by Jamie Probin
Charles walked along the corridor, looking in the compartments. The first few had several occupants, but eventually he found one with only a single resident, and slid back the door. He nodded briefly to the other traveller and settled into a seat by the window. As the train accelerated out of the station, and the blur of Gloucester gave way to countryside, he went over the plan once again in his mind.
He had not enjoyed lying to Andrea last night about his intentions for today, but he could hardly tell her his real reason for travelling to London. The plan was not without its risks, but faint heart never won fair maiden, as he liked to quote, and at least the day marked the conclusion of a very long drama. Oddly, once he had seen Sir Oliver board the train many of the qualms had vanished; a sense of inevitability descended on the day’s events. Like so many valuable actions, what he had to do would not be easy, but he had to do it nevertheless. Otherwise... well, a lot of time and effort had led to this day.
As his mind wandered, so did his eyes. He was momentarily brought back to the present by the figure of the guard walking past his compartment. Then his thoughts flickered back across the trail of actions that had brought him here: the statue, the poisoned chocolates, the death in the Metropole, the murder of his father... If all went to plan that long string of events would come to its finale before the day was out.
The train pulled in to the station at Stonehouse and the other occupant of the compartment stood. He wished Charles a good day and departed, leaving the latter alone with his thoughts. These returned to Andrea, and the lies he had told her. Well, not outright lies, perhaps, but definitely misleading statements. He wondered if she had any suspicions at all about what was planned. He barely noticed the movement of the train as it pulled away to resume its journey.
There was an almost imperceptible knock at the compartment door and the guard pulled it back and stepped inside.
‘I’m terribly sorry to bother you sir, but I wonder if I might see your ticket?’
‘Eh? Well, I suppose if you must...’
Charles stood and turned, reaching up to the luggage rack for his briefcase. As he did so he twisted suddenly and saw the glint of steel in the guard’s hand. Just as the guard was about to plunge the knife forward into Charles’ exposed ribcage the door snapped open once again. Sergeant Davies, the man who had just recently shared the compartment with Charles, leaped in and wrestled the guard’s arms behind his back, whilst Crout wrenched the knife from his grasp. And behind them the voice of Sir Oliver Anstruther said with satisfaction:
‘Oh no you don’t, my lad.’
In the struggle the guard’s cap had been knocked to the floor, and Charles was staring at him in disbelief.
‘You were right,’ he said to Sir Oliver, ‘it really is him. I honestly don’t think I would have recognised him.’
‘No one did.’
If Hollingsworth had been present he would have recognised the man as Tom Watling, the garage mechanic of Reed’s Garage in Cirencester. But to Charles Wentworth and Sir Oliver Anstruther he was known by a very different name.
‘Ronald Asbury, you are under arrest for murder.’
Chapter 34
‘In some ways we can blame Hollingsworth.’
‘What?’ exclaimed the impugned policeman. ‘How can I be to blame?’
‘You were called to the Metropole when they found the body,’ responded Harris, ‘and you made the classic amateur mistake: you accepted the evidence of a suspect without checking it. When Andrea Ketterman told you that the body was that of Ronald Asbury, you believed her.’
‘She didn’t tell me...’ began Hollingsworth, but trailed off as he realised that his defence – that Andrea had implied the fact with admirable acting – was at least as damning, if not more so. ‘But look here, the desk clerk had already confirmed that the body was that of Asbury.’
‘Of course he did,’ sighed Harris. ‘When faced with a corpse with a bullet hole in his forehead you aren’t likely to look too hard. The dead man looked very similar to Asbury, and if you find a body in a locked room the thought that it wasn’t the registered occupant is not likely to cross your mind.
‘Consider it from the clerk’s point of view: the previous day he had checked two men into the hotel, Asbury into room 314 and Mr Thornton – the dead man, using the name Sidney Carter – into room 315. The two looked very similar, and earlier that morning one of the men, giving the name Sidney Carter, had checked out again. The clerk had no reason to doubt the man was who he claimed to be. When he was called upstairs he recognised the face of the corpse but never for a moment realised that he was looking at the man he checked into room 315, not 314, especially since the body was found in room 314.
