‘Absolutely distraught, almost fainted when the realisation hit her. The poor girl began to tremble and kept saying “what will I do”, over and over again. Eventually she calmed enough for me to offer to help her to her room but instead she shook herself away from me then ran out of the door.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘I presumed she’d gone off to her room. It was ... it was the last time I saw her.’
‘Was anyone in the study with you, Sir Arthur, either before or after Miss Bamford returned to the house?’
‘Are you asking if anyone can substantiate I was where I say I was?’
‘If you want to put it that way, then yes, it would be helpful.’
‘I’m afraid not, Inspector. Poor Jervis was in such a flap I didn’t think it right to be ringing him to bring me tea or anything so I was quite alone. When Jenny ran out I just sat at my desk and stared out of the window.’
‘The third shot — what did you do when you heard it?’
‘Initially I thought I was just reliving the horror but realised this was, indeed, another shot and closer by. It seemed to have come from along the corridor so I dashed to Jenny’s room.’
‘Why did you think it might be Miss Bamford?’
‘I didn’t. It’s just that Jenny’s was the nearest, apart from Isabelle’s. I knocked but received no answer so I went in. Her room was empty. I looked in Isabelle’s room and then Alan Haleson’s, because his was next to Jenny’s, but both were empty. I went to Tom’s after those and found Jenny sprawled across his bed.’
‘Had anyone else arrived by then?’
‘No, it was a few seconds later when Jervis and young Alan arrived. We checked Jenny wasn’t breathing then left, locking the door behind us. There was nothing further to be done until the constable arrived.’
He looked a little pale but asked if he could assist me any further.
‘The problem is, Sir Arthur, for the life of me I cannot understand why she’d do it.’
‘Why?’
‘Yes, sir, why would Lady Isabelle go to such lengths? I do understand she’d expressed unhappiness with the marriage — but to kill him? It makes no sense. With a shotgun? It seems too strong to me, Sir Arthur. What do you think?’
‘Can any man understand what goes through the mind of a woman, Inspector? All I know is that Isabelle had gone on and on trying to stop the wedding for a month before she took the drastic action she did.’ He once more massaged his temples and closed his eyes before speaking slowly, as if to himself. ‘Whatever am I going to do?’
Four
When I’d finished with Sir Arthur, Sawyer joined me and I suggested we take a walk down by the lake. The autumn sun still shone but its power was fading as the days grew ever shorter. Golden leaves skittered across the surface of the water in a final regatta before the winter storms arrived.
Sawyer fastened the top button of his overcoat.
‘Any particular reason for this, sir?’
‘Not really, Cudlip’s breakfast is still lying a bit heavy. He certainly knows how to fill a man up. I thought the exercise might help and, besides, that house gives me the creeps.’ I glanced back up the hill and shivered. ‘I’m never comfortable surrounded by that much money, especially when the family fortune is built on countless deaths. On top of that there’s something not right up there, even if the Coroner’s version is correct. A mother killing her own son because she didn’t want him to marry? Hardly bears thinking about.’
‘You said “if” the Coroner’s version is correct, sir. Do you still think it wasn’t?’
‘I’m not sure. We’ve two of the staff still missing and several people whose whereabouts when the shootings happened can’t be corroborated so I’m keeping an open mind. Any news on Collinge or the Sharp boy?’
‘Nothing on the nurse yet but I’ve put the word out as you asked. She’ll show up somewhere. As for Billy, I had an interesting chat with his mate, Alf Nash, when I called in to see him about another matter.’
Nash had been accused of stealing some bread and riding away on a bike he’d taken from Charlie Himlet’s yard. When Sawyer tackled him, the lad denied it.
‘He said it was Billy Sharp, sir. Nash bumped into him just after Billy had taken the bike. Told me Billy was shaking and saying he needed to get away. Claimed someone had chased him in the woods. Only other thing Nash could make out was Billy had been caught with a shotgun in the morning by Perkins, then saw someone take it from the shed.’
