Fair Game

by Gerald Hammond

  Bob Ambrose looked round. The others were well out of earshot, but he lowered his voice all the same. ‘You know about the situation at my home?’

  ‘I know that your father’s been in a wheelchair for some years,’ Keith said.

  ‘Is he my father?’ the boy asked, barely above a whisper. ‘Or was Mr Grass? He left my mother a legacy . . .’

  Keith took a few seconds for mental adjustment. Neither by nature nor by upbringing had he ever had strong feeling about legitimacy; and only with his own marriage had he gained, and at second hand, any feeling for the sanctity of that institution. Only the imminence of a son or even – a staggering thought – a daughter of his own had caused him to start rethinking his attitudes. But young Ambrose, brought up amid ethical conflict, had drawn his own conclusions and was desperate for reassurance.

  ‘I don’t think,’ Keith said, ‘that you were one of his bequests. In fact, we can be sure of it. He did, as you know, leave behind a number of bairns born on the wrong side of the blanket. Since he never married, he could hardly have left any other kind. But in every case he left a bequest to the child, not to the mother. Those bequests are absolutely confidential, but I can tell you that you’re not included.’ Privately, Keith thought that it took a wise man to know his own children, and he could not even be sure of counting himself among their number.

  The assurance satisfied Bob Ambrose. He relaxed visibly. ‘Thank God for that!’ he said. ‘You can’t know . . .’

  ‘How old are you? Sixteen?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Your father’s accident?’

  ‘Polio, when I was three. It’s not that. But Ray Grass was a close friend of my mother’s from long before that. I know exactly what he was, and what my mother is.’ He turned his face away from Keith. He might have been watching a distant flock of rooks squabbling their way to roost. ‘It’s not that I’ve anything much against bastardy. But there were those two. And then there’s Dad. I wanted one decent, honest person in my pedigree.’

  ‘Try to believe the best,’ Keith said gently. ‘Many women flirt around and pretend to be promiscuous who’d scream bloody murder if a man laid a finger on them. And, remember, she’s played fair. It must have been hard for an attractive, red-blooded woman to find herself stuck with a crippled husband, but she’s still around. She might have been forgiven if she’d run off with somebody else.’

  ‘I wish she had,’ Bob said. He sounded near to tears.

  But on the journey home he recovered his spirits. He chatted away about the evening’s doings, said a cheerful goodnight to the men who got out at the inn and was insistent that Keith and Miss Wyper come to his home for a visit.

  ‘We couldn’t bother your parents at this time of night,’ Keith said.

  The boy brushed this aside. ‘My mother’s bound to be out somewhere, and Dad does enjoy being visited at any time of the day or night. And he’ll be needing a snack.’

  The thought of a snack was persuasive, for they had missed dinner. Keith had to drop the boy anyway, and Miss Wyper, who had a room in the village, decided to come along and to walk back.

  Inside the house with the yellow paintwork, Bob and Miss Wyper paid brief respects to Mr Ambrose and then disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, leaving Keith to chat with him.

  ‘I won’t shake hands,’ Keith said. ‘I’ve been gutting rabbits.’

  Mr Ambrose smiled and forgave him. ‘Sport was good, then?’

  ‘Very. Your son’s a good shot.’

  ‘We’ll have to see if we can’t get him a better gun for his birthday.’

  ‘Send him over to me,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll fix him up.’

  Mr Ambrose had been a big man, but his years in a wheelchair had wasted his legs and overdeveloped his chest and arms. He seemed to live almost entirely in the one large room which had been equipped to suit his special needs. One end of the room was taken up by several large tables heaped with books and journals and charts and bound sets of accounts, a typewriter and some pages of manuscript.

  ‘Are you the Ambrose who writes the articles and text-books about cost-effectiveness and current-cost accounting and all that jazz?’

  Mr Ambrose laughed. His smile was so like his son’s that Keith wondered why the boy had ever been worried about his own parentage. ‘That sounds like me,’ he said. ‘I used to be an accountant, and I still do an audit now and again. But after I was stricken, I found that I had time to study the accounts of a whole range of firms, to separate the sheep from the goats and ask myself why one succeeds and another fails. It started as a hobby and grew from there.’

