Model Murder (12 page)

* * * *

At the now almost deserted Incident Room, Kate and Boulter examined the handbag’s contents anew. The wallet, robbed of cash, contained what one would expect—credit cards, driver’s licence and certificate of insurance. The notebook, limp and sodden, was totally indecipherable.

“Definitely a forensic job,” said Kate. “Come on, Tim, it’s off home for us.”

He looked grim. No Julie waiting at home for him tonight, of course. “Reckon I’ll catch the last half-hour at the boozer,” he muttered.

“If you do that, Tim, mind you walk home. Or take a taxi. Hear me?”

He shot her a look that was charged with venom. Venom against her, or the absent Julie? Both, probably. He’d worked well all day, but now that the strain of the job was temporarily lifted he looked as if he might fall to pieces. Kate had a feeling that if she uttered a single word on the subject of his wife, Boulter would either start yelling at her to mind her own bloody business, or she’d have him sobbing on her shoulder. She couldn’t afford to let either happen.

She stood up, buttoned her jacket and slung her bag over her shoulder.

“Go straight home, Tim,” she advised him earnestly. “Get yourself something to eat, then hit the sack. That’s what I intend to do.” She walked out before he could answer.

Once home, Kate remembered something she ought to have done by now. Luckily it wasn’t too late. Her aunt never went to bed early.

“Kate?” The eagerness in Felix’s voice pricked her niece’s conscience. “I’d have phoned
you,
but I knew you must be hellishly busy.”

“I’ve just this minute got home. Sorry about yesterday, Felix. We’ll do your birthday outing some other time.”

“Don’t worry about it, girl. How’re things going on the case? I read all about it in the paper this morning. Sounds a ghastly business.”

“It is pretty horrible. I met Corinne Saxon once, you know. At that big do to mark the opening of the hotel.”

“Oh yes, of course, I hadn’t thought. You were there with Richard, weren’t you? Funny he didn’t mention that to me.”

“When
didn’t he mention it?” Kate asked suspiciously.

“At lunchtime, at the Wagon and Horses.”

A Saturday meeting at the Chipping Bassett pub had become a little ritual that Kate and her aunt both enjoyed, whenever Kate’s workload allowed. Richard sometimes joined them. So it wasn’t in the least odd that those two had chanced to meet up. All the same ...

“What was he doing there?” Kate demanded. “He must have known that I’d never be able to make it today.”

“The man is entitled to enjoy a drink, dammit, even without the pleasure of your company. Likewise me. I must say, though, Richard was very taciturn. I mentioned this murder enquiry you’re on, and he just looked at me daggers and clammed up. Have you two had a row?”

“Something like that.” Kate certainly wasn’t about to fill her aunt in with the details.

“Well, make it up fast. Life’s far too short to waste time in quarrelling.”

“Ah, the sagacity of the sere and yellow.”

“Don’t knock it, girl. When you reach my advanced years and look at all the missed opportunities in life, it makes one feel angry. You young people don’t appreciate a good thing when you find it. Why you and Richard can’t admit that you’re ideal for each other, I just do not know. If you had a grain of commonsense, Kate, you’d get on the phone to him this minute, and ...”

“Do me a favour,” Kate interrupted. “Spare me the agony aunt bit. Whatever’s up with you tonight? You’re not usually given to maudlin rambling. My advice to you, auntie dear, is to screw the cap back on that bottle of Scotch and get yourself off to bed.”

Sunday morning Boulter was at the Incident Room ahead of her, scowling his face off. No need to ask if the errant Julie had had a change of heart and returned to the nest. Exasperated, Kate felt a longing to bang their two silly heads together.

“Morning, Tim. Has the post-mortem report been sent over yet?”

“Arrived a few minutes ago, ma’am,” he told her with a cheerless grimace.

“Give it here, then,” she said, and headed for her office.

The report was a wordy document, as pompous as its author, Dr. Meddowes. A few minutes later Kate called Boulter in.

“You’ve read this, Tim?”

“Not yet. Didn’t have time.”

“I’ve just struck something I wasn’t expecting. It seems that Corinne Saxon gave birth at some stage.”

