The Night She Died

by Dorothy Simpson

  They chatted enthusiastically about the Dordogne (the Thanets had spent their honeymoon there) as Low led the way into a large, pleasantly furnished sitting room which overlooked the back garden. ‘Would you like some coffee, Inspector? I was just about to make some.’

  The coffee was good: hot and strong. How would it be, he wondered, when he and Joan were old? How would he feel about retirement? Would he simply feel that he had outgrown his usefulness, or would he be relieved that he could at last do all the things he never now had time for? He smiled to himself. He could just imagine Joan’s reaction if he were saying all this to her. ‘We’ve got another thirty-odd years to get through first,’ she’d say. And of course she’d be right. It must be something about the atmosphere of this place …

  ‘Right,’ Low said, seating himself opposite Thanet. ‘Now, it’s the Dacre case you’re interested in, you said?’

  Thanet nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll explain.’ Briefly he described the progress of the Holmes case to date. Low listened with complete attention, but it was not until Thanet came to the link with the murder of Annabel Dacre that he interrupted for the first time.

  ‘Little Julie Parr!’ he said.

  Thanet could see from Low’s face that he had added two and two together and come up with the same answer as Thanet. ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  ‘I see,’ Low said slowly. ‘But what …? No, I won’t ask any questions until you’ve finished. Go on, please.’

  ‘I almost have. We’ve traced all the suspects but Alice Giddy, and my sergeant’s working on that now. Peake is dead, by the way – five years ago, of a heart attack. He moved up north soon after the murder.’

  ‘So now you’ll be questioning them all about the night of Julie’s murder. Well, I wish you luck. She was a sweet kid. To think he got her in the end …’

  ‘He?’

  Low shook his head. ‘A manner of speaking.’ He stood up and walked restlessly across to the window. ‘I never forgot the Dacre case.’ He looked back at Thanet over his shoulder and gave a wry grin. ‘For one thing it ruined my track record. We put everything we had into that damned case, and all for nothing. So, if there’s anything I can do to help, anything at all …’ he returned to his chair, lifting his hands in a gesture of largesse, ‘just ask.’

  ‘What I want from you really is the background to the case – relationships, personalities, the sort of stuff you can only guess at from reading the formal statements. Together with your own feelings about the case. You were there, you knew these people at the time. You’d be bound to have a much better grasp of what was going on between them than I could ever hope to attain now, twenty years later.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Low said modestly, ‘but I’ll have a go.’ He leaned back in his chair, thrust his hands hard down into the capacious pockets of the thick knitted woollen jacket he was wearing, as if digging deep into the past.

  Then he relaxed, his eyes glazing with concentration. ‘It’s a long time, of course, but since you rang last night I’ve been thinking, and it’s all been coming back to me. The five suspects and Annabel Dacre were, as you’ve no doubt gathered by now, all members of the Little Sutton Dramatic Society, where they were on equal terms in a way they couldn’t have been in everyday life. They came from very different classes. Annabel Dacre, of course, was the squire’s daughter, from “the big house” and as such one of the social queens of the district. Alice Giddy was closest to her, socially. Her mother was a wealthy widow and Annabel and Alice more or less grew up together – went to the same prep and boarding schools and shared an interest in art. Their paths divided when they left school. Annabel went on to study art in London and Paris while Alice had to stay at home. Her mother’s health was deteriorating and she was insistent that Alice should live at home. They engaged a day companion for Mrs Giddy and Alice found herself a job.’

  ‘In Cooper’s.’

  ‘That’s right, in the fashion department. I can see you’re wondering why she needed to work. The answer is that financially she didn’t. I’ve no doubt at all that she took the job to get out of the house during the daytime. Mrs Giddy was an impossible woman, demanding, capricious …’

  ‘I thought she was hanging curtains on the day Annabel died. She sprained her ankle, didn’t she? If she was sick …?’

