* * * * * * * *
Charlotte had lost all sense of direction as Julian swung the car up the narrow, twisting lane beyond the little fishing town of Brixham. When they suddenly emerged in to an open area of tarmac it came as a surprise to her.
“We’ll have to leave the car here and continue on foot. I see our friends are ahead of us.” He pulled up beside a couple of other cars. One was the white BMW.
“Bingo,” he enthused. “It looks as though your brilliant computer was right.”
“Oh, my god,” muttered Charlotte, pushing the door open as her worst fears were realised. “I hope to god we’re not too late.” She leaped out of the car almost before it had stopped and stood, looking round for the right way to go. The wind whipped her hair away from her head in long tendrils. Then she saw the path and made for it.
“Wait a minute,” shouted Julian, as he climbed out and slammed the door. “You’ve got to wear something over that thin dress. Come here. I’ve got a coat in the boot.” He went round to the back of the car and got out a great, padded winter anorak which he brought over and helped her into. Then he went back for a barbour for himself. By the time he’d got it on and had locked the car, Charlotte was twenty yards up the path. He ran after her.
“I wonder where the hell they are,” she gasped. “We’ll never find them in this weather.”
“I think they’ll have gone onto the headland,” said Julian. “That’s the place I’d choose if I wanted to push someone off. The cliffs there have a sheer two hundred-foot drop into the sea.”
“Which way is that?” she demanded anxiously.
“Don’t worry. We’re going in the right direction. I’ll show you the way. It’s no good getting in a panic.”
They continued to hurry along the path.
“In a panic,” shouted Charlotte at him. “Do you realise that stupid woman’s body may already be at the foot of the cliffs.” In her mind she could see it, lying broken on the rocks, washed back and forth by the great breaking waves. She hardly noticed the howling gale tearing at her body, the bushes and small trees alongside the path which thrashed about in the violence of the storm. She was only half aware of the wall of the fort looming up, of the small bridge and the gateway. The next minute she was rushing along the path towards the headland, looking to right and left for the other two people.
The scene was lit in a macabre way by the circulating flashes of the automatic lighthouse. They glanced violently but briefly upon the clumps of bushes, the stone walls and the couple of small buildings which stood, haphazardly about the grass-strewn plateau on top of the cliffs. Then they passed on, leaving the place dark and mysterious for several long seconds before they came round again to briefly bring the scene back into focus.
“Where the hell are they?” she muttered to herself. “Oh, please god, don’t let me be too late. Please let me be in time to save another tragedy.” She was unaware of the strange mixture of oaths and prayers which escaped from her lips. She was equally unaware of Julian just behind her, desperately trying to keep up with her.
Then suddenly, as she came past a clump of bushes, she saw them, not twenty yards away from her as the beam flicked across them. She thought it was two people. Surely they were both there. Then the light flashed briefly upon them again, and she was absolutely certain. They were locked in each other’s arms, like a pair of lovers, unaware of the violence and the tempest of the world about them. They seemed to be as solid as the rocks they stood upon - two hundred feet above the sea.
Charlotte slowed as she approached the couple. They were gazing out to sea and didn’t hear her footsteps above the wild noise of the wind. When she got to within five yards of them they suddenly seemed to become aware of her. The man’s head jerked round.
“Richard Harris?” shouted Charlotte before he could say anything. “I am a police officer.”
They half-parted as they turned to face her. Their mouths and eyes were like black holes in their white faces, as another sudden beam of light illuminated them. They were a frozen tableau waiting for the release of the next flash.
“Richard Harris,” she repeated. “I am Detective Chief Inspector Faraday. I want to talk to you about the death last year of Cynthia Adams.”
They still remained frozen there. Charlotte was desperately afraid that he would suddenly turn and hurl the woman off the cliff to her death. She had to keep him standing there.
“Please don’t do anything foolish,” she said. “There has already been enough misery and tragedy, following the death of your wife. You have already had more than enough revenge for one sad suicide.”
