The Waxwork Corpse: A legal thriller with a chilling twist (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 5)

by Simon Michael

  ‘How long did that affair last?’

  ‘This was Roddy Batchelor. It lasted right until her death.’

  ‘It sounds as if it was serious.’

  ‘I think it was. She had other flings too, but she always went back to Roddy. Maybe she loved him.’

  ‘What was the situation between you two at that time?’

  ‘At its worst. We lived in a sort of armed truce. I had more or less given up any hope of a real marriage, but at the same time I didn’t want a divorce — at least, not ’til the children were grown up.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I have seen, in hundreds of cases, what a divorce does to the children. Especially when the parents are at one another’s throats. She hated being a mother, and she hated our eldest son, but I knew she’d fight for custody, to spite me. She taunted me with it frequently. And the children were very young. I had a busy practice and was often away from home, so she had a real chance of persuading a judge.’

  ‘But she was an alcoholic.’

  ‘And a very good actress. You have to understand that when she was behaving, she was absolutely charming, and very beautiful. I’d look at her and be baffled by how all that meanness could hide under such a wonderful exterior.’ He shrugs helplessly. ‘I couldn’t take the chance that she’d sweet-talk some matrimonial judge and I’d lose the children. They’d have been at serious risk; Lise was utterly incapable of looking after them. So I decided the best thing was to keep her in the home and under control as much as possible. As long as I could keep the rows and tantrums to a minimum, and I could at least limit her consumption of alcohol, I thought that even a bad atmosphere in the home was better than a custody battle and two homes.’

  ‘What was the situation immediately before her death?’

  ‘I’ve just described it, really. Periodic flare-ups, constant drinking with peaks and troughs, an on-off affair with Roddy.’

  ‘Did that affair bother you, if it was more serious than the others?’

  ‘Just the opposite in fact. He was a good influence on her. He certainly had more control over her than I did, and when she was happy with him, she was much less difficult at home. You could always tell when they’d had a row, because the drinking increased and she’d be even more violent in her mood swings. I actually felt grateful to him and sorry for him in about equal measure.’

  ‘What happened on the day of her death?’

  This one question makes it clear at last that Steele is no longer saying that his wife simply walked out. It means admitting that he was there when she died; that he lied to the police.

  ‘She came back from a couple of days away with Roddy. The children were out somewhere, at the park I think. She looked lovely, alive and happy. And she was sober. You must understand that in spite of everything, I did love her. I thought we might have a quiet meal somewhere, just the two of us, but when I suggested it, she laughed at the idea. She said she was going out again, with him. We had a row.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About him, about her lack of interest in the shop, about … our sex life, or lack of it. Then she threw the sheets at me, and told me to wash them.’

  ‘Sheets?’

  ‘The ones she took down to their cottage, where they had their dirty weekends. They had to take their own sheets.’

  ‘Where did this row occur?’

  ‘It started downstairs in the kitchen and carried on upstairs in the bedroom.’

  ‘Was it violent?’

  ‘Not at first. She had a way of turning on you — some of the other witnesses have spoken about it — completely out of the blue. Sometimes even in mid-word. There would be something in her eyes, a sort of glazed look, and she would go wild, absolutely wild. She did it once with an au pair, and the poor girl just ran for it, straight out of the house. Never came back, even to collect her clothes. I had to post them to her parents in Germany. I believe the police took a statement from her, as she called me and asked what was going on. Anyway, we were just arguing as normal, just a lot of shouting on her part, and attempts at reasoning on mine, and suddenly she came for me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘With a knife, from the picnic hamper. She’d taken a hamper away with them to the New Forest or wherever they used to go, and she carried that and her overnight bag upstairs when she flounced out of the kitchen. She was unpacking as we argued.’

  ‘Did you know she had a knife?’

  ‘Well, I’d seen the hamper, but I’d not really thought about it. She had her back to me. I was in mid-sentence, and she just screamed at me and whirled round.’

