Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  “Did she put all the money into buying Heron Cottage?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve no idea how much she actually won. 1 don’t think anyone knew. I’m sure Pauline would have put a cross in the box for ‘No Publicity’.”

  “But you don’t know whether she celebrated by taking a trip abroad or anything like that?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t know her that well. She could have done all kinds of things I never knew about.”

  “Of course. So, as far as you know, she never did travel abroad?”

  “No, I don’t think…She wasn’t the kind to…” Something came through the fogs of memory. “Oh, just a minute, though…Yes, she did. I remember being surprised when Harry told me. He’d bumped into Brian, who said his mother had suddenly got herself a passport and was going off on a jaunt somewhere. It seemed so out of character, that’s why I’ve remembered it.”

  “You don’t remember where she went?”

  Jenny Grant shook her head. “I don’t think I ever knew. I don’t even know if she actually did go. I just remember Harry mentioning about the passport.”

  “And when did this happen…presumably after the pools win?”

  “I suppose it must have been…except…” Again Jenny Grant screwed up her face with the effort of recollection. “No, because Harry was out working on a development in Spain for most of 1988 and ‘89, so it must’ve been before that. End of ‘87, I suppose.”

  “Really?” said Carole, suppressing the excitement that spurted inside her.

  They talked a little longer, but nothing else emerged that was relevant. Not that Carole minded. She’d already got more than she’d dared hope for.

  Jenny Grant seemed as unsurprised when Carole said she must go as she had been by her arrival.

  “Very good of you to see me, Jenny.”

  “No problem. Lucky you called today, though.”

  “Oh?”

  “Harry and I are off to Portugal tomorrow. For a week. To celebrate the planning permission on the barn.” She made it sound like a death sentence.

  Beneath the stained glass of the open front door, Carole shook her hostess’s hand, and it was then that she saw something in the woman’s eyes that maybe explained her unquestioning passivity.

  Jenny Grant was on tranquillizers, Carole felt sure. A hefty dose of Librium or something similar was needed to maintain that placid equilibrium. Maybe that was the only way this rather quiet woman could survive being married to a social climber like Harry Grant.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  She desperately wanted to talk to Jude, but Jude was up at Sandalls Manor and Carole couldn’t wait. The speed with which her ideas were moving and conjoining and producing new ideas meant she had to talk to someone. And, in a sense, there was only one right person to talk to.

  Lennie Baylis answered his mobile straight away. He was up at Weldisham, doing some interviews with local people about the Heron Cottage fire. But when he heard that was what Carole wanted to talk about, he suggested she came up as soon as possible. He was once again ensconced in the Snug of the Hare and Hounds. If she was quick, they could talk before the pub opened at six.

  Carole drove to the village as fast as she could, but was impeded by the local rush-hour traffic. That was probably just as well, because her excitement would have made her careless of speed limits.

  She was no longer suspicious of Detective Sergeant Baylis and was therefore unperturbed by the readiness with which he’d agreed to see her. Now she reckoned she knew the full scenario, and it didn’t involve him. The detective was no longer a suspect, just a useful professional contact.

  Carole parked in the Hare and Hounds car park and, when she arrived in the pub at twenty to six, Baylis was in the Snug, chatting to Will Maples. Their behaviour definitely looked more like ‘chatting’ than ‘interviewing’. The sergeant had a very large Grouse in front of him, and the manager was sipping a cup of coffee, in anticipation of a busy evening ahead.

  Carole didn’t find out what they were chatting about, though. They stopped as soon as she came in. On a little flick from Lennie Baylis’s eyebrows, Will Maples rose from his seat.

  “Better sort things out in the kitchen,” he said.

  “Maybe our lady friend would like a drink…”

  “No, thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Right. And you’re OK for the moment, Lennie?”

  The whisky glass was raised in acknowledgement. “Fine, thanks.”

