‘No.’
‘When?’
‘I can’t exactly remember. Last week?’
‘Well, I haven’t heard anything about it. Did she lodge an official complaint or not?’
‘No, she just told me about it.’
‘So why did you go to the Bramleys if no official complaint had been lodged?’
‘Because I thought I’d nip it in the bud, say a few words to Ken Bramley before it got out of hand.’
‘It looks like it already has, if you want to call a policewoman brawling in the street with a bunch of ratbags getting out of hand.’
‘I’m very sorry, senior sergeant.’
‘Bramley says you hit him first.’
‘I might have pushed him. I didn’t hit him.’
‘It still counts as you being the aggressor. What led to the pushing and shoving?’
‘He was abusive to me.’
‘That doesn’t mean you needed to get physical with him. You know that. Why didn’t Fantasio lodge a report herself if she felt threatened? And why did Bramley threaten her in the first place?’
‘It was about Linda getting lawyers in over the will.’
‘And she knew it was definitely him?’
‘He didn’t identify himself, but she recognised his voice. And who else would have called about the will? She didn’t want to come in here because she said she could handle it herself.’
‘Sorry, when did you first hear about this?’
‘I don’t know, the other day. Probably when I was getting my hair done.’
Cole looked at her and wondered how long salon-turned curls stayed in a woman’s hair.
‘Alright then,’ he said. ‘I want you to go home now and rest up. Don’t come in tomorrow either. I’ll deal with the Bramleys, though I’ll probably have to just let them off with a caution now.’
‘Yes boss,’ she answered dismally.
‘Off you go,’ he ordered and she felt more miserable than ever.
Cole assigned Forrest the job of yelling at the Bramleys before they were booted unceremoniously out of the station. At least no need for paperwork, he said to himself as he stared again at his choked in-tray.
He wasn’t long at dealing with another issue when his office telephone rang.
It was Robyn Kinross.
‘I’m sorry I flew off the handle at you this morning,’ she apologised. ‘There was no call for that and I know you’re just doing your job. Can I make it up to you?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Cole said. ‘It hasn’t exactly been the best of days.’
‘Yes, I know. I just heard about the shooting at your house. And there I was getting cross with you over you seeing my mother, which was trivial.’
‘I don’t think anyone was trying to kill me. You shouldn’t take someone shooting at you personally.’
‘Have they been caught?’
‘Not yet. But they will be.’
‘You sound tired, Lloyd. Really tired. Maybe you should go home and have a drink or something.’
‘I think it’d be whisky I’d need, except that I don’t drink.’
‘Wise decision,’ she said. ‘I barely touch it myself. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m glad you saw my mother. I don’t go as often as I should. But I suppose she was asleep all the time you were there?’
‘No, not all the time.’
‘Did she say anything to you, then? Normally she’s not capable.’
‘A few words.’
‘You’re lucky then. Usually she doesn’t say anything. Or when she does, it’s just gibberish.’
She was right about him being tired. He remembered he’d been up a good part of the night, and then the visit to Fantasio, and then sorting out the mess with the Bramleys. He pulled himself up in his chair, trying to sound a bit livelier.
‘No, she was better than that. But Robyn, I’m interested in knowing a bit more about your mother.’ Cole said. ‘Do you mind? Before the war lots of people came over from the old country, and Ireland and Scotland. Your mother is Scottish like your dad, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, from near Skye. I think my mother was some kind of mail order bride, like in the Wild West, even though her family was well off. My father can be a bit of a snob about those things,’ she said. ‘My mother came from Scotland to marry my father here.’
‘And her brother came out to join her later on, I take it?’
‘Yes, he did. I used to remember playing with him when I was little. I liked Uncle Cam and what happened was an awful tragedy.’
‘It was an accident, they say. John Colston mishandling a weapon.’
‘Supposedly. But who really knows?’
‘So why did you get involved with Harry Colston then, if you knew that?’
‘It was Harry I was interested in, not his father. And I couldn’t give someone up just because of what had happened several decades ago.’
‘But Harry’s father could?’
There was a brief pause on the line.
‘It seemed so,’ she said. ‘Anyway, Lloyd, that’s past history now.’
‘What about your father, though? He can’t have been very happy you were going out with Harry, not after Colston killed his brother in law?’
He doubted she knew her father was present when her uncle was killed. It was even less likely she had heard the rumours about John Colston’s affair with her mother.
She said, ‘You make it sound like he did it deliberately. Of course Dad wasn’t happy about it. But he knew what I wanted.’
‘Even so, he didn’t try to put a stop to it?’
‘No.’
‘When did your mother fall ill, Robyn?’
He pictured her pausing to think, as she said with genuine sadness, ‘I think the day her brother died.’
‘Has she any other brothers or sisters?’
‘No. She doesn’t have anyone. Just us,’ she said, only just holding back her emotions.
