Death At Willows End

by A. B. King

  “Mr Simmonds will see you now,” he said. “What name shall I say?”

  “Mr Hammond and Miss Fortescue”

  He turned and led us to a small office at the rear of the premises and tapped on the door before opening it and announcing our names. He then stood to one side as he allowed us to enter, and then closed the door behind us.

  The office was the complete opposite of the one I had been spending my recent days in. The floor was fitted with a spotlessly clean plain carpet, the walls were all emulsioned in a sort of beige colour, and the sole furniture was a square boxwood desk with two modern office chairs on our side of it, and a more exotic version of the same on the far side for the sole use of the manager. The desk held a blotting pad and a telephone and nothing else. There was no bric-a-brac anywhere, no files, no papers, not so much as a pen being visible. The word 'Spartan' came to mind. Mr Simmonds was pretty much as I remembered him; stiff, unsmiling and immaculate, and I still didn't like him! He must have been well over sixty, but very precise in his dress and manner. He sat there upright in his chair, his wavy grey hair neatly brushed, his tie exactly central in his brilliant white shirt collar. There was not one speck of dust on the jacket of his suit, and his cuffs gleamed white from the ends of his sleeves.

  “Mr Hammond, Miss Fortescue,” he said, rising to his feet. “Please take a seat and tell me what it is that you wish to see me about.”

  “Thank you for seeing us,” said Danny, sitting quite demurely on the edge of her seat, keeping her knees, as I swiftly noted, firmly together, “I know we should have telephoned for an appointment, but as we were here in the area today we took a chance.”

  “I can give you ten minutes before my next appointment,” he said condescendingly. “Now, how may I help?”

  “I will come straight to the point, Mr Simmonds,” I said in my best business-like voice, “I am a Private Investigator, and I am making enquiries on behalf of Miss Fortescue into a family matter. One aspect of these enquiries concerns the background of a Miss Julia Gordon. Miss Gordon is now deceased, and it is necessary to track down a former acquaintance. We have been given to understand that Miss Gordon once worked for you, therefore we are hoping that you may be able to provide us with information that will lead us to the missing person.”

  “I see,” he said, clasping his hands together. If he was in the slightest degree concerned about being told of the death of a former employee it certainly didn't show on his features or in his tone of voice. “Do you have any means of identification, Mr Hammond?”

  It seemed that I was correct in assuming that he did not recognize me, but then our acquaintanceship had been so brief there was no reason why he should. I produced one of Pete's business cards. “That is the name of the agency,” I explained. “If you wish further confirmation, you can contact Detective Inspector Grayson of the local constabulary who is also working with us on this matter.”

  “That will not be necessary,” he responded, even the casual mention of police involvement seemed not to interest the man in the slightest. “Now, what was the name of that ex-employee again?”

  “Julia Gordon,” said Danny. “She worked here about fourteen years ago.”

  He favoured her with a long expressionless stare. “Fourteen years ago you say?” he ruminated at last, “That is quite a while back. I cannot immediately bring this person to mind. Please bear with me for a moment.”

  He pressed a bell push on the side of his desk, and a few moments later a young woman with huge glasses opened the door.

  “Yes, Mr Simmonds?” asked a nervous voice

  “Bring me the old staff records Miss Banks,” he said without even looking at her, “Immediately, if you please.”

  “Certainly, Mr Simmonds,” The door closed and he looked at us again.

  “You say that this, what did you say her name was, Miss Gordon, is deceased?” he asked.

  “Yes, I'm afraid so,” Danny answered, doing her best to look like a little girl lost. “She has been a friend of my family ever since I was a child, and it was a terrible blow when she died just before we could talk to her on a private matter. However, she did leave information that made us believe that a friend she had at the time, a man friend I think, was also party to the same information. Nobody we have spoken to so far has been able to advise us of this man's identity, but it really is terribly important that we find him. All we need is a name?”

  “My dear young lady,” Simmonds said a little testily, “if the man did not work here, I most certainly would not know his name.”

  “Oh, we fully understand that,” I said quickly as I saw Danny's face flush angrily at his manner, “but there is just the faintest chance you may be able to provide us with a clue that would enable us to trace him by another route?”

  “Hm,” he grunted non-committally.

  A few moments later there was another tap on the door, and Miss Banks returned, placed a file carefully on the Manager's desk and swiftly departed again. Once she had left he opened the file and proceeded to leaf through it slowly and carefully, examining each document as he came to it.

  “Miss Julia Gordon,” he said, half to himself. “Ah, yes, here we are. Yes, a most satisfactory employee. Very diligent, trustworthy, responsible; yes, she left us soon after she married.” He continued to scan through the notes as if he had all the time in the world. “Hm,” he added after a few moments. “Yes, I do recall her now; quite a presentable young woman in a reserved sort of way. There is a note here that may throw some light on your mysterious acquaintance. It seems that I had to speak to her about a young man who was obviously interested in her personally. He came here first as a prospective client looking for office premises, which of course we were unable to provide. It soon became obvious that he was more interested in Miss Gordon than anything else. He was always parking his dreadful three wheeled monstrosity of a vehicle in our car park at awkward times. I cautioned her to conduct her private affairs in her own time, and I am pleased to say that he never called here again after that.”

