Murder for Miss Emily

by J F Straker

  Miss Mytton forgave him. Again she doubted the truth of his generalization, but this time she made no comment, contenting herself with a non-committal nod of the head.

  ‘Like most murderers she made mistakes.’ The inspector now needed no prompting to continue. Normally a quiet, rather self-effacing man, he felt he owed it to the whole Force, as well as to himself, to educate Miss Mytton to a better understanding of police intelligence. ‘For instance, there was her endorsement of Stolpe’s alibi. She said she saw him out on the road at ten o’clock. Yet Mace was there also, and he denied seeing him. And he was far more likely to have done so than Miss Justin, who was concerned for the safety of her dog.’ He smiled. ‘In fact Stolpe was nowhere near here that evening. He was poaching rabbits on Cluster’s land, as he has since admitted.’

  ‘But why did she say she saw him if she didn’t?’ It made no sense to Miss Mytton. ‘How could that help her?’

  ‘It couldn’t. I think she was trying to protect the man from suspicion. If that’s where he said he was, then Miss Justin was prepared to support him. That she did not in fact see him was immaterial.’

  Thinking back, she realized he was probably right in his assumption. Clara was almost the only person in the village who had voiced suspicion against no one. When Miss Mytton had named her own suspects, Clara had argued in their favour. She had even defended Bright, the man she so feared and hated.

  But that could have a more selfish interpretation. If Bright had been arrested for murder he would certainly have incriminated Clara.

  ‘Another factor that told against her was Mrs Colling’s statement that she didn’t see the lights of the car after it left the drive,’ Pitt went on. He was beginning to enjoy himself. Miss Mytton’s interest and growing respect were warming. ‘From where she was hiding she must have seen them if it had turned north; there was nothing between her and the road but the open field and a low hedge. But if the car had turned south, the bushes, not to mention the high wall, would have shielded them from her. So unless Mrs Colling was lying it looked as though the murderer had come from this direction.’

  ‘And Bright?’ asked Miss Mytton. ‘Did you know she was in the room when he was killed?’

  ‘Not until this afternoon, when Colonel Gresham told me that on leaving the office Bright had disappeared down the yard with his bicycle. That meant Miss Justin had lied. She told me she had seen Bright ride off down the road to the Square.’

  ‘It could have been the Colonel who was lying.’

  ‘On the face of it, it seemed more likely that he was,’ Pitt admitted. ‘There’s no way out through the yard; and even if there were, Bright was unlikely to know of it, since that was his first visit to the office. Yet Mace had to have an accomplice; someone had to keep Miss Stewart engaged while he got the body down the steps. So it looked as though Miss Justin’s timely arrival was pre-arranged. If he hadn’t been able to rely on it Mace would have had to get rid of Miss Stewart first, and dispose of the body later. It wouldn’t have given him an alibi, but it would have prevented a direct accusation.’

  He doesn’t look intelligent, thought Miss Mytton, eyeing the grey, expressionless face opposite her. Perhaps that was why she had been so completely deceived.

  Or had he deceived her intentionally? Had he deliberately hidden the truth from her, kept secret the way his mind was working, so that he might humble her at the end? If that were so it was a cheap trick, and she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing he had won it.

  ‘Very clever, Inspector,’ she said, a casual briskness concealing her resentment. ‘I must compliment you on your astuteness. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say I still think you were lucky. What if there had been only the one murder? You couldn’t have forced Miss Justin’s hand then. Mr Mace wasn’t involved in that. And despite all your little bits of “this and that”, as you call them, they didn’t amount to much, did they? Not as much as there was against the Collings, or Bright, or Tom Shannon. And they all had a motive. A strong motive, too. But as far as you knew there was no earthly reason why Miss Justin should have murdered him. You didn’t know, did you, that—’

  She stopped abruptly, horrified at what she had been about to reveal. No one must know about Matt, Clara had said; not even Matt himself. Yet she had been about to betray that secret — a secret for which Clara had twice committed murder — even before her friend had left the house. For Clara was still her friend. Murder could not cancel that. Not a lifetime of friendship.

