Murder in Waiting (Augustus Maltravers Mystery Book 5)

by Robert Richardson

“The fuzz admit off the record that they thought there might be something at first,” he agreed. “But they couldn’t make it stand up. They suspected Owen might have done it, but he was in his office doing a presentation to a client the evening his wife died. He was there with witnesses for two hours from five o’clock.”

  “All the time?” Maltravers interrupted. “He never left, even for a short while? It’s less than five minutes’ walk to Tottenham Court Road.”

  “If he did, then three very respectable members of one of the big five banks are telling lies. Once they started the meeting nobody left the room, not even to go for a leak. There’s no way he did it.”

  “What about Daphne Gillie?”

  “That looked more interesting for a while. She left OGM’s offices at five fifteen — around her usual time — and was at the Groucho by about six. In between she was shopping on Oxford Street.”

  Maltravers’s interest flicked up. “Tottenham Court Road end?”

  “Yep,” Hoffman acknowledged. “And apparently she can’t prove it. Busy shops, wandering in and out and didn’t actually buy anything. All the opportunity you want — but no sign of a motive. She and Owen agreed that they plan to marry, but his wife had gotten stubborn over a divorce. On the other hand, he’d eventually be able to divorce her and she could have done nothing to stop it and they were both prepared to wait. It occurred to me she might be pregnant, but even so … ”

  “No,” Maltravers interrupted. “Owen can’t father children, which is why he and Caroline didn’t have any. I’ve been told that by a friend of hers.”

  “It was only an idea. Anyway, when you get down to it, there’s no reason on God’s earth for either of them to kill Caroline Owen. She was being pig-headed over the divorce, but it wasn’t a problem.”

  “Not pig-headed,” Maltravers corrected. “Just a bad case of Roman Catholic conscience.”

  “Whatever.” Hoffman shrugged. “The fact is that her refusal didn’t matter. He’s hardly tottering into his grave and she’s only in her twenties. There was no panic. The police have dropped it.”

  Maltravers thought for a moment. The information about the police’s actions was interesting but not, on the face of it, productive. “What about somebody else? Any problems with Scimitar Press?”

  “Basically a one-woman business employing a couple of girls. No partners to have arguments with and the books appear to be in order.”

  “One of her authors?” Maltravers suggested.

  Hoffman looked intrigued. “Do authors kill their publishers?”

  “Not usually,” Maltravers admitted. “But insanity isn’t totally unknown among writers.”

  “Well, I didn’t press on that, but as I understand it she published children’s stories and books about how to grow healthy carrots.” Hoffman grinned. “I like it. Dig up some organic gardener’s vegetable patch and find it’s being fertilised by corpses of people they fell out with. Make any front page, that would.”

  “OK, it was just a thought,” Maltravers said. “The fact is that as far as I can make out, Caroline Owen had no enemies but now she’s suddenly dead.”

  “From falling under a Tube train.”

  “But she could have been pushed.”

  “Yes, she could, which is exactly what the police have looked into. All they’ve turned up is a woman who could have done it, but she had no reason to.” Hoffman closed his notebook and looked at Maltravers keenly. “Why’ve you got a hang-up over this?”

  “She was a nice lady and it’s getting to me,” Maltravers answered evasively. “So are the police letting it go?”

  “They’ve still got the inquest coming up, but that looks like being a formality. Open verdict with a few comments from the coroner about safety standards on London’s Underground about which damn all will be done.”

  “There’s still the possibility of suicide,” Maltravers pointed out.

  “If you can come up with a reason. The police certainly haven’t found one. Anyway, you say she was a devout Catholic. Isn’t suicide a mortal sin?”

  “I think it is,” admitted Maltravers. “She’d certainly have had to have been almost out of her mind with desperation, and from what I know she was as happy as any human being can hope to be.”

  “So you’re left with an accident.”

  “Unless Daphne Gillie had a motive.”

  “Then you find it — and don’t forget our deal. You dig up a murder out of this and I get an exclusive. See you around.”

  “Cheers … and thanks. I owe you.”

