Murder Comes Calling (4 page)

six

Rex saw Malcolm’s car
parked in his open garage and hastened his step, anxious to find out how his friend had fared at the station. He had covered half the driveway when a male voice hailed him from the other side of the hedge where, upon turning around, Rex spotted a man of about sixty in a flat cap pruning the foliage.

“Staying long in our parts?” the man enquired in a jovial tone. “You’re a brave one.”

Rex smiled and said he thought he was quite old and big enough to take care of himself.

“I’m sure Vic Chandler thought the same. He was a bouncer at a nightclub in Godminton, but his muscle and army training didn’t do the poor sod any good in the end.” Malcolm’s neighbour looked toward the remnant of blue and white police tape fluttering in the doorway of the victim’s house on the other side of the cul-de-sac. “Win Prendergast.” He stuck out his hand across the soggy hedge.

Rex had heard about Winston Prendergast from Malcolm: A busybody bachelor constantly giving advice on how best to wash a car or mow a lawn. The neighbour on Malcolm’s other side had gone into a retirement home. Her daughter was going to move in the house with her family once they had finished uprooting their life in Shropshire. For now it stood empty, and Malcolm had been cutting her grass to maintain a tidy appearance.

Rex introduced himself in turn. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he told Prendergast.

“Visiting from Edinburgh, I hear. I’m a Clanger myself, Bedfordshire born and bred,” the man said proudly. “Known Malcolm long?”

“Since university.”

“I suppose he filled you in on the murders? We’ve all been on edge, wondering which of our neighbours could have slaughtered our four residents. There are crimes that still merit the death penalty, if you ask me.” Clearly, Prendergast was the sort of person who gave an opinion whether it was requested or not. “Why should tax payers fork out their hard-earned income to house and feed such scum? A dog shouldn’t have to suffer what happened to those four.”

“Did you know them well?” Rex asked with sympathetic interest.

“Well enough. Played golf with Ernest and Barry. And with Vic Chandler once or twice, but he didn’t have the patience for it. Ernest had focus and a good swing for his age. Barry was hit-and-miss. I think his deafness threw him a bit off balance.”

“But it’s not all aboot the game, is it?” Rex said, not an avid golfer himself, but having played back home in Edinburgh and in St. Andrews on occasion. “A beer or two at the club with your mates after a round is a pleasant way to spend the day.”

“I won’t argue with that. And Ernest was a character. He could tell a funny story and have you in stitches, right enough. Came from running a pub, I suppose. Barry was sociable too, a proper gentleman, but, like I said, he was hearing-impaired, so sometimes it was hard to keep a conversation going with him. And Ernest had memory lapses. Senile dementia, I believe they call it. They were getting on a bit, of course. But for all that, they weren’t at death’s door, until someone pushed them through it.”

“What was Barry’s background?” Rex asked with a more-than-friendly curiosity.

Prendergast jutted out his thick lips while he reflected. “I think he said he had an auto-repair shop. Vic was in insurance.”

“And the female victim? Did you know her at all?”

“Saw her about, but never to talk to.”

Rex could think of nothing else to ask without appearing ghoulish, so he bid Prendergast good day and strode up the rest of the driveway. He called out his friend’s name upon opening the front door with his spare key and unbuttoned his coat.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Malcolm replied.

Rex deposited his overcoat and brolly on the coat tree and headed in that direction. “Well?” he asked Malcolm, who was busying himself with the kettle.

“Well, I’m still a free man.”

“I can see that. What happened?”

“I spoke to DCI Cooper, who’s heading up the investigation, and explained that I had remembered something about the first body. I told him about what had looked like three letters scrawled across Ernest Blackwell’s forehead—the M, back-to-front N, and P—but that I accidentally erased them when administering to the patient.”

“Dead patient. You said Mr. Blackwell was all but decapitated.”

“One must always check for a pulse. It’s a reflex.”

“Like wiping away evidence?”

Malcolm had the grace to look ashamed. “Look, I did what I said I would,” he replied defensively. “The detective said he would ask Walker about the letters, but didn’t seem to take it too seriously.”

