The Night She Died

by Dorothy Simpson

  By the time he arrived at the police station, however, his mind was focused firmly on work: first, a quick clearing away of any routine stuff which might have arrived on his desk this morning (fortunately there was nothing particularly time-consuming today), then he would go out to Gladstone Road to see how Lineham was getting on with directing the search of the area by daylight. After that he would return to the office to take a thorough look at the house-to-house reports, which should be typed up by then. And then … well, he’d decide later, when he’d seen what had come in.

  He was in Gladstone Road by a quarter to nine. Lineham, Carson and Bentley were poking about in the patch of waste land next to the Holmes’s house.

  ‘Found anything?’ Thanet asked.

  Lineham shook his head. ‘Not a sausage. Except for rubbish, rubbish and more rubbish, of course.’

  ‘Have you seen Dobson, the builder, yet?’

  ‘Yes. He came over to speak to us when he opened up the yard. Said we could search it whenever we liked, if we wanted to.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘A bit gnome-like. About five two, with a bald head and lots of whiskers.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Sixty-five or so, I’d say.’

  ‘Did he know anything useful?’

  ‘No. The yard opens at eight and the men are sent off to their various jobs. Dobson glimpsed Mrs Holmes once or twice when she left for work, just before a quarter to nine, but he never actually spoke to her. The yard closes at four-thirty, so by the time she got home from work at a quarter to six it would all be shut up.’

  ‘Have you seen Holmes this morning?’

  ‘No. He’s up, though. The bedroom curtains are drawn back now. Do you want to see him?’

  ‘Not at the moment. I’m going to take a quick look around the other streets back there.’

  It was a strange district, Thanet thought as he walked, a little world of its own, bounded on one side by the only road into the area, on the second by the railway line, on the third by the narrow band of trees behind the metal fence which Thanet had noticed the previous evening, and on the fourth by a row of shops.

  Between Gladstone Road and the shops, and parallel to them, were three cul-de-sacs of mean little back-to-back Victorian terraced houses fronting directly on to the pavements, their back yards divided by narrow alleyways which Thanet certainly wouldn’t have cared to use at night. They too, had been named after nineteenth-century politicians – Disraeli Terrace, Palmerston Row, Shaftesbury Road.

  Thanet had no intention of visiting any of the houses as yet, so there did not seem to be much point in walking along one of the cul-de-sacs and back again. It was therefore not until he had returned to Gladstone Road and had gone to take a closer look at the swing gate and the footpath to the station that he made an interesting discovery: glancing to his left he found that the far ends of the cul-de-sacs were linked by a footpath which ran along between the metal fence and the blank sides of the last terraced house in each row.

  Access to Gladstone Road was not then, as he had thought, limited to the road way in. The Holmes’s house could also be reached by walking along any one of those cul-de-sacs and turning into the footpath which led to the railway station.

  Thanet pushed open the swing gate and walked quickly through the narrow copse, emerging at the far end within sight of the station. The strip of trees, he now saw, separated the area of terraced houses from the grounds of a modern factory. He glanced at his watch. Those reports should be ready shortly. He must get back to the office.

  He picked up Sergeant Lineham on the way and they both settled down to study the reports in a silence broken only by the little popping noises made by Thanet’s pipe, the scrape of a match as he relit it from time to time.

  Finally Thanet pushed the papers away from him, sat back. ‘Television is the policeman’s bane,’ he said. The previous evening most people seemed to have been glued to their sets watching The Pacemakers, a new and very successful series which started at eight-thirty and finished at nine-thirty – unfortunately the very period which interested the police. ‘The report on Mrs Horrocks is interesting, though.’

  Horrocks was a travelling salesman and the previous evening he had, according to his wife, been ‘hopping mad’. The inhabitants of all those closely packed terraced houses had parking problems. There simply wasn’t enough parking space, and some of the locals had to be content with leaving their cars in front of the row of shops, coming to regard certain spaces as theirs by right.

