Troubled Waters

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘Not possibly, you know, as far as Tuke goes because of the timing. After Mrs Rawlings cleared off he went to see the room he was having that night. Then he drove into Littlechester — say a good half-hour as he didn’t know the road. He probably had a stroll round before going into the Cathedral, and then that quite lengthy chat with Canon Allbright before starting for Woodcombe again. He was back at the Green Man at a quarter to five, Tom Wonnacott’s statement says. So any excavating up at the longstone before he saw Fordyce is out. And I refuse to believe that he tackled it and got the stone down afterwards, still allowing enough time to get to the Manor at seven, presumably having cleaned up first. And we agree that the state Bolling was in when he got back rules him out, although I admit we’ve no absolute proof that he didn’t somehow get along to the notice and pull it up... Curious type, Mrs Rawlings. I can see her as a sort of rabble-rouser, making impossible things sound quite plausible.’

  ‘Do you think she believes that old yarn about the stone having a face?’

  ‘Could be. Wasn’t it the White Queen in Alice Through The Looking Glass who believed six impossible things before breakfast? We’ll be in in five minutes, and we’ll damn well have some elevenses before we ring the place where Fordyce is working — or says he is.’

  This programme was satisfactorily carried out, and half an hour later James Fordyce was announced by a constable.

  During the exchange of polite preliminaries and the introduction of Toye, Pollard experienced a succession of reactions. This man was intelligent, and keyed up to a high degree of vigilance beneath a quiet academic manner. All his trained professional perception was alerted.

  ‘We’re a bit cramped in here, I’m afraid, Mr Fordyce,’ he said, ‘and the chairs are hideously hard. Our apologies. We’ll try not to detain you for long. We’ve been through the statements you made to the Littlechester C.I.D. at the time of Edward Tuke’s death, and it’s just a matter of asking you to fill in a bit here and there. The main thing we want to ask you is what was your impression of Tuke as a person? Do smoke, if you’d like to.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t,’ James Fordyce settled himself on his unaccommodating upright chair and crossed one foot over the other. Looking up he met Pollard’s enquiring gaze. ‘I thought him an interesting and unusual young man, highly likeable.’

  ‘Unusual in what way?’

  ‘Chiefly in his sensitivity, I think. You know, no doubt, from the information about him sent over from the States, that he was orphaned as a baby and brought up by a maiden aunt, his mother’s elder sister. From what he told me he had realised from an early age that his father had been persona non grata to his mother’s family. All his enquiries about him had been stonewalled, and his U.S. citizenship drummed into him. For some reason the process hadn’t worked: race memory activating itself, perhaps. At all events he looked on himself as British, and made up his mind to come over here as soon as he could, and find out about the possibilities of taking British nationality. His first — and sadly his only visit was through his employers, Integrated Oils. As you know, this is a multinational company, and he was sent over to the London office early in March. Through a friend in the States who had been a client of mine he got in touch with me with a view to tracing his English forebears, and arranged to come down to Woodcombe to see me.’

  ‘You go up to London quite often, I imagine, in connection with searches that you are carrying out, Mr Fordyce. I should have expected Edward Tuke to meet you there. Was this visit entirely his own suggestion?’

  ‘Entirely,’ James Fordyce replied without hesitation. ‘He wanted to visit this part of the country because the friend who recommended me to him had ancestors who emigrated to the States from this city. I have been able to trace the family tree back to the sixteenth century. Edward Tuke had undertaken to buy some books on Littlechester and do some photography for this friend.’

  ‘I see,’ Pollard said. ‘You didn’t gather that any personal contact perhaps connected with this friend brought him down here?’

  ‘He didn’t mention anything of the kind. I think that he was indirectly encouraged to come by the enormous pleasure he was getting by travelling around in Britain, and getting to know as much as possible about what he felt was really his own country.’

  ‘Can we go on now to his meeting with you at Woodcombe? Presumably you discussed the searches he wanted you to make. We have the previous correspondence between you in the file of the case. Had he taken any steps on his own to track down his mother’s people?’

  ‘I don’t think so. At any rate, if he had I feel sure that he would have told me. As it was he asked me to take on the whole job.’

  ‘And were you prepared to?’

  ‘Yes. I warned him that it would take time, and cost quite a bit, too, but he said that was no problem. He had a well-paid job with Integrated Oils, and the aunt who had brought him up had left him her money. A useful amount, I gathered.’

  ‘I suppose the main difficulty you expected to run into was tracing his father’s family, since he had so little information to give you?’

