An Alibi Too Soon

by Roger Ormerod

She bit her lip. ‘Now?’

  ‘When you’re ready.’ I smiled. She squared her shoulders, and marched away up the rest of the drive to the front of the house.

  18

  The setting was ideal. It was the same time of the year, almost the same time of the evening, with the light about what it would have been then. Owen moved his van back into the deeper shadows, and I waited.

  They came down from the terrace, Amelia and Cindy, with Duncan at her shoulder, he gesticulating and talking rapidly, she nodding in apparent agreement but not committing herself. As they rounded the end of the shrubbery he saw me standing in the light from the garage, paused, then came forward quickly.

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Rosie?’

  But I had to check first with Amelia. ‘All right?’

  ‘They’re all very worried,’ she told me. ‘They seemed to know she’d driven away.’

  ‘Anybody say they saw her leave?’

  She shook her head. I could see she was close to tears.

  Duncan said: ‘Will somebody please explain. Why have I been brought down here?’ He was trying to hold himself together and maintain a standard of dignity, but he’d sensed something was wrong and I could detect his disintegration in the hunting of his eyes, the wildness of his gestures.

  ‘I wanted to tell you down here,’ I said, ‘away from the others, because otherwise it could’ve been too big a shock.’ His mouth fell open and he made inarticulate sounds. ‘I’m sorry, Duncan, but it’s bad news. Rosemary is dead. The millrace…’

  ‘She can’t…no, you’re wrong. She can’t be dead.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no mistake. She was drowned in the millrace, and it was no accident. She went there to tell me something which would also have told me who killed your Uncle Edwin, so she was prevented from telling me anything.’

  He was trying to get away from it, to be anywhere but there where it was happening, but there was no direction he could take and he shifted back and forth with his shoulders, his feet not responding. ‘Oh dear Lord!’ he croaked. ‘What…how…’ Then the anger caught him. ‘Who?’ he demanded, and his waving hands closed into fists.

  ‘I think I can show you who,’ I told him. ‘But I need your help.’

  ‘Help? What can I do…’

  ‘A trick. A set-up I’m planning.’

  His eyes glazed. It was too soon. He put up his hands and covered his face.

  I waited as his shoulders shook, until the hands moved enough for me to see his eyes.

  ‘I want to recreate what happened on the night your uncle died. So I need you, Duncan. When you’re ready—when you think you can manage it—I’d like you to run up to the house, just as you did on that evening, and tell them there’s somebody shut inside the garage with the engine running. One person will know it can’t be Rosemary. The rest will assume it must be. Then we watch what happens.’

  He shook his head and turned away, stopped, looked back. ‘Up there? In the house? Whoever killed her?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘I can’t promise.’ His face was set in a grim, grey determination.

  We watched him walk away up the slightly sloping lawn to the terrace, at which point his legs seemed to gain energy, until he had enough impetus to burst in through the tall window. I heard his voice raised. There was a clatter of response, then they came, pouring over the terrace, Duncan first, the two young people at his heels, a tall man in a cream uniform, who was probably Clyde Greenslade’s chauffeur, then Mervyn Latimer (Lights) and Harry Martin (Sets) together, shouting at each other. Drew Pierson maintained his dignity as a possible future knight of the stage, and was not hurrying. Dame Mildred could not, although Clyde Greenslade took her arm. He could have picked her up and run with her, but she was flapping at his fingers, rejecting even his hand at her elbow.

  By that time I had started the Stag’s engine, walked outside to face the garage, and operated the radio. The door was now down, light knifing round its edges. I turned off the radio’s switch and stood with it in my hand, uselessly pressing the operating button.

  ‘What is it?’ boomed Pierson from the rear, and Harry Martin grabbed the radio from me.

  ‘Try the button,’ shouted Mervyn Latimer. ‘The wall button.’

  The young couple were the closest to the garage. They operated one button each. The door to the companion garage obediently opened. The one outlined with light did nothing.

  ‘Rosemary!’ Dame Mildred screamed. ‘Do something! Somebody do something!’

  They were grabbing the radio from each other, jabbing at the button, nobody bothering to check whether it was switched on. Duncan shouted: ‘I’ve tried that.’

