Hushed in Death

  “I didn’t know anything until about three weeks ago, though I suspected,” he said, his voice weary. “The thing is Theresa practically threw herself at Fox, even after I had warned her about him, how he is with women. Even some of the bloody customers began to notice the way she acted toward him.”

  “Did Joseph Lee notice?”

  “He must have, hadn’t he?”

  “How did you find out that Fox had gotten Theresa pregnant?”

  “Fox himself. He came by the pub one afternoon while Theresa was out at the shops. He told me as if he were telling me he’d just bought himself a new motorcar or something like that. Very matter of fact. He told me what had happened and said he wanted to terminate it and that he would set it up and pay for it. He promised it wouldn’t be one of these botched jobs—that he knew medical people who would handle it the proper way and Theresa wouldn’t be hurt. He said the doctor would just put her to sleep for a bit and that would be the end of it.”

  He looked away. “Stupid bloody girl,” he said quietly. “She thought Alan Fox was some sort of bloody Prince Charming. She had no idea what she was doing, and neither did I.”

  He looked back at Lamb.

  “Fox took her to Elton House last night and Hornby did what Fox paid him to do. Then Fox told her that Hornby threw the remains in the pond. That was bloody cruel. Alan Fox was a bastard. The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I felt.”

  “Where did you and Theresa sit out the air raid?”

  “In the trees by the pond. I wasn’t worried about the bloody Germans. I knew they had no reason to come to Marbury. We waited it out together. She refused to go to the shelter because she thought Fox would be there.”

  “Did Theresa shoot Alan Fox?”

  “No, Lamb. I told you. I swear it. She doesn’t even own a gun.”

  Hitchens looked at the table. “All right, Lamb,” he said in something close to a mumble. “I admit I lied. I did go to see Joseph Lee on the night he was killed. But I didn’t kill him. I asked him what he had on Fox, but the little bastard refused to tell me. He was like that; he liked it when he had something over you. But I was worried that he might know about Theresa’s pregnancy and might put it about the village to embarrass Fox. And I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “So you went to his cottage?”

  “Yes, but he wasn’t there. The door was open and some candles were burning on the table but Lee was gone. That’s when I took my chance; I turned the place over looking for anything he might have had on Fox. And I found something, but not what I expected.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A newspaper clipping. It had to do with Fox being a suspect in a woman’s murder years ago. He was accused of pushing someone from a ship on which Lee was a steward. I’ve kept the thing in a bloody drawer in the table next to my bed. I can show it to you. You see, I had no reason to kill Fox. I was trying to protect him because I thought it the best way to protect Theresa in the long run. He said he was going to see Theresa through, even after I sent her away—that he would make sure that she was provided for.”

  “Did the clipping say when this incident on the ship occurred?”

  “There’s a date written on the clipping: April 22, 1922. I remember it because it repeats the twos.”

  “How about the name of the ship?”

  “Something with an ‘A.’”

  “Algiers?”

  “Yes, that’s it—Algiers.”

  “Why didn’t you destroy this clipping?”

  “I kept it as insurance, in case Fox went back on his promise to see to Theresa.”

  “Did you see Lee that night?”

  “I did not; again, I’ll swear to it. I got the clipping and found what I thought I needed, so I left.”

  “Did you see anyone else in and around Lee’s cottage that night?”

  “No one.”

  “Will you grant me permission to search your pub for this clipping?”

  “Yes—yes. When you find it, you’ll see that I’m not lying.”

  The pins were beginning to fall, Lamb thought, as he left Hitchens in the interrogation room and went to the incident room, where he found that Rivers and Vera had returned from the hospital. After briefly greeting them, he went to his office to call Arthur Brandt, who said he was only too happy to go to the Watchman and search for the clipping.

  Brandt found the rear door of the pub unlocked; he then found the clipping in the drawer of Horace Hitchens’s night table, just where Hitchens said it would be. He called Lamb from the telephone in the pub to report that he’d found the clipping.

  “Describe it to me, please,” Lamb said.

