It had gone better than he had ever expected. So far, thirty clients had invested in Sun Trap Holdings, some of them more than once. He had promised them that the profits would be as much as five or even ten times the original investment. All they had to do was wait. And although he’d had to pay out dividends to a few of them, the rest were always satisfied with extra shares in the company, which would add up to even greater rewards further down the line.
Algernon had started coming down to Devon to visit his sister not because the two of them were particularly close but because she had a large house that provided him with the occasional refuge from London when he needed it. There were business partners he had fallen out with, old associates that he preferred to avoid, and when it became necessary he would jump in his car and head south-west. He didn’t much like Tawleigh-on-the-Water. He thought it was dull. He would never have expected to find his biggest investor in such a backwater, but that was exactly what had happened.
He had been introduced to Melissa James just after she bought the Moonflower. At first, he had been overawed meeting such a famous actress, but he had quickly reminded himself that she was just another wealthy woman almost begging to be separated from her money and he had achieved this more quickly than he could have believed. The two of them had become business associates, then friends, then something rather more than friends. It had been easy to persuade her that Sun Trap Holdings would eventually pay her far more than the films she had decided to give up.
She was the reason for this trip. The telephone call had come just a few days ago, when Algernon had been at his Mayfair flat.
‘Is that you, darling?’
‘Melissa, darling. What a lovely surprise! How are you?’
‘I want to see you. Can you come down?’
‘Of course. You know you don’t have to ask me twice.’ Algernon paused. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘I want to talk to you about my investment—’
‘It’s doing fantastically well.’
‘I know. You’ve been brilliant. And that’s exactly why I’ve decided that now would be the best time to sell my shares.’
Algernon sat bolt upright in bed. ‘You’re not serious!’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘But another six months and the value will have doubled. We have the new hotel opening. And as soon as the villas in Cap Ferrat are completed—’
‘I know, I know. But I’m happy with the money I’ve made. So come down and bring the paperwork. It’ll be lovely to see you anyway.’
‘Of course, darling. Whatever you say.’
Whatever you say! Unless he could persuade her otherwise, Algernon would have to find a sum close to a hundred thousand pounds to pay Melissa back for profits that existed only in her imagination. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and saw a great sloosh of water spray to one side as he drove through a puddle. He was meeting Melissa tomorrow. Hopefully, it would be just the two of them. It would all be a lot easier with her husband out of the way.
What time was it? Algernon glanced down at the clock on the dashboard and scowled. Twenty past five. Had he really spent the whole afternoon drinking at the Saunton Golf Club?
He looked up just in time to see the man filling the windscreen.
Too late, he realised that somehow, in the few seconds he had taken his eyes off the road, he had allowed the car to drift over to one side. He actually felt the front tyre mount the grassy verge that separated the road from the hedgerow. That was where the man had been walking. He saw a face, staring eyes, a mouth drawing back in what must have been a cry of horror. Desperately, he scrabbled with the steering wheel, trying to veer away. But it was hopeless. He had been travelling at over fifty miles per hour.
The roar of the engine drowned out any sound the man might have made, but the impact of the car hitting him was the most horrible thing Algernon had ever heard. It seemed impossibly loud. He stamped his foot on the brake, noticing that the man had disappeared as if by magic. He had simply gone. As the car squealed to a halt, Algernon tried to persuade himself that he had imagined the whole thing, that it hadn’t been a man but a rabbit or maybe a deer. But he knew what he had seen. He felt sick, the alcohol churning in his stomach.
The car had come to a halt, slanting diagonally into the road. Now he heard the windscreen wipers grinding against the glass and reached down for the switch that turned them off. What next? He grabbed the gear stick and reversed, pulling in next to the hedge. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes, but they weren’t tears for the man he had just injured – or possibly killed. He was thinking of himself, of the fact that he had been drinking and that, following an incident with a police car at Hyde Park Corner, he had been disqualified for driving for one year and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel at all. What would happen to him? If he had killed the man, he might go to jail!
He turned off the engine and opened the car door. The rain swept gleefully towards him, driving into his face. He was still holding the cigarette but suddenly he didn’t want it and threw it into the grass. Where was he? Where was the man he had just hit, and anyway, what had he been doing out on his own, walking along a major road in the middle of nowhere? Another car rushed past.
He had to get this over with. He stepped out of his car and walked a short distance further down the road. He came to the man almost at once. He was wearing a raincoat and lying face down in the grass. He looked completely broken, his legs and arms pointing in different directions as if some monster had grabbed hold of him and tried to pull him apart. He didn’t seem to be breathing and Algernon was quite sure he was dead. Nobody could have survived a collision like that. It was murder, then. In the two seconds that he had looked down at the clock on the dashboard he had killed someone, at the same time destroying his own life.
One car had passed him. It hadn’t stopped.
With the rain coming down so hard, the driver couldn’t have seen him. He certainly wouldn’t have seen the man who’d been hit. Suddenly, Algernon regretted having a French car in England. It was probably the only one in the whole county. He looked behind him. The road was empty. He was on his own.
