The Trebelzue Gate

by Anna Fitzwilliam

  ‘If you take that turning there, we can come back up through Union Square, then you’ll have had the full tour before we go down the hill to the Old Parsonage.’

  In Union Square there was a pub called the Barley Sheaf, a draper’s shop, the Conservative Association Club and a chemist. A sign post pointed to the Doctor’s Surgery.

  ‘Jones hasn’t got an interview with the doctor arranged yet, has she?’

  ‘She’s trying, but the GP’s been called away, some family emergency the receptionist said, in Northern Ireland.’

  ‘And the garage over there, with the decoy ducks in the window, that’s Hawkey’s is it, where Jarvis maintains he tried to buy petrol on the night?’

  ‘That’s it, but I’m not surprised that it was closed early, he opens and shuts when he feels like it, old man Hawkey.’

  Monica paused to allow a small lorry park to back into a parking space. The lorry was carrying cider, its tailgate was decorated by a caricature of a drink befuddled man under a finger post pointing to Inch’s Devon Cider Factory. Monica said, ‘Surely there’s a lot of licensed premises for a town this size?’

  ‘Well, it’s never been conventional, St Columb hasn't, they say the Wesleys must have missed it off of their route. Population less than three thousand but it’s got four pubs, two clubs and an off licence. Apparently, the residents sign up at both the Consie and the Liberal club, for the cheaper beer.’

  ‘But where we’re going, the Old Parsonage, that’s members only?’

  ‘Very much so, it’s more for your carriage trade.’

  At the bottom of the steep hill Monica turned in at the copperplate lettered sign for the country club. At the end of the gravel drive a large, grey stone Victorian Gothic house stood surrounded by a miniature moat. On either side of the house there were lawns and shrubberies.

  ‘They’ve certainly done all right for themselves, Parc Holdings,’ he said.

  The heavy, arch top oak door stood open onto a square wood panelled hall. A slim and fastidiously groomed woman appeared; she was olive skinned, her dark hair was drawn back into a pony tail. She wore close fitting blue jeans and a navy-blue polo neck sweater, an Hermès headscarf coloured in red and white and blue and gold was knotted around her shoulders.

  She looked them up and down ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Gerstmann? DCI Monica Guard and this is my sergeant, DS Bee. I believe WPC Jones from my investigation team has been in touch with you several times.’

  ‘Possibly,’

  ‘Sergeant Bee also telephoned your husband last night, we’d like to speak to your son, Rudy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘As I am sure you are aware, Mrs Gerstmann, we are investigating the death of the daughter of your business partner, we believe that your son may be able to help with one particular line of enquiry. When Sergeant Bee spoke to Mr Gerstmann he had no objection to us speaking to Rudy.’

  ‘He said nothing to me about it.’

  ‘Perhaps I could speak to him now?’

  ‘He left first thing, a business trip, wine buying. Besides, I can’t think how Rudy could possibly help you. He had very little contact with Amanda, very little.’

  ‘All the same, we’d like to speak to him,’

  ‘It’s debatable whether he’s awake yet. Perhaps you could call back later.’

  ‘No Mrs Gerstmann, we could not call back later.’

  Two guests were approaching from the garden.

  ‘Is your son still friendly with Robert Julian, by the way?’

  A small twitch of anger crossed Maria Gerstmann’s face.

  ‘Come through to the lounge, I’ll have reception give him a call.’

  They followed her to a large room overlooking a rose garden. In the top panes of the windows were escutcheon shapes of stained glass. Mrs Gerstmann bent to neaten the pile of Country Life magazines on a low table. Her hips in the tight blue jeans were as narrow as a boy’s.

  ‘Do you want some coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘No thank you. What were you doing on Tuesday evening, Mrs Gerstmann?’

  ‘I was here, my husband was away and so I had to oversee service in the restaurant.’

  ‘What time does the restaurant close?’

  ‘It rather depends on our guests, how many covers,’

  ‘Was it busy on Tuesday?

  ‘Average, I suppose, for a week night.’

  ‘And what time did you finish, Mrs Gerstmann?’

