The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “I don’t want to say much about it,” he said. “But I suppose I do owe you some sort of explanation.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He blinked hard. “It’s like this. I had a row with this girl—you know, it’s Lynette, who used to work in our office. We were going to go for a drink at this pub in Stockport. Oh, I know it sounds bad, especially after I swore that our little—flirtation—was a thing of the past. But I can explain. Our meeting up was innocent enough, but something happened. There was—an accident. She hit her head. When I tried to bring her round, I realized she was dead.”

  Claire stared at him, unable to comprehend what he was saying. “You killed Lynette?”

  “Oh, don’t say it like that. We were in this alleyway near the pub and we started arguing. I gave her a push—a tap, really. She fell over and smashed her head on a jagged stone, simple as that. It was all so sudden. She must have had a thin skull or something. Oh God, I didn’t mean this to happen.”

  “In Stockport, you said? When was this?”

  He shrugged, as if irritated by the irrelevance of the question. “Does it matter? Twenty minutes ago, I guess. If that. I broke every speed limit in the book on my way back over here.”

  “But—your meeting with Jennifer Bailey …”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “Forget about it. The police mustn’t hear about it. I was here at home with you. Watching the box all evening. Okay?”

  “I don’t understand,” she said and it was no more than the truth.

  “Oh God,” he said again. Tears were trickling down his cheeks. “It just happened. I can’t explain any better than that. Not right now.”

  But he hadn’t given any sort of an explanation, so far as Claire was concerned. It wasn’t so much the mystery of why he had killed that silly little girl Lynette. Last year’s fling had evidently started up again, even though he’d promised he would never see her again after she left the company. No, what Claire could not get her head around was the sheer impossibility of it. How had her husband managed to murder someone in nearby Stockport, when according to Jennifer Bailey he was at one and the same time in Bradford on the other side of the Pennines, and Zack was convinced he’d been run over by a stolen Fiesta?

  She wasn’t able to contact Zack until the middle of the next morning. Karl didn’t work nine-to-five hours and he didn’t have any calls to make first thing. But after a night of tossing and turning, he decided to visit the office and file his weekly report. He had managed to regain a semblance of composure and he thought it would be a good idea to be seen to act normally.

  On his way out, he kissed her for perhaps the first time in a month. “I just wanted to say—thanks. You’ve been fantastic. I won’t forget that.”

  Claire gave him a weak smile. It seemed the safest response.

  “And you’ll remember, won’t you? If the police come, we were together all night. You never let me out of your sight for more than a couple of minutes.”

  “But how do you expect to get away with it?” she asked. “You were with Lynette. Won’t someone have seen you?”

  He shook his head. “We never made it to the pub. The streets were dead quiet. We both arrived in separate cars. There’s nothing to link me with that place. No-one saw us, I’m sure of it.”

  “I still don’t follow,” she said. Already she regretted agreeing to help him out. He’d caught her at a bad time the previous night, when she was so shocked by his reappearance that he could have talked her into anything. “I mean, what about Jennifer Bailey? Why not get her to do your dirty work for you?”

  His expression was one of genuine horror. “She was a customer. I told you. How could I ask her to give me an alibi? You don’t think we were having an affair, do you?”

  “Well, I …”

  “You did! Oh, Claire.” He took her hand in his. A romantic gesture; no doubt he employed it with all his conquests. “Listen to me. I realize things haven’t been great between us for a while. But we can try again, can’t we? I’ve come to my senses, honestly. You’re a wife in a million, I see that now. Will you give me another chance?”

  She withdrew her hand. “You’re saying you haven’t got a thing going with Jennifer Bailey?”

  “I told you. She’s a middle-aged frump. Last night, I was on my way over to Bradford and I suddenly decided it was a complete waste of time. You know what one-leggers are like. I don’t know what got into my head, but I decided to give Lynette a ring. See how she was getting on, for old times’ sake, that’s all. There was nothing in it. Zilch. She suggested meeting for a quick drink. But when we met, she made it clear she wanted us to get together again. I told her there was nothing doing, that I wanted to make a go of things with you. She became angry, hysterical. I didn’t know how to deal with it. She lunged at me and—and that’s when I pushed her.”

