A Choice of Victims (19 page)

‘Discovered?’ Tom said. ‘How?’

‘I don’t know,’ Hasted admitted. ‘But Victor was in the hall while I was outlining the theory to Frances, and he may have overheard me and told Andrew. Andrew was out in the garden, with Natalie.’

‘Oh, no!’ Frances was shocked. ‘He wouldn’t!’

‘Why not?’ Hasted said. ‘It was an interesting piece of information. Why shouldn’t he pass it on to a friend? It would be the natural thing for a boy to do.’ Frances still looked worried, and he added, ‘Anyway, that’s only a guess. I could be wrong.’

‘And you could be right,’ Tom said. ‘That damned door never shuts properly unless you slam it. But about this other chap you’ve arrested, George Bassett. Tony Bassett. I’m told he’s been charged with using threatening behaviour. That covers the bogus attack on Mrs Mason, I suppose.’

‘Oh, that was only for starters. He’s also the blackmailer Andrew spoke of to Patricia.’ Hasted smiled. ‘And I wouldn’t be telling you that if he hadn’t confessed.’

‘How did you know it was him?’

‘We didn’t
know
. But it was a fair assumption. He was in the woods at the time of the murder, and who but Bassett would have thought of blackmailing someone into burglary? Anyway, we took a chance and searched his place. With his permission, of course. He was happy for us to do it—thought we were looking for the Scotts’ silver, you see. “You’ve turned me over once,” he said. Which we had. But that was for the silver. Now we were looking for the weapon. He didn’t know that.’

‘Did you find it?’

‘Yes. In his shed. And when we confronted him with it he coughed the lot.’ Hasted refrained from mentioning that they had led Bassett to believe that Andrew’s confession to Patricia had been more comprehensive than in fact it was. ‘He may be a villain, but he has enough sense to know when he’s beat.’

‘George and I have been wondering about Mrs Doyle,’ Sybil said. ‘Was she really as cruel to Andrew as he made out? What do you think, Tom?’

‘I doubt it,’ Tom said. ‘I suspect he suffered from paranoia. A persecution complex. I’ve no doubt she could be unsympathetic—downright unkind, even—but I think he probably magnified her obduracy out of all proportion. But to return to that morning at the Manor, George. David rang me later and said you had told him you knew who had killed Elizabeth. Did you? Tell him, I mean.’

‘Yes.’

‘But why? He was almost certain to pass the information on to Andrew.’

‘Of course. That’s what I wanted. I hoped it might push Andrew into doing something rash.’

‘It did,’ Sybil said. ‘He killed himself.’

‘Oh, that’s not fair, Sybil!’ Frances protested. ‘It was an accident.’

‘I know.’ Sybil reached for her husband’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Sorry, darling. I wasn’t getting at you. Just stating a fact.’

He squeezed back. ‘It is also a fact,’ he said. ‘that, accident apart, it worked. Having blurted it all out to Patricia—I don’t think he saw it as a confession—he had no way back. He was caught.’ Hasted shook his head. ‘It’s never happened to me before: to know that someone is guilty and to know too that you haven’t the evidence to prove it. One feels both elated and frustrated. Or I did.’

‘No evidence at all?’ Frances asked, surprised.

‘Nothing that would stand up in court,’ Hasted said. ‘Except that it would never have got that far.’

‘So if he hadn’t confessed to Patricia and then had that accident, he’d still be free, would he?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Hasted reached into his pocket and placed a key on the coffee table. ‘Because of that,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ Tom said. ‘I know it’s a key but—well, what of it?’

‘It’s a symbol,’ Hasted said. ‘Actually it’s my spare ignition key. But it represents the key to the boot of the Morris, which Andrew locked after he’d put Mrs Doyle’s body inside.’ He picked up the key and held it between thumb and forefinger. ‘Scores of men spent scores of hours searching for it, with no success and precious little hope. It could have been anywhere. Buried—thrown into undergrowth—at the bottom of a pond. Anywhere.’

