The Cuckoo (Rufus Stone Detective Stories Book 1)

by K. J. Frost

  “Millicent?” he enquires, as though there’s more than one ‘Mrs Templeton’.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Odd woman,” he replies. “Nervous type.”

  “I gather she’s unwell?” I suggest.

  “Not unwell, necessarily, but thinks herself ill. Imagines things are wrong with her, when they’re not. You know the sort.”

  I nod. “And Beth herself?” I ask. “Did you know her?”

  “Yes,” he says quietly. “I’ve known Beth Templeton all her life.”

  “And?”

  “Lovely girl. Not the prettiest thing in the world, but she was hardworking, honest, knew how to take a joke.” He sounds as though he’s discussing one of the rugby fifteen at Harrow, not the murdered daughter of one of his oldest friends.

  “I see… and Amelie Cooper?”

  He pauses. “I don’t know much about her,” he says evasively, looking over my shoulder at the bookcase behind me.

  I find that hard to believe. She’s lived with the family for nearly fifteen years. If he knew Beth, he must know Amelie equally well. However, I don’t say anything. I just make a mental note of his reticence.

  He focuses on me again. “Well,” he says, a little more forcefully, “I think you’ve brought me up to date with your thoughts, even if they are wide of the mark. I suppose I’d better let you get on.”

  I sense he’s uncomfortable with my questions and wants me out of his office, and I’m only too happy to oblige.

  Back downstairs, Styles is summoned by Thompson to deal with some urgent matter on their case. I discover that Ellis’s desk is vacant and a brief enquiry of another man who’s sitting nearby tells me that he’s gone out for lunch. I glance at the clock on the wall. I hadn’t even realised the time. It’s already one-thirty, which means my appointment with Daniel Milton is in half an hour.

  “Tell him I’ve gone to see Daniel Milton, will you? I’ll be back later on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Milton home is a small Victorian semi-detached house, very neatly kept both inside and out. I’m shown into what I’m fairly sure the family would call their ‘parlour’ – a well-lit room at the front of the house, with a fireplace, a small sofa and a single chair, and a neat little sideboard, on top of which sits a potted aspidistra. Above the fireplace is a faded photograph of a man in uniform, the border of which has been etched in black. A Great War casualty, I assume.

  Daniel’s mother is a homely-looking woman, who hasn’t bothered to take off her wrap-around apron to greet me.

  “Daniel will be down directly,” she says. “He’s just getting dressed.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I get you some tea?” she offers.

  “No, thank you very much.”

  She nods and just at that moment, we hear footsteps on the stairs and she moves to one side to make way for the young man who appears in the doorway. He’s fairly tall, handsome, probably around twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and judging from the resemblance to the man in the photograph, I’d say he lost his father very young in life. Indeed, he may never have known the man. He steps forward to shake my hand.

  “You’re the policeman?” he asks, looking me up and down.

  “Yes.”

  “Dapper suit,” he remarks, smiling.

  “Thanks.” I smile back.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you look like…”

  “Errol Flynn? Yes, it’s been remarked on once or twice.”

  He blushes and looks down at the floor. “Sorry,” he replies.

  “Don’t be.”

  I like him. He’s personable, friendly… and in my humble opinion, he’s no murderer.

  “Why don’t you offer the gentleman a seat?” his mother suggests.

  “Oh, yes… sorry.” Daniel blushes again and motions towards the chair. I sit and he does likewise, on the sofa opposite me.

  “I’ll leave you to it, shall I?” his mother asks.

  “Um… just a minute,” I reply. “I believe you also knew Beth Templeton?”

  Her face falls. “Yes,” she replies. “Yes I did.” She glances at her son. “Daniel brought her back here twice… no, three times while they were courting,” she says, stepping a little further into the room. “I thought she was a lovely girl. Very polite and well-spoken. I was ever so sad when she said she couldn’t see Daniel any more.” Her shoulders rise and fall as she lets out a sigh. “Still, he’s got a new girlfriend now. Mabel…” She moves closer to me and lowers her voice, as though she’s forgotten Daniel’s in the room, and we’re speaking in confidence. “Not as well spoken, but she’s pretty, and has lovely manners,” she says, smiling again.

