Puppet for a Corpse

by Dorothy Simpson

  “But don’t you see? That’s just what she’s manoeuvring for.”

  “Yes I do see, but I seem incapable of reacting in any other way. I get so cross with myself about it.”

  Thanet leant across the table to take Joan’s hand. “Look, darling, you must see that we can’t go on like this indefinitely. I’m not just being selfish, though to be honest I do resent the fact that she seems to be seeing more of you than I am at the moment, but the children need you too, just as much if not more than she does. Look at that business of Sprig’s leotard this morning. She was in such a state … I hate seeing her go off to school like that.”

  “Yes, I know. So do I.”

  “And then, it’s taking too much out of you. You really have enough on your plate, with a full-time job as well as a family to look after and a house to run … Try to look at it this way. All the while you’re prepared to do things for her, why should she bother? It’s much easier and more convenient for her to get you to do them. Don’t you see, there’s only one way for her to learn how to cope for herself and that’s for her to do it. Alone. Otherwise, well, I can see no end to it, can you?”

  “I suppose not … Yes, you’re right, I know that … All right, I’ll try. I really mean it. I’ll just have to be a lot tougher, that’s all.” Joan rose and began to clear the table.

  “Leave that. I’ll do it, and the washing up. You go and sit down. You look exhausted. Coffee?”

  She smiled gratefully. “All right. Thank you darling. Yes, I’d love some.”

  Thanet waited until they were both sipping their coffee before saying, “Tell me, as a matter of interest, how you would spell the nickname for Andrew.”

  “A-N-D-Y, I suppose. Why?”

  “Just wondered. You wouldn’t put an I-E on the end, instead of Y?”

  “No. I’ve never heard of it spelt like that. Why?” she asked again.

  “Did you hear about Dr Pettifer?”

  “No, what?”

  He told her. He always had told her—everything—and since she had started work as a probation officer he had continued to do so, not without trepidation. When Joan had decided that this was the career she wanted, Thanet had tried to dissuade her. The views and attitudes of police and probation officers frequently clash and he had been afraid that this conflict of professional interests would spill over into their private life and they would gradually drift apart. But it had not taken him long to realise that they would be even more likely to do so if he prevented her from doing what she obviously very much wanted to do. So, instead, he had made a conscious effort to maintain between them the mutual trust and confidence which had always been the bedrock of their relationship. He still thought that one day the crunch would come, that they would find themselves on opposite sides of the fence over some fundamental issue, but was satisfied that this way they would be better equipped to deal with it if and when they had to.

  Joan listened as she always did, with complete attention, her grey eyes solemn, the lamplight gilding her short, springing, honey-coloured curls.

  “So that’s why you asked me how I’d spell Andy,” she said, when he had finished. “Poor boy, he really does sound most dreadfully upset. And if he can’t stand Mrs Pettifer … Where is he now?”

  “He went to Dr Lowrie’s for the night. He’ll probably go back to school tomorrow. Lowrie seemed to think it would be better if he didn’t have too much time to brood.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Do you think he could have been mistaken, over the mis-spelling of his name?”

  “Well, the note he showed us certainly bore out what he said. He was very overwrought of course, poor kid. And, as I said to him, it was possible his father might have made a mistake, in the circumstances.”

  “You’re having the handwriting checked?”

  “Yes. But it’ll be a day or two before we get an answer. You know how cautious they are. We mustn’t complain—they have to be. But in circumstances like this when we need to have something that’ll clinch the matter …”

  “So what do you think, really? Do you think it was suicide?”

  “I don’t know.” Thanet ran a hand through his hair. “I just don’t know.” And he didn’t. One moment he would veer towards believing that Pettifer had indeed killed himself, the next he would be telling himself that there was too much evidence to the contrary. He said so. “I feel positively schizophrenic about it. The whole thing just doesn’t make sense, doesn’t hang together. If you look at the set-up of the suicide itself then, yes, it does look as though he did. All three doctors I’ve spoken to so far—Dr Barson, Doc Mallard and Dr Lowrie—all agree that the method he chose was the way most medical men would opt for, the most comfortable way to go if you know the right dosage of drugs and don’t overdo the alcohol … Then there’s the note, if it’s genuine, and the timing, the fact that both his wife and his housekeeper were away overnight—a rather unusual circumstance, I gather …”

  “Though that could work the other way,” Joan suggested. “If it was murder and someone had been waiting for the ideal moment and knew Dr Pettifer’d be alone in the house last night …”

  “True. But then, there’s the fact that he left all his business affairs in such incredibly good order, that he’d cleared his desk of all his personal stuff …”

  “But five weeks ago, you said. Surely nobody would cold-bloodedly plan his own suicide five weeks ahead and then go on behaving as though he didn’t have a care in the world?”

  “That’s what Lineham said. And I agree, of course. You see what I mean? There’s an objection at every turn.”

  “Perhaps there’s some other reason you just don’t know about yet. Perhaps he’d just found out he had terminal cancer …”

  “If so, it’ll show up in the post mortem tomorrow. But by all accounts he certainly wasn’t acting like a man who’d just had a death sentence passed on him. On the contrary, everyone seems to agree he was in the best of spirits yesterday—exceptionally so, in fact.”