Or perhaps he did not take Malcolm too seriously, Rex reflected. Detective Chief Inspector Cooper may have concluded that Malcolm was trying to stay involved in the case out of a sense of self-importance or curiosity. “And you didn’t press it?” he enquired of his friend.

“No, why would I? It’s his job to decide whether it’s important or not. I did ask whether Chris Walker was dyslexic.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said he would review Walker’s statement, but that he didn’t recall the house agent’s writing to be better or worse than most. Perhaps some capitals inserted for small letters, but it had been legible, he said, even if the prose would never be nominated for a Pulitzer.”

“Very amusing,” Rex retorted. “And did you happen to mention your initials on the other victims’ foreheads?”

“He didn’t ask.” Malcolm fidgeted with the tea towel he had used on the counter to mop up spilt water from the kettle.

“Malcolm!”

“Listen, Rex. He’s certain they’ve got the right man. At Ernest Blackwell’s house they found a damp shoe print on the front doormat matching Walker’s, which puts him at the scene at around the time the murder was committed. It started raining late in the morning that day and my medical colleague estimated time of death at approximately noon.”

“Were Walker’s shoe prints found in the back room by the piano?”

“No,” Malcolm replied cautiously. “Just on the mat, apparently. He may have removed his shoes out of courtesy before walking down the hall. A good house agent would think to do that.”

“Aye, or else he didn’t go further than the front door mat, and someone else was padding around in their socks. Did they find blood on Walker’s clothes? With all that blood, it’s unlikely he’d get away squeaky clean.”

“Don’t know if they did or not. The only other shoe prints belonged to me,” Malcolm said with an air of apology. “It was still raining when I got there.” He put the filled teapot and two mugs on the kitchen table, along with a tin of digestive biscuits.

The two men sat down across from each other, and Rex asked what Malcolm had been doing when Lottie phoned to tell him about Ernest lying on the carpet.

“I stayed indoors that Thursday as it was pouring outside. Caught up on some medical journals.”

Malcolm’s answer seemed a bit pat to Rex, but he let it go for now while his friend served the tea. Rex deplored the fact Malcolm had not come completely clean about the letters written in blood. He brought that point up again with as much tact as his patience would allow.

“If the inspector had pressed for more information,” Malcolm told him, “I would have mentioned the possibility of letters on the other victims.”

“Possibility?” With an indignant sigh, Rex heaped three teaspoons of sugar into his mug.

“Vic Chandler was in the bath, remember. The steam had blurred the letters. And Barry Burns’s face was so beaten in, the blood could have said anything.”

“Lottie said Barry was something of a dandy,” Rex said, deviating from Malcolm’s excuses for his behaviour, since he couldn’t take much more of them for now.

“I suppose he was,” his friend said, gazing into space. “Tall and trim, with a full head of white hair, which he kept longish, probably the way he had it in his younger days. A bit frail, though, and hard of hearing.”

“So Lottie and your neighbour said. Prendergast waylaid me as I was walking up the driveway,” Rex explained.

Malcolm nodded and grinned. “What a gasbag. I bet he gave you the lowdown on all the neighbours.”

“Mainly the victims. And what aboot Vic Chandler? All Win could tell me was that he had no patience for golf and had been in the insurance business. What was he like?”

“Didn’t know him that well, just saw him from time to time across the street. He liked to potter in his shed round the back of his house. Kept himself to himself mostly. Not very tall, but barrel-chested, with powerful shoulders. And he shaved his head, I think because he was going bald on top.”

“Injured in Belfast, I hear.”

“He had a scar on one side of his face that dragged his eye down a bit and gave him a sinister look, and he had a missing finger on his right hand.”

“A tough-looking character. I remember the picture in the paper. And the woman, Valerie … On the blousy side, you said?”

Malcolm nodded. “Attractive in a barmaid sort of way. I could see her and Ernest having an affair, at a pinch. Though quite a bit older, he had charisma.”

He seemed relieved to have the focus off himself, but Rex was not prepared to let his evidence tampering go that easily. “What if the letters have greater significance than you let on to the inspector? Did he notice the connection between them and your initials?”

Malcolm swallowed down a bite of biscuit. “Not immediately. After all, that middle letter was not a proper N. Later in the interview, though, he asked why Walker might have wanted to frame me.”

