Murder for Treasure

by David Williams

  ‘That would be for a passport application, Mrs Evans,’ Treasure said, unravelling the various threads in the jumbled commentary. ‘People might ask the Judge to sign the photos one has to send.’

  ‘They get a flea in the ear if they do. Job for the Vicar,’ Nott-Herbert declared stoutly. ‘People do leave things on that table, though. And the children put anything delivered there. Could you ask Nye, Mrs Evans? Otherwise I’ll telephone Lewin. Tell him we’ve got a lost passport.’

  ‘No need, darling, I can give it him when we see him later.’ Anna took the passport from Treasure, who abandoned it gladly along with the dilemma it had been presenting.

  ‘As you wish, my dear, but perhaps I should take charge of it. And now I must rehearse.’

  The Judge made towards the house, following in the wake of the tray-laden Mrs Evans. Half way he stopped and turned, the dummy now cradled in one arm. ‘How’s this?’ he cried.

  He took a further moment to compose his features. ‘That’s another fine mess you’ve got us into Stanley,’ he offered in a voice just discernibly different from his normal tones but not remotely reminiscent of the late Oliver Hardy. He then began to manipulate the head of the dummy but without much dexterity: it soon faced backwards to the body and appeared to stick in that position.

  ‘Devilishly tricky,’ Nott-Herbert observed almost to himself as he turned and continued towards the house.

  He pulled the head from the dummy, an action that gave Mrs Evans, who observed it, quite a turn.

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘What you call a grand old British gentleman.’ Anna’s gaze followed the retreating figure of the man she was to marry. Then she looked directly at Treasure. ‘I am not a scheming female taking advantage. I love him very deeply.’ She hesitated. ‘Like a daughter.’ Then asked defiantly, ‘is that wrong?’

  Treasure admired the candour. ‘It’s none of my business, of course.’ He smiled. ‘No, I don’t think it wrong. The marriage will be for love, but . . .’

  ‘But for convenience also. It will be for spiritual and material reasons—not physical ones, I think.’ She spoke the last words deliberately. ‘Henry wants me to inherit his money.’

  ‘Without paying boring death duties. How very sensible.’ Inwardly Treasure debated how advanced into dotage he would need to be before settling for a solely spiritual relationship with Anna Spring. Perhaps the lady underestimated her regenerative powers—or else the Judge had decided discretion was the better path to survival. Aloud he continued affably, ‘I hope Henry is immensely rich.’

  ‘He’s rich, and he’s seventy-three. I am thirty-two. His wife died some years ago, his son and daughter-in-law too . . . in an accident. They had no children. There is no one otherwise, except little Nye, that’s Mrs Evans’s grandson. Henry thinks of him as family. He’s such an endearing child. We both adore him.’ She slipped her arm through his. ‘Come, we can walk through the garden as you wanted before I take you to meet Mrs Ogmore-Davies.’

  ‘I’m sorry to burden you like this.’

  ‘No you’re not, and in any case we find one another attractive. So.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘The church you can do on your own, and the harbour too, in the morning as you said. We have an hour only now. I have to change in time to dine with you and Henry before the recital.’

  ‘What recital?’

  ‘Didn’t Henry tell you? In the cathedral. A local amateur organist who murders Bach. I have to be there, but if I were you I’d beg to be excused. You’re fond of Bach?’

  ‘Passionately.’

  ‘So the Bishop told us. Your wife too?’

  Treasure nodded. ‘I’m sorry she’s not here.’ A relative truth since if she had been it was doubtful he would be strolling through a secluded garden arm in arm with an entrancing woman who had just announced she found him attractive. ‘Your husband . . . ?’ An enquiry of some kind seemed appropriate.

  ‘My husband was killed in an air crash over a year ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘We were very much in love. He ran a small air charter business out of Miami. He’d been a second pilot with the big airlines . . .’

  ‘He was American?’

  She nodded. ‘I’d been a stewardess for a while. That’s how we met. But Ralph wanted to run his own company—not work for anyone else. You understand?’

  ‘Of course. And it worked out?’

