‘Meaning that he either couldn’t get an answer when he arrived and went back home as he says, or —’
‘Or he did the job. There’d have been plenty of time before the Stoneham party got back. Even if the train was dead on time they couldn’t have turned up before half past eleven at the earliest. Come on, we must step on it. The Horner lunch will be getting under way.’
Once again, Eddy Horner opened the front door to them himself. He gave them a sharp interrogative look.
‘I’m afraid we’ve no definite news for you, Mr Horner,’ Pollard told him, ‘but that doesn’t mean that quite a lot of progress hasn’t been made since we were here last. Can you spare a few minutes?’
As they sat down in the long sitting room with its superb view out to sea, he sensed a change of atmosphere. This time Eddy Horner seemed preoccupied rather than almost crushed by the disaster, and there was a litter of papers on the desk, as if some sorting operation were in progress. Coming straight to the point, Pollard asked if the trip to Stoneham on Friday nights had been a regular fixture for some time.
‘Since Penny and the baby came down at the end of June, my son-in-law’s been down every weekend but two, counting this one,’ Eddy Horner told him.
‘So it could be known locally that Wendy was very likely to be alone here for several hours on a Friday evening?’
‘Penny and I didn’t always both go. Here, she’d better come in on this.’
In response to a shout from her father Penny Townsend appeared from the guest wing. Pretty and smartly turned out as before, she also struck Pollard as distrait. After some argument a desk diary was produced, and it was agreed that seven trips in all had been made to Stoneham, on five of which she had accompanied her father.
‘So that anyone knowing that Mrs Townsend was still staying here could have banked on a strong probability of your both being out on the evening of Wendy’s death?’ Pollard summarized.
‘That’s correct,’ Eddy Horner replied.
‘Would you say that your comings and goings are known to a fairly wide circle of people?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. For one thing, I don’t go in for much social life locally, and for another we’re a bit off the map up here. A few friends would know, and Mrs Barrow might have said something about it in the village, I suppose.’
Penny Townsend, who had been listening to the conversation with barely concealed impatience, suddenly came in. ‘All the people who were here for drinks the night before the Fortnight started would know, Dad. I remember you saying what a shame it was that it was the only weekend Bob couldn’t make it.’
‘Who was at this party?’ Pollard asked.
‘Oh, the Fortnight staff. Mrs Makepeace, the housekeeper at the school, and their bursar and his wife. Wendy, of course … that’s all, I think. Oh, and Don Glover barged in at halftime, uninvited. I can’t do with that guy.’
‘Chap oversells himself,’ her father conceded, ‘but he knows his way round in business. But I recall he didn’t turn up until after we’d been talking about Bob coming down. The doorbell broke into it.’
‘I’d like to go on to another matter now,’ Pollard said. ‘Even though you didn’t find anything disturbed when you came back from Stoneham on August 20, the most obvious explanation for Wendy’s murder remains that she surprised a thief. What was there in the way of valuables and cash in the place that night?’
‘Nothing that a professional crook would have been interested in,’ Eddy Horner replied. ‘That’s what’s so damn baffling about the business. The silver I’ve got down here doesn’t add up to a hill of beans, and I don’t go in for Old Masters or first editions or whatever. Nor do I keep much cash in the place. There might have been fifty quid in a drawer in my desk — not more.’
‘What about you, Mrs Townsend?’ Pollard asked.
‘Not more than ten pounds or so in cash,’ she said. ‘I’d got the rest on me. And I was wearing my rings, and a rather valuable diamond pendant. The brooches and earrings in my dressing table drawer wouldn’t be worth more than a couple of hundred at the outside.’
‘Murders have been committed for far less than the amounts that have been mentioned, you know. And there are other things that a certain type of thief is interested in,’ Pollard went on. ‘Mr Horner, did you have any business papers here that might have been of importance to a competitor, we’ll say?’
Eddy Horner looked up sharply. ‘I hadn’t thought of that one,’ he admitted. ‘There were some confidential papers about a possible deal, but nothing on a scale to attract a break-in.’
