“Where did you go next?”
“I just strolled along the street for a little way. I remember looking in at the window of a chemist’s, but I didn’t go in. And then I thought of going into a stationer’s near it.”
“What did you want there?”
“Just some envelopes, but I didn’t bother.”
“So there’s no one in there, or in the chemist’s, who would remember you.”
“No. And I passed an ironmonger’s along there too, but I didn’t want anything.”
“Still, that girl at the counter in the supermarket might remember when you were there.”
“Well, I suppose it’s just possible.”
“It could be useful to you, you know, if someone saw you.”
At that moment Ray suddenly found himself wanting to laugh. It would have been slightly hysterical laughter, but still there was something very funny about the thought that if he had not taken such care not to be noticed by Lucille, she could have given him an alibi now. As it was, he would have to manage without any help from her.
“And where did you go next?” Standish asked.
“Oh, just along the street,” Ray said. “I didn’t notice what it was called. I went on for a bit, then I turned back and walked along to Mrs. Crane’s house and saw all your chaps there.”
“How long were you out altogether?”
“Didn’t I tell you I went out at ten past two and I didn’t notice when I got back? You’ll know that better than I do.”
“That was at five to three. That means you were gone, according to your story, for about three-quarters of an hour.”
“That feels about right.”
After that they brought him a cup of tea and left him quite alone for nearly an hour.
It was long enough for him to start to brood and to lose his earlier optimism, which no doubt was why they left him to himself and was just what they intended. Thinking over the questions that they had asked and the expressions on their faces as they had asked them, he found himself becoming more and more convinced that they believed that he was guilty of the murder. He began to shiver a little though the room was not really cold. Perhaps they were out now questioning the girl in the supermarket and even the chemist and the stationer in case they had caught a glimpse of him outside their windows. But that would get them nowhere. All the same, if things should go really badly for him, he thought of how he could quite easily produce an alibi. He did not want to do it, but it might in the end be the only thing to do.
It was at about eight o’clock that evening that he began to think of it seriously. The girl at the check-out counter had been questioned by then and as they told him when they came back to the room, she had no memory of having seen him. Nor had a number of other people who had been in the store at the time that he claimed he had been there, or loitering outside while Lucille had got on with her shopping. And why should they? Beards were common enough nowadays and he was not a very noticeable sort of man.
“Now,” Standish said, “suppose you tell us where you really went.” He was in one of his friendlier moods and it was easier to respond to this than it would have been if he had been red-faced and shouting. Ray drew a deep breath. He felt that it would be the lesser evil to tell them the truth, or at least some of it.
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t told you everything,” he said.
“Surprise, surprise!” the detective responded heartily. “We didn’t think you had, you know. Might have saved us some trouble if you had, but we thought you’d come to it sooner or later. Now where were you really?”
“Oh, I was in the supermarket,” Ray said, “but it seems to me I’ve got to explain what I was doing there. I didn’t want to. It’s kind of a private thing. I was there, like I said, and then I was outside the chemist’s and the stationer’s and the ironmonger too, but my reason, you see – well, it’s difficult to talk about it, but I was following my wife.”
“Didn’t know you had a wife,” Standish said. “It’s the first you’ve said about her.”
“Because I thought it would strike you as absurd me doing a thing like that,” Ray said. “You see, we’re divorced, but it was never I who wanted that and I had an idea, only an idea, you know, it was never any more than that, that if I tried again now that she’s had time to think things over, she might be ready to think of trying again. And I heard by chance that she’d come to Dillingford and then I saw her again by chance just after I’d come out from Mrs. Crane’s, going into the supermarket and I followed her in.”
“So she can tell us where you were a few minutes after ten past two,” Standish said, sounding exasperated. “Why in hell couldn’t you tell us that straight away?”
“Because she won’t be able to tell you anything.”
“How d’you mean she won’t? Can’t she recognize her own husband when she sees him?”
“You see, I was taking care she shouldn’t notice me,” Ray said. “I didn’t want to speak to her there, I only wanted to find out where she lived. And I’ve grown this beard of mine since we separated and I had on some dark glasses and I always stayed a little way behind her, so I’m sure she didn’t see me.”
“I see.” Standish rubbed a hand along his jaw and stared at Ray thoughtfully. “And you were following her only because you thought you might make things up with her.”
“That’s right,” Ray said.
“You hadn’t any more – well, violent ideas about her, like revenge for ruining your life, or something like that? You didn’t make an afternoon of it? We aren’t going to find another body somewhere, beaten to death?”
“Christ, no!” Ray exclaimed. “She’s as right as rain. Once I’d found out where she lived I went home. I never even got to talk to her. I wanted to think out how I was going to handle things, you see. Wanted to think out just what I was going to say to her.”
“But if there’s any truth in all this, she’ll be able to say if she was really in the supermarket when you say, and where she went next.”
“Yes, of course. Actually she went into the chemist’s, but I didn’t follow her in, then she went into the stationer’s and the ironmonger’s, and then she went home.”
