Change For The Worse

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘You must be tight,’ Alix was saying a little breathlessly, ‘unless you’re on pot or something. Push off! Nobody asked you to come here, and the gardens aren’t open, anyway... Don’t come any nearer, either. You make me feel sick.’

  There was a distinctly unpleasant laugh.

  ‘I’m not pushing off till you’ve made up your mind, Alix dear. You can choose. I’m going straight back from here to the Evening News office in Wellchester. The editor and I are buddies, and I’m offering him one of two scoops. Either one on your precious grandmother and her tenner, or one on our engagement. Headline stuff, both of ’em. It’s up to you.’

  Kit Peck with an unsuspected set to his jaw moved a step forward. Inside the ticket office there was the sound of a sudden scuffle and a scream from Alix.

  ‘Get away! Don’t touch me!’

  Before the words had died away Kit was round at the door of the ticket house with a string of epithets that caused Pollard fleeting surprise. He arrived with Toye in time to see a figure in a grey suit crash landing in a nearby clump of rhododendrons.

  ‘In the classic phrase,’ he said, ‘what’s going on here? Inspector, get whoever’s in those bushes on to his feet, will you?’

  A dishevelled young man, scarlet in the face, was helped up. His spectacles were retrieved by Toye and handed to him. Trembling with shock and rage, he pointed to Kit Peck who was leaning against the wall with folded arms.

  ‘That man assaulted me! You saw him — you’re both witnesses. I’ll take him to court. I’ll —’ Suddenly recognising Pollard and Toye he broke off.

  ‘Mr Peck, do you admit this assault?’ Pollard asked in the dead silence which followed.

  ‘I do,’ Kit Peck replied complacently. ‘I socked the blighter one on the jaw, and chucked him into the bushes.’

  ‘Unusual behaviour on Heritage of Britain property,’ Pollard commented. ‘If he takes you to court as he proposes, have you a plea of provocation?’

  ‘He was trying to blackmail my fiancée.’

  A quick gasp was audible from the interior of the ticket office.

  ‘He was threatening to tell the editor of the Wellchester Evening News that Mrs Ridley had given a ten pound note to a car thief. A note that he’d paid out to her in the Bank where he works. He said he was going straight back to let them have either this scoop or the news of his engagement to Miss Parr.’

  ‘It’s an absolute lie,’ blustered the victim of the assault. ‘It’s your word and hers against mine. You’ve no witnesses.’

  ‘That’s where you’re mistaken,’ Pollard informed him. ‘There were two witnesses, both CID officers who listened in to the conversation. Inspector Toye and myself. Your name, please?’

  The scarlet had ebbed from Charles Hindsmith’s face leaving a greenish tinge, the result of physical shock and acute apprehension.

  ‘I refuse to answer,’ he muttered.

  ‘He’s called Charles Hindsmith.’ Alix Parr had emerged from the ticket office, with, Pollard noted, a striking increase in poise and confidence. She was standing beside Kit Peck, whose arm was protectively round her shoulders. ‘He works in the Southern Counties bank at Wellchester, and comes out to the Spireford branch on Thursdays.’

  Pollard eyed him dispassionately.

  ‘You’re in a nasty spot, Mr Hindsmith,’ he observed. ‘The law takes a very serious view of blackmail.’

  ‘It was only a joke,’ Charles Hindsmith gabbled desperately. ‘Of course I wasn’t serious. I was only trying to — to show Alix I cared about her. I didn’t know she was engaged to him.’ He gave Kit Peck a malevolent look. ‘Why’s it been kept dark, anyway?’

  ‘Hardly your business,’ Pollard pointed out. ‘Are you bringing an assault charge against Mr Peck or not?’

  ‘Wouldn’t I enjoy answering to it in court?’ Kit Peck enquired of no one in particular.

  ‘Yes or no, Mr Hindsmith? Don’t waste our time.’

  ‘No!’ Charles Hindsmith shouted. ‘He’s a thug with no sense of humour, and not worth bothering about.’

  ‘A wise decision under the circumstances,’ Pollard told him. ‘At the same time, I advise you to revise your own sense of humour if you want to keep out of real trouble. Inspector, would you take Mr Hindsmith to his car, and get a full statement from him about this ten pound note for the Brynsworthy police? Then start on the job we had lined up for this afternoon. I’ll join you later.’

