Shallow Grave (38 page)

‘Being a regular visitor she goes to the back door rather than the front, knowing that the front door sticks, and in doing so must pass Cyril Dacre’s window. Miss Rogan says he takes a keen interest in all comings and goings – suggested that’s why he won’t get the front door fixed. I think he saw her pass the window, and was suddenly overcome with the irresistible desire to get rid of this ghastly woman for good. Maybe he was
in pain; maybe she waved cheerily as she passed, or blew him a kiss—’

‘Whatever. You’re winning so far,’ Atherton said.

‘Frances Hammond is in the kitchen,’ Slider continued. ‘Coming from the direction of the footpath, Jennifer doesn’t pass the kitchen window, so Mrs Hammond doesn’t know she’s there. Dacre whizzes out in his chair and intercepts Jennifer at the back door. He invites her into the drawing-room, and offers her a drink.’

‘Which she accepts because—?’

‘Why wouldn’t she? She knows him – why should she refuse? She’s been drinking all evening. She likes drink. She likes men’s company, even an old man like Cyril. He can be charming when he wants to, and he was celebrated in his heyday; and he’s still, presumably, rich. We know she liked rich and eminent people. We also know she was always trying to get in with the Dacre set. She’d probably feel flattered if he showed her attention: I imagine he didn’t usually.’

‘All right,’ Atherton said grudgingly. ‘It plays.’

‘Like Broadway,’ Slider said sternly. He went on, ‘It’s late and Cyril was about to take a Rohypnol tablet to give himself a night’s rest. He slips it instead into Jennifer’s whisky or whatever, and chats charmingly until she suddenly goes blah. Now that she’s helpless, even in his – putatively – weak state he has no difficulty in smothering her with a cushion.’

‘I’ll give you this,’ Atherton said. ‘It makes sense of the drug angle. In his weakened state, he’d need to drug her to be able to smother her, whereas if Eddie – or any other red-blooded male in the throes of sexual jealousy – killed her, you’d expect him to do it on impulse and overcome her with his physical strength. Drugging and smothering is much more like an old man’s murder – a calculating, clever old man’s murder.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Slider said unhappily.

‘But what about the dog? If the dog’s the key to your theory, do you think it’s going to sit by quietly while the murdering goes on?’

‘There would be no violence, no struggle. No sound, even. Unless the dog’s tuned to alpha waves, it wouldn’t even know she’d died. And Dacre’s the one person who can shut it up with a glance or a word.’

‘I suppose it might not even have been with him at that point. It might have been in the kitchen with Mrs Hammond. Although then you’d have expected it to bark when Jennifer arrived, and alert Mrs H.’

‘Dacre usually kept the dog with him. But I’ll come back to that. It’s later that night that his influence over it becomes crucial,’ Slider said, ‘because he’s got to move the body out to the terrace. That’s what I keep coming back to. If the dog had barked in the night, Mrs Hammond would have heard it, because she sleeps over the kitchen and she’s a light sleeper. If it didn’t bark, it could only be because the person moving around was Cyril Dacre.’

‘It’s persuasive,’ Atherton said. ‘All right, retouching the makeup: what was all that about?’

‘A ghastly joke, that’s all I can think of.’

‘I suppose whoever did that would have had to be either thick and earnest, or clever enough to have a diabolical sense of humour and a contempt for his fellow man. This seems to be going quite well, you know. But to go back a step: after the drugging and smothering, there he is with a body in the drawing-room. What’s he going to do with it? Wouldn’t he have to hide it temporarily in case Frances comes in?’

‘I had a thought about that,’ Slider said, even more unhappily.

‘Tell.’

‘When Rohypnol first starts to take effect, the victim becomes mentally helpless, but she still has some ability to move, though slowly and in an uncoordinated way. She can still walk, with assistance – like a drunk.’

‘I don’t like what you’re thinking,’ Atherton said.

‘I don’t like it more than you don’t. But suppose Dacre makes her get up and walk to wherever he means to hide her, and smothers her there?’

‘Where?’

