The Monday Theory

by Douglas Clark

  “Seems like a good idea to me,” said Green. “But there were obvious snags.”

  “You’re telling me. I told Golly to phone Rhoda and get it dictated. Golly said how the hell could she do that if Rhoda wasn’t there, so I asked how the hell I was to get the carbons in that case. She told me I’d got to get into the cottage and find them. She said they were sure to be on her desk or filed on top of everything else as they would be the latest thing she’d done.”

  “Are you saying, lad, that you were told to break into that cottage?”

  “Golly said the door would likely be on the latch because they always are in the country. I said not these days they aren’t, but she insisted that Rhoda’s always was. When I said that I doubted that, she said if I had to I’d got to break a window to get in. I didn’t like the idea at all. I know enough about crime to know it’s an offence even if I had been told to do it.”

  “How did you get in?” asked Masters.

  “The door wasn’t locked—just like Golly said. But the house was all in darkness and the lights wouldn’t work. Thank heaven I’d had enough common sense to take a torch with me. We keep a few here, you know, for people who have to go out on assignments at night. To write by if you’re in the open away from lights.”

  “You pressed a switch and got nothing?”

  “That’s right. But I could use the torch to see my way around and I knew something of the lay-out, which was a help. When I went from room to room I tried all the switches. There was no power.”

  “Did that surprise you?”

  “Yes, it did, because I got the impression the place hadn’t been occupied for a bit. And that was strange because Golly—all of us, in fact—thought Rhoda had installed herself down there with her boyfriend.”

  “Apart from the fact that the batteries were flat—I take it there were batteries . . .?”

  “Yes. Big storage dags which were charged by the engine. A bit old-fashioned, of course. Not like your modern generators.”

  “Dags?” queried Masters.

  “Heavy wet batteries,” grunted Green.

  “Apart from the fact that the storage batteries were flat, which would seem to indicate that the generator had not been run for some time, and which accordingly supports the impression you had that nobody had been in residence for some time, what else added to that belief?”

  “It could have been my imagination, but the place felt cold—dampish, in fact.”

  Green intervened. “You’ve said that this Lugano bird expected the door to be on the latch. But only when Mrs Carvell was staying down there, surely? Nobody would leave a cottage unlocked if they were leaving it for any length of time.”

  “That’s what I thought—exactly,” gabbled Heddle. “That’s why I couldn’t understand the air of desolation. If I’d had to break in, I’d have understood it better.”

  “Desolation?” asked Masters. “Is that an exact description or journalistic hyperbole?”

  “If you mean am I exaggerating, I’m not. The place was as dusty as makes no matter and there was a rotten, fusty smell as though the windows hadn’t been opened for ages. And that wasn’t like Rhoda. She was a fresh-air fiend. She was always writing about people who frowst away, sleeping in rooms with doors and windows shut. One of the characters she invented and used to refer to a lot was Stale Air Stella, the high smelling housewife of the high rise block. You must have seen her articles.”

  “Not him,” grunted Green. “He reads proper newspapers, not adult comics.”

  “Here, I say . . .” began Heddle.

  “What about the carbons you went for?” asked Masters. “Did you find them?”

  “No, I didn’t. There was nothing in the typewriter on her desk and the top thing in the tray was last week’s article.”

  “So you assumed she hadn’t written her column?”

  “Not right away. I know it looked as if she’d not done it, but Golly was right. Rhoda wouldn’t just barge off on some spree and neglect her spot. I knew that, too. She was a professional and bloody proud of what she did. So I thought maybe the carbons would be upstairs.”

  “For any particular reason?”

  “Not really. I suppose I thought she might have taken the article itself upstairs to correct in bed, in which case she might have left the carbons lying about because she was too busy with Ralph Woodruff to do her filing. You see, I still thought she must have posted the top copy but probably just hadn’t got round to putting the carbons in the tray.”

  “If she had posted the top copies, surely Ms Lugano would have received them?”

  “Things have been known to go astray in the post.”

  Masters inclined his head to acknowledge the truth of this assertion and, to Heddle’s great relief, it seemed to indicate that the DCS thought his entire explanation reasonable.

  “You went upstairs to look around. What did you find?”

  “I’d been up to use the bathroom and loo that Sunday in June, so I knew where to go. But it was bloody eerie, creeping . . .”

  “Quite. We can imagine your feelings. Please go on.”

  “There were three bedrooms. Two of the doors were ajar, so I decided to try those to begin with. The first room I went into was not very big, and though it had a bed and the usual things in it, it looked as though it had been used as a junk room. Cases and boxes and heaps of books on the floor . . .

  “The second open room was the guest bedroom, I suppose. It was quite big and furnished with a double bed, wardrobe, dressing table and so on. But the bed wasn’t made up and I got the impression it hadn’t been used for a bit. It looked sort of unlived-in, if you know what I mean. Of course, I only had a torch . . .”

  “And then you tackled the room with the closed door?”

  Heddle grimaced in distaste. “When I opened that door I didn’t have to wonder any longer where the smell came from. God, it was awful. I held my nose and held the torch in at arm’s length. I saw two bodies in the bed and I knew they must be dead. That stink! I’ve heard about it. The stench of death! But I’d never come across it before. I have now, though, and I never want to again.” He looked directly at Masters. “I knew they were dead. They just had to be.”

