An Expert in Murder (29 page)

‘
For I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before
me
,’ he whispered, anxious to find some comfort in the familiar words before he left the church. ‘
I will declare mine iniquity; I will
be sorry for my sin.
’

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Thirteen

As Penrose left the interview room and walked out to the Derby Street entrance of the Yard, where a car had been brought round for him, he could barely contain his anger. Lydia Beaumont had telephoned with a message about Hedley White but the officer who had taken the call had been so keen to go off duty that he had forgotten to mention it to the day shift, and the news only filtered through when the man posted at White’s digs called to see why no back-up had arrived. The mistake could have been disastrous: nearly three hours had passed, and that was more than enough time for a frightened boy to have changed his mind. Penrose cursed the errant constable and, less reasonably, Lydia for not having insisted on speaking to him herself. She must have known how important it was.

‘At least tell me it was Bravo,’ he muttered to Fallowfield. ‘I’d rather have two cock-ups from one idiot than feel like the whole force is turning a blind eye to murderers and felons. Any more of this and I’ll think Bravo and White are in it together.’

‘If it’ll make you feel better, Sir, I’m sure it was Bravo. Shall I drive?’

Penrose was about to retort that they had enough trouble already without throwing a road accident into the mess when he remembered how proud his sergeant was of his driving.

Reluctantly, he took the passenger side and tried to concentrate on White. Why had he decided to give himself up, he wondered? Of course, he wasn’t to know that the police were nowhere near catching him and he might have thought things would look better for him if he handed himself over first but, even so, it took courage, whether he was innocent or guilty. He tried to fit White 203

into the story of Arthur’s death. Obviously he was far too young to have been involved in the war, but he could be a relative of the murderer. A son might kill to protect his father, for example – such a motive might even pass Marta Fox’s rigorous criteria – but that was pure speculation. In fact, although he had looked at the deaths again from every angle since his conversation with Josephine, he had to admit that everything was pure speculation.

Sunday morning was an uncluttered time for the city and Fallowfield kept to the main thoroughfares. He had suggested that they send a team to bring White in while he and the Inspector continued with McCracken, but Penrose had been keen to see the boy in his digs, to get a sense of his personality from where he lived.

And, in truth, Penrose had wanted to do the job himself; he readily acknowledged that he had a problem with delegation which might one day impede his progress up the force, but he would not be happy until he had White sitting in front of him.

The street was unattractive, a long stretch of dignified but tired bricks and mortar given over almost entirely to boarding houses, and uniformly faded. The door to Number Three was standing slightly ajar, and Penrose and Fallowfield climbed the stairs to the attic rooms which White apparently shared with Swinburne. As he looked back down the stairwell, Penrose saw that they were being watched through a crack of one of the doors on the second-floor landing – a crack which was hurriedly closed when the observer realised he had been spotted. This might not be the most glamorous part of town, but it was still an area unaccustomed to visits by high-ranking policemen; the residents must be wondering what evil lurked unsuspected in their midst.

PC Bartlett was standing outside the room on the left-hand side of the stairs and Penrose could see past him through the open doorway to where his quarry sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. White stood up as soon as he heard them come in and held out his hand half-heartedly, as if uncertain whether it would be grasped in a formal handshake or cuffed to the iron bedstead.

Penrose did neither, but simply nodded politely and asked him to resume his place on the bed, then looked round for another seat.

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Finding his options somewhat limited, he took a battered old chair with rush seating from the corner of the room and placed it just close enough to the boy to be intimidating rather than threatening.

Fallowfield remained standing at the door.

