by Roy Lewis
A LOVER TOO MANY
A gripping crime mystery full of twists
(Inspector John Crow Book 1)
ROY LEWIS
Revised edition 2018
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
FIRST PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM COLLINS IN 1969
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Roy Lewis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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©Roy Lewis
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THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH SLANG IN THE BACK OF THIS BOOK FOR US READERS.
CONTENTS
NOTE TO THE READER
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
POSTSCRIPT
INSPECTOR JOHN CROW SERIES
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Glossary of English Slang for US readers
NOTE TO THE READER
Please note this book is set in the late 1960s in England, a time before mobile phones and DNA testing, and when social attitudes were very different.
CHAPTER 1
He came out, blinking, into the sunshine. Nothing seemed to have changed. There was the usual roar of traffic from the High Street, funnelling down through the narrow lane. Sunlight lanced black shadows against the walls, slicing the lane in two, black and grey. People were still walking, talking in the High Street. Nothing seemed to have changed.
Except Peter Marlin.
The others had gone. He had been the last to leave. Shirley had gone; she hadn’t glanced at him. It was not surprising; he had been conscious of the way people in the courtroom looked sideways at her and he had no doubt that their eyes reflected the thoughts in their minds. Shirley Walker and Peter Marlin . . .
And Jeannette.
He moved away from the doors and paced slowly down through the narrow, paved lane towards the High Street. It was an old lane, as old as the town, medieval. It hadn’t changed.
But he had — he must have. How else could he have sat there, outwardly unemotional, when the suggestions were made, the innuendoes thrown at him? How was it that he could not bring himself to speak in his defence, in Shirley’s defence?
More important, when had he changed?
Today? Or months ago, when Jeannette had returned?
The coroner had, of course, overstepped the mark.
‘It is not for me to pass comment,’ Potter had said heavily, ‘on the moral aspects of the circumstances. It is not for me to suggest that the — ah — affair that seems to have developed between Mr Marlin and Miss Walker has any bearing on the death of Mrs Marlin. There is no positive evidence to show that any link exists. We are aware that Mrs Marlin knew of the affair, that she learned of it shortly after her return. It would seem that the whole thing was over and forgotten for her — she and Mr Marlin were living together — ah — reasonably amicably. So the evidence does not seem to suggest that the death of Mrs Marlin would necessarily be related to Mr Marlin’s liaison with Miss Walker. Indeed, there is no evidence to suggest that the relationship between Mr Marlin and Miss Walker has any connection whatsoever with the death of Mrs Marlin . . .’
In which case his words were irrelevant. In which case all the coroner was doing was relaying gossip. But gossip of the worst kind, gossip that merely started people’s minds turning over, thinking about what could have happened, mulling over the possible relationships that could have existed between Shirley Walker and Jeannette and Peter Marlin.
Relationship! Between the two women a positive dislike, that was certain. But where did he stand, where had he stood? Weakly, indecisively. That was the way he had always been, as far as Jeanette was concerned.
He turned into High Street and thought briefly of stopping off at the Blue Dragon for a cup of coffee, but then he knew that it was only an excuse for not returning to the office and he cursed and hurried on. He’d have to go in, walk past Betty’s wide eyes, bespectacled, curious behind her typewriter, walk past Joan’s office, the ante-room to his own. They would say nothing. But they would be aware. And after a decent interval, when he’d had time to sit in his leather chair and gnaw at the time, Joan would bring in some papers for signature, a query from a client, a letter to be answered, a problem to be solved.
The sooner it was over the better. Then perhaps things could go back to normal. As if normalcy was what he had ever wanted. ‘Peter!’
Marlin stopped, and turned his head.
Threading away from a small knot of people across the other side of the road was the tall, slim figure of John Sainsby. His arm was raised.
Peter waited dully. John was grey suited, dark waistcoated as usual. He had the formula white collar, striped shirt. He moved gracefully, as always, his careful, predatory face pale, his moustache neat and precise and formal. As he trotted to the pavement, his black briefcase clutched in his right hand, he was smiling nervously. Peter moved away, and John Sainsby fell into step beside him. It irritated Peter; John Sainsby always walked in step.
‘It’s over.’
Peter nodded. All over. ‘The . . . er . . . the verdict?’
‘Murder,’ said Peter harshly, ‘by person or persons unknown.’
Sainsby was quiet for a moment, his mouth puckered under the neat moustache. His shoes echoed Peter’s, rhythmically. ‘There’s little I can say,’ he murmured. ‘Little that anyone can say, now.’
‘That’s right,’ grunted Peter.
Sainsby twitched his cuff free from entanglement with the handle of his briefcase. ‘You had Potter as coroner . . . did everything go all right?’
Peter quickened his pace in anger.
‘You know Potter as well as I, John. You can imagine the hares he flushed, the irrelevancies he floundered out into open inquest . . . a really open inquest.’
‘One of these days,’ Sainsby said thoughtfully, ‘someone will be suing him for slander.’
