Goosey Goosey Gander

by Frank Edwards

  He thought first of Jeremy. Something held him back. That gentleman would be certain to expect the land to revert to him, and wouldn’t give away anything, or get into any further discussions, until that was finalised. It may have already been, but unlikely. Murder slows progress of all associated affairs as well as complicates them. He wondered if he dare make that first call on the sister? No introduction, for sure, but he could soon spin a yarn. Possibly over-do his connection with the family, though a bit risky. How close had she been to her brothers? And, in particular, to her eldest one’s business dealings? Best keep off that. The grieving friend? Colleague? Contact? Well-wisher? Potential partner? Which role would suit best? He decided to have a stab at it. No use dithering more. Time for action had come. Had to push on. Jeremy Tewkes held more cards than ever if the simple solution of his inheriting was the case. Even so, better than if the late Alan had willed the whole to some wild bird charity. Then again, that might not be so bad. A charity might not want to take on the task of managing the area. They could as easily put it on the market to raise funds. That would suit him better than it would Herr Tewkes. A range of possibilities arose. What he badly needed was an authoritative update. For that, a risky but potentially valuable launch at the grieving sister could be just the catalyst needed. Why, he recalled, she was both a widow and loaded. There was more than one way in which getting to know her could be put to good profit! In any event, and he stopped his fantasising, he had become somewhat immersed in the task of acquiring this particular piece of land. It had become something of a challenge. He loved a challenge. Gave life a spice. What the hell! If this transaction proved sticky, there were many million more acres around. He wasn’t going to bog himself down in these wetlands. If the sister got him nowhere, then, his sharp business sense told him the best course by far was to cut and run. He would have lost nothing except a smidgen of self-satisfaction.

  Remembering his instructions, and knowing to look out for the bay windows, he made up his mind and turned the bonnet of his Roller towards the pearly gates of Fox Lea.

  What the energetic entrepreneur did not know, or fantasise about, was that on arrival at Fox Lea he would meet two detectives. Hole and Maitland had driven straight there from The Grange. They were as anxious to get things moving in their field as Reed was in his.

  Chapter Ten

  alina had been accommodating. As Hole explained when he rang her, he was most anxious to speak to her but could not be absolutely sure what time he would be able to get away from The Grange. DeLacey Thornley had been less flexible in his required times.

  “A bit of an old gasbag, at times, isn’t he, Inspector.”

  “He does like to expound his views”, was Hole’s cautious reply. She had been willing to see him at any time in the afternoon. She had no engagements, and wouldn’t take any on. There was no one keener than she to help in any way she could. Not that that was likely to be much. If anything crossed her mind she would be sure to tell him.

  The two policemen were greeted by a suitable matron, not someone that Hole recognised. In what could be a uniform. Sober, certainly.

  “Mrs Foxley is awaiting you, gentlemen. This way, please.”

  The room was large and comfortable. It was served by four of the famed bay windows. The others ran on from the other side of the wide front door. There was a good stretch of green lying away to the road they had left, with a good view over the broad sweep of the drive on which their car was parked, just out of sight, and a suggestion of quite substantial grounds to the rear. They were comfortably seated and offered tea. Both accepted. Some small talk filled the time until it appeared. The same good lady delivered and retired. Hole noted that Galina did not address her in any way. A touch of a bell had sufficed to bring it through.

  Galina poured. Milk and sugar were available. There were no biscuits, to Maitland’s regret, although he usually found that, having taken one when offered, it became almost impractical to take a bite because of conversational demands. Maybe as well there were none.

  “Now, Inspector. What is it you would like to know?” Hole had mentally rehearsed his line, but for a moment reconsidered it. ‘Know’, not ‘ask’.

  “First of all, my condolences. The whole village has felt the shock.” “And quite a few of the national papers as well! I’ve also seen Mrs Carmichael on the television. She gave the expected comments of communal grief whilst standing where her shop name and main advert could be seen.” Hole allowed a smile, but a quiet one.

