Yesterday's papers

Chapter Twenty-One

‘I came to see you,’ said Clive Doxey, ‘because last night your questions startled me and provoked me into an unwise lie.’

‘And now you propose to make amends?’ asked Harry. He gazed sceptically at the most distinguished visitor ever to fill the client’s chair. ‘Why the sudden change of heart?’

‘Because on reflection I decided you were a man unlikely to take no for an answer, Mr Devlin. Very late last night I telephoned Patrick Vaulkhard at his home and he confirmed my impression. So here I am. Good of you to see me without an appointment.’

Doxey rested his palms on the battered old desk and gave a glimmer of the self-assured smile so familiar from a hundred current affairs programmes. But Harry’s instinctive reaction had always been to switch to the soccer highlights on another channel, and now he sensed that Doxey’s lines were as carefully rehearsed as the we’re-both-men-of-the-world manner. He must be worried, he thought.

‘So you’ve come to tell me that you were involved with Carole Jeffries, after all?’

‘I wonder who gave you that idea?’

‘Someone in whom Carole confided her plan to propose to you on Leap Year Day.’

Doxey closed his eyes for a second before replying. ‘Well I suppose it was foolish for me to deny it. Carole and I did fall for each other. She was only sweet sixteen and I was close on thirty, but that didn’t matter. I wasn’t a dirty old man bent on adultery. I’d been living with a girl who lectured at the Polytechnic, but we’d split up around the Christmas of 1963. I was unattached and ready for a new relationship.’ He gave Harry a direct look. ‘It was nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘Did Guy or Kathleen know you were smitten?’

A shake of the head. ‘They had no idea that we were seeing each other, far less that marriage was a possibility.’

‘And was it?’

‘Yes, your informant was quite correct. On the day Carole died, she did propose to me.’

‘Did you accept?’

Doxey seemed for a moment to measure pros and cons, as if wondering whether a lie would serve him better than the truth. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘I was glad to do so.’

‘So you were keen to marry the girl?’ Harry frowned, uncertain whether to believe what he was being told.

‘I was crazy about her,’ was the calm reply. ‘She had that effect on people, you know. Intoxicating.’

‘And dangerous.’

A brief pause. ‘I suppose you’re right. But on the day of the murder, I told her I felt the time wasn’t right to explain to her parents that we were in love. As it proved, in the end there was never a right time.’

‘Even after her death you said nothing?’

‘It hardly seemed relevant.’ Doxey began to shift around in his chair. He seemed uncomfortable with the admission. ‘They had suffered a dreadful blow. I didn’t think it would help them to learn that their girl had become involved with a friend closer to their age than hers.’

‘And they never guessed?’

‘I did wonder,’ said Doxey, ‘if they might have gained an inkling. After the murder, I sensed that something had died in our relationship also, though nothing was ever put into words.’

‘As if in some way you were to blame for what had happened to Carole?’

‘A ridiculous idea. How could I have been?’

We’ll come back to that, thought Harry. Aloud, he said, ‘I’d like to know more about Carole. Would you mind telling me how the two of you got together?’

Doxey licked his lips. ‘I’d always been fond of her, through all the years I’d been spending time with Guy and planning on how we could change the world. She was a pretty child who soon grew into a gorgeous teenager — and she was a terrible flirt. I’d never thought of her in a sexual way, you’ll have to take my word for that, but after I’d finished with my own girlfriend, I suddenly saw Carole through new eyes. She was more than an attractive little thing who happened to be the daughter of a man I liked and admired. I realised she was a desirable young woman. And all at once — I desired her.’

‘Did she respond?’

‘Oh yes. I started turning up at the house on the flimsiest pretexts. And one day, I found my luck was in. I called unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon, and she told me that both her parents were out but that it was a shame for me to have made a wasted journey and would I like to come in for a cup of coffee? I hardly need go into the details. Suffice it to say that we finished up in bed and I overstayed my welcome so long that I’d barely got my trousers back on by the time Guy and Kathleen returned.’

‘And after that?’

‘We made love at every possible opportunity,’ Doxey said. His tone was defiant, perhaps even, Harry thought, a touch boastful. ‘I will be candid with you — I realised I must be when I decided to talk to you again this morning. She was insatiable: we both were. I didn’t feel as though I was exploiting her. No, I am sure I never exploited her. She was young, I can’t deny it, but she had an old head on her shoulders and she knew what she wanted. I was only glad it was me.’

‘And what about Ray Brill?’

Doxey flapped his hand in a dismissive gesture which sent Harry’s desk tidy spinning to the floor and scattering paperclips all around. ‘He was a passing phase in her life, no more. She’d been bowled over by the idea of going out with a pop singer, she admitted as much to me. He was a charmer, even though he was never going to be a second Paul McCartney. But Carole was no fool. She was much brighter than Brill and she knew that he wasn’t a long-term bet.’

‘Did she realise he might not take the same view?’

‘She didn’t worry about giving him the push. Why should she? For a man like that, there are always plenty of girls around.’

‘I’m told Carole had a secretive streak. Did she relish the intrigue and hiding your love from her parents?’

