Hey, cut yourself down to size, Kate Maddox!
The search of Prescott’s office had provided a whole mass of data to be processed, a laborious procedure which so far had yielded little else of value. Something found in his wallet looked more promising—a membership card of a gambling club in Bristol. A call there had winkled out the information that Mr. George Prescott, a regular member, had in fact been at the club on the evening of the Latimer killing. Furthermore, he’d lost a packet, having increased his stakes recklessly as the evening wore on in an effort to recoup his losses.
A rapid scrutiny of Prescott’s various clients’ accounts, checked against the notebook found by Gower, revealed the fact that earlier on that same day the accountant had illicitly “borrowed” over two thousand pounds. His reasoning was obvious. A huge win would enable him to repay the money before it was missed and square his other gambling debts in one fell swoop. Every losing gambler’s dream. Prescott must have realised that the police would get around to asking for an account of his movements on the night of Belle Latimer’s death, and had been desperate to conceal the truth. To the extent, even, of implicating his sister in a false alibi.
But where did this get her? Kate asked herself gloomily. The basic questions remained unanswered. Who killed Belle Latimer? Who killed George Prescott?
Later on Wednesday morning Kate got a breakthrough, though at first it seemed barely a chink of light. She happened to be alone in her office when a call from Richard Gower was put through.
“I’ve just remembered something about the evening Belle Latimer was killed,” he said.
“Oh yes?” She tried to check her eagerness.
“I told you about the phone call I received from my advertisement manager while I was waiting for the man who didn’t show up. But there was another call later.”
“Go on, I’m listening.”
“I’ve been trying to pinpoint just when it was. As near as I can recall, it must have been between about ten and ten-fifteen. The phone rang, but when I answered there was no reply. It came from a call-box ... you know the noises you get. Then silence. Naturally, I just thought it was a wrong number and promptly forgot about it. But I’ve been going through that evening again and again in my mind, trying to think of something, and suddenly this phone call came back to me.”
Disappointment made Kate’s voice harsh. “Really, Mr. Gower. First, you claim a mysterious assignation with an unknown man, which kept you at home all evening. And now an aborted phone call that neatly pinpoints your presence there at the crucial time.”
“It was the same person, don’t you see? Obviously he wanted to bring my car back and leave it exactly where he’d found it because he didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he’d borrowed it. The way I figure things, he wasn’t trying to frame me, just to use a car that wasn’t his own. But, hopefully, Belle Latimer’s death would have been passed off as an accidental killing, not a murder. To fit with his plan, he phoned to check that I was still at home so he could safely leave the car outside Borough House. If I hadn’t been at home—if I’d given up waiting for him and gone out—I’d have discovered that my car was missing and raised the alarm.”
“It’s an interesting theory, but there’s nothing to substantiate it. Nothing to substantiate anything you’ve told us about that evening, apart from that earlier phone call from your advertisement manager.”
“Damn it, I’ve given you the facts, plus a theory that makes good sense. What the hell more can I do?”
“And what the hell can I do with totally unverifiable information?”
“You’re the detective! Why don’t you put your brilliant analytical mind to work?”
“That sort of attitude isn’t going to help you, Mr. Gower. I don’t think you appreciate what a serious position you’re in.”
“Oh, I’m not worried, just bloody angry. You see, I happen to know something you don’t know.”
“What’s that?”
“The simple fact that I’m innocent.”
“To prove it, Mr. Gower, you’ll need to do a damn sight better than this.” Kate regretted her comeback the second she’d hung up on him. An innocent man didn’t have to prove anything. Her anger was in truth against herself, because she felt so impotent.
She sat at her desk, deep in thought, for a
full five minutes. For once, amazingly, she wasn’t interrupted. A sudden idea flashed into her mind. Wondering if she was being stupid, she picked up the phone and dialled the number of the
Gazette.
“Mr. Gower, please. Chief Inspector Maddox here.”
He came on the line at once. “What now?”
“That phone call. From a call-box, you said. What did you hear, exactly?”
“Nothing. I told you, the caller didn’t say anything.”
“No, I mean what
sounds?
