Death in the Round

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Death in the Round Page 12

by Anne Morice


  Viola, understandably, was inclined to be smug about this, taking it as clear proof that they had already admitted defeat and were content to drop the case into the file labelled ‘Unsolved’ and forget about it, but I guessed that Jamie did not believe this, any more than I did. His first question every evening when he arrived on the terrace was whether either of us had heard any news and now, no doubt bored and frustrated by our regular negative responses, had seized on Robin as the tool to prise some information from the most reliable horse of all, in the knowledge that Colonel Meyrick would open his mouth more freely to a fellow professional than to a member of the public, even one who was a national celebrity.

  The assumption was correct, although the upshot rather on the negative side, which, paradoxically, accounted for Colonel Meyrick’s readiness to disclose it. It had been in his mind for some while to ask for assistance from Scotland Yard and this friendly, unofficial session with one of its members was in the nature of a dry run, not committing him to a full scale performance. His indecision stemmed from the fact that what had begun by looking like a perfectly straightforward act of violence committed by a drunken hooligan and only unintentionally ending in homicide, was now turning out to be a good deal more complicated.

  A major snag was that, although two people claimed to have seen Melanie in Dearehaven, on two separate occasions, about a week before her death, after a whole week of painstaking enquiry, the number still remained at two. Furthermore, equally painstaking enquiries in the local pubs and discos had not produced a single witness to testify having served or noticed a young couple of that description in a state of intoxication. Moreover, if the girl Jamie and I saw really had been Melanie, then she had apparently surfaced in the town for a brief period, left it and returned again approximately forty-eight hours later, since not a single trace of her had been found during the interval.

  The alternative, which opened up some disturbing possibilities, was that she had been engaged in some unlawful activity, with an accomplice, who, having no criminal record, had been able to provide her with a hiding place where no one would ever dream of searching. In that case, the accomplice would have to be either someone quite unknown to the police or else someone nearer home who had been interrogated and had lied.

  ‘So what are they doing about it?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, plastering the local television news with photographs, requesting any viewer who saw this girl to step forward, that kind of routine stuff. There’s not much else they can do. In fact, if you want my candid opinion, they’ve more or less reached a stalemate.’

  ‘And if they do call in the Yard, perhaps you’ll be put in charge of the case.’

  ‘It’s a bare possibility, I suppose. Since you didn’t appear at the inquest and only met the girl once, in a crowd of other people, I daresay there’d be no ethical objection.’

  ‘That’d be fun.’

  ‘Think so? Not my idea of fun. There’s nothing more depressing than taking on a case with the scent as cold as yesterday’s mutton and no leads at all.’

  ‘Oh well, with a little help from me, you know!’

  ‘And how many leads have you got?’

  ‘One or two. Enough, anyway, to convince me that they’re right about her having an accomplice, although that isn’t quite the word I’d have used. Protector would be more like it.’

  ‘Guess or knowledge?’

  ‘Deduction. She vanished into nowhere on two separate occasions and it wasn’t as though she was a stranger in these parts. Scores of people round here must have known her by sight. I don’t see how she could have managed it without assistance from someone.’

  ‘None of which brings us any nearer to finding out who it was.’

  I did not entirely agree with him there and, although refraining from saying so aloud, must have betrayed it in my expression, for he said:

  ‘And just in case you’re still clinging to that weird theory of Douglas Henshaw being the villain of the piece, I had better pass on another item I picked up this morning.’

  ‘Concerning Douglas?’

  ‘Yes, he really has been immobilised for these past few weeks. The broken ankle is perfectly genuine. It happened right there on the golf course, when his ball went into the rough. It was while hunting around for it that he caught his foot in a rabbit hole and went crashing down, in full view of three other members. He was in such a bad way that one of them drove him straight to his doctor.’

  ‘Who said: “Yes, bad luck, old chap, a very nasty sprain! I’ll just put this bandage on and you’d better try and rest it as much as you can for the next day or two.” I don’t find the rabbit hole story at all convincing. In fact, it was the improbability of that broken ankle which gave me the idea in the first place that Douglas was somehow involved, even before I learnt that he was lying when he said he had never met Melanie. I simply don’t believe that doctors allow their patients to dictate to them about whether their broken bones should go into plaster or not. I think they have ways of making them do what’s good for them.’

  ‘All the same, you can’t seriously believe that Melanie was blackmailing him and what other conceivable motive could he have had for pushing her over a cliff?’

  ‘Well, at the risk of being a bore, it all hinges on the original premise, which you and Toby found so hilarious, that Elfrieda’s death was not quite so natural as it might have been.’

  ‘You imply that Douglas gave her a push?’

  ‘In a word, yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For the most commonplace of all reasons.’

  ‘Oh, surely that’s unlikely, Tessa? I agree he probably knew he was her principal heir, and it’s also on the cards that he expected to inherit a much more sizeable chunk than he actually got, but from the way you described the style they live in, he’s not exactly hard up, even without Elfrieda’s money. Why suddenly become in such a desperate hurry to get his hands on it? If things had taken their natural course, he probably wouldn’t have had to wait more than a year or two, in any case.’