  ‘Typical,’ said Low. ‘She’d do something like that – hang the curtains – just to make Alice feel guilty. She was furious that her daughter had refused to stay at home all the time and look after her. So she’d manoeuvre situations to make unpleasantness for Alice, even if it meant inconvenience for herself.’

  ‘You’re not saying she’d actually go so far as to sprain her ankle …?’

  ‘No,’ though Low didn’t sound too sure, ‘but she certainly had no need to be climbing ladders, I assure you. She had a daily help as well as a companion.’

  ‘It’s a wonder Alice didn’t go to the Sturrenden College of Art,’ Thanet said, ‘if she was that keen.’

  ‘She did consider it, I believe, but rejected the idea – said she wasn’t going to settle for the second-rate. She wanted to study dress design – had real talent, I believe.’

  ‘I don’t suppose the Principal of the College of Art would be very flattered by that point of view!’ Thanet said, with a grin.

  Low returned the smile. ‘No. Anyway, the one bright spot in Alice’s life, so far as I could see, was her fiancé Gerald Plummer.’

  ‘Plummer! But I thought …’

  ‘That he was engaged to Annabel? He was, at the time of her death, or so he claimed. Perhaps I should explain that Annabel Dacre was a very beautiful woman. Before she came back to Little Sutton and set up her studio in West Lodge after her years of study abroad, Alice Giddy and Plummer were always together. There was no formal engagement, you understand, but every last person in Little Sutton was convinced they’d marry and saw Mrs Giddy as the only obstacle to the union. Then Annabel came back and all of a sudden Alice was out in the cold. And make no mistake about it, she would care, would Alice. She might hide it, but she’d care all right.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Tall, dark, elegant. Good-looking in an odd kind of way, but too intense for my taste.’

  ‘So Alice would have had motive, means and opportunity,’ Thanet said. ‘If she’d been awaiting her chance to take her revenge on Annabel – or perhaps merely to tackle her in private about Plummer – her mother’s insistence on her doing the church flowers would have been a tremendous stroke of luck. A foggy night, an excuse to be out … She would have known about the chunk of quartz and no doubt Annabel would have let her in without hesitation …’

  ‘Certainly. But unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as that. The same could have been said of every other one of the four suspects.’

  ‘Every one?’

  ‘Every single one,’ Low repeated firmly. ‘Plummer included. Let me explain: Annabel, as I said, was a very beautiful woman and very attractive to men.’

  ‘Didn’t do her or Julie much good, did it? Almost makes me hope my daughter will grow up plain but worthy.’

  ‘Yes. Well, it seems to me that the main difference between them, from what you say, was that whereas Julie seemed unconscious of her power over men, Annabel positively revelled in hers. She had them all eating out of her hand, believe me, and the thing was, she was totally undiscriminating in the bestowal of her favours. One week it would be Plummer, the next Peake, the next Pocock. And so on, in various alternations. They couldn’t have known where they were with her, any of them, and that’s enough to drive any man mad, especially with a woman as beautiful as she was.’

  ‘Pocock was married, though.’

  ‘Didn’t seem to make any difference. Annabel wasn’t the first, as far as he was concerned, but way out of his class, really, and I don’t think he’d have enjoyed being strung along. No, whoever did it, I think it may well have been Annabel’s blow-hot, blow-cold technique which brought about her death.’ />
  ‘What about Pocock’s wife? Why was she suspected? Surely, if she was used to her husband’s affairs, one more wouldn’t have made much difference?’

  ‘This one might have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. And in any case, Edna Pocock was in an unusually fragile state of mind. She’d just had a miscarriage – not the first, either.’

  ‘And that’s another thing. Wouldn’t she have been too weak, to get out of bed, walk to West Lodge in the fog – how far away was it, by the way?’

  ‘About ten minutes walk from the village.’

  ‘… walk to the West Lodge, kill Annabel, walk back, get rid of any evidence – blood stains, mud-stained shoes and so on – and be comfortably back in bed by the time her husband got home?’

