Heirs and Assigns

by Marjorie Eccles

  Gilmour only just stopped himself from punching the air. This was it, then. What had seemed to be an affair confined solely to the family had suddenly gained another dimension. Not only the family here that night, all of them swearing they’d seen and heard nothing. Except for the movement Verity had heard, of course. Which must have been Murfitt coming up the stairs from the housekeeper’s room. Reardon would want to hear this but Gilmour was reluctant to stem the flow by going out to fetch him. ‘What was your nephew doing here?’

  His wish was suddenly answered when, in the sometimes uncanny way he had of being in the right place at the right time, Reardon put his head round the door at that precise moment, looking irritated and wanting to know what was keeping Gilmour.

  ‘You need to hear this, sir.’

  ‘Oh?’ Reardon took in the tension in the room, the women’s agitated faces, Gilmour’s barely concealed elation. Abandoning his impatience, he joined them, drawing out one of the straight-backed chairs from under the table and straddling it.

  Ten minutes later, they had it. Murfitt had come down to Bryn Glas that night and stayed out of sight in the housekeeper’s room. No one else had known he was there except for Mrs Knightly herself and Prue, who had taken in to him a share of each course of the celebration feast. ‘There was no harm to it,’ Mrs Knightly said. ‘Just a bit of whatever was left over and a sit by the warm fire. He used to do that, you know, just come and sit with me of an evening. He was good that way, came down to see me two or three times a week.’ Her lips trembled. She had been fonder of him than she had admitted, perhaps even to herself.

  If he’d been in the habit of calling on his aunt here for a decent meal, it certainly explained how he’d managed to put up with the discomforts of his own living quarters.

  ‘And sometimes he’d forget to go home,’ remarked Prue, evidently not a paid-up member of the Murfitt admiration society, but with an apologetic glance at the housekeeper. ‘More than once, I’ve come in to do the fire early next morning and found him still here, asleep on the couch.’

  ‘If he was, there was no harm,’ repeated Mrs Knightly. ‘But he didn’t spend that night here. He never stirred out of my room until he went home just before I went to bed, and now … now, look what’s happened to him. Now he’s been … murdered, by the same person as murdered Pen.’

  ‘Mrs Knightly, we don’t know that.’ But Reardon couldn’t put any certainty into it. Supposing Murfitt had killed Pen – for a reason not yet apparent. Someone knew this and had then killed Murfitt – someone who either wanted revenge for Pen’s death … or because he might have stumbled across the real killer? It was understandable why Mrs Knightly had been so anxious to keep from them that he had been in the house that night, knowing he was bound to be a suspect. Even though it was allegedly against his principles to kill. And why should he want to kill Pen, the man who’d done everything he could to help him?

  ‘Thank you, both of you,’ he said, standing up.

  ‘I don’t know what good it’s done. He didn’t kill Pen.’

  ‘What time did he leave?’

  ‘Just after the doctor.’

  ‘And there’s nothing else you wish to tell us, Mrs Knightly?’

  ‘What else is there to tell?’ She began stacking crockery again.

  They were lucky. Dr Fairlie was at home. He opened the door himself and when Reardon had introduced Gilmour and asked for a few minutes of his time, he led them into a small sitting room, excusing himself for a moment or two and inviting them to take a seat while they waited.

  Instead, Reardon took advantage of his absence to examine the photographs ranged on the upright, closed piano, particularly one he took to be of Fairlie’s parents: his mother, fair-haired and rather bored looking, as though she would have been happier astride a horse than sitting with a baby on her knee. Fairlie resembled her rather than his father, Henry Fairlie, severe and distinguished looking, with a hand resting on the back of his wife’s chair.

  Before he came back Reardon, who always took notice of such things, had time to study the rest of the room – chair covers frayed and thinned to the softness of silk, an ornate plaster ceiling with pieces missing from the cornice and a watermark on one wall like the map of Italy. An oriental rug, almost worn to the threads, its once glorious colours faded, was laid on ancient floorboards, a foot wide, the polish overlaid with a thin film of dust. On the way in, he’d noticed the front door, peppered with the exit holes of woodworm. Fairlie House was not in good order, but then, Dr Fairlie looked like a man who didn’t notice such things; a plain, sensible man with no frills, born into a lifestyle which didn’t suit him. A lifestyle he evidently couldn’t afford to keep up with – not unfamiliar these days, a once affluent family fallen into bad times. Who looked after him? Someone should.

