A Free Range Wife Read online

  Take it gently, it’ll be all right, Peckover urged himself. He said, “You met here?”

  “Good Scott, no. Here is particular, old chappie. Munich, Athens, where one had business. London, the Carlton Tower, where one is known. Once in Lourdes. A disaster. There is that about Lourdes which is not for gaudy nights. Our adieus we have just said in Gstaad. Is she still upset?”

  “Yes.”

  “She will survive. Are we to discuss Suzy? One has been questioned about Charles. Suzy is fresh fields and new pastures.”

  “Who questioned you about Charles?”

  “A commissaire from Paris. He kept harping on a string about Charles offering weapons to the Basques.”

  “What weapons?”

  “Dear chappie—none. You must know Charles was a debutante. He wanted slices of the action but what backing had he? Whom did he know? Finally one had to refuse to see him. We in weapons are shall we say a Bruderschaft? We are a service for peace within the law. Is one to say the same of the Charleses of the world? Even had he lived and persevered . . .” The downhill racer closed his mouth and frowned at his guest. “Might I see identification just for the records, old scout?”

  Peckover presented his warrant card. This Fancy Dan with the charm of a kidney stone, what did Mercy McCluskey see in him?

  He said, “If we accept, sir, that Mr. Spence was not sufficiently involved in guns to have had enemies there, then where? Your personal opinion could be of the greatest help.”

  “Charles was from the stews of London, old man. That, one imagines, is where one would look for enemies.”

  “Quite.” Stews of London? Impudent bugger. “What made you choose Andorra, sir?”

  Change tack. Charlie and gun-running were a non-starter. As likely this joker and his Bruderschaft had killed Charlie to keep themselves exclusive as that the Basques or Provos had killed him for trying to chisel them. Which was to say, unlikely. Plug on, Parnassian Peckover, you with your head in the clouds. The coffee was hot but thin. Peckover suspected he might not be wasting his time on this mountain top.

  “Mean to say, sir, Andorra, bit remote for a cosmopolitan chappie like yourself.”

  “You have hammered the nail on its head. Tax and sex, my dear fellow.”

  Bloody ’ell. Tax and sex. No shame, Germans.

  “There’ll be profits in the weapons’ business,” he said lamely.

  “I work hard, old top. Tomorrow Zurich. I had hoped for three days here but that’s how the cookies crumble.”

  “Cash before bash.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Something come up, ’as it, in Zurich?”

  “One has a weapons contract.”

  “Defensive weapons.”

  “Natürlich.”

  “Still, all work and no play, I’m with you there, sir.” The death-dealer’s casually crossed, ski-clad, skin-tight legs sprouted at their extremities hairless feet and toes, unnaturally tanned, which Peckover would have preferred to have been shod. “Plenty of ’ealthy copulating with the smugglers and sheep up ’ere, and the particular ones, eh? Not the Suzies.”

  “Please? Oh, ha-ha, yes, the particular ones. Sheep?” Heinz Becker wagged an admonitory finger. “Nein.”

  “Mercy McCluskey though, she’d be a particular one if anyone would.”

  “Ah?” The toes lifted fractionally. “You have talked with her too?”

  “Might talk to’er again when I’ve finished my coffee if no one’s any objection.”

  Policeman and business man held each other’s gaze from opposite ends of a curling, six-seater sofa which was so low and enveloping that leaping up from it, Peckover judged, would have been impossible for anyone but an Eastern bloc girl gymnast. Not that he anticipated a set-to but you needed to be on your guard. He was hazy about what he might be involving himself in up here in the ionosphere. When all was said, one expression for arms-salesmen was merchants of death. Had he been asked to describe for the jury the German’s gaze in those instants he would have said it was glittery. Rather than trying to leap up he could start, if Becker started anything, by throwing his coffee over the toes. Drinking it was no pleasure.

  Becker leaned back, looked up at the precipitous log ceiling, and uttered a resonant laugh.

