An Amateur Corpse

by Simon Brett

  They went out of the back door. There was a shed just opposite. ‘In there,’ said Hugo.

  Charles opened the door. Hugo shone the torch.

  In its beam they saw Charlotte. She was splayed unceremoniously over the coal. A scarf was knotted unnaturally round her neck. She was very dead.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHARLES RANG THE police and stayed beside Hugo in the sitting room until they arrived. Hugo was catatonic with shock. Only once did he speak, murmuring softly to himself, ‘What did I do to her? She was young. What did I do to her?’

  When the police arrived, Charles steeled himself to go out once again to the coal shed. The beams of their torches were stronger and made the colour of Charlotte’s cheeks even less natural, like a detail from an over-exposed photograph.

  The richness of her perfume, which still hung in the air, was sickly and inappropriate. The staring eyes and untidy spread of limbs were not horrifying; the felling they gave Charles was more one of embarrassment, as if a young girl had been sick at a party. And his impression of callowness was reinforced by the Indian print scarf over the bruised neck, like a teenager’s attempt to hide love-bites.

  The bruises were chocolate brown. On one of them the skin had been broken -and a bootlace of dried blood traced its way crazily up towards Charlotte’s mouth.

  Hugo remained dull and silent and Charles himself was dazed as they were driven to the police station. They were separated when they arrived and parted without a word. Each was taken into a separate interview room to make a statement.

  Charles had to wait for about half an hour before his questioning began. A uniformed constable brought him a cup of tea and apologized for the delay. Everyone was very pleasant, but pleasant with that slight restraint that staff have in hospitals, as if something unpleasant is happening nearby but no one is going to mention it.

  Eventually two policemen came in. One was in uniform and carried a sheaf of paper. The other was fair-haired. early thirties, dressed in a brown blazer and blue trousers. He spoke with the vestiges of a South London twang. ‘So sorry to have kept you waiting. Detective-Sergeant Harvey. Mr. Paris, isn’t it?’

  Charles nodded.

  ‘Fine. I must just get a few personal details and then, if I may, I’ll ask a few questions about.., what happened. Then Constable Renton will write it down as a statement, which you sign – if you’re happy with it. Okay?’

  Charles nodded again.

  ‘It’s late, and I’m afraid this could take some time. Say if you’d like more tea. Or a sandwich or something.’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’

  So it started. First, simple information, name, address and so on. Then details of how he came to know Mr. and Mrs Mecken. And then a resume of the last two days.

  As he spoke, Charles could feel it going wrong. He told the truth, he told it without bias, and yet he could feel the false picture that his words were building up. Everything he said seemed to incriminate Hugo. The more he tried to defend him, the worse it sounded.

  Detective-Sergeant Harvey was a good poker-faced questioner. He didn’t force the pace, he didn’t put words into Charles’s mouth, he just asked for information slowly and unemotionally. And to damning effect.

  ‘After your lunch on Monday you say that you and Mr. Mecken went on to a drinking club?’

  ‘Yes, a sort of strip joint in Dean Street.’

  ‘And what did you drink there?’

  ‘Hugo ordered a bottle of whisky.’

  ‘So, by the time you left there, you had both had a considerable amount to drink?’

  ‘I didn’t drink a great deal in the club.’ Immediately Charles kicked himself for prompting the next question.

  ‘But Mr. Mecken did?’

  ‘I suppose he had quite a bit by some people’s standards, but you know how it is with advertising people – they can just drink and drink.’ The attempt at humour didn’t help. It made it sound more and more of a whitewash.

  ‘Yes. But you then both returned to Breckton and continued drinking at the theatre club. Surely that made it rather a lot of alcohol, even for an advertising man.’

  ‘Well, yes, I agree, we wouldn’t normally have drunk that much, but you see Hugo was a bit upset and . . .’ Realizing that once again he had said exactly the wrong thing, Charles left the words hanging in the air.

  ‘Upset,’ Detective-Sergeant Harvey repeated without excitement. Have you any idea why he should have been upset?’

