Hushed in Death

by Hushed in Death (retail) (epub)

  “Were you alone when you did?”

  “No, Aunt Matilda—Nurse Stevens—was with me. She brought the sherry to my room. She wanted us to toast the . . .”

  Travers stopped in mid-sentence as he suddenly realized what had occurred.

  “My God,” he said. He looked at Lamb with the expression of a man who had just jumped out of the way of a speeding train. “But where is Janet?” he said. “Is she all right?”

  “Yes,” Lamb said. “Was she in your room last night?”

  “No. It was . . .” He paused, then added, “Irregular. We planned to meet later, in my room.”

  “Nurse Stevens—your aunt Matilda—gave you the sherry, then?”

  “Yes, but it can’t but true.” He looked at Lamb again with the same look of amazement.

  “I’m afraid it is,” Lamb said, pushing ahead and not wanting to lose the opportunity to pry the rest of Travers’s story from him. He recalled the testy exchange between Janet Lockhart and Matilda Stevens the night before and Lockhart’s mention of how Stevens would not get an of Travers’s “money.”

  “You said she brought the sherry to your room so that you could toast something? What had the two of you to toast? Had you decided to give your aunt some money?”

  “Yes. My late mother left me quite a lot of money. But it has been in trust until I turn twenty-three, which I will do in October. I had agreed to give Aunt Matilda a sum of money for herself and another sum on top of that, which she would donate to the Elton House Sanatorium, to the fund that Dr. Hornby has set up for men who can’t afford the treatment.”

  “What is the sum?”

  “Five thousand. Half would go to her and she would give the rest to the sanatorium.”

  “Why would you not just give the money to the sanatorium yourself?”

  “I did it for Aunt Matilda—so that she could make the donation in her name. She wanted it that way, and I agreed.” He looked away from Lamb. “I trusted her, you see. I never thought . . .” He shook his head in disbelief.

  “You said that your late mother left you this money.”

  “Yes.”

  “Her name was Catherine Berkshire,” Lamb said quietly. “She died on a sea voyage in 1922, when you were only three years old.”

  Astonished, Travers sat up. “But how could you possibly know that, Chief Inspector? No one knows that.”

  “Certain facts have come to light,” Lamb answered cryptically. “I also have reason to believe that Mrs. Lockhart knows of your mother and what happened to her.”

  “Yes. Janet has been helping me—with my grief, you see, and all the rest of it. I’m beginning to see now how it’s all connected. How what happened to me when I was young—losing both my parents so soon together—and then my experiences in France are all part of the same problem.” He looked at Lamb. “Janet has used her gift to help me to commune with my mother, Chief Inspector, and the experience has been eye-opening.”

  “And your aunt Matilda—she also was on the voyage on which your mother died, traveling as your mother’s companion.”

  “Yes. She is my mother’s sister.”

  “Did you come to Elton House Sanatorium in part because of your aunt?”

  “Yes, she contacted me and asked me to come; she believed I would benefit from the program Dr. Hornby has set up. I had tried to commit suicide only two months earlier, by swallowing a handful of sleeping pills. But they weren’t enough in the end. I suppose I didn’t really want to die.”

  “Are you aware of your mother’s past, Lieutenant—of who she was before she came to Malta and married your father?”

  “All I know is that she and my aunt grew up in Warwickshire and that their parents died when they were young women, and that later, after they left the orphanage, they went to Malta, where my mother met my father and Aunt Matilda became a kind of companion to my mother and helped to raise me. After the incident on the Algiers, I was adopted by an older couple from Liverpool, Morris and Diana Travers. Hence my surname. They knew little to nothing about my mother, except what Aunt Matilda told them. They welcomed her into our lives and, though she never lived with us, she did visit often during my boyhood and I became close to her.”

  Lamb was uncertain if Travers was lying. But he decided that if Travers in fact did not know the full truth of his mother’s past and her connection to Elton House that informing him of this could wait. Travers’s ignorance would not hinder his inquires for the moment and the matter could be sorted out in due time.

