“Can you tell me more about it? You’d better be quick, though,” he said, seeing the AMERSHAM TOWN CENTRE sign on the roadside.
“It’s complicated, but I’ll try.” She paused, thinking for a moment.
“It happened about a year after I moved in with Hillier. By accident, I overheard a conversation between him and another person, who I later learned was an American named Mark Slater. I could only get snatches of what they were saying, but it concerned some kind of deal. From what little I could gather, it involved a lot of money. A few days later, a man I hadn’t seen in years showed up at the house. His name was Mike Dempsey. He was a creepy sort who kept pestering me to date him back then. It turned out to be a surprise in more ways than one.”
“What did he want with Hillier—or you?”
Her answer was drowned out by two staccato siren blasts from the police car, now on their bumper. “Pull into the next entry on right,” the crackling loudspeaker commanded.
“Looks like time’s up,” Grace said, pursing her lips. “We’ll have to finish another time—if there is another time,” she added, mustering a wan smile. She unbuckled her seat belt, took the gun from under the seat, and handed it to Kingston. “Here,” was all she said.
They got out of the car. Kingston handed the gun to one of the policemen who were waiting. “You’d better have this,” he said.
They walked together, followed by the policemen, who directed them toward a side door. “Thanks again, Lawrence,” she said. “If nothing else, I hope you’ll understand a little better now and won’t be too harsh on me.”
Kingston placed a hand on her shoulder and opened the door for her.
“Thanks,” she replied, with another halfhearted smile.
“I’ve no idea what they might charge me with,” he said, “but regardless of what happens from now on, I’ll come and visit you as soon as they’ll permit it. That’s a promise.”
“I’d appreciate it,” she said.
He wished her good luck and gave her one last look, as they were escorted down separate corridors to make their statements and for whatever might follow. Although Kingston had many of the answers he needed, there were still many more questions to be asked.
31
KINGSTON GLANCED AT his watch: almost eleven P.M. He and Andrew had been at the Kings Arms Hotel in Old Amersham for the last two and a half hours. They had finished dinner and were sitting in comfortable, overstuffed chairs, with snifters of cognac, next to a brick and stone inglenook fireplace devoid of logs, in the six-hundred-year-old coaching inn’s oak-beamed lounge.
At the police station, Kingston and Andrew had not met up until after Kingston was through with his interview. In the meantime, Andrew had taken it upon himself to make a dinner reservation and book two overnight rooms at the hotel, anticipating—correctly, as it turned out—that it could take a long time for Kingston to go through the rigmarole of making a formal statement. Not only that, checking his phone, he learned that a storm front was moving in over the Home Counties with forecasts of heavy rains and flooding. Added to that was the probability that Kingston would be knackered and surely starving after such a harrowing day and sleepless night. Kingston had needed no persuasion and was grateful for Andrew’s thoughtful foresight and resourcefulness.
Kingston was tired. After a pint of bitters on arrival, a shared bottle of Pommard at dinner, and now the cognac, he could hardly keep his eyes open. All he could think about now was going upstairs, flopping down on the bed, closing his leaden eyes, and getting an uninterrupted night’s sleep.
During the evening he’d given Andrew a blow-by-blow accounting of the events of the last eighteen hours. Fully expecting Andrew to lapse into his familiar I-told-you-so attitude, Kingston was surprised and thankful that Andrew showed more concern for his return to safety, his well-being, and what appeared to be a genuinely solicitous interest in what had occurred at Greyshill. Was this the beginning of a new Andrew? he wondered.
Grace Williams would be spending the night in Amersham, too—only she’d be under lock and key. At the station, after cooling his heels for a half hour, he’d been informed by the detective sergeant interviewing him that no formal charges had yet been filed against him and all that was required was his recorded statement describing the events of the afternoon as he remembered them. An hour and a half later, when he’d completed his statement and been told that he could leave, he inquired about Grace Williams. He was told that a verbal complaint had already been filed against her by Allen Jay Hillier, and that, because the incident had involved the use of a firearm, it was considered a “serious arrestable offense” and she would be held for twenty-four hours, longer if authorized by the chief superintendent. The Land Rover would also be impounded for now.
Kingston had wondered why Hillier hadn’t included him in his charges, but after thinking on it he realized that Hillier would know that if he did, Kingston would countercharge with perhaps far more serious accusations: kidnapping with the use of deadly force, aggravated assault and false imprisonment, for starters. This Kingston planned to do, anyway, when the dust settled.
He had also called Emma to bring her up to date with the extraordinary events of the day. Contrary to expectations, she was remarkably sanguine, considering the gravity of the circumstances.
At last in bed, feeling the soporific effect of the beer, wine, and spirits, sleep didn’t come as readily as expected. This was one night when the adage “fatigue is the best pillow” was the wrong prescription. Since closing his eyes, Kingston could not get Grace Williams out of his restive mind. Back in the library at Greyshill, and in the car, she had pulled back the curtains wide enough to reveal events and names of people in her past that started to explain some of the uncertainty and questions that had been plaguing and eluding him and Emma all these weeks.
