A Shocking Affair

by Gerald Hammond

  I had hoped to narrow down my suspects, but it seemed that the field remained wide open. ‘He’s a very good-looking young man, isn’t he,’ I suggested. ‘Duncan Ilwand, I mean.’

  She shrugged but without her customary air of contempt for the world in general and her company in particular. ‘I suppose so. Some of the girls at uni go weak at the knees when he’s around.’

  ‘But you’re above that sort of thing?’

  She glanced up at me again from the keyboard. The gleam of mischief was back again. ‘I don’t know anybody who’s above that sort of thing,’ she said. She smiled suddenly. ‘Not even the very old.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘You said it, I didn’t. The real reason I came back here was to chaperone you and Joanna.’

  She was only trying to needle me, I thought, to exact revenge. Or perhaps not. Keep it light, I told myself. ‘I’m much obliged, you young dog in the manger,’ I said. ‘I shall call you Gooseberry from now on. What else do you know about young Ilwand?’

  She focused on the computer and keyed into one of the directories. ‘Not a lot. He’s some sort of connection to the Earl of Jedburgh. Umpteenth cousin. Third son of a fourth son, so there isn’t a penny in it for him. I suppose that’s why he has to work for Jake Paterson. He’s supposed to be brilliant.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said.

  ‘Ilwand’s the family name,’ she said absently. She was studying the screen. ‘It’s an old, alternative spelling of Elliot. Duncan gets invited to Aikhowe sometimes, for the gatherings . . .’ Her voice faded away, leaving me free to pursue my own thoughts.

  Her sudden gasp jerked me back to the here and now. She was staring at the screen as though it had shown her a vision of hell.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. But she shook her head, cleared the screen and switched off the computer, then jumped to her feet and ran out of the room. I followed her, uncertain what to do. When I reached the door of her room it was shut tight.

  I knocked. Her voice invited me, in less than delicate terms, to go away. Under no circumstances would I have entered her room uninvited but I listened at the door for a minute or two. I could hear her crying as though her heart was already broken.

  As it happened, I had only a minute or two to hesitate on the threshold. Then Joanna’s head appeared at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘Mr Fellowes is here. And Mr Enterkin’s car just came through the archway.’

  ‘Put Mr Fellowes in the study, and Mr Enterkin when he eventually turns up.’ I resumed my approaches to the unresponsive door. ‘Won’t you at least tell me what’s wrong?’ I asked it. ‘I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong.’

  In a voice distorted by tears, Elizabeth Hay again invited me to go away, although she expressed herself even less politely than before. It seemed that our little truce was over. ‘You’d better come back and wait here in case she suddenly needs a confidante,’ I told Joanna.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Someone to talk to.’

  In the study I was joined by Ian Fellowes. He took a stand at the window, watching Ralph Enterkin’s car, which by then was nearly halfway along the drive. When he turned I saw that he looked tired. I invited him to be seated and asked, ‘Tea, or something stronger?’

  ‘Tea will do for now,’ he said. ‘Ask me again later.’

  I nodded to Joanna. ‘Three cups,’ I said.

  ‘Right away. Mrs Fiddler just made a pot,’ she said.

  I decided that I could come to like being the master of a substantial house staffed by willing slaves. With Isobel so busy, I was more often the slave. I sat behind the desk and, to fill the gap while we waited for the solicitor, toyed with the computer.

  Enterkin arrived and endorsed the majority vote for tea. Joanna wheeled in the trolley, poured and left us. A plate of buttered rock cakes, still warm from the oven, passed round.

  ‘Right,’ Ian Fellowes said a minute later, emptying his mouth with difficulty. ‘Now I feel strong enough to bring you up to date.’ He looked at me. ‘And free to do so. Mr Enterkin has furnished me with a list of those who may expect to benefit from Sir Peter’s death and no doubt he’ll let you see it. I don’t think it’s for me to broadcast it.’

  ‘I scanned it carefully for my own clients and found none who were not already too obvious to merit mention. The list consists primarily of those who gain under the will,’ said Ralph. ‘Plus of course a lady of whom you know and a gentleman ditto. The list is headed by our own two names.’