The room was chilly, but not without comfort. Two of the walls were decorated with theatrical posters of recent productions – presumably those on which White had worked at Wyndham’s and the New – and the monastic austerity of the single bed had been softened by a couple of cushions and a piece of dark red fabric which served as a cover. The small bedside table held an alarm clock and a photograph, and Penrose was momentarily taken aback to see Elspeth so suddenly and unexpectedly brought to life. The picture showed her standing with White outside the New Theatre, next to the ‘House Full’ sign, and triumphantly waving two tickets at the camera. It was a moment of unreserved happiness and it brought the tragedy of her death home to him more starkly even than the murder scene or the Simmonses’ grief. Next to the photograph, a handful of picture postcards from some of London’s tourist attractions had been propped against a water jug full of flowers, and Penrose was relieved at last to find someone whose pocket preferred daffodils to irises; he was beginning to find the more majestic flower a little oppressive. He wondered if the neat domesticity of the room was habitual, or if a special effort had been made for this weekend.

White followed his gaze and anticipated the question before it was asked. ‘I got those for Elspeth on Friday,’ he said. ‘I thought she could look through the postcards and choose where she wanted to go on Sunday, then we could save the rest for another time. And the daffodils – well, if she did happen to come back here, I wanted it to be nice for her.’

Penrose looked round the room again and, with a stab of nostalgia, recognised all the signs of someone hoping to take his first tentative steps towards a physical relationship. The flowers, the window open to air the small space, the best clothes hung ready complete with carefully darned socks – all were part of a universal language spoken by young men regardless of class and geography.

Hedley had left nothing to chance. The gas ring on the floor – a typ-205

ical feature of rented accommodation – held a kettle, and two mugs had been placed next to it, not matching but brightly coloured and welcoming; there was an alternative to tea, too, in the form of a bottle of Guinness and a pair of tumblers, and Penrose was sure that if he were to move a little closer to the bed he would be able to catch the optimistic scent of freshly laundered sheets.

These first impressions of Hedley White were both an affirmation of what he had expected, and a surprise. He had thought of him as a frightened boy and fear was certainly written all over his face – fear, and the relief which Penrose often saw in people who had decided to confront the worst thing that could happen to them. But he had not anticipated someone quite as out of the ordinary as the young man in front of him. Hedley was remarkably good-looking, with the broad shoulders and narrow hips of an athlete and an open, spirited face which was devoid of all vanity and all the more handsome for that. If Penrose didn’t steer clear of such adjectives when questioning a suspect, he would have said it was an honest face. There was a strength, too, behind the fear, a resolve in his eyes to stick to the course he had chosen no matter what; whether that was to White’s credit or not, Penrose hoped now to find out. ‘Was Elspeth fond of daffodils?’ he asked.

For a moment, White seemed to think that Penrose was mocking him. When he realised it was a serious question, he just looked bewildered. ‘She liked all sorts of flowers.’

‘But no particular favourites?’

‘Not that I know of. She talked about rose bushes in her garden at home, but I’ve bought her violets and snowdrops as well as daffodils, and she said she liked them all.’

‘Why did you run away, Hedley? You must have known how that would look.’

‘Because I was scared,’ he said with disarming simplicity. ‘The papers were calling it a crime of passion, so I knew you’d be looking for me and I knew you’d think I killed Elspeth. Haven’t you ever been so frightened that you just wanted to get as far away as possible, even though you had nothing to hide?’

It was a rhetorical question, although Penrose could have cited 206

several salient examples. ‘When did you find out that Elspeth had been killed?’ he asked.

‘During the matinee. I didn’t know straight away that it was Elspeth but everyone backstage was talking about what had happened at King’s Cross the night before and how it was connected to the play. Then after the show I saw a newspaper in the Green Room. It didn’t give any names or a description or anything, but it said a young girl had been killed and the time, and I just knew it had to be her. I left the theatre at about five o’clock and went to a telephone box, and I kept telephoning her aunt and uncle, hoping they’d say she was with them and all right, but there was no answer. That confirmed something was wrong. They’d never leave the shop on a Saturday.’

‘So why did you go to the theatre last night?’

‘Because of the Boat Race.’ Penrose looked confused, so Hedley continued. ‘I suddenly thought that might be why no one was at home. Elspeth had mentioned it in one of her letters – they always go if she’s there because they live so close to the river, and I thought they might have stayed on to join in the celebrations after the race. So I waited outside the theatre in case it had all been some horrible mistake, hoping she’d turn up just like we’d arranged. I suppose I knew in my heart it was no good, but I so desperately wanted there to be another explanation.’

