Dead Before Morning (Rafferty & Llewellyn humorous crime series #1 in series)

by Geraldine Evans

  Allward's eyes narrowed, but, outwardly at least, he retained his composure. 'Even if I had been with a girl, it's hardly a crime, Inspector.'

  Rafferty wanted to see Allward's assurance crumble, that way he might get some more interesting answers. 'No,' he remarked slowly, 'but murder is.'

  'Are you accusing me, Inspector?' Allward quirked an enquiring eyebrow. 'Should I have my solicitor present? You instigated this interview because you've discovered that I like a little diversion during the long nights. So what if I do? It doesn't make me a murderer.'

  'No. But it does make you that much more interesting to suspicious policemen. I want to hear your statement again.'

  Allward heaved a long-suffering sigh and repeated what he had already told them on the occasion of their previous interview. He'd had his tea-break at 11.15 p.m. and had returned at 11.45 p.m, having been delayed by a patient for a quarter of an hour. 'I've told you all this before, Inspector,' Allward sounded wearied by the repetition. 'I was tending to one of the patients, as I said, not having fun and games with a local working girl.'

  'So you said. Old Mr. Tompkinson, wasn't it?' The patient with the convenient memory. Whose room was also handily situated near the back entrance to the bedroom block, to which Allward would have a key. He could easily have slipped out. How convenient that it had been Mr. Tompkinson whom he claimed to have been tending. They'd already discovered that the old man was very suggestible. Had Allward told the patient that he'd woken from a bad dream on Friday night as a cover, sure that the patient would be too fuddled to contradict him? 'I believe you said he was a particular favourite of yours?'

  'What of it?' Allward replied smartly. 'I didn't realise the time of death had been pinned down to one of my breaks.'

  'All the staff are being asked to account for their movements, Sir,' Llewellyn remarked politely.

  'Where do you take these breaks?' Rafferty questioned. 'In the staff lounge?'

  'Sometimes,' came the guarded reply.

  'And on Friday night - were you in the staff lounge then?'

  'No.' A defensive tone had entered Allward's voice. Rafferty was pleased that he had at last managed to rattle the man. 'I put my feet up in one of the empty rooms in the male bedroom block. I was tired and wanted a short nap.'

  Llewellyn raised his eyebrows at this. 'Surely that's against the hospital's rules?'

  Allward gave a cynical laugh. 'You'd be surprised what goes on in hospitals at night, Sergeant; drinks parties, gambling clubs, a fair amount of naughties. Don't tell me it's not the same at cop-shops? It's difficult to believe that the "boys in blue" don't get a kick out of watching confiscated porno movies. I thought it was how you earned the nickname.'

  'We're not here to discuss what the police have to do to prove an offence has been committed, Sir,' Llewellyn replied stiffly. 'I believe we were discussing what you were doing?'

  'I've already told you I was in one of the spare bedrooms.'

  'Alone?'

  'Unfortunately, yes.'

  'Yet, surely with Melville-Briggs safely out of the way, you had an ideal opportunity?' Rafferty suggested. 'What stopped you from providing yourself with a little entertainment?'

  Allward's eyes met Rafferty's boldly. 'I just didn't feel like it, that's all. We can't all be super-studs like the old man, you know. Of course, the rest of us don't have our virility stimulated by the thought of profit in the way that he does. I should imagine it's a great aphrodisiac.'

  'The dead girl was a prostitute. A psychiatric hospital at night is not the obvious choice for a pleasant stroll. Not the likeliest place to pick up a john. Presumably she was expecting to see someone on Friday night. Have you any idea who?'

  'No.' Allward was beginning to sound a little sullen, as though he was no longer finding the interview quite so amusing.

  'Perhaps she was part of a midnight sewing bee?' Rafferty suggested sardonically. Allward said nothing and reluctantly, Rafferty let him go, but remarked to Llewellyn when he had gone. 'I think we've found the "medical man" Linda's father mentioned telephoned.' He snorted. 'Probably told Linda he was a doctor. Some of the other staff must be aware of what Allward gets up to at night, Staff Nurse Estoce, for instance. I think, with a little encouragement, she might forget that touching loyalty for long enough to drop him in it.'

