Loretta Lawson 01 - A Masculine Ending

by Joan Smith

  ‘I don’t think he has been arrested,’ Tracey said, diverted from his problems. ‘As far as I know, he went along voluntarily. After some persuasion, that is. But I expect they’ll charge him some time today. My contact at the Yard isn’t working over the weekend, so I’m afraid I can’t find out much for you. If you keep listening to the radio, you’ll probably hear any news as quickly as I do. So where shall we meet tonight? At the cinema?’ They agreed on a time, and Tracey rang off.

  So Sykes had not actually been arrested, Loretta mused. She must have misunderstood Tracey last night when he rang to say that Sykes had been taken away. Or was it Bridget who had said something about an arrest? She wished she knew more about police procedures. If the police were sufficiently confident of their case against Sykes, surely they would not hesitate to take him into custody? Nevertheless, Tracey still seemed convinced that a charge was imminent. Perhaps the question of whether or not Sykes had been arrested was only a technicality. She made her way upstairs and ran a bath. Lying in the water, she considered the evidence against Sykes again. He had been in Paris at the time of the murder. He had lied to the police as to his whereabouts, even before the body had been discovered. He disliked the dead man, and stood to gain professionally by his death. It still seemed far from conclusive. Loretta wondered if the police had found other evidence about which Tracey had not been told. That seemed the only possible explanation. If they hadn’t, she was far from happy. What about the letter from the mysterious ‘R’? And why had Puddephat’s wife suddenly borrowed the keys to the flat in rue Roland only a couple of months before he was murdered there? Then there was the business of the dead girl, Melanie something. Loretta wished she knew more about that. Climbing out of the bath, she dried herself, and dressed in black ski pants and a thick jersey knitted by her mother. The weather had changed abruptly from unseasonably hot to unusually chilly, and most of her shopping needed to be done outdoors in Chapel market. Then she wrote out a cheque in payment of the forgotten parking-ticket, put it in an envelope and went out.

  Walking the half-mile to Chapel market, she turned over and over in her mind the many questions about the murder that remained unanswered. The case against Sykes looked weaker by the minute. As she made her way from stall to stall, Loretta remembered her promise to ring Bridget. She would welcome her friend’s view on the current state of the case. She hurried her way through her shopping, returned to the flat, and rang Bridget’s number. There was no reply. She piled a week’s dirty clothes into the washing-machine, and sat down with a book. At regular intervals, she listened to the news on the radio. It was not until three o’clock that there were any developments.

  By now, several more MPs were embroiled in the row over whether or not the Princess of Wales was dangerously underweight, and the death toll in the Cardiff fire had risen to four. Puddephat’s murder was the last item in the bulletin. Thames Valley police have confirmed that a man is helping with inquiries into the murder of Dr Hugh Puddephat, the English lecturer whose body was identified in Paris earlier this week,’ the newsreader reported. ‘The man, who has not been named, was taken to police headquarters in Oxford yesterday afternoon. A senior French detective is on his way to question the man, a spokesman said.’ That was all.

  Loretta guessed there were legal reasons for the terse nature of the item. But at least it provided a possible explanation for the delay in charging Sykes. She had quite forgotten that the French police were involved in the inquiry. Even so, she would still like to mull the thing over with Bridget. She dialled her friend’s number again.

  ‘I’ve just seen the local paper,’ Bridget said when she answered. ‘It doesn’t say much.’

  Loretta passed on what she had learned from Tracey. ‘I’m not at all happy about it,’ she finished.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Bridget said. ‘When Geoffrey rang last night, I assumed they’d got more on him than that. But I don’t see what you can do about it. Even if you went to the police now, your story doesn’t shed any light on who did it. All you know is where it happened.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Loretta. ‘But I have this feeling I ought to do something. I wish I could find out about R, for instance, but I can’t think of a way to do it. I wonder if there’s any way of finding out more about the girl who killed herself - Melanie Gandell, that’s her name.’

  ‘Couldn’t Tracey help with that?’ Bridget asked. ‘Or perhaps I could find out something through faculty records. Tell you what, I’ll have a stab at that on Monday morning. At least I’ll be able to tell you where she came from. Though I’m not sure how that helps you.’

