Shallow Grave (Bill Slider Mystery)

by Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia

  Swilley wondered at their immaculate appearance so early in the day. Did they always dress like this, or had they made a special effort in anticipation of a police visit? The house was immaculate too: perhaps they were the sort that would still change for dinner on a desert island. She bet they had twin beds with satin quilts and his ’n’ hers library books on the bedside cabinets. Well, good luck to them.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to disturb you—’ Norma began routinely, but they jumped in eagerly.

  ‘Oh, no, not at all. Our pleasure,’ said Mr Bright, with a social smile.

  ‘Naturally we were expecting to be called upon,’ said Mrs Bright, ‘and of course we are eager to do anything we can to help in these dreadful circumstances.’

  ‘It’s our duty,’ Mr Bright added.

  ‘We’ve never held back when it was a question of duty,’ said Mrs Bright, ‘however inconvenient.’

  ‘Well, I hope I shan’t have to inconvenience you for long,’ Norma said.

  ‘Oh, please, not at all, it’s no trouble,’ Mr Bright waffled happily. ‘Won’t you sit down, Miss – er?’

  Norma sat on a slippery chintz sofa. Mr Bright looked at her legs with a slightly stunned air and sat down opposite her. Mrs Bright arranged herself carefully in an armchair between them and looked to see what Mr Bright was looking at. A spot of colour appeared in her cheeks. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Miss – er?’ she asked, rather sharply. ‘Desmond, shall we have coffee?’

  He snapped out of it and began elaborately rising and enquiring about the nature of preferred beverage and Norma saw herself reaching retirement in this mock-Tudor embrace and said quickly, ‘No, thank you very much, no coffee. I’d just like to ask you a few questions and then I can take myself out of your hair.’

  He sat again, trying to keep his eyes from her legs and not succeeding very well. ‘Ask away, then,’ he said heartily. ‘It’s no trouble. We’re glad to help.’

  ‘Not that we have much we can tell you,’ Mrs Bright put in, in a bid for attention. ‘We didn’t know Mrs Andrews well.’

  ‘She seemed a nice sort of gel,’ Mr Bright rumbled gallantly, and Mrs Bright gave him a sharp look.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. I’m afraid my husband is rather susceptible to a pretty face. Mrs Andrews wasn’t really One of Us. She worked at the pub, you know, the Goat In Boots.’ She gave Norma a significant nod, as though this explained everything. ‘She was rather a forward young woman. One might almost say pushy. She’s quite taken over the church social committee, and the flower arrangements, and I have to say that some of her ideas of what’s fitting for a religious building are—’

  ‘My dear,’ Mr Bright interrupted anxiously, ‘she is dead.’

  ‘That doesn’t change the facts,’ Mrs Bright went on relentlessly. ‘She didn’t understand our ways, and she never seemed to realise where her interference wasn’t welcome.’

  ‘Oh, come, I wouldn’t say “interference”.’ Mr Bright seemed anxious for his wife not to expose herself. ‘Someone has to organise things and she had so much energy—’

  ‘Well, I have to say I didn’t like her,’ Mrs Bright said, giving him a nasty look, ‘energy or no energy. She attached herself to poor Frances Hammond, who hasn’t the sense of a day-old chick, poor creature, and forced her way into our circle, and then tried to impose her vulgar ideas on us. There’s a time and a place for everything, and our church fête is not the time and place for a bouncing castle, or whatever they like to call it.’

  Mr Bright appealed to Norma. ‘I always found her very polite. Quite a nicely spoken girl. She was always cheerful and pleasant to me.’

  ‘Yes, well she would be, wouldn’t she?’ Mrs Bright said sharply.

  Mr Bright went a little pink. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Mavis.’

  ‘Work it out for yourself,’ Mrs Bright snapped, with an appalling lapse from British Empire standards, and clamped her thin lips shut.

  Norma, fascinated by this glimpse under the carpet, reflected how odd it was that the more determinedly a couple kept up their shop front, the more eager they were to trot out old grievances before a ‘safe’ audience like a policeman, priest or doctor. She looked at Mr Bright. ‘Tell me what you know about Mr Andrews.’

