A Capital Crime (13 page)

‘Well …’ Kendall pinched the fag end out of his mouth, and gave a deep sigh. ‘It was a contract job, see, so what’s on the sheets is a bit … Well, put it this way, what it is, I have to make sure that the work’s done in the time allowed.’

‘So you wouldn’t check them?’

‘I’d have a look, but unless the bloke’s put down that he’s at another site where he shouldn’t be, or he’s doing a job that’s not in the contract … then I’d have to have a word, because that’s a mistake, see? I mean, the time sheets aren’t really a timetable for the job, as such.’

At least, thought Stratton, that gives us a bit of room for manoeuvre. Nevertheless, after Canning had escorted Kendall from
the room, he shook his head gloomily. Lamb was going to go berserk, even with dodgy time sheets. It was more likely, he thought, that Davies had muddled up the dates, but that said … Stratton pulled the telegram towards him to check – the date of the seventh was the one thing he’d been consistent about right from the beginning. Backhouse had said the seventh was the last time he’d seen Muriel, so perhaps it was possible that Davies had killed Muriel later on the same day, as he’d said, and brought her downstairs on the evening of the tenth. Or that there’d been two lots of wood … but in that case, surely Kendall would have noticed? He’d have to ask Carpenter.

Stratton leafed through his notebook. Backhouse had said Davies had left ‘about a week’ after the seventh and Davies himself said he’d gone to Wales on the Monday, which was the thirteenth, and that he’d put the baby’s body in the washhouse on the night of the ninth … ‘Balls!’ Stratton flipped his pencil across the desk. Providing the timings were right, and that Carpenter had put the timber in the washhouse on the tenth, as Kendall said, it might still fit … It might even explain the noises in the night, if Davies had moved his wife’s body down one flight of stairs into Gardiner’s flat instead of right down to the ground floor. But if that was the case, why not say so? A mixture of confusion, fear and wanting to please might muddy the waters, he supposed, especially with someone as feeble-minded as Davies clearly was – and with such difficulty telling the difference between fiction and reality.

PC Canning put his head round the door. ‘Next one, sir?’

‘Yes. Let’s have Walker.’

The plasterer was an elderly man with a red face, a thin white moustache which reminded Stratton of a milk mark on a baby’s upper lip, and a defensive air. His account tallied with Kendall’s in every respect, until Stratton pushed the photograph of Muriel under his nose. ‘Did you see this woman at any time?’

‘Is that the one who …?’ Walker tailed off, shaking his head, as Stratton nodded. ‘And her kiddie, too. Terrible business. I did
see a woman on the Tuesday, going out. Never saw the face, so I don’t know.’

‘Did she have a baby with her?’

Walker shook his head. ‘I just saw her go out the front door, that’s all.’

‘And it wasn’t Mrs Backhouse.’

Again, Walker shook his head. ‘No. I saw Mrs Backhouse several times, and this woman was younger. Quite a bit younger, I’d say.’

‘Can you describe her?’

‘Well, I didn’t pay much attention …’

‘Fat? Thin?’

‘I suppose … about sort of medium-sized really. A woman.’

‘How old?’

‘Youngish, I’d say. Hard to tell.’

‘Do you remember what time?’

‘In the daytime. I mean, it was light … but morning or afternoon, I couldn’t say.’

Walker’s statement taken, Stratton told PC Canning to fetch Carpenter, who was a solid chap, heavy and square. He gave the impression of immovability – he wouldn’t go out of his way to swat a fly, but neither would he step out of the way of a charging bull. Hoping fervently that this was just his appearance and not his character, Stratton fixed him with a basilisk stare, thinking, you’re my last hope, you fucker. Don’t let me down.

Chapter Twenty

‘Lamb’ll have my guts for garters,’ said Stratton, gloomily, when Carpenter left half an hour later.

‘It’s not all bad news, sir,’ said Ballard. ‘The Brighton police have telephoned a statement from Muriel’s father, Mr Binney.’

‘Oh? What’s the gist of that?’

Ballard scanned the sheet in his hand. ‘Says Muriel told him she wanted a divorce and asked if she could take Judy and go and live with him … She told him Davies never gave her any money and spent most of his free time in the pub.’

‘Useful, I suppose, but it doesn’t help us sort out this mess with the timing. That was like trying to dig a hole in cement with your fingers.’

