An Act of Evil Read online

  “Not a thing. We flew to Benidorm on the Sunday lunchtime and only got back last night. It was only when I managed to have a look at the Times this morning that I saw his face. So of course I rang your people at once.”

  Jackson was thrown for a moment by the newspaper reference then realised she was talking about the Vercaster Times; it had not struck him as the sort of household in which the better known variety would be found.

  “Did you have any conversation with him?”

  “Very little. He was very polite and quiet — just the sort of person we prefer. But we really had hardly any time to talk.”

  From upstairs there came the sound of a lavatory being flushed, followed by the sound of someone descending. Then Mr Dunn, a neat and compact little man, entered the room. His wife introduced Jackson.

  “I was just asking if your guest might have said anything that could assist us,” Jackson said.

  “I’ve just been thinking about that,” Dunn replied and Jackson kept his face impassive as the image Dunn’s remark created sprang into his mind. “He asked for directions.”

  “Directions? Where to? When?”

  “When he was leaving. I saw him off and wished him a good journey. He asked which was the best road that would lead him towards Wales.”

  “Wales.” Jackson smiled gratefully at Dunn. “That’s a very useful piece of information, sir. Very useful indeed.”

  “No it’s not. Not now.” Dunn smiled knowingly. “You see I asked him if that’s where he was going and he said just for a few days then he was moving on. And this was just over a week ago. So he won’t be there now.” Having neatly demolished the possibility he had set up, Dunn smiled cheerfully at Jackson and sat down in an armchair by the fireplace.

  “It could still assist us,” said Jackson. “If we can find where he was in Wales we may be able to trace him from there. I just want to radio this information into the police station then I’d like to see the room he used please.”

  Mrs Dunn was waiting in the hall when Jackson returned from the car.

  “It’s exactly as he left it,” she said as they went up the stairs. “I glanced in on the Sunday morning after he’d gone and it was perfectly tidy so I decided to leave it until we came back. Of course I haven’t been in it since I read the papers.”

  The Dunns did not take excessive trouble over their accommodation for visitors. The room was long overdue for decorating and the furniture was at best shabby. Jackson remarked that the bed had been made.

  “He must have done that,” said Mrs Dunn. “Very considerate.”

  “Did he have any luggage?”

  “Just a few things in his sidecar. He only brought his pyjamas and a towel in. I think his tent was in there as well.”

  Leaving room, perhaps, for a body, Jackson reflected.

  “Can this room be locked?”

  “Oh, yes. We always give guests the key then there can be no misunderstandings. You know what I mean.”

  “I must ask you to lock it as we leave and nobody must come in here until my colleagues arrive from the police station. They should be here fairly soon. In the meantime, I’ll need formal statements from you and your husband.”

  As they turned to leave, Jackson glanced swiftly round the room. There was no evidence at all that anybody had ever stayed in it. The anonymous Powell had passed through and, typically, had left no trace of his personality behind.

  The Dunns’ statements added nothing to what they had already told him. Powell had left first thing after breakfast on the Sunday morning and Dunn assumed he had set straight off for Wales.

  “He said nothing about staying in Vercaster for part of the day?” Jackson asked.

  “Not a thing. It’s a fair journey and I suppose he’d want to get going as soon as possible.”

  As Jackson was completing the statements, Higson and other officers arrived to start their investigation of the bedroom. Dunn, who appeared to have something on his mind, followed Jackson to the front gate.

  “I think we’ve behaved quite properly in reporting this as soon as we could,” he said.

  “Indeed. We’re very grateful.” Jackson could feel some motive behind the remark.

  “It’s just that we do return our income tax forms to the Inland Revenue’s satisfaction.” Dunn gave a significant wink. “I’m sure you understand, sergeant.”

  Jackson realised that the fact he might have had a murderer in his house for whom there was a nationwide search following a particularly hideous crime was less important to Dunn than the money he obviously denied the income tax man.

