Death Line

by Geraldine Evans

  “Ok,” Rafferty said. “For the moment I'll forget that your boyfriend has the convenient habit of drinking himself unconscious, and accept that you couldn't get away.” Forget it, but not believe it, Rafferty muttered to himself. “So tell us about Friday,” he invited. “I assume the boyfriend wasn't a problem that day, too?”

  “No. He had to go back to work on Friday, so I was able to leave early. Jasper had promised that the money would be there for me as early as I liked on Friday morning. He said he'd leave it in the cash box and I was to help myself when I was passing. Just to make sure that I locked the box up afterwards, otherwise Edwin would only nag him. I knew where in his desk he kept the key, of course. Only trouble was, he got himself murdered before I could collect. Just my luck.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, I got to the office early, just after 7.00 a m.” Rafferty nodded. Although it didn't prove anything, it at least fitted with what they already knew. Astell hadn't arrived till 7.30 a m. “I found the place turned upside down, Jasper dead and the window in his office broken. As you can imagine, I was horrified. But, as the debt collectors would be even more horrifyingly unpleasant if I didn't pay them as I'd promised, I looked to see if my money was still there. To my astonishment it was. I took it and left. After that, it just seemed easier all round to pretend I'd never been there at all.”

  It had all come out very pat, thought Rafferty. But then she'd had plenty of time to concoct her story. He stared at her. She stared back, bold as you please, and without a hint of shame at her callous actions. God, he thought, in unwilling admiration, the wretched woman had more front than Brighton. She had lied about her whereabouts on the morning Moon's body was found, lied again about the money, yet still she seemed to think they should believe her now.

  According to Mercedes Moreno, Moon had begun to regret employing Ginnie Campbell. If that was true, how likely was it that he would be willing to lend her a thousand pounds? It seemed far more likely that she'd asked, been refused and vented her frustration in the time-honoured way before helping herself to the cash. From what they knew of the boyfriend, his alibi wasn't worth the oxygen he had used up talking about it. How could it be, when the betting was that he had spent half the evening passed out on the settee?

  Ginnie Campbell was in debt up to her ears and beyond, being pressed by loan sharks; in such a situation that grand would have been very tempting. Rafferty debated what to charge her with; interfering with the course of justice; leaving the scene of a crime; robbery; brass-faced cheek or just plain murder? However, he confined himself to warning her not to even think of attempting a flit and then they left.

  “It'll be interesting to find out if Lilley's turned up Hadleigh's portfolio,” said Rafferty as they walked back up the path to the car, “especially now we know he didn't take the money. I also think a little digging into his friendship with Jasper Moon might prove rewarding. Art lessons or no, there's something there that doesn't jell. Hadleigh's hiding something, and I don't think it's murder. He seems – I don't know – ashamed, and I doubt turning the screws on Moon would cause such an emotion. I want to find out what has.”

  Rafferty opened the cell door. “Come along, Mr Hadleigh. We'd like another little chat.”

  This time, he proceeded more cautiously. Part of Hadleigh's story checked out, and, although that didn't mean that Hadleigh couldn't still have murdered Moon, it made his story that bit more believable.

  “You'll be glad to know that we've found your portfolio,” he told him. “Including several paintings of Jasper Moon. They were even signed.” Rafferty produced paper and pen. “Maybe you'd like to reproduce the signature for me?” Hadleigh snatched the pen and signed, as requested. Rafferty got Llewellyn to take them to Lilley to check against those on the paintings. But Hadleigh's eagerness to give his signature indicated they would match, Rafferty realised gloomily, as he felt the last hopes of his open-and-shut case sliding away. “You've got quite a collection,” he remarked. “Some of it's pretty good, not that I'm an expert, of course.”

  He expected a sneer from Hadleigh at that. Instead, Hadleigh said simply, “Jasper was a good teacher. He always was. I didn't kill him. I had no reason to. You don't understand. I...”

  “Suppose you help me to understand? From where I'm sitting you still had a very good reason for killing him – that assault on you when you were a boy.”

