A Little Local Murder

by Robert Barnard

  • • •

  Arnold Mailer’s eyes had grey lines around them, but otherwise he seemed calm enough. He was in his study, away from the activities of the team of men who had let Parrish into the house and who were nearing the end of their job of taking the place apart. Cressida left the study when the Inspector was shown in, smiling briefly and rather beautifully. She had her mother’s looks and self-possession, thought Parrish as he watched her go, though not her complacency.

  From his reaction to Parrish’s first question it would seem as though nothing could have been further from Arnold Mailer’s expectations than to be asked about anonymous letters.

  ‘Good lord no, Inspector; here in Twytching? Surely someone’s having you on. It sounds too melodramatic for words.’

  ‘No question of that, sir, I’m afraid. Then you haven’t had one, and neither did your wife to your knowledge?’

  ‘Certainly not as far as I’m concerned. And I’m as sure as I stand here that if Alison had got one she’d have shown it to me.’ He paused almost sentimentally. ‘It would have amused her no end, Inspector. She found this rather a dead-end place, you know. She liked to – what’s the phrase? – épater les bourgeois. It would have tickled her to think she had done it to such good effect that someone wrote a poison-pen letter to her. It was that sort of thing you were meaning, was it, Inspector? Or was it some attempt at blackmail?’

  ‘As far as we can judge from the others,’ Parrish said carefully, ‘these are just poison-pen efforts. But the one often shades off into the other, or develops into it, you know. We’ve no means of knowing whether it did in this case or not.’

  ‘Alison certainly hadn’t had any money off me recently to pay blackmailers,’ said Mailer with a weary smile. ‘Though looking at a collection of gramophone records I’ve just discovered that I knew nothing about, she would have been wanting money pretty soon. She was a wonderful woman, Inspector, but she never could resist an impulse.’

  ‘And you can think of nothing that she might have been blackmailed about, sir?’ asked Parrish. ‘Nothing in her past?’

  ‘Good lord no, Inspector. The idea’s absurd. Just who has given you this crazy idea?’

  ‘Well, we know that some kind of anonymous letter was delivered here in the last few weeks.’

  Arnold Mailer thought for some moments. ‘That means old Amos Chipweather told you he’d brought one, I suppose. Well, I won’t try to teach you your job, Inspector.’ Courteously he let the sentence stand in the air.

  ‘So far as you are concerned, sir, you received no letter?’

  ‘Definitely not, Inspector.’

  ‘And your wife couldn’t have opened your mail for you?’

  ‘Absolutely not! What an idea! That sort of thing’s not on these days, is it?’

  Inspector Parrish, in common with the rest of Twytching, knew of one household where it certainly was on, but he refrained from pressing the matter. As things stood there seemed three possibilities. Either Mailer was lying and had received one; or his wife had opened it without telling him; or she had received one herself. On the whole the last seemed the most likely, but there was no evidence either way.

  At the top of the stairs Parrish had a word with Constable Lockett, who was co-ordinating the police endeavours around and in the house. Lockett was slow, but he had a hunting-dog’s thoroughness, and if he knew what he was looking for, he generally found it. The trouble was, Parrish thought, that he had been able to give him so few indications of what he should be looking for.

  ‘There’s very little, sir,’ said Fred. ‘Nothing personal from the lady’s side at all. No letters, like – only business things: insurance on her jewels, enquiries about things advertised in the newspapers, and that kind of thing. Only trace of blood anywhere is on the chopping board in the kitchen. Course we’ll go into it, but what would it tell us? Bound to chop a bit out of yourself now and then if you’re cooking, if my wife is anything to go by.’

  ‘Keep it up, Fred,’ said Parrish, and went down the stairs and through the hall, nodding to Cressida who was standing by the mantelpiece in the lounge thoughtfully sucking a pen. He closed the front door quietly and set off back to the station.

