The Killing of Katie Steelstock (12 page)

Not very secure, he thought. But since the most valuable items inside were the boats and since you would need to open the main doors to get them out, perhaps not dangerously insecure.

There were three smart-looking four-oar skiffs. The nearest, which had been recently varnished, had the letters G.C.M. in black paint on the stem. George Mariner? Alongside them, two tub dinghies and two rather shabbier skiffs. The rudders had been lifted out of their pintles and were stacked in a rack against the back wall. Just inside the door was a school desk, at which, no doubt, Mr. Cavey sat to record bookings. Behind this lay two canoes which looked as though they had had a hard life. The punts were moored along the landing stage, but would live under the penthouse at the back in winter. Punt and boat cushions were stacked in a neat pile under the window in the left-hand wall. Oars along the back wall, paddles, punt poles and boat hooks across the rafters. Everything shipshape and a credit to Mr. Cavey. The whole place smelled of hot varnish and creosote.

After a look around which produced no surprises, Shilling went out again, leaving the door ajar, and walked around to the side. The door of the annexe was locked. Who would have a key?

Shilling went back into the boathouse and used the telephone which stood on the booking desk to call the Hannington police station. McCourt answered. He had spent two sweltering hours transcribing the tapes of his interviews with Roseabel Tress and the Havelocks.

He said, “Boat Club offices? Mariner will have one key. But if I ask him for it he’ll keep me waiting for at least half an hour. Jack Nurse is a better bet. He’s secretary of the Boat Club. I’ll nip up to his house on my moped and borrow it for you.”

“I could do that,” said Shilling. “I’ve got the car.”

“No trouble,” said McCourt. He welcomed the excuse to get out of the police stationSergeant Esdaile, realising that Sunday was the rector’s busiest day, had timed his movements so that he arrived at the Rectory at exactly two o’clock. He calculated that lunch would be over and Sunday School not yet begun. He had watched McCourt at work and was not looking forward to the labour of transcription. He planned to keep
his
interviews as short as possible. The rector had very little to tell him and seemed more interested in discussing Limbery’s outburst in church. Esdaile headed him firmly back. He and his wife (would the Sergeant like to have her in, too? Not necessary, said Esdaile) had walked back with the Group Captain and his wife to their house, the Old Rectory. He couldn’t help thinking it odd that of all the money the Church Commissioners had made by selling these fine old buildings and housing the incumbents in bungalows, none had gone into increasing stipends.

“Scandalous,” said Esdaile. “What happened next?”

“We had a cup of coffee. All except my wife, that is. She can’t drink coffee at night. It keeps her awake.”

“And what time did the party break up?”

“It must have been after midnight. You know what women are like when they start talking.”

“And you walked home?”

“Certainly. It’s only a very short distance. Past the Memorial Hall and the church. We noticed that Katie’s car was still parked outside the hall and I think I commented on it. My wife would remember. But of course, we neither of us had any idea—”

“Of course not, sir. Did you meet anyone? Did any cars pass you?”

“Let me think. No. We met no one and I don’t think anyone passed us. The Street is very quiet at that time of night. I do remember that we heard a car coming down Brickfield Road. I said to my wife, ‘I wonder who that is.’ Just idle curiosity. And we stopped to have a look. You can see Brickfield Road from the Street. It’s less than a hundred yards away.”

“And did you recognise the car?”

“It was much too dark to recognise it. But we noticed one odd thing. It was driving on its sidelights. Dangerous, I should have thought. It was a dark night and there are no streetlamps in Brickfield Road, although it’s not for want of asking. Young girls don’t like walking down it at night . . .”

At this point Sergeant Esdaile slipped his hand into his coat pocket and switched off the tape. He had heard the rector more than once on the perils of Brickfield Road and knew that he was good for at least ten minutes on the subject of Youth in Dark Streets. He judged that if he got away by a quarter to three that would be about right for his visit to Jack and Sylvia Nurse.

“Nothing,” said Sally Nurse. “Nothing happened at all. We went for a drive.”

“Your mother and I were dreadfully worried.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry. There wasn’t the least need for you to be worried.”