  He hadn’t, not this time, but he’d thought himself into the act, and he was recalling what he’d done previously. He jumped up and down. ‘It doesn’t work.’

  Dame Mildred swept her gaze around. ‘But why should Rosemary do this?’ she demanded. She plucked at my elbow.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ I managed to inject anger into my voice. It wasn’t difficult. ‘She was just about at the end of her tether.’ I went across and reached down to tug at the door handle, which was about a foot from the ground. ‘Somebody help me, damn it. We’ve got to get her out of here.’

  ‘What the hell d’you mean?’ Drew Pierson thundered. ‘End of her tether!’

  I straightened, easing my shoulders. ‘You try it. You did it last time.’

  ‘Last time?’

  ‘Edwin’s death. You lifted the door open.’

  ‘That was ten years ago. What did you mean…the end of her tether?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? Rosemary had a daughter…’

  ‘Rosie!’ cried Duncan in agony. He was not acting now.

  ‘You’re stronger than me,’ I told Pierson. ‘You did it before. Grab hold of the handle and lift the door, if you have to break it.’

  He stared at me. ‘A daughter?’ He turned his back to me, and bent to the handle.

  I heard comment rustle around the group. ‘A daughter? A daughter!’

  It was not simply a matter of lifting the weight of the door, the automatic linkage would have to be broken, too. Pierson linked both hands in the handle, one over the other, and spread his legs.

  ‘What’s this about a daughter?’ asked Greenslade.

  ‘She told me.’ My eyes were on Pierson’s shoulders. They were locked as he put on the pressure. ‘A daughter. You knew her, Greenslade. I expect you all knew her, those of you who were here when Edwin died. Her name was Glenda Grace.’

  Drew Pierson gave a grunt and fell back from the door. ‘It won’t move.’

  ‘Try again,’ I said. ‘You managed it last time.’

  But his face was red from exertion, his fingers twitching.

  ‘Do something!’ Mildred screamed.

  ‘You’ll never lift that,’ said Greenslade, having taken a look at the other garage door. ‘There’s a complicated linkage. We’ll need crowbars.’ He raised his voice. ‘Anybody know where there’s a crowbar?’

  ‘But Drew did it last time,’ I assured him. ‘Didn’t he?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Drew,’ cried Mildred. ‘You did it last time. Don’t waste time talking about that little slut Glenda Grace.’

  Mervyn Latimer was holding the radio. I’d been watching its movement from hand to hand. I took it from him, turned, and saw that Clyde Greenslade was trying to lift the door. He was bigger than Drew Pierson, stronger in a more passive way, but though his shoulders shook, the door would not move. Inside, the engine ran on, faster now, as it began to overheat.

  ‘But it’s Glenda Grace who’s behind it all,’ I said, allowing my voice to reach everybody. ‘It was her death that brought about everything else since then. Edwin Carter killed her. That’s very clear now. He was the only one amongst you all who reacted to those threatening notes. So it was seen that he’d killed Glenda. And Edwin died, in this garage here, with the same door closed o
n his car. I wonder why the radio didn’t lift it then. I wonder why Drew can’t lift it this time.’

  ‘Older,’ gasped Drew.

  ‘I think not. I think that door could not be lifted…’

  I pressed the on switch of the radio and then the button. The door slid up. There was a fluttering gasp, they all surged forward, then stopped when it was seen that this was not Rosemary’s immaculate BMW, but my scruffy Stag. Greenslade shouted something angrily. I walked in and turned off the engine. The fumes nearly choked me. I returned, panting, to the doorway, blinking out at the half-circle of faces now facing me.

  Mildred was making ‘eek-eek’ sounds of distress, with Harry Martin’s arm around her shoulders protectively. Mervyn Latimer was trying not to laugh on the release of his tension. The two young people were clinging to each other, her head against his shoulder. Greenslade was tense with fury, deep rumblings coming from his chest. I thought he might be on the verge of running at me. Drew Pierson stood with his face grey, his arms swinging loosely at his sides.

  ‘What the hell’s this?’ he growled.

