Puppet for a Corpse Read online

  “Because if it wasn’t, he couldn’t have helped bring it about?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re not suggesting he made up that bit about the spelling of his name?”

  “Oh no. He produced evidence to back up what he said, remember. No, he was sincere enough. I’m just saying that we must be careful how much weight we place upon Andrew’s opinion in view of what we now know he feels about Gemma.”

  “Of course, as you said, it could be true, though, couldn’t it? They really could be having an affair, couldn’t they? After all, we know how much she likes young men …”

  “According to Deborah Chivers.”

  “Well yes, according to Deborah Chivers. But Lee’s a good ten years younger than Mrs Pettifer, so there is some evidence to support the idea. And as her life has been so much more restricted lately, with the baby coming … She could just have thought Andrew would be a convenient stop-gap until she was able to get back to having regular fun and games in London, couldn’t she?”

  Thanet grinned. “You really don’t like her, do you Mike? I thought you were very taken with her at first.”

  “That was before I got to know more about her.” Briefly, Lineham’s eyes were shadowed.

  Was Lineham also expressing his disillusionment with Louise, Thanet wondered.

  “Anyway, I agree with you. It’s a possibility we can’t ignore. If they were lovers and Pettifer found out, he could have threatened to throw them both out, refuse to pay for Andrew’s education …”

  “What a prospect!” Lineham said gloomily. “Imagine arresting a fifteen-year-old schoolboy and a pregnant actress twice his age—his adoptive mother at that. The Press would have a field day.”

  “I don’t think we’d better dwell on that one.”

  “How did Mrs Pettifer react when you told her we knew about her affair with Lee?”

  Thanet told him.

  “She was really upset at the idea that her husband might have known?”

  “Quite independently of the possibility that that might have been why he comitted suicide, yes … Or she seemed to be. That’s the trouble. With her I can never make up my mind whether she’s genuine or not … I really do wish we could find out if he did know.”

  “I don’t see how we can.”

  “Wait a minute. You know what I was saying about an independent witness … I’ve just remembered. Mrs Barnet, the secretary at the Centre, mentioned some restaurant where Pettifer had taken his wife for an anniversary dinner recently—the Sitting Duck, that was it. Out Biddenden way. Do you know it?”

  “I know of it. It’s a bit beyond my pocket.”

  “It just occurs to me that if it’s a fairly small place the owner might remember them. It might be worth going to see him, ask him how they seemed together.”

  “Yes.”

  “You sound doubtful, Mike.”

  “I’m not sure there’d be much point. After all, it is a public place. If Pettifer was so determined to keep up a front that even his housekeeper didn’t know, I can’t see that it would help.”

  “It just might. If Mrs Pettifer is lying and he did know about Lee, they might not have been so concerned to pretend that everything in the garden was lovely in front of a lot of strangers.”

  “You’d like me to go out there this afternoon, then?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “Right.” Lineham hesitated and then said, “You know, sir, it’s only just occurred to me that for some reason we just aren’t bothering to look very hard at anyone but Mrs Pettifer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, assuming for a moment that it was murder, not suicide, then in the normal way of things, yes, I agree we’d look first at the wife. But, at the same time, we’d be investigating other possibilities—friends, business associates and so on … I know Dr Lowrie is checking the files for disturbed patients but apart from that we seem to be concentrating entirely on Mrs Pettifer.”

  Thanet was staring at him fixedly.

  “Sir?” Lineham said uncertainly.

  “You’re right, Mike,” Thanet said softly. “By God, you’re right. Now, why is that?” He felt on the verge of recognising an important truth. It was there, hovering just beyond his grasp …

  “Well,” said Lineham, taking him literally. He began to tick the points off on his fingers. “One, there are the fingerprints. Did you ask her to explain them, by the way?”

  Thanet was only half listening. “What? No. I’m holding back on that, for the moment.”

  “Two, we find she’s got a lover and therefore a motive. Three, we’re beginning to wonder whether we can believe a word she said—there’s the business of the cold, for example … And that’s about it.”

