Murder in Hyde Park

by Phillip Strang

  ‘Did she? Or are you making this up to justify what you said about Christine and the dead man?’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘Your final words were, and I’m quoting from what Gwen said, and DCI Cook recorded, “He said that he had been in London and he had seen the dead man jogging alongside the Serpentine, and that…”.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘You left the house.’

  ‘I deny it.’

  ‘Deny all you want. I’ll take Gwen’s account of what was said over yours any day.’

  ‘I’ll admit that I knew Christine was working in that hotel, and that Gwen was a hotshot lawyer.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve got a laptop and the internet. You can find anyone if you look hard enough. Gwen was easy enough to find, and there were court transcripts, a photo of her, and Christine’s into Facebook, photos of her with the children, her husband, a dog.’

  Larry felt that the man’s answer was plausible. He had reconnected with some friends from school using Facebook, met with a couple of them: one had become an actor, the other, a schoolteacher. After an hour of talking to each of them, it was evident that time had moved on and the child was not the man, and he had little in common with either of them.

  But Terry Hislop still believed in the possibility of a connection with his former wife.

  ‘I’ll buy into how you knew about Gwen and Christine. It still doesn’t explain why you said you saw the dead man jogging.’

  ‘It does. The internet, updates on the news. You interviewed two joggers, they told you they had seen someone, and then after he had been identified, his name, his story.’

  ‘Not on the front page of the newspapers.’

  ‘What does that matter? I set an alert for any information relating to the murder, no matter how obscure. You can find anything on the internet, you know that?’

  Larry had to concede that Bridget could. It was possible that, given time, Terry Hislop could as well.

  ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘I’m going back to Liverpool.’

  ‘Cynthia?’

  ‘Any port in a storm.’

  ‘Then I suggest you go. If you go near Gwen or Christine, they’ll be trouble for you. Do you understand?’

  ‘Christine could have still killed him, you know that?’

  ‘Amateur detective, are you?’

  ‘Statistically, the murderer is often the nearest and dearest, a family member. Isn’t that correct?’

  ‘The internet?’

  ‘That’s what I read.’

  ‘You may be right, but Christine Mason is not high on our list of potential suspects. However, you are. Hislop, I suggest you leave London tonight. In fact, I’ll put you on the train myself.’

  ‘Up to you.’

  Larry finished his drink and took hold of Hislop’s arm. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Next door, a budget hotel. It’s not much to look at, but it’s clean.’

  ‘With a shower?’

  ‘And a bath. Luxury after what I’ve had to put up with for the last few months.’

  Sixty-five minutes later, Terry Hislop boarded his train. Larry hoped it was the last that he saw of him. He had not killed Colin Young/Barry Montgomery, that much was known, as his movements could be accounted for in Liverpool at the time and date when the man had met his fate in that cold lake early in the morning.

  ***

  Nobody in Homicide had intended going back to Pembridge Mews so soon. Its significance in the investigation was that it was where Matilda Montgomery had lived and committed suicide and where Amelia Bentham, who lived in another mews house, had bedded Matilda’s brother.

  And now, as the team drove up to Matilda’s house, a sign outside, placed there by an estate agent, announced that it was for sale.

  Typically, just one or two from Homicide would have attended the scene, but the old man with the walking stick and the limp had been adamant.

  ‘Come quick,’ he had said to Wendy when he had phoned. ‘Bring your DCI.’

  The man ended the phone call soon after. Another time Wendy would have regarded the request as that of an old man looking for attention, feeling the loneliness of age, but this was different.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said to the others in the office. ‘It seems serious to me. We’d better go.’

  Larry had phoned for a patrol car to be at the scene, to wait out on the main road and not in the cul-de-sac.

  ‘It’s inside,’ the old man said as the three of them, Isaac, Larry and Wendy, got out of their car.

  ‘What’s inside?’ Larry asked. He had figured from his previous encounters with the man that he was the person in the street – every street seemed to have one – that kept an eye on the comings and goings, who was sleeping with who, who had just bought some new furniture, who had argued with their spouse. Not the sort of person you always wanted living near to you, but handy in a murder investigation.

  ‘Matilda’s father. I saw him enter three days ago and I never saw him leave.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he’s inside.’

  ‘There are no lights on, not even at night, and there’s a smell.’

  Wendy pressed her nose close to the front door. ‘He’s right,’ she said.

  ‘We don’t need a warrant for this,’ Isaac said. ‘Ask the uniforms in the patrol car if they have an enforcer.’

  ‘No need for a battering ram,’ Wendy said. ‘If Amelia’s at home, she’ll probably have a spare key.’

  Two minutes later the door to Matilda Montgomery’s house was opened, the key having been supplied by Amelia Bentham. Isaac entered on his own, ensuring that he had shoe protectors on his feet, nitrile gloves on his hands. The old man had wanted to go in too, but Larry had told him firmly that if anything was untoward then the fewer people inside, the better.

  The old man didn’t understand. To him, he had alerted the police and that somehow gave him privileged status. A small crowd was starting to form outside the building; Amelia standing to one side with Wendy.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Wendy asked the young woman. ‘Stanley Montgomery, have you seen him recently?’

