Design for Murder

by Nancy Buckingham

  “Tracy,” he reproached me, “you insist on expecting everything to be solved in one great blinding flash.”

  “The jigsaw puzzle,” I muttered, reminding myself.

  “Precisely.”

  “So who else takes the magazine?” I asked. “Or aren’t you going to tell me?”

  “Why not? There’s Tim Baxter ...”

  “Oh no, you’re not still after him.”

  “Baxter,” persisted Neil, “advertises regularly in Cotswold Illustrated, like yourself. When he receives his voucher copy each month, he glances at anything that interests him, cuts out his advertisement for the file, and throws the rest away. That’s his story, anyway.”

  “Don’t you believe it?” I demanded furiously.

  Neil ignored that. “I thought the Ebborns worth checking on—they were on the list. But when one of our chaps called there yesterday, Mrs. Ebborn was able to produce last month’s copy instantly. She knew exactly which cupboard to go to.”

  “I can imagine. Grace is always very efficient.”

  “Is she? Not so Mrs. Fairford, anyway. Apparently she was in a real dither and almost had to ransack the entire house before she tracked down her copy. But she did, eventually, and it was in pristine condition. I feel rather sorry for that woman, being stuck there alone in that house with her husband somewhere in South America, and both her sons away too. She’s let this whole business prey on her mind.” He glanced at me questioningly. “I presume you know about the affair between her and Medway?”

  I nodded, and said thoughtfully, “I’m quite certain that the only reason Cynthia Fairford ever succumbed to Oliver was because she was desperately lonely. If you want my opinion, Neil, she was quite madly in love with Oliver.”

  “That’s my impression, too.” He picked up his tankard of beer and held it against the light. “I’d say that her present state of nerves isn’t caused by guilt, but by grief.”

  “Heavens above!” I exclaimed. “Did I hear that correctly? Detective Inspector Neil Grant actually basing his judgment on something other than cold, hard, provable fact.”

  “Isn’t it lucky for some people,” he said, switching his gaze to me, “that once in a while I do?”

  I asked hastily, “Do you have anyone else of interest on your list?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Ursula Kemp. Now there’s a strange woman.”

  “Strange?”

  “Didn’t you spot her in court this morning?”

  “Yes, I saw her,” I said cautiously.

  “She would have had to close her shop in order to come. But there was no need for her presence, it wasn’t required by the coroner.”

  “I suppose ... well, Oliver was a friend, and I suppose she felt that she ought to.”

  “It’s not his funeral we’re talking about, Tracy, where people attend to pay their respects. Why was Mrs. Kemp so anxious to hear the proceedings? She was very jumpy, wasn’t she? Would you say that she’s a nervous person?”

  I had to admit that one wouldn’t describe Ursula as nervous.

  “Okay,” I said, “so what was the outcome when you asked her about the magazine?”

  “Puzzling. I made that particular call myself, yesterday afternoon. Mrs. Kemp searched around vaguely, then announced that she must have thrown it out. She chattered about building up a terrible accumulation of stuff if you aren’t careful to turn things out regularly.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “I might have thought so, too, except for one thing. Glancing round the shop while she was supposed to be looking in her bedroom upstairs, I noticed a pile of back numbers of Cotswold Illustrated. Now, if Mrs. Kemp reckoned that she could make a few pence by selling them second-hand, why on earth should she have thrown away the copy in question?”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “No, I was anxious to avoid alerting her too much because there was something else I wanted to ask her.”

  “What was that?”

  Neil seemed to be considering how much to tell me. He began slowly, choosing his words, “We’ve been having a look at Oliver Medway’s personal bank account. It won’t come as any surprise to you, I imagine, that he was frequently overdrawn?”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “The credits consisted mainly of a regular monthly allowance made to him by his father, the salary he paid himself from the Design Studio, and a weekly cheque which apparently covered the business expenses he had claimed. I assume, knowing your role in the firm, that you kept a fairly close eye on Medway’s spending in that direction.”

