me dinner.”
“He was there when you got there?”
“Yes,” she said. “He may have been there for some time. He’d certainly had a couple of drinks.”
“He was drunk?”
“No. Not really drunk.”
“Could you give me your first impressions of him?”
She hesitated, surprised by the question.
“He was short, thick-set. He’d obviously made some effort to get ready to meet me but it hadn’t quite come off. I suppose I should have found that touching.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No,” she said. “I’m finding this hard to explain, Inspector, but there was something about him which disturbed me. Nothing concrete. A way of looking at me. Perhaps that’s it.”
“One witness has described him as “creepy”,” Ramsay said.
“Yes,” she said gratefully. “That’s just it. I thought I was overreacting.” She gave a sudden smile, self-mocking. “But I don’t think I lived up to his expectations either. We were both disappointed.”
“Yet you went through with the dinner?”
“I wasn’t sure how to get out of it. He was quite insistent and I didn’t want to make a scene. I might not have been the sort of woman he imagined but I had the impression that he considered me better than nothing. I really think he believed I was grateful for his attentions.”