  ‘Perhaps he was scared she would change her will in favour of Melanie; or perhaps word had reached him that she was eating into her capital to prop up the Rotunda? In a year or two there might have been nothing left except a heavily mortgaged theatre. And I don’t see that their putting on such a show at Dene Cottage is anything to go by. In the sort of world where Douglas operates a front of that kind would be essential to the image. If he sold off some of the land or sacked a couple of gardeners the word would soon get around that he was on the topple, which would probably be disastrous.’

  ‘Yes, there’s a grain of truth in that, I daresay, but it doesn’t prove he’s on the financial rocks, any more than the frugal life is a guarantee of financial stability.’

  ‘I realise that, but I caught a whiff of something dubious during that ghastly lunch. Charlie, the son, made a rather feeble, fairly spiteful joke about his parents. He accused his mother of cheating at the flower show and the phrase he used about his father was that he sailed near the wind in business deals. The funny thing is that I feel sure it really was meant as a joke, because he’d hardly have said such a thing in front of a bunch of strangers if he believed it to be true, but it was Kitty who gave the game away. She completely lost her temper and wouldn’t let it rest until he’d apologised.’

  ‘And what was Douglas’s reaction?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, I was watching Kitty. We were all mesmerised by her performance. But I doubt if it would have made much difference. Douglas is too cool a customer to betray himself by so much as a flicker.’

  ‘So now we have a new variation on the same theme? Melanie was not blackmailing him for something she’d found out all those years ago, but because she saw him give Elfrieda the fatal shove?’

  ‘Well, why not? And it needn’t have been for money, either. That was a risk she didn’t have to take, since she knew she had plenty coming her way. It might just have been revenge. Holding the threat of exp
osure over him to get her own back for the humiliation he’d caused her as a child. And a pretty nice revenge it would have been. Douglas could never have come out of a scandal of that kind unscathed. He’d have done anything to shut her up. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t realise just how far he would go.’

  Robin was silent for a moment or two and then came up with the one question which told me that he had begun to take the argument seriously:

  ‘Just suppose there was something in this,’ he asked, ‘would it have been possible for Douglas to have got into the theatre and up to Elfrieda’s office, without being seen, recognised and remembered?’

  ‘Oh, any amount of ways,’ I replied without hesitation, without, in fact, having given a thought to what they might have been.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, let’s see now! Assuming he’d gone in through the front of the house, he could probably have just walked through to the ramp with no questions asked, so long as he did it in a confident, debonair sort of way. She had business appointments with all sorts of people every day and there would have been no reason to suppose that one of them had called for the express purpose of murdering her. What you have to remember is that there has never been a breath of suspicion surrounding Elfrieda’s death, and so no one has ever been questioned about who they saw or what they were doing during the crucial period. When they do call in Scotland Yard and you take over the case, here’s my advice: drop the Melanie end of it, for the time being, and concentrate on what they were all doing when Elfrieda took that tumble.’

  SEVENTEEN

  I was never to know whether he would have followed this advice or not because, alas for my high hopes, within twenty-four hours of this conversation, the proposed appeal for help from Scotland Yard went into abeyance once more, the local C.I.D. having got their first sight of a breakthrough, which led them straight to, of all people, Jill Sandford, our stage manager.

  It came about from the fact that a certain Mr Paul Hockling had left for a holiday in Majorca on the very day that Melanie was found on the beach, not returning until two weeks later, and no computer had been able to supply the information which he alone possessed.

  He had not seen any English newspapers while abroad, but it is unlikely that it would have made any difference if he had, for the girl whose face appeared on the screen of his television set on the day after his return home had been known to him as Jill Sandford.

  Paul Hockling was manager and sole cashier of a tiny branch of one of the big banks, or rather of two such, and they were seven miles apart. The one at Brackley was open for business on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and its humbler counterpart at Hawkham on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was at the latter, a month or two before her death, that he had first encountered Melanie Jones, alias Jill Sandford, when she had applied to him to open a deposit account.

  She had brought a driving licence for purposes of identification and, by way of reference, a letter on Rotunda writing paper, stating that she was employed there as stage manager and signed by the secretary to the General Administrator. She also paid in an initial deposit of one hundred pounds in cash, so was welcomed with fairly open arms, although Mr Hockling did express some curiosity as to her choosing such an out of the way spot to keep it in. Her reply to this was that she was staying in the neighbourhood, so Hawkham was just as convenient for her as Dearehaven.

  During the ensuing weeks she had paid in regular sums of between twenty and a hundred pounds, explaining that these were the unspent balance from her salary and that she was saving up to get married. The amounts had, without exception, been paid in over the counter in cash, which had also aroused faint misgivings in the Hockling mind. He had pointed out that the usual procedure was to deposit the salary cheque and draw out such cash as was needed. She had countered this by saying that, although a perfect fool about money herself, someone who understood these things had told her that if she did as Mr Hockling suggested, hers would be in what they called a current account and would not be earning interest. In fact, there had been no withdrawals and at the time of her death she had a credit of over a thousand pounds.

