Death and the Chaste Apprentice

by Robert Barnard

  “Time,” said Charlie.

  “Exactly.”

  They all three sat thinking about that for some moments. Downstairs, time had just been called. Dundy stubbed out his second cigarette and got up.

  “We’ll go down.”

  In the Shakespeare there were a few stragglers left. Newspapers were strewn around on the tables, mostly turned to the arts pages, and a collection of singers and orchestral players were laughing over an article in the Times in which Bernard Levin confessed that he was unable to take Donizetti seriously. At the sight of the policemen, they drank up and left. How they knew they were policemen was no mystery: In the Saracen at the time, it was a fair bet. Dundy noted that among the disappearing party was Krister Kroll, the tenor. He let him go and surveyed the rapidly emptying room with satisfaction. Then he went to the bar, where Dawn and the new temporary manager were tidying up the lunchtime debris.

  “Ah, you would be the superintendent,” said the new manager, coming round from behind the bar, his manner somewhere between the friendly and the ingratiating. He seemed a pleasant enough young man, but people in any way connected with the licensing trade never quite knew how to behave with policemen.

  “That’s right,” said Dundy. “You’ve been got here quickly. Getting things round?”

  The manager’s face assumed a serious expression. “Oh, officially, there’s nothing to get round, Unofficially we may admit that perhaps the best appointment may not have been made last time, that there may be a few bridges to mend.”

  “I think I might like a brief word, eventually, on how that appointment came to be made.”

  “Of course. I was briefed about that before I was sent over. Oh, by the way, this came this morning from headquarters.” He drew from his pocket a Saracen’s Head envelope and handed it to Dundy. “We didn’t think there was any need to bother about fingerprints since it had been through the postal mill. It’s Capper’s handwriting, isn’t it? Sent the day he died, but by second-class mail.”

  There was no letter. What Dundy drew out of the envelope was a newspaper clipping. It was the medical column of one of the newspapers they had found in Capper’s flat. It dealt, in laymen’s terms, with a newly developed treatment for spastics.

  “I think you’ll find the appointment quite understandable when you know the facts,” the temporary manager was nervously saying. “It’s far from suspicious. In fact, redounding to the credit—”

  “Right,” said Dundy, cutting him short. “But before we go into that—”

  “Yes? Anything we can do to help, of course.”

  “—I’d like to try a little experiment with Dawn here.”

  Dawn looked up, surprised. She was much more alert today, rested and in almost sparkling form. She had, of course, been very much the center of attention both at home and in the hotel. Now she looked puzzled but intrigued.

  “I don’t see—”

  “You don’t have to. It’s quite simple, and something you’re used to doing. Now, I want you to fill a tray with dirty glasses—or clean ones, if you haven’t got enough—just as you did on the night of the murder.”

  “We do generally prefer to wash them by hand, Superintendent,” said the fair-haired manager, then seemed to realize the fatuity of this remark.

  “I’m sure you do, sir. You can do them later by hand if you like. Did you load up the tray on your own on the murder night, miss?”

  “No, Mrs. Capper helped a bit.”

  “If you could help her, then, sir?”

  As he watched them filling a large tray, which it seemed would be all Dawn could manage to lift or encompass the breadth of in her arms, Dundy was conscious that behind him, at the door into the foyer, there was a movement, a presence. He wondered if it were possible . . .

  “Now it’s full, isn’t it? It’s now exactly two-fifty. I want you to take it up, go through with the tray to the kitchens, stack the glasses into the dishwasher just as you did on Thursday, at the same sort of rate you did it then, and then set the machine going, do anything else that you—”

  “Oh, my God, you know!”

  Win Capper, standing at the doorway, seemed turned to stone, her usually sallow complexion turned to an unhealthy white. Dundy held Dawn back from rushing over to her, and after a minute she tottered forward and sat down on a chair. Dundy released Dawn, who swiftly poured a neat scotch at the bar and hurried over with it. She put it to Win’s mouth, then sat beside her at the table and put her arm around her shoulders. Win stared down at the table, then took another gulp at the whiskey.

