A Capital Crime

by Laura Wilson

  Diana thought of the night in Apse’s flat during an air-raid when, hidden inside a cupboard, she’d overheard his conversation with the male tart he’d brought home, the unlikely coquettishness in his tone, and the rhythmic noises of their congress.

  ‘F-J said he was a fool to think he could get away with it,’ said Jock. ‘Mind you, he said the policeman came up to him first, but the policeman said it was the other way round, and of course there’s no doubt as to who would have been believed.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ said Diana, ‘that there are policemen who specialise in that sort of thing? Trapping people?’

  ‘Handsome young policemen,’ said Jock. ‘And this one,’ he added, viciously, ‘will doubtless be commended for behaving like a male prostitute. F-J gave a false name, but even if no-one had recognised him, he wouldn’t have been able to carry on working for the Service – too much of a risk. He was due in court this morning. God …’ Shuddering, Jock took a large gulp of his drink. ‘It was horrible, seeing him like that. Blank. As if he’d been stripped naked. He talked about it afterwards. How he put it was that men like him have two sets of friends. Two lives. He said he’d always been afraid that they’d collide and that he’d tried to leave it alone, but the loneliness … impulses – and sooner or later he’d always fall back into his former ways. He said that was a relief at first, not having to pretend all the time, but then the shame …’

  ‘What about his wife?’ asked Lally.

  Jock shook his head and looked into his glass – now empty – then went to the drinks tray and poured himself a second Scotch. His back to them both, he said, ‘I telephoned her. Someone had to tell her. It was …’ Lally went to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I’m sure you were kind,’ she said.

  ‘She made it easy for me,’ said Jock. ‘When I’d told her how he’d died, she didn’t ask me why he’d done it, or if he’d left a note, or anything.’

  ‘Well, they did lead fairly separate lives, darling. Perhaps she knew about him.’

  Gently, Jock pushed Lally’s hand away and turned to face them. ‘I don’t know … If she did, she certainly didn’t want to hear me say it. I can’t blame her for that … F-J talked about her, too. He said that if things had been different, he would have told her what sort of man he was when he proposed, but he couldn’t. He said, when he married her, he honestly thought he could begin again – wipe out the past.’ Jock paused and looked directly at Diana, and a dull flush spread across his face. ‘He told me he was …’ he grimaced, ‘in love with Ventriss.’

  ‘I know,’ said Diana. ‘I overheard them talking once.’ She took a sip of her drink and lit a cigarette in order not to have to look at Jock, remembering how she’d stood outside the door of F-J’s office and heard Claude taunting him. Apse did it because he thought he could get away with it. After all, most of his friends do, don’t they, Charles? At least I’m honest. I don’t use women as camouflage … You made damn sure that Evie Calthrop got to know about Diana and me, didn’t you, Charles? But I don’t think you’re in any position to preach morality, are you? She remembered, too, the conversation she’d had later with lovely Inspector Stratton. He’d been so kind and understanding when she’d blurted out about Claude’s hold over F-J and her suspicion that Apse’s death was not, as officially recorded, a suicide …

  ‘He said something about that – thinking they were alone and hearing the door of the flat close. He wondered if it was you.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  Although she was only about six feet away from Jock and Lally, the silence between them, as the implications of this sank in, felt like an immense void. She stared down at her shoes, knowing that she’d never be able to talk to them about it, even if it were allowed.

  The chime of the hall clock made them all jump. ‘Oh, Lord,’ said Lally. ‘We’ve got the Tremaines coming to dinner in half an hour. Does Davy know?’ Davy Tremaine had been a colleague of Jock’s since the war years.

  ‘Yes.’ Jock drained his glass and set it on the tray. ‘Better go and dress, then.’

