A Dreadful Murder

by Minette Walters

  Like Mary Stewart, she lived in a house overlooking the village green. But that was as far as the likeness between the two women went. Sarah Anderson was sixty-five and had no time for women who threw fainting fits. She was short and stocky, didn’t wear corsets, and spoke her mind in a forthright manner.

  She pointed to a chair when Taylor was shown into her sitting-room. ‘Sit down,’ she said briskly, ‘and tell me how I can help. If I understood Mary Stewart correctly, in between her fainting fits, you asked her for the names of ne’er-do-wells that Caroline met through her charity work.’

  Taylor was amused by her bluntness. ‘It’s one line of inquiry,’ he explained. ‘We can’t discount that her killer might have been a local man.’

  ‘If you listen to the gossip on the streets of Ightham, the local man was Caroline’s husband, Charles. They say he shot her because he was having an affair with a woman in the village.’

  ‘But you don’t agree?’

  ‘Hardly! Charles would never do anything so vulgar as to murder his wife. He’s a typical Army officer . . . likes to conform and follow the rules.’

  ‘What about having an affair?’

  Mrs Anderson gave a small laugh. ‘Same answer. He’s too afraid of scandal to go running after bits of skirt in his own back garden.’

  Taylor smiled at her choice of words. ‘So where did the rumours come from?’

  ‘It’s a good question. I asked my parlourmaid if she’d ever heard them before Caroline died, and she said no. They seem to have grown out of this absurd belief that Charles was the killer. Without a reason for why he might want to shoot his wife, people have invented one.’

  Taylor watched her for a moment. ‘It’s quite a witch hunt that’s been whipped up against him. Have you any idea who started it?’

  She shook her head. ‘You’ll have to go to the pubs for that. My servants tell me they talk about nothing else in the George & Dragon.’

  ‘And they all think the Major-General’s guilty?’

  ‘As far as I can tell.’ She paused. ‘It’s his own fault. He turned up his nose at the common people and left Caroline to deal with them. Now they’ve turned her into a saint and him into the devil.’

  ‘Was she a saint?’

  ‘Of course not. She was as snobbish as he is.’

  ‘But knew better how to hide it?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Sarah Anderson stood up and went to a desk in the corner of the room. ‘I’ve made a list of families who fall into the sort of group I think you’re looking for. They come from a wide area. In most cases, the wives have been abandoned to bring up their children alone . . . but the last two have husbands who become violent when they drink.’

  Taylor read the names and addresses. One of the families came from Ightham but the rest were in nearby villages like Stone Street or Borough Green. ‘Have you noticed any of these people acting oddly since the murder, Mrs Anderson?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Out of character . . . different from normal.’

  She shook her head. ‘They’re always on their best behaviour with me. It’s the only way they can be sure of getting money.’

  Taylor folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket. ‘They should be grateful you’re keeping them out of the workhouse.’

  Mrs Anderson gave a dry smile. ‘Do you think so, Superintendent? For myself, I don’t enjoy watching hard-pressed women bow and scrape just to put food in their children’s mouths. We should have found a way by now to give the poor a little dignity instead of asking them to beg.’

  Chapter Nine

  Friday, 4 September 1908 –

  George & Dragon, midday

  No one turned to look at Taylor as he walked into the dimly lit saloon bar of the George & Dragon. But he didn’t doubt the other customers were aware of his presence and knew who he was. Within minutes, most of what they said was being aimed at him.

  There were too many comments about the police turning a blind eye to ‘a certain person’ and the murder inquiry being a ‘farce’. Several times, the Chief Constable was referred to as a rich man’s ‘stooge’ and the police as ‘useless’.

  Taylor folded his felt hat and tucked it into his pocket, giving a friendly nod to the landlord. He ordered a pint and leant on the bar while the man pulled his beer. ‘Did any of your customers attend the first inquest?’ he asked.

  ‘What if they did?’

  Taylor shrugged amiably. ‘They’d know the Major-General has an alibi for the time of his wife’s death.’

