A Little Local Murder

by Robert Barnard

  ‘That’s why I suggest you put this back on the bookshelf where you got it from,’ said Parrish. ‘Where would that be, by the way?’

  ‘Second shelf of the case nearest the window,’ said Withens. ‘You will be coming to see Deborah, then, will you?’

  ‘First thing tomorow morning,’ said Parrish. ‘Best to chivvy the breakfast along a little, if you can, sir. But don’t on any account alarm Mrs Withens before I come.’

  ‘No, no, on no acount. Quite, absolutely,’ bumbled Ernest, clearly working around to another difficult point. ‘I suppose you will be forced to arrest her, won’t you, Inspector?’

  It was quite impossible for Mr Withens to keep the wheedle out of his voice, or the look of excited expectation out of his eyes.

  ‘That I can’t say, sir. That’s not something we could ever discuss with the general public. I think you can rest assured, sir,’ said Parrish, his small vein of malice getting the better of him again, ‘that in this case I shall be no harsher than I am forced to be.’

  ‘Oh, quite, Inspector, quite,’ said Ernest, deeply disappointed, and getting up to go. ‘But of course I expect no favours. None at all. It has always been Deborah’s own conviction that people in positions of trust can expect no mercy shown them if they betray that trust. She has often expressed that idea very forcibly. Very often indeed. She’ll be waiting for her Ovaltine,’ he added, as if a bell had rung in his mind. ‘I shall be at the Town Hall tomorrow morning, I’m afraid, Inspector, but I’m sure I can trust you to do your duty without fear or favour. Without fear or favour.’

  And Ernest Withens vaporized himself into the night.

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE LETTER KILLETH

  It was a few minutes after nine when Parrish pulled up outside Glencoe, the Withens residence, that Saturday morning. Breakfast had been cooked and served with alacrity, and Deborah Withens (who seemed to the expert eye to have mellowed fractionally over the past week) gave a measured word of appreciation to her husband. Who looked modestly into the pattern of the carpet, and prayed that Deborah would not see the faint sparkle of anticipation in his eye.

  Parrish got out of the car, told Constable French, his driver, that he was likely to have a long wait, and went to the wrought-iron monstrosity which served Twytching’s Elysée as a gate. He paused as if appalled by his own daring, but he was put in a suitably hostile frame of mind by seeing the regulated, chivvied design of the front garden: daffodils, tulips and gladioli were planted in rows and geometrical clumps, and one had an image of Dame Nature standing over them with a whip, waiting to chastize anything that stepped out of line. Parrish pushed his way through the gate, and rang the front-door bell.

  Deborah Withens was undoubtedly in a good mood that Saturday morning. The eggs had been scrambled to that melting consistency she preferred, and the toast had been soft, warm and buttery. Life presented few pleasures to one so worn down by public duties and moral responsibilities, but when it did vouchsafe her one or two, she felt it her duty marginally to unfreeze. Then again the Inspector, once a favourite, had languished in her displeasure for very nearly two months, ever since that deplorable occasion in March when he had more or less suggested that she neglect her bounden moral duty. Seeing him approach up her path from behind the curtain of her sitting-room it seemed to Mrs Withens time to let the bounty of forgiveness shine from her countenance. Thus, when she opened the door to him she let it beam. Temperately.

  ‘Ah, Inspector,’ she said, reminding Parrish irresistibly of the Chief Constable of the County, a heavy gentleman of the old school. ‘Come to report? Do come into the sitting-room.’

  She led the way through the musty hall, with the little tables placed to incommode, and the sneaky legs, poised to trip. She seated him in the place of honour on one side of the drawing-room hearth, drew the heavy curtains to let in a moderate ration of morning sunlight, and sat down on the other side of the fireplace, her hands intertwined genteely in each other, her face set in an expression of polite interest, ready to receive her loyal subordinate’s report.

  ‘I shall be most interested, Inspector Parrish, to hear the results of your endeavours so far,’ she said.

  Well, if that’s how you want it, thought Parrish, that’s how I’ll give it to you.

