[Peter and Georgia Marsh 05] - Murder in the Mist

by Amy Myers

  ‘Of course I did,’ was the snappy reply. ‘Everyone liked blasted Roy. Despite the fact that he was a selfish pig-headed monster.’

  Well, they’d been warned that Betty Sandford was eccentric, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t right, Georgia thought. ‘Is that a sister’s view or a general one?’

  ‘Have you got a brother?’ Betty turned the tables with a vengeance.

  Rick and Elena flitted like ghosts before her. ‘No,’ Georgia managed to answer, not daring to look at Peter. ‘Molly described Roy as a bright flame, and—’

  ‘Molly would say that. He’s going to warm her pockets very nicely. When you’re brought up in the same family you get a different view, believe me, young lady. While bright flames are burning, humbler lumps of coal tend to get reduced to ash in the process. Birdie was a lump like that,’ Betty snorted. ‘He was always floating around with his arty friends, and all she got was a kiss and pat on the head most of the time. Still, she wants her moment of glory next year, and I’ve no doubt she’ll get it.’

  ‘Is that why Matthew Hunt didn’t cover it in his biography?’ Georgia asked.

  A sharp look. ‘I don’t know. It surprised me too. I imagine Matthew, like all of us, had his doubts about Roy’s allegiance to any one particular woman.’

  ‘So as a brother and lover he had his drawbacks.’

  ‘With knobs on.’ With this observation, Betty sat back with the air of one who knew precisely the effect she wanted. ‘I always used to tell my girls never to use that ugly phrase. It gives me great pleasure therefore to use it now.’

  ‘What knobs?’ Peter asked hopefully.

  The gimlet eyes regarded him sternly. ‘Would you expect me to pass on rumours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  That silenced her momentarily, and she, deliberately or otherwise, ‘remembered’ the coffee and went outside to fetch it. When she returned with it she was quoting: ‘“And you, Dorinda, what shall I bring to you? So much have I planned …” Read that poem, have you?’ Betty asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Georgia replied. ‘From Verses to Dorinda, although we’ve been told there was no Dorinda. Or rather there were lots of them.’

  ‘Rubbish. Know how it goes on, that poem?’ She didn’t stop for an answer but continued: ‘“Myself I’d lay before you/But for my heart which still lies lost.” They all ran after him,’ Betty added. ‘Little blind mice who didn’t see the carving knife. Fools. None of them found his heart.’

  ‘Not even Elfie?’ Georgia asked, still reluctant to abandon her theory completely. She received a black look from Peter for her pains.

  ‘You mean Birdie,’ was Betty’s immediate reply. ‘Anyway, how would I know? I was down there at lot, but I was his kid sister. Eighteen or nineteen. I wasn’t interested in his love life; it was mine I was concerned with. He’d have an arm round this one, the other round another, and keeping his eye open for the next. A teaser was Roy. Poor Birdie. So jealous, he liked telling her she had rivals. He thought that was fun. What do you want to know all this for?’ she suddenly shot at Peter.

  ‘Alwyn Field,’ he answered, ‘and The Flight of the Soul.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said with satisfaction, ‘Madam Molly told me about that. All sorted now, is it? Alwyn was a twerp, I never liked him. He was a bad influence on Roy.’

  ‘But has Molly told you that Alwyn didn’t fake those poems after all?’ Peter queried.

  She grinned at them. ‘She didn’t need to, did she?’

  ‘Need to what?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Tell me. I knew all the time Roy couldn’t have written them.’

  ‘What?’ he asked faintly. Georgia was just as flabbergasted as Peter looked.

  Betty Sandford looked pleased. ‘Surprised, eh?’

  ‘Astounded would be more accurate. What on earth has all this been about then?’

  ‘You should have come here earlier, if that’s what you were interested in. I remember all the fuss about the poems after the war, when my parents were living. William – that’s Mr Elder Brother – was hopping around as if he’d written the stuff himself, the pompous prig. I was working in Suffolk at the time, so couldn’t give much time to it. I kept saying it wasn’t Roy’s style, and I’d have known if he’d written them before he died, because he’d have told me about them on my visits to Fernbourne. He told me about all his work. Wanted to impress me, and his lady friends weren’t enough.

