The Killing of Katie Steelstock (2 page)

Ian had been born in Inverness, where, as everyone knows, they speak the purest English in the British Isles. It was only an occasional broadening of the consonants and a certain formality in his speech that evidenced his origin.

“I can’t tell you exactly when. I brought the car back at about midnight last night and parked it where I always do, at the back of the house.”

“That’s in Upper Belsize Road.”

“Number thirty-four. The other side of the Brickfield Road crossing.”

The Sergeant made a note. “When did you find it had been tampered with?”

“When I tried to start it this evening. I didn’t need it to get to the station this morning. The chap I share the house with – Billy Gonville – he’s got a car too and we take it in turns to ferry each other to the station.”

“Then the assumption is that this person got at your car between midnight last night and first light this morning.”

“I imagine so.”

“It’s curious, all the same.”

“Why?”

“When Mr. Mariner’s car and Mr. Vigors’ car were interfered with we concluded that it was boys being mischievous. But that hardly fits in with something happening after midnight. Boys wouldn’t likely be out at that hour.”

“I suppose not. So who is it who’s playing these tricks?”

“I would hardly classify them as tricks. Trespass and criminal damage. It’s a serious offence.”

“It seems so pointless.”

“You heard nothing?”

“Nothing at all. There’s no reason I should. After all, this joker had only got to hop over the back fence from the lane behind the house, lift the bonnet – there’s no bonnet lock, you see – and whip out the distributor head.”

“Is your bedroom at the back?”

“It is. But I’m a very sound sleeper.”

“Would Mr. Gonville have been home when you got back last night?”

Tony looked surprised and said, “His car was there. I imagine so. In bed and asleep. You don’t think he did it, do you? No point really. It means he’s going to have to drive me to the station every morning until I can get a new part.”

“If we knew why it was being done,” said McCourt, “we might have some notion who it was. Well, I must be getting along.”

“You wouldn’t by any chance be going out through West Hannington?”

“Aye. That’s where I was bound for.”

“Then could you possibly leave a message for me with Miss Steelstock. I tried ringing her up just now, but either she wasn’t at home or maybe she was in her bath.”

“I shall be calling on the Manor House. I could leave a message with her mother, if that would do.”

“That would do splendidly. Just to tell her that I’m carless and she’ll have to drive herself to the Tennis Club disco.”

“I’ll do that,” said McCourt.

“Now that’s a good chap,” said Tony when he’d gone. “Wasted on the police in a dump like Hannington. I must get back and change. Are you coming?”

“I can think of better ways of spending a hot summer evening than plodding around the Memorial Hall with a lot of sweaty girls.”

“You have a point,” said Tony.

Sergeant McCourt and Sergeant Esdaile constituted at that moment the total detective force of Hannington and District. Normally there were three of them, but Detective Inspector Ray was in Reading Infirmary with supposed peptic ulcers.

Because they were short-handed (for this, McCourt reflected, is the way of the world), their work load had greatly increased. An epidemic of country-house burglaries had broken out, starting in the area of Wallingford and spreading south through Moulsford, Compton and Streatley.

“They’re cleaning up the whole area,” said Detective Superintendent Farr from Reading, who had been put in charge of the counteroffensive. “And they’re just about due in your manor, so keep your eyes open.”

Keeping their eyes open had involved patrolling on alternate nights. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, said McCourt, yawning, if they had been allowed to sleep on alternate days. However, provided nothing unexpected happened, this was his last official duty for that day. He had to visit each of the three large houses in West Hannington and urge the owners, all of whom would be going to the Tennis Club dance, to leave someone at home if possible and, if not, to leave a television set or a few lights switched on and to lock up securely. Or, better than either of these corny devices, to leave a dog loose in the house.

He tackled the street in reverse, calling first at Group Captain Gonville’s house, which was the Old Rectory and lay on the far side of Upper Church Lane. The Group Captain revealed that he and his wife were both going to the dance, but he thought that his bull terrier would keep an eye on things while they were away and would the Sergeant like a drop of Scotch. He, too, liked the Sergeant, as did most of the inhabitants of West Hannington. McCourt refused regretfully. He said that if he had so much as the smallest drink he would fall asleep on his moped.

