A Choice of Victims

by J F Straker

  ‘About ten past one. And soaked to the skin.’

  ‘Do you happen to know where they went?’

  ‘West Deering way, I think. Through the woods.’ Frances leaned out through the window. ‘Victor! Natalie! Come in a minute, will you?’

  They came in, leaving the dogs with Andrew, who threw the ball for them once and then flopped onto his back, pushing them away as they tried to lick his face. Yes, Victor said, they had gone and returned through the woods, using the main ride that ran from the Falcon to near Plummer’s garage. What time would they have entered the ride on the way back? Hasted asked. Neither could give a certain answer to that. Well, how long would it take to walk from one end of the ride to the other? About fifteen minutes, they thought, after consultation with Frances. ‘Allow five minutes to get back here from the Falcon,’ Hasted said, ‘and if you were home at ten past one, as your mother says you were, then you must have entered the north end of the ride at around ten to. Would that be about right?’

  ‘If you say so, Mr Hasted,’ Victor said. ‘Actually, I’ve no idea. Once the rain started we weren’t bothering about the time. All we wanted was to get home as fast as we could.’

  ‘So you might have made it quicker than usual, eh?’

  ‘Not really,’ Natalie said. ‘The dogs kept wandering off and we had to wait for them. Eventually we had to put them on the lead.’

  ‘Not that that helped much,’ Victor added. ‘They kept stopping to sniff at something. And you’d be surprised how hard it is to shift them if they don’t want to be shifted. They may be small, but they’re solid.’

  ‘They look it,’ Hasted said, smiling. ‘Anyway, with you in a hurry but hampered by the dogs it would work out about par for the course, eh?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone in the ride?’

  ‘We didn’t actually meet anyone,’ Natalie said. ‘When we were nearing this end we saw a man coming towards us, but he turned off to the left before we reached him.’

  ‘Your left or his left?’

  ‘Our left.’

  ‘That would be on the track towards Mr Philipson’s cottage, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any idea who he was? Andrew, for instance. He came back through the woods.’

  Both shook their heads. ‘If definitely wasn’t Andrew,’ Victor said.

  Hasted pressed without success for a description of the man or his clothing. The man had been too far away, Natalie said, and with the rain driving into their faces he had been little more than a distant blur. Hasted wondered how, under those conditions, they could be sure it was not Andrew. But to them, of course, Andrew would be a familiar figure, recognizable at a distance. Apparently that did not apply to the man they had seen.

  With Smudge on her lap, purring loudly as she stroked him, Frances had listened to the interrogation with growing bewilderment. Now, putting down the cat, she said, ‘I don’t get it, George. What’s all this about?’

  He was envious of the ease, the lack of hesitation, with which she spoke his name. He wished he could speak hers as naturally. But he knew he could not, and he was not going to try in front of the children. He had seen the look of surprise on their faces when she called him George.

  ‘Could I have a word with you in private?’ he said. He smiled at the children. ‘Sorry about this. But I’m supposed to keep my confidantes to a minimum.’

  ‘Well?’ Frances demanded when the children had left. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m interested in the Marstons,’ he said. ‘They live just down the road from here, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes. In Lowfield Cottages. But why them, George? Oh, I see! Because of Bob Marston’s feud with Elizabeth.’ She grimaced. ‘Not a very potent motive for murder, surely.’

  ‘There’s another reason.’ He explained his theory that Elizabeth Doyle might have been killed in mistake for Cheryl Mason and why, if that were so, Marston could certainly be said to have a motive. ‘I’m probably chasing a red herring, of course,’ he said. ‘I know that. It’s an occupational hazard. All the same, I’d like to hear what you can tell me about them.’

  Most of what she told him he had already heard from Sybil, but the little extra was interesting. Some six years previously, Frances said, Marston had been arrested in Limpsted on a charge of common assault and had been bound over to keep the peace. ‘So far as I know he’s not normally violent,’ she said. ‘It’s just that he tends to go over the top when he’s had too much to drink. Or that’s what they say.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Well, it’s generally reckoned they’re pretty hard up. I suppose that’s because he spends so much time in the pub.’

