by Diane Janes
‘Quite. Well, anyway, she went on in that vein for a bit – talk about the Keeper of the Sacred Texts. Eventually I said if that’s the case, how did anyone ever get to do any research? How had Hugh Allonby managed it, for instance? She went very pink and said that Hugh Allonby was a recognized Barnaby scholar and naturally the museum made things available to him. So I said, very well then, how about Mrs Dexter? Hadn’t she had access to them?’
‘Oh, jolly smart move! What did she say?’
‘It wasn’t so much what she said as the way she looked. She went so red that I thought she was going to explode. I’m not joking. When I asked how Linda Dexter had got her hands on those diaries, it made her so mad that for a few seconds she could hardly speak. Then she said that Mrs Dexter had undermined her authority and deliberately arranged to visit while she – Sarah Ingoldsby – was away on holiday. After that, she told me that if I wanted to see the diaries I should put my request in writing and send it to her as the Barnaby archivist. I asked what was the point of asking her in writing, as she had apparently already turned me down, but she just stalked off, back to her hidey-hole.’
‘Ah ha,’ said Fran. ‘Do you think that was why she went for Linda at the Furnival Towers when she said that she’d got a bone to pick with her?’
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’
‘Hold on, though … surely if it’s museum policy that you have to apply in writing to Sarah Ingoldsby …’
‘Yes.’ Tom looked immensely pleased with himself. ‘I thought of that too. If there were restrictions on people seeing the diaries, then arranging to go when Sarah Ingoldsby wasn’t there wouldn’t help you at all because you would still need to get her permission in advance. So, later on, after I got home, I telephoned the museum and asked to be put through to the top brass – the chap who’s the head of collections or something. I spun him a line about being interested in the Barnaby archive and said that someone had tipped me off that to see certain parts of it you had to get permission from a woman called Mrs Ingoldsby, and I was just calling to find out if that was correct and what was the address to write to and so forth.’
‘And what did he say?’
Tom grinned. ‘He just laughed. He said that anyone was welcome to see any of Robert Barnaby’s papers at any time and that Mrs Ingoldsby had no particular jurisdiction over them. Then he said something to the effect that some people like to give the impression they have more clout than is actually the case – not in so many words you understand, but that’s what it amounted to.’
‘So,’ said Fran. ‘Do you think she’s just got an inflated opinion of her own importance, or is it something more sinister?’
‘I don’t know. She’s always been a very self-important little person, hasn’t she? Maybe she likes to see herself as the Barnaby person at the museum and is very possessive about the collection – we once had an office manager who was the same over the stationery cupboard. Made the devil of a song and dance about anyone having so much as a box of paper clips. Father longed to get rid of her, but the trouble was that she was frightfully efficient in other ways. Anyway … Linda Dexter had obviously got it worked out and resolved the problem by going to see the diaries behind Sarah Ingoldsby’s back. That would have infuriated Mrs Ingoldsby and probably been quite enough to trigger the row at the hotel. I suppose that I will either have to go back and confront the wretched woman or else bide my time for a while before seeing the diaries. Either way, let’s get back to the Halfpenny Landing murders. Must leave no stone unturned and all that.’ There was such an obvious twinkle in his eye, so that she wondered for a moment if he was sending her up.
Back in the upper room of the library, there was no longer any need to whisper because the other occupants had both departed, leaving them with the room to themselves.
It did not take long to turn up the editions which covered the resumed inquest (which Edwin Traynor had been permitted to attend as an interested person), and the preliminary hearings at the magistrates’ court, where the police had been required to produce evidence to justify his continued detention and committal for trial. Just as it had done previously, the Westmorland & District Messenger had reproduced that haunting image of the burnt-out shell in which the bodies of Andrew Chappell and his daughter Penelope had been discovered. This time it was accompanied by a picture of the two victims sitting together in a garden somewhere, informally dressed, smiling and laughing, and finally one of Andrew Chappell’s surviving daughter, steadfastly ignoring reporters as she left the court, flanked by a couple of men in suits and bowler hats, who Fran thought were probably the family lawyers.
