Death Speaks Softly

by Anthea Fraser

  'No.' Iris stared back at her. 'God, I hope she's all right.'

  'Who was she meeting in Shillingham, have you any idea?'

  'Simon Marshbanks, I should think.' 'Give him a ring, love. He may know something.' But Simon wasn't in, and his flatmate didn't know when he'd be back.

  'I shouldn't worry, Mum,' Iris said bracingly. 'He's probably with her now. If they'd arranged to meet tonight too, she might have stayed on and skipped the class. I wouldn't put it past her.'

  'Perhaps you're right. Well, I'm not going to hold supper any longer. I'll leave Arlette's in the oven.'

  Nevertheless, they spent an uneasy evening, their ears tuned for the sound of the front door. But it never came. When Mrs King went to the kitchen last thing to let the cat out, she found the oven still on. She took out the plate, stared blankly at the dried-up food on it, and tipped it into the bin. Then she gave a superstitious little shudder. If there was no word from Arlette by the morning, she'd have to contact the police.

  CHAPTER 2

  Detective Chief Inspector David Webb stood in his office staring moodily out of the window. Below him, the gravel driveway shimmered in the sunlight, and the lawn with its fishpond in the centre lay smooth as brushed velvet. Beyond the gateway, on Carrington Street, women shoppers in gaily coloured dresses hurried past. Out there in the sunshine everyone seemed happy and full of purpose. He sighed deeply.

  'What is it, Dave?' Alan Crombie inquired from behind him. 'You've an aura like a thundercloud this morning.' 'Sorry, I'm just thoroughly browned off.' 'On a gorgeous day like this?'

  'Particularly on a gorgeous day like this. Half the trouble is having nothing interesting to do. We've not had a case to get our teeth into for weeks, and I'm up to here with paperwork.'

  Half the trouble, he had said. And the other half was Hannah. More specifically, having caught sight of her yesterday evening, going into the Grand Theatre on the arm of some dark, self-satisfied-looking bastard. Furthermore, it was the second time in just over two weeks he'd seen her in the same company. No wonder the bloke looked pleased with himself.

  God, he must have been mad, losing his cool that way over Susie. Having been married to her for eleven years, he should have known there was no chance in hell of their coming back together. Instead of which, he'd allowed the old chemistry to flare up again, and all three of them had been hurt. He and Susan had at least gone into it with their eyes open, but how could Hannah be expected to understand? And that was nearly eight months ago. Eight months of putting off contacting her, telling himself that, living in the same building, they'd be sure to bump into each other. But Hannah had taken care that they shouldn't, and who could blame her? So why should he be surprised, now, to see her with someone else?

  There was a tap on the door. He ignored it, and after a moment Alan called, 'Come in.'

  'Excuse me, sir—' Young Marshbanks, by the sound of

  it.

  'Yes?' He went on staring out of the window. 'Could I have a word?'

  With a sigh, Webb turned. The detective-constable looked across at him apologetically, his usually cheerful face subdued.

  'All right, Simon. What is it?'

  Alan Crombie pushed back his chair, murmured something about checking records, and left the room.

  'Well, sir, I don't want to speak out of turn, and strictly speaking this isn't our business—'

  'Suppose you start at the beginning?' Webb suggested heavily.

  'Yes, sir. Well, there's a French girl I know, sir, and she's very interested in horses.' Marshbanks flushed, noting his superior's raised eyebrow. 'She's been on at me for weeks to show her round the stables, so I fixed it with the station sergeant for Tuesday afternoon. And she never turned up.'

  'Simon,' Webb began warningly, 'if you're proposing to enlist me to sort out your love-life—'

  'No, sir, really. The point is, she should have arrived on the two-thirty from Steeple Bayliss, but she didn't, and no one's seen her since. Her landlady's daughter's just been on, asking if I know where she is.'

  'I hope you advised her to get in touch with their local station?'

  'Yes, sir, but—well, there are one or two things we could do more easily at this end. I don't want to butt in on their territory, but—'

  'And exactly what could we do better at this end?'

  'She told her landlady she might stay Tuesday night with a friend in Shillingham, an au pair. But they don't know the name of the family. All Iris could tell me was that they live near the Golf Club and have a little boy called Ben. I thought perhaps if we contacted the playgroups or primary schools in the Lethbridge Road area—'

  'Is this an official inquiry?' Webb interrupted.

