‘You’re very welcome. And I’m sure Arabella would say you must be the man who comes to a second dinner.’
‘That would be nice, but it’s my turn next. We’ll have to make it soon, for I’m only here on odd days now. My drugs dossier is almost complete.’
‘And you’re going to leave me with Whetstone?’
‘Maxwell’s murder is his case.’
‘I know. I know.’
‘But Scotland Yard has a telephone number, if you really need to talk.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Now, before we hang up, do me a favour, Sam.’
‘What’s that?’ I laughed.
‘Does your intuition tell you anything about what you’ve absorbed. I’d be interested to know, but don’t force it. I’m not going back on what I said the other night.’
‘Good. Arabella’s called me Sam Sponge ever since.’
He laughed. ‘Well, does it?’ he repeated.
I thought for a minute, then answered, ‘I think I’ve got some more investigating to do yet.’
‘Rain check?’
‘Rain check.’
‘Don’t forget to keep Whetstone informed too.’
‘I won’t. When do you leave?’
‘At the weekend. Maybe before.’
‘I’ll be in touch — if only about dinner.’
‘Don’t forget, it’s my treat, or rather, Scotland Yard’s.’
‘As if I’d forget.’
It wasn’t until I had replaced the receiver that I realised what I had totally forgotten was to tell him anything about the ghostly white apparitions and Tara-Lee’s alleged experience at Ringstead Bay. I was about to ring back, then thought better of it. I didn’t want to appear a bigger idiot than I had already, with such improbable stories. Anyway, I reckoned it could wait until I had seen Mrs Olsen once more.
*
She was out when I called at her small, neat, thatched cottage that was straight out of Disney, Dorset style. I banged the knocker until I was even bluer in the face than the cold autumn air had already made me, and was about to leave down the rose-lined path, when I heard a shout from somewhere nearby. ‘Just gone out. Only missed her by a hair’s breadth, you have.’
I looked across the hedge into the immaculate little garden of the cottage next door. An elderly lady was creaking up from her knees, wielding a small trowel with which she had obviously been tending a flowerbed.
‘Oh, thanks. Which direction did she take? I could catch her up.’
‘Doubt it,’ she smiled. ‘She wasn’t walking. A lady picked her up in a car. Went off with the speed of light, they did.’
‘What did the lady look like?’ I said with some alarm.
‘Tallish. Good-looking woman, elegant, if you know what I mean. More your age than mine,’ she chuckled.
‘What was the car?’
‘How do I know? All look the same to me nowadays, they do. Now, when I was young, you could always tell an Austin from a Wolseley, and a...’
‘Was it white?’ I interrupted sharply.
‘Yes, I think so. Not big, mind you. Didn’t half go, though, down that way.’
She pointed to the right, but by that time, I was sprinting back to the Beetle, and praying its Porsche power, if not my driving, could find and overhaul the white Ford Escort XR3 of Mrs Lavinia Saunders, before it was too late.
*
Broadmayne is on the main A352 which runs, pleasantly enough, from Dorchester through to Wareham and then on to Poole and Bournemouth, a road pretty full of tourist traffic in summer, but on this brisk autumn morning, other than the odd lorry, it was not too crowded. As I accelerated away, I thanked the Lord I was not in Gus’s Ford Popular, which I could so easily have been, had the trouble with my Beetle been more extensive than the lead to the coil.
At first, every car on the road was any colour but the one I was after, but at the Warmwell junction with the A353 Weymouth road, I thought I spotted a flash of white ahead of a giant car transporter. I took a chance and followed it on the long stretch towards Wool, but it was past the Owermoigne turn off before I managed to get past that damned transporter, as, sod’s law, the opposite lane had filled with a procession of cars following its own transporter — an army one trundling a huge tank. And once I’d done so, there wasn’t a white car in sight.
I kept the speedometer at around eighty-five, and prayed I wouldn’t be spotted by another kind of white car — one with a red stripe and a blue lamp. By the time I had reached the Winfrith atomic establishment and there was still no sign of Lavinia’s car (if it was Lavinia’s car), I started to worry that I’d taken the wrong turning at the Warmwell junction, or Lavinia had spotted me in hot pursuit and had high tailed it down one of the side roads. I thought of turning back, but then realised too much time had passed, and that I would be unlikely to find her now, unless she had taken Mrs Olsen back to her own house. And if she had done the latter, it would be unlikely that she intended any harm to the old lady. So Mrs Olsen wouldn’t need rescuing, anyway. I pressed on.
