To Kill a Wife (Inspector Peach Series Book 3) Page 4

  “I do my best, but Derek doesn’t allow me to spend much on carpets and furniture.” She looked at her husband affectionately and said, “He’s quite an old skinflint, you know, when it comes to spending. You’d never think he sold his business for any money at all, the way he goes on.”

  This time, involuntarily, father and daughter did catch each other’s eyes, but only for an instant, for each looked hastily away to the wide window and the distant view of the sea. Verna said, “Well, he always was a cautious old thing. But he used to have the occasional headstrong moment, in the old days; you’d have been quite surprised by some of them.”

  Alice laughed, trying not to feel that Verna was deliberately shutting her out from those years before she had known Derek. She was about to ask for examples of his impulsive moments when Derek said hastily, “Well, we have to think of the future, you know. What with inflation and so forth. And people live for a long time, these days: you have to remember that.” He put out his hand towards his wife, was about to clasp it reassuringly over hers, then looked up at his daughter and decided against it.

  “Yes, I suppose you have to think carefully about these things, especially when you’re five years older than your wife.” Verna was amused to see both pairs of eyes trained now upon the table.

  It suited her to pretend sometimes that she resented her father’s second marriage, though in fact she scarcely remembered her own mother. But it would be a useful confusion, if Alice ever wondered about the enmity between herself and Derek. He would never tell her the real source of it, she was sure of that.

  They took their cups of tea into the little conservatory. From where Verna sat, in the best of the cane chairs, you could just see Blackpool tower six miles away to the north. Alice began to talk about Sue, whom they saw much more often than Verna. “Toby is coming on beautifully,” she said. “It’s a pity he hasn’t got a father, but Sue does wonderfully for him. He loves the beach, and we love having him down here.”

  Verna felt the bitchiness she had subdued rising again within her. She said abruptly, “I think Martin and I will be divorcing later this year.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, dear,” said Alice conventionally. “That’s awful, Derek, isn’t it? Of course, we knew everything wasn’t as it should be between the two of you, but we hoped—”

  “I must be on my way,” Verna interrupted. She stood up so decisively that the chair nearly fell over behind her. Suddenly, she had to be free of this woman, with her cloying, conventional niceness, her unaffected joy in simple pleasures, and her goodwill towards those around her.

  Derek Osborne immediately insisted on driving her to the station. He had the car out of the garage and at the front door within two minutes. Alice thought unhappily that he seemed only too anxious to have this unpredictable daughter out of their lives again.

  They said little on the short journey. She knew he was wondering why she had come, but she left the insertion of the dagger as late as possible, like a torturer enjoying his work. She didn’t really need his money, she supposed. But she needed to make him suffer, to see his pain.

  They were almost at the station when she said, “We’ll need to step up those useful little payments you make to me, Dad, when I’m divorced. I won’t have Martin to draw on then, you see. Well, not to the same extent.”

  She watched his fingers clenching the wheel, noting the tension with satisfaction, knowing that when his words came they would be powerless to sway her. He said hopelessly, “I can’t, Verna. You heard Alice back there. She already wonders why I haven’t got more to spend on the house. Why we can’t have the occasional holiday abroad, like other—”

  “Your problem, not mine. You’ll have to sort that one out for yourself. Father.” The last word was salt, expertly and precisely applied to the wound she had just opened. “I’m just telling you I shall need some more, that’s all. Twenty per cent. It’s not negotiable. You’ll find you can manage it.” She left him without a backward glance moving swiftly and gracefully despite the height of her heels. The holidaymakers streaming from the train, which had just arrived, turned their heads automatically to savor her dark elegance as she moved past them.

  Her father stayed in the bay by the station entrance for a full minute, his forehead bent hopessly against his knuckles on the top of the steering wheel. Then a taxi hooted impatiently behind him and brought him back from the darkness to the bright and blinding seaside light. He inched the car into the stream of traffic as carefully as a sick man.

  Then Derek Osborne drove slowly back to the bright little bungalow, to the woman he loved and the agony he could never discuss with her.

  Six

  The neuro-surgery department in the Brunton Royal Hospital was one of its most respected departments. It was small but effective, and the man at the center of it had a growing reputation among those best qualified to judge such things.

  The reputation of the department stemmed, as in most cases, from its head. Two London hospitals and the Radcliffe in Oxford had already put out feelers to Richard Johnson, but he had so far proved surprisingly resistant to any move south. “We’ve developed a good unit here,” he said. “We’re getting the equipment we need, and the work we’re doing is as interesting as that in much bigger hospitals.”

  Medics, especially distinguished men like Richard, never spoke publicly about the attractions of being king of one’s own small kingdom, rather than one of a team of highly qualified surgeons. Richard was as near to being his own boss as was possible within the National Health Service, and would sometimes confess as much privately to his trusted friends. The managers of the hospital, conscious of the benefits brought by his reputation in a competitive world, had enough sense to allow their Mr Johnson the maximum degree of autonomy. With market forces being encouraged, Mr Johnson and his neuro-surgery unit were actually bringing in work from the surrounding areas.

