A Painted Devil

by Jamie Probin

‘Was,’ corrected his hostess. ‘She died twenty two years ago. Now then, what have I done to attract the attention of the local police?’

  She gestured to a chintz armchair and Hollingsworth sat down.

  ‘I’m not local police actually. I’ve travelled up here from Southampton.’

  Catherine Bowes looked at him politely and said nothing.

  ‘I’m trying to trace a certain five pound note,’ continued Hollingsworth, who for some reason found himself a little disconcerted. ‘I know it was paid in at Mrs Wall’s shop last week, and you are one of the people she remembered paying with a five pound note during that week.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Miss Bowes pleasantly. ‘I had to buy several balls of wool and a book of international stamps.’

  There was a slight pause as Hollingsworth looked at her expectantly. She must know he was interested in where the note came from, rather than what she spent it on, but apparently Miss Bowes intended to make him ask.

  ‘Do you recall where you got the note?’

  ‘I really couldn’t be certain, detective inspector. I had several five pound notes in the house, because it was my birthday some weeks back and a number of friends send me money.’

  Hollingsworth sighed to himself. What had he been thinking? Did he really expect that following the trail of a five pound note would be so easy? Did he really think he could trace it back to a murderer? Why, for that matter, must the person who took the notes from Ronald Asbury and the person who paid them in at the shop be one and the same? The notes certainly connected the murder to Upper Wentham, but once in the village they could easily have changed hands before being used.

  In retrospect he realised that he had been so frustrated by the case, both the absence of any lead and the attitude of his superiors, that he was ready to clutch at any straw, no matter how tenuous.

  Earlier he found comfort in the knowledge that these banknotes established a firm connection between Ronald Asbury’s murder and Upper Wentham, but now even that seemed a hollow victory. After all, he had come here on a dubious pretext, and he had to be back at work tomorrow. If nothing concrete materialised from his inquiries today then the case was as good as over. He had hoped to find some irresistible piece of evidence, which would force the chief superintendent into allowing him further investigation, but he felt certain that what he had at the moment would make no difference. There were a dozen perfectly innocent, albeit unlikely, explanations of how that five pound note could have found its way to Upper Wentham. Realistically he knew that the note must indicate a connection between the murderer and this village, but the fact was that this alone would not persuade his superiors to reconsider the case.

  His attention was summoned back by Miss Bowes.

  ‘You say you have come from Southampton. Is your visit connected in any way with the death of Mr Asbury? I believe that he was found dead there some weeks ago.’

  Hollingsworth nodded. Whilst the efforts of the chief constable had not only seen the death recorded as suicide, but largely kept out of the press altogether, it was natural that the news had filtered through to Upper Wentham, almost certainly through Andrea Ketterman. Hollingsworth had expected that – Ronald Asbury had lived in Upper Wentham his whole life, after all – and it was of little concern.

  ‘Yes, Miss Bowes, it is. Where did you read about that?’

  ‘I didn’t read about it. Andrea Ketterman told me. She said Mr Asbury committed suicide, but that seems somewhat odd to me. He didn’t seem the suicidal type at all.’ Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘And now you are here asking questions. Do the police usually investigate cases of suicide so thoroughly?’

  Hollingsworth considered the situation. This seemed an opportune time to discover some more about the person of Ronald Asbury. If he knew about the man’s life here, his friends and enemies, he might find a way into the case from the other side.

  He decided that the story he used with Andrea Ketterman would serve just as well here. It would be all over the village soon anyway, and consistency would lend it some further credibility.

  ‘We believe blackmail may have been a contributing factor to the death, and we think we may be able to trace some of the money Mr Asbury paid to the blackmailer.’

  ‘So you think I may have actually obtained that five pound note through blackmail?’

  A trace of a smile danced around Catherine Bowes’ lips. Her lined face, framed by straight grey hair clipped around her jaw line, looked old, but this dash of humour gave a glimpse of a younger, more vital woman beneath. Hollingsworth wondered what her true age was, and whether it was time or tragedy that had wrought its toll on her features.

