Dead Man's Bluff

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘But it is not impossible,’ continued Akers smoothly, ‘if we remember there was a deep-freeze at the farm, destroyed by the fire.’

  Clayton stared angrily at the table.

  ‘Do we know the size of that deep-freeze?’ asked Akers.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Sixteen cubic feet.’

  ‘Enough both for the body and the dog meat on top which concealed it.’

  Akers sipped his brandy, Bodmin drank his in three hasty gulps. Clayton suffered a strong desire to throw his over the detective-superintendent.

  ‘Corporal White,’ said Akers authoritatively, ‘was picked up by Knott when he was trying to hitchhike to London. Knott murdered him — probably by drugging him and, when unconscious, stifling him with a plastic bag over his head. Knott took the body to the farm and fitted it into the deep-freeze, which preserved it until wanted. Proof of this lies in the medical evidence of asphyxiation before being affected by the fire, the last meal eaten, and the dental plate … Would you like a cigar, Inspector?’

  ‘I’ll stick to cigarettes,’ Clayton said grittily, even though he loved cigars.

  Akers beckoned to the head waiter, who came straight across and then called over a second waiter with a box containing a selection of cigars. Akers chose a Corona Extra and the head waiter cut the end for him.

  When they were alone, Akers said: ‘We now come to the problem of the real motive behind all this. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, Inspector?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Surely, we’re faced by a crime within a crime? Daniel Knott set out to swindle the Riverside Insurance Company by taking out a large life insurance, payable to his girlfriend in the event of his death. His intention was to fake his own death, wait until Hazel Clews had been paid the forty thousand, and then he and she would go away and live happily on the money. Since he wasn’t a fool, he knew that when a man takes out a large insurance policy and “dies” shortly afterwards, the insurance company automatically becomes suspicious. So he'decided to try to avert, or divert, such suspicions. He reasoned, rightly, that if it appeared he’d been murdered rather than accidentally killed or had committed suicide, there was little chance of his faked death coming to light since all the police’s efforts would be directed towards finding the murderer and not to uncovering a possible fraud.

  ‘He needed someone of his own age, height, and general appearance, without peculiar physical characteristics, who wore false teeth. He picked up an unknown number of hitchhikers before he found Corporal White. He killed the corporal, carried him back to Knott Farm, and preserved him in the deep-freeze. His next job was to invent Alexander and give him substance and an existence because if Knott was to be murdered there had to be a murderer. Do you follow, that, Inspector?’

  Clayton didn’t answer.

  Akers held the cigar between thumb and all four fingers and drew on it with deep pleasure. ‘Louthy advertised in the papers for a traveller,’ he continued, ‘and Knott applied for the post and was granted an interview. He disguised himself in the simplest way — a toupee to transform his baldness into a good head of hair, a moustache to provide a prominent facial feature, and pads in his mouth to fill out his rather hollow cheeks, but nothing more elaborate than that.

  This change in appearance would be sufficient to deceive anyone who didn’t know him really well. He found digs in Relstone and then, to explain his frequent and prolonged absences, invented a sister with whom he frequently stayed and he also made a habit of apparently leaving the house very early in the morning. Obviously, most of the time he left the digs in the middle of the night and returned to a wife who believed he’d been out with Hazel Clews.

  ‘Oddly enough, he made a good commercial traveller, increasing sales except in the one area he dare not work at all hard because there he might meet people who would see through his disguise. To cover up what was going on, however, he made up fictitious orders for cow cake from farmers in the Gertfinden area and collected these orders from the central distribution point in his van, paid for them in the names of other farmers, and stored the cake on his own place. You’ll remember that one of the odd points we noted early on was the excess of cow cake in the barn?’

  Clayton tried to say a number of things at the same time.

  Akers continued to speak smoothly. ‘A murder needs a motive and so Knott had to produce a motive for his own murder — he also needed to find the money to pay for all the cow cake he didn’t want. Hence, the fertilizer subsidy swindle.

