Death of a Salesperson (3 page)

‘Oh no,' said Geoffrey airily. ‘Not really. Though I've just remembered I do know a chap who lives around here somewhere. Man called Roger Michaels.'

‘Roger! One of the best. He's one of our regulars—well, not regular, because these days he's up North from Monday to Friday. But he'll be in on Friday or Saturday, and he and his wife come in at Sunday lunch-time without fail. Come in about half past twelve, have a couple, then leave about half past one, when the roast is done.'

‘Great chap, Roger,' said Geoffrey, with painfully assumed heartiness.

‘Lovely man. Really funny. I'd say he was a real wit. He gets a little circle round him when he comes in here, and he has them splitting their sides.'

‘Bit of a lad too, I believe,' said Geoffrey.

‘Oh, we wouldn't know about that round here,' said the landlord with professional caution. ‘While he's home his wife keeps him on a very tight leash. Between you and me—' he leant forward over the bar, and hushed his voice—‘she has the reputation of being a bit of a b.i.t.c.h. . . . Mind you, if he has his fling now and then, I'm not alto
geth
er surprised.'

‘No?'

The landlord lowered his voice again.

‘Couple round here had their Silver Wedding. Went to
the Savoy for a bit of a splash. They saw Roger there with a woman—a real corker, so they said. 'Course, it could have been his sister . . .' The landlord smirked. ‘Nothing was said. Just one or two dirty snickers. The fact is, his lady wife's not greatly liked. And you can say what you want about Roger, he's a man people take to.'

Then the bar began to fill up.

Geoffrey went back to the roadhouse on Sunday at lunch-time. The bar was full this time, and he was served by a barmaid. He stationed himself by the window. From here he could not see the Michaels's house, but he could see the end of Grafton Avenue. Most of the couples who came for a drink drove, but surely the Michaelses would not. At about half past midday he saw a couple walking from Grafton Avenue. They were apparently affectionate, but there was something forced about it, even from a distance. He walked like a man with something on his mind. She took his hand in hers, but that only increased the sense of strain. As they approached the pub Geoffrey downed his drink and escaped out the back. In the car he found he was drenched with sweat.

That, certainly, had not been the time or the place for an encounter. He had to get Michaels on his own, in some place where neither of them was known. But how could that be arranged?

On Sunday night Geoffrey rang his Deputy Head. He found he just couldn't face school in the morning, he said. He'd intended coming in, but somehow the thought of school assembly, with all the children looking at him, was more than he could bear. He might slip in inconspicuously later in the day, or he'd be there without fail on Tuesday. His Deputy was very sympathetic, and said she quite understood.

It was very dark when Geoffrey left the house on Monday morning—still night, in fact. Roger Michaels's time of departure for the North could be anything from six onwards.
In fact Geoffrey was in position in the little patch of public garden by five past. He had left his car just round the corner from Grafton Avenue. At about twenty past a light came on in the landing of No. 26, and soon there seemed to be lights on in the back of the house downstairs. What was he doing? Making himself coffee, or making himself breakfast? Geoffrey hoped it was the former. When he had thought about their encounter he had envisaged it taking place in some motorway cafeteria where Roger had stopped for breakfast. Daylight broke over Surbiton. He must have made himself something to eat. But even so he would stop for a cup of coffee, surely, at some stage in his journey?

It was just after seven when the front door opened. Geoffrey saw Michaels's back as he closed the door, then a side view as he walked to the garage. Middle height, little moustache, firm walk. Geoffrey fingered his car keys as he heard the garage doors opened. Then another wait. What was the man
doing
? Finally a car started and began backing out.

The rush of blood to Geoffrey's head was so blinding he had to lean against a tree. It was a silver-blue Honda. There it stood, in the middle of the road, as Roger got out to close the garage doors. A silver-blue Honda. He had killed her. Deliberately run her down. The coincidence was too glaring to believe otherwise. Suddenly decisive, Geoffrey ran to his car, started it, and when the Honda had driven past, silently put it into gear and followed at a safe distance.

