There was a total silence in the room. Sounds began to filter in from outside – voices in the building and traffic outside, but distant and muffled. Honey could hear her own heartbeat.
‘The feather could have come from the factory,’ the solicitor said, as if hoping against hope.
‘I’m afraid not. The feather had originated on a bird of oriental origin. It could never have been processed in the factory.’
Vernon Colebrook leaned forward suddenly. The solicitor made a gesture as if to restrain him. ‘No. I must just say this,’ Vernon burst out. ‘If this is true, it is inconceivable that I or either of my brothers would do such a thing. We were devoted sons.’ He paused and rubbed his face. Honey could guess that he had not slept well. ‘We didn’t fawn. We didn’t live in his pocket or spend hours on the phone to him, but we were genuinely fond of him and grateful, and I think he knew it. He had been father and mother to us since our mother died, twenty years ago. What’s more,’ he added suddenly, ‘it would have been against our own interests. We were all right as we were. We would have had little to gain under his will.’
‘And a tax liability if he failed to live just a little longer,’ Honey said. ‘As far as we have been able to discover, none of you has any financial difficulty.’
Vernon paused. He tried to control his expression but there was on his face, Honey thought, an expression that might well have been seen on the face of a man trying to pass a lump of coke. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘We manage very well. We don’t gamble or whore around. We’re not addicted to fast cars. The business is thriving. It pays each of us an income more than adequate for our personal needs. And that’s all that I wanted to say.’
Honey was nodding. ‘That’s understood. My present inclination is to believe you. But you must see that in the state of present knowledge you and your brothers must be suspect. It seems highly probable – virtually inevitable – that you will be convicted of concealing your father’s death. By the time that we have in all the forensic evidence and all the witness statements, I think that it will be inevitable. That, of course, amounts to an act of fraud against the Inland Revenue as well as being a crime in its own right. You must know better than I do whether you can now manage to pay the due tax plus interest and any fine that may be imposed. Nor could I guess what penalty the law may impose for concealing your father’s death. There is a more serious case to consider.
‘Whether on present evidence and evidence still to come one or more of you would be convicted of his murder would be mere speculation.’ Honey paused and then spoke with heavy emphasis. ‘What I want you to consider is this. If nobody else is ever convicted of killing your father, the taint of patricide will linger around you and your brothers forever.’
Vernon seemed about to speak, then turned to the solicitor. Mr Walters blew out his cheeks and then said, ‘I shall have to consult my client. Clients, I should say. I am also representing Daniel and Leo Colebrook. I . . . I did warn them that conflicts of interest might arise and that in that event I would have to suggest the names of other solicitors for two of the three brothers.’
‘Take your time,’ Honey said. ‘All the parties concerned are in custody at the moment and charged in connection with concealing the death of Mr Colebrook Senior. I need hardly point out that the police would vigorously oppose bail while the possibility exists of a more serious charge following. However, there is one matter, which I do not believe to be hostile to your clients, and which I believe would help them in the matter of that charge. I want fuller details of the fraud committed against Mr Colebrook just before his real death took place. I refer to the altering of a cheque. You have already given us a brief account.’
‘This isn’t a trick?’ the solicitor asked.
‘Of course not. This discussion is being recorded. No court would accept evidence obtained by any such deception.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Vernon said. ‘Anything, if it will only get at least one of us out of here. Our business still has to be run.’
Mr Walters considered. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘Go ahead. I’ll stop you if we seem to be straying onto dangerous ground.’
Vernon took a little time to arrange his thoughts but it was clear that he was prepared to be open. ‘About seven years ago,’ he said, ‘— and as to the date I’ll go along with whatever it says on the cheque – my father paid a mason a matter of about seventy pounds by cheque. The man had carried out some repairs to paved paths at Moonside House. The cheque was duly presented. At the request of the builder it was made out to Cash and it was taken in cash. At that time, the bank was in the habit of returning all cancelled cheques to the issuer. My father noticed that the cheque had been altered to increase its value by eight hundred pounds.’
When Honey said nothing, Ian cleared his throat. ‘If your father complained to the police I’m surprised that we didn’t uncover the complaint during our enquiries.’
Vernon managed a faint smile. ‘My father consulted his solicitor, a Mr Hunterton of Edinburgh. He’s dead now. Mr Hunterton’s advice was to try first to recover the money. The man had moved away but his previous landlady had a forwarding address. The sum was substantial but not enormous and the threat of legal action might have persuaded him to make at least partial restitution. My father’s death followed closely after that and, with his testimony not available, the family preferred to forget about the matter.’
‘And all this was within the knowledge of your father’s housekeeper?’ Honey asked.
The atmosphere in the interview room changed. There was surprise. There was hope mixed with relief. Questions hung in the air. But Vernon stuck to the facts. ‘Yes, definitely,’ he said. ‘I remember my father complaining bitterly in her hearing about the breach of trust.’