  Horrocks, recently moved into the district, was one, and he had been incensed to find that on Tuesday evenings his parking space was frequently purloined by a green Triumph Stag. Last night had been no exception and every quarter of an hour or so he had gone out to see if he could catch the intruder and have it out with him. It had been especially irritating as he had been due to leave on one of his frequent selling trips up North – he preferred to do the long haul by night – and he had been angry at having to spend his last couple of hours at home in this way. What was more, he had again failed to catch the owner of the Triumph.

  Unfortunately, by the time Thanet’s man had called, Horrocks had already left and although his wife knew that the Triumph had been there when her husband had arrived home at a quarter past seven and had still been there when The Pacemakers started at eight-thirty, she did not know if it had gone by the time Horrocks left just before nine.

  The presence of the Triumph was confirmed by a Mr Carne, who used the parking space next to Horrocks and who had noticed it when taking out his own car at eight o’clock to pick up his daughter from a music lesson. It had still been there at eight-twenty, when he returned.

  ‘We’ll have to try to trace Horrocks,’ Thanet said. ‘Send the same man – Bentley, wasn’t it? – to go and find out Horrocks’s schedule. And to see if he can get hold of Carne, find out if he can remember any details of the Triumph’s registration number … Interesting, isn’t it? Holmes’s night-school evening.’

  ‘You think the owner of the Triumph might have been visiting Mrs Holmes, sir?’

  Thanet shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s worth checking. Though if he was going to her house, why was she wearing outdoor clothes?’

  ‘Perhaps they went out for a drink?’

  ‘Possibly … Then there are these two reports of “a tall dark man”. No further details. How vague can you get? Seen passing the end of Disraeli Terrace in the direction of Gladstone Road at about a quarter to nine by the woman whose daughter had toothache. Also seen passing Shaftesbury Road in the direction of Gladstone Road by the man who’d been walking his dog, at about twenty to nine, he thinks. Where’s that map?’

  They bent over it together.

  ‘As I thought,’ Thanet said. ‘Disraeli Terrace is nearer Gladstone Road than Shaftesbury Road is. The times should have been the other way around.’

  ‘They both say they’re not certain of the time. One of them must be a few minutes out.’

  ‘Mmm. I think we’d better check on it all the same. And we want more details about our tall dark stranger. Better send Carson. He saw both these witnesses, didn’t he? I know he says he pressed them, but they may have remembered something since.’ Thanet paused, consulted his notes. ‘And that’s about it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sir, what about …’ Lineham stopped, swallowed.

  ‘What about what?’ Dammit, I must be more patient with him, thought Thanet. ‘Go on,’ he said, more gently.

  ‘Well, the husband, sir. I know the evidence of his friend seems to let him out, but we don’t know, do we? I mean, if he had stabbed her in the instant of opening the door, the friend wouldn’t have been any the wiser, would he?’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ Thanet said drily, ‘but at this stage I feel we ought to keep an open mind.’ His pipe had gone out and he took time to relight it. ‘For one thing, we ought to wait for the report on the knife, and for the path report. If Holmes did kill her she would have to ha
ve died instantly for Byfleet to be so convinced Holmes didn’t do it. If there’d been the least sign of life … But of course, it’s possible that Byfleet is lying to protect Holmes. And then, the whole set-up is peculiar. Stabbing, I always think, is more of an impulse crime. If Holmes had planned to use Byfleet as a witness to prove his innocence, he would not only have had to carry the knife with him to evening class but somehow have had to ensure that his wife was waiting for him at the door.’

  ‘He could deliberately have left his key behind so that she would have had to open it.’

  ‘Yes, but he couldn’t count on her answering at once, could he? She might have been washing her hair or in the bath, then his witness would have been out of sight by the time she opened the door. That swing gate is only about a hundred yards away.’

  ‘He could have tried it, then if it didn’t work and she didn’t answer the door before Byfleet was out of sight, he could have planned to put off killing her to another Tuesday.’

