The Sedleigh Hall Murder

by Roy Lewis

  ‘I’m not a copper,’ Ward said quietly.

  ‘You was a copper when—’

  ‘I’ve left the Force now. I’m working with a solicitor.’ Tiggy Williams looked relieved, but only slightly so: solicitors were obviously not to be trusted either. He brightened visibly, however, when Parton put a pint of Scotch Ale in front of him. He drank deeply from it, and froth stained his spiky beard. Ward suddenly remembered the library at Sedleigh Hall and looked around him at the grimy interior of the Hydraulic Engine. They were worlds apart, and suddenly impatient, he glared at Jackie Parton.

  ‘Well?’

  The ex-jockey raised an eyebrow at Ward’s impatience, then shrugged. ‘As you know, I’ve been asking around. The other day I called in on old Tiggy, here. We got chatting, and at the end he had an interesting story to tell.’

  ‘No stories,’ Tiggy Williams muttered.

  Jackie Parton smiled engagingly. ‘Oh, come on, Tiggy, all friends here. And no come-back.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Williams muttered, and finished his Scotch. Parton rose and bought him another; the old man did not look up to meet Ward’s eyes. When Parton returned he put the fresh pint down and said, ‘Thing was, Eric, as you ask around one thing leads to another. I thought I’d try to find out if this woman called Meg Salter could help us in our enquiries. She gave evidence at Arthur Egan’s trial. She was the one — a dairymaid — who saw Egan burning bloodstained clothing after Colonel Denby died. Didn’t get to see her; died a few years back, but had a long chat with her son. He told me Meg Salter always had a conscience about giving that evidence: apparently she liked Arthur Egan a lot. Bit sweet on him, it seems — she was a widow at the time — but he always kept pretty much to himself. But she saw him burn that clothing all right, and when the police came to her she told them. But she always felt sorry she’d done it; sorry for Egan. But Tiggy here, he wasn’t sorry, were you, hey?’

  ‘Doing my duty,’ Tiggy Williams muttered.

  ‘Duty my backside,’ Parton said affably. ‘Your motives were quite different, from what you told me the other night.’

  Tiggy Williams was nervous. He looked uneasily at Jackie Parton, then at Ward, and then back to Parton again. ‘You said there was no need—’

  ‘No need for it to go any further, no further than my friend here, is what I said,’ Parton soothed him. ‘But what you worried about? Egan’s dead. I told you so. There’s no hassle; no problem. So you can tell us, can’t you? You already told me, anyway — so just tell Mr Ward here, now.’

  ‘I was caught clear, you see, that was the problem,’ Tiggy Williams said, in a self-justifying whine.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Ward said, leaning forward.

  ‘It was a bloke off one of the ships at the Quayside. We got talking in the boozer, and he said he knew where he could get his hands on some of the stuff. Snow.’

  ‘Cocaine?’ Ward said unbelievingly.

  ‘That’s right. Oh, I know, it wasn’t my thing. I mean, drugs is something I never . . . But this seemed to be too good to miss. It was two hundred quid, just to pass it on to some lads at the coast. I’d just be the go-between. And I swear I never even got my hands on the stuff. Next thing I know was that this bloke didn’t turn up. He’d been hauled in, as he left the ship. They canned him, then two days later I got hauled in as well. And they really put the screws on me.’

  ‘What kind of screws?’

  The beady eyes took on a cunning glint. ‘Come on Mr. Ward, you know all about that. They had a list of things stuff that got pulled from various jobs. They was going to say it all came through me. All right, I was a fence, I’m admittin’ that — don’t do no more now, mind you — but I had a record and I took stuff. But this list, I mean it was just rubbish, wasn’t it! And then I was pulled in for a private talk with the Super. And he laid it on the line. They was going to fix me with the snow job as well. I’d have been put away a long time on that, I tell you—’

  ‘But you said you didn’t receive the cocaine — the seaman didn’t turn up.’

  ‘That’s the truth!’ Cunning was replaced by earnestness. ‘Never saw him; never touched the stuff. But they’d pulled him in, and the Super said I’d get booked as well. It’d take just a grain, he said.’

