The Woods Murder

by Roy Lewis

  ‘What do you want, Mr Carson?’ Charles Lendon asked in a level tone. He held himself very erect as he spoke, but with an air of careful truculence. ‘I hope it’s not going to be a repetition of your earlier request.’

  ‘More or less, Mr Lendon,’ Carson replied stubbornly. ‘But I’m not speaking for myself, not now. I’m speaking for others. They’ve not sent me, or asked me to come, but—’

  ‘But you’ve taken it upon yourself to come.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Carson was unaffected by the sarcasm in Lendon’s voice. He stood there in the doorway, a powerful, slightly hunched figure, with his arms dangling by his sides, his fingers loosely curling. He gave an impression of immobility, but Lendon was equally imperturbable. He turned away, presenting his back to Carson.

  ‘Well, I see no point in conversation, since you already know my views.’

  ‘I do.’

  Cathy looked swiftly from one man to the other. Lendon had stiffened, and was turning his head slowly to face the man in the doorway.

  ‘You’re on my premises, Carson, and we have nothing to say to each other. I suggest you leave now, before there’s trouble.’

  ‘Trouble? Are you going to cause trouble, Lendon? To me? When you’ve already done all you can to ruin my life?’

  Lendon’s jaw was hard.

  ‘Don’t be a damned fool, Carson ! Your . . . your daughter, that was nothing to do with me—’

  ‘That’s what you’ve said, time and again. But it’s not how the score lies in my book! And it’s why I’m here now. I don’t want to see it happening again to some other poor kid. You—’

  Lendon’s anger was rising, but characteristically he kept his voice on a level tone. ‘It is my sincere hope, as it must be yours, Carson, that there will be no further incidents, but there is nothing I can do.’

  ‘Incidents!’

  Carson took a step forward into the room, and there was menace in the set of his shoulders. His voice was quivering with the violence of his anger. He was rapidly losing control of himself in a situation that he must have anticipated. But perhaps it was why he had come.

  ‘Incident, you call it! Nothing you can do, you say! You know damned well that if you hadn’t closed the right of way through Kenton Wood—’

  ‘There is no right of way through Kenton Wood,’ Lendon said icily.

  ‘—my daughter would be alive today. And while the right of way remains closed kids will still go through the north path in the woods when they’re late, or in a hurry, and one of these days the same thing’s going to happen again! Some child is going to end up—’

  Lendon’s eyes glittered angrily; his scarred eyebrow gave him a satanic appearance. He cut Carson short with a quick gesture.

  ‘There’s no right of way across my property! Children going to the school across the main road can follow the roads. There is a bus service. There’s no need for them to cross my property, and there is even less need for them to go through the north side of the woods. If only parents would accept their responsibilities and ensure that—’

  Carson’s anger broke. Cathy realized that in spite of his apparent calm when he had appeared in the doorway, the man must have been trembling on the edge of violence all the while; now his obvious hatred for Lendon thrust him over. He blundered forward, reaching out clumsily with a large hand, grabbing for Lendon’s shoulder, but the solicitor was twisting away.

  ‘For God’s sake—’ Cathy heard herself cry and then Lendon was pushing Carson past him, and stepping aside. Carson’s impetus carried him sprawling across Cathy’s desk, a big, awkward man; Lendon remained upright, in control, lithely elegant and sneering openly. Cathy came as near to disliking Charles Lendon then as she had ever done. Lendon’s voice was cutting.

  ‘I suggest that you make yourself scarce, Carson. You’re making a fool of yourself. I could already sue you for assault and battery — don’t make things worse; stop this hysterical nonsense. Get out of my office!’

  Carson slowly drew himself upright, one hand on the desk. He glanced towards Cathy. He seemed to have control of his anger again, and his heavy face was apologetic.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he mumbled, but she was even sorrier and felt like crying, for the look on his face was so much like the expression he had displayed in the newspaper photographs: a puzzled anxiety, a lack of comprehension as to where he had gone wrong. But even as he turned his head towards Lendon his expression was changing to one of malignity. There was no doubt as to his feelings towards Charles Lendon.

