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

by P. J. Thurbin

  The Inspector left Stocker dangling rather than respond to his protestations.

  “Well we will of course be checking your story out with Miss Ryman-Jones when she regains consciousness. You can go now and we’ll be in touch as there are a few more people that I want to talk to first,” he said bringing things to an abrupt close.

  As Stocker left the building, Inspector Linham looked out of the window where he could see Jim Stocker in a heated discussion with Jack Welsh, who seemed to be trying to quieten Stocker down. It was time to interview Katie Eggleton.

  As she walked in, the Inspector noticed that she appeared distracted and ill at ease. He felt that he was about to make some progress at last. The reason for his confidence was that he had made enquiries about her past and found out about her first husband’s death in Australia, and that her family had connections to the South African Nursing Corps. Wilson had done some further research, and found from a police report into the missing officer at Kenry House, that a Miss Jane de Witt had been a nursing sister there at the time. And on checking Eggleton’s British Naturalization records, he found that Jane de Witt was listed as being her grandmother.

  “Good morning Professor Eggleton. We would just like to ask you a few questions about Miss Ryman-Jones, who you know was found injured here this morning. Did you and Miss Ryman-Jones get on well together? And do you know of any reason why anyone would want to harm her?” He said.

  Linham was struck by her attempts to appear relaxed and at ease.

  “No, I didn’t really know her at all. She wasn’t on the staff at Kingston. She was over from Reading working on some sort of Archeology project connected to the site where they dug up that skeleton. I think that she and Ralph Chalmers had been an item back when they were younger, but I don’t think they had been in touch for years. That is until she turned up here a few weeks ago. They seemed to be hitting it off when I saw them in the bar here,” she said, and waved in the general direction of the refectory bar. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to harm her,” Katie told them.

  The Inspector played the first of his two cards.

  “Professor Eggleton, did the police in Australia ever find out exactly how your husband came to fall under a horse when you were in Ballarat?”

  He could see her physically recoil from his question, but it took only a split second to re-gather herself as she faced up to Linham’s veiled insinuation.

  “You police are all the same,” she shouted.

  She was beginning to raise her voice. For a seasoned policeman, this suggested that he had hit a nerve. He hoped that it was the right one. Katie went on.

  “It was a long time ago and the enquiry showed it was an accident. Good God, are you suggesting that I was in anyway involved? I find that offensive and disgusting. Next you’ll be saying that I might have attacked poor Jane!”

  Linham tried to calm her down.

  “I’m just doing my job and part of that job is to ask questions. But can you also tell me if it is just a coincidence that you have come all the way from Australia to teach at an English University and have an office in the very building that your grandmother Jane De Witt worked in as a nurse during the First World War? Or are there some other reasons why you came here that you would like to tell us about?”

  He could see that Katie was trying desperately to recover her composure from this double accusation.

  “I object to your approach to this interview. And if you are going to continue to make these stupid and insinuating comments I refuse to play your silly games and will be seeing my solicitor before I say any more. You are obviously trying to trick me into saying something that will make it look as though I had something to do with Jane’s accident, and I suppose then you will want to ask me if I had anything to do with the death of that caretaker. Fortunately I was away at a conference when that happened, so that will spoil your little game.”

  She was now in a high state of emotion and he could see that his best approach was to give her time to cool off. If she did have something to hide she might make a move that would give her away. His intuition told him that there were too many coincidences and she had not answered any of his questions. He decided that he had gone as far as he dare in the circumstances. He would have to wait for another opportunity to probe Professor Eggleton’s background. But he was far from satisfied that she was not involved in some way or other.

  ”Well I can see that you are upset, Professor Eggleton. And you are quite right. You don’t have to answer any of our questions. But perhaps you will speak to us when things have calmed down a bit,” he said.

  With that Professor Eggleton got up and strode out of the office.

  “Not best pleased eh, sir”? Said Wilson.

  Wilson knew how to diffuse a tense situation and he knew that his boss would need time to reflect on how she had reacted to his line of questioning.

  As Katie walked back to her office she suddenly realized that it must have been Ralph who had told the police all about her first husband and about her grandmother. “Some friend,” she muttered to herself. “If that’s the sort of bloke that Jane wants have a relationship with, then good luck to her.”

  Having got back to her office she made a note that when she got home that night she would take another look at some documents that her mother had sent over recently. They contained some photos and note books that her grandmother had written when she was a young nurse. She thought that they might contain something that would clear up some of the mysteries surrounding Kenry House.

  ***

  Inspector Linham had not finished with his morning’s interviews.

  “Let’s have a word with Ken Roach. He seems a tough cookie and I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him or some of his men on a dark night. Get him in here, Wilson.”

  Ken Roach had been expecting to have to answer some questions. He had seen the ambulance rush by as he came on site early that morning, and had heard that someone involved in the archeological dig had been attacked. Linham opened his questioning.

  “Mr. Roach, I will need a list of all your site workers and contractors that were on site either last night or first thing this morning. And can you tell me what was your relationship with Miss Jane Ryman-Jones, the victim in this recent incident?” He noticed that Roach reacted slightly to his choice of words.

