The Gypsy Hill Murders (The Ralph Chalmers Mysteries Book 1)

by P. J. Thurbin

  Peter was not prone to going home straight from college and on a number of occasions had been found in the college recital room playing his favorite Beethoven music on the Steinway. Ralph would eventually help him to sober up then drive him to the railway station and put him on the late train home. Ralph had often wondered if one day Marcia might snap and decide enough was enough. Perhaps even put a dose of poison in his bedtime cocoa before she undressed him and put him to bed. But that night things were a bit less dramatic and Katie Eggleton, a tutor from the School of Education, decided to tease her friends about the apparent lack of adventure in their lives.

  “The trouble with you guys is that you’re all so fascinated with your own hang-ups that you miss what’s going on around you and the opportunity to do something big before you retire,” interjected Katie, or Professor Eggleton to her students.

  “Anyone who can spend 20 years doing the same thing day after day when surrounded by young students who are full of life, strikes me as a wasted opportunity,” she announced.

  Ralph and Peter knew that this was just her way of winding them up for a row, but after a few glasses of red wine they felt sufficiently relaxed not to rise to the bait.

  “You Australians are always telling other people what’s wrong with their lives when all they want is a quiet time,” said Peter. He was thinking of the reception that he was likely to get when he got home and the last thing that he wanted now was to have a row with his friends.

  Katie was the first female Professor of Education at the University. She had studied at Deakin University, near Melbourne where she gained a Masters of Teaching. She had a reputation for taking no prisoners when engaged in an argument. She was the only women, out of the fifty or so on the campus, who met up with them regularly in the bar, even though she stuck to her water with a slice of lemon.

  Katie rounded on David, whom she admired for his direct but sensitive approach.

  “David, I’ve never understood how a guy like you could spend a lifetime trying to drum some complicated ideas about jurisprudence into a bunch of reluctant students? Wasn’t there something else that you could have done with your life?”

  David paused just long enough to let his friends decide if he was going to argue or acquiesce to what could be seen as an attack on his life style.

  “I find that things are never down to a clear choice. Take that business at Kenry House last year. The Vice Chancellor reacted by trying to avoid any adverse publicity that would put the college in a bad light. But I think that they were really rattled by it all and have turned the place into a military camp. We have night patrols with guard dogs, staff being made to escort students to the buses and their cars after dark, and appointing a duty staff member to be responsible for any mishaps until ten o’clock at night. They could’ve handled it in a much more sensitive fashion. I hear that one of the staff has even sued the University because he felt that they were not making him feel safe when he worked late in the evenings. So you see that’s why I teach jurisprudence to our students.”

  Katie was not going to let David get off that lightly.

  “Typical lawyer talk, David. And you still haven’t answered my question. Why are you stuck here in this creepy place when presumably you could be elsewhere?”

  David came straight back at her.

  “Right. I went to Eton before studying Law at Oxford. I would have gone on to become a barrister but fate stepped in. I was at a local party given by one of my friends and danced with what turned out to be my future wife, and that was it. We got married and I had to find a job as Mary was expecting our first child. After a few years my parents passed away and the inheritance gave me the chance to study and obtain my Doctorate. Then I landed a job here and have led a quiet life ever since. Well until you lot arrived that is,” he added with a grin.

  “A convincing story, David,” said Katie. “Wish I had your silver spoon background and some of your good luck.”

  As always Katie liked to be the one who took charge, and at times she could be quite the martinet. She certainly had a hard streak to her nature.

  “You guys are starting to look like you need to get home and recuperate for tomorrow. So drink up and let’s wrap it up for the night. I know I have to get home to finish some work. It won’t be long before that miserable old bugger of a caretaker, what’s his name Jack Welsh, comes around to lock up anyhow,” said Katie.

