A Choice of Victims

by J F Straker

  ‘Oh, sometime after two. Ten—fifteen minutes past.’

  ‘Really? But I’m told you left here shortly after ten-thirty. And the hotel is—what? Fifty miles at the most. How did you occupy the intermediate time, sir?’

  ‘I parked in a lay-by and read the paper.’

  ‘You didn’t call in anywhere for a drink?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you leave so early?’

  ‘Because Winchester is a good two hours’ drive from here, and that is where my wife believed I was lunching.’ David sounded impatient. ‘Fair enough, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. Then let’s call it a day, shall we? You must be a very busy man. Only don’t get me wrong. I’m as anxious as you are to know who killed my wife. But chasing after me will get you nowhere.’

  When Hasted had gone David shouted up the stairs for Andrew and went back to the sitting room to stare moodily out at the garden. That bloody accident, he thought. If only he had waited for the police to arrive there would have been no need for Hasted’s visit and no embarrassing disclosures. As it was...

  ‘You want me?’ Andrew asked, appearing unexpectedly from the terrace. ‘I’m sorry about butting in like that, but I thought he’d gone.’

  ‘How much did you hear?’ David demanded.

  ‘Enough to know I’m likely to be lumbered with another stepmother.’

  David frowned. ‘There’s no need to be offensive,’ he said sharply.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You should be. Anyway, nothing is settled. Which is why I haven’t mentioned the matter before.’

  ‘You couldn’t, could you?’ Andrew retorted. ‘Not while Elizabeth was alive.’

  David ignored that. He could not blame the boy for feeling sore. No doubt Andrew envisaged Marjorie as another Elizabeth, a woman who would try to dominate him, to order his life according to her wishes, not his. It was unfortunate too that he should have learned the news in that manner. He would see it as a lack of trust.

  ‘I think you’ll like her, Andrew,’ he said. ‘I hope you will, anyway. I know you didn’t get on with Elizabeth, but Marjorie’s an altogether different sort of person. Softer. More—well, more understanding, more amenable. She’s young, too. She’ll be 28 on Saturday.’

  ‘You’re the age, aren’t you?’ Andrew scoffed.

  David knew what he meant: that he was of an age to lust after youth. Was there some truth in that? he wondered. He believed himself to be genuinely in love. But was it Marjorie’s youth—and she was young for her age—that really attracted him? That—and her dissimilarity to Elizabeth?

  ‘Perhaps.’ He filled his pipe and lit it, taking his time over the operation. ‘However, as I said, Saturday is her birthday and I’d like to spend it with her. To invite her here might cause unpleasant comment, so I’m fixing for us to stay at an hotel.’ He puffed furiously at his pipe. ‘Why not join us? You’d be very welcome.’

  ‘To play gooseberry?’ Andrew grimaced. ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘You’ll be here on your own.’

  ‘So what? I’ve been on my own before, haven’t I? I can manage.’

  ‘Well, if you’d rather,’ David said, relieved. The invitation had been made on the spur of the moment and almost immediately regretted. He had no idea how Marjorie would have reacted to the threesome, but for him it could have been a disaster. ‘I’ll see if Mrs Trotter can put in some extra time.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Andrew said bitterly. ‘I wouldn’t want to involve you in unnecessary expense. Dirty weekends don’t come cheap, do they?’

  *

  Detective Sergeant Dixon was 32, but with his cherubic countenance and curly brown hair and winning smile he looked ten years younger. He was a great success with elderly ladies, in whom he managed to inspire almost instant and implicit trust. Which was why he had been detailed to interview Ed Mason’s mother. No doubt she had heard of the murder of Elizabeth Doyle the previous Friday, he said. Of course, she said, it was the talk of the village. Well, the police were anxious to interview anyone who happened to be on the West Deering to Yellham road that day between one and two o’clock. ‘They might have seen something that could help our enquiries,’ he explained. ‘Even if they think they saw nothing significant we’d like to talk to them.’

  Mrs Mason looked puzzled. ‘But I wasn’t there,’ she protested.

  Dixon smiled. ‘We know that, Mrs Mason. But your son was. He came to lunch, didn’t he?’

  ‘He always comes to lunch Fridays,’ she said.

