Death Line

by Geraldine Evans

  “We know Sarah Astell disliked Moon even before she learned of his assault on Terry Hadleigh. Obviously, she never suspected when she threatened Moon that he had this film of her adored father, or she wouldn't have dared anger him. You must admit, Moon's possession of this film gives Sarah Astell a strong circumstantial motive for murder. It's not as if it's the only copy. We know he had more made. We also know he sent her a video on the evening of his death.”

  Rafferty conceded the point. “But I still can't see her killing him. It would be more believable if she persuaded Astell to kill him for her. But that scenario also strikes me as unlikely. I can't see Astell committing this particular murder. It simply doesn't fit his character.”

  “But it fits hers,” Llewellyn insisted. “You said yourself that it was a spur-of-the moment murder. She's just the type of highly emotional woman to act in such a way. No rational male – and Astell's certainly that – would be prepared to risk his livelihood over an ancient scandal that would be no more than a five-minute wonder. Most of Sarah Astell's money has gone to pay for her commitments at Lloyds. Even if his wife refused to face it, Astell would know that their future financial security rested with Moon. They needed his friendship. Once tempers had cooled Astell would have been likely to persuade his wife to eat humble pie and apologise to Moon – any other course of action would have been foolish.” Llewellyn paused, before he added softly. “Of course, the difficulty would be getting Sarah Astell to agree. She's capable of ignoring the financial angle to protect her father's reputation. She had the motive. She also had the opportunity, as she was almost certainly alone for some time that evening. Even if Astell and Mrs Moreno came in and discovered her missing, they would assume she was in the bathroom. But even if Astell did check on her, as he claimed, and found her gone from the sitting room, how likely is it he would have betrayed her? He agreed with her alibi readily enough. He's been trying to protect her, can't you see that?” Llewellyn took a breath and went on.

  “There's something else. I didn't mention it before, but while I was talking to the people from the taxi firm, I learned that one of their drivers moonlights from his regular job driving for the bus company. He remembered picking up a middle-aged woman from the stop outside the Astells' house at around 8.05 p m that same night. It's only a five minute drive to the High Street. She got off at the stop outside The Psychic Store and stood gazing in the window till the bus moved off. He noticed her particularly, because even though it was such a wet night she didn't seem in any rush to get out of the rain. Said she seemed all hunched up and furtive.” Llewellyn ventured another opinion. “I wondered if it might not be Sarah Astell.”

  Rafferty raised his eyebrows. “So why didn't you mention this before?”

  Llewellyn shrugged. “What was the point of mentioning this woman when I didn't have anything to connect her with the case? You'd have pooh-poohed me, if I'd said she might be Sarah Astell. After all,” he conceded, “she could have been anybody.”

  “Still could, for that matter. Anyway,” Rafferty pointed out, “Sarah Astell's not exactly middle-aged. She's no older than I am. There's the first flaw in your argument.”

  Wisely, Llewellyn made no comment regarding Rafferty's maturity – or otherwise and merely pointed out, “But she looks a lot older than her years. The driver says this passenger was bundled up in scarves, so he didn't get a good look at her face, but Mrs Astell doesn't move like a young person, does she? The driver could have easily thought of her as older because of her slow gait.”

  “Surely Astell would have seen her going out the front door? It's at the end of the hall opposite the kitchen.”

  “But she didn't need to use the front door,” Llewellyn pointed out reasonably. “Her sitting room is at the side of the house and has French windows. She wouldn't even have needed to walk down the illuminated driveway as she could simply have walked through the shrubbery surrounding the house. It continues right up to the gates at the front, which had been opened for the guests. Then, all she had to do was wait for the 8.05 p m bus.”

  Rafferty shook his head. “Bit risky. What if someone had recognised her?”

  “Unlikely. She rarely goes out, so who would be likely to recognise her? Even when Mrs Moreno returned for her gloves, she wouldn't have passed the stop as she lives in the opposite direction. It was a wet, chilly night, not many people about. Astell said it was her custom to spend some time alone on the night of her father's anniversary. She would feel herself safe for some time. She presumably wore an old coat over her dress and carried an open umbrella well down over her face to protect her hairstyle from the wind. You remember forensic picked up an inside-out umbrella from the gutter outside The Psychic Store. I wonder if it was hers?”

