by Roy Lewis
‘I do! Instead of chasing me up with nonsensical questions you should be doing the real job. You should be questioning Max Lavender — for I bet you still haven’t done that, have you? You should be questioning him, and Stephen Sainsby, and all the other—’
Inspector Crow was walking across the room and Peter stopped. Crow’s eyes made him feel uncomfortable. The long, attenuated form of the inspector slipped into the chair behind the desk. He was still looking up at Peter.
‘Tell me, Mr Marlin. Why exactly should I question Mr Stephen Sainsby?’
* * *
Inspector Crow was sprawled in an ungainly slump in his chair, stirring a cup of tea.
‘We might as well have some tea, Mr Marlin,’ he’d said, ‘while we wait for Jardine to bring that tape in. Miss Walker said that she had no objection to our entering the bungalow to get it; Jardine’s picked up the key from her at the library.’
They sat there, sipping tea, and Crow chatted casually as though this were a normal, pleasant, social occasion. He was a strange man, Inspector Crow: Peter could not make him out. He could never tell what he was thinking . . .
When the tape finally arrived in Jardine’s possession, a machine was brought in and Crow ran the tape. He sat down at the desk as the music filled the room. It cast Peter’s mind back to Shirley’s bungalow. He had been leaning towards her — and Jeannette was laughing again.
Peter looked swiftly at Crow. The inspector had never known, never seen Jeannette. There was nothing to be read in his face now.
Jeannette was talking. It was his wife who was talking. Yet it was as though it were a stranger now. He had learned too much about Jeannette to think of her in any terms other than as a stranger. It was a paradox: the more he learned about her, the further she drifted away from him.
Sainsby’s voice. Peter’s lip twisted. Sir Stephen Sainsby. If this got out, his Knighthood would vanish in the Whitehall corridors. Peter glanced again at Crow: the inspector would not make it public, for he obviously had too much respect for authority — he’d shown that already, in the way he had refused to go after Lavender as Peter thought that he should.
He watched Crow steadily as the silences and the odd sounds followed. Whatever Crow made of them, whatever his private thoughts were, his features did not change. They remained still, completely impassive.
There was Jeannette’s final remark, and the dying of the tape. Crow stood up and reached for the telephone.
‘I want Stephen Sainsby picked up at once. I want him here. No, I shouldn’t think you’ll get him at his office now. His address . . .’
He raised an inquiring eyebrow to Peter, and repeated the address that was given him into the telephone.
‘Send a squad car around at once.’
He sat down, tapping his fingers on the table.
‘Why didn’t you turn this tape in to me at once, as soon as you’d heard it?’
Why hadn’t he? Because he didn’t understand the importance of it? For that matter he still didn’t appreciate why Crow was so edgy.
‘I — I don’t know, really.’
Crow’s eyes flickered to him, and he read there that Crow suspected he’d not brought the tape in because of the humiliation that he had been caused — was being caused now — by hearing in public the duplicity and infidelity of the woman who had been his wife. Perhaps Crow was right, in part. But not entirely. For Peter no longer felt humiliation. The thorn in his flesh, sexual, emotional, personal, that had been Jeannette had been finally drawn. She no longer gave him pain.
Crow was playing the tape once more. He looked towards Peter. ‘There’s no need for you to hear it again.’
‘You mean I can go?’
‘I didn’t say that. I’m sorry, Mr Marlin, I’d like you to stay at the station a while — to assist in my inquiries.’
‘You have a remarkable command of police jargon,’ Peter said sardonically. ‘Are you going to charge me?’
‘Not yet,’ replied Crow coolly. ‘If at all. But I’d like to have you available.’
Peter bowed derisively and walked out of the door. There was a desk sergeant on duty and Peter walked up to him. He had seen him on several occasions in court. The sergeant offered him a cigarette but did not take one himself.
‘On duty.’ He grinned.
Peter remained there for a little while, chatting in desultory fashion. He saw Jardine return, so he strolled across to the interview room, and tapped on the door. Crow bade him enter.
