Dead on Arrival

by Dorothy Simpson

  And Steve looked at Thanet with grudging admiration.

  ‘You were taking a bit of a risk going out with Caroline. Weren’t you afraid she’d realise you weren’t Geoff?’

  ‘I had to do it. I needed that alibi. And Geoff had only been out with her once. I thought I could pull it off, and I did.’

  ‘How did you know where she lived?’

  ‘A bit of luck. She lives next door to a girl we both fancied at one time, and when Geoff came round on Sunday, he just happened to mention it, as a bit of a coincidence.’

  ‘How did you know he had a date with her last night?’

  ‘I didn’t. I was just banking on it. I could tell, on Sunday night, that Geoff was pretty taken with her, and knowing he was moving in a week or so, I guessed he’d have arranged to see her again soon. If not, I thought I could always spin her some tale of not being able to wait so long before seeing her again. As I say, I was pretty sure I could pull it off.’

  There was a knock at the door. Detective Chief Inspector Hines was on the phone.

  Thanet and Lineham exchanged glances. Now for it.

  ‘All right, Sergeant, we’ll take a short break. Arrange for Mr Long to have a cup of tea or coffee, will you?’

  Thanet went up to his office to take the call. He didn’t want any distractions.

  ‘Thanet here.’

  ‘Hines. You rang earlier.’

  ‘Yes. Things have been moving rather fast here, sir, and, well, I thought you’d like to know we’ve got your man.’

  ‘What d’you mean, got my man?’

  ‘The man who killed Mrs Jackson, sir.’

  ‘He turned himself in, you mean?’

  ‘Not exactly. But he is definitely the man you’re after.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Thanet? You’re surely not trying to tell me you’ve arrested him?’

  ‘Well … Not exactly, sir. But we have cautioned him and brought him in.’

  ‘You’ve WHAT?’

  Thanet winced and held the receiver away from his ear as Hines started bellowing down the phone.

  ‘What the devil d’you think you’re playing at, Thanet? How DARE you interfere in my case like this?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly your case, sir. You see …’

  ‘What d’you mean, “not my case”?’

  ‘Well, we were …’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re babbling about, Thanet, but get one thing straight. I’m going to have your guts for garters. I’ll be right over.’

  And the phone was slammed down. Thanet grinned at it and gave it a pat, as if it were a particularly obedient dog.

  Lineham put his head around the door.

  ‘What did he say, sir?’

  ‘He wasn’t exactly over the moon, Mike. Come on, let’s go back down to Long. As soon as Mr Hines gets here, we’re not going to get a look in.’

  Long was sunk in gloom, tea untouched.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Hines will be here shortly, Mr Long. But before he arrives, just tell me this. Give me one good reason why I should believe your story that someone else killed Geoff while you were out of the room, and that the idea of changing places only occurred to you after he was dead?’

  ‘Because it’s true! I swear it is!’

  ‘Maybe, but there’s no way of proving it, is there?’

  ‘There’s no way of proving I did kill him, either.’

  ‘True. At present, anyway. So what it’s going to come down to is whether the jury would believe your version or mine. What do you think, Mr Long? Do you think they’ll take the word of a man who, on his own admission, half-strangled a woman and then drove off, leaving her to die, and a couple of days later seized the opportunity of stepping into his dead brother’s wealthy shoes and deceiving everyone – wife, family and police alike – into thinking that he himself was dead?’

  Long stared up at Thanet, obviously assessing the truth of what he had just said, and then slumped back in his chair, as if acknowledging defeat.

  ‘As a matter of interest,’ he said, ‘would it have been more sensible to have left the ashtray where it was?’

  His tone was casual. Too casual?

