Another tug at his nose.
“Does Miss Fitzpayne live in the town, sir?”
“Yes. Come to the window.”
Mr. Lucas pointed a shaking finger at a row of neat Georgian houses flanking the Corn Exchange.
“See that row of property? The houses have been turned into flats. Marcia lives in the top flat in the last house. She stables her horses at an old farm on the Leicester Road, at the end of Horseferry Street. It was a farm till they sold the ground for building purposes. If she’s not at home, you’ll find her at the stables.”
He looked slyly at Littlejohn and this time flattened his nose against his face with the back of his hand.
“Daresay you think I know a lot about her. I’m her lawyer when she needs one. Helped her buy the old stables. Saw quite a lot of her at one time … Charming gel …”
Cromwell had gone to the Post Office to send off a postcard to his eldest daughter to whom he wrote every day when away on a case. Littlejohn met him in the square.
“We’re going to call on Marcia Fitzpayne. Old Lucas says we can divulge that Bracknell left her all he’d got. That is, if she doesn’t already know. Lucas is a queer fish. A funny nose that looks like a false one. I’ll bet he’s told her already. He thinks she’s what is vulgarly called a tasty dish.”
The front of the house where Marcia lived was gilded by the setting sun and from one of the windows a woman was shaking out a duster. She did it furtively, for such performances were prohibited by the stringent leases of the flats.
An old four-storied house with small brass plates and letterboxes fixed on the front door. Names like Dr. Dalrymple and Colonel Flyte-Smythe … Obviously a first-rate place. Marcia Fitzpayne lived on the top floor. Cromwell and Littlejohn climbed the stairs which were broad and fine for two floors and then thinned-out as they led from a landing up to what must, at one time, have been the servants’ quarters.
“May we come in?” asked Littlejohn when Miss Fitzpayne answered his knock. She gave him a hostile look and seemed ready to slam the door.
“As I told you before, I had nothing whatever to do with Mr. Bracknell’s death. I don’t see why the police should keep pestering me.”
“We haven’t called to accuse you, Miss Fitzpayne. You may know something which will help us lay the murderer by the heels …”
“I know nothing.”
“All the same, I’m sure you prefer us to talk in private, instead of here where everyone can hear us.”
“Very well. Come in for a moment. I’m going out and have no time to spare.”
She opened the door and admitted them.
It was an attic room and might have served well as a studio. The light entered through a skylight and fine dust danced in the rays of the late sunlight which was pouring in. There was a small table with some books on it, two easy chairs drawn up round a gas-fire, a miniature sideboard, and little else. A good carpet on the floor, and one or two of the pictures despised by Lucy Jolland and some photographs of horses in black frames on the walls. Two doors which might have led to a bedroom and the kitchen.
Miss Fitzpayne was definitely hostile. She was a fine-looking woman. Big and strong and strikingly fair. But now her sulky expression spoiled it all.
“We won’t keep you, Miss Fitzpayne, but I wanted to ask you one or two personal questions about the late Samuel Bracknell. He was, I believe, a friend of yours.”
Littlejohn kept his eyes on hers as he spoke and from the momentary flicker of anxiety in her look, he knew that she, too, was afraid. Like Herle, the mayor, Mr. Mandeville at the bank … in fact, like everybody who was intimately or remotely connected with the case.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“If you weren’t his friend, why should he leave you all he possessed? Including Freake’s Folly.”
Instead of replying, she stretched out her hand to the telephone, which stood on the table beside the books.
“One minute, Miss Fitzpayne. Who are you going to call?”
“Mr. Lucas, my lawyer.”
“Please don’t. Mind you, you’re free to ring him if you wish. You’re even free to turn us out. But it will be better for everyone if you don’t. We’ve just left Mr. Lucas.”
“He had no right to discuss my affairs.”
“He didn’t. He simply told us the contents of Mr. Bracknell’s will. They’ll be in the newspapers in a day or two. Mr. Lucas is a model of discretion.”
Now, she couldn’t keep still. She walked from the telephone to the hearth and back. Littlejohn thought at first that she was preparing to show them the door. Or else, heap the pair of them with abuse. Finally, she sat down on a stool by the sideboard.
“Sit down, if you wish. I suppose this will be a long interview. I can see you think I committed the crime. I wanted Mr. Lucas here to advise me.”
“You won’t need him. You needn’t answer a single question if you don’t want to. I’d appreciate your help, however.”
He passed across his cigarette case.
“Do you smoke? It might help you to relax.”
She nodded, took a cigarette without a word, and Cromwell flicked his lighter and lit it for her.
“May we light our pipes, Miss Fitzpayne?”
“Of course, if you like. I thought this was a formal matter.”
“Not at all. As I said, we need your help. Anything you say will be treated with discretion.”
Littlejohn filled and lit his pipe as he spoke. Then he sat in one of the armchairs and passed his pouch to Cromwell, perched on the edge of the other chair.
Marcia Fitzpayne looked taut and anxious. She was wearing the same black jumper as when first they’d met her and she ran her finger round the high collar to ease it.
“Are you going to take all this down?”
