‘I’m very pleased to hear it. No, thank you, we won’t stop for tea. I was about to tell you, but you went for the cups so quickly I didn’t manage to get it out before you’d gone.’
Barnfelt’s eyes twinkled behind his pince-nez. He said: ‘I know.’
His wife said: ‘You knew? Then why dash off like that?’
Masters said hurriedly: ‘Just one question, doctor. Why did Maria Binkhorst come specifically to see you last week, or the week before, when her normal doctor is your son?’
Barnfelt smiled. ‘She told you she came?’
‘Please answer my question.’
‘Then she didn’t tell you.’
‘You mean she didn’t come?’
‘No. I don’t underestimate your intelligence, Chief Inspector. I should be foolish to do so when you are capable of . . . er . . . divination of so high a degree. You know why she came to me.’
‘I think I can guess. She thought she was pregnant, but wished to have an older man confirm it. And probably she felt the need of an independent confidant—knowing how badly her parents would receive the news.’
Mrs Barnfelt said: ‘Maria? Going to have a baby? Who’s the father?’
Barnfelt said: ‘You may well ask, my dear. I had to wheedle hard to get it out of her.’
‘Who? Not . . .?’
‘Not Peter, my dear. Parseloe.’
‘Oh, no. That poor girl. With child to a man like that. And now he’s dead. But I can’t help feeling it’s a blessing he is.’
Barnfelt said: ‘Quite. I’m pleased you take that attitude, my dear. I, too, feel that Parseloe is better dead.’
Masters said: ‘I’d like you to come with us, doctor.’
Mrs Barnfelt said: ‘Go with you? Whatever for?’
Her husband said: ‘Don’t worry, my dear. Statements have to be taken officially, you know. Please get me my coat.’
She murmured: ‘Yes, of course,’ and hurried from the room. Barnfelt picked up his cooling cup of tea and finished it. His wife held his coat for him and handed him a muffler. He said: ‘If I’m not back in time for surgery, let Peter know.’
They were in the hallway of the Goblin. Hill had escorted Barnfelt into the dining-room. Green said: ‘Nicholson’s on his way over. He wanted to know it all, so I told him there was nothing I could tell him over the phone except that he was to get here pronto. Right?’
‘Good. And Pamela?’
‘Getting anything out of her’s as difficult as trying to poke smoke up a cat’s backside with a knitting needle. But I managed.’
‘How?’
‘I murmured in her little ear that accessories to crimes are treated the same as principals. She coughed all right. Young Barnfelt did take her to Peterborough. And they stopped for a snog on the way. She says she lied to protect him, but now we’ve discovered for ourselves that he’s the murderer she feels entitled to speak up for her own protection.’
Masters growled: ‘I thought that’s what she was thinking. Have you still got her?’
‘In the office, with Vanden keeping an eye on her.’
‘Good. I’ll probably want her again. And Peter?’
Green said: ‘We’re having a bit of difficulty with him. He’s been invited to the party, but refuses to come. Brant is tailing him, but we could have a bit of trouble persuading a busy doctor to leave his patients—without using a warrant.’
‘I want him. Wessel’s a magistrate and lives practically next door. Get him to sign one of the ready-use warrants.’
‘What charge?’
‘Accessory—for the moment.’
Green lit a Kensitas. ‘We are having fun, aren’t we? When’s the showdown?’
‘As soon as Nicholson’s here. Keep Peter on ice.’
Green turned his coat collar up and left. Masters hung about near the main door. Binkhorst in carpet slippers and braces shuffled out to him with a large breakfast cup of tea. He said: ‘You’ll be wanting this. I made it myself, so it’s a proper brew.’
Masters accepted. ‘Thanks. Don’t let us upset your routine. And please don’t talk to your customers about what’s going on, after you open.’
Binkhorst said: ‘These women can smell trouble like a cow smells water. How long’ll you be? Dinner an’ all that.’
‘A couple of hours, maybe. We’ll finish as soon as I can make it, anyhow.’
Binkhorst left him. Almost immediately the front door burst open and Nicholson came in like a full back going into a tackle. ‘What’s up? Run into trouble?’
