Dockerty disagreed. “It means nothing of the kind, Murray. For all you know, that doodle could have been in her bag, and Robson just emptied it out when he killed her.”
“For the millionth time,” George protested, “I didn’t kill this bint.”
“I’d be grateful if you didn’t refer to Jennifer like that,” Patterson complained.
Disregarding both men, Joe said to Dockerty, “But you’ve never explained why George would even touch her handbag.”
“We’re working on the theory that he was trying to make it look like a robbery, sir,” Barrett chipped in.
George was about to protest again, but Joe beat him to it. “A robbery where nothing was stolen?” Joe asked.
“The laptop was stolen, Joe,” Tom Patterson said, and a smug smile crossed Dockerty’s face. A smile that said, ‘get out of that’.
Joe was not in the least put out. “All right. It seems I have to work a bit harder.”
The Chief Inspector got to his feet. “Fine. While you’re doing that, Constable Barrett and I have some proper inquiries to make.”
“Not so fast,” Joe said. “When I said I have to work harder, I meant I have to work harder to persuade you.”
Huffing out his breath, Dockerty sat down again.
Confident of his audience, Joe began, “I said earlier we need to look at the possibilities and decide who had the strongest motive for killing Jennifer Hardy: Oliver Quinton, Warren Kirkland or Dennis Wright.”
All three men protested vociferously and Dockerty called for order.
“I told you I never left my room,” Quinton snapped, determined to have the last word.
“And I told you I didn’t care what Jennifer got up to,” Wright growled, equally determined to be heard.
“And I think it’s time I called my lawyers,” Kirkland said, losing his cool for the first time since Joe had met him.
“All three of you have lied to me over the last twenty-four hours,” Joe said.
“Regardless of that, I notice you left out Mr Robson,” Dockerty challenged.
“Patience, Chief Inspector. I’ll get there.” Joe grinned. “Let’s look at the possibilities, huh?”
He dug into his bag again and came out with his gloves. Slipping them on, he pulled out Jennifer’s laptop, hooked it into a floor-level mains socket with his netbook’s power cord, and switched on.
“I’m not fond of digging through rubbish,” he announced while he waited for the computer to boot up, “but I spent an hour yesterday in the rear yard of this hotel, sorting through bags of crap to find this machine.” He held up his gloved hands. “I’ve worn these all the time, Chief Inspector, so my prints are not on it.”
Dockerty nodded his appreciation, and Joe went on.
“The first problem I had was working out Jennifer’s password, but when I thought about it, it wasn’t too difficult. The killer thought she kept it in her diary.” Joe took out the book and laid it on the table next to the computer. “Truth is, she was way smarter than that. The password hung round her neck. That odd date I had to figure out on Saturday night.” Joe pushed another sheet of paper onto the table. It contained only one line of characters printed at the very top of the page. MDCCMMLVIII. “Jennifer told me that it only made sense if you took out two of the letters. I did that on Saturday night and it left me with one, seven, five, eight. If I put the two ems back into it, I get one, seven, em, em, five, eight. Seventeen fifty-eight, the year of the Middleton Light Railway and MM, the initials of Matthew Murray, the engineer who built the Salamanca, the first steam engine to bring coal from Broom Colliery to the canal side in Leeds. It was Jennifer’s specialist subject. She even has a picture of the Salamanca as her desktop wallpaper. When I typed that code in, I got straight into the computer, and you’d be astonished what I found in there.”
“You should have handed it to us,” Dockerty complained.
“You’d already gone home,” Joe retorted. “And anyway, if I’d given it you this morning, you’d have shoved it to one side and ignored it while you carried on hassling poor George … poor innocent George. Anyway, like I was saying, I found tons of stuff on there, including hundreds of emails. Some of them were between Jennifer and Wright, others were between her and Quinton, her and Kirkland.” He sat back as the laptop finally settled into operation. “And now, I’m gonna tell you two stories.”
Dockerty sighed again.
Joe ignored him. “The first is all about a greedy, ignorant piece of bile from Sheffield who wanted only one thing to make his life complete: the Middleton Penny.”