  Sitting at the dressing table in her room, Diana brushed her hair mechanically. She could picture F-J quite clearly, as if it was his face reflected in the mirror and not her own – the round, dark eyes with their long lashes and the squashy button nose that gave him the slightly querulous charm of a pug. The first time she’d met him, she’d been tempted to pat him, despite his formidable intellect. She remembered his flat-cum-office in the monumental Art Deco grandeur of Dolphin Square, with its strange mixture of sturdy Edwardian brass-and-wood masculinity and the feminine delicacy of the toile de Jouy and petit point she’d assumed had come from the wife that no-one ever saw. And that strange painting of the naked boy bather that had been a gift from Neville Apse … She thought of his desk, always – in contrast to his dapper appearance – so untidy, and of how, after one of her first successes gathering information, he’d given her a jar of bath salts. That was when she’d trusted him. That was before his jealousy about her and Claude had led him to take steps to ensure that Evie got to hear of their affair, and before he’d arranged, quite deliberately, that she be the one to find Apse’s body. It had been his way of warning her – telling her that he knew she knew about him and she’d better keep her mouth shut, or …

  Now, she found that she felt no anger towards him, only pity. All his precautions had come to nothing because, in the end, he’d betrayed himself. Setting down her hairbrush, Diana began powdering her face. Why on earth had he done it? Thinking of Claude, and the reckless way she’d behaved over him, she supposed she did understand, a little …

  The Tremaines arrived and everyone acted, in an exhaustingly resolute and determined way, as if it were an entirely ordinary evening (‘Our Mrs Robinson’s such a treasure, she can conjure the most marvellous food out of thin air …’). Sitting over drinks, then dinner, trying to talk normally, was like being caught up in a bizarre nightmare. Jock and Davy discussed China and Mao Tse Tung. They even had an argument about it, but it seemed manufactured, a repetition of familiar positions without conviction or passion. Jean Tremaine and Lally nodded, asked occasional questions and looked interested, and no-one said a word about F-J. Diana stared glassily at her plate, toying with her food – which was anything but marvellous, being the colour, texture and, probably, the taste of Thames mud – and, pleading tiredness from travelling, went up to bed as soon as she decently could.

  Lying on her back, staring into the darkness, she thought that, in the end, F-J had lived up to the ‘code’ of behaviour that bound them all. Just like all those Romans he must have learnt about at school … She tried to imagine him as a boy, inkily cramming at his books, reading about senators ordered to commit suicide by emperors, doing the classical equivalent of the decent thing. We flatter ourselves that we’ve progressed so much, she thought, but we’re just like they were: impaled, like butterflies are in display cases – not by belief in the system of things but by the necessity for that belief, whether we like it or not. Then, as now, it meant war and treachery and casualties, but it was immutable. We must think the same, say the same, be the same, and if, in any way, we find ourselves unable to conform, we must pretend. Hard on the heels of that idea came another: I’ve spent my life trying to conform and pretend, and I’ve failed. I don’t want to try any more. I want to change.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was well after one in the morning when Stratton and Ballard, accompanied by the piles of clothing removed from the bodies, returned to West End Central in a police car brought to the Middlesex for the purpose. The car nosed its way slowly through the acrid, sooty smog that swirled around it, reducing visibility to a few feet, despite the street lamps and the headlights of occasional passing vehicles.

  ‘Message for you from DCI Lamb, sir,’ said Cudlipp the desk sergeant, when they arrived. ‘DI Grove and DS Porter went down to Merthyr Tydfil to collect Davies. They ought to be there now – they’re awaiting your instructions
, sir. Shall I place a call?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Stratton blew his nose. It came out black. ‘A real pea-souper out there,’ he said, shoving the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘And if you could put these,’ Stratton indicated the piles of clothing brought in by Ballard and the driver, ‘in the Charge Room, and rustle up a spot of tea … We’ll be in my office.’

  ‘Right you are, sir. That their clothes, is it? Her and the nipper?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘This Davies sounds a right one.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘This came through, too. From Constable Williams in Wales, sir. Statements of a Mr and Mrs Howells.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Right.’ Stratton put down the receiver. ‘Grove and Porter will bring Davies back by the early train. They’ll say nothing to him about finding the bodies – as far as he knows, it’s still just the briefcase we want him for. The train gets into Paddington at ten past ten, so we’ll need to organise a car to meet it. I’ll go along. We’ll need the formal identification first thing, and once we’ve interviewed Davies, which we’ll do straight away, we need to get the Backhouses in to make separate statements. Then there’s the workmen. Backhouse said they were at the house three weeks ago, which means they must have been around when Muriel and the baby were killed. We need to find out who they are and have a word with them, sharpish. Presumably the bodies weren’t in the wash-house before they arrived, or they’d have spotted them – they seemed to have used the place for storing paint and whatnot. And we need to find out when they gave Backhouse those floorboards for firewood, assuming that’s where they came from.’

