A Dangerous Deceit Page 13

  Joe remembered what Lily had told him about her husband working late. Unprepossessing as Aston had been, he had not seemed to see that as a bar to approaching women – and from Maisie’s testimony, even young girls – and rumour had it that his association with Eileen had been going on for years. Actually, Joe could see the attraction this woman would have had for him – the utter contrast between her and his lacklustre wife. Eileen Gerrity seemed like the sort of woman who would in other circumstances enjoy a laugh, and not be averse to a drink or two, while poor Lily looked as though she would at the best of times have difficulty in summoning up a smile.

  He wondered if she had known what was going on, and that was why she had mentioned all those late nights at the office. She hadn’t given any signs that she had, but he was beginning to suspect Lily was a dark horse.

  ‘Anything you want to know, just ask,’ Eileen said, returning to her desk.

  Joe was here to give closer attention than before to the contents of both the safe and Aston’s desk, not the sort of task he relished, but previously time hadn’t allowed more than a cursory look at what the safe contained. He didn’t expect to find anything he’d missed, though, mainly because there was surprisingly little in the way of paperwork. Arthur Aston, or Eileen, or maybe both, had set up a fairly simple accounting system, which seemed to work well enough for them. There had been the usual stuff, he recalled – the wages book, purchase and sales ledgers, invoice files, bank statements, correspondence files – and that had been about it. Eileen kept the figures neatly and Aston’s diary was also kept up-to-date by her, though he’d had relatively few appointments, most of them seeming to be with regular clients. Occasionally, beside a customer’s name, Aston had made the same sort of cryptic notes he’d written on the back of his chequebook, and that seemed to be all he had needed.

  ‘Where did Mr Aston meet his customers?’ he asked Eileen over his shoulder.

  Her desk chair was back to back with Aston’s, where Joe was sitting, and she swivelled round to answer. ‘Sometimes for lunch at the Rotary Club, if he thought they were important, or else at the customer’s place, sometimes here.’ She laughed at his raised eyebrows and pointed to the spare chair in the corner. ‘It was as good as anywhere. There wasn’t anything special that I didn’t know about.’

  ‘What about his business relationships, were they good?’

  She didn’t reply for a moment and then she said carefully, ‘It wasn’t his policy to make enemies.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting it was, but was there anyone who was dissatisfied with the way he conducted business? Now, or at any time previously?’

  She played with the fountain pen she was holding without meeting his eyes. ‘Well, I can only think of one, but honestly, if you knew Frank Greenwood …’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Greenwood and Bell. They’re the carriers we use to pick up and deliver orders.’ He waited. ‘Oh, all right. It was Arthur’s – Mr Aston’s – practice to go through the statements sent in once a month with me, and to see what money we had coming in, what bills we had outstanding, what needed to be paid straight away and what could run on for another month. He liked to play about with the accounts, you know. Keeping the money moving, he called it. Frank Greenwood’s normally pretty easy-going and he didn’t usually press for quick payment, so we’d sometimes let his account go for another month – but then it got to two months, and when it reached three, he stormed in here one day and demanded immediate payment or else …’ She frowned. ‘It took the wind out of Arthur’s sails, but to be fair, I think it was Frank’s partner, Charlie Bell, who was doing the demanding, and he sent Frank because he’s always been the one to deal with us.’

  ‘“Or else”? What did he mean by that?’

  ‘He threatened the law. He tried to get nasty but, well, it was just a laugh. He’s not that sort, not really. If you’re thinking he might have killed Arthur, you’re wrong. He couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding.’

  ‘What about his partner – Charlie Bell?’

  ‘I don’t know about him, I’ve never met him. But it would seem a funny way of settling a business dispute. And what would he be doing in the foundry, anyway?’

  Privately, Joe agreed, but he said, ‘That might depend on whether it was an argument that got out of hand.’ He thought for a bit. ‘OK, apart from that, what about the men working here? Had there been any trouble with any of them? No one sacked recently?’