She was approaching him slowly, step by careful step to prevent him from taking sudden violent action. “Do you think that your wife would have wanted you to do all this? - to bring all this misery to all these other families?”
She was aware of Julian at her shoulder and motioned to him to hold back. She didn’t want their combined advance to frighten the man into precipitate action.
“Richard - let Susannah go,” she added. “She is guilty of nothing worse than falling in love with you. She had nothing to do with your wife’s dismissal. She didn’t even live in the place then. She had only just married her husband. If you blame anyone for what happened, it must be the husband - not Susannah.”
She was within a few feet of him now. He was just looking blankly at her. Could he hear and understand what she was saying? Did he understand her? The two of them continued to stand as if frozen to the spot. Charlotte felt she could have almost dived forward and reached them. If he made one move, she promised herself she would do just that, leaping to grab the woman and bring her to the ground before he could hurl her into the abyss.
“Richard,” she said, more gently, “please come quietly with me to the station where we can discuss this calmly without all this wind and noise.” She indicated the ferocious elements with a small gesture.
She was moving forward very slowly now. She was almost within reach of Susannah when there came a shout from behind her - a violent, demoniacal shriek which made her spin round. Advancing towards them was Giles Adams. His face was pale and colourless. His fair, gingery hair was plastered over his forehead. His right arm was out-stretched and he held a gun in his smooth, white-gloved hand.
“Stop,” he yelled into the teeth of the gale. “Get back,” he ordered Charlotte and Julian. “Go on - get bloody back.” He waggled the gun away from the cliff-edge. “Over there.” Charlotte noticed that the man was wearing nothing more than a thin sweater over a summer shirt but he seemed unaware of the cold. His eyes were staring sockets. His skin was wet with perspiration. His lips were a thin straight slash across his face.
“Get over there,” he shrieked again at Charlotte and brought the gun up to point straight at her forehead. “Do as I tell you, or I’ll make a hell of a mess of your beautiful face.”
Charlotte became aware of Julian pulling at her arm. Bewildered, she allowed herself to be drawn back a few feet, enough to apparently satisfy Giles Adams, who turned his attention to the other two. He advanced another couple of paces towards them, but was cunning enough to still keep Charlotte and Julian in his clear angle of vision.
“Richard Harris?” He lowered his voice a little but it still came clearly to the others over the noise of the wind. “I’m Giles Adams. I know all about you. I know you used my mother.” He paused for a second then shrieked at him. “She admitted it to me at the end.”
For the first time Richard found his voice. “Did you kill her?” he demanded.
“You shouldn’t have done that” Giles shouted. “You shouldn’t have taken her to a hotel and had sex with her after you used her. She was special until you used her.”
“Bloody hell,” said Julian with feeling.
The expletive suddenly woke Charlotte up. “What do you mean, Giles? What do you know about what happened to your mother?”
“I know everything about my mother.” But the man kept his eyes on Harris. H
is voice had a strange, cracked quality. “We were very close - my mother and I. Nobody would understand how close. Then,” he suddenly shrieked at Richard, “you destroyed all that. Nothing could survive after that. She didn’t deserve to live after another betrayal like that.” His face contorted into a manic sneer. “Neither do you. I’ve been waiting for this for a whole year.” He swallowed again and the pitch of his voice dropped. “Now at last I’ve found you.”
He raised the gun and aimed at Harris’s face.
With a cry Susannah ran in front of her lover. Charlotte thought to herself that the woman’s action was useless, for her head scarcely came up to his chin. She herself still stood frozen - waiting for the shot to crash out - waiting for the final act of the tragedy to take place. She felt powerless to stop it. She knew at that moment that she had failed. It was all very well - being clever and tracking down this criminal. But in the final analysis she was incapable of influencing the outcome. She was a mere spectator at the final scene.
Then suddenly everything changed. From out of the darkness a stick cracked down on Giles’ arm. The gun was knocked from his nerveless fingers.
“Giles Adams,” gasped Paulson, “I arrest you for the murder of your mother Cynthia Adams and also for the murder of Julia Hillman.”
