An Alibi Too Soon

by Roger Ormerod

  It meant that Duncan could not have performed the necessary actions required to kill his uncle. He had not killed him, unless the alibi Rosemary had given him was false.

  No wonder Llew Hughes had been disturbed. And yet…he had also been uncertain. But of course he would, if it all rested on a single word on the side of a beer crate.

  Having settled this neatly in my mind, I climbed into bed, switched off the light, and composed myself to the night’s sleep I’d not expected to get.

  I still didn’t get it. For hours I tossed and turned. There were snags. I hadn’t even started. You can see the difficulties, I’m sure. If not, get out a map and have a look at it. Lichfield is only twelve miles from Burton upon Trent, and Duncan Carter was now the only one with an alibi.

  I was the first in the dining room for breakfast. There was a razor nick in my chin, and my hair, what there is of it, was untidy. I wasn’t pleased to glance up and find Grayson looking at me dispassionately.

  ‘Join me,’ I said, in a tone indicating I didn’t want him to.

  ‘For coffee, perhaps,’ he agreed, and I looked round and caught the waitress’s eye. He took the seat opposite me and picked up the menu. ‘I’d try the kipper. They’re good round here.’

  I waited. When he had his coffee and was stirring in sugar he said: ‘Been busy?’

  ‘Here and there.’

  ‘You’re not convinced?’

  ‘That Edwin Carter was murdered? Oh yes, I’m quite convinced of that.’

  ‘But you’ve spotted something?’ For all his elaborate casualness, he was uneasy.

  I had not the slightest intention of telling him what I’d spotted. I bypassed the question. ‘Any progress on the death of our mutual friend?’ I asked. Then, at his lifted eyebrow, I amplified: ‘Llew Hughes.’

  His slight smile acknowledged my move. ‘Not much. There’d been trouble between Llew and a local farmer. Sheep wandering on Llew’s land, and whose responsibility it was to maintain the fence. Not enough to justify burning his house down.’

  ‘With Llew in it. No. So you’re going for accident?’

  ‘It seems the most likely. The inquest’s on Thursday, and we’ll ask for an adjournment if anything else comes to light. From you, for instance.’

  I grinned at him. ‘You’re pinning your hopes on me? I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.’

  ‘Oh?’ He looked down at his cup. ‘If you’re heading for home, don’t forget the inquest.’

  ‘You misunderstand,’ I told him. ‘I meant, I might come up with something you didn’t hope for.’

  He flushed slightly, but his voice remained under control. ‘Are you setting out to prove me a fool, Mr Patton?’

  ‘If I come across that sort of evidence, I’ll let you know first.’

  His fist closed on the table surface. I said quietly: ‘I believe I can show that Duncan Carter didn’t kill his uncle.’

  He breathed out slowly, a quiet hiss between his teeth. ‘Believe?’ he asked. ‘Show?’

  ‘No proof, to be sure. But evidence.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  ‘I don’t intend to tell you.’

  ‘Are you telling me you’re deliberately obstructing me in the course…’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. This isn’t your case. You closed it, successfully, with a conviction. Ten years ago. I’m obstructing nothing. And if, by chance, I discover who did kill Edwin Carter, then I’ll be assisting you in the case you’re at present working on—the death of Hew Hughes.’

  ‘I tell you, Patton ...’

  ‘You tell me nothing,’ I said. I looked up at the waitress, who’d appeared at my elbow. ‘I’ll try the kipper, I think. Join me, Mr Grayson?’

  ‘Thank you—no.’

  ‘Kippers for one,’ I said. ‘That’s plural, my dear.’

  Grayson had been sitting tensely, but now he seemed to relax. ‘You’re a very difficult man to deal with,’ he said. ‘I told you, I read Llew’s early chapters. He seemed to admire you. I can’t see why.’

  ‘We change,’ I told him. ‘All of us. We get older and less patient. There’s less time left, you see, so you can’t afford to waste it. I’m sorry if I seemed a little short.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘But you can help me, if you will.’

  ‘So that’s why you’ve changed your tune.’

