Shallow Grave (Bill Slider Mystery)

by Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia

  ‘It’s persuasive,’ Atherton said. ‘All right, retouching the makeup: what was all that about?’

  ‘A ghastly joke, that’s all I can think of.’

  ‘I suppose whoever did that would have had to be either thick and earnest, or clever enough to have a diabolical sense of humour and a contempt for his fellow man. This seems to be going quite well, you know. But to go back a step: after the drugging and smothering, there he is with a body in the drawing-room. What’s he going to do with it? Wouldn’t he have to hide it temporarily in case Frances comes in?’

  ‘I had a thought about that,’ Slider said, even more unhappily.

  ‘Tell.’

  ‘When Rohypnol first starts to take effect, the victim becomes mentally helpless, but she still has some ability to move, though slowly and in an uncoordinated way. She can still walk, with assistance – like a drunk.’

  ‘I don’t like what you’re thinking,’ Atherton said.

  ‘I don’t like it more than you don’t. But suppose Dacre makes her get up and walk to wherever he means to hide her, and smothers her there?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘What about the dining-room – his study, whatever you want to call it? I doubt whether Mrs Hammond would go in there at that time of night – if at all, without reason. We know the body was left in a sitting position. Suppose he walked her to the next room, sat her on a chair, and smothered her there. That would avoid exciting the dog, which he left in the drawing-room. And then he tied the body to the chair as it was to stop it falling to the floor.’

  ‘Why would he want to do that?’

  ‘Because it would make her easier for him to pick her up later. He might not have the strength to get her up off the floor, but from a sitting position he could get her over his shoulder – or hoist her into his wheelchair and push her to the terrace.’

  Atherton now looked unpleasantly disturbed. ‘You’re making this sound too reasonable. I don’t like it. It’s nasty.’ He thought. ‘Why did he put her in the trench, anyway?’

  ‘Again, diabolical sense of humour plus contempt of fellow man. Or perhaps he felt Eddie ought to have controlled Jennifer better, and wanted to punish him too. I don’t know. It’s only a theory.’ The last words had something of plea in them, as if he wanted Atherton to produce some serious flaw for him.

  But Atherton only said, ‘Yes, and what do you propose to do about it?’

  Slider spread his hands helplessly. ‘I can’t think of anything to do, apart from putting it to Cyril Dacre and seeing how he reacts.’

  ‘Phew! Sooner you than me.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  Atherton’s eyes widened. ‘What – now? Me and you – go in there? But I’m a young man! I haven’t lived!’

  ‘If he were a younger man, or a well man, we might ask him to come into the factory, and work on him, soften him up over a period of time. But we can’t do that. And I don’t see that we can do nothing, now that we know she went there late that night. That’s the last known sighting of her – and neither of them mentioned it.’

  Atherton shrugged. ‘Well, that’s legit at least. Okay, guv, let’s get it over with, then.’

  Dacre was in his study, at his desk, which faced the side window, looking onto the gravelled area. Slider and Atherton stopped in front of the window. He seemed to be staring at them, but gave no reaction: so unmoving was his face that for a shaky moment Slider thought perhaps he had died with his eyes open and hadn’t been discovered yet. But then Dacre’s focus changed, and Slider realised he hadn’t been staring at them, but at nothing. Now he registered their presence and made a resigned yes-all-right-come-in gesture to Slider’s mimed request.

  The back door and the lobby door were both open, and when they stepped through into the hall, Dacre was there, in his wheelchair, with the dog behind him in the dining-room doorway. She watched them warily, but didn’t bark. One point to the theory.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ Dacre said coldly.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you, sir, if I may,’ Slider said. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Atherton, by the way. May we come in?’

  Dacre looked from him to Atherton, and something happened to his face. It was an almost frightening greying. He knows we know, Atherton thought, and for the first time he really believed his guv’nor was right about this. The old man turned his chair away without a word, wheeled himself briskly before them into the drawing-room with the dog padding after.

  ‘Shut the door behind you,’ Dacre snapped, turning to face them.