By the time I had got to Wool, and had to slow to pass through the tiny town, I had more or less given up hope, and to salve my conscience, tried to play down the whole idea of Lavinia harming Mrs Olsen as just pure hysteria on my part. After all, I was only acting on the wildest of hunches, I told myself, and clutching at straws because no bloody bricks seemed to be available. Quite quickly I convinced myself I should turn around by the level crossing, and retrace my steps to the Warmwell junction, take the road to Osmington and Lavinia’s house, in the hope that she was back.
But it was as I approached the level crossing that I saw it. A white Ford Escort XR3 ahead of a queue of traffic stopped at the barrier to await a train. I swung to the left, pulled up at the back of the queue, got out and sprinted to the Escort. Just as I came up to the driver’s door, the figure at the wheel turned round, no doubt at the sound of my pounding feet, and I looked into Lavinia’s startled eyes. She lowered the window.
‘Why, Peter, what a surprise! What are you doing here?’
I shot a glance across the car to the passenger seat. There was dear old Mrs Olsen safely seat-belted and rosy with health, though somewhat amazed to see me. She waved a trembly hand.
‘Mr Marklin, wasn’t it?’ she remarked, and I could do nothing but nod like an idiot as I heard a train approaching in the distance.
‘You haven’t answered me yet, Peter? You’re such a funny man. First you run away from me. Now you run to me.’ I could see Lavinia was now starting to enjoy my discomfort.
‘I — er, wanted a word with Mrs Olsen,’ was all I could think of to say. A flash of anger flitted across Lavinia’s face, to be replaced by a Cheshire cat’s smile.
‘I can guess what that word is, dear Peter. Mrs Olsen told me all about your questions yesterday, after you had run off like a jack rabbit.’
She turned to her companion. ‘We’ve laughed about it on the way this morning, haven’t we, Mrs Olsen? Mr Marklin’s funny fascination for the exact date of your first call on me.’
Mrs Olsen waved at me again and smiled. ‘We weren’t really laughing at you, Mr Marklin,’ she said kindly. ‘We were joking more about my terrible memory. These days I forget almost everything unless I jot it down on a scrap of paper.’
I smiled back. ‘So you still can’t remember the day you called?’
Mrs Olsen shook her head, and Lavinia jumped in and answered for her. ‘No, Peter, Mrs Olsen cannot remember when she called...’
Mrs Olsen chipped in, ‘I probably never will now.’
‘...and probably never will now,’ Lavinia repeated. ‘And anyway, I don’t see what possible significance the date of her call can have. I think you should take a rest, Peter. Your mind is getting overloaded with wild ideas.’ She pursed her lips slightly. ‘Could be bad for your health, you know.’
The train by now was lumbering and clanking past us, and conversation became virtually impossible. It gave me a little time
to ponder my next move. I obviously could not detain them any longer, as it was plain as a pikestaff that Mrs Olsen did not feel she had been abducted or was under any threat whatsoever. But I was still fascinated as to why the totally self-centred Lavinia had bothered to call on Mrs Olsen at all, let alone take her for a ride, especially as she had presumably given her any jumble she had the previous evening.
As the train pulled away, I caught Mrs Olsen’s eye. ‘Have a nice time where you’re going,’ I tried. It worked.
‘Bournemouth, Mr Marklin. I so rarely get to Bournemouth. It’s so kind of Mrs Saunders to drop by unexpectedly and ask if I would like to keep her company on her shopping trip, isn’t it?’
‘Very kind,’ I replied and looked hard at Lavinia.
‘I can be kinder than you think,’ Lavinia smiled. ‘Now can we go? The barrier is about to go up.’
‘Going all day?’ I asked as Lavinia restarted the Escort’s engine.
‘Be back this evening, Peter. Why don’t you drop by and check, and perhaps we can pick up where we left off last night?’
Mrs Olsen looked a trifle embarrassed, so I said quickly, ‘I’m helping Mr Saunders in his present difficulties.’
