by L. C. Tyler
I had to make a preliminary call to a mate of mine at Scotland Yard. Thank goodness there are still some policemen with literary ambitions.
‘Bill, it’s Elsie, I need a favour.’
‘Is it anything like the last one?’ he asked.
‘Maybe a bit.’
‘Then no,’ he said.‘Definitely not.’
‘An author of mine is having a problem,’ I went on. ‘One of his characters needs to persuade a Swiss bank that he’s from the fraud squad. How would you do that exactly?’
The bank proved to be very cooperative and immediately agreed to let me have the information I wanted as soon as they could. For the record I have to point out that I have absolutely no idea how they got the impression during the course of our conversation that I was from Scotland Yard.
It took them less than ten minutes to get back to me.
‘Can I speak to Inspector Elsie Thirkettle, please?’
‘Speaking.’
‘The account is in the name of Pamela Hamilton-Boswell.’
‘Let me just note that.’
‘I regret however that we can be of little further assistance to you.’
‘Why? I thought that I had made it clear that this was a very serious case of fraud.’
‘It isn’t that. The account has been closed. Miss Hamilton-Boswell withdrew the money in cash.’
‘All of it?’
‘Every last centime. Is there any further information that you need?’
I was about to say ‘no’, when it occurred to me to ask when the money had been withdrawn. I scribbled the date down. It was the day after Geraldine’s murder. The day after Geraldine’s murder.This was a pity because my working hypothesis was, of course, that Geraldine and Pamela were one and the same.
‘Are you sure that it was Miss Hamilton-Boswell herself?’I asked.
‘No. We always release sums of that sort without proof of identity.’ This was interesting in the sense that I hadn’t realized that Swiss banks did irony.
And you’re equally sure of the date?’
‘Obviously.’
‘Can you give me a description of the lady who collected the money?’
There was a chuckle somewhere in Switzerland. ‘I am so very sorry. Our computer records do not include a photograph of all our customers. She would obviously have provided the necessary identification at the time. Yes, looking at our records, I have a note to the effect that she produced her passport.’
‘Young? Old?’
‘I can at least tell you that. Let me see. From her date of birth she would be … let me see … thirty-nine. What would you call that – old or young?’
‘Exactly my age,’ I said.
‘Would you like me to confirm this information in writing to you at Scotland Yard?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said perhaps a little too quickly. ‘Thank you.You have been most helpful.’
‘We are always pleased to be of service to Scotland Yard. By the way, we thought that you were in London, whereas the telephone number you gave us appears to be—’
‘Serious Fraud Unit,’ I said even more quickly.‘We don’t publicize our existence.’
‘I see. Good afternoon then, Inspector Thirkettle.’
‘Merci beaucoup,’ I replied.
Well, old-world courtesy and politeness cost nothing, I always say.
Obviously, Hamilton-Boswell was not the most common of names. Directory enquiries do not usually provide telephone numbers unless you know the address too. Still, it was going to be easier than the Swiss bank, I reckoned.
There proved to be only five Hamilton-Boswells in the telephone directory. None were Pamela or even had a P as one of their initials. Four were in Scotland, but I ruled them out in favour of the fifth: a major, who lived in a little village in Essex. It was a village I happened to know quite well. Well, there’s a coincidence, I thought.
I rang the number and a man answered – oldish, I guessed from his voice. Pamela’s father rather than her husband.
‘Is that Major Hamilton-Boswell?’ I asked.
‘It is.’
‘Could I speak to Pamela, please?’
There was a funny pause at the other end of the phone.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘A friend of Pamela’s.’
‘A friend of Pamela’s?’ He made it sound as though it was a surprise that Pamela had any friends.A little harsh, I thought.
‘Yes,’ I pressed on. A friend from college.’ It seemed a safer bet than a friend from school, since, working on the theory that Pamela was his daughter, the Major might know all of the school friends. And ‘college’ might mean sixth form college or university or veterinary school or whatever. We would have to see in due course what I meant.
