A Recipe for Murder

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, it seems … Mrs Powell, your husband came in some time ago and bought the necklace. Obviously, it’s been kept back as a surprise for you.’ He burbled on about how the style of the carving suggested the piece came from the Langchung area …

  She thanked him and rang off. Julian wouldn’t be keeping the necklace as a surprise. First of all, he never remembered anniversaries and secondly whenever he bought her a piece of jade he handed it over as quickly as possible and with thinly veiled resentment: one piece of jade could easily represent half a dozen top quality Friesians, sired by premium bulls … No. He’d bought it and returned home and she’d been out and he’d forgotten all about it.

  23

  The committee meeting of the Rayman Community had been a tiring one. By the end of it she had a headache and when she drove into the garage at Tregarth House this headache had become severe.

  Powell was watching television and the sound was turned so high that it made her head throb more violently. She adjusted the volume control.

  ‘I can’t hear it now,’ he complained bad temperedly.

  ‘It’s perfectly loud enough,’ she answered, for once speaking sharply. ‘I’ve had a heavy day, Julian, and I’ve a beast of a headache.’

  ‘You shouldn’t waste your time with all those ridiculous committee meetings.’

  Yet again, she wondered sadly why he could not feel more sympathy for others. ‘Did Olive leave supper out before she went off?’

  ‘It’s a rat’s tail of a meal.’

  ‘You know she’s always in a hurry to get away when it’s her night off …’ She stopped. He’d once milked cows three times a day for two years without one single break. Perhaps he was entitled to be intolerant. ‘I had lunch at the White Swan. They’ve put the price up twenty-five pence.’

  ‘Everything goes up but the prices at the farm gate.’

  ‘That reminds me, I bought a copy of the local and in it there’s a photograph of a jade seahorse necklace which was found near poor Avis. I remembered Werner and Hall were supposed to be buying in a necklace like that and as I’d some time after lunch I rang up Mr Leach to ask him what had happened to it. He said he sold it to you some time ago … ’She stopped abruptly, shocked by the expression on his face. ‘Julian, what’s the matter?’

  He struggled to regain some measure of self-control.

  ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘Can’t you ever stop bloody fussing?’ he shouted, fright panicking him.

  ‘I … I was just trying … I’m going up to bed. I don’t want any supper.’

  She waited, expecting at least a few words of commiseration, but he said nothing, merely staring at her with an expression which could easily be interpreted as dislike. Very close to tears, she left.

  He poured himself out a strong brandy and soda. After all this time! When it had seemed certain all danger must be past. He desperately tried to convince himself that she would not realise the two necklaces had to be one and the same: that her fierce sense of loyalty would prevent her coming to the logical conclusion. But sooner or later she must wonder and when that happened … She’d understand he had betrayed their marriage and, in betraying it, had mocked it … Loyal and loving, knowledge of the betrayal would make her hate, as emotionally as she had loved.

  He poured himself another brandy. How to avoid catastrophe? He tried to concentrate his mind, yet all he could do was to think in quick snatches of panic. Then, suddenly he remembered Reginald.

  He hurried through to the library. The phone here was a separate line and so there was no chance of Judith’s picking up the bedroom extension and overhearing him. He dialled. A woman answered.

  ‘Is Reginald there?’ he asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Isn’t that Reginald Powell’s house?’

  ‘You want Reg? Blimey, you had me confused.’ She laughed coarsely.

  He waited, breathless now from tension and fear.

  ‘Who is it?’ demanded Reginald Powell.

  ‘It’s Julian here …’

  ‘You dumb bastard! Didn’t I tell you not to get in touch with me?’

  ‘Something terrible’s happened.’ In a rush of words, he told his brother about the necklace. ‘The moment she realises it has to be the same necklace, she’ll know Avis and I …’

  ‘Your old woman doesn’t understand anything at all yet?’

  ‘Not yet. But when she …’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Up in bed. She came back from Ferington with a bad headache …’

  ‘Who else is in the house with you?’

  ‘No one. It’s the housekeeper’s night off.’

  ‘All right. So I’ll come and see you and we’ll talk it over. Listen, don’t go and tell anyone I’m coming along.’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’

  ‘You’re bleeding dumb enough … I’ll be there around ten. Leave the doors unlocked.’

  ‘You’ll think of something, won’t you?’

  ‘Likely.’

  *

  Reginald Powell and Anderson left the car, stolen just before leaving London, half-way up the drive and walked to the house. Powell was in the downstairs sitting-room: he wasn’t drunk, but neither was he sober. It was a simple job to batter him to death with lead-filled coshes.

  Because the death of Avis Scott had proved how easy it was to make fools of the police, they now set the scene to make it seem as if there had been a burglary and Powell had interrupted it and in consequence had been killed.

