The Killing of Katie Steelstock (14 page)

Since Sally had no car she’d need no car key. But she ought to have had a house key, surely?”

Shilling was about to say, “You don’t know her parents,” but realised that this was not a moment when comments would be welcome. Knott was talking deliberately because he was thinking deliberately, feeling his way step by step along the new and promising path which had suddenly opened in front of him.

He said to McCourt, who was standing unobtrusively near the door, “Find out, will you?” McCourt backed out into the hall and shut the door. Knott picked up Katie’s bag, still without opening it, and said to Mrs. Steelstock, “I take it you identify this as your daughter’s property?”

“Of course I do,” said Mrs. Steelstock impatiently. “I told you. I gave it to her. Less than a year ago.”

Knott clicked open the catch and upended the bag so that the contents slid out onto the table. Items of makeup, a handkerchief, some money and a ring with three keys on it. There was something else. Knott inserted a finger and thumb and drew it out delicately. It was a plain white envelope, which had been folded to get it into the bag.

Knott said, a note of savage satisfaction in his voice, “So
that’s
what he was looking for.”

“Then that’s a note from . . . from the man . . . the one who got her to go down to the boathouse and—”

“That’s right,” said Knott.

“Aren’t you going to look at it?”

“For the moment, what I’m going to do is label it.” He took out a thin silver pencil and wrote on the envelope, ‘Taken from a bag identified by Mrs. Steelstock as belonging to Miss Steelstock.” Then he initialled it, handed the pencil to Mrs. Steelstock and said, “You saw me take it out. Would you mind initialling it too.”

She did so. Her fingers were clearly itching to extract whatever secret the envelope held. Knott took it back, still folded, placed it carefully in his wallet and put the wallet in the breast pocket of his coat.

McCourt reappeared. He said, “Sally did have a house key. And it was in her bag that night. But she didn’t have to use it, because her father had the door open before she was halfway up the front path.”

Knott considered this information, fitting it into the pattern which was forming in his mind. He said, “I take it your daughter was careful about locking up her house when she left it?”

“She’s been careful since the burglary. Before that I don’t think she bothered so much.”

“Burglary?”

“About two months ago,” said McCourt. “The man was actually in the house when she got back. Mercifully he seems to have been as frightened as she was. When he heard Katie coming through the front door he bolted out of the back. All she could tell us was that it was a man and youngish.”

It was one of the difficulties of an investigation of this sort, thought Knott. Too much information. Important issues could become clouded by irrelevancies. As he thought about it he realised that everyone was looking at him. He smiled.

“Well,” he said, “we’d better go down and have a look at her place ourselves. I’d like a word with Walter when we’ve finished. I wonder if you’d ask him to wait.” Mrs. Steelstock nodded, but coldly. She was still angry that the Superintendent had refused to show her what was in the note. It had been found in her daughter’s bag. It probably contained the name of her daughter’s killer. Who had a better right to see it than her mother?

If Knott was aware of her displeasure he gave no sign of it. He led the way out of the house. His mood had changed. He was easy and, for once, talkative. It was the period of relaxation which follows a successful orgasm. He strode fast down the drive, toward the stable block, the sergeants almost trotting to keep up.

“It’s making a lot of sense now, isn’t it?” he said. “He was looking for that note. That’s why he ransacked the bag. He didn’t find it, of course. Because it was the wrong bag.
But he wasn’t to know that.
His next idea must have been that Katie had left the note behind her in her house when she came out.”

Shilling said, “I’d just about got that far myself.”

“Right. So what does he do? He’s a careful planner. But bold and quick when he has to be. I guessed that much almost as soon as I saw the body.
Now he thought he’d been given a second chance.
He’d take the key that was in the bag, thinking it was Katie’s house key, and he’d come up later that night to have another look for the note. He’d be in a hurry, maybe a bit nervous. That’s when mistakes are made.”

Shilling said, “Let’s hope so.” McCourt said nothing. His deliberate Scottish mind was trying to keep up with this new and unexpected version of the Superintendent.

The coachman’s cottage had been converted with tact. The only apparent addition was a two-storey annexe at the back. The rustic porch had been taken down and replaced by a plain strong door and the old windows taken out, the openings enlarged and modern frames put in.

