Grave Stones (The Falconer Files Book 9)

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘Can he read?’

  ‘No, but he’s not deaf, and his temper’s a bit dodgy.’ Falconer kept a perfectly straight face as he said this, and Carmichael slouched, his arms dangling loosely at his sides, his face set in a moronic mask.

  ‘Er, shall we get on with what you summoned me to do? You are Inspector Falconer who spoke to me on the telephone yesterday, I assume?’ Field was now backing away towards the door, and safety from the monster within.

  ‘Correct. If you’d like to accompany me, I shall retrieve the items for your examination from the evidence room, then we can take a look at them in one of the interview rooms. They have lockable doors, so the items will be quite safe out in open view there.’

  Falconer returned to his office, minus Field, his face chalk-white, his eyes staring, almost straining to escape their sockets. Carmichael took one look at him, and asked in a concerned voice, ‘Whatever’s the matter, sir? You look like you’ve looked death itself in the face.’

  Slumping into his chair and dropping his face into his hands, he replied, ‘I feel like I have, too. Every single stone, Carmichael. The whole damned caboodle. They’re all paste – fakes!’

  ‘What? They can’t be!’

  ‘They are. I have no idea whatsoever whether Miss Keighley-Armstrong has been the victim of a systematic thief over the years, or whether she knew about it; contrived at it, even. The gold is plate, and the platinum is silver plate. It’s all paste, and there’s no way of finding out who did it, or when it was done. This case just gets more and more complicated by the day.

  ‘We start off with a little old lady getting whacked for the contents of her safe, and now we’re looking at large-scale forgery, with no time scale to guide us, and another murder on top of that.’

  Both men sat in silence for a moment, before Carmichael said, ‘Well, at least Mr Twelvetrees must’ve discovered they were fakes. He did used to be a jeweller. If anyone had known, it’d be him.’

  ‘Carmichael, you’re at it again!’

  ‘At what again, sir?’

  ‘Being a genius. If someone brought the stones to him to get them valued, and possibly broken up and fenced, and he rumbled quite quickly that they were just pretty glass stones, maybe the person who brought them to him killed him in a fit of rage, that they’d taken all the risk of getting hold of them, and now they had nothing.’

  ‘That would certainly work, sir, and we wouldn’t be stumped for a link between both murders, if it was a spur of the moment thing – not premeditated. Twelvetrees only got his throat cut because he was the bringer of bad news.’

  ‘Precisely! Glory! That makes things a bit less complicated.’ Falconer was regaining a little of his colour, as it sank in that the fact that the jewellery had been carefully copied and substituted at some unknown time in the past, didn’t really have any relevance to what he was currently investigating.

  ‘We’ve been barking up completely the wrong tree, looking for a complicated connection between the two deaths that simply doesn’t exist. I want search warrants for Gwendolyn Galton, Toby Lattimer, and Violet Bingham’s properties, and one prepared that we probably won’t use, for The Rectory and the church. You never know what might not have ended up on that coffee table in front of its latest victim, for there’s no doubt that that jewellery has been the cause of both of these deaths, or the greed to possess them.’

  ‘Why those particular properties, sir? Why not Wanda Warwick’s as well? She’s been in trouble with the police.’

  ‘Obviously, because of the particular brushes with the law of the first two. Either one of them might have gone to Twelvetrees for his opinion on the sparklies. Violet Bingham, because she was Miss Keighley-Armstrong’s best friend, and their circumstances were, apparently so different under the surface. Maybe Violet got tired of waiting for whatever she’d been left. And the church properties, purely because the church is a beneficiary.

  ‘Chop chop, Carmichael! Let’s get weaving. We’ve got an insurance company to visit and a solicitor. In fact, in the light of what the gemologist has revealed, I might just leave the solicitor until tomorrow, by which time we might have the whole thing wrapped up. That’ll show him! It’ll be a case of ‘eat your heart out, Mr C. Batty’, too-busy-to-see-us solicitor.’

