‘Because my husband was confident he could deal with the matter on his own,’ Ursula replied. ‘He insisted we should keep it secret.’
‘Delay greatly complicates the gathering of evidence,’ said Golding. ‘Your neighbours may have seen something the day your daughter was seized. But they’ve already had the best part of a week in which to forget.’
‘I’m sure we all appreciate it was a terrible mistake,’ said Charlotte. ‘My brother believed he was acting in Sam’s best interests. So did we.’
‘Of course,’ murmured Golding.
‘What I want to know,’ said Ursula, ‘is what you’re going to do now.’
Miller’s face darkened for a moment. Then he said: ‘Your husband’s murder will be reported, but there’ll be a media black-out where the kidnap’s concerned. After that it’s a question of waiting for them to contact you again. When and if they do—’
‘But if they don’t?’
Miller said nothing. His expression implied that the problem, if it eventuated, was not of his making. Golding spoke for him. ‘If the kidnappers don’t have what they want, Mrs Abberley, they’ll be in touch. They’re bound to be.’
‘You’re sure money wasn’t demanded?’ asked Miller.
‘If only it had been,’ said Ursula. ‘At least there’d have been no doubt about our ability to pay. Whereas supplying what they wanted …’
‘A set of correspondence between the poet Tristram Abberley and his sister,’ said Golding hesitantly. ‘I do have that right, don’t I?’
‘Yes. You do.’
‘Chief Inspector Golding reckons himself something of an expert on poetry,’ said Miller, with the hint of a sneer. ‘The only rhyme I know is crime and time.’
‘Tristram Abberley was a distinguished poet,’ said Golding, refusing, it seemed, to be provoked. ‘But I don’t entirely understand why this correspondence should have been so … valuable.’ He leafed through his notes. ‘Are you seriously saying it proves his sister was responsible for his work?’
‘We are,’ said Charlotte.
‘Incredible.’
‘Also irrelevant,’ said Miller. ‘I’m sure you ladies don’t expect us to believe that’s what lies behind all this.’
‘No,’ said Charlotte. ‘The letter Maurice took with him last night referred to another document which he didn’t have. He was afraid – and I think now he was right to be – that it was what they were really after.’
‘Not money?’
‘I’ve told you, Superintendent,’ snapped Ursula. ‘Money wasn’t the issue.’
‘Then how do you explain the wad of twenty quid notes stuff—’ Miller paused for a moment and softened his tone. ‘We found five thousand pounds on your husband’s body, Mrs Abberley. What are we to make of it?’
‘I think Maurice hoped to buy them off if the letter didn’t satisfy them,’ said Charlotte. She glanced at Ursula, who nodded in reluctant agreement. ‘I’m afraid it’s just the kind of reasoning he would apply. Clearly, if money had been the kidnappers’ motive …’
‘They wouldn’t have left it behind in such a contemptuous fashion,’ said Golding. ‘Quite.’
‘All right,’ said Miller, with a glare at his colleague. ‘For the ladies’ benefit, Peter, perhaps you’d like to run over what we’ve so far established.’
‘Certainly, sir.’ Golding smiled at Ursula and Charlotte in turn. ‘We can’t fix a definite time of death until after the post mortem, but we’re working on the assumption that it was shortly after the time agreed for the rendezvous – midnight. Chalky footprints in the back of the car suggest two men joined Mr Abberley, occupying the rear seats. The quantity of soil deposited suggests they had walked some distance, perhaps from the lay-by on the other side of Walbury Hill. If so, the purpose was presumably to take Mr Abberley by surprise. The letter he had with him is missing. The money … we have already discussed. Our reconstruction of events assumes a conversation between them, culminating in an argument and Mr Abberley’s murder. He appears to have been grabbed from behind, then, using a knife, his assailant … Well, perhaps I need not continue.’
‘Any idea who we’re dealing with?’ asked Miller.
‘Madmen,’ was Ursula’s bleak reply.
‘Maurice thought they were Spaniards,’ said Charlotte.
‘Because his father was killed in the Spanish Civil War?’ enquired Golding.
