Blood on the Wood

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘But it didn’t work, did it?’

  He grinned. ‘You don’t think so? At least it got them talking to me.’

  ‘Daniel, you mean?’

  ‘Daniel’s not the one with his hands on the purse strings. No, his brother. Ever since the old lady died he’d refused to meet me, sat in his office sending me letters saying to get my dirty working-class boots off his nice doorstep – in lawyer’s language, of course. Then three days after we really turn up on his doorstep, he says let’s meet and talk.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Monday evening. He asked me to be patient about the money his aunt wanted us to have and handed over two hundred pounds in banknotes on account. And if you’re wondering what’s happened to the money it’s duly entered in the Scipian bank balance and will be used for educational purposes just as the old lady wanted. If you don’t believe me I’ll give you the treasurer’s name and you can check with him.’

  I believed that at least. Financial greed on his own account was something even his enemies had never attributed to Hawthorne. For the cause, it was another matter. Still, I found it hard to believe that Adam Venn had voluntarily handed over money.

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘Down in the village at the back of the public house. He drove up in his gig, handed over the money, drove off again.’

  ‘How was the meeting arranged?’

  ‘I got a note from him on Monday morning, telling me to meet him there at seven o’clock.’

  I remembered that as Bobbie and I had been carrying the picture up the hill on Monday evening we’d seen Adam driving down it in the gig. ‘How did he behave when you met? Was he angry?’ I asked.

  ‘Cold and businesslike, typical lawyer. He had a receipt for me to sign and I signed it. He wanted me to agree not to start legal proceedings for the rest and said it would be forthcoming when the estate was settled. I said if the estate wasn’t settled, how come we were getting the two hundred? He said his wife had had to sell her jewellery to get it.’

  ‘So you took the money, signed the receipt, and then what?’

  ‘He drove off, I walked back to the old schoolhouse. Some time after that, Daniel came to see me and told me about breaking things off with Daisy.’

  ‘Did you tell him about Adam and the money?’

  ‘I didn’t get a chance. It wasn’t his business anyway.’

  Two of Harry’s friends appeared at the end of the alley and called to him to hurry up. Even at this hour of the evening, they were going on to another meeting.

  ‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘I’ve answered a lot of your questions but you haven’t answered mine. Who killed her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Some of the girls reckoned it was the other woman, the fancy fiancée, driven mad by love. I told them not to be so stupid. When the middle classes take to killing, it’s not for love – it’s for money.’

  His friends came down to get him. He grabbed a couple of newspapers from the bundle one of them was carrying. ‘Latest edition of the Wrecker. Hot off the presses. Free to workers, threepence to members of the predatory classes like you two.’

  Resignedly, Max and I fumbled in our pockets for coins. The sheets of thin newsprint were tacky with printer’s ink. Harry was dragged away by his friends and Max walked with me to the tram stop.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you make of that?’

  ‘Would Adam Venn have handed over two hundred pounds just like that?’

  ‘I don’t know why Harry should lie, but it’s hardly a lawyer’s way of doing business.’

  ‘Philomena’s estate was settled weeks ago. If the money’s there, why don’t Oliver and Adam just hand it over?’

  ‘A big if, perhaps,’ Max said.

  ‘You don’t mean there’s something in what Hawthorne said?’

  ‘That the Venns killed Daisy because she was a poor working-class girl? Of course not. But I think Oliver and Adam are in deep financial trouble. If you want a guess from me, they’d been gambling on the stock market with trust funds. While Philomena was alive, her money kept them going. Now she’s bequeathed a lot of it all over the place, there are problems.’

  When I thought of our own problem with the picture, that fitted in too. Perhaps Oliver had wanted to keep the Odalisque for her value rather than sentiment: for money, not love. The tram arrived.

  ‘Let me know what happens, Nell,’ Max said.

  I would, I said.

  * * *

  I slept on it and woke up thinking that I’d got worse than nowhere. I carried the problem with me all that Monday, on a round of offices and chambers of people who sometimes gave me translation work. It was hard going because most of my customers were just back from their summer holidays with minds full of sandy beaches or golf links, reluctant to get back into harness for the long autumn haul. The most I managed was a half-promise of some French legal documents in the next week or two, provided the client didn’t decide to decide first.

  By mid-afternoon, I’d decided to do nothing. Why should I take up a campaign that would harm a lot of people for the sake of a girl I hardly knew? A dissenting voice in my mind kept arguing – That’s right. Sweep her aside again. Why not? Everybody else did. But that voice was in the minority, so would have to get used to being ignored. I made my way to Clement’s Inn. Mondays were open days, when members of the public interested in what we did were welcome to walk in so I expected the place to be busy. Still, I was surprised when a friend grabbed me as soon as I’d set foot through the door.

  ‘Nell, where have you been? There’s a man been waiting for you for hours and he’s in an awful state.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. He says he won’t speak to anybody else, it has to be you. We’ve put him in the back office and given him some tea and newspapers but he keeps popping out and asking if you’re here yet.’