  “I didn't kill him, I tell you.” His glance evasive, Hadleigh mumbled, “And that business happened a long time ago. If I'd wanted to kill him I could have done it before now. I've known who he was for ages.”

  “Okay, so if you didn't kill him, why did you run away? If you were such great friends, why didn't you phone the police when you found his body?”

  Hadleigh began to twist an initialled signet ring round and round on his little finger. “I needed time to think. Can't you imagine what a shock it was to me to find him like that? I could see he was dead, and I just panicked, I suppose. I knew my prints must be all over the place. I thought it was only a matter of time before you found out about the court case years ago and put two and two together to make five. I didn't kill him,” he repeated. “That's the last thing I'd be likely to do. Especially as...”

  There was definitely something odd here, Rafferty decided. It was as if Hadleigh was trying to convince them that he had no grudge against Moon-Hedges. Yet how could that be? “Especially as?” Rafferty repeated. “Especially as he was making it worth your while to keep quiet and throwing art lessons in as a bonus? Is that what you were going to say? It must...” He paused as Terry Hadleigh broke into a harsh laugh that held no trace of humour. “Perhaps you'd like to share the joke?” Rafferty invited.

  The laughter stopped as quickly as it had begun. He no longer attempted to put on the earlier tough guy act, but glanced indecisively from Rafferty to Llewellyn and back again, bit his lip, and then blurted out, “He never touched me when I was a boy. I lied about what happened all those years ago.” He raised large, pale blue eyes. They had a fixed, staring quality that would have been intimidating in a larger man. Rafferty supposed that cool stare had helped him survive in a dangerous profession, had given an impression that steel existed within the emaciated frame.

  “I lied and went on lying. It seemed easier that way. But how could I admit it? How admit it was a case of 'like father like son', after all the unhappiness my father had caused mum?”

  “Are you saying your father was homosexual?”

  Slowly, at first, as if he spoke of something that had been kept in the dark cellar of his mind and was unused to daylight, Hadleigh began to explain. But as he continued, his words began to tumble over one another, as if he was relieved to be able to unburden himself. “I think my father was terrified by his own feelings and went overboard in the opposite direction to deny they existed. He managed to build himself up quite a reputation as a ladies' man, but it never quite rang true to me. My mother must have suspected. I know she came to despise him. She used to call him a poor excuse for a man. I didn't want her to think the same about me. That's why, when they found Hedges – Moon – and me together, I kept quiet about what had really happened.”

  Hadleigh looked sorry for himself as he met their appalled expressions, as if the world had unaccountably ganged up on him. “It wasn't my fault,” he insisted. “I didn't want it to happen like that. I had no choice. She-she put words in my mouth, didn't she? I suppose she couldn't bear to face the truth, so, of course, I had to be innocent. I didn't want them to press charges, but she insisted. How could I have told her she'd got it all wrong? That I'd been the one who had made advances and been rejected.”

  The old-fashioned terms gave a comical, music-hall aura to Hadleigh's story. Rafferty tried to imagine Moon as some innocent Victorian miss compromised by an unwanted suitor, but found it impossible. He'd been a grown man, an experienced teacher, surely fully capable of repelling a young lad's impetuous experimenting?

  Hadleigh must have read
what was in his eyes. “You don't understand,” he told him. “I deliberately set up an opportunity to be alone with him. I stayed behind at school that night as I'd managed to persuade him to let me help sort out the art store room. Of course, at school, he kept his inclinations quiet, but I knew. He was about thirty then, yet he'd never married. I followed him home once and watched through the windows. There was another man there. They were kissing. But even if I hadn't seen that, I'd have known he was homosexual. There was something about him I recognised because my father and I had it too. He'd always been my favourite teacher. I-I wanted to experiment and he seemed the perfect one to experiment with.”

