Marsh Blood (The Endel Mysteries Book 2)

by Lucilla Andrews

  David said, ‘We’re sure he hoped you wouldn’t, and only set up his alibi and Gordon Robertson as insurance policies.’

  ‘Quite useful policies.’ The Chief Constable took a typed sheet from his desk. ‘He left his home in St Martin’s at some period after receiving a phone call from Mr Smith at nine-thirty a.m. We’ve had reports of the Audi being seen leaving Midstreet shortly before ten a.m. and driving in the direction of the mainland. According to his statement, he drove into Astead intending to change three books at the public library, but had such difficulty trying to find a parking place as it was market day that after wasting roughly thirty minutes he changed his mind and drove straight over to Harbour. He stopped en route to make a phone call from the public box just over Coxden bridge. The manageress of the Tudor Rooms, Astead, recalls receiving a call from Mr Francis Denver just after eleven a.m. asking if his wife had arrived. She had not, and nor had she booked a table.’ He glanced at me, but I said nothing. She was dead; Gordon had had it tough enough and so had the Smiths. ‘H’mmm. Yes. Well, at eleven-thirty a.m. he met you both on Harbour Marsh and after a few minutes’ conversation ran you back to the inn, drove on to Harbour, bought six gallons of petrol at Wattle’s Garage and offered a lift to Cliffhill to Mrs Joan Burnham of 2 Harbour Cottages who gladly accepted as she had just missed the eleven-forty bus and knew him by sight. He left Harbour at about eleven-fifty a.m. and at that same time Mrs Doreen Burt of 9 Harbour Cottages told you that Mrs Francis Denver was waiting to speak to you on the telephone. And you took that call, Rose.’ He lowered the paper. ‘Two very useful witnesses for the defence, and particularly you, my dear. Susan’s friend and neighbour who knew her voice. A theory can be correct, yet singularly hard to prove. Juries like first impressions. If this had come to court, I’m afraid a good defence lawyer would have made mincemeat out of you over this one.’

  I sat straighter. ‘Despite Mike Wattle’s evidence? The bits of mohair on that blue scarf? The fact that Lymchurch is twelve miles cross-marsh from Astead crossroad? That two separate members of the public have reported seeing a motor-cyclist in shiny black jacket, black skid-lid, with a black muffler round the lower half of his ‒ or her ‒ face haring to and from the crossroads and along part of the northern stretch of the Ditch road sometime just before and just after twelve? I know you haven’t found that muffler yet and probably won’t if the sea got it, but I’ll bet it was Angie le Vere’s, though I’m sure she didn’t ring me from Astead crossroads. Like I’ve said, she wouldn’t give me the number to ring her back even though she said she was short of change ‒ and in a hurry. That, I believe. I don’t think she rang from Lymchurch either. Too risky. Someone in the post office might’ve seen her after she bought the stomach tablets. I expect she stopped at one of the lonely boxes on the marsh. Much safer. And as for my first assuming it was Sue speaking ‒ of course I did, even though, as I’ve said, something about that call worried me. But at the time I’d no reason to think it would be anyone but Sue.

  ‘Yes,’ I added, ‘yes, I did then know Angie had been on the stage, and seemed a casual acquaintance of Francis. I’d no idea then they were having an affair, or that she could do such marvellous female impressions. I only discovered that when David triggered her into doing them at the party. Probably, if she hadn’t had so much gin ‒ and thought David equally tanked-up ‒ she wouldn’t have done them. She liked doing her party-piece and she didn’t like me much. She had a good laugh doing me ‒ did me wonderfully ‒ but I’m sure it was later, when she’d sobered, that she realized she might’ve given me some nasty ideas and decided she’d better do something about me. She’d have guessed I told David, and heard from Francis that I’d told Mrs Smith and others, that Sue had rung me. So why not another sad accident. Huh!’ I snorted. ‘With every respect, Sir Norman, I’m almost sorry I can’t ask the defence lawyer why a woman with nothing to hide who knew about guns should want to pull a Luger on me. I don’t know if juries have soft spots for widows, but I do wonder just how soft that spot would be if Angie and Francis were still alive and this had come to court. Attractive young widow ‒ having it off with a younger man up to the day of her elderly husband’s death and said younger man now on trial for murdering his wife. Blimey! The jury would gladly have crucified her! Juries come from the general public. In theory, the public drools with sympathy over widows. In practice, as most widows learn fast, especially if they’re young, we get sorted into two types ‒ the moaning and the merry. The public does its best to forget the former and think the worst of the latter.’ I suddenly noticed David’s grin and the Chief Constable’s bemused expression. ‘Sorry. Got carried away.’

