The Marsh & Daughter Casebook

by Amy Myers

  ‘You think he’s here to finish the job?’ Luke stopped and looked at her kindly. ‘Georgia, if that pie was poisoned, and if it was meant for you, then there’s no more harm coming Dana’s way. If it was meant for both of you, including Dana, which seems very unlikely, then the idea of a twosome conspiracy of Ludds is hard enough to envisage, let alone the whole family mucking in with attempted murder. My love, you’ve been watching too many TV thrillers, and reading too many Agatha Christies. Comfort yourself that there was some cunning plan to get Dana out of the house for the evening, which failed, and that the pie was meant solely for you.’

  She managed to laugh at that. Nevertheless, Friday Street was getting to her at last, and that was the barrier she could not overcome.

  *

  Luke returned to South Mailing, with a promise to visit Dana on the Monday evening and come over for dinner afterwards.

  ‘Which leaves me as your guardian angel, Georgia,’ Peter said. ‘That’ll be a change. I can be your food taster.’

  ‘Not funny,’ Georgia replied.

  ‘Very well. I’ll be serious, and you’ll like that even less. One, possibly two attempts to stop you, and therefore us, from investigating the Friday Street murders. The first could have been a warning shot, but not the second. What does that suggest?’

  ‘Incompetence’ was the frivolous word that came to her mind, but she could hardly voice it. ‘It means we must be getting near the truth.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘But logically that doesn’t make sense, since I’ve been shouting aloud in the Montash Arms that it’s Jonathan Powell I’m interested in. The idea that the Ludds were involved never seriously arose.’

  ‘Consider whether you have not been mistaken, Georgia,’ Peter said gravely. ‘I’ve always been convinced that the answer lies in Friday Street, and might well be in Downey Hall. Didn’t you tell me that Dana went to dinner at Pucken Manor very shortly before this attack?’

  ‘Yes, but how does that affect the issue?’

  ‘It could depend on what was said during that dinner. For all this feud between the two families, which I’m sure is real enough, there is a close coterie between the Ludds and Toby Beamish. It’s held together not so much by cordiality as by something that I can only define, in the absence of knowledge, as “the past”. Until we reach into that, we don’t see the true picture. I do believe we’re getting closer, however, which brings—’

  The telephone rang, and Peter broke off to answer it.

  ‘She’s here, Mike,’ he said after a moment. A pause while he listened, then ‘Hold on’, and he turned to her. ‘Mike says the pie has been cleared of suspicion. Half of it was left, and there’s no trace of anything but well-cooked chicken, red-wine sauce, and the usual ingredients. Short of a poisoned mushroom having been popped into one half in the hope that it would be the half to be eaten, the pie is innocent. And the symptoms of amanitin and phalloidin, the mushroom poisons, don’t tie in with Dana’s. Any idea what else Dana could have been eating that day? The reaction time could have been some hours.’

  ‘Pub lunch, if any, and the tea tent,’ she remembered. ‘The cake!’ she exclaimed. She could hear Dana’s voice. ‘Sheila’s cheesecake. Delicious.’ Her head began to spin, wondering if she was fantasizing. No. No chance of that. It was too vivid a memory.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Certain.’ With sickening clarity.

  Peter spoke quickly to the police on the phone, then turned to Georgia: ‘They’ll check out the rubbish from the fete and the pub.’

  ‘Even if the cake was poisoned,’ Georgia said, ‘anybody on the tea counter could have added something to it – Cadenza, Hazel, who knows?’ It was weak, and she knew it. Georgia had no particular liking for Sheila Ludd, but nothing against her either, and the idea of her poisoning something deliberately seemed unbelievable. ‘It’s Friday Street,’ she added wearily. ‘There’s just something about it.’

  ‘Villages are made up of people, Georgia. A rose is only a delightful word because the flower is. If the flower were ugly, the word “rose” would be too. Friday Street’s ugliness comes from what went on there. The fingerprints of time are blacker than usual, that’s all.’

  The next day Peter forbade her even to think of driving to Friday Street. Better by far, he told her, to spend the day quietly with notes and computer. When, in defiance of orders, she reached the office late in the afternoon, Peter had news. ‘Mike’s sergeant has rung. They’ve identified the poison as hyoscine. Highly toxic.’