  ‘Once, but that was when they put it up for sale. He acknowledged my presence, but he didn’t want to talk, never asked if I had a spare key. Unusual, I thought at the time, and why he didn’t change the lock, I don’t know.’

  ‘Has the place been painted, carpet changed, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Not that I know of. What if someone buys it, moves in, and then finds out that Matilda committed suicide in there?’

  ‘I’d say they had a lousy solicitor. The estate agent will only address questions asked, and he’ll definitely not be proffering that fact. It’ll only lower the price, render if virtually unsaleable.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Why would he want to sell it so soon after? It makes no sense.’

  ‘Nor did the treatment of his wife and his children, and they’re all dead.’

  Isaac walked along the small hallway, opening a door to one side and entering an open-plan area. Nothing appeared out of order apart from a distinctive smell. He quickly found that it was because the fridge door was open, some cheese inside a delicate mouldy blue. Also, a milk carton was open, its contents gone off.

  Isaac felt that there was no more to see and that the small house was in otherwise good order. He checked in the pantry at the rear, nothing to see. He then climbed the stairs to the two bedrooms upstairs. There was no sign of anyone in the first. The second room, the room where Matilda Montgomery had killed herself, was in front of him. Gingerly, Isaac opened the door, not so much from a sense of trepidation, more from a belief that he was interfering in the domain of the dead.

  Inside, what he had hoped not to see loomed in front of him. He retreated from the room, retracing his steps, and rejoined Larry and Wendy outside.

  Wendy could see from his face that something was wrong.

  ‘Call Gordon Windsor, t
ell him to bring his team here,’ Isaac said as he walked away. ‘And get the uniforms to establish a crime scene.’

  ‘Stanley Montgomery?’ Larry asked.

  ‘Swinging from the same beam as his daughter. No need to rush in and check his pulse. He’s been there for a couple of days from what I can see.’

  The old man adopted a look of ‘I told you so’. Amelia Bentham shed a tear.

  ‘So much tragedy for one family,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Is there a suicide letter?’ Larry called to Isaac.

  ‘There’s one. Wait for Gordon Windsor to give us the all-clear and then we’ll get to read it.’

  ‘We could read it now,’ Wendy said. ‘It could be important.’

  ‘It could be, but wait. The man’s dead, and it’s suicide. A couple of hours is not going to make any difference either way.’

  Chapter 29

  A full team of crime scene investigators were in the house in Pembridge Mews, as were Isaac and Larry. A smell continued to permeate it, no longer coming from the opened fridge but from upstairs where the body of Stanley Montgomery hung.

  ‘The letter?’ Isaac asked Windsor, the senior crime scene investigator.

  ‘It’s bagged.’

  ‘We need to read it.’

  ‘As long as you sign for it. There’s no doubt that he killed himself, messy though.’

  ‘That’s what suicide is.’

  ‘You’ve confirmed it’s the father. She had made a decent knot, even though she would have been strangled, not broken her neck. But he would have suffered for longer. The knot wasn’t tight, and if he had tried, he could have probably used his weight to break the beam, or failing that to have stretched the rope sufficiently for him to touch the floor.’

  ‘He would still have died.’

  ‘Probably. What was his state of mind?’ Windsor asked.

  ‘His son had been murdered, his daughter hanged from the same beam, his wife dead in hospital from a broken heart and malnutrition,’ Larry said.

  ‘Not much to live for then. There’s a half-empty bottle of whisky under the bed, also a bottle of sedatives.’

  ‘The daughter committed suicide without any of those.’

  ‘It makes no difference,’ Windsor said.’

  ‘Agreed. Now the letter,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Is it his writing?’ Windsor asked as he handed the letter over.

  ‘I can’t be sure. What had you hoped to gain from bagging it?’

  ‘Confirmation that the man had written it. Obvious, I’ll grant you that, considering that it was in the room with him, and no one else has been in. It may help you if we know whether it was written in here, or if he brought it with him. Whether he had contemplated suicide or whether it was spur of the moment.’

  ‘He had to buy the rope,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Is his car nearby?’ Windsor asked.

  ‘Not that we know of.’

  Isaac took hold of the letter and left the house with Larry. They both removed their protective clothing on leaving.

  The old man, who had a smug look, was standing in the middle of the mews. Larry moved over closer to him.

  ‘Rum do,’ the man said. The excitement appeared to have perked him up, and he was not leaning so heavily on his walking stick.

  ‘There must have been some noise,’ Larry said.

  ‘Amelia had one of her parties a couple of nights ago. If he had done it then, nobody would have heard.’

  ‘Yet you suspected something?’

  ‘I keep a watch on what goes on here, not like some.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Amelia cares, not that she’s here all the time. But some of the others, they’re here during the week, and then at the weekend they’re off somewhere or other.’

  ‘People live busy lives,’ Larry said. He knew the old man was a busybody, but he was a decent person, and according to what Amelia had told Wendy, he was well-liked by his neighbours, never complaining if there was a party, as long as he got an invite, the chance for one or two drinks.