  “You assume correctly. Knowing that I’d query every extravagance kept a brake on Oliver.”

  Neil nodded. “The puzzling thing about his bank account is that every now and then a considerable sum was paid in— several hundreds of pounds in one go. In cash. And usually at a time when the bank manager was getting restless about the size of his overdraft. Now where, do you think, would Oliver Medway have obtained that sort of money in banknotes?”

  “His bookmaker, perhaps? He did quite a bit of betting.”

  “And quite a bit of losing. But when on rare occasions he had a win, the bookie always paid by cheque.”

  I shrugged. “There must be an explanation.”

  “There’s an explanation for everything, Tracy. But not always a pleasant one.”

  Neil was making me feel uneasy, and I couldn’t quite pin down why.

  “You surely aren’t hinting that Oliver was some kind of thief?”

  “Not in the accepted sense. But perhaps that mysterious money was payments he received in exchange for his silence.”

  “You don’t mean blackmail?” I gasped.

  “It’s a possibility we can’t rule out.”

  “But ... but Oliver wasn’t like that. He would never have ...”

  “I wonder how well you really knew him,” Neil interrupted. “I’ll tell you this much, Tracy, my superintendent has a full scale investigation going. And I don’t just mean in and around Steeple Haslop.”

  I was reduced to silence. The barman came out and cleared some empty glasses from a nearby table, made some remark about the fine weather, and disappeared inside again.

  At last I said, reluctantly, “You mentioned Ursula earlier. You surely can’t be thinking that Oliver was blackmailing her?”

  “It’s possible, though somehow I don’t think it’s likely.”

  “So how are you trying to make a connection with Ursula?”

  “There was clearly a special sort of relationship between those two. The fact that they could share a giggle over that rampant fertility god is one indication, and you’ve told me that he was often round at her shop. Perhaps it was a relief to Oliver Medway to have just one woman with whom he could relax, with whom he could drop the devastating seducer image and be himself.”

  “He was able to do that with me,” I objected.

  “You must surely see that it was different with you, Tracy. However friendly you two were, his guard would have been up to some extent because you were the watchdog put in by his father. Only a minute ago you were explaining to me how you kept a brake on his expenses, and you told me earlier about your function of preventing Medway’s wilder flights of fancy and holding him down to practicalities. Yes?”

  “Yes, but...”

  “So if there was anyone in or around Steeple Haslop,” Neil continued smoothly, “with whom Oliver Medway would have talked freely and let his hair down a bit, I reckoned that person was Ursula Kemp. Therefore, it seemed possible that he might have made an off-guard reference to her about someone or something in his past which would give us a clue to his killer. Mrs. Kemp herself, not knowing the lines along which we are thinking, might not have attributed any special significance to such a reference. Why should she? All the same, I thought it worth doing a little digging with her.”

  My pulses quickened. “And did you discover anything?”

  “Not yet. She was being very wary—some people are like that with the polic
e, whether they have anything to hide or not.”

  “So does that mean you’ll be questioning her again?”

  “Certainly I will. And I shall go on questioning her until I’m quite satisfied that there’s no information to be extracted from that source.”

  I thought for a moment. “Does Ursula understand why you’ve been asking her all those questions?”

  “Naturally not. Any mention of the word blackmail might make her clam up completely.”

  I had never felt any strong liking for Ursula Kemp. Looking back, I recognised that there might even have been a slight antipathy in my attitude towards her, caused by the very thing Neil was talking about ... her rather special relationship with Oliver. I didn’t much like to acknowledge it, but I realised now that I’d taken a certain pride in thinking of myself as the only woman with whom Oliver had any kind of closeness that didn’t involve sex.

  All the same, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Ursula now because of the way she was being badgered by the police. If she was an actual murder suspect, fair enough. But Neil was merely using her, trying to winkle out information which Ursula might not even possess. So what construction would she put on his visits? Even that one call from Neil yesterday afternoon seemed to have scared her half out of her mind.

