by Nina Jon
“I remember her running up on stage and shouting something about giving the print to her mother as a birthday present. Poor Penny Orlick looked as confused as I felt. She was very good about it, saying it didn’t matter, it was for charity after all, and we all make mistakes – but I don’t, Mrs Hetherington. Not about such things. I last counted the money a couple of days before the raffle, and when I put that sweet-jar into my safe, there was only two thousand and forty-one pounds in it. The jar stayed there until the morning of the raffle. I only wish I’d noticed the denominations of the notes before I began the count.”
“Denominations?” Jane asked.
“People buy their tickets with pound coins, sometimes a fiver at most. I take the coins to the bank every so often and convert them into notes; otherwise I’d be weighed down by coins. I ask the bank for five and ten pound notes only to make the count last longer. But when I began the count, I found there were fifty pound notes in the pot, Mrs Hetherington.”
“How extraordinary,” Jane said. “Tell me Mr King, do you keep the raffle money in the safe here during the year?”
“He would if I’d let him,” Carolyn King answered, walking into the room with a tea tray in her hands. She set the tray down and proceeded to fill three cups with tea.
“Milk and sugar?” she asked Jane.
“Just milk, please,” Jane replied.
“Carolyn makes me keep the money at the bank,” he admitted. “I only take it out the weekend of the raffle. That gives me time to work out who the winner is. Often the result is quite close. One year we had a draw. We had to toss a coin to decide who would win the prize.”
“Jon dear, I don’t think Mrs Hetherington needs to hear about that,” Carolyn said, handing him a cup of tea then sitting down next to him.
“You’re quite right,” he said. “I took the money out of the bank on Friday, and put it in the safe, although I told everyone it was still in the bank and Securicor would be delivering the money to the club on Sunday morning. I’m not a complete fool,” he added. “It was only in the safe for those few days.”
“In truth, Mrs Hetherington, Jon and I are the only people who knew the money was here in the safe, and Jon’s the only one who knows the combination,” Carolyn King said.
“I honestly believed it was a joke Carolyn was playing on me – but she swears not.”
“I know nothing about it. If I did, I would have come clean by now. Besides, where would I get one thousand pounds from?”
“Is it only the two of you who live here?” Jane asked.
They both nodded.
“My first wife Judith, passed away three years ago from cancer. I have three adult children. One is studying abroad, one lives in Manchester and the other in London. Carolyn and I don’t yet have any children of our own,” he said, giving Carolyn’s hand a little squeeze.
“Does anyone else have access to the house?” Jane asked.
“Well, let’s see now. The cleaner, the lady who tries to polish the silver and the ironing lady. We had a gardener until he died last year. He was eighty-two.”
“Are any of them ever alone in the house?”
Jon shook his head. “No. We will always make sure one or other of us is here.”
“They’ve all been with Jon for years. When Judith fell ill, she needed help in the house, didn’t she Jon?” Carolyn said.
Jon nodded.
“When we got married Jon suggested we let them go, but I wouldn’t hear of it, no help – no marriage.”
“I’m not sure any of them are likely suspects. The lady who sort of polishes the silver is, well…” Jon said.
“Hopeless,” Carolyn said. “We’d get rid of her, but she lives next door and it would be awkward and unkind. I have to re-polish it myself after she leaves. She’s quite elderly, and has difficulty with her hands and knees. I think we can rule her out as a safe-cracker.”
“We can rule out no one,” Jane said. “Is there a possibility that any of them knew the combination of the safe?”
“I didn’t even tell my late wife the combination. No one knows it but me, and besides, I very much doubt any of them could afford to be so generous. Remember we’re talking about the best part of a thousand pounds, Mrs Hetherington – that’s more than I pay any of them a year. No, whoever has done this, is a very wealthy and eccentric practical joker.”
“Which rules me out,” Carolyn said.
“If Judith’s brother hadn’t e-mailed me a photo of himself taken on the Pyrenees on the day in question, I’d accuse him.”
