Six Feet Under

by Dorothy Simpson

  “But why finish her off? I can see Mrs Selby trying to get her bottle back, but even if she was drunk I honestly can’t see her smothering an unconscious woman, can you?”

  “I suppose not,” said Lineham reluctantly. “And then, of course, she’d have had to get the body across the road and into the garden of number two, somehow. I shouldn’t think she’d be strong enough.”

  “And she’d still have had to drink herself into a stupor before Susan got home. There just wouldn’t have been time. Unless Susan is lying too, which I don’t think she is.”

  “She could have disposed of the body later?”

  “Then where was it in the meantime? No, it just doesn’t feel right.”

  “But none of this applies to Major Selby, does it, sir? I mean, I shouldn’t think he’d have had any scruples about finishing Carrie off, would he, not from what you say of him? If she’d been blackmailing him, he might have thought it the ideal opportunity to get rid of her.”

  “He could have hidden the body in the stables,” Thanet said. “Then he could have waited until everyone was asleep, carried her across the road …”

  “… and dumped her in the privy at his own convenience,” Lineham finished eagerly. “Do you think that’s how it could have happened?”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” Thanet said. “Or committed to any one idea yet. There are too many other possibilities. Carrie could have got knocked out in a struggle with Mrs Selby, but my guess is that Mrs Selby would then have departed in triumph with her bottle and proceeded to drink herself into oblivion. Then when Major Selby arrived home he could have found Carrie unconscious and seized the chance to put an end to what must have been a pretty intolerable situation for a man like him. Anyway, let’s see what he has to say for himself.”

  They had arrived at Stavely’s and were quickly ushered into Major Selby’s office. The Major was standing behind his desk. He gave his secretary a terse nod and the second she had left the room exploded into outraged speech.

  “This is intolerable!” he said. “Absolutely intolerable!”

  “What is, Major Selby?” said Thanet innocently.

  “This … this invasion of my office,” spluttered Selby. He strode fiercely across to the window and back again. “I have a position to maintain here, you know and I really cannot see, in any case, why you should be … harassing me at all. My connection with Miss Birch was of the most tenuous nature.”

  “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us, Major, exactly what that connection was?” Thanet said.

  Selby stopped his pacing and lowered his head, glowering at Thanet from beneath those luxuriant eyebrows. “What, exactly, are you insinuating, Inspector?”

  “Not insinuating, Major, merely enquiring. May we sit down?”

  Selby waved a hand in impatient permission, then went to sit behind his desk.

  Perhaps, Thanet thought, he hoped by this move to establish his control of the interview, underline his authority as managing director of a thriving business. Certainly the office lent weight to the image. It was luxuriously appointed, with a thick, fitted carpet, antique furniture and an impressive array of up-to-date telecommunications equipment on the highly polished desk. A moment later it became apparent that Major Selby, Captain of Industry, had decided to change his tactics.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector,” he said, with an attempt at a smile. “You’ve caught me at a bad moment, I’m afraid. A minor crisis … Would you and your sergeant take some coffee? Or a pre-lunch drink, perhaps?”

  Thanet preferred the man when he was fighting. What was more, the sudden switch was patently out of character. If I hadn’t been suspicious before, he thought, I would be now.

  “Thank you, no,” he said. “I simply wanted to ask you one or two more questions about Monday night. Now,” he went on smoothly, as Selby opened his mouth, no doubt to protest that he had already told him all there was to tell, “I understand that you were not due back from your business trip until Tuesday?”

  “That’s right, but …”

  “And that when you were away, Miss Birch used to call at your house morning and evening?”

  “Certainly, but what on earth …”

  “So that, in the normal way of things, not expecting you home until Tuesday, she would have called in on Monday evening. Yet, she apparently did not do so. Could you tell us why that was, Major?”

