Puppet for a Corpse Page 21

  “Why do you say you don’t feel he could have accepted it? Some men can.”

  Thanet shook his head. “Not Pettifer. He was a proud man. Reserved, and devious, too. And vindictive. There’s a story Dr Barson told me about him …” Thanet related it to Joan.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Nasty.”

  “Quite. It shows that Pettifer wasn’t the type to forgive and forget. And especially where his wife was concerned. Everyone agreed, he idolised her. He would have been shattered. And he’d have wanted revenge, I was convinced of it. Of course, when we finally heard about the multiple sclerosis everything became clear at last.”

  “Poor man. It’s a terrible, terrible disease.”

  “I know. And for someone like Pettifer … He must have been in despair. As his wife said, it would have been truly intolerable for him to know that as time went on he would become increasingly dependent, immobile … To have envisaged progressive paralysis, years spent in a wheelchair as an invalid … And of course, he would have been aware of her revulsion from any kind of sickness. I should imagine that, even before she told him she was pregnant and he learned she’d been unfaithful to him, he must already have contemplated the possibility of suicide at some future date, when the symptoms became more pronounced.”

  “He’d have been angry, too,” said Joan. “People often are, with a disease like that. They think, naturally, ‘Why me?’”

  “I agree. And then she told him about the baby. Now, looking back, I’d guess that it was at that point that his anger switched direction and focused on her.”

  “D’you remember that book I read a year or two ago?” Joan said suddenly. “By that American woman? The one about women as murderers.”

  “Vaguely. I meant to read it, didn’t I, and never got around to it.”

  “That’s right. I told you at the time you’d have found it interesting. Anyway, the author said that her thinking on the subject had been shaped by the realisation that murder could be a psychological alternative to suicide. She said that, especially in Victorian times, trapped in desperately unhappy marriages by force of circumstance—no money, no chance of supporting themselves by taking a job, no divorce—they often had only two choices, murder or suicide.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re saying. That Pettifer was in that position?”

  “To some extent, yes. His hands were tied in so many ways, weren’t they? He couldn’t make his illness go away, he couldn’t try to forget his wife had been unfaithful because the baby would always be there as a reminder …”

  “That’s true. And of course, we must remember that at the time she didn’t know he was sterile—she still doesn’t, for that matter—and she would naturally have expected him to think that he was the father of the child. So he had no freedom of choice there, either: he couldn’t say he wasn’t without letting her know of his sterility, so he dared not show her what the news really meant to him. I should think he was so afraid of giving his secret away that he covered up his confusion by reacting the opposite way and pretending to be pleased. And then, when he thought about it, he saw how he could use that initial reaction to his own advantage. He saw how he could put an end to his own intolerable situation and punish her at the same time. He would kill himself and somehow make sure that she would be blamed for his death. It must have appeared the perfect solution. This way she wouldn’t be free to go to her lover or enjoy the wealth she would inherit …”

  Joan shuddered. “Really, it makes me shiver to think about it. To be so cold-blooded …”

  Thanet squeezed her hand. “I know … Anyway, I’d guess he took his time working out the details of his plan. The most important thing was to make sure that no one would believe he had any reason to commit suicide. This is why it was so vital to convince everyone that he was unaware of his wife’s infidelity. I don’t suppose it entered his head for a moment that we’d find out that he was sterile. He couldn’t have realised that his first wife had told her mother, and even if he had I don’t suppose he would have thought we might find out that way. He hadn’t seen his mother-in-law for years, they didn’t get on, and she must have seemed so remote from his present existence that I don’t suppose she even came into his calculations. And he made sure—or so he thought—that we wouldn’t find out about his illness, by asking Mr Randall, the neurologist, not to mention it to anyone, even Mrs Pettifer.”

  “There was a risk there, though, surely. He must have realised that Mr Randall might consider himself absolved from the promise by Dr Pettifer’s death.”