  ‘I think it’s a matter of stumbling around in the dark until we find a clue,’ Loretta said gratefully. ‘The other avenue I could try is a bit of research into Puddephat’s wife.’ She told Bridget about Veronica’s odd behaviour over the Paris flat. ‘But I haven’t been able to think of an excuse for getting in touch with her,’ she admitted. ‘If you have any bright ideas, do let me know.’

  Loretta felt more cheerful after her chat with Bridget, slightly less at the mercy of events. Her next call was to Tracey. ‘Are you busy?’ she asked when she got through.

  ‘Quite,’ he said warily, sensing she was about to make a request of him.

  ‘I just wondered if you could look in the library for me’, she explained. ‘I’ve seen the articles filed under Puddephat’s name, but I didn’t look under Melanie Gandell. There might be something in there I’ve missed.’

  ‘What’s the point, Loretta?’ Tracey asked irritably. ‘The police have just confirmed they’re holding Sykes. It’s only a matter of time before they charge him.’

  ‘Yes, I heard it on the radio,’ Loretta agreed. ‘But I’m still not happy. Come on, John, humour me. It’ll only take you five minutes.’ Reluctantly, Tracey gave in. If he found anything of interest, he said, he would bring photocopies with him to the cinema.

  Loretta was paying for the tickets at the cash desk when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned, and found Tracey beaming at her.

  ‘Loretta,’ he said affably. ‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.’ In contrast to the last time she had spoken to him, his mood seem positively sunny. She soon found out why. ‘I’m off to Berlin tomorrow,’ he explained. ‘Great story. It’s so good, I can’t even tell you about it. So I mustn’t get to bed too late. And by the way, here are your cuttings. I still think you’re wasting your time. I should be charging you for all this research.’

  Loretta held up the tickets. ‘That’s whythese are on me,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I can’t afford professional rates.’ Tracey laughed, and put his hand under her elbow to guide her into the cinema. As he turned towards the smokers’ seats, Loretta stopped and headed in the opposite direction.

  ‘Come on, Loretta,’ Tracey complained. ‘I can’t sit through a whole film without a cigarette.’ Loretta was unmoved. It was an argument they had had before, and one which she invariably won. Grumbling, Tracey followed her to the non-smokers’ seats. There was no time to look at the cuttings he had given her, and Loretta put the envelope in her bag. For the next two hours she was absorbed in the film, which turned out to be as good as she had hoped.

  Tracey, on the other hand, did not like it; they had an amicable disagreement about its merits on the way to a nearby pub. ‘I can’t stay long,’ he warned her as she carried their drinks to the table where he was sitting. ‘But I can give you a lift home. My car’s just round the corner.’

  Loretta was surprised and touched. There’s no need to do that,’ she protested. ‘It’s still quite early. ‘I can take the underground. It’s miles out of your way, and you need an early night.’

  ‘I thought you might ask me to stay,’ Tracey said hopefully, instantly dispelling her feeling of gratitude. ‘We are still married, after all. And we’re both at a loose end. Come on, Laura, for old times’ sake.’ He cast her a look which, she guessed, was calculated to suggest a combination of nostalgia and affection. It didn’
t work.

  ‘We agreed when we separated that we wouldn’t behave like this,’ Loretta replied in aggrieved tones. It was just like Tracey to take unfair advantage of her attempts to remain on friendly terms with him. She dashed off her orange juice, and stood up. The best thing you can do is go home and tuck yourself up with a hot-water bottle,’ she advised, pulling on her coat.

  ‘I suppose your feminist friends would be proud of you,’ Tracey said sarcastically. ‘How to get rid of your unwanted husband in one easy lesson. And after all the running around I’ve done for you in the last couple of days. You’ve got no heart, that’s your trouble, Loretta. If anything happens to me in Berlin, I just hope you’ll be sorry.’

  Loretta sighed. ‘Don’t be such a baby,’ she said witheringly. ‘It’ll probably be a wild goose chase, just like your trip to Glasgow.’ Having delivered this Parthian shot, she stalked off to find a taxi home.