  ‘Not at all, my dear. Interesting. On second thoughts, I’m almost sorry you won’t have to tackle the defence lawyer. I should’ve remembered you’re your father’s daughter. Rosser Endel,’ he confided to David, ‘was a delightful, easygoing chap ‒ until he decided to do battle. In that event, all prudent chaps took to the hills.’

  ‘I know just what you mean, sir.’

  ‘Quite so. Well ‒ yes ‒ here we are twelve-twenty p.m. Denver dropped Mrs Burnham outside Findlay’s Bank, Cliffhill, and kept his appointment with the manager, Mr Martin Geddes, and left at twelve-forty-five saying he intended to return by the mainland Cliffhill-Astead clearway to save time as he was due to meet Mr Smith at one-fifteen p.m. Twenty-seven miles by the clearway, thirty-one by the Ditch road. No reports of his car being seen on either road or until he arrived at Mr Smith’s office just after one-fifteen. He remained in Mr Smith’s presence until called to identify his wife’s body at four p.m.’ Sir Norman breathed heavily. ‘Must admit, not much time.’

  ‘Only needed a few minutes, sir. He’d a fast car and had picked his time well. Astead market day; Cliffhill Art Show day; harvesting, hedging and ditching and tourist season over; twelve to one, the agricultural dinner hour. I expect he had the Ditch road to himself and reached the hidden Allegro just before one p.m. He transferred the body, crashed the car in that sheltered sharp bend of the Ditch, thumped the tree, put the hat back on to remind any concerned that the kid had seen “the lady” wearing it, rolled the body into the water, nipped back to his Audi and on to Astead. All he had left to do was get rid of the rug and burn that fodder. Home and dry.’

  ‘Perhaps he might’ve been,’ I said, ‘had he burnt it with the fodder.’

  ‘Too risky, love. Burning wool makes smoke and smells foul. Safer to shove it down into a dyke well away from Midstreet and the Ditch.’

  ‘I agree, Lofthouse. A dyke on Harbour Marsh must’ve seemed ideal with those sea outlets so close.’ He sipped his drink and looked at us over the rim of the glass. ‘You think he dealt with both the night of her death.’

  ‘When he was being the bereaved husband with his phone off the hook and doors locked to all comers. Just in case anyone saw or heard him take his car out, when he rang Rose first thing next morning he told her he’d spent hours walking over the marsh. What more natural than that he should want to get off his home marsh haunted by thoughts of his wife? Probably he left the car a couple of miles from the inn and walked down. And got on with the job.’

  ‘Singularly unfortunate for him that you chose to picnic on the beach next day ‒ and fortunate for young Robertson. You don’t require me to explain how our attention was drawn to him. Poor young Susan. A pretty, spoilt, brainless chatterbox. Disastrous combination. One can’t wonder the husband knew precisely what was going on since her entire home village knew. She seems to have met him regularly at that particular place in the woods. We’d no alternative to asking Robertson a few questions, and once he appreciated the potential gravity of his situation, he was very honest with us. He said he had arranged to meet her there at ten-thirty the following morning on the previous evening when he drove her home from Cliffhill in the van he’d hired to take his pictures to the exhibition. Fortunately for him, he could only afford the van for that day. He couldn’t conceal a body on his Norton. What confused the situ
ation, until you provided the probable solution, was his insistence that later that same evening Susan rang his lodgings from, she said, her home, asking him to meet her at noon instead of earlier, and saying she would explain why when she saw him. He assumed her husband to be in her vicinity. But the next day, when Denver was asked what telephone calls from home his wife had made on the night in question, he insisted she had only made one to her mother and had not left the house again after her return from Cliffhill. Robertson was alone in his lodgings when the alleged call came through and we couldn’t trace it now we’ve all gone automatic.’

  ‘Hence Angie le Vere’s mercy dash from Lymchurch.’

  ‘Unproven, Rose, but, I suspect, correct.’

  David sat up. ‘Gordon didn’t keep that date?’

