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

by Geraldine Evans

  That hadn't gone down at all well and some of his fellow officers, were long on memory and short on forgiveness. One in particular, Rick Brown, wouldn't hesitate to do Rafferty down if he got the chance. Luckily, he'd been seconded up north on a case that looked like lasting some time yet and Rafferty hoped that he stayed there - at least until this case was over.

  Although he knew he must accept that Melville-Briggs couldn't have killed the girl, it didn't make him like the man any more. The way he openly sneered, not only at him but also at the wretched victim, enraged Rafferty. Her short life and ugly death resurrected a deeply buried and previously unsuspected chivalrous aspect of Rafferty's character and he resolved to find her killer, no matter how many obstacles barred his way to the truth. He conceded he made a poor knight - he couldn't even ride a horse - but he was the only champion Linda Wilks was likely to get and he meant to do his best by her.

  It was quite late, he was feeling tired and a little sad - combinations that often caused him to wax philosophical. They did so now as he thought about Linda and her parents. 'Funny thing, marriage,' he mused, more or less to himself. 'The strangest couples get together, promise to love, honour, etc and before the honeymoon's over they realise they've made a horrible mistake. Why are so many people incapable of seeing the obvious before they make it legal?'

  'Impetus,' replied Llewellyn.'

  'Come again.'

  'Impetus,' Llewellyn repeated solemnly. 'The thing gathers a momentum of its own. Like a runaway car, beyond control. People start going out together, they continue going out together, either because no stronger force stops them or because at a certain time in their lives they're convenient for each other in some way. Before they know it, they're married with a child on the way. Even nowadays, in spite of the permissive society, most people are conventional and do what's expected of them. Most women want the white wedding and the orange-blossom. Of course, marriage is now big business; once the date's set and huge amounts of money are spent on wedding finery and rings and caterers, couples find themselves on a roller-coaster ride to the altar. It takes more courage than most people possess to stamp hard on the brakes at that stage. Little wonder there's so much divorce.'

  This was a side to his sergeant that Rafferty had never seen before and he was intrigued. 'You seem to know a lot about it.' He'd forgotten that Llewellyn had studied philosophy and psychology at university. 'I know you're not married. Did you stamp on the brakes to make sure you stayed that way?'

  'Me? No Sir. I've never got close enough to matrimony to require brakes.'

  'Very wise,' said Rafferty dryly. 'So what was it? Did all that observation of other people's marriages put you off?'

  Llewellyn shrugged and began to look decidedly uncomfortable, as though wishing he'd never started this conversation. 'Women take the order out of life,' he told Rafferty with a defensiveness that sparked his curiosity. 'Lipstick on the cups, shoes all over the hall, fripperies everywhere. And they're always expecting you to keep them amused, or else they're trying to change your ways.' Rafferty could see that for Llewellyn all that might be a problem. 'Then they tend to want children. Messy things, children.'

  Strangely, Llewellyn's words lacked conviction. It was almost as though he hid his real desires behind a strongly worded support for their opposite. Rafferty wondered whether - like the plain virgin - his rejection of matrimony was more to conceal the fact that he'd never met anyone who wanted to marry him. Dafyd Llewellyn certainly wouldn't be to everyone's taste, he reflected.

  'You want to try the older woman, Taff,' Rafferty advised. 'Someone who'd appreciate neatness after years of tidying up after husband and kids. A nice divorcee for instance.' Llewellyn's nostrils quivered with distaste and Rafferty held up his hand. 'I know - messy things divorces, right?' Llewellyn nodded. 'Widow then,' Rafferty went on in his self-appointed role of agony aunt.

  Llewellyn didn't look any more enthusiastic about a nice little widow than he had about a divorcee and Rafferty wondered why he was bothering. Must be his mother's influence, he decided. Still, Llewellyn seemed lonely. It would do him the world of good to get married, a little disorder in his life might just be the making of him. Standing up, he remarked with grim humour, 'Now's your chance to observe another odd couple - Mr. and Mrs. Galvin. It might be a good idea to take your psychology degree out and dust it off. I wonder whether they're another couple who were overtaken by impetus?' he mused, as they headed for the car park.

  They left the car just past the side gate of the hospital and walked from there. Teams of police frogmen were visible across the fields, as they searched the river for the murder weapon and Linda Wilks's clothes. Their movements were dispirited and it was clear they were having no success.

  The Galvins' lonely, flint-built cottage looked unkempt, and but for the thin stream of smoke from the chimney, which was quickly whipped away by the still sharp winds off the North Sea, Rafferty would have thought it was empty. It wore an air of neglect as though the heart had gone out of it. Apart from the top floors of the hospital visible over the high walls of the grounds, there wasn't another house within sight. The fields gave way to the marshland, desolate and silent apart from the continual crying of the birds - curlews and warblers and moorhens, taking off and landing, taking off and landing again, to pluck fat moist worms from the squelching mud.

  The gate creaked noisily behind them as they walked up the overgrown path to the Galvins' cottage and although he couldn't make out the words, Rafferty caught the tail-end of a hastily cut-off argument. Lifting the knocker, he let it fall, pinning a friendly smile to his face as Mary Galvin opened the door. 'You remember I said I'd call?'