  ‘Best not to count your chickens, sir,’ Carmichael intoned in a warning voice. Things weren’t always the way they seemed, and it was best not to take anything for granted, he believed.

  The representative of the insurance company received them warmly, then said he had some news that might prove rather surprising. Mr Horton, who insisted they call him Freddie, agreed that he wasn’t surprised that all the photographs seemed to be quite old. Had the policy been continued … Falconer’s ears pricked up, and he prepared himself for some more unexpected news.

  ‘Had the policy been continued with, the photographs would have been renewed regularly, and it would have been the company’s advice that the pieces be stored in a safe deposit box at the customer’s bank.

  ‘Looking through our records for this policy, which is now defunct – may I draw your attention to the date it was issued – I find that coverage by our firm was terminated more than twenty years ago, when the original insurer died. I don’t know what happened in the meantime, but we have had no contact with Miss Keighley-Armstrong for some time on that matter.

  ‘She has continued to insure her house and contents with us, but she has not contacted us to revalue, even though we’ve sent her several letters to inform her that it is of the utmost importance to keep valuations up to date, in the event that she needed to make a claim.’

  ‘Out of interest,’ asked Falconer, realising precisely why the policy had not been kept up, ‘what was the date of the last valuation of the property and contents?’

  ‘Our records show that to have been just before she cancelled the special policy on her inherited jewellery. She carried on with the undervalued policies, but this is all before my time. I was still at school when all this was going on, so I can give you no personal slant on it.’

  ‘Thank you very much for your time, sir,’ said Falconer, ever polite, as he rose to leave, giving an almost imperceptible nod to Carmichael that they were leaving.

  ‘I hope you find whatever you need, to solve your case. This sort of almost casual violence makes me feel sick. No one’s safe these days, not even in their own homes,’ were Mr Horton’s – Freddie’s – parting words.

  At the offices of Strickland, Vanny, Batty, and Strickland, Mr Chris Batty, the person with whom Falconer and Carmichael wished to converse, was tied up with nothing more pressing than a cup of coffee and a biscuit and, therefore, felt obliged to see them today, rather than tomorrow, as they had taken the time to turn up in person.

  ‘I’ll show you through,’ said the receptionist, a slight smile catching at the corners of her mouth, for no reason that they could identify, but were soon made aware of the source of her amusement.

  ‘Opening a door, she pushed it open and announced, ‘Detective Inspector Falconer and Detective Sergeant Carmichael for you, Ms Batty,’ allowed them to enter, then closed the door quietly behind them.

  ‘Good morning,’ she greeting them, rising and holding out her hand in greeting. ‘I’m sorry if my gender disappoints you, but I’ve been female since birth, and have no plans to alter that situation in the future.’

  Falconer’s face was a study in scarlet with embarrassment, as he apologised for making a rather sexist assumption. Carmichael merely smiled, finding the situation amusing, and storing it up to tell Kerry when he got home from work.

  ‘I’ve pulled out Miss Keighley-Armstrong’s file, and find that this firm was also her parents’ representative as well. The family has quite a long history with us, but all of it before my time, unfortunately. It does make very interesting reading, however. Let me order us some coffee, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learnt.

  ‘Oh, and by the way, I really did have a meeting planned for this a
fternoon, but unfortunately, my client was unavoidably delayed by a ruptured appendix and was admitted to hospital during the early hours of this morning. I wasn’t just playing hard to get. I didn’t actually expect to be here.’

  ‘Pressing a button on a console on her desk, she ordered coffee for three, and pulled a file from her desk onto her knee. ‘Do you want the full history?’ she asked, her eyebrows lifted in interrogation.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Ms Batty,’ agreed Falconer, still looking a little hang-dog.

  ‘Just call me Chris,’ she replied, smiled, and opened the folder.

  ‘It would appear,’ she began, having settled herself comfortably like an old hand at Jackanory, although she’d never watched the programme herself, ‘that the family moved here from South Africa when their only daughter – the elderly woman about whom you’re enquiring – was in her early teens.

