The Red Chairs Mystery

by L. D. Culliford

  As expected, when Jamie Royle and Patrick Gryllock were ordered to attend a police station in South London for separate interviews by Yewtree personnel, they were accompanied by their legal experts. Royle brazenly denied everything put to him, or otherwise offered no comment. Gryllock was more circumspect, and seemed to the officers conducting the questioning to be in a highly anxious state. He acted, they said later, as if he was feeling the heavy burden of guilt, but was not yet ready to let it go by telling the truth.

  While Royle was back in his office within an hour, the officers kept his partner much longer, talking to him about Daniel and Francesca Pennycuik, Fotheringay House, and the summer of 1971, until his defences gave, just a little. Finally, despite being cautioned against it by his legal adviser, he admitted going to the Royle family home on one occasion, but said he could not remember which year. He denied meeting the brother and sister, and had only a vague recollection of the housekeeper, their mother. He did say, when pressed, that – more or less bullied into it by Royle – the two had once shared a sexual experience with a young woman, but insisted that it had been in a hotel room somewhere, that the person concerned was over the age of consent, and that she had agreed to, even invited, the activity. Having nothing to charge him with, they had eventually let him go too.

  ***

  The atmosphere at St Catherine’s was surprisingly positive when Holly eventually visited, towards the end of the week. She noticed bright colours, plenty of flowers, and a general air of calm cheerfulness when she entered the vestibule. Finding his room, she was glad to see for herself, too, that Dan appeared to be making something of a reasonable recovery. He was sitting in a high-backed chair next to the bed. He was fully-dressed, with his left arm outside the sling round his neck. The sturdy walking stick with a three-pronged foot beside him stood witness to the physio he was receiving to get him walking again.

  ‘They’ve been really lovely to me in here’, he said when she entered. ‘I’ve never known such kindness, except from my Mum and Andy, of course.’

  Holly could well believe it. ‘You’re looking better’, she said.

  ‘It wasn’t as bad as it looked’, Dan explained. ‘They were giving me anti-coagulants to prevent me having more blood clots, and this meant the bleeding wouldn’t stop when I had that coughing fit. They had to give me something else – “platelets”, I think they said – to reverse it and get me clotting again. The actual damage to what must have been only a tiny blood vessel in the lungs was only slight.’

  ‘I’m glad’, said Holly, truthfully. ‘But now we have a little more work to do, Dan, if you feel up to it… First, I want you to take a look at these, please.’ She was fishing a sheaf of papers out of her bag.

  ‘What are they?’ Dan enquired.

  ‘I’ve typed up what you told me the other day on official police Witness Statement notepaper’, Holly replied. ‘I’d like you to take your time, read them, and then sign at the end if you agree that it’s accurate. You have to initial every page as well…’

  ‘Give them here!’ Dan interrupted. ‘I don’t need to read them. You recorded what I said, didn’t you? I’ll just go ahead and sign. I’ve got nothing to lose now, have I? And I want those bastards to know they haven’t got away with what they did to my Fran.’

  Holly helped him sign the forms, then took out her recorder again. ‘I’m afraid I need you to tell me how your sister actually died, Dan’, she said. ‘It’s important that we know.’

  ‘Okay’, he replied. ‘I understand… It was in 2004. That was a very bad year.’

  Holly had fetched another chair, and was sitting quite close beside him as he told her how, in January that fateful year, Andy Anderson had died. This was the first tragedy. She had been suffering from a benign form of leukaemia for several years, and it had become more aggressive. She knew she was dying, so she instructed a solicitor to draw up a Will leaving some money to an equine charity, some to a hospice for children, and the remainder, including the farm, to Dan.

  ‘I couldn’t have run the business, though’, he said. ‘I didn’t have the brains or the education… So she had it wound up. There was still plenty for me to live on; and I could always get odd jobs after that – anything with horses, farm work, tractor-driving, anything mechanical… I am good with machines.’

  ‘Fran had been living with mother all these years. They stayed together in the flat in Guildford, but then Mum became ill too. At first, it was just a cough that wouldn’t go away. She had antibiotics. Then they did X-rays, ran all the checks, but found nothing. Mum was not the type to complain, so it was many months before she went back to the doctor because she had been getting breathless. I suppose he thought she was looking a bit pale this time, so he ran another blood test, which showed she was desperately anaemic. On investigation, they finally found she had bowel cancer and, by then of course, it had spread. After giving her transfusions, they operated, but she died in theatre, on the table. I don’t exactly know why.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Holly exclaimed. She was growing increasingly sorry for this man, as he revealed these long-held sad secrets.