  “You recognised the Mercedes with the château label,” he said. “You are a policeman, you snooped and found her car. When one heard your car, old fellow, one was in a delicate situation. You catch my drift? But when you were only the police one was superlatively relieved. Husbands can be tiresome.” Becker looked hard at his downhill racer’s toes as if for signs of athlete’s foot. “Though not in this case. Hector McCluskey is most civilised and accepting. You will be amused by something he told me. To be precise, what he told me he told his wife. ‘You have made your bed, go and lie in somebody else’s.’”

  “When did he tell you that?”

  “When? My good chappie, do you not grab the idiom? ‘You have made your bed—’”

  “Bit of a comedian, is ’e, the ’usband?” Is or was? “Fellow of infinite jest?”

  “Absolutely. A philosopher. Most tolerant, one would say. Of course, he needs to be. He asked me, ‘Does man have to strive for indifference or is it a gift from God?’”

  “Were you able to tell ’im?”

  “One considered the question rhetorical.”

  “That what he’s striving for—indifference?”

  “One really has no notion. One hardly knows the chap.”

  “He knows about you and his wife?”

  “Naturally.”

  “And the others?”

  “You mean Charles? Charles was nobody. Here today and gone tomorrow.”

  “Ziegler?”

  “That name plucks no chords.”

  “Does Mr. McCluskey know about his wife’s affairs because she tells him or is he paying an inquiry agency?”

  “Certainly not. She tells him, one assumes. Mercy is an honest, sensitive woman. She is incapable of deception.”

  “Who says that?” Peckover was confused. “Her ’usband?”

  “One agrees utterly. But he is in a position to specify the unexplained telephone calls, for instance, which a deceitful woman would take pains to explain. Or she would go out exquisitely made-up, he said to me, dressed in her nines, and when she returned—no lipstick. Where had it gone? Perhaps grass on her hair. Immediately she takes shower behind locked doors. Small things. But have they the smackings of deceit? A deceitful woman takes many pains. If you were to understand woman, my old fellow, you will understand she repairs herself.”

  Peckover was now thoroughly baffled. As he had feared, the death-merchant’s toes had begun to wiggle. Furthermore the bloke’s English had deteriorated. Were these indications of strain, a bad conscience, or simply lack of sleep? Pity’s sake, a dishonest woman might take many pains but be simply sodding incompetent. Come to that she might have been being honest. If she returned with no lipstick and grass in her hair she could have been playing cricket, biting her lips because the bowling was quick. She could have been mowing the lawn with one hand, eating candy-floss with the other. He would probably have taken a shower behind locked doors himself, though not at home, where the bathroom door was warped and hadn’t shut for years. ‘If you don’t do something about this door I’m going to get a carpenter and you know how much that’ll cost,’ Miriam told him once every six months.

  More than baffled, Peckover was cross. Why was everyone so positive he knew nothing about women? What was it he was supposed to know? He didn’t know anything about men either, come to that. If he knew nothing about women, and he didn’t, his ignorance had never troubled him. He preferred liking them to knowing about them, whatever knowing about them meant. If this geezer were so hot on feminine psychology, what was he doing jiggling his toes and talking to a cooper in this failed hidey-hole while his Yankee passion-flower held her breath in the inner depths? He should have been workin
g on getting shut of the copper and dreaming up explanations and treats for Passion-Flower, who hadn’t driven from Mordan to this mountain via Lourdes to be shut up in the box-room with the skis and Pyrenean blowflies while her lover entertained the long arm of the law in the front parlour.

  “When did Mr. McCluskey tell you all this?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Thought you didn’t ’ave a phone?”

  “One has not.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “He was here.”

  Bloody wasn’t, he’s missing, don’t mess me about you fornicating, barefoot hun, you pickled herring.

  “You’ve met Mr. McCluskey before, sir?”

  “Never.”

  “Seen pictures of him though. In the papers. Cookery columns. Television.”

  “No.”

  “How’re you so sure it was Hector McCluskey?”

  “My good chappie,” Heinz Becker said with a dismissive gesture and a shrug so sumptuous that even a Frenchman would have been impressed.

