This ready admission that he had lied to them the previous day rather took the wind out of Rafferty's sails. This, together with his uncomfortable cocktail of feelings caused him to launch straight in with questions.
‘Why didn't you admit when we took your statement yesterday that you used to have another name and were the victim's estranged husband?’
‘Why do you think?’ Harry looked from Llewellyn to Rafferty and back again before he laughed and raised his arms in an expansive gesture as if inviting them to share the joke. ‘It was panic pure and simple. When that young detective told me what had happened to Clara, I knew I needed to sort out an alibi and quickly. If I didn't I felt convinced you would have immediately marked me down as chief suspect.’
Rafferty sat back in the leather settee and folded his arms. Bluntly, he demanded, ‘So why have you decided to tell us the truth about all this now? What's changed?’
Mortimer shrugged. ‘The panic subsided. Also, I suppose I've had time to think. I'm not a complete fool. I knew you would certainly have discovered my relationship to Clara sooner or later – one of my grandchildren could easily have spilled the beans, so I thought it would be better if I told you myself.’
‘Very sensible of you. So tell me Mr – should it be Oliver or Mortimer?’
‘Mortimer, I think.’ Like an emperor on his throne, Harry Mortimer lounged back in his leather armchair, crossed one leg over his knee, completely at ease and candidly confessed, ‘I never really changed my name, not properly, anyway. It was just one of those things one does to ease one's passage through life, so to speak.’
He looked thoughtful for a moment. A spark of – regret? – seemed to cross his face. ‘Maybe it's time I faced up to my responsibilities. What is it that they say, Inspector? That it's never too late to do the decent thing?’
He fixed Rafferty with such a piercing, still vivid-blue gaze as he said this, that Rafferty felt uncomfortably certain that, in him, Harry Mortimer, that previously nonchalant shrugger-off of responsibilities, thought he recognised a twin soul.
Whether his glib talk about ‘responsibilities’ meant anything or not, when Rafferty questioned him about his alibi Mortimer shrugged and admitted:
'That was another lie, I'm afraid. Please don't blame my friend. After I spoke to that young detective on my return here, I got straight on the phone to Mike and pressurized him. As I said, as soon as I learned about Clara's death. I knew how it would look to the police.'
'So where were you?'
I was here, in Elmhurst. While my poor, dear, estranged Clara was being murdered, I was sharing a delightful picnic breakfast with my daughter and her eldest.'
'And they'll confirm this?
Mortimer nodded.
For the life of him, Rafferty couldn't see any reason to believe Mortimer or his daughter, because Mortimer had supplied this alternative alibi in as careless, nonchalant and take it or leave it a manner as the man presented himself. He certainly didn't seem concerned whether they believed him or not.
Had he killed his wife? Rafferty asked himself as Mortimer closed the door behind them. And was his manner the challenge to them to prove it?
Imperceptibly, Rafferty shook his head. The answer to this case couldn't be that simple – could it? But, that said, he found it easy enough to believe that Mortimer's family would lie for him; men like Mortimer had been getting foolish females to lie for them for centuries. It was, with such men, almost a reflex action.
Had Jane lied for him solely because telling lies was her habitual response when anyone questioned her about her father's doings?
Or, this time, was she aware that she had a definite need to lie for him?
Rafferty pondered the pros and cons and decided he didn't know which way to jump. But the part of him that believed in a malign fate couldn't quite manage to accept that this case might after all turn out to be nothing more than a simple domestic between a married couple who, having already failed to get on once, had failed a second time and with deadly effect.
But, if he was wrong and the fates had decided not to be malign, Rafferty suspected that proving it would be neither easy nor simple, especially given Harry Mortimer's carelessly insouciant countenance – a countenance that seemed, to Rafferty, to be issuing a challenge to them to prove he had murdered his wife.
Chapter Seven
Back in the
car after getting Harry Mortimer's latest version of the truth, Rafferty grunted with annoyance. He'd forgotten all about DC Lilley whom he had sent haring off to London on a wild goose chase to re-interview Harry Mortimer's friend, Mike Brown..