  ‘I was wondering why he hadn’t used them, sir. After all, it’s been pretty nippy recently.’

  ‘Perhaps he was using up his coal,’ said Stratton. ‘The thing that’s still puzzling me is the dog. I know that we couldn’t smell anything, but you’d think it would have been scrabbling against the door and making no end of a fuss.’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t let it into the garden, sir.’

  ‘I didn’t see any evidence of it – well, except for those bones, but they might have put them out there afterwards. Looked like they used the garden as a rubbish dump, didn’t it?’

  ‘It was in a bit of a state, sir.’

  ‘Let’s see what Davies’s aunt and uncle have to say for themselves.’ Stratton scanned the statements. ‘Mrs Howells said that Davies arrived unexpectedly on the fourteenth of November at six thirty in the morning. They hadn’t seen him for three or four years, apparently. Said his employer’s car had broken down in Cardiff and could he stay with them while it was being repaired … Left his suitcase at the station in Cardiff – Mr Howells said he saw a cloakroom ticket and that Davies told them Muriel and Judy were staying in Brighton until after Christmas … Left on the twenty-first and came back on the twenty-third with a suitcase. Told them Muriel was at their flat when he went back but she walked out without a word and left him holding the baby …’

  ‘Sounds like our boy all right, sir.’

  ‘It certainly does. He told Mr and Mrs H. he’d given Judy to some people who’d look after her and paid them fifteen pounds to do it. When they asked why he hadn’t taken her to his mother he said it was because she was out working … hadn’t thought to bring the baby to Wales with him, apparently … Seemed quite contented throughout his visit, went to the pub with his uncle, enjoyed himself … This is a bit odd …’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘Says Davies bought a present for Judy – a teddy bear.’

  ‘To throw them off the scent, sir?’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like he’s bright enough for that. I’d say it’s more likely he was trying to pretend to himself he hadn’t done it – that would fit with the statements he made, wouldn’t it? Anyway … Mrs H. had written to Mrs Davies about him and got a letter back two days ago – which tallies with what she told us – telling her that Davies had sold his furniture and people were dunning her for cash. When Mrs H. confronted him about it, he said his mother was lying and the furniture was still in the flat. Very upset, apparently, couldn’t finish his breakfast, and then he went to the police station. Well, it’s all of a piece, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Beats me how he thought he could get away with it.’

  ‘He probably didn’t think at all … Just made it up as he went along. Right. We’ll need a statement from Mrs Davies. She said she’d not seen him since the beginning of November, didn’t she? Now, I’d better get cracking on this report for DCI Lamb, but if you want to get some kip …’

  ‘Don’t think I could, sir. Honestly.’

  ‘Well, ask Cudlipp to set up a couple of camp beds for later, anyway. And why don’t you see if you can find us a drink? For medicinal purposes, of course. I’m sure there’s a bottle knocking around.’

  Left alone, Stratton started bashing out a report for Lamb on the typewriter with two fingers, concentrating like fury in an attempt to keep at bay the pathetic image of Muriel and little Judy lying side by side on their respective slabs. Ballard returned half an hour later, bearing a half-full bottle of brandy. ‘All done, sir.’ As he spoke, he produced a tea cup from each pocket. ‘Shall I? Couldn’t find any glasses, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why not?’ Stratton took his fag out of his mouth and picked a shred of tobacco off his lower lip. ‘I’m nearly finished.’

  Ballard poured and pushed a cup across the desk towards him. Stratton swallowed and made a face. ‘Filthy.’ He held out the cup for more. ‘Don’t know about you, but I could have done with that a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘Me too, sir.’

