Dead Against the Lawyers

by Roderic Jeffries

  For an hour and a half he worked on the case. He was interrupted when the door opened and Marriott stepped just inside the room. ‘Detective Inspector Brock has just arrived, sir.’

  ‘All right. Bring him in.’

  Brock came into the room. He was dressed in a light brown suit that was a bad fit and the collar of his shirt was slightly frayed.

  ‘You’ve taken a long time to get here,’ said Holter.

  ‘I’m a busy man,’ Brock replied equably.

  Holter deliberately and rudely remained seated, fully expecting the inspector to remain standing unless he was offered a chair, but with an unchanging expression Brock moved to his right until he could sit down. He crossed his legs and waited.

  ‘You’ve been annoying a friend of my wife,’ snapped Holter.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘You’ve no right to do it.’

  ‘Would you mind telling me exactly what you’re referring to so that I can ...’

  ‘You know damn’ well what I’m talking about.’ In court, Holter never lost his temper, but he had no such self-control when he remembered how terribly worried Charlotte had been. ‘Miss West.’

  ‘I take it she’s made some sort of complaint to you?’

  ‘Never mind what she’s done. What right have you to question people about my wife’s movements?’

  ‘I’d suggest the right of any investigating officer.’

  ‘My wife is not even remotely connected with the death of Corry.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, but I can’t agree.’

  ‘I’m warning you, Inspector.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘If you continue, I’ll go straight to the chief constable.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if you did that right now, sir, if that’s how you feel.’

  ‘If I do, you won’t be so insolently confident. I’ll tell him you’ve had the impertinence to suggest my wife was somewhere near these chambers last Tuesday. You can threaten some snivelling pickpocket, but you can’t do it to my wife.’

  ‘I’m afraid that when it comes to an investigation, sir, I fail to see any difference.’

  ‘Do you, by God?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then you’ll soon find out.’

  ‘Perhaps, Mr Holter, you’ll either make an official objection about my conduct of the case or else you’ll leave me to carry on as I want?’

  Holter checked any further heated words. Brock must know that a man in Holter’s position could make considerable trouble, given the opportunity. Brock’s confidence, therefore, must stem from certainty. He firmly believed that Charlotte had been near chambers Tuesday evening. In which case he, Holter, must find out why and correct this ridiculous mistake and that could only be done by the use of tact, no matter how angry he felt. ‘Inspector,’ he said, in his mildest voice, ‘if my tongue has walked away with me, it’s because I feel very impassioned where my wife’s concerned.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ Brock’s expression became one of wary watchfulness.

  ‘I’m sure you’d feel just the same about your wife. If someone insulted her you’d very soon take up cudgels on her behalf.’

  ‘I expect I would, yes.’

  ‘Then you can understand that when Charlotte told me last night she was worried absolutely sick, I naturally became very angry. Not because of what you’d been doing or saying, but because of the effect that that had had on her. I’m sure you can feel sympathy for me there?’

  ‘I can understand it, yes.’

  ‘Good. That allows us to discuss the whole thing like two rational human beings. You had a word with Miss West and discovered Charlotte did not stay with her all Tuesday evening. That’s all, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well now, Inspector, why should that insignificant bit of information lead you to say all you have? Why should it concern anyone where my wife was?’

  ‘Because there was a woman present in these chambers at the time of the shooting.’

  ‘But what makes you so certain of that?’

  ‘I think I’d rather just leave it at that.’

  ‘Did someone see a woman leave the building?’

  Brock was silent.

  ‘There are other offices in this building, Inspector.’

  ‘Quite. But all of them were empty by six o’clock.’

  ‘Empty only so far as you know.’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘Still, you don’t need me to teach you your job! You have your task and I have mine and we’re each best suited to our own. That being so, I’ll content myself by saying that it’s quite impossible Charlotte was within a dozen miles of these chambers when Corry was shot. She’s assured me of that, not that I ever thought otherwise for a second. You may have my word for it that if there was a woman present, it was not my wife.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ said Brock, with the greatest politeness.

  There was a knock on the door and Marriott entered. ‘I wondered if you’d like some coffee, sir?’

  ‘An excellent idea, George.’ Holter spoke to Brock. ‘You’ll have coffee, won’t you?’

  ‘I’d like some, thanks.’

  After Marriott had gone, Holter said to Brock: ‘How about a cigar?’

  ‘I’d rather ...’ began the detective inspector, but he stopped speaking when he saw his words were going unheeded.

  ‘They’re not at all bad cigars which were given to me by a chap I defended successfully for fraud at the Old Bailey. That, I might say, was a case and a half!’ Holter searched in one of the right-hand drawers. ‘Two hundred thousand pounds missing and apparently only one man could have taken it ... Where the hell are those cigars? There’s a box of fifty still half full somewhere ... The whole thing became a battle between accountants.’ Impatiently, Holter slammed one drawer shut and pulled out another, searched through it, and then through the bottom one which was by far the deepest. He pulled out papers and files and stacked them on top of the desk. ‘My strongest card, frankly, was his bank balances. There wasn’t a penny in them there shouldn’t have been and if he did pinch the money he damn’ well knew how to hide it. Eh?’