  'No, sir. Not yet.'

  Webb sighed. 'Then you know as well as I do that our hands are tied. What's this French girl of yours doing over here, anyway?'

  'She's at the university, sir, working for her Ph.D. But she also takes conversation classes, and does a bit of coaching.'

  'Well, leave it with me.' He looked at his watch. 'It's twelve-twenty now. I'll phone SB after lunch and see if they could use a bit of help. That satisfy you?'

  'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

  Lunch in the Brown Bear raised Webb's spirits marginally, and, noting Marshbanks's carefully bent head as he returned to his office, he decided to give Chris Ledbetter a buzz as promised. Anything to postpone a return to the paperwork.

  'Dave! Talk about coincidence! Were your ears burning?' 'No, why?'

  'I was just wondering if I could justify getting in touch with you. I don't know if you heard, but I broke my ankle a couple of weeks back.' He brushed aside Webb's expressions of concern. 'Oh, I can hobble to work—just. Happy calls for me and drives me home afterwards, but once here, I'm pretty well desk-bound, which is bloody frustrating, as you can imagine.'

  'And where do I come in?'

  'Well, a case has just cropped up and I'm not sure I like the smell of it. Girl seems to have vanished—and a French girl, at that.'

  'Well, well!' Webb commented. 'You're right about coincidence. That's why I was ringing you.' He explained about Marshbanks's concern.

  'Yes, that's the one, all right. I've had my lads out this morning making routine inquiries, but no one's falling over themselves to cooperate. Look, have you a lot on at the moment?'

  'Damn all. I'd be glad of something to do. I'll clear it with the Super and be right over.'

  'Fine. But, Dave, before you come, have another word with that lad of yours. Anything at all on this girl could be crucial.'

  Simon Marshbanks sat across the desk from Webb, Sergeant Jackson at his side.

  'It seems,' the DCI was saying, 'that SB are taking this seriously, and they'd like us to give them a hand. So tell me everything you can about this girl, Simon. Damn it, I don't even know her name.'

  'Arlette Picard, sir.'

  'Description?'

  'Quite tall—five-six or seven. Fair hair, sometimes in a plait and sometimes loose. Blue eyes. Weight about eight and a half stone.'

  'Age?'

  'Twenty-four, I think she said. She's been through a French university—it's a doctorate she's working on here.' 'And how did you meet her?'

  'Through a friend of mine, Peter Campbell. She's in digs next door to him.'

  'Landlady's name and address?' 'Mrs King, Twenty-four, Farthing Lane.' 'Do you know the girl's home address?' 'No, but she comes from Angers.' 'Spell it.'

  Marshbanks did so. He'd pronounced it 'Onjay'. That's what came of going to a posh school, Webb reflected philosophically. Young Simon's scholastic connections had been of help to them in the past. 'How well do you know her? Intimately?'

  Simon's habitually red checks flamed, and beside him, Jackson moved uncomfortably. 'No, sir. Nothing like that.'

  'Sorry,' Webb said briefly, 'but we need to get the facts straight.'

  'We went to one or two of the same parties and got on quite well. For some reason she's intrigued by my being in the police�
�she calls me 'Flic'. But I've only taken her out twice, once to the cinema and once for a drink. We'd planned to spend the rest of Tuesday together and have a meal at the Hong Kong. She's mad on Chinese food.'

  'Has she any regular boyfriends—anyone who might be jealous?'

  'No one serious. She goes round with a crowd.' 'Any names you can remember?'

  'Afraid not.' He grinned, looking suddenly very young. 'If anyone's jealous, it's probably the girls. Arlette's the star attraction at the moment, and I can see why. She's so different.'

  'And accommodating?'

  'I don't think so, sir. She enjoys flirting, but I'm pretty sure that's as far as it goes. In some ways she's a very private girl.'

  'All right, Simon, that's all for now. Get hold of John Manning and see what you can suss out in the Lethbridge Road area. If you come up with anything, contact us at SB.'

  As they walked round to the car park, Jackson said diffidently, 'You reckon we'll be taking this case on, Guv?'

