The Sedleigh Hall Murder

by Roy Lewis

  ‘Counsel’s opinion, you said.’ There was a vague desperation in his husky voice, as though the contemplation of more lawyer’s delays brought death that much nearer. ‘All right, we’ll take counsel’s opinion. That will do for today, I think.’

  The conference at Sedleigh Hall was over, and Lord Morcomb did not look in Ward’s direction as he walked slowly from the room.

  * * *

  Joseph Francis contented himself with grunting that he’d see Ward back at the office; moments later Paul had whisked him away in his car. As Eric walked towards his own vehicle he heard steps on the gravel behind him. He looked back; it was David Penrose, taking a cigarette out of a silver case. He drew near, smiling, and offered Ward a cigarette, which he declined. ‘The old man doesn’t care for smoking in the house and he’s got a keen nose. And after a long session like that I need a drag.’ He drew on the cigarette and then cocked an eyebrow at Ward. ‘You threw me a bit with that Finance Act stuff.’

  Ward leaned against his car. ‘I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to blind anyone with science. I just think that if Lord Morcomb pushes that particular line he’ll be .. ill advised.’

  Penrose grinned and shrugged. ‘Well, I asked for it, anyway. I was just showing off a bit, I suppose, seeking to impress my employer.’ He hesitated. ‘I like my job, and I’d like to keep it. Keeps me from the workhouse . . . So you think the time of death angle is washed out?’

  ‘In my opinion. The authorities . . . but let’s get something straight,’ Ward explained. ‘I’m no solicitor — not yet. Still qualifying. Hack work and along for the ride, today.’

  ‘Seems to me you knew more about issues than at least one of your companions.’

  Ward made no reply. He thought it time to leave now, but Penrose seemed in no hurry to let him go. Lord Morcomb’s estate manager seemed thoughtful, his eyes lidded against the cigarette smoke as he looked quizzically at Eric Ward. ‘You . . . you threw the old man a bit back there, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Could cut the atmosphere with a knife.’ Penrose waved his cigarette negligently. ‘I know Lord Morcomb; he can be hard, but he can be surprisingly vulnerable too, on occasions. And you really got to him today — whether you meant it or not.’

  ‘It was unintentional.’

  ‘That’s as may be . . . but what’s it about, anyway?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘You mentioned a name — Egan?’

  ‘Arthur Egan. He’s dead. We’re administering his estate.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Penrose considered the matter, drew again on his cigarette. ‘What’s the connection with Michael Denby’s father, then?’

  Ward stared at him. ‘Michael Denby?’

  ‘That’s right. He farms from Vixen Hill now, ever since his father . . .’ Penrose’s voice died away and his glance was suddenly keen. ‘His father was killed, wasn’t he? I seem to remember . . .’

  ‘It was Arthur Egan,’ Ward said shortly. There was no reason why he should not tell Penrose; it was public knowledge anyway. ‘He was convicted of the manslaughter of Colonel Denby. But I hadn’t realized Denby had leased his property from Lord Morcomb.’

  ‘That’s the way of it,’ Penrose replied. ‘And I suppose it was a bit of a shock to Lord Morcomb, hearing the name of a man who had killed one of his tenants — even after all this time.’

  It might well have been a shock, as Penrose said. But Eric Ward was left with the feeling there was more to it than that. And he suspected that David Penrose was of the same opinion. In the silence that fell, he opened the car door, and then paused. ‘Exactly where is Vixen Hill?’ he asked.

  Penrose looked at him thoughtfully for a few moments. ‘There’s a track on the left, just as you reach the main road. Take it, and it’ll bring you to the Sedleigh turning. Bear right there, and it’s about four miles. You can’t miss it — if you intend going there.’

  Ward made no commitment but thanked him and got into the car. As he drove away, through the driving mirror he could see David Penrose standing there, watching him. A few moments later, as the car reached the green and the clock tower arch, the man was lost to sight.

