The Magic Chair Murder

by Diane Janes

  ‘Good. If you hear any paper rustling, it’s because I’m looking at my notes. I wrote it all down when I got home so that I wouldn’t forget anything.’

  ‘Well done. I’m all ears. I’ve got my notebook and a pen on one side and a glass of port on the other.’

  Fran laughed. ‘And I’ve got a G and T.’ She began by trying to tell him Linda’s life story in chronological order, checking backwards and forwards in her notes to make sure she got everything right. He mostly listened in silence, only occasionally interrupting with a question or a minor exclamation of surprise.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘that certainly opens up a whole new can of worms. Look, I’ve got an empty glass. Why don’t I fill it up again and ring you back in say … four minutes. Is that long enough? How far do you have to walk to get a refill?’

  ‘Only about six feet. I’m sitting right next to the kitchen door but I haven’t finished my first glass yet.’

  ‘Oh, come on, you’ve got to keep up. Anyway, I’ve got two flights of stairs to cover, so you’ve got extra time to empty your glass.’

  ‘Two flights of stairs? Where on earth do you live – Buckingham Palace?’

  ‘A very tall, thin townhouse, and my den’s almost in the attic. Come on. Back on the line with refills in four minutes.’

  His bossiness made her laugh. Some people were stilted on the phone, but talking with Tom was easy. Almost as good as having him there in the room … something else which was never going to happen.

  ‘I’ve got something else to tell you,’ she said when she was back in position on the sofa with her legs folded under her, feeling very slightly unsteady from gulping down her previous gin and tonic at speed.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you too – something I was going to tell you before, that Marcus Dryden told me when I was at Furnival Towers last week. Don’t let me forget this time.’

  ‘Very well then, but me first.’ She told him about Stephen Latchford’s three visits to the cottage and his behaviour on the way back from the conference, when he had appeared at the station and tried to persuade her not to take the train. ‘And until recently,’ she concluded, ‘he lived very near to Linda Dexter.’

  Tom didn’t seem inclined to take it seriously. ‘I think you’ve got to remember that he’s new to your area. He’s a lonely sort of chap, I’d say, a bit of a latcher-on and rather lacking in normal social skills. Hence this idea that you can come into someone’s house round the back way. As you well know, there are an awful lot of people who never use their front doors except for weddings and funerals, and I’ve always had a feeling that the chap’s not exactly out of the top drawer. Combine that with the fact that he probably doesn’t know many people round the neighbourhood yet, and add in that you’re an attractive woman, apparently unattached, who shares his interest in Robert Barnaby. If you don’t make him particularly welcome, he’ll soon get the message. As for what happened on the way back from the conference, I might have done the same myself to save someone a roundabout railway journey if I realized that we were both going the same way. You would probably have forgotten all about it by now if he hadn’t started dropping in.’

  ‘He makes me feel uncomfortable.’ Why didn’t Tom understand? Mo did. Because Mo’s a woman and Tom isn’t, said a voice in her head.

  ‘I expect you’ve done enough to put him off by now. He probably won’t come round again,’ Tom said.

  ‘I hope not. Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, he’s a suspect. He was at the hotel that night, in a room just across the corridor from Linda.’

  ‘All right then.’ Tom’s tone had ‘humour her’ stamped all over it. ‘I’ll add him to my list. It’s getting longer all the time. You remember when I said that Marcus Dryden let slip something interesting when I stayed at the Furnival Towers Hotel, the night before the committee meeting?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, it seems that on the Friday evening of the conference, Sarah Ingoldsby was in the hall when Linda Dexter first arrived. Marcus Dryden was in attendance, doing his mine host bit while people were checking in; and while he was welcoming someone else, he overheard Sarah Ingoldsby say to Linda, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.” Apparently the two of them started having some sort of bust-up, right there in the lobby.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Marcus didn’t know.’

  ‘What made him tell you about this?’

  ‘I don’t think he meant to. I got him talking in the bar and I said something about Linda not seeming to have an enemy in the world and always getting along with people, and he said yes, she’d always seemed on good terms with everyone, except for this one incident.’

  ‘Did he seem to think it was important?’

  ‘No. I don’t think he attached any significance to it at all. Well, who would? Sarah Ingoldsby may be Little Miss Snappy but she’s also a complete ninny. You can’t honestly imagine her killing somebody and then setting fire to their car.’

  ‘True. But she has to go on your list of suspects, just the same.’

  ‘The way things are going, I’ll have to start a second page. We’ve got Hugh Allonby, Sarah Ingoldsby …’

  ‘The other thing is that although you called her Little Miss Snappy a minute ago, she’s actually a Mrs. There’s definitely a Mr Ingoldsby, because I remember her mentioning him once, ages ago.’

  ‘And there’s also a Mrs Allonby.’

  ‘Precisely. And as we said before, it’s most unlikely that Mr Ingoldsby or Mrs Allonby would be too pleased to hear about the Sarah–Hugh connection. The society provides the perfect cover for their affair. He can say he has to be involved because of his books and she probably tells her husband she has to attend things on behalf of the museum, because of the Barnaby archive. Suppose Linda threatened to spill the beans?’