  Charles sees the first glimpse of something more interesting beneath Steele’s calm veneer. His speed of response has picked up and the Recorder is having greater difficulty keeping up with the torrent of words. Beaverbrook interrupts to slow him down.

  ‘What did she scream?’

  ‘Not words; it was incomprehensible. Just rage.’

  Steele leans forward, his cheeks now slightly flushed and his pale eyes darting. ‘As she spun towards me I realised there was something in her hand, but I had no time to identify it. I put a hand up to fend her off, like this,’ and he demonstrates to the jury, his right hand held at head height, palm facing away from himself. ‘I felt something strike my hand. I didn’t feel any pain until it was all over, but she’d cut my hand very deeply between the thumb and forefinger. There’s a slight scar, my Lord, which I can show the jury, right in the crease.’

  ‘Yes, certainly, before you complete your evidence, but continue with your account for the present. And, please,’ he adds, ‘a little more slowly.’

  ‘Sorry, my Lord,’ says Beaverbrook. ‘It’s my fault. Go on.’

  ‘I was backing away from her but she kept coming at me, screaming and shouting, her arms flailing wildly. I realised that, at that instant, she was just crazy enough to kill me.’

  Despite the Recorder’s request, Steele’s delivery is still accelerating. The Recorder’s hand is flying across the pages of his red notebook, but Charles sees from his expression that he’s losing ground on Steele’s account. Beaverbrook is also aware of it and puts up his hand to slow his client down, but Steele’s focus is on the jury, urging them to believe him, desperately willing them to enter that bedroom, and see the events through his eyes.

  ‘I didn’t think she’d mean to kill me, but she was out of control and didn’t realise what she was doing. I tried once to get her arm but it was waving too violently. I tried to punch her — I thought I might even knock her out — that’s what you see in the films, isn’t it? — but I only got one good punch in, and it didn’t seem to affect her at all. Plus, I got cut on my arm.’

  ‘Where did that punch land?’

  Steele’s flow stops suddenly and there’s a fractional delay before he answers. He puts his hand to his temple at almost exactly the spot where the pathologist had identified a possible bruise. ‘About here.’

  ‘You say it didn’t affect her at all. Do you know if you connected with her?’

  ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure I did, because my ring caught her eyebrow, and it started bleeding. It was quite a gash, and I was surprised Dr Butcher didn’t notice it. In any event, it didn’t slow her up at all.’

  ‘What happened then? And please try to speak more slowly.’

  ‘You must understand that this all took a very short time, seconds, probably.’ Steele looks round the court, first at the jury, then at the Recorder, then back to his counsel. A sheen of sweat has appeared on his handsome brow.

  ‘It’s difficult to remember the precise order, the precise sequence. My next recollection is of being in the corner of the room, and realising I couldn’t get out. She was coming at me, but I remember blood running down her face, into her eye, and she was blinking hard. I realised I had to disarm her, and I lunged at her, got in between her arms. I have this picture of me bear-hugging her, and her arms were behind my back, thrashing away. We both fell over, me on top of her. I let go as we fe
ll, and put my hands out to break my fall. I landed on my forearm, on top of her.’

  ‘Did your forearm connect with her body?’

  ‘Yes, across her throat.’

  ‘Did you leave it there?’

  ‘Momentarily only. I got off her as soon as I could.’

  ‘Wasn’t that dangerous?’

  ‘No, because she’d fainted. At least, she was unconscious. I thought at first that she’d banged her head as we went down. I sat up, just trying to gather myself. I was going to get my breath back, take the knife away and hide it, and then get a wet towel or something for her.’

  He stops again. His face contorts into an expression of revulsion, as if remembering something deeply disgusting. When he starts again, his throat is constricted. ‘It was a few seconds later that I looked at her face.’