  Today was not one of Richard’s operating days. He saw a succession of patients during the morning, reassuring some, explaining the treatment he thought necessary to others with polite consideration. His skills were not confined to the scalpel and the knife; he had considerable charm and understanding, and had not lost touch with the people he treated as his eminent reputation developed.

  He had developed an empathy with the people of this ugly old cotton town where he had lived for the last ten years. All the people he saw that morning, the anxious and the relieved alike, came away impressed by his competence and sympathy, convinced that their destiny was in capable hands. It was a considerable feat. As the end of the century approaches, old fears and prejudices are buried ever more deeply in the psyche of the average Briton. But they are not so deep that they will not surface surprisingly quickly under pressure. And Richard Johnson touched one of the most sensitive and embarrassing of social nerves. He was black.

  He was used to the reaction of barely concealed panic when out-patients first saw him. He had long since disciplined himself against the irritation this had induced in him in his early days as a junior houseman. He enjoyed the gradual dissolution of tension and fear he saw in his patients as he examined them and talked to them about their symptoms and the treatment options available.

  At this moment, he was reassuring an anxious mother of four about the results of her scan. “There is cranial pressure, nothing more.” He smiled at the round white face with its fringe of graying hair. “You were afraid of a brain tumor, weren’t you, Mrs Pearce?”

  “Well, there was a woman who lived two streets from us, you see, Doctor – er, Mister Johnson.” Even in her sea of worry, the woman had the English fear of getting a title wrong, the need to apologise for her anxieties about her health. “She had the same symptoms as me, and she died in a few months.”

  “No need to apologize for a bit of panic. As a matter of fact, we were quite ready to panic ourselves. When I first saw you and listened to what you said, I thought a tumor was certainly a possiblility. But now we know there’s nothing to worry about.”<
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  He showed her the scan results, picking out the area of the trouble with his slim silver ballpoint pen as he pointed to the printout on the wall, easing away the last of her anxiety, taking her patiently through what would happen next, the drugs they proposed to use, what she could do to alleviate the pain of her headaches.

  He was always delighted when he had good news to relay. As he watched the woman gradually relax, first into relief and then into a rapture she could scarcely conceal, he reflected that this was a kind of indulgence for him. These were the easy cases, where he had good news to dispense; the real test came when he had to prepare his visitors for dangerous or critical surgery.

  No system is proof against the public. His next patient did not turn up. Occasionally, seriously ill people with appointments were inconsiderate enough to die in the waiting period, and no one thought to inform the hospital. More usually, people simply forgot their appointments, or ignored them when they felt suddenly better.

  Richard was left with a spare twenty minutes in a crowded schedule. It was to prove a fateful gap, for him and for others.

  He rang his wife. He rang his lawyer. After a little uncharacteristic indecision, he rang a third number, from which there was no reply. It was surprising that a man who was so professionally calm and confident could be suddenly so full of personal insecurity. But confusion hit him often now, when he turned from his public to his private life.

  He went on his round of the wards, first carefully taking the views of the ward sister about the post-operational progress of his patients, receiving the lift he always felt when the people lying in the beds were glad to see him, explaining to them what they must expect to feel, reserving until the last the pleasure of telling two of them that they could look forward to going home the next day.

  In the short period he allowed himself for lunch, he shut the door of his office and wrote a letter. A reckless letter; its stark phrases seemed at first to have come from someone else. In the weeks to come, he was to wonder many times how he could have been so foolish and so desperate.

  Seven

  One man in his time plays many parts. The most profound of all students of human nature told us that a long time ago. Lest there be any hackles rising, let us be clear that he meant women too.

  Verna Hume was a good example of this process in modern life. Behind her desk in the Osborne Employment Agency, she was the personification of the successful businesswoman. She took day-to-day decisions coolly but swiftly. Policy decisions were given more thought; she aired her views and listened to those of others, principally those of the woman who had worked alongside her to develop the business from its early, struggling days to its present five-branch affluence. The judgments they had made over the years had invariably been the correct ones.

  She had been a secretary herself once, and an efficient one. She smiled at the thought of that gauche girl, who had labored to acquire the skills of shorthand, which were nowadays all but extinct among the girls who came to her in search of employment. But the young Verna had been a quick learner, even then.

  She had realized that sheer black nylon stretched over young legs could often increase career prospects faster than mere efficiency. That a starched and apparently demure white blouse and a simple black skirt could be highly potent weapons in the sex war. And that 90 per cent of men were fools.

  Moreover, Verna had realized by the age of twenty-one that there was more money to be made out of organizing the labors of others than merely working for a boss. She had talked to the most intelligent and ambitious of the six girls who worked beside her in the typing pool, Barbara Harris. They had done a little research, bided their time, saved for six months, and then simultaneously given in their notices, just as the holiday period approached.

