The Strange Attractor (19 page)

Parking his trusty Fiesta at the top of the rise, he was able for a minute or two to enjoy an almost uninterrupted view of the lake’s bland and unrippled surface and of the dark leaf-foliage mirrored upon it before transferring his attention to no. 51 Pentycoed Road, which also presented to his gaze a bland and unruffled surface; neat red-tiled roof, cream-colour stipple plaster, bow windows with heavy velvet curtains and all those other trappings of earnest respectability that proclaim a site to be a suitable location for a spot of mildly stimulating middle-class adultery. If the Stranges weren’t prominent members of the local key club they had, Dobie decided, no business to be living in a place like that. He left his car parked on the opposite side of the street to indicate a proper respect for established custom and marched through the white-painted wrought-iron gate and up the crazy paving to the front door, feeling, though certainly not looking, like Philip Marlowe calling on General Sternwood. Confronted with a bellpush which said, archly but almost inevitably, PUSH ME, he pushed it. After an interval, brief but long enough to be suggestive of the hurried adjustment of bedspreads and wraparound peignoirs, Mrs Strange duly appeared, clad, however, in knitted skirt and an unseasonably thick woolly jumper. “Oh,” she said, apparently by way of greeting.

“Mrs Strange? My name’s Dobie.”

“You’re the one who rang?”

“I’m the one who rang, yes, that does put it in a nutshell.”

“I’d expected an older person. You’d better come in.”

Dobie, on the other hand, had expected a younger. Mrs Strange was of agreeable aspect enough but certainly on the wrong (from the male viewpoint) side of thirty. She had, nevertheless, very blue eyes and very fluffy blonde hair and moved around the place in a bouncy sort of way. The movements in question mainly involved steering Dobie into a very, very low armchair as a sheepdog might expertly have penned a recalcitrant sheep and then backing away from him nervously, as if confounded by this unexpected success. “… So you’re a friend of Alec’s?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps you’ll appreciate his double malt. Or would you prefer tea? Or coffee?”

“Perhaps a
very
short whisky…”

“Then I think I’ll join you,” Mrs Strange said. “Just this once.”

Neither of them were particularly short ones, Dobie noted. Churlish to refuse, though. Or even to object. That business with the whisky had always been easy to explain. Alec had loads of the stuff lying around. Wash out the decanter and the glass, slosh in a refill, and all the while Dobie’s peacefully asleep. Eh?… Wake
up
, Mr Dobie. “This is very nice,” he said. “I must come here more often.”

“Why not? I don’t get to meet Alec’s friends. Not as a rule.”

She sat down facing Dobie and crossed her legs. Even in his newly-bereaved state Dobie could not help but observe that these appendages were long and shapely. A tall girl, almost as tall as Jane. Alec being of somewhat Napoleonic build, kneehigh in other words to a bumble-bee, his tastes perhaps ran in that direction. Of course, Alec… It would be better, Dobie thought, to come clean and let it all hang out, if that was the proper expression.

“Alec doesn’t know I’ve come to see you. In fact, if I were you I shouldn’t want to talk to me at all. I ought to make that quite clear now because it probably won’t seem quite so clear when I’ve finished drinking this whisky. Cheers.”

“I must say I like a man who goes so far out of his way to set my mind at rest. Why shouldn’t I want to talk to you?”

“Oh, I’m not a journalist,” Dobie said hurriedly. “Or anything like that.”

“No, you’re a professor of mathematics and that’s exactly what you look like.”

Dobie was only briefly taken aback by the accuracy of this apparent act of clairvoyance. “Ah. I see. You called Alec.”

“Of course.
And
my husband. And they both said it would be quite okay so they don’t seem to share your misgivings.”

“You phoned your
husband
?”

“Oh yes, I’ve got one of those. He’s in Swansea right now on business, but I caught him at his hotel. Of course
he
’d never heard of you. But Alec had.”

“And what did Alec say?”

“Well, he seemed a bit confused at first. But he told me who you were and so on. I gather that some people think you killed your wife but
he
doesn’t think you did and of course somebody killed Jane, too, and it’s all very complicated and awful and there’s lots about it in the newspapers and you’re both having a bad time and I’m sorry. I don’t know what I can do to help, but I’ll try.”

“Did you
know
Jane?”

“Oh no. We never met.”

“I suppose not.” Dobie shook his head. “Right now I’m a bit confused, too, because I thought I’d have to do a lot of explaining about things it seems you know about already, if you follow my drift. And then again… you said you phoned your husband… Does that mean he
knows
about Alec?”

“Of course he does. He’s always known. What I don’t understand is how
you
come to know about it, Mr Dobie, because Alec says he didn’t tell you. I know it’s silly, but he has got this thing about keeping our relationship a secret… And in fact it’s not so silly because he has his reasons.”

“Jane would have been one of them, no doubt.”

“The chief one.”

“But now she’s dead.”

“Which is probably why he said it would be all right for me to talk to you. It doesn’t matter any more. Or anyway, not so much. I think it’s all been getting on top of him lately, he’s been working so hard… And now all
this
. I’d really like to help him, if I can.”

“He’s never had much time to spare, ever since I’ve known him,” Dobie said.

“But he used to manage a couple of evenings a week when he’d finished work. Not any more. He’s hardly been round to see me at all this past month. And that’s a pity because it relaxes him so much. Or so he says.” Dobie could well believe it. “I was getting quite worried about him. Max was, too.”

“Max?”

“Max, my husband. He’s in insurance.”

