Rules of Murder

by Julianna Deering

  “We’ve been turning our investigation along these lines for a while now, Mr. Farthering, though you might have informed us of your suspicions before today.” The annoyance in Birdsong’s voice was palpable. “No need to make our work any more difficult than it already is, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Terribly sorry, Inspector, but I hated to trouble you until I had a bit more to go on.”

  “That’s as may be, Farthering, but do keep us in mind in the future. Perhaps we can be of some small assistance, and we’d be ever so grateful.”

  “Now, no need for spite, Inspector. I promise I shall mend my ways and lead a blameless life hereafter.”

  Birdsong made a small coughing noise that Drew could not help interpreting as an indication of disbelief. Nevertheless, the chief inspector continued, “I’d like you to come up to the station here in Winchester, if you wouldn’t mind, sir.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t like to say over the telephone, sir. I’ll be happy to explain it all once you’re here.”

  Drew offered Rushford no explanation, and he didn’t tell Madeline or Nick where he was going. Denny had to know, but he was the only one. Before long, Drew found himself seated in a chair in a drab little interview room in the Winchester police station. On the table between him and the chief inspector lay a file folder. It was bursting with papers.

  “Sorry to trouble you like this, Mr. Farthering,” Birdsong said, “but something has come up.”

  “Yes?”

  “It seems that some bearer bonds have been sold to the Chandlers Ford Merchants Bank and Trust.”

  “I expect that happens a great deal more than most people realize,” Drew replied.

  His grave expression went unappreciated.

  “I take it you’ll find this all considerably less amusing, sir, when you hear that those bonds properly belong to Farlinford Processing.”

  Drew was considerably less amused. “Chandlers Ford, did you say?”

  “I thought, as a director of the company who is not currently under suspicion, you might want to accompany me to the Merchants Bank and Trust down there to see what we can make of the incident.”

  “I’d certainly like to go along,” Drew said, “and I won’t even take undue note of the tone you used in saying not currently under suspicion.”

  Birdsong eyed him keenly. “And I’ll do all the questioning, if you please.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know of any other valuables gone missing, sir?”

  Drew leaned forward in his chair. “What kind of valuables?”

  “Bonds? Stocks? Anything that might be sold for ready cash?”

  “Nothing of which I am aware, Inspector. Has something turned up?”

  “According to Mr. Platt of your accounting department, it seems a number of negotiable instruments normally kept in the company vault are no longer there.”

  Birdsong shuffled through the papers in the file and finally pushed one toward Drew. It was a list of what had gone missing and, even more depressing, the values of those items.

  “And the delightful tidings keep rolling in.” Drew sighed. “Anything else I ought to know?”

  “Not so far. I’m only telling you this so you can keep your eyes open. Oh, and I’ve done some research into your findings in Mr. McCutcheon’s flat and laboratory.”

  “Yes?”

  “That law book was not in that drawer when our men searched it, and the bottom drawer of that filing cabinet was full when they investigated the accident.”

  “They’re sure? Couldn’t have just been a muddle in the investigation?”

  Birdsong scowled. “They’re sure.”

  “What about the picture of Marielle?”

  “The sergeant admits they could have missed that behind the cabinet there. They were investigating an accident at the time, not a murder. They missed the deuced passageway, that’s for certain.”

  “Hardly something one would expect to find,” Drew conceded. “So what is your theory now, Inspector? Obviously we’re well past the lovers’ quarrel idea.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “But if it is someone after whatever he can steal from Farlinford, why the bit about Marielle, if that’s her name? And whyever would he kill Constance?”

  Birdsong returned the list of missing items to the folder, his thin lips twitching beneath his heavy mustache. “You may not have all the answers, Detective Farthering, but you do ask some very good questions.”

  It was a short drive southwest of Winchester to Chandlers Ford. The Merchants Bank and Trust was a small but reputable organization long established in a dour Georgian building on Winchester Road just down from the train station. Drew had never heard of them. And though it was not far from Farthering St. John, he had not often visited Chandlers Ford.