  ‘I can’t say, exactly, there are always tasks to do when we close,’

  ‘What sort of tasks?’

  ‘All the usual things, cashing up the tills, checking the kitchen equipment, security …’

  ‘Don’t you have a manager to help, as well?’

  ‘Sandy, yes, but there are things that we prefer to do ourselves, things that cannot be left to the staff.’

  ‘I see. Talking of the staff, what can you tell us about Amanda Shute?’

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘But surely she had worked here for some time, and I gather that as families you have been friends for years.’

  ‘The husbands, yes, they knew each other since flying days. My husband is a very … genial … man. I know Marilyn well of course, we are business partners, but I do not know her children particularly.’

  ‘But Amanda did work here?’

  ‘From time to time, yes, but in the main bar, that is the domain of my husband, and Sandy, the manager.’

  ‘And what is your domain, Mrs Gerstmann?’

  ‘I oversee, I organise our special events and I run a little private member’s bar.’

  ‘And was Amanda good at her work?’

  ‘No, in a practical sense, she was not. She never did more than the minimum necessary and she never got her hands dirty – she always made sure that the casual staff took on all the real work.’

  ‘So why was she employed here, simply because of the family connection?’

  ‘Mainly that, yes, my husband has always been unusually sentimental about Marilyn and her daughters since Charles died. However, although she was not a good worker I cannot deny that Amanda could be very useful.’

  ‘In what way useful?’

  ‘In what way do you think? She was young and very attractive – if a little … grubby … sometimes. She brought in the patrons and once they were in some of them stayed for the whole evening, holding on for one last drink, just in case they could pluck up courage to ask to see her home at the end of the night.’

  ‘You disliked Amanda?’

  ‘I neither like or dislike our employees, they are simply here to do a job for which they are paid. Certainly, I found Amanda irritating, but as I have explained, she was highly decorative. Now, I will go and fetch my son.’

  ‘Sergeant Bee will go with you,’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I would like Sergeant Bee to accompany you, Mrs Gerstmann.’

  She made an exclamation of irritation and then said

  ‘If you must …’ and gestured for him to follow her.

  They returned with a boy of average height who was very slender. He was wearing tight black trousers tucked into knee boots and a white shirt with a ruffle down the deep, unbuttoned front. Like his mother, he was dark-skinned, and his soft hair, the colour of charcoal, was long and swept away to one side of his forehead. His expression was sulky. Casually he flopped onto one of the arm chairs.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Monica ‘And yes, please, do sit down. There’s no need for you to stay, Mrs Gerstmann.’

  She turned to her son and spoke two or three rapid sentences in Dutch. He shrugged and raised his eyebrows disdainfully, reluctantly she left the room.

  ‘You know I can’t tell you anything about her,’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl that’s dead. Amanda. Randy Mandy as she was known,’ he smiled to himself.

  ‘Well there we are, you’ve just proved yourself wrong,’ said Monica brightly, ‘you can tell us something about her
after all – you know that she had a nickname.’

  The boy looked annoyed, he crossed a leg over his knee and began to pick fretfully at the sole of his boot.

  ‘Do you have many friends locally?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘What about Robert Julian, you were at school together weren’t you?’

  ‘For about half a term, yes,’

  ‘Now he goes to the technical college, are you still at the school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it was a waste of time. At first, I was at the Steiner School in Truro, then my father had this stupid idea that I should join in the community, go to the secondary school in Newquay, be educated with … les rustres. Stand and wait for the school bus at the cattle market every morning.’

  ‘And how did that work out?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘How do you think it worked out? It was a disaster,’ he smiled, ‘I made sure it was so. In September I am going to a boarding school in Zurich. I have only to tolerate this place for two more months.’

  ‘And what will you do when you leave school?’

  ‘I haven’t decided; university, art school maybe. My mother has friends who can arrange placements in the fashion industry, maybe Milan.’

  ‘That all sounds a long way from Robert Julian and the Newquay school bus,’ said Monica.

  The boy shrugged.

  ‘Why did you make an exception for him, pick him as a friend from among the local youngsters?’

