The Lately Deceased

by Bernard Knight

  Meredith and Stammers were waiting for him, but Grey wasn’t to be seen. Shortly afterwards, Sergeant Masters came in and sat unobtrusively in the corner with his notebook.

  After some desultory opening remarks, Old Nick began his catechism, again going through all the events of the party.

  ‘Where was this barman, Edwards, during the two games?’

  ‘In the lounge, looking after the bar.’

  ‘Was someone with him all the time?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. I was out in the other rooms most of the time. I know that some of the men stayed with him for a few minutes in the first game to give us time to hide. I’ve no idea what happened later on.’

  Meredith tried a new tack. ‘Was there anything in the flat that would be worth stealing?’

  Gordon looked thoughtful. ‘Only the jewellery the girls were wearing. My wife wasn’t fond of personal adornments and what she did have was down in Oxford, apart from the odd ring or brooch. Anyway, even if one of my guests was a murderer, I’m sure none of them were common thieves, if that’s what you’re trying to suggest.’

  Masters grinned to himself at this. It made it sound as if murder was more of a gentleman’s game than larceny.

  ‘Quite, sir,’ said Meredith, unperturbed. ‘I was really thinking of an outsider like the man Edwards.’

  ‘I’m sure he can’t have been a thief; his job depends on his honesty. But, anyway, I can see no connection between my wife’s death and burglary.’

  Meredith gave up this line of approach in which he’d had little real interest from the start. ‘Where did you go, and with whom, during the first game, sir?’

  Walker began to show exasperation.

  ‘Really, officer. I’ve told you all this before, time and again. I left the room with Mrs Moore. We went to the study and sat on the floor behind an armchair. Then someone came blundering along in the dark and trod on my ankle. There was a lot of confusion, as there is meant to be in those games. I left Mrs Moore, and went into the passage and up the stairs. I remember sitting on a bed with a girl and then another girl came and joined us – it might well have been Miss Arden.’

  He paused, rather irritated by all this repetition.

  ‘The truth is, Superintendent, we had all had a good deal to drink. Officially I’m not supposed to take alcohol because of my stomach but I break out every now and then. I did on Thursday night and it’s damn difficult to cast your mind back afterwards. If you’ve ever had a skinful, you’ll know what I say is true.’

  Meredith accepted this without comment.

  ‘Quite, sir,’ he grunted. ‘And you don’t recollect your wife’s voice at all during the rest of the night?’

  ‘No. Not that I was listening for it particularly.’

  ‘At any time did you go into the back bedroom where you later found your wife?’

  ‘Yes, sometime in the second game. All the men were searching in the rooms, trying to get cocktail sticks.’

  ‘Whose voices do you recall hearing when you were in that room?’

  ‘I can’t remember any. One doesn’t go around expecting to give evidence on everything that happens in life. I can remember that Pearl was in the upstairs passage towards the end of the first game, but I knew that because of her perfume – not because of her voice. She uses a perfume I am not likely to forget.’

  ‘Indeed? Why is that, Mr Walker?’

  ‘Well, you must have been told about it already, I’m sure,’ said Gordon defiantly. ‘I am attached in quite a serious way to Mrs Moore. In such circumstances a man is apt to remember the perfume a woman uses.’

  Meredith nodded and continued.

  ‘Now, please be so good as to tell us about your wife.’

  ‘About my wife! Good God, man, you’ve seen her. Height five feet seven, weight nine stone twelve, hair brown, blue eyes and blood group O! Is that what you want to know?’

  ‘No, Mr Walker, it is not. And, if I may say so, as a reply it is in pretty poor taste.’

  Walker looked at him, another outburst trembling on his lips. Then he passed his hand wearily through his hair.

  ‘You’re right, Superintendent, it was a rotten thing to say. I’m afraid my nerves are all shot to pieces at the moment. I apologise.’

  ‘I understand, sir. Now, will you please tell us about your wife. What sort of a woman was she? What were her interests, who were her friends?’

