The Killing of Katie Steelstock (26 page)

McCourt clicked off the machine. Mavor said, “Fill me in, please. That was Tony Windle, the local boyfriend, talking? And he was reporting something Katie had said to him?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Play the last bit again.”

Tony’s voice said, “’And I’ve got at least one
very
useful friend down here.’ I asked her who it was and she wouldn’t tell me.”

Mavor said, “And you think this
very
useful friend was George Mariner?”

“I know he was useful to her once.”

“Oh? Tell us about that.”

“It was the time when a boy was knocked down by a hit-and-run motorist last March. A small red car. I’d been told to look into it. I’d eliminated a number of other possibilities and I’d concluded there was enough evidence to question Katie. I told Inspector Ray.”

“Ray?”

“He was in charge of C.I.D. here,” said Dandridge. “He died last week. Stomach cancer.”

“And Ray told you to lay off?”

“That’s right.”

“And you think Mariner had been leaning on him?”

“I think so, sir.”

“It’s only supposition.”

Unexpectedly, Sergeant Esdaile said, “The Inspector and Mr. Mariner were very close. If anyone could influence him, it would be Mr. Mariner.”

“Suppose you’re right. It puts Katie in Mariner’s debt. What was the payoff? Did she give him a turn or two on the punt cushions?”

“That might have been the way it started. But I don’t think it stayed like that. Katie was a girl who didn’t like anyone to have a hold over her. She preferred—well, sir, it’s all in Mark Holbeck’s statement.”

“Then I’d better reread it,” said Mavor. During the three minutes that it took him to do so there was silence in the room, broken only by Sergeant Esdaile’s heavy breathing and an occasional creaking as Dandridge shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“What Holbeck’s statement tells us,” said Mavor, “is that Katie was a girl who liked to have the whip hand.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“And how did she get the whip hand over Mariner?”

“I think that’s in Holbeck’s statement, too, sir. You remember he said that Ruoff was angry because Katie had stolen something on one of her visits to him. Suppose what she stole was evidence that Mariner was one of his customers. His name in an address book, an account, something like that. It didn’t mean that Mariner was doing anything criminal—”

“He started as Mr. Mariner,” said Knott. “I think I prefer it that way.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” McCourt’s face was as scarlet as if it had been slapped. “It didn’t mean that Mr. Mariner was doing anything criminal. But if the story had got out—”

“Chairman of the Bench,” said Mavor, “churchwarden, big white chief. You’ve made your point, Sergeant. Do you think she was blackmailing him?”

“Not for money. She had plenty of her own. I think what she had was a sort of power complex. She liked to have people on the end of a string and give it a tweak from time to time.”

“And you think she tweaked Mariner once too often? So he typed out this come-hither note, laid for her and killed her?”

“I thought he might have done.”

“It’s a theory. Like the case we’ve been working on so far. They’re both theories. That’s right, isn’t it?”

Not knowing what was coming, and not caring to risk another rebuff, McCourt contented himself with nodding.

“So what we have to do is to compare them. Like the washing powders on television. Give them a practical test on Junior’s soccer shorts and see which of them washes whitest.”

In the next few minutes McCourt realised one fact clearly. It was not his impressive appearance alone which had elevated Mavor to the position of Senior Treasury Council.

“So far as motive goes, you’d agree that the motive you put forward for Mariner will work equally well with Limbery? If Katie had proof of some homosexual activity – there are hints of this in a number of the statements – then it would give her the same sort of hold over him. And since he was the more violent character of the two, he was more likely to have reacted by killing her. All right? So far as motive goes, we’ll call it fifteen-all. Now let’s think about opportunity. Your timetable is feasible, but it’s damned tight. Dr. Farmiloe, who doesn’t make mistakes about things like that, gave the
likely
limits as eleven ten to eleven forty. When he says that, he’s really putting his money on sometime halfway between. Say eleven twenty-five or eleven thirty at the latest. It was
after
eleven when Mariner left the dancehall. He had to get his car out, get his wife on board, drive home, get her out again and install her in her bedroom. Then cope with the maid and the telephone call. Then, I imagine, take a peep at his wife to see she really was asleep. Then get the car out, drive it by the back way, I imagine, to River Park Avenue and park it. Then walk two or three hundred yards to the boathouse. If I’d been asked, I wouldn’t have put him there before twenty to twelve.”

