Wycliffe and How to Kill A Cat

by W.J. Burley

Genres: Mystery; Cozy Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Another classic crime novel featuring Cornwall's Superintendent Wycliffe. The girl was young, with auburn hair arranged on the pillow. Wycliffe could almost believe she was asleep - that is, until he saw her face. She had been strangled, and someone had brutally smashed her face - but after death, not before... She lay in a seedy hotel room down by the docks, but her luggage, her clothes and her make-up all suggested she had more class than her surroundings. Superintendent Wycliffe was officially on holiday, but the case fascinated him. Who was the girl? Why was she lying naked in a shabby hotel room? What was she doing with a thousand pounds hidden underneath some clothing? And, above all, why had someone mutilated her after she was dead? As Wycliffe begins to investigate, he finds there are too many suspects, too many motives - and too many lies . . . Why readers love W.J. Burley: 'First-class, old-time, hyper-ingenious whodunit.' Observer 'You can always count on Wycliffe ... he inevitably guarantees a good story, convincing characters and appealing landscape ' Financial Times 'Wycliffe teases out the truth with delicate skill that leaves the reader intrigued and convinced.' Mail on Sunday 'Gripping.' The Times Fans of Ruth Rendell, Val McDermid and Peter Robinson will love W.J. Burley: 1. Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy 2. Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat 3. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi 4. Wycliffe and Death in a Salubrious Place 5. Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street 6. Wycliffe and the Pea-Green Boat 7. Wycliffe and the School Bullies 8. Wycliffe and the Scapegoat 9. Wycliffe in Paul's Court 10. Wycliffe's Wild Goose Chase 11. Wycliffe and the Beales 12. Wycliffe and the Four Jacks 13. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin 14. Wycliffe and the Winsor Blue 15. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web 16. Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death 17. Wycliffe and the Dead Flautist 18. Wycliffe and the Last Rites 19. Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery 20. Wycliffe and the House of Fear 21. Wycliffe and the Redhead 22. Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine * Each Inspector Wycliffe novel can be read as part of a series or as a standalone*

Release date: December 16, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 168

Sample

Detective Chief Superintendent Wycliffe, Area CID, in a fawn linen jacket, checked shirt and grey slacks, looked even less like a policeman than usual. He had the right, he was on holiday though paying a courtesy call at the local police station.

‘Don’t be all day, Charles!’ Instructions from Helen, his wife.

‘Back to lunch, dear. Promise!’

‘Is Inspector Warren in?’

‘No, sir, afraid not. Can I help?’

Wycliffe introduced himself. ‘A friendly call, sergeant. The inspector and I used to be in the same squad and I thought I would look him up. I’m in the town on holiday.’

Ferocious grin, the best the station sergeant could manage in the way of charm. ‘Inspector Warren has been ill with stomach ulcers for more than a month, sir.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Conversation languished.

‘As you’re from Headquarters, sir, you might like a word with …’

‘No, this is unofficial, sergeant, I expect you’ve got enough to do at this time of year.’

‘Run off our feet, sir.’

And that might have been that, had not a constable appeared from one of the offices, handed the sergeant a slip of paper and murmured something in his ear.

‘Right! Get hold of the police surgeon and send him there. Tell Wilkins to stay with it and I’ll contact Division.’

‘Trouble, sergeant?’ Wycliffe, on the point of leaving, lingered.

‘Woman found dead in a hotel bedroom, sir. They called in one of our chaps from a patrol car and he’s just radioed in.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Our man thinks there’s a good reason to suspect foul play.’

‘You mean that the woman has probably been murdered?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then why not say so?’

The sergeant said nothing.

Wycliffe hesitated, then plunged. ‘I’ll take a look, where is it?’

‘Marina Hotel, Dock Crescent, sir. It’s a bit of a dump, they cater for merchant seamen mainly. We had trouble there once before.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘Seaman stabbed a tart, sir. A year or two back that was. I believe the place has changed hands since then.’

‘Right! You get on to Division, tell them I’m on the spot and ask them not to roll out the waggon until they hear from me.’

‘You’ll want a car, sir.’

‘I’ve got one.’

