Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(77)

Unsteadily, Spurgeon got to his feet, wiping his face with his sleeve. “We can go through here.”

Following him, Resnick turned his head. “Tea?” he said to Lynn.

“Tea, Anil,” Lynn said, once they were alone. “I’m going to take the chance for a quick look round.”

The room Spurgeon led Resnick into overlooked a muddled garden in which swings and a climbing frame rose above some rather desultory rose bushes, a lawn that was threadbare in patches, overgrown in others, and cabbages that had gone to seed. A fruit tree, pear, Resnick thought, though he could never be sure, straggled up alongside the far wall. A pair of child’s trainers sat in the center of the room, stray items of clothing vied for space with comics and magazines. A small computer was set up on a table near the window, the cursor rhythmically blinking its green eye.

“I’m sorry,” Spurgeon said, “about the mess.”

Resnick negotiated space on an old Parker Knoll armchair, bought secondhand or someone’s hand-me-down. How seriously had they suffered financially when Spurgeon’s publishing venture had gone bust, he wondered, and were they still suffering from that? Financially and perhaps in other ways. Was this simply the house of two busy people with three children, never time to keep up? Or was this what it was like when things had unraveled beyond the point of care?

Spurgeon pushed a pile of publishers’ catalogs to one side and slumped onto a sagging two-seater settee. Resnick waited until he had looked at him and looked away, looked at him and then away.

Resnick wondered if Spurgeon could hear as well as he could those footsteps he assumed were Khan’s or Lynn’s upon the upstairs boards? No, Resnick almost allowed himself a smile, they would be Lynn’s; she would have been sure to have told Khan to make the tea.

And, yes, when the tea arrived, along with milk and sugar on an improvised tray, it was Khan who handed it round and, catching Resnick’s eye to see if he should go or stay, carried his own mug to the side of the room and sat on a straight-backed chair near the door.

“I … I don’t know,” Spurgeon said at last, “what it is you want me to say.”

“The truth,” Resnick replied.

“But about what?”

“Everything.”

Spurgeon tasted his tea, stirred in more sugar, left it alone.

“Mr. Spurgeon …”

“I’ve told you the truth.”

“About Jane? You didn’t know what had happened to her?”

“Of course not.”

“And you haven’t seen her in a long time?”

Spurgeon shook his head.

“How long? Fifteen years? Ten?”

“Ten, something like that. Ten. I can’t remember exactly.”

“What happened,” Resnick asked, “for you to stop seeing her?”

“I suppose we just drifted apart, you know how it is. And then, of course, I married Louise.”

“Your wife knew her, then?”

“No. They never met.”

“Strange then,” Resnick said mildly, “that she should react the way she did.”

For an instant, Spurgeon closed his eyes. “Louise used to say I talked about Jane all the time. She said I made comparisons, between the two of them. It preyed on her mind. I suppose that’s why, when she heard what had happened …”

Leaning forward, Resnick set his mug of tea aside. “There was no other reason for your wife to be jealous in this way?”

“I told you, I haven’t seen Jane …”

“In ten years.”

“That’s right.”

“Nor spoken to her.”

“No.”

“Mr. Spurgeon,” Resnick raised his voice a touch, shifting his weight back in the chair, “don’t you think it’s time we stopped all this?”

When Spurgeon spoke again, his voice was so quiet that both Resnick and Khan had to strain to hear. “When I first met Louise, I was still getting over Jane. I don’t think I even realized it at the time, but it was true. First love, I suppose that’s what you’d say. But I hadn’t kept in touch with her at all, didn’t know where she was, I never expected to as much as hear from her again. And then a couple of months after the wedding a card came. From Jane. I don’t know how she’d found out, but she had, and she sent this card, wishing me good luck. Congratulations. Of course, I should have shown it to Louise straight away, but I didn’t. Perhaps there was some kind of guilt, embarrassment, whatever.” Spurgeon was twisting his wedding ring round and round on his hand. “It’s so easy to get caught up in a lie.” He looked Resnick in the eye. “Louise found the card, almost a year later; I hadn’t thrown it away. She … the way she behaved was out of all proportion. And she hasn’t forgotten. Not even now.”

“Tell me,” Resnick said, “what was written on the card.”

Spurgeon looked away. “Congratulations and good luck, with all my fondest love, Jane.” He hesitated. “Then underneath she’d written, I wish it was me.”

“You didn’t reply?” Resnick asked.

Spurgeon shook his head. “I’d made my bed. And besides, there was no return address.”

“Until later.”