The Plantagenet Mystery

by Victoria Prescott

  ‘I’m glad Auntie Emily won’t be on her own in her house, at least for a while,’ she was saying. ‘She’s stayed at the villa before, and she knows some of the other ex-pats out there, so she’ll be quite happy. I don’t know whether I believe in this idea that someone wanted to steal her book, but it’s best not to take any chances. How’s the hunt for the secret document going, anyway?’

  Rob brought Claire up to date with his investigations.

  ‘If we want to find out about the family papers, I think we’re going to have to track down Lord Somerden and ask him. I don’t know where he lives, or what sort of person he is.’

  ‘If he was in the City, I might be able to get some background on him,’ Claire said. ‘I’ll see what I can find out. I’ll be coming down some time, to check on Auntie Emily’s house, pick up her post, pay any bills and so on. I’ll call round then.’

  Chapter Nine

  Chris’s search for a new job was not going well. He had visited most of the sites in and around Wynderbury. At each one he had been told that they were not taking on men. At the last place, he had not even needed to ask; there was a board at the entrance with the message ‘No Work Available Here’. Chris climbed back into the van and headed for Rollins the builders’ merchants. There were a few things he needed for the house, and a man there had promised to let him know if he heard of any big new jobs starting.

  He was making good progress on the house, but he would need to have some money coming in soon. He was beginning to think he would have to start looking further afield. Rob still thought he should try for a job at Ashleigh. Chris did not think there was any point. He did not have the skills that would be needed on a job like that.

  He swung the van into Rollins’ car park, parked and headed for the entrance. In the doorway he all but collided with another man coming out. When they had done a bit of awkward sidestepping to avoid each other, Chris realised the man was his former boss.

  ‘Not got another job yet, then?’ the man said.

  ‘Working on my own house. Making up for lost time,’ Chris replied shortly.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said the man, in a tone that reminded Chris of why he’d packed the job in. ‘Well, I can’t offer you anything at the moment. Said it wouldn’t take long to fill your job, didn’t I? But I’ll ask around, see if I can hear of anything that might suit you.’

  ‘Don’t bother. I’ve got some things lined up. Like I said, I’m just catching up on things at the house.’ The man looked disbelieving, so Chris added, ‘Big renovation job, outside the city. I’m going out there this afternoon.’

  As soon as he had spoken, Chris regretted it. The man would be sure to ask about it the next time he saw him. Chris did not know which would make him look more stupid – to say he had not gone for the job after all, or to have to admit that he had, and been turned down.

  When he had bought what he wanted at Rollins’, Chris returned to the Greenway. He needed somewhere to store things he was buying for the house. He could keep stuff there, of course, but there would soon be no room to work if he filled it up with pots of paint and kitchen units and radiators bought cheap. Better to have somewhere he could store it all out of the way until it was needed. And it would be good to have somewhere to keep the van. A lock up was not the most thief or vandal proof storage, perhaps, but it would be better than leaving the van parked in the road all night. He might get something off the insurance, too, if the van was in a garage overnight.

  He drove slowly past the row of lockups. He was looking, not for one that was perfect, that would be too much to expect, but one that could be made secure with the least amount of trouble. There was one at the end of the row that did not look too bad. No graffiti on the door, and no rubbish dumped outside. Chris stopped the van, turned off the engine and jumped down. The lock in the lockup’s door was broken, of course. Chris grasped the handle and swung the door up and over.

  It was the smell that hit him first. Gagging, eyes streaming, he doubled over, hands on knees, trying not to throw up. He staggered outside, gulping in fresh air. He had smelt something like this before. When he was a kid, he and some mates had found a dog that had died and lain undiscovered on some waste ground. Some animal had probably died inside the lockup. It was being shut in that was making the smell worse. He could handle it; it would be quicker than waiting for the council to come and sort it. He pulled his jacket over his nose and mouth, took a deep breath and plunged back inside.