  Rafferty still wasn't convinced, but he conceded that point. “I'll get a description of it from them and see if anyone recognises it. But I still don't think you're on the right track. The woman's a semi-invalid, after all. And she's so nervy, she'd jump at her own shadow. It was an appalling night. I can't imagine that someone who took her ailments as seriously as Sarah Astell would consider venturing out in such stormy weather. Apart from anything else, do you really think she had the mental or physical strength to kill Moon?”

  “I know that everyone, including herself, behave as if she were an invalid, but that doesn't make her one. As Juvenal warns us in his Satires, "Fronti nulla fides". Never judge a book by its cover,” he quickly translated as he noted Rafferty's expression.

  “If you must throw these endless quotes at me, could you at least manage to drag yourself a bit nearer the twentieth century? There's something from Gilbert and Sullivan that might suit. "Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream". Though, according to you, in Sarah Astell's case, it should be the other way around – full-bodied cream pretending to be something weak, thin and far less deadly.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Come on, Dafyd. She's had poor health for years, we know that. It's not something she's just invented to help her get away with murder.”

  “I'm not saying she has. But Astell himself said the doctors had been unable to diagnose what was the matter with her. Perhaps that's because, as Ginnie Campbell implied, there was nothing much to find in the first place? She wouldn't be the first woman to find ill health convenient. How much more convenient it would be if she could use it to get away with murder.” Pointedly, Llewellyn reminded him, “You were the one who said that police officers should suspect everyone.”

  “All right, all right. I take your point. There's no need to hammer it home. But now's not the time to change the habits of a lifetime and go rushing off half-cocked.” Rafferty grimaced. “That's my role, remember? Besides, the evidence of this film brings up another suspect. One we hadn't really considered before. Let's face it, if Moon used this film to expose Carstairs and hurt his daughter, he would also expose-”

  “Not Kingston,” Llewellyn protested. “I thought you agreed that he-”

  “No,” Rafferty agreed. “Not Kingston. Although this film exposes his homosexuality as well as Carstairs', it's debatable whether he would greatly care how he's judged by a world he is, anyway, soon to leave. He seems to have developed a fine contempt for it and its petty concerns. Besides, even if he did care, he's obviously far too ill to do anything about it. No, I was thinking of someone in their prime, someone who would care and care enormously if Kingston's reputation was tarnished by cheap sensationalism about his youthful sexual exploits – Kingston's zealous, over-protective secretary, Eckersley. Neither of us even thought of asking him for an alibi.” He took the film out of the video and handed it to Llewellyn. “Maybe we ought to find out whether or not he has got an alibi before we tackle either of our favourite suspects.”

  It was only a short drive to Nat Kingston's home. They arrived to find the gates wide open and an ambulance parked at the front door. Rafferty pulled up outside the gates and waited. Five minutes later, the front door opened and the ambulance crew
appeared carrying a stretcher. Its occupant was obviously dead, as the blankets covered the face. And after seeing a shattered looking Eckersley trailing the little procession, Rafferty didn't need two guesses as to who lay under the blankets. Now was obviously not the time to question the secretary. After glancing at Llewellyn's shuttered face, Rafferty sat and watched, without speaking, as Eckersley climbed in the back of the ambulance. The doors closed, and it made its way at a suitably funereal pace out through the gates.

  Rafferty crossed himself in an involuntary Catholic obeisance to the dead. He only realised he'd done so when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Llewellyn follow his example. Some of his grim mood lifted as he realised that his ma's religious indoctrination of the Welshman was bearing fruit.

  They sat for a few more moments, paying their respects, while the sea, crashing on the rocks far below, paid its own more thunderous homage. Then, Rafferty turned the car round, and they returned to Elmhurst.