  He gave an exaggerated chuckle to suggest he found the idea preposterous. ‘Not at all. I doubt your note was even the particular one in question. I just hope to piece together the trail of the note I want, and follow it back to the blackmailer.’

  ‘I see. That’s a relief. I was beginning to doubt your detective abilities. It would be a little naïve of you to simply ask a blackmailer whether they received money through extortion.’

  Hollingsworth smiled broadly in agreement.

  ‘Did you know Ronald Asbury well, Miss Bowes?’

  The old lady shook her head.

  ‘Not particularly well, but this is not a large village. Everyone knows everyone to some extent. Ronald Asbury was once a good friend of my nephew Charles. This last year they fell out over a girl -’

  ‘Ah yes, Miss Ketterman,’ interrupted Hollingsworth. ‘I saw her just an hour ago in fact.’

  ‘Well, a good deal of enmity arose between them over Andrea. Actually I suspect it was that episode which led to Ronald leaving Upper Wentham. Ronald was a charming boy, detective inspector, but not a man I would have trusted. Not one bit.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Some men just have that air, don’t they? One senses that they would do anything if it would be to their benefit. His late father was much the same. Matthew Asbury was rather well off, but there were rumours that his money was not all made in a moral way. He was a mechanic, a good one by all accounts, but he seemed to have a little more money than could be made by a mechanic, however talented. Ronald took after his father in many ways. I think he was generally liked throughout the village, but other people would always come second to his own interests.’

  ‘The way you describe him I agree he doesn’t sound the suicidal type.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say he was, not at all. He was a strong-headed young man, and prone to recklessness; the kind of man who believes he can solve any problem. If someone tried to blackmail him, I would have thought he would be more inclined to kill the other person than himself.’

  ‘Now that’s a very interesting comment Miss Bowes.’

  ‘I’m not saying that he did so, mind. I just think that if he committed suicide, there must have been an astonishing reason.’

  Hollingsworth nodded. The truth, of course, was that Ronald Asbury did not commit suicide; he was murdered. Was the reason for that equally astonishing?

  Chapter 8

  Hollingsworth departed the lodge and returned to the humid July air, but not before facing a last barrage from Mrs Dale, telling him he should be ashamed of himself.

  The policeman trudged back into the village along the river bank, sweating uncomfortably and feeling disconsolate. He would collect Smethurst from the station and see the last man on his list, Richard Carmichael, as a matter of routine, but any optimism had been battered out of him. The day’s quest had been exposed for what it was: a desperate last throw of the dice in a game that was already lost.

  Suddenly a loud cry shattered the quiet hum of nature.

  ‘Hollingsworth! My dear fellow!’

  The footpath at this point was squeezed between the river on one side and on the other a lazily expansive building, the Green Man, which served as both tavern and inn. The loud hailing which had rent the midday air came from one of the wooden tables scattered outside the fron
t of the Green Man, and Hollingsworth recognised its lone occupant with a broad grin.

  ‘Why, it’s Dr Harris! How are you my old friend? It must be, what? Five years? Six?’

  ‘Something like that,’ agreed Harris with a smile. ‘Too long at any rate. Sit down and I’ll get you a drink.’

  Hollingsworth decided that the day’s activities did not exactly fall under the banner of “on duty” and thus persuaded himself that a drink was permissible.

  ‘I’m hungry anyway. Does this place do a good lunch?’

  Harris shrugged.

  ‘I only arrived yesterday evening. But I’m always ready to investigate new places to eat.’

  ‘You’re staying here? It seems like an odd spot to take a…’ Hollingsworth trailed off with a sudden, hopeful notion. This would not be the first time that Harris had shown up in the middle of a murder investigation, following leads of his own. ‘Hold up, you’re not here for the Asbury case by any chance?’

  ‘The who case?’

  ‘Ronald Asbury; chap who was found dead in a hotel room in Southampton a couple of months ago. It looked like suicide, but turns out it was murder. I thought for a moment you might be investigating.’

