Death in the Coverts

by Roderic Jeffries

  Lydia Decker sighed. Doherty was suddenly struck by the fact that she was looking old and slightly crumpled, as if life had come up from behind and struck her a crippling blow. ‘He’s very ill,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear this. It’s rather sudden?’

  ‘His illness is like that.’

  ‘But it’s only this morning that he was out shooting.’

  She sighed again, looked at him for several seconds, then crossed the hall. When she saw he had not moved, she asked him to follow her. By the door, she picked up a silver salver from an oak chest and moved it slightly to the right. ‘The Danellis simply will not put things back after dusting,’ she said. She led the way into the green withdrawing-room and asked him to wait.

  Alone, Doherty slowly looked round the room. It was filled with objets d’art. On the walls hung framed needlework and paintings and two rows of miniatures, two glass-fronted cupboards were filled with glass or crystal goblets, there were silver ornaments on the many small tables, silver candelabra on the upright piano, and the shelves of a Welsh-dresser were crowded with china figures which looked to him very old and were probably very valuable.

  There was sound from the doorway and he turned to see Fawcett Decker manoeuvre his wheel-chair into the room.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ demanded Fawcett, in a challenging manner.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In connection with what?’

  ‘The death of Mr Abbotts.’

  ‘Another regrettable accident.’

  ‘Regretted by whom?’

  ‘A good question, Inspector. His death is not regretted by me, for one. I considered him an evil bore.’

  ‘Evil?’

  ‘He was too thick-skinned to realise he bored people. There’s nothing more evil than that.’

  Doherty studied the lean, dark face of Fawcett Decker, with its expression of bitter cynicism and pain. The poor bastard, thought Doherty, to be stuck forever in that chair. Wealth might have cushioned his distress, but on the other hand it might just as easily not have done so: the anguish would be in his mind and his mind would dictate how much anguish he felt, not his surroundings. ‘I wonder if you can help, sir, over what happened?’

  ‘How can I? Unless, of course, you think I killed him?’

  ‘There’s no question yet, sir, of it being murder.’

  ‘You make a poor liar,’ Fawcett spoke jeeringly.

  ‘That’s what my wife always claims.’

  ‘If I did murder him, Inspector, and it can be proved, I’ll set a lot of people a lot of problems, won’t I? How can I be fitted into the routine of prison? Will I ever be allowed out of the hospital? How can a total cripple be disciplined? I’m a walking miracle because the doctors killed me off I don’t know how many years ago: but a miracle is easily shattered.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘I appreciate the irony in your sympathy at a time when you’re trying to discover whether I murdered the fat, sweating, boorish Mr Abbotts.’

  ‘Did you go straight to your stand from the car, sir?’

  ‘The ramp was attached to the tail of the Land-Rover and then, with my usual skill, I disembarked and propelled myself to number seven stand.’

  ‘That’s the bottom one?’

  ‘You are quite correct.’

  ‘Did you leave that stand at all?’

  ‘If I murdered Abbotts, I surely must have done?’

  ‘You’re making it rather difficult for me, sir.’

  ‘In the circumstances, you can hardly expect me to make things easy for you.’

  ‘Did you leave your stand at all during the beat, sir?’

  ‘You must have a good reason for asking?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter for the moment.’

  ‘On the contrary, it matters a very great deal.’

  ‘Mr Decker, what was Rafferty threatening your family with?’ Doherty watched Fawcett’s expression become hard, almost cruel. ‘Would you mind telling me,’ he persisted, when there was no answer.

  ‘You’re mistaken.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘That’s your privilege.’

  ‘Was the threat to the whole family, to you, or to your brother?’

  ‘Do you think I killed Rafferty and Abbotts?’

  ‘I’m trying to find out what happened, nothing more.’

  ‘What makes you think I left my stand during the beat?’

  ‘There’s a mark at number five stand that could have been made by the tyre of a wheel-chair.’

  ‘But was it?’