  He got as far as ‘Well,’ when his wife interrupted.

  ‘We didn’t know him. I’ve heard he’s a good builder, but we have our own people that we’ve used for twenty years.’

  ‘Kept himself to himself,’ Mr Bright said approvingly.

  ‘He’s done one or two jobs next door. I can’t say whether he did them well or not,’ Mrs Bright went on, finding another grievance, ‘but I wouldn’t use anyone who wasn’t more careful about leaving things clean and tidy. Only a few months ago I had to speak to him quite sharply about parking his lorry outside our house. Quite apart from spoiling the view, it leaked oil all over the road. There’s still a stain there.’

  Swilley tried another pass over the subject. ‘So you have no idea how things stood between Mr Andrews and his wife?’

  ‘I don’t interest myself in other people’s private business,’ Mrs Bright said loftily. ‘It’s poor Cyril Dacre I’m sorry for. It’s a dreadful thing to have happen on one’s own premises.’

  ‘All those people tramping about,’ Mr Bright joined in, now the topic was safe again. ‘Journalists everywhere. And in his state of health—’

  ‘He’s very ill, you know. Cancer.’ She lowered her voice and almost mouthed the word, as if it were indelicate. ‘It’s dreadful that he should be upset at a time like this.’

  ‘You know him well?’

  ‘Oh, of course. Margery Dacre was one of my dearest friends,’ Mrs Bright said eagerly. ‘She’s been dead – oh, ten years now?’

  ‘Ten, it must be,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Of course, Cyril Dacre is a very distinguished man. We’re proud to have him as a neighbour. His mother was a Spennimore before she married – very old Hampshire family.’

  ‘Wonderful brainy chap,’ Mr Bright said admiringly, and added with faint puzzlement, ‘Odd sense of humour sometimes, but I suppose that comes with being so clever. He writes books, you know.’

  ‘The parties they used to give, before Margery died! She was fond of music. They had a grand piano in the hall, and they had wonderful musical soirées. Quite famous musicians came to play, friends of Cyril’s. He had friends in every circle – artists, actors, scholars—’

  ‘That athletic chap, the one who broke the Olympic record, what’s his name? Became an MP—’ Mr Bright shorted out, frowning with the effort of remembering.

  ‘Dinner parties, garden parties,’ she went on, ignoring him, ‘intellectual conversation.’

  ‘It was like The Brains Trust in there some evenings.’

  ‘Of course, one had to make allowances for Cyril. He could be quite devastatingly rude, but he is a genius after all. And there was that terrible tragedy – his son dying so young. I think that made him a little strange.’ She nodded to Swilley as if she ought to know. ‘After Margery died Frances took over as hostess; and I must say,’ she added, with a hint of surprise at discovering it for herself, ‘that one never noticed the difference. Of course, Margery never did say much.’

  ‘Nice woman, but quiet,’ Mr Bright agreed. ‘Left all the talking to Cyril.’

  ‘And Frances hasn’t two words to say for herself,’ Mrs Bright concluded. ‘But, of course, since Cyril’s become so ill all that’s stopped. They haven’t entertained in – oh, two years. He keeps himself completely to himself now. I suppose,’ she added with a sigh, ‘that when he goes it will be the end of an era. One can’t see Frances keeping up the old traditions. She hasn’t many friends. That’s why she fell a prey to Mrs Andrews.’

  ‘There’s that chap who visits,’ Mr Bright said. ‘What’s his name? Married to the horsy woman – what’s her name?’

  So far Norma had nothing down in her little book. ‘Mrs Bright, if I could just—’

  ‘
Vanhurst Bright,’ she corrected with sharp affront. ‘No hyphen.’

  ‘Mrs Vanhurst Bright,’ Norma said obediently, ‘if I could just come to the events of last night: did you notice what time Mr Andrews left work?’

  ‘Just after six,’ she said promptly. ‘We were watching the six o’clock news when the lorry started up. The engine makes a dreadful noise – and the tyres crunching over that gravel. We could hardly hear what was being said.’

  ‘I suppose it went past your window?’

  ‘No, he went the other way.’

