Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

salad myself.’
       ‘Two ham salads,’ said Burden to the waitress. He poured himself some water from a chilled carafe.
       ‘Getting quite transatlantic the old Carousel,’ said Wexford. ‘And about time too. Not so long ago the water used to steam away like a perishing engine on these tables in hot weather. What’s the betting this McCoy’s running a big racket, paying Charlie Hatton to leave his lorry unattended and paying him to keep other lorry drivers occupied when ever the chance presents itself? Lorries are always getting hi jacked. They leave them in these lay-bys while they have a little kip or a cup of tea. Hatton could have done a nice little distracting job there. Fifty or a hundred quid a lorry depending on the load.’
       ‘In that case, why does McCloy kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?’
       ‘Because Hatton gets scared or fed-up and threatens to rat on him. He may even have tried blackmail.’
       ‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ said Burden, spreading butter on his roll. The butter was almost liquid. Like the rest of humanity, he reflected, the Carousel staff were disappointingly inconsistent.

Chapter 5

    ‘But my daughter wasn’t in the car.’
       Seldom had Sergeant Camb felt so sorry for anyone as he did for this woman who lay against the piled pillows. His heart ached for her. And yet she was in one of the nicest private rooms in the hospital; she had a telephone and a television; her nightgown was a silly frou-frou of frills and spilling lace and on her thin fingers the rings - diamonds and sapphires in platinum - rattled as she clasped and unclasped the sheet.
       It’s true what they say, money can’t buy happiness, thought the simple sergeant. He had noticed there were no flowers in the room and only one ‘get well’ card on the table by the chair where the policewoman sat. From her sister, he supposed. She hadn’t anyone else now, not a soul in the world. Her husband was dead and her daughter . . .
       ‘I’m very very sorry, Mrs Fanshawe,’ he said, ‘but your daughter was in the car. She was travelling back to London with you and your husband.’
       ‘They didn’t suffer,’ put in the young policewoman quickly. ‘They can’t have felt a thing.’
       Mrs Fanshawe touched her forehead where the dyed hair showed half an inch of white at the roots. ‘My head,’ she said. ‘My head aches. I can’t remember things, not details. Everything’s so vague.’
       ‘Don’t you worry,’ said Camb heartily. ‘You’ll find you’ll get your memory back in time. You’re going to get quite well, you know.’ For what? For widowhood, for childlessness?
       ‘Your sister’s been able to supply us with most of the details we need.’
       They had been close, Mrs Fanshawe and Mrs Browne, and there wasn’t much about the Fanshawes Mrs Browne hadn’t known. From her they had learned that Jerome Fanshawe had a bungalow at Eastover between Eastbourne and Seaford and that he and his wife and daughter had driven down there for a week’s holiday on May 17th. The daughter Nora had left her post as an English teacher in a German school before Easter. She was between jobs, at a loose end, Camb had gathered, otherwise nothing would have induced her to accompany her parents. But she had accompanied them. Mrs Browne had been at their Mayfair flat and seen them all off together.
       They had left Eastover days earlier than had been expected. Mrs Browne couldn’t account for that, unless it had been because of the wet weather. Perhaps no one would ever know the reason, for Jerome Fanshawe’s Jaguar had skidded, crashed and caught fire five miles from the hospital where the sole survivor now lay.
       ‘I won’t bother you for long,’ Camb said gently. ‘Perhaps you can’t remember much about the crash. Do you think you could try and tell me what you do remember?’

    Dorothy Fanshawe had forgotten who these kind though tiresome people