Murder Repeated

by Lesley Cookman

  ‘The police would know,’ said Libby. ‘They had his phone for the best part of Thursday.’

  ‘Don’t you go asking them!’ warned Fran.

  ‘Can I ask Colin?’

  Fran sighed. ‘If you like. Oh, and Guy wanted to know if you’d like to come down here for dinner tomorrow? And stay, obviously.’

  ‘We’d love to. Any special reason?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Except, as I told you, he does seem very interested in this business.’ Libby could almost hear the frown in her voice. ‘I might ask him.’

  Libby and Ben spent Friday night quietly at home, undisturbed by either phone calls or visits from anyone. On Saturday, Libby made another trip into Canterbury for her weekly shop, feeling slightly guilty as she did so for not patronising the village shops. But, she argued with herself, they don’t stock everything I need.

  To assuage her conscience, when she got home she went immediately to Nella’s nursery shop for fresh vegetables and to Bob the butcher for pork chops.

  ‘How’s the investigation going?’ asked Bob, as he wrapped her purchase in brown paper.

  ‘Investigation?’ said Libby innocently. ‘Oh, the bodies at the Garden. I don’t know.’

  ‘Come off it, Libby. We know you’ve been over to the incident room, and you’ve taken that Colin Hardcastle under your wing.’

  ‘Well, yes, but that’s all. We – I – aren’t involved.’

  ‘Pull the other one!’ said Bob. ‘But we were wondering about the panto. That Dame Amanda’s bringing hers over, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’ Libby looked nervous. ‘Are you – I mean – don’t you approve?’

  Bob laughed. ‘Oh, yes! We get a year off, don’t we? Except for the techies, of course.’

  ‘She’ll obviously need those – you can’t do panto without lighting and sound, or backstage crew. She’s been in touch about that. You volunteering?’

  ‘No fear! We all need a year off to refresh ourselves.’

  ‘Have we been getting stale, then, do you think?’

  ‘There’s always a danger, isn’t there?’ said Bob. ‘There you go. Enjoy.’

  Another thing to worry about, thought Libby as she walked home. Had she taken her position as panto writer and director for granted? Was the Oast Theatre Company glad to see the back of her?

  The weather was fine enough for the dining table in Fran and Guy’s back yard to be put to use that evening. Balzac the cat eyed them balefully from a perch on the wall, obviously annoyed at having his retreat invaded.

  ‘What’s up, Libby?’ asked Guy, as he poured wine. ‘You don’t seem your usual cheerful self.’

  ‘She’s decided that the theatre hates her,’ said Ben.

  ‘What?’ Fran emerged from the kitchen with plates.

  ‘Oh, it isn’t as bad as that,’ said Libby, squirming a little. ‘I just think they might all be fed up with me throwing my weight around. They’re all glad to be having a rest this season, so Bob tells me. They feel they might be stale. I think he meant me.’

  ‘I doubt if they’d all come back each year, if that were the case,’ said Guy.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Ben. ‘I tried to tell her, but she won’t listen to me.’

  Fran looked at her friend with amusement. ‘She can’t get any further with the Garden Hotel case, so she’s had to find something else to worry about.’

  Everyone but Libby laughed.

  ‘I know you all think I’m being silly,’ she said, ‘but I think I’m right.’

  ‘Speaking of the case,’ said Fran, indicating that they should help themselves to her version of paella, ‘Guy has something to tell you.’

  ‘Guy?’ said Libby and Ben together.

  ‘I don’t know that it’s any help, though,’ said Guy, not looking at them.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’ asked Libby.

  ‘You’ll see when I tell you.’ Guy looked up. ‘I think Fran said that Fred Barrett told you he came to cover our opening at the gallery?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, we got chatting, as you do, and he asked me if I remembered the Shareen Wallis case. It was fairly recent back then. He was obviously – well, I suppose obsessed wouldn’t be too strong a word. And he said he was sure Nigel Preece had something to do with it.’

  ‘Really?’ Libby asked with her fork half way to her mouth.

  ‘That’s why I hadn’t said anything before, because his name hadn’t come up in the current investigation, as far as I knew.’

  ‘It hadn’t, until we saw Barrett, who didn’t mention it as such. We got it from Patti,’ said Fran.

