The Killing of Katie Steelstock (29 page)

“I wasn’t thinking of doing so,” said Knott. “But why? Do you think he’s turning sour?”

“Not sour exactly,” said Mavor. “But he’s got a very Scottish conscience. Abstract notions of right and wrong. It makes him an uncomfortable bedfellow in a case like this where there’s a lot of wrong and not much right.”

By the time McCourt had crossed the yard and reached the room he shared with Esdaile his face had changed from white to red. He shut the door with explosive firmness and said, “I see.”

“See what?” said Esdaile.

“I see,” said McCourt. “That’s all he said: ‘I see.’ I tell him that the bottom’s knocked out of his case and that’s all he can say: ‘I see.’”

“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” said Esdaile placidly. “I never thought that burglary at Katie’s place had necessarily got anything to do with her killing.”

“Not necessarily,” said McCourt. “But it seemed pretty clear. The killer searched her bag for the note he’d sent. He couldn’t find it, so he went to her house to look for it.”

“Maybe,” said Esdaile. “Maybe not. Don’t forget, she was burgled once before.”

“All right,” said McCourt. “Let’s suppose it was just a coincidence. I don’t believe it. But suppose it was. Are we going to give the facts to the defence? Are we going to say to them that when we started we thought this fingerprint was so important we took the door right off its hinges and sent it up to the Science Laboratory and wasted their time on it for a fortnight and now it doesn’t turn out to be the one we wanted, we’re going to forget about it?”

“No need to get worked up,” said Esdaile. “It’s nothing to do with you or me.”

“Of course it is. It’s to do with us and everyone else in the police. If we don’t play the rules, who is going to?”

Esdaile looked at him curiously. He said, “If you feel like that, you ought to resign.”

“That would just be running away.”

“For God’s sake,” said Esdaile. “What
are
you going to do?”

McCourt relaxed and grinned. “What I’d like to do is to catch the killer and hand him to Superintendent Knott on a plate, clearly labelled and garnished with watercress. And there’s only one way to do that. We’ve
got
to find that typewriter.”

“Don’t talk to me about typewriters. I’ve started dreaming about typewriters.” Esdaile opened his desk and took out a thick file. “I worked out the other day, I’ve asked two hundred and ten people if they’ve ever owned or sold or seen a Crossfield Electric. I’ve actually traced two dozen of them and none of them produced a sample which looked anything like that bloody note. It wasn’t worth sending them up to the Documents Division. Even I could see they were no good.”

McCourt seemed to be thinking of something else. He said, “When you were making these inquiries, Eddie, how did you do it?”

“How?”

“I don’t mean with the shops. They’d know what you meant when you talked about a Crossfield Electric. I meant with private people. Look. Say the husband was out and you asked the wife whether her husband used to have one. She’d say, ‘Oh, I know he
had
a typewriter, but I can’t remember exactly what sort it was.’”

“I showed her a picture, of course.”

“Have you got a picture?”

“Dozens of them.” He fished out a handful of catalogues and pushed one across. McCourt examined it. It seemed to fascinate him. He stared at it for so long that Esdaile said, “What’s up? The bloody thing isn’t even beautiful. Now if I’d been going round with the photograph of some smashing girl—”

“Eddie,” said McCourt, “I’ve seen a machine just like this one.”

“I’ve seen two dozen. I told you.”

McCourt ignored him. He said, “Do you remember? I told you two or three weeks ago I had to go and see the Master Mariner. It was when that joker tried to wreck his car. He kept me waiting for twenty minutes in what he calls his business room. I had plenty of time to admire the fixtures and fittings.
I’ll swear he had a typewriter just like this one.”

Esdaile said slowly, “He must have bought it up in London, then. Because if he’d bought it anywhere local I’d have been given his name by the shop that supplied it. Are you sure?”

“Absolutely sure.”

“Another thing,” said McCourt. ‘There’s been a lot of publicity about this. A notice in the press and so on. If he really has got a Crossfield Electric, why hasn’t he come forward to say so? If he was innocent he’d have told you about it and you’d have gone up and taken a sample of the type face and cleared it and that would have been the end of it.”

The two sergeants looked at each other.

“What are you going to do about it?” said Esdaile at last.

