‘But what could Hugh have to do with it?’ she asked earnestly. ‘Apart from being Hugh, there’s no reason why he should be mixed up in T.T.’s murder; after all she was about to change her will in favour of Hugh and Sarah.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ agreed Charity, but all her usual ebullience had left her. She sagged in her seat, looking old and grey and beaten. ‘I don’t know, I can’t tell what he feels; I don’t know him any more, Marion. It’s like being confronted with a stranger, a suspicious, unfriendly stranger. And he used to be such a dear little boy —’
‘But isn’t it a stage all adolescents go through?’ asked Marion.
Charity made a valiant effort at self-control. She turned her gaze back to the ring. ‘Look,’ she said in a trembling voice, ‘one of the Farquharson twins on the pony they bought from the Pratts. Have you ever seen so many martingales and nosebands?’ But she couldn’t recapture her interest in the show; she even watched Sarah’s round in dismal silence and when the gate fell, giving her four faults and putting her out of the competition, Charity felt almost glad. Now they could go home, get warm and dry and ready to talk to Hugh.
Marion, damp and miserable, feeling extraordinarily flat, having bolstered herself up for a glimpse of Laurence that had not materialized, and filled with a vague alarm by Charity’s manner, was also pleased to leave the show. Willingly she collected the crestfallen Sarah’s possessions and helped to rub down and box the dripping pony.
‘They’ll need tractors to pull those horse-boxes out,’ observed Charity gloomily as she drove slowly from the ground.
In the ring, the two younger Pratts were jumping off against each other for first place. With grim efficiency they cleared the enormous fences, both, apparently, quite unmoved by the weather, the slippery ground and the wet reins which slithered through their ungloved hands. They were watched only by their mother, two very irritable judges and a few spectators who, having paid for their ringside car park, were unwilling to go home. Browning, whose opinion of the Pratts was now tempered with a reluctant respect, followed the competition closely, but though Flecker looked in the direction of the ring his thoughts were elsewhere; he was gloomily regretting that the maintenance of law and order should always leave such a trail of shattered lives in its wake.
*
Laurence Keswick had divided the day between exercising his horses and tending his pigs and poultry and bitter reflection on the situation in which he found himself. At five o’clock he drove towards Frailford, judging that by then Charity would be home from the show. He suspected, from her constant attempts to reach him on the telephone, that she was acting as an emissary from his wife and as he drove he determined that he would end what he had begun to describe to himself as ‘all this nonsense’ one way or the other. But, let into the farmhouse by a tearful-looking Sarah, he found himself in the middle of a family scene. Charity, who’d quite abandoned her usual calm common sense, was shrieking at Hugh in desperate and despairing fury. Hugh, his fair hair hanging over his thin white face, his eyes avoiding his mother’s, had the hunted look of a cornered animal. ‘Why don’t you leave me alone? It’s nothing to do with you, is it?’ he was shouting as Laurence, gently restraining the enthusiastic welcome of the bull terrier, came to the doorway of the sitting-room.
Marion, huddled in a low chair close to the electric fire, said, ‘Oh Hugh, she’s only trying to help; we’ll all help if only —’ she stopped as she saw her husband. Charity said, ‘Laurence, thank God. Perhaps you can make him see sense.’
With a certain relief, Keswick shelved his own problems. ‘What’s he been up to?’ he asked.
‘That’s what he won’t tell us. He won’t say if it was him at Whittam last night and the police are coming. We’ve got to decide what to say. Hugh, can’t you see that we must all tell them the same story?’ Charity sounded frantic with fear and Keswick looked mystified. ‘You don’t mean you’re accusing Hugh of attempted burglary last night?’ he asked.
‘The detectives think whoever it was went there in Charity’s Land Rover,’ Marion explained. ‘It’s leaking oil or something.’
‘But why on earth should Hugh — ?’ asked Keswick.