  ‘I know. He told us. Unfortunately he can’t remember exactly what time he got here. And that’s important. So we’re hoping you may be able to help us there. I mean, you were preparing lunch, weren’t you, so you’d be keeping an eye on the clock. You wouldn’t want the food to be spoiled.’

  ‘It was spoiled Friday,’ she said. ‘Half an hour late, he was. Half an hour, Mr Dixon. It was twenty minutes to two when he came through the door. The Yorkshire was ruined.’

  ‘What a shame!’ Dixon sympathized. ‘Me, I’m a real glutton for Yorkshire. Did he say what delayed him?’

  ‘He had to make a business call.’

  ‘I expect he was pretty wet, wasn’t he? It was a filthy morning.’

  No, she said, he was not wet. Or no wetter than what he would be getting in and out of the car. But he had looked tired, she thought. And worried. ‘It’s that wife of his, poor man,’ she said. ‘Leads him a pretty dance, that one does.’

  Hasted’s thoughts on the information were mixed. In addition to a lack of motive, the fact that Mason’s clothes had been comparatively dry on arrival at his mother’s house seemed to confirm that he had had no hand in Elizabeth Doyle’s murder. Yet Yellham was only five minutes’ drive away from West Deering, and a business call en route was unlikely to have taken more than a few minutes. So how had Mason occupied the rest of the hour after leaving the shop? The answer to that, Hasted decided, was not really his concern. Not if the assumption of Mason’s innocence was correct. Yet he knew that until he had the answer he would continue to be niggled by doubt, which could not be good for his peace of mind. So why not let curiosity have its way, and ask?

  He asked the next morning. They were in a room, half office, half store, where Mason had directed him as soon as the question had been put. ‘I like to keep private matters private,’ Mason said, shutting the door on Mrs Barnes and a solitary customer. ‘Though goodness knows that’s not easy in this village. Now, what was it you wanted to know, Mr Hasted?’

  ‘I’d like to know how you occupied your time last Friday between leaving here at twelve-thirty-five and arriving at your mother’s an hour later.’

  ‘Oh? Well, I don’t wish to be rude—but is that really any concern of yours?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Hasted agreed. ‘But in a murder investigation one tends to wander a little. If you see what I mean.’

  ‘Investigation?’ Pointing to the solitary chair for Hasted to sit, Mason perched his lean frame on the ancient desk. ‘Didn’t those two men do it, then?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to discover,’ Hasted said. ‘And for that we need to question everyone who was on the road between here and Yellham during that hour.’

  ‘I see.’ Mason looked relieved. ‘Well, that lets me out. I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Not there? Are you saying you didn’t visit your mother that day?’

  ‘I went, yes. But not directly. I took the other road, through the Morris and the Rye.’

  ‘Oh!’ Hasted considered. ‘Well, that’s longer, of course. Five to six miles, I suppose. But it wouldn’t take an hour. You must have stopped somewhere en route.’

  ‘I did. At the Falcon.’

  This is getting tricky, Hasted thought. Andrew Doyle and Derek Mollison had been at the Falcon, along with others the landlord had mentioned. But no one had mentioned Mason.

  ‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘Mr Grover gave us a list of his customers that mo
rning and your name wasn’t on it. How do you account for that?’

  Mason’s long body seemed to sag. ‘I wasn’t actually in the Falcon,’ he said, avoiding Hasted’s gaze. ‘I was outside. In the car.’

  ‘Really? For well over half an hour?’ Hasted shook his head. ‘I don’t think you’re levelling with me, Mr Mason. And that makes me curious. Why, I ask myself, should someone lie to a policeman if he has nothing to conceal?’

  ‘I was watching for my wife,’ Mason said dully.

  ‘You mean you were waiting for her to join you?’ Mason shook his head. ‘What, then?’ Mason was silent. ‘Come on, man! We can’t just leave it there. What were you up to, eh?’

  Mason slid off the desk and walked past Hasted to the window and stood staring out over the small back yard, now largely a dump in which smoke spiralled lazily from an incinerator to the football field beyond. He stood there for a full minute, his hands deep in his trouser pockets. Then he turned and leaned against the sill.

  ‘It’s difficult to explain, Mr Hasted,’ he said. ‘But I can assure you it had nothing to do with Mrs Doyle.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ Hasted said. ‘All right?’

