A Choice of Victims

by J F Straker

  ‘What inconsistencies?’ Frances asked.

  ‘The first was on the day Mrs Doyle disappeared. When I saw him that evening he spoke of her in the past tense. “She didn’t like being photographed”,’ he said, when I asked for one. With hindsight one can see that that was significant. But at the time it really meant nothing. There was no suggestion that she might be dead, you see, let alone murdered. She had merely gone missing in what we then believed to be her own car.’

  ‘Brandy?’ Tom said. ‘It’s either that or Cointreau.’

  Both Hasted and Sybil declined a liqueur. ‘What was the other inconsistency?’ Frances asked.

  Hasted explained how, for the purpose of eliminating irrelevant fingerprints, he had asked Andrew if he had driven the Morris prior to the murder, and how Andrew had told him he had used it to collect timber from Bates’s yard. ‘So I checked with Rory. I didn’t doubt Andrew. But if Rory or Sam had helped him load up I’d have needed their prints too.’

  ‘And?’ Tom prompted, as Hasted paused.

  ‘Rory said neither he nor his father had touched the car. He had shown Andrew the timber and left him to it. He also told me that the timber consisted of half a dozen oak posts, each seven foot long. They wouldn’t have gone in the boot.’

  ‘Did Andrew say they had?’

  ‘Not in so many words. But when he told me he’d collected the stuff, I said, as near as I can remember, “So your fingerprints would be all over the boot,” and he agreed that they would. The implication was definitely there.’

  ‘That he’d used the boot, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you think he was providing an explanation for why his fingerprints were there? As presumably they were.’

  Hasted nodded. ‘I do now. I didn’t at the time. Or not for long.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because only minutes after speaking to Rory I was told, by someone I believed to be a reliable witness—I’m not mentioning names—that he had seen Andrew crossing the Green shortly after one o’clock. And that, if you don’t already know, was around the time Mrs Doyle was leaving Philipson’s cottage.’

  ‘Which meant he couldn’t have killed her,’ Tom said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Frances refilled the coffee cups. Putting down the pot, she said, ‘But he did kill her. So presumably your witness wasn’t as reliable as you thought, George.’

  ‘No.’ Hasted wanted to use her Christian name, but was embarrassed—as he had been throughout dinner—by Tom’s presence. ‘Unfortunately I didn’t discover that until I questioned him again on the day Andrew was killed.’

  ‘What prompted you to do that?’ Tom asked.

  Hasted smiled. ‘Information supplied by the Holden family.’

  ‘All!’ Frances sat up. ‘Now for the nitty-gritty! What information, George?’

  On the day of the murder, Hasted reminded her, Victor and Natalie had returned home from West Deering through the woods. ‘You may remember we discussed this, Frances,’—there, he thought, I’ve done it!—‘and we calculated they would have been in the ride from roughly ten minutes to one until five minutes past. Now—’

  ‘You calculated, George. Not me.’

  ‘All right, I calculated. Anyway, according to George Grover, Andrew had left the Falcon at ten to one, and another witness had seen him enter the ride about the same time. Yet your two hadn’t met him. They had seen someone in the distance, but they were positive it wasn’t Andrew. And they were right. It wasn’t.’

  ‘Who was it, then?’

  ‘No matter. He had nothing to do with the murder. But if Andrew didn’t meet your two he must have taken the track past Philipson’s cottage. That didn’t necessarily make him the murderer. But it meant he had lied about the route he had taken. It also meant he was unlikely to have reached the Green before a quarter past one at the earliest. So either your two had got the times wrong, or my West Deering witness was way out. I decided the latter was the more likely.’

  ‘Very proper,’ Tom said. ‘We Holdens are thoroughly reliable. Are you sure you won’t have a brandy?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘May I change my mind?’ Sybil said. ‘I’d like a Cointreau.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Poor Sybil!’ Frances said. ‘You must be bored stiff. You’ve heard all this before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Not all,’ Sybil said. ‘And after such a delightful dinner I’m too contented to feel bored.’

