The Wickenham Murders

by Amy Myers

  ‘We could go there and ask the staff if she’s well enough.’ Georgia was taken aback by Jean’s unexpected request, not immediately seeing the reason for it. She couldn’t deny Mary visitors, however, especially Gwendolen Randolph’s daughter. ‘Let’s go now. The light’s already fading.’

  ‘My mother loved Kent,’ Jean remarked as they drove up on to the downs. ‘A pity she never came back here. It’s lovely even in wintertime. The light has an interesting quality, and the trees are themselves, not covered with their greenery. Their skeletons are much more – Ah,’ she said wrily, ‘there we have it, don’t we?’

  Georgia laughed. ‘We do.’

  ‘You want me to clothe yours for you.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘I’m still thinking.’

  The duty nurse at Four Winds looked doubtful at their request to see Mary, however. ‘She’s not good today, not good at all.’

  ‘Tell her Miss Gwendolen’s daughter is here to see her,’ Georgia pleaded.

  The answer came back promptly, though the nurse still looked dubious. When they reached the room, Georgia saw why. Mary was in bed, eyes sunken and looking fully her age. Her eyes were closed but she opened them as Georgia leant over. ‘A visitor to see you, Mary,’ she said gently.

  ‘Sit down,’ Mary ordered hoarsely, a gleam in her eye that suggested she was preparing to rally fast. ‘Let me look at you.’ She examined Jean very carefully. ‘Nice lady, your mother, very smart,’ she said at last. ‘She wouldn’t remember me. I was a child.’

  ‘I’ve brought you a photograph,’ Jean said matter of factly, rummaging in her handbag and producing the 1920s photograph of the Randolph family on the steps of Hazelwood House.

  Mary’s eyes lit up, and after a delay while glasses and magnifying glass were tracked down, she studied at it intently. At last she handed it back.

  ‘I remember her. Lovely she was. You come here about my Davy too?’ She looked hopeful.

  ‘No, about my uncle Guy. You wouldn’t remember him. You must only have been a toddler when he went off to the war.’

  ‘She’s trying to prove my Davy innocent.’ Mary jabbed a dismissive thumb towards Georgia. ‘She’s taking her time about it. I shan’t last much longer. Tell her to hurry up.’

  ‘If you know he’s innocent,’ Jean shot back at her, ‘why do you need to know what really happened?’ Georgia sensed a weird communion between the two of them. Two strong characters meeting on some kind of common ground.

  ‘It’s unfinished business, ain’t it?’

  Georgia tiptoed out, to leave them alone as Mary’s eyes closed, and after a few minutes Jean followed her. ‘Georgia,’ she began, as they walked back to the car, ‘even if that skeleton is Guy’s, that still wouldn’t give Mary closure over Ada Proctor and Davy Todd, would it? It would only raise more questions. How and why did Guy get there and what happened then?’

  ‘That becomes Marsh & Daughter’s job, to find out how the two strands link. We think they do, but we need stepping stones, and that’s awkward in this village at present. Ada’s grave was vandalized recently.’

  Jean looked aghast. ‘A grave? Coincidence?’

  ‘Far from it. Some people in Wickenham don’t want the case examined. Mary’s wishes count for nothing with them.’

  Jean gave a nod. ‘I don’t like graves being desecrated. I’ll tell your father he can fix up for me to give that blessed sample.’

  *

  ‘All in all, a good day’s work.’ Peter was mentally patting his back with both hands as Georgia and he reviewed the day in his beloved study after returning home. ‘Well done,’ he added belatedly, noting Georgia’s steely eye. ‘I acknowledge that you were successful where I was not in persuading the lady to our point of view.’

  ‘Did we do right though?’

  ‘Of course we did. We always do.’

  Georgia kicked off her shoes. ‘I can’t help feeling we’re barking up a wrong tree, though. How is the Scraggs investigation going?’

  ‘Nowhere fast, according to Mike. All the combatants were too busy with what they themselves were doing to notice what was happening elsewhere. The police must still be crawling over their budget for a mass DNA screen, so nothing’s moving forward much. Oliver Todd blames the front-line Elgins, the Elgins first blamed the Todds, then had a go at the Bloomfields, now it’s aliens from outer space who popped in with knives in their hands. Even your name’s been mentioned,’ he added casually.

