Death At Willows End

by A. B. King

  Visions of making immediate and sensible use of the bedroom crumbled instantly into dust as sanity belatedly galloped back once again. Danny may have been one hell of a business girl, but as a great romantic she even made me look good, and I'm useless. I still couldn't make up my mind if she was genuinely interested in me, which I thought highly unlikely, or just enjoying a bit of rough to pass the time away? Perhaps she just wanted to assure herself that she could wrap me round her little finger whenever she desired? Well, it was certainly an entrancing little finger, and even if I could never wrap myself round the rest of her, one finger was infinitely better than nothing at all.

  We had a pleasant meal, and nothing further was said about that all-too-brief but wonderful interlude that will forever remain etched upon my mind. It was as if it had never happened as far as Danny was concerned. She prattled on about everything and anything, and to be honest, I only took in the odd phrase here and there as I gazed at her and sighed wistfully (well, I sighed in my mind that is) over the delights that might have been, but which common sense kept telling me never would be no matter how much I protested over the injustice of it all. With the meal over she suggested that we watch television for a while, and to my delight she settled down alongside me on the couch that faced the screen without so much as a qualm. I've no idea what programmes were on because I couldn't get my mind away from thinking about her sitting there so close to me, and yet in a sense so far away she might have been on another planet. After an hour or two the rubbish being vomited out of my battered old twenty-one inch Hitatchi had a soporific effect on her, for I was suddenly aware that she had dropped off into a doze. Her head came slowly towards me, and eventually I lifted my arm and placed round her shoulder, whereupon she nestled in to me as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Have you ever tried keeping your arm in one place for several hours on end? Take my advice and don't try it. Much as I felt in my seventh heaven of delight as my arm slid round Danny's shoulders, after the first hour cramp started creeping in, and by the time she stirred at a few minutes before midnight it was about ready to disintegrate.

  “Sorry, must have dropped off,” she remarked, sitting upright and stretching.

  “Don't look now, but I think my arm is about to follow suit,” I winced, trying to move it back into a more normal position.

  “Cramp?”

  “Some,” I admitted with a grimace.

  “Here, let me massage it for you.”

  She took my arm and rubbed away at it for a few moments and then she looked up at me with that devilish twinkle I was getting to recognise in her eyes as she pulled my arm round her tiny waist.

  “I think I know a better way of making you forget about cramp,” she murmured, and I just hoped that my idea of a 'cure' was the same as hers. I pulled her towards me and kissed her again. In fact, if the truth be told, I kissed her several times, and once again visions of efficiently utilised bedrooms started to flit through the remnants of my mind.

  And flitting through the remnants of my mind is as far as said visions got. Danny appeared to do an excellent impression of being a mind reader as she slowly and firmly extricated herself from one of my best holds and straightened up.

  “Time, I think,” she said gently, but in a tone of voice that brooked no argument, “to have a hot drink before we set off to keep our appointment with destiny.”

  I started to wonder why I bothered to have a fully equipped bedroom.

  We had a mug of hot coffee plus a handful of biscuits and at about one thirty in the morning we left the flat by the rear entrance, taking with us a large flash-light I kept in the flat for emergencies. The night was quite mild, but there was a fair amount of cloud about that tended to obscure the moon from time to time. As we got out onto the road we found there was very little traffic about, and we drove at a leisurely pace in the general direction of our destination. Danny seemed quite bright and cheerful, but the closer we got the more apprehensive I felt about the whole business. To my way of thinking we were on a pointless, wild, and decidedly risky goose chase. Even if Julia had written a phone number down, which I personally doubted, it was unlikely that 'Mr X'' would have overlooked that possibility, assuming that our theory that he had been there in the first place was valid.

  I brought the car to a standstill around the corner from our destination, and we sat there for a few minutes in the darkness watching to see if there was anybody about. Frankly, I had hoped to see at least one large police officer guarding the place, or better still a bevy of squad-cars, and then I could have taken Danny home with a clear conscience, but as usual my luck was out; the whole area as far as we could see was as quiet as the grave, a simile that did little to ease my mounting feeling of apprehension.

  “Right, let's go now,” said Danny suddenly. “There's a pretty big cloud covering the moon, which will suit us very well.”

  We left the car and walked quietly down the road, keeping in the shadows as much as possible. When we reached Julia's home we quietly opened the drive gates and moved quickly down the drive, past the elderly Volvo that still stood where I had seen it on my earlier visit. We walked swiftly round to the back of the premises, noting that there were no lights on anywhere in the vicinity and no sign of a duty police officer either. The patio furniture stood out a ghostly white in the dim radiance of the shrouded moon, and I all-but jumped out of my socks when an owl hooted somewhere close by. Danny bent down over the rear door, but I couldn't see what she was doing, and I didn't ask questions. Presently she straightened up as the door swung silently open.