  “She should be seconded to the CID”, he said, echoing his pleasantry on leaving Thornley. “When did you last see your brother?”

  “When he came to talk to our luncheon club. He kindly stood in at short notice for a speaker who couldn’t make it. That was it! It went very well. He was an enthusiast, you know. Mad keen on what he was doing down among the marshes.”

  “You never went to visit him there? To see what he was doing?”

  “Of course! How silly of me. Of course. No. That lunch was not our last meeting. Indeed it was not. Rather, inspired by what he said and how he said it, as was everyone there may I say, I went down the next afternoon. I was able to help him out financially. Offer help. A, as it were, partnership. How could I mix up that sequence? I suppose it was because no one else came with me. I had offered Alan the chance to put in a plea for cash as part of his talk, but he wouldn’t be seen to beg, as he put it. Too shy. Poor boy.”

  Hole wondered, too, how such a mix of sequence might come about, but gave little weight to it. He wasn’t a psychologist. She was, after all, bound to be deeply upset by the tragic event. It would excuse a little muddling of recall.

  “When you saw him at the wetland centre, was he in as good spirits as the previous day? At that lunch?”

  “Oh yes! Very much so. He wanted to cart me all round the set-up. I had neither the time nor the shoes… ” Galina broke off. “No! You are going to think me incredibly stupid, Mr Hole, but you know, I’ve got it wrong again! I went, first of all, to see him at his work to ask him to come to the luncheon club. To talk to us. That’s it. Right this time!” and she gave an embarrassed laugh. “Oh dear! Things have been upsetting. That’s it, this time. It was then that he wanted to show me around. I followed him for a short while. He would have had me there for hours. After the talk”, and she stressed the ‘after’, “was when I saw him again and confirmed my offer of financial help. We had a long discussion. So it was following his talk that I did, after all, see him for the last time. Got it right at last!” This flow was not quite what Hole wanted, but he knew the value of keeping people talking. He glanced at Maitland to take up the running. The sergeant stepped in.

  “When you visited the site, on either occasion, Mrs Foxley, did your brother give any indication that he was worried about anything? Or anybody?”

  “Foxes, I think. That’s about the only thing that troubled him. Apart from money, I fancy. He hadn’t been able to complete the enclosing of his land by a security fence, and was afraid that predators would get at his lovely birds.”

  “Predators or people, perhaps?” Maitland pressed the point. “If animals can enter easily, then I suppose people can.”

  “But they are hardly predators are they, Sergeant?”

  “Men with guns? Wildfowlers perhaps, or poachers? Might be.”

  “Oh dear!” Galina swallowed. “There I go again. Sounding like some actress in a grisly B movie. I suppose so. Alan had, with legal backing as I understand it from my brother Jeremy, already warned off all those who used to shoot in that area. Got a mention in the shooting magazines, too. Not a friendly one.”

  “Had your brother, your oldest brother, gone shooting there?” Galina hesitated before answering.

  “Yes. But not for some time, I think. Not since my late father’s illness. Unless he went out with Thornley. I don’t know. You can ask him that.”

  “We shall,” this from Hole. “We are merely trying to build up a background picture. One is emerging. What
would help enormously is if you could tell us what the deceased’s routine was. Have you any idea?”

  “Heavens! Why should I? You’d be better off asking those dear ladies from the RSPB. They would know much more than I do. As I say, I only went there the once – sorry, there I go again; twice – and then only for a short time. Mind you,” and she paused dramatically as, at the same moment, out of the corner of his eye, Hole saw a car begin to come up the drive, “Alan did go into quite some detail of his routine and how he organised his day when he spoke to the Club. I wasn’t going to get up that early to see him at work! Maybe if I had, that morning… ” She broke off, regained control of her voice, and continued. “I’m not very good at remembering details like that at the best of times. What exactly it was he told us that day. My mind was more on organisational matters. Some others who were there may well be able to. I can give you a list of all who attended.”

