Death of a Heavenly Twin

by Anne Morice

  ‘And did Babs explain why she had been held up?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that but he says that, as the museum is closed between one and three, she suggested he should go along to the pub for a snack and a drink and she’d join him there as soon as she could.’

  ‘Which pub? Not the Eglinton Arms by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, I do believe that was the name. Why? Is it important?’

  ‘Could be, but go on. Did he do that?’

  ‘Yes, he walked in at about twenty past one. The place was packed but the landlord knows him and remembers it well.’

  ‘How did he get there? On foot?’

  ‘Presumably. Why?’

  ‘Well, it must be at least a mile from the museum. Wasn’t it rather a curious rendezvous in the circumstances?’

  ‘Not necessarily. There was nothing he could do there, once the staff had departed for lunch, so he had time to kill. And I must tell you that even if he had borrowed or pinched a car, he wouldn’t have had time to drive to the Potteries, murder his wife and get back to the pub by twenty past one. And he did get there. The landlord is certain of it.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Yes, I know. When people have a particular recollection of the time it often means there’s something phoney about it; but there are exceptions and this appears to be one of them. As you might expect, it was the peak period of the day, when all the regulars come and go at the same time, every Monday to Friday, and the publican could give you a reasonable estimate of the time simply by looking round at the faces in the bar. There was the usual crush this morning and Graham elected to take his beer and sandwiches to a table outside. He paid for the lot and carried them out himself, and that was the last they saw of him.’

  ‘Did his wife turn up?’

  ‘No one seems to know. Just after two o’clock the bar-maid went out to tidy up. No one was there, just an empty plate and glass on one of the tables, which was exactly as it should have been; but we now take up the tale as told by Graham himself.’

  ‘Good! I’ve been looking forward to that.’

  ‘He maintains that his wife never came. He waited for over half an hour and then got bored and decided to start walking.’

  ‘Without leaving a message for her?’

  ‘Apparently he expected to meet her on the road. The golf course is roughly in the Missendale direction.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Very little. He remembers passing a cottage called ‘Oakdene’ because the owners have a collie which barks its head off every time someone approaches. He admits to being nervous of dogs and when he heard this one going into its usual hysteria he crossed over and gave it a wide berth. There’s a slight discrepancy there, incidentally.’

  ‘Hooray! What is it?’

  ‘Well, from that point on his mind is a complete blank, and in fact he was found not far away, but on the right of the road, that’s to say the same side as Oakdene.’

  ‘You think he may have invented the bit about the dog, in order to lend colour to his story?’

  ‘Yes, or he could have been in the act of crossing back when he was knocked down. It’s almost instinctive with some people to face the oncoming traffic when they’re walking on country roads. It’s odd though, because as you know so well he would already have passed along the straight section, where it would have been safer and more natural to have crossed over. It’s the only part of his story which raises faint doubts.’

  ‘Then you and Arnold are more easily satisfied than I am. I can find doubts which, placed end to end, would stretch from here to life imprisonment. I don’t mean that it couldn’t all have happened as he describes it; but take that telephone call to the museum, for a start. Supposing Babs had just said that she couldn’t collect him and left it at that? It’s not improbable because if Magnus had invited her to play another round she’d have jumped at it. She wouldn’t have had the slightest compunction in ditching Martin, I’m willing to bet.’

  ‘No takers. I’m willing to bet on it too.’

  ‘All right, so instead of arranging to meet him at the pub, he’s to make his own way home and she’ll be back as soon as she can. He agrees to this and sets up the alibi with the beer and sandwiches. But instead of sitting down to them he simply canters off home across the fields. Not much risk of anyone noticing him go, since they’re so busy at that time, and he could have been home in twenty minutes.’

  ‘To take up his position in the garage, awaiting his wife’s return? Is that the idea?’

  ‘Yes, and having whacked her over the head and attached the note to the golf club to give a false lead, he wheels Walter’s bike out on to the road. All that remains is to drive it a few hundred yards, ditch it in the woods, collapse on the roadside and go into his concussion act. He could easily have inflicted a few cuts and bruises to make it look authentic.’

  ‘Well, that’s a nice, neat theory in a way,’ Robin said, ‘but there’s just one snag.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It gives us the premise of two somewhat eccentric drivers on two separate bikes operating within minutes of each other on the same stretch of country lane. The one who passed you was not only wearing all the proper gear, he was also heading towards the Potteries and not away from them.’

  ‘I’m prepared to write that off as coincidence. After all, the roads are chock-a-block with them, and Walter’s not the only tearaway.’

  ‘Which reminds me: did you get the impression that he was genuinely surprised to find his bike was missing, or could it have been an act?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. I’d already seen Babs by then, and I was fairly certain she was dead. It’s the kind of thing which doesn’t leave much room for other kinds of speculation. And I can’t quite make Walter out. Most of the time he appears to be slightly moronic, but occasionally one glimpses a crafty side as well. On the other hand, Robin, what possible motive could he have had for murdering either of these two women?’

  ‘Unless there’s some connection with the Clean Up People?’

