The Sleeping Partner

  As we turned the corner of the drive to the road, I braked hard. A car was stopped a couple of yards inside the drive and a man was standing with his hand on the door, either just getting in or just getting out. When my tyres slithered he left his own car and came towards us. He was a man of about forty in a bowler hat and a dark suit with speckled trousers and highly polished black shoes. There was a circular mark on his cheek like a vaccination mark, and he had a tight mouth with a full bottom lip.

  He took off his hat when he saw Stella. To me he said: ‘I beg your pardon, this is Greencroft, isn’t it?’

  I said it was, and wondered if he was going to push another petition into my hand.

  ‘And are you Mr Granville?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, my name is Baker. Detective Sergeant Baker. I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes of your time?’

  ‘I can hardly refuse it.’

  He smiled without looking amused and put his hands behind his back. ‘That has been known. Er – you were coming away from the house?’

  ‘Yes. This is my technical assistant, Mrs Curtis.’

  He inclined his head. ‘I won’t keep you long, Mr Granville; but we’re making a few enquiries, and I thought—’

  ‘Enquiries about what?’

  He looked surprised, as if he thought he’d told me or as if he thought I ought to know. ‘About your wife, Mr Granville.’

  I noticed he was wearing a stiff white collar with a blue striped shirt, and his black tie was pulled into a tiny knot. He had a cultured voice that didn’t sound as if it had been with him all his life. Even his smile was tough.

  I said: ‘What was it you wanted to know?’

  Baker glanced at Stella. ‘Would it be convenient if we went back to the house?’

  ‘… Unfortunately we can’t,’ I said. ‘I’m living in Letherton and forgot the key. Would you like to drive along there with me? It’s only twenty minutes.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think that will be necessary. Perhaps a few minutes’ conversation …’

  ‘I’ll walk on,’ Stella said. ‘Catch me up, Mr Granville, will you?’

  ‘No, there’s no need to do that,’ I protested, but she opened the door and slid out. Our eyes met for a second through the glass as she shut the door.

  ‘I’ll take the road for the village,’ she said. ‘Don’t miss me. Will you?’ She smiled at Sergeant Baker, and he raised his hat again.

  We watched her for a moment. ‘Shall I get out of the car, or will you get in?’

  ‘I don’t think either’s really necessary,’ he said. ‘I was really quite lucky to catch you, then?’

  ‘Has my wife sent you?’

  ‘No, not exactly.’ He ran a hand along the panel of the door.

  ‘I was served with a petition for divorce this week. It rather jaundices one’s attitude towards strange officials.’

  ‘Your wife is divorcing you, Mr Granville?’

  ‘That’s her idea.’

  His glance strayed past me and down the road, as if to look at Stella again. ‘No, I came really to inquire if you knew where your wife was at the moment.’

  ‘I wish I did.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, so do we.’

  ‘Don’t tell me the police want her for something.’

  He put out his bottom lip. ‘We’re making a few inquiries at the instigation of her bank. When did you last see her, Mr Granville?’

  ‘Three weeks ago yesterday morning. When I got home in the evening she wasn’t there, and the following morning I had a letter from her telling me she was leaving me.’

  ‘Do you still have the letter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d rather like to see it sometime.’

  ‘Is it of special interest?’

  ‘Well, it could be. You see, her bank have had two communications from her since then, and they are not satisfied about her signature.’

  I looked at him and he looked back at me.

  ‘What do they suggest?’

  ‘I think they prefer to leave it to others to suggest. They are merely – dissatisfied.’

  I got out of the car and took out my pocket-book. ‘I’ve carried her letter ever since. I think it’s here.’

  ‘You haven’t heard from her since?’

  ‘No.’ I gave him the letter

  He read it. ‘Are you satisfied that this is your wife’s handwriting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know if she ever signed herself Lynn Granville in her business affairs?’

  ‘I don’t think so in her formal dealings. She used her full name Lindsey.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what the bank said. Er – were you surprised when she left you, Mr Granville?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘You didn’t expect her to petition for a divorce?’

  ‘Certainly I didn’t.’

  ‘What were the grounds?’

  I put the letter away. ‘ I have a feeling that you know all this already.’

  He smiled slightly and glanced down and moved the signet ring round on the little finger of his right hand. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘If the bank have reported that someone has been forging my wife’s signature, it’s natural to begin general enquiries.’

  ‘These are the general enquiries, Mr Granville.’

  ‘But not the beginning of them.’

  ‘Not quite the beginning of them.’

  A wasp came between us for a moment, settled on the bonnet of the car and moved with angular venomous legs across the slippery surface. Baker waved it away.

  ‘Were you aware that your wife had a flat in London?’

  ‘Not before she left me. I’ve discovered it since.’

  ‘And have you been there?’

  ‘Yes, two or three times, but there was no one in.’

  ‘There was someone in last night. The lady below phoned for the police, but the man escaped through a window.’

  ‘Man? It wasn’t Lynn, then?’

  ‘Apparently there was a struggle. Can you give me any leads as to where you think your wife might be?’