  Charles hedged. ‘Oh, I dare say it was something at work. He was involved in a big campaign to launch a new bedtime drink – that’s what I was working on with him-and I think there may have been some disagreements over that. You know, these advertising people do take it all so seriously.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ The slow response seemed only to highlight the hollowness of Charles’s words. ‘You have no reason to believe that Mr. Mecken was having any domestic troubles?’

  ‘Domestic troubles?’ Charles repeated idiotically.

  ‘Worries about his marriage.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, I shouldn’t think so. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone can begin to understand anything about another person’s marriage. But I mean Charlotte is a – I mean, was a beautiful girl and . . .’ He trailed off guiltily.

  ‘Hmm. Mr. Paris, would you describe Mr. Mecken as a violent man?’

  ‘No, certainly not. And if you’re trying to suggest that –’

  ‘I am not trying to suggest anything, Mr. Paris. I am just trying to get as full a background to the death of Mrs Mecken as I can,’ Detective-Sergeant Harvey replied evenly.

  ‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry.’ Blustering wasn’t going to help Hugo’s cause. As his interrogation continued, Charles kept thinking of his friend, in another interview room, being asked other questions. Where were Hugo’s answers leading?

  ‘You say Mr. Mecken is not a habitually violent man. Is he perhaps the sort who might become violent when he’s had a few drinks? I mean, for instance, did he show any violence towards you during your long drinking session on Monday?’

  Charles hesitated. Certainly he wasn’t going to go back to Hugo’s bizarre outburst while an undergraduate and his instinct was to deny that anything had happened on the Monday. But Hugo’s second swing at him had been witnessed by a bar full of Backstagers. He couldn’t somehow see that self-dramatizing lot keeping quiet about it. He’d do better to edit the truth than to tell a lie. ‘Well, he did take a sort of playful swing at me at one point when I’ suggested he ought to be getting home, but that’s all.’

  ‘A playful swing.’ Detective-Sergeant Harvey gave the three words equal emphasis.

  The questioning ended soon after and the information was turned into a written statement. Detective-Sergeant Harvey courteously went through a selection of the questions again and Constable Renton laboriously wrote down the answers in longhand on ruled paper.

  Inevitably it was a slow process and Charles found his mind wandering. He didn’t like the way it was heading.

  Previously he had been numb with shock, but now the fact of Charlotte’s death was getting through to him. The feeling of guilt which his initially casual reaction had prompted gave way to a cold sensation of nausea.

  ‘With it came a realization of the implications for Hugo. As Charles went through the details for his statement, he saw with horror which way the circumstantial evidence pointed.

  There were so many witnesses too. So many people who had heard Hugo’s denunciation of his wife and his violent burst of aggression towards Charles. Unless Hugo could prove a very solid alibi for the time at which his wife had been murdered, things didn’t look too good for him.

  At this point it struck Charles that he was assuming Hugo was innocent and he paused to question the logic of this. On reflection, it didn’t stand up very well. In fact the only arguments he could come up with against Hugo’s guilt were Hugo’s own denial that he would ever hurt Charlotte and Charles’s own conviction that so
meone he knew so well would be incapable of a crime of such savagery.

  And those weren’t arguments. They were sheer emotion, romantic indulgence.

  The thought of romanticism only made it worse. It suggested a very plausible motive for Hugo to kill his wife. Hugo was a romantic, unwilling to accept the unpleasant facts of life. He had built up his own life into a romantic ideal, with his writing talent supporting the professional side and his love-affair with Charlotte the domestic.

  When it became clear to such a man that the twin pillars of his life were both illusions, anything could happen.

  He finished the statement and was asked to read it through, signing each page. At one point he hesitated.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ asked Detective-Sergeant Harvey.

  ‘Well, I . . . it seems so bald, so . . .’ He couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound like protesting too much. ‘No.’ He signed on.

  He was amazed, to discover it was nearly five o’clock. Dully he accepted the offer of the lift home in a squad car. He gave his’ Hereford Road address.

