Plots and Errors

by Jill McGown

  But it did solve the Copes’ murder, after a fashion. Paul Esterbrook had indeed been with Billy in the hotel room, and he had dealt with his blackmailers, just as he had told his brother he had. It was just that Lloyd couldn’t prove it.

  SCENE XXVIII – BARTONSHIRE.

  Thursday, October 2nd, 10.45 a.m.

  Foster’s Office.

  ‘Sergeant Finch,’ said Foster, looking less than happy to see him.

  ‘Mr Foster,’ said Tom, closing the adjoining door in the face of the hovering, terminally curious, secretary. He was going to enjoy this. ‘Have you been avoiding me, by any chance?’

  ‘No, no – nothing like that. Just a bit of business, that’s all. Debbie said when I got in this morning that you’d been trying to get hold of me, so I rang you. Now, I wouldn’t have done that if I’d been avoiding you, would I?’

  Tom opened the envelope he was carrying, and drew out the photographs, laying them on the desk in front of Foster. ‘Do you recognize either of the people in these photographs?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Foster said, in a small voice. ‘The man is Paul Esterbrook. The woman—’ He looked up at Tom. ‘What happened to her?’ he said. ‘Someone’s given her a going-over.’

  ‘The woman,’ said Tom. ‘Go on, Mr Foster. Don’t play for time.’

  ‘The woman is called Sandie Townsend.’

  ‘Do you recognize where they are?’

  Foster licked his lips. ‘It looks like Mrs Esterbrook’s mother-in-law’s weekend cottage,’ he said.

  ‘Very good,’ said Tom. ‘You did actually go to Penhallin at least once, then? Now,’ he said, leaning over the desk, and pointing to the first picture. ‘These photographs come with the date and time printed on the frame. Can you read what it says, Mr Foster?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Out loud,’ said Tom.

  Foster sighed, and read the date and time aloud.

  Tom sat down in front of him. ‘That’s Saturday’s date,’ he said. ‘So how come you gave me an account of Paul Esterbrook’s movements on Saturday which entirely contradicts that evidence, and entirely corroborates his?’

  Foster licked his lips again. ‘I didn’t know I was giving him an alibi for murder, I swear I didn’t. Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it? He killed that kid in Cornwall. And his own mother. Can you credit that?’

  Tom looked at him, nodding. ‘That’s what it looks like,’ he said. ‘And then it seems he topped himself when it all went pear-shaped.’ He smiled. ‘So you’re all we’ve got, Foster.’

  Foster went pale. ‘I knew nothing about it!’ he said.

  Tom leant menacingly over the desk. ‘You and Esterbrook cooked this up between you, but you’re the one who’ll stand trial for murder.’

  Foster shrank back. ‘Hey, now, wait a minute. It had nothing to do with me!’

  They now knew that Paul Esterbrook had almost certainly not murdered Billy or his mother, but Foster didn’t know that, and Tom was enjoying scaring him half to death.

  ‘It wasn’t like that!’ Foster said. ‘Look – I was following the man, right? Every weekend. She said it might last months, years even. Every weekend during the summer months, May to September inclusive. It was a steady income, nice work. It suited me. But for five weeks I tried every way I could to catch the bastard at it, all the same. I worked hard, whatever you think. I bought a camcorder, and I went everywhere he was likely to go, working out how to get the best pictures – I can show you the practice videos, if you don’t believe me. I was working on it, honest, I was.’

  Tom’s expression didn’t change.

  ‘Then, one weekend, I lost him. His brother had an accident with the boat, and I was stuck out in the channel, fishing, waiting for the boat to come out again, and it never did. But I found him next morning by accident, and he must have thought he’d shaken me off, because he wasn’t so careful that time, and I got a video of him at it. From this brilliant vantage-point – there’s a treehouse in the garden. It overlooks the bedroom, and he opened the curtains. It was brilliant.’

  The unidentified fingerprints in the treehouse. Tom wondered if any of Paul Esterbrook’s doings with Billy hadn’t been recorded on tape. But he had thought that Esterbrook and Foster had had some cosy arrangement from the off, and that wasn’t quite how it was.

