Troubled Waters

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  Toye, sensing that a number of awkward questions were taking shape in Mr Halliday’s mind, decided to extricate himself before they were put to him.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘I’m grateful for your help. I must get back now and report to Chief Superintendent Pollard.’

  Outside on the pavement he paused briefly to consider his next move. Over years of working with Pollard he had learnt to recognise his Chief’s need for spells of solitude in which to chew over the current case. Checking Leonard Bolling’s alibis had not taken quite long enough, and there was a bit of time to fill in. Up to now the Woodcombe affair had been elusive and vaguely unsatisfactory. Possibly his presence would not be required later in the evening. He decided that it would be a good idea to find out what was on at Littlechester’s cinemas. With any luck there might be a Western, his favourite brand of film.

  In their small temporary office at the police station Pollard had flung up the window and installed himself on a chair as close to it as he could get, his feet up on another. For a few minutes he deliberately made his mind a blank. Then he allowed conscious thoughts to filter back into it and group themselves.

  The basic question established itself in the foreground. Had Edward Tuke’s death been deliberately engineered, or had it been the chance result of mindless vandalism on somebody’s part?

  Here at least, Pollard decided, some tangible progress had been made in a short time. The football fans were out of it, and so, he felt personally convinced, was Leonard Bolling. The check-up Toye was now carrying out was necessary for the record, but quite apart from considerations of timing and stamina, uprooting the warning notice on the bridge really didn’t fit in very convincingly with the anti-Kenway-Potter motivation behind Bolling’s activities at the time. The notice didn’t assert Kenway-Potter’s status and rights in the way that the prehistoric monument on his property, well-known in antiquarian circles, and his claim to private fishing in the Honey waters did. So all things considered, exit Bolling as a suspect. Unless, of course, some utterly unforeseen fact about him came to light. One could never entirely exclude such a possibility in an investigation.

  Well, then, Pollard argued with himself, how about the notice having been pulled up and chucked into the river by some mindless vandal just for the hell of it? Or by someone apparently normal who was intermittently and unsuspectedly round the bend?

  He sat staring out of the window and considering these possibilities at some length. Children were, of course, unpredictable. The very young were ruled out because of the physical strength required, and Inspector Deeds had made very detailed enquiries into the activities of the older Woodcombe children after they had come back from Littlechester on the school bus that afternoon. The result of his enquiries had been entirely negative. There was, too, the additional fact that practising for the sports to be held on the forthcoming Bank Holiday was the main preoccupation of the village young at the time. On balance Pollard felt that the children could be ruled out.

  He also decided that the idea of a complete outsider with vandalistic leanings appearing in Woodcombe, pulling up the notice and vanishing again, all without trace must be discarded, too. Extraordinary things did happen, but this was really beyond the limits of credibility. There remained the possibility of undetected mental instability in a local resident. Having been born and brought up in a village himself, Pollard was well aware that personal idiosyncrasies rarely pass undetected in small communities. Moreover, Inspector Deeds had also considered this possibility, and made a number of judicious enquiries with no result whatever. Where he had failed, it seemed highly improbable that strangers from Scotland Yard would succeed.

  Pollard shifted his position and faced the inescapable outcome of his reasoning up to date: Edward Tuke’s death had been brought about deliberately.

  His thoughts moved at once to the small group of people with whom the young American was definitely known to have made contact. The Fordyces, the Kenway-Potters, the Wonnacotts and Mrs Rawlings. There had been quite a lot of people in the bar of the Green Man towards the end of Wednesday morning, but no one had come forward and claimed to have been in conversation with Tuke. At first sight this seemed surprising, but no doubt general interest was focussed on the outcome of the County Court case about which he would have known nothing. Of course he had talked to Canon Hugh Allbright in Littlechester Cathedral during the afternoon, but to include this dignitary in a list of potential suspects would be utterly ludicrous on all counts. On the other hand Tuke might have met someone by appointment in Littlechester. An appeal by the local police for any such person to come forward had met with no response. A photograph of Tuke supplied by Integrated Oils had been published in the local newspaper, and it had produced a response from a few people who thought they remembered seeing him in the city on the afternoon of April the twenty-third. However, their evidence was too vague and inconclusive to warrant following up. In any case no one had reported seeing him with another person.

