Fair Game

by Sheila Radley

  ‘You’re completely wrong, you know. I met Hope when Will first brought her home, and I was so sorry for the poor child. She was totally out of her depth at Chalcot. She had nothing in common with country people like us, who love dogs and horses. If she’d married Will, she would have been wretched. It would never have worked.’

  ‘Possibly not,’ said Hilary. ‘But you couldn’t be sure of that, could you? You couldn’t rely on being able to gloat over her misery.’

  ‘I’m not vindictive. If I were …’ Joanna thought about it briefly, and a grin twitched the corner of her mouth: ‘If I were, I wouldn’t have been at all sorry if Will had been lightly peppered with shot – by accident, of course. But I certainly didn’t shoot Hope Meynell.’

  Quantrill tried a different approach.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘why did you accept the invitation to that shooting party? I believe it was specially arranged to celebrate the engagement. You didn’t join them at lunch – understandably, in the circumstances – but I’m surprised you could face the happy couple at all. Unless of course you had some other reason for being there …?’

  Joanna Dodd straightened. She was nearly six feet tall, not far short of being able to look him right in the eye.

  ‘It’s called pride, Chief Inspector,’ she said. ‘I was damned if I was going to let everyone see I was hurt. It’s what children are always taught when they learn to ride – if you’re thrown, you get straight back in the saddle.’

  Quantrill returned her unwavering look. ‘But if you’re the only suspect in a murder enquiry, Miss Dodd, you don’t get away with a denial. We’d like you to come with us –’

  ‘Wait a minute, please!’ Her confidence slipping, Joanna Dodd held up her hand as if to ward him off. She sounded shaken, as though the seriousness of the interview had only just occurred to her. ‘Why do you say I’m the only suspect? There was someone in that wood behind us, you know. While we were waiting for the drive to begin, someone was putting up the odd bird. I turned to look at a rocketing pheasant, and it was very close to the place where Hope was shot.’

  ‘But you’re not claiming to have seen anyone?’ said Hilary.

  ‘No – but someone must have been there! Why don’t you ask the other Guns? Ask Will Glaven, he must have heard the disturbance. Ask Detective Superintendent Tait.’

  ‘That wretched Tait’s got a nerve,’ fumed Quantrill as he waited for a call to be put through to the DCI’s office at Saintsbury divisional police headquarters. ‘Passing himself off to his county friends as a Super already …’

  ‘Don’t tell me about it,’ said Hilary, ‘tell him. You’d better not blast his ears off, though, because we’re going to need his help.’

  ‘Fat chance we’ll have of keeping him away, once he knows Hope Meynell was murdered.’ Then, over the telephone: ‘Out, is he? All right – as soon as you can get in touch, ask him to ring me.’

  They had returned to Breckham Market with Joanna Dodd, having first cautioned her and allowed her to telephone her family solicitor. The senior partner in an old-established firm, he was clearly astonished by the turn of events and unaccustomed to accompanying his clients to a police station. But he had gallantly provided moral support as she made her statement, and afterwards he had insisted on driving her home himself.

  Having failed to contact Martin Tait, Quantrill headed for Chalcot to break the news of Hope’s murder to the Glavens. As he and Hilary drove up to the gates of the house, a shiny Daihatsu Fourtrak was just nosing out of them.

  ‘Ah – Mr Brunt the butcher’s been visiting his lady friend again,’ observed Quantrill as the driver turned his almost hairless head to stare at them.

  ‘At least he’s someone for Mrs Harbord to talk to,’ said Hilary. ‘She’s probably lonely – and worried sick about Laura, whatever she likes to pretend. I’ll have a word with her while you talk to the Glavens.’

  Lewis Glaven, though, had gone to London for the day on business. The housekeeper took Quantrill to the gun room where Will, weary from riding and unable to raise the energy to pull off his muddy boots, was glumly drinking coffee in the company of his dog.

  Quantrill told him, as sympathetically as he could, what he had told Joanna. Like her, Will was incredulous; he couldn’t imagine who would have done such a thing, or why. And then, when he’d recovered from the immediate shock, he expressed much the same opinion as hers.