‘In a coroner’s inquest? For statements made in the course of his duty? You know your law better than that, John!’
Sainsby’s legs were longer than Peter’s, but they still marched in unison with his. Sainsby was looking down at them.
‘Did he say anything . . . particularly damaging?’
‘If you mean did he drag Shirley Walker into the whole thing,’ Peter said bitterly, ‘the answer is yes. If you mean did he hint at the fact that we’d been lovers—’
‘Peter, really, I—’
‘—the answer is, again, yes. If you mean will people now be thinking that perhaps I, or Shirley, know more about the whole thing than we pretend I’m damn’ sure, again, that the answer will be yes! The blasted man ought to be compulsorily retired!’
‘He hasn’t long to go,’ soothed Sainsby, his face a little pink.
‘For me,’ grunted Peter, ‘and for Shirley Walker, it’s irrelevant, the damage is done.’ He turned into Green Street and ran up
the steps of Abbey House ahead of John.
* * *
The sign on the glass doors before him proclaimed in faded gold lettering Martin, Sainsby and Sons, Solicitors and Notaries Public, Commissioners for Oaths.
The stone face of Abbey House was grimed with age. The offices of Martin, Sainsby and Sons were situated on the first floor: they had always been there, since Abbey House was built in the eighteen-thirties. The world around Abbey House, and inside it, had changed over the years, but Martin, Sainsby and Sons remained. Martin had died in 1880, leaving no heirs, and Sainsby and his two sons had soldiered on. The first son had died a bachelor; when the second son died, in 1930, he had left one male heir to carry on. Stephen Sainsby was that son and he was still there, upstairs, assisted now and being dragged, complaining, into the modern business world, by his nephew John Sainsby and Peter Marlin.
It was perhaps Stephen Sainsby’s impatience with modern business methods and with the changing nature of the pressures of his profession that had caused him to look to other fields of late. He and his family had had a long Liberal tradition, locally; his father had spent a few years away from the business in political campaigning and had succeeded in winning a seat in the Commons for a brief period, before returning to the quiet office when it became apparent that in the Commons his influence upon policy was going to be minimal and he was in any case unlikely to regain the seat he lost in the general election.
But his father’s disappointment had not soured Stephen Sainsby’s ambitions in that direction. They had lain dormant for most of his life, but now that the firm was showing rising profit margins, and he felt the tug of impatience at its progress (since it was due to no effort on his part), he had begun to fly political kites more positively. And it was rumoured that preferment was perhaps not too distant.
Peter mounted the stairs to the first floor and pushed open the glass-panelled door. As he’d guessed, Betty was sitting there, plump and solid as a fat hen, with her myopic eyes gazing at him from behind her horn-rimmed spectacles. He said nothing to her, raising a hand in brief greeting before turning through the door to the corridor beyond and up the short, four-step flight of stairs to the door marked ‘Peter Marlin, LL.B., Solicitor of the Supreme Court.’
He grimaced mentally as he always grimaced at the sight of the plaque: Stephen thought it good for business that their ‘credentials’ should be displayed. Peter thought it pompous and unnecessary, but Stephen was the senior partner.
In the ante-room, sitting neatly behind her desk, was Joan Shaw. She raised her red head as he came in and smiled. She had good teeth, a good figure, and was remarkably efficient. She had everything a man could need in a secretary. He knew it and, he suspected, so did she. And like the good secretary she was she said nothing now, as he passed through the red-carpeted room to his own office. There was just the brief smile; no questions, no curiosity. None that showed, anyway.
Peter closed his door behind him. It was strange how much safer he felt, shut in this room. Safer, and calmer. Perhaps it was because of the hours he had spent here alone: the hours he had spent hard at work in the early years with the firm until he became a partner, the longer hours, midnight hours, that he had spent here during the months after Jeannette left him. The room had become so familiar to him: the smell of the leather armchair, the softness of the green carpet, the pale warmth of the magnolia painted walls, the hard dark wood of the desk, broad, comfortable, executive. Peter grunted to himself. Executive! He’d never before admitted to himself that buying this desk had been an action dictated by a need to feel that he was really in the executive class.
Maybe that was what a working-class background did for you. For Jeannette it had meant other things.
But now Jeannette was dead. The coroner had said so firmly, and had said other things besides.
Real business executives kept bottles of whisky in a drawer or in a gleaming decanter, cut glass, on a shelf. In Peter’s drawers there were papers, a dictaphone, clips, a paper punch, rubbish; on his shelves there were books, Curtis and Ruoff on Registered Conveyancing, Hill and Redman’s Law of Landlord and Tenant, Accounting Requirements of the Companies Acts, Stone’s Justices Manual. They marched shoulder to red, black, green, blue and grey shoulder, drugs that had dulled his sensibilities when Jeannette had left him, far better than whisky could ever have done. They had befriended him then, in the dark days, they had filled his mind and they had made him a better lawyer; the room had warmed him and held him, and it comforted him now. It was his, a place to flee to then, and perhaps again now.
