A Recipe for Murder

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘But I can’t really help you. You see, he never had much to do with us. Used to send a card at Christmas — or rather Judith did — but that was all. And so we don’t know none of his friends.’

  ‘Did you see him very often?’

  ‘Hardly ever. Leaving out the last time, I don’t suppose we’d seen him in nigh on ten years.’

  ‘When was the last time?’

  ‘It must’ve been a couple of months back,’ she said vaguely. ‘And then, of course, he didn’t come to see us: not really.’

  ‘Not?’

  ‘He wanted to find out how to get hold of Reg. That’s one of my other brothers.’

  ‘Had he lost all contact, then?’

  ‘He … He never understood that it wasn’t really Reg’s fault.’ She blushed from shame.

  ‘Fault over what, Mrs Bowring?’

  ‘That … that he’d been to prison,’ she murmured.

  *

  Craven and Kelly drove up to London on Monday morning, arriving at the divisional H.Q. at ten-twenty. The divisional D.I. spoke to them in his room.

  ‘We’ve pin-pointed Powell for you. He’s living in a house in Vermont Street. We’ve had nothing on him recently.’ He pulled a sheet of paper forward. ‘After your phone call, I sent word out to one or two grassers to see if they could turn up anything. There’s not much come in, except that Powell’s been seen around recently with a bloke called Anderson: Jock or Snout Anderson. Is the name of any significance?’

  ‘None,’ answered Craven. ‘But the odds must be that if it’s Powell we’re after he had help.’ He thought for a moment, then added: ‘I’d like to take ’em both at the same time — d’you think we could work two teams?’

  ‘Easily done.’

  *

  Kelly and a local D.C. had driven to the drab, side-by-side house in which Anderson was living. Shocked to learn the reason for their visit, he had not been panicked. Adopting a sullen, dully stupid attitude — an easy task — he blocked all their questions with the same primitive air of ignorance.

  Kelly, his good humour apparently undented even by Anderson’s manner, said: ‘You’ve been working with Reg.’

  Anderson lumbered over to the fireplace. The front room hadn’t been cleaned in days because his common-law wife was a slattern: there were several empty beer bottles in the uncleared grate, cigarette stubs had overflowed an ash-tray, paper lay scrumpled up by the side of an empty bookcase, and on top of the television set was a plate on which were the congealed remains of a meal. ‘Don’t know no Reg.’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ said the D.C. wearily, ‘you two have been seen together.’

  ‘Don’t know no Reg.’

  Kelly, seated on a battered arm-chair, spoke earnestly. ‘Wise up, Snout. Reg is real smart so when he understood which way things were going, he started making certain he was all right even if that dropped you head first in ten feet of mud. He told us he’d said to leave the woman alone, but you got wild and killed her, even though you didn’t mean to.’

  This was sufficiently near the truth for Anderson momentarily to fear that he had been double-crossed.

  The detectives waited. Anderson picked up a pack of cigarettes from the mantelpiece, found it was empty, screwed it up and threw it into the grate.

  ‘Don’t let him send you down for a lifer,’ said Kelly. ‘The truth is, isn’t it, he killed her?’

  ‘Get stuffed.’

  The D.C. sighed. ‘You try to help ’em, but they’re too dumb to be helped.’

  ‘Let’s talk about Reg’s brother,’ said Kelly. ‘Lived in a big house, lots of silver and jewellery and the place wide open. I suppose Reg called it an easy mark?’ Anderson walked back to the window, the panes of which were covered with dirt.

  ‘But it turned out that the real job was to croak the brother. Reg was sure taking you for a sucker.’ There was another short silence.

  ‘Snout, I’m giving you just one more chance because I’m soft enough always to feel sorry for the sucker. We’re about to search this place and find proof you’ve been out on both the jobs. If you don’t speak up, those nick doors are going to shut behind you for more years than you can think about. But speak up now, tell us how Reg lied and tricked you, and we’ll do what we can for you.’

  Anderson cursed them.

  ‘All right,’ said Kelly, ‘let’s start looking.’

  ‘Where’s your warrant?’

  ‘Do you mind?’ said the D.C. scornfully.

  They searched slowly and carefully, but by the time they reached the last room in the small house, a bedroom in the same state of slatternly disorder as everywhere else, they had found nothing of the slightest consequence. It had perhaps, thought Kelly wearily as he went into the bedroom, been stupid to hope they’d find some of the silver from Tregarth House, but Powell and Anderson must have thought themselves completely in the clear and in these circumstances villains often boastfully took the risk of keeping around them the proof of their success.