  Natalie was back in the garden. She sat close to Andrew, one hand fondling the cairns, the other covering Andrew’s hand where it rested on the grass. Had Patricia Scott a rival? Hasted wondered. Was Natalie Holden also keen on the young man?

  Victor was on the telephone when they went into the hall. Outside the porch Frances said, ‘Am I to expect you tomorrow?’

  He laughed. ‘It’s not on the schedule, but you never can tell.’ After a momentary pause he added, ‘Goodbye—er—Frances.’

  She smiled. ‘Goodbye, George.’

  ‘That was Dad on the phone,’ Victor said, when she joined him. ‘He’s spoken to the electricity people. They’re delivering the new fridge on Monday.’

  ‘So we go the weekend without one, do we?’ She took his arm and squeezed it. ‘Well, I daresay we’ll manage.’

  As they went out to the garden Victor said. ‘You’re getting pretty matey with Mr Hasted, aren’t you, Mum?’

  ‘What if I am?’ Frances said. ‘He’s a nice person. I like him.’ Andrew stood up as they joined him and Natalie, and she smiled acknowledgment. ‘What are you all doing this morning?’

  ‘We thought we’d go swimming,’ Natalie said. ‘At the Scotts’. Victor and I were going on our bikes, but Andrew says he’ll drive us over. He’s got the car. And that way we can take the dogs.’

  ‘That’s kind of you, Andrew,’ Frances said. ‘You’ll stay for lunch when you get back, won’t you? Or will your father be expecting you?’

  ‘He’s away for the weekend, Mrs Holden.’

  ‘So you’ll be on your own tomorrow too?’ Frances shook her head. ‘Dear me, we can’t allow that! Come to lunch with us. No—’ as Andrew started to protest—‘I insist. Shall we pick you up after church, or would you rather drive over?’

  ‘Would there be room for Blondie if I come with you?’ Andrew asked. ‘Then I could walk her back. She needs the exercise.’

  ‘Of course.’ Frances picked up the ball and threw it—very inaccurately, so that it landed in a flower bed. ‘Damn!’ she exclaimed, as the three dogs scampered after it. ‘Well, off you go. Enjoy yourselves.’

  *

  Driver did not go directly to headquarters. He rang for a police car and drove to the garage where his Rover was being repaired. Monday, the manager told him, she should be ready Monday. Tuesday at the latest. It was close on ten o’clock when he finally reached his office, to be told that a Miss Scott had telephoned earlier and had left a message, asking him to call her. Puzzled, Driver obeyed. ‘What is it, Felicity?’ he asked. ‘Missing me already, are you?’

  ‘You can cut the funny stuff, James,’ she said crisply. ‘We’ve been burgled.’

  ‘Good Lord! Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘I’ll be right over,’ he told her.

  Normally he would have handed such an investigation to a subordinate, but this was Felicity and he went himself, along with a Detective Sergeant Elphick and the necessary back-up team. Entry had been obtained by forcing a window in the large sitting room, and this provided the only sign of damage. There was none of the mess or the wanton destruction or spoliation so often associated with modern burglaries.

  ‘We’ve got a right tidy one here, sir,’ Elphick said
. ‘Makes a nice change, doesn’t it?’

  Driver turned away from examining the window. ‘Any idea what’s been taken?’ he asked Felicity.

  ‘Some of the silver, for a start,’ she said. ‘Not the really valuable stuff. That’ll be in the safe. And they’ve emptied mother’s and Patricia’s jewel boxes. I don’t know what was in them, but I imagine it would be mostly costume jewellery. That sort of thing. Nothing of real value.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not clued up on the parents’ possessions. You’ll have to ask them.’

  ‘They’re in Greece.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How about the safe?’

  ‘It looks all right to me.’ She smiled. ‘To a laywoman, that is. But no doubt you’ll check.’

  The safe was in the study, and it was clear that no attempt had been made to tamper with it. Nor were there any indications that the intruder had searched the rest of the house. Everything appeared to be in order. If doors or drawers had been opened they had been closed again, leaving the contents undisturbed. ‘Obviously he was in no hurry,’ Driver said, leading the way back to the sitting room. ‘Which suggests he knew the house was unoccupied and that he was in no danger of being disturbed.’

  ‘When do you suppose it happened?’ Felicity asked.