  I took out my cigarette-case and offered him a cigarette. He smiled and shook his head and I put my case away.

  ‘I don’t know what you know of my movements in the last four or five days, Sergeant Baker. But if you check them you’ll find that since I had this divorce petition I’ve thrown over my work and everything else in trying to find her.’

  ‘Did you make no effort to find her before that? I should have thought the incentive would have been greater then.’

  ‘The bank will tell you I did.’

  ‘Only the bank?’

  ‘I rang her mother and every friend of hers I could trace.’

  ‘Have you felt worried about what might have happened to her?’

  ‘No. I take it she’s lying low somewhere for her own purposes.’

  ‘Which are?’

  I said: ‘I don’t quite follow you. Do you think something has happened to her?’

  ‘Not necessarily at all. In any case the bank may be quite mistaken in their doubt as to her signature. Certainly the letters were typed on the machine which is in her flat.’

  ‘I see you’ve already been pretty thorough.’

  ‘We do our best. Tell me, Mr Granville, is the lady who was with you the – er – woman named, as they call it, in the divorce petition?’

  ‘I’m sure you know that she is.’

  ‘She is married, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, and happily.’

  ‘To an invalid husband?’

  ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Frankly, in this work after a while one loses one’s capacity for surprise. But on the law of averages I’d say that an attractive young woman, married to a sick and older man—’

  ‘I should have thought you would have learned to distrust the law of averages as well.’

  He smiled, this time with his eyes too. ‘ That seems a very fair come-back. Have you go
ne through your wife’s papers since she left?’

  ‘I looked through some of them yesterday.’

  ‘No help?’

  ‘No help at all.’

  He took his hand off the headlamp of the car. ‘Well, thank you, Mr Granville. We’ll carry on with our enquiries. We don’t, of course, for the moment propose to list Mrs Granville among the “missing persons”. There may be some very simple explanation of the whole thing. Where can I find you if I want you again?’

  ‘Care of the Old Bull, Letherton. And you?’

  ‘I think I’ll have to back before you can get past.’ He stared with suspicious brown eyes at his own car, as if he thought it guilty of loitering with intent. ‘Me? Oh, you can phone me direct in London or practically care of any police station.’

  I left him sitting in his car watching me drive away.

  I said to Stella: ‘I lied to that fellow about the key for several reasons. One was that I didn’t want him to think we’d spent the whole afternoon alone in the house together.’

  ‘So he thinks Lynn has disappeared?’

  ‘He’s only guessing.’

  ‘But – the signatures that the bank are complaining of – were they on cheques?’

  ‘No, on letters, I think.’

  We drove on.

  I said: ‘Stella …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Will you invite me to supper tonight?’

  ‘Of course. Come in now. There’ll only be an hour to wait.’

  ‘Will John be well enough to see me?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s in bed, but …’

  ‘Do you want me to say I picked you up in the town?’

  She was silent. ‘More than anything I hate lying to him.’

  ‘On this I don’t think we need or should.’

  We had come to the outskirts of Letherton. I wondered what Baker was doing now I’d left him. Was he driving back to London, or was he still at Greencroft, walking round the house and peering in at the windows? I hoped I had locked the french windows both top and bottom.

  Coming to a sudden decision, I said: ‘I want very much to have a talk with John.’

  She looked at me. ‘What about?’

  ‘About this policeman’s visit.’

  Chapter Twenty

  JOHN CURTIS pushed himself farther up the pillows, and then impatiently flattened the sheet. You could still see the power in his hands. For two or three minutes he hadn’t spoken – not since I stopped. Downstairs I could hear Stella as she moved about getting supper.

  Though he was a pretty straightforward man, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. You wouldn’t know until he wanted you to know.

  Without looking at me he said: ‘Why do you tell me this?’

  ‘I’m out of my depth. I thought if anyone could advise me on the motions of self-preservation it would be you.’

  ‘Is self-preservation all you want?’

  ‘Not all.’

  His face was tight-drawn, the brilliant brown eyes concentrated as if in a bright light. ‘You realise you’ve taken a vital step in telling me all this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a risk?’

  ‘The risk of being disbelieved. I know.’

  ‘Oh, I believe you.’

  ‘That’s a risk you take.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re not a murderer. You’ve too much imagination. And tolerance. Though I think you might have put them both to better uses.’

  ‘… Unfortunately the police deal only in proof.’

  ‘No, the risk you’ve taken in telling me this is that you’ve so to speak, passed the baby on to me. Whether you do as I advise or not, I have to tell the police or get in a tricky position myself.’

  I went to the window and sat in the window-seat. ‘And what do you advise?’

  ‘Tell me first about yourself and your wife. Tell me about things on the periphery of the story. I want to see more of the picture.’

  I tried to tell him about all the people distantly or closely involved, Simon Heppelwhite and Ray French and Frank Dawson and our life together before she disappeared. ‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘that the whole equation isn’t laid on. Bits of it are probably floating around Lynn’s London flat and the men who visited her there.’

