Dead by Morning

by Dorothy Simpson

  Byfleet’s voice broke and he dropped his head in his hands. Now it was Mona’s turn to give comfort and she stroked his back, gently, as if soothing a frightened animal.

  How was he going to make this arrest with equanimity? Thanet wondered.

  Byfleet straightened up again. ‘In all my life this is the first place I’ve really felt I could call home. We’ve been so happy here. Haven’t we, love?’

  Mona nodded, biting her lip.

  ‘The thought that it was all going to end, that he had ruined it all … And my wife was in such a state … I’m not trying to excuse myself, but it’s true, it really was an accident.’

  ‘What actually happened?’

  Byfleet was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what came over me … I suppose I just felt I had to do something, anything … So when Mona said that, about him threatening to tell the whole world … I just rushed out. I wanted to have it out with him at once, then and there. When I got down in the yard he was out of sight and the van was just standing there so I jumped in. I always carry the keys in my pocket. Then the damn thing wouldn’t start. It was so cold, that night … Anyway, it fired in the end and I went after him. When I was nearing the end of the drive I could see him ahead and I slammed on the brakes. I suppose I left it too late and had to brake too hard … Anyway, the van skidded and went out of control. He’d glanced around when he first heard me coming, and moved right in to walk at the side of the road, but there was nothing I could do to prevent myself hitting him.’ Byfleet closed his eyes as if to block out the memory.

  Mona Byfleet pressed her husband’s arm.

  Thanet waited.

  ‘It was like a bad dream. It all happened so fast … It was over in a flash, in a matter of seconds …’ Byfleet put up his hands and massaged his temples as if to erase the shock and bewilderment he still felt. ‘I got out of the car. He was lying at the side of the road. I tried to find a pulse and couldn’t … I realised he was dead, that I’d killed him …’ Byfleet shook his head in despair. ‘I’m afraid I just panicked. I knew that at any second someone could come along and … We were near the gates and I thought, the roads are so icy, if I put him in the ditch just outside the gates, it would look as though anyone could have done it … So … So that’s what I did.’

  ‘You see, Inspector. It was an accident.’ Mona Byfleet was still holding on to her husband’s arm, as if clinging to the wreckage of their life. ‘The roads were icy and Desmond wasn’t drunk …’

  ‘It’s all true, Inspector. It happened exactly as I’ve told you, I swear it.’

  ‘Maybe so, but I’m afraid it’s not quite as simple as that,’ said Thanet, bracing himself to deliver the blow.

  ‘What … What do you mean?’ said Mona.

  They stared at him with identical expressions on their faces. The likeness between them had never been more apparent.

  ‘If it happened just as your husband told us …’

  ‘It did!’ broke in Byfleet.

  ‘I believe you,’ said Thanet. ‘And if you had immediately gone for help …’

  ‘But he was dead!’ Byfleet was leaning forward now in his eagerness to convince Thanet of the innocence of his intentions. Then he sat back. ‘Oh hell, why not admit it, you’re right, I know you are. Even though there was nothing to be done for him …’

  ‘Unfortunately, that’s where you’re wrong.’

  Again that identical expression, an unspoken question in both their eyes. Perhaps they dared not ask it. Suddenly the tension was back in the room, the air was thick with their fear.

  Thanet steeled himself. There was no way to soften the impact of what he was about to say and in any case it was true that it was Byfleet’s action that had cost Martindale his life. ‘I’m afraid Mr Martindale wasn’t killed by the collision with the van,’ he said. ‘When you put him in the ditch he was still alive, but then it snowed, of course …’

  He hesitated. Should he tell them that Martindale’s spine had been injured, that he had recovered consciousness and been unable to get out of the ditch? No, at this point he couldn’t bring himself to do it. They would learn, soon enough.

  ‘So after lying outside all night in those conditions it’s not surprising that he was dead by morning,’ he concluded.

  Mona fainted.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Noon next day, Saturday.

