A Recipe for Murder

by Roderic Jeffries

  It was three-quarters of an hour later, over their second cup of coffee, when he placed the newspaper on the table. ‘The nationals have picked up the story of Avis’s disappearance.’

  She spoke uncertainly. ‘Does that matter so terribly? I mean, the local rag carried the news last week.’

  ‘The Gazette stuck to the bare facts. The reporter who wrote this story obviously had a direct line to the police. He opened out the newspaper and folded it at the page in question.

  She read quickly and her expression changed from one of worry to one of anger. She looked up. ‘So now the whole world will think we’re leaping into bed together.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said quietly.

  Her voice became still sharper … ‘We’ve got to do something. They can’t print this sort of thing and get away with it.’

  ‘They haven’t directly coupled our names together. Even if we could demand and get some sort of published explanation, they’d probably manage to put one in that meets the law but makes everyone who reads it twice as convinced as before.’

  ‘Are you suggesting we do nothing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you always lie down and let the world trample over you?’

  ‘If that’s the only sensible course to take.’

  Her shoulders slumped. ‘I’m talking stupidly. Qui s’excuse s’accuse. And in this day and age, who gives a damn about who’s bedding who?’

  ‘You, for one.’

  She nodded miserably.

  *

  For the second time that day, Kelly rang the insurance brokers whose name Scott had given him the day before.

  ‘I’ve been through our records and Mrs Scott did not ask us to insure a jade seahorse necklace, as described by you.’

  ‘But she’s always insured the rest of her jewellery?’

  ‘As far as I know. Obviously I can’t answer for certain without checking what jewellery she possesses against the list of pieces insured.’

  ‘I had this necklace valued and it was put at between five and six hundred. At that value, would you have expected her to insure it?’

  ‘Certainly. One or two of the pieces insured are valued at only a couple of hundred, even to-day.’

  Kelly rang off. The bank manager had, after judicious persuasion, again checked Avis Scott’s account and he reported that no sum larger than twenty-five pounds had been drawn at any one time within the month preceding her death. If she had not bought the necklace, how had she come by it? A lover? There could be an explanation of why it had not been insured. But Fiona Holloway’s evidence strongly negated this possibility. And how and why had it come to be tucked down the side of the settee?

  *

  The forensic laboratory telephoned at mid-day on Saturday, just as Craven was about to leave to return home, determined to enjoy his first half day off for nearly a fortnight.

  The two spots on the cork tiles were of human blood, type AB. This was the rarest of the four basic types and was possessed by roughly three per cent of the white population. Because the blood was dried, it had been impossible to make further tests to determine the MN factor. The two spots had dropped from a low height — probably between 6 and 10 centimetres — as evidenced by their shape, in particular the lack of any outer ‘bobbles’ to the main section.

  18

  As Scott backed the hired car out of the garage, a Cortina turned off the road. Kelly stepped out on to the drive. ‘I obviously only just got here in time,’ he said breezily. He grinned. ‘There’s no need to panic, though: this time it’s just a couple of questions and then I’ll get from under your feet.’

  ‘Don’t you blokes ever take any time off?’ Scott found it virtually impossible not to respond to the detective’s cheerfulness.

  ‘You sound like my wife a bit earlier on, although she became rather heated about things.’ Kelly shrugged his shoulders. ‘If there were ten days in the week, I guess that still wouldn’t be enough.’

  ‘If I suggested a coffee, would you say you were too busy?’

  ‘Don’t go to any bother,’ said Kelly weakly.

  Scott switched off the engine of his car, then led the way into the house. He made the coffee and carried it into the sitting-room.

  Kelly helped himself to sugar and milk and stirred. ‘We’ve had word through from our forensic laboratory on those two cork tiles we took away from here — remember them?’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to have forgotten them, am I? Especially since I’ve had to put that rug over the gap to stop anyone tripping and falling.’

  Kelly did not look at the rug but kept his gaze concentrated on Scott’s face. ‘Those two spots were dried human blood.’

  ‘If that’s so … began Scott.

  ‘You can accept it as fact.’

  ‘Then I’ve not the slightest idea who it came from.’

  ‘It fell from a height of between six and ten centimetres. If a person’s standing and the blood drops from that sort of height, it’s obviously come from around his ankles. If he’s lying down, on the other hand, it could have come from almost any part of the body … Have you recently bled when you’ve been in this room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As far as you know, has your wife suffered any injury which could have caused the bleeding?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What group is your blood?’

  ‘I’ve a note of it upstairs.’

  ‘And would you be able to tell me your wife’s group?’

  Scott went upstairs to their bedroom. He opened the top left-hand drawer of the chest-of-drawers and brought out the old diary in which both their blood groups, together with other personal information, were recorded.

  He returned downstairs. ‘I’m group O. My wife is AB.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Kelly.

  It had been impossible to discern from Kelly’s expression whether the information had been of any particular significance. Scott said, conscious his voice sounded strained: ‘Does that tell you anything definite?’

  ‘Only that those two drops could not have come from you.’