Honey paused. ‘And neither you nor your father knew that the man concerned was her brother?’
Vernon’s eyes opened wide. His expression of surprise was convincing. ‘Was he? We never knew that. She certainly never let on.’
Honey was satisfied that if Vernon had already known of the relationship he would have mentioned it sooner. ‘Years later,’ she said, ‘he returned to the place of his birth. Did you ever see him again?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘He turned up as a beater on the Tinnisbeck Castle shoot. At that time, he was going under the name of Pat Kerr. A dark-haired man, badly shaved, with a spaniel-collie cross dog.’
Vernon shrugged. In his relief he was almost smiling. The solicitor spoke quickly. ‘My client does not admit that he was present at that shoot.’
‘You may come to see that it would be to his advantage to make that admission, once you accept the strength of the other case.’ She turned back to Vernon. ‘You exchanged a look with him. Yours may have been a casual glance. You may only have been returning look for look. But Mr Kerr thought that he was being recognised by the man he had defrauded. He decided to disappear again. But first he gambled on the time it would take for your father to decide to act, to consult the police and for the police to gather the facts and move in. He may have been ready to fly at short notice or to bluff it out if the police moved more swiftly. He had to wait a week for the weather that he needed to coincide with the necessary behaviour on the part of his victim. Then he carried out the robbery that he had been planning for some time. That could have financed quite a lengthy disappearance. But he did not repeat his vanishing act – probably because he then learned that Mr Colebrook Senior had disappeared.’
The solicitor was nodding slowly. ‘I take your points,’ he said. ‘Allow us a little time for consultations. As you pointed out, there is little urgency – except with regard to the management of the business interests of my clients.’
As soon as Honey had stopped the recordings, Vernon Colebrook said, ‘I want to assure you that none of us treated our father or his body without respect.’
*
Ian Fellowes was hot to interview Mrs McLaghan (née Hale) but Honey
pointed out that the housekeeper was not going anywhere, whereas lunchtime had arrived and was about to depart. They headed for the canteen and settled in a quiet corner.
As they ate, Ian said, ‘What did you make of his last statement?’
‘Make of it? I think he wanted to say that whatever they had done with his father’s body it had not been done lightly or casually but with as much reverence as could be managed in the circumstances. And I think he was trying to say that what they did was only out of dire necessity and that it haunted them and will haunt them for evermore. But perhaps I’m reading too much into a few halting words.’
‘No, I don’t think you are.’ Ian ate reflectively. When he had cleared his plate he said, ‘I get the picture now and I see what you meant about the sequence. Let’s see if I’ve got this right. Your prisoner Hale, alias Kerr, was a bad hat. He worked as a mason but he wasn’t above pulling a fast one on the side. He did a job for Henry Colebrook and altered the cheque. His sister, Mrs McLaghan, knew that Mr Colebrook was about to have Hale arrested. She also knew that she was mentioned in Mr Colebrook’s will, so she smothered him, starting while he slept, but she’s a strong woman with some weight to her. She told the brothers that their father had died in his sleep.
‘The brothers were horrified. They had just spent their father’s gifts on establishing a very promising business and to be called upon suddenly for the full amount of estate duty would have crippled them. So they decided to keep the old man alive. The members of staff who would have had immediate contact with the boss were changed and Vernon was elected to double up as Mr Colebrook Senior. No doubt the forensic team will find traces in a domestic freezer at one of the four houses.
‘Vernon Colebrook took over his father’s life, keeping out of the public eye but also being seen around as himself. He must have been a busy lad – no wonder he looks tired.
‘After nearly seven years, by which time the business was on firm ground and the tax burden greatly reduced, they were not so vulnerable. They were preparing the ground for producing the body, possibly in a fire, and passing it off as freshly deceased, when they were overtaken by coincidence. They could see great danger in the continued impersonation of Henry Colebrook so close to young neighbours and more particularly to their dogs who might well recognise in Vernon the man who they had met as Henry Colebrook. They decided that Henry would be seen no more and the two dogs were stolen and kennelled far away – instead of being destroyed, which suggests that the brothers were not without compassion.’
‘That’s about it,’ Honey said. ‘I must go and ask whether the spaniels have been collected yet.’
‘You could go and do that,’ Ian said. ‘Have what remains of your Saturday off. You’ve done all the work so far, and very subtly too. Let me pretend to deserve a little of the credit. It’s high time that you were taking it easy, in view of your delicate condition –’ he grinned suddenly ‘– not that you show any signs of delicacy. You can leave me to finish off the interviews and get formal statements. I think the Colebrook brothers will see the advantage of admitting the lesser offence in order to have their father’s murder placed squarely where it belongs. You’d think they’d have wondered why she was so willing to go along with the impersonation.’
‘I expect they did. But it’s amazing how blind people can be when their own ends are being served.’
