An Amateur Corpse (23 page)

‘Charlotte was all set up. You'd seen her at lunch time. In the excess of your passion you'd marked her neck with a lovebite, so you knew she'd have a scarf round her neck. Maybe you'd even said you'd drop in, so that she'd open the door quickly and you wouldn't be seen.

‘Strangling her must have been quick. She was totally unsuspicious, off her guard. Then you put her body in the coal shed to delay its discovery and you were off home. Back before the end of
I, Claudius
. Just in time to pick up from the cassette and start bellowing your lines with such vigour that your next-door neighbour was bound to complain, thus even getting the police to corroborate your first alibi.'

There was a long pause. Geoffrey kept the usual tight rein on his emotions. ‘Well, Charles, you give me credit for a lot of ingenuity.'

‘I do.'

‘And I can see that, if all your assumptions are correct, it would have been possible for me to kill Charlotte. But you need a ripe imagination to follow the twists of what you've just told me. I think you might have difficulty persuading the police of it all – particularly as at the moment they have two crimes and for each one they have a self-confessed criminal.'

‘But Hugo only confessed because he couldn't remember and because he didn't care.'

‘If he didn't care, then why should we?'

‘I don't know. I just want the truth to come out.'

‘Admirable sentiments. Well, I'm sure as soon as you can produce evidence to back up your preposterous allegations, the truth will come out.'

Yes, there was the rub. Charles knew he had nothing except his own convictions to support his theory. It was right, but, as Geoffrey observed, it was going to be almost impossible to persuade the police to take it seriously. Particularly if the persuader was someone who stood as low in the estimation of Breckton Police Station as Charles Paris.

He felt his confidence begin to ebb and, with an effort, tried to regain momentum. Maybe he could shock a confession out of Geoffrey. ‘What makes the whole crime so ironic, even tragic, is the fact that Charlotte wasn't even pregnant.'

‘What!' This time Geoffrey reacted. This time, for a moment, the mask crumbled. And from that instant Charles knew for certain that he was right. He might have got some of the details of the plan's execution wrong, but Geoffrey Winter definitely killed Charlotte Mecken.

‘No,' he continued coolly. ‘The police post-mortem revealed that she wasn't pregnant.'

‘But –'

‘Oh, she thought she was, but it was just some freak effect of her going on the Pill. If she'd had the nerve to go to her doctor about it, he could have quickly disillusioned her. But no, she told you she was pregnant; she said, as a Catholic, she was going to keep the baby and, what was more, if you wouldn't tell your wife about it, then she would. When she made that decision, she signed her death warrant.'

Geoffrey's eyes were closed and he was breathing deeply. Charles turned the knife in the wound. ‘And, if you're looking for further ironies, between the time that she saw you on the Monday lunch time and the time that you killed her, Charlotte had decided that she would have an abortion. She rang up a friend for advice on how to end the pregnancy that never was. So her death was doubly unnecessary.'

Geoffrey was badly shaken, but he rallied. There was only slight tension in his voice when at last he spoke. ‘This has been very interesting. May I ask what you are going to do now, Charles?'

‘Nothing. I'm going to go away. I'm going to leave you with the knowledge that I know exactly what happened and see how you react. Maybe you'll come round to the conclusion that you ought to devise another equally ingenious method of disposing of me. My knowledge makes me just as much of a threat to your way of life as Charlotte was.'

‘You sound almost as if you are issuing a challenge.'

‘Yes, Geoffrey. I am.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE NEXT FEW
days were an agony of vigilance for Charles. He hadn't really meant to challenge Geoffrey to kill him, but without evidence he saw no other way of drawing the man out into the open. All he had to do was to keep on his guard and see Geoffrey before Geoffrey saw him.

In case the worst happened, he wrote down a detailed reconstruction of what had taken place on the night of Charlotte's murder and lodged it with Gerald. Then if Charles Paris were found murdered, it could be delivered to the police, who would know where to start looking for their murderer.