  “I’ll have to be going in a minute,” I told Neil. “There’s loads of work waiting to be done.”

  “Is everything settled with Sir Robert Medway now? I mean, about your taking over the Design Studio?”

  “I haven’t heard any more, but he said that he’d be getting his solicitor to draw up an agreement.”

  “The old boy still looks in pretty bad shape,” Neil commented.

  “So would you,” I said sourly, “if you had a dicky heart and your son had just been murdered.”

  “Perhaps so.” He seemed about to add something more, but thought better of it.

  I’d suddenly had enough of Neil and his little chats. He pretended that I was in his confidence. But was he just using me in exactly the same way as he was using Ursula?

  “Thanks for the drink,” I said, and stood up abruptly.

  Neil followed suit. “I’ll just walk you back to your car.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “But I want to, Tracy.”

  As we walked the short distance to the forecourt of the municipal offices, Neil asked my opinion of the architecture of the new police headquarters which we passed on our way. Though I considered it an innocuous building, some impulse made me say, “I think it’s hideous.”

  “Aesthetically, you could be right,” he granted. “But at least it’s well suited to its purpose. Care to see inside?”

  I couldn’t avoid a shudder, which he probably noticed.

  “I told you, I’ve no time to spare.”

  “Pity. Still, we can always make it another day. You’d be amazed, Tracy, at what goes on inside that building. Why, just on this murder enquiry alone the Chief Superintendent’s got a whole team of us beavering away.”

  “I’d hardly have thought,” I countered, “that you’ve been beavering away this past half-hour.”

  Neil grinned. “I’d better pass that one. Anything I say in reply might be taken down and used in evidence against me.”

  Chapter 9

  There was a CLOSED card hanging behind the glass door of Ursula Kemp’s shop, but it was lunch-time by now so I wasn’t surprised.

  I pressed the bell-push, waited, then pressed it again. After further delay the door to the private quarters at the back opened and Ursula came through. She began gesticulating that the shop was closed, then saw it was me. Reluctantly, I felt sure, she came to open up.

  “Hallo, Tracy.”

  “Hi. I spotted you in court this morning, Ursula, but you left so quickly that I didn’t have a chance for a word. Er ... am I disturbing your lunch?”

  She shook her head, vaguely.

  “Well then,” I said with a bright smile, “I’ll just come in for a minute or two.”

  “All right.” Unenthusiastically, she stood aside and motioned me to go on through to the back.

  Ursula’s living room had a delightful outlook over a small, rose-trellised garden with a stream at the bottom. Her tiny kitchen was to one side, and I knew—though I’d never seen them—that there were two bedrooms and a bathroom above.

  There was no sign of any lunch. Just half a cup of coffee, which appeared to have been allowed to go stone cold. Seeing Ursula nearer to, she looked quite ill, suddenly a lot older. She held her cardigan clutched about her, and I noticed that her hands were trembling. She waited in silence for me to speak.

  “The verdict came as no surprise, of course,” I said, to get a conversation launched. “I suppose that Sir Robert must be thankful to have the ordeal behind him, though he still has the funeral to face.”

  Ursula gave an odd little jerky nod. Clearly she was under great strain. For a moment I even wondered if her relationship with Oliver could possibly have been closer than I’d supposed, but I dismissed the thought at once.

  “Would ... would you like some coffee?” she asked in a cracked voice.

  I started to refuse, since I was about to go home for lunch, then it struck me that she might like a few minutes alone in the kitchen to get a grip on herself ... as Cynthia Fairford had done the other day.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I could use a cup.”

  While she was gone, I stood at the window watching the breeze ruffling the leaves of some willow trees across the stream. Then I turned and glanced around the room. My eye was caught by a magazine on a side table. The picture on the cover was familiar, three horses taking a hurdle at Cheltenham races. I realised that it was last month’s issue of Cotswold Illustrated. Moving across hurriedly, I picked it up and flipped through the pages. They were all intact.