  ‘Did they come from my wife?’

  ‘They might have done, but no one’s ever going to be able to take it any further than that.’

  *

  Melville-Jones, assistant to the Director of Public Prosecutions, was tall and thin, pernickety in dress, and pedantic in manner. ‘We have three initial points of major importance to consider. First, is she dead: second, if she is dead, how did she die: third if her death was criminal, who was responsible?’

  Why, thought Craven, did lawyers so enjoy repeating the same thing time after time? The detective superintendent fidgeted with a matchstick and tried to work out his chances of getting back to county H.Q. within the next hour and a half. Kelly stared at the far wall.

  ‘Is Mrs Scott dead? On the evidence available we may assume that she is dead, but yet may not presume that she is. I will deal with the point in some detail.

  ‘When a person’s car is known to have gone over a very high cliff to become a total wreck, then clearly — unless the driver is known to have got clear before the crash — it is reasonable to assume he, or she, was in it. That assumption is weakened when the car is recovered, but no body is found inside it. A sprung door offers a reasonable explanation for the absence of the body but cannot by itself strengthen the now weakened assumption.

  ‘If Mrs Scott is alive she will need money. Her account is dormant, but if her disappearance was deliberate, we have to consider the possibility that she has a further source of money not known to us. Friends have heard nothing from her, friends who obviously would have expected to hear were she alive …’

  It was ten minutes before Melville-Jones finally said: ‘So, gentlemen, we can say that at the moment we may not presume that she is dead: but in time this presumption will arise even if no more evidence comes to light provided there is no indication, however slight, that she is still alive.’

  ‘How lon
g?’ asked Craven bluntly.

  Melville-Jones tapped his finger-tips together. ‘Very, very difficult to give a clear-cut answer. But should a further three months pass with the position unaltered I would probably hold that sufficient time had passed.

  ‘Now, let us move on to consider the evidence in the light of a presumption that Mrs Scott is dead. Did she, perhaps while under the influence of drink, drive over the cliff accidentally? Or was she murdered and the car driven over the cliff to make is seem like an accident?

  ‘If it was an accident, then she must have driven the car to Stern Head. Yet we have the evidence of Jenkins that her car was on the road at about nine o’clock on that Tuesday evening being driven by a man. Jenkins is a man of dubious character, but more importantly, how certainly can an observer at night, looking through the rear window, identify the driver of a car as a man or a woman? We are living in a time when even in broad daylight it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the sexes …’ He suddenly chuckled, surprising the three detectives, especially Kelly who had been dozing.

  It was almost mid-day before Melville-Jones finally began to collect together his papers. ‘So there we are, gentlemen. Time must pass before death can be presumed. And unless further evidence comes to hand, then a charge of murder against the husband will not lie.’

  19

  Jane went into Reynolds’s office and put four letters on his desk. ‘Could I have a word with you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘Grab a chair and tell me what’s bothering you.’

  She sat and folded her hands on her lap. ‘I suppose you’ve read in the papers about Mrs Scott’s car having gone over Stern Head?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that …’ She sat a little straighter. ‘And how my name was mentioned along with Kevin Scott’s?’

  He nodded.

  ‘It’s horrible that papers can print that sort of innuendo. I said we ought to make the paper retract it, but Kevin insists it’s much better to leave well alone. Is he right?’

  ‘Libel by inference is the very devil to prove and if you start gunning for a newspaper they so often manage to get their own back. So my advice would be, grin and bear it.’

  ‘It seems so weak to do nothing …’ Her expression slowly changed from indignation to worry. ‘There’s something else I wanted to ask. In law, can someone be charged with murder if there’s no body?’

  ‘They can and have been. It’s one of the common legal fallacies that there can only be a trial for murder when there’s a corpse. If the surrounding circumstances go to show overwhelmingly that someone has died at the hands of an identified person, but the body has not been recovered, then that person will be charged with murder.’

  ‘But what if he doesn’t know anything about her death?’

  ‘Then the surrounding circumstances aren’t going to show overwhelmingly that he murdered her.’

  ‘But if they do,’ she persisted.

  He spoke very carefully. ‘There’s an old legal aphorism to the effect that witnesses can lie, but facts cannot.’

  ‘Yet the interpretation of those facts can be a lie?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then an innocent man could be charged with murder?’

  ‘He could.’

  ‘But the trial must prove his innocence?’

  ‘There is reason for believing that in the past innocent people have been tried and found guilty of murder. They most certainly have been of lesser crimes.’

  ‘I’ve always thought … I’ve always believed that in this country our law couldn’t make that kind of ghastly mistake.’

  ‘It’s about as just as any law can be, but it’s not perfect. Or to qualify that, because it’s in the hands of humans, its administration isn’t perfect.’

  She felt very frightened.

  *

  For his thirteenth birthday, Mike Grierson was given a metal detector and on Saturday, a dreary day with dirt-washed clouds blanketing the sky, he told his mother he was off to find a fortune in Park Wood. She said to be back by a quarter to one, in time to wash for lunch.

