Hours later I woke up suddenly and lay staring at the trap-door thinking about the green trunk. The only thing that stopped me from getting up and having a glass of whisky was that I knew there was none left.
Next day Pargeter was in the pub waiting when I arrived. To tell the truth, I’d half hoped he wouldn’t turn up. Sober, I found him a much less desirable companion.
He was in a morose mood, which didn’t help matters. Yes, he had got the address of Evans’s solicitors. No, they had not given him Evans’s new address because they did not know it. The money from the sales of shop and house had been paid direct into the Evanses’ bank account, less solicitors’ fees and estate agent’s commission, of course.
“What about the bank?” I asked.
He had tried the bank. The people there had not been helpful. People at banks did not believe in giving away information about their clients, not even to their brothers-in-law. He expressed a belief that from time to time bank managers should be severely thumped.
“Well, there’s always the police,” I said.
He had tried the police. When they’d realized who he was, they had been even less sympathetic than the bank. He wasn’t really reporting his sister and her husband as missing persons, was he? Perhaps they didn’t want him to know where they were. It was their privilege. Understandable in the circumstances! Unless there was actual suspicion of a crime, there was nothing they could do. He seemed to think that policemen should be thumped once or twice a day, too, especially by men with experience.
We sat and looked into our drinks for a while. I don’t know what he saw but I kept on seeing a green trunk.
“That’s it then, I reckon,” he said finally.
“Yes. I’m sorry that … Look here.” I hesitated.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.” I couldn’t tell him about the trunk. I’d get the local police to come and look at it, but there was no point in filling this poor devil’s mind with a lot of agony, probably for nothing at all.
“Good luck,” I said, offering my hand.
He regarded it as if it held a lump of manure.
“What were you going to say?” he demanded.
“Nothing at all.”
“I’m not daft,” he said. “There’s something on your mind. You’d best spit it out, or else …”
I felt that I was being lined up with bank managers and policemen with none of the privileges of their positions. People react differently to physical threats. Myself, I almost inevitably give in at once. So I told him about the trunk. I told him as casually as possible, but he took the point at once.
“Let’s go,” he said.
I protested that I had to go back to work.
“Give us the key then,” he said, holding out his hand. I gave in then and went with him. Being late for work was preferable to having Pargeter wandering alone round my beautifully decorated house.
Armed with a torch from my car, I led the way to my bedroom and put up the step-ladder. Visibility in the attic was not so bad even without the torch as quite a lot of daylight crept beneath the eaves, and with two of us standing together up there, everything seemed very ordinary. I think he felt a bit of this, too, as he grinned at me almost sheepishly and said, “Lead on, professor.”
As I moved forward the light caught the overhead beams and I saw something which made the situation a little less ordinary. There had once been an electric light fitting here, but it looked as if someone had deliberately severed the wires and removed the socket. The only motive for this that I could think of was to cut down the amount of light up here. In other words to make it more difficult to spot anything concealed. Even a trunk.
“This is it,” I said to Pargeter. He nodded, leaned forward and rapped with his knuckles on the lid. I started at the sound and almost put a foot through the ceiling beneath.
“It’s not empty,” he said.
“No,” I agreed. “Try the weight.”
He grasped a handle and pulled.
“I see what you mean,” he said.
“Old books weigh heavy,” I suggested.
“Mebbe,” he said.
He examined the padlock for a moment. I stood by respectfully in the presence of an expert. I half expected him to produce some subtle instruments from the lining of his jacket and set about the lock with delicate probings.
Instead he said, “Got a hammer and a cold chisel?”
I had. When I returned with them he struck the lock off with one powerful blow.
“Right,” he said. And together we raised the lid.
It was the kind of disappointment I like. Instead of the decomposing body of Pargeter’s sister, all that the trunk contained was a load of rubble, mainly bricks. A mixed cloud of soot and cement dust rose and sent me choking backwards so that I almost missed my footing on the joist.
Pargeter reached out and steadied me.
Downstairs the telephone rang.
It was my office. A client was waiting. Had I forgotten? Was I ill?
I rushed to clean myself up, yelling to Pargeter from the bathroom. When he finally appeared, he’d contrived to get himself ten times dirtier than I was and it was going to take him commensurately longer to clean up. I glanced at my watch impatiently and he said, “Never mind me. You go off. I’ll let myself out.”
I regarded him dubiously. He was after all a criminal and not one whose incarceration had rehabilitated him, so far as I could judge. On the other hand, there was little of value in the unfurnished house. Perhaps I could afford a little trust. Perhaps I even owed him something for putting him through what must have been an agonizing experience.
“All right,” I said. “I’m glad we didn’t … well, things turned out as they did. I hope you find your sister soon.”
This time he took my proffered hand and I had to wipe it clean on my handkerchief as I broke the speed-limits for one-handed driving into town. Several times during the afternoon I caught people looking oddly at my blackened handkerchief as I absent-mindedly pulled it from my pocket. And by the end of the afternoon, I was looking at it oddly, too.
