A Fatal Secret

by Faith Martin

  ‘Uncle Oliver’s friends. The ones who were teaching him to wrestle.’

  Trudy blinked at this, totally at a loss. She’d had no idea what the little girl was going to reveal, but this reminded her somewhat of Dr Clement’s lecture about surrealism. Wrestling teachers?

  Beside her, she could sense that Clement was shifting about from foot to foot a little uneasily.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning,’ Trudy said, hunkering down so that she was face to face with the girl, instead of looming over her. ‘Was this one of the spy games you were playing?’

  ‘Yes, but I thought of it first,’ Emily said, smiling proudly. ‘I was on my own when I first played the game, and I only did it because I saw Uncle Oliver down by the lake looking all suspicious, and I thought I’d follow him. That’s when I made up the spy game and I became Lola, the beautiful French spy. I made Uncle Oliver a nasty German. Of course, he’s not really. He’s as British as you and me,’ she confided.

  ‘He certainly is,’ Trudy said. ‘So you were playing on your own and you saw your uncle. What made you think he was acting suspiciously?’

  ‘He kept stopping and looking all around, as if to make sure there was nobody about who could see him. Like Lallie working in the garden, or one of the villagers, using the shortcut. They do sometimes,’ Emily explained. ‘The lake has a footpath that leads to the lane by the village green. Daddy says technically they’re trespassing, but he doesn’t mind.’

  ‘All right,’ Trudy said, ignoring the largesse of the lord of the manor. ‘So you thought your uncle was making sure that nobody could see what he was doing?’ she encouraged.

  ‘Yes, which is when I thought of the spy game. So I crept up on him, ducking behind the bushes and all sorts. But he only went to the boathouse,’ she said, her voice clearly echoing the disappointment she must have felt. ‘I thought he was just going to take the rowboat out. I almost gave up then, but the more I waited, the more I realised that he was taking a jolly long time getting out on the water. That’s when I noticed his friend. He went into the boathouse too.’

  ‘Friend?’ Trudy asked, careful to keep her voice calm. This was the first time they’d caught even a sniff of a new suspect and she must be careful to get a description. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I was quite a long way away – I didn’t want Uncle Oliver to catch me, see? So I couldn’t really see his face.’

  Trudy bit back a groan of frustration, but wasn’t about to give up. ‘Could you see the colour of his hair?’

  ‘Oh yes, it was blond.’

  ‘Could it have been white?’ Trudy asked.

  ‘Oh no, he wasn’t old, because after a bit, when they still didn’t come out in the boat, I sneaked up to the boathouse, like an Indian, and looked in the side window. It wasn’t half hard, too,’ the little girl told them earnestly, ‘because all the windows were high up. You have to climb up on something to see in, but around one side there’s this old water vat. So I climbed up on that and looked in. And I could see Uncle’s friend wasn’t old. I think he was a bit younger than him.’

  Once more, Clement began shifting about a little uneasily and Trudy shot him a quick, questioning look. He was watching the little girl closely, and Trudy was sure she could see concern on his face, but so far he seemed content to let her do the talking.

  ‘What did you see?’ Trudy asked simply.

  Beside her, Clement Ryder held his breath.

  ‘Nothing much, it was too hard to see in,’ the little girl confessed. ‘The window was absolutely filthy!’ Emily added, with such obvious disgust that both Trudy and Clement had to smile.

  Clement let his breath out again, loud enough for Trudy to hear him. But she was too busy concentrating on her witness to wonder what had been worrying him.

  ‘So I left, and when I saw Eddie again, I told him about this great new game I’d invented – spies – and how I was Lola, and he had to be James Bond,’ the little girl gabbled. ‘We started off spying on the gardeners, but that was boring, since they didn’t do anything but hack about at weeds and stuff,’ Emily continued with a sigh. ‘So then we tried spying on some of the grown-ups in the village, but they sometimes caught us and told us off. We’d almost given up when, one day, we were staking out the boathouse again. That’s what they call it, you know, when you keep watch on a place. And Uncle Oliver came back again. Of course—’ here she broke off to beam proudly at them ‘—by this time, I’d already gone back there when I was sure it was empty and cleaned the side window, so if we needed to, I could see inside properly.’

