The Wickenham Murders

by Amy Myers

  ‘Must be The Forest Gate Murder,’ Georgia said practically.

  ‘Of course. Now you’ve sent in the 1940s murder script, I should be hounding you for the next one. I need a book a year.’

  ‘Pretty soon we’ll be committing the murders to keep up with your schedule.’

  ‘How is dear Ada – and please, please don’t tell me every single detail. I heard them all from Peter last night.’

  ‘Stuck in a theory, but a tenable one. Everything’s on hold at the moment. The trouble with theories is that invariably some details don’t fit. It would be nice to think that the Randolphs, Proctors and Scraggses are all tied up together, but the Bloomfields are in the frame though they’ve been ruled out for the Scraggs murder. Moreover there’s precious little, save hearsay, that Matthew was keen on Ada at one time, to link them with Ada Proctor’s murder, even though we surmise she might have been on her way to the Manor when she died.’

  ‘At least that’s a wobble forward,’ he agreed, ducking under a branch and holding it back for her.

  ‘And the return of the Prodigal Son is still a favourite theory, with the probability that he wobbled into the denehole by mistake.’

  ‘Don’t like that,’ he declared roundly. ‘Not good for sales. This is a blame culture we live in. Can’t you find someone to fix the murder on?’

  She aimed a fist at him and he ducked.

  ‘Seriously, how about this She-Wolf of Wickenham?’ he asked. ‘She sounds a formidable character. Suppose she strangled Ada out of jealousy and when Guy saw what she had done, she pushed him down the denehole?’

  ‘How about reasons? We don’t know anything about this lady save the recording we heard and her reputation as a formidable character. Flimsy evidence to fix two murders on her. Oh, and apparently she fancied the vicar too. Does that make her guilty?’

  ‘The vicar who was rumoured to have been bumped off?’

  ‘Yes. Do you think she did it? Fell for him and when, being a properly brought-up vicar, he rejected her advances, she killed him?’

  ‘What was her husband Matthew like? A wimp?’

  ‘From the number of times the doctor visited him – my only evidence – he wasn’t exactly macho, and he died quite young.’

  ‘Maybe she bumped him off too. When did the vicar die?’

  ‘Goodness knows, but Matthew died in 1943.’

  ‘Natural causes?’

  ‘Don’t know. Haven’t looked into it.’

  ‘Then why not, dearest Georgia, fill in your time while you’re waiting for this DNA result, by doing some checking into these potentially interesting matters?’

  ‘I am filling in my time, as you put it, by sorting out Christmas, in the traditional womanly fashion.’

  ‘Ah. Could that Christmas include me? I’m seeing my parents on Boxing Day, but they’d love to see you and Peter if you want to join us, and Mark’s going away to his in-laws in Yorkshire. So on Christmas Day . . .’

  ‘I’d love you to come to us.’ Christmas mysteriously assumed the magical quality that had been missing hitherto.

  ‘One condition: not one word about Ada Proctor, Randolphs or Bloomfields. Understood?’

  ‘Gratefully.’

  *

  Georgia drove home the next morning much restored, and even stopped to hurl herself into the supermarket to get some shopping en route. Presents, cards, crackers, food supplies, all had suddenly taken on a pleasantly traditional aura, and even the muzak carols blaring out had an appeal about them. She bought a small Christmas tree in the forecourt, pushed it happily into the boot of the car, and contemplated decorating it. Somewhere were the old decorations they’d used in her childhood; it would be fun to dig them out of her father’s loft and put them up. They’d languished up there for some years after her mother left, as they were too painful a reminder of the absent two members of the family. Now, she felt she could even face the tin soldier that had been Rick’s favourite, though that might be risking too much for Peter. Christmas was a difficult time, and Luke’s presence would be a wonderful boost. Invite the neighbours in for a drink? Christmas morning church service? She was still filled with these pleasant thoughts as she unpacked the car, brought her newly acquired booty into the house, stood the Christmas tree outside in the rear garden for a few days, and went in to see her father to give him the good news about Luke.

