Trade was unusually brisk that morning. The weather had brought shoppers out in cheerful mood and nobody made disparaging comments about Marigold’s wares, or tried to haggle down the price. An old lady brought along some Goss souvenir jugs with “A Present from Swansea” printed on, which she wanted to sell and which Marigold was willing to buy. By midday she’d sold one of them, along with two underglaze blue and white plates, both slightly chipped, a beaded bag and a jet necklace to a personal friend who happened by, three ornate Edwardian hatpins, a cut-glass salt cellar and a couple of hall-marked silver teaspoons for twenty pounds each. Flushed with success, she said yes, she’d watch over Chuck’s stall while he went to get them both a mug of tea from the snacks cabin in the corner.
And then occurred the sort of thing she’d always dreamed would happen but had never actually believed would. A fat, spotty youth in jeans and leather jacket stopped by her stall and casually pulled from one pocket a small teapot, elaborately painted and gilded, from the other its lid and stand. Coalport Imari, early nineteenth century. Genuine, she was sure, by the racing of her heart.
“You interested in buying this, then?” the youth asked offhandedly.
Marigold didn’t show her excitement. She knew that would be fatal. She also knew immediately that he couldn’t have come by the teapot honestly and that she must refuse to buy it from him. “Where did you get this?” she asked, examining it for flaws and finding none.
“It was me gran’s.”
She was sorely tempted, despite the lie. She happened to know just the person who would immediately pay almost anything she asked for old Coalport. And that she really ought not to touch it if it was even remotely suspect. She’d be a fool if she did. “I’ll give you thirty pounds for it,” she said in a rush, almost hoping he’d laugh in her face at such a derisory amount. But he goggled and then his expression turned sly and she knew she’d said too much and nearly given the game away. If she’d offered him ten pounds, he’d have taken it and thought himself lucky.
“Forty,” he said.
She gulped. “Thirty-five.”
He hesitated, but only for a moment. “Done.”
She counted out seven five-pound notes and, as soon as he turned away to mingle with the crowd, put the teapot under the stall. Her hands were trembling so much she was afraid she might drop it.
“Here, what did he want?” Chuck asked, looming up with a pint mug of orange-coloured tea in each hand, nodding towards the disappearing youth.
“D’you know him?” She clutched the huge thick mug he gave her convulsively, warming her icy cold hands round it, grateful for the warmth, drinking greedily, though she’d forgotten to remind him about no sugar and he’d made it almost like syrup.
“Know him? Well, I know his old man better, but I wouldn’t trust either of them as far as I could throw ’em – which wouldn’t be a long way. What’s he up to, then, been trying to sell you summink what dropped off the back of a lorry?”
“Oh, Chuck, how did you know?” She took another long drink of the over-sweet tea. “I think,” she said mournfully, “I’ve just made a fool of myself. I can’t imagine what came over me.”
“Oh dear oh dear! Made a dishonest woman of you, has he?” Chuck roared with laughter, but then a customer claimed his attention and Marigold was left to her own thoughts, which consisted mainly of imagining herself in the Magistrates Court, or behind bars, with James disapprovingly saying, “I told you so.” By the time Chuck had sold a couple of Vera Lynn 78s to his customer she could hardly wait to pour out the story.
“Well, don’t get yourself into a tizz-woz, Marigold darling. Best thing you can do is take it down the nick. Ask for Mr. Mayo, D.C.I. Mayo, and tell him I sent you. He won’t bite your head off, buys clock parts off of me sometimes. Mind you, I shouldn’t tell him it like you’ve told me, darling, no need to say you knew it was hot before you bought it. Say it come to you afterwards, like,” he finished with a grotesque wink.
“The police,” Marigold said hollowly. The day no longer seemed quite so bright.
In the end, it wasn’t Mayo she saw, but Atkins, whom nothing surprised anymore since he’d seen it all before. He took her story with a pinch of salt but didn’t tell her so. He let her think he accepted what she said, that she’d only examined the teapot closely after the youth had gone, realized its value and that the youth’s assertion of it belonging to his gran was unlikely to be true. He knew it was a piece of luck, which he looked forward to relaying to Mayo, especially since Mrs. Vanstone was able to give him the lad’s name on account of the neighbouring stallholder, Chuck Bradley, a name well known to Atkins, having recognised him. Atkins was also acquainted with Sampson pere et fils – Joey Sampson and his son Wayne, who ran a breaker’s yard out on the by-pass. Any more he didn’t need to know.