  ‘I did not count him as a friend. We hung around briefly, that’s all. At first I thought he might be amusing. He soon became boring.’

  ‘What, when he landed you both in court?’

  ‘I want my father to be here.’

  ‘Too bad, I’m afraid, he went up to London first thing this morning on the Brymon flight. So how much were you involved with Robert and his Peeping Tom antics?’

  ‘Very little. I told you, we hung about together only for a very short time. He had a very good camera, his father bought it for him. In the beginning it seemed funny to take pictures of people, stupid people, unawares. Actually it was quite depressing.’

  ‘Robert Julian ran away from home yesterday, do you have any idea where he might have gone?’

  ‘I told you, I knew him for a maximum of a few weeks. Why should I know or care where he has gone?’

  The cover of his chair had a pattern of hydrangeas. He shifted himself so that his booted legs hung over the arm. An elderly woman hesitated in the doorway, about to enter and smile acknowledgement at the room’s occupants. Seeing Rudy, lounging with bored insolence in the chair, she said ‘Sorry’ and turned and walked away.

  ‘Did he take pictures of Amanda Shute?’

  ‘Maybe, I don’t know.’

  ‘She would have spent a lot of time with his next-door neighbour, Graham Jarvis.’

  ‘Him,’ he said with contempt.

  ‘You know Squadron Leader Jarvis, do you?’

  ‘I’ve seen him around. Generally, one sees him pawing and grunting over girls.’

  ‘Isn’t he a friend of your mother’s too?’

  Rudy’s gaze snapped angrily at Monica.

  ‘That’s it,’ Mrs Gerstmann announced as she entered the room, ‘I have just spoken to our solicitor. He says that if you wish to continue to interview my son you must wait until he can be present.’

  Monica smiled pleasantly ‘That’s all right Mrs Gerstmann, I think we’ve seen all we want to see of your son for the time being.’

  Out in the grounds the sergeant said

  ‘I suppose that’s what’s meant by a spoilt brat.’

  ‘Do you know, I think it’s the local teenagers I feel sorry for - can you imagine having him on the school bus every morning? You got a look at his room, did you?’

  ‘I did, and it was suffocating. Red and black painted walls, I shouldn’t think the curtains are ever opened, let alone the windows. He’s got a lot of weird stuff on the walls, posters and paintings he’s done, some of it looks a bit violent, maybe, maybe not … What did you make of him, M’am?’

  ‘Apart from finding him intensely annoying, I think I tend to believe him when he says he has had no further involvement with Robert Julian. However, I think there is an issue with Jarvis, something connected to his mother, perhaps. We must find out what she was doing on Tuesday evening, Jarvis told us she wasn’t in the bar. Try and get hold of the manager, Sandy, without her knowing.’

  ‘How’s the war going?’ Sergeant Bee asked of the duty room when they returned, he was carrying the zipped briefcase under his arm.

  ‘All very quiet,’ said Jones.

  ‘I reckon we’re in a nuclear winter,’ said Ellery.

  At Monica’s entry, the WPC picked up her notepad which was covered in her rounded italic script.

  ‘Right, what news?’ Monica asked, ‘The Julian boy?’

  ‘Possible sighting M’am, somebody thinks they might have seen him waiting for the National Express coach, the stop at Indian Queens, we’re following it up along the route. Also, we’ve managed to trace Flight Lieutenant Blencowe, the ex-husband of the victim’s sister. Apparently, he’s left the RAF, he’s running a business with a new wife somewhere near Glencoe. He doesn’t see any of the Shutes, not even his kiddies, and he’s never been back to Cornwall.’

  ‘What a family. Is there any point in my asking about the Americans, our appointment?’

  ‘Funnily enough M’am, Lieutenant McLean has just been on, he thinks the Commander might have a ‘window’ late this afternoon.’

  ‘A window indeed? That’s awfully good of him.’

  ‘He says he won’t be able to see you on the base, for security reasons, but would you care to call at his home, out at St Eval.’

  ‘Very well, is that it, everybody?’

