Finally, when half an hour had passed and it looked as though Crane would soon disappear into a whirlpool of introspection, Paniatowski put a five-pound note on the table and said, ‘Could you go up to the bar and order the next round of drinks for us, Colin?’
‘We can just call the waiter,’ Beresford pointed out.
‘I’d rather you bought them at the bar,’ Paniatowski said. She turned to Meadows. ‘And I’d like you to go and help him.’
She waited until the sergeant and the inspector were out of earshot, then said, ‘What’s bothering you, Jack? Are you feeling guilty about pushing Arthur Tyndale over the edge, because you’ve no need to – if that is what happened, then it was all my doing.’
‘No, it’s not that,’ Crane told her. ‘You said he was no loss, and you were right.’ He hesitated for a moment, then continued, ‘What are you going to do about Tyndale’s confession?’
‘It’s on tape,’ Paniatowski said.
‘I don’t mean the confession that he killed Maggie Entwistle. I mean the other thing that he said he’d done – setting his own clients up for years.’
‘There’s no record of that,’ Paniatowski pointed out.
‘No, there isn’t,’ Crane agreed, ‘but we both heard him say it, and if you chose to, you could make a statement to that effect.’
‘Best to let sleeping dogs lie,’ Paniatowski said, ‘because Tyndale was right, it would tie up the judicial system for years, as well as effectively torpedoing my career – and possibly yours as well.’
A look of real disappointment came to Crane’s face.
‘What’s the matter?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Have I failed to live up to your expectations of me? Am I not the shining example you thought I was?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, boss,’ Crane said uncomfortably. ‘I can see things from your point of view – you’ve worked hard to get where you are, and it would be unfair that you should be punished for doing the right thing, so no one can really blame you if you don’t.’
‘But …?’ Paniatowski said.
‘But there have been serious miscarriages of justice, and that doesn’t sit easily with me.’
‘Have there been any miscarriages of justice?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘What was it Tyndale said, exactly?’
‘He said that when he knew one of his clients was guilty, he made sure the police found enough evidence to convict him.’
‘So how could he be so sure they were guilty – and how did he know where to find the evidence?’
‘They confessed to him!’ Crane said.
‘They confessed to him,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘They trusted him enough to tell him that they’d done it, and he used that. The way they were convicted was wrong, and went against all the fundamentals of British justice – but there’s no doubt that the people who were sent down were guilty. And do you want to give those same people a “get out of jail free” card?’
‘No,’ Crane said, ‘I don’t think I do.’
FOURTEEN
24th March, 1978
Harvey Morgan only glanced at the thick manila envelope that his secretary, Linda, had just placed on his desk, before looking up at her and saying, ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a manila envelope,’ Linda replied.
‘That, I can see for myself. The question I’m asking is, what’s it doing on my desk?’
‘It could be waiting to see whether or not you decide to open it?’ Linda suggested.
Morgan leant back in his expensive leather chair.
‘Let me ask you a question, Linda,’ he said. ‘Would you describe me as a successful man?’
‘Sure.’
‘Would you say that I’m the most successful literary agent in New York City?’
‘You’re in the top five, certainly.’
Morgan frowned. ‘But not numero uno?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Who is number one then?’ Morgan asked. ‘Is it Harry Conner? Is it … No, forget that,’ he added as he realised that he was getting distracted. ‘What I was going to say, before this pointless discussion began—’
‘It’s your pointless discussion,’ Linda reminded him.
‘Was that as a man of some consequence, I do not open envelopes myself. What I expect is that every envelope which appears in front of me has already been opened.’
‘Look at it closely,’ Linda told him.
I shouldn’t do everything she tells me to do, he thought – but by then it was too late, and his eyes were already on the envelope.
‘It’s got English stamps on it,’ he said, ‘which would be great if I was still in the business of selling stamps, but I moved out of that – and into much more profitable ventures – when I was nine years old.’
‘Look who it’s addressed to,’ Linda said.
‘It’s addressed to Melissa Evans, care of the Harvey Morgan Agency. So some no-hoper in England has sent Melissa a book to comment on. That happens all the time.’
‘Except that it’s not some no-hoper, because that’s Melissa’s own handwriting.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Then this must be the last thing she ever wrote.’
‘That would appear to be the logical conclusion.’
‘So, you wanna open it for me?’ Morgan asked hopefully.
Linda shook her head quite firmly. ‘You’re Melissa’s literary executor – you open it.’
‘Am I also the executor of the … the—’ Morgan waved his hands in the air – ‘of all the other stuff?’
‘Of the estate?’
‘Yeah.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘Then who is?’ Morgan asked, sounding rather hurt.
‘Somebody else,’ Linda said.
‘That I could have figured for myself,’ Morgan told her. ‘Does this somebody have a name?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what is it?’
‘Linda Kaufmann.’
‘But that’s you!’ Morgan exclaimed.
‘So it is,’ Linda agreed.
‘She made a secretary her executor?’
