Heirs and Assigns

by Marjorie Eccles

  He extracted a few more details, but didn’t think the time was ripe for questioning them about the startling news of Pen’s marriage they had been given at that supper gathering. That would do later. He would need to see them again, speak to them more fully, but at the moment it was the dead man’s two brothers he was more concerned with.

  First was the younger one, Huw, known as Huwie, lounging in a chair, smoking as much as Ida Lancaster and demanding when he could leave. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid,’ Reardon told him. For all his Welsh name, Huwie had left any Welshness he might have possessed behind him long ago, and spoke in the cultivated accents of an English public school, but during the course of his career Reardon had put away much less suspicious-looking characters than the man in front of him. It wasn’t just his general loucheness and distinctly shifty attitude, which would immediately have alerted any policeman worth his salt. Stronger than that was a gut instinct telling him Huwie Llewellyn was not to be let out of his sight until he was satisfied he had nothing to do with his eldest brother’s death.

  He began with the usual questions. Huwie’s eyes flickered when he was asked for his address but he gave a London one that was respectable enough. When asked if he was married, he replied archly that he had never seen the necessity.

  ‘Hmm. I understand you and Mr Penrose Llewellyn haven’t been in touch over the recent past, but you suddenly decided to change the situation and come here?’

  ‘Contrary to what everyone believes, I was invited. I’d remembered it was his sixtieth birthday and I wrote to him, suggesting it was time to let bygones be bygones – not that old Pen and I had ever actually quarrelled. We’d just lost touch, you know how it is.’

  ‘Since you left this house, in fact, after a quarrel with your other brother, Theo.’

  His facial muscles twitched with a wry amusement. ‘You’ve informed yourself pretty well already, it would seem.’

  ‘It’s our job. What’s yours, Mr Llewellyn? How have you been supporting yourself for the last – twenty years, isn’t it?’ he asked, making a show of checking the notes Gilmour had made while they were talking to Mrs Knightly.

  ‘Twenty-four,’ Huwie said shortly. ‘I’ve been around. Done my stint in the army. Travelled, knocked about the world, doing whatever offered. I’m not choosy. It’s surprising what unexpected benefits can come with the most menial jobs.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘What lot were you in?’ Gilmour asked. Huwie looked blank. ‘In the army. What regiment?’

  ‘The King’s,’ he replied after a split-second pause.

  ‘Shropshire Light Infantry?’ He nodded. ‘And currently?’

  ‘Currently I’m unemployed – like a million and a half others. Despite our wonderful Prime Minister Baldwin insisting it’s less than that,’ he added, revealing an unexpected concern with current social concerns.

  ‘So you came here to see if your rich brother could help you,’ Reardon suggested. Huwie chose not to rise to this and merely shrugged. ‘And learnt that he was to be married, which put a different complexion on things, a possibility that his will might be changed? Did you kill him before he could do that, Mr Llewellyn?’

  A direct question like that was a ploy not always as useful as it was meant to be in catching suspects off their guard, but this time it did get a reaction. Huwie thrust himself forward in his chair and with the flat of his hands on the desk at which Reardon was still sitting, leant across. ‘No, I bloody well did not. You think I’m an idiot? As far as I knew then, I was more likely to get something from Pen when he was alive than after he was dead! What obligation did he have to leave me anything? Look closer to home, those who knew they were going to get something. They’re the ones who wanted him out of the way, which means all of them!’ He straightened. ‘And if that’s it, I’d like to get back to London.’

  ‘We haven’t quite finished with you yet. But that’s all for the time being, thank you. We shall need to see you again.’

  Reardon knew there was every chance that if they once let him go he could slip through their fingers and they might never see him again. He stopped Huwie as he was about to leave the room. ‘Actually, stay a moment, there is one thing you can tell me. What was that disagreement with your brother Theo about? The one which made you leave home?’

