York CID - The Woodcarver

by Peter Turnbull

  York CID - The Woodcarver

  Peter Turnbull

  First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine No. 3 & 4 (No. 751 & 752), March/April 2004

  THE WOODCARVER

  by Peter Turnbull

  Sophie Crybacce found her husband, she found him when she was not looking for him, not expecting to see him, and she found him dead. She had returned from visiting her sister in Sheffield and had chosen to make the homeward journey to York early in the afternoon to avoid the rush-hour traffic which, despite the best efforts of the town planners and the North Yorkshire Highways Department, succeeds in log-jamming the medieval city each weekday between seven and nine A.M., and again between four-thirty and six-thirty p.m. Sophie Crybacce enjoyed the drive, a pleasant summer's day, only an hour between Sheffield and York, hood down, just her and her silver Mercedes Benz sports car, knowing that she was attractive and flaunting it, silk scarf and designer sunglasses. She had become a rich man's wife via the catwalk. She had never enough about her to become a top model, nor had she any desire to be such, having seen the catwalk only as a means of advertising herself as free, available, and in the market for a husband. She had taken her mother's advice. Her mother had been, and in fact was still, an embittered woman who had married "down," from relative wealth to the absolute poverty of a life on the dole, never really enough to eat and clothes from the charity shops. She had brought her two daughters up not to repeat her mistakes. The only thing that matters about a man, she would say, is the size of his wallet, not the size of his heart or his brain or anything else, just the size of his wallet; only his wallet and nothing but his wallet. Even before Sophie Crybacce and her sister had started school, their mother had ensured that they both knew how to spell the word "wallet." The lesson had, as the north-country expression has it, been "dinned into" the heads of the two girls. And both had clearly been receptive to her advice, for Carol began to call herself by the classier name of Caroline, and had married a man much, much older than herself who happened to own a steel-making factory, though she constantly assured him that that did not influence her decision when he asked her to marry him. There were not many steelworks left in Sheffield by then, still less in private ownership, but Caroline's husband, who was older than her father, owned one, and a rambling Victorian mansion in the leafy and prestigious suburb of Dore. For if you live in Sheffield and you own a steelworks, then you live in Dore, with a Rolls Royce for him and a car, any car of her choice, for her, which in Caroline's case was a lovely beige BMW. Sophie Crybacce's husband, by contrast, was of her age group, and as well as his money---and she found that he had plenty of that—she liked him for his ruthlessness, his cunning, which she thought could enable him to outfox a fox. His not bothering about the niceties of back-slapping, not he, not Lucian Crybacce, for when he spilled your blood he would smile as he did so and you would see him smile, for when he stabbed, he stabbed from the front. Sophie Crybacce was proud of her husband, and she was proud of her sister, and their mother was proud of both of them. The women saw nothing of their father, who, at their marriages, felt overcome and socially gauche. So much so that on neither occasion could he give his father-of-the-bride speech, and went then to tend his pigeons and to fish in the canal and enjoy a pint of brown-and-mild with his flat-capped mates in the taproom of the Dog and Gun, which was a corner pub in the middle of terraced streets where he had lived all his life, and he did so as though his marriage and parenthood had never happened.

  Sophie Crybacce drove into York and turned down Queen Street beneath the walls of the ancient city, across Lendal Bridge, then left in front of the towering splendour of the Minster and out of the city to the expensive northern side, to the village of Pockling-ton, to the Viking-inspired named Foss Avenue, to number 12, her new-built, airy, split-level house. Not quite as striking and impressive as Caroline's ivy-clad mansion, but his and hers, mainly his, and bought and paid for. Not bad for a girl of only twenty-seven, not bad at all, especially when her husband had in excess of thirty years' working life ahead of him. Who knows, she thought, what untold wealth would be theirs when they were as old as Caroline's husband.

