The Casebook of Augustus Maltravers

by Robert Richardson

  ‘How long will it take?’ Tess asked.

  Maltravers stepped out of the car and peered as far as he could along the stationary vehicles ahead of them. He glanced at his watch as he got back in.

  ‘We should make it by about eight o’clock with a bit of luck,’ he said. ‘Good job there’s no panic.’

  *

  Standing rigidly to attention, Ian Drover was petrified as Lambert slouched behind his desk like a brooding Buddha, silently considering everything he had now been told about the interview with Alan Morris. Next to his chief, Donald Moore looked grim.

  ‘One whole hour from three thirty he won’t tell us about?’ Lambert repeated. He sounded like someone who had just learned that Margaret Thatcher had turned up after a secret flight to Moscow and confessed to having been a lifelong agent for the KGB. ‘Says it was confidential? And you accepted it?’

  ‘It was a private matter involving one of his parishioners,’ Drover explained. He was too nervous to see that Lambert’s apparent calm was on a hair trigger. ‘He told me he gave his word that he would never divulge anything about it to anyone, sir.’

  Lambert looked at the young constable as though he could not believe he existed. ‘Somebody come down with AIDS have they? Or is the Reverend Morris having his end away with the verger’s wife? Or one of the bloody choirboys?’ His voice exposed the edge of anger as it emerged out of his incredulity that any CID officer could be so naive and disobedient.

  ‘Mr Morris is…’ Drover looked helplessly at Moore for support but the sergeant stared back icily. ‘You’re not local, sir. Anyone will tell you what sort of a man he is. He’d never do anything that…he’s a member of the Rotary Club!’

  ‘I don’t care if he’s on first name terms with the Princess of bloody Wales!’ Lambert bellowed. ‘He’s got a bleeding great gap in his movements at the time of the murder! And you let him get away with trying to bring the sanctity of the confessional into it! Why the hell didn’t you report this before?’

  Lambert glowered like a raging bull re-gathering strength for another charge as Drover looked down at his shoes.

  ‘I didn’t think it was important,’ he mumbled.

  ‘You didn’t think it was important.’ Lambert let every word drop separately, like bricks on a tin tray. Drover flinched and stepped back as the superintendent stood up like the wrath of God. For a moment he thought his boss was going to physically assault him.

  ‘There is a man in the nick the police have brought charges against and now I find there could be another suspect.’ Lambert’s voice was a fuse hissing towards dynamite. ‘But because Mr Morris used to pat you on the head after church when you were a kid, you decided he has to be innocent. You’ve deliberately ignored evidence because you don’t want to believe it. How the hell did they let you into the CID, Drover?’ A very short pause followed the question, then the dynamite exploded. ‘Because you’re not bloody well staying there! You’re suspended! And if they ever let you back, you’ll be lucky if they put you in charge of a fucking school-crossing patrol on a Sunday! Now get out of here!’

  The shattered detective constable looked as though he had been hit by a falling house as he instinctively saluted in nervous terror and left. The door closed and Lambert crashed back into his chair, putting his head in his hands.

  ‘Why did you send him to see Morris?’ he asked bleakly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Moore looked uncomfortable. ‘He volunteered and I thought a local man might be best. He’s fairly new to the CID, but he’s got a good record and I never thought that…’

  ‘Then think next time,’ Lambert’s face appeared wearily from behind the great hams of his hands. ‘Never send a villager to the village. And if that little prat’s religious beliefs have landed us in it, then St Michael and all his bloody angels won’t be able to save him from me.’

  ‘But what sort of motive is there for Morris?’ Moore argued. ‘He’d known Carrington for years and it can’t have been money because…’

  ‘They pay us to find out things like that, sergeant,’ Lambert interrupted. ‘And even the Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t get away with lines like Morris is using. See him again—and you go this time. Either he comes up with a full explanation of what he was up to for that hour or he’ll have to come here and have a little chat with me. I want you back here in an hour, either with him or a satisfactory story.’

  As Moore was leaving the office, Lambert spoke again.

