Her nod was barely discernible. Not being able to think of anything else to say to improve the atmosphere, I drank down my coffee quickly, and murmured, “I mustn’t keep you. You’ll be wanting to open the shop again soon, and I’ve got work to do myself.”
As I turned towards the door, she said abruptly, “Tracy, I...”
“Yes?”
I paused and glanced back at her. Ursula just stared at me, her eyes dark with pain or fear, I couldn’t decide which, then slowly she shook her head.
“Nothing ... it was nothing.”
“You’re sure?”
She smiled faintly. “Yes, I was just being silly. Goodbye, Tracy.”
I knew it was no use pressing her, so I said brightly, “Thanks for the coffee.”
After a quick snack lunch at Honeysuckle Cottage, I drove to the studio. Billy Moon was out in the courtyard, hosing down the cobblestones in front of the stables.
“That was a super ride Tim Baxter and I had on Saturday evening,” I said. “Perhaps the two of us could go out again soon?”
Billy made no reply, nor did he return my smile. He just looked at me with a dour expression.
“By the way,” I went on, “there’s something I meant to ask you. That morning Mr. Medway was killed, did you happen to be around?”
He glared at me. “What you getting at, miss?”
“Just... well, I wondered if perhaps you spotted anyone coming or going to the studio.”
“I were busy doing me work and minding me own business,” he said fiercely. “That’s the same as I told the coppers. I said to ‘em straight out, I’m not a man to poke his nose in where it’s no right to be.’”
He raised the nozzle of the hose as a sign for me to clear off. But I lingered and tried again.
“It just struck me, Billy, if someone had come along whom you knew quite well, you might hardly have taken any notice of them. But perhaps ...”
“If you don’t mind, miss, I’ve got me work to do,” he interrupted, and began to spray water around, almost splashing me. Though Billy was often taciturn, I’d never before known him to be outright rude. There was nothing for it but a dignified withdrawal. Reaching the door at the foot of the stairs, I glanced back as I fumbled with the latchkey. The old man was staring across at me, a troubled look on his weather-beaten face.
I carried the mail upstairs and glanced through it. But there was nothing that urgently needed attention. I went to my drawing board, and had another go at preparing the visuals of the thatched-barn conversion. But I felt utterly devoid of inspiration. Half of my mind was wondering when Tim would contact me. On an impulse I reached for the phone and dialled his number. Having been so moody and off-putting when he’d mentioned plans for this evening, I reasoned, it was only friendly for me to take the initiative now.
“Cotswold Vintage,” he answered, after the usual long wait.
The mere sound of his voice gave me a little leap of excitement. “Tim, this is Tracy.”
“Oh, hallo.” He sounded slightly guarded, I thought. “I tried to get you a couple of times ... both at the studio and at home. Where’ve you been?”
Not wanting to tell him about having a drink with Neil, I said, “I had various things to do. I slipped home for a few minutes just now though, and snatched a bite to eat. About this evening ... we didn’t really settle anything, did we?”
“That’s what I wanted to explain, Tracy. I just remembered my VAT return. It’s a curse, but it’s already a few days overdue and it must be done ... they won’t give you the slightest leeway. So I’m afraid this evening is out.”
It was absurd for me to feel so slapped down. But I did, and I bitterly regretted that I’d phoned him.
“Oh, that’s okay,” I lied. “Don’t give it another thought.”
“About tomorrow ...” Tim began, but I chopped him off short. “I’m not sure about tomorrow. Give me a ring sometime, if you like, and I’ll see.”
“Right then,” he said briskly, and rang off.
I knew that I was being unfair in blaming him, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to look at the facts plainly ... Tim was a hard-working wine grower whose life during the summer amounted to a running battle against everything nature could throw at him. So it was perfectly understandable that he should have thrust aside boring and inessential paperwork until the very last moment, and then nearly have forgotten about it altogether in all this business of Oliver’s death and having to go to court this morning. If the Design Studio’s VAT return had been due this month, I might well have been in the same boat myself. But such reasonable arguments did nothing to sweeten my acid mood.