All the way, through suburb after dreary suburb and towards the Ml, Geoffrey was thinking. He had tried to throw her over, and she had not taken it lying down. She had got troublesome. She had threatened to go to his wife. He could not imagine Helen being troublesome, but then the whole of Helen's other life was something he could only conceive of by imagining a quite different sort of woman. She was a woman of forty, hopelessly in love with a younger man. A desperate woman will adopt desperate means. He on the other hand had simply been having a fling on the
side. His marriage was important to him. Why? Did the wife have money?

Helen had been driven down between town and home, on a stretch of highway where a spurt of speed was possible. She had been giving her cookery class as usual—something she always did on a Tuesday night. Anyone could have known this, but it was something Michaels would doubtless have known very well. He must have driven down from the North, parked there, waited for her to pass, then driven into her at speed and driven on. Geoffrey felt that great, choking well of anger in him, still as strong as when he had seen the car.

At last they got to the motorway. Roger was not a fast lane man, Geoffrey was relieved to find. He kept on the inside, driving carefully. Was he naturally a fast lane man, but one with something on his mind? On and on they went, towards the Midlands, towards the North. He was not going to stop! Geoffrey felt a growing surge of frustration, pushing his anger to boiling point. He was not going to stop! Where was he going to be able to confront him? Tell him face to face that he knew what he had done?

They were nearing a flyover. On an impulse he accelerated. He drew level with the Honda and stayed level. Roger was driving steadily, carefully. A flicker crossed his face. He had realized that the car beside him in the next lane had been there too long. He turned his head, and saw Geoffrey's face looking directly at him. Geoffrey saw his jaw drop. Michaels had recognized him. So Helen had shown him pictures. His jaw was working. He seemed about to say something. Then all of a sudden his car was out of control, swerving to the left, off the road, through the flyover's safety barrier and down to the ground or road beneath. Geoffrey's last view had been of a face crazed with terror.

He drove on till he came to a lay-by. He sat for some minutes with his head in his hands. He had done nothing. His car had not touched the Honda. And yet—what had been his motive in driving up beside him, staying beside
him in the second lane? To get a good look? Or with the subconscious desire that something like this would happen?

At any rate, some kind of justice had been done. Ten minutes later, almost cool again, Geoffrey drove to the next junction, then turned and headed South. There were police and AA men on the flyover, and down below he could hear the shriek of an ambulance.

Geoffrey drove to Surbiton on the next Saturday, to buy a local paper. There was a brief notice of the accident, with the news that it had involved no other deaths, though a passenger was injured in a car on the road below which had been slightly grazed by the falling Honda. Geoffrey was relieved it was not worse. He went back to Surbiton the next Saturday, and the one after that, but it was not till the third Saturday that he found a report of the inquest.

The Coroner, before accepting a verdict of accidental death, set out the facts admirably. The dead man was still young, was happily married, and had quite recently embarked on a promising career with a first-rate company. Unfortunately his job necessitated a great deal of travelling. There was no evidence that Mr Michaels had been drinking, either on the morning, or the night before. Nor was there any evidence that his judgment could have been impaired for any other reason—for example drugs. The relevant facts were that Mr Michaels had not had a great deal of sleep the night before, and had begun his long journey early in the morning. It was clear that the accident had been caused by a momentary lapse in concentration.

The Coroner also noted the fact that in her evidence Roger Michaels's widow had suggested that a contributory factor in the accident was the fact that her husband was driving a car to which he was not accustomed. His company Volvo was in the garage for an extensive refit, and he had been forced to take her car.

E
veryone said they made a marvellous threesome, because somehow they balanced each other. The Chatterways were so smart and healthy and glamorous: they always looked tanned, obviously had some kind of home gym, and dressed with an unostentatious rightness. Put like that it might suggest they were priggish or inhuman, but in fact they were anything but that. They were enormous fun to be with, and so pleasant on the eye that an invitation from them—and they entertained a lot—was something to be cherished, looked forward to expectantly.