  'It looks like it, Ken, with DI Ledbetter semi-laid-up.'

  'Hope it doesn't drag on too long.'

  Webb glanced at him in surprise, then understanding came. Jackson's wife was expecting twins, and they were due any day. 'SB's only a fifty-minute drive, Ken. Leave Millie their number, if it'll make you feel happier.'

  Jackson grinned shamefacedly. 'I already have.'

  'Your mother-in-law's arrived, hasn't she? Well then, there's nothing to worry about.'

  There spoke a childless man, Jackson reflected, starting up the car.

  It was a lovely day for a drive, and Webb leaned back in his seat, determined to enjoy it. He wished the French girl no harm, but he was grateful to have something to occupy his mind other than Hannah and her new escort.

  'Interesting place, Steeple Bayliss,' he remarked, to distract his sergeant from domestic worries. 'Know it at all?' 'I've been over a couple of times.'

  'That chasm it's built on was carved out by the last Ice Age. The town grew up on the north side, which has the more gradual slope, but the south bank was uncultivated right up to the nineteenth century, when the university was built there.'

  'Fancy!' said Jackson absently.

  Webb laughed. 'OK, I'll spare you the potted history. I read the guide book once, and bits of useless information stuck.'

  Jackson grinned. 'All I really know about SB I got from Bob Dawson.'

  'Don't tell me—the iniquities of its football team!'

  Their journey took them through the small market town of Marlton. In this north-west corner of Broadshire, its proximity to the Cotswolds was apparent in the honey-coloured stone buildings and the increasingly hilly countryside.

  'I'd forgotten how lovely it is up here,' Webb commented, looking about him with an artist's delight. 'My next free day, I'll come along with my sketchpad.'

  The Marlton road brought them into Steeple Bayliss at the far end of its High Street. They crawled along it for a mile or so behind a line of buses, private cars and lorries, until with relief they turned down a side street leading to the lower level of Maybury Street and the local police station.

  Chris Ledbetter awaited them in his office, his injured ankle propped on a stool beneath his desk. 'Excuse me not getting up, Chief Inspector,' he said formally, for the benefit of the two sergeants. 'I think you've met Sergeant Hopkins. He's my right arm—or rather foot—at the moment.'

  The sergeant was a tall, thin man with a long and lugubrious face. He nodded at them gloomily, and Webb repressed a smile He remembered 'Happy' Hopkins from his last visit. He introduced Jackson, and they were asked to sit down.

  Inspector Ledbetter was almost indecently good-looking. His thick blond hair had the faintest suggestion of a wave, his gentian blue eyes were set under straight brows, his shoulders were broad and his waist narrow. Furthermore his smile, as Webb had noted more than once, could be devastating. Men tended to underrate him, women—even the most respectable—found themselves fluttering their eyelashes. Yet he was happily married to a nice woman you wouldn't look twice at, and had a teenage daughter of whom he was inordinately proud.

  'The position so far is this,' he was saying. 'The last authenticated sight of the girl was when she left her lodgings on Tuesday morning. She was wearing an outfit she'd bought only the previous day—camel-coloured linen skirt, pale blue top, fuchsia kerchief round her neck. High-heeled sandals, bare legs. She told Mrs King she'd an afternoon date in Shillingham—presumably with your lad, Chief Inspector—but didn't say what she was doing that morning. Which, we think, is the crux. Because as far as we can make out, she never left here. By all accounts she's a pretty girl, specially when she wears her hair loose as she did that day. There was an impressionable lad on the ticket barrier on Tuesday, and there's no way she'd have passed him without his noticing her.'

  'Buses?' Webb inquired.

  'As you know, they take longer, but we've made inquiries at the depot and no one remembers her there either. Leaving private cars, which we're working on now.'

  'Marshbanks expected her by train—he went to meet the two-thirty. That would be—what?—about one-fifty from here?'

  'One forty-eight, yes. So there you have it. We've no trace of her after she left Farthing Lane at ten-ten that morning.' 'So if she was intending to catch the train and didn't, the time we're looking at is between ten-ten and one forty-eight.'

  'It would seem so, yes. Three hours and forty minutes. A lot can happen in that time. Has your DC any names that might help?'

