Bright Young Things Read online

  ‘While it’s true he might not attack you from behind and break your shoulder, I put very little else past him. And before you ask, no, I’ve no evidence for that. He’s just not a man I like, or am comfortable being close to, or who I believe for one instant is anything like his public face.’

  ‘I will be careful,’ Henry promised her.

  ‘Don’t just say the words, Henry – mean them. I think you might be interested in his manservant, or friend, or whatever you want to call him. He employs a man called Victor Mullins and, while I had no reason to call him to mind before, of course, it now seems to me that Victor Mullins would be a good match for the man on the beach. He’s a big man, well over six feet tall and built like an oak door. Old Mr Caxton employed him as a general factotum and the son has done the same.’

  ‘And what do you know about this Victor Mullins?’

  ‘Not a great deal. He drives for the Caxtons. Old Mr Caxton used a wheelchair for the last few years of his life and I think Mr Mullins helped with that, and with lifting and general assistance. But it was more than that. I called him a factotum and I think that is an accurate description. I believe he was a boxer at one time, and of course he served in the Great War and it may have been there that he met Ben, but I can’t be sure.’

  It was food for thought. The conversation moved to other things, to the children and to Albert and to the weather down in Bournemouth which looked to be improving.

  When he had asked Cynthia about Ben Caxton he had been looking for just a little background information, a generalized opinion of the man and his status. But it struck him that it was very unusual for Cynthia to be so vehement in her disapproval of anyone. He wondered what this Caxton had done to upset her so much. Suddenly Caxton had gone from a name written on a slip of paper to a real possibility in terms of the investigation and the direction it might take next.

  Evening brought news – unexpected news. A telephone call from the Central Office told Henry that Caius Moran had finally agreed to speak with them. They were to take the train to Brighton and Moran had arranged for a car to collect them from the station and bring them to his estate on the South Downs. A message had been sent to Sergeant Hitchens and they would meet at the railway station at ten a.m. the following morning.

  His colleague at Central Office warned him that Moran seemed far more interested in how quickly the police could arrange for the body of the young woman to be exhumed and out of the family grave she currently occupied than about helping with their enquiry, but at this point, Henry considered, anything that gave them access to Caius Moran was useful and he would settle for that.

  ELEVEN

  Faun, December

  Sometimes he allows me to go downstairs to his study. Sometimes to have a bath. I welcome those occasions so much that I take care to behave – so that I am seen to deserve them.

  Downstairs, it is safe. Up in that little room it is not. Oh, Pat, he comes to me at night, sometimes alone but often with that bastard friend of his. And he hurts me so. He takes pleasure in my pain. He is never satisfied unless he leaves me in tears and in pain.

  But I will not think of that now.

  He lets me go downstairs for a little while. I try to be interested in what he is doing. I try to make him like me, to behave towards me as he used to do. When he was kind and told me that he loved me. That we would be married. That all changed once he brought me here after the party.

  Pat, to think I would once have welcomed that. I had such romantic notions. But that was just so much bunkum. He told me what he knew I would want to hear and I just lapped it up.

  He was messing with that microscope of his. He showed it to me once, when he was still treating me like a human being. He showed it to me and I confess I was not much interested. There was too much of the schoolroom about it and I had endured enough of the schoolroom. But this time I asked him to show me. I fawned upon him and I flattered and though I don’t know if he was taken in, he showed me the slides he had made with blood and hair and cells taken from his cheeks, or so he said. And I told him how clever he was and how wonderful it all seemed. And while he was turned momentarily away I slipped one of his unused slides into my pocket.

  I think I imagined using it as a weapon. I had imagined how brave I could be, cutting at his face or his remaining eye, but what good would that do me? He locks the door to the hidden stair each and every time we pass through. If I could leave my room I could not get further than the bottom of the staircase and no one would hear me, I’m sure of that, no matter how hard I banged upon the door or how loudly I should scream. The staircase sounds like a dead room.