  ‘The scene was ready to be set.’ Akers gently scraped the ash from his cigar into an ash-tray. ‘The body was taken out of the deep-freeze and thawed. Knott’s wife was spending all day and every day with Miss Corrins and Browland was paid only to do the milking so no one was around the farm during the day. Knott left the farm — on foot — picked up the van which he must have hidden in the woods, drove to his digs to show himself there, then returned to the farm. He left the van on the concrete after wiping it clear of prints and made certain the papers in it would lead us to the fertilizer swindle.

  ‘He went through to the store-room where the electrical wiring was known to be in a terrible state and where there were diesel oil and paraffin to create a blaze which would burn the body far beyond physical recognition. He prepared to switch a set of his false teeth into the body of the thawed Corporal White because they provided one of the best means of identification … How do you see that things went now, Inspector?’

  ‘Surely you know?’ said Clayton, with furious sarcasm.

  ‘It always helps to have a check,’ replied Akers blandly.

  Clayton stubbed out his cigarette with unnecessary force.

  ‘Well?’ said Akers.

  ‘It’s obvious someone else knew what was going on and joined in. He or she used the set-up provided by Knott to shoot Knott and set the place on fire so that it looked like an “enclosed” murder brought on by a row over the swindle.’

  Akers finished his cognac and put the glass down on the table. ‘That’s the picture,’ he agreed.

  ‘Sir … ’ began Clayton.

  ‘Something troubling you?’ asked Akers, a mocking expression in his eyes.

  ‘Do you by any chance remember … ’

  ‘I wonder if you’re about to remind me of some of the things I said to you?’ Akers smiled. ‘My dear Clayton, I long ago discovered that a man works best when he feels he has a challenge to meet — and so I gave you the challenge and the spur of my apparent disbelief.’ He stood up. ‘I think we’ll have a conference at the police station in half an hour’s time.’

  ‘In half an hour’s time I shall be eating my lunch,’ said Clayton rudely.

  ‘You haven’t eaten, yet? Good heavens, you must be hungry! Shall we say in one hour, then?’ He left.

  Bodmin spoke lugubriously. ‘Will it help, sir, if I tell you that this sort of thing’s happened before?’

  ‘No’ said Clayton bitterly, ‘I’m quite certain it won’t.’

  *

  Clayton looked across the kitchen table at Margery. ‘The worst thing of all is that that bastard has reduced me to the state when I’m even ready to believe he might have suspected the truth after all.’

  ‘I’m quite certain he didn’t do anything of the sort’ she said loyally.

  ‘When I remember all the lectures he gave me on ignoring non-essential details … When I remember all the times he said the cow cake was of absolutely no consequence … When I remember all the times he told me I was a country simpleton for thinking a heavy meal on a hot day was of any importance … I could strangle him with my own hands.’

  ‘Don’t get too het-up, love’ she pleaded. ‘After all, does it really matter who discovered the truth so long as it’s discovered — you’ve always told me police work is a team effort?’

  ‘Traitress’ he cried.

  She smiled. ‘What is it, Jim, are you after a medal?’

  ‘You know me better
than that.’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, and suddenly there was a touch of sadness to her voice. ‘You wouldn’t have gone on and on from any sense of personal glorification — more’s the pity.’ More ambition and how high could he not have risen? she wondered. Yet more ambition and would he have been the same warm, loving husband? — ‘You did it because you believe in truth.’

  He stood up, pushing his chair back, and began to pace the floor. ‘By God, he’s a … a shark.’

  She was near enough to him to grip his hand. ‘I thought you were going to say something very different! Jim, take a word of advice. Next time, just listen and don’t try to help. He’s not the only shark in the world.’

  ‘Don’t worry, this case has taught me one thing — from now on, I’m just not talking!’

  Chapter 14

  The heat had become oppressive, although the sky was overcast, and the air had the sullen, trapped feeling that so often presaged a thunderstorm. The window in Clayton’s room was wide open, but the place was airless. Clayton had taken off his coat, but the sweat ran down his face, as it did on Bodmin’s: only Akers remained cool, by some alchemy known only to himself.

