Murder in Hell's Corner

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Murder in Hell's Corner Page 25

by Amy Myers


  They arrived an hour or so after Mike had left, and Peter almost glowed in a severe attack of fan dottiness. Sylvia, Georgia thought, had the effect of lighting up the room as though the breath and romance of Fifties’ romantic musicals had swept in with her. It seemed amazing that an elderly lady of eighty-six could still convey this, but charm, once possessed, seldom departed. Even Luke was fussing around, more than normally assiduous in settling their guests in comfortable chairs. There were even strawberry tarts – how did he manage that in September? An appeal to Pat Mulworthy? A special crop grown overnight? Or did he whip them up himself while she wasn’t looking?

  ‘Georgia dear.’ Sylvia leaned forward. ‘It was all my fault.’

  ‘That I won these?’ Georgia managed to laugh, pointing to her battle wounds.

  ‘Because I didn’t – I couldn’t – tell you the full story. If I could have done, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘I doubt,’ Georgia said, ‘if it would have made any difference. Alan would still have been attacked, and perhaps I would too. Fortunately Martin Heywood didn’t know about your involvement.’

  ‘He still doesn’t know.’ Sylvia said. ‘The story was mine, and Helen’s, and even partly Richard’s. What I told you was true so far as it went. I loved Oliver very much and . . . Helen?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Helen said comfortingly. She took her hand like a mother to her child rather than the other way around.

  ‘Helen and her twin were Oliver’s children. You might have guessed that, or that they were Patrick’s. That’s a distressing thought. I was still too close to Oliver even to have thought of another man in that way. I told you what happened when I went to the dance with Oliver on the Saturday night. Oliver said he wanted to talk to me about it, but Patrick scooped me up and took me away. I wasn’t sorry. I couldn’t bear even to think of it. All those pilots I’d known who’d lost their lives – maybe, I told myself, they’d lost them because of Oliver. I’m not proud of what I did, but who knows? If I were nineteen again, I might do exactly the same.

  ‘Late the following afternoon, Oliver came to see me and tried to explain. He’d just seen the CO and would be getting his verdict the next day. Again, it sounded like excuses. He said false rumours had been circulating for weeks, because one of the pilots had it in for him. I still couldn’t believe him. He said he didn’t expect me to understand, but it was all in his diary. He wanted me to look after it for him if he were sent away to camp. We had an awful row, and I flounced off, though I took the diary as he asked. That evening Patrick had said I should come to Woodring Manor to take my mind off it; I didn’t want to, but I went. I felt so wretched. And then Oliver came, out of the blue, demanding to speak to Patrick. Naturally I thought he’d come to find me and not finding me at home, hitched a lift and came up to Woodring. The fight broke out and Alan took me home. I didn’t hear any more about Oliver except that Patrick told me he’d deserted before he could be formally charged.

  ‘Two weeks later Alan came to see me, concerned that I was still seeing Patrick. He told me that Oliver had been accidentally killed that evening, and he assumed as I did that the fight was about me. You can imagine how I felt. I just wanted out. I thought I’d been completely mistaken about Oliver, and appalled though I was at his death I just wanted to blot everything out. I pushed the diary into Alan’s hands, and decided to go.

  ‘Two weeks later, back in London, I realized I was pregnant. Norman Lake was a dear man. He was shortly to be called up, he was very fond of me, and when I told him my story, he suggested we should be married. In those days that seemed the right solution. The children were born five months later, by which time Norman was in the forces. At the end of the war Alan came to see me. He told me what the diary had contained, and the evidence that he had collected to support it. He also told me that he thought it possible that Oliver had been deliberately murdered, but that there was no proof of that.’

  She paused. ‘That much you might know or have guessed. Now for the hard part. You have met Helen, but you never asked about her twin, Hilary, who died eight years ago in New Zealand. When the twins were twenty-one I told them the truth about their father and about the LMF charge, I told them it was a mistake and that he was really a brave man and a kind and gentle one too. Neither appeared to react strongly to the news, and I assumed therefore that it had been quietly stored away and forgotten. That was 1962 after all, over twenty years since Oliver had died. It was never mentioned again. Then one day Richard came home from the aviation club very puzzled because he’d seen Hilary working at Woodring Manor Hotel.’

