Murderer's Fen Page 11

  “I’m looking for a missing girl,” Nield said quietly.

  “That’s not all you’re doing.…” Ainger slapped his newspapers down on the desk. “Look at this—and this … ! ‘The last man to see her …’ ‘Helping the police with their inquiries …’ You know what that phrase is intended to mean—and so do I. They’re accusing Alan Hunt of murder.”

  “I think that’s a slight exaggeration,” Nield said. “In any case, I’m not responsible for what the newspapers say.”

  “You gave them the information that set them off.”

  “A girl is missing,” Nield repeated. “What would you expect me to do—keep quiet about it …? Of course I gave them the information.”

  “You didn’t have to bring Hunt into it.”

  “I didn’t bring him into it more than I could help,” Nield said. “I was careful not to. But when you start a search you have to mention the missing person’s last known movements. I gave the Press the necessary facts—no more, no less.… Most of this stuff in the papers comes from Hunt himself. It was up to him whether he talked or not.”

  “He didn’t have much choice, once you’d set the pack on him … It’s character-assassination. It’s a bloody outrage …”

  Nield’s mouth tightened. “Now look, Mr. Ainger, this attitude isn’t going to get you anywhere. I understand how you feel, and I sympathise. You’re deeply concerned in this and I’m quite ready to discuss the situation with you …”

  “I should damned well think so.”

  “… in a reasonable way,” Nield said. “But if you’re going to be abusive, I shall have you shown out. Is that clear …? Now I suggest you sit down.”

  Fuming, Ainger dropped into the chair. The inspector took his accustomed seat behind the desk.

  “I assume,” Nield said, “that by now you’ve had a full account of everything from Hunt.”

  “I have—I’ve just spent two hours with him—and with my daughter.… The most fantastic two hours I ever spent in my life.… He told me you suspected him of seducing Gwenda Nicholls on holiday, killing her because she was pregnant, and inventing a phoney story to cover it all up.”

  “I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that,” Nield said. “I’ve been going into the possibility.…”

  “Put it how you like—the result’s just as unpleasant for him … Now where’s the evidence? He mentioned some anonymous letter. I’d like to see it.”

  Nield took a photostat of the letter from a drawer and passed it across the table.

  Ainger read it through, scowling. “You regard this as evidence?”

  “I think it had to be looked into.”

  “Did you look into it? Did you try to check on what it says?”

  Nield nodded. “By good luck, we were able to identify the place mentioned in the letter. We searched for a body. There was nothing.”

  “So the writer was wrong?”

  “Apparently.”

  “That takes care of the letter, then …” Ainger flung it down contemptuously. “So now what makes you think the girl is dead?”

  “I don’t know whether she’s dead or not,” Nield said. “All I know is that she’s been missing for five days.”

  “How long have you been actively searching for her?”

  “Only for about thirty-six hours—but she has a striking appearance, and with the whole country alerted I’d have hoped for some line on her by now. Unless she’s deliberately hiding away. …”

  “Wasn’t that precisely her idea.…? If she’s changed her name, her clothes, her hair style, would you still expect to find her?”

  “It would certainly be much more difficult,” Nield said.

  “And that could have happened?”

  “It could have done.”

  “Aren’t your records full of missing persons who’ve never been traced? Don’t people often disappear voluntarily, for all sorts of reasons?”

  “They do.… I assure you I haven’t ruled out the possibility in Gwenda Nicholls’s case.”

  Ainger snorted. “But meanwhile, Hunt takes the rap.… ! Have you any good reason to doubt that he drove the girl to Peterborough as he said?”

  “No … But I’ve no proof, either.”

  “I’ve no proof that I drove here via Newmarket—but I did … What about factual evidence? Have you found anything suspicious at his place? Any clues that point to him as a murderer?”

  “No—nothing.”

  “Have you caught him out in any lies? Has he been obstructive?”

  “No—he’s been very frank and above-board.”

  “Then I’m baffled, Inspector.… What have you got against him?”