Quinton leapt to his feet. “I don’t have to listen to this. You’ll hear from my lawyers.” He made a move to leave, but Dockerty’s interest had already been caught.
“Stay where you are, Mr Quinton. Let’s hear what Murray has to say.” He raised his eyebrows at Joe. “Constable Barrett explained something about the Middleton Penny to me. Apparently he got the story from Mr Patterson.”
“Quinton wasn’t alone in his desire for the penny,” Joe said. “Kirkland wanted it too.”
“But not badly enough to kill her, Mr Murray.” Kirkland appeared to have regained some of his aplomb.
“No? We’ll see. Let’s turn our attention to Jennifer herself. I’ve listened to a lot over this last twenty-four hours, but nothing that would adequately explain everything that’s happened. Throughout it all, however, I’ve heard what an angel Jennifer Hardy was, and I’ve also heard what a slut she could be, especially when she felt a man could help her get whatever she wanted.”
Patterson rose. “I’m sorry, Joe, but I can’t sit here and listen to this. Jennifer was a –”
“Sit down, Tom,” Joe commanded. “This isn’t going to be comfortable, but you have to hear it. All of you.”
Patterson sat down again and Joe consulted his notes.
“What I didn’t hear, what I had to work out for myself, was how big a crook Jennifer Hardy was.”
The allegation drew gasps from around the table and this time it was Wright who protested.
“Chief Inspector, do we have to sit here and listen to this?”
“For the time being, yes,” Dockerty said, his face set like thunder. “But it had better lead to a solution.”
“It does,” Joe assured him. “I said Jennifer was a crook. But she wasn’t born or educated as such. She led a comparatively honest life, until these last few months, and it was an event during the last year that turned her from a respected historian to a confidence trickster and a thief. I said to Tom yesterday, people are creatures of habit. When those habits change, it’s usually because of pressures from elsewhere. What changed Jennifer from a respectable academic into a potential thief was her love for you, Dr Wright. More specifically, her unrequited love for you, a love you didn’t want and didn’t return.”
Wright fumed. “If you’re accusing me –”
“I’m accusing you of nothing, yet,” Joe cut in. “The only thing you were guilty of was not wanting her, and that’s not a crime. You tried to make some kind of amends in the bar last night, when I spoke to you, but I never really believed you.”
Joe addressed the room in general.
“Jennifer wanted to become the third Mrs Dennis Wright more than anything else, and she was willing to do anything to get there. Anything. Wright persistently rejected her. He told me that even if he were in the hunt for a third wife, Jennifer would never be a candidate. Too flighty, especially when she’d had a few. Jennifer would never see that. We’re all a bit that way inclined. When things don’t go as we planned, we will look anywhere for a reason other than at our own shortcomings. She thought of many reasons why Wright didn’t want her, including the famous lover who doesn’t exist, but eventually, she concluded that the real reason was that he was practically broke. Am I right, Dr Wright?”
The academic appeared uncomfortable. “It was part of her thinking, yes.”
“So she came up with a plan to rescue the good doctor,” J
oe went on. “When her trip to Alabama was first announced, both Quinton and Kirkland latched onto it through routine publicity, and both men got in touch with her.” Joe patted the computer. “The emails are still on here, Dockerty.”
He checked his notes again. “They wanted the Middleton Penny, and a chapter of Wright’s book, Missing Pennies, was devoted to that penny and its partner coin at Hawksworth. Neither Kirkland nor Quinton heard from her for a long time, then suddenly, she emailed, inviting them individually to meet her here, in the Regency. I guess they each met her three or four times between September and the end of November, and each time, she slept with them both.” He shot a glance at Kirkland. “Don’t deny it. She kept a record of it,” he lied.
About to interrupt, Kirkland shut his mouth and Joe silently congratulated himself in the accuracy of his guess.
“Bedding these men was her way of building up their trust for what was to be a massive sting. At the beginning of December, she sent them each a final email telling them it would be to their advantage to come to the Regency over Christmas. Neither man knew about the other.”
