by Alan Hunter
‘Then you weren’t courting him – as some people thought?’
‘No, I absolutely deny it!’
‘So that if he was seen offering to go with you into the marrams, it wasn’t necessarily for an improper purpose.’
‘I didn’t go with him—’
‘You’re denying that too?’
‘Yes.’ Meares’s head weaved. ‘Yes, I’m denying it.’
‘That’s rather awkward,’ Gently said. ‘Because we have testimony from a witness of unusual integrity. Of course, you may be right and he may be wrong, but the test in these cases is credibility. We may believe you, but would other people – for example, would a jury?’
Meares swayed. ‘I – still deny it!’
‘Could this simply be a question of faulty memory?’
His hands dragged together shakily and he sat with tight lips.
‘Well – we’ll leave it!’ Gently said cheerfully. ‘What isn’t in dispute is that you were friends with him. You were ready to play up to his temperament, to give him your company and make much of him. Yet – suddenly – on Tuesday all this changed. That’s a point we’d better clear up. Why were you hostile to him on Tuesday, when you’d been so friendly with him before?’
‘I wasn’t hostile—’
‘It’s in the statements. You were the first to take exception.’
‘I merely said – what the occasion justified!’
Smilingly, Gently shook his head. I’m sure you understand what is implied here.’
‘I don’t wish to answer any more questions.’
‘What we can allege is that Virtue was blackmailing you over the incident in the marrams on Saturday.’
‘There was no incident – no blackmail!’
‘Then we need to account for your change of face.’
‘I . . . there was no change of face!’
‘You can’t help us.’
Meares raised his clasped hands and let them fall.
‘So we’ll leave that too,’ Gently said. ‘Along with Virtue’s threats on that occasion. We can perhaps come back to it later when the situation is clearer in your mind.’ He picked up one of the pencils lying on the table and stroked a firm line on a sheet of paper. ‘Here’s a question you can answer – yes or no! Are you certain what clothes you were wearing on Tuesday?’
Meares’s sweating face wavered and his hand shot to his mouth: he half-rose.
‘Right!’ Gently snapped. ‘Get him along to the john.’
Leyston hustled him out, knocking over a chair in his eagerness; a door slammed down the passage and, after an interval, one heard the flushing of a cistern. Gently shrugged and added strokes to his paper: Meares would break, that was pretty certain. Doubtless someone else had been at work on him in the still hours of the night . . .
‘Does that . . . often happen, sir?’
The policewoman, a young one, was staring at him gravely.
Gently grimaced. ‘Better be prepared for it! They don’t all manage to leave the room.’
When Meares returned he looked shakier than ever, though now his face had been wiped free of sweat. As he took his seat again he shuddered and his eyes briefly met Gently’s.
‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘Think nothing of it.’
He linked his shaking fingers together. ‘With regard to your question . . . I was wearing the cream lightweight suit and the Italian shoes.’
Gently eyed the policewoman, who began hastily to scribble.
‘You’re sure you can trust your memory about that?’
Meares nodded.
‘It wouldn’t have been the grey jacket, charcoal slacks and sandals?’
‘No . . .’
‘Not the sandals?’
‘I . . . haven’t worn them lately.’
‘Not . . . lately.’
He was pale to the lips, but kept the lips pressed together.
‘Well then . . . in your lightweight suit.’ Gently pencilled a sweeping circle. ‘You left the Music Room, declined a lift, and were seen proceeding up Saxton Road. That’s how it goes, isn’t it?’
‘I . . . I explained about that yesterday.’
‘Oh yes. Your Mr Maxwell and the sudden call of nature.’
‘Mr Maxwell will confirm—’
‘Yes, of course. But you didn’t actually go to his house, did you?’
Meares’s chin tilted feebly. ‘I went to the toilet and nowhere else.’