  Harris shuffled along his bench seat, to keep under the shade of the umbrella in the table.

  ‘Alas no, nothing so exciting. I am here at the request of one of the locals who thinks someone is trying to kill him. It’s probably nothing but paranoia, but he pays very well and this isn’t a bad place for a short break.’ Harris pointed back towards the Lodge. ‘If you’ve walked from that direction you must have seen his place. It’s a huge manor house.’

  Hollingsworth stared.

  ‘Blackwood Manor? I’ve just come from there.’

  Harris stared back.

  ‘You went to see Sir George Wentworth?’

  Hollingsworth shook his head.

  ‘No, no. I went to the manor gatehouse, now a lodge, to see a Miss Catherine Bowes. She is Sir George’s sister-in-law. But hang on, why on earth should someone be trying to kill Sir George Wentworth?’

  Harris shook his head back.

  ‘It wasn’t Sir George who employed me, it was his son, Charles.’

  ‘Oh I see… wait a minute!’ Hollingsworth’s train of thought skipped back to his recent interview. Speaking very slowly to himself he tried to tie all this together. ‘Miss Bowes said that her nephew was once friends with Ronald Asbury. And her sister married Sir George Wentworth, which means her nephew is Sir George’s son... so she was talking about your man Charles Wentworth!’

  He finished triumphantly, only to find Harris’ unimpressed gaze looking back at him

  ‘What’s your point?’

  Hollingsworth gave a deflated shrug.

  ‘None really, I suppose. I’m just clutching at straws again. I was wondering if there could be a connection, you know? Here we are, you’re investigating whether someone is trying to kill your chap, mine is already singing with the choir eternal, and it turns out they were friends.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Harris, suddenly. ‘You said this fellow Ronald Asbury lived in Southampton. How could he have been old friends with Charles Wentworth? For that matter, if Asbury was murdered in Southampton, what are you doing up here interviewing old ladies? Was Asbury found impaled on knitting needles only manufactured in Gloucestershire?’

  Hollingsworth took a deep breath, resenting the slightly simplistic way Harris was speaking, as if talking to a well-meaning but dim-witted child.

  ‘I didn’t say Asbury lived in Southampton, just that he was murdered there. He was born and raised here in Upper Wentham.’

  Suddenly the names Ronald Asbury and Southampton connected in Harris’ mind and he recalled the incident in St. Anne’s church.

  ‘Wait a moment! I’ve just remembered. During the first of Charles Wentworth’s brushes with death, he was in the local parish church when a statue fell from the balcony and would have turned him into pâté if it had done so a few minutes earlier.’

  ‘How simultaneously fascinating and completely irrelevant.’

  Harris, who had forgotten Hollingsworth’s northern sarcasm, scowled at the policeman.

  ‘The point, if you would keep your Yorkshire witticisms to yourself, is that this man of yours, Ronald Asbury, was with him at the time.’

  Hollingsworth’s eyes widened, his dark mutterings of a moment earlier forgotten.

  ‘So the cases may be related after all. I think it’s time you tell me your story and I’ll tell you mine.’

  Harris proceeded to explain about the visit of Charles Wentworth, and the three attempts on his life.

  Hollingsworth reciprocated by detailing the discovery in the Metropole, the tale told to him by Andrea Ketterman, the mysterious figure of Sidney Carter and finally the discovery of the note by Percy Greenspan.

  ‘You might be interested in this,’ said Harris.

  Hollingsworth took the sheet of paper that Harris handed to him and scanned it. The contents were scrawled in an untidy, rather feminine script.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I asked Charles Wentworth to provide me with a list of people who might be relevant to my investigation. I’ve just been reading it. Take a look.’

  Hollingsworth studied the paper:

  Sir George Wentworth – my father; head of the Wentworth family. Owns Blackwood Manor.

  Catherine Bowes – my aunt; my mother’s sister, crippled for many years, lives in the manor lodge. She hates my father but is fond of me because I remind her of Diana, my mother.