  The landlord glared at him, clearly on the side of his customers. ‘No one believes it.’

  Taylor took a sip of beer. ‘So who’s the loudmouth in the corner? He seems to have a down on anyone connected to the case.’

  The landlord flicked a cloth across the bar. ‘John Farrell. He’s only saying what he believes. Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘Until he incites a lynch mob to hang the Major-General from the nearest tree,’ Taylor replied, flicking a glance at the big man who was holding court at the far table. Whenever he spoke, the lesser men around him listened. ‘What’s his problem with Luard? Why is he so hostile?’

  ‘Same as the rest of us . . . reckons the old brute is getting away with murder.’

  ‘Except brutality doesn’t come out of nowhere. Did the Major-General make a habit of assaulting his wife? Does he beat his servants when they annoy him?’

  A hush fell over the room as if the other drinkers had decided to listen. The landlord shrugged. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘No,’ Taylor agreed. ‘They seem quite fond of him. It makes you wonder what his wife could have done that made him angry enough to shoot her.’

  ‘He was bored with her.’

  Taylor used his finger to wipe a trickle of froth from the side of his glass. ‘But why blow her brains out so close to home?’ he asked mildly. ‘If he’d waited a few days until they were on holiday, he could have pushed her off a cliff. Everyone would have believed it was an accident.’

  There was a brief silence before John Farrell’s voice broke in from the corner. ‘He wouldn’t have had the Chief Constable’s help in any other county.’

  With a lazy smile, Taylor turned towards him. ‘If that were true, I wouldn’t be here, Mr Farrell,’ he said. ‘You can’t have it both ways. If Henry Warde was trying to protect his friend, he wouldn’t have called in Scotland Yard.’

  The man spat on the floor. ‘You don’t know your arse from your elbow, mate. If you did, you’d have arrested the old bugger by now.’

  His words were greeted with a snigger by the other men at his table.

  Taylor eyed him for a moment then took out his tobacco pouch and calmly rolled a cigarette. ‘It’s quite a campaign you’ve got going against the Major-General,’ he murmured, running the edge of the paper across his tongue. ‘Did you start it or are you just mouthing someone else’s ideas?’

  ‘None of your business. It’s a free country. I can say what I like when I like.’

  Taylor lit a match and held it to the tip of his cigarette. ‘Even when you’re wrong? What if I say you killed Mrs Luard and you’re putting the blame on the Major-General to avoid being hanged yourself?’

  ‘You’d get my fist in your face.’

  Taylor shook out the match and flipped it onto the counter. ‘You have a bad temper, my friend. Do you lash out at everyone who annoys you?’

  ‘I don’t take lip if that’s what you mean. No man does.’ Farrell dropped a wink at one of his friends. ‘Except for the nancy boys at Scotland Yard who think they’re the cat’s bloody whiskers in their smart coats and pretty hats.’

  Taylor blew a smoke ring into the air. ‘You’re a big man. I doubt you’re challenged very often.’

  ‘That’s the truth of it. Do you fancy your chances?’

  Taylor shook his head. ‘I see too much violence in my job . . . and it’s usually aimed at women. The only way a stupid man can control his wife is by using her as a punchb
ag. We see a lot of that in the poorer parts of London.’

  Farrell’s face turned a dark red. ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘That the most likely type to have killed Mrs Luard is a drunken brute who makes a habit of beating women. He enjoys the power it gives him to see the fear in their eyes.’ Taylor smiled slightly. ‘Would you say that’s a good description of Major-General Luard?’

  The question was greeted with silence.

  Taylor pulled his hat from his pocket and pushed out the crown before placing it on his head. ‘Give my regards to your wife and ask her to expect me later today. Shall we say five o’clock? I need to talk to you in private, Mr Farrell.’

  The man looked uneasy. ‘Why?’

  ‘You seem to know so much about Mrs Luard’s murder.’ He tipped the brim of his hat to the other men at the table. ‘I’ll be calling on you all in the next few days, gentlemen. We can’t hold a second inquest until we have all the facts.’

