An Amateur Corpse (11 page)

Good Lord, had Charlotte been worried that she was pregnant? Suddenly, the thought seemed attractively plausible. A lot of what she had said in the Backstagers' car park would be explained if that were the case. That business about being off alcohol. It could be checked through the police post-mortem. Mental note to ask Gerald.

If she were pregnant, a whole new volume of possible motives for killing her was opened. He felt a catch of excitement.

He tried the drawer next. That didn't seem to offer anything unexpected. A couple of rings, a broken string of beads, no doubt awaiting mending, a polythene bag of cotton wool balls, a nail-file, an empty key-ring, a jar of nail polish and . . . what was that at the back? He pulled it out. A small book covered in red leather.

It was a Roman Catholic missal. Inside the cover was written, ‘To Charlotte. On the occasion of her first communion, with love from Uncle Declan and Auntie Wyn.'

Yes of course, the Northern Irish background. Good little Catholic girl. Which might raise problems if she had got herself pregnant. And moral issues over contraception. Difficult to know how strong the Catholic influence would have remained. She had married Hugo in spite of his divorce. But Charles had gathered from his friend's unworthy ramblings in the Trattoria that she had let Hugo take the responsibility for birth control in the relationship. Which might mean that Charlotte would be in danger of getting pregnant if she started sleeping with someone else. Which would make sense.

He opened the fitted wardrobe on Charlotte's side of the room. The sight of her fashionable clothes gave him a sharp pang. She had worn them so well, been so beautiful. And now they hung lifeless, misshapen by the bony shoulders of the clothes hangers..

Charles ruffled through the dresses and looked with care among the litter of shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe. He still didn't know what he was looking for, but he didn't feel the time was wasted. Somehow, among her things, he felt closer to Charlotte, closer to understanding what had been going through her mind in the days before her death.

Her clothes smelt strongly of her scent, as if she were still alive. He wouldn't have been surprised to see her walk in through the door.

The wardrobe revealed nothing unexpected. Nor did the rows of drawers which flanked it. He was about to start looking round the bathroom when he stopped. There had been nothing unexpected among her clothes, but equally there had not been something that might have been expected there either.

Charlotte Mecken had been strangled with a scarf. Hugo had identified it as her own scarf and yet there were no others among her clothes. There were any number of dresses, skirts and shirts for her to choose from, any number of pullovers and pairs of shoes. But only one scarf.

When he came to think of it, Charles realized he had never seen Charlotte wearing a scarf. And what was more, even his sketchy knowledge of current fashion told him that scarves were not ‘in'. Certainly not those crude Indian prints like the one he had seen knotted around Charlotte's neck. No, those had had a vogue in the late sixties, they now looked rather dated. Charlotte, with her sharp fashion sense, would not have been . . . He smiled wryly as his mind formed the phrase ‘been seen dead in one.'

What it meant was that Charlotte was most unlikely to have been wearing the scarf with which she was killed. Which made the accepted picture of the murder, of Hugo reaching out to her in a drunken fury and throttling her, unlikely. Whoever killed Charlotte must have gone to get the scarf with which to do it.

The bathroom did not offer much space for secrets. The pale green bath, basin, bidet and lavatory were modem and functional. Fluffy yellow towels hung from the heated rail. Only the mirror-fronted cabinet gave any opportunity for concealment.

The contents were predictable. Make-up, various creams, nail scissors, a tin of throat sweets, shampoo, an unopened box of Tampax, cough medicine, a roll of sticking plaster.

The decor of the bathroom was recent. The walls were olive green and the floor was covered with the same mustardy carpet as the bedroom. It was all very neat, very attractive, like a picture out of Homes and Gardens.

The only blemishes were two small screw-holes above the cabinet. It must have been set too high initially and been moved down to the right level for Charlotte. Maybe it had been moved when Hugo exiled himself to the other bedroom and bathroom.

Now it had been moved down, the cabinet's bottom edges rested on the top row of white tiles which surrounded the wash-basin. As a result it was tilted slightly and there was a narrow triangle of space between it and the wall.

