Skeleton Key

by Robert Richardson

  ‘Oh, yes…it’s over there.’ She gestured to her left. ‘Anybody can go in.’

  ‘Thank you. You see, I remember you were telling me about the history of Old Capley. At the party. You were saying something about…which Earl was it? The second? The one who was the father of Tom Bostock the highwayman.’

  Something flickered through her eyes and she looked away. ‘No, the third.’

  Maltravers felt like a fencer, circling an opponent, gingerly probing for an opening.

  ‘Of course, I should have remembered…I presume he’s buried there?’

  ‘Yes.’ She turned back to the flowers.

  ‘Thank you. This way you said?’ Maltravers moved a few paces away but kept his eyes on her visibly nervous back.

  ‘How tragic that the next man to be put there should be so young,’ he added. ‘You must have known Lord Dunford quite well, with your husband working at the house…Did you know him quite well, Mrs York?’

  Joanna York froze, holding a long-stemmed, ghost-white lily at the lip of the vase, and there was a very long silence. Maltravers waited, then, without warning, she turned and ran down the aisle, the sound of her flat shoes on the stone floor of the nave slapping round the walls.

  ‘Joanna!’ Maltravers shouted after her, and his voice was amplified by the stones so that it hammered through the entire, silent building like a booming gong. ‘What’s the matter? I want to help you!’

  The door at the far end of the church slammed and the impact crashed through St Barbara’s swamping the fading echoes of Maltravers’ shout then died away itself to leave an icy hush.

  ‘If you prick us, do we not…scream?’ Maltravers murmured.

  At the church door he picked up the lily which Joanna York had dropped as she ran away, its stem twisted and crushed as though it had been squeezed very hard in the hand. He was carrying it as he entered the Penroses’ house and found that Tess had returned.

  ‘Been stealing flowers?’ she asked. ‘Or aren’t I worth a whole bunch?’

  ‘It’s from the church,’ said Maltravers. ‘I’ve just had another encounter with Joanna York and it only took one gentle push from me for her to fall over.’

  He laid the lily on the table. ‘I don’t know what’s festering there, but it stinks more than these ever would. Incidentally, the police still think it was Luke.’

  *

  That evening Maltravers peered at Susan’s baby sleeping in the Perspex cot beside her bed in the maternity ward.

  ‘Golden the light on the locks of Myfanwy, Golden the light on the book on her knee,’’ he intoned. ‘‘Finger-marked pages of Rackham’s Hans Andersen, Time for the children to come down to tea.’’

  ‘Gus, what on earth are you doing?’ Susan demanded.

  ‘Anything I say to him at this stage will be gibberish,’ he replied. ‘So it may as well be first-rate gibberish. With a little luck, some of it may sink in. There will be no “Diddums then?” from Uncle Gus.’

  ‘Idiot. We are still going to call him after you,’ Susan said. ‘If it had been a girl, she’d have been called Tess. You two have been marvellous.’

  ‘I’ll sympathise with you when you’re older,’ Maltravers told his namesake. ‘Just be grateful that my father didn’t let his passion for Gibbon saddle us both with Tiberius or Caligula. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’

  He sat on the edge of the bed and listened to an incomprehensible conversation between Tess and Susan relating to the feeding and general maintenance of the very young. Tess had said as they drove to the hospital that she intended raising the question of Joanna York with Susan—without telling her everything—but the infant Augustus took priority. Finally Tess edged towards the subject, underplaying her concern.

  ‘It may not be important, but we’ve had…what is it?…three instances now where she seemed to be terribly upset about something,’ she said. ‘We’re wondering if it might help if she talked to somebody, but we don’t know who the best person might be. Has she any particular friends who could help?’

  ‘Joanna’s on everyone’s fringes,’ Susan replied. ‘Not having children means she doesn’t share a lot of things with the rest of us and she’s very shy as well. And Alister keeps her on such a tight rein that I sometimes think she has to ask his permission to get out of the house. If she’s with a group of the girls, she just sits there mumchance while the rest of us are rabbiting on. Everybody likes her, but, frankly, we get impatient with her. I don’t think she has any real friends, just people she knows.’

