by Amy Myers
‘Not on Suspects Anonymous, only in our thinking.’
‘Suppose we compromise?’ Peter suggested generously, ‘and put the Vanes in, husband and wife, as one player.’ He promptly created a new icon, and a Burglar Bill duly appeared on the screen with Vane emblazoned on its stripy shirt.
‘Done,’ she agreed. ‘Lunch?’
‘Not yet. Let’s see how it works. Now, we’re agreed that six of the pilots had left – or at least appeared to have done so – at about five o clock. Matt Jones and Patrick Fairfax remained, Richard Vane left twenty minutes or so later, and the other three club members shortly after that.’
‘Yes, subject to alibis holding up.’
‘Of course. Right, that’s good. That gives us thirteen players, including Patrick himself. An inauspicious number. OK to run the session? I’ll set the clock at three forty-five p.m.’
‘Go for it,’ she said with resignation. Lunch, it seemed, was not an option.
Peter, frowning into the screen, duly clicked the button and sat back as the round clock dial at the corner of the screen whirled into action, and one figure in white (Patrick Fairfax), and seven of the Bills left the bar and sprang to life. The clock worked to evidence time, not real time of course, and despite her empty stomach Georgia became hooked by what was happening. It was all going smoothly with icons gliding in and out of Matt’s office and the two different bars, until the time clock reached seven o’clock, when a large red cross appeared on the screen.
‘The error sign, so that doesn’t fit.’ Peter frowned. ‘Paul Stock said the downstairs bar was empty, yet the cross must be pointing out that not only do we not have supporting evidence for that, but there must be a definite clash. I suppose it’s because the barman told Patrick that Janet was looking for him out in the grounds, but Janet said she was in her room and there was no message.’
‘Easily explained,’ Georgia replied. ‘We have only approximate times. Patrick says at, say, six forty-five that he has to have a word with Matt and he’ll be back in a trice. Janet decides to use the time to go to the loo or to their room. Obviously they were going to spend the night together at the hotel, so she tells the barman to let Patrick know she’ll meet him upstairs. He’ll know she means their room; the barman knowing when he gave his statement that Patrick was killed in the gardens takes it that she referred to the garden doors which are right there as you come up the stairs from the basement floor. Alternatively, instead of going to the loo she uses the time to filch the gun if the barman nipped out, and she’s feeling hard done by Patrick Fairfax. Computers,’ she added crossly, ‘are not Old Bailey judges. They are only a tool.’
‘But a useful one.’ Peter clicked Janet Freeman’s Betty icon again to run through her movements. ‘Yes, a definite question mark over that lady. She was there with the gun, and as barmen tend to come and go she could have been alone with it. She’d only need a minute. The barman . . . Which one was it?’ He hunted in the index file. ‘Tony Wilson. She gets rid of him on an excuse, takes the gun . . . no, another red cross.’
‘Ammunition,’ Georgia said smugly. ‘She wouldn’t have any.’
He stared at her in annoyance. ‘Why? Suppose she’d planned it?’
‘Why should she?’
‘Fairfax was giving her the boot. She thought he was more serious about their relationship than in fact he was. Bingo.’
‘It’s possible,’ Georgia conceded. ‘We’re only presuming that Patrick was going to stay the night with her. Suppose he’d already dropped her and that’s what the row between Paul and Patrick was about. News had spread. Paul was upset on her behalf and told Patrick what a scumbag he was. At six forty-five, after a final appeal to Patrick has got nowhere, Janet departs to her room, which is handy for a swift retreat. She’s come fully prepared for vengeance. She’d need clean clothing, for instance, in case she got Fairfax’s blood on her. She also has the ammunition – she has seized the gun when she had the opportunity in the bar – she leaves the message with the barman, goes into the gardens and waits for Patrick to come.’
‘Possible,’ Peter grunted.
‘Then let’s have lunch,’ she pleaded.
Peter ignored this. ‘Wouldn’t intrepid lady travellers have guns of their own? Why go to the lengths of relying on the Webley?’
‘Not traceable to her.’
‘Why the dell?’
‘Their special place?’
‘Could be.’ Peter frowned. ‘Hypothesis only. It doesn’t satisfy.’