‘What about the dining-room – his study, whatever you want to call it? I doubt whether Mrs Hammond would go in there at that time of night – if at all, without reason. We know the body was left in a sitting position. Suppose he walked her to the next room, sat her on a chair, and smothered her there. That would avoid exciting the dog, which he left in the drawing-room. And
then he tied the body to the chair as it was to stop it falling to the floor.’

‘Why would he want to do that?’

‘Because it would make her easier for him to pick her up later. He might not have the strength to get her up off the floor, but from a sitting position he could get her over his shoulder – or hoist her into his wheelchair and push her to the terrace.’

Atherton now looked unpleasantly disturbed. ‘You’re making this sound too reasonable. I don’t like it. It’s nasty.’ He thought. ‘Why did he put her in the trench, anyway?’

‘Again, diabolical sense of humour plus contempt of fellow man. Or perhaps he felt Eddie ought to have controlled Jennifer better, and wanted to punish him too. I don’t know. It’s only a theory.’ The last words had something of plea in them, as if he wanted Atherton to produce some serious flaw for him.

But Atherton only said, ‘Yes, and what do you propose to do about it?’

Slider spread his hands helplessly. ‘I can’t think of anything
to
do, apart from putting it to Cyril Dacre and seeing how he reacts.’

‘Phew! Sooner you than me.’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

Atherton’s eyes widened. ‘What – now? Me and you – go in there? But I’m a young man! I haven’t lived!’

‘If he were a younger man, or a well man, we might ask him to come into the factory, and work on him, soften him up over a period of time. But we can’t do that. And I don’t see that we can do nothing, now that we know she went there late that night. That’s the last known sighting of her – and neither of them mentioned it.’

Atherton shrugged. ‘Well, that’s legit at least. Okay, guv, let’s get it over with, then.’

Dacre was in his study, at his desk, which faced the side window, looking onto the gravelled area. Slider and Atherton stopped in front of the window. He seemed to be staring at them, but gave no reaction: so unmoving was his face that for a shaky moment Slider thought perhaps he had died with his eyes open and hadn’t been discovered yet. But then Dacre’s focus changed, and Slider realised he hadn’t been staring at
them, but at nothing. Now he registered their presence and made a resigned yes-all-right-come-in gesture to Slider’s mimed request.

The back door and the lobby door were both open, and when they stepped through into the hall, Dacre was there, in his wheelchair, with the dog behind him in the dining-room doorway. She watched them warily, but didn’t bark. One point to the theory.

‘Well, what is it?’ Dacre said coldly.

‘I’d like to talk to you, sir, if I may,’ Slider said. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Atherton, by the way. May we come in?’

Dacre looked from him to Atherton, and something happened to his face. It was an almost frightening greying.
He knows we know,
Atherton thought, and for the first time he really believed his guv’nor was right about this. The old man turned his chair away without a word, wheeled himself briskly before them into the drawing-room with the dog padding after.

‘Shut the door behind you,’ Dacre snapped, turning to face them.

‘Is Mrs Hammond in the house?’ Slider asked.

‘She’s in the kitchen. She won’t come unless I call her.’

How did he know this was private? Atherton thought. But a man so intelligent would know when the game was up, and wouldn’t drag it out. He’d turn over his king – wouldn’t he?

‘Well? You’ve questions to ask, I suppose?’

Slider looked for the end of the string. ‘What time did you go to bed on Tuesday night, sir?’

‘I don’t remember,’ he said at once.

‘What time do you normally go to bed?’

‘I don’t have a regular bedtime. I am not an infant. I go when I feel like it. You had better tell me why you want to know. It may jog my memory.’

There was nothing for it. Slider said, ‘A witness has come forward to say that he saw Jennifer Andrews come to this house on Tuesday night, very late, at a quarter to midnight. He saw her cross the gravel and go round to the back door.’

Slider, who had removed his eyes from the old man’s face as he asked the question, saw the phthisical hands tighten on the chair-arms. But Dacre sounded confident as he said, ‘Witnesses are frequently mistaken.’