‘You knew Pamela at college?’
‘That’s right,’ I said with more confidence than I was now feeling.
‘Pamela Hamilton-Boswell?’
I should have been getting used to people talking to me in strange typefaces, but this last couple of italics threw me. Why the emphasis on the surname? Was it that she was called something else now? Married perhaps? Or what? I needed time to think, but instead there I was plunging ahead, on the slippery slope and about to go completely out of control. ‘Oh yes,’ I heard myself say. ‘Didn’t she marry … that nice What’s-his-name?’
There was a much longer pause, then he said, very very slowly and very very carefully, ‘I don’t know what sort of a sick joke this is, but you really should be ashamed of yourself.’
I pride myself that a lesser person might at this stage have mumbled something about a wrong number and hung up, but I don’t let go easily.‘Has something happened to Pamela?’ I asked.‘It’s a while since I saw her. I really need to know.’
There was a sort of strangled chuckle at the other end. ‘Happened to Pamela? Nothing’s happened to Pamela, as you put it, for a very long time. But I promise you this. If you dare phone this number again, I shall have the call traced and reported to the police.’
I was tempted to point out that he was addressing an apprentice herring seller from Scotland Yard, but under the circumstances it seemed better to hang up abruptly and pray that he didn’t dial 1471 to check out my (that is to say Ethelred’s) number.
As I say, I knew the village where the Hamilton-Boswells were living, and the location was too much of a coincidence to be … well, a coincidence. There was more to this than met the eye, which was saying a great deal.
I fetched a road atlas from the bookcase and studied it. Feldingham was one of those out-of-the-way villages on the marshy bit of coast that lies to the north of the Thames. I know that God-forsaken part of the world well. A damp little church in a damp little churchyard. A damp little pub full of local teddy boys, washed up on some high tide in the late fifties and left there slowly shrivelling. Picturesque fishing boats rotting on the mud-flats. A picturesque container terminal on the far side of the estuary. And the damp, dark green reek of the marshes. Oh, yes, I’m an Essex Girl born and bred all right. Love the place to bits, though next time round do please remind me to be born in Surrey.
This was undoubtedly a three-bar-of-chocolate problem, so I went in search of some. It took a while to dig a bar out from the back of a cupboard, but it was clear from its position, under a rice packet, that Ethelred had forgotten its existence. You don’t leave chocolate in the cupboard under a rice packet if you remember you have it. At least, normal people don’t. Chocolate in a cupboard is public property.
I took it back to the sitting room to study the map. Feldingham was perhaps two and a half hours’rapid drive away via the Dartford tunnel. A visit today was on the cards if Ethelred came back soon and we made an immediate start.
All I needed to do was get the various papers back in place and finish the chocolate before he returned. He was due to be away for an hour so that meant he would be back … I checked my watch … fifteen minutes ago. Shit!
But even a
s I reached for the bank statements, I heard a key turn in the lock. The front door opened. The last thing I wanted was Ethelred now. But nobody came through the sitting-room door. There was an ominous silence. I was forced to correct my earlier statement.The last thing I wanted was a burglar right now. Ethelred would be fine. Then suddenly Ethelred burst into the room, giving me the fright of my life.
Frankly anybody in green wellies and a Barbour looks a prat in my book. Anyone in green wellies and a Barbour who bursts into their own sitting room with a stick in their hand is a total dickhead.
‘What are you playing at, Ethelred, you tart?’ I said.
He looked fairly peeved, though I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. I looked at the chocolate, then at the general mess around me and then back to the chocolate again.
‘Oh, for goodness’sake,’ I said.‘It was in the cupboard.’
Thirteen
From the moment I saw Elsie sitting joyfully in the midst of so many things that did not belong to her, I knew that matters had taken a turn for the worse. As she described her clumsy attempts at detective work I could only groan inwardly. Particularly excruciating was her account of her conversation with Major Hamilton-Boswell.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said. ‘Can’t you recognize when you’re way off track? His daughter – or whoever she is – clearly has nothing to do with the bank account in Switzerland. The poor man must have thought you were crazy.’
