On the way out I gave them my fingerprints—a messy business—then left the Coach House by the staircase from the flat. By now the courtyard was filled with police vehicles. I had to manoeuvre my Fiesta back and forth to extricate it from the tangle.
I felt at a bit of a loss. I still couldn’t quite grasp the fact that Oliver, who’d always lived life right up to the hilt, was dead.
The prospect of going home to an empty cottage and being alone with my thoughts was decidedly unappealing. I considered going to the Trout Inn for a ploughman’s lunch, or the cafe on the Gilchester Road for a hot snack. But news of the murder would have got around by now, and I was afraid that I’d be the centre of morbid curiosity. Anyway, I wasn’t really hungry and I badly wanted to know the outcome of Tim’s interview with Neil. The way Tim had beetled off straight away suggested that he wasn’t any too pleased with me.
So instead of leaving the Haslop Hall grounds by the main gates, I swung round and headed for the exit by the Home Farm. Turning left, I took the lane which skirted the rounded hillock known locally as the Pudding Basin.
A rustic sign swinging on a chain marked the entrance to Tim’s vineyard, Cotswold Vintage. This was a thirty-acre site of south-sloping land which he had claimed (and he seemed to be proving himself correct) would be absolutely ideal for the cultivation of wine grapes.
I turned in and followed a rising, muddy track, on either side of which was row after dead-straight row of vines, all neatly trained on support wires. Bearing to the left, I drove past some new winery buildings and in a moment reached the comfortable, ranch-style bungalow. Fortunately for Tim, the bungalow had become vacant just about the time he was granted use of the vineyard land by Sir Robert. It had been occupied by Ralph Ebborn and his wife. They had decided that the bungalow which went with his job as agent was too isolated, and instead had bought a Queen Anne house in the village.
It was raining too hard by now for anyone to be working outside, and there was no sign of Tim or his two assistants. But when I rang the bell, Tim came to the door.
“Oh, it’s you,” he greeted me ungraciously.
“Why did you shoot off like that without so much as a word?” I demanded. “I was wondering how things went for you with Neil Grant.”
“As if you didn’t know.” But at least he stood aside to let me in out of the rain.
“Look,” I said, “if you’re thinking that I told Neil about you wiping off my fingerprints, you’re dead wrong. What I told him was that I’d done it myself. But he somehow guessed that it wasn’t me and insisted on seeing my handkerchief. So then he figured out that it must have been you. I’m sorry, but there it is.”
Tim’s expression softened marginally, and he turned and led the way to the kitchen. There was a heavenly aroma of beef casserole, and it was clear that I’d caught him just as he was serving up his belated lunch. A table in the window was spread with a checked cloth and all was laid ready.
“Don’t worry, I won’t stay a moment,” I said apologetically, and added, “You certainly do yourself well.”
He grinned wryly. “If it was left to me, I’d have bread and cheese. This is Mavis Price’s doing ... you know, I expect, that her husband, George, works here at the vineyard? So Mavis comes in and does for me each morning, and to her mind that includes providing a good hot nourishing midday meal for the poor helpless bachelor.”
“Very cosy.”
“You’d better have some too,” Tim said, taking off the casserole lid and prodding the contents with a spoon. “There’s plenty. She always makes enough for a troop of Boy Scouts.”
I shook my head. “No thanks.”
“You’ve eaten already?”
“No, but I’m not hungry.” That wasn’t true anymore, though. The tantalising aroma had restored my appetite. Fortunately, Tim brushed my refusal aside.
“Don’t be silly, Tracy, you’ve got to eat,” he said, and immediately started to lay up a second place.
So I sat down, murmuring thanks. Tim poured out another large glass of his own product—the dry, tangy white wine that was beginning to make a name for itself. I’d tasted it once or twice before, and found it very good.
“Well, what did Neil Grant have to say to you?” I asked, as we both dug into our food.
“He grilled me as though he was the F.B.I, and I was suspect number one.”