‘The staff at the Metropole are trained to remember names and faces, certainly, but when two men check in, and the next day one checks out and the other is found dead, is anyone likely to consider for a moment that overnight their identities have been switched?’
‘But what about the passport?’ demanded Hollingsworth. ‘We examined that, as well as the hotel staff.’
‘I imagine that overnight Asbury removed Mr Thornton’s picture from his original passport and stuck it into his own, replied Harris. ‘Of course he may have simply trusted that no one would notice the difference; the two men looked so similar, which of course was why Asbury chose Mr Thornton in the first place, and those small grainy passport photographs show very little detail.’
Hollingsworth sighed. ‘We talked when describing “Sidney Carter” about how vague he sounded, and how the description matched hundreds of young men, but it never occurred to us that it also described Ronald Asbury.’
‘And ultimately the ruse did not need to stand on its own merits for long, as Andrea Ketterman would be showing up soon after and fooling the local police with a natty bit of acting. You can be sure she would have found some way to be taken to the room, and her “breakdown” would be the conclusive evidence for old Inspector Plod.’
‘Come now Dr Harris,’ interjected Crout, ‘I think you are being unfair. I’m quite sure I would have made the same assumption in the circumstances.’ No one was convinced by this prediction. ‘Now then, what you are saying is that on the boat back from Le Havre, Asbury selected a fellow passenger that looked similar to him?’
‘Exactly. Since leaving Upper Wentham he had taken care to let his hair and his clothes look as generic as possible, knowing that eventually he would need to find a “double”. If needed maybe he would have scoured the pubs and cafes of Southampton to find one, but he struck lucky on the crossing. He befriended Mr Thornton, although he was bright enough to make it look to others, such as Miss Lamb the stewardess, that it was actually Thornton who was faithfully following him. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know how he persuaded Thornton to check into the Metropole calling himself Sidney Carter and specifically ask for room 315. I imagine Asbury gave him the money for the room and told him it was part of a practical joke; or perhaps if Thornton was a romantic he told him it was a ruse to win back a girl. It could have been a number of things. I don’t suppose it takes much to persuade someone to spend a free night in the Metropole.
‘As for what happened next we can only guess. Perhaps he simply convinced Thornton to wait in his room, possibly he drugged him. Asbury couldn’t have risked shooting the man too early, in case the time of death was fixed before the visit of Andrea and her brother. Either way, that charade went ahead and the business with the note to Andrea was arranged so that, if necessary, John Ketterman could swear that Ronald Asbury was alive when they left the hotel. Asbury shot Thornton at some point, but made his first mistake. Thornton was upright when shot so the blood tricked down his face slightly and dried there. When Asbury arranged the body on the bed and put the wiped gun into his hands and then on the floor, he failed to notice that the blood had trickled the “wrong way”.
‘He then called the front desk and asked to be woken at nine the next morning. He needed enough time to check out as Sid
ney Carter and be away before the body was found, but he also wanted the corpse discovered before Andrea arrived at the Metropole, so that police would already be in attendance and the de facto identification of the body would proceed.’
‘What first put you onto the pair of them?’ asked Sir Oliver.
‘There were a few facts that, whilst hardly conclusive, drew my attention to Andrea Ketterman particularly,’ admitted Harris. ‘The whole business in Southampton seemed remarkably coincidental. Here is the jilted lover, back in England for one night before sailing off to the new world. I tried to find a motive for actually killing a man who is about to leave Europe for good. The usual suspects didn’t fit. If the motive was simply hatred or jealousy surely it was easier to simply wave him off to America? It couldn’t be money because the fellow had nothing left, and if it were fear of something that Asbury knew, and would use, then why would he so willingly be emigrating? Add to that the coincidence that Miss Ketterman just happened to be in Southampton that same day and it seemed as though the laws of probability had gone awry.