  ‘Yes.’ Guy looked uncomfortable. ‘But I remembered it because I’d had a run-in with Preece myself.’

  There were various expressions of astonishment all round the table.

  ‘How come?’ asked Ben.

  ‘He approached me to do a portrait of him. I refused.’

  ‘On moral grounds?’ asked Libby.

  Guy smiled. ‘I suppose you could call it that. And he took it rather badly. Threatened to blacken my reputation, in fact.’

  ‘Just for refusing the portrait? But how could he do that?’ said Ben.

  ‘Well...’ Guy took a deep breath, ‘he also propositioned me.’

  This time there was an astonished silence.

  ‘And then he came up with some theory that I was a copyist. Claimed to have proof that I’d been painting fakes.’

  ‘What?’ Libby was aghast.

  ‘Oh, it all blew over – he was all bluster, and if he had any proof it would have been manufactured, and to be honest, I didn’t think he had the sort of criminal friends capable of that. But it left a nasty taste in my mouth. So when Barrett mentioned his name, I was quite ready to believe it. But, as I said, his name hadn’t come up this time, so I didn’t mention it.’

  ‘And now it has.’ Libby glowered at her plate. ‘What a piece of shit.’

  ‘Preece, not the paella, I hope,’ said Fran.

  That broke the tension and they all laughed.

  ‘So he propositioned you?’ said Ben. ‘He’s gay?’

  ‘Certainly got leanings. I got the impression that he’d take it where he could find it,’ said Guy.

  ‘So he could be the one who was meeting Shareen,’ said Libby.

  ‘But how would he have got her to Steeple Martin? Or have known about the cellar at the Garden?’ asked Fran.

  ‘Oh, heavens, I don’t know,’ said Libby. ‘I think I just want him to be guilty.’

  Later, as she and Fran sat alone at the table while the men cleared up in the kitchen, she said, ‘The trouble is, even if Preece had some involvement in Shareen’s death, he couldn’t have had anything to do with Ossie.’

  ‘It’s difficult to see how anyone could have had something to do with both of them,’ said Fran. ‘Unless it’s someone we haven’t heard about.’

  ‘And that’s always a possibility,’ said Libby gloomily. ‘I mean, there’s all the people at the party we don’t know. And what about someone connected with Shareen at the time? You know, in her career or something.’

  ‘Or jealousy,’ suggested Fran. ‘Not Emma, she wouldn’t have been able to do it, as we said. But there could have been others who were jealous, or whose career Shareen had wrecked.’

  ‘She wasn’t influential enough, surely?’ said Libby. ‘But I suppose she could be – oh, I don’t know – using underhand methods to climb the ladder. Blackmail, even. We just don’t know.’

  ‘So that’s the next research project, is it?’ asked Fran.

  ‘Can’t hurt,’ said Libby. ‘Shall I fetch the laptop?’

  ‘Not now,’ said Fran. ‘We’ll have a quick look in the morning.’

  After breakfast on Sunday morning, Guy left them to open the gallery/shop, Ben went for a stroll along the sea wall and Libby and Fran sat down with the laptop.

  ‘There isn’t a lot,’ said Fran, ‘and most of it’s to do with her disappearance.’
r />   ‘Look, though – it says here she’d been signed up by some management company.’

  ‘Yes, they’ve got some famous clients. Well, they were famous then.’

  ‘Nothing much else, though, is there?’ Libby scrolled through the information. ‘Except some news reports about her body being found.’

  ‘Speculation that it was a kidnapping for money, here,’ said Fran, clicking on a link. ‘Unsubstantiated, though.’

  ‘Right,’ said Libby. ‘Who else can we look up?’

  ‘The Darlings?’ suggested Fran.

  ‘Oh, yes, what’s his name? Fiona’s husband?’

  ‘Can’t remember. But what about the Whitelaws? Whitelaw Senior went to see Beth and Fiona the other day, didn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, good idea.’ Libby hunched over the laptop again. After a moment she sat back, disappointed. ‘Nothing. Except odd bits where the name comes up in some other context.

  ‘Wait a minute, though,’ said Fran, taking over the screen. ‘Look. Nicholas Whitelaw, member of the campaigning team.’ She looked up at Libby, shock on her face. ‘For Nigel Preece.’

