by Roy Lewis
‘Mrs Lindop . . . I take it that you are related to the recently deceased Chuck Lindop?’
‘Charles.’ She almost snarled the word. ‘I always called him Charles because he hated his real name. Chuck.’ Her voice was harsh but not uncultivated; she had worked at her accent over the years and even dissatisfaction could not destroy training.
‘Perhaps you would like to tell me what you are doing here?’
The fingers that still teased at her tin-coloured hair belied the casual tone she employed. ‘Easy. When my husband Charles Lindop died I thought it was about time that he made some contribution to the life style I’ve been indulging in — or would have indulged in if he’d ever kept to his promise to send me the money.’
‘What money?’
‘Maintenance.’ She almost jeered as she said it. ‘Me and Charles, we were married seven years. After three I found out he was playing the field as though he was still a young buck among the does. We had a few quarrels, and then he went his way, I went mine. But he promised me maintenance. When I made things a bit hot for him from time to time he paid me a little. But usually, it just wasn’t worth the effort. So most times I left him alone. I had my job — I work for an estate agent — so I could manage.’
‘No divorce?’
‘What for?’ Something happened to her eyes, as though old, worn cinema films were flickering through her mind, faded images of something that had once been, and the hope of something that could yet be again. ‘He didn’t want it — it’s useful having a wife in name if you get too tangled with another urgent female — and me, I was indifferent.’ She grinned suddenly, unexpectedly, and it changed her face, gave it a light and a glow that removed years of disgust from her features. ‘Or maybe I really thought he’d come back some time. Stupid, hey? I mean, he was a real bastard. But then women like me behave irrationally over men like Charles Lindop. In the beginning, we see only the charm. Later, we’re hooked, and it’s like a drug. Later still, when everything blows up in our faces, we still think it’s all a bad dream, and in the end, bad dreams are just that — bad dreams. And the reality is something you just live with. But always with a flicker of hope. Just a flicker.’
‘And what was the reality with you, Mrs Lindop?’
She picked up the dark glasses that lay beside the cold tea. ‘Acceptance. I knew eventually that I couldn’t take him any more. So we split. And I didn’t really expect him to come back. Afterwards, I didn’t really want him to. I had my job at Northleach — I could make my own way — but when I heard he’d . . . well, I thought he might well have left some cash lying around and it seemed right I should have first claim—’
‘Did you try his bank?’
Honey Lindop laughed. It was a bizarre sound, half way between contempt and annoyance and untouched by humour.
‘Bank! Chuck would have robbed one rather than put cash into one. No, I wasn’t surprised to learn he’d put his money here. It was the kind of nutty thing he’d do, believe me.’
‘How did you know he’d made a deposit here?’
She was silent for a moment, her calculating eyes fixed on Crow. She toyed with her glasses, clicking them against the teacup. She shrugged.
‘You can check, I suppose. I’ve been to thirteen hotels today and yesterday. They say thirteen is unlucky, well, the fourteenth was unlucky for me. This one. Because I find the place all right but, the money’s gone. How did I know about it? Chuck did it before. Safe as houses, he used to laugh, hotels. I knew there’d be no bank account. But I didn’t know which hotel. So it meant travelling. And I was too late.’
‘Someone else lifted the money?’ Crow said.
‘Exactly.’
‘How much was there?’
‘I didn’t say—’ she began, and then paused, thinking.
Crow waited and Honey Lindop pulled herself upright in her chair. She looked around the room listlessly as though seeking some place to hide and cry. She shrugged.
‘Haven’t a clue. If there was anything.’
‘You said you came looking for money.’
‘I didn’t say there was any there,’ she countered. ‘Last time I saw Chuck he was pretty slewed, he told me he had a nest egg’ — involuntarily her glance slipped around the room as though she suspected it might yet be in there — ‘but that’s not the same thing as saying he had any cash hidden away here. Anyway, even if he had, what’s the odds? Somebody else’s lifted it.’
‘Who?’
‘You tell me.’ For a moment a fierce anger burned in her eyes. ‘Tell me and I’ll put my nails in him.’