  Akers stood in the centre of the room. ‘There is an old aphorism,’ he said, ‘that in a motivated murder you look for the person who had the greatest motive and there you have the murderer.’

  Akers, thought Clayton, had the knack of saying the obvious, yet making it seem freshly discovered truth. Perhaps all success was a confidence trick.

  ‘What motives have we?’ said Akers. He raised his right hand and flicked up the forefinger. ‘First, forty thousand pounds: due to Hazel Clews as the beneficiary under the life insurance. Second, jealousy: Mrs Knott almost certainly knew of her husband’s affair. Third, the estate: Paul Hulton has never made any secret of his longing for the farm, worth close on fifty thousand with the woods. What is the greatest motive? There’s little difference in this context between forty and fifty thousand pounds and jealousy is incapable of definition. For the moment, we must accept the fact that all three have the same degree of motive.

  ‘Let us move on to opportunity. Obviously, Mrs Knott had every chance to discover her husband’s intended fraud and to commit the murder. Equally, if Hazel Clews was told about the swindle, she would have known or could have found out all the details including the day and time when Knott was going to set the scene of his own murder and she could have acted on her own or, far more likely, in company with Shear. Hulton, for his part, was always turning up at the farm, trying to get Knott to farm it properly and so save some of his inheritance, and what’s more likely than that he uncovered what was going on? After all, he had only to see all the cow cake in the barn for him to become suspicious, as we did.’ Akers crossed to his desk, carefully hitched up his right trouser-leg, and sat down on the edge. ‘We know that each of the suspects has provided an alibi for the time of the murder and we have checked these. Until we could be certain we were not dealing with an “enclosed” murder, we accepted them. Now, we know that one of them is false, as is the corroborative evidence. Our next job is to find out which one it is.’

  He folded his arms across his chest. You smooth, sneaky bastard, thought Clayton.

  *

  Akers detailed Clayton to go to Trighton to see Hazel Clews and Shear while he questioned Mrs Knott and Hulton: if neither of them made any progress, they would change over. It was a basic truth of detection — surprisingly, not yet reiterated at length by Akers — that two interviews in quick succession by different interviewers offered more chance of success than several interviews by the same interviewer.

  Clayton and DC Burrows drove to Trighton. Despite the threatening sky, now filled with black-bellied clouds that promised rain, there was a lot of tripper traffic in both towns and when they reached Dock Road it was over ten minutes before Clayton could find a parking space. The walk back along the road took them past the east pier and Clayton stopped to watch a cross-Channel boat set sail.

  He leaned on the rails that protected pedestrians from the drop to the water. ‘I wouldn’t mind being on that — just think, in next to no time they’ll all be in France.’

  ‘Never fancied France myself,’ said Burrows.

  Clayton half turned. ‘Why ever not? You can have the best food and wine in the world there.’

  ‘It’s all garlic and frogs’ legs. I’d rather have a plate of bangers and mash and a pint of bitter.’

  My God! thought Clayton. He could still remember the first meal he and Margery had had in Paris: a plump, delicious capon stuffed with truffles and accompanied by a magnificent sauce. Even the memory set his gastric juices flowing. ‘Come on,’ he said impatiently.

  They threaded their way through the strolling holidaymakers and crossed the road to No. 5. Clayton knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, louder and longer. After a further wait, the door was opened by Hazel Clews and the first thing he noticed was that her dress was buttoned up wrongly, as if this had been done in a hurry.

  They went inside. Alf Shear was in the front room and his face was flushed.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt you,’ said Clayton, with malicious ambiguity.

  Shear didn’t answer.

  Unusually, he closely resembled his mug-shots, thought Clayton — smooth, mean, and smart. His face was long and thin and it held lines of hard cunning. From the way Hazel Clews looked at him, she was infatuated by him and Clayton was ready to bet this was partially because he was so hard, perhaps even cruel.

  ‘What d’you want?’ demanded Hazel Clews. She went and stood close to Shear.

  ‘A word or two with both of you,’ answered Clayton. It was noticeable that she was not as self-confident as on his last visit.