Bleakness really hit me during the evening. Before, I’d always enjoyed my cottage, never being averse to spending a quiet, relaxed evening at home. But now I couldn’t settle down to anything. I was a fool to take this petulant attitude, and Tim must think me impossibly touchy. Should I phone him and apologise?
I switched off the radio in the middle of a book programme and went out to the phone in the hall hesitated, picked it up, hesitated again, and dialled his number. Tim didn’t answer at once, though, and I let it go on ringing. But still there was no answer—very odd. I let it ring for a long while before I finally gave up and put the phone down.
* * * *
It was Mrs. Sparrow who brought the news next morning. Arriving earlier than usual—while I was still having breakfast —she was full of breathless excitement.
“Have you heard about the accident, Miss Yorke?”
“What accident?”
Gratified that she’d not been forestalled, she spun out her pleasure by keeping me waiting while she removed her coat and donned a flowered apron.
“It’s that there Mrs. Kemp at the What-Not Shop. Last night she went and ran off the road in her car.”
“Oh dear!” I exclaimed. “Is she badly hurt?”
Elsie Sparrow tied the tapes of her apron with a dramatic flourish.
“She’s not hurt, dear, she’s dead. Her car was all smashed to pieces, so they say, and she was a proper ghastly sight to see.”
Horror surged over me, and with it came a dozen darting images. Ursula’s face in the coroner’s court, and again when I’d called on her afterwards, drawn and tense and ... yes, frightened. Then, the brandy she’d taken to steady her nerves. Neil’s questioning had obviously shaken her badly ... because she was guilty? Guilty of sending a slanderous letter? Guilty of murder? Or both? I recalled her last words to me, just as I was leaving. She had seemed on the brink of saying something important, but she hadn’t been quite able to bring it out. Would it have been a sort of confession?
“How did it happen?” I asked Mrs. Sparrow on a catch of breath. “Where was Mrs. Kemp going?”
“There’s no one to tell us that now, dear, is there?”
“Weren’t there any witnesses?”
“Seems not. It happened on the little road along the top of Soulter’s Ridge, you see. That stretch of road is very quiet ... Mrs. Kemp couldn’t have chosen a lonelier spot round hereabouts if she’d been trying. Young Steve Gardner it was who found her, on his way to work this morning ... you know the lad I mean, Harry Gardner’s boy, the cowman over at Bailey’s Farm. He spotted the tyre marks going off the road, and the fence at the side was all smashed, so he got off his motor bike and looked down over the edge. He could just see the car lying upside down with its wheels in the air, right at the very bottom. Almost buried in the trees, it was.”
“What... what do the police have to say?” I asked, feeling a bit faint.
“Well, I mean ... what can they say, ‘cepting it was a shocking accident? Mrs. Kemp weren’t what you could call a drinker, was she? Not to my knowledge, anyways, and you usually gets to know these things in a village. If you ask me, she had a burst tyre or something just at the wrong moment, and over she went to her death, poor soul.”
Suicide? The word was battering at my mind. Had Ursula Kemp, believing that the police were closing in on her, killed herself
as the only way of escape? Every second that passed, I became more and more convinced of it.
So what did I do? Leave well alone and let her death be recorded, decently, as an accident? Let the sordid truth be buried with her?
Perhaps there was no need for me to intervene, I reflected. Perhaps the police knew more than I thought they knew, or they would find evidence at the spot that the crash had been deliberate. Be that as it may, I knew that I had a duty to pass on my suspicions ... Neil had drummed this into me, and I’d already been in enough trouble with him without risking more.
Elsie Sparrow was chattering on. “I heard that Mrs. Kemp was at the inquest yesterday morning. They say she looked proper poorly ... all white and upset.” A knowingness crept into her voice. “She had a very soft spot for young Mr. Medway, I reckon ... a bit over fond of him, like. Aren’t I right?”
