Troubled Waters

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘May I speak to Mr James Fordyce, please?’ he asked. ‘This is Chief Superintendent Pollard.’

  A little gasp at the other end of the line was followed by a fluttering assurance that the speaker would get him at once. There was an agitated cry of ‘James’, the sound of running footsteps and distant conversation. Then a purposeful tread and a man’s voice.

  ‘Fordyce here,’ it said briefly.

  ‘I’d be glad of some help from you, Mr Fordyce. As I’m sure you know, the coroner has reopened the inquest into the death of the late Mr Edward Tuke, and I have been instructed by my superiors to conduct an enquiry into the circumstances. My apologies for calling you so early but I have a lot to fit into today. Would it be convenient if I called at about ten this morning?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘As a matter of fact I’d planned to come info Littlechester this morning to work in the reference library. How about my coming along to the police station? Any time would suit me if you’d just give the librarian a ring and ask him to contact me. It’s only a few minutes’ walk.’ Once again Pollard heard a small gasp.

  ‘That’s a very helpful suggestion, Mr Fordyce,’ he replied. ‘Thank you. I’ll do just that. It will be some time in the later part of the morning.’

  He jotted down the telephone number he was given and rang off. As he dressed he remembered that the Chief Constable had said that Fordyce had married a woman much younger than himself.

  ‘It sounded to me as though he might have fallen for a dolly with a pretty face and precious little behind it,’ he told Toye over breakfast. ‘It certainly stood out a mile that he’d no intention of being interviewed by us with her in the offing. Given to listening at doors, perhaps? I’ll swear he’d no idea of coming in to the library this morning before I called... You know, if Boggis doesn’t take more than about half an hour it might be possible to fit in Mrs Rawlings too, if she’s around.’

  Toye agreed that this made sense, and half an hour later they were once more on the road to Woodcombe. They turned into the Manor drive just before half-past nine. As they rounded a curve in the drive they saw that the front door was standing open, and a moment later the grey-haired woman they had met on the previous day appeared on the steps.

  ‘This might take quite a bit of time,’ Pollard told Toye as they drew up. ‘You can’t hustle a Faithful Retainer.’ It transpired that Rodney Kenway-Potter had told Mrs Boggis to take them to his study. The armchairs had been returned to their usual position, and it was with difficulty that Pollard persuaded her to occupy one of them. She perched on the edge of the seat and looked anxiously at the callers. A period piece, Pollard thought, registering her serviceable overall, thick stockings and flat-heeled shoes.

  ‘I’m afraid you had a dreadful shock yesterday, Mrs Boggis,’ he began sympathetically. ‘We feel very bad at bothering you so soon, but it’s the people who were on the spot who can help us so much when something goes wrong. Did you go into Mrs Kenway-Potter’s room and find her unconscious?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir,’ Mrs Boggis twisted her work-worn hands together. ‘I wasn’t over here. That was the dreadful thing. And I can’t help feeling that was why Mrs Kenway-Potter chose yesterday to do what — what she did. That, and Master Rodney being over to Littlechester for a meeting. But the Good Lord was watching over us...’

  With a few questions Pollard and Toye managed to get the record straight. Friday was Mrs Boggis’s day off. She didn’t come in on a Friday, not unless something very particular was on, and then Mrs Kenway-Potter would make her take another day that week. No, the first she’d known of anything wrong was the telephone ringing over in her flat. They’d had it put in to save the running backwards and forwards, and in case she was scared in the night, being on her own, or was took bad. Master Rodney told her to come at once and she’d run all the way over. He’d rung for the ambulance and told her to get hot bottles quick.

  None of this information was particularly valuable although it filled a gap in the record, and Pollard took the conversation back to another traumatic occasion: the evening of April the twenty-third... She had come over a bit early, knowing what a tiring day they’d had going to court, and all because of that wicked old man down at Bridge Cottage telling lies about the fishing and the cars making a noise. The gentlemen as came over to fish parked nearer to her than to him, and she’d never been bothered by them. And the wickedness of him knocking down Old Grim and writing to say he’d done it, bold as brass. Why, when it was found out that the football hooligans hadn’t pulled up the notice at the end of the bridge, people couldn’t understand why the old wretch wasn’t taken up by the police for doing it. Just up his street, it was.

