The Woods Murder

by Roy Lewis

  Then Cathy was running down the slope on to a narrow pathway, and the starlight was above her and she was bursting out into the short-grassed clearing at the verge of the woods. The crashing behind her increased, whirling in its savage, disappointed violence, but she was away from the grass verge. In her ears there was the ringing of tarmac, hard and black under her feet, but almost at once it was blotted out by the harsh, high screeching of brakes and the headlights leapt at her like a wild-eyed tiger.

  Chapter 12

  After the two constables had packed Lendon’s loose papers in the car, Mrs Bell asked Crow if he’d like a cup of coffee before he left. He did not ask himself why he accepted: it was not something he would normally have done, accepting such an offer in such a situation, but he could have said that his acceptance was motivated by a desire to get more about Lendon’s background from her, and more about her relationship with Lendon. Nevertheless, had he asked the question of himself he would have been forced to admit that it was the sheer pleasure of watching her and hearing her low, modulated voice that played an important part in his acceptance.

  They sat downstairs in Lendon’s sitting-room. Crow had looked briefly over her flat and there seemed little point in going up to its cramped confinement when there was room downstairs like this. Mrs Bell sipped at the strong coffee and glanced up at Crow; her eyes were dark, and direct.

  ‘Did they find anything that might be of assistance?’

  ‘The two constables? Well, I don’t know yet. There’s a lot of stuff there, and a large number of what appear to be legal papers. We’ll be down at the station tomorrow sorting them out. We’ll see then.’

  ‘And you have no leads yet as to who might have . . . murdered Charles?’

  He smiled faintly, and made no attempt to answer. His patent reluctance brought a brief smile to her own face. He was pleased at her sensitivity, and quick reaction. ‘You must forgive me,’ she said, ‘but women are constitutionally inquisitive.’

  ‘It’s part of their charm,’ Crow replied gallantly. ‘Is your brother calling tonight?’

  Alex Bell shook her head; Crow had been right about the russet hue, for he caught the light behind her hair now and his guess was confirmed.

  ‘No, John is staying at the hostel in Canthorpe, as usual. He’ll probably be out to see me tomorrow afternoon: he often does come then.’

  Crow weighed his words carefully.

  ‘You said, last time we met, that your brother had not had a happy life. He seems very much on edge to me; has he any record of nervous trouble over a long period?’

  The woman sitting across the room from him nodded, her handsome features smooth and calm.

  ‘I’m afraid he has. You see, John was the third child. My elder brother, Henry, was killed in the war at about the same time as . . . as my husband. John was the youngest and was very much protected by Mother, so that when she died my brother Henry looked after him. When Henry was killed John turned to me. But . . . well, Mother had always spoiled him, you know . . . I think she wanted him to be dependent upon her. And I suppose I’m no better than Mother. I was eighteen when my husband died, and John came to me and I was able to help him through school with the insurance money. But I organized John’s life, made him dependent on me. I was selfish-you know? I used John to assuage my own grief.’

  ‘Your conduct hardly seems selfish to me.’

  ‘John did quite well at school. He got a job in a bank later and was happy for a while, but I think things got on top of him somewhat. There was a girl . . . well, I never felt much could come of it, she wasn’t good enough for him, and certainly when he found out she’d been sleeping with some other man when she was supposed to be engaged to John . . .’ Mrs Bell shrugged. ‘It broke him up, and there was little I could do other than offer sympathy. He’s had various jobs, but it’s a bit difficult since he attends Linwood, and lives in for periods of time. There’s nothing wrong with him, you must understand, he just gets depressed, I think he remembers . . .’

  ‘He comes to see you regularly. That must help.’

  ‘Yes. He has that old car . . . I help him financially, of course.’

  Poor John Barnes: mother-ridden, sister-fixated, and on the receiving end of an unhappy love affair. Crow should have felt stirrings of sympathy but there were none. He didn’t like Barnes though he couldn’t tell why.

  Mrs Bell leaned forward. ‘May I ask you something?’

  Crow didn’t like the sound of that but he nodded and smiled.

  ‘As long as it’s not too personal, and doesn’t involve my breaking the Official Secrets Act.’ She returned his smile, but warily.

  ‘It is personal, in a sense. I want to ask you . . . I told you that I became Charles Lendon’s mistress quite deliberately, in an attempt to secure my future; when I told you that, what was your reaction? I mean, you took it very calmly, but what did you think?’

  ‘I’m a policeman, Mrs Bell—’

  ‘You’re also a man. I want you to tell me: was I wrong in behaving like that seven years ago? Do you think I was wrong?’

  Crow struggled for an appropriate answer.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. You must realize that I’m not here to pass judgments. You did what you thought fit at the time; I don’t think anyone can castigate you socially for that. It was your life. You were hurting no one, except perhaps yourself.’

  ‘Charles was a very attractive man, and I thought that in time he would marry me . . . but it’s no matter. The house will be mine now, and all ends well, I suppose. It’s just that I only wish that he had . . .’

  She looked at him levelly. There was a hint of self-mockery in her dark eyes. ‘You know, he never once told me that he loved me.’