  ‘And did you hear him arrive this morning?’

  ‘We certainly did!’ Mrs Bright said, with tight annoyance.

  ‘Well, people have to work,’ Mr Bright said, making all possible allowances.

  ‘But not at that time of the morning. It’s inconsiderate to be making noise at half past six in the morning—’

  ‘It was a quarter to seven, dear,’ said Mr Bright. ‘I looked at the clock,’ he added to Swilley.

  ‘It’s still much too early,’ his wife said, annoyed at being corrected. ‘Half past eight is quite early enough; a quarter to seven is beyond reason. I said to Desmond, “I suppose we’ll have the cement mixer starting up next, and have to close the windows.” People shouldn’t have noisy jobs done in the summer when people have their windows open.’

  ‘So you heard the truck arrive and pull onto the gravel? What else?’

  Mrs Bright considered. ‘Well, I thought I heard someone shout, and then some voices talking – I suppose that was Frances and Mr Andrews – and then nothing until the police arrived and all the fuss started.’

  ‘You didn’t look out of the window when you heard the shout?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t loud. More a sort of – exclamation.’

  ‘I didn’t hear it,’ Mr Bright said.

  ‘In any case, you can’t see the terrace from any of our windows because of the hedge.’

  ‘That’s why it’s there,’ he pointed out.

  ‘And what about during the night?’ Swilley asked. ‘Were you woken by any disturbance?’

  ‘No, not that I remember,’ Mrs Bright said. ‘Why? Did something happen?’

  Mr Bright, surprisingly, proved more on the ball than his wife. ‘Well, dear, poor Mrs Andrews must have been put into the hole during the night, or someone would have seen.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, evidently not following.

  ‘Under cover of darkness,’ he elaborated. ‘If Frances found her there before Mr Andrews arrived—’

  ‘Oh. I suppose so.’

  ‘But you didn’t hear anything during the night?’ Norma pressed.

  ‘No,’ she said, with a world of regret. ‘Did you, Desmond?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Do you sleep with the windows open?’

  ‘Always,’ he said.

  ‘That was why we heard the lorry arrive in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’m sure if he’d driven up in the night and stopped outside we’d have heard. It’s very quiet round here at night.’

  Swilley extracted herself with difficulty, and went to try the neighbour on the other side of the Old Rectory, but knocking and ringing elicited no reply, and the place had a shut-up, empty look. Out at work or away? she wondered. They would have to try again later. She saw Mackay emerge from three doors down and called out to him. ‘Hoi, Andy!’ He turned. ‘Have you done this one?’

  ‘No-one in,’ he called back. ‘I’ve done the next two. I’ll do the rest of this row if you like.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll start at the corner, then,’ she said, and trudged off. Breakfast seemed a distant dream. If the next house was decent, she decided, she’d accept a cup of coffee. With a bit of luck they might break out the biccies, too.

  Atherton came back with the keen-eyed look of a police dog entering a vagrants’ hostel. ‘Open and shut case,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Slider, leaning on the car roof and addressing him across it. It was going to be another hot day. The earth smelt warm and the sunshine on the pale stones of the churchyard wall made them hard to look at.

  Atherton leaned too. ‘Andrews says he went home from work last night, watched telly and went to bed. His wife was out at work so he was all alone. His wife didn’t come home all night, but he didn’t do anything about it, just got up and went to work this morning as usual – having forgotten to wash and shave – and blow me, there she was, down the hole! Well, you can’t help being convinced by a story like that, can you?’

  Slider assumed a judicious frown. ‘I don’t know. Cyril Dacre, the owner of the house and thus the hole, was extremely anxious to lay the crime in Andrews’ lap, despite accidentally giving away the fact that he – Dacre – loathed the deceased with a deep and deadly loathing, and rejoices that she’s dead.’

  Atherton slapped a hand to his cheek, wide-eyed. ‘Of course, I see it all now! It must have been Dacre. He pursued her up and down the terrace in his wheelchair until she fell into the hole and died of exhaustion. And, come to think of it, Andrews did say that the work on the terrace was Dacre’s idea. He says he told Mrs H there was no need to do anything, but she – i.e. her father, since his was the final authority – insisted.’