  Two could play at that game. Careful not to betray his quickened interest, Thanet shrugged. ‘Difficult to tell. I can quite see why you decided to take it away with you. On the other hand, we might have found one or two nice clear prints which could have led us straight to the murderer. So on balance, I’d say that looking at it from your point of view, at the time it was obviously sensible to remove the ashtray, but that now you’ve been found out, if you could wave a wand and magically whisk it back from wherever it is, you would be wise to do so. But as that’s impossible, I think it’s a waste of time talking about it. I think you’d be wiser to concentrate on …’

  ‘But it’s not,’ interrupted Long.

  ‘Not what?’ said Thanet, innocently.

  ‘Not impossible.’

  Thanet pretended enlightenment. ‘Are you saying you didn’t actually dump the ashtray in that skip, along with the jacket and your anorak?’

  ‘That’s right.’ There was a hint of triumph in Long’s voice now, and the beginning of a smile in his eyes.

  ‘So …?’

  ‘I just couldn’t make up my mind, see, whether it would be better to get rid of it or not. So I hid it where I thought it would be least likely to be found.’

  ‘In one of the packing cases full of china, I bet,’ said Lineham.

  Long looked crestfallen. ‘How did you …?’

  Thanet grinned. ‘You can’t do this job for long without getting rather good at that kind of guess. Which packing case?’

  ‘The one marked “FRAGILE. HANDLE WITH CARE”.’

  ‘Keys?’ said Thanet, holding out his hand. By now the men from the auctioneers would have finished, the house would be locked up.

  Long handed them over and Thanet gave them to Lineham, taking him into the corridor outside. ‘Get Carson on to it right away. Tell him – no, on second thoughts, I’d prefer you to do it yourself. You know what we’re looking for. As soon as you find it, take it personally to forensic and stress the urgency. I’ll give them a ring myself, in the meantime. In view of this rather tricky situation with Hines, it would help if we could get our own case cleared up quickly.’

  ‘Like, yesterday,’ said Lineham with a grin.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘You think Long’s telling the truth, then?’

  In the distance there was a sudden commotion. Hines’s voice could clearly be heard demanding to know where Thanet was.

  ‘Not now, Mike.’ Thanet gave Lineham an encouraging little push on the arm. ‘Off you go.’

  Lineham resisted. ‘You’ll be needing some moral support.’

  ‘Mike! I can handle it. Go on, hurry up, or you’ll get tangled up with Mr Hines and you’ll never get away.’

  Lineham capitulated. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘Thanet!’ Hines had spotted him, and such was his single-minded concentration on the object of his wrath that he passed Lineham without noticing him. He charged along the corridor like an angry bull, head down, feet pounding. Thanet could almost see the angry little puffs of hot breath issuing from his nostrils.

  ‘Well?’ he roared. ‘This had better be good, Thanet, or …’

  Thanet had no intention of enduring a flood of abuse from Hines out here, where every word would be public. During Hines’s advance he had opened the door of an empty interview room and now he backed into it. Hines charged in behind him and Thanet shut the door.

  ‘… or you’ll be sorry you ever heard of Marge Jackson.’

  ‘Won’t you sit down, sir?’ Thanet was all courtesy.

  ‘No, I bloody well won’t sit down. I don’t want a chair, I want – I demand – an explanation.’

  ‘And I’m quite happy to give you one. Please …’ Thanet indicated the chair he had pulled out.

  Hines glared at him sus
piciously. ‘Very well,’ he said, sitting down with a thump and folding his arms belligerently. ‘No one can say that I’m not a reasonable man. But, as I said, it had better be good.’

  Thanet launched into his explanation of how he had come to suspect a possible connection between the two cases.

  Hines listened intently, his little piggy eyes glittering with a dangerous light. At the end he grunted contemptuously. ‘If that’s the way you work, Thanet … A load of airy-fairy notions and half-baked guesswork … Anyway, that’s beside the point. The point is that the second, the very second you suspected that your case might be impinging on mine, you should have informed me. As your superior officer, it should have been up to me to decide how to proceed.’

  He stood up with a jerk that almost toppled his chair over backwards. ‘You haven’t heard the last of this, by a long chalk. I shall seriously consider making a formal complaint. Now, where’s Long? I think it’s about time I had a word with him.’

