An Act of Evil Read online

  *

  A reporter from the Vercaster Times rang Maltravers at Punt Yard the following morning.

  “Are you and Miss Davy staying in Vercaster until the end of the festival?” he asked.

  “Personally, I’m staying here until Diana is found. This was the last place she was seen and I’m not leaving until we discover what happened to her.”

  “Obviously you’re hoping she may still be alive?” Maltravers saw the angle he was looking for and gave him the reply he wanted.

  “I don’t care if the police say it’s murder,” he said. “Until I see Diana’s body, I shall hold on to the belief that she may not be dead. We all know she’s been terribly injured but there is no proof that she may not still be alive somewhere. However terrible the thought is, that’s what is keeping us going.” He could visualise the scribbling down of his eminently quotable comments but wondered bitterly if they had any real meaning or were just a continuing self-delusion. Did he really want Diana found, butchered like Lavinia but with a tongue to relate her torture?

  “Thank you very much, Mr Maltravers,” the reporter was saying. “We’re checking with the police of course, but you don’t know of any particular developments do you?”

  “Nothing special. Do you know of anything?”

  “No. There was some talk in the office about a reward yesterday but the Editor says it’s not happening now.”

  “Really? Well, I don’t think it would have been of much help at this stage.” Maltravers had a feeling of satisfaction that his barbed remark to Hibbert had struck home.

  One other thing was in fact happening, although nobody in Vercaster was aware of it. That morning an expensively dressed woman with raven black hair and a handsome, slightly hard face was thinking as she watched her children playing in the swimming pool in the garden of her home. She had just received a call from an actress friend in London who had casually mentioned the police interest in Peter Sinclair and his visit to England. She knew exactly what he had been doing from the Sunday lunchtime up to when he left to return to California. And she knew why he was lying about it.

  *

  When Mark Kenyon stepped off the plane from Sydney he was tired, jetlagged and had a streaming cold.

  “What the hell’s all this about?” he demanded when the police took him to an interview room. “I’m not smuggling anything.”

  “Do you know Miss Diana Porter, sir?”

  “Di? Of course I do. Why?”

  “I’m sorry to have to inform you sir, that Miss Porter has been missing for nearly two weeks and we have reason to believe that she may have been murdered.”

  Kenyon sneezed messily into a sodden mass of paper handkerchiefs. For a moment he sat catching his breath and looked at the officers with a mixture of weariness and bewilderment.

  “What? Di murdered?” He shook his head as if to clear it then sneezed again. “When? Who by? Why are you talking to me?”

  “Miss Porter was expecting a baby, sir. We have reason to believe you may have been the father.”

  Groping his way through a mental fog of infection and exhaustion, Kenyon began to comprehend what was being said to him.

  “I didn’t know that,” he said. “But it’s what was supposed to happen.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “The night before I went away. When was that? About ten weeks ago. She didn’t say anything about it then.”

  “It’s probable she didn’t know at the time, sir. I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to give us a full statement about your relationship with Miss Porter.”

  Kenyon was overcome by another series of explosive sneezes. He fumbled in his pockets for a less useless wad of tissues.

  “Look,” he said as the paroxysm subsided. “Does this have to be now? I’m in no state to talk to anyone. Let me go home and get some sleep, then you can ask me anything. At the moment I can’t even take in what you’re saying to me.” The two officers looked at each other. “For God’s sake, I’m not going anywhere. But anything I say at the moment will be gibberish. I can hardly stay upright.”

  One officer nodded almost imperceptibly to the other.

  “We have a car outside, sir.” he said. “We can take you home.”

  Kenyon slumped in the back seat of the car and was asleep before they had left the airport. They roused him when they reached his house in Wimbledon and helped him out of the car as he fumbled for his keys.

  “Look,” he said as he opened the door. “Don’t get me wrong but I just can’t take in what you’re saying. You said that Diana’s been strangled?”

  “We didn’t actually say strangled, sir, because we don’t know. But we do believe she’s been murdered.”

  Kenyon rubbed his hand across his forehead. “Funny, I thought you said strangled. I can’t think straight at the moment.”

  “Do you mind if we wait here while you have a rest, sir?”

  “Do what the hell you want,” Kenyon said, stumbling up the stairs. “As long as I get some sleep you can end the world for all I care. Just don’t make too much noise.”

  While Kenyon slept, more inquiries were made with the television crew he had been working with. There was not the slightest possibility of him having left Australia in the previous ten weeks. His apparent lack of concern at the news of what had happened to Diana Porter and his reference to her having been strangled were put down to the state he was in on his arrival, until the police could question him further. He slept for nearly eight hours, then reappeared in the room where the two policemen were playing cards.

  “You weren’t a dream then?” he said. “Let me get a coffee and tell me all that again.”

  “I’ll make it, sir,” said one of the officers and went into the kitchen. The other picked up an envelope that was lying on the table.

  “We saw this among your post, sir,” he said. “It’s not been tampered with in any way but it does appear to be a woman’s handwriting. Can you say if it’s Miss Porter’s?”

