Unfaithfully Yours (2 page)

Yours

Elizabeth Price

PS I think he may be contemplating the prospect of doing away with me. I have seen him giving me some very suspect glances when we are watching television and he thinks I have not got my eye on him. For some reason this often seems to happen when we are tuned to Channel Four. I am pretty sure, however, that he has not got the kind of nerve it would require to stab, gas or strangle me.

From:

Roland O. Gibbons

Gibbons Detective Agency

12 The Alley

Putney, SW15

14 June

To:

Elizabeth Price

PO Box 132

Putney

Dear Mrs Price,

Thank you very much for your letter.

I was
really
glad to get it. I know I should pretend to be ‘cool’ and look as if I can only just manage to fit you in – but – yowzas! A job! This was my reaction. The recession has affected our business very badly and small private firms such as mine are seriously at risk from the major conglomerates.

Well done with the ‘research’ too. I will admit to feeling slightly ‘weird’ that someone has been doing a ‘snoop job’ on me (shouldn’t it be the other way round????) but, in fact, Mrs Price, I completely understand you wanting to make sure that we would be a ‘good fit’. I do not know if you have been following me home or monitoring my telephone calls and emails but, if you have, I hope you didn’t find any real dirt on yours truly!

Your letter does not suggest what it is that has made you feel Mr Price is having an affair, although you seem to imply that, whatever he is up to, it is pretty serious.

Are there stains on his clothing? Has he been making or receiving phone calls that he has attempted to hide from you? Has he been visiting inappropriate websites? I do appreciate your need for privacy but, obviously, in order to make an assessment, a ‘face-to-face’ meeting would be helpful. Perhaps you would call by the office. You seem to have had no difficulty finding it and I am pretty much free most of the time at the moment.

I’m not a hermit! I do occasionally get out for a light snack at the La Mancha Tapas Bar in Putney High Street. I usually bring a selection of sandwiches (cheese, ham or coarse pâté and pickle) to work or – on special occasions – order a delivery from the Royal China in Chelverton Road. Their Steamed Eel in Black Bean Sauce has brought me more moments of real ecstasy than – for example – my first wife. Although that would not have been difficult!

If you would prefer to telephone – and I often feel that, if a physical meeting might cause embarrassment, a chat over the ‘blower’ can be more helpful than words on a page – I enclose a leaflet, which, as well as giving our email and telephone details contains our mission statement and a few selected testimonials from satisfied clients.

I remain, yours respectfully,

Roland O. Gibbons (MA [Reading], PIAA registered)

From:

Elizabeth Price

PO Box 132

Putney

17 June

To:

Roland O. Gibbons

Gibbons Detective Agency

12 The Alley

Putney, SW15

Dear Mr Gibbons,

I fear it will not be possible for us to meet face to face. I am not horribly disfigured and am not more noticeably hideous than other late-middle-aged women of my acquaintance. I am, however, trying to keep our relationship as secret as I suspect my husband has been keeping his extra-marital activities. Although you may think you are adept at snooping, Mr Gibbons, you have no idea of the talents of the women of Putney in this area. Very little escapes their notice, and, were you and I to meet, even at a prearranged location many miles from this area, it would not take them long to rumble us.

I do not anticipate you and I ever having to go through a face-to-face encounter. I would prefer to restrict our contact to the form in which it is presently enshrined. I have used email, but it is, on the whole, a barrier to successful communication. People begin sentences in the middle, abandon paragraphs before they have got to the point and are – with some reason – usually so frightened their words will reach people for whom they are not intended that they do not bother to make the smallest attempt at honesty.

I am afraid I did not find the leaflet you enclosed very informative. The quotations from clients were positively off-putting. Who is ‘Mrs L.B.’ of Raynes Park and why did she think you were ‘utterly smooth and professional’? Why on earth does ‘Mr C. Lewis’ of Southfields believe that ‘your enquiries saved his marriage and restored his faith in humanity’? Are these people real? And, even if they are, is their opinion of any value?