‘Lunch could.’
‘These pilots,’ Peter continued, ‘are moving around in a gang on this screen. Yet they can’t have done. They say old soldiers never die, they simply fade away. Did the pilots fade out together from the hotel?’
‘Yes, according to their police statements. “Just after five” in most cases. We don’t know who went first and who went last. But does it matter?’
‘It matters if one of them didn’t leave. None of them would have been asked by the police about the others’ movements.’
‘The police must have been satisfied that everyone save Jones, Stock and Freeman had left well before Fairfax was killed. Why on earth would any of the pilots or the club members choose the hotel to kill him in? Why not the club itself, where it would surely have been less risky? Unless, of course, it was a spur-of-the-moment murder.’
Peter sighed. ‘You’re getting tired, daughter. Look. You’ll agree Paul Stock is a good candidate for a spur-of-the-moment murder.’ He clicked on Paul Stock’s icon and united it in the downstairs bar with the gun symbol; it then followed the Victim icon through the garden. When they reached the blue area indicating the dell, symbolized by a tasteful blue hyacinth – the nearest the computer could manage to a bluebell – Peter pressed the action button. The gun was fired – and immediately a red cross came up.
‘As you said,’ Peter continued smugly. ‘No ammunition. It was a planned murder. Someone knew the gun was there, knew it was unloaded, knew the layout of the hotel.’
‘All twelve Suspects would qualify for that,’ she said gloomily. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Lunch?’ Peter suggested sweetly.
*
Leaving Margaret intent on preparing a supper for them since they had deprived her of the pleasure of serving them a midday meal (Georgia suspected she really did see it that way) she and Peter set forth for the White Lion. Haden Shaw was a typical Kent village in that its buildings were largely strung out along one street, with a few side lanes, which made it relatively easy for Peter to move around. The pub was on the same side of the road as their two adjoining cottages and it was a pleasant walk past a medley of medieval, Tudor and eighteenth-century cottages. The occasional one was set back from the road, which gave them the luxury of peering into several front gardens and being barked at by a cross-eyed terrier over-protective of his territory.
Inside the pub still had its inglenook fireplace, though the owner, Dave Winslow, had to be leaned on to light the log fire displayed within it. Even though it was high summer, it still provided a comfortable central point. It was fishcake day, Georgia was glad to see. Nancy, Dave’s wife, had a mean hand with them.
‘Any more from Luke about the house?’ Peter asked, after he had taken his first sip of bitter.
‘He said he’d put in a revised offer.’
‘Foregone conclusion?’
‘No. Prepare for doom and gloom and every day a new cliffhanger,’ Georgia said cheerfully. ‘Luke’s really hooked on this house now, so he’ll persevere.’
‘And you? Are you hooked on it?’
Georgia studied the fishcakes being placed before her and thought about this. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly.
‘I take it that’s a yes with reservations?’
‘Isn’t it always and for everyone?’
‘I do realize that Luke’s doing this at least partly for me,’ Peter said forthrightly. ‘You could move to South Malling, if it weren’t for me. You could anyway, but I
know you won’t believe that.’
‘Wrong. Knowing myself, it could work the other way round. Without you in the equation, I’d be having worse jitters. Nothing might prise me out of Haden Shaw. “Jam tomorrow” has always seemed an excellent way of living to me.’
Peter laughed. ‘Change of subject then. Do you agree Suspects Anonymous did a good job?’
‘Within its limits.’
‘Which are?’
‘We might tend to concentrate on the evidence we’ve fed in and the people we’ve identified. What of those who slip the net? They’re going to be further distanced by using that software. The more we use it, the more we’ll rely on it.’
‘Has anyone slipped our net so far?’
‘Tom Armstrong, Lord Standing, Vincent Blake . . .’
‘We can’t dub people suspects just because they were there.’
‘On the other hand we can’t exclude them,’ Georgia pointed out, ‘so let’s say they’re all players in the reserve team for Suspects Anonymous. Like Alice Dane.’
Peter looked pleased at this analysis. ‘Ready for transfer to First Division in her case. Ah, Dave,’ Peter called out, since he was strolling over to clear the plates. ‘Coffee if you please, and tea for Georgia.’
