Rack, Ruin and Murder

by Rack, Ruin

  ‘If you’re thinking of violence, Mr Pascal, I advise you strongly against it,’ Carter warned him.

  ‘Much as I’d like to beat the little sod to a pulp, I won’t,’ said Pascal. ‘But I can still make his life a misery.’ He stared at Carter. ‘We weren’t guilty of breaking and entering, you know, at Balaclava House. Monty leaves the front door unlocked. Anyone could walk in. And we didn’t take anything. We were trespassing, admittedly, but that’s all.’

  ‘You’ve been giving it some thought,’ said Carter drily. ‘Had some legal advice, have you? The day the dead man was found in the house, it was searched and we found the room you’d been using.’

  Pascal sighed. ‘Yeah, I know. Rosie realised you must have done and got on the phone to me about it at once. She was dead scared you’d trace us somehow. She wanted me to go back to the house and get in there and check out the room to make sure we’d not left anything – and give the place another clean round. I told you, she was out of her mind. I couldn’t get back in, even if I wanted to, not with police all over it. Even if I could, I couldn’t move anything in that room not one inch. You’d have photographed it, right? You’d notice the slightest thing out of place.’ Pascal shook his head. ‘She was panicking, you see. I was worried about it myself, honest truth.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’d left it all rather late to be worried, Mr Pascal. However, I’m not here about your affair with Mrs Sneddon. I’m here about a visitor whom, she claims, you saw in the grounds of Balaclava House once day when you were both there. He was a stranger, she said.’

  Pascal nodded and looked relieved that he hadn’t to defend his activities at Balaclava House any more for the moment. ‘Yes, that’s right. We heard a car draw up and my first thought was it might be Mrs Harwell. She does drive over from time to time to check on Monty. I don’t know why she bothers, except that I suppose the old chap has got to leave his estate to someone. He’s stony broke, of course, but there are antiques, stacks of them, in that house. Must be worth something.’

  ‘Mrs Sneddon has made the same observation.’

  ‘We didn’t take anything, I’ve told you that once!’ Pascal snapped. ‘We could’ve done, anyone could’ve. It’s a miracle that place hasn’t been burgled. But Rosie and I never even picked up anything to look at it.’

  Because you didn’t want to leave prints… Carter thought sourly.

  ‘Mrs Sneddon was afraid of a burglary and of being blamed for it,’ he said aloud to the garage owner. ‘And when you saw a stranger apparently casing the place, she feared that was his intention.’

  ‘So did I.’ Pascal nodded. ‘He was up to no good, creeping around. I don’t know if he tried the front door. I reckon he didn’t, because, if he had, he’d have found it was unlocked and walked in. When I looked out of the window upstairs, I could see him below me, peering in the kitchen window. But then he started off walking all over that jungle of a garden. It’s a pretty big area and it took him twenty minutes at least. He kept appearing among the bushes and disappearing again. Rosie was freaking out. I didn’t know whether to worry more about her than about him! I thought she might have hysterics or something. Thank goodness he eventually took himself off.’

  ‘You never saw him again?’

  ‘No, never. He didn’t call in here and if I had seen him at the house again, I might have gone downstairs and asked him what he was doing.’

  Carter raised his eyebrows. ‘You were hardly in a position to do that.’

  ‘If I walked round the corner of the building and confronted him, he wouldn’t have known I’d come out of the house,’ Pascal said. ‘He might have assumed I had, but he wouldn’t have seen me. He was at the back. Rosie and I used the front door.’

  Carter put a hand to his inside jacket pocket and produced the photograph taken at the races, showing Taylor and Terri Hemmings. Silently he handed it to Pascal.

  Pascal hesitated but took it and stared at it frowningly. ‘That’s the bloke,’ he said at last. ‘He was dressed a bit differently, but that’s him. I took the trouble to remember his face because I thought he might turn up again or stop by my place here.’ He returned the photo and looked thoughtfully at Carter. ‘So, is he the dead ‘un? That’s why you’re carrying his photo round with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Carter said. ‘It would appear so.’

  Pascal thought again. ‘Funny, that,’ he observed.

