The Murders of Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Beale

by Jill McGown

  He decided he was all right, and went back into the flats.

  ‘Drake,’ said Lloyd. ‘ OK now?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ But he kept a discreet distance from the body this time.

  ‘Chief Inspector?’ One of the SOC men came back in, still carrying the murder weapon in its polythene bag. ‘There’s something in here,’ he said, shaking it slightly. Something rattled in its depths.

  ‘Probably a ring-pull,’ said Lloyd. ‘Let’s find out.’

  A sheet of paper was placed on the floor, and the end of the bag opened. As the ashtray was upturned, and after much careful shaking, a plain gold wedding ring fell to the ground, rolling off the paper.

  Lloyd stood up, looking grim. ‘Bag it,’ he said.

  Mickey looked expectantly at him, but Lloyd shook his head. ‘Leave it,’ he said.

  ‘But, sir—’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said Lloyd. ‘The book says to confront them with evidence straight away and with any luck they’ll break down and confess. I prefer to let them think they’ve got away with it,’ he said.

  Working with Chief Inspector Lloyd wasn’t going to be dull, Mickey could see that.

  ‘Oh – Sergeant. Mickey, is it?’ the doctor said, looking up from the body.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Call me Freddie. And – do me a favour, will you? Ring my wife and explain to her where I am, or she’ll think I’ve wrapped the car round a tree.’

  Mickey took a note of the number, and went to the phone. ‘ Has this been done?’ he called to the fingerprint man.

  ‘Yes, Sarge. Mind the broken glass.’

  He picked it up, and was about to key the number automatically when he realised he didn’t have a dialling tone. He frowned, and pressed the rest, but he couldn’t clear the line. He listened, and tried again, then checked to see that the phone hadn’t been pulled out. It was intact. And the line wasn’t dead, he realised; he just couldn’t get the dialling tone back. Despite the way he was feeling, a little tingle of excitement went through him. Something odd, something that had to be explained. It was why he had wanted CID work.

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’ Lloyd came over to him.

  ‘The phone’s dead – at least …’ Mickey listened closely, anxious not to make a fool of himself again. But he was right, he was sure he was. ‘I think the line’s open, sir,’ he said, handing Lloyd the phone.

  Lloyd listened.

  If the line was open, then someone had rung the Austins’ number, and hadn’t hung up properly. It would almost certainly lead to nothing, but it was interesting, all the same.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Mickey. ‘ I’ll get on to BT, get them to trace it.’

  ‘You do that,’ said Lloyd.

  Mickey went out, sighing with relief. For one thing, he’d stayed in the room without feeling sick, and for another, he had actually done something which met with Lloyd’s approval.

  There was a wait, of course, but when he got the answer, it was worth it.

  More than worth it.

  Judy saw Sergeant Drake hurrying towards her, and stubbed out her cigarette for some reason.

  He leant in the open window. ‘Frank Beale – do you know him?’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’

  ‘Chief Inspector Lloyd,’ he said, with a grin.

  ‘Oh, I don’t suppose he does,’ said Judy, ‘he hasn’t had him on his patch. I got told all about him before I even got to Malworth.’ Sandwell had briefed her well about her new manor, as he insisted on calling it.

  ‘Someone rang this number from his number some time this evening,’ said Drake. ‘We know, because the line’s still open. The chief inspector says it’s your pigeon. I’ve to drive you over there and you’ve to see what you can get from them.’

  Judy smiled. This was Lloyd not allowing her to get involved. ‘Right,’ she said, getting out of Lloyd’s car. ‘Let’s go.’

  It had taken ten minutes for her to get from the village to Malworth that morning. It would take Sergeant Drake about two, at this rate.

  ‘I think we could afford to slow down,’ she said. ‘It probably has nothing to do with it, anyway.’

  Drake allowed the car to lose some speed. ‘You never know,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Judy. ‘But Frank Beale’s wife is on the board of Austin-Pearce.’

