by Frank Smith
Joanna had been sitting on the seat in the stern, reading, but she had nodded off and the book had slipped to the floor. All three of them had spent the morning cleaning up after the storm. Fortunately, the boat was sheltered and had suffered little in the way of damage, but the tow-path and the path to the pub were littered with fallen branches, and it had taken most of the morning to clear them all away.
Vikki picked up the book and put it on the seat beside Joanna. She was very quiet, but Joanna stirred and opened her eyes.
“Now that’s an improvement,” she declared as she sat up straight. “Turn round.” Vikki turned slowly. “Very good,” said Joanna. “Now all we need are some new clothes for you.”
“I think you and Bunny have done enough already,” Vikki told her. “Now that I’m better, I can earn some money and pay you back.”
Joanna eyed the girl. “And just how do you propose to do that?” she asked. Her voice had turned cool. “We may not have much out here, but we’re not so hard up that you have to go out and earn money by spreading your legs for someone you’ve never seen before.”
Vikki flushed. “I didn’t mean …” She stopped and made a helpless gesture. “It was the only way I could survive,” she said weakly. “If there had been any other way …”
Joanna continued to look at the girl, but now with a more critical eye. “How would you like to come work at the pub, say from ten till midnight each night? Give me a hand with the clearing up. It wouldn’t give you much, but it would be a start. I’m sure no one is going to recognize you now.”
But even as she reassured the girl, Joanna wondered if she had done the right thing in not telling Vikki that her friend Simone was dead. She had seen it in Saturday’s paper at the pub, and she’d recognized the name immediately as belonging to the woman who had taken Vikki in. Fortunately, no paper was delivered to the boat, and Joanna had never felt the need to have a radio, let alone a television set. She’d been afraid that Vikki might panic and take off again if she knew, and she didn’t want that to happen. She had become attached to the girl and wanted her to stay where she’d be safe.
“What do you say, Vikki?”
Vikki liked the idea, but the thought of venturing very far from the security of the boat triggered a tremor of fear. “I’m still a bit scared that someone will recognize me,” she confessed.
“It would be late at night,” Joanna pointed out. “We close at ten-thirty, but we start cleaning up at ten because most of the people have gone by then, and I’m sure no one is going to connect you with what happened a week ago in Broadminster. You look completely different.”
Vikki hesitated, but it would be nice to get away from the boat, if only for a couple of hours each night. She took in a deep breath and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “When would you like me to start?”
“Probably tomorrow. I’ll have a word with George tonight, but I’m sure he won’t object.”
“But won’t I be taking money away from you, Joanna?”
“We’ll worry about that later,” Joanna said soothingly. “Maybe later on we can get you serving behind the bar. Now, what about your sketching? Are you going to do any this afternoon?”
Vikki grinned impishly. “I did one this morning before you were up,” she said, “but I’m not sure you’ll like it. Hang on a minute and I’ll get it.” The girl disappeared inside, returning a moment later with a sheet of A4 paper. She handed it to Joanna without comment.
Joanna shook her head slowly from side to side. “Surely to God I don’t look like that?” she said as she held up the picture. It showed her lying on her back in her bunk, a couple of curlers in her hair, and mouth wide open. She could almost hear herself snoring.
“It’s good,” she admitted with a grimace. “It’s very good, but I don’t think I’ll have it framed.”
CHAPTER 24
MONDAY, 2 OCTOBER
Almost everyone at work that morning had some dramatic story to tell about the storm that had caused so much destruction over the weekend. Low-lying areas had been flooded; fallen trees had damaged houses and cars; slates had been blown off; and out where Ormside lived, greenhouses and cold frames had been smashed to pieces by hail.
“Much damage out your way, sir?” Ormside asked.
“Quite a few trees down, and a lot of flooded fields, but no damage to the house as far as I can see,” Paget told him.
The sergeant picked up a memo and handed it to Paget. “That’s the number of the police garage in Worcester,” he said. “They want you to call back. It’s about the car you had towed in on Saturday. They said the engine block is cracked. It’s going to need a complete replacement, and they need authorization and a work order number.”
Paget grimaced. “That’s going to cost a bit,” he commented as he pocketed the memo.
“What happened?” Ormside asked.
“The oil ran out in the car-park, but fortunately I noticed it before I started back, and had it towed in.”
“So how did you get back?” asked Tregalles, who had been listening.
“I got a lift with someone who happened to be coming up this way,” Paget said off-handedly.
“That was lucky. What was the road like?”
“Wet,” said Paget curtly. “Now, can we leave the subject and get on with what we’re here to do?” He turned to Ormside. “Anything else?” he asked.
“No, that’s it for the moment, sir.”
“Right. In that case I’ll be in my office. I’m expecting Miss Bolen in at nine, so have someone bring her up when she arrives, will you, Len?”
“Will do, sir.”
“I hope this won’t take long,” said Prudence Bolen as she flopped into a seat in front of Paget’s desk. She was dressed in jeans and a baggy sweater at least three sizes too big for her, and trainers. “I have a lunch date with a friend in Bristol at one o’clock.”
Paget ignored the remark. The young woman was forty minutes late for their appointment as it was, and he had no intention of hurrying on her account.
