Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die by Ruth Rendell

nod. ‘You and Mr Hatton were in business together, I understand, Mr Bardsley?’
       ‘That’s right.’
       ‘Was it a full partnership?’
       Bardsley put his teacup down and said in a melancholy voice, ‘I was thinking of taking him into partnership, but business hasn’t been that good lately. As it was, he just worked for me.’
       ‘Would you mind telling me what wages you paid him?’
       ‘Well, I don’t know. . . I don’t rightly like to.’
       ‘Of course he don’t,’ Jack Pertwee suddenly interrupted belligerently. ‘What’s it got to do with what happened on Friday?’
       ‘That’s right, Jack,’ murmured the girl and she squeezed his hand.
       ‘You can see Charlie did all right for himself. You’ve only got to look around you.’
       ‘Don’t make trouble, Jack,’ Mrs Hatton said with that peculiar intense control of hers. ‘The officers are only doing what they have to.’ She fingered her brooch uneasily. ‘Charlie usually brought home a bit over twenty pounds a week. That’s right, isn’t it, Jim?’
       Jim Bardsley looked unhappy about it and his voice became aggressive. ‘I’ve been lucky to make that much myself lately,’ he said. ‘Charlie was one of the sort that make a little go a long way. I reckon he was careful.’
       Marilyn Thompson tossed her head and a lock of hair drifted from the elaborate structure. ‘He wasn’t mean, anyway,’ she flared, ‘if that’s what you mean by careful. There’s not many men who aren’t even relations that’d give someone a record player for a wedding present.’
       ‘I never said he was mean, Marilyn.’
       ‘It makes me sick. What you want to do is find who killed him.’ The girl’s hands trembled and she clenched them. ‘Give us a cig, Jack.’ Her hands enclosed Pertwee’s wrist as he held the lighter and they were no more steady than his. ‘You lot,’ she muttered, ‘you lot don’t reckon nothing to a working man. If he hasn’t got a nice home you call him a layabout.’ She glared at Wexford, pushing back her hair. ‘And if he’s got things like your class take for granted you jump right on him, say he must have nicked them. Class, class, class,’ she said, tears trembling on the brush-bristle lashes. ‘That’s all you think about.’
       ‘Wait till the revolution comes,’ said Bardsley nastily,
       ‘Oh, shut up, the pair of you,’ Mrs Hatton said shrilly. She turned to Wexford, her controlled dignity returning. ‘My husband did overtime,’ she said, ‘and he had his side lines.’
       Side lines, Wexford thought. He got a little overtime and he made it go a long way. The man had colour television, false teeth worth two hundred pounds; he gave his friend a record player for a wedding present. Wexford had seen that glass and teak lamp in a Kingsmarkham shop and noted it had been priced at twenty-five pounds, one and a quarter times Hatton’s weekly wage. When he was killed he had had a hundred pounds on him.
       ‘If he’s got things like your class take for granted,’ the girl had said, ‘you say he must have nicked them.’ Curious, really, Wexford reflected, watching her huddled now in the crook of Pertwee’s arm. Of course she was very young, probably got a Communist shop steward for a father, and doubtless went about sneering at people better-educated and better-spoken than herself. It was an aggressive type that had even reached Kingsmarkham, a type that talked pacifism and the rights of man and brotherly love without the energy or courage to do anything that might bring these desirable conditions nearer.
       And yet he said nothing to provoke her outburst. Neither for that matter had Bardsley beyond hinting that Hatton had been prudent. Had she risen to this intangible slight bait because she knew Hatton’s wealth had been dishonestly come by? If she knew it, green and uncouth as she was, Pertwee would know it also. Everyone in this room but