  'No, but she seems to have quite a few friends, presumably from the university. We'll have to start tracking them down. In the meantime, Marshbanks is trying to discover where she meant to spend Tuesday night, though if you reckon she never reached Shillingham, that mightn't be much help.'

  A tap on the door heralded a girl with a tea-tray and four cups, which she distributed with a smile.

  'We've a house-to-house under way,' Ledbetter continued as she went out again. 'With foreign nationals you can't be too careful. She might have taken it into her head to go home, but it seems unlikely. We checked ports and airports without any joy.' He paused, and added expressionlessly, 'And we're dragging the Darrant.'

  Jackson repressed a shudder. He'd rowed the family down the river on his last visit, and he thought of the pretty, bobbing boats, and the pub that was an old barge. Was that idyllic scene to be the backdrop to tragedy? As a father himself—and shortly to be one again—he felt a wave of sympathy for the anxious French parents, which intensified as Ledbetter added, 'In the circumstances, I thought her parents should be informed. We've asked the French police to contact them.'

  The phone rang. Ledbetter lifted it, listened for a moment, and handed it to Webb. Marshbanks's voice came over the wire.

  'We've located the au pair's family, sir. Mr and Mrs Willoughby, of Lethbridge Close. Arlette spent the weekend there a fortnight ago, to keep Sophie company while they were away; but they haven't seen her since. Sophie says Arlette asked last week if she could stay Tuesday night, but nothing definite was fixed, and when she didn't turn up, Sophie thought she'd changed her mind.'

  'How well does this Sophie know Arlette?' Webb asked.

  'They met a few months ago in a department store. Arlette heard her struggling to find the right words, and helped her out. They've met several times since.'

  'Has she any names which might help us?'

  'One or two, sir, mainly from the campus. Shall I read them out?'

  'No, they'll keep till I get back. We'll leave the university till tomorrow; they'll be finishing for the day by now. Put a list on my desk, with any relevant comments. And well done, Simon. Your hunch paid off.'

  He replaced the phone and repeated the findings to an attentive audience. 'He feels responsible,' he ended quietly. 'He's thinking that if he'd made some positive move to look for her instead of taking the huff, she might have turned up by now.' He looked at Ledbetter. 'Who did you speak to at the university?'

  'Professor Warwic
k, head of the French Department. He says he didn't know the girl well.' He turned to his sergeant. 'Take Sergeant Jackson to the main office, Happy, and introduce him to the lads—we'll be working together on this one.'

  Happy nodded morosely and motioned Jackson out with a jerk of his head. As the door closed behind them, Ledbetter smiled.

  'Happy's mortified that extra help has been called in. To be fair, he's taken on the hell of a lot since my accident, and managed extremely well. He feels quite capable of seeing the inquiry' through.'

  'And it's an added insult that we're from Shillingham?' Webb suggested with a smile.

  'Got it in one. But missing persons are tricky. You have to pull the stops out, even though you half expect them to turn up any minute and ask what all the fuss is about.'

  Webb nodded. 'But it's no use telling a distracted parent eighty-five per cent turn up of their own accord.'

  'As luck would have it, this is our second case in two weeks. Young girl disappeared after a row with her mother. For my money she's skipped to London and is lying low for a while, but we've a full-scale search under way. That's my problem, but it does mean we're already at full stretch, which was another reason for contacting you. I'm just sorry you'll have so much travelling. If it would help, we've a spare room you'd be more than welcome to, and we could soon fix your sergeant up.'

  'Good of you, Chris, but no, thanks. I'll have to look in at DHQ every day, and Jackson's wife's expecting any minute. He'll be anxious to get home at night.'

  'Well, at least you must have a meal with us while you're over. Janet will be pleased to see you, and you'll notice a big change in Emma. She's quite a young lady now.'

  'That'd be great.' Webb stood up and stretched. 'I reckon there's not much else we can do at the moment. I'll go and read the Willoughbys' statement and see what names Marshbanks has come up with. And I'll be here by eleven in the morning.'

  The phone rang again. Chris Ledbetter listened, spoke into it, and nodded, his face grim. As he replaced it, he met Webb's eye. 'The French parents are arriving tomorrow. Flying to Heathrow and getting the train up here, due at three-fifteen. The university's sending someone to meet them, but we should also put in an appearance.'