The Monday Theory

by Douglas Clark

  “I know it well,” said Masters. “I was often there as a student.”

  Carvell was in the act of opening the door. He stopped with his hand on the knob. “You were a student? Here, in London?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a degree?”

  “A first,” confessed Masters. “Now I’ll be on my way.” As Carvell slowly opened the door and he passed through, he added, “In biological sciences. I’ve often found the knowledge useful. Goodnight, Professor.”

  As he walked along the narrow corridor towards the lifts, Masters wondered if the Cartwrights had gone. If not, he wanted a word with Cartwright. He began to hurry.

  “They went soon after you telephoned,” said Wanda, as she kissed him. “Really and truly, darling, they are a nuisance, but you shouldn’t have gone out like that without your supper.”

  “It was unforgivable,” confessed Masters, “but I’m not prepared to eat in front of a gawping audience of any sort, least of all one comprised solely of the genus Cartwright.”

  “They’re not a genus,” said Wanda softly. “They’re a sub species.”

  “Whatever they are, I hope they don’t get into the habit of descending on us at meal times.”

  “It was the first time,” said Wanda quietly. “And, I think, the last.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m afraid I offended them.”

  “Not by design, my sweet. You would never do that to anybody.”

  Wanda didn’t reply. She entered the dining room, crossed it and through the archway to the kitchen. Masters followed her. The smell from the oven was inviting.

  She served up his food. He accepted it shamefacedly and carried it back to the relaid dining table. She sat with him while he ate. When he’d finished he had the grace to say he didn’t know how she managed to hot it up without spoiling it.

  With a knowing little smile she rose to get the coffee.

  *

  Thursday morning was again bright. The touch of overnight frost which had kept the air crisp and clear and had settled in circles on each of the paving stones was burning away by the time Masters left home, but its effects remained. The people he passed as he walked to the Yard seemed to him to be just that little bit livelier than the bleary-eyed, yawning crowd he usually encountered before nine in the morning. He, too, felt livelier. Happier, he supposed. Altogether more pleased with life than yesterday.

  He went straight up to his office. There was an hour’s paper work to be done. His report on yesterday and the odd bit to add to the brief entry on Carvell. Masters preferred to do as little clerical work as he could reasonably get away with. The AC Crime had frequently suggested that his reports could be fuller. Masters preferred brevity, and in view of his success rate, no serious complaint about his methods could genuinely be made. It was not that he actively disliked paper work. He found in it a sense of recording accomplishment that appealed to him. Besides this aspect, he regarded it as a refresher course. Having to marshal his thoughts for a precis of events, as opposed to a full account, concentrated his mind, aided recall and on occasion gave him the necessary alternative viewpoints. But he begrudged the time it took. DS Reed knew the routine, and never appeared till called for unless something out of the ordinary was happening.

  It was ten past ten when Masters at last got round to using the internal phone to summon Green and the two sergeants. He asked Reed to have coffee sent in.

  Green arrived first.

  “What’s on, George?”

  “We’re awa’oot after we’ve had a cup of coffee.”

  “You’re sounding chirpier than you did yesterday.”

  “The Cartwrights called at the house just as we were sitting down to supper last night.”

  “And that has made you happier?”

  “I believe it to have been their last visit.”

  “Ah! You saw them off.”

  “I didn’t. Wanda did.”

  “Good girlie. But why let the lass do it when you’ve got a tongue in your head?”

  “I went out. Chickened out, if you like. I gave them a bit of my mind and then left, without supper.”

  “Leaving Wanda to finish the demolition job? How did she do it?”

  “She didn’t say, and I thought it wiser not to ask. But when I got back, Wanda was alone, with supper re-prepared and literally exuding a sense of achievement.”

  “Good for her. Actually it was better to let her make the break. There’ll be no feeling that you choked the Cartwrights off against her wishes.” Green helped himself to a Kensitas from a crumpled packet. “What did you do? Walk the streets all evening?”

  “I came here . . .”

  “Whatever for?”

  “. . . and then went to call on Carvell.”

  “You what?”

  “I used the excuse that he might not have been told officially of his ex-wife’s death. I said I’d forgotten to do it and I wanted to apologise if the first intimation he got of her death had been from a newspaper report.”

  “Humbug. Anderson was going to phone him.”

  “Quite. But I was at a loose end and I wanted a quick look at the professor.”

  “Have you arranged to see him again this morning?”

  “He was on his way out last night when I called on him. He wasn’t best pleased to see me.”

  “Came the old acid, did he?”

  “Tried to treat me like a conscientious, hard-working copper slightly short on the grey matter and falling down sadly on my forelock-touching drill.”

  “He did that? To you?”

  Masters grinned. “He told me that if I wanted to see him again it was to be in working hours at Disraeli College—presumably after ringing for an appointment.”

  “I like it,” said Green. “Anybody who can put you in your place gets my vote.”

  “I didn’t say he put me in my place.”

  Green stared at him for a moment. “I knew it was too good to be true. I suppose you disillusioned him.”

  “Not exactly. I think the honours were even. But I believe he will be expecting me to ring for an appointment this morning.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I told him there were a few questions I needed to ask him.”