And since she’d acted no differently from the way a lot more people would have done, except that she was being more than usually honest in wanting to make retribution, and he thought it unlikely she’d do such a thing again, he thanked the lady for her cooperation, kept the teapot and said he’d follow the matter up. Marigold Vanstone went away looking hugely relieved that her departure from the straight and narrow had cost her no more than thirty-five pounds down the Swanee, as Chuck might say.
One little old teapot, Coalport Imari or whatever, looked very much like another to Atkins, but having compared this one with the coloured photographs of her property supplied by Lois French, there didn’t seem much room for doubt.
“Farrar!” he called out. “Got a job for you, son. You’re going to love this one, right up your street, it is.”
SIXTEEN
“Can you weep Fate from its determined purpose?”
IT WAS JUST UNDER SEVEN MILES from the centre of Lavenstock to where the road turned into Scotley Beeches, just by the entrance to Fiveoaks Farm. Kite clocked it up and spoke the figure aloud to Mayo, sitting beside him as they drove past on the way to Derbyshire and the village where the elder Flemings now lived in their retirement. Mayo, preferring Kite to drive not only because he enjoyed taking the wheel, but because he was an abominable passenger, observed the place with interest and told him to pull in.
“Stop a minute and let’s have a look at that coppice. It should be just round this next corner.”
The place where Mayo had felt so sure that Fleming had left Cockayne’s car was just beyond a sharp bend in the road. It comprised, they discovered, mainly sapling beech, ash and holly, growing in an undisciplined way that afforded quite dense cover, even this early in the season. They poked about for a while, but found nothing, as Farrar and Deeley had reported. Apart from the entrance to it, where many cars had evidently driven in either for a convenient pull-up off the road or else to venture further in where the cover was deeper, for reasons other than convenience, it seemed fairly undisturbed. The Volkswagen, especially at this time of year, might well have been left there for several days without anyone’s noticing it. And no one had noticed it, or come forward to say they had, despite the appeal that had been put out.
“Only as I expected,” Mayo grunted, settling back into the car. Leaning forward, he pressed the radio button, closed his eyes and forebore to say anything more. And for the first half of the journey, Kite was obliged to listen to Radio Three playing music by obscure Scandinavian composers and to something melancholy by Elgar for the rest. Mayo was quite silent, apparently asleep, but almost certainly not. How could he enjoy this stuff? Kite, hoping in vain that they’d play something from The Phantom of the Opera, or even a bit of his mother-in-law’s favourite Gilbert and Sullivan, sighed and sped on.
There was a notable thinning of traffic now, when they reached the long, rolling roads over the Derbyshire moors. Fewer cars, fewer houses and people. Aware of the empty landscape rolling past, Kite felt as though he might as well be on the moon. The season was later up here. There had been a little snow along the tops, lightly powdering the moors, matching them to the limestone walls and gi
ving the wide landscape an overall greyness, like a shroud. When they were within a couple of miles of their destination, Mayo sat up, switched the radio off and looked round to see where they were.
“Is it going to be worth the trouble, coming all this way to see the old folks?” Kite asked, feeling he could now speak. “Do you think Georgina Fleming’s sent us off on a wild goose chase?”
“Wouldn’t put it past her, but we shan’t know that till we’ve spoken to them, shall we?”
“It’s bound to be a shock. First hearing that your son’s dead, then that he’s not.”
“That’s partly why I decided to break the news in person,” Mayo said. “It’s not something you can convey on the telephone.”
Partly it was that, and partly because he needed to watch their reactions when they were told, that he’d decided to make the journey. As Kite said, it was going to be a shock to the elder Flemings, who could scarcely have come to terms with the fact of his death yet, to hear their son was alive and Mayo felt an almost physical aversion to what lay ahead, but he couldn’t afford finer feelings. If Fleming had been in touch with his parents since his apparent death, Mayo felt he would know and might then be able to get a line on Fleming’s present whereabouts. He didn’t think they would be able to conceal their knowledge that their son was alive. The Georgina Flemings of this world were few and far between, thank God.