  ‘I’m off,’ said Shear.

  ‘After you’ve answered a few questions.’

  ‘You ain’t stopping me going anywhere.’

  ‘Then you’d rather we picked you up at your home or out in the streets?’ Clayton judged Shear to have a sharp temper and an automatic hatred of authority, but to be able, when necessary, to control both sufficiently coolly to assess a situation such as the present one. Shear had been found guilty of two robberies and a GBH, as well as of several lesser offences when a minor: it was a fairly safe bet that his convictions represented only a tithe of the offences he had committed.

  ‘What’s hazing you?’ demanded Shear roughly.

  ‘I’m investigating the murder of Daniel Knott.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I think you may be able to help me. Will you go into another room while I question Miss Clews?’

  ‘Don’t go,’ said Hazel Clews. It was obvious that the moment she had spoken, she regretted it.

  ‘Scared they’ll jump you?’ sneered Shear. ‘They ain’t man enough for that.’ He walked across to the door, a swaggering challenge to his shoulders. He left and slammed the door shut behind himself.

  Clayton sat down and nodded at Burrows to do the same. Burrows, he thought, might be unaware of things that could only be sensed, such as the exact relationship between a man and a woman but he would miss nothing of what was said and of what he saw.

  Hazel Clews picked up a pack of cigarettes from the mantelpiece and lit one. She sat down on the arm of a chair, which exposed one of her legs. This time, she did not bother to affect modesty and try to draw her skirt down.

  ‘Why can’t you leave me alone?’ she demanded. ‘You come bustin’ in on a Sunday afternoon … ’

  ‘Certain new evidence has come to light,’ he said. He watched her expression closely.

  She drew heavily on the cigarette.

  ‘Daniel Knott was engaged in setting up an insurance swindle, the crux of which was that he intended to fake his own death and then you and he would enjoy the forty thousand.’

  ‘I don’t know nothing,’ she said harshly.

  Clayton looked surprised. ‘He must have discussed the details with you?’

  ‘I said, I don’t
know nothing.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ remarked Clayton calmly.

  She threw the half-smoked cigarette into the grate. ‘All right,’ she muttered, ‘I knew something was on. He said as we was going away together and we’d be rich … But he didn’t say nothing more than that.’

  ‘You must have asked him what he meant?’

  ‘He told me he wasn’t saying nothing, then I wouldn’t know nothing if things went wrong.’

  ‘Had you agreed to go away with him?’

  She plucked at one of the buttons on her dress. ‘I … I hadn’t arranged nothing definite.’

  ‘But you’d have wanted to hang on to a share in the forty thousand?’

  ‘Ain’t I said, I didn’t know nothing about that?’

  Clayton nodded, as if he accepted her evidence. ‘Knott was unlucky — someone discovered what he was setting-up and decided to take advantage of the fact to murder him.’ She lit another cigarette.

  ‘You’re not surprised?’ asked Clayton.

  ‘I don’t know nothing.’

  ‘You and your friend Shear could have murdered him.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him. Alf ain’t never met him.’

  ‘You had a very strong motive — forty thousand quid.’ Her voice rose. ‘I keep saying, I didn’t know about the money. Why keep on and on at me? Why not have a go at that bitch of a wife of his? If anyone killed him, she did.’

  ‘Why should she have done that?’

  ‘Why? You call yourself a detective and don’t know? She was mad jealous, that’s what.’

  ‘According to what you told me before, Mrs Knott had no idea her husband was going around with you.’

  She looked at him with a sudden animal wariness, as if realizing for the first time that his pleasant manner did not mean he was soft.

  ‘You were lying to me.’ He made it a statement of fact, not a question.

  ‘I didn’t want to get mixed up in nothing,’ she answered surlily.

  ‘What’s the truth, then?’

  ‘She came into a restaurant where Daniel and me was eating. When he saw her, he was shocked stupid. I thought she’d come over and row, but she never said nothing, just stood there for a bit and then walked out like the stupid bitch she is.’