The Wickenham Murders

by Amy Myers

  ‘Someone killed him,’ Georgia pointed out quietly. ‘Don’t you care who?’

  Trevor shrugged. ‘In a fight like that, who can say? One of the Elgins, probably. Get a few beers inside them and they don’t know who or what they’re attacking.’

  His lack of concern sickened her. Just one more knifing in a fight didn’t count apparently. Involuntarily she turned her head away – and instantly froze.

  It was Zac. She was sure of it. He’d just passed through the swing doors from reception leading to the residential part of the hotel. She’d only had a sideways view, but she knew that profile, and that curly black hair, that careless disregard of his surroundings, animate or inanimate. Oh damn! How could fate spin round and hit her in the face again? Why now? Why here?

  *

  Some people have a greater hold over you in absence than they do when they are with you. Georgia could never quite decide whether Zac was one of them or not. In absence he acquired a sinister attraction that chilled her, but in his presence, despite his exasperating charm, she found herself wondering what all the fuss was about – and that was his most chilling weapon of all, damn him.

  She had first met him when she was a twenty-year-old student and overwhelmed by his casual seven-year seniority and sophistication. Wine was his stock-in-trade as a conman then – though Zac would have been horrified even now to think of himself as such; he buzzed in all the wine connoisseur groups in London and even more fruitfully around the rest of the British Isles. If there were a celeb party, Zac would be there – or pretend he had been. Not, she discovered later, under his own name of course. His was the usual scam. He travelled the world and dealt, he claimed, with only the best vineyards, and those directly in order to obtain the grandest of the grand cru at a fraction of the price it would be through the usual channels. He shared a bottle with the chosen victims to confirm his judgement, which they inevitably did, and then departed with their money. The wine never materialized and nor did Zac reappear.

  When she had married him immediately after her graduation he was already – again discovered later – the proud victor in a Ponzi-type sting for investment in a struggling co-operative vineyard concern in Italy, paying dividends to the first round of investors out of the investments of the next round. The crazy thing was that Zac never bothered to do his homework properly, and he knew very little about wine. He eventually fell foul of a rich and canny lady, who smelt a rat when, presenting her with a bottle of sweet Monbazillac dessert wine, he casually assured her it would go admirably with oysters, and the lady proceeded to make some enquiries of the vineyard before placing her order. Since Zac had been incompetent enough to operate occasionally in his own back yard, Kent, the case had landed by coincidence on Peter’s desk, and as Peter had been privately pursuing a few enquiries of his own about his son-in-law, it had led to Zac receiving a five-year sentence of which he served just over half.

  When they were first married, Georgia, in love with Zac, with life and with the romance of country living, had found work in a bookshop. Zac laughed at her for such steady ways, compared with his own easy-come easy-go approach to money. True, his way was fun, and up to a point she enjoyed the excitement, but it was only after her father had broken the devastating news to her about her husband’s ‘profession’ – she’d thought him a genuine wine dealer – that she discovered the bills he had left strewn in his wake.

  Georgia never forgot the way Zac looked at her after the sentence had been announced. It was simply his familiar bewildered expression of ‘how can they do this to me?’ Was there a real Zac behind it? If so, she had realized at that moment that she had never known him – and this still terrified her. Behind the public mask of anyone and everyone, what might there lie?

  Even Luke’s.

  *

  ‘Are you sure it was Zac, Georgia?’ Peter gloomily regarded the cajun chicken and rice, courtesy of the Green Man, instead of the more gourmet-conscious food of Wickenham Manor. No way was she staying around there.

  ‘Of course, I am,’ she said wearily. ‘What on earth’s he doing here?’

  ‘Knowing Zac,’ his ex-father-in-law observed mildly, ‘I would assume he was conning someone.’

  ‘It’s not going to be me.’

  ‘You can’t play hide and seek in a village this size. Face him.’

  ‘I can’t. Maybe he’s only passing through.’ She didn’t believe it. Once in a good hotel, Zac would settle in and wait for custom. If he saw either of them, he would assume his bill was as good as paid for him.

