Who Saw Him Die? Read online

  The pleasure that could be derived from being permanently clean had come to Jack Goodrum as a revelation. Now, there was nothing he enjoyed more after his morning shower than putting on clean boxer shorts (how could he ever have endured the grottiness of those sagging grey underpants that Doreen had provided for him?), a fresh shirt and socks, soft cord trousers, soft woollen sweater. He felt right, good, on top of the world at last.

  It had taken a long time. Felicity’s divorce had been very difficult, and his own hadn’t been as simple as he’d expected. Then, though he had bought the old house in April with the intention of having it renovated so that they could move in as soon as they were free to marry, it hadn’t been ready until early October. They had been married for three weeks before they were able to take up residence. And even then, when they finally moved into The Mount nearly a month ago, an unexpected problem – more accurately, a little local difficulty – had cropped up.

  Perhaps the problem ought not to have been so unexpected. Perhaps he should have anticipated it, and taken the precaution of buying a house elsewhere. But Felicity had so much liked Breckham Market, when he had driven her through the town on one of their house-hunting expeditions, and had fallen so irreversibly in love with The Mount, that even if the difficulty had occurred to him at the time he wouldn’t have had the heart to disappoint her.

  It wasn’t until after they had settled in that the problem had come to his notice. Perhaps he had let it worry him unnecessarily, but he saw it as a potential threat to his new-found happiness and he couldn’t ignore it. His luck had held, though – as his dreary first wife had prophesied it would – and the problem had been resolved. Now everything was perfect.

  Whistling triumphantly, Jack Goodrum hurried downstairs to join his beloved second wife in the breakfast room.

  ‘G’morning my dear.’

  It had seemed odd to him at first to give a formal daily greeting to his wife when they’d been snuggled in bed together not half an hour before; but Felicity seemed to set store by it, and he loved and respected her so much that he would do anything to please her.

  She looked up from the letter she was reading. ‘Good morning, Jack.’

  She had a lovely smile, and happy eyes. Her new husband’s chest expanded with pride as he saw the transformation he had brought about in her. When they’d first met her face was so deeply lined and her fair hair so prematurely grey that he’d assumed her to be his own age, or older. But that was what twenty years of marriage to that bastard Austin Napier – a gentleman born and bred, a London barrister, no less – had done to her. In fact she was just forty. And now that she had escaped from the man and had survived a bitterly contested divorce, her face had become almost miraculously smooth and untroubled.

  She lifted it as Jack passed her chair. He bent to her and they kissed on the lips, frankly, almost like children, and yet with a tiny cross-current of sensuality that sent him to his own chair with a grin on his face. He sat down at the pretty breakfast table (sunshine coloured cloth, earthenware with a botanic garden design; a small bowl of late flowers from their own garden; and at his place a glass of fresh grapefruit juice, a rack of toast and a boiled egg) and unfolded his napkin. Felicity, as neat in her Liberty housecoat as she would be during the day in skirt and lambswool sweater, poured freshly ground, freshly made coffee. As she passed his cup, their eyes met. Smiling, they both shook their heads in mock bewilderment, dazzled by the good fortune that had brought them together.

  For both of them their second marriage was a complete beginning again. Their courtship had been that of a shyly respectable Edwardian couple, with decorous friendship blossoming into affection. They had no expectation of love and no requirement of it, because neither of them had cause to set much store by that emotion.

  Nor was there any sexual element in their relationship before they married. Felicity, who equated sex with indignity and pain, could hardly bear, in the early days of their marriage, to be touched. Jack had hoped for marital intimacy – his first wife had shut up shop after their second daughter was born, and he’d never had the time or spare energy for girl friends – but he wasn’t sure whether he’d still be up to it. He didn’t want the humiliation of trying with Felicity and failing; and he certainly didn’t want to distress or hurt her.