“How do you know?” Dockerty asked.
“Because when you study her emails – there are literally about two thousand on the machine – you see that Jennifer was quite conversant with email. If she needed to email more than one person at a time, she added the second, third, fourth addresses to the outgoing message. In the case of Kirkland and Quinton, she didn’t. The messages are duplicated, but they’re addressed as individual posts to each man. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Ask the men. Kirkland, Quinton, while you were negotiating with Jennifer, were either of you aware of the other?”
“No,” said Kirkland.
Quinton merely shook his head.
“You see?” Joe glanced around the table, satisfied with the worry of the possibly guilty. “The emails end at the beginning of December, so I can only guess at what happened after that. Both men probably rang for more details. Jennifer told them clearly that the Middleton Penny was for sale and it would be in this hotel over Christmas. The timing was crucial. You can’t have valuable items like that assessed and verified by experts over the festive period because the bods who do that kind of thing are off work enjoying themselves. Jennifer told them the coin would go to the highest bidder.”
“This is utter twaddle,” Quinton protested.
“No it isn’t,” Joe argued. “You told me that you expected the penny to be here. You didn’t tell me you’d be carrying a large amount of cash, though, did you?” Quinton fell silent and Joe carried on speaking to Dockerty. “If we want to get technical about it, the Middleton Penny is stolen property. Neither Kirkland nor Quinton could be sure of the legal position, but if anyone has the right to that penny, it’s the Diocese of Ripon, the people from whom it was stolen forty years ago. Kirkland and Quinton could feasibly be prosecuted for receiving stolen property. So the entire transaction would be carried out in cash. Kirkland told me that it’s not unusual, especially when the coin’s true ownership is difficult to pin down. In order to prevent anyone doing a runner, an intermediary – in this case Jennifer – would hold the cash and the coin until it could be verified as genuine. At that point, she would hand the cash, minus experts’ fees and her commission, to the owner, and the coin to its new owner.” He shot glances at both collectors. “Again, don’t take my word for this. Ask them. How much were you carrying Kirkland?”
He coughed to hide his embarrassment. “Er, one, er, one hundred thousand.”
“And you, Quinton?” Joe demanded.
“The same,” the other replied. “And I was prepared to go higher if I had to. But she never told us it would be a bloody auction. I never even thought about it until I arrived and found him here.” He jerked a thumb sideways at Kirkland.
Joe smiled. “She was clever, that woman. Very clever. Quinton told me he’d come in at fifty and be prepared to go to seventy or maybe eighty thousand. Jennifer needed at least a hundred grand. If you work that out at current exchange rates, it comes to about 160,000 dollars; enough to pay off Wright’s debts and leave some over to start a new life with her lover in the States. The only way she could up the price was by playing them off against one another.”
“There’s no way she would have cleaned up a hundred thousand in commission on a deal like this,” Kirkland protested. “Even if the price went that high, the best she could hope for would be ten thousand.”
“Not if she intended doing a runner with the money,” Joe countered and again the room stared in astonishment. Joe turned Jennifer’s netbook, a single email open, to face Dockerty. “I found this last night. It’s a reservation on a flight from Manchester to New York leaving this morning, a full forty-eight hours before they could have the penny verified as genuine.” He pointed at Kirkland and Quinton. “By the time these two saps realised what was going on, she would be the other side of The Pond, through immigration and she’d have disappeared into America.”
A loud gasp reached his ears. When he looked, Quinton appeared almost apoplectic with rage.
Dockerty interceded before the coin collector could vent his fury. “This is all a bit naïve, Murray. She couldn’t possibly hope to get away with it.”
“It’s naïve from our point of view, Chief Inspector, but remember, we’re trying to reconstruct her efforts. Jennifer had had a long time to iron out all the difficulties. She’s the only one who could tell us all the tiny details, and she was a clever woman. She would have found ways and means of getting round it all. The first thing she would need was a mug to play the part of the coin’s owner. Members of the LHS were out. They knew her too well and they probably knew the tale of the Middleton Penny, too, so she couldn’t use any of them. It had to be someone who didn’t know her, someone she had met only recently. Someone like George Robson.”