  As he left, he was amused by the sounds of dismay that broke out behind him. He trod out his cigarette and double-checked the last name on Sarah Anderson’s list. ‘John Farrell,’ she’d written in neat handwriting. ‘He punches his wife and children when he’s drunk.’

  * * *

  Taylor tapped on the tradesmen’s entrance to Ightham Knoll because he didn’t want to disturb Charles Luard again. Jane Pugmore, the housemaid, let him in and took him to the kitchen, where Cook and Harriet Huish, the parlourmaid, were still red-eyed from weeping.

  Cook showed him the Major-General’s uneaten lunch. ‘He’s hardly touched his food since Mrs Luard died,’ she said. ‘He’s that low, he’s making himself ill.’ She picked up the plate and made to scrape the contents into a slop bucket.

  Taylor put his hand on her arm. ‘Don’t waste it,’ he begged. ‘I haven’t had a decent meal since I arrived in Kent.’

  The three women threw up their arms in horror and bustled around to take his coat and lay a place for him at the table. Jane pressed the Superintendent into a chair and gave him the list she’d made of people who had attended the first inquest. It was much longer than Sarah Anderson’s and, while he ate, Taylor asked the three women to mark which of the names would be most likely to write poison pen letters.

  He was surprised at how easy they found it to agree. They picked only women, and the comments they made while they did it told him why. ‘Bitter old spinster’ . . . ‘guzzles sherry in secret’ . . . ‘jealous as sin’ . . . ‘man-hater’ . . .

  One or two were ladies who claimed to have been friends of Caroline Luard, but most were what Jane Pugmore described scornfully as the lower middle class. ‘They think they’re above us servants,’ she told Taylor, ‘but it eats away at them that they’re not in the Major-General’s league.’

  He ran his finger down the page. ‘I wonder why poison pen letters are usually written by women,’ he murmured.

  ‘Because they marry husbands they don’t like and spend the rest of their lives picking fault with them,’ said Cook bluntly. ‘It turns them nasty.’

  ‘So why marry them in the first place?’

  ‘To give themselves airs and graces. The man who owns the shop that sells the cabbages is higher up the ladder than the one who grows them . . . which is what their fathers did.’ Cook poured water into the sink. ‘Most of the cats on that list are no better than I am, but you wouldn’t think it from the way they look down their noses at me.’

  It was the second time in three hours that Taylor had heard a woman express discontent about the way her society worked. Yet he wondered if either of them would have voiced her thoughts out loud before Caroline Luard’s murder.

  Had Caroline’s friend, Sarah Anderson, always wanted dignity for the poor? Or was it the shock of her friend’s death that had set her thinking about the divide between the classes? Had Cook always resented women who married above themselves? Or was she simply trying to account for the hate mail that kept dropping through the letter box?

  It seemed to Superintendent Taylor that Ightham’s sleepy calm had been ripped apart by a couple of gunshots. As if a close-knit family had turned on itself because no one believed the victim had been killed by an outsider. Instead of peace, there was war. Instead of mutual support, there was suspicion.

  ‘Could it have been someone from round here who killed Mrs Luard?’ he asked.

  There was a brief silence before Harriet Huish spoke.

  ‘Put it this way,’ she said, ‘there’s plenty more likely to have done it than the Major-General.’

  ‘Someone like John Farrell, perhaps?’

  Cook made a scornful noise in her throat. ‘It’s a miracle his wife’s still alive,’ she said. ‘He’s a nasty piece of work, and his son’s just as bad.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Will Farrell? Seventeen . . . eighteen. He goes out poaching with Michael Blaine from Stone Street. They’re as vicious as snakes and as idle as the day is long.’

  Chapter Ten

  Friday, 4 September 1908 –

  Ightham, afternoon

  Taylor made his way to Miss Amy Pegg’s house in the High Street. She was the ‘bitter old spinster’ of Jane Pugmore’s list, and Taylor understood why when he realised how lonely the woman was.

  She invited him into her parlour and he wished he had his constable with him. There was something slightly mad about the way the woman behaved. One minute she was cowering away, the next she was flashing her eyes at him like an ageing flirt.

