by Roy Lewis
THE WOODS MURDER
A gripping crime mystery full of twists
(Inspector John Crow Book 3)
ROY LEWIS
Revised edition 2018
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
FIRST PUBLISHED AS “A SECRET SINGING” IN 1971
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Roy Lewis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
We hate typos too but sometimes they slip through. Please send any errors you find to [email protected]
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©Roy Lewis
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THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH SLANG IN THE BACK OF THIS BOOK FOR US READERS.
CONTENTS
NOTE TO THE READER
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
INSPECTOR JOHN CROW SERIES
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Glossary of English Slang for US readers
NOTE TO THE READER
Please note this book is set in the late 1960s in England, a time before mobile phones and DNA testing, and when social attitudes were very different.
Chapter 1
Most women were fascinated by Charles Lendon.
It might have been his sharp good looks, it might have been his domineering manner. It was possibly his presence: he had a way of drawing attention to himself without effort in a crowded room.
Cathy Tennant liked him, but was not fascinated by him.
There had been occasions when Lendon had stood close to her, almost touching her; there had been occasions when he brushed against her arm unnecessarily, held her hand overlong, looked at her in a way that principals did not or should not look at young articled clerks. There had been occasions when she had caught a glimpse of something in his eyes that she had been unable to understand — a longing, perhaps?
She had put it down to many things, to his practised gallantry, to his way with women, to her youth and his age, but she liked him, nevertheless, for he was sharp and intelligent and he looked after her professionally. He made her work.
It was what he did on that Friday morning. He came through into her room and smiled. ‘Cathy, I’ve got something for you.’ His voice was deep, with a practised timbre. She sometimes felt that there was something theatrical about Charles Lendon, as though he were always aware of an audience; a female audience. As he smiled, his scarred eyebrow lifted sardonically.
‘Nice problem for you. Chap called Cauter. We’ll be getting counsel’s opinion, but it’ll do you good to have a crack at it first. Let me have your notes on it and after we’ve taken counsel’s opinion we can check one against the other. You’ve finished the Stephenson conveyance, haven’t you?’
‘Well, I’m afraid not, Mr Lendon. There’s been some difficulty concerning the right of way across—’
‘Hell, don’t talk to me of rights of way! I’ve had too much trouble over the Kenton Wood affair to do other than flinch whenever I hear the words!’
He smiled again, taking the bite from the words; it was an easy, attractive smile. He’d kept his teeth in good shape.
‘Anyway, when you can, Cathy. I’m out for a while now, but bring the papers in to me about three. All right?’
He touched her lightly on the shoulder before he took his leave. She turned to the papers, curiously. The details were all there. Charles Lendon’s notes made it clear:
Cauter claimed to have been told by the dealer who had supplied the van that certain major repairs had been carried out to the vehicle, but within three days of taking the van, Cauter realized the repairs had not been completed.
‘Mr Lendon gone out?’
Maxwell, one of the young assistant solicitors, stuck his owlish head around the door with the query.
‘Yes, he won’t be back until lunchtime.’
‘Hmm . . . look, Cathy, I’ve got a couple of clients that I have to interview this morning and Parnell’s equally cluttered up, so do you think you can let me have this room this morning?’
‘Of course, Max. I’ll go along to the library. I’ve got some stuff to look up anyway.’
‘Ah, now then, that’s another thing.’ Maxwell’s round eyes peered from behind his glasses at Cathy. ‘It looks as though there’ll be some carpenter character in there most of the morning fitting extra shelving. You’re unlikely to get much peace in that room.’
‘Then,’ said Cathy firmly, rising to her feet with the Cauter papers, ‘the only thing I can do is to use Mr Lendon’s office.’
‘I’m sure the old gentleman won’t mind.’ The sneering innuendo brought Cathy’s head up, but she made no reply. Relatively old Mr Lendon might be, she thought to herself as she marched out of the room, but he still possesses yards more sex appeal than you do, young Maxwell. She went upstairs to the small room that gloried in the name of a library, where the law reports were kept, and selected a few recent volumes after browsing through the indexes under the section on Hire-Purchase. She took them, together with the Cauter papers, to Charles Lendon’s room.
It was the biggest room in the office and somehow it was a reflection of the man himself. The walls were painted in a cool, dignified blue, but the Van Gogh reproduction above the fireplace presented a splash of wild, irreverent colour that typified Lendon’s own character, for he was a man who, she understood, had let passion overrule prudence on more than one occasion. The furniture again was a strange contrast: the carpet was thick and wine-red, and two stiff-backed chairs stood to attention against the wall, to one side of a new leather armchair, but the second armchair, to the left of the fireplace, was deep, heavily brocaded and almost decadent in its flamboyant, sagging-seated luxury. It was Lendon’s desk, however, that took her eye on this occasion. Normally it was swept clean, and pristine in its appearance, its high polished surface stark but for the conventional dignity of a leather-edged blotting pad and a leather-covered pen set. This morning it was cluttered with legal papers.