  ‘It may be a hobby to you,’ Keith said, ‘but my partner used to be an accountant, and he quotes you as if you were the scriptures, usually when he wants to show me that something I want to do wouldn’t be good business. Could you give me a short course in How to Destroy an Accountant in Three Easy Questions?’

  Ambrose laughed again. He was a happy man, despite his disability. ‘Easily,’ he said. ‘I’ll write them out for you, one of these days.’

  A few minutes later, Keith broke off a general conversation. He looked down at his hands. ‘I’d better wash before I eat,’ he said. ‘I’m told that humans can’t get myxamatosis, but I’d rather play it safe.’

  ‘There’s one by the kitchen, and one at the head of the stairs.’

  The house was large and rambling. Keith had expected to see lights or to hear noises which would lead him towards the kitchen, but the place seemed deserted. Rather than go back, he climbed the stairs and found a bathroom at the top. The corridor was as dark as the rest of the house. As he stood in the door, fumbling for the bathroom switch, Keith saw a light shining under another door at the far end of the corridor. While he was looking, it flicked out. He tiptoed in that direction. There were tiny sounds from inside.

  Keith hesitated. Mr Ambrose had mentioned that his wife was out, visiting an old school-friend, but Keith knew that a complaisant husband will often lie to save a reputation that is no longer worth saving.

  On the other hand, Mrs Ambrose had said that she would have given Mr Grass asylum. And the boy had been very upset about her relationship with Grass.

  Keith turned the handle gently and opened the door a few inches. A thickset figure was silhouetted against the drawn curtains. He put his hand to the wall, and before he even knew that he had found the switch the room was flooded with light.

  Two figures stood by the window, so close together that they had looked like one. They were Mrs Ambrose and the younger Mr Yates, and a scrap of lace was the total of the clothing which they wore between them.

  Before the two could react, Keith had switched off the light and closed the door. He tiptoed away. While washing his hands he also bathed his face and wrists in cold water.

  Mr Ambrose, for all his confinement to a wheelchair, was an entertaining host. When Keith drew up the Range Rover at last outside Whinkirk House, the fields were dark and all was silence. The only light in the house seemed to be behind the front doors, which opened in response to the sound of his feet on the gravel. Against the yellow light stood a female figure. Keith’s heart lifted at the thought of Molly. Then he saw that her hair was fair. Bessie the maid had waited up, to let him in and see to his needs.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Keith was bolting a hasty breakfast next morning, trying to overtake Molly who was on her last sip of coffee, when Bessie came to the table. ‘Telephone message from the inn, Mr Calder,’ she said. ‘Can you come over straight away? Mr Enterkin wants you.’ Keith thought that she gave him the tiniest suggestion of a wink with the eye away from Molly, but whether this referred to the message or to something quite different, or was even a figment of his imagination, he neither knew nor cared. He looked at his watch.

  ‘Tell him I’ll be over in half an hour,’ he said.

  Five minutes later he gave Molly a polite kiss on the cheek, collected Brutus and his gun, and set off walking the now familiar tracks. The
preceding fortnight spent walking the estate, at a time of year when he would usually have done his travelling by car, had restored him to his winter level of fitness, but today his pace was less then brisk and when a small flock of pigeon rose from beyond a hedge he yawned and walked on. Brutus glared at him.

  At the inn, there was no immediate sign of Mr Enterkin. Keith begged a cup of coffee from Mrs Brown and took it out to a bench in the forecourt where he could lean the gun, in its sleeve, against the wall and sit quietly for a minute.

  He had almost dozed off when he realised that a figure was standing over him, a tall, solid young man in a grey suit. He had a round, rosy face and brown curls, so that Keith’s first impression was of a child’s drawing sprung to life. Brutus, from under the table, decided that the newcomer’s manner was properly respectful and that he must therefore be tolerated.

  ‘Mr Calder? Harvey Brown said I’d find you out here. I’m Sergeant Yarrow. May I join you?’

  ‘Please do,’ Keith said.

