A Capital Crime (12 page)

‘So she didn’t see Muriel?’

‘Not as far as I know. She’d been up and knocked on the door, and I heard her calling out, but Muriel evidently wasn’t answering.’

‘Was Muriel there at the time?’

‘I don’t know. I think so.’

‘Did you hear the baby at all during that week?’

‘Not that I can remember. Edna used to listen for her, if Muriel was going out, but we thought they were in Bristol.’

‘But you didn’t know that then, did you? You said the last time you’d seen Muriel and the baby was on the seventh, and that Davies told you a few days later that they’d gone away.’

‘Yes …’ Backhouse dropped his voice again. ‘That’s right. But we didn’t hear anything, so we thought all was well and Muriel was up there with her.’

‘So – and I apologise for asking this again, Mr Backhouse, but we need to include it in your statement – you did not, at any time, tell Davies that you could help his wife to get rid of a baby?’

Backhouse blinked and licked his lips. ‘No, I did not.’

‘Davies said you’d showed him a medical book, and said you could help his wife abort her pregnancy.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ said Backhouse firmly. ‘He’s making it up.’

‘Did you ever tell Davies you’d trained as a doctor?’

‘Certainly not. It’s not true.’

‘Did you show him a medical book?’

‘No, Inspector, I did not. As I told you, the only medical book I have is a St John’s Ambulance manual.’ Backhouse shifted in his chair. ‘Would you mind if I stood up for a moment? If I sit too long, it’s a strain on my back.’

‘Of course,’ said Stratton. ‘Please …’

Grimacing, and with great care, Backhouse stood up slowly and rubbed the small of his back. ‘I suppose that Muriel might have
spotted the book and told him about it … I really don’t know, Inspector, but that’s all nonsense.’

‘He told the police in Wales that you helped him to carry the body.’

‘Inspector …’ Backhouse rubbed his back once more, ‘that is ridiculous. My fibrositis has been so bad that I have to get on my hands and knees to pick something up from the floor. I certainly couldn’t lift anyone.’ He shook his head, slowly. ‘I don’t understand why John is saying these things about me.’

‘It must be upsetting for you,’ said Stratton. ‘Did you visit the washhouse during the week of the sixth of November?’

Backhouse blinked for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I don’t believe so. I wasn’t at all well …’

‘But you would have visited the washhouse at some time in the following week?’

‘Oh, yes. I remember that, because I went to get some wood to light the fire and I noticed the timber stacked in front of the sink. That was on the Monday – the thirteenth.’

‘What time was that? Do you remember?’

‘Early in the day. About half past seven in the morning, I think.’

‘I see. And did you notice your dog paying particular attention to the washhouse at any time? Nosing around, scrabbling at the door, anything like that?’

‘No, nothing like that. But then, Inspector, I was in bed a lot of the time, because of my back.’

‘I see. Just one more thing, Mr Backhouse, and then you’re free to go. Sergeant Ballard, would you mind fetching the exhibit?’

Ballard was back in under a minute, bearing a tray on which lay the tie that had been found around the baby’s neck. Twisted, it looked like a flat red-and-black-striped snake. All three men eyed it as if it might begin to writhe at any moment.

‘Do you recognise this?’ asked Stratton.

Backhouse’s tongue popped out once more to moisten his lips, which it did with a slow turgidity that repulsed Stratton who
noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that Ballard had averted his face from the man.

‘That isn’t mine,’ said Backhouse, finally.

‘Do you know who it belongs to?’

Backhouse cleared his throat. ‘I’m not certain, but I think I’ve seen John wearing a tie very like that one.’

‘Fair enough.’ Stratton stood up. ‘Thank you, Mr Backhouse. You’ve been most helpful.’

‘I’m sure he means well,’ Stratton said to Ballard when he’d returned from seeing Backhouse out, ‘and he
is
very helpful, but he makes my flesh crawl.’

‘Me too, sir. DI Grove says he’ll be along in a minute. They’ve finished – Mrs Backhouse was waiting in the lobby.’

‘Right. Whatever we think of Backhouse, it looks like an open and shut case.’

‘That’ll please DCI Lamb, sir.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ Stratton rolled his eyes, then sprang up to open the door as a heavy tread, which could belong to nobody except DI Grove, echoed in the corridor. Grove paused on the threshold, chewing his empty pipe thoughtfully.