  During his talk with Arnold Mailer the This is Twytching team had moved on, and now the over-hygienic-looking American with the fearsome bonhomie was interviewing Mrs Carrington in her front garden. Mrs Carrington was a woman whose only claim to fame was a lethal line in home-made wines. Postmen and milkmen who had been plied with it tended to let their rounds go hang and sleep it off under nearby hedges. Some unsuspecting Seventh Day Adventists had once given a most curious impression of the tenets of their faith after a brief stop-over at Mrs Carrington’s. By the enthusiasm with which both interviewer and production team were quaffing it during the recording of the conversation (Harold Thring was holding aloft his glass and doing a silent but spirited imitation of a certain well-known soprano in the first act of Traviata) it seemed likely that the recording schedule would be only spasmodically adhered to on this occasion.

  ‘I think I’d like something operatic,’ Mrs Carrington was saying as Parrish passed. ‘Could I have “Because”?’

  It didn’t sound like being much of a programme.

  • • •

  ‘So unless Lockett and his gang find the letter,’ Parrish said to Sergeants Feather and Underwood, thinking what a handsome pair they made seated at Sergeant Feather’s desk, and how unlucky it was that Sergeant Underwood had the better brain, ‘we seem to have come to a bit of a dead-end in that direction.’

  ‘If only we could establish some kind of blackmail evidence,’ said Feather slowly. ‘It would at least show for certain why she was there at that time of night.’

  ‘Either giving or receiving, you mean?’ said Parrish. ‘Or perhaps just picking up. It’s a fair point, a possibility. But so far there’s no more than a shadow of a suggestion of it. And if she was receiving, then from whom? Who has money in Twytching?’

  ‘There’s not even a local squire,’ said Sergeant Underwood. ‘Or a property tycoon with a weekend cottage.’

  ‘There’s Jimson,’ said Feather. ‘If he hasn’t got a private income of some sort, then he’s certainly living beyond his means.’

  ‘You’ve got a grudge against him,’ said Parrish. ‘Did he keep you in after school for not being able to conjugate “amo”? It’s a big house for a schoolmaster, but it’s no mansion. Still, I suppose it could be worth looking into. Do you know where he banks?’

  ‘Eastern Provincial,’ said Stephen promptly. ‘We sometimes meet there.’

  ‘Really? And exchange frosty greetings, I suppose? So he did know one of my men was an old boy of his, did he? Cunning little bugger, making it all so hypothetical. Look – that’s where Alison Mailer banked too. Do you think you could go along to get the details on that, and try and get him to show you Jimson’s recent statements at the same time? I don’t know what sort of pressure you could use – threaten to withdraw your princely savings, perhaps.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Stephen. ‘But he does have a nasty Alsatian that takes chunks out of people now and then, so he likes to keep on the right side of the law. I’ll play it casual, and see how far he’ll step out of line.’

  As Stephen set a bloodhound expression on his face and went off, Parrish bent over the anonymous letters newly returned from the police labs in Barstowe, feeling he was looking at them for the umpteenth time.

  ‘That’s one line of enquiry,’ he said, ‘and the other is these little beauties. They worry me, Betty.’

  It was not often that he used Sergeant Underwood’s Christian name. She glowed.

  ‘They puzzle me,’ she said. ‘There’s something about the style – I can’t pin it down.’

  ‘Yes. Of course, whoever wrote them would be a bit limited by what he found in the papers, but still there does seem . . .’

  The telephone rang, and he took it up.

  ‘Yes . . . yes . . . that’s wh
at I guessed. Yes. No, nothing else for the moment. Thanks a lot for your help.’

  He replaced the phone. ‘That was Broadwich. They’ve been on to the BWC, as Livermore calls him. Sir Charles Watson. Never heard of Alison Mailer in his life. Says he meets all kinds of people, so he can’t swear he’s never seen her or met her casually, but he says he’s a good memory for names, and she quite definitely wasn’t a friend or acquaintance.’

  ‘As you thought, Inspector,’ said Sergeant Underwood.

  ‘Exactly. Naïve, these chaps like Livermore. Don’t know they’re born. Or perhaps he just couldn’t be bothered to check, since it was no skin off his nose. Still, it was a neat little idea on her part.’