‘Principally, yes. But also because of the delay in making contact. And the use of the International Herald Tribune in Sam’s photograph.’
‘Which we have?’ Miller looked across at D.C. Finch.
‘Yes, sir.’
Finch handed the photograph to Miller, who did no more than glance at it before passing it on to Golding and muttering: ‘Could be anywhere.’
‘The man who telephoned certainly spoke with a foreign accent,’ Charlotte pointed out.
‘Ah yes, the tapes,’ said Miller, with a roll of his eyes. ‘High time we heard them, I think. Any objections, Mrs Abberley?’
‘Of course not.’
Miller nodded to Finch, who rose and moved to the hi-fi cabinet, where the three cassettes stood ready for use. She inserted the first in the machine and pressed the button. For several seconds, Charlotte expected to hear Maurice’s recorded voice. Then she realized something was wrong. Finch ejected the cassette, peered at it, replaced it and tried again. But the result was the same: the faint whirring of a blank tape.
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Miller.
‘I don’t know, sir. These are the tapes Mrs Abberley showed me earlier.’
Ursula tossed her head in irritation and bustled across to join her. Then, as she inspected the cassette, irritation turned to bafflement. ‘This is the right one,’ she insisted.
‘Try the others,’ suggested Golding.
But even before they had Charlotte knew what they would find. She knew because, albeit too late, she had come to understand her brother. Maurice was as cautious as he was clever. Or had been, she mentally corrected herself. The tapes represented proof of his involvement in the theft of the letters and, by inference, in Beatrix’s murder. He had clearly been afraid they might be used against him after Samantha’s release. Therefore he had taken what must have seemed an obvious step to protect himself.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Finch, as, with Ursula, Miller and Golding gathered around her, she played each side of each cassette to no avail. ‘There’s nothing on them.’
‘Nothing?’ growled Miller.
‘Oh, Christ!’ Ursula turned away and instantly caught Charlotte’s eye. ‘He wiped them.’
Charlotte nodded. ‘I think he must have.’
Golding stared at Ursula. ‘You mean your husband deliberately obliterated these recordings?’
‘I’m afraid so, Chief Inspector.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they proved he’d stolen the letters,’ said Charlotte in a dull voice she scarcely recognized as her own. ‘They were incriminating evidence.’
‘But they were also the only evidence as to the identity of the kidnappers,’ protested Golding.
‘I know.’
‘Let’s get this straight,’ put in Miller. ‘The letters have been surrendered to the kidnappers. The tapes have been wiped. And apart from a next-to-useless photograph all we have—’
‘Is Maurice dead,’ murmured Ursula. ‘And Sam missing.’
8
THE SHOCK OF Maurice’s death finally overtook Charlotte when sleep had undermined her defences. Lying in bed at dawn on Tuesday morning at Swans’ Meadow, she felt the stirrings of grief more as a physical process than a mental one. Her eyes were tearful, her hands trembly, her palms moist. And the horror of how Maurice had died could not be set aside, even when she was awake. Whenever she was not concentrating on something else, it sprang into the foreground of her thoughts.
Yet beyond this involuntary level, she was aware of an altogether more complex reaction. She felt no desire t
o avenge her brother’s murder. Indeed, some part of her approved of the justice of it. Maurice had murdered Beatrix, albeit not with his own hands. He had brought about her death to satisfy his greed and his pride. He had brushed her aside because he believed his needs and wishes were more important than hers. And now he had been made to pay for what he had done.
But why? There her conjectures reached an abrupt end. Nothing in Tristram’s letter could have provoked such a response. Nothing, at all events, that she had noticed. And, since the letters were now gone, it was too late to scan them for clues. She could not even remember exactly how Tristram had phrased his reference to the document he meant to send to Beatrix. No wonder Superintendent Miller had become exasperated. His parting remarks last night had suggested he did not believe anything they had told him. And, in the circumstances, who could blame him?