‘I expect you’re wondering what all this is leading up to. I’ll tell you. From information received, it seems highly probable that someone called here on the night of Wendy’s murder. As you say, your close friends wouldn’t have expected to find you at home. It was late for a social call from a casual acquaintance, and not the sort of night when most people would choose to be out. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to see you urgently on business?’
There was a slight sound from Penny Townsend’s direction. Eddy Horner, who had been lying back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, looked up; and Pollard once again sensed the little man’s formidable quality.
‘Nobody at all,’ he replied tersely.
‘Thank you,’ Pollard said. ‘I think that’s all I need bother you about at the moment.’
Toye put away his notebook, and escorted by a monosyllabic Eddy Horner they made their way to the front door, Penny Townsend having vanished on some murmured pretext. As the car moved off Pollard told Toye to drive to the King William.
‘I swear Glover comes into this somehow,’ he said. ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, Horner will make for his place after lunch. He’s got to pass the pub to get there. We’ll give the party time to get going, and then go along and gate-crash.
They managed to park with a clear view of the road, and took it in turns to go into the King William for a snack. Then, Pollard having successfully got it across to Jack Nancekivell that they were visiting the pub incognito, they settled down in their car to wait.
‘If Glover did go up there that night, do you take it that there’s some deal on between him and Horner?’ Toye asked.
‘Yes, and I’ll make a guess at what it is. My aunt told me that rumours are going round that Glover’s trying to get hold of the land above his caravan site for expansion. Perhaps he’s thinking big, and trying to get Horner to come in on it.’
‘But if it was as urgent as all that, you’d think he’d have rung Horner first thing on Saturday morning, and said he’d called there the night before.’
‘No, I don’t think he would,’ Pollard said thoughtfully. ‘The news that Wendy Shaw was missing would have been all over Kittitoe by breakfast time — you know what village grapevines are like, and Glover might very well have felt it wiser to lie low about his call. Quite apart from any deal, he’s desperately keen to be in with the local leading lights. But there’s another explanation, of course.’
‘That Wendy looked out, saw the caller wasn’t Boothby, opened the door to Glover and got strangled for her pains?’
‘Just that. You weren’t as well placed as I was to see Horner’s reaction when I suggested that someone had come on business, but the way he clammed up stood out a mile, didn’t it? I’m convinced that his mind went straight to Glover, and he saw the red light. Quite apart from his feelings about Wendy, he’d see the headlines — you know. Travel Firm Tycoon in Deal with Killer of his Female Relative. If I’m right, there’s going to be one hell of a confrontation shortly. What’s the time?’
Soon after two there was a cheerful exodus from the pub, and the sound of a door being slammed and locked. The car park emptied rapidly, and before long the police car was the only occupant. The minutes slipped away, and Pollard began to get anxious, and consider alternative courses of action.
‘We’ll hang on a bit longer, and then find another stance,’ he said. ‘We stick out like a so
re thumb alone here. I wonder —’ He broke off as a Jaguar suddenly appeared from the direction of Biddle Bay. Toye exclaimed with admiration as it swept silently past at controlled speed.
‘A real beaut,’ he said gloatingly. ‘How long do we give him, sir?’
‘Say five minutes. If he’s really going to Glover’s, I want them to be in it up to the neck before we show up.’
The Glover house was about half a mile beyond Kittitoe on the Winnage road. As they turned in at the gate, Pollard visibly relaxed at the sight of the Jaguar parked behind the white Ford Capri.
‘Hand it to you, sir,’ Toye remarked.
They got out of the car, and walked on the grass verge of the drive towards the house, a solid Edwardian affair in red brick with two preposterous pepperbox turrets. As they came up to it, angry voices could be heard through an open window.
‘Our arrivals are getting monotonous, aren’t they?’ Pollard murmured in Toye’s ear.
Unnoticed they walked through the open front door into the hall. A woman who was unashamedly listening outside a closed door turned sharply. She was small and round-faced, with straight faded fair hair which was parted in the centre and taken back into a bun. She wore a well-cut brown linen frock which she made look dowdy. Ageless type, Pollard thought, consigning her tentatively to the early fifties.