  ‘Is Mrs Hammond in the house?’ Slider asked.

  ‘She’s in the kitchen. She won’t come unless I call her.’

  How did he know this was private? Atherton thought. But a man so intelligent would know when the game was up, and wouldn’t drag it out. He’d turn over his king – wouldn’t he?

  ‘Well? You’ve questions to ask, I suppose?’

  Slider looked for the end of the string. ‘What time did you go to bed on Tuesday night, sir?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ he said at once.

  ‘What time do you normally go to bed?’

  ‘I don’t have a regular bedtime. I am not an infant. I go when I feel like it. You had better tell me why you want to know. It may jog my memory.’

  There was nothing for it. Slider said, ‘A witness has come forward to say that he saw Jennifer Andrews come to this house on Tuesday night, very late, at a quarter to midnight. He saw her cross the gravel and go round to the back door.’

  Slider, who had removed his eyes from the old man’s face as he asked the question, saw the phthisical hands tighten on the chair-arms. But Dacre sounded confident as he said, ‘Witnesses are frequently mistaken.’

  ‘It was someone who knew her – all of you – very well. I don’t think he was mistaken. But I wondered, you see, why neither you nor Mrs Hammond had mentioned the visit. Of course, if she came to see Mrs Hammond, and you had already gone up to bed, you wouldn’t have seen her pass the window.’

  ‘If she had visited my daughter, she would have said so. Frances is incapable of lying. She hasn’t the wit,’ he said, his voice cold and dark as the Mindanao Trench. ‘Your witness was mistaken, that’s all.’

  Move the question sideways. ‘You have tranquillisers for the pain at night, I understand?’ Slider said.

  ‘What the devil business is it of yours?’

  ‘A tranquilliser called Rohypnol, which has rather unusual properties,’ Slider went on steadily, and now he looked up from the hands to the face. He saw Dacre draw a sharp, small breath, and in the silence that followed, the dark, intelligent eyes, caged with pain, were occupied with a chain of thought, rapid and unstoppable, like a nuclear reaction.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last, very far away. ‘I do.’

  ‘Mrs Andrews didn’t struggle when she was smothered to death, so it seems likely she was somehow rendered helpless beforehand. The interesting thing about Rohypnol is—’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, raising his hand like a policeman stopping traffic, ‘I know all about Rohypnol. I have read the sensational stories in the press. And do you think I would accept any drug without knowing its exact properties? But you have not found the drug in Mrs Andrews’ body.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because you would have said so if you had. That would be a piece of solid evidence, rather than mere wild conjecture.’ He was getting his voice back now; he sounded confident again.

  ‘We are testing for it,’ Slider said. ‘We haven’t had the results yet. But as you say, if the tests are positive—’

  ‘I understand that you are trying to suggest in your clumsy way that I killed Jennifer Andrews,’ Dacre said impatiently, ‘but I can’t think of any reason why I should.’

  ‘You told me yourself that you loathed her.’

  ‘I loathe many people. I loathe most people, if it comes to that, but I do not kill them.’

  ‘You haven’t the
means or opportunity to kill most of them; and they don’t thrust themselves on you, invading your very house, as Mrs Andrews did. She was an extreme irritant, I do see that,’ Slider added sympathetically. ‘I can understand how you might want to be rid of her.’

  ‘In that case, you may as well suspect everyone she ever met. You might perhaps,’ he went on, with withering irony, ‘consider promoting to the head of your list someone not confined to a wheelchair.’

  ‘Oh, but you aren’t,’ Slider said gently. ‘Miss Rogan says that you are quite capable of standing and walking, and that you are surprisingly strong in the arms – a legacy from your mountaineering days, no doubt.’

  His face darkened. ‘How dare you discuss my condition with Miss Rogan? That is a private matter, and none of your business.’

  ‘She suspects you may pretend to be weaker than you really are,’ Slider went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘And it occurs to me that a mountaineer knows a great deal about how to move a body about in difficult conditions.’