  ‘I… I am not yet certain, sir.’

  ‘Then you want me to admit to a visit you cannot yet prove? If I murdered Abbotts I certainly wouldn’t make such an admission and if I did not murder him I equally would make no such admission as how could I then hope to prove my innocence?’

  ‘It always pays to tell the truth, sir.’

  ‘That is stupid. It seldom pays to tell the truth.’

  ‘Then you’re not going to answer me?’

  ‘Ask me again when you’re quite certain what did make that track.’

  Doherty spoke slowly. ‘I didn’t expect this visit to achieve anything.’

  ‘Then you’re in the unusual, but happy, position of being able to go away utterly undisappointed. You did say you were about to leave, didn’t you, Inspector?’ Doherty walked slowly towards the door, hesitated by it, and then went out and left the house.

  In the smaller kitchen, now used to house the deep freeze, refrigerator, and washing machine, Lydia Decker tried for the fifth time to arrange five roses in a long-stemmed glass vase. Lucretia Danelli offered to help, but was summarily dismissed from the room. Almost immediately afterwards, Julian entered.

  ‘Is he still here?’ asked Lydia. She tried to move one rose slightly to the left and in her nervousness disturbed all of them.

  ‘They were in the green room a minute or so ago.’

  ‘Julian, you must go in and see what’s happening. You know what Fawcett can be like. He’s probably being very rude to the detective and that’s not a good thing. Your dear father said that it never paid to be rude to even the most junior policeman because he’d always get his own back. I remember when we went…’

  ‘It’s better if I stay out of there.’

  ‘Don’t you want to help your brother?’

  ‘How can I?’

  ‘I’ve just explained and if you’d only listen to me…’

  ‘Then you think Fawcett shot Abbotts?’

  Lydia very carefully began to arrange the roses once more.

  ‘Do you think he shot him, Mother?’

  ‘Fawcett would never do such a thing.’

  ‘Not to save this place?’

  ‘Fawcett didn’t shoot that man and I refuse to discuss such a horrible thought. You’re not to talk like that, Julian, or you’ll upset me very badly.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to get it out in the open and talk about it?’

  ‘Certainly not. I can’t think how Barbara will live with you if you’re as tiresome with her as you are with me.’

  ‘But you can’t ignore the thing into non-existence: and you can’t drown it in a flood of words. You want me to go in to the green room and stop Fawcett’s being so indiscreet as to admit to the two murders you’re sure he committed. That’s the truth, isn’t it?’

  ‘Julian, you’re being especially horrid and if you can think that sort of thing about your brother, you’re also especially disloyal.’

  Julian stared at his mother. She was frightening herself sick with her fears and yet even now she would not admit to them because she wanted to make him believe such fears were ridiculous.

  He left and went through the large kitchen to the butler’s pantry and then into the dining-room. Danelli was laying the table. Julian crossed to one of the six tall French windows. He looked out at the countryside and saw the sheep,
the herd of Jerseys, the kale the pigeons were beginning to attack, the small copse where there was a large badger set and had been for as long as anyone could remember, and in the distance the hills. From here, neither Avonley nor Ashford was visible and there was no sign of the ever-spreading rash of building which was engulfing Kent. The scene was one of peace. Yet, beyond the copse was Deer Leap Wood and there a man had been shot dead.

  Surely this second death must shatter the Decker heritage, even though the first, by some miracle, had failed to do so?

  Chapter Ten

  Doherty drove to Ashford on Monday morning and parked in the main council car-park. He went up the narrow passage by the Odeon Cinema to the High Street and into Hutsons to buy a tin of anchovies for Peggy, who considered them the greatest treat life had to offer. He then walked to the traffic lights and along the crowded pavements to the mortuary.

  The pathologist had begun work. Doherty stared at the flabby body of Abbotts and wondered whether the man had known any terror before he was shot, or whether everything had happened far too quickly for that.