  ‘Until he was killed in a freak storm somewhere between Tampico and Miami. He needn’t have been flying. He’d been delivering a plane to a Mexican buyer—just a ferrying job. He was to return next day on a scheduled flight but he ran into another charter pilot returning empty to Miami. He rang me to say he’d accepted a free ride home . . . to be with me. It was a single engine plane. It just . . . just disappeared.’ Her hand tightened on Treasure’s arm.

  ‘I think you’d rather not talk about it.’

  ‘No, no. It’s good that I can speak of it now. For a while I was crazy with grief—and guilt. I felt responsible for his death. I couldn’t stay in America. Too many memories. I destroyed all the tangible ones. Even Ralph’s pictures. Stupid.’ She sighed. ‘I went back to Germany—my home, my mother’s home is in Hamburg. May we sit a moment?’

  They had taken a wide path that led from the lawn through banks of tall flowering shrubs. There was a seat in an arbour of deep purple lilac and soft pink rhododendrons.

  ‘What brought you to Panty?’

  ‘I came first many years ago as an au pair to learn English.’

  ‘And Welsh as well?’ Treasure chuckled.

  ‘Sure, that was a bonus.’ She smiled. ‘My father, he was in the merchant navy, knew Captain Ogmore-Davies. We were not rich. My father was not also a Captain, you understand. Mrs Ogmore-Davies needed help in the house, unofficially with a small wage.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘So it worked very well for me to come here.’

  ‘And you did learn excellent English.’

  ‘Some, yes. But mostly now it’s Americanized.’ She drew her legs up to the seat, clasped them at the ankles and rested her chin on her knees. ‘I came here to recapture peace of mind. It’s a very special place for me. Oh, I know it’s now a little commercial, but only in the season.’

  ‘You kept in touch with your friends here?’

  ‘With the Ogmore-Davieses, some others, and with Henry, of course.’

  ‘You knew the Judge when you were here before?’

  She nodded, laughing. ‘Then he was learning German. Always he has needed to learn new things. It was nearly ten years ago. His wife was still alive, she was an invalid.’

  ‘And he hired you to teach him German.’

  ‘Not very well, I’m afraid.’ She had picked a lilac leaf and was studying its composition as she talked. ‘But his wife liked me to come—and the indispensable Mrs Evans too. She was very close to the Ogmore-Davieses.’

  ‘I suppose the community was much smaller in those days.’

  ‘Mmm—I could never have opened an art gallery then.’

  ‘Is that the business you spoke about?’

  She looked up with a glint of pride. ‘There was a little insurance money. I studied history of art in America and worked in a gallery there for a while. It seemed a good risk to take with so many tourists around.’

  ‘Where is the gallery?’

  ‘Half way down the hill. It’s two converted cottages on the High Street. I live over the shop—it’s very snug, with a glorious view of the harbour at the back. You must come. . .’

  ‘To buy a picture or to see the view?’ He was consciously if harmlessly flirting with this very uncommon woman— and aware he had been encouraged.

  Devalera had now rejoined the pair and was lying at Anna’s feet. It was difficult to discern from his permanent hang-dog expression whether the coloured object, part of which was protruding from his mouth, was any more to his taste than the remains of the box which he had now evidently abandoned. Treasure bent down to retrieve the morsel which the
dog seemed content—even anxious—to deliver up. It was a playing card.

  ‘Behold the Eight of Hearts, or what’s left of it,’ said Treasure holding up his prize.

  ‘It’s the Six of Spades on this side.’ Anna giggled.

  ‘Who’d believe we have an Irish wolfhound that does card tricks?’ He smirked at Anna, adding, as he slipped the card into his pocket. ‘And he seems to do them better than Henry.’

  The heated indoor whirlpool at the Panty Sunfun Hotel is circular and measures twelve feet across.

  This gave room enough for each of the three present occupants to enjoy ‘the stimulating caress of the six hundred powered water jets that ease away tension and tone-up the body beautiful in just about any position.’

  The Sunfun Hotel Corporation of America considered the heated indoor whirlpool ‘available at all our locations’ to be a major selling proposition. Most guests preferred a private shower to the prospect of mass stimulation, whatever the position.

  Indeed, most guests preferred a Hilton or a Holiday Inn if there was one available. Panty offered no such alternative.