He made the decision instantly. He turned and hurried back to the car, noticing that there was now a dent in the radiator grille and a smear of bright red blood on the silver Peugeot badge. With a shudder, Algernon took out a handkerchief and wiped it clean. He wanted to throw the handkerchief away but thought better of it. Then he remembered the cigarette. What madness had made him discard it like that? It was too late. It would have been carried away by the wind. He wasn’t going to crawl on his hands and knees looking for it. All that mattered was to get as far from here as possible.
He got back into the car, closed the door and turned the key. The engine coughed but refused to start. He was soaking wet. Water was dripping down his forehead. He slammed his hands against the steering wheel, then tried again. This time the engine fired.
He punched the car into gear and drove away. He didn’t look back. He didn’t stop until he had reached Tawleigh, but he didn’t dare go into his sister’s house, not looking like this, soaking wet and with trembling hands. Instead, he pulled into a quiet lane and sat there for the next twenty minutes, his head in his hands, wondering what he was going to do.
* * *
While Algernon Marsh was sitting miserably in his car, watching the rain still streaking down the windscreen, his sister was also in something close to a state of shock, staring at a letter that lay on the table in front of her.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘What does it mean?’
‘I think it’s fairly clear, my dearest,’ her husband said. ‘Your aunt—’
‘Aunt Joyce.’
‘Joyce Campion has made you her sole beneficiary. And sadly, she has recently passed away. The solicitors want to get in touch with you to discuss the inheritance, and it might be considerable. My love, this could be good news – for both of us! I could be married to a multim
illionaire!’
‘Oh Len, don’t say that!’
‘Well, it’s possible.’
The letter had arrived in the morning post but they had both been so busy that Samantha had only just opened it. It had come from a firm of solicitors in London – Parker & Bentley – and even the letterhead, with an address in Lincoln’s Inn in raised black letters, had somehow seemed threatening. Samantha had always been nervous of the law. She was nervous of anything she didn’t completely understand.
She had read the single page with its three typed paragraphs. She had read them again. Then she had called for Leonard and asked him to read them too.
Leonard and Samantha Collins were sitting in the kitchen of the five-bedroom house that also contained the doctor’s surgery. It was a handsome, old building in need of a fresh coat of paint. The salt-water spray from the sea had done its worst and the wind had taken a few tiles off the roof. The garden, too, had been damaged by bad weather and marauding children. But it was still a solid family home with a vegetable patch that delivered pounds of raspberries in the summer, an orchard and a tree house. It was situated in Rectory Lane, right next to St Daniel’s, and this was one of the reasons Samantha had chosen it. A committed churchgoer, she never missed a Sunday service and helped the vicar with the flowers, all the major festivals, the various fund-raising efforts, tea for the old age pensioners on Thursdays and even with the allocation of plots in the cemetery (available to anyone who lived in the parish on receipt of a moderate fee).
Samantha divided her time equally between the church and her family, which included two children, Mark and Agnes, aged seven and five. She also looked after her husband’s medical practice, keeping a close eye on his accounts, his patient records, the daily running of his surgery. There were some who found her a rather severe woman, the sort who was never without a scarf and handbag and who always seemed to be in a hurry. And yet she was always polite. She smiled at everyone, even if she preferred not to stop and chat.
Nobody knew more about the people who lived in Tawleigh-on-the-Water than her. From her conversations with the vicar, who considered her his closest confidante, she had learned about their spiritual needs, their concerns, even their sins. From her husband she had got a snapshot – an X-ray, perhaps – of their physical condition and what had caused it. Mr Doyle, the butcher, drank too much and had cirrhosis of the liver. Nancy Mitchell, who worked at the Moonflower and who was not married, was three months pregnant. And even Melissa James, for all her fame, had been prescribed pills for stress and sleeplessness.
It never occurred to Samantha that she might, in fact, be in possession of too much knowledge – for her own good and everyone else’s. Anyway, she was much too sensible to indulge in the sort of gossip that sometimes made the village seem impossibly small. It might be said that she believed in the silence of the confessional and patients were welcomed into the surgery with the same formality with which they were greeted at church on Sundays. Even Mrs Mitchell, Nancy’s mother, who came to the house three times a week and who helped with the children, knew nothing about her daughter’s condition. That had been difficult for both Leonard and Samantha, but, it went without saying, they were bound by the Hippocratic oath.
They had now been married for eight years. Dr Leonard Collins had been a consultant at the King Edward VII Hospital in Slough. Samantha had been doing volunteer work when they met and they had got engaged soon after. He was lithe and elegant, a darkly handsome man with a well-trimmed beard and a fondness for tweed suits. Everyone in the village agreed that they were ideally matched, living and working together and always in perfect agreement apart from two things. Dr Collins was not a particularly religious man. He accompanied his wife to church out of respect rather than any personal belief. And, much to her displeasure, he smoked a pipe, a Stanwell Royal Briar that he had owned since his teens. She had been unable to persuade him to give it up, but, as a compromise, he never smoked it when the children were in the room.
‘But I hadn’t seen Aunt Joyce for years and years,’ she said now. ‘We didn’t really contact each other – apart from Christmas and birthday cards.’
