by Hazel Holt
I made an early start and had a very satisfactory couple of hours checking the details I needed in the DNB, with all those side-trackings into that splendid publication that I can never resist. It was still only about midday, so I decided to go along to the Brewhouse Theatre to see if I could get a seat for The Gondoliers which the local operatic group were doing in a few weeks’ time. Gilbert and Sullivan are immensely popular down here and I knew it would be pretty well booked out, but one of the few advantages of going to the theatre on your own is that you can often get a single ticket.
As I was carefully picking my way through the crowded car park I came face to face with Roger.
‘Sheila! How extraordinary – I was going to ring you today.’
‘Oh.’ I said warily.
‘Just a few things I wanted to say – off the record, as it were. Look, are you busy just now?’
‘I was just about to try and get a ticket for the G & S,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes, Jilly and I are going on the Friday. They’re very good, aren’t they. Really most professional. Why don’t we have lunch, if you haven’t got to rush back?’
‘That would be lovely,’ I said. ‘I was planning to have lunch here anyway – the food is splendid, as I expect you know.’
We went into the foyer and I managed to get a single ticket for the Wednesday.
‘I love The Gondoliers’ I said, ‘although I think that Iolanthe is my favourite.’
‘If! had to choose, I think mine would be Patience. Probably because that’s the one I saw first.’
Chatting casually about Gilbert and Sullivan, Roger led me into the main area where stalwart volunteer ladies stood behind a hatch serving out very good pasta dishes or cold meats and salad. All the food was home-cooked and the puddings were especially noteworthy. It was very obvious how the little theatre made most of its profits. As we were early, the dining room wasn’t too full, so that we were able to find a table tucked away in a corner.
‘Oh, you’ve got that gorgeous chestnut and cream thing. I can never decide between that and the sherry trifle...’
I told him about my article on Mrs Oliphant and what the other essays in the Festschrift were to be, staving off the moment when I knew he would be talking about Lee’s death.
After a while he said, ‘I do hope that you’ve quite recovered from that awful shock.’
‘Yes, thank you. And thank you for being so marvellous. I don’t believe I really said anything at the time, but...’
‘Just looking at a murder victim is a horrible thing.’ he said. ‘Something you never get used to, however many times it may happen to you in the course of the job. It’s the knowledge that somebody has done that to another human being.’
‘I remember thinking – who could have hated her so much? That was dreadful.’
‘There is no excuse for taking the life of another person.’
This flat statement, strangely echoing Mrs Dudley’s ‘Right is right and wrong is wrong’, brought me up sharply.
‘I agree with you, of course—’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Jamie Hertford?’
‘I honestly didn’t know at the time. That is, of course I knew him, years ago when I was a child, he was a school-friend of my brother’s. But he went away and we lost touch.
So I never knew that he was married to Lee. Strangely enough,
it was Mrs Dudley who told me. She knows Jamie’s mother.’
‘Jilly’s grandmother’. Did Rosemary know as well?’
‘No, Mrs D. had her own inscrutable reasons for not telling anybody. She only told me to score a snobbish point about my not knowing The Family (the Hertfords used to be practically lords of the manor, you know) as well as I thought I did!’
He laughed. ‘That figures.’ He finished off his lasagne and embarked on his creamy pudding. ‘As you will have gathered, we found a marriage certificate and various letters among her effects at the flat. Did your friend Charles know about Jamie Hertford? He’s local too, isn’t he?’
‘I’m sure he couldn’t have. He actually thought she was divorced, presumably from the man Montgomery. He died – I expect you discovered that – and Lee was never married to him because she was still married to Jamie. Goodness, what a mess some people’s lives are!’
‘But you didn’t know anything about it. Surprising for somewhere like Taviscombe.’
‘It’s really the previous generation – Mrs Dudley and her cronies – who kept up a spy system. We don’t seem to have the time and the energy nowadays. Besides, Jamie went off to the other side of the county – into Devon, even, so interest would be proportionately less.’
‘I went to see him, of course. He had to be told that his wife was dead. And I found that he knew already.’
I tore a bit off my bread roll and pulled it to pieces.
‘I suppose, if I’m really honest, I was just curious to see what he looked like after all these years. I don’t know if I can explain just how glamorous a figure he was when we were all young. Rich, handsome, well-born, with something of a reputation – just a hint of “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. What young girl could resist! I expected something quite different – all run-down and gone to seed. Instead – well, you’ve seen for yourself. Oh Roger, the pathos of it all!’
‘And the son – would you think he’s actually simple-minded?’
‘No, not that. Child-like, I suppose, in some ways.’
‘Obsessively devoted to his father, as his father is to him. There is nothing they wouldn’t do for each other, wouldn’t you say?’
I was glad for Jilly’s sake that Roger was a sensitive and perceptive person, but just at that moment I would have preferred him to be the obtuse, plod-ding policeman of Mrs Dudley’s imagining.