Outside the sun was shining. They were queueing for the beach buses, mothers with bulging picnic bags, kids trailing plastic spades, girls in brief summer dresses and some playsuits conscientiously displaying their navels. The superintendent in holiday attire was not out of place, but he attracted curious glances as he crossed the square to the car park. Perhaps it was because he looked pleased with life. Few people do, or are. In fact he was humming a little tune; he caught himself doing it and wondered. The reason for his complacency would scarcely bear examination. True, it was warm and sunny; true, he was on holiday, but it was not these things, it was the prospect of a case which made him sing. He felt in his bones that he was at the beginning of a case which he would remember, one which would go into the books. To be brutally frank then, he was happy because a woman lay dead in a sleazy hotel bedroom. Did he delight in crime? Surely a vicarious pleasure in vice must be at least as reprehensible as indulgence?

He got into his nice new shining black Zodiac and eased his way into the line of traffic. He was secretly proud of his car though Helen said that it was a trifle vulgar. He liked to cruise slowly, almost silently, aware of the power he had boxed up, waiting only for the gentle pressure of his foot. In fact, he had the Rolls mentality without the Rolls pay packet.

Now he had to crawl through the impossibly narrow main street where a carelessly parked wheelbarrow can snarl everything up. Then the shops thinned and he was running along by the harbour with a row of large, terraced Victorian houses on his right. Just before he came to the docks some of the houses were calling themselves hotels and one of these was the Marina. A couple of tired looking Dracaenas in a weedy patch of gravel and a rusted slatted iron seat. The stucco was peeling off the pillars of the porch and a snake of Elastoplast sealed over a crack in the plate-glass of the swing doors. Constable Wilkins was waiting for him in the vestibule.

‘The sergeant telephoned to expect you, sir.’

‘Doctor arrived yet?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Second floor, sir, a little passage off the landing leads to the extension. It’s the door on your left at the end of the passage.’

Wycliffe grunted. ‘Wait there, send the doctor up when he comes. What about the inmates?’

‘I’ve told them to stay in their rooms, sir. Most of them are out anyway.’

The staircase had some elegance of design but the carpet was so threadbare that pattern and texture had long since disappeared. Paper peeled off the walls and a faint sickly odour suggested dry rot. But the place seemed reasonably clean. He braced himself for what he might find. After twenty years in the force he was still not shockproof. He could have asked the constable but that was not his way, he liked to form his own impressions from the very start.

As he turned on the first landing to tackle the next flight, he made up his mind that the woman would be fortyish, fleshy, blonde and strangled. She would be lying in a tangle of bedding staring up at the ceiling, fish eyed, her face and neck heavily cyanosed. He had seen it all before. This place was a likely hunting ground for whores and if one of the sisterhood got herself murdered it was ten to one on strangulation, frenzied and brutal.

But he was wrong in most of his surmises.

The figure on the double bed was that of a girl, twenty-one or two at most. Slim, petite, she lay on her back, sprawled across the bed. She was naked but, though her posture was suggestive enough, there was something innocent and virginal about her. Her auburn hair was splayed on the pillow, golden in the sunshine, and it was easier to believe her asleep than dead – until he saw her face. Her face, turned towards the wall and hidden by her hair, had been battered. Without disturbing the body it was difficult to determine the extent and nature of her injuries but Wycliffe noticed at once that the amount of swelling and bruising was disproportionately small for the bone damage which had been done. The upper lip and an area round the left eye were encrusted with dried blood but there was no sign of a free flow. Wycliffe was no doctor but he had seen enough of violent death to know the probable answer to that one. The odds were that the facial injuries had been inflicted after death. In which case, how had she died? Perhaps the initial blow had killed her but it seemed unlikely. Would she have lain there waiting to be clubbed? Not unless she was asleep. But she was lying naked on top of the bed clothes …

Wycliffe bent closer to examine the neck and found what he half expected, a tale-telling bluish tinge below the surface of the skin and a faint bruising on either side of the trachea above the larynx. She had been strangled, but by someone who had restrained the impulse to unnecessary violence – or never known it. And that was odd in view of what must have followed. What sort of nut would strangle a girl with such finesse, then smash her face in?

But he was running ahead of himself, time enough to speculate when he had the views of the experts.