  ‘I think it may be, ma’am,’ he began, ‘that this business goes back a long way. As you’ll know, most things in a little place like this do go back a long way. But perhaps we could start most conveniently with the news that the Radio Broadwich people proposed to come and record a documentary about Twytching.’

  Radio Broadwich. Deborah Withens felt a pang of regret, so sharp as almost to amount to self-criticism; she should never have let out her feelings on that subject so excessively to Parrish on that day in March. But she merely said: ‘What a memorable day! As I said to Ernest at the time, it was an opportunity and a challenge!’

  ‘Very well put indeed, ma’am,’ said Parrish. ‘Now what happened some time after that, though I didn’t know it at the time, and few did, was that a series of letters was sent: the first that we know of was in the middle of April, the last at the beginning of this week. They were anonymous letters, in a way you might call them threatening letters, and they went to a number of different people in the village: young Mrs Rice – ’ (Mrs Withens bridled) – ‘the vicar, Tom Billington, one of the Mailers, and so on. By now I expect this is common knowledge around Twytching.’

  ‘I had heard of it, of course,’ said Mrs Withens dubiously, ‘but I naturally hadn’t connected it in my mind with the death of that unfortunate creature.’

  ‘No? But connections there always are, you know, in a town this size. Now, with a spate of poison-pen letters you’ve very little to go on as a rule. With a clever writer you’ve little or no chance of getting them.’ Mrs Withens’s shoulders seemed to unbrace themselves a notch or two. ‘What had one to go on here? The addresses were mostly cut from the telephone directory. Anyone can get hold of one. In the letters themselves, most of the words were cut from newspapers, with the Daily Telegraph predominating. Well, the Telegraph is a popular paper in a village of this sort.’

  ‘I’m surprised but gratified to hear it, Inspector,’ said Mrs Withens.

  ‘So all we had that really might give us a lead were a few typewritten phrases here and there, and some words that were cut from paperback books rather than newspapers. Nothing much, but they presented a slender chance of narrowing the field down.’

  ‘Fascinating!’ said Deborah Withens perfunctorily.

  ‘But before one could start being at all specific, one had to ask oneself: “What sort of mind is at work here?” and “Why is this being done?” Often the answer to the last question is “sheer nastiness”, but I didn’t think it was here. As to the sort of mind at work, well, it seemed on the surface to be a peculiarly unpleasant one. One expects some pretty nasty accusations and insinuations, but the language here, ma’am, was of a particularly crude and violent type, and some of the things said about one or two of the people were sheer guttersnipe gossip.’

  Mrs Withens faintly nodded her head, as if to say ‘I am not unacquainted with such things, alas.’

  ‘But something about the style of the letters suggested to me something other than the usual semi-literate mind you expect in these cases. Now we come to the purpose of these letters. Here there were various possibilities to consider. Blackmail was one. Nobody showed us any letter actually demanding money, but that was to be expected. Demands for money sometimes do follow a “softening-up” letter of the sort we did get shown.’

  Parrish had relaxed considerably, had slid down in his chair, and now he contemplated the appalling light-fitting as he warmed to his subject.

  ‘People think of blackmail in terms of extortion of large sums of money over a period, the sums often getting larger and larger. In fact, it doesn’t always work out like that. Blackmailers are often content with small regular sums, the sort of sum that makes the difference between scrap
ing a living and jogging along very nicely. People will do blackmail for the hire of a colour television or a washing-machine. And that’s the most difficult sort of blackmail case to crack.’

  Mrs Withens had by now also relaxed, and was once again doing her impersonation of the Chief Constable receiving his Inspector’s report with kindly interest.

  ‘An appalling crime,’ she said without much feeling; ‘appalling to contemplate.’

  ‘But again,’ went on Parrish, ‘I didn’t think this case fitted into that sort of pattern. For a start, many of the offences named in the letters were quite simply not of the kind to be susceptible to blackmail. Then there were so many different people written to, and some of them were highly unlikely to pay blackmail money for one reason or another: Mrs Rice, for example, or the vicar. And the fact was that what the letters chiefly seemed to want to ensure was that the recipients kept themselves quiet, avoided publicity, didn’t “make an exhibition of themselves”, as the saying is.’