  His voice was breaking. He had missed his true vocation, she thought. He was better at acting than she was; he might have made a fortune on the stage. Because he wasn’t telling her the truth, of that she was sure. His story didn’t begin to explain why his client, the frump, the one-legger, had called her to say that he was on his way home when he was out pubbing with his floosie. She thought about confronting him, telling him about the message from Jennifer Bailey, but decided against it. He obviously knew nothing about the call. She would keep that morsel of information to herself until she had more of a clue as to what he had really been up to.

  As she made herself a snack lunch, Claire asked herself if it was possible that the whole story about killing Lynette was some sort of elaborate charade. She wouldn’t put it past him. Like most serial adulterers, Karl possessed a vivid imagination and a gift for telling fairy stories that the Brothers Grimm might have envied. Suppose he planned to resume his affair with the girl. The prospect of divorce held no appeal for him, she was well aware of that. Too expensive. Perhaps he had decided to concoct this extraordinary story of killing the girl by accident so that Claire would think she had him in her power and relax. If she thought Lynette was dead, she wouldn’t suspect him of continuing to sleep with her, would she?

  No. It was too bizarre. Ridiculous, even by Karl’s standards of excessively ingenious subterfuge. There had to be some other explanation. She would need to undertake a bit of detective work. But first, she must find out what had gone wrong at Zack’s end. She had tried to phone him as soon as Karl had stepped out of the door, but there was no answer on his mobile. She pressed redial, but as the number began to ring, she heard footsteps coming up the path to the front door. Hurrying into the dining room, she saw through the window that a lean young man was standing on the step, pressing the bell. Quickly, she cancelled her call. Zack would have to wait a few minutes.

  Her immediate impression when she answered the door was that the young man was almost as gorgeous as Zack. He didn’t have the same dark and dangerous eyes, or the muscular shoulders and chest. But he was smart to the point of elegance and his neatly scrubbed face was boyish and appealing. Very nice. Wholesome, you might say. It made a change.

  “Mrs. Doherty?”

  She stared at him with only the slightest nod.

  “My name’s Godstow. Sergeant Paul Godstow. I’m with the police.” He showed her his I.D. “May I come in?”

  “Certainly, sergeant.” When in doubt, ooze charm. She treated him to a brilliant smile which she hoped would disguise her nervousness. What now? “Can I offer you a drink?”

  “Thanks, but no.” He followed her into the living room. “You see, Mrs. Doherty, it’s like this. I just need to ask you one or two questions about last night.”

  He was checking up on Karl. They had already got wind of her husband’s past relationship with Lynette. She swallowed and launched into the tale that she had agreed with her husband. He’d been with her since coming home from a call at half past five. They had eaten together, watched a little television, discussed the need to redecorate the hall and first floor landing. She’d ironed a couple of shirts
, he’d done a bit of tidying in the loft. They had retired to bed at about eleven o’clock to sleep, she strongly implied, the sleep of the just.

  The policeman frowned. “So you were together all the time?”

  “That’s right, sergeant.” She smiled again. He was dishy, there was no denying it. “Not a very interesting evening, but that’s married life for you. The excitement doesn’t last.”

  He looked straight at her. “Depends on who you’re married to, I suppose.”

  “That’s true,” she murmured. “Will—will that be all?”

  “For the moment, Mrs. Doherty. It’s just possible I may need to come back to ask you one or two more questions.”

  “Any time, any time at all,” she breathed and was secretly entertained when his face turned beetroot red. “Actually, I was preparing lunch when you arrived. Nothing special, just a salad. I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?”

  “Thanks, but no,” he said. “There’s a lot to do in connection with the enquiry.”

  “Oh, well, another time perhaps.”

  He handed her a card. “This is my number. If anything springs to mind, I’d be glad to hear from you.”