  But I had one little victory. I managed to snatch a glimpse of a newspaper and I saw the date. I know now that today is the fifteenth of December. I know when I came here – so long ago. Oh, God, Pat, so long ago – and I can use my little scrap of glass to mark the floor beneath my bed as each day passes.

  Though what good that’s going to do me I can’t say.

  Tuesday 14 January

  The journey down had been uneventful. The car collected them and delivered them to the Moran estate. The house was a strangely castellated affair that would not have looked out of place on a Hollywood film set, Mickey thought. It had been created to look antique but apparently had been built only in the last ten years. ‘Someone knows how to spend money,’ Mickey commented.

  The house was raised above the surrounding formal gardens and the entranceway designed to be imposing. Doors that must be ten feet high, Mickey reckoned, and almost as broad, heavy and panelled and carved with grotesque masks. They were admitted to a surprisingly small, square hallway, stairs rising up ahead, doors to either side. The butler led them up the stairs and to the right and into a major reception room with windows all along one wall giving a view out on to the Downs.

  The butler left them and Henry predictably wandered over to the fire while Mickey went to look out of the windows. The view was spectacular, the day was clear and Mickey could glimpse the sea in the distance. Caius Moran did not keep them waiting for long and he was not alone; with him was a man he introduced as his lawyer, Mr Merrifield. Moran waved them into seats in a corner of the room away from the fire. Merrifield sat down, but Moran, obviously agitated, paced or stood and threw his arms about like, Mickey thought, some ham tragedian. Mickey had expected a larger man but Moran was quite small, though stockily built and Mickey was reminded of a bull terrier but without the personality.

  ‘How did this happen?’ Moran demanded. ‘Your people told me that my daughter was dead, and now it seems she was not, that the corpse now residing in our family vault has nothing to do with me or mine. And my daughter is now unequivocally dead, I suppose there is no mistake this time.’

  Moran had ignored Mickey and so he decided he would remain silent for the moment. He recognized his boss’s expression, the cold, grey, river pebble eyes and stiffened jaw and knew that Henry had taken an instant disliking to their host. The last time Henry had taken a dislike to someone it had not ended well, Mickey reminded himself. His boss had taken trouble to demonstrate how powerful his right hook could be. Mickey prepared himself for intervention should things turn nasty, and in the meantime just sat back to watch the show.

  ‘You know full well there is no mistake,’ Henry told him coldly. ‘And if you had permitted a post-mortem to have taken place after the car crash I have no doubt the truth would have been exposed at that point. We would all have known that the young woman who died was not your child, that she was someone else’s daughter, someone else’s loss.’

  Mickey noticed that Merrifield shot an anxious look at his client and that Moran’s face was growing darker and redder by the second.

  ‘And if your people had carried out a proper investigation in the first place, a post-mortem would not be necessary, this business would have been resolved, and—’

  ‘And the chances are your daughter would still be dead,’ Henry said. ‘The young woman in the car was destined to have bee
n burnt, her body destroyed, the evidence that she was not Miss Faun Moran destroyed. The intention was to deceive. Whether the intention at that point was also to murder your child, we do not yet know, but the intention undoubtedly was to keep her from you and for you to believe her dead.’

  Moran laughed harshly. ‘What purpose would have been served by that?’

  ‘That is another question I seek to answer.’

  ‘Really. And you expect to succeed in that, do you? Excuse my lack of faith. Your original investigation was a mockery.’

  ‘It was not my investigation. Had it been I do not doubt that the truth would have emerged. But the fact is, the simple fact is, that officers were called to what looked like an accident and nothing more suspicious than that. And the second fact is that pressure was brought to bear from your family and from Mr Everson’s family to clear the matter up very quickly and quietly and discreetly. It was made known that no scandal was to be attached to the matter, that it was to be kept as much out of the newspapers as possible, and the whole matter brushed away as quickly and unobtrusively as could be managed.’

