‘Miss Oliver’s in the conservatory,’ he was told by an aproned woman. ‘She always sits there. I’ll point her out to you.’
The central heating was overpowering, and there was a smell of past meals and disinfectant. In the lounge, he passed a row of old ladies propped like rag dolls in chairs in front of a television set that was showing a cooking programme. Some young chef was busy making a cheese soufflé, brandishing whisks and graters. It seemed unlikely that any of the viewers present would ever do so much as boil an egg again. There were no old gentlemen among the ladies, which was to be expected. Wives usually outlived their husbands – except in his case. Perhaps, though, it was a blessing in disguise for the men – not to be ending their days like this.
Nanny Oliver was sitting alone in a wheelchair in the conservatory. It was a bright and pleasant room and not so over-heated as the rest of the home. There were some potted palms and a view over a garden which had a few good trees, some dull-looking shrubs and an expanse of rather patchy lawn. The bird table, sited immediately outside the windows, was occupied by a grey squirrel gnawing a crust of bread held in its front paws.
Nanny Oliver had been reading a book and she raised her head slowly at his approach. There was a plaid rug tucked round her legs and one side of her body bore evidence of the stroke that Iris Delaney had spoken of – the left foot resting at an awkward angle, the arm lying uselessly in her lap, the affected face muscles. But the colonel could tell by the look in her eyes, that though her body might have let her down, her mind was still perfectly agile.
He sat down in a chair beside her and, once more, he found himself explaining his intrusion on a stranger. She was not, he realized instinctively, the sort of person who would take kindly to half-truths or prevarication and so he gave it to her straight. The whole story. While he was talking, she studied him over the spectacles on the end of her nose and he found himself hoping that his tie was straight and that his fingernails were clean. When he had finished, she asked more or less the same question as Magda Dormon.
‘Why should you care about Lois?’
He said, ‘I’m not quite sure. At the inquest, the coroner was satisfied that she had taken her own life. There was certainly plenty of evidence that she was subject to mood swings and depression. Is that so in your experience?’
‘Oh, yes. Since she was a little girl. I always used to tell her that she was like the Grand Old Duke of York. When she was up, she was up; and when she was down, she was down.’ The speech was slow, but perfectly clear. ‘It’s quite probable that she killed herself. She told me that she often felt like doing that.’
‘Her twin sister, Iris, says that you knew her better than anyone and that she always confided in you. I wondered what she had told you on the last occasion when you saw her.’
She plucked at the plaid rug. ‘What do you want to know exactly, Colonel?’
‘Well, Mr King testified in court that Miss Delaney had written to him asking him to call at her flat. When he did so on New Year’s Eve, she asked him for money to back the Noël Coward play. She became hysterical when he refused. Do you think that’s possible, too?’
‘It’s possible, but I don’t think she needed to ask him for any money. I understood that the funding had all been arranged. That’s what she told me.’
‘Her agent told me the same. But Mr King maintained that she was afraid of the backers withdrawing. It had happened to her before, apparently.’
‘That’s possible, too. I can only tell you that when Lois came to see me just before Christmas, I hadn’t seen her so happy for years. Everything was suddenly going right for her, she said. She’d be back in the West End and she’d soon be divorced and free of Bruce King. And she’d never have to worry about money again.’
He smiled faintly. ‘Not with a divorce settlement of twenty million pounds – so I heard.’
‘Twenty? Not twenty. More than that. Much more.’
‘Oh? How much more?’
‘Fifty million pounds. Lois said that her lawyer was insisting on it, and not a penny less.’
‘That’s a very large sum.’
‘I agree with you, Colonel. But Lois told me her husband was worth more than three hundred million and so he could easily afford it. Her lawyer was used to handling the big divorces and he knew exactly how to get her what she was entitled to. The judge would agree because her husband had used her as a business asset for nearly ten years. She’d been a great help to him and his company and now he was going to have to pay for it. That’s what she told me. And she said that Bruce would hate parting with so much money, especially since he’d know that Rex would get most of it in the end. He’d hate that more than anything, she said, and it amused her. Made her laugh. I told her that she was asking for trouble. Playing with fire.’