‘It was someone who knew her – all of you – very well. I don’t think he was mistaken. But I wondered, you see, why neither you nor Mrs Hammond had mentioned the visit. Of course, if she came to see Mrs Hammond, and you had already gone up to bed, you wouldn’t have seen her pass the window.’

‘If she had visited my daughter, she would have said so. Frances is incapable of lying. She hasn’t the wit,’ he said, his voice cold and dark as the Mindanao Trench. ‘Your witness was mistaken, that’s all.’

Move the question sideways. ‘You have tranquillisers for the pain at night, I understand?’ Slider said.

‘What the devil business is it of yours?’

‘A tranquilliser called Rohypnol, which has rather unusual properties,’ Slider went on steadily, and now he looked up from the hands to the face. He saw Dacre draw a sharp, small breath, and in the silence that followed, the dark, intelligent eyes, caged with pain, were occupied with a chain of thought, rapid and unstoppable, like a nuclear reaction.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, very far away. ‘I do.’

‘Mrs Andrews didn’t struggle when she was smothered to death, so it seems likely she was somehow rendered helpless beforehand. The interesting thing about Rohypnol is—’

‘Thank you,’ he said, raising his hand like a policeman stopping traffic, ‘I know all about Rohypnol. I have read the sensational stories in the press. And do you think I would accept any drug without knowing its exact properties? But you have not found the drug in Mrs Andrews’ body.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because you would have said so if you had. That would be a piece of solid evidence, rather than mere wild conjecture.’ He was getting his voice back now; he sounded confident again.

‘We are testing for it,’ Slider said. ‘We haven’t had the results yet. But as you say, if the tests are positive—’

‘I understand that you are trying to suggest in your clumsy way that I killed Jennifer Andrews,’ Dacre said impatiently, ‘but I can’t think of any reason why I should.’

‘You told me yourself that you loathed her.’

‘I loathe many people. I loathe most people, if it comes to that, but I do not kill them.’

‘You haven’t the means or opportunity to kill most of them;
and they don’t thrust themselves on you, invading your very house, as Mrs Andrews did. She was an extreme irritant, I do see that,’ Slider added sympathetically. ‘I can understand how you might want to be rid of her.’

‘In that case, you may as well suspect everyone she ever met. You might perhaps,’ he went on, with withering irony, ‘consider promoting to the head of your list someone not confined to a wheelchair.’

‘Oh, but you aren’t,’ Slider said gently. ‘Miss Rogan says that you are quite capable of standing and walking, and that you are surprisingly strong in the arms – a legacy from your mountaineering days, no doubt.’

His face darkened. ‘How dare you discuss my condition with Miss Rogan? That is a private matter, and none of your business.’

‘She suspects you may pretend to be weaker than you really are,’ Slider went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘And it occurs to me that a mountaineer knows a great deal about how to move a body about in difficult conditions.’

Now Dacre laughed. ‘This is most entertaining! Do go on with your work of fiction. I don’t know when I’ve been more diverted.’ But to Atherton, the laughter was forced, and there was a blank look about Mr Dacre, like that of someone who has had a bad shock and hasn’t yet quite registered it. And if he really was innocent, why wasn’t he angry? Atherton would have expected blistering rage. Why, indeed, was he even listening to all this, unless it was to find out how much they really knew?

Slider went on. ‘What really started me wondering was the question of the dog.’

‘Sheba?’ Dacre said in surprise, and the Alsatian lifted her head briefly to look at him, triangular yellow eyes under worried black eyebrows. Then she sighed and lowered her nose again to her paws.

‘You see, if Mrs Andrews had been killed elsewhere, as we first thought, and a stranger had carried her body to the terrace and laid it in the trench, the dog would surely have heard and started barking. You said yourself she’s a guard dog, and I know from my own experience that when I tried your garage doors, it set her off – and that was in daylight. But if Sheba had barked, Mrs Hammond would have heard her. She’s a light sleeper, and
sleeps in the room above the kitchen where Sheba is shut at night. And Mrs Hammond says she didn’t bark. One thing we know for certain is that the body was put into the trench on the terrace during the night. That leaves us with the question: who could have persuaded the dog to remain silent while all that was going on?’