  * * *

  The road was narrower than Ward had expected, even though the signpost intimated he would eventually reach the Jedburgh road. A high hedge on one side gave him no view over the fields; on the other scattered trees lurched in an overhang across the roadway, which twisted and turned every fifty yards or so.

  He heard the other car long before he saw it; the driver was a careful man who sounded his horn on the bends. Ward thought it best to pull into a passing place set against the hedge rather than risk having to reverse later, and within half a minute a black Ford with a battered offside wing nosed its way around the bend ahead.

  For all his caution, the other driver had miscalculated and had strayed too widely around the bend. He was forced to halt, reverse, and then swing the wheel sharply to edge towards the ditch in order to make his way past Ward. He came forward slowly; Ward waved a hand in acknowledgment, as he inched forward, but the man in the other car paid no attention. He was about forty years old, sandy-haired, his skin tanned, the hands on the wheel strong and tense. He flickered a quick glance in Ward’s direction as he passed: Ward obtained a fleeting impression of eyes black as buttons, but hard and determined. Then the Ford was past him, picking up speed, and Eric was able to move forward himself.

  After a mile or so the road widened, swung through a small hamlet, sturdy stone-built cottages overlooking the steep slopes of a river bank, and then ahead of him he saw another track, churned by tractor wheels but passable to a car, climbing up the slope between two fields. The sign bore the legend ‘Vixen Hill’ and below it, uncompromisingly, PRIVATE. Ward swung into the track and drove a little way along it, then pulled to one side, under a clump of trees. He switched off the engine, listened to the tick of cooling metal for a few minutes, deciding whether to walk over the hill and satisfy his curiosity. Then, at last, though recognizing it was merely curiosity and refusing to analyse his motivation otherwise, he got out of the car, locked it, and started to walk up the hill.

  The afternoon sun was warm on his back, but the slope was gentle and he reached the brow of the hill in a matter of minutes. There the track ran over level ground for a hundred yards, then dipped sharply through some trees. Ward walked forward until he was standing on the edge of the copse.

  The track ran steeply down the hillside, through birch and alder and sycamore trees, rutted, but patched here and there with stones and tarmacadam. At the bottom of the hill lay a small wooden bridge; the stream it crossed was swift-moving but shallow, the track crossing it at a ford slightly to the left of the bridge. Ward could make out a post driven into the water to record its depth; in winter, no doubt, there would be times when the bridge would be the only means of access to the other side, and when he walked down the hill he realized this would be the reason for the wooden garages standing under the trees, some fifty yards from the stream.

  He walked forward and stood on the bridge. On the other side of the narrow stream the track rose to high hedges, and beyond, through the trees he could see a stone-built farmhouse — the manor house that Lord Morcomb had spoken of. It was up there that Colonel Denby had lived.

  And it was on this bridge that he would have died. Ward had no idea how long he stood on the bridge, staring down into the water; his thoughts were confused and aimless. They centred on Arthur Egan, and his loneliness, but they also wandered around certain irreconcilable matters he found disturbing him. Egan had been a killer, yet the only information he had so far about the man was that there was probably only this one isolated incident of violence in his life. What had made him act in this way?

  And why had Lord Morcomb reacted so oddly at the mention of his name? Surely, after twenty or more years, the name would have been forgotten.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the voice said, in a tone that suggested no desire to do any su
ch thing.

  Eric turned, startled, to see a man standing a little distance away, watching him. He had obviously come down through the trees and his boots were muddy, suggesting he had been tramping over the fields above. He was short, stocky in build, with a ruddy complexion and a fleshy mouth. He wore a battered jacket and corduroy trousers stuffed into his boots; the flat cap was set back from his wide forehead and his fair hair curled thickly at the nape of his neck.

  ‘Er . . . no, I’m sorry,’ Ward said quietly. ‘I . . . I just came down to look at the stream, and the bridge.’

  ‘You know this is private land?’

  ‘I saw the sign, but . . . do you live up at the manor house?’

  The man came forward, thrusting his hands into the Jackets of his jacket. ‘That’s right. I farm Vixen Hill. And I live in the manor house.’

  ‘You must be Michael Denby.’