‘No. Nothing like that. But it’s your case. I thought you ought to be here to hear the facts and make the arrest.’
‘Arrest? Who?’
‘Dr Frank Barnfelt.’
‘You can’t be serious. What would he do it for?’
Masters put his cup on the hall table. ‘It’s to hear his reasons that you’re here.’
‘I’ll not like arresting the doctor unless I’m sure.’
Masters said: ‘He’s in the dining-room. I’ve got Hill there ready to take shorthand. I’d like to start straight away.’
They went in. Barnfelt was sitting at the table smoking and writing on a note pad. He looked over his pince-nez as they entered, dipping his nose downward to peer at them. He said: ‘Ah! Chief Inspector and Superintendent Nicholson. Is the inquisition about to start, gentlemen?’
Masters drew out a chair and sat opposite him. He said: ‘Dr Barnfelt, at this point I must caution you formally. Everything said now, including this caution, will be recorded. I have reason to suspect you guilty of the murder of the Reverend Herbert Parseloe at eight o’clock or thereabouts last Sunday evening. You are not obliged to say anything . . .’
‘I know. And please record that I do not wish for the presence of a solicitor.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive. I think I can trust to my own legal knowledge at this stage.’
‘Very good, doctor. Do I take it that you wish to make a statement?’
‘Oh, no. That is not my idea at all. I wish to hear why I’m here—why you’re so sure I’m guilty.’
Nicholson said: ‘That’d be most irregular.’
‘Nevertheless, gentlemen, I must insist. Otherwise to keep me here you must charge me.’
Masters thought that this wouldn’t please Nicholson, who’d already announced he wasn’t prepared to arrest the doctor without good, solid proof. So he said to the Superintendent: ‘With your permission, sir, I think in these circumstances that it would be better if I were to outline our case.’
Barnfelt looked at his watch, and then waited for Nicholson’s reply.
‘Whatever you think best.’
Masters turned back to Barnfelt. ‘Now, doctor, I must go back several weeks, and start with Miss Parseloe. She is known to the police here as a girl who steals men from other women—openly. Making no secret of her conquests and ruining many affairs. But I have information that though she was here for the Christmas holiday and went about in Rooksby, she acted very much out of character. She had no overt affair with any man. If she was operating, it was done clandestinely.
‘The leopard doesn’t change its spots, doctor. So when I heard that only ten days after returning to Peterborough she came back to Rooksby with no more excuse than a mild bout of forty-eight hour flu, and stayed a fortnight to get over it, I surmised she must have—as one of the constables put it—some unfinished business to attend to. Romantic business. But again, whatever the affair, it was conducted clandestinely.
‘I tried to find a broken romance—the sure sign of Miss Parseloe’s depredations. Your son and Miss Barrett were no longer on speaking terms, supposedly after a few cross words over a call at bridge. I found it hard to believe that two intelligent people should carry a lovers’ quarrel so far, unless there were more serious grounds. The local constables were aware of the quarrel and were able to assure me that though Miss Barrett had often been seen in the last fortnight without an escort, your son h
ad been keeping company with an unknown girl. The only characteristic of this girl they could give me was that she had dark hair—as seen through the windscreen of a fast car.
‘Most girls in Rooksby are married so early that there are very few mature enough—and still personable enough—to interest a man like your son. And yet it must have been a local girl. Had she been an outner, it is unlikely he would have been seen with her so often in Rooksby. He would have met her, and left her, presumably, near her home, because there is little to attract young lovers to Rooksby. So, a local girl, dark haired, and of a type to interest a young doctor! As far as I could make out there were two. Maria Binkhorst and Pamela Parseloe.
‘I’ve already said I had reason to suspect that Miss Parseloe was carrying on a clandestine affair. If she could bother to come home—to her particularly unpleasant home—with a minor illness, to be treated by your son, who is not her registered doctor, it seemed likely to me that she would be the one I was interested in. But I discovered there was also some mystery surrounding Maria. More about that later.
