Murder in Hell's Corner

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Murder in Hell's Corner Page 21

by Amy Myers


  She agreed but nevertheless it didn’t stop him logging on, this time to put the new Tanner icon into action. He frowned. ‘It’s telling us that Sunday September first 1940 ended with Tanner as victim and out of play. Nevertheless, continuing to hit his icon for Monday the second results in a red cross on the screen in the sergeants’ mess, which is highlighted to indicate action of some sort.’

  ‘Eddie told me that Joseph Smith left that day and that Tanner’s effects were collected by the adjutant.’

  ‘Including his logbook presumably. Now I wonder what happened to that. It belonged to the pilot himself, and was presumably returned to the family. I also wonder,’ he added without drawing breath, ‘why Purcell is so very silent.’

  ‘I didn’t know the Tanner story when I met him. There’s obviously been at least a tacit taboo on any of them talking about it.’

  ‘In which case,’ Peter deftly picked up, ‘did Jan tell you the story with Bill’s permission, or was he stepping outside agreed limits?’

  Georgia thought about this. ‘The latter, but knowing Sylvia had told me about her side of what happened.’

  ‘Then why was Alan attacked after he’d seen you, not before, if the story wasn’t to get around? And how did his attacker know where he was living? Let’s assume that someone really was watching you on your Boulogne trip – not in threat to you, but to find out about Purcell. Who knew you were going to meet him?’

  ‘You and Luke, no one else.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Positive. The ferry company knew I was going to Boulogne. No one else did. I doubt if Purcell told anyone.’

  ‘There I agree. How did you make the booking with SpeedFerries? Phone?’

  ‘Internet.’

  ‘How did you tell Luke?’

  ‘Email.’ Georgia did a double-take when she saw his expression. ‘Come off it, Peter. It’s not possible.’

  ‘It is. You could well have a hacker.’

  Georgia closed her eyes. This was all she needed. ‘All my emails? All of my address book?’ She thought back rapidly. Yes, she had emailed Luke, and Jack. She’d been in contact with Sylvia by email too. And others.

  ‘If there’s a hacker, it has to be someone we know or hired by one of them.’

  Visions of six elderly pilots – if one included Eddie – busily worming their way into computers seemed faintly ludicrous to Georgia. ‘How would they do it?’

  ‘Through Jack’s murderer, Georgia. You’d be in his address book.’

  ‘What now?’ She hadn’t meant it to come out as a wail, but it did and he looked at her kindly.

  ‘We send for Charlie, but meanwhile we know someone’s reading your mail, yes? So we do as with double agents. Send out false intelligence. Fortunately our hacker won’t be interested in sabotage, only in knowing what we are up to. Very well, we’ll tell him.’

  *

  When the internal telephone rang, it was the last straw. She’d just finished a session with Charlie on the telephone, another long conversation with Luke about the house, and preparing back-up files in case the worst happened.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Peter’s impatient voice demanded when at last she picked it up. He did not stop for an answer. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing. Talking to Oliver Tanner’s brother, Robert. Not an easy proposition since he was inclined to deny he had ever had a brother called Oliver. No, I didn’t tell him the story, merely that we were interested in Patrick Fairfax’s death. He did not howl and say, “It’s a fair cop, gov”, so I take it that he never had any involvement with 362 Squadron.’

  ‘Can you be sure of that over the telephone?’

  ‘I’d risk it. He was in the army, not the RAF. Oliver was his younger brother, and I gathered it was generally thought at the time that Oliver had done the right thing in disappearing from the family escutcheon, even though his mother never believed in his cowardice – naturally enough. I asked what had happened to Oliver’s effects. That produced a reaction. A long pause – you know the sort of thing?’

  She did. The feeling that you had gone wrong somewhere or that – and she hoped so in this case – that you had hit a nail on the head.

  ‘He said,’ Peter continued, ‘that there seemed a lot of interest in these things and that I was the second aviation historian who’d asked about that.’

  ‘Who was the first? Or can I guess?’

  ‘You can. Jack Hardcastle. How do you feel like a chat with Mrs H?’

