The Monday Theory

by Douglas Clark

  “My desk is only about four feet away from Golly’s. We’re packed in there like . . . well, we’re short on space but our editor says with the price one has to pay for every square foot of room in London offices he’s going to install double-decker desks and make us . . .”

  “So you are seated near enough to . . . what is she? Miss or Mrs? Lugano’s desk to overhear all that goes on?”

  “She calls herself Mizz actually—you know, emm ess. I can hear every word she says to anybody. And she smokes like a chimney.”

  “I see. Mrs Carvell came in a week last Monday morning at eleven o’clock. What did you overhear on that occasion?”

  Heddle gave a fairly accurate account of the meeting between Golly Lugano and Rhoda Carvell. He mentioned the proposed article on the restoration of capital punishment and the fact that Rhoda intended to spend some time at the cottage celebrating with Woodruff her freedom from the Professor.

  “Then what?” demanded Masters.

  Heddle looked slightly uncomfortable. “She turned to me and asked me how I was.”

  “Mrs Carvell did?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say, lad?” asked Green. “Good morning Mr Heddle. How are you?”

  “What she said exactly was . . .”

  “I’m listening, lad.”

  “And how’s Nettle today, my little Stinging Nettle?”

  “She said what?” demanded Green. “Nettle? Was that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So this smart, well-dressed woman, who ignored all the other men on the floor, spoke to you, did she? My little Stinging Nettle!”

  “She’d called me that for about four months.”

  “Why?”

  “It was just her way.”

  “She’d got some reason, son. Why you and nobody else?”

  There was a moment or two of silence.

  “Answer please,” said Masters. “Otherwise I shall assume there was something going between the two of you. Four months ago, you said. That would make it June. What happened in June?”

  “It was nothing,” said Heddle truculently. “I’d gone down to her cottage on the Sunday.”

  “Why?” demanded Green. “I thought you said you’d never got next to her?”

  “I went to pick up her copy. She was going on holiday on the Monday and asked Golly if she could send somebody down to collect it because she didn’t want the fag of coming back to town.”

  “She could have posted it,” accused Green. “So why did you go? You’re not a messenger.”

  “I was there when she came in and spoke to Golly about it,” expostulated Heddle. “Golly said she couldn’t send anybody. Not on Sunday. Mrs Carvell would have to post it. Mrs Carvell said the last post out was midday on Saturday and the copy wouldn’t be ready then because there was some event on the Saturday afternoon which would be featured—something to do with tennis or Ascot or something.”

  “And?”

  “She said God knew when the next post went out from that area and there’d be some artwork she didn’t want bending in the post.”

  “So?”

  “So I said I was doing nothing on the Sunday and I’d fetch the material if she’d tell me where the cottage was.”

  “You went out there, spent the day with her and came back? Did you go to bed with her?”

  “There was nothing like that.”

  “No?” demanded Green. “What was there something like?”

  “We sunbathed.”

  “Ah! She got into a bikini, I suppose? One of those that showed the top half of her bottom at the back and the top half of her top at the front?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And the two of you sunbathed all day, with you lying next door to a tasty bit of capurtle that you’ve admitted to admiring and you want us to believe that nothing else happened? Not even a cuddle? Not even a bit of smoochy talk? Come on lad! Why should she keep you there all day when all you’d gone for was to collect a parcel? Come to think of it, why did you go prepared to sunbathe if you hadn’t thought there was something in it for you?”

  “Her husband was there.”

  “Sunbathing?”

  “No.”

  “He was in the house?”

  “No.”

  “So where was he exactly?”

  “About.”

  “Please be a little more forthcoming, Mr Heddle,” said Masters. “If you persist in being evasive, your attitude will only reinforce our belief that you have something to hide. Where was Professor Carvell that day?”

  “He’d gone down there, along the beach, looking for fossils or rocks or something. I don’t know what he was after exactly, but he didn’t show up till late in the afternoon. Rhoda said she didn’t even know he was there.”

  “Thank you. I take it the cottage is near the sea?”

  “About two hundred yards inland.”

  “Right,” said Green. “So where does this stinging nettle come in?”

  “Perhaps,” said Reed, “you did try it on, but the only bed you managed to get her into was a bed of nettles.”

  Heddle looked round wildly. “Why won’t you believe me? I tell you I didn’t do anything like that.”

  “There must have been some reason for her to give you a nickname like that.”

  “I’d bought a pound of strawberries on the way down there. From one of those stalls they set up on the roadside outside country cottages. She ate a lot of them, straight out of the bag, while we were lying out in the garden. About an hour later she’d developed a rash across her stomach. It looked like nettle rash. She said she’d had it once before with strawberries and she thought it could be because she hadn’t washed them before she ate them.”

  “I’ve heard of that in other people,” growled Green. “So Mrs Carvell fooled about saying you’d caused it? Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Doctor those strawberries? Put something on them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why did she blame you for causing the rash on her belly?”

  “I told you it looked like nettle rash, and as she’d already started to call me Nettle, for some reason . . .”