‘Gosh, it doesn’t look like Linda at all,’ she said. ‘Different hair style, I suppose, but I wouldn’t have known her if it hadn’t been for the caption.’
‘Everyone changes,’ Tom said. ‘Don’t forget, it’s about fifteen years ago.’
They read steadily through the evidence, pausing every so often to draw one another’s attention to something. The case against Edwin Traynor had essentially been circumstantial. No one had come forward to place him anywhere near the scene of the crime on the night of the murders, but the police had uncovered a strong motive, for it seemed that against her father’s wishes, Penelope and Edwin had become secretly engaged and she had made a will, naming him the sole beneficiary in the event of her death. Although Penelope had little money in her own right, her father had been extremely wealthy, and the police had decided that Eddie Traynor must have assumed that in the event of the simultaneous deaths of father and daughter, the fortune would pass to Penelope and from Penelope to himself.
‘And if he’d committed the murders last week, he’d have been right,’ said Tom.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Because the law changed about three years ago. In English law, I believe it used to be dreadfully complicated if two people who were related died at the same time, but these days, if it’s impossible to determine which of two people has died first, it’s assumed for inheritance purposes that the older one predeceased the younger by a minute, so in a matter of those assumed sixty seconds of survival, Penelope would have come into a small fortune under the terms of her father’s will, which would have fallen straight into the lap of her fiancé, Edwin Traynor, as she expired at his hands.’
Fran looked thoughtful. ‘I didn’t know any of that, but then, I suppose I’ve never needed to. The thing is,’ she paused, then continued, ‘Traynor’s solicitor argued that he hadn’t been within ten miles of his fiancée’s home that night.’
‘Quite so, but as it says here, the police came up with a theory which not only got Traynor to Halfpenny Landing but also overcame the problem of bypassing the heavy garden gates beside the little lodge at the top of the drive, which supposedly needed oiling and creaked like billy-o whenever they were opened. According to the police’s hypothesis, Traynor took the last train of the evening from Kendal to Windermere, where he then melted into the countryside for the next few hours, eventually emerging to steal a dinghy from a boat landing in Bowness Bay and rowing himself down to Halfpenny Landing. By coming ashore off the lake, he would have placed himself on the right side of the gates and been in a position to let himself into the house with keys that he had either stolen in advance or else had been given to him on some previous occasion by Penelope. Once inside the house, he could slip upstairs and murder his victims before setting the fire, which he helped along with the tins of petrol that had been kept in the garden shed for use in the motor mower. Afterwards, he rowed back as far as the ferry, where he must have got onto the road and walked the eight or nine miles back to his home in Kendal. That wouldn’t have been a problem for someone who was a champion fell runner. It says here that the dinghy was found next morning, drifting near the ferry.’
In her mind’s eye, Fran could see the dark shape of a man heading silently through the garden towards the house, surefooted in spite of the darkness. She imagined the faint sound of a wavelet hitting the shore whe
re the passage of the dinghy had disturbed the lake, and in the distance one tawny owl calling to another. He would have been deaf to all that, focused entirely on what he had come to do, one hand protectively enclosing the cigarette lighter and perhaps a ligature that he had earlier concealed in his pocket. She shuddered and pulled herself back into the present.
‘Naturally Traynor denied ever having had any keys to the house,’ Fran said, assimilating information as they both continued to read. ‘You know, with no witnesses or anything particularly strong to back up the police’s theory, the prosecution might have found it difficult to convince a jury of Traynor’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt – except, of course, that he’d made such a mess of his alibi.’
‘Traynor made a massive error there,’ Tom agreed.