‘And he didn’t tell Nash who it was?’
‘Apparently not. As I say, Nash could hardly get anything out of Billy, only that he was trying to escape from something awful. If someone was after him then it’s not surprising he was scared.’
‘Could he just have made it up, do you think? Trying to muddy the trail?’
‘It’s possible, I suppose. Young Alf Nash is a bit of a blabbermouth, so Billy might have lied to him.’
We’d walked the whole path round the lake when a cloud briefly blotted out the sun and the temperature dropped dramatically. I paused, taking in the beauty of the scene, the house up the hill to our left and the late afternoon light accenting autumn on the hills beyond the water. Several ducks swam towards their shelter, a magnificent confection in the shape of a pagoda, which someone had taken immense trouble to paint in red, green and gold. A short gangplank rose from the water into the entrance, an easy entrance for the ducks but not for any passing fox.
‘Could we get back to the house, sir? It’s brass monkeys out here!’
I laughed. ‘Come on then, but I need to talk to you about Elizabeth Parry. Did you know she and I have known one another before?’
I filled him in as far as he needed, leaving out my marriage offer and the personal carnage which had followed her disappearance. Even so, Sawyer asked the obvious question.
‘Do you think you should be ... well... You know, sir. If you don’t mind me asking. Couldn’t it be a bit difficult, like?’
I told him the truth; I just didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure a crime other than the murder of Tom Barleigh by his mother had been committed here. If one had, could Elizabeth be a reasonable suspect? Was my earlier relationship likely to blur my judgement? I hoped not, but Sawyer certainly had a point.
‘I think I’ll need to cross that bridge when I come to it. Let’s keep it to ourselves for now and I’ll talk to the boss about it when we get to that point.’
Sawyer looked at me sideways but knew enough not to disagree with his senior officer. I, for my part, hadn’t a clue how I was going to raise it with Dyer.
George Perkins’ potting shed was neat, tidy, and organised. I’d bumped into him on my way up from the lake and asked him to send up the gardeners to the yard. He’d suggested I went in his shed until he found them. The ten minutes I was waiting gave me a chance to look around where the shotgun had been taken from and find the place in the yard where Billy Sharp might have hidden when he reportedly watched someone take it. Needless to say, the shed bore no evidence of a lock and anyone could be in and out in no time.
Plant pots in rows straight as soldiers stood to attention on a third of a bench stretching virtually the whole length of one wall. I’m no gardener but even I could tell that preparations were already underway for the following season. Strawberry plants and rhubarb crowns were the only ones I recognised amongst the couple of dozen varieties of foliage waiting to be moved out to the cold frames and greenhouses. Every one of them looked healthy and it was easy to see why. The almost black compost in a bin at the end of the bench smelled sweet, earthy, and crumbled effortlessly through my fingers.
A further half of the surface carried evidence of this year’s harvest; a wicker basket still a quarter full of apples lay beside a stack of trays of the fruit individually wrapped in newspaper. When completed these would doubtless be transported up to the house to keep Mrs Veasey well supplied over the winter.
I sat down in a dilapidated armchair when the two ga
rdeners came in, holding their caps in their hands. One man was tall and the other small and fat like the pot-bellied stove warming my feet. I asked them their names. The smaller one answered.
‘I’m Ted Ward and this here’s Dickie Beasley. Mr Perkins said you wanted to see us.’
‘You were the two on the gate after Constable Sawyer arrived, is that right?’
Ward, who seemed to be the spokesman, confirmed that they were.
‘And no-one went out after that?’
‘No, sir, no-one went out.’
‘You were there the whole time? Didn’t slope off for a quick smoke?’
‘Well, we did have a smoke, but stayed on duty like we was told.’
Throughout the exchange, Beasley fidgeted and kept nudging his partner until Ward reacted by flicking his cap at him.
‘Is there something you want to say, Dickie?’
The tall gardener looked like he wanted the ground to open up beneath him.
