The Sedleigh Hall Murder

by Roy Lewis

  Ward was puzzled. The man was uneasy, and angry yet he stayed, even now. He did not want to answer Ward’s questions, yet he stayed. ‘And you never saw Egan again, or talked to him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you knew very little about him, then? You wouldn’t know, for instance, whether he ever had any sort of liaison with one of the girls around here?’

  ‘Our acquaintance was short. We talked; but we didn’t talk about women.’

  He stood there, heavy, waiting, impatient. Ward felt the man was holding something back, or else was tensed for another question he did not want to answer. The silence between them grew, deepened, increased in tension. At last, with an unpleasant snorting noise, Bridges hawked and spat, and then turned and walked towards the door of the cottage. In his view, the interview was over.

  ‘Mr Bridges, tell me,’ Ward suddenly asked of the broad, retreating back. ‘You said you caught Egan in the woods, but you implied it wasn’t in woods on the Hardford Estate. Just where did you find him?’

  Bridges hesitated in his stride; he didn’t want to turn, but he did. A muscle jerked in his jaw. ‘Over there.’ He gestured vaguely.

  ‘Where?’ Ward pressed him. Bridges made no reply. Afterwards, Eric Ward could only think it was pure instinct that made him ask the question, for there was no essential reason that he should have thought of the location. But ask it he did.

  ‘The woods you caught Egan in,’ he said. ‘Were they the woods above Colonel Denby’s farm?’ When Bridges made no reply, Ward insisted, ‘It was Vixen Hill, wasn’t it? That’s where you caught him.’

  There was still no reply but Ward knew from the expression on Fred Bridges’s face that his surmise had been correct.

  * * *

  The discussion with Bridges had been briefer and less productive than Ward had hoped for. Equally, it had compounded some of the problems that had been bothering him. It was as though Egan was taking over his thoughts and his actions, driving him along an old, dusty track from which the footprints of earlier walkers had long been erased by time.

  And central to it was Vixen Hill.

  It was there that Arthur Egan had tried to rob Colonel Denby; there the colonel had lost his life. But what possible magnetic attraction had the farm held for Arthur Egan — to be drawn to it to kill, and as a result serve a prison sentence, and then to be drawn back to it, not once, according to Fred Bridges, but several times?

  And then, apparently, after the job offer in Stanley, nothing. Instead, a quiet, uneventful life in Westerhope, lonely, reclusive, until cancer gripped him and maybe sent fanciful images into his brain about a family that had never existed.

  Yet Ward knew something was missing. A piece of the puzzle remained to be fitted, and the answer lay at Vixen Hill.

  As he drove, he was preoccupied, and it was perhaps two miles from Vixen Hill before he realized he had taken a wrong turning. The lane was narrow and it was necessary to continue before he could find a turning place. In the event he was forced to drive for almost a mile further before he saw a side road. He pulled in, intending to reverse and go back the way he had come; instead, as he saw the sign itself, he changed his mind. It proclaimed SEDDON BURN.

  The narrow road looped over the hill, dipping into folds in the ground and zigzagging past open fields, following the track of a stream that wound its unhurried way through small farms and meadows. Some two miles ahead of him a tree-lined hill rose and he suspected that the village would lie at its foot; in fact, he discovered that the village lay beyond the crest, a scattering of houses, a Norman church and one village store. He drove on, descending, and then as he swung left he saw beyond the moss-grown stone wall the burned-out remains of Seddon Burn Hall.

  The house had stood under the shelter of the hill, but commanding a southerly aspect across the village and towards the rolling hills of Northumberland. It was approached by a long, curving drive flanked by elms and rhododendron; now, in the years since the hall had been destroyed the elm trees had died too, stricken by disease, while the rhododendron had flourished, spilling across the driveway in a tangle of green from which the stark trunks of the elms stood accusingly. To drive up there would be impossible; Ward parked the car, and thrust his way past the rhododendron and up towards the house.