Charles knew there would be something in there. He didn't know why. It was part of the understanding he was beginning to feel for Charlotte. She had been so young, so young, almost childlike in some respects. It was in character for her to have a hiding place for her Secret things, like a girl at boarding school making one ‘little corner of total privacy that the teachers would never know about. It was a way of maintaining her identity in a challenging situation.

Charles pressed his face to the wall and squinted along the gap. Then very calmly, he fished in with a pen and slid out a brown envelope. It was not sealed. As he raised it to shake out the contents, the front door-bell rang.

He shoved the envelope in his pocket and swallowed his first impulse to run and hide. After all, he wasn't doing anything wrong. Hugo had given him the key Without prompting. He wasn't even trespassing on his friend's property.

He tried to calm himself with such thoughts as he walked secately downstairs, but he still felt as guilty as a schoolboy caught with an apple in his hand in an orchard.

This mood was intensified when the opened front door revealed a uniformed policeman.

‘Good afternoon, sir,' said the policeman in a tone that indicated that he was prepared to start quite reasonably, but was ready to get tough when the need arose.

‘Good afternoon,' Charles echoed foolishly.

‘Might I ask what you're doing here, sir?'

‘Yes, certainly.' Charles affected man-of-the-world affability, to which the policeman seemed immune. ‘My name's Charles Paris. I'm a friend of Hugo Mecken. I've stayed here a few times. He gave me a key, actually.' Charles reached into his pocket as if to demonstrate until he realized the fatuity of the gesture. ‘Said I could drop in any time.'

‘I see, sir.' The policeman's tone remained reasonable, but it had a strong undercurrent of disbelief. ‘Rather an unusual time to drop in, sir. Or haven't you heard what's been happening here?'

‘Oh yes, I know all about it.' Charles replied eagerly and, as he said it, recognized his stupidity. If he'd claimed ignorance of the whole affair, he could just have walked away.

‘I see, sir. In fact, we had a call from someone in the road who had seen you go into the house and who thought, under the circumstances, it was rather odd.'

Good God, you couldn't blow your nose in Breckton without someone seeing. There must be watchers behind every curtain. Time for a tactical lie. ‘In fact, officer, the reason I am here is that, as I say, I stayed with the Meckens a few times and on the last occasion Mrs Mecken was good enough to wash out a couple of shirts for me. Now all this terrible business has happened, I thought I'd better pick them up without delay.'

The policeman seemed to accept this. ‘And have you found them?'

‘Found what? Oh, the shirts – no, I haven't yet. I've been looking around, but I'm not sure where Mrs Mecken would have put them.'

‘Ah. Well. Would you like me to accompany you round the house while you find them?' It was phrased as a question, but it wasn't one.

Like Siamese twins they went through the house They looked in the airing cupboard, they looked in the wardrobes. Eventually Charles produced the solution he had been desperately working out for the last few minutes. ‘Do you know, I think Mrs Mecken must have mixed them up with her husband's clothes and put them away in his drawer.'

‘Well, sir, I dare say you'll want to be off now.'

Charles didn't argue.

‘And, sir, I think, if you don't mind, you'd better give me that key. I'll see that it gets put with the rest of Mr. Mecken's belongings. I think, under the circumstances, with the possibility of further police investigations, the less people we have walking around this property, the better. I quite understand why you came in, sir, but if a key like this got into the wrong hands . . . well, who knows, it might be awkward.'

‘Of course.' Charles had no alternative but to hand it over.

‘Thank you, sir.' The policeman ushered him out of the front door and closed it behind them. Then he stood in the middle of the doorstep. ‘Goodbye, sir.'

Charles walked across the gravel and along the road in the direction of the station, conscious of the policeman's eyes following him. He wasn't going to get another chance to get inside that house without breaking and entering.

Still, the search had not been fruitless, In his pocket there was an envelope.

CHAPTER TEN

‘YOU REALIZE
IT'S probably illegal,' said Gerald grumpily. ‘It's withholding evidence . . . or stealing evidence or . . . I'm sure there's something they could get you for.'