  ‘What?’ He stared, still belligerent, then shrugged. ‘Why do brothers squabble? Theo and I have never been soulmates. He’s too po-faced for me, always was. Heavy-handed elder brother and all that. There was always something, some spat or other. I’ve actually forgotten what that particular one was about.’

  Reardon let him go, though he didn’t believe him for one moment. A rumpus that had caused a family rift of nearly a quarter of a century – and he didn’t remember the cause? How credible was that?

  The other brother, Theo, older by more than a dozen years, was a different matter altogether. The two men inhabited different worlds, it might almost have been different planets. A suave, well-tailored lawyer, ready with plausible answers at his fingertips, Theo had his polished wife, a fashionable address and a no doubt affluent lifestyle. Quite the opposite of the down-at-heel brother.

  He immediately demonstrated his intentions by choosing attack as the best form of defence. ‘You realize we’re taking this matter further? The family is going to request another post-mortem.’

  Reardon regarded him steadily. ‘That’s your prerogative, Mr Llewellyn. But I have to tell you, it would be a waste of your time – and your money.’ Hiring another pathologist for a second opinion didn’t come free. ‘The original autopsy was conducted in a perfectly professional manner.’

  ‘I’m not satisfied by the conclusion drawn from those bruises they say they found. They could have been caused by anything … the way his body was handled after he died—’

  ‘The pathology shows otherwise,’ Reardon interrupted shortly. ‘You must do as you see fit, of course. But in the meantime, we need a few details from you.’ He nodded to Gilmour to begin the questioning and sat back to watch. Instinct warned him Theo Llewellyn would be an altogether trickier proposition than his brother. Gilmour began with the usual routine questions, including family circumstances, and his occupation. Two sons, a partnership in a general-practice law firm. How often was he in the habit of visiting Bryn Glas? Regularly, in fact every six weeks or so since the heart attack that caused his brother to live here in permanent retirement.

  ‘You were on good terms with him, then?’

  ‘Extremely. We’d been close ever since we were boys.’

  ‘Did you know the terms of his will?’

  ‘Of course I did. I’d looked after his affairs – his private ones, I wasn’t his business lawyer – for years.’

  ‘Then you’d be aware of its contents?’

  He smiled faintly. ‘I drew it up. What he left, apart from a few small bequests, was to be shared between his legal heirs and assigns, those of his family who survived him.’

  ‘And the amount he left is not inconsiderable, I take it?’ Theo lifted his shoulders. ‘Tell us something about Mr Penrose’s business. What exactly was it he did?’ He knew, of course, having brought himself up to date on Penrose Llewellyn and his affairs before coming here, but it would be interesting to hear what version of it came from Theo Llewellyn’s own lips.

  ‘He was a property developer – you must have heard of Llewellyn Holdings, they’re all over the Midlands.’ Reardon nodded, and once started, the lawyer didn’t seem reluctant to go on. ‘He began as a small builder and made a fair success of it, but it was the building boom after the war that really put his name on the map – Lloyd George’s homes for heroes and all that. Housing schemes for returning soldiers. Pen was astute enough to gain contracts with local authorities and he also branched out by buying up ancillary firms all over the place – those making fireplaces, bathroom fittings, anything needed for a new house. You had to admire him for his business acumen.’

  Reardon noted a flicker of something �
�� jealousy, or resentment? – in his eyes before he added those last words. Theo Llewellyn seemed to be a man entirely without humour, the sort who had a dampening effect on everyone, the spoilsport at the party. Was he as cold as he appeared to be or was he just adept at concealing his emotions? On the surface, despite what he’d said about their closeness, he wasn’t grieving at his brother’s death. Unless they were genuinely unfeeling, as a family they all seemed adept at hiding what they thought. The housekeeper had seemed more upset than any of them. But although Theo Llewellyn was, like all lawyers, a breed whom Reardon instinctively looked on with suspicion, that didn’t make him guilty of taking his brother’s life.

  ‘Is Mrs Douglas mentioned in the will?’