  ‘But women always make friends,’ Tess objected. ‘They’re better at it than men.’

  ‘Not Joanna,’ Susan insisted. ‘I think that Alister sees to that.’

  Maltravers jumped in alarm as the baby woke beside him with a tiny cry.

  ‘Dinnertime,’ said Susan. ‘Pass him over, Gus. Don’t worry, he won’t bite.’

  Maltravers gingerly pulled back the open weave blanket like a bomb disposal expert on a trying day and looked hesitantly at what appeared to be an impossibly small and fragile body.

  ‘Just hold him firmly,’ Susan instructed. ‘You’re a lovely man, but God, you’re helpless.’

  Apprehensively, Maltravers closed his hands around the baby and lifted him up, trying to calculate the balance between holding firmly and squeezing to death, and offered Susan her son as if presenting her with a cup she had won.

  ‘There, that wasn’t so bad was it?’ she said. ‘You’ll be better when you have some of your own. You can stay if you want, but this will take a while.’

  Slickly and expertly, Susan cradled her son in one arm and started to pull the top of her nightgown open.

  ‘I’ll take Gus away.’ Tess stood up and started to close the curtains around the bed. ‘Natural functions trouble him. We’ll see you again before we go.’

  ‘When are you leaving?’

  ‘In a couple of days. You’ll be home then and you certainly don’t want us cluttering up the place. We’ll come back for the christening.’

  Susan reached out with her free arm and took hold of Tess’s hand. ‘No speeches, just thank you. Sorry it’s been such a rotten visit.’

  ‘Forget it.’ Tess leaned down and kissed her. ‘Just look after yourself, you hear. We’ll be in touch.’

  Maltravers instinctively felt that Peter and Susan’s very personal problems, brutally torn open by Dunford’s murder, were showing distinct signs of repair. He winked at her as he lowered his head and kissed her; out of the little raver in the accounts department all those years ago, a very strong lady had emerged.

  ‘Thank God it wasn’t Simon’s baby,’ Tess said as they walked down the hospital corridor. ‘She couldn’t have stood that.’

  ‘I bow to the mysterious knowledge of women in such matters,’ said Maltravers. ‘Actually, I thought the one in the next cot looked exactly the same. But we’re no further forward with the Joanna York matter.’

  ‘No,’ Tess said resignedly. ‘It worries me sick that we might have to just walk away from it.’

  The limited parking space in Bellringer Street was occupied by residents, visitors and pub customers when they returned and Maltravers could only find a space for his car near the bottom of the hill. As they walked up past the Batsman, they reached the Yorks’ house and instinctively glanced in through the front window. Alister York was sitting at the table just inside and looked straight back at them, his face hardening when he recognised Tess. Caught off guard, the thoughts that obsessed her remained on her face for a fraction of a second before she switched on a glassy smile and walked on. York remained staring out of the window across the empty street at the corner of the Darbys’ house opposite and a look of vivid loathing seeped across his features. A few yards up the street, Tess shuddered as she took Maltravers’ arm and held it very tightly.

  11

  Damp, fat, biscuit-coloured mushrooms plopped into the shallow wooden trug basket as Mrs Sarah Hickson meandered through E
denbridge Park, the sheen of dew staining stout sensible shoes. The park would not be open to the public for another three hours, but Mrs Hickson knew the Bellringer Street gatekeeper and was allowed a special dispensation to go in early whenever she wished. And while collecting her breakfast in the shimmering, moist morning she found the cricket ball that had killed Dunford.

  Mrs Hickson was an extremely private person, living a retired, almost reclusive existence centred on the church, memories of her late husband and a succession of Burmese cats. Convinced, like the late Lord Pembury, that the world had become a violent and tasteless place, she had as little to do with it as possible. She rarely watched, read or listened to the news and, if she did, she would shake her head sorrowfully and dismiss such awful things from her gentle mind. Although nearly eighty, she was small, sprightly and independent, polite to her neighbours but never happier than when she was alone in her small house next door to the Penroses, surrounded by the souvenirs of her life and minding her own business. She did not know certain things because she did not wish to know them. She had heard about the murder with great shock, but had then rejected it as something unpleasant, so she was the only person in Old Capley who was unaware that the police were looking for a cricket ball. Even seeing them search in the churchyard as she walked back up Bellringer Street from the shops had not excited her curiosity, because she had no curiosity. She picked the ball up and laid it carefully to one side of the mushrooms before making her way out of the park and going home. At that time in the morning, there was no one about to see her. Fortunately she liked young Timothy next door, whom she regarded as a very well brought-up little boy.