  The inspector smiled. ‘We might not have arrested her so soon,’ he agreed. ‘But it wouldn’t have been long delayed. Not with Bright still around and doing his stuff. As for motive—’ He paused, staring at her thoughtfully. Then he stood up and walked across to the door. ‘You’ll have seen this many times, eh?’ he said, picking up Matt Justin’s photograph. ‘Did you ever notice the resemblance?’

  ‘To Miss Justin?’ Since the resemblance was obvious there was no point in denying it. ‘Of course. She’s his aunt. A family likeness.’

  He looked at the photograph again, scrutinizing it more closely. ‘Yes, I can see that too. But yesterday I was struck by the resemblance to Edward Mace. I noticed it when I was in his office.’

  Silently Miss Mytton stared at him. So he knew that too. And he was right, there was a resemblance between Matt and Edward, although she had never recognized it before.

  Was that because he had looked for it and she had not?

  Her resentment drained from her as suddenly as it had come, and for the first time that she could remember Miss Mytton felt almost humble. With all her education and social upbringing, with generations of illustrious men and women as her forebears, it seemed she had neither the intelligence nor the insight of this gaunt, grey-faced policeman with, presumably, none of her advantages.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector,’ she said quietly. ‘I was being mean. Luck didn’t come into it, I see that. If I may say so without sounding patronizing, you’re a very clever man.’ She could tell that he was gratified by her praise, although he was quick to discount it. But he was also embarrassed by it, and to help him she asked, ‘Why isn’t your red-headed sergeant here this afternoon? We’ve come to look on him as your shadow.’

  ‘He’s got mumps,’ Pitt said, with what in him amounted to a broad grin.

  ‘Mumps? Good gracious! How did he pick that up?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m told there’s quite a lot of it in the village. His chief concern was that he had to depart without seeing a certain young lady.’

  Miss Mytton laughed. It was the first time she had done so since arriving at Fir Cottage that afternoon.

  ‘Does Penelope know?’ she asked.

  ‘I believe he rang her up.’ Pitt shook his head. ‘I’ve no doubt he’ll get over it. He’s young enough.’

  She wondered whether he was referring to mumps or love.

  For a time they sat in silence. There was the faint sound of feet moving above them on a soft carpet, and Miss Mytton looked quickly at the inspector and then away.

  ‘Where will they take her?’ she asked.

  ‘Holloway. It’s the nearest women’s prison.’

  Again they were silent. Then Pitt said, ‘I was sorry to hear about Shannon. It’ll make things difficult for you, I imagine.’

  Miss Mytton was alarmed. ‘Tom? What’s happened to him?’

  ‘You hadn’t heard? Oh! Well, it seems he had rather too much to drink in the Mytton Arms at lunch-time, and then went off and beat up Mrs Cluster.’

  ‘Tom did that? I don’t believe it. He’s the mildest of men.’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe. But it’s true, I’m afraid. She’s not seriously hurt, but he knocked her about quite a bit.’

  Miss Mytton was not greatly interested in Elizabeth’s condition. ‘That’s what she says, no doubt. But what does Tom say?’

  ‘We haven’t been able to ask him yet. He’s packed up and left.’

  Tom gone! It was unbelievable, yet she ha
d no doubt it was true. It was also disastrous. How would she manage without him?

  The footsteps were on the stairs now. Miss Mytton pushed Tom and her own troubles firmly to the back of her mind and said, with uncustomary diffidence, ‘May I see her before she leaves? There may be something she needs.’

  ‘Of course.’

  But Miss Justin needed nothing. ‘Look after Matt for me, won’t you?’ she said, with no hint in her voice that she was leaving for anything more final than a week’s holiday. She picked up Matt’s photograph and tucked it under her arm. ‘I’ll write to you both if I’m allowed to. And thank you, Emily.’

  When they had gone Miss Mytton went back to the sitting-room and knelt down by the fire and poked it. But there was no answering flame or spark or wisp of smoke, and she sat down on the settee, leaning forward with her arms hugging her body to keep herself warm. She wanted to go home, but she could not leave until Matt came. Should she relight the fire? He could not be long now; it was after seven, and he had told Clara he would be there in time for dinner. When he came she would take him home and talk to him there. It would be too poignant to tell him in Clara’s cottage.