‘Doctor, I think you only tried to mislead me twice. But in fact, inadvertently it was three times. The first, and inadvertent time, was when you told me your son had been at a bridge party last Sunday evening. You honestly thought he had gone to play with Mr and Mrs de Hooch. I learned that he hadn’t done so. And yet you should have known—or so I believe—because your son returned home about eight o’clock on Sunday evening. A fact you didn’t appear to know. I wondered if it could have been that you were out at the time—although you assured me that you were in—on duty.’
Barnfelt spoke for the first time. He said: ‘Bless my soul, did Peter actually go back to the house?’
‘He did. And he appears not to have told you. I think the reason why will be apparent later.
‘Now we come to the murdered man. He had an unenviable reputation; but one that he thoroughly deserved. You told me yourself that as the local doctor you gather information like a magnet attracts iron filings, and that you were well aware of Parseloe’s unsavoury character. Probably you regarded him as a man mentally ill—a paranoiac or schizophrenic.’
‘The former,’ said Barnfelt. ‘Delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex. He’d been brought up to believe that the cloth would be a magic vestment that would waft him to unprecedented heights in every walk or facet of life. He worked hard to achieve it, and then found that nowadays both the vocation and its rewards have been devalued. He’d been robbed of his dream and he’d also married a woman who brought no more to the union than an inflated opinion of her own importance and a sense of love and charity that would have disgraced a cold rice pudding. Such men are dangerous. Parseloe was a menace to this community.’
Masters said: ‘You’re not pulling your punches, doctor.’
‘The time for that is past.’
‘To go on. Maria Binkhorst found she was pregnant by Parseloe.’
Barnfelt interrupted again. ‘You may think that strange. A young, lovely girl submitting to an old fiend like Parseloe. But he was as clever as Satan in some ways, you know. With a facile tongue. So many of these men become so. Superficially—after years of preaching. They learn their craft in the pulpit.’
‘I understand. Maria came to you for a pregnancy test. I guess that you were so surprised to find Maria—of all people—following what appears to be the accepted course for young women in Rooksby, that you persuaded her to name the father. And that news, I suspect, angered you more than ever against Parseloe.
‘By a stroke of luck, without which the best of us sometimes fails, I learned that you and your son, in your private cars, carry radios which work to each other and to a control set in the surgery. The average number of patients on a general practitioner’s list these days is at least two thousand five hundred. Here, in Rooksby, there are too few inhabitants to complete one list, and yet there are two very busy doctors. This must mean that your catchment area covers not only the village, but a large area round about. Large, because it is sparsely populated and would not yield the capitation figures for two of you unless you went far afield. This led me to suppose that your wireless sets have a range of many miles.
‘Now you are an able man, doctor. Both in theory and practice. You built your sets and their special power supply to fulfil the needs of a far-flung practice. You could give me all the technical information about those sets except the one fact I really wanted—their range. That was a mistake, doctor. And I knew you were dodging the issue because last Sunday evening you had your control set switched on. Why, I don’t know. Probably you were tinkering, or you habitually keep it switched on—I can’t tell. But I know you heard a conversation that took place somewhere along the road to Peterborough.’
Barnfelt said: ‘Could I interrupt a moment, please. I am out of cigarettes and should like another packet—and a drink if possible. I see it is now half past five—the witching hour for the Goblin—and as we’ve been virtually sitting on the doorstep, as it were . . .’
Masters turned to Hill. ‘Would you please get Dr Barnfelt a packet of . . .’
‘Twenty king-size, tipped. Any sort,’ said Barnfelt. ‘And a large gin and tonic if that is permissible. I am not yet under arrest and so I believe I’m within my legal rights to ask for sustenance.’ He smiled at Hill. A little, toothy smile. He took a well-worn wallet from his inside pocket and handed over a note. ‘Can I persuade any of you gentlemen to join me?’
His offer was declined. Courteously by Masters. Somewhat brusquely by Nicholson who showed he thought this way of conducting an interview to be highly irregular.
When Hill returned he was accompanied by Green who nodded to Masters and sat down beside him.
Masters said: ‘I should like to go straight ahead, doctor.’
‘Please do.’
