The Woods Murder

by Roy Lewis

  The hedge was tall to her right, the line of council houses black against the starlit sky. To her left stood the first scattering of timber that was Kenton Wood. Her shoes crunched loudly on the frozen surface of the lane, patched with tar macadam, hard-rutted, spiky with ice. Her breath moved ahead of her, drifting around her like a ghostly halo. A gleam of light flickered ahead. Charles Lendon’s home.

  The drive was empty. Cathy pressed the bell push and after a few moments lights sprang below and the door opened. Mrs Bell stood there in the doorway.

  The light behind her accentuated her figure and Cathy got a quick impression of a tall, shapely woman with dark hair. Mrs Bell’s voice was resonant and curious.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Bell?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘My name’s Cathy Tennant.’

  A brief pause, then Alex Bell stood to one side and asked Cathy in. She walked into the hallway of the quiet house and saw the heavy wood staircase with its polished used look, and she heard Mrs Bell say: ‘Come in here. It’ll be warmer.’

  Mrs Bell switched on the electric fire in the sitting-room and as she did so Cathy noted the clean, strongly beautiful line of the woman’s neck.

  ‘You worked for Charles.’

  ‘Yes. I was articled to him.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve come about his papers? The police have taken them, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘So how can I help you?’

  Cathy felt a prickling of her eyes and with dismay realized it was all too much for her.

  ‘You’d better sit down,’ Alex Bell said suddenly, a strange smile flickering at the corner of her mouth. ‘Stay here. I was making coffee. I’ll bring it down and you can join me. You look as though you need it.’

  She swept out after firmly directing Cathy to a chair.

  The fire flared its heat at Cathy’s legs as she sat perched on the edge of the settee. She heard Mrs Bell’s tread on the stairs, heard her return after a few minutes, but in the interim the house embraced her, clasped her with its unfamiliarity and she smelt the smoke of Charles Lendon’s cigar again, heard the resonance of his voice, and felt the touch of his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘He was never worth it, you know.’ Mrs Bell’s tone was very matter of fact as she set down the tray and handed a mug of steaming coffee to Cathy. ‘Excuse the mug: it holds more than a cup, and I didn’t expect company tonight.’

  Cathy accepted the coffee and fought back the tears. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry, but—’

  Alex Bell smiled again. Somehow, it wasn’t a pleasant smile. It carried a touch of cynicism that scarred her beauty.

  ‘Don’t apologize. I’m just telling you, he wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth the pilgrimage out here. He wasn’t worth the tears.’

  ‘Mrs Bell, I’m afraid that you don’t—’

  ‘Understand? I didn’t. I didn’t even know! He’d spoken of you, of course, but he spoke of many women. And your name soon faded out. So I didn’t realize how far it had gone. But I recognized the signs at once, as soon as I saw you standing there, like a lost child, as soon as I saw the tears in your eyes. How old are you, twenty? My God, I never knew!’

  She sipped at her coffee, her eyes hard as malice, glittering at Cathy.

  ‘I never even knew. He was changing, was Charles, you understand. Changing, and I didn’t even see it at the time. He was becoming more careless, and he was becoming conscious of his age. I would have thought perhaps that would have made him cling to what he had: instead, I see now that age with its encroachments upon his virility only led him to seek fresher, newer, younger fields.’

  ‘Please, you mustn’t think—’

  ‘Console yourself, my dear, console yourself with the thought that he can remain a romantic figure in your eyes, console yourself with the fact that you didn’t really know him. I knew him. I knew him for seven years.’

  Cathy shook her head.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong idea, Mrs Bell. It wasn’t like that. He . . . he . . .’

  ‘So he didn’t get you to bed!’ Alex Bell laughed cynically. ‘You poor little mutt. What was it? Was he playing his cards slowly, undertaking the wining and dining bit? Or was it that you carried the badge of your virginity just out of his grasp? No matter, Miss Tennant. He’s dead. You’re now completely out of his reach. If you are unscathed, be thankful that you are. For his touch could be death in the long run. He wasn’t kind to his mistresses. A splendid lover . . . maybe you should be sorry you missed that . . . a splendid lover, but a hard, cynical and amoral man. A swine. He proved it always, in the end. As he proved it to me. In spite of everything.’

