“We don’t expect anything. We’re merely searching all the obvious places for a shoe.” Cathart lied easily. “The murderer wore a plimsoll which left a fairly easily distinguished mark.” He finished his drink and put the glass down on a small table. “You’ve nothing more you’d like to tell me, Mr. Plesence?”
“No.”
“Well, thanks for the drink.” Cathart stood up and Quenton followed suit. “I’m afraid we shall have to disturb you again sometime. Don’t bother to see us out.”
The two detectives left.
David went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured him
self another and much stronger whisky. He turned to look through the window at the detectives as they climbed into the car, which drove off.
“David...” began Patricia, then stopped.
“What?” he asked, harshly.
“Why didn’t you tell them? Why didn’t you say Catalina begged you to go to the hotel last night and then never turned up?”
“I...I couldn’t.”
“Because she was your wife? For God’s sake, David, you’ve got to think of just you. She killed the wife just as she poisoned the husband. She must have done. And why did she beg you to go to the hotel if it wasn’t to try to implicate you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must do. She’s insanely jealous. You saw her when she found us living here together. Her pride was hurt so much she was at screaming point. You’ve got to forget any sense of loyalty.”
David did not answer. Even though Catalina had divorced him, she had been his wife and a strange sense of loyalty — or was it, part of his mind asked, fear — held him back from admitting what was so palpably the truth.
“Will you go and tell the detective she threatened you?”
“But if Catalina didn’t...”
“Let the police sort out the dids and the didn’ts.” Patricia knew only one loyalty — loyalty to David.
Cathart drove back to the police station and went up to his room. He telephoned the desk sergeant and said he wanted to see Detective Sergeant Herald in double quick time.
After replacing the receiver, he began to pace the room. He was satisfied, judging the other’s reactions and behaviour, that Plesence had been to the hotel the previous night. Soon, he would learn whether any of the finger prints on the cigarette case matched the one found on the murder knife. The next move would be to swear out a search-warrant and search Frogsfeet Hall in order to find out whether Plesence had a suit whose material matched the thread found in the hotel bedroom. Things were falling into place yet, perversely, that worried him because they seemed to be falling into place so slickly. Another worry was the fact that Mrs. Cabbot had been slashed to death with what must have been maniacal fury.
He sat down and lit a cigarette. On his desk were papers to be signed, papers to be read, and an annoying typewritten note from the divisional superintendent. Other crimes didn’t stop because murder was committed and although a D.I. was expected to give all his time and energies to solving the murder it seemed as if his superiors expected him to give an equal amount of time and energy to clearing up the rest of the crime.
There was a knock on the door and Detective Sergeant Herald, carrying a leather case, came in.
“I was about to sit down for the evening with my shoes off, coat off, and tie undone,” said Herald, with the easy familiarity of a man who had been in the force a long time and knew he had gained all the promotion he was likely to gain.
“Then you’ve had a chance to learn how the other half of the world lives.” Cathart took the cigarette case, still in its plastic case, from his pocket. “There are some prints on the case. See if you recognise any of ’em.”
The detective sergeant put his case down on the desk and opened it. He took out a bottle of dark-coloured powder and a camel’s-hair brush. He brushed the powder over the two surfaces of the case, blew the surplus powder away, picked up a small magnifying glass and examined the set of prints that had appeared. After a while, he went back to the case and brought out of it a large photograph, which he put on the table and studied. “The same,” he said. “Exactly the same as the print on the knife. Who is it?”
“Plesence.”
“Funny how the amateurs still haven’t cottoned on to the danger of finger-prints, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Even professionals did the strangest things when under the stress of doing a job, thought Cathart, but to leave the murder knife behind when it had been used with an ungloved hand seemed incredibly stupid. Still, if people weren’t stupid, they wouldn’t be caught.
“One other thing. That print on the knife — it’s blurred, as if material had been pressed on to it but not material with any appreciable pattern.”
Cathart made no comment. He looked at his watch. There was still time to go to one of the J.P.s to swear out a search-warrant.
David stood in the hall of his house and watched the two detectives and two uniformed police constables climb the stairs. He felt both anger and fear. To see men trample through the house against his will was to suffer the utmost invasion of his privacy: to see them go upstairs was to know that they expected to find proof of what they so clearly suspected.
Patricia took hold of his hand. “They won’t find anything, David,” she said, in a low voice.
He looked at her. She was terrified they would uncover something incriminating. “Shall we go up?”
“Yes,” she answered harshly.
They went upstairs, stood on the landing, and watched the men search the five spare bedrooms, the two bathrooms and the two lavatories. Then the men entered the main bedroom. Patricia felt David tense. She gripped his arm. “Please, darling, please keep calm,” she whispered.
He looked through the doorway and watched the police pull back the bedclothes of the double bed. The humiliation made his cheeks flush. Were they going to pry and poke everywhere: was nowhere sacred?
One of the detectives crossed to the built-in cupboards. He opened the first one and after a short while brought out a Harris tweed suit which he handed to the D.I.Cathart examined the suit, then came across to the doorway. “Is this yours, Mr. Plesence?”