‘Mrs Glover?’ he asked politely. ‘Good afternoon. I’m Detective-Superintendent Pollard of New Scotland Yard. Could I have a word with your husband?’
He saw that she was poised to spring to his defence, but precisely at this moment Don Glover’s voice bellowed from behind the closed door.
‘Go on! Say it! Say you think I murdered the girl!’
Apparently deciding that Scotland Yard was less of a menace than the enemy within, she flung open the door.
‘Police,’ she announced tersely, and darting into the room stationed herself beside her husband.
Pollard and Toye followed her. Don Glover in shirtsleeves, burly and blazing, confronted a poker-faced Eddy Horner across the dining room table.
‘I’ll have the law on the whole lot of you,’ Don Glover shouted.
‘I represent the law, you know,’ Pollard remarked conversationally. ‘Shall we sit down?’
The temperature took a sudden nosedive. In silence the party seated itself round the highly polished mahogany table, in the centre of which a vase of marigolds stood on an oval embroidered mat.
‘I’m sure,’ Pollard said, ‘that I needn’t tell either of you two gentlemen that you are entitled to refuse to answer any of my questions except in the presence of a solicitor.’
‘I don’t want a bloody solicitor,’ Don Glover replied. ‘I’ve nothing to hide.’
‘I’m quite capable of protecting my own interests, thank you,’ Eddy Horner said coldly.
‘Right. Well, Mr Glover, where did you spend the evening of Friday, August 20, between eight and ten-forty-five pm?’
Don Glover stared at him.
‘Having dinner at the Crown in Winnage most of the time.’
‘Were you dining alone?’
‘No. I was with a chap called Basil Thornhurst. He’s the Area Planning Officer, if you must know.’
‘Indeed I must. It’s important, from your point of view as well as mine. I’m going to put it to you that on August 20 you were granted planning permission to develop the fields above your caravan site as a residential holiday area of some kind.’
There was a stupefied silence. Don Glover’s mouth fell slightly open. A glint of reluctant admiration appeared in Eddy Horner’s eyes.
‘As you don’t contradict me, I take it that I’m right,’ Pollard continued. ‘I rather think you felt that, given Mr Horner’s financial backing, the area as a whole had far-reaching possibilities. And being a man who doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet, I think that after you got back here from your dinner you drove over to Uncharted Seas to put the scheme to him, arriving there at about ten-thirty.’
‘S’right,’ Don Glover said hoarsely.
‘What I’m interested in, Mr Glover, is when you arrived back here again. In your statement the other day you said it must have been about a quarter to eleven. Can you produce a witness of this, preferably other than Mrs Glover?’
Don Glover stared helplessly at his wife.
‘Of course you can, you great booby,’ she exploded with the fury of the badly frightened. ‘Reverend Fuller was on the phone as you came in at the door, about the Sunday evening service at the Site, and you took over from me. You weren’t gone above quarter of an hour to twenty minutes.’
‘My God, you’re right,’ her husband almost whispered. ‘I’d clean forgotten. Not that he’ll remember the time, I don’t suppose.’
‘May we use your telephone?’ Pollard asked. ‘Toye, ring the vicarage, and if the vicar’s in, ask him if he’d come here for five minutes. You can run down for him.’
‘Why the hell didn’t you say you’d been over to the bungalow that Friday night, Glover, and save all this hullabaloo?’ Eddy Horner demanded indignantly after Toye had gone out.
‘I didn’t contact you over the weekend because any fool would know that you wouldn’t want to be bothered, with the girl missing,’ Don Glover told him. ‘Then once the murder was out, well, I wasn’t going to look for trouble.’
‘Withholding information from the police invariably leads to trouble, you know,’ Pollard remarked.
An uneasy silence descended, finally broken by Mrs Glover.
‘I’ll get the kettle on,’ she said. ‘The Reverend can do with a cuppa anytime, and I daresay one wouldn’t do any of us harm.’
Eddy Horner mechanically opened the door for her, and she scurried out, embarrassed.
