The Affacombe Affair

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘Well, we’re here,’ he said ungraciously, ‘and bloody inconvenient it’s been, too, coming chasing down at a moment’s notice for what we know perfectly well’s a mare’s nest. Nobody could have got into the garage without busting up the lock, as I told you.’

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ Pollard said politely. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Garnish,’ he added, as Pamela emerged from the passenger door, courteously held open by Toye.

  She acknowledged his greeting briefly, and stood looking bored as her husband extracted his keys.

  ‘As you see, I have brought our experts down,’ Pollard went on, indicating the two cars. ‘If we can have access to the garage from the outside they can start the printing there, without disturbing you by bringing all their equipment through this way.’

  Without replying Roy Garnish unlocked the front door and strode into the house, making no attempt to stand aside for his wife. Great beefy lout, thought Pollard, with an upsurge of distaste, as he watched Pamela turn into the sitting-room, and fling down her coat and other belongings.

  ‘You’d better come this way,’ Roy Garnish called over his shoulder, ‘and let in your chaps by the garage door if you want to. Here, what’s all this in aid of?’ he demanded, wheeling round at the sight of Toye and Dart behind Pollard. There was an unmistakable movement of his hand towards his hip pocket, checked by a swift gesture from Pollard enjoining silence.

  ‘We can’t take the slightest risk, sir, especially with Mrs Garnish in the house. It’s unlikely that anyone’s still in hiding here, but we must make sure.’

  At this moment Pamela came out of the sitting-room and stopped dead with a startled exclamation.

  ‘A routine search of the extensive premises,’ Roy said ironically. ‘For God’s sake make some tea for everybody. It might speed things up.’

  Without replying she went past them into the kitchen. There came the sound of a tap running. Overhead there were muffled footsteps as Toye and Dart searched, the squeak of a seldom-opened trap door being pushed up. A few minutes later the two men came down.

  ‘No one up there, Mr Pollard,’ Dart reported.

  Roy Garnish gave a snort of contempt and led the way to the door into the garage.

  ‘I’ll go in first, sir, just in case. I take it the door is unlocked.’

  ‘As far as I remember. God, what damn nonsense all this is!’

  Pollard stepped forward, unemotionally conscious that the man behind him carried a gun. He opened the door on darkness.

  ‘Switch on your right,’ Roy Garnish said.

  A few moments later the outer door swung up. Detective-Constables Boyce and Strickland were standing stolidly against a wintry background.

  Pollard gave business-like instructions as they unpacked their apparatus.

  ‘You can muscle in, too, Toye,’ he said. ‘I expect you’d like to be getting back to Highcastle, Inspector, unless you’d care to wait for that cuppa Mr Garnish kindly suggested.’

  ‘Make yourself at home, by all means,’ remarked Roy.

  They turned at the sound of Pamela’s step in the passage.

  ‘Tea in the kitchen if anyone wants it,’ she announced, and disappeared again.

  ‘Leave you to it, chaps,’ Pollard said, following Roy into the house, Dart and Metcalfe bringing up the rear. He saw Pamela carrying a tray of tea things into the sitting-room. Roy went to join her, leaving the door ajar. Background noise of voices and of objects moved about came through from the garage. In the kitchen a vigorous triangular conversation was kept up, accompanied by the clinking of crockery. Once there was a short burst of laughter. After an interval Pollard slipped out and went back to the garage.

  He found an atmosphere of tense excitement as Toye finished unscrewing the metal plates of the mortice lock and gently eased them off the door leading into the house. Underneath was a sunken chromium knob controlling a burglar-proof bolt.

  ‘This may have the print to end all prints,’ Pollard said in a low voice as Strickland advanced with his powder. With a subdued exclamation he stood aside for Boyce and his camera.

  Re-entering the house Pollard nodded as he passed the kitchen, and knocked at the sitting-room door. The short November afternoon was closing in, and the lights had been switched on.

  ‘Well?’ Roy Garnish enquired sarcastically. He had lit a cigar, and sprawled at ease in a haze of blue smoke.