  ‘Certainly, sir... This way, please, Mr Hindsmith.’ As Toye escorted his unwilling companion in the direction of the drive, Pollard turned to find Kit and Alix wholly absorbed in each other.

  ‘My congratulations,’ he said, and was unable to resist the temptation of adding that he had had no idea that they were engaged.

  They looked self-conscious, and Alix went attractively pink.

  ‘Gran doesn’t know yet,’ she said hastily. ‘We’ve only just decided.’

  ‘Actually we shan’t get married yet,’ Kit added. ‘Not until Alix is back from Canada. She might come across a bloke there she’d rather have.’

  They exchanged another long glance.

  ‘When are you going to tell Mrs Ridley?’ Pollard asked patiently. ‘I rather want to get a bit of information from her this afternoon. I’ll be the soul of discretion about you two, of course. Is she at home?’

  ‘She’s been out to lunch,’ Alix said, looking at her watch. ‘She’ll be back soon if she hasn’t turned up already. Listen!’

  A distant barking was audible.

  ‘Terry. She took him with her, and they’re back.’

  ‘Suppose you two go for a walk in the woods, and give me time to call on her first?’ Pollard suggested.

  ‘That’s what I call an idea,’ Kit said.

  ‘Me too,’ Alix agreed. ‘We’ll break it to her that we’re engaged this evening; and you can find out what she did with that ten pounds.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll get that straightened out,’ Pollard assured her. ‘I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with Mr Hindsmith, on that or any other subject.’

  Alix grinned. ‘Sorry I went all maidenly and yelled when he tried to embrace me, but honestly, he’s the end. You were super, Mr Pollard — sorry, bad joke!’

  ‘Rotten,’ Kit agreed. ‘Thanks a million from both of us though,’ he added with sincerity, wringing Pollard’s hand.

  They set off in the direction of the woods. Pollard watched them out of sight, and then turned and began to walk slowly across the car park towards the drive. He considered several possible openings to his interview with Katharine Ridley, but finally discarded them all, deciding to play it by ear.

  The front door of the lodge was ajar, and his arrival was greeted by an outburst of barking which brought Katharine Ridley to the threshold. She looked informal and charming, he thought, in a spring suit with her hair beautifully set, and greeted him without a trace of apprehensiveness.

  ‘Do come in,’ she said. ‘I’m just back from lunch with an old friend. I don’t know where Alix has got to. Do you want to see her too?’

  ‘No, not this time, thank you,’ Pollard said, following her into the sitting room, and taking a chair facing her own at the open window. He looked at her, relaxed, assured and gay, and suddenly hated his job. At the same moment he decided to plunge straight in.

  ‘Mrs Ridley,’ he said gravely, ‘the initials were right, weren’t they, but not the name? Not George Palmer, I think, but Geoffrey Parr?’

  She went so deathly white that for a moment he thought that she was going to faint.

  ‘How did you find out?’ she whispered at last.

  ‘Partly through your telling me yourself by acting out of character over his visit. Your account of your movements last Saturday afternoon came unstuck, you see, when I checked it by questioning other people. Also, you were obviously in a state of tension when the visit was innocently mentioned by Alix, and miraculously restored to your normal self as soon as his death in a car crash appeared in the Press. I w
as puzzled about what the link between you and this George Palmer could be. Then, almost by chance, I learnt the tragic story of your daughter Helen and the fact that Alix was an orphan from birth, and began to speculate, having checked dates.’

  ‘Oh, God, I thought we’d be safe once he was dead,’ Katharine Ridley said miserably, twisting her hands together.

  ‘I haven’t come here to threaten you with digging up the past,’ Pollard told her, ‘only to clear up once and for all what has been a distracting false lead in the enquiry into Mr Peck’s death. How long have you known that Geoffrey Parr was still alive?’

  ‘How long?’ She stared at him in blank astonishment. ‘Why, only since last Saturday, although looking back, it’s felt like years. When he suddenly came up to me in the gardens I thought I was going to die from the sheer horror of it.’

  ‘Had he come to blackmail you?’