  ‘But that’s a plant poison, isn’t it? Datura? The thorn apple?’

  ‘Correct. Can be found here in the south, in Kent, but mostly in hot countries. Every part of it can be lethal.’

  ‘Grown at Downey Hall, do you think?’

  ‘Immaterial. He had more results too. The cake as well as the pie is blameless, judging by the remaining crumbs and a leftover slice. And if someone decided to add it to Dana’s own slice, it would be difficult to do so on the spur of the moment. The odd green leaf tucked into a cheesecake might be noticed.’

  ‘So we’re back to square one. Why did someone try to kill me? And who?’

  ‘The why is interesting,’ Peter said, not very tactfully. ‘Over Fanny Star or Alice Winters? Neither adds up. If someone thought you were getting too close to the Fanny Star solution, why should they be worried? After all, we’re not likely to have sufficient evidence at this stage for the CPS to prosecute. We couldn’t publish specific names because of the libel laws, so why risk everything by trying to kill you? All we could do is try to clear Adam Jones’ name. The real killer could just laugh in our faces.’

  ‘Unless, of course,’ Georgia gently reminded him, ‘the same person also killed Alice Winters.’

  ‘In which case the police are on to it, so again why try to kill you?’

  ‘I think my next step—’

  ‘Georgia,’ Peter interrupted, ‘Luke and I have been talking.’

  ‘So?’ She glared at him suspiciously.

  ‘We feel it’s time you had a holiday.’

  ‘I don’t want one. I’m working.’

  ‘Not at Friday Street, you’re not. It’s time to let the dust settle.’

  ‘You mean my dust settle, and you’ll go right on with Alice Winters?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Peter agreed. ‘Mike and I—’

  ‘Conspiracy!’

  ‘Your work lies overseas. Luke feels he could take a week off. Not long, I know, and tiring, but distance helps perspective.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Georgia said wearily. She didn’t want to go anywhere.

  ‘It’s time we talked to Oliver Ludd.’

  *

  ‘First concussion, now jet lag,’ Georgia grumbled.

  ‘Nothing but complaints, even though I got us an upgrade to Club Class,’ Luke retorted amiably.

  ‘I am very grateful.’ She had been; she could stretch out and snooze to her heart’s content, but that still didn’t help the jet lag.

  Rather than fly to Charlotte, which was the nearest airport to where Oliver and Liz Ludd lived, they’d elected to fly to Atlanta and hire a car so that they could drive through Georgia – her eponymous state, she pointed out. The Ludds lived just over the border in North Carolina. Despite an overnight stop at a motel outside Atlanta, she still felt dizzy and was glad they had a day to recover before meeting the Ludds. The heat alone was hard to deal with. Stepping from their air-conditioned Ford into the summer heat was like a plunge into a steam bath. So far they had dashed from air-conditioning to air-conditioning systems while being presented with huge platefuls of food and surrounded by smiling, upbeat American faces whenever they stopped. All very different from England, and it seemed to her like driving through a stage set. Even Luke, who looked (blast him) cool and relaxed in the six-dollar casual shirt he’d bought when they stopped overnight, began to look more like a film star on set than her publisher-cum-lover here on a working m
ission.

  ‘You only want a Texan ten-gallon hat to complete the picture.’

  ‘Next stop, honey,’ he drawled.

  Dana remained in a coma and the hospital was making no promises. She might or might not come out of it. Georgia felt badly about having come away, especially with Luke. Had he really wanted to come with her, or had Peter nagged him into it? Would he have preferred to stay with Dana? Shouldn’t he have stayed with her? She couldn’t work it out, but how grateful she was that he was here, and not in Friday Street. She felt almost herself again now, jet lag excluded, but the tiny gap remaining between herself and normality was profoundly thankful for Luke’s presence.

  Oliver Ludd had sounded reasonably friendly on the telephone, once Josh had paved the way. Josh appeared very anxious to help now. She suspected he had been shaken by the sabotage of her car, and even more by the attack on Dana. When she’d rung him, there was a distinct air of ‘this has to be stopped’ about his voice, and he had raised no obstacles to putting her in touch with Oliver.

