Everything had taken a more serious turn one summer’s evening when she had been reading in her tree house, which she admitted was the only way anyone could see into the neighbouring garden as it was otherwise very secluded. She had happened to lift her eyes from her book to glance across to the house next door. Several men were on the patio just outside the French doors and, although her view was partly obscured by foliage, she could see that they were unpacking what looked like rifles and handguns from a wooden case. There were also small boxes that she guessed contained ammunition. One man had paraded across the lawn, playing soldiers with one of the weapons over his shoulder. That was not the only time she had witnessed men handling guns on her neighbour’s property, the second occasion being that with which I was already familiar, occurring in Hereward Trent’s study.
The rest of the information was slightly repetitive, especially concerning nocturnal comings and goings and more than one visit by Clement Hamlyn, whose girlfriend, Claudia Barton-Jones, had once gestured to Miss Smythe with two fingers when the two women had happened to see one another at the front of the two houses. Barton-Jones had been with Hamlyn, who had roared with laughter. After this, I could not help but feel that the elderly lady had become obsessed about these people and could hardly blame her, especially after she had been hurt when the tree house collapsed. It was after this, when she had recovered, that she had taken to watching them through binoculars, venturing into their back garden.
Highly relevant I felt was Rosemary Smythe being convinced one night – before the tree house collapsed – that someone was in her own garden and being deeply afraid that they were out to silence her. This was in the third letter from the last. The very last was a résumé of all that had happened so far, ending with her regret that nothing seemed to have been done about it and that she hoped to be able to provide more proof.
‘But surely there would have been official replies,’ I said. ‘These wouldn’t just have been ignored.’
‘Just acknowledgements, I expect,’ Patrick said quietly. ‘The usual “Thank you, your comments have been noted”, kind of crap.’
‘Patrick, I really get the impression that, towards the end, after she thought someone was lurking outside just before the tree house collapsed, this woman became terrified. She doesn’t actually say so but, somehow, it’s there.’
‘OK, I suggest you write a précis, buff up on the police case notes and this pathologist’s report when I’ve finished with it. I’ll read the letters and when we’ve really done all our homework by also going through Clement Hamlyn’s and Daniel Coates’ criminal records we’ll head back to London and take a look at Miss Smythe’s house.’
‘And she was still working on it, wasn’t she?’ I persevered.
Patrick nodded soberly. ‘Looks like it.’
The work – altogether there was a lot of it – and in between necessary family matters, never mind eating and sleeping, took another thirty-six hours. But I was content for I had written not just a précis of the letters but also clarified the Met’s report on the murder inquiry so far, it being thorough but the English lumpy in places, the kind of thing that I knew irritated Greenway. I appended my version to the original because of course it could not replace it, having been endorsed by senior officers.
DI Branscombe had noted that although the killer had apparently endeavoured to make it look like a break-in, he, or she, had not found the two hundred and fifty pounds or so concealed in one of a pair of Chinese vases in the living room, which would have been one of the first places a professional burglar would have looked. Drawers under the murder victim’s bed had been pulled out, the contents scattered but more money hidden between the pages of an old photograph album had not been discovered. Branscombe thought whoever had killed Miss Smythe had then hurried around the house knocking a few things over, opened most drawers and cupboards, pulled out the clothes and other possessions within on to the floor, ransacked a jewellery box, scattering the contents, and then made their escape through the back door, which had been forced to gain entry and left open. The niece was fairly convinced that a few of the best pieces of jewellery were missing but had pointed out that her aunt may have given them away or put them in a bank. The DI emphasized that one of his priorities had been to try to discover the truth behind this but, so far, he had got nowhere. If SOCA had no objection, and he himself had the time, he would continue working on this aspect of the case as he had a contact who knew the whereabouts of several fences.
As was routine, the murder victim’s clothing and various samples taken by scenes of crime personnel in the house had been sent to a forensic laboratory, but it would be a while yet before any findings were known. The murder victim had apparently employed a cleaning lady, who must have been dedicated in her work as early results showed that the only clear fingerprints found, so far, were hers, those of her employer, Miss Smythe’s niece and those of a friend, another elderly lady, who had all been eliminated from the investigation. But work was still underway as the house was quite large and there were signs of disturbance in every room but the attics. No doubt delighted to be able to give away the greater part of one of his cases, Branscombe had attached a note to the file assuring Commander Greenway that all outstanding forensic reports would be sent directly to him.
FIVE
The view from Richmond Hill along the River Thames to distant Windsor is preserved by an Act of Parliament and regarded as an icon of beautiful English scenery. This might have been the attraction when she retired for Rosemary Smythe who, we were shortly to discover from her niece, Mrs Jane Grant, had taught English and art. She had been a Londoner by birth having been brought up in nearby Mortlake, an only child who had inherited more than modest wealth on the slightly premature death of her parents. She had not taken early retirement on the strength of this and I could imagine her, having begun to understand her character from reading the letters, feeling that it would be selfish to abandon her young charges for this reason.
