Murder Takes the Stage

by Amy Myers

  ‘But what about Cherry?’ Georgia asked. ‘If Tom loved her, why be so bothered over Joan?’

  ‘Psychology ain’t my forte. I may be a magician, but I’m not a trick cyclist.’ After a tired guffaw he added, ‘There was a spat between Mavis and Joan at the show that night, and Tom joined in.’

  ‘Mavis Maclyn?’ Could Sandy be relied on after all this time? she wondered.

  ‘Right. Very possessive was Mavis. Thought her husband was hers alone, but Joan thought very differently. Tom must have heard it going on.’ Sandy was definitely flagging now, but then he suddenly perked up. ‘Of course there was that sergeant. A real bruiser that one. Tom didn’t get on with him. Not his sort. Dillon, his name was. Buck Dillon.’

  Dillon? Georgia took a wild guess. ‘Any relation to Cath Dillon at the Chronicle?’

  ‘Granddaughter.’ Another guffaw. ‘Go on. Ask me what you like. I’m always helping with enquiries, as the old lag said.’

  ‘Granddaughter.’ Another guffaw. ‘Go on. Ask me what you like. I’m always helping with enquiries, as the old lag said.’

  FIVE

  ‘Will the real Joan Watson please stand up?’ Peter looked despairingly at the photos that Christine had sent. He was having second thoughts after his first enthusiasm. ‘I see what you mean about them. The ones marked “white envelope” which have no identification aren’t going to tell us a lot; the ones that are identified are similar to those we’ve already seen. As for the others, we only have the Hollywood starlet offerings, which don’t get us any further forward on Joan. I suppose . . .’ He looked at her hopefully.

  ‘Christine’s got enough on her plate. It will have to wait until after the funeral.’ Official permission for this had now been given, and Colin had, so Georgia gathered on the telephone, taken all the stress of arranging it off her shoulders.

  ‘I suppose this one would do for the website.’ Peter pointed to one of Tom with a grin on his face. Some personality came through in this photo, not aggressive or otherwise remarkable, but that of a man who had a life of his own and was not just the victim – or perpetrator – of tragedy. ‘I’ll put it in Suspects Anonymous too.’ He cocked an eye at her to see how she took this.

  Badly. Georgia was not impressed. She had never been a fan of Suspects Anonymous, despite the fact that this software was the brainchild of her cousin Charlie Bone and intended to assist Marsh & Daughter in their work. Unfortunately Peter had more faith in it than she did. It was all very well seeing icons of little men in striped jerseys dashing across the screen, Georgia thought, but translated into harsh real terms the software couldn’t work unless there was input from their all-too-human brains and hands.

  At the moment this was sadly lacking. As regards suspects for Joan Watson’s murder, Tom stood very firmly at the top of a list of one. Witnesses yes, but no suspects. She and Peter had fed the times, names, alibis, recollections in so far as they could, but nothing shot up as a warning flag to indicate there was any clash or discrepancy, although in other areas the software came to abundant life, notably over the golden-hearted Joan versus the first class bitch.

  Marsh & Daughter’s website was far more productive as an aid. There, nets could be cast upon the water and the results carefully trawled. Now that Tom’s photo had been put up on their website, there was a faint chance that it might strike a chord in someone’s memory, either from his younger days up to 1953 or, if she and Peter were really lucky, later than that. Cherry’s fairy-tale hope that Tom had survived might just prove not to be fantasy.

  It took only two days before precious metal, if not gold, was struck, but it was not the website that produced it. To her chagrin, it was Suspects Anonymous. Instead of Peter’s usual frustrated shout of ‘I don’t know why I bother with this rubbish’, she was surprised to hear him call out, ‘Hey, Georgia, look at this.’

  There was a note of real interest in his voice, and so she hurried to peer over his shoulder. On the Forgotten Elements screen, designed to pick up statements that didn’t connect with anything else on the site, there was usually only a long list of drivel. Today – perhaps it was something to do with its being Friday the thirteenth – it contained something that had caught Peter’s eye, and no wonder.

  ‘ . . . her daughter had been in there babysitting that evening.’

  ‘The babysitter!’ she exclaimed. ‘We’d forgotten her.’