“Thank you for coming in, Miss Bolen,” he said perfunctorily. “I’ll get straight to the point. Can you tell me where you were on the evening of Saturday, September twenty-third?”
Prudence placed a dramatic hand against her chest and widened her eyes in mock surprise. “Me, Guv?” she asked in a hoarse voice. “I ain’t done nuffink, Guv, honest!”
Paget’s expression didn’t change. “If you’ll just answer the question, Miss Bolen.”
Prudence sighed heavily. “I was in Bristol, which is where I should be going now,” she said petulantly.
“Is there someone there who could confirm that?”
“I don’t know why you’d want to, but yes, there is, as a matter of fact. I share a room with another girl, Joan Lassiter. She’ll tell you I was there all night.”
The Lassiter girl had been warned not to let Prudence know that the police had spoken to her, and apparently she had heeded the warning. That should make things easier. Still, he might as well let Prudence hang herself.
“And you were there, presumably, when your mother rang about seven Sunday morning?”
Prudence shifted in her chair. “Well, no, as a matter of fact I had gone out early that morning. I went bike riding with some friends. Joan told me when I came in, and I rang my mother back.” She put on a sad face. “That’s when she told me about Dad.”
Paget frowned. “I was given to understand that Miss Lassiter had already told you what happened before you telephoned your mother,” he said. “Is that not right?”
Prudence passed a hand across her forehead and frowned as if trying to recall. “Yes, that’s right, now you mention it. Although I’m afraid I don’t see the point of any of this.”
“You telephoned your mother from where?”
“Bristol, of course.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t Broadminster, Miss Bolen?”
Prudence became very still. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“From the Country Garden Nursery?”
Prudence slid down in her chair, hooked one foot over her knee and glowered at him.
“Your friend, Joan Lassiter, was interviewed by the Bristol police,” he went on, “and she admitted covering for you while you were here in Broadminster for the weekend.” Paget’s voice hardened. “Now, shall we stop wasting each other’s time and get on with it, Miss Bolen? When did you really arrive in Broadminster?”
Prudence fiddled with the laces of her shoe. “I came up Saturday evening,” she said grudgingly. “Got in about nine. I was going to surprise Mark and spend the weekend with him.” She looked at him defiantly. “Is that a crime?”
“No, and I’m not interested in how you spend your time as long as it has nothing to do with the events surrounding your father’s death. Did you see your father that night?”
Prudence stared at him as if she thought him mad. “He’s the last person I wanted to know I was in town,” she said. “He didn’t approve of Mark. That’s why I didn’t come up earlier in the day. I didn’t want him or anyone else to see me.”
“You were with Mr. Malone all that evening?”
Prudence frowned and pressed her lips together. “Mark wasn’t there,” she said in a low voice. “I should have let him know I was coming, I suppose, but as I said, I wanted to surprise him. He’d gone to Shrewsbury, and he didn’t get back until the middle of Sunday morning.”
“He stayed there overnight?”
“He said he’d intended to come back that night, but he’d had a few drinks and didn’t want to risk getting caught on the road, so he stayed over with them and came back next morning.”
“So you stayed where?”
“At Mark’s. I’ve got a key.”
“Is there anyone who saw you there? Any way that we can verify what you’ve just told me?”
Prudence shook her head impatiently. “Of course there isn’t,” she told him. “Mark and I had to keep a low profile, so I wasn’t going to let anyone know I was there, was I?”
“Is it true that you had promised your father you would stop seeing Mr. Malone?”
“I don’t see that as any of your business,” the girl flared.
“Your father had warned you of the consequences if you continued seeing Mr. Malone, had he not, Miss Bolen? And yet you continued to see him.” Prudence remained silent. “Which some might say,” he went on, “would be sufficient reason for killing your father.”
Blood drained away from Prudence Bolen’s face as Paget pressed on. “You admit sneaking back into Broadminster after dark. You undoubtedly knew where your father would be; Mr. Malone was in Shrewsbury—or so you say. But he could just as easily have been at the Tudor Hotel that night, either with or without you. Tell me, do you have a set of keys for your father’s car, Miss Bolen? Was it Malone’s idea or yours to take the car from the hotel car-park while your father was having dinner?
“And whose idea was it,” he ended quietly, “to set things up so that someone else would take the blame for the murder of your father? Your’s? Or Malone’s?”
Prudence stared. Her mouth moved but no sound came out.
“And where were you last Tuesday evening?”
Prudence blinked rapidly and swallowed hard. “Tuesday? I don’t … I was with Mark earlier on, but he had to make a delivery, so I went over to see a school-friend. I can give you her name if you like. But I don’t see …”
“And I will want it,” said Paget. “How long were you there, Miss Bolen?”
Prudence looked confused. “I don’t know. Till maybe ten o’clock. I don’t remember exactly.”
Paget picked up the phone and punched in a three-digit number. “I need an interview room,” he said when someone answered. “And I’ll need a WPC to witness a statement.”
Keith Lambert put down the phone and smiled to himself. He hadn’t expected to hear back from London quite so soon. He had banked on their wanting the future of the Ockrington property resolved as soon as possible, but bureaucrats were not known for making swift decisions, and he had anticipated a wait of several weeks before he heard anything.
