The Murder Book Page 24

  Henry asked about the incident with the wine and found that it was one of several. ‘There was a lady who got champagne down her dress – that wasn’t so bad because champagne don’t stay the same way. Then there was a gentleman who got whiskey on his jacket and we sponged it off and gave him his jacket back, then there was the man with the red wine he got down his blazer. Dark blue it was, with shiny buttons on. But he just took it off, tossed it to one side and said it didn’t matter. And to leave it alone.’

  ‘And you think this might have been Mr Charles May?’

  ‘Not if he was a younger gentleman, no. This was an older gentleman with grey hair.’ She leaned a little closer to Henry. ‘To be truthful, he’d been drinking so much I don’t think he knew where he was or even if he’d got a jacket.’

  Henry sighed. This, he thought, was a waste of time.

  A few minutes later Mickey came to find him.

  ‘I’ve been speaking to one of the gardeners,’ Mickey said. ‘The chauffeur had driven the family down south, but the gardener says that on the night of the party what was happening was the cars were all parked around in the back field. The owner of the house didn’t want his lawns messing up and it seems he didn’t trust his guests to park. So his chauffeur and a couple of the others were given the job of moving the cars round the back then fetching them around again when people were ready to go. The gardener reckons there were maybe twenty cars or more parked up on the same field so anyone would have had access, and with the amount of noise that was going on he reckons no one would have heard a thing. They’d got a string quartet playing in the marquee and two gramophones blaring from the house. Later on someone fetched one of the gramophones out on to the terrace, so you can imagine the racket.’

  ‘But anyone leaving would have been seen, surely, from the front of the house? Presumably at least one of the chauffeurs would have been left on duty in case anybody wanted to get their vehicle.’

  ‘Ah,’ Mickey said. ‘But I’ve got a solution to that one. You need to come and look.’

  Henry followed Mickey out to the back of the house and down to the side of the walled garden. The gravel drive took an extra curve around here and led into what had been a stable yard. Beyond that was an open field. This was where the vehicles had been parked on the night of the party.

  A young man was waiting by the gate and they followed him across the field to another gate. ‘Follow this’n round,’ he told them, pointing to a rutted track. ‘She brings you back on to road.’

  Mickey thanked him and the gardener took himself off. ‘Have you followed the path yet?’ Henry asked.

  ‘I waited for you. Shall we?’

  Henry led the way. The path was narrow and rutted and in places high hedges rose on both sides. There was evidence that something had broken off the thin branches. ‘It would scratch the car,’ Henry observed. ‘But probably not that badly. The owner might not have noticed it at once.’

  ‘Especially not if they’d been drinking or were hungover,’ Mickey agreed. ‘But it seems to me, just to be certain of him not being found out, May would need to know who was staying overnight and whose car he could safely borrow. And it would need to be a smaller vehicle, which narrows things down even more.’

  Unexpectedly the path broadened out and the road was just ahead of them. Neither Henry nor Mickey were quite sure what road they were on, but that could be easily established by asking the gardener.

  ‘So this opens up a new set of possibilities,’ Henry said. ‘A new vehicle to look for witnesses to.’

  ‘And the housekeeper will have a list of overnight guests.’

  They turned and walked back towards the house.

  By the time they left they had a list of those who had been planning to stay overnight and also those who had remained as impromptu guests. There were twelve in all, and on the list was also the registration number and make of car. The chauffeurs had been required to write the names of the guests and which car was theirs on a list just to make things easier on the night. And they had one small snippet of information in addition to this: the gardener recalled one of the chauffeurs being puzzled.

  ‘Boss had allowed us all some beer,’ he said, ‘so we all sat around drinking and chatting and the chauffeurs went to fetch the cars as they were needed. One time one came back and said that he was sure he’d parked another way, but when he went to fetch the car it was pointing towards the house and not towards the hedge. We wanted to know how much beer he’d had but he said it had been no more’n a pint.’

