Hollow Vengeance

by Anne Morice

  I was not so sure that it did, but knew we should get nowhere, if a breath of criticism were to be blown on the beamish boy, so I skipped over this point by saying, ‘In that case, we should consider the alternatives.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘On the premise that it was his car and that there exists at least one reliable witness to confirm it, we can only conclude that someone else was driving it, which raises a couple more questions. First of all, is the Darby and Joan party a regular occurrence?’

  ‘Yes, we hold it on the last Wednesday of every month.’

  ‘And you always attend?’

  ‘Except in very rare circumstances, yes, always.’

  ‘Do most people round here know that?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they all do. Quite a lot of other women, and a few men too, help out from time to time, including poor old Geoffrey, although even he couldn’t induce Millie to give us a hand. Anyway, Louise and I are the mainstays and we hardly ever miss. I see what you’re getting at, Tessa, and I must say I think it’s very bright of you.’

  ‘Because, of course, the anti-nuclear rally would also have been well publicised in advance, so that took care of Millie, whereas my being here was something which no one could have foreseen.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, it does begin to make sense, although it’s almost inconceivable that anyone we know could have done such a thing.’

  ‘Which brings us to the second question. How many sets of keys are there?’

  ‘Marc has his own, of course. I have one.’

  ‘And Marc takes his to London with him?’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes he just leaves them in the pocket of whatever he happened to be wearing.’

  ‘And what about your set? Do you carry it around in your bag, for instance?’

  ‘Yes, usually, but there’s no rule about it. Quite often they’re left lying on the hall table, which is where they are now, as a matter of fact. I sometimes use the car myself, you see, when mine is being serviced or lets me down for some reason. Marc is all in favour of it. Much better for it to have a little exercise from time to time.’

  ‘And those are the only two sets?’

  ‘Well, no, there is a third, as it happens, a kind of emergency set, Marc and I both being compulsive mislayers of essential articles. It used to be kept in a drawer in my desk, along with the log book and insurance certificate.’

  ‘Used to be, but not any more?’

  ‘Curiously enough, I think Diane may have it.’

  ‘Oh, not that old Diane creeping up on us again?’

  ‘I could be wrong, but I think that’s where it must be. She got round Marc to give her some driving lessons, you see, and she used to practice things like turning and so on in the drive, which is a lot more than he’d let anyone else do, including Millie, I might add, but of course he’s practically besotted about that girl, poor darling, and you may be sure she made it plain that she couldn’t afford lessons from a professional. It must be over a week now since I first noticed that those spare keys weren’t in their usual place, and I’ve been meaning to ask him about it. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of thing I only remember when he’s not here.’

  ‘He might have left them in a pocket, I suppose?’

  ‘Not that set, no. He keeps special clothes for wearing down here and they’re usually left lying in a heap on the floor on Monday morning. I always go through the pockets because he’s quite capable of leaving his cheque book and God knows what else in them. He’s so utterly careless about possessions.’

  ‘Whereas Diane, as we know, has rather the opposite sort of weakness; not above absent-mindedly popping other people’s belongings into her shopping bag.’

  ‘All the same, it can’t have been Diane who was using the car on Wednesday. For one thing, she hasn’t passed her test yet and, for another, she was already in Bexhill.’

  ‘It might be as well to make sure of that?’

  ‘I am sure. Marigold was helping out at the Darby and Joan, so naturally I asked her whether her mother had got off all right and she said yes, and that the aunt had telephoned just after lunch to say that they’d both arrived and everything seemed to be going splendidly.’

  ‘Oh well, Diane could have passed the keys on to someone else. She may even have left them in Mrs Parkinson’s shop. One way and another, they could be pretty well anywhere by now, which personally I regard as very good news.’

  ‘Is it? I’m afraid I’m not thinking very clearly. The only news that would give me any pleasure just now would be for Marc to walk in and say it was all a mistake, some stupid misunderstanding and nothing whatever to do with Mrs Trelawney’s murder.’

  Curiously enough, when he did walk in, which happened about half an hour later, this was very much in line with the tale he had to relate. Unfortunately, however, far from putting an end to the business, the explanation only succeeded in tangling it up still further.

  ‘The most idiotic and ridiculous muddle,’ he told us, sounding quite cheerful about it and helping himself to a drink. ‘I simply couldn’t imagine what the fellow was driving at and I still can’t. Honestly, if this is the state the law has got into, I think it’s high time I switched to another profession.’

  ‘What was it all about, then? What did he want?’ Elsa asked, starting to look ten years younger again, although she still had several more to lose before re-entering her true age group.

  ‘I tell you, I never properly discovered what it was all about. Some parking offence, presumably, or speeding in a thirty mile limit. Anyway, he’d got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick and when I’d told him so about four times I think it sank in.’

  ‘But, darling, why should he drag you down to the station for a trivial thing like that?’

  ‘Precisely what I asked myself. An Inspector, mark you! Complete with sergeant in attendance, to take down my statement! Naturally, at the start, I thought it must be something quite different they were after and all the questions about the car were just a cover-up, some elaborate kind of trap, but apparently not. At the end of it all he seemed quite satisfied. Said something about how he’d need to check one or two points, but didn’t think it would be necessary to see me again. I should hope not, indeed! After that, the sergeant drove me home and here I am!’

