Charles didn’t want to hurry things. He was now confident that he knew how Charlotte had been killed, and he could afford to take time to check it. There was no point in confronting Geoffrey Winter or going to the police with an incompletely researched solution.
He left Gerald late on the Saturday afternoon. (Gerald wanted to watch Doctor Who and Charles didn’t really much.) They agreed that Charles should make various further investigations and then report back. Gerald was now more or less convinced by the new solution, but his legal caution remained.
Since there was nothing useful he could do that day, Charles went for the evening to one of his old haunts, the Montrose, a little drinking club round the back of the Haymarket. As he expected, it was full of out-of-work actors (and even, after the theatres finished, some in-work ones). A great deal of alcohol was consumed.
He woke feeling pretty ropey on the Sunday morning and did the tube and train journey to Breckton on automatic pilot. It was only when he emerged into the stark November sunlight outside the suburban station that consciousness began to return.
Blearily he reminded himself of the plan he had vaguely formed the day before. He had come down to Breckton to check the timing of the crime, to retrace the steps that Geoffrey Winter had taken on the Monday night and see if it was feasible for him to have killed Charlotte in the forty-five minutes the tape allowed.
Charles was early. Since he didn’t want to run the risk of meeting any of the principals in the crime, he had decided to conduct his exploration after two-thirty when they would all be emoting over The Winter’s Tale up at the Backstagers.
He arrived just after twelve, which was a remarkably convenient time for him to go into a pub and kill time and his hangover at one blow.
There was a dingy little Railway Tavern adjacent to the station which was ideal for his purposes. The railway line was at some distance from the posher residential side of Breckton and he was in no danger of meeting any of the Backstagers down there.
When he entered the pub, it was clear that the clientele came from ‘the other side of the railway’, an expression of subtle snobbery that he had heard more than once from the theatrical circle. On the ‘other side of the railway’ there was a council estate, yet another socio-geological stratum in the complex structure of Breckton. At the bottom was the bedrock of ‘the other side of the railway line’, then the unstable mixture of rising lower middle and impoverished upper middle class ‘the other side of the main road’ (where Geoffrey and Vee lived), then the rich clay of the newer detached executive houses like the Meckens’ and finally the lush topsoil of extreme affluence which manifested itself in mock-Tudor piles like the Hobbses’. Across the strata ran the faults and fissures of class and educational snobbery as well so that a full understanding of the society would be a lifetime’s study.
Charles ordered a pint which made his brain blossom out of its desiccation like a Japanese flower dropped in water.
Being a Sunday, there was nothing to eat in the pub except for a few cheese biscuits and cocktail onions on the bar, but Charles was quite happy to resign himself to a liquid lunch.
As he sat and drank, his mind returned to Charlotte’s murder. Not in a depressed or panicky way, but with a kind of intellectual calm. He felt as he had sometimes done when writing a play, the comforting assurance that he’d sorted out a satisfactory plot outline and only needed to fill in the details.
And little details were slotting into his scenario of the death of Charlotte Mecken. One was disturbing. He was beginning to think that Geoffrey might be on to his suspicions.
First, the interrogation in his office must have put him on his guard, if Charles’s phone call on the evening of Hugo’s arrest hadn’t already done so. But there was something else. On the Friday night, when Geoffrey had discovered Charles on his sitting room, he had looked extremely suspicious. At the time, Charles had assumed that the suspicion had a sexual basis.
But, as he thought back over the circumstances, he found another interpretation. When Geoffrey arrived, the cassette player was running, reproducing Vee’s performance of Wycherley’s Mrs Pinchwife. Geoffrey had entered speaking to Vee, as if he expected her to be in the room. Maybe the suspicion arose when he saw that he had been fooled by the sound of the cassette player, that in fact he had been caught by his own deception. If that were the case, then he might have thought that Charles was further advanced in his investigation than he was and that playing the tape of Vee had been a deliberate set-up to see how the supposed murderer would react.
