He would hear the car’s engine, of course, but by then I’d have a good start. Once he realised that I was running out on him, he’d soon guess why. I had to get to people ... anyone would do.
My first thought as I started the engine was to make for the Hall. But once through the archway, I turned left along the main drive out of the grounds. The Hall was too near and Tim might have caught up with me in the time it took Grainger to don his black butler’s jacket and make his stately progress to the door.
I glanced in the rear view mirror. There were no headlights as yet. If I could only reach the village, there’d be somebody around. I could pull up at the Trout Inn and dive into the bar. There, among people, I’d be safe. And all I’d have to do was get in touch with Neil.
Turning out of the entrance gates, I drove fast down the hill and into the village. There were lights on behind curtained windows, but the street itself seemed deserted. Then ahead of me I saw a man’s figure. It was Ralph Ebborn, just emerging from the front gate of The Larches. I screeched to a stop beside him.
Ralph looked surprised, and not in the least pleased to see me. But our disagreement would have to be forgotten now.
“What in heaven’s name is the matter, Tracy?” he asked, as I leapt out of the car. “You must have been doing sixty.”
“Ralph, I ...” At first, spotting him, I’d known only relief. Now it came through to me that I had a lot of explaining to do, and it wasn’t going to be easy. “I must talk to you,” I finished.
“I was just going along to the Trout for a drink,” he said, with an indifferent shrug. “What is it?”
“Can’t we go into the house, Ralph? I’d feel happier there.”
“Grace isn’t home. She’s gone to Stratford with a Women’s Institute party to see Othello”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He regarded me doubtfully, then nodded. “Okay, come in and tell me what’s on your mind.”
Inside the hallway, I said, “Can I use the phone first?”
“Who do you want to ring?”
“The police. Or rather, Neil Grant.”
Ralph turned his head and looked at me. “What d’you want to talk to him for? There’s not been an accident or anything like that, has there?”
“Oh no. But I have some information I must pass on to him.” I gave a shudder. “I don’t like having to do it,” I admitted with a sigh. “But I suppose I’ve got to.”
Ralph threw open the door of the sitting room. Switching on the lights, he gestured me inside.
“Why not come on in and tell me about it first,” he said, in a more friendly tone. “Then we can decide what’s best to be done.”
“But Ralph ...”
“You look in a real dither, Tracy. Sit down and I’ll get you a drink. You obviously need one.”
“Yes, I do rather.”
A few sips of brandy helped to dull the pain a little and, shakily, I began to put Ralph in the picture. He listened in sheer astonishment.
“You mean to tell me,” he broke in, “that old Billy Moon actually saw Baxter go up to the studio that morning, and overheard him having a row with Oliver?” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Why has Billy only just got around to telling the police about it?”
“You know what Billy can be like, stubborn as a mule. But then he suddenly realised that it was wrong to conceal such a vital piece of information.”
“That’s all the police have managed to get out of him, though?”
“Isn’t it enough?” I said wretchedly. “Especially now it’s emerged that Tim was seen visiting Ursula Kemp the other night, after dark.”
“Ursula Kemp?” echoed Ralph, looking very puzzled. “How does she come into it?”
“I’ll explain in a minute,” I said, realising what a mess I was making of my story. I went on, deeply unhappy, “To be honest, Ralph, I was suspicious of Tim right at the start ... I mean, the way he appeared on the scene immediately after I arrived at the studio and found Oliver’s body. And then when he wiped the fingerprints off the statuette ...”
“He did what?”
“I was holding it, you see, when I heard someone coming ... I’d picked the thing up instinctively. So Tim wiped it clean, saying that it would complicate things if the police found my prints on the murder weapon. But I thought at the time that he could easily be wiping off his own fingerprints as well.”
“Good God! Do the police know about that little episode?”
“Yes, they do. Neil gave us both a real dressing down. But there was nothing else to implicate Tim Baxter—not at the time. If only the business of the keys had struck me then.”
“Keys? What keys, Tracy?”
“Tim’s key ring was on Oliver’s desk when I got to the studio that morning. It just didn’t strike me at the time, and of course at that stage I wouldn’t have known whose they were anyway. Tim has a curious little medallion attached to the ring, you see, and when I happened to notice it yesterday, he explained to me that it had been hand made at a street market in France. Somehow it seemed familiar, but I didn’t realise why until just now, back at the studio, when Tim had his keys dangling from his finger. It suddenly brought back a vivid recollection of Oliver’s desk that day, with the bunch of keys lying on it. That’s what Tim must have come back for— that and to wipe his fingerprints off the statuette—and, of course, he had plenty of opportunity to pocket the keys while I was away fetching Sir Robert.”
Ralph frowned. “Does Baxter realise that you know all this, Tracy?”
“Well, I didn’t actually say anything. I was careful not to. But Tim must have guessed, from the way I ran out on him. I fully expected him to come chasing after me, but he doesn’t seem to have done.”
“No,” said Ralph, looking thoughtful, “he doesn’t.”
“I suppose I ought to phone Neil Grant now and tell him what’s happened,” I said reluctantly.
