A Recipe for Murder

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘It’ll be better for both of us if we do forget.’

  She spoke mockingly: ‘It’ll be better for you if you realise we’re seeing each other again, or else …’

  ‘Or else what?’

  ‘Or else Judith will learn quite a lot of new facts about her precious husband.’

  ‘She won’t believe a word,’ he said with certainty.

  ‘Not even when I show her the necklace that you were meant to buy for her but instead bought for me?’

  Somehow, he’d forgotten all about that necklace. He suffered a feeling of empty, dry sickness, as if in a lift which had dropped too fast, too far.

  ‘Kevin’s going up to London next Tuesday to see his publisher. So we’ll meet that night. Come here, to Honey Cottage. I know it’ll be slumming for you, but at least I won’t have to register as Mrs Smith.’

  ‘Avis, please …’

  ‘In the evening, any time after eight.’ She rang off.

  He replaced the receiver. He daren’t go to the house. He daren’t not go to the house. He stared out through the window at the large Dutch barn, filled with three thousand two hundred bales of top quality hay. No over-ambitious bitch was going to take that — and all it stood for — away from him.

  8

  Maude Bowring lived in one of the northern suburbs of Hemscross, in a small terrace house. Over the past years she had put on a great deal of weight and was now unmistakably fat. Her face suggested a contented, characterless nature.

  She opened the front door to find that her caller was Powell. She said: ‘Hullo, Bert, how are you?’ as calmly as if she had last seen her brother weeks instead of years before. ‘Come on in.’

  He stepped into the hall and handed her a package. ‘It’s some chocolate for the kids.’

  She spoke uncertainly. ‘Teddy’s married. I suppose you knew?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘And Ruth’s doing nursing up in London: getting on real well.’

  He gestured with his hand. ‘I hadn’t realised how old they’d become. You’ll have to eat the chocolates yourself.’

  ‘There’s no hardship in that! … You’ll need a cup of tea.’

  They went through to the kitchen because it didn’t occur to her to have a mid-morning cup of tea anywhere else. He looked round and noted the broken tiles above the sink, the battered units which didn’t match, and the refrigerator which had been badly scratched down almost the whole length of the door.

  ‘We keep seeing photos in the local paper of you and Judith,’ she said proudly. ‘Who’d ever of imagined that one of the family’d become famous?’

  He tried to hide his impatience.

  ‘Not so long ago there was a big picture of Judith looking ever so smart and I said to Mike, if you’d of told me forty years ago that my brother, Bert, would live in a huge house and own a big estate, I’d of told you you was bonkers.’ She opened a cupboard and brought out an old, slightly rusty tea-caddy.

  ‘How is Mike?’

  ‘Beginning to feel the job’s a bit much for him, but none of us are getting any younger. It’s the arthritis. Had it for years and the doctors can’t seem to do anything but tell him he’s got to put up with it. Gets him down, sometimes.’

  He couldn’t remember anything about his brother-in-law except that he was forever sniffing.

  She studied him. ‘You don’t look all that fit, Bert.’

  ‘Julian,’ he corrected her.

  ‘I always forget you changed your name. There’s been a Bert in the family ever since great-grandad.’

  ‘Has there?’

  ‘Mum told me that. She used to know everything about the family …’ She chatted on. She made the tea and poured it into two chipped mugs, one of which she passed to him, and put a bottle of milk and a plastic container of sugar on the table. ‘Have a biscuit? I’ve some of them garibaldis what you used to like so much.’

  He refused, wondering how she could remember what he had liked or disliked all those long years ago.

  ‘So how’s the farm going?’

  He took the trouble briefly to answer her question and was surprised to see the look of longing on her face. Clearly, her heart still lay in the countryside.

  ‘Maude, I want to get in touch with Reginald,’ he said finally. ‘Where’s he living now?’

  ‘I … I don’t know whether you heard? He was sent to … to prison.’