‘You looked after her son when he was small, didn’t you? What do you think of him?’
‘Rex is like his mother. Too handsome and too charming for his own good. And he’s very lazy – which Lois wasn’t. But he’s a kind person at heart. He comes to see me too – not very often, but he comes. A good boy, really.’
The squirrel had polished off the bread and was scampering away.
The colonel got to his feet. ‘Well, I mustn’t keep you, Miss Oliver.’
‘There’s nothing to keep me from.’ She looked up at him. ‘I told Lois not to imagine that all that money would bring her happiness because it wouldn’t. No matter how many millions. Or Rex, either. I warned her. It never does, does it?’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It doesn’t seem to.’
She sighed. ‘I haven’t been much help, I’m afraid, Colonel. I haven’t the strength any more to be of use to anybody. You must do what you think is right. Whatever you feel is necessary.’
The cookery programme had changed to a different one about doing up a Spanish villa. A blonde and smiling girl in very short shorts was whitewashing an outside wall in bright sunshine and talking about how easy it would be to install a jacuzzi. The old ladies had all dropped off to sleep, chins on their chests.
On the train journey back to London, the colonel stared out of the window at the winter landscape and thought about what he’d learned and about what might have happened on that snowy New Year’s Eve, and about what Lois Delaney’s silenced mouth might have been trying to say.
Fourteen
The offices of the BHK Group were located on the top floors of a soaring steel and glass tower on the north bank of the Thames. Surveying its dizzy heights from ground level, the colonel thought it was undeniably impressive – a magnificent counting house where the King could count out his money.
The entrance was closely guarded. However, the guardian happened to be an ex-sergeant major from his own regiment, which worked like a magic password. He went in, found the elevators and took one of them up to the top floor. The receptionist there was as steely as her surroundings.
‘I’m afraid you won’t be able to see Mr King without an appointment, sir. His diary is fully booked.’
He said pleasantly, ‘This is a personal matter, not business. I think he’ll see me, if you give him my name and say that it’s in connection with his late wife.’
‘He’s in a meeting at the moment.’
‘Then I’ll wait.’
He sat on a very comfortable and expensive white leather sofa and picked up a copy of The Financial Times. People came and went around him and after half an hour or so, the receptionist came over.
‘Mr King says he’s too busy to see you, sir. Perhaps you would care to make a future appointment?’
He smiled at her. ‘No, thank you. I’ll wait until he’s free today. I’ve got plenty of time.’
He finished reading The Financial Times and turned to the crossword.
He was halfway through it when another woman came over, perfectly groomed and also made of steel.
‘I’m Mr King’s secretary. He says he can give you ten minutes, Colonel. If you’d care to come this way.’
>
He followed her and she conducted him into a very large room.
You couldn’t, he thought, exactly call it an office. There was no desk of any kind – just more white leather sofas, black glass tables, outsize modern art canvases on the walls, concealed spot lighting and what seemed like acres of white-tiled floor. The view through the floor-to-ceiling windows was breathtaking. The Thames lay far below, snaking its way into the hazy distance, and London was spread out gloriously before him.
‘You’ve got precisely ten minutes, Colonel.’ Bruce King had entered suddenly, like some pantomime demon king. He glanced at his watch. ‘That’s all I can spare you.’
‘Yes, your secretary told me.’
‘So, what’s this about?’
‘It concerns your wife, Lois Delaney.’
‘My wife passed away earlier this month.’
‘I know. I found her body.’
The tycoon frowned. ‘Oh, yes, I remember you now. You were at the inquest. Well, what’s your problem?’
‘I don’t think she killed herself, Mr King. That’s my problem.’
The frown deepened to irritation. ‘Don’t waste my time. You heard the verdict. It wasn’t an accident.’
‘No, indeed it wasn’t. You killed her.’
They were standing facing each other. Being several inches the taller gave the colonel a certain advantage because the other man was forced to look up to him.
Bruce King exploded. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve, I must say – insinuating your way in here to tell me some rubbish like that. Are you mad? Get out!’