  ‘He did, but has insisted that as always he used the clearway and entered the woods from the Astead side. He found no car awaiting and, according to his statement, he waited in the clearing for about thirty minutes, then returned to his lodgings by his habitual route, shut himself in his studio and got on with some picture. He became so engrossed he forgot the time and lunch until he belatedly remembered the exhibition and hurried to the town hall. Unfortunately for him, no one saw him during this period. In confidence,’ he added, ‘it was his forgetting his lunchtime beer that made it seem more probable that this account was true. I’m told the chap’s a good artist. Kind of thing a good artist would do, unless he had a guilty conscience. If he had, I’d have expected him to need his beer and the alibi.’

  I looked at David. ‘You said that.’

  ‘Is that so?’ The Chief Constable looked at David. ‘I’m informed Mrs le Vere’s death was caused by the cumulative effects of sleeping pills taken after alcohol. You know, of course, that Dr McCabe found the bottle still two-thirds full under her pillows when he discovered she had died in her sleep yesterday morning. Doesn’t look like suicide. Suicides more usually empty the bottle. It had only her fingerprints on it. Most correctly, Dr McCabe didn’t touch it or allow anyone near the body until Harry Wattle got the message to us when he rowed you both to Harbour and our chaps managed to get down to the inn. From all the evidence we have, she died accidentally.’ He paused. ‘Do you both agree?’ We shook our heads and I left it to David. He was less likely to say too much.

  He said, ‘Not that we think you’ll ever be able to prove us right on this one.’

  ‘Denver?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Probably, very shortly before Rose woke. We now think it was the sound of his going into six and getting down from the window that actually woke her. He was down when she spotted him and had obviously already decided the rug must be in Rose’s room and how to clear the inn to give him the chance to get back for it.’

  ‘Yes. Possibly. How’d he kill her?’

  ‘Injection of barbiturate while she was asleep. Just a pinprick and no bruising, as it didn’t have to go into a vein. He could have had the opportunity then as she was sleeping alone in the McCabe’s room. After her hysterics following the Luger business, Nick and Linda McCabe had put her in Nick’s bed, he’d given her a mild sedative, waited till she was asleep, then gone next door, got into Renny’s bed and being so tired gone flat out. Linda stayed with Angie, but apparently, after lying there unable to sleep or stop thinking of Renny’s death, she got very scared. Angie was deeply asleep, so the poor kid nipped next door and crawled in beside her husband without waking him. It was Rose backing out her car that woke him and he sent his wife back to Angie immediately and dashed in to look at her before he dashed on outside. Rose’s car hadn’t yet gone up, but Harry was shouting his head off. Angie slept through it all ‒ and she would have, if Francis got in that shot. It wouldn’t do the job for a few hours. He could’ve put that bottle under her pillow. God knows where he got it ‒ probably out of her handbag as it had her name on it. He’d the nous to handle it with great care. Nick McCabe didn’t know she had the stuff. I guess she got them quite legally from her family doctor ‒ that wasn’t Nick. Upset him badly. He hadn’t thought of looking in her handbag, but after Renny died as she was in such a state he searched their room and locked in his medical bag every medicine he found.’

  ‘So he told us. He gave it as his opinion that she must’ve woken while you were all occupied with the aftermath of the sea’s incoming, but was too confused to be aware of what was happening and just stumbled out of bed for her pills, took the bottle back to bed, swallowed a few, went back to sleep and died without waking at around seven a.m., but this was not discovered until two hours later as the rest of you were all so tired that you slept late.’

  David looked over his glasses at the Chief Constable. ‘Nick McCabe could be right. We doubt it. That’s all.’

  ‘Not quite all. Why would Denver have wanted to kill her? Tired of her? Or to close her mouth? Or,’ he suggested unemotionally, ‘both?’

  ‘Probably both.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Sufficient motives for a man who had already murdered once. How do you suggest he got hold of the barbiturate?’

  ‘Bought it somewhere abroad on his business trips. Not all countries are as sticky about selling dangerous drugs over the counter as this one.’

  ‘Possibly not, but how’d he have known it would serve his purpose and how to use it?’

  I caught David’s fleeting glance and the cue. ‘I expect you know he was raised by an uncle after his parents’ death, Sir Norman.’

  He looked at me sharply. ‘Gerald Smith told me some years ago. Died when Denver was at university leaving him without other relatives. I never heard the uncle’s profession.’ He frowned in quick comprehension. ‘Medicine?’

