Seeing is Believing (3 page)

Then he drew a deep breath, stretched comfortably in the seat beside Malcolm and said, ‘Wonderful to be back here. You don't know how I've been looking forward to it. Peace and quiet. That's what you always give me here. Wonderful, it really is. Train was on time, too. That's wonderful these days. And I'm needing the peace and quiet more than usual. Life's been pretty hectic this last term.’

Trouble?’ Malcolm asked.

‘No, not trouble. But the place is expanding and there's been a lot of planning to be done. You know, I'd like to be the headmaster of a really small school, the kind of place Granborough was fifty years ago. But I don't complain, at least not overmuch.’

‘I hope it won't upset your ideas of peace and quiet that we're taking you out for drinks this evening,’ I said from the back seat. ‘If the thought appals you too much, we can leave you behind. We needn't stay long.’

‘Dear me, no, that'll suit me nicely,’ Brian said. ‘All strange faces and no need to worry if you're going to say
something that's going to give someone bitter offence. A touchy lot, schoolmasters and mistresses. Who's our host?’

‘Someone I think you may have met on a previous visit,’ Malcolm answered. ‘His name's Hugh Maskell. He's a retired surgeon. He lives in the only modern house along our lane.’

‘Maskell. Ah, yes. I remember him quite well,’ Brian said. ‘Remarkable thing the memory is, isn't it? He called in on you one day when Judy and I were staying with you a couple of years ago, and I think he stayed for about half an hour, yet I'd know him if we happened to meet casually in a London street. But expect me to recognize a parent who visited us only a week ago, and you'll find I'm floored. Most inconvenient. I'm in a job where, as you know, one's memory ought to be infallible.’

‘How's Judy?’ Malcolm asked.

‘Annoyed,’ Brian said. ‘Definitely annoyed that I'm coming here when she'd committed herself to visiting that sister of hers. I'd be annoyed in her place too. Her sister is someone I can do without. I advise Judy to break the bond entirely, as really it means nothing to her, but she can't bring herself to do it and subjects herself to a week of irritation, boredom and pointless quarrelling at least once a year. There's no need to tell me blood's thicker than water. It certainly is, but I think I prefer water.’

Malcolm began to ask him questions then about some of the older members of the staff at Granborough, people whom we both remembered, whether they were still at the school or had moved on to higher things or retired. The drive home seemed short, and Fred Dyer was still at work when we drove past the Loxleys’ gate. That is to say, he was just putting his tools away in his van and taking a broom out of it with which to sweep the paths, when he saw us and once again gave us a wave.

But the gesture was strangely, abruptly checked and he stared blankly at the car.

At the same moment, Brian said, ‘Good God!’

Malcolm edged the car past the van and stopped at the entrance to our garage.

Brian repeated himself, ‘Good God!’ Then he went one further and muttered, ‘Christ!’

‘What's the matter?’ I asked.

‘That man,’ Brian said. ‘What's he doing here?’

‘He does all kinds of things,’ I said. ‘Gardens, washed our car yesterday, puts new washers on taps if you need them, does minor electrical repairs. Oh, he's a treasure. Why, do you know him?’

‘No!’ Brian said with considerable violence. ‘No — that's to say I don't
know
him. I may have exchanged a few words with him, but I could hardly help knowing who he is. You mean you don't?’

‘We don't really know much about him,’ I answered, ‘except that he turned up here about four or five months ago as the boyfriend of one of the local glamour girls, and seems to live contentedly with her. There's a rumour around that he's a poet, but I don't think anyone's ever seen anything he's written.’

‘What's his name?’

‘Fred Dyer.’

‘Well, that's something that it certainly is not.’

‘What is it then?’

‘When I last heard of him, he was called Jack Benyon.’

Brian and I had got out of the car and Malcolm was driving it into the garage. He took Brian's suitcase out of the boot, came out of the garage, locked it and started towards the house. But Brian stood still, looking towards the Loxleys’ garden, where Fred Dyer's red hair was visible above the hedge.

‘I could be mistaken,’ Brian murmured. ‘I suppose I could be.’