  ‘I agree it’s unlikely,’ Low said, ‘but possible all the same. She had plenty of time. If I remember rightly, Pocock left home at about seven that evening and didn’t get home until about half past nine.’

  ‘I only wish I had a memory like yours!’ Thanet said. ‘To be able to remember a detail like that after twenty years …’

  ‘Believe me, the facts of this case were burned on to my brain,’ Low said.

  ‘What was she like, Edna Pocock? How long had they been married?’

  ‘Ten years. Oh, she was small, plump, a motherly-looking type. Not terribly bright – not stupid, but just not very intelligent. I always hoped she might have managed to have children later, she seemed to me to be the sort of woman who would have made an excellent mother – warm, kind, comforting, you know?’

  ‘What about Peake? I know he’s out of it, but I’d still like to know.’

  ‘An entirely different type from Plummer. Now Plummer was tall, solid, a good family-doctor type, but Peake was thin, nervous, intense, the sort who would worship from afar, I should think.’

  ‘But Plummer? How would he have reacted to cavalier treatment?’

  ‘Not well. I think there was a streak of vanity there. I think he rather enjoyed being a big fish in a little pond.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, here comes the sixty-thousand-dollar question. Who do you think did it?’

  Low sat back in his chair, steepled his hands beneath his chin and looked back into the past. ‘Who do I think did it?’ he murmured. He lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness before letting them come to rest on the arms of his chair. ‘Well, for my money, Alice Giddy. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing to substantiate that suspicion.’

  ‘I realise that. I shouldn’t have asked, I suppose,’ Thanet said. He tapped the burning ash from his pipe into the big ashtray, made sure it was safe before stowing it away in his pocket. ‘Well, I think that’s about it for the moment, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Mr,’ said Low, with a rueful smile, ‘and it’s been a pleasure. I hope you get him. He’s had twenty years’ grace already.’

  The burly figure, hand raised, remained reflected in Thanet’s driving mirror until he turned the corner at the end of the road.

  11

  It was now ten-thirty and it occurred to Thanet that Little Sutton was only three or four miles out of his way. Suddenly he wanted to see it. He’d been there before, of course, in passing, but on those occasions it had been a village like any other, with no particular significance for him. Now he wanted to look at it in a different light, as the place where the Holmes case had really begun. And he’d like to see West Lodge, where Annabel had lived and died …

  He pulled up at the next telephone box.

  ‘Mike? Thanet here. Any luck with tracing Alice Giddy?’

  ‘Just got it.’ Lineham’s voice was faint. ‘Hang on a minute.’

  ‘Can you speak up? This is a terrible line.’

  ‘I got Johnson’s secretary to go in to the College and open up her files.’ Lineham’s voice was faint and Thanet pressed the receiver hard against his ear.

  ‘She – Alice Giddy, that is – now lives in …’ His voice faded out.

  ‘Can you repeat that? Speak up, can’t you? I can hardly hear you. Oh, Maddison House, you say. Where Parrish lives! That’s interesting.’ Any connection there? he wondered.

  Lineham’s next words were unintelligible. It occurred to Thanet that there was no interference on the line, and that Lineham seemed perfectly to understand everything he said. ‘Mike, are you all right.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The answer was clearer this time, as if Lineham had made an effort.

  ‘Who else is in, this morning?’

  ‘D.C. Bennet, D.C. Stout, D.S. Parkin …’

  ‘Put Parkin on, will you? Parkin? What’s the matter with Lineham. He sounds odd. Is he ill or something?’

  ‘He won’t thank me for telling you, sir, but we think he’s got ‘flu. He looks like death warmed up, and …’

  The connection was cut. Thanet swore, dug out some more coins, dialled again. ‘Parkin? Now look here, I’m going to tell Lineham to go home. You make sure he does just that, will you? Now put him on.’

  The matter was soon settled. The token resistance Lineham put up showed Thanet just how ill his sergeant must be feeling. He knew himself how frustrating it was to have to pull out of a case just when things were getting really interesting. Thanet checked that nothing else of note had come in that morning and rang off.

