An Accidental Shroud

by Marjorie Eccles

  Carmody had backed away and was looking around the shop. 'If it did happen here, whoever did it made a pretty thorough job of cleaning up afterwards. Takes some nerve, that.'

  'The bleeding was mostly internal but there must have been a fair amount of gore around,' Abigail agreed. 'OK, we'll leave that until we've more to go on. Meanwhile, let's go and see what we can gather, see what he'd been doing with his day and if anything in it could have led up to this.'

  11

  In normal circumstances, George Fontenoy was a spruce, tall, urbanely cheerful old man. This morning he was none of these things. He seemed shrunken and bent, and looked as if he hadn't slept. He'd shaved badly, his hands trembled and there was a stain on his white shirt-front as though he had slopped his coffee. It upset him to let other people see him looking like this.

  Jenny Platt fetched him from the kitchen where he'd been sitting with Matthew, making a pretence of eating some breakfast, then left him with Abigail in the sitting room and returned to the kitchen to sit with the boy.

  Abigail was wandering around the big, high-ceilinged room when George came in, studying the well-polished antique furniture, the slightly shabby, oriental carpets and walls hung with pictures in heavy gilt frames. There was a fine collection of purple Stourbridge glass in the corner cabinet. A glint of old silver here and there, deeply comfortable chairs. The two men had not been without their little luxuries.

  Mayo, it seemed, had not questioned George on his flying visit. He must have merely taken a quick look around – to get the feel of the scene, she presumed – leaving the interviewing to her. She took George through the necessary procedures as gently as she could, mindful of the fact that it was Fontenoy's only son who had been brutally murdered. He shook his head as if to clear it, rubbed his eyes.

  'Damn sleeping pills, put me out like a light,' he grumbled. 'Iniquitous things, but I haven't been well lately and the quack insists. Takes me an hour to pull myself together in the mornings, too. Otherwise I'd have heard him go out, I'd have known.'

  It was possible, of course, that something had caused Nigel Fontenoy to take it into his head to leave the house some time during the late evening. Something urgent enough to brave the foulest weather for half a century. The fact that he hadn't been wearing a coat suggested that he could have gone out in a car. Then perhaps there had been a quarrel, he'd been stabbed where he sat and then dragged from the car and dumped in the alley. Not impossible, but difficult to pull a knife and stick it into your passenger while sitting in the driving seat of your car. Especially if you were right-handed, and the attack had come from the left. He might, of course, have been driving his own car, with the attacker as passenger. The car was in the garage but could have been returned after the murder; they would have to wait for forensic examination to reveal anything there was to be revealed.

  George was walking the room with tremulous steps but soon had to sit down again. He felt restless and uneasy, unable either to relax or keep moving. Still less able to calm the erratic pounding of his heart, though he knew it was bad for him to get over-excited. Concentrating on answering the young woman's questions, however, made him feel slightly better. He'd never spoken to a woman police officer before. They said she was a senior officer. A mere babe in arms, he thought her, but even thirty-five was considered over the hill these days. The damn country was being run by a kindergarten.

  'Had your son quarrelled with anyone recently? Or been in a situation which had upset him? Did you have the impression anything was worrying him?'

  George hesitated. 'Not more than usual. Nigel was often in a stew about something or other. Lived on his nerves, though he didn't let it show. He was inclined to be secretive about his feelings, never gave much away.' Suddenly, his eyes filled. He turned away, blew his nose loudly.

  Abigail gave him time to recover before saying gently, 'You say you last saw him about half past nine, just before you went to bed. Did he give any indication he was going out later on?'

  'Good God, no!' His voice still shook a little, but grew stronger as he went on. 'Why would he go out on a night like that? Especially when he was so busy? He was putting the finishing touches to the new catalogue and he intended staying up until he finished it ... Nothing unusual in that, he never went to bed until one o'clock at least.'

  'Someone may have rung him after you left him ... arranged to meet him, perhaps? Did you hear the telephone?'

