by Anne Morice
“Although I suppose you could argue that, as the money had come from her father, in the first place, giving it back was a matter of conscience?”
“According to Philip, she was perfectly well provided for. Lashings of money around, by the sound of it and, anyway, I doubt if Dolly had a conscience. Poor old Philip, I do hope he didn’t kill her. Imagine going to all that trouble, only to find himself worse off than he was before!”
“Doesn’t he get anything?”
“Only the house, which luckily was bought in his name. I suppose that’ll fetch quite a packet, but it can’t be a quarter of what he was expecting and he’ll still have to find somewhere else to live.”
“So long as he doesn’t get the idea that our spare room might do to be going on with! How’s he taking it?”
“Surprisingly calmly, almost as though he’d been prepared for it. The only thing that really seemed to worry him was how it was going to look in the News of the World.”
“Which at least puts paid to any suggestion that he was the one who went to the trouble of murdering her?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Well, doesn’t it?”
“I’m sure that it does. Philip may not have the sharpest brain in the world, but even he would have the wits to see that to collapse into transports of shock/horror would strike the wrong note. He would at least know enough to put on an act of being resigned.”
“But the point is, surely, that it doesn’t need to be an act. You say that he appeared to have been expecting it and I should think the chances are that he was. It’s quite normal for married couples to discuss their wills and presumably Philip knew all about the terms of hers. It didn’t bother him because neither of them expected for one minute that he would outlive her.”
“I don’t see why she wouldn’t have taken such a contingency into account. People of all ages can get killed in motor accidents or drop dead from heart attacks. It doesn’t have to be anything as way out as murder and that argument would apply particularly to Dolly, if she was the hypochondriac Philip makes her out to be.”
“Not necessarily. Hypochondriacs don’t really believe they’re going to die in the foreseeable future, any more than anyone else. I sometimes think they believe it less than anyone else. And, anyway, if Philip wasn’t prepared for it, again why bother to put on an act? A degree of surprise and disappointment would be only natural in the circumstances. There would be nothing incriminating about it.”
“Yes, I agree with you.”
“You do? So what are we arguing about?”
“I see it all clearly now and it is you who have opened my eyes. He probably was putting on an act, but, being such an incurable ham, he overdid it. He was so anxious not to betray the shock/horror that he went to the other extreme and pretended to be indifferent.”
“I can’t quite fathom whether, in your view, that confirms his guilt or his innocence, but no doubt you have taken your theory a stage or two further?”
“No, I haven’t and I don’t intend to. I admit to feeling curious about who killed her, but no more than that. She was not a nice woman and I have no great urge to see her murderer brought to justice. I shall leave that to the professionals. Are they making any headway, incidentally?”
“Not so’s you’d notice, I gather. It’s proving a tough one to crack. They’ve interviewed countless people in and around the apartment block, but it hasn’t brought any results. There’s no porter, you see, only that caretaker type in the basement and, except in cases of emergency, he’s off duty by five thirty; something which the murderer was doubtless aware of. The only conclusion left is that it must have been someone she knew and trusted, but that still leaves a pretty wide field and there’s no way of telling what device he used to get into the flat.”
“What are the options?”
“Did they meet outside and go there together? Did he ring the outside bell and announce himself, either with his own name or a false one? Or was he someone who was in a position to get his hands on both keys and have duplicates made?”
“Like Pete?”
“Like Pete, and the chief trouble with him is, apart from not appearing to possess one glimmer of a motive, reputed in fact to have been on rather more amiable terms with the victim than most, he has an almost impeccable alibi.”
“Only almost?”
“It seems that no-one has a cast-iron, gold-plated impeccable one, with the possible exception of Oliver Welles.”
“What’s so special about Oliver?”
Robin had taken a page from a memo pad out of his pocket and began to read aloud from it: “Five thirty-eight p.m. Deposited his car in an underground car park two hundred yards north of Shaftesbury Avenue. Regular customer, known to staff, time confirmed. Six twenty. Seen entering theatre by stage door keeper, who spoke to him.” He stopped and then added:
“Not conclusive, I grant you, but it allows him approximately forty minutes, which he claims to have spent eating a sandwich at a pub on his way down to the theatre, to get to the Mickletons’ flat, make his way inside, commit the murder and return to base. Not really long enough, seeing that on the outward journey he’d have been travelling with the rush-hour traffic and therefore slowed down almost to walking pace part of the time; whereas coming back he’d have been caught up in the beginnings of the surge towards the West End theatres and movies. He might, with exceptional luck, have found a cruising taxi for each trip, but it would still have been very tight.”
“Yes, it would. Any witnesses at the pub?”
“As it happens, no, but that’s not as damning as it sounds. All those places in Soho are crammed to the lid at that hour; people meeting each other at the start of the evening, or dashing in for a quick one on their way home. He has the reputation of scarcely setting foot inside a pub as a rule and he said he’d never been in this one before in his life, so it’s not so surprising that none of the staff remembers seeing him on that occasion or any other. However, it’s the time element which counts most in his favour. They’ve tested it with three separate experiments and the one which came closest to equalling it over-ran by twelve minutes.”