  She parked the car in the driveway and got out of the vehicle in the way she had been taught in deportment, to swivel on her bottom with both knees and ankles together, knees raised and toes pointed downwards. "A man may split his legs when getting out of a horseless carriage, but a lady never does, never, never, not even when wearing slacks, if you really must wear such unladylike attire.... Never." It was then she noticed that the front door of her house was ajar. That was unusual. It was very unusual. She walked from the car to the gloss-black painted door, her heels clicking on the concrete driveway beside the modest but neatly clipped lawn, and approached the door slowly. She glanced to her left and right. All was quiet in Foss Avenue, second cars on the driveways, no children playing, not at that time of the day and few at any other time. This was a place of upward mobility, a place where children came "later" if at all. She opened the door, pushing it wide, and called out, "Lucian . . . hello ..." and her voice echoed in the spacious building. But there was no reply.

  She saw the blood first, a smear, very noticeable in her "just so" home, then beyond the smear was a splatter, and beyond the splatter was a pool, and beyond the pool was her husband, crumpled on the floor, his white-towelling dressing gown having turned crimson.

  George Hennessey turned his car into Foss Avenue and smiled warmly, as he always did, when he saw the car, a red-and-white Riley, circa 1947: sleek, with running boards, a "just don't make 'em like that anymore" sort of car. Still in daily service and maintained, he knew, by a small garage whose proprietor drooled over the vehicle and had, by means of pestering for years and years, finally extracted a promise from the owner that should she ever sell the car, she would offer him first refusal. It was a promise the car's owner had been able to give because she knew that she would never sell the vehicle: It had belonged to her father and in time she would bequeath it to her son. Yet giving the promise meant the garage proprietor would care for the vehicle as if it were his own. Behind the Riley was Sergeant Yellich's fawn-coloured Escort, modest by comparison, and behind that was the police car with the blue flashing light on its roof. The vehicles were parked outside a house across the. door of which a blue-and-white police tape had been tied, and in front of which a constable stood. Hennessey halted his car behind the police car and stepped out onto the pavement. He glanced about him and saw a few people looking at the scene, discreetly so, from the front windows of their houses. He walked up to the house and stooped under the police tape and entered the building just as the bulb in the scene-of-crime officer's camera flashed. Sergeant Yellich stood in the hallway. Hennessey swept his hat from his wavy silver hair and nodded to Yellich.

  "Afternoon, sir," Yellich said briskly. "One deceased male, believed to be one Lucian Crybacce."

  "Crybacce? Unusual name."

  "It is a bit, isn't it, sir? He was stabbed repeatedly in the chest. He was found by his wife, lady in the front room."

  "Lead on, Yellich, lead on. Introduce me."

  Yellich opened the living room door and entered. Hennessey followed him and read the room: deep pile carpet, expensive furniture, ceiling-height mirror, top-of-the-range hi-fi; a room of wealth, but yet, he thought, a room which lacked life, akin to a photograph in an Ideal Home magazine.

  "This is Detective Inspector Hennessey." Yellich spoke to Sophie Crybacce. Then said, "Mrs. Crybacce, sir. She found the body and phoned the police."

  Hennessey nodded at the tearful lady, ashen-faced, wide-eyed. "I'm sorry. Not a good day for you, madam."

  "I came home about an hour ago now, less. I've been to Sheffield to vis
it my sister. . . . The front door was open, Lucian was in the kitchen ... blood everywhere."

  "The obvious question—"

  "No." Sophie Crybacce cut Hennessey off in mid sentence. "No, I don't know anyone who'd want to murder him."

  "Have you noticed anything missing from your home?"

  "No. ... If it was burglary, this wouldn't be here." She indicated the hi-fi. "I haven't checked my jewellery, but there's no indication of the house having been ransacked, as you see."

  "The door was ajar?"

  "Yes."

  "No sign of it having been forced?"

  "No ... well, see for yourself. He's in his dressing gown. He must have opened the door to pick up the mail. He would have switched off the alarm before opening the door. You see, my husband, his ... he was ... a businessman, an estate agent. ... He was frightened of petrol being poured through the letter box and set alight, so he had one of those metal postboxes attached to the outside of the house.... You probably noticed it."

  "I did, in fact. Confess I've been toying with the idea of having one fixed to the outside of my house for the same reason. You know, Britain is one of the few countries in the world where folks' mail is pushed through a flap in their front door. It's good to pick up your mail from the hall carpet rather than having to leave the house to collect it, but it does make you feel vulnerable."