With very good reason, I thought unhappily. But I didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it. Would I be sitting here with Tim, calmly sharing his lunch, if I seriously considered it possible that he was a murderer? This might have been a ridiculous, backwards kind of logic, but I wanted to trust my instincts about Tim.
“Neil made me feel like that, too,” I said, with an attempt at a smile. “Perhaps it’s his usual technique. Perhaps it’ll be the same for everyone else he interviews.”
“Think so?” Tim moodily toyed with his glass, swishing the pale wine around. “He won’t be short of suspects, I’m sure.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Wouldn’t you agree that Oliver Medway was the sort of man who made enemies?”
“Oh, I don’t know. With most people he was charming.”
“With women, you mean. But he could be a good deal less than charming when it came to men. He had a vicious way of putting people down, with that bloody superior manner of his.”
I couldn’t honestly refute that. On a couple of occasions recently I’d felt embarrassed by Oliver’s behaviour. Once, when an order of silk-flock wallpaper had been delivered a roll short and he’d phoned the supplier to complain, and then at a client’s house, when an electrician had misread his wiring instructions. Each time Oliver was witheringly sarcastic, not content with an apology and a promise to put the matter right forthwith. Trivial errors, but he’d reacted out of all proportion. And only last week he had roasted Billy Moon, the stable-hand, simply because the old man had for once forgotten to get the horses saddled up for our ride.
Tim was continuing, “And don’t forget, Tracy, that charmers have a way of leaving a trail of wreckage in their wake. How many women around these parts must have come to hate Oliver Medway? Not to mention all the husbands and jealous boyfriends. How many of them must have felt like having a go at him?”
“But surely not to the extent of killing him?”
“It doesn’t have to have been premeditated murder,” Tim argued. “Can’t you imagine it ... a man goes to the Coach House intending to warn Medway off, but gets provoked by that sneering air of superiority he put on. My God, it would be the easiest thing in the world to snatch up the nearest heavy object and bash him with it.”
“If you’re right,” I said, “the police won’t be long in finding out who did it.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked quickly.
“Well, if it was a sudden fit of rage, the killer probably won’t have covered his tracks any too well. In fact,” I couldn’t help adding, “by now they might already have discovered who it was, if you hadn’t wiped off those fingerprints.”
The angry look on Tim’s face made me wish I hadn’t been so blunt, but then he shrugged and said, “I suppose it was a damn fool thing to do. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though.”
“Why?” I demanded, but not too aggressively.
Tim looked down at his plate, pushing the food around with his fork.
“It’s hard to say now. I suppose I thought of all the probing questions you’d have to face about your relationship with Medway. It seemed simpler all round just to get rid of your fingerprints.”
Damn him, Tim seemed to take it for granted that I’d been sleeping with Oliver, just as Neil Grant had—and probably everyone else in the entire neighbourhood. Would he ever believe me if I told him the truth, that the “relationship” had been purely platonic?
“Supposing it really was me who killed Oliver?” I said, flinging it out as a challenge.
His glance shot up to meet mine questioningly. Then he said slowly, “But
it wasn’t, Tracy.”
“How can you be so positive?” There was only one answer to that. Tim could only know for certain that I was innocent if he himself had killed Oliver.
Perhaps Tim had seen that, too. He said—evasively, it seemed to me “I just don’t believe that you’d be capable of doing a thing like that, Tracy.”
“I wish the police shared your touching faith in me.”
We continued eating in silence for a bit. Then Tim asked abruptly, “Will you keep the Design Studio going?”
“I don’t see how I can,” I said. “I couldn’t expect Sir Robert to let me have the Coach House premises virtually rent free, as he did for Oliver. Besides, what would I do for money? You have to be prepared to allow very long credit in this sort of business. Clients expect it.
“And I’m not really sure that I’ve got the necessary experience yet. It was different for Oliver. He was untrained, but his imagination sometimes used to leave me gasping with admiration.”
“So what exactly was your role in the set-up?”