  Now Dacre laughed. ‘This is most entertaining! Do go on with your work of fiction. I don’t know when I’ve been more diverted.’ But to Atherton, the laughter was forced, and there was a blank look about Mr Dacre, like that of someone who has had a bad shock and hasn’t yet quite registered it. And if he really was innocent, why wasn’t he angry? Atherton would have expected blistering rage. Why, indeed, was he even listening to all this, unless it was to find out how much they really knew?

  Slider went on. ‘What really started me wondering was the question of the dog.’

  ‘Sheba?’ Dacre said in surprise, and the Alsatian lifted her head briefly to look at him, triangular yellow eyes under worried black eyebrows. Then she sighed and lowered her nose again to her paws.

  ‘You see, if Mrs Andrews had been killed elsewhere, as we first thought, and a stranger had carried her body to the terrace and laid it in the trench, the dog would surely have heard and started barking. You said yourself she’s a guard dog, and I know from my own experience that when I tried your garage doors, it set her off – and that was in daylight. But if Sheba had barked, Mrs Hammond would have heard her. She’s a light sleeper, and sleeps in the room above the kitchen where Sheba is shut at night. And Mrs Hammond says she didn’t bark. One thing we know for certain is that the body was put into the trench on the terrace during the night. That leaves us with the question: who could have persuaded the dog to remain silent while all that was going on?’

  There was no answer. For a moment there was silence; the bright day outside and the dusty air within equally still. Atherton glanced towards his guv’nor, and saw, with a strange chill, that Slider had thought of something, was pursing a train of thought which must have been triggered by something he had just said or noticed. He was preoccupied; he was no longer looking at Dacre. The urgency of his thoughts was almost palpable to Atherton, and he tried anxiously to work out what it was Bill had thought of, because he had a sense of being left behind in a cold place where he very much didn’t want to be.

  Then he looked at Dacre. The dying man was etched against the bright window, thin as a Byzantine martyr and with eyes as deep and dark and burning; failing hair making a fuzzy aureole around that thinker’s skull. And then Dacre started shaking, his bunched hands, his knees under the tartan rug, his shoulders, his head. Slowly as a cinematic western shoot-out, he moved one hand to his lap, caught at the rug, pulled it away and threw it down, shoved away the foot-rests, put down his feet and stood up. It was terrible and unnatural, like seeing a tree uproot itself and walk. The dog looked up, startled, and then rose, backing away a step, tail and ears down, unsure what reaction was required. Dacre let go the chair-arms and reached equilibrium. Erect and burning, impressive and frightening as a forest fire, he said with quiet triumph, ‘You’re right, Inspector. I applaud your diligence and persistence. I killed Jennifer Andrews – or rather, I exterminated her! Don’t look upon it as murder, if you please, but as a public service. I killed her, and I am ready to take my punishment.’

  Slider rose as well, facing him, and the dog began to growl menacingly; and when Atherton, between them, stood up, she jumped at him, barking. Dacre turned his head and fixed her with a look. ‘Quiet, Sheba! Lie down!’ The dog subsided slowly; but in the moment Dacre was thus occupied, Atherton looked at Slider, and saw that his earlier expression had changed from the taut, preoccupied look of the man on the scent to a look of sadness and defeat.

  ‘Please sit down, Mr Dacre,’ Slider said quietly.

  Dacre stared a moment, and then lowered himself back into his chair. He did not attempt to replace the rug; his legs inside his trousers were like broomsticks inside a Guy Fawkes effigy. ‘Well,’ he said, and Atherton could see it cost him an effort to speak, ‘what happens now? Am I to be arrested and carted off to the police station?’ He met Slider’s eyes, and some message passed between them, something almost of pleading from the old man, out of a black depth beyond anything Atherton could imagine. Bottom of the trench, sea-bottom, colder and darker than death.

  But Slider had no opportunity to answer, for the door opened and Mrs Hammond was there. She registered the scene and a look of alarm came over her vague, indeterminate face. ‘What is it? What’s happening? I didn’t hear anyone come in.’ She came forward, her hands moving nervously. ‘Father, what is it? Are you all right?’

