‘Start talking, mate,’ grunted the DS, watching Daniel Westbrook in the rear-view mirror as he sat next to Markham. So far, Westbrook had not said a word and Noakes’s patience was fast evaporating.
‘I’ll make it easy for you, Mr Westbrook.’
Markham’s voice was colder than the North Sea.
‘You knew the killer’s identity but chose to say nothing.’
Aubrey Carstone’s deputy looked as though he hadn’t slept for days, eyes like black pips in the sallow gourd of his face.
‘I didn’t know anything for certain, Inspector.’
‘I believe you got the wind up when your uncle’s papers went missing after the first murder.’
An infinitesimal nod. It was enough.
‘Helen Melville had talked about a mystery, an unsolved crime from the past. You made the connection with Alex Carter straight away.’
Another nod.
‘You figured she was killed because of something hidden in those papers . . . a clue your uncle let slip.’ Impassively, Markham added, ‘Complicity to murder perhaps.’
Westbrook jack-knifed as though he had been kicked in the stomach.
Nice one, guv, thought Noakes shooting another glance in the mirror. You’ve got the bastard on the ropes now.
‘I knew there were some private things of my uncle’s in storage.’ Westbrook spoke low and fast. ‘Just odds and ends, stuff that had been found in his house and passed to my mother as his executor. They ended up in her attic . . . nobody even remembered they were there.’
‘Until you went looking.’
‘At first there didn’t seem to be anything, but then I found this . . .’ Westbrook reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small Silvine notebook. ‘He must’ve used it as a jotter at some point. There’s drafts of letters, scribbles and notes to himself . . .’
‘There was something hidden in there,’ Markham prompted. ‘Something that shook you to the core.’
‘I suspected he and Aubrey had been lovers at one time. Some of what he’d written confirmed it.’
‘No big deal these days,’ piped up Noakes from the front, very much man of the world.
‘There were these sketches of a child too. Over and over.’
Westbrook’s breathing was very rapid now. Despite the cold, he looked clammy and feverish.
‘Some were labelled “The Lost Boy.” Others had the initials AC or CH.’
Making a visible effort to pull himself together, he continued. ‘There were scraps of doggerel too, stuff he’d copied out . . . all about children dying young with their lives before them . . . like inscriptions from a Victorian cemetery.’ He shuddered. ‘And weird little drawings . . .’
‘What kind of weird?’ Noakes was watching him closely.
‘Stick men in front of a wall with spades and a hammer . . . a rectangular box with a cross on it. Like a grave.’
The DI felt his blood turning to ice water. But there was no sign of horror in his demeanour.
‘What conclusions did you draw, Mr Westbrook?’
Markham sounded as chilly and composed as prosecuting counsel.
‘Look, Inspector, I admired my uncle . . . revered him almost . . .’
‘But this made you regard him in a different light.’
Westbrook shut his eyes, his hands clasped tightly in his lap. When he finally opened them and began to speak, his voice was muffled and the words came out very slowly with long pauses between them.
‘I realized there was another side to my uncle . . . a whole world I’d never even guessed at.’
‘Go on.’
‘It was clear he was haunted by something . . . some experience he had shared with Aubrey. He’d had to compartmentalize himself to cope with it, but it all came spilling out in this . . . this horrible little cache he’d squirrelled away.’
‘Murder,’ Noakes said bluntly. ‘You thought him and Aubrey killed that little lad . . . that they were in on it together.’
‘No!’ It was jerked out of him. ‘My uncle wasn’t capable of that. He was wonderful to me and my brothers. Never a hint of anything untoward.’
‘But you said you didn’t really know him.’ Markham was inexorable.
‘If something did happen,’ Westbrook looked at the DI helplessly, ‘he must have got sucked in . . .’ With rising passion, he added, ‘I’ll never believe he deliberately hurt a child. Never.’
‘Is that why you didn’t tell us?’ Noakes asked belligerently. ‘To protect your uncle’s precious reputation?’ His face as it glowered in the rear-view mirror looked apoplectic. ‘Two more innocent people died cos of you being a fucking gutless wimp.’