Carpenter hadn’t seen Muriel and he’d been adamant that he’d left the pulled-up boards on the stairs on the Thursday and Friday evenings, and only put them in the washhouse on the Monday, and, when shown a photograph of the boards
in situ
, he’d been equally positive that they were the ones taken up from the passage.

‘If the boards were in the passage all weekend, it’s odd that noone else mentioned it, sir,’ said Ballard.

‘Bloody odd. Apart from anything else, it’s a nuisance. Of course, the only person it would have really affected is Davies, especially if he was taking a body, or – if he’s got the dates for Muriel wrong – two bodies, downstairs …’

‘Or maybe Backhouse moved some of them into the washhouse
over the weekend – but then, of course, he’d have seen what was in there.’

‘And the furniture bloke, sir. Lorrimer. He’d have noticed wood on the stairs, wouldn’t he?’

‘That’s true. Except he only valued the stuff, didn’t he? He didn’t actually take anything away till the Monday, according to Davies.’

‘Well, we’ll have to see what he’s got to say for himself. But the Backhouses must have seen the planks on the stairs, mustn’t they? And they didn’t mention it.’

‘Well, we didn’t ask them, but all the same …’ Stratton passed his hands over his face.

‘Of course, the workmen don’t have to be called to give evidence, sir.’

‘I suppose not. Let’s see if we can get something sensible out of the Morgan woman, at any rate.’

Shirley Morgan was a lumpy girl in her late teens with a poor complexion and an air of cheerful incompetence which Stratton found surprising, given the circumstances. Charitably, he decided that it must be because disengagement and inanity were her response to everything and she was simply incapable of behaving in a different manner. ‘Funny,’ she said, brightly, ‘I thought it was the Tuesday I went round there.’

‘The seventh of November?’

‘Was it? I don’t know. I’m no good at remembering things. It might have been the Monday, for all I know. It’s a while ago, isn’t it? I can barely think what I was doing yesterday …’ Here, apparently involuntarily, she gave a grating, shrieky laugh. ‘Mr Backhouse was very funny with me.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well …’ She leant forward conspiratorially. ‘He said I shouldn’t come round again because my clothes were so nice,’ she smoothed her skirt complacently, ‘they made Muriel jealous. I mean, what a thing to say!’ She shrieked again.

Stratton winced. ‘Where was this?’

‘Where?’ Another shriek. ‘Oh, I see what you mean! Yes. On the landing. I’d gone up to knock on the door of Muriel’s kitchen, you see … Oh, no, wait, that was afterwards … or was it before? I’m all confused – I told you I couldn’t remember things. Oh, dear, I’m not being much help, am I?’

Stratton felt like slapping her. ‘It’s important that you remember, Miss Morgan. Please try to keep calm.’

‘Oh!’ The single syllable came out on a high, squealing note. It sounded like the rending of metal.

‘This is a murder enquiry,’ he said, in his most soothing voice, adding, mentally, ‘you silly bitch.’

‘Oh, I know … of course … oh, dear … I don’t know what to say.’

‘When did Mr Backhouse tell you not to come round?’

‘Because of my clothes, you mean?’

‘Yes. Was that before or after the sixth or seventh of November?’

Shirley Morgan thought for a moment. It looked like quite a strain. ‘Before,’ she said, finally. ‘About a month, I think. I remember now … there’d been some trouble, you see. I’d stopped there for a few nights, and John – that’s Muriel’s husband – didn’t like it, because we were in the bed and he had to sleep in the kitchen. He didn’t like that at all.’

I don’t blame him, thought Stratton. Half-deafening a bloke with that laugh and then turfing him out of his own bed …

‘Muriel wanted me to stay because John was going to work somewhere foreign. Something to do with aeroplanes, I think he said. It turned out to be one of his stories … The second night I was there they had a row. John hit Muriel, so she got hold of the bread-knife. He said he’d push her out of the window. I’ve heard him say things like that before to Muriel – “I’ll do you in,” that sort of thing … Well, it got very nasty. Mr Backhouse came up, and he told me to leave.’

‘You left with Davies, didn’t you?’

‘No, he came after me. He was always giving me the eye. That was after Mr Backhouse said those things about my clothes. He shut the door in my face and told me not to come back, and then a minute later John came out and suggested we go somewhere together. Well …’ She gave Stratton a meaningful look. ‘I didn’t know what to do – I didn’t have anywhere to go, so we walked around … Miserable, it was. Cold. I said I was going to get lodgings, but I didn’t want him coming with me. He was Muriel’s husband,’ she added, as if this might not have occurred to Stratton. ‘John said to pretend we were married, but I said what if we were found out, so then we had a row about it and he got nasty again …’

For Christ’s sake, thought Stratton, wondering if – given the trouble she was having with a sequence of fairly drastic and important events – it would actually have registered if Davies had beaten the living daylights out of her. ‘What happened then?’ he asked.

