Farewell to the Dancing Man Ch. 25-29

"There were two reasons initially. The first was that I didn't know. Before he left he told me that he had booked to return in one month, but could vary that date if necessary. He told me not to be surprised if he stayed longer in England and the Continent. The second reason was, after he hadn't made contact in over two months I asked his wife if she knew where he was and she said that she didn't. I asked her if we shouldn't report it to the police and she said 'non', so I didn't. I was sure that she must have had her reasons for not wanting the police to look into it."

"I have interviewed the late Mr Thomas' widow and I feel that even then any reason that she might have had may not have been very rational."

"She did say that there was some form of legal reason why she didn't want his disappearance made public. I got the impression that, as a director in the company, any adverse publicity could focus attention on the business at a time that would not be of benefit to its profitability. She stood to lose a considerable amount of money if anything happened to the business because it was very much her money that financed it in the first place. I don't think that she had been insisting on him repaying the loan. She also said something about a will."

"So you took over the running of the business? In what capacity?"

"Officially I was the Manager. Unofficially I was the Managing Director until I bought the business, and then I became officially the Managing Director."

"And you took over all of his duties, did you get friendly with Mrs Thomas?"

"You've seen her and yet you still ask that question?"

"What I've seen doesn't give me any idea of what she was like twenty years ago. The years and the strain have taken their toll. What was that you said before about a will?"

"It seems that he changed his will and was only leaving a small percentage of his assets to her with the bulk of it going to Judy Pearson."

"So she knew about them?"

"Pretty hard for her not to have known, he was playing her for all he was worth. I guess he felt that if he was to divorce his wife he should at least have someone that looked good as well as having a reasonable amount of money. Judy Pear4son filled the bill on both scores."

"I wasn't aware that Judy Pearson had any money."

"Well she didn't, but her husband did and the way they had it planned was that she would stick him for as much as she could get out of him. From what I heard he would have paid up big if she asked for it. I also heard that she had a separate bank account and for some time had been siphoning money from the housekeeping and depositing it in that account."

"Did he mention her daughter at all?"

"Yes. He was having an affair with both of them at the same time. He said that she was pretty hot. I took her out once but she seemed like a cold fish to me so I ended up dumping her for someone else that night."

"You were aware that she'd only just turned eighteen when he was having his affair with her?"

"Was she really?" His answered sounded as unconvincing as if he was talking about one of the cars in the lot. "She looked a lot older than that."

"She doesn't look her age now, she looks younger."

"You've seen her recently?"

"Yes. You've heard about the skeleton that was found in the septic tank at Wahroonga recently?"

"Yes. You don't mean? No, not after all of these years."

"Well, we have very strong evidence that the body is that of Paul Thomas, your former associate. Not only that but the present owner of the property is none other than the former, very mature for her age, Cynthia Pearson. What do you think of that?"

"Do you mean she is still living in the same house?"

"Yes. Her father sold it to pay the divorce settlement and several years ago, in the middle of the property slump it came onto the market and her husband bought it."

"I went to a party there."

"When was that?"

"It was not long before he left. It wasn't a party as such, it was a sort of flow-on from the Annual Tennis Club dinner dance and trophy presentation."

"Did anything happen that night that was unusual?"

"Nothing that I can remember apart from the fact that Cynthia gave me the cold shoulder so I left with someone else."

"You couldn't very well leave with her could you?"

"No, but she could have been a little more friendly, there were plenty of opportunities for us to become more than just good friends."

"It would seem to me that you were lucky that your plans didn't work out."

"I suppose so although I didn't think that at the time, I was pissed off."

"Were there any arguments between Mr Pearson and either his wife or Paul?"

"Not that I can remember although there was a bit of trouble when he switched on the pool lights."

"Why should that have been a problem?"

"There were several couples swimming in the nude at the time."

"And I suppose that Paul Thomas and Judy Pearson were among them?"

"Now that you mention it, yes they were."

"This could be the break that I've been looking for."

"You don't think that he could be responsible do you?"

"If she wasn't directly responsible for it I bet that Cynthia Swain knows a lot more about this than she is letting on. Thank you very much for your time."

The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were slowly falling in to place. There was every possibility that Paul Thomas had been killed for having an affair with either or both of the Pearson women. I would surmise from the evidence that Cynthia's father was the most likely suspect, but I'm still convinced that she knows more than she's letting on. My plan now is to gather as much evidence as I can and confront her with it in the hope that she will break down and implicate herself.

My next port of call was the current secretary of the tennis club to see if there is still a list of members for the year in question.

I came away with a list of thirty women's and twenty six men's names. The men were relatively easy to trace, I checked through the electoral rolls until I had the address of sixteen of them. The single women were a different kettle of fish entirely. I had to start with the Registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages again to trace the married names of as many of them as I could. By the end of the day I had twenty eight people to call on over the next few days. It was time for a couple of beers before going home to bed.