  Dr Fielding drove them round to where the track came out on to the road. It was clear that his own car would not fit but something smaller would. Something like an Austin or a Sunbeam might fit the bill and, looking at the list, Henry narrowed his search down to a possible three. The car the chauffeur had been puzzled over was an Austin seven, and thinking about the car that Ted drove – same make if not exactly the same model – Henry was pretty certain that it could have been driven through the gate and down the narrow track.

  Driving back to Louth, he finally began to feel that they might be getting somewhere.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Heath House was two miles outside of Boston and the owner of the car in question was Melissa Heath, sister to Toby Heath, both of whom had been at the party that midsummer night. Henry had spoken to them both on the telephone and the following morning he and Mickey had caught the train and gone down to Boston. Toby Heath met them in his car and drove them back to the house.

  ‘Sis loves to drive,’ he said. ‘I have to say,’ he laughed a little uncertainly, ‘I like to have myself a drink and she says I don’t drive well when I’ve had a drink or two. And like all women, she fusses. And so, if we go anywhere like that, nine times out of ten Melissa drives. This brute is far too big for her so we went out in hers that night.’

  ‘And you stayed overnight? You had been intending to?’

  Toby Heath laughed again. ‘Too busy drinking and dancing and having fun, old man. Didn’t notice the passage of time, you might say. Next thing we know the sun is coming up. So I crash on some sofa, in the billiard room, I think, just for an hour or so. Don’t know where Melissa took herself off to. Have to ask her that.’

  ‘And what time did you leave?’

  ‘Ah, it would have been just before eight, I think.’

  ‘And when you left did you notice anything unusual about the car? Scratches to the doors, perhaps?’

  Toby turned to stare at Henry, taking his eyes off the road for what felt like a dangerously long time. ‘How the devil did you know that? Melissa was furious and tried to blame the man who’d done the parking for us, but like I pointed out to her, she couldn’t be absolutely certain that it happened on that night. Melissa drives like a mad woman sometimes, takes the corner so tight she takes half the hedge with her. Anyway, it didn’t seem worth making a fuss over.’

  Mickey had brought the camera with him and spent some time photographing the car and also the damage to the doors and sides. The scratches were not deep but were consistent with being driven along the narrow pathway, the hedge catching on either side. On its own that meant nothing. But Henry felt that it was another link in the chain.

  Melissa stood beside Henry and watched as Mickey took his pictures.

  ‘Do you know Charles and Celia May?’ Henry asked her.

  ‘Only casually. We’re part of the same crowd, I suppose.’ She smiled at Henry again. ‘We’ve heard all about what you’ve been doing, though. You’ve been making a lot of waves, Mr Policeman. A lot of very big waves.’

  ‘It’s difficult to do my job without upsetting someone,’ Henry said. ‘Is he well liked?’

  A little moue of disgust answered that one. ‘He seems pleasant enough,’ she said. ‘But he has, shall we say, a bit of a reputation. Celia has, I’m told, threatened to leave him two or three times already.’

  ‘Do you think she will now?’

  ‘I thought she already had.’ She tipped her head to
one side. ‘From what I hear, Celia May and her children have taken themselves off to Nice. Her father has a property there. I hear,’ she leant in closer to Henry, ‘that there are lawyers involved.’

  ‘And what do you think will happen?’

  She shrugged delicately. ‘I imagine Celia’s father will make him an offer and the marriage will be quietly dissolved. He’ll get a settlement, I suppose. That’s unless’ – a small, sideways look at him – ‘you arrest him first, of course.’ She laughed then, as though this was an impossibility.

  ‘And do you think he could be guilty?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘How on earth would I know? It’s sad though, isn’t it? Three people being killed like that. Sadder than what happened to Robert, in a way.’

  ‘You knew Robert Hanson?’

