The Night She Died

by Dorothy Simpson

  ‘There were four names, you said?’

  ‘Five suspects originally, three men and two women. Only four of them appear on both lists. The fifth, a man called Peake, isn’t on either of them. But I’d like you to check on him just the same.’

  ‘And the advertisement requesting the loan of paintings appeared in the national as well as the local press?’

  ‘Yes. So you could find that these people are scattered all over the country. Some might still be around, though. One of them was the local doctor, a Doctor Plummer. It would have been difficult for him to give up his practice and start all over again – it was a family practice, too, so it’s all the more likely he would have stayed. And two of the other suspects were a local builder and his wife, Roger and Edna Pocock. They might well still be in the area. Anyway, here’s the list. I’ve written Johnson’s number and his secretary’s at the top. I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon working through this file.’

  Thanet took a few minutes after Lineham left to get his pipe drawing really well, then settled down to read. It was tedious, painstaking work, even for someone as experienced as he. The different threads of the case had to be teased out, woven together into a recognisable pattern, reports and statements read and reread until each slotted into its place in the design. Thanet worked his way steadily through the whole file, took a five-minute break and then went back to study in turn each batch of statements relating to the main suspects. These were a surprisingly disparate group of people, the link between them apparently being that they had all been members of the Little Sutton Dramatic Society.

  The murder of Annabel Dacre, he reminded himself as he began, had taken place between 7.45 and 8.45 pm.

  First, there was Dr Gerald Plummer, then aged twenty-eight and unofficially engaged to Annabel. On the night of the murder he had taken evening surgery from 5 to 6 pm, had done some paperwork and had then had supper with his father who had recently had a serious illness and was in the process of withdrawing from the practice. They always ate early because the housekeeper left at seven thirty.

  At seven forty-five there had been a phone call (confirmed) from the local midwife: one of Dr Plummer’s patients had gone into labour and there were complications. He had set off at once but had had a puncture and had experienced difficulties in changing the wheel. He had therefore not arrived at the patient’s home (normally some ten minutes drive away) until eight forty-five. The local garage confirmed that the next day Plummer had called in with a punctured tyre, but there was no telling, of course, when or how the puncture had occurred or how long, if at all, the doctor had really been delayed. Plummer had denied that Annabel had ever given him cause for jealousy and had expressed total bewilderment at the motive for such a brutal and senseless crime.

  A bit of a stuffed shirt? Thanet wondered, reading through the statements again. The trouble was that it was difficult to gauge what the man was really like from the formal language of the official documents. Thanet sighed, relit his pipe and turned to the next suspect.

  This was Edward Peake, aged twenty-five, also a bachelor, and an optician’s assistant. He had lodgings in Rose Cottage, a breakfast and evening-meal arrangement. He had had supper at seven. His landlady had recently had bronchitis and during her illness he had been in the habit of taking her dog for his evening walk. That evening he left at seven fifty, keeping the dog on the lead until he had reached the woods adjoining the grounds of Champeney House. He had then let it off the leash for a run and had, he claimed, lost it. He had blundered around calling and whistling, eventually giving up around eight twenty-five and arriving back home at eight forty. The dog had apparently been run over in the fog, its body being found in a ditch at the side of a road next morning.

  The landlady was hot in Peake’s defence. ‘A nicer, kinder, more considerate young man you couldn’t wish to find.’

  But again, no alibi for the time of the murder.

  The third male suspect was the builder, aged thirty and married. He was in much the same position as Plummer and Peake, the difference being that he should, if his arrangements had not gone awry, have had a comfortingly sound alibi. The Pococks had had supper at six thirty that evening because Pocock had an appointment with a client at seven thirty to discuss some alterations to a house which the client was buying some five miles away from Little Sutton. Pocock left just after seven, allowing plenty of time because of the fog. He claimed to have arrived at the house a few minutes early and waited in vain for the client to turn up. At nine he gave up, arriving home at nine twenty in a furious temper at his wasted evening. The client confirmed that the appointment had been made. Unfortunately he lived twenty miles away and, unfamiliar with the area, had lost his way in the fog in the maze of country lanes. Eventually he had given up, found his way back to the main road and returned home, ringing Pocock to apologise as soon as he got there, at ten.

