Fair Game

by Sheila Radley

  ‘Ideal part-time situation for you, I told Mrs Harbord. And she and her daughter can live in one of my properties in the village, rent-free in return for a daily meal and a little company. What do you say to that? I asked her.’

  He was beaming with satisfaction. Knowing that she had lost the initiative, Hilary asked patiently, ‘And what did Mrs Harbord say?’

  ‘She was pleased – most appreciative. Though ever since the shoot, of course, she’s been very worried about her daughter.’

  His smile was replaced by a look of concern: ‘Fine girl, Laura – any progress in your search?’

  Aggravated, Quantrill snatched back the initiative.

  ‘What concerns us at the moment, Mr Brunt, is Hope Meynell’s death. You took twelve cartridges with you to Belmont, but you can only account for eleven. Our view is that the twelfth of your cartridges is the one that killed her. What do you say to that?’

  Reg Brunt said nothing. He frowned, and chewed his thumb in thought for several moments. Then his sagging face lifted.

  He bustled to a tall kitchen cabinet, and reaching in behind an upright hoover he took out a side-by-side double-barrelled shotgun. Breaking it open, he said a shamefaced, ‘Oh dear, oh dear …

  ‘Only took one shot from my final reload,’ he explained. ‘That was when I heard the nearby single shot. Afraid of being discovered. Picked up my pheasants – hurried home – put the gun away without cleaning it. Broke all the safety rules, I’m afraid – should have known better – dangerous thing to do.’

  He showed the detectives his gun, with the brass cap of the twelfth cartridge still sitting snugly in the breech of the second barrel.

  Before returning home that night, Chief Inspector Quantrill made some arrangements for the following day.

  First, he telephoned the Hertfordshire police, who were keeping in contact with the father of the murdered girl, and asked them to make an appointment for him with Mr Meynell.

  Then he took the next step in the search for Laura Harbord.

  If enquiries among the students at Yarchester had brought no results by ten the following morning, he wanted a televised press conference set up in time for the early evening news. The policewoman who was minding Mrs Harbord was to persuade her to attend, to make a personal appeal for any information whatever about her missing daughter.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  The Meynell family lived in leafy suburban Hertfordshire. Their detached house was 1930s developers’ Tudor, embellished with diamond-leaded window panes and black mock-timbering on white gables. It was set in a quarter-acre of garden, leaf-strewn on this soggy November morning but neatly landscaped with terraces and pergolas and lawns and flower beds. This was comfortable middle-class England: a place of double garages, living-flame gas fires, deep carpets and beautifully colour-coordinated soft furnishings; a world away from the draughty corridors and the doggy, shabby antiquity of upper-middle-class Suffolk.

  The detectives were shown in by a fair-haired young woman whose attractive face was stiff with sorrow. She said that she was Hope’s elder sister, Dawn, and that she and her children were there for a few days to keep her father company. Small voices raised in play, elsewhere in the house, lightened what would otherwise have been a sombre atmosphere.

  Andrew Meynell, a dentist by profession, was standing with his back to the sitting-room fire. He was a dapper, balding man in his late fifties, in a dark suit and a plain navy blue tie. His face was drawn and his eyes were heavy with grief as he accepted the detectives’condolences, but he seemed fidgety.

  He invited his visitors to sit down, but he himself remained on his feet. Bone china cups and saucers stood ready on a tray, and he waited impatiently for Dawn to bring coffee, in a matching pot, pour it and then go.

  ‘I find this difficult to say,’ he burst out. ‘If I’m wrong, it’s unforgivable even to think it. But I’ve been mulling it over, and I’m convinced that Lewis Glaven must have killed my daughter.’

  He looked almost defiant, as though he expected the detectives to be either surprised or shocked. Quantrill sat back in his armchair and gave his coffee a methodical stir.

  ‘What makes you say that, Mr Meynell?’