“Well, it was up to me to translate Oliver’s brilliant but nebulous ideas into reality. The reason I got this job was Sir Robert’s insistence, before he agreed to finance the enterprise, that Oliver engage an assistant level-headed enough to keep his feet in contact with the ground.”
“And you,” Tim enquired, “are level-headed?”
“I like to think so.”
“Was it level-headed to pick up that statuette?”
I put my fork down. “I thought we’d finished with that subject.”
“I’m sorry,” he said mildly. “Have some more wine.”
“No, I’d better be going. Thanks for the meal.”
“Won’t you at least have some coffee?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said, and stood up.
Tim followed me to the door. “I’ll see you, Tracy?”
“Yes, I’ll be around ... for a while, at least.”
Chapter 3
The rain clouds had cleared away in the night and the sunny morning seemed to mock my mood. I couldn’t banish the feeling of unreality I’d woken with after a night of bad dreams, the peculiar feeling of numbness. Even now, a part of me still couldn’t accept the fact that Oliver was dead.
In a way, I had been closer to Oliver since Aunt Verity died than I’d been to anybody. At least, he’d played a bigger part in my life than anyone else. So it was no wonder that his death left me feeling bereft. He had the kind of personality that was intoxicating. Every job we undertook he charged at head-on (though his enthusiasm never lasted for very long), and somehow he managed to make every working day seem exciting.
To add to my grief, I had to face the fact that I was now without a job.
While I was having breakfast the phone rang several times, as it had done all last evening. Friends of my schooldays whom I’d picked up with again after coming back to Steeple Haslop were calling to express their sympathy. And naturally —I didn’t really blame them—they wanted to discuss the details of the murder. It was the biggest thing to have happened in this sleepy corner of the world for an age. There were also two or three calls from newspaper reporters, but to these I gave short shrift.
After I’d cleared the dishes I retreated to the walled back garden, and began in a desultory way to nip off a few dead heads of marigolds and sweet williams. Then I sat on the swing that hung from a bough of the old pear tree.
Wandering on again, I found myself at the door of Aunt Verity’s workshop, a spacious, stone-walled building she had designed herself. Light flooded in through big windows set high in the walls on three sides, and there was a skylight overhead. There were no eye-level windows, because she said they would be distracting. But on fine summer days she cheated by unbolting the bottom of the double doors and leaving them both open to the garden.
As always, the moment I stepped inside I felt a sense of closeness with my aunt. Everything was as she had left it when she became too ill to sculpt any longer. I wasn’t preserving it as a sort of shrine, it was just that I kept postponing the task of clearing it out. Somehow that seemed such a final step.
Like my aunt herself, the place was thoroughly workmanlike, without any frills. A massive bench was set about three feet from the rear wall, with racks of tools behind it ... mallets and chisels, rasps, and an electric polishing machine. Small sculptures and a number of models of her bigger pieces were ranged around on shelving, and in the centre of the floor was a great block of pink Cotswold alabaster mounted on a wooden plinth, with a platform to enable Aunt Verity to reach the top. This piece was to be the figure of Hebe, the goddess of youth, planned to stand in the entrance foyer of Gilchester’s grand new youth centre. But it had scarcely been more than roughed out, the only detailed work done being on the head.
A great bronze gong stood in one corner, a trophy my aunt had brought back from a Far East trip. I tapped the hammered surface with my fingertips and listened to the faint shiver of sound.
It occurred to me suddenly that maybe I could set up on my own account in the interior-design business, using the workshop as my studio. But tempting though this was, I knew that as a practical possibility it just wouldn’t work. I hadn’t got the finances to carry me through the first few years while I built a reputation. No, I’d have to find myself a job—and that meant selling up and moving away from Steeple Haslop.
I heard a voice calling from the garden, and it was Mrs. Sparrow. Ten-thirty already. Elsie Sparrow was an inheritance from my aunt and came in for a couple of hours two mornings a week. She needed the money, and although I didn’t really need her (and couldn’t really afford her) I hadn’t the heart to tell her to stop coming.