  Will Maples left the bar. Detective Sergeant Baylis looked at the eternally repeating flame pattern of the log-effect fire. “Not so wet as you were last time we met here, are you, Mrs Seddon?”

  “No. No, I’m not.”

  “But I gather it’s still something to do with the same subject you want to talk about. The bones.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, fire away.”

  Carole nodded, and then a caution struck her. “What I’m going to say may be tantamount to an accusation…” He looked alarmed. “Of someone we both know.” He relaxed. “I wouldn’t like to think that kind of thing would become public knowledge.”

  “Mrs Seddon…” Detective Sergeant Baylis spread his hands disingenuously. “It is my job to listen to wild accusations…often a lot wilder than anything I’m sure you’re going to come up with…and it’s also my job to keep the source of such accusations secret. Goodness, if all the murder theories I’ve heard in Weldisham the last few weeks ever became public, nobody in the village would ever speak to anyone else again. I can’t think of a single person who hasn’t been accused by someone. It’s amazing how the discovery of an unidentified body brings out all kinds of old resentments that have been bubbling under the surface for years.”

  “And it still is an unidentified body?”

  He smiled cannily. “Very clever, Mrs Seddon. Worth putting the question in. You might just catch me off my guard, and I might just let slip some classified information to you…but don’t count on it.”

  She coloured at what was unmistakably a reproof. “I’m sorry.”

  A grin. “OK, let’s hear your theory…”

  Carole took a deep breath, and as she embarked on her theory she became aware that, beneath his laid-back exterior, Detective Sergeant Baylis was tense. He still thought what she was about to say concerned him at a personal level. He was waiting to hear what she had unearthed about his family history.

  “I think,” she began slowly, “that what’s happened recently has roots that go back a long way into the past…”

  He nodded assent. Nothing controversial so far. But he remained taut, waiting to see what would follow.

  “I think the bones I found had lain undisturbed for more than twelve years, and might have lain undisturbed for a lot longer, but for certain recent developments.”

  Baylis couldn’t keep quiet any longer. Still trying to sound casual, he said, “I assume this means you reckon you know who the bones belonged to?”

  “Yes. I think they belonged to Sheila Forbes, Graham Forbes’s first wife.”

  He gave no obvious reaction, but Carole thought a little of the tension had left his body.

  “I think Graham Forbes murdered her over the weekend of the Great Storm, in October 1987, and buried her body in the floor of the old barn behind his house.”

  The sergeant gave her a smile that was half congratulatory, half sceptical. “Nice idea. And I may say you’re not the only person to have had that thought.”

  Carole felt a pang of disappointment.

  “It’s a line of enquiry, I can tell you, that we in the police have pursued as well. But I’m afraid, persuasive though the theory might be, it doesn’t stand up to the facts.”

  “No?”

  “Sorry. One of the facts we know is that on the Monday morning after the Great Storm, 19 October 1987, Graham Forbes was witnessed travelling on a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur, in the company of his wife, Sheila. There’s no question about it. Her passport was
checked and stamped. It’s on the records at Heathrow.”

  Carole was a little shaken to find out how closely the official enquiries must have mirrored her own, but she kept her cool. “I’m sure Sheila Forbes’s passport was checked, but I don’t believe the person travelling on that passport was Sheila Forbes.”

  She had the sergeant’s interest now. With mounting confidence, Carole continued, “I think the woman who travelled to Kuala Lumpur with Graham Forbes that Monday morning was Pauline Helling.”

  “What?”

  “There was sufficient family likeness for Pauline to pass herself off as her distant cousin, certainly among people who didn’t know her well, like passport officials.”

  “But what about people who did know her well…like the British Council staff in Kuala Lumpur? They were never going to believe that Pauline Helling was the woman they’d seen around the house and office for three years.”