‘Should know that by now,’ Dave grunted. He was the laconic one of the couple. Nancy took the bubbly role. ‘Weren’t you off to Eynsford a few weeks back, Georgia?’
She looked up in surprise. ‘Yes, why?’
‘Heard there’d been a murder there. Wondered who it was.’ Dave was under the impression that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police had a hot line to Peter as did every Chief Constable in the country, especially Kent. Dave therefore presumed that news of each body discovered in Britain and quite a few outside reached Marsh & Daughter pronto, whether the death dated from 3000 BC or thirty minutes previously.
‘No idea, Dave.’ Georgia looked at Peter uneasily.
‘It’s only because we’ve been talking about the case,’ Peter reassured her quickly. ‘It won’t be Jack.’
‘Of course not,’ she agreed. ‘Eynsford’s a large village.’ A silence fell which lasted until they had paid the bill and returned to Peter’s office.
‘I’ll ring Mike,’ Peter said at last, ‘just to be sure.’
‘Yes,’ Georgia agreed. This was stupid. Not every tragedy in the world revolved round Marsh & Daughter or 362 Squadron. She tried to occupy herself with such delights as writing out cheques to the Inland Revenue – anything to make the time pass until the phone rang with Mike’s reply. Eynsford wouldn’t be in his area of course, it would be in Darenth Valley’s, and so it would take longer. She could see that Peter was obviously feeling as on edge as she was, and only pretending to be busy on the internet – which didn’t help her own fears.
By the time the phone did ring – and she guessed from Peter’s expression as he answered it that it was Mike – she had managed to convince herself that the answer would be negative. It couldn’t possibly be Jack. Then she realized that Peter was listening to Mike for too long a time, and by the time he put the receiver down, she guessed the truth.
‘It was Jack,’ he said, looking very shaken. ‘His wife had been away, and found the body in his office when she returned on Sunday evening. He’d been bashed over the head with a heavy and as yet unknown object, dead for twenty-four hours or so. Their neighbour was taken in for questioning, but released this morning without charge.’
Neighbour? She clung to this thought, if only because it took this terrible murder into the realms of the real, and away from the turmoil inside her which insisted this had something to do with Patrick Fairfax.
‘Some boundary dispute,’ Peter continued. ‘Going on for years. The neighbour came round to sort it out once and for all, and according to him, they had. Then he left. Moreover, he claims he came on Friday evening, not Saturday. There’s no proof of that, however, and he had no alibi for the evening in question. Anyway, the SIO has ruled out charging him.’
The taste of the fishcakes was unpleasantly repeating itself in her mouth, and her stomach churned. Jack dead. All she could fix her thoughts on was that model Spitfire outside his door, and that ridiculous bench. Her eyes felt heavy with shock, and even tears were close. All this morning they had playing around with stupid computers and Burglar Bills, and in the real world Jack was dead.
She told herself this was illogical, that she had no difficulty in remembering what their job was all about. She also reminded herself that Suspects Anonymous served the purpose of providing objectivity away from the hideousness of whatever crime they were investigating. It was a tool, as the police had tools, to come at a case from an outside angle rather than the personal emotions that perhaps inevitably clouded the people most concerned.
She’d only met him twice, and yet the thought of that now unused office dedicated to his life’s passion threatened to overwhelm her. She disciplined herself, struggling to think rationally, separating personal sadness from work. Why on earth should his death be connected to their enquiries about the Fairfax case? Jack hadn’t been interested in writing another biography himself, nor had he tried to deter her from the project, as he would have done if he felt fiercely protective of the people involved. Indeed rather the contrary. Involuntarily her thoughts switched to Susan Hardcastle. She thought of Jack as he had been at Tangmere – and then inevitably she pictured what Susan had walked in on.
‘Mike’s keeping us informed,’ Peter told her. ‘And, decent of him,’ he said graciously, ‘the Scene of Crime is being wrapped up Thursday morning. He says you can go over and have a word with the SIO if you like. I take it you would?’