  ‘Photos, M’am,’ Martin Bee indicated the briefcase, ‘From the local paper.’

  He and Jones fixed the six prints to the wall beside the lining paper.

  ‘Right,’ said Monica, ‘Let’s have a Lobby Lud competition with this lot.’

  They identified Amanda in only one of the photographs. A caption for the typesetter had been penned at the bottom edge of the image, it read ‘Thirsty work for Newquay Silver Band’. The photograph showed the uniformed band members, seated on folding wooden chairs with musical instruments set aside. Amanda and her sister were passing among them, carrying trays of beer glasses. Amanda had been caught half in profile, smiling over her shoulder.

  ‘She took a good photo,’ said Martin Bee.

  Ellery said that he reckoned he had gone to school with the cornet player. Jointly they surveyed the other photographs, like pictures at an exhibition. Jones listed the names of those recognised.

  In Number 1 Dress Uniform, Graham Jarvis and Peter Goodchild were pictured among a group looking on as the station commander wielded a croquet mallet. In a photograph captioned ‘Judging the Carnival Royalty’ the local M.P. and Dorothy Haig-Mercer presented trophies to three small girls in long white dresses and tiaras and a small boy with a bow tie and a cloak and a crown. Felicity Haig-Mercer in a pleat skirt dress appeared with her mother-in-law and a fair-haired man, the caption read ‘By kind permission …’

  ‘That’s the husband, presumably,’ said Monica.

  The telephone began to ring, all the men present looked to Jones to answer it.

  ‘M’am,’ she held out the receiver to Monica, ‘They’ve found her car.’

  Amanda’s car was a long way from the road, it stood at the end of a narrow and overgrown track. It had taken them twenty minutes to reach the place on foot. The ground was dry but in places that had been damp earlier in the season there were the traces of tyre tracks and an imprint of horse shoes. The wrapping from an orange ice lolly glowed brightly in the undergrowth. DC Toy stood waiting beside the Renault 4, beyond him men in blue overalls were moving like slow bears through the bracken.

  ‘These are the loose items, from the c
ar,’ Toy opened the neck of a small brown paper sack to exhibit to them the contents – an exercise book with a few pages of Cyrillic script, a bar of chocolate, and a handbag with a gilt chain.

  ‘Not much in the bag M’am – mirror, a bit of makeup and a bunch of keys. Over there, where they’ve put the marker, there’s a torch, it’s got a Mermaid Hotel sticker on it. They reckon she must have been killed somewhere close to the car, just after she got out, there’s marks where she was dragged, that’s what they’re following now.’

  One of the overall-ed men approached, his freckled face was filmed with perspiration. A fragment of conifer foliage adhered to his cheek.

  ‘Speculation at the moment, M’am, but we think the Renault was coming back and forth over this ground fairly often. Then, over there beyond the fallen tree, it looks as if a second vehicle was parked, there’s a clear indication that she was dragged across to it. The ground’s too dry for very much but we’ll start taking casts for tyre treads.’

  They returned to Monica’s car and bumped slowly back up the track towards the road.

  ‘No wonder it took a while to find it,’ remarked the sergeant, ‘It’s pretty well secluded in there.’

  ‘Ideal for keeping her meetings with whoever it was a secret. For a tryst in the woods, in this climate, I’d say you have to be very young, very fit and very much in love, maybe all three. Hold on, what’s she up to?’

  They had reached the road and some way along the verge a woman stood peering into the woods. She wore a short, belted raincoat, underneath it an apron was tied over her skirt. She was raising herself on tip toe to better see beyond the first band of trees. Sergeant Bee got out, as he approached Monica watched the woman turn and smile at him, apparently quite unabashed. They spoke for a few moments and then the woman crossed over the road and began to walk rapidly towards the drive gates of Trenant House.

  ‘That was a bit of luck,’ said Martin Bee as he returned to the car, ‘That there was Esther, the housekeeper. Mrs Haig-Mercer senior had heard the commotion and sent her down to see what was going on. She didn’t want to talk to us now, she said the old lady would be waiting, but I’ve arranged that I’ll go and see her at home, later on today.’