In the hotel I bumped into a woman that I had been with a couple of months ago. She sat next to me at the bar and we started talking and by closing time she had invited me to her flat for a night cap. I was onto a sure thing and from memory she just might be able to get my mind away from Cynthia. She handed me her keys as we walked along the corridor from the lifts, in doing so her hand held mine until we reached the door. I opened it and held it for her to go in, she had other ideas and her arms snaked around my neck and she kissed on the lips. "I thought that you'd forgotten all about me."

"How could I forget someone like you?"

"I was beginning to wonder about that, it's been three months, one week and four days, but who's counting. I was good for you wasn't I?"

"Of course you were. It's just that I've been very busy lately."

"Solving all of those nasty crimes around the place."

"Of course."

"A regular little sleuth aren't you, what are you working on at the moment?"

"You know very well that I can't discuss any details of cases that I'm working on. I could prejudice weeks of sensitive investigations."

"I just bet that it's the skeleton in the septic tank case."

"I can neither confirm nor deny that."

"I bet that I can make you."

"How?" By this time we were seated on her bed and she was still working on me, she had the buttons of my shirt undone to the waist and she was rubbing her hands softly over my chest. "I have my ways." She kissed me hard on the lips, I would have returned the kiss but my heart just wasn't in it. "Come on lover, what's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Your mind is a thousand miles away, what are you thinking about? It certainly isn't me or us."

"I can't tell you. If you keep this up I'll get up and walk out."

"If you don't put some effort into it you might just as well go now."

"Okay." I stood up to leave.

"I was only joking." Her voice had taken on a pleading tome and it was then that I remembered why I had dumped her before. She was average in bed but she just wouldn't stop whining, well hardly ever, before lovemaking, after lovemaking, it was whinge, whinge, whinge, it was only during lovemaking that she stopped and I just didn't have the stamina to keep her quiet for any length of time. I wasn't prepared to put up with that all over again so I left. Even after the door had been slammed shut behind me I could still hear her carrying on.

Trying to piece together the last days in the life of Paul Thomas was proving to be a long drawn out process. The first man on the list remembered nothing of him other than change room talk about how he had made love to just about every woman in the club and how Judy Pearson seemed to have lasted longer than most. Other than that he remembered nothing. He hadn't attended the dinner dance that night so wasn't a guest at the Pearson's afterwards.

It was well into the next day before I found someone who was at the party. I was still working my way through the men without a lot of success until I spoke to John Farrow. Farrow was now a successful businessman and insisted that anything he said was only to be used as a last resort. "Paul Thomas had everything going for him, good looks, a talented natural athlete, women found him irresistible and he used that to his advantage. He was never short of female companionship. On the night of the dinner dance he and Judy Pearson were getting pretty involved which confirmed the rumour that had been going around the club that they were having an affair. Little was said among the other guests at the Pearson's post dinner party and one got the impression that everyone else was waiting for something to happen or something to be said, after all they were being obvious about it. The only indication that her husband had even noticed was when he turned on the pool lights while we were skinny dipping. She was furious and we all beat a hasty retreat before anything heavier happened."

"Did Thomas leave with the rest of you?"

"Yes. It was as if he was avoiding a confrontation. I was one of the last to leave and up until then nothing had been said about it."

I left him with doubts in my mind about Cynthia's father. He had been playing it pretty close to the chest. Did he feel strongly about it to kill Paul Thomas? At this stage I would have to answer that with a qualified 'no'.

The first of the women on my list that I spoke to was reticent about speaking to me for a different reason, she had been one of his lovers and, as she was married at the time, she didn't want her husband to know. "My husband was a member of the club as well and knew nothing of the affair, if you could not mention it because it wasn't really a full blown affair as affairs go, more like a short indiscretion and I want to keep it that way. I want nothing to happen at this time that would jeopardise my marriage."

"Whatever you tell me will be kept in the strictest confidence and only used if absolutely necessary and then only after getting your permission."

"Do you think that it'll be necessary?"

"Probably not. I don't think that we will ever be able to prove anything one way or the other against any particular person. Now what can you tell me about the Pearson family?"

"Where would you like me to start?"

"Wherever you like." "In a lot of ways I was jealous of Judy Pearson."

"How come?"

"Well there she was with a great husband, a comfortable house and she was having affair after affair. He was one of the most patient men I have ever met."

"Did you know about the affair she was having with Paul Thomas?"

"Who didn't? Even her husband must have known about it. I got the impression that he was waiting for it to blow over like the others. It didn't seem as if it would. The only friction in the family was after she found out that Paul was having a fling with their daughter. What was her name now? That's it, Cynthia. I don't think the husband knew about the daughter or he might have done something about it. They were close, Cynthia and her father, she was much closer to him than she was to her mother."

"Did anybody else know about it?"

"Jean Thomas must have known about it. I think he used to taunt her with his successes. He had absolutely no compunction about paying attention to his current lover even while she was around. There were some very tense Saturday afternoon tennis matches, I don't know why she never got rid of him, after all it must have hurt her deeply to see him carrying on like that. Hey! That's a thought! Maybe she's the person that you should be looking at."

That was indeed a thought, but one that I had to dismiss for a number of reasons. Even if she had done it, how did the body get into the septic tank? Was she in league with Pearson? I think not, even if they did work together, I doubt if she could have maintained her silence for so long.