  “I’m investigating a murder, sir,” he replied. “I’ve no interest in anything else.”

  *

  The lock of hair and the note posted in Islington also brought fresh evidence. To nobody’s surprise, it was Diana’s hair, and one set of fingerprints on the envelope, belonging to someone in the Islington sorting office, was also found on the package containing Diana’s hand which had been sent to the Dean. Saliva tests further showed that both items had been sent by the same person. But there were no available saliva samples from Powell to clinch the matter. The police felt they had taken a significant step forward but until the final pieces fell into place the picture was still maddeningly unclear.

  Monday evening saw the second performance of the Mystery Plays, this time in the Vercaster Players’ own theatre. For Maltravers it was at least another diversion to occupy his mind with something else. The plays went from the Nativity — engagingly performed by a cast of children — through to the Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. The Shepherds’ Play was a delight, with an hilarious scene in which they became increasingly drunk, pulling an endless collection of ingeniously contrived long-lost local delicacies from their sacks until the stage was littered with scattered offal. The contrast with their wonder and adoration as the angels appeared was effective and moving.

  But once again it was Jeremy Knowles’s Devil who dominated everything, wielding a bloody and vicious sword through the Slaughter of the Innocents, attending the Wedding at Cana as a sly and malevolent guest, peering resentfully round the side of the cave from which the resurrected Lazarus emerged. Christ’s steadfast rejection of his seductive worldly inducements was no more than a temporary setback in his progress towards eventual triumph. He spat his parting words like venom:

  Long in patience, I shall wait

  Till we meet at Hell’s dark gate.

  Flamed and awful, red with blood,

  Evil then shall master Good…

  He stopped with his voice on a rising, uncompleted note, then strode unnecessarily across the stage, losing the sense of direct conflict with Christ.

  “He’s forgotten his lines,” Maltravers murmured sympathetically to Tess.

  “Death triumphant…” a voice said from the wings and Knowles appeared to recover himself.

  “Death triumphant…” he began but it was obviously not enough. Before the prompter could come in again he was riskily ad libbing.

  “Death triumphant loud shall sing.” There was the fraction of a pause which many of his audience did not notice but which was recognisable to anyone who had acted as a moment of pure terror.

  “Praising the accursed thing.” He finished and swiftly made his exit. For a moment Christ looked confused; it was not the right line. Then he recovered himself and spoke his own final words which Maltravers did not hear. Jackson had told him what the note to the Bishop had said. He also remembered the sergeant’s remarks about coincidence.

  Knowles was cleaning off his exaggerated make-up when Maltravers went up to him backstage.

  “Don’t tell me,” said Knowles looking at Maltravers behind him in the mirror. “You of all people must have noticed.”

  “I’m afraid we did although a lot of people wouldn’t have. You got out of it very well. But they obviously weren’t the right lines.”

  Knowles rubbed a rough towel over his face. “No they weren’t,” he mumbled through it the
n pulled his face clear and examined it again in the glass. “It should have been ‘Death triumphant then shall reign, Endless night and endless bane’. God knows what mental fail-safe device threw out what I actually said. I’m afraid the fact that we’re amateurs showed up rather badly there.”

  “Don’t let it worry you,” said Maltravers. “The only actor who never forgot his lines was Harpo Marx.”

  Knowles grinned and Maltravers was again conscious of the fact that humour somehow amplified the inescapable wickedness of his features. The fact that Knowles had shown him the letter about Hibbert and the Latimer Mercy came unexpectedly back into his mind. Nothing had come of it but it could have diverted the police’s attention. And there was no proof that the letter had been genuine. Certainly its allegations had been found to be untrue.

  “Let’s hope I don’t do the same thing on Saturday night,” Knowles added. “That really is my big scene, even though I lose.”

  Knowles’s apparently spontaneous but disturbing ad lib nagged at Maltravers’ mind as they drove back to Punt Yard where Jenny the babysitter said that David Jackson had called and asked that Maltravers should ring him at home.

