Silent Witness (Dr. Patrick Grant)

by Margaret Yorke

  ‘Well, I suppose I’d better hear the worst,’ Liz said. She put the chops into a fireproof dish and poured the sauce over them.

  ‘Colin has a good contact in the Cotswolds,’ Patrick went on. ‘I say, what a sentence.’

  ‘Patrick has pretty peculiar pals,’ Liz retorted, tartly. ‘Fifteen love.’

  ‘Sorry. Where was I?’

  ‘In Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, or somewhere. But you didn’t know the Fosters lived there, I told you that this morning. How did he find out?’

  ‘He didn’t. I did know, because I discovered it by inquiring down at the clinic before I rang Colin up yesterday. But naturally I couldn’t ask about the marital background; your information on that was most valuable, Liz.’

  ‘You asked me for it,’ she said, coldly.

  ‘Well, to proceed: it seems Roy Foster’s farm is mortgaged to the hilt. It’s been in the family for generations, yeoman farmer stuff I think originally, but Roy’s a bit of a good-time lad and has frittered away his assets. Wedding astonished all the locals – June’s father to the rescue, one would surmise.’

  ‘What a silly girl,’ Liz shuddered. ‘Nowadays, one would think she’d have more sense.’

  ‘Moonlight plays tricks, you know,’ Patrick said, lightly. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Casting doubts on everyone.’

  ‘Ah yes. The Derringtons, now. I couldn’t give Colin anything to start from about them, but they talked about their mink losses last night so we know they’re in some financial trouble.’

  ‘Not enough to prevent them having a holiday. Pity you can’t prove it was Bernard in the helicopter visiting Hilda and frightening the mink,’ Liz said, sarcastically.

  ‘Even Bernard may have had his hour of glory once,’ said Patrick, mildly.

  ‘What did your policeman friend have to say about him?’

  ‘He wasn’t the town clerk of Wapshot, as he’d implied. He was just a clerk in the municipal offices. He lived in a bed-sitter in the borough and attended evening classes in woodwork. He was a dutiful son and went home every weekend to his mother, who is a sprightly old lady involved with townswomen’s guilds, Derby and Joan clubs and the like. A dominant figure, in fact. He had no girlfriends, and no hobbies apart from carpentry. He didn’t even run a car. He was in the R.A.S.C. for the last two years of the war and rose to the dizzy rank of corporal, and he served in Holland after the D-Day landings.’

  ‘Holland!’ Liz said, and then quickly, ‘But Jan was a child.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘Putting sand into petrol tanks. He told us so.’

  At this point, Max joined them.

  ‘There is a most delicious smell coming from here. You have enticed me away from my work, Mrs. Morris,’ he said, and added, looking at their grave faces, ‘I suppose you are discussing this sad business about your countryman.’

  ‘Yes. Patrick’s full of wild ideas about it.’

  ‘Is he? Tell me what they are.’ The professor topped up their glasses and poured himself out a tot from the rum bottle. ‘Surely it was an accident? He had too much to drink, perhaps, and fell into the river?’

  ‘No, Max. It isn’t as simple as that. The body hadn’t been in the water long. It lacked the typical features of death by drowning – froth in the throat and nose, wrinkled skin on the hands and feet. Without a post-mortem, one can’t be sure, of course, but Dr Wesser agrees that I may be right. I saw him when he got back from the scene of the avalanche this morning, quite some time after Bernard was brought in.’

  ‘There will have to be a post-mortem, anyway,’ said the professor.

  ‘Yes, but I understand the pathologist lives over in the next valley. Bernard will have to be removed for it. I suppose Wesser may be ordered to do it if there’s a prolonged delay.’

  ‘There’s no refrigeration at the clinic,’ said the professor.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Patrick grimly.

  ‘What do you mean – oh, how horrible,’ Liz exclaimed.

  ‘Quite,’ said Patrick. ‘Fiona, as far as we know, was the last person to see Bernard alive,’ he went on. ‘She’s elusive, isn’t she? I must talk to her.’

