by L. C. Tyler
‘Hello, Joe,’ I said to the policeman. ‘Anything wrong? Is this business or pleasure?’
‘Hello, Ethelred,’ he replied. ‘Business, I’m afraid. Murder. Do you mind if we do this inside? It’s starting to rain out here.’
I went back to the kitchen and poured him some coffee while he explained, apologetically, why he needed my help. I knew Joe well – we met from time to time so that he could keep me up to date with police procedure and so I could provide a little literary gossip in exchange. Strangely it was literary gossip of a sort that he needed now.
‘Yes,’ I said eventually, in answer to his question. ‘I did know Roger Norton Vane. I’m writing his biography – well, one of them anyway. I can’t say I liked him much as a person, but I admired his work. I also probably ought to tell you now that if he was killed last night, then it’s my fault in a way. He phoned and said that his life was in danger. I didn’t believe him. I told him I couldn’t see him until this morning.’
‘But you changed your mind and phoned him at his hotel?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Definitely not. I was out to dinner. I got back around midnight. I’d recommended a couple of hotels where he could stay if he insisted on coming down to Chichester. But I didn’t hear from him at all after that. I certainly didn’t call him – I had no wish to find myself driving into Chichester to pick him up because he didn’t like the hotel.’
‘We think he was killed around eleven or eleven-thirty. A couple of blows to the head. The pathologist reckons that the second injury may have been when he fell to the ground – a lucky or unlucky blow, depending on how you look at it. When we were called to the crime scene we identified him straight away from the driving licence in his pocket – one of the old paper ones, but still in good nick. You don’t see so many of those now and a lot of the ones you do see are held together with Sellotape. He also had his hotel key card with him, so we traced where he had been staying.
‘It turned out he had arrived at his hotel around ten o’clock, having walked there from the station. He checked in and went to his room but an hour later he left, having asked reception for directions to East Street. Earlier he’d told the receptionist a Mr Tressider would be picking him up the following day and so he needed a room just for the one night. She wondered if that was who he was going off to meet. Vane was found in an alleyway just off East Street, so the hotel seem to have remembered the conversation reasonably well. We checked Vane’s phone – he’d received a call from an unidentified pay-as-you-go just before he went out. And interestingly, your mobile number was stored on it. I thought it odd, if you really had phoned him last night, that you hadn’t used your own phone. But then being murdered just off East Street isn’t routine either. So, I thought I’d better check.’
‘You don’t suspect me?’ I asked.
‘If we did, they’d have scarcely sent round a detective who knows you personally and might possibly be biased in your favour. You say somebody else had threatened to kill him, though?’
‘He actually said somebody had already tried.’
‘How?’
‘He was going to tell me today. It must have been in London, because that was where he was until yesterday afternoon.’
‘But he didn’t say exactly where?’
‘No.’
‘Or who?’
‘No.’
‘That takes care of all my best questions, then.’ Joe made a couple of quick entries in a black notebook. ‘Did he have any enemies?’
‘The difficulty is knowing where to start. The number of people who wanted him dead was surprisingly large. But the number who would have actually killed him would be very much lower.’
‘How many in the last group?’
‘If it wasn’t for the fact that he was dead, I’d have said none at all. His enemies were mainly highly respectable and had a lot to lose. They wouldn’t have taken the risk.’
Joe looked at me with a sort of kindly sympathy. ‘As you know, Ethelred, it’s when you’ve got a lot to lose that you’re prepared to take risks. So, who wouldn’t have minded him dead if somebody else would do it for them? I’d be happy to start with the top dozen or so if there really are that many.’
I drew a deep breath. ‘OK, what I have to begin by explaining is that Roger Vane had just re-emerged after a long absence—’
Joe held up his hand. ‘It’s OK, Ethelred. We googled him. It’s all there. But the name was familiar, anyway. He’s been on the news a bit lately.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Well, then you’ll already know his enemies included his former partner, Tim Macdonald—’
‘The artist?’
‘Yes – well done for knowing that.’
‘Not really. We got him off Google too. Illustrator of the Terry the Terrible Terrier series. I’ll have to look them out for the grandchildren. Macdonald has an obvious motive.’
‘Roger had evicted him from the flat,’ I said.
‘He was accused of murdering Vane before – in Thailand.’
‘But never charged,’ I said.
‘Is that right?’ He made another note. ‘That will save me a lot of unnecessary checking. And, as his partner, he would inherit Vane’s money?’
‘No, it will go to his niece, Cynthia.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘One suspect down, eleven to go. Next?’
‘Roger Vane and his agent were involved in some wrangle over fees. He’d accused the agent of fraud – not something agents ever do, according to my agent. But even if he did, I can’t see that would be enough to kill for.’
‘It might be enough if there genuinely was fraud and the agent didn’t want anyone to find out. Who else?’
‘There’s a man named Slide – he was Roger Vane’s housemaster. Roger ridiculed him in his books. Gave him a nervous breakdown. He had good cause, you might say. But he’s pretty old and frail to have done it himself.’