  She looked round the familiar room. Clara’s cottage. Yes, it was still Clara’s; but Clara would never come back to it, never see it again. What would Matt do with it? Sell it, and make his home with her? Perhaps he would wish to have nothing more to do with Cheswick. Its memories would be too sad.

  She began to wonder about the inspector. What a strange man he was! Such a dull, wooden face, such an uninteresting voice. She had doubted his ability, had believed him to be lacking in intelligence because he had not followed the paths she had pointed for him. Yet in the event his intelligence had been proved greater than hers; he had rejected her advice because he had known it to be wrong, he had interpreted the facts more ably than she.

  Humility was unusual in Miss Mytton, but she felt humble now. In the past week she had made so many mistakes, been wrong so often; her judgment had been sadly at fault. Tom, for instance. Tom had worked for her for five years now, and she could have sworn she knew exactly how he would react in any given circumstance. He was steady and gentle and loyal. But Tom had got drunk and had beaten up Elizabeth, and had walked out on her without a word. She had misjudged the inspector, and she had been completely deceived by Clara. Clara, whom she had known all her life!

  Miss Mytton sighed. She felt deflated and sad. The village looked up to her as to one whose wisdom and judgment they could trust, and she had accepted their belief as right and proper. She had never doubted herself. Myttons had been put into the world to guide and counsel, and she had done her share of both. But if she could be so wrong now, how often had she been wrong in the past? How wrong had her ancestors been?

  Perhaps it’s as well, she thought grimly, that I’m the last of the Myttons.

  She had been so lost in thought that she had not heard the footsteps on the path; the shrill call of the front-door bell startled her. That’ll be Matt, she thought. But glad as she was to see him she did not hurry to the door. Her gladness was tempered with a dread of what she had to tell him.

  But it wasn’t Matt. It was an elderly uniformed police-sergeant whom she did not know.

  ‘Miss Justin?’ he asked. ‘Miss Clara Justin?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’m a friend of hers.’ She invited him into the hall, and he stood there, large and uncomfortable, the raindrops glistening on his mackintosh in the lamplight. ‘Can I help you? Miss Justin is away.’

  ‘Oh!’ She thought to see relief in his eyes. ‘We’ve had a message from the Birmingham police. It’s bad news, I’m afraid.’

  She wondered if there could be any news bad enough to hurt Clara now. ‘You’d better tell me,’ she said.

  ‘It’s her nephew, ma’am. Matthew Justin. The car in which he was travelling was in collision with a lorry. Mr Justin was killed, I’m afraid. Died before reaching hospital, the report says.’

  Miss Mytton felt a tingling sensation at the back of her eyes. But tears were unnatural to her, and she fought them back. Matt dead! The tragedy and the irony of it! For Matt, Clara had suffered blackmail and murdered two men, and might die on the scaffold herself. And all to no purpose. Matt was dead.

  ‘Not a pleasant job, this,’ the sergeant said. ‘I don’t mind telling you, ma’am, I’m not sorry Miss Justin isn’t here herself. Will she be away for long?’

  ‘Quite some time,’ Miss Mytton told him. ‘But I’ll see she gets the message.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He reached for the door handle. ‘It’ll be a nasty shock for the poor lady. Sudden death always is. Quite foreign to most people’s lives, thank goodness.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Quite foreign.’

  If you enjoyed reading Murder for Miss Emily, you might be interested in Death on a Sunday Morning by J F Straker, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Death on a Sunday Morning by J F Straker

  1

  With her wrists bound behind her back and her ankles tied to the legs of the chair, Rose Landor sat at her husband’s desk and strained her ears in an attempt to make sense of the muffled sounds and voices that filtered through to her from beyond the closed door of the office. She was more worried than frightened, for neither she nor Brian had been treated roughly and the men had curtly apologised for tying her up. She was also tired and physically distressed. Bound as she was, she could not relax her body against the chair or rest her head, and for what seemed like time interminable but was probably little more than half an hour she had been forced to sit upright. Her limbs ached, her eyes were hot and the lids heavy. Spasms of cramp attacked her soles and her thighs; and although her ankle bonds were sufficiently loose for her to dispel some of the pain by standing up, without the use of hands and arms the struggle to lift herself off the chair became increasingly hard.