  The stocky man came closer; his eyes were wary, and he inspected Ward’s sober suit, as though suspecting he had received a visitor from the Inland Revenue. ‘You’re looking for me?’

  ‘No. I said . . . I just came down to look at the bridge. But David Penrose told me a little while ago that you farmed here.’

  Michael Denby’s chin came up a trifle, belligerently. ‘Penrose? You and he have been discussing me?’

  Ward shook his head, smiling slightly. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve not made myself very clear. I was up at Sedleigh Hall this morning, on a legal matter. Colonel — your father’s name came up. Then Penrose told me you farmed here, in succession to your father. I . . . I was interested in seeing . . . Vixen Hill.’

  Michael Denby stared at him thoughtfully for a few moments, his brow furrowed as though he was somewhat disturbed. ‘A legal matter . . .’ he murmured. ‘Would that be to do with Carlton Engineering?’

  Ward’s lack of understanding must have shown in his face. Denby stared at him closely, then asked, ‘If not that, what’s your interest in Vixen Hill, then?’

  Ward hesitated briefly. ‘I . . . I’m dealing with the administration of the estate of Arthur Egan.’

  Michael Denby’s expression changed subtly; his gaze became tangled, confused with conflicting reminiscences and he brushed his mouth with his hand, his breathing suddenly ragged. He stepped slowly on to the bridge, moving past Ward and he placed his stubby hands on the wooden supports. He stood quietly like that for almost a minute, staring sightlessly into the shallow stream, a man in his mid-thirties suddenly feeling much older. Then he pulled his emotions together, buried them under a faint smile as he looked at Eric Ward.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to come up to the house,’ he said, and turned to walk across the bridge without waiting for an answer.

  He was more relaxed and at ease among the Jacobean structures of his home; it was a warm house and a welcoming one, and his wife Jenny was plump, rather homely, but friendly. She bustled out to the back of the house to make a pot of tea in spite of Ward’s protest that he needed none, and then Denby motioned Ward to a chair, took off his jacket and threw it on the settee, and took the chair facing Ward. He scratched his chin, slightly nervous again, and finally said, ‘I asked you in because perhaps my curiosity matches — or is probably even greater — than yours.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve wondered for many years what kind of a man he was, the man who killed my father.’ When Ward was silent, he continued. ‘Do you understand that? I never met him, never really wanted to meet him. But I wanted to know about him. And now he’s dead. What kind of man was he?’

  Slowly Ward said, ‘I don’t know that I can answer that. My essential interest is in . . . in discovering who the beneficiaries might be to his estate. Beyond that . . . I don’t know, but he seems to have been a quiet, remote man, no friends, no relatives calling, cut away from his Newcastle roots and living in a semi in Westerhope and . . .’ He hesitated, aware of the oddly hungry expression in Michael Denby’s eyes. ‘And maybe still brooding on the one act of gratuitous violence he seems to have committed in his life.’

  A sigh escaped from Denby’s lips; it could have been disappointment; it might have been frustration. ‘It was an act that cost my father his life,’ he said quietly.

  They sat saying nothing for a moment as Jenny came in with the tea. She sensed that the conversation precluded her presence and went out, closing the door behind her.

  ‘It’s ironic, really,’ Denby said, pouring the tea, ‘I never knew my father’s murderer, but then, I never really knew my father, either.’

  He explained that he had been only twelve years old when his father had died. He had seen very little of him; a boarding school as he grew older, and before that a period spent with an aunt while his father was overseas in the Army. His mother had died when he was three. He had hero-worshipped his military father in the way a young boy would, but now, as he was older, he was trying to be more objective.

  ‘It’s why I’ve thought back so often to that night,’ he said. ‘As far as I understand things, Egan had broken into the house here — it was well known that my father had a silver collection, which has in fact now been sold — with the intention of robbing the place. My father must have heard him and came downstairs. Egan ran, taking very little of value with him. It could have ended there — Egan would presumably have been caught anyway, as he was, by selling the silver in Newcastle. But my father . . .’ He paused ruminatively. ‘Do you see how his background must have affected his decision? He took down a shotgun and went out after Egan. The questions in my mind have always been, why the hell did he chase after the man — it wasn’t that important — certainly not worth throwing his life away for it, at least! And Egan. Was he a violent man? Or was he just scared, panic-stricken in the darkness when my father caught up with him at the bridge, waving that shotgun in his face.’