  Pollard’s mind went back to the incredibly small number of Edward Tuke’s known contacts in Woodcombe during the few hours that he had spent there. What conceivable motive could any of them have had for virtually ensuring his fatal fall? At the word ‘motive’ he pulled himself up sharply. Wasn’t it dinned into you from your first day in the C.I.D. that a criminal investigation didn’t begin with an enquiry into motive, but with a detailed study of means and opportunity?

  His mind went back to the visit to the longstone on his first afternoon in Woodcombe, and the possibility of deliberate misdirection of Tuke that he had suggested to Toye and Deeds. There seemed to be two feasible reconstructions of what could have happened. Somebody who knew that Tuke was going up to see the longstone removed the warning notice in advance, went up himself or herself, simulated surprise at meeting Tuke, managed to delay him until he was running it fine for his supper date with the Kenway-Potters, and finally advised the shortcut over the disused bridge to save time. Alternatively, someone met him at the longstone by chance, and persuaded him to go and look at something else of interest while assuring him that the shortcut would get him back to his car at the Green Man in ample time, apologised for not escorting him to this second objective on the grounds of a previous engagement, and then took the shortcut in order to remove the warning notice and clear off before Tuke came down again.

  In the hope of being on some firmer ground at last, Pollard allowed the subject which had been lurking on the threshold of his mind to come to the surface. Mrs Kenway-Potter’s attempted suicide might very well have no connection whatever with the case, but she was one of a very small group of possible suspects, and if she had survived, she would have to be interviewed as soon as this was practicable. So, too, would her husband. Except for James Fordyce, he appeared to have had more contact with Edward Tuke than any other member of the group, with possibly the exception of Mrs Rawlings. He turned to the case file again and looked through the notes on the various Tuke contacts. The information had been collected locally and supplemented by reference to the Yard. None of those concerned had a police record. Mrs Rawlings had originally trained as a librarian in a London borough, but soon left her post as an assistant and married, only to be widowed at an early age. She appeared to have small private means as well as a pension, and to have drifted from one temporary job to another until settling at Woodcombe, working part-time for the Littlechester Public Library and becoming a folklore addict with a modest local reputation of being quite knowledgeable.

  Pollard pushed the file to one side, and after a brief pause reached for the telephone and asked the operator to put him through to St Hilda’s Nursing Home. Three o’clock in the afternoon seemed a suitable time to ring. Medical establishments needed tactful handling...

  ‘St Hilda’s Nursing Home,’ announced a competent but friendly voice. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Pollard speaking. Would it be possible for me to have a word with Mr Kenway-Potter do you think?’
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  There was momentary hesitation. ‘I think the best course would be for me to put you through to Matron, Chief Superintendent. Would you be kind enough to hold the line for a moment?’

  A click was followed by silence. After a full minute’s silence an equally pleasant but decidedly more authoritative voice came over the line.

  ‘Good afternoon, Chief Superintendent Pollard. This is Matron speaking. I understand from our receptionist that you want to speak to Mr Kenway-Potter?’

  ‘I should be very grateful if I could, Matron. As I expect you may have heard, I have been sent down by my superiors at Scotland Yard to carry out the reopened enquiry into the death of the late Mr Tuke. As it took place on Mr Kenway-Potter’s property, I need his help. To save time, I know the reason for Mrs Kenway-Potter’s being in St Kilda’s. Is it in order to ask how she is?’

  ‘She is no longer on the danger list, but in a weak state of course. Mr Kenway-Potter has been with her almost continuously. Under the circumstances I think the best thing would be for us to let him know that you are anxious to contact him, and to ask him to call you as soon as he can.’