  He found Little Sutton without difficulty, but did not stop in the centre of the village. Hoping that his memory was serving him correctly he drove around the Green and out by a different road. Half a mile out of the village he smiled with satisfaction as a tall, crumbling red-brick wall came into view on his left. As he had thought, these were the grounds of Champeney House.

  A hundred yards further on he pulled up in front of a pair of tall wrought iron gates. The drive beyond them, curling away into the distance and disappearing into an avenue of tall, dead elms, was obviously never used. Couch grass and other weeds had thrust their way up through the old tarmac which was visible only in crumbling patches. A small, stone-built lodge, solidly built but undoubtedly empty and neglected stood within the gates, to the right.

  Thanet got out of his car, locked it and approached the gates. The words WEST LODGE were cut into the stone of the right-hand pillar. The gates, however, Thanet saw to his disappointment, were padlocked. Flakes of rust came off on his hands as he gripped them to peer through at the little house.

  Weeds and overgrown shrubs grew right up to the walls, half covering the windows, and ivy climbed the walls unchecked, thrusting destructive fingers through rotten window frames, entwining gutters and drainpipes in a stranglehold which must surely soon bring them down. Broken window panes gaped everywhere, hastening no doubt the process of decay by letting in the wind and rain. Thanet gave the gates one last, frustrated rattle and was about to turn away when he hesitated, stooped to examine more closely the tangled chain which had been loosely wound several times around the inmost bars of the gates. Surely that link should not be projecting like that? He began to fumble with the rusted links and almost at once saw with satisfaction that at some point long ago – for the ends had rusted over – someone had cut through the links and then twisted them around each other so that to a casual inspection they still appeared unbroken. It took him a few minutes to disentangle them, then he was through, pushing the gates roughly together behind him.

  His hands were covered in rust and he bent to rub them impatiently on a clump of rough grass before pushing open the little wicket gate which led into the overgrown garden. Here and there a few flowers still survived: a sprawling, woody tangle of forsythia, a single peony thrusting its way up through a tangle of last season’s dead foliage, a drift of bluebells carpeting the ground beneath an old apple tree at the far side of the garden.

  Thanet approached the front door and pushed. It was, of course, locked. He picked his way around to the back of the house, pausing to peer into one of the front windows as he went. Here a surprise awaited him: the room was furnished – sketchily, true, but furnished nevertheless. For a moment he was
afraid that the place was, despite all the signs, inhabited after all, but a second glance reassured him. That room had not been lived in for years. Annabel’s mother, then, had presumably not bothered to clear the house after her daughter’s death. Would Annabel’s studio, like Miss Havisham’s wedding feast, have been preserved intact over the years? The thought excited him.

  At the back of the house he had better luck. As he had hoped, someone – children or courting couples perhaps – had been unable to resist the temptation of breaking in. When he put his shoulder to the door it yielded to him, its sagging timbers scraping protestingly over the stone threshold.

  The dank, musty smell of a long-uninhabited house filled his nostrils as he stepped into a large, square kitchen with generous windows on two walls. Attempts had been made to modernise it, presumably when Annabel had come to live here: there was a stainless-steel sink, dull and dusty from disuse, and units with formica work surfaces along two walls. Out of curiosity Thanet opened one of the cupboards. Yes, as he had thought, the house had never been cleared. The decayed remains of cardboard packets mingled with liberal sprinklings of mouse droppings. A quick glance into some of the other cupboards told him that, predictably, everything of any value had long since been stolen.

  It was the same story everywhere else on the ground floor. Even now, after all this time, lighter patches on the wallpaper showed where prints or pictures had once hung, and the only items of furniture which remained were those which would have been too cumbersome to move. Carpets and rugs had been taken, but curtains still hung at the windows, presumably to give the impression that nothing within had been disturbed. Empty coca-cola bottles and crumpled crisp packets showed that children had played here, no doubt relishing the atmosphere of strangeness and decay in games of mystery and adventure.