Die-Cast (A Peter Marklin Mystery)

by Neville Steed

  ‘But the police have been through all that with her before.’

  ‘You’re not the police. You’re a sweet generous attractive lady trying to help, an arm to lean on...’

  ‘...a shoulder to cry on...’

  ‘...a pleasure to do business with.’

  ‘Like you’ll be with dear innocent little Lavinia? Only instead of arms and shoulders, I suspect she’ll require parts of the anatomy that are more below the equator.’

  ‘Now, now, Arabella.’ I gave the clean version of the scout’s salute. ‘I promise I won’t let it get too tropical.’

  ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,’ she intoned in her best John Wayne voice. I kissed her long and hard. I love that girl, and I needed a spanking new reminder that the feeling was mutual, before I ventured into the night. I got it.

  As I left, Muir rang to say Wednesday evening would be fine to see the finished Flamingo. That made a nice sanity clause, too.

  *

  At least she was dressed when I arrived. I’d half been expecting a negligéd Barbara Stanwyck act straight out of Double Indemnity — but, maybe, that only happens with insurance salesmen who look like Fred McMurray. But what she was dressed in was certainly not the old virginal Laura Ashley stuff, but tight, black leather trousers and white silk wrap-over blouse, not too tightly wrapped.

  I was ushered past the bull’s horns and elephant’s foot into the awful room I’ve described before, and took my place dutifully on the settee next to her.

  ‘You haven’t asked me about my kettle,’ she smiled languorously.

  I had to remind myself. ‘Oh — er, yeah, kettle. Oh yes, has it boiled yet?’

  ‘Getting warmer all the time, Peter. Isn’t that what kettles should do?’ She put her long white fingers on my brown cords. Things were moving too fast for me, as obviously, unlike her, I wanted my chance at conversation before I got into hot water, not after.

  I tried a ploy. ‘You haven’t asked me how my Inspector Plodder investigation is going.’

  She looked a trifle miffed. ‘Oh all right, I’ll ask. How is Inspector Plodder?’

  ‘Not too good, I’m afraid,’ I replied. ‘He’s got a few nasty problems.’

  She moved a little closer to me. ‘What nasty little problems? Anything I could help with?’ she breathed.

  I perked up. ‘Well, yes, actually.’

  She suddenly put her arm around my shoulder, and drew me to her. She had changed perfumes. This one was three parts musk to one part subtlety. I suddenly wished Arabella had been outside in the car, available at the first scream for help.

  ‘Come to Mama, and tell me all about it.’

  ‘Well, it’s about phone calls really. Inspector Plodder has Telecom trouble.’

  I waited for a reaction. There was nothing, unless you call a snuzzling of the neck a reaction. So I was disappointed on two counts, but persevered.

  ‘He thinks Adam Longhurst did receive a call the night of the murder.’

  ‘Oh,’ she murmured.

  ‘And he thinks it was a lady with an American accent.’

  She moved her face upwards towards mine, and smiled. ‘So, if he’s right, we know who that lady was, don’t we?’

  I nodded. She sat up a little straighter.

  ‘I wonder what Lana-Lee’s motive was in making that call — just to frame Longhurst? Then why...?’

  I cut her speculation short. ‘Inspector Plodder has a gut feeling it wasn’t Lana-Lee.’

  Her eyes flickered. ‘But you said she was an American.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I said Inspector Plodder thinks it was some lady with an American accent.’

  She suddenly turned on the settee to face me directly. ‘Another American, maybe? Old girlfriend of Maxwell’s, perhaps? That is, if Inspector Plodder is on the right track in the first place.’

  ‘Or someone pretending to be an American,’ I said, quietly, ‘pretending to be Lana-Lee.’

  Her undeniably attractive mouth quivered as she hunted for the right words. ‘Who — who would want to pass themselves off as Lana-Lee?’

  ‘The murderer. Or someone who knew about the murder, and wanted to frame Adam Longhurst.’

  ‘She would have to have been a good actress to fool him.’

  ‘Much better than the WI,’ I said and braced myself for an explosion.

  ‘You can’t mean you think I had anything...’

  ‘I don’t know. Did you?’