  ‘That was very clever of you, Emily,’ Clement said, and meant it. But his voice was once more tight with tension.

  ‘Thank you,’ Emily said with a pleased smile. ‘Anyway, as soon as we spotted Uncle Oliver go in, Eddie wanted to climb up to the window, but I said we had to wait, and see if his friend came again. If they were passing on secret messages, we needed to catch them doing it and make a note of it properly. The date, time, all that sort of thing,’ she explained airily. ‘Of course, we knew it was only pretend,’ she added anxiously, just in case they should think her silly. ‘We knew Uncle Oliver wouldn’t really be passing on classified information.’ She’d clearly heard that phrase from somewhere, and she repeated with a solemn nonchalance that again had the pair of them smiling.

  ‘And did his friend come back?’ Trudy asked, still not sure where all this was going, but getting drawn into the drama nevertheless.

  ‘Oh yes. Well, no,’ the little girl hastily amended, somewhat confusingly. ‘Another of his friends came, but it wasn’t the same man. This one didn’t have blond hair like the first one did. But he came to the boathouse, and then we sneaked to the side and both of us climbed up to look in. We had to be jolly careful to be quiet.’

  ‘And what did you see?’ Trudy asked, amused.

  ‘They were wrestling,’ Emily said. ‘Or at least, that’s what Eddie said they must be doing. They were sort of lying on the floor and moving about.’ She gave a brief shrug. ‘We couldn’t see all that much, because they were behind one of the rowboats.’

  Beside her, Trudy was sure the coroner muttered something under his breath, but she wasn’t to be distracted.

  ‘I expect Uncle Oliver wanted to learn a new sport,’ Emily swept on with her tale. ‘He already knows how to row and play tennis and golf and stuff. Eddie says wrestling is something only boys can do anyway,’ she said with disgust. ‘It’s so boring! Anyway’ – she shrugged – ‘after a bit we went away. I said I was getting bored of the spying game, but Eddie said he wanted to keep on with it for a while. So I said, if he really wanted to be James Bond, he should follow Uncle Oliver’s friend when he left and see if he could tail him back to wherever it was he went when he wasn’t meeting Uncle.’

  ‘And where did he go?’ Trudy asked.

  ‘Only to a car parked on one of the farm tracks just off the village green. At least, that’s what Eddie told me later. So he couldn’t follow him any further.’ Emily shrugged again. ‘But he copied the number plate, by writing it in the dirt with a stick. So I loaned him one of my exercise books and a pen so that he could go back and note it down properly, and the make of the car as well. Eddie was good at knowing all about cars. There weren’t many he didn’t know the name of,’ Emily said proudly. ‘Eddie was really clever, in a lot of ways that I’m not. Anyway, after that, he’d sometimes report back that Uncle Oliver took more wrestling lessons, sometimes with the blond man, sometimes with other men. And he followed them, and made a note of all the number plates too. Of course, that didn’t really get us anywhere, since we couldn’t figure out how to find out who they were from that. In the films, the police or whoever can find that sort of thing out. But we couldn’t.’ The little girl took a much-needed breath. ‘But after a while even Eddie got bored with it and stopped following them.’

  ‘Well, thank you for telling us all this, Emily,’ Trudy said.

  ‘
It’s just that I overheard Daddy talking on the telephone to Aunt Sylvia. I got the feeling Aunt Sylvia was cross about something, because I heard Daddy telling her that the police had every right to consider strangers in the grounds. That’s what made me think of Uncle Oliver’s friends. But I suppose they’re not really strangers, are they, if Uncle Oliver knew them?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Trudy conceded.

  ‘Anyway, I just wanted you to know,’ the little girl said. ‘I’m not allowed to play on my own anymore. Mrs Roper says it’s not safe,’ she added forlornly. ‘And… sometimes I get scared,’ she admitted.

  Trudy reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Is there anyone in particular that you’re afraid of, Emily? You can tell us if there is, you won’t get into trouble, I promise,’ she said softly.

  ‘No. Not really. It’s just… grown-ups can be so funny sometimes, can’t they? I mean, do really odd things. I don’t understand them. I told Eddie…’ Suddenly her garrulousness dried up, and she looked down at her feet uneasily.

