A Free Range Wife Page 5

  The hushed gush from hidden orifices he identified as “Annie Laurie,” rendered like goose fat by a thousand violins. He approved of, on the other hand, the blown-up colour photograph of a lake with a steamer and gloomy mauve mountains which covered most of one wall, as pictures of old Kashmir and the Taj Mahal covered broad spaces of wall in Indian restaurants in Islington. Loch Lomond, he assumed. He had to lean sideways to see past the stag’s backside. The weather over Loch Lomond looked unpromising. He wouldn’t much have cared to have been aboard the steamer either, which had an air of immobility, of having been marooned there for weeks, engine kaput, radio operator, skipper, and crew blotto from the stocks of Scotch. But he liked big pictures.

  He looked down at his table and the card thereon which listed Loch Lomond Bar Cocktails, none of them having anything to do with Loch Lomond. With his ball-point he crossed out “Gin Sling.” “Gin Fiddle,” he wrote in its place. He was making fair progress renaming the cocktails with titles more appropriate to their prices. Already he had a “Gyp,” a “Chiseller,” a “Rum Ramp,” a “Swindle Swizzle,” an “Extortioner,” a “Twister,” and a “Bloodsucker.”

  He looked up. No change in the clientele. At the only other occupied table, three food inspectors, or Common Market administrators on expense accounts, passing through, discussing exchange rates. At the near end of the bar, a svelte young couple with nothing to say to each other. At the far end, the gent with the trimmed beard but no moustache, still reading Le Monde. Peckover could see it was Le Monde from its tabloid size and unrelievedly grey picturelessness. The gent could go on reading those dense rain-swept pages for the next twenty-four hours.

  Peckover drew a line through “Harvey Wallbanger” and inserted “Harvey Hornswoggle.” When he looked up the bar customers numbered still the same.

  No they didn’t.

  Yes they did. The woman who had arrived was not a customer. If she were, she was slumming on her own doorstep. To be precise, in her own doorway, where she stood blonde and sleeveless, peering into the bar. Was she working? “Off and on, up front, in the restaurant, when my husband’s away,” she had told him that morning, betwixt loom and drum kit, clutching her bathrobe to her throat to hide the love-bites.

  All right, tonight she was on. Up front. Except she was not up front, she was in the Loch Lomond Bar, or about to be. Looking for himself perhaps to admit her error. Yes, sorry, she had seen Mr. Ziegler, in Paris, a few months ago, totally by chance. It had slipped her memory.

  Had she spotted him? He was on the point of lifting an arm, rising, hailing her, because at this remote end of the bar, still and umbrageous beyond the stuffed stag, he was not stage centre. She had done peering and was advancing into the bar. If she came over to him and mentioned Ziegler he was going to have to telephone an addendum to the report he had only just sent, dammit.

  If she did not mention Ziegler, would that be more significant than mentioning him, or merely a sign of continuing amnesia?

  Significant of what?

  He could forget it anyway. She was not coming over to him. She was aiming towards the far end of the bar.

  The gent with Le Monde must have had a sixth sense. His back was to her, and though tall, Mercy McCluskey was not elephantine, her tread across the carpet was muffled, and in any case had to compete with “Coming Through the Rye,” now hogging the sound-waves. But he slid from his bar stool and turned with an expression of rejoicing. The buss they gave each other on their cheeks might have been comic, he being a head shorter than she, but Peckover did not find it particularly so. The gent beckoned to the barman, whereupon Mrs. McCluskey signalled that this was a false alarm. The barman approached anyway, requiring to be in on anything there might be to be in on, especially anything involving Madame. She shook her head, she was not thirsty, she required nothing. Her friend’s glass remained for ever unreplenished, half filled with a red liquid which may have been the Bloodsucker. The barman held his ground on the other side of the counter, looking the other way, smiling the weasel smile, doing things with glasses, and straining to hear what would enable him to blackmail Madame for every sou she was worth, and her capitalist Scotchman husband too, and fetch up owning the château. They turned their backs on him, which brought them approximately profile-on to Peckover, but too distantly in the gloaming for him to lip-read in spite of the practise he had been having. What the gent was probably not saying was, “I find the number-six moisturiser combined with an ordinary cream lotion adequate for day protection,” and what she probably was not saying was, “After Amsterdam hammered home the second there came the penalty and that sealed it.” Now he rested his hand on her bare upper arm, which made lip-reading superfluous anyway, because she did not recoil, and in Peckover’s view such gestures were not given or received if the topic were farm prices. Their conversation touched on the subject of policemen, however, for both were turning their heads and looking in his direction, then looking away again.

