Plots and Errors

by Jill McGown

  At six-thirty a.m. on Sunday the 24th of August, I opened the door of Room 312 of the above-mentioned hotel. There were two male people in the room. One, in his late thirties, about six feet tall, with dark wavy hair, dressed in an open bathrobe, was sitting on the edge of the single bed. The other, in his teens, about five feet six inches tall, with dyed blond hair and a tattoo of a spider on his left shoulder, was naked, and was performing a sexual act on the older man.

  As per your instructions, I indicated to the occupants that I had inadvertently gone to the wrong floor, apologized, and left. A covert video, lasting only a few seconds, was made, but I regret that this was of very poor quality, and will be of no use to you. I enclose a print-out of the only frame recoverable, and have not of course charged you for this. I hope the still photograph will suffice for your purposes.

  ‘The hotel room was registered to Paul Esterbrook,’ said Lloyd. ‘The report was still in its envelope, and date-stamped Friday the twenty-ninth of August – but the video-frame wasn’t with it.’

  Judy had questions. Why would Paul remove the visual evidence but leave the report? Why had his mother had a private detective checking up on him in the first place? Why on earth did she want a video? And what exactly had happened to it that it was of no use?

  Lloyd, as ever, had different questions, ones that homed in on the little puzzles thrown up by the report. ‘How do you suppose Kathy Cope was able to take a covert video, however poor the quality?’ he asked. ‘How could a little business like that have that sort of equipment? And why didn’t we find it in the house?’

  ‘Maybe she hired it,’ said Judy.

  ‘With more of this money that she didn’t have?’ said Lloyd. ‘But I think it answers one little puzzle. It explains why a zillionaire would use Kathy Cope.’

  Judy frowned. ‘Does it?’ she said.

  ‘Tom established that the Copes had Room 412, directly above Esterbrook’s,’ said Lloyd. ‘It seems to me that Mrs Esterbrook knew the room number well in advance, and made certain Mrs Cope booked the same room on a different floor so it would look like an honest mistake if Esterbrook checked up. And Kathy was able simply to walk in on them, so the door must have been unlocked, and they were conveniently in flagrante when she did.’ He shrugged slightly. ‘It looks as though someone arranged for that to happen at the appointed time.’

  ‘Billy?’ said Judy.

  ‘Billy. And he, presumably, told Mrs Esterbrook that Paul had taken him to her cottage after that interruption to the proceedings, and that really got her blood boiling, so she left that letter for him to find the next time he tried that.’

  Judy wasn’t happy with that letter.

  ‘And it explains why she would use Kathy, because a more experienced private detective would have guessed that Mrs Esterbrook was in league with whoever was in the room, and might have turned the job down. But Kathy wouldn’t question it. She’d just go blundering in.’

  Judy stared at him. ‘You’re saying his own mother colluded with a rent-boy to set him up?’ she said.

  Lloyd shrugged. ‘As I said, families are funny things. And this one is funnier than most, you have to concede.’ He pushed his chair back and rocked gently on the back legs. ‘And I don’t know that she was setting him up, as such,’ he said. ‘The letter suggests she was just trying to scare Paul out of his way of life . . . after all, if his wife caught him, he’d lose everything.’

  ‘She got someone to video him for his own good?’ said Judy.

  Lloyd grinned, and let the chair fall forward. ‘Or – perhaps more importantly – a part of the business would leave the family if Elizabeth found out, and the family seems to have been very important to Angela Esterbrook, from what I hear.’

  ‘It seems Kathy sold the video to Esterbrook rather than send it to her client,’ Judy said, aware that she might be given an argument. ‘He said someone had got a video of him. And that he was dealing with it. He told Josh that the night the Copes died.’

  ‘But Kathy wouldn’t blackmail anyone,’ said Lloyd, then backtracked. ‘Well, not of her own volition, anyway. She could get talked into it, I expect.’

  ‘By her husband, do you think?’

  Lloyd shook his head. ‘From what I’ve heard about Andy Cope, he found the whole idea of spying on people unacceptable. I can’t see him turning blackmailer.’

