The Liar in the Library

by Simon Brett

  ‘Oh?’ Carole had the skill of putting quite a lot of accusation into a monosyllable.

  ‘Why didn’t you want to be involved?’ asked Jude, more gently.

  ‘Well, it goes back to an experience my late husband Gerald had. He was always a very law-abiding man. Brought up that way, and he spent his career in insurance, so he was never going to break the law, was he? But there was a scandal at the firm he worked for, a scandal to do with car insurance.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It involved a company of panel beaters – you know, car-repair people?’

  ‘We have heard of panel beaters,’ said Carole, in a manner testy enough to prompt a look of mild reproof from Jude. They were both desperate for the information that Eveline Ollerenshaw had to reveal, but the old lady had to be allowed to deliver it at her own pace.

  ‘Well, these panel beaters had got into the habit – the criminal habit, it should be said – of making the damage to cars that were brought in for repair rather worse than that caused by the original accidents.’

  ‘So that the insurance companies were charged more than they should have been?’

  ‘Exactly, Carole. And there was some deal whereby the extra money was divided up between the owner of the vehicle and the panel beaters.’

  ‘There have been scams like that around,’ said Jude, ‘as long as there has been car insurance.’

  ‘Oh yes. But for this particular fiddle to work, when the police investigated it, they reckoned there had to be someone on the inside.’

  ‘Someone in the insurance company?’

  ‘Yes.’ Resentful of Carole’s hurrying her, Eveline Ollerenshaw deliberately slowed down her narrative. ‘Well, the thing was, because Gerald worked in the car insurance section of the company, and because it was a very small department, for some time there was suspicion that he might have been involved in the fiddle. Of course he wasn’t – and eventually it was proved that he wasn’t. The rotten apple was a junior clerk – wide boy from the East End; he should have been the first suspect straight away – but Gerald was very much upset by the episode. He said it showed how easily lies get believed as truth, and how easy it would be for a miscarriage of justice to take place. He never forgot it.’

  Evvie was silent for a moment, lost in recollection. Then she pulled herself back to the present. ‘Anyway, thereafter Gerald always discouraged me from doing anything to help the police. So when that Detective Inspector Rollins and her gawky sidekick came round here to ask if I’d seen anything during the night in the library car park … No, of course I hadn’t! I normally sleep very badly, I told them, but I had a really early night on the Tuesday and I’d slept right through. One of the best night’s sleep I’d had for a long time.’

  Eveline Ollerenshaw sat back in her armchair with considerable satisfaction.

  Carole and Jude exchanged looks, both thinking the same thing: by what small details the processes of justice can be affected. Detective Inspector Rollins and Detective Sergeant Knight had spent more than a week in frustrating dead-end investigations, Jude had been put through a nightmare of suspicion … and all the time there had been a witness to the crime. A witness who, for a reason that didn’t stand up to any logical examination, had withheld her testimony and not revealed to the police what she had witnessed on the night in question.

  Assuming, of course, that she had witnessed something on the night in question.

  Jude asked first. ‘So tell me, Evvie, what did you see?’

  The old lady’s narrative provided just what they had hoped for. It confirmed suppositions they had made, and provided new details. After a couple of supplementary questions, Carole and Jude had all the information they required.

  They thanked her, refused offers of more tea and cake, and left Eveline Ollerenshaw to her loneliness.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was the first time either Carole or Jude had seen his house. The luxury of the interior matched the expectation given by the black Range Rover parked in the open garage. A detached Edwardian villa, it was only separated by the coast road from the grassy dunes to the west of Fethering Beach.

  But there was something anonymous about the inside of the house. The cleaning had been done with efficiency rather than love. Though some of the objects – African masks, Japanese hangings, beer steins – reflected Oliver Parsons’ life of travel, they gave the impression of tokens rather than mementos. Even the framed stills from his television work looked somehow unregarded. Jude wondered how different the atmosphere in the house would have been when his wife was alive. Since their first meeting in the library, the deceased woman had not been mentioned again but, inside the house, Jude felt her absence.