  “I think I understand,” said Masters. “Did Mrs Carvell ever invite you to her cottage again?”

  “No.”

  “But you did see Professor Carvell there that day?”

  “He came back just before tea. We talked a bit.”

  “Did he dislike the idea of his wife spending the day sunbathing with another man?”

  “Not that I could tell. He was a nice enough chap, I seem to remember. There was no aggro about me being there.”

  “Doddering old professor, is he, looking for fossils?” asked Green.

  “He’s a strong-looking, well set-up chap of not much more than forty. A bit thick set and wearing nothing but a pair of navy-blue shorts, white tennis shoes and a terry towelling sun hat. He was as brown as a berry, with muscles like a weight-lifter and his hair was just going grey at the temples. If that sounds to you like a doddering old professor, you wait till you see him.”

  “Had he found any fossils?”

  “Yes. He had a cloth bag with him. One of those with a draw-string top, and I could see he’d got bits of something in it. He told me they were bits of rock. Oh, and he had a hammer, too. One of those with a flat end and a pick end. It looked a dangerous weapon to me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d never seen a geologist’s hammer before. I thought they were little things like those they used to use in shops for breaking up slabs of toffee. But this was much bigger and heavier than that, with a shortish, stubby handle. The way he held it I reckon he could have felled an ox with it.”

  “So he did threaten you, if not directly, then perhaps by implication?” said Masters.

  “No. No, he didn’t.”

  “You felt quite safe even though the hammer he held looked dangerous—to use your own words? Mr Heddle, a ge
ologist’s hammer cannot be considered dangerous unless it is held or wielded in a dangerous or potentially dangerous manner.”

  “Well, he didn’t threaten me. It was just that I sensed that were he ever to use it . . .”

  “What you are trying to say, Mr Heddle, is that the professor was himself a bit of an intimidating figure. Isn’t that it? He looked a bit of a pirate, dressed as you’ve described him, and pirates are, by tradition, bloodthirsty fellows?”

  “That’s exactly right,” gabbled Heddle, pleased that at least somebody seemed to be understanding and believing what he was saying. “I wouldn’t have liked to have crossed swords with him.”

  “Cutlasses,” grunted Green. “Pirates used cutlasses.”

  “Oh, yes. Of course.”

  “Right, lad. Let’s get back to the last time you saw her. She’d asked you how you were—her little Stinging Nettle.”

  “I said I was fine and that she looked well dressed in that suit, and she said she felt well and was looking forward to getting her freedom. I was a bit shocked because I hadn’t heard about the divorce, so I said she couldn’t be divorcing the professor just to get her freedom, because he’d seemed pretty easy-going to me. What I mean was he’d not worried about me being there all that Sunday, where some chaps might have.

  “And then she told me he was divorcing her. She said I wouldn’t understand, but easy-going men can curb a woman’s freedom just as much as an old stickler. Then she added that the dear professor wasn’t easy-going, just preoccupied with other things rather than her.”

  “Hold it there please,” said Masters. “What did you understand from that conversation? Was Mrs Carvell the sort of woman who pretended she liked her own way, but in reality would have been happier if her husband had been stricter or far more attentive?”

  Heddle thought for a moment or two before replying. “I’d never thought of it that way, Mr Masters, but I think you’re right.”

  “On what do you-base your conclusion?”

  “I’d never been able to guess what it was about her that made her sort of unsettled, but now you come to mention it . . .”

  “Please say whatever it was you were about to tell me.”

  “One day I heard Mrs Carvell say to Golly, who was making some derogatory remark about one of our girls who was going to get married to Purby, who’s a real no-nonsense character we have round here, I heard her say that this girl would likely be very happy with a man who took the trouble to be jealous about her. Just as if she, Rhoda, wouldn’t have minded somebody laying down the law to her once in a while. I must say it surprised me a bit at the time.”

  “You’re a very observant young man, Mr Heddle.”

  “I’m a reporter. I have to be, don’t I?”

  “It doesn’t necessarily follow. But please go on. Mrs Carvell had told you the professor was divorcing her and not vice versa. What then?”

  “I said I thought he was a fool if he was divorcing her, and she said that I’d paid her a pretty compliment. And that was about it. She had a few more words with Golly about her article, and then said she had to rush away because she’d got quite a lot to do before the divorce next day after which she was going off to her cottage for a few days to celebrate with Ralph Woodruff, her boyfriend.”

  “Did she leave the office then?”

  “She went straight out.”

  “And that was the last time you saw her?”

  “Well—not quite.”

  “Make up your mind, son,” growled Green. “You told us her visit to the office was the last time you’d seen her.”

  “It was—alive.”

  “You mean you’ve seen her body?”

  Heddle grimaced. “I discovered it.”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  At last, Masters spoke. “The West Sussex police have already interviewed you, Mr Heddle?”

  Heddle shuffled in his seat and a faint tinge of colour rose in his pale cheeks. “Well . . . no, they haven’t,” he confessed.

  “No? Are you saying they don’t know you’ve seen the two bodies?”

  Heddle didn’t reply.