“How about the others?”
“Well, as you know, it was established that death had occurred between five-thirty and six-thirty, allowing for a few minutes either way, which is the worst possible time for alibi checking. It is just the period when most people are on their way home from work, or, in this case, on their way to it and that gives scope for endless manipulation. It’s easy enough, as a rule, to pin down to within minutes what time someone left one place and arrived at the next, but he can say he walked the whole way and that it took him forty minutes; that he waited half an hour at a bus stop, or that he crawled along in his car at three miles an hour through the rush-hour traffic. All these claims are just as likely to be true as false, so you may not be surprised to hear how many people have trotted them out.”
“No, I’m not, but to go back to what you were saying before, Robin, about what trick the murderer used to get into the flat; if I were sticking my oar in, which as you know I’m not, it would be the last one you mentioned which would receive most attention from me.”
“That he’d got hold of the keys? Why do you see that as the most likely?”
“Because, if Philip is right in believing she was scared of something like this happening and wrote the letters herself, either to get police protection or in the hope of its acting as a deterrent to her would-be murderer, then it’s hard to imagine her taking someone back to the flat with her at a time when she knew they would be alone there. It’s less likely still, in my opinion, that she would have released the catch on the main door, if he’d rung her bell.”
“You may be right, but you have to remember, you see, that the people in charge of the case have never heard of those anonymous letters. Which reminds me to tell you it’s one thing not to stick your oar in and, in general, I’m all for it, but it’s quite another to go round advising people
to suppress evidence.”
“What evidence? A drawerful of newspapers and brown paper wouldn’t provide much to work on, specially as there doesn’t seem to be a single example left of the finished product. And, if there were, it still wouldn’t give any clue to the murderer’s identity, if we accept that she wrote them herself.”
“It could still be helpful to know that she believed someone was trying to kill her.”
“Well, that’s for Philip to tell them. I have no first-hand knowledge of it, so it’s not for me to interfere. And he wouldn’t be much use either, since he insists that she never mentioned it to him, far less that he has any idea who she could have been afraid of.”
“And don’t you find that faintly incredible? Her not mentioning it, I mean?”
“No, not particularly. She would have gone to any lengths, rather than allow him to be worried or upset, with this crucial first night almost upon them. It was an obsession with her, her mission in life, you might say. I’m told it had got to the point where she took it on herself to open all his letters, in case one of them contained bad news or a nasty bill. The only way he managed to escape from her eternal vigilance was to go and spend an hour or two at his club. They don’t allow women in there.”
“I wonder she didn’t force him to resign.”
“She probably would have, if she hadn’t been such an arrant snob, but it happens to be a club which numbers a great many celebrated actors and writers among its members, so that was the one bolthole which hadn’t been put out of bounds.”
“And I am sorry to tell you that you have spent the last three minutes flatly contradicting yourself.”
“Really? How have I managed to do that?”
“If, as you maintain, her principal object was to spare him worry and anxiety, don’t you find it paradoxical that she should have sent the letters to herself? If anything was designed to bring on an attack of worry and anxiety, one would have said that was it.”
“Yes, it does seem incongruous, on the face of it.”
“Putting it mildly!”
“I didn’t exactly overlook the point, though, Robin. At first, like you, I took the view that it made nonsense of Philip’s theory, but now I’m not so sure. After all, if she believed herself to be in great peril, it would have called for desperate measures and let’s assume that she sent the first letter as an experiment. If it had knocked Philip out and struck terror into his heart, she’d most likely have dropped it like a hot potato and tried some other dodge. It would have been just a one-off affair, leading nowhere and soon forgotten; and Philip would have had three clear days to recover and calm down before the opening night. But, as you know, that wasn’t how it worked out. He was the least concerned of anyone, maybe a little too unconcerned for her liking, but at least it left her free to continue her campaign, to the point where she could blackmail, or rather con, Oliver into calling in the police, which is what she had been aiming for all along.”
As I finished speaking, the front door bell rang and we both instinctively glanced up at the grandfather clock, which responded politely by starting to strike ten. Between the eighth and ninth chimes the bell rang again and Robin got up from the table and left the room.
“Do be careful!” I called after him, but he did not bother to reply and I daresay there was no need. Whatever his faults, carelessness is not one of them.
II
Two minutes later he was back, preceded by Oliver, looking as bleached as one of his own handkerchiefs and tumbling over himself with apologies: “Do forgive me, Tessa! I know this is unpardonable, but something rather tricky has come up, which you might be able to help me with. Oh, I see you’re still at dinner! How awful of me!”
“That’s all right, we’ve finished now. What’s the trouble? Something to do with the play?”