  Tom handed her a Cointreau. ‘So you confronted this unreliable witness, did you?’ he asked.

  ‘Not right away,’ Hasted said. ‘I couldn’t. It was a Saturday, and the—well, he wasn’t available over the weekend. But I saw him on the Tuesday and he admitted he had lied. It wasn’t shortly after one o’clock when he saw Andrew crossing the Green, he said, but nearer half-past.’

  ‘Weren’t you furious?’ Frances asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Hasted said. ‘I should have been, I suppose, but I wasn’t. Just relieved to know I’d got it right. Besides, he hadn’t realized the time was important. He was trying to protect his own image.’

  On the morning of the day Andrew was killed, Tom said, while he and Hasted were having coffee with David Doyle at the Manor, Hasted had made the astonishing assertion that Cheryl Mason had been in no danger from the man who had threatened her the previous Sunday evening, that the man had had no intention of actually assaulting her. ‘I was sceptical about that,’ Tom said. ‘Your reasons for the assumption didn’t really impress me. Still, it seems you were right. But what made you associate Andrew with the incident? That seemed even more unlikely.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Hasted admitted. ‘Although obviously he was in the forefront of my mind. Besides, it seemed such a lucky coincidence that he should be around just when he was needed. I also thought it strange that a young man who was crazy about cars should have chosen to walk here and back when he could have used the Fiat. Anyway, I—’

  ‘He didn’t walk here,’ Frances said. ‘We collected him after church. Him and Blondie.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Hasted said. ‘Anyway, it was a possibility I couldn’t ignore. Hence my visit to you on the Monday.’

  ‘You were always visiting,’ Frances said. ‘What was special about that Monday? No, don’t tell me. I remember now. You said you had a problem. You wanted to know what time Andrew had left here the day before to walk home.’ She frowned. ‘What time did I say?’

  ‘Six-thirty. Which made the possibility a near certainty. It would have brought Andrew to the Philipson track some twenty minutes before the incident occurred.’ Hasted looked from one to the other. ‘The conclusion is obvious, isn’t it? For that twenty minutes he was just marking time for Mrs Mason to scream and come running.’

  ‘You mean it was a put-up job between him and the man who threatened her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why? What was the point?’

  ‘To divert possible suspicion away from Andrew. They had discovered we were considering the possibility that Mrs Doyle had been killed in mistake for Mrs Mason. Faking an attack on Mrs Mason, they reasoned, would bolster that theory. And Andrew could have had no conceivable motive for killing her.’

  ‘Discovered?’ Tom said. ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hasted admitted. ‘But Victor was in the hall while I was outlining the theory to Frances, and he may have overheard me and told Andrew. Andrew was out in the garden, with Natalie.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Frances was shocked. ‘He wouldn’t!’

  ‘Why not?’ Hasted said. ‘It was an interesting piece of information. Why shouldn’t he pass it on to a friend? It would be the natural thing for a boy to do.’ Frances still looked worried, and he added, ‘Anyway, that’s only a guess. I could be wrong.’

  ‘And you could be right,’ Tom said. ‘That damned door never shuts properly unless you slam it. But about this other chap you’ve arrested, George Bassett. Tony Bassett. I’m
told he’s been charged with using threatening behaviour. That covers the bogus attack on Mrs Mason, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, that was only for starters. He’s also the blackmailer Andrew spoke of to Patricia.’ Hasted smiled. ‘And I wouldn’t be telling you that if he hadn’t confessed.’

  ‘How did you know it was him?’

  ‘We didn’t know. But it was a fair assumption. He was in the woods at the time of the murder, and who but Bassett would have thought of blackmailing someone into burglary? Anyway, we took a chance and searched his place. With his permission, of course. He was happy for us to do it—thought we were looking for the Scotts’ silver, you see. “You’ve turned me over once,” he said. Which we had. But that was for the silver. Now we were looking for the weapon. He didn’t know that.’