  When she spoke, it was in a dull, flat voice. “I overdid it, didn’t I? About how wonderful Des was and how he hadn’t an enemy in the world.”

  “It did occur to me,” said Dundy carefully, “that the wife of someone like Des Capper might think he was wonderful, but she couldn’t remain unaware that other people didn’t share the same view. Not in a pub, where she could see people’s reactions to him and would probably overhear opinions of him.”

  Win nodded. She looked up now, and faint traces of color had begun to come back into her cheeks.

  “I’m ready to come along with you. It’s almost a relief. I was always afraid someone else was going to be charged. Dawn will help me pack one or two things, won’t you, dear? I’d just like to say why I did it”—she patted Dawn’s hand—“so you won’t think so badly of me.”

  “I don’t,” said Dawn, only with an effort refraining from saying that she thought Win had done a public service.

  “I expect by now you know what Des was really like. He was mean, cunning, and a slave driver. I should have left him years ago, but perhaps I’m a natural slave. Or I’d become one over the years. I was a nurse when I married him. Guess I just went from slavery to matron to slavery in a bar for Des. Seven years ago I got pregnant. I was over the moon. Des was pretty pleased, too. Me not getting pregnant was one of the things he used to throw in my face the ten years we’d been married. Then Kevin was born, and a few days later they told us he was a spastic. . . . It didn’t make any difference to me. I only loved him the more. But that was the end for Des. If he wasn’t a healthy, normal child, he just didn’t want to know about him. He said you couldn’t have an idiot child—that’s what he called him— growing up in a pub. The customers wouldn’t like it. He had to go into a home. So we put him in one in Lancashire, and I went from Carlisle to see him every Sunday. I didn’t think I could ever forgive Des for that, but there was more.” She put her handkerchief to her mouth and swallowed.

  “The director,” murmured the new manager.

  “That’s right. The director of Beaumont Hotels. He’s got a spastic son, too. He brought him to our hotel in Carlisle, on his way to the lake district. He’s a wonderful father, devoted, always taking the boy places, bringing him out, arousing his interest. Like I would do if I could see Kevin more than once a week. . . . Of course Des was all over his boy. You’d have thought he was Prince William the way he fawned. And he kept saying it made a bond—us having a spastic boy as well. The director was the only person I ever remember Des mentioning him to. And Des said if only we had a bigger hotel to run, with room to bring up a family and to get a bit of privacy—”

  “The place in Carlisle is not one of our better hotels,” put in the manager. “It’s very small and inconvenient, with very little residential trade out of the summer season.”

  “That’s right. Des desperately wanted to get somewhere with a bit of prestige. So he went on and on to the director about how he longed to get Kevin out of the home if only he could get somewhere with a bit of space for him to play, somewhere with a good staff, so I could be freer. After the director went, he used to send him anything he read on cerebral palsy and its treatment. Used to cut things out of papers and the like. Said it was so I shouldn’t see them. ‘Only set you off again,’ he’d say. But he always sent them to the director. When Arthur Bradley died, Des heard about it through the grapevine, of course, and bombarded the director with h
ints of how he’d like the job and what a difference it would make for Kevin’s life. . . .”

  “That’s true,” said the manager. “That’s how he got appointed. The director told several people at Head office after we began to get hints that the appointment was not turning out well. Naturally he felt responsible.”

  “I won’t say I ever believed Des,” Win went on, dabbing at her eyes. “But I thought—hoped—that if we got it he’d have to keep his word. I should have known better. We’d been here a month when he wrote to the director and told him Kevin had had a setback and was hospitalized and it would be dangerous to move him. . . . The lying bastard! Kevin was just as he’d always been. But what could I do about it? That’s when I decided he had to die. From then on I was just waiting for an opportunity.” She got up, now quite steady, and turned to Dawn. “I’ll get my things together now, dear, if you’ll come with me. It won’t take long. Then I’ll be quite ready to come with you.” She paused at the doorway. “They won’t separate me entirely from my boy, will they, sir?”

