by Ellis Peters
He leaned into the car and switched off the purring engine, and stood wiping his hands on a tangle of cotton-waste. ‘Am I allowed to ask about Annet? We’ve been – we are terribly anxious about her. There’s nothing new?’
‘No, nothing new.’ He didn’t want to talk to anyone about Annet, he didn’t want to show to anyone else even a part of what she had made him experience. ‘We’re still filling in details wherever and however we can – about all the people we can. Do you mind if I ask Stockwood a few questions?’
‘If you must,’ said Peter, frowning. ‘But I thought you’d already done with him. He accounted for himself to one of your fellows yesterday. Something the matter with the liaison, or what?’
‘Nothing the matter with the liaison. Just a double check for safety’s sake. And you might fill in the timing of the week-end for me yourself first, if you will. Mrs Blacklock went off to Gloucester on the Thursday afternoon. Stockwood drove her down and brought back the car, because she was meeting a friend there who could run her about locally. You then gave him the whole long week-end off, I understand. Exactly when did he leave here, and when did he return?’
In the very brief moment of quietness Stockwood leaned and turned off the tap. He laid down the brush and took a step towards them, waiting in readiness, dark colour mounting in his face and blanching again to pallor.
‘He garaged the car about a quarter to five,’ said Peter in a thin, brittle voice, his long face sagging with reluctance and distress. ‘I told him he could consider himself free until the following Wednesday noon, and then come in for the Bentley and fetch my wife home. I told him if he liked he could make use of one of the BSAs for his weekend, and he said yes, he would like to. I don’t know what time he left the lodge, but it was all in darkness before six o’clock. He came back prompt at noon on Wednesday, and drove to Gloucester to bring Reginaback.’
‘You didn’t ask him where he was going?’
‘I didn’t. I don’t. Nor where he’d been, when he came back. He’s my wife’s employee, not mine, but even if he were mine I shouldn’t think that gave me any right to ask him where he spends his free time. Only his working hours are bought and paid for.’ He added gently and wearily: ‘Your business, of course, it may very well be. You ask him.’
The young man dried his hands carefully, automatically, confronting them both with a wary face and narrowed eyes. He had left it too late to protest at being interrogated again, and far too late to pretend surprise or indignation. He waited, moistening his lips, a glitter in his eyes that might have been anger, but looked closer kin to desperation.
‘I think,’ said George after a moment of thought, ‘I’d better talk to Stockwood alone. If you don’t mind?’
Blacklock did mind, that was abundantly clear; he felt a degree of responsibility for all the members of his wife’s staff, and was reluctant to abandon any of them to the mercies of the police, however implicit his faith might be, in theory, in British justice. He hesitated for a moment, swung on his heel to pick up his jacket from the stone bench in the middle of the yard.
‘All right! I’ll see you when you’ve finished, Felse. Look in at the house for a moment if I’m not around, will you?’
He went out through the deep archway between the coach-houses with his long, nervous stride, and vanished up the slope of the field towards the hall.
‘Well?’ said George. ‘Where did you spend the weekend?’
The young man drew breath carefully between lips curled in detestation and fright. ‘I’ve told you already. I told your bloke who was here yesterday—’
‘You told him you went to a fishing inn up the Teme valley – I know. Not having a home of your own to go to.’
Stockwood’s head jerked back, the gipsy face took fire in a brief blaze of defiance quickly suppressed.
‘You thought the landlord was a friend of yours, and quick on the uptake, and would see you through. Maybe he promised you he would, when you ’phoned him. Maybe he really would, up to a hold-up or a smash-and-grab. But as soon as he smelled murder he packed it in. He’d not getting lumbered with any part of it, boy. And you weren’t at the Angler’s Arms last Saturday night. So where were you?’
The colour had ebbed from Stockwood’s face so alarmingly that it seemed there could not be enough blood in him to keep his heart working. George took him by the arm and sat him down, unresisting, on the stone bench. The lean young face, self-conscious and proud, stood him off steadily; and in a moment the blanched lines of jaw and mouth eased.