  “That would be most helpful You never know what someone may be able to recall,” said Hole, as the door bell rang. Maitland had clocked the fact that it was the same car, the Rolls with the slightly odd index plate, that had driven up. With his eyebrows he tried to tell his Inspector that, if the visitor were to enter the house, it would be no bad thing if he could be invited to join them. Hole got the hint.

  The outer door bell rang again. There were voices, then the drawing room door opened and the housekeeper entered.

  “A gentleman to see you,” she said, direct to Galina. “His name is Mr Reed and he was an acquaintance of Mr Alan.” Hole was struck again by the stilted nature of her speech and her lack of what he would have taken to be the normal courtesies – tapping on the door before entering; addressing Galina Foxley by name. Neither happened. Gloria took it as part of the normal behaviour of someone who, again Hole could only conjecture, was a valuable and efficient employee. Hearing Alan’s name, and interpreting Maitland’s signal, he spoke at once. This new arrival might be interesting.

  “If that’s the case, and you’ve no objections, Mrs Foxley, would you invite him to join us?” Galina nodded approval to the housekeeper, who went off to collect the new arrival.

  Gresham Reed had seen the unmarked parked car but took it to belong to the occupants. He had decided on the ‘acquaintance’ approach – he had left aside the adjective ‘business’ as being too involving – as being the least committed that would be yet strong enough to get him inside the door. Taking it, that was, that the lady of the house was at home. On being shown into the room he was at once put on his guard by the two men with her. Family? Visitors? In neither case did he wish to say much. That decision was reinforced when they were introduced to him.

  “Please sit down, Mr Reed. So you knew my brother Alan? Tea?” Reed accepted refreshment as a way of giving him a brief moment to think whilst the cup was filled and passed over. He normally took no sugar, but did on this occasion, gaining with a few more stirs a few more seconds, using the smart little silver spoon. An antique he guessed, in keeping with his target’s understood financial standing. As he stirred, he murmured that, yes, he had ‘had contact with him. In a sort of way.’ Hole began the new round of talks.

  “Mrs Foxley asked you to join us at my request. I need to know all I can about Mr Alan Tewkes’ last days. Maybe you can help us. Have you, by chance, come to see him today?” Reed considered briefly avoiding that question, but as quickly concluded that in a place this size then, if nothing else, it would get about from the women at the centre.

  “As a matter of fact I did. Hoped to see him at the wetlands centre. Met him there a few weeks ago and had an interesting chat. Thought I would like to get a bit more information on the place.” Most of this was untrue. Although the women, or one of them, might have recalled his first visit, as he sensed they did when he had driven up that afternoon, there was no way that they could have known that he had not actually met Alan.

  “Went by introduction of Mr Jeremy Tewkes.”

  This interested Galina as much as it did Hole, if for different reasons. She knew of Reed’s land ambitions from her talk with Jeremy; Gresham didn’t know how much Galina knew of him. Hole knew nothing of the man except that he had turned up, some time after the murder, claiming ignorance of the death of a recent contact that he wished to renew. All three had to dance around these perceptions as they put their points one to the other. Hole took up his official role.

  “May I ask why? Are you a wetlands supporter?”

  “My contact was originally with Mr Jeremy Tewkes. I met him in his previous role in the estate agent’s office and, returning to the area, I looked him up. He kindly invited me to his house.”

  “Come back here often, then, do you sir?” asked Maitland. “First to see Mr Jeremy Tewkes and now to see Mr Alan Tewkes.”

  Reed wanted to steer away from this line, so he went into unwanted detail about his recent journeys around our ‘European friends’, ending with a mini-lecture on the undoubted benefits of the Common Market to upright and honest tradesmen such as he.

