by Ann Granger
Meredith felt a surge of relief. She wasn’t badly hurt.
Fran looked up and saw them. She gave them a wan travesty of her smile and said, ‘Ah, visitors! Sorry to break into your evening! Hope I didn’t ruin anything promising.’
‘You didn’t!’ Markby said with what Meredith felt was unnecessary frankness. He crossed to bend over her and Meredith looked curiously round the room.
The wattage in the central light bulb was low so the whole scene was lit by an orange murk. The room represented a far cry from anything Fran must be used to. In fact she’d come to The Crossed Keys from the luxury of Klosters and it must be hard to think of a more extreme swing of the pendulum. Room twenty was adequate but no more. It badly needed decorating. The wallpaper was faded and the furniture looked like the sort of thing sold after the war against austerity furniture dockets. On a dressing table lay a document case, open and with papers spilling out higgledy-piggledy. There was quite a hideous picture on the wall showing a row of children asleep all in one bed, each face more grotesque than the one next to it, and by Meredith’s foot lay an ugly glass vase. Automatically she stooped to pick it up.
Markby’s voice prevented her, ordering sharply, ‘Leave it!’
She flushed and straightened up. ‘Sorry.’ Stupid – obviously it was the weapon.
‘Do you feel you can tell me about it, Frances?’ he was asking.
Pringle interrupted to say crossly, ‘She’s had a nasty biff on the head and can do without being badgered. Can’t it wait until morning?’
‘Don’t fuss, Jack. I’m all right!’ said Fran. Her unwitting echo of the words of her cousin jolted Meredith unpleasantly. Pringle, too, looked taken aback and then upset.
Markby had drawn up a chair. ‘Off you go, then, Fran.’
‘Well, as I didn’t have anyone to dine with – ’ Fran said in a way which struck Meredith as having some meaning which was not immediately apparent to her – ‘I thought I’d eat here, downstairs. I wasn’t very hungry anyway because Charlotte cooked such a huge lunch. I went down – ’
‘Lock the door?’
‘Yes – yes, I did. Not that I’ve got any jewellery or anything with me. I went down and started to eat but the food wasn’t very good and I wasn’t very hungry as I said, so I changed my mind in the middle of the meal, told them to take it away and came back up here.’
‘Up which flight of stairs?’
‘The main ones. They’re the nearest to the dining-room entrance. I was thinking about this and that – not paying much attention to anything. The lighting is pretty poor outside in the corridor. I didn’t notice anything until I actually put my hand on the door handle. Then the door swung open. I thought, that’s odd – and just walked in a step, putting my hand out for the light switch – and he leapt at me from nowhere. Well, obviously from somewhere – he must have flattened himself against the wall when he heard me coming. He hit me with something hard. I fell flat on the carpet and he was away – gone. I didn’t see his face. I can’t tell you a thing about him. And I’m not hurt, despite this great big lump of wadding Jack’s stuck on my head. I’m just surprised and extremely angry!’
‘I see.’ Markby stood up. ‘Probably a petty thief. Have you had a chance to check and see if anything is missing?’
‘I haven’t got anything. I had my handbag with all my money and credit cards with me downstairs. All I had up here were my overnight things and my document case with all the papers relating to Harry’s estate. Over there – ’ Fran turned too quickly and grimaced.
‘Steady!’ warned Pringle, putting a hand on her shoulder.
‘On the dressing table.’ Fran pointed. ‘You can see he was going through that. But there was nothing in there which could possibly interest a thief. No valuables. Just Harry’s papers and all my correspondence which in the case of a death, you will know, is considerable.’
Markby turned towards Pearce. ‘Take charge of that vase. Mind how you pick it up, it may have fingerprints – but they all know to wear gloves these days. Still, might be lucky. But he was probably just some yobbo in the public bar who saw Miss Needham-Burrell go into dinner and thought it might be a chance.’
‘How would he know this was my room?’ Fran asked pertinently.
‘True. He may have tried other doors and only got this one open.’ Markby walked over to the door. It brought him to stand by Meredith but he took no notice of her. She realised wryly that, as at The Bunch of Grapes when he was dealing with Tom, she had become invisible. That put her in her place, she thought. Flattering herself he was carrying a burning torch for her. Well, he wasn’t. His work, that was his first love. And a load of plants his second. No wonder his wife had divorced him.