  24

  Kelly stared at the chalked outline on the parquet floor: by the roughly outlined head was an irregular patch of congealed blood. On the face of things, there was little doubt about what had happened, but there were inconsistencies. Take the time of death. The police doctor had given this, subject to all the usual qualifications, as having been between ten and midnight. Yet mobs who specialised in country houses worked the early hours of the morning, for obvious reasons. Take the strong-room. From appearances, it dated back to when the house had been built. Any twirler expert would be inside it within five minutes and any mob working country houses would take along a twirler expert, but a D.C. had checked the three locks with an illuminated probe and no attempt had been made to force them. Had the intruders killed Powell, panicked, and fled? But professional mobs seldom panicked. Had it, then, been not an experienced country house mob but a bunch of tearaways? Yet the window of one of the French doors had been expertly smashed after coating the glass with an adhesive and covering this with mutton cloth: the closed circuit alarm had been cross-contacted: Powell’s injuries, designed to kill, had been expertly inflicted …

  An experienced detective learned to gain a feel about a case and right now he felt there was something wrong about this one. He looked through the shattered French window and watched a line of uniform P.C.s searching the garden.

  A man, dressed in a dark suit, entered the sitting-room. ‘I’ve done all I can so I’ll be on my way. I’ve told the housekeeper to get in touch with me if necessary, but as I’ve sedated Mrs Powell quite heavily there shouldn’t be any trouble.’

  Kelly said: ‘I need a quick word with her.’

  ‘She’s much better left alone.’

  ‘It is very important.’

  ‘You’ll not get any sense out of her.’

  ‘But if I’m brief, will it do her any harm?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ replied the doctor reluctantly. ‘But five minutes at the very most.’ He left.

  Kelly went into the hall and up the stairs with their elaborately shaped balusters. As he reached the landing, around which were pots in which grew indoor plants, a D.C. came along the passage on his left. The D.C. reported that all the rooms except Mrs Powell’s had now been searched and nothing of the slightest significance had been found. Kelly asked him which was her room.

  There were two beds, set against a single quilted headboard, with matching tab
les on their outsides. The drawn curtains were a rich burgundy velvet, the large carpet a Persian kaleidoscope of reds, blues, and blacks: there were two matched serpentine-fronted chests-of-drawers, beautifully and elaborately inlaid, which immediately, if briefly, drew his attention: on one of the walls hung a painting of sunflowers, orgiastically coloured, which he guessed was a van Gogh.

  She lay in the right-hand bed with the small table lamp switched on. Normally plain, shock and grief had coarsened her features. Her eyes held the luminosity which came from repeated tempests of weeping.

  He said how sorry he was and the genuineness of his sympathy was obvious. ‘I need to know one or two things as soon as possible if we’re to catch whoever broke into this house last night … The housekeeper says you were out most of the day — when did you get back and when did you last see your husband?’

  She continued to stare at him.

  ‘Mrs Powell, have you any idea what the time was when you got back here?’

  ‘I had a headache,’ she murmured. ‘And he was so angry.’

  ‘Your husband was angry?’

  ‘All I did was phone them. How could I know?’

  ‘How could you know what?’

  ‘That he’d bought the seahorse necklace from the jeweller’s.’ She began to moan, low, choking sounds.

  Kelly left.

  He returned downstairs and went along the main corridor, past a door still lined with green baize, to the housekeeper’s small but cosy sitting-room, converted from one of the pantries.

  Olive Bins, middle aged, had the features of someone who had often been battered by life but who had always fought back. She said in her deep voice, in answer to the first question: ‘I spent the night with my sister in Ferington and didn’t return until just before nine this morning. The police were already here.’

  ‘Will you think back carefully and then tell me something? Has anything happened recently which in the light of Mr Powell’s death makes you now think that it might be significant? The kind of thing I’m looking for is someone who’s tried to be friendly and has asked about the routine of the house, telephone calls which were cut off the moment you answered them,

  parked cars which could have been spying out the lie of the land.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, there’s been nothing like that.’ He brought a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it. She shook her head, but said she’d no objection to his smoking.

  ‘You told one of my blokes that Mrs Powell has some sort of collection which is kept in the strong-room and you thought that maybe that was what the men were after — what kind of a collection is it?’

  ‘It’s jade. There’s quite a lot of it and I’ve always understood it’s pretty valuable.’

  ‘Is there any chance you know the name of the jeweller’s Mrs Powell usually went to?’

  ‘Not off-hand. But she has a small book of telephone numbers she uses quite often and I’m sure it’ll be in there — maybe I could work out which it is.’

  *

  Craven stood near the telephone as Kelly spoke to Leach of Werner and Hall and there was an expression of irritation on his lean, sharp face because he couldn’t make out the course of the conversation.

  Kelly finally replaced the receiver. ‘Powell bought a jade seahorse necklace from them at the beginning of September for six hundred quid. He was able to describe it fairly well, but says that if we’ll get our necklace to him he’ll be able to make a positive identification.’

  ‘How does his description fit?’

  ‘Well enough.’

  ‘Then since I don’t believe in coincidences a mile high, it is the same. Which surely means there has to be a connexion between this murder and Mrs Scott’s.’ He walked over to the nearest window and stared out at the view. Until now, such a possibility hadn’t arisen. Since it had, all the facts had to be re-evaluated. Kelly’s hunch was probably right. The prime reason for the break-in the previous night had been murder, not theft: for some reason, Powell had had to be silenced. Craven swung round. ‘First thing is to get over to Scott’s place.’

