An Alibi Too Soon Page 4

‘This is relevant?’

  ‘Kind of. It comes into the motive bit. All right? Well, he was throwing a party…’

  ‘When he’d failed?’

  ‘That was the type of man he was, and that’s relevant, too. It was a kind of wake. Eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow we sign on the dole. Edwin Carter was a manic-depressive. Way up one minute, way down the next, and like a kid on a swing in the park, the higher he went one way, the higher he went the other.’ He frowned. It didn’t sound quite right, but I got the point. ‘So there he was with his party at the big house. It was a Sunday. At the house were six or so people from the stage and that sort of thing, and his nephew Duncan, who wasn’t from the stage—he was an organist, in fact—but he’d associated in a minor way with his uncle in the writing of the plays.’

  ‘I’m with you.’

  ‘Now you’ll realise this was 1976. At that time, though it’s eased off now, you couldn’t find a pub open in Wales on a Sunday. Edwin Carter got himself tanked up into a fine state of roaring ecstasy and decided they needed more drinks. This was around ten in the evening. August. A fine night. He said he was going to drive out and get a fresh supply of booze. People tried to restrain him, but it was more of a good laugh than anything else. So off he went. Ten o’clock. He’d have nigh on fifteen miles to drive to any pub that’d be open. You could say a good hour and a half on the trip.’

  ‘There was mention of this’, I said, ‘in that envelope. Llew timed it.’

  He nodded. ‘On that case, it was about the only thing he did do that took him away from his desk. He seemed to think the time was critical, but I couldn’t see it. I’ll tell you…this house. A large place with its own drive, its own lane really, and a wide parking space at the front of the house, and two garages at the side. Those were a hundred yards from the house and just off the drive. Two garages, and two house cars, you might call ‘em. One was Edwin’s, the other belonged to his secretary, a niece of his called Rosemary Trew. She lived at the house. That evening, all the visitors had their own cars parked out at the front. They’d come for the party and were staying the night. Duncan, the nephew, had been staying there for the past few days. He’d borrowed Rosemary Trew’s car that day, but when he’d brought it back he’d put it in the wrong garage. This was because his uncle had driven up to London that day to see if there was any chance of saving the last play.’

  ‘On a Sunday?’

  ‘This is show business, friend. They work funny hours, when they work at all.’

  ‘Righto,’ I agreed. ‘So Uncle Edwin drove back from London for his party and to welcome his guests, and found the other car in his garage. Did it matter?’

  ‘Not to you it wouldn’t. Not to me. But to Edwin Carter it mattered. He played hell, but not enough hell to trouble to get ‘em switched over. The point was, you see, that they were up-and-over doors, and radio operated. So…for the system to work, they had to keep to the correct garage for the correct car.’

  He seemed to be making a big point of this, but I wasn’t really with him on it.

  ‘It meant the doors stayed open,’ I commented. ‘So what?’

  ‘So you can’t get yourself poisoned with car fumes when the garage doors are open.’

  ‘And that was how it was? Carbon monoxide poisoning?’

  He seemed irritated. ‘Yes. Will you let me tell this in its proper sequence!’

  Did he allow his suspects to do that? You can bet he didn’t. I grinned at him and he managed a small smile in return.

  ‘Your own time,’ I said.

  ‘Where was I? Any more tea?’

  ‘It’s cold. I’ll send down for some beer if you like.’

  ‘Not on duty.’

  ‘You’re on duty? Oh heavens, and what have I been saying?’

  ‘If you don’t want to hear…’ He shrugged. ‘You’re trying to distract me, but you won’t succeed. This party. Around ten, Edwin Carter went down to the two garages—the shortest way was by way of the terrace, outside that big dining hall they were using. His niece, Miss Trew, went with him. Did I mention her?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘She was trying to persuade him not to go, but there was no stopping him. He was going to use his own car, but it wouldn’t start. You can imagine his language. But he wouldn’t quit, and said he’d use the other car, which was hers, a Triumph Dolomite with an automatic box, which he didn’t like, which didn’t improve things. But she hadn’t got the keys because Duncan still had ‘em in his pocket, so she went back to the house for them, and when she got back and handed them to him he said something unpleasant, so she marched away and left him to it, and it was about five past ten when he finally got away.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory for detail.’