‘Take no notice, Inspector, he’s just being stupid.’
‘I think I’ll be the judge of that, Ted. Now come on man, spit it out.’
The gardeners looked at each other and Ward nodded.
‘Go on then, Dickie, we’d best come clean.’
Beasley now stared at the ground as if his very life depended on it.
‘I said to Ted we should tell the truth from the start, sir. After all, we know Miss Parry can’t have had anything to do with what happened.’
‘Miss Parry? What are you talking about?’
‘She went out, Mr Given. Must have been before we got to the gate and after she’d been with the others in the kitchen, but out she was. She came back again about fifteen minutes after the constable sent us up there. Said she’d needed to get out for a walk.’
After the gardeners left, I headed for the warmth of Mrs Veasey’s kitchen. She greeted me with a great deal of fuss and despite my protests soon had me well provided with sandwiches, tea and freshly-baked scones. All of the time she was preparing these the cook was throwing enquiries in my direction. Had I settled into my lodgings? Was I from around these parts? Then the one she really wanted to ask from the start: was I making any progress with my investigation?
‘Slowly but surely, Mrs Veasey, slowly but surely. These things take time, you know, everything has to be checked and double-checked before we can be sure that we’ve got the picture straight. Take your own story as an example, Mrs Veasey.’
‘My story, Inspector? I’m certain I told Constable Sawyer the truth. I hope you’re not suggesting anything different.’
‘Not at all. I don’t believe you’d lie to the constable but you might not have told him everything you knew. It’s just that we don’t always see what’s important when we’re telling a story, do we? Little details might be missed out which make all the difference. That’s why I’d like you to go through it again with me, if you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t mind in the least, Mr Given, if you think that I can help in any way but, as I told Constable Sawyer, I wasn’t even here when those awful things happened. I was down in the village.’
‘Would you normally go out at that time of the day?’
‘Only occasionally. If I’m short of anything I’d ask Phibbs, the driver, or one of the lads from the garden to collect it for me but we’d all been up to our eyes in the preparations for the wedding so there was nobody available. Sir Arthur had especially asked for some nice haddock for his dinner so I had to go into the village myself. I could have done without it, I can tell you; it was hectic enough in the kitchen as it was, without losing an hour or so on special errands.’
‘It would have taken you as long as that?’
‘Oh yes, Inspector. I’m not as fit as I once was —’ the cook patted her not insubstantial hips by way of explanation — ‘and it would take me around half an hour each way and I’d not get around the fishmonger and bakery without a bit of a chin-wag. I’d have gone out shortly before eleven. Sir Arthur asked me for the fish soon after breakfast, so I had to make up sandwiches and cold meats for lunch before I left because I wouldn’t be back in time to do it later.’ With this she let out a distressed moan. ‘If only I’d gone straight away, right after breakfast, none of this would have happened.’
‘How would that be, Mrs Veasey?’
‘Well, I’d have seen everything from the kitchen window and might have been able to shout a warning. Perhaps Lady Isabelle would have stopped herself if she knew I was there.’
I did my best to comfort the cook, telling her that it was unlikely that she could have prevented what happened but I didn’t sound convincing. Unfortunately it was true she might have made all the difference in the world by being in the kitchen that morning and there was no way of changing that. She hadn’t done anything wrong by going later, but circumstances had conspired to make her feel guilty nonetheless. She took a good few minutes to settle down before I could continue.
‘You told Constable Sawyer that you saw someone in the woods when you were on the road, is that right?’
‘Yes, Inspector, I did. I’d turned out of the gate and been walking for about five minutes when I noticed a man, just standing there peering over the wall. We often have walkers in the woods and I suspect one or two must stop there to have a nosey so I didn’t think much about it at the time. He didn’t seem to be doing any harm and I left him to it. It was only when I was in the village that a couple of people mentioned seeing someone hanging around and asking questions. I thought then I should have shouted across to the stranger and asked him what he was doing there.’