‘Keep your eyes on the road, Sergeant.’ Markham made no comment on his subordinate’s swingeing denunciation, but something in his eyes told Noakes the guvnor agreed.
‘I didn’t know what the hell to think.’ Westbrook’s voice was hollow now, defeated. ‘And when Charles died, I began to doubt myself . . . decided I must have got it wrong.’
He passed his hand across his face from top to bottom in a curious gesture, as though by that means he could wipe the page clean.
‘Charles had a complicated love life, you see . . .’
‘An’ you loved Charles.’ Noakes was matter-of-fact. ‘Even though he gave you the run-around.’
‘You could say that.’ Westbrook’s face was bleak. ‘But those two women — Melville and Summerson — were like a pair of fucking corkscrews, he had no chance against them . . . didn’t know whether he was animal, vegetable or mineral by the end of it all . . . I suppose I latched on to the idea that this couldn’t have had anything to do with Aubrey or my uncle . . . I even suspected Summerson of getting a hitman to kill them.’
‘A hitman!’ Noakes guffawed.
Westbrook flinched.
‘I wasn’t thinking straight, but it seemed to me she might’ve wanted to take her revenge on both of them . . . Melville left her for Randall after all.’
‘Did you speak about any of this to Aubrey Carstone?’
‘Not about the things I’d found . . . not about him and my uncle. I couldn’t. It would have seemed so disloyal . . . so ungrateful. A total rejection . . . I mean, they practically brought me up between them.’ He stared unseeing out of the car window. ‘Donald had dementia towards the end of his life, which could account for him going to pieces and imagining stuff . . . And anyway, it didn’t make sense. Aubrey was just the same as ever. There’d have been some sign, wouldn’t there? If he’d committed murder . . . there’d have been a giveaway?’
‘Not with a psychopath.’ Noakes spoke with the authority of one who had personal experience of the breed.
There was an appalled silence during which Westbrook seemed to shrink into himself.
‘On the afternoon of Helen Melville’s funeral, you were overheard shouting at someone,’ Markham observed calmly. ‘Who was that?’
The other appeared startled at the change of direction. ‘After the funeral?’ He sounded dazed.
‘That’s right. You were shouting at someone to get away from you.’
‘I don’t remember,’ Westbrook replied. ‘Look, I was in a kind of fugue state or something . . . like I was cracking up.’ His eyes narrowed on Markham. ‘You think it was Aubrey, don’t you?’
‘I think it may have been.’
‘Like my subconscious was accusing him . . .’
‘Yes.’
Beneath Westbrook’s frozen immobility something was stirring.
Remorse.
‘I was a coward, Inspector,’ he said. ‘A fucking coward. I couldn’t face the truth . . . tried to rationalize it away . . .’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘But I couldn’t get the echoes out of my head . . .’
‘What echoes?’ Noakes was intrigued.
‘Footsteps coming towards me incessantly . . . they kept coming . . . going . . . breaking off . . . then stopping altogether . . . I could never see whose they were . . . but they kept bea
ring down on me . . .’
Jesus, thought the DS with a wary eye on his passenger, looks like this one’s headed to the funny farm before very much longer. Footsteps?
’Course the guvnor looked as though it all made perfect sense, though as far as he was concerned Westbrook might as well have been speaking bleeding Esperanto.
‘Perhaps it was the footsteps of Truth, Mr Westbrook.’
‘More like the Furies, Inspector.’
Noakes didn’t understand what the fuck they were talking about, but at least the mad look had gone out of Westbrook’s eyes. For a moment back there, he thought the bloke was going to try something stupid . . . like fling himself out of the car.
If Westbrook fancied he heard footsteps, happen it didn’t have owt to do with echoes or the Furies, whoever they were. P’raps it was the ghost of little Alex Carter playing Grandma’s Footsteps. The DS smiled grimly. Now that’d be poetic justice all right.