  “You’re not very forthcoming, are you lad?” said Green. “I wonder what else you’re keeping hidden under that straggly thatch of yours?”

  “I haven’t hidden anything.” He looked from one to the other of the detectives in turn as if seeking some sympathetic glance. “Honest.”

  “We’ve been talking to you for thirty-five minutes,” growled Green, “and we’ve only just got to know that you discovered the bodies.” He put a pudgy clenched fist on the table. “In my book, boy, the discoverer of dead bodies shouts it from the housetops—if he’s innocent. And I’ll add something every budding crime reporter should know before he’s been in the job a week. And that is that people who discover murdered bodies are very often the people who have done the murdering.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. They can’t wait to show off their handiwork, so if nobody else will oblige with a rapid discovery, they come across their victims themselves—accidentally on purpose.”

  Heddle swallowed. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “Wasn’t it?” asked Masters. “Then suppose you tell us what it was like. We’ll be grateful to hear your version. To see how it stands up.”

  “How do you mean, stands up?”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you, Mr Heddle, that people who discover bodies are usually invited along to the nearest police station and questioned rather closely by the local CID? Yet you don’t appear to have been to any police station or even to have been interviewed by so much as a constable. In fact, you were free to ring the Assistant Commissioner before he was out of bed this morning. I find that slightly . . . shall we say, unusual?”

  “I told the local police.”

  “Did you now? When?”

  “Late last night—about eleven o’clock, I think.”

  “And after helping the local police you were back here in London before seven o’clock, making a nuisance of yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “When the West Sussex police spoke to me they didn’t mention your name, and I must say they let you go surprisingly quickly.”

  “I never saw them.”

  “How about stopping the story of what you didn’t do,” said Green wearily, “and starting to tell us what you did do?”

  “I did my duty as a citizen. I rang the police at Chichester and told them there were two dead bodies in the cottage.”

  “And they didn’t ask you to wait at the scene or call at the police station?”

  “No.”

  Green sighed heavily. “So what did, they do, lad? Tell you to forget it and go home?”

  “They asked me my name.”

  “And they haven’t been in touch with you yet?” asked Masters. “That does surprise me.”

  “They couldn’t get in touch. I didn’t give them my name.”

  Masters shook his head. “You’re a very foolish fellow, Mr Heddle. Foolish and irresponsible. How long do you suppose it would be before the West Sussex police tracked you down?”

  “I . . . I didn’t . . .”

  “You didn’t think they would find you?”

  “Oh, I knew they would, but . . .”

  “You wanted to hold them off for a bit. I wonder why?”

  “Because I was scared,” flared Heddle. “And after meeting you lot, I was right to be.”

  “You can hardly say we’ve beaten you up, can you?” asked Reed.

  “Let’s get back to business,” said Masters. “You say you made an anonymous phone call, Mr Heddle?”

  “Yes.”

  “You seem to like the telephone. I hope the Daily View can afford to pay the bill even if it can’t afford to rent more office space. I take it you did phone from here, and not at your own expense?”

  “Well . . .”

  “At about eleven o’clock last night, you said?”

  “Roughly.”

/>   “Presumably after returning from a visit to Mrs Carvell’s cottage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s have it, son,” urged Green. “What were you doing down there last night in the dark. What were you hoping to find or get?”

  “Copy.”

  Green groaned again. “Oh, no! Not playing the volunteer messenger boy again for this Lugano dame?”

  “I didn’t volunteer. Rhoda’s copy should have been in yesterday morning for today’s issue. It didn’t come. By the time the last delivery of mail had been, Golly was tearing her hair and cursing the Post Office for having lost it or held it up because Rhoda would never let her down.”

  “Didn’t she try to get in touch with Mrs Carvell?” asked Masters. “You people seem to like using the phone, so why not ring her?”

  “Golly tried. She knew Rhoda was down at the cottage and she rang umpteen times. There was no reply. And Golly got more and more angry. You don’t know her, but she’s a . . . well, she lives with another woman and she’s always sounding off against men and marriage, and she was saying some pretty basic things about Rhoda and her Ralph Woodruff being more interested in you-know-what than they were in business. It was a pretty acid display, I can tell you. I was quite pleased when I had to go out on a job in the afternoon, believe me.”

  Masters suddenly felt a surge of sympathy with young Heddle. He had not met Golly Lugano, but the memory of Mrs Cartwright still lingered with him, and he imagined that each, in her own way, could have the same effect upon men. So it was in a gentler, more conversational way that he urged the young reporter to continue with his account.

  “I got back to my desk about half-past five. I’d just got a few bits and pieces to file and after that I hoped to get away, but Golly grabbed me as soon as I got in. She’d been to see the editor about Rhoda’s piece not having turned up. Her column was popular, you know, and it was a bit of a disaster not having it for its regular Wednesday spot. The editor had said they could hold the space until everything else was ready to be put to bed. I suppose that meant until half-past ten or eleven. So he and Golly between them had decided that I should go down to the cottage as I knew where it was. I was to pick up Rhoda’s copy, bring it back, and everything would be fine.”