‘Sainsby’s not at home,’ grunted Crow. ‘Have you any idea where we might get in touch with him?’
Peter had none at all. Crow hesitated, indecisively, then reached for the telephone again.
‘I want a general call put out — for Stephen Sainsby.’
He brushed past Peter and held open the door.
‘Come on, let’s go to the canteen. I could do with a sandwich.’
Peter remained at the station for the rest of the evening. There was no trace of Stephen Sainsby. His housekeeper had said that he might well have gone off to London, but his secretary from the office reported that he had no business as such that she was aware of that would take him to London. On the other hand, he did occasionally go, telling no one.
‘You won’t mind spending the night here?’ asked Crow.
‘What have I got to lose?’ jeered Peter. ‘I’m safer here than anywhere.’
Crow didn’t rise to the jibe. He went back to the interview room. Peter didn’t see him again until 11.30 when he was just settling down on a cell bunk. Constable Wilson touched his shoulder.
‘The inspector would like to see you, sir.’ With a growl Peter went along to the interview room. Crow was there. His chin, in the poor light, was blue-shadowed.
‘Sit down, Mr Marlin.’
Peter did as he was told.
‘We can’t trace Stephen Sainsby. I’ve been sitting here and listening to this tape. I want you to listen to it again. At these points.’ The tape whirred: Inspector Crow stopped it, restarted it and Jeannette’s voice came again.
‘. . . mind me turning this thing off! It’s something I taped from that ghastly Tea at Three programme this afternoon . . .’
Crow switched off.
‘We have now had time to check. The music which was playing on this tape, before Mrs Marlin switched it off — and for some reasons of her own then turned over to “record” — was broadcast on the afternoon of her death. In other words, when she entertained Stephen Sainsby she did not have long to live.’
Peter swore. Stephen Sainsby. The possibility had never occurred to him. Any more than the possibility that the tape could have been recounting the last hours of Jeannette’s life.
Crow sent the tape whirring onwards.
Again he stopped it. Then played it again. Silence. A low moan. Jeannette’s breathing, the harsher breathing of Sainsby, quickening. Peter felt himself flushing.
‘Crow—’ he began in protest.
‘Listen, man,’ said Crow fiercely. He turned the switch, sent the tape back a few feet, and replayed it. Impatiently he turned the volume control up to the full. Again Jeannette’s moan came, loud, and the breathing. Then, lightly, in the background, something else.
‘The clock,’ said Peter flatly. ‘That stupid ornamental clock.’
‘Did you get the time?’ inquired Crow.
‘Ten.’
Crow switched off and turned to Peter. ‘So what do we now know? We know that Stephen Sainsby visited your wife on the night of her death, and we know that according to this tape he left her about fifteen minutes after the clock struck ten.’
‘The coroner said she died at about ten-forty-five.’
‘He based it on an autopsy report, which stated between 10.30 and 10.45. The margin isn’t great.’
Crow moved across to his desk. He opened the folder which lay there and extracted four letters, the letters he had earlier shown to Peter.
‘Now, Mr Marlin, let’s return to these let
ters. They have been puzzling me — and an hour ago I noticed something strange about them. Look, I lay them out in order, according to the dates which appear on each one. Right? One, two, three, four. And your letter. Would you agree that they are in chronological order?’
‘Yes, obviously,’ snapped Peter testily. Why the hell was Crow worrying about this blackmail nonsense? He should be raising heaven and earth to find Stephen Sainsby.
‘All right, now look carefully at this letter — and yours. Do you see anything of significance?’
‘No,’ replied Peter slowly, scanning the letters.
‘When you wrote your letter concerning the trust holding to John Sainsby,’ said Inspector Crow patiently, ‘did you notice anything about the machine? Anything in particular?’
‘I don’t think so,’ wondered Peter. ‘Not that I can recall — wait, there was something. One of the letters was sticking — it was chipped, I think.’
‘Look again now at your letter — and then look back to this one.’