You say your rates are ‘between £125 and £150 a day depending on the type of surveillance required’. I am not quite sure what this means. Do you concentrate harder if you are being paid more? I am sure I do. I am sure that keeping my husband under observation is worth at least £150
per diem
. Although large, he is physically agile and naturally suspicious. He is a lawyer. Need I say more?

Perhaps – if you are willing to undertake this job – you could write back to me and give me some details about yourself and your working methods. I always think it is possible to deduce all one needs to know about a possible employee from studying their prose style and, indeed, their handwriting – should you feel moved to scribble your reply.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours,

Elizabeth Price

PS Inverted commas should only really be put at the beginning and end of directly reported speech.

From:

Roland O. Gibbons

Gibbons Detective Agency

12 The Alley

Putney, SW15

30 June

To:

Elizabeth Price

PO Box 132

Putney

Dear Mrs Price,

I am sorry to be late replying to your letter. I was called away to Norwich on a difficult case involving a missing animal.

If you do not wish to meet – let’s not meet! I want what you want, Mrs Price! I am not one of those private investigators who argues with the chap (or lady!) who is paying his bills! I am happy to accept your terms. Indeed, in the interests of ‘transparency’ you will have noticed that I am writing this reply with a black Uniball ‘Eye’ pen, made by the Mitsubishi Pencil Company. You are welcome to make what deductions you may from my handwriting!

A graphologist, who did some work for yours truly, once told me that my signature was ‘a cry for help’. My wife said she started to lose faith in me when she received my first love letter to her in what she called my ‘pathetic, spidery writing’.

Well, Mrs Price, you are in charge, and if the style and formation of my letters lay me open to you, I am happy for it to be that way! You is de Boss Lady!

Your typed letter tells me diddly-squat about you, ma’am! It was written, I would guess, using the Microsoft Word Program and printed with an HP LaserJet 2015 that is nearing the end of its cartridge life, which might suggest that you are a person who writes for a living. Your quite stern attitude to the old ‘references’ and my habit of being a bit too free with the ‘inverted commas’ tells me you may be a teacher of some kind (English possibly?) but otherwise, Mrs Price, I am quite happy for you to remain a mystery.

I would warn you, however, that the more I find out about your husband the more I am likely to find out about you. What is it the Spanish say? ‘The husband wears the wife on his linen; the wife wears the husband on her face.’

What can I say about myself?

I am fifty-four years old and have a degree in English from Reading University. I was married for twenty years and am now divorced. I was brought up in a working-class household in Putney and was the first person from my family ever to go to university. Hence my ‘penchant’ perhaps for ‘inverted commas’. I have been a private investigator for over thirty years and I take my calling very seriously indeed. I may not seem an appetizing person, Mrs Price – though I hope your sighting of me did not make you feel I was the shabby ‘man in a mac’ of detective stories – but in my quiet way I am a moralist.

I am very happy to start at the rate of £150 per day, which I usually reckon at eight hours. If I have to observe him after the hour of eleven p.m. there is a surcharge. I will obviously need a current photograph of your husband and some idea of where and when he is to be found. You mentioned that he is a lawyer so I presume he visits an office on a daily basis. Adultery is, in my experience, often committed with work colleagues – sometimes, I am sorry to say, even in the workplace itself. Perhaps he goes on ‘away days’ – a modern management notion that has done wonders for marital infidelity.

Does he, for example, have hobbies? You mentioned a boat. I have done several cases in and around Portsmouth where the bunks of seagoing yachts were not always being used for the purposes for which they were intended. Is he a keen sportsman? Leisure centres are a hotbed for this kind of thing. Is he, perhaps, a member of a local dramatic society? You mentioned your fears that he might be a homosexual and, of course, it is in these sorts of places that our ‘gay brothers’ are often to be found! I am also, at some stage, going to need to know your home address – if only so that I can make sure I go nowhere near it! Believe you me, our motto here at the Gibbons Agency is total and complete discretion at all times.

I say ‘our’. It’s just me here. I often joke that I am so discreet I usually do not have a clue what I am doing and why I am doing it!