  The friends said their farewells and Ralph drove slowly home pondering on his next steps. He had a meeting lined up with Dean Granger for the next day, and that was not always a pleasant experience. He and Granger had never been great pals, and Granger had been particularly tetchy with Ralph ever since the incident at Kenry House. No doubt he blamed Ralph for the adverse publicity it brought to the University. For his part, he thought that logic had never been Granger’s strong suit.

  Ralph had also been surprised at Katie’s efforts to unhinge David over his choice of a career at the University. He knew that she had a difficult background about which she had confided in him some months earlier. The business at Kenry House was still playing on his mind and he felt that somehow it linked in with Katie’s story and her mentioning Jack Welsh, as they had left and for some reason it made him feel uneasy. Back in his apartment he sat down with a whisky and thought back to what she had told him about her past and how she came to be living in England.

  It seemed that when the First World War broke out, her grandmother, Jane De Witt, had been a young nurse at a hospital in Sydney, and had volunteered to join the South African Medical Corp working over in England with the wounded soldiers. Katie had been intrigued to hear about the young English officers her grandmother had met and she had decided that getting to England was her goal.

  Soon after leaving University, Katie had met Robert. He was an architect over from England working on a project outside Melbourne. Their romance ended when he was called back to London. On the rebound she had married a wealthy industrialist. Her husband, it transpired, turned out to be a womanizer and had girl friends around the world. He told her that a divorce was not possible and that she would never get her hands on his money no matter how many lawyers she hired.

  One weekend they went to a tourist attraction at the old gold mining town of Ballarat. It put on re-enactments of Australian life in the outback, during the gold rush days. Part of the show involved a group of outlaws galloping along the dusty main street. Just as the riders went past, her husband had stumbled and was trampled to death by a horse.

  The police concluded that it was simply a tragic accident and that no one was to blame. She inherited everything, as there were no other relatives. A few weeks later she flew to England to look for her young architect. They married and bought a large Georgian mansion in the expensive part of Chelsea, in London.

  Ralph had not told anyone about Katie’s background. But now he kept thinking how Gypsy Hill seemed to be linked with tragic deaths in some form or other. That night he slept badly as there seemed to be a lot of loose ends that just didn’t seem to make sense.

  Chapter 3

  Whenever Ralph looked at Rupert Granger he saw a caricature of Henry the VIII. At the college graduation ceremonies the orchestra would play the music for the staff to process into the auditorium in a long and colorful column of gowned figures, and Granger would strut ahead as though he were Henry entering the banqueting hall at Hampton Court Palace. Like Henry, Granger was a bit overweight, but it was the smile and the way that the jowls moved up and down, and that sly smirk, that made Ralph see him that way. All he needed was a lace ruff and white silk tights to complete the picture. Granger had called Ralph in to discuss a project that he had in mind.

  “Well Ralph, you need to think about what sort of mark you want to leave behind when you leave here. You’ve been teaching here for what, nearly twenty years now? and you need to think about what sort of legacy you want to leave behind. Obviously it’s too late for promotion and you are too old to move on, so if you’re goin
g to make your mark it has to be now.”

  Ralph could read between the lines. Granger would like nothing better than to usher him through the door that very minute. But his hands were tied. So instead he was trying to make Ralph go for early retirement by foisting the most undesirable jobs he could find on him. Ralph decided that he would wait and see just what Granger had in mind and forced himself to look interested in the proposal. When Granger saw no response would be forthcoming, he went on.

  “The Royal Borough of Kingston on Thames wants to celebrate 100 years of education in the Borough and I was thinking that you might be just the man to organize the Centenary celebrations we’re holding at Gypsy Hill. You know that it’s a pet project of the Vice Chancellor’s, and he has asked me to make certain that it puts the University in a good light, what with all the bad press that we attracted with that business last autumn.

  Granger seemed to be on a roll and Ralph knew from past experience it was best to just keep his counsel until he had run his course.

  “By the way, Ralph, I’ve talked to that caretaker’s family, the one who died, and offered to put a bench in the grounds with his name, Bob something or other, engraved on it. But beyond that, there’s little more we can do for the poor bloke, or his family. But that’s water under the bridge now, so let’s move on.”

