‘Maybe her husband, Michael Trevelyan, made an excuse for her,’ said Betty, who’d had time to think about it. ‘Perhaps he said she’d gone to bed with a headache or something. Even if your mother thought it was strange at the time, she could hardly question him about it in his own house.’
‘I still think it’s odd,’ said Jenny. ‘My mother never said a word about it ever. I can’t help thinking that she would’ve mentioned it. After all, according to Mr Laidlaw, there was quite a rumpus about it in the newspapers.’
‘Would she really talk about?’ asked Jack. ‘I can imagine it’s not something you’d want to talk about to a child.’
‘Not to a child, no, but later on, when I was grown up, I’m surprised she never mentioned it.’
‘Maybe she’d forgotten it,’ suggested Betty.
Jenny shook her head. ‘Not my mother. She wouldn’t forget anything like that. Especially not if, as you say, this precious husband was involved. If she and Caroline Trevelyan were very close friends, she might have been too upset to talk about it, I suppose, but it still seems peculiar.’
She broke off and her expression became thoughtful. ‘I wonder if Dad asked her not to mention it? He was very protective where I was concerned.’ She smiled indulgently. ‘He had some very old-fashioned ideas of what girls should and shouldn’t know about. In fact …’ She looked up sharply. ‘I wonder if Dad talked to my brother, Martin, about it? Martin and Dad were very close.’
‘How much older is Martin than you?’ asked Jack.
‘Eight years.’
‘So say you did see a murder, he’d be old enough to know you were terribly upset and old enough to be warned not to talk about it.’
‘That’s right,’ said Jenny. ‘And, knowing my parents, old enough to be told the truth.’ She grinned. ‘Martin would want to know the truth. He’s that kind of person.’ Her eyes shone with sudden determination. ‘I know! I’ll write to him! If he knows what happened – and I bet he does – then he’ll surely tell me. It can’t do any harm after all this time.’
‘That’s a really good idea,’ said Betty. ‘Jack, can you find anything out? What about looking in the old newspapers?’
‘I can do that, certainly, but I don’t know if the press will be able to tell us much more than what we’ve already learned from Mr Laidlaw. Now we’ve got names and dates, I think Bill Rackham would be more help.’
‘Of course!’ said Betty. She turned to Jenny. ‘I’d like you to meet Bill Rackham,’ she said. ‘He’s an absolute dear and a chief inspector at Scotland Yard.’
‘He sounds a useful sort of person,’ said Jenny.
‘He’s been very useful on occasion,’ agreed Jack with a laugh. ‘I came across him ages ago when I wanted some details about the police for a story I was writing. We’d both been in the war, of course, and it turned out that we knew some of the same people and so on and really hit it off. Now I’ve got some details to go on, I can certainly ask Bill to look up the records. It might take him a while, though. I know he’s been engaged on a case in the Lake District that’s taken up all his time. How about putting an advertisement in the newspapers? Even if Bill Rackham and your brother Martin are able to fill us in, we might find out something else worth knowing.’
‘You mean ask people to write to me?’ asked Jenny, looking startled.
‘I’ll ask them to write to me, if you like,’ offered Jack.
‘That’s very nice of you,’ said Jenny in some relief. ‘If you really don’t mind, I’d much rather you handled it.’ She paused for a moment. ‘For one thing, I don’t want Wilson and Lee to see my name in the papers, and … and …’ She swallowed hard. ‘You see, it really was very scary in the garden. If someone spelled out chapter and verse what happened …’ She shook herself.
‘You’d rather Jack dealt with it first,’ put in Betty sympathetically.
Jenny nodded. ‘That’s exactly it.’ She looked at him gratefully. ‘I want to know the truth,’ she said with determination, ‘but,’ she added, with a little break in her voice, ‘I’d like some warning of it first.’
SIX
M. Langton, MRCP
46, Boar Lane
Leeds
W. Yorkshire
Dear Jenny
I don’t know how you got hold of this old story about the Trevelyans, but it would be much better if you let it drop. I think the best thing for it would be for me to have a word with this detective chap you seem to have lugged in to it and tell him to back off. Even if he is your friend’s husband, we don’t want an outsider poking around in our private family business and I’m surprised you ever considered it.