  ‘Fran had to come and live with me, after that’, he continued, ‘But I couldn’t look after her properly. When mother died, she was inconsolable… And I was pretty much an emotional wreck as well… She wouldn’t eat. I begged and begged her, but she wouldn’t eat anything… Next to nothing at all!’

  Holly noticed he was sobbing again. Finding the tissues and blowing his nose, eventually he went on.

  ‘She pretended to eat, but she basically just starved herself to death in the end’, he said. ‘I called an ambulance once, but she only sent them away. To be honest, I was drinking quite a bit in those days. I didn’t take proper care of her. I shall always blame myself for that…’

  ‘But it wasn’t your fault, was it, Dan?’ Holly asked gently, trying to help him feel better. ‘Not really?’

  ‘Well, Miss’, he said, genuinely filled with remorse. ‘I was drunk the day of my mother’s funeral, and I was drunk the day my sister died. What do you think of me now?’

  ‘I think you are human like all of us, Dan’, Holly said. ‘And like all of us, you did the best you could at the time.’

  ‘Well, my best wasn’t very good, was it?’ He was still crying. ‘I was drunk when I found her. I didn’t kill her, although many was the time she begged me to finish her off. Once, I even got a pillow and stood over her while she slept, but I couldn’t do it. I knew she was in such pain, but I was too much of a coward. I couldn’t finish her off, no matter how much she wanted me to… Then, one morning, I just woke up and found her dead, all curled up in her bed. She was cold… Must have been dead for hours... And I just left her there and got drunk again. I didn’t know what to do… I didn’t want to call the police and have to answer all their questions. I didn’t want anyone interfering so, later that day, I lifted her up… she hardly weighed anything at all… and took her across the yard to the freezer. I wasn’t thinking… Did it by instinct… I wanted to keep her nearby, I suppose.’

  ‘And that’s where she’s been for eight years, Dan?’ asked Holly, ‘Ever since you found her dead that morning?’

  ‘I never wanted to lift the lid on that freezer again’, he explained, ‘So… Yes… That’s where she was until a couple of weeks ago… But when I knew I had cancer, I started thinking about those two scum, about what they did and how they were going to get away with it. I just got so incredibly angry, and the only thing I could think of to expose them was to bring poor Fran’s body and those chairs back out into the open. Her nightie was torn badly. I think it had snagged on something when I moved her the first time, but I was so drunk I either didn’t notice or didn’t care. In the end I just put one of my old dressing gowns on her, to give her a bit of decency... But even that was a problem. She was so stiff, I could only get one arm in, so I just had to wrap it around her, like. I wasn’t th
inking properly.’

  ***

  ‘So, that was it’, Holly reported back to Holroyd and Garbutt the following afternoon. In the meantime, she had typed up the rest of her report, printed more Witness Statement forms for Dan to sign, and was now awaiting instructions.

  ‘You’ve done well, Angel’, Hugh Holroyd said. ‘And you, too, Baum.’

  Rich wasn’t sure he deserved this praise, but accepted the plaudits cheerfully enough. ‘Are we going to say anything to the press or the media, Sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet, I fancy’, was the cautious reply. ‘It will all be made public anyway, at the Inquest in due course.’

  And that is what occurred several months later at Chichester Crown Court. Holly had been back to St Catherine’s just once, to have Dan Pennycuik sign his second and final Witness Statement. After she told him that he would not be arrested for concealing Fran’s death from the authorities, or for anything else, but that there would be an inquest to which both Royle and Gryllock would be called to give evidence, he seemed more than relieved. She thought she detected a new degree of contentment in his face, and wondered if perhaps he was learning to forgive himself for what he called cowardice.

  ‘I’ve seen a solicitor’, he told her, ‘And the undertaker’s just left. I’ve got my Will sorted out, and there’s enough in the bank to pay for two cremations – a cheap one for me and the best that money can buy for my dear Fran. Then, when I’m gone, the farm will be sold and the money given to charity, although I’m not sure which ones yet…’

  ‘How about “Riding for the Disabled”? That would do, wouldn’t it?’ Holly found herself saying. She didn’t think he would be inclined to support the “Damsel in Distress” homes, given the connection with Gryllock. Yet maybe, she hoped, his attitude would soften later towards those despicable perpetrators of the unspeakable crime against his poor sister. However, there had barely been time for such a forgiving change in his outlook. When she said goodbye, Holly promised to visit again. The next day, however, she took a call from the hospice superintendent telling her that Dan had died peacefully in his sleep during the night. The doctor thought there had been another heavy bleed in his chest. He would not have felt any pain.