  "Doesn't it? I was very pleased when Lucian had the metal box fitted."

  "Petrol has caught up with the letter box. The Victorians invented the things and the twentieth-century criminal mind saw the possibility of pouring petrol through them, but I digress. Your husband ... he sounds as if he was a frightened man."

  "He was cautious rather than frightened. He said that anticipation was essential to a successful business career. Preventing petrol being poured through our letter box was just an example of his farsightedness, not a reaction to a specific threat or fear."

  "I see, so he'd open the front door wearing pyjamas and dressing gown and at that point it seems that he was attacked and retreated back into the house."

  "It seems that way. He's not a large man. I'm taller and heavier than him . . . but he survived because he had the killing streak that small men have, a sort of built-in aggression that comes from being pushed around too much during his childhood . . . it's a need to compensate, but it made him a driven man and he achieved a lot for someone who's still in his twenties."

  "So it seems." Hennessey glanced around the room.

  "It's fully paid up; the mortgage, I mean. We don't owe a penny. We've got a holiday home in Wales and we both have a Mercedes Benz. His is a huge saloon. So he's come a long way in a short time; humble beginnings, both of us have, despite his fancy name. But he didn't take a single prisoner en route, not Lucian. He was utterly ruthless."

  "So he had enemies?"

  "Oh yes, sold his first house when he was just nineteen. He said people on the way up make enemies; it's folk going nowhere that make friends. But I still don't know of anyone who'd want to murder him."

  "Thanks." Hennessey walked into the kitchen. He saw the corpse and thought Sophie Crybacce had been kind when she described her husband as "not a large man." He was, in fact, very small, suffering, it seemed, from dwarfism.

  The forensic pathologist glanced up at him but showed no emotion. "Afternoon, Inspector," she said.

  "Dr. D'Acre." Hennessey spoke softly, as he found he tended to do in the presence of a corpse. "Have you been able to ascertain the cause of death? It appears to my untrained but experienced eye to be multiple stab wounds."

  The tall, slender, short-haired woman stood. "Well, I would say that your untrained eye is quite correct. The amount of blood could only have come from a body whose heart was beating when he was stabbed, and there's no other indication of possible cause of death. I'll have to do a full postmortem, of course, but twenty-plus stab wounds ... if I was a betting lady, I would bet large sums of money that the man was stabbed to death, and in a frenzy by all indications."

  "Emotionally driven?"

  "Passion, yes, definite passion, but of a negative nature, hate . . . that sort of passion. The wounds have a distinct semicircular pattern ... see.... I'd say the murder weapon was a chisel."

  "A chisel?"

  "Yes. Some chisels have a round blade when viewed in cross-section, carpenters use them for very delicate work. . . . Here, as you see, a small, narrow blade, only about half an inch from tip to tip, but with a distinct concave shape."

  "As you say." Hennessey pondered the wounds. "Most to the body, a few to the face."

  "Yes. . . . But I still think this is an emotionally driven murder. I know that there is a rule of thumb that states that murders of passion tend to feature injuries to the face because the murderer is attacking the personality, whereas murders which do not involve passion, such as aggravated burglary and serial killing, for example, tend to involve injury to the body because the murderer doesn't recognise the personality of the victim. But that's a rule of thumb and not absolute. ... Mainly, I see this as a passionate murder because of this. ..." Dr. D'Acre knelt. "This bruise, on the neck, under the chin, and here and here ... fingertip bruising. You see, if I put my fingers close to the bruises like this . . . you'll see how my forearm covers the man's face...."

  "I see."

  "My guess is that the man suffered facial injuries as he was being overpowered, probably near the front door—there is some blood splatter in the hall. Then, eventually, he was pinned to the floor here with the murderer's arm covering the face but the chest exposed, thus explaining the concentration of stab wounds to the chest. But if you've seen all you need to see, I'll have the body removed to York City for the P.M."

  "Please carry on." Hennessey left the kitchen and returned to the living room, to a stunned and shaken Sophie Crybacce. "Mrs. Crybacce?"

  The woman forced a smile and nodded as if to say, Yes?