  One look at Peter’s face and all thought of giving good news vanished. He was looking as dejected as she had ever seen him, huddled into himself.

  ‘Dad, what’s wrong?’ She hurried to him. ‘Are you ill?’

  He shook his head impatiently. ‘Bad news, that’s all. I’ve had the DNA result. It was rushed through because Darenth changed its mind and upgraded it to fast track two days ago. Whoever that poor skeleton in the mortuary was, it wasn’t Guy Randolph.’

  Chapter Twelve

  The evening stretched out dismally before them, and dinner had passed almost in silence.

  ‘Shall we leave it until tomorrow?’ Georgia suggested at last. ‘The wine won’t have done my thinking any good.’

  ‘Let’s have a go now, otherwise I’ll be fuming all night,’ Peter said practically.

  She saw his point, so they returned to his study area after she had cleared away the dishes. Other parts of the house were in theory sacrosanct so far as work talk was concerned. Especially from unpleasant discussions such as this. Surrounded by Peter’s books, computers and office clutter, she hoped her brain might be more willing to cope with this setback – though that word was understating the case.

  Georgia blamed herself for getting carried away with the near certainty that the skeleton was Guy’s. She could almost hear their friends in forensic science snorting with laughter, and reminding them there’d always be the possibility that the time dating for the skeleton had been tampered with. But that had seemed so unlikely in this case that it hadn’t been worth taking seriously. Working from evidence up to a thesis was all very well in principle, but this skeleton had produced the French watch and coins, which surely could not have been popped in later and had been encouraging hints that their owner had come from France. In 1929 there couldn’t have been many French tourists interested enough in Wickenham to come here. Or, looking at it another way, many casual workers who’d been to France or who made a specialty of examining deneholes. Fate had served Marsh & Daughter badly.

  ‘If it wasn’t Guy Randolph, who was it?’ she began, and added quickly, ‘Don’t tell me it was a tramp.’

  ‘It was a tramp,’ Peter muttered viciously. ‘Otherwise he’d have been on the missing persons’ list in the Wickenham area.’

  ‘And this tramp killed Ada?’

  ‘No evidence whatsoever.’ Peter remained deep in gloom. ‘We can’t tie the skeleton down to a precise time. We’re back exactly where we started. We’re agreed there seems or seemed to be unfinished business in Wickenham, and we assumed that concerned Ada Proctor and/or Davy Todd. We lost sight of the other possibility that the skeleton or some other problem, such as the feud, was the unfinished business, and that there was no unfinished business over Ada Proctor.’

  ‘What does your sixth sense say about that?’

  ‘I have to admit, Georgia, that my sixth sense is somewhat buried at the moment. It’s difficult to go backwards and see things as we did at first.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. We decided it was Mary Elgin who was causing those fingerprints and Mary Elgin is very definitely related to the Ada Proctor case. And,’ Georgia reminded him, ‘we can’t let her down now. We have to go on prodding. She was very definite that Davy was with her, we know Ada made a phone call that night and informed the maid at The Firs that she was going out to meet someone, and we’re sure she would not have dressed up in her best clothes for a badger hunt or even a dalliance with Davy Todd. No.’ Georgia frowned. ‘I still feel – is that allowed?’

  ‘Tonight anything’s allowed.’

  ‘– that Guy Randolph was around that night. We�
�ve evidence of that too. He went to the Manor.’

  ‘Slender evidence not tested in court, and based on hearsay.’

  ‘True, but independent evidence it remains.’

  ‘So the only tenable theory, for which as yet no evidence exists, is yours, that Guy Randolph murdered Ada to stop her talking, and then scarpered. Are we happy with this? I, for one, am not. Why didn’t he murder the maid at the Manor too, to stop her gabbling to Rose Sadler and the like?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Georgia said crossly. ‘What we’ll have to do –’ the prospect stretched bleakly before her – ‘is get on with the routine leads and see if anything pops up from that. Guy’s war record, for instance. It might seem irrelevant, but you never know. We can check that if it still exists, and I can go to Kew. I can reread the local papers for 1929 and see if anything leaps out at me now we know a lot more. I can – oh hell.’ She slumped mentally and physically in her chair. ‘Perhaps tomorrow will look brighter.’

