The Lately Deceased (7 page)

‘Yes; sorry I can't offer you one. I don't suppose you'd care for a drag on my pipe!'

To his surprise, he found himself straining to be gentle towards Eve, whom he had usually met only at the parties that abounded at ‘Metro'.

‘What's happening now, have they told us what this is all about?'

‘No. They promised to, as soon as they could. The big chief detective came in just before lunch and gave us some patter to stall us for a bit, but that's all so far. They're holding a post-mortem.'

‘Post-mortem … ugh, how horrible! Where's Gordon now?'

Leo Prince, who was sitting at the table reading a newspaper with assumed nonchalance, answered for Geoff.

‘The bobbies have got him in there.' He jerked a thumb in the direction of an inner door. ‘Probably got him under the bright lights trying to wring a confession out of him,' he sniggered. Eve looked shocked.

‘Don't make fun of it. Gordon must have had a foul day already, without you being clever about it!'

‘OK, keep your hair on. But he didn't take much notice of her when she was alive, did he, so why should he be so cut up now that she's gone? Besides, he'll come into a packet of money – if he's around to spend it!'

Geoff slid off the ledge and advanced on the greasy-haired Leo.

‘Exactly what the hell do you mean by that?' he demanded.

A nasty situation was averted by the opening of the door and the arrival of Meredith and Grey. The murmur of voices died down and all faces were turned expectantly towards the tall superintendent. His face was grave and his eyes roved around beneath the black brows, probing the faces before him as he delivered the news.

‘As we thought this morning, this occurrence has proved to be serious in the extreme,' he announced slowly. ‘Mrs Margaret Walker died as the result of direct violence and we have no alternative but to assume that she was murdered.'

The announcement was met by a stunned silence. Everyone had been uneasy since being summoned by the police, but all had had the idea that some unfortunate accident during the rather torrid party had brought down the disapproval of the authorities.

But
murder
? Everyone seemed incapable of taking in the detective's meaning for a moment. Before they had time to break from their silence with demands for details, Old Nick went on.

‘I must ask you all to remain here until you are called to give as full a statement as you can. Each statement will then be typed and read over to you, to be signed by you if correct. After that you are free to leave, but you must give us detailed directions as to where you may be found. I shall be glad if none of you will leave London without first informing me or Inspectors Stammers or Grey.'

He threw another dark look around the room before turning and going back into the interview room, where Gordon Walker could just be seen sitting in front of a desk, shoulders hunched.

Meredith closed the door on the rising babble of voices which now broke out in the waiting room, and retreated to the desk, where a typed statement lay on the blotter. He sat down and waved the paper at Gordon.

‘Right, Mr Walker, I'll just read what the sergeant has written. Please listen carefully and, if there are any mistakes or omissions, please let me know before you sign it.'

He cleared his throat and began to read aloud. It was a fairly short account of the previous night's happenings, prefaced by a paragraph stating that his wife's health had always been good during the time that they had been married. Then, as near as he could remember, he gave a timetable of events during the night, with the information that Margaret had been drinking more than was her custom during the earlier part of the evening.

He could not remember with whom she had left the room for the first of the games, and he had not seen her until he had found her in the wardrobe much later on. At the time of finding her, he had thought that she was in an alcoholic coma, but that certainly he thought she was alive. He was not prepared to swear to the presence of breathing; he had been slightly drunk by then himself and had had no cause at the time to think that she was in anything other than a drunken stupor.

He recounted the discovery by Lena Wright and the arrival of the doctor, then the removal of the body from the house. He then had had a bath and shave and lain in his dressing gown on the bed until nine o'clock, when he dressed and waited for the doctor or coroner's officer to contact him as expected. The first indication of serious complications was the arrival of Masters who told him that his wife might not have died a natural death.

‘Have you anything to add to this, sir?' asked Meredith at the finish.

‘No I don't think so, Superintendent,' replied Gordon wearily. Those are the facts – you don't want opinions, I suppose?'