  ‘My colleague was informed, it says here in confidence, that Mr Keighley-Armstrong had been a gem dealer before relocating, and took some of his salary in stones. He had invested the bulk of the money he made in fine jewellery, which he smuggled over here in the horsehair stuffing of an armchair.

  ‘It represented just about all of his worldly wealth, and customs and excise were not as well-equipped in those days, unlikely to suspect a consignment of household goods to be worthy of close scrutiny. Thus he avoided income tax in both countries.

  ‘He worked for a while in Hatton Garden, but when he decided to retire early, he started to sell off the pieces he’d had made for his wife, to keep him in the style to which they’d all become accustomed.

  ‘Another note, made for information given in confidence, says that he dutifully had each piece copied in paste, so that his wife wouldn’t miss what she had previously been able to wear, although she was fully aware of what her husband was doing. They were particularly fine copies, and would have fooled anyone but an expert. I presume you’ve had them looked at?’

  ‘Just this morning,’ Falconer concurred.

  ‘Funny, I should have thought that was the first thing you’d have done. No doubt they fooled you as well.’

  ‘We never got the chance to look at them before, as they were stolen when Miss Keighley-Armstrong was murdered, and have only just turned up again. It was decided that they were the reason for her death. She was hit over the head during the course of the robbery.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s all out in the open now. And to continue, the daughter – your victim, I understand – didn’t find out until her father’s death that this had happened. She kept it a lifelong secret from her mother, whom she thought would have been devastated to find out that the more than generous gifts from her husband had only been a means of transferring money into England without incurring any tax charges.

  ‘That her mother knew exactly what her husband was doing, and never let on to her daughter for the very same reason, Miss Keighley-Armstrong had no idea. No one here could say anything to her, because of client confidentiality. I hope that makes sense. It is a bit of a muddled story to try to follow. Families, eh? Who’d have ’em?’

  ‘So, at least the mother died, happy and informed, which is more than I can say for her daughter. This additional information is really useful as a history of how and why the replicas were made. My main reason for wanting to see you, though, was to check the most up-to-date will of your late client.’

  ‘I’ve got that right here for you,’ she said, smiling again, and picking up a document tied with pinkish-red tape, that had sat under the file. Here you are; have a look. Dated only recently, by the looks of it.’

  One glance told Falconer it was the original of the copy that had been stored in the safe. One thing he hadn’t noticed in his haste, however, was who the executor – or in this case, the executrix – was. It was Violet Bingham: why had she not said something about being Lettice’s executrix? It would have made life a lot easier for him. Probably. Possibly. He wasn’t sure, but the situation made him a little cross at being denied information like that which might prove pertinent to the case – cases. Plural! Blast!

  They took their leave of Chris Batty, Carmichael’s notebook stuffed with more information to add to the background on the first victim, and with high hopes of doing a little searching around suspects’ homes.

  These hopes, however, were dashed when, on arriving back at the station, they found out that the search warrants wouldn’t be available until the following morning. Hand-cuffed from this angle, Falconer suggested they take a look in on Roberts, to see how he was getting on, and find out how long they intended to keep him incarcerated and off active service.

  It had been nice, just for that very short time that he had been with them to have someone else to do some of the running around, instead of there just being himself and Carmichael, and he wanted an informed opinion on when that situation would be available to him again.

  They found Roberts propped up in bed, his curtains drawn for privacy, and sheets of printed paper peppering the bed cover’s surface. Looking up, as Falconer parted the curtains and the two detectives dragged chairs to the side of his bed, he crowed, ‘Great! Visitors! And just when I wanted someone to discuss the case thus far with.’

  ‘You’ve got the case notes?’ queried Falconer, looking at some familiar sheets of printing.

  ‘Got ’em copied and dropped over to me. I might be in pain, but that doesn’t mean my brain’s addled, does it? I’ve been mulling things over, and I think it’s definitely that Asquith woman. And I’m not going to say anything about your joyful shirt, Carmichael. Truce? Please?’

