The Missing Wife

by Roger Silverwood

  ‘He did it. He murdered Yvette and my father helped him!’

  Angel pressed on. ‘I daresay you dropped it out to him one night in The Feathers — how your father’s marriage would greatly reduce your inheritance expectations. I expect Scrap pointed it out to you. And I expect, among other words of wisdom, he indicated what would happen to your inheritance if she fell pregnant! Especially if your father died first! I expect that caused a bit of a flurry when you realized that.’

  ‘No. No. It’s not true. It’s not true!’ he yelled.

  Angel ignored him. ‘Your business as “fence” to the Scudamores and others has not gone unnoticed by uniformed division. You’ve been skating on thin ice for some time. Anyway, I’m over running my story a bit. Your father was being poisoned by Yvette because he carelessly killed his friend, Marcus La Touche, who was her father. This was her revenge. As you told me, your father telephoned you on his mobile and told you this immediately after he had been given the results of tests on his stomach conducted by a doctor in Harley Street. He made the call from there just before his driver, Melanie Bright picked him up round the corner in Marylebone Road.’

  ‘No. It was after that. Yesterday, I think it was. Yes.’

  ‘This was a golden opportunity for you. Get rid of Yvette, and if your father found out, get praise from him for showing concern for his safety. Also he wouldn’t have given you away to the police. So you enrolled Scrap Scudamore to help you. You knocked up a plan to help you dispose of Yvette; and you agreed to pay him ten thousand pounds. You worked it out that Yvette would be on her own between four o’clock and five o’clock that Friday afternoon. That was after Mr and Mrs Moore had left and before your father arrived back from London. You’d easily be able to gain admission to the Hall. Yvette would let you in. She had no reason to suspect you of any ill will towards her. The alarms and buzzers and the noise of car tracks and feet on the new gravel afforded no protection for her against her “loving” stepson and his accomplice. And it was the easiest thing in the world for you to murder her, undress her and get Scrap Scudamore to take her body up to Western Beck in the dark, dump it, and then destroy her clothes and handbag to effect her complete disappearance. So that’s what you did. And Scrap Scudamore took a black plastic bin liner to put her clothes, pearls and handbag in. But Scrap didn’t want to take the body out of the Hall starkers, so it was rolled in the carpet, but he was to bring the carpet back and you would’ve returned it to the hearth. However, in the rush, he accidentally dropped it in Western Beck and it was too wet to return.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ Duncan snapped.

  Angel continued unmoved. ‘Well, everything was going nicely for you, and we were completely baffled. Of course, your father was suspect number one and the Scudamores also came into our reckoning. I briefly thought that Scrap Scudamore was guilty of the murder of Yvette. But he hadn’t the brains to be a serious contender. He let you down, firstly by not returning the hearthrug, and secondly by not destroying your stepmother’s belongings. You may not have been aware that the contents of the bin liner were still in his house, under his bed. Also, when his car had a puncture and he had no spare tyre and he wanted some wheels, he remembered the car key he had seen in Yvette’s handbag. He got the key, came up to the Hall, presumably after dark. Probably got a lift from his brother, Scott, and stole the Citroen from the unlocked garage at the back of the Hall. He was actually using it as his runabout. He even drove it to the Can Can Club the night you murdered him. We found it parked in a back street off Bradford Road. That was confirmed when the key was found in his pocket at the mortuary. You slipped up there, Duncan. You should have gone through his pockets.’

  Duncan sat staring at Angel, trance like, occasionally shaking his head.

  ‘Up to that point you seemed to have got away with Yvette’s murder. However, your relationship with Scrap Scudamore soon soured. I expect he kept on at you about the money you had agreed to pay him. Maybe he’d got as far as blackmailing you. Anyway, he wanted his ten thousand pounds, and now wasn’t quick enough. It began to dawn on you that you were going to be milked by him for the rest of your life, so you had to think of a way out of the trap. Obviously, you couldn’t come to us. There only was one way. You’d got the taste for murder now. And it was beginning to look to you as if you were getting away with it. It hadn’t really been that difficult choking Yvette, had it? You thought you could do the same to Scrap. But you would need to disable him first. After all, he was a big man. So you filled him full of booze — the postmortem showed that. You remained sober. Well, almost. You needed a certain amount of Dutch courage, didn’t you? Later that night you took him round the side of the club and battered him on the back of the head with a brick. Then, when he was on the floor, you leaped on him and choked the last breath out of him. And you didn’t let go until he was dead.’

  *

  DS Gawber was hovering in the corridor. He came up to the door when he saw it open.

  Angel came out of the interview room wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. He closed the door and waved the cassette at the sergeant.

  ‘It’s all here, Ron. Book him. Read him his rights and lock him up. Then come to my office.’

  Gawber grinned and then rushed into the interview room.

  Angel turned towards his office. He closed the door and dropped the cassette on the desk. He slumped in the chair, still dabbing his face with his handkerchief. Then he opened the desk drawer, found the nicotine chewing gum, tore at the packet and stuffed a strip of gum in his mouth.

  A few minutes later, DS Gawber knocked on the door and came in.

  ‘Sit down, Ron. I’m beat. How is Sir Charles?’

  Gawber said, ‘He seems reconciled to the situation. Melanie Bright picked him up in his car a few minutes ago. He’ll be at home by now.’

  Angel nodded. ‘Good.’

  ‘Would you like some tea, sir?’

  ‘Later. I just want to sit down and have a bit of peace and quiet.’

  ‘Well, can I ask you a question, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How did you know it was Duncan who murdered Lady Yvette?’