Markby was studying the door and surround. ‘Old,’ he said to Pearce. ‘Warped. The door doesn’t fit the frame, must be a half-inch gap at some points. Even if it were locked, the spring-bolt would scarcely connect with the mortise on the frame meant to receive it. One good push would break it open. It wouldn’t even be a noisy break-in. Just a snap of wood. In this old building, wood’s creaking and crackling all the time. Look here, you can see where the wood’s splintered on the frame round the mortise.’
‘I had a word with the manager before you came, sir,’ Pearce said. ‘It seems there was no one on duty in reception. They don’t bother in the evening. It’s a holiday anyway and they couldn’t have got a receptionist in to work. Anyone could walk in off the street and nip up those back stairs by the reception desk. He probably ran out the same way. No one in the public bar would notice him. No one in the dining room would. The only risk he ran of being seen was if someone was actually coming out of the dining room into the lobby. Not many people staying here tonight and I shouldn’t think anyone saw him.’
‘You’ll have to ask them all, anyway. That constable is stopping any diners leaving, I hope?’
‘Yes, sir. And he’s asking them all if they saw anything unusual. But it’s unlikely they did.’
Meredith crossed the floor towards Fran. ‘Would you like to come back to Rose Cottage, Fran? There’s a spare room and I don’t like to think of you staying on here, not after this.’
Fran smiled. ‘I’m okay, truly. Only my dignity upset, nothing worse! Thanks for the offer but I’ll stay on in town – it’s easier to get hold of people.’
Meredith went back to Markby. He looked slightly surprised as she came up. She repressed an urge to say snappily, ‘Yes, it’s me!’ Instead she said, ‘I’d like her to come back with me, but she won’t. You talk to her.’
‘If she wants to stay, she will,’ he said simply. ‘We’ll have to move her to another room anyway, one with a lock which isn’t broken. We’ll seal this one up until tomorrow when we can get a good look at it by daylight.’ He hesitated. ‘I have to talk to the manager and get a look at the stairs. Do you mind very much if Pearce walks you down to the taxi-rank?’
‘I can get a cab home, certainly – and I don’t need Pearce. You want him here really, obviously.’
‘I’ll call you – ’ he said a little awkwardly.
‘I’ll drive in tomorrow, anyway, to see how Fran is.’
‘Fine – goodnight, then . . .’
She took her farewell of Fran and Pringle, promised to come in the next day, and set off down to the taxi-rank. As she passed the manager in the lobby he was saying to the uniformed constable, ‘But we’ve never had an incident like it! Never! We’re not a big hotel. We don’t have the sort of people staying here who attract thieves!’
Sitting in the back of the taxi on the starlit drive back to Pook’s Common, Meredith turned the incident over in her mind. What if the intruder had not just been an opportunist petty thief? What if he had waited his opportunity and made for Fran’s document case looking for – for what? A copy of the will? Why? Postmortem report? The inquest was due to be held on Friday. All he had to do was attend, sit at the back and listen. What then?
She wriggled on the seat and glanced out of
the window at the night-veiled fields and hedges. There was something else, too, which niggled at her mind. What was it? It had almost come to the surface when she walked into the hotel room, but concerned to see how badly hurt Fran was, it had been pushed back down again. It was – Meredith tried to visualise the scene. Fran sitting, Pringle stooping – ’
‘Dr Pringle!’ she said aloud, suddenly.
‘What’s that?’ asked the taxi-driver.
‘Sorry, thinking aloud.’
‘Turn off down here somewhere, isn’t it?’
‘What? Oh yes, by the garage. Just a bit further – here!’
They bumped down the lane to Rose Cottage. She got out and paid him.
‘Bit lonely, isn’t it?’ asked the driver, looking about them at the darkened windows of the other cottages and sounding concerned.
‘Yes, it is a bit.’
‘You go on indoors, Miss. I’ll wait until I see you put the lights on.’
‘Thank you.’