‘My attention was really drawn to Miss Ketterman after the incident at Sir Oliver’s house. We heard from a number of people that she was not mechanically-minded, and knew next to nothing about things like cars. It seemed very suspicious to me that she would firstly notice the brake fluid on the ground when the car left, secondly identify it and thirdly realise the implications for Charles driving the car, all in a matter of seconds. Had she pointed to it and asked what it was I may have paid it no thought, but that was not an option. If no one had immediately registered the emergency Charles might have driven through the gate before they could catch him, and above all Charles could not die before the wedding.’
Hollingsworth nodded. ‘So in the end it was all about the money?’
‘It would seem so. Charles Wentworth has no heir, and although the question of what would happen to Blackwood Manor would have been a thorny one for the solicitors, Andrea would have certainly been a very rich woman. And of course she had no intention of remaining in Upper Wentham anyway.
‘For Ronald Asbury it may have been personal as well. He hated to lose at anything, and Charles challenged him over Andrea Ketterman. I think in the end what really suggested the solution to me were the questions which everyone seemed to have asked themselves in Upper Wentham: Did Andrea Ketterman really love Charles Wentworth or Ronald Asbury? And if it was Asbury, would she choose money or love?
‘Everybody had an opinion on the matter, and most of the more astute villagers seemed to think she loved Ronald Asbury. But when it came to the question of whether she chose love or money, nobody seemed to consider the possibility that she might have tried to choose both.
‘From everything I’ve heard and seen I would guess that it was Asbury’s idea originally. When she told him she had decided to turn down Charles and marry him, he probably suggested it then. The arguments that Mrs Leaworth watched on the moors and the fear she saw in Andrea Ketterman’s face were her initial reaction to the idea of murder. But we’ve heard how charming and persuasive Asbury could be, and the Wentworth fortune was an awful lot of money. She would not be the first person to have given in to greed.
‘Nevertheless they were going to need an audacious plan to actually get their hands on the money. Both Sir George and Charles would need to die before the money could pass to Andrea. And if both died within months of a wedding between Charles and Andrea, followed soon after by another marriage to Ronald Asbury...’
‘That would go down as the most obvious murder since Cain killed Abel,’ agreed Hollingsworth.
‘For Ronald and Andrea to end up with the money and each other they were going to need some amazing sleight of hand. For one thing any scenario that resulted in her marrying Ronald Asbury was bound to draw attention, and for another, regardless of any subsequent matrimonial events, two close deaths which resulted in her inheriting the Wentworth fortune would inevitably bring great scrutiny on her. The primary consideration was that Andrea should have absolutely cast-iron alibis for the murders of both George and Charles Wentworth. Put these together and the idea that Asbury should “die” solved both problems. He could commit the murders without anything connecting them to Andrea, and later when she moves away grief-stricken and finds a new life and love elsewhere it would simply be seen as the coda to a tragic story.
‘You have to admire the audacity of the plan, but Ronald Asbury was a very vain young man, and with vanity often comes an inflated opinion of your own ingenuity. Asbury couldn’t help being cleverer and embellishing the plan. First came the inspiration to fake some attempts on Charles Wentworth’s life, the first coming even before Andrea told Charles she would marry him. If the notion that someone was trying to kill Charles Wentworth was established before his wedding to Andrea, or even their engagement, then he no doubt hoped that would throw us off the scent, suggesting as it did that the motive for the murder pre-dated any possibility of inheritance. If the successful murder was the fifth attempt then why should the motive be any different than that for the four failed efforts? And since Andrea would have had no benefit from any of those, this would remove her from suspicion.
‘As it was though, the ineptitude of those first four murder attempts merely drew attention to the fact that something was not right. And of course, they led to me being brought into the case...’
The hanging sentence, with its unspoken consequence, was rudely interrupted by Hollingsworth.
‘So in the church it was Andrea who pushed the statue, waiting until both the men had moved away from the pew, before bolting out of the back door. Then it was Asbury who shot at Charles and Andrea in the folly, ensuring he missed. What about the chocolates? It could have been either of them.’
