The Affacombe Affair

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘No good getting it in your hair, Roy,’ Pamela adjured him, yawning, ‘I’m sure the Inspector understands it’s urgent for you to get back.’

  Dart replied coldly that there was no obstacle in the way of their departure.

  ‘Just one or two points about the search of the grounds last night, sir,’ he added.

  Roy gave him the information he wanted with hardly concealed impatience.

  ‘Is that all?’ he demanded. ‘We want to go out and get a meal. This place has been like a morgue all day. No objection, I suppose?’

  ‘None whatever, sir.’ Dart rose to go. ‘I must ask for the loan of the boots you were wearing for the search of the grounds last night. We are trying to get prints sorted out. I’ll give you a receipt for them.’

  ‘Christ!’ exclaimed Roy Garnish. ‘Perhaps one of your chaps’d like to clean ’em?’

  ‘Inside the lining,’ Sergeant Metcalfe said, indicating a suitcase with an air of suppressed triumph. ‘She’d made a slit here, see? Neatish job. I got ’em out with tweezers.’

  Dart grunted and pulled a chair up to the table. Three foolscap envelopes were lying on it. The first was inscribed:

  F.E.

  Oct. 7th?

  Oct. 14th

  Oct. 15th E.E.!!!

  The final entry had been scored with such violence that the ball pen used had torn the paper. The envelope itself was empty, unlike the second one which contained a sizeable wad of treasury notes. It carried the inscription:

  B.W.

  Oct. 27th?

  Nov. 3rd £25

  The third envelope was both blank and empty.

  ‘Looks as though she won’t be missed in some quarters,’ commented Sergeant Metcalfe.

  ‘Maybe, but it’s our job to find out who did her, blackmailer or not. F.E. could be that chap Fred Earwaker, Murch was talking about. Said to have had an affair with one of the foreign girls up here, and his wife’s left him.’ Dart referred to his notes. ‘He’s a gardener here.’

  ‘Perhaps Roach tried it on and he wouldn’t pay up.’

  ‘Possible. She could’ve blown the gaff to the wife if the initials are right, and enjoyed doing it if those exclamation marks are anything to go by.’

  ‘Any idea who B.W. is, sir?’

  ‘There was a Mrs Winship around on Saturday afternoon with some dogs,’ Dart said thoughtfully. ‘Give me that telephone directory. There’s a Colonel Winship, MC, DSO, Crossways, Affacombe. Class that takes its dogs for regular walks. What’s this?’

  Sergeant Metcalfe laid a Post Office Savings Book on the table with the air of a supercilious retriever.

  ‘Found it locked away in a drawer in that desk. Key was hidden under her smalls in the bedroom. Reckon she’s been in the game quite a while.’

  Dart turned the pages with interest. There had been a number of periods during the past ten years in the course of which regular deposits had been made, each coming to an end when the date stamp showed a move to a fresh place. The amounts varied from one to ten pounds. Not a bad scheme, he thought, not pressing ’em too hard or too long. Opening her mouth a bit wider now.

  ‘Pity she hadn’t got round to putting the next victim’s initials on this third envelope,’ Metcalfe remarked. ‘We’d know who to go for, like as not.’

  ‘Doesn’t follow,’ replied Dart. ‘What matters is where we go from here. I don’t want to put the wind up this Earwaker chap, and have him making off. You heard Murch say he lived in Church Lane. You go up to the far end and work back, making a genuine house-to-house enquiry which takes him in. Ask ’em all if they were out and about between three forty-five and five-fifteen yesterday, and who they saw. See what sort of an alibi Earwaker puts up, but don’t rattle him. While you’re doing that I’ll try this place Crossways on chance.’

  Hugh Winship cleared a pile of nurserymen’s catalogues from a chair in his den, and invited Dart to sit down.

  ‘Smoke?’ He held out a cigarette box. ‘Won’t offer you a drink, knowing the drill. You’ve come about this shocking business, I take it? They’re saying in the village she was murdered, poor woman.’