  ‘This isn’t the last you’ll see or hear of me, Lendon!’

  ‘I’ve no doubt!’

  Carson glared at the solicitor for a long moment, and then butted his way past and out into the corridor. Lendon stood staring at the empty doorway in silence and the angry flush remained on his cheek. At last he flickered a disturbed glance towards Cathy: he was obviously unhappy that she should have witnessed the brawl with Carson.

  ‘We’ll leave this now,’ he said, gesturing towards the Cauter papers. ‘We can take the matter up again on Monday.’

  Cathy nodded and put on her coat. Lendon assisted her, his fingers lingering unnecessarily on her shoulder. He made no further reference to Carson. His breathing had slowed again and he was in full control of himself. He stood aside, and Cathy preceded him to the door.

  ‘Can I give you a lift home?’ he asked suddenly, and to her surprise, a little hesitantly. Hesitancy in Charles Lendon seemed out of character.

  ‘No, thank you, Mr Lendon. Someone’s waiting for me. I hope he is, at least!’ She said it with a brief smile, as she turned away. Just inside the main doors, Lendon put a hand on her arm.

  ‘Someone waiting? Who is it?’ Cathy was taken aback at the urgency in his tone, for she saw no reason for it. On the other hand she saw no reason why he should not know. ‘A young man called Enson; Mike Enson. And in fact, there he is now! Good night, Mr Lendon.’

  She walked quickly across to the sports car drawn up at the kerb on the other side of the road. She got in with a brief apology to Mike for keeping him waiting, but he hardly seemed to hear her. He was looking away from her, glaring back coldly towards the offices of Lendon, Philips and Barrett.

  And when Cathy followed his gaze she saw that Charles Lendon was still standing on the steps of the office. He in his turn was staring at the car, and at Mike Enson. Even at this distance Cathy could see the expression of enmity that shadowed Charles Lendon’s features.

  Chapter 2

  It was a pleasant room full of dark wood and whorled glass and dim lights, and it was a room made for lovers. But just loving wasn’t enough. These surroundings held memories for Cathy, for Mike had brought her here several times. They had come out of the cold wind and they had sat in front of the fire nursing their drinks and the silences had held them in a warm contentment.

  Those silences had been loving silences, times to savour what they had come to mean to each other, to think about how it had been and how it would be without each other, to think how it was going to be, together.

  But tonight it was different and just loving wasn’t enough.

  The silences that drifted between them were cold anger in an icy sea of disapproval. Cathy had come to believe that such problems could be overcome; the silences and the awkwardness of explanations and the difficulties of a new relationship could usually be smoothed over by the fact of loving, but not always, and that Friday evening after she had witnessed Lendon’s quarrel with Carson was one of those evenings when a smoothing over was impossible.

  Cathy glared in silence towards the flaring hearth while Mike stared moodily at the brass horse buckles winking fulsomely above the stone fireplace. She snorted and sipped at her lager.

  She had met Mike Enson a month ago when the heavy frosts of late January had turned to a cold February rain. He’d come along a few minutes after a careless driver had drenched her with a great bow wave of puddle water lying above an overflowing drain and she’d been soak
ed from head to foot. As she came out of the side road Mike Enson, in his sports car, had come squealing to a violent halt, spattering her with thick mud as he did so.

  Cathy had stood there speechless, shoulders hunched and arms stiffly held out in front of her, glowering at him as he thrust his fair head out of the passenger window.

  He looked her up and down with a studied casualness that she found infuriating. It was not only his surprised air; it was the fact that water was running down her neck and squelching into her shoes. She clenched her fists impotently, and waited.

  ‘By God,’ he had said, ‘I’ve seen nothing more like a drowned rat in my life!’

  ‘You just splashed me!’

  ‘You mean it made any difference?’ he had enquired, raising his eyebrows. And she had noticed his friendly, slate-grey eyes even through the soaking despondency of her frustration and anger. Then he grinned and she liked his wide mouth, and smile, too.