Not that his scepticism about the letters would last much longer, since Chief Inspector Golding was to travel to Wales today to interview Frank Griffith. Nevertheless, Charlotte could not see how their enquiries were to be taken forward. Ursula was clinging to the belief that Samantha would soon be released. Her daughter’s safety was all she cared about. In many ways, she would prefer not to know the identity or motive of her captors. If time began to undermine her confidence in such an outcome, it would be different. But until then …
Charlotte climbed out of bed, put on her borrowed dressing-gown, crossed to the window and pulled back the curtains. The night had strewn a carpet of dew-beaded cobwebs across the lawn and mist was rising from the river. Autumn was reclaiming summer and with it the sun-gilded image of Samantha, last and most innocent of all the Abberleys. Would she ever again pad across the grass, barefoot in her bikini? Or stretch her limbs and laugh at the careworn ways of her elders? How long, Charlotte wondered as she bit her lip to hold the tears at bay, would the question remain unanswered?
Derek Fairfax learned of Maurice Abberley’s death from a headline in the Financial Times: LADRAM SHARES SLIP ON NEWS OF CHAIRMAN’S MURDER. It was such an utterly unexpected development that his mind could not register any immediate reaction beyond amazement. He bought half a dozen other newspapers and read every word they had printed on the subject, but none added much to his knowledge. Maurice Abberley, fifty-year-old chairman and managing director of Ladram Avionics, was found murdered in his car in a hilltop lay-by near Newbury, Berkshire, early yesterday morning. Police said his throat had been cut. The discovery was made by his wife and sister.
Derek debated whether to telephone Charlotte Ladram and offer his condolences, but, in the end, he decided not to. He did not want her to think he was gloating. Later, he began to wonder whether, with her brother dead, she might be prepared to tell the police how he had almost certainly murdered his aunt. If so, it would surely only be after a period of mourning. He would have to let her recover from the shock before contacting her. Even then, she might not respond well to the suggestion. But, for Colin’s sake, he would have to put it to her.
In so far as Derek thought at all about who had murdered Maurice Abberley – or why – he supposed a crazed hitchhiker must have been responsible. The possibility that he had been killed for some reason connected with his father’s letters did not occur to Derek. Even for a single moment.
At Swans’ Meadow, Charlotte and Ursula had no time to brood. Police officers of various ranks and specialisms came and went all day, checking for forensic evidence relating to the kidnap, intercepting some telephone calls and listening in to others. Friends and business associates of Maurice were in frequent contact. Some were judged trustworthy enough to be told about Samantha’s abduction. Others were not. Uncle Jack fell into the latter category, Ursula vehemently rejecting his offer to lend a hand. The police took the immediate neighbours into their confidence out of sheer necessity, hoping one of them might have seen or heard something significant the previous Tuesday; but none had.
Ursula’s concern for Samantha’s safety seemed to eclipse any grief she felt on Maurice’s account. She was happy to let Charlotte deal with the registrar, coroner and undertaker, with whose procedures Charlotte was only too familiar. The pathologist had finished with Maurice’s body, which now lay in a chapel of rest in Maidenhead, awaiting a decision on when and where the funeral was to be held. Charlotte felt it was for Ursula to say, but all Ursula could think about was her living daughter, not her dead husband.
In the afternoon, D.C. Finch drove Charlotte to Newbury Police Station to collect her car. Nothing was said, but she had the impression it had been examined almost as closely as Maurice’s. Superintendent Miller, it seemed, was leaving no stone – or mat – unturned.
She returned to Bourne End by a circuitous route along minor roads. The winding lanes and grey stillness of early autumn combined to soothe her spirit. But a stray recollection of a golliwog Maurice had given her for her fifth birthday undid the effect in an instant and she reached Swans’ Meadow with her eyes red and face blotchy from tears, only to find to her surprise that Ursula was in a similar condition.
‘It’s having to tell so many lies, Charlie. It’s the strain of remembering who knows and who doesn’t. Friends of Sam have been on, wanting to speak to her, eager to offer their condolences. And I have to keep saying she’s out, busy, emigrated, in the bath, gone to bloody Timbuktu.’