  ‘Find Roy and you’ll find Fiona,’ Liz said. ‘Maybe he took a shine to her straight away, on Saturday, and he and Bernard had a fight over her. Roy would have had no qualms about leaving Bernard lying in the snow. Did Colin know anything about her?’

  ‘He hasn’t got that far. He’s on to it now,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Well, I’m glad someone’s private life is still their own,’ said Liz. She turned to the professor, who had been looking somewhat bewildered during this exchange. ‘I don’t know how you got mixed up with Patrick, Professor, but he’s a beastly man. He won’t ever leave things be. He’s sure someone killed Bernard.’

  ‘But why should anyone want to do that? From what you’ve said about him it sounds as if he was a harmless, ineffectual sort of person.’

  ‘Exactly. He was just that. Dreadfully dull, and he behaved mysteriously to make himself seem more interesting,’ Liz said, firmly.

  ‘He acted out of character in going for a walk without his galoshes,’ Patrick said. ‘If he wore them just to cross from the annexe to the main hotel, he’d certainly put them on to go back again; and if he left the Gentiana with the intention of going for a walk, all the more reason to wear them.’

  ‘Maybe Fiona was so impatient she wouldn’t let him go and fetch them,’ Liz suggested.

  ‘Now who’s being fanciful? Can you imagine Fiona really wanting to tangle with Bernard?’

  ‘Fiona is the young woman who operates the record-player?’ asked the professor.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She might for want of something better, or to make someone jealous,’ Liz declared. ‘She could have killed him, too. Why are we so sure it was a man?’

  ‘We aren’t, if he was lured to where he was killed. But a woman couldn’t have carried him.’

  ‘Some women could have,’ Liz said slowly. ‘He was slim and can’t have weighed much. Hilda’s pretty beefy. But she’d have had no motive. Suppose it was Fiona, and it was just an accident? She and Bernard went down to the river amorously entwined, Bernard having passed up the galoshes in the excitement. He lost his balance and fell over – that’s possible – and she was bored because he obviously wasn’t in her league, so she left him there, thinking he’d soon get up again, and went off herself. Then she got scared when he was missing and that’s why she and Roy were in a worried huddle this morning. That must be it.’ Liz was pleased with this theory. ‘It holds,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ Patrick conceded.

  ‘And it was an accident, as I’ve said all along.’

  ‘We agree that the general opinion is that Bernard wasn’t drunk that night?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. There’s no doubt about that.’

  ‘Then I don’t see him going for this famous walk with Fiona. From what you say he was scared of women – probably led a rich fantasy life, wild in the extreme, but faced with real opportunity, would run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.’

  ‘I have to admit that I don’t understand why Fiona picked on him that night,’ Liz admitted. ‘There were plenty of chaps in the nightclub that night who were far better prospects. He was scarcely the answer to a randy girl’s prayer.’

  ‘Liz! Your language!’ Patrick exclaimed, his eyes almost vanishing behind his thick-framed glasses as he burst into laughter.

  The professor was smiling, too.

  ‘You are a most refreshing person, if I may say so, Mrs Morris,’ he told her. ‘You certainly don’t mince matters.’

  ‘Please call me Liz, Professor,’ she asked. ‘Patrick!’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You haven’t mentioned Francis.’ She looked at him steadily. ‘Did your pal find out anything about his grisly past?’ She turned to the professor and explained, ‘Patrick has some policeman friend in London he’s been asking for i
nformation about us all.’

  ‘No. He simply confirmed that the caravan encampment is tastefully managed, and the Whittakers are respected in the district. We knew already that Francis was in this area during the war.’

  ‘He needn’t have told us. He volunteered it himself. If he’d anything to hide, he’d have kept quiet.’

  ‘One would imagine so, yes.’

  ‘What about Sam?’

  ‘Ah yes, poor Sam. Now he’s been a bit unlucky. A few years ago he went to a party where there was a raid. Drugs were found, and he was fined. Afterwards he had a breakdown and was in hospital for some time. That was why he couldn’t fulfil his contract. Colin seemed to think the general feeling was that he’d been framed – professional jealousy, possibly, or jealousy of some other sort. But anyway, he bought it.’