There was little point in speaking to the man again now that Mortimer had owned up that he had been in Elmhurst all the time.
Then he remembered something else he had forgotten. So far, they had had no joy in speaking to 'Fancy' Freddie Talbot; the man never seemed to be at home. But maybe this time they'd be lucky.
He directed Llewellyn to turn the car round and make for Talbot's address.
For once, Freddie Talbot was at home. He turned out to be quite a natty gent – hence the 'Fancy' moniker Rita Atkins had given him.
Freddie Talbot sported a red silk cravat and a walking stick topped with a round ball of what looked like solid silver but couldn't be if the rest of the flat was anything to go by, Talbot would surely have pawned it when it became clear that Amelia Frobisher had cast him off for good.
He used the walking stick more to emphasise points in his conversation rather than help him get about after the fall he told them he had suffered earlier in the week.
Although, with his red silk cravat, jaunty pepper and salt moustache and silver-topped cane, he cut something of a dash, it was plain, as Rafferty had already deduced, that this dash didn't go deep.
Talbot's small flat looked shabby and uncared for. Talbot himself, with his attempts at sartorial elegance succeeded only in drawing attention to the fact that beneath the navy blazer that smelled faintly of mothballs, the collar of his shirt was threadbare.
'Keeping up appearances' was the expression that came to mind. How Talbot must rue the day he tried to catch Clara Mortimer's interest and managed only to lose that of Amelia Frobisher, who herself couldn't be short of the readies.
Now, thought Rafferty, 'Fancy' Freddie Talbot, with neither a bird in the hand nor one in the bush, didn't seem very fancy at all.
Talbot's pale grey eyes were damp and although he – just - managed to keep up the jaunty front, it was clearly becoming more of an effort the longer they stayed.
'I understand you've known Amelia Frobisher for some years.' Rafferty finally got down to the questioning when Talbot's relentless flow of talk about 'poor, dear Clara' finally came to a halt.
Talbot sighed, noticeably his damp eyes dampened still further.
'I fear I've blotted my copybook there,' he artlessly confided. 'And although I know Amelia can be a very unforgiving woman, I'll love her to my dying breath. What am I to do?' he appealed to Rafferty. 'She's quite cut me off. I can't bear it and I so used to enjoy the outings she organised to the theatre and the occasional intimate little dinners she cooked.'
Rafferty couldn't decide whether it was Amelia or her 'little dinners' that Talbot missed the most.
Freddie Talbot looked hopefully at Rafferty. 'I say, would you be a good chap and put in a word for me?' With his cane, he gestured at his injured leg, which didn't, to Rafferty, seem to have much wrong with it and said, 'Make me out to be at death's door, if you think it would help.'
Talbot chewed anxiously at his moustache. 'Maybe that will bring her round. What do you think?'
Personally, Rafferty thought Freddie Talbot had as much hope of re-engaging the unforgiving eye and interest of Amelia Frobisher as he had of getting clan Mortimer-Ogilvie to all tell him the truth unvarnished. But as Talbot looked as if he might burst into tears if Rafferty told him that his hoped-for reconciliation with Miss Frobisher struck him as unlikely, he promised to put a word in and quickly changed the subject.
'Another
waste of time.' Rafferty muttered as he and Llewellyn climbed back in the car. And given Freddie Talbot's seemingly endless ability to dominate the conversation without saying much of any interest, he had managed to waste plenty of it.
'Fancy' Freddie had struck Rafferty as a vain little man, with his cravat and the walking stick that he used with such emphasis.
When they got back to the station it was to find that forensic had released the pile of birthday cards Clara Mortimer had received on the morning of her death.
There were six of them. Curiously, Rafferty opened them. One was from the Toombses and contained a sentimental little verse about friendship that had presumably been picked by Mrs Toombes rather than her fisherman husband. Their card brought to Rafferty the unwelcome reminder that Mr Toombes had yet to be questioned.