  From the way she looked at me as I went along the corridor to the office, you’d have thought they’d got some kind of unpredictable beast penned up there. I opened the door, not too worried, then stood rooted in the doorway. Tea on the table, grey and untasted. Newspapers spread all over the floor and table as if he’d been looking for something. On his feet in the middle of it all, face grey, hair sticking out at all angles, whole body quivering with nerves and impatience – Daniel Venn. He didn’t give me time to ask a question or even step inside the room, just came straight out with it in a croak of a voice, nothing musical about it.

  ‘They’re going to arrest me.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  I CLOSED THE DOOR.

  ‘Have they said so?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but even Adam thinks so. He said to me last night we should be prepared for the worst.’

  ‘But why? What’s happened?’

  ‘They found the gun. It was there on the terrace in one of the big flowerpots. It might have been there all the time. Then they took my fingerprints. Oh God.’

  ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Just get things in order and tell me what there is to tell.’

  I felt nearly as rattled as he looked, but tried not to show it. We sat down opposite each other at the table.

  ‘If Adam thinks the police are going to arrest you, there must be a reason. Start from Tuesday when the police questioned you.’

  ‘Was it Tuesday? They’ve been at me so many times since then.’ He took a few deep breaths, staring down at his hands, then started.

  ‘It wasn’t so bad the first time. They wanted to know if I knew Daisy and I said yes and where her family lived and so on, and about bringing her to the camp because we were both interested in folk music, and the other girls looking after her. I could tell the inspector didn’t approve. Adam had told me not to talk about being engaged to her unless they asked outright and they didn’t, so I didn’t. Not then.’

  ‘But they heard anyway?’

  ‘From Hawthorne. After the show he put on at the house, they must have gone down to the camp
and asked him and the others about Daisy. So of course it all came out and I suppose he made things look as black for me as possible.’

  I wondered why, even in a state of shock, we’d ever thought the news wouldn’t come out. It had been Adam’s initiative and he’d been stupid as intelligent people can be sometimes, underestimating the opposition. I didn’t say that to Daniel, just waited for him to go on.

  ‘The same day the police sent … a kind of a covered cart to take Daisy away. I asked what would happen to her and they said she’d be going back to her family, in due course, as they put it. It makes me feel sick, the thought of her going back there, even dead.’

  He was fighting hard not to break down.

  ‘And the next day,’ I asked, ‘when the police came back?’

  ‘The inspector was furious with me, with all of us. He accused me of concealing evidence. He asked if I’d been worried that Daisy would bring a breach of promise case against me. I told him that was utter rot. I’m sure Hawthorne put that into his head.’

  ‘Did they talk to Felicia?’

  ‘Yes. They asked her if she knew about the engagement to Daisy and she said she did. Had she met Daisy? No, of course she hadn’t. Then the usual things they asked the rest of us, like had she heard or seen anything unusual.’

  ‘She hadn’t?’

  ‘No. They were … quite gentle with her, Carol said. They let Carol stay with her while they were asking questions.’

  The inspector would have had no reason to deal harshly with Felicia. She’d have been wearing, almost for certain, a long-sleeved blouse buttoned at the wrist as any properly dressed girl would. No scratches visible.

  ‘So when did they find the revolver?’

  ‘The same day, the Wednesday. They brought a couple more constables in and one of them found it in one of those big stone pots by the studio door.’

  ‘But it’s not evidence against you, is it? Anybody could have left it there.’

  ‘That’s what Adam said. Anyway, the next day they came to take our fingerprints, his and mine and even poor Uncle Olly’s because the thing belonged to him. Do you know about fingerprints?’

  ‘A bit. Not much.’

  ‘Apparently they can tell if people have handled something, even days afterwards, and metal things are good for showing fingerprints. That’s what the inspector told me. I think he was probably trying to scare me.’

  I could imagine Inspector Bull’s pale grey eyes as he said it.

  ‘And did he succeed?’

  The look on Daniel’s face answered for him.

  ‘I thought I’d better tell him I’d had the gun. It would have looked worse if they found my fingerprints on it and I hadn’t, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Meanly, I was thinking that this put me in deeper trouble. I’d actually given him the gun so could expect another and more awkward interview with the inspector. He’d want to know why I hadn’t told him before and I couldn’t answer that without bringing in Felicia.

  ‘I didn’t tell him about Felicia, though,’ Daniel said, as if he’d read my thoughts.

  ‘Then how did you explain having the gun?’

  ‘I told him I was carrying it around all afternoon to shoot at squirrels and things. I knew Uncle Oily kept it in his drawer, so I just borrowed it without asking him.’

  The lurch of relief for myself gave way to horror at the way Daniel was managing to dig himself in deeper all the time.

  ‘And he believed you were wandering round with a Smith and Wesson revolver to shoot squirrels?’

  ‘No, I don’t think he did. Not from the way he looked at me.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. And how did you explain its turning up in the flowerpot?’

  ‘I said I supposed I must have dropped it. I’m always carrying a lot of things round in my pockets so I might not have noticed it had gone.’

  No need even to ask how the inspector had reacted to that.