  ‘I’ll find out. You stay at the Todds this evening and I’ll zap Zac.’

  That made her giggle – for a moment. ‘What did you make of the Bloomfields?’

  ‘I bet he drives a new S-type Jag,’ Peter threw back instantly, ‘and she’s used to sitting in it. I wouldn’t like to be the one that suggested she downsize to a Mini.’

  ‘My feeling too,’ Georgia agreed. ‘The lady’s not for swerving. Nor’s he either.’

  ‘Now before I go to see Mary Elgin,’ Peter announced, ‘I’ve had an okay from Mike on my mobile in my room for you to look round Scraggs’s room provided Mike’s present. The police have done all they need.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Mike will tell you. Precious little. They’ve found the parents’ address – they’re coming to identify the body at the mortuary, and the personal possessions will be sent on to them. They don’t want to come to Wickenham themselves. Too traumatic. So go quickly – and don’t tell the world. Mike will meet you there.’

  ‘You’re glad about this, aren’t you? You want to see Mary alone.’

  ‘I must admit that is the case.’

  Peter versus Mary. Formidable force meets formidable force. Which of them would win, or would it be a draw?

  She went straight back to Country Stop, where, with Mike at her side, she entered Terence Scraggs’s room. It was creepily like her own, the same floral pattern on duvet cover and curtains, merely in a different colour. Hers was the pink room, Terence’s had been yellow. Yellow for sunshine, but there was little joy left here. If he had ever poured any of his personality into this room during his stay it had vanished now. She concentrated hard on summoning up Terence in her mind – if only to banish Zac’s sick-making image. Lucy hadn’t yet packed his belongings, so his toothbrush, soap and razor were still on the washbasin, a testament to how carefully he tended that wispy beard. His sparse belongings still hung in the wardrobe, or lay in one of the drawers. His spare shoes poked from under the bed. Soulless or not, it seemed like prying and she let Mike take the running in going through his few papers.

  Mike had come to the force via the profession of window-cleaning, which he’d taken up as soon as he could get shot of school. He’d told Peter that this was what turned him into a policeman. He’d learnt so much about the way human beings lived, and their quirks and idiosyncrasies, through window-cleaning that he thought he’d put it to good use. To look at him quickly, one would see nothing other than a Policeman Plod; a second look at his watchful eyes would explain exactly why he was now a DI and climbing. He had a knack for absorbing every detail and was going through Scraggs’s scribbling pads, his draft speech about the protest, and a note from his parents about a forthcoming family weekend with equal zeal.

  Georgia noted down the parents’ address, although this wasn’t her main reason for coming here. While Mike was still occupied elsewhere, she picked up Terence’s portfolio, which was propped up by the wardrobe together with his paints, crayons, pencils and a portable easel. Donning the gloves Mike handed to her, she hauled the portfolio on to the bed and looked through it. Halfway through she found an unfinished watercolour of Country Stop, and a rough pencil sketch of Wickenham Manor. Presumably the latter had been a botched attempt and the finished painting had been handed over, which bore out Trevor’s story. One or two other sketches showed Terence had had a boldness of approach that she would not have expected, although his sterling performance
at the meeting should have suggested it. There was nothing on Jim’s Forge, so that too must have been handed over.

  Then came two sketches that were not of houses, but of what she identified after some thought as the Wickenham Manor estate, perhaps because Terence had considered a double hit by offering landscape paintings of the park as well as the house. The next one was a finished watercolour of a Victorian house in its own grounds which seemed familiar though she could not quite place it. Why had this one remained? Did the prospective purchaser not like it? Was it perhaps not even in Wickenham? It wasn’t so good as the other work. It had a static quality without the life suggested by the others.

  And then she realized why it seemed familiar. ‘Mike, look at this. It must have been done from a postcard, one of Jim’s probably. It’s Hazelwood House.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘We’re probably standing on it. It was pulled down in the 1960s.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Why did Scraggs go to this trouble when there’d be no buyer for it? Don’t you think he must have had more interest in Wickenham than just protests?’