  But because their affection was genuine, they found that they enjoyed being close. When they set up home in The Mount they agreed to have separate bedrooms, but they soon discovered that there was comfort and reassurance in sharing a bed for at least part of the night. Gradually, Felicity learned to trust her new husband’s embraces. Gradually, Jack learned to be considerate with his new wife. Together, they found the experience of sex more pleasurable than either of them had ever thought possible. They also found, on occasions when they chose to abstain, that an exchange of tenderness could be just as satisfactory, in its way, as conjugation; every bit as soporific, and even more conducive to love.

  What finally brought them to the realisation that they had fallen in love was the fun they began to share in bed. Being playful and absurd was a new experience for both of them. Jack loved to make Felicity giggle. He considered it another achievement, all the more unexpected because, in company, she always looked and sounded so precise, almost prudish. The knowledge that when they were cosy together she could be both funny and sweetly silly endeared her to him completely. And because she could relax so unhesitatingly in his arms he knew without doubt – and with considerable pride – that his love was returned.

  ‘You seem particularly happy this morning, Mr Goodrum,’ she observed as he began his breakfast.

  He grinned at her. ‘I’ve got good reason to be, haven’t I?’

  ‘Apart from that, I mean.’ She looked at him with quizzical affection. ‘There’s an air of relief about you, as though you’ve just sorted out some kind of problem. Have you?’

  ‘D’you wonder I’m relieved?’ he parried. ‘It hasn’t been comfortable, having the inquest on that drunk who fell in front of the Range Rover hanging over me. But we can forget about it now, thank God.’ He gave his egg a casual thump with the back of his spoon, crushing the shell. The egg was cooked just as he liked it, the white firm, the yolk slightly runny. He dipped in a finger of toast – no butter, he was a reformed character now – and munched with contentment.

  ‘Yes, of course the accident’s been a worry for you,’ his wife agreed sympathetically, ‘even though everyone knows it wasn’t your fault. But your problem went back further than that, didn’t it? Something’s been bothering you almost from the day we came here.’

  He looked up from his egg, surprised and slightly on guard. He hadn’t realised that she was so observant. ‘D’you reckon so?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Felicity smiled at him. ‘Feminine intuition,’ she explained. ‘Or perhaps it’s simply because I love you …’

  That made him grin again. ‘You’re a marvel, Mrs Goodrum. And I love you too. That’s why I was worried when we moved in. I want to make you happy, and I wasn’t sure we’d done the right thing by coming to live in Breckham Market. You’d taken such a liking to this house and garden, but I was afraid that after living in London you’d find a small country town too dull. Now I’ve seen how well you’ve settled, though, I’ve stopped worrying.’

  Jack turned his empty egg shell upside down in the cup, and bashed the other end for good measure. ‘So there’s your answer, my dear,’ he concluded cheerfully. ‘Is that a letter from young Matthew you’ve got there? How’s he settling down?’

  ‘Very well, by the sound of things. He seems so much happier than when he was a day boy at the City of London School, with all that pressure from his father to do as well as he did when he was there. Matthew always longed to go to boarding school, and it was such a good suggestion of yours to let him finish his education at Saxted.’

  ‘I could just as easily have afforded Eton, if that was what you’d wanted,’ her husband reminded her. His knowledge of public schools was confined
to the names of Eton and the one nearest to Breckham Market, Saxted College. In his opinion, they were of equal standing.

  Felicity smiled at him fondly. ‘I know, Jack. You’re so very generous. But Saxted was a better idea. I prefer Matthew to be no more than twenty miles away from us, and out of reach of his father. You know how bitterly Austin resented my being given custody …’ She shuddered at the recollection of her divorce proceedings, then looked again at her son’s letter. ‘He asks after you, by the way.’

  ‘Does he?’ said Jack eagerly. He was anxious to be liked by the boy because he knew that Felicity adored her only child.

  She passed her husband the page of hasty scrawl and indicated the final paragraph: How’s Jack? Don’t let him forget that he promised to take me shooting in the Christmas holidays!

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ said Matthew’s stepfather with pleasure. He’d always wanted a son to pass on his skills to. ‘And, let’s see, won’t he soon be seventeen?’

  ‘Next March.’