  “Tell me about Alan Fox,” Lamb said, purposely phrasing the question in a way that made it sound as if he believed that Travers knew Fox.

  “Alan Fox? I know no one of that name. Should I?”

  “So neither your aunt, nor Mrs. Lockhart, nor anyone at the sanatorium has ever spoken to you of Alan Fox?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “He also was a passenger on the Algiers and for a brief time was suspected of having pushed your mother into the sea. He is also a resident of Marbury—or he was until last night, when he was shot to death.”

  “My God,” Travers said. “Marbury? But I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, I don’t know the man at all. And if you say that he was on the Algiers then I have no choice but to believe you. But other than my mother and my aunt, I don’t know who was on that ship; indeed, I have no memory of the incident at all, though Janet has been helping me to pull bits and pieces of it to the surface.”

  The surface, Lamb thought. All of the bits and pieces—the secrets and lies—now were coming to the surface, like so much detritus breaking free from a sinking ship.

  THIRTY-ONE

  RIVERS ARRIVED AT THE HOSPITAL BEARING THE SIGNED WARRANT to search Elton House and ready to debrief Lamb on his and Wallace’s interrogations of Matilda Stevens and Janet Lockhart on the previous night.

  “Lockhart admitted that she and Travers have become lovers,” Rivers said. “She claimed to be surprised that Travers would have tried to kill himself and said outright that she believes Stevens spiked his sherry. According to her, Travers has agreed to give Stevens some of his money—apparently he’s worth a bundle—and Lockhart believes that Stevens has in effect ‘hypnotized’ him—that was her word—into doing her bidding. For her part, Stevens flatly denied all of this and turned it on Lockhart. She said Lockhart had been filling Travers’s head with a lot of nonsense about communing with the dead and that that is why Travers tried to kill himself.”

  Lamb told Rivers what he had discovered from his conversation with Travers.

  “Bloody hell,” the detective inspector said, stunned. “Do you believe him?”

  “About the sedatives, yes. I don’t see him as having a reason to kill himself. I’m not sure about the rest of it. He claimed to have no knowledge of Fox.”

  “We’ll have to go after Stevens as soon as possible, then.”

  “Yes. I’m going to have Hornby call her and tell her that Travers never regained consciousness and has died. Hopefully that will keep her in place at least for a while. As soon as I’m done with him, we’ll discuss the best way to approach her and the search of Elton House.”

  Lamb now turned his attention to Hornby. The two sat facing each other in a pair of chairs in the room in which Lamb had left Hornby under guard.

  Although he was grateful for Hornby’s efforts on behalf of Travers, he nonetheless wasted no time in pressing the doctor. He informed Hornby that he had obtained a warrant to search Elton House on suspicion of Hornby having violated the law prohibiting abortion and that he intended to charge Hornby under the act, never mind the additional charges that would follow if he found stolen lend-lease goods hidden in the house.

  “I will find what I am looking for, Doctor,” Lamb said. “Despite your denials. But if you cooperate with me now, I will cite that in arguing for a mitigation of your punishment. As it is now, you face a possible charge of treason. I also might be able to help you with the trouble you will face with whoever put you up to this. From my e
xperience, they hate those they consider snitches and like to take their revenge. They have long tentacles that reach even into prison.”

  “But this would mean the end of my practice—my mission,” Hornby said in a pleading tone.

  Lamb thought that Hornby seemed not to have understood what he had just told him. He seemed unconcerned with the fact that he faced a long prison sentence and the possible retribution of the gang with which he’d conspired to hide the stolen lend-lease goods.

  The doctor covered his face with his hand for a second and sighed deeply. He looked at Lamb. “But don’t you see, Chief Inspector?” he said. “You must. You were on the Somme. You must see that what I am doing is important.”

  “But I’m afraid you are the one who is failing to see the truth. If I find what I believe I will find at Elton House, your practice is finished. I’m offering to help you possibly receive some mercy from the court and to protect you in prison.”