  Pollard assured her that the police had gone into absolutely everything Mr Bolling had done after coming out of court on April the twenty-third, and were satisfied that he would not have been able to commit this particular anti-social act. A mulish expression came into her face, and he hastily introduced the topic of her long association with the Kenway-Potter family. The diversion was almost too successful. Now highly voluble, Mrs Boggis poured out a stream of reminiscences covering an association of fifty-four years and the regimes of Master Rodney’s grandfather and father, working up to his own marriage in 1950 and inheritance of the estate in 1962. At intervals she got up to fetch photographs, and Toye used the opportunity to jot down dates. Pollard commented with sincerity on Mrs Kenway-Potter’s good looks to Mrs Boggis’s pleasure.

  ‘She was the loviest bride I ever saw, and she’s passed it on to her daughter, Miss Amanda ... this is Miss Amanda, taken last year... They’re quite a good-looking family, no doubt about it. Master Rodney and his lady are cousins, although she came from a different branch of the family. A Miss Hartley, she was, from a village called Lockwood near Worcester. Very interested in family history, Master Rodney’s become since Mr Fordyce came to live in Woodcombe, and they got to know each other. Mr Fordyce finds out about people’s families for a living you see, and he’s shown Master Rodney how to do it. They’ve been up to London together to places where they keep old papers, and Master Rodney’s working on his wife’s side of the family now.’

  ‘Pull up outside the gates for a minute until we recover,’ Pollard said, as the Rover moved decorously down the drive.

  ‘Fell into our laps like a ripe plum, didn’t it?’ Toye remarked with an uncharacteristically vivid turn of phrase. ‘I could have done with that coffee she offered us, though.’

  ‘Take courage. The folklore woman we’ll call on next: she may offer us some made of ground acorns, I expect. We simply couldn’t afford to spend any more time with Boggis, once we got what we hoped for. Let’s face it. We’ve found out something we wanted to know, but all it amounts to is that Fordyce has got K-P keen on his family history and shown him the ropes. It’s possible that they hit on something involving Tuke and Mrs K-P which added up to a motive for getting him out of the way before he learnt about it himself. But all this is pure conjecture at present. The next step is to get on to Fordyce, but there’s time to take Mrs Rawlings en route. The thing we must try to get out of her is whether Tuke said anything to her in the Green Man about going up to see the longstone, or if she recommended him to go herself. Push these unworthy thoughts of elevenses out of your mind and we’ll press on. She lives at the far end of the village, next door to the Fordyces apparently.’

  ‘Her place is called “Yesterday”,’ Toye contributed sardonically, switching on the engine. ‘I saw it on the gate.’

  A couple of minutes later they drew up outside. It was a cottage of the traditional Woodcombe type, built in grey stone and thatched. The small front garden was well-kept. Their arrival had been observed, and as they walked up the short gravelled path the door opened. Pollard was struck by the contrast between the attractive cottage and the woman on the threshold, clumsily built with a slightly but perceptibly deformed left shoulder and a large flat face. She wore a shapeless grey dress and plimsolls.

  �
�Good morning,’ he said politely. ‘You are Mrs Rawlings, I think. I’m Detective Chief Superintendent Pollard of Scotland Yard, and this is my colleague, Detective Inspector Toye.’

  He saw small sharp eyes taking them both in.

  ‘You needn’t trouble to tell me what you’ve come about,’ she replied, ignoring his greeting. ‘The whole village knows what you’re here for. Come inside if you want to, but I’ve nothing to add to what I told the policeman from Littlechester, and put my name to when he’d had it typed out... My living room’s upstairs.’