  The landscape changed little. Endless flat fields, broken by the occasional mountain range, were dotted sporadically with small townships as the road swept onwards. Every so often they’d stop for a cup of coffee at a wooden country shack that seemingly sprang up in the middle of nowhere as they approached. Their presence must indicate a local market for it somewhere, but to her eye there was no human habitation for miles around. Each had its own balcony to give shelter from the sun, and slow-moving owners serving petrol or coffee or a thousand and one other daily needs as required.

  Taking the drive easily, they reached the border at Hiawassee. ‘According to the map,’ Luke said, ‘on the other side of this lake is North Carolina, and Oliver and Liz’s house on Route 64 overlooks the water.’

  ‘Nice.’

  It was. The Ford wound gradually up a hillside, with houses so discreetly sheltered from the road that, from all angles, the hillside looked entirely forested. Each of these little paradise homes overlooked the lake. Brightly coloured blue jays darted everywhere and oleanders blossomed. Haden Shaw seemed a million miles away.

  ‘It is a film set, isn’t it?’ Georgia said. ‘I’m waiting for Sheriff John Wayne to come riding along.’

  The Ludd home was almost at the crest of the hill, a huge wooden bungalow in essence, but with a basement half below ground and the obligatory balcony; below in the garden a few roses struggled for survival in the heat.

  It wasn’t John Wayne who greeted them, but Oliver Ludd could have made a passable James Stewart – tall, grey-haired and rather distinguished-looking, despite his casual cotton clothes. He resembled Henry much more than Michael, with the same calm grey eyes.

  ‘Liz,’ Oliver called as they shook hands, and an answering shout indicated she’d be joining them. Georgia waited, agog, intrigued to find out what the former wife of Toby Beamish looked like.

  Liz, when she finally appeared with a tray of cold drinks, proved to be entirely unlike anyone Georgia could have envisaged in connection with Toby. She was tall, elegant, with grey hair twisted up on to her head, rather like a younger Katherine Hepburn and just as intelligent, Georgia guessed. Clad in sundress and sandals, she looked casual, cool, interesting – and tough. More so perhaps than Oliver, who had something of Henry’s mildness about him. Perhaps he also, she thought, had Henry’s inner steel.

  ‘Welcome, Brits,’ she smiled.

  ‘Aren’t you Brits any more?’ Georgia laughed.

  ‘We’re both. We get the nostalgia of still being English but we don’t have the queues at immigration. Not that we rush in and out too much.’ Liz spoke with a slight Georgia accent, although Oliver seemed to have retained more of his English intonation.

  ‘Oliver says you’re here to grill us about Friday Street,’ she continued. ‘It must be mighty important to come all this way, not to mention Josh Perry stirring himself to make a transatlantic call. How is the old place, and how’s my dearly beloved ex-husband, by the way? Still playing ghosts?’

  ‘Yes. I took the tour,’ Georgia replied.

  ‘And survived that infantile performance? My dear girl, well done.’

  ‘Did you ever trip over any of these ghosts yourself?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Nary a one. And yet,’ Liz added, ‘that was some spooky house, I can tell you. Now it spooks me even to think about it. Of course, the family had its other interests too.’

  ‘The deodands?’

  ‘Yes.’ Liz grimaced. ‘What kind of family gets into murder weapons?’

  What kind of family uses them? was Georgia’s reaction, but all she asked was: ‘So you didn’t live at the Manor?’

  ‘No. Toby’s parents were alive when we married. He was in the army then, and we were moving around. Toby only moved in to the glory hole after I left.’

  ‘So there might be ghosts there after all,’ Luke pointed out cheerfully.

  ‘There might,’ Liz agreed without enthusiasm. ‘What do you think, Olly?’

  ‘I saw a spook there once,’ he said surprisingly.

  ‘A real one?’ Georgia asked incredulously, then she laughed at her own absurdity. She was still struggling with the image of Toby as a soldier.

  ‘A presence,’ Oliver said. ‘I used to go over as a kid with Michael. We were welcome there even though my parents weren’t.’

  ‘Whose ghost?’

  ‘Heaven knows. I was hiding in a cupboard in a game and felt this, well, presence at the back of my neck seizing my hair. I couldn’t move. I shouted out and suddenly I was free. I got out of there like a bat out of hell.’ A pause. ‘I probably got caught in a clothes hanger. That what you wanted to ask me about? Ghosts? I thought it was Fanny Star.’