  “But everything I’ve done is to make the sanatorium work for the benefit of the men I treat,” Hornby said. “And I’ve succeeded in that. Ask Travers himself; he will tell you.”

  “Nevertheless, I’ve given you a choice, Doctor,” Lamb said flatly. “I strongly advise you to cooperate, or you will have much more than the end of your practice to worry about.”

  Hornby slumped in his chair. He seemed nearly about to cry, Lamb thought. He looked at the floor and said, in almost a whisper, “I don’t know where it’s hidden.”

  He looked up. “I swear to you, Chief Inspector. I agreed to it only for the money. A man came to me not long after I bought the house. He offered me a very large sum of money, up front, in cash. He said he wanted to use the cellars of the house to store goods. I told him I wasn’t aware of the cellars; but he assured me they existed. All I needed to do was to give them access to the rear doors of the house and they would handle the rest. The only proviso was that I ask no questions. I was to forget about the cellars. I was not to look for them or speak of them. And I was to take on a man of his choosing as gardener, who would ‘keep an eye on things,’ as the man put it.”

  “Joseph Lee.”

  “Yes.”

  “So Lee had a key to the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he knew where the goods were stored?”

  “I can only assume. I kept up my end of the bargain. The man gave seven hundred and fifty pounds in cash on the very day on which we spoke and promised that, if all went as he hoped, I would receive another seven-fifty a year hence, which I have received. Had it not been for that money I would not have been able to keep the sanatorium open.”

  “Did they make use of the lorry in the carriage house?”

  “Again, I can only suppose. I was as surprised to see that lorry there as you must have been. I had no idea that it had been stored there. When I showed you the stables I was certain they were empty.”

  “Who was the man who offered you the deal?”

  “He said his name was William Smith. I knew it was an alias. I don’t know his real name. He made it clear that if I compromised the operation I would pay what he called a ‘severe’ penalty. Then Lee was murdered. I knew I couldn’t hush that up because it was simply too public, and that it would only look worse if I did. When I went to Southampton on the night Lee’s body was found, I spoke to my contact. I explained to him what had happened and why I had acted as I did. He advised me merely to lay low and wait out the inquiry. In the meantime, if you or anyone on the police began to suspect anything regarding the goods I was to deny knowledge of it, and continue to deny it. He admitted that they had become worried about Lee; that they were getting word that he was acting strangely in public, saying too much. They were in the process of removing him, though I’m certain they didn’t kill him—at least not in the way he was killed. They would have taken him elsewhere and made it appear as if he’d quit his job or just gone missing.”

  “Did you abort Theresa Hitchens’s unborn child?” Lamb asked.

  “Yes,” the doctor muttered, so quietly that Lamb almost didn’t hear him. “Again, I needed the money."

  “Alan Fox paid you for the operation. Was he in attendance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he leave with Theresa afterward?”

  Hornby nodded.

  “Did Nurse Stevens assist you?”

  “Yes.”

  “When the air raid came, where did you and the patients and your staff take shelter?”

  “In the cellar, the kitchen mostly; there’s also a pantry.”

  “Was anyone among the staff or patients absent during the raid?”

  “No. I took the count myself.”

  “Did anyone leave the house later that night, or in the early morning hours?”

  “Not that I know of, though Nurse Stevens has a penchant for wandering about at night. She has trouble sleeping.”

  “Did you know or suspect that James Travers had developed a closer-than-normal relationship with Janet Lockhart?”

  “I suspected it, yes.”

  “But you never confirmed your suspicions?”

  Hornby looked at the floor again and shook his head. “I was too busy. I told myself I had nothing to fear from Janet Lockhart, in any case. I actually thought that she probably was doing Travers some good.”

  “Did you know that Janet Lockhart had a key to one of the rear doors of the house, through which she let herself in last night and used on other occasions to come and go after hours?”

  “No.”