  Gordon thought for a moment before replying. ‘I suppose it would be true to say that she had three loves in her life: money, horses, and me. And in that order,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘By nature, you might describe her as a do-gooder. She was an active member of most of the charitable societies – you know; the RSPCA and the like. She sang in the church choir, and she spent two evenings of most weeks reading aloud to some old blind woman who lives near us in Oxford. What else?’

  He paused again, and then went on.

  ‘She was a regular on the books of the blood donor service; a volunteer chauffeur in the organisation for providing car outings for sufferers from multiple sclerosis; and she sat on so many Appeals Committees, I wonder she had any time for hunting, which was the only other thing she genuinely liked doing.’

  ‘A very impressive list of activities,’ said Meredith.

  Gordon nodded. ‘I suppose it is,’ he said. ‘I’ve never thought about it before. Perhaps she was anxious to secure a safe seat in heaven – if so, the poor woman has taken it sooner than she bargained for.’

  Meredith let this pass. ‘On what sort of terms were you with her?’

  Walker hesitated before replying. Then he said. ‘Amicable, I would say.’

  ‘And what would you mean by that?’

  ‘Well, we didn’t see an awful lot of each other. She preferred our house in Oxford. But when we were together, we got along quite smoothly for most of the time.’

  ‘Was your wife a jealous woman?’

  ‘Not particularly. She understood me and she certainly knew my weaknesses; but ever since we gave up living together – in the accepted sense, I mean – I don’t think she cared very much what I did.’

  ‘Do you mean by that she had lost her affection for you?’

  ‘No, most certainly I don’t. You should know that our marriage was always a rather one-sided bargain in the matter of affection. From the very first, I never loved my wife as she loved me. But I never made a secret of it; she knew it as well as I did.’

  ‘Forgive me, sir,’ Meredith said, mildly embarrassed. ‘I am sure that was true in the early days of your marriage, but did it continue to be so?’

  ‘Yes, it did. I collapsed some eighteen months ago and was carted off to the Whittington Hospital with an internal haemorrhage. I was a pretty sick man for a couple of weeks and throughout that time Margaret pretty well lived by my bedside. I think you will agree that that is not the action of a woman whose love for a man has gone sour.’

  ‘I see. So up to the time of your wife’s death, you continued to live in harmony with her, though not often under the same roof. Is that it?’

  Walker weighed this up before answering.

  ‘By and large, yes, though it depends a good deal on what you mean by harmony. If by that you mean did we never have a row, then the answer’s no. It would be pointless for me to deny it, as any of our friends could tell you. We had our disagreements of course. Show me the man and wife who don’t.’

  ‘Quite, sir. What was the nature of these disagreements?’

  ‘Oh, always the same thing – money.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Don’t get the wrong idea, Superintendent; it wasn’t lack of money, it was too much.’

  ‘I don’t understand, sir.’

  ‘My wife was an heiress from birth. She was brought up to believe that money could buy anything and she believed it implicitly. She believed that every man had his price; that it’s only a question of how much. That sort of attitude may work very well on the other side of the Atlantic, but in
this country people tend to take exception to it. After all, you must admit it’s a bit embarrassing when you are invited out to dinner and during the meal your wife tries to buy your host’s dinner service, or his watch, or possibly his cook.’

  ‘I can see that would be embarrassing, sir.’

  ‘You’re damned right it’s embarrassing. It was the main reason why I stopped going to Oxford. I couldn’t stand sitting there and watching people laugh at her from behind their hands.’

  ‘Thank you for being frank with me, Mr Walker,’ Meredith said. ‘Now, I am afraid I have another personal question to put. Were you contemplating divorce from your wife, and remarriage to Mrs Moore?’

  Gordon reverted again to sudden hostility.

  ‘No, I damn well wasn’t … and if I were, I can’t see how it could be even remotely relevant. Pearl was estranged from her husband, though she still made a pretence of living with him. She may well have wanted to get rid of him – in fact I know she did, but she knew he would never divorce her.’

  Meredith pressed the question further.

  ‘I presume that, if Moore had wanted to bring his action, he would have had no lack of evidence as to her misconduct?’