  “I don’t think they saw her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the Forbeses arrived at Kuala Lumpur airport in October 1987, Mrs Forbes was taken off in a taxi. Graham Forbes and the writer Sebastian Trent were taken off in a British Council car, but it wasn’t driven by Graham’s regular driver—in spite of the fact that the driver Shiva had worked with the Forbeses for years and was exceptionally loyal. I think Graham Forbes made that arrangement deliberately, so that the supposed Mrs Forbes wouldn’t be seen by anyone who could recognize her as an impostor.”

  There was still scepticism around Baylis’s mouth, but he hadn’t yet rejected her theory out of hand. “So where did ‘the supposed Mrs Forbes’ go then? Some member of staff must have seen her when she finally got to their residence.”

  “I don’t think Pauline Helling ever did get to the residence. I think Graham Forbes arranged for her to stay put in a hotel and then, after a suitable interval, she flew back to England on her own passport.”

  “But why on earth would Pauline Helling do all that?”

  “Money. Graham Forbes had done a deal with her. Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that, late in 1987, Pauline Helling suddenly has a pools win…suddenly finds herself in a position to buy Heron Cottage…and hopefully to live in the style in which her distant cousin had lived? A big step from being a cleaner in Weldisham to being a house owner in Weldisham..”

  “Hmm…” Detective Sergeant Baylis’s head was shaking slowly.

  Carole pressed home her advantage. “And don’t you think it’s another coincidence that round that time, Graham Forbes suddenly loses a lot of money. Nobody knows why he’s lost it—and being nice middle-class English people, the good folk of Weldisham would be far too polite to ask—but Lloyd’s is mentioned and that seems to make sense. Possibly Graham started the rumour himself…that he’d caught a cold in the Lloyd’s crash. It’s happened to a lot of other people, so no one questions the idea.”

  Baylis still wasn’t convinced about the whole picture, but some of Carole’s ideas intrigued him. “Let’s just go along with your theory for a moment. If it were true, how do you explain more recent developments? If the bones did belong to Sheila Forbes, why do they suddenly turn up where you found them, in South Welling Barn?”

  “All right.” Carole took another deep breath. “There are things that happened in Malaysia which I’m guessing about, but which could be checked. I think Graham Forbes had met Irene before 1987 and fallen in love with her, which was why he did away with Sheila. He reckoned the body would be safe in the old barn behind his house, because it was only used as a village dumping ground and people very rarely went in there. When he retired, and felt able to introduce his new bride to Weldisham, he quickly got a position of power on the Village Committee. A man of his administrative skills, with time on his hands, would be welcomed with open arms. And thereafter, every time an application came up for planning permission to develop the old barn, Graham Forbes marshalled the Weldisham opposition against the idea. Everyone thought his motivation was to protect the village environment, but in fact he was protecting something else that was much more significant to him.”

  “So why were the bones moved?”

  “I’m getting there, Sergeant. Harry Grant had bought the barn and he, like others before him, kept trying to get permission to turn it into a dwelling. He was always turned down…until last week. I don’t know how it happened…local back-scratching perhaps, maybe a few palms greased…that’s not important. What was important, from Graham Forbes’s point of view, was that the barn was about to be developed, its floor was going to be dug up to build foundations. His guilty secret was about to be uncovered. So, as soon as he got wind of the Planning Committee’s likely decision, Graham Forbes knew he had to move his wife’s remains.”

  “But why would he only move them as far as South Welling Barn?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was a temporary measure. Maybe he was going to take them to a more permanent hiding place and got interrupted.”

  Baylis pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Anything else?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  Carole hadn’t really worked out the next part of her allegations. The first bit had been conjecture supported by some facts and a good ration of logic; this bit was pure conjecture. “I think something…my finding the bones perhaps…had an effect on Pauline Helling. Maybe she had a guilty conscience about the crime of which she’d been part, but for whatever reason she decided that she was going to tell someone the truth of what happened.”

  “Tell who?”

  “I don’t know. You perhaps. But I think she let Graham Forbes know about her change of heart…or he found out about it somehow…and, for that reason, he decided that he had to keep her quiet.”