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  ‘What?’ Libby grabbed the laptop. ‘He supported Nigel Preece! When?’

  ‘When he campaigned to be an MP, of course.’

  ‘Blimey!’ Libby sat back. ‘He’s got branches everywhere!’

  ‘Tentacles, rather,’ corrected Fran.

  ‘But Whitelaw’s got nothing to with anything!’

  ‘Except as a victim’s father.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Libby subsided.

  ‘Come on, then,’ said Fran. ‘Nothing more we can do now, and I’d better get to the shop to help Guy.’

  ‘And we’d better get home to get ready for Hetty’s lunch,’ said Libby.

  ‘So what did you find out?’ asked Ben, once they were in the car on the way home.

  Libby told him. ‘And do you know,’ she said, ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Ben.

  ‘No, listen. There was one link when we looked for Shareen that suggested she had been kidnapped for ransom.’

  ‘No note, though,’ said Ben.

  ‘Yes, but just suppose she was taken, rather than killed, and then killed later. Her body could have been put in the cellar at any time. It didn’t have to be that same night.’

  ‘You’ve got a point there,’ said Ben, much struck. ‘Surely the police must have thought of that!’

  ‘But she’d have to have been kept somewhere.’ Libby stared out of the window. ‘But where? Felling or Steeple Martin? Or somewhere in between?’

  ‘As I said, the police must have thought of that, and they would have looked into that. In fact,’ said Ben, ‘they would have searched all over the place for her – not knowing she’d been brought back to Steeple Martin.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Libby sighed. ‘Oh, well. As Fran said, nothing more we can do now.’

  Ben dropped Libby in Allhallow’s Lane before taking his car back to the brewery. She contemplated ringing Fran with her new theory, but decided against it, telling herself that it would look like obsessing over the subject.

  Before they went up to the Manor for lunch, she wondered aloud if Ian would be there.

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. It’ll be all hands on deck now, what with two bodies to investigate. And try and stay off the subject, eh?’

  Sure enough, when they arrived in the Manor kitchen, Hetty was there alone.

  ‘No Flo and Lenny?’ said Ben, kissing his mother.

  ‘They’ll be along. And Edward,’ said Hetty gruffly.

  ‘I think you’ve got an adopted brother, Ben,’ said Libby, with a grin.

  ‘I like him,’ said Hetty, turning away to her Aga.

  ‘So do we, Mum,’ said Ben. ‘Oh – and here he is!’

  The kitchen door opened to reveal Ian. Three people stared at him in surprise.

  ‘It’s all right, Hetty,’ he said, ‘I haven’t come to gatecrash.’

  ‘Welcome to stay,’ said Hetty, who always cooked enough to feed the whole village.

  ‘No, I’ve got to get back to the incident room, thanks all the same. I just wanted to catch up with Libby and Ben.’

  Libby squinted at him. ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ian’s dark brows quirked upwards. ‘May I sit down?’

  ‘Yes – and a glass of wine while you’re here?’ asked Ben. ‘Might as well be comfortable.’

  ‘We-ell,’ said Ian, and sat down.

  Ben went to fetch wine and Libby sat down opposite Ian.

  ‘Go on, then,’ she said.

  ‘I wanted to know if you’d found out anything else since we last spoke.’

  Libby gasped, and Ben stopped dead in the doorway.

  ‘All right, don’t look at me as if I’d grown two heads,’ said Ian. ‘It was simply that while we were having a conference down there,’ he jerked his head in the direction of the village, ‘both DS Trent and DI Maiden gave their opinion that you and Fran often thought of things that we – the police – didn’t. Often irrelevant,’ he added, frowning, ‘but sometimes useful.’

  Libby was smiling. ‘I never thought I’d hear that’

  ‘I never thought I’d say it,’ said Ian, raising his glass.

  ‘Cheers.’

  Libby put her head on one side and thought. ‘Well, there were a couple of things. One of them isn’t mine to tell, so I suggest you ask Guy.’

  ‘Guy?’

  ‘Yes. He hadn’t mentioned it before because – oh, well, he’ll tell you. But don’t bully him!’

  ‘Bully - ?’ Ian’s eyes positively bulged.