  Masters said kindly: “Such experiences are not pleasant, Mr Heddle. But try to forget your repugnance and tell me what you did.”

  “I held my handkerchief over my nose and mouth and went in for a closer look.”

  “That was very brave of you.”

  “Brave? Bloody stupid more likely. I didn’t touch anything and I didn’t touch them. I just had a closer look and then . . .”

  “And then” said Green, “you got a bit scared and scooted from the room, down the stairs and out to your car as if all the fiends in hell were after you, and you didn’t stop to phone the police.”

  “I never thought about it. Honest!” said Heddle, wildly. “All I wanted to do was get away. To get out of the house and away from that ghastly smell. I just got into the car and drove away.” Although basically more composed than earlier, the reporter was showing some signs of panic at the memory of the events of the previous evening. He was breathing gaspily.

  “Take it easy, son,” said Green. “Forget what you saw, if you can. You’ll find you’ll feel a lot better about it now you’ve told us. Getting it off your chest’s as good a remedy as any. And have one pf my fags. If you smoke your own you’ll choke.” Green got up to give him the cigarette and the light. “Look on it as good experience, son,” went on Green, continuing to humour the younger man. “In your line of business, what happened to you should help a lot. It’ll add a bit of colour, to your reporting. Give it an air of authenticity.”

  “I suppose it will.”

  “If you’re ready, Mr Heddle, I should like to get on,” said Masters.

  “Yes, of course. Sorry.”

  “You said you got back here to the office at about half-past five yesterday afternoon. When did you set out for the cottage?”

  �
��Sixish, I think. I only had a few little things to do and Golly was trying to rush me.”

  “How long would it have taken you to drive to the cottage?”

  “No more than an hour and three quarters or two hours, normally, but it was rush hour when I set off from here. I lost a bit of time at this end of the journey. I’d say two and a quarter hours at least.”

  “That would mean that you arrived at the cottage at a quarter or half past eight.”

  “Yes. I remember looking at my watch a mile or two before I got there and wondering if I’d be too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “Supper with Rhoda, of course. I’d eaten nothing since lunchtime and I thought that the least she could do would be to give me a meal for running her errands for her.”

  “Which you would then claim for on expenses?” asked Green with a grin.

  “Perhaps I would. But I’d rather have had supper with her.”

  “What time was it when you looked at your watch?” asked Masters.

  “Ten past eight.”

  “You are very precise, Mr Heddle. Most people when questioned are a little hazy about times.”

  “It was only last night,” complained Heddle. “And I can tell you I’m not going to forget the salient facts of what happened last night. Minor things may go, perhaps, but the others . . .” He shuddered at the memory.

  “I’ll accept that for the moment. How long were you at the cottage?”

  “Too long.”

  “Please don’t be flippant, Mr Heddle. Half an hour?”

  “It seemed like it, but I don’t think in reality it could have been more than six or seven minutes.”

  “So you were away from there soon after half-past eight and, from the way you described it earlier, driving like the clappers. The rush hour would be over by then so you would have arrived here by ten or soon after. You rang the Chichester police at something after eleven. What happened to that hour between ten and eleven?”

  “I didn’t come straight back here.”

  “Ah!”

  “I didn’t do anything,” protested Heddle.

  “Anything?”

  “Look, when I got away from the cottage and I began to feel a bit less scared, I began to feel hungry, so I stopped at one of those Inns. You know, where you can get a set meal and a drink . . .”

  “I know the sort of place. Berni, Schooner and various others. Please give me the name so that we can check your story and timings.”

  Heddle gave the required information.

  “I had a steak and half a bottle of red wine.”

  “And was it while you were eating your meal that you cooked up the idea of ringing the police at Chichester anonymously?”

  Heddle nodded. “I realized that perhaps I’d been a bit of a fool not to do anything about the two bodies immediately. And because of that I thought that if I went back then I might be in trouble it would take some time to get out of.”

  “Meaning what, lad?” asked Green.

  “I suppose I felt I would be safer doing something about it from here with the View behind me and the editor and so on. If I’d turned round and gone back to Chichester I’d have been alone with nobody knowing where I was.”

  “And frightened of the police, lad?”

  “I’d rather have somebody powerful watching my interests if I was in their hands. Besides I had to get back here to see Golly.”

  “You’d a lot on your mind,” said Masters drily. “But please go on, Mr Heddle.”

  “While I was having supper I decided that the best thing was to come back here and phone the Chichester police without giving my name. That way, they’d get to know of the deaths, and as I’d had nothing to do with them they’d be no worse off not knowing who their informant was.”

  Masters shook his head sadly. “You didn’t think very far ahead, Mr Heddle, did you? You forgot to consider that as soon as the news of Mrs Carvell’s death broke, your colleagues here would remember you’d been to the cottage last night and they would tell the police of your journey. And that, I’m afraid, would make your situation much worse than it would have been if you’d gone to Chichester after you’d finished supper.”