Mrs Olsen nodded. ‘That’s kind of you, Mr Marklin.’
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Lavinia smirked, as she put up her window, and with a little wave of the hand, drove across the railway tracks, and accelerated away towards Wareham. I stood watching the white car disappear, until a cacophony of horns reminded me my own car was now effectively blocking the eastward lane of the A352.
*
‘Look, Mr Marklin, I only agreed to see you now because you claimed on the phone you had uncovered new evidence that might have a material bearing on the Maxwell case.’ Digby Whetstone’s puffy hand pointed to a hard, unpuffy chair. I duly sat down on it. ‘Now, if I find out you have no such evidence, I’ll not only kick you out of this office so fast you won’t know what hit you, but also see you are never ever let in again. That understood?’
I didn’t see much point in nodding, so just waited until his bulky frame had sweated back into his creaking recliner. He folded his hands carefully on the hump of his waistcoat. ‘Now, Mr Marklin, let me partake of these fruits of your amateur investigations.’
I felt like tipping him, chair and all, out of the window, but reckoned it would hardly help my case, so I began, ‘I think you should interrogate Lavinia Saunders again — at some length.’
‘And why, pray, should we do that? The lady has enough problems, I would have thought, without our repeating a procedure we have already carried out,’ he then mimicked me, ‘at some length.’
‘Because I believe she’s afraid her alibi might come unstuck.’
‘That she was indoors all that night watching some television programme or other, as I recall.’
‘Sleuth,’ I said.
‘Ah yes, that’s right. That’s where I handed the interrogation over to one of my sergeants. He’s a great film buff. He should be on that programme, answering questions on old films. Anyway, I had him ask her about almost every foot of Sleuth to be certain she had actually seen it. And at the end, he was sure she had.’
‘She could have seen it before. It’s been on the box several times, in fact. She could have seen it more than once.’
‘Maybe. And maybe not.’ He creaked his chair upright. ‘Now, Mr Marklin, get to your point. What are you trying to prove about Mrs Saunders? That she killed Maxwell?’ He chuckled. ‘You’ll have a hard time of it. That murder bears all the signs of a male hand, in my judgement. I’ve told you that before. And what the hell would be her motive anyway?’
‘I didn’t say she was the murderer — or is it murderess? I just said I was pretty sure she was concerned that her alibi might be about to be blown.’
Whetstone looked at his watch. ‘Okay, I give you five minutes to explain yourself. If, by that time, you haven’t...’
I interrupted him by starting. I knew I would need every second to get Digger to see things my oh so conjectural way. A quarter of an hour later I finished. I was somewhat amazed I was still in his office. For a full minute Whetstone didn’t say a dicky-bird, then a smile slowly raised the tips of his undersized moustache. I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
‘Well, well, well, Mr Marklin. You have been a busy bee, haven’t you? I’m amazed at your tenacity, if nothing else. No, that’s unfair. To be honest, you have uncovered one or two little facts that we missed. Like the phone call to Paris, for instance. And the anonymous call Mrs Saunders claims she received about what her husband was up to. So well done on those points, but they are irrelevant to the actual murder, and all the rest is purely conjectural, I’m afraid. Not a shred of evidence or proof of any kind, especially connected with that other phone call Longhurst claims he received on the night of the killing. As you know, I doubt such a call was made, so as to your theory that someone imitated Lana-Lee to lure him to the beach — really, Mr Marklin, you should pull my other leg, it’s got bells on.’
‘Concentrate on that call, when you get Lavinia Saunders in. I think she will...’
Whetstone raised his eyebrows sky high. ‘Mr Marklin, I am not willing to drag Mrs Saunders in here just because you’ve seen her take little old ladies on shopping trips to Bournemouth. Really, I’d be...’
‘...being very bright,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m sure she is terrified that Mrs Olsen will remember she first called for her jumble on the night of the murder, and found she was out.’
‘But, you say, Mrs Olsen has told you to your face that she can’t remember which day it was. So Lavinia has no worries, even if what you say is true.’
‘But she can never be sure Mrs Olsen won’t remember, at some time or other in the future, can she? For that reason, I believe until you interrogate Lavinia Saunders further, that little old lady may be in considerable danger.’
