Murder Strikes Pink

by Josephine Pullein-Thompson

  ‘All right, it doesn’t matter,’ said Flecker as Browning came in proudly bearing a tray, neatly set out with tea and biscuits.

  ‘Sugar, madam?’ and ‘Will you have a cup, sir?’ asked Browning, pouring out.

  ‘Have you any friends or relations in the neighbourhood you could stay with, Mrs. Keswick?’ asked Flecker, when Marion had drunk and looked a little revived.

  ‘The Chesterfields asked me to go over there,’ she answered, ‘but I can’t; there are the pigs and chickens to look after, not to mention the dog.’

  ‘You could take the dog with you,’ Flecker told her. ‘And who normally feeds the rest of the livestock?’

  ‘My husband or I.’

  ‘Well, Mr. Keswick can come up and feed them then,’ said Flecker. ‘If you like I’ll get hold of him and tell him so.’

  ‘You might not be able to find him or he may not be able to come or something,’ objected Marion weakly.

  ‘I can certainly find him; I shall be seeing him this afternoon, and if he can’t come up himself he must arrange for someone else to do it,’ Flecker told her belligerently. ‘Go and telephone your friends and tell them you’re coming after all,’ he added, ‘otherwise I shall import a policewoman to keep you company.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ said Browning as Marion went out to the hall. ‘She hardly knows what she’s doing.’

  When the visit was arranged they waited for Marion to pack. Flecker sat in the sitting-room doodling and drawing tiny gibbets on the folder which contained Jackson’s report, while Browning bustled round washing up cups, shutting the downstairs windows and turning off the electricity at the main switch. When she reappeared, carrying a suitcase and still protesting weakly, they put her and the dog in the back of the car and drove them firmly to Frailford.

  About four miles from Whittam, Frailford was in a more truly agricultural area, with large, flat, elm-bound fields. The Chesterfield house, square and white with wide sash windows, had been a farmhouse, but was now divested of most of its land. White doves cooed from an outhouse roof and the whole atmosphere was rural and peaceful and comfortably shabby. As the car stopped Charity Chesterfield came hurrying down the flagged path to the garden gate. A small, square figure wearing bright blue jeans and a green blouse, she welcomed Marion volubly.

  ‘You look all in, you silly girl. Why didn’t you come before? You know we wanted to have you. Sarah, take ‘Tilda and don’t let her eat the cairns. Hughie,’ she shouted, ‘come and take Marion’s suitcase.’ She turned back to the detectives. ‘Thank goodness someone had some sense; I’ll look after her.’

  Flecker said, ‘Thank you, and we’ll come and see her tomorrow morning if we may.’

  ‘And you won’t forget about the animals, will you?’ pleaded Marion as she was led away up the path.

  ‘Don’t worry, madam, I’ll remind him,’ Browning called after her.

  They lunched, as it was growing late, at a lorry drivers’ ‘Pull in’ on the main road. Flecker, coatless and preoccupied, wolfed his food, bacon, eggs and chips, followed by a tasteless fruit pie out of a packet, without noticing his surroundings. But Browning resented the ancient and discoloured oilcloth which covered the table, the smeared and drip-congealed ketchup bottle and the threadbare linoleum. ‘Not much of a place,’ he said sniffily as they went out into the sunshine.

  ‘Oh well, they fed us,’ said Flecker indifferently. ‘And now for the erring husband.’

  The stable yard at Whittam House was full of activity. Two Land Rovers and two trailers were parked on the gravel sweep in front of the red-brick stable block; hurrying figures carrying saddlery, hay nets and buckets darted about and from inside the stable came restive trampling noises and agitated whinnies.

  ‘Looking for someone?’ inquired Brenda Dix cheerfully as she scurried by with a hay net.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Keswick,’ answered Flecker, ‘but there’s no desperate hurry.’ He’d already located a man whom he felt must be Keswick. He was wearing an open-neck shirt and drill trousers and was fully engaged in trying to placate a very hysterical horse.

  Gradually calm prevailed and Keswick, warned of their presence by Brenda, came out to find the detectives sitting on the mounting block.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘We’ve been having a bit of a shuffle round; the idea was to get the whole lot under one roof.’

