The Best British Mysteries 3 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  ‘Not so obvious,’ William retorted, though not so fiercely as usual. ‘Why should he expose one of us? If one of us is knocked from the running, the other one is thereby proven as the true heir. Of course, my hot-headed friend here could well have lost his temper with Jonathan last night.’

  Red did not reply immediately and, when he did, like William his heart did not seem to be in his protestations. ‘Listen, pal, if I wanted to kill a man, I’d do it honestly. With the fists I was given to fight with, man to man. How would I get a firearm in this country anyway? This here holster came over empty and it’s stayed empty.’

  ‘Smith and Wessons are American,’ William snapped back.

  ‘Sure, and it’s the right of every American citizen, including you, bucko, to carry one.’

  ‘In defence of others, I believe,’ Auguste intervened, ‘not in defence of his entitlement to a title and money. I have one question to ask both of you before I make my report to the police, and it’s this: which of you did Jonathan Luckens ask to see first last night? There wasn’t an opportunity in the banqueting house, so it must have been here, in his room.’

  ‘Not me,’ William came in promptly.

  ‘Nor me,’ Red said earnestly.

  ‘Suppose they both went,’ Lord Luckens growled. ‘Thought of that?’

  ‘We didn’t, Grandpappy,’ Red assured him. ‘Why, speaking for myself, I slept like a babby all night.’

  ‘Says you,’ William snarled.

  Auguste was puzzled. This was all very odd. After the police had been notified, he left them to return to the kitchen, for he needed room to think and breakfast. Both were possible since the servants taking theirs in the servants’ hall. What should he have? All he could face was a drink of soothing chocolate. Then his eye fell on the humble egg. An egg!

  One could always rely on an egg. Unassuming, nutritious, the self-sacrificing base of the most perfect dishes in the world. Who thought of the egg while a bavarois was in one’s mouth? Who thought of the egg while a sauce hollandaise eased itself into one’s stomach? Yes, he would boil himself an egg, plain and unadorned, perhaps with soldiers, as in the English fashion, crustless buttered bread cut into strips.

  Eagerly, Auguste placed the egg in the boiling water, turned the ornamental egg timer, from Alum Bay no doubt, upside down for the coloured sands to run through, and prepared lovingly to watch the cooking of his breakfast.

  Coloured sands? Alum Bay? Queen Victoria? Egg timer? He stared at it hypnotised, as first the solution of the case of the missing heir and then that of the murder of Jonathan Luckens clarified in his mind like heated butter. It was as plain as a boiled egg. .

  * * * *

  ‘Well?’ Lord Luckens demanded, after Auguste had requested a private interview.

  ‘Which of them did it?’

  ‘I prefer to tell you which is the impostor.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Have it your own blasted way then. Just tell me.’

  ‘Red Luckens is a fraud. I am convinced he has never been near a silver mine in his life, for hominy grits is a southern dish and Colorado is not in the south of the United States. Also, he is, like a neatly trimmed poached egg, too good to be naturally true.’

  ‘So William’s my grandson then,’ Lord Luckens said glumly. ‘Pity. Red has more spunk in him. Still, it’s better than the estate going to Queen Victoria, God bless her. And Red killed Jonathan. Might have guessed it.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So it was William shot him,’ Lord Luckens said immediately. ‘He knew Jonathan had got it the wrong way round, and wasn’t going to risk his precious inheritance vanishing.’

  ‘No, sir. William as well as Red is an impostor. That letter must surely have been forged, for he wrote, “Wait till you see Denver”, as though it would be his wife’s first visit. In fact, William purports to have been born there, so that is impossible. I was puzzled by their apparently amicable private conversation at the banquet, and suspect they were discussing their spoils.’

  ‘You’re raving, Didier. How can both of them be impostors? There wouldn’t be any spoils to discuss.’

  ‘I refer to the spoils they have or will shortly receive from you, Lord Luckens.’

  ‘What the devil do you mean?’ he shouted, red in the face with anger.

  ‘I looked at this case the wrong way up. It took an egg timer to understand that I needed to stand it on its head and let the sand trickle through. When I did so it was quite obvious that neither of these gentlemen could be your missing heir. That in any case was always a possibility, but the egg timer caused me to realise that it was you who had planned the whole thing, hired their services, forged the so-called evidence and falsely claimed to them and probably your solicitor that Pinkertons had checked out the birth certificates in the States.’

  ‘Think I’m out of my mind, do you? I’d have to adopt one of them to keep Jonathan out of it. Why the devil should I adopt a stranger?’

  ‘Because you hated your brother and then his son so much.’

  ‘Enough to adopt an out-of-work actor and a smooth-talking rogue? That’s who they are and that I can prove. How could I have known one of them was going to shoot the fellow to make sure of his inheritance?’

  ‘You couldn’t. You hated your nephew so much, you’d prefer the Queen to have the estate. With Jonathan dead you would later find proof that neither Red nor William is your missing heir. There is in fact no missing heir. It was a plot to rid yourself of Jonathan by murder. You shot him, Lord Luckens, in the expectation one of them would be blamed.’

