Death on the River: A gripping and unputdownable English murder mystery (A Tara Thorpe Mystery Book 2)

by Clare Chase

  At last, she saw the sign for the house on the bank, swinging in the icy breeze. She made the turn, relieved to be away from the water.

  How the hell would she make the journey back again, when conditions would be even worse?

  Forty-One

  Blake was talking to a security manager at a boutique just off the market square in the centre of Cambridge. Before they’d left Philippa Cairncross, he’d had one more go at impressing upon her the importance of proving she’d been into town that morning. It wouldn’t necessarily put her in the clear, depending on the times involved, but they had to start somewhere. She was leading them a merry dance. He got the impression she didn’t give a damn what they thought or how much of their time she wasted.

  But Blake had spotted her Achilles heel: she cared about her mother. When he’d threatened to take her in, charge her and keep her overnight, Sadie had collapsed into a chair, and Philippa had finally got the message. And then it turned out that she could remember the other shops she’d visited. Either that, or she’d done some hasty inventing under pressure. With a sour expression on her lips, she’d reeled off the names of three outlets, including the one he was now standing in.

  ‘Be my guest,’ the security guard said, and Blake scanned the shop’s CCTV for the times when Philippa said she might have been there. The place had been far less crowded than the shoe shop and the cameras better sited.

  At last he saw a familiar figure on the footage. Bloody hell. She really had been there. He checked the time. Fifteen minutes after Sadie Cairncross had received the mystery call. That was it. There was no way she could have got home in time to lock her mother in the archive store and then get back to the shop. She could still have done it if her mother had been in on the whole thing too, of course. If that were the case, she could have locked her in any time – it might have been a while later than they claimed – or indeed not at all. They could simply have made all the right footprints and left it at that. But that didn’t work. Her mother’s shock had been genuine, from what the medics said. They’d had to treat her for a full-blown panic attack. She wouldn’t have had that reaction if she’d known she was never in danger.

  No. Blake reckoned Philippa Cairncross was out of it. And Tess Curtis was sounding unlikely, from Max’s latest update.

  They needed to think again. Patrick wasn’t going to be pleased. Tara had been right about him latching onto Philippa too quickly, though wrong about Tess Curtis’s possible guilt as far as he could see.

  He called Patrick and was pleased when he was forced to leave a message. He didn’t feel like dealing with him right now. He was still one of Blake’s top suspects for leaking that story to Not Now magazine. He only wished he could prove it.

  As he stepped out of the shop’s doorway, onto the pedestrian walkway next to the university church, Great St Mary’s, he wondered how Tara was doing. Max had explained how he’d had to let her make the visit to Verity Hipkiss alone. The going would be unpleasant out in the Fens. And if Philippa Cairncross wasn’t their killer, nor Tess Curtis, then who was?

  He thought afresh about putting the snake into Ralph Cairncross’s car. Now he knew Philippa was out of it, the possibility of someone who’d been at the party doing the job seemed most likely.

  He made up his mind to follow Tara and find out first-hand what Verity Hipkiss had to say.

  Forty-Two

  Tara pulled up on the wide, rough driveway outside the house on the bank. It was still rutted with ice-hardened snow. Very little light spilled out from the house onto the forecourt. Verity had the curtains closed.

  Tara pulled her coat tightly around her and went up to knock on the door. Whilst she waited for Verity to appear she heard something crash inside. When at last the door opened, the woman leant against the frame. Tara wondered if she’d drunk more since she’d called earlier. Behind her, she could see a vase that had smashed on the floor. The table it had presumably sat on was tipped up on one leg and rested precariously against the wall. Tara guessed Verity had cannoned into it on her way to open up.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Verity’s eyes were red and puffy. She nodded and put out a hand, clutching at Tara’s coat sleeve. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I thought you might have decided not to come and I need to talk to someone. I think I might know who’s behind all this.’ She stepped back into the hall. ‘Because it’s not just a coincidence, is it?’

  Tara followed her in and closed the door on the night behind her. Once again, she noticed that the place hadn’t been well maintained. There were damp patches on the wall of the hallway.