  Typical old war-horse, thought Dart. Stuck in a groove, but a decent sort. Not like that Garnish blighter.

  ‘At the moment we’re treating it as a case of murder,’ he replied, offering a light. ‘That’s the reason for this house-to-house enquiry. We’re hoping someone will be able to give some information.’

  ‘Can’t help you m’self, I’m afraid. Spent the whole afternoon in the garden burning up rubbish. You can’t see the road at all. No one came near the place either.’

  ‘Do you remember what time you knocked off, sir?’

  ‘About twenty past four, when m’wife got back with the dogs. We didn’t go out again: rain was just starting.’

  ‘Perhaps I could have a word with Mrs Winship, then, if she was out?’

  A worried look came over Hugh Winship’s rather impassive weather-beaten face.

  ‘Afraid you’d suggest that. She’s upset by it all. She was along that path with the dogs, you see. Not very pleasant to think it might have been her. Another of these sex maniacs, I suppose?’

  ‘I quite understand how she feels, sir, but I’m afraid I’ll have to get her statement at first hand. Matter of regulations.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Not your fault. No point in it, though. She didn’t see a soul. Told me so. Keep it as short as you can. She’s only just over ’flu.’

  Dart’s instant reaction to Barbara Winship was satisfaction. He had not expected to find her so much younger than her husband. A good-looker, and what you’d call elegant, too. Easy to fit a spot of blackmail into the picture. Tall and well-built. Physically quite capable of knocking out a small woman like Roach, and heaving her over that rail. She certainly looked a bit under the weather, but there could be a lot more to that than the ’flu.

  He proceeded cautiously, apologizing for troubling her when she had been unwell, and stressing the routine nature of the enquiry.

  ‘I understand you were exercising your dogs along the Monk’s Path yesterday afternoon, madam,’ he said, his eyes on her restless hands. ‘Can you remember when you started off from here?’

  Barbara gave a slight shudder.

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘About half-past three, I think.’

  ‘Did you go far along the path?’

  ‘Roughly half-way.’

  Dart took out his notebook and opened it carefully at a clean page.

  ‘I wonder if you could draw me a very simple map to show where the path begins and ends, and about how far you went?’ he asked. ‘It would help to get the picture clear in my mind.’

  ‘I’ll try, if you like,’ she replied, sounding faintly surprised as she took the notebook from him.

  ‘Ordnance map any use?’ enquired Hugh Winship, who had taken up a defensive stance at his wife’s side.

  ‘Thank you, sir, but I’m all right on the general lie of the land. It’s just this bit of detail. Thank you, madam, that’s fine. I gathered from Mr Ainsworth that the path’s a public right of way. Did you meet anyone on it yesterday?’

  ‘No one at all,’ Barbara answered flatly.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure? It’s very important. And I include anyone near the path as well as actually on it, of course.’

  She looked straight at him, with a curious mixture of fear and confidence in her blue eyes which he found puzzling.

  ‘On the way out I could see people drifting towards the school after the match. By the time I came back they’d all disappeared. Apart from them I didn’t see a soul the whole time.’

  Dart tried another tack.

  ‘Forget about people now. I want you to think back your whole walk. Did you see or hear anything at all that struck you as unusual?’

  Her hands clasped and unclasped in her lap as she frowned in concentration.

  ‘Nothing whatever, I’m afraid,’ she said finally.

  Hugh Winship ostentatiously cleared
his throat.

  ‘Just one more question,’ Dart said. ‘Did you notice the time when you arrived home?’

  ‘I remember the church clock striking the quarter just after I came out on to the road. A friend saw me, and we waved. A Mrs Strode. So I must have got in two or three minutes later.’

  ‘Near enough,’ said her husband. ‘I heard the quarter while I was collecting up m’tools. You came along just afterwards.’

  Dart picked up his notebook and turned over the page.

  ‘May I have your full name for my report, madam?’

  ‘Barbara Jane Winship,’ she told him.

  He stood up, thanking her politely for her help. At the door he glanced back and saw her with her face in her hands.