  ‘Right, then it’s time he learned to drive. Tell you what, my dear, I’ll buy him a car for Christmas –’

  ‘Jack!’

  ‘Only a banger, but a reliable one. I know a farmer who’s got some private roads on his land, and I can teach the boy how to handle the car there before he’s officially old enough to drive. Then he can take the test and get his full licence as soon as he’s seventeen.’

  ‘Oh Jack – and you’ve only just bought him a computer! You really mustn’t spoil him.’ Felicity paused, then looked anxiously apologetic. ‘He didn’t ask you for a car, I hope? I heard him telling you, when he was here at half-term, that he’d already applied for a provisional licence.’

  ‘Ah, that was so’s he could take part in a course on motor bike riding. He certainly didn’t ask me for any transport – but I can remember well enough what it was like to be young! A boy of his age needs some wheels of his own, and a car’s a lot safer than a motor bike.’

  Her eyes bright with affection, Felicity stretched her hand across the table. ‘You are so kind.’

  ‘’s not kindness,’ Jack said. ‘I reckon it must be love.’ He reached out and took her hand, clasping it warmly and sighing with happiness. ‘By God, I’m a lucky man …’

  Chapter Three

  In Jack Goodrum’s former marital home, not far from Ipswich, breakfast was a more mobile occasion.

  The residents of Factory Bungalow saw no point in getting up at any particular time. There was nothing to get up for. Doreen Goodrum and her daughters Sharon and Tracey had had no occupation in the two years since the family business was sold. Ever since Jack had left them, they had spent their mornings wandering aimlessly about the bungalow in their nightwear, eating and drinking as they went.

  They felt no inclination to do more than a scant minimum of housework. Factory Bungalow had never been much of a place to live in. It was a small, immediately-post-war prefabricated building that had been given an extended lease of life by the application of a brick and tile skin. Its rural position, on a wired-in half-acre of rough grass and scrub at the side of the old wartime airfield road that led to the factory site, was solitary and unattractive.

  Inside, the bungalow was packed with showy furniture and expensive electrical appliances. Nothing was more than two years old, and some of the more attention-demanding items of equipment – the microwave oven, the dish-washer – were so evenly covered with unfingermarked dust that they were clearly never used. Jack Goodrum’s original family had, it seemed, enjoyed one enormous shopping expedition and then lost interest in their acquisitions.

  Their present lethargy was understandable. They had all worked so hard in the poultry-meat business – the girls, now twenty-three and twenty-one, since their earliest teens – that the abrupt ending of their jobs had disoriented them. Spare time was such a foreign commodity to Mrs Goodrum and her daughters that they had no idea what to do with it.

  It was not that they had wanted to continue with the business. Doreen had been exhausted by it at the end of the first ten years. Slaving all hours in the factory, as well as looking after her husband and children and the home, was wearing her out and she had begged Jack to sell up.

  ‘We can’t afford to, woman!’ was all he had shouted by way of reply. And whenever she had renewed her plea, as she struggled through another ten years of unremitting hard labour, he had given her the same answer.

  ‘Good God, I’ve just bought you a refrigerator,’ (and later, a washing machine; later still, a tumble-dryer) he had added with a bellow of exasperation. ‘I’m doing as much for you as I can, woman! What more do you want?’

  Even when Jack did at last decide to put the business on the market, there had been a further eighteen months of work and worry before the sale was completed. Productivity had to be not only maintained but improved on, he insisted, if they were to sell the business for what it was worth.

  And so Doreen and the girls had buckled-to again, standing as usual on the production line because they were none of them confident enough with figures to ask for a sitting-down job in the office. But at least, during those final eighteen months, Doreen had had time to accustom herself to the idea that her long hard slog was nearly over. The prospect of being able, shortly, to stop working in the factory for good entranced her. She longed for that wonderful moment.

  But when it actually did come, on the day when the business was officially transferred from J.R. Goodrum Ltd to the new owners, and Doreen was able to hang up her overalls for the last time, she had sat down in Jack’s office and burst into tears.