  Anderson and the woman — her hair was in curlers, her dress was stained and torn — stood in the doorway and watched as Kelly began to search the bed and the D.C. the clothes cupboard. The woman in a shrill, penetrating voice kept asking Anderson what it was all about and he, in his hoarse, harsh voice kept telling her to belt up.

  Having finished with the bed, Kelly let the mattress fold back into position and tidied up the bedclothes, even though they had originally been in disarray. He crossed to the single chest-of-drawers. Each drawer was a jumble of clothes, some of them dirty. The floorboards had on them only a small slip carpet and it was easy to make certain that there was no hiding place beneath them: the ceiling was cracked, with a chunk of plaster having fallen away in one place, but again a visual search was sufficient to be certain there was no hiding place above it.

  The D.C. shut the cupboard door. ‘It’s clear,’ he said.

  So that was that, thought Kelly. And yet the evidence pointed to Reginald Powell and Anderson and beneath that air of brutish stupidity he was convinced there was the watchful tension of a guilty man …

  ‘We’d best be moving,’ said the D.C. He was in a hurry to get back to H.Q.

  ‘I’m telling you, if you don’t push off smart I’ll bleeding well throw you out,’ Anderson shouted, with the belligerence of a bully who, after a moment of doubt, once more felt himself to be in control of the situation.

  As Kelly stared at him, he remembered something.

  ‘Are you getting?’ Anderson balled his fists.

  ‘Cool it, Snout,’ said the D.C. with bored authority. He spoke to Kelly. ‘I’ve a job back at the station …’

  ‘One last thing,’ interrupted Kelly. He walked over to the wardrobe.

  ‘I’ve checked there,’ said the D.C., his voice expressing irritation.

  Kelly pulled open the two battered doors. Some clothes were hanging up, others were lying in the bottom in untidy heaps: amongst those hanging was a check sports coat, in Harris tweed, reddish brown in colour. He lifted the hanger off the rail.

  ‘What are you up to?’ demanded Anderson, his belligerence now tinged with concern.

  ‘Were you wearing this when you drove the Jaguar through the fence and over the edge of Stern Head and nearly left things too late for yourself?’

  ‘I ain’t …’

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone’s told you that a length of thread from the coat was caught up on an edge of the door of the Jaguar? The lab’s holding it for comparison tests.’ Kelly smiled.

  26

  Over the phone, the editor said in his rich, plummy voice: ‘I thought you’d like to know that your latest book has recorded some very satisfactory sales just when we were thinking of remaindering it.’

  ‘Mirabile dictu,’ said Scott. ‘What’s suddenly breathed fresh life into the dying?’ He became hesitant. ‘D’you reckon it’s my slight change in style which has gone down with the public?’

  ‘No, I don’t think it was that.’
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  ‘Then was it the couple of good reviews I got?’

  The editor coughed. ‘As a matter of fact, Kevin, our travellers report back that the sales are up because you’ve been in the news. A little … outside publicity often helps, you know.’

  Scott thanked the editor for phoning him. After replacing the receiver, he thought how he must have sounded ridiculous when he had assumed that it had been the quality of his work which had increased sales … Bitterness gave way to amusement. Life was a banana skin.

  *

  At that moment Kelly walked past the window, his mackintosh ballooning in the wind. Scott went through to the porch. ‘As the actress said to the bishop in one of the intervals, this seems to be becoming a habit.’

  Kelly stepped inside. ‘A habit you’ll be glad to hear is ending. I’ve just come to say that we’ve identified and arrested the two men who were responsible for the deaths of your wife and Mr Powell. I don’t know whether it will help at all, but there was no intention to kill your wife.’

  He didn’t know either. He had not loved Avis at the time of her death, but her death had hurt and a small part of that hurt had surely been the thought of men deliberately killing her.

  ‘I’m very sorry for everything that’s happened, but we had to do our job. I can only assure you that we tried to do it as fairly as possible. Now, except for the formalities, you won’t be bothered by us again. You’ll be able to give all your time to your books.’

  But how to ensure that their sales remained up?

  *

  Jane was waiting outside her flat, her expression very worried. ‘Kevin, has something terrible happened?’

  He took hold of her, kissed her, and then led her inside and shut the front door. ‘The police have discovered who killed Avis and Julian.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Her mouth trembled and she began to cry.

  ‘Hold it. How can I propose to a woman who’s acting as if this is the most miserable moment of her life?’

  ‘You could try,’ she answered, in a choked voice.

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