Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die by Ruth Rendell Page A

Burden and himself might know it. Not for the first time he reflected on the power of grief. It is the perfect unassailable defence. Pertwee had already employed it the previous morning effectively to terminate interrogation. Mrs Hatton, even more expertly, kept it under a piteous control that only a brute would have the brashness to disregard. She was moving about the room now, balancing painfully but stoically on her high heels, taking empty cups and plates from each of her guests with a gentle murmur for every one of them. Wexford took in the looks that passed to her from each of her visitors, her mother’s merely solicitous, Pertwee’s indicative of deep affection, Bardsley’s shifty, while the thwarted bride leaned forward, stuck out her chin and nodded her utter committed partisanship.
       ‘Did your husband have a bank account, Mrs Hatton?’ Burden asked as she passed his chair.
       The sun was full on her face, showing every stroke and grain of make-up, but at the same time driving expression from it. She nodded, ‘At the Midland,’ she said.
       ‘I’d like to see his paying-in book.’
       ‘What for?’
       The truculent harsh voice was Pertwee’s. Wexford ignored him and followed the widow to the sideboard from a drawer of which she took a long cream-coloured book. He handed it to Burden and said, apparently inconsequentially:
       ‘When did your husband get his false teeth, Mrs Hatton?’ Pertwee’s muttered ‘Bloody nosey-parker’ made her flinch a little and throw a desperate glance over her shoulder. ‘He’d always had them. Had them since he was twenty’ she said.
       ‘This present set?’
       ‘Oh, no. They were new. He went to Mr Vigo for them about a month back.’
       Nodding, Wexford eyed the paying-in book over Burden’s shoulder and what he saw astonished him far more than any of Hatton’s prodigality. Some three-quarters of all the slips in the book had been torn out and with the exception of three, all the stubs had been torn too.
       On the most recent remaining stub the date was April and on that occasion Hatton had paid into his bank account the modest sum of five and four-pence.
       ‘Fourth dividend on the pools that was,’ Mrs Hatton said with a miserable gulp.
       The other two stubs were filled in each with amounts of two pounds.
       ‘Mrs Hatton,’ he said, beckoning her into a corner. ‘The purpose of these stubs in a paying-in book is for the holder to have a record of the amount of money he had deposited in his bank. Can you suggest to me why Mr Hatton tore them out? They must have been filled in at the bank either by Mr Hatton himself or else by the cashier who was attending to him.’
       ‘It’s a mystery to me. Charlie never talked about money to me. He always said . . .’ She gulped again and a tear trickled through the make-up. ‘He always said, “Don’t worry your head about that. When we got married I promised I’d give you everything you want and so I will. You name it, you can have it”.’ She bent her head and began to sob. ‘He was one in a million was Charlie. He’d have got me the moon out of the sky if I’d wanted it.’ The girl Marilyn got up and put her arms around her friend. ‘Oh, Charlie, Charlie . . .!’
       The drawer was open, Hatton’s cheque book exposed. Wexford leafed through it and saw that Hatton had paid twenty-five pounds for the lamp on May 22nd. Thirty pounds had been paid to Lucrece Ltd., High Street, Kingsmarkham (his wife’s wedding outfit?), and another thirty in the same week, the last week of May, to Excelsior Electrics, Stowerton (Pertwee’s record player?).
       Then came three blank stubs, lastly one filled for fifty pounds cash. There was no stub for Vigo, the dentist. Hatton must have paid for his teeth in cash.
       He put the books back in the drawer and stood waiting for Mrs Hatton to recover. Her mother and brother had departed to the kitchen from where Wexford