  ‘Now what’s the matter?’ he had hissed. The room was occupied by smooth legal and financial men, assembled to celebrate the satisfactory outcome of months of negotiation, and Jack was wrestling with the unfamiliar wiring of a champagne cork. ‘For God ‘s sake stop blubbing, woman, and fetch over the glasses!’

  ‘Let me help you, Mrs Goodrum,’ one of the smooth men had said. And everyone, it seemed, had turned to look at her.

  It was too much. All those posh voices, all those smart suits and crisp shirts, all those closely shaven chins and clean hands … Doreen had struggled to fit into her best mail-order dress for the occasion, but she knew that her body looked ungainly and her yellow-grey hair was a mess. She gasped for air as a hot flush suffused what she knew to be her homely face. Over-wrought, humiliated, she had run bawling out of the office and away from the factory and back to the grimy familiarity of her home.

  ‘I dunno what you’re goin’on about!’ Jack had said when he eventually rolled in. His new light grey suit couldn’t disguise the fact that he was as ungainly as she was, but he had always been satisfied with his appearance. Now, awash with champagne and toweringly pleased with his business achievement, he was mystified by his wife’s lack of gratitude.

  ‘I’ve given you everythin’you ever wanted, haven’t I?’ he pointed out, tipsily aggrieved. ‘Haven’I? I’ve worked and provided for you all these years, and bought you everythin’I could think of to make your life easy. Everythin’. You an’the girls. An’ now I’ve done what you wanted an’sold the business, jus’so’s you can do absolu’ly nothin’for the rest o’your lives … So what are you still blubbin’ for, you schupid woman?’

  Doreen didn’t really know.

  She was accustomed to think of herself as being stupid. Jack had often enough told her so, in the course of their married life. She knew the production side of the business – the transformation of cheap, prematurely worn-out battery hens into valuable soup and pie-meat – inside out, but she had been content to leave the administration to her husband.

  She didn’t even know how much the business was eventually sold for. It hadn’t mattered to her. She had had so little opportunity to spend money, in the whole of her life, that she hardly knew at first what to do with the housekeeping increase Jack gave her.

  The girls had had plenty of ideas, of course. They wanted clothes, to begin with; then holidays. Sharon, who was enga
ged to the firm’s sales manager, had set about planning the slap-up wedding that her father promised her. Her younger sister Tracey, who had no intention of tying herself to any one man, preferred to talk her father into giving her the money for a car so that she could racket about Ipswich having a good time.

  Doreen, too, had thought about having a holiday. She collected brochures by the armful, but couldn’t make up her mind where to go. And anyway, Jack wouldn’t consider going with her and she was unnerved by the thought of staying in a hotel on her own. So she settled, instead, for having the bungalow redecorated inside and out.

  She would really have liked to move. Preferably to the seaside, Lowestoft or Felixstowe. Even Jack had spoken about the possibility of moving, though all he’d wanted was to be nearer the village pub.

  But then a change had come over him. He had started taking frequent baths, and wanting clean underclothes and shirts. Doreen was puzzled. One thing about Jack, he’d never before bothered with girl friends; and if he had just acquired one, why had he immediately given up wearing his new gold rings and his dazzling new ties?

  His attitude towards her had altered, too. He began to be much kinder. And although he said no more about moving house, it was at this time that he had offered to have Factory Bungalow redecorated. The new owners of the poultry-meat business had decided to transfer the operation to one of their more modern plants, and close down the old site. This would put an end to the flow of heavy lorries past the bungalow which would then, as Jack pointed out, become nice and quiet, and easier to keep clean.

  ‘You can buy new furniture, an’all,’ he’d said generously. ‘Might as well do the job properly while you’re about it. No, I don’t mind what you buy, you please yourself entirely. Take the car and go to Ipswich for the day. Order whatever you like, and tell’em to send the bill to me!’

  If only she’d had the sense to realise what the crafty devil was up to … But then, though she hadn’t loved him for years, and had never much liked him, it simply hadn’t occurred to her that Jack would cheat her out of the fortune she had helped him to accumulate.