  ‘I say it with great reluctance. I liked Will Glaven well enough – I didn’t think he was the right man for Hope, but I couldn’t fault the way he treated her. And she always said how kind his father was to her when she first visited Chalcot. In fairness to Lewis Glaven, I have to admit that he’s shown me nothing but kindness and support, ever since the terrible event …’

  Andrew Meynell shook his head in despair. ‘It seems unthinkable that he should have wanted to kill my daughter. But I can see now what his motive must have been. Such callousness, though – such cold-blooded calculation …’

  Hilary helped him get to the point. Prominent on a bookcase was a framed studio portrait of a beautiful, fair woman in early middle age. ‘Has this any connection with your late wife?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah.’ Meynell gave her a quick look. ‘You’ve heard something about Carol, have you?’

  ‘Only what Will Glaven told us. He already knew that your wife had died, but he didn’t know the cause. On Friday, when they were on their way to Chalcot, Hope told him her mother had died in a psychiatric hospital.’

  ‘I see …’ It was Meynell’s turn to stir his coffee. ‘Hope should have told Will sooner, of course. But it’s a very difficult thing for a girl to explain to the man she wants to marry. She was obviously trying to break the news bit by bit.’

  ‘There’s more?’

  ‘Oh yes. And Lewis Glaven knew almost the whole of it, even if his son didn’t. He came to call on me about three weeks ago.’

  Andrew Meynell swallowed his cooling coffee in three long gulps, and parked his empty cup on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Glaven telephoned me at the surgery. He said he happened to be driving through Hertfordshire, and asked if he could call late that afternoon to introduce himself. I knew that Will’s family were landowners, and it did occur to me to wonder whether his father wanted to “look us over”. That would have been intolerable. But he turned out to be perfectly civil, and appreciative of Hope.’

  ‘Was she at home at the time?’ asked Hilary.

  ‘No, she wasn’t back from work. She had a long journey from her City bank. He said she was a beautiful and charming girl – which of course we already knew,’ added her father with a choke in his voice.

  He walked quickly to a window overlooking a conservatory bright with floral cushions. For a few moments he stood rigid, trying to compose himself. The two detectives exchanged wry looks of sympathy for him, and Hilary got up to collect his empty cup.

  Red-eyed, Andrew Meynell returned to the hearthrug and accepted Hilary’s offer to pour more coffee.

  ‘Lewis Glaven’, he said, after taking a deep breath, ‘told me that if Hope and Will decided to marry, he would do whatever he could to make her feel welcome at Chalcot. I took that at face value. But now, thinking about it,’ – his fingers tightened angrily on his cup – ‘I believe he was a thundering snob who considered that my daughter wasn’t a suitable wife for his son.

  ‘I think he came here to try to persuade me to warn her off. He said it worried him that Hope might not be happy at Chalcot, because life there was so different from the life she’d led here. He sounded apologetic about it – they were very old-fashioned and set in their ways, he said, and he was afraid their chief interests were dogs and guns and horses.’

  ‘That’s perfectly true, from what we’ve seen and heard,’ said Quantrill. Oddly, considering that he’d come here to find the evidence he wanted against Lewis Glaven, he found himself inclined to defend the man. ‘My own daughter Alison was there at the shoot lunch on Saturday – her first time too, and she felt completely out of place. She said you’d have to be born to that kind of life to fit in. Alison met your daughter and liked her very much, but she wasn’t at all sure that Hope would be happy there. So perhaps Le
wis Glaven was as much concerned for her as for his son.’

  ‘Did you pass the warning on to Hope?’ asked Hilary.

  The dentist shrugged. ‘I simply told her that Will’s father had called to introduce himself. What was the point of telling her anything else?

  ‘Hope was very much in love with Will and wanted to marry him. It’s ungenerous to interfere, even if your daughter’s set on marrying someone you don’t consider right for her. Besides, it’s a complete waste of time. If they want to marry they will, and there’s no point in being difficult about it.’

  Quantrill looked deep into his coffee cup, and said nothing.

  ‘You were going to tell us about your late wife, Mr Meynell,’ prompted Hilary.

  ‘Yes. There’s a lot to tell.’ He parked his cup again and began to pace up and down the room.

  ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘my wife Carol isn’t dead.