  The sergeant showed his warrant card. ‘Strictly speaking,’ he said, ‘I’m C.I.D. But I’ve been detached for the moment to help Inspector Glynder with the matters you raised with him.’

  ‘I see. He’s taking it seriously, then?’

  ‘Seriously, yes. Reluctantly, too, in view of the line he took at the fatal accident enquiry.’ Keith got the impression that Sergeant Yarrow was amused but trying to hide it. ‘He is finding other things to do just now. I’m to look into the matter and report back. For the moment, think of me as being in uniform. As soon as we’re sure that we’ve got a criminal case, of course, it becomes the business of my proper department and I’m in plain clothes again.’

  ‘I hope you’re a bit of a quick-change artist, then,’ Keith said. ‘Because I don’t think there’s a damn bit of doubt about it. But go your own way. Do you want me to run over it again?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Do you shoot?’

  ‘I’ve a gun,’ the sergeant said. ‘Just for the clay pigeons. But I load my own cartridges and a mate of mine pours shot, so I know the basics. That’s partly why I was put on this job.’

  ‘That’s a help,’ Keith said. Patiently, he took the sergeant through the ground that he had covered with Inspector Glynder. He kept his voice low for fear of eavesdroppers. The sergeant seemed to follow him very closely, taking brief notes and interrupting to ask an occasional question.

  ‘That seems clear enough so far,’ the sergeant said when Keith finished.

  ‘What do you think, yourself?’

  ‘I’m not here to think, I’m just gathering facts.’

  Something in Sergeant Yarrow’s voice reminded Keith of his initial briefing by Mr Enterkin. ‘You gave evidence at the fatal accident enquiry, didn’t you?’ Keith asked.

  ‘What if I did?’ the sergeant asked sharply. ‘That was just due to chance. I happened to be nearby, looking into a case of sheep-stealing, when the call came in that Mr Grass had been found shot. A car was sent with two uniformed lads, and I was told to look in just in case it was a criminal matter. Because I was nearer I got there first, so I was called to give evidence as the first officer on the scene. And that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all,’ Keith said, grinning, ‘except that you had your own doubts. You started to voice them in court, and you were told to shut up. Right?’

  ‘I don’t think we need to –’

  ‘What’s more,’ Keith said, ‘you’ve been told to come here, go through the motions and make a negative report. Right?’

  The sergeant said nothing. His face was impassive.

  ‘In confidence,’ Keith said, ‘what didn’t you like about it?’

  Sergeant Yarrow looked round. The windows were closed and there was nobody near. ‘In absolute confidence?’ He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. ‘The distances didn’t look right. I measured them. If he was climbing the fence when he was shot, the maximum distance would have been the sixteen feet to where the gun ended up. And that’s not to say that the gun hadn’t done some of its sliding and bouncing after it went off. I gauged the barrels of the gun – I have my own gauge – and it was the old-fashioned game – boring, true cylinder on the right – and full choke on the left.’

  Keith was frowning. ‘I never saw the body,’ he said. ‘How big was the pattern-circle?’

  ‘About six inches. It had smashed most of his face, but you could make out the edge of the pattern clearly. Well, I reckoned that no full-choke pattern was going to open out that much inside sixteen feet. I’ve fired at a target at that sort of range, and as often as not the shot isn’t even coming out of the shot-cup by then. Of course, now you tell me that that cartridge wouldn’t have had a shot-cup anyway. I’d missed that point. I’m too used to clay-busting.’

  ‘Even from a game cartridge,’ Keith said, ‘I’d expect a much smaller pattern than six inches. Could you get your hands on the gun again? We could run some tests.’

  ‘I could try.’

  ‘I’d like to have it for a few days, just to give it an overhaul to make up for some of the neglect it suffered in your colleagues’ hands.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ the sergeant said absently. ‘Blast it! I’m pig-in-the-middle. You were right, I was told to come out and prove that there was nothing wrong, and in my mind I’m certain that there’s been a murder done. If I go back and say so, without having any further proof, I’ll . . .’

  ‘You’ll have your arse in a sling?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to put it just that way, but it expresses it admirably.’

