by John Gardner
‘Storing up terrible trouble for his brickwork, that creeper,’ Dennis muttered.
Shirley Cox said he probably had minions to deal with it, and Suzie gave a little bleat as she thought of the butler, up a ladder with shears, while the fiery Lees-Duncan shouted orders from the ground.
Inside it became immediately apparent that John Lees-Duncan had been advised and cautioned by somebody; a changed man, more contained, not trying to charm or bluster, and in command of his temper. He was also taking no chances for his solicitor was with him, a plump, middle-aged man introduced casually. ‘Howard Baldwin,’ Lees-Duncan said. He pronounced it Hard Baldwin. ‘Had a meeting this afternoon so Howard’s stayed on. Thought it best.’ They had rung from Gloucester: a courtesy call even though the Lees-Duncans had been informed this morning that they were on their way.
Suzie wondered why he thought it best. Feeling guilty about their last meeting? Or conscience pricking about his previous snide behaviour? She still didn’t like him. His attitude was that of someone who considered himself vastly superior to other men, no matter how he tried to hide it.
Mrs Lees-Duncan didn’t put in an appearance, but the blonde Flight Officer Willow Lees-Duncan was still in attendance. ‘Got an extra few days on the strength of this mix-up,’ she said to Suzie with a winning smile, and Suzie so wished that Tommy could be here. She was certain he would preen and flatter.
‘I have a photograph of the lady who claimed to be you, Miss Lees-Duncan,’ delving into the briefcase and bringing out the picture of the late Novice Mary Theresa. Shirley Cox watched the girl and Dennis only had eyes for John Lees-Duncan. Dennis was good at detecting reactions.
‘The one killed by the flying bomb,’ she added.
‘Good Lord!’ Lees-Duncan looking over his daughter’s shoulder.
‘It’s Dulcie,’ said Willow, a crack in her voice, roughness in her larynx. ‘Dulcie Tovey. So that’s where she went. No wonder we’ve never seen her again.’
‘Good Lord,’ Lees-Duncan repeated, and again, ‘Good Lord!’
‘You recognise this person, then?’ Suzie took a step forward.
‘Yes, yes.’ Willow spoke first. ‘Of course.’
‘Daughter of me head gardener,’ Lees-Duncan frowned. ‘Me only gardener nowadays.’ Then, ‘Good Lord!’ he said yet again.
‘And you had no idea…?’ Suzie began.
‘Thought she’d gone away, joined the ATS or something. They didn’t get on, Bob Tovey and his daughter.’
‘That’s an understatement,’ Willow said with a near jokey laugh. ‘She looked after him when her mother, Katie Tovey, left. Came back. Didn’t want to come back but she did. Fought like cat and dog.’
‘Eventually up and left. Must’ve gone from here to this nunnery. She’d have been better in the Forces or as a Land Girl.’
‘She was always religious,’ Willow said, a sad, yearning in the words. The WAAF officer was upset.
‘Where did this Mr Tovey go?’ Dennis asked.
‘Still here. Still in my service. You’ll have to talk to him, I suppose.’
Suzie told him, yes she would have to see the man.
‘Cottage other side of the kitchen garden.’
They were in the same drawing room where Suzie had first interviewed him and Lees-Duncan started towards the small pair of french doors in the wall to the left of the big bay window. ‘Take you over there myself,’ he said but Suzie reached out, touching his arm with her hand.
‘Just one other thing, sir,’ she said, the idea coming into her head. ‘While we’re all together here, just on the off chance.’
She returned the photograph of Novice Mary Theresa to her briefcase and extracted the one of the man. She thought, this one’s rising from the dead, but didn’t say anything. ‘On the off chance,’ she repeated. ‘Off chance you might know this man.’
They craned forward and Willow gave a horrible little strangled cry, as though the breath was being pummelled out of her by a shock. ‘Daddy,’ she cried. ‘Oh God … Daddy! Daddy! It’s Michael … Daddy!… Michael!’
‘Dear heaven, what has that stupid boy done?’ As he inhaled, John Lees-Duncan gave a sob. ‘Dead, isn’t he? The boy’s dead.’
Suzie nodded and both Dennis and Shirley stepped closer.
‘My brother, Michael,’ said Willow. She had gone white and looked stricken.