  Her long fingers reached for my cheek, and softly rested there. ‘Oh, lovely Peter, you don’t think I murdered Ben, do you? Oh, tell me you don’t think I am capable of...’ She broke off, and her hand slid gently down from my face. I waited patiently. At last she resumed, and her voice was calm and collected. ‘I have to confess, Peter, I haven’t been exactly truthful with you. But I didn’t make that call and I didn’t kill Ben, although, I must say, I felt like it after I found out about Ben and John’s scheme to smuggle drugs into the country. You see, I did know before John was arrested. I had an anonymous phone call.’

  Hell, I thought, here we go again.

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘Man. I didn’t recognise the voice.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That Ben and John were up to their necks in a drug smuggling operation, and he thought he ought to tell me, just in case I didn’t know.’

  ‘And you didn’t know until then?’

  ‘No, I swear, Peter, I didn’t. I was absolutely horrified.’ I took her, for the moment, at her word.

  ‘What day was the call?’

  ‘The morning of the day Ben was killed.’

  Things, suddenly began coming together in my mind, as I thought of Elizabeth Sumner.

  ‘You then rang your husband in Paris, didn’t you?’

  She looked at me in surprise. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Inspector Plodder told me,’ I grinned weakly.

  She took my hand. ‘Oh, Peter, I didn’t know what to do, when I learnt. I thought, if I rang John right away, I might somehow stop the whole thing there and then.’

  ‘Weren’t you afraid someone at Reinhardt might be listening to your call?’

  ‘I spoke in riddles, so that only John would understand what I was getting at.’

  ‘What was your husband’s reaction?’

  ‘He couldn’t say much, obviously. He just said for me to keep my mouth shut and he would be home next day to deal with the whole problem.’

  ‘Did he know who the anonymous phone call might have been from?’

  ‘He implied he thought it was probably someone at Reinhardt, who was making some wild guesses, in the hope of blackmail, and he’d take care of it on his return.’

  She put her arm back around me, and snuggled her face up against mine. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, lovely Peter, not to have told you all of this before. But I thought, if I kept quiet about knowing about the drugs business, I’d not get involved. But that’s all I’ve kept from you, I promise.’

  Her mouth reached for mine, and I felt the probing of her tongue. I pulled back sufficiently to say, ‘Did you ring Maxwell, too?’

  She nodded. ‘I tried, but was told by the housekeeper he’d been out most of the day.’

  ‘And you didn’t try to see him later?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about that night?’

  ‘No. No. I’ve told you. I’ve told everybody. I stayed in all evening, with your Inspector Plodder and Sleuth.’ She returned to exploring my mouth, and tried to take my hand on a journey inside her blouse. I resisted, then remembered I still had a few questions left to ask. Her breast felt surprisingly cold, the nipple small and almost buried in the curves. I intended to let her relax for a few minutes in the hope my next question might take her off guard. But she was very soon not content with just a hand in her blouse, and as I felt her own hand tip-toe towards my zipper, I had to come out with it prematurely (so to speak).

  ‘Lavinia, do you think John killed Maxwell? Fle
w back, and because of your call, drove down from Windsor, had a row with Maxwell over lapses in security or whatever, killed him, then drove back to Windsor to spend the rest of the night with his alibi, Elizabeth Sumner?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, rubbing her hand firmly against my groin. ‘Why don’t we talk about it all afterwards — in bed?’

  I stayed her hand for a second, but couldn’t disguise a growing hardness that I had been fighting ever since her first advances.

  ‘Look,’ I cleared my throat, ‘before we — er — just one more question.’

  ‘What’s that? It had better be quick.’

  ‘If John did murder Maxwell, then it might well be that he forced you to imitate Lana-Lee on the phone, to get Longhurst down to the beach to frame him.’

  I could see from her eyes that she was having difficulty deciding what her response should be, and, luckily, the delay stayed her zipper hand.

  ‘I...er, no — Plodder’s wrong, Inspector Whetstone’s right. It was nothing to do with us. It must have been Adam...Adam.’ I felt her hand move back to its task, and I was about to intervene, when I was saved by a doorbell equivalent to the us cavalry.