  On learning from Sergeant Metcalfe that Fred Earwaker claimed to have spent the whole of Saturday afternoon watching Grandstand, alone in his cottage, Dart’s satisfaction expressed itself in unusual communicativeness.

  ‘Half-past six,’ he remarked, as they drove towards Highcastle. ‘We could’ve done a lot worse. Gave his wife’s name as Ethel, did he? Looks as though we’ve got Roach’s two clients nicely lined up, and neither of ’em with an alibi. If Winship’s dabs are on those treasury notes, it clinches it where she’s concerned. You got Earwaker’s, of course?’

  ‘Got ’em on my card.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Great hefty chap. Truculent at first. If I hadn’t got my foot in I reckon he’d’ve slammed the door on me.’

  Dart grunted, and relapsed into silence for the rest of the journey. He liked a case where there were some facts to go on right from the start, good solid leads to follow up.

  On arrival at police headquarters he found plenty to occupy him. After a brief conference with the Chief Constable and Detective-Superintendent Martin, there was the coroner to contact and arrangements to be made for the inquest. A report had come through from Lewisham. Mrs Grant, the next-of-kin, was an elderly arthritic widow, a half-sister of the deceased. She had stated that there had been little contact between them of recent years, although she had brought up Sister Roach after the death of the parents, and got her into her hospital training. Mrs Grant had not appeared upset by the news, merely remarking that her half-sister had obviously got into bad company.

  Dart felt a sudden unexpected sympathy for Sister Roach. Perhaps an unhappy childhood and adolescence was at the bottom of it all. Dismissing this aspect of the case from his mind, he considered the checking of the Garnishes’ alibi, and rang the Super at Polharbour.

  The fingerprint and photographic experts who had come on ahead had little of value to show him. After a night of heavy rain there were no distinguishable prints on the iron railing at the Leap. The rain, following the trampling of John Ainsworth and Roy Garnish, had also obliterated any possible footprints. Consigning the two men to perdition Dart stared disgustedly at a photograph of a large pool of water with muddy margins.

  ‘Ruddy lake,’ he remarked. ‘Get anything on the notes?’ This was more encouraging. Both Sister Roach’s and Barbara Winship’s prints had been found on the treasury notes. Microscopic examination of some threads caught on the iron bar had shown that they came from Sister Roach’s coat. On the other hand, the most exhaustive search had failed to find any clues near a patch of trodden grass behind bushes across the path at the Leap, with the exception of a small part of a heel print. A plaster cast had been made of this. Dart looked at it doubtfully. Beyond the fact that it had not been made by the boots handed over by John Ainsworth and Roy Garnish it told him nothing. He decided to send it to the forensic laboratory in case something could be deduced from it.

  Finally Dart settled down to consider the various statements taken at the Priory. The first essential was to fix the time when Sister Roach had left the school kitchen with her tea tray, as this seemed to be the last occasion on which she had been seen, other than by the murderer. There was no problem here. Three members of the domestic staff had been on duty. They were Mrs Tonkin, the assistant cook, and two German girls, Elsa Schmidt and Maria Bauer, and their statements agreed in every particular. As soon as there were sounds of people returning from the match, Elsa had gone into the boys’ dining-room, and received the plates of food from the other two through the serving hatch. The electric tea urns had already been switched on. She had stood waiting until the hands of the clock reached 3.45, when she rang the tea bell. Meanwhile Maria Bauer had wheeled a trolley of eatables to the drawing-room, and returned to the kitchen as the bell was ringing to fetch a second trolley with the tea and hot water. As she came into the room, Sister Roach had entered by the opposite door, picked up her tray, nodded to Mrs Tonkin and departed again. Say 3.46, thought Dart.

  The next job was to check up on the whereabouts of all adults known to be on the premises from 3.46 onwards. The three domestics had retired to their own dining-room to enjoy their tea, and had sat over it until they heard the boys dispersing about half-past four. From then on they had been busy clearing and washing up until after five. Mrs Claythorpe and Sheila Wills had had tea with the boys, and been about afterwards keeping an eye on the common-rooms where the visitors were being entertained. Dart, always cautious, considered the possibility of their having been in league and covered up for each other, but decided that it was too far-fetched to be worth following up for the present.