  ‘Everything is quite all right, Frances,’ Dacre said. ‘Don’t fuss.’

  She went on scanning the room, trying to understand. ‘Why is the rug on the floor?’

  ‘I put it there. Be quiet. There is nothing for you to do here,’ Dacre said. ‘I was merely demonstrating a point to Inspector Slider. And now, having satisfied him on that point, I am going to make a statement, which he will take down to my dictation.’ He looked at Slider, trying for hauteur and almost succeeding. ‘I imagine that will obviate the need to take me to the cells? As you are aware, I am in no condition to flee the country – or, indeed, this house – and I should prefer not to be locked up for the short time that still remains to me.’

  ‘A statement is all that’s required at this stage,’ Slider agreed neutrally, dividing his attention between Dacre and his daughter. ‘You can make that here as well as anywhere.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Mrs Hammond was looking bewildered. ‘Statement? Father, what’s going on? Statement about what?’

  Dacre held her eyes. ‘A statement about how I killed Jennifer Andrews.’

  She whitened. ‘No!’

  ‘I told you, Frances, there’s nothing to make a fuss about.’

  ‘No, you mustn’t!’

  ‘I understand it must be a shock to you, but you know I always disliked the woman. I am perfectly happy to confess to my crime and take what’s coming to me. And at my age and in my condition, I have nothing to fear. What can they possibly do to me?’

  ‘No, Father, no!’ Her face was collapsing in distress, with the slow inevitability of a demolished factory chimney; almost tumbling in anguish. Her hands were twisting about as though they were trying to burrow into her stomach for shelter; her eyes held her father’s pleadingly. ‘Oh, no, please!’

  ‘Be quiet, child,’ he said, so gently it made Atherton shiver. ‘Leave the room now. I wish to be alone with the officers. No! Not a word. Go!’

  The command in the voice was so firm it even had the dog on her feet again. Mrs Hammond dragged out a handkerchief and applied it to her face, covered her trembling lips. She was making hoarse noises, a cross between sobs and gasps, and her eyes were everywhere, but she turned away, to obey as she had obeyed all her life.

  And Slider said, ‘Just a moment.’

  His voice was quiet, but Mrs Hammond jerked as if she had been hit across the spine with a heavy stick. She stopped, turning only her face back towards him, so that her eyes showed white like those of a frightened horse.

  ‘Go, Frances,’ said Mr Dacre, but the command had gone out of his voice. It sounded much the same, but it was
powerless; an empty firework case. ‘Inspector, I forbid you to speak to my daughter. I forbid you to trouble her with this. I’ve told you, I’m ready to make a statement.’

  But Slider only looked at the woman. ‘Mrs Hammond,’ he said, ‘I can quite see how, when you realised the enormity of what you’d done, you wanted to cover your tracks, but how could you let us arrest poor Eddie Andrews? How could you let him take the blame for your crime? That was cruel.’

  Atherton looked at Slider. Her? he thought.

  She turned. ‘Cruel?’ Her face was working horribly, like something trying to escape from under a blanket, and her voice rose as she repeated, ‘Cruel? What do you know about cruelty?’

  She flung herself at Slider. Atherton moved fast – the reaction of instinct, which later he would remember and be glad about – to try to interpose himself between them. The dog barked like machine-gun fire and jumped at him, teeth not quite making contact, but keeping him back. But as he tried to fend it off, and Mr Dacre shouted at it and him and Slider almost indiscriminately, Atherton saw that Slider was holding Mrs Hammond, not wrestling with her, that she was not trying to kill him, but weeping on his shoulder, in his arms; a big woman, almost as tall as Slider, too big and ungainly easily for him to comfort.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ethics Man

  When sufficient back-up had arrived, Slider pulled Atherton out of the room, which saved Atherton from having to pull Slider out.

  ‘Are you crazy, or am I?’ Atherton asked urgently. ‘I’d just like to know.’

  Slider hardly noticed. ‘Come with me. I need you to witness this.’