‘She obviously hadn’t forgotten you,’ Leonard remarked. He picked up his pipe, thought for a moment, then set it down again.
‘She was a wonderful person and I’m very sad to hear she’s dead.’ Samantha had the sort of face – square and serious – that was better equipped to express sorrow than pleasure. ‘I will ask the vicar to say a special prayer for her this Sunday.’
‘I’m sure she would have appreciated that.’
‘I feel bad. I really should have made more effort to stay in touch.’
Samantha sat in silence, thinking about Joyce Campion, who had stepped in after her parents died. It was actually Aunt Joyce who had first encouraged her to go to church. Her brother Algernon, of course, had refused to come. Aunt Joyce had also paid for her to go to secretarial school, where she had learned shorthand and typing, and later on she had used her contacts to get her niece a position in the typing pool of Horlicks, the malted-milk company in Slough. Samantha had always thought of her aunt as the quintessential spinster so it had come as a complete surprise when she had suddenly announced her engagement to Harlan Goodis, a multimillionaire with an advertising agency in New York. That had happened at around the same time that Samantha had met and married Leonard, moving with him first to a house he had inherited near Torrington and later to Tawleigh. It was perhaps inevitable that the two women should have lost touch.
‘Her husband died two years ago,’ Samantha said. ‘They didn’t have any children. As far as I know, they didn’t have any family at all.’
‘From what the solicitors are saying, it looks as if everything is going to you.’
‘Do you really think it could be . . . a lot?’
‘It’s hard to say. I mean, he was doing pretty well for himself. I suppose it all depends how much of his money she spent before she died. Would you like to ring them or shall I?’
‘I think I’d prefer it if you did, Len. I’d be too nervous.’ Samantha glanced down at the letter for perhaps the twentieth time. From the way she was looking at it, she might have been happier if it had never arrived.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t set our expectations too high,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t even say anything about money. She could have left us something we don’t need. A few paintings or some old jewellery.’
‘A few Picassos or a diamond tiara.’
‘Stop it! You’re just imagining things.’
‘If it wasn’t a lot of money, why would they want to see you?’
‘I don’t know. Because—’
She was about to continue when the door opened and a small boy came in, dressed in pyjamas, fresh from the bath. This was Mark, her seven-year-old son. ‘Mummy, are you going to come up and read to me?’ he asked.
Samantha was tired. She hadn’t even served the children their tea yet and there was still dinner to be made. But she smiled and got to her feet. ‘Of course, darling. Mummy’s coming up right now.’
The two of them had just started reading C. S. Lewis. Mark loved the books. Only the night before, Samantha had found him in the back of his wardrobe, trying to find his way into Narnia. He ran out of the room and she was about to follow when a thought occurred to her. She turned back to her husband. ‘The letter doesn’t mention Algernon,’ she said.
‘Yes. I noticed that.’ Leonard scowled. ‘It says quite specifically that you are the sole beneficiary.’
‘Aunt Joyce was horrified when Algie was sent to prison,’ Samantha said. ‘You remember – that business in Piccadilly.’
‘That was before I met you.’
‘I told you about it.’ Samantha was standing at the doorway, aware that Mark was waiting for her upstairs. ‘She always said that he was untrustworthy,’ she went on. ‘Falling in with the wrong crowd – and all those business ideas of his. Do you think she’s cut him out?’
‘It rather
looks like it.’
‘Well, I’ll have to share it with him. I can’t take it all for myself. I mean, if it is . . .’ she paused as if unwilling to consider the possibility ‘ . . . lots!’
‘I suppose so. Yes.’ Leonard lowered his voice, as if he was afraid that the children were listening. ‘Would you mind if I said something, my dear?’
‘You know I always listen to you, Leonard.’ It was true. He had always been the first person she came to for advice. Even if she didn’t always take it.
‘Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t say anything to your brother.’
‘What? Don’t tell him?’
‘Not yet. I mean – you’re right. We don’t have any idea how much money we’re talking about and we won’t know until we go up to London and talk to these solicitors. It would be a shame to make a fuss about nothing.’
‘But just now you were saying—’
‘I know what I was saying, but listen to me.’ Leonard chose his words carefully. Samantha and Algernon didn’t see a lot of each other, but he knew that they were close. After what had happened during the war, the sudden death of their parents and the loss of everything they had, how could it have been otherwise? ‘I’m not sure we should have this conversation now, not while Algernon is staying in the house, but it does worry me a bit.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t want to alarm you, my dear, but there is a side to him that we don’t really know about. And it’s just possible that he might be . . .’
‘What?’
‘Dangerous. You know how he is with his schemes and dreams. Let’s not say anything about it for the time being. Let’s at least find out how much we’re talking about before we come to any decisions.’ Leonard smiled and at that moment he was as handsome as the day they had met and Samantha was reminded of why she had married him. ‘You deserve a break,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve never been able to look after you properly. Not on my salary. This could be a new beginning for you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve got nothing to complain about. I’ve been perfectly happy.’
Moonflower Murders Page 21