‘There’s been no news of her release, then?’
‘No. And now I’m beginning to wonder if there ever will be.’ She poured herself a gin and tonic and took up a position she had frequently occupied since the kidnap – standing by the lounge window, staring out into the garden, glass cupped in her right hand and cradled against her breast like a child, cigarette held aloft in her left hand, mouth half-open, eyes fixed intently on some distant and perhaps invisible object. ‘Everyone’s been so bloody kind. I think that just makes it worse. So understanding, so very solicitous.’
‘They’re only trying to help.’
‘Even Spicer rang. Can you imagine? Even he thought he ought to—’
‘Spicer?’
‘Our boozy ex-chauffeur. Surely you remember?’
‘He phoned? Today?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he want?’
‘To express his sympathy, I suppose, which I could have done without. It was difficult to get rid of him, actually. He was full of the usual questions. How? When? Why? Anybody would have thought—’
‘Where did he phone from?’
‘A call-box somewhere. Or a pay-phone in a pub. I don’t know. Does it matter?’
‘It may do. You see, I—’
‘Wait!’ At the first note of the doorbell’s chime, Ursula swung round and signalled Charlotte to be silent. ‘This may be news of Sam. I’ll go.’ She almost broke into a run to reach the hall. Charlotte heard her wrench the front door open and exclaim: ‘Chief Inspector Golding! Is it about Sam?’
‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Abberley. Can I come in?’
Ursula’s reply was not audible. A few moments later, she reappeared in the lounge, with Golding behind her.
‘Ah, Miss Ladram,’ he said, smiling at Charlotte. ‘I’m glad you’re here as well.’
‘I thought you were in Wales, Chief Inspector.’
‘I’ve just got back. In fact, I came straight here.’
‘Frank Griffith told you all about the letters?’
‘Not exactly. That’s why I’ve called. There’s a substantial discrepancy between your account and his.’
‘Discrepancy?’ Ursula rounded on him. ‘What bloody discrepancy?’
‘Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a total contradiction.’
‘For God’s sake say what you mean,’ she snapped.
‘Very well. Mr Griffith is a prickly character, as I’m sure you’re aware. Unforthcoming, to put it mildly. But he was emphatic on one point. He knows nothing about any letters from Tristram Abberley to his sister.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No.’
Ch
arlotte stared at Golding, hoping she had somehow misunderstood. ‘Knows nothing? He said that?’
‘He denies ever reading or possessing such letters. Hence he also denies they were stolen from him. By Mr Abberley or anybody else.’
‘But we saw them,’ shouted Ursula, stubbing out her cigarette so violently the ashtray vibrated beneath it. ‘At least we saw one of them.’
‘So you said.’ There was a flatness in Golding’s voice, a deliberate suppression of meaning.
Charlotte looked straight at him. ‘Don’t you believe us, Chief Inspector?’
‘It’s certainly hard to imagine why you should invent such an elaborate story.’
‘We didn’t invent it.’
He smiled faintly. ‘Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it? As a detective, I have to keep an open mind. I have to consider every possibility.’
‘Including the possibility that we’re lying?’
‘Exactly so, Miss Ladram. Including the possibility that you’re lying.’
9
THE FIRST TELEPHONE call Derek Fairfax received after reaching the office on Wednesday proved what he had begun to suspect: that the death of Maurice Abberley amounted to rather more than the newspapers had revealed.
‘Fairfax.’
‘Good morning, Mr Fairfax. My name’s Golding. Detective Chief Inspector Golding of Thames Valley CID.’
‘Thames Valley?’
‘I’m investigating the murder of Mr Maurice Abberley. Perhaps you’ve read about it.’
‘Er … Yes, I have.’
‘Your name’s been given by the murdered man’s sister, Miss Charlotte Ladram, as somebody able to corroborate certain aspects of the evidence she’s laid before us.’
‘Really? What evidence?’
‘I’d like to talk to you about it. Would that be possible?’
‘Well … Yes, of course. But—’
‘Could I call on you later? This afternoon perhaps?’
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