  ‘That’s all right, we were quite happy sunning ourselves,’ Flecker answered. ‘I’m Chief Inspector Flecker and this is Sergeant Browning. We’re from Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Oh.’ Keswick looked surprised. ‘They’ve called you in, have they?’

  ‘The County Police are busy with this fire raiser,’ Flecker explained. ‘I’m afraid I’ve a lot of questions to ask you, Mr. Keswick.’

  Keswick scratched his head and looked round him uncertainly. ‘Well, I suppose we can go up to the house,’ he said. ‘The secretaries ought to be able to find a corner for us somewhere.’ He turned and yelled, ‘Helen.’

  Helen Farrell almost justified a departure from the straight and narrow, thought Flecker. She was lovely to look at, she emanated sex and yet at the same time there was a cool, childlike and somehow innocent quality about her that was very appealing. He remembered Jackson’s observation that she’d discarded three husbands before she was thirty.

  Keswick said, ‘Scotland Yard on the job, Helen.’ ‘Scotland Yard?’ said Helen, and turned her limpid gaze on the detectives.

  ‘Mrs. Farrell?’ asked Flecker, and when she answered, ‘Yes, that’s me,’ he added, ‘I’d like a word with you too if I may, after I’ve talked to Mr. Keswick.’

  ‘Come on then,’ said Keswick. ‘Brenda can keep an eye on the horses; we’ll all go up to the house.’

  The front door was open and Keswick led the way in; he was obviously rather diffident about using the house as though it belonged to him. He opened one or two doors cautiously and finally discovered Molly Steer in the morning-room.

  ‘Scotland Yard is here, Molly,’ he said. ‘Can you spare the drawing-room for my interrogation?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, Mr. Keswick. Scotland Yard? You mean the police, oh dear. But would you rather have this room?’ She began to gather papers frantically as the idea occurred to her. ‘I can easily go somewhere else; it won’t take me a moment to clear up,’ she said in flustered tones as she scattered papers on the floor.

  ‘No, we’d rather have the drawing-room.’ Keswick shut the door. ‘You’d better wait in the garden, hadn’t you?’ he asked Helen.

  ‘O.K., but don’t be too long, darling, or I shall come and beat on the door.’

  Keswick said, ‘If you do that they’ll have you up for obstructing the police in the course of their duty.’ He sounded, Flecker thought, a little dry and withdrawn as though he felt the ‘darling’ had been a mistake.

  The drawing-room was more formally furnished than the morning-room, with a depressingly sombre colour scheme of brown and green; the furniture was large, the hangings heavy. The room wore an air of opulence, not the gaudy richness of vulgarity nor the expensive elegance of taste, but more of a lavish mediocrity, a spending on dull and unbeautiful objects for spending’s sake.

  ‘Take a pew,’ said Laurence Keswick.

  Flecker sat down and produced his envelopes.

  ‘First of all, we’ve persuaded your wife to leave Down End Farm and stay with Mrs. Chesterfield,’ he told Keswick. ‘She’s taken the dog and I said I’d ask you to arrange for the pigs and poultry to be fed.’

  Keswick looked embarrassed. ‘Yes, I’ll see to that. What’s the matter with my wife? Is she ill?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s a case for the doctor, but she seemed in rather poor shape,’ Flecker answered, ‘and I don’t think she was bothering with meals.’

  ‘That’s typical,’ said Keswick angrily.

  ‘And of course she’s not in a very happy position so far as this inquiry goes,’ added Flecker a little grimly.

  ‘And sittin
g up there all alone brooding over it is enough to give anyone a breakdown,’ said Browning reproachfully. ‘But I expect Mrs. Chesterfield will cheer her up; she seemed a cheerful soul.’

  ‘If she doesn’t send her right round the bend,’ observed Keswick gloomily. ‘Charity never stops talking.’

  ‘Well, business,’ said Flecker. ‘Could you draw me a rough plan of the showground, with the horse-box park in detail so far as you can remember it? I want to know which horse-boxes were next to Miss Thistleton’s.’

  ‘I can try,’ answered Keswick.

  Flecker handed him Jackson’s folder. ‘Draw it on the back of that,’ he said, and produced a disreputable pencil.