  “Because,” said Major Selby, leaning forward across the desk and more or less spitting out his words, “I rang my wife on Monday evening, told her that I would be home at about ten and asked her to let Miss Birch know that it wouldn’t be necessary to call. And now, Inspector,” he said, rising, “I really am a very busy man, so if you’d excuse me …”

  Thanet did not move. “I haven’t quite finished yet, I’m afraid,” he said.

  Selby’s face flamed. It was obvious that he was quite unused to having his authority challenged. “Very well,” he said, controlling himself with a visible effort. “But I wish to make it clear that I consider this intrusion into my private life absolutely inexcusable.”

  “You don’t consider murder sufficient excuse?” Thanet said quietly. “Look Major,” he went on, “I think it only fair to tell you that we know why you employed Miss Birch to keep an eye on your wife.”

  Silence. Thanet could almost have felt sorry for the man. The high colour seeped slowly out of Selby’s face and in ten seconds he seemed to age as many years.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Inspector,” he said, but his eyes avoided Thanet’s and there was no conviction in his voice.

  “I think you do, Major. So could we please cut out the skirmishing and stick to plain facts?”

  Selby said nothing.

  “You didn’t really ring your wife on Monday evening, did you?”

  Selby looked up. “Certainly I did.” There was a note of—what?—defiance in his voice now. Clearly he had decided to stick to his story. A predictable reaction, Thanet thought. Selby was the sort of man who, more than most, would find it difficult to admit to having lied. A pity. For a moment there Thanet had thought the man’s defences sufficiently breached to make him acknowledge defeat. “At what time do you claim to have made this phone call?”

  Selby did not react to the implication. “About six thirty.”

  “From where?”

  “A call box at a motorway service station.”

  Untraceable, of course. “And you arrived home at what time?”

  “Just after ten, as I told you.”

  It was obvious that Selby was not going to budge.

  “Thank you, Major,” Thanet said briskly, and stood up.

  Selby looked up at him with a slightly dazed expression, as if he could not quite believe that the interview was at an end.

  “We’ll see ourselves out.”

  He and Lineham were almost at the door before Selby reacted. “Wait!” he said urgently, and came hurrying after them. “Just a minute. Er … look, Inspector,” and he swallowed, as if the words he was about to say were stuck in his gullet, “I apologise for over-reacting just now. As I said, we’re in the middle of a minor crisis here and of course my wife is very upset about this business.… The County Council Elections are coming up next month.… A man in my position has to be seen to be above reproach.… What I’m trying to say is, what you said just now, about knowing the reason why Miss Birch used to … er … keep an eye on things for me while I’m away …”

  Thanet couldn’t stand it any longer. Selby trying to be ingratiating was a nauseating sight. “Don’t worry, Major,” he said, “we’re not in the habit of broadcasting people’s secrets unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “Yuk!” said Lineham, when they were safely out of earshot.

  “My sentiment exactly,” Thanet said.

  Despite his earlier conviction that they were drawing close to a solution to the case, Thanet suddenly felt depressed, partly because of the abortive interview with Major Selby, which he felt he had p
erhaps mishandled, partly because he knew that they had now reached the stage in the case that he always loathed: it was time to sit down at his desk and work systematically through every single report that had been made since the beginning of it. It was astonishing just how fruitful this task could be. It gave one an overall picture, enabled one to see the wood instead of just the trees, and at the same time refreshed the memory. Facts, remarks, comments, observations which earlier, in isolation, had appeared to have little or no significance, took on new meaning when they were linked with others which had surfaced or been made subsequently.

  “Desk time, I think,” he said to Lineham, with a rueful grin.

  Back at the office, Lineham organised a thorough search of Nettleton for any trace of Arnold’s pilfered building materials while Thanet made sure that all the reports were up to date and at hand. Lineham ordered coffee and sandwiches for a working lunch, then they settled down to it.

  For the next three hours the atmosphere of concentration in the room was almost palpable. The telephone rang from time to time and occasionally one of the two men would query some point or comment upon something of significance. Otherwise the silence was unbroken save by the scrape of a match and the little popping noises made by Thanet as he puffed at his pipe.