He looked round the room – a back room. The window, which had its top sash wedged open an inch or two, looked on to a small yard and a railway cutting beyond with the back gardens of a row of houses on the other side. An iron fire escape crossed diagonally just below the window. There were net blinds but the Regency striped curtains would not draw. The carpet was worn through in places and of no discernible pattern. A built-in clothes cupboard with a full length mirror in the door, a dressing table, an upholstered chair with loose stuffing – these, with the bed, made up the furniture. The girl’s underclothes were strewn over the chair and a sleeveless frock in gay op-art material hung from a hanger hooked over the picture rail. A nightdress and a quilted dressing-gown lay in a heap on the floor by the bed. A white pig-skin travelling case, elegant and incongruous, stood by the dressing table which was littered with expensive looking cosmetics. Among the bottles and jars he noticed a few items of jewelry, a pair of earrings, a garnet bracelet and a silver clip with another red stone inset. He looked at everything but touched nothing.

He went out on to the landing when he heard footsteps on the stairs. The police surgeon, tall, slim, immaculate in pepper and salt suiting, iron-grey hair faultlessly parted, and bifocals. A questioning glance at Wycliffe’s informal dress.

‘Chief Superintendent Wycliffe? Dr Rashleigh. Where is she?’

‘As little disturbance as possible if you please, doctor.’

A faint lift of the eyebrows. ‘We must assume that we know our respective jobs, superintendent.’

‘Perhaps. But don’t move her!’ Wycliffe snapped. Pompous ass! He went downstairs; doctors always put him in a bad temper. ‘Constable!’

‘Sir?’

‘Radio information room for the murder squad, pathologist, forensic – the lot. Then find the proprietor.’

While he waited, Wycliffe opened a door labelled Lounge. A large front room with a bay window which could have been pleasant. Several upholstered armchairs in varying styles and stages of decay, an octagonal table in veneered wood of revolting aspect, a nickel-plated flower stand and plastic flowers. A black iron grate stuffed with crinkly red paper and an overmantle with fairground ornaments. The room reeked of stale tobacco. They would need somewhere to interview witnesses and this would have to be it. He decided to ask for some kitchen chairs to spite possible fleas.

The proprietor was a little man, bald on top with a fringe of grey hair. He was thin except for his paunch, which he carried low. He was smoking a home-made cigarette and his lips were stained yellow. A near down-and-out like his premises, but he had lively brown eyes which missed nothing.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Ernest Piper.’

Wycliffe lowered himself on to the arm of one of the chairs. ‘Who is she, Mr Piper?’

The little man raised a hand to his ear and stroked the lobe. ‘According to the register she’s Mrs Slatterly. Address given, W1.’

‘When did she arrive?’

‘Sunday evening, she’s been here three nights.’

‘Alone?’

He nodded. ‘She said she was waiting for her husband to join her.’

‘And did he?’

‘Not to my knowledge, he didn’t.’

‘Had she booked in advance?’

‘Telephone call the day before to reserve a double for three or four nights.’

‘Not a common experience for you.’

Piper put in some more time fiddling with his ear. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

The superintendent took out his pipe and began to fill it. He was entering into the spirit of the thing, beginning to get its flavour. ‘I mean that you don’t get many bookings, certainly not from husbands and their wives.’

A slow grin revealing blackened teeth. ‘I don’t have to draw pictures for you, do I?’

‘What was your impression of her when she arrived?’

‘Classy. Pretty too, a real eye catcher. Pity she got spoilt like that. To be frank, I couldn’t make out what she was doing in a place like this …’ He hesitated then added in a burst of confidence, ‘Look, superintendent, I got nothing to hide in this business and I hope you’ll bear in mind that I’m being frank.’

Wycliffe struck a match and lit his pipe, puffing great clouds of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘We’ll see. Did she have any visitors?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘Which doesn’t take us very far.’

Piper shrugged. ‘Well, you know how it is.’

‘Did she go out much?’

‘I passed her in the hall a few times. In any case she had to go out for food, we don’t do meals other than breakfast.’

‘Any mail?’

‘One letter waiting for her when she arrived.’

‘Postmark?’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘Who found her this morning?’

‘Kathy, the girl who does the rooms.’

‘When?’

Piper looked at his watch, a silver turnip which he took from a pocket in his unbuttoned waistcoat. ‘About an hour ago. Say half nine. Kathy came to me in the kitchen and said, “I think something’s happened to the girl in fifteen. I think she’s dead.”’

