Eight
The next day, Rex was finishing up breakfast in the dining room when Phoebe joined him. She had discarded her dark mourning clothes of the previous day and wore a mint green pullover and soft brown slacks, which enlivened her whole appearance.
“I hope you slept well,” she said cheerfully as she sat down at her place mat opposite his at the oval mahogany table.
“I did,” Rex replied, folding the newspaper whose front page featured further details on Lindsay Poulson’s disappearance. “And I partook of your grand old bath.”
“Doug loved Victoriana, as you’ve probably noticed. This,” Phoebe said, reaching back to the sideboard, “is a Victorian nutcracker. Isn’t it fun?” She held up an iron crocodile whose jaws clamped shut when she opened its split tail. “The dining room is a bit formal for breakfast, but it was either here or the kitchen. I usually breakfast in my room.”
Rex took a bite of buttered toast. “No complaints here.”
She smiled sheepishly at him. “Sorry I got a bit wobbly last night. The Glenlivet went straight to my head! I’m not used to it.”
He waved aside her apology. “As long as you have no after-effects this morning.”
“Right as rain,” she pronounced.
Annie entered the dining room and asked what Mrs. Wells would like for breakfast. Phoebe said she would have her usual muesli and fruit. Rex declined more toast. He had eaten two soft-boiled eggs and three crispy rashes of bacon and was well content.
“Have you been up long?” Phoebe asked him as Annie cleared his plate.
“Since eight. I managed to complete your father’s crossword in the Canterbury Tales newsletter I found in my room.”
“Clever you!”
“I would have had more difficulty had I not visited the cathedral yesterday and refreshed my knowledge of its history. There were a lot of medieval references and obscure clues relating to Thomas Becket and the Plantagenet kings that had me stumped for a while.”
“Henry the Second turned on Becket for being too big for his boots,” Phoebe said. “But at least he died a martyr and got a sainthood out of it. Beheading and braining someone in a church is rather horrific, don’t you think? Mind you, killing someone in their bed isn’t much better. Annie, do you mind bringing more coffee?” she called to the housekeeper, who was on the way out the door to the hall.
“I did some initial research on my laptop regarding your handyman,” Rex told Phoebe in a low voice. “Couldn’t find any criminal background on Alan Burke. Thought it worth checking even though you said he hasn’t been to the house in a year.”
“And I don’t see what he would have had to gain by Dad’s death.”
Rex folded his napkin. “With no family besides yourself or many friends of your dad’s here in Canterbury to look into, there’s not much more I can do until I return to Edinburgh and speak to the clerk. His old chess partner might have been able to help us if he hadn’t been mugged. And Christopher Penn had not seen your father at his shop in a while.” He glanced over at his hostess. “Are you going to report the thefts to the police?”
Phoebe poured herself a mug of coffee from the thermal pot. “I’ll do that. Maybe his album and watch will turn up in a pawnshop, as you suggested. Anything interesting in the paper?” she asked, indicating the refolded Sunday Times at his elbow. “Is that the photo of the missing girl?”
Rex passed the newspaper to her. “The police are pretty certain it’s an abduction now. There’s no boyfriend in the picture, and an old brown and beige Iveco van was spotted driving around the vicinity of the school on Thursday afternoon.”
“Some pervert on the prowl, no doubt,” Phoebe remarked in disgust, shaking out the paper. She looked across the table at Rex. “Are we still going on our outing?” she asked more brightly.
“Ready when you are. I checked the weather and we could not have asked for better for a leisurely stroll.”
He kept Phoebe company while she finished her breakfast and afterwards he called his fiancée while his hostess went upstairs to find a pair of shoes suitable for their walk.
Located close to the city centre, Westgate Gardens comprised eleven acres of public park by the banks of the River Stour, providing a tranquil spot for families and couples both young and old. They had not gone far when the blue and orange flash of a kingfisher caught Rex’s attention as it flitted over the colourful flowerbeds that bordered the narrow expanse of water.
“I used to bring Dad here when he first came to live with me,” Phoebe said, taking Rex’s arm and ambling beside him along the gravel path. “He was able to get about without the use of a cane then.” She gave a heavy but not altogether unhappy sigh. “He so enjoyed the wildlife and the punts.”
They stopped to watch the long, squared-off wooden vessels glide by with their single boatman standing astern, steering with a pole as passengers bundled in parkas and fleece jackets took in the views from the water. Phoebe decided she didn’t want to go out on the river after all, which looked cold and uninviting even on this mild October morning, the breeze ruffling up ripples on the grey surface. Suddenly she shrieked and jumped backwards, eliciting surprised glances from passers-by on the path.
“Whatever is the matter?” Rex asked, following her fixed stare. He spotted a sleek rodent by the bank a second before it turned tail and disappeared among the plant stems. “It’s a water vole,” he said. “Quite harmless. It was more frightened of us, I think.”
Phoebe tucked her arm back under his and touched her head to his shoulder. “Doug said my fear of mice and rats was a socially induced conditioned response, but that doesn’t make my revulsion any the less. What about you? Do you have any phobias?”