‘Could somebody have done it on his behalf?’
‘Yes, anyone of that generation at Cordwainers.’
Joe looked up from his note-taking. ‘The posh school in London?’
‘That’s the one,’ I said. ‘I understand that the school generally disliked Roger. They felt he had let the side down a bit. There was … I’m not sure … something the headmaster and Roger’s contemporaries seemed keen to keep quiet. I talked to various people and always felt that something was being held back.’
‘I bet. Anyone else?’
I hesitated. ‘Maybe. But I don’t really feel comfortable speculating like this – I mean, I feel as if I’m grassing up people who’ve done me no harm.’
‘That’s how it works, Ethelred, though grassing up people who have done you some harm is more fun. Anyway, we’ll need to talk to everyone who knew Roger Vane, so anything you say will merely speed up the process – get them cleared a bit faster, if they’re innocent. If they’re guilty we’ll get them anyway. Hopefully. What about the niece who gets the money?’
‘Cynthia. She stood to inherit a lot of money if Roger had been declared dead, but lost it all when he came back. And now he really is dead, the status quo is restored … But I really don’t think—’
‘How much money?’
‘The accumulated royalties over twenty years must have run into hundreds of thousands – maybe millions.’
‘Was she short of cash?’
‘Apparently. So is her mother, Margery Vane. Cynthia wanted the money in part to help her mother – she’s basically broke. Her mother was apparently once close to Roger Vane – later less so.’
‘Close? Meaning what?’
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ I said. ‘She implied a falling out.’
‘Anyone else?’ asked Joe.
I hesitated again. ‘People may tell you that his former editor, Lucinda, disliked him. But she wouldn’t—’
Joe held up his hand again. ‘I’ll be the judge of that. What did he do to her?’
‘Got her sacked. Actually she wasn’t the only
sacking he was responsible for. There was Roy Johnston.’
‘Oh yes, I remember – he was in the first series of Gascoyne.’
‘Did you Google him too?’
‘No, I’ve always been a bit of a fan of the series. I actually liked him better than the other one who replaced him. He was … how can I put it? … more like the Gascoyne in the books. What happened to him?’
‘He went to Australia, apparently.’
‘OK. I wouldn’t mind a trip over there to interview him. Of course, if he’s still there, it’s unlikely he killed somebody in an alleyway off East Street last night. And if he isn’t, I won’t be able to interview him. But I might be able to swing it. You never know your luck. Next?’
‘Lord Davies was at school with him – Vane knew something about his past that was not to his credit – but I wouldn’t want to suggest that Davies might have killed him.’
‘Very wise. Not with his legal team. But we can do that, of course. We’ll have a word.’
‘William Ogilvie, his lawyer, went to the same place. Also nervous about what Vane was going to say to me. You should probably talk to him too.’
Joe made further notes.
‘So, what did happen to Roger Norton Vane in Thailand, then?’ he asked. ‘I probably owe it to my colleagues in London and Bangkok to clear that one up. Did he say where he’d been all this time?’
‘He and Tim had an argument. Tim took a swing at him. Roger decided to clear off into the jungle to teach him a lesson. He rather liked it there so he stayed – first in Thailand, then in Laos. He sold his watch to raise funds, then later he taught English. He heard he was about to be declared dead, and so he came back. There’s not much more to it than that – or rather, Tim can fill you in on the detail if you need it.’
‘Twenty years is a long time to stay away. It would have caused problems for all sorts of people.’
‘Roger would have rather liked that,’ I said. ‘It was probably at least half of the reason why he stayed there.’
‘And there’d be records of him living in Laos?’
‘I assume so. But he lived there under a false name.’
‘Which was …?’
‘I don’t know. He never said.’
‘Tricky, though it may not be impossible to find out if we need to. Where were you last night, by the way? You will notice the casual way I throw that in.’
‘Out to dinner with some friends in Itchenor.’
‘Names?’
I gave him their names and address. He wrote them in his notebook.
‘Until when?’ he asked.
‘About midnight. I called a taxi company to get a cab home. They’ll have records.’
Joe made a note of the company name and nodded. ‘I’m sure they will. If we need to ask them.’
‘Is there anything else?’ I asked.
‘Not for the moment. I’ll let you know how it goes.’
‘So, what do you think happened?’
‘Well, based on the laws of probability, I’d have said he went for a stroll and was attacked by some druggie who needed twenty quid for his next fix. He was in a badly lit alleyway late at night – not wise, even round here. The guy coshes him, he falls awkwardly and hits his head against the wall or pavement. In the absence of other evidence, he died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the phone call to his mobile beforehand is interesting. Did somebody know Vane was down here and did they phone him and invite him to a rendezvous in an alleyway? If Vane was genuinely worried, it would have been an odd invitation to accept.’
‘Vane implied that only I knew he was here – but it’s quite possible that he told other people.’
‘It might be convenient for you if he had told a few other people’ said Joe. ‘It’s never good to be the only person with an opportunity to kill.’
