Dead Clever

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Not the fuel receipt you found in the paperback.’

  ‘We can’t prove that the man in the hotel was Green, only that he was travelling on a false passport and probably had light or blond hair and a moustache; we can’t prove that the paperback in the bookshop was left behind by him; we can’t prove that the receipt was used as a bookmarker by the same man who bought the fuel . . . A clever counsel would revel in all those negatives. As I see things, until we can prove beyond all legal doubt that Green survived the air crash, we cannot say that if taken to court we must win the case.’

  ‘Even so, you don’t reckon that our best bet is to wait for a claim to be made and then to refuse to pay it? After all, when the other side sees the strength of our case they might very well drop out because if we present the evidence we have this might very well attract the attention of the police, who’d carry out a much more thorough investigation than you ever can, which could easily uncover the missing proof ‘I still think it’s worth my digging a little deeper. If I could find his girlfriend, there’s the chance I’d be able to get a lead on where he’s hiding out and that would settle everything, once and for all.’

  Parrot fiddled with a pencil. ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘See if you can track her down.’

  In her early twenties, Joan Carling had been physically very attractive and so had had a large number of boyfriends. Unfortunately, she had accepted their homage as her due and such self-satisfaction had cooled their ardours even more quickly than her rapidly expressed distaste for ‘mucking around’. Consequently, on her twenty-eighth birthday she had looked in a mirror and had seen a woman who was obviously beginning to age and all of whose contemporaries were married. She had panicked.

  Born and brought up in Wimbledon, her tastes were refined, her manners impeccable, and her values irreproachable. She carried her shopping in a Harrods bag, was invariably polite to the lower orders, and voted Conservative. Despite all this, when Timothy Green—who clearly had not been even to a minor public school—suggested a dinner date, she had not refused him. And when, a few meetings later, he had begun to fondle her breasts, she had consoled herself with the thought that at least on her twenty-ninth birthday she would not still be unmarried.

  Being so conscious of her background, after they were married she had not hesitated to show him in which areas he lacked breeding. That he was a salesman was a cause for apology, that he was a very successful one who made a great deal of money in no way mitigated the social solecism; that he made a noise when he drank soup from the end of the spoon instead of the side was of far more concern than that he was so generous-hearted that he did all he could to please her despite her attitude towards him.

  After he had lost his job and his large income, there had been little reason to continue to suffer him since it was the state of marriage that was important in her circle, not the success, or otherwise, of it. She had demanded a separation. Her father—Harrow, Lloyds, a silent soup-drinker—had, despite many years of heavy drinking, gambling, and expensive mistresses, left her enough money to be reasonably financially secure, but naturally she had demanded the house and made certain she got it. Some time later, he’d asked if she’d agree to a divorce, only to learn that if he thought she was going to give her blessing to his luring another woman into his disgusting embraces . . .

  His death irritated her because it raised a question to which she did not know the answer. What was the correct degree of mourning to observe in respect of a prurient, adulterous husband?

  Ware arrived at her house at a quarter past eleven and she was reasonably welcoming since he spoke without a regional accent and was well, if a shade informally, dressed.

  ‘I’ll be as brief as I can,’ he said. ‘I represent the Crown and Life Insurance Company with whom your husband took out a fairly large life insurance roughly three years ago.’

  ‘He did what?’

  ‘Then you didn’t know about it?’

  She shook her head.

  He hid his surprise; she had struck him as a woman who would have made certain she knew everything about her husband’s affairs. ‘As I’m sure you’ll understand, in connection with that policy, certain facts have to be verified.’ He spoke carefully because he did not want to have to be the person who told this sharp-eyed, straight-mouthed woman that her husband was, in fact, alive, living with a girlfriend, and probably not intending to share any of his fraudulently acquired insurance money with his estranged wife. At the conclusion he said: ‘I imagine you have a copy of his will?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘May I have a look at it?’

  She left the room, to return with a long, brown envelope which she handed to him.

  It was a short, simple will made immediately after the marriage. Everything Green owned was to go to his wife and, surprisingly, there was no proviso should she predecease him. Ware noted the name and address of the solicitor on the back of the envelope before returning it. He thanked her and left.

  It took him twenty minutes to find the solicitor’s offices, largely thanks to a misdirection which sent him down to the wrong end of the high street and thence into a maze of one-way streets. The rambling building was in need of decoration and the carpet in front of the information desk was nearly threadbare. This reminded him of some advice he’d once been given. ‘If you want a smart lawyer in central London, go to one who has smart offices; in the suburbs or the country, to one whose offices need money spent on them.’

  He met a partner who dressed and spoke as if he regularly rode to hounds.

  ‘Let me see, Mr Ware, if I have the facts correctly. The Spanish authorities are at the moment satisfied he died in the air crash arid so are in the process—likely to be drawn out for normal administrative reasons—of issuing a death certificate. You, however, contend that he did not die in the crash?’

  That’s right.’

  ‘Your interest in the matter is clear. If he is alive, the company you represent will not be liable to pay out the sum assured on his life. You are unconcerned with the criminal aspect of the matter?’

