The Dark Lady

by Sally Spencer

  In the woods on either side of him, he could hear the noises of the night – the rustling as small furry creatures made their way through the grass, the hissing and buzzing of insects, the chirping of the crickets.

  He had left the park well behind him, and with it all outward signs of the modern world. He could, with just a tiny leap of the imagination, picture himself in a very different world, one in which everyone knew their place – just like in the hymn – from the farm labourers in their simple hovels to the rich landowners up at the big house.

  But Sir Richard Sutton had apparently not known his place in the established order. He had strayed from the path, bringing feelings of betrayal and humiliation down on his poor wife’s head. And he had paid the price for that. But then, so had she. Two lives had been wasted that terrible night, and now, a hundred and fifty years later, there had been a third death – not more than a few minutes’ walk from the place in which the first tragedy had taken place.

  He was less than forty yards from the horse and rider now, yet they maintained their frozen tableau. Did the rider know he was approaching? And if she did know, did she care?

  He could see that she was wearing a three-cornered hat, and though he couldn’t swear to it, he was almost sure that a long mane of hair spilled over her shoulders.

  At thirty yards the tableau was suddenly shattered, and the horse began to trot towards the canal.

  But there were no hoof beats! Woodend thought as he broke into a run. Why were there no bloody hoof beats?

  The horse was, by its own standards, going at no more than an amble, but the gap between it and the policeman was perceptibly widening.

  “Stop!” Woodend gasped. “Stop! I want to talk to you.”

  The rider gave no sign of having heard him, but stayed as erect and silent in the saddle as she had done from the moment he had noticed her. Knowing it was probably pointless, Woodend put on an extra spurt, which made it all the worse for him when he stepped on something slippery and went sprawling forwards in the road.

  He held out his hands to break his fall, and felt the shockwaves travel up his arms as his palms made contact with the asphalt. It took him a second or two to recover, and by the time he had pulled himself to his feet again, horse and rider had vanished.

  Six

  The morning sun was streaming in through the breakfast-room window when Woodend sat down at the only table which had been laid. There seemed to be no one around, but next to one of the serviettes was a small brass bell.

  For a few moments the chief inspector sat staring at it, reluctant to use anything as imperious as a bell to summon anyone to serve him. Then he felt a pang of hunger, and decided it was not for him to buck whatever system they chose to use in Westbury Hall.

  He rang the bell, and almost immediately Tony the bar steward appeared through the kitchen door.

  “Good God, lad, don’t you ever sleep?” Woodend asked.

  Tony grinned. “We never have more than three or four people stayin’ here at any one time,” he said, “so it’s not really worth employin’ an extra pair of hands.” He tilted his head to one side, and examined Woodend with a professional caterer’s eye. “I may be wrong about this, but you look like the full-cooked-breakfast type to me, Mr Woodend.”

  “You’re not wrong. In fact, you’re spot on.”

  “How would two eggs, sausage, bacon, tomato, mushrooms and fried bread suit you?”

  “It’d suit me grand,” Woodend said. “An’ if you could find me some black puddin’ from somewhere, I’d be your slave for life.”

  “I’ll see what I can do for you,” Tony said. “You like your tea strong, I take it?”

  “So you can stand your spoon up in it,” Woodend replied. “An’ I’d like it in a big mug, if you’ve got one.”

  Tony nodded. “That’s what I figured,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen again.

  Woodend lit up a Capstan Full Strength, and got that jolt which only the first cigarette of the day gave him. It seemed remarkable to him that it was less than twenty-four hours since he’d got off the train, because, as with so many of the cases he’d worked on in the past, he’d already immersed himself in the small world in which the murder had taken place.

  Westbury Park was now his reality, whereas London – which had been his home for nearly fifteen years – was nothing more than a distant dream, a vague memory of a time which used to be. And he had not even begun to scratch the surface of the park yet, he recognised. But before he finally left it, he would probably know more about the lives of some of the people in it than even their closest neighbours could guess at.