  She nodded. It was plain she'd been weeping. Her eyes were red and sore-looking as though the tears had been particularly bitter. After taking their coats, she led them into a small sitting-room-cum-kitchen. The room had a half-finished look, one side of the kitchen had modern fitted cupboards and looked quite sleek and stylish, while the other half had an old stained stone sink and a cheap red drop-front kitchen cabinet, the sort his mother had thrown out years ago. An attempt had been made to strip the many different layers of paint off this, but patches had clung, stubbornly resistant to the paint stripper and had been left as though the effort required to finish the job was too much.

  Rafferty turned as he heard the wheel chair behind him and introduced himself and Llewellyn. Andrew Galvin seemed a surly individual. He barely managed a nod, before he brought the chair to a halt and gazed at them with a brooding, unblinking stare.

  During the course of the case, Rafferty had come to expect hostility, but this was something else again and he found himself meeting Galvin stare for stare, feeling that it was somehow important not to betray any pity. Although Galvin's legs, under the thick working trousers, might be withered, his arms and shoulders were powerful and strained against the denim shirt. A sprinkling of sawdust covered the material and Rafferty could see a trail of it leading from a door at the far end of the living-room to the connecting garage, which was an obvious later addition.

  'Well now.' Rafferty unlocked his gaze from that of Galvin and began, with a mock cheerfulness that did nothing to lessen the tense atmosphere. The Galvins had the air of people waiting for the axe to fall. The house was very quiet; set amidst the fields as it was, the limited traffic on the road, several hundred yards away, passed unheard. He found the silence and isolation of the Galvins' house depressing. Coming from a large family, he was a sociable man and liked to hear the sounds of the neighbours through the walls of his flat.

  How did Andrew Galvin stand being alone here day after day while his wife was at work? he wondered. But perhaps solitude was preferable to long uncomfortable silences, broken only by the next argument, to company that created strain without companionship. How many times had he felt that way about his own wife?

  As he had expected, Mary Galvin's alibi was backed up by her husband, as his was by her. They had both been at home the entire evening of the m
urder. Whether they were telling the truth or not, Rafferty thought it would be impossible to shift them. They seemed to have decided to present a united front, yet he sensed it was an uneasy alliance and wondered if he might succeed in breaking it?

  Apart from supporting his wife's version of events on the night of the murder, Andrew Galvin said little. He sat in his wheelchair, a sullen and withdrawn presence. He was still quite a handsome man, despite the lines of pain deeply engraven from nose to mouth. The full lips were compressed impatiently as though he was only waiting till the statements were noted down in Llewellyn's little book before he burst out with some furious comment. Rafferty sensed the frustration and bitterness just beneath the surface and he guessed Galvin had been a sensual man before the accident. How would he feel? Rafferty wondered, if he lost his mobility, his job, the love of his wife and in their stead suffered continual pain and the knowledge that his wife was as bitterly unhappy as himself? He had to admit he didn't know - he, at least, had a large family to cushion him should he need it. In this man's presence he felt suddenly ashamed that the death of his wife, Angie, hadn't caused him to grieve either long or deeply. It was only guilt that had caused him suffering. His family had realised his wife was little loss to him as a human being, for they'd left him to come to terms in his own way with the feelings of mingled self-reproach and relief her death had brought. If he'd truly loved her and mourned for her his family would never have been out of his flat, especially his ma.

  Yet Andrew Galvin had grieved; was still grieving. His wife's infidelity had obviously devastated him as much as a bereavement. Llewellyn's earlier remarks had made Rafferty oddly contemplative and now he wondered if there had been anyone to comfort Andrew Galvin? He let his eyes flicker casually around the room and saw that there was no evidence of brothers or sisters, nephews or nieces; no photographs of any description. But even if there were such a family in the background, it was usually the woman who took the trouble to frame and display their pictures. And Mary Galvin struck him as unsentimental, not the sort to put such things on show, the sort of woman who would keep her deepest feelings locked away from prying eyes. It was strange that a man like Sir Anthony had been able to release them. Perhaps his psychiatric training had supplied him with a few tricks denied to lesser mortals?

  After getting their statements out of the way, they both seemed to loosen a little of their stiff control and Rafferty decided now was the time to get under their guard. 'I've some—rather delicate—questions for you, Mrs. Galvin. Perhaps you'd rather speak to me without your husband being present?'

  To his surprise, she shook her head, her back seemed to straighten a fraction more and she gave him a sad smile; the smile of a woman who knew she had already lost everything of importance. 'I think I know what you want to ask about, Inspector,' she remarked quietly. 'There's no need to be so circumspect on my account. I no longer have any secrets from my husband. Andrew already knows about Sir Anthony and me.' She raised her head and met Rafferty's eyes boldly. 'I'm sure you already know all this, Inspector, but you might as well have the true version rather than the more lurid gossip from the hospital grape-vine.