“That’s absolute nonsense,” I said, trying to stop myself from sounding shrill. “We often used to buy things from her shop, and she and Oliver were friendly, that’s all it ever was.”
“If you say so,” nodded Mrs. Sparrow with sage disbelief. “The way it struck me, though, was that if his death had upset her very bad, like ... well, that could’ve accounted for her losing control of her car. Not properly thinking about what she was doing, if you see what I mean.”
I said, less than coherently, “Well, anyone can be upset when ... when a friend is murdered. It doesn’t mean that Mrs. Kemp ...”
Mrs. Sparrow allowed my babbling to pass her by. “I wonder where she was going, at that time of night?”
“What time of night?” I asked quickly. “Is it known when the accident actually happened?”
“Well, it must’ve been latish, stands to reason. After dark for sure, otherwise the fence and all that would’ve been noticed sooner. And that means sometime from about ten o’clock on. So, where would she have been going, d’you reckon?”
“Going home after a visit somewhere, I imagine.”
“No, that’s what makes it so peculiar. She was driving away from home.”
I didn’t intend to phone Neil in Mrs. Sparrow’s hearing. Telling her that I wanted to get to the studio early this morning, I hastily put my breakfast things into the sink and left. She was disappointed, I knew, having reckoned to spin out the interesting speculation over a cup of coffee. Doubtless she was hoping that my close association with Oliver would throw up a gossipy titbit.
I rang Neil the instant I got to the studio. He wasn’t in, though, and I refused to talk to anyone else. So I had to leave a message for him to call me back, and the hour or so that passed before he rang seemed like an age.
“You wanted me, Tracy?”
Stupidly, now that he was on the line I suddenly became choked with doubt. A few odd suspicions strung together didn’t turn an accident into suicide ... a suicide motivated by a murder.
“Neil ... it was just ... about the accident to Ursula Kemp. I suppose you’ve heard about it?”
“I most certainly have.”
“Well...” How on earth did I begin?
“You’ve got something on your mind, Tracy?”
“I’m not really sure, but...”
Neil made a swift decision. “I’m coming straight over. You’re at the studio, are you?”
“Yes.” I was glad, now, that there was no going back.
As I waited for him, making meaningless squiggles on paper, I suddenly remembered a job I’d completely forgotten about. At once I phoned the contractors who were supposed to be working on the consulting rooms of the chiropractor in Cheltenham. To my intense relief I learned that they’d started the job yesterday, and that so far there’d been no snags. Thank God for that.
When I heard Neil’s car in the courtyard, I went to the head of the staircase to greet him. He ran up and took hold of me by the shoulders, studying my face.
“Now then, what’s this all about?” he demanded. “On the phone you sounded in a bit of a dither.”
I came out with it in a rush of words. “Ursula Kemp’s accident ... do you think it could possibly have been suicide?”
“Anything is possible, love,” he said. “I thought I’d already taught you that lesson. You’d better give me your reasons for thinking it was suicide.”
“I’m not sure that I do. It’s just...”
“Why not sit down,” he suggested, “then talk?”
He himself perched on the edge of my table, facing me, while I began uncertainly, “After driving back from the inquest yesterday, I called in on Ursula, and she was in a very odd mood.”
“Why did you call in on her?”
I looked up and met his gaze. “Because I thought that you were being rather tough on her, Neil. I mean, even though you didn’t really suspect Ursula, you were putting pressure on her to try and extract information about Oliver. I reckoned it must have really upset her. You said yourself how desperate she looked in court, so I thought I’d ...”
“Tracy, you weren’t intending to pass on to her what I’d told you in confidence?”
“Of course I wasn’t. I was just ... I don’t quite know what I intended to do. I felt sorry for her, and it was an impulse. Ursula hadn’t many friends, you see, and she was obviously taking Oliver’s death very hard.”
Neil smiled wryly. “You’re too soft-hearted. So what happened?”
