‘That’s one of the recent insertions,’ the expert remarked, echoing his thoughts.
The film moved on to buildings: a narrow little street of small houses with built-out porch rooms, some fascinating seventeenth-century alms-houses, grouped round a courtyard. A really impressive terrace of Georgian houses, and finally a Victorian monstrosity of baronial gothic type, which Michael Jay was hilariously pointing out to an appreciative group. Presumably the second insertion…
Suddenly Marcia Makepeace filled the screen, gazing up at the spire of the parish church. Shots of new municipal buildings followed, modern and functional, in carefully landscaped grounds. Now they were in the market square, crowded with shoppers and drifting holidaymakers. The camera moved on, now focusing on a stall displaying a bewildering range of garments, now on another heaped with vegetables and fruit.
‘Hold it!’ Pollard shouted.
‘As it turns out,’ Eddy Horner said, ‘I’m having the usual meeting with Jay, King and Susan Crump at eleven tomorrow, to discuss this year’s Fortnights, and future plans. You’re saying that you want the Winnage part of the Kittitoe film run through as a natural outcome of the discussion, and to have it stated definitely that it was actually shot this season. And you’re asking to be in on all this, but not visible?’
‘That sums it up perfectly,’ Pollard replied. ‘Is it feasible?’
Eddy in dark suit, collar and tie, behind the imposing desk of his room at Horner House seemed remote, he thought, but not through boss-consciousness…
‘Perfectly feasible. The small committee rooms are wired for projection. I’d better show you one.’
When this had been done, the inevitable question came.
‘I take it that you may be making an arrest tomorrow?’
‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ Pollard answered.
There was a moment’s silence.
‘I won’t keep you,’ Eddy Horner said. ‘The lifts are at the end of this corridor. Can you make your own way out?’
An entirely convincing discussion was in progress in the adjoining room. Pollard listened with frank admiration for Eddy Horner’s stage managership. He had a clear view of the meeting, through the crack at the hinges of the door of a small secretarial office leading off the committee room. The door was ajar, and he looked straight across at the white screen. Michael Jay sat on Eddy’s right, taking minutes, and Susan Crump on his left. Paul King was on Susan’s left.
An informal but business-like exchange of views was concerned mainly with the advantages and drawbacks of the various centres at which Fortnights had been held. The programmes followed were also reviewed.
‘There’ll have to be changes next season, of course,’ Eddy Horner said. ‘I’ve decided against rebuilding the Biddle Bay hotel. The site isn’t big enough for satisfactory modernisation, and I’m selling it. I’ve been thinking a good deal about starting up at Winnage. That place has got possibilities. How about trying out a more specialized type of Fortnight there, if the deal goes through? One concentrating more on local history and architecture. That film of yours gave me the idea, King. I take it you shot it this summer? Old buildings get bulldozed a damn sight too often these days.’
‘It’s bang up to date, sir,’ came Paul King’s voice. ‘I shot it on the last Thursday of the Kittitoe Fortnight.’
‘Well, run it through the projector, will you? Just the Winnage bit, I mean. This is your pigeon, really, Jay.’
There was a brief pause, broken only by the whirr of the projector, as Paul King put through an earlier section of the film at speed. Watching, Pollard saw Eddy Horner studying him with fixed attention, while Michael Jay got up and went to the window to lower the blackout blind. As he returned to his seat, Winnage once more occupied the screen.
Pollard eased the door open another couple of inches. He was aware that his throat was dry, that Toye was close behind him, and that the two constables had silently departed.
He stiffened a little as at long last the grotesque Victorian mansion appeared … Marcia Makepeace, a sudden breath of fresh air … the market … the stall selling clothes…
‘Hold it!’ he called authoritatively, striding into the room.
Reacting automatically, Paul King had stopped the film.
‘What the hell!’ he began.
‘Worcester Pearmains price-tagged at 1/6 a pound, Mr King?’ Pollard was surprised by the irony in his voice. ‘You missed out on D Day, didn’t you — 15 February 1971. This film wasn’t shot on the last Thursday of this year’s Kittitoe Fortnight, nor were you editing it between 7.50 and 8.50 on the evening of August 20. You were otherwise, and less innocently employed during that time, weren’t you? I charge you with the murder of Wendy Shaw…’
Paul King kicked over the projector. Under cover of darkness he dashed for the door opening on to the corridor, where sounds of a violent struggle and smothered curses indicated that he had collided head on with the waiting constables. Simultaneously Pollard dived for the light switches, suddenly aware as he did so of a struggle going on inside the room. He went cold, his recent vague uneasiness about Eddy Horner’s reactions crystallizing in a flash. As light flooded the scene, he swung round to see him pinioned by Michael Jay, while something metallic clattered on to the polished table, and skidded off it to land at his own feet. As Toye shouted an order outside in the corridor, and there came the click of handcuffs, he stooped to pick up a revolver, and slipped it into his pocket.