If you let me have a note of his address, I’ll write to Major Haldean and explain the situation. I intend to call on him on Saturday afternoon and that, I hope, will be the end of it. I will be staying at the Regent’s Palace hotel. If you would like to join me there for dinner, please be in the lobby at seven o’clock. Let me know about dinner.
Your affect. brother,
Martin
It was Wednesday morning. In the privacy of her own room, Jenny re-read the letter away from the prying eyes of the other boarding-house inhabitants. The outraged gasp she had given when she’d opened the letter at breakfast had drawn far too much attention and concerned – call that downright nosy – enquiries from the other guests.
She usually thought a lot of Martin. She was very fond of him as a general rule but this was just beyond a joke. She wasn’t going to be pushed out of the way, no matter what Martin’s opinions were, and to tell Jack Haldean to lay off was simply outrageous. Well, she thought grimly, as she scribbled a note in reply, Martin could say and do what he liked, but she was going to find out the truth whether he liked it or not.
‘Bossy pig,’ she commented to herself as she stuck a stamp on the envelope. ‘He always did think he knows what’s best.’
Jack slit open a letter with a Leeds postmark and propped it against the teapot.
M. Langton, MRCP
46, Boar Lane
Leeds
W. Yorkshire
Dear Sir,
I understand from my sister, Jennifer Langton, that she has asked you to investigate an old scandal concerning the Trevelyans of Saunder’s Green House. Can I state, in the strongest possible terms, that this investigation must cease. There is no point whatsoever in raking up old scandals which would be much better left forgotten and which can only be detrimental to the good name of my family.
Jennifer has furnished me with a note of your address and I intend to call upon you at two o’clock on Saturday afternoon. Please confirm by reply that you will be able to receive me.
Yrs faithfully
Martin Langton (Dr)
‘What d’you think of that?’ he asked, passing the letter over to Betty.
Betty’s reactions, although she didn’t know it, virtually mirrored those of Jenny Langton’s. ‘The cheeky beggar,’ she said. ‘I wonder what on earth’s got into him? I always got on perfectly well with Martin Langton.’
‘He sounds,’ said Jack, ‘a bit of a pompous ass.’
Betty shook her head. ‘He likes his own way and he does tend to think his way is the right way, but he’s always been very nice. What on earth’s he so upset about, Jack?’
Jack started to speak, then hesitated. ‘I think we’d better let Dr Langton tell us that himself. At the moment, all I know is what was in the old newspapers, which was virtually what Mr Laidlaw told us. There certainly wasn’t any mention of Jenny Langton or her mother. However, Bill should be back on Friday and hopefully he’ll be able to dig up some solid facts.’
Bill Rackham relaxed into the familiar surroundings of Jack’s rooms in Chandos Place. Running a hand through his ginger hair, he pulled the tobacco jar towards him and filled his pipe with a sigh of content. ‘You’re a lucky devil, Jack. I thought when you got married you’d have to give up some of your bachelor comforts, but this room’s hardly changed.’
‘B
etty,’ said Jack, ‘has been very understanding. She’s transformed the downstairs of the house, but she’s let me keep this room more or less as I like. We’ve had the decorators in downstairs and this room was jolly useful to retreat to. We use it as a sort of snug, and, of course, I work up here. If I’ve got bookcases, a typewriter, a kettle and the absolute understanding that no one tries to tidy up when I’m working, what more do I need?’
‘It’s looking pretty tidy at the moment,’ said Bill approvingly. He liked things to be neat and tidy.
‘Betty put her foot down on the strength of this chap, Dr Langton, calling. She’s out shopping at the moment, but she said she’d be back to meet Dr Langton. She knows him, of course, and she says she always liked him, but he seems a prickly sort of character.’ He picked up the letter that lay on the table beside him and held it out. ‘You’d better read this.’
‘Dr Langton,’ said Bill, reading the letter, ‘seems a bit steamed up.’
It was quarter past one on Saturday afternoon. Bill had returned from Oxenholme the day before and had obligingly looked up the Trevelyan case in the records at Scotland Yard.