Pollard turned to Don Glover, who had recovered most of his normal self-assurance, but kept eyeing Eddy Horner.
‘What happened when you arrived at Uncharted Seas that night?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. I rang, and nobody came. I could hear the telly going, and thought they hadn’t heard the ring, so I had another go, and after that I hammered on the door. In the end I decided that they must be out, and had told the little girl not to open the door to anyone, so I got into the car and came back home, hoping I hadn’t scared her.’
Eddy Horner moved abruptly in his chair.
‘Owe you an apology, Glover. I shouldn’t have taken the line I did. Truth is, I’m not as young as I was, and this business of Wendy has knocked me for six. Hope our deal’s still on,’ he added with an appraising glance.
Clever old devil, thought Pollard … quite a psychologist.
Don Glover came slightly larger than life.
‘Forget it, Horner. I’d’ve gone a lot further in your shoes. As to the deal, it can’t go through too soon for me.’
‘That’s fine. It can’t for me, either. I’m clearing out of Kittitoe. Putting the bungalow on the market.’
‘Clearing out?’ Don Glover echoed in dismay.
‘Yes. I’ll never find another place to touch Uncharted Seas, but after what happened I can’t get Beckon Cove out of my mind, day or night. It’s haunting me, you can say if you like. Care to buy the property yourself? At a professional valuation, of course,’ Eddy Horner added hastily.
Into Don Glover’s face came the incredulous expression of a man who sees undreamt-of bliss suddenly within his grasp. He opened his mouth to reply, then checked himself.
‘I’d like to talk it over with the wife,’ he said, as a car drew up outside the window.
The Reverend Arthur Fuller, vicar of Kittitoe, suggested a puffin. His nose was parrotty, his gait waddling, and as he came in a pair of shrewd eyes briefly engaged Pollard’s. He evinced no surprise at his urgent summons, nor at the company present, and listened politely to an explanation of the Yard’s policy of getting confirmation of all statements made during a murder investigation.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said, from the chair at the head of the table, into which he had been ushered by tacit c
onsent. ‘Fortunately I can be of some assistance here. On the night in question I rang Mr Glover about a service on the caravan site, at just before twenty minutes to eleven.’
‘How is it that you can be so sure of the time, sir?’ Pollard asked.
‘Because one of my favourite radio programmes was starting at a quarter to eleven, Superintendent — a serial reading. They’re doing George Eliot’s Scenes from Clerical Life, you know. Entirely delightful. I wonder if any of you are following it?’
At this juncture the appearance of Mrs Glover with a tea-tray produced in Pollard the sensation of taking part in a drawing room comedy. As the cups circulated, it transpired that no one, himself included, was familiar with Scenes from Clerical Life, but Toye unexpectedly came into his own, having followed Adam Bede in twelve instalments during a period of sick leave. Eddy Horner and Don Glover detached themselves from this literary conversation, and began to discuss demolition costs, in connection, Pollard hoped, with the existing caravan site. Left to entertain Mrs Glover, he fell back on the infallible interest topic of the twins.
Later, they dropped Arthur Fuller, discreet to the last, at the vicarage.
‘Well, there seem to be just three bits of formal checking-up between us and Square One,’ Pollard remarked, as they went on. ‘There’s the Planning bloke, the radio programmes for August 20, and where Stubbs was during the early part of the evening. We’d better make for Pike’s place.’
They found Constable Pike triumphant to the point of garrulity.
‘Mr Stubbs was at home all right on the Friday night, sir,’ he told Pollard. ‘There was a lady called at the house, and she saw him, although she was in the kitchen most of the time between quarter to nine and quarter to ten, having a tell with Mrs Stubbs. She’d got behind with her delivery of free range eggs because of trouble with her van, else she wouldn’t have been so late. She’s on the WI committee, like Mrs Stubbs, my wife says. It was my wife remembered that she’d come here very late that night, and why ’twas. I thought the Stubbs would have free range for sure, so I went up there — to Miss Honeybun’s place, I mean — this afternoon, and got a statement from her.’
No Vacation From Murder Page 15
