Cast a Cold Eye, page 17
Waring's frantic alarm was stilled. "Sylvia—Johnson? Clive's secretary? Johnson? My God."
"Was she? American?"
"No. No—I don't know. She didn't have an American accent, not so's you'd notice."
"Thank you, Mr. Waring. Make the most of this weather; it can't last."
They left him to sweat, on the Spanish patio beside the pool, though clouds were already beginning to obscure the sun.
CHAPTER 19
The golden morning had dulled by the late afternoon into a heavy, leaden humidity. A wind got up, blowing up for rain, but hadn't yet brought coolness. It had grown so dark that the lights had had to be switched on in the interview room, and so stuffy that all the windows were thrown wide open.
Caroline and Matt, brought there by Mayo for purposes of his own, sat uncomfortably on hard chairs under the stark fluorescent lights. A stolid-looking policewoman sat in the corner, the short sleeves of her uniform shirt strained around her fat, freckled arms, her freckled nose shining with perspiration.
Mayo didn't keep them waiting overlong. He had plenty of reasons for not wanting to draw out the proceedings. He came in, followed by a man leaning on a stick, a woman and Sergeant Kite. There scarcely seemed enough air for all of them; there were too many people in the small room, seated round the centre table, with Mayo at the head—though not centre stage. The focus of attention was on the young woman, a focus drawn to herself without words, by the sheer force of her personality.
"Mrs. Lethbridge first," began Mayo, turning to her. "All I want you to do is tell me if you recognise either of these people. Take your time."
Caroline knew she'd never seen the man in her life before.
Receding curly hair, petulant expression. Dejected, a superannuated, fallen boy scout. An impression reinforced by the tweed jacket with leather patches he was wearing ... in this heat?
But the girl.
For a long time Caroline looked at her, knowing immediately and intuitively, as women often do, but needing to be absolutely sure. She was met with a defiant stare from green eyes, a toss of luxuriant coppery hair. She looked away, and the image of another girl superimposed itself on her mind. Take away thick-lensed spectacles, drab, shapeless, figure-disguising clothes, a self-effacing manner. Substitute contact lenses, skilful make-up, a new style and different colour of hair, clothes designed to draw attention. Above all, replace the habit of fading into the background with the confident projection of self . . .
Caroline turned her gaze back to the girl in front of her. "I do know her. She's Sylvia Johnson."
"Mr. Royston?"
"She told me her name was Elaine Morrow."
"Her name is Elaine Morrow, but she's the woman you knew as Sylvia Johnson, Mrs. Lethbridge," Mayo said, "and she's being held for questioning in connection with the murder of your husband."
The relationship between Murfitt and the girl was a fragile one. Not one to stand up to the pressures being put on it. Mayo knew it, and Elaine Morrow knew it, too. Mayo could see it in her face as she looked at her erstwhile—friend, lover, accomplice? The knowledge that he was going to save his own skin, whatever the cost to her.
He thought he could sense the struggle going on in her, a conflict between her innate need to dramatise herself, to tell the story in her own flamboyant way before an impressed audience, and the innate secrecy of a nature that precluded her from admitting anything. For the moment, she was refusing to answer questions, to talk at all. Mayo left her with W.P.C. Sutton, a stolid young woman who wasn't impressed by much, presently let the others go, then went to concentrate on Murfitt.
Murfitt was closeted in the small interview room with Mayo, Inspector Atkins between them like the Rock of Gibraltar, all of them wilting in the heat. His lips were stubbornly set, but his thick, pale skin was glistening with fear and perspiration.
"Why don't you take your jacket off?"
Murfitt clutched his lapels, then removed it. An acrid stench of stale sweat pervaded the room. He might have done better to leave it on, anyway. Without it, in his shirt sleeves, his confident self-image seemed to dissolve. He looked defeated, without the air of being set apart from those who could do wrong.
He licked his lips. "What'll happen to me if I tell you the truth?"
