Find the Innocent

by Roy Vickers

  She hurried to the lockhouse. His back was towards her as he bent over the sideboard.

  “Don’t turn round for a minute,” she said. “When you do turn round, pretend I’m Veronica.”

  “But you aren’t a bit like Veronica—thank heavens!” he said, without turning. “And I don’t think it will lead to anything.”

  “Like your fishing!” she taunted. “At any moment we might land something that could be turned into evidence … Oh, but I forgot! You didn’t want to catch a fish!”

  “You’re cheating, but never mind. I’ll play.” He turned round and gazed at her blankly.

  “Go on,” she urged, which made him look unhappy.

  “In amateur theatricals,” he explained, “I am always cast for the part of the chap who shows people to their seats.”

  “You don’t have to act it. Just remind yourself of what happened—using me as a lay figure. You must have said ‘hullo’ or something when you first saw her.”

  “I don’t think I could have said ‘hullo’. I don’t remember what I did say.”

  “Where was she when you first saw her?”

  “In here.”

  “All right!” Jill stepped backwards. “Unknown woman appears in the doorway—like this.”

  “No—er—no. It was I who appeared in the doorway.” He paused. “And I was carrying something—oh yes—her suitcase!”

  Jill looked perplexed. The way he said it strongly suggested someone relating the circumstances of a dream.

  “It does sound absurd, doesn’t it!” he said. “But I’m sure I’ve got it right. I was fishing on the other side of the weir. I must have been, or I would have seen her walking in. She had come in to use the telephone. And dumped her case outside. I saw the case and stood my rod against the house. It was noticed there the next morning.”

  “That’s something!” said Jill, encouraging him and herself. “She was in the house when you first saw her. Small things like that might contain something the police could check.”

  She concealed from herself the possibility that any one of the three might have inferred from the position of the rod that he had gone fishing between the departure of the Ford and the arrival of the girl—who might well have entered the empty house to telephone.

  “Go on, Mr. Canvey.”

  “The gentleman’s name is Lyle.”

  “Jill to you. Go on, Lyle. Was she telephoning when you came in?”

  “I don’t think so—no. Only talking about it and apologising.”

  “And you said ‘That’s all right. Go ahead and telephone’?”

  Canvey thought it over.

  “I didn’t say that. I suppose I ought to have, but I didn’t. I could see she had been footslogging and I suggested a drink first.”

  “And she accepted.” Jill looked round the room. “Where did she sit while you mixed her a drink?”

  “I first took her outside and planted her in a deck chair, facing the lock.”

  “Show me. Plant me in that deck chair in the shade—we can imagine the lock.”

  With a shrug he followed her out of the house.

  Jill eyed the deck chair with mistrust. It was on the lowest notch but one.

  “How did she manage to lower herself gracefully into that?”

  “She left it to me.” He took her by the arm, pulled her off balance and lowered her gently into the chair.

  “Good!” approved Jill. “You were kind enough to offer me elevenses.”

  “I’m getting the idea!” He went back to the house returning with another chair and a wicker table, then a tray with drinks and biscuits.

  For a while they sat in silence. They were facing upstream, the road concealed by willows and overgrown herbage. The muffled rumble of the weir made them unconscious of the heat.

  “I’ll give you a lead.” With a passable imitation of Veronica’s voice, she went on: “I was on my way to Renchester to join my husband.”

  “Not a bit like it! For one thing you are imitating her. Starting on the wrong foot. Obviously she was behaving in a manner that was strange to her.”

  Jill remembered that Eddis had said the same thing in other words.

  “She had stepped out of her own groove. She was more like—”

  He stopped—scowling at the river as if he had lost his train of thought.

  “More like—?” she prompted.

  “More like you!” he answered. “Before leaving here she reverted to type. A pretty hefty reversion too! A different woman! It was not that Woman Number 1 turned quarrelsome and nasty. In a quite friendly way, she revealed a personality and outlook revolting to me, which entirely blotted out the appeal of her beauty.”

  “But she was Woman Number 1 while you were sitting here.”

  “And Woman Number 1 was an imitation, so it’s no good trying to remember things about her.” He added with a laugh that held bitterness: “Incidentally, Veronica can imitate you a lot better than you imitate her.”

  “Come back to that telephone. She must have mentioned her husband at some point.”

  “She didn’t. I did. I pointed at her wedding ring and she said there was no need to worry about that.”

  Jill was disappointed.

  “That doesn’t sound like Veronica. She was very conscious of being a rich man’s wife.”

  “I told you she was playing out of character”

  “I think you said she was imitating me.”

  “Not then! If you had a wedding ring the only way of throwing it into the lock would be to throw you with it.”

  “Thank you, Lyle!” Her voice held irritation. “If you threw her wedding ring into the river—”

  “Like this—imagining you had a ring.” He stood up, bent over her and took her wrist. “I straightened out her finger—dammit, this is the wrong hand, give me the other!—I took the ring, wiggled it over the knuckle—and flipped it into the lock.”

  “If you threw her wedding ring into the lock, the woman with you was not Veronica.”