  ‘Yes?’ Trudy said sharply. ‘What did you tell Eddie?’ she asked more gently, careful not to sound too pushy or insistent. ‘You can tell us too, you know. I’m a police lady.’

  The little girl heaved a sigh. ‘Well… it’s just that, once, when Eddie wasn’t here, I saw Uncle Oliver leaving the boathouse, but only because I was down by the lake trying to catch damselflies in a jar. I don’t hurt them, and I let them go very quickly,’ she promised. ‘Anyway, I noticed he and his wrestling teacher were holding hands,’ Emily blurted. ‘So I told Eddie. I mean… only little kids hold hands, don’t they? So they don’t get lost. It seemed strange. Eddie thought it was strange too, and he said, next time, instead of hiding in the bushes and waiting for the teacher to come out so that he could follow him, he’d climb up and look in the window again. I told him not to do it again after that first time, in case Uncle Oliver or his wrestling teacher saw us. We’d have got in trouble then. We’d already learned that grown-ups don’t like being spied on.’

  Again, Trudy noticed that Clement was looking very uneasy, and wasn’t surprised when he finally asked a question of his own.

  ‘Did Eddie say what he saw?’ the coroner asked gently.

  ‘No. He just said that I was right, and that grown-ups can do some very strange things. But after that, he said he was fed up of playing spies too and didn’t want to go back to the boathouse, so then we invented a new game. Well, not new, really, because it meant building forts in the bushes, which we’d done before.’

  Clement nodded. ‘Emily, do you know what happened to Eddie’s notebook?’

  ‘Oh, I expect he hid it,’ the little girl said simply. ‘He thought it best. Every good spy knows you’ve got to have a secret hiding place that the baddies don’t know about.’

  ‘And do you know where Eddie’s was?’ Clement pursued.

  ‘Of course,’ Emily snorted. ‘I spied on him one day and followed him. He never spotted me either,’ she boasted. Then her smile faltered as if she suddenly realised that she’d never be able to play spies, or anything else, with Eddie again.

  Her lower lip began to tremble ominously.

  ‘Can you tell us where it was,’ Trudy put in hastily, hoping to stop the tears before they could begin. The distraction worked, because Emily nodded, swallowing hard.

  ‘Yes. It’s in the hole in the old oak tree by the tumbledown wall opposite the orangery. Do you want me to show you?’ she added helpfully.

  ‘That would be a good idea, thank you,’ Trudy said, getting up and then rubbing her calf ruefully as she felt a touch of cramp shoot through her leg.

  ‘It’s this way.’ Emily, looking serious, led them through the kitchen garden to one side of the outer wall, where a long, low, glassed-in lean-to did indeed grow a variety of small, pruned citrus trees. ‘See, that’s the oak tree over there,’ Emily said pointing across a small meadow, and setting off almost at a run.

  It was a lovely spring day, and the buttercups were out, with a few orange-tip butterflies fluttering about and taking advantage of the early source of nectar. The oak, just greening, was indeed a veritable old tree, and halfway up the trunk was one of those naturally framed, round boles that such trees sometimes acquired. Too low to the ground to house a woodpecker or an owl’s nest, it might have been a former resting place for squirrels or perhaps field mice. For, after somewhat gingerly putting her hand inside it, Trudy felt some old fallen leaves that would have made a comfortable bed for some small mammal.

  But no notebook.

  ‘Are you sure this was his hiding place, Emily?’ she asked.

  The little girl nodded. ‘I know that’s where he kept all his things,’ she insisted. ‘Here, let me have a feel,’ she said, a shade condescendingly. ‘You need to get your arms and hands right in. You’re not afraid of woodlice are you?’ she scoffed.

  Trudy wasn’t – but earwigs were another matter.

  But the little girl’s face quickly fell as she, too, had to admit defeat. ‘It’s not there,’ she said, sounding amazed and angry. ‘Somebody took it!’

  ‘Maybe Eddie moved it,’ Clement said consolingly. ‘Could we see your notebook do you think? You said you loaned it to Eddie so that he could copy down the number plates of the cars. So it should still be in there, right?’