  ‘On Saturday,’ said Keswick, when he’d drawn in the main lines of the showground, ‘my trailer was parked next to Mrs. Farrell’s. We were in the same line as T.T.’s box, but about six nearer the entrance so far as I remember. The later arrivals parked behind us.’ He drew them in. ‘Of course most of the people in this park were fairly local,’ he explained. ‘As it was a two-day show they fixed up to use Brunswick’s winter quarters for stabling — they’re the local circus — and the field between the show-ground and the stables was a park for the caravans and the horse-boxes of the long-distance people; a lot of them live in their horse-boxes during the show season and so they were put nearer what are known as facilities — in other words water taps and lavatories.’

  Flecker looked at the plan with interest. ‘Who did the boxes and trailers next to Miss Thistleton’s belong to?’ he asked.

  Keswick scratched his head. ‘Brown’s was somewhere near,’ he said, ‘and the Chesterfields and the Pratts and Potling, a local farmer and a load or two of Pony Club children who’d shared cattle trucks and were riding in the gymkhana. Oh yes, and the army had sent a contingent from Windsor. It’s difficult to say exactly who was next door, but Brenda might know.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Flecker, taking the folder. He looked through his envelopes. ‘I gather you didn’t talk to Miss Thistleton on either Friday or Saturday; when did you last speak to her?’

  ‘About a couple of weeks ago,’ Keswick answered. ‘At Dexley, I think. That’s right, she poured out all her woes to me in anger rather than sorrow. It was soon after Christina Scott hit this bad patch. T.T. hadn’t won a prize for three or four shows and she was getting very worked up about it.’

  ‘What made Miss Scott — er — lose her form?’ asked Flecker. ‘I imagine she normally won a good deal.’

  ‘Yes, she’s done very well in the past. She wasn’t quite top class, but she’s represented Britain abroad a good bit. T.T. wouldn’t have taken her on without a winning record. I don’t know what went wrong. She’s had some pretty unpleasant falls just lately, but I don’t think her trouble began with a crash. Of course for a lot of us our show-jumping technique is a sort of gift from God. We don’t know exactly what we do and if we try to analyse it and then decide that by pulling this string and that string we’ll jump a clear round every time, we generally go off form. A lot of show-jumping riders have never recovered from being trained or taking lessons in style. You’ve got to learn to ride before you start jumping and once you’ve begun to win the less you think about your technique the better. At least that’s my opinion.’

  ‘In fact you suspect that Miss Scott found herself in the position of the centipede who learned that he had a hundred legs and then couldn’t decide which one to move next?’

  ‘Yes, that about it,’ agreed Keswick.

  Flecker looked through his notes. ‘Did you know about this emergency basket?’ he asked.

  ‘I knew there was an object T.T. called her emergency basket which was taken to shows, but I didn’t know it included thermoses of milk shake,’ answered Keswick.

  ‘That’s the point,’ said Flecker thoughtfully. ‘I don’t suppose that it was generally known that she carried round a thermos for her especial use. It rather limits us to her immediate circle. All right, Mr. Keswick,’ he went on, getting to his feet, ‘thank you very much for your help and would you send in Mrs. Farrell, please.’

  As Keswick went out Flecker turned to Browning. ‘Go and have a chat with that blonde bombshell down in the stables,’ he said. ‘See if she can tell you which horseboxes were next to the Thistleton one on both Friday and Saturday. And remember you’re a married man,’ he added with a grin.

  ‘God!’ said Helen Farrell as she came into the drawingroom. ‘God, what an awful house. The outside’s bad enough — North Oxford Scottish baronial — but the inside’s worse. Have you been to the loo? It’s still got the original stained glass.’

  ‘Another hundred years and it’ll be preserved as an ancient monument,’ Flecker told her, ‘and the Americans will be bidding for the stained glass.’

  ‘The whole place makes me shudder,’ said Helen. ‘The thought of those three women cooped up here. God! I’m only surprised T.T. didn’t have a blood bath long ago; I should have taken a hatchet to the pair of them. It seems so extraordinary to live like this when you’ve a quarter of a million. When I think what I’d have done with it —’

  ‘You wouldn’t have had a quarter of a million for long then,’ Flecker pointed out.

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Helen energetically, ‘but I’d have lived; not just mouldered.’

  Flecker said, ‘Well, business. Sit down, Mrs. Farrell.’ He produced his envelopes and Keswick’s plan of the showground which he handed to her. ‘There’s your trailer next to Mr. Keswick’s,’ he explained, ‘and this is Miss Thistleton’s box. Does that look like the right layout for Saturday to you?’