  Crow was getting out of his depth. He finished his coffee and stumbled to his feet, suddenly more conscious than ever of his skeletal height, and his awkwardness, and his gaunt, unlovely appearance. Mrs Bell rose with him and he looked down at her. In a way he could understand why she asked such questions of him, a stranger. He could understand her need to confide in someone, to talk about herself and Charles Lendon, and John Barnes too, for that matter. She was a handsome woman, and a proud one, he had no doubt. She would not have spoken like this to anyone she knew. A stranger was different. He felt a little sorry for her. And yet he knew it could be misplaced. Softly, he said:

  ‘Such inhibitions wouldn’t have been Charles Lendon’s alone. It’s my wife’s constant complaint that I don’t tell her these days.’

  Alex Bell smiled at him.

  ‘At least that implies you did once upon a time.’

  And, he mused, as he took his leave of Mrs Bell, he supposed he did use to tell Martha, once. In his youth. Why was it that people might feel love deepen, become warmer, but in the greater security of passing time become less demonstrative of that love? A paradox.

  But what the hell had John Crow been doing talking about love with Alex Bell, anyway? He had a murder case on his hands and there he was sitting drinking coffee with a handsome widow and discussing mistresses and motivations and love. It was time he got back on the rails.

  Nevertheless, his mind kept drifting back to Mrs Bell as he drove through the darkness along the road to town, drifting back to the pleasant sight she presented sitting stiff-backed and upright in her chair, her russet-dark hair swept back, her slim hands in her lap, those magnificent eyes holding his . . .

  It was partly because his mind was still on Alexandra Bell that John Crow almost failed to take evasive action when the girl ran out into the road in front of him.

  She leapt out, her face white against the headlights and he wrenched the wheel sideways. The car bucked and the brakes screeched as he thumped both feet down, then he was swinging across the road, skidding, and his headlights flashed across and round in a wide arc, road, trees, road, trees . . .

  He was stalled, facing the way he had come. The night was quiet, except for the clicking of the girl’s shoes on the road and then sobbing breath,
harsh outside the car door. His black, angry excitement vanished when he saw who it was.

  ‘Miss Tennant! What on earth-!’

  Crow opened the door quickly and got out; the girl was holding her throat with one hand, and leaning against the car with the other. She was gasping for breath.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked quickly, taking her arm. ‘Here, get in the car!’

  She shook her head but allowed him to draw her into the car, where she slumped down in the seat.

  ‘It’s all right, Inspector. It’s just that I came running down the bank . . . and then your headlights . . . I thought you were going to knock me down, and . . . it drove all the breath out of me. I’m all right, really I am. Just shocked, that’s all.’

  Crow eyed the girl carefully. In the interior light of the car he could see her dishevelled condition, the paleness of her cheek, the broken bits of twig on her coat. Instinctively, he looked back towards the woods stretching above, dark and menacing against the skyline. The girl touched his arm.

  ‘I am all right, really.’

  It was as though she was unwilling for his thoughts to turn towards the trees.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you look considerably distressed. Are you sure nothing’s wrong?’

  She managed an embarrassed laugh and attempted to smooth down her skirt and extract some of the twigs from her hair.

  ‘The fact is, Inspector, I . . . I was walking across the top there and came down through the woods, and got a bit lost, then a bit frightened, you know how it is in the darkness when you can’t see a thing. I got a bit tangled in the bushes. Then, when I saw the road I was so pleased I was out that I ran down, and the slope was steeper than I thought and there I was, right in the path of your car.’

  There was an odd pleading in her tone. She wanted desperately to be believed, and yet Crow had heard nothing less convincing in his life. She was a poor liar and he had come across some of the best. She had had a reason for entering those trees and something had frightened her in the woods, right enough, but it hadn’t been just the darkness. She didn’t want to talk about it. In Crow’s book that could only mean that the person who had frightened her was known to her, and she didn’t want to involve him in trouble. As Crow stared at her impassively the thought came to him that this matter might not be unconnected with the piece of information that he was convinced she was withholding from him. She would bring it out in time, if he were patient, but that didn’t mean that he should simply remain completely passive in the matter. Abruptly he slid his long body behind the driving wheel.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you’re all right, Miss Tennant, the least I can do is drive you home, even if you did almost wreck the car and put me through the windscreen in the process.’

  ‘Inspector, I’m terribly sorry. Truly.’

  She was, but he also detected in her tone a tremor of relief because he seemed to have accepted her story. As he started the engine and turned the car in the road, his headlights briefly flashed over the trees again. For a moment he thought he caught a brief, answering flash, as though someone had flicked a torch through the trees, but as the car moved up the hill, and his eyes glanced along the outlined pines and thick undergrowth of bushes, he dismissed the thought as imagination. Nevertheless, he wondered what else, or who else could be in there among the pines.

  The journey back to town and to her flat was silent.

  He made no attempt to ask how she had got there in the first instance, who had driven her, why she was walking. He was busy with other considerations. When he dropped her off at the flat he waited until she had gone inside. As she was doing so a car’s headlights briefly turned into the road. The car stopped, reversed, and went on its way. Crow looked after it thoughtfully. It could have been someone taking a wrong turning. On the other hand . . .