But Charles didn't intend to be murdered; he intended to catch Geoffrey Winter attempting to murder him. That attempt would be tantamount to a confession to Charlotte's murder.

Charles tried to live as normally as possible. He stayed round Hereford Road a lot, so that Geoffrey should have no difficulty finding him. He drank less, so as to remain alert. He rigged up an elaborate alarm over the door of his bedsitter so that he should not be surprised in the night. And he waited.

Meanwhile he tried to continue his career, as funds were getting low. In this he encountered an unexpected setback.

He rang through to Mills Brown Mazzini on that Friday to find out when the next Bland recording session would be. Ian Compton told him with ill-disguised glee that the housewives of the Tyne-Tees area had given the thumbs-down to the Mr. Bland television commercials. They had found the animation too frivolous for something as important as a bedtime drink and they didn't like the name.

As a result, Ian had worked out a completely different approach for the product, and it had been approved by Mr. Farrow. The new campaign for the drink (now renamed Velvet-Sleep) was to feature a young couple who had just finished a hard day's decorating. The voice-over was going to be done by Diccon Hudson.

So that was it. Charles was paid off for the Tuesday's cancelled recording session and suddenly the heady vistas of infinitely repeated commercials bringing in infinite repeat fees shrank down to a few solitary session payments. Needless to say, there had been no long-term contract signed. The dazzling prospects had existed only in conversations between Charles and Hugo. With his sponsor still remanded in custody, Charles was suddenly out of the voice-over world. He never heard the result of the No Fuzz test.

He rang Maurice Skellern and said he would audition for the Cardiff company. He had to live on something.

He also kept thinking he should ring Frances, but didn't get round to it.

On the Saturday morning he received a letter.

 

Dear Mr. Parrish,

Thank you so much for letting us see your play, How's Your Father?, which we read with some amusement.

We regret that we do not feel it to be suitable for our World Premières Festival, as we feel it is too slight and commercial a piece for production in what has increasingly become one of the main outlets for modem experimental theatre in this country.

We have also been fortunate to receive a new play by George Walsh. It is called Amniotic Amnesia and concerns the thoughts of a group of foetuses awaiting a fertility drug-induced multiple birth. It raises many interesting questions of philosophy and ecology and is much more the sort of work we feel the Backstagers should be doing.

We will hope to see you down here for our next production, The Winter's

Tale by William Shakespeare.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Chubb

World Premières Festival Sub-Committee

PS Your script is being returned under separate cover.

It was over a week before the truth sank in. That Geoffrey was not going to be drawn, that so long as he didn't rise to Charles's challenge, he was safe He knew that there was no evidence and he did not intend to supply any.

Charles felt ridiculous when this dawned on him. He had nothing; he should have realized. Geoffrey Winter had killed Charlotte Mecken, but it could never be proved.

Charles was furious. Having got so near, to be thwarted at the end . . . Hugo would be sentenced to life imprisonment and maybe come out after eight years to drink himself to death. Geoffrey would get a fine or a short sentence or maybe – if Willy, the Hobbses' solicitor, were really good – a suspended sentence for the crime he'd had to commit as a cover-up. Then he'd take up a job with Denis Hobbs in the ‘construction industry' and continue to play all the leads at the Breckton Backstagers. And Mary Hobbs would have the satisfaction of feeling that she had done something direct and positive for the artistic life of the community. And memories would heal over and the case would trickle away.

He couldn't stand the thought. He resolved to get back to Breckton for one last try. There must be something he had missed.

It was Monday. Exactly two weeks from the night that Charlotte had died. Monday. November 15th. It had been a bright autumn day, but was dark by the time Charles arrived once again at Breckton Station.

Nearly seven o'clock. Instinctively he walked towards the Winters' house. As he rounded the corner of their road, he stopped.

Geoffrey and Vee were walking ahead of him towards the main road.