  The kitchen door swung open, and Tony appeared, carrying a plate high in the air, as if were delivering a feast. And to Woodend, he was. The egg yolks looked soft enough to dip his sausage in, without being runny. The bacon was crisp and appetising. And there was black pudding. The chief inspector picked up his knife and fork, and attacked his breakfast with gusto.

  He was just washing down the last of the bacon with his second mug of tea when Rutter entered the room with several newspapers in his hands.

  “You wouldn’t think it would make much of a difference where in the country you eat a fry-up, would you?” Woodend asked. “But it bloody well does. The only place south of the River Trent you can get food as good as this is in Joan Woodend’s kitchen.”

  But Bob Rutter, it seemed, was in no mood to cross swords with his boss over the respective merits of northern and southern cooking. With an uncharacteristically dramatic gesture, he slammed the newspapers down on the table.

  “Look at this bloody lot!” he said.

  Woodend glanced down at the headline in the Daily Mirror: “The Curse of Lady Caroline”.

  He put it to one side, and read what the Daily Express had to say: “The Dark Lady’s Ride of Death”.

  He chuckled. “That young woman from the maltham Guardia told me she’d get the story in all the nationals, an’ bugger me if she hasn’t gone an’ done just that.”

  “You’re not angry?” Rutter asked incredulously.

  Woodend picked up the Daily Mail, which proclaimed “New Twist to Age Old Mystery” and had the byline “Elizabeth Driver”.

  “You’ve got to admire the lass’s spirit of enterprise an’ determination, haven’t you?” he asked.

  “Have I?” Rutter countered.

  Woodend shook his head, almost mournfully. “Sometimes I think you’re more middle-aged than I am, lad.”

  “But don’t you see what this will mean?” Rutter demanded. “We’ll have busloads of people coming up here now. You’ll not be able to move for busybodies on the lane at night.”

  “Well, that’ll certainly make things a lot more difficult for her,” Woodend mused.

  “For who?”

  “The Dark Lady.”

  It was Rutter’s turn to shake his head. But in his case it was with amazement. “You’ve surely not started believing in this ghost of Lady Caroline Sutton, are you, sir?”

  “There’s often a lot more to these old legends than first meets the eye,” Woodend said enigmatically. “What time did you say your train down to Hereford was leavin’, lad?”

  “I didn’t,” Rutter answered, still stinging from the implied rebuke about middle age. “But, as a matter of fact, it leaves Maltham in forty-five minutes.”

  “Then you’d better grab a decent cup of tea while you’ve got the chance, because personally, I wouldn’t use that stuff they serve up on British Railways for weedkiller.”

  Woodend was hiding something, Bob Rutter thought. It couldn’t be important, or he’d have shared it with his trusted sergeant – but he was definitely hiding something.

  “What will you be doing with yourself while I’m away down south, sir?” he asked.

  “Me?’ Woodend replied, so innocently that it was almost a confession. “I’ll be workin’ my way down the list of people who were in the bar the night Gerhard Schultz was killed.”

  “A
nything else?” Rutter persisted.

  Woodend gave him a wide grin, an acknowledgement of the fact that he’d been caught out.

  “Well, if I do find I have a bit of spare time on my hands, I just might go chasin’ after the Dark Lady,” he admitted.

  Woodend had noticed Kurt Müller’s sharp, intense features before, but the German had been sitting at a table in the club so Woodend hadn’t really been able to see the man’s hands. Now, standing in the doorway of the Müller’s home, he noticed they were long and artistic – hardly the hands he would have expected to belong to a production worker.

  “Yes?” the German said, as if Woodend were a complete stranger to him, rather than someone who’d addressed his group on the small matter of Gerhard Schultz’s murder the night before.

  “As I explained yesterday, I’ll be interviewin’ everyone who saw Mr Schultz just before his death,” Woodend said.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  This was as bad as dealing with the Poles, Woodend thought. “So that’s what I’m here for now,” he explained. “To interview you.”

