The Woods Murder

by Roy Lewis

  ‘So there’s nothing else?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Inspector.’

  ‘All right. Now then, that afternoon Lendon had the two quarrels — where did he go?’

  ‘I don’t know. Doesn’t his appointment book—’

  ‘There’s no entry for the period between one and four in the afternoon. Indeed, there are three days during a period of a fortnight when the pages are similarly blank. The third of those days was the afternoon of the day he died.’

  ‘I’m afraid—’

  ‘Where was he on those days, Miss Tennant?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Could he have been meeting a woman?’

  ‘Well, I suppose he could have been, but—’

  ‘Where were you on those days, Miss Tennant?’

  The room was suddenly silent. Cathy felt the blood draining from her face. The implication of Crow’s sudden question was like a douche of cold water and, for a moment, she was unable to frame an answer. Then, coldly, and with dignity she said: ‘My own appointment book—’

  ‘I checked it last night,’ Sergeant Turner said heavily, ‘and you’ve been less than careful in filling it in.’

  ‘When it’s blank, it means I’m just working here in the office.’

  ‘We’re not implying anything,’ Crow said. ‘Just checking possibilities.’

  ‘I was here in the office on each of the afternoons.’

  ‘I’m sure you were.’

  Crow’s sympathetic smile only served to increase her pulse rate. Her own sense of guilt was rising strongly . . . all right, in the first instance she’d just been reluctant to tell him of Mike’s dislike for Lendon, but now there was the letter . . . but he couldn’t know about that. And she couldn’t — daren’t — tell him.

  ‘We’ve gone through the files in both filing cabinets now,’ Crow said quietly. ‘Our intruder made a bad mistake. Lendon, it would seem, was a careful man. Two drawers in the cabinet in the anteroom simply contained duplicates of the files in his room. Our intruder took three files, we suspect, from the cabinet in Lendon’s room, without realizing that they were duplicated in the anteroom. It looks as though it’s going to . . . ah . . . help us with our enquiries. As you can, Miss Tennant, if you will go down to the anteroom in about ten minutes’ time.’

  When she agreed to do so Crow thanked her and left with Turner. Cathy sat there somewhat puzzled, until she was disturbed by the jangling telephone.

  She picked up the receiver and her heart sank. It was the one voice she didn’t want to hear, the one person she didn’t want to speak to.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I can’t make it tonight.’ The voice was insistent.

  ‘No, I can’t make it, not even later. I have to stay at home and wash my hair and—’

  There was anger in the voice now, but again she said she couldn’t go out. The caller rang off abruptly. She replaced the receiver with care and sadly walked across to the window. An immense feeling of depression washed over her. She stood staring out across the street but she saw nothing. She saw none of the buses that passed, nor the dark-suited gentlemen. She was hardly aware of the two lorries, the fifteen bicycles, and the thirty-five private cars that drove past during the next six minutes. And she did not see, as she turned away from the window at Detective-Sergeant Turner’s invitation, the small blue Volkswagen drive past the entrance to Lendon, Philips and Barrett, and proceed up to the next junction, turn left, and park at the end of the long road that led down to the children’s playground and pleasure park. But even had she seen it, Cathy would probably have paid it no attention, for she did not know its occupant.

  The woman who got out of the car was thirty years old.

  Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes a warm, alluring brown. She possessed a slender figure, but one that displayed her expensive and carefully chosen clothes to advantage. She was not tall, her legs were not long, but she presented overall the sort of picture of womanhood that many men in their mind’s eye dreamed of: warm, exciting, passionate and available.

  But Mrs Gillian Kent was not available. For more than five years she had been separated from her husband, but she had managed to keep well away from the types of men who quickly sought to turn to their advantage a situation where they felt she must surely need sexual comfort. For five years she had kept free of such men, and for the last eighteen months it had not been too difficult, for her own sexual desires, always a force to be reckoned with, had been assuaged — and this had meant she could present an even colder shoulder to her transient admirers.