“That can wait,” said Ralph, with a shake of his head. “Finish telling me about it, first. What made the police concentrate on Billy Moon?”
“Neil always had a feeling that Billy knew more than he’d admit to. And then there was the matter of his finding the magazine.”
“Magazine?” Ralph looked mystified. “You haven’t mentioned that before.”
“Oh, haven’t I? I’m afraid I’m not thinking very clearly. You see, Billy found a copy of Cotswold Illustrated stuffed down behind a manger in the stables, and it was obviously the one used to make up that anonymous letter about me ...” I saw a fresh query flash in Ralph’s eyes, and hurried on, “But you don’t know about that, either, do you?”
“There seems to have been a lot going on that I knew nothing about,” he remarked bitterly. “So tell me, Tracy ... tell me everything.”
I briefly explained about the letter.
“And you think,” interrupted Ralph, “that it was Baxter who sent it?”
“I’m coming to that. The police got a list of all the people who took the magazine, and they checked up on everybody who was in the least connected with this case, to discover if any copies were missing. I was able to produce mine, and Grace showed them yours ...”
“Yes, she mentioned something about being asked for it. We couldn’t understand why.”
“Nothing could be solved until the missing copy was tracked down, because there were several not accounted for ... not just Tim Baxter’s. Tim had told the police that he always throws his away after glancing through it and cutting out the Cotswold Vintage advertisement. But the Haslop Hall copy had vanished, too, and Ursula Kemp’s.”
Ralph, about to pour himself some more brandy, stopped with the bottle in his hand and looked at me.
“Surely,” he said, “nobody suspected Ursula of sending an anonymous letter?”
“Well, yes. As she couldn’t produce her copy of the magazine, she had to be regarded as a suspect. And there were several other things too.”
“Such as what, for heaven’s sake?” He put dow
n the brandy bottle again without pouring any.
“For a start, Ursula knew very well—because I had told her so myself—how vital the matter of timing was to me. You see, I wasn’t able to bring any proof that I hadn’t reached the Coach House until after twelve-fifteen that day. And if we suppose that the sender of the letter was also Oliver’s murderer...”
“A big assumption!”
“Is it? The only reason for that letter must have been to divert suspicion from the real killer.”
“And was it seriously believed possible that Ursula Kemp had killed Oliver?”
“It was I who thought she must have done, but Neil was inclined to dismiss the idea. He was very interested in Ursula, though, because he thought she might well know something which would throw light on Oliver’s death.” I sighed. It was all so terribly involved, and much of it was irrelevant now, anyway. “You see, Ralph, it very much looked as if Oliver had been blackmailing someone.”
He made a startled exclamation. Then he demanded urgently, “How on earth did they work out such a ridiculous theory?”
“It’s not so ridiculous. You see, Oliver used to pay large sums of cash into his personal account at the bank every now and then ...”
“The bloody fool.”
I stared. “What do you mean?”
Ralph stood up abruptly and strode across the room. “I just meant, what a fool to imagine that he could get away with blackmail. He’d be certain to be found out in the end, or...”
“Or get himself murdered,” I whispered.
“Well, yes ... that’s obviously what happened.” Ralph turned round to face me. “So it was Baxter?”
“Was it?” I said slowly. All of a sudden I had been shaken with an extraordinary conviction that Neil and I were on the wrong track. I felt excitement, triumph ... and at the same time a crawling sense of fear.
“Well, it must have been Baxter. Who else?” Ralph gave an uneasy laugh. “Why are you looking so petrified, Tracy? You’re perfectly safe. Even if Baxter spots your car outside, he won’t try to follow you in here.”
I clenched my fists, desperately trying to keep calm, desperately trying to grasp a coherent line of reasoning without giving Ralph any clue as to how my brain was working.
Was this just an emotional reaction, I debated frantically, because, despite all the damning evidence stacked up against Tim, I still couldn’t bear to acknowledge that he was guilty? This sudden, dizzying suspicion about Ralph ... what, in truth, was it based on? Nothing more than his rather curious reaction to the suggestion that Oliver had been blackmailing someone. As though this were something that Ralph already knew about.
How, though, could I ever hope to convince Neil that it wasn’t just another of my hare-brained theories? Keep talking, that was all I could do now. Keep on talking to Ralph and hope that something decisive would emerge.
So, clutching at words feverishly and stringing them together, I began, “Of course it doesn’t have to have been Tim. I mean, it’s conceivable that it could have been Ursula, after all. If Oliver had known something about her, about her past ... and was blackmailing her. And, in sheer desperation, Ursula killed him.”
Ralph cut across me, “But if they think that Ursula might have killed Oliver, then who do they imagine killed her?”
A sense of elation thrust through my fear. Wasn’t this just what I’d wanted, a fatal slip on Ralph’s part? Neil had been most insistent that Ursula’s death must continue to be thought of as an accident. I had said nothing to anyone. And neither, obviously, had the police.
Chapter 14
I drank down the rest of my brandy, and stood up.
“Sorry to have panicked on you like that, Ralph. It was silly of me. But I feel a lot better now, so I’ll be going.”