‘That’s better. Take it quietly. It’s very simple. You gave us a phoney tale about where you spent your free week-end. Now all I want is the truth, and for your own sake you’d better produce it. You’d have done better,’ he said dryly, ‘to stick to it in the first place, when you came here after the job. Why didn’t you tell Mrs Blacklock you had a prison record? Oh, no, I haven’t told her, either, so far this is just between you and me. But you must have cased the job and the people before you tried it, you should have been able to judge that she’d take you even with a stretch behind you – maybe all the more.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said the young man through tight lips. ‘How could I? I wanted the job, and I was on the level. I didn’t dare to risk what she’d do if she knew.’
‘I’m telling you, she’d have taken you on just the same. She’d pride herself on giving you your chance.’
‘That’s what you fellows always say. And that’s what women like her always say. But when it came to the point how could I be sure? I’ve done the job properly,’ he said, stiffening his neck arrogantly, and stared up into George’s face without blinking. ‘Didn’t take your lot long to get after my record, did it?’
‘It doesn’t, once we’ve got the idea, once we know you’re lying about your movements last week-end. We can connect. It doesn’t follow,’ said George, ‘that we think you necessarily did the Bloome Street job. It’s a long way from helping to hi-jack a load of cigarettes to killing a man. But nobody lies about his movements without having something to hide. So where were you?’
Stockwood’s jaw clamped tight to shut in whatever words he might have been about to blurt out furiously in George’s face. He sat for a moment with his hands clenched and braced on the edge of the stone seat. There was no hope of success with a second lie, and all too clearly he had no new line of defence prepared. After a brief struggle his lips opened stiffly, and said abruptly: ‘With a woman.’
‘Miss Beck?’ said George conversationally.
‘No, not Miss Beck!’
‘Rosalind Piper again?’
Or was it ‘still’ rather than ‘again’? But there was as little reason for him to hide a connection with her as there was to continue or resume it. According to the records, she had cost him a year in gaol by involving him in the gang in the first place; and she had cost him his marriage, too, it seemed, since there was a divorce hanging over him. Briefly George wondered what she had looked like. A blonde decoy with a brazen face, or a little innocent creature with big blue eyes? The boy could have been only about twenty-one or twenty-two at the time, and not long married, probably a decent enough young man with good prospects, but the usual, ever-present money difficulties; and a quick share-out from one big haul must have seemed to him an enticing proposition, especially the way the experienced Miss Piper had pictured it for him, with herself as a bonus.
‘No!’ Stockwood spat the negative after her memory, and turned his head obstinately away.
‘I have no interest,’ said George patiently, ‘in your private affairs, as long as you’re breaking no laws. You’d better give her a name. If she bears you out, I can forget it.’ If she bore him out, it would be the truth.
‘You might,’ said Stockwood. ‘She wouldn’t.’
‘If she didn’t grudge you the week-end, she won’t grudge you an alibi. What harm can there be in asking her to confirm your story? If, of course, it’s true this time.’
‘It’s true!’
‘And if you did nothing the law would be interested in.’
‘No. I didn’t do anything wrong. You won’t be able to prove I did, because I didn’t.’
‘Then don’t be a fool. Tell me who she is, and help yourself and me.’
‘No – I can’t tell you!’
‘You’ll have to in the end. Come on, now, she won’t be inconvenienced, we have no interest in her. But unless you name her you’re putting yourself in a nasty spot, and casting doubt on every word you have told me.’
‘I can’t help it,’ said Stockwood stubbornly, and licked a trickle of sweat from his lips. ‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You can’t because she’s as big a lie as the fishing weekend. She doesn’t exist.’
‘She does exist! Oh, my God!’ He said it in a sudden, soft, hopeless voice to himself, as though, indeed, she was the only creature who did exist for him, and of her reality he was agonisingly unsure. ‘But I can’t tell you who she is.’