  We stepped into the gloomy interior, and once we were in, Danny dropped the window blinds leaving us in total darkness. Satisfied, she switched on the torch that I had provided her with, keeping the beam low and pointed towards the floor. I tried to recall the layout of the interior from my earlier visit, and stepping cautiously we left the kitchen area and went into the lounge. The heavy curtains were drawn, and she continued to keep the torch aimed low so as not to attract the attention of a chance passer-by. Danny went straight to the phone where it resided on a small table, and looked at the pad alongside it. There was nothing written on it, nor was there a private telephone directory in evidence.

  “I told you this would be a waste of time.” I hissed in her ear.

  “Oh ye of little faith!” she hissed back. (It was starting to sound like a conversation between a couple of snakes.)

  Abandoning the phone she moved to a bureau, and finding it unlocked rummaged through the papers inside. I couldn't help feeling that it was all a waste of time. Even if she found something that looked like a phone number, it wouldn't prove a thing. Moving slowly and purposefully she rifled through every drawer and cupboard in that lounge, but to no effect. Finally she moved out to the study, and here she started the same thing all over again. Everything was the same as when I had seen it last. Or was it? Suddenly I realised that there was one subtle difference. The cane had gone.

  “Danny,” I whispered, “The cane?”

  “No thanks,” she whispered back, “I'm not into that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, very droll, haven't you noticed?”

  “Noticed what?”

  “It's gone.”

  “So?”

  “Don't you see? She kept this room as a shrine to her late husband; that cane was a vital part of the whole ethos of her existence. She wouldn't have disposed of it in a month of Sundays, so somebody else must have. It suggests that we were right; the only person who would want to remove such a thing would be our mysterious 'Mr X’.”

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than the room was suddenly flooded with light.

  “Good evening,” said a quiet but uncomfortably familiar voice. “Or should I say; good morning?”

  Chapter Twenty.

  I am fully convinced that shocks of this nature are not good for my heart. When such situations happen in a 'cops-and-robbers' show on the TV the hero spins round and does something dr
amatic. Only this wasn't a TV show, and I'm not that good at spinning at a split-second’s notice, and that is quite apart from the fact that I am really not the sort of stuff that TV heroes appear to be made of. Suppressing my natural desire to leap head-first out of the window, I glanced swiftly over my shoulder, expecting the worst, and knew instantly I was broadly correct. Standing by the open doorway, with his hand still on the light-switch was an uncomfortably familiar person.

  “Detective Inspector Grayson!” I exclaimed in a sort of half-strangled tone of voice. (Well, he could scarcely have denied the fact!)

  “Mr Hammond,” he responded evenly, “and unless I am much mistaken, your client Miss Fortescue?”

  I have to admit that Danny seemed a good deal less shaken by the sudden turn of events than I was. She straightened up, turned round in an unhurried manner, smiling at the police officer as she leaned back against the desk.

  “Good morning,” she said, smiling sweetly at the man. “Do we put the handcuffs on now, or later?”

  “Later, I think,” the police officer said as a second man came into the room behind him. “By the way, this is detective sergeant Thompson. Now, shall we all go into the lounge where we can sit down and talk about things in a civilised manner? Of course, if you prefer, we can always do it back at the station, and under caution?”

  I took the lounge as the more comfortable option, and Danny appeared to have come to the same conclusion. We left the study and re-entered the lounge, with the taciturn police sergeant bringing up the rear. As soon as we entered, Danny immediately sauntered across and settled herself down on the settee as if being caught burglarising a house in the early hours of the morning was an ordinary everyday occurrence for her. The amount of aplomb she evinced astonished me, but I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was very little in life that could shake her habitual sang froid. With limited alternatives available I followed her example and sat beside her, and for once my thoughts were not fully engaged with schemes designed to inveigle her into my bedroom. The Inspector moved over and sat in the armchair opposite, and the police sergeant who had said nothing since his appearance, took up a station by the doorway. His general bulk implied that even if I should be so foolish as to try to make a bolt for it, it would be tantamount to running head first into a brick wall.

  “Well now,” said the Inspector as he leaned back in the chair, “Supposing you tell me why you are here?”

  “It's like I explained to you when we first met,” I said quickly before Danny could jump in. “It is all to do with the case I am working on. Following my initial visit I had reason to believe that Mrs Johnson may have had information important to the case. I had hoped to obtain at a second interview, but as matters turned out I could no longer ask her for it, and official channels, even if successful, would take far too long, so-”

  “-you took the law into your own hands,” he finished quietly, “and came in to look for it.”

  There wasn't a lot I could say to that. I'd been caught red-handed, so-to-speak, and had no one to blame but myself.

  “Mrs Johnson was an old friend of mine,” Danny interposed. “I'm sure she wouldn't have minded me popping in just to pick up a piece of information that I'm sure she would have given me willingly had I asked in time.”