  As soon as he uttered the words 'three wheeled monstrosity' I knew we had at last hit pay-dirt!

  “That sounds like it could be our man,” I exclaimed. “Did you get a name or anything else that would enable us to trace him?”

  He glanced again at his notes. “No, no names recorded,” he said. “However I do vaguely recall the man; a tallish individual who gave the impression of having originated from Spain or somewhere in that part of the world. I seem to remember that he was well built, and with a somewhat extrovert demeanour. I should imagine that he was quite successful with the ladies. I believe that Miss Gordon overcame her interest in him fairly quickly, because he certainly wasn't the man she married. I should know; I attended the wedding.”

  He closed the file and looked across the desk at us. “I'm sorry that I cannot be of any more assistance” he said in a tone of voice that suggested that he was really quite indifferent to our enquiries, and rapidly tiring of our presence. “Now, if you will excuse me, I really do have an appointment I must keep.”

  “Of course,” I said, before Danny could leap in with any more questions. “Thank you so much for your time.”

  I stood up, and after only the briefest hesitation Danny stood up also, and we took our leave. Once we were back in the car Danny rounded on me.

  “You,” she said with emphasis, “are simply not forceful enough! I'm sure that ignorant pig of a man knows a good deal more than he was letting on!”

  “Quite likely,” I agreed happily, “but if you had tried pushing him in your usual ruthless manner you wouldn't have got any more out of him than I did.”

  “Oh, and what makes you so sure about that?”

  “Because I bet you a pound to a pinch of snuff that he was knocking off the fair Julia as well!”

  “What?”

  “Why do you think she stayed with him so long?”

  “She needed a job, and she obviously pleased him.”

  “I
bet she did!”

  “And what's that supposed to mean?”

  “It just so happens I have already met Simmonds before. He didn't remember me, of course; there was no reason why he should. I called in there once some time ago to see if he had any rented accommodation I could afford, and he happened to be out in the front office at the time. I didn't much like him then; his manner seemed too stiff. Not so very long afterwards I saw his name in the local paper. One of his female employees had brought a charge of assault against him. She claimed he had pushed her over a desk and given her a sound spanking for some alleged misdemeanour. He had a good lawyer and got away with it.”

  “You're not serious?”

  “Look it up for yourself in the local rag if you doubt me. It was unfortunate for him that that particular girl wasn't into the sort of fun and games he obviously enjoyed. Julia, as we now know, would have been a very different kettle of fish of course. I wouldn't mind betting she has since been replaced by the rather mousy Miss Banks; did you not observe the way she looked at him, and how he deliberately ignored her presence?”

  “Well, I'll be-”

  “I shouldn't, it's quite painful.”

  “So our visit was a complete waste of time then; there was no way he was going to admit that he was the man on the bridge.”

  “Sorry to contradict you; firstly, our visit was not a waste of time, and no, he wouldn't admit to being the man on the bridge because he wasn't the man.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Can you see Simmonds haring about the countryside in a sporty three-wheeler?”

  “Oh, no, I suppose not. So we really are no further forward then?”

  “On the contrary, he confirmed that the driver of the Reagan, if that is what was parked at his premises, was definitely one of Julia's boyfriends. There is no reason why he would make that up as a story, our three-wheeler-driving unknown man first met Julia there, and without a shadow of a doubt he was the man on the bridge. Rather than criticise Julia for her actions, I suspect that Simmonds encouraged it just in case others were getting suspicious of his attentions towards her, and not only that, it would also have provided him with an acceptable excuse to 'punish' her!”

  “All right, but how does that get us any farther forward?”

  “Because, “I announced with some satisfaction, “when Simmonds asked Miss Banks to get him the file, it reminded me that I may already have the name of the man we want sitting on my desk back in the office.”

  “What!”

  “I asked Tracy to get onto the internet to see if there is a Reagan owners club, and if possible to down-load a list of members current at the appropriate date. She was obviously successful, because she gave the list to me with some other information I asked her to dig out, but I haven't looked at it yet. Providing our man was a member of the club, and I've a feeling he would have been, his name is somewhere on that list.”

  “Then why on earth are we sitting here in this car park wasting time?”

  “That,” I muttered as she started the engine and drove out of the car park, “is a good question.”

  Chapter Nineteen.