  He paused for a moment before going on. He was careful not to meet Rafferty's eyes again and kept his gaze glued to the table. Hadleigh swallowed hard, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing up and down like a toy yacht on a pond, his voice now reduced to little more than a whisper. “But he was appalled when I tried to kiss him. I felt dirty, perverted, angry. I wanted to hurt him in return. Until then, I'd been so set on my plans that I didn't give the cleaners a thought. But I've always had good hearing and when I heard them come into the art room I decided to make him sorry for throwing my feelings back in my face. I began shouting and crying and loosened my clothing. Jasper tried to restrain me – that's how I got the bruises on my arms.”

  His voice turned pleading, now, as if desperate to have them understand. “If I'd given a moment's thought to the consequences, I'd never have done it. I just acted on impulse; one I've regretted ever since. But I loved him, you see and he'd hurt me. I couldn't help myself. I came to love him even more, lately.” Him or his money? Rafferty wondered. “I hoped he might come to love me, too. Sometimes I thought he did, but he never once...” His voice trailed away and he sighed. 'I was never able to bring myself to tell him I loved him. I was scared he'd reject me again. Each time I tried, I'd see again the horrified look in his eyes as I tried to kiss him all those years ago; how appalled he looked when that storeroom door opened.

  “I'd locked it behind me, of course, as a precaution, and put the key in my pocket, but the cleaners had a key, as they kept some of their cleaning stuff in there.” His head hung dejectedly between his coat-hanger thin shoulders. 'Anyway, when my mother was called to the school, I had to go on lying. How could I tell her the truth? Only, after it all happened, the court case and everything, I felt differently. I wanted to hurt her. So I started to thieve.

  “Afterwards, I felt sorry for him. I wanted time to go backwards, as if it had never happened. Only it didn't. The case had been in all the papers and even though my name hadn't been published, enough people knew I had been involved for word to get round. And then, of course, my mother attacked him after the court case.” That was the first Rafferty had heard about it. He presumed it had been kept quiet. That would be something else that might be worth looking into. 'How could I have said it was all untrue after that?

  “The headmaster was all for hushing it up. It only came to court because mum over-reacted. She had hysterics when the headmaster seemed to believe that Jasper might be telling the truth when he said he had done nothing, that I was the one who... I think mum wanted to punish someone for the way my father had treated her, for all those years of humiliation. Any man would have done.”

  “It doesn't explain why Moon agreed to give you tuition in art,” Rafferty objected. “It doesn't explain it at all.”

  Hadleigh seemed surprised at Rafferty's comment. “Surely, you can see that when I bumped into him in Elmhurst and discovered he lived here, enough years had gone by for him to forgive me. He even understood my feelings, why I'd done what I did. He told me he'd found his homosexuality difficult to come to terms with when he was young, had even tried to deny it by having one or two affairs with women, but it was no good. Anyway, by the time I met him again, he was rich, successful. And he felt everyone deserved a second chance to make good. He decided to give me that chance.”

  Hadleigh smiled, adopting again the cocky pose he had assumed when first interviewed, but now, his breast beating over, with far more success. His smile revealed small, neat teeth, their prettiness spoiled by the marks of decay between them. “You could say I'd done him a favour. If it hadn't been for me, he'd have still been teaching in some crummy school, and would probably have been heading for his first nervous breakdown.”

  As Hadleigh seemed to have forgotten the little matter of Moon's murder in his bout of self-justification, Rafferty bluntly reminded him of it. “Instead of which, he's dead. Some favour. He must be grateful.”

  “It's not my fault he's dead,” Hadleigh snapped. The bright blue eyes were resentful. “I didn't kill him. Why should I? I had no reason to.”

  “So you say. Still, it's convenient, isn't it, that you're willing to "confess" to telling lies now about Moon's supposed assault? Why should I believe you?”

  Hadleigh stared at him. “Christ, do you think this is easy for me? Can't you see that I wouldn't be telling you macho bastards all this now if there was any other way to convince you I had nothing to do with his death?”

  Rafferty stared back, unwilling to believe him. But Hadleigh's indignant aggression had the ring of truth. “Your mother said you found his body about 8.30 p m. Is that true?” Hadleigh nodded. “How many people knew about these art lessons?”

  “Only Jasper and me. He preferred it like that. His lover was inclined to be jealous and would only cause a scene if he knew. The last thing I wanted was to give him more problems.”