  “Well, we shall never know if she would have minded or not now, will we Miss Fortescue?” he asked rhetorically with that gentle disarming smile that I felt sure masked a very sharp mind. “Still, be that as it may, am I right in thinking that this 'case' you are involving Mr Hammond in has something to do with a certain tragic event that occurred about fourteen years ago?”

  As I suspected, the man didn't get to be a Detective Inspector for nothing.

  “You know about that?” she asked, seemingly not in the slightest degree abashed that she was facing a day in court leading to heaven knows what sort of penalty for breaking into a house in the dead of night.

  “I know a great deal,” he agreed amiably. “I know, for example, that you are a very successful businesswoman, and although some of your methods might perhaps be classed by a few jealous rivals as being, shall we say, slightly questionable, to my knowledge you have never been in trouble with the law. I also happen to know that your sister died in an accident fourteen years ago, and until very recently the event appears to have played no real part in your life. No doubt this is due to the fact that, as a result of the injuries you sustained at the time, you suffered total amnesia. Now quite suddenly, the young woman who was also present at that sad misadventure has likewise died. Is it co-incidence, I ask myself, that this second tragedy follows so close upon the heels of a visit by Mr Hammond, a visit made in pursuance of the commission that you have given him? Perhaps it is, or perhaps it isn't. Naturally I checked on him, and again I discover that he is not a man who is known to us as a criminal, and as I anticipated, his 'alibi' for the time of this latest tragic event is certainly valid, as it is indeed for both of you.”

  “I'm glad that at least you do not suspect us in having a hand in poor Julia's death,” Danny remarked.

  “Now, who said anything about anyone 'having a hand' in the death of Mrs Johnson?” he asked mildly.

  “No one, as far as I know,” she admitted freely. “Then again, why would such an exalted personage as a Detective Inspector waste his time catching common burglars at the scene of the crime, if indeed there was a crime here in the first place, in the small hours of the morning? No, I suspect, just as much as I imagine you do, that Julia's death was not quite what it seems to be.”

  “Suspect, or know?” he enquired in his deceptively bland manner.

  “I don't 'know' anything,” she admitted, “other than the fact that Julia has always been a very religious person, and would most certainly never commit suicide, nor do I think it likely that she died as a result of an accident. Your presence here simply confirms my suspicions.”

  “And just exactly what do you suspect?”

  “We both suspect that Mrs Johnson was murdered,” I said. If I was going down for committing a crime I might just as well explain why I was trying to commit it. “We also suspect that whoever killed her may well have had a hand in the death of Miss Fortescue's sister.”

  “I see. May I ask what draws you to that somewhat fanciful conclusion?”

  “If you want to know the truth,” Danny interrupted, “It all started when I had a sudden flash of returning memory. Nothing of any great consequence, just enough to unsettle me. I engaged Mr Hammond in an effort to settle once and for all the doubts that had been awoken within me. Initially, I fully anticipated that the end result would be a complete corroboration of the story related by Julia at the time of the tragedy. Unfortunately it hasn't worked out like that at all. There are serious discrepancies between the story she related, and what we have uncovered. We have a strong suspicion that there was a man involved, a man that never came forward as a witness at the time of my sister's death, but almost certainly a man who was having a relationship with Julia. It is our theory that, following Mr Hammond's visit, Julia contacted this man and warned him that someone was nosing around.”

  “And that this man came here and made sure that she wouldn't give him away?”

  “That's about the size of it,” I agreed.

  “Do you seriously think she drank too much wine, climbed into the bath and cut her own wrists?” Danny asked.

  The police looked at her with expressionless eyes for a few moments, and she held his gaze whilst I waited for him to fish out the handcuffs and march us off.

  “I'll tell you what I think, if you will answer a question for me,” he said at last.

  “I will try.”

  “Would you have said that Mrs Johnson was, shall we say, completely normal in every way?”

  It was Danny's turn to stop and think. “I'm not sure that I can give an unequivocal opinion on that,” she answered at last. “She was certainly completely sane as far as I am aware, and I have never heard a suggestion to
the contrary.”

  “As I understand it, you have both been making a number of enquiries about her background. Am I wrong in believing that this has led you to drawing certain conclusions about her way of life?”

  “Everything we have discovered about her background indicates that she was a closet-masochist,” I said before Danny could start hedging again.

  “I see.”

  “My own theory is that being a widow,” I continued, deciding that I might just as well be hung for a hippo as a dormouse, “my advent gave her the excuse to renew an old acquaintanceship with a man with corresponding sadistic tendencies. On that basis she invited this man in. If he was the same man as the one she knew fourteen years ago, then yes, circumstances now current in his life might make it imperative that he ensure that she would never divulged anything about the past.”

  “You suspect that this theoretical sadist murdered her?”

  I shrugged. “Possibly.”