Cole found her rapid changes of mood and feeling perplexing, how she could be so dismissive of her past with Harry Colston one minute, and then close to tears about her mother the next when she hadn’t shown any real compassion for her mother in any of the previous exchanges they’d had. She hadn’t even inquired as to what health he’d found her in during his visit to Bendigo, or asked any questions about her welfare generally. He thought that if he did ask her when she’d last visited her mother, he would have been surprised to hear if it had been any time recently.
‘Did you ever go to Scotland, meet your grandparents over there?’
‘Just the once. When I was little. I can’t recall much about them.’
‘They say Scotland’s beautiful. All green, hilly and cold. Did your grandparents live in a town, or somewhere else?’ he asked, as casually as he could.
‘No, no. They had property. They were quite well off.’ She’d been almost wistful in telling him, but then she shook herself out of it. ‘But what are you going to do about this shooting business? You can’t stay at your house any longer, can you?’
‘I intend to.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘I’m in plain view most of the time. If someone wants to take a shot at me there’ll be plenty of opportunity for them. I’m not going into hiding.’
‘No, I suppose you won’t. But be careful, won’t you? I don’t want anything to happen to you.’
They exchanged some more small talk before she hung up. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Did she say that kind of thing deliberately, he wondered?
Janice knocked and came in to remind him of a letter that needed signing, which he did while she waited.
‘You should go home, Lloyd’ she told him. ‘You look totally beat.’
‘That’s how I’m feeling, too.’
; ‘Then go home.’
‘Thanks, I think I will. Soon.’
He felt drained. His shoes felt like lead as he stood to retrieve a file from the cabinet.
He’d go to the Bridges to see Nancy who still sounded jittery when he’d spoken to her by telephone earlier, and have dinner with them before returning to his house. Nothing would keep him awake tonight. There was just one last thing he needed to do before leaving the station, and that was to satisfy himself about the lingering questions he had over Harry Colston’s will.
Now he had two wills, the original one saved from Betty Castle’s incinerator, and the more recent one provided by both Linda Fantasio and Grimes. As expected, the wills given to him by Fantasio and Grimes were one and the same.
He put the Betty Castles and Fantasio wills side by side on the desk in front of him. Thanks to Grimes’ habits of a lifetime, at first glance the two wills seemed carbon copies of each other, with everything typed save the signatures at their end. But their contents, he quickly saw, were markedly different. Harry Colston’s earlier will – and this was a surprise – was created less than a year ago, in November 1966. It left Hilltop and everything it contained, as well as all of Colston’s worldly goods, to be divided equally between his sister Linda and his two brothers. There was an unexpected coda, too. The will had been witnessed by Barry Jennings.
It was in sharp contrast to the newer will, which divided Harry’s spoils equally between his sister and his wife, with his wife’s share going to the Bramleys in the event she became deceased, too. The will was witnessed by Martin Bigelow.
Cole sat back.
There were so many questions: He presumed the first will was genuine, but if so why had nothing been left to either his wife or his son? And why had the sharefarmer been called in to witness it? Just because he was nearby and handy? The more recent will was so different he wondered if it was fake. And if it was, had it been drawn up by Dianne Bramley or by a member of her family? The phrase, Should my wife be deceased too, raised other suspicions. There was again no mention of the child, George, as inheritor either, which was more than baffling. Was it because of his age, and was Linda Fantasio included only to avoid a likely contesting of the will? If that was the case, whoever had drafted it had sadly misjudged her character. Then, finally, there was Martin Bigelow jumping out at him as a witness at the end, a man supposedly not on the best of terms with the Colstons.
And he wasn’t an expert on signatures, but to his untrained eye Harry Colston’s second signature looked a pale imitation of the first, adopting the slight hesitations and deviations of a traced working.
He quickly burrowed among the other papers Fantasio had given him this morning and found a number of documents with Harry’s signature on them. They were all a good match with the first will, but not with its successor.
He leant back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, trying to take it all in.
Here now was official police business, too, because sitting on his desk staring right back at him was a clear-cut case of serious fraud.
Chapter 29
Cole slept so deeply a hundred horses jumping through his windows wouldn’t have disturbed him. He woke momentarily surprised that Nancy wasn’t beside him but the minute between throwing open the curtains and making his way to the bathroom gave him time to collect his senses. Stiff gusts of wind rattled a loose window frame as he shaved, showered and dressed. He made himself tea and toast with jam and then tidied up the kitchen before leaving for an early start at the station.
He felt better this morning. At last he had conclusive evidence pointing to interference with Harry Colston’s will and, following on from that, a strong motive for someone wanting one if not both Colstons out of the way. It proved his suspicions had been right. The not so small task now was to follow the creation of the second will back to its source. But a complicating factor was knowing who did or didn’t know about the contents of the first will, as well as of the second version. If a beneficiary of the first didn’t know the will had been updated, the killer might have just as easily come from there.
As soon as the shops opened for business in Main Street Cole let himself into Albert Grimes’ office, a leather satchel in his hand. He slapped the two wills down in front of the solicitor, saying, ‘I need to know a bit more about these.’