  ‘You know what? I’m glad it wasn’t an accident. I couldn’t have borne it if you’d discovered that I’d fired the shot. And I didn’t want it to be pinned on Joanna – or your colleague, either.’

  ‘The Guns aren’t necessarily excluded, just because their pegs were too far away,’ said Quantrill. ‘One of them could have moved.’

  Will Glaven sat up and stared at him, affronted. ‘Of course they didn’t move! Guns always stay on their pegs.’

  ‘But if anyone had moved, would you have noticed?’

  Will said nothing, except ‘Boris’as he fondled his dog’s ears.

  ‘If it wasn’t one of the Guns who fired the shot,’ said Quantrill, ‘someone must have been in that wood just behind you. Was there any legitimate reason for anyone to be there?’

  ‘No – not at that stage in the shoot.’

  ‘Did you hear any sounds from that direction, when you were waiting for the drive to start?’

  Will frowned. ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember. I was thinking about Hope, and what she’d told me about her mother’s illness. Wait a minute, though – yes, I did hear a pheasant rocketing up somewhere behind me.’

  ‘Would it have done that unless it was disturbed?’

  ‘No, only if something or someone spooked it. But that was probably Laura, when she was creeping through the bushes before running out and trying to stop the shoot.’ Will looked up, heavy-eyed: ‘Is there any news of her?’

  The man had such a burden of grief that it would be wrong to add to it. ‘Not so far – but I’m sure we’ll soon find her,’ said Quantrill, sounding a good deal more positive than he felt.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Quantrill had been looking forward to having a go at Tait about his premature claim to the rank of superintendent. But when they met, they had more important things to discuss.

  ‘Any news of young Laura?’ Martin said immediately. And he spoke with such genuine anxiety that Quantrill almost forgot how much his daughter’s partner annoyed him.

  The three detectives had met for a late lunch at the Royal Oak, an old inn on the former turnpike between Breckham Market and Saintsbury. It provided a log fire, Adnams beer and crusty ham rolls for the men, and fresh orange juice and a salad for Hilary who was feeling dehydrated after too much wine the previous night. Tait offered to pay, and no one argued.

  ‘I don’t believe Joanna Dodd would have shot Hope Meynell,’ he announced. ‘Yes, I agree, it would have been possible for her to do it. And she was certainly hurt and angry. But I never thought she was unbalanced enough to take a shot at Will Glaven, despite what the Treadgold brothers said about her. Besides, what could she possibly gain from killing Hope?’

  ‘What about her claim of a mystery gunman in the wood behind you?’ said Quantrill. ‘You didn’t mention anything about it in your own statement.’

  ‘That was because of Laura. I’d heard the odd pheasant taking off behind us – in fact I mentioned it to Alison – and afterwards I assumed that Laura must have spooked them. That was when we were thinking in terms of a shooting accident. But now it’s obvious that someone else was up among the trees with a shotgun.’

  There was a confidence in the way he said it that invited the next question.

  ‘All right,’ said Hilary, ‘who’s your candidate?’

  Martin Tait paused, his blue eyes sharp under his springy fair hair, alert as a terrier about to pounce on a woodpile and produce a rat. He’d always been good, thought Quantrill sourly, at attention-getting pauses.

  ‘How about Reg Brunt, the Chalcot butch
er?’

  His colleagues stared at him, astonished. Tait sat back, glass in hand, looking intolerably pleased with himself.

  ‘What possible motive could the butcher have for killing Hope Meynell?’ demanded Quantrill.

  ‘Ah, well.’ Tait was enjoying their wonderment. ‘Having been a member of the shooting party gives me a great advantage, of course. Though something you’ve since told me,’ he added hastily, ‘confirms my theory.’

  ‘In my view, Reg Brunt had two strong motives for killing Hope Meynell. One was social resentment against the Glavens. The other was love for their housekeeper.’

  Hilary screwed her eyes shut. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a headache, and this doesn’t help.’

  She drew breath, and opened her eyes again.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘we know Reg Brunt makes frequent visits to Mrs Harbord. I’ll certainly believe his attachment to her, though she doesn’t return it. And you told us he wanted to join the shoot on Saturday morning, and how furious he was when he felt they were putting him down. But that doesn’t add up to a reason for shooting Hope.’

