The Sinking Admiral

by The Detection Club

  ‘The champagne is real,’ Amy said, interrupting their tête-à-tête. ‘Fitz hated cava and Prosecco alike, and when I asked Griffiths Bentley – the late Griffiths Bentley, that is – about paying for the funeral, he said there was plenty in the will, and testamentary expenses are always allowed – and before tax too, so you shouldn’t be too worried at the cost, Greta.’

  Feeling Alice’s hand on her back, Greta controlled herself and her galloping emotions. It wasn’t easy, but this was neither the time nor the place to tell Amy to stop being so patronising or so intrusive.

  ‘I think that is something for the executors, not for me, Amy.’

  Amy’s flush and scowl were reward enough for Greta’s self-control, and helped her smile sweetly before moving towards the tray and picking up another glass of red wine. She hoped it was a New World one. The pub’s stock of French wine had always struck her as being dire, but Fitz had been old-fashioned about that. He believed only the French knew how to make wine properly. But he kept the best stuff for his own private supply. Otherwise he would occasionally take himself off on a day-trip to Calais in a hired van and stock up on the cheapest, thinnest, sourest stuff he could buy for a euro or two.

  Greta sipped and relaxed. This was more of the perfectly decent fruity Australian Shiraz. She gave Alice an approving nod.

  ‘But, Greta, before you go and talk to anyone,’ Amy said, pushing between them to grab another glass of champagne for herself, ‘I have to ask you again whether any of your Guides stayed on the beach after the rest of you left.’

  Greta put down her glass so sharply that wine slopped over the edge. She had to lick the back of her hand to clean it.

  ‘I’ve told you – they all left at the same time.’

  ‘All, are you sure?’

  ‘Well, that is, Tracy Crofts stayed to do a bit of tidying up inside the tents.’

  Greta could not believe the speed with which Amy rushed out of the pub.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was still raining, but Amy hardly noticed. In the distance she could see Tracy Crofts walking fast, almost stumbling, along the beach. The tide was coming in, wavelets sucking at the pebbles and threatening the girl’s spangled trainers. Her head down, she seemed unware of the weather.

  Amy caught up with her. ‘Tracy,’ she put her hand on the teenager’s arm, ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said, trying to sound conciliatory.

  The arm was pulled away. ‘I got nothing to say to you.’

  Amy skipped out of the way of a sudden surge from the tide. ‘Look, we can’t talk here. I live just over there.’ She pointed in the direction of her cottage, now a mere moment’s walk away. ‘Why don’t you come with me and dry off?’ She saw Tracy’s look of sulky disdain and added, ‘I’ve got a bottle of wine open.’ The girl was under age, but this was an emergency, and the weather could almost mean alcohol was a medical necessity.

  Tracy halted, looked towards the cottage, then at Amy, finally gave a defeated shrug and said, ‘OK, then.’

  Amy hadn’t left any heat on but, after the dismal weather outside, the cottage seemed warm as she opened the door and led Tracy inside.

  ‘Where’s this wine, then?’ The girl flung herself into Amy’s favourite chair and drew her thin jacket with its badly sewn-on badges, none of which appeared to have anything to do with the Guides, closely around her.

  Amy lit the log-burner, found two glasses and a bottle of the pub’s Merlot; Fitz had given her a case only the other day. ‘You can think of me when you drink it,’ he’d said with one of his endearing twinkles.

  Tracy knocked back half the glass in one gulp.

  Amy found some cheese and biscuits. She hadn’t seen the girl eat anything at the pub, and she needed her to keep sober. On the other hand, this being Tracy Croft, she could probably drink anyone under the table. Even so…

  ‘Now,’ she said, sitting down opposite the girl. ‘Why were you tidying up inside the tents the night Fitz was killed? I don’t have you down as someone born to housework.’

  The glass, now empty, was held out for a refill. Amy obliged.

  ‘You don’t know nothin’,’ Tracy sneered. ‘My nan said I was a dab hand at washing up, better’n what she was.’ For an instant she forgot to be sulky, then her face crumpled. ‘My nan and me, we got on really great.’ Tears started to roll down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, Tracy,’ Amy leaned forward and took her hand, the girl seemed really upset. ‘Is it something I’ve said?’