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘Yes. In his shed. And when we confronted him with it he coughed the lot.’ Hasted refrained from mentioning that they had led Bassett to believe that Andrew’s confession to Patricia had been more comprehensive than in fact it was. ‘He may be a villain, but he has enough sense to know when he’s beat.’

  ‘George and I have been wondering about Mrs Doyle,’ Sybil said. ‘Was she really as cruel to Andrew as he made out? What do you think, Tom?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Tom said. ‘I suspect he suffered from paranoia. A persecution complex. I’ve no doubt she could be unsympathetic—downright unkind, even—but I think he probably magnified her obduracy out of all proportion. But to return to that morning at the Manor, George. David rang me later and said you had told him you knew who had killed Elizabeth. Did you? Tell him, I mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why? He was almost certain to pass the information on to Andrew.’

  ‘Of course. That’s what I wanted. I hoped it might push Andrew into doing something rash.’

  ‘It did,’ Sybil said. ‘He killed himself.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not fair, Sybil!’ Frances protested. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘I know.’ Sybil reached for her husband’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Sorry, darling. I wasn’t getting at you. Just stating a fact.’

  He squeezed back. ‘It is also a fact,’ he said. ‘that, accident apart, it worked. Having blurted it all out to Patricia—I don’t think he saw it as a confession—he had no way back. He was caught.’ Hasted shook his head. ‘It’s never happened to me before: to know that someone is guilty and to know too that you haven’t the evidence to prove it. One feels both elated and frustrated. Or I did.’

  ‘No evidence at all?’ Frances asked, surprised.

  ‘Nothing that would stand up in court,’ Hasted said. ‘Except that it would never have got that far.’

  ‘So if he hadn’t confessed to Patricia and then had that accident, he’d still be free, would he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Hasted reached into his pocket and placed a key on the coffee table. ‘Because of that,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’ Tom said. ‘I know it’s a key but—well, what of it?’

  ‘It’s a symbol,’ Hasted said. ‘Actually it’s my spare ignition key. But it represents the key to the boot of the Morris, which Andrew locked after he’d put Mrs Doyle’s body inside.’ He picked up the key and held it between thumb and forefinger. ‘Scores of men spent scores of hours searching for it, with no success and precious little hope. It could have been anywhere. Buried—thrown into undergrowth—at the bottom of a pond. Anywhere.’

  ‘And you found it?’ Frances asked.

  ‘Yes. Or rather, it was handed to me. By Andrew’s father.’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ Hasted said. ‘If you remember, Tom, it started to rain while we were at the Manor that Tuesday morning. By the time I left it was pelting down. So Doyle lent me an anorak—one of Andrew’s—and I found the key in a pocket. Andrew must have put it there after locking the boot, intending to dispose of it later. And then forgot. And he wouldn’t have used the anorak again. There had been no rain since.’

  They stared at the key as if mesmerized. Then Hasted put it back in his pocket and Frances said, ‘Would that have convicted him?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  She shook her head. ‘I wonder if he could have coped with prison life.’

  ‘People do. And he’d still have been a young man when he came out.’

  ‘Well, it’s all very sad,’ Sybil said. ‘But if you’ve quite finished with my husband I think I should take him home. I promised Eileen we wouldn’t be late.’

  ‘Of course.’ Sybil stood up. Then she sighed. ‘Fate can be very cruel sometimes, can’t it? I mean, when George and the other officers went to the Manor that day to arrest Andrew they missed him by only a few minutes. That’s so, isn’t it, George?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hasted said.

  ‘But think what a difference it would have made if you’d been—well, ten minutes earlier, say.’

  Hasted nodded. He had thought about it a great deal. If he had not been so damned selfish, so concerned for his image with the community—if he had not waited for Driver but had made the arrest himself, as any right-minded copper would have done—young Andrew Doyle would still be alive. The memory of that, Hasted suspected, would be with him for a long time to come.

  ‘Mind you,’ Frances said. ‘you were a loser too, George, in a way, weren’t you? You’d worked so hard on the case—and then, when you’d finally got it all together—well, didn’t you somehow feel cheated at not being able to make the arrest?’