The leather sighed as he dropped into the armchair. The sky was cloudy. There was an old bird’s nest against the drainpipe outside the window. It had been built there when Jeannette was alive. Now it was old and abandoned.
The intercom buzzed.
Peter flicked the switch and Joan’s voice, harshened, impersonalised, gritty, intruded into the silent room.
‘Mr Marlin, I have a request from Mr Gaines that you telephone him this afternoon. Would you like to make the call now?’ This way lay quick forgetfulness.
‘Yes, please, Joan. Get him for me straight away — and I suppose you have other matters for my attention?’
‘I’ll bring them in as soon as you’ve finished your call to Mr Gaines.’
‘Thank you.’
The intercom went dead.
Just three minutes later the telephone rang and Peter closed the file he had been staring at dully, to lift the receiver.
‘Peter?’
‘Hallo, Sam. I gather you wanted to have a word with me.’
‘Yes, I rang earlier this morning. I’m sorry, I’d forgotten that you’d be at the coroner’s inquest—’
If he really had, thought Peter, he’d have been the only one in town who had suffered such a lapse of memory.
‘—how did things go?’
‘As well as could be expected,’ replied Peter dryly.
There was a short silence.
‘I’m sorry, Peter, that was a stupid question . . . I imagine the verdict was murder by persons unknown.’
‘It was.’
‘Yes . . . anyway, we don’t want to talk about that. It’s over, finished. I just wanted to have a word with you about the meeting tomorrow. Can you pick me up at Greygables? The old lady’ll do her nut, but I’m afraid that I had a slight contretemps with a lamp-post last night.’
‘Serious?’
‘Well, it may add a scar or two, but not where my manly beauty will be affected. The Jag is somewhat bent, however. I can count on a lift, then?’
‘Of course.’
‘Er . . . Peter, look, this meeting tomorrow — you know I’m no great shakes at this legal stuff, and I’m just along for the ride at the meeting, as a representative of the trust holdings, but what exactly is going on? I don’t quite get the picture from the agenda.’
Peter hesitated.
‘It’s . . . er . . . it’s a long story, Sam . . .’
‘Try me, shortly, in short syllables.’
‘Well, basically, I suppose, it’s nothing more than an attempt at a takeover of the companies in which your trust holdings are placed by Amalgamated Industries, Ltd. Just that.’
‘And you support the takeover, Peter?’ Again Peter hesitated.
‘In principle . . . yes, I do. As solicitor to the trust I’ve looked closely at the deal and I think that it will do a lot of good for the trust holdings.’
‘Who’s this chap Jackson, Peter?’ Peter went cold.
‘Jackson?’
‘He’s named as the character who’ll get a seat on the boards of the trust companies if Amalgamated Industries take over.’
‘You seem to have read the notices pretty closely,’ remarked Peter in a controlled tone, ‘for someone who doesn’t know what’s going on.’
Sam Gaines laughed. It was on a high pitch that somehow lacked masculinity, a girl’s party laugh. But then, Sam went to more than his share of parties.
‘I didn’t say I hadn’t read the papers that came with the agenda — just that I didn’t understand them. Do you know this chap Jackson?’
‘No. Look, Sam, I’m sorry, but I’m pretty busy at the moment — I think it better that we have a word about it all tomorrow when I pick you up in the car. Mrs Gaines well?’
‘Sound as the proverbial ancient bell.’
‘Right, Peter me lad, I’ll see you tomorrow and you can give me a rundown on the whole swindle then. Okay?’
‘I’ll see you at Greygables about ten a.m.’ When Peter replaced the telephone his hands were damp. A rundown on the whole swindle. Gaines could have chosen his words with more care.
There was a light tap on the door. It was Joan. She came in with a sheaf of papers in her hand. The letters for signature she placed in front of him. He cast his eyes swiftly over them, more by habit than anything else, for he well knew that he could rely on her, and his eyes took nothing in to his brain on this occasion. He was still preoccupied with Gaines’s phrase. And his own feeling of discomfort, the quickness of his pulse.
‘And there are these three conveyances, Mr Marlin. They are now due for completion this afternoon. Shall I instruct—’
‘Bill,’ said Peter firmly. Bill Daly was not the most senior legal executive in the firm, but he was the most capable in conveyancing matters. He should have crossed over into articles years ago, but maybe at thirty-eight now he was too old to start. Stephen Sainsby would certainly think so.
‘Anything else, Joan?’
She was looking at him carefully when she said, ‘Nothing that can’t be dealt with without worrying you, Mr Marlin.’
He stared at her, and a slow smile touched his face. She was a better secretary than he deserved.
‘I get the message, Joan. You think I ought to take the day off.’
‘After the coroner’s inquest—’
‘I think,’ he interrupted, ‘that solid work is a better way of forgetting problems than lying back and worrying about them.’