The Old Manse turned out to be a square, grey stone house on the edge of a singularly charmless limestone-works village on one of the hills which surrounded Buxton, but its back was to the village and its large sash windows gave out over a magnificent view of the moors. The front garden rose steeply from the road in a series of terraces, along which small early rock plants were braving the bracing air. A small cold drizzle had begun and Kite shivered, turning up his collar and digging his hands into his pockets as they mounted the steps, Mayo likewise, realizing his blood, too, must have thinned since his days in the north.
The door was opened by an elegant, white-haired woman, rather bent but still slim, with a vague, sweet smile and lustrous dark eyes. She wore cashmere and soft tweed, and her hands on the handle of a silver-knobbed stick were heavily ringed with big old jewels that slid about on her thin fingers.
“You’re the police,” she greeted them in a pleasant contralto. “Please come in.”
Drifting before them, using the stick more like an Edwardian parasol than an aid to walking, she led the way into the drawing room at the front of the house, a cold room with a high ceiling and white walls, which the fully turned on gas fire did little to heat. It was furnished with heavy handsome antiques and Georgian chairs with slippery upholstery, fine old silver in a corner cabinet, Chinese porcelain on the mantelpiece. A room looking and smelling as if it were polished every Friday and never used.
“Excuse me,” Mrs. Fleming said, “I’ll get my husband, he’s in the other room. Oh, here he is. Guy, they’re here.”
Guy Fleming was a tall stork-like figure buttoned into a cardigan, still a good-looking man, though by now in his late seventies, with the sort of lofty profile the Victorians used to call “noble.” His expression was benign, his smile and his handshake warm and ready, and Mayo wondered why he felt there was something empty and insubstantial about him, as if he were not really flesh and blood but a cut-out fashioned from cardboard. He had been something high and mighty in his company, but it was hard to imagine that now. Perhaps he was one of those men who need an image of themselves to believe in, and without the corporate identity there was nothing left to live up to.
They made a fine pair, and it was easy to see where Rupert Fleming had got his good looks. Mayo needn’t have worried about breaking news which, however he put it, was bound to be painful.
Though elderly, the couple were all there, and he was relieved that at least the meeting would be conducted on a basis of mutual intelligence, though Mrs. Fleming was beginning to unnerve him slightly with the unexpected perception of her gaze.
“They don’t want that muck,” the old man growled when she announced that if they wanted coffee she would get the girl to bring it in, “get them a proper drink!”
But Mayo declined both suggestions with thanks. They hadn’t made such good progress as he’d hoped from Lavenstock and, judging by the savoury smell issuing from the back quarters, lunch was evidently in the offing. In any case, he was impatient to get on.
“I’m sorry to have to intrude on your grief,” he began, “but perhaps you’ll understand when you’ve heard what I have to say.”
Mrs. Fleming looked down at her folded hands, then raised her eyes. “Please go on.”
He was watching them both and it was the old man’s eyes that filled with tears when he began to speak of their son. It was hard to tell what Mrs. Fleming was thinking, with that dark, deep, slightly ironic regard fixed on him. Hard to go on, too. How did you say, “The good news is that your son has not been killed, the bad news is that he is a murderer”? There was no easy way, in fact, for them to hear what he had to say, even though he omitted as much detail as he could and left out any mention of Mitch’s death. When he’d finished, there was a long silence. The old man looked stunned. “Did you hear that, Muriel?” he asked at last. “Rupert’s still alive!”
Mrs. Fleming’s remarkable eyes remained fixed on Mayo. “Are you sure of that?”
“We’ve no reason to think otherwise.”
“Why were you so certain it was Rupert who was dead in the first place?” The questions were decisive and he saw that her vagueness was an illusion which she chose to foster and use when she felt it was expedient.
“He was in your son’s car, wearing his watch. Rupert’s jacket was there, with his wallet and papers in it. A suicide note was left in his handwriting. And his wife identified him as her husband.”
