by Tessa Dale
“Then there were the black cab records, Guv,” Dan Jones put in. “The town’s black cabs have to keep a record of every fare, and where they go. DC Stanton checked with the company, and they produced their records within a few minutes.”
“What did they tell you, DC Stanton?” Clever asked.
“Nothing at all, Guv. Not one of their sixteen cabs went anywhere near the Earl’s house that night.”
“I think you produced a very creditable effort, Sir Simeon,” the DCI told his suspect. “Considering the very short notice, you concocted a detailed story, but that is all it was… a story. When did you begin to think your nasty secret was going to be revealed?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“I have,” Clever snapped. “You and your accomplice must have been shaken when Peter Kerr suddenly showed up, asking awkward questions. Your partner in crime must have come to you, hoping you would help. After all, you were both in it together, and might well swing together.
“It was an old photograph that finally gave you away. I found myself looking at a very attractive woman, who once worked for Lady Maisie Vancleur in London. Peter Kerr’s mother identified her as Daphne Leighton, her housekeeper. This made me wonder. Every single person who spoke about her, after she came to work in Castleburgh, described her as a very plain looking woman, partially deaf, and with thick glasses and a tight, black bun.
“This was confirmed by some sketches sent to us by the editor of the Daily Mirror. Back at the trial of Peter Fornell, she was drawn by an excellent artist who saw her leaving the court. You see, in court, as was the fashion then, she wore a fine black veil over her face. Those who knew her from Castleburgh assumed it was the crone under the veil, and Peter Fornell, who had seen her in London, assumed it was the pretty woman behind the disguise. It was a desperate ruse, but it worked.” Richard Clever paused and gave Sir Simeon a quizzical look.
“Don’t think anyone will believe a single word of this,” he said, but he had begun to perspire profusely, and his right hand had started to shake, almost imperceptibly. Chief Inspector Clever noticed the muted crumbling of his man, and continued.
“You met Daphne Leighton at the London house, and began an affair with her, not Lady Maisie. We asked around, and some of your friends told us how fast you got through cash back in those days. You hit financial troubles, and decided to steal from your business partner. I think he was getting suspicious of your activities, and the only way out was for him to die.
“You arranged for Vancleur’s staff to be dismissed. You poisoned Lady Maisie’s mind against them. She was, from all accounts, a decent, but gullible young woman. Very unlike the portrait you painted. Then you suggested that Daphne was sent to Castleburgh, to help out until new staff could be engaged.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. I wired the Royal Canadian Mounted Police offices in Vancouver. It took them no time at all to locate Lady Vancleur. She kept the title, even after marrying her second husband. Maisie recalled that it was you who influenced her, and recommended Daphne was transferred.
“The scene was now set. All it needed was an alibi, and someone to throw the blame on. You arranged a reconciliation between Peter Fornell and his natural father for the evening of the dance. Then you made sure you were seen at the Masonic function.
“Enough people knew that Fornell was going to see his father, because he boasted of it. He must have thought his luck had really changed for the best. Once he left the house, Daphne Leighton, your accomplice, went into Charles Vancleur, and murdered him.
“The paper knife was a nice touch. I suspect Daphne had engineered getting Fornell’s prints on it, perhaps when she was still in London. Eleanor Catesby said he used to be around her a fair bit of the time. I suspect he had designs on her. Maybe she even slept with him to move things on.”
Sir Simeon Arthurson launched himself at the DCI then, but was immediately pinned down by Stanton and Jones. The look on his face was enough to make even the emotionally challenged Richard Clever realise something.
“Ah, I see. You really loved her. That was the bond between you both. No wonder you don’t want your wife to find out how you and Daphne were involved. You still love her, don’t you?”
“Go to hell!”
“She stabbed him, disposed of the murder weapon, and then used the letter opener with just Fornell’s prints on it. That was what convinced me that he had been framed. It should have had dozens of prints, from several people. Alan Herbert missed that, and so did what passed for our forensics people at the time. Things were going along very well, until you heard that Black Archie Morant was going to provide his friend with an unbreakable alibi. If Fornell was cleared, we would have to re-open the investigation.