  He didn’t notice the drabness of the bedsitter as he entered. He homed in on the bottle of Bells straight away and sank half a tumblerful. Then he lay down on the bed and lost consciousness.

  When he. woke, it was still dark. Or rather, he realized after looking at his watch, dark again. Quarter past six. He’s slept round the clock.’

  He was still dressed. He left the house and walked along Hereford Road to Westbourne Grove. There was a newspaper seller on the corner. He bought and Evening Standard.

  It didn’t take long to find the news. Hugo Mecken had been arrested, charged with the murder of his wife, Charlotte.

  And Charles Paris felt is was his fault.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IN SPITE OF logic, the feeling of treachery remained. Charles Paris had deserted his friend in a crisis. Charles Paris had incriminated his friend by his statement.

  He had to do something. At least find out all the circumstances, at least check that no mistakes had been made.

  He hurried back to the house in Hereford Road, went to the pay-phone on the landing and dialled Gerald Venables’s office number.

  Gerald was a successful show business solicitor whom Charles had known since Oxford. Armed with a boyish enthusiasm for the whole business of detection, he had collaborated with Charles on one or two investigations, starting with the strange death of Marius Steen. In the current circumstances, it was an immediate instinct to ring Gerald.

  An efficient, husky voice answered the phone.

  ‘Is that Polly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Charles Paris. Could I speak to Gerald, please?’

  ‘I’m sorry, he’s not here.’

  ‘Oh, sod it. Is he on his way home?’

  ‘No, he’s out with a client, I’m afraid. He was called down to Breckton mid-morning and he’s been there all day.’

  ‘Oh my God, of course. He’s Hugo Mecken’s solicitor, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. That’s who he’s with. I gather you’ve heard the news.’

  ‘Yes.’ It wasn’t worth going into details of how he had been the first to hear it. ‘Stupid of me. I’d forgotten. Gerald sorted out Hugo’s divorce, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. And he was a bit shocked when he discovered what it was about this time.’

  ‘That I can believe. Look, Polly, have you any idea when he’ll be back? I mean, is he reckoning to go back to the office?’

  ‘No. He rang about half an hour ago to say he’d go straight to Dulwich from Breckton. And asked me to ring Mrs Venables and say he’d be late.’

  ‘Why didn’t, he ring her himself?’ Charles asked irrelevantly.

  ‘I think it sounds more businesslike if I do.’ Polly replied with a hint of humour.

  Yes, that was Gerald all over. ‘Polly, when he says “very late”, what do you reckon that means?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. He said I was to say ten-thirty at the earliest to Mrs Venables.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks, Polly. He didn’t say anything else about . . . you know, the case . . . or Hugo . . . or anything.’

  ‘No. Well, there isn’t really much to say, is there?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  Charles spent an unsatisfactory evening and drank too much. He thought of ringing Frances, but put it off again. Round eight he realized he hadn’t eaten for over twenty-four hours.

  He didn’t feel hungry, but he thought he ought to have something.

  Going out to a restaurant was too much effort. He was too jumpy to sit down and relax over a proper meal. He looked round the room. There was an opened packet of cornflakes on the table. No milk. He tried a handful. They were soft, cardboard.

  He rooted through the grey-painted cupboard, shoving aside scripts, half-finished plays, empty bottles, socks and crisp packets. All he came up with was a tin of sardines without a key and a tin of curried beans.

  The menu was dictated by his antiquated tin-opener, which wouldn’t grip on the sardine tin., He slopped the beans into a saucepan still furred with boiled milk from the previous week and put it on the gas-ring which was hidden discreetly behind a plastic curtain.

  The curried beans didn’t improve anything. He took a long swill from the Bell’s bottle as a mouthwash. Except he didn’t spit it out.

  Then he addressed his mind to thought. Serious thought. He had been in criminal situations before and he had even, by a mixture of luck and serendipity, solved crimes before. But this one mattered. He had to concentrate, sort it out. He was motivated by his affection for Hugo and his abiding sense of guilt.

  His first assumption remained Hugo’s innocence. No logic for this, just a conviction.