  “Mum,” Daniel says, clearly embarrassed.

  “Well, she does have lovely manners,” she replies and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

  I look across at Daniel. “Sorry about Mum,” he says.

  “Nothing to apologise for.” I actually prefer it when people let their guard down. It makes my job easier. “So you and Beth Templeton courted for a while?” I ask, using his mother’s turn of phrase.

  “Yes,” he replies. “I can’t believe what’s happened to her.” His voice drops to a whisper. “Is it true… what they’ve said in the paper, about there being some kind of sexual motive?” Despite my best efforts to keep the details away from the press, their speculations are rife – and some are more accurate than others, unfortunately. They covered the Franklin case in much more lurid detail, and so far none of them seem to have linked the two cases. I suppose it’s only a matter of time though…

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “Was she raped?” He looks me in the eye.

  “Yes.”

  He shakes his head, letting it fall to his chest. “Poor Beth,” he murmurs. “Poor, poor Beth.” I give him a moment to recover himself, and wait for him to look up. “I saw her, you know?” he says.

  “When?”

  “Last Monday,” he replies. “The day she was killed.”

  I sit upright. “Really? But surely, you and she had stopped seeing each other some time ago, hadn’t you?”

  “We had, but we worked in the same factory. We ran into each other occasionally.”

  “I see. Did you sometimes run into each other on purpose?”

  “No. When she broke it off with me, she made it very clear her father wanted her to have nothing more to do with me. She respected his wishes; I respected hers, and that was that.”

  I look closely at him. “But you were fond of her?” I ask him.

  “Yes, I was. Very.”

  “So you met her on Monday?” I prompt, hoping he’ll have more to tell me and this isn’t another dead end.

  “Yes.”

  “What time?”

  “About six, I suppose.”

  “Did you get the impression she was waiting to see you… that the meeting was intentional on her part?”

  “No. She was just leaving the office as I was going in for my shift.”

  “And did you talk to her, or wasn’t it that kind of meeting?”

  “No. We spoke,” he says.

  “What did you speak about?” I ask, wishing to God he’d just open up.

  He stares at me for a moment, then lowers his eyes, focusing on his fingers, which are clasped tightly in his lap, to the point where his knuckles are whitening. “She told me she was sorry,” he says, after a moment’s pause. “She said she’d made a mistake and she regretted ending things with me.” Finally he’s found his voice.

  “Did she give you a reason for her change of heart?”

  “Not in so many words, no. She just said she should never have listened to her father, and she was wrong to have trusted him.” He looks up at me again, and I notice his eyes are filled with tears. “She kept saying she was sorry, and she wished things could’ve been different,” he mumbles, and then sniffs. “And then she said she had to go and meet Amelie – that’s her friend – and she ran off.
I wanted to go after her, but I’d have been late for my shift. I thought I could maybe try and talk to her the next day… only…” He doesn’t need to say anymore because we both know that by the next day, she was dead. “I’d have gone back to her,” he adds all of a sudden. “I know it’s probably not very fair on Mabel, but we’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks, and… I––I was a lot more than fond of Beth. I loved her, and I think she loved me. Mum might be right, and maybe Mabel is prettier, but Beth was different. She had something inside her that made her special – at least she seemed that way to me – and if she’d have asked me to, I’d have gone back to her…” He finally breaks down and sobs quietly. I get up and reach into my pocket for my clean, folded handkerchief, which I hold out to him. He looks up and takes it from me, silently dabbing at his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he says, after a short time has passed.