She nodded. It would be the last thing she would want to do if she had any choice. But she didn’t. The tape, the chalk marks, the scene-suited figures, the memories it would bring of Jack himself, they all had to be faced. It went with the job.
Chapter Eight
‘I don’t believe in coincidence.’ Peter had obviously guessed her basic concern. ‘Was there something, anything, you felt Jack was holding back on when you first met him? I can’t see anything he told us at Tangmere that would have led to this.’
‘Yes. I still can’t pin down what or how. There was his outburst about Paul Stock at Tangmere, but Paul having made a pass at his wife hardly seems a motive for his killing Jack – especially since it happened years ago.’
‘But when you first met Jack?’
‘He answered my questions, more or less. But, as I told you, he was ambivalent. He was talkative about the pilots themselves, and encouraged us to meet them. Then he told me that they would be of more use over information on the aviation club members since the pilots could be discounted as suspects for Fairfax’s death.’
‘From your notes,’ he reminded her, ‘he hardly mentioned the club, although he must have researched that for his biography.’
‘What are you implying?’ she asked edgily.
‘That he was definitely trying to steer you away from 1940. All the more reason for your meeting with Sylvia Lee tomorrow, Georgia.’
Peter didn’t even glory in this small victory, but nevertheless Georgia was silenced. Had Jack done so purposely? And if so, why?
As she drove to Eynsford half an hour later, she found herself switching tack to Peter’s last comment hurled after her as she left. ‘Alan Purcell. Don’t forget him when you see Sylvia Lee.’ Or, she thought, Susan Hardcastle. Jack had given away that he’d at least met Purcell. Too fast, too fast, she warned herself. There should be speed cameras for case investigations as well as roads. First, concentrate on Jack himself. Somebody had killed him, and the priority was to discover why.
For once she wished she wasn’t on her own, as she drew up near Bramley House that Thursday morning. It looked all too familiar, except for the large mobile incident van parked opposite the house. Even the roses bloomed on regardless. There was no Susan popping up from behind the hedge now, however. Instead the door was open and a man,
not scene-suited, which meant the main investigation must be over, was walking up to the gate. Thirties, weasel-faced, the sort who, like the cross-eyed terrier in Haden Shaw, would guard his territory.
‘Georgia Marsh? DI Pullman, Darenth Area. I gather you knew Hardcastle. You wrote that book about Wickenham, didn’t you?’
The eyes seemed to be drilling into her, and his tone of voice indicated that books were not only sidelines but full of fairy stories and a world away from his.
‘We did. My father was a Kent DCI, Stour Area.’ She needed to lay down credentials here. ‘Jack Hardcastle was helping us on a cold case we’re looking into.’
‘So Mike Gilroy said. Patrick Fairfax, 1975. I deal with facts like Gilroy. Have you any evidence that the Fairfax case has anything to do with his death, or is it just a hunch?’ He kept a straight face, but the implication was there: she might be too young for a Miss Marple, but was obviously tarred with the same brush. So what, she thought. Miss Marple did a good job.
She answered him suitably earnestly. ‘I don’t blame you for thinking we might be barking mad at this stage.’ Slight emphasis on the last three words. ‘To tell you the truth, I hope we’re wrong about any connection. We liked Jack Hardcastle and, really, I’m only too anxious to be able to rule out that slight possibility.’
A pause while she was weighed up. ‘You’d better go in. Mrs Hardcastle says it’s OK.’
‘She’s here?’ Georgia hadn’t expected this.
‘Only for a few hours to double check there’s nothing missing. The place was a mess.’
Could robbery have been a motive, she wondered. Robbery of what, though? The insidious thought crept in that Jack’s files might have been the goal.
‘Do I need to be scene-suited?’
‘No. Mrs Hardcastle’s got a PC with her. We’ve bagged everything we need, but don’t walk off with anything without her say-so.’
She assured him she would be good, while wondering how far her understanding of the word ‘good’ might stretch. As she entered, she could hear voices coming from Jack’s office. Susan Hardcastle must be a brave woman to face that. When Georgia joined them, she could see that it was indeed a mess: chalk marks still evident on the carpet, blood spatters now being cleaned by the police constable, who was a formidable-looking girl in her early twenties.