“Did she, now.” Give Boulter his due, that small piece of information was enough to spark his interest. He’d immediately seen the possible implications.

“The child might not have survived, of course,” Kate went on. “In which case it’s probably unimportant from our point of view. But if there’s a child of hers still around somewhere, it could be significant. I think we’d better go and talk to Kenway again.”

“Like now, you mean, guv?”

“Why not? Get it cleared up. Anyway, it’s time we had another go at him about his shaky alibi.”

* * * *

On this fine Sunday, the village of Ashecombe-in-the-Vale had even more tourists milling around than the day before. Kate wasn’t surprised to find there were customers at Kenway Antiques. When she and Boulter entered the house, both the Kenways were talking to an elderly couple who seemed interested in a stripped pine kitchen dresser. The arrival of the police was clearly unwelcome. The Kenways exchanged glances, looking apprehensive.

Kate said quietly, “We’d like a word as soon as possible, Mr. Kenway.”

“Er, yes ... of course.” He muttered an apology to the customers, leaving them to his wife. “You’d better come upstairs.”

The furniture in the living quarters was of distinctly lesser quality than in the display rooms below. In fact it was all pretty shabby. The walls needed decorating and the sofa and chairs cried out for re-upholstering. One corner of the room was used as an office. A battered filing cabinet and desk and chair. On the desk stood a typewriter so ancient it might well have fetched a price in the shop as a genuine antique. Clearly, Kenway and his wife were existing on a shoestring. Saving that regular monthly payment of four hundred pounds to Corinne was going to make a world of difference to them.

Kenway didn’t invite them to sit down. Presumably he hoped to be rid of them quicker that way.

“When I talked to you yesterday,” Kate began in a bland voice, “you were unable to suggest anyone who might be able to verify your claim to have been here with your wife last Wednesday afternoon. Have you had any further thoughts on that?”

His eyes flickered nervously. “No, there isn’t anyone.”

“You were both here for the entire afternoon?”

“That’s right. As Liz and I told you before.”

“You’re quite
certain
of that, sir, are you?” queried Boulter, with one of his intimidating glares.
“Wednesday
afternoon, we’re talking about. Neither you nor your wife went out for any reason?”

“No, definitely not. I ... I don’t see why you won’t accept that.”

We might, Kate thought, if you weren’t so obviously concealing something.

She said, “If you want to change your story in any way, Mr. Kenway, this is the time to do so.”

He seemed suddenly to come to the boil with indignant anger. “You can’t seriously be suggesting that I did away with Corinne. What possible reason could I have had for killing her?”

“For the saving of four hundred pounds a month, perhaps.”

“That’s a monstrous thing to say.”

“But it’s a fact that you won’t have to pay the money any longer. Which is quite a considerable benefit to you. So I’m afraid that unless you provide us with some real proof of where you were that afternoon, your name will remain on our list of suspects.”

He was silent for extending moments, glaring at her sullenly. Then he muttered, “I was here, I tell you. Liz and I were both here, and you’ll never be able to prove otherwise.”

“That remains to be seen,” Kate said. “Now, onto another matter. The post-mortem examination of Miss Saxon’s body has revealed that she gave birth to a child at some time.”

Kenway looked totally flabbergasted. “No, that can’t be right. Unless ... you mean since the divorce?”

“Are you saying that it wasn’t your child, sir?” Boulter asked.

“Of course it wasn’t.”

“Why, of course?” said Kate.

“Because Corinne flatly refused to have a baby, that’s why. I kept on and on at her about could we start a family, but she just wouldn’t listen. She said she’d no intention of being lumbered with kids.”

Believable! It tallied with Kate’s assessment of Corinne Saxon’s character.

“The evidence of the pathologist,” she said, “is that the birth wasn’t recent. Therefore, if it wasn’t during the time you were married to her, it’s likely to have occurred at some earlier date. Are you sure she never said anything to you about having had a child? Did you never suspect the possibility from something she let drop?”

“No, never. I had no idea.”

“I want to find out more about Corinne Saxon’s life in those earlier years before you were married. What can you tell me, Mr. Kenway? How did you come to meet her?”