Now it was George’s turn to gape. “Me? Why me?”
“Because you hit on her in the bar, George. She knew what you were after, but she also knew you were a bit of a berk. Pliable, manipulable…” Joe frowned. “Is there such a word?”
“I think you mean capable of being manipulated, dear,” Sheila said.
“Whatever. George tried his luck, she brushed him off. Ten minutes later, she was back and all over him. She had found her mug.”
“Joe…” George began, only to be cut off by his chairman.
“Shut up, George. Jennifer asked George to play the part of Director of Leisure Services for Sanford Borough Council. Why? Kirkland summed it up. A common gardener would not be in possession of the Middleton Penny. That’s a measure not only of Kirkland’s snobbery, but of Jennifer’s too. The Director of Leisure Services is a man who earns a vast salary…” Joe trailed off, suddenly thinking about Cliff Leasowe at Sanford Town Hall. “Yes, and he does bugger all for it.”
“Concentrate on the job at hand, Joe,” Sheila advised.
“Sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes. The Director of Leisure Services is a man who earns a large salary and he’s the kind of well-educated man who just might own the Middleton Penny. Someone she could pass off on Kirkland and Quinton.” He leaned forward, pulled the netbook to him, and opened up the photograph folder. “Again, we don’t have to take my word for this. Look at the photograph of George.” He showed it to the table. “Why have a picture of him holding a CD?”
“You’re not making sense,” Dockerty pointed out.
Joe hit the forward key on the computer, and the image switched to the doctored example. “Does it make sense now?”
Dockerty’s eyes widened. “How the hell…?” he trailed off and looked at Joe.
“Photoshop,” Joe said. “I don’t know much about it, but I do know that you can pull all sorts of stunts with pictures, and Tom told me Jennifer was quite talented at illustrating her own books. She produced some of those illustrations by computer, and if you check the machine when we’re through, you’ll find some of her work on the hard drive. She manipulated the original image of Geor
ge to make it look as if he was holding the Middleton Penny in a presentation case. If you zoom the image in, you’ll see that the date on the penny is 1933.” He turned his attention to Patterson. “Tom, you brought Jennifer’s personal effects. Have you looked through them?”
The other shook his head. “I didn’t care to.”
Concentrating on Dockerty, Joe said, “If you check, you’ll probably find a penny in a presentation case, but it won’t be a 1933 penny. She will have altered the date in Photoshop.”
To Barrett, Dockerty said, “Do it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Barrett took the bags off to one side and began going through them.
Leaning across Sheila, George whispered, “This is not making sense, Joe.”
“It will as we go on, George,” Joe promised. “And it’ll completely exonerate you.”
“As well as making me look a complete prat.”
Joe smiled. “You’ve always been a complete prat. Especially when some trollop offers to take her knickers off.”
George frowned. “Trollop?”
“Brenda remembered the word for us yesterday, George,” Sheila assured him.
“Found it!”
Barrett’s declaration called them back to the table.
He held a presentation case up. Inside was a British penny, looking to Joe more silver than copper bronze.
“May I?” Quinton asked and Barrett passed him a pair of forensic gloves with the penny. Quinton looked it over, sniffed disdainfully, and handed it to Kirkland.
“A 1938 George the Sixth penny, with mint lustre,” Quinton declared.
Kirkland agreed. “Probably uncirculated. Value perhaps five pounds.” He handed it back to Barrett.”
“And she altered the date using Photoshop?” Dockerty asked.
Joe nodded. “She knew how to use that software, I don’t. I imagine changing the eight to a three is pretty easy. Cutting it out then overlaying it on the image of George probably needed a deal more patience, but if she really was an expert, as Tom suggests, she could probably do it in minutes. George left her at two in the morning, she was killed at three thirty, so there was a 90-minute window, which was ample time for her to set up the picture. To boot, there’s a photo of the penny in its case on the hard drive.”
A Murder for Christmas Page 22