  Roach then paused to give himself time to think. By answering the easy question first, he was hoping that he could by-pass the second.

  “No problem with the list. We keep a log that my people have to complete when they arrive and leave site. The contactors are a bit difficult to keep track of because they sometimes just drive in with a delivery. But I can see what records we have for last night and this morning,” he answered.

  Linham had not forgotten his main question.” Good and what about Miss Ryman-Jones and yourself?” He again noticed that Roach was playing for time.

  “Well, I only spoke to her once or twice about the areas that we wanted to dig and asked when she would finish her work here. You see all that archaeology nonsense is holding our development work up and it costs a lot of money keeping equipment and people standing around,” he said, trying to show that he was only interested in the site work.

  Linham pushed Roach a bit harder.

  “I can see that you could get pretty annoyed over the delays. So did you have any rows with Miss Ryman-Jones over this?” He asked.

  Roach was now starting to whine about his situation in dealing with all of the delays to the site work. And one thing that Linham detested was when people under pressure started to whine. It was an easy role to adopt and could easily be used as a tactic to avoid a question.

  “No, nothing like that. She has her job to do the same as anyone else. Mind you, she was going around telling my men to stop doing things, and I heard from one of them that she had asked if they could clear away the earth around the ice house entrance because she wanted to have a look down there. She managed to get one of my men,
Bill Roberts, to use the digger on it. I bawled him out when I found out. I did confront her about it, but since no harm had been done and Bill has a reputation for liking a pretty face, I let it go. You don’t think that I had anything to do with her accident? Whatever you have heard about me, and I know my men sometimes get the thick end of my tongue, I don’t go around bashing women. We are not all rogues just because we have muddy boots and swear a lot, you know,” he said raising his voice slightly.

  Linham had got little from Roach, but he hoped that he might have unsettled him enough, just in case he knew more than he was letting on. He stood up to emphasize his authority in the matter.

  “Thanks for talking to us Mr. Roach, and if you could let the Sergeant here have that list it would be much appreciated. And I know it’s not my responsibility, but you might think about putting some barriers up in front of that ice house in case some of the students decide to do a bit of midnight exploring. We don’t want any more incidents to add to what we have already.”

  Roach promised to get at it straight away and send the list across. As he left, Wilson shared his thoughts with his boss.

  “Sir, what puzzles me is, why did he make that remark about bashing women?”

  He never saw her before she was taken off to A&E and we are the only ones that the police doctor has spoken to since he talked to the A&E people.”

  Inspector Linham had missed that point, but he was not going to admit that to Wilson. So he quickly moved on.

  ”I know that Roach is starting to look like he fits the frame for this one, and his whereabouts on the night that Chalmers secretary, Janice, was attacked, seems a bit vague now I think about it. We’ll have to keep a close eye on our Mr. Roach. But for now it’s time we had a chat with Jack Welsh before we take time out for a cup of tea. Let’s see what he has to say about himself. He got the job here only a few months before that caretaker got killed in that accident. He seems a bit of a rough sort in spite of all his ‘yes sirs’ and ‘no sirs’. Bit of an old soldier in more ways than one, and I bet he would have loved the command ‘take no prisoners’. Just up his street don’t you think? Let’s have him in, Wilson.”

  Jack Welsh had been expecting to be questioned. He was well used to interrogations and knew how to deal with them. He had gone through the army training courses on what to do when captured and tortured. Name, rank and number, he knew the drill. Linham adopted a friendly approach as he knew it was probably not what Welsh was expecting.

  “Good morning Mr. Welsh. Thanks for coming up to talk to us. We know how busy you must be what with all the development works and the incident this morning. Can you tell us if you have noticed anyone following Miss Ryman-Jones around, or any signs of harassment? She is an attractive woman and I expect with all the workers on site and that she got a lot of attention.”

  This threw Jack a bit as it had not crossed his mind that the police would take that approach.

  ”No sir, not what I can recall,” said Welsh.

  During his army career he had often been accused, by his senior officers, of what they called in the army ‘dumb insolence’. It referred to a situation where a soldier gave the minimum answer to a question with just a hint of sarcasm in their voice that was in effect saying ‘sod you mate I’m keeping my mouth shut over this one. The more I say the deeper I will get in the clag’.

  Wilson took over the questioning as sometimes it put people off their guard.

  “Did you ever have any reason to confront or argue with Miss Ryman-Jones?”

  Jack never hesitated in replying.

  ”No Sergeant. I never ‘ad any real contact over than saying good morning if I saw ‘er.”

  Wilson kept pressing.

  “If it turns out that she was attacked and that it was not an accident, can you think of anyone who might have had reason to do such a thing?”

  Jack always found it hard to resist getting what he saw as his senior officers, in this case the University academics, into trouble.

  ”Well sir, I’m not sayin anyfing is certain ‘ere, but I know that she ‘ad trouble wiv

  Doctor Stocker over in the music school, or so I ‘eard from some of the cleaners over there.