  Nield stirred uneasily. “It must be obvious to you, sir, why we’ve made inquiries.… The girl is missing, Hunt was the last known person to see her, he told an extraordinary story which can’t be confirmed—and he could have had a very strong motive for getting rid of her.”

  “He wanted to marry my daughter, you mean?”

  “Exactly. I gather she’s a well-to-do young woman in her own right.”

  “A man isn’t necessarily a criminal,” Ainger said “because he wants to marry a woman who happens to have money.… I should know—I did it myself, and for the best of reasons—I was fond of the girl … Naturally, when Hunt first appeared on the scene it did occur to me that he might be a grabber—so I studied him carefully. I decided he wasn’t—and I was right. The other day he turned down an offer I made him of a first-class job, because he preferred to be independent. And when this trouble blew up he thought he ought to end his engagement to my daughter. Would he have done that if he’d been an unscrupulous fortune-hunter?”

  Nield looked surprised. “Has he ended it?”

  “He hasn’t, but only because Susan flatly refused to let him. He tried—he tried very hard.… So there’s your motive blown sky high—like everything else.… For God’s sake, Inspector, where’s your case?”

  Nield sighed wearily. “You don’t seem to understand, sir. I never said there was a case. I’ve made no accusations. I’m too aware of the points that can be made in Hunt’s favour—and there are far more of them, incidentally, than you’ve mentioned yourself … All I’ve done is look into things. That’s my duty.”

  “Duty … ! You’ve blackened a young man’s reputation, you’ve destroyed a girl’s happiness, you’ve wrecked the peace of a household—and all without a single shred of evidence. What sort of duty is that?”

  “Unfortunately,” Nield said, “it’s often impossible to investigate a case of this kind without some suspicion falling temporarily on innocent people … It’s hard—but it’s unavoidable … If Hunt has come under public suspicion, and he’s innocent, I’m very sorry about it—sincerely sorry. But for the time being, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “You can tell the Press there’s no justification for their treatment of him. You can exonerate him.”

  Nield shook his head. “I can’t exonerate him, any more than I can accuse him. If I could, I’d be only too glad to. At the moments I’ve no grounds for either course.…”

  Ainger pushed back his chair. “Well, that may satisfy you, Inspector, but it doesn’t satisfy me. It’s not justice. I thought a man was supposed to be considered innocent till he was proved guilty.… Evidently I was wrong. What you’re doing is punishing Hunt, and everyone associated with him, for something he didn’t do—and you’re not going to get away with it. I shall advise him to sue you, and the newspapers, for defamation—and I’ll back him to the hilt.”

  Nield gave a curt nod. “That’s your privilege, Mr. Ainger. You won’t, I’m sure, expect me to change my attitude because of threats.…” He opened the door. “Good-bye, sir.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Nield slept badly that night.

  Normally, he didn’t allow his professional problems to keep him awake—he’d realised long ago that lying in bed and worrying about them didn’t help. He’d learned to discipline himself—to switch off, a
nd start again fresh next day. It always paid.…

  This time, though, he couldn’t switch off. He was overtired, he decided. Maybe getting a bit old for the job, with its long hours, its tremendous responsibilities, its pressures … Or was this just an exceptionally difficult and complex case? He certainly felt very dissatisfied with the way it had gone. There were so few anchor points he could refer to with confidence—so few facts. Apart from Hunt’s story, he’d had almost nothing to go on. And the prospects looked no better. The only end he could see to the case was a question mark—unless he could find the girl, dead or alive.… Or establish her voluntary disappearance.…

  The interview with Ainger, too, had upset him. Not because of the threat of a court action—that was just angry talk, which he was used to. The police were constantly being threatened by people who relied on their protection and resented the only methods by which it could be achieved.… But Nield was a humane man with a conscience, and he didn’t like what had happened in this case any more than Ainger did. The lives of several people were being undermined by suspicion and uncertainty—and there wasn’t any real evidence against Hunt. There was only a doubt.…

  It was a pity, Nield thought, that Hunt had talked so freely to the Press about Gwenda and the purpose of her visit, about the alleged seducer, about his own marriage plans. If he’d been a little more discreet, there wouldn’t have been nearly such a fuss. He’d positively invited public suspicion. But there again—wasn’t indiscretion on that scale a sure mark of innocence? What guilty man would so determinedly have marshalled the facts against himself.…?