  When he got back to the Warwick Arms, where he and Wilson had rooms, he went straight upstairs for a quick wash, and then came down to the lounge bar. Wilson was already sitting there, with an evening paper and a glass of beer. He caught sight of Crow, and called to the barman for another half of bitter. Crow sat down beside Wilson, who folded away his newspaper, and the two sipped silently at their beer for a moment.

  ‘Developments?’ Crow asked.

  Wilson shrugged, and twisted his broad face into an unhelpful grimace.

  ‘I’ve been through the Charlton file but there’s not much there. As far as I can see, Charles Lendon employed this enquiry agent, Charlton, for a client who lives in London. Hampstead. A chap called Kent — a dentist, I understand. There’s nothing in the file to say precisely what he was looking for, though I gather it has something to do with Kent’s wife.’

  ‘Divorce proceedings?’

  ‘Looks like. But there’s not a single thing in the file about Charlton’s final report to Lendon. On the other hand, there is a letter from Lendon to Kent to the effect that he has been unable to discover anything to suggest that Mrs Kent had been conducting an affair with anyone in Canthorpe.’

  ‘Hmm. I think it would be wise to have a word with Mr Kent as soon as possible. Probably a dead end, but I’d really like to know who, if anyone, Mr Kent was suspicious of.’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t be Lendon, sir, would it? Kent wouldn’t employ him to conduct an enquiry if he was the one who was cuckolding him.’

  ‘We’ll follow it up, anyway, Wilson. See what we find. Two other matters also. Lendon’s papers from his house: they’ve been taken to the station tonight so we’ll have to go through them tomorrow. I think you’d better supervise that and let Turner go chasing Mr Kent. The other matter concerns Miss Tennant.’

  Briefly he told Wilson what had happened on his way back from the Lendon house. There were certain inspectors, he knew, who preferred to keep some lines of investigation to themselves, in the mistaken assumption that to tell another of their suspicions inevitably meant a destruction of secrecy and a confession of weakness. Crow believed in keeping Wilson entirely in the picture.

  ‘What I want to know, Wilson, is just who she was with this evening. To start with, I imagine she has a boy-friend?’

  ‘Well, I understood from one of the assistant solicitors — Parnell, I think — that she’s been going out with a young man for the last two months or so.’

  Crow pursed his fleshy lips.

  ‘I don’t know what conclusions you’ve reached about Miss Tennant, but I’m sure she knows more than she tells us. I’m convinced that she has information which it worries her to keep back from us. Now tonight, she was equally anxious that I should believe her nonsensical story about going out for a walk, getting worried in the dark, and running out to the main road. I want to know whom she is protecting, and what information she has. So as a first step we must get her background, and find out about her social life.’

  He took a long draught of beer and caught the barman’s eye to order another for Wilson and one for himself.

  ‘As for me,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll have a session tomorrow with our respected chief superintendent.’

  * * *

  Wilson was already at breakfast when Crow came down next morning. It was a fine, crisp day with a watery winter sun hanging low in the morning sky and they decided to walk to the station together. Crow rather liked Canthorpe; true, its centre was a mess of snarling traffic, particularly at this time of the morning, but most towns were like that these days and there were some small, rather interesting-looking alleys running off from the main street, while the poultry cross in the High Street was rather fine, even if it was dwarfed by a garish department store towering high. Crow shuddered as he passed it and Wilson smiled a grim smile: he was used to his inspector’s aesthetic quivers.

  When they arrived at Canthorpe Police Headquarters Wilson went at once to join the two officers dealing with the material culled from Lendon’s house, while Crow had a quick word with Turner, who told him:

  ‘All the thirty files from the office have now been brought here, sir: I’ve
gone through most of them, and written up a précis of contents.’

  ‘Fine. Look, I was going to ask you to see a Mr Kent at Hampstead, but on second thoughts I think we’ll ask the local police up there to do the job for us. I want to know why Kent instructed Lendon to look into his wife’s movements, what he suspected about his wife and whether he was satisfied about the results. Will you ask one of the CID men to get that sorted out? Then, you get those files finished and as soon as the summary is completed I want to see it. Anything interesting, and I mean particularly interesting, I’ll want my attention drawn to. Right?’

  Turner nodded and moved away. Crow liked him; a little green, but eager. He’d do. With a sigh Crow moved across to the desk sergeant.

  ‘Chief Superintendent Simpson in yet?’

  The desk sergeant looked surprised. From the look he received Crow gathered that the chief superintendent was always in early.

  ‘About twenty minutes ago, sir. But he did have someone with him. Mr Carson.’

  ‘Oh? He still there?’

  ‘I’ll check, sir, but he might have gone.’

  The sergeant rang through to Simpson’s office, spoke briefly and then looked up to Crow.

  ‘Yes, sir, Mr Carson has gone. The super is available if you wish to see him.’

  Crow tapped lightly at the door and when he received the grunted reply entered the room.

  The craggy head of the chief superintendent was bent over a file on the desk, but he didn’t keep Crow waiting. It was a good sign. Simpson was obviously not in one of his surlier moods, even though his mottled face seemed to suggest that his interview with Carson had hardly been amicable.