  She shook her head. ‘They’ve all worked here for years – the nine chaps on the machines in here, and the foundry men. Those two have both been laid off quite a bit lately, I’ll admit, but they knew Arthur wouldn’t have done that if he’d any choice. He was a good boss, you know,’ she added after a slight pause. ‘He could be a tight-fisted old devil and he wouldn’t tolerate slackness or slovenly work, but he was fair.’

  ‘How did you get on with him yourself?’

  It was a loaded question and she knew it, but she answered without a blink. ‘He was all right. We had a drink or two in the Punch Bowl now and then.’

  ‘OK. Does WIM mean anything to you, by the way?’

  She didn’t reply, and after a short silence, he repeated, ‘WIM. It was written down several times on the back of the firm’s chequebook, and on the back of his personal chequebook at home.’

  ‘It was a habit he had, it used to annoy the bejaysus out of me, the way he scribbled over everything.’

  ‘So you’ve no idea what it means?’

  ‘No.’ She picked up her glasses, fiddled with them and finally put them back on. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, it’s nothing that matters, probably.’ He pushed his chair back. ‘I think that’s as far as I can go for now, but we may have to get someone who knows more about these things than I do to check the books over thoroughly – not that we expect any discrepancies, mind,’ he added hastily, seeing she might be about to protest. ‘Just routine.’

  As he was leaving, the green coat hanging behind the door prompted him to ask her what time she started work.

  ‘Half past eight’s my starting time, but my bus gets to the end of the street at quarter past, so I’m always here well before that.’

  ‘Then you wouldn’t have seen a disturbance out in the road at half past eight, between the milk float and a butcher’s van?’

  She laughed. ‘Vincent, you mean? There’s always some rumpus going on about the way he stops in the middle of the road. But no, I wouldn’t have seen it, being in here, would I?’

  Not for the first time, it struck Joe how claustrophobic the little office was – no windows, and only the shop floor outside the glass. He wondered what it would be like to be working here in the heat of summer, squashed together as everything was. And this reminded him of something else. ‘By the way, what can you tell me about Hadley Piece?’

  ‘That old warehouse? What is there to tell?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I gather Mr Aston was negotiating to buy it because he needed bigger premises. I can understand why.’ He gestured round the little office, a makeshift sort of place if ever he’d seen one. And the machines that occupied the shop floor left no room for more out there, either, if Aston had been thinking on the lines of expansion.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said, though he thought she did.

  He left Aston’s, and with Gladys’s comments still in mind, went along to make enquiries at the other two workplaces on that side of the street.

  Thirteen

  Binkie Scroope and his wife were alone in the drawing room of their large, first-floor mansion flat in Belgravia. All the furniture in the flat was modern: the last word in blond wood, glass-topped tables, unframed mirrors. It was decorated in tones of oatmeal, cafe au lait and dove grey, a neutral de rigueur colour-scheme of the moment, beloved of Opal and her friends. Binkie had not cared enough to raise any objections when it had been chosen – at least it wasn’t all dead white, which it might have been – but by now h
e thought it exceedingly dull. Its blandness was getting on his nerves. He didn’t know which was worse – this, or the faded glories of Maxstead.

  A letter from his mother had come for him by the afternoon post. He read it through again, then put it back in its envelope, and put the envelope in his pocket, without making any comment. The best way to deal with Maxstead was not to think about it at all.

  His lazy eyes surveyed Opal – pretty and spoilt, quite good-natured on the whole, until it came to Maxstead and money. She was lying back in her chair, wearing black satin lounging pyjamas lavishly embroidered at the hems and cuffs, her bandaged leg up on a cushioned footstool, turning over the pages of Vogue while simultaneously playing jazz band dance music on the wireless, smoking a cigarette through an amber holder and dipping into the hideously expensive box of Charbonnel et Walker chocolates he had bought her. It was rare, if not unheard of, for them to be spending an evening in, but Opal had tripped over her carelessly dangling evening stole as they returned home in the grey light of morning after a night out and had sprained her ankle and been ordered to rest it.