“Think up some excuse and go up and have a look for myself. If he keeps me waiting, which he usually does, I’ll slip in a piece of paper and run off a sample.”

“Suppose he hears you?”

“If it’s an electric typewriter it’ll be pretty quiet.”

“I hope so,” said Esdaile. “Because if he catches you taking samples behind his back and if they turn out to be innocent samples, he really will have a stick to beat you with. He plays golf with the Chief Constable, too.”

McCourt said, “If the samples match, it’ll be a long time before he plays golf with anyone.”

“We have quite a few points to consider,” said Mrs. Bellamy, “and one or two very useful leads.” Her voice had a purring quality. She’s a cat, thought Noel, a big well-muscled tabby cat, sleepy-looking, but murder to any mouse that strays within reach of her claws.

“First of all, we’ve got Captain Smedley’s reports. There’s no doubt at all that the killing of Ruoff has got some connection with Katie’s death. Otherwise why would Sergeant Shilling, who must have more than enough work to do down at Hannington, be snooping around Chelverton Mews?”

“The papers this morning,” said Simon Crakenshaw, “all carried the same story – some sort of official handout, I suppose. That a man was assisting the police with their inquiries and a charge was expected shortly.”

“No doubt,” said Mrs. Bellamy. “But it still leaves my question unanswered. Here’s another one. What was Lewson, one of Ruoffs bodyguards, doing down at Hannington? And how did he come to fall into the river with a hole in his head which had been made by the same weapon which killed Katie? Your pathologist was absolutely clear about that, Laura?”

Laura showed her pretty teeth in a grin and said, “Absolutely, Mrs. Bellamy. As a matter of fact he was rather annoyed about that. Apparently Knott didn’t entirely trust his opinion. He sent his report up to Summerson for checking. That’s the sort of thing that just isn’t done among top-class pathologists.”

“Knott never had an ounce of tact. What did Summerson do?”

“He sent the report back with a scribble at the bottom of it. ‘I agree with every word of this report and wonder why it was necessary for me to see it.’”

“Excellent,” said Mrs. Bellamy. “That gives us several different lines of attack. Next we have to think about this last-minute alibi that the prosecution has kindly presented us with.”

“I’m not too clear about the rules,” said Noel. “I suppose they passed it on to us because they had to.”

“In theory,” said Mrs. Bellamy, “the Crown has to present the defence with any relevant information. However, there’s no need for them to do so before the committal proceedings. Then they must expose the whole of their case. But they’d have been severely criticised if they hadn’t passed on this particular piece of information as soon as they got it. And I think they had another reason. They were fairly certain we wouldn’t dare to use it.”

Noel said in tones of incredulity, “But I thought—”

“You thought that the boy’s story was a complete defence to Limbery, Mr. Vigors.”

“Well,” said Noel.
“If
it’s true, surely—”

“Whether it’s true or not is unimportant. In the last analysis what matters is whether the court believes it. He’d be savagely cross-examined, asked for prurient details, which he’d be ashamed or unwilling to give, contradict himself at half a dozen points and finish by bursting into tears. And at the end of it all, when he’d been publicly crucified, do you know what conclusion the court would come to? They would conclude that conduct of this sort
had
taken place, possibly more than once, but
not
necessarily on the night in question. And this presents the Crown with one enormous advantage, one ace in their hand which they didn’t possess before. You might almost call it the ace of trumps. Motive, Mr. Vigors. Motive.”

“I suppose so,” said Noel unhappily. Although no hint of expression had appeared on their well-drilled countenances, he felt certain that Sophie and Laura were laughing at him.

Mrs. Bellamy said, in more accommodating tones, “You mustn’t believe all the nonsense that’s talked about motive. Every judge in a murder case tells the jury that there’s no onus on the prosecution to prove motive. I sometimes wonder how he can say it without laughing. There may be no onus, at law,
but motive is the one thing the jury understands.
They don’t believe that people commit murder for no reason at all. Show them a reason and you show them a guilty man. So far the only motive they’ve got is a piffling one. A lovers’ quarrel! Six weeks before! No one in their senses is going to believe in that as a motive for murder. But give them a real motive. Let Peter tell his story and suggest that Katie had got to know about it. Hell hath no fury like a woman who’s been thrown over for another woman. But a girl who’s been thrown over for her own brother! A girl like Katie, who had a tongue like a whipsaw and enjoyed using it and watching people squirm. There’s a background to murder that any jury could understand.”