  He grimaced. ‘I read it up before I came out.’

  ‘So you thought Llew’s death did have something to do with Edwin Carter’s?’

  ‘Not really. But I thought you might.’

  I nodded, tapping my teeth with the pipe stem. He was a complex person. I now realised he expected me to look into his old case. He’d warned me off. Perhaps he’d already known that wouldn’t have any effect.

  He stared at me blandly as he went on. ‘Five past ten, and Edwin drove away. By ten-fifteen they’d organised party games in that dining hall. All the guests were involved. But the fact is that Duncan was the only one not joining in. He wanted a word with his uncle, so he was restless. At a quarter to eleven he went down to the garages. Again at eleven, then eleven-twenty. And there he was, standing and looking into the distance for headlights—this is his story—when he realised he’d heard a humming noise stop. If you can make sense of that.’

  ‘Maybe I can.’ I wasn’t going to stop him now.

  ‘And he realised that the door of the garage in which he’d left Rosemary Trew’s Dolomite was down, and he said he suddenly felt that his uncle was inside there with the car, and he’d just heard the engine stop. He said he couldn’t get the door to go up, and he ran for help, and somebody else managed it, and there was Edwin inside, dead.’

  He stopped. A flair for the dramatic, Grayson had. He put Cindy on the chair again and took a few paces round the room, gesturing as he continued with his story.

  ‘When I got there they said they’d touched nothing, just put on the light in the garage then stood around outside. The assumption was suicide, their assumption. They said it was typical, that he’d obviously had a swing into deep depression, with that long drive. The beer and the rest were there on the back seat. He was belted in, and there was a bruise on his forehead. As though he’d driven in fast and braked hard. The petrol tank was empty. They said there was plenty of reason for the depression, and later I found he’d had those two successive flops with his plays. So fine. But I didn’t like that bump on his forehead. If he’d knocked himself out, how had the gearbox got into parking position? And how had that blasted door got itself shut?’

  I realised that we’d at last reached what he was aiming for. His dark eyes gleamed and his head came up. This was a matter for pride.

  ‘These radios,’ he said. ‘One in each car, hand-held things. But they were tuned differently. The one in the Dolomite would’ve closed the other garage door. So…if it’d been suicide…well, look at it. He’d have had to stop the car, leave the engine running, operate the radio in the other car—that was his own—which was parked outside, then dash back before the closing door cut him off, get back in the driving seat, and belt himself in. I ask you! And the car lights were off. What suicide would choose to go out in the dark? I just couldn’t accept it.’

  ‘Llew said something on those lines.’

  ‘But it was my thinking.’

  ‘Granted. But there has to be more.’

  ‘It was all a matter of how that door was closed. There was a button beside the doorway in the wall, for manual operation outside, but that wasn’t working. So that left the radio in the other car. You can see, I was thinking about murder at that time.’
<
br />   ‘Naturally.’

  ‘And the only one—the only one, because all the others were with each other in that dining room—who could’ve been down there when Edwin returned was his nephew Duncan. And Duncan had a motive. His uncle used to pay him for work Duncan did on those plays. Fancied himself as a playwright did Duncan. And Edwin hadn’t paid him anything for a year. Duncan was the primary beneficiary under Edwin’s will. And guess whose fingerprints were on the only thing that would’ve closed that door, which was the radio in Edwin’s own car. Duncan’s. And nobody else’s.’

  ‘Could he explain that?’

  ‘He said that when he realised the Dolomite was inside the garage, he ran to the other car and tried the radio, but it didn’t work.’

  ‘And I suppose you tried it?’

  ‘It worked for me. At least, the mechanism hummed when I switched it on, but when they lifted the door they’d had to do it by force, and they’d broken the linkage.’

  I thought about that. ‘It sounds a bit slim. And they convicted him on that?’

  ‘Motive—he thought he’d inherit. Means—the car in the garage and the radio in the other car. Opportunity—he was there, at the right time, and the rest had positive alibis for each other.’

