“But,” Phoebe said, addressing the constable, “how else could those items have found their way into my father’s bed and desk drawer? My housekeeper uses thick yellow rubber gloves for cleaning. And what about the unlocked window?”
“Circumstantial,” the policeman apologized. “I’ll try to get someone to take a look, but I can’t promise anything.”
“Well, that’s that,” Phoebe said in a disappointed tone after he had left. “Unless you can come up with anything.” She looked at Rex hopefully.
“I am working on something, but it’s a long shot, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, well. Thank you for trying.”
Annie came in to collect the tea things.
“I don’t think anything will come of your discovery,” Phoebe told her.
“Ye did yer best, Mrs. Wells. Ye’ll make yourself ill if ye keep on, and then where will ye be?”
Phoebe sighed deeply. “I suppose you’re right, Annie. If Dad were here now he would probably say the same thing. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation for a hair clasp being in the bed.”
“There now, there may be,” the housekeeper consoled her, and carried out the tray.
“I take it you took her into your confidence,” Rex said to Phoebe.
“Up to a point, though not about Dad’s murder.”
Rex felt awkward making his excuses to leave, but he had done his best, and he had Helen to think about. He went upstairs and rang her to let her know he was leaving Canterbury on the next train to London, and then on to Derby. However, as he was getting his belongings together, Phoebe dropped another bombshell after calling him downstairs to her father’s old room.
Twenty
“I hadn’t noticed the wig’s disappearance before,” Phoebe said with a panicked look in her dark eyes as she stood before the carved wardrobe positioned perpendicular to the window. Beside it, an oval-mirrored dressing table displayed fabric samples fanned out across its gleaming mahogany surface.
“It was the one your father wore in court?” Rex asked from inside the bedroom doorway.
“Yes, a ratty old thing. I don’t know why he kept it. Or why he never bought a new one when he was on the bench. It’s not as though he couldn’t afford to replace it.”
“When you find a comfortable wig, it’s hard to part with, and they’re not cheap by anyone’s standard. I should probably change mine. Where did he keep it?”
“On the top shelf. The head’s still there,” Phoebe added. “Do you have a head for yours?”
“I do. It helps keep the wig’s shape.”
“I think wigs are rather silly myself. I can’t understand why they’re still worn in this country.”
“It’s part of the tradition. It lends gravitas to the important business of justice.”
Phoebe sighed in desperation. “Well, anyway, it’s not there, but I can’t remember when I last saw it.”
“Did you look in the wardrobe when you were searching for the stamp album and watch?”
“No, it only contains old clothes. I looked in it just now because I was going to sort through the contents to see if there was anything I could donate to Oxfam. The crimped spaniel wig Dad wore for ceremonies is still in its box. It’s just the bench wig that’s gone.”
Rex strode to the wardrobe to see for himself. As Phoebe had stated, a bare moulded plastic head and neck stood rather macabrely on the top shelf. “Perhaps your father got rid of it.”
“Why would he suddenly decide to do that after all these years?”
“I don’t know. It’s very peculiar. Especially in light of the other missing items.” Rex wondered why a thief would steal a worn-out old wig. “There may be some reasonable explanation,” he said, “Though it eludes me for now.”
Phoebe smiled. “Yes, it’s all a bit of a brain-teaser, isn’t it? If our intruder used a clasp, she must have had hair and wouldn’t have needed a wig.” She giggled and clamped a hand to her mouth. “Sorry, it’s nerves.”
Or booze, Rex couldn’t help but wonder. “Perhaps the judge had a secret paramour.” He chuckled.
Phoebe laughed along with him, which made her face look almost girlish, her black eyes shiny as liquorice. “Somehow I don’t think so.”
Rex’s hand coursed through the hangars in the wardrobe, which exuded a woodsy scent laced with lavender. Among the deceased’s clothes, and swathed in plastic, hung the judge’s red cape, faced with red crosses, over a white-trimmed red robe. “Well, let’s consider the other possibilities,” he said. “Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’ve missed?”
“Pretty sure. Should I report the old wig as stolen too?” she asked with a straight face.
Rex shrugged. “I suppose so. I do find it strange that only personal items are missing and nothing of greater value.”
“There’s nothing of value in here, apart from some of Dad’s books, and they’d be too heavy to carry out of a window. The burglar can’t have left the room or she would have found several antiques and ornaments downstairs.”
“You’re sure none of your jewellery was taken?”
“Absolutely sure. And thank goodness. She’d have had to come in my room while I was asleep, which I would have been in the early hours of the morning.” Phoebe looked frightened. “The thought of a stranger creeping around my bedroom is thoroughly terrifying.”
“And there’s no lock on your bedroom door, correct?” he asked.
“There is now. I had Alan Burke install one of those sliding bolts on Monday, that locks on the inside.”
Rex nodded. “Did your handyman ask why you were taking the extra security measure?”
“No. It’s not that unusual, is it? With me alone here with Annie … And he had to replace a washer in the kitchen tap, which had started to drip.”
Rex told her she had done the right thing putting in the bolt. “What’s in that box?” he asked, gazing at the top shelf of the wardrobe.