Old Nick looked at him warily.

‘Not on this preliminary statement, no, sir; but if you have anything at all to say which might be relevant to my inquiries, please let me have it right away.'

‘Well, if this is murder, which I certainly can't credit, then my wife was probably the least likely candidate in the house last night! If someone was to have been killed, there were several far more likely customers present – perhaps even myself amongst them. But Margaret … impossible!

Meredith regarded him with interest.

‘In other words, you mean that the fatal attack on your wife was made by mistake in the dark, having been meant for someone else?'

Gordon nodded. ‘I can see no other explanation, Superintendent!'

Old Nick stood up, towering above the others.

‘Thank you, Mr Walker. Probably at a later time I'll ask you to enlarge on that. At present, we must get on with the other witnesses. I expect you've had enough by now, anyway. Please let one of my officers know where you are staying, and if you want to go out of town, let us know so that we may contact you if we want your help again.'

Grey beckoned Meredith down and spoke softly into his ear.

‘What about the weapon? Or are you going to keep that under your hat?'

Old Nick rubbed his blue-black chin thoughtfully, before making up his mind.

‘You might as well know that your wife was stabbed to death,' he said bluntly to Walker. ‘We must start looking for the missing weapon at once. Have you any instrument in your flat resembling a stiletto?'

Gordon ran a hand shakily through his hair. ‘Stiletto? God, this gets more fantastic every minute! I feel as if I shall shortly wake up from a nightmare.'

Meredith waited patiently for Gordon to come down to reality. ‘Please try to think if you can recall any tool or instrument that might fit that description.'

The other chewed his lip in concentration.

‘Certainly no stiletto … never even seen one. A knitting needle, maybe. Margaret used to knit sometimes, but that was in Oxford. She wouldn't have brought her knitting to a horse show. I just can't think of anything else, Superintendent.'

‘Well, if you do come up with any ideas, let us know right away. You can go back to collect your things, but I'm afraid that we will have to stay in possession for a day or two. Where will you be staying until then, sir.'

‘With Mr Tate, I expect. I've not asked him yet, but I've no doubt that he can put me up. I wouldn't stay in the flat now, anyway. I'll go down to Oxford as soon as I can, to square things up down there.'

Chapter Nine

After Gordon Walker had left, the CID officers sat down to a long drawn-out afternoon of interviewing. All of the party guests had turned up by now except Martin Myers, Pearl and Colin Moore, and two girls from a model agency who had gone off to a show in Manchester and hadn't yet been contacted.

Pearl and Colin had vanished into thin air, their flat was deserted and no sign had been seen of them at Metro. The Hampstead police, in whose district they lived, were making hourly calls to try to catch them as soon as they came home.

One by one, the witnesses went in for interrogation, looking very different in appearance from twelve hours before. The men, some in dark business suits and others in roll-neck sweaters under raincoats, looked tired out before they started. Some obviously had roaring hangovers, their eyes puffy and shy of the bare light in the room.

The girls were all smartly turned out despite the fact that some had been roused by the police almost before they had got to bed.

Grey and Stammers looked through the pile of statements with growing frustration. All the guests seemed to do their best to be helpful, but it was painfully obvious that their eyewitness value was just about nil. None had any clear idea of time during the revels, no one had noticed any unusual happenings, no one knew what had happened to the deceased after the games had started and no one had seen any instrument in the flat that resembled a stiletto.

Late in the afternoon, just as the last of the girls had swayed her hips out of the interviewing room, a constable came in from the duty room below and handed Meredith a message slip. As he rapidly scanned it through, Meredith's black brows rose.

‘This is all we wanted to make our day. Take a look at that!' He tossed the flimsy across the table at Stammers.

The inspector picked it up and read it aloud for the benefit of the other two.

‘“Martin Myers admitted to Whittington Hospital early this morning. Unconscious state following head injury. Found by police officer at bottom of basement steps leading to his flat in Canonbury. Presumed accidental.”'