  ‘Thank you, Matron. That would be most helpful. If he could ring 731485 and ask for me, he will be put through to my temporary office. I shall be there for the next few hours, and in any case he could leave a message... Yes, quite,’ he replied to a further comment, making a hideous grimace at Toye as the latter came quietly into the room, ‘I quite understand. Again, many thanks, Matron. Goodbye.’

  Pollard rang off and stretched himself.

  ‘That, as you no doubt deduced, was the Queen Pin of St Kilda’s Nursing Home,’ he told Toye. ‘Mrs Kenway-Potter is off the danger list but understandably still in a poorish way. Her husband is with her, but is being informed that we want to contact him. With any luck he’ll ring before long and we’ll know what the prospects of interviewing him are. Meanwhile, what have you been doing all this time, apart from tactfully leaving me to brood in solitude?’

  Toye grinned and gave a resumé of his various enquiries.

  ‘I reckon we can scrub Bolling on common sense grounds,’ he concluded.

  Pollard agreed. ‘I’ve been thinking over every other possibility of someone removing that bloody notice without any criminal intent,’ he said. ‘Plain vandalism by local kids, or a mentally disturbed stranger or some unsuspectedly dotty local. I’ve come to the conclusion that we can scrub the lot of them out, too, unless some new evidence turns up out of the blue. This means working on the assumption that Tuke’s death was deliberately engineered. So in the best tradition of C.I.D. investigators we concentrate first on opportunity, and resist the temptation of speculating about motive. And obviously we begin by concentrating on the Woodcombe people known to have been in contact with him. How’s that for a programme?’

  ‘Spot on,’ Toye replied without hesitation.

  ‘Right. Well, this is how I think it could have been done.’

  As Pollard finished outlining the alternative methods of directing Edward Tuke to the broken footbridge that he had thought out, the desk telephone bleeped and he picked up the receiver. ‘K-P,’ he mouthed to Toye as he waited for the incoming call to be put through.

  There was no telephone extension in the room so Toye had to be content with piecing the conversation together in the light of Pollard’s contributions. He waited patiently, as usual occupying himself with sorting and rearranging the papers scattered on the table.

  ‘We’re going over to Woodcombe Manor,’ Pollard announced at last. ‘As soon as we’ve had some grub. Kenway-Potter says he simply must go home and cope with the faithful retainer we left in tears. He offered to come back here again, but I felt that in common humanity I must make the offer. He’s had one hell of a day. All right, I see you look disapproving. I know a suspect is in a stronger position if he’s interviewed on his home ground, but a show of humanity can be disarming... There’s only one thing I thought was just a shade offkey. I thought the chap sounded — well, almost buoyant.’

  Toye looked surprised. ‘Wouldn’t you feel on top of the world if Mrs Pollard had been snatched back from attempted suicide?’

  Pollard’s imagination struggled to conjure up a situation in which Jane had taken an overdose of sleeping tablets washed down with whisky.

  ‘My God, yes... I suppose years in this soul-destroying job make it difficult for me to accept decent human explanations of people’s behaviour. Let’s go and find something to eat.’

  Before they had reached the door the telephone bleeped. Pollard swung round on his heel and grabbed the receiver to learn that he was wanted by the Coroner’s Office.

  ‘Inquest to be reopened,’ he told Toye a couple of minutes later. ‘Come on before anybody else rings us.’

  Chapter Five

  Rodney Kenway-Potter’s study was at the back of Woodcombe Manor with a view across the garden to the Honey winding through the meadows below Lower Bridge. French windows stood wide open, letting in the soft warm air of the June evening and the scent of flowers. Pollard, also conscious of well-filled bookcases and some good pictures, felt briefly envious.

  ‘Shall we sit over by the windows?’ Rodney suggested, beginning to propel inviting leather armchairs with Toye’s assistance. ‘All the advantages of being out of doors without the midges. As you’re on official business I won’t press drinks on you, but don’t think me inhospitable.’

  ‘Far from it,’ Pollard assured him. ‘One doesn’t often find people accepting the drill as a matter of course... I do like this view of yours.’