Paul, on the other hand, was shambling: untidy, even unkempt, with flecks of paint on his clothes and hands, and a layer of nicotine on his teeth. He sometimes drank too much, and certainly never went to a tailor's. Paul nicely dispelled any idea people might have had that the Chatterways were too perfect.

Of course technically there was no reason to consider them a threesome at all. Paul had the flat in David and Imogen's house—Meadowbanks, their large, modern house of Scandinavian inspiration, where the light in the flat lifted Paul's painter's heart. He had been at school with David, and now painted precise, painterly landscapes of a conservative kind which sold well, yet somehow belied his public personality. David was head of a furniture business that specialized in modern pieces, all quality wood and clean lines.

Yet it was not surprising that they were regarded as a threesome, or that people, when they invited the Chatterways to dinner, always added: ‘You'll bring Paul along too, won't you?' For Paul usually did come (necessitating unexpected invitations to divorcées or widows who thought
they had in their solitude been entirely dropped by their former friends), and he was always to be seen in their company: if they went shopping in Leamington Spa he would go with them, and they'd meet up for lunch. At concerts and fêtes they would usually arrive together, and they were often to be seen on drives around the countryside on Sundays, when David and Imogen might sit reading, while Paul made sketches. If you were invited to the Chatterways you would expect Paul to be there, but if you dropped in unexpectedly during the evening you would probably find him there then too—sprawled in the long, uncluttered sitting-room, smoking his old pipe. You could say that Paul earthed the Chatterways.

Naturally people, being human, made the odd joke, the occasional conjecture. They said that Paul had gone on their honeymoon with them; they suggested he was the emasculated male figure of fiction and of real life—the Turgenev to their Viardots, hopelessly in love with Imogen. Some said he was in love with David—weren't they at public school together, after all? Some, under their breath, suggested they all shared a bed together, in a variation of the pattern favoured by Sir Charles Dilke (the comparison sprang to mind because David and Imogen were active in Liberal circles).

No one hit on the truth: that at the end of the day spent running David's home, entertaining David's friends, establishing David's role in the community and significantly helping him to run his business, the bed Imogen went to was Paul's.

It was an ideal working arrangement. David needed a wife in the social sense—a helpmeet who was also an ornament. His sexual drives were low, intermittent, and essentially solitary. Paul needed a bed-partner, but he had no use for a wife who would be around him at all hours. He knew Imogen at once most intimately and least intimately. Imogen loved money, good clothes and good food, the sense
of living luxuriously, though hers was also a generous nature—a spreader of good fortune rather than a hoarder of it. She also liked spice and a mild sense of danger. The joke people made about their honeymoon was not too far from the truth. Paul had flown to Pisa by a different flight, and they had all met up outside Customs. While David had taken his hired car to Florence, Paul and Imogen had driven in theirs to Portofino. They had all enjoyed themselves very much.

In fact, they enjoyed their life together very much too. A typical day might have Imogen entertaining important foreign buyers to lunch. She was a delightful hostess—impeccable in her standards, yet relaxed and amusing. She was a beautiful woman, and if a hair on her head was never out of place, nor did her coiffure seem to have been bulldozed into conformity. David, with his lithe, broad-shouldered figure, his even but not ostentatious tan, seemed almost un-English to his guests (who were much more used to British businessmen of the pot-bellied and guzzling variety). The Chatterways were like their furniture: the quality of the product was undeniable.

Often they entertained David's employees. These were big do's, and outside caterers were called in. But always there were special dishes that Imogen had cooked or prepared, and the flower arrangements were hers alone. And the welcome she gave—she and David gave—made everyone from board director to workshop sweeper feel at home, wanted, part of one big team.

And when the workers from Chatterway and Company had gone home, Imogen would go to Paul's bed—cool, delightful, responsive.

It was a surprise to Imogen when she became pregnant. She was, after all, thirty-nine—she had been over thirty when she had married David. They had never intended having children, and she or Paul had always taken precautions.