‘Did they say what he’d been asking?’
‘Mainly about who lived here and what people thought about them. Apparently he showed quite a lot of interest in Miss Parry, how long she’d been there, what she looked like, if she ever came into the village, that kind of thing. You don’t think he could have had anything to do with what happened do you, sir?’
‘It’s still too early to say, Mrs Veasey. Could you describe him, or was anyone in the village able to tell you what he looked like?’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t really get a proper view of him, Inspector. As I said, I didn’t think anything of him at the time, just noticed he was there. I’d say he was a little above your height, but on the skinny side, and possibly had dark hair, although it could just have looked darker in the woods. No-one in the village described him, only saying that he was young and looked a bit suspicious. Someone said he might have been sleeping rough, by the state of his clothes.’
I asked her a few more questions to try to draw out any further detail, but there was none forthcoming so I left her to her work.
I went for a better look around Tom’s bedroom. I needed to verify the upstairs maid’s account and to see if there was anything to explain the death of his fiancée in this room. The search after Jenny Bamford had been found was, at best, cursory. The assumption was she’d committed suicide. Sawyer had the body and the gun, so there was no need to look further.
Somehow the maid’s account didn’t ring true. She said she’d seen both Tom and his mother at the same time but how could that be, given the measurements I’d taken on the lawn and my observations from the window on my first day here?
I spent the first few minutes checking the views and confirming my initial assessments. The walls were thick, the windows narrow and the rhododendron bush hid most of the lawn, except for the few feet around Tom Barleigh. I knew then Clark couldn’t have seen what she claimed from her position, standing by the desk. Was she mistaken, or lying?
I began to examine the room from the perspective of the third death. Why would Jenny Bamford shoot herself? And why in this room? I’d already learned from Alan Haleson she wasn’t entirely in love with Tom Barleigh, so his demise wouldn’t be likely to result in broken-hearted grief. Could it be the loss of a fortune? Hardly. From all accounts the Barleigh’s were comfortable but not wealthy, at least not rich enough for Jenny to commit suicide because she couldn
’t share in their affluence. She’d been a good-looking young woman who’d have found another well-heeled suitor with little trouble.
I found the room exactly how I’d expect a young man’s to be, with the exception of the medication stacked on the dressing table. The sheer quantity of painkillers, tinctures, liniments and dressings told the tale of how damaged the poor fellow had been. I envied his immaculately tidy shelves and drawers; one of the benefits of having servants.
His desk was less well organised, with random stacks of paper of varying heights and, in several cases, overlapping each other. However, on closer inspection, it became clear that Tom had been reading up on the Great War, as there were several photographs and written accounts of decisive actions. One pile contained diagrams and family trees, as well as old letters, clearly related to the history of the baronetcy. The rest appeared haphazard, with just personal notes and material on anything which had caught his imagination: cars, aeroplanes, fishing, and the like.
It was plain to see why he instructed the staff not to touch his desk. He’d never find anything again if it was moved. Oddly, there was one corner of the desk almost clear, covered by a single photograph. It was of three young men in casual clothes, as if pulled together in the middle of a game of cricket. I turned it over and discovered three names written on the back. This must be the one given to Tom by Miss Leeming. Below the names, written in what appeared to be a different hand, were what looked like three teardrops with the letters ‘BE’ above. A note scribbled at the bottom asked “Beatrice?”
I spent a few moments trying to make sense of this with no luck, so put it to one side and began to make notes of what else was on the desk. I moved on to the wardrobe, where there appeared to be nothing unusual. The box containing the revolver had been removed to the evidence store along with the gun itself, waiting for fingerprint tests. There were fewer outdoor clothes than normal, and the indoor garments were perhaps a little larger than a fashionable young man might have wanted, had it not been a necessity when someone else was dressing him. I removed the bottom drawer and lifted it to the bed to examine the contents. As I did so I saw a large manila envelope lying on the floor. When I knelt and reached under to pick it up I heard a footstep behind me.
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