The house, one of a terrace in a quiet side street, was obviously still a crime scene, traffic cones preventing the general public from parking their cars across the entrance, incident tape around railings and lamp posts creating a cordoned-off area. This meant that our movements would probably be limited within the house whether people were working in the rooms or not. We discovered that they were, with a constable standing outside, the DI having undertaken to carry on providing that kind of backup while scenes of crime personnel were still on the premises.
It was a Victorian house on three floors if one counted the attics, and as one might expect from the late owner’s neat handwriting, the windows sparkled and the dark blue paintwork of the front door was immaculately clean. There were beds of pink and pale blue and white striped pansies bordered by a Lilliputian-height box hedge on each side of the short path to the front door.
We showed our IDs and went in. The hall was light, bright and quite lofty, the staircase wide and carpeted in a shade of deep cream. I did not really want to look at the area at the bottom of the stairs as I knew that was where the body had been found. But I did, and stood there for a moment, very sad.
A man in a white anti-contamination suit bustled forward to tell us that we could only look into the rooms from the hallways on the ground and first floors, and grudgingly added that work in the loft rooms had been completed and also outside in the back garden. Oh, and the kitchen. He actually finished by saying that he would rather we were not there at all.
‘When are you likely to finish?’ Patrick asked him.
‘I’ve absolutely no idea,’ was the cold response before he turned on his heel and went from sight.
Patrick raised a meaningful eyebrow in my direction and we commenced our now curtailed tour of the house by immediately ascending the stairs as, if Miss Smythe had indeed been thrown down them, that was where she and the killer had been just prior to that.
‘OK,’ Patrick said, pausing. ‘What happened here?’
There
was nothing to see, and despite the Met’s findings that there were signs of disturbance in almost every room there was none on this spacious landing, no damage to anything, not even to some delicate small bone china figures of animals on a nearby half-moon table. I made no comment but jotted down details in my notebook.
Patrick said, ‘We know from the Met’s report that he – I’m sure it was a he – broke in through the back door, which we can take a look at in a moment. Was Miss Smythe hard of hearing? Do we know?’
‘We don’t,’ I said.
‘Please make a note and remind me to ask the niece if I forget. We must talk to her today if possible. At what time, roughly, was she killed?’ Answering the question himself, he went on: ‘The pathologist reckoned she had been dead for between twelve and eighteen hours when the niece found her at three thirty that afternoon. One doesn’t have to be very clever to arrive at the conclusion that she had been killed late the previous evening and before she went to bed as the body was fully clothed. I don’t reckon he could have been in the house for more than ten minutes, almost certainly a pro.’
Slowly, trying to take in as much detail as possible, we moved on. The report indicated that the murder victim’s bedroom was at the back of the house, a detail we already knew from her letters. Incident tape was secured across the doorway. The room was plainer than I would have expected: the walls ivory white, just two or three small pictures that appeared to be reproductions of religious paintings and a larger one of birds, a cornflower-blue carpet with toning curtains and bedspread in a muted floral pattern. The bedcovers had been neatly turned down at one corner but that was where what must have been normality ended, for all the drawers under the bed and those of a nearby chest had been pulled open, the clothing inside them scattered over the carpet, as were the contents of a fitted wardrobe.
‘Obviously, she had been about to get ready for bed,’ Patrick said under his breath. ‘We must find out from her niece at what time that might have been.’
The two other bedrooms on this floor had been similarly dealt with but the general impression was of someone who had run from room to room flinging things around but not pausing to search for something to steal. In the bathroom, all the towels were on the floor. Why do this other than to try to give the general impression that the house had been ransacked by a burglar?
Almost listlessly, I gazed into the rooms, unable even to start answering any of the myriad questions in my mind. Then we went up the slightly narrower staircase to the attic. This consisted of three smallish rooms, once presumably servants quarters, which were jam-packed with furniture, packing cases, and every kind of lumber imaginable.
‘This must be all her parents’ stuff,’ I said. ‘And she couldn’t bear to dispose of it or throw any of it away.’
‘I’m not surprised chummy downstairs said they’d finished up here,’ Patrick commented wryly. ‘They just took one look at it and bolted. But to be fair, everything’s covered in dust and it doesn’t look as though it’s been disturbed for years.’ He went into the room nearest to us which contained an ancient brass bedstead stacked high with cardboard and wooden boxes. A very dusty teddy bear gazed down sadly from the top of the pile and I longed to take it home to be loved by the children.
‘He didn’t come up here,’ Patrick was muttering. ‘And if he did, he took one look and realized it was not much more than a load of second-hand furniture.’
I went into the adjacent room and made my way, gingerly, through lots of cobwebs, between several old bicycles and a hallstand and looked out of the tiny window. The rear garden was fairly narrow, as was to be expected, and charming, the oak tree about two thirds of the way down dominating it. Either Miss Smythe or a previous resident had used it to full advantage, creating a woodland garden with a couple of paths meandering between shade-loving shrubs and groundcover plants. At the bottom of the garden there was obviously access to a rear lane as I could glimpse a gravel parking area through the emerging foliage of the oak.