‘It was idiotic. Whatever possessed him to tell the police on the day after the murder that he had bumped into his old flame, Miss Belinda Chappell, in Kendal and gone back to her house for supper on the night of the murder? Of all the people to pick – none other than Penelope Chappell’s own half-sister, who, naturally enough, not only failed to corroborate the story but was able to provide the police with details of the party that she had attended the previous evening, where more than a dozen witnesses had seen her.’
‘It says here that by the time of his second appearance in court, Traynor had changed his story completely, as of course he would have to, claiming that he had invented the encounter with Belinda Chappell because he’d panicked when the police first came to call on him. The snag is that this new version of events wasn’t backed up by anyone either. All he could say was that he’d spent the entire evening alone at his mother’s house and had already gone up to bed by the time she came home from visiting her sister.
‘Making up that story about being with Linda was the worst possible thing he could have done,’ said Tom. ‘As you say, the police hadn’t really got any evidence against him to speak of, but telling that stupid story showed him up to be a liar. The money wasn’t that much of a motive, you know, because he wouldn’t actually have inherited under the law as it stood then.’
‘Just a minute.’ Fran’s mind had jumped ahead of the intricacies of inheritance law. ‘I’ve just thought of something. Look at this – this elaborate story about how he got to and from the scene of the crime. I’ve just realized something really obvious that we’ve never thought of.’
‘Well? Go on.’
‘If someone abducted Linda from the Furnival Towers and then killed her on the railway line, that person must have either forced her to drive there from the hotel or else driven her car there himself. But the car was found close by the line, so assuming that the abductor was someone at the conference, how did he or she get back to the hotel afterwards?’
‘Another long hike?’ asked Tom.
‘I was thinking more in terms of another car, with a second person driving.’
‘Meaning that more than one person was involved.’
‘Hugh Allonby and Sarah Ingoldsby!’ said Fran.
‘Or Marcus Dryden and another member of his clan. There’s that lemon-faced daughter of his who works on the reception desk occasionally.’
Fran looked doubtful again. ‘In a way, it sounds like a brilliant theory,’ she said, ‘but then you look at it in another light and it just sounds barking. I wonder if the police found any evidence of a second car having been there. You know, tyre tracks and things.’
‘Look out,’ said Tom. ‘Don’t suck the end of your pencil like that. Now look – you’ve got black all over your lips.’
‘I haven’t, have I? Oh, bother. I’ll have to go and wash it off.’
‘I’ll carry on copying all this lot out while you’re gone,’ Tom said.
By the time Fran returned from the ladies’ cloakroom, Tom had reached the edition of the paper which covered the conclusion of the inquest. The verdict was ‘murder by Edwin Edgar Traynor’ and the report mentioned in passing that the surviving daughter of Andrew Chappell was applying to inherit the estate and would in all likelihood get everything. The paper speculated that rather than restore the house at Halfpenny Landing, discussions were already underway to sell the site to a developer.
‘Funny name for a house, isn’t it? Halfpenny Landing,’ Tom commented.
‘Particularly considering what it must actually have been worth.’
‘Anyway, I think we’ve got all that we’re going to get from here. What do you feel about what we’ve found out?’
Fran considered the question. Her gut response was ‘uneasy’. The picture of the burnt-out house had imbedded itself in her memory and she found it oddly upsetting. ‘Honestly? I don’t really feel as if we’ve managed to find out anything much at all.’
‘Funnily enough, neither do I. It’s hard to see how the first two murders have got any connection with the second one at all. If it was a murder, that is.’
TWENTY-THREE
Tom offered to drive her home again, and on this occasion he did not decline her invitation to come in for a cup of tea. Fran found her heart was skipping in a silly way as he followed her up the garden path and in at the front door. All those times that she had pictured him, ducking slightly to get through the sitting-room door, and now here he was, actually doing just that.
‘Do sit down and I’ll organize a pot of tea.’
Unlike Stephen Latchford, he did not attempt to follow her into the kitchen, where she found Ada pretending to bustle and clearly only too pleased to be instructed to provide tea for ‘Mum and the gentleman’ as it would afford the perfect opportunity to goggle at the visitor.