  ‘What?’ I said incredulously.

  He seemed surprised at my surprise. ‘But of course. Each of us can expect to earn a substantial fee. One of us was on the actual scene. I do not seriously suspect myself but the Detective Inspector should certainly do so. We must be considered.’

  ‘I was hardly in a position to electrify the fence,’ I pointed out. ‘What’s more, I didn’t know at the time that Peter had already signed his revised Trust Disposition and Settlement.’

  ‘It was hardly for me to omit names because of my own interpretation of the evidence,’ Ralph said stiffly. I let the subject drop. The legal mind has its own logic.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ advised Ian Fellowes, hiding a smile. ‘You both come rather a long way down my personal league table of suspects or I wouldn’t be having this discussion with you at all. I’ll give you the facts in systematic rather than chronological order. First either way, I spent Saturday morning in Edinburgh, reporting to my superiors. As usual, they saw this as a splendid opportunity to eat their cake and have it too. They quite agreed that the circumstances were suspicious and I was to look into them with all my might; but, because there was no real evidence of foul play, they would support me neither from above nor below. In other words, I have a free hand, unsupervised, but no more help than I can beg or borrow locally.

  ‘So a small and motley crew of uniformed PCs, some cadets and a very few DCs have spent a lot of the weekend on a supposedly methodical search. The snag, of course, is that the place where Sir Peter died was never very likely to reveal anything for the simple but sufficient reason that, apart from the depositing of a piece of foil, nobody committed any evil deed there. The territory in which some such deed was committed lies within an unknown distance of the whole length of the farm boundary and we are very unsure what we are looking for anyway, so not surprisingly they have found a great deal of material, none of which is so far of any evident significance. The search continues.

  ‘Meanwhile, the makers of the energizer unit have also been busy over the weekend. From experience, I was resigned to getting a report long after the case had been closed and even then saying very little, but I owe them a mental apology. In fact, I received their report just after lunch today. I only wish that they were as lucid as they are prompt. The only part of the report that comes over loud and clear is where they hedge themselves around with ifs and buts. For the rest, I had to get Keith to interpret it for me. He seems to understand electricity as he does other matters of engineering. As interpreted by him, the report suggests that the primary winding – the coil into which the mains electricity is fed – is undamaged. Therefore a substantial current must have arrived via the side which normally stores the energy and releases it at high voltage and low amperage for a very brief period about once a second. This input current, they think, must have been full mains voltage at least. It fused the timing electronics, creating an arc which then destroyed the secondary winding.’

  I could see that Ralph Enterkin was flagging, so I said, ‘That doesn’t seem to take us any further. It already seemed almost certain that somebody had fed mains electricity into the fence wire.’

  ‘And now we have it confirmed,’ Ian said. ‘Which makes it murder – barring a remarkably unlikely accident, and if an overhead power line had blown down onto the fence we would surely have heard about it by now. So to that extent it’s a major step forward. Next we need to know where the deed was done.

 
‘Mains power could have been fed into the fence from almost anywhere, given two requirements. One is the availability of power near the fence, which almost certainly means a building or a power line. The other is that the gate would have to be visible from the place or nearby. It’s not to be supposed that somebody fed mains electricity into the fence and then wandered off, hoping that Sir Peter would come to the gate before some other poor soul or Jennings’s cattle brushed against the fence. You’d think that that would narrow it down but in fact, if you allow for the second condition being met by somebody climbing a tree or standing on the roof of a vehicle, a preliminary look suggests a surprising number of buildings and several power lines. You see, the power source may not be right against the fence. We’ve had one small stroke of almost luck.

  ‘The Local Authority is laying street lighting cables in Denbigh Street and there was a drum of cable left overnight, the night before the death. By the morning, although they’ve only just got around to reporting it, some cable had been stolen off the drum. Not as light as domestic cable nor as heavy as the mains in the street but conveniently in between. Ideal for the job.’