“I do. Hippophobia. A fear of horses.”
Phoebe laughed as she drew him back to the trail. “Really? Why?” she asked with a quizzical glance.
“They have big teeth and unpredictable hooves, and they don’t like me. I got thrown from one when I was a lad, and, though I was not badly injured, I never felt the urge to get back on one.”
“I fear death more and more,” Phoebe confided gravely. “I lost my mum quite young, which was an awful shock, of course, but Dad’s death has given me an even greater sense of my own mortality.” She gave a deep sigh.
“He had a long life,” Rex said in an attempt to console her. “And an illustrious legal career that not many can boast of.”
“I haven’t done much with my life,” Phoebe lamented, staring at the path ahead of them. “Doug was the career-minded one, the brilliant psychologist. I simply made the travel arrangements and read drafts of his books, though much of it went over my head.”
Rex squeezed her arm with his. “They say behind every great man is a great woman.”
His companion smiled up at him. “Well, you do know how to cheer a person up, Rex,” she said.
Then he had achieved at least one small thing this weekend, he reflected. “Hungry yet?” he asked.
“Famished. It’s been a while since I had this much exercise and fresh air. It’s nice to be able to walk here from the house. I should do it more often.”
They found a local pub with a beer garden. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, brightening the grass and warming the wooden bench at the trestle table.
Phoebe loosened her gold-threaded green scarf and pulled a pair of sunglasses from her bag. “Now tell me all about your fiancée,” she said, turning towards him.
A girl came just then to take their order, a Guinness for Rex, a cider for Phoebe, and a Ploughman’s Lunch for two.
“Well,” he replied when they were alone again. “Her name’s Helen and she works as a school counsellor in Derby.”
“Younger than you?”
“By five years.”
Phoebe sniffed. “Brunette, blonde?”
“Blonde.”
“
Where did you meet?”
“In Sussex, some years ago.” Rex removed his jacket. “It was on my first private case. I was visiting an old school friend of my mother’s for Christmas. She’d converted her manor house into a hotel, and Helen was staying there with her friend Julie.”
“And when’s the wedding?”
The inevitable question. “It keeps getting postponed. It was all but set for this year, but other events got in the way. Helen can’t quite make the decision to pack in her job and leave all her friends and move to Edinburgh. She likes Edinburgh well enough, mind, but it would mean pulling up roots.”
“I pulled up roots when I left Edinburgh to get married,” Phoebe countered. “I don’t see why she can’t make the sacrifice. And you can’t move to England. It would mean giving up your QC-ship and everything you’ve worked so hard for.”
“Helen has worked hard too,” he said, rushing to his fiancée’s defence. “My mother, who’s getting on, would expect us to live with her. It’s a big house and she can’t afford its upkeep on her own, and so I live there most of the time.”
Helen, understandably, had reservations about such an arrangement. She was used to having her own place, and setting out on married life under a mother-in-law’s roof at their age was hardly ideal. However, there did not seem to be a viable alternative.
Phoebe rubbed a finger over a knot of wood on the table. “I could be persuaded to move back to Edinburgh, much as Canterbury has become my home.”
“Aye,” was all Rex could come up with. Was Phoebe hinting that he should be looking at her as a more suitable match? It made him think he had not been wrong about her behaviour after dinner the previous night. He spotted the waitress bringing their tray of drinks across the grass, adroitly sidestepping a toddler who was evading his fraught mother and chortling with glee.
“Grand,” Rex said, taking up his glass tankard of stout and sinking his lips into the foam, grateful that he had again been spared an awkward moment. He savoured the clean and bitter taste before letting the first gulp slide down his throat.
Phoebe sipped at her drink. Her sunglasses masked her eyes, but he felt she might be pondering her next move, which he would be forced to parry. Would she report the theft of her father’s possessions to the police or had she brought him to Canterbury on false pretences? He had not found any tangible clues in the judge’s alleged murder; perhaps because there were none to begin with.
Nine
When Rex left St. Dunstan’s Terrace to return to Edinburgh, all the media was talking about, on Annie’s television when he went downstairs to say goodbye and on Phoebe’s car radio on the way to the station, was the disappearance of the schoolgirl from Dover, now missing for three full days. News racks displayed photos of the dimpled fourteen-year-old, and posters had begun to appear in shop windows.
His own case was progressing no faster, and, much as he’d had an interesting time in Canterbury, he was glad to return to his mother’s house in Morningside where, as he had told Phoebe, he lived during the week and most weekends when not visiting Helen in Derby or staying at his country lodge in the Highlands.
Miss Bird, his mother’s aging companion and erstwhile housekeeper, met him at the front door.
He had called his mother upon arriving at Waverley Station and tea was waiting for him in the parlour, complete with the Royal Doulton china and paper doilies. He kissed his mother’s snowy head and sat down beside her.
“Now tell us all aboot your trip to Canterbury,” she said as Miss Bird, a diminutive woman with beady eyes reminiscent of currants, joined them at table and poured the tea.
