Death on Account

by Margaret Yorke

  ‘She seems all right but she must be rather shaken. I know I am,’ Philip admitted.

  ‘Well – yes. You don’t think one of the women –?’ Robbie tried, but did not persist. Betty Fox always hurried away, back to her invalid husband, and none of the other women had cars.

  Wendy was very grateful for the offer of a lift. She didn’t feel shaky, but it was nice to be sitting in Robbie’s car instead of waiting for the bus. She lived about three miles from the bank across town. The journey was taken up with giving Robbie directions about the route and when they arrived outside the terraced house where she lived, she asked him if he would like to come in for a few minutes.

  ‘To tell you the truth, Robbie, I don’t feel like being left alone, right away,’ she admitted.

  She had always liked Robbie. He was quiet and kindly, almost cosy, and, unaware of Philip’s intervention, she thought it typical of him to offer her a lift.

  Since Robbie was responsible for Wendy’s disturbance, he could not refuse. He followed her up the stairs to where she lived on the top floor and stood on the landing while she felt for her key in her handbag.

  She lived in a large attic room, with a curtained recess at one end containing a sink and small stove. There was a gas fire, which Wendy immediately lit.

  ‘Come in and sit down,’ she said.

  There was a divan bed in one corner, covered with a Welsh wool spread in various shades of red and purple, and two armchairs, a wing one upholstered in deep red velvet and a small tub chair in a linen cover. Wendy gestured Robbie towards the wing armchair. It was extremely comfortable and he said so.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Wendy said, laughing. ‘I bought it for five pounds about ten years ago and went to upholstery classes to learn how to do it up. It turned out all right.’

  There were some prints on the white-painted walls – Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ and two Canalettos. A vase of daffodils stood on the mantelpiece. The carpet was a drab, worn beige but there was a large sheepskin-type rug in front of the fire. On top of a bookcase there were some photographs, among them a handsome young man in naval uniform.

  Wendy saw Robbie glance at it.

  ‘That’s my father,’ she said. ‘He was killed in the war just before I was born. My mother married again seven years ago – she and her husband live in Scotland. I go up there to stay for part of my holidays most years.’ Except when I’ve been away with Terry, she thought. They had been to Corfu, to Yugoslavia and to Spain together. ‘I stayed down here when my mother got married,’ she added. ‘I lived at home before that.’ But then she had met Terry and their affair had begun. ‘That was before you came – you were in the Harbington branch before you came to us, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your wife runs that very good dress shop, doesn’t she? Caprice?’ Wendy asked. ‘She has lovely things.’

  ‘So they should be, at the prices she charges,’ said Robbie, who was always shocked at the immense mark-up which Isabel put on her wares.

  ‘I bought a dress there once,’ said Wendy. ‘It was expensive.’ She bethought herself suddenly of her hostess duties and added, ‘I’ve got some sherry. Would you like some, Robbie? Maybe it would do us good after all the shocks of the day.’

  ‘It would be very nice,’ said Robbie.

  He watched her cross the room to a large, old-fashioned sideboard and begin pulling bottles out. Her green jersey dress was drawn tight round her sturdy body as she bent to open the door. Isabel had been much that shape at the same age, Robbie reflected; but her sturdiness had turned solid and unyielding.

  ‘There, I knew there was some,’ cried Wendy triumphantly, plucking a bottle of Cyprus sherry from the back of the cupboard. She had arranged tins of spaghetti, soup and cereal packets on the floor in order to get at it. This was obviously her store cupboard.

  Sipping his sherry, Robbie looked round the room in a more relaxed way.

  ‘Do you cook in here?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s a minute stove and a sink behind there.’ Wendy pointed to the curtained recess. ‘I use the bathroom on the floor below.’

  ‘I like it,’ Robbie said, and tried to decide wherein lay its charm. None of the contents would have been tolerated by Isabel except possibly the reproduction paintings. ‘It’s cosy,’ he pronounced.

  ‘I think so too,’ said Wendy. ‘I’d rather be here on my own than sharing a big flat.’