‘Just like that.’

Piper nodded. ‘Just like that, Kathy don’t scare all that easy.’

‘Then?’

‘I went up to take a look.’ He relit his cigarette which had gone out.

‘Touch anything?’

He shook his head. ‘Only her – just to see if she had really croaked. I didn’t see her face at first. Of course she’d been dead several hours, I should think.’

‘You know about such things?’

‘I seen a bit.’

‘How long since you were last inside?’

A moment of reflection. ‘Must be all of ten years.’

‘Immoral earnings?’

He nodded. ‘No violence though. I never been done for violence.’

Wycliffe noted and approved the precision of statement. The two men smoked placidly in complete accord.

‘She was no trollop, super.’

Wycliffe sighed. ‘They all have to start.’

The doctor interrupted them, shirt-sleeved and peevish, ‘I suppose there is somewhere I can wash in this place?’

‘Down the passage on the right, doctor, I’ll show you.’ Courtesy and service à la Marina! Wycliffe chuckled. He felt better and better. It wasn’t crime which gave him pleasure, it was people. He made himself comfortable in the armchair. To hell with fleas!

Dr Rashleigh came back alone. ‘I suppose you have notified the pathologist?’

‘Of course! Perhaps you will be good enough to look in again when he is here?’

‘Very well!’ Rashleigh was still stuffy. ‘But you may wish to hear my preliminary conclusions?’

Pretentious bastard! ‘Certainly, doctor.’

Rashleigh smoothed his tie (Greyhounds 1934). ‘I don’t want to be too specific, but I think I may say that death was probably due to strangulation. The indications of asphyxia are slight and though there are marks on the neck they are faint.’ He squinted up at the ceiling through his bifocals as though reading his lines there and mumbled something about ‘vagal inhibition’. Then he went on, ‘The facial injuries were almost certainly inflicted after death. As to time of death, I would say that she has been dead from eight to twelve hours.’

‘Between ten and two, then?’

‘That would certainly agree with my preliminary findings, superintendent. If I were pressed I should incline towards the earlier time.’

‘Very helpful, doctor. Anything else?’

Rashleigh hesitated. ‘The girl was not a virgin, superintendent.’

Big deal! Surely he must know if anybody did that virginity beyond the age of twenty is a wasting asset?

‘In fact, certain signs lead me to suppose that sexual intercourse probably took place shortly before death.’

‘Not after?’

Rashleigh looked flustered. ‘I’m not in a position to answer that question on the evidence I have seen.’

Surely the old goat must realize that it mattered! Never mind, the pathologist would see to all that.

When the divisional inspector arrived with his squad he found Wycliffe alone. He was standing beside the window, staring out at the docks. Born and reared and having lived most of his life in the Midlands, the sea and all that pertained to it fascinated him. Those tankers with their ugly grey hulls had probably rounded the Cape not so long ago on their way from some sun-scorched oil port in the Gulf…

Inspector Fehling coughed. He had not previously met the chief superintendent, who was a comparative newcomer to the area. His first impression was unfavourable and the inspector set great store by his first impressions. Wycliffe did not even look like a policeman, it was difficult to believe that he was tall enough and he seemed almost frail. A teacher, some kind of academic, perhaps a parson, but never a policeman.

‘Inspector Fehling, sir.’

‘How do you spell it?’

‘F – E – H …’

‘Ah, the solution, not a lack of success.’

‘Sir?’

‘Fehling’s solution – Prussian blue stuff they used to use to test urine. Never mind, an unusual name, Inspector.’

‘So they tell me. Now, do I have your permission to go ahead, sir?’

Wycliffe smiled as though at a secret joke. ‘By all means. The pathologist should be here at any minute and the forensic people will be on their way. Let me know if you find anything – I shall be here.’ When Fehling reached the door he called him back. ‘Mr Fehling, I object to working in the middle of a circus – no cars outside this building. They must park on the car park down the street; and no uniformed men in evidence …’

Fehling was shocked. ‘But there are several of our vehicles out there now …’

‘Then please get them moved – damn quick!’

When Fehling was gone Wycliffe returned to the window. Delegation is a magic word. When you ha. . .