‘Did he have a theory about who did kill Donald?’
‘He thought it might be one of the people who worked for him. Apparently, he was as unpopular with most of his staff as he was with his family.’
Jane frowned. ‘One wonders why any of his workers would take the risk of killing him. What advantage would there be? Why not just leave the plantation?’
‘I suppose he could have found out that one of them was stealing from him and threatened them with arrest.’
‘Did you believe Flint?’
De Silva rasped a hand over the day-old stubble on his chin. ‘I’m not sure. I’ll need to question him again when he’s had time to reflect on his predicament. Contrary to the way things often happen in detective stories, criminals rarely blurt out a confession the moment they’re apprehended.’
‘Where are Marina and Flint now?’
‘I used the telephone at his office to contact Archie.’
Once more a mental picture of his boss, woken early and coming sleepily to the telephone garbed in dressing gown and pyjamas, rose before de Silva’s eyes.
‘I wanted to come home,’ he went on. ‘And I thought it was only fair to give Prasanna and Nadar the chance to get some sleep too. They did a good job last night. Anyway, even though he had to be dragged out of bed, Archie rose to the occasion and sent reinforcements. For now, Flint’s locked up at the police station with a couple of the Residence’s staff keeping an eye on him. It was harder to know what to do with Marina. In the end I decided the best course was to ask Archie to arrange for her to be taken care of. She’s up at the Residence under house arrest. Archie also agreed to see to it that the other stations are contacted and told they can call off the search.’
‘I’m not surprised it was all too much for Marina,’ said Jane. ‘Even though she wasn’t happy with her husband, if she’s innocent, it must have been an awful shock to hear that he was murdered, and for her and her lover to be accused of it. Her past doesn’t seem to have been a happy one, and now her future must look bleak indeed.’
‘I agree, although we can’t rule out the possibility that she’s guilty yet.’
He wiped his mouth and stood up. ‘Don’t let me sleep for more than a couple of hours. I ought to go to the station and see Flint. Archie may want a word too.’
As he drifted off to sleep, another thing occurred to him. Someone would have to tell Isobel Moncrieff that Marina and Flint had been arrested. He wondered what her reaction would be. If she was involved, would her behaviour betray her? Her self-control seemed to be such that he doubted it, although she had shown some distress when she’d heard that Marina was a suspect. Should he arrest her anyway? That was a knotty problem. Given her status, he had a feeling that it wouldn’t go down well with Archie. The situation had been different with Marina. By disappearing, she had brought justifiable suspicion upon herself. And what about Perera? Was it time to rule him out? De Silva fell asleep still very much unsure of where the case was leading.
**
He woke just before two o’clock in the afternoon and went to the bathroom. After he had splashed water on his face and run a comb through his hair, he went to find Jane.
She was on the verandah, busy with a new piece of knitting. Billy and Bella were stretched out nearby in a patch of sunshine. As always, they had the knack of finding the perfect spot where the rays would warm their furry little bodies.
‘Another gift for Emerald’s baby?’ he asked with a smile.
She held it up. ‘I thought a bonnet might come in useful for keeping warm. Babies tend not to grow much hair until they’re a few months old.’
Ruefully, he smoothed his own hair. In the last year or two, he’d noticed that a bald patch had been creeping over the crown of his head. ‘And middle-aged detectives lose it.’
Jane laughed. ‘Poor dear. Now, I’ve already eaten, but I expect you’d like some lunch.’
‘I would.’
She rang the bell and arranged for food to be brought.
Whilst he ate, he and Jane discussed Isobel Moncrieff.
‘You said she disapproved of the way her stepson treated Marina,’ said Jane. ‘And it was clear she didn’t like him personally, but from there to committing murder’s a big step. And anyway, how would she do it?’
‘There was a photograph of her in her drawing room on a hunting expedition. She looked very at home with a gun.’
‘Oh, I’m not saying that a woman wouldn’t be capable of shooting someone, but you didn’t see any evidence of a bullet wound.’