  ‘How did you get on at the police station?’ Robbie asked. It was a perfectly natural question under the circumstances.

  ‘Oh – it was quite interesting, in rather a grim sort of way,’ said Wendy. ‘They were really very patient. I kept changing my mind about the photofit picture. I didn’t register anything much about the man except his beard and hair. It must all have been a disguise. I couldn’t describe his mouth or anything helpful, and his chin was all hidden. Still, they’re going to circulate the result of our efforts. I don’t think the inspector feels it will be much help.’ She rose, and topped up Robbie’s glass. ‘We looked at guns, too – pictures of them, and a few real ones they’ve got. That was no help. It just looked like a small grey pistol to me – sort of pewter-coloured. I thought the inspector was a bit disappointed I couldn’t be more definite.’

  ‘What about the woman who was run over?’ Robbie asked. ‘Is she badly hurt?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Wendy. ‘They didn’t mention her while I was at the station.’

  ‘I suppose she went to Blewton hospital?’

  ‘Where else?’

  Soon afterwards, Robbie left, but with some reluctance. For a moment he thought about inviting Wendy out for a meal. She seemed to have only tins in her larder. It had been very pleasant, sitting there chatting; despite everything, his tension had eased. But he had things to do. He must ring up the hospital to find out how the woman was who had been hurt in his escapade, and there was all that money in the car to be hidden away.

  ‘Who was the woman who was hurt?’ he asked, he hoped in a casual voice. ‘Do you know that?’

  ‘Yes. I did hear them mention it at the police station,’ Wendy said. They had given her tea in a big china cup, with a digestive biscuit, while the inspector conferred with a colleague, and she had heard two constables talking. ‘Her name’s Helen Jordan. She doesn’t come from Blewton – Wimbledon, I think they said.’

  Wendy thought about Robbie as she opened a tin of spaghetti for her supper. He had seemed quite happy to stay indefinitely. If she hadn’t known that he had a wife to return to, she might have asked him to stay for supper, although she had only tins and some eggs. She thought he would have been quite happy eating a scratch meal. She had lapsed into eating too many scratch meals herself lately; she filled up with bread and had developed a habit of watching the clock until it was time for the morning coffee break, at which she now often ate a chelsea bun coated in sugar which she bought on her way to work. She had put on pounds since Terry was married.

  Robbie was probably going home to an exotic meal cooked by his wife. Wendy remembered her visit to Caprice quite clearly. She was going up to London for a weekend with Terry and she had decided to buy a new dress, for once sparing no expense, since he was taking her to meet some business colleagues and she wanted to create a good impression. Caprice had the reputation for being a better dress shop than anything that could be found in Blewton, where there were various stores of the sort to be found in most large towns but few specialist shops. Caprice catered for the wives of the well-off business and professional men who lived in the area, many of whom commuted some distance to work.

  She had looked first at the window, where there was a display in emerald green – two dresses, a skirt and a silk shirt, with a few accessories draped round them. It was a striking well-arranged display, and the clothes were elegant.

  Wendy entered the shop, which was long and narrow, with two changing cubicles at the rear. Garments hung in racks along the walls, and there was a section of shelve
s containing shirts and sweaters. A young woman came forward to serve Wendy, who said she was looking for a light wool dress for a lunch party – pink.

  Miriam, Isabel’s chief assistant, showed her various dresses and Wendy hummed and ha’d and changed her mind about colour. Another customer came in, and Wendy asked to be left to look through the clothes on her own while the assistant took care of her. Then the telephone rang, and a woman came through from the rear of the shop. She gave the impression of being tall, but in fact she was not much taller than Wendy. She was squarely built, smartly dressed in a green and navy two-piece, and she had stiffly set jet-black hair, sprayed with lacquer. She was well made up and looked rather like a successful headmistress. She came straight over to Wendy after she had concluded a short, sharp conversation on the telephone, and in no time at all Wendy was sure she had been summed up as not wealthy enough to shop here.