  ‘Buttering you up? True. I want information. That garage and the radio.’

  ‘So that’s it.’

  ‘No. I can’t argue with your deductions there. But…you said you checked the radio that was in his car, the one parked outside, and it operated the door of the garage he died in.’

  ‘The mechanism. It operated that, not the door. They’d had to break the linkage to lever the door up.’

  ‘Yes. It was the range I wanted to ask about. I tried it, yesterday, and the range was about thirty yards. Did you try for range?’

  ‘Thought of it,’ he said complacently. ‘Thirty yards was about it. If you’re thinking it could’ve been done from a distance, that’s out.

  ‘Just checking.’ She brought me my kippers. Plural. I eyed them with pleasure.

  ‘So,’ he said, pushing back his chair, ‘how do we keep in touch?’

  ‘For the inquest?’ I asked, teasing him.

  He straightened to his full height. ‘Progress. I’m interested, Mr Patton. Intimately.’

  ‘Of course. I was forgetting. I can’t tell you my plans, except that they involve Lichfield.’

  A slow smile spread all over his face. ‘You’re going to see Duncan. Then you’re in for a surprise.’

  On that cheerful note, he left. I tried the kippers. Not as good as we got on the coast, certainly not smoked. I ate the lot, nevertheless.

  I phoned Amelia the moment I got up to our room.

  ‘Sleep well?’ I asked.

  ‘Terrible.’ I could picture her, sitting at the kitchen table with tousled hair and a cradled cup of coffee. But of course, the phone was in the hall!

  ‘How’s the wrist?’

  ‘What? Oh! I haven’t given it a thought.’

  ‘Good. Now listen. I wanted you to know that your journey wasn’t wasted.’

  ‘I’m pleased about that. Now Richard…’

  ‘The essential clue was in the letters. I had another look at the photos, and the whole thing is turned on its head.’

  ‘You don’t have to sound so excited.’

  ‘It means I’ll have to see a number of people, but just at this moment I can only locate one. Duncan Carter. He’s at Lichfield.’

  ‘What you should be doing, Richard…’

  ‘So that gives us three alternatives.’

  ‘You can’t have more than two alternatives, Richard.’

  The fact that she was picking me up on semantics, and kept using my name, meant she wasn’t feeling sympathetic towards my intentions.

  ‘Choices, then,’ I said. ‘Three choices.’

  ‘I can’t wait to hear.’

  ‘Obviously, we’ve got to get together as soon as possible…’

  ‘Richard,’ she interrupted, ‘with whom did you dine?’

  The careful formality warned me. There’s only one course in those circumstances. ‘Rosemary Trew.’

  ‘Have I met her?’

  ‘Not yet. She’s Edwin Carter’s niece. We met in the afternoon. There was something she wanted to get off her chest.’

  ‘Her bra, perhaps?’

  I was silent. Amelia never makes that sort of feeble joke.

  ‘Sorry, Richard, I’m not really myself.’

  ‘You’re tired, you had an accident…’

  ‘But there’s no need to condescend. I just hope you grilled her and discovered what you wanted to know.’

  ‘I know she wasn’t wearing a bra.’ It took real courage to say that.

  She recognised it, saw beyond it. ‘Dear Richard,’ she said. ‘So very observant.’

  ‘I was saying—three choices.’

&nb
sp; ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Now…we can meet at Lichfield—but that would mean another long drive for you.’

  ‘Not just at the moment, I think.’

  ‘No, of course not. The second alternative—choice—is for you to drive back here, while I go over to Lichfield and back. It’s only about eighty miles away. But you already know how far it would be for you.’

  ‘Richard…’

  ‘And the third would be for me to drive to Lichfield and do what I need to, then on to Devon, and you could just sit there and rest till I get home. That’d be best, I think.’

  ‘Richard…’

  ‘I shouldn’t be long in Lichfield. I’d be with you this evening.’

  ‘I did rather want to see our mill again,’ she said gently.

  ‘We must certainly do that.’ Frankly, I’d forgotten about it.