  ‘Of course. The old families tend to stick together. We all know one another. I know your Chief Inspector Carrington, too. He married Elsie Marris – she’s Canon Marris’s niece. Nice woman but I’m not so keen on him.’ She giggled. ‘I don’t suppose I should tell you that.’

  Mickey had finished his task and Henry said that they would need to leave if they were to get the next train back.

  ‘Toby will drive you,’ she said, and Henry had the impression that the novelty of the police visit was already wearing off. ‘Of course,’ she added, ‘the Hansons and the Marrises and the Carringtons aren’t really in the top set, are they? But our paths cross. You know how it is.’

  Henry didn’t but he thought he could probably guess.

  ‘And are Fry and May in the top set?’

  ‘I suppose.’ She smiled slightly. ‘By marriage anyway.’

  ‘And did you have an opinion of Robert Hanson?’ he asked.

  ‘One really doesn’t like to say.’

  Toby drove them both back to the station and Henry half listened as Mickey chatted to him about cars and horsepower. He guessed that news of their visit was halfway round the county by now and that it would eventually get back to May.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Chief Inspector Henry Johnstone and Sergeant Mickey Hitchens had taken up their accustomed seats in the snug of the Wheatsheaf. They still had the space to themselves but, Mickey reckoned, it was a sign of their acceptance that the locals were slower to move away and didn’t shift so far. Another week and they’d be accepted as a normal part of the scenery, ordinary enough that he and the boss might have to move their ‘office’ elsewhere.

  Mickey hoped they would be gone before he had to test that theory out. He took a long drink of his pint and then set the mug down on the table. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what do we have?’

  Henry took a mere sip in comparison then set his glass aside. ‘A clearer picture, perhaps. Though I’m not willing to discount anything as yet.’

  He ticked off the points on his fingers. He had long, rather slender hands but Mickey knew they were surprisingly strong.

  ‘Ethan Samuels. The button found at the scene matches. The boy admitted to his father that he knew the Fields and George Fields told us that he thought Mary and Ethan might have liked one another a little too much, so …’

  ‘So it’s possible he visited her with thoughts of sex rather than killing on his mind. He’s not off the hook, though. He’s shown himself fully capable of violence. If she caused him to lose his temper, well, there’s not much evidence that he can keep a rein on it once it’s lost.’

  Henry nodded agreement. ‘Robert Hanson’s face was beaten to a pulp,’ he said. ‘The punishment meted out had rage behind it, not merely the loss of temper. Then we have the candlestick.’

  ‘There’s a partial that might match one of the unknown prints from the house but frankly it’s so partial I’d be reluctant to put it forward as proof. No, the usefulness of the candlestick will come when the case finally gets to court. You can imagine the effect it will have on the jury. A tiny girl like Ruby Fields attacked with a weapon of that size and swung with the intent to smash out her brains.’

  Henry allowed himself a wry smile. ‘You should have become a prosecuting counsel, Mickey.’

  ‘I think I’d have needed a different set of parents if I’d any hope of bringing that about. And then we have our Mr May. Technically a man with motive but no opportunity.’

  ‘Technically a man who could have created his opportunity. He could easily have taken Melissa Heath’s car, driven back here, killed Mary Fields and her family, driven back again and picked up his champagne glass without anyone being the wiser.’

  ‘And he had a good motive, at least in his own eyes.’ Mickey frowned. ‘I wonder how much or, should I say, how little cash it would have taken to have shut Mary’s mouth for good. My guess is a couple of hundred pounds and a train ticket back to her family and that would have been an end to the matter.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Henry agreed. ‘But she could just as easily have kept him on the hook. He’d not have risked that. My conviction is that he didn’t risk that.’

  ‘He must have had blood on his clothes.’

  ‘So he went home and changed. It’s a big enough house – he could have slipped in the back way or he could have taken a change of clothes with him. One blazer and one pair of lighter-coloured trousers look pretty much like another and I doubt our Mr May has such a restricted wardrobe that he owns only one of each.’

  ‘His valet would notice an absence?’