She said it almost in a tone of appeal. She was thawing a little.
“No. It’s unofficial.”
“What do you want to know?”
“First of all, your visit to Freake’s Folly on the first day we met you. You’d been burning something. Why, Miss Fitzpayne?”
She looked him straight in the eyes.
“There was nothing wrong in it. Mr. Bracknell and I had been friends. I’d written letters to him. I wanted them. I’d no wish for the police and the public to be poring over them. They were mine and I’d the right …”
“You knew where they were kept, then?”
“Yes. Among his books, Mr. Bracknell had a dummy one, a kind of box bound like a volume. The police hadn’t found it and I took out the letters and burned them. There was a book, too, I once gave Mr. Bracknell. It was … well a book of poetry and certain passages were marked. I burned that, too … or half burned it. You took it before I’d finished.”
She now seemed eager to make a clean breast of the whole affair. Her anger had gone. Her eyes were resigned and tired-looking, as though she’d reached the end of her tether.
“Were you and Mr. Bracknell engaged?”
“No.”
“Just friends.”
“That’s all.”
“Lovers?”
She didn’t even flare up. She merely nodded her head.
“You may as well know it. Mr. Lucas hinted at it in an unpleasant sort of way when he told me about the will. And the whole town talks about it. There’ll be more talk when the will becomes public. You can have the truth from me.”
“Forgive me, but did he never mention marriage? You see, I want to know as much about Bracknell as I can. His background, his past life, his ways, his habits.”
“He never mentioned it. He said I was his best friend. I don’t think he was the marrying kind. Neither am I, for that matter. We both wanted to be free.”
“You met socially in the town?”
“No. We met three years ago. He bought a horse. He’d done a lot of riding in Australia and was a good horseman. The one he bought didn’t suit him. Not heavy enough. He advertised it and I went to Freake’s
to see it. I didn’t buy it, but we became friendly. After that we went riding together often.”
Littlejohn could imagine it. Marcia Fitzpayne and the susceptible, perhaps rather mysterious and considerably attractive Bracknell would soon be in the middle of an affair. But unlike the case of the little milk girl, Lucy Jolland, the attachment went deeper. Bracknell had left Marcia everything.
“He must have thought a lot of you, Miss Fitzpayne, to leave you all he had.”
“He used to laugh about it. I thought it was just a joke. He’d say rather angrily, that if he’d his way, he’d make a lady of me instead of letting me run a riding-school and suffer the attentions of a lot of amorous clients … I thought it was banter. He had a jesting way with him. He was sometimes very bitter. I’d no idea …”
There was a look of genuine grief in her eyes now. Although she had not touched her hair, it had tumbled over her eyes and she thrust it back with an impatient gesture. She seemed somehow to have grown dishevelled, as though desperate and trying to escape from her thoughts.
“Did you know he had so much money, Miss Fitzpayne?”
“No. Honestly, I didn’t. He used to complain about being hard-up. Again, in a kind of ironical funny way.”
“He never spoke of his past life in Australia?”
“Oh, yes. He often talked of it. He’d farmed out there. I don’t know whether or not he ever owned a farm, but he’d worked mostly among cattle and sheep. He used to compare the local stock with that of Australia.”
“Where do you think he got his money from? I mean, he’d want ready money for his needs at Freake’s Folly. Where did he get it?”
“He told me he’d an income from Australia. Every now and then, he’d get a bank draft … Quarterly, I think. He once said something about its being repayments of capital. He’d either sold a farm or a share in some ranch or other and the cheques were instalments from the buyer.”
“Was he an extravagant man?”
“Not at all. He liked a drink, he had books sent from a London library. He was quite an educated man and liked reading. He was particularly interested in the history of these parts. He settled down here thoroughly. In fact, he loved the place and, although you might not think it, he loved Freake’s, too. It is rather a ruin, I admit, but he once said if he’d the money he’d make it into a place to be proud of. He also said …”
She paused.
“No, I won’t tell you that. It’s nothing to do with the case.”
“It may have. Please tell me.”
“He said when he’d made it fit to live in, I could move in with him.”
She must have been desperately fond of Bracknell, in spite of her case-hardening of pride, for now she was tugging at a small handkerchief she’d produced from somewhere and looked ready to burst into tears in it.
“Wouldn’t you regard that as half-way to an offer to marry you?”
“I’m afraid we were both a little drunk at the time he said it. It was my birthday and he gave me a party at Freake’s. Just the two of us. We had champagne, and well … Sam got a bit maudlin. He said he was tired of wandering and wanted to settle down, make Freake’s a place to be proud of, and have me there with him. He was terribly proud of his family connections, particularly of the Huncote side. I do believe if he’d had enough money and could have bought back Huncote Hall from the county, who now run it as an old folk’s home, he’d have done it and settled down there.”
“So, he might have been keen on accumulating money to pay for re-building Freake’s Folly.”
“Quite. Only he hadn’t any way of getting it, as far as I could see. He used to say he was broke. And yet …”
She looked anxiously at Littlejohn.