  Kenyon took the envelope and stared bleary eyed at it, then nodded.

  “If you could open it, sir, it might be of assistance to us.”

  Kenyon sat down and blew his nose, then ripped open the flap of the envelope. The letter inside was written on one side of a single sheet of pale blue notepaper. He read it through then handed it across to the policeman without a word.

  “Dear Mark,” the note said. “I’ll be away by the time you get back but I wanted you to know as soon as possible that it’s been confirmed today that I’m pregnant. I’m very happy and very well and should be a mother by Christmas. I’ll see you when I get back. All my love, Diana.” It was dated four days after Kenyon had flown to Australia. The policeman looked inquiringly at him.

  “She wanted to have a baby,” he said in reply to the unspoken question. “But she didn’t want a marriage. It’s not altogether uncommon. I met her at a party and we liked each other very much. She was perfectly honest about it. Obviously she wanted to feel…some affection for the father but the baby would be hers. I accepted her terms.” He pressed a handkerchief to his running nose. “That’s all there is to it really. Now what the hell’s all this about her being murdered?”

  “You’ve not heard what’s happened at all?”

  “Not a thing. I’ve been somewhere in the outback of beyond most of the time.”

  The policeman told him of the events surrounding Vercaster. Kenyon listened unemotionally as he finished, then accepted the coffee brought through by the other officer.

  “I’ll probably react to all that later,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in all at once. I’m sorry I can’t play the grief-stricken lover if that’s what you expect. I was very fond of Diana but I’m not going to pretend I was madly in love with her. That wasn’t part of our arrangement. But I can’t see how I can help you.”

  “You said something earlier about her being strangled. We never said that.”

  “I knew you’d pick that up. You’ll just have to
believe me that I didn’t know my own name when I got off that plane. I saw Diana about ten weeks ago and she was alive and well and that’s how I left her. Don’t try and pin a murder on me for some meaningless remark.”

  “There’s just one thing you might be able to help with. Do you know a man called Peter Sinclair?”

  “Sinclair?” Kenyon thought for a moment then it came back to him. “Oh, that prat. Depends what you mean by know him. We’ve been in the same studio. Why?”

  “Did Miss Porter ever talk about him?”

  “She talked about a lot of people. Let me think. They’d appeared in something together once she told me. What was it? No, it’s gone…but we saw him once…where was it? That’s it, it was a Variety Club Lunch for someone or other. He was sitting with…what’s her name?...Vicky Price, that black-haired cow who quit acting a while back and married some smart Harley Street doctor. They were at a table on the other side of the room. Diana said something about him being the most evil man she’d ever known.” Having pieced together the picture out of his memory, Kenyon suddenly saw the nature of it.

  “Are you saying that he did it?” he exploded. “Why haven’t you got him yet?”

  “We have no evidence, sir, and in fact Mr Sinclair may well have an alibi. Do you know why Miss Porter said he was evil?”

  “No. But I know she meant it. And Diana did not like disliking people.” Suddenly he sneezed again.

  “We’d like to take your statement now, sir.”

  The Variety Club Lunch had taken place three weeks before Kenyon went to Australia. Sinclair, who had claimed not to have seen Diana Porter for more than a year, was now known to have been twice in the same company within the previous four months and the long unfilled period of time remained in his visit.

  Chapter Fourteen

  MADDEN SAT ALONE in his office on Friday morning and wrestled with the problem of the continuing absence of Powell and the lack of an adequate alibi for Sinclair. All his experience and instincts still centred on Powell, whose failure to come forward was tantamount to an admission of guilt. He found it unbelievable that Powell could not know the police were looking for him. Never before had Madden faced an inquiry in which the known facts stubbornly refused to fit a recognised pattern. While Maltravers might only dream of solving crimes, Madden knew from long experience how they should be investigated and settled, but the very discipline of proper inquiries, which had never failed before, was now a fatal handicap. At his centre, William Madden had one terrible human failing — he could not admit that he might be wrong.

  It was now, he considered, only a matter of time before Powell was arrested and the lack of an alibi for Sinclair would become academic. But how long could he afford to wait before taking direct action on Sinclair? Forty-eight hours, he decided. Until then he would put these irrational misgivings down to overwork. Certainly for most of the previous fortnight no police officer in Britain had worked longer or more conscientiously in the hunt for Diana Porter and her killer.

  Maltravers now had all his waking moments — and many of his sleeping ones — haunted by dread of inescapable abominations. He was finding it almost impossible to think clearly about everything that had happened in the now forlorn hope of identifying some key piece of information that would lead to the solution, however horrible it might be. More than anyone he wanted Diana to be found — dead or alive — and was quietly furious with his own impotence to do anything.

  Grim faced, he walked again round the cathedral and the Chapter House. A note had been put on the case which had contained the Latimer Mercy explaining that it had been stolen and he gazed at it thoughtfully. It seemed an impossible length of time since he had first met David Jackson at that spot, when the only crime to be investigated was the esoteric theft of an old misprinted Bible. That was something he could have played with in his imagination, a pleasing intellectual exercise in which he might demonstrate the incisiveness of his analytical brain. Now his mind was stultified with grief, worry and anger. He paused by the organ and noticed his own face in the mirror which the organist used to watch the choirmaster; his features were chillingly like those of his father in the last dreadful weeks before he died. He sat in the Chapter House, trying to recall faces he had seen there on the night of Diana’s performance. While he was wrapped in his thoughts someone quietly sat down beside him. It was Miss Targett.