  ‘Then Mr Gavin Hunt arrived at my parents’ house after the war, strutting like the Lord High Executioner over his great discovery. He said he was there to discuss The Flight of the Soul with them, only he didn’t discuss. He just told them, that was his way. Showed us the evidence and that was that. It was lawyers and courts and this that and the other. No one listened to me. I told Gavin I was on Alwyn’s side in this, twerp or not. He wouldn’t listen. Nevertheless, I got brother William and my parents to see it would be better not to go to court, because I swore I’d get up and say my piece. So it was all settled.’

  ‘And Alwyn just accepted it?’

  ‘There was nothing he could do. He was shell-shocked at first, but Birdie and Elfie believed him, and so did I, and that was enough for him. After all, he got the kudos during the war on first publication, and provided it wasn’t published again that was OK. Gavin considered it wasn’t Alwyn’s style, but he was wrong. It was stronger, but his all right, if you look carefully. Roy was usually all for the passions of life, and Alwyn the dreamy one. “I will build me a home on some sweet Kentish hill / Screened by ancestral oaks from winter’s chill.” I always liked that poem. I’m a Kentish woman, you know. Not that Welling’s got much in the way of ancestral oaks. A few in Danson Park maybe, but not in this part. The Flight of the Soul was another matter in style. Alwyn’s dreaminess had a wider range – that comes of the war, I suppose. It changed us all in one way or another. It certainly did poor Roy. The evening it all ended. We didn’t even know he had leave that weekend.’

  ‘He didn’t spend leaves with you?’

  ‘Sometimes he gave us the privilege of his presence for a few hours, but mostly it was straight off to Fernbourne. He lived there after all. He went there from Biggin Hill – expecting everyone to fall over him as usual, but, typical Roy, he hadn’t checked and Birdie and Alwyn were on duty that night, Birdie at a hospital somewhere, and Alwyn on air-raid warden duty. Gavin and Elfie were around, but that wasn’t enough. We found out later he rang some chums, or they rang him, and off he went to have a good night out at the Café de Paris. And that was that. It broke my heart when I got the news. A waste,’ Betty said. ‘No more poems, no more women, no more life. That’s what he had. Joie de vivre. Alwyn was the opposite.’

  ‘But you agree Alwyn wrote all the poems in The Flight of the Soul, and you’d have no objection if it came out again under Alwyn’s name?’

  ‘No. Madam Molly will though, and Birdie wouldn’t like it. She wants her Roy to get a big hand.’

  ‘But Alwyn’s her brother,’ Georgia said. ‘Surely there’d be conflict there.’

  Betty chuckled. ‘So if you were on that board, what would you do? Just what it has done. Not authorize it to be reprinted. They’ll have some problems over Roy anyway, in that arts centre. Can’t brush them all under the carpet.’

  ‘Such as?’ Peter asked.

  ‘What are they doing about Jenny Baker?’ She looked smugly from one to the other. ‘Hasn’t Miss Molly talked about her?’

  ‘Not much,’ Georgia said. Could this be what Molly had been holding back? ‘We know something about Jenny from Clemence, and we know that the rough music Joe Baker organized was probably one of the reasons for Alwyn’s death.’

  ‘You need to look behind the varnish, young woman. Have you seen pictures of Jenny Baker, and of Roy and Alwyn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which of the two would you go for if you were a looker like Jenny?’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Georgia said. ‘Roy. Is that why Alwyn raped her, because she was chasing Roy?�
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  ‘Sometimes I think you youngsters don’t know what life’s about,’ said Miss Sandford severely. ‘Young Jenny didn’t mean to chase Roy; it was Alwyn she got on with so well. She was a beauty, but a village girl, and she didn’t know her own power. She was there sometimes, posing, when I visited. She was flaunting her charms at every man in sight, but not seriously. She was courting the village policeman, but liked to flirt. She felt safe with Alwyn. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly.’

  Georgia had a terrible feeling she knew what was coming next. ‘But Roy would.’

  ‘My dear brother took her at face value. I found her howling her eyes out one day. And she had been preening her feathers in front of brother Roy, so I guessed what had happened. I had it out with him, and he was pretty ashamed of himself, I can tell you. He denied anything serious had taken place though. He claimed it was just a pass that upset her. He would. When I heard later about the rough music and Alwyn, I thought I’d been right to believe Roy, but I’ve had time to think since then.’ She made a face. ‘Think they’ll be telling that story at the arts centre opening? Somehow I doubt it.’