  ‘Yes. Not a GP, a specialist in toxicology. Different name as he was Francis’s mother’s only brother. Most kids pick up bits of information from their fathers’ or guardians’ jobs. Francis may even have inherited his textbooks. If not, he’d have known which books to look up.’

  David added, ‘And he was far too intelligent to pick the kind of obvious poison that could be traced. With sleeping pills that were barbiturates under her pillow, why should anyone stop to wonder why she had a high concentration of barbiturate in her blood at the post-mortem?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ The fine-boned, distinguished face set in hard lines. ‘Very intelligent chap. Doing very well professionally, I’m informed.’ He paused for thought, then went on, not inconsequentially, ‘The freak wave that broke Harbour Wall was seen by a coastguard. Sixty foot high and an exceptionally high tide, he says. I’m glad it doesn’t appear to have done the inn much damage. A nice old building. Empty of guests now?’

  ‘Temporarily,’ I said. ‘The McCabes left this morning to stay with friends in London until the inquests. The East Anglian farmers have gone home and the Evans-Williamses have cancelled all bookings for the next two weeks. The cellar floors are still under water and the cold store’s wrecked, but the ground floor and yard are drying out. They’d started working on the wall before we left today and already the old harbour was beginning to look like a lake. The swans were enjoying it. And the ducks.’

  ‘Duck, my dear,’ corrected the Chief Constable paternally, as if his mind were elsewhere. ‘The birds won’t enjoy their lake long. All the dyke pumps on the marsh are working overtime. They’ll soon have that wall back in shape and Harbour Marsh back on the map ‒ until the sea comes in again. It will. But whether that’ll be in another century or two, or next month or next week, who can say? One can merely say the return is inevitable. Inevitable,’ he repeated, ‘as the probability that somewhere in this country at this moment some other over-patient husband or wife is approaching breaking point and contemplating murder as a solution. Yet divorce is so much easier now, and safer.’

  ‘A divorce wouldn’t have suited Denver, sir. This was her home territory. If he’d divorced her, even if he had insisted on staying in St Martin’s ‒ and he could’ve had a problem about the house as it was a joint wedding present and hi
s father-in-law is a lawyer ‒ but even if he stayed in another house, he’d have lost one hell of a lot of friends and influence. If you’ll forgive my saying it ‒ you marshfolk stick together more than most, specifically where incomers are concerned.’

  ‘I fear we must accept that as fair comment, Rose. Go on, Lofthouse.’

  ‘Denver liked life on the marsh. He liked the social scene, the social status he acquired when he married into an old, respected, comfortably affluent local family. I’ll lay a year’s pay he had hoped to get away with murder and continue living in St Martin’s first as a sorrowing widower for a respectable period of mourning. And then’ ‒ David studied the lighted end of his cigarette ‒ ‘I guess he’d have looked around for another wife and picked one who could help him maintain his chosen image.’

  The Chief Constable studied David’s closed face. ‘Were that event now possible,’ he observed dryly, ‘in my considered opinion the second Mrs Francis Denver would be ill-advised to insure her life in her husband’s favour. However’ ‒ he rose ‒ ‘let us leave the subject and rejoin my wife, as I feel sure our dinner is waiting ‒’

  We were on the road to Endel in the elderly Cortina we had hired from Joe Wattle when I said abruptly, ‘He must have known about the girl who slipped off Ben Gairlie.’

  David was driving. ‘Bound to. When the cops start digging the dirt they dig good.’

  ‘Not good enough to turn up his uncle’s job.’

  ‘He died over fifteen years ago. They’ve not had time to dig that deep and don’t have to now. But it’s only just over four years back that the girl friend he’d been living with for a couple of years just happened to slip off a mountain path and fall to her death. No coroner’s inquest involved as it happened in Scotland and the local Fiscal was satisfied it was an accident, but there’ll be a record of it. Bound to have interested the local cops just as it did our Helen and our Johnnie, as it happened a few weeks after he first met Sue in Majorca. Just up for a nice long weekend in the Highlands, she said, and walked up the mountain a little higher than was wise as it was such a lovely day and the poor girl slipped and was over before he could grab her. Tragic accident, the Fiscal said, and commended the gallant English lad for his bravery in climbing down and attempts to resuscitate her with the kiss of life. Yeuk bloody yeuk! Just a kid over from Ireland training as a nurse and one of a large family with nowt but her pay packet. Too bad, baby ‒ nice knowing you. Shove off.’