  This did not mean that she resented their glances, and she was aware of several now as she stepped out of the blue Volkswagen, locked the door and walked quickly down the street. She did not resent them but she ignored them, nevertheless.

  She was a little breathless.

  When she finally turned into Gethin Road her breathlessness had increased, but she knew it was not due to the speed of her step. She slowed deliberately, and attempted to control her breathing and the pace of her heartbeat. She still walked on, nevertheless, towards the white-painted door to No. 37 Gethin Road.

  The receptionist smiled her usual perfect smile and stood up behind her neat, clean-swept desk.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Kent. Do you wish to make an appointment?’

  ‘Is Dr Barstow in surgery yet?’ The smile remained professionally perfect.

  ‘Not for another hour, Mrs Kent. Do you wish to see him before then?’

  ‘If it is at all possible.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure.’ The receptionist looked doubtful letting the smile harden just slightly at the corners to denote that the appointments system was the child of her nurturing and was not to be despised. ‘But I’ll see.’

  She lifted the telephone and waited. Then, with her careful, low-modulated telephone voice she murmured:

  ‘Dr Barstow, Mrs Kent is here and would like to see you if this is not inconvenient.’

  There was a pause and the receptionist’s eyes lifted to Mrs Kent. The smile was switched on again, briefly. ‘You can go in, Mrs Kent. Dr Barstow will be pleased to see you.’

  Gillian Kent inclined a graceful head and walked through the door held open for her by the receptionist. She crossed to the door at the far end of the passageway. She tapped at it lightly, heard the intoned command, entered and closed the door behind her. She stood leaning against it, both hands braced, as she stared at Dr Barstow, rising from his chair. His wide eyes held a hint of anger and his jaw was set hard but she didn’t care. Deliberately she walked across the room and took him by the shoulders. She kissed him, hungrily, and even though anger stiffened his lips they moved against hers and she felt that nothing had changed for him, it was the same as always, the same as it had been this last eighteen months.

  He pulled away from her, with an involuntary glance to the window. There was perspiration on his brow and he twitched at his tie convulsively.

  ‘For God’s sake, Gillian, you must be crazy coming here like this! You know what we always said, you know what we arranged.’

  ‘Darling, it’s different now.’ Her voice was edged with strain and longing. ‘It’s different now, for we’re free.’

  ‘Are you mad? What do you mean-free?’

  He was looking at her with glaring eyes. There was a nervous tic at the corner of his sensuous mouth, and he ran his fingers across his lips suddenly.

  ‘Darling,’ she murmured, ‘he’s dead. He’s dead, and we’re free, and the whole filthy, ugly episode can be forgotten and we can be together again, just as we were before.’

  Paul Barstow shook his handsome head violently, and turned away. She watched him walk across to the window, saw the anxiety in the set of his broad shoulders and she couldn’t understand it, any of it.

  ‘Darling, Lendon’s dead and it is all right now, surely!’

  He flashed a quick, angry glance at her over his shoulder and shook his head again.

  ‘It isn’t all right. I thoug
ht at first that it would be changed, but it hasn’t, it can’t. We’re no further forward, we’re no better off. And I told you never to come here again, to wait until I rang you, until things were quiet when we could meet out at Rains Point again, as we used to. And now, at the first chance you come charging in here like an empty-headed fool! Don’t you realize what you’re doing? Don’t you realize that this way you can ruin everything? Don’t you realize that once people suspect us, see us together, start adding things up, it could be finished between us for good? Hell, the way things stand now we could well be washed up already!’

  Gillian Kent stiffened, hardly able to believe her ears.

  She stood staring at the man she loved and she could not understand what he was trying to say. Or perhaps she understood him only too well.

  ‘You made me,’ she mumbled. ‘When Charles Lendon put the pressure on you, you came to me, you asked me, you made me do it. And now, after I’ve done what you wanted, now, after he’s dead, you say that nothing has changed. You shamed me and humiliated me and now you say we’re back where we started. Worse than that, you say that we could be finished. You say that things are dead between us . . . when it was you who fixed it that way.’