  Footsteps were coming upstairs. John waited but they went past. He said: ‘An equation can have unknown quantities. The real difficulty lies in setting the thing up.’

  ‘It’s in trying to set it up – or break it down – that I’ve landed myself in a worse mess than before.’

  ‘This man Simon Heppelwhite. He’s your best friend and hers. If he’s not involved he could have a clearer view of your marriage than anyone. Have you seen him recently?’

  ‘Not since this thing blew its top off.’

  ‘He would be worth seeing. There must be a reason why he appeared to turn against Lynn, as you say he did. And why has your wife been meeting this man from your works, Dawson? I—’

  ‘The answer looks fairly obvious to me.’

  He tried to take a deep breath and failed. ‘ This man French tells you that your wife was a nymphomaniac. What do you say? You should know.’

  I said bitterly: ‘Perhaps I don’t.’

  ‘But what would you have said?’

  ‘I should have called her highly sexed. I’d no reason to suppose more.’

  ‘Perhaps a nymphomaniac doesn’t need to appear more than that to any one man. Why should she? Especially to her husband, whom it’s more necessary to deceive than anyone else. And yet I wonder …’

  Silence fell between us.

  He said: ‘ How exactly did the body look? Can you describe it in more detail?’

  I described it in more detail. He said: ‘Yes … Of course we’re supposing that the police will be able to fix the date of her death accurately. That may not be. When a body is left exposed to the air, an estimate’s much easier because the calliphora which normally breed on the body go through definite life cycles, and you can calculate accurately by their evolution. But anthracite, I should think— This upsets you?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Anthracite would have some of the semi-preservative properties of ordinary soil. Was she completely covered?’

  ‘I think she must have been. The dog … She isn’t now.’

  ‘She isn’t now. So from now on things will move more quickly. Well, if she has been completely covered I doubt if the pathologists will be able to specify the date of her death to within four or five days … But are you sure?’

  ‘I think she died the night she disappeared.’

  ‘Then who came back the following night and what did they come for?’

  ‘I think the person who killed her had left something behind and wanted to get it … The scent came from the bottle he’d upset. And I think the earring had been lying there since the night before.’

  ‘But your wife must have intended to divorce you. She must have sworn the affidavit when she was still alive.’

  ‘Yes, and I think she must have meant to leave me that night. The letter she wrote to me was so typical, and her handwriting is particularly hard to copy.’

  ‘But you believe she didn’t pack her own bag?’

  ‘I’m certain she didn’t complete it anyway. She wouldn’t under any circumstances pack my toothpaste. She always hated the flavour. She’d be as likely to pack my shoes by mistake.’

  ‘The point I think we have to ask ourselves, since it’s the first question the police will ask themselves, is who stands in any way to benefit from your wife’s death. What was the motive: profit, concealment, reputation, sex, anger, jealousy? And how was the murder done?’

  ‘Her – present condition shouldn’t prevent them from discovering that.’

  ‘No …’

  ‘And what do you advise me to do?’ I said again.

  Outside on the weedy lawn a
long black cat was stalking a thrush. In the branch of a distorted elm another thrush was making an excited twittering sound.

  ‘Go and see a good criminal lawyer first thing in the morning. It’s the only way, Mike. Don’t go within a mile of your house again. Go and see him and tell him everything and do whatever he advises.’

  ‘Which will be to see the police at once.’

  ‘Yes, but in his presence. You’ll be in a far stronger position after you’ve consulted him.’

  ‘Another lawyer …’

  ‘As a matter of fact I think I know the man who would do – I was at school with him – Digby Hamilton. At the moment he’s right at the top.’

  The black cat had got very near the bird now. His hind quarters quivered with the intent to kill. The thrush had taken no heed of his friend’s warning. Then almost as the cat launched himself, the thrush saw the danger and flung open his wings. A quick flutter put him just out of reach of the flying claws, and then he gathered height and soared into the tree.

  ‘If I don’t take your advice?’

  ‘That’s to be decided.’

  ‘Doing what you say wouldn’t keep Stella out of the picture.’

  ‘Perhaps nothing will.’

  ‘Yes, but if I was arrested and charged they might think she had some knowledge of it – if we’re supposed to be lovers. She might be dragged in as an accessory after the fact.’

  ‘The danger’s there, but it will be there now whatever you do. Actually, even if you were the murderer and they convicted you, they couldn’t find enough evidence to move against her.’

  ‘Only to poison the rest of her life with ugly rumours.’

  ‘The surest way of avoiding that is to clear yourself, and the surest way of clearing yourself is to see someone like Digby Hamilton.’

  I got up and walked across the room. Now that it came to the point I shied away from the sort of thing I’d been going to do three hours earlier. Detective Sergeant Baker’s arrival on the scene had made everything infinitely more difficult.

  ‘Oh, of course, I know you’re right; it’s the logical, sensible thing to do. But telling you about it – even though you’ve believed me – has made me realise what a lame-duck story it really sounds. I wish I could make one more positive step of some sort before giving away my freedom of action. For instance, I feel I ought to follow up this note from Frank Dawson.’