  ‘And the neighbour,’ Peter cried in unison with her. A few moments of rapid mutual congratulations, and then, ‘How do we find them, or at least the daughter?’ Georgia asked.

  ‘Elementary, my dear Georgia. We can try Gary’s Fish Bar or—’

  ‘Pamela Trent.’

  ‘Who was three years old at the time.’

  ‘But might have known who they were.’

  ‘Accepted.’

  ‘I’ll write to the Trents. I winkled out their address from Christine. They’re not in the phone book.’

  ‘No telephone number?’

  ‘No, and it’s too chancy. Gives them no time for reflection.’

  ‘That might be just as well,’ Peter muttered. ‘Gwen’s asked us over to lunch on Sunday, by the way. Luke too, of course, if you can prise him away from his desk. Apparently, Charlie’s got a girlfriend, and Gwen wants support when she meets her.’

  ‘Charlie?’ She was flabbergasted.

  This must be serious. Charlie seemed the eternal bachelor, more dedicated to roaming cyberspace than searching for a girlfriend. Not that he locked himself up in a room with a screen that passed for life. Far from it. He dashed here, there and everywhere, solving abstruse problems and enjoying the life o’Reilly on his travels. Travels, song and different ways of life were his métier, with a huge circle of friends of both sexes worldwide. Girlfriends had come and gone; he wasn’t gay, he wasn’t asexual, so far as she could tell, but nothing ever seemed to happen. Gwen was despairing, so bringing a girlfriend to Sunday lunch with Mum and Stepdad was a big advance.

  ‘Who is she?’ she asked.

  ‘No idea. Not sure Gwen knows either. You know what Charlie’s like.’

  She did. This girl must be spectacular to have managed to pin Charlie down to any date, let alone this one. ‘Casual,’ she replied.

  ‘Not this time, apparently. Anyway, it sounds like a good opportunity to slip something in about Rick without making a point of it through a special visit or phone call. Gwen and Terry might have some ideas. We won’t broadcast the news to Charlie and lady-friend yet though.’ A pause, then an airy, ‘Janie’s coming too, by the way.’

  ‘To a family gathering?’ Georgia was taken aback. Was Peter making a statement by carting Janie along too? She’d no objection, but if Peter specifically wanted to talk to Gwen about Rick, Janie’s presence was going to make an awkward addition. True, Terry was relatively new to the family too. He and Gwen had been married two years, but Janie was surely a somewhat different case.

  ‘Why not?’ Peter answered, somewhat defensively. ‘Anyway, I’ve nothing dramatic to report on Rick. Have you?’

  ‘No,’ she was forced to admit. The fact that their enquiries were going nowhere was tearing at both herself and Peter, however much they tried to conceal it.

  ‘Then it will only be a negative situation report to Gwen.’

  ‘Did you check Glyndebourne?’

  ‘Yes. They were presenting The Marriage of Figaro that season.’

  Georgia wrestled hard to believe that a possibility but had to face defeat. ‘No good, is it? Rick would have let us know he was back in England, even if he wasn’t staying in Haden Shaw, and,’ she added bravely, since it was better to get it in the open, ‘we don’t know it was Mozart he and Miss Blondie were going to hear. Even less that it would have been The Magic Flute, even if it were an opera.’

  ‘No, but we have to narrow the search down little by little.’

  ‘What about Salzburg?’

  ‘No to that as well. Their Mozart week was in the winter of 1994, and the only Mozart o
pera I can trace is La Clemenza di Tito, which was during their Easter Festival, not the July one. So if Rick and lady friend were heading for Salzburg, it can’t have been for a Mozart opera. There was a major event with Carreras in the Requiem in Sarajevo, which would have had Rick scurrying off to hear it, but that was in April. But we can’t ignore the big obstacle. Even if he was rushing off to a special do, why not telephone us?’

  She had to say it. ‘Perhaps he was madly in love and everything else went out of his head?’ Love, marriage, grandchildren – they were all left to her and Luke now, and time was rapidly passing. If Rick had lived, how different it might have been. No, don’t think that way, Georgia disciplined herself. Think forward. Think positive leads.

  Peter seemed to be thinking the same, for all he said was, ‘So it’s back to the drawing board.’