When I got home that evening, I went straight upstairs with the car torch which Pargeter had left by the telephone. What I was thinking was absurd, but I’d had the taste of soot in my mouth all afternoon, and there was only one place that it could have come from.
I was moving swiftly in order to keep ahead of my fear. I had a picture very clearly in my mind now of Frank Evans watching with growing jealousy and hatred the developing friendship between his wife and young George Foxton in the shop. Perhaps he followed them. Perhaps he saw things no husband should see. But he sounded as if he were the kind of man who could hold himself in check, maintain the surface of things until the moment should be ripe to strike. I’m not normally a very imaginative man, but once I get going, there’s no holding me. I saw it all quite clearly. At last the moment had ripened and Frank had struck. Up here in this very attic, on these very boards over which I now made my way purposefully towards the chimneystack. The chimney would have been prepared in advance, the bricks smashed out and deposited, soot and all, in the trunk, leaving a hole just large enough to push a human body through. Or perhaps two. George Foxton was unaccounted for also. And then roughly plug the hole with cement and shove the trunk up against it to hide the traces. A perfectionist like Frank might have meticulously re-laid the bricks if he’d had time, but even perfectionists will rush things where murder’s concerned. Suddenly I was an expert!
Of course I should have rung the police. But I wanted to be sure before I let those clod-hoppers loose in my lovely house. God knows what else they might want to dig up or knock down if they found nothing first time.
My impetus to action added to my strength also. I managed without too much difficulty to wrestle the trunk away from the stack. My torch showed me that I was well on the way to being right. There at floor level in the chimney was a large semi-circle of rough cement which the weighted trunk had nicely conce
aled. The hammer and cold chisel lay where Pargeter had left them. I picked them up, applied the chisel and struck home.
I recorded four different sense impressions almost simultaneously.
Touch told me that this cement was still soft and damp as though newly applied.
Scent told me as the hole crumbled open at my gentle pressure that something was decaying close by.
Sight told me what it was.
And sound told me that I was not alone.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t be a clever bugger,” said Pargeter.
He was standing on the step-ladder with his head and shoulders in the attic.
“Yes,” I said. “Well, I’m glad your sister’s all right.”
I doubt if Frank Evans shared my relief, but then there was little he could say with a mouthful of cement. How did I know it was Evans? My logical mind, I suppose. Who else would wear a red, purple and orange checked tie? Though I preferred it to the other ornament he had round his neck, which was a length of light flex.
Pargeter pulled himself into the attic.
“Me too,” he said. “I really thought he’d done her in, while all the time … !”
He shook his head admiringly.
“Like me,” he said. “Quick, impulsive. Mind you, she must have had help. That lad from the shop, I dare say. Geordie Foxton. She used to tell me he fancied her. Well, it must have gone beyond fancying.”
He was moving steadily across the boarded area as he spoke.
“I checked with the estate agent on the phone,” he said. “Frank did it all by post, the selling and such. Well, if my little Marion couldn’t scribble his signature, she’s no sister of mine! Money in a joint account so she can draw it at will. She’s a bright one, our kid! If only she’d thought to warn me, I wouldn’t have stirred things up. Or if only you hadn’t been so bright. But I reckoned that if I could work it out, it shouldn’t be too difficult for a clever bugger like you. So I waited, just to see. I can be a clever bugger, too!”
He laughed. So did I, but a bit hysterically.
“They’ll be abroad now, no doubt. Safe and sound.”
He sounded quite matter of fact, but I suspected he knew as much about extradition laws as I did. No, the only way his precious sister could be safe and sound was if no one knew about the body in the chimney. Except Pargeter. Strong-willed, quick-tempered, criminally violent Pargeter who was so much like his sister. I glanced again at Frank Evans. That tie really was terrible.
Then I looked back to Pargeter, who had reached the water tank. I had no idea what his precise intentions were but there are some calculations even an accountant doesn’t want to waste time working out. Instead my mind was busy with other problems in mathematics. There were eleven joists between the one I stood on and the back of the attic. They were approximately thirty inches apart. Therefore …
Pargeter took another step towards me.
I jumped.
My calculations were wrong. I estimated I would come through the ceiling above the landing. Instead of which I crashed to the floor of my beautiful master bedroom in a shower of plaster and ceiling tiles.
Still, it could have been worse, I thought as I bounced to my feet and hurtled through the door, down the stairs and out into the street. One joist to the left and I would have straddled an interior wall with God knows what dreadful consequences!
When the police came, I explained the hole in the ceiling as an accident. There was no proof that Pargeter had intended to silence me. In any case, the angry way in which he was reacting to their questions about Marion suggested he could get himself into a lot of trouble without my help.
The hole came in useful three or four hours later when they decided to remove the trunk to the police station and the body to the morgue. They still had to be manoeuvred down the stairs, and by the time they got them out of the front door there was a long trail of desolation behind them.
I bought another bottle of scotch and settled down to contemplate my next move.
Half a bottle later the phone rang. It was Ann.
