‘Come on,’ Flecker said to him, ‘we’re not usefully employed; we’re merely taking up space and consuming valuable oxygen,’ and he led the way out. Laurence, an expression of rising rage on his long face, followed them. Closing the kitchen door behind him, he turned on Flecker furiously. ‘You caused that,’ he said, ‘with your idiotic innuendoes. Why can’t you leave my wife alone? If you’ve got a case against her, let’s hear it. Let’s bring it out into the open and we’ll get a solicitor to advise us; otherwise, leave her alone.’
Flecker looked up at him. ‘I don’t think it was me, you know,’ he answered calmly. ‘Well, perhaps I was a contributing factor at the end of a long and very tiring day, but the basic reason has nothing to do with me.’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Keswick angrily.
Flecker looked at him for a moment, searched for words and then suddenly grinned. ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you,’ he asked, ‘about the birds and the bees?’
Keswick stood and stared and gradually comprehension wiped the anger from his face.
‘Good God, is that it?’ he said. ‘Is that what’s been causing all the trouble?’ He turned and hurried back to the kitchen.
‘Well, well,’ observed Browning as he and Flecker let themselves out. ‘It did just enter my mind.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
LAURENCE KESWICK went back into the kitchen and stood gazing down on his wan-faced wife. Marion looked up at him. ‘I’m all right now,’ she said unconvincingly in tremulous tones.
Charity turned to Hugh and Sarah. ‘Do you think you two could put the Land Rover and trailer away?’ she asked. ‘We were so wet and cold,’ she explained to Hugh, ‘we just left it in the yard, but it seems to have stopped raining now.’
‘Yes, I’ll do it.’ Hugh sounded eager to be of use. Now that the first terrible shame of discovery was wearing off, he felt curiously empty; limp and washed-out by emotion, but miraculously free. Sarah, longing to escape from the adult world with its complex scenes and unexplained tensions, followed him willingly.
Laurence sat down on the plastic-covered table, looked at his wife again and said, ‘The police seem to think you’re pregnant.’
Marion flushed pinkly and looked down at the clenched hands in her lap.
‘Oh, Marion, why didn’t you tell us?’ demanded Charity reproachfully. And then with indignation, ‘You silly girl, look what you’ve been doing: dragging jumps about and heaving up that trailer ramp.’
‘Are you?’ asked Laurence quietly.
Still looking away from him, Marion answered miserably, ‘Yes, I think so.’
Laurence got up. ‘Well, that just about explains everything,’ he said with forced cheerfulness.
‘No, it doesn’t. And it’s no use dismissing the whole business as the tantrums of a pregnant woman, because it wasn’t.’ Marion spoke with a weary urgency. ‘And anyway, Laurence, it doesn’t make any difference.’ She sought for words. ‘I mean you don’t have to come back just because of this.’
‘I think it makes all the difference in the world,’ Laurence told her. ‘We quarrelled originally because you kept nagging at me about security and I thought you were being bloody unreasonable. If we’re having a baby, I don’t think you’re being unreasonable or only moderately so.’ He turned to Charity. ‘Oughtn’t she to go to bed or lie down or something?’
‘No,’ Marion answered first. ‘I’m perfectly all right now; it was all that standing —’
‘I’d take her home,’ Laurence went on, ‘but I know she’ll start on the housework or the washing up. Could you cope with her for another couple of days, Charity, until I’ve cleaned up the place a bit and got some sort of help?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Charity forced some warmth into her tired voice. ‘Now go on, Marion, upstairs with you and lie down until supper. I’ve got Hugh and Sarah to help me.’
‘Yes, come on, be tactful.’ Laurence turned on his wife firmly. ‘Leave the Chesterfields to themselves for an hour —’
Later on that evening, after clearing the backlog of washing up in a mood of virtuous energy, Laurence Keswick drove down to the George and spent an unpleasant and recriminatory quarter of an hour with Helen Farrell. Afterwards, reviving himself with a drink in the bar on the way out, he learned from Stan that the detectives had returned to London for what was left of the weekend, and were not expected back until Monday evening.