‘But so gentle, Roger. Andrew is wonderful with animals, with plants. And Jamie – well, I simply can’t believe...’ My voice trailed away. We both had the same picture, I felt, of Jamie, goaded beyond endurance by Lee’s vicious taunting, snatching up the knife. ‘Roger.’ I said briskly. ‘I really don’t know much about what you found at Plover’s Barrow. Are you allowed to tell me? I feel so involved, as you can imagine. I really would like to know the actual facts. I suppose there’s no chance of it having been a robbery of any kind?’
‘No. Her handbag was there, with quite a large sum of money in cash – several hundred pounds, actually – and her cheque book and credit cards. No, not robbery.’
‘And the knife?’
‘Part of the stuff left behind in the house. There were several old knives and kitchen implements on the dresser. It was old and rusty, but it had a thin blade and did the job.’
I shivered. Then I thought of something that had been at the back of my mind for several days.
‘Roger, I think that Lee must have gone to Plover’s Barrow to meet a client.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘She was wearing a suit, wasn’t she, and high heels?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, except when she was on business she always wore trousers and boots or flat shoes. That day we talked, she was saying how she hated skirts and never wore them except when she had to be done up for work or in the evening.’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact I had come to something of the same conclusion. There was a dressing case in her car, and a suede jacket and a Harrods bag with trousers and a sweater and some other shoes. As far as we can judge, she wasn’t at her flat the night before she was killed, so she must have taken her business suit and so forth with her to change for her appointment the next day.’
‘Where can she have stayed?’
‘That we will have to find out.’
‘Certainly not with Jamie and Andrew – Jamie wouldn’t have had her in the house! So you see...’
‘All that doesn’t alter the fact, I’m afraid, Sheila, that the two people – the only two people, as far as we know
– who wanted Lee Montgomery dead were Jamie and Andrew He
rtford. They have neither of them got an alibi. Andrew was off, riding over the hills in a highly emotional state. Heaven alone knows where he went. He can’t, or won’t, say. And his father had an extremely acrimonious interview with his wife in a very remote spot the day before she was killed, and no alibi at all for the day in question. He simply said he was out, looking for Jamie.’
‘But if she was meeting a client at Plover’s Bar-row...’
‘She could have arranged to meet Jamie Hertford there either before or after her business interview. She seemed to prefer meeting him in out of the way places.’
‘I think that was because she didn’t want Charles to know that she was still married – if anyone had seen her with Jamie something might have got back to him somehow.’
‘But then, what about the client, whoever it was? It seems most likely that she was killed before he arrived. Something must have happened and he never showed up – only that one set of tyre tracks, remember.’
‘It seems an extraordinary coincidence,’ I said, unwilling to relinquish an unknown suspect, someone who wasn’t Jamie or Andrew.
‘True. But there is something else, something that I’m afraid points only too clearly to the Hertfords.’ ‘What’s that?’
‘Two things, actually. First of all, round the back of the house, where there’s a gate that leads straight on to the moor. There were the hoof-marks of a lot of ponies.’
‘Yes, I saw them that day – there was a little group of them standing round the gate.’
‘Exmoor ponies are wild, of course, but among those hoof-marks there were marks of a horse that had been shod.’
‘It couldn’t have been an exception, I suppose – just one pony that had been shod for some particular reason?’
‘I’m afraid not. In fact it wasn’t a pony at all. The hoof-marks were definitely those of a horse, and quite a large horse at that. The imprints were much bigger and deeper than those of the ponies. And the other thing we found out confirms it. There was a shepherd, checking on his sheep across the valley. He noticed a man riding away from Plover’s Barrow about midday. He was much too far away to give a proper description, but he certainly saw a figure on a horse. He says it was a large horse, possibly brown, though of course he can’t say whether it was a bay or a chestnut or whatever. The rider was going away from him, round the edge of that wood, and making for the open moor.’
‘But it would be much too far for Jamie or Andrew to come on horseback – it would have taken far too long.’
‘Andrew went off the day before, remember, making for the moors. He would have just about reached that spot if he’d slept overnight in a barn or some-thing, as his father thinks he did.’
‘But how would he have known that Lee would be there?’
‘He might have heard something when his father was talking to her on the phone.’
‘I still don’t think it’s possible. But anyway, it would certainly be too far for Jamie...’
‘There are such things as horse-boxes, you know, and the Hertfords do horse-transporting don’t they? He could easily have left the horse-box in a lay-by up on the road. It wouldn’t have been in any way remarkable. The hunt was out that morning and there are a lot of horse-boxes about on hunting days.’
I was silent for a while. Then I said, ‘There’s no sort of proof, is there? I mean, you can’t match up the horse-shoes or anything?’
‘No – that’s not really possible. No proof. They can neither of them prove that they weren’t there, but then we can’t – so far – prove that they were.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m sorry, Sheila, but you must admit that they do seem to be the only people who have a real motive.’