  The encounter had lasted some thirty seconds when the gent was hoisting himself back onto his bar stool and she was walking towards the couple at the near end of the bar. The barman watched the separation in dismay, head flicking from him to her and back again like a Wimbledon spectator.

  After a smiling word with the svelte couple, Mrs. McCluskey walked diagonally through the bar, past the stag, to the three Common Market administrators. If she had remembered to bring menus now she would have been offering them, Peckover thought. Her hostess chat and smile won return smiles from two administrators and a scowl from the third, whose punch line to an anecdote she had killed.

  Now, smilingly, she was taxiing towards himself, mouth opening to say, “Hi, having a nice time?” He stood up.

  “Hoots,” he said.

  “Hunh?”

  “Hello. Have a drink. Love your bar.”

  He stepped round the table and slid out a chair for her. If he were going to be given a buss, now was her chance.

  No buss. The vaccination mark high on her upper arm reminded him of a pressed, colourless flower.

  “What’ll you ’ave?” he said.

  “Sorry. Got to get back. Your table’s ready. Would you like the menu or will you go straight in?”

  “I insist. Two minutes.”

  “Is it what you were asking about this morning?”

  “What was I asking about?”

  “Hope you had a good day anyway, not working non-stop.”

  “We could meet back here for a digestif. That what they’re called? One of those sticky, primary-coloured jobs.”

  “Did you meet anyone? Get everything you wanted?”

  “Told you, I’m on my hols.”

  She was fishing. He tried to keep his eyes off the vaccination mark, which he feared he was about to find moving, being too intimate and private a thing, worn since infancy.

  His present beer would be his last, no question.

  “Ever know anyone named Spence?”

  “No,” she said.

  Too quick, Peckover thought. She’s lying again. Spence was not such an uncommon name. You’d have needed to think before being certain you had never known a Spence. Spence was not like Spelunker or Knightley-Cadwallader.

  “I’m seeing his widow tomorrow. Mrs. Spence. In Lourdes.” He fondled an earlobe, frowning and remembering. “Eighteen, Rue Jacques Brel. He was a singer, did you know? You need a dictionary of national biography to get the best out of France. Tell me, will I do it in a day, there and back—Lourdes?”

  “You might. How far is it? Reception will tell you. If you like I can—”

  “When did you say you finish?”

  “Late. I shall really have to get away. Your wife is truly exceptional in the kitchen, Mr. Peckover. We’re distressed about her voice.”

  “Could be worse. Not as if she were an opera singer. You’re going back to your flat then?”

  “Yes. If you’d care for another beer, on the house? I’ll have the menu brough
t to you. I can recommend the cabillaud—that’s cod. I think. Your wife has baked it in cream.”

  “Your friend at the bar, the beaver, p’raps we might share a table? If you’d introduce us?”

  “He’s not eating.”

  “Hurt his arm, has he?”

  “What?”

  “Got ’is arm bandaged. There’s a bandage poking out under his cuff. Or there was.”

  Though he had turned his head, and Mercy McCluskey too, to observe the gent with Le Monde, the Bloodsucker, and the bandage poking from under his cuff, he had gone.

  “What was his name?” Peckover asked.

  “He’s a regular, kind of, he drops by sometimes. Excuse me. Have an enjoyable evening.”