His next port of call was West Hannington Manor. This was the oldest and largest house in the neighbourhood and the most likely target for burglars. It had belonged to Matthew Steelstock, the estate agent, who had broken his neck out hunting, ten years before, leaving a widow with three children: Katie, then fifteen and already beginning to turn male heads; Walter, thirteen; and Peter, six. Matthew Steelstock had been a riotous, fast-living, foul-mouthed man, and since he had left his wife well provided for, she had accepted widowhood without any undue distress. As she often remarked, she had her children.

Of these, Katie was now a first-magnitude star.

Who would have thought she had it in her? An attractive girl, agreed. One who took trouble over her appearance and was never short of boyfriends. But so were a million other girls. Then she had to go up to London and get involved with that photographer. The one who got into trouble afterward with the police. But he certainly took beautiful photographs. Artistic lighting, unexpected angles. And he
said
he had an in with the television companies. Well, people like that would say anything, but in this case there seemed to be some truth in it, because Katie started getting better parts in commercials. Well paid, too. About that time she had acquired an agent. “A very respectable man,” said Mrs. Steelstock, “with an office in Covent Garden.” She understood he had been to Harrow.

Then came the
Seven O’Clock Show.
The all-family quiz show that combined general knowledge, popular music and a touch of sex. The perfect condiment to season the family evening meal. And starting with one of the supporting parts, Katie had somehow managed to take it over. The producer must have had something to do with it, and the cameramen certainly lent a hand; but it was her own bubbling, self-confident, friendly extrovert personality which turned “Kate” into “our Katie,” the two-dimensional friend of a million three-dimensional families; pin-up for a million adolescents; the guest, at the same time real and unreal, at a million supper tables.

“With the money she’s made,” said Mrs. Steelstock, “she could have gone off and lived up in London with all her smart new friends, but Katie’s really a home girl. Her family and her friends are all down here in Hannington and that’s where she prefers to stop. We converted the stable block into a self-contained maisonette for her.” (If when she said “we” Mrs. Steelstock implied that she had paid for it, this was untrue. The cost of the conversion had come out of Kate’s own pocket.) “It gives her just that bit of privacy that all real artists need.”

It was Katie’s brother Walter who opened the door when Sergeant McCourt rang the bell. He said, “It’s quite all right, Sergeant. We’re leaving Peter in charge. He’s got a headache and won’t be coming with Mother and me. Anyway, we’ll be back by eleven. We’re not night birds.”

“That’s all right then. And by the by. I’ve a message for your sister. From Mr. Windle. He won’t be able to take her to the dance. Some joker’s put his car out of action.”

“I suppose it’s the same kids who damaged the other cars.”

“We’re not so sure about kids. It transpires that this incident must have taken place in the early hours of the morning.”

Walter considered this slowly. He liked to consider things slowly. He said, “If an adult is responsible, the whole thing seems rather pointless, doesn’t it? Unless he has a particular grudge against the three people concerned. Mariner, Vigors and Windle. There doesn’t seem to be much connection.”

“It’s a problem we’re working on. I’ll have to be on my way. You won’t forget to tell your sister.”

“That’s all right. She’ll take her own car, I’ve no doubt.”

“Or maybe she’ll walk.”

“Not our Katie,” said Walter.

One of the reasons that McCourt had taken a circular route into West Hannington was that it was an excuse for leaving the Mariners to the last.

George Mariner had built the Croft when he came to West Hannington twenty years before. It had taken a lot of money, and the sacking of one architect, to get it exactly as he wanted it, which was odd, because it was not a house of any particular character.

McCourt raised the heavy brass dolphin door knocker and let it fall with a thud upon the heavy oak-panelled door.

When nothing happened, he said something under his breath, knocked again and pressed the bell. This did produce results. Lights came on in the wrought-iron lanterns on either side of the porch and the door was opened by a smart-looking maid.

McCourt said, “Is Mr. Mariner in?”

The maid said, in tones which would have suited a fifty-year-old butler, “I will ascertain if he is at home. May I have your name?”