  He shakes his head. His eyes close, as if trying to shut out the memory. Beaverbrook leaves him like that for a moment, and then speaks softly.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Her eyes … it was her eyes. They were open … but I could see immediately that something wasn’t right. Blank, like a fish’s eyes. I think I knew then that she was dead, but I couldn’t believe it. I listened for her breathing, put my ear to her mouth, felt for a pulse. Then I tried artificial respiration. I thought she had to be alive, because the wound on her eyebrow was still bleeding … and I didn’t know what I could’ve done to kill her! I hadn’t hit her hard. I leaned on her neck, but for a second, not even that, and I couldn’t believe that I’d suffocated her. I thought, maybe she’s had a heart attack, but I knew what that would look like, and she hadn’t exhibited any of the signs, so … I just didn’t know! Then I saw the room. There was blood everywhere! I looked at my hands, and the right one was completely red. It was the first time I realised that I’d been cut. There was blood on the floor from her eyebrow, a huge pool of it, getting wider as I watched, and flecks on the walls and ceiling where I suppose it had been flung off my hand in the struggle.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I just sat there, looking at her. I knew she was dead, but I kept expecting her to sit up, like it was some game to frighten me. Then I got a plastic bag to put her head on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because blood was still coming from her wound.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I sat on the floor with her. I don’t know how long, but it was dark when I next remember. I heard the door go downstairs and the children’s voices.’

  ‘What were you doing while you sat there?’

  ‘I was thinking what I should do. My first impulse was to call the police, but then I began to think what it looked like. Here was a man in an unhappy marriage, his wife having an affair right under his nose, demeaning him and abusing him all the time, and his wife was dead at his hands. I knew prosecutors — I was one myself! — who could make a case out of that. What’s more, some people, police officers sometimes, love to put people like me in their place. They work hard for convictions in those cases,’ and he looks directly at Charles as he says this.

  ‘What did you decide to do?’

  ‘Nothing at that stage. I got up and left the room, and locked the door behind me. I went straight to the bathroom, took off all my clothes and put them in a holdall, and had a shower. Then I went back to the room, bandaged my hand, took some clean clothes, and locked it up again. Then I went downstairs and helped with getting the children to bed. We had supper, and then I went to my study to think. Later that night I realised that I was going round and round in circles, and I needed to talk to someone, to collect my thoughts.’

  ‘So you went to your children’s nanny? The jury might find that rather strange.’

  ‘Jenny was more than just a nanny. She’d been with us for years, was part of the family. She was my friend, she loved the children and I trusted her completely. She at least would believe me when I said it was an accident. There had never been anything between us, but maybe … I don’t really know, maybe unconsciously, I knew she cared for me. Anyway, I knocked on her door, asked to come in, and told her the whole story. We talked all night. In the end I decided not to report it. When it got light, before the children were up, I went back into the room. There was a huge pool of blood in the centre of the floor.’

  ‘I think we can move on from —’ starts Beaverbrook, but Steele pays no attention and forges on.

  ‘I realised that if I was going to dispose of my wife’s body, I had to bend her double to fit her in the car boot. I knew that rigor mortis would set in, but I didn’t know when. It’d been a warm night and she wasn’t stiff yet.’

  Beaverbrook tries again, ‘Mr Steele —’

  ‘So I got some polythene sheeting from the loft, bent her knees up under chin, and rolled her up into a package. I couldn’t find anything long enough to tie it up, so I got all the bits and pieces from around the house that I could find, cable, rope and so on, and used that.’

  The Recorder stops taking notes and watches the accused man talking. None of this evidence is relevant to the charges of murder or manslaughter. He makes eye contact with Beaverbrook and raises his eyebrows, inviting the QC to control his client, but the man in the dock now seems unaware of everyone and everything in the courtroom. He’s no longer on trial, no longer choosing his answers. He needs no prompting, no guidance. He’s caught up in a story stronger than he, a story with a life of its own that demands to be told. Whether innocent or guilty, he has waited over a decade to tell this story, and now he is going to tell it.