  “So. Do we go or not?”

  “If I’m right and he is expecting me, wouldn’t it be rather nice to disappoint him?”

  Green grinned. “You’re a devious bastard if somebody puts your back up. He’ll be there thinking you’re going to dance to his tune, and . . .”

  Reed and Berger came in with the coffee. As Masters accepted his cup, he said to Reed: “Ring up Divorce and Admiralty and ask who represented Mrs Carvell in court last Tuesday.”

  “I did that, Chief. I thought you’d want to know her solicitor and what her will contained and if she had any property to leave. It’s Vadil of Drawer and Vadil.”

  Masters nodded his thanks. He’d met Vadil and he was of the opinion that he and the young solicitor were not each other’s most fervent admirers. Vadil tended to act for a set which considered policemen should be permitted to nose into the business of everybody but themselves. He wasn’t surprised to learn Rhoda Carvell had asked Vadil to accept service. As Carvell was divorcing her, it seemed likely that the professor’s solicitor would not be available to her.

  “Roger the dodger,” said Green sourly. “You won’t get much out of him.”

  “Maybe not,” agreed Masters, “but I shall have to see him. I want to know the provisions before I see Carvell again.”

  “Vadil may not have her will—if he only acted in the divorce suit.”

  “True. But I should imagine that a good lawyer—and Vadil is a good lawyer—would go into the property side pretty closely when involved in a divorce suit. It could be that he knows something we should know.”

  *

  Roger Vadil kept them waiting a few minutes, but it was a genuine wait. He was with a client. Green, with his eye to the partly-open door of the modern,
well-heated waiting room, decorated with framed cartoons of eminent past and present advocates, saw a woman leave Vadil’s office.

  “He certainly gets the clients. That one’s got Russian boots on.”

  “Russian boots?” queried Berger.

  “That’s right, lad. These tall boots women wear nowadays.”

  “What’s Russian about them?”

  “That’s what they were always called in my day.”

  “I thought they were a modern fashion.”

  “Nothing’s new, lad. You should know that. Only in the old days women wore Russian boots when the weather made them necessary. Now they’re worn for fashion and god-awful most of them look.”

  Before Berger could reply, a secretary put her head round the door. “Mr Vadil will see you now, gentlemen.”

  Vadil was on his feet behind his desk as they entered his office.

  “I was going to ring you, Chief Superintendent.”

  This surprise announcement had no apparent effect on Masters who took the client chair opposite the solicitor. Green, however, said he liked to think of the Yard saving hard-up members of the legal profession the price of a phone call and pulled up, alongside Masters, a second chair upholstered in bright orange tweed.

  Vadil, in his mid-thirties, smooth and impeccably dressed, with a gold fob in his waistcoat, remained standing until all four were seated. Masters waited to hear the reason why Vadil had intended to ring him.

  “I should like to know when I can safely make arrangements for the funeral to be held.”

  “Just hers?”

  “And his. I’d better do that for her. We can dispose of both at once.”

  “I shall make enquiries in Chichester and let you know. I don’t think the coroner will want to hang on to the bodies too long after the forensic people have finished with them.”

  “Thank you. Now perhaps you will tell me what I can do for you?”

  Masters paused for a moment before saying: “Mrs Carvell was divorced last Tuesday morning, I believe.”

  “Correct.”

  “She appeared in court?”

  “No.”

  “No? That amazes me Mr Vadil.”

  “Why?”

  “She was heard to state, in the View office last Monday, that she intended to be present.”

  “So she did—intend, I mean, but she didn’t.”

  “You were expecting her and she didn’t turn up? Weren’t you surprised?”

  “Not unduly. I had told Mrs Carvell there was no need for her to be there. There was no wrangle over the settlement. That had been fixed beforehand and she’d agreed. But she was a journalist, as you know. Every new experience provided good copy. She said she wanted to know, first-hand, how women were liberated—the actual mechanics of the business—so that she could tell her women readers there was nothing to be afraid of in the actual act of cutting loose. You know the line she usually took. Anything remotely reminiscent of Establishment was a target for her, and many readers lapped it up. She wrote for a number of women’s magazines besides the View you know.”

  “So why weren’t you surprised when she didn’t turn up to take advantage of so unique and subjective an opportunity?”

  “I simply took it that she had thought better of it and had followed my advice to stay away from what can be, even for a woman like her, an emotional experience.”

  Masters nodded his understanding. “When was the last time you actually saw her?”

  “On the previous Friday. Here. A last minute conference to agree everything and so on. That’s when she told me she would be in court.”

  There was a short silence. Then Vadil asked: “When did she die?”

  Masters frowned. “After what you’ve just told me, my guess would be Monday night.”

  “On . . . you mean she was dead before . . .?”

  “Before she was divorced? Yes.”

  “But that would invalidate the proceedings. Are you sure of your facts?”

  “I’m not absolutely sure. We’re trying to find out if anybody saw her after lunchtime on the Monday.”

  “But if she went down to Abbot’s Hall with Woodruff . . .”

  “On the Monday?”