  At five o’clock Mallard poked his head around the door.

  “Good grief,” he said disgustedly, fanning away the coils of tobacco smoke which by now were as dense as one of the celebrated old London smogs. “Look at you!” he said as Thanet and Lineham raised dazed faces from the heaped papers on their desks. Then, striding across the room, he flung up both sash windows. Sweet, fresh air poured into the room. “It’s a miracle your brains are functioning at all.” he said. “Next time I’ll bring an oxygen mask with me.”

  “Nonsense,” said Thanet with a grin, laying down the report he had been studying. “Ideal working conditions, aren’t they, Mike?”

  “Well …” said Lineham, who didn’t smoke.

  “There you are,” Mallard said. “If you’re not careful, Luke, you’ll be up on a charge of poisoning off your subordinates.” He propped himself against the window ledge. “How’s it going, anyway? Still with the delectable Miss Birch, are you?”

  “So so,” said Thanet. “Nothing definite yet, I’m afraid. Though there’ve been one or two surprises.” And he told Mallard about the money and the clothes.

  “Not really so surprising, I suppose,” said Mallard. “Fairly typical pattern. Domineering mother, repressed spinster daughter. It’s got to come out somehow.”

  “Ah yes,” said Thanet. “But that’s just the point. How, exactly, did it come out? I agree, the clothes are understandable enough, but where did she get the money? Did she earn it, win it, steal it, or did she get it by blackmail? I forgot to tell you that she was a snooper. There’s a very interesting old man, used to be her headmaster years ago. He knows her pretty well, she used to clean house for him. Anyway, he thinks that her real passion was the sense of power it gave her to know other people’s secrets. He thinks that just to know was enough for her—but of course, there’s always the possibility that it didn’t remain enough, that sooner or later she was tempted to use what she’d learned.”

  “And was there anything—anything she could have used for blackmail, I mean?”

  “Nothing earth-shattering. But then, the things which matter most to ordinary people are not usually sensational, are they? Just grubby little secrets which they’d rather nobody else knew about. And we’ve turned up a number of those, haven’t we Mike?”

  Mallard wrinkled his nose in disgust, heaved himself off the window ledge. “Rather you than me. Give me a nice healthy corpse any time. Well, let me know when you come up with something definite.” He looked at his watch. “Got to be off. I’ll leave you to your dirty washing.”

  “And that’s the trouble, isn’t it, Mike,” Thanet said when Mallard had gone. “That’s all it appears to be, dirty washing.” He waved his hand at the mounds of papers. “All this, and no real evidence of any kind.”

  “Oh I don’t know. If Miss Birch had known about Ingram’s affair with the hairdresser …”

  “If. That’s the point. If. There’s not a shred of proof anywhere that his relationship with Carrie—if such it can be called—was anything but what he claims it was, absolutely superficial. In all the stuff the men have dug up there’s not one reference to any significant connection between them.”

  “She would have been pretty careful not to be seen talking to him though, surely.”

  “Why? Who would have suspected that the innocuous Miss Birch was indulging in a spot of blackmail? And in any case, if there’s no evidence, Ingram’s in the clear as far as we’re concerned, isn’t he?”

  “What about Major Selby?” said Lineham. “He’s much more promising.”

  “True. But again, there’s no evidence. I admit he’s got a lot to lose, especially with the elections next week …”

  “Don’t you think it’s pretty peculiar that he should employ someone like Miss Birch as a sort of watchdog for his wife, sir?”

  “I do. But then, it was Hobson’s choice, wasn’t it? His daughter is at school all day and you know what alcoholics are like about hiding their supplies. Carrie would have been bound to be aware that Mrs Selby drank, cleaning the house as she did, and I suppose Selby thought he might as well cash in on the fact that she knew and pay her well enough to make sure she kept her mouth shut.”

  “Perhaps that’s where all the money came from.”

  “I very much doubt it. There was just too much of it, for that.”

  “Perhaps she got greedy, sir?”