‘Yes . . . but that still leaves us with a problem.’ Gently took his time in bisecting the circle. ‘You see . . . your memory is less than precise about what took place on what day. You were able to confuse Saturday with Sunday – and you were quite positive at the time – until, luckily, we were able to put you right. Couldn’t the same thing have happened here?’
‘That’s not possible!’
Gently hunched. ‘In our experience, it happens frequently. In fact, one would say more often than not, when people are trying to account for their movements. They remember occasions in great detail that have nothing to do with the matter in hand. In the present instance, what could be more likely than your continuing up Saxton Road?’
‘But I do remember!’
Gently shook his head. ‘Look, the road was practically deserted just then. Yet we have testimony that someone was hurrying along it at exactly that time. Who else could it have been?’
‘I went back to the toilet!’
‘That was some other night.’
‘No – it was then. After the rehearsal!’
‘Why did you leave your cello at the hotel, and decline your regular lift home?’
Meares’s head was waving again and sweat had reappeared on his brow. His eyes had an off-focus look, were directed somewhere below Gently’s chin.
‘Naturally, this has been a strain for you,’ Gently said. ‘That would help to account for slips of memory. It could well have been that you suffered a blackout after you left the hotel that evening. We can understand that. We know about blackouts – in our line we’re meeting them all the time! But usually with patience and a little help from the evidence we can bring about complete recall.’ He stroked off a square. ‘Isn’t your memory becoming clearer?’
Meares shivered but didn’t reply. One would have said he was a long way away, listening to sounds from a different world.
‘Anyway . . . let’s suppose for the moment that you remember hurrying up that road. You left the hotel shortly after Virtue. Couldn’t you have caught up with him in the lane?’
‘I couldn’t . . . no!’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because . . . he left a good five minutes ahead of me.’
‘But if he’d gone by the links instead of by the road?’
Meares stared glassily, his mouth hanging open.
Gently ripped off a line. ‘If he’d gone by the links, that might account for the time factor. You could have left the hotel five minutes later and still have been at the cottage before him.’
‘But he went by the road!’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because . . . because . . .’ He was weaving dangerously. ‘Why should he have gone round there just then . . . what was the point? He would have gone by the road!’
‘I think you can be more definite than that.’
‘He went by the road . . . I couldn’t have caught him.’
‘Then where was he when you got there?’
‘He wasn’t . . . I . . . !’ Meares’s mouth trembled shut.
‘I think he went by the links,’ Gently said. ‘The statements have him leaving the Music Room by the porch. That would be his exit if he was heading for the footpath, and you could see through the window which way he turned.’
Meares groaned and dragged on his hands.
‘So you could have been there before him,’ Gently said. ‘In time to take your stand, say, behind that laurel bush that grows beside the gate.’
‘This is . . . fantasy!’
‘Bear with me.’ Gently scribbled a few short strokes. ‘After all, we must do our best to assist your uncertain memory. Now . . . from somewhere . . . you’d collected a weapon.’
‘No!’
‘We’ve got men out searching for it – a heavy stick, something of that sort. Virtue’s skull wasn’t very thick.’
‘I won’t listen!’
‘We’ll find it,’ Gently said. ‘I expect you got rid of it pretty quickly. About then you’d be panicking, naturally, with Virtue lying bleeding on the ground. Or didn’t the blood show up in that light? Possibly you didn’t see the blood. That would explain why, going to kick him, you risked aiming a kick at his head. Would that be right?’
His face was a blur, nodding slowly, this side to that.
‘Not that there was much blood on your sandal,’ Gently said. ‘You’d washed most of it off . . . we found only a trace.’
His hand came up. This time, Leyston fielded him without overturning a chair. The policewoman knocked over hers, however, in her rush to follow them out.
‘Could I . . . perhaps . . . have a drink of tea?’
The room had got no cooler in his absence. Though the high window was swung to horizontal it appeared to play no role in the matter. Gently had spent the interval in the passage, leaving the interrogation room door ajar. But all that had done was to charge the room with superheated air from the front of the building. Then the policewoman had returned in a miasma of eau de cologne. It smelled at once stale and acrid: directly, Gently had felt for his pipe.