  ‘You said it was a personal question,’ Walker blustered. ‘I should call it bloody cheek. However, I don’t really mind telling you that he would find it very simple. In fact he would be able to choose from quite a number of co-respondents. But none of this has anything to do with the murder of my wife. If you are in the least interested I can tell you now who the killer was and why. I’ll be glad to do so, if only to stop you asking these damned impertinent questions!’

  Masters’ chair squeaked on the floor as he leant forward to listen to the Super’s reply.

  ‘What exactly do you mean, Mr Walker?’

  ‘Let’s face it, Superintendent, nobody’s going to benefit to any noticeable extent from my wife’s demise. Oh, I know about the five thousand apiece that Webster and Barbara Leigh get, but you don’t really mean to suggest that that gin-sodden pair would commit murder in order to collect a paltry ten thousand.’

  ‘Ten thousand pounds is a large sum of money to many people, Mr Walker.’

  ‘Not to them, it isn’t. You wouldn’t think it from the way they sponge on everyone fool enough to give them hospitality, but the Leighs are more than comfortably off. Take it from me, Superintendent, ten thousand pounds either way would make very little difference to that precious pair. So if you’re looking for your suspects among the beneficiaries under my wife’s will, you can rule them out for a start.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. And if I do rule them out, whom will that leave to suspect?’

  ‘No one, as far as I can see.’

  ‘Oh, come, sir! Not even yourself?’

  ‘Me? Be your age, man! I admit I’m a beneficiary, but I shall be a damn sight worse off now than I was before, and you know it. Don’t kid me you haven’t studied that bloody silly will. You know as well as I do that I can’t touch a penny of it for fifteen years.’

  ‘I don’t know anything of the sort, sir. I understood the lawyers to say that you inherit your wife’s house at Oxford and five thousand pounds per year immediately.’

  ‘That’s right: I do. The house at Oxford and five grand a year! Riches indeed, Superintendent. Enough to tempt any man to murder?’

  ‘We mustn’t forget the sum of half a million pounds,’ Old Nick reminded him gently, ‘Even though it’s not immediately payable. Time soon passes, you know, sir.’

  ‘But even you, my dear man, can’t believe that I would commit murder now in order to hasten my enjoyment in fifteen years’ time of a fortune I neither need nor particularly desire. I’m not a pauper, you know. In fact, I’ll be thoroughly vulgar and confess that I’m a very rich man.’

  ‘And being a very rich man,’ Meredith prompted him. ‘you can afford to wait for your inheritance. Is that what you want me to understand?’

  ‘You can understand what you bloody well like, but if you think I killed my wife in order to inherit a packet in fifteen years’ time, you need your head examined.’

  Meredith acknowledged this with a wintry smile.

  ‘You said, sir, that you would be worse off as the consequence of your wife’s death. How do you explain that remark?’

  ‘Quite simply. When I met my wife I was broke, or comparatively so. She was a wealthy woman, and generous. I’ll say that for her. Margaret quickly got the habit of putting up the cash for whatever we needed, and it was a habit she persisted in to the end. She bought and maintained our house in Oxford and she paid all the expenses of the flat in Beachy Street that the taxman wouldn’t let me charge up to Metro. Total it up for yourself and you’ll find that her annual disbursements on our joint behalf add up to a tidy penny. Think it over, Superintendent, and tell me whether you really think I benefit under the will?’

  Meredith ignored the question and put one of his own.

  ‘You have known all along the terms of your wife’s will?’

  ‘I have, and so have the Leighs. Margaret never suffered the least embarrassment in discussing such matters. She loved talking money. Details of personal income and such like, which you and I would cloak in decent privacy, she would cheerfully discuss with the neighbours, the lift boy or any public-spirited stranger who could be persuaded to listen. And it was the same with her will.’

  ‘I see. Then in these circumstances you must have been familiar with her preceding will. I take it she made one.’

  ‘She did – at the time of our marriage. I was the sole beneficiary.’

  ‘No mention of the Leighs?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘No fifteen-year period of waiting for you?’