  “Don’t be,” I reply, sitting back down again and watching him. “I do understand.” Well, I don’t. The young man must be in hell, knowing the woman he loved wanted him back and was taken from him before he could do anything about it. Whatever life has thrown at me, I’ve never had to face that kind of torture. “She didn’t say anything else?” I ask, aware yet again of the insensitivity of my profession.

  “No,” he replies, simply.

  “Just one more question… Do you remember Miss Templeton ever mentioning the name Ursula Franklin?”

  He looks up at me, a flash of confusion crossing his eyes, before his brow furrows, like he’s trying to remember. “No,” he says eventually.

  I nod my head, not surprised by his response, and get to my feet once more. “Thank you for your time, Mr Milton.”

  “I’ll get Mum to wash this,” he says, standing with me and looking down at my handkerchief, which he’s got clasped in his hand.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I reply. “And I’m very sorry.” I don’t need to say what for.

  Back at the station, Ellis has returned and is sitting at his desk, typing.

  “Ellis?” He looks up at the sound of my voice. “How did you get on with that button?”

  “Nothing doing, sir,” he replies. “There are no missing buttons anywhere and it doesn’t match any of the others on her clothes.”

  “Right. Get your jacket on. We’re going back to the Templeton house.”

  “Sir?”

  “I want to speak to Gordon Templeton again. And we may as well take the button with us.”

  He shrugs on his jacket, delving into the evidence bag to retrieve the button. I hold out my hand for it and he drops it into my palm. I take a cursory glance before putting it in my jacket pocket, and we set off down the stairs. “Any particular reason for our return visit, sir?” Ellis enquires. “Other than the button…”

  “Yes. I want to look into this blackmail angle a bit more, and he’s the best place to start with that. Plus, he insisted that his daughter break off her relationship with Daniel Milton, which she did, but on Monday, just hours before she was killed, she told Milton she’d changed her mind and she wished she’d never trusted her father.” I go out through the exit and head towards my car. “That struck me as odd, and I’d rather like to know what Mr Templeton’s got to say about it.”

  “Indeed, sir.” He stops and stares, as I get in. “Is this yours, sir?”

  “Yes. I haven’t stolen it, and not even Scotland Yard issues MGs as standard police cars,” I reply.

  He nods his head and climbs in beside me, while I start the engine.

  “I was coming down here by myself,” I explain, “so I thought I might as well enjoy the journey.”

  “Drives nicely does she?” he asks.

  “Like a dream.”

  The journey to Molesey is uneventful and I park in the driveway of Cavendish House. Ellis follows me up the few steps to the front door and, after I’ve rung the bell, we wait to be admitted.

  “I’d like to see Mr Templeton, please,” I say to the maid, whose name I know to be Sarah.

  “I’m afraid he’s not here,” she replies, giving the slightest of curtsies.

  “Can you tell me when he’ll be back?” I ask.

  “He went up to London,” she says, blushing. “So I can’t really say.”

  “To London?” I can’t really hide my confusion.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Would it be possible for us to come in?” I ask.

  “Certainly, sir.” She stands to one side and lets us enter the house, taking our hats.

  “Is Miss Cooper here?” I suddenly remember that I arranged with Pickford for her to take today off of work.

  “Yes, sir. She’s in the drawing room.” She starts to walk in the direction of the familiar room, and I follow, with Ellis tagging along behind.

  “It’s the police, Miss,” Sarah announces as she opens the door.

  Amelie looks up from the sofa, where she’s sitting with her feet curled up beneath her, reading a book, which she closes with a startled thump. “Oh, it’s you,” she says when she sees me, and smiles.

  I smile back. “Yes. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  “You weren’t. It wasn’t a very good book anyway.” She glances at Ellis, her face falling a little, and I remember that they met yesterday and that he wasn’t perhaps as sympathetic as he could have been. “How can I help?” she asks, getting to her feet. Today she’s wearing a navy blue dress that has a full skirt and white polka dots, with a white cardigan over the top. It’s simple, elegant and very different to the business outfit she was wearing yesterday, although to be frank, I think she’d look beautiful in anything.