  ‘As a barman,’ Peter said.

  Sylvia looked at him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d assumed,’ Georgia said ruefully, ‘that Hilary was Helen’s sister. It was only when I saw the full birth certificate that I realized otherwise. The index only gave the name Hilary.’

  ‘I’m afraid we let you assume that,’ Sylvia confessed. ‘You saw the photograph of the two babies and naturally assumed them both girls. I was exceedingly anxious to keep Hilary from suspicion so I let you continue to do so. He was, after all, my son – Oliver’s son. We asked Hilary what he was doing there – this was several weeks before the murder. It was just the coincidence rather than the job itself that surprised us. He had never settled to anything and seemed content to drift from job to job. He had his own flat in north London, so we were never quite sure what he was doing. We had no idea he was working at Woodring under a false name, of course.’

  ‘Did your husband see him there the afternoon Fairfax died?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Yes. But naturally he thought nothing of it by that time. He had a few words with him, but had left long before Patrick was killed. Hilary had told us he was there simply because Richard had talked so much about the aviation club and the hotel that he thought he’d come down to see them. He hadn’t realized it was so closely connected with his father’s old squadron.’

  She looked at them in appeal. ‘When we heard about Patrick’s death, naturally we talked to him about it, and it was then he told us he was working under a false name, but that was nothing. He often did it, he said. It made things easier. We wondered what things of course, but with Hilary one didn’t enquire too far. He had this way of staring at you and just shutting up, going inside himself. We were uneasy, but felt reassured because he went on working at the hotel. If he’d been implicated, Richard reasoned that he would have run away immediately. We waited and waited for someone to be arrested but no one was. Hilary told us that Matt Jones was the chief suspect, and Richard said that was entirely likely. But later Hilary suddenly disappeared and we had a letter to say he was working his passage to New Zealand. I think we guessed then, and . . .’ She looked at her daughter. ‘Helen did too.’

  ‘You want me to tell them, Ma?’ Helen asked doubtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ Sylvia replied firmly. ‘This is the time. Georgia and Peter can decide how much to put in their book and how much to omit. When Jack Hardcastle came to see me not long before he died, I wasn’t prepared, but now I am. We both have to be.’

  Helen took a deep breath. ‘Mum was wrong. I took it OK – after all, I didn’t know the full story about Fairfax, but Hilary was obsessed with it. I know twins are supposed to be close, but we weren’t close in everything. I could tell when Hilary was lying and when he was genuine, but his thought processes were a mystery to me. We complemented each other rather than duplicating. Does that make sense?’

  Peter nodded.

  ‘After Mum told us about Oliver, I thought it was tragic but it was in the past. It didn’t seem to bear much reference to me; I wanted to go forward. Hilary was different; he kept wondering what our father was really like. If Mum was telling us the truth. And if so, there must be more to find out. He was always one for absolutes was Hilary. All coward or all hero. He seemed to forget it after a while, and I thought he was over it, but in the 1970s with the new thirty-year rule at the Public Record Office over releasing records I disco
vered he spent hours there, poring over documents. One day he was very excited. A chap called Joseph Smith, who’d been in the same squadron, told him he reckoned Fairfax was inclined to be yellow himself, and that Oliver had been the cat’s whiskers. It was then that Hilary left home and I lost close touch. Then a year or so after Fairfax’s death, this New Zealand plan came out of the blue. It turned out that Hilary was gay. We heard from him occasionally, but never saw him again. Then we heard he’d died.’

  Georgia looked at Sylvia’s face and realized how much this was costing her.

  ‘He hadn’t left a will,’ Helen continued, ‘so I had to go over to New Zealand to sort it out. His partner had found a holdall stuffed full of papers and thought we should have them. It was packed with information about 362, and a sort of journal that Hilary had kept of his researches, full of hatred for Patrick Fairfax – and of what had happened that day. You can copy it if you wish.’ She delved into her handbag and produced it.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ Georgia asked Sylvia.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Georgia opened the journal and turned to May 10th 1975.