It was quite a thought. Geoffrey was a cold-blooded killer and if he could dispose of his mistress without a qualm, he would have little hesitation in getting rid of anyone else who stood in his way. Charles would have to tread warily.
Because if Geoffrey Winter did try to kill him, he would do the job well. He was a meticulous planner. Charles thought of the set model for The Caucasian Chalk Circle in Geoffrey’s study. Every move carefully considered. Little plastic people being manipulated, disposed (and disposed of) according to the director’s will.
The thought of danger cast a chill over the conviviality of the pub and the glow of the fourth pint. Well, the solution was to get to the source of the danger as soon as possible, to prove Geoffrey’s guilt and have him put away before he could make a hostile move.
The pub was closing. Charles went to the Gents with the uncomfortable feeling that the amount he had consumed and the cold weather were going to make him want to go again before too long.
It was after two-thirty when he reached the Winters’ road. He walked along it at an even pace, apparently giving their house no deeper scrutiny than the others. Somehow he felt that the watchers of Breckton were still alert behind their net curtains on Sunday afternoons.
The Winters themselves had resisted the suburban uniform of net curtains, so from a casual glance he could feel pretty confident that they were out. But he did not start his timed walk from then. He felt sure there must be a route from the back of the house.
When he got to the end of the road, his hunch was proved right. The gardens of the row of identical semis (identical to everyone except their proud owners) backed on to the gardens of the parallel row in the next road. Between them ran a narrow passage flanked with back gates into minute gardens.
The alley was concreted over, its surface cracked and brown, marked with moss and weeds. Suburban secrecy insured that the end fencing of all the gardens was too high for anyone walking along the alley to see in (or, incidentally, to be seen).
As Charles walked along, he could hear sounds from the gardens. The scrape of a trowel, a snatch of conversation, the sudden wail of a child, very close the snuffling bark of a dog. But except for the occasional flash of movement through the slats of fencing, he saw no one.
And this was in the middle of Sunday afternoon. After dark one could feel absolutely secure in passing unseen along the alley. And Geoffrey Winter must have known that.
When he reached the Winter’s garden gate, he pressed close to the fence and squinted through a chink. He could see the distinctive wall-colouring of Geoffrey’s study and, outside it, the little balcony and staircase, so convenient for anyone who wanted to leave the room unnoticed after dark.
As anticipated, the pressure on his bladder was becoming uncomfortable and he stopped to relieve himself where he stood. He was again struck by the secluded nature of the alley, which enabled him to behave impolitely in such a polite setting.
Then he started his timed walk. He reckoned Geoffrey must have allowed a maximum of forty minutes. I, Claudius lasted fifty, but he could only get forty-five minutes of The Winter’s Tale on one side of the tape. Five minutes would be a buffer to allow for the unexpected.
Charles set off at a brisk walk. If Geoffrey had run, the timing would have been different, but Charles thought that was unlikely. A man running after dark attracts attention, while a man walking passes unnoticed.
The alley behind the houses came out on to the main road exactly opposite the footpath up to the common. There was a ‘No Cycling’ notice at the entrance. The path was paved until it opened out onto the common.
It was the first time Charles had seen this open expanse in daylight. In the centre were a couple of football pitches, which were reasonably well maintained, but the fringes of the common were ill-tended and untidy and had been used as a dumping ground by the nice people of Breckton. Superannuated fridges and rusty buckets looked almost dignified beside the more modern detritus of garish plastic and shredded polythene. It was an eyesore, the sort of mess about which aggrieved ratepayers no doubt wrote righteous letters to the local paper. To Charles it seemed a necessary part of the suburban, scene, the secret vice which made the outward rectitude supportable.
The half-burnt crater of the bonfire doused by the fire brigade at sour Reggie’s behest gave the dumping ground an even untidier and more melancholy appearance.