  “The name of the paper and the date of publication have been cut away, though someone has written what I take to be a date on it in blue ink: 22/04/1922. There’s a photo with the article that shows a policeman escorting Alan Fox down the gangplank of a liner called Algiers; there are several people behind them who are unidentified; some in naval garb. The captions reads:

  Belfast police escort Alan Fox, of Hampshire, from the Blue Star Line’s Algiers yesterday. Police questioned Fox in the disappearance at sea of Mrs. Catherine Berkshire, of Malta, on the liner’s journey from that country to Liverpool, via Belfast. Police later cleared Fox in the incident and ruled Mrs. Berkshire’s death a suicide.

  “Hold on,” Lamb said. “You said the woman’s name was Catherine Berkshire?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “Read me the story, please.”

  Brandt read:

  Officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary questioned a Hampshire man in the disappearance at sea of a Malta woman, but later released the man having ruled that Mrs. Catherine Berkshire had committed suicide by jumping from the Blue Star liner, Algiers, in the early morning hours of April 20, while the ship was en route from Malta to Southampton, via Gibraltar and Belfast. Mrs. Berkshire was traveling with a two-year-old son and a woman described as a companion, neither of whom police named.

  Officials detained Alan Fox, of Marbury, Hampshire, in Mrs. Berkshire’s disappearance after several passengers told police investigators that they had seen Fox speaking and interacting with Mrs. Berkshire on several occasions during the voyage, including once in the first class dining room several hours before it is believed Mrs. Berkshire went missing. She was not reported as missing until eight A.M. April 20, by a female companion whom police did not name. However, investigators determined that Fox played no role in Mrs. Berkshire’s disappearance. Police subsequently determined that the Malta woman took her own life by jumping from the ship and did not therefore refer the case for an inquest.

  The Algiers was scheduled to depart Belfast for Southampton yesterday, but was delayed because of the inquiries. The ship is scheduled to sail for England tonight.

  “That’s it, Chief Inspector,” Brandt said.

  For the second time that night, Lamb found himself knocked back upon his heels. The story was alleging that Alan Fox might have pushed the woman formerly known as Lady Catherine Elton into the sea from the deck of a second-rate ocean liner.

  He thanked Brandt and asked him to take the clipping and put it in a safe place until he was able to retrieve it. Then he went to look for Larkin. He found the forensics man staring into a microscope in his lab, studying the slug he’d pulled from the wall of Alan Fox’s studio.

  “Did you receive the passenger lists from the Blue Star man?” Lamb asked.

  “Yes. They came in by courier while we were in Marbury tending to this mess with Alan Fox.”

  “Let’s have a look at them.”

  Larkin retrieved the packet, which was addressed to him and still sealed. He pulled out the contents, and he and Lamb began to study them. Lamb immediately went to the list from the April 1922 voyage, which had carried seventy-nine passengers. He had to go to the very bottom of the two-page list to find what he was looking for.

  Lost at sea, suicide, 20.04.22: Mrs. Catherine Berkshire. British subject,
embarked at Malta 14.04.22.

  Now he scanned the rest of the list, in which the passengers were listed alphabetically and by class, along with where they embarked and whether they were “British subjects” or “Non-British subjects.”

  Under the list of first class passengers he found the name Fox, Mr. Alan. He then scanned the list to see if he could find the name of Catherine Berkshire’s two-year-old son. He found that name and another, which stunned him anew.

  Berkshire, Master James

  Stevens, Mrs. Matilda

  “Matilda Stevens?” Larkin said, peering over Lamb’s shoulder as the chief inspector underlined the name. “And she’s married? That didn’t turn up in the police records I checked.”

  “Yes,” Lamb said. “And James Berkshire.”

  “Are you thinking that’s Travers, then?”

  “Nothing would surprise me at this point, Mr. Larkin,” Lamb said. He picked up the passenger list and headed for the door. “The only way to find out for sure is to go back to Elton House.”

  Lamb met with the team in the incident room and told Rivers and Wallace that they were returning to Elton House immediately.