  ‘I still think it’s Lydden,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want to have made a mistake and have him able to come up with a charge of wrongful arrest.’

  *

  In Stricklandgate, Charlotte Quinn sat in her flat, slowly turning the pages of a photograph album on the table in front of her. The hunting knife lay alongside a bell-bottomed ship’s decanter from which she steadily drank neat vodka. There were pictures of herself and her family on holiday with the Carringtons in the Algarve fifteen years earlier; the children in the swimming pool; herself and her husband on the beach with Margaret; Charles laughing at the camera as he was caught off guard eating a watermelon on the patio of the villa. Six of those people in the pictures, all of whom she had loved in different ways, were now dead while Jennifer Carrington was still alive, young, happy and about to become very rich. She would be as indifferent to her lover being jailed for life as she was to him having murdered her own husband; Lydden had been a meaningless sex object and she had never been a wife in any sense Charlotte Quinn could accept.

  She slammed the album shut as bitter memories and coruscating resentment became unbearable. Wracked by all-consuming, disorientating hatred, she moaned and bent forward, hands clutched to her abdomen.

  ‘Charles,’ she whispered. ‘Oh my darling, darling Charles.’

  She raised weeping eyes to where the unsheathed blade of the hunting knife shone like a sacrificial dagger on the altar of demanding gods.

  11

  ‘Reverend…Morris.’ Lambert’s voice dropped an octave between the title and the surname as he examined Moore’s report without looking up. ‘When I was at school, they taught us about something called benefit of clergy. Very useful it was. If you could read, they didn’t hang you.’

  Lambert raised his enquiring, bullfrog of a face, the ball-bearing eyes piercing like lasers.

  ‘However, I happen to remember my teacher telling me it was abolished in 1827, so it doesn’t concern us. What were you doing between half past three and half past four last Thursday afternoon?’

  ‘I have already explained to your sergeant that I can see no reason to tell you, superintendent.’ Morris returned Lambert’s stare without flinching. ‘You have my assurance that it was not connected with the murder of Charles Carrington. That ought to be sufficient.’

  Lambert leaned across the desk, his fingers interlocking.

  ‘It would be for some. It satisfied DC Drover.’ Morris looked away. ‘But, you see, I’m a Methodist. Now we’ve got a number of options. I could arrest you on suspicion and haul you up before a magistrate. We could call your solicitor so that he can explain the law to you. I could waste time making enquiries in Attwater…or you could tell me.’ Lambert smiled. ‘Let’s go for that.’

  Morris sighed and closed his eyes. He had had nightmares about this moment.

  *

  Lowry’s industrial Lancashire of smoking mills, corner tripe shops and cramped back-to-back terraces where the front room was kept ‘for best’ or ham sandwich funerals had almost disappeared. As they drove through the old cotton towns, Maltravers found the functional tower blocks and endless anonymous estates with a token presence of trees and the mustard glare of street lights on concrete posts in many ways more depressing than what they had replaced. The indigenous echoes of George Formby’s ukulele and Gracie Fields’s soprano had faded completely, swamped by electronic disco music in dazzling multi-coloured neon caverns, indistinguishable from a thousand other towns. A gritty north country individuality had been lost in carbon
copy modern shopping centres with homogenous supermarkets and bleak new pubs where Muzak seeped out of flocked wallpaper. There had been a harsh, tough romance about wooden clogs clattering along cobbled back alleys and tin baths in front of the black lead grate in the kitchen; however grim it had been, it had at least had a personality. Now there was hot and cold water from cheap chromium taps, colour television and the mill girls’ granddaughters played bingo in Majorca.

  ‘Charles Carrington’s last journey,’ he remarked as they re-joined the M6 beyond Lancaster. ‘Of course, nobody was supposed to find the body until Jennifer got home in the evening, but Charlotte must have arrived minutes after it happened. They must have been worrying about that. The idea was that Duggie Lydden would have needed an alibi to cover several hours, which can be almost impossible. Having the murder pinned down to within half an hour or so was very different.’

  ‘But he still can’t have had one.’