  Helen gave it a cursory glance. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she answered.

  ‘Can you remember who owned any of the other boxes?’ he asked. ‘Do you know which belonged to the Pratts and the Browns and the Chesterfields?’

  ‘No,’ answered Helen without, thought Flecker, even trying to remember.

  ‘You didn’t speak to Miss Thistleton yourself,’ he said trying another tack, ‘did you see her talking to anyone else?’

  ‘God! What time did I have to watch what she was doing?’ inquired Helen explosively. ‘I was riding; I had a horse to see to and I was trying to take an interest in what went on in the ring.’

  ‘As far as I can make out you and Mr. Keswick wanted to steer clear of Miss Thistleton,’ said Flecker mildly, ‘and that generally means one observes the person rather closely. One says, “Oh lord, there she is talking to so-and-so” and one dodges round the back of the refreshment tent or takes some other defensive action.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose in a way that’s true,’ Helen admitted grudgingly, ‘but we didn’t go in the enclosure much, you see there was a beer tent near the collecting ring. We only went in the enclosure for lunch and the loo and at the end of the day when the beer tent ran out. T.T. did wander round the horse-boxes a bit. I remember thinking that it was odd for her to be alone; generally she didn’t move without a retinue of secretaries.’

  ‘Friday or Saturday?’ asked Flecker. ‘Morning or afternoon?’

  ‘Saturday morning,’ Helen answered after a moment’s reflection. ‘I was just having a practice jump before the Grade C.’

  ‘Right, thank you,’ said Flecker, getting up. ‘I’ll probably have some more questions for you in a day or two, but I gather you’re staying on at the George.’

  ‘Yes, until Sunday, anyway. There’s another show fairly near on Saturday. I’m stabling my horse here with Laurence’s so I shall be in and out.’

  Flecker said, ‘Would you tell the secretaries I’d like to see them now?’

  A few moments later Molly Steer’s flushed face appeared round the door. ‘Mrs. Farrell said, but I don’t know if it was a mistake or not, that you wanted to see us. We didn’t know whether you meant both at once or one at a time or which you wanted first — or anything.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter a bit,’ Flecker answered her. ‘Come in, Miss Steer, and sit down. There,’ he added, point
ing, as Molly stood rent with indecision, her gaze roving uncertainly from chair to chair. ‘Can you remember,’ he asked, ‘how Miss Thistleton spent Friday evening?’

  Molly Steer sat bolt upright on the extreme edge of her chair. ‘Oh dear, I’ve such a poor memory,’ she moaned.

  ‘It was very hot,’ Flecker reminded her, ‘and Miss Thistleton was in a bad temper; she’d dismissed Miss Scott.’

  ‘Oh yes, she was in a dreadful mood.’ Molly Steer’s eyes bulged behind the green diamante-decorated spectacles as she recollected. ‘So unkind, she scarcely gave us a moment to collect her things together. But one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. I wouldn’t like you to think that — I mean —’

  ‘You may as well be honest,’ Flecker told her, ‘and we’ve more or less gathered what sort of person Miss Thistleton was. Did you have dinner immediately you reached home?’ he prompted her.

  ‘Oh no, we always changed. Miss Thistleton was most particular. I don’t mean into evening dress, of course, but into something, well, suitable.’

  ‘And after dinner?’

  ‘Joy got the Browns on the telephone and Miss Thistleton arranged for the son to ride instead of Christina Scott. Then I had to phone Mrs. Keswick and tell her.’

  ‘And then?’ asked Flecker.

  Molly thought for a moment. ‘Oh yes,’ she cried with relief. ‘Of course, Miss Thistleton sent us for the scrapbooks. So unkind, she let us bring them all in here and then it turned out she only wanted the year before last’s and we had to take all the others back.’

  ‘What do the scrapbooks contain?’ asked Flecker.

  ‘Oh, they’re really a sort of record of each year. We had to paste in photographs and Press cuttings, things like that; they were mostly to do with the horses.’

  ‘Was she looking for some particular thing?’ asked Flecker.

  ‘Yes, and she found whatever it was, I think, because she suddenly became much better-tempered than she’d been all day.’