But he did not sound as if he believed that he was. Following Malcolm along the path to the house, he repeated thoughtfully, ‘Benyon.’ Then after a moment he
added, ‘That's the name he was using then. Don't expect it was any more his own than Dyer.’

‘But when did you come in contact with him?’ I asked.

We had reached our door and Malcolm had opened it.

‘Did you never hear about the sex murders in Edge-water?’ Brian said. ‘There were three of them, all the same, and they've never been solved. But a man called Jack Benyon was nearly arrested for them.’

At his words, I felt a chill go through me, although I did not believe that his Jack Benyon and our Fred Dyer could possibly be the same person. But the mere thought of those murders in Edgewater a year ago was enough to make one shudder.

I led the way into the sitting room.

‘I should think everyone in the country must have heard about them,’ I said. ‘Of course, we paid a bit of extra attention to them when the papers and television were full of them, knowing the place as we did.’

‘But you said this man you're talking about was only nearly arrested for them,’ Malcolm said. ‘In other words, even if you're right that he's turned up here, he's innocent.’

‘I don't think many people thought he was,’ Brian said. ‘But there wasn't enough evidence for a conviction. They took him in for questioning, but then they let him loose and he quietly disappeared. I know Detective Inspector Dalling quite well — he was in charge of the case — and he told me a bit more about it than perhaps he should have.’

‘What was the evidence they had that made them suspect him?’ Malcolm asked.

He had put Brian's suitcase down in our small hall, at the foot of the stairs, and was standing in the doorway of the room, ready to take Brian up to our spare bedroom. Brian was standing in front of the fireplace, where I had just switched on a bar of the electric fire that stood on the
hearth. Though the spring day had been so bright, it was still cool and a little warmth was welcome.

‘A woman saw him running away from the place where they later found a body,’ Brian said. The third body. As you know, they'd all been killed in the same way: a black plastic rubbish bag pulled over the head from behind, then strangling. There wasn't any actual sexual assault, though her clothes were ripped and her body was bruised. Extreme sexual perversion, obviously, probably linked to impotence. And this woman who saw him running off described him perfectly. His red hair, his height, his thinness and all, and the clothes he was wearing. And she picked him out at once in an identity parade of red-haired men. Mostly men in red wigs, that's to say. They couldn't collect enough of the genuine article in Edgewater. But then she had second thoughts and said she was not at all sure that he was the man she saw, in fact she thought he wasn't. And the other bit of evidence was that Benyon, only the day before, had been into a hardware shop in Edgewater and bought a packet of those black rubbish bags, and when he was questioned about them one bag was missing, and he couldn't account for what he'd done with it. The girlfriend he had there said she'd taken it to line the dustbin, but as the rubbish people had just been round that day, there was no way of checking her story. She gave him an alibi too, which could have been true, though not many people believed it.’

‘But that doesn't sound much like impotence,’ Malcolm said. ‘And I doubt if you could accuse our Fred of it, either.’

‘How long was it after this girl saw the man, whoever he was, running away, that they found the body?’ I asked.

‘A couple of hours, I think,’ Brian answered. ‘It was dusk, which was partly why she wouldn't stick to her first story.’

‘She didn't stop to investigate at the time?’ I said.

‘No. She didn't think much about it till she saw the
news of the murder on television that evening, then she got in touch with the police straight away. The television showed, you see, just where the body had been found, and she remembered at once what she'd seen,’

‘Just where did that murder happen?’ Malcolm said. ‘It was somewhere down by the heath, wasn't it?’

There is a heath with a stream running through it on what used to be the edge of Edgewater, but in recent years buildings have slowly been creeping round it, so that it is losing its old, wild look. But there is still a good deal of gorse on it and as I remembered accounts of the murder, the body had been found in a patch of gorse.

Brian corroborated this.

‘Yes, in some gorse. But they didn't think she'd been killed there, or at least not assaulted. They thought the object of the plastic bag was to prevent her being able to recognize the man if the murder somehow went wrong and she got away. Or it may have been less sensational than that, more some kind of fetishism. They never found that out, of course. There were no fingerprints on the bag.’

‘What was the man Benyon doing in Edgewater?’ Malcolm asked.

