The Killing of Katie Steelstock (30 page)

Georgie grunted sleepily and said, “Wassup?”

“Too hot.”

She said, “Take off one of the blankets,” turned over and went to sleep again. He wished he could have discussed the problem with her, but that was professionally impossible. He turned onto his other side and started to count sheep going through a gate until these became clients going through the door of his office. He got a couple of hours of unrestful sleep.

Next morning when he reached the Manor, Peter, who had been warned of his visit, was waiting for him. They walked down together to the wooden shack beside the tennis court which was a repository for tennis and croquet gear and they sat on a bench in front of it.

Peter said, “I heard you’d taken on this case. I was glad about that. Johnno would have made an awful mess of it if he’d tried to do it himself. Is it true you’ve got a Q.C. from London?”

“Quite true. I saw her yesterday.”

“Her? You mean it’s a woman? Funny. I always thought of Q.C.’s as men. Do you think a woman will be able to stand up to the police?”

“I can’t think of anyone Mrs. Bellamy isn’t capable of standing up to.”

“I expect you wanted to talk about my—about me—giving evidence.”

Noel thought that there was no point in trying to break it to him gently. He said, “As I told you, we had a conference on the case yesterday. Mrs. Bellamy has decided that it would be better not to call you.”

He had wondered how Peter would take it. Many people, having offered to give evidence, evidence which would involve them in public ridicule, if nothing worse, might have been relieved when their brave offer was refused. The reaction he had not looked for was anger.

The blood mounted in the boy’s face, colouring his pale and freckled skin. He said, “Why, Noel? Why? Why?”

Noel said, “The police don’t usually try to help the defence in a case like this. So when they told us what you’d said, we came to the conclusion that they
wanted
you to give evidence. That it would actually help their case. You’d be cross-examined viciously about exactly what had taken place between you and Limbery. They’d ask you for a lot of details. You understand? Then they’d suggest that this part of your evidence was very likely true.
But that it hadn’t happened on this particular occasion.
That you’d made all that up, to help him. Do you see?”

Peter muttered something under his breath. His mouth was set in a hard line that reminded Noel of Mrs. Steelstock.

Noel said, “If they could convince the court that their version was right, it supplies a sort of motive.”

Noel was aware that he was getting into deep water. Fortunately for him, Peter didn’t seem to be listening. He was busy with his own bitter thoughts. He said, “When I told Sergeant McCourt what had happened, I thought the police would have to drop the case. All he’s done is tell everyone about it.”

“Not everyone,” said Noel. He was listening more to the tone of voice than to the words. He wondered if there was any age at which you could be more deeply hurt than at sixteen. “I know about it. And our council knows. They wouldn’t—they couldn’t—say a word to anyone else.”

“All right. I trust you. But I don’t trust the police. They’ll talk about it and make jokes about it and soon it’ll get out. Johnno warned me, never trust the police. Never, never, never. They’ll always do you down if they can. I hate them. All of them. Particularly that smug Sergeant. I thought he’d understand. He’s always been friendly. And he—he looked at me as if I was a piece of dirt he wanted to scrape off his boot.”

When Noel got home to lunch, as he did on most days, Georgie said, “What’s up? You look as if you’d been run over by a traction engine.”

“Not a bad guess,” said Noel. “I can’t tell you about it now, but I will when it’s all over.”

“It’s this bloody case, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I wish to God, if Katie was going to get murdered, she’d had the decency to do it up in London, where she really belonged.”

This made Noel laugh, which may have been what Georgie had intended.

“I wish Peter wouldn’t spend all his time cooped up in that room of his,” said Mrs. Steelstock. “He’s hardly come out of it for the last two days. It can’t be healthy. Couldn’t you get him to take some exercise?”

“I’ve tried,” said Walter. “He just tells me to leave him alone.”

“What about a game of tennis?”

“He doesn’t want to play tennis.”

“What can be wrong with him? He’s been like this ever since that policeman came to see him. Do you think he can have said something to upset him?”

“I think he may have done,” said Walter. “The only things he’s said to me have been about the police. He’s very bitter.”