  By the time that we reached the office Tracy had already gone home. During the journey I outlined for Danny the scenario of what I thought had probably occurred on that fateful day when her sister had died. I explained how the idea of a weekend camp had probably been a ploy by Julia simply to meet her lover in a clandestine manner, how it was highly likely that the inquisitiveness of Dian had betrayed her secret, how the twins had failed to appreciate just how highly sensitive the whole business was, and who had perhaps agreed to play some sort of joke on Julia, and how this had probably caused Julia to angrily react by perhaps pushing one twin into the water. Whether this was a deliberate attempt at murder, which I doubted, or the accidental result of an angry shove, was open to conjecture, and what would have happened afterwards if nature had not dramatically intervened was impossible to know. But nature had intervened, and it is what happened in the first few minutes after the lightning strike that made all the difference between accident and murder.

  My personal belief was that murder was never in Julia's mind at the time, yet circumstances had in a sense forced her hand. With one twin, accidentally or otherwise, out of the way, and the other initially believed to be dead, or at best so badly injured that survival must have seemed most unlikely, it would have appeared a heaven-sent opportunity of keeping her secret safe. In the weeks following the accident she had kept in close contact with the surviving twin and the total amnesia must have come as yet another heaven-sent blessing. To my mind, if 'Danny's' memory had come back, Julia would have spun a story about the whole tragic business being no more than a terrible accident arising out of a sudden flush of temper. She would probably have 'confessed' to having 'accidentally' knocked the child into the water, and being terrified of the consequences had lied about it. She might have had an official 'rap over the knuckles' but that would probably have been all. But the amnesia was total and seemingly permanent, and so the whole business had eventually been forgotten. At least, Julia would have assumed it was forgotten until my advent upon the scene. In my view she had panicked when I had appeared, and started asking her awkward questions. No doubt as soon as I had left her, she had contacted her ex-paramour and advised him of the situation. If, as I suspected, he was at least party to what happened, the last thing in the world he would now relish was having it all dragged out in the open again. If he was now well set up in society with a good deal to lose he would possibly go to any lengths to make sure that nothing would come to light. No, I personally didn't believe for one moment that Julia had committed suicide!

  After all that we had since learned, I couldn't see Julia changing her spots. She was a sexually orientated masochist, and I suspected that following my visit she had contacted the mysterious 'boyfriend' from all those years past and acquainted him with the fact that enquiries were being made about the whole business. She was a widow now, and by suggesting that she had let just a little information slip, she would qualify once again for 'punishment', and all that that entailed. She knew that she could now safely indulge her fantasies within the seclusion of her own home, yet I doubt she ever realised just how extreme the 'punishment' she courted would be. If my theorising was correct, 'Mr X' had swiftly followed up her call and ensured that she didn't let on to what more she knew; the knowledge she had of his own involvement with the affair. If I had figured it out correctly, then Julia may or may not have pushed her tormentor into the river, and it was odds-on that it was the boyfriend who ensured that she didn't get out. The big question left in my mind was; did we now confide in Inspector Grayson what we knew, and what we suspected?

  I confess that I rather hoped that Danny would agree that this was the best course, but as I had realised long since, she was one hell of a stubborn lady.

  “Not until I know who the bastard is,” she declared adamantly as we drew up at the back of the office. “I want the swine to realise just who tracked him down, and why!”

  We entered the building and went up to the office where I was surprised to find the door standing very slightly ajar. My first thought was that Tracy had gone home and simply forgotten to close it properly behind her, but then a darker suspicion crossed my mind. I pushed the door gingerly open with my foot and peered inside. Danny divined what was passing through my mind and kept slightly behind me. The place was empty, and as far as I could see, nothing appeared at first glance to be disturbed. Satisfied I stepped in and looked all round. Maybe I was wrong, perhaps Tracy had left the door open by accident after all? Then I looked at my desk, and at once I could see that the file I had come back for had been moved. It didn't prove anything; Tracy could have moved it, but the fact that the door was open and the file no longer where I knew I had left it made me suspect that someone had been in there, looked at the file, and departed. I turned and looked back at the door to see if I could detect any signs of it having been for
ced, but there was nothing to say it had, yet instinctively I knew that someone had been there. Someone who knew that I was involved in uncovering an old crime, someone who wanted to know how much I already knew, someone I had already theorised had killed a second time just to keep a secret. It was a most uncomfortable feeling, and yet the person I felt most concerned about wasn't me, but Danny.

  “You think our mysterious man on the bridge has been here?” Danny asked as I slumped down in a chair to think.

  I nodded.

  “And obviously you still think we should call the police, and turn over to them what we know?”

  “It is the right and sensible thing to do,” I agreed. “We are amateurs, and we are in real danger of getting in over our heads. It is one thing tracking down lost cats and finding who is sleeping with who; it is quite another trying to track down someone who may already have killed two people! In case it hasn't crossed your mind; if 'Mr X' thinks that you are getting your memory back, you could already be in real danger yourself. If he already has two deaths on his conscience, a third isn't going to worry him too much.”