‘That’s true, but Isobel might have made a clean shot without hitting bone.’
‘For that, I think she would have needed to be lucky as well as skilful. But there are plenty of other methods a woman might employ. Poison, for example. Isobel told you that Marina had medical training, so there’s a good chance she would have been able to obtain the means to kill Donald.’
‘Hmm. And poison would be undetectable now.’
‘What about disposing of the body?’
‘I doubt either Isobel or Marina would be strong enough, but Peter Flint would.’ De Silva thought of those muscular arms. ‘Maybe he told the truth when he said that he didn’t kill Donald, but he might have helped either of the women to cover up their crime.’
‘Or even both of them, if they were all in league to get rid of him.’
De Silva’s mouthful of curried green beans suddenly seemed less tasty. ‘We still have a long way to go before we uncover the truth,’ he said gloomily. ‘I doubt it’s going to be easy to extract any confessions. Isobel is a strong character, and Peter Flint seems to be no shrinking rosebud.’
‘Violet, dear.’
‘Ah.’
He pondered for a moment. ‘At one time, I thought Marina was the most likely of the three to buckle under questioning, but now I’m not so sure. Archie may also present a problem. He seems very co-operative at the moment, and Charlie Frobisher believes he’s keen to make amends for the mistakes of the past, but he backed off from questioning Marina before and may do so again. If I’m honest, I don’t relish the prospect myself.’
Jane sighed. ‘That’s understandable. Particularly if she’s innocent and suffered as badly at her husband’s hands as we’ve heard.’
She glanced at the empty serving dishes and de Silva’s clean plate. ‘You were hungry. Shall I ring for more of anything?’
He finished his glass of water. ‘No, I’d better be off.’
He came around to her side of the table and kissed her cheek. ‘I hope to come home at a sensible time tonight, whatever happens.’
‘I hope so too,’ said Jane with a smile.
Chapter 12
At the station, the two servants Archie had sent down from the Residence were talking quietly together when he came in. They stood to attention.
‘How has the prisoner been?’ he asked.
‘He has given us no trouble, sahib,’ said the elder man. ‘We fetched food for him this morning, but he has not eaten much.’
‘Well done. I’ll talk to him now. I’d like you to stay here until my officers arrive. I hope they won’t be long.’
The men nodded.
Peter Flint lay on the narrow bed in his cell, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. He turned his head at the rattle of de Silva’s key in the lock.
‘Hello, Inspector. I’ve been wondering when you’d arrive.’
De Silva closed the metal grille and relocked it. The air in the cell was stale and the smell of curry lingered. A meagre ray of sunshine fell from a high, barred window, supplementing the dim light coming from the corridor. The cell faced north, and the lower parts of the bars were green with lichen.
He sat down on the hard chair facing the bed. Flint didn’t move.
‘I hope the time to reflect on your situation has been useful, Mr Flint. Are you ready to tell me the truth now? It’s sure to come out in the end, and it may make things easier for you if you’re honest with me. I should also tell y
ou that I have searched your office and am aware that you have been keeping two sets of financial accounts and have been making substantial payments to anonymous bank accounts. Basically, you have been hiding secret profits. I assume you have benefitted, and you need to tell me who else has.’
‘What makes you so sure that I wasn’t telling the truth last night?’
‘My instinct for detecting when someone is lying has served me well over the years.’
There was a long pause. De Silva waited.
‘If I tell you everything, I want your assurance that nothing will happen to Marina. She’s the innocent party in all this.’
‘You know as well as I do, that I can’t promise you anything at this stage. The only assurance I can give you is that whatever happens, she’ll receive a fair trial.’
The expression on Peter Flint’s face darkened and his eyes narrowed. ‘I suppose that’s the best we can hope for,’ he muttered. Another silence ensued. Deciding to let Flint take his time, de Silva took his notebook out of his breast pocket.