  ‘Unconcerned, if that means that I have no interest in whether or not he is ever prosecuted for attempted fraud.’

  ‘I ask because the distinction does raise an interesting point. If he died in the crash, his valid will—in due course of time—becomes open to public inspection; in the circumstances, I might be able to find the justification for letting you read it now. If he is alive, his will is secret and there cannot be any justification for my divulging any of its details. Mrs Green has informed me of his death and I had begun to set in motion all the usual steps. Now, you tell me he may well be alive which brings all such steps to a stop . . . I think I must refuse your request, Mr Ware. Until the position is absolutely clear, my duty now must be to act as if he were alive.’

  Ware said ruefully: ‘I was afraid of that.’

  The partner smiled briefly. ‘Had you not made the strength of your belief so evident . . . I gain the impression that you assume he will have made a new will relatively recently?’

  ‘He must have done. Mrs Green showed me one, made immediately after their marriage, in which she gets everything. He’ll have cut her out in favour of his girlfriend. The insurance money must be paid to a named person whom he can trust not to run off with it and it’s difficult to think of anyone else he’d be willing to trust in the face of such temptation.’

  ‘You would appear to have rather a poor opinion of people’s honesty.’

  ‘I’ve been a loss adjuster for several years.’

  ‘Quite! Assume you’re correct, if you knew the name of the beneficiary, and his or her address, would you expect Mr Green to be living with such person now?’

  ‘He’s smart; very smart except when he becomes either too greedy or too pressed for time. So I very much doubt that he’s living with her yet, just in case someone turns up to question her about him. He’ll be keeping out of sight, but in contact, and that’s how it’ll be until
the money’s paid out. Assuming it ever is.’

  ‘Then if you knew where his friend lives, you would no longer have a pressing interest in his valid will?’

  ‘All I want is her name and address.’

  ‘Information provided outside a will which although pertinent to that will is not specifically material to any of the terms in it, clearly comes under the umbrella of client confidentiality, but this may be less absolute than that pertaining to wills. In other words, if the provision of such information is to the advantage of the estate, it may be given. It is clearly to the advantage of Mr Green’s affairs that I know whether or not he died in the air crash. I feel, therefore, that I shall be justified if I give you the name and address of the person to whom all matters of importance are to be referred in the event of his death.’

  Lawyers, thought Ware, were surely the most successful of all practitioners of the art of subtle hypocrisy.

  CHAPTER 9

  Although Ware had always liked the French, he’d never managed to become reconciled to their determined inability to understand their own language when incorrectly spoken by a foreigner. He leaned his head through the open car window and for the third time asked directions to the Rue de la Paix, and for the third time the elderly man on the pavement shrugged his shoulders. ‘Forget it,’ Ware said in English. The Frenchman inclined his head—in contempt, in triumph, in commiseration?—and walked on.

  Ware studied the small road map of Changres which the car-hire firm had given him at the airport and he tried to work out why, since he had taken the third road to the right after the cross-roads, he had turned into Rue Mortel which, to add to the confusion, wasn’t marked. A woman, past her youth but maturely smart and very aware of that fact, approached. He leaned out through the window and asked her to help him and this time his accent was an advantage since it marked him as a foreigner and she had a soft spot for the underprivileged. She listened to his halting French and then replied in good English that he was in Rue de la Paix, but the name had recently been changed to Rue Mortel to commemorate the town’s late mayor. He thanked her and she walked on, satisfied that although he was considerably younger than she, he would be watching her.

  He left the car and walked along the pavement, past houses which had been built at the turn of the century for the well-to-do bourgeoisie and whose rather bleak exteriors gave no indication of the elegance to be found within many of them. He reached No. 45, pressed the entry button, and the door latch slipped free with a quick buzz. There was a short passage, to the right-hand side of which were the concierge’s rooms, to the left-hand side stairs, and at the end a small courtyard.

  He climbed the stairs to the third floor. There were two flats on each floor and in the small brass holder on the left-hand side of the landing was a handwritten card naming Miss S. Collins. He rang the bell.

  The door was opened by a woman he judged to be in her early thirties. ‘Miss Collins? My name is Robert Ware.’ She was not beautiful, yet she had a face which attracted because it expressed character; by some visual trick, it seemed to alter in composition when seen from different angles. Her brown eyes were warm, but her nose had a touch of Roman arrogance; her mouth was generous and her lips full, suggesting a capacity for passion; her hair was black and wavy and cut tightly to the shape of her head; she wasn’t fashionably thin, but neither was she plump. A woman to remember and to wonder about. ‘May I have a word with you?’

  ‘What about?’

  There was a touch of huskiness in her voice which reminded him of a distant cousin who rode sidesaddle. He did not answer immediately, but brought out his wallet and from this extracted a card which he handed to her.

  She read it, looked up. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’d like to discuss something that concerns us both.’

  ‘But what? I’ve never heard of this insurance company before. How can anything to do with it concern me?’