  Hoffman returned to his screen and Maltravers went to the coffee machine. As he waited for the plastic cup to fill, he wondered if there was anything more he could do before meeting Jack Buxton and attending the OGM party. One possibility occurred to him and he called Louella Sinclair.

  “What’s happening with Scimitar Press now?” he asked. “Is anyone still running it?”

  “Yes. Jane Root, Caroline’s pocket dynamo. Why do you want to know?”

  “Perhaps she knows something without realising it. Have you met her?”

  “Several times. Mention my name and tell her I say it’s all right. Hang on, I’ll give you the number.”

  Using Louella’s name saved explanations, but Jane Root still sounded cautious. “You want to talk about Caroline’s death? That’s heavy with me at the moment.”

  “I appreciate that, but it could be important,” Maltravers told her. “Let me buy you lunch and if it gets too painful, I’ll back off.”

  “All right,” she agreed. “You’ve got me interested if nothing else. The office is just round the corner from Friday’s in Covent Garden. Is that all right?”

  “Meet you in the foyer … Oh, what do you look like?”

  “Small redhead. I stand out in a crowd for the wrong reasons. You’ll see. About half an hour?”

  *

  Covent Garden bustled with tourists and office workers as Maltravers made his way through it. For more than three hundred years, it had been London’s fruit and vegetable market, now its open-ended, glass-roofed hall contained stalls selling upmarket gifts and flower girls had been replaced by street entertainers; a music student played her flute, accompanied by amplified chamber orchestra on tape deck, a woman sang old music hall songs without any accompaniment at all, on the cobbled square outside the Palladian front of St Paul’s Church two young men joked as they juggled Indian clubs deliberately badly. Maltravers walked behind them and their audience and turned down past his own publisher’s offices, a tall five-storey building fitted into the terrace like one of the company’s thinner volumes, and round the corner towards the Strand. Jane Root was waiting at Friday’s and he recognised her immediately. She was about thirty years old and twelve years tall, lack of height compensated by crackling red hair and six foot personality. Eyes as brilliantly blue as Maltravers’s own looked up at him shrewdly as they shook hands.

  “I rang Louella. She says you’ve helped her a lot and that you’d tell me the details. Is there something wrong about Caroline’s death? I mean more than the fact it happened?”

  “Perhaps. I didn’t think so at first, but … I’ll tell you inside.”

  Friday’s — properly Thank God It’s Friday — is one of the places that has brought American courtesy and friendliness to London restaurants. The English, who generally don’t know the difference between giving service and being servile, usually bring all the charm of a prison canteen to eating out. Being welcomed with a smile, shown to your table, offered iced water on a hot day, thoughtfully warned that some dish is unfortunately not available but something else is very good if you fancy it, having your order taken cheerfully and encouraged to enjoy your meal is not actually unknown, but is as rare for natives in London as a polite cop for New Yorkers. Within minutes, Maltravers and Jane Root had sat down, ordered, and been supplied with a bottle of decently chilled white wine.

  “So what do you want to talk about?” she asked.

  Maltravers gla
nced at her as he filled her glass. During the previous few minutes he had experienced the sense of being silently judged by a woman of sharp intelligence who would be irritated by polite prevarication.

  “I think that Caroline was murdered,” he told her bluntly.

  “Why?” There was no emotion in the question, no horror or immediate instinct to be repulsed, just a simple demand for an explanation.

  “Why do I think it or why was she?”

  “Both.”

  “The second one I don’t know.” Maltravers stopped filling the glass as she indicated he had given her enough. “The first one is a long story, but I’ll keep it as short as I can.”

  Jane Root never took her eyes off him as she listened, fingers running up and down the stem of her glass. When he finished, she pursed her mouth into a reflective moue for a few moments.

  “First off, I can’t imagine Caroline killing this character Kershaw, which is the bottom line,” she said finally. “But if you and Louella think it’s possible and that’s why she died then I’ve got to look at it. She often talked about people she’d known in the Sixties, but his name never came up — which might be significant of course. If you’re right, she wouldn’t have wanted to talk about him. But in view of what you say he was like, I’d have remembered if she had. I’m sorry, I’d like to help you there, but I can’t.”

