Vintage Crime

by Martin Edwards

  “So I heard,” said the Wing Commander with a distinct change in tone.

  “You knew him, didn’t you?”

  “Years ago.” There was definitely an edge to the voice now.

  “He painted a pretty accurate interior of this room. It was found among his canvases after he died.”

  “Did he, by jove? That’s a liberty, don’t you think? Abuse of friendship, I call that.”

  “He didn’t remain your friend, I heard.”

  “We fell out.”

  “Do you mind telling me why?”

  “Actually, I do, John. It’s a closed book.”

  In other circumstances, Brandon would have put the screws on. “But you must have been close friends for him to know this room so well.”

  “I suppose he’d remember it. Used to drop in for a chat about cricket. We both played for the town team.” The Wing Commander poured the sherry and handed one to Brandon. “Are you here in an official capacity?”

  It had to be said. “I’m afraid so. The picture I mentioned wasn’t just an interior scene.” He hesitated. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this. It had the figure of a woman in it, lying across the carpet, apparently dead of a head wound.”

  “Good God!”

  “There was a poker beside her. You don’t seem to keep a set of fire irons any longer.”

  “It’s gas now.” The Wing Commander had turned quite crimson. “Look here, since you’ve come to question me, I think I have a right to see this unpleasant picture. Where is it?”

  “At the police station, undergoing tests. I can let you see it, certainly, later in the week. What bothers me is whether it has any foundation in real events.”

  “Meaning what? That a woman was attacked here – in my living room?”

  Brandon had to admire the old man’s composure. “It seems absurd to me, too, but he was an accurate painter—”

  “An alcoholic.”

  “... and wasn’t known to paint anything he hadn’t seen for himself.”

  “Don’t know about that. Painters of that time used to use their dreams as inspiration. What do they call it – surrealism?”

  “I have to ask this, Wing Commander. You separated from your wife in the nineteen-fifties.”

  “Helen? She left me. We found out we were incompatible, as many others have done.”

  “Did you ever divorce?”

  “No need. I didn’t want another marriage.”

  “Didn’t she?”

  “Evidently not.”

  “You’re not in touch?”

  “When it’s over, it’s over.”

  He’s lost none of his cricketing skills, thought Brandon. He could stonewall with the best.

  The dust samples went to the Home Office forensic department for analysis. In three days they sent the result: significant traces of human blood had been found. Normally, he would have been excited by the discovery. This was a real downer.

  So a gentle inquiry was transformed into a murder investigation. Wing Commander Ashton was brought in for questioning and a scene of crime team went through his house. More traces of dried blood were found, leaving no question that someone had sustained a serious injury in that living room.

  The Wing Commander faced the interrogation with the dignity of a veteran officer. He had lost contact with his wife in 1956 and made no effort to trace her. There had been no reason to stay in contact. They had no children. She had been comfortably off and so was he. No, her life had not been insured.

  Brandon sensed that the old man held the truth in high regard. It was a point of honour not to lie. He wasn’t likely to volunteer anything detrimental to himself, but he would answer with honesty.

  When shown the painting that was the cause of all the fuss, he gave it a glance, no more, and said the woman on the floor didn’t look much like his wife, what you could see of her. He was allowed to go home, only to find a team of policemen digging in his garden. He watched them with contempt.

  A public appeal was made for the present address of Mrs. Helen Ashton, aged 79. It was suggested that she might be using another name. This triggered massive coverage in the press. Davey Park’s painting was reproduced in all the dailies with captions like: IS THIS A MURDER SCENE? and PROOF OF MURDER OR CRUEL HOAX?

  The response was overwhelming and fruitless. Scores of old ladies, some very confused, were interviewed and found to have no connection with the case. It only fuelled the suspicion that Helen Ashton had been dead for years.

  The investigation was running out of steam. Nothing had been found in the garden. There were no incriminating diaries, letters or documents in the house.

  “What about the book?” someone asked. “Did he have anything mean to say about his wife?”

  Brandon had already skimmed through the book. Helen wasn’t mentioned.

  The answer to the mystery had to be in the picture. If the artist Davey Park knew a murder had been committed, and felt strongly enough to have made this visual record, he’d wanted the truth to come out. Then why hadn’t he informed the police? Either he had killed Helen Ashton himself, or he felt under some obligation to keep the secret until he died. The picture was his one major work never to have been exhibited.

  Either way, it suggested some personal involvement. He’d been known to have numerous affairs. Had Helen Ashton refused his advances and paid for it with her life?

  Brandon stared at the picture once more, systematically studying each detail: the bloodstained fireplace, the pictures, the medals, the photos on the table, the armchair, the typewriter on the bureau, the dead woman, the blood on the carpet, her clothes, her damaged fingernails, her blackened fingertips. By sheer application he spotted something he’d missed before.

  She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. The hand in the foreground was her left and the ring finger was bare.

  “I deserve to be sacked,” he said aloud.

  Park had been so careful over detail that he wouldn’t have forgotten to paint in the ring. And in the Fifties, most married women wore their rings at all times.