  A thin smile came to the German’s lips. “I hadn’t expected you so soon. Both alphabetically and geographically, I should have been a long way down your list; yet here you are, only a few hours after starting your investigation, standing on my doorstep with your questions. So exactly what system are you using, Chief Inspector Woodend?”

  I’m usin’ the system of talkin’ to the men who matter – the men who are most likely to know what I want to know – an’ we’re both well aware of that, Woodend thought.

  But aloud, he said, “It’s purely random, sir. I’m not a great one for organisation.”

  Müller’s thin smile widened. “Then you would have made a very bad German,” he said. “Please come inside.”

  The layout of the house was similar to that of the Bernadelli home, but the both the décor and atmosphere were totally different. The furniture had none of the cosiness of Mrs Bernadelli’s. Instead, it was austere – a utilitarian cloth sofa, a heavy sideboard, and a plain carpet. The bookcase which stood facing the window was filled, not with paperbacks, but with what looked like weighty tomes. There were no ornaments, but on one wall hung a large iron crucifix, with two pictures of the Virgin Mary flanking it.

  Woodend, with his Methodist background, shuddered at the anatomical exactitude of the crucified Christ.

  “You’re a religious man, are you then, Mr Müller?” he asked, when he’d sat down.

  Müller nodded. “For a while, during the war, I lost my faith, but God, in His infinite mercy, has restored it to me.”

  “Were you a prisoner of war in this country?”

  “No, my wife and I came to England together in 1946.”

  “Where are you from originally?” Woodend asked.

  “Bavaria.”

  “That’s where Gerhard Schultz came from as well.”

  “So I believe.”

  “Did you know him?”

  Another thin smile came to Müller’s lips. “It’s said that if you talk to an Australian and say you come from England, he will be convinced that you must know a friend of his who lives only ninety miles from your home. You have fallen into the same trap as the Australians, Mr Woodend.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Woodend agreed. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

  “True,” Kurt Müller conceded. “But I will now. I can say in all honesty that Herr Schultz was not brought up in my village.”

  “But since he’d been here, livin’ in Westbury, you had met him, hadn’t you?”

  “As fellow Germans, we were introduced to each other in the bar by Mr Hailsham, the personnel manager. We exchanged a few words with each other. Nothing more.”

  “I get the impression you didn’t like him.”

  “Then you are wrong. As I person, I didn’t know enough about him to either like or dislike him. As he was a senior manager and I am a humble worker and we are therefore on different sides of the fence, I perhaps mistrusted him a little. As a German, I have to admire him for the part he played in the last war, even if his views differed from mine.”

  “Differed from yours?”

  “I assume he believed in what he was fighting for. I didn’t. But that’s not the point I wanted to make. To have been a fighter pilot, to have faced the strong possibility of death every single day, demands a great deal more courage than I think I could ever have shown.”

  “Where were you at the time when Gerhard Schultz was killed?” Woodend asked.

  “Here. With my wife.”

  “An’ you didn’t hear or see anythin’ suspicious?”

  “My wife was listening to the radio when I got home from the club. There was a concert on. It was Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, which has always been one of her favourites. I joined her on the sofa, because I know she always enjoys music more when I am listening to it with her. The concert finished at around a quarter to twelve, and that was the end of the evening’s programmes, so we both went to bed. There could have been a dozen men murdered in the woods, and we would have known nothing about it.”

  “I assume your wife will confirm this.”

  “Of course.”

  “So could I speak to her?”

  “She is not here. She works.”

  “As what?”

  “She’s a teacher in the local primary school.”

  “Is that so?” Woodend asked, wondering how Mrs Müller, as a member of the middle class, felt about having a husband who was a production worker.

  “I have qualifications,” Kurt Müller said, reading his mind. “I hold a degree in engineering.”

  “So why aren’t you an engineer?”

