An Amateur Corpse (20 page)

‘Could I. speak to Geoffrey, please? It's Charles Paris.'

‘No, I'm sorry, he's not here.' She sounded near to tears.

‘Do you know when he's likely to be back? I've been to his office and I couldn't find him there.'

‘No, I've no idea. He's . . .' She stopped, leaving the word dramatically in the air. Charles was conscious of her acting instincts vying with genuine emotion.

‘Is he likely to be in this evening? Do you know?'

‘No. I don't. I –' Again she cut short, uncertain whether to confide more. Charles felt a new panic. Had Geoffrey done a bunk?

But Vee could not keep her secrets to herself. In the same way that she had confided Geoffrey's supposed infertility to Charles, she couldn't resist the dramatic and martyring implications of her latest piece of news. ‘Oh, what the hell. I might as well tell you. The whole country will no doubt know soon enough. Geoffrey's been arrested.'

‘Arrested?'

‘Yes, the police came round this morning before he left for work.'

Charles murmured some suitable words about how sorry he was and how sure he was that it would soon all be cleared up and how it must all be a ghastly mistake, but he had stopped thinking what he was saying. He concluded the conversation and then walked slowly, numbly, down to the Embankment.

He looked into the murky, swirling Thames. He tried to tell himself all kinds of other things, but ultimately he couldn't deny that he felt profoundly disappointed.

So that was it. The police must have been following his investigations in exact parallel. They must have worked out in just the same way how Geoffrey had contrived his alibi and managed to leave his room for the vital forty minutes.

Or no, perhaps he was flattering himself. The police had probably far outstripped his feeble investigations. They must have done. They wouldn't make an arrest without convincing evidence. He felt diminished and unnecessary.

He tried to argue himself out of this selfish mood. After all, what did it matter who had found the truth, so long as it had been revealed? Hugo could now go free, that was the main thing.

It didn't help. Depressingly he thought how little Hugo cared whether he was free or not. The release might well be a licence for him to commit suicide or, more slowly, drink himself to death.

Still, right had triumphed. He tried to feel glad about it.

With an effort he drew himself away from the river and started back to the station. Better ring Gerald and bring him up to date. Though if charges against his client were about to be dropped, he'd probably know already.

He didn't. He reacted strongly when Charles told him. But the reaction was not that of Gerald Venables the amateur sleuth; it was all solicitor. This new development changed circumstances for his client. He would get on to the Breckton police immediately.

‘Okay,' said Charles dismally. ‘Well. I'm going back to Hereford Road. So if there's any interesting development, just let me know.'

But he didn't really think any new development would concern him. He felt excluded, the one boy in the class without a party invitation.

He bought a new bottle of Bell's on the way back to Hereford Road. He was going to drink himself into a stupor. After the tension of the last week, this sudden anti-climax had let him down like a punctured air-bed.

The phone was ringing when he entered the house. He ran up to the landing and picked it up.

It was Gerald. Very cross. ‘Are you trying to make me look like a complete fool? I've just spoken to the Superintendent at Breckton. He must think I'm a bloody lunatic. And you're not the most popular person down at the station either.

‘Geoffrey Winter has been arrested, yes. But it has nothing to do with the Mecken murder at all. He's been arrested for stealing some jewellery from a couple called Hobbs.'

‘Oh my God.' Charles saw the bottom card being withdrawn from the great edifice he had built up.

‘So you were right, Charles. Geoffrey Winter did have something to hide about what he was doing last Monday night. But it wasn't what your fertile imagination gave him to do.'

‘But –'

‘And what's more – just for your information – I've heard about the postmortem. Charlotte Mecken was not pregnant.'

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

LIKE THE CAT
in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, Charles Paris continued running after the ground had crumbled away beneath his feet, before the inevitable realization and the windmill-armed plummeting descent to the depths.

Geoffrey Winter must be guilty of Charlotte's murder. All the motivation fitted; Charles couldn't start again the laborious reconstruction of emotion and opportunity with another subject. He refused to accept it.