The lawyer just stood there opening and closing his mouth, like a fish. ‘Oh, my,’ he said wrapping his meaty hand around John Lees-Duncan’s forearm. ‘John. Courage. Oh my,’ like some clergyman in an Aldwych farce.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Later, Suzie was pleased with herself; pleased about the way she dealt with it all: decisively, intuitively; didn’t have to stop and think about the what and how of matters: asking Lees-Duncan if she could use the telephone (‘If you must,’ he responded, returning to the imperious manner she had found so distasteful on their first meeting); then telling him that if the photograph was indeed that of his elder son, Michael, they would have to talk at length, by which she meant an interrogation, though she didn’t say it aloud. Her first duty, she added, would be to see the gardener, Tovey, and break the news of his daughter’s death.
Lees-Duncan simply shrugged. ‘If that’s what you’ve got to do,’ he grunted.
‘Perhaps you should tell Mrs Lees-Duncan about your son as well, sir,’ she began, but he waved her away saying his wife was unwell. He would talk to her later and, yes, that was certainly his eldest son.
Willow sobbed quietly, eyes brimming as she explained that Dulcie Tovey was her age, that they had been close, ‘like sisters,’ she said and Suzie asked about her brother, Michael, and Willow told her that Dulcie and Michael had also been close, which was not what she was asking. Though it was interesting anyway. Her father made some remark about it being an unhealthy relationship, and Suzie was not certain if she meant Michael with Dulcie or Willow with Dulcie.
It was clear that Dulcie’s death made more of an impact on Willow than her brother’s demise. John Lees-Duncan said nothing, but his hands trembled like those of a man naked in a blizzard. Then he began talking to Willow, chivvying her, Suzie thought, until they were having a full-blown, inaudible argument, each speaking in a low mutter that rose and fell to some tempo of their own choosing.
Unaccountably, Suzie thought of the jacket Novice Mary Theresa wore in the photograph, wondering if it was a hand-me-down of Willow’s. They had been close and it was so obviously a tailored item. Had she passed it on to the gardener’s daughter?
She took Shirley Cox to one side and quietly pointed out that it was now necessary to separate the Lees-Duncans and probably the gardener, Tovey. ‘I’ll need to talk to each one of them without the other. I’ll try and get Gloucester nick to send up some extra bodies,’ which she reckoned would be like getting hens to lay square eggs. ‘You find somewhere to take Willow where I can talk to her. I’ll look after the father first after I’ve seen the gardener.’ She turned away then, as an afterthought, ‘Oh and drop that useless legal sparrow Baldwin down the nearest well.’
‘Of course, guv. Anything you say, guv.’ Shirley gave her a raised eyebrow, right corner of her mouth turned up in an exaggerated smirk indicating this last would be as easy as making dentures for hens.
‘The telephone?’ Suzie asked Lees-Duncan who inclined his head towards the hall.
‘And Mrs Lees-Duncan?’
‘Poor Isabel,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She’s not available. Unwell.’
Suzie nodded to Dennis and Shirley, closed the door on her way out, and picked up the telephone in the hall.
When the operator came on she asked to be put through to Gloucester nick, repeating the number straight from the notation in her pocketbook. She was given a bit of a run around at the other end but finally found herself speaking to the duty officer, an Inspector Gaimes, Cyril Gaimes, known to the staff of Gloucester central police station as ‘Waiting’ Gaimes because of the unconscionable t
ime he took to make up his mind on anything: whether he wanted sugar in his tea, or how many officers he should dispatch to an incident.
She explained the situation: her need for at least one uniformed constable and a WPC to keep things legally secure. The inspector hummed and hawed, said he couldn’t possibly spare anybody, so she reminded him that Churchbridge was in his manor, and the situation was serious: two deaths, one possible murder. No, she thought, definite murder but didn’t say so. Finally the inspector said he would point the local village ‘bobby’ in the direction of the Manor House, and he’d also have another officer sent out with a WPC in tow.
As she replaced the receiver she glimpsed the butler standing at the foot of the stairs, stock still; had no idea how long he had been standing there, vaguely aware that she had first seen him out of the corner of her eye as she finished the conversation. She turned and he diplomatically cleared his throat, his hand coming up and head bobbing in a little bow. Old Scrotum, she thought, smiling to herself and thinking fondly of Tommy. The wrinkled retainer.