  He wondered if her mind had gone, because she seemed to think he wanted to hear her life story. She told him rambling tales about growing up in Ightham, claiming Charles Luard had been her ‘childhood sweetheart’ before Caroline had stolen him away.

  She seemed unaware that the Luards had been married for thirteen years before they moved to Ightham Knoll, and that neither of them had lived in Kent before.

  But it wasn’t until she claimed she was giving ‘dear Charles’ all the help she could ‘at this difficult time’ that Taylor held up his hand. ‘We both know that’s not true, Miss Pegg. The only people helping him are his close friends and servants.’

  Her face became spiteful. ‘You mean Henry Warde, I suppose. He’d say black was white to protect Charles.’

  ‘That’s not true either,’ said Taylor. ‘You might as well accuse the police from Scotland Yard of not doing their job properly. Are you accusing me, Miss Pegg?’

  She wrapped her arms across her thin chest. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ she whined. ‘You’re a bully. I’m afraid of you.’

  Taylor took the hate letters from his pocket. ‘The only bullies round here are people who write poison like this. Do you want to explain why you’re one of them?’

  She stared at him with mad-looking eyes. ‘I’m doing God’s work.’

  * * *

  Taylor was left with a nasty taste in his mouth. All he’d done was pry into the misery of an unhappy woman. He had no better luck with the next person on Jane’s list – the secret sherry guzzler.

  She was fat and florid, slurred her words and told him she knew for a fact that Caroline Luard had gone to the summer house to meet a younger lover. The Major-General followed in secret and shot his wife out of jealousy when he caught her ‘at it’.

  Taylor didn’t believe this sexual fantasy any more than he believed that Miss Pegg had been Charles’s childhood sweetheart. There would have been two bodies on the veranda floor if Luard had fired his gun in the heat of anger. It was a rare husband who killed his wife but spared his rival.

  As Superintendent Taylor emerged into the fresh air, he made a mental note to listen the next time his wife told him she was bored and wanted a job. It clearly wasn’t healthy to sit alone with nothing to do all day.

  The irony of that thought hit him when he reached John Farrell’s door at five o’clock. The woman who opened it looked very ill, but not from under-work, he thought. She had a yellow bruise around one of her eyes, and was surrounded by half-starved, pa
le-faced children.

  Taylor didn’t need the smell of wet washing in the tiny house, or the sheets hanging on the line outside, to tell him she took in laundry for a living. The only time her hands were out of water, he guessed, was when she was asleep.

  He explained who he was and asked if her husband was at home. Mrs Farrell nodded to a curtained alcove in the corner of the room. ‘It’s best not to wake him.’

  ‘He knows I’m coming.’

  ‘Don’t make no difference. He has a bad temper when he’s in drink.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Taylor, stepping inside the door.

  There was only one room on the ground floor, though some rickety steps in the corner suggested a bedroom upstairs. Taylor pulled the curtain aside to expose John Farrell, fully clothed and flat on his back on a stained mattress. He nudged the man with his foot but got no response.

  ‘You have my sympathy, Mrs Farrell,’ he said loudly. ‘You made a rotten bargain when you picked this one.’

  If he hadn’t been ready for it, the man’s speed would have taken him by surprise. Farrell launched himself off the mattress in a roaring charge, fists flying.

  ‘A very bad bargain,’ Taylor grunted, jabbing his knee into Farrell’s groin and crowding him back against the wall. He slammed his forearm against the man’s throat. ‘A brute when he’s drunk and a fool when he’s sober.’

  The woman wrung her hands. ‘He’ll take it out on me and the kids if you don’t let him go,’ she wailed.

  ‘He’ll do that anyway,’ said Taylor, staring into the other man’s eyes. ‘He doesn’t need reasons to inflict pain.’

  ‘You don’t know him like I do, sir. He can be nice when he wants.’

  The Superintendent wondered why battered women always said the same. It made no sense to him. He eased the pressure on the other man’s throat. ‘Does your husband own a revolver, Mrs Farrell?’