The Players And The Game Page 9

  It was Plender also who talked again to Ray Gordon. The journalist’s movements on that Monday evening had involved going from one place to another in search of a story, and they had proved almost impossible to check in detail. It was not this, however, so much as the nature of his relations with Louise that interested the police.

  ‘Look, I’ve told you, I didn’t have any relations. I said that when I first spoke to you.’

  ‘You didn’t say then that she’d been passed on to you by the Lowson girl. I still don’t see quite how that could happen.’

  ‘I took Sally Lowson out a few times. She was a good dancer and she’s quite a piece, if you like big girls. Then, I don’t know, she seemed to go off me.’ His nutty face screwed up into displeasure at the idea. ‘One night she just said “We’ve had it,” and that was that. I suppose a journalist on a local paper wasn’t interesting enough for her. Snobbish bitch.’

  ‘And how did Louise come into it?’

  ‘Then she said, “I’ll tell you a girl who’s really got hot pants for you, Louise Allbright. You should do something about her sometime.” So I took her out a couple of times. Three, actually.’

  ‘But she hadn’t.’

  ‘Hadn’t what?’

  ‘Got hot pants for you. You said you didn’t make her.’

  ‘I told you what she was like, that she wanted excitement but was too timid to go out and get it. She was the sort who’d settle down in the end with a man twice her age and then complain about having a dull life.’

  Plender also went round one evening and had a chat with Paul Vane about the incident at the tennis club. Vane, a tall, handsome but rather nervous man, laughed at the idea that it might have rankled with Gordon. What sort of girl was Louise, Plender asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea, I hardly knew her.’ Vane was looking at a spot behind Plender. He turned and saw that Mrs Vane had come into the room. ‘She seemed pleasant enough. Very young.’

  ‘My husband takes a kindly interest in young girls,’ Alice Vane said from behind Plender.

  ‘Alice, for God’s sake.’ She walked out of the room. ‘Another beer, Sergeant?’

  ‘Thank you, sir, very nice of you.’

  Vane poured whisky for himself and splashed soda on the tray. ‘My wife’s nervy. She hasn’t adjusted yet to life down here. It’s nonsense, what she was saying.’

  ‘About your kindly interest in young girls, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, it is a kindly interest if you want to use that phrase, nothing more.’

  ‘To go back to that bit of bother at the tennis club–’

  ‘It was really absolutely nothing.’

  ‘You took Louise Allbright home afterwards.’

  ‘Yes, I believe I did. Why?’

  ‘You’re employed by Timbals Plastics in London, is that right?’

  ‘I’m their Personnel Director. Why?’

  ‘Louise’s father is with them too, only he’s here in Rawley.’ Plender pretended to look at his notes. He remembered perfectly what Mrs Allbright had said, and now repeated it. ‘His wife said one of the bosses at Timbals brought her home that night and wanted to make love to her, but she wouldn’t let him.’

  Plender was surprised by Vane’s reaction to what was really not more than a routine inquiry. He actually flinched away, as the sergeant put it to Hazleton later, as if you’d stuck a branding iron in front of his nose. The struggle for self-control lasted only a few seconds. Then Vane was himself again, a man rather too eagerly friendly.

  ‘That’s preposterous.’

  ‘You mean it’s not true?’

  ‘After what you call the bit of bother – and believe me, even to call it that is to exaggerate it out of all proportion – we stayed there talking and playing darts. Then I drove her home and kissed her good night. Nothing more.’

  ‘It’s not true that you tried to make love to her and she wouldn’t let you?’

  ‘Absolute rubbish. Who did she say this to?’

  ‘Her parents.’

  ‘I should say she was showing off. Trying to impress her father because he works at Timbals.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Plender had become perceptibly more distant in the course of the conversation. ‘As a matter of form, could you tell me where you were on the evening of June twentieth?’