A moment, and she was in control again. She stared at the floor trying not to be aware of Crow’s glance. When she was asked if she had anything to add she shook her head without speaking. Crow soon found the way to open the floodgate, however. ‘You described your . . . husband as a real bastard, Mrs Lindop. I’d be grateful if you’d fill in the picture a little more fully. We don’t know a great deal about him.’
She did it with relish. In the background, George Stafford’s pencil flew over his note book as Honey Lindop’s malicious voice tore into the character that had been Charles Lindop. He had been a useless, whoring, puffed-up pimp, good in bed and bad at everything else. He couldn’t keep his hands off other people’s money or other men’s women. He was unreliable and untrustworthy, he’d take every last penny from your purse and every stitch of clothes off your back. He made friends easily and enemies even more easily and lots of his friends were soon enemies. In a party he was great; in private he was a swine. He could con you with a smile in his voice, and stamp on your face when your back was turned. ‘And that,’ she added drily, ‘takes some doing, I don’t need to tell you.’
‘But you didn’t hate him, Mrs Lindop.’ Honey started as if she had been slapped. Her eyes slid a glance around the room as though seeking escape from the question. She circled her lips with a pale, nervous tongue. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hate him.’
‘You remained on reasonably good terms with him.’
‘I had to live.’
‘I gather he had a certain charm,’ Crow said drily. ‘I’m told he was popular with women. He could—’
‘Use you,’ Honey Lindop said bitterly. The interruption seemed to spark off some flash of nervous energy in her; she came to life like a rumbling volcano, letting off sparks and steam and pain. ‘For God’s sake. Why do I dredge around in my mind for excuses for him! He doesn’t need them now, not that he ever did. He was a bastard, and he died a bastard. He conned me, he conned his friends, he conned everyone he met, but he was such a small man! You know that story about inside every fat man there’s a thin one tryin’ to get out? That’s how it was with Chuck Lindop — he was a small man, with a big one trying to get out from inside. But the trouble was he never would be big. He had ideas, did Charles Lindop! He thought he was smart, and clever, a genius; he thought he could handle people, make them sing his tune and never get off-key. He thought he could manipulate people and there’d never be a come-back. He was so bloody clever, and one day, he knew, he’d really make it. A big one, the big time, the day it would all go right for him and he’d have a Rolls, a country house, and money in the bank. But it was all a dream. While he saw himself as Mr Big inside, other people saw him for what he was, a small con-man, picking up small cash in small ways. Tough, but not tough enough. Dirty, and ready to do the dirt, but not big enough to lay it on really thick where there could be a real payoff. He had one real talent for women. He could charm all sorts of birds out of all sorts of nests, but beyond that he was nothing. Just small. Small.’
There was a fine film of spittle on her lips. She wiped it off, surprised, perhaps at the wetness of her mouth, perhaps at the uncontrolled vehemence of her tongue. With the surprise came something else — a hint of fear. Something was going on at the back of her eyes and she seemed shaken by her own vehemence. As Crow stared at her he could almost sense the fumbling that was going on in her mind, the check she was
making of words and phrases she had used, testing them, trying them out again, looking for something, searching. But the anxiety was dying as she calmed, returned Crow’s gaze.
‘One thing’s for sure,’ she said, more quietly. ‘I don’t have the first idea who killed him.’
‘Or why he was killed?’ Stafford asked from behind Crow.
Honey Lindop shook her head. ‘Not that either. But if you want my guess, cherchez la femme. Charles Lindop needed women like other men need air. There’ll be a slap and tickle in it somewhere. I’m telling you.’
‘You know Ruby Sanders?’ Crow asked. Honey Lindop showed her teeth. The grimace passed for a smile. She nodded. ‘Ruby took over there for a while. Bouncy little tart. Chuck moved her down the field. There’s been others since then, though. The latest . . . well, I did hear a rumour and saw him with a woman some time ago. Married to someone working at the quarry, I believe. You check it out and I reckon you’ll find there’s a jealous husband in it somewhere.’