  ‘I say “in fact” advisedly. She’s still physically alive, but’ – he glanced sadly at her photograph – ‘horrendously changed in appearance and personality. She was in a home for the mentally ill for some years, but she became too violent for them. She’s now in a secure ward in a psychiatric hospital.

  ‘We haven’t forgotten Carol, or abandoned her. I visit the hospital every month, though I’m often advised against seeing her. Understandably, our children find visits too distressing.

  ‘As you can imagine, knowing how to explain this to Will has been a great problem for Hope. I told her she must do it in her own way, and I can’t blame her for telling him her mother was dead. If she’d told him the truth in the early days, before she brought him here, it would have destroyed their relationship.’

  Hilary was looking shaken. ‘I hate to ask you this, Mr Meynell,’ she said, ‘but if it makes it any easier for you to tell me, I once did some psychiatric nursing. Is your wife’s illness hereditary?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ He seemed relieved to be able to talk to a former professional: ‘It’s a genetic disorder of the nervous system, Huntington’s disease.’

  The name meant nothing at all to Quantrill, but he was watching Hilary and he saw her face turn sheet-white. For once she was speechless.

  ‘You have our sympathy, Mr Meynell,’ he said, conscious that whatever words he offered would be clumsily inadequate. ‘This must be a terrible thing for you and your family …’

  ‘It’s something we’ve had to learn to live with,’ said Andrew Meynell with dignity. ‘My daughter’s murder is a greater tragedy.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Quantrill returned to the enquiry. ‘What you’re suggesting, then, is that Lewis Glaven killed Hope because he didn’t want this disease passed on to his grand-children. But Will had no idea it was hereditary – so how could his father have known?’

  Meynell took another deep breath.

  ‘First,’ he said, ‘I want to make it clear that we as a family have strict rules of conduct. There’s a history of the disease in Carol’s family, so we knew that she and our children were at risk. We explained it to them when they grew up. We made them understand that it would be indefensible to marry without first telling their partners and discussing the implications.

  ‘They also knew that they must do the telling. It would take a lot of courage, but it had to come from them, not from me. So I’m certain that Hope wouldn’t have left Will in ignorance – she was taking her time, that was all. He’ll have to hear the truth now, and I’d be glad if you’ll tell him that.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hilary. She was still white round the gills, but she was back at work. ‘You still haven’t told us, though: how did Will’s father know that Hope was at risk?’

  Andrew Meynell’s shoulders drooped. ‘It was my son, my oldest, who told Lewis Glaven. But I can’t blame poor Roger for it. He’s inherited the gene, and begun to show the symptoms.

  ‘He and his family live about half an hour’s drive away, and they arrived without warning just as Glaven was about to leave. Roger’s an accountant, and he can still work from home. But his concentration is affected, he has alarming mood swings, and there’s something – odd – about his appearance. His wife does all the driving now, because he sometimes loses control of his movements.

  ‘The last thing I wanted was for Lewis Glaven to meet Roger, but there was nothing I could do about it. We all stood chatting in the hall for a few moments, then Glaven said he must go. Roger went to open the front door – but unfortunately he lost his balance and almost fell.

  ‘Lewis Glaven was nearest, and made a helpful grab for him. But my son brushed him away. Nothing to worry about, said Roger bitterly, I’ve got Huntington’s, that’s all.’

  Andrew Meynell’s own voice was filled with bitterness. ‘So there you are: that’s how Glaven found out, and that’s why Hope is now dead.’

  ‘But the name “Huntington’s” wouldn’t necessarily have meant anything to him,’ objected Quantrill. ‘It certainly didn’t to me.’

  ‘That doesn’t affect my argument,’ said Meynell. ‘Lewis Glaven came here to try to stop Hope marrying his son. He met Roger, and was alarmed by his abnormalities. He then made enquiries about Huntington’s, decided that the marriage had to be stopped at all costs, and invited Hope to a shooting party for the purpose of killing her. There’s no doubt about it in my mind. I don’t see how you can doubt it, either.’

  Quantrill glanced at his sergeant. There was of course a gaping hole in Andrew Meynell’s argument; but the man had grief enough, heaven knew, and this was not the time to debate with him.