‘But Ethelred,’ said Elsie. ‘It’s Feldingham. Feldingham. Doesn’t the name mean anything to you?’
‘I don’t see what you’re getting at,’ I said.
‘Feldingham, Ethelred. Stop playing the idiot boy for a moment and cast your mind back to an ill-omened day in June, many a year ago. You were wearing a grey morning suit and a top hat, if that helps you at all. You had a carnation in your button hole. There was a bitch hanging off your left arm. I was there in a lemon-coloured frock, which I have since graciously bestowed on the Oxfam shop.’
‘All right,’ I sighed. ‘I got married there. So what?’
‘You got married there because Geraldine’s parents lived there and had done so for many years. Geraldine grew up there. Her sister still lives there. Come on, Ethelred. Of all the joints in all the world, the only Hamilton-Boswell in England shows up in this one. That is not a coincidence. That is deeply, deeply suspicious. It needs following up.’
‘You are not going to visit the Hamilton-Boswells.’
‘I agree that that might be inadvisable. But we can visit Geraldine’s sister, Miss Charlotte Turner.’
‘I am not going off on a wild-goose chase to the depths of Essex.’
‘Fine, I’ll go on my own, then.’
‘You don’t know where Charlotte lives.’
‘I didn’t know where the Hamilton-Boswells lived.’ I sighed again. ‘OK, I’ll come. But only to stop you making a total fool of yourself.’
‘Thought you might,’ said Elsie.
God, she can be smug at times.
It was a long drive through low, unambitious countryside. The road wound over gentle rises and falls in the ground that could make up their minds neither to be proper hills nor satisfactory valleys. Occasionally a new vista would slyly suggest that more might be on offer, only to fail to deliver anything that we had not seen before. We passed through tacky, strung-out settlements with no pretensions to be any more than that. Only billboards and breakers’ yards added a touch of class to the scene. As we approached the coast, you could taste the salt and decay of the marshlands. The old white weather-board houses and meagre flint churches seemed to crouch and huddle together against a wind that blew across the North Sea straight from the steppes. This was a flat land, merely on loan from the ocean, and prevented only by the snaking dykes and sea walls from returning at the next high tide to the salt water from which it came.
St Peter’s church is a modest brick-and-flint building with a stumpy wooden steeple and a large green churchyard full of mossy and largely unreadable gravestones. As Feldingham has grown, piety has declined proportionately; the need has never arisen to enhance what Fairfax would have approved as a perfectly good Norman building.
I succeeded in convincing Elsie that I had no wish to revisit the scene of my wedding and we passed on to the far side of the village where Charlotte’s substantial, boxy, modern house lay in well-tended grounds.
I was of course well aware that Charlotte had never liked me, but her dislike had taken the form of a certain aloofness rather than actual antagonism. As with others who had featured, either as major players or in walk-on parts, during my divorce, I had good reason to feel sorry for her now rather than harbour any ill feeling. For her part, Charlotte greeted us with her usual indifference.
Charlotte was some three or four years older than her sister. Old enough certainly to give her a lifelong sense of superiority and to regard Geraldine, rightly, as an irresponsible child forever having to be pulled out of life’s muddy puddles. They resembled each other only superficially in appearance and not at all in character. While there was some facial similarity, Charlotte was taller, more solidly built than Geraldine: one of nature’s hockey players. She had inherited at birth the mantle of the sensible one. Even in photographs of her as quite a small child there was a seriousness about her: more showed her frowning than smiling and in all there was a firmness in her gaze that suggested that here was a kid who wouldn’t stand for any nonsense. But even she must have been briefly susceptible to Geraldine’s charms, because she had, after all, also invested a sizeable sum of money in the last failed project. Unlike Rupert or (in a different way) Smith-the-Bank, she could afford to lose the money. She had inherited a house from her parents. She had a good job and no family dependent on her. In this last respect she had always struck me as rather lonely. I don’t believe that she had actually been jilted at the altar, but there had, in the distant past, been some disappointments – a broken engagement possibly, an unrequited passion for some rugby-playing merchant banker. Or then again, perhaps not. How was I to tell? She never was the sort of person to share intimate details of that nature with a brother-in-law, unlike Geraldine, who would share anyone’s secrets at the drop of a hat with a total stranger. She was also the exact reverse of Geraldine in one other important respect: she was essentially a very unhappy person.