Tom had hardly had time to accept her invitation to sit down, and stretch his long legs out across the hearth rug, before the knocker sounded on the front door and they could hear Ada hastening through from the kitchen to answer it. Through the ill-fitting sitting-room door, Fran recognized Mo’s voice. ‘Hello, Ada, is Mrs Black at home?’ And the next minute, Ada was announcing, ‘It’s Mrs Gallimore, Mum.’
Polite introductions were exchanged and Ada asked to provide an additional cup and saucer. After they had done the weather, Mo and Tom discovered a mutual liking for the lowlands of Scotland and, in under half an hour, Tom had made his excuses and left.
‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ Mo said as soon as Tom had taken his leave. ‘I would never have come butting in if I’d known. The fact is that I was calling in on spec, and when I saw the car I thought it might belong to that creepy fellow, what’s-his-name, so I came barging in on the two of you.’
‘Don’t be silly, Mo. I’m glad you’ve met Tom.’
‘But it’s the first time you’ve had him here for a tête-á-tête: trust me to ruin everything, just when you were enjoying a romantic interlude together!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Fran repeated. ‘We were just having a cup of tea, before he got back on the road. And there’s nothing romantic in the air. As I keep on telling you …’
‘Oh, come off it. You’re obviously mad about him – the way you keep laughing at all his jokes, even the ones that aren’t funny. And anyway, what’s a family man doing, spending the day up here with you when he could be with his wife and son?’
‘We’re trying to find out what happened to Linda Dexter.’
Mo stared at her for a moment and then laughed. ‘Oh my goodness! You really believe that, don’t you? Well, you may think you’re playing Watson to his Sherlock Holmes, but at the end of the day, he’s a red-blooded chap. Don’t fool yourself that there isn’t an ulterior motive. Anyway,’ she went on in an altogether different tone of voice, ‘please bring me up to date on whatever it is that you’ve found out now.’
It was only after Mo had left that Fran noticed the day’s post, which Ada had for once propped on the mantelpiece. The envelope at the front was addressed in a distinctive upright hand which she half-recognized, and when she had extracted and unfolded the single sheet of writing paper, she saw that it was from Hugh Allonby.
Dear Fellow Committe
e Member,
It has come to my attention that one of our number has taken steps to acquire the late Mrs Linda Dexter’s research papers, having misled the family into handing them over, by representing herself as acting on behalf of the Robert Barnaby Society. I take this matter very seriously, as no doubt you all will. My own position is that the person concerned should hand over the papers and resign their position on the executive committee forthwith. Kindly let me have your views on this at your earliest convenience.
Hugh Allonby
Heat rose in her cheeks as she read the text. It was humiliating – like being a child called out in front of the whole school for some imagined offence.
She glanced at the clock and decided that she would need to give Tom at least another hour to get back home. She spent the next sixty minutes pacing about, making several false starts on responses to Hugh Allonby’s letter and chewing at her nails. When she eventually picked up the phone and asked the exchange to connect her, she was relieved when Tom answered the telephone himself.
‘This is probably because I went to the Vester House Museum,’ Tom said. ‘I bet that wretched Sarah Ingoldsby has put two and two together. You remember that I asked her how Linda Dexter had managed to see parts of the Barnaby archive? Well, she must have worked out how I knew and reported back to Allonby.’
‘“Herself”, the letter says. How did they know that it was me?’
‘I’m sure I never mentioned you. Allonby must have contacted Christina Harper and she must have told him that you’d got the papers. Funny that she never mentioned it today.’
‘I suppose she didn’t think of it. And we were too busy getting her to talk about the Halfpenny Landing murders.’
‘Anyway, you never told her that you were acting on behalf of the society.’
‘Umm … I rather think that I did. Not outright, perhaps, but I gave her that impression.’