‘And you found it?’ Frances asked.

‘Yes. Or rather, it was handed to me. By Andrew’s father.’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ Hasted said. ‘If you remember, Tom, it started to rain while we were at the Manor that Tuesday morning. By the time I left it was pelting down. So Doyle lent me an anorak—one of Andrew’s—and I found the key in a pocket. Andrew must have put it there after locking the boot, intending to dispose of it later. And then forgot. And he wouldn’t have used the anorak again. There had been no rain since.’

They stared at the key as if mesmerized. Then Hasted put it back in his pocket and Frances said, ‘Would that have convicted him?’

‘I imagine so.’

She shook her head. ‘I wonder if he could have coped with prison life.’

‘People do. And he’d still have been a young man when he came out.’

‘Well, it’s all very sad,’ Sybil said. ‘But if you’ve quite finished with my husband I think I should take him home. I promised Eileen we wouldn’t be late.’

‘Of course.’ Sybil stood up. Then she sighed. ‘Fate can be very cruel sometimes, can’t it? I mean, when George and the other officers went to the Manor that day to arrest Andrew they missed him by only a few minutes. That’s so, isn’t it, George?’

‘Yes,’ Hasted said.

‘But think what a difference it would have made if you’d been—well, ten minutes earlier, say.’

Hasted nodded. He had thought about it a great deal. If he had not been so damned selfish, so concerned for his image with the community—if he had not waited for Driver but had made the arrest himself, as any right-minded copper would have done—young Andrew Doyle would still be alive. The memory of that, Hasted suspected, would be with him for a long time to come.

‘Mind you,’ Frances said. ‘you were a loser too, George, in a way, weren’t you? You’d worked so hard on the case—and then, when you’d finally got it all together—well, didn’t you somehow feel cheated at not being able to make the arrest?’

Hasted looked at Sybil. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t feel cheated.’

If you enjoyed reading
A Choice of Victims,
you might be interested in
Death on a Sunday Morning
by J F Straker, also published by Endeavour Press.

Extract from
Death on a Sunday Morning
by J F Straker

1

With her wrists bound behind her back and her ankles tied to the legs of the chair, Rose Landor sat at her husband’s desk and strained her ears in an attempt to make sense of the muffled sounds and voices that filtered through to her from beyond the closed door of the office. She was more worried than frightened, for neither she nor Brian had been treated roughly and the men had curtly apologised for tying her up. She was also tired and physically distressed. Bound as she was, she could not relax her body against the chair or rest her head, and for what seemed like time interminable but was probably little more than half an hour she had been forced to sit upright. Her limbs ached, her eyes were hot and the lids heavy. Spasms of cramp attacked her soles and her thighs; and although her ankle bonds were sufficiently loose for her to dispel some of the pain by standing up, without the use of hands and arms the struggle to lift herself off the chair became increasingly hard.

Her main fear was of the dark. Since childhood she had suffered from claustrophobia, and the longer she sat the more menacingly the darkness seemed to close in on her. To overcome her fear, as well as to ease the increasing stiffness in her neck, she kept turning her head from side to side in an attempt to locate familiar objects and so make the gloom seem less opaque. She knew the room well: modest in size, but high-ceilinged and with a noble cornice, with a good Wilton carpet on the floor and an attractive yet unobtrusive paper on the walls. The furniture was functional rather than decorative, although the tubular-framed chairs were comfortable and the large flat-topped desk was admirable for its purpose. Yet she could remember when the room had looked very different. Only a few years back Brian had constantly complained about its appearance. It gave a bad impression, Brian had said, for the manager to receive his customers in an office with rusting filing cabinets and stained wallpaper, with large cracks in the ceiling and worn carpet on the floor. But then in those days Westonbury had been something of a backwater, a small country town where the Tuesday market was the main feature of practically every week except Race Week. And even Race Week could be something of a non-event. The meeting was too insignificant to attract the big stables or the heavy punters. We’ll pretty you up in time, the Bank had told Brian. But right now our resources are fully stretched and Westonbury is low in priority.