‘Take him along to the Yard,’ he said briefly, as Toye appeared in the doorway. ‘I’ll charge him formally there.’
When the sound of footsteps died away, he silently surveyed the scene before him. A dishevelled Eddy Horner stood at the head of the table, his face set, an appalled Michael Jay beside him. Tears were running down Susan Crump’s weather-beaten cheeks. All three were staring at him in taut anticipation of further disaster.
…he was back in the mortuary at Winnage, looking down at what had once been Wendy Shaw…
‘No charge will be preferred against anyone present here,’ he said, and turning, walked out of the room.
Epilogue
‘You two make me feel pallid and unhealthy,’ Pollard remarked across a restaurant table one evening early in the New Year.
Michael and Marcia Jay had returned from a skiing honeymoon superbly suntanned, and had invited him to a celebration meal.
He guessed that it was Marcia who had wanted the date. Since the incident at Horner House on the day of Paul King’s arrest he had sensed embarrassment in Michael when they met.
‘We’ve come back fighting fit, and with all our bones intact,’ Marcia said. ‘Just as well, with the programme ahead. Tell him about it, Michael.’
Once again, Pollard’s trained perception registered slight constraint.
‘In a nutshell,’ Michael said, ‘Horner’s have decided to try out Discovery Fortnights on the continent, and Muggins has agreed to be in charge.’
‘Isn’t it super?’ Marcia broke in. ‘Of course, he’s the ideal person to get them off the ground, with his French and German, and know-how about running holidays abroad. But would you believe it, he hung back at first, making all sorts of idiotic excuses. I had to anticipate the ambitious pushing wife.’
Pollard’s and Michael Jay’s eyes met fleetingly.
‘I’m a cautious sort of chap,’ Michael said, choosing his words carefully. ‘Nobody wants to be associated with a flop. But I found out in the end from Bob Townsend that Eddy had been hatching out the idea all last year, and had marked me down for the job from the start. He’d even been over to inspect some possible localities in Switzerland. He’s got amazing flair for what will catch on in the trade, so when I knew all about this, I decided I’d sign on the dotted line after all.’
I get you, Pollard thought … you were afraid at first that Eddy was trying to repay a debt … something you’d never have accepted…
‘That all sounds completely reassuring,’ he said aloud. �
��Tell me some more about the job.’
He learnt that a suitable hotel had been acquired in the Lauterbrunnen valley. The Jays, and a botanist and a geographer were shortly having a month there to map out the various courses.
‘In the meantime I’m taking a gruelling crash course in German,’ Marcia told him. ‘Hours of being incarcerated in a language lab. Of course, I’m thrilled to bits at being in on the job, too. I’m to be the hostess. The same job as Janice King’s,’ she went on, deliberately introducing the topic at the back of their minds. ‘Mr Pollard, what will happen to her when she comes out of prison, with no home or work? Whatever she planned to do, it’s a dreadful thought.’
‘It all depends on whether she wants to be rehabilitated, and also, I think, if she sticks to her husband during the years of his sentence. Some women do, you know, and in the end something is salvaged from the wreck.’
‘How on earth could they ever have imagined that they’d be able to carry off that cockeyed kidnapping?’ Michael Jay, solid and sensible, looked at Pollard incredulously. ‘They must both be plumb crazy.’
He refilled his guest’s glass.
‘Thanks,’ Pollard said. ‘Well, you know, I’m not at all sure that they mightn’t have got away with it, if poor little Wendy Shaw hadn’t turned up at that particular moment. Reconstructing, Paul King would have rung her up as soon as he got back to St Julitta’s, and had stowed away the baby in the Roamhome. Disguising his voice as a precaution, although as far as we know, she only met him once. He would have made the ransom demand, to be passed on, and added the usual threats about what would happen if the police were brought in. How would Penny Townsend have reacted, do you think?’
‘You’ve certainly got something there,’ Michael agreed. ‘I’m as certain as one can be of anything that she’d have prevailed on Eddy to produce the cash, and take no steps to trace the kidnappers until the baby had been returned.’
‘Suppose Eddy had insisted in calling in the police, though?’ Marcia asked.
‘Even if that had been done,’ Pollard replied, ‘I still think the odds were slightly in favour of the Kings, at the early stages, at any rate. It takes time to mount a full scale police operation, and just picture the roads round Kittitoe from an early hour on an August Saturday morning: cars, caravans, dormobiles — the lot. The hiding place wasn’t all that obvious in terms of a routine search. And add to that the fact that as Horner employees, the Kings would naturally be tumbling over backwards to help find the kid, and avert suspicion from themselves in this way.’
