An Act of Evil Read online

  Maltravers shifted awkwardly in his chair as the pain in his leg narrowed and bit.

  “But it is still possible,” he insisted. “She may have been treated by someone you don’t know about.”

  “Believe me, I would like to think you’re right but I feel it’s only proper that I should explain the official viewpoint quite clearly. We can say without doubt that she has not been in any established or regular hospital or seen by any reputable doctor. The chances of her being treated by some unauthorised medical practitioner are very slim. And we have no indication that Powell could render her assistance, even assuming he wanted to.”

  “If it is Powell,” said Maltravers.

  “He’s still the principal suspect, in fact he’s really the only one.” Jackson paused uncertainly for a moment. “I’m afraid this is additional distress for you, but the police surgeon is unable to say definitely whether either hand was severed while she was still alive or shortly after death. What he is certain of is that without treatment she must by now have died.” He made a slight gesture of sympathy. The last time Diana had been in that room she had been alive and laughing and playing with Rebecca and in the silence that surrounded them were echoes of that moment.

  “I would like to say on behalf of us all, sergeant, that we greatly appreciate your coming here this morning to tell us this,” said Michael. “It is very unpleasant for you as well. I think, however, that we would probably all prefer to cling on to what little hope may remain .”

  After Jackson had gone, Melissa left to drive down to Sussex and bring Rebecca back and Michael went out on cathedral business. The day had the timeless quality of an English Sunday with its images of empty streets, shuttered shops and stillness in places of activity. Deciding that cautious exercise would be better for his leg than sitting still, Maltravers, leaning on a stick borrowed from Michael, walked with Tess down to the Verta again. They instinctively turned the opposite way from the path that would lead them to the ruined church where they had been with Diana the previous week and walked down river to where the Verta spilled over a weir and the shouts of laughter from the gathered children mingled with the rushing sounds of cascading water. The normality of the scene was painfully alien to their mood.

  In the afternoon they sat in the garden, Tess reading and Maltravers stretched on a sun lounger. Clouds of greenfly speckled the sunlit air and cushions of pinks near where they sat were heavy with the drone of bees. Maltravers idly watched a butterfly flicker near them until it finally settled on Tess’s auburn hair and stayed there for several moments until she turned to look at him.

  “How’s your leg?” she asked.

  “Much better.” He stretched it experimentally and a spasm of pain crossed his face. “It’s the waiting that’s worse.”

  The sense of inertia was becoming intolerable. Maltravers had frequently imagined being faced with a crime that baffled the police and solving it with some brilliant flash of deduction; it was not an uncommon human fantasy. The reality, he now knew, was not like that. It was the police, not eccentric gifted amateurs, who investigated and solved murders. His total contribution so far had been a ridiculous and unprofitable journey to Belsthwaite, the net result of which had been a row with Madden. And yet, as he tried to see straight through his confusing emotional involvement, the insistent impression remained of knowing certain things which he was quite unable to recognise. The fanciful genius of his daydreams was turned to a sense of inadequacy and despair by what had actually happened. The garden gate opened and Rebecca trotted happily across the lawn to them, followed by Melissa.

  “Nana brought this,” said the little girl and thrust a glove puppet of an attractively stupid-looking duck at her uncle. Maltravers put it on his hand and accompanied his manipulations with quacking noises. Tess went into the house to make a cup of tea and Melissa took her place on the rug.

  “I’ve been thinking while I was driving,” she said. “Why was the hand actually put on our door? Obviously whoever did it was taking the risk of being seen when he could have sent it through the post as he did with the Dean. Who do you think it was meant for?”

  “Possibly all of us,” said Maltravers, making Rebecca giggle as he pinched her nose with the duck’s beak.

  “But suppose it was specifically one of us?”

  “Tess and I knew her best, so we’re the obvious targets.”

  “Yes, but just suppose it was Michael. There is a clear link between him and the Dean and the cathedral and if this man Powell has something against the Church it could make some sort of perverted sense. Do you know anything about that?”

  “No. As he’s Welsh, I assume he’s probably a Methodist or one of the Nonconformist sects.”

  “The Primitive Methodists are very narrow minded,” said Melissa.

  “Maybe so, but we go back to your first point. Why didn’t he send it to Michael through the post and avoid the risk of discovery?” Maltravers put the puppet on Rebecca’s hand and watched her as she toddled away, clumsily working it. “It’s as good a theory as any but until the police find Powell it’s just another guess.” He looked at his sister and smiled oddly. “The only thing that can be said about the hand on the door is that it removes suspicion from me.”

  “You?” Melissa had obviously never considered the possibility. “The police can’t suspect you.”

  “Yes they can. David Jackson’s never said it but it’s a well-known fact that murderers almost invariably know their victims. They’ve obviously considered the possibility. However, equally obviously I couldn’t have nailed the hand to the door. David Jackson himself is a witness to that.”

  Melissa was offended that such a thought had ever entered anyone’s mind.

  “I expect the same goes for me as well.”

  “For all of us. And for a number of other people. The Dean for example.”