Depending on the type of box, you’d either hear a series of clicks or what they call the cuckoo tone.”
“Oh yes, I see.” A pause. “It was clicks.”
“Sure about that?”
Another pause, longer. Then, “Quite sure.”
“Right. Thank you.”
“Hey, don’t ring off. Are you on to something?”
“I’m a long way from that.”
“At least you believe me now. That’s a step forward.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions. I asked you a question, you gave me your answer. Whether anything comes of it is something else.”
Kate hung up and buzzed for a DC. “I want you to check with British Telecom about the type of payphones around Chipping Bassett ... say, a couple of miles’ radius. There are two kinds, I believe. The newer ones where you put in the coin before dialling and the older ones where you put it in after. Make a list of every pay phone in that area of the older type, and have its location pinpointed. Report back to me as fast as you can.”
It took him thirty minutes. Thirty long minutes. His list numbered eleven in all. Six were in pubs or other premises, and for the time being Kate disregarded these. The remaining five were call-boxes; of these, three were on the far side of Chipping Bassett from the lane where Belle Latimer met her death. That left two for immediate investigation.
She sent for Sergeant Boulter. “We’re going out to look at telephone call-boxes, Tim.”
“Come again?”
Kate explained briefly. The sergeant looked extremely dubious.
“Job for a DC, I’d have thought.”
“No, I want to handle it myself. Get the car, will you?”
Boulter shrugged, and his hefty shoulders were eloquent. Put a woman in authority and this is what happens. Everything out of proportion, just because she fancies some guy and wants to get him in the clear. Kate felt defiant as she joined the sergeant in the station yard.
Within five minutes they were pulling up outside a newsagent’s shop on a small council estate bordering the Marlingford road. A red call-box stood on the pavement outside, and, according to the map Kate carried, it lay on the most direct route from the murder scene to Gower’s flat. Yet somehow it didn’t feel right to her. The situation was too public, too much on view for a man who wouldn’t have wanted to be seen, driving a car he wouldn’t have wanted to be recognised or even noticed. All the same, she and Boulter questioned the owner of the shop (where Tim took the chance to buy a bag of toffees), and also the residents of a couple of close-by houses. Then Kate decided to give up.
“We’d need to do a concentrated house-to-house here,” she said as they retreated to the car. “Maybe it’ll come to that. But first we’ll try the other call-box.”
Kate had a positive feeling the moment she saw the second box. It stood in a small lane where there was only a scattering of houses.
“Where do we start?” Boulter wasn’t keeping it to himself that he thought this was a hare-brained scheme.
She pointed to a bungalow almost opposite the phone-box. But when they rang the bell, there was no answer. A pile of mail on the floor was clearly visibly through a small window, advertising the fact that the occupiers were away from home.
Thwarted, Kate led the way to the only other nearby dwelling, a thatched cottage twenty yards along the lane. The small garden was beautifully tended, lush with flowers and healthy-looking vegetables. A lean-to greenhouse at one side also promised abundant crops.
Their ring was answered by an elderly man with thinning grey hair and a leathery face. He surveyed them hostilely, one hand scratching his back. A stout woman in a flowered apron sidled up behind him. The two presented a barrier guarding the privacy of their home.
“If you’re selling something,” he rasped, “we don’t want it.”
Kate showed him her warrant card. “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Maddox, and this is Detective Sergeant Boulter.”
“Police? What’s wrong? If it’s to do with that complaint I made about their dog barking ...”A thumb was jerked in the direction of the bungalow. “Well, they’re away on holiday. You better come back next week.”
“It’s nothing to do with the dog, sir. I just want a few words with you, please. You might be able to help us.” It would be a tactical mistake, Kate knew, to press for admission into the house. These two wouldn’t feel safe with officialdom intruding.
She smiled at them winningly, like some vote-fishing smoothie of an election canvasser. “Er ... you’d be Mr.... ?”
“I’m Fred Winter, if it’s any business of yours.”
“I wonder if you can cast your mind back to Tuesday of last week, Mr. Winter. Can you remember what you were doing on that evening?”
“What d’you want to know for?”
“We think it’s just possible that you may have seen someone using the phone-box along there.”