  ‘But if you were to go on investigating, and were to go back with proof positive, even an arrest . . .’

  ‘I’d have to be on damn sure ground.’ There was a silence while the sergeant glared at the table-top in front of them. Then he went on. ‘You’re right. All I can do is to gather it all up. I’ll have to decide how to play the hand once I’ve got all I can get.’

  ‘You could start by getting microphotographs, to prove that the extractor-marks on the cartridge which was in the gun were made by that gun,’ Keith suggested.

  ‘I can do that.’ Sergeant Yarrow made a note. ‘And I must get samples of this poacher chap, Merson, the shot he pours. If that corresponds with the shot recovered from the late Mr Grass, at least we’ll know that it was a local cartridge.’

  ‘I don’t want to worry you,’ Keith said, ‘but you’re up against a number of snags. First of all, cartridges get passed from hand to hand. People borrow a few cartridges. Obviously they can’t return the same ones. So reloads could turn up in the hands of somebody who always bought his cartridges off the shelf. Secondly, Merson hasn’t been seen around since a few days after Mr Grass died. And, thirdly, Merson’s shot probably never came out the same two days running. If he was using scrap lead, it could come from a dozen sources, wherever he could buy it or scrounge it or exchange it for finished shot. Sheet lead off a roof one week, an old bird-bath the next. Maybe battery-plates.’

  ‘There still might be what you might call a chemical fingerprint. My pal adds a little arsenical weedkiller, to increase surface tension. Then again, the shot seemed to be as hard as the shot that you buy. That suggests antimony, doesn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Keith said. ‘And his easiest source of antimony would be printer’s metal. And Enterkin said something about Mr Grass owning a print-shop somewhere.’

  The sergeant was looking happier. He seemed relieved to have found a sympathetic ear on a helpful witness. ‘I bow to your superior knowledge,’ he said. ‘I’d better go and look.’

  ‘Shall we show you his cottage, or do you know where it is?’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The dog and me.’

  ‘I never saw him under there. Isn’t he well-behaved!’ He scratched behind Brutus’ ear.

  ‘Would that it were ever so,’ Keith said. Mr Enterkin’s mode of speech sometimes rubbed off on him. ‘We’d better walk. A car’s a dead loss among the fields.’

&n
bsp; ‘I found that out last time,’ Sergeant Yarrow said.

  ‘You don’t mind if I carry my gun?’

  ‘Shoot if you like, but don’t shoot me,’ the sergeant said frivolously.

  *

  Once out in open country Brutus got going again, questing to and fro in a satisfactory manner. The two men walked together, the sergeant tactfully dropping slightly behind.

  ‘Do you mind if we talk?’

  ‘Talk away,’ Keith said. ‘Miss Wyper – she was Mr Grass’s secretary – she and I have been shooting over this ground for the last week or more, and the pigeon and rabbits aren’t as trusting as they used to be. Everything else is out of season and knows it. So I’m not really expecting a shot, I’m just looking for the chance to do a little dog-training.’

  ‘It’s early to think of motives, but I was wondering whether you’d come across any.’

  ‘Hundreds. Possibly thousands.’

  ‘I thought he was well liked.’

  ‘I believe he was,’ Keith said, ‘from what I hear. I met him once and I liked him, but that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t have had reason to want him dead. He was a bit of a joker and that got him a few enemies, although he usually made amends afterwards one way or the other. He seems to have been one hell of a man for the women, which is another way to get yourself misliked.’ Keith was speaking from old and not altogether bitter experience. ‘There may have been any number of husbands, fathers, brothers, boyfriends, grand-children, you name it, who’d have been just as happy to see him out of the way. But that’s only the start of it.

  ‘You also know, or if you don’t I’m telling you, that to call him wealthy would be like saying that the Duchess of Argyll was adequately provided for. Ralph Enterkin keeps trying to explain it to me, and whenever I think I’ve got the picture he points out that I don’t know the half of it yet. Now, you can’t get rich without making enemies, and when you are rich there’s got to be somebody better off for your dying if it’s only the taxman. About sixty individuals are mentioned in his will, a dozen or so charities and the local trust.’