‘Is there anything, madam? Anything I can do?’ A precise voice, pitched low. They also serve, she thought, who only stand and wait, or just creep around earwigging.
‘You heard what I said on the phone?’
‘Yes, madam.’ He was tallish, well built, broad shouldered, muscular, though past retirement age, which didn’t count these days when people were staying in jobs for the duration. Suzie thought there was something military about him; maybe the steel in his light grey eyes or the way he carried himself.
‘Your name?’ keeping her voice down, not wanting to be heard on the other side of the door.
‘Sturgis, madam. Alfred Sturgis.’
‘They just call you by your surname? Sturgis, right?’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘I’ve brought sad news, bad news. You know that?’
He nodded.
‘Which, in turn has revealed more tragic…’
‘Young Mr Michael…?’
She nodded, ‘And the gardener’s daughter, Dulcimer.’
‘Yes, I am sorry to hear it, madam.’
‘You’ve been with the Lees-Duncans for how long, Sturgis?’
‘A little over twenty-five years, madam.’
She almost expected him to say, ‘man and boy,’ but he stood there waiting. Not a flicker.
‘I believe Mrs Lees-Duncan is unwell.’
‘Mrs Lees-Duncan is unwell most afternoons.’ He cupped his right hand and made a drinking movement, then a tiny shrug as if to say it was ever thus. He looked sad, as a clown will look sad at the circus. Suzie had always found clowns sinister. Sturgis was sinister, the way he stood, subservient; the manner in which he had appeared, suddenly and silently at the foot of the stairs.
‘That been going on long?’ she asked.
‘A good few years, madam, yes.’
Twenty-five years, she considered. Quarter of a century, a long time to remain in service to one family. Take care, she thought. He may have been willing to tip her off about Mrs Lees-Duncan, but he could well be tied to her husband with bands of steel and reinforced padlocks. Bide your time. ‘Sturgis, I have more police officers on their way now. Could you alert me when they arrive?’
‘Certainly, madam.’ Couple of seconds pause. ‘Certainly.’
She did not care for Sturgis. Not at all. As she walked back to the door, Suzie could feel his eyes on her back. Dear Lord, she thought, this should have started when the novices were killed by the V-1, but it’s really only starting now. It’s starting here. She had no idea why this thought struck her so forcibly.
Now it begins.
The narrow French windows in the left wall, to the side of the great bay window, were still open and the group remained almost as she had left them, seated at the end of the long green settee, a luxurious piece covered in some kind of velvet, dark green like the bottom of a pond. John Lees-Duncan leaning forward, right hand to his chin, elbow braced against his knee, eyes down staring at the carpet, seeing nothing, the face full of pain. Willow sat to his left, far back in her seat, cheeks damp, eyes opening again as Suzie came into the room. Shirley Cox sat on Willow’s left and Dennis stood behind John Lees-Duncan.
Outside, the sun was going down, shadows long across the flat-clipped lawn; a sense of the day winding down, birds heading back to their nests; far away an animal call and, coming in from the east, visible now, two aircraft, Lancasters, thrumming their way to wherever they were headed, eight Merlin engines throaty and regular, pulsing through the still air. She knew that in the future the sound of aircraft would be a signal memory of this time of war – aeroplane engines always sounding over the busy skies day and night.
‘I want to see Mr Tovey, now,’ Suzie said, standing directly in front of John Lees-Duncan. ‘Dennis, with me. Shirley look after the young lady while we’re away. Other officers should be here shortly. Send one after us. Mr Lees-Duncan, I’d be obliged if you would come with us, show us the way.’
Lees-Duncan raised his head, ‘I can show you the way quickly enough.’ Back to his surly self. ‘I don’t need to come with you.’
‘I think you do, sir.’ All calm, but firm: the concrete hand in the steel glove. ‘Come along now.’
Dennis encouraged him, moving closer. Dennis had a threatening quality about him when he wanted to use it: a kind of movement of the shoulders, a swagger, part of a strutting walk. Dead encouraging to anyone who wanted to drag his heels.