"It's more what'll happen if you don't." Mayo wasn't prepared to start trading with Murfitt. "Like being charged with being an accessory to murder."
"You can't do that!"
"Can't I?" Mayo asked nastily.
Murfitt was very badly shaken. He'd give in and admit what he knew sooner or later, sooner at any rate than Mayo's patience, endless in such situations, would give out. "She's been using you, Murfitt. Think about it."
You could see him doing just that as the questioning went on, and finally he broke at the same time as the storm, at the first clap of thunder. The words came forth just as the rain did, large, heavy drops at first, then a torrent, and afterwards relentlessly, monotonously, falling on and on.
It promised to be a very long night.
It had all seemed so simple at first, Murfitt began, an opportunity to avenge himself for that humiliating dismissal from Waring & Lethbridge. Dismissal, not for being late a few times, but because he'd stuck his neck out, feeling it his duty to inform Lethbridge what had happened when Simon Johnson had received his letter. A high moral tone entered, bolstering the self-justification. Lethbridge's rash and ill-considered promises, cruelly raising Simon's hopes only to dash them again, had certainly sent him to his death. Clive Lethbridge was a murderer. Murder was a mortal sin. Sinners should be given the opportunity to repent—
"Or accept the wages of sin?"
"No, no!" Murfitt's eyes rolled. He looked like a terrified horse. "I didn't mean that!"
He meant that Lethbridge couldn't have been allowed to remain in ignorance of the consequences of his action; he meant that he, Donald Murfitt, had felt it his duty to inform him of what had happened. It was only right that such a one should feel remorse. He deserved to have it on his conscience . . .
Self-righteous, Lethbridge had called him. To be more precise, a bloody self-righteous hypocrite. A busy-body. And much worse. "And what do you propose to do about it?" he had demanded. Knowing there was nothing at all to be done, that he would as usual ride over any accusations of moral turpitude, merely laugh or more likely counter-attack, as he had in actual fact done, by finding the first opportunity he could to get rid of Murfitt. The bad timekeeping was an excuse Murfitt wasn't prepared to fight, Mrs. Carlene Winthrop and her Assembly of Alternative Witnesses having by then arrived timely on the scene. All this was what Murfitt said. He mentioned nothing of the slow-burning resentment Mayo sensed in him. Perhaps it was hidden even from himself.
"And then?"
It wasn't until two years later that Murfitt had opened his newspaper and read the news that an international award had been given to a local architect, and seen before him the artist's impression of the group of buildings that would shortly be the completed Svensen Centre.
He would never forget that moment of choking disbelief. He knew those designs, intimately, and the last time he'd seen them had been the night when Simon Johnson was getting his portfolio ready to take with him to the interview the following day with Clive Lethbridge.
Faced with the sketches in the newspaper, hardly able to credit the direction his thoughts were taking, Murfitt poured himself a stiff glass of brandy and then went along to the reference library and looked up several of the most recent issues of magazines devoted to the interests of the architectual profession. Sure enough, he found there what he wanted, a laudatory article discussing the Svensen Centre, spread over several pages, together with photographs and detailed plans.
He sat there, staring into space, and then went home and wrote a letter to Elaine Morrow. She was on his doorstep within a few hours of receiving it.
"Tell me about Elaine Morrow. What you know about her."
Elaine, Murfitt said, was the woman with whom Simon Johnson had lived for nearly six months before he died, an influence on him as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides. She had virtually dragged him from disaster . . . though in retrospect there had always been something several degrees less than normal in the fierce, intense possessiveness she showed towards him. A power which, had Murfitt stopped to analyse it earlier, might very possibly have prevented him from acting as he had.
He had had no doubts that she would have kept all Simon's work, and indeed, when she arrived back in Lavenstock, she brought with her everything Simon had ever done, including the portfolio he had taken with him to the interview . . . and the Svensen Centre designs were not there. She remembered them, as clearly as Murfitt did, even though she hadn't been able to bring herself to look through Simon's work since he had died, and so hadn't noticed their absence. The conclusion they reached was that Simon, on the day of his interview, excited and euphoric at being offered the job, had accidentally overlooked them when gathering his things together before leaving Lethbridge's office.