  “Sorry I haven’t been able to help. Perhaps I ought to return the compliment anyway.” She found a slip of paper and wrote the number of the house and her own mobile in her flamboyant script. “Don’t hesitate to call me.”

  He considered her carefully. “Thanks, Mrs. Doherty.”

  “Please call me Claire.”

  “Thanks, Claire. I’m sure we’ll talk again.”

  “Zack? God, I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day. What went wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he replied. His voice sounded dreamy, as though he were living out a fantasy. “I went out for a ride on my Harley, that’s all. And I felt free as a bird. It’s amazing, you know, darling? You can snuff out a life just like that”—she heard him click his fingers—“and guess what? You carry on, same as before. You haven’t changed. You’re still you. You’ve murdered someone, but it’s not the end of the world. Not for you, at any rate.”

  “Not for your victim, either,” she said grimly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Karl’s still alive.”

  She could hear his intake of breath. “This your idea of a joke? Don’t tell me you can’t cope with what we’ve done. You told me you were sick of him. I did it for you.”

  “You didn’t do it at all,” she said curtly. Rapidly, she told him what had happened. The awestruck silence at the other end was eloquent. “Are you still there?” she demanded.

  “I don’t get it. There must be some mistake.”

  “Yes, and it looks like you made it.”

  “But it all went according to plan.”

  “Something went wrong with the plan, then.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand.”

  “That’s true, Zack. I don’t bloody understand a thing. I suppose it’s too much to hope that you can cast any light on this whole God-awful mess?”

  “No, I …”

  He was stammering, sounding like an overgrown schoolkid. He was so much less mature than the sergeant, she thought. Now there was a young man who was going places. Quiet, assured, effective. Everything that Zack was not.

  “So tell me what really happened. Did you by any chance run over a bit of sacking that you mistook for my husband? An easy mistake to make in the dark, I suppose. A shop window dummy that seemed to have a bit of life? Or at least more of a brain than you?”

  “No, honest. I did the business. He came out of the house, just like you said he would. I mean, I didn’t see his face under the streetlight, so it wasn’t easy to compare him to that photo you gave me. But he was a big bloke, muscular, walked with a bit of a swagger. It had to be your old man.”

  Claire groaned. Zack coughed and kept on talking. She thought he was trying to convince himself, rather than her, that he hadn’t made the ultimate in fatal errors. “He’d been in there since before I turned up. I couldn’t see where he’d parked. I thought it was probably out of sight so the people next door wouldn’t twig that something was going on. I was following him down the road and then the pavement came to an end. I’d staked the spot out in the afternoon. Double-checked the address you gave me, the photograph of your old feller. Everything was planned down to the last detail.”

  “Go on,” she said bleakly.

  “He was forced to cross over. No choice. And that’s when I did it. Put my foot down and went for him. Tossed him up in the air like a pancake and then, when he hit the deck, reversed back over him just to make sure. I’m telling you, no-one could have survived that. I even saw the blood making a pool on the roadside before I drove away. Believe me, he was dead all right. The car was in a right state when I dumped it.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “I swear to you. On my mother’s life.”

  “There’s only one more question, then.”

  “What’s that?” He sounded bewildered. He’d been expecting her undying gratitude and now it had all gone wrong. “Hurry up, there’s someone at the door. They’re leaning on the buzzer. What’s your question?”

  “Who exactly was it that you did kill?”

  That was it, Claire said to herself as she pulled down the ladder that led up to the loft. Zack was finished, as far as she was concerned. She should have remembered her late father’s favourite saying. If you want a job done properly, do it yourself. How could she ever have believed that he would do what she wanted without a slip-up? She blamed herself, even though it wasn’t her habit. All her life, it seemed, she’d been seduced by men talking big. They always acted small. That nice sergeant would be different, she thought. He hadn’t worn a wedding ring: she noticed these things. If only …