*
Sunday was fine. A day of blue and gold, but the heat of the sun was tempered and the air soberly autumnal. Browning spent the greater part of the day trimming his already neat privet hedge, an occupation which provided unlimited opportunity for conversation with the neighbours. Flecker took the Sunday papers to Kensington Gardens, but, growing tired of the to-do that was made over the perpetual ebb and flow of world affairs, he abandoned them and, lying on the grass, watched the people. He found himself envying the men with girls; the fathers with children, and began to wish that he had had the presumption — or was it the courage? — to go down and visit Lesley at her parents’ house in Hove.
The Chesterfields and Marion went to church, where they prayed passionately but egocentrically for themselves and each other. Laurence Keswick joined them for lunch and they waded through the substantial meal, treating each other with anxious solicitude and concealing behind a facade of polite conversation, emotions which varied from a bowel-gnawing fear, unallayable because it took no definite shape, to a despairing dread of discovery that was no more bearable for being known and faced.
After lunch Hugh and Sarah went off to play tennis and their elders sat in the garden. They sat drinking in the warm air, heavy with the scent of the late roses and listening to the white pigeons which cooed softly from the stable roof and to the occasional long, weary thud as an apple fell in the orchard. And the faint melancholy of fulfilment, the haunting undertones of sadness with which autumn seems to mourn the death of the wilder hopes of spring, lapped them round in an unexpected serenity.
*
On Monday morning Flecker and Browning made early visits to Somerset House and to the British Show Jumping Association, and then they fought their way out of London, through the heat and the dust and the traffic. At eleven thirty they emerged from the pine and rhododendron country and into the farmlands which surround Frailford. The farmhouse, standing foursquare in the September sun, seemed a place of idyllic peace after the turmoil of the overcrowded roads.
Charity Chesterfield was gardening; weeding the rose bed in a desultory fashion, her mind elsewhere. She wore a gardener’s apron, a hessian affair with a huge pocket across the front, over her cotton dress. When she saw the detectives walking up the flagged path to the front door she put her tools in her trug and went to meet them.
‘Good morning, we came to have a word with you,’ said Flecker.
Charity looked at him and her eyes were full of quiet, dispassionate grief, the grief of someone who has faced the anguish of a situation in thought until he is ready to meet it in fact.
‘Yes, come in,’ she said, and dropping her trug and gloves on the doorstep she led the way.
They sat down in the pleasant, shabby sitting-room. Flecker produced his bundle of envelopes and looked straight at Charity. ‘You have kept the fact that you and Miss Hemming are half-sisters a very closely guarded secret,’ he said, ‘because of Hugh.’
‘Because of Hugh,’ agreed Charity, sagging deeper into her chair.
‘The likeness between you and your sister isn’t obvious, but it’s there,’ Flecker told her. ‘It bothered me from the first; I knew you resembled someone I’d seen. And there’s an affinity about your Christian names which gave me a hint.’
Charity didn’t speak. She sat gazing straight before her and her plain, square and normally good-natured face was set stiffly in lines of pain.
‘Miss Hemming would have been in her early twenties,’ Flecker went on thoughtfully. ‘I imagine that she didn’t want to be saddled with her indiscretion, w
hile you and your husband had already given up hope of having a child; for you to adopt him would probably have seemed the ideal way out of a difficulty.’
‘Yes.’ Charity’s voice was low and infinitely weary. ‘It did seem a good idea at the time. Joy thought she didn’t want him, but she was over-persuaded, I think. Our parents were elderly, very old-fashioned and absolutely horrified. They painted a very one-sided picture of what life was like for an unmarried woman with a child. It doesn’t do to over-persuade people —’
‘Was there any trouble before your half-sister came to work for Miss Thistleton?’ asked Flecker.
‘Not trouble exactly, no.’
‘Did she consult you before taking the job?’
‘No,’ Charity shook her head.
‘She waited until your husband was dead,’ said Flecker looking at one of his envelopes. ‘I suppose it was to be a sort of revenge; she was going to torture you with perpetual skating on thin ice.’ Charity showed no inclination to speak so Flecker went on, ‘Then there was this trouble between the Keswicks and Miss Thistleton began to talk of leaving her money to Fhigh and Sarah. That must have brought everything, the pent-up jealousies of years and years, to a head.’ He waited, looking at Charity, but still she didn’t speak.