‘All right then, it was me,’ Hugh shouted suddenly. ‘There, now you know and a lot of good it’ll do you. And I don’t want your bloody help either. Let the police come, I don’t care —’
‘Hugh, don’t be childish.’ Keswick tried to sound calm and capable, though he felt himself being carried away by Charity’s obvious terror and the general uproar. But Hugh suddenly rushed from the room. They heard his feet thundering upstairs and then a door slammed and a key turned in a lock. Charity ran halfway up the stairs. ‘Oh God, he’s locked himself in the bathroom. There’s a razor in there. Oh God, now what’s he going to do?’ she cried. She ran on up the stairs and began to beat on the bathroom door. ‘Hugh, come out of there. What are you doing? Come out of there at once,’ she sobbed, the last vestige of her self-control departing.
The Keswicks looked at each other appalled.
‘Can he really be mixed up in this?’ asked Laurence.
‘I don’t know.’ Marion drew a hand across her eyes. ‘She’s so frightened there must be something we don’t know about.’
‘Well, the obvious thing is to get hold of a good solicitor,’ said Keswick, hurrying upstairs. As Marion turned to comfort Sarah there was a knock on the front door. The police, she thought, and began to wonder whether delaying tactics would be any use. But there was no point in prolonging the agony, she decided, and if Hugh was really committing suicide they might be some use. She hastily opened the door. Flecker looked at her worried face and listened for a moment to the commotion upstairs. Then he asked, ‘Hugh?’ Marion said, ‘Yes, we don’t know what’s the matter, but he’s locked himself in the bathroom.’
Flecker ran upstairs, followed by Browning, Marion and Sarah.
‘All right, Mrs. Chesterfield,’ he said. ‘We’ll get him out.’
‘There’s not a sound,’ moaned Charity. ‘What’s he doing in there?’
‘Have you a ladder?’ Flecker asked.
‘Yes, it’s behind the garage,’ Sarah answered at once.
‘Right, well you show my sergeant and Mr. Keswick where to find it. Mrs. Keswick, take Mrs. Chesterfield downstairs and make her a cup of tea. I want a quiet word with Hugh,’ he added, when they all showed a disinclination to move.
‘Come along, madam,’ said Browning, taking the distraught Charity by the arm. ‘You leave it to the Chief Inspector.’
‘Why doesn’t he break the door down?’ moaned Charity as she was led away.
Flecker waited until they were all downstairs and then he knocked gently on the bathroom door. ‘Hugh,’ he said, ‘it’s Chief Inspector Flecker here. I want that scrapbook. Don’t you think you’d better come out and give it to me?’ There was no response. He waited a little and then tried again. ‘You can’t spend the rest of your life in there,’ he pointed out. ‘Come on, save me the trouble of climbing in at the window or breaking down the door.’
He was just beginning to wonder whether the boy had done something silly when the key turned in the lock, the door opened slowly and Hugh appeared, his white face blotched with tears. He looked at Flecker. ‘You’d better arrest me,’ he said, ‘I’m a thief.’
‘Well yes, I had rather guessed that,’ answered Flecker calmly. ‘Come on, we’ll go downstairs and talk it over quietly.’
In the hall they met Browning and Keswick who, having placed the ladder in position, had appeared for further orders.
‘Oh good, you’ve got him out,’ said Keswick. ‘I don’t think you ought to question him except in the presence of his mother and a solicitor.’ Charity rushed out of the kitchen. ‘Don’t say anything,’ she cried. ‘Hugh, you’re not to say a word. Where’s the telephone directory? Oh Marion, find Geoffrey Haines’s number.’
Flecker said, ‘All these precautions are quite unnecessary.’ He pushe
d back his hair in an exasperated gesture. ‘Look, I haven’t charged Hugh with anything. I am not at this stage contemplating charging him with anything. He’s seventeen and that’s quite old enough to talk to a policeman alone.’
‘And she’s not my mother,’ shouted Hugh with a sudden hysterical venom that made Flecker push him hastily into the sitting-room and shut the door. ‘Now sit down,’ he said, ‘and for heaven’s sake keep calm.’
Hugh seated himself gingerly on the extreme edge of the sofa, so Flecker chose one of the armchairs. ‘What did you want the money for?’ he asked.
Hugh’s thin body contorted almost as though in physical pain; he stared fixedly at the hearthrug. ‘I owed it,’ he said in a shaking voice, ‘to a bookmaker.’
‘How did you manage that?’ asked Flecker. ‘Bookmakers aren’t generally stupid enough to let people of your age have accounts.’