  Llewellyn looked doubtful. 'He's good-looking, confident, hardly the type to turn to a prostitute. And he's not the sort to lose his head - Smythe yes, but not him.'

  'He might have been between girlfriends,' Rafferty suggested. 'Perhaps he rang Linda to fill a temporary gap. She said herself that the medical type who rang her was one of her men friends - a regular? And even if he hadn't used her services before, it seems likely he'd have heard of her.'

  'But what if there wasn't a phone call at all?' Llewellyn threw in. 'Sidney Wilks isn't completely above suspicion himself, remember? He could have invented that phone call to avert suspicion from himself. Of the two, I favour him.'

  Rafferty shook his head. 'Even if Wilks did lie, it doesn't alter the fact that she must have known someone at the hospital to have come here in the first place. Otherwise why come? I want Allward's clothes checked by forensic, just like Smythe's,' he added decisively. 'He's too clever to refuse and of course, if he did it, he'll have got rid of the ones he was wearing by now, but it'll rattle him and that's what I want.'

  Simon Smythe had been telling the truth after all and they would have to cross him off their list of suspects. Although the pub landlord had been unable to confirm what he had been wearing, forensic had discovered a few tiny splatters of Linda Wilks's blood on the bottom of his trousers, presumably picked up from the grass around the body which indicated that he had merely fallen over her body rather than killed her. There were signs that he'd tried to remove the stains, but minute traces had still clung to the fibres. Simon Smythe might be many things, but he wasn't a murderer. The only things he was guilty of being were a coward and a bit of a dummy, and they carried with them a punishment far longer and more severe than most courts would give out; a real life sentence in fact. Allward's clothes, too, were free of suspicious stains, though in his case, that proved nothing, merely that he was smarter than the younger doctor and not nearly so likely to incriminate himself.

  So Rafferty was back to square one. Some questions had been answered only to find another crop springing up in their place. For instance, why had the killer gone to the trouble, not only of removing all Linda Wilks's clothes, but also of taking them away with him? 'Maybe the clothes the victim was wearing were an important clue,' he suggested to Llewellyn. Perhaps, Rafferty pondered, in some desperation, they were dealing with a necrophiliac - a tidy necrophiliac, who also collected the clothes of his victims. Perhaps he had gone out to his car for something before he began his vile practices, had seen Smythe coming up the road, recognised him, knew his "fun" was cancelled and drove off? Rafferty sighed. Perhaps he was being fanciful again. It couldn't have been easy to strip the body, he reflected. He'd have expected bruises from rough handling, but there had been none. Had the murderer cut the clothes off the girl? If so, it pointed to premeditation and that indicated that whoever had phoned her had also killed her. If there had been a phone call at all. Damn. Rafferty frowned. Why hadn't they checked with Mrs. Wilks? By now, if her husband had been lying about that call, he'd have had ample time to browbeat his wife into supporting his story. Still, it was worth trying. Perhaps, he thought, if they could ask the question when her husband was at work, they'd be able to winkle the truth out of her.

  'Did the murderer fear the victim would be more easily traced through her clothes?' he asked Llewellyn. He couldn't imagine why. From what the parents had said, they'd been pretty nondescript, the sort lots of young girls wore. 'What other reason could he have had for taking them?' he asked Llewellyn, that fount of all knowledge.

  'Perhaps he reads crime fiction and was worried about the possibility that he'd left hair or spittle on them.'

  Raffe
rty drummed his fingers on the table. 'If only we could be sure what the girl was doing there; who she'd come to see. I still fancy Allward.'

  'We haven't seen Dr. Whittaker at The Holbrook Clinic, yet, Sir,' Llewellyn reminded him. 'Unless we want to upset Dr. Melville-Briggs...'