  To Auguste’s surprise, Lord Luckens did not treat him to an outburst of abuse. Instead, he gave a bark of laughter.

  ‘You’re clever for a Frenchie, Didier. Not clever enough, though. If I were a murderer, I’d be unmasked the minute those two rabbits blabbed to the police. No, I’ll tell you what really happened. I hired them all right. The mistake I made was to make it a gamble for them. Whichever you unmasked as the impostor would get nothing but his expenses; the one you decided was my grandson would get £5,000. Tidy sum, eh? Worth killing for. Hadn’t foreseen that. Whichever Jonathan picked on as the impostor had good reason to stop him talking. With two such prime suspects, the police aren’t going to suspect me just because I didn’t like the fellow, no matter what beans they spilled about my hiring them.’

  ‘Would the police not believe it a little strange that you were willing to pay so much money merely for the pleasure of seeing your nephew’s ambitions temporarily thwarted? You could hardly explain that you knew in advance of hiring Red and William that Jonathan would no longer be alive when you disclosed the truth about them.’

  Lord Luckens gave a gargoyle grin of pure evil. ‘They’ll understand why I hired them, Didier. I’m a poor old man of eighty, and can’t hang around for ever. Devoted to Lady Luckens, tears in her eyes, not too bright in the head, loving husband wants to make her happy. What better than that her beloved grandson’s returned to her? Worth any price, that. Might even adopt one of them - which do you fancy, Didier? Money no object to make her ladyship happy. They’ll believe me, not a blasted chef.’

  ‘They will when they hear what I have to say.’

  His lordship snorted. ‘You stick to cooking, Didier. Blasted sugared lettuce stalks.’

  With some effort Auguste ignored the insult to his suckets. ‘I asked myself why Jonathan should have armed himself with a pistol to defend himself and then left it in a drawer when a night-time visitor arrived. If he were expecting Red or William, or if the visit were unannounced, the pistol would be within easy reach; if he knew the caller was you, however, he would hardly have felt fear for his life. I believe that you told him you were coming, giving the excuse that at such a time and in such a place you could not be overheard if Jonathan were to tell you whom he suspected of being the impostor. Or perhaps he suspected them both. You, Lord Luckens, were the only person who need not fear the gunshot being
overheard. What’s more natural than that the host, who sleeps nearby and who has placed his guests’ bedrooms far away from the Queen’s Chamber, should be first on the scene to find the cause of the alarm?’

  ‘Poppycock,’ Lord Luckens snorted, with less conviction.

  ‘I think not. Had you hired only one impostor, you might well have succeeded. Your mistake, Lord Luckens, was to over-egg the pudding by hiring two, to try to make your story more convincing.’

  Through the window Auguste could see the police arriving.

  ‘You were the bad egg,’ he continued. ‘Your mistake was that you asked me, a master chef, to cook it.’

  <>

  * * * *

  Peter Turnbull

  Max Winner’s Shadow

  The man enjoyed the work. He always did. Just he and his dog and a summer’s morning. It was ‘their time’ - his feet crumbling the loose gravel on the towpath as the last of the haze rose from the canal and his dog twisting and turning, now ahead of him, now beside him, now behind him, now ahead of him, now beside him, now behind him, now ahead of him again. They rounded the bend of the canal and entered the phase of the walk that the man loved most of all, where thick vegetation grew at either side of the canal and reached out over the water, so that in summer especially, when the foliage was at its most lush, this part of the canal resembled a walk in a tunnel. It was in this section of the York canal that the man saw the greatest incidence of wildlife, the moorhens, kingfishers, stoats, and water rats. The latter he minded not, for like all creatures, they had a place in the scheme of things. Here they were wild, not scavengers living off the debris of humankind, and he chose to accept them as beasts in their own place. And he also saw insects, dragonflies, butterflies, spiders. At the end of the ‘tunnel’ ahead of him, he could see the black-and-white gates of the ‘Larkfield Three-Rise’, a tier of three locks which lifted the canal up a full thirty feet to its next section, which took it across the Wold towards Hull and the seaport there. Or lowered it for the final stretch into York, depending upon which way the barge, now a pleasure craft rather than a working boat, was travelling. The man walked slowly, savouring the walk, just he and his best friend. An onlooker would see a man in his sixties, plus fours, stout shoes, a tweed jacket, and a white Norfolk hat, and with him, a confident chocolate-brown Labrador. The man left the shade of the ‘tunnel’ and put himself at the inclined path which ran alongside the three-rise until he stood at the top. These days he was finding the incline difficult...even a short incline such as this he found hard. He could, he felt, walk forever upon the flat, but inclines were proving difficult. He paused at the top of the incline and pondered the next section of the walk, another six hundred yards of canal towpath and then he’d turn into the wood and begin the sweep back towards home. He expected to be home by nine-thirty...in time for Morning Service on the BBC. It was a good walk, about three hours long, and he and his friend did it together twice a week, in all but the most extreme weather conditions.