  Mickey raised an eyebrow. They had absolutely no proof that this was the case though it was a solid enough assumption. Moran, however, seemed to believe that Henry was in possession of the facts. He halted in his pacing and turned to stare at Chief Inspector Johnstone. ‘Take that tone with me and I’ll report you to your superiors.’

  Henry nodded. ‘As you wish. But the fact is that your daughter is dead and that I am now leading the investigation into her death and I will get to the bottom of the matter. So I suggest that if you have information to give me you do so. And as to the poor young woman who has found her way into your family vault, I have arranged for the exhumation to take place, the body to be collected and taken away. A post-mortem will be carried out, so that whatever truth escaped the investigation last year will not escape us again.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about her; I want to know what happened to my daughter.’

  ‘I don’t yet have the report from the surgeon, but the post-mortem will undoubtedly add to our knowledge and you will be informed. As to not caring what happened to this other poor young woman, Mr Moran, I have no doubt but that the fate of one is linked to the fate of the other, and the more we can discover about one the more you will discover about the other. I would also have you know that while you may not care, I care and my sergeant cares, as do all of the other officers that will be involved with this investigation. We will do all we can to give this girl a name and an identity and return her to her own people. Someone else is missing a child, a daughter. Somehow the death of this girl is linked to the death of your own child but one is not more important than the other. Both are tragic and both will command my full attention.’

  Mickey felt like applauding but supposed that would not be the best response. Moran’s face was beetroot now and Mickey wondered idly if he might explode and how much mess that might make. Moran made a point of looking at his wristwatch and then at his lawyer. He pointed at Henry, jabbing his finger, though wisely, Mickey thought, keeping his distance.

  ‘You’ll deal with Merrifield. Give him your documentation; he will facilitate the removal.’

  ‘And what if I want other information?’

  ‘Then you’ll ask Merrifield,’ Moran snapped. He turned on his heel and left the room. It was as though a storm cloud had departed and the sunlight come back through the windows.

  Henry took out his notebook and removed a loose page which he handed to the lawyer. ‘These are the details I need,’ he said. ‘Information that is relevant to the investigation. I will need to know how to contact you if I have other requirements. May I leave it to you to liaise with the undertakers? I’m sure it will please all involved if the removal of the body takes place quickly and quietly.’

  Merrifield looked through the list and then nodded. ‘If you could wait here for half an hour I can get the names and addresses you want,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll arrange for the car to drive you back to Brighton. I imagine you will want to take the first available train back to London this afternoon.’

  ‘Actually I think we will take the train to Bournemouth,’ Henry said when Merrifield had gone. ‘It’s too late in the day to do anything else of use, we may as well stay the night at Cynthia’s and travel back in the morning. The post-mortem report on Faun Moran should have arrived by the time we get there and, if Mr Merrifield can give us the information we require, we can interview the two young women that Miss Moran shared her lodgings with tomorrow afternoon.’

  Merrifield was back within the half hour with the information Henry required and told them that the car was waiting.

  ‘And that was something of a wasted trip, I think,’ Mickey said. ‘For all the help that Moran was. We could have spoken to his lawyer on the telephone. They didn’t even offer us a cup of tea,’ he added, aggrieved.

  ‘I wanted to see the man himself,’ Henry said. ‘To make my own judgement about him.’

  Mickey smiled; he didn’t bother to ask what that judgement was.

  Evening found them at Cynthia’s, where the welcome was much warmer and Mickey, now fed and watered to his great satisfaction, extended his feet and legs towards the fire and folded his hands across his waistcoated belly. ‘I don’t think much of Mr Moran,’ he told Cynthia. ‘Though we like his daughter.’

  ‘Pat is a good egg,’ Cynthia agreed. ‘And the elder brother is a nice enough man. He is less under his father’s thumb now than he was, and I think he’s improved as a result of that. So, did you find out anything useful? Could Mal tell you anything more?’