“Why should we have done? We don’t watch folk. We’re not nosy parkers.”
“I’m sure you’re not. But I don’t imagine that many people use the box, in an out-of-the-way spot like this, so if you happened to be looking out the window, or were in the front garden, say, and someone drive up and stopped, you might have noticed.”
God, you’re clutching at thin straws, Kate!
“Well, we didn’t, did we, Mother?”
The woman instantly shook her head in unthinking confirmation. It was so much easier not to get involved.
“This really is important, Mr. and Mrs. Winter. Very important.” The sound of TV from the back room gave Kate an idea. “You might be able to pinpoint the evening I’m talking about by remembering something you watched on television.”
“Tuesday’s ‘Emmerdale Farm’
night,”, said the wife.
“That’s right. Well, it’s a bit later than that I’m interested in. More like ten o’clock.”
“Dad always likes to watch the ‘News at Ten’ headlines,” she said. “Then we switch off. Had enough by then.” She paused, her mind clicking over. “Here, it was Tuesday when that woman got killed, wasn’t it? The one at the big house?”
“That’s right, madam,” said Tim Boulter in a tired voice.
“Is it about that, then? Do you think the murderer stopped and made a phone call from here?” The husband and wife exchanged awed, excited looks.
“It’s just possible,” Kate said. “So you see how important anything you can tell us might prove to be. Please try to think back.”
Thankfully, she had won their interest now. They saw themselves as vital witnesses. Pictures in the papers. On the telly too, like as not.
“It was the evening Hilda and Perce came round,” the woman said to her husband, and explained, “That’s my sister and her hubby. I was over her place only yesterday and we were talking about the murder. Makes you shudder to think what was happening just a mile or two away, and we were all sitting here in the front room.”
“So ... around ten o’clock that evening the four of you were in your front room, talking together. What then? Did you put on the news as usual, for the headlines?”
“Aye, we did,” the man confirmed. “I wouldn’t have bothered, myself, not with them round. But Perce always wants to know what’s happening.”
“And you switched off after two or three minutes?”
He nodded. “Reckon so.”
“What then? Try to remember, please. Did you happen to look out of the window and see anyone? Did you hear a car stop?”
He screwed up his face in a grotesque display of effort. His wife came to his rescue.
“Hilda was helping me with that knitting pattern I got stuck with. And you took Perce out to the greenhouse with you while you did the watering.”
More facial contortions. “Aye, so I did. Late, I was, ’cause of them being here. It was nearly too dark to see.”
Kate felt a prickle of excitement. “So you were in your greenhouse in the front from, shall we say, three minutes past ten? Until when?”
“How d’you mean?”
“The chief inspector is asking what length of time you and your brother-in-law were out of the house, sir.” Boulter was letting his boredom with this whole business show.
“Oh, I dunno. We got talking, you know how it is, and—”
“Must’ve been nigh on half an hour, Dad. Hilda and me nearly came out to fetch you back in.”
“So while you were outside, did you see anyone in the lane?”
He shrugged. “Only Tom Howard on his way home from the pub.” He chuckled vindictively. “That wife of his won’t let him stay till closing time.”
“I don’t blame her, neither,” said his own wife. “Drink himself silly, Tom would, given half a chance.”
“What about cars, Mr. Winter? Do you remember a car that night?”
“Now I come to think of it, there was a car.”
“And did it stop?”
“Aye, that’s right, it did. I remember now quite clearly.”
“That’s good, that’s very good. What sort of car was it, Mr. Winter?”
He shrugged. “One of them big fancy ones. Dark colour.”
Kate buttoned down her excitement. “And this car stopped by the call-box, you say?”
The man shook his head. “Not by the box, no. Further along.”
“Oh? What happened? Did the driver get out?”
“Aye, he did. I thought he must’ve broken down or something. He pulled up on the verge over there.” Winter pointed. “Then he got out and walked all round the car having a good look at it, then he went along to the phone-box. ‘Gone to phone the AA,’ I said to Perce. But then when he’d made the call, he walked back to the car, got in, and drove off. So he couldn’t have broken down.”