  Not surprisingly, when the real Jill Sandford stood up, Mr Hockling firmly denied ever having set eyes on her and, on unearthing the reference letter from the Rotunda, the signature was found to be that of M. Jones.

  ‘Rather daring and clever,’ I told Robin, when we had finished weaving together our separate strands of information during the evening telephone call. ‘If the manager had decided to check it, the chances are that he would have rung up and asked to speak to Miss Jones, who would have been happy to assure him that all was in order and above board. Everything one learns about Melanie makes it increasingly clear that there was a lot more to her than met the eye. First we hear that Len had fallen under her spell and now this!’

  ‘Didn’t do her much good, poor girl! But I suppose you now feel vindicated in your blackmail theory?’

  ‘How else could she have got her hands on all that money? She wasn’t paid a salary, in cash or otherwise. All she had was pocket money doled out by Elfrieda. And we’re getting warmer, you notice, Robin?’

  ‘Warmer?’

  ‘Hawkham, where she banked it, is only a mile or two from that stately Cottage of Dene.’

  ‘In that case, I don’t agree that it strengthens your case against Douglas, quite the reverse, in fact. If he’d been paying her hush money, that would have been the last place she’d have chosen.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I admitted, ‘and it may be just coincidence, because it’s also very near the Home where she was brought up. Did your Chief Constable tell you whether the police have formed any theory of their own about where the money came from?’

  ‘No, but the chances must be that it was from a local source. Wads of cash like that could hardly have been sent through the post. That’s one up to you, I admit, but, all the same, if Douglas were involved in any way, it couldn’t be on account of Elfrieda’s death. The payments started long before that.’

  ‘I still can’t help believing that he comes into it somewhere. It’s too much of a coincidence that he should have known her as a child . . I broke off here, adding in a brisk voice, ‘Okay, then, I’ll think it over and call you back,’ trusting to luck that Robin would realise that, through the open doorway, I had just seen Jamie walk on to the terrace.

  I had not been expecting him because it was now well past his usual calling time and he must have known that Viola would already have left for the theatre. I concluded that I had judged correctly in attributing him with an ulterior motive in bringing Robin and the Chief Constable together and had snatched this opportunity to come and get his reward in private. So I did the honours with the champagne and tapestry and waited to see how he would go about it.

  He began by enthusing over the way my performance was working out and saying how absolutely right and marvellous I was going to be. However, this did not elevate me to the dizzy heights because it was exactly the line I would have taken if I had been hoping to extract some information out of someone who was not burning to part with it, and the next helping of flattery was fairly predictable too. Having asked me whether Robin would be able to get down for the first night, he re-threaded his needle, saying:

  ‘What a dear fellow he is! And so attractive! You must be dotty about him.’

  ‘Oh, I am.’

  ‘And clever with it, so I hear.’

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘Even my buffy old friend, Billy Meyrick, who is not given to superlatives, was wildly impressed. I gather they got on like a couple of bugs in the rug. Did Robin tell you?’

  ‘Yes, he did, and also that it was very sweet and thoughtful of you to arrange it.’

  I could not swear that those were Robin’s exact words, but they were near enough for the purpose.

  ‘Oh, nonsense! No trouble at all and I guessed they’d have a lot in common.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, and apparently their handica
ps are about the same too, which was very lucky. You’ve nearly finished that piece of work, haven’t you? How many will that make altogether?’

  ‘Four,’ he replied, frowning at it and, considering that he had now been teased enough, I said:

  ‘I gather Colonel Meyrick wasn’t very forthcoming on the subject of Melanie, but that was because there wasn’t much to come forth about.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ he replied, with a fine enough show of indifference to suggest that he might not have been such a bad actor as he had claimed.

  ‘No, at that point they’d reached a dead end, if you’ll forgive the pun?’

  ‘Seeing as it’s you; but why do you say “at that point”?’

  ‘Simply because this business of the mysterious bank account has now jerked them into life again, even if it should turn out to be a short-lived one.’

  Jamie laid down his work and gave me his undivided attention.

  ‘What mysterious bank account?’

  ‘You mean you haven’t heard about poor old Jill being hauled off to the police station, to be identified by Mr Hockling?’

  ‘Not a word. What had poor old Jill done?’

  ‘Nothing. They turned her loose in five minutes, but you can imagine the stark terror. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard.’

  ‘No reason to be. I haven’t been near the theatre today and I haven’t been at home much either. So let me put it another way; what was poor old Jill mistakenly thought to have done?’

  ‘She was a mere pawn in someone else’s game,’ I explained and then proceeded to give him the full story, not forgetting to acknowledge that most of the inside information had come, via Robin, from the Chief Constable.

 

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