  He rocked his head from side to side in slow denial. ‘You don’t understand me, Gillian. I’m trying to say you shouldn’t have come here, I’m trying to tell you we have to be careful . . .’

  ‘Are you in love with me, Paul?’

  Her words leapt across to him like a lash and he flinched. His eyes failed to meet hers, and he made no reply.

  ‘Do you love me?’

  Even as he looked at her dumbly she lost control: she crossed the space between them in two strides and struck out at him hysterically. Her right hand caught his cheek a stinging blow but his up-raised arm caught the next blow, deflected it and then his strong arms were round her, pinioning her hands to her side, and his handsome face was close to hers, his breath warm on her cheek.

  ‘Don’t be such a damned fool! Listen to me, and think! Think! Lendon is dead, but though I thought at first it would make a difference I realize now that it doesn’t. Can’t you see that? What will be happening up there now, today, at his office? Lendon is dead, and what was in his head has gone with him, but how do we know he didn’t keep records? How do we know that everything was not put down on paper? How do we know that the police are not at this very minute going through his files, and discovering all about this mess?’

  Gillian stared at him, wild-eyed.

  ‘Are you . . . are you trying to say that it was all pointless? That in spite of what I did—’

  ‘Lendon’s dead,’ Barstow said with a snarl, ‘but the police will know, or guess. I’m sure of it. And you come here today!’

  Slowly her chin came up. She was beginning to see Paul Barstow with new eyes, and she didn’t like what she saw. The man was badly frightened.

  ‘I love you, Paul,’ she said slowly and with studied care. ‘Does it matter, does any of it really matter, if we love each other?’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody childish! What the hell is going to happen now God only knows! While it was only Lendon who knew, we stood a chance—’

  ‘Did we? Did we ever really stand a chance, Paul, me and you? I’m not sure now, not sure at all.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked in a voice harshened with strain as she turned to go. ‘Do? Embarrass you no further. Leave you, accepting that I should never have come. Go back home and sit by the telephone, wait for you to call. But will you ever call? Will you ever call me again?’

  A spasm of doubt crossed his face and he put out a hand to her. She ignored it coolly. ‘Perhaps I should have guessed that under the strain we’ve suffered any love you did have would be eroded. I’m no longer the same woman to you, am I, Paul?’

  ‘You don’t understand, Gillian. It’s not that way. It’s just that we have to stay careful, for a while at least, until suspicion dies and then later, maybe we—’

  ‘Yes. Maybe we can. But not now. I’ll go home now, Paul, like a good girl. Shall I say goodbye, or leave it at au revoir?’

  ‘Gillian—’

  She let herself out into the corridor. She knew that he would make no attempt to follow her. She walked carefully out past the receptionist, and managed to smile as she had managed to smile over these last eighteen months. But those months had given her a great deal to smile about: the last few minutes had robbed her of all that. Yet she smiled. Perhaps it was a measure of the way her character had hardened. Perhaps it was a measure of her guilt.

  Lendon was dead, but nothing had changed.

  A few heads turned as she walked back to the car, though on this occasion she was not aware of them. Tears pricked at the back of her eyelids, but she kept her head up and the watery sun gleamed on her lashes. She reached the Volkswagen, unlocked it, sat behind the driving seat for a few minutes, stiffly, dully, then started the car and drove it carefully from her parking place.

  Two minutes later it passed the offices of Lendon, Philips and Barrett, but once again Cathy Tennant did not see the blue Volkswagen. For Cathy was no longer standing at the office window. She was coming out, white-faced, from the anteroom to Charles Lendon’s office. She was looking at Chief Inspector Crow and Sergeant Turner and her hand was shaking slightly. Crow was leaning forward, his head thrust out like a great predatory bird.

  ‘Well?’ he asked, and there was a note of underlying urgency in his voice. Cathy nodded, in a sad conviction.

