‘We’re all right,’ Maltravers assured her. ‘We can catch up on some sleep tonight.’
‘Then are you hungry? I’m sorry, I haven’t thought about lunch.’
‘Don’t bother for us,’ Tess said. ‘We’re going down to the pub to grab something.’
‘Are you sure? It’s no trouble…I’ll have to…’ Susan looked at them hesitantly. ‘We thought you might not want to stay now.’
‘Would you like us to?’ asked Maltravers.
Susan looked at Peter, who was filling in the o’s in the headlines of the Sunday Times.
‘If you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘We…think it might help. But…’
‘Then we stay,’ said Maltravers firmly. ‘Apart from anything else, an abrupt departure might give the police the wrong impression at the moment. I told them we were staying here for a few days and if they find we’ve gone they might jump to all sorts of conclusions. Of course, you don’t know the full story yet do you?’
‘We know.’ Peter threw down his pen, suddenly provoked by the meaninglessness of what he was doing. ‘The Old Capley grapevine is firing on all cylinders. The latest scuttlebutt is that Oliver Hawkhurst has been arrested.’
‘And charged?’ Maltravers asked sharply.
‘Don’t know. He was seen being driven out of the park in a police car earlier this morning. However there’s also a rumour that Luke Norman has vanished and the police are looking for him as well.’
‘Then you know just about everything that we do,’ said Maltravers. ‘Once they decide which one it is, it should be an open-and-shut case. We’ll be back later.’
As they walked down Bellringer Street to the Batsman, two police cars were still outside the Darbys’ house and the street contained several groups of people taking carefully disguised interest. Opposite the cars a man on a stepladder was repairing a broken window.
‘Heard about it then?’ he asked as they reached him. ‘About Lord Dunford being murdered?’ His day had clearly been considerably enlivened by the events and he was prepared to talk about it even to complete strangers.
‘Yes, we’ve heard,’ Maltravers replied briefly.
‘Bad business,’ the workman commented feelingly. ‘I liked Lord Dunford, he was a good boss.’
‘You work for the Estate then?’
‘Yep. Lord and Lady P’s very cut up about it and they’ve pulled in Mr Oliver for questioning. Never did like ‘im.’ The man’s tone indicated that this personal dislike of Hawkhurst had been instantly transmuted into a conviction of his guilt. Maltravers was disinclined to discuss the matter with a garrulous and morbidly fascinated workman standing opposite the house where it had occurred.
‘What happened to the window?’ he asked as they prepared to move on.
‘Bloody drunks from the pub.’ The man gave the unlikely impression that hard drink was unknown to him. ‘It’s always bleeding happening.’
‘The Estate owns this house then?’
‘Yeah. Mr York and his wife live here. He sent me down to fix it.’
Maltravers reflected that a broken window would have been a quite unnecessary added annoyance for Lord Pembury’s secretary in the circumstances, but at least the Edenbridge workforce could be called on to replace it on a Sunday.
Run by a landlord with the attractive Pickwickian name of Juggins, the Batsman had survived more than two centuries of changing drinking habits without undue damage. The brewery chain that now owned it had renovated the premises without the tacky introduction of Space Invaders, jukebox, polystyrene mock beams, hideous plastic padding round the bar or half a ton of brass wrought into imitation horse decorations and suspended against every upright surface. Polished wooden settles, honoured with time and fellowship, had been preserved, although they now stood on fitted carpet rather than congealed sawdust, and decrepit, pungent latrines had been replaced by modern plumbing. Maltravers’ only complaint was his standard one, that he had to ask for his pint to be served in a traditional dimpled jug rather than the ubiquitous straight glass which he regarded, like electric organs, as part of the continuing curse of Cain upon mankind. He ordered their food, then carried his pint and Tess’s whisky and water to where she was sitting by a striking stone fireplace, recently rescued from behind a Victorian plastering operation carried out for no apparent reason. The pub was full of talk and the talk was of nothing but murder.
Half-listening, Maltravers gathered that Hawkhurst’s widely reported departure in a police car appeared to be regarded as much more significant than the parallel search for Luke Norman. Several slanderous remarks made by the customers in the lounge bar indicated that killing for financial gain was a very plausible motive, which cast a revealing light on the mores of Bellringer Street. Their food was brought to their table and they had just started eating when they were approached by a young man with the face of a starving ferret.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’m from the Sun.’