  “I never said she was!”

  He spoke without emphasis. As Jill stared at him blankly, he went on:

  “I say only that she was the woman I saw with you at the Red Lion. If you tell me she was the other girl’s identical twin, all I ask is that the identical twin will tell Curwen about it.”

  “Veronica has no twin. Is it within the bounds of possibility that you mistook Veronica for a woman, say, of the same physical type?”

  “Identical twin, or I shan’t play.”

  Jill was at a loss. Maenton had convinced her that the ring proved that the woman at the lockhouse was not Veronica, but Canvey was unimpressed. It was always a mistake to use someone else’s theory. A long silence was broken by Canvey.

  “How well do you really know her? Is it possible that she kept a stock of wedding rings?”

  “For a stock of lovers who would invariably throw the wedding rings into rivers?”

  “When we have laughed a little,” he said coldly, “let’s examine the possibility of at least a second wedding ring—”

  “I’ve examined it already. If she was at the lockhouse here with you until the small hours, she would not have had time to buy a ring—still less to have it engraved.”

  “—a second wedding ring purchased within a few weeks of her having received the engraved one and without any thought of lockhouses and lovers. She’s obviously a careless woman in small things. Probably leaves her wedding ring in a washroom and makes hell for everybody until it’s found. I’ve met that kind.”

  “She certainly does leave it about and forgets to wear it,” admitted Jill.

  “There was the danger of offending the mogul by losing the engraved ring. She would not be careless, as you say, of her investment in the mogul. She may have used the second one—unengraved—when she left home. When she asked me to fish it out of the lock—and then said it didn’t matter on second thoughts—she may have reminded herself that it was not the engraved ring.”

&
nbsp; “Now you’re on the right track!” cried Jill. “It’s all in character. She might have behaved just like that.”

  “She might have—and she might not. I’m offering you a choice of probabilities. It seems to me more probable that she did all that than that I should be telling lies.”

  “Me too!” laughed Jill. “Then, if we drag the lock we shall find a plain, unengraved wedding ring.”

  “We’re not going to drag the lock. It’s an expensive process and a plain wedding ring would prove nothing. Anyway, Stranack probably collected it before the mud settled. He was diving about in the lock the morning after.”

  “And you think he found the plain ring?”

  “If he did, he probably pawned it. A plain ring would not support his tale.”

  “But how did he know you had thrown the ring in the river? As I understand it, he must have been in Renchester at the time.”

  “That’s easy!” He took her hands and raised her from the deck chair. “Come along.” In the doorway he stopped.

  “I had just let some barges through the lock. She was standing by that window which was open then—the top half of it—as it is now. She was frightened. She said someone had flashed a light on her through the window where she was standing, looking for the car’s lights. I thought it was Huggins, the local constable, but I know now that it was one of the others. A man close to the window could have heard what we said about fishing the ring out of the lock—and one thing and another, while we were waiting for the car.”

  “That, of course, explains how the others know nearly everything that happened!”

  “And if I was the man at the window—”

  “You’d know all about everything too!”

  She was joking but he took it seriously. He laughed—with the laugh on himself.

  “‘I was at the lockhouse, lockhouse—’”

  “I know you were!”

  As she spoke she became aware that her words had said more to him than she intended. A declaration of personal faith in him—a truth that caused him disturbance, as if he had never had hope of convincing her. She broke the silence with a deliberate banality.

  “If only we could find some means of proving you were not the man at the window!” She said it breezily and was relieved when he frowned.

  “Why do you want to prove it?”

  She looked up at him, saw that his first disturbance had passed.

  “Because if Veronica forfeits her marriage settlement I get the capital sum, as residuary legatee.”

  “That’s not your motive. You’re imitating Veronica again and flopping.” He was following his own train of thought. “Whatever your motive may be, you will achieve nothing. The police already have all the evidence they’ll ever get. As soon as they let me leave the country I shall apply for a job in Japan, or some country where they don’t mind one being under a cloud.”

  “That would be giving up without a fight.”

  “You can’t fight a deadlock—a stalemate of evidence. No appointments board will give me a chance.”

  That was so obvious that she could find no answer.

  “Jill!” There was a long pause before he added: “I hope I shall not see you again.”

  In the car on the way back Jill felt an exhilaration which had no direct connection with the task she had set herself. Canvey’s parting words were echoing. He hoped he would not see her again—because he was attracted and felt that his circumstances forbade him to pursue a friendship with her.

  Everybody, she assured herself, likes being liked.

  And, of course, it was perfectly obvious that he was the innocent man. Admittedly, she had been impressed by Eddis, but for the wrong reasons. Now she came to think of it, Eddis, while appearing to unburden himself, had actually told a plausible tale with clever little touches to give the likeness of truth. Too clever, too many neat dovetails. By comparison Lyle Canvey had been almost incoherent. Manifest truths had tumbled out of him. There remained only the difficulty of featuring something which the police would be able to work up into legal evidence.

  After lunch she started to make a list of the manifest truths and compared it with the list of Eddis’ statements. After a while she noted that they were substantially the same.