  “We can’t get Sinclair’s story to add up,” Jackson said when he answered. “There’s a couple of points you might be able to help us with. According to Sinclair, he hadn’t seen Miss Porter for nearly a year but one of the people he saw when he was back here has shown us a picture of them both at a party two months ago for the opening of a new London nightclub called the Seventh Heaven. According to our informant, you were there as well. Can you remember it?”

  “Oh, God, yes. Dreadful place. I only went there by chance because I was mixed up with some crowd or other that evening. I can’t recall much about it.”

  “Did you see Sinclair and Miss Porter there?”

  “I remember talking briefly to Diana but she was with some other people. I can’t remember seeing Sinclair but there were so many free-loaders and the usual riff-raff about I didn’t take much notice. I only stayed about an hour and the place was packed out.”

  “Well, he certainly was there because he’s in the picture so we’ll have to ask him to explain that. The other thing is, do you know a Mark Kenyon?”

  “Mark Kenyon? Yes, he’s a freelance cameraman. Was he there as well?”

  “He can’t have been because he left the country a couple of weeks previously and still isn’t back. He’s working on some series or other in Australia. But we’re told he was Diana’s boyfriend and at least two people reckon he’s the father of the child.”

  “They know more than I do,” said Maltravers. “I told you that our lives drifted apart a great deal. Anyway it’s more significant surely that Sinclair’s lying.”

  “Yes. We’ve asked Los Angeles police to talk to him again. The problem is that his movements can only be confirmed up to the lunchtime of the Sunday Miss Porter disappeared. After that he says he was in the flat until his flight from Heathrow on the Wednesday. He claims he had eaten something that upset him at lunchtime on Sunday and was ill for two days.

  “There’s one other thing that makes me think. He spent that Sunday lunchtime in a wine bar off Shaftesbury Avenue and the man who met him there told us that they talked about Miss Porter’s appearance at the festival. He remembers Sinclair saying ‘Fancy dying on a Saturday night in Vercaster’.

  “Now I know what that sort of remark means in the show business world but it’s an odd thing to say when you think about what’s happened, isn’t it?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  To MADDEN’S INTENSE annoyance, Powell’s camping spot in Wales remained undiscovered. Reported sightings were marked on the incident room map with red pins, replaced with yellow when they had been checked; the land mass beyond Offa’s Dyke took on the appearance of a pig with an unpleasant skin disorder. Madden’s irritation was compounded by the news on Sinclair, having assumed inquiries in London would clear him. He read the report gloomily.

  “After Sunday lunch, when he says he was at home being ill, he’s not got a story we can substantiate?”

  “No, sir. According to what he has told the Los Angeles police,” Jackson glanced at the papers he was holding, “he went to another show on the Tuesday after he had recovered but, as on the Saturday, he says he was alone.”

  “Seventy-two hours he can’t account for. That’s quite a long time.”

  “And it happens to cover the most vital period, sir.”

  Madden looked at the report on Sinclair again with evident distaste. It was planting seeds of doubt in his mind which interfered with the smooth pattern that led to Arthur Powell.

  “Do you want someone from here to go and see Sinclair, sir?” Jackson asked.

  Madden shook his head vigorously, rebutting the suggestion and stamping on his doubts at the same time.

  “I can see no justification for sending officers to California at the public expense on the strength of what we have so far. One chance return visit to England, some quarrel with Miss Porter a long time ago and a period he has no alibi for do not add up to a substantial case. Continue inquiries in London. Check with the theatres he says he visited. If he’s an actor they may remember him being there. In the meantime the search for Arthur Powell continues.”

  The holes in Sinclair’s story remained. The two shows he had been to see were among the most successful in the West End, drawing packed houses almost every night. The managers at both theatres were apologetic when the police called but it was impossible to remember who might have been there apart from the most well-known public faces. One produced a virtual Who’s Who of names from the worlds of show business, politics and sport who had been his patrons but did not recognise Sinclair when shown his photograph.