It was the arrival of Turnbull Motors that had changed the Bank’s attitude. Turnbull Motors were big, and with them had come a host of subsidiaries. New housing estates had sprung up on the periphery of the town to accommodate the influx of workers, new shops and services had opened to cater for the workers’ needs. Westonbury had become prosperous, and the Bank had reacted to its prosperity by starting work on larger and more suitable premises in the town centre. The new premises should have been ready the previous year, but there was still no firm date for completion. In the meantime the existing building, a converted Victorian dwelling-house, had been given a hasty facelift. Extra staff had been engaged and, although cramped for space, had so far managed to cope. Only during Race Week had the pressure become really excessive, for with the town’s new prosperity the meeting had grown in importance. In Race Week business was terrific.

It was Race Week now. Or the end of it. And that, Rose Landor supposed, was why she was sitting in the dark in her husband’s office, bound hand and foot, waiting for Brian and the men to return and wondering what was to follow when they did.

They had been watching the late night movie on television when the bell rang. She had opened the front door and there they were: two menacing figures in boiler suits, with wooden staves in their gloved hands and stocking masks over their heads. But despite their appearance their manner had been brusquely polite. They had urgent business at the bank, they told Brian, and needed his assistance; would he and his wife please get ready to accompany them? They hoped he would be cooperative, they said, because although they had no wish to get rough, rough was what they would get if he wasn’t. Brian had complied without argument; apart from the knowledge that resistance would have been futile, only a few months previously the Bank had issued instructions to all branches that under such circumstances they wanted no heroics from members of their staff. He had, however, queried the order for her to accompany them. Was that really necessary? They could lock her in a room without a telephone if they feared she might raise the alarm. But the men had insisted. They had their instructions, they said. The woman was to go with them.

They had gone in two cars: Brian driving his Austin, with her beside him and one of the men crouching in the back, and the second man following in the car in which the two had come. The house was some distance out of town, and as they drove she had wondered what the men would do if there were people on the street when they reached the bank—a possibility that was by no means unlikely, for although the bank was situated in a side street life did not die early on a Saturday night in the new Westonbury. Even if the men removed their masks even if Brian went unrecognised would not the sight of four people entering the bank at that hour arouse suspicion in an onlooker? But the hope that this thought had engendered vanished as they approached the bank. ‘Drive on past,’ the man in the back said, when Brian started to brake. ‘Take the first turning right and then right again.’ ‘Right again’ was a cul-de-sac that served the rear of the row of buildings in which the bank was situated, their back yards screened by a high brick wall; the buildings on the other side were in the process of being demolished to make way for a shopping complex. As the Austin stopped behind the bank two other masked men, also in boiler suits, emerged from the shadows. No one spoke. The man in the back motioned them to get out, whereupon they were grabbed by the newcomers and hustled through a gap in the brick wall. Moments later they heard the two cars being driven away.

At one time the back yard had boasted a lawn. Now it was little better than a sea of mud, the mud made sticky by a week of heavy and persistent rain. As they ploughed their way through it Rose wondered why Brian had done nothing to have it cleaned up. She never used the back entrance herself, but she knew that Brian did so regularly. The Bank had wanted to brick it in on grounds of security; it was a relic of the past, they said, when the building had been a private residence, and was out of place in a bank. But Brian had pressed for it to remain. With double yellow lines outside the front entrance and the nearest parking lot some distance away he preferred to park the Austin in the cul-de-sac and use the ‘tradesmen’s entrance’, as he called it. The Bank had not insisted. Perhaps at the time they had reasoned that such an insignificant branch was unlikely to attract the attention of bank robbers. And had then forgotten.