  She was already backing, and now she swivelled and with gathering speed retreated out of the bar. Peckover carried his beer to the counter. The barman ignored him.

  “Jack,” Peckover said. “Pedro?”

  No response.

  “You, cock. Hey!”

  “Monsieur?”

  “Good evening. Encore une bière, s’il vous plaît.”

  “Hng?”

  “Don’t try that. ’Ow many languages do you ’ave? Six? Sixteen? Either buy yourself a drink or keep the change.” Though it went against the grain, Peckover slid a fifty-franc note towards the barman. The change would just about buy the barman one beer: or anywhere else a crate of it. “The bloke who just left, what was his name?”

  Pedro poured Heineken.

  “Smith, p’raps?” Peckover wondered.

  “Not know.”

  “You know. You know mine too. D’you know Inspector Pommard?”

  “Pommard?”

  “Mate of mine. In Mordan. A mate of his is the geezer who calls to inspect your measures, check the stock, see ’ow much water you’ve sloshed into the whiskey. Comprendo? That bloke who was sitting there. Name?”

  “Fontanille.”

  “Pierre?”

  “Jean-Luc.”

  “What’s he do with ’imself for a living?”

  “Professeur.”

  “In Mordan?”

  “Sí.”

  “He’s not staying here?”

  “Not know.”

  “Is he or isn’t he?”

  “Non.”

  “What sort of car’s ’e got?”

  “Hng?”

  “You ’eard. Car. Toot-toot.”

  “Simca GLS.”

  “Pink?”

  “White.”

  “White for chastity. Sí. See—easy, wasn’t it? Didn’t know how well informed you were till you tried, did you?”

  The barman retired in a sulk towards the less threatening reaches where Jean-Luc Fontanille had read his newspaper. Peckover gulped the beer and trod fast out of the Loch Lomond Bar. At the crossroads in the passage he hesitated, looking to left and right, restraining himself from calling out, “Coo-e-e-e, Jean-Luc, where are you?”

  If he were going to have a word with the prof, better at once than when the effects of the last fizzy beer had taken hold, which would be any moment now. Or after the next fizzy beer or next of similar. After all, Saturday night, dinner to come, tomorrow the lie-in, and the Yard picking up the bill, God bless the British taxpayer.

  He was less certain how far any of this was his or the Yard’s business, or whether Portland or Paris were going to be excited. But she had lied about dead Ziegler. She may have lied about dead Spence, trading-post for the Basques and the IRA, possibly. Jean-Luc, wherever he had got to, was not dead, not anyway up to a couple of minutes ago, but he was bandaged. About him, Mercy McCluskey had carefully given away nothing.

  If she had chosen to say anything about Jean-Luc, that probably would have been a lie too, given the consistency of her batting record.

  And if he, Boozy Buggins, Bard of the Yard, being wise after the event, had suspected that the night was far from being over, that before it was over, everything would be over for ever for one denizen of the Château de Mordan, he would have taken only black coffee, if that, from this point on.

  Chapter Four

  Peckover found the Gents in the passage off the passage from the Loch Lomond Bar. He pushed open the door.

  Monsieur Fontanille, bandaged prof with a white Simca GLS, was not there. Not even an attendant in a turban and curled shoes was there. There was, as if in compensation, a gleam of glass and marble, piped music, and exaggerated smells of sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

  Apart from the woman with the gold-filled mouth behind the reception desk no one was in the foyer either. Where, even in recession-time, did everyone go, Saturday night at the poshest hotel for fifty miles?

  Peckover wasted no time with the receptionist. Unlike barmen and hall porters, receptionists never knew anything. They had no incentive to know, not being at the receiving end of tips. Customers might be stripping on the stairs and sprinkling each other with star-dust for all a receptionist would know.

  No one outside. “I’m counting twenty then I’ll call ‘Coming,’” Peckover announced, descending the feudal steps.