  ‘I was going to tell his wife, honest, I was. She’d said I was on a percentage if I came up with the goods, and that would be worth a hundred thousand. But it could take years for her to get the money even if she did have the proof, because he’d fight it. You know how long challenged wills take, and how much they cost. My percentage would go down all the time the case was going on. Whereas he stood to lose everything, and he’d got lots of money now, not some time never. I reckoned he might be just as generous if I told him what I had on him.’

  Foster had blackmailed him. Foster had, not the Copes. Tom wasn’t sure where that left Lloyd’s theory on their murder. If it was murder.

  ‘He agreed to do the business last Friday,’ Foster went on. ‘I reckoned the old park at Malworth was favourite, because there’s never anyone there after midnight. Told him to get there at midnight, leave the money where I said, and he’d find the video. I got there earlier than I told him, so I could leave the tape and see him leave the money, make sure he was alone and all that. But he’d got there even earlier than that, and jumped me. And he didn’t bring a hundred thousand with him.’

  Someone should have told Foster that his victim had been in the SAS or whatever it was, thought Tom, suddenly visited by a vision of Paul Esterbrook in camouflage, with a blacked-up face and twigs in his helmet, leaping on to the hapless Ian R. Foster, Private Enquiry Agent. He smiled, shook his head.

  ‘He brought two hundred thousand.’

  Tom’s smile vanished. ‘He what?’

  ‘Said it was mine in return for carrying on working for his wife, only when I sent my reports in they would say what he wanted them to say. He’d ring me up on the Sunday night each weekend he was there, and tell me what to put. That way, I could put my feet up at the weekend, he said, and he could stop looking over his shoulder.’

  ‘And you agreed,’ said Tom.

  ‘The alternative was that he cut my throat with the knife he was holding to it at the time. So yes. I agreed. What would you have done?’

  Tom thought that he might have agreed, in those circumstances. They weren’t circumstances in which he was ever likely to find himself, however.

  ‘The weekend just gone was the first time she employed me again. I couldn’t hang about in Barton in case Debbie or someone saw me, so I went to London, had a bloody good time on Esterbrook’s money. When I got home on Sunday night, there was a message on my answering machine, telling me everything I told you. I jotted it down in my notebook, and brought it in with me as usual, so Debbie didn’t know it was any different from the way it had been before. I didn’t know what had gone down at his mother’s place, I swear I didn’t. But I’d have had to do what he’d said anyway – he’d have killed me if I hadn’t.’

  ‘You still blackmailed him,’ said Tom. ‘Whatever he chose to do about it.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Foster. ‘But Esterbrook’s dead. You can’t do me for it.’

  ‘His wife’s not dead,’ said Tom. ‘You were defrauding her.’

  ‘No,’ said Foster. ‘I wasn’t. All the reports I sent her were kosher. I never sent her this report, did I? And I never sent her anything at all the weekend I caught him at it. Told her I’d come down with a bug, didn’t charge her or anything. You can check.’

  Tom already knew that was true. He sat back. ‘Where’s the money now?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, that would be telling.’

  Tom nodded. ‘You’ve spent the last two days running round opening bank accounts, and taking a spot of legal advice, haven’t you, Mr Foster?’

  Foster smiled. ‘The way I look at it is, it’s my money. He gave me it, fair and square, so to speak.’

  �
��Fair and square? He was telling you to defraud his wife, and you were demanding money with menaces!’

  ‘I wasn’t as menacing as him, mate, I can tell you that!’

  Tom wasn’t at all sure that Foster wasn’t entitled to keep the money. He was hard pressed to think of any criminal offence with which he could be charged. And quite frankly, he didn’t care. It was a drop in the ocean compared to the sort of money that these murders were all about. ‘Where’s the video?’ he said.

  ‘I gave it to him, didn’t I? Seeing as he asked so nicely.’

  Tom closed his eyes briefly. ‘Where’s the video?’ he asked again, and leant forward. ‘The copy you kept, just in case.’

  Foster looked slightly mutinous. ‘At home,’ he said.