  They stared at each other blankly.

  “You’re right, Mike. It just isn’t enough for us to be focusing exclusively on her. I can’t think how it’s happened. I started off with an open mind. When I saw Dr Lowrie, for instance, one of the first things I did was check his alibi. Though I haven’t bothered to verify it … What the hell’s the matter with me? Talk about slipping … Thanks Mike. Come on, drink up.” Thanet stood up abruptly.

  “Where are we going?” Lineham asked, in the car.

  “Back to the office first. We’re going to do a bit of catching up on lost time, so we’ll need two cars. Now let’s see …” Thanet took out his notebook. “We’ll make a list. First, there’s Andrew …”

  “Andrew?”

  “Of course. If only for elimination purposes. I don’t like the idea, he’s upset enough as it is … And I certainly don’t think we ought to speak to him directly at this stage—after all, he is at boarding school. It should be easy enough to check his whereabouts on Monday night. Then there’s Mrs Price. And the partners—Doctors Lowrie, Braintree and Fir. Fir’s away on holiday at the moment, but we’d better verify that. And lastly, there’s Lee. That’s about it, isn’t it?”

  “Unless Dr Lowrie has turned anyone up in the files.”

  “I should have thought he’d have been in touch with us, if he had. Right, we’ll split them up between us, leaving Lee out for the moment. I want to wait until we find out whether that Morgan was his or not, first. So you take Andrew and Mrs Price, I’ll take the doctors.”

  “What about the Sitting Duck? Shall I try and fit that in on the way back?”

  “Yes.” Thanet closed his notebook with a snap. “That’s it, then … You know, Mike, there’s one thing I keep coming back to, over and over again …”

  “What’s that?”

  “This business of children. It really puzzles me.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well I think Mrs Pettifer’s attitude is understandable, just about. Initially she didn’t want them because they would interfere with her career. When she found she was pregnant she’d reached the top of her profession, felt she could afford the time off. Also, she had realised there was a bonus to producing a child—she would enlarge her experience of life with a capital L. But him … well you don’t make sure your prospective bride doesn’t want children unless you’re pretty well against having them yourself.”

  “Unless, as she said, he thought she wouldn’t marry him unless he made it clear he didn’t want a conventional wife and would be one-hundred-per-cent behind her continuing her career?”

  “True. But there was no need to make an issue of it, was there? I mean, if he’d asked her to marry him and she’d refused on the grounds that it could interfere with her career, you could understand him then saying, well, I don’t expect you to be a coventional wife, there’ll be no need to have children and so on … But the impression I had—certainly from Deborah Chivers—was that he wanted to make sure Gemma didn’t want them before he asked her to marry him.”

  Lineham was shaking his head. “I don’t agree. I should have thought that, if you didn’t like children and didn’t want them, it’s the very thing you would want to check out before you proposed. And remember, Pett
ifer was no spring chicken either. Apart from his dislike of children he might well have felt he just couldn’t face the prospect of nappies, disturbed nights and disruption of routine all over again. People often do feel that, when they’re getting on towards middle age.”

  “Yes, I agree. But surely it’s therefore all the more strange that, when she did tell him she was pregnant, he was over the moon about it.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. People do change their minds about such things. After all, he was supposed to be devoted to her. He probably didn’t want to upset her.”

  “Possibly. But I had the impression, from her, that it wasn’t something they’d ever discussed, he was just presented with a fait accompli. I shouldn’t have thought, from what we’ve heard about him, that he’d have been too pleased about that.”

  “Even so, if he doted on her …”

  “I suppose you’re right. That’s how it must have been.”