  Funny meaning ‘peculiar’, thought Carter, observing Pascal. Not funny meaning ‘comical’, I suppose. Though he’s got a sort of grin on his face now. He thinks he’s away clear, but we’ll see about that…

  ‘Did you, with or without the help of Mrs Sneddon, take the victim, this man in the photograph, alive or dead, into Balaclava House and leave him there on a sofa?’

  Pascal’s grin vanished. He gaped foolishly, staring at Carter first in surprise and then in horror.

  ‘Me? Us? No, we weren’t there that day! We had nothing to do with any dead body!’

  ‘Let me ask you again. Think carefully, Mr Pascal. You didn’t find him outside the house as you were leaving? You might only have thought him very ill. You were chiefly concerned with protecting your reputation and that of the lady. So you took him inside and left him there for the owner to find on his return.’

  ‘No!‘ Pascal almost shrieked the word. ‘We weren’t there that day!’

  Carter believed him. So much for Morton’s theory. Jess had never gone along with it but Carter himself had thought Phil’s idea a possibility. But it hadn’t happened that way.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Pascal,’ he said. ‘We may be in touch again – or Mr Bickerstaffe may be.’ Carter smiled. ‘Or more likely, Mrs Harwell, on Mr Bickerstaffe’s behalf.’

  Pascal put his hands over his face. ‘Oh, Gawd…’ he moaned.

  Chapter 15

  Carter sat in his car outside the petrol station for a few moments, pondering his next course of action. He was only a couple of minutes’ drive away from Balaclava House, and was curious to retrace Jay Taylor’s steps, the day Pascal and Rosie Sneddon had seen him from the window, wandering about the former gardens. It also occurred to him – as it had done earlier to Jess – that he should check that no one had tried tampering with the scene in any way or done any damage to the building. Empty premises attracted vandalism.

  He drove off towards Toby’s Gutter Lane, watched, he knew, by a miserable Seb Pascal through the window of the minimart.

  The house stood in lonely crumbling decay and yet today, when Carter got there, it was not quite deserted. An elderly Ford Fiesta was parked outside. There was no sign of its occupants.

  Carter got out of his car, pushed his way through the rusted gates and approached the house, hoping he wasn’t about to discover another body on a sofa. The front door was ajar. It should have been locked and sealed with a strip of blue and white tape, but the plastic ribbon lay tangled on the ground. Was he too late? Had the place already been ransacked? There would be hell to pay if it had. He pushed the door open and listened. Within, all was quiet.

  He stepped into the hall, pausing to glance round its gloomy splendour and up the staircase, to where the dull light still made patches of colour play across the landing from the stained-glass window. The silence was oppressive but he wasn’t alone. He could sense another presence. He stood still, waiting, ears straining. Then he heard, from the direction of the kitchen, the chink of china or glass and the scrape of a chair.

  ‘Police!’ Carter called out loudly.

  He fancied he heard an inrush of breath but possibly that was imagination. The kitchen door, at the far end of the hallway, opened and a woman stepped into the hall. The light was behind her and she was only a dim outline, slim, with long hair and some kind of loose, coat-like garment.

  ‘Who are you?’ Her voice was loud, confident and educated. It was also young.

  ‘Superintendent Carter,’ he replied, and reached for his ID. He held it up, open towards her.

  She came briskly towards
him and now he could see her clearly. She was no more than twenty. The hair was fair and very straight so that it lay on her shoulders in a pale gold waterfall. As for features, he thought her pretty in a sharp-faced kind of way. The coat-like garment was a long knitted cardigan with geometric patterns. Carter still held up his ID and when she reached him, she studied it carefully.

  ‘Doesn’t do you justice,’ she commented. It was a simple observation, delivered in a matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘It isn’t meant to be flattering.’ He put the ID away, obscurely nettled.

  As he did, she asked, in that same cool, disconcerting way, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘This is the wrong way round,’ Carter told her mildly. ‘That’s what I ask you.’

  ‘It’s my uncle’s home. I’m checking everything’s OK.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Carter, ‘you’re Tansy Harwell.’

  ‘No,’ her voice was colder. ‘I’m Tansy Peterson.’