That evening she wrote to her friend Poppy: -
I phoned home but the weather had cleared and Sandy had gone off to his golf He couldn’t possibly be playing golf in the snow, could he? I dare say that the nineteenth hole is seeing a little action. The dog unit confirmed that the two spaniels, Honey and Spot, had been taken away, along with a bottle of Champagne that I brought from home and left for collection. The sergeant said, ‘They were both in tears,’ so I couldn’t resist saying, ‘The dogs?’ I was in rather high spirits, you understand. He looked at me as though I was mad, which probably I was.
I decided to pay a visit to Thack an Raip and see how they were settling in, hoping that a little happiness would rub off on me. The country roads were very bad but the Range Rover coped.
The first thing to catch my eye was the figure of the unpleasant Mr Gloag, almost hidden in the snow-covered escallonia bush beside their window. I was going to give him a shock that would make him jump out of his horrible and insanitary skin, but the snow was crunchy underfoot. He heard me coming and hurried off round the house in the opposite direction. Before chasing after him, I wondered what he had found so interesting.
Honestly Poppy, I don’t think that you need worry about your ex any longer.
On the hearthrug before a recently lit log fire, the two spaniels were curled up together. The two humans were fondly contemplating the snoring bundle of dogs while entwined together on the couch. I can only say that whenever Sandy and I are curled up so closely it only leads to one place. All in all, a perfect picture of a thoroughly contented family. We should all be so happy.
Lots of love, Honeypot.
Chapter Nineteen
There could never be any doubt about the guilt of Pat Hale, a.k.a. Pat Kerr. The presence of the stolen property in his employer’s van along with his behaviour and the attempt to flee were more than sufficient. Fingerprint and handwriting evidence damned him in connection with the earlier cheque fraud on Henry Colebrook. He was also convicted of the armed robbery of Julian Blakelove QC.
Gemma Kendal, despite her plea of having acted under duress, was tried for complicity in the second of those two crimes. On her behalf, her QC pleaded that she had been led into mischief by her paramour and that her seduction of Mr Blakelove was the impetuous act of an infatuated woman with an excessive sex drive. She had agonised over whether to present to the court the picture of a dowdy countrywoman to whom sex would be a no-no or to portray a woman burdened with an unwanted beauty that attracted the attentions of men such as Mr Blakelove. Vanity decided her to appear at her most seductive, which was a mistake. She might have escaped with a verdict of not guilty, or at the worst not proven, had her comment about Mr Blakelove’s qualities as a lover not been leaked back to the QC himself. His description of the pleasure she had taken in tying him to the chair and taping his mouth was so detailed and graphic that a conviction was inevitable. She received a lesser sentence than did her lover.
The upper reaches of the legal profession had closed ranks in an attempt to spare Julian Blakelove embarrassment. The prosecution made no attempt to introduce in evidence the manner of Ms Kendal’s dress (or undress) on the occasion of the robbery. It seemed, however, that her counsel was not acting wholly under pressure from those upper reaches – pressure that, as one who fervently disliked Mr Blakelove, he resented. Tipped off by a similarly motivated person (who shall be nameless but whose identity may well be guessed) he managed to leave the door open for Honey, in replying to a question about the accused’s words on being arrested, to quote the remark about sex with Mr Blakelove resembling being raped by a sweaty and overweight warthog. The comment was widely quoted and never forgotten. Honey awaits, not without a little trepidation, the next occasion when he will have the opportunity to question her in court.
Vernon Colebrook accepted the greatest share in the blame for concealing the death of his father. He could hardly do otherwise – the evidence was overwhelming. Daniel, who had not impersonated his father and whose only known sin was silence, served a shorter sentence. It was evident (to the police if not to the court) that there had been another agreement, amounting to conspiracy, between the brothers with the intent of keeping at least one of them at liberty to manage the business and to provide the others with comfort and support. Leo Colebrook escaped conviction with a verdict of not proven. The firm survived but, in order to raise the tax and fines imposed, was forced to go public. Detective Inspector ‘Honey’ Laird came by a block of shares, a gift from her father.
Maggie McLaghan, née Hale, was convicted of the murder of Henry Colebrook, largely on the scientific evidence
and the word of the three brothers. She denied the charge adamantly but made some damaging admissions in the heat of her trial. She will not be seen in public for several years yet.
Before these various crimes could come to trial, Detective Inspector Laird was delivered of a six-pound baby girl. Detective Superintendent Blackhouse was accepted as godfather. Nobody could think of a convincing excuse for passing him by.
Andrew Gray has almost completely recovered from his wound. He and Jackie also are aiming for a baby. In the meantime, the dogs keep them fully occupied. Jackie (now Mrs Gray) even qualified, along with Spot, to enter a field trial. They were unplaced that time but received a certificate of merit.
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Cold Relations (Honey Laird Book 1) Page 18