  Emily’s shoulder’s slumped and then she shrugged morosely. ‘Sorry, but Eddie tore out the piece of paper so he could put it in his own codebook. That’s what he hid in here,’ she said moodily. ‘I suppose I’d better get back before Mrs Roper finds out I’m not still in the nursery,’ she said heavily.

  ‘Bad luck,’ Trudy commiserated with her.

  The little girl gave them a woebegone smile, and they watched her go all the way to the house, before Trudy turned to Clement and shrugged. ‘All right, so what was all that about? All the time she was talking, you were looking like a right nervous ninny,’ she accused him, a shade crossly.

  Clement grinned, liking the phrase – but not at all so sure that he liked it being applied to him – and then very concisely told her just what it was that had been making him so nervous.

  When he was finished, Trudy knew her face must be red as a beetroot.

  Of course, she knew all about homosexuals – she’d been taught about them during her training. Homosexuality was a crime, after all, but she knew the likelihood that she’d ever have to arrest anyone for it was slight. Both DI Jennings and Sergeant O’Grady made sure that she was never called to make up the numbers whenever one of those sorts of clubs were raided. Nor was she allowed to do patrols at night at certain gentlemen’s lavatories, which were also known hotspots for that sort of thing.

  Of course, now it was clear what the ‘wrestling lessons’ had really been.

  ‘But I thought Oliver de Lacey wanted to marry Marjorie Chandler,’ Trudy said, with a frown. ‘So he can’t be, you know…’

  Clement sighed, and once again set about educating her.

  When he was finished, Trudy was silent for a while, and then sighed. ‘We need to warn her, don’t we? I mean, suppose she actually marries him, and then the poor woman finds out…’

  ‘Yes, I’ll have a discreet word,’ Clement promised. And then wondered. Was it possible that Martin de Lacey had called them in, not so much because he cared about Eddie Proctor, but because he was hoping that they would discover his cousin’s secret? Which would, in turn, seriously boost the likelihood that Marjorie Chandler would come to find out? His mind went back to that first interview with the squire, when he’d come to his office. Hadn’t he felt then that Martin de Lacey had a hidden agenda of his own?

  Clement gave a mental shrug. It hardly mattered now. ‘I’m more interested in Eddie’s missing notebook.’

  Trudy frowned. ‘Why?’ Then her eyes widened. ‘You don’t think it has something to do with Eddie’s death do you?’

  ‘Well, we’ve been looking for a motive for murder,’ Clement pointed out. ‘Just suppose Oliver discov
ered Eddie peering in through the boathouse window during one of his… er… wrestling matches? As you more than most can appreciate, if the boy reported back to anyone what he’d seen, he would be facing actual jail time. He’d certainly lose his job at the university, not to mention his high-flying job in the city, that’s for sure. And the scandal alone would ruin him.’

  Trudy nodded. Yes, she could see all that. His poor mother would be devastated. The proud de Lacey name, dragged through the mud, the courts, the press. ‘But… Would he really kill the boy to keep him quiet?’ she asked, appalled. And wouldn’t it be much easier and safer just to pay him off? ‘The money!’ she suddenly cried out, so loudly she almost made Clement jump. ‘You remember, young George told us that he overheard Emily and Eddie talking about money. Perhaps Oliver de Lacey was paying him to keep quiet?’

  ‘Hmmm, it might explain it,’ Clement concurred. ‘We certainly need to speak to Oliver again. Come on, let’s go back to my office. You need to make notes of that conversation with Emily while it’s still fresh in your mind, and I want to do a bit of discreet investigating of my own. If what we suspect is true, we’ll need to have more concrete evidence against him than merely young Emily’s say-so. And there are people, and places, that men such as Oliver like to go. I need to put out a few more feelers – it might just be possible to find somebody willing to testify about his proclivities. Even so, it’s going to be tricky.’

  Trudy nodded, eager to get going, and quickly the pair made their way back to the house.

  The church clock struck three as they hurried past the house and headed for the front drive where they’d left the car.

  *

  And the person who, on Easter Sunday, had stood on the hill looking down at the Hall and decided that Eddie Proctor needed to die, watched them go with narrowed, angry eyes.