Hushed in Death

by Hushed in Death (retail) (epub)

  “Yes, but it’s not like having a dog or cat, is it?” Vera said. “They can’t curl up beside you on the sofa.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. I often walk round my study with Terry draped round my neck. He quite enjoys it. In fact, I take him for walks twice a day round the village; once in the morning and once in the evening. The fresh air is good for him. He rests on my shoulders and off we go.”

  “But don’t you worry that he might choke you?” Vera asked. “Isn’t that how they kill their food, wrap themselves round it and squeeze?”

  “Not at all. They only constrict their prey, which in Terry’s case are rodents. They seem to understand instinctually that if they took on something our size, they’d come out the worse for it. Their docility is actually a kind of defense and it tends to work quite well.”

  Vera touched Terry’s head again. “I have to admit that I do find him surprisingly charming.”

  “He charms most people who take the time to really notice him. That’s because he is charming, of course. But I believe it also has something to do with the positive feeling one gets from facing and overcoming one’s fears. Most people naturally fear snakes; and then they meet Terry and realize they’ve nothing to fear.”

  Brandt lifted the snake. “All right, then, son,” he said to it. “Time to go back into hiding.”

  He gently placed Terry back into the terrarium, whence the snake immediately headed for the cigar box. He and Vera watched the snake slowly slip through the hole and out of sight. Brandt put the top back on the cage and turned to Vera.

  “Well, now,” he said. “I suppose we should get a move on and drink our tea so that we can get back to the matter at hand.”

  Lamb made his way back to the Wolseley only to find Vera and Brandt gone. He told himself that there must be a good reason for their absence—that Brandt might have gone to home to check his own car for whatever parts he needed to make the repair. But he was somewhat put out that Vera seemed to have left her post to go with Brandt. Resolving to check back on the pair later, he went in search of Rivers, in part to bring the inspector up to speed on the subject of the disabled car, but also to check and see if the canvass had turned up any useful information yet.

  After fifteen minutes of searching, Lamb found Rivers emerging from a cottage on the western edge of the village green.

  “I didn’t expect to see you back here so early,” Rivers said.

  “My car broke down. We found a local man who can repair it—the same one who wrote the newspaper article on Lord Elton’s murder.”

  “A jack of all trades, then?” Rivers said.

  “We’ll see.”

  Lamb said that Hornby had not yet returned from Southampton.

  “Sounds as if we might have to put a ball and chain on the good doctor before it’s all over,” Rivers said.

  “What we need is probable bloody cause for a warrant to search the place. I’m hoping that we will find something today.”

  Rivers brought Lamb up to date on what the canvass had so far uncovered. The people whom he and the three constables under his command had interviewed so far had mostly denied knowing Joseph Lee personally, though a couple had admitted they would have recognized him if they saw him on the street. The gist of their statements was that Lee came into the pub regularly and normally left drunk, but that before the incident with Fox nobody had seen him act belligerently. Everyone knew Alan Fox and a couple of them had seen Lee harassing Fox in the pub on the night in question and waving around what he claimed was a love letter that Fox had sent Theresa.

  Although several people had seen Lee follow Fox out of the pub, none had witnessed the fight near the church. Two people had confirmed Horace Hitchens’s story that Lee had returned to the pub with a bloody nose not long after he’d left it. None had seen Fox return to the pub that night.

  Rivers halted briefly to retrieve his notebook from his pocket and flip it open. He glanced at it, checking his notes.

  “One of the women I spoke to said that when Lee returned to the pub bloodied, she heard him tell Horace Hitchens that he intended to ‘ruin’ Alan Fox and that Fox could do nothing about it,” Rivers said.

  “Did she know what Lee meant by ‘ruin’?”

  “No. She thought it just another case of Lee mouthing off, as he often did in the pub when he was in his cups.”

  “Has anyone else mentioned hearing Lee tell Hitchens this?”

  “Not so far.”

  “All right, then, Harry, nice work,” Lamb said. “Sounds as if I’ll have to pay another visit to the pleasant Mr. Hitchens.”

  Vera waited as Brandt set to the job of replacing the Wolseley’s distributor, humming the tune to Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” as he worked. Occasionally she came round to the front of the car to check his progress and to ask how he was doing, to which he three times answered, “Nearly there.”

  Having briefed Rivers, Lamb now arrived back at the car, glad to see that Vera and Brandt had returned. Brandt had slid beneath the front of the car and was fiddling with something.

  “How is she coming, Mr. Brandt?” he asked.

  The sound of Brandt’s voice floated up from beneath the car. “Chief Inspector—ah, you’ve returned. Nearly there. Just a few minutes more, I hope.”

  Lamb debated whether he should say something to Vera about having left the car unattended, but decided he hadn’t the stomach for it, and that it was unnecessary besides. In the end, she and Brandt had achieved their mission.

  Five minutes later, Brandt reappeared from beneath the car, smiling and wringing the red handkerchief with his oily hands.

  “Well, she’s done, I should say.” He added for Lamb’s edification, “It was the distributor. Shot, I’m afraid. But the one from my Wasp fit perfectly.”