The colonel stayed. ‘I know how you did it. And why you did it.’
‘Really?’ The sarcasm was biting. ‘I suppose it’s money you’re after? Is this a clumsy attempt at some kind of blackmail? If so, I’m calling the police immediately.’
‘It’s not blackmail, Mr King. I’m not interested in any money.’
‘Everyone is, Colonel. There are no exceptions.’
‘I’m one.’
‘Then you’re the first I’ve ever met. So, you think I killed my wife? Just how do you suppose I managed to do that? You were at the inquest. You heard the evidence. I’d left the house. I was on my way back to London.’ He glanced again at his watch. ‘You have eight more minutes.’
‘You’d left the house, yes. And you were seen to drive off. But you returned. Your wife hadn’t asked you to call on her, Mr King, nor did she ask you to put up any money to back the play. You went to see her because you had discovered that her lawyer was asking for a fifty million-pound settlement and you had been told that she was very likely to get it. You don’t part with money easily – not after a lifetime’s hard work – and certainly not such a huge amount. And there was also the matter of her son, Rex. You knew that your wife would keep on giving him hand-outs and that he would inherit the lot when she died. Your lazy, good-for-nothing, freeloading stepson whom your wife adored but whom you loathed and despised.’
‘That’s the first true thing you’ve said so far, Colonel. Seven minutes to go.’
‘Your own son died as a child – the beloved boy who should have been your heir. The prospect of Rex Farrell cleaning up instead was intolerable. Unbearable. You had been prepared to go along with a twenty million court settlement for your wife, but fifty million was too much. Too large a slice of the cake that it had taken so long to bake. The only way to stop that happening was to kill her before the divorce was finalized and make it seem like suicide.’
‘And how exactly did I manage that? With smoke and mirrors?’
‘It was simple. When you called at the Hall on New Year’s Eve you made certain that the Barnes’s knew exactly when you arrived and exactly what time you left by pretending that the outside bell was faulty. Your wife was in a very happy and conciliatory mood and she told you about her chance of returning to the West End. You suggested a drink to toast the good news – a Bloody Mary which you knew she always kept ready-mixed in the fridge. As soon as she went into the kitchen to fetch it, you put your gloves on again and unlocked and unbolted the French windows behind the curtains. You knew exactly where the keys were kept and how the locks worked. Mrs Barnes told me that you had supervised everything done to the house. You pride yourself on being personally involved in every detail.’
‘You’re damn right I do. That’s how I make my money, Colonel.’
‘So, if your wife had come back into the room too soon, you would simply have told her that you were checking on the security locks. You had originally planned to tell the police that she had been very depressed when you saw her, and so the news of her comeback was a problem. Instead, you invented the story of her being frightened that the backers would pull out and begging you for the money.’
‘Four minutes left, Colonel.’
‘After the Barnes’s had gone with you to the front door, you drove away from the Hall but stopped further along the road. There was a risk of your car being noticed but Frog End isn’t known for its night revellers, even on a New Year’s Eve, and you weren’t going to be long. You walked back, cutting across the lawn to the terrace where you knew the security lights were out of action. There was no need to worry about making tracks because it was snowing heavily and the weather forecast had predicted that it would go on for most of the night. Your tracks would be well covered. Once again, you wore your gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints anywhere that might incriminate you.
‘You had been married to your wife for nearly ten years, Mr King. You knew all about her habit of taking an early bath in the evenings, and that she always kept a hairdryer on her dressing table. You let yourself in through the French windows then locked and bolted them behind you. Your shoes would have had snow on them, of course, and you took those off so as not to leave any marks in the bedroom. ‘Your wife was already in the bath, the door slightly ajar. It only needed seconds to fetch the hairdryer, plug it into the socket by the door, switch it on and then throw it into the bath. It was very quick and easy. You took another risk when you left the house by the front door, but there was no alternative – the French windows had to be left locked and bolted inside, the keys on the hook. In fact, you’ve been taking calculated risks for most of your life. You thrive on them.’