  Her main fear was of the dark. Since childhood she had suffered from claustrophobia, and the longer she sat the more menacingly the darkness seemed to close in on her. To overcome her fear, as well as to ease the increasing stiffness in her neck, she kept turning her head from side to side in an attempt to locate familiar objects and so make the gloom seem less opaque. She knew the room well: modest in size, but high-ceilinged and with a noble cornice, with a good Wilton carpet on the floor and an attractive yet unobtrusive paper on the walls. The furniture was functional rather than decorative, although the tubular-framed chairs were comfortable and the large flat-topped desk was admirable for its purpose. Yet she could remember when the room had looked very different. Only a few years back Brian had constantly complained about its appearance. It gave a bad impression, Brian had said, for the manager to receive his customers in an office with rusting filing cabinets and stained wallpaper, with large cracks in the ceiling and worn carpet on the floor. But then in those days Westonbury had been something of a backwater, a small country town where the Tuesday market was the main feature of practically every week except Race Week. And even Race Week could be something of a non-event. The meeting was too insignificant to attract the big stables or the heavy punters. We’ll pretty you up in time, the Bank had told Brian. But right now our resources are fully stretched and Westonbury is low in priority.

  It was the arrival of Turnbull Motors that had changed the Bank’s attitude. Turnbull Motors were big, and with them had come a host of subsidiaries. New housing estates had sprung up on the periphery of the town to accommodate the influx of workers, new shops and services had opened to cater for the workers’ needs. Westonbury had become prosperous, and the Bank had reacted to its prosperity by starting work on larger and more suitable premises in the town centre. The new premises should have been ready the previous year, but there was still no firm date for completion. In the meantime the existing building, a converted Victorian dwelling-house, had been given a hasty facelift. Extra staff had been engaged and, although cramped for space, had so far managed to cope. Only during Race Week had the pre
ssure become really excessive, for with the town’s new prosperity the meeting had grown in importance. In Race Week business was terrific.

  It was Race Week now. Or the end of it. And that, Rose Landor supposed, was why she was sitting in the dark in her husband’s office, bound hand and foot, waiting for Brian and the men to return and wondering what was to follow when they did.

  They had been watching the late night movie on television when the bell rang. She had opened the front door and there they were: two menacing figures in boiler suits, with wooden staves in their gloved hands and stocking masks over their heads. But despite their appearance their manner had been brusquely polite. They had urgent business at the bank, they told Brian, and needed his assistance; would he and his wife please get ready to accompany them? They hoped he would be cooperative, they said, because although they had no wish to get rough, rough was what they would get if he wasn’t. Brian had complied without argument; apart from the knowledge that resistance would have been futile, only a few months previously the Bank had issued instructions to all branches that under such circumstances they wanted no heroics from members of their staff. He had, however, queried the order for her to accompany them. Was that really necessary? They could lock her in a room without a telephone if they feared she might raise the alarm. But the men had insisted. They had their instructions, they said. The woman was to go with them.

  They had gone in two cars: Brian driving his Austin, with her beside him and one of the men crouching in the back, and the second man following in the car in which the two had come. The house was some distance out of town, and as they drove she had wondered what the men would do if there were people on the street when they reached the bank — a possibility that was by no means unlikely, for although the bank was situated in a side street life did not die early on a Saturday night in the new Westonbury. Even if the men removed their masks even if Brian went unrecognised would not the sight of four people entering the bank at that hour arouse suspicion in an onlooker? But the hope that this thought had engendered vanished as they approached the bank. ‘Drive on past,’ the man in the back said, when Brian started to brake. ‘Take the first turning right and then right again.’ ‘Right again’ was a cul-de-sac that served the rear of the row of buildings in which the bank was situated, their back yards screened by a high brick wall; the buildings on the other side were in the process of being demolished to make way for a shopping complex. As the Austin stopped behind the bank two other masked men, also in boiler suits, emerged from the shadows. No one spoke. The man in the back motioned them to get out, whereupon they were grabbed by the newcomers and hustled through a gap in the brick wall. Moments later they heard the two cars being driven away.