“It must have been quite horrible for you, dearie,” she began in an awestruck voice. “Fancy walking up them stairs and finding the body all smothered in blood like that.”
“Yes, it was a dreadful shock,” I admitted.
We returned to the cottage and I made coffee, resigned to having a chat with her. When I’d given all the details I intended to give and parried a number of artfully-angled questions, Mrs. Sparrow kept the conversation going by remarking darkly, “Mind you, I’m not a bit surprised that your Mr. Medway came to a sticky end, the way he used to carry on. My Fred says that many’s the time on his early milk round he’s seen that red sports car of Mr. Medway’s parked where it had no business to be parked. Fred could tell a tale or two, if he’d a mind, about the goings-on around here.”
“If Mr. Sparrow knows anything that could be relevant to Mr. Medway’s death,” I pointed out sternly, “then he should go to the police about it.”
The suggestion startled her.
“Let them find out for theirselves,” she said, and stood up to begin work. “That’s what they’re paid for. Nobody in their right mind goes running to the coppers—you never know what you might be letting yourself in for.”
On an impulse, partly to get away from Elsie Sparrow, I decided to go to the Coach House, though I more than half expected to be refused admittance. Still, they might at least allow me to collect any mail.
The thought of going back to the studio, of trying to work in the room where Oliver had been killed, was something I dreaded. But I couldn’t avoid it, there was so much I would have to clear up. So the sooner the better, I argued to myself. It was like falling off a horse, and getting straight back on again before you lost your nerve completely.
To my surprise the courtyard was empty of cars. I glimpsed old Billy Moon sweeping out the stable, but he drew back quickly as if not wanting to be noticed.
As I let myself in I felt a curious sensation of reliving yesterday. I felt almost convinced that I was going to be confronted with Oliver’s body stretched out on the floor, his head battered and bloody, the grotesque fertility god lying beside him. It took every ounce of willpower to make myself climb the stairs.
Astonishingly, the studio had been left tidy. Someone— Neil, presumably—had even thought to have the b
loodstains scrubbed off the carpet, only a damp patch remaining. All the same, after the first glance I kept my eyes averted.
There had been several letters on the mat downstairs, and a small package which contained the samples of gold tassels I’d sent for a week ago. Everything seemed unreal—as if nothing to do with me—and I just wanted to turn tail and run. It had been a mad idea to come to the studio this morning. I realised for the first time that someone around here—probably someone whom I knew personally—was a murderer. The thought made me feel sick with panic.
Yet I felt duty bound to stay and do my best to clear things up. Commissioned jobs couldn’t be abandoned half done, and there were all kinds of loose ends to be tied off. I could hardly press Sir Robert for instructions, at least for the next day or two, so in the meantime it was up to me to do my best.
In cases where we were still at the early planning stage, there was little problem. The clients could merely be informed that the Design Studio was regretfully unable to complete the job, and I could recommend another firm of interior designers to take over. I mentally put these aside for the moment, as well as the jobs in which there were just a few bits and pieces to be finished off.
I was left with three undertakings which presented a real headache. Oliver had planned a dramatic revamp for the consulting rooms of a fashionable chiropractor in Cheltenham, and work was due to begin next week—the timing here had been an important factor in the contract. Then there was the new grill-room extension of the Golden Peacock restaurant over towards Stow-in-the-Wold, where the decorators were already in—almost finished, in fact—but it looked as if there was going to be a delay with delivery of the specially woven peacock-motif carpet. And there was Myddleton Manor in the nearby village of Haslop St. John where Lady Chorley was having an expensive kitchen installed. At present the old kitchen and dairy had been stripped to a bare shell awaiting the laying of cork flooring and the arrival of cabinets and cupboards, ovens and hobs, fridge and freezer and dishwasher, and everything would need chasing up to be fitted ready for use in time for Lord and Lady Chorley’s return from their holiday.
Design for Murder Page 3