  ‘Presumably, yes.’

  Your sympathies, naturally, are all with ...’ Holter stopped speaking as he began to lift out a file and there slid from inside it the heavy silver-framed photograph of Charlotte that normally stood on his desk. He wondered how he had never missed it, but clearly the heat of events had made him less observant than usual. How had it come to be in the drawer? He saw that one side of the frame was covered with a dull, brownish substance which he was certain was dried blood. The photograph must have been handled at the time of the murder. Immediately, his mind recalled the trail of blood which had led from the point where Corry had been shot to the point where the body was found, by the desk, and for the first time the reason for dragging the body across the floor became frighteningly clear to him.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ asked Brock.

  Holter, desperately trying to overcome his sense of shock, dropped the file he was holding on to the photograph. He began to pack back the papers and files which were on top of the desk. ‘I just can’t think where the cigars have got to.’

  ‘Please don’t worry on my account, Mr Holter. I much prefer a cigarette.’

  ‘I suppose the police searched this desk?’

  ‘Just a quick look in each drawer, but nothing more. We never go through personal effects unless we know there’s a need to. I can assure you that no policeman has walked off with your cigars.’

  Holter hastened to erase the suggestion that he had inadvertently made. ‘No, of course not. I must have taken them home sometime and just completely forgotten the fact.’ Marriott came into the room with a wooden tray on which were two chipped mugs filled with instant coffee, a battered jug of milk, and sugar.

  Holter helped himself to sugar. ‘George,’ he said, ‘d’you remember that box of cigars the fraud bloke gave me a
nd which I keep in chambers?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘I can’t find it anywhere.’

  ‘Have you looked through all the drawers, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Marriott put the tray down. ‘You’d better let me check. As Mr Traynton says, he’s sure you couldn’t find a haystack on a needle.’ He walked round the desk.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Holter hurriedly. ‘I know they’re not here.’

  ‘If I just ...’

  ‘No, no. I must have taken them home.’

  Marriott picked up the tray and left.

  As he smoked a cigarette, drank the coffee, or tried to keep an intelligent conversation going, Holter kept looking at the floor as he imagined the trail of blood on the carpet. It took all his self-control to stem a rising sense of panic.

  A few minutes later. Brock leaned forward, put his empty cup on the desk, and stood up. ‘If there’s nothing more, then, I’ll be on my way?’

  ‘Nothing, and thanks very much for coming along.’ Holter hurriedly went round the desk and shook hands. ‘I’m sure it was a good idea to meet and have a chat. It clears the air when both parties know what’s going on.’

  ‘Good-bye, Mr Holter,’ said Brock, ‘and thanks for the coffee.’ He left the room.

  Holter sat down. He stared unseeingly at the papers and law books scattered over the top of his desk. In the shock of finding Charlotte’s photograph with the blood on the frame, he had connected it up with the trail of blood that had marked the path which the dead Corry had been dragged along. But wasn’t it ridiculous of him to suppose there was any connection? Hadn’t his mind, trained to follow logical conclusions, been shocked into complete illogicality?

  Logical or illogical, one thing was absolutely certain. He had to wash the blood off the frame and then take the photograph home so that no one else should ever have the same ideas as he had just had.

  Taking some brown paper from one of the small drawers, he began to wrap up the framed photograph of a smiling Charlotte. God! he thought, if any of the police started thinking as he was thinking now they might really believe she had been in chambers at the time of the murder. Why couldn’t that goddamn’ fool of a woman, Rachael, have kept her mouth shut? No one could have proved anything. Hadn’t Charlotte spent enough money with the old bitch to get some loyalty in return?

  His fingers became all thumbs as he tried to fold the ends of the brown paper flat. The thought of Charlotte falsely placed in trouble increased his panicky anger and he began to curse the murderer with monotonous obscenity.

  Eventually, he secured the brown paper sufficiently well and he hurried from his room to the small cloakroom, immediately opposite the clerks’ room. After locking the door, he filled the basin with hot water. Then he carefully washed the blood from the ornate silver frame, using a small scrubbing brush. When satisfied he had removed everything, he dried the frame on the hand towel.

  Before wrapping up the framed photograph again, he studied it. Charlotte was very, very beautiful. It was outrageous to think that someone thought she was in any way connected with the dirt of the case.

  He left and went across to the clerks’ room where Marriott gave him some string, which he used to secure the brown paper around the photograph once he was back in his own room. He put the parcel in the centre drawer of his desk, locked the drawer, and dropped the key into his pocket.

  *

  Because the job was almost certainly going to be an extremely unpleasant one, Brock might have been expected to pass it on to one of his subordinates. The detective superintendent was coming down from HQ and his visit was an obvious and perfect excuse. But Brock always carried out the unpleasant tasks that were naturally his because he did not believe that one of the benefits of command was to make others do the dirty work.