Grimes stared goggle-eyed. ‘Where did you get this from?’ he inquired of the first will.
‘It turned up in some old papers,’ Cole said. ‘But I’ve got some questions for you Albert, because from what I can tell this other will is a forgery.’
He watched the man’s face drop.
‘That’s not possible,’ Grimes protested.
‘Yes, it is. Because here they are in black and white. They’ll be professionally scrutinized by our Fraud Squad, of course, but in the meantime you’ll notice that the signatures are different.’ Cole drew out several other sheets of paper from the satchel. ‘Compare these other, genuine signatures, with the two on the wills. It’s clear the second one isn’t in Harry Colston’s hand.’ Cole stood back with the coolest of smiles. ‘Which puts you in a fairly uncomfortable position, doesn’t it Albert?’
‘I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Both these wills have been registered with you. That’s your stamp, clear as day, on them, isn’t it? Now this first one is dated November 1966, whereas this second one, as you’ve been so fond of reminding me, dates from February 1967. Don’t you find it odd that Mr Colston would have altered his will so soon after creating the first one?’
‘A man is entitled to change his mind.’
‘Of course he is. But when it’s odds-on this other will is a forgery it puts a whole new complexion on what he’s supposed to be thinking, or who has changed his mind, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ the solicitor could only agree, albeit still reluctantly.
‘What’s your normal procedure, Albert, when someone wants to change their will?’
‘Generally, they make an appointment with me, and then they usually provide me with their requests already written down. I read it, make sure it’s all as it should be, and make changes where they are needed. Then it’s typed up, I stamp it and send a copy to the client.’
‘And the old will gets burnt. Is that what happened with Mr Colston? In writing his wills you followed that exact procedure twice?’
‘I can’t recall … everything that happens,’ Grimes stumbled, trying to maintain his professional dignity.
Cole leant over, speaking slowly.
‘Mr Grimes, did you or did you not see Mr Colston here in your office, or elsewhere, twice during the last ten months as you formalised his wills?
‘I can’t be sure.’
‘Then you need to be, or you might be implicated in a very serious matter. Think.’
Grimes took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his cheeks and brow.
‘What I sometimes did, when we were exceptionally busy …’ he explained, as if it was trivial. ‘… was I let the secretary take care of the more mundane chores, posting documents back and forth, and so on.’
‘And in typing up the new will according to a client’s instructions? Was that what you called a mundane chore? Letting her just take care of typing it up without you even checking it? Tell me exactly what this secretary would have done, if it had been her alone who dealt with the new will.’
Grimes grew paler by the minute.
‘Someone might telephone the office,’ Grimes said, trying to distance himself from Colston. ‘They might say that they can’t come in to the office but will post their handwritten requirements instead. I would read it and then give it to my secretary for typing and sending back for signing. There are two copies. She stamps them and the client gets one while we hold the other for safekeeping.’
‘Just so we’re clear about this. Did you actually read Harr
y Colston’s new will?’
‘I can’t recall,’ Grimes answered.
‘Did you actually see Harry Colston when his new will was created?’
‘I can’t recall.’
‘You don’t remember anything about it at all?’
‘I can’t …’
‘Albert.’
‘I probably would have seen the will, but I have no clear memory of it,’ Grimes answered miserably.
‘You might want to take a bit more care with your customers’ paperwork in future then,’ Cole said. ‘But that’ll do for the moment. It’s likely you’ll be interviewed by someone else later on, so maybe get your statement ready for them, alright?’
Cole went out and shut the door behind him.
He walked down the street to the offices of the Mitchell Advertiser, a twenty-page newspaper less reliant on news than on sporting reports and advertising.
Cole spoke with the proprietor and was taken to the rear of the offices where their archived newspapers were stored. One of its young office staff, Eve, helped him locate the 1941 editions. Even so, it took a full hour to find references to the death of Elsa Kinross’s brother. The account of the shooting was relayed in a matter of fact tone. The dead man, Cameron Dunbar, was referred to as the unfortunate Scot, who had been residing at the property of William Kinross. Four men had been engaged in rifle practice at the time of the accident, according to the article. One man’s weapon had discharged in error and delivered a wound, the man responsible for it running several miles for help. The man who had discharged the weapon reported himself astonished at the man’s death. He’d thought he’d inflicted only a minor wound.
And by a fluke, in locating references to the shooting, they also came upon an earlier, brief article with a photograph of the local military forces in training, the photograph clearly showing younger versions of John Colston and Bill Kinross, among other men.
Cole asked Eve to make copies of the articles and he put them in his satchel. There was nothing else the newspaper staff could help him with and he thanked them for their time and left.
Besides Kinross, he thought about the payments Harry Colston had been making to Agostini and Bigelow and on face value they seemed to be about as above board as they could be. There was still a lingering question over Bigelow given his witnessing of the forged will, and he’d be curious to see what the farmer had to say about that, and who had asked him to sign the document.
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