  ‘I mean,’ Verity went on, ‘when you and DS Wilkins came to see me, you said you were just being cautious, going round interviewing us all, and warning us to be on our guard. But that was so we didn’t get scared, wasn’t it? You knew something was up. You took that crate away, didn’t you? That means you were looking for proper evidence of some kind.’ Her eyes were glassy. ‘The article in Not Now mentioned a snake. Was that where it was kept? In the crate?’

  She turned on her heel and led Tara along a corridor. ‘There’s an upstairs sitting room,’ she said, one hand on the polished newel post at the bottom of the stairs. ‘It’s warmer up there.’

  Tara followed her. ‘It’s true that we’re increasingly sure someone else was involved in the deaths of Ralph, Lucas and Christian,’ she said carefully. The release of the information in Not Now had been a disaster. Up until then they could have interviewed each of Ralph Cairncross’s contacts until one of them slipped up and mentioned a detail they shouldn’t know. But thanks to Shona Kennedy the whole of Cambridge and beyond now had access to details that ought to have been under wraps. Was that really how Verity knew about the snake, or had she been more intimately involved in the drama? She could have had an accomplice – a new lover, keen to replace Ralph, who’d put the snake in his car whilst Verity kept him busy. That same man could have called Sadie Cairncross. It was still possible she’d wanted Lucas and Christian dead because of what they could reveal about her: her affair with Ralph.

  Ahead of Tara, Verity stumbled. She was wearing a long, floaty dress, insubstantial for the weather. She had a soft woollen cardigan – cashmere? – slung round her shoulders. After a second, she caught her elbow on the wall and paused again. Even if she was guilty, Tara didn’t think she was much of a threat. If she was acting, she was doing a bloody good job. And if there was anyone else in the house – an accomplice perhaps – then Tara was primed and ready. It was good to know Max was on his way, though.

  At the top of the stairs, everything was in near darkness.

  ‘Where’s the light switch, Verity?’ Tara said.

  ‘Bulb’s gone.’

  But something was shedding low levels of light onto the landing. The effect was flickering and guttering, a warm glow.

  ‘Verity, stop.’

  The woman looked at her dazedly over her shoulder. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Fire. That was Tara’s immediate thought. The final method of death in Ralph Cairncross’s books. Her heart beat faster. Tara was great at self-defence – quick in the face of danger – but fire was something else. But even as she had the thought she realised this was something on a smaller scale. ‘You’ve lit candles?’

  Verity nodded. ‘It’s three months to the day since Ralph died. That’s one of the reasons I came over here. To feel close to him.’ She shrugged her elegant shoulders. ‘I come from a Catholic family, so I lit a candle.’

  Several, by the look of the light spilling onto the landing.

  Verity was stumbling ahead again, through a door and into a room that was indeed full of candles. Her long dress swept past one she’d set on the floor, on a white saucer. The flame danced and weakened in the draught created by her movement, but then sprang up again.

  ‘Careful, Verity,’ Tara said sharply, wetting her finger and thumb and putting the flame out. ‘It’s not safe to leave them burning on the floor.’ But there were more. Everyw
here she looked. Night lights, large pillar-shaped ones of the sort you saw in cathedrals, old ones, already half burnt down. Verity had lined them along a window seat, next to aged velvet curtains that moved slightly in a draught from the sash.

  ‘God, Verity, you’ll have the whole place up in flames,’ Tara said, going to put out the candles near the window.

  ‘Please leave the rest,’ Verity said. ‘I’ll sit down, and you sit too. We won’t disturb them then. I wanted to mark the occasion.’

  Tara sat on a slouchy blue corduroy sofa, her heart thumping in her chest, her palms clammy. On the wall next to her was a montage of photographs in frames. They were of Ralph and his Acolytes. They weren’t all group shots. Some were of the individual members on their own. There was one of Verity wearing only a towel, her hair tousled, lips pouting. Someone – Ralph presumably – had scrawled ‘My voluptuous Verity’ across her shoulder in marker pen, and added a kiss. It made Tara’s skin crawl. Somehow, it was as though he’d marked her as his.