  ‘I was at home in bed!’ Georgia was astounded.

  ‘Any proof of that? Luke with you, was he?’

  ‘I work alone, you know that. Except in Lille,’ she conceded.

  Peter grinned. ‘The police aren’t taking the accusation seriously.’

  ‘Good.’ She changed this uncomfortable subject. ‘Mary’s fading fast, and yet we’re not an inch further forward in finding out the truth about Davy. It’s as if Ada Proctor lived in another country, marching around in her Wickenham, while we footle around in ours.’

  ‘Something,’ Peter declared Micawber-style, ‘will turn up.’

  ‘Maybe it’s supper if you play your cards right,’ Georgia said sourly, going out to fix it. Yesterday’s beef stew filled the bill nicely. She wondered if she could get away with pasta or frozen veg and decided she could. Or at least would try to. Next time she wouldn’t so rashly tell Margaret not to bother about supper.

  ‘How long will Jean’s DNA sample take to process? I assume it won’t be fast-tracked,’ she asked, when she had served this sumptuous meal. The latter was eyed askance, when he saw the pasta, but Peter obviously realized discretion was the better part of valour this evening.

  ‘Mike says the SIO has arranged for it to be taken next week, with a strong suggestion my blood will be next if it leads nowhere.’

  When Georgia returned to her own home, she realized she still felt disgruntled, which was irrational in view of the step forward over Denehole Man. She’d banked on having something at least by year’s end, and that was unlikely now. The living room, usually so inviting, tonight looked empty and cheerless. Damn, she said softly, could it be I’m missing Luke? This was an ominous sign. She tried to convince herself in vain that her depression was only over the Ada Proctor investigation going so slowly, and picked up a pile of Christmas cards still waiting to be written. Everywhere lights were going up, turkeys were being ordered, presents chosen and children getting excited. She was thirty-four, the biological clock was running faster now, and if ever she wanted kids of her own enjoying Christmas, steps would have to be taken. This was an even more ominous thought, so she turned her mind to wondering what sort of Christmas Ada would have had if she hadn’t met her murderer that Hallowe’en night. It failed to produce anything.

  Irritably she flung aside her list ten minutes later. She needed communication with the outside world, but Christmas cards were a longwinded path to it. Any messages on the answerphone? There were not. E-mails? She ploughed her way through, deleting spam, Christmas offers from supermarkets, bookshops and gift shops, but found not one single one that could be called a message from a real person. Would Ada have taken to e-mails? she wondered idly. She hadn’t the slightest idea, and wasn’t that some kind of admission of failure? They were off chasing wild geese about deneholes while Mary Elgin’s life ebbed slowly away, tired at last of waiting. And yet, for the life of her, Georgia couldn’t see her next step ahead. She needed a light to guide her through the field, just as Ada must have had her torch.

  Since some sort of communication with the outside world suddenly seemed essential. She tried to ring Luke. He was out. Very well, she would spend the rest of the evening, such as it was, with Peter. As she padded back through the hallway to put her outdoor shoes on, her eye fell on the one method of communication she hadn’t yet checked. She was so used to seeing flyers and bills she tended to forget nowadays that there could still be such things as real letters.

  *

  ‘Peter!’ It was her turn to yel
l out as she closed his front door behind her, making him jump. He was deep in a book about facial reconstruction of skeletons. Guy Randolph in this house, living next door to Ada Proctor.

  ‘I hear excitement in your voice,’ he observed. ‘A Lottery win?’

  ‘In a way. So far as Ada’s concerned anyway. And probably Denehole Man too. Maybe he’ll get his gravestone yet.’

  ‘Tell me. Waste not a single second.’

  ‘I’ve had a letter from Rose Sadler’s granddaughter, Meg Watson. Hardly surprisingly, Rose is dead, but her daughter Angela, Meg’s mother, is still alive, although she remembers little about the Ada Proctor case. She had the impression, however, that Ada was Rose’s friend, rather than her father’s, but that might not be so of course.’

  Peter made a face. ‘And this passes for a breakthrough?’