  Driver shrugged. ‘Can you contact your father?’

  ‘Yes. But is that necessary? He’ll probably take the next flight home, and he needs this holiday.’

  ‘That’s up to him,’ Driver said. ‘But until we know what’s missing we won’t know what we’re looking for.’

  ‘I can tell you about the silver,’ she said. ‘Or some of it.’

  ‘It’ll make a start,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know Tony Bassett, sir?’ Elphick asked. Driver shook his head. ‘He’s a local tea-leaf. Been done twice for burglary. And he specializes in nicking silver.’

  ‘Does he, though! Interesting.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But he lives over at Compton Rye, and I’ve never known him work so close to home.’

  ‘There’s always a first time.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But although he doesn’t go in for wilful damage he—’

  ‘That fits,’ Driver said.

  ‘Yes, sir. Except that he’s also bloody untidy. Like if he pulls out a drawer it stays out. Know what I mean? He’s clumsy, too. Things get knocked over and he doesn’t bother to pick them up. Clearing up after a visit by Tony Bassett can be quite a job. That doesn’t fit this one, does it?’

  ‘No,’ Driver agreed. ‘It certainly doesn’t. But have a word with him all the same.’

  *

  Unlike his colleague, Detective Constable Burbidge, Elphick had interviewed Tony Bassett on previous occasions. He did not consider the man to be particularly smart—not with two previous convictions—but he had a certain cunning. He was also, in Elphick’s opinion, an incorrigible villain who would stoop to any crime that might show a profit and did not involve violence. Yet it was difficult to dislike him as a person. In his confrontations with the police he was always cheerfully polite, treating them more as friends than as enemies. It was as if crime were a game, and if occasionally the police won he accepted it philosophically and without a grudge. That was how it was with games. One did not expect to win them all.

  ‘You must be joking, Mr Elphick,’ Bassett said, leading the way into the neat sitting room. ‘Me pull a job in my own manor? I’m not that daft.’

  ‘We all go over the top occasionally,’ Elphick said. ‘And it had your trademark.’

  ‘Like the silver, you mean?’

  ‘That in particular,’ Elphick said. No sense in mentioning the disparities.

  ‘So someone’s using my M.O.,’ Bassett said. ‘It happens. You know that, Mr Elphick.’

  ‘You’ll have an alibi, of course,’ Burbidge said, with heavy sarcasm.

  Bassett smiled at him. ‘What sort of an alibi was you thinking of, Mr Burridge?’ he asked politely. ‘I mean, you don’t—’

  ‘Burbidge.’

  ‘Sorry. But honest folk don’t have alibis, do they? Not for that time of night.’

  ‘What time of night?’ Elphick said quickly.

  ‘Any time of night, Mr Elphick. They’re asleep in their beds, aren’t they? And if they’re single like me they don’t have wives to swear they never left them. That makes if difficult, don’t it?’

  ‘You have a sister,’ Burbidge said.

  Bassett managed to look shocked. ‘You don’t think we share a room, do you, Mr Burridge?’

  ‘Burbidge,’ the constable corrected again. ‘No, of course I don’t, man. But we’d like to hear what she has to say.’

  ‘Of course.’ He got up briskly and went to the door. ‘Moira! Come here, love, will you? These gentlemen want to talk to you.’

  Moira Bassett was several years older than her brother, and although both were slimly built there was little facial resemblance. She had grey hair framing a pale grey face, drawn into a tight little bun at the back of her neck. Hair sprouted from a mole on her right cheek and she had the suspicion of a moustache. But when she smiled, as she did now rather warily, her lips parted to reveal perfect teeth and the grey eyes seemed to gain sparkle.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Elphick,’ she said, and nodded politely at Burbidge.

  They stood up, murmuring greetings. ‘Someone’s done the Scott place over at West Deering,’ Bassett told her. ‘Last night. And seeing as some silver was took they think it might be me. Mr Elphick knows I’m partial to silver.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ she said. The smile had gone. Now she looked puzzled.

  ‘I told them I didn’t go out last night, but they don’t seem to believe me.’ He gave a sigh of resignation. ‘You tell them, Moira.’

  ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Really. We watched telly until it closed down and then went to bed.’