  If only he could see Hugo face to face, talk to him, ask him. Then he would know, he felt sure.

  But how do you get to see a man who has just been arrested for murder? Gerald would know. All action seemed to hinge on speaking to Gerald.

  Half past nine. The evening was passing, but slowly. Perhaps another generous Bell’s would speed up the process.

  He looked at the floor through the slopping spirit in his glass. The image was refracted and distorted. Like his thought processes.

  The obvious solution was that Hugo had killed his wife. In a wild reaction to the collapse of his dreams he had taken the terrible kamikaze course of the disillusioned romantic. ‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves . . .,’ as Oscar Wilde wrote in his despair.

  The only way to escape the obvious, solution was to provide a feasible alternative. Either to prove Hugo was doing something else at the time that Charlotte was killed. Or to prove that someone else did it.

  Charles’s brief experience of the Backstagers told him that emotions ran high in the group. Charlotte had antagonized the established stars by her success as Nina. Vee Winter, for one,., felt herself usurped by the newcomer.

  But that kind of jealousy wasn’t sufficient motive for murder. A sexual impulse was more likely. A woman as beautiful as Charlotte was bound to cause reverberations wherever she went and no doubt her appearance among the Backstagers had let to the snapping-off of a few middle-aged husbands’ heads by middle-aged wives who saw eyes lingering with too much interest. Indeed, Charles had seen evidence of this with the Hobbses.

  But that was still not something for which a sane person would kill.

  It must be a closer attachment. Clive Steele. Charles thought back over the conversation he had heard in the car park. The young man’s passions had been demonstrably immature, but they had been strong. He was supposed to be away working in Melton Mowbray for the whole week, but it might be worth investigating his movements.

  Or then again, why should the murderer have anything to do with the Backstagers? Charlotte did have other contacts. Not many but a few. Diccon Hudson, for instance. He had made some sour reference to having gone around with her before her marriage. Probably nothing there, but anything was worth looking into to save Hugo.

&
nbsp; After all, Diccon could have been the mysterious lover of whom Hugo had spoken. Charles didn’t know whether to believe in this personage or not. It could just be a creation of Hugo’s fevered imagination. But if such a person did exist, the possible permutations of violent emotions were considerably increased.

  Equally, if he did exist, Hugo’s motive for killing his wife was that much stronger. But Charles put the thought from his mind. He had to start by assuming Hugo’s innocence.

  He was full of nervous excitement. He wanted to do something, get started, begin his task of atonement.

  He looked at his watch. Twenty-five to eleven. Thank God, he could try Gerald again. The need to do something was now almost unbearable.

  Kate, Gerald’s wife, sounded disgruntled. No, he wasn’t home yet. Yes, Charles could try again in half an hour if it was important, but not much later because she was going to bed.

  Charles stood by the phone, seething with energy. There must be something else he could do. He could start piecing together Hugo’s movements from the time he left the Back Room on Monday night. Someone must have seen him leave, someone might even have walked him home. Details like that could be vital.

  The only Backstager’s number he had was Geoffrey and Vee’s. Geoffrey answered.

  ‘Have you heard about Hugo?’

  ‘Yes, Charles. Horrible, isn’t it?’

  ‘Horrible. Look, I’m trying to find out what he did when he left the bar on Monday night.’

  ‘Amateur sleuth work.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Thing is, you’d know – who are the real barflies up at that place? Who was guaranteed to have been there at closing time and seen him go?’

  ‘Well, Bob Chubb’s the obvious one. He was on the bar, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Do you have his number?’

  ‘Yes, sure. I’ll get it. I – what’s that love?’ Vee’s voice was asking something in the background. ‘Just twiddle the aerial round to the right. Sorry, Charles, our television’s on the blink. Extremely unwilling to get a decent picture on BBC2. Comes of buying cheap junk. Ah, here it is.’ He gave Charles Robert Chubb’s number. ‘I only hope it bears fruit. It seems incredible, doesn’t it? The idea that Hugo . . . I keep thinking that it’ll all turn out to be a mistake and all be cleared up somehow.’