  ‘That’s possible, I suppose, with his background. And Sarah could well have been on the list of people to be eliminated. I suppose it could also have been his reason for beating up Kit. I could never swallow the idea of his doing it for love of Sarah, but if his object was to ensure that Kit was so groggy that he wouldn’t realise or remember that Walter was covering the attacker’s retreat, instead of going after him, then there would have been method in his madness. But where does Babs fit in with that theory?’

  ‘Perhaps she’d rumbled him and he had to kill her out of self-protection? If there had been any hanky panky over the students’ overalls, to name but one possibility, Babs would have been the most likely person to know about it.’

  ‘You’re quite right, Robin, it all hangs together splendidly. Now, the only thing is, how are we going to pin it on him?’

  ‘Ah well, as to that, I’m afraid you’ll have to count me out,’ he said, pretending to take the question very seriously. ‘I have one or two problems of my own on hand at present. Besides, it’s rather your forte, isn’t it? I’m sure we can safely leave the whole thing to you and Arnold.’

  2

  ‘I’ve been thinking over the case against Walter,’ I announced the following morning. ‘And I’m sorry to say that I’ve hit a gigantic snag.’

  ‘Oh, tough luck!’ Robin said absently. He was packing his case to go back to London, and not, I suspect, giving his entire mind to what I was saying.

  ‘Yes, the difficulty lies in reconciling his being a member of the Clean Up Brigade and also a student at Missendale. Surely there would have been something in his background to connect him with racialism and so on? Martin Graham told me that it was largely through Magnus’s sponsorship that Walter got a place here, and Magnus, as you know, is very hot on details.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a point, but I expect you’ll find a way round it. He may not be the real Walter, you know; just someone impersonating him. Or p
erhaps he had a good record when he came here and only got converted to the Cleaners afterwards?’

  ‘Well, I suppose that can happen. Perhaps Arnold ought to do a little checking on this mysterious friend in Oxford? It might be a pseudonym for the gang. But speaking of Magnus reminds me of something else I wanted to ask you: wasn’t he able to throw any light on Babs’ movements?’

  ‘Oh yes, plenty, but none of it does a thing for yesterday’s case against Graham or today’s case against Walter.’

  ‘Oh, how dull! What did he say?’

  ‘That he was entirely to blame for the fact that she cancelled the arrangement with her husband.’

  ‘Not that he had to twist her arm, presumably?’

  ‘No, and he wasn’t even aware that she’d made one. What happened was that on the way to meet her for the golf lesson he stopped off at the local garage because his self-starter was playing up and he wanted to get it fixed before he drove to London in the afternoon. They told him it might take some time, so he used one of their hire cars, plus driver, to take him on to the club. The same man was to collect him again at twelve thirty and drive him back to the garage.’

  ‘Doesn’t he have a chauffeur to take care of these things for him?’

  ‘Yes, that did come up, but it seems that the chauffeur is employed by the company and Magnus makes a point of only using him for company business. Apparently he’s very meticulous in these matters.’

  ‘And also it probably suits his youthful, jaunty image to dash around the countryside behind the wheel of his sports car. Go on, though.’

  ‘Well, he related all this to Babs during her lesson and, for some reason which he either doesn’t understand or is too modest to acknowledge, she insisted on driving him to the garage in her car. However, he claims that he had no idea that this would mean breaking an appointment with her husband.’

  ‘Hang on! What about her telephone call?’

  ‘There is no proof that she actually made one, but Magnus certainly did.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘To cancel the arrangement with the garage. He went away to do this and she told him she was going to powder her nose. They met up again ten minutes later in the bar. She said nothing about having made a call herself, but in fact the time coincides with the one which came through to the museum, and also there’s a coin box in the ladies’ changing room.’

  ‘Which garage was it?’

  ‘The one at Eglinton. The story was checked, naturally, and they confirm that when he rang up to ask if his car was ready he was told it was and that he could collect it whenever he liked. In fact he did so between one and one-fifteen.’

  ‘And Babs was with him?’

  ‘Yes, although they could easily have missed that, seeing that it was the lunch hour and there weren’t many of them around. However, it just so happened that the man on the petrol pumps did see him arrive and get into his car, and did see Babs drive away in hers. So, in fact, Tessa, although your reconstruction may be basically right, I think you’ve made it unnecessarily complicated. She would have been quite near the pub by then, so what was to prevent her going on there, as arranged? Martin could then have driven home with her and carried out the rest of the programme exactly as you described it.’

  ‘But in that case, wouldn’t someone have seen her arrive at the Eglinton Arms?’

  ‘Conceivably someone will turn up who did, which would certainly blow Graham’s story into tiny fragments, but I doubt very much if he’d have told it unless he’d felt on safe ground. The car park was probably full at the time, so she may well have driven on and stopped round the corner. If so, Graham would have seen this happen and gone out to join her. She need never have left the car at all.’

  ‘So, one way and another, things are beginning to look rather black for poor old Martin?’

  ‘Oh, he’s poor old Martin now, is he? Well, don’t worry, there’s a long way to go before he’s in real trouble, particularly if the two murders are connected.’