‘A boy at school has an elder brother in the army, he puts it on for us,’ Hugh explained. ‘It all began when we hitch-hiked to the races on a Saturday. Colin’s brother was there with some friends. I soon lost all my money. I hadn’t much, but Colin’s brother lent me a whole lot more. I lost that too. He was very sorry about it and the next week he rang us up at school to say he’d heard of an absolute certainty and we must all recover our losses by backing it. So he put some more money on for me and that horse lost too.’
‘Certainties make a habit of it,’ said Flecker. ‘Go on, what happened next?’
‘Colin’s brother wanted to be paid back. He was quite decent about it, but he’d lost a lot and his mess-bill came in or something. I sold my camera, but it wasn’t a particularly good one and I hadn’t anything else that was worth anything.’
‘You couldn’t tell your adopted mother?’ asked Flecker.
Hugh shook his head. ‘She hasn’t any spare cash. Not with two of us at school. School fees are enormous nowadays,’ he answered gloomily.
‘So you went to Whittam House last Saturday,’ prompted Flecker.
‘Yes. I’d had another letter from Colin on Friday asking if I couldn’t do something. I decided to ask T.T. to lend me the money. All Friday at the show I kept hoping to speak to her; I waited in the enclosure all day, but I didn’t get a chance; the secretaries never seemed to leave her. On Saturday I made up my mind I’d go to Whittam, wait till she got home, and ask to see her alone. There was no one about, and no one answered the door, but I found the french windows open, so I went in and waited in the drawing-room. The scrapbook was there on the table so I looked through it as I waited. I saw the money, it was pasted in in cellophane packets and labelled 1st and 2nd prizes at the South Roscott show or something. It wasn’t doing anyone any good. I waited for ages and then at last I heard the car come back and the secretaries in the hall; they were shouting at Mrs. Maggs trying to explain that T.T. was dead. When I heard that I picked up the scrapbook, went out through the window and ran. It seemed the only thing to do.’
‘What about last night?’ said Flecker.
Hugh buried his face in his hands. ‘They kept on and on about the scrapbook,’ he explained. ‘Marion and my mother, I mean. They seemed to think if it could be found it would solve everything. In the end I decided to take it back. I thought I’d put it somewhere in the drawing-room, somewhere not too obvious so that it could have been there all the time.’
‘Why didn’t you just leave it on the doorstep?’ asked Flecker.
‘I didn’t want to draw everyone’s attention to it,’ Hugh answered. ‘I went through it several times rubbing off fingerprints, but I couldn’t be certain there weren’t some left.’
‘I see,’ said Flecker. ‘Now what about your parentage? I take it you are adopted?’
‘Yes, you see my parents were old when they married; my mother was nearly forty and my father even older, and when no children arrived they thought they weren’t going to have any so they adopted me. Then Sarah arrived.’
‘Tiresome,’ said Flecker. ‘And you felt they preferred Sarah to you?’
‘They didn’t say so or anything,’ Hugh answered. ‘It’s just that she’s always been much more satisfactory. She’s mad about horses and good-tempered like my mother and all that sort of thing. The point is that she’s like them and I’m not; I’m different.’
Now that the formidable wall of his introversion was breached, the boy was obviously glad to talk about himself, thought Flecker, watching Hugh’s eyes light up and become able to meet his own.
‘Of course other people don’t realise I’m adopted,’ Hugh went on. ‘They’re always saying that I’ve got my mother’s nose or something, you know how people do. But the odd thing is I am a bit like her. I suppose it’s having lived with her for so long: you know, like dogs getting like their owners or the other way round.’
‘You don’t know who your real parents were?’ asked Flecker.
‘No.’ Hugh shook his head. ‘They got me through an adoption society. I suppose I was left on a doorstep or something, but none of the societies will tell you anything about the real parents.’
‘Which gives the children unlimited opportunity for wild surmise as they grow up?’ suggested Flecker.
Hugh blushed. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But still, anything might be true.’
‘Who did know you were adopted?’
‘No one much. Relations and some old friends of my parents. Laurence Keswick’s about the only person round here who knows. My mother told him because she altered her will after my father died and made Laurence one of our guardians.’
‘Good,’ said Flecker getting to his feet. ‘Well, we’ll explain the situation to him now.’
