Gently Where She Lay

by Alan Hunter

  Next, the time factor. Would he have had time enough to commit the crime and dispose of the body? At most, between the time of Mrs Selly’s arrival at the house and the return of his wife there could have been no more than two hours. It may well have been less: there was Pamela. Pamela, who’d gone for a spin in her Mini. After their row Pamela might not have come in early, but probably it would still be earlier than eleven p.m. How much earlier? An aching question, and the one that had echoed through my dreams; but (remembering our first interview), I was not ready to accept that she had walked in on the commission of the crime. It didn’t fit. What was more likely was her return to an empty house, meaning nothing at the time, but becoming dreadfully comprehensible after Selly had asserted her uncle’s guilt. If this were so he’d had less than two hours; but also, if this were so, he was guilty: unless he’d been absent for an unconnected reason which hadn’t come to light. Time enough? Perhaps. It depended on the pattern of the event: on the actual killing following very early on Mrs Selly’s arrival at the house.

  I tossed another grey splinter into the tide-race and watched it begin its journey up the harbour. The pattern of the event: I’d been dodging that issue, wanting equally to establish it and to show it untenable. The latter was easiest. It was clearly implausible that the murder should have taken place in the first few minutes. It would imply malice aforethought, and I couldn’t believe the Major was capable of that. There must have been argument and provocation, leading at last to a homicidal row: the Major would be deep into his reserves by the time he was left staring at the limp body. And then, was he so suddenly resourceful? Throwing off the shock of the deed in action? Able immediately to pick up the body, load it in his car and dispose of it? Very convincing! And in addition, during those hurried and terrible moments, he’d have to find time and inclination, both, to strip the corpse and lay it out . . . I grabbed more driftwood and pitched it in. No, the jury would never buy it. But what about me, would I buy it? Knowing, as I did, that such things happened?

  Because this was my case, the police case, the case for the public prosecutor: here was a man with experience of killing, with opportunity and with an overwhelming motive. Yes, the Major did plan his deed. Yes, he was ready for Mrs Selly. He had lured her into the empty house with a promise to come to an agreement. Once she was there he had wasted no time in pointless argument and fulmination: the crime was committed, the body disposed of, and the Major returned home to dissemble innocence. A strong, simple case, and laced with the forensic poison of perversion: whip, ropes and abundant photographs displayed on the table of exhibits. A winning case, oh yes! The defence merely a delaying action. And the truth of the matter? Not my business: I was only the setter-on.

  I kicked at the driftwood, scattering shards of it and raising sand and papery seaweed. The bright blandness of the morning had a gaiety that oppressed me. The sun was too immaculate and the blazoned sea too guileless: too much innocence in the shore, the sands, the town with its squat, white lighthouse. What could I do? There was a case to make out. Another outrage on the girl would probably complete it. Crush the Major’s feeble offer of an alibi. Impound his car. Invade his house. But yet, yet, if he were innocent – a fool, a pervert, but still innocent – as I must half have thought, heaven help me, when I set him down at the recorder? Because that was the rub: I wasn’t convinced. I could still see the innocent version peeping through – or, more accurately, I could see Vivienne, the Vivienne I’d tried so hard to know. And she was wrong, my Vivienne, wasn’t the woman who fitted the case: one who’d come back after a rebuff and make good her threats from pure malice. Not her style: she was too abject! My Vivienne would have taken no for an answer. She would never have risen from her knees before Miss Swefling to make a second attempt on the Major. What was the end to be? I’d asked him, and the answer was staring me in the face. She’d been defeated: the Major wouldn’t play, and he knew, she knew, the threats were hot air. She’d done for herself. She’d lost the Major along with the girls and everything else. Vivienne was a loser, born a loser; and come to the last throw in the game.