  ‘Strange,’ said Mrs Withens, with a slight flutter in her voice.

  ‘Isn’t it? Now, it occurred to me, Mrs Withens, that the language of these letters was odd. That’s not unusual in this sort of communication. But these seemed odd in a peculiar way, and I read some of the phrases to a bright young chappie at Broadwich University. Now these phrases all came from plays, and do you know what? All these phrases were typewritten ones, pasted on to the paper from photocopies, not from originals. Now that gave one to think.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Mrs Withens, seeming to get a grip on herself with difficulty.

  ‘And the other thing one noticed was that these were all cut out in an odd way – they went in at the top, so to speak – and I began to wonder whether in the original they hadn’t had quotation marks around them. Stranger still. Where might one find strong, one might say obscene phrases from plays, typed out in quotation marks?’

  Mrs Withens let the question hang in the musty air of her sitting-room, and Parrish decided to come straight in for the kill.

  ‘My answer was, in letters to the BBC and similar organizations, complaining about the language in their programmes. And the fact that these were photocopies suggested that the complaints might have been channelled through one of the recognized “watch-dog” groups, who had sent copies of their letters to the original “monitor” or complainer.’

  By this point Mrs Withens was forced to make a stand.

  ‘Really, Inspector, I find this fanciful in the extreme, a quite extraordinary line of thought. As you may know, I have been involved with these bodies for some years, and they are composed of the most public-spirited citizens, all of them performing a most valuable public service.’

  ‘We’ve made an initial check at the offices of the League for the Preservation of Decent Standards in Radio and Television,’ said Parrish, producing that mouthful with a flourish, ‘and as far as we can see the machine which typed the phrases was one of theirs, an Olivetti Lettera 36.’

  ‘As far as you can see,’ throbbed Mrs Withens scornfully.

  ‘We’ll be quite definite in a matter of hours. We have also checked the League’s correspondence files. All the phrases mentioned were used in letters of protest to the BBC, duplicates of which were sent to you, the original complainant. The phrases came from plays by John Osborne, Edward Albee and William Shakespeare, all performed on television in the last eighteen months.’

  There was a long silence in the room, and the morning spring sunlight seemed to tremble near the bay window, wondering whether this was a propitious moment to make a bolder entrance.

  ‘I see now, Inspector,’ said Deborah Withens at last, ‘the full extent of your fantastic notion. You have come here not to report but to accuse me.’ Her mouth twisted convulsively, and her piggy eyes darted murderous glances of outrage and frustrated power-lust. ‘Your accusations are ludicrous, based on pure conjecture and the flimsiest of evidence. I defy you to prove them in a court of law!’

  ‘So far, ma’am, the evidence is not quite conclusive, I agree,’ said Parrish. ‘But I think I can make it more so. One or two phrases were taken from a paperback book.’ He walked towards the window and the sun. ‘I think I could lay my hand on the book.’

  He darted out a right hand, and took from the shelves Mrs Withens’s copy of the Longford report. He brought it to her, and very deliberately opened it at page 97. He let the mutilated page dangle in front of her eyes.

  There was a long, long silence in the drawing-room of Glencoe.

  • • •

  Timothy Jimson had had a far from comfortable night at the Twytching police station, and was looking well below his best. A half-hearted growth of stubble disfigured his chin, and indignation struggled with bleariness in his reddened eyes. It didn’t make him feel any better to see Sergeant Feather spruce and well-groomed, and obviously prepared to go over and over the same ground as last night until he got the answers he wanted. Nor did it make him feel any better to think that Sergeant Feather was a rather stupid young man who, once he had made up his mind, would probably only accept answers that tallied with his conclusions.

  ‘Then you deny that there were any further letters after the one you showed us?’ Stephen asked patiently for the third time.

  ‘I deny it absolutely. And I also deny that there was any attempt to blackmail me.’

  ‘You had no connection, then, with Mrs Mailer, other than that of being next-door neighbours?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘And yet you and she were both on the committee of the – ’ here Stephen consulted his notes – ‘Amenities Group.’