He described the sights, specifically the ancient castle ruins and the soaring spires and stained glass windows of the cathedral. He remembered the engraving he had tucked among the clothes in his bag and which he would fetch down after tea when he unpacked. He went on to tell his mother and Miss Bird about Christopher Penn at whose shop he had purchased the souvenir, and he detailed the case Phoebe Wells had asked him to take on, without expressing his growing doubts regarding her motives.
“Not much to go on,” his mother concluded.
“Noo,” Miss Bird agreed. “And why did she not call the police if she thought her father was murdered?”
Rex helped himself to an iced bun from the three-tier cake stand. “She said she would file a report for the missing items, but she doesn’t feel she has enough evidence to bring up her suspicion of murder.”
“But the more time that goes by, the more evidence might be lost,” his mother pointed out in surprise.
“I agree, Moira,” Miss Bird said. “Either she believes it or she doesna. What are ye going to do, Reginald?”
Miss Bird had been their housekeeper since he was a boy, and she and his mother persisted in calling him by his given name, instead of its derivative “Rex,” which he preferred. Now that they were well into their eighties he had lost all hope of their changing the habit.
“Tomorrow I’m seeing someone who worked with Judge Murgatroyd,” he informed them. “Beyond that, I don’t know.”
“I remember Phoebe Wells as rather a highly strung young woman,” his mother commented as she poured him more tea. “I hope you’ve not embarked on a fool’s errand, Reginald. But I understand why you feel you had to offer your assistance. Her father did favour you, after all.”
She spoke in the genteel tones of Morningside ladies, which Rex often thought belied a razor sharp mind that had lost none of its acuity in her advancing age. Helen had remarked how his mother reminded her in appearance and depth of perception of Miss Marple, and Rex had laughed and been forced to agree. Fortunately, however, Moira Graves did not meddle in his cases, professional or private. She and Miss Bird simply liked to offer arm-length opinions and applaud him on his success when deserved.
Once again, he doubted whether success in this case was even an option, since there might be no case at all.
After tea, he went upstairs and rang Helen. One wall of his boyhood room had been knocked through to the next bedroom and the new space remodelled to accommodate a private bath and a small study-cum-lounge. His personal suite notwithstanding, his mother had designated a separate room in the draughty Victorian house for his fiancée when she came to stay.
He stood at the window, mobile phone in hand, gazing over the walled back garden where an ancient elm provided shade in summer. Blackbirds flocked to the grey stone birdbath on the lawn, which was now filled with rainwater. A wrought-iron feeder containing black sunflower seeds was attached to the outside of his window and attracted starlings and great tits, and on occasion a Spotted Woodpecker, which he liked to watch when he got ready for work in the morning. Helen answered promptly.
“Hello, lass, I’m back home. Did you have a good day?”
“I went jogging with Jill after we spoke this morning, and then met Julie for lunch. I was just watching the news about the girl who’s gone missing in Kent, not far from where you were staying.”
“Aye, Dover is about half an hour’s drive from Canterbury.”
“It’s not looking good,” Helen predicted. She counselled teenagers at her school and Rex understood this would be a subject close to her heart. “It doesn’t matter how often you tell young girls not to walk home by themselves, they think they’re immune from danger at that age. She was wearing her school uniform and carrying a satchel. You’d think someone would have noticed her crimson blazer with the school emblem if she’d run away. Unless she had packed some clothes and left them with a boyfriend her family knew nothing about … ”
“It appears more likely she was abducted. There’s even speculation she was taken to France and sold into the white slave trade.”
“Smuggling is easier with the Chunnel, I suppose,” Helen said despondently.
“Kent Police staffs a station in Coquelles on the French side to deal with border crimes,” Rex reminded h
er, referring to the village near Calais where the Eurotunnel terminal was located. “Hopefully, if it’s a case of abduction, the person or people involved won’t get far.”
“You seem well-informed,” Helen said in a way that told Rex she was smiling.
“I had time to read the Sunday papers on the train since I’ve not made much headway in my own case.” He relayed his suspicions regarding Phoebe’s intentions towards him. “I think she may have made up or exaggerated the part concerning her father’s murder. She’s clearly lonely after losing both him and her husband, and in need of company.”
“Be careful, Rex. I know what a big teddy bear you are, but she may mistake your kindness for something more and get her heart broken if her feelings are unrequited.”
“Well, of course they’re unrequited! I have no romantic interest in the woman.”
“I’m just saying … Remember what happened with Moira.”
Moira Wilcox, the girlfriend preceding Helen and who shared his mother’s first name, had attempted suicide after he broke up with her. It had been a tragic and messy business, and had almost cost him his relationship with Helen.
“Did she make a pass at you?” she enquired.
Rex scratched his ear as he stared across the garden now disappearing into shadow, lying as it did on the east side of the tall house. “Ehm, I’m not sure. She got a wee bit tipsy last night … ”
“And?”
“I think she may have hoped I might kiss her. But she apologized this morning. And she asked a lot aboot you.”
“There, you see? She’s jealous. Probably a good idea if you don’t go back to Canterbury.”
Judgment of Murder Page 4