  ‘You’d better get in, and let me drive you home. In your state you’re quite likely to float there, but this way it’ll be quicker.’

  She had hesitated for only a moment; it would have been morally satisfying to snub him but physically foolish to so indulge her ego. She was damned wet. She got in the car.

  ‘I never did like sports cars.’ The words were by way of salve to her outrage.

  ‘You obviously prefer walking in the rain. You must have been out in it for a week!’ When she extracted the small mirror from her handbag she could see what he meant. Her dark hair was plastered to her muddy face under the sodden headscarf and there were dirty stains all over her raincoat.

  ‘By God, you don’t half smell too,’ he commented cheerfully. ‘My name’s Mike Enson, by the way.’

  Fury overrode politeness and she glowered silently at her mirror. Warm air filtered a little comfort around her squelching feet, but she refused its solace, and Enson drove on silently until they reached the outskirts of the town.

  ‘Well,’ he suggested, cheerful still, ‘if not names, at least an address, otherwise, where do I drop you? The nearest pond?’

  ‘I was half drowned by a lunatic road hog who almost killed me. I do not get wet as a hobby. My name is Cathy Tennant, and I live in a flat in Camden Street.’

  ‘And I’m delighted to meet you.’

  He illustrated his delight by calling on her two evenings later and she made little attempt to conceal her own pleasure.

  It had been a marvellous month in many ways, lifted by the exhilaration of their realizing just what they had come to mean to each other, but it had culminated in something quite unexpected. Mike had asked her to marry him, and she had turned him down.

  Cathy plonked the glass of lager down on the table to her right and glared defiantly at Mike, sitting beside her. ‘I didn’t really turn you down you know, not flatly.’

  ‘As good as,’ he disagreed. ‘No matter. Let’s just forget it.’

  ‘I don’t want to forget it! Why are you being so damned pig-headed?’

  ‘Pig-headed? I’m being pig-headed? What the hell is there to describe your conduct?’

  ‘Lower your voice. We’re being stared at!’

  ‘You call me pig-headed, but as soon as I try to come back at you, you tell me to shut up—’

  ‘I didn’t say shut up, I said—’

  ‘-when all the time it’s you who—’

  ‘-was that you were speaking too loudly and—’

  ‘-is being pig-headed in refusing to give me what I regard as an adequate reason for turning me down.’

  Cathy pursed her lips; Mike folded his arms across his chest and glowered. ‘You said you were in love with me.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘It’s got everything to do with it!’

  ‘Mike, please!’

  Suddenly, she was near to tears, and he saw it, and he put his hand out to her but this only made things worse so she grabbed for his handkerchief and blew into it violently. When she looked up there was the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes had softened.

  ‘Sometimes I think you’re just like a kid,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Just because I’m only twenty and you’re eight years older!’

  But the earlier rancour had left their voices, and they looked at each other and she thought that perhaps it would be all right after all. It was a drawback in their relationship, a difficulty that they would have to surmount, this strange barrier that occasionally rose between them. A failure to communicate, a failure to reach each other verbally, that was it; it was a failure that they could bypass as they were bypassing it now, by the very fact that they were in love and people in love had their own imaginations and their own conceptual methods of communication: a look, a touch, a breath. This was how it was now, a glance and things were getting better, even though explanations would yet be necessary. The atmosphere was easier, and communication might again be possible, where it had proved impossible only moments before.

  ‘We’ve not known each other long, Cathy.’

  ‘A month.’

  ‘It’s happened quickly, this love thing.’

  ‘It’s happened just right.’

  ‘But you won’t marry me.’

  ‘I won’t marry you . . . yet. You didn’t let me get out that last word last time. It’s a very important word.’

  ‘The difference between a positive and a negative. But it doesn’t explain anything.’