  He next turned his attention to the tea party in the drawing-room. According to the statements of the two Ainsworths it had consisted of five people, themselves, the headmaster of St Hector’s, and the games masters of both schools. They had all been present when tea was brought in, and no one had gone out of the room until the gathering broke up at about a quarter to five. The visiting team had then been rounded up, and their coach cheered off just before five o’clock. Bob Notley, the Priory games master, had then stayed chatting to the Ainsworths about the match before driving off in his car at a quarter past.

  Dart made a note to get Polharbour to check with St. Hector’s, and to see Bob Notley himself. It certainly looked pretty watertight. Mrs Claythorpe said it was ‘about quarter past five’ when she took a boy to the East Wing, and found Sister Roach absent.

  He spread out a large-scale map and began to consider distances and times in the light of his interview with Barbara Winship. Suppose Roach had gone straight back to her own quarters from the kitchen, having left a kettle on? She certainly hadn’t made the tea before she went to get the tray, because she’d used the cup from the latter. This was an important point. She’d got to make it, and presumably drink it, and it would have been piping hot. A booster before going to meet her victim? A cuppa! Almost pathetic, if you could think of a blackmailer as a human being. What was the earliest she could possibly have got to the Leap? Dart scratched his head as he stared at the map. Well, certainly not before four o’clock. And how long would it have taken Barbara Winship to get from the Leap to the place where Mrs Strode saw her?

  After some careful measurements, using the scale line and a piece of fine string, Dart decided that it could have been done in five or six minutes by anyone stepping out. Winship wasn’t the athletic type, but having committed a murder was enough to get anybody moving. If there’d been an appointment for four, and the whole thing was premeditated it looked as though there could have been time for the job. It depended on the state of the path, of course. He’d have to go over the ground himself the next day. Then there was this Fred Earwaker, very likely suspecting — or even knowing — that Roach had given him away to his wife. Murch had said that he’d cut himself off from everybody out of working hours since she’d gone, taking the kid with her. He’d have brooded over it all, and got so worked up against Roach that he might very well have gone off the deep end on meeting her in a deserted place. On the face of it, it looked much more like a man’s crime, too. Anyway, tomorrow he’d tax both Winship and Earwaker with having been blackmailed by Roach, and see how they reacted. With the right sort of handling there was a reasonable prospect of one o
f them tripping up or cracking.

  As he gathered up his papers and prepared to go home Dart conceded that some useful headway had already been made in the case.

  Chapter Nine

  John Dalby and Richard Miles, the two boys in bed with colds, were showing signs of boredom and restlessness. As Olivia sat reading to them she heard the detectives come out of Sister Roach’s sitting-room and leave the East Wing by the door on to the colonnade. She intercepted a meaning glance between the boys and hurried on with The Red-Headed League in the hope of averting awkward questions. A few moments later there came the sound of a car starting up and driving away.

  Behind the red-polled throng in Pope’s Court, and the scratching of Jabez Wilson’s pen over the sheets of foolscap, she was acutely conscious of her own anxieties struggling for precedence. Would the Ainsworths be faced with a mass withdrawal of boys by horrified parents? Barbara in an unhappily compromising situation ... surely she wouldn’t be such a fool as to deny having been on the Monk’s Path yesterday afternoon? Ought I to have tried to warn her about the C.I.D. man, Olivia thought? Then there was Fred Earwaker: they were obviously on to him already.

  She stumbled over her reading, and made a great effort to concentrate on the story.

  At last there were footsteps, and Mrs Claythorpe appeared to announce that she had come to take over, and that Mrs Ainsworth would be glad if Mrs Strode would look in before she went home.

  In the drawing-room Olivia found the two Ainsworths in anxious conclave with Simon and Jane Fairhall. Faith broke away from the group as she came in, and seized her hand in both her own, her eyes suspiciously bright.

  ‘Olivia darling, it’s no good even trying to say what you’re being to us.’