  Ward hesitated. ‘You mean they were going to plant a grain of cocaine on you and book you as being tied in with the smuggler?’

  ‘That was it.’

  Ward watched the old man for a moment. A faint odour of decay seemed to emanate from him and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘But you didn’t get booked, Tiggy, is that it?’

  ‘I didn’t get booked. I got offered a deal, instead.’ Ward could see it coming. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘The Super took me in this room and he closed the door and he said we got this bastard and we got him cold but juries can be awkward buggers and we need just a bit of evidence to make the whole thing watertight and all I had to do was say this bloke had come into my pawnshop and tried to pawn a ring and some silver and I handed it over to the coppers and then they’d be asking me to take an identification parade. You got to understand, Mr Ward, I was scared: they had a whole book to throw at me, and this snow thing—’

  ‘How did they fix the parade?’ Ward asked, feeling slightly sick.

  ‘There was no real problem. They had them in this room and I got this feller pointed out to me. Then they went out in the yard and lined ‘em up and I went out and put the finger on him. And that was that. I got spruced up when I went to court later, but that was that — I gave the story and it went along quiet enough.’

  ‘The man was Arthur Egan?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Had he ever come into your pawnshop?’

  ‘Hell, no, never seen him before that parade.’ Tiggy finished his Scotch Ale and looked hopefully at the two men sitting with him. Neither moved.

  ‘Why now, Tiggy? Why not years ago?’ Ward asked in disgust.

  ‘What for? Hell, if I’d spoken up at the time I’d have got throwed inside myself! And later . . . Egan might’ve come for me. I was scared a while after he came out, but he never came looking for me. And now . . . well, I heard Jackie was askin’ around, and there’s no edge, is there? The old bugger’s dead now, and they’re gone, nearly all of them, so no hassle.’

  Eric Ward’s lips were dry. He was remembering a previous conversation, in another pub. ‘Tell me, Tiggy, who was the Super who took you into the room and . . . persuaded you?’

  Tiggy Williams managed a malicious grin. ‘Him? Oh, he was a hard bastard, that one. Knew how to put the screws on all right. But you know something else? I reckon he was being screwed too. I tell you, he wanted me to finger Egan bad. He was sweating, and usually it’s the poor little sod like me who does the sweating.’

  ‘Who was it, Tiggy?’

  ‘Starling. You know, him that became Chief Constable, later.’

  * * *

  The question was, did it really matter?

  Jackie Parton was noncommittal about it all. His attitude was that he was being paid to dig out information and if what he discovered was not exactly the information required by Eric Ward, that wasn’t his fault. He’d managed to discover very little that might lead Ward to the beneficiaries of the estate, but he had certainly raised other problems.

  * * *

  Ward sat in his office the following morning with the Egan file open in front of him. An immense depression gripped him; he felt he was in danger of moving into matters that were irrelevant and damaging. It was no business of his to learn whether or not the retired Chief Constable had been guilty of forging evidence and worse, over twenty years ago. It was not his affair to discover why it had been felt necessary to push Egan to trial on evidence that, according to ex-Detective Inspector Kenton, could well have been planted. It was possible the police had then worked on the same instincts that had often motivated Eric Ward: they had known Egan had killed Denby, but the evidence was thin, so they had ‘arranged’
matters.

  But did it now really matter? Egan was dead; the events twenty years old and more; the Chief Constable a farmer near Jedburgh and among the hunting set he had yearned to join for years; what was to be gained by raking over these old, dying coals?

  There had been no replies to the advertisement, apart from some obvious fortune-hunting ones which could be easily disposed of, and he was no nearer to finding the beneficiaries of the Egan estate than he had been at the beginning. What was worse, he was beginning to become obsessed with matters of no relevance to his basic enquiries, and that was bad.

  Vaguely dissatisfied, Ward opened the envelope again and looked at the lock of blond hair. He wondered how long Arthur Egan had kept it. Then the photographs:

  Egan with Tommy Andrews. The baby . . . was it Egan’s child, or, as was more likely, was it a photograph of Tommy as a baby?

  And then the grave, and the churchyard. Perhaps the answer lay there.