  ‘And I’m delighted to see you. I’ll get something done about the dinner in a minute, because I’m sure you must be starving, but I do wish you’d tell me a little more about this strange affair. What kind of questions did the Inspector ask you?’

  ‘Only two was what it amounted to, but he kept putting them in different languages, so that one had the illusion there were dozens. What it actually boiled down to was where my car had been on Wednesday afternoon.’

  ‘So what did you tell him?’

  ‘Oh, Ma, how you do go on, don’t you? Naturally, I told him that it had been tucked up in its little garage because I only use it at weekends and I’d spent the whole of last Wednesday in London.’

  ‘Did he want you to prove it?’

  ‘He seemed to think it would be a nice idea, but unfortunately I was unable to oblige. I’ve been flat out on all this blasted revision and one day has been pretty much like another. I can’t even remember whether anyone telephoned me on Wednesday; might not have noticed if they had. Pretty feeble, isn’t it? I’m sure Tessa would have come up with something much more convincing, but since I hadn’t the remotest idea what they were on about, it didn’t seem worth while inventing any fancy lies.’

  ‘Oh, that would have been my advice, too,’ I assured him. ‘Fancy lies can get people into no end of trouble. I hope you stuck to the same principle when he was asking you about the car?’

  ‘Yes, indeed! And of course I was on firmer ground there, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Were you?’ Elsa asked faintly. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Simply because I was able to say without fear or fumble that it had never left the garage, having been reliably informed by my moth
er, who has never once been known to deviate from the truth in her entire life, that at daybreak on Thursday the battery was as dead as a doornail. How then could it have been taken out, by her or anyone else, not much more than twelve hours earlier? I’d probably left the lights on, or something equally daft, when I was down last weekend, but batteries don’t go flat overnight all by themselves in this weather. It’s okay, Ma! No need to look so doom laden! I’m sure I got it through to him in the end. Probably the worst that can happen is that he’ll be after you to confirm all this, but that shouldn’t present any problem.’

  SATURDAY A.M.

  ‘So this is your great crime prevention exercise?’ Robin asked the following morning. ‘Forgive my saying that I don’t think much of it. Judging by what has been going on here during the past five days, I would hate to see what happened when you were trying to incite a crime.’

  Making the most of a rare Saturday off duty, he had arrived at Pettits Grange soon after breakfast and I had barely allowed him more time than to say hallo to his hostess, before dragging him off for a stroll in the woods, a proposal which had received the warmest encouragement from Elsa, who indeed had been the one to suggest it. She had come into my room when I was getting ready to go to bed the night before and had impressed upon me that she was now relying on Robin to extricate herself and Marc from the mess her well meaning efforts had got them into, and that the first move should be to acquaint him with past events and the prospect of further upheavals ahead.

  ‘I hardly see how you can blame me for any of it,’ I said in answer to his accusations. ‘If there’d been more time, things might have worked out differently, but since Mrs Trelawney was killed two days after I arrived here, there was really nothing much I could have done to prevent it. It begins to look as though the crime was planned down to the last detail before I made my unexpected appearance. In fact, my being here at all and, in particular, my calling on her that very afternoon might seriously have upset matters, if the timing had been only very slightly different. To that extent, you could say that I only failed to avert a murder by a matter of minutes.’

  ‘Or failed to make it a double murder by exactly the same margin.’

  ‘Yes, I hadn’t thought of that. So perhaps it was all for the best! Incidentally, Robin, it’s not very flattering to my vanity, but I suppose I should also be grateful for the fact that Alice still hasn’t the faintest idea who I am, so at least I don’t have that to worry about.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of it, if I were you.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s days ago now. If no bell has rung yet, I must be pretty safe.’

  ‘It may not have been Alice who reported that you were wandering about near Pettits Farm that afternoon, but someone sent Bledlow an anonymous letter about it.’

  ‘Really? How do you know? Why haven’t you told me this before?’

  ‘Haven’t had much chance really, have I?’

  ‘But how do you know?’

  ‘From the horse’s mouth. He rang me up and told me.’

  ‘Why? Is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘Not really. He came here a year or two after I was moved on, but we’ve met once or twice since then and a lot of people in the Force know that you’re my wife, or perhaps I should say that I’m your husband. He thought I might be interested.’

  ‘Just that?’

  ‘Well no, there was a little more. He was quite keen to know whether Anon had got his facts right.’

  ‘And what did you reply to that?’

  ‘That he most likely had; that you were staying here with friends and that, being a great walker, it was not unusual to find you padding about the countryside on a summer afternoon.’

  ‘And that was all?’

  ‘Not quite. Naturally, it occurred to him to ask whether you had ever met the deceased, to which I replied with a categorical no. I see now that I was a bit hasty there. It does rather alter the situation.’

  ‘I don’t see why. Our previous acquaintance had certainly not set up any desire to murder her, should the chance arise some time in the future. In fact, she was exceptionally civil and hospitable on that first occasion. Probably felt she was queen of her own patch, instead of an outcast in hoity-toity Sowerley, which I take to have been at the root of her disgusting conduct.’