  ‘And his valet would accept an excuse. Valets generally want to remain in employment.’

  Mickey nodded. ‘So, now we wait. We let the gossip do the rounds and its job. May will know that we’re closing the noose.’

  ‘And when the pressure has built sufficiently, we bring him in again.’

  ‘There’s still the missing key,’ Mickey reminded his boss.

  ‘Which most likely went the way of the candlestick but didn’t land in the weeds.’

  ‘True,’ Mickey agreed. ‘But I did wonder if the landlord might still have a spare.’

  Celia May and the children had barely contacted Charles since they had left. He had received a postcard from the boys and a brief phone call from his father-in-law, informing him that his wife planned to take an extended holiday but that was all.

  Charles May could feel his entire life sliding away from him.

  He poured himself another whisky, this time without the soda, and remembered a happy day, just a scant two weeks before, when he had joined Celia and the children at the seaside. They had walked together along the promenade and then watched the one-armed man dive off the end of the pier and tossed some coins into his cap. It had been a relaxed and happy afternoon, so different from the previous visit he and his family had made there.

  The difference was that he had known Mary Fields could not interrupt their visit this time.

  A few months before, at Easter, on a blustery but sunny day, they had gone – Celia and Charles and the two boys – to blow the cobwebs away after the long winter.

  Charles remembered that the wind had been blowing off the sea but the sun had been shining and he had been happy. Celia had been happy too. And then he had seen her, Mary Fields. And for a distressing moment he was certain that she must have followed him there.

  She was standing with her own little girl and with a younger man that Charles now knew was Walter Fields, and she was smiling at Charles. A knowing, spiteful smile and Charles knew, just knew that she planned to destroy him.

  A small knock on the door. ‘A telephone call for you, sir.’

  Charles went to his study, hoping it might be Celia telling him she was on her way home.

  It was Edmund Fry. ‘I heard,’ he said, ‘that the police visited Toby Heath. They were asking about Melissa’s car, suggesting that you might have borrowed it on the night of the party and driven back here. I just thought you should hear it from me.’

  Charles thanked him but a chill settled in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘I’ve been thinking of joining Celia for a week or two,’ he said, attempti
ng to sound cheerful and normal. ‘You were right, of course, telling me we should both go away for a while. I should have listened to you.’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone, then: ‘Charles, I don’t think … I don’t think that’s such a good idea. It might have been, of course, but now … now I think it would just look … guilty.’

  Guilty. ‘You think I did it,’ Charles said flatly.

  ‘No. Of course not. Of course I don’t think—’

  Charles set the receiver back into its cradle.

  Edmund believed he might have killed her, Charles thought. Edmund no longer believed him.

  FIFTY-NINE

  In small communities it is difficult to hide anything, and when the letter came it was impossible for Helen to keep it secret. Helen Lee rarely received mail.

  She knew at once that it was from Ethan. She recognized his writing – a pencil scrawl. She ran from the house and up to the copse of ash trees on the ridge above Vale farm and there, sitting on a fallen tree, she opened the envelope and read the short message within.

  It was written on a piece of rough paper that looked as though it might have been a flyleaf from a book. The envelope bore the mark of a seamen’s mission and she knew, because Ethan had told her, that they sometimes made envelopes and stamps available for those who could not afford to buy but who needed to get a message home.

  She looked at the postmark and was only faintly surprised to find that it was Bridlington – a port she vaguely recalled was somewhere in Yorkshire.

  Ethan had headed north.

  The letter was brief and also written in pencil.

  My Darling Helen,

  I am so sorry, sorry more than words can say. I didn’t want any of this to happen. I never planned to fall in love with you and I never planned to hurt anyone and now I have and it means I have to go away from you.

  I want you to be happy, my darling. I want you to be happy because I can’t come back to you and I can’t ask you to wait for me to get settled somewhere and send for you because I’d be asking you to run away with a guilty man and I’ve got nothing I can offer to you.