  ‘You’ve been most helpful, Mr Meynell,’ said Hilary, as they both got to their feet. ‘Thank you for telling us so much that’s painful to you.’

  ‘I admire your courage,’ said Quantrill. ‘We all have family problems, but most of them are nothing in comparison with yours. Tell me – if you don’t mind my asking – how do you cope, with this terrible disease overshadowing your lives?’

  Andrew Meynell gave a wry smile.

  ‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘it’s love. Carol told me her family history when I asked her to marry me, but it didn’t put me off. With Huntington’s, you see, there’s a fifty per cent chance that any one child of a sufferer won’t inherit the disease. And when you’re young and in love you think you’re bombproof, don’t you?

  ‘After the first flush of love, what keeps you going is optimism. You have to be positive. Carol was perfectly well until she was forty, so we had nearly twenty good years together. And we didn’t hesitate to have children. We knew that even if Carol was carrying the gene, each of her children would have that fifty per cent chance of escaping it.’

  He paused. ‘As a family, we’ve always lived in hope. Hence my younger daughter’s name.’

  The detectives said little as they drove up the A10, through the late-autumnal countryside of Hertfordshire. Quantrill turned off at Puckeridge, and stopped at the old Fox and Hounds in Barley. They tottered into the pub, both of them shaken by what they’d heard.

  Hilary’s preferred drink was wine, but after she’d bought a modest half of bitter for the chief inspector, on the grounds that he was driving, she ordered a reviving gin and tonic for herself.

  ‘Those poor Meynells,’ she said. ‘Huntington’s is a terrible disease – it gradually shrinks the brain. I never had to deal with it when I was a nurse, but I remember seeing a horrifying case history.’

  For once, Quantrill had lost his appetite. He’d asked for Stilton with granary bread, but he picked at it half-heartedly.

  ‘Isn’t there any cure for Huntington’s?’ he said.

  ‘No. No prospect of it at the moment. It’s a long downhill progress to insanity, poor souls … About fifteen years, from the onset of the disease to death.’

  Hilary brooded over her drink. She hadn’t felt like eating, but now she absently filched some celery from the chief inspector’s plate and nibbled it as she talked.

  ‘One of the problems with Huntington’s is that the symptoms don’t usu
ally show before the age of thirty. The gene is passed on by both men and women. By the time they realise they’ve got it, they’ve probably married and had children of their own – like Roger Meynell. That means they could already have passed the gene to the next generation. And so it goes on.’

  Quantrill had always looked to his sergeant for information on medical matters. But he’d recently taken an interest in genetics, on the strength of an article in one of the Sunday colour supplements, and now he had a point to make.

  ‘There are blood tests for genetic diseases,’ he said. ‘Hope Meynell wouldn’t have had to wait a decade to see whether the disease appeared, or to take risks with her own children. She could simply have asked to be screened. Then she’d have known for sure, before she married Will Glaven.’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ said Hilary crossly. There were times when she felt a great deal of sympathy for Douglas Quantrill’s wife. ‘Haven’t you any imagination?

  ‘Yes, Hope could have found out whether or not she was carrying the Huntington’s gene. And if the test had proved negative, she’d have been singing and dancing.

  ‘But supposing it proved positive? How would she feel then, knowing without doubt how hideous her future was going to be? I wouldn’t want to know that, if I were in her shoes – and I bet you wouldn’t either! Genetic testing’s wonderful for curable or treatable diseases, but there can’t be many people at risk from Huntington’s who’d want to chance it. As Andrew Meynell said, what his family lives on is hope.’

  Then she laughed: partly to unwind her own imaginative tension, partly because Douglas Quantrill looked so taken aback and she was really very fond of him.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘eat your Stilton, and tell me what we’re going to do about Lewis Glaven.’

  When they returned to the car, Segeant Lloyd made a call to Breckham Market for a progress report on the search for Laura Harbord.

  There was no news of Laura from Yarchester. As Chief Inspector Quantrill had instructed, a televised press conference had been arranged for late that afternoon. Hilary confirmed that he would be there to front it, and was told that Mrs Harbord had agreed to appeal for information about her missing daughter.