20 THE TWO RINGS

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

A meeting and murders

“We were in the Cap and Gown for an evening when there were reports of a serious incident, or at least that’s what they called it,” said Sophia to Constance, “murder, they said, and the young Constable had to go immediately.”

She had met the librarian just as they entered her second pub of the evening, the Crab and Lobster. She recognised the elderly man who was talking to her friend because she had seen him in the library and he had taken one of her own books out. She hoped he hadn’t been too disappointed, but her target readership didn’t include the males of the species and least of all the elderly variety.

“Who’s we?” asked Constance, curiosity getting the better of her.

Sophia grinned at her. “Oh, a young and much too attractive police detective woman was with Jonny here and the new priest, for my sins, was with me,” she said as they shuffled to the bar in what was becoming quite a crowded pub, “first she got a call that she said she had to respond to, and then he did, to administer last rites or something to a victim of what sounded like a thoroughly nasty crime. The two of them vanished leaving Jonathan and me stranded without transport, so we took a taxi back into town before it got too busy and decided to pop in here rather than accept that our evening was totally ruined before it had actually begun.”

“Well, you can join me … us … if you like. Bernard was asking after your books,” smiled Constance.

The older man looked at Sophia with a mixture of shyness and curiosity on his face, then he lowered his eyes as if there was something really fascinating on the floor. “I don’t know how you do it,” he mumbled, “all those words...”

“Let’s get a drink first,” said Constance, finally reaching the bar, “and then I’ll try to tell you.”

The room was getting quite crowded, but they found a small round table with four stools squashed in around it, barely enough room for them. Bernard was still looking uncomfortable as he picked up his glass and took a long sip of foaming beer.

“Lovely,” he mumbled, carefully placing his pint glass on the table.

“What were you going to say earlier?” asked Sophia.

He looked uncomfortable, then glanced up. “It’s as if you were looking into our lives when you wrote that book,” he confessed, “me and my misses, I mean. She passed away, but that book I read brought it all back. The way she said she felt. The way I felt without saying it properly. It’s not so easy to say how you feel...”

Jonathan nodded. “I lost my wife quite recently,” he said, almost choking, “and there are so many things I never said to her. So much I wanted to say but couldn’t properly find the words, and then it was too late. You can’t tell an urn of ashes that you love her...”

“Steady, Jonny,” murmured Sophia.

“Mildred was the love of my life,” choked the man, still young enough to have expected a long life before him with Mildred. “And I don’t think she ever understood what she meant to me, not properly….”

“She did,” Sophia, “you can take it from me that she did. I suppose we women can hear things that aren’t being said out loud. Can read them in eyes, on faces, in the silence between words. But she knew, all right. Truthfully. She knew.”

“But it never goes away, that you could have said so much more,” mumbled Bernard. “And your books, Miss Stone, it’s the little things, isn’t it? That’s what love’s made of, isn’t it? Moments that go unmentioned, that sort of thing?”

“I’m no expert,” replied Sophia frankly, “I’ve never really had anyone of my own...”

“But the way you write!” exclaimed Bernard, “the words you use, the way your people think, you understand… I know you do!”

“I watch other people,” confessed Sophia, “I know what I see and try to put it into the lives of the people I invent! There is a lot of love in the world, you know. Rising above all the troubles and conflicts and doubts there’s love.”

“Even for old men?” asked Bernard, “because I feel lonely quite a lot, the misses being long gone.”

“But you’ll never replace her,” put in Jonathan, “I know I’ll never replace Mildred. I know that for certain.”

“Come on, this is all getting maudlin!” put in Constance, “don’t you think, the three of you, that there’s got to be time for joy without the baggage that love takes with it?”

Bernard shook his head. “It’s not baggage,” he said simply, “it’s … pure and clean and wholesome. She knows that...”

He indicated Sophia, who blushed.

oo0oo

Police Constable Pamela Smythe was washing her hands in a stranger’s bathroom sink. There had been too much blood, and she felt sickened by it.

The emergency had been a double murder, crimes of passion rather than hatred, she thought. Passion and confusion.

The first of the two corpses, Ben Aldrich, had lived alone for years, had grown old (he was now sixty-nine but looked ten years older) in his bungalow that he had always imagined sharing with someone one day before he died, someone he had met and fallen head over heels for. He hadn’t known who it would be until she knocked on the door. And then he knew, and every time she smiled at him his certainty grew.

She was spectacularly beautiful in a girl-next-door sort of way, and she called on him in the first place because there was a lot of publicity about old people being lonely, and she perceived him to be an old person who was lonely because he lived on his own. She could spend a few minutes each weeks, she decided, to do the right thing in a world that largely wasn’t bothered.

She was Angela Carter, a nineteen year old student with all the best intentions that youth and beauty can give a young woman, and she knew she was good for the elderly man she was befriending. She could see it in his eyes, interpreting his expressions as gratitude for the time she offered him.

She called on him about once a week and stayed for maybe an hour, and she always dressed well because, after visiting him, her intention was going out with her boyfriend of two or three years. They were a definite item and often went socialising with friends, at a club where there was both excessively loud music and dancing. So she wore pretty, often almost revealing, things: short dresses and shorter skirts, left her legs bare and paid special attention to her hair, which was long and worn in a long luxurious wave over one shoulder.

“It’s been a mess, this one,” grunted Inspector Craddock, pushing past her to the sink and starting to wash his own hands.

“He was old and she was young,” sighed Pamela, “but what went wrong?”

“I’ve just been with her boyfriend. Or should I say fiancé. The poor lad’s fair cut up and will need counselling, or I’m a Dutchman. He only proposed to her yesterday, bought her a ring and all, and they were all set for a good life together. He’s a bright lad, a good worker, they say, and sensible to the point of almost being unnatural!”

“And tonight she told the old fool that she was befriending, expecting him to be pleased for her, but instead all the fantasies in his mind exploded into ball of rage when he saw her love was for someone else,” said Pamela. “I get the picture, sir. He had knifed her before he had time to think.”

“Straight in her heart. She didn’t have a moment to regret wor wish things were different… And then he turned his blade onto himself,” nodded the Inspector, “I’ve never seen anything like it, so vicious, so insane!”

“But can you imagine it, sir? Stabbing yourself with so much violence that you’re dead within moments? I mean, yourself? The medics said they were both dead when they got there.”

“She had two men crazy about her,” grunted the Inspector, “and only thought she had one. Poor thing! To her Aldrich was no more than a lonely old soul who she tried to help, but he saw things very differently. He had plans too, plans of his own … he’d also got a ring for her, a cheap one but it meant the world to him. The neighbours say that Aldrich often talked about her as if they were betrothed, and showed off that ring as if being with her for more than an hour a week was a proof of eternal and never-ending devotion. They thought it was sick, that he was deluded, but he didn’t. To him she was the wife he’d never had but would soon, with his ring on her finger. And it’s all so bloody sad!”