Simon said, “I see the force of that. But can we do without Peter’s evidence? The court
might
believe him. And it
is
an alibi.”

Mrs. Bellamy considered the point, her thick white hands resting on the table in front of her. She carried an armoury of rings on both hands thick as knuckle dusters.

“It’s really a balance of chances,” she said. “If the Crown case was a strong one, I’d agree with you, we’d have to use the boy. But I don’t think it is a strong one. The more I look at it the weaker it seems. Are you by any chance a bridge player, Mr. Crakenshaw?”

Simon, who knew that Mrs. Bellamy was a bridge player of international repute, thought it safer to say, “I play a little.”

“Then you know that the secret of good defence lies in working out what cards your opponent holds. So let’s see what cards the Crown has got.”

She ticked them off, one point at a time, the rings on her fingers sending out flashes of blue light as she did so.

“They’ve got the note. That’s their strong card. I imagine they hoped to spring it on us, but luckily we know all about it.”

Noel nodded. It was Walter who had given him that useful piece of information.

“Forewarned is forearmed. The evidence that it came from Limbery is internal and we know that they’re not too confident about it. If they had been, they wouldn’t have wasted all that time looking for the typewriter. What else have they got? Opportunity. Limbery wasn’t at the dance. Five hundred other inhabitants of Hannington weren’t at the dance. Is that a reason for suggesting they killed Katie? His account of his movements that night is inaccurate. Suppose that it is. People aren’t always meticulously accurate when talking to the police. Particularly when they haven’t been charged and have no reason to suppose they are going to be. Motive? As things stand, so weak as to be unbelievable. I’m really surprised at Knott risking a charge if that’s all the ammunition he’s got.”

Surprised, thought Noel. But pleased, too. She’s looking forward to her old enemy making a fool of himself.

He said, “Do I gather from what you’ve said that you propose to go the whole way in the Magistrates Court?”

“And lift restrictions on reporting?” said Simon.

“We’ve asked for an old-fashioned committal,” said Mrs. Bellamy. “No need to make our minds up on the other points until the last moment. We’ll keep our options open.”

McCourt had decided that a simple and adequate excuse for calling on Mariner was to take along a copy of the photograph of Gabby Lewson and ask him if he recognised it. This could reasonably be tied into an inquiry about the telephone call from the mysterious Mr. Lewisham.

Two things prevented him from carrying out this plan immediately. The first was that he suddenly seemed to have a great deal of work to do – routine matters which had been pushed to one side while the murder investigation was proceeding. It was not until late on the Wednesday evening of that week that he managed to get away and visit the Croft. Here he met the second difficulty. Polly, who answered the door, told him that Mariner was not at home.

“Gone up to London for two days,” she said. “Left this morning. Coming back Friday night.”

“Do you know what he’s up to?”

“Search me,” said Polly. “I heard him telling Mrs. Mariner something about business.”

This was awkward. If he asked to be allowed to inspect Mariner’s study, Polly would be bound to ask him why he wanted to and he could think of no plausible excuse for doing so. Not that Polly would have objected. He suspected that she disliked Mariner almost as much as he did.

She said, “If it’s urgent, he’s staying at his club. You could get hold of him there.”

McCourt said, “It’ll keep. I’ll try again on Friday evening.”

The thought of what he had to do worried Noel Vigors so much that he found it difficult to get to sleep. He was desperately sorry for Peter. He had known and liked him ever since he was a shy six-year-old wincing under his father’s hearty verbal onslaughts. He suspected that what had brought Peter and Limbery together was the fact that they had both been afflicted with bullying and inadequate fathers.

Peter’s statement of what had happened on that Friday night when Katie was killed had had the ring of truth. Noel was more than half inclined to believe it. That, as he informed his pillow at two o’clock in the morning, was personal feeling; and it was his duty as a professional man to be impersonal and dispassionate. Intellectually he accepted the arguments put forward by Mrs. Bellamy for not calling the boy. He accepted that she was more experienced in these matters than he was. He tried not to be influenced by the fact that he disliked her.