She nodded briefly but at the mention of Georgina her lips compressed and he saw there was no love lost there.
“He’s not dead!” the old man repeated in wonder. He appeared not to have heard what else had been said. “Oliver, we must tell Oliver. His brother, you know,” he explained to Mayo.
“Guy!” Mrs. Fleming turned slowly towards him, speaking to him with compassion, enunciating slowly as if he were a child or a person of limited intelligence. “Don’t you understand what they’re saying, my dear? They think Rupert is the one who – who took this other man’s life.” Despite her calm reception of the news, her deep voice shook a little, either with emotion or with one of the involuntary tremors of old age. Her hands were convulsively clenched on the arms of her chair, the jewels flashing fire where the light caught them. “That is what you think, isn’t it?” she asked Mayo.
“I’m afraid it’s a strong possibility.”
She nodded several times and then suddenly, startling him, smiled, a very beautiful, transforming smile. “But, you know, that’s absolute rubbish.”
It wasn’t an unexpected response. She would protect her son with every fibre of her being, fight for him like a tigress because she simply would never admit that any son of hers was capable of committing murder. It was the same blind spot, the same unshakeable belief in their child’s innocence he’d seen in countless other mothers, the same serene certainty. Unfortunately, such faith in their errant lambs hardly ever turned out to be justified.
Rupert’s father did not appear to share her convictions, either. “So it’s come to that, has it by God?” he quavered. “To murder!”
“Never,” said the mother. “That’s quite absurd. There must be some mistake.”
“Muriel, he’s never given us anything but trouble. And now, this. Oliver now, he’s been everything a son should be, but Rupert ...” He faltered for a moment. “And yet, you know, I always loved him best.”
“Guy Fleming, I’m surprised at you. Your own son! There was nothing wrong with Rupert, until he married that woman, nothing that wouldn’t have righted itself, given time. Pull yourself together, Guy.”
The effect of these brac
ing words on him was immediate, though not perhaps in the way she would have wished. He seemed to be literally obeying her orders, pulling his shoulders back and sitting more stiffly upright. He said stubbornly, “Nothing could ever have put Rupert right. No, I shall speak, Muriel. The whole thing is too much for me at my age. He was always an unsatisfactory child, and nothing’s changed. Expelled from school, failing his accountancy exams, losing the insurance position ...”
It was then that Mrs. Fleming began to show her mettle. “That’s enough,” she ordered. “Quite enough. The Chief Inspector doesn’t want to hear your prattle.”
She was wholly wrong. It was exactly what Mayo did want to hear. But it was too late. As if the effort had been too great, Fleming passed a hand across his face and subsided, and before Mayo could frame further questions, the door opened and a young woman stood there. Hesitating on the threshold, she waited until Muriel Fleming beckoned before crossing the room to sit beside her on the sofa. “I don’t believe a word of it either,” she said as they exchanged looks, entirely in accord.
This, presumably, was “the girl” Mrs. Fleming had mentioned, who would have brought the coffee in, had they wished it. She still looked sad and solemn, but she’d discarded her dreary, penitential black for similar garments in shades of green, brown and ochre that looked as if they had been hand-dyed with vegetable colouring, and probably had. There was no mistaking her. It was Bryony Harper.
Mrs. Fleming was watching Mayo with a detached, ironic amusement while he recovered his momentarily scattered forces. Having the advantage, and with perfect composure, she beat him to it with a return of her vague smile and a slightly rambling explanation of Bryony’s presence.
“This dear girl, whom I believe you’ve met,” she began, “wrote to us to offer her sympathy as soon as she heard about Rupert. Can you imagine anything kinder or more thoughtful? In her position? We’d never heard of her before, but we knew Rupert’s marriage wasn’t all it should be, so we weren’t entirely surprised that he should have found someone else. Bryony mentioned her children and we thought” – a fleeting look of disappointment crossed her face – “well, never mind, we took the car down to Lavenstock and brought her and the little boys back here with us. She’d made our son happy, it was the least we could do. And here she’s going to stay, aren’t you, my dear?”
More Deaths Than One Page 17