  'Wouldn't hear the last trump after I've taken one of those pills! Not usually, anyway. But I did wake for a short time last night, around midnight. It was the cedar falling,' he said, already accepting as fact what his mind had told him had to be the truth. 'I dropped off again, though, eventually.'

  'Was everything as you would expect to find it this morning? Everything locked up as usual – and the alarms on?'

  George briefly closed his eyes. All these questions! And none of them would bring Nigel back. 'I don't know. Nigel always opened up in the mornings, but when Matthew arrived this morning, he had to use his key to get in. He has his own set of keys. I expect you'd like to speak to him?' He rose and went to the door with an alacrity born of relief and called: 'Matthew!'

  Matthew was sitting at the kitchen table with Jenny Platt, who had made them both some coffee and had been taking a detailed statement from him. He knew it had to be done, and she was being prosaic and matter-of-fact about it, which helped, but Jesus, he wished she'd leave him alone to think out what he really ought to say! The elation of the previous night had left him and he felt terrible, queasy and as if his brain was stuffed with cotton wool. Just when he needed all his wits. He'd have to watch it, watch every word he said, he didn't want to start them off on the wrong tack ... Oh God, he thought, what a mess, and prayed he wouldn't cry.

  'And I suppose you'll be wanting to know where I was last night, as well,' he said savagely, turning his misery on Jenny. 'Well, if you must know, I was busy getting drunk with my mate, Joss Graham!' So smashed out of my mind I hardly knew what I was doing, except that it was something I'd thought about for weeks and it seemed like a good idea at the time. 'And I have the bloody hangover to prove it.'

  'Dear oh dear,' Jenny said, 'no wonder you look like hell. Have some more coffee.'

  Matthew glared at her then jumped up, released, when he heard George calling him, stuck his hands in his pockets and stalked into the sitting room to face yet more questions.

  'My nephew – great-nephew to be precise – Matthew Wilding.' George's hand rested briefly on the boy's shoulder. 'Only just left school and joined us in the business. Joined Nigel, that is. I've been useless since my stroke so I'm more or less retired.'

  'Hey, Uncle George, what are you talking about, useless?' the boy protested, but mechanically, as if he wasn't really thinking about it.

  George smiled slightly. 'Plain words, Matthew. Never do any harm.' He added, with old-fashioned gravity, 'This young lady is the police officer in charge of – of all this business. She'd like to ask you some questions.'

  Abigail guessed Matthew Wilding to be about eighteen, good-looking in an athletic, muscular way, with crisp dark hair, a strong nose and brown eyes in a tanned face, at the moment looking decidedly sallow. And whereas the old man, George, appeared to be making some attempt to get himself together, it was the boy who was the distraught one. He looked wretched.

  'I know you've already answered a lot of questions, Matthew, but there are just a few more. First things first. You'll realize we have to consider robbery as a motive. You'll be able to go through the stock and tell us if there's anything missing?'

  'Nothing obvious has been taken, I've already looked. But until we go through the stocklists, it's impossible to say for sure.'

  Oh, marvellous, Abigail thought – tramping all over the scene! And wondered what Dexter would have to say to that. 'You opened up this morning – which door?'

  'The side one, you can only open the front from inside.'

  There were metal grilles over the double-secu
rity door and the small front window – the shop had at one time been part of the house, and you didn't need a large window to display jewellery – and the side door, according to Matthew, was locked and then bolted from inside.

  'How did you get in then?'

  'The bolts weren't on. It was just on the lock.'

  'Nigel wouldn't have left it unbolted,' George said sharply, then fell abruptly silent, realizing, as everyone else did, that the door had been left unbolted because Nigel had made his last exit that way, voluntarily or not. Further questions produced the information that the only other way into the shop was through the house itself and, like the side door, these doors were always bolted on the inside.

  Matthew said suddenly to George, half defiant, 'I've rung Christine to let her know what's happened. Uncle George. She was out when I first rang, but she's coming down straightaway now. Have I done right?'

  His attitude was wary, as if he was expecting a rebuff, but an expression of intense relief crossed Fontenoy's face. 'Good lad. Quite right. Ought to have thought of it m'self. Christine will know what to do.'