“You dropped a hint to Alan Herbert, who tried to bully Morant, and was knocked back. Then he told you what had happened, and you parted company with twenty thousand pounds to keep Morant from saving Fornell. Black Archie lived up to his name and betrayed his friend… sending him to his death.
“So, Fornell was hanged. You were the Earl’s principal executor, and proceeded to cover your tracks regarding the thefts, and take over Charles Vancleur’s houses, land and share of the business. You told Maisie that Vancleur was not as rich as she thought, and offered to buy the properties. She wanted to go abroad, and needed cash, so, reluctantly, she accepted.
“You bought your knighthood soon after, took possession of the great house, and married well, but what about your partner in crime, Daphne Leighton? She had been the one to do murder, so was at your mercy. I think you kept her in some place close by, and kept up your sordid liaison. It was the best way to keep you both on side.
“Then we jump forward twenty odd years. Peter Kerr finds out who his father was, and decides to look into things. He asks around, without much luck, then stumbles onto Virginia Thrower.”
“Who the hell is that?” Sir Simeon snarled.
“One of the servants you had dismissed, years before. She used to be Peter Fornell’s secret lover for a while, but fell on hard times. Vinnie Morant realised who she was, and tried to get rid of her, but she had already done the damage. She told Kerr how she and all the other servants had been treated, and how a woman from London had been the sole domestic in the house when Vancleur died.
“The penny dropped. Peter Kerr believed his father was innocent, and the only other person there that night was Daphne Leighton. Therefore, she must have murdered Charles Vancleur. He pondered how to proceed. After all, why would the police believe him, after all those years?”
“You tell a good story,” Arthurson said.
“Better than yours, I think. Kerr made a fatal mistake. He knew who you were, and contacted you for advice. You were taken by surprise, arranged to meet him, and threw him off a cliff. It must have come as a shock when he turned up again, dazed and bewildered. By now, you had enlisted the help of Daphne Leighton once more. Together, you hanged him. He looked so much like his father that it must have felt like you were hanging him a second time. We will find Daphne, and bring her to justice.”
“Daphne Leighton died years ago,” Sir Simeon said, confidently. “Check the records. As for your theory about Peter Kerr, you don’t have a shred of proof. With Daphne dead, your case will never hold up.”
“Records can be faked,” DCI Clever replied, but, in the back of his mind a small alarm bell was ringing. He had overlooked something, and it would take a while for him to figure out just what it was. “That’s enough for now. We’ll resume later.”
“Guv?” Dan Jones said, once the suspect had been returned to his cell. “Why stop now? You had him on the ropes. We can prove Fornell was innocent, and that points to Daphne Leighton’s guilt.”
“Yes, I know, Dan,” Clever replied, “but there is more to this than I thought. I need to sit in a quiet room and pull my thoughts together.”
“But, Guv…”
“That’s enough, Sergeant Jones!” the DCI snapped, and went off to his
office in search of solitude. Behind him, Stan Stanton turned to his sergeant with a bemused look on his face.
“What is it, Sarge?” he asked. “I thought the Guv’nor had this case sorted. We’ve enough on Arthurson to hang him for at least one of the murders, and his partner in crime is dead.”
“Is she?” Dan Jones, like his DCI, had his doubts. Sir Simeon Arthurson was a good liar, and desperate enough to try one last ruse. “Simeon Arthurson knows he’s finished, but what is the one thing we really know about Daphne Leighton?”
“I suppose, in some odd way, they loved each other,” the DC replied. “Oh, I see what you mean. He’s trying to throw us off the scent. She’s still alive.”
“I think so. Let’s start digging into her ‘so called’ death,” Dan Jones told him. “It’s not hard to fake, especially when you are as rich as he is.”
“Yes, Sarge. I was thinking though… it’s just that…”
“Spit it out, Stan.”