  The phone rang. The switchboard girl explained it was a Mr Michael Denby. He said he’d made some enquiries, and come across a man who had befriended Arthur Egan after he had come out of prison. It might be useful to interview him. He lived in a cottage on the Hardford Estate.

  His name was Bridges. Fred Bridges.

  After Denby had rung off Ward took the letter out of the file again, and read the last few lines.

  ‘So, watch how you go, lad, and good luck. And no more nonsense, hey? Yours sincerely Fred.’

  There were various matters to be dealt with in the office before Ward could get away; Paul Francis had pushed some more files in his direction and he needed to ensure that they contained matters he could deal with at home later. By lunchtime, however, he was clear enough to leave the office and drive north again. It was a sunny afternoon, and the roads were fairly quiet, so he made good time. He decided he’d call in to see Michael Denby first, before driving on to the Hardford Estate to see Bridges.

  On this occasion Ward ran the car down the track and parked near the garages, before crossing the stream and walking up to the house. He found Denby out at the back, in the small orchard, sawing wood. He was stripped to the waist in the warm afternoon, and his heavily muscled body glistened with sweat, while his ruddy complexion was now glowing as the result of his exertions.

  ‘I really came to thank you for your help, and to ask just who this man Bridges is, before I go to see him.’

  Denby ran a massive forearm across his forehead. ‘I came across his name up at the local pub the other evening, and was introduced to him afterwards. He wasn’t all that keen to talk, but in the end he did admit he knew Egan after he came out of jug. He’s retired now, but he was a gamekeeper for Lord Morcomb for years, apparently. That’s how he came to meet Egan. Arrested him, it seems.’

  ‘Arrested him?’

  ‘Poaching, of all things,’ Denby said, shaking his head slowly. ‘It all seems a bit odd, but Bridges got to like Egan and somehow or other the charges were dropped and Bridges apparently helped Egan get a decent job. But no doubt he’ll tell you himself. Drink before you go?’

  Ward refused, explaining he had better get on because he had it in mind to call in at Warkworth on the way back, to try to see the woman Anne Morcomb had mentioned — Sarah Boden. ‘And after that, well, I think we’re just going to have to wind up the estate quickly. I don’t see much hope of tracing Egan’s relatives. It’s not been long, but there are too many dead ends.’

  ‘Well, anything I can do to help.’

  He took some further directions from Denby and then went back to his car. A twenty-minute drive through winding back lanes brought him to the tiny hamlet where Fred Bridges had his cottage. It was neat, sprucely-kept, with a white-painted wicker gate and trailing ivy all along its front. Rather twee for Ward’s taste, he could yet understand a man wishing to spend his declining years in such a quiet spot.

  Not that Fred Bridges was ready to decline yet. When he stood in the open doorway he filled it. He was perhaps sixty-six years of age, over six feet tall, with a shock of grey hair, a deep, massive chest, and long, powerfully muscled arms. His face was the colour and texture of leather, his mouth grim, his attitude a no-nonsense one. Ward could understand how he might have ruled the Morcomb estates and their shooting rights with a rod of iron: he looked the kind of man who would have beaten the hell out of a poacher rather than taken him to the magistrates.

  ‘You’ll be the gentleman Mr Denby spoke of; the one making enquiries about Arthur Egan.’

  He spoke with the curling Northumberland ‘rr’ in his throat, and his directness suggested their interview would be short — particularly since, rather than invite Ward into the cottage, the man stepped outside and sat down on the low stone wall in the sunshine, waiting for Ward to put his questions.

  Having briefly explained the purpose of his enquiries, Eric Ward said, ‘I gather you became friendly with Egan some time after he came out of prison.’

  ‘Matter of months after he was released, I recall,’ Bridges said laconically.

  ‘And I gather you met him in a . . . er . . . professional capacity?’

  ‘You mean I catched him poaching, don’t you. Yes, something like that.’

  ‘He wasn’t prosecuted,’ Ward remarked.

  Fred Bridges stared at him without expression for almost a minute. He seemed to be calculating, weighing his words, preparing, discarding, sorting out phrases he might use. In the silence Ward heard from across the valley a car starting up, distant, out of place in the warm hamlet where Bridges lived.