  ‘A number of prints have come up, sir, but of course we shan’t be able to classify them until the photographs have been developed and blown up. If Mrs Garnish has finished her tea, perhaps we could start a general look round now?’

  ‘I really don’t think this is going to be the slightest use,’ Pamela said fretfully in her high metallic voice as she stubbed out a cigarette. ‘Last weekend was such a mess-up that I can’t possibly remember what tins and stuff were in the cupboards.’

  She rose unwillingly and went out of the room, followed by Pollard.

  ‘You’ll be surprised at what you can remember,’ he told her. ‘Oh, I see my chaps are starting on the kitchen. Could we take the upstairs rooms first and work downwards? I particularly want you to check things like blankets and any clothes of your husband’s.’

  ‘You’d better come yourself, Roy,’ she called back from the top of the stairs. ‘I haven’t a clue about the stuff you keep down here.’

  The door of the main bedroom of the house faced the head of the staircase. Pamela pushed it open and flicked down the light switch. It gave a click, but nothing happened.

  ‘Damn! ‘she exclaimed. ‘The blasted bulb’s gone.’

  As she spoke there was a faint click from the other side of the room, and a flood of light. For a measureless length of time she stood frozen, confronted by a stocky, bull-shouldered figure with a red face and ginger hair, incongruous in striped trousers and morning coat.

  Then she began to scream, a high continuous scream.

  The heavy footsteps crossing the hall below became an animal stampede on the stairs. Roy Garnish burst into the room. For a split second he seemed transfixed by sheer primitive terror. Then he whipped out his revolver.

  ‘Rat on your own brother would you, you dirty swine?’ he bellowed. ‘I’ll send you where I sent the nurse.’

  The bullet struck the elegant Adam ceiling as Pollard wrenched the arm upwards, and Toye and the others closed in. Pamela’s screams suddenly ceased. She stood frozen between Strickland and Boyce.

  Pollard turned to Roy Garnish, now safely handcuffed.

  ‘It’s unwise to jump to conclusions,’ he said. ‘Allow me to introduce Detective-Sergeant Blair. Make-up by Scotland Yard. Roy Garnish, I charge you with the murder of Joan Emily Roach.’

  Pollard found Olivia Strode alone in the Ainsworths’ drawing-room. She explained that John was away and offered to fetch Faith.

  ‘It’s not necessary,’ he said. ‘Frankly, I’d rather you told her what I’m sure you know I’ve come to say. Roy Garnish has just been charged with the murder of Sister Roach, and his wife as an accessory together with a second person at present unknown. He admitted to the crime in front of half a dozen witnesses. I’m just taking them both into Highcastle.’

  Olivia steadied herself with a hand on the mantelpiece.

  ‘I thought it would be the most colossal relief,’ she said slowly, ‘but now it’s happened it seems quite horrible.’

  ‘In my experience it always feels that way in the end. Incidentally the case would probably have remained unsolved without your evidence, you know.’

  She stared at him in astonishment.

  ‘Do you think that one day you could possibly unravel it all? At the moment everything is just incomprehensible.’

  ‘I’ll do that, Mrs Strode,’ he promised her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The news that the Garnishes had been charged with the murder of Sister Roach reverberated round Affacombe like a sonic boom. At first it met sheer incredulity. A variety of reactions followed.

  ‘Us be wel
l rids o’ the lot o’ they,’ was the main theme of comment in the Priory Arms, bracketing killers and victim. It was felt that the nurse had got what was due to her for trying to come between Fred and Ethel. As to the Garnish money, it could only have come through beggaring hundreds through crooked dealing, as well as by highway robbery, as the papers were saying now. The topic of the demolition of the North Lodge was resurrected, and a surprising number of people said they had thought it a proper queer business at the time, and now anybody could see for themselves.

  In other circles reactions were more complex. There was genuine shock and horror, but also a certain unconscious satisfaction born of resentment of the Garnishes. Such absolutely impossible people with that fantastic amount of money, and actually having the nerve to say they didn’t want to get involved with local society instead of coming cap in hand trying to get into it. But those experiencing these feelings would have been appalled to know of their existence, and their conscious minds were charitably concerned with the future of the Priory School.