  Susan didn’t answer her phone until the following weekend as she’d been away, and as Monday was set aside with great reluctance for visiting the Family Records Office in London, it was Tuesday before Georgia could go to Eynsford. Better that way than discussing it over the phone. Susan needed live contact.

  Meanwhile, north London, poring over indexes of births, marriages and deaths, was no place to be on a late August day. Only a week to go and the bank holiday would be here, signalling the imminent arrival of autumn. August should be spent in the sunshine, but nevertheless Georgia obeyed instructions, did a thorough sweep and ordered the certificates. One thing was sure. Sylvia’s twins, born in early May 1941, could well have been Oliver Tanner’s.

  *

  As Georgia drove up and parked by the side of the lane on the Tuesday morning, Bramley House looked desolate, and she tracked this down partly to the fact that the Spitfire and Hurricane had departed from the doorway.

  ‘I couldn’t bear them,’ Susan said frankly as she led her into the living room. The door of Jack’s office was closed. ‘They seemed to be mocking me every time I came into the house. It’s bad enough waiting all the time for the police to ring, without having too many of Jack’s things around. I suppose I’ll have to decide what to do about his collection.’

  ‘Take your time,’ Georgia advised. ‘Are the police any further forth?’

  ‘They don’t seem to be. They talked to Eddie Stubbs again a day or two ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry to pester you again . . .’ Georgia began.

  ‘Pester all you like. It’s a small price to pay for company. I think of Jack all the time anyway.’

  ‘Did he ever mention a 362 Squadron pilot called Oliver Tanner?’

  ‘Not that I remember, but then I didn’t know one from the other.’

  ‘Or Jack meeting or phoning a Robert Tanner?’

  Again a no. ‘He said,’ Georgia explained, ‘that he had sent something – an RAF logbook – to Jack.’ She knew it was all too probable that his killer had taken it. ‘Is there anywhere he might have put it for safe keeping?’

  Susan grimaced. ‘Safe keeping? Goodness knows. Jack was a squirrel.’

  ‘No hollow tummies in the wooden Spitfire?’ Georgia joked.

  Susan managed a smile. ‘I think I’d have noticed. Jack was a straightforward man. He wouldn’t think of that.’

  ‘The bank? Storage?’

  Susan shook her head.

  ‘What would you have done with it?’ Georgia asked in desperation.

  The answer was prompt. ‘Copied any pages I wanted and got the original out of the house. Given it to my son, probably. But before you ask, he hasn’t got anything. The police have checked already.’

  ‘And Michael Hastings only has the disks,’ Peter grunted when Georgia reported back. ‘Which makes me wonder if this logbook is so important.’

  ‘It could be,’ Georgia said firmly. ‘It’s worth checking anyway.’

  *

  ‘You know what?’ Peter looked up in the middle of the spaghetti puttanesca she had cooked. He was getting gloomy again, she realized with foreboding, partly through frustration with Suspects Anonymous. ‘I still don’t think we’ve got the full story.’

  ‘We’re eating supper,’ she protested. ‘No work. Anyway, we now know there’s a corpse in the dell, unless Matt had it removed. That’s possible, but unlikely. Isn’t that full enough for you?’ It certainly was for her.

  ‘No. Something Eddie said set up a train of thought and it’s gon
e, dammit. And what exactly did Purcell imply by “as he spoke to her in 1940”? Fairly weird statement, isn’t it?’

  ‘I took it merely to mean that he had told Sylvia the story in 1940. She confirmed it. She told me she left Malling so that she was no longer reminded of Oliver all the time. Then Alan told her what had happened, except for the fact that the body was still in the dell. He spared her that. It wasn’t the fact that she was pregnant that made her leave – not that it makes any difference. The twins are almost certainly Tanner’s.’

  ‘I agree.’

  She sighed. ‘So why are you so sure it’s not the full story?’

  ‘I told you already. The attack on Alan was after he met you, which implies that the arsonist was not particularly interested in what he told you, but in what proof he had. And that might mean more than an accident at the heart of the story.’

  Tap, tap, tap. The sticks advanced out of the darkness. What was so terrible that it could have led to Fairfax’s murder later? She saw where this was leading and shrank from it. Murder begets murder.