As Flecker had feared, his request for Keswick to come in brought Charity hurrying from the kitchen to demand instant elucidation.
‘Yes, in a minute,’ Flecker told her patiently. ‘He hasn’t done anything too disastrous and we’re just getting things sorted out.’
‘Come along, madam. You leave it to the Chief Inspector, he’s used to dealing with this sort of situation,’ said Browning soothingly as he shepherded her away.
Laurence Keswick looked inquiringly from Hugh to Flecker and waited. Flecker retold Hugh’s story as briefly as possible. ‘Strictly speaking I suppose I ought to charge him with larceny,’ he went on, ‘but it seems rather unnecessary, he’ll only be wasting some overworked probation officer’s time. How do you feel about it? As chief beneficiary the scrapbook and its contents are really your property; do you want me to go any further or can you sort it out between you?’
‘I certainly don’t want you to go any further if it can be avoided,’ answered Laurence slowly. ‘I mean if you can turn a blind eye without breaking any police regulations I think we’d all be extremely grateful. It sounds to me as though Hugh’s got himself into a stupid mess rather than a criminal one.’
‘Well, as far as I’m concerned no loss has been reported,’ Flecker explained, ‘and as it’s more or less in the family — anyway, I’ll have a word with the Chief Constable about it. And now,’ he went on briskly as he turned to Hugh, ‘I’d like that scrapbook; I hope you haven’t been ill-treating it?’
‘No,’ Hugh answered. ‘It’s O.K. I hid it in the loft, in the trunk with the bee-keeping outfits, all among the straw hats and veils; it may have a faint old-lady smell.’ There was a note of hysterical humour in his voice which irritated Laurence. ‘I can’t think why you didn’t tell your mother you were in a mess, instead of causing all this uproar,’ he said severely. ‘Or why, if you couldn’t tell her, you didn’t come and borrow from me.’ At this reproach Hugh’s shame overwhelmed him again. He stood hanging his head in an attitude of gangling abjection.
‘I did think of it,’ he said, ‘but everyone I knew seemed so hard up, except for T.T.’
‘Go and get that scrapbook,’ Flecker told him, ‘and don’t hurry over it, because while you’re out of the way I’m going to explain things to your mother.’
Flecker sent Keswick to enlighten Marion, Brow
ning and Sarah while he explained matters more fully to the distraught and exhausted Charity. He did his best to lighten her grief and gloom. He pointed out that much wilder oats had often been sown by what were now exemplary citizens. That the unnamed elder brother had been largely to blame, and that Hugh had learned a valuable lesson without much harm being done. But Charity seemed to have gained only a temporary respite from terror. She was, thought Flecker, behaving like someone who has survived the first wave of attack, but is too frightened of what will follow for even a moment’s self-congratulation or thanksgiving.
He took her back to the kitchen and they were all standing about drinking tea and searching for subjects of conversation when Hugh, looking shamefaced and avoiding his mother’s and sister’s eyes, came in with the scrapbook and handed it to Flecker.
‘Do you think that it will tell you what you want to know?’ asked Marion diffidently. ‘Do you think it will solve the crime?’
‘I hope it’s going to tell me what was in T.T.’s mind on Friday evening,’ Flecker answered her. ‘That should solve one bit of the puzzle, but not all. I suspect that most of what I need to know is being carefully guarded from me. I think that if everyone in this room suddenly decided to tell me all he or she knew the investigation would be finished and the crime solved without any further effort on my part.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Laurence. ‘That seems to me an incredible statement to make.’
‘Well, time will show,’ answered Flecker equably. He drank the rest of his tea and put down his cup. ‘We must be on our way.’
‘Your mackintosh, sir,’ Browning reminded him reproachfully, ‘don’t let us forget it again.’ Flecker, who’d been watching Marion across the table, ignored him. ‘Look out,’ he called to Keswick, ‘your wife’s going to faint.’ Marion, realizing it herself at the same moment, was swaying as she groped blindly for a chair. Laurence caught her as her legs buckled and sat her down at the table. Confronted with the need for action Charity immediately became competent; she sent Sarah for a glass of water, Hugh to the dining-room for brandy, while she tried to persuade the ashen Marion to put her head between her knees. Browning began to offer extraneous advice.
Murder Strikes Pink Page 13