  ‘But you never got him to admit it?’

  He laughed, a mirthless sound, I thought, directed at himself, at his only failure in the case.

  ‘Give me a tough villain any time. You can break them down. But that Duncan Carter! He was broken down before I could say a thing, dithering and nervous, contradicting himself every other word. Not living in this world. An organist, he said he was. Deputy organist and choirmaster at Lichfield Cathedral. Get him talking about music, and all of a sudden the words poured out. Apart from that, he didn’t know a thing. Didn’t even own a car himself. You’d never believe—when we came to take a statement, we couldn’t get a word down. In the end he wrote it himself.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’ll just have to meet him.’

  ‘I look forward to it.’

  He was abruptly serious, staring at me with suspicion. ‘You’re not convinced, then?’

  ‘Llew wasn’t. I’d like to think he’d still got a bit of brain left.’

  ‘When all he could think about was how far Edwin had to go for the booze? What could it matter? He got back with it in time to die.’

  ‘You’ve got a point.’

  ‘Well…’ He pulled an ear lobe. ‘I’ll be in touch. You’ll be wanted for the inquest, of course.’ He walked back to his chair and swept up Cindy into his arms. ‘Come along, old girl.’

  ‘Heh!’ I said.

  ‘Might be able to find her a good home.’

  I could feel the chill in my throat. ‘And if not?’ The words matched.

  ‘She’ll have to be put down, won’t she.’

  ‘Yes, she’ll have to be put down, right on that chair. And now.’

  ‘Oh…oh!’ he said, grinning at me. ‘You’re keeping her?’

  ‘Yes. Away from you.’

  He tipped a cold cigarette in his lips, walked to the door, looked round, and said: ‘Nice meeting you.’

  Then we had the room to ourselves. ‘Did you hear what he said?’ I asked Cindy. Then, a late reaction, I was laughing. It’d been Grayson’s method of checking that we wanted Cindy. He was a man who enjoyed risk.

  4

  From the window I watched him walk across the street to where he’d parked his white Volkswagen Golf. The fact that it was a hatchback meant nothing. There are thousands of them. I reckoned it would be a GTI. Grayson was the type who’d relish the tearing acceleration and the unattainable top speed.

  I was far from certain about him, but I had to assume he’d given me the go-ahead to take a fresh look at the death of Edwin Carter.

  My watch told me it was five minutes past eleven. Amelia had left a little before ten, and it was unlikely she would complete the journey in under six hours. So I had time on my hands, time to take a look at the scene of Edwin Carter’s death.

  Grayson had been persuasive about his logic in assuming murder, but the basic reason for suicide had been there, and I’d not been fully convinced. I rescued the manila envelope from the carpet and looked for clues as to where to begin. The house was called Plas Ceiriog. My map of Wales showed a place called Glyn Ceiriog around twenty miles north, so the odds were that the house was in the area. I dumped Cindy on the passenger’s seat, and we got going.

  The hood was still in place from the night before, and I left it like that, in case Cindy had a dislike of driving and made a sudden dive for freedom. But she was car-trained, and settled down at once.

  The main road north from Wellington to Oswestry was a trunk road, which I took at a fair speed, then on to Chirk. There I turned west, straight for the mountains. Ceiriog turned out to be a river, and the lesser road followed it faithfully, climbing steadily towards its source. Very soon I was due to run out of roads, and I was only eight miles from the border. But probably I was ten or more from an English pub.

  Having had experience of the confusion the lanes could produce, I stopped often and asked for information. The Welsh accents became more difficult to untangle, and there didn’t appear to be much interest in the difficulties of a lone Englishman. All I could see was mountains all round me, and the occasional buildings were distant farms.

  I found it by accident, drawing up to ask at what I thought to be a farm, and discovering it to be a deserted hutment, then noticing a very indistinct sign directing me up a lane beside it: ‘Plas Ceiriog’. It seemed a remote location for anything but a farm. Even the sheep would feel lonely.