  ‘No.’ He examined his manicured nails. Long, strong fingers. A gold signet ring and a gold wristwatch. ‘As far as I knew, she was just a friend, not someone he would have thought of leaving money to. It came as a surprise to everyone that he was intending to marry her, although he’d already told me he wished to talk about his will. I didn’t think anything of it, it was something we did as a regular thing, once a year. Reviewed the situation to see if any changes were necessary, though I have to say he wasn’t one to chop and change once he’d made up his mind.’

  ‘As a family, you must have been aware that his marriage might radically affect your expectations.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said smoothly. ‘But it was his money to do as he liked with. He’d been a widower for a long time and Mrs Douglas is a nice woman. We were all happy for him.’

  Reardon managed to hide his scepticism. ‘Were you surprised that your brother Huwie turned up for this birthday party?’

  ‘Astonished,’ came the dry reply. ‘We all of us thought he’d severed all connection with this family.’

  ‘We’ve been told the reason for that was some altercation he had with you.’

  He looked as though he wasn’t going to answer this but after a moment he shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s no secret that we quarrelled. That, and the fact that my father refused to mention his name again preyed on my mother’s mind so much she went into a decline from which she never fully recovered. Huwie was always her favourite, very much the baby of the family. It was only because he knew how it would have grieved our mother that my father didn’t cut him out of his will altogether.’

  What a curiously old-fashioned phrase! Did people, other than in Victorian novels, go into a decline? Under another more scientific name, perhaps they did, perhaps the mind could affect the body in ways we couldn’t yet explain. ‘He says he wrote to your brother Penrose and was invited to come and stay at Bryn Glas.’

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ Theo said, ‘take too much notice of what Huwie says.’ He prepared to stand up. ‘If you’ve finished, I have other things to occupy me.’

  ‘Not so fast, Mr Llewellyn. Sit down a moment longer. You’re a lawyer … disregarding your reservations about the post-mortem, I don’t need to spell it out to you that the circumstances of your brother’s death are suspicious to say the least. A locked house with only a few people in it, most of them with a motive for wishing him dead. If you discount the women – though we haven’t done so as yet – that leaves you and your brother, Huwie. Did the shock announcement about this marriage make one of you decide to kill him?’

  The mask slipped momentarily. Stripped of pretension, his expression was for a brief moment vicious, before he changed it to outraged. ‘I have just lost a dear brother and you see fit to make tasteless accusations!’

  ‘That quarrel with your brother, Huwie. What exactly was it about?’

  He seemed taken aback by the sudden return to this question, but only momentarily. ‘What did we ever not quarrel over? To be frank, I thought him a spoilt brat who wheedled his way round our mother. She couldn’t see any wrong in him. He was always her darling little boy.’

  ‘You weren’t boys when the quarrel happened – you were both grown men.’

  ‘Inspector,’ he answered with exaggerated patience, ‘let’s nip this line of questioning in the bud, shall we? What happened years ago has nothing whatever to do with your enquiry. No one in this house killed Pen. His death was upsetting, but natural.’ Reardon stayed silent. ‘Look here,’ he added suddenly, ‘I didn’t hate Penrose. None of us did.’

  Perhaps that was true, but not all killers hated their victims; there were plenty of other reasons for wanting someone dead. And whether Theo Llewellyn chose to ignore it or not, there had been considerable violence attached to Pen’s death, a need to silence him, perhaps born out of desperation, which could easily have overridden other emotions.

  ‘Has it occurred to you, inspector, that those bruises may have been caused by someone helping him to sit up and get his breath? He’d had a nasty cough for weeks.’

  Reardon had been wondering when that theory would be brought forward. It no more held water than the claim that no one had been aware of any disturbance, or of hearing any noise in this old house of creaking stairs and floorboards. ‘From what I’ve heard,’ he said mildly, ‘Mr Llewellyn was quite capable of raising himself to deal with a coughing fit, without needing help to the extent where he ended up black and blue.’