  ‘Then let’s go, Mr Foster. And when we’ve seen the video, and I’ve taken it as evidence, you can accompany me to the station and make a statement while I decide what to charge you with.’

  SCENE XXIX – BARTONSHIRE.

  Thursday, October 2nd, 11.15 a.m.

  Foster’s House.

  Home was still up for sale, Tom noticed as he pulled up outside. Presumably Ian R. Foster was looking for something a little more upmarket. He wondered how long a chancer like Foster could hang on to two hundred thousand, and smiled. Maybe the bookie would give him odds.

  Foster produced the video, and his television flickered into life. Tom saw Paul Esterbrook turn away from the bedroom window, then a close-up of his face as he sat on the bed. He took a mobile phone from his companion, and the camera pulled back.

  Tom’s eyes widened. ‘That’s Sandie Esterbrook!’ he said.

  ‘Townsend,’ said Foster.

  ‘Esterbrook,’ said Tom, absently. ‘But never mind that. What matters is that she isn’t Billy Rampton.’

  ‘Who’s Billy Rampton?’ asked Foster.

  SCENE XXX – BARTONSHIRE.

  Thursday, October 2nd, 11.30 a.m.

  Elizabeth’s House.

  ‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Angela told me, just before I began helping her with her autobiography. That was why Paul senior refused a knighthood, in case it all came out, and embarrassed the Queen, or something.’

  It was good, being able to gossip about this at last. She had been sworn to secrecy by Angela. ‘Paul was three years old before she found out. He called himself Laurence – she was Mrs Paul Laurence for five years until, of all things, she’s sitting in her little cottage in Penhallin and finds herself reading about Mr and Mrs Paul Esterbrook and their son Josh at Henley or Wimbledon or somewhere, in the society pages of a Sunday paper, complete with photograph.’

  Detective Inspector Hill had come this time; Elizabeth had barely noticed her on Saturday night, what with one thing and another. She was very elegant, very calm and assured, not at all like Sergeant Finch. It was nice, having another woman to talk to that wasn’t Angela bloody Esterbrook or Sandie, who seemed to be welded to Josh, even when he wasn’t there.

  ‘How did he manage to keep them both in the dark so long?’

  Elizabeth poured coffee for each of them before answering the inspector’s question. ‘There were a lot of miles between them,’ she said, handing the inspector hers. ‘More than there are now, with motorways to get you there fast. They got married in the Fifties, remember. And Paul Laurence was considerably less wealthy than Paul Esterbrook,’ she added, as she sat down. ‘Mrs Laurence didn’t have a car, and couldn’t hop on a train whenever she felt like it. And she was a single parent, to all intents and purposes; she wasn’t free to go where she pleased.’

  ‘So she was stuck there on her own with a toddler?’

  ‘Most of the time.’ Elizabeth shook her head. ‘Mr and Mrs Laurence lived in that little two-up, two-down cottage with no money to speak of, while Mr and Mrs Esterbrook lived at Little Elmley surrounded by nannies and maids and goodness knows what else. Angela believed when Paul was away from home that he was out selling IMG’s wares, and Josephine thought that he was off to high-level conferences.’

  ‘And he was shuttling backwards and forwards between Bartonshire and Cornwall? Being two different people?’

  ‘Yes. But apparently he was becoming increasingly worried about leaving Josephine with Josh in order to spend time with Angela, because Josh was a handful even at two, and the nannies kept walking out. Josephine was, well, as mad as a hatter, as far as I can gather. So he was away from Angela for longer and longer periods, and Angela was worried about how hard he was having to work in order to make ends meet – she was besotted by him, and she remained so, even after he died.’

  ‘Despite what he did to her? Deceiving her, keeping her short of money?’

  ‘She excused it. He had such a terrible time with Josephine, he just wanted a simple life in a simple cottage—’ She smiled. ‘One is tempted to say with a simple woman, but there you are. Do you know, she never told Paul that she and his father were bigamously married? Made me promise not to tell him. That was why she was having trouble facing that part of the book. Because she would have to tell Paul.’