‘Welcome to our planet,’ Maltravers replied cordially. ‘Have a drink.’
‘Pardon?’ The reporter seemed to be working out whether or not he had been insulted. Maltravers wondered how many more of his breed had been despatched at high speed to Old Capley for sensational, seamy and preferably sexy titbits that could be blown up out of all proportion. The excesses of parts of his previous profession had been something he had been very happy to leave behind.
‘I don’t think we can help you very much,’ he added. ‘We’re strangers round here.’
‘Oh.’ Terrified that the opposition were even then working on an exclusive angle he had missed, the journalist feared another blind alley of inquiry. ‘You don’t know about the murder then?’
‘We know there’s been a murder,’ Maltravers admitted. ‘And I heard somebody mention that the man who runs the local sex shop has been arrested.’
Tess choked on a mouthful of Stilton as the reporter’s face lit up like a man offered the Holy Grail of a Page One by-line. ‘What sex shop?’ he demanded eagerly.
‘I presume it must be the one in the square at the bottom of the hill,’ Maltravers replied. ‘Sells kinky underwear and that sort of thing.’
‘Who told you?’ There was a hint of anxiety in the question.
‘Someone at the bar mentioned it a few minutes ago.’ Maltravers was keeping his lying within the bounds of plausibility. ‘A chap from…which paper was it, darling?…the Mirror, I think, went off with him. I think they—’ He stopped and grinned wickedly as the reporter fled with a frantic yelp of thanks.
‘That was very unkind,’ Tess protested, still half laughing.
Maltravers distastefully watched the running outline of the journalist flash past the window of the pub and down the hill.
‘On the day the Belgrano was sunk off the Falklands,’ he remarked, ‘the Sun gave a prize of a fiver and a tin of corned beef to a schoolboy who’d sent in a joke about Argentinians being killed. People who choose to work for papers like that deserve everything they get. He’ll find out that it’s a false lead soon enough.’
He turned his attention back to his beer and Sunday ploughman’s lunch. ‘However, I fear that Bellringer Street and its neighbourhood are going to become acutely aware of the disadvantages of a free Press over the next few days. Upper-class murder, middle-class respectability and— it’s certain to come out—homosexuality. What more could any News Editor ask for in the silly season?’
7
It is a fact universally acknowledged among policemen that, having executed their crime, murderers do not then considerately take the trouble to search out a perfectly clean, smooth surface at the scene and carefully press all their fingers and thumbs on it to leave a convenient set of pristine prints; indeed, even single good impressions are not always found. However, finger-marks from various parts of the hand are usually revealed by a visitation of aluminium dust, and the room in which Dunford had been killed contained nineteen such different marks, offering confusion rather than possible leads. The stick
y tape on the carpet had garnered a considerable collection of dust and other fragmentary bits and pieces, any one of which might prove invaluable, but only when the police had a definite, chargeable suspect.
On Sunday afternoon Detective Chief Superintendent Keith Miller surveyed the results of the forensic examination impassively, then turned to the medical report drawn up after the post-mortem. Stripped of its medical jargon, it said that Dunford had died after being hit a number of times—probably four—with a hard object on the left side of the head, damaging flesh and bone sufficiently to cause fatal damage to the brain; the pathologist noted that the skull had been markedly thinner than average. Detailed examination of the wound had revealed ridged patterns on the skin corresponding to the stitching round a cricket ball and the angle of blows suggested someone at least as tall as the deceased. The strength that would have been required indicated a man or an unusually powerful woman.
Miller leaned back in the chair that seemed too big for his bantamweight frame—he had only qualified for the police by a fraction of an inch in his height—and his narrow, inverted triangle face somehow managed to contract even further as he considered the situation, the pencil-thin moustache almost bridging the space between his cheeks. Three of the party guests had already indicated their intention of calling in their lawyers, and one had complained to the Chief Constable about the manner in which police inquiries at the house had been conducted. None of this concerned Miller; having served for a period on the Fraud Squad he was accustomed to outbursts of defensive outrage from allegedly respectable citizens when their affairs came under police scrutiny; the complaint he would just have to live with.