  ‘He remembers very little,’ Henry told her. ‘He reminded me of young men suffering from shell-shock, that same detachment and inability to face their own memories. I don’t think he’s lying; I think he genuinely does not remember what took place. We have almost reached the conclusion that he was drugged in some way.’

  ‘Drugged? Is that why he went off the road?’

  ‘It’s possible he wasn’t even driving,’ Mickey told her. ‘He remembers feeling ill and that Faun Moran suggested that she take over the driving but he doesn’t recall whether or not that happened.’

  ‘It’s also looking increasingly possible that no one was actually driving when the car went over the edge,’ Henry added. ‘It’s increasingly possible that the entire incident was staged to make it look as though an accident had taken place. A local farmer heard the car as it rolled down the slope and came on the scene very rapidly. It was natural for him to assume he had also heard the car trying to brake before it went over the edge, but no skid marks were ever reported on the road, and while I believe that DI Shelton made only a cursory investigation of the scene, having met one of the young officers involved I am of the opinion that the local police would have reported skid marks on the road had they been there. The inference was that Malcolm Everson did not try to brake and he failed to make the bend and instead continued straight off the road and down into the valley. A very steep valley, I might add.’

  ‘And the fire.’ Mickey picked up the story. ‘We were given to believe that the car had burst into flames when it hit the bottom and that the young woman had been consumed by the flames. We’ve no doubt that had things gone to plan that’s exactly what would have happened, but for the intervention of the local farmer, Mr Carter and his son-in-law, who came to the rescue and put out the flames. They then sent for the doctor and the police. If they hadn’t been there then things might have turned out very differently.’

  ‘You are telling me,’ Cynthia frowned, ‘that perhaps Malcolm Everson and Faun Moran were brought to that spot, that their car was then pushed over the cliff, that Malcolm’s body was dumped as though it had fallen from the car and whoever this young woman was, her body was then set on fire in the hope that … Well, presumably in the hope that it would cover up another crime. The murder of this girl, I suppose. But how would Faun fit into such a conspiracy? You can’t for one moment think sh
e was complicit?’

  ‘That’s something else we can’t be sure of, not yet,’ Henry told her. ‘What we know so far is that the car went over the cliff edge, that Malcolm Everson was certainly badly hurt, either while he was still in the car or perhaps when he tumbled over the cliff edge. That there was a young woman, whose identity we do not yet have, found at the scene and an attempt had been made to burn her body and to burn the car. Those are the facts, as we currently know them. Interpretation of those findings is still not quite possible. However, when we have the post-mortem report on Faun Moran and the post-mortem is carried out on this other young woman, I believe things will become a little clearer.’

  ‘She’s been six months in her grave,’ Cynthia objected. ‘Well in a grave, as it turns out, poor child, it’s not her own, is it. What condition will the body be in?’

  ‘Not good, I would guess. She has been inside a coffin, inside a mausoleum. It is very possible that the body will be still in a state where a post-mortem will tell us how she died, and if she was still alive when the fire began. Anyway, something might be discovered that is of use to us. I would dearly like to know who she is and it’s possible that dental records might still be of some use, even though the face and head were severely damaged. We weren’t meant to know; whoever dumped her body went to a great deal of trouble to conceal the identity. And if our farmer, Mr Carter, is correct, then someone deliberately set out to smash her features so badly that identification was impossible.’

  ‘That’s a terrible thought, Henry. It’s callous. I can’t believe that Caius Moran did not want a post-mortem carried out at the time. Surely that would have saved everybody a lot of trouble?’

  ‘In retrospect it would have done, but at the time it was assumed to have been a tragic accident and neither family wanted more scandal attached than was inevitable. If we’re being charitable, which I’m inclined not to be where Moran is concerned, the family simply wanted to grieve in private and Malcolm Everson’s family was simply so shocked they too wanted to retreat from the reality of it all. So they removed him to the sanatorium where he was out of sight and out of mind, I suppose. It seems only his sister Violet bothers to visit.’