  ‘Patience, patience, Peter dear. Here it comes. Meg, the granddaughter, is a solicitor specializing in criminal cases, so always had her ears pricked up when her grandmother talked of having been ready to give evidence in the Ada Proctor case and not being called. What was the evidence? she asked. Her grandmother was vague at first, explaining said it wasn’t very important, which was why she wasn’t called. Ada had been in London that day and Rose Sadler met her as she walked home from the station at about six o’clock. Ada chattered on about her trip and asked Rose if she were going to the Hallowe’en dance that evening. Rose said no, she and John had offered to look after the Bloomfield children as well as their own, so that the Squire and his wife, and the maid, could all go to the dance. But when Rose went to the Manor to collect the children, the maid had told her it wasn’t necessary, for Mr and Mrs Bloomfield had had an unexpected visitor, a Mr Guy Randolph.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Three cheers for Ada,’ Peter shouted.

  ‘For who?’ Georgia took up the well-worn response.

  ‘For Ada,’ Peter roared. ‘I think this calls for a drink,’ he suggested tentatively, and looked surprised as Georgia wholeheartedly agreed, and put the deed to the idea.

  Three cheers for Ada, three cheers for Pooh. Very nearly Christmas and how often had her parents sat by the fire on December night with them when she and Rick were children, reading the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. She and Rick were allowed to burst in with the Pooh ‘hum’ songs at appropriate – and often inappropriate – places. Rick’s specialty was ‘Here’s a mystery’. Nostalgia of course. How about all those evenings when Peter was working, or those when Elena was out organizing something or other? Yet there must have been some Pooh evenings for them to catch so painfully at her memory.

  She lifted her glass to Peter and perhaps to Ada as well. ‘It looks as if you were right about Denehole Man.’

  ‘Why did you ever doubt me? And it brings Bête Noir Bloomfield back into the frame.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Georgia laughed. ‘I know it’s late at night, but isn’t there a tiny flaw in that reasoning? Bête Noir Bloomfield was nowhere near born in 1929.’

  ‘His ancestors then. All tarred with the same brush no doubt.’

  ‘That’s a fairly wide-sweeping statement,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Evening talk. I wouldn’t put that to Mike.’

  ‘Not a good idea.’ An image of stolid Mike cheerily sitting here between them, knocking back even a small whisky while they indulged in fantasy, was a happy one.

  ‘Of course,’ Peter reminded her, ‘we need to go steady on this. It’s still only a theory.’

  ‘Tonight we rejoice, tomorrow we slog on. Here’s to Denehole Man.’

  ‘Seriously, Georgia,’ Peter began, holding his empty glass out expectantly, ‘this disproves all that stuff about her series of lovers, and Luke is going to love it. Shall we indulge ourselves and consider it?’

  He was right. It was time for one of their periodic ritual reconstructions during a case.

  ‘Yes,’ Georgia said decidedly. ‘It was a dark and stormy night,’ she began theatrically, then caught her father’s eye. Although the deaths they were dealing with were seventy-odd years earlier, they should be no less real to them than that of Terence Scraggs. It was all too easy to fall into the trap of treating their cases as ‘stories’, something for the mind to puzzle out, rather than for imagination to picture, and humanity to grieve for. ‘Ada had returned in a good mood from London that day,’ she began again. ‘She was well respected in Wickenham – except by scandalmongers—’

  ‘The source for whose scandals we haven’t yet marked down.’

  ‘– and was looking forward to going out badger-hunting and nightingale listening with Davy the following night. As she left the train, she was glad she had put off their trip until the morrow, for she was tired after the day in London, and ought to spend the evening doing the household accounts and cooking her father supper, since their maid might have wanted to go to the dance. Once, with Guy and their usual crowd, she remembered, she had liked dancing herself, but that had been in the old days before the war that changed everything. She was quite happy with her present life, however. Her father needed her and she did a useful job in the surgery, etc.’

  ‘Where had she been in London?’ Peter interrupted.

  ‘She’d been in London to go to a matinée,’ Georgia conjectured. ‘She went with a friend of hers from the war days when she was—’

  ‘Hey,’ Peter interrupted again, ‘what did she do in the war?’