  ‘What sort of interest?’ Mike was not to be moved.

  ‘Hazelwood House is where the Randolphs lived. Peter’s got a bee in his bonnet that the man in the denehole was one of them.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Rested?’ Peter looked at her keenly as she arrived at the Manor next morning. Georgia was hardly surprised he asked. She must have looked a fright. She had slept badly again, probably because she spent much of the night walking in through the front door of Hazelwood House, just as it had appeared in Terence Scragg’s drawing. She had felt like Gretel, entering the unknown to meet the wicked witch, and yet once inside there had seemed nothing to fear. There had been merely a jolly family Edwardian Christmas, a la Hollywood, in progress, with a large Christmas tree and benevolent father handing out gifts. There had even been one for her, a painting of Wickenham Manor, for which she was ecstatically grateful – in her dream. However, when she left the Hazelwood House, much relieved, it always called her back again, but the next time she entered there was no sign of benevolent father or presents. Instead Zac leapt out at her from behind a door. ‘Didn’t you expect me?’ he would say with his hurt look. ‘I’m always here.’ Then he’d smirk . . .

  ‘I can see you’re not,’ Peter continued. ‘We’ll go home tonight. Staying at Country Stop is a bad idea for you. You need to keep away from this current mess or you’ll lose track of the past.’

  ‘Suppose they’re related,’ she said reluctantly. The nightmare about Hazelwood House still loomed in her mind, and she tried in vain to convince herself she was making too much of one simple painting in Scraggs’s portfolio. She told Peter what she had found in Terence’s room, surprised he hadn’t badgered her immediately for this information. ‘Interesting, don’t you think?’ she managed to conclude, hoping against hope that he’d pooh-pooh her fear. If there were more to it than coincidence, that brought Terence Scraggs’s murder closer to her.

  ‘Very. As you say, why bother to paint from a postcard a house long gone?’

  ‘Is that a rhetorical question, or do you want an answer?’

  ‘Answer please,’ Peter requested.

  ‘He had some interest in the house, either architectural, or more probably because it had some significance for him.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Peter mused on this. ‘Remember the car he drove?’

  ‘You can’t make a thesis out of that. Suppose he borrowed it. Suppose it belonged to his mum.’

  ‘Get real. It’s not a mum’s car.’

  ‘You don’t know his mum.’ Georgia was irritated. Peter was always doing this, playing with his own pet theories, and then goading her to the point where she’d have to cry: ‘Where’s your evidence?’

  This time Peter didn’t carry the clash any further, which was again unusual. Instead, he helped himself to some more coffee, and remarked, ‘Georgia, would you be interested to know I had a pleasant drink in the bar last night with a marketing rep for a shampoo and hair products distributor?’ She looked at him warily, but he was serious. ‘He had black curly hair, and a sharp profile,’ Peter continued, ‘as did your former husband, but—’

  ‘It wasn’t.’ Georgia slumped back in her chair in relief, as her tension slipped away.

  ‘At a second look this gentleman was nothing like Zac. It worried me, Georgia. I thought he was safely behind you, whether he turned up occasionally or not, but what this episode suggests is that he’s still lurking inside you.’

  ‘I don’t love him any more,’ she replied immediately. It sounded inadequate even to her. Love was no longer the point. There were other forces even less controllable than love, including a sexual one that both attracted and repelled.

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it. Think about it.’

  She would. She had to, she was aware of that. Peter too was involved in this sphere of her life, as by one of those ghastly coincidences of which life is capable he had been the one who finally put Zac behind bars to receive his comeuppance. But this was not the time or place to put this under the microscope yet again. Instead: ‘How did you get on with Mary Elgin?’

  ‘Interesting. I had to see her downstairs of course in the communal room, which was buzzing with the news of the murder and the fight. It’s not often they get so animated, so one of the staff told me, but Mary ignored all chat of her tribe’s involvement with the murder. Nor was she in the least concerned about the sale of the sports fields, but she did want to know, very much, about our progress over Davy Todd.’