‘What would you like me to do — ring her cottage with armed guards, and put a tail on Mrs Saunders everywhere she goes? Come now, Mr Marklin, it’s a thousand to one all she was doing with that old dear in the car was being kind to her. After all, you don’t know they didn’t discuss such a shopping expedition the evening before, after you had gone.’
I scoffed. ‘You’re kidding. Lavinia Saunders has about as much sympathy for her fellow beings, as — as Lucretia Borgia had for her dinner guests. That’s why I’m so certain, don’t you see?’
Whetstone glanced at his watch once more. ‘All I see, I’m afraid, is an amateur detective dying on his feet, or rather, on my chair, and wasting too much of my goddamned time.’ He rose creakily to his feet. ‘Now, don’t try to see me again unless...’
I too rose, but in anger. ‘What the hell will it take, Whetstone, to get you to unblinker your bloody mind, and, at least, get Lavinia Saunders in here for further interrogation? Mrs Olsen’s dead body?’
‘Something like that, Mr Marklin, something like that.’ He went over to the door and opened it. I took his hint and joined him.
‘I’ll save you the bloody trouble,’ I shouted. ‘Sergeant!’
*
I don’t remember much of the drive back to Studland as anger joined worry in clouding my mind. And the clouds did not lift when I finally got indoors and was greeted by Gus who was holding my toy fort once again.
‘Phone’s never stopped since I’ve been here,’ he claimed, which, upon examination, turned out to be just two calls, one from Sebastian Lynch, apparently to check on any progress I might have made (Gus said he’d brought him roughly up to date, minus, of course, my adventures of the morning), the other from Lana-Lee with an urgent message for me to ring back. I did just that, and needed her news like a hole in the head. ‘I’ve seen it now,’ she said, and her voice was shaky.
‘Seen what?’
‘The white shape. You know like Ben and Tara-Lee said they saw.’
‘Where did you see it?’
‘From the drawing-room windows. It seemed to flit between thos
e two great rhododendron bushes, just before the steps down to the lower lawns.’
‘What did it look like?’
‘I only saw it for a second, Peter, and then it was gone. It was like a ghost.’
I had to get her to be more precise. ‘The proportions and size of a human figure, or bigger or smaller?’
‘Yes. I guess it was about the size of a human figure. I can’t remember the head, though. Seemed to be all white.’
‘Could it have been a hooded figure of some sort?’
‘I suppose so. But I don’t know. Honestly, Peter, if it hadn’t been for Tara-Lee, and Ben, claiming to have seen something of the sort, I would have thought it was a figment of my imagination.’
‘It obviously isn’t. Four people have seen it now.’
‘Three, surely. Ben, me and Tara-Lee.’
‘And me.’
I heard her draw in her breath. ‘You?’
‘Yes. I saw something of the sort going through a gap in your hedge the very first night I met you — at your party that Adam interrupted.’
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘It didn’t seem significant at the time but now it is.’
‘What does it all mean? Have you any idea?’
‘Not really. I should advise you to be careful until we do know. Keep doors and windows locked and I think it’s time you informed the police.’
‘Do I have to? I’m terrified to have anything more to do with them than I need.’
‘Then let me ring Sebastian Lynch, and get him to come round to you. He’ll ring them when he arrives, so that you won’t be alone.’
‘That would be a great relief. Thanks. And Peter, have you made any more headway in your investigations? When I last saw Adam, he was very down. I think he’s very near giving up hope.’
‘Tell him not to. I have a lead at last that may get us somewhere. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve checked it out a bit further.’
‘Oh let’s pray it leads to Adam’s release.’
‘Meantime, don’t forget: be careful until I discover what all this apparition business means.’
‘I promise.’
*
If you’ve never sat for over three hours in a cold Beetle convertible, whilst the heavens opened, then you’re not SAS material. After the first hour, I was more than damp; after the second, more than half-way to hypothermia; and during the third, numbness began paralysing my nether end, for my Beetle seats are in the winter of their days. (Certainly there is precious little spring left in them.) Even all that might have been vaguely bearable had not my brain been in angst and turmoil as to why Mrs Olsen had not yet returned to her cottage, just up from which I was parked, partly concealed by a hedge in a muddy farm track.
Die-Cast (A Peter Marklin Mystery) Page 19