  As he waited in his car, Squire by his side, Brock wondered whether he should have taken some action while in Holter’s room? But what? Any move on his part would merely have resulted in Holter’s slamming shut the drawer and refusing to co-operate in any way and he, Brock, could have done nothing about it. Now, in his inside coat pocket, there was a warrant, duly signed, which denied even Radwick Holter his rights as a freeborn citizen.

  Detective Constable Squire lit another cigarette. ‘That’s not at all bad, sir,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘The bit of skirt coming along. D’you think if I chucked a bob on the pavement, she’d bend down to pick it up?’

  Brock was silent.

  ‘The trouble with me, sir, is I’m sex starved.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Squire shut up. He watched the woman go past. It made him sad to think that while men all over the country were chasing beautiful women, he sat in the High Street, slowly being dehydrated by the sun which was turning the DI’s rusting old car into an oven.

  Brock began to tap his fingers on the steering wheel, but he realized what he was doing and stopped himself. The sense of tension within him was rapidly becoming, greater which meant that to some extent Holter had been right when he said that dealing with him was not the same as dealing with some snivelling little pickpocket. Hunches so often went sour. As time passed, they so often seemed more and more like tired flights of fancy.

  Then he saw Holter walk out of the building, carrying a small parcel in his right hand.

  Brock stepped out of the car and went round the bonnet to the pavement. Squire joined him. ‘Mr Holter,’ he said, as the latter came abreast of him.

  Holter started and stopped abruptly and another pedestrian almost crashed into him. Instinctively, he held the photograph tightly against himself. ‘What?’

  ‘Would you mind telling me what’s in that parcel?’

  Holter looked down at it and shook his head.

  ‘May I see it, please?’

  ‘No.’

  Several schoolgirls, in red and white striped blazers, came along the road. Giggling, they split into two groups and swept past on either side of the three men.

  ‘I must ask you to give it to me, sir.’

  ‘How dare you intrude into my privacy like this,’ said Holter desperately.

  ‘I have a warrant.’

  ‘A ... a warrant?’

  Brock took the warrant from his pocket and handed it to Holter, who just stared down at the outstretched hand. ‘The parcel, please.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I should hate to have to use force.’

  Holter was quite motionless. Brock reached forward and took hold of the parcel. He felt something hard, with a knobbly rim. Using an even, slow force he drew the parcel towards himself. For a second or two Holter resisted, but eventually he let go.

  ‘Would you like to come to my car, sir, so that I can give you a receipt?’ asked Brock.

  Holter went with the two detectives to the car. Brock opened the nearside door and sat down sideways on the seat, with his feet on the pavement. He unknotted the string and unwrapped the photograph. He stared down at it. ‘Write out the receipt,’ he ordered Squire, in a flat voice.

  ‘You can’t keep that,’ objected Holter.

  ‘Sorry. We’ll have to for a while.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with the murder.’

  ‘Was it in the bottom drawer of your desk?’

  ‘What if it was?’

  ‘Would you tell me why you were so surprised and shocked to find it there?’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  ‘I’ll crucify you for this.’ Holter turned and left, ignoring the receipt that Squire tried to give him.

  Brock looked down at the photograph. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Squire.

  ‘Nothing,’ snapped Brock.

  *

  It was thirty hours since Brock had taken the photograph of Charlotte Holter from Radwick Holter. Brock sat at the desk in his room at the central police station and smoked. For
something over twenty-nine hours, various high-ranking police officers had been asking whether he realized what he must expect if he had made a mistake. He was beginning to think it more and more likely he had made a mistake. Now, he was sweating it out. The more time that passed, the less likely it was that the photograph held any significance. So Holter had been surprised to find it in his drawer — so what? That didn’t go to prove anything and her photograph wasn’t suddenly going to start talking.

  The telephone rang. Wearily, Brock picked up the receiver. Another irate, worried senior police officer? ‘Detective Inspector.’

  ‘There’s a call from London for you.’

  This was almost certainly the lab report. Was it also, in effect, his obituary as a police officer?

  A voice thick with Yorkshire accent said: ‘Detective Inspector Brock?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Lab here, Inspector. About that photograph and frame you sent us.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s nothing in the photograph, glass, or backing.’

  ‘And the frame?’

  ‘That has its interesting features.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It has been recently cleaned with soap and water, but not quite well enough. You’ll remember the silver is very heavily patterned? Tucked away under one of the scrolls was some dried blood. Not much, mind you, but just enough.’

  ‘Can you type it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘An LV a plus b plus factor.’

  Brock remembered Kinnet telling him that that was the make-up of Corry’s blood and that it was a pretty piece of research with no relevancy: Kinnet had, for once, been wrong. ‘That’s Corry’s blood.’

  ‘It is, Inspector. Unless one of the fifty other people in the British Isles with that blood happened to be present at the same time.’