  They followed her up a short steep flight of stairs into the front room on the first floor. From the window there was a view across the valley of the Honey to the Manor Woods and the clearing and the rock pile at the top of the hill. The room was more like an office than a place to live and relax in, Pollard thought. The walls were hung with photographs and mediocre watercolours of antiquities, and in a hasty glance he identified Stonehenge, the White Horse of Uffington, and old Grim in pride of place. In one of the bookcases he caught sight of the monumental unabridged edition of Sir James Frazer’s Golden Bough. On the kneeholed desk in the window were box files and folders, a pile of typescripts, a portable typewriter and an expensive-looking pair of binoculars. Mrs Rawlings sat down in the revolving chair drawn up to the desk, twirled it round to face the room and pointed to two upright chairs. Toye deftly placed one for Pollard in a position which gave him a good view of her face. If she was aware of the manoeuvre she gave no sign of it.

  ‘Well, now,’ Pollard opened pleasantly, ‘we’ve read the very clear statement you made to Inspector Deeds. There’s no need to go over it in detail. The main thing we want to know is your impression of the late Mr Edward Tuke.’

  He registered faint surprise and a suggestion of relief in the impassive face.

  ‘It’s wiser not to speak ill of the dead,’ she replied, ‘but since this is a police matter I suppose I’ve no choice. My impression of him? I could see he was one of these modern young men who think in their ignorance that they know everything there is to know.’

  ‘That’s a rather different impression from the one he made on Mr Kenway-Potter.’

  ‘I can’t help that.’ Her tone was contemptuous. ‘Some people can’t see further than the end of their noses. And I didn’t thank Mr Kenway-Potter for dragging me into a conversation with young Tuke. He came across to me in the Green Man and said there was a young American interested in Woodcombe folklore, and I ought to have a chat with him. The truth was that the Kenway-Potters wanted to get away and push him on to somebody else. I found that Tuke didn’t know a thing about folklore, and didn’t want to, either. He’d simply asked just out of idle curiosity why the pub hadn’t got one of those painted signs hanging outside.’

  ‘Well, what did you talk about when you found he knew nothing about your special interest?’ Pollard enquired.

  ‘He’d asked me a question and I answered it, although I knew it was a waste of time. There’s a Woodcombe Green Man: a boss in the nave roof of the church. I had a photo of it on me and I showed it to him to explain why local people didn’t want it on their pub sign. Perhaps you’d like to see it yourself if we’ve got to go into all this detail?’

  ‘Certainly I should,’ Pollard replied, ignoring her sarcasm.

  The photograph was produced. He found the face singularly repellent, partly because of its savagely dynamic quality. He handed it back, managing to bypass Toye.

  ‘Striking,’ he said. ‘Unique, I should imagine, judging from examples I’ve seen up to now.’

  Mrs Rawlings looked at him in astonishment and leant a little forward. ‘You’re interested,’ she said, making the statement sound interrogative.

  ‘A policeman needs wide interests. In the course of his work he comes into contact with a wide range of people.’

  ‘You’re right about the Woodcombe Green Man being unique,’ she said after a short pause. ‘A seventeenth-century manuscript says that the boss was carved by a local stonemason in the fifteen hundreds. He swore it was a copy of a face he’d once seen on Old Grim, the longstone up there in the woods. Old Grim’s the Saxon name for the Devil. The stonemason was driven out of the village with his family.’

  ‘Did you tell Mr Tuke this story?’

  ‘I did. He was too opinionated to take any interest and tried to make fun of it — and me.’

  ‘The young are often irreverent these days, aren’t they?’ Pollard replied, ‘and American ideas of humour seem a bit brash to us at times. I don’t suppose he intended anything personal.’ As he spoke he glanced up and saw a secretive smile on her face, and abruptly changed the subject. ‘Did you advise Mr Tuke to go up to see the longstone, Mrs Rawlings?’

  ‘No. Why should it be wasted on somebody like that? But he went. Made a fool of Mr Fordyce by asking to be shown the way up. Of course he’d been up already, as soon as I’d gone off on my job, and started digging around Old Grim.’

  Could this statement conceivably be true? Pollard wondered. ‘What is your job, Mrs Rawlings?’ he asked, to conceal any show of interest.