  ‘Nor the story that Alwyn Field was probably murdered,’ Peter said.

  Betty Sandford looked startled. ‘Alwyn?’

  ‘Now that we know he didn’t steal Roy’s poems and that he probably wasn’t responsible for the rape of Jenny, the two planks for suicide have been considerably weakened.’

  ‘Only if Alwyn was a fighter,’ Betty shot back. ‘But he wasn’t.’

  Georgia didn’t have to wait long to hear from Molly, who rang almost as soon as she walked in the door at Medlars.

  ‘How did you get on with Scatty Betty?’ she asked.

  ‘Fairly mind-boggling,’ Georgia said. ‘It upset a few apple carts.’

  A silence, while the airwaves crackled with displeasure. ‘She told you her views about The Flight of the Soul.’

  ‘She did. I haven’t told Luke yet.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘I think you can guess. Roy and Jenny Baker.’

  No silence this time. ‘Good. So you know now. That’s what Damien Trent came to see me about. You can imagine I was pretty well knocked sideways.’

  ‘Not sufficiently to tell us,’ Georgia pointed out drily.

  ‘Let’s not fight,’ Molly pleaded. ‘I had to work it out.’

  ‘I suppose so. Did you tell the trustees?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, why not?’

  ‘Birdie.’

  Georgia had forgotten. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Damien’s father had told him shortly before he died that he had tracked down Jenny Baker, his real mother, and that she had told him that Roy was his father, not Alwyn. But when Damien’s father Phil had visited Fernbourne in the mid-seventies, Joe Baker had been adamant that it was Alwyn. Damien wanted to try the conundrum out on me. I gave him short shrift, I’m afraid. I wish I hadn’t.’

  If wishes were horses then beggars would ride. The old proverb ran through Georgia’s mind as she put the telephone down. Luke would be encouraged when she told him the position over The Flight of the Soul, but what of Marsh & Daughter? Where did they go next, especially with a hostile board to reckon with? The hostility wouldn’t matter, if only the path were clear. But instead it seemed to be getting murkier. She and Peter had talked little in the car on the way back home, agreeing that to sleep on it might help. It served its purpose, and by the time the morning came, she felt more able to face the problem.

  Peter too was surprisingly upbeat about the visit to Great-Aunt Betty. ‘Mad or sane, do you think?’ he asked her cheerfully enough. ‘Betty seems quite clear-headed even if she does like playing skittles with our assumptions.’

  ‘I’d like to put her in a room with Clemence and see who wins,’ Georgia said with feeling. ‘My view is that Clemence would – with the reservation that she who shouts loudest often gets heard first.’

  ‘Clemence shouts in her own way.’ He paused. ‘What has survived the night about that meeting yesterday – not your notes, your impressions?’

  Easy one. ‘The point when we mentioned that Alwyn had probably been murdered.’

  He looked relieved. ‘Right. I think we’re on the same lines.’

  ‘Betty was surprised that anyone would want to murder him.’

  ‘No. We’ve parted lines. It was her emphasis that intrigued me. She said “Alwyn,” as though if it had been someone else she could have understood it better.’

  Georgia thought back. ‘That could have been a quite innocent reaction.’

  ‘But was it? We’d just been talking about Roy.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Far-fetched, I suppose,’ he muttered.

  ‘Roy died in a well-recorded Luftwaffe raid.’

  ‘There were unidentified bodies,’ he reminded her. ‘They identified him by bits of uniform, and the fact that he was known to be there by witnesses. Clothing and possessions had mostly been destroyed. That month there was a new law going through with the result that if death was caused by enemy action there was less red tape to go through, so the process was much quicker. If you think about it, what proof is there that he ever went to the Café de Paris that evening? It’s worth considering.’

  ‘Why?’ Georgia was thrown, somewhat annoyed at yet another central brick of the case being queried. ‘No one has ever mentioned the possibility that he wasn’t there.’

  ‘To recall the famous line: they wouldn’t, would they?’

  ‘Are you implying that Roy was murdered?’ Even as she asked the question, it became painfully clear that there could be motives for it. Nevertheless, surely Peter was sticking his neck out. ‘We need some guidelines here,’ she tried to reason with him. ‘Our remit was to prove that Alwyn was murdered. And now you’re talking about switching to someone else being the victim.’