  Rafferty grunted as Llewellyn's voice trailed away. 'We'll see him this afternoon. I want to speak to his lady friend first, though, Gwendoline Parry. Let's have her in.'

  Rafferty settled the Hospital Administrator as comfortably as the rickety chairs would allow. He was surprised by a feeling of recognition. He felt he had met her before somewhere and then it came to him. Big-boned and with the rather old-fashioned bun hairstyle and practical short nails, she reminded Rafferty of one of his former school teachers, a Miss Robinson, who had fallen in love late in life, with the new French master. She had been an intense woman and had fallen hard, and he remembered with a trace of shame how he and the rest of the school had sniggered over the affair, how they had mimicked the adoring eyes of Miss Robinson at assembly. She must, like Miss Parry, have been in her early forties; "Miss Robinson's last chance" the affair had been called. The man had let her down, he recalled, and she had left the school soon after. He wondered whether Miss Parry had found her last chance and if she was prepared to fight for it. According to Gilbert, she had a widowed, invalid mother at home, so would be unlikely to have many more such opportunities.

  'I understand you've just returned from a few days leave, Miss Parry?'

  Gwendoline Parry nodded.

  'Do anything nice?' Rafferty enquired casually, aware that a few interested, non-threatening questions relaxed an interviewee no end, but this time, his technique failed abysmally.

  For some reason Gwendoline Parry's fair skin blushed a delicate rose, though she replied calmly enough. 'I had some work I wanted to get on with at home, Inspector.'

  'Doing a spot of DIY, were you?' he asked, reminded of the necessity to soon do something about the depressing yuppified magnolia walls of his own flat. He fancied something cheery like sunshine yellow or terracotta.

  'No. As it happens I was typing up some research notes.'

  'Surely Dr. Melville-Briggs doesn't expect you to do extra work when you're on holiday?' he queried sympathetically, though Rafferty wouldn't put it past him.

  Gwendoline Parry smiled faintly. 'No. Luckily, Sir Anthony isn't in need of my amateur typing skills. He has a perfectly competent secretary in Mrs. Galvin.'

  Rafferty had a good idea who was in need of some free assistance. He couldn't imagine Simon Smythe went in for much in the way of research, he had as much on his plate as he could handle already. But Gilbert's tongue had proved obligingly indiscreet on various topics, not least who was sweet on whom and Miss Parry's love and loyalty didn't rest with Sir Anthony. However, for the moment, he didn't pursue the question. 'You've heard about the murder, of course?'

  She gave a grimace of distaste. 'How could I not? The papers were full of it. Still are.'

  Rafferty felt guilty, as he remembered his reassurance of Linda's mother, but there had been no way he could have kept Linda's double life out of the papers. 'You understand that we have to check up on everyone's movements for Friday night?'

  She nodded. 'Of course. As for myself, I was at The George in Hamborne from 7.30 p.m. till 2.00 a.m., Inspector.'

  'The doctors' do? I didn't know administrators got an invite.'

  'They don't. I was a guest of Dr. Nathanial Whittaker. He runs the Holbrook Clinic,' she explained. 'It's a few miles from here. Perhaps you've heard of him?'

  Rafferty nodded again. Between Sam Dally and Gilbert, he knew all about Dr. Nathanial Whittaker. Owner of a rival private mental hospital, he was a truly dedicated doctor, but a driven one. His father had been a brilliant surgeon until struck down with Alzheimer's Disease when Whittaker had been a teenager. The boy had adored his father and the cruel, undignified death had apparently made a deep impression on him; he had abandoned his long-planned career as a surgeon and decided instead, after his general medical training, to specialise in the psychiatric field, studying mental illness, its causes and treatments.

  Once trained, he had dedicated his life to finding a cure for Alzheimer's. The research had taken its toll on his health, his marriage and his money and the Holbrook Clinic nowadays barely kept its head above water. His wife had left him six months ago and he'd been pretty cut up about it, according to Sam. The house had been sold - there had been no children - and he'd ploughed his share into his hospital, where it was being swallowed up with the same despatch as the rest of his money.