  ‘He’d have to be a pretty cold-blooded character,’ Thanet said grimly. ‘And as I say, all this planning doesn’t fit in with stabbing, to my mind, I could see him killing her in anger, or in a fit of jealousy – if he caught her with another man, for instance … You saw their bedroom.’

  ‘Yes. He was besotted with her, I’d say. All those expensive clothes, and his own wardrobe practically empty.’

  ‘I know. So all right, he may have had a motive, there might have been another man … She may have gone out to meet him, while Holmes was at night school … All the same, I’m not happy about the mechanics of the actual killing. I can’t seem to visualise it, somehow. I just don’t think we have enough to go on. So we’d better do some digging while we’re waiting for the results of the lab tests and path report. I want you to get along to Homerights, see what you can find out about Holmes, any gossip and so on. Did you manage to get that photograph of Mrs Holmes?’

  Lineham took an envelope out of his pocket, extracted the print.

  Julie Holmes was leaning against a five-barred gate, gazing solemnly into the camera.

  ‘Holmes says it’s a good likeness, sir.’

  ‘Good. Get some copies made, then make sure it gets into tomorrow’s papers – tonight’s, if possible. If she was out last night, someone might have seen her.’

  Thanet stood up and Lineham followed suit. Watching him, Thanet sensed a certain reluctance. Why …? Suddenly it dawned on him. Lineham was dying to know what he, Thanet was going to do. Thanet remembered only too well how he’d liked to be kept informed, when he was in Lineham’s position. ‘I think I’ll go along and have a sniff around the Estate Agents where Mrs Holmes worked. It’s just possible there might be a man there who was interested in her. Or perhaps there’ll be other girls who might have picked something up.’

  He had been right. Lineham made for the door with alacrity now. Thanet was about to follow him when the phone rang.

  ‘Thanet here.’

  The fingerprints on the knife had been Julie’s. Some were blurred but they were indisputably hers. The written report would follow.

  Thanet relayed the information to Lineham, who was hovering at the door.

  ‘Hers!’ Lineham’s forehead creased as he assimilated this interesting piece of information. ‘Still, it’s not really surprising, is it? It was her knife, after all. Do you think there’s any chance it was suicide?’

  ‘With her coat on? In the hall? I doubt it. I expect Doc Mallard’s report will enlighten us. Meanwhile, let’s get on. Don’t forget to put those enquiries in hand before you go, will you?’

  Lineham tapped his notebook. ‘I’ve made a list.’

  Yes, Thanet thought, Lineham would do. He would do very well indeed.

  3

  Jefferson and Parrish, Estate Agents, occupied choice premises in the High Street. Thanet parked without compunction in the small car park at the rear reserved for clients, noticing with interest a green Triumph Stag in the slot marked Mr J. Parrish. He made a note of the registration number before making his way around to the front of the building.

  The clients of Jefferson and Parrish had generously supplied the firm with top-grade wall-to-wall carpeting, a spectacular rubber plant and a receptionist who could have stepped off the cover of a women’s magazine. She was not without feeling however; when Thanet introduced himself and stated his errand the girl shivered, grimaced.

  ‘I heard it on the news this morning. I couldn’t believe it. Poor Julie …’

  ‘You knew her well?’

  ‘Not really. She’d only been here four or five weeks. All the same, working with someone –’

  The buzzer sounded on the girl’s desk.

  Thanet waited until she had finished with the phone. ‘What was Mrs Holmes’s job here, exactly?’

  ‘She was Mr Parrish’s secretary.’ The girl’s eyes swerved away from Thanet’s.

  ‘Then I’d like to see Mr Parrish, please. Perhaps I could have another word with you afterwards?’