  He could see the debris which had accumulated while the lockup was unused. A child’s discarded bicycle, a broken television, an old mattress in the corner. The smell seemed to be strongest in that far corner. Moving forward, he seized the mattress with both hands and pulled it away from the wall. He had to drop it immediately, to duck and thrash at the flies that rose in a cloud from what had been under the mattress.

  It was not a dog.

  Anyone who had grown up on the Greenway had seen their share of unpleasant things. Fights, domestics, the occasional knifing. But this was something Chris had not seen. Trainers, long legs in blue jeans, a hooded top, face down on the floor. Chris forced himself to keep looking, fearing, but also somehow knowing, what he would see. Then his stomach rebelled against the smell and the sight. Gagging, he stumbled backwards, wanting the light and the fresh air.

  Chris used his mobile phone to call the police, then waited in his van for them to arrive. Much as he might have liked to disappear, it would be stupid. Mobile phone calls could be traced, and he had been in the estate office asking about the lockups only the day before. He waited while the first officers to arrive looked inside the lockup, saw them joined by a more senior officer, who asked him to give his account of finding the body. Random images and sounds imprinted themselves on his brain, as if the events around him were a film with faulty sound and vision. The shouts of children playing at a school nearby; a patch of oil on the road; the scar on the back of the hand of a redheaded policeman, as he unrolled the blue and white tape to cordon off the scene.

  ‘Do you know him?’ the inspector asked finally.

  Chris thought of what he had seen; the black top with the white bands on the sleeves, the sandy hair. He hesitated only a moment. Easy to lie now, but too many people would know it was a lie.

  ‘Yeah. Wayne Simpson.’

  ‘You sure? You had to think about that.’

  ‘Give me a break, mate. You lot might be used to this sort of thing. I’m still wondering if I’m going to puke my guts up. I’m sure. It’s him.’

  ‘Know where he lives?’

  ‘Conway House.’

  ‘Right.’ The inspector made a final note, then snapped a rubber band around his notebook. ‘Don’t talk about this. We’d like his family to hear it from us, not the local grapevine.’

  ‘OK. Was he done in?’

  The inspector looked at him sharply.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Doesn’t take a genius. He was lying on his front, with the back of his head bashed in. And someone put that mattress over him.’

  ‘We won’t know anything until the post mortem. Meanwhile, like I said, don’t talk about it.’

  As soon as he opened the door, Rob could see that Chris was deeply shocked about something. His face was white, his usual cocky manner absent. Rob ushered him in. He refused to sit, but stood, uneasy. Finally,

  ‘Homer’s dead,’ he blurted out.

  ‘What – Wayne? How?’ Even as he asked the question, Rob could tell from Chris’s demeanour that he was not going to like the answer.

  ‘His head was bashed in, I think.’ He swallowed, looking as if he might be sick. ‘I found him.’

  ‘Jesus! Look, sit down, for God’s sake.’ Rob pushed Chris into a chair and went to the kitchen. Chris looked as if he could do with a stiff drink, but coffee was the best he could do. He put two spoonfuls of sugar in the mug and stirred it thoroughly. When Rob went back into the living room, Chris was leaning forward, hands clasped between
his knees.

  ‘Here.’ Rob put the mug down on the coffee table. Chris picked it up, took a gulp and leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Rob sat down opposite him with his own coffee. He listened as Chris told the whole story.

  ‘Could it – is there any possibility it could have been an accident?’ he asked, when Chris had finished. Chris shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so. Somebody else must’ve been there, to put that mattress over him, and why would anyone do that, if it was just an accident?’

  Rob was trying not to jump to conclusions. There was no reason why Wayne Simpson’s death should be connected with their particular mystery; Chris had said Homer was involved in all kinds of dubious activity. But –

  ‘Did the police give you any idea how long he’d been there before you found him?’ Rob asked.

  ‘No. But I’d say he’d been there a while.’ Chris put his mug down, the smell of coffee suddenly too much, as the memory of what he had seen set his stomach churning again.