  The fire had been extensive; the roof had gone and some of the walls had collapsed. Their blackened surfaces had been carpeted over the years by ivy and moss and grass, however, and though from a distance the remaining walls seemed stark and dead, on closer inspection there was a softness about them that was comforting. The sun was warm and the hum of bees in the air gave a pleasant background to his inspection of the ruins. He did not enter them; he suspected they might be dangerously near to collapse, so he contented himself with walking around their perimeter.

  His mind drifted back to the Scotswood Road pub where he had met Tiggy Williams; he had thought then of the contrast between the life-styles displayed in the West End of Newcastle and the country seat of Lord Morcomb; now, as he looked at the burned-out ruins of Seddon Burn Hall, he fancied he saw the bridge between them. For one day Sedleigh Hall could look like this, and a way of life that still owed so much to the past might be extinguished. Perhaps by a mundane force such as the Inland Revenue Commissioners, he thought wryly.

  He heard the rattle of stone and turned; a moment later he saw her, the big black pacing its nervous way among broken stone, the rider concentrating on the path ahead. She was wearing no riding cap this afternoon, and he realized for the first time that her hair was red-gold in colour, flaming under the warm sun. He moved and her head came up; she started, dragging on the rein involuntarily in her surprise, and then she recognized him.

  ‘Mr Ward! What are you doing here?’ she called, and came towards him.

  He glanced back at the ruins. ‘Thinking about anachronisms,’ he said.

  ‘Is that how you see us?’ She was perceptive. And her smile was warm and friendly. She slipped from the saddle and stood looking up at him. He was surprised, again, how small she looked.

  ‘Not exactly anachronistic. But different. Most of the people I know, and have met, live a very different kind of life in very different surroundings from yours.’

  Her smile faded and she looked about her. ‘But I wonder if they feel different? Oh, superficially, of course they do. But inside, I mean. Me, now, there are times I feel just . . . scared.’

  ‘Scared of what?’

  She looked at him, her eyes wide. ‘I’m not certain. The future, I suppose. Daddy’s a rich man but when he dies . . . it will be mine. That’s a responsibility, Mr Ward. Money . . . and possessions . . . they bring responsibilities that I’m not certain I can match up to.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be alone,’ Ward said.

  She hesitated, not sure what he meant. ‘No, probably not. But marriage wouldn’t remove the responsibilities. They could be shared, of course, but they’d still be there. And times are changing so rapidly — I sometimes wish I’d been born fifty years earlier. Things were more settled then.’

  ‘Hardly that,’ Ward said drily.

  She laughed. ‘A hundred and fifty, then. But you still haven’t explained your presence here. I told you before, I’m the original Nosey Parker.’

  ‘Accident, really. And the same curiosity of character that you suffer from, I suppose. Arthur Egan worked here. I thought I’d like to see . . . get the feel of the place.’

  She looked about her, frowning. ‘I remember it, not well, but vaguely, as it used to be. Now, I ride over here rarely. You . . . you’re a bit unusual, aren’t you, Mr Ward? What’s your first name, by the way? I can’t keep using these formalities.’

  Ward told her and then, as she looped her horse’s bridle over a young sycamore that was pushing its way through the base of the wall, he said, ‘How do you mean unusual?’

  ‘Coming out here. Going along to Michael’s. Do you have a streak of romanticism? I wouldn’t have thought in a man—’ She was going to say
of his age, but caught herself, confused. ‘I mean, do solicitors normally poke around old ruins when they administer an estate? Or, I wonder, spend as much time on such a case as you are?’

  She was perceptive. And slightly embarrassed. But her embarrassment was now shaded with something else. She was looking at him critically, in a way a woman did not look at a stranger, or a recent acquaintance. ‘It’s a difficult case,’ he said lamely.

  ‘Why?’

  He blinked at her directness. ‘Well . . . It’s difficult to explain.’

  ‘Difficult case, difficult explanation. So tell me,’ she commanded.

  Ward smiled, and looked around, leaned against the warm stone wall. The girl followed suit, folding her arms, watching him intently.