  Andrea Ketterman – my fiancée; we have been engaged for almost eight months, and are to be married in August.

  Adele Wentworth – my grandfather’s second wife (his first was my late grandmother); she hates my grandfather because he left her nothing when he died, and she makes things difficult for father. Her first husband died in the war and she has two children, Richard and Rebecca, from that marriage.

  Richard Carmichael – son of Adele Wentworth from her first marriage; technically he is my father’s stepbrother, although he is not much older than me. My father considers him to be very impertinent and they dislike each other enormously.

  ‘Sir George Wentworth does not seem to be very popular in these parts,’ murmured Hollingsworth. ‘Miss Ketterman doesn’t appear to hate him, at least, but she seems to be the only one.’

  He read on.

  Rebecca Hollins – Richard Carmichael’s younger sister and stepsister to my father.

  Joseph Hollins – Rebecca’s husband, editor of one of the local newspapers.

  Samantha McKinley – friend of the family.

  Douglas McKinley – Samantha’s husband; local MP.

  ‘I’ve met Catherine Bowes and Andrea Ketterman this morning,’ said Hollingsworth when he had finished reading. ‘And I was on my way to see Richard Carmichael when I met you just now. You can come with me if you like.’

  Just as Harris was assuring his friend that he very much would like that, their lunches arrived and the pair spent the next minutes in focussed appreciation of the country cuisine.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Harris after savouring his last roast potato, ‘does anything strike you as odd about these attempts on Charles Wentworth’s life?’

  Hollingsworth mused, considering them over again.

  ‘One thing does stick out,’ he nodded eventually. ‘Why are they all so isolated? If someone needed to kill Charles Wentworth last November, and their trick with the statue in the church failed, why did they wait three months to try again? And the same for the second attempt with the gunshot in the folly: since our assassin can’t hit a fellow at what sounds like about ten paces, why wait so long to send the poisoned chocolates?’

  ‘Well, off the top of my head...’ began Harris, who had never met a rhetorical question he liked.

  Hollingsworth waved his fork in complaint

  ‘What do you mean, off the top of your head? You just said you’d been mulling over this for
hours?’

  ‘The timing of the incidents was not actually what struck me as odd,’ said Harris with dignity. ‘But you raise a good point, and one worth considering. One possibility is that the first two incidents were accidents after all, and only the third was attempted murder. This is not the likeliest solution, but it remains an option.’

  Hollingsworth sipped meditatively at his second pint.

  ‘Do you think there is anything in it? Is someone really trying to kill your chap?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Harris. ‘It’s not a likely proposition, but Charles Wentworth seems a sensible and intelligent young man, and something tells me he is not prone to melodramatic flights of fancy.’

  ‘Let’s say someone has it in for him then,’ continued Hollingsworth, who had wanted an affirmative answer and intended to continue as if he had received one. ‘Here is the crucial question: is it connected to my case?’

  Harris pondered for a moment.

  ‘I would have to agree with your hypothesis that Ronald Asbury’s death is linked with Upper Wentham in some way.’

  ‘Exactly!’ exclaimed Hollingsworth. ‘And there can’t be two homicidal lunatics both wandering the lanes of this village.’

  ‘Unless you count whoever in the kitchen is responsible for this outrage.’ Harris gestured at the empty plate in front of him. It was a habit for him to critique any meal he ever ate in a restaurant in scathing terms, expressing doubts regarding the qualifications and sometimes even ethical and social conduct of the chef. With the meal just consumed, however, in common with almost every other in this back catalogue, it appeared that his disgust had not prevented him from finishing every last morsel.

  Hollingsworth waved these culinary criticisms aside.

  ‘Alright then. So we suspect there is a murderer in Upper Wentham. The question is: what to do about it? Unless I find a miraculous breakthrough with this last interview, my chief superintendent is not going to allow me any more time on this affair. But if your investigation is related to the Asbury case…’