Dead in the Water

“I contributed,” said Derek Stanley, giving a reason for his presence.

Mullen stood up. “Even so, I’m still not discussing the case with you, not without Rose being present. Now, if you don’t mind I’m going to make myself some toast. I’ve not eaten yet.”

Mullen located two slices of wholemeal bread from the larder, put them in the toaster and removed marmalade and soya spread from the fridge. There was silence as he worked away, smearing his pieces of toast and then cutting them diagonally into triangles. Then he returned to the table and started eating as if they were no longer there. But if he hoped they would get the message and go, it didn’t work.

“It’

s such a shame about Janice.” Margaret Wilby spoke in the same tone of voice that she very likely used when discussing the weather. “Such a shame it rained today.”

Mullen took another bite and refused to make eye contact.

“Actually,” Stanley interrupted, “maybe in retrospect it’s a good thing.”

This time Mullen did look up. “What on earth do you mean by that?” He felt, he suddenly realised, very defensive about Janice Atkinson. She had come to him in need and he had at some level failed her. He had done what she had paid him to do, yet he had done nothing more. Guilt clung to him, which made it impossible for him to sit there quietly while a jerk like Derek Stanley spouted stuff like that.

“Janice and Chris.” Stanley shrugged and allowed his face to do the talking. Enough said. Work it out for yourself, Mr Private Investigator.

“You’re telling me Janice and Chris had an affair?”

“That is a blunt way of putting it, Mr Mullen.” Margaret Wilby was taking back control. Or maybe she had been in control all along and Stanley was part of it — her tame stooge. “Chris was a very charming man. A bit of a rogue too, but what woman doesn’t like a charming rogue? Poor Janice, with her marriage in tatters, was very susceptible to him. Of course, I don’t know the precise nature of their relationship, but my impression is that she was making rather a fool of herself.”

Mullen considered this as he finished the third quarter of his toast and took another slug of tea. “When you say her marriage was in tatters, are you saying you knew Paul Atkinson was having an affair?”

“Not at all. What I meant was that it was perfectly obvious from the way they behaved in public, from what they said and didn’t say, that their relationship had entered rocky waters. And it was perfectly obvious too that Janice liked Chris. Dangerously so.”

“So what exactly is your point?”

“I would have thought that was obvious.”

Mullen was getting to like her less every time she opened her mouth. But hidden somewhere amid the unpleasantness was information about Chris that might be relevant — if it was true. “Humour me, Mrs Wilby.”

She sniffed. “Personally, I don’t go along with Rose’s conspiracy theory about Chris. He had a relapse. He got extremely drunk, fell into the river and drowned. My daughter may not wish to believe it, but it happened. The pathology report supports that. His bloodstream was swimming with alcohol. The only issue as far as I can see is whether there was anyone else present at the time. My guess would be that if anyone was involved in it, if anyone did facilitate him in getting into such a state, it was Janice.”

Guess was the operative word as far as Mullen was concerned. Possibly even an intelligent one. But nothing more than that. “Do you have any actual evidence, Mrs Wilby?”

“Do you, Mr Mullen?” She stood up and picked up her bag from the table. She had had her say and — to Mullen’s relief — was going to leave. “I merely present to you what I know and what I consequently deduce. I suggest you give up your investigation with good grace and get back to more profitable work, such as tracking errant husbands. I do not want my daughter wasting any more money on a wild goose chase.”

Mullen stood up too. He was not going to give her the satisfaction of having the last word. “Let’s just get this straight, Mrs Wilby. You think Janice felt guilty about Chris? That she felt she had somehow driven him to drink and so to his accidental death?”

She didn’t reply, though there was a slight nod of her head, as if in agreement.

“So how does Janice’s own death fit in with that?”

She sighed, as if the whole conversation had become just too irritating for words.

“Suicide, Mr Mullen. She was so riddled with guilt that she walked into the path of an oncoming car. Maybe it was a split second decision. She saw the car coming her way in the rain and the dark and she just decided to end it all.”

* * *

As Mullen watched the two of them disappear down the drive in Derek Stanley’s blue Astra, his overriding emotion was one of relief. But there was another feeling too; it had at first been a mere grain of sand in his shoe, but as the minutes passed it had become a sizeable lump of sharp grit impossible to ignore. Earlier, lying in bed, he had been ready to give up. But Margaret Wilby, far from putting him off, had ironically achieved quite the opposite. For a start, he hadn’t liked her hectoring, I-know-better-than-you manner. The more she tried to persuade him to give up, the more he felt determined not to. That was human nature, or his human nature at any rate. It was Rose who had hired him and he would stop only if Rose asked him to. And yet even if she did ask, even if she rang up this very moment and told him that they were quits, he wasn’t sure he would. Because the death of Janice had changed things. Now it felt extremely personal.

Besides, Mullen mused, as he wandered round the back of the garden to review the tomato plants, he had been struck by something that Margaret Wilby had said. She had referred to ‘the pathology report’ on Chris. Those had been her precise words. It was almost as if she had had access to it or as if she had spoken to someone who did. She had, in their first meeting when she had given him lunch, hinted at being well connected; maybe she was. Did she know Charles Speight? Was he the pathologist who compiled the report on Chris? Was he working on Janice too? Why had Charles Speight been meeting Dorkin in a pub and why had that meeting been so brief? The questions flooded in, each demanding precedence in Mullen’s reluctant brain. And out of those questions there took shape another one: what are you going to do about all of this, Mr Mullen?

The answer to that was in a sense rather modest. Mullen made a telephone call to the Reverend Diana Downey, though only after some considerable deliberation while he drank a fresh mug of tea at the kitchen table. His initial impulse had been not to ring her. Why give her advance warning that he was coming? Or indeed an opportunity to make an excuse not to see him? Better just to turn up at the vicarage or the church. Either she would be in or she wouldn’t. Of course, said the pessimist inside Mullen, Thursday might be her day off. Did vicars have a standard day off? Unlike their congregation, it could hardly be a Sunday. Saturdays were often wedding days. So, he guessed, Thursday was as likely as any other, a one in five chance. Mullen imagined that vicars generally made a point of getting out of the parish on their day off, in order to avoid the unwelcome parishioner knocking on the door (‘Sorry, Rev, but I wonder if I could just . . .’). Or did Diana Downey prefer to draw the curtains, microwave some popcorn and settle down on the sofa to catch up on the last series of Downton Abbey or Breaking Bad or whatever it was that floated her boat?

But in the end, after all the wondering and all the procrastination, Mullen made the call. She picked up on the third ring.

“Mr Mullen, how nice to hear from you.”