  “You’re joking, guv,” said DS Makepeace when Brandon asked him to make a list of the women Davey Park had been out with in the nineteen-fifties.

  “I’m not. There are people in the town who remember. It was hot gossip once.”

  “Did he keep a diary, or something?”

  “If he had, we’d have looked through it weeks ago. All he left behind were pictures and unpaid bills. Start with Henry Chivers, in the Crown.”

  After another week of patiently assembling information, Brandon had the Wing Commander brought in for further questioning.

  Sergeant Makepeace thought he should have waited longer, and didn’t mind speaking out. “I think he’ll stall, guv. You won’t get anything out of him.”

  “No,” said Brandon firmly. “He’s one of those rare witnesses you can rely on. A truth-teller. With his background it’s a point of honour to give truthful answers. He won’t mention anything that isn’t asked, but he won’t lie, either.”

  “You admire him, don’t you?”

  “That’s what makes it so painful.”

  So the old man sat across the desk from Brandon in an interview room and the tape rolled and the formalities were gone through.

  “Wing Commander Ashton, we now believe the woman who was attacked in your house was not your wife.”

  A soft sigh escaped. “Isn’t that what I told you from the beginning?”

  “The woman in the picture doesn’t have a wedding ring. I should have looked for it earlier. I didn’t.”

  The only response was a slight shrug.

  Brandon admitted, “When I realised this, I was thrown. The victim could be anybody – any dark-haired young woman without a ring. There had to be some extra clue in the painting, and there is. She was the woman who
typed your book. Her name was Angela Hamilton. Is that correct?”

  He said stiffly, giving only as much as his moral code decreed, “I had a typist of that name, yes.”

  “She was murdered in your house in the manner shown in the painting. Davey Park saw the scene just after it happened and painted it from memory.”

  The Wing Commander spread his hands. “The existence of this painting was unknown to me until I saw it here a few days ago.”

  “But you confirm that Miss Hamilton was the victim?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m interpreting the picture now. It gives certain pointers to the crime.”

  “Like the typewriter.”

  “Just so. And the reason she was partially dressed is that you and she had been making love, probably in that room where she typed for you. Precisely where is not important. Your wife came home – she was supposed to be out for some considerable time – and caught you cheating on her.”

  The Wing Commander didn’t deny it. He looked down at his arthritic hands. The passions of fifty years ago seemed very remote.

  Brandon continued: “We think what happened is this. To use an old-fashioned phrase, Angela Hamilton was a fast woman, an ex-lover of the artist Davey Park. Park heard she’d been taken on by you as a part-time typist and found out that she didn’t spend all her time in front of the machine. Perhaps she boasted to him that she’d seduced the famous Battle of Britain hero, or perhaps he played Peeping Tom at your window one afternoon. Anyway, he decided to tell your wife. He’d been trying to flirt with her, with no success. He thought if she found out you were two-timing, she might be encouraged to do the same. She didn’t believe him, so he offered to prove it. They both turned up at your house when you and Angela were having sex. Is that a fair account?”

  “They caught us in some embarrassment, yes,” said the Wing Commander.

  “You were shocked, guilt-stricken and extremely angry. The worst part was seeing Park and realising he’d told your wife. Did you go after him?”

  “I did, and caught him in the garden and let fly with my fists.” At last, the Wing Commander was willing to give more than the minimum of information. “I was so incensed I might have injured him permanently.”

  “What stopped you?”

  There was an interval of silence, while the old man decided if at last he was free to speak of it. “There was a scream from the house. I hear it now. Like no other scream I have ever heard. The fear in it. Horrible. We abandoned the fight and rushed inside.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Yes. He saw it too. Angela, dead on the floor, with blood seeping from her head and the poker beside her, just as it is in the picture. Helen had already run out through the back. Such ferocity. I never knew she had it in her.”

  “What did you do?”

  “With the body? Drove it to a place I know, a limestone quarry, and covered it with rubble. It has never been found. I blamed myself, you see. Helen had acted impulsively. She didn’t deserve to be hanged, or locked up for life. You’ll have to charge me with conspiracy.”

  “I’ll decide on the charge,” said Brandon. “So you felt you owed it to your wife to cover up the crime. What did she do?”

  “Packed up her things and left. She wanted no more to do with me, and I understood why. I behaved like a louse and got what I deserved.”

  “You truly didn’t hear from her again?”

  “I have a high regard for the truth.”

  “Then you won’t know the rest of the story. Your wife took another name and moved, first to Scotland, and then Suffolk. Davey Park, always scratching around for a living, saw a chance of extorting money.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “He set out to find her, and succeeded. We’ve looked at a building society account he had. Regular six-monthly deposits of a thousand pounds were made at a branch in Stowmarket, Suffolk, for over twenty years.”

  “The fiend.”

  “He painted the picture as a threat. Had some postcards made of it. Each year, as a kind of invoice, he would send her one – until she died in 1977.”

  “I had no idea,” said the Wing Commander. “He was living in my village extorting sums of money from my own wife. It’s vile.”

  “I agree. Perhaps if you’d made contact with her, she would have told you.”