  But Kathy Cope had brand-new office equipment that she had paid for somehow, and that letter left little room for doubt, thought Judy – a faulty video, with just one frame that was of any use. And Lloyd’s belief that they had been murdered surely clinched it.

  ‘If they did blackmail him, and Esterbrook found out they’d sent a frame from it to Angela despite that,’ she said, ‘he might well have murdered them.’

  ‘Perhaps. Keep working on the little puzzles,’ Lloyd said, and looked at his watch. ‘Tom should be with Elizabeth Esterbrook’s enquiry agent right about now, so that might help. In view of the Copes’ report, I’ve told him to have a word with Mrs Esterbrook while he’s in Barton – try to find out what she knew about her husband’s homosexual activities.’

  Tom? He seemed a very brave choice for something that required sensitive handling. Judy smiled. ‘Was that wise?’ she said, as she picked up the phone, thinking of a little puzzle that might not take too long to solve.

  Lloyd grinned. ‘You’re the one who said he needed to learn a bit of diplomacy,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but he hasn’t yet, not really.’ She held up a hand as her call was answered. ‘Excalibur Hotel, Plymouth,’ she said, listening to the recorded number, taking a note of it.

  ‘I think this family can take Tom without cracking under the strain,’ said Lloyd. ‘He’ll be all right, and he gets results. We’ve still got to prove that Paul Esterbrook did these murders, however helpful he’s been about leaving us clues. Even Sandie’s statement doesn’t really do that – it just places him at the scene. And that’s all that Foster’s will do, I imagine.’

  ‘You’re still not exactly happy with any of this, are you?’ said Judy.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I believe Sandie Esterbrook was telling the truth.’

  ‘Even the bit about being a decoy?’

  Lloyd shrugged a little. ‘Paul Esterbrook stood to lose an enormous fortune,’ he said. ‘And the Esterbrook mind is a devious and cunning thing, as Josh said. Read the will – Paul Esterbrook père covered every conceivable eventuality.’

  ‘Except this one,’ said Judy.

  ‘Yes. Which is one of the reasons that I’m not happy with it.’

  ‘Sandie Esterbrook needn’t be lying,’ said Judy. ‘I think there’s something funny about that letter. Why would she sign it ‘‘Angela’’?’ Her eyebrows rose as a thought occurred to her. ‘It might have been written to her husband,’ she said. ‘The little boy she’s talking about could be Paul himself. It could be an old letter, lying around because she’s writing her autobiography.’ A terrible thought occurred to her then. ‘You don’t think Paul just made a ghastly mistake, do you?’ she said.

  Lloyd thought about that, then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s threatening him with the police over it. It might be a bit galling to be the mother of an unacknowledged son, but it’s not against the law to have an illegitimate child.’ He smiled. ‘Besides, no one would be taken in by a letter that would have to be at least thirty years old, however slow on the uptake. I think it was written to Paul junior, all right. I’m just not convinced that Angela wrote it.’

  ‘But what about the fax? Do you think he made that up?’

  ‘No,’ said Lloyd, illogically. ‘I don’t. Can you get someone on to that? Check out all the faxes available to other members of the family for a start, see if a fax was sent from one of their numbers to that number any time in the last week. And ask the lab if the burned paper could be the remains of a fax.’

  ‘Right,’ said Judy, and turned her attention to her call. ‘Oh, good morning,’ she said, when the hotel answe
red with commendable speed. ‘This is Detective Inspector Judy Hill, Stansfield CID, Bartonshire. I’m making enquiries about a couple who stayed with you over the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of August – Cope, Room 412. You’re welcome to ring me back if you want to check my credentials, but I don’t think you’ll need to. I would just like you to check and see if Mr Cope had any special requirements. Did he need wheelchair access?’

  The girl didn’t think it necessary to make sure that Judy was who she said she was. Judy could hear her checking back, then the phone being picked up.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that. And we would have to know, because people in wheelchairs have to use the service lift.’

  ‘You don’t happen to remember what Mr Cope looked like, do you?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. It was very busy then. It was the Bank Holiday.’