  Sunday’s papers, including the Sunday Herald, reported that an unidentified man was still being questioned in connection with Puddephat’s murder. No developments were reported on LBC that morning, and Loretta had to switch the radio off when her friends arrived for lunch. After the meal, someone suggested a walk on Hampstead Heath, and that turned into tea at a small patisserie close to where Loretta had parked her car. It was after six when she got home and started clearing up the detritus of lunch.

  When she had finished, she sat down at the kitchen table with the envelope Tracey had given her the night before. Inside, there were four sheets of paper, each of them a photocopy of a newspaper cutting. Three were familiar; she recognized the Sun headline, ‘Warning For Death-case Egghead’, and the more subdued headlines from the Observer and the Guardian. Loretta guessed Tracey had simply copied the entire contents of the file on the dead girl. For a moment, she thought she had wasted his time. Then she saw that the last cutting was new to her. It was a long report of the inquest on Melanie Gandell which had appeared in the Daily Telegraph. The story, which mentioned Puddephat by name, should have appeared in his file, but she had been right to doubt the efficiency of the Herald’s library staff.

  Glancing down the columns, she immediately discovered some new information: Puddephat had been accompanied at the inquest by his wife, she learned with surprise. Surely they had been separated, and on bad terms, by the time of the inquest? But the paragraph that interested her most concerned Melanie Gandell herself. ‘Formal evidence of identification was given by the dead girl’s aunt, Mrs Lucretia Grant, who travelled to the inquest from her home in Herefordshire,’ the story said. ‘Miss Gandell’s parents died in an air crash in 1968, when she was five. She was an only child. Her mother was the talented young painter, Livia Gandell.’ Poor Melanie, Loretta thought to herself. The girl’s short life had been dogged by tragedy. She felt a surge of anger towards Hugh Puddephat. How could a man in his position take advantage of so vulnerable a creature as Melanie Gandell? She read the paragraph again. She wished she knew more about painting; the name of Melanie’s mother meant nothing to her. But at least she now had the name of Melanie’s aunt. It was a nuisance that the Telegraph was so vague about her address - she wasn’t even sure whether Herefordshire still existed as a county - but perhaps Bridget would have more exact details for her next day. And Melanie’s aunt might be important if Loretta was going to pursue this line of inquiry: presumably it was she who had brought up the girl after her parents’ death in the plane crash. Not that Loretta had yet come up with an excuse to contact Mrs Grant, even if she acquired a proper address, but that problem could wait until after she spoke to Bridget. With that thought, she returned the cuttings to their envelope and put it away in a drawer of her desk.

  There had been no more news about the murder inquiry by the time Loretta arrived at her office on Monday morning. She was tied up until lunch with yet another department meeting but, after a sandwich in the refectory, found herself with a clear afternoon.

  Returning to her office, she wondered if she should phone Bridget, but decided to leave it until later in the day: the first-years would be arriving at Bridget’s college in the middle of the week, and her friend would be as tied up as Loretta had been the week before. Just before five, it occurred to her that Bridget might have forgotten her promise to check Melanie Gandell’s address, and she dialled the number of her college rooms. She found Bridget in a state of great agitation.

  ‘I was just going to ring you,’ she said. ‘You were absolutely right. Theo Sykes didn’t do it. Geoffrey’s just been telling me all about it. The police have made a dreadful mess of it. Poor Theo, he’s escaped a murder charge, but his career here is finished.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Loretta impatiently.

  ‘Well,’ said Bridget, ‘they held him all weekend, and tried everything they could think of to make him confess. He didn’t. But he went on refusing to say anything at all about what he’d been doing in Paris. Then, last night, the master’s wife came home after a weekend away. She went on Friday morning, you see, so she’d no idea Sykes had been taken in. As soon as she found out what had happened, she went straight to the police and told them everything. She’s been having an affair with Theo Sykes, and it turns out they were in Paris together at the time Puddephat was murdered. She told them this in confidence, because the master didn’t know - he suspected, apparently, which explains why he went off Theo, but they’d always denied it. She gave them the name of the hotel where they’d stayed, the lot. Of course, they had to let him go. Then this morning, the police were all over the college again and, by lunchtime, the master knew. Geoffrey says nobody knows whether they let it out accidentally, or were getting their own back on Sykes for wasting a whole weekend. But there was a terrible scene between the master and Theo Sykes. Apparently you could hear them shouting all round the college. And poor old Mary Morris, how must she feel? Geoffrey saw her put a couple of suitcases in her car and drive off. So it looks as if she’s left the master, as least for the time being.’