  Dundy hoped he was speaking the truth when he murmured: “No, I’m sure they won’t.”

  As Win and Dawn went up the stairs, Dundy slipped out into the foyer and detailed a police constable to follow them and station himself outside the room. When he got back to the Shakespeare, the new manager had tactfully taken himself off. The others, inevitably, were wanting a bit of a natter.

  “I think I can see why Brad Mallory’s story changed everything,” said Nettles, his forehead creased. “We’ve been going badly wrong over the times, haven’t we?”

  “Of course we have. Gently led astray by Win Capper. We put so much weight on Des Capper’s promise to help at Interval and the fact that he didn’t turn up that we began to assume that he was dead by then. But there was nothing in the medical evidence to suggest that he need have been. It was slipshod thinking on my part. Once I’d established that Win must have spent the first period when Dawn was away pouring nice cold white wine, I began almost without noticing to exclude her—fool that I was! Because the first person you pay attention to when a husband has been murdered is the wife—and vice, of course, versa.”

  Dundy sat for a moment in thought. “Actually, there were two things of importance in Brad Mallory’s story, if we decided to believe it. The first was that Brad rang Des up from the Town Hall to make the appointment for twenty past eight. That meant Des knew well in advance that he wasn’t likely to be able to help in the interval. The second, if we believed him, was that he was not dead by Interval—probably not for some time after it. That didn’t really alter things as far as the play people were concerned, though it let Peter Fortnum off the hook. But it did alter it for others.”

  “And for Win Capper in particular,” said Charlie.

  “Yes. I began making an alternative scenario in my mind. You know, people tend to divide murders into premeditated ones and ones done on the spur of the moment. But there is another kind: killings that are intended over a long period, the killer merely waiting for a convenient opportunity and then seizing it. That was what we had in this case.”

  “I think I’m there now,” said Charlie. “I think I’ve got the opportunity Win seized on. Capper rang Win in the bar while Dawn was fetching the snacks.”

  “That’s it, I’m sure. Knowing Des, he might do it, or he might not. But let’s assume he did, at about a quarter past eight, when Dawn was in the kitchen getting the nuts and the cheese dainties. I suspect he did it because he wanted to gloat. He told Win she’d have to cope or get someone else from the kitchen, because he’d be holding someone over a slow fire. He may even have named him. We don’t know how much he told Win about his activities and the people he wanted to ‘get.’ Anyway, she decided then and there that now was the time. As she said, she’d intended doing it for some months, and while the festival people were here was obviously a good time, since Des had put up so many backs. The fact that there was now going to be an interview of murderous potential made this an irresistible opportunity. She was getting ready the drinks for the interval, which gave her a marvelous alibi for this period on her own. As she poured them out, her mind must have been working furiously.”

  “And she decided not to mention Des’s phone call to Dawn when she returned,” suggested Nettles.

  “That’s right. So that when he failed to turn up at Interval, the presumption would be later that he was dead by then. And even if the plan misfired—say, Des came down after his interview with Mallory—well, forgetting a phone call was no great matter. The plan could be put on ice.”

  “I did wonder,” said Charlie, “why she didn’t ring up to the flat after the interval. I thought it must be because she knew he was dead.”

  “No, it was because she knew that he was alive. So, during the interval she commented on Des’s nonappearance to Dawn, and doubtless within the hearing of customers as well. Then, when Interval was finished, she had to make herself an opportunity. She packed Dawn off with glasses for the big kitchen dishwasher—an unusual procedure but easy to justify. Then she was off through the manager’s office, up to the flat. She was just talking to Des—making conversation, by the table with the knife on it, perhaps about the problems at Interval—when there was Brad Mallory’s knock on the door. Des turned, she took up the knife she’d all along intended as the implement, and she shoved it in his back.”

  “Come to think of it,” said Charlie, “that knife was always a pretty unlikely murder weapon for Brad Mallory.”