“Well, while she was making me some coffee, I noticed a copy of Cotswold Illustrated lying on a table ... last month’s issue. I took a quick look at it, and all the pages were intact.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes. Anyway, Ursula saw that I’d picked it up, and she told me that you had been asking her about it the day before, but that she couldn’t find it. She said that it had turned up later in her sewing cupboard.”
“So then?”
I made a helpless little gesture with my hands. “I know it must sound stupid, but an idea suddenly hit me. It all fitted in with the terrible state Ursula was in at the inquest, and she still was when I called round to see her. I suddenly thought— suppose she had sent that anonymous letter? After you asked her about the magazine she might have reasoned that she’d better get hold of last month’s issue to cover up her tracks. She could have bought it somewhere in Gilchester on Monday morning.”
Neil was thoughtful. “Why should she send a nasty letter about you, Tracy? Did she have something against you?”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t. Ursula never showed the least sign of disliking me, or in any way resenting me. But it could have been just to divert suspicion from herself. She knew how vital it was for me to establish that I’d driven through the village at twelve-fifteen, and not any earlier.”
“How did she know that?”
“Because I told her—the day after Oliver was killed.”
“So what you’re saying is that you think it was Ursula Kemp who killed Oliver Medway? Presumably because he was blackmailing her?”
“Well... yes.”
“Tell me, Tracy, how did you make the surprising deduction that Mrs. Kemp killed herself?”
As I had dreaded, Neil was pouring scorn on my ideas. But I couldn’t back-pedal now.
“Doesn’t it all add up?” I argued. “The way I see it is that when you questioned her on Sunday about the magazine, Ursula must have thought you were suspicious of her—not guessing that it was just a routine enquiry. And at the same time you asked her a lot of probing questions about Oliver, too. So my guess is that she was really scared by then. She would have known that the police always follow things through. So if you started delving into her past—before she came to Steeple Haslop—you would soon turn up whatever it was she wanted to keep hidden so desperately that Oliver was able to blackmail her because of it. When that happened, the game would be up. So her only chance was to make a run for it—or to give up and kill herself.”
“What a tissue of supposition,” Neil remarked, after a moment.
“Which means that you think it’s all a load of rubbish?�
�
“I think it’s an interesting hypothesis,” he said.
“But you don’t believe it for one second?”
He slid off his perch on the table and wandered over to the window, staring out across the river as if debating how much to tell me. Eventually, he turned to face me again.
“I think the suggestion that Ursula Kemp committed suicide is considerably more likely than that her death was accidental.”
I was astonished to hear Neil agreeing with me, and I couldn’t help feeling a bit triumphant.
“Does this mean that you’ve found some evidence to suggest it was suicide?” I asked him.
“Nothing definite. But in my job you develop a nose.’”
“You still have doubts, though?”
Neil stood there with a deep frown on his face. I had a feeling that he was mentally sorting through the few facts and the mass of supposition about Ursula’s death. He said slowly, “There’s a third possibility, Tracy.”
My skin prickled. “You ... you mean that someone ...?”
He nodded. “If that accident was faked, if it was murder made to look like an accident, that puts a whole new complexion on things, doesn’t it?”
Chapter 10
In the oak-beamed refectory at Haslop Hall everyone was busy talking about the weather. What a blessing it was fine, we all said. How much more depressing an occasion this funeral would seem had it been a wet day ... like the day Oliver was—no one could quite bring himself to actually use the word.
Earlier, in the little Saxon church dedicated to St. Gregory, the vicar had conducted the service to a capacity congregation. The Reverend Peter Anders was a modern young churchman who, so I’d heard, was wont to have straight man-to-man chats about sex with embarrassed youth club members, and daily downed his jolly pint in the bar of the Trout Inn. He was here now, gravely enjoying the good amontillado provided by Sir Robert while he circuited the room exchanging a few polite words with each guest. I watched him move inexorably towards the corner where I stood with Tim.
“Hallo, you two. What a tragic business this is! And now we have another fatality in our little community. Poor lady. Still, we must be thankful, I suppose, that her passing was not attended with the same hideous brutality as with Mr. Medway. What a monster the assassin must be.”
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