  ‘I gather he’d already fired one barrel,’ Ward said quietly.

  ‘And was ready to let loose with the other.’ There was an edge of bitterness to his voice and Ward suspected it was directed more against his father than against the man who had killed him. But Denby’s curiosity was compounded by not really knowing either man, yet seeing the incident in his mind’s eye, over and over again. ‘After my father died, my aunt and uncle came to run the farm for a few years, and I came home from school. Eventually, I took over the lease. But almost every time I walk across that bridge . . .’ He glanced at Ward shamefacedly. ‘You’d think that kind of thing would have faded over the years, but it hasn’t. The stupidity of it all. Egan, scrabbling away with a few trivial pieces of silver; my father, chasing him with a shotgun, and prepared to use it, for God’s sake! You know, I think I would have acted the way Egan did. One of the stanchions of the bridge was broken. He grabbed it up and hit out at my father. But then, when my father was down, why did he hit him again? The trial . . . the newspapers said he’d hit him three times.’

  It would have been touch and go with a self-defence plea, Ward thought as Denby sat brooding. One blow, sending Colonel Denby to his knees . . . Egan should have run, then. Instead, he had struck at the prostrate man, twice more. Maybe Francis, Shaw and Elder had done a better job with the defence than Joe Francis suggested.

  ‘You didn’t really explain why you came to Vixen Hill,’ Denby said after a little while. ‘Was it just curiosity?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Ward replied. ‘I know very little about Arthur Egan — he kept very much to himself. I don’t even know yet where he was working in this district. It was somewhere around here, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Michael Denby nodded. ‘He worked at Seddon Burn, about eight miles from here. There was a hall there — it burned down about ten or fifteen years ago now, and the chap who leased it from Lord Morcomb emigrated, I believe. But it was he who employed Arthur Egan. He ran the stables — there was quite a fine stable there, I seem to remember. Mainly hunting, of course, but I seem to recall he also had some racing bloodstock. That’s where Egan was, anyway.’

  Ward was p
uzzled. ‘Odd thing to do, somehow, wasn’t it?’

  Michael Denby watched him for a little while. He knew what he meant. He scratched his cheek thoughtfully. ‘Like I said, I know nothing about Egan, but I was always a bit puzzled. There was never any talk about why he broke into the house that night. Bits of silver, yes . . . but he had a good job, so why commit a burglary? And it seems it was the only such act he ever committed.’

  ‘The only act of burglary, the only act of violence.’ Ward nodded. ‘A man working in the country, having escaped the terraces of Byker and Scotswood. And more-over, he commits the robbery so close to home.’

  There was something wrong about it. He felt it in his bones. Policemen often worked on instinct, and were suitably criticized for it when they failed to produce evidence to confirm their suspicions, but Eric Ward had never discounted instinct. He was no longer a policeman, but his instincts had not changed, and there was something wrong about the events of that night. But it was a long time ago, and most of the people concerned were dead.

  ‘There is one thing,’ he said after finishing his cup of tea. ‘You say Egan worked at Seddon Burn. Is there a village there?’

  ‘Of sorts.’

  ‘Did you ever hear any rumours about Egan fathering a child on one of the local girls? You see, the problem is, in his instructions to us he wrote of a child or grandchildren. He was a lonely, remote man, and at the end racked with cancer, and he might have been fantasizing — maybe he never had a child. We’re advertising, with no response so far. But I just wondered . . .’

  Michael Denby was shaking his head. ‘I’ve heard no rumour . . . but then, it’s not likely I would. But if you like, I’ll ask around, because I go to one of the locals occasionally, and there’s a group of old men there who seem to know about almost everything that’s happened in these hills for the last fifty years.’