And that Lethbridge, learning of Simon's death, hadn't bothered to return them. He'd kept them and then, certain no one was going to claim them, had made use of them.
"I'll make him pay," Elaine said. And that was when she'd contrived a friendship with Amanda Bradford in order to get nearer to her objective, to find out how she might best get her revenge, and grasped the opportunity, when Amanda left, to take her place as Clive's secretary.
And that was it, Murfitt shrugged.
Not by a long chalk it wasn't, Mayo said. "That's when it all began, when you began to blackmail Lethbridge, threatening him with exposure—making out you'd some proof the drawings weren't his. A serious crime, attempted blackmail."
"Money was never asked for! Only an admission—to see Simon get his rightful due."
"Oh, right, nothing but the purest of motives! And vengeance? Revenge? They didn't enter into it, I suppose. Give over, Murfitt."
Murfitt said at last, sulkily, "Oh, if you like."
But that was all he'd done, he insisted, gone along with Elaine, made a few telephone calls for her, to put the wind up Lethbridge good and proper—which they'd succeeded in doing. Elaine had been there and seen the effects of the calls Murfitt had made, the letters she herself had written. "And that's the truth." He leaned back and wiped his damp forehead; the rain drummed on the flat roof and poured down the gutters.
"Why did she pass herself off as Sylvia Johnson?" Mayo asked at this point, Murfitt evidently believing he'd come to the end of his statement.
"I don't know."
"You don V know? Come on, try again."
"I don't know. She's the sort who likes to play games. There's no telling what goes on in her mind, and no stopping her either, once she's set on course."
"Playing games in the church Friday afternoon, weren't you? Both of you?"
Dull, furious colour stained Murfitt's cheeks; a hunted look came into his eyes.
"Or were you cycling towards Brome House to keep an appointment with Lethbridge? Hiding your bike in the bushes, and leaving it there after you'd murdered him, using his own car to get away instead?"
"You're making a lot of assumptions, without any proof," Murfitt said, trying to summon some spirit.
"Except your dabs all over the bike."
"Not surprising, if, as you say, it's my bike! And aren't you forgetting something—how could I drive a car, let alone ride a bike, with my leg like this?"
His protests were token. He was backing down, now that they were getting down to the dangerous nitty-gritty. Now that suspicion was pointing its finger at him.
"Let's take it again, shall we?" Mayo asked. "Starting with Friday afternoon . . ."
CHAPTER 20
"It's all wrapped up," Mayo said. "Elaine Morrow's been charged with wilful murder and will be committed for trial."
"She's confessed then?" asked Woman Police Sergeant Alex Jones.
"As much as she ever will. There'll be no difficulty in assembling the evidence against her, anyway. Forensic have come up with hairs and prints in the car—fibres, too, though she burned every stitch she was wearing that day, threw them on the demolition site bonfire at Amelia Road. Her plea that she killed Lethbridge under provocation's hardly likely to stand up, in view of the elaborate charade she set up beforehand."
"By that you mean her impersonation of Sylvia Johnson?"
"And the pretence of taking the flight to Boston."
They were sitting together amidst the self-consciously fashionable green and gold neo-classical decor in her sister's flat, above the shop, where Alex was staying until she found somewhere of her own to live. Mayo had been unaware that she had a sister, let alone that she was Lois Fielding, Interiors, owner of the small but expensive boutique just off the Cornmarket, here in Lavenstock. Half an hour after ringing the bell and being persuaded into coffee and ham sandwiches, he was still surprised to find himself there at all, to find that he'd so quickly taken up her invitation to drop in any time, when he and Alex had renewed their acquaintance at the station. Never before had he felt the need to discuss a case, other than with those directly involved—but then, never before had he had a case quite like this . . . and Alex, after all, was on the inside, so to speak.