  The answer came almost immediately with the entry of Fairlie himself carrying a decanter and glasses, followed by the same untidy woman who acted as his receptionist, bearing a tray with sandwiches. ‘There you are,’ she said, plonking the tray on a table. ‘And if there’s nothing else, doctor, I’ll be on my way now.’

  ‘Thank you, Myra. Everything’s fine. Mind how you go. No more falling over.’

  ‘I’ll be careful. And I’ve got my torch this time.’

  ‘Mrs Jenkins,’ Fairlie informed them, ‘managed to trip over and nearly broke her ankle the other day, going home. If I didn’t know you better, Myra, I’d be tempted to think you’d been at the bottle,’ he added with rather heavy-handed humour.

  ‘More likely it was that man! Appearing like that out of nowhere and scaring the living daylights out of me.’

  ‘Which man was that?’ the doctor asked with a frown. ‘You didn’t say anything about a man before.’

  ‘That Murfitt, him from the bookshop. I won’t speak ill of the dead but you ask me, he was up to something, sneaking about – well, look how he’s got himself murdered!’

  She looked all set for a gossip but Fairlie, switching on a lamp said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Jenkins.’ She rolled her eyes and left.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have been a popular man, Mr Murfitt,’ Gilmour said.

  Fairlie shrugged and waved a hand towards the sandwiches and decanter. ‘You’ll excuse me, I hope, if I eat while we talk. I have evening surgery in half an hour. Will you join me?’

  They accepted whiskies but waved away a sandwich. ‘Thank you, sir, but Mrs Parslowe’s dinner awaits,’ Gilmour said.

  ‘Then you won’t want to spoil your appetite.’ Fairlie poured himself a large measure and attacked the sandwiches himself with relish – a case of the cobbler’s wife being the worst shod, if this was his usual evening meal, which seemed likely enough.

  ‘Well, I suppose this latest bad business is why you’re here?’ he asked after the first bite or two. ‘If there’s any help I can give … John Emerson has made me au fait with the details.’

  ‘Just one or two points. For a start, tell us what you know of Murfitt?’ Reardon asked.

  ‘I didn’t know him at all. I must confess I’m not much of a reader and haven’t the time for it these days, anyway – dull chaps, doctors, I’m afraid! I never went into the shop, but I believe I’ve seen him around once or twice.’

  ‘You met him when you were younger, though.’

  He stopped in the act of taking another sandwich and frowned. ‘Did I? If I did, I don’t remember. How do you make that out?’

  Reardon reminded him of the incident when the dog had been shot. He added carefully, ‘I think you might know more about the quarrel that followed than you implied when we last spoke. You were there, weren’t you?’

  ‘Ah.’ He looked slightly put out. ‘Yes, well, I didn’t think it necessary to mention it,’ he admitted. ‘Raking over old bones never does any good, you know. So, he was that fellow, was he? Good God! Well, of course I remember what happened to poor old Rory. Caused one helluva to do. I was home for the vacation and I’d been invited over there to lunch. But I didn’t remember
the culprit. Of course, it’s a long time ago and our acquaintance was brief, to say the least, and anyway, I was more concerned with what was happening to Mrs Llewellyn. She wasn’t in good health, but she tried to separate them, Theo and Huwie, when they came to fisticuffs over it. The shock could have killed her.’

  ‘Lucky you were there, then,’ Gilmour remarked.

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t yet out of medical school but I knew enough to make sure she was all right – she had to be got to bed, take her medication and so on. When I eventually went downstairs again, after I was satisfied she was settled, and no apparent harm done, I found Huwie and his friend had prudently got themselves out of the way, and the other guests, a local couple, had left, too. There was only Theo and his father, but such a tense atmosphere I judged it better that I left them to it and went home, too. I had to go back to medical school the next day and forgot all about it.’