  'I'd been having an affair with Sir Anthony for six months before the accident that paralysed Andrew. Oh, now I see him for what he is,' she exclaimed bitterly, 'but then he took the trouble to be as charming and considerate to me as he is to his rich patients. It was only later that I realised what a fool I'd been, thinking myself in love with a man who didn't exist. He played a part, you see and played it to perfection. It took Andrew's accident to show him in his true light. Even then I didn't want to believe it. I thought his reluctance to leave his wife stemmed from concern for me, worry about my reputation in such a small place.' Her eyes didn't flinch from his, but now, the hatred was plain in her face. 'All the time, of course, his only concern was for the social position he enjoyed through his wife. Without her, he was only another doctor - not a terribly good one at that. She got him his first clients.' She laughed harshly. 'I used to think it was loyalty to him that kept them. But of course I was wrong.'

  She didn't elaborate, but left Rafferty to come to his own conclusions. He could believe that it was loyalty to Lady Evelyn that brought his patients back time and again.

  He wondered again if Mary Galvin could have killed the girl, her personality corroded by seeing her now hated ex-lover day after day, and having to watch as he paraded his latest mistresses under her nose? Had she decided to hit him where she could do most damage - in his reputation? It would explain why the victim's body had escaped the blows. She didn't hate her ex-lover's latest mistresses, why should she? She knew they would be replaced in time, as she had been. But she was astute enough to realise that a 'Faceless Lady' would catch the imagination of the press and guarantee far more damaging publicity and that would surely be what she wanted?

  Had she known the girl would be coming to the hospital that night? Had Sir Anthony delighted in telling her about his mistresses? Rafferty didn't find it hard to imagine that he would get pleasure from such casual cruelty. Had he intended to slip away from The George that night to meet Linda? And had she known about the assignation and decided to meet the girl herself and kill her? Looking at her sitting calm and composed as she related the details of her affair, he felt her to be fully capable of it. The thought brought the realisation that if he wanted answers, he would have to get tough with her. She might yet regret that confident assertion that she had no secrets from her husband.

  'You must have felt very angry when Sir Anthony told you the affair was over,' he remarked. 'I can imagine what a traumatic time it must have been for you; your husband crippled, your realisation that Sir Anthony didn't love you. A lot of women would brood over the unfairness of it all, maybe even want revenge. Is that what you wanted, Mrs. Galvin? How many lonely nights while your husband was in hospital did you scheme to get back at him?'

  'I didn't,' she protested. 'I...'

  'How many mistresses did he parade under your nose before you snapped?' he demanded remorselessly. 'Was it one? Three? Six?'

  'No, I tell you. It wasn't...'

  'Come on, Mrs. Galvin. You can't expect me to believe that a woman passionate enough to have a love affair wouldn't also have enough passion to kill. I understand your husband was paralysed from the waist down in the accident. You must have felt very frustrated after Sir Anthony dumped you. Did you channel that frustration into planning murder? One that...'

  'Stop it!'

  Startled, Rafferty stared as Andrew Galvin raised himself from the chair and launched himself at him. He tried to protect his head from the man's fists as they rained blows down on him.

  'Leave her alone. Leave her alone, I tell you. Of course, she didn't kill that bastard. I know damn well she didn't because...'

  Llewellyn had finally managed to drag him off and Galvin stood in the middle of the room, breathing heavily and swaying, before he turned and flung himself back in his chair.

  There was a stunned silence that lasted all of thirty seconds after Galvin's outburst. Llewellyn was the first one to gather his wits. 'When did you discover you could walk, Mr. Galvin?' he asked quietly. 'Was it before the murder? Or after?'

  Andrew Galvin's painfully rasping breath was now the only sound. As though satisfied that his outburst had caused sufficient shock, he wheeled his chair away from them and spat out a single word. 'Before'

  Rafferty shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The man's manner seemed to challenge them to arrest him. Rafferty wondered why? Was he trying to protect his wife? Or was there a deeper reason? Andrew Galvin had been discounted from the murder investigation. The man couldn't walk, or so they had thought. Apart from the difficulty of manoeuvering his wheel-chair through the undergrowth and trees planted at the perimeter of the hospital, there had been no sign of any tracks, no sign of vegetation flattened by the passing of such a vehicle. But if he could walk...

  Although he might find the feat difficult, it wouldn't be impossible. Was th
at why Mary Galvin had kept up the pretence of his paralysis? Had she secretly suspected? He remembered that she'd become very defensive when he'd told her he would have to check her alibi with her husband. Did Andrew Galvin secretly want to punish her for her infidelity? And was being arrested for the murder of one of her ex-lover's mistresses the method he had hit on? Bemused that so many possibilites should fall into his lap at once, Rafferty glanced at Mary Galvin. Her face was chalk-white and anguished. Her eyes, when they met his were pleading.

  'Well, what are you waiting for?' Galvin demanded, when the silence had dragged on a little longer. 'Aren't you going to arrest me?'

  'Why?' Rafferty asked. 'Did you kill the girl?'

  The reply was slow in coming. 'No.'

  'Then why should I arrest you?'

  Andrew Galvin looked helplessly from Rafferty to his wife and back again. Then he shrugged and slumped back in his chair, a defeated expression on his face.