* * *
John Crow spent the next morning at the forensic laboratories. The pathologist in charge was eager and determined to show all his wares. Crow allowed himself to be shown the lines of test tubes bearing the hairs, the fibres, the materials and the body fluff, the slides with blood specimens, the photographs of the murder weapon, the shots of the deceased; the list seemed endless. It was late morning before he was able to pin the pathologist down to answer the questions he wanted to ask. And then they were vague enough.
‘First, the cause of death. Pretty clear. The crowbar was almost certainly the weapon, the haemorrhage the cause of death. A thinnish skull, splintering; the blow not too heavy, but direct. A right-handed person, standing just behind the deceased as he faced forward. Medium height — maybe five-seven, five-nine.’
‘The struggle he had been involved in?’
‘I would say brief, and not very significant to the death itself. There are traces which might lead to an identification but evidentially, as you’ll appreciate, they would not necessarily correlate. I mean, we might show that Mr A struggled with the deceased; we could not show the deceased died as a result of the struggle. It could show motivation of course. And all this presupposes you can find Mr A. A for Attacker, you see?’
‘Time of death?’
‘Ahhh. I so fear that question. So many policemen regard it as a crucial factor, but no sensible doctor would dare go into the witness box and state the exact time of death merely from deductions arising out of a post-mortem change in the body. You will have non-medical evidence which gives a lead?’
‘Lindop was alive at ten-fifteen. He was dead at eleven.’
‘Ahhh. I think we can be more precise than that. As you may know, the rate of loss of heat from a cadaver offers a reliable method of estimating the time which has elapsed since death, up to about twenty-four hours. But it means a careful study of the cooling curve, it has a sigmoid form, you know — after collection of the relevant data: air temperature reading, rectal reading, determination of the constants. Now, in the case of the deceased, taking him as average to fat in build, we could suggest a regular decrease of one point five degrees Fahrenheit per hour. The body was clothed, so adjustments are necessary but—’
‘Time of death?’
‘Don’t quote me in court but I’d say after ten-fifteen, before ten-thirty. Press me and I’d say ten-twenty. Ask me to enter the regions of fantasy and hypothesis and I’d say ten twenty-three. But I’d never be able to prove it. Near enough for your purposes, Chief Inspector Crow?’
* * *
‘Near enough,’ George Stafford grunted, ‘but where does it get us?’
‘Not very far,’ Crow said gloomily. He stood by the window with his hands in his pockets, staring out over Stowford Broadway. The fair was over, the gipsies were packing up and leaving. Already the ranks of painted caravans showed gaps and one ancient vehicle was trundling away with an impatient lorry on its tail. The swarthy gipsy holding the reins ignored the lorry horn with an assurance born of indifferent superiority. He was small and dark. He could have been the man who emptied Lindop’s deposit box. So could fifty other people in Stowford alone. Crow shook his head. ‘Not very far,’ he repeated.
He turned away and Stafford looked up expectantly. ‘At least the street will be quieter,’ Crow said with irritation in his voice.
‘And maybe we’ll get no more calls about Northleach Hall.’
‘You’ve had another?’
Stafford nodded. ‘Yesterday. The caller refused to give his name again, but said that Northleach Hall was going to be done. Well, we don’t get too much of that kind of robbery around here, so maybe now the gippoes are off it’ll all come to nothing. The Chief Constable has ordered a watch on the Hall anyway — he hunts from time to time with the owner.’
‘Our hunt’s of a different kind,’ Crow said sourly. ‘But let’s look at what we have so far. If we assume the pathologist is right about the timing of the death — and we have to assume that — the pattern of events seems to be like this . . . Lindop arrived back at the site about nine-thirty. Keene visited him at about ten o’clock. By ten-fifteen they had quarrelled and Lindop threw Keene out of the van. He then returned to his wife, who was beginning to have labour pains.’