  “I’ve been here almost every day since…” She smiled at him apologetically. “I don’t know why. Whenever I sit here and think about all the dreadful things that have happened, one phrase keeps coming to mind.” She paused then quoted softly: “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

  Maltravers looked slightly surprised. “T. S. Eliot,” he said. Little Gidding would not have struck him as being Miss Targett’s sort of poetry.

  “Pardon?” she said. “Oh, no. Dame Julian of Norwich. I remember Miss Porter speaking those words on television. But I’m afraid I cannot see how things can possibly be well now.”

  Unlike the last time he had seen her, Miss Targett was now composed but Maltravers still acutely sensed that the little old lady, her life previously settled and secure within a framework of innocence, had been irreversibly affected by being brought into contact with violence and wickedness. Her understated sorrow was all the more potent for her aura of dismay. He stood up and offered her his arm.

  “May I walk you home, Miss Targett?”

  She smiled gratefully. “That would be very kind.”

  Miss Targett’s cottage was the end of the terrace at the corner of the alleyway leading from opposite the north transept to the city centre. When they reached the door she invited him in but he said he had to return to Punt Yard.

  “Please give my love to Miss Davy,” she said. “Tell her that you are both in my thoughts a great deal. Oh, and how is your leg incidentally? You don’t seem to be limping.”

  “No, it’s much better, thank you.” Maltravers looked at her slightly puzzled. “But how did you know about it?”

  Miss Targett frowned to herself. “I can’t recall who told me about it. I think it was Mr Knowles after morning service on Sunday. I assumed that everyone knew about it. They really will have to do something about Talbot’s Tower I fear. Somebody could be seriously injured.” She extended her small hand. “Thank you so much for seeing me home. God bless you.”

  As he walked back to Punt Yard, Maltravers met the Dean and Webster by the Lady Chapel.

  “Still no news?” the Dean inquired. “Oh this is intolerable. Every day I fear there will be some further outrage. Oh, forgive me. Your concern can only be for Miss Porter. Is there still any hope that she…” He was unable to finish the sentence.

  “I don’t know,” said Maltravers. “All I want now is for it to be over.”

  “It may not be much longer,” said Webster. “All our prayers are with you.”

  The Vercaster Times was lying on the hall table when he went back into the house. Half the front page was given over to Diana’s disappearance and the police hunt but there was no mention of Hibbert offering his reward. Maltravers’ outraged offence in the market place two days earlier had given way to a pitying contempt for the vain, glory-seeking councillor and he wondered if he should have curbed his tongue. The offer of a reward would have done no harm, even though it seemed unlikely to have done any good.

  There was a reception in the Town Hall that evening to which Maltravers and Tess had agreed to accompany Michael and Melissa. It had been planned as an occasion of thanks and congratulation on the eve of the final day of the festival but instead was a gathering of unrelieved tension. The Mayor made a speech, dutifully acknowledging the work that had gone into the event and touching on some of the highlights of the previous fortnight. Everyone listened in polite silence, many staring into their wine glasses, but his words had an inevitably hollow ring.

  “Finally and most unhappily,” he concluded, “I must express on behalf of everyone in Verca
ster our sense of regret and horror at the dreadful events which have cast such a terrible shadow over all our endeavours. We have with us this evening some of the friends of Miss Diana Porter, whose performance in the Chapter House so magnificently launched our festival. We extend to them our deepest sympathies over the awful mystery of her disappearance and all that has happened since. We can only hope that even now Miss Porter may be found alive and the man who has perpetrated this wicked deed arrested.”

  The gathering coagulated into separate groups, each talking in hushed and uncomfortable tones. Maltravers was approached by a man he vaguely recognised who introduced himself as the producer of the Mystery Plays.

  “I’ve seen you backstage but we haven’t spoken,” he said. “I’d just like you to know that we greatly appreciate your attending our performances. It can’t have been easy for you.”

  “I’ve been grateful for something to do,” said Maltravers. “And both Miss Davy and I have been very impressed by the standards you have achieved.” He paused momentarily, then forced himself to add, “I’m sure Diana would have shared our opinion.”

  Slowly and inevitably he was beginning to think and speak about Diana in the past. He was the last one who would fully accept the fact of her death without absolute proof. The producer made no comment but smiled sympathetically and walked away.

  Across the room Maltravers caught Hibbert’s eye. The councillor immediately turned away and began talking in an unnaturally loud voice.

  “Of course we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that it has been an absolutely marvellous festival,” he said. “Tremendous credit to Vercaster. Let’s not forget that.”

  Several people turned and stared at him in disbelief but he was impervious to their looks. He walked across the room and started talking to the Mayor about how the event should become an annual occasion.