  So I gave him the message that his dollybird was waiting in the rockery garden for him. Nice touch. That’s where I reckon he killed my dad. Thanks, chum. And the same to you. May it was, and the bluebells were ringing. Really pretty. Only it was drizzling. What the hell’s she gone there for? Fairfax muttered. I’d seen a picture of Mum and him together in the hotel gardens – what kind of a creep would let that happen? He’d only murdered my dad a week or two before. Sick, really sick. I took my time; I’d brought ammo with me, took the gun out of the cupboard in the bar and walked after him.

  He stopped short when he reached that dell and she wasn’t there, so I ran up to him. Sorry, just met her, I said. She’ll be here in a minute or two. His sort never question a mere barman. Why should I lie, he’d think. I’ll tell you why. Because he did. Lied and lied and lied about my dad. I’ll never forget his face when he turned and saw the gun. Oh boy. What the devil . . . That’s for Oliver Tanner, I said, cutting across him. That did it. Fear? He was yellow. As yellow as a Texas rose, was old Patrick. This is for my dad, I said, and pulled the trigger.

  Epilogue

  Georgia stood by Peter’s wheelchair at the back of St Mary the Virgin’s church in West Malling as the coffin with the skeletal remains of Oliver Tanner was borne down the aisle on its way to a private burial. Only Sylvia and her family and Oliver’s brother would be present at that, but it was fitting that the short memorial service should be held here, in the presence of his former squadron members. Georgia didn’t know what had passed between them. All that had appeared in the press was a notice that the film was postponed due to production difficulties, and that there would be a note on the squadron records about the removal of an LMF charge on a pilot called Oliver Tanner. The new edition of This Life, This Death had been cancelled. One reputation restored, and one still officially intact.

  She watched as Sylvia, a small figure in black, followed the coffin with Helen and Robert Tanner, and then came the five pilots, their wives and carers. With them were Eddie Stubbs and Alan Purcell, leaning heavily on his stick. The pilots knew the truth now – and it had been Alan who had broken the news to them. What exactly he had told them, she had no idea. Not the whole truth, perhaps, but enough of it to reinstate Tanner’s memory.

  She and Peter followed them out into the churchyard, where Eddie stopped to speak to them. ‘We’re off for a noggin at Woodring Manor. Why don’t you come? The chaps all want you to.’ The six other pilots stopped too and gathered round, nodding their confirmation.

  An olive branch. ‘We had no choice,’ Georgia said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Bill Dane put his hand on her arm. ‘It’s we who are to blame, not you. We refused to see it. We saw Patrick that night, we saw the terror on his face; we thought it was an accident, you know. Even now, we can’t believe it was murder – not planned at least. All we can say is that many pilots crashed during the war without graves save the ruins of their aircraft. To us Oliver was LMF, which put us all at risk. Our other friends who had died deserved our sympathy more, we felt. Now we know that is not true, and it’s too late.’

  ‘A rock crashed down on his head,’ she said quietly. How could she and Peter go to Woodring with them in those circumstances?

  He regarded her gravely. ‘Why do you think we have met all these years?’

  ‘You were drawn together by this secret hanging over you.’

  ‘No. That would have driven us apart, not kept us together. The main reason was Patrick. Worthy, or unworthy as we now know, then he kept us together. As Alan says, he believed himself a brave man and therefore unified us with his presence. And for that, we may owe him our lives.’

  ‘Will you go on meeting?’

  ‘I believe we shall. Yes, I do believe that, so long as we are able. We’ll go on now for Tanner’s sake. Eddie will join us, of course, and Alan too when he is able. And we trust that today you and Peter will do that too.’

  She wanted to walk away, be rid of the case, not to have to think about the dell. But there was a book to be written. King Arthur must be banished from Peter’s desk. And there was a house to move into, a house called Medlars. A house with a permanent ramp for wheelchairs. A house without ghosts. A house with Luke. She had all this before her. Could she walk away from what she and Peter had stirred up?

  She glanced at Peter, who nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘We’d love to join you.’

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