‘Right. According to Ruby Sanders’s statement, she drew up in the lane outside the camp at about ten-fifteen or ten-twenty. She had a minor struggle with her octopus salesman — incidentally, we’ve managed to trace him now and he should be through here by tomorrow morning to make a statement — and then she went on the site at approximately ten forty-five.’
‘Keene phoned at eleven o’clock, the ambulance arrived, the body was found, the police got to the site at eleven-fifty and the residents began drifting back from Stowford Fair, Samson being one of the first, just before midnight. Those are the only ones who would seem to be pretty positive about their timings. Now then, the explosion . . .’
Stafford consulted the notes in front of him. ‘Everyone seems to agree that this occurred at about ten-ten. Hartley, Keene, Mrs Keene, the people up the road by the bus stop. It would seem to be right — the culprit must have left the lane before Ruby Sanders arrived.’
‘And the culprit?’
Stafford scratched his nose reflectively. ‘From the remarks passed by Mrs Lindop, and the rumours we’ve checked out on, it would seem it could have been a quarryman called Sam Dixon. His wife left him recently: she’s twenty years younger than him and had certainly been seen in Lindop’s company. He could have lifted some dynamite from Keene’s stores, and he could have blown the generator out of spite, getting his own back on Lindop. But whether he also thumped Lindop on the back of the head, in the darkness . . .’
‘There’s enough people with motive,’ Crow said. ‘This man Dixon, angry because Lindop seduced his wife; Forsyth maybe, angry because he was being swindled; Ruby Sanders, possibly, if she never really got over being dropped by Lindop—’
‘And Andrew Keene.’
‘Yes . . . Andrew Keene. He must still be a front runner,’ Crow admitted reluctantly. ‘I hardly think it likely he would kill Lindop simply because he felt he’d been cheated, but he is capable of sudden violence, he does admit to fighting with Lindop, and he was the only other person on the site—’
‘But that still doesn’t explain the deposit box, and just where Honey Lindop fits in.’
‘It doesn’t, indeed. I seemed to detect something odd in the relationship between Mrs Lindop and her husband. Did you notice anything?’
Stafford shrugged. ‘Not in particular. She seems to me to have come to a compromise about the man. She saw his faults — recognized them — and in the end she just didn’t care. Except for the money.’ He paused. ‘She’s been making her own way in her job.’
‘At the estate agents?’
‘Yes. I checked. She goes down well when the men take a look at houses; she has a good line, I gather. And she’s got herself interested in the valuation line
too. Learns quickly apparently. A small firm, and she’s proved useful.’
‘I just find it odd,’ Crow said. ‘If she was making her own way, and separated from Lindop, why did she maintain contact with him? Oh, I know she hasn’t said as much, but they were still on reasonably good terms and I just wonder if their contact was more regular than she’d have us believe.’
‘You mean they slept together occasionally?’
‘No, not that.’ Crow shook his head, frowning. ‘I’ll have to think about it. Just vague notions. And that deposit box . . . it bothers me . . .’ In sudden decision Crow headed for the door. ‘I’m going out to the camp again. I think you ought to take a closer look at that Dixon fellow; I’ll have another chat with Ruby Sanders. She knew Lindop for a while, stayed in his van and his bed. Maybe he talked to her about a deposit box; if he did, he might also have talked to her about Honey Lindop . . .’
* * *
It was a grey afternoon. Dark clouds lay banked against the hills and there was a fine rain mist in the distance, not enough to make the roads wet but forming a damp pattern on the windscreen of the car. Crow had dispensed with a driver: the Chief Constable was already champing over the manpower demands Crow had made — he had traffic to control, after all. So, while others did the grinding work of comparing statements and making the usual checks, Crow made his own contribution to the Chief Constable’s peace of mind by driving himself. Besides, he liked to be alone in countryside like this.
Not that it was the best of days to enjoy the Cotswolds. The mist obscured much of the distant hills, and in a short while he was in the lane outside the site anyway, walking its length, noting distances, checking the place where Ruby had parked with her salesman Romeo, observing the bungalow from which Keene had made his telephone call that night. Hartley. Crow hadn’t interviewed him yet. There’d be time to repair that omission later.