  ‘Of course. Thank you,’ said Judy, and hung up, glancing at Lloyd. ‘I thought the fourth floor was a bit unlikely for a wheelchair-bound guest,’ she said, and smiled. ‘I think we might have found the other man the neighbours heard the row about, the provider of surveillance equipment, and our blackmailer, all rolled into one.’

  ‘Yes, I rather think we have,’ said Lloyd. ‘That makes much more sense. Some boyfriend of Kathy’s who talked her into blackmail – that I can believe.’ He pushed himself off her desk, and went to the door. ‘We’re going to have to find out who he is as well as everything else,’ he said with a sigh. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to the Copes’ post-mortem, which I believe will provide some answers, rather than conveniently useful clues.’

  SCENE III – BARTONSHIRE.

  Monday, September 29th, 11.00 a.m.

  Foster’s Office.

  ‘DS Finch, Stansfield CID.’

  The street door, sandwiched between a kebab house and a bookie, buzzed, and Tom pushed it open, going up two flights of a narrow staircase to find the business premises of Ian R. Foster, Private Enquiry Agent.

  He opened it to find an office the size of Elizabeth Esterbrook’s front porch, its walls lined with sagging shelving piled high with telephone directories, yearbooks, old copies of Who’s Who, everything and anything that a jobbing enquiry agent might want to have to hand. A small L-shaped desk held a well-used word-processor, a printer, photocopier, fax machine, and an electric kettle, leaving barely enough room for the woman who was wedged in behind it.

  ‘I rang earlier,’ said Tom. ‘Mr Foster is expecting me.’

  ‘Just go through,’ she said.

  Tom pushed open another door into a very slightly larger office. Behind the desk sat, presumably, Ian R. Foster, Private Enquiry Agent, small, shabbily dapper, with a dark moustache. He looked suspicious; Tom had not said why he wanted to see him.

  ‘What can I do for you, Sergeant Finch?’

  ‘I’m told you were observing the husband of a Mrs Elizabeth Esterbrook at the weekend,’ said Tom. ‘I’d like to know what he did.’

  Foster looked horrified. ‘I’m sorry, sergeant,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t possibly discuss that without my client’s permission. You should have said when you rang. I would have told you it was impossible.’

  ‘It’s your client who wants you to tell me.’

  ‘Well, I can’t just take your word for that, can I? I would be failing in my duty to my client. I am not, of course, confirming that I have a client of that name.’

  Tom picked up the phone on the desk, and dumped it down in front of him. ‘Yes, you have,’ he said. ‘Ring her.’

  Ian R. Foster rang the client he wouldn’t confirm that he had, told her Tom was there, asked if he could divulge the contents of her report, and hung up. ‘She seems very anxious that I tell you what’s in it,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine why. What’s it got to do with the police?’

  Tom smiled without humour. ‘I couldn’t possibly discuss that without my Chief Inspector’s permission,’ he said. ‘Just tell me what Esterbrook did on Saturday.’

  Foster sighed, and reached into his pocket for a small loose-leaf notebook, turning back a few pages. ‘Saturday, the twenty-seventh of September. I arrived at subject’s residence at six a.m., but subject did not leave until seven-thirty.’

  ‘What time did he normally leave?’

  ‘Half past six. He usually went to Stansfield and picked up his secretary or whatever she is, but he didn’t do that this time.’ Foster carried on. ‘Subject drove, with one stop at a motorway service area, to Plymouth, where he stopped at the Excalibur Hotel. He ate lunch alone, and left the Excalibur at fourteen-twenty hours, arriving in Penhallin harbour at fifteen-ten hours. He left his vehicle, and boarded the boat Lazy Sunday, which appeared to me to be deserted. While aboard the boat he spent some moments examining the wheelhouse doors—’

  ‘Examining them?’

  ‘—opening and closing them several times. I was unable to ascertain the reason for his interest in—’

  ‘Did he go into the wheelhouse?’

  Foster frowned a little. ‘No.’

  ‘OK, carry on.’

  ‘He then left the boat, and spoke to a number of other boat-owners before returning to his vehicle and driving back to Plymouth, where he went into the Excalibur Hotel, and picked up his weekend case. He then drove back to Bartonshire without stops.’