‘Yes, she did love to be mysterious. It was part of her appeal. But she disagreed with me about keeping our engagement quiet for a while. She was adamant that her parents should be told. We would have needed their consent for a wedding, of course, but I felt it was a question of tackling them sensibly, waiting for an opportune moment. Carole at least agreed with me that, provided he was in the right mood when I tackled him, Guy might be more sympathetic than Kathleen.’

‘Despite his own devotion to his daughter?’

‘If he loved her — as I am sure he did — he must have wanted her happiness most of all.’

‘But you decided not to stay around and broach the subject with him yourself that afternoon?’

Doxey shrugged. ‘You might call it lack of nerve, Mr Devlin but…’

‘And you claim you never saw Carole again after you left the house?’

Doxey’s tone hardened. ‘I did not lurk about, if that is what you are implying, and follow her into Sefton Park.’

‘Did you quarrel about whether or not to break the news to Guy and Kathleen?’

‘Not at all. I cannot say I care for your insinuations, Mr Devlin. I would sooner have killed myself than seen a hair on her head come to any harm.’

‘I accept that you found her attractive,’ said Harry, ‘but I only have your word for it that you agreed to marry Carole. Suppose her proposal horrified you. After all, you were a rising star of the radical left. An affair with the teenage daughter of your closest colleague might have done you untold harm if it had come to light. Perhaps for you it was only a fling.’ He paused deliberately. ‘If you’d turned her down and she then threatened to go public, wouldn’t that have been a motive for murder?’

Doxey’s plump cheeks were drained of all colour and he was gripping the edge of the desk as if in need of support. When he spoke his voice was choked with anger as well, Harry thought, as with a touch of fear. ‘What you suggest, Mr Devlin, is entirely misconceived. I came here this morning in good faith, hoping to clear up last night’s little misunderstanding. I gather you have a reputation for doggedness and I appreciate that even after thirty years, my relationship with Carole might in some quarters still be seen as providing cause for criticism. The press is never happier than when it is questioning the morals of people in the public eye, and I have made one or two enemies over the years. You can embarrass me, I accept, but you have no grounds whatsoever for accusing me of murder.’

‘So you say.’

‘And I can prove it!’ Doxey raised his voice. He was beginning to look his age: still smart and well groomed, but undoubtedly sixty plus.

Harry gave a sceptical nod, confident now that he had unsettled his man. ‘Really? And how can you do that?’

‘A check on my medical records should suffice. You see, Mr Devlin, two days before Carole was killed, my right wrist was put into plaster. I had slipped on ice the previous day and fractured it when I tried to break my fall. On Leap Year Day in 1964, I could no more have strangled Carole Jeffries than made love to her to celebrate our betrothal.’

After Doxey had gone, Harry sat for a while at his desk, with his phone off the hook. His mind was working furiously. At last he felt sure he could see the sequence of events leading up to Carole Jeffries’ death, rather than the blurred image presented by press cuttings and Cyril Tweats’ old file.

He had a sense of events moving towards a crescendo during the first few weeks of 1964. Carole had been reckless. After stealing Shirley’s lover, she had grown tired of him and turned to an older man. Her contempt for Edwin Smith had mirrored her treatment of Ray Brill. The golden girl of shock-horror news coverage had been tarnished by her unrelenting pursuit of pleasure. And what, he wondered, did her parents make of it all — the adoring Guy and the stern Kathleen? How would they have reacted had they learned that their daughter had fallen in love with a family friend, a man almost twice her age?

The press picture of Carole came into his mind. Over the last few days he had come to understand her and now he believed he knew the reason for her death. He had so desperately wanted to know who had strangled her, and why, and now that he had his answers, his principal emotion was sadness rather than satisfaction. With murder, he reminded himself, there were no slick solutions, just the desolate reality of human behaviour as weak as it was wicked.

Soon he was on the road and heading north. As he drove he tossed around various ideas on how he might obtain confirmation for his hypothesis about Carole’s murder, but in the end he decided he must trust to luck. Even as he was parking once more outside the block of flats where Kathleen Jeffries lived, he had no more than a vague plan for persuading her to talk to him. All he could do was make her realise that the truth could not be buried forever. It must be acknowledged: Vera Smith deserved nothing less.

He pressed her bell and when he heard her sharp voice through the entryphone, he said, ‘This is Harry Devlin again. I really do need to talk to you about Carole.’

He could imagine her compressing her lips in cold anger — and, perhaps, apprehension. ‘I have nothing whatever to say to you.’

‘Mrs Jeffries, please listen to me. I know what happened on that Leap Year Day. I know who strangled your daughter. And what’s more, I strongly suspect that you know too.’

‘You’re talking nonsense! This is most offensive — an impertinent intrusion on private property. If you are not away within the next two minutes, I shall not hesitate to call the police.’

‘It won’t do any good,’ said Harry. ‘And besides, the police will need to be told about the mistake they made thirty years ago. Isn’t it better for us to talk?’

‘Why on earth should I wish to talk to you, you foolish young man?’

‘Because,’ said Harry patiently, ‘you have kept a terrible secret for so long and now it’s a secret no more.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But there was no disguising the dismay in the disembodied voice.

‘I think you do, Mrs Jeffries. Let’s face the truth together. We both know that Carole was killed by her own father. Your husband, Guy.’