‘So what have we got?’ he said to David Parry. ‘Mr Hawkhurst is denying everything and his lawyer—Lord Pembury’s family solicitor no less—is becoming increasingly tetchy. That gentleman must be handled carefully, incidentally. Meanwhile our Mr Norman has done a runner. What do you think?’
The fourth son of a Parks Attendant with Capley District Council, Parry had been born, bred and conditioned by life in the New Town and regarded Old Capley as an alien world populated by toffee-nosed, stinking-rich snobs. A constant lack of money in his childhood had made that commodity very important to him.
‘It’s got to be Hawkhurst,’ he said positively. ‘He had opportunity, motive and he ran.’
‘Not very far,’ Miller observed. ‘His story is that after the party he spent the rest of the night having it off in a house less than thirty yards away—we’ll have to see what the lady concerned has to say about that—then he walked straight into us. As for opportunity, just about everybody in the house had that.’
‘Yes, but he’s skint,’ Parry argued. ‘He’s up to his ears in debt and now he stands to inherit a fortune.’
‘And it’s all a bit obvious, isn’t it?’ objected Miller. ‘If he really wanted to kill Dunford—and I accept he’s got reason to welcome his death—wouldn’t he have planned it a bit better? He’s not all that bright but is he such a complete wally? If I’d committed murder, I wouldn’t jump into bed with some randy bit I’d only just met and hope she’d give me an alibi. I’ll reserve judgment until we find out what Mrs Harriet Harper, has to say, but I don’t see Hawkhurst as our man at the moment. Someone’s seeing her now, aren’t they?’
‘Sergeant Home’s round there,’ Parry confirmed. ‘But if it isn’t Hawkhurst, it must be this poof Norman.’
Miller sighed. ‘Sergeant, there are at least three senior officers in this county’s force who are, to my knowledge, what you refer to as poofs and I’ve heard you speak very highly of two of them.’
Parry looked resentful as his superior casually exposed another facet of his prejudices.
‘However, Mr Norman does interest me,’ Miller continued. ‘This doesn’t look like a murder that was planned in advance and a fit of passion after too much to drink looks very possible. And Mr Norman certainly appears to have done a runner.’
As the two men spoke, reports had been received by Capley CID saying that Norman, whose MG had gone from Edenbridge House by the time the police arrived, was not at his flat above the Richmond antique shop and efforts to trace him were continuing.
‘What do we do then?’ Parry asked.
‘Keep collecting evidence,’ Miller said simply. ‘We’ve not got enough to charge Hawkhurst—or anyone else for that matter—at the moment. We should have a statement from this Harper woman fairly soon and in the meantime we concentrate on finding those missing cricket balls. There’s no sign of them in the house or the garden and we’ve started searching the churchyard, right? Keep me informed.’
Parry left the room unsatisfied. His basic hostility towards the rich and privileged had been amplified by Hawkhurst’s imperious behaviour—the smooth London lawyer had thrown in some belittling remarks about provincial police forces as well—hardening it into a desire that he should be guilty. He was privately inclined to coax a confession out of him by methods generally frowned upon by the defenders of civil liberties. He returned to the incident room to read another report that continuing inquiries among Luke Norman’s family and known friends had still not traced him.
*
‘This is intolerable!’
Sunday-school teacher, parish councillor and primary-school governor Harriet Harper glared at Sergeant Kate Horne with inflamed fury.
‘Sergeant, I must warn you that if the police repeat such an offensive suggestion, then I shall seek legal advice and take the most serious action. I do not casually go to bed with men I happen to meet at parties!’
She sat in the high-backed wicker chair, arms folded defensively in front of her as Kate Horne looked back impassively.
‘I’m sure you appreciate that we must investigate what Mr Hawkhurst has told us, Mrs Harper,’ she said. ‘He is being questioned in connection with a murder and claims he was with you in this house at the time. If that is true, it could eliminate him from our inquiries. Are you saying that he never came to this house last night?’