  I breathed deeply. This was my judgement. It was based on premises I couldn’t prove. ‘My Vivienne’ was one more ghost I had striven to recall from oblivion. I was like the man who dwelt in the Gobi and who had heard of trees, but never seen one: who had studied books, photographs, prepared specimens, in steppes where not even bushes grew. But for him one day had come an aircraft to carry him to a sight of his subject, when he had exclaimed in astonishment: ‘Ah . . . ! So that’s a tree!’ For me, that aircraft would never come: I would never echo: ‘. . . so that’s Vivienne!’ My steppes were eternal steppes where I had only statements, photographs, prepared specimens. Premises unproven. And leading where, if not to the Major? The broken woman, setting out with her dog, where had her anguish been about to take her?

  To Selly?

  I stood a little longer with the sealight flashing round me.

  Selly?

  When I met Eyke later, he had an answer waiting for me on a plate.

  He was seated at his desk with a pad before him; and the pad was covered with neat scribble. Also in the office was Detective-Sergeant Campsey, a hefty, untidy-looking young man. They were silent when I walked in. Campsey rose to his feet clumsily. Eyke seemed to come out of a happy reverie: he made to rise, then sat again.

  ‘Sir, I think I’m on to something!’

  I put on a poker-face and sat. Judging from his manner, Eyke was being too modest: already he had visions of a case firmly wrapped-up.

  ‘You’ve been checking with Birmingham?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And Selly has form?’

  ‘Not exactly that.’

  ‘Then what’s the excitement?’

  ‘It’s just this, sir. I think we’ve got a motive that’ll put him away.’

  I grunted. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Two hundred and twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two hundred and twenty thousand. That’s an estimate in round figures.’

  I looked at Eyke. He pleasedly stroked a line beneath the scribble on the pad. He’d wanted to amaze me, and he’d succeeded – here was an angle even I hadn’t thought of!

  ‘And how does this magnificent sum come into it?’

  ‘It was missing from Aplan, Rayner Co. Ltd.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Selly’s old firm. That sum couldn’t be accounted for when they went broke.’

  ‘And you’re saying Selly stole it?’

  ‘Perhaps not the whole sum, sir. But I’m pretty certain he had a finger in it. Especially when you remember his wife worked there too – and she was in accounts for part of the time.’

  I rocked my chair. ‘I’m glad you’re so confident! But it’ll take a little more than that to give us a tie-in.’

  ‘Of course sir. But it does sound promising.’

  ‘Just give me the information you got from Birmingham.’

  Eyke sat a little stiffer and straightened the pad.

  ‘The firm failed in March two years ago. The failure followed a judgement given against them in a thalidomide case involving several children. As a result of the Receiver’s examination a large deficiency was discovered. There was evidence of actuarial manipulation and the illicit conversion of assets.’

  ‘And Selly was suspected of all that?’

  ‘No sir.’ Eyke’s tone was patient. ‘The man the directors tried to put the blame on was their ex-chief accountant, Reginald Aston. He had resigned from the firm a few weeks earlier and then apparently had disappeared. He had sold the house he owned at King’s Heath and closed his bank account, leaving no address.’

  ‘I’d say the directors were being logical.’

  ‘But that wasn’t how the Fraud Squad saw it, sir. Aston had just lost his wife in an aircrash, and there was evidence to show he had taken it very hard. It seems he’d been talking of chucking-up and making a fresh start ab
road, and there was nothing in the books to suggest he knew what was going on.’

  ‘Did they catch up with him?’

  ‘No sir. I don’t think they tried very hard. The picture they were getting was of one or two directors milking the funds before the crash came. The chief accountant was a handy scapegoat, but the man they fancied was Joseph Rayner. He was Chairman of the Board and the managing executive.’

  ‘But he wasn’t charged.’

  ‘Not enough evidence.’

  ‘In fact they didn’t charge anyone.’

  Eyke gestured with his pencil. ‘A clever job, sir. Some of these people know how to work it.’

  ‘Among which elect you’re placing Selly?’

  He pinked a little, but didn’t waver. ‘Yes, sir. I’d say that Selly would be a handy man at converting assets.’

  I shook my head; it was fishing too far afield. We would never hang this one on Selly. If the Fraud Squad hadn’t as much as suspected him, what chance did we have, two years later? And the odds were long there was nothing in it. Only a fool would trust Selly in a matter so delicate. If the milking of Aplan, Rayner had been successful, it was just because its projectors had been no fools.