“Dad’s ceremonial wig.”
“Did you search behind it?” Better to find out now than to be called back later, he decided.
“No, I couldn’t reach.”
Rex groped around the back of the shelf and rummaged beneath the piles of clothing. He touched an envelope, which he pulled out and examined.
It was a rather old envelope, judging by the discoloured paper, and was addressed to Gordon Murgatroyd at Phoebe’s residence. Three abbreviated wavy black marks showed where postage had been affixed.
He turned over the envelope. The flap had been opened, leaving a few ragged tears, and resealed.
“I wonder who it’s from,” murmured Phoebe beside him. “And why isn’t it with Dad’s other correspondence?”
He handed it to her. “Why don’t you open it and see?”
Phoebe ran a red fingernail under the flap, which gave away easily, and drew out a single sheet of notepaper. “It’s in German,” she stated. “Looks like a woman wrote it. I can’t make out her name. Perhaps if I got my glasses.”
Rex fished his out of the pocket of his trousers and put them on. “Permit me. Not that my German is up to much, especially when it’s written in longhand.”
The letter was confined to one side of the page. “It’s addressed affectionately to your father and signed ‘Veronika.’”
“I don’t know a Veronika. What does it say?”
Rex perused the note, barely able to make it out, but it mentioned the word Tochter a couple of times and the name Elvie.
“Elvie is doing well at her university in Stuttgart,” he translated aloud.
“Who’s Elvie?”
“‘Our daughter’. I think that’s what it says.”
“No idea who that might be.”
“Did your father ever go to Germany?”
“He visited Munich a few times while he was still living
in Edinburgh. This was over twenty years ago. I think the trips had something to do with stamps. He was gone for a couple of weeks.”
“There’s no sender’s address. The letter must be important if he kept it. It’s dated five years ago.” Rex refolded the sheet and returned it to its envelope. “Perhaps your father misplaced it after removing the stamps. I could take it with me and have someone give us a proper translation.”
Phoebe shrugged. “Fine, but it’s probably nothing. He must have forgotten about it. Over the past five years it would have been almost impossible for him to get at the envelope, tall as he was. He had started to lose range of motion by then. Even you had to reach up.”
The light dust on his fingers suggested the shelf had not been cleaned in a while. He further wondered if he would find cobwebs on top of the wardrobe. He had difficulty imagining the elderly housekeeper balancing on a step ladder.
He suddenly remembered the time and went back up to his room to grab his bag before anything else came up to delay him. Phoebe drove him to the train station, talking about the hidden letter and racking her brains as to who might have sent it.
He called Helen from his mobile as soon as he reached the platform. “A short delay, but I’m on my way,” he announced. He told her what time to expect him at the station in Derby.
“Any further developments with the case?” she asked.
“Hard to say. The police may deem the evidence too flimsy to proceed with. And to be truthful, I’m not sure what to think myself. But Phoebe seemed more calm and resigned when I left her.”
“That’s good,” his fiancée said. “And what would you like to do with the rest of your weekend?”
“Just spend it with you, quietly at home.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Helen told him with a smile in her voice.
Twenty-One
That evening after a quiet dinner at Helen’s home, Rex lay content and relaxed beside her on the sofa. With her blonde hair, blue eyes, and a mouth prone to smiling, she was the antithesis of Phoebe Wells. His fiancée probed his neck with gentle fingers. A few tell-tale yellow marks remained of the bruising, easily covered up when he wore a shirt with a high collar, which was now open.
“Don’t say it,” he warned with a smile.
“What?”
“That I should be more careful.”
“Well, you should. Especially after last time.”
Clearly she was referring to the case a while back in Bedfordshire, where he had narrowly escaped with his life. “I came back in one piece then just as I did this time,” he pointed out.
She tapped his bearded jaw. “Next time you might not be so lucky.”
“Well, I’m letting the police take care of Dan Sutter, if they can find him.”
“And what about the judge’s murderer?” Helen asked. “If he exists.”
“Right.” Rex stretched out his arms and yawned. “And it is a big ‘if’. No sign of forced entry and nothing taken outside the bedroom. Possibly the intruder was scared off.”
“Scared off by what? You said only Phoebe was at home and that she didn’t hear anything. Maybe there was nothing to hear. Maybe she hid the album and wristwatch herself, and now the wig, to give her an excuse to get you down there.”
Rex had kept Helen apprised of every step in the case. “If that’s true,” he said, “it’s quite an elaborate plan.”
“Not really. I wonder what she’ll come up with next?”
“So you’re not prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her and smiling.
“I might if it weren’t so obvious she was after you.”
Rex shook his head pensively. “She told me aboot the missing album during our first phone call. I hadn’t seen her in over ten years and I don’t recall us ever having had a proper conversation. We just happened to be at some of the same social functions her father was attending.”
“Well, no doubt you made an impression on her, and then when you called to offer your condolences, she saw her chance, her being a widow now and probably having heard that you were widowed.”
Rex scratched his ear in puzzlement. “She does not strike me as a scheming woman. If anything, she’s a wee bit doolally.”