  She instantly raised her head, and rearranged her blouse. ‘Who the hell can that be?’ she muttered with considerable venom. The serpent was never very far below the smooth skin of Lavinia Saunders.

  I rose from the settee and did my own readjustments.

  ‘Shall I peep through the curtains?’ I offered.

  ‘No. You stay here. I’ll just dab some lipstick on, and see who it is.’

  She went out into the hall, and a few moments later, I heard her open the front door. I moved across the room to the sitting-room door, so that I could make an instant getaway the moment the visitor had gone.

  ‘I’m so glad to catch you in, Mrs Saunders.’ It was a woman’s voice, of the older, Women’s Institute type. ‘I hate to bother you at a time like this, when you have so many other problems, but, if you remember, you did promise us some little items for our annual jumble sale. I called some time ago, but you weren’t in. Or at least, I couldn’t make anybody hear.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, Mrs Olsen,’ I heard Lavinia reply. ‘But I’m a bit busy right now.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a pity. I was so hoping, Mrs Saunders, you might have something.’

  Lavinia did little to hide her impatience. ‘I’m not sure I can lay my hands on anything just this second.’

  ‘But if you could, Mrs Saunders, it would be such a great help. We haven’t had quite the response this year as last, and the vicar...’

  Lavinia obviously decided that her own desires would be quicker satisfied by capitulating to her visitor than resisting. She popped her head around the door and blew me a kiss. ‘I won’t be a minute. Bloody woman.’ And then she was gone, and I heard her footfalls on the stairs.

  I took the opportunity to go out into the hall, and to the front door. Mrs Olsen turned out to be a personification of her voice, about sixty, prim, proper, and a pillar, I am sure, of her church — just the lady for saving me from a fate worse than (but rather different from) death. It was such a pity I couldn’t tell her of her bell-push salvation.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, rather startled. ‘I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Mrs Olsen.’

  I shook her hand. ‘Peter Marklin. I’m just a friend of the family. Flying visit, was just off.’

  ‘Don’t let me interrupt anything.’

  I almost laughed. ‘No, I had to go now, anyway.’

  She did not seem to be listening, somehow, but rambled on, ‘Collecting jumble can be quite embarrassing sometimes, especially in the evenings. But that’s when everybody is most likely to be in, isn’t it? One knows one is intruding and interrupting things, television often, these days, but, there we go. It’s all in a good cause.’

  Her mention of television prompted me to try a long shot. ‘You said you called before? Do you remember what day it was?’

  ‘Now, let me see, it was an evening. That I do remember. And it was late, very dark. I had to use my torch to see my way. Sometimes I can’t begin collecting until quite late, meetings, you know, and...’

  ‘But can you remember what day it was?’ I interrupted, fearful Lavinia would return downstairs before I’d received the answer and made my getaway.

  ‘Now, let me think. It was quite a few days ago now, and one’s memory does not improve with age, Mr — er...’

  ‘Marklin.’

  ‘Marklin. No, I can’t quite place the day. It’ll come to me, no doubt.’ She looked up at me. ‘Why, is it important in some way? I can’t see how it could be.’

  Before I could reply, I heard Lavinia’s footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Olsen. Can’t explain now. Must run.’ And run I did, out the door to Arabella’s Golf in the drive. And, Lord be praised, Mrs Olsen had had the sense not to block my exit with her Hillman Avenger. Otherwise, who knows how the evening might have ended.

  12

  It was well after midnight before Arabella and I could, at last, be alone. For Gus, as was his right, insisted on staying not only to hear my evening’s exploits, but also Arabella’s all over again, though he’d heard hers ad infinitum on the drive back from Lana-Lee’s. However, there was one sugar plum in his staying: he told me where he thought Mrs Olsen lived — Broadmayne; her cleaning lady was an old lady friend of his.

  After we’d dragged ourselves up to bed and had switched on the bedside lamp, Arabella gave an uncharacteristically deep sigh.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ I laughed. ‘We did learn something on our travels.’

  ‘That both Lana-Lee and dear rapacious Lavinia vigorously deny making the phone call. Hardly sensational, is it?’