  Thanet laid down his pen, sat back, stretched, then reached for the telephone.

  ‘Joan? It’s me.’

  ‘Hullo. How’s it going?’

  ‘Just finished. I was thinking … Fancy an afternoon out?’

  ‘Lovely! Where?’

  ‘What about Rye?’

  ‘Bit chilly, d’you think?’

  ‘Nice and quiet, though. No tourists.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘If there’s anywhere you’d prefer …?’

  ‘No. I like Rye, as you know.’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I thought …’

  ‘Good. That’s settled, then.’

  ‘What about the children?’

  ‘Ben’s going ice-skating in Gillingham, remember?’

  ‘Ah yes, of course. And Bridget? Think she’d like to come?’ Much as he loved his daughter, Thanet hoped she wouldn’t. There was so rarely time these days for him and Joan to talk, just to enjoy being alone together.

  ‘She’s going shopping with Mandy this afternoon.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘What time will you be home, then?’

  ‘Soon as I can. Twenty minutes?’

  Outside on the steps Thanet stopped to inhale appreciatively. It was a perfect winter day: crisp cold air, blue sky decorated with puffs of cotton-wool cloud, and a sun which was doing its best to make you forget that it was February.

  By 1.30 they were on their way, with a delicious feeling of escape. Across the Weald the landscapes immortalised by Rowland Hilder basked in the unaccustomed warmth, the bare trees casting long shadows across furrowed fields and empty roads.

  For a while they drove in a contented silence, relishing the sense of freedom, and then Joan stirred.

  ‘Feel like telling me how you worked it out?’

  Thanet would have preferred to forget about work this afternoon but it was part of the pattern of their lives to have a ‘post-mortem’ at the end of every case and Joan, he knew, would be disappointed if he demurred. ‘If you like.’

  He paused, ordering his thoughts. ‘Actually, believe it or not, it was the Super who finally put me on the right track.’

  ‘Really? How?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean he did it consciously. No, it was just that while I was talking to him, yesterday afternoon, we saw two visitors coming in – his window overlooks the forecourt, as you know. And as you also know, he likes to know every last thing about what is going on in the division. So I wasn’t in the least surprised when he said, “Who’s that?” and because I didn’t know one of the men I assumed he was referring to him. Then I discovered he was referring to the other chap.’

  ‘I don’t get it. How did that help?’

  ‘Well, when Leo Martindale arrived at Longford Hall on Monday evening he saw Mona Byfleet, the housekeeper, talking to Toby Fever in the entrance hall, and he asked the receptionist the same question: “Who’s that?” Mona was wearing her housekeeper’s dress and the receptionist therefore took it for granted that Martindale would realise who she was and that he must be referring to Toby. So she told him it was Miss Hamilton’s boyfriend. Then she said, “He was just going to say something else when Mrs Hamilton arrived.”’

  ‘And you think the “something else” would have been, “No, I don’t mean him, I mean the woman with him.”’

  ‘Exactly. In other words, it was Mona Byfleet who interested him, not Toby, and when I realised that I naturally asked myself why? If she’d been an attractive woman, the sort that Martindale was always on the lookout for, it would have been a different matter, but she’s fairly plain and heavily pregnant. So it see
med to me that the most likely answer was that she interested him because he had recognised her and wondered what she was doing there. Until then, you see, I had assumed that the Byfleets couldn’t possibly have had any motive for wanting him dead because they didn’t appear to have any connection with him, past or present.’

  ‘So then you asked yourself what that connection could possibly be?’

  ‘Yes. We knew that Martindale had been abroad for several years but before that, when he was in this country, he tended to move from hotel to hotel, living on any pickings he could glean from women he met, mostly wealthy widows or middle-aged spinsters. They’re always the most vulnerable, the most susceptible. Well, Mona didn’t really fit that pattern but it did occur to me that her mother might. I knew that Mona had been to school in Brighton and that her maiden name was Taylor – I saw it in the fly-leaf of one of her old books – and then I remembered that one of Martindale’s former women friends had been called Taylor and ran a hotel in Worthing, which is near Brighton.’