  Having finished the sandwiches, he went to pour himself another large scotch. Returning to his chair he said, ‘Are you telling me that was the cause of the big trouble between Huwie and Theo? I always thought it was something that happened later. Though I suppose I might have guessed, if I’d given the matter much thought. Theo thought the world of that dog, and he was in one heck of a temper. And Huwie always knew how to slide out of trouble.’

  ‘Apparently so, even if it meant never coming back to Bryn Glas again – or not until he arrived for Pen’s birthday party. And now he’s disappeared again.’

  ‘The devil he has!’ This was obviously news to him. He stood up again, taking a stance by the fire, pulling his pipe out of his pocket and proceeding to fill it from an oilskin pouch. He looked very tall, rather gaunt and tired in the shadowed light from the lamps. ‘You’re saying he had something to do with Murfitt being killed? Huwie? The Huwie I met at Pen’s supper party?’ He made a doubtful face. ‘Well, if you want my opinion, I suppose anything’s possible but—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘My God, who would have thought … it’s damned peculiar, isn’t it, that Murfitt should choose to be here, in Hinton? After that trouble with Theo?’

  ‘Apparently they’d settled their differences. Both Theo and Pen eventually became reacquainted with him through the antiquarian book business.’ Fairlie shook his head in amazement. ‘Would it surprise you further to know that it was Penrose Llewellyn who financed Murfitt’s bookshop?’

  ‘What?’ Even more taken aback, it took him some time to reply. ‘Yes. Yes, it damn well would,’ he said at last. ‘Unless there was something in it for him.’ He added hastily, ‘That sounds harsh, but I have to say Pen’s good nature often depended on whether it suited his own purposes.’

  ‘But not always, surely? I’ve heard he spent time with an apparently disagreeable old woman, Mrs Brewster, for instance.’

  ‘That was different. Little boys can become very fond of their nannies, you know.’

  ‘His nanny?’ Reardon blinked.

  ‘Yes, really,’ Fairlie returned wryly. ‘Nanny Sumner – or Nanny Muriel, as they called her. Late in life, after her nannying was done, when everyone thought she was a confirmed old maid, she married Thomas Brewster. His first wife had died in childbirth, leaving him with the baby – that’s Carey – so I suppose it was a mutually convenient arrangement.’

  ‘So Muriel Brewster was Carey’s stepmother.’

  ‘She was. Which makes Carey’s devotion to her all the more commendable.’ His sandwiches finished, he stole a covert glance at his watch. Reardon took the hint and nodded to Gilmour. They stood up. ‘You lead a busy life, doctor. Thank you for your time.’

  ‘There’s always something, yes.’ He smiled. ‘But no one forced me to take up general practice.’

  ‘It’s a vocation, I’m told.’

  ‘If that means I wouldn’t trade it for anything else, I suppose it is. Yet people seem to think I ought to be living the life of a lord.’ He added wryly, ‘You’ve only to look around you to know why I don’t.’

  ‘Haven’t you considered moving to somewhere more manageable?’

  He looked down his patrician nose. ‘Giving this up? Good Lord, no. This house has been in my family for as long as Fairlies have been around, inspector. I rather feel it’s one’s duty, as my father and his father did, to keep it up.’ Suddenly embarrassed that he’d been caught in an apparently unguarded moment, he ushered them to the door.

  Reardon was silenced. We live in a modern world, and not the past, he thought. But, like his own view of that, which in saner moments he admitted could be rose-coloured, Fairlie’s was one he was entitled to.

  Carey was more or less camping out in the house now. Jack had found a dealer willing to take the old-fashioned furniture she’d grown up with and because she’d accepted whatever was offered, it had been taken immediately. Upstairs there was now virtually only her bed left, and downstairs a wicker chair, a couple of straight-backed ones and the kitchen table, all of which would be given to Martha Tansley further along the lane when Carey left. Mrs Tansley had been very helpful, offering her services and getting rid of Muriel’s personal possessions – her few bits of jewellery, her good coat and sensible shoes, her serviceable frocks. And also – Carey made a face – her nightgowns, trimmed with scratchy crotchet work and the brown wincey petticoats, the long woollen combinations, the thick lisle stockings. Glad of the help when it was offered, Carey hadn’t enquired too closely where all the items had gone. Mrs Tansley was an incurable busybody, but basically kind.