  ‘I expect so.’ He looked at a pocket diary. ‘A fairly ordinary day. I caught the six-something home, was back here just before seven-thirty. Then I stayed in the rest of the evening, had dinner, watched TV.’

  ‘Just stayed in with your wife? Nobody called, no telephone calls, you didn’t go out?’

  ‘No,’ Vane smiled, at ease now. ‘I’ve just remembered. We had a cold meal, which Alice had made in advance because she felt a migraine coming on. She’s taken to playing a lot of bridge, and I believe the concentration on it is bad for her. She ate nothing, went to bed around nine o’clock. Later on I worked on some papers I’d brought home from the office.’

  ‘I believe your daughter lives here?’

  ‘Yes. But she was out till midnight. She’s moved out altogether now, taken a flat in London with friends. The younger generation, you know.’

  Plender left it at that. There was nothing against Vane really, nothing beyond his wife’s hostility and his own embarrassment on the subject of young girls. They ran a check with CRO, but he had never been charged with any offence.

  Hazleton himself talked to Sally Lowson, feeling that this was appropriate in dealing with the daughter of a friend of the Chief Constable. He had a whisky and a bit of a chat first, and was impressed by the wall panel and the drinks tray. He was impressed too by Sally, who seemed to him a fine figure of a young woman. When he was left alone with her he smelled something. Sex? Fear? A mixture of both perhaps, but anyway something that he found exciting. If I wasn’t a married man with a couple of kids, and if I were a few years younger, I’d take this girl out and I bet before the evening ended I’d have screwed her, he thought.

  He already had Plender’s report on Gordon’s statement. Sally put things a little differently when he asked about it.

  ‘I did go around with him a bit, but it was a dead loss. I mean, he talked about nothing but himself and his work all the time. After the second hour I stopped listening.’ Her smile showed fine large teeth.

  ‘So you packed him up. Did you suggest to him that Louise Allbright was interested in him?’

  ‘I think I did say something like that. Louise thought he was good-looking. So he is, if you like little men.’

  But you like big men, my beauty, Hazleton thought. ‘She went out with him, as you know. Did she say anything to you about that? Putting it bluntly, Miss Lowson, did she say whether she’d had intercourse with him? I’m sorry if the question embarrasses you, but what she said might be important.’

  ‘It doesn’t embarrass me at all. The answer is no. I mean, she didn’t tell me, but I very much doubt it.’

  ‘Did she mention any other affairs?’

  ‘She told me she’d been to bed with a boy two or three times. At some pop festival last year. All she said about Ray was that she’d had a good time – that was the first time she went out with him. Afterwards she didn’t seem so keen. Perhaps he’d given her his lecture on journalism.’ Hazleton sensed an evasiveness in her response, especially when she went on talking. ‘I didn’t know her that well, actually just through the tennis club. I felt a bit sorry for her, really. I mean, she obviously wanted to have a man of her own, but she was nervous of going out to get one. You know she went to Keep Fit classes?’

  ‘Yes. It’s been suggested that she’d have been more likely to go for an older man. Would you think that was so?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘As far as you know, she didn’t go out at all with a man of that sort?’

  ‘No.’ For some reason the question seemed to make her nervous. When he probed round and round about it, though, like a dentist looking for a nerve end, he got no further response.

&
nbsp; Neither Hazleton, Plender, nor anybody else working on the case, got any farther in discovering hidden depths in Louise Allbright. Her school-friends said she was the quiet type, her mother and father that she had always been a good daughter who never gave them a minute’s trouble – the Isle of Wight escapade now forgotten. The holdall had obviously been put in the London bus in an attempt to divert attention from Rawley, and if Hazel Palmer had not been passing by Planter’s Place it could have achieved that object, since the body might well not have been found for weeks. There was no clue to the meaning of the envelope fragment with a number on the back.

  The sum total of discovery from these investigations was not great. Beyond the fact that her murderer owned or had access to a car there was no clue to his identity. Indeed, the assumption that he was male was not justified, nor was the use of the singular. It seemed likely that two people were involved, and they might be two women, or a man and woman. Also, it appeared likely that this was a murder without a rational motive, prompted by sadism.