  ‘So you thought, Aha, I wonder if she was Mona’s mother and that was where Mona and Martindale met?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But even so, what possible relevance did you think it could have?’

  ‘I didn’t know. But if the connection had been entirely innocent I didn’t see why Mona shouldn’t have owned up to it.’

  ‘Not necessarily, surely. If I became innocently entangled in a murder investigation I’m not sure that I’d be particularly anxious to volunteer information that could connect me with the victim, would you?’

  That was a tricky one. ‘I don’t know. It would depend on the circumstances, I suppose. But in this case I just felt that this particular connection could be important.’

  ‘Your intuition again.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘I once read that a policeman should never underestimate the value of intuition.’

  ‘I think I’d agree with that. Though I know a lot who wouldn’t, who are distinctly suspicious of it.’

  ‘Why is that, d’you think?’

  ‘Probably because nobody quite understands how it works.’

  ‘I suspect,’ said Joan slowly, thinking aloud, ‘that although it sounds very vague it’s really a perfectly logical process. Without our even being conscious that it’s happening, the brain takes note of facts, impressions, expressions, reactions and then assesses them all and comes up with a conclusion.’

  ‘I think that just about sums it up. An article I was reading the other day claimed that the brain is infinitely more powerful than the computer and that we only ever use a minute fraction of its potential.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s true. So anyway, your intuition told you you were on to something …’

  ‘Yes. I’d put DC Swift on to checking back on Martindale’s women friends and Mrs Taylor was one of the ones he’d managed to track down, so we rang her up, made an appointment, and went to see her.’

  They had reached Appledore and Thanet stopped talking while they drove through the picturesque village, pausing to admire a pretty Georgian house built of rose-red brick with a For Sale notice outside.

  ‘My ideal house!’ sighed Joan.

  ‘Mm.’ It was Thanet’s too, but a policeman’s pay was unlikely ever to stretch to their buying anything like it.

  As they turned into the Military Road to Iden Lock and drove along parallel to the Royal Military Canal, Thanet told Joan the sad tale of Brenda Taylor’s two marriages and the disastrous meeting of the son she had been forced to abandon and the daughter ignorant of her mother’s past.

  ‘Bit of a coincidence, wasn’t it? That they should meet at all?’

  Thanet shrugged. ‘Coincidences do happen. And I’ve often thought that the danger of this sort of thing, the innocent coupling of close relations, is going to become more and more frequent as time goes on. With divorce and remarriage becoming more common, artificial insemination by donor and surrogate motherhood … It would be a miracle if half-brothers and -sisters didn’t occasionally meet.’

  ‘And become attracted to each other for that matter. With all those genes in common …’

  ‘Yes. I noticed the resemblance between the Byfleets the first time I met them, you know, but I didn’t realise its significance. Just thought how interesting it was that some husbands and wives do grow to resemble each other.’

  Joan grinned. ‘D’you think we have?’

  He smiled back. ‘Don’t know. I suppose we’d be the last to see it even if we had.’

  ‘So, all right, you’d discovered that the Byfleets had a possible motive for the murder. You assumed that Leo Martindale had recognised Mona Byfleet, and had told her the truth about Desmond being her half-brother. Presumably you also thought he must have threatened to blackmail them in some way with this knowledge?’

  ‘I didn’t know. I just felt that it was a potentially explosive situation.’

  ‘But how did you guess which of them had run him down? Or did you think they’d acted together?’

  Thanet shrugged. ‘Again, I didn’t know. At that stage neither of them was even admitting to having driven the van that night and at one point in the interview, I really thought I wasn’t going to get anywhere. All along, you see, Mike and I had been saying that even if we did find out who’d actually killed Martindale, there’d be no means of proving it. All the other suspects had admitted driving the van but even so there was no specific evidence, or so it seemed, to link any of them with the crime.’