‘You won’t.’
‘All right, I won’t!’
George walked away from him as far as the hollow shadow under the archway, walked his heat and exasperation out of him for a few minutes in the chill of it, and came back to begin all over again. It went on and on and on through the sparse, barren exchange, two, three, four times over; but at the end of it, it was still no. Quivering with tension, exhausted and afraid, Stockwood looked up at him with apprehensive eyes, waiting for the inevitable, and still denied him.
‘All right,’ said George at last, with a sigh, ‘if that’s how you want it, there are more ways than one of finding her.’
But were there? Had he discovered even one way yet of finding the man who had picked up Annet and taken her to Birmingham? The city might be, must be, more productive.
‘We’ll leave it at that,’ he said, ‘for the moment. And on your own head be it.’
‘Are you taking me in?’ asked the young man from a dry throat.
‘No. Not yet. I don’t want you yet, and you’ll keep. But you won’t do anything rash, will you? Such as deciding to get out of here, fast. I shouldn’t. You wouldn’t get far.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Stockwood steadily, and sat with his clenched hands braced on his knees, tense and still, as George turned and walked out of the stable block.
Peter Blacklock was waiting in the leaf-strewn border of the drive, just out of sight of the windows of the house.
‘Well, did you satisfy yourself?’ His kind face was clouded, his eyes anxiously questioning. ‘You know, Felse, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m sure Stockwood had nothing whatever to do with it.’
‘I’ve finished with him for the time being,’ said George noncommittally, his voice mild.
‘I’m glad. I was sure—’
He fell into step beside George, shaking his head helplessly over his thoughts, and feeling for words.
‘You know, Regina and I are very worried about Annet. One can’t help realising, from what was published in the papers, that she’s very deeply implicated. What I wanted to say— to ask— You do realise, don’t you, that she must have been dragged into this terrible position quite innocently? We know her, you see, very well. It’s quite impossible that she should willingly hurt or wrong anyone. She can have known nothing, nothing whatever, about the crime – before or after the act.’
He waited, and George walked beside him and said nothing.
‘Forgive me, but I had to tell you what we feel about her, we who know her, perhaps, as well as anyone. We’re very fond of her, Mr Felse. I’m sure you can understand that.’
‘I can understand it,’ said George. ‘I’m beginning to think I know her pretty well myself.’ And could be very fond of her, too, his mind added, but he kept that to himself.
‘Then you must have realised that she can’t have known anything about murder or theft.’ He looked up into George’s face with the shadowy, emasculated reflection of his wife’s confidence, authority and energy. ‘I know this isn’t professional conduct, but I should be very grateful to you for some reassurance – a hint as to how you’re thinking of her—’
‘I think of her,’ said George, goaded, ‘as a human creature, not a doll, a whole lot more complicated and dangerous than any of you seem to realise. She isn’t anyone’s hapless victim, and she isn’t a pawn in anyone’s game, and when I pity her I know I’m wasting my time. But if it’s any consolation to you, I don’t think she’s a murderess.’
He climbed into the MG, swung it round, hissing, on the apron of rosy gravel, and drove away down the avenue of old lime trees, leaving Blacklock standing with a faint, assuaged smile on his lips and the deep grief still in his eyes; slender and tall and elegant in his ancient and excellent clothes, like a monument to a stratum of society into which he had been drafted just in time to decay with it.
George telephoned Superintendent Duckett from home, over the hasty lunch Bunty had spent so much time and care preparing, and he had now no leisure to enjoy.
‘The bike again,’ said Duckett hopefully. ‘If you can find where they stayed there may be a real chance of finding out if anyone saw the bike around. And if so, then it’s looking unhealthy for our friend. But why, for God’s sake, say he spent the week-end with a woman, if he really is the one who was off with the Beck girl? You’d have thought he’d turn out absolutely any tale rather than go so near the truth.’