‘She did indeed,’ Linda confirmed. ‘What a crazy lady she must have been.’
It was nearly an hour before Harvey Morgan called Linda Kaufmann back into his office.
‘I’ve read it,’ he said. ‘It’s sort of a diary, describing her investigations into this old murder over in England. She must have sent it to herself here for safe keeping.’
‘Yes, that would make sense,’ Linda agreed.
‘It’s not like anything she’s done before, but I think we could sell it. The only problem is that it’s nowhere near eight or nine hundred pages, but if we could bring in an editor with a good imagination, and add some background articles—’
‘Before we do anything else with it, I think we should let the police have a look at it,’ Linda said.
‘And by the police, you don’t mean New York’s finest, you mean that Captain Panovski in England?’
‘That’s right, I mean Detective Chief Inspector Paniatowski.’
‘I’m not sure we should do that,’ Morgan said.
‘Aren’t you?’ Linda asked. ‘I am.’
JOURNAL
It seemed to me, when I had collected all the evidence together, that two things happened that afternoon. The first was that Mr Wilfred Hardcastle was killed, and the second was that someone went to a great deal of effort to frame my father.
But why was my father framed – because the killer hated him, or because the killer merely wished to distract attention away from himself?
To begin at the beginning: two looms were sabotaged that afternoon. The motive behind that was obvious. The killer wanted John to have an argument with Wilfred, or at least be able to claim, with some plausibility, that such an argument occurred.
And what does this tell us? It tells us that the killer belonged to the mill, because no one from outside could have sabotaged th
ose looms.
Actually, that’s not quite true. Someone from outside – say, a rival mill owner – could have bribed one of the workers in Hardcastles’ mill to do it. But would that rival mill owner have risked putting himself in the power of the lowly mill worker in that way? I think not.
Then there’s the money found under my father’s bed. Fifty pounds was nearly as much as the average mill worker earned in a year back then, so there is no way one of them could have saved up that much. Of course, the killer could have stolen the money, but he would have had to know where to find it first, and Wilfred Hardcastle does not strike me as the kind of man who would just leave money lying around.
Could Tom Clegg have been the killer? He came into close contact with Wilfred, and lied about seeing my father. But surely, if Tom had done it, he would have confessed as much when he hanged himself, rather than just leaving a note which said that he had lied.
So what conclusions had I come to? That Wilfred was killed by someone from inside the mill, and that that someone had to be at management level. And that was where I hit the problem of a motive. No one who is benefiting from it wants to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, and Wilfred was, by all accounts, a prodigious layer.
I was going round and round in circles, and getting dizzier and dizzier.
And that was when I went to see George Clegg.
George is one of those people you like at first sight. He’s in his early sixties, but he suffers from very poor health, and most people probably think he is much older. But what he does have – and I noticed this the moment he opened the door to me – is the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.
I said, ‘I’m investigating the murder of Wilfred Hardcastle,’ but looking into those eyes, I discovered that I couldn’t be even the slightest bit disingenuous with him, so I added, ‘Actually, I don’t care who killed him. My only concern is to prove that my father, John Entwistle, didn’t do it.’
For a moment, he looked as if he didn’t quite know how to react, but then he smiled and said, ‘In that case, you’d better come inside, lass.’
I followed him in through the front door.
‘I’d invite you into the front parlour, but there’s no fire in there, so it’ll have to be the kitchen,’ he said, as he led me down the corridor.
‘The kitchen will be fine,’ I said.
And it was. It had one of those old-fashioned ranges, where the fire heats the oven, and toast is cooked over a naked flame.
He saw me looking at it.
‘There’s not more than a dozen of these left in Whitebridge,’ he said. ‘It’s all electric now. But I like the old ways.’
‘You’re Tom Clegg’s nephew, aren’t you?’ I asked him, when we’d sat down at the table.
‘I am.’
‘Do you remember him well?’
‘Very well, even though I was only a nipper when he hung himself in the woods.’
‘So what can you tell me about him?’
George frowned. ‘I hope I’m not speaking ill of the dead, but Uncle Tom was a bit slow. I don’t mean he was a nutter or anything, but he didn’t always catch on very quick. But he was a nice man – a kind man – and both me and me dad loved him.’ He paused. ‘As far as I know, we were the last people to see him alive.’
I didn’t know why that fact should have made me go all tingly, but it did.
‘Tell me about it,’ I said.
‘The morning he hung himself, he came round to see us. Me dad says, “Shouldn’t you be in Preston, giving evidence again, Tom?” Uncle Tom says, “They don’t need me anymore,” but even a kid like me could see he was lying. Anyway, he had this old shoe box in his hands, and he handed it to me dad and says, “Will you look after this for me, Raymond?”. “What’s in it, our Tom?” me dad asks. And Uncle Tom says, “My life”, which stuck us both as bloody odd. He didn’t say no more, just turned and walked away, and a couple of hours later, they found him hanging in the woods.’