  “True. But it was a risk he had to take. He could hardly go to the length of asking the man to consider his promise binding even after death, without making him suspicious that suicide was on the cards. And in that case Mr Randall might have considered himself justified in breaking that promise and approaching Mrs Pettifer.”

  “True.”

  “He had to take some risks, after all. The best he could do was try to foresee as many loopholes as possible, and stop them up. He dared not change his will as insurance against his wife inheriting if his plan went wrong, for example, because that would have told us that he knew about her affair.”

  “So this was why right up to the end he went on behaving as though he expected to have a future—why he arranged to have his car repaired, for example.”

  “Yes. And booked that cruise. All designed to make us think it couldn’t have been suicide.”

  “And went on pretending to be delighted about the baby,” Joan said with a sigh.

  “Exactly. Meanwhile, he made his personal preparations for his death, put his affairs in order and cleared his desk. He was the sort of man who would hate the thought of anyone going through his private correspondence, even after he was dead. That desk of his, together with the method he chose to kill himself, were the only things which made me think he might have killed himself after all. He’d kept the clearance to a minimum, but there was such a vast, obvious absence of personal paraphernalia.”

  “Yes, I meant to ask you about the method he chose. You said that all the doctors you spoke to agreed that it was the one they would opt for. If he wanted to make sure you thought it was murder, why didn’t he choose something less … oh, dear, what’s the right word? Comfortable?”

  “I know. That stumped me too. Then I thought, well, yes, he desperately wanted his plan to succeed, but all the other methods would have seemed either so difficult to set up or so messy or painful that in the end he thought, what the hell, you only die once, I’ll go out gracefully.”

  “Yes, I can see that. I suppose that’s how it must have been. Just a minute …” Joan scrambled to her feet. The castle was taking shape. Bridget was creating the building itself, Ben digging out the moat. Now they were both claiming the right to construct the most interesting part, the drawbridge with its tunnel beneath. Thanet looked on indulgently as Joan arbitrated. God, what a lucky man he was! He sent up a silent prayer of gratitude as he waited for her to return.

  “All settled?”

  “More or less. Anyway, what were you saying?”

  “Well, having firmly established in everyone’s minds the picture of a man with everything to live for, he moved on to planning the details of the suicide/apparent-murder. What he had to do was lay a careful trail for the police to follow so that they would be sufficiently suspicious to feel they had to dig a little.”

  “Which is what happened.”

  “Yes. The first bit of planted ‘evidence’ was of course the note, with its mis-spelling of Andrew’s nickname.”

  “Ah yes, I remember you asking about that right at the beginning.”

  “I suppose that, knowing Andrew, Pettifer counted on his demanding to see the note and spotting the mistake, as indeed he did.”

  “That was another risk, surely? What if Andrew had never seen it?”

  “Then other things would have made us suspicious anyway. This was just an additional pointer that it hadn’t been suicide. For all we know there may yet
be other ‘clues’ we haven’t yet discovered. Interestingly enough, though, it was this very bit of ‘evidence’—which was supposed to, and did make us suspect that it might have been murder—that in the end put me on to the fact that it had been suicide after all. Together with something else that had absolutely nothing to do with the case. That was where my famous ‘intuition’ came in.”

  “What do you mean? No, tell me later, when you’ve finished explaining what Pettifer planned to do.”

  “Well, as I said, he wanted first to make us suspect that it was murder and then point us specifically in the direction of his wife. And this was where things began to get complicated. He wanted to ensure that she would appear to have not only motive but means and opportunity as well. In addition, he wanted to discredit her, underline her apparent guilt by making her appear an out-and-out liar.”

  “A tall order.”

  “Very. But then, he was a clever man, and, as I said, there was no hurry. Time was on his side. The very nature of his particular disease meant that there was no risk of it being spotted in a routine post mortem in its early stages.