  ‘Anyway, it certainly worked,’ said Betty Underwood, and then added: ‘Perhaps only too well.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Parrish thoughtfully. ‘You know, I’m puzzled by one thing. Both the Mailers say she had a lot of friends. Now would you have said that was true?’

  ‘Didn’t know the woman well enough,’ said Sergeant Underwood. ‘It’s not usually true with women of that type. Would you like me to do a bit of snooping round?’

  ‘Would you, Betty? Neighbours, parent groups from school, Mrs Leaze – all the obvious sources. Find out just who her friends were.’

  When she had gone Inspector Parrish sank back into his armchair, pleased to be on his own. He liked Betty Underwood, but it always made him sad that Stephen Feather wasn’t a bit brighter, and seemed destined not to go much further in the hierarchy of the Force. He just didn’t use his brain – or what was more pathetic, he did use it, and it got him nowhere. As with those letters, for example. He took up one of them again. Somewhere at the back of his mind a theory had been forming. It pleased him that he could pursue it without witnesses in case it fell speedily to the ground, as he feared it might. He was on very unknown territory for him. He took out a magnifying glass, with a strong sense of the ludicrous and of what Stephen would have said had he been there, and peered at some of the phrases on the letter. He went up closer and closer to the typewritten phrases, and muttered to himself: ‘“Fornication, adultery and all uncleanliness.”’

  He reached over to his desk and took up the phone.

  When he finally got through, the lady on the switchboard at Broadwich University was rather dubious:

  ‘The Professor of English literature. Well, that’s Professor Cant. What was it exactly you wanted?’

  Inspector Parrish explained.

  ‘Well, you could try him, I suppose,’ said the operator with great reluctance. He is the expert. I’ll put you through.’

  The extension rang several times before it was answered.

  ‘Yes, what is it, what is it?’ said a querulous voice.

  Inspector Parrish explained.

  ‘It is most inconvenient,’ said Professor Cant. ‘I always have to collect my thoughts before my big lecture, otherwise I lose the thread entirely!’

  ‘There are only three or four phrases,’ said Inspector Parrish. ‘I got on to you because the lady on the switchboard told me you were the Shakespeare expert.’

  ‘How would she know?’ said the peppery voice, refusing to be placated. ‘And what a vulgar description!’

  ‘Could I just read you the phrases?’ wheedled Parrish.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ said Professor Cant testily. ‘But I never was very good at guessing games.’

  ‘The first phrase that worries me,’ said Parrish, ‘is “fornication, adultery and all uncleanliness”.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Professor Cant.

  ‘Then there’s “masculine whore” and “a whore and a cuckold”.’

  ‘The second could be anywhere,’ said Professor Cant. ‘Shakespeare is full of whores and cuckolds.’

  ‘Then there’s “pigs barbecued in your own shit” . . .’

  ‘Really, that’s not a very nice thing to read me just after my lunch . . .’

  ‘And “personal screwing machine”.’

  ‘Well, the last two aren’t Shakespeare, I’m sure of that,’ said the voice of Professor Cant. ‘The others – well, really I don’t know. You could look up Partridge, I suppose – the Shakespeare bawdy man. I haven’t actually read those plays for years, you understand, not for years. I just lecture on them.’

  ‘I see,’ said Parrish. ‘Well, I suppose if you don’t know, there’s nobody there who would, is there?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Professor Cant, clutching at a straw. ‘Why don’t you try a research student? They have to read these things, you know, and it will probably be much fresher in their minds than mine. Let me get you switched over to Porson. He’s an able young chap, or so he says anyway. Terribly tiring, I know that. I’ll get you transferred.”

  And Professor Cant went off thankfully to his pre-lecture meditation. Porson was much more helpful, and came up with the answers as quick as a flash.

  ‘Yes, that’s Shakespeare,’ he said. ‘Troilus and Cressida. Probably Thersites. Yes, definitely, but I can’t tell you the act or scene. The other’s Measure for Measure – the whole play’s about fornication and adultery and that. It’ll probably be in the low comedy scenes somewhere.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Parrish, appreciating the proximity of a university for the first time. ‘What about “personal screwing machine”?’