‘The remains of the tree house are still there,’ I called. ‘Perhaps she intended to have it repaired or rebuilt.’
We returned to the ground floor. The kitchen was large, very clean and sparsely fitted out with basic and surprisingly cheap equipment but for a top-of-the-range microwave cooker.
Patrick was looking at the broken lock on the rear door, situated in a little lobby off the kitchen, examining it minutely with a magnifying glass. It was old fashioned with a fairly large key and still in the locked position, the screws on the striking plate, the section fixed to the doorframe, having been forced out by what one could only imagine as someone having put their shoulder to the door from outside. This plate, with its screws, which looked rusty, was now on the floor. Bolts top and bottom on the door for added security had not been put across and I could imagine Miss Smythe leaving those until just before she went to bed.
I went into the garden where an almost overwhelming sadness came over me as I wandered along the winding paths. It had been designed with great skill so that you could never see all of it from anywhere. This made it seem much larger than it was and there were almost concealed, and delightful, surprises: a wrought-iron table and two chairs by a tiny pool, a miniature statue, another corner to go around and explore, little mysteries. Rosemary Smythe would never see it again.
The oak tree stood in the only large open space, the lawn, some of which was taken up with the planks and smashed larger sections of the fallen tree house. It had been a much more substantial structure than my limited view of it from upstairs had led me to believe and I tried to piece together what it must have looked like. Some, if not most, of the fixing struts were still in the tree.
‘I think you should take a look at this,’ I told Patrick when he joined me moments later. ‘This was a solid, well-built thing and it doesn’t appear to be rotten.’
He waded in among the shattered woodwork. Grass was growing through it and I wondered why it had not been cleared away.
‘No, there is a certain amount of rotten wood,’ he concluded a few minutes later after I had explored the end of the garden. ‘Do you think you could climb up and take a look at what’s left up there?’ He pointed skywards.
‘Patrick, I’ve never been any good at climbing trees,’ I protested.
‘You can stand on my shoulders whereas I can’t stand on yours,’ he reasoned winningly. ‘Then it’s easy to get on that lower branch. After that it’s a piece of cake.’
He is quite good at catching me, drunk or sober, after all.
‘They might see me from next door – it isn’t in full leaf yet.’
‘We’ll have to risk it.’
‘My life is in your hands,’ I told him grimly. ‘Literally.’
He cupped his hands and I stepped into them, finding myself elevated – I always forget how strong he is – so I could put my other foot on to one shoulder and was then steadied so I could sit sideways on and then astride the branch. I was at least wearing the right kind of flat shoes but would still have to be careful on the mossy bark. Luckily there were plenty of upper branches to hang on to.
‘That’s fine,’ I was encouraged. ‘Now make your way to the centre where the tree house was secured around the main trunk. Mind your head.’
He had not mentioned the bit about having to climb at least another ten feet higher. But the tree was old and there were holes and fissures and the stumps of sawn-off branches so it was easy to use these almost like a ladder. I only clouted my head the once. Then I arrived in an area which, from up here, looked like the arms of a candelabra, a perfect place upon which to put a platform for a tree house. Except that . . .
‘But why did the platform fall down?’ I called, but quietly.
‘Quite.’
I could see into the garden next door through the partly opened leaves and wondered if the tree’s natural growth might now obscure what Miss Smythe had been able to observe without hindrance when it was not in full leaf. Moving carefully and keeping
low I examined the remaining struts that were fastened to the tree. They were very substantial, the job done properly, not just nailed on, and with regard to the health of the tree, but all those I could easily reach had been sawn almost all the way through. Still speaking quietly I passed on this information to Patrick below.
‘They would almost certainly marry up with some of the fairly heavy chunks of wood down here that are partly buried by the other stuff so I can’t see the ends,’ Patrick said. ‘But some of the other timbers must have also been cut before they finally broke, including what were probably the horizontal supports of the platform. It must all have come down like a pack of cards.’ He began to walk away. ‘You can come down now.’
I maintained a dignified silence and he chuckled and came back to help me. My descent was a lot less dignified but finally, and accompanied by rather a lot of moss and dead twigs, I landed. And, yes, he steadied me when I tripped on something and almost fell.
There was a thoughtful silence as we went back towards the house. We had moved some of the wood to have a look at the corresponding partly sawn-through ends and then gone down to the end of the garden where there were parking spaces for two cars on a gravel area. There were double gates, locked, that must lead out into an access road of some kind. We would have to look at that as well.
‘Do we have a key for these?’ I asked, indicating the gates.
There were four on the ring, a couple of modern-looking ones, presumably for the front door, a large old-fashioned one that we already knew fitted the lock on the back door and another that was smaller. It fitted and turned, answering my question.
Quietly Patrick slid across the bolts top and bottom and opened the gate. We went out and found ourselves in a lane, a picturesque little by-way to the rear of the terrace. Like Miss Smythe’s, some of the houses had gates, others no barrier at all, giving views down the gardens, used in some cases as car and wheelie-bin parks and little else. We, of course, were really interested in Hereward Trent’s property next door and had been careful not to openly stare at the house from the front.
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