‘T.T. mentioned her plans to the secretaries. I imagine that Miss Hemming told you. Had she decided to tell Hugh that she was his mother? Did she see herself enjoying a comfortable old age, living on her rich son? But you knew what was going on in Hugh’s mind,’ Flecker continued after a pause. ‘His fantasies about his real parents; you knew what a terrible blow the truth would be to him. What did you do?’
Charity didn’t answer; she supported her bowed head on her hand and a long silence fell.
Flecker broke it. Ignoring the revulsionary feelings that suddenly beset him, he said quietly, ‘You knew about the linseed, you knew about the thermos of milk shake and you knew, as almost no one else did, that your half-sister frequently drank the milk shake. On Saturday you were close to the Thistleton horse-box all day; you had unlimited opportunity to add the poison to the thermos.’
Charity sat up and looked at him. There was an air of weary, of almost piteous dignity about her, but still she didn’t speak.
‘Don’t you think you’d better tell me what happened?’ suggested Flecker. ‘I’m going to find out sooner or later.’
Charity shook her head. Flecker got to his feet. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid we shall come back.’
Leaving Charity slumped in her chair, the detectives let themselves out into the sunshine. In the car Flecker sat for a moment in preoccupied silence, then he sighed and said, ‘We’ll go to Whittam House, but there’s no desperate hurry. I want a certain amount of telephoning to have taken place before we get there.’
Browning took a sideways glance at Flecker and then drove off in silence, wearing a funereal expression and proceeding at an almost funereal pace.
As they came in view of the Whittam House gates they saw a silver-grey Bentley turn out into the road ahead and disappear in the direction of Hamberley.
‘Looks as though they’ve had a visitor,’ observed Browning. Flecker didn’t answer, he was still deep in thought, but his preoccupied mood vanished abruptly when he saw Molly Steer standing on the front doorstep and looking up the drive with an air of agitation about her. He was out of the car as it stopped. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
Molly blinked and swallowed. ‘Oh, it’s Joy, Miss Hemming, I mean. It’s dreadful; I mean I can’t make it out, it’s so awful, I mean what can have made her do it?’
‘Someone telephoned?’ suggested Flecker.
‘Yes, that’s right. I don’t know who it was, but Joy seemed very angry. And then she just took it all, with me there in the room. That’s what seems so funny, I mean so bare-faced to do it there before my eyes. I began to tell her that it wasn’t right, but she just pushed past me and rushed out — so unkind. And I didn’t know she could drive, I mean, not properly.’
‘What did she take?’ asked Flecker, his voice tense with controlled impatience as he got back into the car.
‘All the week’s housekeeping money and the wages. You see, generally we go to the bank on Fridays, but last Friday —’
‘And Miss Thistleton’s car?’ Flecker interrupted her.
‘Yes, and she scratched it on the garage doorpost as she got it out; whatever would Miss Thistleton have said?’
‘A grey Bentley?’ asked Flecker.
‘I don’t know what kind it is, I mean I don’t know about cars, but it is grey,’ said Molly doubtfully.
‘Did she say where she was going?’ asked Flecker, as Browning put their car in motion.
‘No, she just pushed past —’ the rest of Molly’s sentence was lost as they roared up the drive.
Flecker, recollecting his last conversation with Joy, remarked, ‘She said she hadn’t driven for “donkeys’ years”.’
‘No licence then and no third party insurance,’ observed Browning, swinging the car out into the road. ‘Where do you reckon she’s heading for?’
‘London seems the obvious place,’ answered Flecker.
‘Difficult to do a disappearing act with a Bentley in the country lanes. Anyway we’ll take a chance on it.’
They raced along the narrow road towards Hamberley, the car lurching protestingly as Browning held it firmly to its course and forced it on. They joined the main road and in a very few minutes approached the town. The lunchtime traffic was light but the streets were full of pedestrians: workers crossing the road to their regular cafés and restaurants, crowds of school-children hurrying home to lunch.