  ‘I want a pink dress,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve looked at several. Your – er – your colleague showed me some, but none of them is quite right.’

  ‘You’d look better in green, or even blue,’ said Isabel. ‘Pink isn’t easy after a certain age.’

  Thank you, thought Wendy, but the way in which it was said somehow robbed the words of offence.

  ‘Now, cyclamen,’ Isabel was saying. ‘We’ve got something outside that’s just come in – I’ll fetch it.’

  She disappeared, and returned in a few minutes carrying a dress in a deep bluish pink which she held against her own body so that Wendy could see it properly. ‘This colour would suit you,’ she said. ‘It would do things for you. Why not try it on?’

  Wendy was soon in a cubicle, doing just that, and it was true: the colour was perfect for her, and it was her exact size. She looked at the price tag. Even that was not extortionate. Robbie’s wife had picked out a possible purchase for her, coaxed her to try it on, and left the rest to the dress. She certainly knew her job, and she had been pleasant and easy although she looked rather formidable.

  Wendy bought the dress and it was a success.

  That efficient woman, with the rigid hair and the corseted body, for Wendy had realized she was moulded behind powerful elastic, was the one that Robbie went home to each night. It was difficult to picture them together.

  She had just finished her meal and was washing up when she had a caller. The wild, irrational hope that it might be Terry surged up, to be sent away sternly: habit died hard.

  It was Detective Inspector Thomas. He was alone.

  ‘Miss Lomax – I’m sorry to trouble you again, but if I might have a word –’ he said, on the landing.

  Wendy unlatched the chain and opened the door.

  ‘Of course. Come in,’ she said.

  ‘Glad to see you’ve got that chain,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s not very secure here, is it? Anyone can walk in.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Wendy. The front door of the house was often left on the latch, although all the tenants had a key. ‘But I don’t think anyone who lives here is worth robbing.’

  ‘Everyone’s got a pound or two lying about, or items worth a few quid,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Yes – well –’ Wendy knew he had not come to lecture her on security. ‘Sit down, won’t you?’

  Thomas sat down in the velvet armchair and Wendy faced him in the small tub chair.

  ‘The raid this afternoon,’ Thomas began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re our best – really our only witness.’

  ‘I know. I’ve told you everything I can think of,’ said Wendy.

  ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ said Thomas. ‘But I just thought that away from the station, and now you’ve had time to get over the shock a bit, something else might have come to mind.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Well – the voice, for instance. You said it was a sort of snarl.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe I’d know it again if I heard it.’

  ‘It wasn’t foreign? Or like a dialect?’

  ‘He only said, “Give me the money”,’ said Wendy. ‘And then “Hurry”. You couldn’t really tell. It didn’t sound foreign.’

  ‘We’ve found the car he used,’ said Thomas. ‘The red Renault that knocked down Mrs Jordan.’

  ‘Oh – well, that’s good. Isn’t that a start?’ said Wendy. ‘Where was it?’

  ‘Not far away. Just round the corner in Johnson Road, near the recreation ground.’

  ‘How did you know it was the same car?’

  ‘We checked it out – checked the number. It belongs to a James Jordan – Mrs Jordan’s husband.’

  ‘What? So she was knocked down by her own car?’

  ‘Yes. She must have seen the thief driving off in it and tried to stop him. Probably realized she’d left the keys in it – very careless, that.’

  ‘Do you think he drove at her deliberately?’ asked Wendy.

  ‘It looks a bit like it,’ said Thomas.

  ‘I wonder why he left it so near? You’d think he’d hurry off as far as he could, after that,’ said Wendy.

  ‘Yes, you would – but he’d know we’d be after the car. He may not have been certain that no one had the number. He may be a very cool customer who walked away from the Renault, perhaps without his disguise, and picked up another car quite quickly. We’re checking reports of stolen cars but nothing definite’s turned up yet. There are several cars missing in Blewton, I’m afraid. With a town this size it keeps happening, and the owners ask for it half the time.’

  ‘By leaving their keys in?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Thomas, and smiled.