  ‘It does, you know,’ said Tait. ‘Will Glaven is leaving the army next year, and coming back to Chalcot to run the estate. If he were to bring Hope here as his wife, they’d have no need of a housekeeper. Mrs Harbord would be out on her ear, and Reg Brunt would lose her. His only way of keeping her at Chalcot is to get rid of Hope.’

  ‘Oh, come off it!’ scoffed Quantrill, breaking apart his ham roll with such vigour that he scattered crusty crumbs all over the table. ‘Hope Meynell isn’t the only girl in the world. Will Glaven’s devastated now, of course, but sooner or later he ‘ll meet someone else. Are you suggesting that Reg Brunt intends to pick off every girl Will thinks of marrying?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting he’s thought it through,’ said Tait. ‘There’s no logic in love, you know that as well as I do. Anyway, it wouldn’t necessarily have been Reg Brunt’s own idea. He could well have been put up to it by Mrs Harbord.’

  Quantrill took a long, thoughtful drink. Remembering the housekeeper’s look of relief and triumph after Lewis Glaven had told her Hope was dead, he could almost believe that aspect of Tait’s theory. He wasn’t prepared to swallow it whole, though, because he and Hilary had been working on a theory of their own.

  ‘So where’s your evidence?’ he demanded. ‘Have you got any proof that Brunt was anywhere near Belmont on Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘No, of course I haven’t!’ Tait was visibly annoyed. ‘Good grief, I’ve presented the solution to you on a plate – it’s not my job to go grubbing around finding evidence to support it. Surely you can do that for yourself?’

  Irritation was zinging between the two men like an electric current. Hilary decided to intervene.

  ‘I don’t know about anyone else,’ she said, ‘but I’d love some coffee. Are you still buying – “Superintendent” Tait?’

  Martin sloped off to the bar. ‘Slip of the tongue, that’s all,’ he was heard to mutter as he went. Quantrill and Hilary grinned at each other.

  ‘All the same,’ Quantrill admitted, ‘he could be right. I can imagine Mrs Harbord stirring up Brunt, and him doing anything at all to please her.’

  ‘She’s certainly besotted with Lewis Glaven,’ agreed Hilary, ‘and a very happy woman now Hope Meynell’s dead. But I still think we’re on the right track. Besides, we’ve got evidence to support our theory – circumstantial, perhaps, but coherent. Are you going to tell Martin now?’

  ‘I hadn’t intended to, not before we’ve visited Hope Meynell’s family. Still – why not?’

  ‘Lewis Glaven? Don’t be ridiculous …’

  ‘What’s ridiculous about it?’ said Hilary. ‘Surely it’s the fact that he’s a landowner, and concerned for his family and the estate, that makes it believable. He’d already told his son that Hope wasn’t right for Chalcot, but Will was too much in love with her to care. The only way to stop him marrying Hope was to get rid of her.’

  ‘Rubbish! Absolute rubbish. However much a father may disapprove of his prospective daughter-in-law, he doesn’t go after her with a shotgun. Does he, Doug?’ Tait added with a flick of mockery. ‘Not even if it’s a prospective son-in-law he’d like to get rid of …’

  Quantrill ignored the gibe.

  ‘The point is,’ he said, ‘that Lewis Glaven’s behaviour changed completely when he realised that Will intended to marry Hope. He stopped objecting, and invited her to Chalcot for the weekend. And he arranged a shooting party, ostensibly for her to meet the neighbours. After that, his behaviour was all of a piece. He cleverly set up a situation in which Hope Meynell could be killed, but everyone would assume it was a shooting accident.’

  Tait shook his head with scorn. ‘Look, I know Lewis Glaven, and I’ve never met a more honourable man. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Not at first hand, no. A lot of it’s based on what you told us – but you were so much Lewis Glaven’s guest that you couldn’t see its significance.’

  ‘Let’s take it bit by bit,’ said Hilary, intervening again. ‘First, Hope didn’t want to watch the sport. She was quietly terrified by the whole thing, only Will was too unimaginative to see it. You’d agree with that, wouldn’t you, Martin?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘But if Hope had been the only female spectator, it might have seemed cruel of Lewis Glaven to insist on her being present. That was where Alison was useful to him. Lewis specifically asked you to bring her, didn’t he? She didn’t want to watch the shoot either, but Lewis insisted that both girls had to be there. Right?’

