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Judgment of Murder: A Rex Graves Mystery © 2016 by C. S. Challinor.
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First e-book edition © 2016
E-book ISBN: 9780738751009
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Challinor, C. S. (Caroline S.), author.
Title: Judgment of murder: a Rex Graves mystery / C. S. Challinor.
Description: Woodbury, Minnesota: Midnight Ink, [2016] | Series: A Rex
Graves mystery; #8
Identifiers: LCCN 2016026848 (print) | LCCN 2016032125 (ebook) | ISBN
9780738750095 (softcover) | ISBN 9780738751009 ()
Subjects: LCSH: Graves, Rex (Fictitious character)—Fiction. |
Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3603.H3366 J86 2016 (print) | LCC PS3603.H3366 (ebook)
| DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016026848
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Joel A. Gonzales, friend and attorney, for setting me straight on a few points of law and other things. Sincere gratitude also to my editor, Sandy Sullivan, for her extraordinary patience and diligence, and for helping keep track of Rex Graves’ to-ing and fro-ing between Edinburgh and Canterbury.
Not least, retrospectively, to Connie Hill, for her editorial assistance with past titles. May she be deservedly enjoying her retirement.
~~~
A starless night steeped the lawn and summerhouse in deepening shades of darkness and no lights shone from the residence. A human shape scaled the cast-iron drainpipe, raised the window, and climbed inside, disappearing behind the curtains. An early autumn breeze chased fallen leaves across the path as the distant murmur of traffic dispelled the near silence. Five minutes later, the shadow emerged and made a slow and careful descent down the white stucco wall.
~~~
One
Hon. Lord Gordon Murgatroyd QC, 80, passed away peacefully at his home in Canterbury, Kent, early yesterday morning.
Rex Graves set the newspaper down on his desk, leaving his hand resting on the obituaries page. So the old judge had passed away, he mused with a sense of regret. On many an occasion, Rex had prosecuted under his eagle eye at the High Court of Justiciary, Scotland’s supreme criminal court, and had found him to be a rather caustic and cantankerous man. Universally considered severe in his sentencing, “Judge Murder” had been Murgatroyd’s sobriquet, uttered with trepidation in the halls of justice.
Yet for some reason unknown to Rex, the judge had taken a shine to him, giving him terse pointers and sage advice in the privacy of his chambers.
He left behind a daughter, Phoebe Wells, whom Rex had met a few times in the past. She had moved from Edinburgh when she got married and now lived in Canterbury on the southeast coast of England. Her husband had been a renowned psychiatrist.
Rex spent some minutes on the phone locating her number through directory enquiries. Once obtained, he made the dutiful call.
“I don’t know if you remember me, Mrs. Wells,” he began when she answered. “Rex Graves QC. I wanted to offer my deepest condolences. Your father took me under his wing when I started out and he taught me a lot.”
“Of course I remember you! It’s so kind of you to ring. Not many of our old acquaintance have, you know.” Phoebe Wells spoke in a cultured voice, with the slightest of lisps. “There’s to be a small service on Monday. Can you come down?” she asked in the next breath. “My father liked you, and he didn’t like many people.” She laughed awkwardly. “And, well, I’m troubled, you see.”
“Troubled?” Rex repeated in surprise.
“This might sound silly, but … ”
“Go on,” Rex prompted.
“Well, it’s just that Dad’s stamp collection went missing from his room the night he died. And his window wasn’t locked. He always kept it shut as he had a phobia about draughts.”
Rex attempted to collect his thoughts as Phoebe’s words tumbled out in a rush. This was not the conversation he had anticipated having with the bereaved daughter. “I had assumed he died of natural causes,” he ventured.
“Presumed heart attack,” Phoebe qualified. “Which could have been provoked by shock. I think someone broke into the house and suffocated him. In fact, I’m all but positive that’s what happened. I’m glad they put that bit in the paper about him passing away peacefully because I don’t want people phoning to enquire, out of morbid curiosity, how exactly he died. I’ve had newspapers and legal publications requesting interviews as it is. Did you see an obit or did someone tell you?”
“I saw the one in the Scotsman.” Rex quoted it.
“I always found Dad’s titles to be a bit confusing,” Phoebe Wells fretted at the other end of the line. “Oh, do say you’ll come,” she pleaded.
“It’s a bit short-notice, I’m afraid,” Rex replied. “I’ll be in court all next week.”
“Oh, I see.” Then, after the briefest of pauses, “How about next weekend? It would mean so much to me, and to Dad. I’ve heard you’ve had considerable success in solving murders.”