“Mrs Hetherington will get to the bottom of things,” Carolyn announced. “I’m quite certain of it.”
Over tea and shortcake, Jane and the Kings talked on. As the conversation continued, it seemed to Jane, at first sight anyway, that whoever had opened the safe had most likely done so late on Friday afternoon.
Jon had taken the money out of the bank Friday morning, and had spent early afternoon establishing whose estimate was closest to the final ticket sales. Once he’d established this, he’d put the money and the ticket stubs back in the safe. He and Carolyn had spent the rest of the day away from the house, and hadn’t returned home until the evening. One or other of them had been home all day Saturday. The Kings, and the closely guarded jar of money, left for the bridge tournament early on Sunday morning.
“Who has a spare key for the house?” Jane asked.
“Oh, now let me see. Only the kids really,” said Jon. “I do keep a spare hidden inside a loose brick.”
“Who was here over the weekend besides yourselves?”
It transpired that the silver lady had been there for a couple of hours on Friday, but not Saturday. Mrs Duncan, the cleaner, had spent Saturday morning at the house, but neither Carolyn nor her husband could remember her being anywhere near the study. No one else had called at the house over the weekend.
Chat over, Jane and Carolyn took a walk around the garden, where Carolyn said, “It really wasn’t me, you know?”
“I know it wasn’t,” Jane replied. “And it wasn’t an ingenious practical joke either. I had wondered whether the perpetrator had stolen something from your husband many years ago, and the guilt of it had so worn him down, that he’d been forced to return years later and pay for whatever it was he’d taken – but in such a way as to conceal it. But then I remembered another so-called crime from long ago, which I later named the Case of the Missing Engagement Ring. That was a case which initially seemed very complicated indeed when really it was very simple. This crime isn’t complicated at all. It too is really very simple. It all comes down to the arrangement of the bottles in the drinks cabinet.”
“You already know who did it?” Carolyn King sounded amazed.
“Not yet, but I think I have a hunch why they did it. To be certain, I need to speak with the people who were in the house over the weekend.”
“You’d better start with Mrs Duncan. She’s due any minute. Look, here she is now,” Carolyn said, as a middle-aged woman cycled up the drive towards them. “Please don’t say anything that will upset her. She has problems enough at home, without thinking we’re trying to accuse her of something. Good cleaners are hard to find. I don’t want her walking out.”
“May I enquire what problems?”
While Mrs Duncan steadied her bike against the wall, Carolyn called,
“I’ll be in shortly Mrs Duncan. Put the kettle on, and we’ll all have one.”
Mrs Duncan waved a hand in acknowledgement and went inside the house, allowing Carolyn to speak to Jane out of earshot.
“Her son-in-law walked out and left her daughter with a couple of kids – a boy and a girl. The boy’s been more and more of a handful since his dad left. Every spare penny she and her husband have, go to her daughter for the kids. There’s no way she could afford to give us a thousand pounds, or any reason why she’d want to. I doubt she could even raise half that for herself if she had to.”
“Maybe it’s best I speak with her al
one?” Jane suggested.
The two women made their way to the kitchen, where Carolyn introduced Jane to Mrs Duncan as an old friend of hers. Carolyn made an excuse to leave them alone. No sooner had they sat down at the kitchen table to drink coffee from two chipped green mugs than Mrs Duncan began chatting.
“You’re a friend of Mrs King?” she asked, cheerily.
Jane nodded noncommittally.
“You weren’t at the wedding, though?” Mrs Duncan asked.
“Unfortunately I couldn’t be there, no.”
“It raised an eyebrow or two in the village, him marrying her. More than a few things were said about it, I can tell you. But she’s made him happy, all’s I’ll say and she’s always been okay to me.”
Jane decided to come straight to the point.
“Mrs Duncan, I am actually not an old friend of Carolyn King. The Kings really asked me here to find out who went to all the trouble of breaking into Jon’s safe only to add to the large sum of money which was already in it, rather than steal the lot, being the more customary practice of safe-breakers.”