  'Who is Christine?' Abigail asked.

  'My stepmother. She used to work here – well, more than work ... There's nothing she doesn't know about the business. She only left when she married my father.'

  'Thank God, here she is now,' George said, as voices were heard downstairs and light footsteps could be heard ascending. 'She must have dropped everything and come immediately.'

  'Well, Christine would, wouldn't she?' Matthew said.

  He flung himself down into the chair, his hands driven deep into his pockets, as an attractive, red-headed woman entered the room like a brisk breeze. Her hair, lighter and brighter than Abigail's by several shades, lit the room like a lamp in a dark corner. She had eyes of a vivid blue-green, a gorgeous figure, a generous mouth that was a trifle too wide for beauty, and seemed to charge the room with her energy. The overhanging pall of misery seemed to lift a little.

  'Oh, George!' she said. George stood up and put his arms around her. For a moment she laid her head against his shoulder, throwing out a hand to Matthew, which, after a moment, he grasped hard, then dropped, embarrassed. After this, she seemed to give herself a little shake and asked to be told exactly what had happened, paying careful attention to what was said. 'Has the stock been checked yet? Right, I'll give Matthew a hand to go through it,' she announced.

  'Oh, all right,' Matthew replied, without much visible enthusiasm.

  'Come on, Matt, buck up, you won't feel so bad if you've something to do,' she chivvied him, her tone suggesting that she herself would not be averse to having something practical to occupy herself with.

  'I'm afraid we shall have to ask you to wait until our Forensic team's finished,' Abigail told her.

  The other woman looked momentarily disconcerted but then nodded. Nothing much, Abigail guessed, would throw her for long. She was dressed with perfect coordination and if she'd dropped everything to come over here then full marks for efficiency. Her cream sweater and tan slacks were complemented by a chestnut suede jacket, soft leather boots, big gold earrings and a chunky matching necklace. Her hair swung like a bell. An expensive bell, thought Abigail, who knew what her own cropping had cost.

  It was only when she saw the expression in those extraordinary turquoise eyes that she knew that Christine Wilding, too, was filled with misery and despair, and wondered why.

  The SOCO team worked on, continuing their examination, fingerprinting the glass cases, doors and door jambs, sticky-taping for fibres, vacuum-cleaning every inch of the carpeted floor. They took away the foolscap pad with the ink stain on it, and cut out a large square of carpet. DC Napier took photographs from every possible angle. Sergeant Dexter estimated they would finish in the shop within a day and would begin on the rest of the premises the following day. Christine Wilding packed a bag for old George and bore him off to Ham Lane.

  The following day, Matthew and Christine Wilding were able to check through the stock. Matthew rang to say when they had finished, and Abigail went along to the shop to get the details, taking Carmody with her.

  It appeared that two things were missing: a gold and lapislázuli seal ring (though it was possible that this might have been taken out of stock and worn by Nigel himself, something he was in the habit of doing). The other was a gold chain and pendant, set with amethysts and a diamond, worth something under fifteen hundred pounds.

  'Though why that, and nothing else, I find it hard to understand,' Christine Wilding frowned. 'Compared with all this other stuff it was nothing in terms of value. And besides, it needed cleaning and the clasp replacing. That's why it wasn't on display.'

  'Nothing special about it, then?' asked Carmody.

  It was Matthew who answered. 'Not really. It was part of a private collection that came in a few weeks ago, belonging to some old woman who'd died, but nothing of it was worth anything to speak of. Nothing worth murdering anybody for.'

  Carmody, who'd known people mugged and killed for the price of a packet of fags or the next fix, didn't disillusion him. He asked if it was possible that Nigel Fontenoy himself had sent the pendant for repairs to the broken clasp and forgotten to record the fact. A quick telephone call to the repairers, however, confirmed that they knew nothing about it.

  'Nothing else missing?'

  Matthew shook his head, then Christine gave a sudden exclamation. She'd remembered a wrapped parcel, kept at the back of the safe, its contents apparently unknown to anyone but Nigel.