  “All right, but I’ve also found out something else,” Maltravers said. “Ted Owen’s girlfriend was in the Tottenham Court Road area around the time that Caroline died … and I find that suspicious.”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  “You mean that you do?” he asked sharply as the possibility of something showed itself. She knocked it down by confirming what Hoffman had told him.

  “No, but the police do. Or did. They asked me about the affair. I told them that as far as I was aware, Caroline accepted the situation and wasn’t bitter or vindictive. Really.”

  “But she wouldn’t give him a divorce.”

  “Because she couldn’t,” Jane replied. “Don’t get me wrong. Caroline wasn’t a prejudiced Roman Catholic, just a very sincere one. Divorce was wrong. But she knew that Ted would eventually be able to divorce her and she’d have been able to cope with that. This may sound irrational, but in some ways she actually wanted the divorce herself because it would have … I don’t know … closed the book. But Ted had to be the one who did it.”

  They were interrupted as their meal arrived and Maltravers was mixing dressing into his salad when he picked up the conversation again.

  “But Louella says that Caroline told her he’d been pressing her to agree to a divorce immediately.”

  “That was a while back,” Jane said. “Caroline never gave me any details, but I put a call from Ted through to her one afternoon and it was ages later that I went into her office and they were still talking. Well, arguing would be more like it. She was saying that she didn’t care how much money was involved, there wasn’t going to be a divorce. When I appeared she told him she had work to do and slammed the phone down. Then she said — ”

  “Money?” Maltravers interrupted. “Does he have a financial stake in Scimitar Press which would be shared out when — ?”

  “No,” Jane cut in. “He had no connection at all. Caroline set it up and ran it on her own.”

  “But he mentioned money and … just a minute!” Maltravers’s mind ran between possibilities. “What happens now she’s dead? If he was her only known relative, did she … ?”

  “No.” She had immediately seen how Maltravers was thinking. “The police went into that. They asked who her solicitors were so they could check her will. I told them I could save them a trip because I know what it says. Caroline told me.”

  “Go on.”

  “Caroline’s only asset was Scimitar Press. She and Ted had owned their home while they were married, but when they separated, they sold it and divided the money. She used her share to launch Scimitar Press and rented somewhere to live. She kept meaning to buy a flat, but couldn’t afford it. Under her will the business is to be disposed of by her lawyers and frankly won’t bring in a fortune.”

  “But what happens to the money it does raise?” Maltravers asked.

  Jane Root smiled at him curiously. “It will be split four ways. A quarter each to her local church, the Save the Children Fund, Ted … and me. After the legal costs, I think we’ll be lucky to get about twenty thousand each top weight and that’s being optimistic. A lot for the church, a welcome donation to charity and peanuts to Ted Owen. He can pull that in with his expenses.”

  Maltravers said nothing as he picked up the wine bottle and poured for them both again.

  “You’re very polite,” she told him. “The police were much more inquisitive. For me twenty thousand pounds is a lot. But I’m not stupid and I’m not wicked. I wouldn’t kill anyone for a bit more than a year’s salary and I wouldn’t have killed Caroline for all the money they’ve ever printed. I liked her very much and her death hurts me a lot.”

  “Sorry.” Maltravers smiled sympathetically at the pain that crept into her eyes. “I’m detached from all this, but I’ve been where you are and it hurts like hell doesn’t it?”

  “Yes it does,” she said tersely. “Any more questions?”

  “None that I think you could answer, except that I interrupted you a moment ago. You were going to say that Caroline said something after putting the phone down on Ted. What was it?” Jane Root shrugged. “It didn’t make sense and I’d almost forgotten it. She was furious and … I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something on the lines of ‘Sod her bloody aunt.’”

  “Aunt who?”

  “I don’t know. Caroline immediately asked what I wanted and obviously didn’t want to talk to me about it.”

  Maltravers finished the last of his potato skins. “God knows what that was about. Perhaps Daphne’s got some relative who wants to splash out on an expensive wedding present. Hardly enough to murder for.”

  “How sure are you about her being murdered? Are you sure at all?”