  ‘I work part-time for the Littlechester City Library, taking the Mobile Library van round to the villages three days a week. Wednesday’s the day for the ones in this area. When I’ve done I have a snack at the Green Man before I drive the van back and do the paperwork. Then I come home in my own car.’

  ‘What time did you get home on April the twenty-third?’

  ‘Not till nearly four. There’d been a lot of requests handed in that day.’

  ‘I see in your statement to Inspector Deeds that you spent the rest of the day at home. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, it is. I was glad of a cuppa and a bit of a rest before I got down to an evening’s gardening. I’m a vegetarian and grow most of my food out at the back.’ She broke off and gave Pollard a hostile stare. ‘Of course it was Tuke who got old Grim down. I’d like to know why the police are trying on this cover-up.’

  Pollard patiently explained that a Canon of Littlechester had had a lengthy conversation with Edward Tuke in the course of the afternoon.

  ‘That fact, and the time spent on the road and the fact that tools would have been needed completely rules out Mr Tuke. He arrived on time for his five o’clock appointment with Mr Fordyce, remember.’

  ‘Tools,’ she said contemptuously. ‘Easy enough to come by round here.’

  ‘Who do you suggest it was that removed the warning notice from the old bridge,’ he asked with a swift change of subject.

  She shrugged. ‘That wouldn’t have been anything to do with Tuke going up to Old Grim. Why, it was old Bolling did it, of course, to get a bit of his own back after losing out in court that morning. Mrs Trotman at the post office saw him coming back in his van just on six o’clock when she was shutting up shop. Plenty of time for the old bastard to nip along the bank and pull the notice up before Tuke came down.’

  Pollard decided not to comment on this reconstruction. ‘How did you hear of Mr Tuke’s accident?’ he asked.

  ‘Why, from Mrs Fordyce next door. I was washing up my supper things when I heard their front door slam and Mr Fordyce go running down the road for all he was worth. It seemed a bit funny. Time went on and he didn’t come back, so I thought I’d better just look in on Mrs Fordyce and see if she was all right. They don’t usually lock their back door till they go to bed, so I went round the bungalow and called to her. She came running down the stairs and told me about Mr Kenway-Potter’s phone call. It’s a semi-bungalow with a room upstairs, and she’d been looking out of the window upstairs to see if she could find out what was happening down at the river, but said it was too dark. Then we heard the ambulance coming. She was so upset that I asked her if she’d like to come in with me until her husband got back, and we had a cuppa together.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Rawlings,’ Pollard said, ‘thank you. That’s all quite clear, and we now know your views about what’s happened here recently. We must be getting along. You must be
glad that the longstone has been put up again so quickly.’

  ‘Put up again!’ she almost spat at him. ‘Dragged up and stuck into the hole as if it was a clothes prop. And it isn’t reoriented properly. Where the face would come ought to be looking to Midsummer Day sunrise. They couldn’t care less... You needn’t trouble to go in next door if that’s what you’ve got in mind. They both went off early in the car.’

  On the way back to Littlechester Pollard found himself thinking more about the Fordyces than the clearly eccentric Mrs Rawlings. By now he felt quite certain that James Fordyce had had no previous plan to go into Littlechester that day. He had simply seized on a pretext to avoid being interviewed at home. Did this mean not only that he was aware of his wife’s curiosity but also that he had something highly confidential to say about Edward Tuke? Then there was that odd little gasp of astonishment she had given on hearing of his intentions. Was it just surprise, or could it have been dismay at the prospect of the police coming to the house yet again? It was difficult to see how she herself could in any way be involved in Tuke’s death, but she might be anxious on her husband’s account. Or was she just a silly little ass who overreacted emotionally to everything that happened? Sooner or later she would have to be interviewed herself as Tuke had actually come to the house and met her, however briefly, on two separate occasions. But after James Fordyce, the vital person on the list was, of course, Mrs Kenway-Potter, and how long were they going to be held up for the medicos to give the all clear?

  ‘I suppose there couldn’t be anything in that old bag’s rigmarole,’ Toye said suddenly. ‘About Tuke and the longstone, and Bolling and the notice.’