  Peckover was satisfied. See that, you layabouts at the Factory? Hear what the man says, Superintendent Veal, sir? Verily, doth not a man rejoice more of that sheep which he findeth on the mountain than of the ninety and nine which went not astray?

  Not that the intelligence was going to mean instant promotion. He had missed the bloke, now probably missing for ever.

  “Where did’e go when ’e went?”

  “One did not pry.”

  “Where’d ’e arrive from then?”

  “He did not explain.”

  “Looking for his wife, was he?”

  “Not in the least. He did not know she was here. In fact she was not, they missed each other by an hour, one is happy to say.”

  “So what did he want?”

  “To warn me about her, one supposes. Warn me off. Circuitously.”

  “Thought you said he was tolerant.”

  “Absolutely. And anxious on my behalf. He reminded me his wife’s lover, Charles, had been murdered. Lover—poof! Another lover, he said, a pianist, had been murdered also. His wife was unbalanced. One refrained from informing him that it was him—excuse me, he—in one’s private opinion, who was unbalanced.”

  “McCluskey said his wife had murdered Charles Spence and the pianist?”

  “Implied it. One was of the opinion he loves his wife a little overpossessively. He accepts. What choice does he have? But he is bitter.”

  “How did he know you were here?”

  “Fair question. He said that Mercy told him, which was plainly a lie.”

  “She denies it?”

  “Absolutely, if I were to ask her.”

  “You haven’t told her he was here?”

  “Good Scott, old scout, you are an innocent! Do you not think such news at such a time—l’amour, old boy—might not have had an inhibiting effect?”

  Peckover had no idea. He supposed it might. The double negatives, like double whiskies, did nothing to help. They might even have been triple.

  “You going to tell ’er?” Peckover said.

  “One doubts it. Are you?”

  “I’m still not too clear how he knew to find you here.”

  “My whereabouts are not top secret.” Again a shrug more Gallic than German. “He may have telephoned Zurich. One tries to guard one’s privacy but always there is a clerk perhaps, an unalerted friend. My Zurich office slipped over.”

  “Up.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Slipped up. Heads may roll.”

  “Sorry?”

  “In Zurich.”

  “Ah yes, heads may roll.”

  “Say anything else, did ’e, Mr. McCluskey?”

  “He rambled. One offered him Southern Comfort, from which he grew three sails in the wind. It crossed one’s mind, when he was leaving, he might drive over the edge of the mountain. But one could hardly encourage him to stay when his wife, was, ah, imminent.”

  “Would you say, sir, bloke of your insight, ’e was more bitter than tolerant or vice versa?”

  “More incoherent than either after half the bottle. He compared unhappiness with the eagle pecking at the liver—Prometheus, was it?”

  “That’s right, it’s what the French all have. Crise de foie. Only they put it down to the cakes and goose fat.”

  “I am sorry?”

  “Go on, then what did ’e say?”

  “Unhappiness like the eagle and the liver went on unremittingly, on and on, like an extravagant present—he specified prunes in Armagnac—presented to one’s hostess, which she would pass to her uncle for Christmas, and later he gives to a brother, who leaves it in his desk until he needs a gift for a friend’s birthday. And so on.”

  “I see,” Peckover lied.

  “When he left he was weeping. He held my hand and said he was one who loved not wisely but too well.”

  “Bit green-eyed, was he?”

  “Pardon?’

  “Something about rather being a toad than keeping a corner in the thing you loved for other’s uses. That it?” Fat use asking this lover-boy. Peckover stood up. “Most ’elpful you’ve been, sir. I’ll be on my way.”

  “You do not wish to beard the lion when she is in the den?”

  “Hardly necessary, sir. Give ’er my regards. True, I ’ad thought of striking an iron while I’m hot but I’ve enough in the fire as it is.”

  *

  Watched by Becker from the door and by Mercy McCluskey, he guessed, from behind eentsily-weentsily opened shutters, Peckover climbed into his car. He did not look back. He drove down the stony, serpentine track which eventually joined the main road. For the little he had learned he had come a longish way. But he saw nothing further to be won by waiting around or saying hello to Mercy McCluskey. He pressed the radio’s button.