  In the early days, it was Barbara who was the more ruthless of the partners. When the directors of the insurance company had spluttered with irritation, appealed to their sense of loyalty, even, in desperation, offered them substantial inducements to stay, she had laughed in their faces. “I’m afraid it’s much too late for that,” she had said. “You should have realized earlier what excellent workers we are.”

  And within weeks, they were supplying temps to the very firm they had left in the lurch. It had a nice irony, which appealed to Verna and Barbara. And it was the beginning of a highly successful business. They often reminisced about the faces of the men they had surprised by their enterprise.

  They supplied the temporary secretarial services which were much in demand in the town. They were careful to send only women who they knew were efficient – principally young married women who were only available for part-time work, because of the demands of their families. Verna and Barbara took their commission and built a reputation for reliability.

  Verna did most of the selling of their services. She had a way with men, a way of combining efficiency with a consciousness of her sexual attraction, which Barbara was quite ready to acknowledge and admire. “You can give them a price for the job and a hint that they might just be in bed with you by the end of the month without putting a word out of place!” she said, admiringly.

  It was Barbara Harris who had seen the possibilities in vetting workers for employers who were too busy, too lazy, or simply too inefficient to sift job applications and make their own decisions about whom to employ. She and Verna were careful, and they knew better than anyone what to look for. As the numbers of the Lancashire unemployed rose steadily in the eighties, Barbara chose only the most efficient among those coming to them from schools and colleges, while Verna interviewed the experienced office workers moving into the town from Manchester and Liverpool.

  In five years, Harris and Osborne (Verna insisted on using her maiden name as one more small insult to Martin rather than as any feminist assertion) was a flourishing concern, with a high standing. Workers came to them because they had a reputation for handling good jobs and securing good working conditions. Employers looked to them to help fill increasingly high-profile jobs. They were now head-hunters for junior executive posts in a variety of fields, no longer merely a secretarial agency.

  Both Verna and Barbara enjoyed building up the business. They treated the workers who came to them well and understood their needs as well as the requirements of employers. When the business expanded, they used the best of them to staff their own new offices in neighboring Lancashire towns. It was, as Barbara often remarked, almost a foolproof system. “We observe the progress of people we place in responsible jobs, allow them to prove themselves at others’ expense, and then offer them work with the agency.”

  But no system is proof against human disaster. After eight years, Barbara Harris’s husband died when the Mondeo, in which, he traveled the country was hit by a runaway lorry on a freezing night in North Yorkshire. She was much in love with him and devastated with grief. “I don’t think I can go on,” she said to Verna through her tears at the graveside.

  “You can and you must,” Verna Hume replied firmly. She put her arms round her partner, feeling an access of pity, which took her by surprise as Barbara’s suddenly vulnerable shoulders heaved beneath her fingers with the pain of her loss.

  She dismissed the feeling briskly before it could unnerve her. “Pity it wasn’t my Martin,” she said with a brittle little laugh. “We could have spared him much more easily.”

  There were other, less emotional repercussions of this untimely death. Three years earlier Barbara and her husband had moved into a large new detached house. That was in 1989, at the height of the property boom, when prices were astronomical but everyone thought a house was still a good investment. They had not insured against Michael Harris’s death.

  “It seemed so unlikely,” said a weeping Barbara.

  Verna and Barbara had a crisis meeting a week after the funeral. This time Verna was ready with her plan. “I’ll buy you out. I can afford it, with the business doing so well. And when things have righted themselves, you can buy back in. It won’t alter things. We�
�ll just call you Chief Executive, instead of director, as far as the books and the taxman are concerned.”

  In ordinary circumstances, Barbara would have been more cautious. In the trauma of her grief, it seemed a wonderful offer. “We’ve come through a lot together, Verna. I won’t forget this, believe me.”

  It was a phrase she was later to remember.

  Verna changed the company agreement, and in due course the name on the notepaper and over the office doors became simply ‘Osborne’ instead of ‘Harris and Osborne’. Barbara thought that unnecessary, but she was glad of the lump sum of money to sort out her finances. And it made no difference to the development of the business: she worked as hard as ever as Chief Executive. In the four years which followed her husband’s death in 1992, the firm opened two more branches. Verna, as proprietor, felt able to give a little less time to the business and rather more to her other concerns.

  Of late, that had meant Hugh. Because she was in love for the first time in her life, she had indulged herself in the last few months, spending more time away from the business than ever before, leaving more and more to the very efficient staff they had installed over the years.

  Now, on this bright Friday morning, it was time to assert herself, to demonstrate to herself as well as to Barbara that she was still the clear-sighted woman she had always been. She was closeted in her thickly carpeted office with her Chief Executive. She felt the old, familiar surge of excitement as she savored the power she had and the urge to use it. The fact that she was using it this time on the person who had been her close friend for so many years seemed quite irrelevant.

  Within minutes, Barbara Harris was white-faced and incredulous. “But you said I could buy back into the company as soon as I was ready,” she said, hearing her voice rising towards shrillness.