‘He did, originally. It fell down under him. This time he was pushed. And of course,’ said George cautiously, ‘there’s always the chance that it may be true – even provably true, if it’s that or his neck. He’s a good-looking chap, and there could be other women, besides Annet, who’d think so. Even some others he might risk a good deal before he’d name.’
‘You’ve got one in mind?’ said Duckett alertly, hearing the note of wary thoughtfulness he knew how to interpret.
‘I have, but it’s far-fetched. I’d rather plough other ground first, it’s more likely to yield.’
He could picture in Technicolor Duckett’s face if the receiver should blurt out baldly in his ear: ‘Well, he could have gone off back to Gloucester, and spent the week-end amusing Mrs Blacklock between lectures and discussions. She’s noticed him, all right. She speaks up for him, as well she might if she knows where he was but doesn’t want to have to say so – and a little more freely than you would normally for a good chauffeur you’d had only three months, and who otherwise meant nothing to you. And what would be more likely to shut his mouth, and make him stick out even the threat of a murder charge rather than come out with the real facts? A blazing scandal, her reputation gone and his job, and where would he get another in a hurry? If it was Regina, it all makes sense!’
No, that was all true enough, but not for publication, and for the moment non-essential in any case. It couldn’t catch their murderer for them, even if they proved it, it could only cancel out one more possibility. The elimination of Stockwood could wait its turn.
‘I’m making for Birmingham now,’ he said, aloud. ‘It looks the more profitable end at the moment.’
‘Give ’em my love,‘ said Duckett. ‘And keep off them corns.’
George drove to Birmingham, and conferred with his opposite numbers there briefly and amicably. They had worked together on other occasions, and understood each other very well. Hag-ridden and undermanned, the city CID were hardly likely to chill their welcome for someone who came with a handful of suggestions, however dubious; all the more if he was willing to investigate them himself.
The sum of their own discoveries, up to then, was two shop assistants who had sold clothing to Annet in one of the big stores, and one elderly newsboy from whom she had bought a paper on Friday evening.
‘Never reads the damned things himself,’ complained the Superintendent bitterly, ‘except the racing page. Says he’s seen too many of ’em to care. Waving the girl’s face in front of the rush hour crowds, and never noticed it himself!’
‘Sh
e was alone when they saw her?’
‘Every time.’
‘Well, let’s see if we can get anything out of her old class-mates.’
The student of literature was out of town for the weekend; he should, of course, have thought of that. But her lodgings were easy enough to find, shared with three other students, and presided over by a competent matron of fifty, who had reared a family of her own, and knew all the pitfalls. It was clear within ten minutes that it would be quite impossible for any irregularities to creep into her well-ordered household, or any of her girls to misbehave herself or entertain a misbehaving visitor within these walls. Contact with Beryl there might have been, but on the whole even that was improbable. The one girl who was spending the week-end in town, over a crucial essay, had never heard Annet mentioned, and never seen her, and from her George gathered that Beryl’s time and attention was very largely taken up by men friends rather than women. He wrote that one off, and made for the retired teacher who had enjoyed Annet’s liking and confidence.
Miss Roscoe was rosy and grey and garrulous, of uncertain memory, but certain that she had not heard from or seen Annet Beck for over a year.
It took him some time to run the art student to earth, for Myra Gibbons had known no exact address for her, and before he could find her he had to find the secretary of the school. But he had luck, and when at last he located the small old house in a quiet road, and the side-door in the yard which led directly to the converted first-floor flatlet, it was Mary Clarkson in person who opened the door to him.
No, she had not seen Annet Beck during the weekend, because she had herself been home in Comerbourne for a whole week, and left the flat closed up. She knew, of course, about Annet’s picture being in the paper, and the appeal for information about her, but she had had no information to give. She was terribly concerned about her, of course, but mostly just plain astonished, because it seemed so incredible.