  Tracy gulped, pulled her hand out of Amy’s grasp, and scrubbed at her eyes. ‘Today wasn’t my first funeral.’

  ‘You mean your grandmother died recently?’

  The girl nodded and more tears flowed. ‘The other week. She lived with us, and she used to tell me all sorts of things. Been in Crabwell for ever she had. When she heard I’d joined the Guides and it was run by Miss Knox, she didn’t half have a laugh.’ Tracy sat up and dashed away the last of the tears. She was scornful now. ‘Said she was no better than she ought to be and I should watch myself, Nan said. She used to do for old Mrs Knox; years ago that was. She worked in lots of Crabwell houses, she did. D’yer see that Gregory Jepson at the funeral? Well, she worked for Mrs Jepson, too, was there when he arrived as a baby.’ She paused for a moment. ‘They say he’s a success, but ’e can’t be, I mean, look at him!’

  Amy wasn’t interested in this, in her experience Tracy rubbished everybody. Now that the girl had lost some of her sulkiness it was time to get to the important matter. She topped up the empty glass. ‘You may well have a Duke of Edinburgh Award for housekeeping, but you can’t fool me that is what you were doing in the tents that night. Come on, who were you waiting for?’

  A sly look came into Tracy’s eyes. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know? Maybe you had an eye on him yourself!’

  ‘On whom?’

  ‘Jed Rhode,’ Tracy said proudly. ‘He told me I was cute and all.’

  ‘Jed Rhode? That hunk…’ Amy caught herself. ‘I mean that strapping fisherman with the red hair?’

  Tracy nodded vigorously. ‘He said he’d come by that evening, and if I was there and no one else was, well, we might have some fun. Only, I was tired, see; Miss Knox had kept us all hard at it, and then we’d had the bonfire and sausages and, well, I fell asleep in one of the tents. Thought he’d come and wake me, call me a sleeping beauty!’ Only, Amy thought, if Meriel Dane was to be believed, her mature charms had trumped Tracy’s youth.

  Amy looked at the bedraggled hair that was just beginning to dry out, the pointed little face, the three nasty spots on the chin, the stubby eyelashes and indeterminate grey of the eyes, and gave an inward sigh. How soul-destroying your teenage years could be! ‘And did he? Wake you up?’

  Tracy shook her head. ‘I woke up freezing. Then I heard voices, so I put my head out of the tent.’

  Amy knew, she just knew, that now, at last, she was going to find out what had happened to the Admiral.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘It wasn’t Jed; it was the Admiral who was talking.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘To that television chap, Ben what’s-his-name. I knew Jed wasn’t going to turn up, so I sort of melted away.’

  ‘And that’s all you saw, Ben Milne and the Admiral talking? Nothing else?’

  ‘I had to get home, see; get in the back way without my mum seeing me or she’d give me a right thrashing.’ Tracy’s mouth pinched up and she shivered.

  Mrs Crofts was an Amazon of a woman whose arms featured a whole gallery of tattoos. For the first time Amy began to see why the girl behaved the way she did.

  She took the wine glass out of Tracy’s hand. ‘You get home now. And better not let your mum know you’ve been drinking.’

  ‘Reckon it’s illegal what you’ve done, giving me wine.’ Tracy’s truculence was back.

  ‘In the bar it would be, yes. Not on private premises, so don’t get any ideas.’ Amy didn’t know whether this was in fact true, but she had t
o get rid of the girl.

  Amongst the swirling thoughts in Amy’s head one predominated. And inevitably it had to do with Ben Milne. There was no romance in the thought, only suspicion.

  When he’d been so insistent that they should share all the information they found out on the case, she’d thought he was just keen to find out the truth. Now his actions offered another explanation. For reasons of his own he wanted to know exactly where her suspicions were focussing.

  She knew she had to confront him, but now didn’t feel like the right moment. He was still in the pub, and her duty as bar manager should have taken her straight back there. She needed time to compose her thoughts, though. Even more than that she needed more evidence. Evidence that would confirm her darkening suspicions.