“A quarter past one! We were on the point of ringing up the police.”

“They wouldn’t have thanked you. They’d got other things to think about by then.”

“Anything
might have happened.”

“The worst that could have happened,” said Sally in an effort to lighten the discussion, “was that we might have turned the car over. Billy drives like a maniac.”

Mr. Nurse was not to be diverted. He said, “In my young day, if girls went out for midnight drives with young men people knew what to think.”

“Then people in your young day must have had filthy minds.”

“Really, Sally. You mustn’t speak to your father like that.”

“Why not?” said Sally mutinously.

“Because he is your father.”

“And I’m his daughter. And I’m nineteen, not nine.”

“You’re living in our house—”

“And paying for my keep.”

“As long as you’re living here, you’ve got to behave yourself properly.”

“For God’s sake,” said Sally, her voice going up, “this is the twentieth century, not the reign of Queen Victoria. And it’s England, not the Arabian Gulf. If you don’t want me in the house, say so. I can find somewhere else to live—”

“Don’t shout at me. I’m not deaf.”

“I’m sure your father didn’t mean—” said Mrs. Nurse and broke off.

Two policemen were coming up the front path.

“There’s no need to be alarmed by this invasion,” said McCourt pleasantly. “Sergeant Esdaile was on his way round to ask you a few routine questions. Lucky he’s found you all together.” He was looking at Sally as he spoke. He had heard the shouting as he came up the path. He thought that Jack Nurse must be a trying parent.

“All I’m here for,” he went on, “is to borrow the keys of the Boat Club. Sergeant Shilling asked me to get hold of them.”

“The keys,” said Nurse vaguely. “Why?”

“I expect he just wants to have a look round.”

“I suppose it’s all right. I’ll fetch them.” He came back with two keys, each with a label attached. When McCourt had taken them and departed on his moped, Nurse said, “Do you want to question us together or alone?” He felt awkward about it. Sergeant Esdaile was a family man. He knew him and his wife well and had made their wills for them.

“You and your wife were together after the dance, so I gather,” said Esdaile. “Save time if I had a word with you two first.”

Sally took the hint and departed into the garden.

“There’s not a lot to tell,” said Nurse. “My wife and I left the hall soon after the Mariners. A minute or two after eleven, I should say. We walked straight home.”

“Not a long walk,” said Esdaile.

In fact their bungalow,
Syljack,
was almost directly across the road from the hall.

“Then we sat up and talked for a bit.”

Mrs. Nurse said, “We watched the end of the film on television and had a cup of coffee to pass the time.”

“To pass the time?”

“We never like to go to bed until Sally’s back.”

“When one o’clock came, we were very anxious. We thought we ought to do something. Then Sally came back, with Billy Gonville.”

“That terrible car of his,” said Mrs. Nurse. “You can hear it half a mile away. We asked her where she’d been and she said—”

“I’ll ask her about that myself,” said Sergeant Esdaile firmly.

One key said “Outer Door” and let them into a tiny hallway with a door on the left labelled “Committee Room” and a wooden staircase straight ahead. The air was heavy with stored heat and undisturbed dust. Like a forgotten attic in an old house, thought McCourt as he followed Shilling.

The committee room was unlocked. It was furnished with a table and chairs and two old-fashioned wooden filing cabinets. On the walls hung rows of framed photographs of regatta events. One was a photograph of a man with a large moustache, with the legend “Alfred Butt. Single Sculler. Oxford to London. Five hours, forty minutes.” Mr. Butt had a thoughtful look on his face, as though he was wondering why he should have done such a thing. One of the cabinets held files of correspondence, membership cards and minute books. The other was empty. A moth flew out as Shilling opened it.

“No wonder they don’t bother to lock it up,” said Shilling. “Let’s try upstairs.”

The room upstairs was labelled “Chairman’s Office.” This was locked. The second of the two keys opened it. It had a square of carpet on the floor, a rolltop desk with a swivel chair in front of it, a small table and three wicker chairs. There was a triangular cupboard in one corner with glasses in it, a nearly full bottle of gin, a half-empty bottle of whisky and some unopened bottles of tonic and soda water.