  And he told her some of it. How he had been a policeman, how he had turned to and been forced towards the solicitor’s office, and how he had become involved with the Egan administration. He told her how he felt there was something odd about it all, how the image that had built up in his mind of the lonely man at Westerhope did not square with the picture of a violent struggle on the bridge at Vixen Hill. And he told her about life in the Scotswood Road and in Byker, and about Arthur Egan and his half-brother Tommy, and all the while her eyes never left his face. He was tempted to explain about the other things, Tiggy Williams and Chief Constable Starling, but he held back, for these were matters of rumour perhaps, and bore no real relevance to the search for the beneficiaries to Egan’s estate. When he lapsed into silence, she kept that silence for a little while.

  ‘I know what you mean about anachronisms,’ she said at last, glancing back over her shoulder at the ruined walls of Seddon Burn Hall. ‘What you’ve told me — it’s all so distant from this, and me too, I suppose. Distant in place but in time, too.’

  ‘I’m not really so sure of that. As you said, everyone has responsibilities.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ She hesitated. ‘Daddy’s not too well, you know. It’s one of the reasons I came out here today, riding. And why I didn’t want David with me. I’m confused . . .’ Again she hesitated. She glanced at him worriedly, as though concerned that she should even be talking like this to a virtual stranger. But she went on. ‘You see, David and I . . . he wants to marry me and, well, I suppose we have a certain understanding. But I’ve been in no hurry, and that surely means a certain lack of decisiveness, or something, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You’re talking of David Penrose.’ When she nodded, he said, ‘Not necessarily indecisive. Just . . . young.’

  He wasn’t certain she liked that; she glanced at him sharply and he was again aware of the difference in their respective ages. Then she went on, ‘Be that as it may, I’m worried about Daddy, and, I confess, what’ll happen if he dies soon. David’s there, but . . .’

  ‘No other close relatives?’

  She shook her head and the sunlight glinted on her red-gold hair. ‘Not close. There’s a branch of the family in Ireland. Daddy hates them; no, loathes them would be a better description. I think it’s something to do with the attitudes they displayed during the thirties and forties. Very much a patriot, Daddy couldn’t forgive them for some utterances they made about Germany. Strange, isn’t it, how things said and done in the past can have echoes so many years later?’

  ‘People remember hurts,’ Ward said tritely.

  She smiled suddenly. ‘In fact, as far as I can gather, there must have been quite a performance before Daddy’s uncle died. It seems he didn’t have quite the same opinion of the Irish branch of the tree as Daddy did, and for a while it was touch and go whether the estates would be willed to him. He was bound to succeed to the title, of course, but as he tells it, there was the chance that much of the trust property would have been put in the way of my Irish relatives. Anyway, the quarrel, or whatever it was, blew over and title and lands came to Daddy. Which really is part of the trouble now.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You must remember, Daddy was not a young man when he succeeded to the title. And as soon as he did, this awful business about the estate duty came up. I needn’t explain to you just how important it all is — the valuation of the estate is bad enough, but Daddy knows too that even when it’s settled he’s going to have to find a great deal of ready cash to satisfy the Inland Revenue. It worries him, and he’s not well. He can’t decide whether to meet the liabilities by sale of some of the land — but he has this idea that he wants the land kept intact for me. I don’t really care — though I do care if those horrible opencast mining people are going to scar the landscape. The alternative is to sell some of his shareholdings. I’ve talked it over at length with David, and that seems the best solution. The trouble is, if Daddy does sell any of his largest holdings, he will lose quite a lot of money: prices are pretty low and there seems little prospect of them improving in the short term.’ She looked at him, smiling again suddenly. ‘I sound like a real economist, don’t I?’

  ‘In my experience economists aren’t as attractive as you.

  ‘Oh.’ It should have been a flippant remark and it should have been received as such. Instead, neither smiled, and she looked away from him. There was a short, edgy silence and Eric Ward cursed himself, wondering what had possessed him to speak as he did, and wondering too why she had reacted the way she did.

  After a little while, without looking at him again, and in a reflective tone, she asked, ‘Why did you leave the police force? It wasn’t just that you’d taken your degree, was it?’

  ‘No.’ He hesitated. ‘I might have left anyway, but I was told I had glaucoma.’