  At the inquest, Royle was called to the stand first. With a full gallery and a good number of journalists watching, he had persisted in his denial of all knowledge of the allegations in Dan’s statements, which had been read out in full earlier; and he took the opportunity of threatening to sue anyone who repeated and spread what he said amounted to unfounded and malicious rumours.

  There were few who would take on such an adversary in the libel courts, someone with almost limitless financial backing and access to the best libel lawyers in town. However, Patrick Gryllock’s testimony, which followed, was more equivocal. He did not say enough to be convicted of anything, but he left many suspecting that privately he knew himself to be guilty – and by the same token that Royle was guilty too. A rift had clearly developed between the two men, and it was no surprise to Holly, reading about it later, that Gryllock had resigned from Regal Enterprises, the reason given that he wanted to spend more time with family and concentrate on his charity work. She suspected strongly, however, that Royle had simply and unceremoniously kicked him out.

  The final verdict was ‘Death due to Natural Causes’, specifically ‘Starvation due to Anorexia Nervosa’. Dr Narayan gave firm evidence, firmer than she knew him to believe, that the crack in the cartilage of the dead woman’s larynx had appeared after death as a direct and natural result of being frozen and later defrosted. He assured the court that it was not therefore an indication of foul play.

  The inquest was reported in the local and national news. A few days later, a woman of forty-six reported to the police that she too had been drugged and sexually molested against her will by Jamie Royle. The incident had occurred in London when she was a teenager. Later, someone else came forward with a similar complaint. The information was passed on, in both cases, to officers from Operation Yewtree.

  ***

  Holly was pleased, after the inquest proceedings, to bump into Peter Harding, also there to give his evidence as a “witness to fact”. Standing in the lobby, with people going past on either side, the Colonel told her that the entire unsavoury affair and all the attendant rumours had left quite a mark on the Golf Club. Several members had left, to disassociate themselves from the club and its owner. The Colonel, too, was on the point of departure, bringing his retirement forward by a couple of years. Valerie Parton had decided to go also. Young Kyle Scott had, in turn, accepted the post of head professional at a well-established golf club in Kent. Gary Brooker, on the other hand, had decided to stay loyal to his benefactor.

  ‘And what about Mark?’ the Colonel asked, as they walked out into the sunlight, surprising Holly with the question.

  ‘Mark?’ she replied innocently.

  ‘Yes… He left the club too, didn’t he? How’s he getting on?’

  Holly was slightly flummoxed by this, albeit friendly, interrogation. She thought she and Mark Berger had managed to keep their budding friendship well hidden. Once the case of Fran Pennycuik had been solved, though, she had given in to a strong temptation to call him and renew their acquaintance. Now, she was meeting him regularly, for golf instruction at the new golf club he had joined, and for a good deal more. Apart from her father, and her friends Jack and Brian, she thought that no-one else knew.

  Seeing her discomfort, Peter Harding said, ‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you your secret’s out, but Valerie Parton chanced to meet Mark in the supermarket one day. On a whim, she asked him about you. As a gentleman, he was quite unable to lie to her face. Anyway, she’d guessed already that you were seeing one another.’

  Holly wasn’t sure whether to be upset or pleased. Mark was a gentle man, kind and considerate to her all the time, very unlike Tony Angel. He was also appealingly attractive and an excellent teacher. Perhaps it was time to admit to herself that she was ‘emotionally involved’, maybe even falling in love.

  After this brief conversation on the courthouse steps, they said their goodbyes. The Colonel, walking away, turned round after a few paces to look back at Holly. Raising his voice slightly, to carry the intervening distance, he imparted a final message, delivering it with a broad grin on his face.

  ‘Val told me she’s sure the two of you will be married by Christmas’, he called out, holding his open hands to his mouth. ‘Should I tell her she’s got it right?’

  ‘You’re a cheeky man’, was all Holly would say, smiling back. ‘Why don’t we just wait and see?’

  Catch up with Holly again as she investigates

  ‘The Case of the Double Dutchman’

  Out Soon…

  Acknowledgements

  A number of people have helped me write this book. I would particularly like to thank retired Sussex Police Detective Phil Bottomer, golf commentator Ewen Murray, and horse trainer Keith Scott for their generous and helpful contributions.