Very astute of the detective, Rex thought. “And you said?”

“I barely knew the chap. I had one conversation with him when he was putting the For Sale sign in Barry’s garden. I asked if the homes in the neighbourhood had gone up in value in the past year, and he said it depended on how quickly you wanted to sell. Apparently, Barry was in a hurry.”

“Do you know why?”

“You’d have to ask Walker.”

“That might be difficult, considering his situation,” Rex said pointedly.

Malcolm expelled a long breath. “Look, he confessed to being there that Thursday.”

“And killing Ernest Blackwell?”

“No, why would he? If he has a good barrister, he could still go free.”

No thanks to you, Rex said to himself. “So, if you’re so convinced now he’s guilty, why do you need me?”

Malcolm shifted in his chair. “I thought you could shed some light on the murders one way or the other, and, to tell the truth”—he glanced quickly at Rex—“my conscience was bothering me. I feel rather better now that I’ve made a clean breast of it at the station but, I’ll admit, I was terrified. Do you think the detective will call me back in?”

Rex thought it more than probable. No detective, particularly of Cooper’s rank, would risk his reputation and the case by not following up on a lead, however late in the proceedings. And this case was only three weeks old. Where did this leave him in his own investigation, he wondered. What did he actually have to go on, and was his time and effort wasted if Chris Walker was the culprit?

“We could try to determine why the house agent might have wanted to frame me,” Malcolm said.

“It would help if there were other suspects. Are there no other people of interest the police could be looking at?”

“There was a handyman, but he was eliminated when his alibi checked out. He does odd jobs for Mrs. Parsons and told her he was originally the prime suspect, on account of his having done work for all the victims when they were getting their homes ready for sale. You know, all the deferred maintenance stuff. Chris Walker had told the owners to address the problems up front, so the homes would show better and there’d be no delays later on. So Randall, whom we refer to as Handy Randy, was over at their homes doing some paint and electrical jobs. Ernest and Barry were too old to get up a ladder. And Vic had a fear of heights.”

“A solid alibi?” Rex asked regretfully. A handyman would know the victims’ floor plans and their routines, and would have ready access to the homes. He might even have had an opportunity to copy the door keys or else knew where spares were kept.

“Pretty solid. The day of the murders he was visiting his mother in Bedford, twenty-five minutes away, depending on traffic. The security cameras at the old people’s home recorded his coming and going. That’s what let him off the hook.”

Rex sat back in his chair, deep in thought for a moment. “A whole day is a long time to spend with a senile person. Unlikely they’d be alert the whole time. He could have slipped out a side door for a few hours. An hour to return to Notting Hamlet and back again, and an hour or so more to commit the murders. Aye,” he concluded, “it would take a bit of doing and a good deal of luck not to be spotted. But it’s feasible. What’s this handyman like?”

“Let’s see … mid-forties, a bit rough around the edges, with a swarthy complexion and blue eyes that some women swoon over. Rumour has it he and Valerie had something going on. Him being married with three kids made for juicy gossip.”

“Does he drive a bluish-green BMW?”

Malcolm barked out a laugh. “Hardly. He has an old van.”

“Where does he live?”

“On that row of homes down by the entrance.”

“Oh, so here in Notting Hamlet,” Rex said with interest.

Malcolm sighed in frustration. “I wish Owl Lane didn’t exist at all. It’s an eyesore. You don’t notice so much coming in, but when you leave, you can’t help but see all the junk. The homes are not kept up to the same level as the rest in the community. Some are let out and, well, tenants just don’t take the same pride in where they live, do they? Some of us have tried to get the owners to do something about the detracting aspect of Owl Lane, but most of it falls on deaf ears. The bikers chase off the petitioners. Big Bill’s the worst offender. He runs a motorcycle repair shop out of his garage in flagrant contravention of zoning regulations.”

Malcolm would no doubt have continued to vent had Rex not stopped him. Discussing petty feuds within the community might not be the most effective use of their time, he argued. And yet, the murder of four residents did speak to some form of vendetta. “If we could determine why the victims were killed, it would no doubt help us discover who did it,” he told Malcolm. “We need to learn more about the victims. Who else was or might still be on the police suspect list?” he asked. “Specifically people with a grudge.”