  ‘Yes. But the committee didn’t meet.’

  ‘I see, sir. Was there any reason for this?’

  ‘There didn’t seem to be any public interest. I sent her notification of the meeting last Monday.’

  ‘But she didn’t come.’

  ‘No, she sent apologies, and said she was busy.’

  ‘Busy getting herself murdered, as it turned out.’

  ‘I don’t think that a very clever remark.’

  ‘Well, now, sir, while we’re waiting to hear from the police in Colchester about the printing of – what was it called – Troy Weight, that’s right, I think we’d better clear up the business of those sums of money that have been coming into your account.’

  Timothy stirred in his seat with extreme irritation. ‘They have no connection with anything you’re interested in. Even you haven’t been able to suggest any possible link. I decline to answer your question.’

  ‘Well, now, sir, we have to follow up many things that seem to have no connection with the main topic of interest. Since the suggestion of blackmail has been made, you must see that it would be as well to clear up every unexplained sum.’

  ‘Could you make up your mind whether you regard me as the blackmailer or the victim,’ said Timothy, with pardonable irritation.

  ‘Either, sir, either,’ said Stephen Feather blandly. ‘Now if you would clear up that matter we could all go home.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like a child,’ said Timothy pettishly.

  ‘It’s up to you, sir. But I doubt if anyone in Twytching has registered that you’re at the police station. We could let you out by the back way as soon as we heard from Colchester, and nobody would be any the wiser. On the other hand, if we are forced to keep you all weekend, it’s bound to get around the village.’

  Timothy looked at him viciously. ‘You’re threatening me.’

  ‘Now, sir, with your concern for using words with their precise meaning, I’m sure you must realize I’m doing nothing of the kind,’ said Stephen, revelling in having retained that much of Timothy’s English classes. ‘I’m merely presenting you with the alternatives.’

  ‘That money was earned. Perfectly legitimately.’

  ‘Exactly, sir. All the more reason for telling us.’

  ‘I earned it by my writing.’

  ‘Really, sir? Could you tell me which of your works it
was that brought in those kinds of sum?’

  There was a threatening pause while Timothy considered his position.

  ‘If word of this ever gets out,’ he said, ‘I’ll sue you.’

  ‘It never will, sir.’

  There was another loaded pause. ‘I earned it by ghost-writing.’

  ‘Ghost-writing?’ said Stephen, astonished. For him the phrase only conjured up the sort of communication with lost loved ones that the vicar claimed to achieve.

  ‘Yes. For Rosaline Macrae. She’s getting old and past it, but she still sells like hot cakes all over the world. I give her the manuscript when it’s finished, and she pays me cash. That way it’s kept between her and me.’

  ‘Rosaline Macrae, sir? Should I have heard of her?’

  ‘She’s a – ’ Timothy Jimson could hardly get it out – ‘romantic novelist. Sheer escapist stuff, you know: stable-girl marries Lord of the Manor, hospital romances. She writes the most terrible trash.’

  ‘You mean you write it for her, sir?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Timothy Jimson, glaring vindictively at his ex-pupil.

  • • •

  The silence in the drawing-room of Glencoe had indeed been prolonged. Parrish had dropped the odd question into it, but Deborah Withens had merely drawn herself up, and sat silent, staring and immobile, like a Medusa who had inadvertently turned herself to stone.

  Finally Parrish decided that if they were not to sit there all day, he would have to do some talking.

  ‘Let’s recap a little, then, ma’am,’ he said. ‘If we can get the whole sequence of events into some sort of perspective, perhaps the whole thing will be easier for us both. Now then, in March you get a letter telling you that the Radio Broadwich people would be coming to Twytching. Immediately you start planning (against my advice, be it said) the sort of face the village should present to the Americans, and who should be allowed to be on the programme. On April 10th you had a visit from little Mr Thring, the deputy producer, in which he made it clear to you that you would neither be on the programme yourself, as you had assumed, nor be consulted as to who would be. This was a considerable blow to your pride.’