Her explanation in the car had supplied him with a critical missing piece of the puzzle. Knowing now that Hillier had converted the stolen money into diamonds, that Butler and Jennings were close, and that Butler had, in all probability, fled to the U.S.—all that lent much more credence to Kingston’s contention that Butler could have been the person who was instrumental in arranging for the acquisition of the Belmaris rose, that, somehow, he had ended up as an inmate in Alcatraz. But so much of what had happened was still unclear . . . He cracked open his eyes and glanced at the luminous dial of his watch on the nightstand: one thirty. Enough.
He turned over, hoping that sleeping on his other side might help. At least he wouldn’t have to listen to his heartbeat.
And yet a few seconds later, the questions started to trickle back. What charges would be pressed against Grace Williams? What were the legal proceedings from now on? How long could she be detained before being granted bail? For that matter, would she be granted bail? That would depend entirely on the charges filed against her, he supposed—and what could those be? For a moment, he pulled the top sheet over his eyes in a futile attempt to will himself to sleep. He thought he’d succeeded, felt himself drifting away, when one last question flashed across his numb and jumbled mind, perhaps the most frustrating question of all, where this whole business had begun: What had happened to Letty’s mother, Fiona McGuire?
He was no farther along with regard to that question than he’d been before the events at Greyshill.
He sighed, resigning himself to a long, sleepless night.
And, of course, a few minutes later, he was fast asleep.
32
THE NEXT FEW days were a waiting game for Kingston.
After they’d arrived back in London, Andrew had more or less disappeared. Either he’d decided to let Kingston stew for a few days or had gone off on another of his spur-of-the-moment trips—which was fine with Kingston; he welcomed the chance to be left alone for a while, to recuperate from his ordeal and gather his wits.
He had wasted no time calling Emma again. She’d read the newspapers and watched the TV news reports, glad that it wasn’t a lot worse, and
there was no indication of what Andrew had earlier described as her “dim view.”
“I want a complete report, Lawrence,” she’d said, “a full confession.”
And for the next half hour Kingston had obliged.
Only after a twenty-minute question-and-answer period did she seem satisfied, expressing uncharacteristic sympathy for the ordeal that he’d suffered and inquiring about his still noticeably wounded cheek. He thanked her and quickly changed the subject by asking for her thoughts on what the immediate future might hold in store for Grace—the arrest process, the legal implications, what kind of charges she could be facing, how serious they could be, and how long she would likely remain in custody. Emma spoke briefly about the arrest procedure and bail, but as for the rest of his questions, she emphasized that she was a policewoman, “not Rumpole of the Bailey.” It was the first time Kingston had cracked a smile in days.
The conversation was coming to a close when she brought up Letty’s name and something she thought worth mentioning.
“How is she doing?” he asked.
“Very well. She always asks about you.”
“Why don’t I come with you on your next visit?”
“She’d really like that.” Emma paused for a moment. “Last week she said something I found curious. It’s straw grasping, but it could connect Fiona to Beechwood.”
“Really?”
“It started with our talking about flowers and my mentioning our visit to the garden at Beechwood and how lovely it was. It must have stirred something in her subconscious, because she said she’d once had a foggy recollection of having visited a beautiful garden with her mum and a man when she was very little. I asked if she could remember anything special about it. And there was. She recalled a lake with flowers floating on it and a bridge crossing it. A bright red bridge.”
“That is unusual. But it couldn’t have been Beechwood. It only has what one would call a pond and no red bridge.”
“I know. But to a four-year-old, a pond could resemble a lake.”
“Good point.”
“Didn’t Grace Williams say that Jennings once owned a house in the Chalfonts? Maybe that had a pond.”
“It never existed. Jennings’s house in the Chalfonts, his money, investments, owning a successful business—it was all fiction cooked up by Grace, for our benefit.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” She paused. “In any case, I would have thought red an unusual color for Jennings’s kind of garden.”
“Not really. Nikko bridges—an ancient design from Japan, many of which are sacred—are almost exclusively painted vermillion. They’re not exactly two-a-penny in the UK, but I’ve seen a few. The loveliest I know is in the garden at Heale House in Wiltshire. It spans the river Avon, leading to a Japanese teahouse.”
“Understandable why it could have been rooted in Letty’s subconscious,” Emma said.
“Colors, smells, and sounds—it’s said they evoke the most powerful memories. But in her case, maybe we’ll never know how.”
Soon after that, the conversation ended with promises to meet again when Emma returned to London.
Both days since returning he’d left the flat at seven thirty and walked to Martin the newsagent on Sloane Avenue, three minutes away, to check the Daily Mail’s front page, to see if Grace’s letter had reached the reporter yet. Still nothing.
His trip the next morning proved fruitless, as did the day following.
On the fifth day he began to get worried. It had now been almost a week since the incident. What had happened to Grace’s letter? Had it been lost in the mail? Had it been received but been discarded as not credible? Had Hillier somehow managed to squash it? Had it even been mailed?
Kingston frowned. There was one way to find out. He picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Sophie. It’s Dr. Kingston. Lawrence Kingston.”