‘Like I said, we walked around and sat on benches. I found some lodgings. That was the next day … I suppose he must have gone home, because I didn’t see him again. I went to see Muriel because she’s my friend, and she was feeling poorly, with the baby coming.’

‘You knew she was pregnant.’

‘Yes.’ Shirley’s dull eyes registered surprise. ‘She told me.’

‘Did she tell you she was trying to get rid of the baby?’

‘Get rid of it?’ Surprise was replaced by incomprehension. ‘Why would she tell me that?’

Good question, thought Stratton. You’d be a fat lot of use. Poor Muriel, surrounded by idiots. ‘What happened,’ he asked, ‘when you went back to see her?’

‘Well, I didn’t see her, did I? I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I thought she must be in there, so I said if she didn’t want to see me, she’d only got to say so.’

‘Why did you think she was in there?’

‘I don’t know. I just thought she would be, I suppose. I tried the kitchen door, but it wouldn’t open.’

‘Did you hear anything?’

Shirley shook her head. ‘No. I just had a feeling she was, because when I tried the door, it wasn’t as if it was locked—’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes, because it gave a bit. I thought that was because she was pushing against it to stop me opening it.’

‘Leaning on the other side, you mean?’

‘Yes. That’s when I said if she didn’t want to talk to me, she should just say, and I’d go. I was quite upset about it, because we were friends.’

Except that you’d just gone off with her husband, thought Stratton. ‘Did you see anyone in the house?’

Shirley shook her head, then said, ‘No, but I think Mr Backhouse was there, because I heard something when I went downstairs.’

‘Why
Mr
Backhouse in particular?’

‘Because it was a very quiet noise. I couldn’t really tell where it was coming from. I suppose it could have been Muriel, if she was there, but I thought it was him because he’s always creeping about in those plimsolls of his.’

‘Frankly,’ said Stratton, when Shirley Morgan had been shown out by PC Canning, ‘that young woman struck me as pretty half-witted, so I think we’d better take Backhouse’s word for it that she visited on the Monday and not the Tuesday. Of course, it could have been her that Walker saw, but Muriel was still alive then, and she could have popped out for something, couldn’t she? And Backhouse saw her on the seventh as well, so that seems more likely.’

PC Canning appeared at the door. ‘DI Grove is talking to Mr Benfleet now, sir, and Mr Lorrimer’s here. Shall I bring him in?’

Lorrimer, a small man who looked as if he’d been kept under the stairs for a number of years, wore a flat grey cap that gave him the appearance of a mushroom and had a palm so damp you could have grown mustard-and-cress on it without much difficulty. ‘Davies come into my shop on Friday the tenth. Said he wanted to
sell his furniture because he’d got a job abroad, so I said I’d come and have a look later and give him a price for it. I offered him forty pounds for the lot, and I sent my boy round Monday to collect it and give him the money.’

‘When you went to look at the furniture, did you see any wood on the staircase? Floorboards?’

‘Yes, there was something. A few boards, I think. In a pile. Wasn’t much room to get past. I remember thinking my boy’d have a bit of a job if they weren’t moved.’

‘And how did Davies seem to you?’

‘Well, I don’t know the bloke, so that’s a bit difficult. He seemed like he was in a bit of a hurry, but he’d told me he’d got this work abroad so I thought he wanted things sorting out, you know … He wanted me to take all the stuff except the baby’s things. Said the bloke downstairs was keeping them for him until he’d fixed up a place for them to live.’

‘Did you see the baby?’

Lorrimer shook his head. ‘Didn’t see no-one except him.’

‘More lies,’ said Stratton, after Lorrimer had gone. ‘That tale about working abroad.’

‘And about the money, sir,’ said Ballard. ‘He told Backhouse he’d got sixty pounds for the furniture.’

‘Yes, I remember that … It’s odd that he didn’t include the baby’s things. I mean, he sold his wife’s wedding ring, didn’t he? He doesn’t strike me as the type to see the consequences of his actions.’

‘You mean looking suspicious, sir?’

‘Yes. Mind you, I suppose he had to have something to tell Backhouse, and asking him to keep the baby’s things would have put him off the scent, at least.’