A sound halfway between a curse and a sob burst from Giles lips. He launched himself in a flying leap across the few feet that separated him from Richard Harris. Susannah shrieked and desperately pulled her man away from the edge of the cliff. Harris stumbled and fell on top of her. With a howl of anguish, Giles Adams disappeared over the edge of the cliff.
- 10. Saturday Night / Sunday Morning -
It was after midnight by the time they got back to the station. Susannah Blake had said that she felt sufficiently composed to drive herself back to her house and Julian Brace had also been sent home. Richard Harris had to accompany Faraday and Paulson to the station in the inspector’s car. He was asked to wait in an interview room while the police officers prepared to question him.
“It was a good job one of us had a radio with them,” said Charlotte when they reached the CID section. “We’d have looked a right pair of fools if we’d had to go to the nearest public phone box to call the ambulance and cliff rescue.”
“Sorry ma’am. I wasn’t on duty.” Paulson wasn’t very penitent. “I wasn’t being escorted by the local press.”
She ignored the sarcasm. “You seem to have had quite a busy day for a man off-duty. In fact, I’m still waiting to hear exactly what you found out.” She paused expectantly.
“Yes. Well, I was out fishing.” Paulson shrugged. “You tend to think a lot when you’re fishing. There’s not much else to do. And I found that I had started thinking about that man at the hotel who Janice (the receptionist) said was wearing rubber gloves. And I thought - surely no woman would let a man make love to her wearing rubber gloves. That meant either the man with rubber gloves had nothing to do with the murder. Or else, maybe Cynthia Adams was murdered by a different man to the one who had made love to her earlier in the afternoon. Do you understand me?”
“Go on.”
“OK. Well, I thought that it was too much of a coincidence to assume the man wearing rubber gloves had nothing to do with it. I mean - why else would he walk around the hotel with rubber gloves on?”
“I follow you.”
“So, I decided to find out whether this bloody computer of yours was any good. The fish weren’t biting anyway.” He grinned. “I came in here after lunch and read through the instructions you’d left for us. Then I turned on the machine and asked it a number of questions, ‘What if the murderer wasn’t the man who’d made love to her - who was it?’ Well, who do you think the computer came up with?” He put his head on one side. “Top of the list was Giles Adams.”
He sat on the edge of his desk and continued. “I decided I might as well go straight round to Giles’ house and ask him a few questions. Don’t worry -” He pulled a sheaf of rather tatty papers out of his jacket pocket. “I’d asked the machine to give me a list, so that I made sure I didn’t miss anything. However, when I got there, his wife told me he was visiting some aunt who lived in Plymouth. She also gave me a few interesting little tit-bits of information about his relationship with his parents and with this Aunt Agatha who we’d never heard of before. She told me that Giles’ parents went abroad when he was seven, taking his baby sister with them, and he hardly saw the three of them for the next eight years.”
“Hardly a reason to go and murder her,” objected Charlotte.
“No, but what she said made it seem important to me that I should go and see the two of them.” Paulson looked at her carefully, aware that he should have tried to contact her. “I had my wife with me,” he said, more or less truthfully. “I was taking her to see our daughter and her family. So I decided to drop her off and go on to Plymouth for an hour or so. When I got there, I found Aunt Agatha was on her own. Giles had already left. We had quite a long chat - Agatha and I. She seems to have been his mother and father and part-time teacher all rolled into one for those eight years when his parents were abroad. She said that Giles was very clever but he was an emotionally immature child. She reckons, that if he had gone to university, by now he would have been a first-class academic.” He grinned. “Something like you, ma’am - but not the emotional bit, of course.”
Charlotte snorted but didn’t take up the challenge.
“However, when mummy came home all that changed. According to her, Cynthia was very pretty, but rather empty-headed. Her husband had got bored with her and spent all his time in London concentrating on his business interests and who knows what else. So she was all over young Giles - arms round him, kissing him, taking him everywhere with her.” He raised a hand. “Of course, there’s no suggestion that she acted improperly. She was just a very loving mother. But Agatha reckons that in Giles mind it was something very different. What did she call it - the Oedipus complex?”