  Some time later, the pathologist gave a hurried report. ‘There’s nothing definite, Inspector. I can say that it’s certainly not suicide, but although it was probably murder it could have been an accident. Almost exactly the same considerations apply here as with the last killing and all the figures are near enough the same. I’ll make out a full report and let you have it when I can, but my secretary’s ill and I’m far too rushed to waste time typing.’

  ‘This could have been an accident?’

  ‘As I have just said, yes. Purely on the evidence of the body there is nothing finally to prove it was not an accident.’

  Doherty spoke reflectively. ‘Whatever the medical evidence, a jury’s unlikely to believe in two accidents like these.’

  ‘My experience of juries leads me to be prepared for them to believe anything, provided only that it’s illogical to do so. However, their beliefs are not my worry. Good-bye, Inspector. I have another two P.M.s to carry out and someone else will have to shunt this corpse on. The human race at the moment wisely seems bent on exterminating itself.’ The pathologist hurried out of the room.

  Doherty went through to one of the small rooms, in which Williams was working. Williams, weighing shot in a pair of laboratory scales, looked round.

  ‘Close the door, man. A draught like that upsets everything.’

  Doherty shut the door. He watched Williams add another tiny weight to one pan and then raise both pans by pressing down the central control lever. They rose and quivered slightly before settling into equilibrium. Williams lowered the pans. He wrote in his note-book, after which he carefully emptied the shot into a plastic bag which he packed into a cardboard box. He sealed the box and scribbled a signature on it.

  ‘Any luck?’ asked Doherty.

  ‘Luck? Luck has no part in my work.’

  Hell, thought Doherty, the man’s really pompous today. ‘What I mean sir, is that…’

  ‘Inspector, the science of firearms and ballistics is perhaps the most exact in the whole field of forensic investigation.’

  ‘I’m sure it is, sir.’

  Williams moved away from the worktable and stood in the centre of the room. He thrust his chin forward and, luckily unknown to him, irresistibly reminded the D.I of a bantam cockerel on a dung heap. ‘Inspector, certain facts are inescapable. With this killing the whole of the charge entered the body and on my explicit directions every pellet has been recovered.’

  The pathologist would like to know he had been ‘directed,’ thought Doherty.

  ‘The size of the shot is again number five and there are two hundred and one pellets, weighing just under fifteen-sixteenths of an ounce. On the presumption that a very few pellets have inevitably been irretrievably lost, we have the standard load for a two and a half inch sixteen bore cartridge.

  ‘Sixteen bore?’

  ‘That is so, Inspector.’

  ‘How does this fit in with the cartridges I brought you?’

  Williams turned round, opened a small leather case, and brought out from it seven cartridges which he set up on their bases. Around each cartridge was a tag. ‘Here they are, Inspector. All are two and a half-inch, all are standard loads, and none is a maximum cartridge. All are five shot except for one which is six and a half: incidentally, I do not agree that a half size gives the advantages claimed. The twelve bore cartridges have a shot load of one and one sixteenth and one and one eighth ounces.

  ‘One and one sixteenth ounces hold two hundred and thirty-four pellets, one and one eighth ounces holds two hundred and forty-eight… I’m talking about number five shot, of course. The pathologist is quite certain that it is impossible he has missed as many as thirty-three pellets. Therefore, I can tell you that the deceased was killed by the load from a sixteen bore cartridge.’

  ‘Since his gun was a twelve bore, we can rule out accident?’

  ‘That is an inescapable conclusion.’

  ‘And only two sixteen bore guns were being used.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘Would you expect the average shot, sir, to realise that the size of the gun he was using could be judged from the number of pellets found in a body?’

  ‘I would very much doubt it. And remember, this can only happen when nothing but standard load cartridges are being used. Have you collected every cartridge case found at the dead man’s stand?’

  ‘There were only a lot of pretty old ones.’

  ‘Let me see them, please.’ Williams, for a few seconds, tapped his teeth with his forefinger. ‘In fact, I had better examine every cartridge from every stand so that we can answer any defence allegations of non-standard load cartridges giving a different load of shot.’