  There was the difference that Lyle revealed that Veronica was in the room when he first saw her. But if all the fishing rods had been inside the house when the Ford left for Renchester it could be inferred that the man who stayed behind had gone fishing before Veronica—no, before the girl, query—had arrived. So that item would not be received by the police with shouts of joy.

  The drinks outside the house. That was washed out by the police saying that the finger prints on the bottles were not those of Canvey.

  But he had himself pointed out that he could contribute nothing that could not be known to the others. He had repeated that gramophone line until she had wanted to scream. He had not tried to be convincing, like Eddis.

  Discouragement settled upon her. With it came a horrified awareness that she might have misinterpreted those parting words of his. “I hope we shall not meet again—because your company is not desired by me.” No, if it were true, it would be too crude an insult.

  But the words would bear the meaning “because it is a mutual waste of time”.

  Back to the theory that she must be an erotic female, ready to let her reasoning be numbed by any personable male who would pretend that he liked her.

  I can’t really be as bad as that, she urged. It’s because I am tired. She went to her room and lay down. She slept a little but awoke in the same mood of pessimism.

  Erotic female or not, she was certainly no good as an investigator. A one-woman police force, as the horrible Maenton had remarked. She had been an arrogant fool. She would back out without giving herself excuses—run away from Renchester and get on with her holiday. She must have a holiday or she would not be up to her work.

  When she went down to dinner she turned to Reception, to tell them she would leave tomorrow. On the way she stopped at the letter rack. There was an envelope addressed to her which had not been through the post.

  From Arthur Stranack.

  Dear Jill, she read.

  If you can forgive my unforgiveable boorishness (you could call it nerves), please read on: This evening I relieve Canvey at the lockhouse: will you come over tomorrow to see me? I have something concrete and definite to tell you about another person—and a proposition pinned to it. Yours, Arthur.

  She turned away from Reception. Over dinner she wondered what Veronica was doing by herself in London. It was very hard to keep angry with Veronica.

  Chapter Ten

  Sir Edward Maenton had few of the characteristics of a middle-aged voluptuary. He would approach a love affair as a mature critic of music approaches the performance of a new prima donna in an opera with which he is well familiar. Veronica—whether she knew it or not—had made a good first impression.

  Though he never cheated, he deceived, and in turn expected to be deceived but not cheated. Thus he bore her no ill-will for suppressing a good deal of information, with special reference to Driver Roach’s visit. On the contrary he was pleased.

  He took her to the same restaurant and again returned with her to the flat. This time he sat opposite. It no longer mattered looking at her, because he had made his plans.

  “I have to tell you about a man called Roach,” he began. “I think the name was Roach. Yes—Roach. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  “I can’t place it,” answered Veronica, carefully. “But I’m awful at names.”

  “That’s yet another characteristic we have in common,” smiled Maenton. “He is a driver employed by a garage at Renchester—The Hollow Tree—a curious name that does stick in the memory. But you know nothing about him?”

  “I didn’t hire a car while I was in Renchester. I remember, I walked from the coroner’s court to the station and my luggage was brought by the hotel. I seem to be disappointing y
ou. Ought I to know about him?”

  “You would never disappoint me, my dear.” It was the first “my dear” and marked the beginning of the second stage—the honorary uncle stage—later leading to the semi-final stage, which would open with the little speech about having been cheated of his youth … The second stage was one of assiduous protectiveness in small things. “It is I who must inevitably disappoint you. You left everything in my hands, as I begged you to do, and now—”

  “You have been wonderful, Sir Edward!” interrupted Veronica, which was quite correct, but the moment was spoilt by the telephone bell. Maenton who was sitting close to the instrument was about to disturb himself.

  “Don’t move—please! It’s switched into my bedroom. Excuse me!”

  There were things about the telephone installation in that flat which WillyBee had never told his wife. As Veronica left the room Maenton lifted the receiver, keeping his eye on the door.

  “Mrs. Brengast here,” he heard.

  “It’s me. Are you alone?”

  “My solicitor is here, but I’m speaking from my bedroom, so it’s all right.”

  “You have a pencil, haven’t you? Write down ‘Savoy theatre’.… Now write ‘Mr. Palmer’ … Tomorrow, buy two tickets—seats next to each other—in stalls or dress circle—for the matinée. A minute before curtain rise, hand one ticket back to the office and ask them to keep it for ‘Mr. Palmer’. You needn’t give any other explanation. Then go to your seat with the other ticket. I’ll slip in beside you a couple of minutes later. Understand?”

  “Yes—but—”

  “No buts. Say something nice.”

  “You are ridiculous! I trust you. I’ve treated you badly. And I’m grateful. Is that nice enough?”

  “It’ll do to go on with. Goodbye!”

  That man might or might not have anything to do with the Renchester affair. His voice sounded young! His association with Veronica must cease forthwith.

  Maenton waited for the click, then replaced his receiver.

  “So sorry!” said Veronica, fluttering. “My sister wants to meet me tomorrow afternoon. You were just going to tell me something about a driver?”