by Amy Myers
Had he? She thought about their conversation. As she did so, it wasn’t Greek soldiers she centred on, however, but a faint hangover from her nightmare. She shook herself free from it. This was daytime; her eyes were open, and fully objective.
‘A test,’ Peter continued. ‘Did he suggest you meet the other four as well?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ she admitted crossly. ‘But he didn’t try to dissuade me from seeing them.’
‘He wouldn’t do that. If you follow it up, however, they’ll all tell you the same thing. With their armour on, Georgia, how do you tell one from another?’
She glanced at him. ‘Why should we? It’s a motive in 1975 we need, not from 1940. And I’ve brought you one.’
‘And who’s to say one of the five didn’t have a good reason for hating Patrick Fairfax that evolved in the thirty-five years since the war? Matt Jones had, for example. But,’ he said generously, ‘follow up Janet Freeman by all means. And,’ he added as she left to make the appointment, ‘good luck to you.’
Georgia had the distinct impression she was being fobbed off, because Peter had sniffed out a scent he wished to pursue. She absolved him of the crime of wanting to go it alone, but he was certainly appealing for space. He had it. He had at least upgraded Janet on the Suspects Anonymous file to a Burglar Betty, and Georgia had promptly made an appointment to meet her. But not without difficulty.
Janet Freeman lived in Norwich, but the idea of ploughing round the M25 to the A11 was not appealing. Georgia was considering the train journey when by serendipity Luke rang up and offered to come with her.
‘I’ve had my own survey done,’ he told her grumpily. ‘I need to be alone.’
‘You won’t be if you’re with me.’
‘You, my heart, are part of me. I just don’t want to see delivery vans, books, invoices, jacket designs, and authors for a while. OK? In particular a book called Catty Kent.’
That made her laugh. He’d been in two minds whether to publish it, and had regretted his decision to go ahead. Once he’d signed the contract, the dear lady who had written it, one Mrs Letty Pinkton, turned out to have a will of steel regarding every aspect and they had fallen out over the jacket design which she insisted should be one of her sweet illustrations. Since this had resembled a Louis Wain cat during his manic period, Luke had put his foot down and exercised his contractual rights to final choice.
‘Very OK,’ Georgia replied. She’d like nothing more than to have his company. ‘But if we go by car, you drive.’
‘Done,’ he agreed. ‘Provided you come for the weekend and stay over.’
‘Done. I thought you said a poor survey could suit your budget. So what’s wrong with this one?’
‘There’s poor and there’s catastrophic. Everything from dry rot to general dilapidation. Last wired under King James I.’
‘Are you put off?’ She held her breath, waiting for his reply. Would she be relieved or sorry if he were?
‘No, just drawing a deep breath, getting estimates and sorting the wheat from the surveying jargon chaff.’
*
Since Bill’s revelation, Georgia had read Women and Air, Janet Freeman’s best-seller of 1974, with much interest. The cover showed a dark-haired, eager-eyed young woman, laughing into the camera, hands thrust in flying jacket pocket, and standing by a light aircraft. She was in her thirties then, and Peter had said that her picture adorned every magazine on the stands. She stepped out round the world following the tracks of intrepid lady Victorian travellers writing up both their adventures and hers. Women of the Air centred on the flights of famous aviatrixes including Amy Johnson, Amelia Ehrhardt and an intrepid lady before the First World War by the name of Miss Trehawke Davies. She hadn’t been a pilot herself, but insisted on being the first woman in the world to experience a loop-the-loop and had done more travelling in Bleriots than most male pilots of that time put together. That book, she realized, must have been the reason that Janet Freeman took up membership of the aviation club.
Janet lived on the road to Earlham on the outskirts of the city, an area which was, she explained on the telephone, fast disappearing under concrete. Luke negotiated the traffic with his usual imperturbable skill and drove into the gravel driveway with aplomb.