  ‘And you agree with me that they must be?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘On the whole, I do.’

  ‘And also that there’s a link of some kind with the Cleaners?’

  ‘Yes, to that too. I have a feeling that the Cleaners fit into the pattern somewhere. Curiously enough, I’ve been on the track of something very similar myself, during the past week or two. There’s a kind of international Ku Klux Klan in operation, with link-ups all over the world. Ostensibly it’s a crusade against communism, but there are some rather more disagreeable features as well. You’d be surprised to hear of the countries where they’ve managed to get a foothold; including our own, I regret to say. But that’s a long story, and I really haven’t time to go into it now, Tessa. In fact if I don’t get a move on I shall be in trouble.’

  I recognised the tone and knew it would be useless to try and coerce him into further disclosures. It was a nuisance because his last remarks had suddenly opened up a whole new range of possibilities, and I was longing to follow them up. Unfortunately I have never managed to overcome a rather childish resentment at being kept in the dark, and must confess to a certain ambiguity when Robin said,

  ‘Well, goodbye, love. I may have to go abroad again tomorrow, but only for a couple of days. What are your plans?’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll stay on here for a bit, in that case,’ I replied. ‘I’ve had a rather pressing invitation.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  1

  Nor did I take Toby into my confidence. On the erroneous assumption that the fewer people who knew about my movements the better, I simply allowed him to believe that I was going back to London.

  Julie was ecstatic over the news and I had the alarming impression that she counted on my staying for at least a week. This was not my intention, for although two of the five items on my agenda could best be accomplished as an inmate of Eglinton Hall, I hoped to conclude them in a matter of hours and had no desire to prolong my visit unnecessarily.

  However, there were other matters to be dealt with before this and the memory of a stray remark of Robin’s set the wheels in motion for the first. Acting on his advice, I took the car to the Eglinton Garage and explained that one of the tyres had a slow puncture. There was a slight hold up while I puzzled out which one it was, but as soon as that was sorted out the mechanic obligingly changed the wheel for me and while he was doing so I asked him a question or two about the Grahams’ car. The answers came out much as I had anticipated and the exhilaration of discovering I was on the right track provided a much needed boost for the next hurdle.

  I had been distinctly apprehensive about approaching Dr Simmons, for he had a most discouraging manner, but I had asked for an appointment as a private patient so at least he was getting paid for my importunity and maybe the fact that two people in the neighbourhood had been brutally murdered did something to induce a more lenient response than I would otherwise have got.

  In fact he quite naturally refused to give me any information in open terms, explaining that it would be unethical to do so, but when I had rephrased the questions in a form which required merely a nod or shake of the head, he grudgingly fell into line, and once again the answers came out precisely as I had expected.

  It was four o’clock when I arrived at the Hall, and Julie welcomed me in a state of repressed excitement which I could not attribute solely to her pleasure in seeing me, although she went on a good deal about that too.

  She took me up to the bedroom which had been allotted to me before, and I became rather disenchanted with millionaireville when I discovered that the waste paper basket had not been emptied since my previous visit, nor the sheets changed on the four poster. However, some allowance had to be made for a household which had been the scene of a major tragedy and furthermore Julie explained that she had allowed the staff the weekend off, since it was the first free time they had had since Sarah’s death, but had foolishly forgotten to give instructions about my room before they left.

 
‘I’m afraid I’m rather an amateurish housekeeper,’ she told me, endeavouring to look contrite about it, but unable to conceal the inner complacency. ‘Sarah was so marvellously efficient that one never had to give it a thought. But I expect I’ll get the hang of it soon, and these are your own sheets, so perhaps you won’t mind using them again.’

  ‘Not a bit. I’m quite used to it.’

  ‘And there’ll be armies of daily women coming up from the village tomorrow, so we don’t have to worry about cleaning or anything. Or meals, either. Cooking is one of my few talents.’

  ‘Oh, really? Where did you learn that?’

  ‘I did some courses at the Women’s Institute. I don’t often get the chance to put my skills into practice, but I’m preparing a very special supper for us this evening, so I do hope you’re going to enjoy it.’

  She burbled on in this strain for a while, then left me to unpack while she went downstairs to get started with the chopping and marinating.

  It provided an unforeseen opportunity for proceeding with the next part of the programme, but as this involved an expedition to one of the other bedrooms, I decided to pass it up. This was partly funk, admittedly, but strategy was involved as well. For one thing, it was a particularly grey afternoon and a good light was essential for my purpose. Moreover, Julie’s bubbling mood was hardly conducive to a protracted solitary spell in the kitchen, and I fully expected her to come hobbling upstairs again at any moment on the pretext of ascertaining whether I liked garlic in the stew. My chances of success might well suffer a setback if she were to discover me roaming round the family’s private apartments.

  The salmon mousse and stuffed veal were well up to Women’s Institute standards, and the wine in excess of them. Julie became quite maudlin, telling me about fourteen times how much she enjoyed my company. It was a sad reflection on the dreariness of her life that dinner in the kitchen with a female she had known for barely a fortnight should have constituted such a highlight, but I was not disposed to carp about that.