  By a curious irony, Whittaker might be a dedicated and respected psychiatrist, but, according to Sam Dally, as a researcher, he was singularly inept. For all the long hours he devoted to the work, he lacked the plodding patience and meticulous attention to detail necessary, which explained both his lack of success and his inability to attract funding. Whatever money he made from his hospital was ploughed into his research work. Inevitably, his patients and their relatives had gradually turned to more comfortable establishments, where their ailments, real or imagined, were given that number one priority they felt they deserved. As Gilbert had so graphically put it, "Not even a lunatic would pay good money for group therapy on couch-grass when he could have gymnasiums and jacuzzis just up the road." He was right of course. Whittaker had presumably done his best to keep the standards of his hospital to a certain level, but then, according to Sam, when his wife had left him, things had begun to slide downhill. Whittaker had turned more and more to his research work, burying himself in it almost. Rafferty wondered how long the relationship between the doctor and Gwendoline Parry had been going on? He'd forgotten to ask Gilbert. Now, he signalled to Llewellyn to take over the questioning.

  'What time did you leave The George, Miss Parry?'

  'I stayed till the convention ended, Sergeant.'

  'I see. But Dr. Whittaker didn't?'

  She shook her head faintly, as though unwilling to confirm the matter, but, aware that there were plenty of other witnesses who would, she elaborated. 'He left around 10.30.'

  'You didn't mind?'

  Miss Parry raised her eyebrows. 'Why should I mind?'

  'Most women would expect to be escorted home after being invited out, particularly at that time of night.'

  'I am an adult, Sergeant. Dr. Whittaker knew I was perfectly capable of taking a taxi.'

  The sharp retort failed to conceal the fact that she had minded and Rafferty's opinion of his sergeant's interview technique went up a notch. Who'd have thought that seemingly dedicated bachelor would appreciate that most women would mind? Perhaps there was more to this psychology lark than he'd thought? It had been a very swish do, by all accounts, probably looked forward to for weeks and he remembered vividly his dead wife, Angie's reaction when he had had to leave her at some social function or other. He couldn't believe the elegant, if slightly repressed, Miss Parry, would be anything but extremely miffed in similar circumstances. She would surely find it even more humiliating that her boss should witness it? Particularly as there was no love lost between the two doctors.

  Rafferty wondered if Miss Parry and Whittaker had had a row? If so, no-one had so far mentioned it. But that could be because the one between Melville-Briggs and Whittaker had been much more spectacular - fisticuffs, no less. Still, it would be worth making a few enquiries. Now, with a sensitivity that surprised Rafferty, the Welshman abandoned this interesting sidelight and returned to the main beam of the interview.

  'We believe that the victim entered the grounds of the hospital by the side gate, Miss Parry. As you probably know, Gilbert, the lodge-porter, took it upon himself to give out unofficial keys to this door. I believe you have one?' She nodded. 'May I see it?'

  Surprisingly, for such a neat-looking lady, her handbag was a large affair and she rummaged through it for some time with a worried look before admitting defeat. 'I'm sorry, but my keys don't appear to be here.'

  Raffert
y's interest was sparked by this admission. 'You're sure? Perhaps you'd better check again, Miss Parry.'

  She tipped everything out on the scarred table; pens, tissues, purse, make-up bag, diary, notebook, more tissues, a stray lipstick and finally a small set of keys. Rafferty pounced on them.

  'They're the keys to my office and the filing cabinets, Inspector,' she explained. 'I've always kept them separate from the main ring.'

  'So when did you last see the other set?'

  She frowned. 'I'm not sure.'

  'Perhaps it'll help if I ask when you last used them? Would it have been last Friday? I believe you worked that day?'

  Her lips pursed and, with a degree of reluctance, as though realising that there was no way she could conceal the fact, she agreed that that had been the last time she had seen them. 'I had to work late, so I arranged for Dr. Whittaker to pick me up at the side gate as it's more convenient for the Hamborne road. I had to use the key to get out.'