  Before I could put the magazine down again Ursula had returned with my coffee. There was a tinge of colour to her cheeks, and I distinctly caught a whiff of brandy. She must have taken a quick nip to steady her nerves.

  Seeing what I was holding, she remarked with tight-knit brow, “The detective inspector was here yesterday afternoon, and he asked about that magazine. I couldn’t lay my hands on it at the time, then it turned up last night in my sewing cupboard.”

  I was about to tell her what it was that Neil had been after but I kept silent, a new thought clawing at my mind—or rather, an old thought that I’d dismissed before. Was Ursula Kemp the sender of that anonymous letter?

  Her story about mislaying the magazine could well be true, of course, but equally, if she were guilty, she might have thought it prudent to try to get another copy of the June issue after Neil’s enquiries. Perhaps this morning she had done the rounds of the newsagents in Gilchester until she found one that still had a copy of last month’s number on sale. Perhaps, in fact, her attendance at the inquest had merely been a blind to cover her trip to town.

  My thoughts tumbled on wildly. Neil considered it unlikely that it was Ursula who had been blackmailed by Oliver. But just suppose it had been her, wouldn’t that constitute a motive for murder? Would Ursula have been physically capable of it? She was quite a strong woman, I’d guess, and in good health, and being well-known to Oliver she could easily have taken him by surprise. But that would mean that Ursula had left her shop in the middle of a weekday morning when it should have been open. Why not, though? The What-Not Shop wasn’t like the village general store, with locals popping in and out all the time. Her trade was confined almost entirely to people passing through Steeple Haslop, tourists and trippers. Who would be likely to have noticed that for an hour or so on a wet and windswept morning Ursula Kemp’s shop was in fact shut? She’d hardly have drawn attention to the fact by hanging the CLOSED sign on the door, as now.

  Getting to and from the Coach House at Haslop Hall without being seen would have been difficult for her—but possible. Madly risky, of course, but perhaps a chance worth taking for a woman driven beyond endurance.


  Always supposing, I reminded myself, that Oliver was indeed a blackmailer. I realised with a jolt that I was coming to believe this, to accept it as though it were a proven fact.

  “Er ... sorry, Ursula, what was that?” I asked, aware that she had spoken. She was looking at me oddly, and I was afraid that my preoccupation must have been very apparent.

  “I said that Inspector Grant had me searching all over the place for that magazine. Goodness knows why he should have been so keen to see it.” Her gaze was intent. Was she watching to see how I reacted, gauging whether I had been told about the anonymous letter?

  I made an effort to sound casual, unconcerned. “Neil Grant just likes to be mysterious. I expect he wanted to look up an advertisement or something.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Ursula, not sounding as if she believed it, though.

  “Have you heard that I’m going to be able to stay on at Steeple Haslop?” I babbled. “Sir Robert invited me to take over the Design Studio.”

  “I see.” Was she really listening? “You must be pleased, Tracy.”

  “I’m delighted. Or rather, you know what I mean ... I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen like this, of course, but naturally I’m glad to have the chance of running my own business. I believe that I can make a go of things financially,” I added. “I learnt a lot from Oliver, and I can put all that knowledge to good use now.”

  I saw Ursula’s eyes narrow in a swift, calculating glance. It had been a stupid thing for me to say, which could easily have sounded to her like a veiled threat of continuing blackmail. I felt suddenly nervous, and the cup I was holding jiggled in its saucer.

  “I shall settle up your bill,” I promised, “as soon as the bank account is freed. It shouldn’t be too long now.”

  Ursula made a dismissive gesture, not commenting. As her silence lengthened and she continued to watch me closely, I began to feel distinctly rattled.

  “I intend to go on buying things from you whenever possible, Ursula. And you must remember to let me know if you ever come across anything you think might interest me.”