It’s my wife you’re after.”
“Crispin, what the hell’s got into you?”
“It’s you. That’s what. You getting into my wife. Every bloody day of the week. D’you think I’m blind and deaf and bloody stupid?”
I’d only been with her a couple of hours that one day in that one week, If she’d been away from home more than that, it wasn’t with me. But protesting that it had certainly not been every day of the week would hardly have been a sensible defence. While I shook my head, playing for time, Gemma sat down again and looked coolly from one to the other of us as if to guess who might risk the first blow and who would qualify to carry off the prize.
I took it slow and dignified. “I do think you’d find it more fruitful to keep your lively imagination for your writing, Crispin.”
“And don’t patronize me, Milburn.” My Christian name had been ditched and his voice was rising to a parade-ground bellow. “You’ve done damn-all to promote my books until even you could hardly fail to sell this last one. And all the time you’ve been having it off with my wife. Sniggering behind my back.”
“Where’d you get all these crazy notions?”
“From the way she looks, and the things she’s told me.”
“Told you?”
Still Gemma wasn’t saying a word. Might almost not have been in the room with us. Yet she was the most important person in that room, round which everything was revolving. Had they already had a big scene before I arrived? Was she planning to leave him? To come to me?
I put my glass down. “I’m not going to listen to any more of this.”
“You’ll listen to just as much as I choose to say to you.”
Now I was the one who was shouting. “And who d’you think you are, insulting me without the—”
“How could anyone insult anyone as two-timing as you?”
I got up. “I’ve had enough of this.”
“You’re not leaving here until we’ve—”
“I shall leave here when it suits me. And it suits me right now. So just get out of my way, or else—”
“Or else what?”
He stood there, swaying from side to side. And we went on swapping ridiculous insults and accusations, standing in the middle of the room and making a racket like football hooligans. Enough, you’d have thought, to get the neighbours phoning or coming round and ringing the doorbell to complain.
I risked a glance at Gemma, hoping for a hint of some kind, wondering how much she had really told him, or if that had just been a wild stab of his.
Her smile was distant, almost contemptuous—contemptuous, I thought, of both of us. Sitting there so silently, just letting it happen.
I said: “I’m going to ring for a taxi.”
“Not from my phone, you’re not. You can start walking. But only when I’ve finished with you.”
His threatening sway from side to side became erratic. He lurched forward, put out a hand, but could find nothing to grasp except my arm. I tried to steer him towards an armchair. He recovered for a few seconds, long enough to bellow a string of obscenities at me before collapsing into the chair.
In an undertone, hoping not to start him off ranting again, I muttered to Gemma: “Look, how much did he have to drink before I got here?”
She seemed to wake up at last, and motioned me to follow her out into the hall.
“I do think you’d better go home and leave this to me.”
“But just what have you been telling him? What started all this?”
“Let him sleep it off. I can cope.”
“If you’d ring for a taxi for me, then. Don’t want him to wake up and start another battle over his precious phone.”
“I’ll drive you back.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I think it’s a very sensible idea.” She had been so silent, and now was so decisive. “Come on, David, I do know what I’m doing.”
She closed the front door very quietly, walked briskly but soundlessly down the short path to the gate, and then even more briskly along the pavement to the corner of the street. I had to hurry to catch up with her, “Don’t you keep your car in the garage?”
“There was somebody blocking the way when I got home today. Had to park it round the corner.”
When we were in her Mégane I said: “You were talking about when you got home—home from where?”
“Shopping, of course. I do have to do some real shopping sometimes, you know. Not just as a cover-up.”
She pretended to concentrate on the road, although there was little traffic and it was no more than a ten-minute drive to the block where I lived. We stopped a hundred yards from the entrance. That was unremarkable: we had always been careful to cover our tracks. Maybe we wouldn’t need to from now on.
I said: “Are you planning to leave Crispin?”
“We’ll talk about that some other time.”
I put my hand on her arm. It tensed; and then she made too obvious an effort to relax. “Are you coming in?” I asked. “We can talk about things then. About everything.”
“The state he’s in, I’d better get back.”
“The state he’s in,” I said, “you don’t know what he’ll do.”
“Oh, I think I know him well enough. Leave it to me, David.”
She kissed me quickly and meaninglessly.
“Tomorrow?” I said. “I can take the afternoon off. Sort things out,”
“Tomorrow,” she said, “maybe things will sort themselves out.” And as I got out of the car, she said with unexpected intensity: “Thanks, David. Thanks so much for everything.”
* * * *
So here I am in a police cell, refused bail. My solicitor has just left, and obviously doesn’t believe a word I’ve told him, any more than the police do.
Their first assault had left me winded, incredulous. I didn’t feel that I could really be in my own office, on an ordinary day, listening to something far more crazy than anything some of my clients offered as storylines.
“But hold on a minute,” I was protesting. “She was there with us last evening. Having a drink. The three of us.” And when that stony face yielded no response, I demanded: “Look, how did Crispin die? Fall over blind drunk, or something? Alcoholic poisoning?”
“Not