  ‘No, it was all perfectly straightforward.’

  ‘When she made the new will, you must have asked her, sir, why she had imposed this cautious condition.’

  ‘Naturally, I did. She said she had done it because it pleased her to do so.’

  ‘Have you any idea why she should say that?’

  ‘It was because we hadn’t been hitting it off very well at the time. Pearl had only recently come on the scene and I don’t think my wife entirely approved of my relationship with her.’

  ‘Did that surprise you?’

  ‘It didn’t bother me greatly, though I don’t see what concern it is of yours.’

  ‘All the human relationships in this case are my concern,’ Old Nick retorted sharply. ‘You think, then, that your wife changed her will as a form of reprisal.’

  ‘That was about the size of it. An attempt to bring me to heel. I’ve no doubt she hoped I would lie awake at night racked with remorse and disappointment.’

  ‘And how in fact did you react?’

  ‘I told her that, like good wine, her money would improve with keeping, and I carried on just as before. Though, as things have now turned out, I’m bloody grateful she did have the foresight to make this new will. But for that, judging from your present behaviour, you’d have thrown the book at me at our first meeting.’

  ‘We may yet do that, Mr Walker,’ Meredith assured him with unruffled calm. ‘But for the time being let us speculate in another direction. A few minutes ago you offered to tell us who was your wife’s murderer and why he killed her. Would you like to enlarge on that theme?’

  ‘Certainly, but I can’t give you proof, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘You provide the information and we’ll provide the proof,’ Meredith promised him silkily.

  ‘Well, I should have thought that it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that my wife was the wrong victim. In fact, I told you as much last Friday. The trouble is that you and your motive-conscious colleagues can only think in terms of money. You’ve bent over backwards to dream up a case against the Leighs or me because we’re beneficiaries under the will, but if you’re honest with yourself you’ll admit there isn’t a shred of evidence to support either theory. So what’s the next line of inquiry? If you can’t find a
motive in one direction, you must look elsewhere, and you don’t have to look far. Accept the fact that the wrong person was murdered, and the mystery is practically solved.’

  ‘Indeed! And who, in your opinion, was the right person?’

  ‘Pearl Moore, of course. That husband of hers stabbed my wife in the belief that she was Pearl.’

  ‘That’s a very serious accusation, sir, and one I wouldn’t advise you to repeat outside this room,’ Meredith’s words were almost identical to those used by Grey when Moore had made a similar accusation against Walker.

  ‘I’m not a fool, Superintendent,’ Walker said coldly.

  ‘I have no intention of mentioning it outside these four walls. But you can’t blink at facts. I know Colin Moore pretty well and, if you want my opinion, he’s a spineless, alcoholic bastard.’

  ‘A nice testimonial!’ Meredith said dryly.

  ‘It was intended to be.’

  ‘And you think he killed your wife in mistake for his own wife?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Why should he want to kill his wife?’

  ‘Jealousy, I should think. God knows that Pearl gave him reason enough to be jealous.’

  ‘In your opinion, is that reason enough for this murder?’

  ‘It could be, if the man was goaded into it.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that Mrs Moore goaded her husband to murder?

  ‘Well, no. Not in so many words, I suppose. But Pearl can be an absolute bitch at times, as I’ve good reason to know. She never bothers to conceal her feelings, especially towards that husband of hers. She despises him and she doesn’t care who sees it. A man can suffer just so much contempt and no more. It’s my belief that she tried him too hard once too often.’

  ‘Well, it’s a possible theory,’ Meredith said, thoughtfully.

  ‘Of course it’s a possible theory! It’s the only theory that can be made to fit all the facts.’

  ‘Cast your mind back to the night of the party once again, Mr Walker. Can you recall if there was any sort of scene between the Moores in the course of the evening?’

  ‘God, yes! A half a dozen, I dare say. They are always at each other’s throats. As I said, Pearl gets pleasure from needling the man. Most of the time he pretends to take no notice, but every now and again, particularly when he’s had a few drinks, he flies off the handle, and when he does he’s beside himself. I’ve seen him attack her more than once.’