  Rafferty still felt that Ellen Hadleigh was their strongest suspect. And although Llewellyn had laid out a good case for Sarah Astell being the murderer, he remained unconvinced and was determined to pursue his own line before any other. Llewellyn raised no objection when Rafferty told him his decision; Kingston's death had affected him deeply and he had not said a word all the way back to town, not even to criticise Rafferty's driving.

  Unfortunately for Rafferty's theory, no-one who had seen her on the night of the murder had been able to recall what Mrs Hadleigh had been wearing. It seemed she had an assortment of nondescript dresses which she wore for her work and they all looked much the same; dark, drab and practical. There was no help for them there, Rafferty realised. But, he thought, before he went cap in hand to Bradley to have the tip searched, he wanted another go at getting the truth out of her. As he'd already discovered, telling lies didn't come easily to her. Maybe – if she had killed Moon, the strain of having to tell more would prove her undoing.

  But, it was clear when they visited her at her shabby flat, that Ellen Hadleigh wasn't about to confess to murder just to give Rafferty the satisfaction of being right.

  “Do you deny challenging Moon that night?” Rafferty asked again, having received no reply to his earlier question on the point. “You had only discovered his true identity the previous day. Do you really expect us to believe you were prepared to forgive and forget?”

  “No,” she admitted. “I was going to tell him what I thought of him; tell him exactly what damage he'd done to our lives. I'd had long enough to decide what to say.” Her hands raised for a moment, before falling back in a gesture of hopelessness. “But then, I thought – what was the point? What could I expect to come of it – bar me getting the sack, that is? Would it have changed my Terence back into the boy he used to be?”

  Her eyes fixed steadily on Rafferty's. “He's forty-one, Inspector, not a boy any more. Moon may have tried to force my son to his own unnatural ways, but do you think I don't realise that Terence has continued with them willingly enough?”

  Her answer sounded logical enough to convince Llewellyn. But Rafferty found it difficult to accept that logical reasoning would come naturally to a loving mother in such circumstances. He decided to try another tack. Although her answer to his next question wouldn't prove anything either way, as it now seemed pretty conclusive that Moon had still been alive when she left the offices after work, if he could wrong-foot her on an unimportant aspect, it might unnerve her sufficiently to betray herself on something that did matter.

  “I understand you finished work at 7.00 p m?” She nodded. “Yet you didn't arrive at the Astells' house till 7.35 p m. It's less than a five minute ride. There's a bus from the stop along from the offices at 7.10 p m, yet obviously you weren't on it. Can you explain why?”

  “I did finish work at 7.00 p m, as I told you,” she insisted. “But I couldn't go to the Astells' house on such an important evening in my old cleaning dress. I know from previous years that even if I'm only there to remove glasses and load the dishwasher, I'm still expected to make an effort, to show respect for her father's memory. Can you just imagine what Mrs Astell would say, and her in that expensive black glittery get-up, if I turned up in something worn out and shapeless? I had to have a wash and get changed.”

  Rafferty stared at her. “What did you just say?”

  “That I had to get chang...”

  “No. Not that bit. What you said about Mrs Astell's dress. Describe it to me.”

  Ellen Hadleigh looked at him as if he had just gone mad, but did as he asked. “She had a thin black dress on. Cashmere she told me it was. It had glittery silver threads that caught the light. I told her she'd catch her death in it.”

  Mrs Hadleigh had been wrong, Rafferty thought grimly. And so had he. It had been Moon who had caught his death. But Mrs Hadleigh's description of the dress made him swiftly cast aside his ruminations on mortality. Because its make-up sounded suspiciously similar to the few threads that had caught on Moon's desk. And Sarah Astell had said she had never been to the offices...

  Rafferty sneaked a glance at his sergeant's face as they left. It was as expressionless as ever and Rafferty's conscience started up in fine heckling style. You should be ashamed of yourself, it chided. Making Dafyd feel he has to cloak his triumph with tact just to soothe your bloated ego. If it had been you, it told him, you'd have been crowing from the rooftops.