  She swallowed. ‘Are you implying that Patrick Fairfax deliberately murdered Oliver Tanner? Supposition. It wouldn’t fit all the facts.’

  ‘Why not?’ Peter asked.

  ‘The other pilots wouldn’t have helped cover up a murder. For one thing, that would make them accessories after the fact, which could carry the death penalty in those days.’

  ‘They might not have known it was murder. It was getting dark. They were burying him, presumably in a sheet or blanket. Even if they’d had time to be curious, death by hitting one’s head on a stone and by other hands crashing the stone down would look the same to the lay eye, especially in the dusk. Especially if the person telling you what had happened was your much admired leader whom everyone trusted.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ she agreed. In her mind she saw the blood from the stone, seeping into the ground, from what was left of Tanner’s head. She saw the whole grisly scene, but there was one inevitable question.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Over Sylvia?’

  ‘The trophy girlfriend. A prize. Fairfax could well have thought the prettiest, wittiest girl in town should be his, and not welcomed the idea of being second best to an LMF pilot. It could have been manslaughter; it could have been deliberate murder. We might never know.’ Some drumming of fingers on the table followed. ‘I’d like to know whether that logbook survived.’

  ‘Why? Tanner wouldn’t have recorded anything about Sylvia in that.’

  ‘No, but Jack asked for it specifically. He must have had some reason. Besides, it might give us some insight into the man. He was charged with LMF. How did that reveal itself in the logbook, for example? Did he forge entries? No, he can’t have done. Logbooks had to be signed by the intelligence officer, or flight commander.’ Peter poured himself another glass of wine as the spaghetti grew slowly colder. ‘What exactly did Michael Hastings say when he told us what he held of Jack’s possessions?’

  Presumably Peter had some reason for going over this old ground. ‘As I told Mrs Hardcastle,’ Georgia obediently complied, ‘he said he had the computer files, but that was all.’ Then she had a sudden doubt, thinking again. ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘didn’t he say that what we saw were all the files he had?’

  ‘That’s my recollection too. And files would not include anything Jack left with him for safe keeping. Such as a logbook.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was in their hands at last: Michael Hastings had obligingly disgorged it, once Susan Hardcastle had spoken the magic words of consent. Now all they needed were the magic words to tell them what, if anything, made this logbook so important that Jack had asked to see it. It was history, as Peter had remarked. Grey-covered, each page of the book had columns headed month, date, aircraft type, serial number, pilot, remarks, flying times etc. Each sortie was meticulously recorded in Tanner’s neat handwriting. She glanced at one entry: attacked 3 Me109s; bullet in starboard wing; engine rough. This looked like standard stuff.

  ‘Perhaps Jack’s interest was only casual,’ Georgia said at last.

  ‘Then why did he secrete it away? He could just have returned it to Tanner’s brother.’

  ‘Did Jack think Tanner had managed to fake the logbook in some way? Claimed he was flying when he hadn’t been?’

  ‘I doubt if that would be possible. These logbooks had to be signed every month or so. Look, it’s initialled here and there.’

  Georgia squinted at it. ‘It’s unreadable.’

  ‘That’s not unusual with officialdom.’

  Georgia continued reading when something struck her. ‘Look at this entry, Peter. August sixteenth. Pilot self. Remarks: raid on airfield by Dorniers. Got Spit out of harm’s way. Attacked, got one.’

  ‘So?’ Peter asked.

  ‘I’m sure that was the day Jean Fairfax told me Patrick had rushed out to save one of the LMF pilots who was frozen with fear in the cockpit. He pulled him out, and took the aircraft up himself.’

  ‘That might have been Joseph Smith, not Tanner.’

  ‘All the same, I’ll just check something else.’ Georgia turned back to July 20th. ‘Remarks: Ju87s over convoy. Attacked Me109 fighter escort. Shot down one. But according to Jean Fairfax, Patrick rescued the same pilot from certain death; he wasn’t even firing, but trying to get the hell out of it.’

  Peter logged on to Jack’s notes. ‘Well, perhaps we’re in luck. Joseph Smith only joined the squadron on the twenty-second, so if Jean has her facts right, it was indeed Tanner to whose rescue Patrick did – or did not – come. Where does that get us? Tanner was a fantasist and cooked the books?’