“Going where, Tracy?”
“Home, of course.”
“I thought you were terrified of Baxter,” he said.
“Well, he’s obviously not followed me, has he? Besides, the police are sure to have picked him up by now.”
Ralph made a negative face. “I can’t let you take the risk. No, you’ll be better off staying the night here with us.” He glanced at the French clock on the mantel. “Grace won’t be back for an hour or more, but...”
“I can’t stay the night,” I protested. “I mean, I haven’t got any things with me. Besides,” I hurried on to forestall his dismissal of this objection, “my supper is in the oven and it’ll be burnt to a cinder if I leave it.”
Ralph tapped his thumbnail against his teeth as he thought that over.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll come to your cottage with you now, and you can turn off the oven and get some night things at the same time. Then we’ll return here.”
“No honestly, there’s no need ...”
He interrupted me, “I’ll be much happier having you stay here. And I’m sure that Grace will be, too. She’d never forgive me if I let you out of my care, and something happened.”
“Nothing will happen,” I insisted.
“I insist. Now let’s go.”
Outside, the village street was deserted. It was a serenely beautiful night, the thin crescent of moon floating in a cloudless sky directly above the church tower.
I drove the short distance to Honeysuckle Cottage and drew up outside.
“I won’t be a minute,” I said, jumping out.
My plan was to phone Neil the instant I was inside. But to my dismay Ralph got out of the car, too, and followed me up the garden path. I didn’t even have the chance to slam the front door in his face because his arm came over my shoulder, holding it open until he was inside too.
“I thought you said you’d left your supper in the oven,” he commented, sniffing the air.
Useless to pretend. With a forced little laugh, I said, “Well I only told you that as an excuse, Ralph, because I didn’t want to put you and Grace to the trouble of having me stay the night.”
“Silly girl.”
“I... I’ll just pop upstairs and collect a few things.”
He shook his head. “Don’t trouble, Tracy. D’you know, my dear, I’m thanking my lucky stars that you bumped into me this evening. Up until you spilled it all out just now, I had no idea that things were moving so fast. And so dangerously.”
I made a last attempt to bluff it out. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Ralph.”
“Oh, yes you have. You don’t know all the details, perhaps, but enough to stop me getting away with it.”
I gave up, feeling almost a sense of relief. “So you’re admitting that it was you who killed Oliver?”
“There’s not much point in trying to deny it now, is there?”
“And Ursula, too?”
He grimaced. “I slipped up there, didn’t I, letting out that I knew her death wasn’t accidental. You have rather a transparent face, Tracy ... fortunately.”
“But why?” I whispered in a strangled voice. “Why did you kill them, Ralph?”
“You answered that question yourself, my dear, you and your astute young police inspector. Oliver was blackmailing me, and he did it once too often. That morning in the studio, he was demanding even more from me. And fast. It was the final straw, and I completely lost my head. The thing was done almost before I realised. When I heard your car drive into the courtyard, I wiped my fingerprints off the statuette and ran down the staircase.”
“And what about Ursula?”
“I had to kill her, too, I had no option. Stupidly, I’d let her guess that I was the one who’d killed Oliver, and she was getting squeamish. I dared not take the risk that she’d give me away.”
I stared at Ralph, sheer bewilderment to some extent overriding my fear of him.
“However did you come to let Ursula Kemp guess that you’d killed Oliver? How did she get involved in the situation?”
Ralph’s face tightened. “There’s a very simple answer to that question. Kemp was an assumed name. Her real name was U
rsula Ebborn.”
“Ebborn?”
“Yes. She was my wife.”
In my astonishment I took a backward step and stumbled against the bottom stair.
“You and Ursula ... were once married?”
“We still were,” he said grimly. “Ursula was my legal wife. I bitterly regret it now, but my marriage to Grace was bigamous. Ursula had left me and gone abroad, and I never expected to see or hear from her again. So it seemed pointless to cause a lot of upset for poor Grace. As you know, she’s inclined to be a bit strait-laced.”
“And Oliver had somehow discovered this? That’s the reason he was blackmailing you?”
“Not right at the start,” said Ralph. “He only found out about Ursula quite recently. She let it slip out, apparently. It was that extra hold on me that made Oliver greedier than ever. He really put the screws on hard, and he got what he deserved.”
“But... but I don’t understand ...”
Ralph sighed. “What does it matter, Tracy? Understanding the rest can’t do a thing to help you.”
Only now, I think, did I fully understand that Ralph intended to kill me. Sick with panic, I wanted to turn and escape from him. But the only possibility open to me was up the stairs, and that would be senseless. So I desperately played for a little more time ... even though I couldn’t see how more time would help me.
“If ... if Oliver only just found out about you and Ursula,” I stammered, “what was he blackmailing you about before that?”
Ralph shrugged impatiently. “He discovered that I was dipping into the various farm accounts and decided he wanted a share. He thought it was a clever way of extracting more cash from the estate than his father was willing to allow him. So, with the two of them on my back, I had to step up the amount I was taking.”
“You mean that Ursula was demanding money from you as well as Oliver?”
Design for Murder Page 16