‘I see what you mean; they both have—’
‘But look at the other three, and in particular, the two that come after this particular blackmail letter in time.’
‘The letter a,’ said Peter slowly, ‘isn’t chipped in those . . . But if these two don’t show a damaged a, whereas the one before them, and mine after them does, it means—’
‘It means,’ said Inspector Crow with a grimace, ‘that the blackmail note carrying the broken a does not bear its true date. It was back-dated.’
‘But why should the blackmailer backdate this letter to—’
‘Why indeed? . . . Unless perhaps he was sending the letters to himself.’
Before Peter could begin to think straight and ponder on the significance of Crow’s remark, the inspector was switching on the tape-recorder again. It was the last few inches of tape.
Jeannette’s voice, contemptuous.
‘Would you have guessed the old stallion had it in him?’
Peter stared at Crow in puzzlement.
‘Would you have guessed the old stallion had it in him?’
Crow glared at Peter with a fierce, intensity.
‘Would you have guessed the old stallion had it in him?’
‘For God’s sake, Inspector,’ snapped Peter. ‘Turn it off. I know what she said!’
‘Yes, but the inflection, man, the inflection!’
Peter shook his head.
‘It’s obvious. There’s utter contempt in her voice for Stephen Sainsby. So much contempt in her she’s speaking aloud, speaking aloud to herself—’
‘Is she?’ Crow whirled on Peter. ‘Listen again!’
He played it again, and replayed it. Peter sat still. He could hardly believe it. Stephen Sainsby had just made love to Jeannette in that room. She had waved him out of the house. And she had walked back into the room and spoken.
Aloud.
But not to herself.
‘That wasn’t rhetorical,’ he said dully. ‘She was making a statement, asking a question. For which she expected an answer.’
Crow smiled, without humour.
‘You’ve picked it up too, that odd inflection. Yes. There was someone else in the room.’
Dazedly, Peter commented, ‘It would have been easy . . . there are drape curtains against the far wall . . .’
Crow shrugged.
‘Perhaps this person wasn’t in the room all the time; he could have entered after . . . after Sainsby had gone.’
‘But who?’
Crow stood staring at him; Peter thought he detected an odd sympathy in the glance.
‘Mr Marlin, haven’t you asked yourself why your wife deliberately turned that recorder to “tape,” without Stephen Sainsby’s knowledge? And having asked yourself that, does not that letter over there—’
Peter’s mind was whirling. He bit his lip. ‘You think she put it to “record” with the intention of using it, later! And this letter . . . this man . . . But he’d never be capable of murder!’
Crow sighed. He extracted a sheet of paper from the folder.
‘Read this report,’ he said quietly.
Peter read it with mounting horror. Then he stared at Crow, wildly.
‘Inspector Crow! He — this man won’t know the tape is in our possession. And I think he will now be aware of who has been holding it these last weeks!’
Inspector Crow’s haggard face glared down at him, uncomprehendingly, for a moment. Then the tall, ungainly man was reaching for the telephone.
‘Her number?’ he snapped. Peter told him.
Crow demanded it of the switchboard.
Then they waited. Crow drummed impatiently on the table. Suddenly he looked at Peter, hesitated, then quietly replaced the telephone.
He looked old.
‘Miss Walker’s telephone is dead. Her line has been cut.’
CHAPTER 8
Shirley half expected Peter to telephone her during the course of the evening, if only to let her know what had happened concerning the tape which the police officer had collected from her bungalow. She sat in the deep easy-chair all evening, trying to read a light novel, but found herself unable to concentrate. She was quite prepared to admit to herself that her lack of concentration was due not only to the question of why the police wanted to listen to the tape, and what they might discover from it: she wanted to hear Peter’s voice.
For she had to recognise the fact now, however much she had tried to smother it in rationalisation. The fact was that she wanted Peter, she needed him; in short she loved him. But she could not be sure of his own feelings for her. There had been that moment, the last time he was here, when she had felt that he too recognised his own love for her — but the memory of Jeannette had risen up between them with her laughter.