Also, if it were possible for her to have done it, getting a prosecution now would be impossible due to her unbalanced mental state. We would have a great deal of difficulty convincing a jury of her reliability.

"Were you at the Tennis Club dinner dance that year?"

"Yes, my husband and I were also at the Pearson's after the dance."

"Do you remember any incident that might have prompted someone to kill Paul Thomas?"

"There was the incident when he switched on the pool lights. The air was pretty tense about then, but nothing much was said apart from a few protests about the lights. The party broke up soon after."

"Were you one of the people skinny dipping?"

"Is this important?"

"Not really, just searching for reactions from other people."

"Yes I was, and my husband was with me. I think he was sort of relieved because he only did it after I pleaded with him not to be so straight laced. He was one of the first dressed after the lights went on."

"Were you also one of the first to leave?"

"Yes, and we had words on the way home in the car. He protested that he had never been so humiliated in his life and it was only after I convinced him that he was as well endowed as the other men that he let up on me."

"So you didn't recall any incident involving Paul Thomas and Pearson?"

"No. One thing I did notice was that Paul and Judy seemed to spend more time together after that night."

"How long was it between the dinner dance and when she left for England?"

"A couple of weeks, I thought it strange at the time that they should be seeing each other as much if she was going away. It wasn't until after she had gone that I heard the rumours that he was going to meet her and that she was planning to file for divorce as soon as possible after she got there."

"Did you hear anything about his filing for divorce?"

"No, I assumed that he would, but there was no mention of it at the time."

"Was anything said when neither of them returned?"

"No. We all assumed that the rumours were true. His wife acted as if nothing had happened. I do remember that her husband seemed quite devastated by the whole thing and Cynthia left the club. I also heard that she dropped out of school to become his housekeeper for a while. After that the house was sold and I lost track of them."

"Would it surprise you to know that she is back in the same house?"

"No! Really? I would never go back to a house that had so many bad memories for me, unless. . ."

"Unless what?"

"Nothing, just a thought."

"Tell me, it might be important."

"It's just that . . . how better to keep an eye on the place than to move back in? There's something else."

"What?"

"Why was it that the Swains were the last house in the street to have the sewer connected? The mains had been laid for months before they were connected and it can't have been for financial reasons, they are very well off financially."

I left her with several trains of thought spinning around in my mind. There were now many more questions that needed to be answered. I rang the Water Board inspector for that area to find out if the Swains were the last to have the sewer connected.

"Yes. We had to serve notice on them to have it done. They initially wanted to retain the septic system and pay the sewer rates but we wouldn't have that even though they had one of the very first single chamber septic tanks in Sydney and it was efficient, you see the reason that we spent so much money installing the sewer mains was because of poor absorption. I concede that there were no indications that they ever had any problems with their system, we just couldn't allow them to retain the septic."

"Was there anything else unusual about the connection?"

"No, once it started it was pretty straight forward until the police stopped progress, except, yes that was interesting, Mrs Swain asked if the tank could be retained. She thought that it would be a good container to make liquid manure for the garden."

"What was wrong with that idea?"

"Two things, one was that we insisted on all septic tanks being pumped out and the waste disposed of properly and the tank removed, and secondly, it struck me as strange given that the garden didn't look as if it needed all that much fertilizer to maintain it."

"You said that tanks had to be pumped out and the waste disposed of properly, the plumbers were pumping it directly down the sewer, is that the correct method of disposal?"

"No, but it is one that we put up with. We didn't like it because the six inch mains that we had installed weren't built to cope with that sort of volume. The other pipes on that branch main had the potential to back up while that was happening."

"You did nothing about it?"

"We didn't bother all that much about it. We couldn't be there all the time you know, and once the final inspection was completed we only went back after about three months to make sure that the grounds restoration was carried out in the approved manner. These particular men were reliable, so I didn't see much point in hanging around once I'd given the clearance to fill in."

I went back to Nigel Thornton. "After the dinner dance did Paul see much of Judy Pearson?"

"She was here all the time, the spent most of their days together."

"Did he mention anything to you about getting a divorce from his wife?"

"No, actually he told me once that he could never do that. We all thought that it was possibly that he had too much to lose by divorcing her."

"Earlier you said that he planned to marry Judy Pearson after her divorce."

"He did mention once or twice that if he were ever to marry another woman it would have to be someone like her because she had everything he was looking for and needed."

"You mean looks, passion and money?"

"Yes but not in that order, money was the most important as far as he was concerned, she could have been the most fabulously attractive nymphomaniac but, unless she had enough money to allow him to buy Jean out of her share of the business, she would be useless to him."

"You got the business at a very reasonable price, couldn't he expect a similar deal?"

"Hell no! As far as he's concerned if she sold to him it would be at a high price, sort of 'think of a number and double it' figure. As for the deal she did with me, part of it was a payment for fronting the business until he was declared legally dead, and partly because I didn't cross her in any way. Hell hath no fury like Jean Thomas scorned."

"Do you think she could have killed him?"

"With her anything is possible, I've seen her throw a huge tantrum over a trivial matter and then shrug off something major. Unpredictable would be the best way to describe her."