Mrs Duncan stared at Jane, first in confusion, then in panic, as she began to grasp what Jane was talking about.
“It’s an unusual thing to do, I’m sure you’ll agree. Not to mention generous. So unusual and so generous, that I don’t believe for a minute that whoever put the money in the safe was merely a wealthy practical joker. In fact, I doubt the person who put the money there could afford it. No, this was a crime committed to cover up an earlier crime, of that I’m sure. I think it was you who broke into the safe Mrs Duncan, to return money that someone else stole from it earlier. Only you put back too much. In fact, you put back so much more than you needed to that it aroused Jon King’s curiosity to the extent that he employed me to find who put the money there, and why.”
Mrs Duncan began to shake uncontrollably
“It’s a large sum of money Mrs Duncan, for anyone. But for a woman in your position! You must have had very good reasons for what you did.”
“How did you guess it was me?” she asked, glancing continuously to her right and left.
“Crimes are committed in the most part by young males, and you have a troubled grandson, do you not? It was he who took the money originally, wasn’t it?” she said.
Mrs Duncan nodded sadly.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” Jane asked. “You might find it a relief to unburden yourself to someone.”
Mrs Duncan slowly began to talk, albeit reluctantly.
“On Friday evening, I went upstairs to my grandson’s room to clean it. But when I got there, I found money scattered all over his bedroom floor and him almost insensible through drink,” she said. “When I demanded to know where the money came from, he laughed at me, and told me to get lost and things a lot worse than that. I told him if he didn’t tell me what was going on I’d get his grandfather to give him a good licking. That’s when he lost his nerve. He’s a little wimp, really. He told me he’d got the money from the Kings’ place. I asked him what he meant. He said he’d overheard me talking to his mum about what a fool the Flight Lieutenant was for keeping all that cash in the house over the weekend, thinking that no one knew it was there, in a thirty-year-old safe, hidden behind a fake drinks cabinet, with a lock so old even I could pick it. When he said this, I collapsed on the floor, Mrs Hetherington. God’s honest truth, I did. My knees buckled underneath me. How could he do it to us? How could he do it to his mum, after everything she’s been through?”
Mrs Duncan was becoming more and more distressed.
“I’m a grandmother myself, my dear,” Jane said, attempting to reassure her. “I’ll do everything I can to help you, you have my word.”
Mrs Duncan took some moments to compose herself before continuing. “He didn’t have any idea of the enormity of what he’d done. ‘It’ll be okay, Gran,’ he said. ‘Okay?’ I said. ‘How will it be okay? You’ve broken into someone’s house and stolen money! You could go to Borstal. You’ll have a criminal record for the rest of your life.’ He grinned and said he hadn’t broken in, he’d used the hidden key and what’s more he’d been around the house that many times with his mum and me, he knew the number of their burglar alarm off by heart. It’s the date Jon and Judith got married. He saw Jon and Carolyn go out and seized his moment. He let himself in and went straight to the safe. They never change anything in the house. It was the same when Judith was alive, God bless her. The wiring’s as old as I am, and the plumbing twice as old. He figured the number for the safe would be the same as the code for the burglar alarm and it was. ‘People are thick, Gran,’ he said. ‘They can’t remember numbers, so they use the same ones for everything.’ Smug little …
“He told me he had the jar in his hands, when he saw car lights in the drive and realised the Kings were back. He figured the longer it took Jon King to realise his money had gone, the more likely he was to get away with it, so he closed the safe and put the cabinet back in its place. He picked the jar up and ran to the kitchen, reset the burglar alarm and left by the back door, locking it behind him. He’d even had the presence of mind to take his boots off and leave them outside. He was sat on the back doorstep, putting them back on, when Jon and Carolyn came in by the front door. He told me all this himself. ‘Most criminals get caught ’cos they’re thick and leave a trail behind them. But not me, Gran, I’m too clever for that,’ he said. He was proud of what he’d done, Mrs Hetherington, proud. I wanted to throttle him there and then. I made him gather