The lodge at Greygarth House in the hamlet of Troutbeck showed no signs of life when they crunched along a gravel drive towards it, and the electronically-operated gates were closed.
‘Sunday,’ grunted Noakes. ‘With all the budget cuts, they likely don’t bother putting anyone on at weekends unless there’s an . . . event.’ The last word being pronounced with a distaste which gave that noun the force of an offensive epithet.
‘Aubrey Carstone no doubt has his own means of access,’ Markham replied quietly. ‘Ah, there’s Doyle’s car.’
The young DC came crunching across the snow towards them. An interrogative quirk of Markham’s eyebrows elicited a subtle shake of the head.
So, Kate’s here, then.
It was what he had been expecting, but nevertheless his heart sank.
I should have kept her safe, he thought. After what happened last time, I should have made Noakes stick to her like superglue.
The DS was looking at him, great leonine head cocked on one side as if he knew exactly what his boss was thinking.
We both got it wrong, guv. Both of us.
‘Constable, I’d like you to look after Mr Westbrook in your car.’
Doyle looked crestfallen. He wanted to be in at the close, the DI thought ruefully, remembering his own early days in plain clothes.
But he just couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t go in mob-handed.
‘Kid gloves, I understand boss,’ the other said quietly, giving a half-salute before escorting their passenger to the other vehicle. Noakes smiled approvingly after his retreating figure. Like a proud parent, Markham thought with a flare of amusement.
It was quickly extinguished as he looked through the gates at the Queen Anne building. With the blinds down, it brooded in the distance, blank and inscrutable.
‘Where d’you reckon he is, guv? I mean, there’s two potential kill sites.’
Wreaths of mist spiralled into the air and drifted upwards like dank exhalations.
And what seemed corporeal melted, as breath into the wind.
‘I think he’s in the place where he disposed of Alex Carter.’
‘Not the mausoleum thingy?’
Markham shook his head.
‘That was dismantled and the coffins moved, remember. The site with most meaning for him will be the room on the ground floor . . . the one Mrs Yately pinpointed for us . . . the library and snug.’
Noakes sensed there was more.
‘The place where he killed Charles Henry a second time.’
The DS blinked at this elliptical statement but put his faith in the guvnor.
‘Righto,’ he said rubbing his hands. ‘I’m ready when you are, boss.’
As they came nearer to the low, wide portal, they saw the front door was ajar.
‘Looks like Carstone’s expecting us, guv,’ Noakes muttered as they passed through the pillared portico into the glass-in entrance hall. ‘No frigging bread crumbs, though.’
To Markham’s eyes, Greygarth didn’t look much like a house from a fairy story, though its long drive, with the snow lying deep and crisp, gave the place an aspect of melancholy solitude. No wind stirred the sentinel elms at its rear, while the mournful sound of a dog baying in the distance only seemed to emphasize the building’s blank repose.
Later, he found himself unable to recall the interior clearly, save for a blurred impression of frescoed ceilings, balustrade staircase, large gracious rooms with high double doors, walls covered in olive green silk, curtains of brocade hanging stiffly from tall windows and elaborate knotted lace curtains shutting out any glimpse of the snowflakes that were starting to whirl about outside.
Under the strange influence of his surroundings, the DI moved towards his goal as though some gravitational pull at the heart of the house drew him inexorably towards his destination.
With Markham leading they advanced along a bow-windowed corridor lined with thin-legged chairs and occasional tables boasting miniatures of ladies and gentlemen in the powdered wigs of a bygone age. Noakes looked about him askance, as though this preference for ghostly unsymmetrical passages crammed with spindly furniture over solid corporate comfort merely confirmed his darkest suspicions about highfalutin interior designers.
And suddenly, there in front of them was the library, dark and womb-like with its massive mahogany floor-to-ceiling bookcases and the panelled snug lying through a pilastered alcove beyond. Eighteenth-century portraits stood on varnished easels, while other pictures peppered the brocaded walls as thickly as though shot out of some ancient cannon. Yet more occasional tables, elaborate inlaid chairs and strange little footstools with twisted legs were strewn across a luxuriously thick carpet that deadened all sound.