  “Possibly. Who can tell? And that’s the trouble with this case. There’s too much speculation, and speculation just isn’t enough. Sooner or later we’ve got to have something more concrete.”

  The two men sat in silence for a while, thinking.

  “Mike,” said Thanet eventually. “Major Selby …”

  “Yes?”

  “How did he strike you?”

  “Not my cup of tea.”

  “I know that, but what did you think of him?”

  “Typical army type.”

  “Too typical?”

  Lineham frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, just think about him for a minute. I mean, he’s almost a caricature, isn’t he? Clothes, appearance, manner, the lot. You don’t think it’s just a bit too much?”

  “You mean, he’s an imposter? But he’s managing director of Stavely’s!”

  “I’m not talking about that,” said Thanet with an impatient wave of the hand. “I’m talking about the army bit. These titles, Major and so on, they carry social weight, don’t they? And that’s something Selby is rather fond of, I should think.”

  “You’d like me to check? Where should I begin?”

  “You’d need to know his regiment first. I’ll ring Mr Pitman now. He’ll be sure to know. Then you’ll have to check in the Army lists. They’re in the Public Record Office at Kew. They’ll be shut now. Get on to it first thing in the morning.”

  Thanet had been dialling the Pitmans’ number as he spoke and now a brief conversation with Marion Pitman produced the information he needed. “He was in the North Kents,” he said, replacing the receiver. “If he was a fraud and Carrie found out, while she was poking through his desk, perhaps, then that really would have given him good reason to want to get rid of her.”

  Thanet surveyed his untidy desk, groaned and began to shuffle papers together, stopping now and again to glance once more through a report. He felt discouraged. The afternoon’s work had been a waste of time after all.

  “What about the vicar?” said Lineham, who was doing the same thing. “Or Miss Pitman?”

  “Shouldn’t think so,” said Thanet. “I really cannot see him killing someone to preserve his secret. Oh, I know it would be unpleasant for both of them if it came out, but they’d weather it all right. It’s surprising how people rall
y to the support of their vicar when things go wrong.”

  “Chris Gamble, then?” suggested Lineham.

  “Another dead duck,” said Thanet. “Theoretically, Susan doesn’t want her father to know, but I have a feeling she wouldn’t be exactly heartbroken if he did. Young Jenny Gamble said something of the sort, and I think she was pretty near the mark.”

  “Chris Gamble might not know that, though.”

  “Even so,” said Thanet with an air of finality. He thumped the last report down on the pile. “Let’s face it, practically everyone connected with the woman has some sort of motive. I bet we could even find one for poor old Miss Cox, if we tried hard enough.”

  “What, for example?”

  “Well, let me see. What does Miss Cox value most? Her privacy. Carrie could have threatened that, in some way.”

  “How?” said Lineham. “Miss Cox wouldn’t let her over the doorstep, we know that.”

  “She could have sneaked in somehow,” retorted Thanet. “Let me see. Yes. If you remember, the cat got shut in the shed that night. Perhaps Carrie heard Miss Cox down the garden, calling it, and realised that this was her chance to have a quick snoop around. After all, just think what a frustration it must have been to someone like her to live next door to a hermit. She must have been dying to take a peek. So she grabs her chance and then Miss Cox comes back and finds her.”

  “Surely she would have made sure she was out of the house by the time Miss Cox got back?” objected Lineham.

  “Perhaps she got carried away, didn’t realise how quickly the time had gone. Miss Cox was only away about ten minutes.”

  “So Miss Cox finds her snooping, takes a swipe at her …”

  “… with her walking stick!” said Thanet. “The ideal weapon, literally to hand.”

  “And then puts a cushion over her head and finishes her off?”

  The two men grinned at each other. “All right,” said Thanet, lifting his hands in a mock gesture of defeat. “It was a nice little exercise in fantasy, I agree. The rest I can see: Carrie grabbing her chance, Miss Cox being angry, hitting out at her—though even that is straining the imagination a bit. But then deliberately to finish her off …”