  ‘We have to, Georgia.’ Peter was getting annoyed. ‘Whatever the true story of Alwyn Field, it can’t be told independently of the Fernbourne Five. There’s too much baggage and the answer to the murder lies deeper than The Flight of the Soul.’

  ‘Jenny Baker—’ she began.

  ‘For whose rape Roy is in the frame.’

  ‘It’s still a far cry to whether Roy was murdered. It’s just daft, Peter. What do you think? That Joe murdered him? That Jenny came back to Fernbourne and arranged it all? That Alwyn was in love with Jenny and not Elfie, and murdered Roy in revenge for her rape? And how and where did this supposed murder take place?’

  ‘I haven’t said it did yet,’ Peter said firmly. ‘But we did agree Betty gave an odd reaction.’

  ‘Coincidence. We were looking for anything to pick up on.’

  ‘Well, I’ve picked on this.’

  Georgia bit her lip. ‘We’re getting childish.’

  ‘Children,’ said Peter reflectively, ‘don’t see through glass darkly. And, by the way, Clemence wants to see us on Monday. She left a message on the machine. Luke’s summoned too.’

  ‘Quite a deputation,’ Peter said when Clemence opened the coach house door. Luke had been undecided as to whether to come, but had given way. He wanted to get ahead with books he could publish, he had told Georgia sourly, not those he couldn’t.

  Clemence seemed in no mood for irrelevant pleasantries. ‘I thought we’d sit in here,’ she said briefly, leading them to her living room, which was pleasant but less intimate than the studio. Not so much of Clemence was evident despite the family photos and paintings on the wall. There was no sign of Janie, and this time no mention of her.

  ‘I gather you saw Betty last week,’ Clemence began.

  ‘Did Molly tell you?’

  ‘Of course. Both she and Birdie via Christopher imparted the news. I would like to know what your plans are now.’ This wasn’t the diplomatic, considerate Clemence that Georgia was used to and it worried her. Clemence was tense and anxious about something. ‘The board, as you know, is standing firm on The Fli
ght of the Soul,’ she continued. ‘Are you happy with that situation?’

  ‘I can’t say yet,’ Luke answered – truthfully, as Georgia knew.

  A sigh of exasperation from Clemence. ‘And you?’ She turned to Peter and Georgia. ‘Are you going ahead with a book on Alwyn in view of this apparent clearance over plagiarism and …’ She hesitated. ‘Over the Jenny Baker rape?’

  So Clemence had already heard about that from Molly. The trust was working quickly. Or had Clemence known all along? Georgia suspected, and hoped, not.

  ‘Our answer has to be the same as Luke’s,’ Georgia replied. ‘We can’t give a definite answer until we’ve looked into this new situation.’

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’ Clemence persevered. ‘Through Betty? Not, I hope, through Birdie, as I warned you before.’

  ‘Is your concern for Gavin’s reputation?’ Georgia tried to calm the situation down to get to the truth, and that, she suspected, was what was worrying Clemence. Clemence looked relieved.

  ‘It’s a major factor,’ Clemence admitted. ‘You must see that with Gavin having backed the plagiarism charge he’s left in the firing line. Someone, after all, did the actual faking. Does your thesis accuse Gavin of this? Or …’ She must have noticed Georgia’s hesitation. ‘No. Of course it’s me, isn’t it? You think I could have helped him.’ There was disdain in her voice, and she did not wait for Georgia to reply. ‘You think I was so in love with him and under his sway as not to think independently. It could be a viable thesis, I agree. It’s incorrect, however. There were several people Gavin could have called upon for such assistance. He was no forger himself, but such skills were not uncommon in student circles in the late 1940s.’

  ‘Is this what you wanted to talk about?’ Peter asked gently.

  ‘No,’ Clemence replied quickly. ‘I want to talk about Gavin himself. It seems to me he’s getting a raw deal over this, the only member of the group not to have been defended. You defend Alwyn, everyone defends Elfie, Molly and Birdie defend Roy. Now it’s my turn and I shall protect my husband. Gavin was an honest man, a writer of integrity. He was put in an impossible position over Alwyn and Elfie. He was bewildered by it, he couldn’t cope. In his novels he wrote of complex relationships, but in real life he could never see the wood for the trees.’