  Slider shook his head. ‘Pity he said that, because Mrs Hammond says it was Andrews who told her that the work needed to be done, or the whole terrace would collapse.’

  ‘So he was trying to distance himself from authorship of the hole?’

  ‘It was a silly lie to tell – too easy to expose,’ Slider said.

  ‘Perhaps he hasn’t had much practice. This could be the first time he’s murdered his wife.’

  ‘We don’t know she was murdered,’ Slider said, for the third time that day. ‘She might have dropped dead of a heart-attack, during a quarrel, for instance, and Andrews – or whoever – panicked and tried to get rid of the body.’

  ‘“Might” is right,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Well, we’d better try to expose a few more of Andrews’ lies, hadn’t we?’ Slider said. ‘If it was a domestic murder, the most likely place for him to do it was at home: private, convenient, and a thorough knowledge of the tools to hand to boot. The forensic team’s going over there when they’ve finished here, but we might as well have a look first.’

  Woodbridge Road was the long road that led from the other side of St Michael Square to the main road. Fourways was at the far end, on the corner with the main thoroughfare. There was a red sports car parked on the hard standing, with the registration number JEN 111.

  ‘Hers, I bet you,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Give that man a coconut. Well, if she was working at the Goat In Boots last night, she must have come back here afterwards.’

  ‘Or she might have walked to work.’

  ‘So she might.’

  ‘Or he could have driven it back himself from wherever he killed her.’

  ‘So he could. Not much help, is it? Shall we go in?’

  Fourways was a large, modern, well-appointed house, smelling strongly of new plaster, and full of large, modern, well-appointed furnishings of the sort that were obviously expensive without being in any way luxurious or even particularly pleasing. It was the sort of house to which you might invite people you didn’t know very well so that they could marvel at how well you were doing for yourself.

  It had Atherton gaping. ‘Gloriosky, what a gin palace!’

  ‘Every mod con,’ Slider agreed. ‘Sunken whirlpool bath, electrically operated curtains—’

  ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame,’ Atherton said.

  There was no sign of any struggle anywhere – no sign of life at all. Everything was clean and tidy, the beds made, the bathrooms spotless. There was no dirty crockery in the kitchen: if Andrews had eaten supper on Tuesday night and breakfast on Wednesday morning, he had not only washed up after himself but dried up and put away too.

  ‘As if!’ Atherton snorted. ‘No man on this planet puts away after he’s wa
shed up. It’s against nature.’

  The kitchen waste-bin contained a fresh bin-liner and nothing else; the toothbrushes in the en suite bathroom were both dry, as was the wash-basin, the bath and the floor of the shower. The towels were clean and folded and looked as if they had just been put out.

  ‘It doesn’t look as if he’s been home at all,’ Atherton said.

  ‘He said he was watching television all evening, but the TV listings are folded open at Monday,’ Slider observed. ‘Not that that proves anything. He could have known what was on, or just put it on at random when he got home.’

  ‘There was football on last night,’ Atherton blinked, feigning astonishment. ‘Blimey, even I know that! An international – England versus Italy. If he’d been in, he’d’ve been bound to look and see what time it started.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t like football.’

  ‘And the Pope’s a Jew.’

  ‘Just trying not to jump to conclusions, that’s all. One of us doing it is quite enough. Well, I think we’ve seen all we’ll see here. How was Andrews when you left him?’ Slider asked, as they headed for the front door.

  ‘He’s gone sulky,’ Atherton said. ‘Decided his best policy is to say nothing – but he’s not agitating to go home.’

  ‘Oh?’ Slider asked significantly.

  ‘I dunno,’ Atherton answered elliptically. ‘I don’t think I’d read anything into it necessarily. He seems to be in a state of lethargy.’

  They opened the front door, and found a woman outside arguing with the guardian policeman. She was a small, fair woman in her fifties, with a neat face and figure, wearing a raincoat which hung open over a pink nylon overall, and she was carrying a raffia shopping-bag. She turned to them, her expression a mixture of belligerence and fear, and her sharp eyes effortlessly singled out Slider as the present peak of authority.