  John Ainsworth, once reassured by his lawyer about the terms of his lease, was one of the very few to feel genuine distress, at least on behalf of the Garnishes. Old Roy had turned out a wrong ’un, of course, and you couldn’t stand for bank raids and what-have-you in a civilized country. But he’d been pretty well as smart as the train robbers, come to that. And when Roach cornered him, well, he fought his way out. Blackmail was a filthy stinking business. Faith Ainsworth was unable to rationalize the situation as successfully as her husband. She ached with confused compassion for all concerned, and the school gained from the sympathy she aroused in parents.

  After the initial impact of the news Olivia Strode was overwhelmed with relief. It felt like waking up from the grimmest kind of nightmare, she thought, turning eagerly to her normal preoccupations. Rather to her surprise, however, she found it difficult to give them an undivided mind. In spite of David’s cheerful reassurances she was still uneasy in case action were taken by the authorities over the false registration of Julian’s birth. Also the puzzling circumstances surrounding the murder intrigued her. She often wondered if Pollard would remember his undertaking to elucidate them.

  ‘That, my darling,’ David Strode had remarked on hearing the news over the telephone from Julian, ‘is that. There’ll be some tiresomenesses, I expect. Giving evidence, perhaps. But you and I can at last give our minds to essentials. Listen, sweetheart...’

  There followed a lengthy and recklessly expensive conversation, mainly unintelligible to anyone overhearing it.

  The two Garnishes were duly committed for trial at the Highcastle Assizes. After a lull during which local interest began to show signs of flagging, it was revived by reports in the Press of the arrest of one Peter Baker in connection with the mail van robbery at Bristowe on September 19th. Accused was the half-brother of Roy Garnish, at present awaiting trial on a charge of murdering Sister Joan Roach, a school nurse. It was understood that further charges of a different character were likely to be preferred against him.

  Olivia read the paragraph over and over again, illumination slowly dawning in her mind.

  A few days later she had an unexpected telephone call from Pollard, who was in Highcastle, offering to pay her a short visit that afternoon. She accepted with pleasure, but, as she put the receiver down, suddenly wondered if she really wanted to see him after all. If they did prosecute Barbara, it would be on his information. She decided that she was being emotional and silly.

  ‘I remember that attractive map,’ Pollard said, standing in front of the fire and examining it closely. ‘In fact, I’ve thought of this room more than once. It was here that you gave me the pointer to Garnish, you know.’

  ‘What was it?’ asked Olivia. ‘I’ve racked my brains. Do sit down.’

  They settled in a couple of armchairs, and he accepted a cigarette.

  ‘It was Dettol,’ he told her, and smiled at her bewildered expression.

  ‘Dettol?’

  ‘Yes. When I asked you about your arrival at the Priory on the night of the murder, you described it so vividly that you transported yourself back there: right into the smell of baked beans, wet clothes and Dettol. Let me explain a bit more fully.’

  Olivia listened absorbed to Pollard’s narrative of charred bandages, Streak’s bruise and the subsequent deductions leading finally to the tracking down of Roy Garnish’s half-brother, Peter Baker.

  ‘But the Garnishes’ alibi in Polharbour?’ she asked. ‘Did you bust it wide open, as my son would say?’

  ‘I don’t know about wide open, but it transpired that no one saw or spoke to the alleged Roy Garnish who was in a position to identify him beyond any doubt.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Olivia. ‘This is incredibly complicated, but from what has appeared in the papers, wasn’t Sister Roach blackmailing the wrong person for the wrong thing? I mean, Pamela for a non-existent — or incidental — lover, instead of Roy for using, the impersonation set-up as a cover for crimes like the Bristowe mail van robbery?’

  ‘Congratulations, Mrs Strode. You’d better join us in the C.I.D. Yes, she’d jumped to the same wrong conclusion as the boys. It was a very daring and cleverly worked-out scheme. Take the Bristowe business. Peter Baker did the job — with suitable assistance, of course, while Roy went about his usual work in London. Late that night, Baker, who’d made a clean getaway, was dropped off near the second Affacombe turning, and doubled back through the North Gate into the West Wing garage where he laid low until Pamela arrived the next day. Then he stepped into Roy’s identity, Roy having gone to ground elsewhere. On the Monday, Baker, disguised as Roy, returned to London with Pamela, and the two men unobtrusively became themselves again.’