She had been unable to speak, unable to protest at the time; nor could she do so now. Over the months she thought she had come to terms with the situation that had existed after Jeannette’s return. Now she wasn’t sure she would ever come to terms with the present. It would have to be Peter who made the move: she would not put difficulties in his way, but the first step must come from him. She had been hurt and humiliated once already. She couldn’t take it again.
But if she was prepared to meet him halfway, place no difficulties in his path, why was she leaving? It was easy enough to say that she was giving up her job, and had received an offer for the bungalow, but that wasn’t all of it. She had to leave, she knew that: had to leave because she couldn’t bear to wait — for Peter might never take the step that she desired. Soon he would be gone; if she waited here she might one day turn round and find that she had waited too long. So her leaving of her own volition might achieve two separate objects: it might stir Peter to think, and reach a decision to come to her, and if it did not, at least it meant that she was shaking the dust of the town off her feet, and beginning a new life — if necessary, without Peter. That she could not do here, for there were too many memories.
And he wasn’t going to telephone tonight. It was 10.30. Waiting up would be a pointless exercise. She made herself a hot drink and took it into the bedroom. Slowly she prepared for bed. She turned out the main light, switched on the bedside lamp and slipped between the cool sheets.
She lay back, sipping her drink in the quiet room. Everything could have been so different — if Jeannette had not come back, if Peter had not returned to her, if Jeannette had not died, if Jeannette had not recorded Stephen Sainsby’s visit to her, if Jeannette, Jeannette, Jeannette . . .
She would never be able to exorcise her ghost. Her hand lay on Peter, affecting his every action, denying him a free thought: he had told Shirley, not once, but several times, that he had loved her. He had said he still loved her. To Shirley’s knowledge nothing had happened to change things for Peter not even that tape-recording, for it had driven Peter away from this bungalow in humiliation when he had heard it here.
Did the police think that Stephen Sainsby might have killed Jeannet
te? There was something absurd in the thought. Yet they had imagined that Peter could have killed her.
Tears welled in her eyes. She leaned over and turned off the light. The darkness was soft, and sympathetic. She lay there and felt the wetness on her cheeks and she told herself aloud, absurdly, that she was a big girl now.
It was stupid. She should know by now that Peter could not be for her.
She heard eleven strike from the church clock on Gladstone Hill. She turned over, unhappily, and went to sleep.
When she woke, suddenly, it was with a start. She lay there with her heart pounding against her ribs in the nameless fear that grips in the darkness. Gradually, the sudden panic washed away. She must have been dreaming of something unpleasant, and had started awake. Her bedside clock ticked away cheerfully, and she glanced towards it.
Midnight. The witching hour, she smiled to herself, and settled back into the pillow.
But suddenly the darkness had lost its softness.
It was like a blanket pushed over her head, this, muffling, deadly. For a moment she felt unable to breathe, and she sat up, furious with herself. She was too imaginative. She reached for her cigarettes on the bedside table; there was a clink, and something fell heavily to the floor and rolled. Damn! Her cup. If there was anything left in the bottom it would spill and stain the carpet. She depressed the light switch.
Nothing happened.
Shirley sat still. The darkness enveloped her. The feeling of panic, of smothering, crept over her again and she tried to fight it. The light didn’t work; the bulb had failed.
So what! All she had to do was to get out and walk across to the wall switch. But her argument didn’t convince her. It didn’t allay the fear that crept coldly through her veins.
It was illogical, unreasoning — but terror in the darkness was new to her and the fact that there was no focus for it, no known basis for it, made it somehow worse. She was shaking. Pull yourself together! It didn’t work.
With quivering fingers she groped in the bedside locker for the torch that she kept there for emergencies. She flicked the switch — and a beam of strong light fled away across the room, fixing on her wardrobe. Strangely, it was little comfort. She was furious with herself, but her pulse hammered still: she found that the dark areas outside the beam were frightening to her. She couldn’t bring herself to swing the beam around the room.