  "Where is your husband's place of work?"

  "He has premises in York, in St. Peter's Gate, and an office in Selby, but he works at the York office."

  "Business partner?"

  "No.... He was a one-man band. Had employees, but no partner as such."

  "And you don't think any of his business associates would have cause to murder him?"

  "No ... like I said. He wasn't popular, but that's the way he liked it. He seemed to thrive on being unpopular. . . . But I can think of no one who'd want to murder him. He probably wasn't easy to work for. At home he was a bit of a control freak, everything had to be his way. ... I think that was because of his size, he was a bit self-conscious about it... had a chip on his shoulder."

  "Socially?"

  "A quiet social life. . . . Golf club for the clubhouse but he didn't play. He saw the club as a place to make business contacts."

  "Family?"

  "He was a classic rags-to-riches boy. Illegitimate, abandoned by his mother after he was born; children's home, a series of foster placements which failed; all of which made him bitter. But he provided a good home. Money is important. If you come from poverty, money is everything."

  "He was an animal." The woman was slender, bespectacled, red skirt and blazer, black shoes. "I was on the verge of leaving. Not many people stay in his employment for more than six months."

  "That's true." The second woman was dressed like the first, in what Hennessey deduced was the uniform of Lucian Crybacce's employees. They sat at desks in an office with schedules of property for sale on the wall or pinned up in the window. Most of them, Hennessey noted, were very upmarket.

  "He went on all the time about offering a service to his clients, but he wasn't above overcharging and underselling to his wife."

  "He did what?"

  The two women glanced at each other. The first said to the second, "Go on, you may as well tell him."

  "Tell me what?" Hennessey allowed an edge to creep into his voice.

  "We didn't like what he did."

  "Just tell me."

  "He'd
cheat his clients out of their money if he could. You see, what he'd do was, if someone came and asked him to sell their property and they clearly didn't know what it was worth, especially if it was ripe for modernisation, he'd really try it on with them. Tell them it was worth only up to half what it was really worth and if they still agreed to let him act for them, he'd phone them within twenty-four hours telling them he'd got a cash offer for their house and recommended them to accept it. Most of them did, because they were so pleased to have a rapid sale. The market is depressed at the moment, some houses can take two years to sell, so a sale within twenty-four hours is like ..."

  "Manna from Heaven," offered the second woman.

  "But in fact, the cash buyer was always the same, it was always a woman called Sophie Arbuthnot, whose address was in Wales, Arbuthnot being Mrs. Crybacce's maiden name. She retained an account in her maiden name when she married and the address in Wales was their holiday home."

  "I see."

  "So he then had a property at a knockdown price which he'd tidy up a bit, or modernise, and then put on the market for a greedy price. An easy way to make money and totally reprehensible."

  "It happened recently, about six months ago. Poor guy, sort of wide-eyed and naive, very biddable, no hard edge to him at all, artist type, casually dressed. He waltzed in and asked us to market his house and I knew, I just knew, what was going to happen.... I was screaming at him in my head, 'Get out, get out' . . . but Ciy-bacce saw him, recognised the type, and homed in on him, a fly on dead meat. 'It's all right, Jane,' he said, 'I'll handle this,' and escorted the fellow into his office. They left a minute or two later to view the property and Crybacce came back an hour later with that self-satisfied look he always has when he has snared a mug. He really was an evil little man. The original poisoned dwarf. I'm surprised he wasn't murdered a long time ago. Anyway, it all went to plan. The property was a terraced house, overlooking allotments, so there'd be no building opposite it, and it looked out over the river which was beyond the allotments. Lovely house for an artist and completely original, downstairs bath and toilet, for example. Crybacce sold it to Sophie Arbuthnot of Wales for the guy and then gutted it, new bathroom upstairs, new kitchen, paint job, and then sold it two months later for twice the price he'd purchased it for. When it was advertised, he put it smack in the middle of the window and I saw the previous owner walk past and glance at the display. I thought he was going to faint. I knew what was going on in his mind. He knew he'd been cheated, and he knew that it was Crybacce who'd cheated him. But that was four months ago. If he was going to murder Crybacce, he'd surely have done it before now, you'd think."