  Panty was able to offer a Sunfun Hotel because the Welsh Development Council had made a building subsidy on two other more commercially promising Sunfun locations dependent on the erection of a third at distant Panty. More accurately, the hotel sits on a cliff-top site overlooking a spectacular but inaccessible beach a mile beyond Panty on the way to St David’s. At the time of the deal the Sunfun Hotel Corporation of America had shrugged its corporate shoulders, figured it was getting the third hotel for nothing, and put in an extra large whirlpool.

  ‘I enjoy the whirlpool. Stay at a Sunfun whenever I can,’ Edgar J. Crabthorne observed to the others: he had a sizeable private investment in Sunfun stock. ‘Marvellous exercise,’ he added, but this time more in the direction of Mrs Bronwen Crutt whose gyrating contours were providing stimulation as advertised.

  While Crabthorne and Crutt were content to sit chest deep on the underwater step at the pool edge, Mrs Crutt had abandoned herself to the ‘free-floating, cross-current massage’ available at the centre of the whirlpool.

  Bronwen was the second Mrs Crutt. The first one had demanded a divorce after twenty-two years of sheer boredom. Bronwen lacked the wit to be bored, was a good listener, and seldom spoke: she was a better wife to Albert Crutt than ever she had been a secretary. This was a relative comparison since she had never really mastered shorthand, but was sound enough on supplying the primeval satisfactions to a spouse who enjoyed doing the cooking himself. She was a handsome brunette built on generous curves, all of which could be viewed to advantage as she swooped, twisted and wiggled in the turbulent water.

  Crabthorne considered the possibility that the fastenings on the brief bikini would fail to withstand the strain. From experience he knew such mischance was remote but not without precedent: another reason he preferred staying in Sunfun Hotels.

  ‘Great idea of yours to book us all in here for the weekend, Arthur,’ he observed amiably to Albert Crutt, but without removing his gaze from the Amazonian Bronwen. He edged along the submerged seat towards Crutt the better to exchange confidences, although the three had the whirlpool dome entirely to themselves. ‘So you figure Treasure won’t be strong enough to tip the Judge in our favour after all, Arthur.’

  ‘It’s Albert.’

  ‘Where?’ Crabthorne looked around hastily.

  ‘I’m Albert. It doesn’t matter.’ The self-effacing Crutt had earlier been convinced that even the Governor of the Bank of England could not have persuaded Nott-Herbert to sell out to Americans. It was only when he had learned about the intervention of Mrs Anna Spring a few days before that he had begun to see his world crumble about him. Crabthorne was his only hope. ‘You’re our only hope, Edgar,’ he continued sincerely.

  ‘Nice of you to feel that way, Art—I mean Al. But you don’t think I have to up the ante?’

  T don’t think so. The Judge is quite rich. You need to emphasize your plans for expansion—in England. You mentioned you intended moving the factory to London ..

  ‘Folding it into the Hutstacker plant at Ealing, sure. Rationalization is all these days. But Rigley & Herbert will survive in more than name . . .’

  ‘In Ealing. The Judge will like to know that.’

  ‘You don’t think it’ll be tactless to rub in we’ll be closing down the Llanelli plant?’ Considering Bronwen, which he was still doing intently, perhaps he could find a slot for Crutt in the new set-up after all: he liked his lady friends to be married to men who depended on him, ‘Phasing the Welsh work out gradually, I think you said.’ Crutt didn’t want the Judge to miss any of the phraseology.

  ‘With jobs for all the work staff who want to re-locate. You see, Al, we at Hutstacker really care about our people.’ He could certainly care for Bronwen. ‘Why, in the last decade . . .’

  ‘Don’t forget about the new packaging.’ Every jar of Rigley’s Footbalm had carried the effigy of a great-grandfather of the Judge’s—distaff but venerated—since the product had first been produced in 1908. Nott-Herbert would need to know that was to be changed.

  In fact Crutt had only needed to recite this list of heresies to the Judge four weeks earlier to have the older man dismiss with contempt any possibility of his parting with effective ownership of the family firm.

  The Judge had been on the brink of empowering Crutt to relay his decision to Hutstacker’s. But for Mrs Ogmore-Davies and her wretched dead body the Americans would have been sent packing long since. The invitation to Treasure had not represented a change of heart, only an intended short delay.