  “Anyway, I would think that his decision as to when to stage his ‘murder’ was made as far back as August, when Mrs Price received an invitation to speak at a Women’s Institute meeting in Merrisham last Monday, and asked him if she could spend the night at her sister’s. That gave him three clear months in which to work things out. It wouldn’t surprise me if, during that time, he employed a private detective to follow Gemma, find out where and when she was meeting her lover. He wanted somehow to manipulate her into spending the night of the ‘murder’ in London, so that he would have the house to himself. He must have hoped that she would grab the opportunity for a night with Lee so that as soon as we became suspicious of her and checked her alibi we would discover her infidelity.”

  “And therefore her motive.”

  “Exactly. In the event, Fate was on his side. Gemma was asked to consider a part in a new play and couldn’t make up her mind whether to take it. Pettifer persuaded her into a trip to London on Monday night to discuss the matter with her agent. Meanwhile he had been elaborating his plan. I think, you know, that he probably enjoyed doing that, in a macabre kind of way. It wasn’t enough for him that she should simply have appeared to commit the ‘murder’ before leaving for London. He wanted to enmesh her in a whole web of deceit so that everything she said or did would serve only to incriminate her further.”

  “You make him sound really diabolical.”

  “He just wanted to hit back, I think, for what had happened to him. At life, at her … at her especially. The higher the pedestal, the more shattering the fall. Anyway, his plan was very neat, very simple, really. He would pretend illness, nothing so serious that it would keep her at home, but sufficient to give her a conscience about going out and make her fall in with his suggestion that she give him a ring around ten o’clock to check that he was all right. Then, when she rang him, he would make a panic-stricken request for her to return home at once. Knowing how uncharacteristic of him such behaviour was, she was sure to do as he asked …”

  “He must have thought she cared about him to that degree, then.”

  “I suppose so, yes. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He got her to promise to leave immediately, before he rang off. The next problem …”

  “Just a minute. I’m sorry, perhaps I’m being a bit dim, but I don’t quite see the point of all that. You say he had to get her down to Sturrenden late at night, presumably so that you—the police—would then find out that she was on the spot at the time the overdose was administered.”

  “That’s right. He wanted us to think that she had slipped him just enough sodium amytal—that was the drug he used, by the way, we heard yesterday—in the cocoa she gave him before she left, for him to go off into a really sound sleep so that when she returned later to finish him off he would still be sufficiently drugged not to realise what was happening. I bet that if Mrs Price hadn’t washed the mug we’d have found traces of sodium amytal in it.”

  “But how would you know she had been there later that night? I mean, if those two men on patrol hadn’t noticed Lee’s rather unusual sports car or if Gemma hadn’t been spending the night with Lee and had come in a taxi … it was taking a chance, surely?”

  “Perhaps Dr Pettifer had more faith in the police than you have, my love,” Thanet said with a grin. “No, sooner or later it would have come out, via the hotel perhaps. Anyway, as I was saying, the next problem was to make sure not only that when she got here she couldn’t get in, but that she wouldn’t attempt to break in, either. And this he managed by leaving his car at the Centre, without her knowledge. It was supposed to have broken down, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he immobilised it on purpose. He knew enough about cars to be able to do it, to make sure the fault was one which could have come about accidentally, so that the mechanic wouldn’t be suspicious. Then, before he took the overdose, he bolted and barred the front door so that she wouldn’t be able to get in that way and banked on the fact that, when she went around to the back and saw his car wasn’t there, she’d assume he’d gone out on a night call.”

  “Another risk.”

  “Yes, but it worked. You have to hand it to him. The risks were all calculated, based on his understanding of her character, and most of them paid off. She did react to much of what he planned exactly as he intended she should. And he made sure that there were other little touches of circumstantial evidence to incriminate her. At some time during those three months he must have set aside the drinking glass and the tablet container with her prints on them, made sure they were protected from dust so that the fingerprints would appear fresh …”

  “So, what went wrong? Why didn’t it work, in the end?”

  “Chiefly, I think, because his understanding of her didn’t go deep enough. He misread the depth of her feeling for him. He thought that because she had a lover, she didn’t care about him, her husband. Being the sort of man he was, he wouldn’t have been able to understand that her lovers were for her really no more than a diversion, a physical appetite perhaps, or a sop to her ego. Playthings, really, I suppose. For him a sexual relationship meant commitment and he couldn’t have begun to understand that she could be committed to her husband while enjoying an affair with someone else.”