  “Yes,” whispered Heddle. “When I got back here soon after eleven, I was told Golly had got fed up of waiting for me and had gone out to eat, leaving a message to say she’d be back later. I was really thankful, I can tell you, not to have to face her with the story. Her absence gave me the chance to ring the Chichester police and then to scribble her a note. I just said: ‘No luck at the cottage. Nothing in the typewriter or Rhoda’s tray’. I left it for her to make of it what she liked. Then I hid. One of my colleagues told me she came steaming back, read the note, crumpled it up and just rang down to the presses. She’d had a stand by page made up in case I didn’t get the copy, so there was no delay. They ran it and Golly went off home.”

  “Was it then that you realised you hadn’t thought far enough ahead?”

  Heddle nodded miserably.

  “So what did you think up next?”

  “I thought—all of a sudden—that this might become a bit of a scoop for us and I could say I’d acted properly by letting the police know about the deaths and at the same time I’d done the right thing in withholding my name until the crime editor could be told and decide what was best to do in the interests of the paper.”

  “Clutching at straws, lad,” said Green.

  “Specious, Mr Heddle,” added Masters.

  “A bit specious, I know. But I am supposed to refer to him before I do anything big or important.”

  “Then please tell me why you rang the Assistant Commissioner.”

  “I stayed here all night, thinking. Honestly, I did come to the decision that I ought to let somebody in the police know about me. I reckoned it was no good giving information to the press office at the Yard. They’re there to dish it out. So I looked up our phone list and found the Assistant Commissioner Crime. He seemed to be the one who ought to be told, so I waited until I thought he might be up and then I rang. Then if questions were asked about my journey to the cottage . . .”

  “But you didn’t tell the AC you were the one who had found the bodies, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. I’d meant to, but honestly I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. I said who I was and that I was from the View and mentioned the two bodies and where they were, and then I funked telling him I’d found them. I didn’t know what to do, so I pretended I’d rung to ask questions for a report. Honestly, Mr Masters, that’s how it happened.”

  “If you say so. But I shall have your story tested at every possible point, and if I find you’ve told me the merest hint of an untruth I shall take you up either as an accessory or for impeding the police. Is that clear, Mr Heddle?”

  “Yes. Yes, thank you.”

  “And one more thing. No writing this up for your rag until I give the word. If you do, I’ll take you in, even if it’s only for breaking faith.”

  “I’ll have to tell my bosses. They know I went there.”

  “Mr Green will see them and he will tell your editor he is at liberty to put in a piece about you finding the bodies. But there will be no details because you are a witness and, despite the chance of a scoop, you are not permitted to talk. If they’ll let you, you can write them an account later. Meantime, as I said, you are to regard yourself as a witness and to keep absolutely quiet, on that account. Mr Green will tell your bosses that, too, so they will not press you to act unlawfully.”

  “I understand.”

  “And now, Mr Heddle, we are taking you to the Yard.”

  Heddle looked thoroughly frightened. “What for? I’ve told you the truth. I thought you’d believed me.”

  “Your finger prints will be all over the cottage,” said Reed. “On every door handle and light switch. I want to take your prints for elimination purposes, and I can’t take them here.”

  “We shall also need a written statement from you,
” added Masters.

  Heddle got to his feet looking slightly happier.

  Green slapped him down again immediately. “Before we go, lad, just tell us why you were so sure it was murder, right from the word go.”

  Heddle blinked.

  “Because I knew it couldn’t be suicide. At least I decided it wasn’t after I’d thought about it. Rhoda told me she was looking forward to her freedom, so I reckoned she wouldn’t have killed herself as soon as she’d got it. And I couldn’t see her joining in a suicide pact with a man. I mean, they were in bed. Suicides don’t go to bed, do they, unless they’re taking an overdose of sleeping pills? And knowing Rhoda, I’ll bet she didn’t take pills—not sleeping ones. But even if she had done, would that Woodruff chap have let her die and then taken an overdose himself?”

  “All right, so it wasn’t suicide in your book. What about accident?”

  “I don’t really know, but it didn’t look like an accident if you know what I mean. They were lying there peacefully in bed. I knew there was no gas in the house and that home-made current of theirs wouldn’t have electrocuted a mouse I’d have thought—well, not two grown people lying in bed it wouldn’t. They were just there, with no disturbance or anything. I know it sounds as if I’m describing people who’d just laid down and died, but people don’t, do they? Not people like Rhoda Carvell, anyway.”

  “So you decided on murder.”

  “I didn’t see what else it could be.”

  “Right, lad, we’ll be on our way.”

  *

  “You believe him, George?” asked the AC.

  “I’m inclined to do so, sir. He was in a blue funk, he was tired from being up all night and he’d had a hell of a shock, so when he rang you he really didn’t know what he was doing. At that time he wasn’t thinking straight, sir, and I don’t think he was in any condition to dissemble when we tackled him.”

  “Long-haired character, you say?”

  “A straggly youth, certainly, but all things considered, he didn’t put up a bad show when the four of us confronted him.”

  “Pleased to hear it. There’s a lot of good in most of these lads if only they weren’t too ashamed to show it. Now what?”