“It’s about Peter Kerr’s hanging. Professor McFarland said there was something special about the rope used, and it was cut from a longer length. Would Arthurson be stupid enough to keep the remainder? The big house has stables at the back… a tack room would be full of gear.”
“Good thinking,” Jones replied. “Once we’ve finished looking for Daphne Leighton, we’ll apply to a magistrate for a full search warrant.”
“I took the liberty of doing that as soon as the Guv’nor set his mind on Arthurson being our man. It covers the house, grounds, and all outbuildings.”
“Well done, Stan. I can see I’ll have to watch out for my job with you around. Have you thought about taking your sergeant’s exam? Granted, you are a bit on the young side yet, but it would do no harm if you started studying now.”
“If I only had time, Sarge.”
“Things will ease up, once we’ve settled this business. They don’t call the Guv’nor ‘Clever Dick’ for nothing. We’ll just have to wait for him to have a think, and have faith!”
Chapter Twenty Eight
“Ah, here it is,” Sergeant Prothero declared, hoisting the dusty cardboard box file down from its high shelf. “We put all the old stuff up high,” he explained. “Then, after twenty five years, it goes to the central archives in either Carlisle or Workington, dependant on the alphabetical split.” He blew away the top surface of dust, and handed it over.
Dan Jones took the box and set it down on the Evidence Room’s single table. He opened it and began to read the top sheet, a final report on the death of Miss Daphne Jean Leighton on Wednesday, the 12th August, 1914. The Great War was days old and, it seemed, no one had time to bother with a straight forward traffic accident. The entire case had been handled by a sergeant and one constable. It was, Dan Jones thought, hardly the full force of the law.
I don’t know what we were doing back in those days,” he said to Stan Stanton, who was eagerly peering over his shoulder. “It certainly wasn’t police work. Everything in this ridiculous report is supposition. The brakes ‘probably’ failed, it says. No mechanical investigation carried out by us, and the body they recovered was burnt beyond recognition. The identification of Daphne Leighton was based on it being her car, and a handbag, conveniently thrown clear of the crash.”
“You think it wasn’t her then, Sarge?”
“It happened on a quiet stretch of road, and there were no witnesses to the actual crash. The car only hit a tree, yet it exploded like a bomb. It was completely burnt out, as completely as the body inside. Then we have Daphne Leighton’s handbag, conveniently undamaged by the inferno, used for identification purposes,” Dan Jones continued. “Inside was her appointment diary, a purse with her name stamped into the leather, and a pair of thick spectacles.”
“Local people barely knew her, and they saw her as a dark haired frump, who was deaf and wore glasses. She was, according to an unnamed ‘friend’, on her way to shop in Carlisle. A town where no one knew her. Why go with your disguise with you?”
“I don’t understand,” DC Stanton said.
“The glasses were a prop. Once you see a pair of thick glasses and a face devoid of make up, you are conditioned to think of Daphne Leighton. Any Castleburgh folk asked for her description would start out by mentioning the thick spectacles. They were placed at the scene to confirm Daphne as the body in the car.”
“Then it was all a set up,” Stanton said. “Dear Christ, who was in the car then?”
“We’ll never know. It seems that our love birds were quite comfortable with murder. The car’s driver may well have been their fourth victim.”
“The damnable woman changes like a chameleon,” Stanton concluded. “In London she is a beauty, then becomes a frump. We think she is in Canada, but we find that she was living somewhere locally. Then, to top it all off, she is supposed to be dead!”
They made their way back up from the labyrinth of cellar rooms that comprised the working underbelly of the station. Dan Jones was happy with his result. It had appeared to be a long shot, but his guess that Daphne Leighton’s death was violent, and merited a police report, had paid off. Considering her age at the time, it had seemed unlikely that she had died of natural causes.
The two detectives hesitated to interrupt their boss’s quiet contemplation, but DS Jones felt their news was important enough to warrant the intrusion. He raised his hand, ready to knock on the closed door, when it flew open.
