by Granger, Ann
Hemmings ran his fingers nervously over his mouth. ‘This whatever-it-was he found out, you reckon it killed him, then?’
‘I don’t think his murder was motiveless,’ Carter told him. ‘I think, Mr Hemmings, it’s not a good idea in the present circumstances for you to go wandering about Balaclava House and grounds. Whoever killed Taylor might also see you as a threat.’
Billy Hemmings had been looking uncomfortable. Now he began to look worried.
Chapter 18
Balaclava house, when Jess reached it, was deserted. To make sure, she toured the building on foot, peering in windows. This is what Jay Taylor had done, she thought. But then Seb and Rosie were watching him from above. If anyone is watching me, he or she is keeping very quiet. She rattled the front door handle but now it was locked. She walked back slowly down the drive to the lane and scoured the ground for signs of a car having parked here, fresh footprints other than her own, anything that would have indicated a recent presence. There were marks of tyres outside the gates, but both Carter and Tansy Peterson had parked there the day before and had probably left the traces. If either Bridget or Tansy had been intending to drive here this morning, there was no sign of either. Footprints in the garden were those seen by Carter and already no longer fresh.
Jess returned to her car and thought desperately. Monty might deliberately have put her on a false scent. But she remembered Monica Farrell telling her that Monty wouldn’t tell an out and out lie, not to Jess who so resembled his late wife. If Monica was right, Monty might have been telling the truth about the previous evening’s argument; but he could still have drawn the wrong conclusion when he saw the two women drive off in such a panic and in separate cars that morning.
No, decided Jess. Monty didn’t think it out wrongly. The women had argued violently about Balaclava House only the night before. The quarrel or dispute, whatever it was, was left unresolved. They would have picked it up again this morning. When they did, it resulted in Tansy running out of the house, closely followed by her mother. They were coming here. So, where are they?
She looked around. This was a benighted spot. Everything was in need of repair: the potholed surface of the lane, the collapsing sign at the entrance to it, poor Balaclava House sinking into ruin, a shadow of its once-proud self. Jess drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Tansy had left The Old Lodge first. Bridget had followed her. Therefore it was a question of where Tansy had been heading. The assumption by Monty and by Jess herself was that the destination was Toby’s Gutter Lane. But if not to Balaclava itself, then where?
The Colleys! Jess gave the steering wheel a little slap of triumph. Bridget would not have any time for the Colleys but Tansy told Ian Carter that she and Gary Colley had been pals when children. Tansy used to go to the Colley homestead and ride Gary’s pony round the field there.
‘And Tansy’s gone there again,’ said Jess aloud. ‘I knew those Colleys were mixed up in this somehow!’
She drove the short distance to the Colley pig farm. Leaving her car outside, she pushed open the gate and walked through. As she did so, she remembered Morton telling her about the dogs. Boldly to walk up the drive unannounced might not be the best idea. She turned back to her car, drove through the opened gate, got out and closed it as Morton had done on his visit. She then continued down to the complex of buildings Phil had described to her.
There it all was, just as Phil had said, house, old stable block, pigsties and dog run . . . and she was not the first, nor even the second, visitor today. Two cars were parked in the muddy yard: Bridget’s little two-seater and, in front of it, Tansy’s Fiesta.
Bingo! thought Jess, allowing herself a moment’s satisfaction at having found her quarry. She looked across towards the dog run to check it was safe to get out.
This influx of visitors seemed to have thrown the dogs into some confusion. Probably they had been ordered sternly not to bark at the previous arrivals and so did not know what to do about Jess. They crowded to the wire to stare at her suspiciously but didn’t bark, not even when Jess got out of her car.
Others had heard her, however. Both Dave and Gary emerged from the former stable block and stood watching her.
Jess walked towards them and they watched her approach with the same mix of hostility and caution as shown by their dogs. Gary obviously recognised her, but this was the first time she’d met Dave, his father. She took out her ID and held it up so that he could see it.
‘My lad’s told me about you,’ said Dave.
Jess wasn’t going to waste time. ‘Where are they?’ she asked briskly. ‘Where are Mrs Harwell and her daughter, Tansy Peterson?’
‘Gone walking up over Shooter’s Hill,’ said Dave. ‘Nice day like it is, after all that rain. They decided to stretch their legs.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jess said curtly. Tansy might ramble over Shooter’s Hill for the fun of it. Bridget was not the hiking type. ‘Don’t waste my time, Mr Colley. That’s obstruction and an offence. I want to speak to both women and I want to know where they are right now.’
Both men stayed silent, hostile, watchful and wary. Dangerous, too? Should she have waited for Phil to join her before tackling them? The Colleys stood shoulder to shoulder in the open entrance to the former stables. It was as if they blocked it. They are blocking it, she thought.
She addressed Dave Colley. ‘Mr Colley, I don’t have a search warrant, but I can get one very easily. I don’t have to leave, I just have to phone through to my superintendent with a request; and he’ll be here within the hour with one.’
‘We can ask you to leave our property meantime,’ growled Dave.