  Mason came away from the window and, head down, began to pace slowly up and down the narrow passage between the piles of stores. He and his wife had been married for fourteen years, he said, and for most of that time they had grown further and further apart. One of the main reasons was financial, for Cheryl never ceased to complain about the lack of money. ‘People think village stores like this are little gold mines, Mr Hasted,’ he said. ‘Well, some of them are. But not this one. I lack the necessary capital, you see, and that means I’m understocked. And when customers find I can’t supply all their needs they do the bulk of their shopping in the Limpsted supermarkets and come to me for odds and ends. If it weren’t for the post office I couldn’t keep going.’

  He sounded bitter. ‘Sad,’ Hasted said, wondering where this was leading but comfortably aware that Sybil did most of her shopping in the village. ‘And unfortunately you’re not unique. By the next century the village shop could well have become extinct.’

  ‘We’d do better, of course, if Cheryl would help out,’ Mason said, still pacing. ‘I wouldn’t need Mrs Barnes then. But she just isn’t interested.’

  ‘Hm! Well, I can see you’ve got your problems,’ Hasted said. ‘And I’m sorry. But what has this to do with—’

  ‘Please!’ Mason interrupted. ‘Let me tell it my way.’

  It was possible, he said, that his wife had been meeting other men, although he had no proof of that. What he knew for certain, however, was that recently she had taken to visiting Claud Philipson, and rumour had it that the association was far from platonic. ‘I find that disgusting,’ he said, pausing to bang an angry fist against a carton of tinned carrots. ‘He’s old enough to be her father. There’s talk that she’s after his money. Well, maybe she is, although she denied it when I tackled her. Said she’s sorry for him, likes to cheer him up, and not to listen to gossip. But I know Cheryl, Mr Hasted. That’s why I decided to check on her.’

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Hasted thought. ‘Last Friday, you mean?’

  Mason nodded. He knew she usually got to Philipson’s cottage around one o’clock, he said, leaving her car at the Falcon and walking up through the woods. So he had left the shop early in order to be in the Rye by twelve-forty-five, intending to wait until she arrived and then follow her unseen to the cottage. ‘I had no clear idea what to do when I got there,’ he said. ‘Spy on them through a window, I suppose. Perhaps even confront them. I don’t know.’ He halted in front of Hasted and made a gesture of despair with his hands. ‘But it didn’t happen, of course.’

  ‘What didn’t happen?’

  ‘Nothing happened. She didn’t come. I waited until around half-past one. Then I gave up and drove on to my mother’s place for lunch.’ He slumped on the desk. ‘Are you a jealous man, Mr Hasted?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hasted said. ‘I’ve never been tested. But what made you think your wife would be visiting Philipson that morning? In weather like that I’d have thought it was most unlikely. And it wasn’t her turn for Meals on Wheels.’

  ‘According to the list, it was. I checked.’

  Hasted sat up sharply. ‘Are you saying your wife was down to deliver Meals on Wheels that day?’

  ‘That’s right. I didn’t know till later that Mrs Doyle had asked her to swap.’ Mason sighed. ‘She was lucky, wasn’t she? It could have been her got killed by those men. Not Mrs Doyle.’

  *

  Frances Holden was in a flap. She had come downstairs that Thursday morning to discover that the door of the refrigerator would not open. They had all had a go at it, but the door remained sealed. She had got butter and bacon and bread from the freezer and put them on the Aga to thaw, but inevitably breakfast was late. Tom had just left and she was on the phone to the electricity board when Hasted arrived. Natalie left him to wait in the sitting room, and he sat on the settee fighting off the ablutionary tactics of the two cairns until Frances joined him and shooed them away. He expressed proper concern for her misfortune, but she rejected his offer to have a look at the recalcitrant appliance. ‘It’s donkey’s years old,’ she said, using both hands to push back unruly hair. ‘But there seemed no point in replacing it while it still worked. Now Tom’s agreed that we can have a new one. Well, that’s enough of my troubles. How can I help you, Mr Hasted?’

  She was apologetic when he told her. When she made out the quarterly lists, she said, she always kept a few spare copies, and it was one of these original copies that she had given to Hasted. ‘It never occurred to me to make the alteration,’ she said. ‘I thought all you wanted was a list of names and addresses.’

