MURDER IN THE GARDEN

by Faith Martin

  And Keith had the unhappy feeling that, should that happen, Gavin was more than capable of expecting Keith to throw in his job here and join him in London. And maybe even accept some sort of sinecure job in the import–export antiques business that he would be heading in the temporary absence of his father.

  ‘I can’t imagine that Mr Clarence Greengage would have kept her in ignorance,’ Hillary Greene’s ironic voice snapped him out of his reverie and brought his mind back to the task in hand. ‘I think we’ll pop down the road and bring our Miss Hepton in for a formal chat at the station. If nothing else, it will teach her not to tell more porkies.’

  Barrington smiled obligingly. Hillary gave him a searching look, and wondered what was eating him. She’d been aware for some time that her young DC’s personal life was a never-ending source of angst, and wished that he’d get a grip on it soon. At least, now that Ross was on his way out, if it did become widely known that Barrington was gay there’d be no one on his immediate team to give him a hard time of it. Of course, he’d still have to weather the flak that would be bound to come his way.

  As it stood, she could only hope that his personal commitment to the job would see him through. But sometimes she thought she sensed a wavering in her young officer that boded ill for his future.

  ‘We’ll just have another word with Rachel first,’ Hillary said briskly, picking up the letters and heading for the door. ‘See if she knew about this, and what she intends to do about it. And we might just pop in to see the victim’s solicitor before we tackle the mistress.’

  ‘Guv.’

  Downstairs, she tapped gently on the door to the small lounge, and heard Rachel Warner’s weary voice bidding them to come in. When they entered, she was sitting on the sofa, her legs up and drinking from a mug of tea.

  ‘Please, don’t get up,’ Hillary said quickly, as the younger woman turned her head to look at them, and then started to bend her knees and swing her shoulders around.

  Rachel smiled a thanks and relaxed back into her former position, and Hillary took a seat close to the sofa. ‘Have you seen these before?’ Hillary asked, handing over the letters.

  Rachel read them quickly, the papers shaking in her hands just a little as she did so. Even the effort of holding the papers up seemed to be too much for her, and she slowly let them drop into her lap, still reading. When she’d finished she glanced up at Hillary and shrugged.

  ‘No, I hadn’t. But I’m not surprised. Dad talked about “realising his assets” some time ago, but I have to say, I didn’t really know what he meant until now.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘You know Miss Hepton?’

  ‘I’ve seen her around, sure. We live in a hamlet — I couldn’t not know her. But we’re not friends — or enemies either.’

  ‘You know she was renting Honeysuckle Cottage from your father?’

  Rachel Warner smiled briefly. ‘Yes.’

  Hillary nodded. So she knew about the arrangement between the attractive artist and her father.

  ‘Will you follow through with your father’s plans?’ Hillary asked curiously. ‘I imagine he intended either to sell the cottage, or perhaps let it to another party for a, er, slightly higher rent.’

  Rachel sighed and shrugged. ‘I’ll probably sell it. I’ve been looking into the possibility of boarding schools for Julie and Mark. There are schools where they’ll be able to stay together. And who knows, it might be a better option than fostering, where the chances are they’ll be split up. I’m hoping to talk to my cousins soon — if they’d agree to take Mark and Julie on alternate holidays, and act as their guardians, I might have the problem solved. But boarding school for six and eight years respectively isn’t going to be cheap. Then there’s the question of higher education for them, if they want to go on to university. I’ll need all the cash Dad’s left me, as well as the money raised from the sale of this house and Honeysuckle Cottage. I’m just hoping that, properly invested, it’ll see them both through.’

  Barrington, standing by the door, shuffled his feet, deeply uncomfortable. To listen to a woman making plans for after her death, all the while not knowing what was to happen to her two young children, made his own problems fade into insignificance.

  ‘Well, good luck with that,’ Hillary said softly. ‘I’ll leave you in peace now. I’m just going to interview your father’s solicitors. I take it you know the contents of his will?’