  ‘What it isn’t is Rosemary,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to break the news this way, but she’s dead, and a few miles from here. She was killed, because she’d decided to tell me something that couldn’t help but lead me to the person who killed her Uncle Edwin. Yes, I’m sure she’d known who it was for a long time, but for some reason she’d decided to remain silent. Until this evening. There must have been a strong reason for her silence…’ I tried to smile around at them, but it was a stiff grimace.

  ‘A very good reason,’ I went on, ‘because Rosemary knew that her Uncle Edwin had killed her daughter, Glenda Grace.’

  Greenslade made a sound of disgust, and turned away. ‘Oh…come on!’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me. She didn’t know until the night Edwin died. She knew then—but so did his murderer.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’ Pierson spoke with only a poor imitation of his stage voice, hoarsely, with restrained passion.

  ‘Believe what?’ I asked. ‘That Edwin killed Glenda Grace, or that she was Rosemary’s daughter?’

  He made an impatient gesture.

  ‘Well…I for one didn’t know she was Rosemary’s daughter,’ said Mildred, tight-lipped. ‘Did you, Drew?’

  ‘No!’ He said it violently.

  ‘But she told me so,’ I said. ‘And Edwin killed her. We know that, because of his remarkable reaction to the threatening letter he received. Then Edwin was killed by whoever closed this door on him.’ I gestured up to it, where it lay snugly beneath the roof. ‘But it wasn’t closed with the radio. If that’d been done, Drew wouldn’t have been able to lift it by hand. That’s been demonstrated. It was closed like this.’

  What I did next was based on theory alone. I had noticed that the door, when closing automatically, did so rapidly at first, then more slowly for the last bit. I’d reasoned that it meant the linkage had a strong, but slower, leverage at the bottom end. At the top, as it was at that moment, the linkage would have been at its weakest. I thought. I hoped.

  I reached up to the handle on the underside, got both hands on it, and jumped, coming down with all my weight. There was a crack, and the door came down so fast that it almost pressed me into the ground. I struggled from underneath, then lifted it back. Not so easy—that door was heavy.

  ‘Like that,’ I said.

  ‘So what?’ Greenslade was not impressed.

  ‘Yeah,’ said his chauffeur, remembering who paid his wages.

  I drew a deep breath. ‘I couldn’t see why Duncan was unable to lift it by using the radio. But this explains it. The linkage had been broken, that was why, and that was done when the door was shut on Edwin and the car, not when it was opened.’

  I looked round, but there was no comment. ‘It shows that whoever shut this door didn’t use the obvious way of doing it by operating one of the two available radio transmitters. The wall button was out of action, and perhaps that was tried. But the radio in Edwin’s car, which was standing right where you all are now, wasn’t used. You’d think he didn’t even know how the radios work. But I was told you all knew that. You were told by Edwin, who was proud of his fancy gadgets. All but one of you, that is.’

  ‘Oh dear me,’ said Mildred. She touched his elbow. ‘That’s you, Drew. He means you. You didn’t want to know—remember?’

  He shook his head angrily. ‘I’m not listening to this.’

  ‘But who’, I asked, ‘almost came to blows with Edwin, trying to stop him going out that evening—but really testing how important it was to Edwin?’

  ‘This is plain, bloody nonsense,’ he roared, his voice back to full strength.

  ‘You haven’t been listening, Drew,’ I told him. ‘I’ve explained that Rosemary must have known who killed Edwin, because of the motive, which was the death of Glenda. But she remained silent. She loved her uncle, yet she said nothing. Why? There had to be someone who was even more important to her. Just think around, and wonder who that could be. Who else but Glenda’s father? They must have been intimate at some time! There could still have been fond memories. Were you still fond of her, Drew? After all, you said you’d been a friend of the family since she was a child.’

  ‘Are you saying…’

  I cut in crisply. ‘That you were Glenda’s father? Yes, I’m saying that.’

  ‘Damn you!’ He was choking, his face livid as he threw himself at me. I caught his wrists, his fingers reaching for my throat, and held him. I couldn’t have done it for long, he was berserk, spittle flying in my face, but Greenslade stepped in from behind him and got his arms round Pierson’s chest. He was dragged from me, struggling and shouting.

  ‘I wasn’t her father! Wasn’t!’