Lees-Duncan shook his head. ‘I’m in me own house. I don’t have to do anything…’
‘Sir, I realise this may seem strange to you.’ Suzie spoke quietly and with a smile she hoped would convey charm. ‘But I’m the officer in charge of this investigation and you really do have to cooperate.’
‘I’m in me own house.’ Lees-Duncan’s accent was what you might call educated, apart from the somewhat old-fashioned application of the occasional me instead of my: pronounced sort of meh.
Then who the hell’s that, out there cutting me roses?
‘We’ll see about that. Howard!’ As though he was calling a dog to heel rather than his lawyer.
Suzie turned towards the chubby little man, ‘Yes, Mr Baldwin, please tell your client.’
‘Well, I must protest, Sergeant…’
‘Detective Inspector,’ knowing what Tommy meant when he talked of the iron entering his soul. ‘And what have you got to protest about, sir? There is a question of identification. His son, Michael, who has died in suspicious circumstances…’
The caution appeared to have gone from John Lees-Duncan; in its place was the bluster with a hint of bully. ‘Suspicious? You said it was a bloody doodlebug.’
‘The man was found dressed as a novice of the order of St Catherine of Siena.’
‘Wha—’
‘Found in a cell that had been demolished following a V-1 flying bomb exploding in the vicinity…’
‘There! Enemy action.’
‘The man was not killed by the explosion, sir. His throat had been cut.’
This brought Lees-Duncan to a halt, as though brakes had been applied. ‘You mean…?’
‘I mean, sir, that this is a murder inquiry and in all likelihood we’ll have to take you back to London with us so you can identify your son’s body. Then we’ll have to talk to you at length, find out what you know about your son’s movements…’ She stopped, remembering words he had spoken earlier. ‘You said just now, Mr Lees-Duncan, something about an unhealthy relationship. I wondered what you meant.’
Lees-Duncan frowned, smiled but said nothing.
‘I wondered who you were talking about: your son? your daughter? Dulcimer Tovey?’
‘Most likely all three,’ he said, leaving them none the wiser.
Suzie looked at him wishing she understood, then said they had better go and see Mr Tovey. So off they went, Lees-Duncan leading the way, followed by Dennis with herself just behind and the lawyer, Howard Baldwin flapping around at the re
ar.
As they crossed into the garden she asked, ‘Mr Lees-Duncan, when did you last hear from your son, Michael?’
‘Nineteen thirty-nine, when he walked out of here with his brother. May of that year.’
‘You haven’t heard from your two sons since ’39?’
‘What did I just say? Difference of opinion with the pair of them. May, ’39. Walked out, both of them.’
‘And you had no idea where they’d gone?’
‘Friend of mine saw Michael in New York later that year. I caught sight of Gerald in the Troc in ’42. He didn’t see me. Or didn’t want to see me. Ask Willow if you don’t believe me.’
A wide gravel path ran along the side of the lawn, within half a dozen paces of the narrow French windows. In front of them, at the far end of the lawn, lay the rose garden, formally laid out, the roses past their best, the place where Suzie had first glimpsed Willow in her flowing dress, big hat and trug, cutting roses, the wide-brimmed hat reminding Suzie of the lady who appeared as a kind of moving colophon for Gainsborough Pictures. She had seen a Gainsborough production only a few weeks ago – Millions Like Us, Patricia Roc, Anne Crawford, Eric Portman and Gordon Jackson, the message of which, she reckoned, was that everyone – from those in the front line to those making tiny components for aircraft, ships or guns – were winning the war. Millions of little people fought for victory each in his or her own way.
To their left was a long flowerbed – good old staples, lupins and delphiniums and poppies at the back, antirrhinums, snapdragons, with neatly spaced pansies at the front, flowers looking a shade rough as summer took its toll. The flowerbed was backed by a weathered red-brick wall. Halfway down the bed there was a break to allow access to a door in the wall, green paint, blistered and cracked but secure, with an iron thumb-latch. The door led into a long, blossoming kitchen garden, a greenhouse to the left, sticks for peas and beans, lettuce, a broad potato patch, carrots, some fading large cabbages, tomatoes and cucumbers jungling the greenhouse. Everything neat and ordered, a cinder path running straight through to a small orchard behind which Suzie glimpsed a solid grey stone cottage.