  She was bored beyond tears. It was only three days since it had happened, but incarceration within the four walls of the flat was testing the limits of her endurance and fraying the edges of her temper. Prolonged association with her toddlers was not the unalloyed pleasure it was supposed to be, and she had already had sharp words with Nanny over their behaviour. No one had called to see her since lunch. Worse, it was windy outside, causing a lot of static on the wireless and making it difficult to listen to Harry Roy. The flowers sent by her friends were beginning to wilt in the central heating.

  She said fretfully, ‘For goodness’ sake take those lilies out, Binkie, darling, they’re going off. I can’t think why Edmé Porter brought them – she knows I’ve always detested the smell of lilies. Isn’t it time for cocktails?’

  Binkie left the room, without taking the flowers. He was away some time. She was looking impatiently at the clock when he eventually returned, carrying by its tall stem a single shallow cocktail glass with a twist of lemon and a maraschino cherry. He had changed into his evening clothes, his white silk scarf was slung around his neck, his coat folded over his free arm. She looked at him incredulously as she took the glass from him. ‘You’re not going out, surely? You can’t leave me here on my own! Oh, Binkie-Boo!’ Her painted cupid’s bow mouth turned down discontentedly.

  The use of her private pet name for him, employed in this particular situation, left him unmoved. ‘Just for an hour or so. You have that new novel to read.’

  ‘Oh, that – it’s frightfully overrated. Couldn’t be more boring, in fact. I can’t get past the first few pages.’

  ‘It’s been very well received. Maybe you should give it another try.’

  ‘Oh, rats to that!’ Her gaze sharpened. ‘You’re not … you’re not going to meet that – that man again, are you? You promised!’

  ‘I told you months ago I wouldn’t see the fellow again, and I haven’t.’

  She stared at him and her voice began to shake with temper as she said, ‘This is all because I complained about having to go down to Maxstead next week, isn’t it? Because I refused to go with you?’ He said nothing. ‘It is, I know it is.’

  He studied her for a moment, then crossed to the little fumed oak desk in the corner that was reserved for her personal use and extracted an opened envelope from one of the pigeonholes. Holding on to it by its corner he fluttered it in the air.

  ‘What … what’s that?’

  ‘As you know very well, it’s your dressmaker’s bill.’

  ‘Binkie, you have no right—’

  ‘I have every right – if I’m to find the money to pay this exorbitant amount. Which I assume you expect me to do.’ Without raising his voice he went on, ‘I have every intention of going down to Maxstead. And you will go with me. And you’ll be nice to my mother. Do you hear me?’ Their glances met. ‘Don’t wait up for me, Opal.’

  He went out. The door closed behind him, leaving her speechless with rage. Then she picked up Mrs Dalloway and hurled it across the room. It hit the big vase of lilies but it wasn’t heavy enough to knock it over. She burst into tears.

  Leaving the station for home that night, Joe cursed to himself when he saw the elf-like figure of the reporter, Judy Cash, turning the corner from Town Hall Square and dancing towards him. He was further annoyed to find that she had seen him, and to realize retreat would be undignified, if not cowardly; he wasn’t good at fending off people like her.

  ‘Sergeant Gilmour, what luck!’ She was bright as a button, and began to walk alongside him. ‘I was hoping to see someone and get the latest.’

  ‘Then your luck’s just run out, Miss Cash, sorry.’

  ‘Oh, Judy, please! Come on!’

  ‘You know very well I can’t tell you anything.’

  ‘There isn’t anything to tell, that’s what you mean, isn’t it? You’ve still no idea why anybody should have killed Arthur Aston?’

  ‘We don’t know that anybody did, yet. Anything else is pure speculation. Your paper will be the first to be told if there’s anything the public needs to know.’