‘What arrangements had you made for the weekend?’

‘We were going to meet at the theatre, an hour or so before the show so we’d have time for a drink. Afterwards, we were going to have dinner at the Lyons on Shaftesbury Avenue. Her uncle works for them and he put in a good word for us. The staff there love Frank, so we knew we’d get a good deal.’

‘And afterwards?’

Penrose could see that imagining how the weekend should have gone was painful for Hedley, but the boy was making a big effort to hold himself together and he carried on. ‘I would have taken her home. On Sunday, we were going to go out for the day but we hadn’t made any definite plans. We thought we’d see what the weather was like.’

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‘How long did you stay at the theatre on Saturday night?’

‘We’d agreed to meet out the front, so I waited across the road.

I got there at about a quarter past six, I suppose – Elspeth was always early because she’d get so excited, so I didn’t want to miss her. I stayed until the house had gone in and they started to turn the queues away. By that time, I couldn’t pretend any more. I knew she wasn’t coming, and that I wouldn’t need the tickets, so I sold them.’

‘Where did you go after that?’

‘I walked about for a long time – it must have been hours. I couldn’t come home because I knew you’d look for me here, so I went in the opposite direction, round all the parks, and ended up at Paddington. I thought about getting a train and making a run for it.’

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t know where to go, or what I’d do when I got there. The only person I could think of who would help me was Miss Beaumont, so I telephoned her and she told me to come here. She said if I didn’t, I’d be wasting your time when you should be trying to find the person who did this to Elspeth.’

Clever, thought Penrose, or true. ‘If you were so excited about the weekend, why didn’t you meet her at the station on Friday night? You would have had time before work, even if it was just a quick hello. She must have been looking forward to seeing you.’

‘Yes, but her Uncle Frank always met her. She brought loads of luggage down with her which needed his van, and anyway, I liked to give her time to settle in with her family. I didn’t want to get in the way, so I went for a drink with a friend before work. Rafe Swinburne – he lives across the landing and he’s on at Wyndham’s, so we often go in together. We arrived in town at six o’clock, had a beer or two upstairs at the Duncannon, and left there in plenty of time to get to work. You can check with him if you like. He’ll probably be home soon.’

‘We’ll do that,’ Penrose said. The alibi had been offered very readily, he thought, and with more detail than was natural. He didn’t yet know what to make of Hedley White. He was certain 208

the boy was lying about Friday evening but, if he was capable of killing at all, Penrose doubted that he could do so in such a cold and calculating way. In the heat of the moment, perhaps, but not with the careful planning that both murders had required. Then again, he remembered what Frank Simmons had said about Elspeth’s travel plans.

‘I understand that Elspeth wasn’t supposed to come down until after the weekend, but you brought her visit forward and sent her the train ticket?’

‘Yes, although I didn’t buy it, of course. I could never have afforded first class. It was a special treat for her. Mr Aubrey helped me sort it out. He knew how much Elspeth loved the play because I’d told him, and he was making arrangements for Miss Tey to come down for the final week, so he suggested getting Elspeth booked on the same train. It was supposed to be a lovely start to the weekend. Mr Aubrey thought it would mean a lot to her to meet her favourite author, and he fixed the seats so they were bound to bump into each other and get talking. Elspeth always found it easy to talk to people – it was one of the things I loved about her.’

So Josephine’s encounter with Elspeth had been carefully orchestrated after all. He had never entirely believed in the coincidental meeting, in spite of Josephine’s reassurances, and, significantly, the hand behind it all was Bernard Aubrey’s. But was it important to the crime that the two had met? Would Elspeth still have been killed if Josephine had not been on the train? There was no doubt that the murders were linked, but how could Josephine have any part to play in Aubrey’s past? Whether the explanation was innocent or not, he wished fervently that Aubrey hadn’t decided to involve Josephine in something that had ended so trag-ically, no matter how kind his intentions had been towards Elspeth.