  ‘He couldn’t. They had to be initialled.’

  He seized the logbook from her and went quickly through it. ‘One set of initials only, and that’s at the end of July. No more. Either Tanner eluded the check, or routine had gone by the board in the frantic scrum of battle conditions. So there is a question mark – a small one,’ he warned.

  ‘Jack wanted this logbook,’ Georgia argued. ‘He thought enough of its contents to ask Michael Hastings to look after it.’

  ‘He was a thorough man.’

  ‘Then he would have pursued it twenty years ago for the squadron history, not for a general history of the battle years later.’ She took the logbook back to skim through it once more. ‘Have a look at the last entry, on August thirty-first, the day of the dance.’ She thrust the logbook under his nose again. ‘The handwriting’s changed,’ she said. ‘It’s less neat. Look at this line scored underneath the entry for the first operation, when they were scrambled at twelve fifty p.m. Raid on Biggin, Heinkels and Dorniers. Attacked Me109 escort. Lyle shot down. No enemy again (underlined). Fairfax tally ho!’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Peter said.

  ‘I agree. It did to Tanner though. He’s obviously under extreme emotion.’

  ‘Nothing for the next day, the day of his death?’

  ‘Yes, but not a report of an op.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘A doodle. Look.’

  Peter stared at it. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think it could be the dormouse.’

  Peter frowned. ‘As in Alice in Wonderland?’

  ‘Yes, it might be Tenniel’s drawing of the Mad Hatter stuffing the dormouse in the teapot. Is Tanner reproaching himself for being asleep at the switch?’ she speculated. ‘Blaming himself for Lyle’s death?’

  ‘Why the mention of Fairfax tally-ho then? That Tenniel picture always worried me as a child,’ Peter observed. ‘The Mad Hatter seemed to be pushing him in upside down, but whether upside down or not the dormouse went through a rough time.’

  ‘As Tanner did. But, unlike the dormouse, no one listened to his story before stuffing him in the teapot,’ Georgia reflected. ‘This was probably drawn after he’d seen the CO and learned of the LMF charge. Suppose, just suppose, Tanner wasn’t a fantasist and we’ve got it upside down. Everyone, including the CO, had i
t upside down.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Peter said politely.

  ‘Not literally,’ she said impatiently. ‘Suppose the RAF had it upside down, that 362 Squadron still has it upside down.’

  ‘Do you mind telling me what you’re talking about?’

  ‘Suppose – what a wonderful word.’ Her excitement grew. ‘Suppose Oliver Tanner is the dormouse, and Fairfax the Mad Hatter. That it wasn’t Tanner whom Fairfax helped out of that aircraft on August sixteenth, but Fairfax helped out by Tanner. Oliver wasn’t a gung-ho chap. He wouldn’t have let down a fellow pilot by saying the fellow couldn’t hack it. Fairfax might have done though.’

  ‘Pardon my saying so, Georgia, but you’re not thinking straight. Fairfax is on public record as a war hero; he won two major decorations. And you claim there might have been a slight mistake?’

  She was determined to go on now, nonsense or not. ‘Remember what Eddie said.’ Odd facts were beginning to clog together in her mind now. ‘These LMF cases begin with rumours going round. Who better to spread them than a popular pilot like Fairfax? He climbs down from the cockpit and says offhandedly, “I say, chaps, better watch young Tanner, he cut me up at the third cloud” or whatever pilots say. The further the ripples spread the more it will be believed. The climate is there. It’s not as though it was an orderly line up to see the headmaster when they returned from an operation. The adrenalin was going as they all rushed to dispersal. Angry words, angry accusations, not thinking straight when a chum has been shot down.’

  She had set Peter thinking at least. She could tell that from the drumming fingers. ‘Far too many unanswered questions, Georgia,’ he said briskly. ‘First, they both wrote full combat reports. Discrepancies would be tracked down if there were a serious charge against someone.’

  ‘But Tanner wasn’t the sort to word combat reports as though he deserved the VC. Or to mention that he saved someone’s life under fire. I bet if we read this logbook against Jack’s biography and the National Archive records we might find a few discrepancies.’

 

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