Another of the cards was from Mary Soames and looked to have been hand-painted. After Mrs Soames had gone to such trouble to create a pretty card it was a double shame that Clara Mortimer had never got to see it.
Two of the others seemed to have come from old acquaintances of the sort one didn't see from one year to the next if the hastily scribbled news of the sender's doings during the six months since Christmas were anything to go by. Rafferty was sad to note that the last card in the pile was clearly not from Mrs Mortimer's daughter. The old-fashioned 'real' writing which the sender shared with Rafferty's ma, made that plain.
The sixth and final card turned out to have come from Freddie Talbot. Rafferty cringed as he read the lover's poem Talbot had penned; it didn't even scan properly at least to Rafferty's unpractised eye, though when he handed it to Llewellyn, he smiled and said, 'Mr Talbot's efforts wouldn't have greatly impressed Mrs Mortimer, I fear. Her bookshelves indicate she was an educated lady.'
'Didn't think much of it myself, I must admit,' Rafferty began, before Llewellyn interrupted him.
'If I'm not mistaken, I believe this is one of the sonnets Shakespeare was reputed to have written to 'the dark lady'. Llewellyn opened his mouth as though to begin to quote.
Rafferty held up his hand. 'Please. Spare me.' He paused and grinned. 'What a sly old goat Freddie Talbot must be. First he sends love poems to Clara Mortimer, then, only today, he professes undying love for Amelia Frobisher and begs me to try to bring her round. It's lucky for him that Miss Frobisher didn't read his little ditty.'
'Maybe she did,' Llewellyn quietly observed. He held up a note that had been returned with the cards. 'According to forensics, this card had been opened and resealed. But whoever did it left their fingerprints on it.'
'Let me guess. They're Miss Frobisher's – right?'
Llewellyn nodded.
All the residents fingerprints had been taken as a matter of routine, though not without protests, most volubly from Amelia Frobisher, though Rafferty, thankfully, had missed that particular little scene.
'No wonder she's cut Freddie Talbot off without a home cooked little dinner to his name,' said Rafferty. 'I suppose Miss Frobisher recognised the writing when she noticed Mrs Mortimer's door was ajar and couldn't resist opening the envelope to see what 'Fancy' Freddie had to say to Clara.'
'Probably,' Llewellyn agreed. 'But the important question I would have thought, is whether she saw the card after Mrs Mortimer was killed – or before.'
The
discovery that Talbot's birthday card to Clara Mortimer had been opened and resealed, together with Llewellyn's weighty question, gave both men much on which to ponder. The other fingerprints – one set of which forensics had already identified as Mrs Mortimer's – presumably belonged to the postal workers handling the mail; certainly none of the other residents' prints had been found on the envelope.
They decided to have an early night and ponder some more before they tackled Amelia Frobisher again.
Rafferty
and Llewellyn returned to the station on the Saturday morning to catch up on the mountain of paperwork a murder enquiry inevitably produced. In the back of Rafferty's mind was the question of how best to tackle Amelia Frobisher, but for now, he left the question to soak in his brain, with the hope that his brain would throw up some answers.
Along with the routine stuff was a report from the forensics laboratory that had arrived after they had left the previous evening. The report included a particularly upsetting discovery concerning Clara Mortimer's murder. Not only had someone apparently tried to wipe the victim's living room free of fingerprints, it seemed they had done so whilst dragging the dying woman around the living room with them.
They must have done so, Rafferty concluded. Given that smears of the victim's blood were left at each location where the surfaces had been wiped what other conclusion was possible?
Upset by this barbarity, Rafferty sat heavily in the chair behind his desk. Surely this latest news put the scrawny Amelia Frobisher out of the running? He couldn't see her having the strength to manhandle Clara Mortimer, who must be a good stone heavier.
Now he demanded of Llewellyn, ‘Mrs Mortimer was an elderly woman. What need was there for her assailant to be so brutal?’