  ‘And we know what a problem that kind of thing can be,’ Hazleton said gloomily to Paling. ‘People just don’t seem to notice anything connected with sex and crime. Remember that girl who was raped and killed and then dumped? Three boys saw a man take her body out of a car and put it in the bushes, five other people saw him too, and still nobody tried to stop him or do anything about it.’

  ‘Cheer up, these are the dog days. Here’s something interesting. You remember Anne Marie Dupont?’

  ‘The French girl? Of course.’

  ‘I wrote to her family – you remember they collected her things without our having a look at them? What was the name of that Inspector who thought they were of no interest? Hurley, yes, I’ll remember that. Anyway, I’ve had a letter from the sister with which I needn’t bother you – it’s in French–’

  Supercilious bastard. Hazleton thought. Paling was known to regard himself as a French scholar.

  ‘She repeats that although her sister was interested in men (she doesn’t put it in quite that way) she wouldn’t have gone off for good without telling her family. But she found this letter among her sister’s things.’

  He pushed a photostat across the table. The letter was typewritten, with no address at the top.

  My dear Anne Marie

  Thank you for the photograph. May I keep it? It is in front of me now as I write, and I think you look wonderful. So appealingly fresh and gay, and with that certain look in your eye which says you are French and not English.

  And now, shall we meet? I hope so. I look forward to introducing you to the group. We are prepared to discuss anything and everything, as I told you. Nothing is barred! You ask about women members. Yes, there is one in particular. I want you to meet her. Can you be at the corner of Boundary Road at 6 o’clock on Friday evening? I’ll pick you up from there. Sorry I can’t ask you to come to the place where we meet, but there are reasons. I hope you can manage this, and look forward to seeing you.

  Sincerely,

  Abel.

  ‘Boundary Road,’ Hazleton said. ‘Near Rawley station. And I’ll tell you another thing. There aren’t many houses there, it’s all warehouses and factories. And Friday, May twenty-seventh, was the day she disappeared.’

  ‘The lab have given us a report on the machine that typed this. It was an Olivetti portable between five and ten years old, letters “a” and “e” rather worn, “c”, “t” and “l” slightly out of alignment. Thousands of them about, unfortunately. What else do you get from the letter?’

  ‘They haven’t met, so how did they get in touch? One of those friendship circles. The sort of thing where you put in an ad: “Gentleman in 30s, attractive, well-to-do, interested music and the arts, would like to meet attractive younger lady–”’

  ‘You’ve got the tone. And this was just the sort of girl who’d answer an advertisement like that, telling herself it was a joke but being a bit serious about it too.’

  ‘What about Louise Allbright? Isn’t she the sort of girl who’d have answered that kind of ad too? I think we may be on to something.’

  Paling, who had already reached this conclusion, now applauded it. ‘What about the writer? Forty or round about, wouldn’t you say from the phrasing? “That certain look in your eye” and “We are prepared to discuss anything and everything.” No young man would write like that.’

  ‘Married. Or single with a landlady, but more likely married. That’s why he can’t ask her to the place where they meet. Lives in Rawley.’

  ‘Or works here, lives outside. What about his occupation?’

  ‘Not a manual worker. Some sort of professional job, I’d say. Not an important one, too fussy and pedantic. Civil Servant perhaps, assistant accountant who won’t get any higher, chief clerk, likes to think himself the pillar of the firm but will get the sack one day, that kind of thing. And I should say he’s probably nearer fifty than forty.’

  ‘Anything else strike you?’

  ‘The name, you mean?’ Paling nodded. ‘No, I don’t make anything of that. Except that it won’t be Abel.’