‘Alright, I’ll tell you what happened,’ said Flint at last. ‘It was two days after the 1932 rally took place. I was in my office late, finishing off some paperwork. It was getting dark, so I went outside to find oil for my desk lamp. The servant who normally filled it must have forgotten to do so that morning. I made a mental note to reprimand him. I was on the point of going back inside when Moncrieff came around the corner. I saw from the way he carried himself that he was in the mood for a fight. It was likely the workers had gone to their huts, but there might have been a few stragglers. Bad for morale to see the bosses arguing, so I suggested we go into the office and deal with whatever he wanted to talk about in private. He made some grudging comment, but he agreed.’
There was another pause. De Silva speculated whether it was because after eight years Flint was having to think hard to recollect the exact sequence of events, or because he was constructing his story as he went along. For the moment, he reserved judgment.
‘Once we were in the office, I waited for Moncrieff to begin. More than once, I’d seen him when he lost control, and I hoped silence on my part would be the best way to keep him calm. But it soon became clear that very little I could say or leave unsaid was going to defuse the situation. He started on about how he knew Marina and I had become involved and that I’d been trying to turn her against him from the start.’
Flint smiled bitterly. ‘That wouldn’t be a difficult task, believe me, although I swear on my honour it wasn’t something that I deliberately set out to do. The affection between us grew slowly, and I think we both tried to resist it at first. For my part, that was because I knew the danger that she was likely to face from Moncrieff if he found out she was unfaithful. There was also the prospect of her being shunned by the British community.’ He scowled. ‘Even though she’s worth ten of most of them, people can be such hypocrites. As far as Marina was concerned, I’m sure she had scruples about breaking her marriage vows, even though much later she told me that she’d made up her mind about it being the right thing for us to be together far sooner than I did.’
He seemed lost in thought for a while. De Silva heard a noise above him and glanced up to see that a blue magpie had landed on the sill of the barred window. It pecked insistently at the lichen then flew away in a flash of indigo and white. He shifted on the uncomfortable chair. ‘What happened next?’
‘He started to insult me. Although he’d never had to work for his money and was reckless with what he’d been given into the bargain, Moncrieff liked to give the impression that he was a bigshot in business. He told me I was a fool to think that a no-hoper like me could ever be more to Marina than a temporary amusement. She was bored at the plantation and I was a novelty, but she’d soon tire of me. And that would happen even sooner than it might have done because he was firing me, and he’d make sure I didn’t get another job in the Hill Country. Marina would certainly have no time for a man with no job, no money, and no prospects. He started to make allegations against her, claiming this wasn’t the first time she’d been unfaithful. I was sure it wasn’t true. She’d sworn to me there’d been no one else.’
Flint pushed his hair out of his eyes; there were beads of sweat on his forehead and damp patches on his shirt under the armpits. His voice had become croaky.
‘Would you like some water, Mr Flint?’
‘Moncrieff just laughed when I told him that,’ said Flint, seeming not to hear the question. ‘He told me that if I believed the word of a tramp, I was more of a fool than he’d thought I was. I was a fool in one way for sure,’ he added sourly. ‘And that was to let him get to me. It was the way he talked about Marina, sneering at her when I knew what she’d suffered at his hands, that made me snap. I couldn’t stay in my seat. I knew that if it was the last thing I did, I had to wipe that self-satisfied look off his face. I got up, went around to his side of the desk, and grabbed him by the collar. I don’t think he was expecting it because I had him off his feet with no difficulty.’
Flint clenched his fists and de Silva saw the muscles in his arms bulge. From the photographs of Donald Moncrieff, he’d been a big man but probably not as fit, and certainly not as young, as his manager.
‘He recovered soon enough and lashed out at me. The punch caught me off balance and I toppled backwards against the desk. My spine must have hit a sharp edge of wood because I felt a stab of pain.’ Flint’s lips drew back, baring strong white teeth. ‘Then I went for him.’