  Parrish was tall, dark, of athletic build and had the kind of good looks associated in television advertisements with masculine pursuits such as climbing, sailing, driving fast cars and smoking seductive cigars. He wore a beautifully cut, dark-brown hopsack suit, a cream shirt, a tie diagonally striped in chocolate, cream and coffee and a fawn waistcoat with a brown and red overcheck. The effect – no doubt carefully studied – was conservative with a dash of daring. He would, Thanet thought, be very attractive to women, with that studied charm and low, caressing voice. He also had two characteristics which Thanet disliked: a smile which switched on and off like a neon sign and never reached his eyes, and a habit of saying, ‘mmm, mmm, mmm’ all the while his companion was speaking – intending presumably to convey an impression of intense interest but succeeding only in making Thanet feel that he had to hurry through everything he said.

  ‘A terrible thing,’ said Parrish when they were seated. ‘Terrible.’ Thanet waited.

  ‘I could hardly believe it, when I heard it on the radio this morning. I was shaving.’ And he turned his head aside with a slight, rueful smile, to show Thanet the little cut on the side of the neck.

  Thanet nodded, still saying nothing.

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ said Parrish, throwing himself back in his chair with an alert, eager movement and spreading both hands palm-downward on the desk before him, ‘how can we help you?’

  Thanet noted the first person plural, the implication that Parrish himself could do nothing of the kind.

  ‘Mrs Holmes was new to the area. This was where she worked. We have to try to find out all we can about her and this seemed the obvious place to start.’

  ‘But why? Surely … look, didn’t it say her body was discovered by her husband, when he got home from night school? Well, I mean, it must have been someone who thought the house was empty, broke in … mustn’t it?’

  ‘At this stage we have to take every possibility into consideration. Now, I understand Mrs Holmes was your secretary. Could you tell me about her?’

  ‘I’m not very good at describing people, I’m afraid,’ said Parrish.

  I bet you aren’t, thought Thanet. He guessed that Parrish was too self-absorbed to take in much of other people.

  ‘I get on well with them, of course, you have to, in this job, but … well, Ju … Mrs Holmes … Oh, what the hell, I called her Julie, of course, this a small office and she was my secretary, after all. Well, she was very quiet, reserved. Didn’t have much to say for herself. Efficient, though. I rarely had to explain anything twice, or had reason to complain. And that’s about it, I suppose.’

  ‘Did she get on well with the other girl?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Is there more than one?’

  ‘Yes. There’s Maureen Waters – tall, brunette – and Joy Clark. She’s a redhead. Wasn’t she …? Oh of course, I’d forgotten. Joy’s popped along to the printers to pick up some brochures for a client who’s coming in later this morning.’


  ‘Well, did she? Get on well with them?’

  ‘Oh yes – so far as I know, anyway. You’d better ask them.’

  ‘Would you say that Julie Holmes was attractive to men?’

  If this question alarmed him Parrish neatly concealed it by leaning across his desk to pick up a cigarette box. ‘Cigarette, Inspector? No?’ He took one himself.

  Thanet detected no betraying tremor as Parrish lit up.

  ‘Attractive to men,’ Parrish repeated thoughtfully, as if the concept were new to him. ‘Well, I don’t know. Yes, I suppose she might have been. She was a very pretty girl, certainly, but of course, she was married …’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Married? No, why?’

  ‘Just wondered.’

  ‘No, I … well, I suppose I just haven’t found the right girl yet. And of course, married women … After all, there’s plenty of the other sort around. Why risk getting involved with an enraged husband and so on if you don’t have to …’

  ‘Quite. So there was no one special, as far as you know, paying attention to Mrs Holmes?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, no.’

  ‘Mr Jefferson is the only other man here, I gather?’

  Parrish gave a snort of genuine amusement. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree there, Inspector. I don’t suppose old Jeff’d notice if Simone Signoret walked stark naked through his office.’ He sobered down. ‘Sorry. Look, Inspector, it’s a pity I can’t help you, but really, there’s nothing to tell. Julie Holmes was a nice, quiet, pleasant girl. She got on with the job, gave no trouble, scarcely caused a ripple. I’m sorry about what happened to her, very sorry, but I really don’t see what more I can tell you.’

  ‘Right.’ Thanet rose. ‘But there’s just one other question.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Last night. Could you tell me where you were between, say seven and nine-thirty pm?’