  Edna Pocock aged twenty-nine and the fourth suspect, was a different matter. Thanet was very interested to note that although she had at the time of the murder been confined to bed, having had a miscarriage three days before, the police had obviously not ruled her out as a suspect. Why? Thanet found himself becoming increasingly impatient with the bald facts presented by the statements. He read on.

  Edna Pocock had had two days in bed and on Friday, the day of the murder, had got up for the first time in the late afternoon, going back to bed immediately after supper, when her husband left for his appointment. According to her doctor (Plummer) she had still been very weak at the time. In any event, she, too, had no alibi for the time of the murder.

  Finally, there was Alice Giddy, aged twenty-five. She lived with her mother, Mrs Florence Giddy, and worked in Cooper’s, a department store in Sturrenden which had had a reputation for high quality merchandise and which, Thanet remembered, had given up the ghost ten years or so ago, when Marks and Spencer had opened a branch in the town.

  On the night of Annabel’s murder Alice Giddy had arrived home from work at six to find that her mother had unwisely attempted to hang some curtains and had had a fall, twisting her ankle. Alice had decided that the sprain was not bad enough to warrant calling the doctor and had spent some time dealing with the matter herself, treating the ankle with cold compresses and binding it up. She had then cooked the supper which her mother had partially prepared earlier in the day and they had eaten at seven fifteen. Mrs Giddy had been due to do the Church Flowers next morning and had fussed and fussed over the fact that now she wouldn’t be able to. Nor could Alice do them after work the following day, Saturday, as she had already made arrangements to go to the theatre in London with friends. So, after supper, Alice had set off for the church at around seven forty-five, had spent an hour doing the flowers and had arrived back home at eight fifty, having seen no one.

  And that was it. Not one of the people whom the police had apparently suspected of having committed the murder had an alibi which would stand up, and no amount of patient digging had been able to confirm or to disprove any one of them. It had been a foggy November evening and people had not gone out unless they had to. Those who had had seen nothing of any significance.

  Thanet pushed the file away and glanced at his watch. Five o’clock. He stood up and stretched. His back protested and, simultaneously, he experienced a twinge of guilt. Joan really would be furious, when she discovered that he had skipped his appointment.

  He walked stiffly across to the filing cabinet, stretched out his arms to grasp two of the drawer handles at chest level, positioned his feet carefully and then, rising on tip-toe, arched himself over backwards as far as he could go, held the position for a count of three, returned to an upright position and relaxed. He repeated the exercise three times and then, feeling virtuous, returned to his desk and asked for some tea to be sent in.

  Deliberately, while he sipped it, he kept his mind blank, giving his mental processes a necessary few minutes in which to recuperate. Then he swivelled his chair around, upturned the waste-paper ba
sket, put his feet on it and leaning back, closed his eyes – a position strictly forbidden by his physiotherapist but most conducive to constructive thinking.

  There had been no circumstantial evidence against any one of the suspects. Fingerprints of all of them had been found in the studio, but this information had proved worthless; rehearsals had often been held there. There had been no sign of a forced entry to the Lodge. Annabel had apparently let the murderer in herself and taken him up to the studio. The murder weapon had been a rough chunk of quartz which normally stood on one of the studio shelves. Either, then, the murderer had known of its being there and had counted on using it, or the murder had been unpremeditated and the rock seized as the nearest weapon to hand. There was no way of telling. For all the physical evidence Annabel, like Julie, could have been killed by a ghost.

  Thanet could sympathise with the investigating officer. It was obvious from the file that the police had done their job with meticulous care. It must have been galling to fail. Thanet did not recognise the name of the man who had been in charge of the case – probably he had retired long ago. A pity, he thought. It would have been useful to discuss it with him.

  On impulse he rang through to records, asked them to check. He was in luck. Sergeant West, to whom he spoke, was an older man and remembered Detective Chief Inspector Low. Low had retired about ten years ago, having transfered to Ashford some years previously.