Rex sighed inwardly. He had been looking forward to a long-overdue game of golf with his friend and colleague Alistair Frazer. “Are you convinced your father was murdered?” he asked carefully. He could not see an eighty-year-old man being much of a threat to anyone, even if he had been known as Judge Murder.
Phoebe Wells spoke firmly. “I know my father was old, but much as I’d like to believe he died in his sleep, I just can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong. My late husband always said to trust one’s instincts. Physical feelings, he told me, never lie, and I’ve been feeling on edge ever since it happened; I don’t know—sort of jittery. But I need someone of sound judgement to properly air my suspicions to before I involve the police. I don’t want to appear paranoid.”
“I’m sure they would not think that. Your father w
as an eminent jurist.” Rex debated with himself for a brief moment. “I’ll come,” he agreed. He felt he owed it to the old judge. The golf could wait. Murder could not.
Two
The following Saturday, Rex took the early morning train from Edinburgh to London. At St. Pancras he boarded the High Speed Link to Canterbury West Station, which arrived less than an hour later.
With only his weekend bag to carry, and the weather mild and dry that day, he decided to walk to St. Dunstan’s Terrace, where Phoebe resided in one of the late Regency townhouses.
Pausing briefly on the pavement, he admired the spacious white residence adorned with grey shutters and a wrought-iron balcony running along the entire upper storey. He mounted the short flight of steps to the varnished red door and rapped on the heavy brass knocker.
A sturdily built woman in a plain black dress and black compression stockings answered the door. Rex was taken aback. Had Phoebe aged so much since he had last seen her ten years ago?
“Mrs. Wells is expecting ye,” the elderly woman informed him. “Please come this way.”
“Ehm, thank you,” he said, instantly disabused of his misconception. This must be the housekeeper. He followed her into the hall where he deposited his bag and removed his coat. “You’re from Edinburgh?” he asked. Her accent, thicker than his, was unmistakably Lowland Scots. “Do you get back much?” he enquired.
“Not as much noo.”
“And how do you like Canterbury?”
“I like it jist fine.” She led him into an elegant drawing room overlooking the quiet residential street.
Phoebe Wells, much as he remembered her, though now with wisps of grey threaded through her mass of dark hair, rose from an armchair. “The tea, Annie,” she instructed the older woman, who immediately left the room.
Phoebe welcomed Rex with a soft kiss on the cheek, stretching up on her tiptoes to accomplish the gesture, owing to his above-average stature. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you accepted my invitation. Have you had lunch?”
Up close, he noticed lines etched around her eyes and downturned mouth, a feature inherited from her father. As was the case with Annie, she wore black, accentuating her natural pallor. The coral lipstick and jade beads around the collar of her turtleneck sweater displayed the only colour on her person.
“A sandwich on the train,” he said in reply to her question. “I’m fine. Really.”
“Well, Annie will bring us some tea. You look well. In fact, you haven’t aged much at all. The same red hair, but perhaps more grizzly in the beard?” Mrs. Wells continued to study him. “It’s very distinguished,” she pronounced. “And with your height you can carry off a bit of extra weight.” She indicated for him to take a chair next to hers.
“How are you?” he asked solicitously, sitting down. “How was the service? I’m sorry to have missed it.”
She gave a wan smile. “It was a quiet but dignified send-off. Dad wouldn’t have wanted a huge fuss. He’s been retired for ten years and has lived most of them here, largely forgotten by everyone back home in Edinburgh.”
Rex privately disputed the notion of his being forgotten. Judge Murder was something of a legend in Scottish legal circles and often talked about, especially since his death. An American colleague had referred to him wryly as His Orneryness. Lord Murgatroyd may have been avoided by some after his retirement, but never forgotten.
“Dad became something of a recluse,” Phoebe went on, fingering her jade necklace. “He couldn’t go out by himself towards the end as he tended to wander about and get lost.”
Rex nodded in commiseration.
“In any case, it wasn’t safe for him to be out on his own. An old man was robbed and beaten to death on St. Dunstan’s Terrace shortly before Dad died.” Phoebe gave an uncomprehending sigh.
“Was the mugger caught?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think there were any eyewitnesses, otherwise the police would have released one of those composite sketches. I expect it was some yob looking for drug money. Anyway, the point is I couldn’t think who to invite to the funeral. But I bought Dad the very best coffin. Solid oak with beautiful brass fittings.” Phoebe blinked away tears and looked down at the pale, manicured hands clasped in her lap.
“Ye did him proud,” Annie remarked, bustling in with a tea tray, which she placed on the low table between the two occupied armchairs.