  'Mr Fontenoy,' Abigail turned to George. 'Have you any idea what might have been in it?'

  'What? Oh, certainly not. Not at all. It was Nigel's personal property and he never said what was in it.'

  'Matthew?'

  'I remember the parcel, it was a nuisance, always in the way – but I never saw it opened.'

  'Oh, well, he must have got rid of it, and whatever was in it.' Christine described the parcel. 'It was a box of some kind, I think, wood or metal by the feel of it. Not cardboard, I would've thought.'

  'How big?'

  She sketched shoebox dimensions in the air.

  'And you've no idea what was inside it?'

  'Papers, I suspect. Nigel used to refer to it as his retirement pension.'

  'Insurances, share certificates, things like that?'

  'I suppose so, but they wouldn't be much use to anyone else, would they?'

  Matthew said suddenly, 'He took a parcel with him when he went to London, yesterday. It could've been the same box – it was that sort of shape and size. But he didn't get back here until after we'd closed and I'd gone home, so I don't know if he brought it back.'

  'Rewind it and let's all have another listen,' Abigail said several hours later, back at Milford Road Police Station.

  While Carmody fiddled about and then pressed the playback switch of Nigel Fontenoy's answering machine, now standing on a desk in the CID room, away from the frenzied activity of an incident room in the first stages of a murder inquiry, Abigail perched on the corner, skimming through her notes as she waited.

  The last few days of Nigel Fontenoy's life had, it appeared, followed their normal pattern, except for the visit to London on the day he died. There, his appointment diary revealed, he'd had an appointment with a Mr Alec Macaudle, of Jermyn's, the big London-based jewellery conglomerate; further searches had brought to light a lengthy correspondence between the two men, the subject of which was the imminent takeover of Fontenoy's by Jermyn's, something

  George Fontenoy insisted he knew nothing about. In a file marked 'Personal' they also found a copy of a letter to Jake Wilding, Matthew's father, the contents of which were judged promising enough to warrant following up.

  Meanwhile, there was Nigel's answering machine to consider, which Carmody now fast-forwarded, bypassing the other messages, deemed to be of no interest at the moment, until he came to the one they wanted to hear again – a curt, unidentified message which merely said, OK. see you. Same place, sam
e time.

  There was a tantalizing quality about the voice, as if it ought to be recognizable. But it showed some distortion, whether deliberate or not, and, since neither George Fontenoy, Christine nor Matthew Wilding had been able (or willing) to identify it, it was hardly surprising that none of the investigating team could either, even after listening to it several times.

  Carmody finally gave up and switched it off.

  Abigail said, 'Get me Jermyn's on the line. I'd better speak to this Mr Macaudle.'

  But he had, it seemed, left that morning for Switzerland and would be away for the next few days. If Mr Fontenoy had left anything in the way of a parcel with Mr Macaudle, a starchy female voice informed her, he would not have failed to mention it, but she would take a look to make sure. It was a foregone conclusion, before she rang back, that her answer would be negative. Yes, she would leave a message for Mr Macaudle to ring Inspector Moon when he returned.

  12

  Gil Mayo always hoped the day might come when he had all his cases neatly stitched up before a new one materialized, but since his was not a particularly optimistic nature he had to concede that this was pie in the sky. Meanwhile, out of necessity, he'd become an expert at running several complex cases together – such as preparing airtight evidence for a prosecution on the one hand, while familiarizing himself with the details of a new investigation on the other, at the same time as keeping the facts of something else in his head. The last week had been like that, hellish, but things had improved, and today offered a bonus: the court hearing had been adjourned, leaving him free to concentrate on the Fontenoy murder with Abigail Moon.

  He would have preferred to be working with Kite, but this was impossible, and there were compensations. She was prettier than Kite, for one thing, and smelled nicer. She was wearing a sharp, fresh scent, a greenish-brown suit that matched her eyes, and her bronze wavy hair shone with life and vitality. All of which he'd had plenty chance to appreciate as she drove him up to Ham Lane to talk to Jake Wilding.