  Ralph was tempted to laugh outright at what he saw as another appalling demonstration of insensitivity. Perhaps that was the attitude you needed if you were to get to the top of an organization, he mused. But he had been trying to get Granger to sign off on a trip he wanted to attend at a conference in Los Angeles. And although it went against his principles, back scratching was now part of academic life and he was not going to try to change the system at this late stage in his career.

  The slight pause had allowed Granger to regain his breath.

  “I’d like you to write up some sort of proposal – nothing formal, of course, and set out what we might have to do to make it happen.”

  Ralph recognized that what Granger was really trying to do was curry favour with the Vice Chancellor, and while he may have disliked Ralph on a personal level, he was smart enough to know that Ralph was probably the only person on the staff who could pull it off. Ralph decided he had better speak up before his trip got ploughed under by the new project.

  “I’d need some time to prepare the proposal properly,” said Ralph. “And of course there’s my trip to Los Angeles to organize as well.” There. Now the ball was in Granger’s court.

  Ralph was rather pleased with that neat bit of diplomacy. Of course Granger would recognize the game he was playing, but they both understood the rules. I give you what you want and in exchange you give me what I want. No doubt the executioner’s block played a similar part in Cardinal Wolsey’s decision to hand the Palace at Hampton Court over to Henry VIII nearly 500 years ago, and now Ralph and Granger were going through a similar charade. Very little had changed in spite of all the efforts to educate and refine people, he surmised.

  “Good,” said Granger. “So that’s all agreed. I’ll get Margaret to set the wheels in motion”.

  With that Granger reached over and pressed the button that summoned his secretary into his study.

  “Get Mr. Chalmers his tickets for America and make sure that he gets a copy of the rules about claiming expenses. We don’t want him moonlighting and getting paid more than he should, at the same time!”

  Granger always chuckled when he made these types of slurs on someone’s integrity and it made Ralph’s stomach turn. But this was no time for petty grievances. After all, he had what he wanted, and he knew he could practically write the proposal for the Centenary project in his sleep.

  Margaret Raynor had been the Dean’s secretary for a number of years and Ralph sometimes wondered who was really pulling whose strings. She and Granger were certainly very close, and Ralph was always careful not to let the odd sarcastic remark slip, as he never knew how long it would take before it got back to her boss.

  But Granger hadn’t finished.

  “By the way, don’t forget that we’re having some major site development work done, and it begins next month. So whatever you come up with for the Centenary, Ralph, it will have to fit in with the contractor’s plans.”

  Ralph nodded and stood up to leave. He understood that the meeting was over and followed Margaret into her office. While he waited for the paperwork, Ralph had time to reflect on the exchange with Granger. Perhaps it was just that Granger had an inferiority complex or felt inadequate in some way, or maybe he was just jealous of staff who had a Doctorate, and that all his posturing was part of his way of covering this up. Whatever it was, Ralph decided not to take it personally. He had secured his conference approval and a project to keep him occupied in the meantime.

  When he had recovered his composure Ralph pondered on the task he had accepted. Being originally trained as a historian, he wanted to get to grips with the history of Kenry House and the Gypsy Hill site itself. If he treated it as a research project, then at least that part would be fun. The rest would probably involve whom to invite and what ceremonies to arrange and mean a lot of politics would have to be dealt with. But that part was not really up to him, and no doubt Granger had already decided on the guest list. All Ralph would need to do was nod and agree with whatever was decided on that score.

  Ralph was never so happy as when he had a problem to solve or a project to design. He had access to the records held by the College Estates Department, and he could easily get hold of the archives of the Surrey Comet, a local newspaper that was still in circulation. What struck him as the centre piece to any Centenary celebrations had to be the ways in which Kenry House had been used over the years, and he would need to search for any mysteries or unusual happenings that had occurred, as he knew that was a sure way to attract the public’s attention.