  ‘And perhaps you’d introduce me to that…Rosemary Trew, was it?’ She knew darned well.

  ‘You mean you want to drive back here?’

  ‘In my own time. I’m getting to like this car. But…there is something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t you think this is all becoming rather expensive? This car alone…’ I could almost hear her shrug. ‘Nobody’s going to reimburse us.’

  For that, too, I hadn’t given a thought. ‘Llew’s death…’ I began.

  ‘Which could have been an accident,’ she said briskly, having clearly given it some thought.

  ‘I’ve been knocked out.’

  ‘That’s happened before. Treat it as experience.’

  ‘And there could’ve been a miscarriage of justice.’

  ‘You’re no longer a policeman.’

  How could I explain to her that I would never cease to be? I’d been trained into a cult, with the simple precept that right is right, and wrong is wrong. Nobody had used those words; they would have sounded too pretentious. But the knowledge and understanding had seeped into my soul. Oh, I know…nowadays this simplistic philosophy has become blurred and degraded, but we still live in a tight society, in which, if simple moral right becomes no longer an accepted precept, we can look forward to a very precarious future indeed. I was only one man, and couldn’t do much towards it. But I knew I had to try to right even the smallest wrong I came across.

  I couldn’t have said this to Amelia, because it was something private to me alone. Besides, it would’ve sounded too smug.

  So she could not be expected to understand, she was tired, and we were spending money we couldn’t afford. She was quite correct, I was no longer a policeman, so what the hell was I doing…

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I tend to forget, and you’re quite right. Tell you what…I’ll pack our things and settle up here, and drive home. We can give the mill some more thought…but for the rest…it’s really none of my business.’

  ‘We really can’t afford the expense.’ There was now a hint of apology in her voice.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  ‘With what they’re asking for the mill, we’d have difficulty as it is.’

  ‘And I really liked it,’ I reminded her.

  She was biting her lower lip, I could sense that. At last: ‘But I’d have loved to see it again.’

  ‘Probably it’s damp in the winter…’

  ‘Richard, you can’t just drop your case now. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll drive back, and you hold the room there. You can go to Lichfield and do what you’ve got to do, and drive back, and perhaps we can meet again this evening.’

  I grinned at Cindy, whose tail quivered at the end. ‘That’s what I’d prefer,’ I admitted.

  ‘And take care,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do that.’ I retrieved a thought. ‘Oh—and Amelia…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Have you checked on the front step?’

  ‘What…’

  ‘To check whether the letters are still under the stone.’

  ‘Idiot.’ She laughed, and hung up.

  Always end on a cheerful note. It helps things along.

  I said to Cindy: ‘How d’you feel about another drive?’

  She seemed to approve, I put some more ointment on her ear, and we went down to the car.

  8

  I found him in the Close, where I thought he would be. They look after their own, and wouldn’t forget an organist, even if only a deputy. It was Sunday. Working day for the Cathedral. I’d walked twice round it before deciding which of the haunting little side entries to investigate.

  The three spires towered over me awesomely. I explored, wandered down narrowed passages flanked by tight little ancient cottages, knocked on a few doors and enquired, and eventually found him.

  ‘Are you Duncan Carter?’ I asked, although, for some reason I could not have explained, I knew he was. He was certainly the right age, which would be forty-nine.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I come in and speak to you?’

  ‘Not if you’re from another newspaper.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  He was tall and slim, and carried himself with a strange elegant diffidence—something to do with the tilt of his head—yet there was humour in his large, placid eyes. It was a contained humour. Perhaps he treasured it, as it must have been deeply enshrined to have weathered ten years in prison. The clothes he was wearing, casual and therefore loose, were nevertheless hanging on him in an indication that he’d lost weight. They’d been in store, waiting. His hair was blond, lank, falling across his forehead. One hand persistently reached up and dashed it aside. The lips were full. They might easily have assumed a sulky line.

  ‘Then who are you? Surely not the piano tuner, on a Sunday?’ He said it with a drawl that was close to a sneer. They’d probably taught him that inside.