From the dustcover photo on her book, Georgia had decided she liked the look of Janet Freeman – but that, of course, was over thirty years ago. The woman who greeted them – if that was the word – bore little resemblance to it, even given the time gap. The dark hair was recognizable, but the face wore a set expression that did not relax easily as she spoke, and the lively eyes were hard and suspicious. She was wearing trousers and casual jacket and blouse, and bore every sign of still being extremely active physically as well as mentally.
‘Come in.’ Her eyes shot to Luke.
‘Luke Frost,’ he supplied.
‘The publisher?’
‘I’m honoured you’ve heard of me.’
‘Of course. You’re publishing a book by a cousin of mine, Letty Pinkton.’
Georgia gave Luke full marks for self control. His expression didn’t change a jot. ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘What an extraordinary coincidence.’ Serendipity was letting her down with a vengeance, Georgia decided. Janet Freeman’s hackles would be well sharpened.
‘And you’re publishing this book on Patrick Fairfax?’ Her tone suggested this came a poor second to Letty Pinkton’s.
Georgia answered for him. ‘Yes, provided Marsh & Daughter come up with enough material.’
‘Somewhat rash of you to sign it up before that’s certain.’ She returned the attack to Luke.
‘I have the utmost faith in all my authors,’ Luke returned blandly.
Janet Freeman let that one go, and ushered them into her living room, although her silence suggested she had heard a different story from her cousin. The room spoke not of that laughing girl but of the sharper, older woman she now was. Clinically tidy, angular and revealing little of the personality that created it.
‘What are you hoping I can tell you?’ The words flashed out.
‘Your memories of that day.’
‘What use will they be? I take it you’ve read my statement to the police. How can I remember more at this stage?’
‘I haven’t read the statement itself but . . .’
‘I do dislike interviewers who haven’t done their homework.’
Georgia wasn’t having that. ‘Who sets the homework?’ she countered.
‘In this case, I do,’ Janet Freeman returned briskly. ‘Nevertheless, since there’s no reason for me not to tell you, I will. My statement no doubt read that I arrived about four o’clock with three or four other people.’ She frowned. ‘To be correct, I think I arrived first. I saw Paul Stock drive up as I went inside. I went to the cloakroom first, and when I returned I found Paul and the other club members in the bar with the 362 pilots. I stayed there, and when the party broke up, Patrick Fairfax suggested we had another drink after he had taken the club members to see Matt Jones about investment. Patrick duly returned, we chatted for a while, then he took me to the downstairs bar to show me the memorabilia there. We stayed there until well past six thirty. Patrick realized the time was passing, said he must see Matt Jones again and that he’d be back. He didn’t return so after a while I left too.’
‘Left the hotel or the bar?’ No mention of Paul having been her husband, Georgia noted.
‘The bar. I was staying at the hotel for the weekend to be ready for flying the next day. I went up to my room.’
‘According to the barman, you left a message with him for Patrick that he would find you in the gardens.’
‘I don’t recall that.’ Very stiffly. ‘And I resent the implication that I might have been around near the time that Patrick was murdered. The police had no such suspicions, I would point out.’
Georgia tried hard to appear grateful for these very small mercies. ‘What brought you to the hotel? I assume you can’t have been intendi
ng to invest money or you would have gone with the others to the meeting with Matt Jones.’
Little chance of catching this lady unawares. ‘I imagine it was because the weather wasn’t good enough for flying. Besides, I’m always interested in talking to former pilots. Having just written a book about women pilots, I was considering writing one about their male counterparts.’
Georgia looked around. No photos here of her former husband, and no ring on her finger. Nothing to suggest she had a partner or husband now. What made this woman tick? Travelling? She supposed that must be it, and yet she did not seem a woman who had much curiosity in her fellow human beings, although that was a quality that travel writers must surely need.
‘And did you write one?’ Luke asked casually.
She looked disconcerted at this reasonable question. ‘No. I became sidetracked by mountains and desert pioneers.’
‘Such as Jane Digby?’ Georgia asked innocently.
‘Not like Jane Digby. Her sole purpose in life was to subordinate herself to a man. Any idiot can ride across deserts to lie under the stars with a sheikh. It takes rather more to cross the deserts for their own sake. I like to think so anyway.’