Dobie had expected the Strange household to reveal something pretty outré in the way of life-styles but the de Maupassantish element in all this was leaving him decidedly bemused. He could detect no reflection of it in the accoutrements of the living-room where he sat, which, apart from a preponderance of potted plants and a John Bratby roofscape over the mantelpiece, seemed to be determinedly contemporary-provincial. “How long has Alec, er… been coming to see you?”

“Ever since we came to Cardiff. About a year ago. We’d always lived in Leeds before, you see. That’s where Max’s head office is.”

“Ah,” Dobie said. “Well, I’m afraid they know all about it in
Alec
’s office. The security man there ran a check on you, all in the ordinary line of business as I suppose. And that’s how
I
got to hear of it. Apparently there’s been a certain amount of, well… Gossip.”

“Gossip?”

“Or let’s say speculation. About Alec’s having a lady friend somewhere.”

“
Lady friend
?”

Probably, Dobie thought, that term wasn’t in current usage, either. A series of (surely) unpalatable alternatives chased through his brain. “… Or whatever the current expression is.”

“Oh my God,” Mrs Strange said.

“You see they’ve been having some security problems—”

“Is
that
what they think?”

To his further surprise and partial consternation, she emitted a sudden little scream of bubbling laughter. “… Well, it serves him right, it serves him bloody well
right
. I always told him that if he wasn’t careful…” She went into another and even more prolonged fit of the giggles. Then, as though becoming aware of the perplexed opacity of Dobie’s gaze, “Oh, I’m sorry. But it’s not like that at all. I’m not Alec’s lady friend. I’m a youthful indiscretion.”

“A what?”

“I’m his
daughter
, for heaven’s sake.”

This idea Dobie could at once dismiss as preposterous. “Daughter?… You can’t be. He’s got one. I know her. He hasn’t got a…
Daughter
? Impossible. He’d know about it. Or rather
I
would. Or
someone
would. It’s ridiculous.”

“
We
know about it,” Mrs Strange said, restraining her hilarity with some difficulty. “Alec and I and Max. Yes, Wendy’s his
legal
daughter and I’m sure she’s a very sweet girl, she certainly seems to be. But I’m much older than she is, as you can see, and I’m not the least bit legal. Or I am in the sense that I’ve got some legal parents of my own and very nice ones, too. But Alec is my
real
dad. Biologically speaking.”

Dobie swallowed the remainder of his whisky very quickly. “Yes, I see. Or I think I do. I’ve made a fool of myself again, but I’m getting used to that. I’m very sorry.”

“That’s all right. It’s not really your fault. I should feel quite flattered, in a way.” Dobie, covertly re-examining her facial features, couldn’t detect the slightest resemblance to those of Alec; certainly the relationship wasn’t one that could have readily been guessed at. “I mean, Alec is still… Wouldn’t you say? I can see why poor old Mum should have got swept off her feet, as the saying goes, especially bearing in mind he’d have been thirty years younger or thereabouts. And so would she, of course. Now that I know him quite well, I’m sure he really was in love with her. It could be I remind him of her, though he’s never actually said so. Mum and I do look very much alike.”

“In that case his little peccadillo becomes much more easily understandable.”

“Now I
am
flattered. Anyone can make a mistake,” Mrs Strange said, “but a little old-world gallantry is always greatly refreshing.”

“In my distant youth I got involved in something rather similar myself. Though as far as I know without any such altogether admirable results.”

“Actually if you knew my other dad you’d think it even more easily understandable because while he has a gentle nature he’s unquestionably one of the world’s most excruciating bores.
Guinness-Book-of-Records
standards. But
he
doesn’t know about Alec, you see, and Mum thinks it important that he shouldn’t and so do I and that’s why all this hole-and-corner stuff. Apart from whatever Jane might… You do have to think about other people’s feelings, after all.”

“What about Wendy?”

“Oh Wendy, yes, I suppose Alec thought
she
ought to know about it. We’re half-sisters, after all. He brought her round here once but she didn’t come again. A bit awkward for her, I expect, divided loyalty sort of thing, though Alec says she didn’t get on with her mother particularly well. Of course all I know about Jane I know through Alec, so to speak. How did
you
see her? I mean
really
?”

“Well…” Dobie wasn’t very good at executing succinct verbal portraits of his acquaintances and knew it. “I always thought of them as being quite a well-matched couple. She was the sort of wife I imagine a very successful businessman would want to have. She
could
be very agreeable. To people she liked.”

“What about people she didn’t? Was she such a
very
jealous person?”

“I suppose she was.” Dobie thought about it for a spell. “… Possessive, anyway. I mean, she seemed to like Jenny very much and though I’d known her for years and years myself, in no time at all she was obviously thinking of me as Jenny’s husband and as such, a bit of a nuisance. But then I always thought most women were a bit that way.”

“Perhaps we do tend to be,” Mrs Strange said. “But then we have a lot to put up with where men are concerned. I love Max very dearly, as indeed I should, but that doesn’t prevent me from thinking of him on occasion as a royal pain in the ass, because that’s sometimes what he
is
.”

“But you don’t feel that way about him all the time.”

“Of course not. If I did I might get myself into trouble, as I suppose I have to say Mum did. Of course Alec wasn’t married at that time but
she
was. And I expect you know Alec has glorious visions of his name in the New Year Honours List?… It wouldn’t do his chances much good if his terrible guilty secret were to become common knowledge, especially with this other awful business and all that nonsense in the papers… I know these are enlightened times. But even so…”

“It
is
an awful business,” Dobie said. “That’s my only excuse.”