  ‘Poor Sam. I see. But it doesn’t connect up with Bernard.’

  ‘I agree, unless by some odd chance he was also at the drug party, but that’s rather a fanciful idea.’ Patrick pondered. ‘Sue’s Dutchman was around on Saturday night, wasn’t he? Or had he gone back to his own hotel before Bernard went into the gloaming with Fiona, assuming that he did?’

  Liz wondered whether to tell Patrick about the figure she had seen in the corridor that night. Not yet, she decided.

  ‘I don’t think he had. Sue was quite late coming to bed. She’d been spooning somewhere or other,’ she said.

  ‘What a delightful old-fashioned expression, “spooning”.’ Patrick rolled it round his tongue. ‘I love your use of language, Liz. I must get you to give a lecture to my nicest pupils one day. Now, how’s that lunch doing? I don’t think we can get any further with this business until I’ve heard what Fiona has to say about that night; and Max, you must be thoroughly bewildered about all these people and their activities. Let’s forget about Bernard for an hour and think only of our stomachs.’

  ‘”Now good digestion wait on appetite,”’ said Max.

  ‘”And health on both”’ Liz answered, smartly, and astounded them.

  IV

  June Foster ate very little of her lunch. Her ankle still hurt; her head ached because she had cried so much; and she felt utterly wretched. Roy had spent a total of only fifteen minutes with her since she had arrived in the clinic. She could not really blame him; fancy breaking your leg on the second day of your honeymoon. But it wasn’t as if the weather were fine so that he could go off skiing for the day. She couldn’t help wondering what he was finding to do.

  She thought back to the wedding on Friday, only four days ago; it was better to remember that than the humiliation which came later. She had worn a cream brocade dress and yards of tulle, and been followed down the aisle by two cousins both much slimmer and much prettier than herself. She had no real girl friends. At school she had been known as ‘Podge’ because of her figure. She had been good at nothing, only cooking, and that was discovered by chance when her parents could not think of anything to do with her after she left school. When Roy, whom she had known all her life, had suddenly started to take her out and generally pay her attention, it had seemed the most marvellous thing that could happen. Their mothers often met; when they were children they had gone to Woolacombe for holidays at the same time. Roy, several years older, had thrown buckets of water over June and jumped on her sandcastles; she had hated him then. She blotted out the memory: lots of little boys were unkind. Their parents were delighted about the marriage. Roy’s father had been killed in a motor accident when Roy was sixteen and the farm had been run by a manager until Roy was old enough to take it over.

  June liked Mrs Foster, and was glad to think she would be living nearby. She was thrilled at the prospect of living in the big old house, and Roy had said that she could keep a horse, for its cost could be included in the farm accounts. June loved riding, though she was too dumpy to look good on a horse. Her father had settled a lot of money on her: she knew that the main idea was to save death duties, but she was grateful because it meant she would not be a drain on Roy but would be contributing herself to their income. She wouldn’t be lonely when Roy was busy about the farm, for she would have plenty to do. She was perfectly confident about her ability to run the house well and economically, for she understood thoroughly all aspects of domestic management. It was the only thing, apart from riding, that she knew she could undertake without courting disaster. While she did her training, she had lived at home, travelling back and forth to Weybridge daily on the train, inwardly thankful to be avoiding the social whirl her fellow students seemed to thrive on, though she pretended to envy them. She knew she could never cope with adventures they thought nothing of.

  That was one thing about Roy. He had never alarmed her at all. Sometimes she had rather regretted his restraint. Until Friday night, at the hotel in London. She shuddered to think of it, and began to cry again; she was still snuffling into her pillow when a knock at her door announced a visitor.

  It was Sam Irwin. He carried a box of chocolates and a magazine, and pretended not to notice her distress.

  June quickly wiped her eyes and put on a smile. How very kind of Sam to call; she had scarcely met him, though Sue had chattered so freely about everyone at the Gentiana that June felt she knew them all.

  The chocolates were delicious; June opened the box and they both began eating them. Sam inquired about her leg; then he described the fondue party and how the lights had gone out.