Cathy stared at the desk. She could, she supposed, remove the papers and work on the desk, but she could imagine Lendon’s cold anger if he returned to a disturbed surface behind which was seated an insignificant articled clerk. She had not yet felt the keen sabre-edge of Charles Lendon’s anger, but she had witnessed its effects in the outer office.
The answer lay in the anteroom. She opened the door: it was a small, stuffy room that lacked ventilation but the skylight provided enough light, and she could use one of the volumes to prop open the door. The open door would give her enough air and she could work on the old roll top desk in the corner, beside the filing cabinet.
&
nbsp; Cauter . . . Cathy settled down to the problem. She was soon immersed in it, and she was hardly aware of the passage of time. Lendon’s notes of the case were admirable: it would seem that Cauter had complained to the dealer, who refused to remedy the defects or to supply another van. Cauter had then taken his complaint to the Hire-Purchase company who had loftily said that it was all a matter for Cauter and the dealer to sort out. So he stopped making payments. There was a copy of the letter written by the company solicitor, and the writ was there also. They were claiming damages for breach of the agreement. Interesting . . . Cathy stuck her pencil between her teeth and ploughed into her books.
It must have been about eleven forty-five when she realized that she needed the volume that was propping open the anteroom door. Without thinking, she crossed the room to pick it up and failed to replace it with another. The door quietly swung shut; Cathy hesitated, then decided not to bother to prop it open again since she would be finished in fifteen to twenty minutes.
She scribbled away, giving her opinion about the Cauter case. It was an interesting exercise; it would be useful to read counsel’s opinion later, and indeed, to discuss it with Charles Lendon, for that matter. It was when she had just two further points to make on the sheet that she heard someone enter Charles Lendon’s office.
Cathy looked up and saw the figure through the frosted glass panel of the door. It was Lendon whom she saw, and he was hanging his coat up on the pegged coat-stand in the corner. His dark figure, hazy through the glass, vanished as he went across to his desk. Cathy scribbled on, quickly; she could leave this on his desk on her way to lunch. She hoped he wouldn’t be too surprised when she appeared out of the anteroom.
It was several minutes before she realized that Charles Lendon was not alone.
He used a dictating machine on occasion and at first she had assumed from his level monotone that he was speaking into it. The words were muffled through the door, and she was unable to make out what he was saying. But then she heard a lighter voice, a man’s voice, answering Lendon. Again, she could make out the words only very indistinctly, but there was something familiar about the voice: it was someone she knew. What she clearly recognized, however, was the anger in the tones.
Lendon’s voice remained level, but he was like that.
Anger was a passion he controlled, but it could be coldly vicious-indeed, it was probably more effective for its control. The other voice rose, however, and became almost completely inarticulate at one point. Cathy sat there in the anteroom rigidly. The quarrel in Lendon’s office was not communicated to her in any detail, but it was obvious that it was serious in quality, and it was now impossible for her to leave the anteroom and walk through the office.
Occasional words drifted through to her as the man arguing with Lendon became more excited.
‘. . . can’t do this to me . . . lost every damned thing I’ve got . . . I’ve a good mind . . . make it all public and the hell with it!’
Cathy’s face was hot, and she knew that, foolishly, she was blushing. She felt herself to be in an impossible situation: she was not eavesdropping, but she could hear the raised voices and was aware of the anger: she was not deliberately listening but she could not steal away unobserved. She could only sit there, silently, and wait. It was too late to leave now.
The voices became angrier and snatches of conversation drifted in to her.
‘. . . father’s money sunk into the business . . . I wish I’d never let you talk me into it in the first place!’ Lendon’s own measured tone had become a little deeper and more bitterly precise.
‘. . . had no option to act otherwise than I did. But for me you would have been put away for a stretch of years!’
The resentment in the other’s tone had reached a petulant stage, but with the petulance came a slow subsiding also, and even through the closed door Cathy became aware of the fact that whatever the argument was about Charles Lendon had the whip hand. She sat still.
She did not like her situation. The quarrel in the next room was no longer white in its heat: Lendon’s tones were smooth and firm while the other man was silent. But Cathy could not escape; she could only sit and wait.
It was almost twelve-thirty when the visitor in Charles Lendon’s room left. It was twelve-forty before Lendon himself went to lunch. Cathy sat on. She had a horror of emerging from the anteroom to be met by Lendon returning, having forgotten something. She couldn’t bear to think of the expression that would sweep across his face in such a situation. At twelve-fifty she gathered her papers together, picked up her reference books, carefully opened the door and came out into Lendon’s office. Outwardly it bore no sign of the quarrel, and yet Cathy felt that the atmosphere remained charged with an indescribable passion. It was fanciful, she knew, and the result of an over-wrought imagination, but it was an aura of unpleasantness that she was glad to escape from when she closed the door of Charles Lendon’s office behind her.