  Cathy stared at Mrs Bell. The woman’s eyes were reflective, yet they glittered still and Cathy felt the strength of will that Lendon’s mistress exerted. Slowly, Cathy said: ‘I know about it.’

  The curving smile touched Alex Bell’s lips again, but the humour was tinged with unpleasantness.

  ‘You know? You know what, little girl?’

  ‘I know what he did to you. And I want you to realize that . . . that I’m sorry, Mrs Bell.’ The smile was fading. Mrs Bell put down her cup. She observed it, passively. ‘You know what, Miss Tennant?’

  Cathy hesitated, and the silence was frigid.

  ‘I know about his leaving you an annuity . . . but not the house.’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ Mrs Bell uncoiled viperishly and the words flickered out, harsh in their insistence. Cathy stared in surprise at the woman facing her. Mrs Bell snarled again. ‘How the hell do you know about the will?’

  Cathy was frightened to silence and Mrs Bell slowly sank back to her seat. The smile drifted back to her lips, but almost dreamingly in an indefinable evil way.

  ‘You little bitch! You cunning, scheming little bitch! It’s you, isn’t it?’

  ‘You must let me explain—’

  ‘Explain? My dear girl, I told you. I knew Charles Lendon! I understand. Those tears of yours . . . didn’t you milk him enough before he died? Or will you tell me you regret not sleeping with him? That you regret not sticking to your bargain though he stuck to his? He made a similar bargain with me seven years ago, Miss Tennant, and don’t think I’ll let you get away with this!’

  ‘You’re wrong, you don’t understand—’

  ‘About Charles Lendon I was never wrong!’

  ‘He loved my mother.’

  The room was silent. Alex Bell’s eyes were still. The dark shadow lying in them trembled and spread, her mouth stiffened and the hands jerked in her lap, just once, convulsively. The air seemed charged with her resentment and it seemed that Lendon’s presence filled the room, enclosed them.

  Cathy started to speak but Alex Bell interrupted her. ‘The bastard! He was a real bastard.’ Then the cold smile grew again, and Cathy shivered as Mrs Bell’s eyes focused on her. ‘I wonder if that will would stand up in court?’ She rose suddenly to her feet and she was tall and her hands were cruel, gripped one inside the other. She strode across to the door, and then paced back again, silky, like a tigress in the inhibiting confinement of a cage.

  ‘It’ll do you no damn good, you know! I made a bargain with Charles Lendon all those years ago, and I kept to it. I can’t be cheated of it now. He promised me this house. He told me that he’d leave it to me. And he can’t get away with this.’

  Her fierce eyes flashed towards Cathy. The shadow was changed now, into a malignant intensity of purpose.

  ‘And you won’t get away with it, you won’t because I won’t let you! I’ll contest that will, I’ll have it thrown out, I’ll have my rights, under the bargain he made with me!’

  Cathy tried to rise. A wild conflict of emotions swept over her: the legal training in her wanted to cry out that Mrs Bell would have no grounds upon which to contest the will, for no bargain enforceable in law had been made, yet the woman in her wanted to cry out her sympathy for Mrs Bell, tell her that Cathy wanted her to have the house, but she had n
o opportunity to speak.

  ‘He promised me!’ Mrs Bell thrust her head forward and her eyes were hot and angry, her fingers crooked involuntarily, opening like the talons of a bird of prey. ‘He died and it was to be mine and he took me, I gave myself for what? An annuity! But it won’t work, you slut, it won’t work! I won’t let it happen!’

  ‘Mrs Bell—’

  An imperious jerk of the hand stopped Cathy. Mrs Bell tilted her head slightly as though she were listening; hard small lines appeared on her upper lip, the puckering of anger and advancing years. The house waited around them, the clock ticked unhurriedly, and Cathy heard the other sounds, the creak of old timbers, the groans of an old house.

  ‘You’d better go.’

  Mrs Bell’s voice was cold and flat.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bell, and I want—’

  ‘I said you must go. Now.’