  ‘Obviously not, but murder plans that go adrift right from the start don’t make for peace of mind.’

  ‘Are you sure about what you’re doing when we get back?’ Tess asked uncertainly. ‘You’ve got everything you need to go to the police.’

  ‘Of course I’m going to the police,’ he said. ‘Eventually. But after all I’ve done, I think I deserve the satisfaction of trying to dig out a confession myself first. There’s no risk. Trust me.’

  There were lights showing as they passed Carwelton Hall and Jennifer Carrington’s car was in the drive.

  ‘Malcolm and Lucinda will have been wondering how we’ve gone on, so we’ll tell them first then come back,’ Maltravers said. ‘After that the police can have the whole lot with my compliments.’

  Malcolm had just returned from working late at the office and he and Lucinda listened in fascination as Maltravers explained how he and Tess had confirmed the final pieces of the story.

  ‘This is going to be one hell of a court case.’ Malcolm shook his head in disbelief as Maltravers finished. ‘Would you write a backup piece for the Chronicle when it’s over?’

  ‘I think I’d like to do that,’ Maltravers agreed. ‘And I may be able to make it an even better read with one last thing. Jennifer is still at Carwelton Hall and I’m going to see her.’

  ‘What?’ Malcolm sounded alarmed. ‘You’re not going to face her with it are you?’

  ‘Of course not, the police can do that,’ Maltravers assured him, straight-faced. ‘But it would be interesting to see if an idle chat reveals anything to fill in the odd corner.’

  ‘But what’s your excuse?’ Malcolm argued. ‘She’ll be suspicious if you just turn up for no reason.’

  ‘I’ve got the perfect reason. I promised Charles Carrington I would return The Attwater Firewitch and I’m giving it back to his widow. It’s presumably her property now. Tess can come with me and we’ll see what happens…if anything.’

  *

  Maltravers parked on the road beyond the bend outside Carwelton Hall half an hour later.

  ‘There’s no point in taking the car in, we won’t be staying long,’ he remarked as they walked back.

  ‘For the last time, I think you’re mad,’ Tess said warningly as he opened the gate and they stepped on to the drive. Ahead of them, several downstairs lights were on and there was a glow from behind the curtains at a bedroom window. ‘We should be going straight to the police. Your taste for the theatrical will get you into trouble one day.’

  ‘But not this evening,’ he said confidently. ‘Howard’s in London, probably collecting another consignment of drugs, while Jennifer waits for Duggie Lydden to be sentenced then they take off with the loot. I think I’ve earned tonight’s little indulgence.’

  Jennifer Carrington looked nervous as she opened the front door, then invited them in and took them through to the sitting-room.

  ‘We’re going back to London at the weekend,’ Maltravers added after he had introduced Tess. ‘I wasn’t sure how long you’d be here, so I thought I’d better return this to you while I had the chance. I promised Charles I’d bring it back.’

  ‘Oh, of course. I’d forgotten you had it,’ Jennifer Carrington took the envelope containing the Conan Doyle photocopy. ‘The police still have the books, but my solicitor says I should get them back soon…would you like a drink?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Maltravers watched as she walked across to the drinks cabinet. ‘One of Malcolm’s reporters has heard that Duggie Lydden’s shotgun has been found. Did you know?’

  Jennifer Carrington paused fractionally, but did not turn round. ‘No. Where was it?’

  ‘Hidden somewhere near his house apparently. The fact that they’ve charged him suggests they must have proved it was the murder weapon…’ Maltravers shrugged. ‘Perhaps he’ll tell the truth eventually.’

  ‘I hope so.’ She poured the drinks and handed them their glasses. ‘I never knew anyone could hate as much as he does. He seems determined to mix me up in it somehow.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Tess asked. ‘When it’s all over. Will you stay here?’

  ‘I don’t know at the moment. I’ve got a lot of good memories in this house, but…’ she gestured helplessly. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘I was wondering if you might go back to Manchester,’ Maltravers said. ‘You must have friends there.’

  ‘Not many…and nobody special.’ Jennifer Carrington turned away to put her glass down as she replied. ‘I might leave England altogether and try to start again.’