But like the cat, he became increasingly aware that he was running on air. Whichever way he worked it, Geoffrey could not have committed both crimes on the Monday evening.

Unwilling to relinquish his theory, Charles went down to Breckton to time it all out again. He felt none of the elation of the previous day; as time passed he saw his logic falling apart.

He tried the trip from the Winters' house to the Meckens' via the Hobbses', he tried it the other way round, going to the Meckens' first, but there was just not enough time for anyone to have committed the two crimes.

Visiting the two houses added another five minutes to the round trip. Which left five or less for murder. Which was cutting it fine by the standards of the most experienced assassin. He tried adding the extra five minutes which he had reckoned Geoffrey would have left as a safety margin, but the sums still seemed pretty unlikely.

They seemed even unlikelier when he remembered that he had not allowed any time for the actual theft from the Hobbses' house. He had only timed the round trip of going past the house. If that were all that had been involved, the murder might have been possible. But even if Geoffrey knew the house well and knew exactly where Mary Hobbs kept her jewellery, it was still going to take him some time to break in, get through the house in the dark armed only with a torch and grab the loot. The absolute minimum was four minutes. In fact, considering the care with which Geoffrey had covered his tracks, it must have been six or eight.

Which left very little time to murder Charlotte Mecken.

Charles sat down on a bench on the common as it started to get dark. He was furious. There was no way it would work.

It wasn't just the timing. If Charlotte hadn't been pregnant, then none of his complex sequence of motivation worked either.

Depression took over. So everything was as obvious as it seemed. Hugo Mecken had killed his wife and Geoffrey Winter, in desperate financial straits because of his failing architect's business, had stolen some jewellery from the richest people he knew. The fact that the two incidents had taken place on the same evening had been mere coincidence.

The new turn of events changed his opinion of Geoffrey. While he had thought of the architect as Charlotte's murderer, he had had a kind of respect for him, for the cold blooded intellect that could plan such a crime. But now he knew that all that planning had been for a petty theft, a mean robbery from some supposed friends.

And Geoffrey's was not a great intellect. He had shown remarkable ineptitude in the execution of his crime, however clever the original conception of the cassette alibi. For a start, there had been his confused exit from the Hobbses' house when he saw Robert Chubb pass. Leaving his torch behind on the window sill was the real mark of the amateur.

The way he had been caught had been equally incompetent. Charles had heard it all from Gerald. The thief had gone along the jewellers' stands in the Portobello Road on the Saturday morning trying to sell his loot. One of the dealers had bought some and then, becoming suspicious, alerted the police. From a description and from some remarks Geoffrey had carelessly let slip to the stall-holder, they had had little difficulty in tracking the culprit down.

So Geoffrey was relegated to the status of a shabby sneak-thief and Charles had either to concede that Hugo had killed Charlotte or start investigating somebody else.

The only two people left who seemed to have had any emotional relationship with Charlotte were Clive Steele and Diccon Hudson. Clive was supposed to have been in Melton Mowbray auditing at the time of the murder and no doubt Diccon would have some equally solid alibi. Still, wearily Charles supposed he must try to get interested again and check their movements. But the spark had gone. Any further investigation was going to be just a chore.

Since he was down in Breckton, he might as well start with Clive Steele at the Backstagers. The Back Room opened at six. Just sit a little longer on the common to kill time.

‘Evening, sir. A bit dark to be out here, wouldn't you think?'

An Amateur Corpse 163

He looked up to. see the outline of the same policeman who had found him inside the Meckens' house the previous week.

‘Yes, I suppose it is dark.' While he had been wrapped up in his thoughts, it had changed from dusk to blackness.

‘You intending to sit there all night?'

‘No, I wasn't. I was just going.'

The policeman held his ground and watched Charles out of sight along the footpath towards the Backstagers. He obviously thought he was watching a potential rapist or, at the very least, a flasher.

Charles decided that, considering how low his stock stood with the Breckton police, any alternative murder solution he took to them was going to have to be backed up by absolutely incontrovertible evidence.