‘It’s difficult, really, to think,’ he added, holding a match to his pipe, ‘why he should be so excited by it all. After all, even if Miss Langton did witness a murder when she was a kid, poor little beggar, that’s no reflection on her or her family, is it? I wonder,’ he added significantly, ‘if our Dr Langton knows more about this business than he’s letting on.’
‘That was my first thought,’ agreed Jack, ‘but he’s a bit young to have been directly involved. After all, if he’s eight years older than Jenny Langton, that makes him only twelve or thirteen when it happened.’
Bill pulled a face. ‘That is a bit too young to be directly involved, I agree. That wasn’t really my drift. I still want to hear what he’s got to say, though. If he was there that day, he could’ve seen or heard something that might be relevant to the case. Even if he overheard his parents talking, it could put us on the right lines. After all, a murder case is never closed.’
‘So you’re taking it as murder?’ asked Jack with an enquiring tilt of his head.
‘Suspected murder, certainly,’ agreed Bill, concentrating on getting his pipe to draw. ‘There’s nothing much else it can be.’ He pulled a notebook from his pocket. ‘I’ve jotted down the relevant facts here.’
The facts, as contained in the official report, didn’t leave much room for doubt. On the 15th July 1907, Caroline Trevelyan had vanished. She had last been seen by the housemaid, a Rosanna Selgrove, at three o’clock that afternoon, who had served her mistress with afternoon tea. As it was a fine day, Caroline Trevelyan had taken tea under the shade of the cedar tree in the garden. When Rosanna Selgrove had gone to collect the tea things at just gone half three, her mistress had disappeared.
At first the police were disinclined to treat the matter seriously. It was Michael Trevelyan himself who had reported his wife’s disappearance and Michael Trevelyan who insisted that the police institute a search. This they refused to do.
‘Why,’ asked Jack, as Bill read from his notes, ‘didn’t the police spring into action right away?’
Bill rubbed his nose with the stem of his pipe. ‘Reading between the lines, in the first instance they believed she’d gone off of her own volition. Apparently the family were going to move to New Zealand and that, according to the servants, had caused some friction between the couple. Michael Trevelyan was all for the move. He was employed as a shipping manager by Travis and Sons of Cockspur Street, importing wool, butter, cheese and so on from New Zealand. He’d been appointed to the firm’s Wellington office and the move represented considerable promotion for him. Caroline Trevelyan was dreading it. The servants had heard them arguing about it. To be honest, Jack, I think the police side of it was all very badly handled. Inspector Chartfield, who was in charge of the case, was convinced she’d turn up at some relative or friends and thought Michael Trevelyan was making a blasted nuisance of himself.’
‘What made them change their minds?’
‘Eight days after Mrs Trevelyan had disappeared, Michael Trevelyan turned up with a letter purporting to have come from his wife. It said that she just couldn’t face the move and she was going to stay in England. The letter didn’t carry an address or date but the envelope was postmarked from Norwich. Trevelyan admitted that his wife didn’t have any connections in Norwich but wanted the police in Norfolk to be called in to look for her.’
‘And did they?’
Bill shook his head. ‘No. Right from the start the police were suspicious about that letter. I don’t know if you know, but handwriting analysis had come in and was all the rage. Well, Michael Trevelyan was insisting on action, so Inspector Chartfield thought he’d start with the letter and bring modern science to bear. I don’t know if he was suspicious of Trevelyan or not at this stage, but he sent the letter off for analysis. That letter’s still on the file, by the way, together with an authentic sample of Mrs Trevelyan’s handwriting. The upshot was that although the handwriting bore a superficial resemblance to that of Mrs Trevelyan’s, it was a forgery.’
‘Was it, by George?’ murmured Jack.
‘Well, as you can imagine, that put Caroline Trevelyan’s disappearance in a very different light. It was obvious that somebody was trying to cover something up.’
‘And the police thought that someone was Michael Trevelyan?’
Bill shrugged. ‘It’s an obvious thought, Jack, and the obvious answer is so often the truth. After all, you know perfectly well that the husband or wife is always the first suspect on the list and, to be fair to Inspector Chartfield, there didn’t seem to be anyone else to suspect. Mrs Trevelyan was very well liked. There really didn’t seem to be any reason for anyone to bear her any ill will. There was certainly no suspicion she’d been having an affair, went in for gambling or had got involved with any unsavoury types. On the other hand, she was known to have disagreed with her husband. Both the servants, Rosanna Selgrove and Eunice Cowick, had heard him raise his voice to her about the proposed move. He’d accused her of wanting to hold him back.’