‘That’s the second true thing you’ve said.’ The colonel paused. He said quietly, ‘Only I think that in that very last moment she saw you, didn’t she? She caught sight of you through the part-open door and she saw what you were going to do. She started to speak before she died. The only thing Lois Delaney begged of you that evening, Mr King, was not for you to back her play, but to spare her life.’
They faced each other across the white-tiled floor. It was a stand-off, as in Wild West films, the colonel thought, except that neither of them carried a gun to draw fast from the hip.
He went on, ‘As a matter of fact, you were seen when you left the flat for the second time, later that evening. Seen in the hall, letting yourself out of the front door at a quarter to seven.’
Bruce King shrugged. ‘The police told me a crazy old woman had told them some such story. They didn’t believe a word of it. I was on my way back to London then. My wife died by her own hand, not mine, Colonel. She was very unstable – everyone knew that. Completely unbalanced. The big comeback would never have worked. But, as it happens, I worshipped her. It was she who wanted the divorce, not me. I never wanted our marriage to end. And you’d never be able to prove your ridiculous theory, Colonel. Your word against mine. Not much of a contest, I’d say.’ Another glance at the watch. ‘Your time’s up.’
There was a clicking sound from a machine on one of the tables. The secretary’s clipped voice spoke. ‘Your next meeting is due to start, Mr King.’
Bruce King went over and flicked a switch. ‘My visitor is just leaving.’
The ex-sergeant major hailed a taxi for him. As it sped along the Thames embankment, the colonel reflected that it was entirely possible that Bruce King had loved his wife – in his fashion �
� while she had tired of him, in the same way as she had tired of her previous husbands. Like goddesses, women such as Lois Delaney were more prudently worshipped from afar.
Fifteen
Freda Butler, watching from her sitting-room window, saw the colonel’s Riley motor car travelling smoothly along the road around the village green. A moment or two earlier, the Cuthbertsons’ Escort had gone by. She had known it was Mrs Cuthbertson driving, not the major, by the way the car had bounced along like a kangaroo and by the way it had veered so sharply into the driveway of Shangri-La, narrowly missing the gate post. Mrs Cuthbertson would have been returning from one of her ladies’ bridge afternoons. Miss Butler would have liked to take part in them, but bridge had never been her game. Her late father, who had been an excellent player, had tried to teach her once but had soon lost patience.
A while before Mrs Cuthbertson had driven past, Miss Butler had observed Dr Harvey’s grey Renault emerging from the Manor gateway and her hopes had been raised. So far as she knew, Ruth was in perfect health and so it was likely to have been a purely social call – unless, of course, the doctor was particularly interested in plants. She rather thought, though, that he was much more interested in Ruth.
She consulted her wristwatch. The afternoon train from London must have been late, which was not unusual – unless the colonel had stopped in Dorchester to do some shopping. It was known that he had gone to stay overnight in London because Mrs Dibbs had seen him waiting on the London platform with a small suitcase as she had arrived from Weymouth.
He had stayed at his club, no doubt. Gentlemen were very fortunate to have their clubs. Her father had spent a great deal of time in his after his retirement. Ladies were only permitted to enter a separate annexe, but, in any case, he had never invited her there.
The colonel’s car had stopped outside the church lychgate and she could see that he was getting out, carrying something. Miss Butler hurried to fetch the U-boat commander’s binoculars and trained them on the colonel. It was a bouquet of flowers – pure white lilies, which must have been quite expensive. She tracked her quarry through the lychgate until he was lost to view around the east side of the church. Miss Butler lowered the binoculars, puzzled. The colonel was a relative newcomer to Frog End and had never mentioned knowing any of the occupants of the graveyard. The expensive lilies would surely not have been intended for old Mrs Tanner who had been buried last month and had not been in her right mind for many years. Then her brow cleared. The only possibility was that the colonel was taking them to Miss Delaney’s grave. Some kind of belated tribute? The gallant and respectful gesture of a gentleman who had had the misfortune to be unwittingly involved in her passing? She waited and, after a while, the colonel reappeared and got back into his car to drive on to his cottage.
THREE SILENT THINGS a cozy murder mystery (Village Mysteries Book 2) Page 17