A Death Left Hanging (19 page)

‘How did you––?'

‘Just answer the question, if you don't mind, sir.'

A look hardly strong enough to be called defiance came into Cuthburtson's eyes.

‘Before you go any further with your questioning, I demand to know what this is all about,' he said.

‘I'm afraid all that I can reveal at this point is that I'm running a joint operation with the Lancashire Constabulary,' Paxton said. ‘Fredrick Dodds was your father's partner? Is that correct?'

‘It's correct.'

‘So you must have known him well.'

‘He was a grown-up; I was a child. I couldn't swear that I ever even met him.'

It was all going even more beautifully than he could have imagined Paxton thought. He consulted his notebook again. ‘Couldn't swear that you ever even met him?'

‘That's what I said.'

‘But according to my information, he used to come to your house
every Sunday
for lunch. And not only that, but the whole family used to go on excursions with him.'

Cuthburtson bowed his head, but said nothing.

‘Well?' Paxton demanded.

‘You're right, of course.'

‘So why did you lie to me?'

Cuthburtson shrugged. ‘Habit, I suppose. When we first arrived in Canada my father said that none of us was ever to mention Fred Dodds' name again. He said as far as the family was concerned, Dodds had never existed. We followed that rule for the last twenty-seven years of my father's life. There didn't seem to be much point in breaking it now that he's passed away.'

‘Did your father go back to England often?' Paxton asked.

‘Now and again. For business reasons.'

‘Did he happen to go back in the summer of 1934?'

‘I have no idea.'

‘We can easily check up on it, you know. There'll be records of his journeys somewhere.'

‘I
still
have no idea.'

‘What caused the partnership to break up? How did Dodds suddenly turn from close family friend into a guy whose name should never be spoken?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Was it money? Did Dodds try to cheat your father?'

‘If he did, my father never said so.'

‘Or have I got it the wrong way round? Was it your father who tried to cheat Dodds?'

‘My father would never have tried to cheat anybody. Ask any of his Canadian business associates.'

‘So it
was
Dodds who was trying to cheat him?'

‘I didn't say that. I couldn't be expected to know. As I've already said, I was only twelve years old at the time.'

‘In this country, we take our kids hunting when they're twelve. We think of twelve as being almost a man.'

‘I very much doubt that's true. But even if it is, I'm only Canadian by adoption.'

The bastard was getting better at defending himself, Paxton thought. Like a rat trapped in a corner, he was starting to fight back.

‘So your father didn't tell you about it when you were twelve. I'll accept that,' he conceded. ‘But he must have explained it to you when you were older.'

‘I've told you, once we'd set foot on Canadian soil, we never discussed Fred Dodds at all!'

Paxton shook his head, disbelievingly. He recognized that psychology was not his strongest point, but a man like Cuthburtson was as easy for him to read as an open book.

Maybe Cuthburtson's father hadn't told him why he was dissolving the partnership at the time. Maybe he hadn't even explained his reasons when his son had joined him in the business. But at some time – possibly just before he died – the old man had to have come clean. So now that knowledge was locked inside the weak son's brain – and it shouldn't take too much of an effort to force that brain open and discover the truth.

‘There's two ways we can do this – the easy way and the hard way,' Paxton said, his voice now more Sgt Frank Arcaro than it was Sgt Joe Friday. ‘The easy way is that you tell everything I need to know here and now. The hard way is that––'

‘There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and this had been one of them,' said a mocking voice from the doorway.

Paxton turned to face the new arrival. It was a woman, possibly a few years younger than Cuthburtson. The family resemblance was unmistakable, but there were clear differences, too. His chin was weak, hers determined. His eyes were watery with indecision, hers burned with the fires of anger. He might be the chairman of Cuthburtson Import-Export, but there was no doubt about who was actually running the company.

‘Sergeant Paxton, my . . . my sister Louise,' Cuthburtson stuttered.