  *

  Craven deliberately presented the news in the baldest terms as soon as he and Kelly were in Honey Cottage. ‘I suppose you’ve heard already that Powell was murdered last night?’

  Scott, standing close to the bottom of the stairs, stared at him with an expression of surprise which could hardly have been simulated.

  ‘D’you mind telling me where you were last night?’

  ‘Are you trying to say I murdered him as well?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing of the sort. But in view of what’s already happened, I have to put the question.’

  ‘There’s a link between the two murders?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  Scott spoke pugnaciously. ‘I was with Mrs Ballentyne from five-thirty until sometime after one. And this time there are enough witnesses to back up Ananias and us.’

  Craven said nothing.

  ‘We went to dinner at that new Mexican restaurant which has just opened outside Hemscross. Given half an encouragement one of the waiters sings love songs to the ladies and we stayed on until they shut at almost one. I tipped far more than I can afford, so I hope they’ll remember us.’

  Craven nodded.

  *

  On Saturday afternoon, when the day had become dull and limp and the overcast sky was glooming for rain, Mrs Bins showed Craven and Kelly into the upstairs sitting-room at Tregarth House.

  Judith was seated on one of the bench window seats of this very large, sparsely furnished room, staring out past the balcony with its graceful wrought-iron rails at the scene her husband had so loved. She wore black and it was ironic that this colour suited her tall figure and austerely plain, heavy face.

  Two comfortable chairs had been placed near the bench seat: between them was a small occasional table on which was an ash-tray and a lacquer box, opened and half full of cigarettes. They sat.

  ‘You want to ask me some questions?’ Judith said.

  ‘We need your help if we are to identify the man or men who broke into this house on Thursday night,’ replied Craven.

  She was a quiet woman who could too easily be hurt vicariously by another’s misery, but for her husband’s murderers she knew only a violent hatred. Normally a woman of personal secrecy, she now withheld nothing. She relived in detail memories which a person of a different and less honest character must have tried to conceal, even from herself.

  When Craven and Kelly left her, sitting very upright by the window, they both had the uncomfortable feeling that they had been present not only at an interview but also at a confession.

  25

  Craven’s room at divisional H.Q. was thick with smoke. Craven, unusually smoking a pipe, pointed the Stern at Kelly. ‘All right, we’re building with bricks which may be all straw: but they’re the only bricks we’ve got right now.’

  ‘Just so long as they don’t all collapse at the same time.’

  ‘You always were a pessimistic bastard,’ he said, in a rare moment of friendly joshing. He put the pipe down on his desk. ‘I don’t think we’re too far wrong.’

  Kelly didn’t think so either, but life had taught him that it was fatal to become too certain.

  ‘Powell gave that necklace to Avis Scott and then he became scared his wife would hear what he’d done. That left him out on a limb because the estate was in her name and she’s the kind of woman who if she learned he was using someone else’s bed would have kicked him right out. I suppose he might have claimed his half, under a reverse women’s lib, but that would have made him look a Charlie and he obviously hadn’t any sense of humour. He had to neutralise Avis Scott and the best way of doing that was to arrange to have the necklace nicked because if she no longer had it to prove the truth, he reckoned he could convince his wife she was lying.

  ‘One or more men went to Honey Cottage to nick the necklace when Scott was in London. In the course of the robbery, which fai
led because they never thought to search the settee, she died very suddenly. They phoned Powell to tell him what had happened and it was that call which shattered him to such an extent that his wife still remembers it so clearly.

  ‘An attempt was made to make the death look like suicide or accident, but this failed. On the facts available to us then, we had a case of murder against the husband, but there just wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge him.

  ‘Then we had our lucky break. Mrs Ballentyne became so desperate to take the pressure off Scott — not realising that, ironically, we’d decided to put the case into cold storage and so it was already off — that she tried to fake an alibi for him. Because of this, we got a photo of the necklace printed and because of that Powell was caught in the jaws of a nutcracker. What he didn’t have the sense to realise was that now he’d have to be murdered to save the skins of whoever had killed Mrs Scott.

  ‘Having said all that, how are we doing now? I’ll tell you. We’re doing badly. We don’t know who Powell had been in contact with over Mrs Scott. When he was murdered there was no one in the house but his wife and she was laid out with a headache. There’s not a meaningful dab and not a useful trace. We’ve sent word through to the grassers and you’d think they’d all taken vows of silence …’

  Kelly said slowly: ‘Powell was at home the night the attempt was made to nick the necklace, so he hired someone. Assuming it’s the same someone who killed him, we’re dealing with professionals. Where would a man like Powell find himself a villain?’

  Craven stared at him for several seconds. ‘You know, there are times when you begin to earn your keep! If he’d asked around casually, every grasser in the area would have heard about it.’

  ‘So it has to be someone he knew. How does a farmer come to know a villain?’

  *

  Kelly and a D.C. from the local division arrived at Maude Bowring's house at eleven-fifteen on Sunday morning. Kelly, showing quiet, warm sympathy, spoke generally to her until some of her nervousness had subsided, then he said: ‘We thought you might be able to help us, Mrs Bowring. What we’re trying to do is draw up a list of all your brother’s relatives and friends.’