  Damn, yes, of course. Bridget Harwell was much married. ‘I apologise,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no need for you to apologise. It’s my mother’s fault for having so many husbands.’ She pulled a wry grin. ‘Uncle Monty is at our house, but you know that. Mum’s concerned about Balaclava standing empty, so I drove over to take a look at it. I’ve got Uncle Monty’s keys.’ She took them from a pocket of the knitted coat and jangled them. ‘Mum got them off him.’

  ‘You didn’t bring Mr Bickerstaffe with you, to see his home for himself and that everything’s OK?’ Carter asked. ‘How is he coping, by the way?’

  ‘Come off it. If I brought him here I’d never get him to leave again. He’d just move straight back in. He’s coping well enough with the thought of finding a dead body. It wouldn’t put him off returning here. It’s staying at our house that he’s not coping so well with. To be frank, he hates it.’ Tansy raised her eyebrows questioningly. ‘I was just making a cup of tea. Would you like one?’

  ‘Thank you, that would be very nice.’

  Minutes later, they were seated in the kitchen, either side of the table, and Tansy was pouring tea from a chipped brown glazed earthenware teapot into a couple of cups with odd saucers.

  ‘Do you take sugar? If so, I haven’t found any yet, but I dare say there is some – somewhere…’ She gazed round at the untidy, cluttered dresser and array of cupboards.

  ‘I don’t take sugar, thanks.’

  She was prettier, now that he had a chance to view her better, and she was more relaxed, than he’d first judged. The sharp look had probably been due to tension and perhaps the chill temperature. She had cupped her hands round her teacup as if using the hot liquid to warm them. They were small hands, with neat, clean, well-polished nails and looked more like a child’s than an adult’s. But she was nineteen, or almost nineteen. He knew that because Jess had told him.

  ‘Have you checked upstairs?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet. Downstairs is fine. It’s a mess but it’s always a mess. Uncle Monty lives like that.’

  ‘It must have been a fine house once,’ Carter said, making conversation.

  Her reaction was unexpectedly vigorous. ‘It’s still a fine house! It’s beautiful. It needs some repair and decoration and a good clean through, but it’s a wonderful place! I’ve always loved it. Uncle Monty loves it, too, and I understand just how he feels. Mum doesn’t. She thinks it’s a ruin. But there’s real history in here.’

  There is some friction between mother and daughter, thought Carter. Jess Campbell witnessed that.

  ‘You came here a lot as a child, I think?’

  She nodded, steam from the hot drink spiralling upward before her nose. Her eyes lost that combative shine and became misty in memory. ‘Oh, yes, during the school holidays. That was when Aunt Penny was alive and Uncle Monty was not nearly so decrepit. Aunt Penny kept him in order. But in the end, it got too much even for her – and she went away. Mum was fond of Aunt Penny and furious with Uncle Monty. They had a blazing row about it and that put an end to our visits to Balaclava for a long time. Uncle Monty sort of turned inward after that. He missed Aunt Penny and wanted her back but he knew that wouldn’t happen.’ Tansy’s voice was sad.

  There was an awkward pause. Did Sophie leave me because I was impossible to live with? Carter wondered. I wasn’t the best of husbands and the police work got in the way. It always seemed to have first call on my attention. But, in the end, Sophie met someone else. In a funny way, if Penny Bickerstaffe had met someone else, Monty wouldn’t have been left feeling it was his entire fault. But she didn’t; and Monty’s been living with the thought that he’d driven away the woman he loved.

  He was glad when Tansy, who also seemed to have drifted away on a line of thought private to her, broke the silence.

  ‘When Aunt Penny died, Mum tried to get Uncle Monty to come to the funeral, but he wouldn’t,’ she went on more briskly. ‘I don’t think she went about persuading him very tactfully. Mum has the knack of rubbing Uncle Monty the wrong way. He gets very cross with her. It’s easy to do,’ added Tansy disloyally but probably truthfully. ‘So they had another blazing row.’

  ‘The house would have been in a much better state during the time Mrs Bickerstaffe was alive and living there,’ remarked Carter.