“We first met at a hotel in Cheltenham. The Angel. She was there in the cocktail bar.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, and I was alone, too. She was stunningly attractive, and I thought she looked vaguely familiar. But I didn’t realise who she was. A couple of times she gave me a friendly glance, and after a bit I went over and told her I was sure we must have met before somewhere. She laughed and said that it was a terribly corny line, but then she said maybe I’d seen her on the cover of a magazine. She told me her name, and of course I recognised it. That was the start. After that we went out together most evenings. I was doing pretty well in those days, so I could afford to take a woman to the best places.”

“What was she doing in this part of the world?”

“She was staying at her aunt’s house, near the Spa. She told me the old girl was ill in hospital, and because she’d brought Corinne up after her parents died, Corinne felt a sort of responsibility towards her. She gave me the impression that she was still being very successful in her modelling career, and I wasn’t to know any different. She said she’d cancelled all her professional engagements to come and be with her aunt.”

“Her aunt died, I understand?”

“Yes, about six weeks after we first met. By that time I was head over heels about Corinne, and I was scared to death she’d go back to London and I’d never see her again, so I asked her to marry me. It was only later on I realised she’d been expecting to inherit a lot from her aunt. She knew the house was only leased, but she didn’t know that the old lady’s income came almost entirely from annuities that died with her. So all there was for Corinne was a few hundred pounds and the furniture.”

“She saw you as a fat meal ticket?” Boulter asked brutally.

Kenway flinched, but he didn’t show offence. “I imagined that Corinne would continue with modelling work, but she never did. I was glad, really. I could support her, and I didn’t like the idea of her being away for days at a time. Even so, she went off to stay in London on a few occasions—to go shopping, she said, and look up her old friends.”

“Where were you living in those days?” asked Kate.

“In Cheltenham, at a very fancy new block of flats. Corinne found the place and I didn’t need much persuading, even though the rent was astronomical. As I said, I was doing pretty well at that time. Then things began to go downhill with my business, so we had to move somewhere cheaper. Corinne hated that. She never stopped blaming me for letting her down. In fact,” he added with a burst of feeling, “she made my life sheer bloody hell from then on. In the end, I was only too glad to get out of the marriage, even on the terms Corinne demanded. I became a free man again.”

“Those friends of hers in London,” Boulter said. “Do you know who they were?”

“I haven’t the least idea.”

“You seem to know remarkably little about the woman you were married to, Mr. Kenway,” Kate observed.

“It was the way Corinne wanted it, and I was so happy to have her I didn’t let it worry me. Not at first. Later, it became obvious that she’d been using me all along, right from the start. There was never any closeness between us, not ever. Now, though, I have a real marriage, and I thank God for it.”

There was a slight sound from the doorway. Unnoticed, Liz Kenway had come upstairs and she must have overheard his last remark. With a little catch of breath that was almost a sob she ran forward to her husband and touched her lips to his cheek. Then she stood there beside him, her hand finding his. Together in their closeness, they faced the police.
Don’t go
soft
on them, Kate!

“Mr. Kenway,” she said directly, “did you kill Corinne Saxon?”

He flinched again, and Kate saw his wife’s grip on his hand tighten. But he answered steadily, with no more than a slight tremor in his voice.

“No, Chief Inspector, I did not. And I believe you know that I did not. I could never do such a dreadful thing.”

“How about you, Mrs. Kenway? Did you kill her?”

“How dare you accuse my wife,” Kenway flared.

“Please, sir,” Boulter cut in, “allow the lady to answer for herself.”

“Of course I didn’t kill her. What a suggestion! I hated Corinne, I’m ready enough to admit that and I’m not sorry that she’s dead. But I’d never have dreamed of killing her.”

“It sounds as if,” Boulter remarked when they’d returned to the car, “they were expecting us to take their word for it, just like that.”

“Innocent people do,” Kate reminded him. “They just can’t appreciate how the situation looks to us.”

“That was quite an act they put on, wasn’t it? The loving couple.”

“Was it an act, Tim? I’m not so sure. All the same, they weren’t telling the truth about Wednesday afternoon. I think we’d better have questions asked in the village, and specially the neighbouring houses, to see what emerges.”

A message awaited Kate at the Incident Room that Mr. James Arliss had phoned. Would she ring him back? She made it her first job.