  “Right. It was Indian. It directed too much attention to Singh.”

  “Another thing,” said Charlie. “That damp patch on the cover of the sofa in their flat. It probably came off her apron; she’d been washing up pretty well nonstop all evening.”

  “Yes. I think she leaned against the sofa to give herself purchase as she stabbed. When I thought about it, there was nobody else, other than Dawn, likely to leave that sort of wet patch.”

  “And provided she was back in time, she could wash off any blood in the sink in the bar.”

  “That’s it. She went back into the bar, and she acted as usual for the rest of the evening. She wanted the body found as late as possible, of course, so that the time of the murder would be reasonably open. So she expressed no great worry about Des’s nonappearance, and Dawn, and all the regulars in the bar, knew that Des was just the sort of person who would say he’d turn up and then not do so.”

  “He hated working in the bar,” said Charlie.

  “Yes, and it was only his wife who was inconvenienced. He treated her like a skivvy, and he didn’t care who knew it. By closing time she thought it would be all right for the body to be found, so she talked to Frank and began to express worry. For a plan that was largely improvised at short notice, it was extremely cunning. It could very well have worked—except that I rather think that if we had charged anybody else, Win would have come forward and confessed. I can’t see her letting Brad Mallory take the rap for her.”

  “Interesting question,” said Charlie: “Would we have believed her confession?”

  “That’s rather a frightening thought,” agreed Dundy.

  The fair-haired head of the new manager appeared at the dining room door.

  “Sorry to intrude. I’ve just been on the phone to head office. They’re glad it’s all cleared up, though the fact that it’s Mrs. Capper does tie it in rather unpleasantly with the chain. But they’ve told me to make it plain that they’ll do everything in their power in the matter of legal advice, defense, and so on. The director was very insistent on this. Blames himself a lot, as I said before. Feels that if he hadn’t pushed for Capper’s appointment none of this would have happened. And of course he feels very cut-up about the boy. . . .”

  “I can’t see the police pushing very strongly for a heavy sentence,” said Dundy. “It would be hard to argue that she’d be a danger to anyone else in the future. The courts take a surprisingly lenient view, sometimes, these days, especially in cases of domest
ic murder.”

  They heard a sound from the stairs, and the policemen went out into the foyer. Win was coming down the stairs. Dawn was following, carrying a small suitcase. Win needed no help now. She was quite composed. As Charlie and Nettles went out to usher her from the door to the waiting police car, Dundy went forward to take her arm. She smiled at him, a smile he had not seen before, with some faded prettiness in it.

  “I feel much happier now,” she said.

  Chapter 17

  The Webster

  MUCH LATER that day, after a long interrogation of Win Capper, the policemen came back to the Saracen. The play was just over, and the audience was streaming out of the great gates or into the three bars. It had been full, of course. If it had not been booked solid before, the murder would have seen to it that it would be now. Rumors that an arrest had been made had rather disappointed most playgoers as they arrived. Secretly many of them had cherished the unlikely hope that at some point in the evening a uniformed cop would stride onstage and arrest somebody, preferably one of the Galloways. Now that would be something to tell one’s grandchildren!

  The policemen collected up their papers and anything they thought might conceivably be used as evidence at the trial. They told the temporary manager that the flat would be available to him in a few days, but he said he didn’t fancy it and would use one of the hotel bedrooms. Then there was really nothing more to be done. Yet Charlie and Nettles felt that Dundy was oddly reluctant to be gone. He surely wasn’t getting a taste for arty people, was he? Awkwardly they made conversation.

  “You’d better be booking your ticket sharpish, hadn’t you, sir?” asked Nettles.

  “Ticket?”

  “For The Chaste Apprentice. You’ll want to see a performance, won’t you, after all we’ve heard about it?”

  “I suppose it might be an idea. I expect they’ll let me in if I say I need it to set the seal on my case. As a Ketterick man I can’t think why I’ve never seen a play here before.”