  ‘Yes, I recognized it, muffled through the door, as you were talking with him. The man you’ve been speaking to is the man who was quarrelling with Charles Lendon on that Friday afternoon, the week before Mr Lendon was murdered.’

  Chapter 10

  Detective-Sergeant Wilson arrived at the operations room to join Crow and Turner, carefully hung his blue raincoat behind the door and took a chair near Crow’s desk.

  ‘Well, what have we got?’ Crow asked.

  Wilson hitched himself forward in his chair and extracted a battered notebook from his pocket.

  ‘I’ve left two men from the scene-of-crime unit up at the Old Mill; they’ll be there for the rest of the day. The others have finished there now. We’ve more or less cleaned the place out and there’s very little to go on. Still, the picture would seem to be fairly clear.’

  ‘That sounds ominous. When a “picture” is clear it usually turns out to be far from the truth.’

  ‘It’s as near as we can work it out, anyway, sir. I’ve checked the statements of the principal witnesses so far and the facts as we know them are these: after leaving his home at eight-thirty or thereabouts Lendon walked up to the Old Mill . . .’

  ‘We still don’t know why he didn’t take his car.’

  ‘No, sir, we don’t.’

  Wilson paused as Crow’s head sank on to his narrow chest. He knew the signs when Crow would be lost in thought. What he could not know, of course, was that Crow was thinking of Alex Bell and the way the light had caught her russet hair.

  ‘It could be,’ Wilson continued, ‘that he walked up to the Old Mill simply to ensure that he’d be unobserved; maybe he just wanted no advertisement of his presence. He would have reached the Old Mill, walking briskly, at some time just after nine in the evening. We’ve found an empty packet of cigarettes, of the expensive kind that he smoked, among the trees just short of the mill, so there’s the possibility that he waited there for a little while.’

  ‘Waiting for someone?’

  ‘Or watching for someone . . . who can tell? Anyway, he couldn’t have been there long because we found only one cigarette butt there, and that half smoked. It would seem, therefore, that at about nine-fifteen he walked forward to the door of the Old Mill. There are three footprints in soft earth under the trees that may well be his: the lab boys are working on it.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘It’s mainly as I say. He walked into the Old Mill, and prowled around, I guess. Then he stepped forwa
rd to the inner doorway. There’s nothing to suggest what happened either way thereafter. It’s possible that he met the person he came to see and stood talking; it’s equally possible that he just walked forward and was attacked.’

  ‘Which do you think happened?’ Wilson frowned thoughtfully.

  ‘My impression is that there was no talking, no discussion. There was no sign of a struggle. Now, if you think about it, if we were standing talking and I suddenly produced a skewer and thrust at you, you’d step back, wouldn’t you, try to avoid the blow? Well, there’s no sign of his stepping back, no scuffing of the thick dust around there. He just came forward on to his face. I think he was still walking forward when that skewer hit him. It doubled him up, forward, and down he went.’

  ‘You think it’s likely that he didn’t even see his assailant?’ Wilson nodded.

  ‘I think someone was waiting there for him, and as he came through the opening in the darkness . . . wham!’

  ‘Very descriptive,’ Crow remarked dispassionately. ‘But could he not have fallen forward if the blow had been given to him when standing close to someone, when he could not see the weapon to step back? When he was embracing or about to embrace a woman, for instance?’

  ‘Cherchez la femme.’ Wilson’s shrug was expressive. ‘It’s a line of enquiry that I intend to pursue. We know what Lendon’s predilections were; we know that the Old Mill is a lovers’ haunt. He could have been going to meet a woman. The question is . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Wilson pursed his lips and stared at Sergeant Turner. ‘Anything in the files you’ve been looking at?’

  ‘A great deal,’ Turner replied, ‘and a lot of it is more than interesting. I haven’t finished yet, because we’ve been mugging up on one file in particular this morning, but so far, no homicidal “birds” appear.’