  ‘More or less …’

  ‘In fact,’ said Quantrill, ‘he made sure of it by driving them to Belmont himself and taking them to their places. He didn’t say anything to Alison about an escape route. But she heard him tell Hope that if she felt she’d had enough, the safest place for her to go would be the wood behind them.’

  ‘That’s perfectly true, actually,’ said Tait. ‘That wood ought to have been the safest place.’ But he had begun to sound subdued.

  ‘It’s significant, though,’ said Quantrill. ‘And didn’t Lewis Glaven rearrange some of the places for the last drive?

  ‘He and his friends were out of sight of the rest of you, weren’t they? As a result, we’ve never suspected them of shooting Hope, either accidentally or deliberately. But because Lewis was the host, he could leave his peg without comment. And because he knew his own woods he’d be able to move through them, unseen, until he could get a shot at her.’

  Martin sat silent, frowning at his glass.

  He was still on his original half-pint. He didn’t much like beer, but he was always sparing with wine and spirits because they had contributed to his father’s early death. The midday drink he really preferred was lager. But how could a man with his aspirations drink that now, when everyone associated lager with louts?

  ‘What you say may sound plausible,’ he said, ‘but there’s a rational explanation for everything Lewis Glaven did.’

  ‘Not for his apparent phobia about cameras,’ said Hilary. ‘Didn’t he refuse to allow Alison to take photographs at the shoot? And then later, when he saw the sabs making a video film he went berserk and destroyed both film and camera. I’d say that was totally irrational. Unless of course he had a reason for not wanting anyone to make a record of where people were and what they were doing at the shoot.’

  Tait raised an eyebrow. ‘You aren’t trying to dispute Lewis Glaven’s sanity, then? Good – because no sane man has been known to kill his prospective daughter-in-law simply because he didn’t consider her suitable. Do bear that in mind before you think of barging in on Lewis, won’t you?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Sorry, but I really must go. I do have rather a lot to do in my own division.’

  Quantrill raised a magisterial hand. ‘Now hold you hard,’ he said, sounding more Suffolk than usual. ‘What you don’t know, Martin, is that Hope Meyne
ll’s mother died in a psychiatric hospital. Hope told Will, but he didn’t want his father to know. He reckoned Lewis would assume the disease was hereditary, and oppose the marriage. But what we suspect is that Lewis did already know, and …’

  His confidence wavered. The construction he and Hilary had been working on was still several planks short of a bridge, and he found himself teetering on the edge of the drop. Martin Tait knew it, and was looking superior.

  ‘That is the most unlikely argument I’ve ever heard. Even if Lewis already knew, and even if the disease were hereditary, he wouldn’t reach for his gun! What kind of a man do you think he is?

  ‘Oh, I agree: in those circumstances he would certainly oppose the marriage. But the natural thing would have been for him to tell Will as soon as he found out, and do everything he could to talk him out of it. He would never have kept such serious information from his son – let alone killed the poor girl.’

  ‘Well, we shall find out,’ said Quantrill. ‘If betting weren’t a mug’s game, I’d –’

  ‘I wouldn’t take your money,’ said Tait loftily. ‘Even though I’m shortly getting married – with or without my prospective father-in-law’s approval.’

  He stood up, and collected his Barbour and country gentleman’s tweed cap from a nearby peg.

  ‘The thing is, Doug,’ he said in a more conciliatory tone, ‘you’ve completely overlooked one crucial point. Lewis Glaven invited me to join his shooting party, knowing who I am. If he’d intended to kill Hope, the last person he’d have wanted at the shoot was a senior detective.’

  Hilary smiled at him. ‘We did notice that point, actually. But we put a different construction on it. In fact, it reinforces our argument.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Tait looked at his watch again, sighed and propped a shoulder against one of the exposed timbers of the ancient inn. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Just let’s assume for the moment’, said Quantrill, ‘that Lewis Glaven had decided to kill Hope Meynell. And let’s assume that he set up the shoot as we’ve suggested. What he’s hoping to do is to pass off her death as an accident.