  ‘Is she?’ Drake sounded startled, as well he might. ‘I’d have thought she was a bit … well, shady, for an outfit like that.’

  ‘Isn’t she, though,’ said Judy. ‘But she’s on the board, nonetheless. And she probably just rang Austin about something.’

  ‘Oh – of course. You know the Austins, don’t you?’ said Drake, apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. This must be terrible.’

  Judy smiled. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘ We weren’t bosom friends or anything. It was a shock. But I’m much happier having something to do, even if it is a wild goose chase.’ She wondered if mentioning it would be right or wrong, and just hoped that she was right. ‘ It was a bit of a facer for you too, I gather,’ she said.

  He went pink.

  ‘I’m sure it is a wild goose chase,’ he said. ‘I think the chief inspector was just getting me out of the way.’ He glanced at her. ‘I was sick again,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ she said. ‘You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.’

  ‘God knows what Chief Inspector Lloyd thinks of me,’ Drake muttered.

  ‘Lloyd understands,’ she said. ‘He’s none too happy with dead bodies himself. But he can make himself squint so that he doesn’t really look at them. I don’t know how he does it.’ She took out her cigarettes. ‘He was always thinking of useful things for me to do, too,’ she said. She waved the cigarette packet at him. ‘ Do you mind?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no. Go ahead. I was a sixty a day man once.’

  ‘How did you give up?’

  ‘I found something else to lavish my money on.’

  She laughed, and lit one. ‘I had very nearly given up,’ she said. ‘But if I have three in one day, I think I’m chain-smoking, so I’m not too bad.’

  ‘You’re a non-smoker,’ he said. ‘You don’t crave it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I couldn’t have made a worse impression, could I?’ asked Drake. ‘I made a complete balls of it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. You did what you thought was right.’

  He drove without speaking until they were entering Malworth. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said.

  Judy looked at him. ‘Lloyd said that Austin had blamed you,’ she said. ‘ He was upset, Mickey. Of course you weren’t to blame.’

  ‘No. But he wasn’t assaulting her,’ said Drake. ‘I’d have stopped him if he had been. He says she was afraid of him – but she wasn’t.’

  ‘But you did think she might have been in trouble?’ Judy said. ‘I mean, that’s why you went back, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said defensively. ‘But – but it wasn’t like Austin thinks. She was – she was with him. She was with him. I mean – I suppose she might have been saying no, but—’ He broke off, and slowed down as they passed the row of craft shops and studios. ‘The doctor thinks that’s why she got killed,’ he added, in a low voice.

  Judy noticed the light in the studio, as Drake signalled to turn into the small car park. ‘Stop a minute, Mickey,’ she said.

  There was nothing to be seen through the window; just the empty studio, and the open door into the office, where the desk light burned.

  ‘Austin said he thought she was here,’ said Drake.

  Judy listened to the story about the car, and tried the studio door. ‘Do you think she was here with her boyfriend?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t see the car anywhere when I saw them,’ said Drake. ‘They’d have been in it, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Judy, as they got back into their car. ‘ If
she was trying to get out of a tricky situation.’

  ‘If you ask me, it was her own fault,’ he said, as he pulled into a parking space in the private car park behind the flats.

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ said Judy quietly.

  ‘She could have got away,’ he said. ‘She could have got away, when I pulled up. He came towards the car. She could have got away then, and she didn’t! It wasn’t my fault!’

  Judy knew what Lloyd meant; Drake wasn’t ready for any of this. And they would promote him next year. She put her arm round him, instinctively comforting him.

  ‘Don’t keep blaming yourself,’ she said. ‘I think you saw exactly what there was to be seen. Someone who wasn’t sure what she wanted. But whether that was what made this man kill her, or whether Austin killed her in a rage – it doesn’t matter. We’ll find out which – but don’t whatever you do blame yourself. Most people wouldn’t have come back at all. Wouldn’t have found her, wouldn’t have put themselves through all this. You’re a good policeman, Mickey. I know you are.’