  ‘Is he still in jail?’ he asked harshly.

  She imagined he was angry because of the shame of having a brother jailed. ‘They let him out early under a scheme where he got a job and just reported back at night, but even that’s finished with now.’

  ‘What had he done?’

  ‘He kind of got mixed up with a wild bunch. If he hadn’t, he’d never of done such things: I know he wouldn’t.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Stealing wages and hitting the guards,’ she said, her voice low. She was surprised to see his tight expression relax.

  *

  Reginald Powell was five feet eleven tall, broad shouldered, and still slim waisted: his face was chunky and coarse and an inch-long scar ran down his right cheek to add a touch of harshness to what would otherwise have been sly features.

  He stared at Powell with an astonishment which turned to open hatred. ‘What’s brought you slumming?’

  ‘I want a word with you.’

  ‘It’s a pity the feeling ain’t mutual.’

  When Powell said nothing more, his brother finally stepped to one side, shrugging his shoulders scornfully. They went into the front room. This was small, over-furnished, and it smelled of stale cigarette smoke and beer. A woman was sprawled in one of the arm-chairs: her hair was aggressively blonde, her face thick with make-up, and the expression in her tired brown eyes suggested that all her illusions about life had long since been shattered. She looked at Powell with little interest.

  Reginald Powell went over to the fireplace, kicking an empty pack of cigarettes across the worn and soiled carpet as he did so. ‘What’s there to talk on?’

  ‘I’ve come to make a proposition.’

  He turned towards the woman. ‘Take a walk, Flo.’

  ‘But I’ve been …’

  ‘Move.’

  She stood and left, her expression resentful: she still sometimes knew a tiny flicker of pride.

  They heard the front door slam shut and then through the dingy net curtain and fly-blown window they saw her cross the road and walk along the pavement.

  ‘I need help,’ said Powell quietly.

  ‘You what? I’ve needed help enough times in the past, but I ain’t come running to you for it.’ Reginald Powell’s scornful anger grew. ‘I’d of got more help from the splits than you. Heard I’ve been in the nick recent?’

  ‘Yes, but let’s forget all that …’

  ‘We don’t forget nothing, not when you come crawling for help after keeping right clear of me for thirty years. Didn’t want to know whether I was alive or dead because you’re the rich Mr Powell and if I’d of asked you to come and see me in the nick you’d’ve told me to get lost. But now you’re in trouble and maybe me being an ex-con could be useful so you’re all for forgetting. What’s the play? Something you’re scared to touch with your own white hands? I’ll tell you. Get bloody lost.’

  ‘There’s a thousand quid in it for you.’

  Reginald Powell’s expression didn’t lose its hatred, but it additionally became calculating.

  ‘What are you handing out a grand for?’

  ‘For breaking into a house and taking enough stuff to make it look like an ordinary burglary. All I’ll want out of it will be a necklace.’

  ‘What’s that worth?’

  ‘Six hundred pounds.’

  ‘Who’s going to be there?’

  ‘Just one woman.’

  ‘Why no one else? Ain’t she married?’

  ‘Her husband will be in London for the night.’

  ‘Where’s
the house?’

  ‘In the country. It’s surrounded by farm land and screened by trees. The nearest neighbour is half a mile up the road.

  ‘Is the house wired?’

  ‘For electricity? Yes, of course —’

  ‘For alarms, you stupid bastard.’

  ‘Almost certainly not,’ said Powell stiffly.

  ‘All right, the job’s dead easy: so why don’t you do it yourself?’

  ‘The woman … She knows me.’

  His brother laughed jeeringly.

  ‘You break into the house just after eight in the evening —’

  ‘Are you round the twist? Two in the morning.’

  ‘Just after eight. That way it makes certain she’s the only one there.’

  Reginald Powell ran his right finger along the scar on his cheek. ‘If I was to be interested, it would cost three grand.’