  ‘What sort of length?’ I asked.

  ‘The nearest estimate they could give me was “quite a lot”,’ Ian said disgustedly. ‘That’s why I referred to it as a stroke of almost luck. I suspect that they only noticed the theft at all because the end had been left stripped ready for making a connection and when they came back they found it severed cleanly, apparently by hacksaw. Not that an exact figure of the length stolen would have helped us. The most casual of murderers would surely think of cutting off a little extra rather than present us with a valuable piece of evidence.

  ‘I stood again today on the spot where Sir Peter died and used my eyes.

  ‘It turned out to be a revealing exercise. Looking to my right, the ground rose slightly to the fence above the old railway cutting and the conifer wood beyond. An overhead cable carrying a high voltage follows a ride cut through the wood and ends up at a substation at the farm, from where power is distributed at domestic voltages through other overhead lines. I’ve asked the electricity board to take a look at the high voltage lines and at several other overhead cables that pass over or close to the boundary. One of the constables, who claims to have some knowledge of electricity, will go with them. He’s been briefed to look out for the marks of climbing irons on timber poles, strips of cable showing brightness and anything else suggesting unauthorized abstraction of power. But I’m given to understand that unless the culprit works for the Electricity Board he’d have to be mad to interfere with the high voltage cable.

  ‘In front of me and slightly to the right were Mr Synott’s house and the farm buildings. Away beyond the barns is the farmhouse. Beyond again and left, the farm boundary follows the crest, but the village of Bellafield lies beyond and I could see the upstairs rear windows of six houses.’

  Ralph Enterkin, who had been listening with a glazed expression on his plump face, stirred suddenly. ‘One of those houses, you may care to note, is occupied by Ms Dorothy Spigatt.’

  ‘I had already discovered that fact for myself, thank you very much. Left again, the farm boundary vanishes behind Langstane Wood and a small hillock, reappears for a moment beside a pair of houses in so far unknown ownership, vanishes again behind the trees only to emerge and return to the gate along the side of the wood.

  ‘My spying out of the land led me to two conclusions,’ Ian Fellowes continued sadly. ‘First that there’s a lot of work to do. And second that the most likely place remains Mr Jennings’s tractor shed, with Ms Spigatt’s house a close second.

  ‘But.’

  ‘I knew that there would be a but,’ Ralph Enterkin said.

  ‘Buts, like the poor, are always with us,’ Ian replied. ‘This particular but is that Mr Jennings is becoming more and more sure that he would have seen anybody going into his tractor shed.’

  ‘Unless Mr Jennings himself is the culprit,’ Ralph suggested.

  ‘He claims to have been spraying weeds along the line of the fence,’ I reminded them both. ‘And Peter Hay waved to somebody who seemed to be doing just that, a long way from the tractor shed, a minute or two before Peter died.’

  The Detective Inspector nodded. ‘So tomorrow starts with a search around those vicinities and at any place where mains electricity is available within fifty yards of the fence and a view can be obtained of the death site.

  ‘What else can I tell you? The local supermarket has been very helpful in providing samples, and the lab technicians now state that the metal foil came off the top of one of their frozen shepherd’s pies and that the grease on the wire and the gate stems from the gravy in one of the same pies.

  ‘Meantime, a borrowed sergeant, temporarily removed from uniform but quite intelligent for all that, has been busily checking on where every apparent suspect was that morning. I have my own list of suspects but you can’t expect me to tell you who they are.’

  Ralph Enterkin, who had been working his way through the plate of rock cakes with small, appreciative noises, swallowed quickly. ‘If you are gauging the qualification of a suspect by the degree of motive,’ he said huffily, ‘we probably have as good an idea of who they are as you have, and probably very much better. On the other hand, I know, as you should know by now, that murders and other crimes have been committed for motives which you or I would consider trivial beyond belief, which is why courts do not always require motive to be proven.