‘Sure, why don’t you? And I’ll just wait outside your gate back there, blocking the way in and out, just as you are both blocking my view of that barn or stable or whatever you call it now. Neither woman will be able to drive away. Neither woman can get very far without transport. I can stay around for as long as it takes and, sooner or later, one of them if not both will have to come out and face me.’
‘What do you want them for?’ Gary asked truculently.
‘That’s police business.’ She paused. ‘I’d like to look around the barn now, please. I’d be obliged if you would give your permission. Mr Colley?’
The Colleys exchanged glances. Gary looked as if he would still object. Unexpectedly, Dave shrugged. ‘Go and look, then, if it makes you any happier. It’s nothing to do with either of us, is it, Gary?’ A minatory note sounded in his voice.
Gary hesitated. ‘No, right . . .’ he said unwillingly.
‘That’s very sensible of you, Mr Colley. If you are already in any trouble, you don’t want to make things worse, do you?’
They parted barely enough to allow her through. Jess stepped into the former stable block and into a lost age. She was surrounded by signs of its former, as well as present, use. One end was still divided into stalls. Dusty harness items hung from pegs on the wall, the leather dried and cracking. Touchingly, a painted sign still hung above one stall. It read ‘Brutus’. If Brutus had been a carriage horse, what had been the name of his pair? Caesar? Modern times had come. The elegance of a carriage and pair had gone and been replaced by a mud-splashed truck garaged at the other end of the open floor area. Against the rear wall a flight of wooden stairs rose into the loft above. The air was musty and made her nose itch.
‘Mrs Harwell? Tansy?’ Jess called. ‘It’s Inspector Campbell. If you are up there in the loft, come down, please. I need to talk to you both.’
There was silence. She sensed a collective holding of breath. A slight movement behind her, telegraphed by the disappearance of one part of the shadow falling through the open entry, caused her to turn her head. Dave Colley was still there, watching her sullenly from the doorway. Gary, however, had vanished. Now, where had he gone? Jess felt uneasy, not having him in sight. Her ear caught the faintest creak above her head.
‘I’m coming up there!’ she called out.
She started slowly u
p the wooden stairs. They creaked ominously beneath her feet and she reached for the handrail. She could feel the intense gaze of Dave Colley’s eyes watching her every move. He himself had not moved, thank goodness. But where was the wretched Gary?
Jess had reached the top and the loft. The shadowy rafters, strung with ancient cobwebs, loomed high above her head. The place was packed with every kind of junk, ancient and modern, old tools, furniture, tea chests, some of it looking as if it had been there many years. Even wisps of Edwardian hay still lay in corners. What the Colleys planned to do with all this rubbish she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps they just didn’t bother to throw any of it away, keeping it as they had kept the old harness, useless but part of the place. The loft was brightly lit, more so than the floor below. The light streamed through one of the floor-length openings through which hay had been brought up so many years ago to feed Brutus and his companions.
Bridget Harwell stood on the far side of the loft, away from the head of the stairs, and framed by the opening behind her. She was standing too close to the edge for Jess’s liking; but she guessed it was a deliberate ploy on Bridget’s part to prevent Jess moving towards her.
‘Where’s Tansy?’ Jess asked.
‘We had another row,’ Bridget told her in her brittle voice. ‘She stormed out and has gone off walking over Shooter’s Hill somewhere to cool off.’
So perhaps Dave had almost been telling the truth.
‘We don’t need Tansy, in any case,’ Bridget went on. ‘I can tell you what happened. I suppose that’s what you want to ask.’
‘Yes, I do. I was at your home earlier and spoke to Monty. He said you and Tansy had a violent quarrel last night. You continued it this morning and first Tansy drove off and then you followed. I guessed the quarrel was about Jay Taylor. I do now know that Tansy was well acquainted with him. Was he her boyfriend?’
Bridget uttered an expression of disgust and waved a hand to dismiss this outlandish idea.
‘Come off it,’ Jess told her. ‘I’ve seen a photo of them at a nightclub, very pally. I thought at first you were making for Balaclava House, but when I didn’t find you there, I guessed you’d come here. Tansy was friendly with Gary Colley when they were children, wasn’t she?’
‘My daughter,’ Bridget said coldly, ‘has a talent for picking unsuitable friends.’ After a moment’s hesitation, she added, ‘Perhaps she inherited it from me. I pick unsuitable men, too. But a mother always does blame herself when things go wrong for her child, as if that child were still a schoolgirl. Tansy is a woman. She’ll be nineteen in two weeks’ time. But she is still a child in her attitude. She has no idea of the world, no knowledge that men like Taylor exist. I think she met him at a party somewhere in London. I won’t dignify the emotion she felt towards him as falling in love. As far as I was concerned, it was just a massive schoolgirl crush. She thought he was wonderful. He told her a load of nonsense about loving her and she believed every word.’
‘You met Taylor?’