  He shook his head. “Too proud. She was too proud ever to speak to me again.” His eyes had reddened. He took out a handkerchief. “You’d better charge me before I make an exhibition of myself.”

  Brandon shook his head. “I won’t be charging you, sir.”

  “I want no favours, just because I’m old.”

  “It would serve no purpose. You’d be given a suspended sentence at the very worst. There’s no point. But I have a request. Would you show us where Angela Hamilton was buried?”

  The remains were recovered and given a Christian burial a month later. Brandon, Sergeant Makepeace and Wing Commander Ashton were the only mourners.

  On the drive back, Makepeace said, “One thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, sir.”

  “Ask away.”

  “That picture contained all the clues, you said. Davey Park made sure.”

  “So he did.”

  “Well, how did you know Angela Hamilton was the victim?”

  “She was on your list of Park’s girlfriends.”

  “It was a long list.”

  “She was the only one who temped as a typist. The typewriter was in the picture. A big clue.”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “You’re not old enough to have used an ancient manual typewriter,” Brandon added. “If you remember, her fingertips were smudged black. At first I assumed it was soot, from the poker, but the marks were very precise. In those days when you wanted more than one copy of what you typed, you used carbon paper. However careful you were, the damned stuff got on the tips of your fingers.”

  The Egyptian Garden

  Marjorie Eccles

  “But what has happened to the garden?” asked Mrs. Palmer.

  “There doesn’t appear to be one, I’m afraid, dear,” replied Moira Ledgerwood, who felt obliged to take the old lady under her wing, as she’d frequently let it be known over the last two weeks. “Just a big courtyard.”

  “Well, I can see that!”

  “No garden in Cairo houses,” the guide, Hassan, asserted sibilantly, with the fine disregard for truth which had characterised all his explanations so far.

  “But there used to be one here. With a fountain in the middle.”

  Hassan shrugged. The other twenty members of the cultural tour smiled tolerantly. They were accustomed to Mrs. Palmer by now, after ten days together in Upper Egypt. You had to admire her spirit, and the way she kept up with the best of them, despite her age. A widow, refusing to let the fact that she was alone limit her choice of holiday to Eastbourne, or perhaps a Mediterranean cruise. Intrepid old girl, eighty if she was a day. They were always the toughest, that sort. But her younger travelling companions sensed that this trip had turned out to be something of a disappointment. Egypt was not apparently living up to expectations, it wasn’t as it had been when she’d lived here, though that would have been asking a lot, since it had been in the Dark Ages, before the war.

  “Taking a trip down Memory Lane then, are you, Ursula, is that why you’ve come?” Moira had asked kindly, when Mrs. Palmer had let slip this fact on the first day, utterly dismayed at the tarmac road that now ran towards the once remote, silent and awesome Valley of the Kings, at the noisome phalanxes of waiting coaches with their engines kept running for the air-conditioning, the throngs of people from the cruise ships queuing up for tickets to visit the tombs of the Pharaohs, which were lit by electric light. Before the war, when her husband had taken her to view the antiquities, they had sailed across the Nile in a felucca fro
m Luxor, and traversed the rocky descent and on to the Valley of the Queens and the Temple of Hatshepsut by donkey, accompanied only by a dragoman. The silence had been complete. Now, they might just as well be visiting a theme park, she said tartly.

  “They’re a poor people. The tourist industry’s important to them, Ursula,” Moira reminded her gently.

  Mrs. Palmer had so far managed to bear Moira’s goodness with admirable fortitude, but she was beginning to be afraid it might not last.

  Strangers ten days ago, the tour group members were on Christian-name terms within a few hours, something it had taken Mrs. Palmer a little time to get used to. But nothing fazed her for long, not even the touts who pestered with their tatty souvenirs, and craftily pressed worthless little scarabs into your palm, or even slipped them into your pocket, and then held out their own palms for payment. Moira had asked her advice on what to say to get rid of them, but when she repeated what Mrs. Palmer had told her: “Imshi! Mefish filouse!”, the touts had doubled up with laughter and Moira was afraid that Ursula had been rather unkind and led her to say something indelicate. Ursula, however, said no, it was only the prospect of a middle-aged English lady using Arabic, telling them to go away because she had no money, that amused them, when they knew that all such ladies were rich, and only addressed the natives loudly, in English. But then, they were easily amused – childlike, kindly people, who were nevertheless rogues to a man.

  The group advanced through the courtyard and made an orderly queue at the door of the tall old Mameluke house near the bazaar, now a small privately owned museum with a cafe for light refreshments on the ground floor, buying their tickets from the doorkeeper, an enormously fat, grizzled old man who wore a sparkling white galabeya and smiled charmingly at them with perfect teeth. He kept his eye on Mrs. Palmer, gradually losing his smile as she lagged behind. He noticed her casting quick glances over her shoulder at the benches set in the raised alcove of perforated stonework, at the many doors opening off the large dusty inner courtyard, which itself held nothing but a couple of dilapidated pots haphazardly filled with a few dispirited, un-English-looking flowers. But after a while she turned and resolutely followed the rest of the party.