She was wearing gold studs in her ears and a suede skirt with a perfectly matching striped silk blouse that reminded him of mint humbugs, but nevertheless met with his approval. Feminine, but not fussy. In uniform, she tended to appear rather prim and severe, with her pale complexion and black hair, shining and cut in a sharply defined style. Out of it, she smiled more, the vividly blue, thickly lashed eyes danced, in tune with a cheerful, optimistic outlook on life. He speculated on the possibility of a bit of Irish in her ancestry.
"So why did she do it?" she asked, extricating the coffee-pot from a table crammed with miniature obelisks, statuettes and a malachite spillholder.
"Take on Sylvia Johnson's identity? Because if Elaine, as Sylvia, came under suspicion of any kind, she'd have an alibi, since Sylvia was three thousand miles across the Atlantic when the murder occurred."
"What I meant was, how the dickens did she expect to get away with it?"
"I don't think it ever entered her head she'd be caught. She lives in a fantasy world where anything's possible if she wants it to be so. The flaws in the plan she simply shut her mind to, and maybe because failure was unthinkable to her, the whole thing might just have come off." When logic ceased, that was when the difficulties of detection began, sometimes defeating careful, inexorable step-by-step police procedures. "And you know, there was more than a sporting chance Elaine Morrow might never have come into the investigation, if she'd had the sense to take herself off back to London and disappear, immediately after the murder, instead of believing herself invulnerable."
Mayo had asked that question of himself—why hadn't she put as much distance between herself and the crime as possible? But that was before he'd begun to assess the depth of her obsession with herself and the effect she was producing. The answer emerged clearly enough during his interrogation, and was simply that she could not have borne to be absent, never to see the drama she had created unfolding.
"Is she mad, do you think?" Alex asked, following the direction of his thoughts.
"That's for the shrinks to say, not us, thank God, but I don't think so, not within the clinical definition. Unbalanced, yes. Over the top to the point of outrageousness, sure. She just has to see herself in some kind of role, in this case first as Simon's saviour, then his avenger. She's an exhibitionist, she exists at a permanent remove from reality, and I think Murfitt was right when he said to me that living on the edge of danger was necessary to her. It gives her the stimulus and the spice she needs."
And so the temptation to remain on stage had been too great, even though she must, by then, have known how perilously close she was to discovery. "What's more, if she'd gone back the way she came, by bicycle, and left Lethbridge's car alone, there'd have been precious little evidence to connect her with the case."
Why had she taken Lethbridge's car?
"I didn't know there'd be so much blood," she'd admitted when he questioned her about it, and he'd sensed her first and only moment of natural panic. "I was in a terrible mess, and I couldn't risk anybody seeing me. And then I saw the BMW outside the window and I thought, why not?" A sparkle in the eyes at that reckless moment remembered, giving a charge of excitement that banished any fear. "I drove back to Amelia Road, changed and then dumped the car."
About certain aspects, she had talked quite freely to him, the parts in which she thought to appear clever. Not knowing that the chief thing which invariably impressed Mayo about the criminal mind was its ultimate stupidity. But then, her whole confession had been a self-regarding presentation, her green eyes brilliant as she made it. She showed no shame, no remorse. Yet all through, she kept up the fiction that she hadn't planned to kill Lethbridge. Which perhaps indicated, after all, a subconscious admission that she was not so entirely unworried about the consequences as she made out.
"What was the reason you went to Brome House, if not with that intention?"
She shrugged. "He'd ignored the letters, the calls. He had to be made to understand there was no bluff involved. Never mind waving it aside."
"So you made an appointment to see him?"
"Appointment?" She laughed. "Why did I need an appointment? I knew he'd be there, working on his precious conversion scheme, most likely. He had probably given orders not to be disturbed—he often did on Thursdays—so I went in through the french windows. I wasn't going to give him the chance to refuse to see me. He didn't recognise me, of course."
"I'd like you to tell me exactly what happened."