  ‘Jason said Homer – Wayne – went to meet the person who sent him to steal the book,’ Rob said. ‘No-one seems to have seen him since. Do you think – ?’

  ‘I dunno. But I don’t like it.’

  They sat in silence for a while, Chris trying to forget what he had seen in the lockup, Rob trying to comprehend this latest turn of events. He had never even seen Wayne Simpson; it was hard to feel much sympathy over the death of someone he did not know, and who by all accounts was an unattractive individual. It was even harder to imagine that he might have died because of some scribbling in a book and a five hundred year old story that Rob barely believed in. He was suddenly very glad that Emily was safely out of the country.

  ‘Shouldn’t we go to the police?’ Rob said eventually. ‘I mean, if we know something that could help them find out what happened to Wayne?’

  Chris looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Yeah, well, we don’t really know anything, do we? You said yourself, you don’t think what’s in that book is important enough for anyone to want to steal it.’

  ‘Yes, but someone did want to steal it. Maybe the police know something we don’t that would make sense of it all.’

  Chris looked even more uncomfortable.

  ‘Yeah, well, I suppose I better tell you. I got a record.’

  ‘A criminal record? What for? Not – ’

  ‘No, nothing big, just stuff when I was a kid, messing about really.’

  ‘Oh. Well. Lots of people get into trouble when they’re kids, don’t they.’

  ‘I bet you never.’

  ‘Well, no. But just because you were stupid when you were a kid, doesn’t mean you’d murder someone now, does it?’

  ‘No, course I wouldn’t. But it’d look bad, me finding him, then not saying something when the police was talking to me.’

  ‘You could say you were shocked, not thinking clearly. You still looked pretty shocked when you got here.’

  ‘You think they’d believe that?’

  ‘But what motive would you have for killing Wayne? Anyway, they couldn’t prove anything. You didn’t do it, so there can’t be any evidence.’

  ‘Since when do they need evidence to fit someone up?’

  Rob knew there were corrupt policemen who falsified evidence to get convictions, but it was something he could not understand. For him there would be no satisfaction in producing work based on false evidence.

  ‘Especially if they find out what we did to Jason,’ Chris went on.

  ‘We didn’t do anything to him, not really. And they don’t know about that, do they? Or will Jason tell them?’

  ‘Not him. Not if it means dropping himself in it about doing the old lady’s house. But it was Jason told us about Wayne going to meet the man who wanted the book. If we went to the police, we’d have to tell them that.’

  ‘Yes. Damn. But we spoke to Jason on Monday. If Wayne was killed the previous Thursday, and if we did it, why would we need to speak to Jason on Monday?’ Rob said.

  ‘Trying to find out how much he knew – which is what we were doing, really.’

  Rob was still unconvinced. Chris persisted.

  ‘Look. You think it’s got something to do with the writing in this book, right?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘You know all this history stuff. Think the police will be able to work out what it’s all about?’

  ‘Um, no, probably not.’

  ‘Think you can?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Suppose we go to the police and get banged up ourselves, or they take the book away as evidence, then what chance will you have of finding out what it’s all about?’

  Rob still did not feel entirely comfortable about keeping what they knew, or suspected, from the police, but neither did he like the idea of telling the whole story to a sceptical police officer with a tape recorder. What information did they have, after all? Something Jason had told them that Wayne told him. The police must know that Jason was a close associate of Wayne’s; they would be bound to speak to him themselves and discover anything he knew. So Rob rationalised it to himself. If Wayne Simpson had been killed by whoever had sent him to steal the book, the best thing he could do to help would be to try to solve the mystery.

  ‘All right, then,’ he said. He reached for a notepad and pen.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Making a list. It’s what they do in all the best detective stories.’

  ‘If you say so. What have you got?’