  ‘Blackmail!’ Tom said, as if he was relishing the thought of a particularly luscious slab of chocolate cake.

  ‘It’s a bit far-fetched, I know …’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. We can’t necessarily assume that Mr Ingoldsby and Mrs Allonby are in complete ignorance. Some couples arrive at … unusual arrangements.’

  Fran was trying to decide if he was laying particular emphasis on this phrase when he abruptly turned to another topic. ‘You were the one who suggested that Linda present a paper to the conference. You’ve never told me how you came to know about her research in the first place.’

  ‘There’s nothing much to tell. We were having coffee together at that meeting in Durham – the one where we had that visiting Professor of Literature from Australia.’

  ‘I couldn’t make it to that meeting.’

  ‘That’s right, you weren’t there. Linda and I happened to be the only ones left sitting at a table and we were just making conversation. She said that she’d been doing some really interesting research about Robert Barnaby and his sources. She didn’t tell me anything specific, but because we’re always on the lookout for new people to take part in the conference programme, I asked her if she thought there was enough material for a lecture, and when she said there was, I asked if she would mind me putting her name forward.’

  ‘You’re sure that she didn’t give you any inkling of what it was about?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘And no one overheard you?’

  ‘There wasn’t anything to overhear. Why?’

  ‘Because it has occurred to me that in order to want to stop Linda from giving her talk, you’d have to have a pretty good idea of what she was going to say. Anyway, let’s get back to that list of suspects.’

  She heard the rustle of a piece of paper at the other end of the line and smiled to herself. He really had got an actual list.

  ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Back to the suspects. There’s the sister, Christina Harper.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. She gets the money. Money’s always the number-one motive. In fact, there’s a funny sort of pattern. One stepsister is gett
ing most of the benefit of the money until she’s murdered and someone sets fire to the evidence. Then her stepsister inherits – she gets killed and there’s another fire, at which point stepsister number three gets her hands on the loot.’

  ‘There was the better part of fifteen years in between. If Christina Harper did both murders, she’s been prepared to play a jolly long waiting game. Anyway, she was only a child when the Halfpenny Landing murders took place.’

  ‘Just thinking aloud,’ said Tom. ‘Then there’s the ex-husband, David Dexter. We don’t know anything much about him.’

  ‘Except that he’s dead.’

  ‘We’ve only got Christina Harper’s word for that at the moment. We ought to try and check.’

  ‘There’s an awful lot of things to check,’ Fran said. ‘Starting with Linda’s research. Then there’s the original murders, back before the war. There could be a connection to that which puts the Barnaby Society right out of it.’

  ‘Where would be the best place to look for the lowdown on that?’ asked Tom.

  ‘The local papers would have been full of it. I think they’ve got back numbers of the Westmorland & District Messenger in Kendal Library.’

  ‘I could come up and help you look at them,’ Tom said. ‘I can probably get up towards the end of next week.’

  ‘That would be good.’ For a moment, she thought of asking him if he needed a bed for the night but immediately decided against it. One did not offer unaccompanied male friends overnight accommodation and such an invitation could easily be misconstrued. She burned with embarrassment now whenever she thought of how she might have invited him up to her room at the Furnival Towers, and how dreadfully embarrassing it would have been if he had only made that remark about needing an invitation as a joke. I only like him as a friend, Fran told herself. He has a wife called Veronica and a son called William, named for the brother who was lost in the war. She had been the victim of an affair herself, and she knew that if she went down that road everyone would get hurt in the end, and herself probably most of all.

  ‘In the meantime, as I don’t live far from the Vester House Museum, I could pop in and have a gander at their archives too.’ Tom’s voice cut in on her thoughts. ‘It shouldn’t take too long to confirm Linda’s findings, as we have all the references and know what to look at. It isn’t like starting from scratch.’

  When Tom finally rang off the cottage felt suddenly empty, like a house when the last of the partygoers have departed and the host is left to clear everything away. Fran took her notebook back into the parlour and reached into the pigeonhole where she had put her Barnaby Society committee papers. In the course of the conversation, Tom had mentioned something about the next committee meeting and she wanted to double-check the date. The notes and doodles on the back of the last agenda caught her eye. Why did Jennifer Rumsey resign? She wasn’t sure why the question bothered her, but it did. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was almost ten. Was it too late to ring Jean Robertson? Miss Robertson probably fell into that category of older woman to whom a telephone call after nine p.m. would only be made to flag up an ailing relative or some similar emergency. Better to ring tomorrow evening. She would put it on her list of things to do. If she wasn’t careful, she would soon have to make a list of her lists.

  TWENTY-ONE

  There was a note of surprise in Jean Robertson’s voice when she discovered that it was Fran on the line. Their acquaintance had never stretched beyond the normal run of Barnaby Society activities, and this made it hard for Fran to think of a convincing excuse for telephoning. After giving the matter some thought, she had decided to tell Miss Robertson that she had been thinking about the reaction at the committee meeting, when she had suggested that they approach Jennifer Rumsey about resuming the membership secretary’s job if John James stepped down. ‘There was obviously some reason why we shouldn’t,’ Fran said. ‘And I wondered if it was something I ought to know about as a member of the executive committee. After all, it’s far better to be forewarned than to put one’s foot in it.’