  Back at the office there was as yet no word about Lee’s car. Lineham set off at once for Merrisham to interview Mrs Price’s sister and Thanet settled down to do some checking. First he rang his own doctor, Dr Phillips, who confirmed Lowrie’s alibi in every detail. Satisfied, Thanet moved on to Dr Fir. Mrs Barnet at the Centre provided the information that, last Saturday, two days before Dr Pettifer’s death, Dr Fir and his family had left on a 10 a.m. British Airways flight from Heathrow for a three-week stay with his brother-in-law in New Zealand. It proved relatively simple to establish that the Firs had indeed left on their scheduled flight and would have arrived in New Zealand on Monday morning. So unless Fir had abandoned his family half-way and flown back to England … Too far-fetched, Thanet decided. Temporarily he shelved Fir as a suspect. Which left Braintree.

  Thanet sat back and thought. He was still angry with himself that he had allowed himself to be so … blinkered, was the word, in focusing exclusively on Mrs Pettifer. He was glad that Lineham had seen what was happening, but humiliated that he had not been aware of it himself. How had it come about? He felt ruffled, as edgy as a cat that has been stroked the wrong way. He gave a wry grin. It’s your ego that’s been dented, he told himself. How had it come about though, he asked himself again. During that interview with Dr Lowrie he had certainly had an open mind … His eyes narrowed. He had just remembered Lowrie’s evasiveness when asked if there had been any problems with the practice. It was remiss of him not to have followed that up before now. Perhaps, before seeing Braintree, it might be fruitful to see Lowrie again …

  A second phone call to Mrs Barnet informed him that it was Dr Lowrie’s afternoon off, but that Thanet could find him at the Inn in the Forest until three o’clock. Swimming.

  On the way he wondered how Lowrie was getting on with checking Pettifer’s files. The way he felt at the moment even a psychopath or two couldn’t add much to his confusion.

  14

  Dr Lowrie was also floundering, though physically not metaphorically.

  It was a brave man, thought Thanet, who decided to learn to swim in his late fifties. Most people would be afraid of looking foolish. He sat down in one of the white wrought-iron chairs tastefully arranged in the raised seating area at one end of the pool and waited for Lowrie to finish his lesson.

  The Inn in the Forest had once been an undistinguished Victorian country house, its ugliness redeemed only by the beauty of its setting. Surrounded on three sides by dense deciduous woods (which at this time of the year were a kaleidoscope of colour) and on the fourth by a lake, its potential as a money-spinner had quickly been spotted by the one of the major hotel chains. Architects, consultants and environmentalists had been called in and almost before one could say “planning consent” the builders had arrived. Now, one would find it almost impossible to detect the presence of the original building in the shell of concrete, rustic wood and glass which had been constructed around it—and for those who liked canned comfort and a variety of entertainment on tap, it was a holiday paradise. Sailing, swimming, windsurfing, tennis, table-tennis, snooker, a choice of discos and no fewer than four restaurants ranging from the formal to the tastefully sleazy: it offered them all, confident that few prospective customers would spurn all of its attractions.

  And although he hated to admit it, Thanet thought, gazing around, they would have been right, for the one redeeming feature in his eyes was the indoor swimming pool. It overlooked the lake, seemed almost, by some trick of perspective, to merge into it. Flanked by tall, curved white concrete wings which supported a high, glass bubble of a roof, it contrived despite its almost aggressive modernity to blend with the lake, the sky, the trees in a way which gave those who swam in it the illusion of being at one with nature. Entrance fees to this pool were high—ten times as much as those for the pool at the new sports centre in Sturrenden—but the setting was so delightful, the water so well-heated and the pool so uncrowded that a swimming session here was truly a delight and local people would bring their children as an occasional special treat. Thanet and his family had been twice, enjoying a picnic afterwards at the lakeside.

  Thanet sat back in his chair and allowed himself to sink into a pleasant torpor induced by the warm, steamy atmosphere and the knowledge that there really was nothing to do but wait. Beyond the tall sliding glass doors lightly misted with condensation the colours of the forest trees were blurred, hazy as in an Impressionist painting and as Thanet relaxed the cries of those in the pool blurred too, became distanced as he began to drift towards sleep.