  She nodded. ‘He wanted money — five thousand pounds. He threatened to take Alix back to the woman he was living with if I didn’t give it to him. I knew he couldn’t because he was legally dead. But — but she’ll be of age in August ... it was her reaction to knowing he was her father that I was afraid of.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ Pollard said thoughtfully. ‘The serious-minded young’s idealism makes them terribly vulnerable, doesn’t it? Did you actually give Geoffrey Parr any money last Saturday?’

  ‘I gave him thirty pounds. He was pretty well down and out. He said he’s been in South Africa all this time, and had done quite well out there at first, but things had got difficult and some of his friends had taken risks over shady deals and were in trouble with the police. Obviously he’d been involved too, but managed to get out before he was arrested. He was that sort of man all along. That’s why he suddenly married my poor Helen and rushed her over to Paris in the spring of 1960. It all came out when the French police made enquiries over the identification. But I suppose the English police hadn’t a definite case against him, only suspicions, and as he was dead — or so they accepted — they didn’t bother to check up any further. No relatives ever came forward, and the police in London thought Parr wasn’t his real name.’

  ‘Going back to the money you gave him,’ Pollard said after a pause, ‘it was in cash, I expect?’

  ‘Yes. One ten-pound and two five-pound notes, and ten ones. Fortunately I had cashed a cheque for fifty pounds in Wellchester on Friday afternoon.’

  ‘Do you remember the cashier who paid it out?’

  Katharine Ridley looked puzzled. ‘Yes, I do. It was a tiresome young man called Charles Hindsmith who’s been pestering Alix. I gave him pretty short shrift once when he rang her up, and always avoid him at the Bank. But it was just on closing time and he was the only cashier free. I pretended not to notice him.’

  ‘This afternoon,’ Pollard said carefully, ‘he was socked on the jaw and thrown into the rhododendrons by the ticket office by young Mr Peck.’

  Katharine Ridley gasped. ‘He wasn’t trying to rape Alix, was he?’

  ‘Oh, no. Nothing as drastic as that. But he had been making a rather inept attempt to blackmail her into announcing her engagement to him. You see, he had made a note of the numbers of the ten-pound notes he paid out to you, and one of them was found on Geoffrey Parr. Its number had been released to the Press and he recognised it. Of course he’s got the wits to realise that he has no proof that you gave Parr the note: it could perfectly well have gone into circulation through your spending it, but he was in a position to make unpleasant publicity for you.’

  Katharine Ridley’s sharp intake of breath was audible. ‘But surely he’ll do it all the more after Kit Peck’s onslaught? How did Kit come to be there?’

  ‘He must have seen Hindsmith come to the ticket office and gone down to turn him out as the gardens are closed. Inspector Toye and I came on to the terrace just as Mr Peck went into action rather quickly, and Hindsmith was extricated from the rhododendrons to learn that his attempt at blackmail had been overheard by two officers of Scotland Yard. He’s a very frightened young man, and you needn’t anticipate any further trouble from him. My guess is that on Monday morning he’ll put in an application for a transfer to another branch of his Bank.’

  ‘What can I possibly say to Alix about all this?’

  ‘That’s a matter for your own judgement, Mrs Ridley,’ Pollard told her. ‘There’s one question I’d very much like to ask you, if I may. Why did your daughter identify another body as her husband’s?’

  ‘At this distance of time,’ Katharine said slowly, ‘I can see in a way that it was all our fault. We didn’t realise how the war had changed the world. She reacted violently against all my husband and I stood for, and I shall always think that she married Geoffrey Parr as a — a sort of supreme gesture of protest and defiance, if you understand me. Then he let her down and she wanted to blot him out in — well, despair. I’d like to show you her photograph.’

  Pollard studied the studio portrait of a girl of about eighteen. It was a striking face, combining, he thought, the tenacity of the Young Heir and Alix with an exaggeration of Katharine Ridley’s vitality and impulsiveness: a highly explosive mixture.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘By the way, Alix has gone for a walk with Kit Peck. I forgot to tell you.’

  Their eyes met.

  ‘He’s so dull and worthy,’ she said.

  ‘If you had heard his language just now, and seen his onslaught on the wretched Hindsmith,’ he told her with the vestige of a grin, ‘I think you might revise that opinion.’