“About all of them?”

“Yes. About Sergeant McCourt in particular.”

“Odd,” said Mrs. Steelstock. “He always seemed to me to be one of the nicer ones. Nicer than that horrible Superintendent from London, anyway. Whatever can he have done to him?”

“Term will soon be starting. He’ll have to snap out of it then.”

It was late on Friday evening when McCourt arrived at the Croft and rang the bell. Polly opened the door to him. She said, “His Majesty is taking his bath. As soon as he emerges I will inform him of your presence. Perhaps you would care to await him in his throne room. I mean his study.”

“O.K. I hope he won’t be too long.”

“Fifteen minutes minimum, I should guess,” said Polly. “He’s a careful washer.”

That should be long enough, said McCourt, but this was to himself.

As soon as he was alone in the study he moved across quietly to the desk where he knew the typewriter was kept. The desk was locked. It did not look like the kind of lock that would respond to such simple methods as were available to him. Moreover, if he succeeded in opening it he was far from certain that he would be able to relock it. One thing he did notice. If there was an electric typewriter in the desk, it was no longer plugged into the wall socket.

It was a full twenty minutes before George Mariner appeared. Even before he began to speak. McCourt noticed the change in him. His face seemed to have lost some of its smooth rosiness and his eyes were deeper in his head. He looked like a man who has sustained a shock. A man who was unused to shocks and lacked the resilience to deal with them.

Mariner said, speaking hurriedly, “Sorry to keep you waiting, Sergeant. Something about this case, I suppose. Is it true that the committal proceedings are starting on Monday?”

“Unless the defence asks for an adjournment.”

“That’s unusually quick, isn’t it?”

“It is quick,” agreed McCourt. “No doubt there will be a considerable delay before the case can reach the Crown Court. If it goes forward.”

“But I suppose it means that the Superintendent is very sure of his ground.”

McCourt did not feel prepared to comment on this.

Mariner said, “Well, now, what can I do for you?”

“There are one or two loose ends we would like to tidy up, sir, if we can. This is one of them.”

McCourt slid his hand into his pocket and laid the photograph of Gabby Lewson on top of the desk. Mariner looked down at it. His eyes flickered for a moment. He said, “It’s not very pleasant, is it?”

“Well, you see, he’d been two, three days in the water. He’ll have had a little cosmetic treatment, I don’t doubt.”

Mariner was still staring at the photograph. He said, “It’s difficult to be sure, with him in that state. But I don’t think—no, I’m quite sure. I’ve never seen him before.”

McCourt repocketed the photograph. Mariner seemed glad to see it go. He said, speaking more normally, “Was there any reason to suppose I should have known him?”

“We did at one time connect him with that telephone call that came to your house on the night Katie was killed. Polly thought he called himself Lewisham. This man’s name is Lewson. It would have been easy for her to make a mistake.”

“Polly doesn’t make mistakes. If she said Lewisham, that’s what it was.”

“And the name meant nothing to you?”

“Nothing at all. Might I ask why the police should attach such importance to this particular telephone call?”

“It’s like this,” said McCourt. “Any stranger who was in this neighbourhood at just the time Katie was killed and is unaccounted for is bound to be a subject of inquiry. If our first idea had been right and ‘Lewson’ and ‘Lewisham’ were one and the same person, then you might say that he
was
accounted for. In the river. On the other hand, if Mr. Lewisham exists, as a separate person, we’re bound to try to locate him.”

McCourt wondered, as he said it, if this would sound as thin to Mariner as it did to him. Apparently not. Mariner had followed the explanation carefully and now said, “Yes. I see that. But I find it difficult to help you.”

“You’re quite sure that the name means nothing to you? You have so many different interests. If I might make a suggestion, why not have a look in your address book? A busy man jots names down and forgets them.”

“If it’ll set your mind at rest, Sergeant,” said Mariner. He took a bunch of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the desk. McCourt moved unobtrusively up behind him. There was a typewriter in the desk. It was a new portable machine and bore no resemblance whatever to the typewriter that McCourt had seen there three weeks before.