  It was ten o’clock when the front door bell rang and Maltravers answered.

  ‘Is Mrs Penrose in?’ asked Mrs Hickson.

  ‘I’m afraid not…she’s had a baby you know.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t know.’ Maltravers realised from the reply that the little bird-like lady on the step was certainly not the local gossip. ‘However,’ she continued. ‘All I wanted was to give her this. I know that young Timothy enjoys a game of cricket. It’s a bit dirty, but I’m sure it can be cleaned.’

  Maltravers stood very still indeed as she held out her hand towards him. It was not dirt sticking to the ball she was holding; it looked very much like strands of hair stuck in some deeper red than the leather surface.

  ‘Where did you find that?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘Oh, in the park. You often come across them near the cricket pitch. I usually leave them with the gatekeeper but he wasn’t about this morning and I don’t think the cricket club will miss just one, will they? It seems quite old but Timothy can use it.’

  Maltravers stepped back slightly.

  ‘Would you come in for a moment, please?’

  Mrs Hickson looked reluctant. ‘No, I’ll just leave it…’ She jumped as Maltravers reached forward, took hold of her arm and dragged her into the house. ‘Let go of me, young man! What do you think—?’

  ‘Come in,’ he interrupted firmly, steering her into the kitchen where Tess looked up enquiringly from the washing up of a late breakfast. ‘It’s quite all right, but there are a number of things you really ought to know. I’ll take that, thank you.’

  To Mrs Hickson’s consternation, he grabbed hold of a kitchen towel and very carefully took the cricket ball out of her hand.

  ‘This lady is Miss Davy who will explain everything,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to make a phone call. Darling, this lady’s found the bloody thing.’ Mrs Hickson looked offended; bad language on top of abduction. As he dialled the number of Capley police station, Maltravers was staggered by the element of farce in it all.

  By the time the police arrived a few minutes later, Tess had managed to reassure Mrs Hickson that she had not fallen into the clutches of a maniac but that she had become an unsuspecting part of a murder inquiry.

  ‘Did you really not know the police were looking for a cricket ball?’ Tess asked in disbelief. ‘It was the murder weapon.’

  ‘I did not.’ Mrs Hickson appeared to find the question faintly offensive. ‘We don’t all pry into other people’s business.’

  Maltravers and Tess looked at each other helplessly, unable to think of any adequate response.

  One policeman took Mrs Hickson back to her cottage for a statement while another placed the ball in a plastic bag and drove back to Capley police station, warning both Maltravers and Tess that statements might also be required from them. After they had all left, Maltravers rang Peter at his office.

  ‘Old Sally Hickson found it?’ Peter roared with disbelieving laughter. ‘God, she could have kept it for weeks and never thought about it. It’s lucky she didn’t throw it away. Are you sure it’s the right one?’

  ‘I could see what looked like human hair and dried blood on it,’ Maltravers told him. ‘The question is, are there fingerprints? And whose are they? I think we need Harry Matthews again.’

  ‘I’ll call him,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll tip him off that the ball’s been found on condition that he lets me know the results when somebody tells him. It’s press day on the Citizen so he should be very grateful for a front-page lead handed him on a plate. Call you when I hear anything back.’

  Maltravers put the phone down and stared at the wall thoughtfully for a moment before turning to Tess.