  Toye was sitting at the wheel of the Rover writing up his notes.

  ‘Palmer was Parr,’ Pollard said, subsiding into the passenger seat. ‘I got the whole story out of Mrs R. without any difficulty. This is what happened...’

  Toye was severely critical of what he considered lack of thoroughness on the part of both the French and the British police.

  ‘Well, it’s old history,’ Pollard pointed out. ‘I don’t believe that the AC will want anything done about it after all this time. It’s not as if there are known Parr relatives — probably Parr was another alias. And no money’s involved. And as far as we’re concerned the whole affair’s irrelevant... How did you get on?’

  Toye reported that he had begun by having a look at the door in the wall at the bottom of the Fairlynch main garden. It gave on to the road, just opposite the gate into the water garden on the far side. It had no lock but two bolts on the inside.

  ‘There’s a notice on the inside saying that the water garden won’t be open until April the thirtieth,’ Toye went on, ‘so people wouldn’t have been going through last Saturday afternoon. But Rossiter could easily have nipped down and slipped back the bolts after closing time. But even with this done, I don’t reckon it could ever be proved that he had enough time to get up to the house and somehow slip in while Peck was talking to Gilmore when they got back from the party. Anyway, wouldn’t this imply that Gilmore was on the job, too?’

  ‘Never mind about that at the moment,’ Pollard said. ‘Let’s concentrate on the timing to start with.’

  Toye argued that this depended on two things. How much start did Rossiter have when he left Weatherwise Farm? Gilmore said ‘about five minutes’. They had been putting food into the Gilmore car, and wouldn’t have been looking at their watches. Then neither Mrs Ridley nor Alix was definite about how long it was before the car came back from the Manor after dropping Francis Peck. All they could say was that it came back very soon. Gilmore himself said that he had talked to Peck for a couple of minutes.

  ‘Then there’s the question of Rossiter’s car,’ Toye went on. ‘He couldn’t have left it in the road, which is narrow just there. Gilmore would have had to slow down, and the others would have noticed it. He didn’t leave it inside the gate of his own place, because Mr Howlett stopped there and had a look at about eleven thirty on Saturday night, thinking he might have got to Manor Farm. He said there was a bit of a haystack and some machinery under a tarpaulin, but not
a car. I thought I’d better check up properly, so I walked right down to the old mill where Rossiter lives. There didn’t seem to be anyone in, so I belted all the way back, along the road, through the garden door and up all the steps to the top terrace. Hardly got my breath back yet. It took me eight minutes. All things taken into account, I wouldn’t have thought he could have made it in the time if he’d driven right home first. And if he didn’t, what did he do with his car?’

  ‘I hope you remembered to go down and bolt that garden door again,’ Pollard remarked after a pause.

  Toye turned and stared at him. Then a grin spread over his normally serious face.

  ‘Sorry old boy,’ Pollard told him, ‘but I couldn’t resist it. No, you’re dead right, of course. As evidence it’s all hopelessly inconclusive. At the moment we haven’t a single lead to work on — let’s face it.’

  They sat on in a heavy silence. Presently Toye observed that they had been badly stuck before.

  ‘I’ll tell you what else we’ve done before when bogged down,’ Pollard said suddenly. ‘Gone home. Let’s head for town. Some things look better from a distance.’

  Chapter 10

  In the Pollard household the morning of Easter Sunday was strenuous. An exciting breakfast, with boiled eggs appropriately decorated for each member of the family by Jane, was followed by the hasty unwrapping of Easter eggs proper and a dash to church by car. On the return there was a lightning change into picnic clothes for the twins who were being taken down to the coast by neighbours. Soon after eleven their parents waved off a jubilant car load.

  ‘Peace, perfect peace, bless their little hearts,’ Pollard remarked as they went back into the house, ‘the only snag being that we’ve both got urgent jobs on hand.’

  ‘Infuriating, isn’t it?’ Jane agreed. ‘Still, at least you’re at home. And I suppose I might win a luxury weekend for two in Paris if I can only get this wretched poster done for the comp. It’s got to be in by Thursday. There’s masses of food laid on, by the way, so we can have separate lunch breaks if it fits better.’