I thought about Lee’s property dealings.
‘Have you investigated her business affairs? I’m sure far more people kill for money than for hate.’
Roger smiled. ‘Inspector Dean is dealing with that side of things, being on the spot, as it were. Why? Do you know anything that we should know?’ He looked at me quizzically.
‘I don’t actually know anything,’ I said, wondering how I could divert the police’s attention away from Jamie and Andrew without involving Carol and Charles. ‘It’s just that I got the impression, from what people have been saying,’ I added vaguely, ‘that Lee was involved in some sort of large property deal. It might be worth looking into.’
‘It will be.’ He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward sympathetically. ‘I know how you feel about the Hertfords, Sheila. They have managed to salvage something very fragile from the wreckage of two lives. It would be very upsetting to have to smash it. But you have to face the fact that someone’s been killed – murdered. It isn’t a fact that can be conveniently ignored, you know, just because the victim was unpleasant and the suspects are pathetic’
‘You’re right, of course. Perhaps she was a spy,’ I said hopefully, ‘and was killed for the Secret Papers?’
‘Heaven forbid.’ he laughed. ‘Things are complicated enough without having Special Branch breathing down my neck!’
I looked at the clock by the door.
‘Goodness, look at the time. I must go. Thank you so much for my lunch, Roger, and for telling me what’s going on. Can you let me know if there are any developments?’
If anything happened to Jamie or to Andrew the other would need a lot of support.
‘Yes, I will. Keep your ears open for me, Sheila – the Taviscombe intelligence network probably hears a great many things that we don’t.’
I promised that I would – though with certain mental reservations.
‘I shall look forward to your essay on Mrs Oliphant.’
‘If you’re interested I’ll send you a set of proofs – they usually let me have a couple.’
‘Signed by the author, I hope.’
‘Of course. Give my love to Jilly.’
We parted with friendly waves and I plunged into the Marks and Spencer food hall. As I packed various delicacies into my wire basket I tried to think of some way that I could find out something that would open up another line of police enquiry. A pack of American-style beefburgers decorated with the Stars and Stripes made me think of Charles. I might telephone him. He had been definitely evasive about his financial dealings with Lee. It wasn’t that I wanted to throw him to the wolves to distract attention from Jamie and Andrew – he was an old dear friend. But he could look after himself, and they, poor things, certainly couldn’t. And Charles was half a world away, across the Atlantic, while they were all too close to the scene of the crime.
Chapter Eleven
I did some calculations about the time difference and tried to phone Charles at his apartment before he left for work, but there was no reply. I gave it another hour and then tried his office. His secretary – Paula, I think she was called – with immense efficiency remembered my name from my previous calls to Charles.
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Malory,’ she said. ‘He isn’t here right now. He had to go to Denver yesterday for about three days. He’ll be travelling about, but I could give you the number of our Denver office...’
‘No, really, it’s not that urgent – I’ll wait until he gets back.’
‘He’ll certainly be sorry to have missed your call. Just between ourselves, Mrs Malory, I think he gets a little homesick for England sometimes.’
‘Yes, I think he does. Have you ever been to England yourself?’
‘Oh, sure. Rob, that’s my husband, and I, we were over just last spring. We did London, Stratford and Canterbury – it was really exciting. I said to Mr Richardson when I booked that trip for him to London in January, I sure do wish I was coming with you, to go to that wonderful Harrods sale – there’s TV advertisements for it over here you know. That really would be something!’
‘January?’ I asked.
‘Sure. New Year’s Day – but it was only a short trip, I guess.’
‘I see. Well, thank you so much. If you could tell Mr Richardson th
at I called...’
‘I surely will. Nice to speak with you, Mrs Malory.’
‘Yes, thank you very much indeed.’
‘My pleasure. Goodbye.’
I put the telephone down in a state of considerable bewilderment. Charles had said nothing about being in England at the beginning of January. Had he seen Lee then, and if so, where? In London? Surely he couldn’t have been in Taviscombe
– someone would have been sure to see him and word would get around. And why was he over here? And – most peculiar of all – why hadn’t he told me about his visit when he telephoned about Lee? I was really beginning to get worried. Nothing seemed to make sense any more. My last telephone conversation with Charles had left me uneasy. I had the impression that he was holding something back and that there was something slightly discreditable that he didn’t want me to know about. What was Charles up to?
The telephone rang. It was Anthea.
‘Sheila? About Friday. Ronnie’s cousin can’t come, I’m afraid. He’s got flu.’
I suppressed an unworthy exclamation of delight and said how sorry I was not to see him.
‘But do come just the same, Sheila. I’ve invited Philip Bradford. You know him, he’s on the District Council. Ronnie’s met him quite a bit at various Rotary things and we owe him some hospitality! Actually, I was a bit worried about the numbers, but it will be all right, we’ll just be four, because his wife’s away for six weeks visiting their daughter in Australia