A man’s voice, louder than before and quickly hushed, interrupted her uneasy musing. Then the door opened and Brian and the men were back. Though her eyes were now more accustomed to the dark she could not distinguish them as individuals, but as they approached the desk she saw that three of them were carrying suitcases. Another, the tallest of the four, switched on a torch. The beam lit her face, and she blinked and turned her head.

‘Sorry we had to neglect you, Mrs Landon’ the tall man said. ‘But business had to come first, I’m afraid. All right, are you?’

‘No.’ The quiet tone, the polite inquiry, dispelled all fear of what might be in store for them. She felt free to vent her anger. ‘I am far from all right. I have sore ankles and sore wrists and a blinding headache. I have also suffered severely from cramp.’ Her throat was dry, and she swallowed. ‘Are you all right, Brian? They haven’t harmed you in any way?’

‘No, dear. I’m perfectly all right.’

The controlled precision of his voice was reassuring. ‘Well, that’s something to be thankful for,’ she said. ‘I suppose they’ve taken all the money?’

‘I hope so, Mrs Landor,’ the tall man said. ‘That’s what we came for, and we pride ourselves on being thorough. Now, let’s get you out of that chair, shall we?’

Her bonds gone, she sat for a few moments, wiggling her feet and rubbing her chafed wrists to restore the circulation. Then, steadying herself against the desk, she stood up. Confident now—what did it matter that the bank had been robbed so long as she and Brian were safe?—she said tartly, ‘Well, what happens next? Do you drive us home? Or are we expected to walk?’

‘Neither, I’m afraid. You will be staying here for a while. But not in the office. We’re going to leave you in the vault. For security reasons, you understand.’

‘In the vault?’ Landor was shaken out of his calm. ‘Good God, man! Why?’

The other did not answer immediately.

‘Off you go, then,’ he said to one of his companions, and watched the man leave. ‘Why? I would have thought that was obvious, sir. I mean—well, what’s the alternative? If we released you, you would immediately contact the police. You might promise not to do so, but we both know you would. Promises made under duress are seldom kept. So we would leave here to find police checks on all the roads out of town. We could, of course, rip out the telephone and tie you up, but you would find that most uncomfortable. In the vault you’ll be free to move around.’

‘And how and when do we get out?’ Landor asked.

‘I’ll ring the police as soon as I consider it safe. A few hours start is all we need.’

‘Suppose you forget?’

‘I shan’t.’ His tone was suddenly curt. ‘I’m meticulous in such matters, Mr Landor. Now—shall we go?’

He led the way with the torch. The vault was open and the lights switched on, and as Rose paused in the doorway she saw that most of the space was filled with steel shelving laden with deed boxes and ledgers. There were no windows and the air smelt stale, and for the first time since leaving home she experienced a pang of real fear. Brian would be with her, they were not to be left in the dark. Yet below ground—and in such a confined space—and once the heavy door closed on them, how long before it would open again? Suppose, as Brian had suggested, the man forgot? Suppose that in fact he had no intention of remembering?

She shuddered. ‘No!’ she said, her voice shrill. ‘I can’t! I’m sorry, but I just can’t!’

‘Oh? Why not?’ The tall man drew her aside as his companions carried in a couple of chairs. ‘All the comforts, you see. And no lack of reading material, by the look of it. And it won’t be for long, I promise you. A couple of hours at the most. You can stick it that long, can’t you?’

‘No,’ she said hysterically. ‘I can’t. If you shut me up in there I’ll die of fright.’

‘Oh, come now! That’s an exaggeration, isn’t it? Of course you won’t.’

Gently but firmly he propelled her into the vault, her struggles and her husband’s protests unavailing. Landor followed, angrily shrugging off a hand from one of the other men. As the door started to close the woman screamed. Frowning, the tall man slammed it shut.

‘Claustrophobia, I imagine,’ he said. ‘Nasty, poor thing. Still, her old man will look after her. She’ll be all right.’