  “You really think she did feel deeply for him, then?”

  “Yes, I do. Mind, I don’t think even she was aware just how deeply until he was dead. I think that it was this realisation that hit her so hard, coming too late, as it did. Anyway, the result was that, whereas I suppose he expected her to deny, bluster, appear more and more guilty as each new bit of incriminating information came along, in fact she reacted in precisely the opposite manner. She insisted from the start that it couldn’t have been suicide and, if it had been murder, seemed hell-bent on incriminating herself. She would have had to be the most inefficient murderer in the annals of crime to have made such a mess of her story. It was as full of holes as a colander, and the discrepancies were so pointless, so incomprehensible. No, I don’t think either of them had any idea how much she cared for him.”

  “Sad, wasn’t it—that he died not knowing, I mean.” Joan was silent for a while, thinking; idly picking up handful after handful of sand and watching it trickle away through her fingers.

  “So,” she said at last, “how did you cotton on, in the end? It was to do with the mis-spelling of Andrew’s name in the suicide note, you said?”

  “Yes. Well, it wasn’t just that. All week …”

  “Just a minute,” Joan said suddenly. “Sorry to interrupt, darling, but what about the other note, the one you found in Andrew’s bedroom? Did you find out any more about it?”

  “No. I’m still convinced that there was nothing between him and Gemma. But the trouble was that I couldn’t be certain without either tackling Andrew himself or Gemma—and I didn’t want to do that and risk embarrassing the boy if the whole thin
g was no more than a fantasy. I felt that to know we knew how he felt about Gemma would just have caused him unnecessary distress, and he had enough to cope with as it was.”

  “I agree. Poor boy. He must feel completely lost, now. What will happen to him, do you know?”

  “It’s been arranged that he’ll live with his grandmother—well, adoptive grandmother, really. Mrs Blaidon.” Thanet gave a reminiscent smile. “You’d have liked her. And she seemed fond of Andrew.”

  “I should think that’s far and away the best arrangement in the circumstances. Anyway, do go on with what you were saying.”

  “Where was I? Oh, yes, explaining how I finally came to see what had been going on. Well, as I said, although it was the mis-spelling of Andrew’s name in that first note which eventually put me on the right track, there was much more to it than that. All week the clues came along so neatly—Gemma’s guilt seemed too obvious, the explanations too pat. And all along I felt uncomfortable, uneasy. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I felt as though I was being nudged further and further along a road I didn’t want to follow … as if someone was pulling the strings and there I was, dancing against my will. Like a puppet.”

  Joan grimaced. “A puppet for a corpse. What a macabre notion.”

  “A delightfully graphic way of describing it, darling. But yes, that was it, exactly. Though, as I say, I didn’t realise it for some time. I just had this feeling of resentment which people get when they’re being manipulated into something against their will.”

  “I know what you mean. Like me and Mrs Markham.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I think Mrs Markham had a lot to do with my understanding, in the end, what was happening.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the night I finally worked it out, we’d had that discussion about driving her down here today, do you remember? Though I must admit,” Thanet added, gazing around at the sunlight sparkling on the water, the near-deserted beach and Bridget and Ben rushing to and from the water’s edge with buckets of water for the moat, “it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The point is, she’d been in my mind all week—Mrs Markham, I mean—the way she had you dancing attendance on her. To be honest, I think now, looking back, that one of the reasons why I became increasingly angry with you for allowing her to manipulate you like that was because subconsciously I was aware that precisely the same thing was happening to me, and I didn’t like it one little bit. I think I was taking out my anger and frustration at my own situation on you. Anyway, to get back to how I came to work it out, if you remember I’d just learnt that afternoon that Pettifer had been sterile and as I said this discovery had turned my previous thinking about the case upside down. The final thing which made it all click was, believe it or not, a game I was playing with Ben.”