Charlotte nodded. “I can see why that might make him hate Richard Harris. But why murder his mother?”
“There’s more to it than that,” said Paulson. “Of course, Aunt Agatha should have contacted us earlier about her suspicions, but she reckons she had been out of touch with Giles and the rest of the family for some time and that it was only since his mother’s death that he’d started to visit her again. She said that she has gradually discovered more and more of what happened. Even now she doesn’t know the whole story. But as far as she can work it out, this is what happened …”
Charlotte couldn’t resist butting in. “What sort of woman is she - this Aunt Agatha?”
“Oh dear.” Stafford shook his head. “She’s a strange old lady - approaching seventy and still a miss. She and Cynthia were cousins. From the way she talks, I think she originally fancied Henry herself, but the pretty one got him instead. However I think she’s honest.” He took a breath. “Anyway, although he was a brilliant student, Giles reached the end of his schooling with very poor results. Agatha blames that on his mother, for taking his mind off his studies. After Giles left school, Cynthia got Henry to buy in to an accountant’s business in Torquay and set up Giles as a trainee and ultimately a partner in that. The lad also got married, at quite a young age, to this Carol girl who apparently looked a lot like mumsie. For the next few years everything went well. They had the child named Cardew,” he shuddered, “and relations were friendly all round - although Aunt Agatha thinks Giles still spent too much time hanging around his mother. Then disaster struck.”
“Go on. This is interesting.” She pulled up a chair and sat down.
“Well it seems that, bored with his vacuous wife, Henry had started a liaison with Julia Hillman - who by then had recovered from her drinking habit, but no longer shared a bed with Lionel. Apparently this developed into a major affair, with Julia often going up to London to spend nights with Henry and he even visited her at home from time to time when Lionel was out. When Cynthia found out she made
a lot of fuss about it to her special confidante - Giles.” He paused again.
“Agatha kept on saying what a stupid woman Cynthia was, although that can hardly excuse Giles’ behaviour. He was in his thirties, after all. Anyway, after that Giles was like a loaded gun. Agatha thinks he must have followed his father to an assignation with Julia at the Hillman home. It seems that he waited until his father left, and then strangled the woman and made it look as though she had hung herself. Luckily for him, husband Lionel managed to draw such a heavy veil over the supposed suicide that no post mortem was carried out and no suspicions were raised.”
“Wait a minute,” asked Charlotte. “Did Giles just go and confess this to his Aunt Agatha?”
“Not in so many words. In fact the actual conclusion was all my own work. I haven’t checked yet whether the computer agrees with me.” Stafford walked across to the window and looked down into the darkened car park. “Apparently Giles used to go and have these long chats with her when he seemed to talk about his feelings, but not any specific action. Her suspicions were gradually aroused but only finally confirmed this afternoon when I added some details to what she already knew.” He looked at his watch. “Er - yesterday afternoon.”
“So what made her realise what Giles had been doing?”
Paulson turned back to her. “Agatha told me that he said to her something about knowing who had taken Cynthia away from him, but that it was all going to be sorted out in the near future. When she told me that, I decided that I’d better get after young Giles straight away.”
“How did you manage to catch up with him?”
He took another deep breath. “Well, I decided to go to his house first to ask his wife if she knew where he was. There I got lucky, because I saw his Mercedes leaving, just as I turned up. I followed at a discreet distance. He went and parked outside a house which turned out to be Susannah Blake’s. After an hour or so they left in their white car. I followed Giles when he followed them. It was quite easy really. He was so busy keeping his distance from them that he didn’t spend much time looking in the mirror. He sat outside the hotel while Susannah and Richard had their meal. Then he followed them up to the headland without his lights switched on. I had no choice but to do it on foot.” He looked down at his muddy clothes with distaste. “The path was very slippery after the rain.”
Faraday 01 The Gigabyte Detective Page 24