“Thank you, Annie. I’ll take care of this. She’s a wonder in the kitchen,” Phoebe confided to Rex when the housekeeper had left the room. “Especially in the baking department. Please help yourself to a scone,” she said as she poured the tea.
“How many years has Annie been in your employ?” Rex asked, splitting open a scone still warm from the oven. He helped himself to butter and strawberry jam.
“Two years. Before that I had a live-in student who attended the university. Michaela. She was supposed to help with Dad in return for free board, but she wasn’t very reliable. Annie came highly recommended by the family she charred for in Edinburgh. She had just lost her husband and wanted to move south to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren in Essex. In a place called Brightlingsea.”
“Never heard of it.” Rex munched into his scone.
“It’s a small coastal town. London day trippers own most of the beach huts along the shore, or at least they did when I was last there. But that was a long time ago, with my husband.”
“I was sorry to hear aboot Dr. Wells,” Rex said with grave sincerity. He had found him to be an astute and agreeable man on the few occasions he had met him socially in Edinburgh.
“His death was so sudden.” Phoebe sighed heavily as she restored her tea cup to its saucer on the table.
“I forget the circumstances,” Rex faltered in apology.
“An aneurism. It happened while he was preparing oysters for a party. I can’t bear to look at an oyster now. You never remarried, did you?”
“I’m engaged, as a matter of fact.” Rex smiled at the thought of Helen.
“Oh.” Phoebe stiffened in her chair. “How nice,” she added belatedly.
“So you still have doubts regarding your father’s death,” Rex stated, since that was the main purpose of his visit.
“Yes, and more so than ever. You don’t think I’m being irrational, do you? Dad wasn’t always an easy man to get along with, especially during the last years of his life, but I hate the thought of him suffering at some evil person’s hand and never knowing the truth.”
“Do you fear the killer might come back?” Rex asked with concern for her safety.
Phoebe shook her head in the negative, and then paused. “Well, I suppose I do in a way, although that’s not what’s been preying on my mind. I mean, wouldn’t I have been murdered at the same time if that was the intruder’s intention?”
“You were home that night?”
“I’m almost always home,” she said bitterly.
Rex feared this might be a long weekend and began to privately question Phoebe Wells’ motives for inviting him to Canterbury. Hopefully, her account of foul play was not pure fabrication.
An unlocked window and a missing stamp album were not a lot to be going on with, he reflected. The story about the old man being mugged in the street would have to be verified. In the meantime, he had little choice but to continue with his investigation and hope either to catch the killer or else catch Phoebe out in a lie.
Three
Rex fortified himself with more tea. “And your housekeeper?” he pursued, accepting another scone. “Was she also home the night your father passed away?”
“Wednesday is her night off,” Phoebe replied, setting down her teacup. “She went to the cinema with a friend from her Presbyterian church and stayed over at the woman’s house. I checked in on Dad before going to bed. He usually turned in by nine with his mug of Horlicks.”<
br />
“He was awake?”
“Sound asleep, and so I switched off his reading lamp. The coroner estimated his death as occurring in the early hours of the morning. He hadn’t seen his own doctor in over two weeks. That was for angina, and the nitroglycerine medication seemed to be working. I’m sure his condition was what led the coroner to conclude he had a heart attack.”
“You say a stamp album went missing. Anything else?” Rex looked about him. The drawing room was full of portable antiques and valuables, ripe for the picking.
“Dad’s watch,” Phoebe replied. “I mean, I can’t be sure since he was always misplacing things, but I haven’t been able to find it. I turned the house upside down again before you arrived. It should have been on his bedside table. It was the last thing he removed after his spectacles. Dad was obsessed with time.”
Rex recalled what a stickler for punctuality the judge had been in his courtroom. “What sort of watch was it?”
“A gold-plated wristwatch. A good Swiss make, but nothing fancy. The face was scratched, and I kept meaning to get it replaced. It had large numbers he could read.”
Rex stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “Tell me aboot the stamp collection.”
“Well,” Phoebe began slowly. “He kept it on his desk. He was still working on it. He had a filled album in one of the drawers. The lock wasn’t forced and that album wasn’t taken.”
“Was the one you think was stolen worth anything?”
Phoebe shrugged. “I know next to nothing about stamps. But it’s not as though he had a Penny Black, or anything like that. He would have told me if he had. The main attraction for him, I think, were the exotic places of origin and the appealing designs. A lot of them, though, looked very ordinary. He visited a local dealer from time to time before he became housebound.”
“Perhaps I could take a look at the completed album later, not that stamps are my thing either. And perhaps you could give me the name of the dealer to follow up on. Now, what aboot a will? Any incentive for murder there?”
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