‘And what was in the shoe box?’ I asked, doing my best not to wet myself with excitement.
‘I don’t know,’ George said. ‘Me dad never opened it.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t say. All I know is that when it was passed down to me, after me dad died, I didn’t open it either. It were as if it held some dark secret that should never see the light of day again. I know that’s a bit fanciful, but that’s the way it felt.’
‘Have you still got the box?’ I asked.
‘I have.’
‘And can I see it?’
He thought about it, long and hard.
‘How important is it to you to clear your dad’s name?’ he asked, finally.
‘It’s very important,’ I said. ‘Now my dad’s dead, it’s the only thing I can still do for him.’
George nodded, then went over to an ancient sideboard and produced an even more ancient cardboard box.
He placed it on the table, then said, ‘I think I’ll go for a bit of a walk, if you don’t mind.’
I waited until I heard the door click closed, then opened the box.
On the top layer, there was a Sunday school attendance certificate, several payslips from the mill, and a collection of cigarette cards of famous footballers.
The letters were underneath. There were half a dozen of them. Tom’s name was on the front of each envelope, written in a hand which showed a degree of education far beyond what he would have acquired, but there was no stamp.
With trembling hands, I took the first letter out of the envelope. At the top of it was written, in block capitals: BURN THIS AS SOON AS YOU’VE READ IT.
But Tom hadn’t been able to bring himself to burn it, not even when he’d been on the point of taking his own life.
I started to read the letter.
‘My dearest Tom, I know it is foolish of me to write to you, but I am helpless to resist. When you came into the office this morning, it was all I could do to prevent myself from touching you, from running my hands over your beautiful slim body …’
Was it that Tom was Wilfred’s lover, I asked myself. Had the upright, self-righteous mill owner a penchant for young men? And had they had a lover’s argument at the end of which, Tom had killed Wilfred?
‘… running my hands over your beautiful slim body, exploring your mouth with my eager tongue …’
There were three pages of it, and it got more fervid – and frankly, more pornographic – as it went. Even the handwriting began to deteriorate from page two onwards.
And then I got to the end, and saw the signature.
‘I will always love you, Oswald.’
And now, finally, we have reached the point at which I can postulate my grand theory. It is not perfect – there are gaps in it, there are questions unanswered – but it is the best I can do.
Tom and Oswald were lovers, and somehow Wilfred found out about it. I don’t know what he told Oswald, but it will not have been comforting, because Wilfred knew what was right – and this definitely wasn’t – and Wilfred gave no second chances.
Would Wilfred have reported it to the police? I believe he would have, because Oswald had disobeyed both the laws of God and the law of the land, and even if it brought shame down on the whole family, he would have to be punished for it.
So why didn’t he go to the police immediately?
I think it was because he wanted to give Oswald a little time alone – a little space in which he could repent of his sins!
But Oswald is not prepared to go to prison, and so, as he sees it, he has no choice but to kill the golden goose. He gets Tom to sabotage the looms, thus putting my father – a good worker, but well-known to be a man who won’t take shit from anybody – in the frame. He kills his own brother, then either plants the money himself or gets Tom to do it.
Why does Tom go along with the killing, and why is he prepared to lie in court?
Because he too, is afraid of going to gaol?
Perhaps, but I believe that
this is not his driving motivation.
This is the man who cannot bear to burn Oswald’s letters, even though that is what Oswald himself has instructed him to do. Even more tellingly, he can’t even bring himself to do it on the morning he hangs himself – when he knows he will no longer be around to see them.
So what is driving him is not fear, but love. He loves Oswald, and he tells himself that he will do whatever Oswald asks him to.
But then he finds himself facing a dilemma which a quicker brain would have seen coming much earlier. He must either send an innocent man to the gallows, or betray the man he loves. He cannot do either, and chooses to sacrifice himself – to face a lonely death in the woods.
And what about Oswald himself?
He drinks himself to death – because he finds life without Tom unbearable.
EPILOGUE
George Clegg, lying there immobile, heard the voice of an angel.
‘Hello George, it’s me – Kate,’ the angel said.
Hello, Kate, he thought.
‘I’ve been talking to some of your neighbours, George, and they told me that you and Ellie were the happiest couple they’d ever seen, and that it almost destroyed you when she passed on.’
It did destroy me. I’ve never been strong, but I was healthy enough while she was alive. After she went, there seemed no point to anything.
‘It was Arthur Tyndale who killed Maggie, George, but then you knew that already, didn’t you?’
I didn’t know for certain, but he was Wilfred Hardcastle’s grandson, and I couldn’t think of anybody else who would want to kill that beautiful girl.
‘Maggie never told you what was in the shoe box, did she, George?’
No, she didn’t. When I got back from me walk, she’d gone – and so had the box. I don’t think she could face me after what she’d found in there. I didn’t blame her. And the next morning, the florist delivered this huge bouquet of flowers. It was lovely. There was a card with it. It just said ‘Thank you’.
Death in Disguise Page 23