  ‘Oh, Christ… Jenny was pregnant when she died. Not so far gone, but … They thought it would have been a boy.’ It occurred to him then, for the first time, that Jenny might not have told him of the existence of the baby not only because she was afraid he’d be angry – they’d agreed to stop at two – but also because she’d been trying to get rid of it, as Muriel Davies had. That couldn’t have been the case, could it? Jenny loved children, she’d been the best of mothers, she wouldn’t … would she? But if she’d been afraid of giving birth with the doodlebugs, of the world she’d be bringing the child into … Stratton put his hands over his face. ‘I just wish she’d told me,’ he muttered thickly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  Stratton jerked his head up. ‘No, Ballard, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I don’t know why I did. But with something like this, it brings it back. You know, I’ve never told anyone – not even the children – only the lady who took them when they were evacuated. When Dr McNally said Muriel Davies definitely was pregnant, I felt as if I’d been punched. And Davies killed his wife … I’d give anything to have Jenny back, and the baby. Be five and a half years old, now, if he’d lived … Going off to school. Still …’ Stratton rubbed a hand over his face. ‘No use dwelling on it. Doesn’t do a bloody bit of good.’

  ‘I suppose not, sir, but it’s rough, all the same. Drop more brandy?’

  ‘Thank you. You’ll have all that to come, your nipper learning to talk and walk and all the rest of it …’

  ‘Unlike poor little Judy.’

  ‘Yes … Too late. Best we can do is nail the bastard that killed her.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that, sir,’ said Ballard, with fierce solemnity. ‘I’ll certainly drink to that.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Davies was white-faced, haggard, and very small. Next to DI Grove, who was a large, avuncular type, he seemed like a pygmy, and the top of his head barely came up to Stratton’s shoulder. The camel hair overcoat he wore looked too large, so that he looked like a boy in man’s clothing. Grove had told Stratton on the telephone that Davies was twenty-four years old, but he looked younger. Constable Williams’s description of him as ‘puny’ was spot on, thought Stratton, as the four men walked down the platform at Paddington Station towards the waiting car.

  ‘All right, was
he, on the way back?’ Stratton asked DI Grove as DS Porter and the driver settled Davies in the back seat.

  Grove removed the pipe he habitually chomped on and, wiping a hand over his droopy moustache, stained cinnamon with nicotine, said in his distinctive phlegmy rumble, ‘Didn’t talk much. Mind you, neither did we. I’m not sure the lad really understands what’s going on. He’s hardly the brightest – to be honest, I don’t think he’s all there. He asked if his mother’d got in touch with the people looking after his daughter.’

  Stratton, aware of a slight ache behind his eyes – he and Ballard had polished off what was left in the bottle before they’d turned in – endeavoured to collect his thoughts.

  ‘Well, he’s not been told we’ve found the bodies, so perhaps he thinks it’s a good idea to keep on with his story.’

  ‘I suppose so. Oh, and he told us he didn’t pinch the briefcase, but he didn’t say who did.’

  ‘I’m surprised he didn’t say it was Backhouse. He seems to be blaming him for everything else.’

  They rode to West End Central in silence, Stratton in front beside the driver and Davies, flanked by Grove and Porter, in the back.

  Ballard met Stratton in the lobby. ‘Mrs Davies has identified the bodies, sir, so there’s no difficulty there. She’s made a statement, too. There’s not much new, although she did tell us that there’s some insanity in the family. Her grandfather and an uncle died in asylums, and her father was violent.’

  ‘I suppose it’s not surprising. Grove and Porter are bringing Davies in now. Tell Cudlipp I want him taken straight through to the Charge Room. I’ll be waiting.’

  Once in the Charge Room, Stratton arranged the two piles of clothing on a desk so that the tablecloth and the sash cord were on top of Muriel’s, and the tie – still tightly knotted, but slit at the back in order to remove it – on top of Judy’s. Then he took his notebook out of his pocket and positioned himself beside the table. After a few minutes, the door opened and Davies appeared, escorted by Ballard and Porter. On seeing the clothing Davies blinked several times, opened his mouth, then closed it again, and looked at Stratton in bewilderment. Bang to rights, chum, thought Stratton. Bang to fucking rights.