  “Thank you again for your efforts, Mr. Brandt,” Lamb said. “As I said earlier, we will see to it that you are made whole.”

  “Well, don’t thank me until she starts, Chief Inspector. Hopefully I haven’t crossed any wires.”

  Vera sat in the driver’s seat and pushed the starter. The car coughed, and then the motor caught and turned over. Vera turned to her father and Brandt and smiled.

  “Success!” she said.

  Lamb smiled.

  Brandt emitted a sigh of relief. “Will miracles never cease?” he said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  LAMB AND VERA WASTED NO TIME IN HEADING BACK UP THE HILL to Elton House. Lamb knocked upon the door and was surprised to see Frederick Hornby open it.

  “Good morning, Chief Inspector,” the doctor said. “I understand you’ve been anxious to speak with me. I’m sorry; I’ve been away on business in Southampton that took longer than I had reckoned. Nurse Stevens was saying that you were interested in opening up the horse sheds for some reason.”

  “Can we speak privately for a moment first, sir?” Lamb asked.

  “Of course, of course. Let’s go to my office.”

  Although Hornby sat behind his desk, Lamb did not take the chair opposite it and instead remained standing. “What sort of business kept you in Southampton?” he asked.

  “I was speaking with a couple who might send their son here. They are making up their mind. It’s a question of cost, truth be told.”

  “Can you give me the name of the couple to whom you spoke?”

  Hornby’s brow furrowed. “Well, I’d rather not, obviously, for reasons of confidentiality. Why would you need that information in any case?”

  “To check your story.”

  “Meaning that you believe that I might be lying to you, Chief Inspector?”

  “You might be, sir.”

  “But why would I want to lie to you?” He smiled briefly, almost as if he was testing whether Lamb was putting him on.

  “For the same reason that anyone lies,” Lamb said, keeping his tone just this side of conversational. “To conceal something.”

  Lamb expected Hornby to become defensive and even to lose his composure—an
d in so doing perhaps give away some tidbit of information that he might otherwise have kept hidden. But the doctor remained composed. Lamb thought that Hornby likely had practiced reining in emotion during conversation; doing so was part of his profession.

  “It seems as if you’ve got it in your head that I’m hiding something from you, Chief Inspector,” he said. “But I assure you that I am not. Perhaps if you’d tell me straight out what your suspicions are I can clear them up.”

  “I’ve evidence that you are in possession of American lend-lease goods, including gum and cigarettes, which, as you know, are rather hard to come by these days. These goods seem to have come from field rations meant for soldiers. As I’m sure you’re aware, quite a lot of lend-lease shipments come through Southampton and Portsmouth, so I would expect a bit of it to end up in the local economy. But the goods of which I’m speaking would have to have been stolen and traded on the black market to have ended up in civilian hands.”

  “I see,” Hornby said. “You suspect, then, that I’m supplying the hospital with ill-obtained goods?”

  “One of your patients was smoking American cigarettes—again a very scarce commodity. And yet he described the supply of cigarettes here as bottomless. You also seem to be unusually well supplied with certain hard-to-obtain foods.”

  Hornby stood. “Yes, I see,” he said. “I’m not going to claim that I have personally inventoried every morsel of food that has come through here, Chief Inspector. We might very well have a few things round here that are out of the normal bounds. It’s possible that some of the patients brought them in, or even some of my employees. Especially the cigarettes. But I promise you that we are not knowingly taking in stolen lend-lease goods here. We do have approval for amounts of coffee, tea, sugar, milk, eggs, and the like that probably exceed the normal rations for those commodities in part because we are considered a medical facility. I can have Nurse Stevens show you the paperwork on that if you’d like. As for the gum, I don’t know about that, unless it, too, has come from the patients or staff.”

  Lamb believed that Hornby was attempting to outflank him—suddenly getting to his feet; rapidly taking control of the conversation; making assurances that all was well, while at the same time shifting the blame for anything that might be amiss onto the patients or staff.

  “I’d like to see the inside of the horse sheds in back,” Lamb said. “The stables and the carriage house.”

  “That can be done, Chief Inspector. Of course. I have the key on my chain.”

  With that, Hornby led the way round to the rear of the house, where he first opened the stables. Stepping into them, Lamb was nearly overcome by the twin scents of mildew and rotted hay. The interior was dark and musty, full of nearly indistinguishable gray shapes.

  “There’s no light, I’m afraid,” Hornby said. “The last time this building was used with any regularity they lit the place with paraffin lanterns. I’ve a torch, though.”

  Hornby pulled a battery-powered torch from his pocket and handed it to Lamb. The pair of them moved about the interior of the shed, with Hornby always keeping a step behind Lamb, who played the light on every corner of the room and along its walls and ceilings. But other than weathered wood, rotted hay, and this or that rusted metal implement related to equine care, he found nothing.

  They searched the carriage house in the same manner and the result was the same, with the exception that the building contained a lightweight delivery van with a roofed bed, which Hornby claimed had not been used since the previous year due to the lack of petrol. Lamb made silent note of the fact that the van’s tires possessed a diamond-shaped tread and that the front tire had what appeared to be still-damp mud stuck among some of the grooves. He reckoned the tires were roughly six inches wide—the same width as the tracks he’d found imprinted in the courtyard on the previous day. Strangely, though, the rear tires appeared to be clean.