  “Oh, Augustus, this is ridiculous! You can’t be serious.”

  “I don’t imagine we’re high on the list of suspects. Powell’s actions — particularly the fact that he hasn’t come forward — make him the obvious line of investigation. But if it turns out not to be him…well, where do we go from there?”

  “There’s nobody else. Apart from this Sinclair person.”

  Maltravers shook his head. “I can’t see it. And at the moment I don’t think the police can either. It just seems a very odd coincidence that he came back.”

  *

  First thing on Monday morning, Miss Craven, the Bishop’s secretary, efficiently tackled the post, slitting open each envelope with a long slender paper-knife shaped like a sword. She stopped and thrust her fingers into one foolscap envelope and could feel nothing inside. Frowning, she turned it upside down, squeezed the sides slightly and shook it experimentally. A long lock of fair hair spilled onto the lime-green blotter on her desk, followed by a small piece of paper which fluttered to the floor. She picked it up and turned it over to read the typewritten message on the other side:

  And ye, in any wise, keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed.

  As the daughter, granddaughter and niece of clergymen, Miss Craven prided herself on her knowledge of the Bible, but the quotation was not immediately familiar. She read it again then casually examined the lock of hair with a puzzled and slightly vexed expression. Anything other than the most correct and regular of correspondence was almost unheard of at the Bishop’s Palace. Finally she crossed the room and took a Concordance from the bookshelf in which she discovered that the passage was part of the eighteenth verse of the sixth chapter of Joshua, which settled the irritation in her mind. She carefully put the hair and its enigmatic message to one side and calmly continued with the rest of the mail, sorting it into piles of relative importance and urgency. All the envelopes were put together to have their stamps removed later to help raise funds for the Red Cross. Precisely as the clock on the mantelpiece chimed half past nine she picked up all the mail and walked through to the Bishop’s study, knoc
king discreetly on the door before entering.

  “Good morning, my Lord,” she said. “Quite a deal of post today including a reply from the Archbishop. There’s also one from Downing Street and a most charming letter of thanks from…” She stopped in mid-sentence as a look of horrified realisation filled her face. “Dear God!” She was staring at the hair and its note which she had kept separate from the rest of the post. As the Bishop looked at her with concern she dumbly held them out towards him.

  “I think you had better call the police, Miss Craven,” he said.

  Monday morning’s post was, fortunately, the lightest of the week for the Bishop and there were only twenty-two envelopes to sort out. Half of them bore some printed indication to connect them with their contents, three were handwritten and could be similarly identified and another three were in distinctive italic typewriter face. The remaining five were sent in separate polythene bags for examination in conjunction with the note itself. The note did not bear any fingerprints. As police were sent to Diana’s flat again, this time to see if they could find any samples of her hair, consideration was given to the wording.

  *

  “Joshua,” Madden said tersely, “fought the battle of Jericho of course.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jackson. “In fact the walls come tumbling down a couple of verses later.” Madden looked at him in surprise. “There’s a Bible in the station, sir. I looked it up.”

  “You amaze me,” Madden said drily. “I trust there’s not about to be a similar occurrence in this investigation. Anyway, what do you make of it?”

  Jackson shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing really, sir. It’s just another inexplicable…” He stopped abruptly as Madden’s flattened hand slammed hard on the top of his desk.

  “It is not inexplicable! Nothing is inexplicable. We are just not seeing the explanation.” Madden pinched his nose so hard that red pressure marks remained when he let go. “I am beginning greatly to dislike this case. A diligent and methodical hunt has failed to discover the whereabouts of our chief suspect and I am being constantly faced with events which are regarded as unconnectable mysteries. There are links which we are failing to identify.” He raised his hand and itemised points on his fingers. “One, Maltravers brings Miss Porter to Vercaster. Two, Powell is seen in Vercaster. Three, Miss Porter meets the Dean and the Bishop among others and then disappears as does Powell. Four, parts of her body reappear in Vercaster and now we may assume some of her hair has done so as well. Now, what can we possibly deduce from this latest incident?”

  Jackson was beginning to feel a certain sympathy for Madden, whose considerable reputation had been built on a long series of textbook investigations which unfailingly followed the rules. He had once relentlessly caught a child-killer by fingerprinting the entire population of a village. But this case required imagination and a flair for the bizarre in which patient, professional police routine was not producing results.

  “On the basis that it is Miss Porter’s hair,” he began cautiously, thinking as he proceeded, “it seems to follow that she is the accursed thing. The Bishop would appear to be being warned to have nothing to do with her.”

  “He can’t have anything to do with her if she’s dead.”

  “There have been prayers said for her safety in the cathedral. Admittedly not by the Bishop but he’s obviously connected with them.”

  There was a knock on Madden’s office door and another detective sergeant came in.

  “We’ve had a report from the lab, sir. They’ve identified the envelope. It was posted second class in Islington on Friday afternoon.”

  “Thank you, sergeant,” said Madden. “Fingerprints?”

  “Being done now, sir.”

  “Right,” said Madden as the door closed behind him. “Is that where Powell is hiding? With a little elementary disguise it could serve as well as anywhere.”