  ‘A few years ago Mr Timothy Green took out a life insurance with them.’

  ‘Oh! . . .’ She turned away so that he could no longer see her face. ‘I . . . I can’t . . .’ Her voice trailed off into silence.

  ‘I’m very sorry, but I do have to talk to you,’ he said firmly. It was, he thought, a tribute to her acting ability that until he reminded himself that it was ridiculous, he felt guilty because he was causing her such distress.

  She did not move for several seconds, then, shoulders slumped, she stepped back. He accepted this as an invitation to enter, closed the door.

  ‘I . . . I just can’t get used to knowing he’s dead,’ she murmured.

  He noticed, for the first time, the black armband she wore. Since Green must have considered a visit such as the present one to be unlikely, it was a tribute to his skilful planning that he had still taken the possibility into account and arranged for her to wear a sign of mourning. Skilful planning negated by greed or the necessity to be greedy.

  She led the way into the sitting-room. Large, with a high ceiling, originally it would have been sombrely decorated and furnished to provide a fitting setting in which a grave and dignified paterfamilias could digest his lunch and dream of mistresses, but now it had been painted in an off-white, the furniture was modern and occasionally frivolous, and the four modern paintings on the walls were filled with colour if little form.

  She sat in a rocking-chair and began to rock, staring out through the nearer window as she did so. He studied her face which was in profile. He saw strength and determination. Perhaps she had agreed to help in the proposed fraud without any of the hesitations and fears that most women would have experienced. Before, he had assumed that Green had been much the stronger of the team; now he was certain that if she had not wanted to help him, no amount of cajoling on his part would have persuaded her to do so. He said: ‘Miss Collins, how did you hear about Mr Green’s death?’

  She rocked twice before she said sharply: ‘What does that matter?’

  ‘It could be important.’

  ‘Oh God, can’t you understand . . .?’

  He waited, then said: ‘Either I or the police have to question you. I promise you it will be easier if I do so.’

  ‘Why d’you say that? Why should the police bother me?’

  ‘If you’ll answer the question I asked a moment ago, I’ll tell you.’

  She continued rocking for several seconds, then abruptly checked the movement with her feet. She ran the tip of her tongue over her full lips. ‘He didn’t return here when he said he would. I thought maybe business had taken longer than he’d expected, then I wondered if the weather had stopped him flying back, so I rang his hotel in Majorca. They told me . . .’ She stopped.

  ‘They said that his plane had crashed at sea.’

  She closed her eyes, resumed rocking.

  ‘His plane did crash at sea. But as you well know, he was not in it when it crashed.’

  She spoke fiercely. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘He parachuted from the plane and was picked up by a boat which landed him on the mainland.’

  ‘If that had happened, he’d have got in touch with me immediately. Why have you come here with such filthy lies? Oh God, isn’t it enough to have to know he’s dead, without having someone like you taunt me . . .’

  ‘I’m not taunting you, Miss Collins.’ His tone was sad, because he hated having to convince her that all their plans had failed. ‘Green needed money and he decided to fake his own death so that a claim could be made against his life insurance. In his last will he named you as sole beneficiary, thereby making certain you’d be paid the insurance money. He hired a twin-engined Fleche and flew to Mallorca where he persuaded a past employer of his to cooperate in the fraud. He then flew from the island and rendezvoused with a motor-cruiser, jumped from the plane and parachuted down, and was picked up. The plane crashed several minutes later.

  ‘The motor-cruiser sailed to Stivas and presumably he telephoned you on arrival to let you know that everything had gone accordi
ng to plan. He stayed one night in the Hotel Grande before leaving Stivas. Exactly where he is now I don’t know; you most certainly do.’

  ‘That’s all filthy lies.’

  ‘We both know it’s the truth.’

  ‘He’s dead. He never phoned me. D’you hear, he’s dead.’

  ‘Miss Collins, a Spanish detective and I went to Stivas and talked to the employees at the Hotel Grande, where he used the name Thomas Grieves. We also had his passport number checked and it turned out to belong to a passport which had been stolen.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything.’

  ‘On the contrary, it proves that Grieves was not who he claimed to be.’

  “Just because a man has a false passport . . .’

  He interrupted, determined to make her understand that it was hopeless to go on arguing. ‘A desk clerk made a reasonable identification of him from his passport photo. Next morning, a chambermaid went into the bedroom, not realizing he was still there, and he was on the bed . . .’

  ‘Is she trying to say that that man was Tim?’

  He shook his head. ‘She’s unable to identify him, but what’s important . . .’

  ‘That’s important. She can’t identify him because he wasn’t Tim.’

  ‘She can’t identify him because . . .’ He stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The actual reason is immaterial.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. You come here making filthy accusations, saying Tim isn’t dead and he’s a crook, but you won’t answer a simple question. It proves you’re lying.’

  ‘She couldn’t identify him because she was so shocked by what she saw,’ he said reluctantly. ‘He wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him; he was naked and she was wearing standard s/m gear and was whipping him.’