Georgia murmured something soothing and Luke quickly stepped in.
‘What about a book on Kentish explorers?’ he asked.
He received a terse reply. ‘Men chiefly. I’m not a rabid feminist but I do have to think of marketing. I’m interested in little-known women, not men. You should appreciate that as a publisher.’
‘I do,’ Luke assured her.
‘Now, if you have no further questions . . .’ Janet said firmly.
‘Just one,’ Georgia said immediately. ‘I see from the acknowledgements in Women in the Air – which I enjoyed,’ she added sincerely, ‘that you give Patrick Fairfax quite a big hand.’
‘I was fond of him,’ she replied instantly. ‘His death upset me a great deal, especially since I had been with him so shortly before his death.’
‘You acknowledge Paul Stock too. I understand you were once married to him.’
Georgia had forgotten she hadn’t told Luke that, and he looked surprised. Janet was made of stern stuff, however. ‘I can’t see its relevance, but yes I was. It was he who first introduced me to the club. We married, we divorced and we remained on good terms.’
‘Were you still married in 1975?’
‘No,’ came the iceberg answer. ‘If you must have the exact details, we were married in 1970, and divorced at the end of 1973.’ A pause. ‘Have you met Paul?’
‘Yes, though he didn’t mention your marriage. There are various rumours, however, which of course we treat as just that, until proved otherwise. One that Patrick Fairfax accused him of fraud, and another that he was a ladies’ man.’
Janet regarded her with distaste. ‘If you are implying I had an affair with Patrick, please don’t be so mealy-mouthed.’
‘It was actually Paul I was speaking about.’ Ambiguity could bring its rewards. ‘Those were also the words used to me about Patrick though.’
A reluctant smile appeared on Janet Freeman’s face. ‘You seem to have caught me out. Well, no problem, I’d prefer it not to be in your book for the sake of Jean Fairfax, but if you feel the need to upset her, then you must do as you please. I won’t deny it. As for Paul, let’s say that he was and may still be enthusiastic where his sex life is concerned. And as for the rumours over the fraud, Paul always seemed to me an honest broker – financially at any rate.’
Well put, Georgia thought wryly. ‘Was it a serious affair with Patrick?’
‘I thought so,’ was the bland answer. ‘But then I would, wouldn’t I? To Patrick it was probably just a Spitfire interlude. Now you see him, now you don’t. That, I realized later, exactly suited me. I’d had enough of marriage not to want to be tied down in any way.’
Georgia avoided Luke’s eye. ‘But Paul might not have seen it that way?’
‘How can I say?’
Very easily, Georgia thought. One last try.
‘We were told that Patrick and Paul Stock had a row over you when Paul arrived, and I wondered if that was because you had planned to stay at the hotel with Patrick?’
‘Irrelevant in the circumstances,’ Janet said coolly. ‘And even if poor Paul did fly off the handle in a big way, you need waste no time trying to pin Patrick’s murder on him. He wouldn’t have the guts.’
*
‘What did you make of that lady?’ Georgia asked Luke as they headed round the ring road to the A11 for the drive home.
‘A doughty customer.’
‘For all her marriage to Paul and affair with Patrick, she seems distinctly unsexy.’
‘You think so?’
She glanced at his profile to see that he had that irritating smile on his face which said ‘we men know more than you about such things’.
‘I do,’ she said firmly.
‘I don’t. I would say that she had a sexy youth and is now enjoying a sexy maturity.’
‘If she’s a passionate lady then,’ Georgia began, ‘perhaps the affair with Patrick was very serious, which means—’
‘He found the guts?’
*
‘Lunch,’ declared Georgia at last, the following morning. There was only so much rapture she could extract from a computer screen.
‘That’s a delaying tactic, not a solution,’ Peter shot back at her.
‘For me it’s a solution. All computers can do is produce sense from what we feed into them. They can’t do our work for us, only make short cuts.’
‘Charlie wouldn’t agree. He’d disown you if he heard you speak disrespectfully of Suspects Anonymous.’
‘Tell me one good thing that it’s produced over this case.’