‘Why would I want to kill the subject of the biography I was writing? What’s my motive?’
‘Let’s not worry too much about motive for the moment,’ said Joe. ‘You can kill somebody with no motive at all. But you can’t kill them if there’s no opportunity. It’s always worth remembering that.’
‘I was having dinner with friends—’
Joe gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder. ‘Just winding you up, Ethelred. Unless we spot your face on the CCTV footage, of course. Then it will be another matter entirely. Why don’t you focus on motive and I’ll focus on opportunity? You never know – between us we might just get somewhere. Thanks for the coffee. I can find my own way out.’
‘It’s ironic,’ I said to Elsie. ‘Just as he proves who he is and gets hold of his money, somebody murders him.’
‘Maybe that’s why he was murdered,’ said Elsie. ‘So long as it wasn’t clear who he was, he was in no danger. Once it was certain he was Roger Norton Vane, the killer decided it was time to act. The real Vane knew something that somebody was very keen to keep quiet.’
I thought about this. ‘When I first saw him at the church, he said that the literary world should be trembling in its kitten heels.’
‘There you are, then. Proving his identity sealed his fate. The whole time he was just digging his own grave. It’s classic tragic irony, when you think about it. Of course, there’s a silver lining. Now we can slag him off in the biography with no risk to anyone. You might earn out the advance, after all. First time for everything.’
‘Profiting from his death? That would just make me feel even guiltier,’ I said.
‘Why should you feel guilty? Other than for the pitifully small amount of revenue you bring this agency? Of course, I’d never embarrass you by mentioning it.’
‘If I’d just let him come and stay with me, he wouldn’t have been at the hotel and wouldn’t have been murdered. That’s plenty to feel guilty about. To make it worse, I think the police see me as a suspect because I was the only person who knew he was down in Sussex. Or if they don’t think that, they should. As Joe pointed out, it’s all about opportunity. I was the only one who could have phoned him and lured him to the alleyway.’
‘Cynthia knew,’ said Elsie.
‘Did she?’
‘Roger told her in the strictest confidence.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘Because she told me in the strictest confidence.’
‘And who did you tell?’
‘In the strictest confidence?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just Tim, I think.’
‘And he told … ?’
‘You mean yesterday afternoon or later?’
‘Yesterday afternoon.’
‘Four or five people, absolute tops. And Cynthia would have told her mum, of course. Roger’s secret was absolutely safe with us. Which just leaves you, I’m afraid. Let me know if you’re arrested. I’ll come and see you on visiting days, if it’s not too far away.’
I had no sooner ended the call than my phone rang again.
‘Lord Davies’ secretary here, you’ve been quite difficult to get hold of.’
‘I was talking to the police, then I was on the phone to somebody,’ I said.
‘Lord Davies would like to speak to you,’ said the secretary.
‘Put him through, then,’ I said.
‘No, he wishes to speak to you here in London,’ she said.
‘Maybe tomorrow or the day after …’ I suggested.
‘He requests that you should be here by midday.’
‘That might be tricky, even if I set off now …’
‘If you look out of your window, you should see a limousine drawing up in front of your house. I’ll put you in the diary for twelve-fifteen, just in case the traffic is heavy coming into London.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘I can get you some lunch, if you eat it. Never have time myself.’
‘It’s only just after twelve,’ I said. ‘Your driver put his foot down once we reached the motorway. We slowed only for the speed cameras.’
Lord Davies nodded approvin
gly. He was willing to spend money on a limousine to ensure that I was delivered when needed, but I could see he wasn’t one to waste it on unnecessary speeding tickets.
‘My secretary says that you’ve already spoken to the police?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘So, what did they have to say for themselves?’
‘I’m not sure how much I can tell you,’ I said.
‘Are you really uncertain? Perhaps I can clear that up for you, Ethelred. I have investments in several publishing houses, one of which publishes your books. I have dinner with the chairman on a regular basis. He won’t, of course, have heard of you, but I can ensure he does. He won’t have formed much of a view of your books, but I can advise him what to think – whether you are still worth publishing, and possibly even promoting, or whether you might be dropped back into the obscurity from which you came. It’s quite a small company. I am quite a large shareholder. Their cash flow is not good at present. They’d like me to put some more money in. I’m thinking about it. Now, let me ask you again: what did the police have to say for themselves?’
‘You overestimate my importance in this affair,’ I said. ‘I know very little that you won’t have already heard on the news. Roger Vane was attacked in an alleyway in the centre of Chichester, late at night. You presumably don’t need me to tell you that.’
‘You are quite right in believing that I haven’t had you ferried up here by limousine to confirm what I’ve just heard on the BBC, much though I suspect their left-wing bias and pleasant though it is to see you again. Do the police have any suspects lined up?’
‘My source in Chichester says that they would have assumed it was a simple opportunist robbery that had gone wrong, had it not been for an earlier attempt on his life and a phone call that he had received just before he went out. He seems to have been lured to the alleyway and ambushed there.’
‘So, he was killed by somebody who knew him?’ asked Davies.