  Park Wood had once belonged to the priory — now a ruin — and it was said that in the time of Henry VIII the prior, determined to save their treasure from the state’s confiscation, ordered this to be hidden in the woods. Both the prior and the monks who had buried the treasure were subsequently murdered and so no-one knew in which part of the woods the treasure had been buried …

  Mike’s enthusiasm survived half a dozen soft drink cans and fourteen cartridge cases, but became noticeably weaker when, within ten feet of the road, he spent over three minutes digging up a fifteenth cartridge case. He sat down on a tree stump and reflected that a hundred and fifty acres was really rather a lot of land.

  After a long rest he reluctantly resumed his search and eleven paces on, as he went round a large clump of brambles, the detector’s note changed once more. He dug, finding the soil surprisingly loose but initially seeing no significance in this.

  The spade met something solid. He knelt and began very carefully to clear the earth away. Soon, he uncovered a hand, on one finger of which was a large costume jewellery ring.

  *

  The body was sketched and photographed. Then four P.C.s, wearing green overalls, rubber gloves, and wellingtons, eased a canvas sheet underneath and lifted it out. More photos were taken, the pathologist made a preliminary examination, and the body was cocooned in thick plastic bags and carried out to the road where it was put in the back of an undertaker’s van which drove the five miles to the nearest mortuary.

  Later, at the mortuary, a detective constable viewed the body. He wrote out a detailed physical description and a list of the clothes and jewellery, now in a number of plastic bags. A précis of the physical description was sent to all divisional police stations and to the central index of missing persons.

  *

  Kelly studied the report, newly received over Telex. There seemed little doubt the body was that of Avis Scott. He looked at a map. Park Wood, near Lower Melford, was four miles from the main road. The murderer had buried her on his way back to London …

  He spoke over the phone to the detective inspector in Lower Melford. ‘We’ve just had your message in, sir, and it looks like we can put a name to the corpse: Mrs Avis Scott, last seen on the seventeenth of July.’

  ‘The date fits with the pathologist’s estimate of the time of death.’

  ‘Would you give me a run-down on the clothes and any jewellery? If it still looks right after I’ve checked with the husband, I’ll bring him up for an identification.’

  The call completed, he went down to the courtyard and finding the C.I.D. car was for once available, drove off in that.

  He spoke to Scott in the low beamed sitting-room of Honey Cottage. ‘I’m sorry to say we’ve had word that a body has been discovered in a wood near Lower Melford and there’s reason to believe this may be the body of your wife.’ Scott was shocked but showed none of the signs of panic which might have been expected. ‘Can you remember the clothes your wife was wearing on the Tuesday?’

  Scott stared at the fireplace. ‘I think she was in a blouse and pink slacks,’ he finally said.

  The dead woman had been wearing a skirt, a blouse missing a button, a slip with a torn strap, and pants. ‘What were her marriage and engagement rings like?’

  ‘The wedding ring was chased platinum, her engagement ring was opal, set around with small diamonds.’

  Kelly now had no doubts left about the identity of the dead woman. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to come to the mortuary with me to see if you can identify the deceased.’

  He swallowed heavily. ‘I can’t.’ He saw Kelly’s expression. ‘All right, suppose it was you — how in the hell would you like to have to go to a mortuary to see if you could identify the body of your wife after she’d been buried in some woods?’

  ‘I’d detest it, but I’d go because that would be the only way in which I could
be certain.’ He moved towards the door. ‘Is there anyone you’d like to ask to come along with you?’

  Scott shook his head.

  *

  Scott watched as the white-coated attendant slid one of the large drawers out of the refrigerated cabinet. He wasn’t as sickly frightened as he had expected, but his right hand was suffering quick spasms of shaking.

  ‘Would you just stand over here, please,’ said the attendant, in a matter-of-fact voice. He pulled the white cover back a couple of feet.

  Scott stared at the face he had last seen that Tuesday morning: he remembered the day he’d proposed to her when he’d promised that soon his name would be a household word: he remembered her mother telling him that she was a very good cook, omitting to mention that she knew nothing about budget cooking …

  ‘Is she your wife?’ asked Kelly.

  He nodded.

  The attendant replaced the white cover and slid the drawer back.

  *

  Scott climbed out of the car. Kelly said: ‘Good night, Mr Scott.’

  He walked down to the gate, helped by the car’s headlights since it was now dark, and round to the porch. He switched on a light and only then did the car back, turn and leave.

  Even though in the end he had not loved her, he knew a terrible, icy emptiness because he had loved her in the beginning. He crossed to the corner cupboard and picked up the telephone receiver and dialled. As soon as the connexion was made, he said: ‘Talk to me for a while. Blame me for interrupting your favourite telly programme, but talk.’

  ‘My God, what’s happened?’ asked Jane.

  ‘I’m just back from the mortuary at Lower Melford. Avis’s body was found buried in some woods and I had to go and identify it.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The detective brought me back home after the traditional double whisky.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come here? At a time like this, to go back to an empty house! Have you still got the car you’ve been hiring?’