  Nield was wrong about the prospects. The morning was to bring a sensational transformation of the case.

  He surfaced from the restless dozing of the night with a headache and a muzzy mind. He swallowed the aspirin his wife brought him, bathed and shaved, and went gloomily down to breakfast. He’d barely glanced at the headlines in the Telegraph when the phone rang.

  “Inspector Nield?” a voice said. “Ah—morning, sir. It’s the station sergeant, Peterborough, here.…”

  Nield felt a surge of hope. “What is it—news of the girl?”

  “No, sir.… But I’ve got a couple of people here who say they saw a cream MG sports car parked near Everton Road on Saturday evening.”

  “Good lord,” Nield exclaimed. “All right, Sergeant—keep them there … Tell them I’m on my way to see them.”

  It was ninety minutes later when Nield and Dyson strode into Peterborough police headquarters.

  “They’re in the waiting room, sir,” the station sergeant said. “Getting a bit restive.… A Mr. John Porter and his girl friend, Miss Margery Haines. He’s a bank clerk, she’s a secretary. They both live close by Everton Road.… They heard the appeal on the radio.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant …” Nield led the way into the waiting room. A young man in his middle twenties rose as the policemen entered. He looked a solid, respectable type. The girl was younger, well-groomed, easy on the eye. Nield introduced himself, and apologised for keeping them. “If you’ll give me your office numbers I’ll make it right with your employers,” he said. “Now—tell me about this car.”

  “It was a cream MG sports,” Porter said. “It was parked in Grange Road, just round the corner from Everton Road, by a telephone box.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About twenty to nine on Saturday evening.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes—my fiancée was telephoning and she was rather a long time—so I looked at my watch.”

  “Did you see who was in the car?”

  “Yes—a man on his own. A hefty chap, fair hair, about thirty.”

  “You noticed all that in the dark?”

  “He was parked under a lamp,” Porter said. “And I’d plenty of time to look at him while I was waiting.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Nothing special. Just sitting and smoking a cigarette.”

  Nield produced a newspaper photograph of Hunt. “Is that the man?”

  Porter gave it one glance. “Yes—that’s him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely certain.”

  “What about you, Miss Haines?”

  “It looks like him,” she said.

  “I see.… Well, I’d like to have your home addresses, if I may.… And thank you both for coming forward—it was very public-spirited of you, and you’ve done a most useful job …”

  As they left, Nield looked quizzically at Dyson. “Well, Sergeant—any comment?”

  Dyson gave a faint shrug. “It seems he was there … I must say I’m very surprised.”

  “I’m extremely thankful,” Nield said. His headache was clearing—he was beginning to feel much more human. “It’s exactly the confirmation we’ve been wanting—and if he told the truth about that, we’ve no reason to doubt the rest of his story. I‘d say he’s in the clear. He dropped the girl as he told us, she wandered off and went to ground—and that’s it … No foul play, no suspicion of anyone … Case virtually over.”

  Dyson grunted.

  “You doubt it, Sergeant?”

  “I’m not too sure about it, sir … I’d like to think so—but I have a feeling we’ve not got to the bottom of it yet.”

  “What’s worrying you?”

  “I don’t know,” Dyson said. “I wish I did.”

  Nield grinned. “Hardly up to your usual standard!”

  The telephone rang on the station sergeant’s desk. “Call for you, sir, from Cambridge,” the sergeant said.

  Nield took the phone. “Yes …? Really.…? Well, that’s very interesting.… Okay, tell them we’ll be over right away.” He hung up.

  “Quite a morning we’re having,” he said. “They’ve found Gwenda Nicholls’s suitcase at Cambridge railway station.”

  The station-master had the case in his office. There was no doubt about the identification. It had the letters G.L.N. in black beside the handle, and the remains of a Vistasund Hotel label on the end.

  “Where was it found?” Nield asked.