  Cathy’s pulse quickened unaccountably. There was a violence in Alex Bell’s manner that unnerved her.

  ‘The back door is open.’

  ‘The back door? Can’t I—’

  ‘I said the back door!’

  Cathy stepped back a pace. She hesitated, then turned quickly and walked out of the room. She turned through the corridor to the kitchen and saw the back door. She reached for the handle and Alex Bell said just three words more.

  ‘Goodbye, Catherine Tennant.’

  The door handle twisted under Cathy’s fingers and she was out in the cold glittering darkness, and the frost was on her burning cheek and the stars rode high.

  Silence swept in behind her. Cathy stood against a tree at the back of the house and tears ran down her face. Not tears for her humiliation or pain, but tears for a dead man and for a love that had been no love but a bargain, and for a woman who in Charles Lendon’s death lost self-respect and beauty and charm to become a symbol of cold hate.

  The lights in the house went out. Cathy rubbed her hand against her face, and her nose was cold, and wet with tears. Blubbering like a kid. She sniffed, drew out a handkerchief and blew her nose. The house was dark.

  Somewhere, a door slammed, with a light, yet not distant sound. Not an internal door, but another. The front door.

  There was no wind, no rustle from the winter trees.

  No moon. Just the cold, hard, glittering starlight, and the white frost and the dark etching of trees against sky. She remembered the sounds of Mike’s body, forcing his way through Kenton Wood in pursuit of her, and she shivered.

  Something crunched in the driveway.

  Cathy raised her head. The darkness of the house lay to her left; the driveway waited silently ahead of her. Beyond was the lane and the path and the houses and the road. Cathy stepped forward hesitantly.

  Frost crunching quickly and lightly, then silence. Had it been her own movement, or her imagination?

  She could not be sure, but her heart began to beat more quickly again, where it had slowed in the seconds after her retreat from the house. Had Mrs Bell left the house . . .. had that been the sound of the slamming door?

  ‘Mrs Bell?’

  Stupid. Silly. Frightened, like a little girl. The voice hung quavering in the cold night air and Cathy hated it for its weakness and its credulity and its fear. She shook herself, and walked forward confidently towards the drive and the frost crunched firmly beneath her feet. The side of the house loomed blackly up at her and to her left, and she walked past the front door and into the lane. The trees stretched sombre arms above her head, and in the faint starlight she saw the dark marks that her feet had made in the crisp frost on the pathway.

  But even as she saw the other marks the torch flickered at her from the darkness, pinning her in its beam. It held her briefly, contemplatively, and then it was gone. Next moment Cathy’s scream lanced the air as she made out the dark shape leaping towards her and heard the swift, sliding sound.

  The breathing was harsh, and animal.

  Chapter 20

  Chief Inspector Crow stretched his long legs under the table, cupped his angular jaw within thin fingers and stared at the sullen face of Mike Enson, glaring at him from the chair in front of the desk. The young man was angry; but his anger was a compound of incomprehension, suspicion and fear. It was puzzling. Crow tapped the letter on the desk.

  ‘So you deny writing this?’

  ‘I’ve told you. I know damn all about it!’

  ‘But the signature is yours.’

  ‘It looks like my signature, I agree, but then my signature is hardly difficult to copy, is it?’ Crow agreed drily. There was a curious, stereotyped immaturity about Enson’s writing that in no way reflected the personality of the man before him. Crow sighed.

  ‘All right. Let’s go over the whole thing again. Just to get the picture straight, from my point of view as well as yours.’

  Enson opened his mouth to protest but Crow overrode him.

  ‘You became friendly with Cathy Tennant. You had no idea she was the object of Charles Lendon’s interest and affection, though you did know she worked in Lendon’s office. Not long after your association with Miss Tennant began, Lendon became aware of it. There is no doubt he would disapprove of it. You continued to see Miss Tennant, and one evening you had something of a quarrel, not serious, but upsetting, because she refused to marry you immediately. You then wrote her a letter which—’

  ‘I said I wrote no damned letter!’