  She reached up to switch on the loft light. It was a large loft, running the length of the house, but so dusty that it made her want to sneeze. Telling the sergeant that Karl had been up here tidying the previous night was probably the biggest lie of all. Her husband thought that life was too short for tidying and he never bothered with their attic. Taking a job with Slickloft had not made the slightest difference. His argument was that if he’d wanted a fourth bedroom he’d have bought a bigger house on day one. Besides, he said that nine out of ten loft conversions were only any use for midgets who liked walking down the middle of a room, and he was six feet three. The loft was, therefore, an admirable hiding place so far as Claire was concerned and she often made good use of it. Amongst the bits and pieces she kept here was the note she had made of Jennifer Bailey’s name, address, and telephone number: information she had needed for Zack’s briefing and which she’d managed to copy surreptitiously from Karl’s personal organizer.

  In fact, there were two numbers. Home and work, presumably? The codes were different. She recognized one immediately; it was the code for Bradford, she had a cousin who lived there. Next to the other were the initials “AA” and a couple of exclamation marks. Karl had a tedious sense of humour and she could not imagine what had been in his mind. Alcoholics Anonymous? Automobile Association? Agony Aunt? Nothing seemed to make sense at the moment. However, she had more important things to worry about.

  She hurried downstairs and dialled the Bradford number, having taken care to withhold her own. “Yes?” The woman sounded subdued, very different from the night before.

  “Mrs. Bailey? You may not remember, but you rang me last …”

  “This isn’t Mrs. Bailey,” the woman interrupted. Of course not: she was elderly by the sound of her, probably a pensioner. “My name’s Dora Prince, I’m her next door neighbour. I’m sorry, but she’s not able to come to the phone right now. I’m afraid she’s still in shock. You know what’s happened, do you?”

  I wish, Claire thought. “No …”

  “It’s a terrible tragedy,” the woman said, lowering her voice. “Her husband went out last night to pick up some fish and chips and he was run over as he was crossing the roa
d. The driver didn’t stop. The policewoman’s here now. She hasn’t even got round to asking me anything. She’s too busy comforting Jennifer, of course. You can imagine.”

  Yes, Claire could imagine. “Oh dear,” she said.

  “Awful, isn’t it? Such a lovely chap. And a dab hand at do-it-yourself, too. He’ll never finish that pergola now, poor fellow. Shall I tell Jennifer you rang?”

  “Oh, it’s all right. Don’t bother. We—we hardly know each other. I don’t want to intrude.”

  As she put the phone down, Claire’s heart was pounding. She had solved one mystery, only to be confronted with others. What on earth had possessed Jennifer Bailey to telephone her the previous night? Come to think of it, why had she lied about having seen Karl? And why had Karl said she was a one-legger when her husband—her late husband, thanks to bloody Zack, a real case of collateral damage, poor sod—had apparently been at home with her throughout the evening?

  She sighed and looked for Jennifer Bailey’s second number, the one which Karl had marked with the initials “AA.” The code seemed familiar. Wasn’t it Crewe? Curiouser and curiouser. Why would a woman who lived in Bradford have a work number in south Cheshire? Well, it was possible, but it seemed strange. She was seized by the urge to find out what “AA” stood for. She rang the number.

  “Hello?” The woman who answered sounded familiar.

  “Who is that?”

  “Who’s calling?” Definitely evasive.

  The penny dropped. This was the woman who had rung the previous evening. Jennifer Bailey. Or rather, someone purporting to be Jennifer Bailey.

  “Is that AA?” Claire asked in a hopeful tone.

  “Yes.” The woman sounded less guarded. “How may I help you?”

  “Well, I just wondered …”

  “You’re interested in our services?” The woman seemed to recognize Claire’s hesitancy, and to regard it as natural enough.

  Claire pondered. Was she calling some kind of brothel? She wouldn’t put much past Karl. “Could you give me some details?”

  “Of course.” The woman became business-like. “It’s very simple. The Alibi Agency’s name speaks for itself. We provide excuses for people who need them. Most of our business comes by way of word-of-mouth recommendation, but you may have seen that feature article about us in The Sun. You want to be in one place when you’re supposed to be in another? We can help. Our rates are very reasonable and …”