  Mountains crowded me, thrusting and elbowing the lane into contortions. At one point the sparse pines marched down the slopes from either side, and I was surprised to round a bluff and discover that the lane drove through them, at that stage resembling a maintained drive. Beyond the trees it opened out again, and there was the house, nestling on the south-facing slope, with more trees beyond it but with the view open across the valley, where twin streams met to urge the water onwards to become the River Ceiriog, with beyond the valley the peak of the Berwyns.

  Plas Ceiriog. Surely a rich man’s folly from the Victorian age, built to accommodate oil lamps and natural water from the mountains, their fuel from their own pines. How had they lived through the winters?

  I drew the car in and got out to have a look. The building had matured into its enfolding hills and become part of the landscape. The red brick was dulled from exposure to the west winds, the walls clad with rampant creepers. The gardens, evident as such only from the slightly different green against the grey sparseness of the hillsides, had been allowed to slumber on to return to the mountain. I could see the terrace, itself a flat plate of green from that distance. It ran along the whole length of the house. The tall windows caught a reflection of the blue sky. This would be the rear of the house. The drive curved out of sight beyond it. I could not make out the two garages, which, as Grayson had explained it, should have been on this side of the house.

  I climbed back into the car and drove on slowly.

  A fold in the land had hidden them. As I rounded a crop of meagre thorn, there were the garages, just off the drive and below the house on the terrace side, hidden from it by the determined planting of a row of rhododendrons. I pulled off the drive on to the grass-strewn patch of hardcore that fronted the garages, and stopped.

  Cindy jumped out after me. I took the lead in my left hand. We stood and contemplated the garages.

  Both doors were now closed, and gave the appearance of having been so for a number of years. I walked up to them. The foot of wall between the doors had a plate inset in it, with two buttons side by side, one for each door. I assumed that, when operating, a single button would actuate its door with a push. Door closed; one touch opened it. Door open; one touch closed it. It would probably have been the same on the radio transmitters; one push of the button would make the door do the opposi
te to what it was.

  I touched one of the buttons. There was a hum, and slowly the left-hand door began to rise. It took about twenty seconds, then was fully slid away beneath the roof. Inside, facing me, was a gleaming black BMW, one of the 500 series. I stared at it for a moment, then touched the button again. The door hummed down in quiet obedience.

  I stood back, a little disconcerted. Where had I got the impression that the house was uninhabited?

  There was a soft chuckle behind me. As there’d been no menace in it—in fact, more a luscious delight—I turned slowly.

  ‘A big man’, she said, one finger poised in front of her lips in case an outright laugh should need suppressing, ‘ought to have a big dog.’

  ‘I’m having enough trouble handling this monster,’ I told her. ‘I’m sorry. I assumed there was nobody living here.’

  ‘You’re quite a distance out of your way, on that assumption.’

  ‘I’m not out of my way. I wanted to look at the house.’

  ‘And at my car?’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a car inside.’

  She smiled. ‘But of course you didn’t—you told me you assumed the house was empty. Did you plan to break in?’ Then, with no pause for a reply, she went down on one knee to Cindy. ‘Whatever’s happened to the poor thing? And…what is it?’

  ‘I didn’t plan to break in, she’s been in a fire, and I think, when she’s white again, she’ll be a Westie.’

  ‘The little darling!’ She straightened, Cindy in her arms and loving it. ‘What fire?’

  ‘Last night,’ I explained, ‘about twenty miles south of here. Cindy, there, came out of it alive.’

  She was now staring at me with grave, brown eyes. Her face was expressive, alive, her brow high and her dark hair drawn back, caught in what looked like a green rubber band. The effect was one of angles, a sharp jaw and high cheekbones, ears displayed, with a ring in one and a sleeper in the other. Her mouth was wide, flexible, seeming always to be poised indecisively between humour and solemnity. In tailored beige slacks, she was slim, the whole effect accentuating her height. She was tall, five feet eight or nine, and carried herself with an easy grace. She could have been knocking on fifty, could well have opened the door. There was a confidence about her, an assuredness of her place in the world. I found myself wondering whether I should know her, and realised I’d subconsciously linked her with previous mentions of the world of the stage.