  A child’s sudden shriek aroused him and he sat up with a start. Dr Lowrie was still in the pool practising the leg movements for the breast stroke, grasping the instructor’s long pole to keep afloat. As Thanet watched, the lesson ended and Lowrie waded to the steps and hauled himself out, gasping. Thanet half rose and called his name in a low voice. Lowrie looked up, raised his hand in response and went to retrieve a towel from the far end of the seating area before coming to join Thanet. They greeted each other, Lowrie towelling himself vigorously, his fat little paunch wobbling.

  “I’m quite happy to wait while you get dressed,” Thanet said.

  “No, no. I’ll be going in again later, when I’ve had a breather. I only have time to come once a week, so I have to make the most of it. Marvellous exercise, swimming.” Lowrie sat down, towel slung around his shoulders and patted his stomach ruefully. “Though you might not think so, looking at this. Anno Domini, too much good food and too little exercise, I’m afraid. That’s why I decided to take up swimming. I only started recently. Marvellous exercise,” he repeated. “You use up 480 calories per hour, you know.”

  Thanet privately thought that he would prefer to deny himself four or five slices of bread a week, the equivalent in calorific value. Lowrie, with the enthusiasm of the newly converted, was still talking about the benefits of his chosen form of exercise: “… muscle tone … heart rate … reduction in weight …” punctuated Thanet’s consideration of which subject to broach first. There was a lot to talk about.

  He decided to begin on neutral ground and, when Lowrie eventually said, “But you haven’t come to hear me talk about swimming,” responded with, “I was wondering how you were getting on with checking through Dr Pettifer’s files.”

  The jovial lines in Lowrie’s face sagged. “I thought that might be why you’re here. You’re still working on the theory that he might have been murdered, then?”

  “At present, yes.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, is it definite? Have you any conclusive evidence?”

  “No. Not as yet. All imponderables, I’m afraid. But we can’t afford to let the matter rest, just in case. Too much time would be lost.”

  “What about the post mortem?”

  “Nothing significant. He was a healthy man, as you said. As a matter of interest, did you see him on the afternoon of the day he died?”

  “Briefly, yes. Why?”

  “Any sign of a cold?”

  Lowrie considered. “Not as far as I remember, no.”

  “And t
he files?”

  “Ah, yes.” Lowrie sighed. “Well, I’ve been working on them every night, right through into the early hours …”

  “You really should have allowed us to send someone to help you.”

  “No, I couldn’t have done that, not under the circumstances. If we’d been certain it wasn’t suicide, perhaps I would have felt justified, but as it was I felt I didn’t even want Mrs Barnet to help. Anyway, I’ve been right through them now. I was going to give you a ring later on this afternoon. I’m afraid there’s no one who seems to be even a remote possibility. I told you I didn’t think there would be.”

  “Why not?”

  “Two main reasons, I suppose. First, as I said before, if there had been anyone with a strong enough grievance against Pettifer to want to murder him, then I really can’t believe that I wouldn’t have heard about it. I simply couldn’t see him attacking out of the blue. From what I’ve heard—and I must admit I haven’t had any experience of such a situation, thank God—such people usually kick up a terrible stink. Secondly, even if such a person did attempt murder, I can’t see him using the drink-and-drugs method. It’s too quiet, too … comfortable. He’d be wanting not only to release his own feelings of violence, but to make Pettifer suffer in the manner of his death, in payment for the suffering he’d caused. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes I do. So I suppose that’s that. I apologise for wasting your time.”

  Lowrie shrugged. “I can see that it had to be done.”

  Thanet took his pipe from his pocket, held it up. “Do you mind?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Thanet took out his tobacco pouch and began to fill the bowl. The next topic was a delicate one. How best to broach it without making Lowrie clam up, that was the question. He gave the little doctor an assessing glance, caught his eye.

  “Come on, Inspector. Out with it. I can see you’re wondering how to put what you want to ask me next.”

  Thanet gave a wry smile. “That was below the belt, Dr Lowrie. I’m the one who’s supposed to be reading you, not the other way around.”