“Quite a snug little den,” said Shilling. “I suppose this is George Mariner’s hideaway.”

“He’s a man who likes to do himself well,” said McCourt.

This room had signs of recent use. There were three cigarette ends in a glass ashtray on the desk. They looked new.

“When was the last Boat Club Committee meeting?” said Shilling.

McCourt, after some thought, said, “I imagine it would have been in connection with the regatta. That was on July fifteenth.”

“More than a month ago. They don’t look a month old.”

“He could have been up here dealing with correspondence. Something like that.”

Before Shilling could pursue the matter they heard the telephone. It was ringing down in the boathouse.

“Wonder who that can be,” said Shilling. “The Super’s the only man who knows I was coming down here. Something must have turned up.”

He made his way with no undue haste down the stairs. McCourt, left to himself, took a look around the room. The first object which struck his eye was the calendar on the wall beside the desk. The picture of the girl on it, if not actually obscene, came close to the borderline. McCourt’s lips wrinkled in distaste. Two years as a policeman in London and three in the quieter backwater of Hannington had eradicated some, but by no means all, of the puritan ethos bred into him by his upbringing.

At that moment a small spotlight flicked across the room. It seemed to come from behind the desk. McCourt went across to examine the phenomenon.

He saw what had happened. When Shilling had opened the door to let himself back into the boathouse the sunlight, reflected off the glass, had shone directly onto the opposite wall. It had not only shone onto it. It had shone through it.

McCourt went down onto his knees behind the desk and found the hole. Originally a knothole, it looked as though it had been enlarged with a knife. As he knelt, it was on eye level and gave him a view of a section of the boathouse below. To the left he could see the legs of Sergeant Shilling, who was sitting at the chair behind the booking desk talking into the telephone. To the right the ends of the two canoes. Straight ahead, across the tops of the skiffs, he could see the flat punt cushions stacked in line under the window in the wall.

As he stared down through this peephole, other matters were circling through his mind, not settled yet into a definite pattern. The wheel marks of the car which had been parked farther along the towpath. The car which Roseabel Tress and the Havelocks had heard driving away at around midnight. The car which had aroused such a strong presentiment of evil in Roseabel’s curious mind.

There was something else that one of the women had said to him.

He felt sure that it was important. No need to trouble his mind about it. He could play back the tapes and listen. As he heard Shilling coming back up the stairs he scrambled to his feet.

“I’ve got to get back to the Steelstock house,” said Shilling. “And pick up something on the way. At once, if not sooner. You’d better jump onto your moped and come too. Things are beginning to move.”

“And I hope you’re not going to be like Dad about this,” said Sally Nurse.

“I’ve got two girls of my own,” said Sergeant Esdaile. “They’re only eight and ten. When they’re a bit older, I expect I’ll be exactly like your father. At the moment, I’m broad-minded.”

“There isn’t anything to be broad-minded about. Billy asked me if I’d like to go for a drive. You remember how hot it was on Friday night. I thought it was a chance to get a breath of fresh air before I went to bed.” She smiled and suddenly looked much younger. “Oh, boy. Did I get some fresh air. We must have gone over a hundred down that bit of the motorway.”

“Better give me a rough idea of where you went and what the timings were.”

“Do my best,” said Sally.

Esdaile let her talk, only interrupting her to say, “Yes. I heard about the police check. They had a lot of men out that night. It was organised from Reading. We weren’t involved.”

And later. “What did you talk about?”

“What people always talk about, of course. We talked about ourselves.”

“Did he . . .?”

“If you’re getting round to asking me if he tried to rape me, the answer’s no. All he did was kiss me, in a brotherly way. Well, perhaps a bit more than brotherly. But he didn’t paw me. He really is a very nice person.”

“I’m sure he is,” said Esdaile.

They had moved down to the far end of the garden but could hear the telephone when it rang. Mr. Nurse appeared and said, “It’s for you, Sergeant. Superintendent Knott. He says it’s urgent.”

Knott’s voice at the other end of the line was deliberately flat. He said, “Is Sally there?”

“Right here.”

“Ask her to check if her evening bag’s there.”

“To check—”