  ‘I’ll get on to that right away, sir.’

  Both men stared at the cartridges on the table, two of which were thinner than the remaining five. Only the two brothers had shot with sixteen bore guns.

  *

  Detective Constable Pawley knocked on the brightly coloured door of Abbotts’s house in Yarnley-without. As he waited, he watched a large black bird circle the square steeple of the church and he wondered, in a vague way, what kind of bird it was. The door was opened by a blonde. Pawley, who hadn’t seen her on his first visit to the house, gazed with open appreciation. The D.I had said there was a housekeeper and that she’d obviously kept more than just the house warm, but he hadn’t gone on to say what a perfect dish she was. Probably the D.I was too old to appreciate such things any more.

  ‘Yes?’ said the blonde, distantly. She had no doubt about where the caller’s thoughts were wandering.

  ‘Detective Constable Pawley at your service.’

  ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘A few soft words.’

  ‘I suppose you’d better come on in, then. But you’ll have to hurry, mind. I’m off soon.’

  ‘Off to where?’

  ‘Off out. There ain’t much use to staying here, is there?’

  Pawley stepped into the hall. She shut the door and waited, a disinterested expression on her face.

  ‘We’re trying to find out all we can about Abbotts,’ said Pawley.

  ‘Why go to the trouble? D’you want to know something? He’s left me without a brass farthing. After all I did for him.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘You’ve a filthy mind.’

  ‘I know – but it’s fun.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘Now you’re asking. How long have you been here?’

  ‘Three months and I was a fool, I don’t mind admitting, He liked to chuck his money around in front of other people, but back here with no one to look on what he was doing, he’d worry about spending sixpence. There was a little bracelet in Canterbury I saw and I asked him to get it for me, but would he? Like heck. You can’t get meaner than that.’

  ‘I’d buy it for you.’

  ‘What makes you think I’d give you the chance?’

&nbs
p; ‘Try me out for size,’ he leered.

  She studied him with a cool regard. ‘On a copper’s pay?’ she finally asked with scorn.

  You bitch, thought Pawley appreciatively. ‘Did he ever talk about the Deckers?’

  ‘He used to curse them, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘He never mentioned any kind of secret about them?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Or he never chatted about what Rafferty knew concerning ’em?’

  ‘Look, chum, Joe and me had better things to talk about than the Deckers or Rafferty.’

  If she had only been in the house for three months, she obviously knew nothing about what had happened before the end of July. ‘Any idea whether Abbotts had a housekeeper before you came here?’

  ‘Strike a light, you ask some bloody silly questions for a detective. A bloke like him doesn’t live alone until he’s dead.’

  ‘Who was here before?’

  ‘Someone with the sense to clear out when the going was good. D’you know, a solicitor comes here and gives me a month’s wages and tells me to hop it as if he was ordering a bit of dirt around. I told him just what I thought…’

  ‘D’you have any idea who was here before?’

  ‘And what if I do?’

  ‘Then you can give me her name and address.’

  ‘You’re out of luck, mate.’

  ‘But you just implied you knew.’

  ‘I didn’t imply nothing. What happened is, I found some photos. They was the kind you wouldn’t show to your aunt, and that’s a fact. The girl in ’em was the last housekeeper.’

  ‘What happened to the photos?’

  ‘They’re still around, I suppose.’

  ‘Perhaps you could find ’em?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You’ve no idea where the girl lives?’

  ‘I just know she moved on to Maidstone.’

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘You look after your business and I’ll look after mine.’

  ‘All right, all right. Now suppose you go and find those photos.’

  ‘I don’t know you’re old enough to see ’em,’ she said, as insultingly as possible, before she left.

  *

  In Maidstone, detectives began the laborious task of trying to identify and find the girl in the photographs. Through a mixture of hard work and good luck, they succeeded after only two days. Doherty drove up to Maidstone and, in company with one of the divisional detectives, went to the house where she was living.