Seriously, though, I take your confidentiality seriously and your address will not be divulged to anyone. I will make sure all my letters are directed to the ‘PO Box number’ you have given me.

Yours,

Roland O. Gibbons

From:

Elizabeth Price

PO Box 132

Putney

3 July

To:

Roland O. Gibbons

Gibbons Detective Agency

12 The Alley

Putney, SW15

Dear Mr Gibbons,

I am impressed! You got me in one! I have taught classics at a girls’ public school in Putney for twenty-five years! I am generally reckoned to be pretty strict but – of course – I have a heart of gold! Don’t we all?

Classics, actually – not English. And, yes, I am working on a long book about Propertius, though I am not sure it will ever see the light of day.

I am a terrible snob, I’m afraid. I think people should have heard of Beethoven even if they haven’t listened to him. I think there are rules of grammar that should be obeyed, if only because they help to clarify our thoughts. An inverted comma, like a full stop or a semi-colon, is there for a precise reason. Sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking. Well – it
is
sloppy thinking and that is all there is to it. I only found out recently, through my daughter, that Big Brother was not – to most people – a character in a novel by George Orwell but the name of an unusually witless television programme.

I will say, however, that, while I might be rather tough on your homework were you to have the misfortune to be a pupil of mine, I knew from the moment I caught sight of you in the little alley off Putney High Street that you were the man for me. Do not, please, misinterpret that remark. I have no interest in forming another sexual relationship – not that ‘sexual relationship’ (I am using quotation marks here, Mr Gibbons, because I am quoting myself) is in any way a description of my marriage.

You do not want a private detective to look distinctive, do you? I do not mean this to be offensive, Mr Gibbons, but it took me some moments, on my first inspection of you, to realize that there was a person there at all. You blended into Putney High Street with a skill I don’t think I have seen anyone else achieve. You hinted in your last letter that you have to struggle against putting on weight but, like many plump men, you are surprisingly light on your feet. There was a rather unpleasant-looking dog in the doorway to the stairs leading up to your office and I admired the way you flicked it out of your way with the toe of your rather extravagantly pointed shoe.

Most importantly, Mr Gibbons, you exude cunning. Even from behind you seem almost dangerously intelligent. That is the thing that counts – not inverted commas – as I often tell my girls. You have the kind of pale, watchful blue eyes that make me glad you are working for me and not my husband!

À nos moutons
!

I am enclosing a picture of my husband and £750 in cash, which should take care of five days of close observation of him. His name is Gerald O’Shaughnessy Price, although there is nothing obviously Irish about him. I think he just added his middle name to spite me when, in the late seventies during a brief period of feminist activism, I announced my intention of using my maiden name, which is, unfortunately, Smellie. We live in Heathland Avenue, Putney, a small road lined with large houses very close to Putney Heath off the top of Putney Hill. There is little through traffic, a lot of grass and a great many trees. You could easily fool yourself into believing you were in the country, so it is a place where a private detective might prove to be conspicuous. We are, unfortunately, also very close to the Telegraph pub, where my husband is quite often to be seen drinking pints of Guinness and slapping strangers on the back.

It might be a good place to observe him at weekends. He is usually in there from about one p.m. to three p.m. on Saturdays and from seven p.m. to ten p.m. on Sunday nights. He works as a barrister, specializing in medical negligence. His chambers are called Highleybury Parkside and they have a website bearing that name, which carries photos and contact details for all their employees. Take a careful look at Sandra. She has blonde hair and a big nose but that would not necessarily stop him.

He travels to work every day by bicycle, and as he wears a bright yellow jacket, a bright green helmet, luminous socks and there are two large red flags attached to the front and rear of the vehicle, I imagine he will be hard to miss. Next week he is going into chambers on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He is in Kingston Crown Court the week after that. He leaves Heathland Avenue, on chambers days, at approximately nine a.m. It is quite possible there is an organized gang of adulterous cyclists, somewhere along his route, who use this absurd method of transport as a way of shaking off their legitimate spouses.