  ‘But surely it was terribly risky for Baker to have been in the West Wing? There was some arrangement with the Ainsworths about having the place kept clean.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it,’ Pollard said, ‘but that garage has no windows. If it could be made impossible for anyone to open the connecting door from the house side, it would be a very safe hideout indeed. It didn’t take my chaps long to find a concealed burglar-proof bolt, so there was no risk at all of a cleaning woman or even one of the Ainsworths coming through. They took a risk over letting Pamela drive down alone on the 20th, of course, and pulled it off. No one seems to have noticed that she arrived without Roy.’

  Olivia considered.

  ‘I don’t think it really was much of a risk — not at this end, anyway. You see, nobody knew anything about their comings and goings. If I’d seen her driving up the village alone, I should just have thought that they’d arrived together earlier. Then on other occasions like October 28th, I suppose Baker came to establish Roy’s identity here, so that there couldn’t be any question of his being involved in whatever he was really doing elsewhere?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. There is a remarkable physical resemblance between the two brothers, and it was a well-established impersonation, all ready to step into when they decided that Roach had to be eliminated. She’d tumbled to it, and become much too dangerous to them to be allowed to go on living.’

  ‘But surely,’ Olivia covered her face with her hands and thought furiously, ‘the murder was unnecessary? I mean, the letter they must have had from Sister Roach showed that she had got the wrong idea about the purpose of the impersonation? Why not let her go on having it? Roy and Pamela could have gone to the Leap, and he could have said that Pamela had confessed everything to him, and unless Sister Roach signed a confession of attempted blackmail he’d go to the police. A bit risky, perhaps, for people like themselves, but nothing like as risky as committing murder.’

  ‘Think about the letter,’ suggested Pollard.

  She exclaimed aloud.

  ‘Of course! How stupid of me! It would have been anonymous, like the one Mrs Winship had, and they wouldn’t have known who they were up against.’

  ‘Exactly. They might have found themselves confront
ed by someone not at all easy to silence and intimidate. One of the masters from the school, perhaps. Or even John Ainsworth. Or even yourself.’

  ‘Me?’ she gasped.

  ‘Yes, you, Mrs Strode. I shouldn’t be surprised if they speculated about you. After all, you’d had several contacts with them: more than anyone else locally, except the Ainsworths. In fact, after I saw you here last time, I decided that you’d been a bit too much in evidence if there really was something fishy about the Garnishes. Hence that phone call of mine about any more invitations to the West Wing.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ she said, unpleasantly chilled at the thought of having been at risk. ‘But I still don’t understand,’ she persisted, ‘why Roy Garnish, when he found it was only Sister Roach at the Leap, didn’t fall back on the story of knowing all about Pamela’s lover.’

  ‘I don’t suppose we shall ever know why he decided to take the greater risk all the same. My theory is that he was badly rattled by the Streak incident, and that Roach showed signs of being difficult. In confidence, she was quite an experienced blackmailer.’

  Olivia stared into the fire.

  ‘What I find so staggering,’ she went on after a pause, ‘is the part sheer chance seems to have played in all this. Things like the time Barbara Winship happened to start out that afternoon, and Streak electing to come and paw at you and get picked up. It makes me wonder if there’s any cause and effect in history after all.’

  Pollard laughed.

  ‘In the long run I’m quite certain there is. But pure chance does play a bigger part in life than a lot of people realize. I’ve come across it again and again in my cases.’

  ‘By the way, you haven’t told me yet how Roy Garnish came to admit to the murder. It seems astonishing: not a bit in character, somehow.’

  ‘His wife was confronted with an impersonation of his impersonator, and it broke her. A gamble, but it came off. He reacted by trying to shoot his way out.’

  Olivia listened absorbed, looking at Pollard with undisguised admiration.