“So if she says she went into all these places at the time you say, it’ll be almost the same as if she’d seen you follow her.”
“Yes, yes, that’s just what I thought.” Ray nodded vigorously. “Only do you have to say...? I mean, do you have to explain to her why you’re asking these questions? Oh, I suppose you do. Pity. It’ll upset the way I’d thought of things, but I dare say it can’t be helped.”
“Don’t see what harm it can do. Come on, give us her name and address. Still calling herself Bagstock, is she, or has she gone back to her old name?”
“I think she’s still Bagstock. And I think the street was called Harkway Terrace, or something like that. And the number was 37.”
“All right. Come along, Bob.” The two men went to the door. “Mind you, Mr. Bagstock, the evidence of a loving wife doesn’t always go down well with a jury.”
The irony in his tone gave Ray a nasty jab. Then he was left alone again.
When they came back about an hour later it was with Lucille. She was still in her old overcoat but had taken off her headscarf and her wonderful hair was loose about her shoulders. Ray stood up when she came in and muttered, “Hallo.”
She gave him a long look and said nothing.
“Do you identify him as your husband, Raymond Bagstock?” Standish asked.
“My ex,” she said.
“My mistake, sorry, your ex. And can you tell us if you saw him this afternoon?”
Her face was cold, as if she were looking at a stranger.
“I haven’t seen him since the divorce,” she said. “That’s over a year ago.”
That was a lie. She had seen him in Birmingham when she had managed to prevent his futile attempt to take off with the children. It prepared Ray for what might be coming next.
“Can you tell us what you did yourself this afternoon?” Standish asked.
“Why should I tell you that?”
“It might help us.”
“Well, I went out shopping.”
“In the supermarket in the square?”
“No, I hardly ever go there. I can’t stand the crowds.”
“Where did you go, then?”
“I went into Marks and Spencer’s and bought some ready-cooked things, that’s all.”
Ray felt sure that it would turn out to be true, but that probably it had been on the day before, and if anyone there remembered her they would not be sure on what day she had been in. And if the detectives searched her lodging they would find some ready-cooked food in the refrigerator.
All the same, he tried to shout, “I tell you, that’s a lie!” But his voice came out a croak. “She was in the supermarket and she bought some vegetables and bread and things and two bottles of whisky. See if there are two unopened bottles of whisky in her house.”
“You’ll find one that I bought at the pub at the corner yesterday, along with one for the old man who lives upstairs, though I only took it up to him this afternoon,” she said. “What would I be doing, buying two bottles of whisky for myself?”
“Did you go into the chemist next to that dress-shop?” Standish asked. She was on less certain ground there, because she might have been remembered in the chemist’s. People tended to remember her hair. But that had been covered by Ray’s old scarf. She shook her head and said,
“No.”
“Or into the stationer’s or the ironmonger’s?”
“No.”
“So you only went into Marks and Spencer’s?”
“Yes.”
Standish turned to Ray and gave him a sardonic smile, as if it amused him to see his alibi go up in smoke.
“Well?” he said.
Ray said nothing. Looking at Lucille, he wondered how he had managed to keep his hands off her all those years except just that once when he had come home unexpectedly and found the children locked into the house, alone and hungry, and presently she had come in from the pub where she liked to go at lunch-time for a drink and a chat. He had bashed her jaw then and she had fallen against the corner of a cupboard and fractured two ribs and that was what had got her her divorce and custody of the children whom she did not love nearly as much as he did. A man given to atrocious violence, he had been called.
“It’s all lies, I’ve told you the truth!” he shouted.
She gave a slow shake of her head. There was no more expression on her face than when she had come into the room.
“Not a word of it.”
“Lucille, for God’s sake – !”
Again the slight shake of her head. Was there a twitching at the corners of her mouth, as if it were the beginning of a smile? But the shake of her head was repeated.
At that point, for some reason, Standish muttered, “Excuse me,” and he and the other detectives went out. Ray felt fairly sure that they would only be where they could hear what the people in the room would have to say to one another when they thought that they were left alone. He tried desperately to think of the right thing to say for them to overhear. Was there any way that he could trap Lucille into telling the truth?
But before he could speak she leant on the table between them and thrust her face towards him.
“They’ll do you for this, Ray, whatever lies you tell,” she said clearly for the men to overhear. “You won’t get away with it. And when you come out the children will be grown up and I’ll have nothing to fear from you.”
“Why do you want them so much?” he asked. “You’re not a good mother.”
“But they were given to me,” she said. “They were given to me because of what a rotten man you are. And now I’ll be able to spend the next few years in peace without watching for you to snatch them. They needn’t even know they’ve got a father, wasting his life away in gaol.”
“But, Lucille, don’t you understand, you’re letting a murderer go free?” he cried. “Don’t just think of me. Someone came into that house through the open door and the poor old soul let him into her room and he smashed her skull and stole her money. And he’ll do it again! Don’t you understand, Lucille? He’ll do it again!”