  The main problem had arisen over selling the house. Buyers for such property, in a place like Hinton, were non-existent. Anna had suggested that rather than leave it empty until a buyer should magically turn up, it might be rented to a young Hinton couple who were expecting a baby shortly. Carey had agreed, though without the lump sum from the sale of the house her future plans were going to be more restricted than she had anticipated. Anna, horrified at the thought of her staying in the house under such primitive conditions, had pressed an invitation to stay at her house but Carey had no wish to spend her last days in Hinton in such close proximity to a man whose affection for her was, at the most, brotherly. She needed to become used to distancing herself from him, rather than forging closer links.

  Now only the last task remained: sorting the contents of a drawer, most of which she’d already discarded. Only a couple of photograph albums were left, plus several loose snapshots and a bundle of letters tied around with a frayed blue silk ribbon. She threw some more coal on the fire, made herself some tea and began by putting aside the one photo she wanted to keep. This was a sepia snapshot of a man with a kind face whom she’d always known she would have loved had she ever known him: her father, the man who had died when she, Carey, was a child of two. It wasn’t until she was thirteen that she’d been told Muriel wasn’t her real mother. Perhaps Thomas Brewster had married her because he had imagined that as the Llewellyn boys’ nanny she must be good with children. It was interesting that the leather album was crammed with photographs of ‘her boys’ as Muriel had called them, and scarcely any of Carey herself. Well, she could live with that. It hardly came as a surprise. There were only a few snaps where Ida featured, too. Perhaps Muriel hadn’t liked little girls.

  Now for the thick bundle of letters. All of them, Carey saw when she untied the ribbon, were from her darling, her baby, Huwie, addressed to Muriel as ‘his dearest Nanny Moolie’. They began with letters from school which were mostly tearful complaints about bullying and being beaten, the hatefulness of sums, the awful porridge at breakfast that made him sick and please would she ask his mother to send a cake and some sweets and new socks as some fellow had pinched four pairs of his. Over the next years at school, the letters changed but the tone did not, and they ceased abruptly when he left school. Until they’d begun again, three or four years ago. Letters written by a child were precious, and although it was difficult to imagine Muriel as sentimental in any way at all, it was understandable they’d been kept. But it was less understandable to keep the ones written
by a man who took no more trouble than to write as if he was submitting a health or weather report and to hope she was well, too … Still, he had written.

  And then she came to one that brought her heart into her mouth.

  Half an hour later, the panic hadn’t subsided. Here in her hands was a potential time bomb and Pen, the only one who could have advised her what to do about it, was no longer here. Who else could she trust? None of them at Bryn Glas: Ida, Claudia, nor Huwie himself, and least of all Theo, from whom she’d always shrunk. There was indeed one person she would have trusted her life to, but now he was the last one she could go to.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Although they were not dissimilar in size, the London premises of Everard Forster, Rare Books, were otherwise as unlike the Hinton bookshop as its owner was unlike Adrian Murfitt. Not on the Charing Cross Road itself, but situated in a short side street, the shop had a handsome frontage with the name gold-painted on black above its old-fashioned bow window, in which only a few handsomely leather-bound volumes gave any indication of its purpose. Two lollipop bay trees in pots stood one either side of the glossy black front door, which was locked. To be admitted, you had to ring the bell and wait.

  Forster himself, a hugely fat man whose width filled the doorway, answered the summons. Possibly in his fifties – though with all that fleshiness it was hard to tell – he was immaculately suited. Reardon immediately wondered if his tailors charged him double: that amount of grey pinstripe would have made two, conceivably three, normal-sized suits. His shoes were highly polished ox-blood, and the knot of a discreet maroon tie was half-hidden under the third of his three chins. Reardon followed the faint, pleasantly mingled smell of bay rum and Vinolia soap as he was waved inside. After he had examined his warrant card and without asking what his business was, Forster courteously gestured him to a chair with hands that were surprisingly small, white and carefully manicured, with an onyx ring on his left pinkie. His throaty voice was cultured, though he breathed heavily, with a slight wheeze.