  ‘-which suggested a meeting at the Old Mill. The terms you used were short and succinct.’ Crow glanced again at the letter and read out:

  “Darling,

  I must see you tonight. Can you make it at the Old Mill, about eight? I’ll be waiting there. Yours, Michael”

  He looked up to Enson.

  ‘But you miscalculated; you didn’t expect Lendon to intercept the letter. You left it at the office and Lendon picked it up when he returned that afternoon, opened it, read it and stuffed it into a file. He left the office and drove to a lay-by where he sat for a while, brooding about your association with his cousin’s daughter. He drove home, where his housekeeper noticed his preoccupation. It was then that he decided to do something positive about you. Cathy hadn’t received the letter; she knew nothing about the assignation. But Lendon did, and he didn’t take his car to the Old Mill: he wanted to surprise you, have it out with you, warn you off. He walked up there, and you were waiting. What happened then, Enson? Did you panic when you saw him? Or was it more premeditated? Did you see him coming and realize that here was a chance to revenge yourself upon the man you hated? Did you cast around, see the rusty skewer, pick it up and as he walked through the doorway, plunge it straight into his heart? Was that how it was, Enson?’

  ‘I shall never understand,’ Enson growled sourly, ‘how you ever made chief inspector.’

  ‘Hard work.’

  ‘And a surfeit of imagination! I tell you, you’re talking a lot of rubbish. I’ve already explained that I was nowhere near the Old Mill that night, I was alone in my digs. I’ve told you that I long ago sublimated my hatred for Lendon in work. I had no idea he disliked my associating with Cathy. And I never wrote that damned letter.’

  ‘Then who did? And what connection does it have with Lendon’s death?’

  ‘That’s your problem, not mine. But if you’re such a damned clever policeman you’ll find out.’

  ‘Cup of coffee?’

  Enson’s brow contracted at the innocent question. He seemed unwilling to assent, as though by doing so he would be accepting a hand of friendship, but his needs overrode his pride and he nodded reluctantly. Crow rose to his feet and walked out of the room.

  He needed to get out for a few minutes. He was puzzled.

  Things didn’t fit. It had seemed so obvious, so neat as a solution, and yet Enson’s stubborn insistence was causing serious doubts to rise. Crow was not given to assessing character by a man’s face — he had seen too many prepossessing villains for that — nor by his protestations, and yet there was something about Enson that bore the
stamp of truth. Stamp of truth, ring of honesty, name the cliché, and it fitted. But the letter didn’t fit.

  That letter. Cathy.

  Crow asked a constable in the corridor to fetch three coffees from the canteen and then he turned and walked towards the main doors of the station. He nodded to the desk sergeant then went through the doorway to stand on the steps, looking out to the street. It was quiet; there were a few cars about, and a heavy frost had whitened the parked vehicles outside the pub across the way. He stood there, and the night air was sharp to his lungs.

  ‘Cold enough, eh, Crow?’

  It was Hugh Simpson. The big, heavy man stood at his shoulder, staring like Crow out into the street. He seemed at ease, and yet there was something . . . after a moment Crow realized that Simpson had been regretting his earlier restrictive attitude towards the inspector and wanted to make amends, but found it difficult to do so.

  ‘How are things going?’

  Crow shrugged his narrow shoulders.

  ‘They’re not. Bit sticky, really. Puzzling. And you?’

  Simpson was silent for a moment. Then as though making up his mind he took a deep breath and said: ‘That man Barnes you mentioned. I told you we’d checked him, didn’t I? That he was clean? Well, I still wasn’t really satisfied, you know, so I went and spoke with his “alibi” — the old porter at the nursing home. Hell, the old man’s a dodderer! He’d swear to anything, I’m sure, if the idea was put into his head! And as for dates . . . Still, could mean nothing, except that friend Barnes wasn’t around to be interviewed today.’

  ‘You’ve not found him?’

  ‘He skipped the rest home about lunchtime today, saying he was taking a few days off. His sister hasn’t seen him, apparently.’

  ‘He may not be the one.’

  ‘I’m by no means sure he is. There’s no record of sexual offences and it’s only my suspicion that the old porter—’

  ‘You playing hunches too, Superintendent?’

  Simpson scowled.