  Oliver Parsons seemed to know why they had come, but showed no emotion stronger than a resigned amusement. Jude had phoned to check that he was in, and they had arrived in the Renault around noon. Oliver was of the view that that was a perfect time to open a bottle of champagne, and neither woman disagreed with him.

  ‘So,’ he said, after they had raised their glasses and sipped, ‘you have found out my little secret?’

  ‘I think we have,’ said Carole.

  ‘Well, congratulations. We spoke in the Hare & Hounds in Weldisham, Jude, about Golden Age amateur sleuths and policemen. This is one up to the amateur sleuths. You got there before the flatfoots.’

  ‘You’re not attempting to deny what you did?’ asked Carole.

  ‘What would be the point of that? It’s a fair cop. You’ve got me bang to rights.’ He proffered his wrists before him, as if to have the handcuffs clicked on.

  ‘But you must have done some research,’ Carole persisted. ‘There’s no way you could have set the whole thing up on the spur of the moment.’

  ‘No, you’re right. It became a little project for me, and the research was part of that project. Rather fascinating, actually. I got really caught up in it.’

  ‘As you got caught up in the library Writers’ Group, and the study of Golden Age crime fiction?’ Jude suggested.

  ‘Ah. You’ve seen through me,’ he said. ‘Yes. I always have suffered from a low threshold of boredom. While I was directing, that wasn’t so much of a problem. There was plenty of work; each project offered new horizons, new challenges. The adrenaline junkie within me was constantly fed, constantly stimulated. As the offers of work dwindled, things got more difficult. I needed something else in my life. Tried booze for a while, even drugs. They didn’t fill the void. They were just time-wasting and destructive. As you say, Jude, I picked up on the Creative Writing, studying the Golden Age, lots of other courses and things. Each time I started with enthusiasm, but after a few months, a few weeks in some cases, I still felt unsatisfied. And then I thought of having a go at murder …’

  ‘Are you telling us,’ asked Carole, ‘that you committed murder out of boredom?’

  ‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I got very caught up in it.’

  ‘And did you get the idea for your murder method from Best Served Cold by G. H. D. Troughton?’ asked Jude.

  ‘You really have done your groundwork, haven’t you? A woman came to the Writers’ Group and talked about that book.’

  ‘Professor Vanessa Perks.’

  ‘Oh, well done, Carole. Another brownie point for research. Yes, the book was what set my brain in motion. I liked the idea of everyone suspecting that the poison had been in a wine bottle, while all the time it was in a hipflask.’

  ‘Though in your case you didn’t use cyanide.’

  ‘No. I didn’t want to follow G. H. D. Troughton too slavishly. Wanted to add a few of my own touches. Then I saw that Burton St Clair was coming to talk at Fethering Library, and I happened to know about his walnut allergy.’

  ‘From when you made the film about the Wordway Trust at Blester Combe.’

  ‘I can’t tell you two anything, can I? So, anyway, I’d recently heard Burton being interviewed on some radio programme about Stray Leaves in Autumn, and he s
ounded so pretentious, such a self-regarding liar, and I thought to myself: Why don’t I murder the bastard? At first it was a kind of joke, but gradually the appeal of the idea became stronger and stronger. By the end, it was an obsession. I didn’t know whether it would work, but I loved the idea of trying. I think if it hadn’t worked, I’d have lost interest. Forgotten about him, taken up macramé or something.’ His eyes glowed. ‘But it did work.’

  ‘And didn’t you feel any guilt?’ asked Carole, very much in Home Office mode.

  He shook his head. ‘None at all. The world was free of another bastard. And, what was more to the point, I had succeeded! I had achieved what I set out to do.’

  ‘You said you did a lot of research.’

  ‘Yes, Jude, I did. Real cloak-and-dagger stuff. I started trailing Burton St Clair, following him, particularly when he went to do literary events. I’m very proud of how I did it, actually. He never suspected for a moment that he was being followed.