  ‘Phone call for you,’ Luke said, coming with Medlars to summon her. ‘On my office phone. One Matthew Trent. Mean anything to you?’

  So her letter had done the trick. Georgia had only posted it to Pamela Trent on Saturday, and this was Monday. A very prompt reply. But why to Frost & Co’s phone and not her own? This did not bode well.

  ‘I told him you would call him back,’ Luke continued. ‘He doesn’t sound a happy gentleman.’

  Georgia debated whether to leave it until she was in the office the next day, thus making a point, but on the whole decided it was best to face dragons as soon as they started breathing fire. Turn your back on the problem and the heat would grow.

  Deep breath, and she rang the number. ‘Mr Trent? Georgia Marsh.’

  She could sense the atmosphere at the end of the line without a word being spoken in reply.

  ‘You wrote to my wife asking whether she would be prepared to give you information pertaining to her father. The answer is no.’ Neutral voice. Icy edge. ‘Our view is that the case was over fifty years ago, and there is no point in raking over old coals.’

  ‘I can understand that point of view, particularly when your wife’s mother was the victim. I hoped to be able to explain face to face why my father and I are investigating it.’

  ‘That would be pointless, as she has no interest in discussing the matter.’

  ‘The subject is hardly dead. It comes up regularly in the Chronicle.’

  ‘No one who knows anything about the case would take Ken Winton seriously.’

  ‘And yet Ken was murdered.’ She had crossed the Rubicon now, but she was not going to achieve anything by dithering about on the riverbank.

  The ether almost crackled in fury. ‘Do you have any proof that Mr Winton’s death is connected with Joan Watson’s?’

  ‘His laptop was stolen.’ Was that privileged information? She couldn’t remember, but it was out now.

  ‘Laptops are often stolen,’ came the sharp response – too sharp, too quickly? ‘But rarely for information inside them.’

  ‘Forgive me, but your wife’s father was acquitted, so you must both wonder who did kill her mother?’

  ‘If we do, Miss Marsh, it is in the privacy of our family, not for public muckraking.’

  ‘The public is already involved as the trial was a public one. But,’ she hastened to add, ‘I do understand it’s upsetting for your wife even though she was only a toddler at the time.’

  ‘Quite. She was a child and has no recollection of this neighbour or the babysitter. Is that clear? And whatever rumours might be flying around, she is in no position to comment on them.’

  ‘Would your wife not want them scotched by an outside examination of the facts?’

  ‘That rather depends on what your line would be.’

  ‘The truth, so far as we can establish it.’

  ‘I doubt if you could. And I have to add, Miss Marsh, I doubt if you should.’

  He rang off abruptly, and Georgia put the receiver down, shaken. She was being warned off, and this must be why Ken had hesitated over putting her in contact with the Trents. But why the need for secrecy on Matthew’s part? Devotion to his wife? His reaction was excessive, if so. Knowledge of what really happened? That would depend on his age. If he was roughly the same age as Pamela, his knowledge would be second-hand. To have first-hand knowledge, he would have to be about fifteen years older and his voice did not sound like that of a man in his seventies.

  Gwen and Terry’s home, Badon Lodge, set under the North Downs, was an ancient house built on an even more ancient site. The house was of never-ending interest to Terry, who dug for archaeological artefacts and fossils happily in the cellar and garden and spent much of his time striding the hills with a resistivity machine in search of clues, while Gwen battled with keeping the lawn borders and vegetable garden in order, and preserving the resulting produce. Housewife at heart she was not, however. In her younger days she had been as much of a traveller as Terry, perhaps greater, but now she pursued this interest through books and the Internet.

  Georgia had thought that Charlie, her only child, lived in London, but now it appeared from what Gwen told Luke and herself on arrival that he had bought a house near Whitstable. Peter and Janie had already arrived, and Georgia found her father in the kitchen getting Rick’s story off his chest, while Gwen flew around checking last-minute details of the lunch and Terry looked after Peter and the drinks. Luke, seeing Janie on her own in the living room, had tactfully gone in to talk to her.

  The reaction to the news about Rick was unexpected, at least by Georgia.

  ‘Full marks, Peter,’ Terry commented. ‘Question is: suppose you do work out which concert or opera Rick might have gone to, what then?’