She went in, switched on the hall light and waved to the driver from the open doorway. He turned his car as Markby had done, by driving on a little way and using the verge beyond the Haynes’ cottage. That would be something which would further annoy Geoffrey when the Haynes moved in permanently. The taxi drove past with a toot of its horn. Meredith hurried into the living room and snatched up the Bamford Gazette.
Where was that picture of Harriet? Yes – no mistake now. Half his face hidden but the burly build was recognisable and the visible features clear enough. Jack Pringle. And hadn’t he said something in the Market Square about once being a hunt follower? Dr Pringle. Dr Pringle?
Ten
When Markby returned to The Crossed Keys on Thursday morning, he found the manager in furious argument with the scarlet-taloned receptionist.
‘All I’m asking, Lisa, is for a little cooperation!’ the manager was saying in an aggrieved voice.
‘I’m not staying on at this desk late at night, Mr Perkins, it’s not safe! I can’t stop thieves and muggers getting upstairs. I’d only get hit over the head myself like the woman in number twenty.’
‘How about another, say, oh – ’ the manager wrestled with his instinct for economy and immediate necessity – ‘a pound an hour extra for work after seven in the evening. Say you came in from seven to ten, that’s three pounds a night on top of your regular wage, Lisa! Fifteen pounds a week more – just think.’ He thought himself and added hurriedly – ‘just for a limited period, until the end of January.’
‘My boyfriend,’ said Lisa crushingly, ‘wouldn’t hear of my doing it. And that’s that.’
‘Good morning, Chief Inspector!’ Mr Perkins had spotted Markby. He hurried forward. ‘The lady is much better this morning. Dr Pringle has been to see her already. She’s now in number twenty-eight at the end of the corridor. You haven’t, I suppose,’ he looked mournfully at Markby, ‘heard anything – found out who he was?’
‘Afraid not yet.’
‘It’s not fair, you know,’ said the manager fretfully. ‘We’ve never had anything like it before but no one remembers that! All they remember is this one episode. Bamford Gazette will stick it on the front page. Business representatives who’ve stayed over here for years on regular visits will take their trade to The Royal Oak, just like that, for no other reason.’
Markby left him lamenting and pleading with Lisa and made his way along the gloomy, creaking corridor to room twenty-eight. He tapped at the door.
‘Come in!’ invited a mellifluous voice.
‘Good morning!’ he said opening the door and adding immediately to himself, ‘Oh, Lord!’
Fran Needham-Burrell was sitting up in bed in what looked to him like a turquoise silk karate suit. The large sticky plaster on her forehead had been replaced by a slightly smaller one – witness to Dr Pringle’s ministrations earlier – and she was perfectly made up and coiffed. Her corn-gold hair spun a radiant halo round her head and some kind of perfume, he was sure very expensive, permeated the room. The room itself was similar to number twenty but possibly slightly more ramshackle. She looked completely out of place in it, like a goddess descended among unsuspecting peasants in some ancient Greek legend.
‘Oh, good!’ she said, holding out both hands towards him. ‘Company! I’m so bored. Jack Pringle says I’ve got to stay in bed all day. Such a lot of nonsense. I wouldn’t have agreed, but Charlotte has got to hear of this and she rang up and suggested I go and stay with her and Bungy. It’s kind and I love them both dearly, but I love my independence more so I’ve settled for taking Jack’s advice and staying in this very uncomfortable bed.’ She paused. ‘You should try it,’ she added with the very faintest flicker of eyelashes.
‘Glad to see you’re feeling better,’ Markby said politely, feeling like a prize lemon, ‘I’ve come to see whether you’ve remembered anything about your assailant or found out if anything is missing.’ To his own ears his voice sounded like that of a more old-fashioned type of High Court judge.
‘Sit down!’ she patted the coverlet. ‘I’ll tell all.’
Markby somewhat ostentatiously drew up a chair. He wouldn’t have minded so much, but she was laughing at him for his pompous manner; he could see the merriment gurgling away in the depths of her green eyes.
‘I can’t actually tell you anything more about him, Alan. I’m very sorry. I’ve tried to remember. But it was so quick. He just was there, hit me and was gone.’