  And there was no question in her mind as to where she should search for that evidence.

  The reason why Rosalie Jepson was not seen much on the streets of Crabwell became apparent when Amy knocked on the door of her seafront cottage. It was at the far end of the village, separated from the other houses by a small footbridge over a narrow stream that had over many years marked its passage through the shingle to the sea.

  Though not yet six o’clock, to Amy it felt much later. Walking into St Mary’s for Fitz’s funeral seemed an age away as she waited on Rosalie Jepson’s doorstep. She was about to knock again when the hall light came on. Sounds of effort preceded the homeowner’s reaching and unlocking her front door.

  It opened to reveal an old woman supporting herself on a three-wheeled blue walker. The size of the ankles beneath a long skirt explained her lack of mobility. The straps on her huge shoes had nearly reached the limit of their Velcro. The rest of her body also looked grotesquely swollen. In spite of her disabilities, Rosalie Jepson’s face was truly beautiful. Framed by white hair gathered in a bun at the back, there was a calmness about it, a serenity.

  ‘You’ll have come from the pub, I dare say. You’re Amy, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Do come in. It’s perishing out there, isn’t it? Go straight through into the sitting room.’ She gestured the way. ‘I’ll come at my own pace – a pace that makes tortoises think they’re Formula One drivers.’

  Amy did as instructed, wondering how Rosalie Jepson knew her name, but at the same time feeling excitedly certain that the old lady knew a lot more about things that went on in Crabwell.

  The room into which she had been directed was a shrine to china figurines. On every surface porcelain ladies swirled their skirts. It wasn’t a world of collectibles that Amy knew much about, but she got the impression that she was not looking at top-of-the-market products. These weren’t Meissen or Royal Doulton. But the care with which they were displayed told how much they were valued by their owner.

  The other striking thing in the room, in the bay window that looked out towards the sea, was a large telescope on a stand, which was pointing to the right along the Crabwell sea front. Amy reckoned its range went at least as far as the bit of beach on which Fitz’s body had been found in his dinghy.

  ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea or something,’ said the voice behind her, ‘but you’d have to wait for it. Getting back to the kitchen would take approximately twice as long as it has taken me to get here from the front door.’

  ‘No, I’ve just had a drink, thank you,’ said Amy.

  ‘At the wake for the dear old Admiral, I dare say.’

  ‘Yes.’

  With practised ease Rosalie Jepson swung her huge bulk into a large armchair beside a fireplace where electric logs burned eternally without ever making any ash. ‘And,’ she continued once she was settled and had folded her walker behind the chair, ‘I gather it’s become a wake for more than one now.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ asked Amy, puzzled as she moved to the armchair towards which Rosalie had gestured.

  ‘I hear Griffiths Bentley’s dead too.’

  ‘How on earth did you know that? His body’s only just been discovered. Have the police been in touch with you?’

  ‘No,’ she replied, mystified by the question.

  ‘Were they in touch with you about Fitz – the Admiral’s death?’

  A firm shake of the head. Amy wasn’t that surprised. She had yet to be impressed by the efficiency – or even competence – of Cole and Chesterton.

  ‘So, Rosalie, how did you hear about Griffiths Bentley’s death?’

  The old woman’s smile would have been complacent had it not been for the twinkle in her eye. ‘Crabwell’s a small place. Even though I can’t get around now like I used to, I still hear the jungle drums.’

  Amy pointed towards the telescope. ‘And watch what goes on?’

  ‘Not very often. That was Ritchie’s pride and joy. He loved monitoring the shipping.’ She gestured towards a bookshelf packed with spiral-bound notebooks. ‘Wrote down all the details of what he saw through the telescope. I hadn’t the heart to move it after he passed.’

  ‘And how long ago…?’

  ‘Six years now.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes, so am I. Still, I mustn’t be maudlin. Ritchie and me were very happy while it lasted. Many people don’t even have that much. And of course I’ve got Gregory.’

  ‘Yes.’ Amy had been wondering how to bring up the name, and now Rosalie had done the job for her. ‘You adopted him?’