‘Oh, yes, I met him. As soon as I got wind of what was going on, I sought him out. I wanted to see who this fellow was she was talking of marrying. Marrying! She was supposed to be going to university, spreading her wings, finding out a little about life. When I met Taylor, all my worst fears were confirmed. He was much too old for her, very experienced in the world, and an out and out chancer. I didn’t know what he wanted from Tansy – apart from the obvious and he didn’t need to offer her marriage to get that! She was falling into his arms! I told him to stay away and he told me, as cool as a cucumber, that it was between him and Tansy, and nothing to do with me. Her mother! I was supposed to stand back and let him ruin her life?’
‘So when you looked at his dead body in Balaclava House, you recognised him. You said at the time you didn’t.’
‘Of course I recognised him. I was responsible for his being there.’
There was a silence.
‘Perhaps you could explain that?’ Jess prompted.
‘Why not?’ Bridget returned coolly. ‘It’s pretty straightforward. I got Tansy out of the way for the day and invited the wretched Taylor to come down to The Old Lodge for lunch with me, to talk things over. I made the invitation the day before, when I went up to London.’
‘You were confident he’d accept your invitation? He knew you disapproved of his friendship with your daughter?’ Jess asked.
Bridget gave a knowing smile. ‘I knew he’d accept. His vanity made him do that. He thought he’d won. He thought I was going to give up my opposition and I had invited him down to talk terms. He didn’t know me if he thought I would just throw in the towel like that. I wasn’t about to let him have Tansy and I had to do something to stop that happening, stop it for good! I’m going to the States soon to get married myself.’ She grimaced. ‘I suppose I ought now to say that I was going. At any rate, I wouldn’t be here to protect her. So I did what I had to do. I would make her safe from him.’
‘And remove an obstacle from your own life, too? If you wanted to keep to your schedule in travelling to the USA.’
Bridget gave a satisfied nod. ‘Of course. He had to go, however you look at it. The wretched man had just made himself a complete inconvenience. It was stupid of him. But I counted on his being stupid. So he came down to The Old Lodge and I cooked him a first-rate lunch, if I say so myself.’
Jess didn’t want to interrupt Bridget but she was worried about how close the woman still stood to the edge of the hayloft and the open hatch behind her.
‘Perhaps,’ she suggested as calmly as she could, ‘we could talk more comfortably. There’s an old sofa over there. It doesn’t look too dirty.’
‘We’re quite all right as we are!’ Bridget snapped. ‘I’ll stay here and you stay right there and we’ll be fine.’
‘OK.’ Jess didn’t think it was fine at all, but the other woman’s nervous tension fairly crackled through the air between them. I need to calm her down, Jess thought. If I let her go on with her story, she might relax a bit. Then I’ll have another go at persuading her to come with me, or at least move away from that opening.
‘I crushed up a bottleful of sleeping tablets and mixed them in with the wine sauce,’ Bridget said. ‘It was coq au vin. I usually do that for lunch parties. We’d had a couple of drinks before we ate and a bottle of decent red with the meal.’
‘You thought that would kill him?’
‘No!’ Bridget grew irritable. ‘Of course that wouldn’t kill him. Or it wasn’t likely. I couldn’t have relied on it and I didn’t. I knew it would make him very sleepy and then I could make my next move. I thought it would be an hour or a bit more before the pills and booze had any real effect. My idea was to have him leave before that, drive away. I thought he’d crash on the way home, just another drunk driver cut from the wreckage. Add him to the statistics.’
‘He could have killed other people, innocent people!’ Jess broke in angrily, unable to stop herself.
Bridget shrugged. ‘I didn’t think of that. I was only thinking of Tansy. I told you, I did it for my daughter. That was all that mattered to me; the only thing I had on my mind. I had to kill the bastard – or arrange for him to kill himself – because he’d left me no other choice. Blame him!’
‘So how did he end up on a sofa in Balaclava House?’
‘I’m coming to that!’ Bridget was beginning to sound exasperated. ‘Stop interrupting.’
I’m not doing a very good job calming her down, Jess told herself. Shut up, Jess, whatever she says. Let her finish. But I’ve got to get her away from that opening.
Bridget looked discontented. ‘It was a good idea but it started to go wrong at once. The pills and wine worked more quickly than I’d judged they would. We hadn’t even finished our meal and he was already dozing off over the cheese. I’d misjudged how powerful they’d been. I began to be afraid he’d pass out right there in my house, flat out on the carpet. He mumbled he didn’t feel well. I told him I’d drive him home. He was confused
and clumsy but I managed to get him to his feet and out of the house, into his car. He slumped in the passenger seat and hardly appeared to be breathing. He closed his eyes and I thought he’d gone to sleep. Fine, that suited me. I’d planned for him to crash and he was still going to, only I’d have to organise it differently.
‘First of all, we had to get away from my house. I remembered Shooter’s Hill. That would be ideal, steep, lonely, no one to see what happened. I’d stop at the top of the hill and manhandle him somehow into the driver’s seat. Then I’d release the brake, give the car a bit of a push, and off he’d go, rattling down Shooter’s Hill to pile up at the bottom. Sooner or later someone would find the wreck, either Pete Sneddon or a walker. But I’d be long gone, well away.’