  ‘Can you tell me,’ I countered, ‘whether you’ve had a recent visit from an ex-policeman called Hughes—Llew Hughes?’

  His eyes were wary. ‘And if I have?’

  ‘I’m another one. Mr Hughes is dead. He sort of asked me to pick up and carry on.’

  He’d been lounging against the door frame, and now thrust himself upright. ‘You’d better come in, hadn’t you?’ He made a gesture, indicating a door to the right of the narrow, natural-stone hall.

  I preceded him into the room. When he’d followed me and closed the door, we’d pretty well absorbed all the spare space.

  ‘This was my place,’ he said, ‘before it happened. This room was where I worked. Now Frank Leigh’s got the position—deputy organist and choirmaster—but he’s letting me stay with him. For now. The future’s uncertain. As you can see, there isn’t much room.’

  Beams pressed down on us and walls seemed to bulge inwards. The room, even empty, would have been small. The single window was tiny, the door through which we’d entered was narrow and low. One wall was an open-shelved bookcase, tossed and piled untidily with music and books on music, manuscript paper, a guitar that had found its way in. There was a tiny table, a small upright chair, and standing in the centre proudly, its keyboard towards the window, was a full-sized concert grand piano.

  How they’d got it in I couldn’t imagine. They’d have had to strip it down to the last key and string. He edged round, sat on the stool, and gestured to the upright chair. I perched myself on it, and from there could see he had manuscript paper sheets on the music stand.

  ‘You look younger than him,’ he commented, cocking his head. ‘Perhaps you can tell me what’s going on. I couldn’t understand a word he said.’

  ‘Perhaps because he was over-cautious,’ I suggested.

  ‘Well…’ He glanced away, then back, trying a weak smile.

  I had to remember that he’d just done ten years in prison. He’d have had to acquire a protective cynicism in order to survive. I didn’t know what he’d been like when he was arrested. Certainly, if he’d led a cloistered life, shut in this very room with his piano and emerging only to walk the few yards into the Cathedral and mount to the organ loft, h
e’d not have encountered the rough and harrowing side of life.

  If he’d been like that, going into prison an innocent man, the shock to his system would have been immense. I had to continue on that assumption, handling gently a personality that had become used to ungentle hands.

  I shifted uncomfortably on the chair. ‘You were working?’ I nodded towards the piano keyboard. ‘Sorry if I interrupted you.’

  He shrugged. His smile was now attractive. ‘A melody. A tune. Nothing much.’

  ‘You can still play? I mean, you haven’t forgotten…lost your touch?’

  ‘No, no. Hands are fine.’ To illustrate, he thundered out a few fistfuls of chords.

  ‘Tried the organ, have you?’

  He laughed. ‘Lord, no. Any day now, though. I’m not authorised, really, but Frank’s going to sneak me in. Then you’ll hear something. I’ll set the spires rocking…’

  His eyes were sparkling with enthusiasm, until he caught my smile.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘I was simply pleased—for you.’

  ‘No need to be.’ He shook his head and dashed the hair from his eyes.

  ‘Really, you know, I don’t need your pity. God…haven’t I had enough! They come round…came, at first…all friendly and welcoming, but you could see it in their eyes. Pity. It’s all that’s allowing me to stay here. Pity. I’ll be glad when I can get away.’

  Then he flicked another little smile at me, apologising.

  ‘It doesn’t seem to me that you need any,’ I said. ‘Quite frankly, in your situation I’d have gone mad.’

  He eyed me suspiciously. ‘Is that what you think happened? I’ve gone off my head?’

  ‘Far from it. I just thought—the transition, from here to there. Quite a shock, that would be. Especially if you were innocent.’

  ‘Don’t start that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s over, done with. I’m out. Oh yes, on parole. Don’t imagine I’m a free man, far from it. But I’m out, and I can at least…’ He played a little dreamy tune with one hand, then stared up at me with mischief in his eyes. ‘I can even tell you to leave, and you’d have to go. Now…that’s freedom for you.’