‘I suppose, too, that the fact that they were quite reasonably spending the weekend on the road might have helped them?’ Michael suggested.
‘It certainly would. Having no fixed abode is a decided advantage when you want to avoid interested neighbours, and are dodging about picking up ransom money. Whether Eddy Horner would have meekly handed over a large sum of money without even having a go on his own is another matter. But in the long term, I’m pretty confident that the Kings would have given themselves away, you know.’
‘You mean that they couldn’t have resisted splashing the money around?’ asked Marcia.
‘This is it. I think this is where Paul King’s lack of judgement and control which led to Wendy’s murder would have come out again, and drawn the attention of the police. As soon as the baby was safely back, the hunt would have started up. Think of the publicity, and the interest. There’d have been an investigation on a vast scale, and no doubt very substantial rewards offered for information.’
Marcia shuddered.
‘I can’t even bear to think that I’ve sat at the same table as Paul King,’ she said.
Michael patted her hand.
‘Let’s look at the case objectively,’ he said. ‘What was it like from the professional angle?’
‘Interesting,’ Pollard said, ‘because of the personalities involved, and the influence they had on the course of the enquiry. Unusually emotive, from my personal point of view. Very salutary.’
‘Salutary?’ the Jays queried in chorus.
‘Yes. It has underlined the recurring danger of accepting even the most reasonable statements made by perfectly reliable people without checking up. I mean the statement that Paul King had to spend the evening of August 20 editing the last part of the Fortnight Film because of the late return from Starbury Bay. Because it was so convincing in the general context of the Fortnight, I let it slip through. In the end, the process of elimination brought us back to it.’
‘You weren’t long getting back,’ Marcia commented.
‘No, but en route we made life very unpleasant for some innocent people, I’m afraid. Have you any news of young Boothby?’
‘He came to our wedding, unrecognizably tidy.’
‘It sticks out a mile that he puts us on the far side of the generation gap,’ Michael said. ‘He’s just fixed up an exchange year in a Canadian school for the autumn, which seems a very sound move.’
‘Did you have a difficult term at St Julitta’s?’ Pollard asked Marcia.
‘Not at all, rather to my surprise. The girls were madly excited at first, and talked about nothing else, but when nobody tried to stop them visiting the cave, and standing round Sir Toby, and gooping up at Uncharted Seas, they soon got bored, and it all became old hat. I felt rather awful myself at how soon it seemed to fade out … one does forget.’
Michael’s arm slipped round her shoulders. She turned her head, and Pollard saw their eyes meet.
‘I hear from my aunt that having arrived, Mr Glover has stopped running,’ he said.
Marcia laughed.
‘She always puts things so neatly. It’s absolutely true. Now that he’s in with Horner’s over the redevelopment of what was that awful caravan site, and actually living at Uncharted Seas, I think he feels life has nothing more to offer. And because he isn’t bothering about impressing people, they’re beginning quite to like him. I believe he’s even been known to cut a governors’ meeting.’
Pollard glanced at his watch, and his eyebrows shot up.
‘Good lord, I’d no idea it was so late. I ought to be at the Yard. It’s been a splendid evening. I do wish you the very best of luck with the Swiss Fortnights. I’ll look out for the advertisements.’
‘Eddy wants a new name for them,’ Michael said. ‘Something eye-catching. He thinks Discovery Fortnight’s firmly associated in the public mind with holidays in Britain. I’ve got to think up something. I suppose you haven’t a bright idea?’
Pollard considered.
‘What about Beckon Holidays?’ he suggested. ‘Pleasantly enticing. Just a faint suggestion of the mysterious and the unknown. And delightfully nostalgic for you both: your first meeting place.’
‘Really,’ Marcia said, ‘aren’t our policemen wonderful?’
*****
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ALSO IN THE POLLARD & TOYE INVESTIGATIONS SERIES
DEATH OF AN OLD GIRL
THE AFFACOMBE AFFAIR
ALIBI FOR A CORPSE
DEATH ON DOOMSDAY
CYANIDE WITH COMPLIMENTS
BURIED IN THE PAST
STEP IN THE DARK
UNHAPPY RETURNS
SUDDENLY WHILE GARDENING
CHANGE FOR THE WORSE
NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CASE
TROUBLED WATERS
THE WHEEL TURNS
LIGHT THROUGH GLASS
WHO GOES HOME?
THE GLADE MANOR MURDERS
Published by Sapere Books.
11 Bank Chambers, Hornsey, London, N8 7NN,
United Kingdom
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Copyright © Elizabeth Lemarchand, 1973
The Estate of Elizabeth Lemarchand has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be r
eproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales are purely coincidental.
eBook ISBN: 9781912786923
No Vacation From Murder Page 20