“Of course it is,” snapped David. “Who else d’you think lives here? D’you like being a Peeping Tom? D’you get a thrill from searching our bed, from opening the drawers, from examining the underclothes?”
“We’ve a job to do,” said Cathart, for once sufficiently angered to show it, “and we do it as pleasantly as we can. We’re taking this suit with us.”
“Why?”
“To make certain tests.”
“What kind of tests?”
“For blood. Mrs. Cabbot bled very severely.”
David shivered.
One of the uniformed constables came up to Cathart and handed him a small lace-edged handkerchief. The D.I. smoothed it out and examined both sides. He looked up. “What are your initials, Mrs. Brakes?”
“My...my initials?”
“That’s right.”
“PM B.”
Cathart addressed David. “And what are Mrs. Plesence’s initials?”
“C M M P.”
“Thank you. This handkerchief has the initials M C woven in one corner.”
“M C?” queried Patricia, unable to see any significance in them.
“Marion Cabbot,” replied Cathart.
On Tuesday morning, Cathart reached the police station at eight-thirty. There was a message waiting for him — would he see the divisional superintendent. He went down to the latter’s office and the superintendent said that in view of the seriousness of the crime situation, wasn’t eight-thirty a bit late to start work? Cathart replied that he didn’t think so since he’d not ceased work until after midnight the night before. The superintendent looked annoyed, but moved on to other matters.
When, twenty minutes later, Cathart returned to his office, he was told that Mrs. Brakes wanted to see him and was in one of the interview rooms. He
asked the constable to show her up to his office.
Patricia spoke as soon as she stepped into the room. Her voice was sharp and the lines in her face were deeper than before. “You’ve got to understand the truth,” she said, not bothering with any form of greeting.
“Which is, Mrs. Brakes?”
“David didn’t kill that woman any more than he killed the husband. He couldn’t have done.”
“They were both murdered by someone.”
“She murdered them.”
“She?”
“Catalina. She’s mad. When she turned up at the house and discovered I was living there with David, she lost control of herself. Did he tell you she threatened him?”
“In what way?”
“She swore she’d make him pay for what had happened. This is her ghastly, twisted way of getting her own back.”
“Have you any proof that Mrs. Plesence killed either Mr. or Mrs. Cabbot?”
“Why did she make him go to the hotel if she didn’t set out to inculpate him?”
“Hotel?”
“The one where that woman was staying.”
“You’re talking about last Sunday, of course?”
“Yes, yes. He got the telephone call...” She came to a sudden stop. “Oh, my God!” she whispered.
Cathart spoke quietly and sympathetically. “I knew Mr. Plesence had been in the Swan Hotel on the night of the murder, Mrs. Brakes. One of the staff saw him there and has since identified him.”
“Do you...Do you swear that’s the truth? I couldn’t live with myself if...”
“It’s the truth.”
“Even if he was there, he didn’t kill her.”
Cathart was silent.
“She telephoned him and pleaded with him to meet her at the hotel. He waited there, but as she didn’t turn up, he left. Can’t you see, she trapped him into going there?”
“Can you tell me what suit he was wearing Sunday evening?”
“Suit?”
“Yes.”
“Why d’you want to know?”
“Was it the Harris tweed we took from the bedroom?”
“What’s it matter what suit he was wearing?”
“A thread from a Harris tweed suit was found in the room in which Mrs. Cabbot was murdered.”
“He was wearing a light grey suit. D’you understand that?” she said desperately. “A light grey suit. Look, he wouldn’t wear a Harris tweed in the middle of summer. Why can’t you see the truth?”
“What is the truth? How did his finger-print come on the murder weapon? How was this weapon the old carving knife that he used for gardening?”
She put her hand up to her mouth. Her face was white. “He...he could explain all this if only he weren’t loyal to her, just because she was his wife. He’s so loyal, even where no one else could be, that he refuses to believe what’s staring him in the face.”
“One thing’s obvious, Mrs. Brakes. However loyal he may be, your loyalty can’t be questioned,” said Cathart. And it was only after he had spoken that he realised she might think his words were ironic.
CHAPTER X
David lay on the cell bunk and stared up at the ceiling. The plaster was flaking and a large section, immediately above him, looked as though it was about to come crashing down.
Life, he thought, with impotent anger, had a vicious habit of kicking you hardest just when you believed it was treating you well. Catalina had made his life a miserable hell and destroyed their marriage. Then he had met Patricia and she had brought him happiness. In the end, Catalina had decided to obtain a divorce and he had been able to see a future in which he’d be able to marry Patricia. It seemed as if life was treating him well — an illusion soon shattered. Life had merely been setting him up in order to kick him down the harder and trample him in the mud.
The trial was to-morrow. His counsel said he must not be too downhearted, but both Gretnor and Illington had an unfortunate habit of pointing out the strength of the prosecution’s case. Still, Gretnor was a fighter, many said the best fighter at the Bar.