‘The conversation that took place on the road to Peterborough. Between your son and Miss Parseloe. Miss Parseloe has, throughout this case, exhibited a degree of stupidity which surprised me. She told me she left her home at six o’clock on Sunday evening in the hope of thumbing a lift to the station. I refused to believe this for several reasons. First of all, she had a heavy suitcase, and under no circumstances could I envisage her running the risk of having to carry it a mile to the Halt. Which she may well have been forced to do, because it is doubtful whether many cars pass through Rooksby at that time on winter Sunday evenings. Second, her father had a car and enough time to run her to the station and be back in good time for Evensong. And third, if her father had failed her, as a girl earning her own living—an adequate one—she could and would have afforded a taxi from the local garage. So I assumed she had arranged a meeting which she didn’t want me to know about. Surely an odd thing for a young girl to mislead me about during the course of an investigation into her father’s murder?
‘At that time I wasn’t sure whom she had met, but you will remember that I saw your son paying her a visit immediately after my first interview with her. I couldn’t understand this. She was perfectly well. I’d been with her for nearly an hour and I’d seen it for myself. And later you told me you had been asked to send him round urgently. From the evidence of this bogus call and for the reasons I have already outlined, I felt justified in supposing that Doctor Peter had arranged to—and, in fact, did—take her to Peterborough.
‘A little later, Inspector Green was looking into the question of the keys of the school. Anybody could have broken into the hall through the makeshift barrier, but the classrooms were locked. The Inspector discovered that there were four master keys. One in possession of the builders; one with the former headmaster; one normally kept on the vestry keyboard; and one normally kept in the vicar’s desk. He established that the church key was the one found on the dead body, and that the one normally kept in the vicar’s desk had been missing at the time of my visit, but had reappeared before his visit. The only other caller, besides myself, at the vicarage so far that day had been your son. It seemed fair to assume
that he could have returned the missing key. Called to do so by the bogus request for urgent medical attention.
‘But how had Doctor Peter got hold of the key? The vicar had borrowed the church key. As I have reason to believe that he knew, before he left the vicarage that evening, he would be visiting the school after Evensong, it seemed strange that he should not take his own key, unless he intended that it should be handed to whoever was to meet him later. If Doctor Peter had it, only one person could have given it to him. Pamela. For what reason?
‘Cora told us that for much of the Sunday afternoon her sister and father had been carrying on an important conversation from which she had been excluded. Important enough to need one daughter out of the way, and serious enough to prevent an avowed believer in siestas from taking his afternoon nap. What were the matters of such moment? I believe them to have been a discussion—probably started by the vicar—about his daughter’s relationship with Doctor Peter. And I believe he instructed his daughter to give the school key to your son and order him to present himself at the school at eight o’clock that evening for a heart to heart talk. And I also believe I know what the talk was to be about.
‘The vicar was devious minded. He chose the school for the meeting when his own study was available. He went across to the church early to avoid meeting Maria Binkhorst. I feel free to suppose that it was to avoid meeting Maria on the way back to the vicarage—at an inconvenient moment—that he decided on the school. A typical resolve of a secretive, devious mind.
‘And now we come to the radio message. I checked up on Pamela’s time of arrival in Peterborough and came to the conclusion that there had been a halt on the way. What happens in a car during a halt on a dark night when two youngsters of opposite sex are alone? On this occasion, probably nothing more than a kiss and a cuddle. But Doctor Peter’s Triumph is cramped quarters, and I believe that some movement depressed the toggle switch of the car radio transmitter and that you, at the control set at home, were an unwitting eavesdropper on an illuminating conversation. I imagine it started amicably enough and then developed along the lines I have already indicated. Pamela Parseloe, so long unsuccessful in finding a suitable husband, intended to marry your son. Her father had pointed out how it could be done. He was to play the part of outraged father of aggrieved and wronged girl, accusing your son of unprofessional conduct. Don’t forget she was technically his patient while he was in attendance on her. So Pamela was instructed to tell Doctor Peter that her father wanted to see him in the school after Evensong, and she gave him the key to let himself in if needs be. Probably Peter scented danger. I suspect he demurred. What did he say? That he was due at a bridge party at the de Hooch house? An excuse which he thought up on the spur of the moment but which you believed? Whatever it was, I suggest your son saw the pit yawning before him and struggled to get out of meeting Parseloe.
Masters and Green Series Box Set Page 36