  ‘Ralph took that one,’ Verity said. She must have followed the direction of Tara’s gaze. ‘He took all of them – except the ones where he’s present, of course.’

  ‘Who took those?’

  ‘Letty took the one of him there.’ Verity pointed at a head and shoulders shot, where Ralph had raised his hand and blown a kiss in the direction of the lens.

  Tara reacted to her tone and looked at her face. There was jealousy there. ‘Letty was very young, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Very. Far too young for Ralph.’ She gave an elaborate roll of her eyes. ‘It was unsuitable.’ The final word came out loudly – she still seemed very drunk.

  Tara scanned the wall of photos again. There were a couple of gaps, she noticed, and no photos of Letty on her own. ‘Did you take the portraits of Letty down?’ she said.

  But Verity shook her head. ‘Stephen did.’ She squinted at Tara. ‘They’re still here though.’ She twisted where she sat and reached towards a bookcase to her right. She reached in amongst the volumes on the top shelf and pulled out three photographs, handing them to Tara. ‘Far too young,’ she said again as she sat back on the sofa and closed her eyes.

  The first photo Tara looked at showed the same girl she’d seen in the group shot in the Cairncross family kitchen. But something had happened between when the two photographs were taken, Tara guessed. The carefree kid-sister look, full of easy laughter, had gone. In this portrait, Letty looked uncertain, her lips parted. The strappy dress she wore was coming down off one shoulder. The shot was taken outside, in the grounds of the house they were sitting in, by the look of it. Behind Letty, the sun shone, lighting up her red hair. Her pale skin was striking by contrast and Tara remembered Stephen Ross comparing her to a pre-Raphaelite painting. And then suddenly, Tara felt the hairs on her arms lift. She remembered Ross’s poem ‘To My Love at Evening Time’. Rubies and alabaster… Letty’s hair and her skin? Evening time… because Letty had been dying? She remembered how weak Stephen had made the subject of the poem sound – and she’d thought the words must reflect his views on women in general. But if it had been about Letty, laid low by her illness…

  Scrawled across the bottom of the photograph, in what was probably the same pen used to annotate Verity’s picture, was ‘My pretty Titty’.

  Verity had her eyes open again. ‘He always used that old-fashioned shortening of Letitia,’ she said. ‘Stephen hated it. That’s why he took the pictures down.’

  Small bits of information started to coalesce in Tara’s head. Hadn’t Stephen said he and Letty were the first people Ralph scooped up as his Acolytes? They’d been together at a party – something to do with the English department. She searched her memory. He’d said they’d shared the same tutor. But what else…? She took out her notebook, flicking back through the pages. He’d mentioned in passing that they’d known each other before they came to Cambridge. She’d forgotten that. And he’d said she was ‘very bright and beautiful too’.

  Memories shifted in Tara’s head, like cogs in a machine that hadn’t quite interlocked, but suddenly slipped into place. Again she thought of the photograph of the Acolytes and Ralph in the kitchen at Madingley Road. Stephen had had his arm around Letty’s shoulders and he’d looked fierce. Had he felt he’d been defending Letty against something… the group she’d got sucked into?

  ‘So, were Stephen and Letty an item, then, when they joined the Acolytes?’ Tara said, watching Verity’s face in the flickering light.

  ‘He was in love with her,’ Verity said, a note of irritation in her voice. ‘But she was very young. I think she looked up to him as an adoring kid sister might hero-worship an older brother. He was so protective of her; even after she died he was more interested in her than anyone else.’

  And this girl was the subject of Ralph Cairncross’s final dedication, according to Tess Curtis.

  To T, who managed to escape unscathed. You are blessed indeed.

  Had Stephen guessed that his Letty was the T in the dedication? If Ralph had called her Titty all the time, then surely it was likely. And then she remembered how Ralph had shared the manuscript of his final book with Stephen first. ‘I knew there were elements he’d appreciate in a way that no one else could,’ Ralph had said. He’d looked amused, but Stephen Ross had looked angry. Had Ralph been talking about the dedication? Had he known how it would make Stephen feel? He’d been a cruel man – you only had to talk to Philippa to understand that.