  Baylis looked shocked now. “So you’re saying Graham Forbes torched Heron Cottage?”

  Stated like that, the theory sounded rather bald. Carole backtracked. “I’m saying it’s a possibility. I’m not certain about that yet. It’ll need a bit of investigation.”

  “Yes,” the sergeant agreed, slightly mocking. “That kind of thing often does.”

  “All I am certain of, though,” said Carole, reasserting her authority, “is the fact that the bones I found belonged to Sheila Forbes, who was murdered by her husband.”

  The door behind the bar opened. Will Maples stood there. “Sorry, have to open up to the thirsty public now.”

  His manner was full of apology, but of something else as well. Carole wondered how much of their conversation the manager had overheard.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Charles Hilton led Jude up the heavy mahogany staircase to the second floor of Sandalls Manor. The landings off which the bedrooms opened showed no signs of the building’s New Age make-over. They were opulently decorated with rich carpets and curtains, as in any other luxury country house hotel. Again Jude got the impression that the minimum amount of change would be required to convert from psychotherapeutic to clay-pigeon-shooting weekends.

  Tamsin Lutteridge’s bedroom was at the end of the corridor on the top floor. Charles tapped on the door. Jude didn’t hear a voice granting admission, but he pushed in regardless.

  The room, like the landings, was expensively upholstered. Pine dressing table, chairs, bedhead and wardrobe gave a rustic impression, as did the chintzy curtains and bedcovers. The tall windows behind the closed curtains must in daytime have commanded wonderful views across the Downs and down to the glinting line of the sea. Jude wondered how much Gillie Lutter-idge was paying for accommodation, before she even started on her daughter’s medical treatment.

  The mess around the room was more characteristic of a teenager than a girl in her early twenties. Underwear, T-shirts and trainers lay on the floor. Make-up and perfume bottles, some open, spread in confusion on the dressing table. Open magazines and paperbacks littered the bedside table. Minidiscs and their boxes clustered at the foot of an expensive stack system.

  And, front down on the bed, watching an American high school soap,
lay Tamsin Lutteridge.

  She looked up without much interest at their arrival, and Jude’s first impression was how ill the girl looked. Four months of Charles Hilton’s regimen seemed to have made no difference to her health at all. If anything, she looked worse than when Jude had last seen her.

  Tamsin Lutteridge was blonde, like her mother, with blue eyes which, at their best, could sparkle and entrance, but were now as dull as pebbles. The hair hung lank, not unwashed but lifeless. Her long, slight body was swamped in a grey sweatshirt and elasticated trousers of the same material. They were probably her normal day clothes, but gave the impression of pyjamas.

  The most striking feature of the girl, though, was her pallor. Perhaps aggravated by reflection from the television screen, the face looked actually grey, a kind of papier-mache colour.

  Tamsin recognized Jude and nodded a greeting. It wasn’t unwelcoming, but the effort of making the gesture positively affable seemed too great.

  Charles Hilton either didn’t see the moment of recognition or—more likely—wanted to assert his control over the situation by making the introductions. “Tamsin, this is Jude, whom I’ve agreed can come and talk to you.”

  “OK.”

  The girl’s attention was now back on the television screen. Jude had anticipated a reaction of alarm, or even fear, to her arrival, but all she encountered was indifference.

  Charles Hilton gestured to a pine armchair and Jude sat down. Then he perched himself neatly on the stool in front of the dressing table.

  “Charles…I want to talk to Tamsin on her own.”

  His eyes grew darker. “I’m sorry, Jude. I can’t allow that. Tamsin is my patient. We’re going through a long therapeutic process and I can’t risk her getting upset.”

  “I have no intention of upsetting her. What I want to talk about is nothing to do with her illness. And, as I believe I mentioned, nothing to do with you.”

  Charles Hilton shook his head slowly, as if dealing with someone unschooled in the arcana of his profession. “I’m afraid, as her therapist, I can’t allow Tamsin to be alone with you.”