‘Probably Andrea I would think. Sending the chocolates locally would give less opportunity for anything to go wrong. Asbury had gone abroad by that point but returned within days to begin working in the guise of Tom Watling at Reed’s Garage. Some padding and a false moustache as a disguise insured against anyone from Upper Wentham accidentally spotting him. In his spare time he was travelling around the country creating the persona of Sidney Carter and transferring all his assets to that name, so that when he “died” he did not lose all his money, not to mention creating a false trail for us to follow after the Metropole.
‘Finally he once again sailed to France, only to instantly return, back in the persona of Ronald Asbury. And on that trip he recruited his unsuspecting stooge Mr Thornton, whose physical similarity to Asbury sealed his death warrant.
‘As far as the last incident with the severed brakes, either Asbury could have crept into the grounds of the hall and cut the brake lines, or he could have told Andrea how to do it. He certainly knew his way around a car.
‘At some point Asbury sabotaged the front wheel of Sir George’s Rolls Royce. By frequenting the same pub he had easily lured Jenkins, Sir George’s chauffeur, into friendship and it was no problem to coax the incident with the Rolls from his new acquaintance. From there it was child’s play to arrange for Jenkins to recommend him to perform repairs, and so when he was called in to fix the car he was on the spot, ready to shoot Sir George.’
Hollingsworth snapped his fingers. ‘So that’s what all the business was about with the telegram! I knew there was something significant about those messages claiming that Watling’s mother was supposedly ill, but I assumed someone else was trying to keep him away. In reality he just needed an excuse to delay his trip to Blackwood Manor.’
‘Exactly. The whole point was that Sir George should be found dead whilst Charles and Andrea were flying to their honeymoon and absolutely beyond suspicion. When you insisted they postpone their trip a couple of days Asbury had to hastily find an excuse to defer his visit.
‘By this time Asbury had gained weight and shaved off his hair, in addition to growing a real moustache and using some basic stage prosthetics, until he looked almost unrecognisable from his old self. Add to that the fact
that when a person is wearing a uniform, or work clothes like a mechanic, people don’t tend to notice faces as much.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Sir Oliver. ‘I know Ronald Asbury’s face pretty well, and I would never have recognised him as the guard on the train. How did he pull that off, by the way?’
‘He wasn’t really one of the guards. He had simply managed to get a uniform that looked just like those they wear. He must have changed into it in his compartment and then walked up and down the carriage waiting to find Charles alone. If that hadn’t happened, I assume he would have followed Charles into London and found a way to take care of him there. Perhaps a fall onto the Underground rails or under a passing car.’
‘What I don’t understand is, after conceiving such a long and patient plan, why he suddenly had to act yesterday, and how he knew to be on that train,’ said Hollingsworth. ‘It seems so impulsive.’
‘That was our doing,’ replied Sir Oliver. ‘When Harris came to me with his solution it was apparent that we did not have anything close to enough evidence to prosecute. I contacted Charles and explained the truth. He was shocked, as you can imagine, but that boy is very level-headed. The Wentworth estate is safe in his hands. On my advice he told Andrea that he had learned that Sir George was not really his father, and that in the circumstances it was wrong for him to inherit the title, property and money of the Wentworths. Consequently he intended to go to London and advise the family solicitor that all of his inheritance was to be given away. Well, that put a spanner in the great plan of Andrea and Ronald, and meant that Charles’ death, which I imagine they had originally intended to postpone a month or so, again with a cast iron alibi for Andrea, had to be brought forward. Charles fed all the details of his train journey to Andrea, knowing that she in turn would pass them onto Asbury. After that it just remained to place a few of us on the train for protection. In particular I drafted Sergeant Davies, Hollingsworth’s man, up from Southampton, knowing that Asbury wouldn’t recognise him as police. Davies boarded at Cheltenham and used his police badge to keep the compartment clear, so that it would only be him and Charles in there once they left Gloucester. Then he made it appear that he had disembarked at Stonehouse, in the hope that the dangling the carrot of Charles alone in a compartment would be too tempting for Asbury to resist.’