  ‘I had another shower and was already dressed when the children got up. Just the younger ones, you understand; Stephen was at boarding school. They were packed off to some friends for the day, and I got the body down through the house and into the garage. I emptied the boot and put her in. Then I went back up to start clearing up the room. As soon as I started, I realised that the whole room would have to be redecorated — there was so much blood. We never usually locked the doors in our house, so I had to do it immediately, or the children would start asking questions. During that day I stripped all the wallpaper and repainted the ceiling. The skirting board and other glossed areas I washed down. I scrubbed the floor a dozen times. By late that night, all I had to do was repaper. That evening, after supper, I was sitting in the dining room, and I could hear a noise like a tap dripping. I searched for the sound, and found there was blood dripping from the light fitting onto the dining table. It had seeped through the floorboards from upstairs and was running down the light flex. I went upstairs, and, while the children were asleep, I prised up the floorboards. There was more blood underneath them. I thought I could get away with mopping it up until I realised that I had marked the boards when lifting them. They were badly stained anyway, so I decided that I would have to re-stain and re-varnish them.’

  ‘Can we move on —’ tries Beaverbrook for the third time.

  ‘The next morning I set about trying to put together an alibi. I’d told my son’s headmaster that I might come down for the sports day, and I thought: if I can get there, I can get a lot of people to remember me. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the body at that stage, but I wanted to put as much distance between myself and the house, and as publicly, as soon as possible. Then I stained the whole of the floor of the bedroom. It took less time than I had imagined. I used a mop and it was done in two hours. While it dried, I went out in the car to look for something really heavy. By then I’d had the idea of a lake or the sea or somewhere, and I knew that I’d need a weight. I found a sort of hollow kerbstone, I think it’s the stone under the kerb that takes all the surface water, it looks like a doughnut, with a hole in the middle, which was perfect.’

  The Recorder interrupts, fascinated. ‘You went out in your car?’

  Steele looks up, the words having percolated into the scene replaying his head, and he answers with smile. ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘The one with your wife in the boot?’

  ‘Yes.
I only had one car, so I had no choice. There was room for both the body and the kerbstone in the boot anyway.’

  Steele’s expression suggests that he saw nothing surprising about driving round a county town with one’s wife’s body in the boot of your car.

  He continues. ‘When I got back, I started to paper the walls. That was the most difficult part. I’d never done wallpapering before. It’s very difficult. I did it though,’ he says, with evident pride, ‘and then I did a final clearance of the room. The bedding for example had to be taken out and washed, the curtains taken to the dry cleaner’s and so on, and when I was sure there was nothing left incriminating, I started applying the varnish to the floor, gradually painting myself out into the corridor. Then I closed the door and locked it. Now I was able to do so legitimately, as I told the children that I had redecorated, and I was locking the door so that they wouldn’t accidentally touch anything that was still wet.

  ‘That night I got out my old dinghy —’ he turns to Inspector Carr who sits at the back of the court. ‘Sorry I lied to you, Inspector; I did have some experience of sailing — and I put that into the boot too. Even deflated, it was a tight fit but I just managed it. By now, it was two days since her death, and I’d had no sleep. I lay down for an hour, and then set off for Somerset where my son’s school was. I didn’t dare stop anywhere and leave the car, as she was beginning to smell a bit. I got to the school late that afternoon, just in time to watch the sports. I parked the car at the far side of the car park and kept my fingers crossed. I had a stroke of luck, as the head asked me to present the prizes, so I had lots of photographs taken of me.

  ‘I made an appointment to see him the following morning, and I checked into a local hotel. Straight after dinner, I told reception that I was going to bed and asked not to be disturbed. I made a bit of a fuss about it, saying I was feeling unwell, so everyone would remember me. After a short while in my room, I climbed down the drainpipe.

  ‘Then I set off for Wastwater. I knew it was the deepest lake in Britain, and I thought that it would be better than the sea, where she could get washed up, or caught in a fishing net or something. I had bought a complete spare set of bulbs, windscreen wipers and so on. I didn’t want to be stopped for any reason and risk the police searching the car. I drove under the speed limit all the way, stopping every now and then to make sure all my lights were working.’