  Angel smiled. ‘Well, I laid a trap, Ron. I knew I was taking a risk. We were never going to be able to prove which one of them was the murderer. We were never going to be able to separate Sir Charles from Duncan. Duncan wanted us originally to think Yvette had simply disappeared! One of the fifteen hundred people who go missing in Britain every year. That’s why she was dumped naked in Western Beck. A clumsy attempt at concealing her identity. So when she was found dead and identified, we had to find out where she was murdered. Until it was established where she had been murdered there would be an endless number of suspects, with almost as many motives. I couldn’t prove that Yvette was murdered in the Hall, but I thought she was, because of the pantomime with the carpet.’

  Gawber nodded.

  Angel dabbed his mouth with the handkerchief before continuing. ‘If you have to transport a dead body, secretly and in the open air, what better and more innocent way is there, than inside a roll of carpet? Well, I thought she was murdered in the Hall and probably in front of the hearth. And so I planted an unrelated pearl under the grandfather clock in the drawing room near where the carpet had been and then arranged to find it later in Sir Charles’s presence. As it later transpired, Yvette was murdered there, and, as you would expect, her pearl choker was damaged and loose pearls were presumably dispersed during the actual choking of her. Now, when the pearl I had put there appeared from under the clock, Sir Charles mistakenly thought it was a pearl overlooked in the clearing up after the murder and undressing of Yvette, and he correctly assumed that the murder had taken place right there, on the hearthrug, in Millhouse Hall. And that’s what I wanted him to believe. Because of all the security measures, burglar alarms, bells, lights and buzzers, as well as that noisy gravel, nobody could possibly have gained access to the Hall without being seen or heard or both. The murder co
uld only therefore be executed by person or persons Yvette herself chose to admit. The only people she would have admitted (apart from Mr and Mrs Moore and Melanie Bright) were Charles and Duncan. We know that Melanie Bright was with Charles, and that the Moores had gone home. There were, therefore, only two possible people that could have murdered Yvette.’

  Gawber said, ‘Sir Charles or Duncan.’

  Angel nodded. ‘Obviously, when Sir Charles saw the pearl, he worked it out. He knew the murderer had to be Duncan. There was nobody else, and he reacted accordingly. Naturally, as a good father, his first consideration was the well-being of his son. Not himself! It was then that I knew for certain it was Duncan.’

  The phone rang. He grunted and reached across the desk. ‘Angel.’

  It was the WPC on the station switchboard. ‘There’s a woman by the name of Annabelle Scudamore wants to speak to you, sir.’

  Angel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Put her on, Constable.’

  There was a click.

  ‘Yes? Is that Bella?’

  ‘Yes, you smarmy beggar,’ she said. There was a catch in her voice. She sounded near tears. ‘I’m in the coach station. I can’t talk long. My bus is going to leave any minute. You’ve got your own way. Now Scrap’s gone there’s nothing for me down here. All I knows is, I’m not going to be next. I’m going to Galashiels. I’m going to see my daughter. It’s my only hope. I might even stay a while if I’m made welcome. I’m not prepared to stick my neck out for Scott any longer, but don’t tell him where I am going. Oh! The driver’s arrived. Got to go.’

  ‘Thanks Bella. Goodbye, and good luck!’

  ‘Ah. You always were a smarmy beggar!’

  The line went dead.

  A big smile slowly dawned across his face. He looked across at the sergeant. ‘Annabelle has called in her alibi. She’s going back to her little girl and her husband in Scotland. Sensible girl. Now you can go and charge and arrest Scott Scudamore for armed robbery!’

  DS Gawber grinned across at him. ‘It’s our lucky day, sir.’

  He stood up to leave.

  ‘Take two men with you, Ron,’ Angel said sternly. ‘I don’t want any accidents.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied and went out closing the door.

  Angel reached across the desk for the weighty pile of letters and reports. He began to read.

  There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ he growled.

  The door opened. Angel looked up.

  It was Cadet Ahmed Ahaz. He was not his usual bright self. He came in carrying a small parcel. He was carrying it at arm’s length held out in front of him. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said swallowing hard. ‘This package has been handed in for you at reception,’ he said warily.

  Angel pointed to the desktop to indicate he should place it there.

  Ahmed lowered it slowly and gently on to the desk, and then quickly stepped back to the door.

  The package was about twelve inches by five inches square and wrapped in brown paper that had been used before, and very generously sealed with transparent adhesive tape.

  Angel read the words, ‘Detective Inspector M. Angel,’ printed in blue ballpoint pen on an envelope secured to the package by sticky tape. ‘What is it? Who’s it from?’

  Ahmed licked his lips. ‘Do you think it’s a bomb, sir?’

  Angel grinned. ‘Nay, don’t be daft, lad.’

  He picked the package up boldly and shook it. Then he tore the envelope off the wrapping. Inside it was a pink card with a flowered heading. He read the message. It said, ‘Thank you for everything. From Mr and Mrs Injar Patel.’ Angel gave a broad smile. ‘Now that’s nice, isn’t it?’

  Ahmed became bolder and advanced to the desk. His smile slowly returned as Angel tore open the package to reveal some printing. It read, ‘Two hundred filter-tipped Virginia cigarettes.’

  OTHER BOOKS BY ROGER SILVERWOOD

  YORKSHIRE MURDER MYSTERIES

  Book 1: THE MISSING NURSE

  Book 2: THE MISSING WIFE

  Book 3: THE MAN IN THE PINK SUIT

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