‘Come on, dear, that’s right. No, you don’t. Can’t you see I’m in a hurry? Now Aunty, you wait a minute. Well really, some people ask for it!’ monologised Browning as he hurried the car through the streams of recklessly inclined pedestrians.
Flecker said, ‘I don’t see any casualties being tended at the roadside, so it looks as though she got through all right, if she came this way.’
‘I expect she got through just before one,’ remarked Browning. ‘Come on girls, I’m not going to wait about all night even if it is a pedestrian crossing. She’ll have the legs of us on the open road.’
‘I doubt it. If she hasn’t driven the car before and she’s out of practice, you’ll catch her all right.’
They emerged from the congested streets and passed through a brief suburban district, then the road widened to carry three lanes of traffic; Browning began to build up speed. They came to the first roundabout, where they joined the new Upshott road, and then they raced on along the dual carriageway towards London. They were only about five miles from Hamberley when Flecker said, ‘That looks hopeful; large grey Bentley ahead.’
Browning increased his speed, hooting to clear the offside lane before him he hurtled in pursuit.
Flecker said, ‘I reckon it is her, she’s putting on speed too.’
‘Come on, get over,’ Browning addressed two cars in the offside lane which were slowing his progress. He kept his hand on the horn until they reluctantly moved over and then with a grim look of concentration on his face he put his foot down again. There was only a long straight clear stretch between them and the Bentley and at once the gap began to narrow. They drew very near. Flecker made a note of the registration number and decided from the smallness of the figure driving that it must be Joy.
‘We’ll catch her on the next stretch,’ said Browning, forced to slow up for an approaching roundabout. Joy didn’t slacken her speed, the Bentley went away from them like a bullet. Too intent on the pursuit Joy hadn’t noticed what lay ahead. As she came into the roundabout she braked violently and then suddenly lost control of the car. It hit the kerb surrounding the grass island, ricocheted across the road and crashed violently into a concrete lamp standard; there was a carnivorous crunch and the Bentley turned over, glissaded down the grass slope and came to rest with a rending sound on the woo
den fence and hawthorn hedge below. It lay like a great beetle on its back, its wheels spinning slowly.
Flecker and Browning pulled into the side, jumped out and ran down the bank. The car doors were jammed. While Browning struggled with the least damaged and most accessible of them, Flecker took a look at the figure inside; at the twisted but curiously limp body, the yellowing whiteness of the drained face and the wounds which had scarcely bled. ‘I don’t think there’s any desperate hurry,’ he said.
The growing knot of people on the bank above began to offer advice. Someone ran to telephone …
Joy Hemming was quite dead when they got her out. Flecker and Browning saw her body into an ambulance and explained matters to the local police officers who’d arrived on the scene; then they turned back.
‘We’d better go straight to Frailford and break it to Mrs. Chesterfield,’ said Flecker with a sigh. ‘I imagine we shall get a statement from her now. Anyway,’ he said more cheerfully, ‘it’s better for the boy. It’s not much fun to have your mother doing fourteen years and we’d have had to drag the whole lot out at the trial.’
Browning said, ‘It’s after two so we’ve had the pubs, but Sergeant Dunster said that there was quite a nice little place along on the left here, where you can get a quick cup of tea and a sandwich.’
They told Charity Chesterfield of her sister’s death and, though obviously grief-stricken, she remained composed and was able to make the long statement which Flecker needed. Then, after a short interview with Murray and Jackson in Hamberley, the detectives drove to Whittam House where Molly Steer received the news with less grief, but far more loss of composure. They spent about an hour in Joy Hemming’s room and took several small objects with them when they returned to London.
On Friday the detectives drove down to Hamberley again, this time for the inquest and afterwards they spent some time at the County Police Headquarters indulging in tea and talk with Superintendent Jackson. It was nearly six when they drove up to Down End Farm and having parked the car in the yard beside the Land Rover, walked across to the house. Flecker had Theodora Thistleton’s scrapbook under his arm, while Browning carried the double boiler. The white bull terrier welcomed them at the open front door and behind her, hearing their voices, came Laurence Keswick.
Murder Strikes Pink Page 14