  “You’ll need a driver,” Vera said, concerned that her father apparently wasn’t including her in his plan.

  Lamb looked at Vera. He would have preferred that she go home to eat a decent meal and get a proper night’s sleep. But she had found Theresa Hitchens at the pond and deserved to see the thing through with the rest of them.

  “We will indeed,” he said.

  THIRTY

  DR. FREDERICK HORNBY ANSWERED LAMB’S KNOCK UPON THE DOOR of the Elton House Sanatorium at a little past ten P.M.

  “Chief Inspector,” he said, clearly surprised by the fact that Lamb, Rivers, and Wallace were standing upon his doorstep. “It’s rather late, isn’t it?”

  “I’d like to speak to you for a moment, sir.”

  “About what, if I may ask?”

  “I’d rather discuss it in your office.”

  “Well, it is rather late, as I said, Chief Inspector. We’re past lights-out. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  The bluntness of Lamb’s answer startled Hornby. He stepped back from the door.

  “All right, then. Come in.”

  The doctor ushered the detectives through the foyer and into his office. A single tumbler full of whiskey sat on his desk. “I was just having a drink before retiring,” Hornby said. “May I fix you gentlemen something?”

  “No, thank you,” Lamb said. He, Rivers, and Wallace remained standing. Hornby stood by his desk facing them.

  “I do hope this has nothing to do with your suspicions about us hiding stolen goods and the rest of it, Chief Inspector,” Hornby said. “I feel as if I’ve cooperated with you to my utmost on that point and can assure you yet again that we have nothing to hide here.”

  “I asked you during our first interview if you knew a man named Alan Fox and you said that you did not,” Lamb began.

  “And now you want to ask me about him because he’s dead,” Hornby said. “Word has filtered up here from Marbury about his suicide.”

  “Did you know Alan Fox?” Lamb repeated.

  “I might have met him once, but I didn’t know him. I don’t think I’d even recognize him on the street if I saw him.”

  “Have you seen Alan Fox since the morning Joseph Lee’s body was discovered?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know Horace Hitchens, the man who owns the pub in Marbury?”

  “No. I’m afraid I haven’t had much time to explore Marbury. My work here has kept me too busy.”

  “How about his daughter, Theresa Hitchens?”

  “No.”

  “Theresa Hitchens claims to have been here just last night, with Alan Fox. She said that Fox paid you to abort the child that he had fathered with her. She also claims that you took the child’s remains and threw them in the pond. Now Alan Fox is dead.”

  Hornby’s face flushed red and his composure finally began to crack. “But that’s a lie,” he said. “I did nothing of the kind.”

  Someone entered the anteroom. “Dr. Hornby!” It was a female voice.

  A second later Janet Lockhart burst into the room, breathing heavily, as if she had been running.

  “But Mrs. Lockhart, what are you doing here at this hour?” Hornby said.

  “Please, Dr. Hornby,” she said. “It’s James. I can’t wake him. You must come quickly.”

  Janet Lockhart looked at Lamb. “Please, Chief Inspector,” she said.

  “Calm down, please, madam,” Lamb said. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s James. He seems to have taken an overdose of sedatives. I fear he might be dead.”

  The four men followed Janet Lockhart to James Travers’s room, where they found Travers lying still and silent in his bed, his body straight, his head on the pillow facing up, and the blanket tucked beneath his chin.

  Lamb moved to the bed and shook Travers and yelled his name. But Travers did not move. He put his ear to Travers’s chest and heard his heart beating, though faintly.

  “He’s alive,” he said.

  “Let me see,” Hornby said. He took Travers’s wrist in his hand and held it, measuring the lieutenant’s pulse. “His pulse is weak.”

  Wallace stood by the small table in the middle of the room at which Lamb had earlier interviewed Travers. Upon the table sat a partially full bottle of sherry and a single glass.

  “It looks as if he was drinking,” Wallace said.

  Hornby went to the table and picked up the glass. “There’s residue in the bottom,” he said. “He must have put something in the sherry.”