  “There are a great many minor actors,” he said condescendingly. “There are members of the cast in this theatre I wouldn’t know in the street.”

  In America Sinclair stuck to his story. He agreed he had been at the nightclub opening but could not remember seeing Diana there. He violently denied being specifically in her company. His remark in the wine bar was a casual comment without any meaning. He could offer no further information about his movements after Sunday lunchtime or suggest anyone who could vouch for him. The police report added that he was becoming increasingly agitated by their investigation and the producer of the television series had made a complaint about the interruptions their inquiries were causing. Jackson examined the night-club photograph again. There were several people in the crowd between Sinclair and Diana and no indication that they were in fact together. So far the police had been able to contact only one person in the picture, a show business hanger-on who did not know anybody or anything. They had been unable to establish even the names of several of the group grinning inanely at the camera.

  The only line of inquiry remaining was to talk to Mark Kenyon, allegedly the father of Diana’s baby, but he was not due back in London until early on Thursday morning. Two officers were detailed to meet his plane when it arrived at Heathrow.

  *

  On Wednesday Maltravers remembered the odd incident of what Knowles had said in the Mystery Plays; it had been driven out of his mind by the news concerning Peter Sinclair. He rang Jackson.

  “I’ll make a note of it,” Jackson sighed patiently. “But unless you’ve got something useful like a motive don’t expect us to do anything too drastic. You do realise, don’t you, that we’re in the middle of one of the biggest man-hunts this country has ever seen for a man we have every reason to suspect, is known to have been in Vercaster at the appropriate time and has now apparently vanished off the face of the earth? Plus this Sinclair business. Do you know how much sleep I’ve had in the last ten days?”

  “I can make a guess. It’s nothing more than an odd remark but I said I’d let you know anything that might be of use.”

  “Thank you.” Jackson sounded very tired. “Find Arthur Powell. That will be of use.”

  *

  Wednesday wa
s market-day in Vercaster and it seemed that most of the population of the surrounding county was drawn to the city following some ancient impulse of race memory. The stalls appeared to sell unremarkable goods which could easily be purchased without the necessity of travelling several miles into the city and battling to find somewhere to park, but there was a sense of social occasion about the event.

  Maltravers and Tess took Rebecca for a walk round as another way of passing the time. He was searching through some old books on one of the stalls in the faint hope of finding something of real value when Hibbert appeared through the door of the nearby Town Hall and saw him.

  “Mr Maltravers,” he said, crossing the cobbled space between them. “There’s something I want to tell you. I’ve just been speaking to the Editor of the Vercaster Times. It will be in this week’s edition.” Hibbert paused pompously, leaving a dramatic moment before his announcement. “I have offered a reward for anyone giving information leading to the apprehension of Miss Porter’s murderer. A thousand pounds.” From Hibbert’s entire demeanour, Maltravers realised that he anticipated effusive thanks for such benevolence. A thousand pounds, he reflected, was a substantial sum, excellently balanced between parsimony and tasteless flamboyance. The credit accruing to Hibbert for such a gesture would make it money well spent.

  “We’re grateful for anything that will help sort this business out,” he replied, dropping his response well below the level of gratitude Hibbert was hoping for.

  “Yes,” Hibbert continued slightly uncertainly when it was clear Maltravers was taking his thanks no further. “I imagine they’ll be contacting you for some comment on the matter.”

  Maltravers noticed the Rotary badge glinting in Hibbert’s lapel and wondered if the Vercaster Times Editor was also a member; he felt certain he was. Councillor Hibbert’s offer would be handsomely reported.

  “I imagine they will,” he said evenly. The prospect of the insufferable Hibbert benefiting from Diana’s horrendous fate was unspeakably offensive. Casually he indicated the box he had been looking through. “There might be something of interest to you here,” he said mildly. “Although I think it’s only their covers that are dirty. Good afternoon, Councillor.” Hibbert watched him walk away with a look of bemused offence on his face.