  ‘We, not being committed to secrecy for secrecy’s sake, will continue to feed you the information as we come across it. However, in return we ask you to bear in mind that we are not only the executors of the estate but the trustees of Sir Peter’s granddaughter. Accordingly, it is vital that we know of anything suggesting that her present boyfriend, as well as being undesirable, is a physical threat and a dangerous person to have around.’

  Ian hesitated. ‘Would you consider his motive that strong?’ he asked at last.

  ‘I certainly would,’ I said. ‘Give me a moment.’ I fed paper into the printer and set it going. ‘Just before you arrived, Miss Hay came across something in the computer which upset her to the extent that she rushed upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom for a good cry. It only occurred to me a few minutes ago that I could find out what it was. In the File window of the word processor program there’s a small panel showing the last four items referred to. While we were waiting for you, I keyed up the most recent one. It’s a copy of an incoming e-mail.’

  The printer finished its gentle muttering. I got up and handed the paper to Ian. Ralph leaned across to share the reading of it.

  ‘What is the firm?’ Ralph asked. ‘I seem to know the name.’

  ‘You should,’ said Ian. ‘They’re the best detective agency in Scotland.’ He read aloud.

  As instructed, we enquired into the identity and antecedents of the young man known as Roland Chatsworth. At first some difficulty was experienced because he seemed to have no history going back more than eighteen months and no student of that name had ever been registered with the university. However, by following the lines of enquiry outlined in the Appendix, we uncovered the following facts.

  The man’s real name is Arnold Drayne although he has also used the names Ross Pemberly, Harvey Hamilton and others. He was born in Paisley and is 34 years old but looks and claims to be younger (copy birth certificate attached). At 18, he left home, taking with him his father’s credit cards and cheque book, etc. Since then he has supported himself mainly by mingling with students at various universities and passing himself off as one of their fellows. He then seeks out girls of good family, courts and, when possible, seduces them. On several occasions the girl’s family has paid him off. On others his bluff has been called and he has shown no reluctance to go through a form of marriage, deserting the bride only when the pickings seemed to be exhausted.

  ‘The report,’ Ian said grimly, ‘seems to go on and on, with chapter and verse, but I
think that’s enough for the moment. His movements will certainly be investigated. I’ll keep this copy and I’ll be obliged if you’ll print out the appendix for me.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, wondering where in the computer’s diverse memory to look for it. I could hardly ask Elizabeth Hay.

  ‘Poor child!’ Ralph Enterkin said. ‘A terrible shock for her! And, not least, the narrow escape from having become Mrs Drayne. But what a mercy that Sir Peter thought to commission that report.’

  ‘And that Henry found it,’ Ian said.

  ‘Yes, by Golly!’ Ralph said, giving credit at last where it was more or less due. ‘Is there anything we can do to soften the blow?’

  My mind went immediately to the eligible Duncan Ilwand. There is no better cure for a broken romance than a fresh one. ‘She should be kept occupied,’ I said. ‘For the moment, exams are looming. But the long vacation will follow. I suggest that we might release an allowance to her, proportionate to what she can earn.’

  ‘Restrict her allowance to doubling her wage?’ Ralph queried.

  ‘Treble it,’ I said. ‘Make it worth her while. Do you think that your friend Jake Paterson could find work for her?’

  ‘I’m sure that that could be arranged,’ Ralph said. ‘Given a little encouragement, if needed.’

  ‘Encouragement?’ Ian echoed.

  ‘When you have an estate of this size to manipulate, there are always little pressures that can be brought to bear. I am sure that Mr Kitts is aware of that. But perhaps Sir Peter’s faith in your acuity was misplaced?’ he added in my direction. ‘Mr Paterson, for instance, is very anxious about his lease. And you might well find that one of the businesses in which Sir Peter had a stake is overdue for having its burglar and fire alarms updated.’

  I said that the point had not passed me by.

  Joanna came in to enquire who would be staying to dinner. Ian said that he was leaving to resume his investigations, and did so. Ralph Enterkin let his business face drop for the moment. ‘To set aside sordid commerce and teenage heartbreak for a minute or two, would this be a suitable day for me to renew my dinner invitation?’