  The night was crisp. He walked an exemplarily straight line along the drive. This sweep of driveway and the flaking limestone of the château were gaudy with floodlighting. Beyond the floodlights and azaleas, to either side of the drive, the woods were dark, as if curtained off by a stage director. Peckover breathed in the scented night. Ahead, in the half-light of the parking area, stood a meagre row of cars.

  Eight or nine. Miriam’s château car was the one crookedly parked, taking up two spaces. Having long ago decided she was useless at parking she deliberately, in her husband’s view, parked crookedly. He peered in at a window. On all seating except the driver’s seat there had accumulated bits and pieces: her shoes, her knitted helmet, new blue unfamiliar knitting, a towel—wherefore a towel?—a box file, an unexplained kettle, and dammit her book, which later in bed she was going to complain she could not find so what had he done with it? Mechanically, a policeman in spite of abroad and alcohol, Peckover tried the doors. To his surprise they were locked. Being surprised, he felt guilty. He walked along the row of cars observing a big flashy number, probably Pedro’s, bought out of the profits of watered whiskey; then a battered black Mercedes bearing a Château de Mordan sticker; next, and here Peckover paused, a white car with metal letters identifying it as a Simca GLS.

  The Simca was impeccably parked, its interior swept and orderly, but with stickers like a plague obliterating most of the rear window: stickers supporting wildlife, careful drivers, various seaside resorts, bicycling, Mordan Rugby Football Club, Mordan Youth Club, and stickers damning hunting, pesticides, nuclear weapons, and war. If he had held an opinion of the professor, now it would have slipped, blinding as he had his window with paper. Assuming this was his car.

  He might have been a family man, of course, as adulterers were inclined to be, and the paper the work of his children.

  Peckover tried the doors. Locked. He walked round the car. Tyres in reasonable shape, licence plates and tax dockets in place. Nothing a London bobby would have taken exception to. He looked over the wall of the parking area at France by night. He congratulated the stars and wondered if the clump of yonder, low-down lights, below eye-level, might be Mordan. He had mislaid his bump of direction.

  Ah, the smells though! Pines? Mushrooms? Whatever they were, they were authentic.

  He sat on the wall, took out his notebook and a ball-point and tried to find the words, scratching in and scratching out. The chief problem was the gloom, which made it impossible to see what he was writing. Marriages of Inconvenience, I, he thought he would call it. Number one because there were so many different ways in which a marriage could be inconvenient he might fill the notebook before he was finished.

  Yes, I’m incredible, just how

  I get things wrong, and at my touch

  Even a good old family row

  Does not amount to m
uch.

  *

  The other day I made a pass

  At a colleague’s cousin’s wife

  But scarpered when she bared her arse.

  One more turning of the knife.

  *

  My own wife’s given up. That’s best,

  When hubby makes botch after botch;

  But if she upped and skipped the nest

  Ten to one I’d hit the Scotch.

  *

  Dying’s to come. O fateful cup!

  O boon! O everlasting night!

  A thousand ways to cock death up.

  I’m hoping hard to get that right.

  That last bit was as gloomy as the light in the château car-park. Wasn’t true either, or not entirely true. Still, best not show it to Miriam, no sense looking for trouble. Rhyme was the real problem, diverting him from what he had intended to say, shoving him off course, like fat women in a bus queue. There were blokes who eschewed rhyme but he was not one of them and neither, he defiantly informed the stars, had been Shakespeare. Not the Shakespeare of the ditties.

  Cuckoo, cuckoo! O word of fear,

  Unpleasing to a married ear!

  How much, Peckover wondered, did the married ear of Mr. Cuckoo McCluskey hear of the goings-on of Mrs. McCluskey? Presumably he did not care or she would not have had her own flat in town. Or he might care but there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe he had his own goings-on. Peckover strained to hear the cuckoo’s call from the woods. In vain. What he believed he had in fact heard had been a crunchy sound which might have been a footstep. What he had seen was a movement in the dark wood beyond the floodlighting.