  “No. It’s just that it may tie up with this Kershaw business, but I can’t see the connections.”

  “I can give you the names of people who’d known her longer than I had if it helps,” Jane suggested.

  “Louella’s already on to that. Perhaps it’ll turn up something.”

  “Where else are you looking?” she asked.

  “It’s all rummaging in the dark at the moment, but I’m due to meet Ted Owen and his girlfriend at an OGM party my lady’s been invited to and I’ve fixed up a visit to someone called Jack Buxton. He’s — ”

  “Oh, I know about Jack Buxton,” she interrupted. “Caroline used to laugh herself silly remembering what a crush she had on him. He was a pop singer, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes … and tell me more. This could be important.”

  “Oh.” She appeared surprised at the suddenly heightened interest in his voice. “I don’t know much except that they had an affair twenty-odd years ago. I don’t think it was a big thing, just one of those memories that Caroline treasured. What’s so important about it? Caroline was quite a little raver back then. She told me about several other lovers.”

  “But they weren’t worked over on Barry Kershaw’s orders,” he said grimly. “Nasty story coming up. Good job we’ve finished eating.”

  When he’d finished, Jane Root’s mouth curled in disgust. “What a shit. Now I understand why you think Caroline could have been involved in killing him … but she just wasn’t that sort of lady.”

  “People change,” Maltravers commented. “Sometimes we look back and can hardly recognise ourselves. Anyway, Jack Buxton being beaten up and Kershaw’s death were near enough to suggest one was the result of the other. If that’s the case, then people who were close to Buxton become interesting. And that includes Caroline … and Caroline is dead.”

  “But there must be others,” Jane argued. “Caroline told me there was a whole crowd
of them in those days — and you say that plenty of them lied at Kershaw’s inquest.”

  “True,” he acknowledged. “We’ve only talked about Caroline because you knew her. Kershaw’s death doesn’t concern me. It was years ago and I accept that he deserved it. But if Caroline died because of it, I’d like to know who killed her.”

  “I don’t like to think about that,” Jane said quietly, but he heard a note of anger. “But if it’s true, I hope you find them. If I come up with anything that might help, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you.” He gave her his phone number. “I’ll keep you posted as well.” He settled the bill and walked back with her to Scimitar Press.

  “Has Ted Owen been in touch?” he asked. “Since Caroline died.”

  “No. There’s no reason why he should have.” They stepped round some scaffolding poles blocking half the pavement, part of London’s eternal rebuilding. “He had nothing to do with the company and I can’t imagine he’s panting for the money he’ll eventually get.” They reached an anonymous door with “Scimitar Press, fifth floor” stamped on one of the plastic plates fixed to the adjacent wall. “If you’d like another coffee, you’re welcome, but we’re in the eyrie and there’s no lift. It’s like being the doctor making house calls on Mrs Rochester.”

  “I’ll pass at the moment, but perhaps another time.”

  Standing on tiptoe, she raised her face to kiss him. “I’d rather you told me it was an accident. That’s bad, but not as bad as the thought of murder. She was too nice for anyone to be so cruel to her.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Owen Graham Metcalf’s launch party was infested with the humanised soap bubble, inflated by a six million pound Press and TV advertising spend designed to change the shopping and washing-up habits of Britain’s housewives. Its insanely smiling face was stamped on people’s lapel badges, cloths spread on buffet tables were patterned by it, swaying in the slightest draught, an immense version in clear polythene was suspended from the centre of the ceiling with matching satellite balloons in attendance. The boardroom was filled with trendily-dressed advertising people, sober-suited executives from Pearlman UK (Domestic Products Division, Accrington) plc, trying to adapt to what they regarded as an enviable metropolitan sophistication, a collection of people who could claim some tangential connection with the campaign and the inevitable boyfriends, mistresses and gatecrashers. Maltravers resisted the temptation to draw a moustache on the face of his badge’s bubble logo as Tess was extravagantly embraced by the director of the television commercial and dragged off to meet Pearlman’s managing director, introduced with a cry of “Mr Callaghan, this lady is the voice of Bubbles!” Maltravers hoped that Tess would behave herself and not kick him in the balls.