  Then he saw a shiny black object in the canal, and tutted at folk who thought nothing of throwing their refuse into the water. With a jolt, he realised that he wasn’t looking at a black bin liner containing domestic rubbish, he was looking at oily water shimmering on a leather jacket which encased a human body, floating face down in the water.

  * * * *

  The body was that of a female. The first police officer to attend waded into the canal and was eventually forced to swim the last few feet, the water being just too deep for a tall man to wade. He reached the body, gasping at the chill of the water despite it being high summer, and rolled it face up, just in case there was still time, but the pale and bloated, macerated skin said that all hope had gone. He swam sideways, dragging the body with him back to the towpath, where he and his colleague together hauled the body out of the water. Closer examination showed her to be a woman of middle years and possibly, probably, of privileged living. The leather jacket was not inexpensive, neither was the watch, nor the jewellery, nor the skirt, nor the shoes, which had remained on her feet, held firmly as the body expanded.

  One of the police officers, the one who remained dry, stayed with the corpse. The other, saturated and chilled, walked to where they had parked the area car. He called Friargate police station, requested the police surgeon and CID attendance. He added that the death was probably suspicious, if only because middle-aged, middle-class women do not walk along canal towpaths alone at night. They just don’t.

  When, thirty minutes later, the police surgeon arrived, he noticed a blue-and-white police tape around the body, which by then lay under a black plastic sheet. He noted a member of the public being told firmly but politely that he couldn’t walk along the canal despite the fact that he did that each morning. The police surgeon approached the tape, knelt by the body, lifted the plastic sheet, and let it fall reverently back in place as the member of the public turned and walked sullenly away.

  ‘I can confirm life extinct.’ The police surgeon stood. ‘At nine-ten a.m.’

  ‘Nine-ten a.m., sir?’ the police constable repeated and noted in his notebook. He glanced up and noted two figures walking towards them along the towpath. ‘CID here now, sir.’

  ‘Good...I think they’ll be needed.’ He turned and glanced and nodded at the approaching figures, one a white male, the other a black female. Both tall, both slim, walking easily in each other’s company, occasionally rubbing shoulders; two people who like each other. ‘Dr Truelove,’ he said when the officers were close enough.

  ‘DCs Pharoah and Markov.’ The woman spoke. ‘I’m Pharoah.’

  ‘We haven’t met. Not local, are you, by your accent?’

  ‘St Kitts, via Stoke Newington, London.’ Carmen Pharoah smiled.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. Well, to the matter in hand.’ Truelove turned to the body. ‘I think you’ll be needing a pathologist. The police constable who phoned it in was correct to assume suspicious circumstances. She didn’t drown, you see. I can tell that virtually at a glance. Eyes closed, you see. She was either unconscious or deceased before she entered the water. But that’s really the territory of the Home Office pathologist, not I.’

  ‘I see,’ Carmen Pharoah said. ‘Pathologist, as you say.’

  ‘I’ve pronounced life extinct at nine-ten, this day. It’s really up to the pathologist now.’

  ‘Wonder where she came into the canal?’ Carmen Pharoah said, more to herself than anyone around her. ‘No sign of a struggle here that I can see.’

  ‘Up there.’ The constable spoke. He pointed along the canal, away from the locks, towards Hull and the coast. ‘She would have drifted down overnight. Canals have currents, like rivers.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’ Markov spoke.

  ‘It’s true, sir.’ The police constable spoke confidently. ‘All canals are the same. They benefit from rainwater which runs off the land into the canal, but each canal has a river or a stream or a lake close to the highest point and they flow down from there. This part of the canal drains into the Ouse at York.’ He turned. ‘In that direction. So she would have drifted down from the opposite direction until she reached the locks, where she was caught.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ Markov nodded. ‘We’ll take a walk up there.’ Carmen Pharoah pressed the Send button on her radio and called Friargate police station, requesting the pathologist and the mortuary van. She and Markov walked eastwards along the towpath in the opposite direction of the current. As she walked, she had to concede that this really was a very, very attractive part of England, lush fields and a flat landscape. She thought that she might settle here after all. She knew that she couldn’t go back to London...horror of horrors...the commuting...and while St Kitts would always be ‘home’, to return there was not an option. But York, and North Yorkshire...an ancient city... affordable housing...vast skies produced by a flat landscape.

  There are worse places.

  Every few hundred yards along the York and Hull canal, as with all British
canals, there are stone ramps which lead from the towpath into the water, the ramps being inclined towards each other with a gap of about six feet between them. Their purpose was to enable a horse to be recovered from the canal, so that should a horse that was pulling a barge slip into the canal, it could be unhitched from the barge and worked along the canal, through the water, until a ramp was reached where it could easily walk back up to the towpath, and be returned and rehitched to the barge. Diesel engines have rendered such ramps redundant, but they remain, and the six-foot gap between each ramp tends to be a collection point for floating debris. It was between two such ramps that Simon Markov noticed a handbag, black leather, floating among the plastic bags and bottles. He knelt down and fished it out of the water.

  The handbag, by its contents, belonged to one Sadie Winner. The driving licence in that name gave an address of Dovecote Cottage, Lesser Listlea, North Yorkshire.