  ‘Let’s assume she had trained as a VAD, yes? She did some hospital work, maybe she even went to France, and all that training helped when she returned home at war’s end—’

  ‘So when the news came that Guy had died, why didn’t she make use of that training and go away and nurse somewhere other than Wickenham?’

  Georgia frowned. ‘Is a guess in order?’

  ‘For tonight, yes.’

  ‘She would have been twenty-six when the war ended. Perhaps she thought she had been away from Wickenham long enough, and liked living at home. Perhaps there was someone else there she was attracted to. Or perhaps she decided to work in a local hospital, to put her skills to work, Gravesend perhaps, somewhere she could get to easily by bus or train. Country doctors aren’t rich, and cars were expensive luxuries then. Ada enjoyed her job, or at least she felt she was performing her duty. She probably met other men and had a social life, which is how the stories of other men crept in. She brought them home to meet her parents, like any respectable girl at that time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter said. ‘I’m with you there. That’s a real possibility.’

  Encouraged, Georgia continued. ‘But for poor Ada everything changed yet again. Before she could settle down in a new relationship, tragedy struck. After her mother died, her father needed someone to run the house and even more importantly to do the jobs in the surgery that Winifred Proctor had formerly performed. Back comes Ada, the dutiful daughter.’

  ‘Unwillingly?’

  Georgia considered this. ‘Probably not. Daughters on the whole tended to do what was expected of them, and there would be perks in coming back.’

  ‘Even if love passed her by?’

  ‘Perhaps it already had. Perhaps she was only too glad to return to the cocoon of The Firs, if there had been another disappointing relationship.’

  ‘All conjecture, of course,’ Peter said. ‘Ada could have lived at The Firs all the time, nursing her woes in losing Guy.’

  ‘I don’t see Ada as a “nursing her woes” type of woman. With so many men of her generation wiped out in the war, that happened to a lot of women. She was more likely to have assumed that life was over for her in the field of love. That’s why there was all the excitement when Rose told her Guy was back. Rose only came to the village in the early twenties so she wouldn’t have known what a bombshell she was tossing Ada.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she?’ Peter queried. ‘Girls in those days were just the same as now. They’d talk over their past boyfriends.’

  ‘Perhaps not Ada. Ada was a practical sort of woman. She might have mentioned
a fiancé killed in the war, but she wouldn’t necessarily have gone into details; the Randolphs had left by 1921 so Rose wouldn’t have known the Randolphs either, except perhaps as past history.’

  ‘Humph,’ remarked Peter. ‘I’m more or less with you. So what happened after Ada left Rose that night?’

  ‘She was even more glad that she hadn’t arranged to go out with Davy Todd, though it would have been easy to call off the meeting since he was still here. She dashed into the garden still in her best London-going coat, gave Davy a few instructions for the morrow—’

  ‘Why? She’d expect to be there.’

  ‘In case he arrived early while she was in the surgery,’ Georgia continued firmly, ‘and then she ran back into the house to give full thought to the momentous news she’d just heard. Her father was in the surgery, so before she went to the dispensary to prepare the patients’ medicines she flew to the telephone to confirm the news she’d been given.’

  ‘She rang the Manor.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who answered the phone? The maid?’

  ‘The odds are against it, or it should have come out in the evidence. It would have stuck in the maid’s memory, and she might even have told Alice about it in later years. The fact she didn’t isn’t proof it didn’t happen, of course. Anyway, the maid was going to the dance, the Bloomfield children would be in bed, she had probably put together a quick supper for Matthew and Isabel She-Wolf and Guy, and then been free to get ready for the dance. So it would have been Matthew or Isabel who took the call, or even Guy himself, though that would be unlikely.’

  ‘So why didn’t Matthew or Isabel give evidence to that effect?’

  ‘Perhaps they did. It might have been in the statements collected at the time, but it wouldn’t seem relevant to Ada’s death from the police point of view, because the field by the wood where she was thought to have been killed was nothing to do with the Manor.’

  ‘But didn’t you say that that footpath through Crown Lea leads on through the woods past the denehole and past Wickenham Manor?’