  There was a brief silence, and when the older woman spoke again, her initially friendly tone had become cagey. ‘I don’t think there’s anything you need to know, as such. It was recorded in the minutes that Miss Rumsey resigned because she had a lot on her hands, helping to care for a sick relative.’

  ‘But that wasn’t the real reason,’ Fran prompted.

  ‘Miss Rumsey had a difference of opinion with the other members of the committee. It was a sensitive matter and the committee voted not to discuss it beyond the four walls of the meeting room. It’s never a good thing to start the rumour mill grinding or make the membership aware of tensions – washing dirty linen in public is always best avoided, don’t you think? Miss Rumsey said she would not be coming to society meetings of any sort in the future, so the problems she had been experiencing with her mother’s health seemed as good a reason to give as any.’

  ‘Can I ask what this argument was about?’

  ‘It was a confidential matter. It wasn’t recorded in the minutes.’

  ‘So, no good going back to Jennifer Rumsey for help if Mr James stands down,’ Fran said as brightly as she could.

  ‘No.’ Miss Robertson was obviously not going to be drawn.

  Fran tried Tom’s home number next. If his wife answered, so what? It wasn’t as if there was anything she shouldn’t know about, but it was Tom himself who picked up the phone. She told him about her call to Jean Robertson, finishing with, ‘I don’t know why this Jennifer Rumsey thing is bothering me, but it is.’

  ‘Why don’t you ring Jennifer Rumsey and ask her direct?’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not? You’ve spoken to her in the past at meetings. Tell you what, why don’t you say that you’ve heard that John James is about to step down as membership secretary and you were just wondering if her situation had improved, and if so, whether she might be willing to consider taking the job on again.’

  ‘But that’s lying!’

  Tom ignored the protest. ‘She isn’t going to say yes because it’s obvious that she’s completely fallen out with the society over something. The thing is that she doesn’t know you’ve already been warned off, so she will just think that you don’t know the score. She might even come right out and tell you what happened.’

  ‘Suppose someone on the committee finds out that I’ve rung her?’

  ‘They won’t. Why would she tell any of them? It doesn’t exactly sound as though she’s on friendly terms with them.’

  ‘It’s a funny old business,’ said Fran. ‘Jean Robertson sounded really uncomfortable. Of course, it’s probably nothing to do with Linda Dexter …’

  ‘Better to double-check, all the same. Her telephone number will still be in the membership list.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Fran didn’t have long to think. She scarcely had time to put the phone down before Mo rang wanting to know if she’d like to make up a four for tennis on Saturday afternoon.

  ‘Who with?’ asked Fran suspiciously.

  ‘At the moment, there’s only myself and Caro Lambert, who plays on the Ladies’ B team. I was going to ask Mina Hendry to be the fourth.’

  ‘Oh, go on then, count me in.’

  ‘Jolly good. How’s the sleuthing going on? What does Lord Peter make of all the latest clues?’

  ‘Lord Peter? What are you talking about, Mo?’

  ‘Lord Peter Wimsey, of course.’

  ‘Ah, I assume you mean Tom – who doesn’t have a Daimler, unfortunately. He thinks that I should ring Jennifer Rumsey.’

  ‘Is that the sister?’

  ‘No, sorry, that’s the ex-membership secretary of the Robert Barnaby Society.’

  ‘What on earth has the ex-membership secretary of the Robert Barnaby Society got to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re not losing the plot, are you, Fran – telling people your cat is cal
led Tiddles again and all that sort of thing?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I ever found out what the plot was in the first place. That’s the whole problem.’ She decided not to confide in Mo that earlier in the day, while listening to the news on the wireless, she had indeed wondered whether being so fascinated with the obscure manoeuvrings within the Robert Barnaby Society while the rest of the country was still worrying about who would be prime minister might not indeed be indicative of someone who had completely lost their marbles.

  She hadn’t been off the telephone for more than two or three minutes when it rang again. Now what? She picked it up rather impatiently. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Black, it’s Stephen Latchford. My goodness but you’ve been on the telephone a lot this evening. I’ve been trying to get through for about half an hour.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My telephone’s been very busy this evening. What can I do for you?’

  ‘It isn’t bath night, then?’

  For a moment, Fran didn’t know how to answer. The question was intrusive, inappropriate. Why did he constantly overstep the boundaries of good manners and normal behaviour? ‘No,’ she said abruptly. ‘Was there something specific that you wanted?’

  ‘You remember how you said I should call first, to check whether you’re at home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’m doing. I’m calling to see if it’s a convenient time – and if it is, I’m in the public telephone box out on the main road. In fact, I can see your chimney across the fields. I can be there in two minutes, in the car.’

  She sank on to the sofa as if poleaxed. How long had he been hanging about out there? Had he actually been spying on her? There was still plenty of light left in the sky, so the curtains weren’t drawn, and she couldn’t remember when she had last looked out of the window.

  ‘Well? May I?’

  ‘What do you mean?’