  ‘Would you say he might have had a religious upbringing? I don’t mean he’s a clergyman, but very likely a regular churchgoer, sidesman, choirmaster, something like that. Too far-fetched? Perhaps you’re right.’ Paling gave a delicate little laugh. ‘We don’t want to sound too much like Sherlock and Mycroft, do we?’

  Hazleton, who had never read the Sherlock Holmes stories, ignored this. ‘If the two cases are linked – and we still don’t know for certain that they are, though it looks like it – then Louise belonged to this friendship circle too. That number on the envelope is presumably something to do with it. And if Louise had joined one of these clubs or circles she must have left some record of it.’

  ‘And if you find a choirmaster mixed up in it, we’re home and dry.’

  Hazleton left thinking that the Toff wasn’t so stuffy after all. But the prospects that looked so promising came to nothing. The Services knew nothing about Anne Marie’s private affairs, and a letter sent by Paling to the sister in France brought a negative reply. A meticulous check on all Louise’s correspondence – which didn’t take long, because there was so little of it – revealed nothing connected with any friendship organisation. Since Louise had always been down to collect the post in the morning her parents did not know whether she had been receiving letters recently, but she had never mentioned such a thing to them as they felt sure she would have done. Allbright seemed to think that the whole thing was an oblique way of suggesting that his daughter was unpopular, and that this reflected on him. There were no friendship circles registered in or around Rawley, although this did not mean much since many of them were unregistered. The garden of Planter’s Place was dug up in the hope of finding Anne Marie’s body, and the nearby fields searched, without result. The characteristics of the Olivetti on which the letter had been typed were circulated, in case it should have come into a dealer’s hands, again without result. Progress on the case came to a dead stop.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Personality of a Murderer

  The Vanes had at last asked the Lowsons to dinner, and the Services too. Alice had spent the afternoon at the bridge club where she and Mrs Clancy Turnbull won rubber after rubber, and she arrived home in too exhilarated a state to pay much attention to the cooking. It was not a comfortable meal. The first course was some kind of fruit concoction in jelly, and the jelly had not set properly. The boeuf Stroganoff that followed was as tough as leather, and in some mysterious way the sour cream in the sauce appeared to have curdled. The cheese, however, was impeccable. Now they sat out in the garden on a fine July evening, drinking coffee and brandy. It was Penelope who mentioned the Allbright case, saying that the police now seemed to think it was linked to the disappearance of their au pair.

  ‘I mean, they go on and on, asking all sorts of really personal questions about her which I absolutely – can’t answer. I can only keep on repeating that she w
as a silly little thing. I mean, I’m terribly sorry if something’s happened to her, but I will not be made to – feel guilty.’

  ‘It’s pretty horrible, what they did to the other girl,’ Valerie Lowson said. ‘From what I hear she was pretty well cut to ribbons. We had the police round here. Sally knew the girl slightly. You knew her too, Paul, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed. What were your movements on the night in question? And all I’d done was play tennis with her.’ Paul, who wore a blazer with brass buttons and very tight dark trousers, needed only a peaked white cap to look like a member of a yachting club.

  ‘Cut to ribbons.’ Valerie drank a little of her coffee and shuddered. ‘What kind of person could do a thing like that?’

  Dick Service had been working on his pipe. Now it puffed away like a tiny steam engine. ‘Inadequacy. That’s the mark of sex criminals.’

  Bob Lowson held up his hand. ‘Silence for the company psychologist. You mean the police ought to be looking for a henpecked man trying to assert himself? I thought it was poisoners who did that.’

  ‘And other sex criminals. Well, most criminals if it comes to that. They’re over-compensating for some inadequacy in their personal lives. Often it’s got social origins, they have the feeling that other people look down on them because of their birth or their limp or their bad breath or something. Sometimes it’s a straight sexual inadequacy, which can be prompted by anything, a single incident of rejection, the loss of a lover to a rival who’s younger and more attractive–’

  ‘Impotence?’ Alice was sitting near the french doors leading into her house, her face in shadow. She had said little during dinner. Now she spoke the word with emphasis.