With a jolt, de Silva sensed what a formidable opponent the manager would be. He was glad he’d had the backup of Prasanna and Nadar in case he’d needed it.
‘Everything’s a little hazy after that,’ Flint continued. ‘All I’m certain of is that I didn’t intend to kill Moncrieff. I just wanted him to feel some of the pain Marina had suffered and to know that his time for tormenting her was over. I punched him and he started to bleed from his nose. It was as if the sight of the blood made me even angrier. I think I would have gone on hitting him if he hadn’t managed to break free. He lunged for the oil lamp on my desk and knocked it over. Luckily, the glass didn’t shatter, and I managed to right it before anything caught alight, but it gave Moncrieff his chance to get as far as the door. I wasn’t prepared to let him escape though. I was worried he’d go after Marina.’
‘What did you intend to do after you’d stopped him?’ asked de Silva quietly.
Flint exhaled a long sigh. ‘I don’t think I’d got any further than wanting to stop him. I grabbed him by the shoulder, and he swung around and tried to punch me again, but I was faster than he was. He fell awkwardly, knocking the back of his head hard on the edge of the metal cabinet nearby. There was more blood from his nose and now some coming out of his ear. He just looked at me, an expression, if anything, of surprise on his face, then he slumped to the floor.’
Flint gave de Silva a sideways glance. Was he trying to gauge how the story was going down? It crossed de Silva’s mind that he still hadn’t asked Hebden to check over the bones. Surely a blow such as Flint described would cause a fracture to Moncrieff’s skull? If Hebden didn’t find one, it might be proof Flint was lying.
‘I’ve always kept a spare shirt at the office to change into if the one I start the day in gets too damp and filthy to be pleasant,’ Flint went on. ‘I balled it up and tried to stop the bleeding with it, but the blood just kept coming through. Moncrieff’s eyes were closed, and he didn’t open them when I splashed water from the jug on my desk over his face. I was still wary though. I knew he was crafty. He might really be conscious and planning to go for me again when he thought I was least ready for him.’
Flint shivered, wrapping his arms around his chest. ‘It wasn’t until his skin started to feel clammy and I saw a grey tinge around his lips that I began to be afraid he really was in a bad way. I panicked and tried to pump his chest. There was even a moment when I thought I was getting somewhere, but looking back, I should have called for help. The telephone was
right there, but I hesitated. It would be his word against mine over who’d started the fight. I already knew my job was gone but finding another one would be hard enough with no references, probably impossible with a conviction for assaulting my boss on my record.’
A look of misery came over his face. ‘I wasn’t sure how Marina would react either. Later, when my head was clear again, I was sure he’d lied about her seeing other men, but I’m ashamed to say that in the heat of the moment, his accusations shook my faith in her. Was he right about what I meant to her? Would she stand by me, or would I lose her too?’
There were footsteps in the corridor. De Silva looked up to see Prasanna. He wished his sergeant hadn’t interrupted them. The intrusion had broken the flow of Flint’s confession, but it was too late.
‘Nadar is back as well, sir,’ said Prasanna. ‘Shall I tell the staff from the Residence they may go?’
‘Yes, tell them to give a message to Mr Clutterbuck that I’ll be in touch with him later.’
He waited for the sound of Prasanna’s footsteps to die away before prompting Flint to go on.
‘When did you realise that Donald Moncrieff was dead?’
‘A few minutes later maybe. No, I can’t say for sure. It seemed like hours. In my job, I’d often been called upon to shoot animals, both the wild and the domestic variety. I’m not afraid of the sight of blood, but this was something different. I felt sickened.’
He raised his head and looked wretchedly at de Silva. ‘A man’s life gone… I knew that by losing my temper I had probably changed my own for ever as well. And Marina’s, if she still wanted me. What are those lines about mercy dropping like the gentle rain from heaven? It was going to take a deluge to save me. If people found out about us, they’d never believe I was innocent.’
Cold Case in Nuala (The Inspector de Silva Mysteries Book 10) Page 12