  ‘Could you get me his address?’

  ‘Ashford might have it, sir, unless he moved right away when he retired. I’ll check and ring you back.’

  Thanet replaced the receiver. It would certainly help to talk to Low. Low would have known all the people involved in the Dacre case, would be able to put flesh on the bones of what Thanet had learnt.

  Lineham came in and plumped down wearily in a chair.

  Thanet grimaced in sympathy. ‘Hard time?’

  Lineham nodded. ‘Johnson’s secretary was out for the day, her daughter said. I couldn’t get hold of Johnson, either. Anyway, I’ve got all of them but Alice Giddy. Two of them were easy – well, three, assuming the Pococks are still together. Their number and Dr Plummer’s were in the telephone directory. He’s still in Little Sutton, but they’ve moved to Sturrenden. Little Mole Avenue.’

  ‘Ah yes. That’s right on the edge of town, off the Canterbury Road, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Both Peake and Giddy were much more difficult. Neither was in the directory. I rang Parry’s, where Peake worked, and they confirmed that he’d left the area to go North, years ago. Well, to cut a long story short, he’s dead, about five years ago, of a heart attack.’

  ‘That’s definite?’

  ‘Yes. I spoke to his last employer.’

  ‘Well at least that’s one fewer to worry about. But you still haven’t traced Alice Giddy?’

  ‘Nope. She’s probably moved away too. Short of going out to Little Sutton and asking questions, we’ll just have to wait until we can get hold of Johnson’s secretary.’

  ‘I don’t want to do that – go out to Little Sutton, I mean. I’d like to catch all these people completely unprepared. I should think the murderer believes himself to be absolutely safe.’

  ‘If he is one of them.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Thanet was startled. He was so convinced by now that they were working on the right lines that he had forgotten Lineham’s scepticism.

  The telephone rang. Sergeant West had got hold of ex-D.C.I. Low’s address and telephone number.

  Thanet thanked him warmly. ‘Low was in charge of the Dacre case,’ he explained to Lineham. ‘He’s retired, lives out at Biddenden, apparently.’ He dialled Low’s number.

  Low couldn’t see Thanet that evening but readily agreed to an interview next morning. This suited Thanet very well. It had been a long day and he felt stale, semi-stupified by all the new information he had assimilated. He would prefer to be fresh and alert before interviewing any of these new suspects and as it would obviously be sensible to delay doing so until after he had seen Low, he now had the perfect excuse for going home. ‘While I’m seeing Low you can get hold of Alice Giddy’s address from Johnson’s secretary,’ he said to Lineham.

  He shuffled together the loose papers from the Dacre file and pushed the folder across the desk. ‘Here you are,’ he said with a grin. ‘Your book at bedtime.’

  10

  He was in a pit and he had to get out. Sprig was in danger, he knew it. He had to save her. He hurled himself frantically at the sides of his prison, seeking a toe-hold, finger-hold, anything by which he could lever himself upward, but there was nothing. The walls were soft, resilient, yielding beneath the pressure of his fingers. He looked up and saw suddenly that far, far above him there seemed to be some kind of ledge. Gathering together all his strength he sprang, the soft, furry surface receiving him suffocatingly into its embrace. And then he was free, the walls of the room soaring above him into darkness. They were hung with paintings and he knew at once where he was: Annabel’s studio. And there, on the floor was Julie, long golden hair matted with blood. In the corner of the room stood a cot and he understood now his desperate sense of urgency. Sprig was in it and he had to get her away. He tried to hurry towards it but his legs were leaden. He could see Sprig now, clinging on to the bars of the cot, her eyes dilated with shock and terror. Just before he reached her he knew, without looking around, that the murderer was behind him. He spread his arms to protect her, but the murderer seized one of them, began to drag him away …

  He opened his eyes. Sprig’s face floated before him, puckered with anxiety, and for a moment he hovered between nightmare and reality, uncertain which was which. Then she released his arm, at which she had been tugging, raised her eyebrows comically.

  ‘OK, love,’ he whispered. ‘I’m awake now. I’ll be out in a minute.’