He remembered how he had tried not to accuse Catalina of deliberately inculpating him because of a totally unnecessary sense of loyalty. In the end, he’d realised how right Patricia was and he’d told the police all he knew, crossing all the Ts and dotting all the Is. By then, the police didn’t want to know.
At the preliminary hearing before the magistrates he’d listened to the evidence with a sense of incredulity as point after point was made that incriminated him. At one stage, he’d shouted out the truth. With ponderous pomposity, the chairman of the Bench had said that such an outburst could do him nothing but harm and if he were innocent, this would be proven. But would it? How could he explain away that it had been his knife with his finger-print on it? How could he explain away the thread from his suit, found in the murder bedroom? Catalina must have planted this false evidence, but how could he prove that? Further, as counsel had quickly pointed out, what would the jury think of a man who blamed everything on to his wife but could produce no proof to back up those accusations?
He cursed violently. His mind was repeatedly filled with pictures of Patricia and he imagined her mental distress and thereby suffered so much more than he would have done had he worried only about himself. Suppose...suppose he could not prove his innocence? What would she do? She had lost her husband in cruel circumstances: if she now lost him, David, just before they’d planned to get married, what would the shock do to her? He lit a cigarette. The agony of mental suffering was like a white-hot knife gouging its way deeper and deeper into his mind.
“Goddamn it,” said Danby in his office at county H.Q., “what d’you want? A cine film of him slashing the woman to bits?”
Cathart wearily shrugged his shoulders. He looked round the room and met the gaze of the detective chief inspector who was at his desk. The look plainly told him he was a fool to go on arguing. He went on arguing. “What’s the motive, sir?”
“Since when have you had to show the motive before a case can be brought? There’s a motive here, all right. The trouble is, neither you nor your men have been able to turn it up.”
“Or imagine what it can be.”
“Look, Fred, as far as the legal boys are concerned, there’s enough evidence to take him to court. There may be some weak points. There usually are. We tried to clear them up and without success. But as you’ve been told more than once, with the evidence that’s been turned up an action had to be brought. It’s been brought, the magistrates decided there was a case to answer, and to-morrow Plesence starts answering it.”
“If the wife faked the evidence...”
“Then what’s her motive?”
“Damned if I know, sir.”
Danby stabbed the air with his forefinger. “Haven’t you yet learned to take the evidence as you find it?”
“The killing was done by someone in a frenzy. Plesence surely isn’t that kind of character: his rages would be far more controlled.”
“Are you a qualified psychiatrist, able to guarantee another man’s actions at all times and under all conditions?”
“No, I’m not. But what about the evidence? It was all very obvious, just lying around the place.”
“So?”
“So it could have been planted by someone very anxious it was turned up.”
“Fred, break it up. Haven’t you investigated any other crimes where there’s been plenty of evidence lying about?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And wasn’t that evidence left there by a criminal who either panicked, was too stupid, or too shocked, to realise what he was doing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then?”
“It’s a feeling I’ve got.”
“Take a couple of aspirins.’
Cathart slumped back in his chair. The evidence all added up and the legal experts had said a case had to be brought. It had been brought. But...He thought of Catalina and the way in which she’d been so eager
to testify against her husband over the death of Cabbot and he contrasted that with the way in which Plesence had been so very reluctant to accuse his wife. Yet, his mind asked, had that reluctance been genuine? Plesence was a damned clever man and the reluctance could have been simulated in order to make his guilt seem the more unlikely. Perhaps his cleverness only failed him after he’d slashed Mrs. Cabbot to death and he was shocked by the reality of what he’d done, shocked by the sight of the dead woman...
Danby leaned forward. “I’ll give you one thing, Fred. That suit worries me. Why wasn’t there blood on it? Could he have stripped first, before he slashed her to bits?”
“She wasn’t exactly the kind of woman to watch in silence a man strip. She’d have called for the manager the moment the first button was undone.”
“Then why wasn’t there blood on the suit?”
“Quite,” said Cathart. “And why a Harris tweed in the middle of summer?”
“But hell, man, look at the weight of the rest of the evidence!”
Criminal cases were heard in the larger court. It was an ornately built courtroom, ugly by modern standards of taste. Being large, it was far too cold for comfort in winter, but in summer it remained cool.
Early July had been cold and wet, but on the 27th, when the case started, the day was cloudless and hot.
Mr. Justice Fletcher listened to the opening address for the prosecution and from time to time he made notes. He was a man of medium build, relatively young for a High Court judge, with a face that was lined and almost cruel looking: he was, however, a compassionate man when compassion was needed. Due to an irritating, but not serious, skin disease his cheeks were heavily mottled, a fact which gave rise to the rumour that he drank heavily. He was an intellectual who brought to the Bench an inquiring and humane mind and he was far more concerned with administering justice than with making certain the law was strictly applied.
Prosecuting counsel’s opening speech was a long, but very fair one. He emphasised the weaker points in the case as well as the stronger ones. It was his invariable habit to present a case exactly as it was, with no attempt to weigh any piece of evidence in favour of the prosecution. This attention to detail and impartiality made him a deadly prosecutor in every case in which the accused was guilty.
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