  ‘I think we’ll forget it.’

  Eyke’s eyes sparkled. ‘Sir, if you’ll look at the pattern for a moment—’

  ‘I am looking at it.’

  ‘But if you’ll let me go over it! The Fraud Squad didn’t know what we know about Selly.’

  ‘We don’t know it either.’

  ‘But it’s near enough a case, sir, and we’d be justified in looking at it from that angle. And if we’re right we can perhaps turn up some evidence that didn’t seem important two years ago.’

  Well, that was possible. ‘All right, then. But remember, it’s just an exercise in probabilities.’

  ‘Understood, sir. And the first probability is that Selly wouldn’t otherwise have married who he did.’

  Silence. I had underestimated Eyke! This was digging into the foundations. All along I had been bothered a little by the incongruity of the match. Now it appeared that Eyke too had quietly brooded over the matter, so that when the occasion arose he could slip it into the argument.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t his sort, sir.’ Eyke sounded modestly triumphant. ‘She wasn’t a raver, she didn’t have money, and you couldn’t call her a social asset. A fellow like Selly might have given her a whirl but you wouldn’t expect him to hitch-up with her – not unless there was a reason that doesn’t appear on the surface.’

  ‘Like two hundred and twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘Like a whack of it, sir, anyway. I’m not trying to say they were in a position to lift the lot on their own. The way I see it is she spotted what was happening and helped Selly to cut himself in, then he was forced to sign her up because of what she had on him. Notice how it all happened at the same time. He married, left the firm, and the firm went bust. And all the time he was flush with money – he paid seven thousand cash for the cottage.’

  ‘You’ve checked that?’

  ‘Yes sir. Paid cash.’

  ‘He may have got it from the sale of his house in Birmingham.’

  ‘No sir, he didn’t. I’ve got his address there. It was a rented flat in Yardley.’

  I nodded: Eyke had been on the war-path. ‘Have you run any other check on his finance?’

  ‘Not yet. But I’d be surprised if he’s earning the seventy or eighty he was swanking about. Yet he’s oozing with money: his clothes, his car, the allowance he was paying his wife. I’d say the signs are there all right if someone wanted to follow them up.’

  ‘But suppose you proved it. Where would that get us?’

  ‘It would get us to Tuesday evening, I reckon, sir. Mrs Selly was fed up with his carryings-on, so she threatened to grass unless he played ball. And Selly wouldn’t take it. He’d done with her. He was paying her off till he got his divorce. She may have wanted him back or a split of the cash, but either way he wouldn’t wear it.’

  ‘So he killed her.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Where and how?’

  Eyke gave me a steady look. ‘In his car, sir. He met her on her walk and invited her to drive somewhere quiet for a talk.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s how it must have been, sir.’

  ‘That’s the way it couldn’t have been.’

  ‘But sir, it fits the facts. He didn’t have much time for it, so he must have driven her straight on to the Common.’

  ‘And asked her to tie up her dog and undress?’

  ‘Sir, we don’t know the dog was tied-up.’

  ‘We know she was naked.’

  ‘But her clothes were with her, sir. It’s likeliest that the murderer stripped her at the spot.’

  I shook my head very definitely. ‘It’s not the likeliest for Selly. Selly would have dumped her and got to hell. Selly had an alibi to catch up with. And the dog was wearing a lead, and the lead was broken.’

  ‘That could have happened—’

  ‘No, listen! What you’ve forgotten is the state of the body. It wasn’t scratched or bruised, and every fingernail was intact. She didn’t struggle, or if she did the killer found some way to prevent it damaging her, and that’s not possible in a car unless the victim is in a strait-jacket. Also suffocation in a car is difficult for simple mechanical reasons. Selly would have strangled her, and it wouldn’t have mattered to him if she was bashed and bruised in a hundred places. So the car is out. If Selly killed her it would have to be at the cottage, and if you think around that you’ll see how improbable it is.’