Of the three keys on the ring from Katie’s bag one was clearly a car key, one was a tiny cylinder of steel of the type known as a “Bramah.” The third was an ordinary Yale. And it opened the front door for them.

Knott said, “He couldn’t have opened the door with Sally’s key. So let’s try to find out how he
did
get in. Have a look round, Bob.”

They waited, standing in the sunlight outside the open front door. Shilling reappeared. He said, “There’s a window open at the back. It looks as if it’s been forced. And I could see a chair that had been kicked over.”

Knott grunted. He was trying, unsuccessfully, to see into the front room. He said, “We don’t want three of us trampling about inside there. You go in, Bob. And open the curtains. Then we can see in.”

They were heavy lined curtains and had been pulled right across the window. When they were drawn back, they could look in from the outside into what was evidently the living room. Shilling opened the window and said, “What do you make of that?” Against the wall, to the left of the window, was a desk. It was a solid affair, with drawers on either side of the kneehole and a cupboard on top of it. A masculine piece of furniture in a feminine room. The door of the cupboard had been forced. There was a gash in the woodwork beside the lock and a crack right across the panel.

“Rough work,” said Knott. “Try the key.”

He handed the key ring to Shilling, who moved across the room. McCourt noticed that he avoided standing directly in front of the desk, keeping over to the far side. The smallest of the three keys fitted the tiny keyhole.

“Not a lock he could pick,” said Shilling. “So he bust it open. Using this, I shouldn’t wonder.” He pointed at the heavy steel poker lying in front of the fireplace, but he made no attempt to touch it.

“All right,” said Knott. “Let’s start the routine. Get Dandridge up here and warn him he’s going to need help from Reading. We’ll have the whole place dusted and photographed. Particular attention to the carpet in there, Bob. We want holograms of any footprints. When that’s been done, have them take that cupboard door off its hinges, fit it up with clamps and a facing of cardboard or plywood – you see what I mean?”

“To protect the front surface.”

“Right. And when you’ve got it rigged up, put it in the car. Tomorrow you can take it up to London when you go and hand it over to the boys at Hendon. And tell them not to take a month of Sundays about it.”

“Quickest if I use the telephone here.”

Knott thought about it and said, “Should be all right to use it. You come with me, Ian. We’re going back to the house.”

As they walked up the drive, McCourt could contain himself no longer. “Surely,” he said, “the man would be careful not to leave prints. He’d likely be wearing gloves.”

“Likely he would,” said Knott with ferocious good humour. “And likely they’d be thin cotton gloves. And likely he wouldn’t realise that on a hot night his hands would be sweating. You can sweat a fingerprint through cotton gloves. Did you know that?”

“I did not.”

“It’s not infallible. The camera has to screen out the mesh of the glove. But it can be done. And let me tell you something else, Ian, which may be useful to you later on.” They had reached the doorstep of the house and the Superintendent paused with his hand on the knocker. “In a case like this you do
everything.
You take
every
step laid down in the book. Even when you know who the killer is.”

McCourt gaped at him. During the last hour he had seen two different superintendents. This was a third. The father figure, dispensing wisdom to his children.

He said, “Did I hear you say, ‘Even when you
know
who the killer
is’?
”

“Certainly. It was pretty clear all along what sort of man it had to be. We’ll be putting a name to him in a few minutes. Knowing
who
it is doesn’t really matter. It’s a help, of course. But it’s not the important point. We’ve got one problem and one problem only now. We have to put together a case that’ll stand up in court.” On the word “court” he thumped down the knocker. It was the full stop at the end of the sentence.

It was Walter who opened the door. Knott said, “Let’s go in somewhere quiet.” He indicated the dining-room door, on the left of the hall. Walter and Sergeant McCourt followed him in. He took his wallet out of his jacket pocket, opened it and extracted the folded envelope. He said to McCourt, “You’ve been with me, Sergeant, ever since I took this from Mrs. Steelstock and put it in my wallet.”

“Aye.”

“Then you are able to state that I haven’t touched it until this moment.” He turned to Walter. “And you can watch me open it.”