  Satisfied that their morning ritual was under way she trotted off towards the door.

  Already the nightmare was fading, but the sense of distress still lingered and Thanet deliberately held on to his dream, forcing himself to remember, to try to interpret. That pit … the pit in Johnson’s studio, of course. And Sprig had been Julie, Julie Annabel … He almost groaned aloud. What a mess.

  But Sprig would be waiting. Silently, he slid out of bed.

  ‘I forgot to ask,’ Joan said suddenly, at breakfast. ‘How did you get on with Mrs James yesterday?’

  ‘I didn’t. No,’ Thanet held up a hand, ‘please, darling, listen. I honestly didn’t have time. But I did ring to apologise.’ He didn’t mention the fact that the apology had been made long after the appointment should have been kept, that he had clean forgotten about it.

  ‘But you promised …’

  ‘I know. And I’m sorry, honestly. But so much happened yesterday.’

  ‘Bridget hurt her knee,’ Sprig announced, displaying the injury.

  Thanet seized thankfully on the diversion. ‘Oh dear. How did that happen?’

  ‘Luke Thanet, you are trying to change the subject,’ Joan said accusingly.

  ‘So I am!’ he said in mock astonishment.

  ‘You did make a further appointment, I hope?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact I was wondering if it was really necessary. My back’s so much better now …’

  ‘Oh Luke, no! You can’t sign off until she thinks you’re ready.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Darling, please!’

  Thanet sighed. ‘All right. I’ll make one more appointment – just one, mind, and that’ll be it.’

  ‘See what she says,’ Joan said vaguely. ‘Come on now, Ben, one more spoonful.’

  Ben obliged by scooping up some cereal and then, leaning over the side of his high chair, dropping it on the floor.

  ‘Ben! Naughty boy!’ Joan jumped up, fetched another spoon, closed Ben’s cereal-covered fingers around it. ‘Come on now, darling, just one more spoonful. In your mouth,’ she added warningly. Then she fetched a piece of kitchen roll to mop up the mess
.

  ‘I shouldn’t bother,’ Thanet said, watching her, ‘What’s the point? He’ll only do it again.’

  Obligingly Ben did, the cereal this time narrowly missing the top of Joan’s head. ‘Ben!’ she said and, catching Thanet’s eye, began to laugh.

  The little incident somehow succeeded in finally banishing the last of the shadow which had lingered as an aftermath of his nightmare and Thanet felt cheerful as he set off for the interview with Low. It was a glorious morning. A few fluffy white clouds enhanced the forget-me-not blue of the sky and the sun shone down upon a countryside clothed in the freshest and most delicate shades of green.

  As soon as Thanet turned off the main road he found himself in narrow, winding lanes bordered on each side by a froth of Queen Anne’s lace. He remembered the heady scent of it from earlier expeditions to the country and he wound down his window, inhaling the fragrance which drifted into the car. He found himself wishing that Joan were with him and remembering his resolution of a few days earlier to take her for a drive through the orchards. Here and there the apple blossom was already showing pink. Next Sunday, he promised himself, work or no work, they would have their expedition. If the weather were as good as this they might even take a picnic.

  The prospect lifted his spirits still further and by the time he drew up in front of Low’s bungalow he was feeling distinctly optimistic. It was, Thanet thought, rather an attractive bungalow. For himself, he preferred houses, but this one had some interesting features, being built entirely of stone in a style reminiscent of the Dordogne. He said so to Low, who had obviously been looking out for him; the front door opened before Thanet was half way up the path.

  Low was delighted with Thanet’s perception. ‘We felt it was the next best thing to the genuine article. We’d have loved to retire to the Dordogne – a surprisingly large number of English people do, you know – but family ties kept us here and now, well, we’ve settled and don’t want to change.’ Low was a big man, a good sixteen stone, Thanet thought, and well over six feet. A luxuriant growth of white hair encircled a bald patch on the top of his head, and sprouted from his eye-brows. Although he must be now be well into his seventies his carriage was good, his flesh firm and well-muscled. Criminals, Thanet thought, must have found him a formidable opponent.