  ‘Yes. Having our own children didn’t work for us. I’m sure now there are all kinds of medical things we could have done about it, but back then… Anyway, Ritchie wouldn’t have liked going through tests and… As I say, we couldn’t have children of our own, so… I’d always wanted a little boy called Gregory, and when we first saw him in the orphanage… those dark, dark eyes… I loved him from that moment on.’

  ‘Where was the orphanage? Somewhere local? ‘

  ‘Oh, good heavens no. It was miles away in Hertfordshire. Ritchie and I had a very anxious time after we’d first seen Gregory… you know, wondering whether the adoption would go through. Because Ritchie was a good few years older than me, on the edge of the age that they then thought would be unsuitable as an adoptive parent. But God – or someone similar, I don’t care who – was on our side. It all went through without a hitch…’ her old eyes glistened ‘… and Gregory has brought more joy into my life than I ever thought possible.’

  ‘And become astonishingly successful.’

  ‘So I believe.’ Rosalie Jepson casually dismissed his millions. ‘He’s always trying to give me money, but I keep telling him I’ve got everything I need. Ritchie thought that too, he never wanted to take money from anyone else, even his son. He’d worked all his life for his state pension, and that was enough for him. And then I’d got my private pension too.’

  ‘Oh? What did you do, Rosalie?’

  ‘I was the village schoolteacher.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, right here in Crabwell. Until the school closed. Not enough pupils, government cutbacks, you know the story. Now the kids have to get buses to Dunwich.’

  ‘So there’s now no school in Crabwell?’

  ‘Well, no state school. Only the private one.’

  ‘Is that where Greta Knox teaches?’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, I was into my late fifties when the local primary closed, so I reckoned that was a message I should retire. And the pension I got was surprisingly healthy. So I never needed any extra.

  ‘Of course, I’m delighted for Gregory… you know, the money he’s got. I think it really frustrated him that we wouldn’t take anything from him. He wanted to spread his largesse.’ She smiled nostalgically. ‘He was always good with figures… as a boy he was always top of the class when it came to sums.’

  A facility inherited from his mother, thought Amy.

  ‘It was sometimes embarrassing, what with me being his teacher. Some of the parents thought I must have been giving him extra coaching. But I didn’t. He didn’t need it. He just had this natural ability.’

  ‘And Gregory keeps in touch with you, does he?’


  ‘Oh yes, he’s very good at that. Doesn’t come down to Crabwell as often as he used to, but he rings me at least once a day.’

  ‘Was it from him that you heard about Griffiths Bentley’s death?’ Amy asked, and a nod from the old woman confirmed her intuition. ‘And he didn’t say who he thought might have done the murder?’

  ‘No. He didn’t actually use the word “murder”. He just said the body had been found in St Mary’s churchyard.’

  Amy couldn’t see much point in telling Rosalie how she knew the solicitor was murdered. Besides, she had a more pressing line of enquiry. ‘Was it Greg – Gregory who discovered the identity of his birth parents?’

  ‘No. He never expressed any interest in them. Ritchie and I told him when he was eighteen he’d be able to find out who they were, but he said he didn’t want to. He said we’d looked after him and loved him, and we were the only parents he ever wanted.’ A shy smile crossed the old lady’s beautiful face. ‘Which shows at least that we did something right.’

  ‘I think you did a lot of things right. But did you and Ritchie know about Gregory’s birth parents?’

  ‘No. Maybe we could have found out, but we didn’t want to. Gregory was ours, that’s all that mattered.’

  ‘So, if you didn’t know, and he didn’t search out the information himself, how did he find out who his birth parents were?’

  ‘It was kind of a coincidence. But as soon as he discovered his birth father was Fitz… and knowing how badly the Admiral Byng was doing… well, it gave him great pleasure to bail the old boy out.’

  ‘With the two million he transferred to Fitz’s account?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Why did he make over so much?’

  The old woman’s huge shoulders shrugged. ‘For someone who’s so good at making it, Gregory doesn’t really have much sense of the value of money. Two million just felt the right amount to him.’

  Which was fair enough. And certainly explained the glee and generosity of the Admiral’s ‘Last Hurrah’. Though it didn’t bring Amy any closer to the reason why someone would want to murder him.