  ‘Well, not Shakespeare, of course,’ said the prodigy. ‘Modern. It rings a bell. Could it be the young chap – Nick, isn’t it? – in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’

  ‘You could be right,’ said Parrish, who had seen the film and thanked his lucky stars for his bachelorhood for days afterwards. ‘What about “pigs barbecued in your own shit”?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s easy. That’s Osborne. Small Hotel in Amsterdam. Right at the end. The BADS are doing it, that’s how I know. The Broadwich Amateur Dramatic Society. Anything else? Well, glad to have been of help – any time, any time.’

  Parrish could picture him putting down the phone, and positively basking in his own cleverness. He reminded him of some of the people on University Challenge.

  That, so far as it went, was satisfactory. What Parrish couldn’t decide was how far it actually went. Not very, he feared, and very probably in the wrong direction at that. The trouble with this case . . . but his thoughts were interrupted by Constable Lockett, who brought him the results of the search of the Mailer home. He put them down on Parrish’s desk apologetically, like a dog who knows it has been sent to retrieve a partridge, but has found nothing bigger than a sparrow.

  ‘And if you can make anything much out of that lot,’ he said glumly, ‘I’ll be surprised.’

  The notes on the various parts of the house were indeed bare. From them, as from the house itself, one got an unlived-in feeling. It seemed like a house where someone regularly swept through, removing the evidences of humanity. Mrs Mailer, of course. Very much the de-humanizing type. No stacks of old magazines in her house, no sentimental treasuries of letters or mementos, no holiday snapshots or wedding groups. Parrish could guess how Alison would have reacted to the idea of displaying these last items. The Mailers’ lives seemed a beautiful bare surface. Only in Arnold Mailer’s study and Cressida’s little room were there vital signs of occupation, of human life going on: business papers, postcards from acquaintances, files of bills were found in the former; games, books and piles of school exercise books in the latter.

  Along with the inventory Lockett had brought along the few scraps of personal correspondence he had managed to lay his hands on in Alison’s own parts of the house. They concerned minor insurance business or purchases Alison had made or was contemplating. There was a bill from Harrods, and there were replies from advertisers in The Times – one from a firm dealing in villa holidays in Italy, the other from the makers of continental quilts.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ asked Sergeant Underwood when she came in later and found him mulling over this hoard and getting little out of it.

  ‘Nothing, nothing
at all,’ said Parrish. ‘I suppose you could say that was in itself interesting. Mrs Mailer was a woman who believed in covering her tracks, it seems.’

  ‘That’s my impression,’ said Sergeant Underwood.

  ‘Is it? No friends, no girls’-get-together groups?’

  ‘Nothing that I can find,’ said Betty Underwood. ‘Mrs Jimson said she dropped in if she wanted anything, but that there might be months between each visit. The children played together quite a lot, but obviously the mothers didn’t get on, though Mrs Jimson says they never had anything definite like a quarrel. Mrs Mailer had been to one or two parents’ evenings at the school when she first arrived, but she lost interest, and anyway the girl’s gone on to Barstowe Grammar. She seldom shopped in Twytching, and she antagonized everyone when she did by acting the colonel’s lady. So far as I can discover she had no close friends, male or female.’

  ‘That was my impression of the poor creature, I must admit,’ said Parrish. ‘And I can understand her having few friends, or none at all come to that, because she wasn’t a comfortable body to be with, I suspect. But the Mailers were deceived, so presumably she had business that took her somewhere now and then in the evenings. Where did she go? And what I don’t cotton on to is this habit of cleaning up behind her, so to speak. It seems almost obsessive. Why?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put too much weight on that,’ said Betty Underwood. ‘It’s common enough – just a more elaborate version of not wearing dirty underclothes in case you get run over. And then, if some people see something out of place, their fingers itch till it’s put back again.’

  ‘Seems just plain bloody unnatural to me,’ said Parrish. ‘And it certainly puts a full stop to our enquiries all down the line. Ah – here’s Stephen.’