“Lamprey, Levett, Ligertwood, Livingstone. No Lewisham, I’m afraid, Sergeant.”

“Another dead end, I’m afraid,” said McCourt politely. “But thank you for trying.”

“Really,” said Colonel Lyon, “I don’t think I’ve ever read such a letter. I hardly know what to do about it.”

In times of doubt he was used to consulting his head warder, a reliable and experienced officer.

“Might I have a look at it, sir?”

“Certainly.”

The letter had arrived at the prison that morning, addressed to Jonathan Limbery and marked “Personal and Confidential.” These words were three times underlined. “I had to open it, of course.”

“Of course, sir.”

“From West Hannington Manor and signed ‘Peter.’ That would be the dead girl’s brother.”

“That’s right, sir.”

The head warder was experiencing some difficulty with the handwriting, which had started reasonably enough but had deteriorated as passion took hold of Peter’s pen.

“The police are playing their usual dirty tricks. Sergeant McCourt is the worst of the lot. I used to like him, but now I hate him more than all of them. When he came to see me I told him about what happened in the car that night. He spat in my face.”

“Really, sir! That doesn’t sound like Sergeant McCourt. A very steady officer, I’d always understood.”

“There’s worse to come.”

I’m sure he was the one who persuaded them not to call me as a witness, so if they do convict you and send you away, you’ll know who to blame. For that and anything else that happens. I hardly know what I’m writing. Perhaps they won’t even let you see this letter. Goodbye, my dearest, dearest Johnno.”

“Might have been written by a girl, sir.”

“It’s a very curious letter altogether,” said the Governor. “I don’t think I can show it to him.”

“Certainly not.”

“Then what am I going to do with it?”

“If I were you, sir, I should tear it up and forget about it.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” said the Governor unhappily.

The Reverend Bird looked sadly around the church. The congregation was an unusually large one for Sunday evensong, but the front row of the choir stalls on each side was empty. Although the local boys had refused to join the choir he had had a happy little group of girls, including his own daughter. Now even she had refused to perform. “I should be all by myself and look silly,” she had said.

He had prepared a sermon on Church Unity, a subject which was being much canvassed by his bishop at that time. But before plunging into ecumenical argument he felt that he must say something more directly to his troubled flock. He had sensed that they were deeply divided, young against old, children against parents. He had heard of the discords in the Vigors family and of the sudden departure of Sally Nurse for London. He had caught a glimpse of Peter, white-faced and miserable, coming out of the gates of Hannington Manor and had felt an impulse to run up to him and put an arm around his shoulders, an impulse which he had been just sensible enough to resist.

The committal proceedings hung like a black cloud across all horizons.

He said, “Long before I was born and before most of you were born, a man called Wallace was tried and convicted of the murder of his wife. It was a well-known case. Criminologists still argue about whether he was guilty or not. There is still doubt. But one thing about which there is no doubt at all is that owing to the intense local feeling which the case aroused he didn’t get a fair trial. He appealed against his conviction. On the Sunday before his appeal was heard the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool prescribed a prayer to be read in all the churches of his diocese. I should like to read it to you. It ran, ‘You shall pray for the people that their confidence in the fair dealings of their fellow men may be restored and that truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us. Finally you shall pray for all who await the judgment of their fellow men and commit them to the perfect justice of Almighty God.’”

After a brief silence, during which the congregation seemed to be holding its breath, he said, “And now to my text . . .”

Walking back after the service with Mr. Beaumorris to pick up her car, which she had parked in the open space between his cottage and the Rectory, Mrs. Havelock said, “I thought Dicky Bird was better than usual tonight. All the same, I think he might have told us the end of the story. Did the man get off?”

“I rather think that he did,” said Mr. Beaumorris. “And died less than two years later of a very painful disease.”

“So much for the justice of God,” said Mrs. Havelock.

Mr. Beaumorris was surprised to see a light in his front room, and even more surprised to find Sergeant McCourt waiting for him, with Myra in attendance.