  ‘Rosemary must have known. Remember the party at the flat, when Glenda died? Rosemary was sick. She’d seen Glenda there, her daughter, who’d been instrumental in taking Duncan from her, cynically and coldly. Rosemary was sick, and Edwin observed that. But she wasn’t sick because Glenda was there. Her reaction was too strong—she was physically sick. And why not, seeing Glenda on your arm, Drew? Can’t you understand—Rosemary saw you as Glenda’s latest lover…’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Drew gasped. ‘I was not…’ He stopped, staring at me, realising that he was committed.

  ‘Not what?’ I asked, and I managed to be gentle. ‘Not her lover…or not her father?’

  Greenslade stood with Drew Pierson clasped against his chest, glaring past Drew’s head as though it was my fault.

  ‘I was not her father,’ sobbed Drew.

  I gave it a couple of seconds. Nobody seemed to be looking at anybody else.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘If that’s how you want it. We’ll assume that you, although a lifetime friend of the family, were so much out of contact with Rosemary that you didn’t know she’d borne your child. We’ll accept that. But d’you want people to believe Glenda was your mistress, and that you were committing incest, even unknowingly…’

  ‘No!’ He shouted, writhing again in Greenslade’s arms.

  ‘…or would you rather they thought you knew she was your daughter, and you were doing no more than escorting her proudly to Edwin’s flat for his party?’

  I saw Clyde Greenslade bare his teeth. Drew’s head was bobbing against his chest.

  ‘Say it!’ said Greenslade, his teeth barely parting.

  ‘I knew…’ Drew whispered. ‘Knew I was her father. I was proud. Proud! And Edwin killed her!’

  There was a whimper from behind me, then Duncan ran past and began to pound his feeble fists into Drew’s uncovered face.

  Greenslade’s rubbery lips distorted with disgust. He lifted Drew from his feet, twisting him away from Duncan’s assault. He was shouting: ‘Don’t mark his face! Don’t mark his face!’

  Dear heaven, I thought, did he still believe his prime property, Drew Pierson, would be available for his film?

  I heard Owen Davies shout, and he ran f
orward. I joined him. We struggled with Greenslade, and finally tore Pierson free. Owen was panting. He raised his voice.

  ‘I think we’ll all go up to the house.’

  Amelia was pressed against me. I took her in my arms, for support. Mine. Around us, they were recovering from the shock, muttering together, shuffling their feet, stealing glances at Drew as he tried to get to his feet and stay there.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mildred. ‘Whatever are we going to do to replace him? Would you like to play the part of the policeman, Mr Patton?’

  I smiled at her, shaking my head. I’d had enough of that.

  Quietly, when nobody was looking, we got into the Stag and drove away.

  If you enjoyed reading An Alibi Too Soon, you might also be interested in Face Value by Roger Ormerod, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Face Value by Roger Ormerod

  1

  The snow over the moors had been mostly unbroken, and I’d managed to plug along at a steady thirty, but heading down into the valley I lost it once or twice, and felt the tyres beginning to bite again only when the road began to climb. There was a feeling I was getting close. The slope down on the left was much as he’d described.

  I saw his official Allegro first, then the constable himself, standing in the lay-by and staring down towards the copse, slapping his hands together vigorously. I drew in behind the police car. He came across and opened the door for me, his breath steaming.

  ‘You made good time, sir.’

  I nodded. ‘Brason, isn’t it? I’m Detective Inspector Patton. What’ve you got for me?’

  He was hesitant, slightly embarrassed. For a burnt-out car he’d probably expected to get a DC, or at the best a sergeant. On a Sunday, particularly. But the test day was mine, and it was none of his business.

  ‘Snow’s bad over the moors,’ he commented. He was eager, reaching for an explanation. I smiled, then went to stand by the gate, and let him work on it.

  The air was clean and crisp, the view spectacular. Farm buildings were spread on the other side of the valley, almost beyond the far rise. The copse was snuggling low, immediately below us, and there was a dark flash of water between the bare trees. Up along the road, the farmer had cut back his layered thorn hedge for fifty yards and erected an angled pine fence, then stuck his five-barred gate in the middle. It made a lay-by that just held the two cars.