  ‘The trouble is that I inadvertently led Bledlow to believe that it was entirely out of the question that you had ever set eyes on her, far less that you could have been with her in the very room where she was found dead so soon afterwards. I honestly think it might be the decent thing for you and me to pay a call on him some time this morning.’

  ‘Oh, very well, if you insist, although there’s nothing I can tell him that he won’t already have heard from Alice. In the meantime, what about Elsa?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Will he want her to confirm Marc’s story about the car and, if so, what line should she take?’

  ‘She hasn’t much choice, has she? He’ll probably begin by asking her quite casually and gently, whether it was true about the battery and, if she says yes, indeed, he’ll appear to be quite satisfied and to take her word for it. Then, when she’s breathing out great gusty sighs of relief and beginning to let her guard down, he’ll say that, purely as a matter of routine, he’ll have to ask her to supply the name of the garage who fixed it. And then what?’

  ‘Would he really be so mean?’

  ‘What’s mean about it? If she’s lied to him, he has every right to make things awkward for her. My advice would be to own up before it gets to that.’

  ‘How can she, though, without making things awkward for Marc? She would have to explain why she went to such lengths to find out tactfully whether he had been driving around here on Wednesday afternoon and that would inevitably lead to explaining that both she and Louise had instantly taken it for granted that it was his car they saw and that her anxiety sprang from the fact that he had personally threatened to kill Mrs Trelawney.’

  ‘I daresay he’ll have heard that from numerous sources already, since you tell me that he didn’t confine these proud boasts to the family circle. So she won’t do him much good by trying to conceal anything there. Quite the reverse, in fact. If the boy’s own mother took these threats so seriously, why should Bledlow be expected to laugh them off?’

  ‘So she’s in a jam, whichever way she plays it?’

  ‘Not necessarily. There are still those missing keys to be accounted for and he’ll be much more likely to believe her there, if she’s been honest with him about the other thing.’

  ‘He wouldn’t just assume that she’d buried them in the garden, or that they never existed?’

  ‘That might occur to him, but on the other hand, there must be no end of people to confirm that they did exist and also that she was pretty free about lending them out. It would at least give him something to work on. I don’t think there’s much point in trying to kid ourselves that it wasn’t Marc’s car, so the only question is: was he driving it, or was someone else? If the second, it would have to be someone who knew his way around the house and, presumably, also someone who had sufficient grudge against young Mr Carrington not to feel squeamish about landing him in a sea of trouble. That ought to narrow the field a little.’

  ‘No as much as you might suppose. Elsa is quite the most trusting woman who ever lived and to describe her as keeping open house is the literal truth. She hardly ever locks any doors, even at night, and people seem to wander in and out whenever they feel like it. Furthermore, she has told me on two occasions that Marc has managed to make quite a few enemies around here.’

  ‘All the more reason for supposing that one of them had felt vengeful enough to play such a vindictive trick.’

  ‘Of course, it may all be sheer coincidence. Someone could have borrowed the car for quite an innocent purpose. It doesn’t absolutely follow that whoever it was also killed Mrs Trelawney.’

  ‘I think it almost does. However well known Elsa’s reputati
on for casualness about her premises and property, I find it hard to imagine anyone with perfectly innocent motives calmly walking in, picking up the keys and driving off in one of her cars, without some sort of by-your-leave, or at the very least confessing to it afterwards, and returning the keys at the same time, incidentally. At any rate, I still think this is her best, if not her only chance of getting Marc off Bledlow’s hook.’

  ‘In which case, we ought to hurry back right now and outline the script to her.’

  ‘I am only afraid that he may have forestalled us.’

  ‘Not too much danger of that because the minute we left she planned to bolt down to Storhampton and conceal herself in a supermarket. She often goes early on Saturday morning, to stock up for the weekend, so Marc won’t find anything unusual about it and she means to spin it out, to make sure we’re back before she is.’

  ‘I love the way you lay on all these amusing weekend recreations,’ Robin said, brushing off the dust and chips of bark which had stuck to his trousers. They always make such a pleasant change from the dull routine of work.’

  Elsa had not returned, but there was an unfamiliar car parked behind Robin’s, some distance from the front door. However, as it was a very dashing Mercedes, almost split new, neither of us was inclined to associate it with Inspector Bledlow. The owner, we concluded, was the fair-haired young man standing with his back to us under the porch.

  He turned round as we approached, either hearing our feet crunching on the gravel, or perhaps because he had been on the point of leaving anyway, for, advancing towards us with a sunny smile, he said, ‘Out of luck, I’m afraid. There doesn’t appear to be anyone at home.’

  Seeing him thus, at close quarters, I could understand the doubts that had been expressed concerning his qualifications for the job of farm manager, and also why it had been grudgingly conceded that he was not bad looking and had pleasant enough manners.

  He was slightly built, four or five inches shorter than Robin, with very small hands and feet and his face, too, was small and doll-like. There was something almost babyish looking about him and it was impossible to imagine him ever maturing into middle age.