Martin Edwards: Yesterday's papers

‘He described it as unbeatable.’

‘Again, I am impressed. You are well read.’

‘A misspent youth. And adulthood, come to that.’

‘But Chandler was wrong, was he not?’ Miller leaned across the table, stabbing his forefinger at Harry to emphasise the point. ‘Fifty years later, the Wallace case was solved.’

‘Although the guilty man escaped justice.’

‘My point entirely. So much of the fascination of these mysteries lies in the fact that one person killed another — and lived on for many years thereafter, untouched by the law, untroubled even by the clammy breath of suspicion.’

‘And you believe that to be so with the strangling of Carole Jeffries?’

‘I do. The first person I spoke to about the case was Edwin Smith’s mother. She was widowed more than forty years ago and her son died by his own hand in circumstances she must have considered to be of the utmost shame. Yet she is still alive, although very frail. I visited her in Woolton, in the residential home where she has spent the last eighteen months. She is eighty-five but for the past thirty years she has clung to the notion that a terrible mistake occurred. She accepts that her son was weak; she told me that he always craved the limelight. That, she believes, is why he confessed to the crime. Yet she is adamant that for all his faults, he was no murderer.’

‘Wouldn’t any mother say the same?’

‘I can understand your scepticism. Yet I believe she is right.’

‘Why?’

‘Please forgive me, Mr Devlin, if I do not put all my cards on the table in this first conversation. Besides I am still at the stage of piecing the facts together.’ He opened his document case and slid from it a thin red file. Fanning out a sheaf of papers, cuttings and handwritten notes, he said, ‘As you can see, I have already collected a good deal of material concerning the case, but I have yet to begin the rigorous analysis that a solicitor would consider appropriate.’

Depends on the solicitor, reflected Harry, thinking of Cyril Tweats. Aloud, he said, ‘What’s your objective? Do you plan to write a book?’

Miller’s laugh reminded him of a seagull’s keening. ‘Dear me, I have no literary ambitions at all. Although I have written — well, one or two little personal things — I can assure you I have no ambition whatsoever to see them published. I leave creative fiction to second-rate CID men with an imperfect grasp of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. My research is conducted out of interest, nothing more.’

‘How long have you been working on this project?’

As if to give himself a few seconds to frame his reply, Miller put the papers back in their wallet, which he carefully replaced in the shabby case. ‘Oh, a short time only. I–I had been casting round for a suitable subject for my enquiries. Of course, I hoped for something local, as I do not care to travel far afield. And nothing mundane would do, it had to be out of the ordinary. But even though, quite apart from Wallace, Liverpool is not lacking in murder stories, I discovered that most of the best had been — if you will excuse my choice of words — done to death.’

‘So you hit on the killing of Carole Jeffries?’

‘As I said, it boasts many appealing features.’

If Miller felt his adjective unfortunate, he gave no indication of it and Harry did not doubt that he was in the presence of a ghoul. Yet the man’s deliberate and excessively formal way of speaking had a hypnotic quality and Harry found himself hungering to know more. ‘Refresh my memory.’

‘Guy Jeffries,’ said Miller, with pedagogic gravity, ‘seemed in 1964 to be a man who had everything. He was handsome and knew it, his wife Kathleen was a tall, striking brunette and their only daughter, Carole, was extremely pretty. They were a close family. Kathleen had been a brilliant undergraduate at the time she met Jeffries, but after marrying and starting a family, she gave up any thoughts of a career and dedicated herself to looking after Carole and supporting Guy as his reputation grew. Guy, for his part, although universally regarded as a charmer, does not seem to have looked at another woman after his marriage. Everyone was aware that he doted on Carole. They were, then, that rare thing — the perfect family.’

Miller permitted himself the glimmer of a smile. ‘Yet as we are all too painfully aware, life is never perfect. On a bleak February night, Carole was murdered and the happy family destroyed forever.’

‘About Guy,’ said Harry. ‘Wasn’t he a writer?’

‘Yes, your memory is excellent. He wrote a couple of seminal works on socialism in the sixties, although by profession he was a lecturer. His subject, political philosophy, might sound dull to you and me, but he had the gift of making it come alive for both students and readers. Shortly before the tragedy occurred, the University was buzzing with rumours that a new Chair was to be endowed by a charitable foundation and that Guy Jeffries would be the first to occupy it.’

‘How old was he?’

‘He had recently celebrated his fortieth birthday. The appointment would have made him one of the youngest professors in the University’s distinguished history.’

‘It didn’t happen then?’

‘No. So much in Jeffries’ life came to an end when his daughter was killed.’

‘Is he still alive?’

Miller shook his head. ‘He died in 1979, by his own hand. It is said that he never recovered from his distress at Carole’s death. I looked up his obituary in The Times: reading between the lines, he must have had a nervous breakdown and I gather he later turned to drink to drown his sorrows. Extraordinary, is it not, how one act of shocking violence can change so many lives?’

Harry remembered the death of his own wife, Liz. She too had been murdered and there had been times during the past two years when he had felt as though he would never recover from the loss of her — even though they had been living apart before she was killed. Friends meaning to be helpful would tell him that life must go on, and they were right, although their homilies made him grind his teeth in silent rage. All the same, he could imagine the horror Guy Jeffries must have felt, could understand how the death of his child might rob any man of the love for life.

Brusquely, he said, ‘It was February, you say, and therefore as cold as hell, if the weather was anything like it is now. What was Carole doing in the park?’

‘She had told her father she wanted to go for a short walk there. It had been a misty and miserable day and she wanted to blow away the cobwebs.’

‘You sound unconvinced.’

‘The picture I have of Carole does not suggest to me a fresh-air fanatic. It was already dark: of course, the clocks had not yet gone forward. I find the idea of a health-giving stroll implausible. But Guy Jeffries seems to have had no hesitation in believing what his daughter told him.’

‘When was her body found?’

‘Close on midnight. Jeffries was working in his study when Carole left the house and Kathleen was out, attending a seminar in Manchester. There had been one caller at the house earlier in the day, another upwardly mobile man of the people by the name of Clive Doxey.’

Harry raised his eyebrows. He had not been aware that a celebrity of the present day was involved in the story. ‘Nowadays Sir Clive?’

‘Yes, another doughty campaigner against injustice.’ Miller smiled slightly. ‘Doxey left before Carole went for her walk, however, and Jeffries failed to realise she was still missing until his wife returned. At first they assumed Carole must have decided to visit a friend, possibly a girl called Shirley with whom she worked. And there was her boyfriend, a pop star of the day whom she had met through her job at Benny Frederick’s photographic studio and shop in Victoria Street.’