“Don’t be daft, Polly. You know perfectly well who I am. Buzz along like a good girl and get hold of him.”

“Will you come this way please,” said the maid, without abating a jot of her formality. “If you will be good enough to wait.” She showed him into the room on the left of the hall, which was George Mariner’s study or business room, and departed, closing the door carefully behind her. McCourt sighed and contained his soul in patience. It was a full ten minutes before the master of the house appeared.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Sergeant,” he said amiably. “I was in my bath.”

The pinkness and whiteness of his face, the smartness of his lightweight linen suit, the crispness of his shirt reproved the Sergeant, who felt hot, sticky and dirty and illogically blamed this on the cool figure in front of him.

“Can I offer you a drink?”

“Not just now, sir.”

“Then you won’t object to me having one myself.” Mariner turned his broad back on the Sergeant and mixed himself a generous Scotch and water. “Now tell me, what is it brings you out on this hot evening?”

McCourt explained. Mariner said, “Have no fear. My girl will be here until we get back. And even if the house was empty I shouldn’t feel uneasy. I have Chubb locks on the front and back door, window locks on all the ground-floor windows and a burglar alarm which sounds off in your police station. I take it there will be someone on duty tonight?”

“Aye,” said McCourt. “There’ll be a night duty man there. I’ll be getting along now.”

Mariner touched a bell in the wainscoting and said, “Polly will show you out.” He then sat down at his desk, inserted a sheet of paper into the typewriter and started to type, not inexpertly. The Sergeant retired to the hall, where he found the maid waiting. He said, “So you’re not going to the dance, Polly?”

“I haven’t been asked,” said the girl, who seemed to have abandoned her impersonation of Jeeves. “As if I’d want to go anyway. A lot of toffee-nosed crumbs.”

McCourt grinned, resisted the temptation to smack the bottom which, in its tight black dress, seemed to be inviting a smack, and clumped out of the door. He said, “Be good, then.”

“Not much chance of being anything else in this dump,” said Polly. “Tarrah.”

She watched him go. She thought he was rather a dish. A bit solemn, but good-looking in a dark Scottish way. A bit like Gregory Peck, really.

At the police station McCourt found Detective Sergeant Esdaile, a Yorkshireman, his senior in years and rank, finishing an accident report. He said, “I’ve done the West Hannington lot, Eddie. My God, how I hate that man.”

“Who?”

“The bloody Master Mariner.”

“Oh, him.”

“Because God made him a J.P.—”

“Not God, the Lord Chancellor.”

“You’re wrong, Eddie. He wouldn’t accept the honour from a mere menial like the Lord Chancellor. It was a direct gift from the Almighty. It enables him to look upon policemen as supernumerary footmen.”

Esdaile grunted, looked at the word he was writing, crossed it out and wrote it again.

“True, he only kept me waiting for ten minutes tonight. Last week, when I called on him about the joker who let down his tyres – you’d have fancied he’d had his house burgled and his wife raped, the fuss he was making—”

“You couldn’t rape her,” said Eddie. “She’d freeze your balls off.” He crossed out the second version of the word and scratched his head with the end of the pen.

“—he kept me waiting nearly
twenty
minutes. And when he did come down from whatever it was he was doing he spent another twenty minutes giving me a lecture on the proper performance of my duties.”

“He’s a bastard in any one of nine languages,” said Eddie. “How
do
you spell unconscious?”

Old Mr. Beaumorris sat in the bow window of his cottage on the street. The window was wide open. Through it he observed the life of West Hannington. There was not much happened in the village which escaped him.

He saw the Reverend “Dicky” Bird driving past in his battered Austin, the back of the car stacked with folding chairs, presumably destined for the Memorial Hall. He was glad there were going to be plenty of chairs. Mrs. Havelock came striding past. Must weigh all of twenty stone, he thought. In prime condition, though. She spotted Mr. Beaumorris, drew up, poked her head through the window and boomed, “You coming dancing tonight, Frank?”

“I’ll be there. Too old and too stiff to dance, though. I imagine all your brood will be in evidence.”

“I’ve told the three oldest they can come. Roney and Sim will have to stop at home and look after the young ones.”