“Ah, Dan. Where have you been?”
“Records, Guv. We found the report on Daphne Leighton. It was flawed, badly. I think she is still alive.”
“Of course she is. Get the car. We are going up to the house, with Stan’s warrant.”
“How did you know he’d obtained one?”
“I’m Clever Dick, remember?” Richard Clever savoured the look on their faces, then laughed. “He asked Sergeant Harris to countersign his request, yesterday. I was in the canteen, and Harris mentioned it to me, just to cover himself. Now let’s get going shall we? Tempus is definitely fugiting.”
Stan Stanton took the wheel, with Dan Jones next to him. Their DCI took off his glasses and spread his solid bulk out, across the soft leather back seat. He was, to the other two’s surprise, in an expansive mood, and ready to explain it all to them.
“It was Daphne Leighton who was the stronger one in the relationship,” he began. “I think she targeted Simeon Arthurson from the start. She wanted to be the cosseted mistress of a rich lover but, to her annoyance, found a weak willed, thieving scoundrel in her bed. I think she genuinely loved him, but they could not survive on what he had left. Besides, once Charles Vancleur knew he was being robbed on a huge scale, he would have his crooked business partner investigated, tried, and thrown into gaol.
“So she suggested a rather novel solution to their small difficulty. Kill Charles Vancleur, as soon as possible, and they could live happily ever after. The flaw was, she realised, that her lover, as Vancleur’s closest business partner, would be a prime suspect, so she agreed to do the deed on his behalf, whilst he obtained an unbreakable alibi.”
“I think we knew that, Guv,” DC Stanton said, confident now that he could say his piece. “They killed Vancleur, and stole everything he had. The widow was cheated, and left the country, and the only son was illegitimate, and unable to inherit as a right.”
“Correct, but Peter Fornell could still be a nuisance, asking awkward financial questions,” their DCI continued. “So they set him up at the same time, and he died for a murder he did not commit. Then came the division of the spoils. Daphne had to contrive a way of making sure her lover did not lose interest and cheat her of her share.”
“That must have been a pretty penny,” Dan Jones said. “The Earl was reputed to be worth several million pounds, and owned half of the shire.”
“Three million, two hundred thousand pounds. I checked with the probate office registry. There was a stipulation that, in the event of either partner’s death, the other would get it all, including the land and
factories they had. There were, however, two codicils to the document. One made provision for the Earl’s pretty, new wife, who received a lump sum of twenty thousand pounds, and a pension for the rest of her natural life.
“The second Codicil was rather more interesting. It stated, quite clearly, that the entire fortune would go to any children he might sire. It did not specify that his offspring had to be born legitimate. Charles Vancleur was estranged from him, but had openly admitted that Peter Fornell was his natural son to several of his friends. So, Fornell simply had to go too. A convicted murderer is not allowed to inherit.”
“Then it should have gone to Peter Kerr, through his father,” Dan Jones argued.
“Not so,” Richard Clever paused before going on. “Peter Fornell actually married Ellie Catesby. It is a matter of public record that, prior to Ellie giving birth to her first child, the couple married in a registry office in Solihull. She was her husband’s sole heir at the time he died. As he was innocent, he must, in retrospect, inherit from the father who pre-deceased him by a few months.”
“My God,” Dan Jones was beginning to feel sick. “You mean Ellie Catesby will get the lot?”
“She set her son up.” Stan Stanton shook his head in disbelief, and spoke his thoughts aloud. “She hoped he would find something out, get Sir Simeon arrested, and take all of the money for herself. The cunning woman!”
“Stop talking such utter rubbish, DC Stanton,” Richard Clever said. “Despite suspecting Arthurson, she waited twenty three years before she made her move. Talk about patience. No, she did not connive in Simeon Arthurson’s downfall. She was little more than a footnote in our investigation. You have a very devious mind though, I must admit. No, the answer is far simpler than that.”