  ‘“Or so it seemed …”. There was something, then?’

  ‘Yes. And I knew it. But I simply couldn’t put my finger on it. It was just nagging away at the back of my mind … Infuriating.’

  ‘So put me out of my suspense. What was it?’

  Thanet told her about Delia’s pocket calculator, picked up in the van by Desmond and mistaken by Thanet for a diary when he first saw it in the Byfleets’ sitting-room. ‘A diary and a calculator can look extraordinarily alike.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Though when I looked more closely at it, of course, even without picking it up I could see that it wasn’t a diary.’

  ‘Bit of a gamble, though, wasn’t it? You were only guessing that it was Mrs Hamilton’s.’

  ‘I know. I had a few nasty moments there, I must admit. But as soon as I started questioning them about it, it became obvious at once that each thought it belonged to the other and that it therefore belonged to neither. I knew then that I was probably home and dry.’

  ‘Because you could then definitely prove that they were lying and that one of them must have driven the van that night – no, wait a minute. Not necessarily, surely. Desmond could still have claimed that he’d picked the calculator up somewhere else, and you’d never have been able to prove it.’

  ‘Not really. Because then he’d have known it wasn’t Mona’s. And as I said, they’d both already revealed that each thought it belonged to the other and the only way that could have happened was if one of them had acquired it unconsciously, when they were too agitated to know what they were doing.’

  ‘It could still have been Mona, though.’

  ‘Less likely, I thought, because Delia had told her the calculator was missing and she was on the lookout for it. But the last place she’d have expected to find it would be in her own sitting-room, obviously.’

  ‘So when you’d proved that they’d lied about having been in the van that night, Desmond confessed?’

  ‘Well it was his wife, really. She just broke down. The past few days had been a terrible strain. I honestly don’t think she could have gone on indefinitely, living with the knowledge that Desmond had killed someone. It was only her genuine belief that it had been an accident that had enabled her to keep quiet as long as she did.’

  ‘I should have thought that would be the very reason for getting him to own up! After all, no one knew about the connection between her and Martindale.’

  ‘I don’t think she was thinking
straight at the time. Not surprising, really, after what she’d just learned. Her whole future had just collapsed around her ears and I suppose she must have thought, illogically, that if Desmond did own up the truth would come out. But I agree, if he’d only called an ambulance and said it was a straightforward accident, a skid on icy roads, then that would probably have been the end of it.’

  ‘I notice you’re saying “she” all the time. Are you implying what I think you’re implying? That Desmond either ran Martindale down deliberately or at least knew that he was still alive when he put him in the ditch?’

  ‘Well, I must admit I can’t help wondering if he did genuinely believe Martindale to be dead. After all, Martindale alive was an unexploded bomb as far as he and Mona were concerned, whereas Martindale conveniently dead would enable them to decide in their own time and on their own terms what would be their best course of action in the light of what they had just learned. If Martindale were unconscious but still breathing there must have been considerable temptation simply to leave him out in the cold and let nature take its course. And Desmond did move him, remember, put him in the ditch, where he was less likely to be found before morning. And that’s what is going to put him in the dock. If only he hadn’t moved him, if Martindale had simply died in hospital as a result of the accident, Desmond would probably have got away with it. As it is, because Martindale wasn’t dead when he was moved to the ditch we’ve been able to charge Desmond with manslaughter, on the basis of recklessness in regard to his post-accident conduct.’

  ‘You’re still on tricky ground there, though, surely. Doesn’t it depend whether or not Martindale would have died anyway from his injuries?’

  ‘Doc Mallard says he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Maybe, but will he be prepared to stand up and say so in the witness box? You know how reluctant expert witnesses are to commit themselves on matters of opinion in Court. And the Defence might well be able to dig up someone to disagree with him. I can imagine a good Counsel having a field day over this.’