  ‘I’ll tell you how it was,’ Bridges said abruptly. ‘In my job with Lord Morcomb I was responsible for tramp in’ most of the Hardford Estate. But poachers, they don’t keep to boundaries. And there’s some roads they take where they can be catched easy as a wink, if you knows where. But it meant me and my squad, we worked better movin’ off Hardford. So his lordship had this agreement with those leasin’ properties on the Hardford boundaries that I could move on them and take poachers if I caught them. They’d go along with the prosecutions after.’ He snapped off a budding rose from the bush beside him and inspected it critically for greenfly. Fancifully, Ward thought he detected the same game-keeping glint in the man’s eye as would have been present all the many nights in the woods. ‘Anyway,’ Bridges continued, ‘I knew at this time that someone new and clumsy was abroad. Couple of times I heard him; saw him once. Couldn’t be sure he was taking anything, particularly since his timing was odd. Dusk, like, not late on in the dark. So I went up one afternoon and watched and waited, and I saw him in the lane and I followed him, other side of the hedge. In the dusk he slipped into the woods. So I went in and got him. Told him I knew he was a poacher, and said I’d beat hell out of him if I ever caught him with a bird.’

  ‘What did he say in answer?’

  ‘Nothing. Just stood there. Mind, if he’d have turned nasty, I’d have beaten the hell out of him.’

  ‘So what happened then?’ Ward asked.

  ‘Few days later, caught him again. But different this time. I found a brace of pheasant with their necks snapped, and I confronted him with them, told him I had him by the short and curlies this time.’

  ‘And -?’

  ‘Took him back to my place.’ Fred Bridges looked away from Ward suddenly as though he didn’t want Ward to see his face. His hands were still, as though a certain tension had crept into his veins. ‘We had a talk,’ he said abruptly. ‘And I decided I wouldn’t hand him over to the magistrates. You see, them pheasants, I couldn’t prove he’d took them. Some other night lad might’ve done it and been scared off by Egan’s blundering. And Egan said he didn’t know nothing about the birds. So I didn’t know what to believe. Anyway, I asked him about himself and he said he was just out of prison and had no job and I took a shine to him, took pity on him if you like. We had a few drinks together, and he seemed a good enough bloke, so I got his address from him and then a few days later I got in touch with a friend of mine and fixed Egan up with a
job. Market gardener. He stayed there, I’m told, rest of his working life.’

  ‘Did you keep in touch with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you write this letter to him?’ Ward extracted the letter from the file and held it out to Bridges. The man stiffened, turned slowly. He seemed very reluctant to look at the letter; he handled it gingerly, with an inexplicable tension. Then, after a moment he seemed to relax. He handed it back. ‘No date on it. But I wrote it. Must’ve been when I fixed him up in Stanley. Yeh, that’s my letter.’

  Ward stared at Bridges with a feeling of disappointment. Somehow, he had expected more than this. He put the letter back in the file. ‘I thought . . . I’d hoped you might have had a longer, more friendly relationship with Egan.’

  ‘No. That was all there was to it.’

  Ward hesitated. There was something odd about Bridges’s tale, something that seemed to leave questions unanswered. ‘You took a bit of a chance, didn’t you?’ he asked after a short silence.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Writing to an acquaintance about a job for someone you’d only known a short time.’

  ‘I liked him,’ Bridges replied shortly.

  ‘But you’d met him under pretty strange circumstances — walking the woods, maybe poaching. And then he told you he’d just come out of prison. I mean, they’re hardly recommendations, are they? What made you—’

  ‘I was sorry for him.’ Fred Bridges rose to his feet and half turned his back on Eric Ward. He surveyed the quiet street of the hamlet as though Ward were no longer with him. A hard man, a strong, self-sufficient man, not the kind of individual who would be given to philanthropic gestures of any kind to a stranger he found prowling his estates.

  ‘I find your conduct difficult to understand, Mr Bridges,’ Ward said quietly.

  The ex-gamekeeper made no reply for a moment. Then he turned, slowly, and glared at Ward. They were much of a height and Bridges had allowed resentment to seep into his eyes. ‘I don’t really give a damn what you think, friend. But that’s the way it was.’