  Rachel Warner sighed. ‘He told me years ago that he’d left everything to me, but recently he was going to change his will to leave it all in trust for the kids. I’m not sure if he’d got around to it yet, or what it’ll mean to my plans if he had. I suppose it’ll depend on whom he nominated as trustees?’

  Hillary didn’t know the answer to that, but as they drove towards Banbury, with Keith behind the wheel, she wondered why Rachel hadn’t been on to her father’s solicitors long before now. It had been three days since her father’s death — time enough for her to recover somewhat from the shock and start planning things. Especially since she had so much to do, and presumably so little time to do it in.

  But then, perhaps the dying had their own way of doing things.

  * * *

  As Hillary and Keith made their way towards the attractive market town of Banbury, Janine Mallow parked carefully in a small side street in the equally attractive town of Thame and turned off the car engine. She muttered under her breath; she could almost feel her ankles swelling as the warmth from the car’s heater slowly subsided.

  A hundred yards up ahead, on the left, was the home of Clive Myers. She’d easily spotted the ‘undercover’ car, parked just beyond it and on the right-hand side of the road, and had been careful to pull in behind a large Land Rover, out of their line of sight. Now, as she watched, she could clearly see the outline of two male heads inside, as the officers on observation chatted to one another.

  She didn’t realise, however, that another car parked at the rear of the Myers house in a cul-de-sac that curved around also contained two officers who had noted her arrival. Or that they could clearly see her from their vantage point.

  The man in the passenger seat, a DC Stephen Crane, frowned slightly, and put the binoculars to his eyes. For once, he wasn’t looking at the house, but at the car behind the Land Rover. For some reason, it was ringing a bell. And when he saw the familiar pretty blonde woman behind the wheel, he cursed softly.

  Damn it, what was she doing here? And close on that thought, came the next: what the hell was he going to do about it? His home patch was Oxford, out of St Aldates, and the thought of reporting one of their own to the Met man, Evans, even if he was in charge, stuck in his craw. Besides, his instinct was to avoid an almighty row if possible, and the appearance of Mel’s widow on the scene was bound to cause that, at the very least.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. What if she got out of the car and approached Myers’s place?

  ‘Hey, Mike.’ He nudged his partner, who’d been dozing off behind the wheel. ‘Who do we know that we can trust to deal with a madwoman?’

  His partner, who worked out of HQ, grunted awake and said blearily, ‘Huh?’

  * * *

  Clarence Greengage’s offices were in a small cobbled square, not far from the famous Banbury Cross, and down a narrow medieval-looking street. Lead-paned windows and a black-and-white exterior gave the building the appearance of an old coaching inn, now long since converted into commercial premises. An undulating roof echoed undulating floorboards inside, and reinforced the atmosphere of antiquity.

  No doubt it made the largely affluent clientele to which Phipps, Brown and Greengage catered feel cautiously reassured that their business and legal affairs were in safe hands.

  Considering they didn’t have an appointment, the pleasant-faced receptionist was very quick to show them in to a large office on the lower floor.

  The man who rose from behind his desk, somewhat to Hillary’s surprise, was very much the antithesis of
his old-fashioned-sounding name, however. Barely twenty-five, Hillary guessed, and wearing a smart suit and Armani aftershave.

  ‘DI Greene, DC Barrington,’ he echoed the receptionist’s introduction of them. ‘Please, take a seat. This is concerning Mr Philpott, I imagine?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hillary agreed.

  ‘I read all about it in the papers. Shocking. He was such a nice man.’

  With Hillary and Barrington seated, the young Mr Greengage retook his own chair. He had a smartly barbered haircut that suited his lean face, and his intelligent hazel eyes flickered from one to the other of the two police officers.

  ‘I’ve just come from his residence,’ Hillary began. ‘As you may know, he shares it with his daughter. She’s given her permission for you to speak freely to us. I understand that she herself has not yet been in touch?’

  ‘No. But I understood from her father that the lady is rather seriously ill?’