‘Working in a garage,’ Brian said. ‘I used to take our car there to be serviced. That's why I told you I thought I'd exchanged a few words with him. I think I did. And it's why I recognized him at once when I saw him out there.’ He nodded towards the window.

‘He recognized you too,’ I said. ‘Anyone could see that. So perhaps Fred Dyer is Jack Benyon, even if he isn't necessarily a murderer. Now I think I'll get some tea,’

The party that Hugh Maskell was giving was a small one. Besides ourselves there were only the Loxleys, Lucille Bird and her son Kevin, and Jane Kerwood. The Birds lived in the heart of the village in one of its few modern houses, designed by Kevin, who was an architect and who had designed Hugh Maskell's house. It was a white, square-looking place with a low-pitched roof of grey tiles, windows of great sheets of glass, a door approached from the garden by steep steps with no hand-rail which I was old enough to feel nervous of ascending in case I overbalanced, and at the back, a patio with a sculpture in one corner of it made of some kind of metal and which I believed, without being too sure about it, represented a nude woman.

Kevin was about thirty and the office in which he worked was in Otterswell. He was tall and slender, with a curiously wilted air about him, as if the burden of life was a bit too much for him. Perhaps the burden of living with Lucille would have been a bit much for anyone. Living up to her standards would always have been a strain. She expected almost everyone she met to be brilliant and successful, and if they did not quite achieve this, had a way of making them feel that they had intentionally failed her.

Kevin, unfortunately, was neither really brilliant nor successful, but only a moderately talented and hard-working young man, though very devoted to his mother. He had a pale, round face with large, somewhat protuberant dark
eyes, a short nose, a small, rather tight-lipped mouth, soft, pink cheeks and a dimpled chin. His hair was dark and already growing scanty, so that his forehead looked very high, and with a few deep wrinkles across it, gave him a look of intellect which was a little misleading. He was not stupid, but he was not much interested in anything but reading the more bloodthirsty kind of thriller and in performing remarkable feats in the way of cookery. He was not easily amused and a reluctant chuckle was the nearest I had ever heard him get to laughter.

Lucille, who was sixty, had very little resemblance to her son. She was thin, sharp-featured and very erect. How long ago her husband had died I did not know for sure, but I had an idea that it was after only two or three years of marriage. She was a keen bridge player, worked hard in her garden and with considerable knowledge of what she was doing, so that it was about the most attractive in Raneswood. She drove a Mercedes with skill but slightly alarming aggressiveness, and seemed to be a rich woman, with her considerable wealth inherited, so I had heard, from various rich aunts and uncles. She had, I knew, some rich relations in Canada, whom she occasionally visited. In fact there was no need for Kevin to work for his living, but he probably did it, I thought, because it gave him a little independence. On the other hand, it might have been that Lucille would not have tolerated idleness. Sometime, sooner or later, she seemed determined he was to make his mark in the world. When he did, she would have the deep satisfaction of being the mother of a celebrity.

She was talking to Jane Kerwood when Hugh Maskell brought us into his drawing room. Hugh, who had known that we were bringing a friend, had recognized Brian at once.

‘Mr Hewlett — of course — I'm afraid that name didn't mean anything to me when Malcolm asked if he might bring you with him — I'm hopelessly stupid at names,’ Hugh said. ‘Naturally, I said I'd be delighted, and how glad
I am that he suggested it, because I remembered quite clearly our very pleasant meeting a couple of years ago. But wasn't your wife with you then?’

Hugh was a tall, well-built man who looked less than his age, largely because he had kept the easy and supple way of moving of a much younger man. His light brown hair was only flecked with grey and though there were some deep lines on his face which at times gave it a grave, melancholic look, his skin was smoothly and healthily tanned. He had keen grey eyes under level eyebrows and strong, rather craggy features. When we first made his acquaintance, he had only recently lost his wife, who had died of leukaemia, which had been the real reason of his early retirement, as it had made him able to look after her through her long illness. There was no doubt that he had been tender and devoted, yet not long after her death he had shown signs of being interested in various women living in the village, and possibly some out of it too and it was the general view that he would remarry before very long.