  ‘Did you show her printouts of the trial reports?’ Georgia was not surprised at Mary’s one-track mind. Davy was the driving force keeping her alive.

  ‘No. Too heavy going. Instead I reminded her of the evidence. And she listened very carefully, making some pertinent comments. She didn’t get upset either, which is a good sign. It suggests it’s been in her mind all along. She remembers the grilling on the stand she received from the crown prosecutor. It can’t have been easy with her father having sworn blind he’d never seen Davy that night. Assuming we’re believing Mary’s story, I wonder whether her father thought about the consequences of what he was doing in virtually condemning the boy to death, or whether he had convinced himself that somehow Davy was guilty.’

  ‘I don’t see how he could have done, do you? If Mary’s right, he was with them from about ten until eleven thirty or so. Even if Ada’s time of death was somewhat later than the post-mortem stated, surely no one could rush straight out after a thrashing like that to make a sexual assault on their employer’s daughter. Nor would there have been much time since those witnesses said they saw him in the street about a quarter to twelve.’

  ‘She remembered everything, Georgia.’ Peter had clearly been impressed. ‘She described the entire courtroom to me, and Davy “dawthering and doddering”, as she called it, when he gave his evidence, knowing no one believed him. Poor Davy, she said, with his pocketful of dead hopes.’

  Kentish dialect was more graphic then than now. Georgia had a sudden thought. ‘Had Davy and Ada ever been out at night before looking for birds and animals?’

  ‘Yes. Once at least. But again he’d been advised not to talk about that in case the Crown claimed he’d got a taste for it.’

  ‘But that’s surely a point in his favour too. If he had made any sign of a pass at Ada she would never have arranged to meet him again.’

  ‘Unless she enjoyed it, and next time he went further,’ Peter pointed out, which silenced her. ‘And if he’d laid on a hand on her before, and she didn’t like it, she wouldn’t just have avoided his company, she’d have had him sacked.’

  ‘So the jury’s still out on that. Damn,’ Georgia said crossly.

  ‘And remember the maid testified that Ada was excited about going out later, so a solitary walk on the spur of the moment seems ruled out. So,’ Peter suggested craftily, ‘how about considering Guy Randolph no
w? You seem to be coming round to my way of thinking.’

  ‘Certainly not. Not without more proof at least,’ she shot back at him. ‘One painting from a postcard does not add up to a skeleton in the denehole – even,’ she added guiltily, ‘if Terence did ask me about it.’

  ‘Aha. Now you tell me!’ Peter roared. ‘So our Terence knew about that before he came to Wickenham.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’ve been holding back on me. That could have been the reason he came here in the first place. The sale of the sports fields was a cover.’

  ‘If you care to add two and two and make fifteen and a half, certainly,’ Georgia whipped back.

  ‘You must agree Terence Scraggs needs more investigation.’

  ‘And the police will be doing it.’

  ‘Perhaps, Georgia dear, you could offer to take his belongings back to his parents. They might even be glad of a visit. You talked to him here and there’ll be no funeral yet for them to concentrate on.’ Their eyes met. No funeral. Many religions believed the spirits of the unburied wandered between heaven and earth. Like Rick’s. The pit of the unknown heaved inside her, but she managed to suppress it, and for Peter’s sake to make her voice sound normal.

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘And I’ll get stuck into the Internet, to see if I can find out more about our friend Terence. Not that –’ he suddenly raised his voice – ‘our magnificent police force aren’t pulling out all the stops to solve this crime.’ Georgia turned round to see Mike Gilroy marching across the lounge area to join them.

  ‘No need to shout,’ he remarked stolidly. ‘I can hear you loud and clear. And we are pulling out stops. That,’ he said, pulling up a chair, ‘is why I’m here. I’m halfway through interviewing the Elgin family.’

  ‘Good of you to keep us informed, Mike. I appreciate that,’ Peter said genially.

  ‘I’m not here for PR. I’m here to say there’s feeling about, especially amongst the Elgins.’