“Certainly,” said Walter. “But why—”

“Because,” said Knott, “sooner or later, some snotty-nosed barrister is going to get up in court and say”—here Knott adopted a horrifically upper-class accent—”’Naow, Superintendent, perhaps you will tell the court just haow you intend to prove that you faound this letter in the handbag of the deceased.’ That’s why I’m going to get both of you to initial this piece of paper which you see me extracting from this already identified envelope. Right?”

Walter said, “All right.” McCourt said nothing. He felt breathless.

The Superintendent spread the paper delicately on the table, holding it by the edges. It was a plain sheet of white paper. They craned over Knott’s shoulder to read the words which had been typed on it.

Darlingest Kit Cat. I can’t keep this up a moment longer. I don’t believe you want to, either. If I’m not wrong about that, come to our usual place. I’ll be there at eleven. LYPAH.

The Superintendent read it out loud, pausing on the last word, which was in capital letters. He said, “’LYPAH.’ That’s an odd word. Do you think it’s a name?”

He became aware that Walter was scarlet in the face. He was struggling with a mixture of embarrassment and laughter, in which embarrassment predominated. He said, “What’s up, son? Something tickle you?”

Walter said, “It’s LYPAH.”

“You understand it?”

“It’s just a stupid thing. It used to be a sort of catchword with some of the boys round here. I think it started at Coverdales, actually. You put it at the end of a letter – a letter like this – making a date with a girl.”

“Why?”

“You put it there so that she’d ask you what it meant.”

“I’m asking you.”

“It meant ‘Leave your pants at home.’”

The Superintendent considered this, but could think of no appropriate comment.

“Then you’re sure it came from Limbery,” said Dandridge.

“Almost sure enough to prove it in court,” said Knott. “Quite sure enough to make it a working hypothesis. The Steelstock boy confirmed to us that ‘Kit Cat’ was Limbery’s pet name for Katie. He hadn’t heard anyone else use it. The first part of the note indicates that they’d had a quarrel and he wanted to make it up. Well, we know all about that. And LYPAH. He’d have picked that nonsense up no doubt when he was teaching at Coverdales.”

“In our part of the world,” said Shilling with a grin, “we don’t put LYPAH, we put—”

Knott said, “That’s quite enough, Bob. We don’t want any reminiscences of your lecherous past. There’s a lot to do.” He considered it, standing squarely on his stubby legs in front of the map in the operations room. Then he swung around on Sergeant Esdaile. He said, “I want a proper case book set up, Eddie. An hour-by-hour log of everything we’ve done and everyone we’ve questioned so far. Transcripts of what they said. A timetable showing people’s movements that night. Copies of the photographs you took at the boathouse. Good photographs, by the way. I congratulate you. Photographs of the fingerprints on the boathouse door. Copies of Dr. Farmiloe’s report and the report of the pathologist from Southampton. Also, as soon as it’s available, a second report that I’ve asked for from Dr. Summerson, checking both of them. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with them, but you can’t be too careful with medical evidence. Then there’ll be photocopies of this letter and a written statement, which I’ll give you, of how and where it was found. You get the general idea?”

Esdaile looked dazed but resolute. He said, “You want everything we’ve got so far organised into one file.”

“That’s right. Next, we’ll extend the search for the weapon. Have two men cover every yard of the way between the place where the body was found and Limbery’s house. Search all drains, culverts, ditches and wasteland. We’ll assume he wouldn’t risk coming home via Upper Church Lane, because that would have taken him straight past the hall. He’d have stuck to the towpath, turned off it up Eveleigh Road and crossed the end of the street into Belsize Road. His house is number seventeen. That’s just beyond the Brickfield Road crossing. It’s the part they call Lower Belsize Road.”

Dandridge said, “Windle and young Gonville share digs at number thirty-four Upper Belsize Road. They both say they heard Limbery’s car coming back at sometime between half past one and a quarter to two. If he’d been out in his car, isn’t it possible that he’d dumped the weapon miles away?”

“Extremely possible,” said Knott placidly. “Even probable. Or he may have thrown it into the river five miles downstream. But killers do odd things. So we’d better make sure.” He turned to Shilling. “You’re going back to London. You know the points I want you to cover. You’ll have a full programme and I want you back tonight, so I suggest you take McCourt with you. He can do the checking at the Documents Division. It’s in Lambeth Road. You can explain the form to him as you’re driving up. Right?”