  ‘Sue Carter said you played the piano and everyone danced. Roy must have enjoyed that,’ she said, fishing for information.

  ‘He danced once or twice. There’s a shortage of men, so he had to,’ Sam said, which was not strictly true. ‘He didn’t stay late.’ This at least was no invention; no need to add that he had left with Fiona, who was freed by the power breakdown from her record duty.

  ‘You’ve heard about poor Bernard Walker, I suppose?’ Though not exactly a cheerful topic, it was at least a different one, and safer in the present context for June to talk about than her own troubles.

  ‘Yes. What a terrible thing. How could it have happened?’

  ‘He must have gone for a walk and slipped,’ said Sam. ‘He left the nightclub with Fiona.’ This at any rate was a good piece of information for June to possess, in case by some mischance anyone else let fall the name of Fiona in connection with Roy. But Sam had seen Fiona later that night himself.

  Unlike Bernard, Sam had a balcony to his room; he had opened his big windows and stood on it late on Saturday night watching the snow come down. His plan was to air his room, then batten the windows shut again with the radiator turned off, so that he should not wake in the night roasting gently from over-powerful heating; it was snowing too hard to leave the window open all night long. As he gazed out, sheltered by the canopy of the balcony above, in the light that streamed out from the main hotel, he had seen Fiona below, wavering about on her way back to the annexe; he had seen, too, another figure join her, a stocky male who had emerged from the Gentiana’s main building. A few minutes later he had heard their footsteps coming up the stairs in the annexe; they had gone on past the first floor on which the rooms of both himself and Bernard were, to Fiona’s up above. A long time later Sam had heard footsteps coming down again. As far as he knew, no one else was aware that June had been abandoned for most of the second night of her honeymoon.

  He knew the Cotswolds from the time that he had spent at Stratford-upon-Avon, and this gave them a safe subject to discuss. They talked about the early lambs always to be seen high up on the ridge; the stone walls and the lovely old houses with their silvery roofs; the little streams and narrow lanes; and half an hour passed pleasantly. Sam was just casting about in his mind for something else to talk about when two more visitors appeared, Sue and Jan. They carried a box of cream pastries they had bought and said they had come to tea.

  ‘We’ve been swimming at the Grand,’ said Sue, who was glowing.

  ‘It’s much easier than skiing,’ Jan said. ‘I don’t sit down on my fat double
-Dutch backside like I do on the mountain, I just give my stomach a nasty smack instead.’ He rubbed his vast front. ‘I cannot dive,’ he added. ‘But Sue is superb. What a woman she is!’

  Sue smirked.

  ‘Perhaps Roy was there too?’ June suggested, wistfully.

  ‘He might have been. I didn’t see him. There were quite a lot of people swimming,’ Jan told her. ‘Elizabeth and Dr. Grant were there. It’s the only thing to do, since we cannot ski. I hope the beer won’t run out before we are back in touch with the rest of the world.’

  June suddenly felt a great deal better. She would ring the bell and ask the nurse to bring tea, enough for five; for surely Roy was on his way, and when he arrived he would find her popular, surrounded by her friends.

  V

  Liz got a lot of sardonic amusement out of watching Sue and Jan disporting themselves in the swimming-pool. Two whales, she thought they were.

  ‘That’s unkind. Sue’s not so large, she’s more like a porpoise,’ Patrick said. ‘She swims well, doesn’t she?’

  Sue did, but today she was preferring to wallow playfully with Jan. Liz and Patrick swam up and down the pool briskly a few times, both keen on working off their lunch.

  ‘I get so cross if I eat too much and can’t get exercise,’ said Liz.

  ‘How do you manage in London?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘I play squash in the winter and tennis in summer,’ said Liz. ‘You, on the other hand, lead the indolent life of a don, and all those rowing muscles you acquired in your youth will turn to flab as you get older.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Patrick said. He hauled himself out of the pool and stood on the edge so that she could admire his physique. He kept very fit; he took a skiff out on the river several times a week when he was in Oxford, and spent part of every vacation walking or climbing. Now he executed a neat dive back into the pool and surfaced near Liz, shaking his head to toss his hair back from his eyes.