  They bargained, dislike and contempt making them even more pugnacious than they would otherwise have been, and it was over a quarter of an hour before they agreed on the sum of two thousand, one thousand in advance, one thousand to be paid on delivery of the necklace.

  9

  Reginald Powell had none of his brother’s sharp intelligence, drive, or determination. If he had stayed on the land he would have become the kind of farmhand who needed to be closely supervised but who, when supervised, was a good worker: since he had drifted to the towns, where he knew no roots, and had neither the skill nor application to train for and hold down a good job, and since he blamed the world for his shortcomings, it was hardly surprising that he had drifted into crime.

  He was not a successful criminal: cunning made a poor substitute for intelligence and application. Only a stupid man would have chosen Jock Anderson as an only accomplice, simply because his services came cheaply.

  Anderson had been born into a family of nine children. His father had spent more time in prison than out of it — at least five of his brothers and sisters had been fathered by other men — and his mother, a selfish, weak-willed woman had simply not bothered about their upbringing. The schools he was supposed to have attended were grateful that he mostly played truant and he had committed his first real theft before he was eight. By the time he was twenty, he had a reputation as a moronic expert in violence. ‘Snout,’ a man had once said, ‘would kill a month-old kid in its pram if you could get through to him that that’s what you wanted.’

  Reginald Powell didn’t bother to explain the job in anything but ludicrously general terms. ‘It’s a bloody walk-over, like doing a blind man. Just this broad in the house.’

  Anderson nodded.

  ‘There’s a couple of centuries in it for you — are you on?’

  He nodded again. He never worked out the feasibility of a job he was offered, realising the futility of this, but instead always said ‘Yes’ if he liked the man who gave the orders and he was being offered a large enough sum to see him through the foreseeable future, which was generally about a fortnight.

  ‘Then to-morrow you take this car and case the scene.’

  ‘O.K.’ Anderson had a large, round head: his cheekbones were prominent, imparting a Slavonic look to his thick, crude features. He watched a woman come along the pavement towards the car and he felt horny: he usually did.

  Reginald Powell lit a cheroot. He wondered why his brother wanted that necklace so desperately and how much extra he’d be able to black out of the bastard before handing it over.

  *

  On Tuesday morning, Scott pulled on the coat and thought vaguely that his only suit was getting old and soon he really must buy himself a new one.

  ‘Aren’t you ready?’ Avis shouted from the hall.

  He looked at his watch. ‘There’s plenty of time.’ He wondered why she was so on edge to-day. He shrugged his shoulders. He picked up his ancient briefcase in which he’d packed pyjamas, toothbrush and toothpaste, and a change of underclothes, and went downstairs.

  She was fidgeting with something by the telephone. ‘What train are you coming back on?’

  ‘The four-eighteen to-morrow. Unless I ring to the contrary because Charles wants to discuss film rights.’

  ‘You’ve had an offer?’

  ‘Not yet, but I remain optimistic.’

  ‘You’re just like a child,’ she said angrily, ‘living in day dreams … For God’s sake, come on.’ She hurried out of the house.

  He followed her after locking the inner front door and leaving the key hidden in the porch. Living in day dreams? They helped to make life more bearable.

  He opened the garage doors, lifting the right-hand one because the hinges had sprung and otherwise it scraped badly on the ground: by the time he’d finished, he saw that she’d settled in the driving seat. He wondered if she’d decide to drive to assert herself — but he didn’t particularly like driving and never bothered who was at the wheel. He sat in the front passenger seat and she started the engine and backed out of the garage much faster than was necessary. It was supposed to be men who found in cars all sorts of hidden releases but Avis, he was certain, found a car a handy means of working off frustrations.

  She drove on to the road at speed, careless of the possibility of another car coming along, and they were doing seventy by the time they were abreast of the old orchard. When they stopped at the cross-roads which marked the village, a woman carrying a heavy shopping basket began to cross the road. Avis hooted.

  ‘We’ve still over twenty minutes in which to get to the station,’ he said.