  A number three bus was trundling down Market Street. It wasn’t going where Joe wanted, but he could always nip off when it had turned the corner. At danger to life and limb, he jumped on to the platform, grabbing the pole, and swung himself inside. The conductor shouted, ‘Oi, you, that’s not allowed!’ but the bus was already gathering speed. He felt an unmitigated idiot, paying his fare and jumping off at the next stop.

  Dearest Plum,

  I long to be able to talk to you, but as that isn’t possible, this will just have to do.

  I had another disappointing encounter with Sergeant Gilmour a couple of hours ago. He won’t talk to me at all. I think he’s rather frightened of me, which makes me smile. But he’s not the only apple in the barrel. I’ve managed to strike up an acquaintance with a young police constable, not as useful, but he might do.

  He’s called Dave Pickersgill, and he’s a sweetheart, lovely dark eyes with the sort of eyelashes most girls would die for, but rather shy and very earnest. I let him take me out for a drink the other night – it had to be the Shire, of course. Nice girls don’t go into public houses. But next time I must think of somewhere else we can meet and talk. ‘A bit posh for me, all this,’ he remarked, obviously uncomfortable at being in Folbury’s best hotel, as if he felt that people would think he was getting above himself, trying to mix with their upper crust. He’s quite sweet, really, but I have to say, a bit naive. He knows, of course, that I’m the press and went all red at one point when it dawned on him I might be probing too deeply about the murder. Poor pet, he doesn’t realize what he’s giving away sometimes by not saying anything. Though I believe him when he says he really doesn’t know much; the extent of his involvement so far has been making door-to-door enquiries in Henrietta Street, and that sort of thing, but I shall keep up with him. One never knows what he might pick up and let slip inadvertently. One thing I have learnt: the police already know it was no secret that Arthur Aston could be a fairly nasty piece of work, and they think it probable that someone has taken the law into their own hands to pay him out for something he’d done, which contradicts what Gilmour said. Rough justice, maybe, Plum, but just deserts.

  I only hope they don’t believe that person could have been Felix. I went to see Lily Aston again, and this time she told me that he’d had a fight with her husband the night before he died, and admitted that she has told the police about it, too. I could scarcely believe he’d been such an idiot. If he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have given them better grounds for suspicion. I’m sorry to say he can be a bit of an ass sometimes, in the way clever people often are. Intelligence, but no common sense. He is so immature, for all his age. One can only hope he must wake up one day and allow himself to grow up and be the person he really is inside.

  Apparently the police have been asking Lily abo
ut the keys to the foundry, which they believe the killer took away, removing all doubt that Aston’s death could be regarded as accidental. How careless! But then, we all make mistakes, darling, sometimes. Anyway, it’s unlikely they’ll be found. It would be a naive killer, wouldn’t it, who kept them, rather than throwing them into the Fol or somewhere.

  More later.

  Fourteen

  Joe, in the somnolent three p.m. after-lunch hour of the afternoon, was rereading the files collected for the Aston case. They’d been worked over so many times without getting anywhere it was hard to stop himself yawning. PC Pickersgill’s handwriting on the pre-printed forms he’d filled in looked as though a fly had crawled across the paper, and reading the laboured, typewritten answers gained from his doorstepping duties was even more painful. Hadn’t he ever heard that ribbons should be changed before they were threadbare, that the typeface should be cleaned occasionally and type bars properly straightened after they’d jammed? The blocked spaces in the characters, giving the report the appearance of a bad attack of black spot, began to dance before Joe’s eyes.

  He went to fetch himself some tea, came back and ploughed on. It was maddening. Even at that busy hour of the morning when Aston had died – children going to school, latecomers rushing off for work – no one on Henrietta Street had admitted to seeing anything unusual on the morning of the murder, with the later exception of Gladys Ibbotson. Aston had arrived, let himself into his foundry and nobody had seen him. But the houses were ‘through’ houses, not back-to-back, with the front parlour facing the street and the kitchen-living rooms at the back.