  “Does he take sedatives?” Lamb asked.

  “Yes,” Hornby said. “And he took an overdose of sleeping pills before he came here in a botched suicide attempt. So he has tried this before.”

  “We’ve got to get him to hospital immediately,” Lamb said. He turned to Rivers and Wallace and said, “Let’s get him to the car. We’ve no time to waste.”

  They loaded Travers into the rear seat of Frederick Hornby’s large saloon. Vera, who had been waiting by Lamb’s Wolseley, came to assist. Janet Lockhart stood by, silent and obviously still frantically worried.

  Lamb instructed Hornby to stay in the back seat with Travers. “The constable will drive and I’ll go with you,” he said.

  Matilda Stevens appeared, still in her nurse’s uniform. “What is wrong?” she asked Hornby. “I heard noises.”

  “Travers has tried to take his life again,” the doctor said. “We’re taking him to hospital.”

  “Is he dead?” the nurse asked.

  “No, thank God,” Hornby said.

  Janet Lockhart wheeled to face the nurse. “You did this,” she said to Stevens. “You’re not going to get his money. He knows now that he’s made a mistake.”

  The nurse reached out a hand toward Mrs. Lockhart. “You’re delirious,” she said. “Let me help you.”

  But Mrs. Lockhart recoiled and said, “Don’t touch me.”

  Lamb heard this exchange but had no time to follow up on it. He pulled Rivers aside and told him to stay with Wallace and take statements from Lockhart and Stevens and anyone else whom they deemed appropriate.

  “Lockhart and Travers are lovers, according to Brandt,” he said to Rivers. “Hornby did not know that Lockhart was here, but Stevens might have known. She and Stevens dislike each other.”

  “What about the abortion and this business with the Algiers?” Rivers asked.

  Lamb glanced back at Hornby’s car, anxious to leave. “That will have to wait until tomorrow,” he said.

  James Travers awakened on the following morning, lying in a hospital bed. Lamb and Dr. Hornby had passed the night with him, each taking turns dozing, after a doctor had worked to flush from Travers the poisons that had threatened to slowly shut down his body’s functioning. The doctor reported that Travers had ingested a combination
of barbiturates and sherry, which would have killed him within the hour of their discovering him had they not brought him to the hospital.

  Lamb had much still to do, including serving Hornby with a warrant to search Elton House, which he expected to receive that morning. Lamb believed that the doctor had aborted Theresa Hitch- ens’s unborn child and continued to suspect Hornby of harboring stolen lend-lease goods. But Lamb also did not doubt that Hornby’s efforts to save Travers’s life had been sincere.

  After managing to locate a cup of coffee with the help of the nurse on duty, Lamb called the nick and instructed the desk sergeant to tell Rivers that he should obtain the warrant to search Elton House as soon as possible and to bring it to the hospital. Lamb also wanted to know from Rivers what Nurse Stevens and Janet Lockhart had said in their interrogations on the previous evening. He had an inkling of the relationship each shared with Travers, but wanted to be certain he was correct. He hoped that Travers could—and would—tell him that morning. He also asked that a uniformed man be sent to the hospital to stay with Hornby; although the doubted the doctor would bolt, he wanted to make certain of it.

  An hour later, as Hornby cooled his heels in a spare room guarded by the uniformed man, Lamb stood by Travers’s bed with the doctor who had treated the lieutenant. Travers, his eyes still showing weariness, looked up at Lamb.

  “Hello, Lieutenant Travers,” Lamb said.

  “Chief Inspector,” Travers said, sounding bewildered. He glanced round the room. “What is this?”

  “You’re in hospital. You had a rather rough night of it, I’m afraid.”

  Lamb introduced the doctor and briefly explained to Travers what had occurred. “You took too many sedatives and drank them down with sherry,” he said.

  Travers put a hand to his head. “Sedatives? But I took no sedatives, Chief Inspector—or I took only the one I normally take. But I took nothing else.”

  “I’m afraid you did. Did you also drink a glass of sherry before going to bed last night?”

  “Yes.”