  “All right, Doctor, I think I’m finished,” Lamb said to Hornby, who stood between the door and Lamb. As Hornby turned to lead the way out, Lamb scraped some of the mud from the van’s front right tire onto his finger. It was still damp, though barely. As he followed Hornby back into the sun, he wiped the mud from his finger onto the inside lining of his trousers pocket.

  “Well, Chief Inspector, I hope that puts your mind at ease about the way we operate here,” Hornby said as the two stood in the courtyard.

  Lamb ignored the remark. His mind was not at ease. “I’d like to see one other room, if you please,” he said.

  The doctor’s patience finally began to wear a bit. “Really, Chief Inspector, I don’t see why you should want to. I’ve told you we’ve nothing to hide, but you clearly don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t believe—or disbelieve—anything anyone tells me, Doctor. I prefer to gather evidence that I can see and hold.”

  “Yes, but I can’t help but feel as if you are overstepping your mandate. You came here to investigate a murder and Mr. Lee was not murdered in the house.”

  “Frankly, I have no idea yet where Mr. Lee was murdered, nor, I think, should you. Unless you know something you haven’t told me.”

  For a second time, Hornby reined in his rising emotion.

  “Very well,” he said. “What would like to see?”

  “The room in the basement at the end of the hall off which the kitchen is located.”

  “But why that? I don’t think anyone here has ever opened that door or had any cause to.”

  “One of your nurses told me that Joseph Lee had attempted to lure her into the room with a story that it was haunted by the ghost of the former owner, Lord Elton. Are you aware of the history of this house?”

  “If you are speaking of the murder of Lord Elton, yes, I know about it. But what has that to do with Mr. Lee’s murder?”

  “Perhaps nothing. But it’s clear that Mr. Lee knew about the room and might even have used it for something other than attempting to impress young women.”

  “All right,” Hornby said. He led Lamb through the door at the rear of the house and down a flight of wooden steps into the kitchen, through which they passed as they moved into the hall and thence down the hall to the door.

  “I have no idea where this door leads to,” Hornby said as he found the key that fit its lock. “This will be the first time I have opened it.”

  “Has anyone on your staff opened it?”

  “Not to my knowledge. The only other person with a key would be Nurse Stevens.”

  The door swung open on creaking hinges; Lamb caught sight of a set of wooden steps leading up to a spot that appeared to end at what he guessed would be the level of the courtyard at the rear of the house. The steps seemed to mirror those they’d descended into the kitchen.

  “May I have your torch, please?” he asked Hornby. He shined the light on the stairs and followed them with the beam of light to the top, where they ended abruptly at a solid stone wall.

  “That’s very curious,” Hornby said.

  “Yes.”

  Lamb carefully ascended the steps, which creaked beneath his weight. At the top he examined the wall where they ended and saw there what appeared to be the outline of a former door. The stone within this outline was a lighter shade of brownish-gray than that of the blackish-gray stone that surrounded it.

  Seeing nothing more, he and Hornby retreated through the kitchen and back into the rear courtyard, where Hornby locked the horse sheds.

  “I hope I’ve convinced you that nothing untoward is going on here,” Hornby said.

  Again, Lamb ignored the question and countered with one of his own.

  “Are you aware that Janet Lockhart sometimes meets with your patients to help them commune with dead people whom they knew in life?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “And you approve?”

  “I do. I look on what Mrs. Lockhart does as a therapeutic exercise for people who are grieving.”

  “Did you know that she was working with James Travers?”
/>   “Yes. They both informed me and I endorsed it.”

  “Thank you for your time, sir,” Lamb said. “I can see my own way back to my motorcar.”

  Hornby began to turn to leave, but stopped and addressed Lamb.

  “I feel terrible about your suspicions, Chief Inspector. But perhaps you’d understand us better if you had a chance to really see how the staff and patients work together here toward success. What we do here is important and I would hate to see it disparaged.”

  “As would I.”

  With that, Hornby seemed finally to surrender to Lamb’s refusal to allay his anxieties, bid Lamb good day, and disappeared round the corner of the house.

  When the doctor was fully out of sight, Lamb squatted and dredged up some of the moist soil of the courtyard and compared it to the mud he’d scraped from the tire of the small van in the carriage house. The two samples looked and felt similar—gray, rather thickish and hard-packed, almost like clay and flecked with small bits of a lighter- colored gravel. He also found faint, diamond-shaped tire tracks near the door of the carriage house that looked to be identical to the tread on tires he’d seen on the delivery van. He thought that if Hornby was dealing in stolen lend-lease goods—perhaps as a way to finance the operation of his sanatorium—then Lee’s murder might be connected to that. And yet he had still had no real evidence of either of those suppositions.

  He looked up at the gray walls of Elton House and felt as if the old mansion itself was intent on defying him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT THEN BUT TO KEEP DIGGING. FEELING very much like a boomerang, he returned again to Marbury with Vera and parked in the lot by the Watchman. His teams still were out canvassing residents, but this time he did not seek them out for a debriefing.