‘Why not?’
He nodded to the policewoman, who rose again with an effort to do his bidding.
Meares had dispensed with his tie now, and sat with his shirt front and cuffs unbuttoned. Oddly, his chest showed a mat of black hair, plastered in spandrels by perspiration. Pallor gave his sallow cheeks a greenish tinge and accentuated the bruised eyes. He leaned forward, resting on his arms, the eyes withdrawn, empty.
The tea came. Meares sipped it with the same faraway expression: as though he’d momentarily switched off and retired to some inner sanctuary. At last cup chattered back to saucer.
‘I – I’m ready now.’
‘Ready . . . ?’
‘To answer your questions.’ His dark eyes found Gently’s. ‘It’s no use hanging on, is it?’
Gently sucked air through the pipe he hadn’t lit. Really this was going a bit too well! No delaying tactics or appeals for lawyers: it was almost as though Meares was asking to be broken. He pushed across some paper.
‘Perhaps now . . . a statement?’
‘No . . . I’d sooner answer your questions.’
Gently hunched massively. ‘For starters, then! Tell me all about the connection with Virtue.’
Meares straightened himself a little. ‘It . . . was much as you thought.’ His eyes were quiveringly frank. ‘I – I was attracted by him. I ought not to have been, but somehow . . . in the end . . . it seemed quite natural.’
‘How do you mean?’
Meares glanced at the policewoman, who was staring fixedly at her pad. ‘I mean . . . Virtue was that sort of person, not properly a man. It seemed normal with him.’
‘No doubt he encouraged you.’
‘I suppose so. He truly was . . . well, like a girl. His responses were feminine. He was a flirt. It was like being with a girl but with an extra stimulus.’
‘And you fell for him.’
‘No . . . not at once! Honestly, I’m not that sort of person. I was shocked when I realized how I was feeling about him . . . tried to rationalize it, keep it superficial. But . . . it was insidious. As I said, with Virtue it seemed almost normal. Then there was Walt’s example in front of me . . . you can’t censure Walt, whatever he does.’
‘And of course, the Greeks and Michelangelo.’
Meares shook his head. ‘I’m not trying to excuse myself. But yes, there is a long mystique attached to it, and that does seem to provide an aura of permissiveness. When the club is so ancient and exclusive you feel fewer scruples at becoming a member.’
‘Murder is a club just as ancient and exclusive.’
‘I repeat that I’m offering no excuses!’ Meares’s eyes had winced. ‘I only want to explain how a person like myself can act as I did. And I tried to resist it. Virtue was willing. It might have happened much sooner than it did. But I resisted it until that wretched encounter on the dunes on Saturday.’
‘Virtue knew you were hooked.’
He dropped his eyes. ‘I’m afraid there’s no question about that. I know now that he had everything planned, ready for me to fall into his trap.’
‘On Saturday.’
Meares nodded. ‘He knew just where to find me. I make a habit of patrolling the dunes on Saturday – a sort of unofficial warden, if you like. And Virtue knew it. He had only to wait there. On the dunes there is certain to be opportunity. As it happened we were the only people in sight . . . or so I permitted myself to think.’
‘Virtue wouldn’t have cared.’
‘No.’
Meares was still staring down. What his eyes were gazing at had drawn his black brows into sweaty furrows. ‘What was he after?’
‘He wanted Up-and-Under.’
‘Wanted what!’
Meares gestured. ‘It’s a tiny house that stands on the Front, facing the sea. Probably once a beachman’s lookout, one up and one down. It’s been restored and modernized. Everyone who sets eyes on it wants it.’
‘And you own it?’
He shook his head. ‘We act as agents for the owner. The lease falls due at the end of the month. Virtue knew that. He wanted it.’
‘Free of rent and rates, naturally.’
Meares’s hand rose and fell.
‘Plus pocket money.’
‘He mentioned a sum.’