  ‘Truce,’ replied Carmichael, slightly truculently, but hopeful that they would get along a bit better in the future.

  ‘Why her?’ asked Falconer. ‘Explain your reasoning to me.’

  ‘Well, for a start, she was definitely a hostile witness …’

  ‘She did make a complaint about you. How do you explain that?’

  ‘It was just her attitude when I called round. Maybe I was a bit brusque with her, but no brusquer than she was with me. Anyway, to continue; she’d spent years sucking up to the first victim, hoping for a legacy in her will. Maybe she suddenly realised that she wasn’t going to get one for a long time yet, the way the victim was partying at the hall.

  ‘Perhaps she just got fed up, thinking the old biddy was going to outlive her, given the chance, and decided to hurry things up a little. She’d have gained admittance to the house, no problem, as she called round there quite a lot, and our Miss K-A could hardly not answer the door, if her lights were on, not given the days in which she was brought up. It would just be sheer bad manners.

  ‘Things got out of hand, and she dotted her one. Then she decided to have a little snoop around, and found the combination to the safe. Being a nosey-bag, she’d be unable to resist opening it, just to have ‘a little peek’, as she’d no doubt call it, saw all the baubles, and couldn’t resist having it on her toes with them. Does that float your boat?’

  ‘Not really,’ replied Falconer, watching the young man’s face fall like a jelly sliding down a wall. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news for you. The jewels were just paste – copies. They have hardly any intrinsic value.’

  ‘Old Maudie Asquith wouldn’t have known that, though, would she?’

  ‘Probably not, but how do you explain the stolen goods turning up on Julius Twelvetrees’ coffee table, with him beside it with his throat cut?’

  ‘Oh, that’s an easy one, guv – sorry, sir. She thought he was a dodgy character, and went to him to see if he could offload them for her, and when he told her they were worthless, she cut his throat.’

  ‘She just happened to have a knife with her, did she? Little old ladies go around with knives in their handbags these days, do they? And he’d be happy with her strolling round the back of the chair he was sitting in, would he? Sorry, Roberts, but it just doesn’t stack up to my mind. What about you, Carmichael? That ring true to you?’

  ‘Sorry, Rob
erts, but I just can’t see it. I can see her dotting the old woman over the head, but the rest is just too far-fetched,’ replied the sergeant, choosing his words carefully, so as not to upset the DC.

  ‘Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction,’ Roberts retorted, then added, ‘I’m clutching at straws, aren’t I? Well, back to the drawing board for me. Where are you two off to this afternoon?’

  ‘I suppose we’ll go back to Shepford St Bernard and just call on a few people. We were hoping to have warrants for Bingham, Galton, Lattimer, and The Rectory plus church for this afternoon, but apparently we won’t be able to lay our hands on those until tomorrow morning. I thought it might be a good idea just to make another visit and see if we could ferret out anything new in the meantime. Shake the branches and see if anything else fell out of the tree, so to speak.’

  ‘Lucky you! I’m bored to tears in here. Still, I’ve got four fresh suspects to work on, given what you’ve just told me about where you’re concentrating your energies.’

  ‘When do they think you’ll be out of here, anyway? I could do with the use of your shoe leather,’ asked the inspector, thinking of what he could have delegated if Roberts wasn’t stuck in this prison camp, under armed guard.

  ‘They say a few more days before they think I’ll be able to manage at home, but it won’t be straight back to work, unless you can find me anything to do that’s desk-bound.’

  ‘Typical!’ Falconer snorted, and rose to leave. ‘We’ll call in again tomorrow; see what your imagination has come up with, given the current state of play.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tuesday afternoon – Shepford St Bernard

  Before calling on any of those that particularly interested them now, Falconer and Carmichael stopped outside Robin’s Perch, to see if Bonnie Fletcher had yet returned home. As they pulled up, they noticed that Wanda Warwick was just turning away from the front door, so maybe she’d been visiting, and the wanderer had turned up.