“Oh.” She sounded surprised and, to his ears, a bit contrite. “Dr. Kingston, I apologize. I should have called you. But these have been difficult days. I’m sure you understand.”
“They have, indeed.” Much more difficult for me, he wanted to say. “You’re holding up, though?”
“Yes, I am. I—I shouldn’t have got you mixed up with this in the first place. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize; you did the right thing. It might have turned out a lot worse for your mother if I hadn’t.”
“That’s true, I’m sure.”
“Have you spoken with her?”
“Yes. I went to see her yesterday.”
“Good. How was she?”
“Surprisingly normal, actually. Not at all what I expected. She said that if I talked with you, to thank you again for everything you did, for saving her life. I’m not quite sure what she meant by that, though.”
“Let’s just say that trying to leave Hillier’s place got a bit dicey. Much more than the papers would have you believe. We got lucky. Did she say how long they plan to keep her? What the charges are?”
“They first told her that one charge was for possessing a firearm with intent to cause violence. Another had something to do with trespassing, using threatening behavior, et cetera. I looked them up. They’re both serious.”
“You said ‘they first told her.’”
“Those could change. Apparently there’s a lot more to this whole thing than her waving a gun around threatening this man. I asked what she meant and all she said was that it was something to do with her and Hillier’s past. She also said she came awfully close to pulling the trigger. ‘A despicable murderous swine’ was how she described him. I asked her if she meant that in the literal sense, and she said, ‘Yes, you’ll find out all about it soon enough.’ I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, either.”
“I think I do,” Kingston replied. “Sophie, one of the reasons I’m calling concerns a letter. Did your mother leave a letter with you to post?”
“She did.”
“And did you send it?”
“Yes, of course. Why? Do you know what was in it?”
“I have a pretty good idea,” he said. He told her what Grace had told him and Hillier at Greyshill, and said he expected the Daily Mail story to break any day now.
Sophie sighed. “I wish she had talked to me about all this. I had a feeling all along that whatever she’d been mixed up with back then was some kind of criminal activity that she was ashamed of, and rather than tell me face-to-face, she preferred that I found out secondhand—when it all finally came out in the papers.”
“I imagine that it was simply too painful for her to have to explain and justify it to you, her daughter.”
“I suppose,” Sophie replied.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think she went there to kill Hillier, Sophie. My theory—and it’s just a theory—is that if what she knew about his past were to be made public, it would mean the end for him, utter ruin. That would give her much more satisfaction.”
“I was really hoping you’d know more about this awful mess than what’s been reported. I just hope to God she didn’t commit some dreadful crime years ago and that that was why she left the country.”
“I can’t say, for sure, but I don’t think that’s the case.”
“Typical of her, though—I’ll find out after everyone else.”
“Did your mother say if there’s a likelihood of bail?”
“Not really. I asked if there was a chance she could be released anytime soon, and she said they were still waiting on that decision. Like the charges, everything, seemed to be in limbo. She did tell me that they’d taken a statement from Hillier, but, naturally, she wasn’t privy to his version of what took place.”
The call ended with Sophie promising to call back after she next spoke with her mother. She thanked Kingston for believing her when nobody else did and, in her words, “probably saving my mom from a far worse fate.”
Kingston hung up hoping she was right. And wondering, still, what would happen w
ith Grace’s letter.
The next morning, he found out.
33
The Daily Mail headline:
Allen Jay Hillier, Mastermind of the Notorious
Great Highway Robbery?
Fifty-six years later, Hillier’s lover reveals all:
The 1957 crime, murder, and corruption
By Nicholas Cooper
THE NEWSPAPERS HAD been flying off the rack at Martin: Kingston got one of the last copies. He took it back to his flat where, timed perfectly, the kettle had just finished boiling for tea. At his usual breakfast—two poached eggs and toast with marmalade—he pored over the story.
Ten minutes later, he’d finished the article, mildly disappointed. Cooper had done a workmanlike job, but he’d focused only on the incident at Greyshill. It had all been described in considerably more detail than in previous reports, but he had been hoping Cooper would have got Grace to open up, would have probed beneath the surface to reveal her state of mind and the circumstances that led her to such an extreme decision.
There was no mention of Grace’s letter, either, which disappointed him even more.
He was about to put the paper aside when he noticed a notation at the foot of the article: Today’s report was the first of several, and the story would be serialized over the coming days. That explained everything. Undoubtedly there would be more about Hillier’s crimes in future stories. Kingston realized, however, that he couldn’t necessarily count on or wait for Cooper to reveal the things he needed to know. It was imperative that he talk to Grace himself. He should have done it days ago.
“You’re losing it,” he muttered to himself as he went to the living room and picked up the phone.
Directory Inquiries transferred his call to Amersham police station, and he spoke to an obliging Sergeant Evans, who was curt but informative. Yes, Grace Williams was still in custody. No, regulations did not permit her directly receiving incoming calls. Yes, she would be informed of Kingston’s call. Yes, there was every reason to believe Ms. Williams would be able to call back within a reasonable span of time.
6.The Alcatraz Rose Page 21