  ‘After a cup of tea,’ Bassett explained. ‘We always have a cup of tea before bed.’

  ‘That’s no alibi, Bassett, and you know it,’ Burbidge said. ‘A patrol checked the house around midnight, so the break-in must have taken place after that. You could have done the job while your sister was asleep.’

  Bassett shrugged. ‘Maybe I could of, Mr Burridge, but I didn’t.’ This time Burbidge did not bother to correct him. ‘Must be a good four miles to the Scotts’ place. You think I’d hump the stuff all that way?’

  ‘We didn’t suppose you went on foot,’ Elphick said. ‘You have a car, haven’t you? A clapped-out old Buick, if I remember alright.’

  ‘So I have, Mr Elphick. Only I didn’t have it last night, see? It’s in Plummer’s garage. I left it there yesterday morning to have the brakes relined.’

  Elphick sighed. He was on a loser and he knew it. Bassett would not be fool enough to lie about the car, and he certainly would not have tackled the job without one. Add to that the dissimilarities he had pointed out to the superintendent, and the significance of the silver became almost minimal. There was also Moira Bassett’s reaction to their visit. On previous occasions she had been nervous and apprehensive, her attitude suggesting that she either knew or suspected her brother to be guilty. She was not like that this morning. Bewildered at first, uncertain why they had come, she had been relieved to discover they were investigating a crime of which she obviously believed her brother to be innocent.

  As perhaps he was.

  ‘You want to take a look round, Mr Elphick?’ Bassett asked. ‘Just as a formality, like. We don’t mind, do we, Moira?’

  ‘Not so long as they’re careful,’ she said.

  Elphick stood up. ‘May as well, now we’re here,’ he said. ‘Like you said, just as a formality.’

  He knew that was all it would be.

  *

  Twice during that Saturday afternoon Hasted tried to contact the Marstons, much to Sybil’s displeasure; it’s our first day home, she said, and you’ve hardly given us a moment. When a further visit in the evening was also unsu
ccessful, he checked, at Sybil’s suggestion, with Monica Ebbutt, to learn that the family was spending the day with Bob Marston’s brother in Eastbourne and was unlikely to be home much before midnight. ‘Which means I’ll have to go over there again in the morning,’ he told Sybil. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I know it’s Sunday. But you know how it is.’

  ‘I should do,’ she said. ‘But can you leave it until after Matins? I’d like to go, and I’d like you and Jason to come with me.’

  ‘How about Martin?’

  ‘Eileen’s coming in.’ She squeezed his thigh. ‘Please, darling! You can spare an hour out of a Sunday morning, can’t you?’

  Yes, he said, of course he could. ‘I also need a word with Andrew Doyle,’ he said. ‘But I can fit that in between breakfast and church.’

  ‘Will the burglary at the Scotts’ place involve you at all?’

  ‘No. Adam Elphick is handling that.’

  He was surprised to find Mrs Trotter at the Manor when he called there the next morning. No, she agreed, she did not usually come in Sundays, only Mr Doyle was away for the weekend and had asked her to fix something for Andrew’s lunch. ‘Except that he won’t be here for lunch,’ she said. ‘Going to the Holdens, he says, when I took him up a cup of tea.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ Hasted asked. ‘I’d like a word with him.’

  ‘Still in bed,’ she said. ‘And that’s not like him at all, Mr Hasted. He’s not one for lying in bed of a morning, isn’t Andrew. More like early to bed and early to rise.’ She shook her head. ‘He looked proper poorly when I went up. Could be he’s sickening for something. But I’ll give him a call, shall I?’

  ‘Please,’ Hasted said. ‘I won’t keep him long, tell him.’

  He was enjoying the sunshine in the garden when the young man, bare-footed and wearing jeans and a T-shirt, came out to join him. Mrs Trotter was right, Hasted thought, he does look poorly. There were dark shadows under his deep-set eyes, which seemed to have receded even further into his skull, and his movements lacked the spring of youth.

  ‘Mrs Trotter said you wanted to see me,’ Andrew said.

  Hasted came straight to the point. ‘You told me you were in the Falcon the morning your stepmother was killed,’ he said. ‘Who else was there?’