  “. . . bottomed out while coffee held firm though sugar was dull . . .”

  The question exercising him was less whodunnit than whom it might be done to next and where? Unless Mrs. McCluskey was as promiscuous as a mountain goat—looking through the wind-screen for goats, Peckover saw only the rocky slopes, patches of green, and high snow—the candidates were limited. He would have guessed Becker, but Becker was alive and well, so far, and away back to Zurich, where bank accounts were numbered and the murder rate was low.

  Jean-Luc?

  Peckover would have been ready to switch off Business Matters and rehearse aloud his telephone call to the Mordan bluebottles, rolling his French r’s and snapping his consonants, were it not for the Comment? and Hng? which would have been all he would receive back along the air waves of his mind. Bleedin’ frogs, they didn’t even want to understand.

  He was content to give up for the present on who might be bucketing about with the knife. He would have put a quid on Hector if Hector had been missing, but Hector not only was not missing, Hector was sobbing on his wife’s lover’s shoulder, had been, when he might as easily have put the knife in.

  Another question exercising Peckover was where he was going to eat. He believed he might be about to swoon from hunger but with respect to Andorra he was not ravenous for Andorran paella, couscous, or cassoulet. He knew what he wanted but it was another hour’s drive to the border and la belle.

  “Darling Miriam, I might be about to deceive you,” Peckover roundly announced above dire news about cocoa futures. “If there are chips in Andorra, I’m going to have them, too many of them, but if ever you ask I shall deny it until one is blue and black in the face. Give me an inch and I’ll take a mile.”

  Driving and announcing, Peckover noticed but did not recognise or become excited by a pale blue car parked among pines off the track, half a kilometre from the main road. A tax-dodger, he supposed. He would have become excited had he seen the occupant, who lay full length across the front seats, not asleep, or in distress, or dead, but simply preferring not to be seen.

  Chapter Eleven

&n
bsp; “Brrrrp,” burped Peckover, and washed down with a mouthful of rusty plonk what he fervently hoped was the last chip in Andorra.

  There had been a tureenful of them, dosed with salt. Extraneous elements were what had slowed him down: the potato-packed Spanish omelette especially, which had arrived with the chips, and more bread, and had followed a shoal of small but numerous grilled fish, which had followed a soup sporting three sorts of meat, a cabbage, barrowloads of beans of different kinds, chopped vegetables, white lumps of garlic like the tips of drowned men’s fingers, and many doughy, golf-ball-sized balls not unlike dumplings, though tasting of olive oil, as had everything else. Superlative! He would write one day an ode to the Last Chip in Andorra, though not now, having no notebook.

  The temperature not being broiling, and this side of the street being out of the sun, everyone except himself and one or two wholly liquid lunchers was inside the Café Cataluña. Peckover sat smiling and burping at his pavement table for two, an unashamed tourist neither expecting nor looking for company. He would have preferred a mountain view but he quite enjoyed watching the traffic stopping and starting in a roughly Franceward direction on his side of the street, a roughly Spainward direction on the other side. He did not know what the town was called or if it were a town. He was in Andorra but still, he judged, a thirty-minute drive from France. His map named towns, possibly they were villages, on this sole road linking Spain and France but the reality was a continuous duty-free paradise or hell of shops. Who knew where a town began and where ended? The gimcrack supermarkets creaked with identical competing booze, butter, cassettes, car tyres, handbags. Behind the cratered, dusty loading-bays and parking areas soared the mountains. A charabanc of smugglers crawled past, speeding up as the light ahead became green, in its wake anonymous traffic, and a battered black Mercedes.

  Peckover, inattentive, failed to notice who was at the wheel, but in the back window he glimpsed a sticker: a label, as Becker had called it. Twice before he had seen the car: at the Château de Mordan and a couple of hours ago at the Villa Azul. The sticker was not receding either but advancing as the Mercedes reversed. Honked and shouted at, its near side wheels considerately on the pavement, giving an extra inch to the traffic trying to overtake from behind, the Mercedes backed tiltingly and halted at the Café Cataluña. Mercy McCluskey climbed out.