  “He certainly seems to have behaved very oddly for a man who was about to kill himself—paying for that cruise, for instance, only hours before he died.”

  “Exactly. Then there’s the business of the car. As Lineham said, why bother to get your car repaired if you know you’re never going to need it again?”

  “What did you say was wrong with it?”

  “It’s a bit technical,” Thanet said dubiously.

  Joan grinned. “Try me,” she said. “Put it down to my thirst for information.”

  “Well, it was nothing very serious. Apparently—let’s see if I can get it right—over the coil in the new Rover there’s a damp-proof cap which is connected to the distributor by a high-tension lead. Engine vibration had loosened the cap and the connection was broken, so the car wouldn’t start. It was only a little thing, but one which is not immediately obvious when you lift the bonnet. Clough said that Dr Pettifer knew a little bit about cars and could probably have found the fault himself if he’d been prepared to spend a bit of time looking for it, but I suppose he was in a hurry, knowing that his wife was going to London last night. I expect he wanted to get home before she left.”

  “Or he might have wanted to catch the travel agents before they closed.”

  “That’s a point, yes, if he’d arranged to call in yesterday afternoon. But, as you say, he wasn’t exactly behaving like a man who knew there’d be no tomorrow.”

  “Luke, are you saying you think there might be some truth in Andrew’s accusation of Mrs Pettifer?”

  “I just don’t know. It was difficult to take it seriously at the time because he was in such a state. I simply thought his grief and anger had to find a focus and she happened to be it. But the way things are going, we certainly can’t afford to dismiss the possibility.”

  “But then, you say she herself is also insisting it couldn’t have been suicide. Why should she do that, if she killed him? Surely the last thing she’d want to do is stir up any doubts whatsoever?
”

  “Unless it’s a double bluff—she’s aware that there are discrepancies which might make us doubt that it could have been suicide and therefore she’s trying to put herself in the clear by insisting it couldn’t have been.”

  “Don’t!” said Joan, clutching her head. “I see what you mean. I’m getting as confused as you are.”

  “And then, what motive could she have? Everyone seems to agree that they were as happy as the day is long.”

  “Oh come on, darling. It’s unlike you to accept that as true, just because everyone says so. You know how deceptive appearances can be. Just think how often you hear people say, ‘I’m astounded. I always thought they were the ideal couple’, about a marriage that’s split up.”

  “That’s true.”

  “She could have been after his money,” Joan suggested. “You say he was very well off.”

  “But why? She’s got everything she wants, surely, materially speaking … A lovely home, a housekeeper to run it for her, a car of her own …”

  “Then perhaps she wanted something else?”

  “What, for example?”

  “Her freedom?”

  “Freedom to do what? Her husband was one hundred per cent behind her in her career. To go to a lover, I suppose you mean.”

  “Well it’s possible, surely? Someone in her position … Actors and actresses do seem to change partners fairly frequently, after all.”

  “I’d thought of it, of course,” Thanet said, “but somehow I didn’t consider it as a serious possibility. Now, why was that? Perhaps it’s because she’s pregnant.” He grinned sheepishly. “All right, all right, I know. How naive can you get?”

  “The sanctity of motherhood,” Joan teased.

  “Don’t rub it in … I’ll get on to Jennings at West End Central tomorrow, ask him to make a few enquiries at the hotel Mrs Pettifer stayed at.”

  “Just a minute,” Joan said suddenly. “I’ve just remembered … Talking about her being pregnant … It rings a bell. Yes, I’m sure there was an article about her in one of the Sunday Colour Supplements. The Telegraph, I think.”

  “Really? I certainly don’t remember that. Would we still have it?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m trying to think how long ago it was. A few weeks, certainly.”

  “So the Cubs might not have taken it yet?” Once a month the local Cub Scout group collected newspapers, storing them up to sell at so much a ton for troop funds and charity.

  “I’ll see if I can find it,” said Thanet, heading for the door. The old newspapers were stored in boxes in the garage.

  “It’s got a picture of her on the front cover,” Joan called after him.

  Thanet almost missed it, Gemma looked so different. “She doesn’t look a bit like that close to,” he said, brandishing the photographs at Joan.

  “In what way?”

  “Not nearly so glamorous. I hardly recognised her.”

  Joan laughed. “I bet you’d hardly recognise me if someone spent an hour or two on my make-up and gave me a dress like that to wear.”

  Gemma was wearing a sumptuous, exotic creation in scarlet and gold brocade.

  “I prefer you as you are,” said Thanet, kissing the tip of Joan’s nose. “Come on, let’s see what they have to say about her.”

  The article was entitled, THE MOST GIFTED ACTRESS OF OUR TIME, and in the best journalistic tradition contrived to be both entertaining and informative.