It was a density of effect that made Markham feel as though he must suffocate . . .
Sitting primly in one of two red velvet armchairs over by a window looking out onto the stone terrace was Aubrey Carstone. ‘Like he was at a vicar’s tea party or summat,’ as Noakes described the bizarre scene afterwards to Doyle, ‘but with a pistol on his lap ’stead of the cucumber sarnies. Fucking surreal.’
Kate Burton occupied the other armchair behind which stood Bill Hignett, looking for all the world like a footman poised to wait at tables.
Markham locked glances with her. She looked worn and wan, as though she had been up all night, but was otherwise unharmed.
I’m all right, boss, she telegraphed silently. Don’t worry about me. Just bring him in.
Scrutinizing the brittle conker-brown bob, dishevelled and lustreless, framing the serious little face with its myopic hazel eyes, the DI felt as though he could never let her out of his sight again.
Noakes too seemed oddly affected, giving her a clumsy thumbs up which, most uncharacteristically, she shyly returned to his evident confusion.
‘You took your time, Inspector.’
The tone was civilized, ironical.
Aubrey Carstone, in his pinstripes and waistcoat, was the same dignified and imposing presence of yore.
But for something wrong with the eyes, thought Markham. Those were not the same.
‘And before you ask, yes, I did for them all, gentlemen.’ He sounded almost bored.
Markham measured the distance from where he and Noakes stood by the fireplace. Carstone would have the pistol to Kate’s head before they could lay hands on him. And notwithstanding the vacancy of Hignett’s expression, there was a vigilance about his posture which suggested he would be quick to spring to his mentor’s defence.
A twisted smile, as if their quarry knew exactly what he was thinking.
‘I suppose you want me to tell you how it was.’
Humour him.
‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
Markham motioned to Noakes to sit on a fragile chair which stood on one side of the hearth, himself taking the other. Gingerly, as though apprehensive it might disintegrate under his weight, the DS complied.
‘Such a pity Helen fancied herself a sleuth,’ Carstone said gently in a tone of mild regret. ‘Such a pity.’
‘From her researches in the archives, she guessed your secret,’ Markham said quietly. ‘The secret of little Alex Carter abducted all those years ago from the gallery and brought here to Greygarth.’ His eyes were infinitely sad as they lingered on the wainscot and panelling behind which he knew a child’s skeleton had long since mouldered into dust.
‘Poor foolish Helen. Rabbiting away to Rebecca Summerson about crimes and mysteries without a thought for consequences,’ the other said with chilling disdain as though Markham had not spoken. ‘Presumably she thought to unveil her discoveries with some éclat . . . but alas, fate overtook her.’ This was accompanied by a sardonic curl of the lip which imparted a look of treachery and cruelty to the whole countenance.
‘And what of Charles Randall?’ Markham forced himself to remain calm. ‘Why did he deserve to die?’
‘I believe young Mr Randall may have had it in mind to blackmail me, though he never expressly formulated anything so crude, you understand. It was more a case of hinting that he’d cottoned on to something his inamorata had come across while she was playing detective.’ There was nothing of civilized urbanity in those eyes now. They were flat, empty, devoid of humanity.
‘At any rate, I couldn’t take the chance.’ Carstone emitted a high-pitched titter which was shocking in its unexpectedness. ‘Another second-rater bites the dust.’
‘And Ned Chester?’ Watching the sly, cruel features — how was it he had never noticed their latent guile? — it felt like profanation even to pronounce his dead friend’s name. But somehow he managed it, though his tongue felt swollen and nerveless in the utterance.
‘Mr Chester, now there’s a genuine loss to cultivated circles.’
Christ, thought Noakes at the look on Markham’s face, the guvnor’s going to lose it.
He half rose from his chair.
That slight movement brought the DI back from the abyss and the red mist receded.
‘As you were, Sergeant.’
Aubrey Carstone watched the interaction as dispassionately as a vivisectionist might contemplate his specimens on the slab.
Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set Page 125