  Since the Judge had now so firmly had his mind altered for him, it was absolutely necessary for him to be exposed to this preposterous commercial rapist—a term more apposite than Crutt divined—who gave nothing for tradition or loyalty, and who seriously imagined the good Welsh people of Llanelli would be ready to ‘re-locate’ in suburban London. Not that Crutt, who was vaguely Anglo-Scottish, cared a damn for the perishing Welsh, with the exception of Bronwen: he cared a good deal about his job and the unlikelihood of his getting another if the Machiavellian Crabthorne turned him out at fifty-two.

  ‘What time did you say we were due at the Judge’s?’ The American, planning to tangle awhile in the crosscurrents, had already cast off for the centre of the whirlpool.

  ‘At seven for drinks and probably dinner.’ Crutt did not trouble to add that the arrangement had been made only an hour before, on the telephone, with the Judge’s housekeeper, that Nott-Herbert had been engaged at the time and Treasure out visiting. He hoped most warmly that the practically unheralded arrival of four self-invited guests expecting dinner would cause their host the maximum irritation, and that Treasure would be equally vexed to learn that Crabthorne evidently did not trust him to cope here alone.

  ‘That’ll be fine, Art—Al, I mean—Owl’ The free-floating Crabthorne had just been kneed in the stomach by the cross-currenting Bronwen.

  ‘Emma, my knees are hot. Why d’you think they’re hot?’ Nye, the grandson of Mrs Blanche Evans, carefully examined the offending members. ‘Emma, d’you think it’s because I’m early-germinated?’

  ‘Illegitimate,’ Emma Wodd corrected.’

  ‘Course not, silly.’

  ‘Brenig Price at school says it could be because I’m illee . . . what you said, and his father drives an ambulance.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t make him a real doctor, and anyway it’s wrong. My knees get hot sometimes and I’m not illegitimate. It’s the sun.’ She stood up. ‘I expect they’ve gone to Mrs Ogmore-Davies’s.’

  The two children had earlier been holding off a Zulu attack on their jungle hide-out, supplies nearly exhausted, when Anna and Treasure had settled on the seat close by.

  ‘They said that’s where they were going. Is there any Coke left?’

  ‘No, it’s all gone. We should have coughed or something.’

  ‘Why? It wasn’t secrets.’ Nye had found the
adult conversation boring. ‘Devalera nearly gave us away.’ He giggled. ‘My Gran asked if someone left a posspot. What’s a posspot? Sounds rude, like a p—’

  ‘ ’Tisn’t,’ the Vicar’s daughter cut in, ‘it’s like a book.’

  ‘Oh.’ He tried licking his left knee and comparing the result with the right one. ‘Mrs Ogmore-Davies told my Gran that Anna shouldn’t marry the Judge.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because by rights my Gran should get the money.’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘I dunno. That’s what she said.’

  ‘P’raps that’s why they’re seeing Mrs Ogmore-Davies.’

  ‘No it’s not. My Gran says it’s about the body, and Anna’s being specially nice to Mrs Ogmore-Davies.’

  ‘Because she doesn’t want her to marry the Judge?’

  ‘I dunno.’ He looked a little bashful. ‘I love Anna,’ he said before licking his right knee and changing the subject. ‘Shouldn’t we have told him, Emma?’

  ‘How could we have told him.’

  Nye was closely comparing his knees. ‘They’re cooling off, Emma. P’raps it was the Coke.’ He looked up. ‘Would you be punished much ’cos we were there?’

  ‘Yes. Daddy said it was dangerous and should be knocked down and we weren’t ever to climb up.’

  ‘My Gran says he’s a detective. They made sense to each other.

  ‘Can’t be. Not a proper one. He’s too posh.’

  As an avid television viewer Nye had to agree. ‘Can we play hospitals in your shed, Emma?’

  ‘All right.’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘Race you there, but it’s my turn to operate.’

  They ran down the path to the garden gate and back along the road to the Vicarage. Devalera went along for the lollop, bounding with ease through dense and expensive shrubbery and emitting a deep slow bark that suggested a run-down battery.