  Hasted looked at Sybil. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t feel cheated.’

  If you enjoyed reading A Choice of Victims, you might be interested in Death on a Sunday Morning by J F Straker, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Death on a Sunday Morning by J F Straker

  1

  With her wrists bound behind her back and her ankles tied to the legs of the chair, Rose Landor sat at her husband’s desk and strained her ears in an attempt to make sense of the muffled sounds and voices that filtered through to her from beyond the closed door of the office. She was more worried than frightened, for neither she nor Brian had been treated roughly and the men had curtly apologised for tying her up. She was also tired and physically distressed. Bound as she was, she could not relax her body against the chair or rest her head, and for what seemed like time interminable but was probably little more than half an hour she had been forced to sit upright. Her limbs ached, her eyes were hot and the lids heavy. Spasms of cramp attacked her soles and her thighs; and although her ankle bonds were sufficiently loose for her to dispel some of the pain by standing up, without the use of hands and arms the struggle to lift herself off the chair became increasingly hard.

  Her main fear was of the dark. Since childhood she had suffered from claustrophobia, and the longer she sat the more menacingly the darkness seemed to close in on her. To overcome her fear, as well as to ease the increasing stiffness in her neck, she kept turning her head from side to side in an attempt to locate familiar objects and so make the gloom seem less opaque. She knew the room well: modest in size, but high-ceilinged and with a noble cornice, with a good Wilton carpet on the floor and an attractive yet unobtrusive paper on the walls. The furniture was functional rather than decorative, although the tubular-framed chairs were comfortable and the large flat-topped desk was admirable for its purpose. Yet she could remember when the room had looked very different. Only a few years back Brian had constantly complained about its appearance. It gave a bad impression, Brian had said, for the manager to receive his customers in an office with rusting filing cabinets and stained wallpaper, with large cracks in the ceiling and worn carpet on the floor. But then in those days Westonbury had been something of a backwater, a small country town where the Tuesday market was the main feature of practically every week except Race Week. And even Race Week could be something of a non-event. The meeting was too insignificant to attract the big stables or the heavy p
unters. We’ll pretty you up in time, the Bank had told Brian. But right now our resources are fully stretched and Westonbury is low in priority.

  It was the arrival of Turnbull Motors that had changed the Bank’s attitude. Turnbull Motors were big, and with them had come a host of subsidiaries. New housing estates had sprung up on the periphery of the town to accommodate the influx of workers, new shops and services had opened to cater for the workers’ needs. Westonbury had become prosperous, and the Bank had reacted to its prosperity by starting work on larger and more suitable premises in the town centre. The new premises should have been ready the previous year, but there was still no firm date for completion. In the meantime the existing building, a converted Victorian dwelling-house, had been given a hasty facelift. Extra staff had been engaged and, although cramped for space, had so far managed to cope. Only during Race Week had the pressure become really excessive, for with the town’s new prosperity the meeting had grown in importance. In Race Week business was terrific.

  It was Race Week now. Or the end of it. And that, Rose Landor supposed, was why she was sitting in the dark in her husband’s office, bound hand and foot, waiting for Brian and the men to return and wondering what was to follow when they did.

  They had been watching the late night movie on television when the bell rang. She had opened the front door and there they were: two menacing figures in boiler suits, with wooden staves in their gloved hands and stocking masks over their heads. But despite their appearance their manner had been brusquely polite. They had urgent business at the bank, they told Brian, and needed his assistance; would he and his wife please get ready to accompany them? They hoped he would be cooperative, they said, because although they had no wish to get rough, rough was what they would get if he wasn’t. Brian had complied without argument; apart from the knowledge that resistance would have been futile, only a few months previously the Bank had issued instructions to all branches that under such circumstances they wanted no heroics from members of their staff. He had, however, queried the order for her to accompany them. Was that really necessary? They could lock her in a room without a telephone if they feared she might raise the alarm. But the men had insisted. They had their instructions, they said. The woman was to go with them.