  ‘Lloyd doesn’t,’ he said miserably.

  She smiled. ‘Give him time,’ she said. ‘And don’t try so hard to impress him. He won’t think any less of you because you were upset tonight – but you have to start being professional about it now. You couldn’t stop it happening, but we can find out exactly what did happen.’

  She gave him a little squeeze. ‘ Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if Mr Beale can help us with our enquiries, as I understand he’s so often done before.’

  She was rewarded with something approaching a smile. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  But it wasn’t as simple as all that, as they discovered when they were confronted with the Andwell House hi-tech security system.

  ‘You have to have a card,’ said Drake, wonderingly. ‘And a PIN number.’

  ‘My God, I’d never get in,’ said Judy. ‘I’m always standing at hole-in-the-wall machines having another stab at remembering my number and then watching it eat my card.’

  Drake touched the sensor below the Beales’ name, but nothing happened. He tried again. And again. ‘We’ll have to wake someone else up,’ he said. ‘Someone with more on his conscience than Frank Beale.’

  Judy laughed. ‘Try the … oh – the Pearces live here, of course.’ She wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Gordon Pearce was Austin’s partner – they could hardly barge in there, if the Pearces didn’t know what had happened.

  ‘Pearce,’ said Drake. ‘He was at the Austins’ house tonight. I think Mr Lloyd wants to see him.’

  ‘Does he think he might be involved?’

  ‘Well … he seemed to. He was the cause of the row, in a way.’ He explained the nature of the row to Judy.

  Judy made a decision. If it was the wrong one, she would hear all about it in due course, but for now, she was the man on the ground, so to speak. She pressed the pad under the Pearces’ name.

  There was a moment’s wait, then a woman spoke. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Police, Mrs Pearce. I’m sorry to bother you so late, but we have to come in. Could you open the front door for us?’

  ‘Can I see your identification?’

  Judy frowned. If she couldn’t get in, how could she show her ID?

  ‘There’s a camera just above your head,’ said the voice.

  So there was. Self-consciously, Judy removed her warrant card and held it up to the lens. ‘Is that all right?’ she asked. ‘Can you read it?’

  ‘Could you move it back a little? Yes – yes, I can read it … Inspector Hill? Thank you.’

  There was a buzz and a click, and Drake pushed open the door, and went in.

  Judy was still taken with the camera, until she realised that the door was slowly closing again. She made it in just before it closed with a little world-weary sigh.

  ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘How much do you suppose it costs for a flat here?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Drake. ‘I’d feel a bit as though I was in prison.’

  ‘Mm. Nice, though,’ said Judy, looking round at the designer reception area, where chauffeurs and the like waited, by the look of things. A table, with magazines. A little fountain, switched off for the night. Plants. Real or plastic? She peered at them, then realised that the ash on her practically unsmoked cigarette was dangerously close to falling all over the floor that looked suspiciously like real marble. There must be an ashtray. She looked round.

  There was. A free-standing chromium ashtray, with a heavy metal base. She looked at Drake as she let her cigarette slip into its depths. He had gone pale again. ‘Sit down,’ she said.

  He obeyed, and she sat down too, to work out how to approach the matter.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right. Just take your time. I’ve got a lot to think about.’ She sat back in the chair. ‘All right,’ she said quietly, after a few moments. ‘We’ve got two lots of people upstairs who knew Mrs Austin. One was on the phone to the Austins, and the other was visiting them.’

  Smoke curled up from the ashtray as she stood up again, and picked it up. The weight surprised her. ‘It must have lead in the base,’ she said, and understood how it had made such a mess of Mrs Austin. ‘ Right,’ she said, briskly, in grave danger of emulating Drake. ‘Mrs Pearce knows we’re here, so we can’t just disappear again, I don’t think. We’ll proceed exactly as we meant to – don’t

  ask anyone about the ashtray. OK?’

  ‘Keep them off their guard?’