Grey whistled.

‘That accounts for one of the missing three, anyway,' he said. ‘If we find the two Moores with their skulls bashed in, we've accounted for them all!'

‘Very funny, Grey,' said Old Nick acidly. ‘Where did that report originate from, Stammers?'

His deputy consulted the top of the telephone message form.

‘The nick in Dalston Lane, Super. That's near Canonbury.'

‘Right! Masters, get to the hospital, and see what goes on. How many of these glamour boys are still outside?'

‘Four, sir.'

‘Right, wheel the next one in; we'll hear the same old story again, I suppose.'

As each witness finished and signed his statement, he was released with the standard warning to stay within reach. Geoff Tate, who had already been in once and had been asked to wait over, was the last on the list and, when he came out, he found Eve waiting for him.

‘Let me give you some tea,' he said, taking her by the arm. ‘Gordon's staying with me for the time being, but there's no hurry for me to get home. I gave him a key and he knows the flat well enough to look after himself for a bit.'

They left the station and went by taxi into the bustle of Oxford Street. The cab pulled up at an Italian restaurant at the top of Dean Street, where they suddenly found that they were very hungry. In spite of the time and the upheaval of the day, they did justice to a large omelette followed by continental pastries and a pot of tea.

Sitting opposite each other in the snug warmth of a panelled alcove, with the grey drizzle outside forgotten, they suddenly became silent and shy. Eve sat demurely, gazing at a pink fingernail, and waited for Geoff to say something.

His main emotion was one of surprise that Eve should seem so different now from the coquettish, shallow woman he'd always imagined her to be.

Perhaps it's just that I'm sober
, he thought, as he gazed at her slim neck nestling in the little fur collar of her suit. Embarrassed, he made an effort to break the silence.

‘Funny what twenty-four hours can bring, Eve! This time yesterday, we were just looking forward to another of Gordon's binges.‘

Eve looked up at him and frowned.

‘I can't take it in yet, Geoff,' she said. ‘I've never been anywhere where there's been a death before. Now all this fuss about police and statements, the lot. What's going to happen, Geoff?'

He was suddenly conscious of a desire to put his arm around her. He'd done it often enough before at parties, but then it had been just a meaningless act. Now it was somehow different, and he kept his arm at his side.

‘God knows how it will all end,' he said quietly. Then, smiling at her, he added. ‘Let's let the police do the worrying, it's their job. My job is to keep your mind off unpleasant things and this I propose to do by taking you out to a show tonight.'

At seven thirty that evening, the CID team met in the detective inspector's room at Comber Street. The Manchester police had contacted the two girls, who clearly knew nothing of any importance about the affair. There was still no sign of the Moores – their telephone and doorbells had been rung regularly with no result.

‘Much more of this and we'll have to put out a general call for them,' said Stammers.

‘Think they've hopped it, Fred?' Grey asked him.

‘Shouldn't think so. They'll have cooked their goose if they have.'

Meanwhile, Meredith rifled through the pile of typescript that was the reward of the day's work.

Suddenly he threw the sheets impatiently down in front of him. ‘Worth next to nothing,' he said in disgust.

‘Are we going to carry on with the case ourselves, or will the Yard take it over?' Grey asked him.

‘The commissioner's content to let us handle it in the Division if we feel we can cope,' Meredith replied. ‘Though of all the jobs to get landed with, this one is the limit.' He slapped his hand on the top of the desk.

‘Right, let's get on with it. These statements are a dead loss, the fingerprint records are useless unless we find the weapon, the scene investigation taught us nothing. So at least we know where we are – no bloody where!'

Grey stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and spoke through a haze of smoke and a splutter of coughing.

‘We don't know “who” but we ought to be able to find out “why”,' he said.

Meredith nodded. ‘Yes, a little spadework should reveal who gains by her death. Masters has already phoned her solicitors. I'll be seeing them the first thing in the morning. Apparently, she's a very rich woman.'