  Gemma, it claimed, set herself very high standards and did not spare herself in her efforts to attain them. She took her work very seriously indeed and had always been highly ambitious—which was, the article said, scarcely surprising in view of her background. She had been brought up in a children’s home, having been abandoned on a doorstep. (“How can people?” murmured Joan.) According to her former Housemother, now retired, Gemma had always had a formidable capacity for hard work and a single-minded determination to succeed. Even while she was still at school it had become obvious that, on stage, she also possessed that rare power to grip and inspire an audience and send people away from a theatre feeling that they have for a brief while lived more intensely, that their experience has been enlarged by the performance they have just witnessed.

  Gemma Shade’s subsequent career, Thanet read, had more than fulfilled that early promise and her rise to the top had been truly meteoric. Her audiences were regularly moved to wonder and disbelief at the intensity of her portrayal, her ability to become the vessel through which the personality of another takes on a new and vibrant life.

  “Ah, this is the bit I was thinking of,” said Joan:

  Most of us are able to change our minds in private without loss of face. Not so for public figures, and it is to Miss Shade’s credit that she has not been afraid, in recent years, to admit to changing hers. She had always said that she would never get married and would never have children. “I’m too self-centred,” she used to say gaily, “ever to want to arrange my life around that of another person.”

  Now married for two years and pregnant, reminded of these words Miss Shade just smiles and say, “Well, perhaps I’ve grown up a bit since then.” And she has, she says, been exceptionally lucky; her doctor husband is completely in favour of her continuing her stage career. And the baby, due in January? “The best New Year present either of us could wish for,” she says. “I can’t wait to become a mother.”

  It has been said that maturity improves the quality of an actress’s work. If so, Miss Shade’s many admirers must contemplate the prospect of her future performances with something approaching awe.

  “Interesting woman,” commented Joan.

  “Yes, well, don’t expect me to pronounce on that. My conversation with her was somewhat limited by circumstance.”

  “What are you going to do, then? Will you go ahead with the inquest?”

  “Fortunately, we’ve got a few days grace before we need to make a final decision on that. Meanwhile, perhaps the post mortem result will help. If not, well, we’ll just have to plod on until we’re satisfied one way or the other.”

  “Of course, even if Dr Pettifer didn’t kill himself, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she did it. There must be a dozen reasons why he could have been murdered.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well … two or three, anyway. Doctors are so vulnerable in some ways. He could have mortally offended some psychotic patient … or been held to blame for a patient’s death by some close relation … For that matter, he could even have been having an affair and been killed by a jealous husband. Come on, darling, cheer up. It’s early days yet.”

  “True.” Tactfully, he did not say that all these and other possibilities had already crossed his mind. Instead, acknowledging her attempt to console him, he smiled, put up his hand to caress her face.

  “What would I do without you?” he said.

  9

  “Inspector Jennings, West End Central, on the phone for you, sir.”

  “Hullo, Peter? Luke here.”

  “About this actress …”

  “Gemma Shade. Yes.”

  “I checked with security at the Lombard. I know the chap there, he’s an ex-copper. And you were right.”

  “I was?”

  “Yep. Miss Shade had company on Monday night. Sorry we’ve been so long, but it took a bit of winkling out, apparently. The chambermaid in question was new and had got her room numbers muddled up and was afraid that if she admitted it she’d be in trouble. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, she took Miss Shade early morning tea by mistake and got herself bawled out by lover-boy.”

  “Ah … Did your chap find out who he was?”

  “Have a heart. He’s not a bloody miracle-worker. Remember, Miss Shade’s boyfriend wasn’t even there, officially.”

  “Any description?”

  “Youngish and fair-haired, that’s all. There was one thing, though …”

  “Yes?”

  “The girl, the chambermaid, said he looked kind o
f familiar. So I was wondering. Seeing as his lady love’s an actress …”

  “He might be an actor, you mean?”

  “Well, it’s poss., isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Thanet thought hard. Jennings could well be right. In which case, it was more than likely that Gemma Pettifer’s lover had been in the cast of her last production. And, if she hadn’t worked for the last couple of months …

  “Luke? You still there?”

  “Yes. Sorry. Thinking.”

  “God! You’ll be solving cases next!”

  “That’ll be the day. Look, Peter, if you wanted to find out the gossip about the cast of a play, how would you go about it?”

  “Current production?”

  “No. Came off a couple of months ago.”

  “Here in London?”

  “In the West End. Away Day at the Haymarket, to be precise.”

  “I’d ask Westwell.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “One of our DSs here. Theatre buff.”

  “Is he there at the moment?”

  “Sure. D’you want me to put him on?”

  “Please. And Peter, thanks.”

  “Don’t forget you owe me a pint next time I see you.”

  “I might even make it two.”

  “The work must be getting to your brain. Hang on.”

  Thanet grinned. He and Jennings had been friends for years, had helped each other on a number of occasions. He covered the mouth of the receiver while he waited. “She spent the night with a lover,” he said to Lineham.

  “So I gathered.” Lineham made a moue of disgust. “At six months pregnant.”

  “You don’t switch off sex just because you’re having a baby, you know,” Thanet said with a grin.

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant …”

  “Just a moment …” Thanet turned back to the phone.

  “Inspector Thanet? DS Westwell here.”

  Thanet explained what he wanted to know.