  “Because the work I do is not demanding, and leaves me time to think,” Müller replied.

  “So you’re a bit of a philosopher on the quiet, are you, Mr Müller?” Woodend asked.

  But the intense German was not to be rattled. “There are so many questions which need to be answered,” he said. “The nature of God and the nature of the universe. Divine justice versus that justice which has been invented by man. I could live a thousand years – a hundred thousand years – and never find an answer. But at least I am making a start.”

  The man’s sincerity was so obvious that Woodend began to feel slightly ashamed. Goading a pompous piece of work like Simon Hailsham was one thing; treating Kurt Müller’s beliefs so lightly was quite another.

  “I admire you for trying to understand,” he said.

  Müller’s smile acquired a sad edge. “I am not quite sure that I’m worthy of your or anyone else’s admiration,” he said. “Do you have any more questions for me, Chief Inspector?”

  Woodend stood up. “No, not for the moment.” He gestured with his hand that Müller shouldn’t bother getting out of his seat. “You stay where you are – I’ll see myself out.” He walked over to the door, opened it, then turned round again. “Oh, there is one more thing,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “I wondered if, as someone from Bavaria, the Dark Lady would mean anythin’ to you.”

  Müller’s eyes flickered, but only for a split second. “Why should you ask me that? What’s it got to do with being Bavarian? As I understand it, the Dark Lady is nothing but a local ghost.”

  “An’ you believe in ghosts, do you?”

  “No, I don’t believe in ghosts,” Müller said. “But as a good Catholic, I do believe in demons.”

  The bar of the Westbury Social Club had just opened when Woodend got back to it, and there was only one customer – Mike Partridge, the red-faced balding man whom Woodend had identified the previous evening as the leader of the club’s British contingent.

  Partridge gave him a noncommittal nod, then returned to the serious business of studying his pint of bitter.

  The chief inspector ordered his own pint from Tony and took it over to Partridge’s table. “Do you mind if we have a word?” he asked.

  Partridge looked
up. With a face as red as his, it wouldn’t always be easy to tell when he was getting angry.

  “A word?” the production worker repeated.

  “That’s right.”

  “Or do you mean an interrogation?”

  “You can call it an interview if that makes you feel any better,” Woodend said easily.

  “Why ’ere?” Partridge demanded. “Why ’aven’t you come to my ’ouse, like you did with all the uvvers?”

  The question offered a good opportunity to take the measure of Partridge’s character, and Woodend grasped it with both hands.

  “All the others – all the ones I’ve seen at their houses – they’re foreigners,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to drink with them. But us English – well, we’ve got to stick together, haven’t we?”

  “I’ve nuffink against foreigners,” Partridge said defensively.

  “Neither have I,” Woodend told him, winking. “Not as long as they stay where they belong – which is well an’ truly in their own bloody countries.”

  “BCI don’t encourage that kind of talk,” Partridge said. “They way they look at it, we’re all one big team.”

  “An’ is that how you look at it?”

  “Yes.”

  Woodend decided to try another tack. “Were you in the war, Mr Partridge?” he asked.

  “I was.”

  “An’ did you see any action?”

  “I was wounded durin’ the D-Day invasion. Got shot in the leg. They gave me a medal, but that don’t do anyfink to take away the ache I get when the weather’s damp.”

  “So because of a Kraut, you’re goin’ to be in pain for the rest of your life,” Woodend said. “An’ you’re tryin’ to tell me that you don’t bear the Germans any ill will?”

  Partridge shrugged. “I wouldn’t ’ave ’Itler or Goebbels round to tea, if that’s what you’re askin’,” he said. “But the way I’ve got it figured, the bloke who shot at me was just doin’ ’is job. Bloody hell, I was shootin’ at ’im an’ ’is pals – what else did I expect ’im to do but fire back?”

  He sounded very plausible, but Woodend was still not convinced. “How long have you lived in the park, Mr Partridge?” he asked.