‘You can have a disagreement without resorting to murder though,’ protested Jack. ‘Blimey, Bill, I’ve not always agreed with Betty but she’s still here.’
‘But a disagreement about what country you’re going to live in is rather more serious than where you go for dinner or what have you, isn’t it? Inspector Chartfield, with the evidence of the letter, became convinced that Michael Trevelyan had made away with his wife. His theory was that, although no one was suspicious at first, it could only be a matter of time before questions were asked about Mrs Trevelyan’s disappearance. His idea was that Michael Trevelyan had raised the alarm to divert the suspicion that would inevitably fall on him.’
‘He’s probably right at that,’ commented Jack. ‘Was Trevelyan able to produce an alibi?’
Bill shook his head. ‘Not really. Trevelyan had returned to the house at quarter to six. By his own account he had been down at the docks on the afternoon of the fifteenth of July, but although plenty of people had seen him up to about quarter past two, he couldn’t produce an alibi for the rest of the afternoon. He had returned to the Cockspur Street office just before five, but from quarter past two until five, no one had seen him. He said he had called into the Fraser Street public library to complete his paperwork and was there until about half four. Although the librarian at Fraser Street certainly recognised Trevelyan as someone who frequently used the public reading room, he couldn’t say if Trevelyan had called in there on the fifteenth or not. That would, as Inspector Chartfield noted, give him ample time to get to Saunder’s Green and back to Cockspur Street. He could even have time, if he really got a move on, to call in at the library to give a bit of backbone to his story.’
Jack pulled a face. ‘It’s hard to know what to make of an alibi like that. Did Inspector Chartfield examine the paperwork that Trevelyan had supposedly done th
at afternoon?’
Bill shrugged. ‘If he did, there’s no record of it. That’s the first thing I’d have done, I must say, with such a thin alibi, but by this time Inspector Chartfield had Trevelyan firmly in his sights. You see, whoever had written that letter knew enough about Caroline Trevelyan to make a fair stab at copying her handwriting and knew she didn’t want to go to New Zealand. Armed with this conviction, Inspector Chartfield got a warrant and searched the house.’
‘They were looking for the body, I suppose?’
Bill nodded. ‘They didn’t find it, though. What they did find however, was Trevelyan’s diary. Most of it was appointments and memoranda, but at the back he’d written a list of poisons together with a date; Monday, July the fifteenth.’
Jack whistled. ‘That’s nasty.’
‘So Inspector Chartfield thought. The upshot was that the police called in on Michael Trevelyan in his office in Cockspur Street and arrested him on suspicion of murder. He seemed to come quietly. That must’ve put the officers off their guard, because as soon as they got into the street, he lammed a police officer and made a run for it. And that,’ said Bill, tamping down the tobacco in his pipe and re-lighting it, ‘is that. From that day to this, no one’s had a sniff of him. What d’you think?’
Jack pursed his lips. ‘I don’t like the diary, I must say. You see, if Caroline Trevelyan was murdered, then obviously the murderer only had half an hour between the servant bringing out the tea tray and then returning for it. That’s not long for an impulsive murderer to do the deed and hide the body. And, what’s more, to hide it so well a thorough search couldn’t uncover any trace of it. If it was planned though, which the list of poisons suggests it was, then he could’ve had a temporary hiding place arranged in a shed or so on, and disposed of it at his leisure.’
‘How would you go about disposing of a body?’ asked Bill curiously. ‘You’ve disposed of dozens in fiction.’
‘I’m glad you’re only accusing me of fictional murders,’ said Jack with a grin. ‘That’s interesting. It’s a question that doesn’t often come up in the Notes and Queries section of the newspaper. How I did it in The Neighbours at Number 17 was to have my villain rent a house under an assumed name and talk about his dear wife who was ailing, with his willing girlfriend taking the part of the ailing wife. Then he bumped off his wife, smuggled the body into the house, called for a doctor, had her buried quite openly by a legitimate undertaker, and swanned off with the girlfriend.’
Forgotten Murder Page 9