  “Did Moon ever tell you why he opened his consultancy so close to his old haunts? After the court case, I'd have thought he would have wanted to stay as far away as possible.”

  Hadleigh nodded. “Jasper used to have his business in London, but when Astell became a partner and worked longer hours, his wife started complaining – she's a sickly sort,” he quickly explained, “and too attached to her old home to move. She didn't like Astell commuting and returning home late in the evening, so when Jasper learned of her complaints, he told Astell to look for premises in Elmhurst. The court case had happened years ago. He'd altered a lot physically, put on weight, dyed his hair, grown a beard. He'd even changed his name, so he thought he'd be safe. And he was. Apart from you, no-one ever connected Jasper Moon and Peter Hedges.” He paused. “Unless you count whoever sent Astell's wife those newspaper cuttings about the case.”

  “Cuttings?” Rafferty repeated. “What cuttings?”

  “The ones my mother found lying around their house. If it hadn't been for them and Sarah Astell she might never have realised that Peter Hedges and Jasper Moon were one and the same.” He frowned. “Funny that.”

  Rafferty was sorry to discover that Ellen Hadleigh had told them more lies. “You're saying that your mother knew who Moon was before he was killed?”

  “Yes. Why?” Hadleigh's mouth twisted. “Did she say something different?”

  “Never mind. When did she see these cuttings? Was it recently?”

  “I've no idea. I hadn't seen her for weeks before I turned up at her place Thursday night, and she started on me like a crazy woman. It was only when I told her that Moon was dead and I looked like being in the frame for his murder that she stopped.” He grinned. “That shut her up right enough.”

  “Did you ever tell your mother the truth about the assault?”

  “Of course not.” A note of self-pity was evident in Hadleigh's voice as he went on. “She wouldn't have believed me, anyway. Don't you know I'm mother's blue-eyed boy who can do no wrong?” He gave another humourless laugh. “There was no point. I knew that well enough.”

  Lilley popped his head round the door. Rafferty halted the interview and went into the corridor. “Well?”

  “As far as I can tell, the signatures on the paintings and that slip of paper are the same. Do you want me to get them checked out further?”

  Rafferty shook his head. “No. Leave it. For once in Hadleigh's life, I think he's telling the truth.” He dismissed Lilley and returned
to the interview room.

  “I don't suppose you have any idea who might have sent these cuttings to Mrs Astell? And why?”

  Hadleigh shook his head. He seemed genuinely bewildered that an attempt had been made to rake up a scandal that was nearly thirty years old. What on earth was the point of it? Rafferty wondered. And why send them to Mrs Astell of all people? Surely, Ellen Hadleigh was a more obvious recipient? On a sudden impulse, as he walked to the door, he asked, “By the way, I suppose you know who Moon used to buy his bent gewgaws from?”

  Without pausing to think, Hadleigh nodded. “It was Danny Lewis.” It seemed his soul-bearing had given him a taste for telling the truth. Rafferty didn't expect it to last. “Jasper told me he always bought from Danny.” Hadleigh gave a taut grin. “Said us fags should stick together.”

  Rafferty supposed he should be grateful that the news ended one line of enquiry. Because Danny Lewis had been residing at Her Majesty's pleasure in Elmhurst Station cells from Thursday afternoon till the following morning. On a charge of receiving. A doubly apt charge it now appeared. Danny Lewis had kept his homosexuality very quiet, as it was the first Rafferty had heard of it. But even his earthy humour failed to find much cause for amusement in the double-entendre.

  Llewellyn had remained pretty much a silent observer during the interview. He sometimes preferred that and Rafferty had thought little of it. But as they closed the door and walked away, he discovered that his sergeant had been occupied in working up yet another theory.

  “Did you know that there's a body of opinion amongst psychologists that a boy who is brought up by a mother embittered against men may try to compensate by fostering the more feminine side of his character?”

  Rafferty, after a few moments absorbing this and translating it into plain English, asked, “Are you saying he may turn out bent?”