  ‘And I found out the important things I needed to find out about him. I found out that he still had the walnut allergy. I found out that he still carried a hipflask of whisky, and had a habit of taking a swig when he got into the car after a gig. And I found out that he always kept his car keys in the pocket of his leather jacket.

  ‘I was very excited when the relevant Tuesday arrived. I’d offered Di Thompson my help in putting out the chairs, so I knew I’d have time to set everything up if all went according to plan. But I still didn’t really believe it would. I wouldn’t abort my mission, but I was fully prepared to have my mission aborted by external circumstances. You know, he might keep his jacket on because it was cold; I might not be able to get out to the car park unobserved: there were any number of things that could go wrong.

  ‘But, come the day, none of them did. I kept my gloves on in the library, which was reasonable given the outside temperature. Burton’s jacket was left unattended in the staff room. I helped myself to his keys, went out to the empty car park, opened the BMW and found the hipflask in the glove compartment, just as he’d left it when he was out on previous gigs. I opened it, tipped in the ground walnuts I’d brought with me, returned it to the glove compartment. The car was locked and his keys were back in his jacket pocket. And nobody had noticed a thing. Whole exercise took … under two minutes.’

  ‘And then you just had to wait?’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve no idea how wonderful that waiting time was, Jude. I felt so in control. I was challenging myself, presenting myself with the ultimate challenge, in fact. For the first time since Aileen died, I felt good.’

  Both Carole and Jude realized it was the first time he had mentioned his wife’s name.

  ‘But if the anaphylactic shock had killed Burton St Clair – as indeed it did,’ asked Carole, ‘how were you planning to remove the evidence of the hipflask from the car?’

  ‘Ah, this was when my plan started to go wrong. After I’d supposedly left the library, I hung around in the rain, watching from that little copse next door. And the first thing I wasn’t expecting was for you, Jude, to get into the car with Burton.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Jude suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That should have put me on to you. When you asked me for that drink at the Hare & Hounds, you said you knew I hadn’t got a car because I’d accepted Burton’s offer of a lift. But in fact you’d left the library before he made the offer.’

  Melodramatically, Oliver Parsons struck his head with the heel of his hand. ‘Mea culpa! You see? I’m sorry, I am not the master criminal I thought myself.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Carole coldly.

  ‘Very well. I must confess, I thought at that stage, when I saw Jude get into the BMW, my plans were really scuppered. I thought Burton was going to take you to your home, to his hotel … I didn’t know where. Whether he would then take a swig from the hipflask at some other time, I had no means of knowing. All I do know was that I felt very disappointed, cheated of my triumph at the last moment.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked Carole.

  ‘I drove back home and tried to console myself – unsuccessfully – with a bottle of Scotch.’

  ‘And then? Did you return to the library?’

  ‘Yes, I did, Carole. You guessed that, didn’t you?’

  Carole was about to say that his return had been witnessed by Eveline Ollerenshaw, but a look from Jude stopped her. Both were silent, as Oliver went on, ‘A dog returning to his vomit, isn’t that the usual image?

  ‘So, I went back and found – in spite of my gloomy prognostications – my plan had actually worked. There was no sign of you, Jude, and Burton St Clair was dead. I could tell from the expression on his face and the smell of walnuts from his mouth that it was the anaphylactic shock that had killed him. Yippee! I had got away with it!

  ‘Except, of course, there was one thing wrong. My earlier plan, once Burton was dead, had been to remove the evidence from the car.’

  ‘The hipflask?’

  ‘Exactly, Jude. But when I look for it in the middle of the Tuesday night, there’s no sign. I move Burton around in a way which I’m sure is unseemly for a dead body, but it’s not there. I still don’t know where it is.’

  ‘And that’s why you got in touch with me, wasn’t it, so soon after Burton’s death? Nothing to do with wanting to play amateur sleuths. You just wanted to keep up to date with how much I knew.’

  ‘Sorry, Jude.’ Then, gallantly, he added, ‘But I did enjoy your company too.’

  ‘Thanks a lot.’ She knew he was just being polite. Since his wife’s death – and indeed during her lifetime – he had had no romantic interest in other women.