  She smiled. ‘I see you’ve had the lecture. But if someone left here

  with one of those things in order to kill Mrs Austin, there’s nothing

  to be gained by letting them know we suspect that.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Drake. He stood up.

  ‘And if the subject arises, I don’t smoke.’

  They used the lift. It deposited them quietly and went back down

  with a well-bred whine.

  Knocking on the Beales’ door, and ringing the Beales’ bell proved

  just as ineffective as the Beales’ entrance phone had.

  Judy sighed, rather like the entrance door. ‘They’re out,’ she said.

  ‘Or avoiding us. If that camera comes on when you press the

  pad, then Beale would see us, wouldn’t he?’

  Judy nodded, and bent down. ‘When in doubt,’ she said, ‘look

  through the—’ The door swung open at her touch.

  Rosemary Beale lay on the hall floor, the telephone receiver lying

  on her chest. Its cable was still tight round her neck.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Did you hear anything at all suspicious?’

  Gordon was under instructions to let Pauline do the talking, which command had been given to him last night, when the entrance phone had buzzed.

  ‘I think,’ he had said, still feeling light-headed, still breathless from Pauline’s urgent restoration of marital relations, still strangely removed from the guilt he should have been feeling, ‘I think that might be the police.’

  Pauline had already got out of bed, and was pulling on a wrap. ‘Yes,’ she had said, matter-of-factly. ‘Just let me do the talking.’

  It was like something out of a film. Except that he must have dropped off, or they’d put the reels on in the wrong order. She didn’t know what he had done, but she hadn’t been at all surprised that he had thought it might be the police, and calmness itself when that proved to be the case. She had pressed the button to admit them to the building, slipped off the wrap, and returned to bed.

  The night had been interrupted by the alarms and excursions next door, and now the police were here, in the flat, asking questions.

  ‘Did you hear anything at all suspicious?’ DI Hill repeated.

  ‘Gordon was out for the count,’ Pauline answered. ‘He wouldn’t have heard if they’d dropped a bomb.’

  The inspector smiled. ‘I’m like that, given half a chance,’ she said.

  ‘Gordon’s like that gi
ven half a pint,’ countered Pauline.

  Gordon wasn’t sure who she was playing, but from the moment she had uttered the deathless line ‘Just let me do the talking’, she had been playing someone. Brittle, smart, unmoved by the tragedy next door. Too coquettish to be Joan Crawford, he thought.

  ‘Did you hear anything unusual?’ asked the inspector again, almost as though she hadn’t just asked twice before.

  Nice-looking girl. Honest, open face. If he hadn’t been ordered to say as little as possible, Gordon might even have been flirting with her. Flirting was all right, he thought, providing it was in the presence of one or other of the spouses. He had flirted with Lennie when Jonathan was there. Not any more.

  ‘No,’ said Pauline slowly, as though she were trying to recall. ‘No, nothing. It was very quiet – it always is.’

  Gordon hoped that the frown hadn’t appeared, but from the sharp glance the inspector gave him, he felt that perhaps it had. But he had never known Pauline to lie before. About anything. He had teased her about it – she had a thing about the truth. And here she was, saying she had heard nothing unusual, when the first thing she had said when he had come home was …

  ‘Have you remembered something, Mr Pearce?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’d had a bit more than half a pint. I don’t remember much at all. I’m still a bit woozy.’ A very tall young man hovered at the open door, and the inspector went to talk to him.

  That’s not true, Gordon, old son. You remember everything about last night.

  He smiled as she came back in, closing the door this time. ‘Can we offer you a cup of tea or coffee or something?’ he asked. ‘You might want some breakfast – have you been here all night? You look a little tired.’

  ‘Here or hereabouts,’ she said, with a smile. ‘I’d love a cup of tea, thank you.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he said to Pauline.

  You’ve lied to the police now, old son.

  Yes. But I’m sowing the seeds. I remember nothing. That’s what my defence will be.