  And she ‘ad a few rows with that contractor Mr. Roach,” he said, trying to look as though he was trying to recall some incident or other. After a pause for effect he went on.

  “And that Professor Chalmers was always chatting ‘er up.” He added a shrug to indicate that all this was none of his business. But now he thought it’s time to put Professor Eggleton in the frame.

  “I heard ‘er rowin’ wiv Professor Eggleton only the uver day. Those women round ‘ere are always arguin’. If you ask me they’re all jealous. Like a bunch of wild cats once they get goin’, sir.” He smiled inwardly at his skill at putting everyone in the frame and making himself appear to be blameless.

  Then Jack realized that he had broken one of his golden rules and said more than he had intended. For once he had slipped and had let his eagerness to impress take control over his determination to say nothing. Inspector Linham took over the questioning.

  ”Quite a list Mr. Welsh, but can you tell us more about Doctor Stocker. Everyone on site seems to know that they rowed quite recently.”

  Jack was now in a quandary. He wanted to keep Stocker away from any police spotlight since he didn’t know how much Stocker would spill to the police about the story he had told him about the Will and Jack’s determination to find it before Ryman-Jones got there. Jack struggled to regain the high ground that he was in danger of losing.

  “I don’t know anyfin about that sir. There is a lot of gossip going on wiv all the staff and their petty intrigues so I try to stick to my job, sir, as it’s what I’m paid to do.” He said, with a more servile note to his voice.

  Inspector Linham could see that Jack Welsh was not going to incriminate himself and that the style he had adopted was to blame everyone else in order to put a smoke screen around his own possible misdeeds, assuming that he had committed any. But Linham made one more lunge to see if he could break down Welsh’s guard.

  ”Just before you go, Mr. Welsh. Were you satisfied that our enquiries into that accident with the caretaker had cleared up the matter? Is there anything that you think that we overlooked?”

  He saw Jack Welsh flinch. The last thing that Jack had expected was a question about something that he was trying to put at the back of his mind. Welsh put on his most servile voice.

  “Yes sir, as far as I could see you did your best for the poor sod, begging your pardon sir. It was just one of those unfortunate fings. It ‘appens when you’ve ‘ad a busy day and you are just lockin’ up. Sometimes even I get dizzy at the top of those stairs, probably all that stress in Bosnia, sir, and it would only take someone to knock into you and you would go tumbling down the stairs and could easily break your neck. Being a caretaker ‘as its dangers sir; you never know when you might ‘ave an accident. All part of the job, sir. Not that I ‘ave any complaints.”

  ”The Inspector could see that he had got more out of Welsh than he had anticipated. No one in the enquiry into the caretaker’s death had suggested that he had bumped into someone. His suspicions that Jack Welsh might have also been at the top of the stairs in Kenry House on the night of the caretaker’s death now became a distinct possibility. If it was the case, then what on earth was he doing there? Was it a simple accident, and Jack Welsh had been too scared to own up, or was it that he was up there searching for something to steal and had been disturbed? Well for now he had more urgent things to worry about. If Jane Ryman–Jones’ injuries turned out to be fatal, then there could be a killer lurking out there.

  Ralph had been waiting at the hospital for four hours when the nurse came out to tell him that Jane had regained consciousness. The waiting had seemed like an eternity for Ralph. He had cast his mind back over their days at Cambridge together. The runs in the park on those Autumn days with the leaves crunching under their feet as the sunlight fil
tered through the bare branches on the tall trees. Those afternoons when they ate muffins in front of a log fire in his apartment. The feeling of calm and happiness that he always felt when they were together. And how happy and complete he had felt when they were out for dinner at the Mitre. The memories kept crowding into his mind. He wracked his brain to think of anyone who would have wanted to harm her, but the thought that anyone could do this to her was overwhelming for him. If he had one wish, above all he wanted Jane to be alright. He even allowed himself to hope that they could then get back together and rebuild a relationship.

  The nurse then came out to tell him that although the police constable had instructions not to let anyone talk to her before his Inspector arrived she could see no harm if Ralph had a quick word while the constable was having a cup of tea in the canteen. She obviously thought Ralph was the husband, and he was surprised that it pleased him, in spite of the serious reason for being here in the first place.

  As he walked in, Jane tried to sit up. But before he could say a word, she almost shouted out to him.

  “Ralph they told me that you were here. I am so glad that I can tell someone about what happened. I was just going to take a look in the ice house before anyone got into college and it was just light. I heard someone’s footsteps and as I turned I must have slipped on the wet grass on the ice house mound. As I went down I thought I saw a man by the trees but then I must have blacked out.”

  Ralph wished that she would just rest but she continued to tell her story.

  ”But I want to tell you, Ralph. I deciphered the writing on the slate and made a drawing of it. It turned out to be a plan. It was Arabic just as you said. It was a message about some precious items being hidden in the ice house and that whoever found the message should let the Bryman family know. I realized that he was one of the officers that you mentioned had been involved in that police and army investigation back all those years ago. I wanted to take a look before I spoke to anyone. I know it was silly, and hardly professional, but I got so excited I just had to go and look. Will anyone be there to find my map?”