  She ignored him. The moment the woman was clear, she drew out, turning left, and accelerated fiercely.

  He wondered again, but only vaguely, what was disturbing her.

  She didn’t speak until they were passing a small copse of chestnut, the growth still bushy because the trees had been cut for stakes only four years before.

  ‘What are you going to do to-night?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought I might go to a film.’

  ‘Suppose the flat isn’t empty after all — what then?’ It was unlike her to bother about such problems. ‘There’s always the put-u-up which gives one the illusion of sleeping … But Ted was quite certain he was going up to Scotland for the week.’

  ‘Why hasn’t he ever got married?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ But he had a shrewd idea: Edward Garth knew too much about the marriages of his friends.

  They reached the outskirts of Ferington, crossed the bridge over the river and almost immediately the much larger bridge over the railway lines, turned right into the station car-park.

  He climbed out. ‘I’ll see you at five-twenty tomorrow.’

  ‘You told me you were catching the five-eighteen.’

  ‘Four-eighteen, then I avoid the rush hour.’

  She drove off and his last view of her was in profile with her mouth, which could be so filled with laughter, set in sullen lines. He began to climb the two flights of stairs which led up to the booking complex that ran above the lines.

  10

  Avis, in the sitting-room, poured herself out a second whisky and thought about Tregarth House. It was a pile of a building, but if nothing could be done about the exterior, a great deal could be done about the interior. Judith had decorated and furnished it with her own brand of dowdiness, yet taste and a lot of money could make the rooms quite elegant …

  *

  It was now dark and the car’s headlights turned the thorn hedges, set high up on steep earth banks, into the side vaulting of a tunnel.

  They reached Colderton cross-roads. Light was streaming out from the pub on the opposite corner and several cars were badly parked along the road. Reginald Powell visualised a foaming pint of beer: at the beginning of a job his mouth and throat always dried — this wasn’t a sign of fear, merely a physical reaction over which he had absolutely no control.

  ‘Straight over and then turn left fifty yards on,’ said Anderson.

  They crossed and passed the pub, just catching the high notes of a rough sin
g-song, cleared the last of the parked cars, and turned left.

  ‘It’s a mile down this road, on the right. The entrance is immediately past the tree.’ Anderson had drawn a sketch map and on this he’d placed the ash tree which marked the position where the road bent very slightly to the right, ten yards before the drive entrance.

  Their headlights picked out the ash tree. Reginald Powell braked and turned into the drive. The woman might hear their arrival, but because the ordinary person expected the world to continue as it always had and therefore violent trouble only happened to someone else, it was probable that she would find no cause for alarm.

  He turned and backed, to park the car facing the road. They left, shutting the doors quietly. They had been wearing gloves from the start and now they brought nylon hoods out of their pockets, but did not yet pull these over their heads because it was a moonless night and dark.

  Anderson led the way. The drive, badly surfaced, suddenly narrowed into a path as it met the thorn hedge which encircled the garden. He opened the wooden gate, not quite succeeding in stilling the squeaks. As he stepped on to the brick path, he could just make out a door now facing him. He hesitated, but Reginald Powell prodded him on. The room beyond was in darkness whilst light was coming from the house from around the corner: since the path went round the house, it was easy to guess that the door used as the front door was on the south facing side.

  They donned their hoods, now there was enough light. They walked quickly to pass through the light from the windows, uneasy at being outlined even though they knew that to the south the house faced only woods. They could see that the hall was empty.

  Both outer and inner porch doors were unlocked. Once inside, they heard the sounds of a man’s talking, but the tones of his speech, and then a short passage of music, convinced them they were listening either to the television or radio.

  Reginald Powell took a cut-throat razor from his coat pocket and flicked it open: at close quarters, people were more terrified by cold steel than by a gun. He nodded at Anderson, who would initially remain in the hall, then lifted the latch of the wooden door, pulled the door open, and stepped inside.