  He seemed to be settling down for a considerable stay. Wendy wondered if she should offer him the rest of the sherry.

  ‘Where’s the sergeant?’ she asked.

  ‘At the hospital. Mrs Jordan’s come round and he’s trying to talk his way past the doctors to see her.’

  ‘Poor thing – I hope she’ll be all right,’ said Wendy. ‘Has her husband come?’

  ‘We haven’t been able to get hold of him. Someone’s been to their home address but there’s no one there. It seems Mr Jordan often goes abroad on business so he may be away.’

  ‘Can’t you find out?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We’ll get on to him through his firm,’ said Thomas, who knew that his colleagues in the Metropolitan Police were doing just that. ‘But it may take a bit of time to bring him back from wherever he’s gone to.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Wendy. ‘I wonder what she was doing down here.’

  ‘She works in a photographic studio near her home, it seems,’ said Thomas. ‘Maybe she was down here on a job. They may do industrial photography. But you’d expect local firms to employ local photographers. Still, we’ll soon know about that. Was he left-handed?’

  He shot the question at Wendy.

  ‘No,’ she said at once. ‘I told you – he held the gun in his right hand and scooped the money with it into a carrier bag that he held in his left. A blue bag. I don’t think there was any writing on it – it may have been a plain one.’

  She had been sure when they talked before, and she was sure now. If the police traced this villain, she would be a very safe witness to the extent of what she had seen. Thomas was less concerned about the three thousand pounds the bank had lost than the accident to Mrs Jordan, but the amount of the robbery did not lessen the degree of evil employed: Wendy Lomax had been held up at gun point.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for our protective glass barrier, I might have managed to throw something at him,’ said Wendy.

  ‘It’s a very good thing you didn’t. He might have shot you,’ said Thomas.

  Wendy smiled.

  ‘Well – it’s easy to sound brave now it’s all over,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose I’d really have done anything like that. The woman couldn’t have been his accomplice, could she? She might have been hurrying back to the car to join him.’

  ‘A fine way to treat her, if so,’ said Thomas.

  ‘No – I suppose
that isn’t a good idea,’ said Wendy. ‘But she must have followed him pretty quickly when he took the car, to have caught up with him.’

  ‘She didn’t have to. She was having lunch in The Copper Kettle. One of the waitresses told us that. She must have left the car outside while she was eating. We’ll be able to establish that – someone will have seen it.’

  ‘So the thief took the car on the spur of the moment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That supports your theory that he was a pretty cool customer who meant to walk away,’ she said.

  ‘He may have had his intended getaway car waiting round the corner,’ said Thomas. ‘Then used the Renault when he saw it handy.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a very well-laid scheme to me, if he changed it at the last minute like that,’ said Wendy.

  ‘I think it may have been very well laid,’ said Thomas. ‘Then he improvised, and hit that woman.’

  ‘If she dies –’ said Wendy.

  ‘Exactly.’ Thomas’s voice was grim.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t describe him properly for you,’ Wendy said again.

  ‘You didn’t really notice his mouth, did you?’ Thomas said. ‘You had trouble with that, with the photofit.’

  ‘I had trouble with the whole thing,’ said Wendy. ‘All I really saw was a lot of hair and some dark glasses. Usually with beards you do notice lips – rather odd they seem, pink among all that hair. But I don’t think his showed.’

  ‘You don’t like beards,’ said Thomas.

  ‘I haven’t a lot of experience of them,’ said Wendy. ‘Shall I make some coffee?’

  ‘That would be nice,’ said Thomas. ‘Thanks.’

  He should leave really. He had known all along that she was unlikely to be able to add to her statement. They were getting nowhere. But he watched her put on the kettle and thought that perhaps they were, in a way.

  On his way home after leaving Wendy, Robbie stopped at a telephone box to inquire about Mrs Jordan. At first he thought of saying he was inquiring on behalf of the bank, but then he wondered if this might lead to problems: suppose Philip Grigson, or someone from head office, had already done that?