Simon Brett - An Amateur Corpse

Or no, perhaps he was flattering himself. The police had probably far outstripped his feeble investigations. They must have done. They wouldn’t make an arrest without convincing evidence. He felt diminished and unnecessary.

He tried to argue himself out of this selfish mood. After all, what did it matter who had found the truth, so long as it had been revealed? Hugo could now go free, that was the main thing.

It didn’t help. Depressingly he thought how little Hugo cared whether he was free or not. The release might well be a licence for him to commit suicide or, more slowly, drink himself to death.

Still, right had triumphed. He tried to feel glad about it.

With an effort he drew himself away from the river and started back to the station. Better ring Gerald and bring him up to date. Though if charges against his client were about to be dropped, he’d probably know already.

He didn’t. He reacted strongly when Charles told him. But the reaction was not that of Gerald Venables the amateur sleuth; it was all solicitor. This new development changed circumstances for his client. He would get on to the Breckton police immediately.

‘Okay,’ said Charles dismally. ‘Well. I’m going back to Hereford Road. So if there’s any interesting development, just let me know.’

But he didn’t really think any new development would concern him. He felt excluded, the one boy in the class without a party invitation.

He bought a new bottle of Bell’s on the way back to Hereford Road. He was going to drink himself into a stupor. After the tension of the last week, this sudden anti-climax had let him down like a punctured air-bed.

The phone was ringing when he entered the house. He ran up to the landing and picked it up.

It was Gerald. Very cross. ‘Are you trying to make me look like a complete fool? I’ve just spoken to the Superintendent at Breckton. He must think I’m a bloody lunatic. And you’re not the most popular person down at the station either.

‘Geoffrey Winter has been arrested, yes. But it has nothing to do with the Mecken murder at all. He’s been arrested for stealing some jewellery from a couple called Hobbs.’

‘Oh my God.’ Charles saw the bottom card being withdrawn from the great edifice he had built up.

‘So you were right, Charles. Geoffrey Winter did have something to hide about what he was doing last Monday night. But it wasn’t what your fertile imagination gave him to do.’

‘But — ’

‘And what’s more — just for your information — I’ve heard about the postmortem. Charlotte Mecken was not pregnant.’

Like the cat in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, Charles Paris continued running after the ground had crumbled away beneath his feet, before the inevitable realization and the windmill-armed plummeting descent to the depths.

Geoffrey Winter must be guilty of Charlotte’s murder. All the motivation fitted; Charles couldn’t start again the laborious reconstruction of emotion and opportunity with another subject. He refused to accept it.

But like the cat, he became increasingly aware that he was running on air. Whichever way he worked it, Geoffrey could not have committed both crimes on the Monday evening.

Unwilling to relinquish his theory, Charles went down to Breckton to time it all out again. He felt none of the elation of the previous day; as time passed he saw his logic falling apart.

He tried the trip from the Winters’ house to the Meckens’ via the Hobbses’, he tried it the other way round, going to the Meckens’ first, but there was just not enough time for anyone to have committed the two crimes.

Visiting the two houses added another five minutes to the round trip. Which left five or less for murder. Which was cutting it fine by the standards of the most experienced assassin. He tried adding the extra five minutes which he had reckoned Geoffrey would have left as a safety margin, but the sums still seemed pretty unlikely.

They seemed even unlikelier when he remembered that he had not allowed any time for the actual theft from the Hobbses’ house. He had only timed the round trip of going past the house. If that were all that had been involved, the murder might have been possible. But even if Geoffrey knew the house well and knew exactly where Mary Hobbs kept her jewellery, it was still going to take him some time to break in, get through the house in the dark armed only with a torch and grab the loot. The absolute minimum was four minutes. In fact, considering the care with which Geoffrey had covered his tracks, it must have been six or eight.

Which left very little time to murder Charlotte Mecken.

Charles sat down on a bench on the common as it started to get dark. He was furious. There was no way it would work.

It wasn’t just the timing. If Charlotte hadn’t been pregnant, then none of his complex sequence of motivation worked either.

Depression took over. So everything was as obvious as it seemed. Hugo Mecken had killed his wife and Geoffrey Winter, in desperate financial straits because of his failing architect’s business, had stolen some jewellery from the richest people he knew. The fact that the two incidents had taken place on the same evening had been mere coincidence.

The new turn of events changed his opinion of Geoffrey. While he had thought of the architect as Charlotte’s murderer, he had had a kind of respect for him, for the cold blooded intellect that could plan such a crime. But now he knew that all that planning had been for a petty theft, a mean robbery from some supposed friends.

And Geoffrey’s was not a great intellect. He had shown remarkable ineptitude in the execution of his crime, however clever the original conception of the cassette alibi. For a start, there had been his confused exit from the Hobbses’ house when he saw Robert Chubb pass. Leaving his torch behind on the window sill was the real mark of the amateur.

The way he had been caught had been equally incompetent. Charles had heard it all from Gerald. The thief had gone along the jewellers’ stands in the Portobello Road on the Saturday morning trying to sell his loot. One of the dealers had bought some and then, becoming suspicious, alerted the police. From a description and from some remarks Geoffrey had carelessly let slip to the stall-holder, they had had little difficulty in tracking the culprit down.

So Geoffrey was relegated to the status of a shabby sneak-thief and Charles had either to concede that Hugo had killed Charlotte or start investigating somebody else.

The only two people left who seemed to have had any emotional relationship with Charlotte were Clive Steele and Diccon Hudson. Clive was supposed to have been in Melton Mowbray auditing at the time of the murder and no doubt Diccon would have some equally solid alibi. Still, wearily Charles supposed he must try to get interested again and check their movements. But the spark had gone. Any further investigation was going to be just a chore.

Since he was down in Breckton, he might as well start with Clive Steele at the Backstagers. The Back Room opened at six. Just sit a little longer on the common to kill time.

‘Evening, sir. A bit dark to be out here, wouldn’t you think?’

An Amateur Corpse 163

He looked up to. see the outline of the same policeman who had found him inside the Meckens’ house the previous week.

‘Yes, I suppose it is dark.’ While he had been wrapped up in his thoughts, it had changed from dusk to blackness.

‘You intending to sit there all night?’

‘No, I wasn’t. I was just going.’

The policeman held his ground and watched Charles out of sight along the footpath towards the Backstagers. He obviously thought he was watching a potential rapist or, at the very least, a flasher.