“And yet, Miss Fitzpayne, he had ten thousand pounds in the bank, which he’s left to you along with Freake’s Folly. It seems he might like to think of you moving-in there yourself, with money to make it a really nice home.”
“Yes … I don’t know where he got it all.”
“He brought half of it from Australia, I gather. He must have sold his interests out there, perhaps for a cash-down payment and the rest in instalments. Had he many friends locally, do you know?”
“I don’t think so. He’d a few acquaintances in the town. He did his own shopping and came in two or three times a week. He used to call here for lunch sometimes; others he’d dine at one of the hotels and have a drink after with the regulars.”
“Any particular hotel?”
“He didn’t care for the Huncote Arms. He said you paid too much for style. He used to go across to the Barley Mow, just past the Corn Exchange on the other side of the square from here. If I was out, I’d leave a note and he’d come inside and make himself comfortable till I got back.”
“What did he do with the rest of his time?”
“Reading, riding … he kept his horse at my stables … doing odd jobs about Freake’s, loafing …He was like a retired man, if you understand what I mean. He used to get his own wood from the spinney at the Folly, which went with the property. He liked cutting down trees, chopping them up, and hacking out dead wood in the copses. In fact, he was in love with Freake’s. It meant so much to him.”
“He liked pottering about the town, too?”
“Yes. Antique shops fascinated him and he liked buying-in his own food. We often had an evening meal together at Freake’s and he used to be proud of the food he produced. Cold chickens, salads, foie gras, Melton pies, cheeses of all kinds … And always a good bottle of wine …”
She was lost in reminiscences and glad to turn over the old days again.
“We’d some good times together.”
She looked at Littlejohn and her look softened.
“Please forgive me. I know you’ll not be interested in my memories, especially of the things we ate. And I want to apologise for the rude way I treated you when first we met. I was annoyed at strangers milling around the place Sam loved so much and I … I …”
“You were grieving for him?”
“Yes.”
Tears began to run down her cheeks, large ones like pearls, and she didn’t seem to care and let them drop from her chin and vanish in the wool of her jumper.
“I’m sorry …”
“Don’t mind us, Miss Fitzpayne. It will do you good to have a cry and tell someone about things.”
Littlejohn gave her another cigarette and lit it for her.
“And finally, Miss Fitzpayne, have you any idea why Bracknell was killed? Had he any enemies? People who might have wanted him out of the way?”
“But I thought he was murdered by a madman, the maniac who killed the two girls earlier in the year …”
“You haven’t seen the papers, yet, or heard the latest news?”
She looked astonished.
“No. What has happened? There hasn’t been another murder? Not another, surely?”
“No. You know the Quarleses of Turville’s Ground …?”
“Yes. Sam hated them. They used to be always sneaking around peeping over the hedges and even dodging Sam, as though he might steal their money or something … What’s happened to them?”
“Quarles hanged himself last night and his wife is in the asylum. It seems that the homicidal maniac who killed the two girls was Quarles’s brother, who turned-up at Turville’s after the crimes and asked for shelter. After a quarrel with his brother the madman attacked him, and Mrs. Quarles killed him and they buried him under the manure heap. That was before Bracknell’s death. So, it looks as if Sam Bracknell’s murder had nothing to do with the other two, but the real murderer might have used them as cover for it …”
“Oh … How horrible …”
She raised her hands to her face in alarm.
“So it may have been somebody in the town?”
“Easily. That’s why I want to know had Bracknell any enemies.”
“Then …”
Her eyes opened wide and she impulsively rose and searched in one of the drawers
of the sideboard and took a small object from it which she passed to Littlejohn.
It was a red plastic ball-pointed fountain-pen, the writing end of which emerged when you pressed a button at the bottom. Quite a common object. This, however, was an advertisement. Along the barrel was the name of the firm who had given it. Fowler’s Universal Stores, Perth, W. Australia.
“What is this, Miss Fitzpayne?”
“When I knelt to light the fire on the day you caught me there, I found it. It had rolled to the brick kerb round the fireplace and lodged between it and the hearthrug. It puzzled me, because you’ll see it’s an old one and well used. It didn’t belong to Sam.”
“How do you know?”
“I’d surely have seen it before. In the time we were together, I knew everything there was in the place. Even down to his socks, which I sometimes darned for him. The police must have overlooked it when they searched the house. But it wasn’t Sam’s.”
“Are you sure? This is most important.”
“He was never a man for hoarding useless things. He had one pen, that style, which wrote black, whereas that is blue. I never saw him write anything in blue ink and I knew most of the writing he did. He’d one pen. He threw them away as they gave out. And he’d a pencil … an imitation gold one which somebody gave him. That was all. That pen wasn’t his, I’m sure.”
“Why didn’t you turn it in to the police, Miss Fitzpayne?”
“I slipped it instinctively in my pocket at the time. Then, I got so angry about the police, including you, Superintendent, tramping all over the place, that I just couldn’t bear to call on any of you and give it up. Besides, I never thought it might be a clue. With a maniac … well … clues don’t seem to matter … Or so I thought.”
Death in the Fearful Night (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 7