  ‘Pleasant, isn’t it? I do like some foreground as well as background. I shouldn’t care to look straight out to sea, for instance.’

  During a brief exchange of generalities Pollard was again conscious of a latent buoyancy in Rodney Kenway-Potter. He put out an exploratory feeler. ‘We’re grateful to you for seeing us tonight,’ he said. ‘You must have had a harrowing day. We’ll be as brief as possible.’

  ‘Don’t apologise, Superintendent. You’ve got your job to do. And as far as I’m concerned it’s a case of Jordan passed. The doctors assure me that there’s no longer any immediate anxiety about my wife. The sheer relief has sent me over the moon. It’s been a miracle, really. I went off to an important committee meeting in Littlechester at nine this morning. I’m up to the neck in local conservation projects, and we were due to meet a chap from the Department of the Environment. We’d hardly started arriving when a message came through that he’d had a car crash en route and was in hospital. The meeting was postponed, and I came home almost at once, just in time.’

  Relaxed in his chair, with one arm hanging down and a hand fondling a golden cocker spaniel’s ear, he gave Pollard a smile that could have been taken as encouraging. Pollard felt his hackles stir slightly.

  ‘First and foremost, Mr Kenway-Potter,’ he said in a more official tone, ‘please understand that your wife’s action this morning is no concern of ours unless it has a bearing on Edward Tuke’s death. It’s to establish whether it has or not that makes it necessary to ask you for some information, I’m afraid. But you can be assured that anything non-relevant that you tell us won’t go any further.’

  Rodney Kenway-Potter released the spaniel’s ear and shifted his position. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘it very definitely is involved with the poor chap’s death. If you hadn’t contacted me this afternoon I should have got on to you after what my wife told me at St Kilda’s. Briefly she’s had five of these bloody anonymous letters. She never let on, or I should have insisted on them being handed over to the Littlechester police, of course. I hate to tell you, but she’s burnt the lot.’

  ‘This is important.’ Out of the corner of his eye Pollard registered Toye with his notebook on his knee. ‘Was Mrs Kenway-Potter able to give you any details about them?’

  ‘Yes. As far as I could gather, they — the actual letters — were identical in externals with the ones the police and the Littlechester Evening News had. Block capit
als made with a stencil on ordinary greaseproof paper. The envelopes were different in one respect. They were the ordinary business manila sort, but my wife’s name and address were stuck on the outside, and had been cut off the postcards with printed headings that she uses for her official correspondence. I’ll give you one from her desk...’

  Alone for less than a minute, Pollard and Toye exchanged glances. Rodney Kenway-Potter returned with a couple of white postcards of standard size. Their heading read MRS R.J.W. KENWAY-POTTER WOODCOMBE MANOR WOODCOMBE LITTLECHESTER L132 3PZ. Telephone Littlechester 59432.

  ‘Thank you,’ Pollard said. ‘We’ll keep these, if we may.’ He passed them over to Toye, who asked about postmarks.

  ‘They were all posted in Littlechester and sent by second-class mail. The postmarks showed the dates, but not the times of posting. We only have one delivery of mail a day out here. It arrives about 9.30 a.m. Except for the first and last ones my wife is by now uncertain of when the others arrived.’

  ‘Has Mrs Kenway-Potter much official correspondence?’ Pollard asked.

  ‘Yes, quite a bit. Here in the village she’s the W.I. president and secretary of the P.C.C. Then she’s involved in various things in Littlechester like the National Trust Centre and an Old People’s Home and so on. I’m afraid there’s the heck of a lot of these postcards around.’

  ‘Can we go on to the content of these letters now? To put it crudely, were you satisfied that your wife was clearheaded enough this afternoon to tell you — well, accurately — about this?’

  ‘A perfectly fair question, Superintendent. Yes, I was. I should have said before that she mercifully underestimated the lethal dose of the sleeping tablets she took. Also, the relief of telling me about the letters at long last had the effect of making her relax.’

  ‘Quite. About the contents, then?’

  Rodney Kenway-Potter crossed his legs, folded his arms and frowned slightly.