  This was going to put the proverbial among the whatsit, thought Tom. So much for Sandie Esterbrook’s story about Paul taking her out to Bodmin Moor and duffing her up. Lloyd had believed her; he wouldn’t like it when he knew he’d been fooled.

  ‘Subject drove to Little Elmley—’ Foster looked up. ‘That’s a private estate belonging to the family,’ he said.

  ‘I know. What happened there?’

  Foster consulted his notebook once more. ‘I allowed the subject to go out of sight before driving in after him, and drove as close to the house as I could without detection before taking my own vehicle off the road, into the woods. I walked the rest of the way until I could see the subject at the front door of the house, talking to his mother.’

  ‘You know Mrs Esterbrook?’

  ‘By sight,’ said Foster. ‘We don’t exactly move in the same circles. But I’ve been following this geezer for weeks, and you get to know the family, so to speak.’

  Do you ever, thought Tom. But not for long; they had a nasty habit of being shot to death. Funny, that Foster didn’t seem to know that there had been ructions at Little Elmley. ‘Did you see any other members of the family there?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyone else at all?’

  He looked a little uncomfortable. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Never mind. You saw him talking to his mother. Did he go into the house?’

  He addressed his notebook. ‘No,’ he said. ‘When the subject left his mother at the door, I returned to my vehicle—’

  Tom had had enough of subjects and vehicles. ‘Forget the notebook,’ he said. ‘Just tell me in plain English.’

  Foster put down the notebook a little reluctantly, and shrugged. ‘I gave him time to get clear, went after him, caught up with him just as he turned down to the reservoir. I took a walk down, and there were people doing a dive, so I just hung about with the ones on the shore. Esterbrook spoke to a couple of people, then watched the divers with binoculars for a few minutes. Then he got back in his car, went home, and I was off watch, so to speak.’

  Tom grinned. ‘I hope your bladder was as strong as his,’ he said. ‘No stops at all on the way back?’

  ‘What?’ Foster looked a little puzzled. ‘Oh, no. No stops. It was a bit difficult, but I managed.’

  ‘You must miss having back-up,’ said Tom. ‘Not so easy going private, is it?’

  Foster smiled. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘The notebook. I kept expecting you to ask permission to consult it. How long were you in the job for?’

  ‘Too long.’

  Tom grinned. ‘Can you let me have a copy of your notes?’

  ‘
Yeah, sure.’ Foster removed the appropriate pages and went out to his secretary’s office. ‘Can you copy them for me, sweetheart?’ he said.

  ‘Where were you yesterday?’ asked Tom, following him through as his secretary arranged the small sheets on the platen.

  ‘What?’ Foster looked suspicious again, then shrugged. ‘I was at a Sunday race meeting,’ he said. ‘I had the day off, because Esterbrook went back early. Is that all right?’

  ‘Got back late, did you? Just fell into bed?’

  Foster frowned. ‘Are you having me followed, or what?’

  Tom smiled. ‘You didn’t catch up on the local news, did you?’

  ‘No. Should I have?’ He took out the photocopy. ‘It’s on the house,’ he said, sardonically, as he handed it to To m .

  ‘Thank you.’ Tom folded it, put it in his inside pocket. ‘Two people have been shot dead at Little Elmley,’ he said. ‘One of them might have been shot while you were in the grounds.’ He made for the door while the gobsmacked Ian R. Foster was at a loss for words. ‘You might have to give evidence, so it’s a case of don’t leave town, so to speak, Mr Foster,’ he said, grinning at him, and left.

  Well, well, well, thought Tom, as he rattled down the stairs and out. Not like Lloyd to let himself be taken in, but he had been, good and proper. He wondered how much, if any, of Sandie Esterbrook’s story was true, and which order he should do things in.

  Sandie Esterbrook would have to be taken in for questioning, but she didn’t know that anyone was on to her, so that could wait until he’d spoken to Elizabeth Esterbrook. Some of what Sandie had told Lloyd had come from Elizabeth Esterbrook in the first place; the suggestion that Paul had given her the beating, for instance. Perhaps she too had to be approached with caution.

  He drove out of Barton’s rundown, slightly seedy, once-busy shopping area, superseded by the big indoor complex, and out to its wealthy suburbs.