  ‘It looks as though we’ll know—at least unofficially—fairly soon,’ he said. ‘But you realise what all this means, don’t you? Mrs Hickson told us she found the ball on the far side of the cricket pitch, about a quarter of a mile from the house. Harry Matthews said Oliver’s story is that he went straight from the party to spend the rest of the night with some woman in Bellringer Street and then he was picked up by the police at Edenbridge House. If that’s true, he can’t have put it there. And there’s no way that York could have. He found Simon’s body and would have been searched like the rest of us before he left the Darbys’. I know he’s a cricketer and a strong man, but he can’t have leaned out of that study window just across the road and thrown it—what?—perhaps half a mile right into the park. It’s got to have been Luke.’

  Tess paused for a moment, then shook her head impatiently.

  ‘But York could be lying about coming straight downstairs after he found Simon’s body,’ she argued. ‘He could have left the house first, thrown away the ball and then come back. Couldn’t he?’

  ‘Darling, you’re grasping at straws and you know it,’ Maltravers told her. ‘What sort of sense does that make? There’s no way he would have left the body hoping nobody would find it while he went into the park and dropped the ball in the grass—and surely he’d have found a better place to hide it than that—and came back to the house. Why would he do such a thing? We’ve got to accept that everything is pointing to Luke at the moment, and if that’s the case Joanna’s behaviour presumably has nothing to do with the murder.’

  But as Tess failed to find flaws in Maltravers’ logic, he had the nagging feeling that he was missing the significance of something he had just said.

  There was no call back from Peter with news from Harry Matthews for the rest of the morning and Maltravers left the Ansaphone connected while they went to the Batsman for lunch again. It seemed that nobody in the bar had heard of Mrs Hickson’s discovery and Dunford’s murder had been replaced as a general topic of conversation by discussion of the finely balanced test match at Trent Bridge that was to end that day. Even without any confirming evidence, Luke Norman’s running away and death—suspected by some not to have been accidental but deliberate—had settled the matter as far as most people were concerned. Maltravers and Tess sat in a corner of the bar, quietly going over what they knew.

  ‘When do you think this Matthews man will call?’ Tess asked.

  ‘It could be any time. First of all he’s got to get his contacts to talk—although that won’t take him long—then he’s got to catch his deadline,’ said Maltravers. ‘He’ll let Peter know all right, but I rather suspect that h
e’ll make himself a bit of money by tipping off the nationals first.’

  ‘Well, I’m not staying in all afternoon waiting,’ said Tess. ‘If there’s nothing from Peter when we get back, let’s leave the Ansaphone on and go for a walk in the park.’

  Maltravers looked offended. ‘Darling, England are more than a hundred behind with four wickets left. The final session’s on television this afternoon.’

  Tess looked at him crossly. ‘This bloody visit started with cricket and now it’s going to end with it? Oh, all right, if it’s that important. I expect there’s nothing else to do—but you watch it on your own and don’t tell me all about it afterwards. And, incidentally, I shall expect a very good dinner out when we get back to town.’ She paused and smiled wickedly. ‘Langan’s I think. And I mean the Brasserie. And I mean downstairs.’

  Maltravers flinched. Downstairs at Langan’s was for international superstars and others of the very rich and his previous visit there with Tess was still appearing on his credit card demands.

  ‘All right,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘But it counts as a treat for your next three birthdays.’

  *

  As they were eating, Alister York was sitting in his office in Edenbridge House, his mind obsessed with the image of Tess Davy. He had dismissed the possibility that Maltravers’ answering the Penroses’ phone had meant it had only been taking incoming calls; the woman had simply lied in order to get into his own house and talk to his wife. Joanna had repeated insistently that she had told her nothing, but York did not completely believe her. The Davy woman could only have come to the house because she suspected something was happening—God only knew how—and would she leave it alone? If Joanna had even hinted…Once again Alister York returned to the relentless conviction that the woman’s interference threatened him with exposure. And exposure was unthinkable.

  His chair squeaked as he spun it round and looked out of his window through which he could see the Bellringer Street gate of the park in the distance. Just beyond that gate was the house where Tess Davy was staying and it was as if his narrowed eyes were trying to pierce the solid brickwork to see her and read her thoughts. As he concentrated, tense with gathering anger, his thick-muscled right hand unconsciously closed around an apple he had taken for his lunch. There was a sudden squelching sound as it split under the pressure and his fingers were covered with crushed pulp.