  Peter looked taken aback. ‘We take it further.’

  ‘How, darling?’ Gwen asked, bestowing a kiss on Peter’s bald patch as she passed by with a tray of potatoes for the oven.

  Time to step in, Georgia realized. Peter looked upset at what he probably saw as a negative rather than practical comment. ‘We can check the local police for unidentified deaths.’

  ‘But if he was with this girl,’ Terry said, ‘he wouldn’t have been unidentified. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but she would have reported his name and details. Very unlikely for them both to die in the middle of a concert.’

  Put that way, it sounded dismal, and for a moment Georgia too was thrown. This was the problem about sharing news; one threw the dice, but they could come up with unhelpful instead of helpful comments.

  Providentially, at that moment Luke came in with Janie. ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said, ‘but I disagree with your conclusions, Terry. Once Peter and Georgia know where Rick was, a whole new scenario opens up.’

  ‘That’s how I see it too,’ Janie said firmly.

  Georgia struggled between gratitude for her support and a desperate but illogical feeling that Rick was somehow moving further away from them with this spotlight on their fragile lead.

  ‘Don’t you see,’ Luke continued. ‘Once there’s a pinpoint, we can advertise. Offer a reward. Check hotel registers, someone might remember, we might even find the girl herself.’

  It sounded good, it sounded hopeful, but was Luke just saying that or did he really mean it? He must have sensed Georgia’s doubt, for he squeezed her hand.

  ‘Trust me,’ he said blithely. ‘I’m a publisher.’ As she laughed, he added, ‘But I did mean it. After all, what have you two got on the Tom Watson case? Not one firm foot further forward, and yet you’re both still sure there’s a story there. So push on with Rick.’

  Georgia heard the sound of a car pulling up, and one that could only be Charlie’s. (The silencer needed attention.) Now the moment was upon her, Gwen looked panic-stricken, so Terry rushed over to kiss her, then seized her by the arm and led the way outside, with Luke following. Peter took himself as near as he possibly could to the doorway, thought better of it and remained in the living room to meet the new arrivals. Janie inevitably stayed with him, and feeling ridiculously anxious about the coming meeting, Georgia did too. She longed to peer through the windows but resisted t
emptation. Janie caught her eye and laughed, obviously reading her reaction correctly.

  ‘I’m glad I’m not the only nervous one,’ she said.

  ‘Daft, isn’t it?’ Georgia said amiably. ‘I can’t get used to the idea that Charlie has a real girlfriend.’ Too late she realized that this was hardly tactful, as Janie did not comment and looked away.

  Something sounded familiar about the girlfriend’s voice as Georgia listened to the chatter outside, but she couldn’t place it. Not, that is, until the girl came into the room with Charlie behind her and stopped short. It was Cath Dillon.

  ‘Georgia Marsh!’ She looked totally bemused. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Charlie?’

  ‘Didn’t know you knew each other.’ Charlie grinned, coming over and giving Georgia a kiss.

  ‘We met over a case,’ she replied. Now was not the time to mention which one. This was a time to be delighted for Charlie. Don’t muck it up this time, Charlie, she thought. If she could have chosen someone for him, she couldn’t have done better than Cath – so far as her limited knowledge of her went, of course. ‘Where did you two meet?’

  ‘Over what I thought was going to be a boring piece about new businesses in Thanet,’ Cath joked. ‘It wasn’t that boring.’

  ‘Damned with faint praise.’ Charlie threw an arm round her shoulders.

  From that moment everything went with a swing, to Georgia’s relief. Terry and Gwen happily chatted to Cath, and Luke and Peter seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves, as indeed she was. Janie was joining in well and looked much more relaxed than Georgia had ever seen her. The whole lunch passed happily, and only when it was over and they gathered in the garden did Georgia remember with a sickening jab who Cath’s grandfather was – if Sandy Smith had been right.

  Janie was firmly at the wheelchair’s side, but Luke, ever adept at sensing what was needed, steered her away. Peter looked relieved and manoeuvred himself close to Georgia. ‘I take it this is Buck Dillon’s granddaughter?’ he whispered to her, and when she nodded, added, ‘Let’s pull out all the stops. Don’t hold back the horses, because we’ll never get another chance like this.’