He was wrong. The murderer was caught that evening. A woman who lived opposite to Mrs. Crane and who at last overcame her reluctance to get mixed up with the police, telephoned them and told them that she had seen a man go into and leave her house at the time that mattered. He lived in a house next but one to Mrs. Crane’s and when he was interrogated was unable to account for the unusually large amount of money he had in his possession.
But Lucille did not know that Ray was wrong and she only smiled at what he said. Perhaps, but for that smile, she would have left the room in safety. The detectives were not there to see the smile, but they heard her scream and when they burst in they found her sprawling on the table with Ray’s hands throttling her. Her neck was broken. So they had a murderer. Ray would never be able to flee with the children now to that villa waiting for them in Spain.
They were taken into care.
THE TRAP
As the refuge which, three days ago, Isobel had decided to find at all costs, it would have been difficult to imagine a more promising place than this small stone cottage.
Even in the fast deepening twilight she could see that the little cottage was all she had dreamed of and more. So it was disturbing for her to discover, as she stepped down from the taxi into the mud of the lane, that she was not feeling any of the relief that she had been expecting.
Instead, it seemed that what had sounded perfect three days ago had all of a sudden turned into a trap from which, when the taxi had disappeared, there would be no escape.
But as she started up the path that led from a low wooden gate to the front door she showed no sign on her face of this bewildered reluctance to go any further. Her smile, as she thanked the driver for bringing her luggage in for her, was cheerful and hopeful.
Smiling back at her, he turned to go.
“Well, I’d say they’re in luck this time, miss. And for Mrs. Buckle’s sake, anyway, I hope you stay longer than the last one.”
He got back into the taxi and drove off. Soon his rear lights were tiny red eyes in the distance.
“The last one – ”
Looking for the doorbell, Isobel told herself that before agreeing to come, she ought to have inquired why the “last one” had left.
She herself had been engaged on the spot when she telephoned. Without references, without experience, indeed, without anything to recommend her but her own statement that she could cook and drive a car, together with her willingness to come at once.
Finding the doorbell, she pressed it. But her new feeling of nervousness slid up into her hand as she did so and the ring was so gentle that, even if everything in the house had been as quiet as in the garden and the people inside had been listening for her to arrive, they might not have heard the brief tinkle.
And clearly they were not listening for her. Through a partly open window she heard raised voices – those of a man and a woman.
They were both talking at once and were both too angry even to be listening properly to one another.
“Please, please!” Isobel heard the woman cry imperiously. “Haven’t I said we’ll take no further action? Haven’t I told you we will not talk about the matter? That seems to me all you have a right to ask!”
“Talk! You won’t talk! You’ve talked too much already. The damage has been done!” the man answered furiously.
“I’ve talked to no one outside this house!” the woman said.
“That I don’t believe!” cried the man.
Quickly Isobel pressed the bell again and in a passion of determination to make the voices stop, kept on pressing it. For it was in order that she need listen to no more such voices and to escape from just such scenes as this that she had come here.
&nbs
p; She was trembling slightly as the sound of her ringing died and the raised voices stopped abruptly. But the flushed young woman who, a moment later, opened the door saw only a slender girl with fair hair and calm grey eyes and a cool look of inquiry on her nineteen-year-old face. It was an oval face, with delicate yet firm features and a soft freshness of texture. And the girl wore a heavy coat, no hat and flat-heeled brown shoes.
“Miss Allen? Oh, heavens, how young you are!” The woman’s voice was still unsteady. “But come in. I’m so sorry there was no one at the station to meet you. I meant to be there, but something came up – ”
She stopped confusedly, snatching a quick glance over her shoulder at something behind her.
She herself was about twenty-five, tall and slim. Her short hair was dark and her skin very white except for the two patches that blazed on her cheek bones. She wore a smartly cut dress of flame-coloured wool and clasped both her hands tightly together, as if she had to do this to stop them striking out at whatever was still absorbing her thoughts, although she was trying hard to concentrate on Isobel’s arrival.
Isobel picked up her two suitcases and brought them into the small hall.
“Are you Mrs. Buckle?” she asked.
“No, I’m her sister, Jean Chantry,” the other girl answered.
There was still an angry glitter in her eyes as she looked Isobel up and down.
“Oh, you’re so young! You didn’t tell my sister that, did you?”
“I don’t think so,” Isobel said. “I don’t think she asked me. Does it matter?”
“But she did tell you she is more or less an invalid, didn’t she? And that you’ll be alone with her here – that I shan’t be staying?”
“She told me she was lame and that her husband died recently,” Isobel said. “She didn’t really say much else about anything.”
“It’s just that it’s rather isolated, you see, and it’s a responsibility looking after someone who can do so little for herself. A responsibility and a lot of work. Didn’t she tell you that?”
“Oh, yes, she told me what I’d have to do,” Isobel answered.
“Well, I don’t understand it – a girl like you, I mean, taking this kind of job. You won’t stay, of course, so you might as well not have come.”
The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries Page 5