‘Was he tall – taller than you are? Heavily built?’
‘About the same height as me – I’m five-ten. Not particularly heavy in build, I think, but it’s difficult to say because of his overcoat.’
‘He was wearing an overcoat?’
She stared at him in unfeigned astonishment. ‘Point to you! Yes, I think he was! I did know something I hadn’t told you, didn’t I? I didn’t realise I knew it.’
‘People often don’t. Why do you think it was an overcoat and not say, a raincoat?’
‘Because, as I fell, my hand just brushed against it and it felt tweedy.’
‘Not many young men wear tweed overcoats, do they? They wear leather jackets, even in quite cold weather. It suggests he was older, don’t you think?’
She was nodding but reluctantly. ‘It did get quite a fashion to buy old overcoats at jumble sales once. Lots of kids I know of were wearing them, down to their ankles and sleeves all too long. A goddaughter of mine was going round in a coat which had belonged to her grandfather the last time I saw her, a sort of Sherlock Holmes affair with a cape on the shoulders.’
‘So he might have been a younger man, eccentrically garbed to follow some youthful fashion, you mean?’
‘He might – I don’t know.’ Fran folded her hands on her lap and wriggled back against the plumped-up pillows behind her. The silk karate suit gaped invitingly, just enough. ‘I did check my document case and nothing was missing. That’s not surprising – it was all to do with Harry’s estate and private correspondence. I’ve been writing to lots of people to tell them what’s happened.’
‘Have you?’ Markby frowned. ‘And these letters were in the case? They’d been disturbed?’
‘It was all disturbed.’
Markby was silent. Our intruder might have wanted to know if she had any suspicions about her cousin’s death, he was thinking. He might have wanted to know what she’d written to others – or if Harriet had written to her about something – something the police didn’t know about yet.
‘Penny for your thoughts,’ she said huskily.
‘Just idle speculation. Nothing missing, then?’
‘Not a sausage.’
‘To come back to this tweed coat – as you fell, did you happen to smell it?’
‘Smell it?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Yes – I was thinking that if it came from a jumble sale, it might have smelled a bit frowsty.’
She frowned, forgetting the patch on her forehead, said ‘Ouch!’ and put up one hand to the dressing. ‘Now
you mention it – it did have a funny smell. I can’t quite place it. A bit damp, perhaps . . . you know, as things smell when they’ve been in an old house.’
Jubilee Road . . . Markby found himself thinking. Pardy wore an old army greatcoat.
‘Okay, Fran – I won’t pester you any more about it. But if you think of anything – let me know.’
‘Sure.’ She pulled a wry grimace. ‘I messed up your romantic evening, didn’t I?’
‘No – quite honestly, you didn’t.’
‘Oh.’ The green eyes contemplated him. ‘Lovers’ spat?’
‘Not even that. Just a general bad-tempered sort of argument.’ He was surprised to hear himself tell her that much.
‘Sorry to hear it but that’s the way love goes, I’m told. It wasn’t about me, was it?’ Eyebrow flickered.
‘No – as a matter of fact, it was about Harriet, in a way.’
‘Harry? Don’t tell me you were one of Harry’s merry circle of admirers?’ Now Fran really was surprised and curious.
‘No, I wasn’t!’ Markby said crossly. ‘What I meant was, Meredith seems to have got Harriet on the brain.’
‘Harriet had that effect on people.’
‘What circle of admirers?’ he demanded suddenly.
She wriggled on the pillows again and the karate suit gaped a bit more. And, he thought, impervious to it now – she knows it and is doing it on purpose. He must be a pretty obvious target. She knew how to distract him with a twitch of her shoulders! And him a copper with how many years experience?
‘Stop doing that,’ he said sternly.
‘Spoilsport.’ She didn’t even try to deny it.
He had to laugh then. ‘Come on, Frances,’ he said, growing serious again. ‘If you do know of any of her boyfriends. . ..’
‘Lots, but not round here. Not current anyway. Well, I could name You-Know-Who down at the stables but you know about him!’
But he was a copper with years of experience, after all. ‘Not current ones, okay. So name me a past admirer who’s local and I might know of?’