  “So long as you speak the lingo. That’s the thing. Gives you an edge in bargaining. Not with the locals, I mean the Europeans, but your own home-based competitors. I’ve picked up quite a bit of the old kraut and frog,” ( ‘very continental’ mused Hole) “and some words of the others. ‘Please, ‘thank-you’, ‘have a drink on me’, that sort of stuff. That said, I make sure that when I go to one of these places I’ve always got a fluent local speaker with me. Of course, all the serious work is done in English. I’m not losing my grasp of any of that. But a few local-language phrases help oil the wheels. They’re all happier doing business in English, believe me, whatever their governments may say.”

  Hole waited for the natural break.

  “So, Mr Reed, you were out of the country when the murder happened.”

  “What I say! Sure I was. The euro-rags don’t print stories like that. They got enough of their own to fill the pages.”

  “You don’t keep abreast of what’s happening in the UK while you’re away? Thought that was essential for a businessman.”

  “Through the BlackBerry, yes. Until I get my hands on one of the new ‘Curve’ models; more user friendly. And the FT when I can get it. Not otherwise.”

  “So no one in your office told you of Mr Tewkes’ death, even though you had some dealings with him?” queried Maitland.

  “Nothing that big. The dealings, as you call them. Just casual. Chance. Might have come to something, but early days. They won’t come to anything now.”

  “Might do, surely? My wife tells me she would have liked me to have joined that business when I retire. If you can save it by then, I might be just your man.”

  Reed gave the Inspector a distinctly chary look.

  “No. You’ve got me wrong. Not my line at all, that sort of thing. What I had in mind for the place is one for the history books now. Move on, I always say. The businessman who stands still is run over by the juggernaut of progress.”

  “Most eloquently put, Mr Reed.” A smile all round. “Was my brother Jeremy the broker in this, whatever it was to be, deal or arrangement?”

  Reed’s look of worry altered to one of concern at Galina’s intervention.

  “Better ask your brother. All over now,” he repeated.

  “Really? Maybe, when the Inspector’s left us, you will stay on a while. I would be happy to talk over possible future use of the land now Alan is dead. Can you?” They both knew that was what he wanted. What he had come for. Hole guessed as much, but had no way of knowing what that common interest was. Nor could he expect an invitation to join their confab.

  He and Maitland pursued their lines of enquiry, to no constructive end. Galina stuck to the settled version of her story. Her brother had been happy to show her around, happy to give the talk, and even happier after his sister’s offer of some monetary underpinning of his project. With an eye on Reed, Galina added:

  “Happier, as I say, once I had offered to come in with him. Become his financial partner.
You wouldn’t have caught me messing about in a little boat at dawn around those chilly marshlands though. I would be the, if not sleeping, then supine partner. He could do all the wading,” and she inwardly smiled to herself as she caught Reed’s refreshed look of concern.

  Alan Tewkes had been happy to broadcast his ways of working, and widely, but that, Hole knew, wouldn’t place any one particular person at that spot at that hour on that day with a gun and an intent to kill.

  “Of course”, as he expounded to Maitland on the drive back to the HQ, “that doesn’t mean that someone didn’t come to that spot more than once knowing that it would not be too many days before Alan did as he said he would, and at the time he said he would.”

  “Depending on the weather, sir. We could check on the weather. Then, concerning those days when it was suitable, we could ask around if anyone saw anyone. Not simply, as we have been, asking about the actual day of the murder.”

  “Fair enough, if you feel like some meteorological homework. I’ll see you tomorrow”, this as they drew up outside the offices. “I’ve got one or two other things I want to do. See you first thing in the morning, when we’ve had time to sleep on what we’ve been told. We can then have a first shot at trying to put the overall picture into focus. More leg work though, getting into local gun records. Someone knew where he would be and when, someone with a gun and a motive that we don’t yet know. It’s a fair bet that the use of the land comes into it. Quite an acreage. And a blossoming business. It just could be that the visit of Mr Reed is opportune. Given us a lead as to that.”