There was no sign of Clive Steele in the Back Room, nor of anyone else Charles knew until Denis Hobbs came in at about half-past six. He was his usual boisterous self, though there was a slight strain beneath the bonhomie.

He had come in for a quick one on his way home from work. Charles wondered if he needed his regular drink to fortify him to face the redoubtable Mary.

They got talking naturally and Charles bought drinks. Denis had a pint, Charles a large Bell's. After some social chit-chat, Charles said, ‘So you've got your man.'

Denis recoiled. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Your burglar.'

The builder's eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know about it?'

‘I know who's been arrested.'

Denis Hobbs looked at him steadily for a moment and then downed the remaining half of his beer. ‘We can't talk here. Come round to my place for a drink.'

Inside, the Hobbses' house was, decoratively, exactly what the mock-Tudor exterior with its brash stone lions would lead one to expect. The tone was set before you entered. A china plaque by the doorbell showed a little girl in a crinoline and a boy in a tasselled cap leaning forward to kiss over the legend ‘Denis and Mary live here'.

It must have been Mary's taste. The same eyes which had chosen her turquoise trouser suit and rainbow-coloured lamé slippers had certainly picked the jungle wallpaper. And the Raspberry Ripple carpet. And the green leather three-piece suite. And the miniature cluster of swords and axes tastefully set behind a red shield on the wall. And the three-foot-high china pony pulling a barrel. And the wrought iron drinks trolley with the frosted glass top and gold wheels. Denis was content to let her make decisions about such things. After all, she was the artistic one.

It was to the drinks trolley Denis went first. He poured a pink gin for his wife, a Scotch for Charles and got out a can of beer for himself. When he had poured it into his glass, he crushed the can in his huge paw. The metal flattened like tinfoil.

Mary's greeting to Charles was distinctly frosty. She had not forgotten his reservations about her Madame Arkadina.

But Denis cut through the atmosphere by saying, ‘He knows.'

‘What?'

‘About the burglary.'

‘Oh.' Mary looked downcast, as if rehearsing for a tragedy.

‘How did you find out?' asked Denis.

‘I spoke to Vee on the phone this morning. She told me.'

‘Damn. I hope she's not telling everyone.'

‘Why? What does it matter? Presumably everyone'll know when it comes up in court.'

‘If it does come up in court. I'm trying to see that it doesn't.'

‘I wouldn't have thought you stood much chance. I mean, if the police picked him up, they're going to bring charges.'

‘I don't know. I'm going to ask them not to proceed. I'm going to stand bail for him and try to keep it as quiet as possible.'

‘But why? I mean, there's no question as to whether he did it or not.'

‘No, he's' admitted it.'

‘Then why shouldn't he pay the price of his actions?'

‘Well, he's . . .' Denis was having difficulty in framing his thoughts (or his wife's thoughts) into words. ‘He's a friend.'

Mary took over. ‘It's terribly embarrassing. I mean, he's been in and out of our house so often. This place becomes a sort of Backstagers' annex when the Back Room closes – particularly when we've got a show on. Geoffrey's a very close friend.'

‘I can see it's embarrassing, but the fact remains that he has stolen your property.'

‘Yes, but people are so materialistic, Mr. Parrish. What's a bit of jewellery?' Mary sat surrounded by the fruits of middle class affluence as she posed this ingenuous query.

‘The thing is,' Denis contributed, ‘we didn't realize the financial state he was in. We could have helped, lent him some money or something, not driven him to this.'

‘Hardly driven. He did it of his own free will, presumably to get himself out of a spot.' Charles was bewildered by their reactions. Instead of being affronted and disgusted by Geoffrey's betrayal of their friendship, they were trying to justify his actions.

Mary gave Charles the patronizing smile of sainthood. ‘It may be difficult for you to understand, but we feel an enormous loyalty to Geoffrey. He is a wonderfully talented person and we just didn't understand the terrible time he had been going through. To steal from us was a terrible lapse, which I'm sure he's regretted bitterly, but it's only an expression of the dark side of his impulsive artistic temperament.'