  For a moment, Theo looked quite capable of murder. ‘You won’t get anywhere with this, you know,’ he said through his teeth. Reardon didn’t stop him from leaving the room this time. He didn’t think they were going to hear any more about second post-mortems.

  ‘Well, what do you make of that, Joe?’ he asked when the door had closed behind the lawyer.

  ‘Rum lot, aren’t they? But I’d say they have to know – or don’t want to know – who it was. Or else the lot of them were in it together.’

  It was, of course, in the collective interest of the Llewellyn family to keep mum. Because if a charge of murder couldn’t be brought, there would be no long-drawn out court case to delay probate and prevent them getting their hands on whatever they were hoping to inherit. But … in the quiet of the night … a man held down in his bed, fighting for his life … he wasn’t going to go quietly, was he? Yet not one person, in the adjoining bedrooms, only a few yards away, had heard a thing. Pen Llwellyn couldn’t have got where he was without making enemies. But none of them were likely to possess supernatural powers, able to get soundlessly into a locked house, one with floorboards that creaked like pistol shots, and silently kill.

  He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘If Theo Llewellyn drew the will up, he’ll have the original, but Penrose must have had a copy, and I’d like to have a look through it before we talk to Theo about it. It’s most likely in one of these locked drawers. What’s happened to his keys? Why haven’t they been handed over yet?’

  Gilmour confessed he didn’t know but it was getting late in the afternoon and they were ready to pack up. He promised to locate them when they returned to Bryn Glas in the morning. Outside the house they parted company. Reardon prepared to make the acquaintance of Kate Ramsey by delivering his wife’s letter to her, while Gilmour was to try his persuasions on the unwilling landlord of the Fox to make available his two rooms, however small, even with the less than attractive prospect of the beds being damp.

  His suspicions as to the nature of the accommodation at the Fox were confirmed when he was shown the two dark, poky rooms available, but the savoury smells issuing from the kitchen and a few words with the smiling, comfortable lady who was the surly publican’s wife went a long way towards stifling his doubts. When she told him what was on offer for dinner he took the plunge and booked himself and Reardon in for as many nights as might be necessary. A savoury pie and jam roly-poly to follow couldn’t be bad. And the snug, with its fire already blazing, looked inviting. If they had to be away from home, a good dinner was a comfort they couldn’t afford to ignore.

  Emerging into the darkening afternoon, he began to make his way back to meet Reardon at the place where he’d left the car. He was in no hurry – his arrangement with the publican’s wife hadn’t taken long. All at once, from s
omewhere behind him a small young woman being almost dragged along by an energetic Jack Russell attached to a lead swished past him in a colourful whirl of yellow flapping coat, long scarf and a heady waft of scent. The suddenness of it made him nearly lose his balance. She half-turned to call out, ‘Sorry!’ but he heard her laughing as she and the dog almost fell into the doorway of one of the small shops a few yards further along the road, leaving Gilmour with a glimpse of black shiny hair cut in a fringe and a wicked little heart-shaped face, alight with mischief. He carried on, almost convinced that this glimpse of exotica in the quiet workaday street had been a figment of his imagination.

  NINE

  Kate Ramsey’s husband, like Kate herself, had been a teacher at Uplands House, near Castle Wyvering, a school for the sons of well-heeled parents. When the teaching of German was discontinued at the outbreak of war and she’d lost her post, she’d considered herself lucky, as a married woman, to have been allowed to understudy for the schoolmaster at the nearby Hinton church school, which all the children of Hinton attended until they were old enough to transfer to the bigger school at Castle Wyvering. She’d been forced to give up her live-in accommodation at Uplands House and for the duration of the war had occupied the attached schoolhouse. Having been forced to quit when the schoolmaster returned, she now lived in a rented cottage at the end of the back lane which ended at the junction with the main road that ran along the ridge into Castle Wyvering. Reardon had been directed to take the lane as a shortcut from Bryn Glas and she welcomed him in warmly after he had surprised her by introducing himself as Ellen’s husband.