It was a man named Hutchinson who called. The name didn’t mean anything to Keith, but it soon became apparent that Hutchinson was very familiar with the offer he had presented a week ago, and he made it clear from the outset that the offer was not acceptable.
Not acceptable, he hastened to explain, in its present form. The Minister had expressed concern over the fifteen-year time frame, for example, and the amount of money Lambert had offered to put up was, considering the potential of the property, below expectations.
When Lambert asked what would be acceptable, Hutchinson hedged. It was hard to put an exact figure on it until other factors had been worked out, he explained, but if Lambert was still interested, he felt sure that some sort of compromise could be reached. Would it be convenient for Mr. Lambert to come to London? Say, this Thursday? Ten o’clock? Excellent! Hutchinson gave further directions and rang off.
Lambert, hands locked behind his head, rocked gently back and forth in his chair as he re-ran the conversation in his mind. The very fact that they wanted to talk again told him they were eager—more than eager—to make a deal and get Ockrington off their hands.
And what a deal it would be! If Jim Bolen hadn’t been so blinded by his obsession, he might have come up with a more innovative approach himself.
With Bolen out of the picture, it had been a piece of cake. But best of all, Laura was now free, and he couldn’t see her spending a lot of time mourning her dear departed husband.
It was simply a matter of time, he told himself. Just a matter of time.
Paget took Prudence Bolen down to the interview room himself, but once there he left her under the watchful eye of a WPC and went in search of Tregalles. “She’s admitted she was in Broadminster the night her father was killed,” he told the sergeant, “and what I want you to do is record her statement and take your time doing it. Under no circumstance allow her to get to a phone. I’m on my way to see her boy-friend, Mark Malone, and I don’t want her tipping him off before I have a chance to talk to him. I don’t know whether either of them had anything to do with the Bolen killing, but the girl certainly hasn’t been losing any sleep over her father’s death.”
Twenty minutes later, Paget pulled into the car-park in front of the nursery, where he could see at a glance that it had suffered a lot of damage from the storm. Boxes of bruised and battered plants had been dragged to one side, and leaves and twigs had been raked into several piles. Tubs of trees had been tipped on their sides, presumably to allow water to drain out, and two girls were pulling down the tattered remnants of a plastic greenhouse covering.
“He’s in the office,” one of the girls told Paget when he asked for Malone. “Go through the shop to the back, and you’ll find him there.”
Malone showed no surprise when Paget stuck his head through the open door and introduced himself. It was almost as if he had been expecting the chief inspector. “Have a seat,” he said, indicating a decrepit wooden chair. “Will this take long? I have a lot on my plate this morning.”
“It rather depends on you,” Paget said as he sat down. The chair creaked ominously beneath his weight.
It wasn’t hard to see why Prudence Bolen was attracted to Malone. He was an extraordinarily good-looking man, bronzed from working outside, and there wasn’t a spare ounce of flesh on his body. He wore a T-shirt, shorts and sandals, and looked to be in excellent physical condition. He had a pleasant face, not rugged, exactly, but his features were well-defined, and there were small lines around his dark-blue eyes that made him look as if he were secretly amused.
“Prudence Bolen tells me that you stayed with friends in Shrewsbury last Saturday evening,” said Paget. “Is that true, Mr. Malone?”
“Ah! Yes, of course, that was the night Prudence’s father died. Yes, that’s right, I did. With Peter and Sheila Trowbridge. Known Peter for years.
He and Sheila run Lyndwood.”
“So you won’t have any objection if we ask him for confirmation?”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Malone’s face. “I won’t object,” he said. “Although I do question the need. I can’t say I like the idea of having the police asking my friends about me.”
“What time did you leave Broadminster?”
“Somewhere between one and two o’clock in the afternoon. I got to Lyndwood Farm about three, I suppose, and spent a couple of hours with Peter sorting through stock and making out orders. His is a wholesale business as well as retail, and I get a lot of my three-to-five-year stock from him.”
“Which takes us to about five o’clock. What then?”
Malone allowed his annoyance to show more plainly. “I really don’t see the point of all this,” he said impatiently, “and to be frank, I resent the implication of these questions.”
Paget eyed Malone thoughtfully. “Do you?” he said. “Well, let me put it to you this way, Mr. Malone: Jim Bolen was opposed to the idea of your marrying his daughter. He and Prudence had what has been described as a violent argument over it, which resulted in his threatening to disinherit her if she went through with it. She promised not to see you again, but it was an empty promise, wasn’t it? She continued meeting you secretly, and she lied about where she was the night her father was murdered. She lied to me, she lied to her family, and even had her room-mate in Bristol lie for her. In addition to that, she received a panic call from her room-mate here shortly after seven o’clock on Sunday morning, telling her that her father had been killed. Yet Miss Bolen couldn’t even be bothered to go home until late in the afternoon, lying once again to account for the delay.
“And by an odd coincidence, the same night Prudence Bolen sneaked back into Broadminster, her father was confronted by someone who stabbed him five times. Does that make the situation clearer, Mr. Malone?”