  Birdsong showed the woman at the front desk his identification, and he and Drew were immediately shown into the manager’s office. There they were greeted by a middle-aged man whose portly physique and florid face spoke to his keen enjoyment of good food and fine wine.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen, I am Joseph Grambs, the manager. You must be Chief Inspector Birdsong.” Birdsong shook his hand, and then Grambs extended his hand to Drew. “And you are . . . ?”

  “I’m Drew Farthering. I am one of the directors of Farlinford Processing. My stepfather is Mason Parker, the managing partner.”

  “I see. Well, I hope you can appreciate our position in this matter, Mr. Farthering. The papers were in order, if you’d care to review them. And as you say, Mr. Parker is the managing partner of your company.”

  “Yes, he is, Mr. Grambs,” Drew said with a smile. “Might we sit?”

  “Oh, yes, certainly.”

  Drew and Birdsong sat in the pair of leather chairs that faced Mr. Grambs’s imposing mahogany desk.

  “Now, Mr. Grambs,” Birdsong began, “if you don’t mind, I’d like to hear exactly what happened.”

  After taking his seat behind the desk, Grambs began, “Well, as I told your man on the telephone, it was the end of last month. Our Mr. Rodale received a call from someone claiming to be a Mr. Lincoln at Farlinford Processing. He said he wanted to sell some bearer bonds the company had held for some while now, and asked if we could accommodate him. As it was rather a large amount, Mr. Rodale came and spoke to me about it. I told him that so long as they had the proper authorization from the directors of the company, we would be happy to make the transaction. That afternoon a messenger arrived with the bonds and a declaration from the board of directors approving the sale.”

  “And you’re contacting us now because . . . ?”

  “Well, after I heard about the goings-on at Farlinford, I thought I’d better make certain I didn’t have possession of stolen goods.”

  Birdsong narrowed his eyes. “May I see the declaration?”

  “Certainly.”

  Grambs took an official-looking document from a file and pushed it across the desk. “You’ll see it’s on Farlinford’s stationery and signed by two directors as required. Very aboveboard.”

  Birdsong inspected the paper and then handed it over to Drew. It was indeed on company stationery, signed by Edwin M. Rushford and David Lincoln.

  “Do you know if those signatures are genuine?” the chief inspector asked Drew.

  “I really couldn’t say. Did you happen to see the messenger, Mr. Grambs?”

  “No. Mr. Rodale dealt with him.”

  “And Mr. Rodale was the only one to speak to the man on the telephone?”

  “He was.”

  “Is it possible to have your Mr. Rodale come in here for a moment?”

  “Of course.” Grambs stood and walked over to the door of his office. Poking his head through the doorway, he said to the woman at the front desk, “Miss Stapleton . . .”

  “Yes, Mr. Grambs?”

  “If you would, please ask Mr. Rodale to come to my office.”

  “Right away, sir.”

&nbs
p; A few moments later, Mr. Rodale stepped into Grambs’s office, shielded behind the sheaf of files and loose papers he carried in both arms. “You wished to see me, sir?”

  Grambs introduced Drew and the chief inspector. “They’d like to ask you about the Farlinford matter.”

  “Certainly, sir.” He juggled his papers to allow himself the opportunity to push his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose. “How may I help?”

  “Tell us what you remember,” Birdsong said, and Rodale dutifully repeated the story Grambs had already related.

  “The Mr. Lincoln on the telephone,” Drew said, “what sort of voice did he have?”

  Rodale thought for a moment. “Nothing unusual, I suppose. Rather an ordinary voice.”

  “Young or old?”

  “Sort of middling, I’d have to say. Or perhaps a bit more on the young side, but not much.”

  Birdsong made a note in his book.

  “And the messenger?” Drew asked.

  “Young chap. Looked barely out of school.”

  “What sort of voice did he have?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think he was the same one on the phone. Working class, going by the way he spoke. And he didn’t say much, anyway. Just a hasty ‘Package for you, sir’ and ‘Sign here, please,’ and he was off.”