  “We were hoping to speak with Mr Templeton,” I explain. “But I understand from your maid that he’s already returned to London.”

  “Yes. He got a telephone call just after lunch and said he had to dash back to town. He said something important had come up.”

  “And I presume you’re not expecting him back until the weekend?”

  “He said he might try to get back on Friday evening, rather than Saturday…” Her eyes drop as she stops talking. It’s as though she feels Templeton’s absence is somehow her fault.

  “I see. Well, not to worry,” I say, trying to sound more cheerful than I feel. “I don’t suppose we could speak to Mrs Templeton, could we?”

  Amelie looks up again. “I don’t see why not; if you really think it’ll help.”

  “Well, we weren’t able to talk to her yesterday…”

  She nods and shrugs at the same time, which doesn’t augur well. “Yes. I see. I’ll take you up.”

  “Thank you.”

  She comes closer and, I’m once again struck by the colour of her eyes, grateful that today at least they’re not filled with tears, even if there is still a lingering sadness behind them.

  I hold open the door, allowing her to exit first. “Follow me,” she says softly, and smiles up at me. Her eyes sparkle just a little, those green flecks twinkling like stars.

  We trail up the stairs and pause in front of the first door directly on the right. Amelie hesitates before knocking. “Would you like me to stay with you?” she asks.

  “No. We’ll manage.” I’m sure the last thing Amelie needs is to have to go through all the details of Beth’s murder again. “We’ll speak to you again before we go, if that’s alright?”

  She nods her head. “I’ll be downstairs in the drawing room,” she replies, then she knocks twice and waits until she hears a barely audible, “Enter,” before opening the door and crossing the threshold.

  Chapter Seven

  I spend my lunch hour wandering the streets, just feeling happy to be out of the office for a while. I look in shop windows, catching sight of my own reflection and marvelling that I appear to be no different to how I looked a few weeks ago, before I became one of the most wanted men in England. I laugh out loud at the thought, noticing a young mother passing right beside me, clutching tightly to the hand of her young child. She gives me an odd stare, then scurries away and I la
ugh a little louder.

  I move away from the shop window and continue on my way, just as a woman in uniform barges into me.

  “Watch where you’re going,” she cries, clearly cross with me. “Can’t you see I’m in a hurry. You should pay more attention.”

  I go to open my mouth, to tell her that I’m not psychic. I’ve got no idea whether she’s in a hurry or not, and I’ve got a perfect right to use the pavement, just like everyone else, but she’s already gone, and I’m left standing there fuming to myself.

  I look at my hands and notice they’re shaking, so I take a deep breath and try to calm down. I can’t afford to make a display of myself in the middle of a busy street. It’s not working though. Nothing can soothe my nerves. Well… there is one thing, but it’s too dangerous to try that again, and certainly not in broad daylight. I’ll have to wait another few days before I can do that. But then… then I’ll get my revenge.

  I can feel my heartbeat slowing and my nerves quietening as a slow smile forms on my lips.

  *****

  Ellis and I step into the room, which smells of cologne and disinfectant. It’s not a very appealing combination. There’s a large four-poster bed against the wall to our right, in the middle of which is a woman who’s probably in her early to mid-forties. She’s lying back against a pile of white pillows, her dark hair spread across her shoulders, which are covered with a knitted shawl.

  “You’re the police?” Millicent Templeton asks, evidently uncertain, despite the introductions Amelie made before departing the room.

  “Yes, Mrs Templeton.” I approach her bed. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Detective Inspector Stone, from Scotland Yard.”

  She looks up at me. “Are you sure about that?” she asks, smiling, and my heart sinks.

  “Yes, I’m positive.”

  She uses her arms to prop herself up a little. “No, you’re not,” she says, leaning over towards us. “You’re Errol Flynn. I’d recognise you anywhere.”

  I hear Ellis laugh and turn to scowl at him. He controls his mirth as best he can, although I can see it’s a struggle.