  ‘What do we know?’ Rob said, writing quickly. ‘According to Jason, someone – we’ll call him Mr X – wanted Wayne to steal the book. Do we believe him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chris. ‘Jason couldn’t make up something like that. Anyway, you said they knew where to look for it. But why send Homer to get the book?’ Chris asked. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t trust him with anything important. Why not go himself?’

  ‘He wanted to keep out of it as much as possible? Wanted to make it look like an ordinary break in? If Emily hadn’t come back, they’d probably have gone through the rest of the house, then no-one would have guessed what they were really after,’ Rob said.

  ‘So what can we do? Find out if anyone’s been asking questions about the old lady?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be hard to find out about Emily.’ She regularly wrote to the journal of the local family history society with her latest discoveries about the Finch family.

  ‘Someone must have been watching her for a while, to know when she’d be out. She might have noticed something.’

  ‘No, it was only the second week of term. A stranger watching the house couldn’t have known it was something she does regularly. But she’s been going to that Thursday class, and my Friday one, for years. Anyone could have found that out. Anyway, wouldn’t the police have asked her if she’d noticed anyone hanging around? And I think she’d have mentioned it to me, if she’d seen anyone.’

  Rob read back over what he had written.

  ‘It must be someone who knows a bit about antiquarian books, and family history, to know how to find out who was interested in the Finch family,’ he said.

  ‘So does that help us find out who he is?’

  ‘Not really. All that information is easy enough to find, you just have to know where to look. And he can’t be a well known collector, otherwise the bookseller I talked to would have known him.’

  Rob threw the notebook down.

  ‘He knows how to find out what he needs, without leaving a trail for anyone else to follow.’

  ‘Can you go back to the bookseller, ask him what this bloke was like?’

  ‘I don’t think he’d tell me. He was quite offended when I asked if he’d told this man about Emily. It’s the sort of thing the police could do, but we can’t.’

  ‘So we’re screwed, then,’ Chris said.

  ‘As far as finding Mr X is concerned, yes. He hasn’t aroused suspicion, whoever he is, b
ut we will, if we start digging around and asking questions.’

  ‘There’s still the document,’ Chris said.

  ‘If it exists. But how are we going to find it, if it’s hidden at Ashleigh somewhere?’

  ‘Well, I thought I’d go and see if there’s anything going there. Any work, I mean. Like you said.’

  ‘Really? Well, that’s good, even if you don’t find the document.’

  ‘Not much chance of that, I reckon. But at least I’ll have had a look.’

  ‘It’s got to be better than what you were doing before, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see. I’ve got to get the job, first.’

  ‘And Claire’s going to see what she can find out about Lord Somerden. Maybe we’ll get a clue to some family papers that way.’ Rob picked up his notebook again and and wrote a new heading: Things to do.

  It was all very well to sit and make lists, Rob thought later. But really, what could the two of them hope to achieve? Real life was not like fiction, where the amateurs came in and solved the crime under the noses of the bumbling police. And how likely was it that Wayne Simpson’s death was connected to their affair? The Greenway was notorious for crime and violence, and Wayne, according to Chris, had been involved in much of it. It was much more likely that his death was related to some other criminal activity.

  Chapter Ten

  Chris parked the van on the verge outside the gates as before and made his way to the site office. The man there looked at him appraisingly.

  ‘Ever done a job like this before?’

  Chris mentioned the Charlotte Street conversion.

  ‘Yes, I know it. Not a bad job. All right, we could use someone, at least while we’re still clearing out the junk. When can you start?’

  There were two firms working at the house; one doing all the modern fixings, another, specialist, firm, working on the restoration and conversion of the sixteenth century building. There was, as Rob had suggested, plenty of work installing modern fittings in the rooms that were to be the guest bedrooms. There was a staircase at the back of the house to be taken out, and a new one fitted that met modern health and safety standards. There were door frames and doors to be fitted where rooms were being partitioned to install en-suite shower and toilet facilities. Before any new fittings could be installed, there was a lot of stripping out of old stuff, and clearing out of decades worth of junk that had accumulated in rooms that had been unused for years.