  “You didn’t pay for the bonds in cash, did you?” Birdsong asked.

  “I should say not. We gave the boy a check made out to Farlinford Processing.”

  “Has that check been deposited?”

  “It has,” Mr. Rodale said. “It was cashed at the bank in Otterbourne that same day.”

  “Another bank with which Farlinford has never had dealings,” Drew said, and Birdsong nodded.

  “The messenger, was he from a service?” Drew asked Rodale.

  “Not that I could tell. He didn’t have a uniform or anything of the sort. I thought he’d been sent over from your firm.”

  Drew sighed.

  The chief inspector removed some photographs from his pocket and spread them out on the manager’s desk for Rodale to see—pictures of Lincoln, Mason, Rushford, Peterson the gardener, and even Nick, along with three or four others Drew did not know. “Do you recognize any of these men, Mr. Rodale?” Birdsong asked.

  Rodale studied them for a minute or two, then slid one of the photographs back toward the chief inspector. “I’ve seen that man. I know I have.”

  Drew leaned forward in his chair. “Really? Where?”

  “Give me a moment, Mr. Farthering. I’ll think of it.”

  Drew glanced at Birdsong, but instead of the excitement he expected to see on the chief inspector’s face, there was only mild disgust.

  “That’s Detective Inspector Cook from our fraud division. We put his picture in there so as not to unduly influence any of our witnesses.”

  Drew sighed once more.

  “Cook, Cook,” Rodale mused, tapping his chin, and then he beamed at them. “Ah, yes! He won the cycling race they held at the fair in Highbridge last summer. Bested their local chappie by a good fifteen seconds. Grand day, that was.”

  Chief Inspector Birdsong stood and thanked the two men for their time, and then Drew followed him back onto Winchester Road.

  “A slippery fellow, this Lincoln,” Drew said after he and the inspector had driven toward Winchester for some minutes in near silence.

  “We’ll have him,” Birdsong grumbled, grinding the gears as he shifted into third. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Farthering.”

  “Where do you think he’s got to just now?”

  Birdsong frowned, considering. “If he was smart, he’d be long gone by now. Grambs said they bought those bonds at the end of last month.”

  “But we know he was in Winchester no longer ago than Friday, when he broke into the office.”

  “True enough.”

  “Why do you suppose he hasn’t made good his escape to South America or China or some such?”

  “Obviously he was after something at Farlinford. Question is, did he find what he was looking for?”

  Drew nodded. “And if he didn’t, where is he now, and will he be coming back for it?”

  Sixteen

  In his own car now and heading back to Farthering Place, Drew considered the question of where Lincoln might be secreting himself since his supposed death. Searches at Farthering Place had turned up nothing. Where else might he be? Somewhere close enough for him to prowl about the place at night, skulking in the wood or climbing trellises into upstairs windows. Drew hadn’t actually checked the trellises around the house, but he supposed there would be broken tendrils and scuffed or damaged bits of wood or brick if someone had climbed one.

  On a whim he drove past the drive up to Farthering and headed into the village instead. Of course, the lad he’d seen climbing down from the window at the inn couldn’t have been Lincoln, even if the man was a wizard at disguising himself. Still, if a boy could climb a trellis, so could a man. It couldn’t hurt to make inquiries. Any clue would be welcome, and perhaps all wasn’t as advertised at the Royal Elizabeth Inn.

  Mrs. Burrell started when she saw him at the back door of her inn.

  “Mr. Drew! What are you doing here? Wasn’t anyone at the front to see to you?”

  Drew removed his hat and stepped into her kitchen, into the simmering, tantalizing smells coming from a variety of bubbling pots on the enormous iron stove.

  “I didn’t go up front, actually. I came to see you, if you’ll forgive the intrusion.”