‘Pleased to meet you, Sergeant – now bugger off before I call a policeman,' Louise Cuthburtson said.

Paxton stood up and stretched to his full height so that he towered over the woman. ‘I
am
a policeman,' he said witheringly.

Louise Cuthburtson threw back her head and laughed contemptuously. ‘You're not a policeman,' she said. ‘You're nothing but an errand boy with a warrant card.'

‘I'm a sergeant!' Paxton protested, outraged.

‘A
senior
errand boy, then. It still doesn't give you any right to talk to the grown-ups.'

‘Listen to me––' Paxton began.

‘No, you listen to me,' Louise Cuthburtson said commandingly. ‘My brother is of a nervous disposition. He's been that way since before we moved to Canada. He's––'

‘It wasn't my fault,' Ernest Cuthburtson said in a voice that was almost a moan.

Louise Cuthburtson abandoned her attack on Paxton, and turned towards her brother. ‘Of course it wasn't your fault,' she said soothingly.

‘He was older than me. He should have known better,' Ernest said, as tears began to form in his eyes.

‘Nobody ever blamed you,' Louise told him. ‘Daddy didn't when he was alive, and I'm certainly not doing it now.'

‘What's he talking about?' Paxton asked.

Louise whipped round to face the Mountie again. ‘You see what you've done to him?' she demanded. ‘See the state you've driven him to. It's been years since he's been anything like this. Years!'

‘I only asked him––' Paxton began.

‘Why don't you go to your room, Ernie?' Louise Cuthburtson said. ‘Why don't you go to your room, and have a nice lie down.'

‘Will you come and see me?' her brother asked pathetically.

‘Yes, I promise I'll come and see you as soon as I've got rid of our unwanted visitor.'

‘Now just a minute––' Paxton said.

‘Go on, Ernie. Go to your room,' Louise Cuthburtson coaxed.

The man in the silk dressing gown headed towards the door, walking with the shuffling steps of a man twice his age. Paxton considered stopping him, but somehow couldn't quite bring himself to.

The moment her brother had left the room, Louise Cuthburtson turned on the policeman with all the ferocity of a wounded mountain cat.

‘I will not have my brother bullied by an insensitive thug like you,' she spat. ‘You don't know what he's been through. You have no comprehension of how much he's suffered.'

‘Does this have anything to do with why you left England?' Paxton asked.

‘You surely don't think I'm going to answer any more of your questions, do you?' Louise Cuthburtson said incredulously.

‘I'm here on official business and––'

‘And I'm a personal friend of your commissioner. If you don't get out of this house right now, I'll personally see to it that you spend the rest of your career in Inuvik, with only a dog team to keep you company. Am I making myself clear?'

‘You can't talk to me like that,' Paxton protested.

But she already had – and he did not doubt for a minute that she had sufficient influence to see her threat carried through. Though he was almost exploding with frustration and humiliation – though nothing would have given him greater satisfaction than to pistol-whip the bitch – he saw no alternative but to do as Louise Cuthburtson had instructed.

‘I'm going now – but I may be back,' he said, trying to save a little face from this desperate situation.

‘You know where the door is. See yourself out,' Louise told him.

Paxton walked slowly to his car, deep in thought. What had Ernest Cuthburtson done that he claimed hadn't been his fault? the policeman wondered.
Who
was older than him, and should have known better? Was what he'd done the reason that the family moved to Canada? And was he a mental wreck because of what he'd done, or had he only done it – whatever ‘it' was –
because
he was a mental wreck?

The policeman sighed. There were times, he thought, when he wished he really
was
as smart as the cops on
Dragnet
.

W
oodend and Paniatowski were already sitting at their usual table in the Drum and Monkey when Rutter entered the bar. The inspector had already dropped one bombshell that afternoon. Now, from the expression on his face, it looked as if he were about to drop another one.

Rutter pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘There's nothing in Sharpe's case notes about the murder of Marcus Dodds,' he said.