  ‘Trust John to be out of the country,’ Loretta said wistfully. ‘He was beastly to me on Saturday night, and it would give me great pleasure to tell him I was right all along. Oh, dear,’ she added, a new thought striking her, ‘it doesn’t give one great confidence in the police, does it?’

  ‘It certainly doesn’t,’ said Bridget. ‘And, if you want to carry on looking into it yourself, I’ve got Melanie Gandell’s address for you. Have you got a piece of paper?’ Loretta had. ‘If s a village in Somerset. A place called Buckland Dinham.’ She spelled it out for Loretta. ‘The actual address is Cherry Cottage. There didn’t seem to be a phone number. Our records are not brilliant, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ said Loretta. ‘I’ve been looking through the cuttings on the inquest again, and she was identified by an aunt who lived in Herefordshire.’

  ‘Perhaps she moved just before Melanie died,’ Bridget suggested. ‘As I was saying, the administrative people in the English faculty are not particularly efficient. Didn’t the newspaper give the aunt’s full address?’

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ said Loretta. ‘And her surname is Grant - there must be thousands of people with that name in the county. Perhaps I should concentrate on Somerset first. Assuming Melanie’s aunt did move from Cherry Cottage, she may have left a forwarding address with the new owners.’

  ‘Let me know if I can help,’ Bridget offered. ‘I’m rather busy during the week, but things will calm down by the weekend.’

  Loretta thanked her. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ she said. ‘First of all, I need to sit down and work out a plan of campaign.’

  Chapter 8

  Loretta looked at her watch. It was ten past five. She had agreed to have a drink with the deputy head of the English department after work, which gave her a bit of time. Taking a clean sheet of A4 paper out of a drawer, she divided it into three vertical columns. At the top of the first, she wrote ‘Melanie Gandell’. In the second column, she filled in the address Bridget had just given her - Cherry
Cottage, Buckland Dinham, Somerset. The third column she left blank. Underneath Melanie’s name in the first column, she wrote ‘Lucretia Grant’. It was an odd combination of names, she reflected; an unhappy juxtaposition of the unusual and the mundane. In the second column, she wrote the word ‘Herefordshire’ with a question mark. She returned to the first column. ‘Veronica Puddephat’, she wrote, and put her pen down. She was horribly short on even the most basic information about the people she wanted to speak to. The third column, which she had reserved for telephone numbers, was so far entirely blank. She wondered how she could fill in some of the gaps.

  If Melanie’s aunt had moved from Cherry Cottage, the phone number would no longer be listed under Grant. There was no way of knowing who lived there now. But wait a minute … what if the cottage had belonged to Melanie herself? Been left to her, perhaps, by her parents? It was perfectly possible that one of Melanie’s relatives - a cousin, maybe - had inherited it. She picked up the phone and dialled Directory Enquiries. ‘Somerset,’ she told the operator. ‘It’s a village called Buckland Dinham. The name is Gandell. G-A-N-D-E-L-L. No, I’m sorry, I don’t know the initial.’ She drew a blank. There were no Gandells at all in the directory that included the village. As a long shot - just in case Lucretia Grant owned two homes - she also checked the name of Grant. Still no luck. The column for telephone numbers of Melanie’s family would have to remain empty for the time being. She moved on to Puddephat’s wife. Andrew Walker was bound to have Veronica’s address and telephone number but a request for them, so soon after she had been asking questions about the woman’s husband, might well arouse his suspicions. There must be another way of finding out.

  She thought back to Puddephat’s Who’s Who entry. She was pretty sure the only address listed was that of his college. That was no help. But she had only checked in a very recent volume. What if she were to look in earlier editions? She congratulated herself on her improving powers of deduction. Only a few weeks ago, she would have been stumped by now. If the college library stocked Who’s Who, her task would be easy. A quick phone call confirmed that it did.