  ‘It won’t,’ Peter observed. ‘One of us has to ring Jean and give her the bad news.’

  Georgia’s heart sank even further. That was the trouble with cases that went wrong. Mud got stirred up for which they were responsible, and in their own setbacks it was all too easy to forget that other human beings had become involved. Someone had to smooth down the mud again. ‘Do you want me to do it?’

  ‘Good of you, but I was responsible for this daft theory about Guy Randolph. I sold it to you, so I should carry the can.’

  ‘Shall we do the deed now?’ she asked. ‘It’s only nine o clock, and it would get it over with.’

  ‘Hold my hand, daughter dear, let’s do it.’

  From what Georgia could hear of Jean’s voice at the other end of the line she was taking it rather well. Peter didn’t overdo the apologies, nor did he underdo them. He spoke for some time explaining the pros and cons and what the situation was now, and there was no sign that Jean was trying to interrupt him.

  At last she did, however, and what she said obviously flummoxed Peter. ‘We’ll be working on that, Jean,’ he told her, sounding very confident, but Georgia knew his voice well enough to realize he’d been thrown off course. After assurances that they would keep in touch, and that the fact that the skeleton wasn’t Guy’s didn’t mean he wouldn’t have a role in the story (Peter tactfully didn’t mention it might be that of murderer), he put the phone down. Then to her annoyance he began to laugh.

  ‘What,’ she asked crossly, ‘is so funny?’

  ‘Sometimes it takes an outsider to ask the obvious.’

  ‘I rely on Luke for that.’

  ‘Jean asked it. She said: “If it wasn’t Guy in that denehole, but he was in Wickenham that day, what happened to him?” If he scarpered, Georgia, where did he scarper to?’

  *

  So much for getting work problems out of the way before bedtime. Now she would be dreaming all night about Guy Randolph. Georgia had mentally kicked herself hard several times for not following through her theory about his strangling Ada. In the knowledge (they had to assume) that Guy had been at the Manor that night, she had been so busy casting him in the role of Ada’s killer that they had overlooked what happened next, apart from his ‘scarpering’. If he’d killed Ada, she reasoned (and the coincidence of his presence there that day was an unlikely one otherwise), he had done it for the purpose of financial self-protection, and disappearance would put paid to that. He had had every intention of hunting down his family, so why hadn’t he turned up at the new home? Answer, she supposed: the news would be out from the Bloomfields that he had been around, once Ada’s body was discovered, and he couldn’t have banked on the fact that a convenient scapegoat in the form of Davy Todd would appear.

  Okay, he couldn’t go to find his family right away, but there was no reason he couldn’t skip back to France, and slip back into obscurity. He need not even have returned to Rosanne; he might just have temporarily vanished into the underworld of Europe. He would in due course have realized that the main players in the drama were dead and that he wasn’t being hunted in connection with the Proctor case. So why was there never a word about Guy Randolph again? Possibly if he too were dead. He certainly would be by now.

  She had been right, she thought confusedly as the night wore on, they needed to know more about Guy’s background. Peter would be checking the National Archives/PRO site catalogue on line, and then – if the results were good – she would go to Kew. They needed this research for the book anyway, regardless of whether Guy proved to be Ada’s killer or not. Proved to be? That was an inaccuracy by today’s standards. Firstly, both were dead, which meant an official clearance was not possible since there’d been no trial. Secondly, only DNA could now unofficially prove guilt, and she recalled one recent rapist/murderer whose DNA profile matched that on the clothing of a victim nearly thirty years earlier. But there would be no chance of Ada’s outer clothing or belongings still being around, so only an exhumation could possibly provide a DNA sample. And the chances of the police paying for that now were zilch. Marsh & Daughter’s names were mud with the Darenth police.

  Georgia got up early the next morning, suspecting that Peter would already be at his computer, pushing ahead with the job. Margaret regularly saw him out of bed and dressed at eight o’clock and officially he was supposed to have breakfast before he began work. If he protested loudly enough, however, she agreed to lose the battle once in a while, and he was permitted to go straight to the computer and return to breakfast in due course. Today was one of those days.