  ‘But . . . couldn’t she have been out of the car when he attacked her?’

  ‘Can you describe how it was done?’

  ‘They could have sat down . . . then he’d throw his coat over her. . .’

  ‘Instead of strangling her – like you and me?’

  Eyke’s expression was obstinate. ‘Well . . . you could be right sir. But villains don’t always do what’s logical. If you ask me every murderer is kinky. There’s something off-beat about every killing.’

  Too true: but I shrugged it aside. ‘The point is we don’t know how Selly could have done it. And there’s this: if he were scared of his wife grassing, why wasn’t he scared to walk out on her? He wasn’t, and I can give you one reason: to shop him she’d have to shop herself. Nearer the divorce she might have risked something, but until then she’d have sat tight.’

  ‘She’d have got off light, sir.’

  ‘But not off clear. She’d have collected a oncer at least.’

  ‘Perhaps she’d made a deal with him about the allowance.’

  ‘So if she had a deal, why upset it?’

  He shook his head glumly, not convinced. As far as Eyke was concerned, it was to be Selly. I could read it in the straight line of his shoulders and the stubborn set of his mouth. And in my pocket I felt the weight of the spool with its seal and the Major’s signature across it. Produce it now? I held my hand rigid. The spool was a bomb I was still hoping not to throw.

  ‘Very well – if you want to, go ahead. At least we have some new questions to fire at Selly.’

  Eyke nodded at Campsey, who rose lumpishly. We sat in silence and waited for Selly.

  And nothing came of that.

  Selly strode in bumptiously, his confidence unshaken by our brush on the Common. He was wearing a lightweight suit in a shiny, watered material and a mauve damask shirt with a maroon bow-tie. He leered at me and at Eyke, then plumped himself on the chair placed for him. He had the air of a man who comes into a room expecting the company to realign around him.

  ‘What’s new then – have you pinched the General?’

  Eyke’s face was magnificently blank. He took a statement-file from a drawer and laid it open on the desk before him.

  ‘I have here your statement, Mr Selly.’

  ‘If you say so I’ll believe you.’

  ‘The
re’s a point I would like you to clear up for me.’

  ‘Sock it to me. But keep it clean, squire.’

  That was the way it was going to crumble, and I sensed that Eyke could do nothing about it. Selly on form was nobody’s push-over: he needed a type of pressuring Eyke didn’t possess. A hard-seller. You had to wrong-foot him, keep him continually off-balance. But this was Eyke’s picnic: I didn’t propose to intervene.

  ‘You say here you had dinner on Tuesday at The Bull in Eastwich in the company of a Mrs Royce.’

  ‘That’s it. Jill. No bloody mystery about that.’

  ‘And you were in her company all evening.’

  ‘Give or take a trip to the loo.’

  ‘So if she told us different she would be a liar.’

  ‘She’s a liar anyway. What’s the odds?’

  ‘In fact Royce tells us she left you at The Bull and didn’t see you again until nearly ten p.m. That leaves a period of two hours which your statement doesn’t account for.’

  Selly’s laugh was contemptuous. ‘So that’s the jackpot! And of course you’ll believe her before me. She’s a bloody spare-time pro, mate, didn’t they tell you? If you believe her you’ll believe anything.’

  ‘Why would she lie to us?’

  ‘I’ll tell you why. She has to keep in with the pigs, doesn’t she? She’ll tell you anything you want to hear if you give her half a hint. But I was with her, don’t you worry, and my word’s a damn-sight better than hers. So she can get stuffed and so can you. A whore like that doesn’t bother me.’

  ‘Is that your answer?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘You don’t want to amend this statement?’

  ‘Do I hell. It’s the bloody truth. I’ll swear to what’s down there on oath.’

  Round to Selly! He was lying, naturally, but the lie was justified by the circumstances. The truth might have been quite innocent, but if he couldn’t prove it, it would be no use to him. Worse, it would have meant admitting to a lie, and perhaps have led him into a trap. He showed good judgement in thumping the table and casting aspersions on the witness.