  Ralph’s conviction that the happenings involving the caretaker were somehow linked to the past fired his enthusiasm about researching the history of the Kenry House site. Who knows, he mused, this research may unearth more than one hidden truth.

  The use of the house as a hospital during the First World War caught his eye.

  Some of the officers had convalesced there before being sent back to the frontline in France. The South African Nursing Corps had worked at the house and Ralph recalled Katie’s story about her Grandmother, Jane De Witt, and wondered if by some strange coincidence she had been one of those young nurses?

  Wounded soldiers from the ranks were used as ward orderlies. And he could imagine them trying to help the officers, almost acting like unpaid servants.

  As he flicked through the newspaper articles his eye caught a police report into an incident at Kenry House in the summer of 1916. Police had been called in to investigate a shooting involving two officers who had been seen arguing over a young Australian nursing sister, and ward orderlies said they heard sounds of a revolver being fired. The case was closed as they were not able to find that anyone had been injured or killed. A cold chill ran through Ralph as here was another incidence of a sinister happening, and possible murder, taking place in the very building, and possibly the very room where he was now sitting.

  But Ralph had been sitting at his desk for quite a while now and decided that he needed a break. He strolled down the corridor to see if anyone was around.

  Ralph knocked on Katie’s door, and as he entered she turned from the lecture slides she was preparing. She laughed out loud on seeing Ralph’s standing there with his typically serious expression.

  ” Well don’t tell me you now have second thoughts about taking on Granger’s project? Anyone could have told you it would turn out to be a nightmare. You just happened to be the poor guy who got suckered in”, she said with a laugh.

  Ralph smiled at her direct, if less than polite, approach. He knew that he did appear overly serious most of the time, and it was good that he had friends who could remind him that he should lighten up. He tried to respond to her obv
ious hint at his inability to handle Rupert Granger.

  “Well not exactly, but I’m finding it’s taking up a lot of time and has involved much more work than I anticipated. Some of the stuff that’s coming out about Kenry House is pretty interesting, though. But I’m not sure where it fits into the background for the Centenary celebration. And having to tie the logistics of the whole affair into the schedules of the blokes who are doing the site development work, is a bit of a logistical nightmare.”

  “Your problem is that you’re a control freak and every little bit has to fit in place or you get as twitchy as hell. Why not just put up a few flags, get catering to put on some cucumber sandwiches and some booze, and bingo everyone will be tickled pink, as you poms like to say,” said Katie.

  Ralph had noticed in the past that when Katie wanted to bring her outbursts to a finale she always found some way of demonstrating her Australian toughness. The English, and she was not fussy how far that label fitted her audience at the time, were usually on the receiving end. Although he did not agree with her entirely, he could see that as usual Katie had cut to the chase and she was probably right.

  “Well something has come up that I’m not sure about yet. But it may be the theme that could run through the whole event,” said Ralph.

  He told her what he had read about the alleged shooting of the army Captain and before he knew it he blurted out that there might be a link to Katie’s grandmother. It might just be that if she had been with the South African Nursing Corps she would have heard about the scandal. Katie was unusually quiet, and for a minute Ralph thought that she was not listening. After a while she turned to face him and he couldn’t believe it but he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

  “You stupid bugger,” she mumbled. “Just like you to never forget anything. Yes my grandmother did tell me that one of the officers had been involved in a row over her when she was a nursing sister over here. He was her fiancé. They’d been lovers and planned to get married when the war was over. She had a photo of him that she showed me. He was a Captain Craig Renlow of the Suffolk Regiment. I remember because it was written on the back of the photo. My grandmother could never understand why after his arrest he never wrote. She was moved to a field station in France then eventually went back to Australia because she had picked up some form of lung disease. It was a few years later that a letter, from one of her friends in England, described how her fiancé had been killed in action. She told me that she somehow felt responsible for his death and agonized for years over the fact that he may have believed to the end that she was involved with the other guy. But I don’t believe that being a man you would understand that.”