  Hillary nodded, tight-faced. ‘She tells me that Edward Philpott had left all his property to her in his will, but that in the light of the circumstances, was going to alter it in favour of her children.’

  ‘Quite true,’ the solicitor agreed at once. ‘I’d drawn the papers up, but Mr Philpott hadn’t yet been in to sign them. He was due in tomorrow to do so, in fact.’

  ‘So, legally, the old will still stands?’

  ‘It does, yes. Unless, of course, in the unlikely event that Mr Philpott made yet a third will, not with this company, that was properly signed, dated and witnessed. But that, I imagine, is very unlikely.’

  Hillary agreed that it was. ‘So Rachel, Mrs Warner, gets everything? Were there any other major bequests we should know about?’

  ‘Not one,’ Clarence Greengage assured her. ‘It was one of the most simple wills I’ve ever drawn up. The second will, the one that left his estate to his grandchildren, was much more complicated, of course.’ Hillary nodded, and Barrington took down notes as the solicitor obliged by outlining it.

  ‘So an old friend of his, his local vicar, and one of his own cousins were due to act as legal guardians for Mark and Julie, should he die before they reached maturity?’ she recapped succinctly.

  ‘Yes. And, of course, there were the usual safeguards in place to ensure that any residue of the estate went to the children on their maturity.’ In other words, the guardians wouldn’t be able to snaffle it with some clever accountancy.

  So there were no obvious provisions in Edward Philpott’s will that might provoke a motive for his murder, Hillary mused grimly. True, Rachel Warner got everything, but the fact that she would probably be dead herself in a few months’ time rather ruled her out as a suspect.

  Unless, of course, there was some as yet unknown urgent reason for her to want to get her hands on her father’s money and property? It seemed so unlikely as to be hardly worth investigating, but she’d tell Keith to work systematically on researching the theory, when he had time between more urgent priorities.

  ‘Now, there’s another matter I wanted to discuss with you, Mr Greengage,’ Hillary said briskly, handing over the letters she’d taken from Eddie Philpott’s shoebox.

  The solicitor read them briefly. ‘Oh yes. The tenancy of Honeysuckle Cottage.’

  ‘I take it you informed Miss Hepton that her lease would not be renewed at the end of November?’

  ‘Oh yes. Edward informed me that he’d already told her, and that she hadn’t taken the news well. So I wrote a formal letter to her the same day. That would have been, let me see,’ he briefly riffled the pages of a large desk diary and nodded, ‘yes, nearly eight weeks ago.’

  ‘Has Miss Hepton been in touch?’

  ‘No, she hasn’t.’

  ‘Has she got any legal recourse, to challenge her eviction, as it were? I take it you know that Mr Philpott and Miss Hepton were in a long-standing relationship?’

  Mr Greengage, for the first time, looked rather surprised. ‘No, I didn’t know that. I simply assumed she was a regular tenant. Mr Philpott certainly never mentioned it. Hmmm, that might be awkward, should the lady challenge the will in court. The rights of a common-law wife, or partner, are somewhat, shall we say, elastic?’

  Hillary sighed. ‘But what do you think her chances are of being allowed to stay on in the cottage?’ Briefly, she explained the circumstances, as she knew them to be, and the solicitor frowned thoughtfully.

  ‘On the face of it, there seems to be little the lady can do. If neither of them publicly acknowledged the liaison and there was no actual co-habitation . . . Then again, long-term tenancy is a bit of a nightmare. But no, on the whole, I think even if the lady should fight it, the courts would almost certainly side with Mrs Warner, or her heirs, in this particular case.’

  So Martha Hepton, at least, had motive for wanting the old man dead.

  At last, she was getting somewhere.

  ‘Well, thank you very much for your time, sir,’ Hillary said, getting to her feet and shaking hands.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know when the funeral is, do you, Inspector?’ the young man asked. ‘I would like to attend.’

  Hillary admitted that she didn’t know, but would be sure to inform him when she did.

  Once outside they walked thoughtfully to her car, and got inside.