  ‘Yes. Josh told me you were friendly with her. My father and I are working on the theory that Adam Jones was innocent. Do you think so? You knew him?’

  Oliver chuckled. ‘Is that a polite way of asking if I knew Fanny well?’

  Georgia grinned, deciding she liked Oliver Ludd. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And of hinting that Liz might wish to leave the room. No way. We’ve no secrets. We both knew Fanny. She was a great girl. As for Liz—’

  ‘I fancied Brian Winters,’ she picked up cheerfully. ‘Oliver was just another Ludd to me then. One of the high and mighties.’

  ‘I was never that,’ he protested.

  ‘Unlike brother Michael,’ Liz retorted.

  ‘You’re very like your father,’ Georgia said to Oliver diplomatically.

  Oliver sighed. ‘He says he’s too old to come over now, but I miss the old fellow. Perhaps I’ll go back for a visit.’ He glanced at Liz.

  ‘I gather that you knew Fanny in London.’

  ‘Sure did,’ Oliver replied promptly. ‘We were good friends – I heard her singing in a sleazy pub. I thought, “I know that voice”, looked closer, and recognized her. We got together.’

  ‘Did your family know about that?’

  ‘No. She didn’t want anything to do with Friday Street except for me.’

  Georgia hesitated in view of Liz’s presence, but there was no choice. ‘Jonathan Powell – you remember him, Oliver? – says it was you who told him about Fanny’s rape and abortion.’

  ‘After her death.’ Oliver looked livid. No longer the genial American host. ‘That bastard. I don’t like Powell. I never did. He created their careers, but ruined their lives. He’s responsible.’

  ‘For Fanny’s death?’

  ‘I’d like to believe it. He had every reason. You know he’s gay, and was in love with Adam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He didn’t know whether to follow his pocket, which needed Fanny in his life, or his love for Adam, which wanted her out, away, expunged, deleted. That’s why he suggested she went solo. What he meant was, Adam should go solo and he would manage him. He wanted Adam all to himself, pulled him two ways and made him into an emotional mess. Fanny loathed him by that time; he was a good manager but they could do without him. As for the rape,’
he continued awkwardly, ‘she told me about it when she got the invitation to sing at Downey Hall. I’d asked Dad to send it, and Fanny went berserk. She told me she’d never go back. And then she told me why.’

  ‘What made her change her mind?’

  ‘Because I told her she should face the past,’ he said bitterly. ‘It was the biggest trauma of her life and she had obviously never got Friday Street out of her mind. I thought if she came back, saw her mother, saw everyone, she could put it behind her. You have these cracked ideas when you’re young. Only when you’re our age do you know it’s better to walk away.’

  ‘We did,’ Liz said drily.

  ‘Fanny agreed. Time for forgiveness, she said,’ Oliver continued, ‘and Adam was keen for her to go. So we all went, and I didn’t even look after her. And what happens? She gets murdered. Well done, Oliver. A great day’s work. I tell you, I heard the music played that night, and I cried my eyes out. Fanny was a wonder; funny, quick, adorable, the best friend I ever had, except for Liz here, and that’s what I did for her.’

  Georgia let a moment or two go by, since he was clearly upset. ‘Is there anything you remember about the day of her death that might help?’

  ‘Not about Powell. Wish I did. I had a girlfriend there, so I spent time with her after the concert. We had tea, then my father came looking for me to have a chat. That would be about an hour or so before the drinks began.’

  That wasn’t in his witness statement, Georgia thought, but then why should it be? It had nothing to do with Fanny. Then a niggle in her mind told her that everything that happened might be relevant. ‘A chat about Fanny?’ she asked.

  Bull’s-eye. He hadn’t expected his casual remark to be taken up.

  ‘I guess it was.’ He glanced at Liz, who nodded vigorously. ‘Dad was kind of hurt when Fanny left the village. They’d got on well, so he wanted to know why she’d walked out without a word to him. Well, she told him, and that’s why he came raring after me. To find out more. Fanny . . .’ He cleared his throat, and Liz took over briskly.