  ‘It was, primarily,’ Hasted said. ‘But as I explained before, if we’re looking for a local killer it has to be someone who knew who would be delivering the meals that day. That’s why the alteration is important. Who would know of it?’

  Frances could not say for certain. Helpers were free to swap dates as they wished, and although some notified her of a change, as Elizabeth Doyle had done, it was not obligatory and the majority did not bother. ‘Basically it would just be the two families concerned,’ she said. ‘But there could be others. For instance, in this case, Mrs Trotter.’ The blue eyes widened. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. It sort of reduces the field, doesn’t it? Makes it simpler for you.’

  ‘It might,’ he agreed.

  He did not point out that it might also make it more complicated. But he pointed it out to Driver as they ate a ploughman’s lunch in a pub down the road from headquarters. Had Elizabeth Doyle been killed because of who she was, and therefore by someone who knew of the change in dates? Or had she been killed by someone who, unaware of the change, had supposed her to be Cheryl Mason? ‘The two women are—were—about the same height. Different hairstyles and colouring, of course, and Mrs Mason is plumper. But those details might not have been apparent under the voluminous mac and hood she was wearing. Particularly if the killer attacked her from behind, as the wound suggests.’

  ‘So you’re saying we have a choice of victims, eh?’ Driver swore as a pickled onion eluded his grasp and rolled off the plate. ‘Or intended victims, rather. Which presumably increases the number of suspects.’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘With the two husbands leading the field, eh?’

  ‘I suppose so. But we’ve no hard evidence against either. Just opportunity and motive.’

  ‘That’s certainly true of Doyle,’ Driver said. ‘Reading a newspaper in a lay-by isn’t the most solid of alibis. Mason seems more doubtful. Unless the two women possessed identical macs, wouldn’t he know that the one the dead woman was wearing wasn’t his wife’s?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Hasted said. ‘I get the impression the couple are so far apart that her wardrobe could be as foreign to him as it is to me.’

  ‘There’s his
mother’s evidence. That his clothes were dry when he arrived for lunch.’

  ‘She could be lying,’ Hasted said. ‘Mothers do. I’ll have enquires made in the Rye, see if anyone noticed his car.’

  Driver drained his glass. ‘Well, drink up, George. We’ll have the other half.’

  When he returned with the drinks he said, ‘I looked in at the incident room this morning. Not exactly a hive of activity. Still, it’s fun for the kids, I suppose. Dixon got anything on Bates yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The chief’s getting impatient. He’s hoping for an arrest before Bright and Willis come up again on Wednesday.’ Driver lit a cigarette. ‘I can’t see that happening.’

  ‘If only we could find that damned key,’ Hasted said. ‘Forget it, George. It could be anywhere.’

  ‘If you were chummy, what would you have done with it?’

  ‘Buried it, probably.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have pocketed it and disposed of it later?’

  ‘I might have done. Why?’

  Hasted shrugged. ‘It worries me, that’s why. I get the feeling that the key itself is less important than where we find it.’

  ‘If we find it.’ Driver stood up. ‘Come on, back to the factory. When are you collecting Sybil?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon. Three-thirty. And I’ll have a bottle of champagne on ice to celebrate.’

  ‘Is champagne good for nursing mothers?’

  ‘It’s good for nursing fathers,’ Hasted said. ‘Godparents too, if you happen to be out that way.’

  ‘I shan’t be,’ Driver said. ‘Thanks all the same, George. But I’ve a rather special date for tomorrow evening.’

  Chapter Six

  Elizabeth’s funeral was reasonably well attended, largely by fellow members of the Women’s Institute, the parish council and the housing committee. The Holdens and the Masons were there; so were Derek Mollison and Mrs Trotter. And Bridgadier Follick, who shunned weddings but seldom missed a funeral. There were a few strangers, among whom Hasted, who was there to represent the police, thought to recognize the man he had seen in the photograph and whom Andrew had identified as the dead woman’s London solicitor. The remainder were villagers who Hasted suspected had attended more out of curiosity than from a sense of loss or duty. There were a respectable number of floral tributes but no tears. The vicar’s address was short and stereotyped; his reference to ‘our sister Elizabeth who, although a comparative newcomer, had immersed herself wholeheartedly in the affairs of the community’ made Hasted wonder how soon one ceased to be a newcomer, even a comparative one. Apparently five years was not enough.