  ‘What happened to the hipflask, though?’ he asked. ‘Did you take it, Jude?’

  ‘No. Burton was still alive when I got out of the car.’

  ‘Why did you get out of the car, incidentally? In that filthy rain?’

  ‘Because he came on to me.’

  ‘Ah. Yes, that would figure. So where is the hipflask?’

  Quickly Jude summarized the part Uncle Pawel had played in the night’s proceedings. Still neither of them mentioned the confirmation they had had from Eveline Ollerenshaw of what had happened.

  ‘And where is the hipflask now?’

  ‘Who knows, Oliver? Possibly in the hands of some Polish gangsters?’

  ‘Melted down by now, I would think,’ said Carole.

  ‘So I’m almost off the hook,’ Oliver mused. ‘No evidence against me.’

  ‘We know what happened.’ Carole’s tone was stern.

  ‘Yes, you do. And I’ve confessed. But have you done the proper Golden Age thing and set up some recording contraption to preserve my confession for posterity?’ He looked from one to the other and knew that they hadn’t. ‘Which means I might get away with it. Not that I would, of course, in a Golden Age whodunit. I would be found guilty and at my trial the judge would put his black cap on and …’ He grinned wryly. ‘This is rather like the end of a Golden Age whodunit. With very few of those, though the doughty amateur sleuths have solved the mystery to their own and their readers’ satisfaction, would the case stand up in court. Could you really see the Criminal Prosecution Service taking on a case in which someone was poisoned by a gas released from a glass receptacle which was shattered by a singer on a radio broadcast hitting a high C? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Are you saying you’re going to deny what you’ve done?’ asked Carole, concerned.

  ‘It’s a thought.’

  ‘There is a witness who saw all the comings and goings of Tuesday night.’

  ‘Is there? I’m not surprised.’ He did not ask for any further details. ‘As I say, rather far from the Perfect Crime, what I set up, wasn’t it?’

  He grinned again. ‘No, I’m not going to deny anything. Mind you, I’m not going to confess anything either. Not to the police. I think going through the process of their trying to prove I did what I did might be rather fun. Not quite as much fun as
committing the murder, but getting on that way.’ He yawned ostentatiously. ‘Anything to stave off boredom.’

  There was a long silence in the nice middle-class Fethering sitting room. ‘Then Jude broke it by asking, ‘Why did you really do it, Oliver?’

  ‘Ah.’ He exhaled a slow sigh. ‘Why?’

  ‘It was something to do with Aileen, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You’re very perceptive, Jude.’ The next silence threatened to be even longer, but then Oliver Parsons said, ‘It goes back to Blester Combe. Yes, when I was making the film. I hadn’t met Aileen then, but she was on that crime-writing course. There was an immediate attraction between us, we exchanged phone numbers, but not much could happen while we were there. I was busy shooting the film, she was doing all those workshops and stuff. Anyway, I was only down there for a couple of days. But we both knew it was the real thing. We swore we’d keep in touch.

  ‘Then weeks went by, months went by, I didn’t hear from her. I tried ringing her number, always got voicemail, left messages, no response.

  ‘Eventually, three months later, she rang me. Explained that she couldn’t be in touch before because she’d been having an abortion.’

  ‘Burton?’

  Oliver Parsons nodded. ‘He’d come on to her at the course’s last night party. Got her in one of the outbuildings. It was rape,’ he concluded briefly.

  Neither woman could think of anything appropriate to say.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Aileen and I agreed to put that behind us. We got married. We were very happy. But … Aileen couldn’t have children. Something had gone wrong during the abortion. And now she’s dead.’

  Again, for Carole and Jude, the right words wouldn’t come.

  Oliver Parsons smiled a grim smile. ‘In the words of G. H. D. Troughton – and many other proverbial wordsmiths before him – “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Carole didn’t argue when Jude insisted that she should see Detective Inspector Rollins on her own. Carole hadn’t been involved in the witch-hunt of accusation which Jude had suffered the previous week. Jude was the one who should manage its resolution. The time was set for four o’clock that afternoon.