‘Mrs Backhouse identified Muriel Davies’s clothes,’ he said, plonking himself heavily on the nearest chair. ‘She recognised the baby’s cardigan, too, and the little frock. Nice woman – very distressed about the kid. Said that although they’d never been blessed, she’d looked after little Judy a lot and thought of her as almost like her own.’ Clamping his teeth angrily round the pipe and grimacing so that they showed up to the roots, he added, ‘When I think of what that bastard did …’ Leaning forward for emphasis, he chomped the pipe into the corner of his mouth and continued, ‘My girl came round to see us last night, with my little granddaughter. God, I’d like to get hold of that murdering little shit for five minutes …’

Grove was a kindly man who, despite years in the police force,
rarely said a sharp thing about anyone, but now his rage seemed to reverberate around the walls of the little room, unchecked and raw. Stratton saw his own anger and incomprehension reflected in Grove’s eyes and saw, also, from Ballard’s face, that he felt exactly the same way.

Grove cleared his throat and opened his notebook. ‘Mrs Backhouse said she saw Judy on Monday the sixth – looked after her when Muriel went out. That was the last day she saw either of them. Shirley Morgan came to the house on the same day. Backhouse told her to clear off, apparently. And … she said they’ve got a medical book – St John’s Ambulance – but when I asked her about Backhouse training to be a doctor she said Davies was making it up.’

‘He seems to have done a lot of that,’ said Stratton.

Grove nodded, chewing his pipe. ‘Said she knew Mrs Davies was pregnant, but that she and her husband were moral people and wouldn’t help anyone to get rid of a baby … Seemed quite genuine. Said they didn’t know of any childless couple who wanted a baby in Euston or anywhere else … She saw Davies on the seventh, in the evening, and he told her that Muriel and the baby had gone to Bristol. Said she was surprised because Muriel hadn’t said anything about it to her. Davies told her that Muriel hadn’t told his mother, either … Also said she heard a bump in the night of Tuesday the seventh of November. Sounded like furniture being moved about. She saw Davies at about quarter to seven on the evening of the ninth, when he came downstairs and told Backhouse he’d given up his job … Then she saw him a few times on the Friday when he came in and out, because he wasn’t working then … Didn’t see him at all after that. She said she’d been in and out of the washhouse since the seventh of November, as usual, getting water to rinse the slop-pail … There were some bits of wood in there, stacked in front of the sink …’

Stratton nodded. ‘That tallies with what Davies said about concealing the body. Backhouse said he’d noticed planks stacked
in front of the sink on the thirteenth – the same ones, presumably.’

‘She said she didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary,’ Grove continued. ‘No smell or anything out of place. There’s not much more, really … they were married in nineteen twenty, in May … they’ve lived in Paradise Street since thirty-eight … came to London in twenty-three … Halifax before that … she was away for a while during the war, stopping with relatives in Sheffield, and came back in forty-four … never had any trouble …’

‘A model citizen, in fact,’ said Stratton. ‘I mean, you’ve seen the man. Anyway, the accounts seem to fit, so it’s just the workmen and the tradesmen and the Morgan woman and then we’re home and dry.’

Chapter Nineteen

‘So,’ said Stratton, when Grove had gone, ‘we’ll need to see the men from the building firm. The name’s in Backhouse’s statement somewhere, isn’t it?’

Ballard scanned the document. ‘Kendall’s, sir. Premises in Drummond Street, off the Hampstead Road. There’s Mr Kendall, and the plasterer’s name’s Walker, according to this, and the chippie – if you can believe it – is called Carpenter.’

‘Sounds like Happy Families,’ said Stratton, scribbling in his notebook.

Ballard grimaced. ‘We wouldn’t be doing this if it were, sir.’

‘Quite,’ said Stratton, hastily. ‘Take PC Canning and round them up, tell them exactly why we want them, and don’t take no for an answer. Get hold of the time sheets for the job while you’re at it. Then we’ve got the bloke from the hire purchase place, Benfleet’s, and the chap who bought the furniture …’

‘Lorrimer, sir,’ said Ballard. ‘They’re both on the telephone. I have the numbers here.’

‘Good … and there’s Davies’s boss at Murchison’s van company, and that woman Backhouse was talking about – Muriel Davies’s friend.’

‘Shirley Morgan.’ Ballard found the relevant page in the statement. ‘Says here “she lives nearby”.’

‘I’ll do that. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out where she is. And I’d better get someone to speak to the owner of that briefcase, too, although I can’t imagine he’s got anything to do with it.’

‘That’s a Mr Parker. Address in Everton Buildings. I think that’s somewhere off the Hampstead Road, too, sir.’