  ‘Are we presuming our Guy was an officer?’ he hurled over his shoulder to her, as she came in, bleary-eyed from disturbed sleep.

  She did her best to concentrate. ‘I’d say it was a near certainty with a major for a father. He’d have been at public school and university, all set to follow Dad’s path – in Dad’s view at least. Then came the war, and every man expected to do his duty and volunteer; you bet he was an officer. And he must have done pretty well to survive three years.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Survive how though? Desert? Dodge?’

  ‘We can’t prejudge. He might have been a brilliant leader of men before his nerve went.’

  ‘Convince me.’

  ‘I only said might have. So how are you doing?’

  ‘Pretty well. Not all the PRO records survived the bombing in 1940, as you know, but officers’ records are more complete than other ranks. There’s a small bunch of Randolphs including a Lieutenant T.G. who was discharged in 1920. Not our chap, obviously. But there is a G.H. That’s the one to go for. In file W0339. None of the others fit. I’ve written down the reference number for you. At the very least you’ll get regiment and ID number.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  In fact it was the following day, Wednesday, that Georgia took the train and tube to Kew. Kew had happy connotations for her. She had loved Kew Gardens for many years, from the Chinese pagoda that had fascinated her as a child, to the steamy conservatories of tropical plants that conjured up images of a wider world than Britain more vividly than television, and the historic houses that spelt England. And then there were the gardens themselves, so large that peace and calm could be discovered in some corner at any time of the year. By connotation the PRO even under its new name of National Archives took on something of the same symbolism, plus the optimistic impression that if one burrowed deep enough truth could be distilled from all those facts.

  An illusion, of course. Truth could by its nature elude even the most diligent researcher. The best stab one could make at it, she and Peter agreed, was to establish all the evidence possible and make a judgement. But then wasn’t that what the courts were for? Yet, there too, truth could slip quietly through the window back to the Almighty, whose province it was.

  This morning the PRO yielded up its treasure relatively easily, with no false starts of byways to divert her. Unlike the day she had come here to check the Ada Proctor records, this time the information was readily before her. Guy Henry
Randolph had entered the First World War in 1914 as a second lieutenant, joining the Royal West Kent Regiment, and went missing on 26 October 1917 during the Third Battle of Ypres, by which time he was a full lieutenant with the 1st Battalion. Of course he was with a Kentish Regiment, she thought. The Buffs would have been a more natural choice but perhaps his father had been in the West Kents. That would figure, even if a progression over three years of only Second Lieutenant to Lieutenant did not suggest he was following in his father’s more prestigious footsteps. Her next port of call was to the London Library, where again fate obliged her in the form of a weighty tome of regimental history, which she took into the reading room to study.

  The Third Battle of Ypres, with the military front line bulging out in a salient round the town, had begun at the end of July 1917 over land already reduced to mud.

  In October, the 1st Battalion of the Royal West Kents had been – oh yes, this fitted with Guy’s story as they knew it so far – in a back area and it returned on the 24th to the front line near the village of Gheluvelt on the road from Ypres to Menin. Its next objective was not Gheluvelt itself, but to its north, and the village was the responsibility of Seventh Division. But there was a major problem for the West Kents.

  Three weeks earlier the battalion had been fighting over this same ground and established a line that was not far behind the one they now held. In order to get a satisfactory preliminary barrage the battalion had to retreat to the earlier line, and the Germans, noting this, quickly nipped in and occupied the other one. This meant the battalion had to fight for it all over again, and this burden fell on two companies, who won it back at great cost.

  By the time they reached it, they were exposed on their right and rear to the enemy. The division taking the village had been counterattacked and the survivors retreated to the old line; this left the two West Kent companies open to the enemy as they tried to push their advance forward to their new objective. Nearly all died since they were now too far from the line to be rescued by stretcher-bearers, and in any case mud was the chief enemy that day. It prevented the men from moving, it got into their guns and stopped communications. There was no ground won, and over two hundred were killed or missing from the battalion.