  ‘In interview room 3, sir.’

  Hines opened the door, glanced along the corridor and bellowed, ‘Draycott?’

  The sergeant hurried towards them, almost at a run.

  ‘We’re going to interview the suspect,’ said Hines. And with one last venomous glance at Thanet he and Draycott disappeared through the door of interview room 3.

  Thanet took a deep sigh of relief and felt in his pocket for his pipe. He was sorry for Long. He wouldn’t wish a long session with Hines on to his worst enemy. Then he hurried up the stairs to his office. With luck he could persuade Specks, in forensic, to rush through the tests on the ashtray. He sent up a fervent prayer that they would provide him with some good, sound evidence.

  TWENTY-THREE

  All six houses in Benenden Drive were individually designed, generously proportioned, and set in extensive wooded grounds of an acre or so.

  ‘At least five bedrooms, wouldn’t you say?’ murmured Lineham as he swung into the gravelled drive of ‘Smallwood’ and parked neatly beside the porticoed front door.

  ‘We’re not estate agents, Mike.’

  Manicured lawns stretched away on all sides, bordered by well-tended flowerbeds, and at the far end of the garden beneath a stand of deciduous trees a man was busy raking up fallen leaves and piling them into a wheelbarrow.

  ‘Full-time gardener too, by the look of it,’ added Lineham, undeterred by Thanet’s mild rebuke.

  Thanet did not reply. He had been notified that morning that Harry Carpenter was insisting that he was well enough to go home and that the hospital intended to discharge him. Thanet imagined him now, drifting like an aimless ghost through the empty rooms of the big house which he and his wife must have bought – perhaps even planned and built – with such pride. Carpenter was a self-made man, and this spacious neo-Georgian house would have been for them a symbol of all that he had achieved. Thanet shook his head sadly as he and Lineham climbed the short flight of steps between the white pillars.

  The door was opened by a dowdy middle-aged woman wearing an old-fashioned crossover apron and carrying a duster. She looked worried.

  ‘May we speak to Mr Carpenter, please?’

  ‘Who shall I say?’

  Thanet introduced himself and presented his identification card, which she studied carefully before handing it back.

  ‘You can’t be too careful, these days.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Thanet as she stepped back and gestured them in. ‘How is Mr Carpenter?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘It’s all right. We do know what’s been happening to him, and that he only got back from hospital this morning.’

  She shook her head, her mouth turned down, and with a glance at the door on the left drew them away to the far side of the hall. ‘To tell you the truth I’m ever so worried about him,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Ever since he got back he’s been sitting in there not saying a word. He didn’t so much as touch his lunch …’

  ‘You’ve been with him long?’

  ‘About eighteen months.’

  ‘Since before the accident, then.’

  ‘Yes.’ She shook her head again, mournfully. ‘You’d hardly believe this is the same house. When I first came there was people in and out all day long – Mrs Carpenter knew loads of people, and Chrissie’s friends were forever coming and going. There’d be a dinner party at least once a week and always people here for lunch and tea on Sundays …’ She sighed. ‘It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed it. But now … Ever since Mrs Carpenter died … And then Chrissie, on Tuesday, poor little scrap … The place is like a morgue.’ She clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … Anyway, the point is, I’ve never seen Mr Carpenter quite as bad as this.’

  ‘You really are worried about him, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, before Chrissie died he never lost hope. He kept on saying he believed she’d get better, that he had to believe it, or go mad. He did everything a human being could do, in the circumstances. He got one of them coma kits, so as to see how to go about it, and he’d sit up hour after hour in the evenings, trying to put together the things he thought were most likely to get through to Chrissie – the voices of her friends, the whinny of her pony and the sounds of him feeding, trotting, being groomed … oh, all sorts of things, I can’t tell you. And he’d spend hours at the hospital every day, talking to her, playing her all the tapes …’ The woman was almost in tears by now. She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘If there was any justice in the world,’ she said, ‘Mr Carpenter would have been rewarded for all that effort, all that faith, and Chrissie would be home and running about by now …’

  ‘You were obviously very fond of the family.’

