If anyone could concoct the undetectable perfect crime, Bernard Knight is surely our man. Maybe I ought to preface the following with “don’t try this at home”.
He laid his binoculars on the window ledge and decided that it was time that he murdered his wife.
Pondering for a few minutes, Lewis Lloyd reviewed the various methods that had been going through his mind for the past few weeks. He had more or less decided on one, the prime considera tion being that he should never be convicted of the crime. There was no doubt that he would be strongly suspected – and if his luck was out, he might even be brought to trial, given their past record of domestic discord.
But found guilty – never!
Having made the decision, Lloyd gave a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to the window. Picking up his glasses again, he trained them at the line of scraggy rowan trees and stunted oaks that rimmed the top of the mountain, high above his hut. He watched a group of magpies strutting about under the trees, until his attention was diverted by a pair of buzzards soaring high over the old coal tip, beyond the ruined lime-kiln.
Lewis Lloyd loved birds and this ramshackle hut was his only refuge from the nagging and abuse that he suffered down in the valley bottom. He often came up early in the morning, or when the pub was shut in the afternoon. Sometimes he even stayed overnight, in winter huddled over the little pot-bellied stove, blissful in his solitude.
Lewis smiled complacently behind his binoculars, thinking that when the deed was done, he could come up even more often, with no Rita to screech objections at him.
Yes, it was high time to put Plan A into action.
“Bloody nonsense!” growled Mordecai Evans, tossing the letter on to his cluttered desk. “We’ve got enough aggravation already without daft women writing us letters.”
“Mind you, boss, that family’s got a bit of previous,” murmured his sergeant, peeved that Mordecai had dismissed his offering in such a cavalier fashion. The detective-inspector, a squat bruiser who could have doubled for John Prescott, scowled up at Willy Williams.
“What previous? A bit of form for couple of domestics?”
“Lloyd broke her arm once – and another time she got a couple of busted ribs,” said Willy defensively. “The beak gave him six months, suspended on account of provocation.”
“Big deal!” sneered the DI. “So we’re supposed to take her seriously, are we?”
He hauled himself to his feet and grabbed the crumpled letter from the desk, going to the window for better light. Though he was reluctant to admit it, he couldn’t see so well these days and a visit to Specsavers was on the cards soon. Peering at the cheap notepaper in the grey light that managed to percolate through the dark clouds looming over Pontypridd, he glowered at the unwelcome message.
“How did you come by this, Willy?”
“Eddie Morgan, the desk sergeant at the nick up in Ton Pentre gave it me yesterday, when I was up there about the break-in at the Co-op.”
“And where did he get it?” grumbled Mordecai, slumping back into his chair.
“Rita Lloyd brought it in a few days ago. Apparently, she bent his ear something terrible, saying her old man was threatening to kill her, so she was making an official complaint.” The detective-sergeant delivered this with some relish. “Eddie said he forgot all about it, knowing what a nutter Rita was – but as I was there, he said he thought he’d better pass it on to us.”
“Oh, Gawd!” sighed Mordecai. “Was she battered and bruised this time?”
“No sign of it, he said. But half-pissed, as usual.”
Wearily, the DI pulled a stack of case folders across the desk towards him. “Well, I haven’t got bloody time to waste on that now. If she comes in with two black eyes, we’ll have a word with her, otherwise it goes in my ‘pending’ file.” He opened the top folder and peered myopically at the first page of endless police bumf, so his sergeant took the hint and sloped off to the canteen for his refreshments.
Ten minutes later, his lanky ginger-haired figure slid back through the door and he came to stand in front of the desk, his knuckles resting on the edge.
“I think you’d better have another read of that letter, boss,” he said in sepulchral tones. “I just had a cup of tea with the coroner’s officer. He happened to mention that Rita Lloyd was found dead yesterday morning!”
“Nothing! What d’you mean, nothing?” demanded Mordecai Evans. “There must be something, for God’s sake!”
On hearing his sergeant’s news, the DI had gone storming downstairs to the little room where the coroner’s officer presided, Willy trailing in his wake. He stood over Jimmy Armstrong, a large, placid man who had been a police officer before he returned after retirement to the same job as a civilian.
Jimmy shook his head sadly. “Sorry, guv, we got nothing. There was a post-mortem this morning and the doc found nothing that could have killed her. He’s kept some samples for analysis, just in case.”
Mordecai brandished Rita’s letter under Armstrong’s nose. “She wrote to us, saying her husband was threatening to kill her, man! Now she’s dead!”
The coroner’s officer shrugged. “Don’t blame me, I’m just the dogsbody round here. Perhaps you’d better have a word with the coroner.”
“Damn right I will,” muttered the detective. “And a few words with the flaming husband as well.” His irritation subsided as the possible consequences of this affair began to sink in. He sat on one of the hard chairs provided for grieving relatives when being interviewed by Armstrong and stared pensively at the coroner’s officer.
“You live in Tonypandy, Jimmy. What’s the gossip on these Lloyds these days?”
Armstrong, whose tweed suit and tidy grey hair made him look like everyone’s favourite uncle, clasped his hands as if in prayer.
“Queer pair, a disaster waiting to happen, I reckon.”
“He still runs the pub? I thought he’d have had the sack, after his run-in with the law,” growled the DI.
“It’s a Free House, he’s not just a manager,” cut in the sergeant. “The Elliot Arms is a bit of a dump, but we don’t get much trouble there. It’s too old-fashioned to attract the yobs, no strippers or live music, just a quiz-night once a week.”
“Why were he and his missus at each other’s throats then?” demanded Mordecai.
Armstrong shrugged his big shoulders. “Incompatible, they are! He’s a quiet sort of bloke, until he gets his rag out, then he’s got a terrible temper. She’s an old slag-booze, bingo and blokes. Rita’ll go for anything in trousers – at least, when she’s sober enough to stand up.”
The DI grunted and hauled himself to his feet. He tapped the letter. “So there might be something in this, eh?”
The coroner’s officer held up his hands defensively. “Don’t ask me, that’s your job. But I’d have a word with my boss first.”
The coroner was a local solicitor who conducted his business from his offices above a shoe shop in Pontypridd’s Taff Street, a few hundred yards from the Divisional Police Headquarters. Mordecai Evans and his sergeant took a walk there, pushing impatiently through the ambling throng in the narrow road, which was the town’s main shopping street.
They turned in at a door on which a worn brass plate declared “Thomas, Evans and Rees – Solicitors” though these gentlemen were long dead and the present senior partner was Mr David Mostyn, Her Majesty’s Coroner for East Glamorgan.