‘I’ve made you tea,’ she said. ‘I believe that’s what one is supposed to do under these circumstances. The grieving family assembles for cucumber sandwiches and a little hypocrisy.’
It was remarkable that she could inject such a note of bitterness into the offer of a cup of tea.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Ta,’ said Elsie, on what passed for her best behaviour for the moment. I watched her juggle a cup of tea and a plate ornamented by a single, impossibly thin cucumber sandwich.
Charlotte put down the teapot and placed a tea cosy over it. (I tried to remember when I had last had tea that had not been made with a tea bag in a mug.) ‘So, what really brings you here?’
‘Oh, a chance to drive out into the country and revisit the happy scene of my wedding day. You’re lucky: it’s so peaceful round here.’
‘Don’t you believe it. They broke into the church early this year and did all sorts of damage – they even stole the parish registers, if you’ll believe that. So, that’s the record of your marriage lost and gone. I know why you’ve come here. It’s the money, isn’t it? And I assume that the cash, like everything else, is also lost and gone for ever?’ Charlotte was not the sort of person to waste a great deal of time on small talk.
‘Probably.’
‘Pretty much what I expected. God, what a cow my sister was. I suppose you’ve been lumbered with clearing up her mess?’
I nodded, thinking as I did so that these were probably the most sympathetic words that Charlotte had ever addressed to me.
‘Have you fixed a date for the funeral?’ she continued.
I took a sip of my tea. ‘I�
��d like to get on with it, but I don’t yet know when they’ll release the body.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to go, but don’t expect me to weep over the coffin or anything. I’m not saying that I would have strangled her myself, but I can understand how somebody might decide it was a sound plan. Did the police question you?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Me too,’ she said with a certain relish. ‘I was here in good old Feldingham, God rot it, on the relevant date – at a meeting of the WI, as it happened. Deadly boring but an impeccable alibi. And no mere police sergeant is going to be able to browbeat the chairwoman of the WI into saying something that she doesn’t want to say. Tough job for the police all round. If they need to talk to everyone who wanted Geraldine dead, they’ll have to interview half the Home Counties.’
‘Not quite. She had her good points too,’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ said Charlotte. ‘I keep forgetting that you alone never saw through her. And you had to identify the body. That can’t have been much fun.’
‘It was all surprisingly matter-of-fact.’
‘Still, it can’t have been pleasant seeing somebody you were once fond of stretched out cold on a slab like a pound of cod. I assume that’s what she looked like? You used to show her a dog-like devotion that I never quite understood, so you have my sympathy now, for what it’s worth …’
‘Does the name Pamela Hamilton-Boswell mean anything to you?’ demanded Elsie, apparently finding this polite chitchat a bit off the point.
Charlotte frowned. ‘Yes, definitely,’ she said. ‘What is this? A trivia quiz?’ She tapped her fingers on the table for a moment. ‘Didn’t she present Blue Peter back in the sixties? Something like that. The name is really familiar anyway.’
‘She’d be about your age – maybe a bit younger,’ said Elsie.
‘My age? Wait a minute. I remember now!’ Then she chanted in an eery voice, ‘ “Pamela Hamilton-Boswell, she’s pushing back the stone. Pamela Hamilton-Boswell, she glides the road alone. Pamela Hamilton-Boswell, she’s creeping up your stair. Pamela Hamilton-Boswell is there, there, there!” ’ Charlotte laughed. ‘It’s years since I thought of that. It’s a rhyme that Geraldine and I made up to frighten each other. Chanted in the dark at about midnight it can be quite effective.’