“Well, yes, indirectly, I suppose you could say that.”
“That being so,” Robin told him, “I’ll leave you to it. You won’t need me and I have some work to catch up with before I go to bed.”
Taking this to be a euphemism for stacking up the dishwasher, I did not try to detain him.
“Do sit down, Oliver. Would you like some coffee? It’s still fairly hot.”
“Oh no, thank you very much. It keeps me awake and that’s one thing I don’t need at the moment.”
“Well, I can’t imagine what help I could be, but I suppose what you really need is a shoulder to cry on?”
“Not exactly. The fact is, I was hoping for some practical advice.”
“On what?”
“It’s a long story but I’ll be as brief as I can. You remember the night of my party?”
“When you were mugged?”
“Exactly! I have to confess that there was more to that story than I told you.”
“You didn’t make it up, by any chance?”
“Make it up? What an extraordinary suggestion! No, I did not.”
“And you still have no idea who the man was?”
“None, and that’s what I find so disturbing.”
“Because you realise it must have been someone you know?”
“That’s one reason. It hadn’t occurred to me until you pointed it out, but then I saw that you must be right. That threw me a bit, but the real worry is a little matter of some keys.”
“But surely, now that you’ve had the locks changed . . . Oh well, we’ll be at it all night, if I keep interrupting you. Go on!”
Oliver paused, took a deep breath, then pulled out his handkerchief and gave his glasses a rub up: “I feel ashamed of myself in confessing this, Tessa, but the truth is, I’m not referring to my own keys, this was another set. They belong to the Mickletons’ flat.”
“Do they indeed? So what were they doing in your pocket and how long had they been there?”
“Since almost a week ago. Last Wednesday to be precise.”
“My God, Oliver, that was the day when . . .”
“When Dolly was murdered? Yes, I’m afraid it was, but you needn’t look at me like that. I didn’t kill her, I assure you. I didn’t even use the keys. I had intended to, but I didn’t.”
“But how . . . Oh, wait a minute, I believe I’ve got it now! They were the keys Philip thought he’d left at home when we took him back that evening? He hadn’t done anything of the kind, you’d nicked them?”
“Not so. I borrowed them, and with every intention of returning them, only the opportunity never arose.”
“But what did you borrow them for?”
“To get my hands on the letters. On Wednesday morning Dolly marched into my office and fairly let fly. Bullying and threatening and carrying on like the Gestapo. What it boiled down to was an ultimatum. Either I would inform the police about Anon within the next twenty-four hours, or she would do so herself. I tried not to show it, but I was so angry I could hardly speak. What right had she to come strutting in and order me about? You had already warned me what would result from the police getting involved and how could I allow that to happen at such a moment? It seemed so totally unnecessary and unfair too, since Philip didn’t appear to be in the least bothered.”
“So what did you say to her?”
“That I would think it over; and as soon as she left I went along to the theatre to have a chat with Philip. I had calmed down a bit by then and I saw that my only hope was to try and persuade him to use his influence to postpone matters until after the first night. I knew I could probably catch him on his own, for once, because Dolly had told me in her gracious way that she was only prepared to spare me five minutes, as she was on her way to an important committee meeting.”
“And how did he react?”
“I never saw him. There was a photograph call when I arrived, so I went up to his room to wait for him. His dresser wasn’t there either. I was just about to sit down when I noticed a pile of odds and ends on his shelf. There was a cheque book among them, I remember, one or two letters and the keys. I acted on impulse.”
“Grabbed the ke
ys and ran?”
“It’s so hard to explain. I had never in my life thought to do such a thing and my only excuse is that I do not think I can have been quite myself. I was sick with worry, about a number of things, quite unconnected with Dolly and those wretched letters and I had been sleeping badly. Also, I suppose, the rational side of me had always known that enlisting Philip’s support had been something of a forlorn hope. He was always too weak and lazy to stand up to her.”
“So you settled for a little breaking and entering instead?”
“I’d been to their flat before, you see, several times, when we were drawing up Philip’s contract. So I knew the drill and I timed it all very carefully. Much good that did me! I appear to have no more talent for crime than for any other potentially profitable activity,” he added with a snort of laughter.
“Not many people have, I imagine, without the proper training and apprenticeship. What went wrong in your case?”
“It was the night of the preview, as you know. I put my car in the usual place, near the theatre and then stopped by at the stage door to find out if Philip was in. They told me he was and, in my innocence, it never entered my head that Dolly wouldn’t be with him.”
“So off you sped to Mickleton Towers? What happened when you got there?”
“Still playing it cautious, which seems such a sour joke now, I got the cab driver to drop me off in a street round the corner from the flat and I walked the last fifty yards. I felt quite elated with myself for having taken that precaution, like a child pretending to be some television private eye character, though quite what purpose it was supposed to serve now escapes me.”
“Never mind, we all need our fantasies to get us through these tricky moments. What happened?”