“If he didn’t go there to kill Katie,” said McCourt, “why did he go?”

“That’s obvious,” said Knott. “He saw her slipping off, guessed she was going to meet Limbery and decided to treat himself to an eyeful. Bang in character.”

Mavor nodded. “So he arrives sometime after half past eleven. By which time Limbery could have killed Katie
and
Lewson and got clear. Mariner waits at his spyhole for twenty minutes or so. No luck. Nothing for peeping Tom this time. He pussyfoots back to his car, arriving there a few minutes past twelve, and drives off, being heard by Miss Tress, whose extrasensory perception tells her that a dirty old man is passing her bedroom window, and is noticed driving back
without lights
by the vicar and his wife. All right so far, Sergeant?”

McCourt said, “Aye, it’ll work that way, too.”

“Thirty-all so far? Right. Now I’ll give you three reasons why your theory of Mariner as murderer doesn’t work at all. First, because the murderer, as we suppose, visited Katie’s house later that night and broke open her desk to find the note which he hadn’t found when he ransacked her bag. Or what he thought was her bag. Why should Mariner have bothered? The note didn’t incriminate him. It pointed away from him. It pointed to Limbery.”

“The breaking in could be unconnected with the killing. There’d been an attempted burglary once before.”

“Ingenious, but unconvincing. Take the next point. The latest reasonable time for the killings was half past eleven. Here’s Mariner with two corpses on his hands. So tell me this. Why did he hang around for half an hour?”

“Searching Katie’s bag.”

“Twenty seconds.”

“Hiding the weapon.”

“If he didn’t throw it into the river higher up, he’d take it home with him.”

“Perhaps Dr. Farmiloe was wrong about the time.”

“It’s not a supposition I’d bank on myself. But let me show you the third hole in your case. To my mind it disposes of it. Haven’t you forgotten that telephone call?”

McCourt started to say something and then stopped.

“Work it out, Sergeant.”

“You mean the call Lewson made to Mariner’s house? The one that Polly took?”

“And told him about. He may or may not have known who Lewson or Lewisham was, but he knew this much.
Someone had telephoned him asking for him by name and proposed to call on him later that evening.
If he was proposing to go out and treat himself to an eyeful of what was going on in the boathouse he wouldn’t necessarily have put it off. Suppose the man does turn up. His wife’s in bed, deaf and drugged. There’s no one else in the house, which is an isolated one. He can ring the bell and thump the knocker as much as he likes. In fact, if he does know who Lewson is, all the more reason for being out when he calls. He knows Lewson can’t hang around too long. He’ll be planning to take the last train back to town. Another reason, incidentally, for not coming back until after twelve.
But now try it the other way round.
Imagine he’s going out to commit a carefully planned murder. Knowing that a man is going to come to his house and will stand up afterwards in court and say, ‘Wherever else Mariner was at half past eleven he wasn’t at home. I thumped on the knocker for five minutes. I could hear the dog barking. If he’d been there he must have heard me.’”

“You started at fifteen-all,” said Knott with a grin. “I think we’ve reached game, set and match. Retire gracefully, Sergeant.”

McCourt was saved from answering by the telephone. It was the outside line on Shilling’s table. He listened with a look of mild surprise on his friendly face.

“It’s for you, Ian,” he said. “Walter Steelstock on the line. He wants a word with you. He says it’s urgent.”

“Me, personally?”

“You, by name.”

Knott said, “If it’s urgent, you’d better jump on your fiery steed and gallop round there.”

After he had gone, there was a moment of silence, broken by Mavor, who said, “He’s a bright lad. There were one or two very good points in that theory of his. Got a logical mind. Only wants a bit more experience.”

“He told me,” said Esdaile, “that he was planning to be a lawyer. It didn’t work out. His father died.”

“Wouldn’t there be more scope for him up in the Met?”

“He tried it,” said Shilling. “It went sour on him. He got dipped head first into the cesspit of Soho and it didn’t mix well with a simple Scottish upbringing.”