  As usual, his conscience managed to hit the target. Rafferty cleared his throat, and said, “Come on, Daff. You're allowed to say "I told you so".” With a rueful grin, he added, “Only once, mind.”

  Llewellyn's dark eyes met his and his thin lips turned up a millimetre. “In that case, I'll wait till the court gives me the go-ahead, if you don't mind.”

  Rafferty shrugged. “Suit yourself.” I tried, he told his conscience, before it had the chance to have another go at him. It's not my fault if he doesn't know how to relish his triumphs.

  Further questioning of Ellen Hadleigh had revealed that the dress had cost £400. As they made their way down the grubby stairwell to the car, Rafferty recalled Mrs Hadleigh's scandalized voice as she had told them this. Understandable, of course in a woman who must exist on a similar amount for a good chunk of a month. “And there was nothing of it,” she had said. “Just this plain black cashmere with silver metal threads woven through it. Not a patch on my good black jersey.” Sarah Astell had bought it, just before the anniversary evening, at Chez Sophie, an up-market dress shop in Elmhurst.

  “Do you want me to go to Chez Sophie and ask them to let us have a similar dress?” Llewellyn enquired when they returned to the station.

  “No,” said Rafferty decisively. “I'll do that myself. You go and light a candle for Nat Kingston.”

  An hour later, Rafferty let himself out of the tastefully discreet door of Chez Sophie, and patted the silver carrier bag. Mission accomplished.

  The dresses were a new line imported from France for which Chez Sophie had sole selling rights in the county. They'd taken two dresses in four slightly different styles, two each in black, midnight blue, scarlet and gold. The black were the only ones with thread in silver; the others had toning threads. So far, the proprietor assured him, they had only sold one of the black – to a local lady – Mrs Astell. The credit card slip confirmed it.

  Now all he had to do was drop the dress off with Appleby at forensic and wait for the results of their tests to see if they matched the fibres removed from Moon's desk. With luck – even if it was no thanks to him – the end of the investigation was in sight.

  Back at the station, Rafferty told a slightly happier Llewellyn, “If Appleby comes up trumps, I think we'll have enough to get a search warrant and...” He broke off as the phone rang. Two seconds later, he shot up in his chair, fingers clutching the receiver tightly as he demanded, “When did this happen? What hospital?” Having got answers to his questions, he deliberately broke the connection. After asking the desk sergeant to get him the hospital on the line, he told
Llewellyn grimly, “Guess what? That was Edwin Astell. His wife tried to kill herself this afternoon.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “What was it?” Llewellyn asked. “An overdose?”

  Rafferty confirmed it. “The little girl's nanny found her in time and she's had her stomach pumped out.” He met Llewellyn's eye and smiled wearily. “I'd say this clinches the case against her, wouldn't you?” The phone rang again. It was the hospital. Quickly Rafferty got put through to the doctor looking after Mrs Astell and, after a bit of persuasion, managed to get him to agree to let them see her for a few minutes.

  Sarah Astell was pale, but dry-eyed. She was sitting up in her hospital bed when they arrived and appeared surprisingly calm, as if her recent brush with death had insulated her from earthly troubles. Astell, in the chair beside the bed, tried to prevent them questioning her, but when Rafferty over-rode him he subsided.

  Sarah Astell's unnatural calm deserted her when Rafferty tried to get her to admit the reason for her attempted suicide. She quickly became hysterical, and Astell protested again. “Surely you can see she's in no fit state to be questioned? For pity's sake, she's just tried to-” Astell broke off and glanced guiltily at his wife, as if he had been about to mention a forbidden topic.

  “I'm aware of that, sir,” Rafferty told him, his own guilt making his voice sharper than he intended. He should have guessed Sarah Astell might attempt suicide, he told himself. She had already attempted a form of self-destruction with the anorexia in her youth, so the seeds were there. Being suspected of murder was a far more pressurizing influence than the indifference of a parent. But Astell was right, he realised. Now was not the best time to question her. But before he could say so, Sarah Astell herself calmed down sufficiently to answer his question.