‘You’d have been lucky to have got away with that! What was he threatening?’
‘To inform my wife and head office. And everyone else.’
‘Including Walt.’
‘Walt . . . first.’
Gently sucked his pipe and gazed at him.
‘I . . . I didn’t accept his terms,’ Meares ventured. ‘I let him see I thought he was bluffing.’
‘You’d have accepted them.’
‘But you see . . . I couldn’t.’ He shifted position awkwardly. ‘I’ve just bought a new yacht, which has rather . . . extended my resources. I couldn’t afford what Virtue wanted. I made him understand that.’
‘And he settled for a rain check?’
‘No. Actually . . .’
‘He didn’t,’ Gently said. ‘And he wouldn’t. More likely he’d tell you to cash the yacht or fiddle the company’s loan account. Virtue was a professional when it came to extortion. You were stuck with him and you knew it. So let’s get on to Tuesday night and the way this little problem was solved.’
Meares’s eyes were distant again, his mouth bitter. He took a fresh grip with his hands.
‘I was . . . incensed . . . by what happened at the rehearsal. I was seeing Virtue in a new light.’
‘No doubt of that!’
‘Perhaps, until then, I’d been making excuses for him to myself. But his behaviour there was wanton and evil, and I knew he had to be resisted.’
‘In fact, you proposed to yourself a final solution.’
Meares ignored him. ‘I resolved to confront him. I resolved to defy him on my own behalf and to punish him for his wickedness to Walt. There might be consequences, but I would accept them. They would be less than those of suffering Virtue. When the rehearsal broke up early and Walt didn’t go home I saw my opportunity. Yes . . . I followed him.’
‘Followed him – intending to beat him up.’
‘I intended to thrash him till he couldn’t stand.’
Gently gazed, a little wonderingly. ‘Well . . . it’s nice to have that on the table!’
Meares dropped his head. ‘I wish to hide nothing. You have taught me the futili
ty of lies. I had but one thought when I went after Virtue and that was to make him pay. I followed him as fast as I could – you were right, I did see which way he turned. He went the direct way, by Saxton Road. And the man seen hastening up there was me.’
‘And you caught him.’
‘In a manner . . . yes. Though I saw no sign of him in Saxton Road. It was in the lane where I came across him . . . I tripped over his body, by Walt’s gate.’
‘You – tripped over it!’
‘Yes. It was lying there. That’s when I got the blood on my sandal. He was quite dead, not breathing. I struck a match. He was gone.’
Gently leaned back, his eyes two points. ‘You’re saying it wasn’t you who killed Virtue?’
‘Certainly not.’ Meares’s gaze was on the table. ‘It was all over before I got there.’
‘You simply – found the body.’
‘Just as I told you.’
‘And heard – and saw – nothing to account for it?’
‘No.’
‘Though you were there within moments of the killing?’
‘Nothing,’ Meares said stubbornly. ‘Nothing.’
In Leyston’s office they held a conference.
‘He’s got to be lying, sir,’ Leyston said. ‘When he found we’d copped him with the goods he had to change his tale – and this is it.’
‘But what’s he lying about?’
‘Him killing Virtue.’
Gently took a sight along his pipe. ‘I think I might have believed him about that – if he hadn’t gone suddenly blind and deaf.’
Leyston considered the point with a frown. ‘You reckon he’s covering for someone, sir?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘But who, sir?’
‘We still have Hozeley in the wings.’
‘Hozeley!’
Gently nodded. ‘He could have beaten Virtue to the cottage in his car. Meares would risk his neck for Hozeley . . . and Hozeley’s alibi is zero.’
Leyston took a long pull on a sideboard. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Not Mr Hozeley. I did fancy him for it once, but I’ve changed my ideas a bit since then.’
‘Also . . . there’s the time factor.’
‘Sir?’
‘We only have Meares’s word for when Virtue died. His wife’s corroboration may be worthless. And a later time of death would widen the field.’