  She pursed her lips. ‘To be honest, it wasn’t in a wonderful condition, even then. Of course, it was a bit better than this!’ Tansy indicated their surroundings with a wave of her hand. ‘But it was much too big for them and I think Aunt Penny lost heart. She only had the help of a local woman who came in to mop the floors and push a vacuum cleaner round downstairs, that was all. They only lived in part of it, you see. Here – ‘ she nodded at the kitchen – ‘and the drawing room and dining room, one of the bedrooms upstairs and the smaller bathroom up there. The rest was just shut away and left to rot. I used to go up and explore, with Gary.’

  Carter blinked, surprised. ‘Gary Colley?’

  She flushed. ‘Yes. He was older than I was but he was still a child, then. We were great pals. He kept a couple of ponies down at their place. I used to go there with him and he let me ride round their paddock. He always walked or ran alongside in case I fell off. Mum is snooty about the Colleys, but I like them. They’re very kind, you know, in their way.’

  ‘What about the Sneddons? Didn’t they have two daughters?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, but I didn’t know them very well. Their girls were older than me and didn’t want a little kid tagging along. Mrs Sneddon was nice. I remember going to the farm once with my mother about something to do with Balaclava. I think Mum was worried about Aunt Penny. Mrs Sneddon gave us tea and cupcakes with different colour icing on them. I remember them because I thought they were wonderful. My mother didn’t bake – still doesn’t.’ Tansy’s lips twitched in the barest smile. ‘I didn’t like Pete Sneddon much. He was always a bit dour. He came into the kitchen while we were having our tea and cupcakes and told Mum to leave “the poor old bugger and his missis alone”. He meant Uncle Monty and Aunt Penny. Mrs Sneddon told him off for using language like that in front of a child. It put an end to our visit, anyway. Mum spoke to him sharply and dragged me away. We didn’t go back.’

  Carter put down his empty cup. ‘Perhaps I should take a look round upstairs?’ he suggested, getting to his feet.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Tansy jumped up, perhaps glad to put a stop to the childhood reminiscences.

  They climbed the wide staircase and paused to gaze up at the Jezebel window.

  ‘Isn’t it great?’ said Tansy. ‘That one, over there…’ She turned and pointed to the boarded-up companion window across the landing. ‘That one showed Jael and Sisera – before a branch broke off a tree in a storm one night, about two years ago, and smashed it. In the original scene he was asleep and she was creeping up on him with a tent peg and a mallet, one in each hand. I always preferred poor Jezebel; but Gary liked the Sisera one better. He was really sorry when it got smashed and came over and did his best to repair the
damage.’

  ‘Both violent subjects,’ Carter commented, thinking that Gary’s ‘best’ carpentry skills were limited. He had secured the broken window as he might have fixed the hole in the pig compound fence he’d told Jess of. ‘A pity murder at Balaclava didn’t remain contained in a coloured glass picture.’

  Tansy flinched and he was sorry he’d added that. The recent events at the house must have upset her. She walked away quickly down one corridor. Carter followed and, one after the other, they checked the rooms. At the room used by Pascal and Rosie, Tansy paused. Then she pushed open the door and they both looked in.

  ‘Someone had been using this room, hadn’t they? Without poor Uncle Monty knowing?’ Tansy’s voice sounded muffled. ‘Your Inspector Campbell told us.’ She looked around. ‘You can tell someone’s been here.’

  ‘Yes, they did use this one.’

  ‘Do you know who it was?’ she demanded with a sudden return to her usual belligerent style.

  ‘We do now know,’ Carter told her cautiously. ‘We think it’s unconnected with – the later event.’

  ‘Well,’ Tansy said fiercely, ‘whoever it was, they had no right!’

  ‘No, they didn’t. But your uncle had a habit of leaving the front door unlocked when he went out. It’s fortunate no one came in and vandalised the place, or stole anything. The people who used this room at least left it tidy.’

  ‘It doesn’t excuse them!’ Tansy was having none of it. If she found out it was Seb Pascal, Carter could imagine her going down to the garage and haranguing the hapless owner. She’d probably have a go at Mrs Sneddon, too. A distant memory of cupcakes wouldn’t save Rosie.