  She smiled a little uncertainly and pushed a limp strand of graying hair behind one ear. “I’ll be happy to help however I can, of course, but—”

  “I was just having a look in your garden, to be perfectly honest, and I was wondering if you could tell me if anyone’s been climbing down that trellis from that window there?”

  “I should say not,” she huffed. “That little rapscallion who helps round the inn climbed up it a few days ago, and didn’t I half tan him when I caught him at it.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Said there was a pound note caught up there and he went to bring it down. I won’t have him up there spoiling the ivy and tramping his mud back through the inn.”

  “And was there a pound note?”

  “Funny enough, there was. I checked to make sure there wasn’t nobody missing of it, then I couldn’t do nothing but let the little rascal keep it. Heaven knows what he’ll be wasting it on.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, Friday, I suppose it was. He’d been warned not to get into mischief, not if he wanted to keep his job. Mind you, I can find another little imp to do the fetching and such round here if he doesn’t behave, and I told him as much.”

  “Quite right,” Drew agreed. “Is, um . . . is he about at the moment?”

  “I sent him to gather up the breakfast things from any of the rooms as ordered up. Shouldn’t take a minute, but he takes his precious time, he does. Those should have been down long ago.”

  “Mind if I pop up just for a bit and talk to him?”

  The woman smiled, splitting her face into two crinkled halves. “’Course I don’t mind. He’ll listen to you, I don’t doubt. Remind him of where his heathen ways will end him up. Tell him a layabout never comes to any good.”

  “Yes, well, I’ll have a talk with him. Don’t you worry, Mrs. Burrell. What’s the boy’s name?”

  “May as well be Mischief Maker, if you ask me, but it’s Eddie. Eddie Jenkins.”

  “One of the Jenkinses from over by the mill pond?”

  “The very same, sir.”

  “Right. Thank you.”

  “You send him down with those dishes too when you’re done, sir. He’ll be all day about it otherwise.”

  “Right away.”

  Drew hurried up the stairs and found the boy tottering down the hallway with a trayful of dirty breakfast ware and three pairs of boots to be blacked. It was a heavy load for a ten-year-old.

  “Well, you must be Eddie,”
Drew said, smiling, and the boy stopped and nodded, big dark eyes uncertain under a mass of lank black hair.

  “I’m Drew Farthering and—”

  “I know who you are. You come from up at Farthering Place.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I ain’t done nothing.”

  “Of course not,” Drew said as he took the tray from him. “I just thought you might be able to help me with something.”

  “You oughtn’t do that. It’s my job.”

  “That’s all right, Eddie. I don’t mind helping you a bit, too.”

  “Did that man and lady really get killed at your house?”

  “I’m afraid they did.”

  The boy dropped his eyes and fussed with the lace on one of the boots he still had slung over his shoulder. “My mum’s dead, too.”

  “It’s a tough go, isn’t it?” Drew set the tray on the floor and gestured toward the two Morris chairs that graced the little alcove in the hallway. “How about we sit right here and talk a bit?”

  The boy shook his head. “I ain’t allowed. I might get the chairs dirty.”

  “Come on now,” Drew urged. “If you do, I’ll make it all right with Mrs. Burrell. Fair enough?”

  Still looking as if he were about to be scolded, the boy sat down. Drew joined him.

  “Now, this is better, isn’t it?”

  The boy nodded, obviously certain that it wasn’t.

  “Now, Eddie, I understand you got in a bit of a jam with Mrs. Burrell awhile back. What was that about?”

  “Didn’t mean nothing by it. There was a pound note up in the ivy in back of the inn, and I went to fetch it down.”

  “A pound? How do you suppose it got up there?”

  “Dunno. I thought maybe the wind got it. One of the guests, the gentleman with the white mustache, he was looking up at it, figuring what it was, and said I might as well have it if I wanted to go up. That was all. I didn’t steal it, and I didn’t break nothing.”

  “I believe you. Do you know the name of the gentleman with the white mustache?”

  The boy shook his head. “But he’s in number twenty-two, ’long with the other gentleman that don’t come out.”