  ‘You’re right, but I’m here all the time. If people look after their places, then that’s fine. We had a rogue down the other end of the mews, a couple of years back now, who was dealing in drugs. The police picked him up soon enough.’

  ‘Did you report him?’

  ‘He caused no trouble, and the only times I saw him, he was extremely polite. You never know who people are really, do you?’

  ‘Not really,’ Larry agreed. ‘You’ve still not explained why you phoned us to come to Pembridge Mews urgently.’

  ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Lucky guess, or is there more to it?’

  ‘What do you know about me, Inspector Hill?’

  ‘What you told me and what we’ve checked on since.’

  ‘SAS, Special Air Service when I was younger, behind enemy lines. I wasn’t always an old man. You’ll not find any reference to my full military record on any website, no matter how hard you try. And it’s confidential, so don’t go putting it into any report.’

  ‘I need to report what I see and hear, you know that.’

  ‘I prefer to live my life in cold reflection of what I saw and did, not to become involved in a police investigation.’

  ‘But you have.’

  ‘I’ve acted as a responsible citizen, that’s all. Pembridge Mews is important to me, so are the people who live here. I missed picking up on Matilda, but I wasn’t looking for clues then. I’m trained to observe and to remember, more of a subconscious reaction nowadays. I saw her father going into the house, I never saw him come out.’

  ‘Did he have a rope when he went in?’

  ‘He was carrying a bag with him. There could have been a rope in there.’

  ‘Why did you believe we’d find him dead?’

  ‘I’m trained to observe, I told you that, to ascertain a person’s frame of mind. Whether they’re cheerful or sad, and if their body language contradicts how they appear. A subtle art, and no doubt I could teach you a thing or two about it.’

  ‘Once this is over, maybe you could,’ Larry said. He had to feel admiration for the man who was maintaining his wish to live out his remaining years in tranquillity, not interfering, just observing, helping where he could. Larry realised that the man had trusted him with privileged information. He would respect his wishes, although in confidence he would need to tell his DCI.

  ‘I can give you a few pointers. The father goes into the house, he’s carrying a heavy bag. I can see his face. It’s not the face of a contented man. I can see the lines etched into his forehead, the drawn expression, the obvious signs that he’s not been eating properly for some time, and that he’s been drinking.’

  ‘You can tell all that?’

  ‘If you’re behind enemy lines, you need to be able to judge quickly. Is the man standing in front of you ready to shoot or is he just a local peasant trying to feed his family, not interested in getting involved in petty squabbles and violence?’

  ‘Afghanistan?’

  ‘Other countries, not there. My time with the military was over before that became a war zone. Don’t ask too many questions. Not everyone understands or agrees with what we had to do.’

  ‘Do you agree, on reflection?’

  ‘I was a soldier, following orders. And besides, we’re talking about Stanley Montgomery.’

  ‘Sorry for diverging. It sounds interesting.’

  ‘It was bloody and dirty and sometimes boring. We did things that no man should ever be forced to do, experienced things that I don’t need to talk about.’

  ‘The limp?’

  ‘A bullet in the leg, but mainly it’s old age.’

  ‘My apologies for resurrecting the past.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s good to talk. Coming back to Montgomery. He enters the house, closing the door behind him. He moves through to the kitchen at the rear, and opens the fridge.’

  ‘You could see this?’

  ‘T
hrough a gap in the curtains. I’m suspicious, not because I’m interested in what he’s up to, but as I said, I’ve seen the man’s face.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘A group of Amelia’s friends appear, and they beckon me over.’

  ‘A couple of drinks and you no longer took any interest in Montgomery?’

  ‘That’s it. I couldn’t have known what his ultimate intent was. Maybe he didn’t either.’

  ‘But he had a rope.’

  ‘Having and doing are two different things. And I’m not the Samaritans. If the man’s intention had been clearer, then I’d have probably knocked on the door and had a chat to him, but it wasn’t. I liked Matilda, even her brother, so I can understand the father being upset. Most people deal with it in time, but he didn’t.

  ‘And then you phone us?’

  ‘The house had been quiet, the lights off. He could have been drowning his sorrows for all I know, but then the smell from the kitchen. And yes, I did stick my nose to the front door, the same as your sergeant. That was the signal that something was amiss.’

  ‘That’s when you phoned us?’

  ‘In my army days, it was a clear indicator that if the food was rotten, then no one was at home or they were dead, but I knew he was inside.’

  ‘You were certain of your facts when you phoned us?’

  ‘As certain as I could be. Of course, he could have left, and I had missed it, but why the open fridge, the rotting food, the smell of burnt meat?’

  Larry left the man and joined Isaac and Wendy who were sitting in Isaac’s car. He couldn’t help but think that he had been talking to Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, both wrapped up into one man who walked with a limp.

  ***

  Isaac removed the letter from the evidence bag. On the front of the envelope, ‘To whom it may concern’. He then withdrew the letter and unfolded it. The writing was firm and legible, the signature on the third page that of Stanley Montgomery.

  ‘What does it say?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘There’s a lot here,’ Isaac said as he scanned it.