She skipped down the short flight of stairs to the rooms below. She paused outside Parnell’s room: had he heard the quarrel? Indeed, had any of the other office staff heard the quarrel? Probably not: the stairs tended to insulate Lendon’s room from the others, and words, even white-hot words, would not travel down to other ears.
She had probably been the only person in the office to be aware of the quarrel. And even she didn’t know who the other participant had been. And yet, the voice had been familiar, though roughened by anger . . .
She grimaced at herself in the mirror before she left for lunch. The straight nose wrinkled back at her, the blue eyes narrowed, the curling, unexceptional brown hair glinted in the reflected light.
‘If I wanted to quarrel,’ she said to her image, ‘I wouldn’t choose Charles Lendon to cross swords with!’ But before the afternoon was out she discovered that there was more than one man in Canthorpe who wanted to cross swords with Charles Lendon.
Her principal was late returning that Friday afternoon.
When she saw him walk past her room she called out to him that she had a rough note on the Cauter case drafted.
‘All right, Cathy, I’ll have a look at it, but not just yet. If you’ll hang on there in your room, I’ll come down later and have a word with you about it. Let me have it now anyway, and I’ll see you later.’
She handed the papers to him and he went upstairs.
It was three-thirty. At five-fifteen she had finished the work outstanding on the Stephenson conveyances and Charles Lendon had still not put in an appearance. Maxwell came into the room and said cheerily: ‘Well, I’m off. Not a clock-watcher of course, but it is Friday after all! Aren’t you gone yet?’
The other assistant solicitor, Parnell, as tall as Maxwell was rotund, hovered in the background.
‘Mr Lendon wants to have a word with me before I leave’, Cathy said innocently.
‘Aha!’ The significance in Maxwell’s exclamation caused Parnell to snigger. ‘The old goat has got you staying after hours now, has he? You want us to hang on and preserve your chastity?’
Cathy stared at him without expression. The unkind thought that preservation was about all that Maxwell would be capable of came to her but was not expressed. Instead, she said: ‘Someone’s calling for me at five-thirty anyway.’
‘Ah yes, Mike Enson, is it? Saw you together last Saturday. Well, he’s big and strong enough to—’
‘Oh, come on, Max, if we’re going to have that beer before we head off!’
Parnell pulled Maxwell away, and Cathy rose to get her coat. There was no harm in looking ready to go — perhaps Lendon wouldn’t keep her too long then.
He came downstairs only some thirty seconds later. His wicked eye glinted at her as he entered and he gave her his practised smile. ‘I’ve got the papers, Cathy. Interesting case, isn’t it? Now let’s see . . .’
They stood side by side at her desk. Lendon’s shoulder touched hers but she did not move away; it would be an admission that she was aware of him and this she was not pr
epared to do. Somehow, Charles Lendon inspired no fear in her, nor did he affect her sexually.
‘Cauter . . . now you say that you think . . . ah, yes . . . that the failure of the company to go into the question of the defects with the dealer, or indeed, to sue the dealer if need be, really amounts to a failure on their part to take proper steps to mitigate the loss occasioned by Cauter’s refusal to pay further instalments . . .’
He looked at her carefully, in consideration.
‘Interesting point, that . . . It would mean that the company couldn’t claim damages. I think we’d have to be careful in saying that, Cathy. Nevertheless . . .’
‘There is a decision along these lines, you know, Mr Lendon. There’s a 1960 case where—’
‘You’ve been doing your homework,’ Lendon interrupted.
There was something in his voice which made her look at him, and there was something in his eyes also which disturbed her. She could understand neither the tone nor the look; she was not familiar with Charles Lendon’s armoury although she knew enough to recognize danger signals in most men, and she felt confused. She hesitated, and returned his glance in puzzlement — there was an odd, admiring expression on his face, and again, while she had seen admiration in other men’s eyes when they had looked at her, this expression on Charles Lendon’s face was new to her.
She opened her mouth to speak, to cover her confusion, but unexpectedly other words cut across hers.
‘Can I have a word with you, Mr Lendon?’
The man who stood in the doorway was dressed in a worn grey shirt, and a brown corduroy jacket, patched at elbows and cuffs with leather. His trousers were baggy at the knees, his shoes scuffed and unpolished. He looked like a workman, returning home across town. And she knew him.
She had seen the heavy, stubble-shadowed face before, pictured in the newspaper and once on television, on the local news. A broad, sensible, quiet face that had been lined by anxiety-then. The anxiety had, within twenty-four hours, turned to anguish when the body of his nine-year-old girl had been found in Kenton Wood.