up all the money and give it to me. I told him I was going to put it back. That’s when he admitted he’d spent about half of it. He didn’t know how much money there was to begin with, or how much he’d already spent. I knew there’d be more than two thousand pounds in the pot, there always was. The year before there was two thousand six hundred pounds. I didn’t know how much had been raised this year. I guessed it would be at least the same as the previous year, or even more. I made him count out what money there was left, then put it back in the sweet-jar. There was less than a thousand pounds left. I made him promise not to tell anyone – least of all his mum. I didn’t sleep a wink, not a wink. My husband asked me what was wrong, and I had to say I had an upset stomach. I was up and down all night that many times, I can’t tell you. The next morning I was at our bank before it opened. I withdrew all the money I had there. It came to one thousand nine hundred and forty pounds. That was my life savings, Mrs Hetherington. How I’m going to explain to my husband where it’s gone, I don’t know. All I could do was hope it was enough. I just hoped that if I put too much money back, he’d put it down to absentmindedness. I should’ve known better with him. I had the sweet-jar in my bag. I locked myself in the ladies and put the money in the jar before cycling to the Kings’ place. I busied myself around the house as usual. They didn’t notice me go down to the study. He was listening to the radio in the kitchen, and she was talking to her family on the phone. I was in and out in a flash. I put everything back where I knew it should go. I even tidied up in there. It’d cost me a fortune, all I had, but I’d kept the boy out of jail and his mum out of a mental hospital. I made it clear that I couldn’t save his wretched neck again and I wouldn’t want to anyway.” She leant back in her seat. “I really thought everything was okay. There was some commotion at the draw, I know, but nothing else was said about it.”
She broke down in tears.
“Please don’t say anything, Mrs Hetherington. I’ll lose my job and my grandson could end up inside.”
Jane glanced up to Carolyn King, who had stepped out from behind the door, from where she’d been listening. Mrs Duncan looked up in horror.
“It’s about time Jon spent some money on this place. I came down to breakfast yesterday, to find a lump of plaster on the kitchen floor,” Carolyn said. “He can start by changing the locks and buying a new burglar alarm.”
“Aren’t you going to call the police?” Mrs Duncan stuttered.
“No,” she said.
“Why not?”
“When I married Jon, you were the only person to congratulate us and say how happy you were for us. The only person out of the whole bloody village. That’s why.”
“How are you going to explain the money?” Mrs Duncan asked.
“I’ll tell him it was me all along.”
She sat down to face Mrs Duncan.
“If your grandson burgles this house again, or any other, I will go straight to the police. I won’t have any choice.”
“Oh, he won’t,” his grandmother said. “I promise you that.”
CHAPTER TWO
FIRST THINGS FIRST
I
Jane Hetherington was sixty-three years of age and recently widowed. Despite this, her decision to advertise her services online as a private detective wasn’t some- thing she’d given a great deal of thought to. On the con- trary, the decision had been quite a casual one, taken after the idea popped into her head from nowhere. She’d been cutting back the roses that grew over the door of her thatched cottage at the time. “Now that’s an idea,” she said to herself, at the same moment pricking her fi nger on a thorn. Jane lived in the pleasant self-contained market town of Failsham, in the rural county of Hoven. She’d lived there for nearly four decades, fi rst as a young bride and now as a widowed sexagenarian. In one direction lay the Metropolis, in another the South coast. Failsham came complete with a common, a duck pond and a town cross displaying a farmer tilling a fi eld with two shire horses and an old-fashioned plough. She’d moved there with her husband Hugh, a few years into married life, after she’d tired of their London lifestyle.
II
“Everywhere I go something is being knocked down and turned into a flyover or a multi-storey car park!” twenty-three-year-old Jane complained one evening in the small flat, off Kensington High Street, the couple rented. “London is going to turn into a sheet of concrete soon. Let’s move somewhere in the middle of the countryside. A quaint little village somewhere, where no one locks their doors and everyone lives to be one hundred and six.”