  Cathy reached out and took his hand. It was a strong hand that in a way was typical of Mike. He exuded strength, even though he was not heavily built, strength and reliability. Though there had been occasions when he had seemed almost weak and very vulnerable. But those were private occasions the thought of which now caused her knees to tremble.

  ‘You’ve got to understand, Mike, I love you and I hope we will marry. But not yet. It’s too early.’

  ‘Cathy, I’m twenty-eight, I’m a qualified surveyor, I’m earning £2,000 a year, I should soon get a partnership. . .hell, I can support a family, why can’t we get married?’

  ‘Because you’re qualified — and I’m not.’

  Mike groaned.

  ‘What the hell does that matter? Look, Cathy, I want a wife, not a breadwinner. It doesn’t matter a damn whether you get qualified or not. I want you to bring up my kids, not trouble the Inland Revenue authorities!’

  ‘You’re being old-fashioned, and you haven’t got the point,’ Cathy insisted stubbornly. ‘I want to qualify-and I’m going to qualify.’

  ‘All right, why don’t we get married and—’

  ‘And after I qualify, I’ll marry.’

  Mike’s mouth took a grimmer line. ‘If I’m still around.’

  ‘If you loved me, you’d still be around.’

  Mike grunted despondently.

  ‘I suppose you’re right at that.’

  She squeezed his hand.

  ‘Please try to see my point of view over this matter. Dad keenly wanted me to get a professional qualification if I wasn’t going to university. And he’s right-because if we married, and you died . . . well come on, Mike, it could happen — and I was left alone, or with children to bring up, what could I do? If I had nothing behind me but seven years at school? He’s right when he says that getting a professional qualification is important, and that’s why he got me the interviews, that’s why he arranged for the interview here at the firm, and that’s why he’d be against my marrying before I qualified.’

  ‘You mean it’s your father who—’

  ‘It’s my idea, Mike. My idea and my responsibility. In just eighteen months I’ll have finished my period of articles. Provided I get through the Part II exams this coming summer I’ll become an admitted solicitor. Thereafter, any time you ask me to marry you I’ll do so gladly. But until then, I must refuse. If I marry now, who knows what would happen? Maybe I’d never get to my exams, maybe I’d lose the incentive to work, I don’t know. But I do know what I’m capable of now, and
I’ve got to stick the course.’

  Mike looked at her calmly, with a twisted half smile on his face.

  ‘You’re a stubborn girl, Cathy Tennant. You know your own mind. I can’t argue with you.’

  ‘I’m glad. On this matter at least, argument will do no good. My mind is made up. It’s right for me, and for Dad, and, well, for us, too, in the long run. Apart from that, there’s Mr Lendon—’

  ‘Lendon?’ A certain harshness crept into his voice. ‘Where does Lendon come into this?’ Cathy looked at him in surprise, raising her eyebrows at his tone.

  ‘Well, you know perfectly well that I’m articled to Lendon. He’s bound to come into it!’ Mike drained his glass of beer before replying. His eyes were slate-cold, and they held a vicious gleam.

  ‘I see no reason why you need to consider his interests at all.’

  ‘Mike! I don’t think that’s fair! Of course I have to consider his interests! He’s my principal, he’s helped me a great deal — for believe me, there are many principals who give their clerks no help whatsoever—’

  ‘You mean he’s had you ensconced alone with him in his little office when the rest of the staff are gone, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ Cathy said, half amused, half exasperated. ‘I tell you he’s been very kind, and very helpful, more than I could expect—’

  ‘I’ve no doubt!’

  She paused, and a little of the old anger seeped back as she caught the inflection in Mike’s voice and saw the bitter sneer on his face.

  ‘And moreover, I have a duty to him under the terms of my employment. I have an agreement with him to work out my articles. He’s kept his side of the bargain; I must keep mine. I’ve got a place in his office — he entrusts me with a great deal of work, and a great deal of responsibility. If I were to leave the firm I would not only be leaving an excellent training ground for myself, but I’d be leaving his office in a certain amount of difficulty. He relies upon me, he’s come to look upon me as—’