  He’d been publicly celebrating the early death of the woman Stephen Ross had loved. All at once she remembered Bea’s horror at the writer’s thoughts on old age. His views on dying young wounded her, having just lost Greg. How must Stephen – dealing with Ralph first-hand – have felt? The interview would have been conducted a few short weeks after Letty’s death.

  ‘Stephen only really tagged along with the group to keep an eye on Letty,’ Verity said, reaching to a side table to pour herself more brandy from a bottle she had next to her. ‘I think he felt she was too young to hold her own if he left her to the rest of us. And yet she’d got Ralph wrapped round her little finger. It was such a shame when she got ill, but it was only then that Ralph started to pay attention to me.’

  Had Stephen seen that? Had he noticed that Verity was a tiny bit glad that the girl he’d loved was out of the way?

  ‘You said Stephen only stayed with the group to keep an eye on Letty,’ Tara said, ‘and yet he carried on as a member after she’d died.’

  Verity sipped her brandy and frowned. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose by that stage he’d integrated himself. Though Lucas and Christian always thought of him as lesser, somehow. He wasn’t such a strong physical specimen as them. But everyone indulged him.’ She blinked. ‘He can be a bit snooty at times – and taciturn too.’

  She knocked back the rest of her drink and the candlelight flickered on her glass. ‘Sorry,’ she said after a moment, ‘would you like one?’

  Tara shook her head. If ever she’d felt the need to keep her wits about her it was now.

  ‘I shouldn’t be talking Stephen down though,’ Verity said, leaning forward now, her expression becoming more focused. ‘He’s the reason I wanted to talk to you. We were speaking earlier today, and I told him what I think: that there’s only one person who could be carrying out such an audacious plan. Who hates us all and who would have the power and the guts to do this.’

  ‘And who’s that?’

  ‘Philippa, Ralph’s daughter.’

  Bloody hell, what was the obsession with her? ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I reckon she must have got round Lucas and Christian – and Stephen agrees. And she hated Ralph. And me for that matter,’ Verity said. ‘But what’s most compelling is that she knew Ralph was afraid of snakes.’

  ‘Wait a moment. He was? I hadn’t heard that before.’

  ‘Well, nor had I. Not until Stephen told me Philippa knew about his phobia.’

  ‘So obv
iously Stephen knew too.’

  Verity was losing focus again. ‘He must have.’

  ‘Verity!’ Tara grabbed her arm and shook her. She opened her eyes once more. ‘You said you and Stephen were talking. When? Where was this? Where is he now?’

  She shrugged. ‘He was here before. He helped me to light the candles. We talked, and when I said what I thought about Philippa he said I should call you, so I could tell you all about it.’ She paused and blinked. ‘And then he went off somewhere.’

  Suddenly Tara thought of Thom King, and the person who’d tried to run him down. He’d said he hadn’t gone on about it to Ralph and the Acolytes because it had been just after Letty had died, and they’d all been so low.

  ‘Can you remember, Verity, how the other Acolytes reacted when Letty died?’

  ‘Hum?’ She licked her lips. ‘Well, they followed Ralph’s lead, of course. We had a ritual out here in the grounds to celebrate the fact that she’d still been in her prime and never withered. I’m not sure they all bought it really. They missed her. But they wanted to keep in with the group.’

  Was that when Stephen had decided he wanted to get rid of the lot of them? When he saw them all celebrating the death of the woman he’d loved, who could have gone on to have had a long and happy life, if only she hadn’t been so unlucky?

  Had he heard Thom King banging on about this new studio, when all Stephen could think of was the dead girl he’d wanted to be with? Maybe he’d gone and waited for the artist, full of pent-up rage and sorrow, and driven straight at him. Perhaps the raw emotion he’d experienced had caused him to misjudge his approach. It hadn’t worked out, but he hadn’t let go of his plans to make them all pay. No wonder he’d stayed on in the group. He’d got unfinished business…