  “Were you aware that Alan Fox, Joseph Lee, Matilda Stevens, and James Travers shared a common event in their past and that this event also connected them to the death of Lady Catherine Elton, who had once been mistress of Elton House?”

  Hornby looked up, clearly startled. “No. I had no idea. What incident?”

  Lamb did not answer the doctor’s question, but pressed ahead with his own. “But you did know that Matilda Stevens recommended to Travers that he come to the sanatorium for treatment.”

  “Yes, she knew his family and so knew of the problems he’d encountered since his breakdown in France.”

  “Do you know of any other connections Nurse Stevens has to James Travers?”

  “No.”

  “Did she mention to you that Travers was prepared to give her a large sum of money, part of which she promised to donate to the sanatorium?”

  Hornby again appeared shocked. “No, she said nothing to me of any donation. This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

  “How often does James Travers take a sedative?”

  “Once a day, at lights-out, to help him to sleep. He suffers from nightmares. The kind of which you are aware, Chief Inspector.”

  “And is Nurse Stevens responsible for providing Travers with his sedative?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, sir, I want you to call Nurse Stevens and tell her that James Travers never recovered consciousness and has died and that you are taking care of matters here in Winchester. I also want you to make clear that she is in charge of the sanatorium until you return.”

  “But I thought we’d gotten to Travers in time,” Hornby said.

  “We did,” Lamb said, and left it that.

  THIRTY-TWO

  LAMB ARMED HIMSELF WITH A .45 CALIBER WEBLEY MARK IV, which he put into a holster beneath his jacket, and issued identical pistols to Wallace and Rivers. He intended to send uniformed men to guard the front and rear entrances of Elton House, to prevent anyone escaping, and then issue Nurse Stevens the warrant. His plan was to arrest her on a charge of violating the law and interrogate her while Rivers, Wallace, Larkin, Sergeant Cashen, and some uniformed constables, including Vera, searched the house, beginning with the cellar, including the kitchen and the strange corridor that contained the staircase that led nowhere.

  The team quickly swarmed upon Elton House. Lamb rang the front door bell and announced the presence of police with a search warrant. A full minute passed, but no one answered. Lamb rang the
bell again and rapped loudly on the door. He was on the verge of breaking down the door, when it opened and the young nurse to whom he'd spoken on the first day stood before him. The sight of so many policemen standing before the door surprised her.

  Lamb showed her the warrant and announced that they had come to search the premises. The nurse stepped aside to let them in and watched the team file into the foyer in the same way a child might watch a group of exotic animals parade down a city street. Lamb asked the young nurse to fetch Stevens.

  “She’s gone into Winchester, to the hospital, to help Dr. Hornby with Lieutenant Travers,” she said. “She left a note in the nurses’ room explaining what happened last night.”

  “So you have not seen her at all this morning?” Lamb said, realizing that the nurse had not bought his ruse about Travers never regaining consciousness and dying.

  “No, sir. I haven’t seen her since last night. With her and Dr. Hornby both gone, the place has gone a bit awry, I’m afraid. There was no one here this morning to give the men their medicines.”

  “And Janet Lockhart? Has she been in today?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Where is Nurse Stevens’s room?” Lamb asked.

  The nurse explained how to reach it. Lamb then sent Larkin and Cashen to search it, discreetly telling Cashen before they left: “Turn it upside down if need be.”

  He turned back to the young nurse. “Are you in charge, then?”

  “Yes, sir. I suppose I am.”

  “All right then, miss. No one is to leave the house, either staff or patients, until I say it is permitted. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With that, Lamb went with the others to begin the search of the cellars, though he gathered them in the kitchen for a brief meeting first.

  “It appears that Nurse Stevens is on the run,” he said. “Either that, or she’s holed up somewhere here on the property. She won’t have known that we’d be searching the house today, so, if she is hiding in the house or on the grounds, and waiting for an opportunity to make an escape, that gives us an advantage. She’s possibly armed, so we must proceed with that in mind.”