Knott said, “As if this case wasn’t complicated enough, without detective sergeants thinking for themselves.” He said this with ferocious good humour. “Don’t you start getting ideas of your own, Eddie.”

“Me?” said Esdaile. “I just do what I’m told. I spend most of my time looking for typewriters.”

“The machine that note was written on,” said Mavor thoughtfully. “If you could find that, it really would be a clincher.”

When McCourt reached West Hannington Manor, Walter had the front door open for him. He said, “Come in quietly, if you don’t mind. Mother’s in the drawing room. We didn’t want to disturb her.”

He led the way up the broad thick-carpeted staircase and along a passage to a door on the left, at the end. It was a bedroom which had been converted into a mixture of study and workshop, a boy’s room full of books, papers, trophies, toolkits, records, posters and photographs.

“I’ve got the Sergeant for you,” said Walter and backed out, closing the door quietly but firmly behind him.

Peter, who had got up as they came in, indicated the only chair and said, “Won’t you sit down.” He sounded as breathless as if he had just finished a hundred-yard sprint.

McCourt said, “Thank you,” and seated himself with deliberate slowness. His hand on the side farthest from Peter slid in his coat pocket and switched on the recorder. “I gather you’ve something you wanted to tell me.”

“I heard,” said Peter, “that is, Walter told me—is it true that no one knows where Johnno—where Limbery—was that night?” He was speaking in a high, unnatural voice.

“If it’s the Friday night of the killing you mean, we have had an account from Limbery of his movements.”

“But he can’t
prove
where he was?”

“His story is unsupported at the moment.”

“Well, I can tell you where he was. And I can prove it. He was with me.”

McCourt said in his most unemphatic voice, “Aye. Well, perhaps you’d like to tell me about that. Before we start, why don’t you sit down. I’ll have to ask you a few questions. It’ll maybe take a little time.”

Peter squatted on the end of the bed. The action of sitting down seemed in some sense to relax him. He said, “It was about ten o’clock – a bit later. Mother and Walter had gone out to this dance and Mrs. Basset always has Friday evenings off, so I was alone downstairs when the telephone rang. It was Johnno—Mr. Limbery.”

“Let’s call him Johnno,” said McCourt.

“He told me he’d been sent out to do a story on a fire. He was going straightaway. Would I like to come with him for the ride? I said yes, I would. There’s a door in the wall at the bottom of our garden. It leads out into Brickfield Road. We keep it locked, of course, but I knew where the key was. And I left the scullery window unlatched. I’d often got in and out that way before.” He smiled, in a way that made his sullen face suddenly attractive. “I guessed we might be late getting back, you see, and I wanted to be able to slip in without disturbing the others.”

McCourt nearly said, Would your mother have minded you going out like that? But he had the sense not to interrupt. Peter was talking more easily now, but there was explosive material not far below the surface.

“When we got to Streatley we could see the fire. It was the other side of the river, just outside Goring, blazing away like anything. We drove up as close as we could and parked the car and Johnno got out and talked to one of the firemen. They were doing what they could, but until the other brigades arrived they couldn’t do all that much.”

“That would be the local brigade?”

“I should think so. I don’t know exactly what was happening, because I stayed in the car. Johnno made a few inquiries and we pushed off.”

“You realise, don’t you,” said McCourt, “that if your story’s going to be a help to Johnno, we have to be a wee bit careful about times. For instance, you said Johnno rang you about ten o’clock, or a bit later. How much later?”

“Not more than a minute or so. The ten o’clock news had just started. I turned it off when the telephone rang.”

“Then he drove straight round? So you’d have been on your way by ten past ten and that would get you to Goring—when? By half past, assuming you went straight there.”

“That would be about right, I think. I couldn’t swear to the exact time.”

“As a policeman, I’m always suspicious of people who swear to exact times. About how long were you at the fire?”

“Well . . .” said Peter.

He’s tightening up, thought McCourt. To help him, he said, “I imagine you must have been away before the roof fell in, or Johnno would have put it in his report?”

“Yes, we were away before that happened. I shouldn’t think we were there much more than half an hour.”

“That brings us to eleven o’clock. What next?”