“An act,” Helen teased.
Rex saw that his fiancée was not being completely serious, and yet in all truth, the same thoughts had occurred to him. “Well, if Phoebe is not making it all up, I may be looking for a female housebreaker. It would not have taken much force to subdue an old man and suffocate him with a pillow. Forensic testing might reveal prints on the hair ornament or scrap of latex linking them to a known offender.”
Helen laughed and tossed her abundant blonde hair back from her face. “I’m sorry, but I’m trying to picture it: a young woman smothering an octogenarian for a stamp album, an old watch, and a scruffy old wig. If she was interrupted in her diabolical actions, why even bother with those things? She’d be out the window and away as fast as her murderous legs could carry her.”
Rex got the impression from Helen’s sardonic tone that, not only did she mistrust Phoebe’s intentions, she no doubt felt resentful because she and Rex had not been able to spend the whole weekend together. He decided the best thing would be to drop the discussion altogether.
“And then there’s the letter,” she added before he could do so. “Were you meant to find that?”
“I won’t know until I know what it says.”
He would have to find someone competent enough in German to render an accurate translation on the off chance the mysterious missive provided a clue in this most peculiar case.
Twenty-Two
That Monday morning, Rex knocked on Alistair’s door and poked his head inside the office, where his colleague sat behind his desk busily clicking away on his laptop.
“Sorry to interrupt, but how’s your German?” Rex enquired.
“Nine goot, I’m afraid. Why?”
“I discovered an old letter squirreled away in Gordon Murgatroyd’s wardrobe. It’s from a woman in Germany and mentions a daughter at university in Stuttgart. It refers to ‘our’ daughter, and there’s a long word I don’t recognize with the word for daughter in it. The letter is personal in tone, and I thought it might be pertinent to my investigation.”
“A love letter to Judge Murder? About a love child? Why, the old goat!”
“He was a pillar of rectitude and, as far as I knew, faithful to his late wife’s memory,” Rex remonstrated.
“How can you be such an idealist, Rex, when you see the worst of human nature every day in our profession? Even judges can deviate from the straight and narrow, you know. And he was a widower, after all, just like yourself.” Alistair reached out his hand. “Leave it with me. I know a native German court interpreter. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s been translated.”
Rex gave Alistair the envelope with his profound thanks and hurried off to attend to court business.
During the course of the day, he found himself turning over the letter in his mind. Did Judge Murgatroyd really have another daughter? He would likely have made some provision for her in his will if that were the case, and Phoebe had told him her father had left everything to her. Rex could not reconcile the stern judge in his wig and gown withholding the secret of a half-sister from Phoebe.
Late in the afternoon, he visited Pruitt in hospital to deliver the books he had promised. The patient was wearing a pair of black-framed glasses and what looked to be his own pyjamas instead of a hospital gown. The sticking plaster on his neck had shrunk in size, and he had more colour in his round face and bald, egg-shaped head.
“Sorry to be getting back to you so late, but I had to go to Canterbury.” Rex placed the reading material on the narrow bed and grabbed a chair. “I took the liberty of bringing you a book from Canterbury and also what you asked
for.”
Pruitt thanked him for the handsome tome on Scottish history and eagerly leafed through the glossy pages of photographs.
“How have you been?” Rex asked.
“Bored, mostly. My fellow patients are not a lively lot, as you can see. And there’s constant interruption which prevents me from sleeping, what with doctors’ rounds, nurses coming in for this and that at all hours, and a stream of visitors—though not for me.”
“I think the police are rigorously monitoring who sees you. It took a bit of persuading before I was let in.”
“Oh, that could be it,” Pruitt said, letting out his breath. “Better safe than sorry, eh? Dan Sutter is a devious and dangerous man. Any news on that front?”
“He’s still evading the long arm of the law. The police are searching for him far away from here.”
“I heard.” Pruitt furrowed his brow. “He must be desperate. I don’t think he has family in northwest Scotland.”
“You said you had retained the services of a private investigator. Presumably you have information on Sutter’s background?”
“I do. It’s not a stellar background. Grew up poor, left school early, in and oot of Borstal for theft, and then ten years inside for breaking into that house with a weapon.”
“Can you elaborate on that if it does not hurt too much to speak?” Pruitt’s voice sounded a bit stronger, though it still held the reedy quality Rex remembered from their first phone conversation.
“My throat’s much better. I’m being discharged tomorrow. The wound will leave a scar, but it won’t be too noticeable when I wear a bow tie. It will all be worth it if Dan Sutter is caught and confesses to abducting and murdering April Showers.” Pruitt smiled with satisfaction. “Then everyone will be sorry they never believed me.” He paused. “Where were we … ? Aye, the lesser charge Sutter went down for, instead of attempted assault on a minor … ”
He reached for his beaker and took a protracted sip of water while Rex waited. Clearly the man had a flair for the dramatic, as he recalled from the media coverage ten years ago. Pruitt carefully replaced his plastic cup by his bedside and began to speak again.
Judgment of Murder Page 9