The bonfire had been built where the footpath divided into two. The right-hand fork went up towards the Backstagers’ club-rooms and the Hobbses’ house. Charles took the other path which led towards the Meckens’.
He was feeling the need for another pee, but resolutely hung on, because any unscheduled stop would ruin his timing. He wished he had got a stopwatch, so that he could suspend time long enough to make himself comfortable. But he hadn’t.
Even on a Sunday afternoon there were not many people up on the common. A few bored fathers trying to feign interest in their toddlers, one or two pensioners pretending they had somewhere to go. Breckton boasted other, more attractive parklands, equipped with such delights as swings and duck-ponds, and most of the inhabitants were there for their exercise.
It had rained during the week, but the path had dried out and was firm underfoot as Charles continued his brisk stroll. When he got to the other side of the common, the footpath once again had a proper surface of dark tarmac. His desert boot soles sounded dully as he trod.
To maintain his excitement he made a point of not looking at his watch until the journey was complete. He didn’t stop when he got to Hugo’s house. His memories of the new curtain snooper made him unwilling to draw attention to himself.
When he had gone one house-length beyond (which he reckoned would allow for going over the gravel drive to the front door), he looked at his watch.
Sixteen minutes. Geoffrey, with his longer stride, might have done it in fifteen. Say the same time each way. That gave eight to ten minutes in the house. Charlotte would have recognized him and let him in immediately, so there would have been no delay.
And eight or ten minutes was plenty of time for a determined man to strangle a woman.
If, of course, the murder weapon was to hand. On that kind of schedule, Geoffrey couldn’t afford time to look for a scarf. He must have known where it was or… no, there was something missing there.
Charles tried to focus his mind on the problem. He summoned up the image of Charlotte in the coal shed, surprised untidily by the torch beam. He remembered her face. The red hair that framed it had looked unnatural, as if it were dyed, against the horrible greyness of her flesh. And that thin knotted Indian print scarf which couldn’t hide the trickle of dried blood and the purply-brown bruises on her neck. Bruises almost like love-bites. He remembered what he had thought at the time, how she had looked so young, embarrassingly unsophisticated, like a teenager with a scarf inadequately hiding the evidence of a heavy petting session.
Good God — maybe that’s what it had been. After all, she had seen Geoffrey at lunch time. By then he must have planned the murder. It would be typical of the man’s mind if he had deliberately marked her neck, knowing that, respectable married woman that she was, she would be bound to put on a scarf to cover the bruising.
Then Geoffrey could go round in the evening, confident that the murder weapon would be to hand. Under the circumstances, he did not have to leave long for the strangling.
Charles shivered as he thought of the cold-bloodedness with which the crime had been planned.
He felt like an athlete in training for a major event. Everything was moving towards a confrontation with Geoffrey Winter. It was going to be risky to confront the villain with what he had deduced, but he couldn’t see any way round it. The evidence he had was minimal and certainly not enough to persuade the police to change their tack. So his only hope was to elicit some admission of guilt from Geoffrey.
The fear of the man was building inside Charles. He felt increasingly certain that Geoffrey had read his suspicions and he wanted to keep the advantage by going to see his adversary rather than waiting for his adversary to search him out.
Within the next twenty-four hours, Charles knew, something conclusive was going to happen.
He went back to Hereford Road on the Sunday evening and rang Sally Radford. He had the sensation of a condemned man deserving a final treat.
But he didn’t get his treat. Sally was glad to hear from him, but, sorry, she’d got a friend coming round that evening. Yes, maybe another time.
It shouldn’t have hurt him. They’d agreed no strings, but it did cause a pang. The idea of a completely casual encounter with no obligations had always appealed to him, but now it had happened he was full of the need to establish continuity, to keep it going, to make something of it.
When he’d rung off from Sally, he contemplated ringing Frances, but procrastinated once again. He wrote off the idea of female company for the evening and went back to the Montrose. If he could keep on topping up his alcohol level, he might retain his mood of confidence and face the ordeal ahead without too much introspection.