Harriet Harper turned away evasively, biting her lip in fury. Hawkhurst had been a gauche and incompetent bed partner; now he was using the incident to provide himself with an alibi. After a moment’s hesitation, she looked at the sergeant again defiantly.
‘He did not!’
‘I see. Thank you.’ Kate Horne pulled a notebook out of the pocket of her suit. ‘And are you prepared to make an official statement to that effect, Mrs Harper?’
‘If it’s absolutely necessary, yes,’ she snapped.
‘Very well.’ The sergeant paused as she took out her pen and unscrewed the top. ‘Of course you realise that if Mr Hawkhurst continues to claim he was here, the police may have to send forensic experts to examine your bedroom? Just to settle the matter beyond argument.’
Harriet Harper stared at her. ‘Are you saying the police will not accept my word?’
‘In the circumstances, I’m afraid not. If Mr Hawkhurst persists with his story, his lawyer will certainly insist we investigate in any event.’
The woman looked at her apprehensively. ‘Surely I could object?’
‘Yes, but we would secure a warrant if necessary. I’m sorry, Mrs Harper, but the police would have no choice in the matter.’
‘And what would you expect to find?’
Kate Home shrugged. ‘A number of things. Hair on the pillow, fingerprints perhaps, traces of sweat…’ She smiled innocently. ‘And other secretions. We would of course notice if all the bed linen had been changed.’
For several seconds the two women stared at each other, then Harriet Harper lowered her eyes in defeat.
‘Mr Hawkhurst came to my house after the party. Is that enough for you?’
‘Thank you, Mrs Harper, we don’t need all the details. Your private life is not the concern of the police.’ Kate Home held her pen against a page of the notebook. ‘Can you tell me what time he arrived?’
‘One-fifteen.’
The sergeant looked up sharply. ‘Are yo
u quite certain of that, Mrs Harper?’
Harriet Harper gestured towards a mahogany grandmother clock in the corner of the front room where they were sitting.
‘It had just chimed the quarter hour when he came in,’ she said.
‘And how long before that did you leave the party?’
‘I’m not certain. About twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour.’
‘And Mr Hawkhurst was still in the house when you left?’
‘Yes.’
Kate Horne reported back to the inspector in charge of the incident room an hour later.
‘She admitted it finally,’ she said. ‘But didn’t we get the first call about the murder at one-eighteen? I thought so. Then according to Harper’s statement, Hawkhurst could have been in that house up to only a few minutes earlier. It doesn’t look much of an alibi to me.’
*
Early on Sunday evening, the police released a photograph of Luke Norman, which they had found in his flat, to the media. Despite a carefully-worded statement that they only wanted to question him in order to eliminate him from their inquiries—the customary oblique phrase they would use if they wanted to talk to Hitler about World War II—the press devoured it hungrily. One of London’s most famous homosexuals made a good deal of money tipping off several reporters about Dunford’s hitherto unsuspected private life and, unfettered by someone being inconveniently charged (which would have severely restricted their behaviour), the tabloids deliriously plunged into a sea of scandal. ‘Queer peer’s boyfriend in murder hunt’ was one of the more restrained headlines.
*
Alister York was not mad, but he had been hideously damaged by a father who recognised no other way to bring up his children than by brutality. Childish tears of disappointment, poor marks at school, the playful waywardness of a small boy, had all brought the same vicious physical reprisals. The buckle end of a belt, a stinging cane across the knuckles, deliberate slaps across the head, had hammered York into a distorted shape. He did not hate his father; the pain and terror had been warped into an unquestioning acceptance and respect. He was contemptuous of those who paraded similar terrors from their childhood and wanted sympathy; they had been broken and had not deserved the advantages of a strong parent. Where others had hatred and bitterness, he had a perverse admiration and could now joke with the retired senior Civil Servant in Hastings about moments of rage and assault that had become the twisted remembered joys of infancy. Father and son now shared the same attitudes; simple bullies who could see only virtue in their savagery. York’s mother’s suicide they could only comprehend as the ultimate weakness of a woman who could not cope with reality. As secretary to Lord Pembury, York was conscientious, honest and diligent; to those who worked under him he was demanding but efficient; to his friends he was cordial but cold; to his wife he was an iron tyrant.
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