‘Nothing?' Woodend repeated incredulously.

‘Nothing,' Rutter confirmed. I've been through
all
the documentation three times since I got back from Simcaster, and there's not a single mention.'

‘Why are you so surprised?' Monika Paniatowski asked.

‘Shouldn't we be?' Woodend countered.

‘No. Sharpe probably left out anything on Marcus Dodds for the same reason that he made no mention of the two cars which drove down Hebden Brow on the night of Fred Dodds' murder. Because it would have been a distraction – a little annoyance which might threaten to divert attention away from his claim that Margaret Dodds killed her husband.'

‘I know it doesn't seem likely, given the fact that the first murder occurred less than thirty miles from here,' Woodend said tentatively, ‘but perhaps Sharpe didn't even
know
about the Marcus Dodds case.'

Rutter shook his head. ‘He knew, all right.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘Because after I failed to find any mention of Marcus Dodds in Sharpe's records, I had a close look at the transcript of the trial.' Rutter reached into his briefcase and handed Woodend a folder. ‘The relevant part has a blue line in the margin.'

Woodend flicked through the pages until he came to the passage Rutter had marked.

Edward Mottram QC: Were you aware, Chief Inspector Sharpe, that Fredrick Dodds' father, Marcus Dodds, was also murdered?

Sharpe: I was, sir.

Mottram: And not only murdered, but murdered in exactly the same way as his son. Were you aware of
that
?

Sharpe: Yes, sir.

Mottram: And yet it never occurred to you that there might be a connection between the two murders?

Sharpe: No, sir. As far as I can ascertain, Margaret Dodds never met her late father-in-law. And even if she had, I can think of no reason why she should have wanted to murder him.

Mottram: Are you being deliberately obtuse, Chief Inspector?

Sharpe: I'm afraid I don't understand.

Mottram: I was not suggesting that Margaret had killed both Fredrick and Marcus. Rather, I was suggesting that she killed
neither
of them – that both were murdered by a third party as yet unknown, a third party whose preferred method of murder was with a hammer.

Sharpe: Margaret Dodds had the means, the motive and the opportunity. She could provide no alibi for the time her husband was killed, there was blood on her dress and her fingerprints were on the murder weapon. She killed Fredrick Dodds. To suggest anything else is fanciful.

Mottram: Is that so?

Sharpe: Yes.

Mottram: Then can you tell me
why
she used a hammer to kill her husband? Why, of the hundreds of ways available to her, she selected exactly the same weapon as had been used on her late father-in-law?

Sharpe:
Because
it had been used on her father-in-law.

Mottram: I beg your pardon, Chief Inspector.

Sharpe: Because she hoped that by using the hammer she would create exactly the kind of confusion that you are referring to now. Because she hoped that the police would accept the absurd theory that there was a mad hammer killer on the loose, a mad killer who just happened to have a grudge against the Dodds family.

Mottram: And isn't it possible that was, in fact, the case?

Sharpe: Yes. In a ‘whodunnit novel', it's perfectly possible. But I've been a policeman for a long time, and I can tell you that sort of thing doesn't happen in real life.

‘An' that's it?' Woodend asked. ‘That's all there is?'

Rutter shrugged. ‘Not quite. Mottram mentions Fred Dodds' father's murder again in his summing up to the jury, but even just reading it cold, you can tell his heart isn't really in it.'

‘That's not surprising, after the way he'd handled the cross-examination,' Woodend said. ‘If they'd rehearsed it together, Mottram couldn't have done a better job at feeding Sharpe just the lines he wanted to be fed.'

‘Are you suggesting that the defence lawyer made a deliberate hash of the cross-examination?' Monika Paniatowski asked.

Woodend shook his head. ‘No, I don't see any conspiracy here – at least no conspiracy which involved the defence counsel. Mottram was incompetent, rather than corrupt. Sharpe had anticipated all
his
questions, but he simply wasn't prepared for Sharpe's answers.'