  She appeared guarded as they talked casually for another few minutes, then Maltravers finished his drink and stood up.

  ‘We must go,’ he said. ‘We just came to return the manuscript while you were here and say goodbye.’ He held out his hand. ‘I haven’t had the chance to tell you how sorry I am about what’s happened. I hardly knew Charles, but I liked him.’

  Jennifer Carrington lowered her head as she took his hand, touching only the ends of his fingers.

  ‘He was a wonderful man,’ she said softly. ‘I loved him very much.’

  ‘Could I ask one thing before we leave?’ Tess said. ‘Gus has told me about how he worked out the combination for the safe. May I see it?’ She looked hesitant. ‘No, I’m sorry. It will upset you and…’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Jennifer Carrington interrupted. ‘I’m very grateful to him for that. It’s something I couldn’t have known. Come on through.’

  They followed her across the hall and into the library where Maltravers demonstrated how the figures from the Sherlock Holmes story unfastened the lock. But this time it did not work.

  ‘I must have got one of the numbers wrong,’ he said. ‘Could you get the manuscript? You left it on the table in the other room. As long as I open this quickly enough, the alarm won’t go off.’

  As Jennifer Carrington walked out, he rapidly spun the dial and opened the safe, putting something from his pocket on the shelf before relocking the door. When she came back, he went through the pantomime of consulting the manuscript and repeating the operation.

  ‘Quod erat demonstrandum,’ he said to Tess, opening the door again. ‘Which means that Duggie Lydden must have read…hello, what’s this?’

  He reached inside the safe and took out the envelope he had placed there moments before, turning to Jennifer Carrington quizzically.

  ‘Surely the police would have noticed this,’ he said. ‘Or did you put it there yourself afterwards? It has your name on.’

  ‘What? But it was empty when…let me see that.’

  She snatched the envelope from him and tore it open then read the single sheet of paper inside.

  ‘What does it say?’ Maltravers asked quietly.

  ‘“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important”.’ Jennifer Carrington stared at him in bewilderment. ‘What does it mean? How did it get there?’

  ‘I put it there,’ he said. ‘The quotation is from Conan Doyle, who keeps cropping up.’


  There was sudden alarm in Jennifer Carrington’s face.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded.

  ‘Murder of course,’ Maltravers replied quietly. ‘And a very clever murder at that. Whose idea was it in the first place?’

  ‘What do you mean, whose idea?’ Jennifer Carrington’s alarm was deepening to panic. ‘You know that Duggie killed Charles. For God’s sake you helped to prove it.’

  ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ he agreed. ‘With my brilliant discovery about this safe combination. That was one of the things you were counting on wasn’t it? If I hadn’t done it, you’d have had to find another way to bring it out. However, I’ve now seen my mistake.’

  Jennifer Carrington controlled herself with a visible effort.

  ‘Look, I don’t know what you think you’re doing. But I’ve been through more than enough the past few days with people being unkind to me without sick jokes. Now just get out of here and leave me alone. Both of you.’

  She stalked to the library door and stood next to it, implicitly ordering them out. Neither of them moved.

  ‘It’s no good, Jennifer,’ Maltravers told her. ‘We know that Duggie Lydden didn’t kill Charles…and we also know who did.’

  For a moment she stared at him coldly then turned to Tess. ‘Will you make him leave?’

  ‘There’s no point,’ Tess told her. ‘We know an awful lot.’

  ‘Even that it all started a long time ago when Geoffrey Howard met Gillian Carrington,’ Maltravers added.

  Jennifer Carrington’s eyes flashed back to him in horror then her face flared with anger.

  ‘You’re mad!’ she shouted. ‘Now just get out!’

  Maltravers glanced at Tess then picked up the telephone on the desk beside him. ‘We’re wasting our time. I’ll ring the police from here.’ As he lifted the receiver, Jennifer Carrington screamed.

  ‘Geoffrey!’

  The sound of footsteps racing down the stairs mixed with the clatter of Maltravers dropping the instrument.