‘One can’t expect miracles.’
‘One can hope for them. Look what this blasted screen is showing though. On second thoughts, don’t. I’ve been eyeball to monitor long enough. It’s lunchtime.’
The screen was dotted all over with Burglar Bills, not to mention Janet Freeman, but they were all lined up against a bar. The problem currently being thrashed out – a moderate term for the heated discussion in progress – was whether Sylvia Lee should be added only as a witness for background information or whether in view of her husband being present that day she should be upgraded.
‘Are you suggesting,’ she asked him sweetly, ‘that Richard Vane was so concerned over what his wife had been up to thirty-five years earlier that he (a) joined the aviation club and (b) for some mysterious reason chose a public place like Woodring Manor Hotel to sort the matter out with Patrick Fairfax once and for all?’
‘I don’t have to prove a case for it,’ Peter pointed out with dignity. ‘We once agreed the rule that gut feelings are relevant.’
‘Not on Suspects Anonymous, only in our thinking.’
‘Suppose we compromise?’ Peter suggested generously, ‘and put the Vanes in, husband and wife, as one player.’ He promptly created a new icon, and a Burglar Bill duly appeared on the screen with Vane emblazoned on its stripy shirt.
‘Done,’ she agreed. ‘Lunch?’
‘Not yet. Let’s see how it works. Now, we’re agreed that six of the pilots had left – or at least appeared to have done so – at about five o clock. Matt Jones and Patrick Fairfax remained, Richard Vane left twenty minutes or so later, and the other three club members shortly after that.’
‘Yes, subject to alibis holding up.’
‘Of course. Right, that’s good. That gives us thirteen players, including Patrick himself. An inauspicious number. OK to run the session? I’ll set the clock at three forty-five p.m.’
‘Go for it,’ she said with resignation. Lunch, it seemed, was not an option.
Peter, frowning into the screen, duly clicked the button and sat back as the round clock dial at the corner of the screen whirled into action, and one figure in white (Patrick Fairfax), and seven of the Bills left the bar and sprang to life. The clock worked to evide
nce time, not real time of course, and despite her empty stomach Georgia became hooked by what was happening. It was all going smoothly with icons gliding in and out of Matt’s office and the two different bars, until the time clock reached seven o’clock, when a large red cross appeared on the screen.
‘The error sign, so that doesn’t fit.’ Peter frowned. ‘Paul Stock said the downstairs bar was empty, yet the cross must be pointing out that not only do we not have supporting evidence for that, but there must be a definite clash. I suppose it’s because the barman told Patrick that Janet was looking for him out in the grounds, but Janet said she was in her room and there was no message.’
‘Easily explained,’ Georgia replied. ‘We have only approximate times. Patrick says at, say, six forty-five that he has to have a word with Matt and he’ll be back in a trice. Janet decides to use the time to go to the loo or to their room. Obviously they were going to spend the night together at the hotel, so she tells the barman to let Patrick know she’ll meet him upstairs. He’ll know she means their room; the barman knowing when he gave his statement that Patrick was killed in the gardens takes it that she referred to the garden doors which are right there as you come up the stairs from the basement floor. Alternatively, instead of going to the loo she uses the time to filch the gun if the barman nipped out, and she’s feeling hard done by Patrick Fairfax. Computers,’ she added crossly, ‘are not Old Bailey judges. They are only a tool.’
‘But a useful one.’ Peter clicked Janet Freeman’s Betty icon again to run through her movements. ‘Yes, a definite question mark over that lady. She was there with the gun, and as barmen tend to come and go she could have been alone with it. She’d only need a minute. The barman . . . Which one was it?’ He hunted in the index file. ‘Tony Wilson. She gets rid of him on an excuse, takes the gun . . . no, another red cross.’
‘Ammunition,’ Georgia said smugly. ‘She wouldn’t have any.’
He stared at her in annoyance. ‘Why? Suppose she’d planned it?’
‘Why should she?’
‘Fairfax was giving her the boot. She thought he was more serious about their relationship than in fact he was. Bingo.’