  ‘Could you have left it there on the Monday night when you checked the door was unlocked?’

  ‘I suppose so. I’ve been trying to remember but I can’t. Sometimes I can picture myself putting it back in the drawer where Uncle Olly kept it.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘But that’s no good, because I can picture myself just as clearly putting it down on a bench in the school yard and leaving it there. The more I think about it, the more confused I get.’

  ‘What else did the police ask you?’

  ‘They kept on about where I’d been all afternoon and evening. I don’t think I made a lot of sense to them. I’m not good with clock-watching at the best of times, and with Daisy and so on to think about…’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘Did they ask you when you’d last seen Daisy?’

  ‘Yes. I was sure about that, at any rate. It was the Monday morning when I gave the talk.’

  ‘Did you speak to her that morning?’

  ‘A bit, yes. Asked how she was and if she was getting enough to eat and so on. I said I was trying to sort things out with my family. I didn’t tell her what a row there’d been.’

  ‘How did she seem?’

  ‘Quiet, but then she always was.’

  ‘Did she tell you she’d woken up in the night with a screaming nightmare?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘She was shouting Don’t let him take me. Who do you think she meant?’

  ‘Fardel. Her uncle.’ It came out as something between a snarl and a groan. ‘All the time we were coming here she was terrified of him, sure he’d follow us and take her back.’

  ‘Did he try to?’

  ‘No, he was too cowardly for that. Cock of his own little dunghill, that’s all.’

  ‘But she was still terrified of him?’

  ‘Of course she was. After the life he’d led her, of course she was. I was going to make it up to her, see she wasn’t scared any more. The nightmares would have stopped and…’

  His head went down into his hands. I waited, conscious of the normal noises of a WSPU At Home going on around us: talk, laughter, doors slamming. They were leaving us tactfully alone.

  ‘So you don’t think he followed you?’

  ‘If he had, wouldn’t he have come to me for his wretched money? That was all he was interested in. I wish I could say he had.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because then it might have been him who killed her, out of spite.’

  ‘With your aunt’s gun in your garden? And why would she have gone to him?’

  ‘He might have dragged her away.’

  ‘With Scipians all over the place? Besides, you’re right. If he’d been anywhere near, he’d probably have come looking for you.’

  He slumped, all the energy gone out of him. He’d used the last of it in bringing his problem to dump at my feet.

  ‘Did you tell the police you’d arranged to meet Daisy again that evening?’

  ‘Yes, but then I said I’d changed my mind.’

  ‘Did they want to know why?’

  ‘Yes. The inspector kept coming back to that, trying to trip me up. I couldn’t tell him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know why not.’

  ‘Felicia?’

  ‘Yes. If I told him what you told me – about her having the gun, he might have thought…’

  He’d been mumbling it to the desk top; now his voice died away altogether.

  ‘Thought that Felicia killed her?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Do you think so?’

  His head jerked up. ‘No!’ For a moment the light was back in his eyes, then he looked away. ‘You don’t think so, do you?’

  ‘She had the gun.’

  ‘But … but you’d have seen, wouldn’t you? You were there.’

  ‘Almost there. I wouldn’t necessarily have seen.’

  ‘But you don’t think so?’

  He said it so pleadingly that part of me wanted to comfort him and say no, no of course not.

&nb
sp; ‘The police must think it’s possible. I think you know it’s possible too or you wouldn’t have told them that lie about having the gun all afternoon.’

  ‘No. I only wanted to protect her from being nagged at the way they’re nagging at me. She’s ill. It would drive her mad.’

  (Mad enough to confess. Was that what he meant?)

  ‘What it comes to,’ I said, ‘is that you’re lying to the police and making them suspicious of you to protect Felicia.’

  ‘Don’t I owe her that?’

  ‘Perhaps. But you’d better start deciding exactly how much you owe.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You think they’re going to arrest you. You might even be right. If they’ve got enough evidence they’ll charge you, lock you up, put you on trial and possibly…’

  I intended to scare him into thinking about what he was doing, but even I couldn’t finish the sentence. In any case, he looked scared enough.

  ‘Did you kill her?’

  ‘No!’ He was on his feet, sending papers from the table flying everywhere. I thought for a moment he might try to hit me, then he sank back in the chair. ‘No. I swear by everything that’s ever mattered to me or ever will that I didn’t kill her.’

  We stared at each other. Feet came and went in the corridor. I asked him if Adam agreed with what he was doing.

  ‘He doesn’t have any choice.’

  ‘He does. He could tell the police you’re lying about having the gun all afternoon. So could I.’

  ‘You won’t, will you?’

  ‘Yes, if I have to. In the last resort, I won’t stand by and see you hanged.’

  ‘It won’t come to that.’

  ‘Don’t rely on it.’

  ‘No, it really won’t. All I’m trying to do is gain time so that we can find out who killed her without involving Felicia. That’s why I’ve come to you.’

  ‘So that I can produce a handy murderer out of the moss? I’m not a conjurer.’

  ‘If they lock me up, I can’t go round asking questions. You can.’

  ‘Oh yes? Have you any suggestions where I start?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’