Gerald was being unhelpful over the whole thing. He didn't want to hear how Charles had spent the rest of the morning and manifested the minimum of interest in his findings. Also it was clear that he didn't like having his friend round the Grosvenor Street office. Charles Paris was a reminder of the Mecken case and Gerald didn't want to be reminded. He wanted to re-immerse himself in his regular work, wrangling over small clauses in film and television contracts, or even sorting out the odd divorce. Having clients charged with murder upset him; he thought it was irresponsible and didn't want to dwell on it.

‘I don't care,' said Charles, ‘I think it's important. I had a look at the book on the train, but couldn't make much of it, so I thought two heads might be better than one. You always said you wanted to be included in any of my cases.

‘Charles, there is a difference between what one does professionally and what one does as a hobby.' Gerald could be insufferably stuffy.

‘Murder's a funny sort of thing to have as a hobby. Anyway, just give me five minutes of your time to look at this stuff and then I'll leave you alone.' Gerald looked dubious. ‘Good God, do I have to pay for your time?'

This at least brought a smile to Gerald's lips. ‘You'd never be able to afford my rates, Charles.'

He took advantage of the shift of mood to redirect attention to the envelope on the desk. He shook it and out came a thin, blue-covered book and a beige plastic envelope. ‘Let's concentrate on the diary first.'

He flicked through the pages. Gerald,' in spite of himself, craned over to look. ‘Not much in it, Charles.'

‘No, that's what makes it interesting. Why make such a palaver about hiding a book that contains so little information?'

‘Presumably because the little information it does contain is extremely secret.'

‘Yes. In other words, it had to be kept secret from Hugo. I mean, there was no one else in the house to hide things from, was there?'

‘No.'

‘The interesting thing is that there's nothing at all until May. Then we have this entry – Saturday May 23rd, Backstagers' Party. Now I know that Charlotte hadn't been a member of the society long, so I reckon that could well have been her first contact.'

‘Seems reasonable, but it doesn't get us far.'

‘No. Then we get these four dates in early June –
Seagull
auditions. That's self-explanatory. And isn't it typical of that Backstagers lot to make a big production out of it and have four whole evenings of auditions.

‘As we know, Charlotte was successful in the audition, because then in July we start getting rehearsals marked. Okay, that makes sense. She started the diary when she started getting involved in amateur dramatics.'

‘Not really something you'd treat as a big secret, is it, Charles?'

‘No, the secret bit comes later. But there's something odd about this diary even from what we've seen so far. I mean, I can understand why she enters all the rehearsals – they're quite complicated and she'd need to make a note of them – but why are there no engagements before the Backstagers' party? I'm not going to believe that was the first time she went out in the year.'

‘No.' Gerald sounded as if he was losing interest again.

Charles picked up the pace. ‘I think I know what it was. Not the first time she had gone out, but the first time she had arranged to go out herself., So far as I can tell, it was round that time that she and Hugo ceased to communicate. I think starting this diary was an identity thing for her. All right, if Hugo and I are not having a life together, I'll damned well make a life of my own. And this little diary was a symbol of that determination, of her separateness. And if that's why she started the diary, it explains the later entries. The Affair.' He pronounced it portentously to whet Gerald's appetite. ‘Look.'

Starting late August, in the midst of all the Seagull rehearsals, there was a new series of notes. Lunchtimes. 1.0 – Waterloo. 1.0 – Charing Cross. 1.0 – Charing Cross again, then back to Waterloo. A whole sequence of them.

The last was different. It was for the Tuesday of that week. 1.0 – Victoria. But that was one railway station rendezvous Charlotte Mecken did not make. Because by then she was dead.

‘You reckon it was a lover?'

‘It would fit rather cosily, wouldn't it, Gerald?'

‘But I thought you were working on the idea that she was having an affair with someone in the Backstagers. Surely that'd be strictly local.'

‘Not if they wanted any degree of privacy. To have an affair in a place like Breckton would be like having it off in the middle of Wembley Stadium on Cup Final day.'