  ‘Anyway, the other thing was that Ossie Whitelaw’s dad was part of Nigel Preece’s campaign team when he wanted to be an MP.’

  ‘I don’t see what that has to do with anything,’ said Ian.

  ‘No, neither do I. But Mr Whitelaw called in to see both Beth Cole and Fiona Darling the other day.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. Donna saw him at Fiona’s – you know, Donna at the caff – and Beth told Fran and me. He wanted to know what she’d told the police, which seemed odd. And she told him the school had been very bad for Ossie. He didn’t like that.’

  ‘You see?’ Ian sat back in his chair. ‘You do come up with little nuggets. We probably wouldn’t have found that out.’

  ‘In that case, can you tell me something?’ asked Libby.

  ‘What?’ said Ian cautiously.

  ‘Was kidnap considered when Shareen disappeared? And did the police search reveal anywhere she might have been kept – or killed?’

  ‘So you’ve got on to that,’ said Ian. ‘How?’

  ‘Just thinking about it. Her body didn’t have to have been taken to the cellar the night she died, did it?’

  Ian sighed. ‘No. It was considered, of course, at the time, because there was a possibility she was still alive, but the search revealed nothing. They went over all the suspects’ homes, including Nigel Preece, whose father was extremely annoyed about it, and every likely and unlikely place anywhere in the area. And there was never any ransom note, of course.’

  ‘No.’ Libby looked down into her glass. ‘And her management? Her career? That would have been looked into, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Libby.’ Ian smiled and patted he hand. ‘The police do think of some things by themselves.’

  Edward arrived as Ian was leaving, and after being supplied with wine and explaining that he’d come by taxi, placed his own offering on the table.

  ‘This makes me feel like being part of a family again,’ he said, flashing his white smile round the table. ‘Now fill me in on where we are with the case.’

  Libby and Ben gave him as many details as they could before Flo and Lenny arrived and Hetty brought out a large pork joint.

  Libby duly obeyed instructions, and the subject of Colin and the murders wasn’t referred to again. However, after lunch and clearing up, Libby, Ben, and Edward made their way down the Manor
drive to make the weekly call on Peter and Harry, and, inevitably, it was the subject under discussion once more. When they had been brought up to date, Peter said, ‘So there really isn’t any more you can do?’

  ‘No...’ said Libby.

  ‘Except that she’ll try,’ said Ben.

  ‘How about,’ said Harry, from his usual seat on the sofa, feet on Peter’s lap, ‘you and I go and see Fiona?’

  ‘Eh?’ said Libby and Ben together, while Peter simply rolled his eyes and Edward looked amused.

  ‘Well, you remember when we did a bit of prospecting together before?’ said Harry. ‘I can keep you under control.’

  ‘And what will your excuse be?’ asked Peter.

  ‘That’s up to Libby,’ said Harry.

  ‘I can’t think,’ said Libby. ‘I wanted to go and ask her about Ossie’s dad, but I can’t think why I should. I mean, I know why I want to know, but I don’t know of a reasonable excuse to give Fiona.’

  ‘There isn’t one,’ said Ben. ‘I think you should just leave it alone. We’ve given the police – well, Ian, anyway – all the information we have, and I really can’t see any little nook or cranny you can start prising open.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Harry. ‘I quite enjoy getting involved when I can.’

  ‘You tell me to leave things alone as much as the others,’ said Libby.

  ‘When I see the need, yes,’ said Harry, ‘but to be honest, I like Colin and I think he’s getting a raw deal.’

  ‘And there’s the homophobic element in the past,’ said Peter thoughtfully. ‘But Fiona didn’t have anything to do with that.’

  ‘You’ve all got more experience in these things than I have,’ said Edward, ‘but I can’t see that anyone involved now had anything to do with the case in the past. The only people who might are your friends John and Emma, and Ted Sachs, of course.’

  ‘None of which have any reason to bump off either the singer or young Ossie,’ said Peter. ‘I’d leave it alone, if I were you.’

  ‘All we’ve done,’ Libby said to Ben as they walked home, ‘is go over and over the same ground. I think I’ll have to give it up.’

  Ben laughed. ‘If I’ve heard that once...’

  ‘I know. You’ve heard it a dozen times.’ Libby sighed. ‘So what else can I get interested in?’

  ‘Me,’ said Ben.