  “On a bench in the Ladies’ Waiting Room,” the station-master said. “I gather it’s been there since the middle of the week—the cleaner didn’t realise it had been abandoned until this morning. Then she took it to Lost Property and one of the chaps remembered the description.”

  “Good for him …” Nield opened the case. It contained a pale-blue jumper, a grey pleated skirt, a blue-flowered head scarf, an off-white woollen coat and a pair of navy-blue shoes.

  He looked at Dyson. “Well, doesn’t that just about settle it, Sergeant?”

  Dyson’s face was expressionless. “Does it, sir?”

  “I’d say so … She knew the things she was wearing would identify her sooner or later—and the suitcase, too—so she changed in the Ladies’ into other things she’d got with her, and cleared off. It all fits—and she’s still alive.”

  “Where did she put her other belongings?”

  “She could have bought a cheap case for those. Or made a bundle of them. No difficulty there …”

  Dyson looked down at the clothes. “For a girl with less than ten pounds in her pocket,” he said, “it seems a lot to abandon.”

  “Well, if she was determined to disappear, she didn’t have much choice. She could hardly have left the case in the cloakroom—it might have been identified on the spot.”

  “Maybe it was Hunt who brought the case here,” Dyson said. “To back up his story.”

  “Oh, come, Sergeant—if he’d killed the girl he wouldn’t have kept a dangerous piece of evidence like her suitcase around for several days—he’d have got rid of it at once. Buried it, or something.”

  “H’m—I suppose so …”

  “He certainly wouldn’t have put it in the Ladies’ Waiting Room, anyway. He’d have wanted to leave it as inconspicuously as possible—and for a man to put it in the Ladies’ would have been a sure fire way of getting noticed. No one with a m
urder to hide would take a risk like that.…” Nield picked up the suitcase. “Okay—on our way.”

  “Where are we going, sir?”

  “Ocken,” Nield said. “I think it’s time we put the suspect out of his misery.”

  Hunt was just emerging from the office as the police car drove up. He looked at Nield and the sergeant with unconcealed animosity. “Now what is it? Thumbscrews?”

  “On the contrary,” Nield said, “I’ve good news for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Two witnesses have come forward who say they saw your car parked in Peterborough on Saturday evening—just where you told us. They’ve identified you as the driver.”

  Hunt’s face cleared a little. “Well, that’s a bit of luck.”

  “It seems they were telephoning from the box close by. I’m surprised you didn’t remember seeing them. A young couple …”

  “I think I do vaguely remember them now,” Hunt said. “I wasn’t paying much attention at the time.”

  Nield gave an understanding nod. “That’s not all, though—I’ve even better news.…” He produced Gwenda’s case from the car. “I expect you recognise this.”

  Hunt stared at it. “Where did you get it?”

  Nield told him of the Cambridge find. “It looks as though the girl has gone to ground somewhere.”

  “I never doubted it,” Hunt said. He drew a long breath. “So what’s the position now, Inspector?”

  “The position, Mr. Hunt, is that I now accept your story—the whole of it—and that as far as you’re concerned the case is over. I propose to notify the Press accordingly.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Hunt said. “Even if it is overdue … It hasn’t been exactly pleasant for me these last few days.”

  “I realise that, Mr. Hunt—it’s been on my mind quite a bit … I’m sorry about it—and I’ll do all I can to repair the damage.”

  Hunt nodded, unsmiling. “Coming from the police, I suppose that ranks as a handsome apology. Forgive me if I’m not overwhelmed with gratitude.… Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ring my fiancée …”

  Back at headquarters, Nield reported to his superintendent on the latest turn of events, and afterwards told Dyson he could take the rest of the day off. He then drafted and dispatched a short statement for the Press, and telephoned Gwenda Nicholls’s father at the Council offices in Peterborough. Since Gwenda’s disappearance was now established as voluntary, he explained, the active police search would have to be called off—though of course if any information came in it would be passed on. He felt sure that Mr. and Mrs. Nicholls would be relieved that their worst fears had not been realised, and he hoped that Gwenda would in time return to them. Having relieved his conscience over Hunt, and done his best for the deprived parents, he relaxed.