  “Sinclair’s flat is in Islington, sir.” Jackson reminded him.

  “Sinclair?” For a moment Madden looked blank. “Oh, our friend in America. But he went back…when was it?...Wednesday. This thing to the Bishop was posted on Friday.”

  “Accomplice possibly. Perhaps an unwitting one who just agreed to post a letter for him? Sergeant Neale’s still checking his story but as far as I understand there’s nothing so far to positively exclude him as a suspect.”

  Madden remained silent for a moment then pressed a switch on the intercom on his desk and asked for Inspector Barratt to come in. By the time the Inspector had joined them, he had marshalled his thoughts.

  “I want all those principally concerned to be interviewed again,” he said. “See if they can remember anything else. I want Neale’s report on Sinclair’s movements while in Britain as soon as possible and a full report on fingerprints on that envelope. I take it we have the secretary’s and the postman’s. And check anything you find connecting it to the Islington sorting office with anything found on the package sent to the Dean. Even without the postmark that may confirm it also came from there. That will be all.”

  After they returned to the incident room, Inspector Barratt told Jackson to return to Punt Yard to talk to Maltravers and the others again.

  “I’m afraid this investigation is proving somewhat irregular,” said Jackson, as he turned to go. “It’s not to Mr Madden’s liking.”

  “No it’s not, sergeant. And he doesn’t like having me in charge of this room either. Mr Madden just does not like senior women police officers but I was the only one available when this thing began. However,” she looked up at him from her desk, “Mr Madden likes lack of results even less so we’d all better get on with it.”

  Patiently Maltravers and the rest went over their statements again, desperately trying to remember details of inconsequential conversations and casual events, small incidents and gestures, but nothing seemed to emerge.

  “When will you know if it’s definitely Diana’s hair?” Maltravers asked.

  “When we find something in her flat,” said Jackson. “The chances are there’ll be something on her pillow or somewhere.”

  “And there’s a possible link with Sinclair?”

  “It may just be a coincidence that he happens to have a flat in Islington but in our business coincidences are not just shrugged off. Until something removes him definitely from the picture we’re keeping an eye on him. At the moment, things keep happening to push him further into our line of vision.”

  Maltravers gently changed his position to relieve the ache that was starting to creep down his leg. Jackson noticed the movement.

  “What’s happened to you?”

  “Oh, just a fleeting contact with a collapsing cathedral. It’s much better today.” He was interrupted by the phone ringing next to him. He picked it up, listened for a moment then said, “Yes, he’s here. Hang on.” He proffered the receiver to Jackson. “It’s for you. Inspector Barratt.”

  Jackson listened for several seconds then said, “Good God, where the hell have they been?” He listened again, then asked for an address which he wrote in his notebook. “All right,” he said, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He rang off.

  “Where the hell have who been?” asked Maltravers.

  “The couple that Powell stayed with in Vercaster a week ago on Saturday. They’ve just rung the station.”

  “What? Why haven’t they been in touch before?”

  “Been on holiday apparently. We all assumed that Powell probably camped somewhere when he was down here, particularly when nobody said he had stayed with them. We checked the hotels and boarding houses but there are dozens of places in Vercaster that do bed and breakfast unofficially during the tourist season.” He consulted his notebook. “Do you know Acacia Street? It doesn’t matter, I’ve got a map in the car. Stay where you are, I’ll let myself out.”

  *

  Acacia Street reminded Jackson of Sebastopol Terrace except that the houses had the added benefit of small front gardens. It was exactly the sort of drab, anonymous are
a that would appeal to Powell. As he unlatched the gate of number nineteen the curtain shifted slightly at the window and the front door was opened as he approached it.

  “Mrs Dunn? Sergeant Jackson, Vercaster CID.”

  “Come in please. Here in the front room.” He followed the sun-tanned woman with the excessively precise hair-style through to the room where the first thing that caught his eye was an enormous imitation sombrero hooked over the back of a dining-chair.

  “I understand that Mr Arthur Powell stayed here a week ago Saturday,” he said formally.

  “Yes, he did. Here, sit yourself down. My husband’s just upstairs but he’ll be down in a minute. I didn’t know what to think when I saw it in the paper. I mean, the man’s a murderer isn’t he?” Mrs Dunn seemed concerned that her own reputation would suffer from having had such a person beneath her roof.

  “We just want him for questioning at the moment. I think it will be best if we start at the beginning. When did he arrive?”

  Mrs Dunn settled and composed herself. Her narrative was refreshingly succinct.

  “He arrived on the Saturday lunchtime — about half past twelve,” she said. “At first I said we couldn’t put him up because we were going away the next morning but he said it would only be for the one night and…well, he was such a pleasant person so I agreed. He was hardly in the house. He went out in the afternoon to look round the cathedral. I said he could watch television with us in the evening but he said he was going to a performance at the Chapter House. He assured me he would not be late and I said it would be all right as long as it was before eleven. And on Sunday morning he left.”

  “And you knew nothing about what happened afterwards?”