  ‘Pick up the mistress, guv?’ Barrington asked brightly. He too was glad to have something solid to go on at last.

  ‘Pick up the mistress,’ Hillary confirmed. ‘And once you’ve dropped us off at HQ, I want you to talk to every resident of The Knott again, and see if anyone can place Martha Hepton at Edward Philpott’s cottage that morning. Don’t forget, she could have gone through the gardens and not walked down the main road at all. And while you’re at it, see if there are any footpaths or rights-of-way she could have used that would take her round the back of the houses. Very often in old, small villages there are secret little paths that outsiders like us don’t know about.’

  ‘Guv.’

  * * *

  Back in Steeple Knott they found Martha Hepton about to tackle a field of poppies on her latest canvas. She looked more annoyed than afraid when Hillary insisted that she come with them to Kidlington for a formal interview; she washed her hands and pulled off her painter’s smock with ill grace.

  She was curiously quiet on the drive back into town. Most suspects, Hillary knew from experience, liked to talk in the car on the way to the station. Either to protest their ignorance or innocence, or to nervously make joking observations, or even to throw angry abuse and threats of a suit for wrongful arrest.

  Very few simply sat quietly in the back and watched the scenery pass. She wondered what the other woman was thinking, and it made her feel suspicious. It would be interesting to see which way Martha Hepton jumped when confronted with the fact that they knew her long-term lover had been in the process of making her homeless.

  * * *

  Gemma Fordham glanced up as her boss walked through the crowded office to her desk. ‘I’ve just brought Martha Hepton in,’ Hillary said coolly by way of greeting, and briefly brought Gemma up to date. ‘I’m letting Barrington sit in with me, but I’d like you to observe. I’ve got a feeling she’s going to be a wily one.’ Hillary suspected another set of eyes and ears might come in very handy.

  Gemma felt her heart rate skip. ‘Right, guv.’ She picked up her notebook and headed for the door. She liked to watch Hillary in action, and this was the first real lead they’d had since starting the investigation. Who knew, she mused: if Hillary could break her down they might get a confession and have the case wrapped up by teatime.

  Hillary collected her favourite personal mini-cassette recorder and slipped it into her bag, then glanced across at Danvers’s cubicle and saw that it was empty. She started to write out an update for him concerning their new suspect when her phone rang.

  ‘DI Greene.’

  ‘Hello, DI Greene? This is DC Stephen Crane, ma’am. You don’t know me, ma’am, but I’m one of the officers in Thame.’

>   Hillary jerked upright. What the hell was going on now? ‘Yes, Constable?’ she said warily. She wouldn’t put it past Brian Vane to be setting her up for something. After all, he’d warned her in front of Donleavy to stay out of Mel’s case, and she didn’t know this DC Crane from Adam.

  ‘I think you should know, ma’am, that I’ve just seen an ex-sergeant of yours,’ Stephen Crane said, carefully and unhappily. ‘In fact, I’m looking at her right now.’

  Hillary caught her breath. Shit! Janine was in the vicinity of Myers’s house? What the hell was she thinking of?

  ‘Is she on foot?’ Hillary asked sharply.

  ‘No, ma’am. In her car.’

  ‘I’ll be right there. If she tries to leave the car, please tell her I’ll be there shortly.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ came the relieved reply. Hillary swore colourfully as she hung up and grabbed her coat. She all but ran across the office, down the stairs and into the interview rooms in the basement.

  She didn’t go immediately to interview room two however, where she’d left Martha Hepton not five minutes ago, but rather to the adjoining observation room. There she stuck her head around the door.

  ‘Gemma, it’s all yours,’ she told her startled sergeant. ‘I have to go out. I want you to get Barrington out here and let him fill you in more fully, then start the interview without me. I expect to be back within the hour, so keep her talking if you can.’

  ‘Guv, what if she wants to walk?’ Gemma asked in alarm. They both knew that unless a suspect was actually under arrest, he or she could leave at any time they liked. ‘Do I charge her?’