  ‘No. But Lana-Lee did agree that it was quite possible that Adam Longhurst thought it was her, and Lavinia’s confession about that other phone call ties in with our air hostess’s feeling about her night of idyll with John Saunders. It’s no wonder his mind seemed to be elsewhere. He was wondering who the hell had phoned his wife about the drugs.’

  ‘Doesn’t help us much, though. Saunders could still have slipped down to Osmington, had a quarrel with Maxwell, murdered him and slipped back up again, getting his wife to do her American bit and lure Longhurst to the beach.’

  ‘True. I put that to Lavinia, as you know, but eventually, she went back on the “Longhurst must have done it” line’.

  ‘Eventually?’

  I sat up on one elbow. I can’t think straight, somehow, flat on my back. Useful for other purposes, though, including sleeping.

  ‘Well, I sort of felt she was working out what was best for her to say. Don’t forget she’s blamed just about everybody for Maxwell’s murder already.’

  ‘Except herself.’

  ‘And her husband. But I think she’d shop him as soon as look at him now, if it suited her. Her only aim in life is what’s good for Lavinia Saunders, so she’ll throw suspicion just about anywhere, so long as she remains whiter than white.’

  ‘Murderers tend to do that,’ Arabella said quietly. ‘And murderesses.’

  ‘I know. I’ve thought long and hard about it. But venomous and hot-tempered though Lavinia is, I can’t see her being so vicious as to beat Maxwell’s head and face about the way it was. Kill him, almost accidently, in a sudden fit of jealousy, pique, sheer temper or frustration, maybe, but not then beat him around the face and knock half his teeth down his throat, surely?’

  ‘I don’t know. But what we do know about tonight is that Lavinia was mighty upset that day, after discovering about the drug smuggling.’

  ‘I’d love to know who phoned her.’

  ‘So would I. That is, if her phone ever rang...’

  I silenced Arabella with a kiss. ‘Don’t add any more “ifs” to the argument tonight. I’m overflowing with them already.’

  ‘You don’t want me to squeeze?’ she teased.

  ‘No,’ I smiled, and luckily, she didn’t take
me totally at my word.

  *

  Next morning, after I had phoned my bank manager about the toy purchase (he was surprisingly affable, as bank managers go — just like the ones in the adverts), I set to work on my Beetle, as I resented running up a garage bill if it wasn’t necessary. What’s more, I didn’t want to be without the car, for reasons that are not hard to define. They come in the shape of a Ford Popular. The trouble turned out to be a loose lead to the coil, which, as often happens, took far longer to trace than to cure.

  It was while I was indoors getting the grease and grime off my hands prior to ringing Inspector Blake, that Blake rang me. I took him quickly through my findings, but not quickly enough for their thinness not to show, even to me. At the end, I had to apologise for my lack of real progress.

  ‘Don’t apologise. I’m not employing you.’

  I’m afraid I sniggered. ‘Oh yes you are. By a proxy doxy. Lana-Lee.’

  He did not comment, and his silence made me feel a little cheap. ‘Okay, have it your way,’ I said. ‘I’ll apologise to Lana-Lee.’

  ‘Don’t apologize to anyone. You may have done better than you think.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, think of it this way: we’ve interviewed Lavinia Saunders and not uncovered her phone call to her husband in Paris. Nor did we know that Lavinia knew of the drug smuggling before we arrested Saunders. Whetstone and his boys have interrogated Longhurst countless times and not ever believed his story about that other phone call. You obviously do believe him, and by believing him, have disclosed another possibility — that he did actually recognise the voice, or think he did, as that of Lana-Lee.’

  It sounded better the way Blake was telling it, so I let him continue.

  ‘What’s more, you haven’t just assumed, therefore, that it must have been Lana-Lee, because, I guess, your intuition baulked against it, but have taken a quantum leap to it being someone who wanted Longhurst to think it was Lana-Lee. And you’ve been clever enough to discover a person who might fit the bill.’

  ‘Oh shucks,’ I said, ‘it’s only because of The Man Who Came To Dinner.’

  ‘And a load of old toys. I must come and see them some time.’