  Inspector Hill put down her coffee. ‘Do you have access to Angela’s correspondence from that period?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes – I’ve got it all. Except the premarital – if you can call it that when you’re talking about a bigamous marriage – love letters. She kept them in what she called her not-for-publication drawer. And for the first three years of the quote unquote marriage, I’ve only got letters from Paul to her, of course, because she thought he was on the road when he wasn’t with her, and she couldn’t write to him. Then after it all blew up, Paul made proper provision for her and Paul junior, but he stopped dividing his time between his wives, and stayed with Josephine. He visited Angela about once a month or so, but Paul didn’t know he was his father until he was about thirteen.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘That can’t have done him any good.’

  ‘It didn’t do anyone any good. I think it was worse for Josh, really. Anyway, that carried on for about two years, until Paul was five or so, and she wrote to him at IMG during that period. Do you know, she’d thought he just worked for IMG until then? She had no idea he owned it.’

  ‘And she forgave all that?’

  ‘Yes. And at first things were all right, but Paul had promised to tell Josephine and sort everything out, and of course he didn’t, so in the end every letter was a demand that he tell Josephine about her and Paul. That went on for nearly a year, until eventually she turned up at Little Elmley complete with Paul junior, and introduced herself. Josephine killed herself, Paul senior married Angela for real, and they became a family. Not one you’d want to meet up a dark alley, but a family all the same.’ She smiled briefly. ‘And if that sounds bitter, Inspector, it is.’

  Inspector Hill picked up her coffee again. ‘They do seem to be a little on the devious side,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know – believe me, you can have no idea. They’re all like it! Angela wasn’t devious, not being an Esterbrook, but she was dangerous. If you crossed her you knew all about it, just like Paul senior did. I was seventeen years old when I married into this family, and now it looks as though I’m going to come out of it with nothing at all. And I’ve earned a slice of their fortune. Believe me, I’ve earned it.’

  ‘Well,’ said the inspector, ‘I didn’t just come for a gossip, interesting though it is. You should write the biography anyway,’ she added.

  Elizabeth thought she might think about that. She might have to write the biography if she had no income from anywhere else, she thought. It would be poetic justice at least if she could profit in some way from the Esterbrooks.

  ‘Who else had access to the letters?’

  ‘Well, Josh actually found all the ones from Angela to Paul. Angela didn’t know Paul had kept them, until Josh was clearing out his things after he’d died. Josh was sworn to secrecy about the bigamy too, but that was when she decided to write her autobiography, because she had the entire correspondence, and all the diar
ies. That was when I became involved – she gave them to me to put into the word-processor so she could edit them.’

  ‘Did you see one written immediately after she had found that she was bigamously married?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘No,’ said Elizabeth, shaking her head. ‘I didn’t know there was one.’

  ‘Did you have access to her diaries?’

  ‘Only up to just before she found out about Paul being already married. Then she told me what had happened next, but she didn’t let me see her diary. She had written very bitter, very private things in it, she said. She was having to steel herself to deal with that part. And to tell Paul junior, of course.’ She shrugged, feeling for the first time a tinge of compassion for her stepmother and her husband. She was glad Angela had never had to tell Paul, even glad, in a way, that Paul had never had to find out.

  ‘We’ve checked her diaries,’ said the inspector, ‘and found the one where she discovered the bigamy. One of the things she wrote in it was that she had written to Paul senior under his own name at IMG, telling him that she had found out what he’d done. When you were going through them to transcribe them on to the word-processor, did she say that one of the letters was missing?’

  ‘No, but she didn’t re-read them. She was going to, but she found it difficult, and she was killed before she could.’

  SCENE XXXI – BARTONSHIRE.

  Thursday, October 2nd, 1.10 p.m.

  Interview Room One at Stansfield Police Station.

  They had taken them away separately; Josh’s car had driven off first, with him sitting beside Sergeant Finch. She had Inspector Hill.

  She was taken into the interview room, which had a TV in it. That seemed a little odd. Then Inspector Hill came in, and once again Sandie was cautioned, asked if she wanted a solicitor.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘This is a video taken by a private investigator from outside the cottage of Mrs Angela Esterbrook at the Headland, Penhallin,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘I would like you to watch a few moments of it.’