  ‘Oh I was. I am. They’re really nice people. I’ve worked for a lot of families, and I know what employers can be like. But the Carpenters – they were always so kind, so appreciative … You don’t find many like that around these days, I can tell you.’

  Especially self-made men, who’ve probably had to claw and struggle their way up, thought Thanet. Carpenter, then, was that rare creature, a man with sufficient determination to get to the top and the ability to retain his humility when he got there. It seemed unfair that the personal hell he had had to endure for the last year should have been his reward.

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ said the housekeeper, echoing his thoughts. She glanced at the door across the hall again. ‘To be honest, the state he’s in, I’m surprised they let him come home from the hospital. I don’t think he’s safe to be left alone, I really don’t.’

  ‘You don’t live in?’

  ‘Yes, we do. Ron – that’s my husband, he’s the gardener – and me’ve got a self-contained flat in the house, but that’s not the point. I can’t keep an eye on him all the time – what about at night? He’s alone for hours then. He could do anything.’

  ‘You mean, commit suicide?’

  She nodded, lips compressed.

  ‘You really think it’s a serious possibility?’

  ‘You’ll see for yourself … I’m very relieved you’ve come, I can tell you.’

  The poor woman wouldn’t be so relieved when she knew why, thought Thanet as she led them across to the door she had been looking at, and knocked. ‘Mr Carpenter?’

  No reply.

  She tried again. ‘Someone to see you, Mr Carpenter.’

  This time there was a faint response and she opened the door, ushered them in.

  The room was obviously Carpenter’s study. It was luxuriously furnished – Persian rug on the parquet floor, heavy velvet curtains, antique mahogany kneehole desk, opulent swivel desk chair, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves laden with leather-bound volumes, a set of Jorrocks hunting prints. For Carpenter, dust and ashes all, now, thought Thanet.

  A coal fire burned in the hearth and before it, slumped in a green leather wing chair, was Carpenter. Had he chosen this room because it held the fewest memories of his wife and daughter? Thanet wondered.

  ‘Good afternoo
n, Mr Carpenter.’

  ‘So you’ve come at last.’ The man’s speech was slow, almost slurred, as if he had just woken from a long sleep. ‘Thank you, Mrs Epps.’ And he nodded, dismissing her.

  Thanet waited until the door had closed behind her, then said, ‘You’ve been expecting us?’

  ‘I knew you’d get around to it, sooner or later, when you’d eliminated all the other possibilities.’ He paused. ‘You didn’t believe me yesterday, did you?’

  ‘We weren’t sure what to believe. You were very … confused.’

  ‘I know.’ Carpenter eased himself up a little straighter in his chair. ‘Well, I’m not confused now – not, at least, over the part that matters. Do sit down, Inspector … Thanet, was it?’

  ‘That’s right. And this is Detective Sergeant Lineham.’

  When they were seated, Thanet said, ‘Are you saying that what you told us last time wasn’t true?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what I did tell you, last time. Tuesday was still a blur in my mind, then. I wasn’t even sure if I had killed him, until you told me he was dead. But when you did … Well, I was suddenly certain, then, that I had. But I couldn’t remember the details, so I just told you what I thought must have happened, as I’d imagined it happening, over and over again, while I was waiting for it to be time for me to go and see him, on Tuesday.’

  It looked as though they needn’t have bothered to rush through the tests on the ashtray after all, Thanet thought. Carpenter was obviously bent on making a full confession. A clear set of prints had in fact confirmed what Thanet suspected – that it had been Carpenter, the most likely suspect of all, who had delivered that fatal blow to Geoff’s head, thinking him to be Steve.

  ‘One moment, Mr Carpenter. In view of your confusion yesterday, I think it would be advisable to caution you again.’ Thanet glanced at Lineham and nodded.