‘In that case, maybe you can kill two birds with one stone. Canning can escort Kendall’s lot back here, and you see if you can get Parker to come and identify the thing. And,’ he added, getting heavily to his feet, ‘while you’re doing that, I’ll go and tell DCI Lamb what we’ve been up to.’

Twenty minutes later, Stratton unlaced his shoes and spent several minutes rubbing his feet violently against each other to ease his itchy chilblains – Lamb (‘for God’s sake make sure it’s watertight’) seemed to have had a bad effect on them. Somewhat relieved, he lit a cigarette and picked up the telephone. In short order, he spoke to Mr Benfleet from the hire purchase outfit, and to the furniture dealer, Lorrimer, requesting their presence at the station, then ascertained Shirley Morgan’s address and packed an unwilling Arliss off to fetch her. He’d just spoken to Davies’s former employer, Murchison, when PC Canning put his head round the door and summoned him to the lobby, where he found Kendall, Walker, and the carpenter called Carpenter sitting in a depressed-looking row.

Stratton and PC Canning started with Kendall, a lugubrious man with a soggy roll-up glued to his lower lip. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said, unhappily. ‘Don’t like it at all. It’s nothing to do with any of my men. Been working for me for years, they have, and we’ve never had nothing like it.’

‘I’m sure you haven’t,’ said Stratton. ‘But we need to clarify a few things. When did you begin the work at Paradise Street?’

‘We started the job on the Tuesday – that was the seventh of November. We’d have gone in on the Monday,’ – here, the fag drooped disconsolately – ‘but the weather was bad. I give your bobby’ – Kendall nodded righteously at Canning – ‘the time sheets for Walker—’

‘That’s the plasterer?’

‘That’s right. There’s time sheets for Walker and Carpenter there.’

PC Canning produced a sheaf of time sheets from his tunic, and
Stratton peered at the scrawl, trying to make sense of it. ‘It says here …’ he indicated Walker’s first sheet, dated 7 November, ‘“taking material to job” . . . and he was working there until Friday the tenth. Where would this material have been stored?’

‘In the washhouse. Same as Carpenter, for his tools, only he come later.’

This, thought Stratton, was going to be more difficult than he’d imagined – Davies had told them he’d put Muriel’s body in the washhouse on the night of the seventh, and there was the Backhouses’ description of the noises in the night … ‘So Walker would have been in and out of the washhouse from Tuesday until Friday?’

‘Yes. Well, he had to, see?’

‘You’re absolutely sure about this, are you?’

‘Well,’ said Kendall, with exaggerated reasonableness, ‘he would, wouldn’t he, if that’s where he was storing things? Mind you, I wasn’t there so much, only in the beginning, and when we cleared out the tools and that on the Friday.’

‘And you didn’t notice anything unusual about the washhouse during that time?’

‘Can’t say I did.’ Kendall scratched his chin with a thumb and forefinger stained cinnamon by nicotine. ‘And I don’t reckon Walker did neither, or he’d have told me.’

‘Did you see any wood in there – planks?’

Kendall shifted the limp dog-end ruminatively from side to side. ‘Can’t say I did.’

Stratton sighed. ‘I see. Did you see this woman at any time?’ He pushed the photograph of Muriel Davies across the table.

‘Is that the girl who was killed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Poor lass.’ He shook his head. ‘Nice-looking, too … I didn’t see her. I’d remember if I had.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Stratton. ‘Now, let’s look at Carpenter’s time sheets, shall we?’ As Stratton read the scribbled notes his heart
sank: Lamb wasn’t going to like this one little bit. ‘They say Carpenter pulled up the rotten joists and flooring in the ground floor passage on the Thursday afternoon and the Friday, and laid new flooring on the Saturday. He fitted the new skirting on Monday the thirteenth, and then he’d finished the job, had he?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So you’re saying there wouldn’t have been any timber stacked in the washhouse until Friday the tenth?’

‘No. There wasn’t nothing to put there, was there?’

‘What about the stuff taken up on the Thursday?’

‘Well, he had to loosen it first, see, so he’d have done that then … Even if he’d started taking it up, I doubt there’d have been much to move.’

‘What about the new flooring?’

‘I picked that up myself, on the Friday, and he collected it on the Saturday, before he started.’

‘Mr Kendall,’ said Stratton, ‘as I’m sure you understand, it’s very important that we get a clear picture of what happened.’ Here, he looked hard at Kendall, who waggled the remains of his roll-up solemnly in response. ‘These time sheets,’ Stratton indicated the grubby pages, ‘would you say that they give an accurate picture of what happened and when?’