  ‘Oh.’ Again she was silent for a while. ‘Did you have treatment . . . surgery?’

  ‘No. I keep it at bay.’

  There was a stilted quality about the conversation; the earlier confidential ease between them had disappeared. ‘Do you miss the police work?’ she asked, and it seemed to him a polite, inconsequential, even foolish question.

  ‘It gave me hard work, poor pay, little promotion, much frustration, occasional danger, a broken marriage and, eventually, illness. No, I don’t miss police work.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ From the trees on the hill a harsh cawing suddenly ‘broke out as a colony of rooks set up a cacophony, perhaps to drive off an intruder. Anne Morcomb turned her head and looked at Eric Ward. ‘You’ve not thought of marriage again?’

  ‘Once bitten . . . No, in the police force, it can cause problems. I was away, she was lonely, there was one miscarriage, we saw so little of each other. She found someone else. A common enough story. Absence can sometimes make the heart grow less than fond.’

  She smiled faintly. ‘Proximity can do the same, I suspect. My mother and father . . . they weren’t happy, you know. She died when I was quite young, so I don’t remember too much about her, except that she was very beautiful, but I do recall the rows they had, and she seemed such a . . . sad person, as I remember. I’ve thought about it as I’ve grown older and it seems to me to be something I can’t understand. You see, it wasn’t Daddy’s first marriage, and one would think that after one broken marriage a person would take great care in a second choice of partner. Yet I don’t think they got on too well. I’ve talked about it with Michael — you know, Michael Denby. He’s older than me, he remembers my mother and he recalls how distant she and Daddy seemed to be. And yet Daddy can be such a loving person. Over the years he’s shown me so much overt affection that I wonder why he should, in effect, have failed twice in his marriages.’

  ‘Failure is perhaps overstating it, surely?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’ She rose suddenly, loosened the reins of the black mare and mounted. She sat on the horse, looking down at Eric Ward thoughtfully. ‘You haven’t told me quite everything about your investigations, have you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Yes you do. In some ways, Eric Ward, you’re rather a transparent person. I think you know — or suspect something about this man Egan that offends . . . what? Your
sense of justice? And you can’t make up your mind what to do about it.’

  ‘As indecisive as you,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘You won’t put me off with that kind of remark,’ she replied, but smiled, nevertheless. ‘I still feel you know something about Egan that you haven’t told me. You also know I’m a very curious person.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘So do something about Egan. Don’t let it drift. You’ll be happier.’

  ‘So might you be,’ he replied, and her smile faded. She turned the black’s head and began to pace away. When she was some fifty yards off she looked back, but said nothing, then with a touch of her heels she sent the mare galloping towards the trees.

  She looked, at this distance, very confident, very sure of herself and her position. But now, Eric Ward knew better.

  In a strange way the knowledge depressed him. Over the years he had received many confidences, taken part in many private conversations where people had talked to him of their fears and aspirations and hidden terrors. Little men in darkened rooms, prostitutes drunk in the cells, one arrogant businessman who, under questioning, had suddenly broken down to confess his fraud and expose much, much more of his personality. It happened also in the offices of Francis, Shaw and Elder, with clients who wanted more than merely a legal shoulder to lean on. Legal problems had a way of spilling over into personal ones.

  In all these, however, Eric Ward had managed to retain a certain detachment. Express sympathy, but in the main don’t feel it: it was too dangerous, and too destructive of logic and reason. Perhaps that was why, now, on a sunny afternoon a conversation with a young woman disturbed and depressed him. She had an inheritance and position — yet she felt indecisive and afraid of the future.

  He had no part in that future, and yet his detachment was not complete. He walked back to the car trying to shut thoughts of their conversation out of his mind; her words, and the way she had looked, leaning against the wall of the ruins at Seddon Burn.

  In the car he checked the map. It would be necessary to take several minor roads to make his way towards the A1. From there he would need to cut across towards the coast, near Alnwick, and take the run north to Warkworth if he was going to interview Sarah Boden and see the last of the damned Egan administration. He calculated it would take him an hour or more.