Of course. Rehearsal. Up to the Back Room for a quick one, and then ready to give artistically at seven-thirty. Leontes and Perdita, played by Geoffrey Winter and Vee le Carpentier. The stars of the Breckton Backstagers. Oh yes, he knocks around a bit with other women, but they're really very close. No children, no. But they're very close.

He tailed them at about fifty yards distance, but they didn't look round. It was uncannily silent. Geoffrey, like Charles, must be wearing his favourite desert boots and Vee's shoes also must have had soft soles, for there was no sound of footfalls on the pavement of the footpath. Just the occasional chuckle from up ahead. Geoffrey sounded more relaxed alone with his wife than Charles had ever heard him in company. Oh yes, he needed Vee. When Charlotte threatened that relationship, she had to go.

Charles followed them all the way, keeping the same distance behind. It was sickening. He knew what had happened, the criminal was right in front of him and yet he could do nothing about it. Nothing without proof.

By the time Charles got to the Hobbses' house, Geoffrey and Vee had disappeared inside the Backstagers. Everything went on just the same – drink, rehearsal, home, work, drink, rehearsal . . . Why should he try to break it up? Hugo was long past hope – what did it matter whether he despaired in prison or at large? He had nothing to live for. Geoffrey Winter at least had his love for his wife, his acting, his little affairs. What was the point of trying to break that pattern?

Charles decided he would go back to the station, get the train back up to Town and forget the case had ever happened.

A feeling almost of nostalgia for the time he had spent retracing Geoffrey's movements made him take the long way round past the Meckens' house.

It stood dark and unfriendly. Presumably, after Hugo's trial it would go on the market, someone would buy it. There would be stories of what had happened there. If the buyer were imaginative, Charlotte's ghost might even be seen. If not, it would all be forgotten. Sooner or later, all would be forgotten.

As he stood there, he was seized by an impulse to do it once again. One more retracing and that was it.

This time just as Geoffrey must have done it two weeks before. He slipped across the gravel drive to the side gate. He no longer cared about the net curtain snoopers. Let them report him if they wanted to. He was about to leave Breckton for the last time.

The side gate was not locked. He lifted the latch and let himself into the back garden. He had a small pencil torch in his pocket and he shone it on the ground before his feet as he walked towards the coal shed.

It was a shock not to find Charlotte's body still there. That embarrassingly sprawled figure had so etched itself on his subconscious that he felt cheated when there was only coal in his torch-beam.

He stood there for a moment looking round. Nothing. Not the perfect crime, but a crime that was by now undetectable. Maybe at the time, maybe if Geoffrey had been the first suspect, there might have been something which would have given him away. Maybe the blood from the abrasion on Charlotte's neck had been on his hands as he walked home. But if so, that blood had been long washed away, long dispersed and unidentifiable. Now there was nothing. Not a chance of anything.

Charles's footsteps crunched in the coal-dust as he sighed and left the coal shed. Back across the drive, along the road and down the tarmac footpath to the common.

There was no one, about, of course. No one to see him, just as there had been no one to see Geoffrey Winter a fortnight before.

He walked doggedly along the hard mud path skirting the football fields towards the path to the main road. He passed the untidy bit, the dumping ground, still dominated by the washed-out crater of the Guy Fawkes bonfire.

He reached the paved path and walked a couple of paces. Then he stopped.

He felt a little tremor of excitement. Twisting one foot round on the paving, he heard the crunch of coal-dust.

Good God, it stayed on. He'd have thought it would have been wiped off by the walk across the common, but no. The little grains of coal embedded themselves into the rubber sole of the desert boot and took a lot of shifting.

And if he had noticed the difference in sound when he came on to the paving, so would someone else have done two weeks before. Could Geoffrey have taken the risk of carrying that incriminating dust into his own house?

No, surely he would have tried to remove the evidence. Charles looked at his own sole with the pencil torch. Little chips of coal glinted in the beam. He tried to scrape them off. Some came, some stayed. He could have got them all out, but it would have taken time. And time was the one commodity which Geoffrey hadn't had. His tape gave him a maximum of forty-five minutes.