  “Yes. Say she had done that, there is the reason for her not turning up on Tuesday. It could just be that they were too wrapped up in themselves or just too idle to come back to London to attend the court. It’s a long way to come when there is no urgent reason for doing so.”

  “Did Mrs Carvell tell you she was travelling to Abbot’s Hall on the Monday?”

  “I can’t be sure. I knew she said she and Woodruff were going there, but exactly when it was to be . . . look here, Chief Superintendent, what makes you think she died on the Monday?”

  “The gale.”

  “What the hell are you talking about now? What gale?” Vadil was getting slightly rattled. Masters guessed that he didn’t like the idea that he had been instrumental in helping the divorce proceedings of a dead woman.

  “Mrs Carvell was a fresh-air fiend, I’ve been told.”

  “Very much so.”

  “She always slept with her window open.”

  “I’ve had no first-hand experience, but I have heard it was a fetish of hers.”

  “In spite of that, my information is that when there was a southerly gale blowing straight into the front of Abbot’s Hall, even Mrs Carvell—fetish or no fetish—had to shut her bedroom windows.”

  “That sounds more than reasonable. Please go on.”

  “She was found dead in a room with windows closed and fastened, which argues there was a gale when she went to bed.”

  “Yes.”

  “There was a howling gale last Monday night, but it had died down and backed away by noon on Tuesday.”

  “I can see why you are opting for Monday night, but what does the medical evidence say was the time of death?”

  “So far, only that it was more than five days ago.”

  Vadil leaned back in his chair and played with the watch-chain across his slim stomach. “I hope you can do better than that, Mr Masters.”

  “Why?”

  “Because all sorts of legal complications could arise. If you are right, the divorce could be invalid. Quite where that would leave Carvell in regard to the various dispositions and agreements that were made to come into effect when the decree became absolute . . . but I needn’t go into detail. I’m not at all sure that I know the answers, or anybody else for that matter, because it must be the only case on record where a divorce was granted after the death of one of the parties.”

  “If it was after death,” said Green.

  “Quite.” Vadil turned again to Masters. “Was that all you came to see me about?”

  Masters shook his head. “I suspected she died on Monday night on the evidence of the closed windows and the gale. But as I had been informed that she intended to be in court on Tuesday, I assumed she had been there, otherwise somebody would have wanted to know why not. So, in spite of my suspicions, I had expected to hear you say she had, in fact, been present to hear the decree granted. That is why I asked you when you had last seen her.”

  “I understand. So you really came to ask something else. The usual, I suppose? Who benefits?”

  Masters nodded. “If marriage invalidates a former will, I suppose divorce does?”

  “The new act complicates matters. I doubt if one would be able to cut out one’s former spouse entirely, particularly if maintenance payments are to be made. But I don’t think we need to discuss that particular point. Mrs Carvell had comparatively little to leave in the way of an estate.”

  “How little is comparatively?”

  “Abbot’s Hall was in joint ownership and though it was the only marital home that they actually owned, Mrs Carvell had contributed well over half the money towards it. She bought the fabric and he paid for the renovation. It was paid for. Carvell had no mortgage to pay, so he had agreed to her having it. As for other monies—well, I suppose
you can guess that a journalist of her standing earned as much as a professor, so there was an agreement that no maintenance was to be paid.”

  “You agreed to that?”

  “Mrs Carvell had announced her intention of marrying Woodruff as soon as the decree became absolute. To fight to obtain an order against an equal—probably smaller—earner would have cost more than would have been awarded for the three months or so which were to have elapsed before Mrs Carvell’s second marriage. On her remarriage the order would have stopped.”

  “No proper marital home, you said?”

  Vadil offered a cigarette box. Green and the two sergeants accepted, but the solicitor himself did not smoke. He offered them lights from a gold lighter.

  “They used to live in a house owned by the college. They had furnished it, of course. Very attractively. It was my duty to see that Mrs Carvell received a fair share of the movable property, some of which she had contributed to the home.”

  “I see. But she had no money?”

  “A few hundreds in cash. She had spent her capital on Abbot’s, and a woman like Rhoda Carvell spends what she earns. She dressed with a capital D.”

  “The professor was amenable?”

  “Entirely. All he wanted was his books, the bookcases and his desk.”

  “Not surprising, seeing he was moving into a set in Gladstone Hall.”

  “As soon as they broke up he left the house.”

  “That must have been fairly recently.”

  “He moved into Gladstone just before the beginning of this term. Towards the end of September, I believe. But he had rooms elsewhere before that.”

  “The professor’s lawyer must have got the divorce through quicker than usual, Mr Vadil. They were still together in June.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “We have a witness—a colleague of Mrs Carvell—who called at Abbot’s Hall in June, on a Sunday, on newspaper business, and met the professor there as well as his wife.”

  Vadil frowned. “You’re sure of this?”

  “We saw no reason to doubt it when we were told. Can you suggest a good reason why we should doubt it now?”

  “Only because Carvell claimed he had not been cohabiting with his wife for some months previous to last June. And that claim, in a legal matter, is the equivalent of swearing on oath. So, to hear they were staying together at Abbot’s more than surprises me. It astounds me. Are you sure your informant has not mistaken Woodruff for the professor?”