“Hello,” she said. “What a lousy day I’ve had! How’re things with you?”
“So-so,” I replied.
“Everything’s fixed at this end. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to getting into the new house. Tell me again about our bedroom.”
“Words can’t describe it,” I said.
“You sound a bit funny,” she said suspiciously. “What are you doing?”
“Just having a quiet drink.”
“Huh!” she snorted indignantly. “How very pleasant! And while you lie around enjoying yourself, your children and I work our fingers to the bone.”
“Tell me about it, darling,” I said sympathetically.
“Well, for a start, you’ll never believe the bother we had getting your trunk down from the attic …”
Carefully I poured myself another cup of whisky and settled down to listen.
The Rio de Janeiro Paper
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It has been the custom at the International Criminological Conference to save the best for the last. At least this was the policy pursued by your committee before ill health forced my resignation from it. I think of the men who have occupied this spot in years gone by and I tremble at my effrontery. But perhaps today there is no need. Perhaps during my recent illness the policy has been changed and the last full session of Conference is now reserved for broken-down old professors on the edge of retirement!
Forgive my flippancy. I am deeply moved by the honour you have accorded me. And more than a little scared. Not that I don’t like the view from up here. Through that huge window at the back of the hall I can see right across the harbour. The Sugar Loaf seems but a step away and I fancy that if I cared to strain my eyes just a bit, in this clear air, I could see clean across to Africa. It’s really quite splendid.
It’s only when my gaze drops to take in your own politely expectant faces that I begin to feel afraid.
But I have spoken elsewhere of the psychology of terror and that is not my subject today.
No, today I want to examine a simple proposition that seems to me to derive naturally from any serious criminological study of modern society and one which has implications which must be relevant to all your specializations.
It is that every husband would like to see his wife dead.
Let me start by being non-scientific.
How many married men sitting here in this hall can look into their own hearts and say they have never felt personally the truth of this proposition?
Come on. Don’t be shy. There are no hidden cameras spying on you. Two, three. I can see three. No; four. Thank you, sir. Definitely four. Well, I am disappointed. I had hoped to find greater powers of self-deception among so many eminent men!
So, it seems there might be some popular support for this proposition, every husband would like to see his wife dead. Certainly, as I’m sure that Captain Ribeiro of the Rio de Janeiro Police Research Bureau, whose stimulating paper caused so much debate on Tuesday, would confirm, if you show a policeman a female corpse the first thing that comes into his mind is, where’s the husband? Cherchez le mari! I can’t manage it in Portuguese!
I think Dr. Egermann in his excellent paper on Women’s Liberation and the Crime of Violence put it succinctly when he said that men are killed for many reasons, but women usually because they are women.
In other words because of sex.
Lust, jealousy, disgust, frustration; potency fears, mother fixations, homosexual repression, transvestite envy—you will all recall Dr. Egermann’s list of the sources of sexual violence. And is it not self-evident that the marriage relationship as it is understood in Western society, reinforces all these causes where they exist, creates many of them where they do not, and provides, in E. K. Charleshead’s well-known phrase, the provocation of opportunity.
To Egermann’s list, I myself would add one non-sexual motive to support
my present assertions, and that is material gain. In her unpublished Ph.D. thesis on The Sociology of Wills, Edna Botibol of Yale shows that while a man is rarely left money by his mistress, wives tend to be much more generous. (A form of compensation, I shouldn’t wonder!) But it certainly brings marriage well into our professional view. For it seems to me that in many ways all that Conference has been discussing for the past week, some might say for the past decade, is—which of the two great areas of criminal motivation should be our prime concern: the sexual or the economic? Marriage, I would suggest, unites them uniquely and deserves much more attention from all the criminological specialists gathered here today than it has ever received in the past. It may not be putting it too strongly to say that in marriage there is no such thing as accidental death.
Every husband would like to see his wife dead.
I can see several dubious expressions, and many more that have that air of bright interest with which students are wont to conceal advanced torpor. Perhaps I am being too general. “When in doubt, present a theoretical model” has always been a good maxim for the social scientist and that is what I shall do now.
First, we need a husband. Let’s call him Smith. I am, after all, trying to demonstrate, not deceive! But let’s bring him within the experimental range of everyone here by making him an academic; Professor Smith, a moderately eminent scholar at a moderately obscure university, the kind of man who at the age of sixty is pretty well known to his contemporaries but will hardly be remembered by their successors. But his voice will be listened to while he speaks.
Now, Professor Smith is a man who values marriage. He must do. He tries it twice. The first marriage follows a conventional course, and the professor reaches his half-century with little cause for complaint and some for congratulation; indeed, he looks an unlikely source of evidence to support my contention that every husband would like to see his wife dead. His children have grown up without too much drama, his first heart attack is still five years away, his home is comfortably and efficiently managed by his comfortable and efficient wife, a still attractive woman, who is a good economist, likes gardening, laughs at his jokes and cooks a fair if underseasoned canard en croûte for special occasions.
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