  ‘Yes.’ James Fordyce hesitated. ‘You’ll understand, I’m sure, that a self-respecting genealogist treats anything he unearths about a client’s ancestry as confidential, anyway in the first instance. It goes against the grain, but in the present situation I feel I ought to pass on some remarks that Edward Tuke made to me about his father. He made it clear that what he said was simply speculation on his part, but here it is for what it’s worth. He suspected that his father had left the U.K. in 1948 because he had got himself into trouble of some kind. He made the point that at that particular moment it wouldn’t have been too difficult to get hold of a passport in another name, and rather reluctantly admitted wondering whether his father had deserted from the armed forces towards the end of the last war, and that “Tuke” was an assumed name.’

  Pollard’s mind reverted to his conversation with Canon Hugh Allbright and the latter’s mention of Edward Tuke’s comments on the War Memorial Chapel in Littlechester Cathedral.

  ‘Thank you for telling us this,’ he said. ‘In a complicated case like this one any scrap of information could unexpectedly turn out to be a pointer. But if Edward Tuke’s hunch about his father having changed his surname is right, surely it would make any attempt to trace the family virtually impossible?’

  ‘Extremely difficult, certainly, and very time-consuming. For that reason I don’t regret the job having fizzled out, although it would have been interesting to have a go.’

  ‘We mustn’t be side-tracked, fascinating though the prospect of this sort of detection is,’ Pollard said, ‘but just where would you have started?’

  ‘There’s a mass of recorded and classified material about individuals. One might follow up young Tuke’s desertion idea and consult the military and naval records at Hayes and the P.R.O. branch now at Kew.’

  ‘And isn’t there a place in Kingsway where all births, marriages and deaths are classified on a regional basis over the last century or so? I expect you often use it.’

  ‘Yes. St Catherine’s House. One would just go on making shots in the dark in the hopes of finding a lead.’

  ‘Well,’ Pollard said, ‘we mustn’t keep you from whatever you’re on the trail of at the moment. Was that all we wanted to ask Mr Fordyce, Toye?’

  Toye, taking his cue, looked up from the case file. ‘There’s just the small point of his visit to Bridge Cottage on the afternoon of April the twenty-third, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes. We have to check up meticulously on timing in a homicide investigation, of course. In your statement, Mr Fordyce, you said that you left the Woodcombe post office at three, discovered that Mr Bolling was out, and took the opportunity of examining as much of Bridge Cottage as you could from the outside, and then walked home along the north bank of the river. Mr Bill Morris, Mr Kenway-Potter’s forester, says that you stopped for a chat with him at Upper Bridge at about ten to four. It seems rather a long time fo
r so short a walk.’

  As he spoke Pollard watched James Fordyce looking embarrassed. Not guilty, he thought, puzzled by the reaction.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I sat down in the sun for a few minutes after leaving Bridge Cottage to think over the pros and cons of buying it — my wife was very keen, I knew — and I must have dropped off. I’d had a tiring drive down from London during the morning. The traffic on the roads seems to get worse every year. When I came to I looked at my watch, and was surprised to find that it was nearly a quarter to four.’

  ‘Entirely understandable,’ Pollard commented. ‘It must have been very pleasant. Reverting for a moment to genealogists’ treatment of information about their clients’ family histories as confidential, you work from your own home at Woodcombe, I take it? So you presumably have a certain amount of material of this sort under your own roof?’

  ‘Certainly I do. Each client for whom I’m carrying out a search — or have done recently — has a folder, and these are stored in a filing cabinet in my study which I keep locked, more on principle than because I can think of anyone — my wife or our visitors, for instance — taking the remotest interest in its contents.’

  ‘And you have never, to your knowledge, had a client shown into your study to wait for an interview with you while this filing cabinet was unlocked?’

  ‘Never. And in any case I really don’t see that this has any relevance to Edward Tuke’s death, since I had not started the searches he wanted done,’ James Fordyce replied, with an unmistakable edge to his voice.

  ‘Quite,’ Pollard replied. ‘It’s just that in our line of business we have to think round every conceivable possibility in an investigation. I don’t think we need bother you any further, Mr Fordyce. Thank you for the help you’ve given, and particularly for being so frank over Edward Tuke’s conversation with you.’

  When Toye returned from seeing James Fordyce out, Pollard was sitting with his elbows on the table with his chin cupped in his hands.

  ‘A fundamentally decent chap, that,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult to see him as a killer, either singlehanded or in partnership with Kenway-Potter.’

  Toye guardedly admitted that it didn’t look likely on the face of it, but that first impressions were often misleading.

  ‘O.K. I’ll grant you that. And in my opinion he took evasive action on three points.’

  Toye, engaged in polishing his horn-rims, looked across the table with interest, and said he had made it two.

  ‘First of all,’ Pollard said, doodling on the cover of the telephone directory, ‘he didn’t seem keen to discuss St Catherine’s House. That’s the place in Kingsway where they keep the National Indexes of births, marriages and deaths. There are four quarterly indexes for each year, going back to about 1840. Tuke père gave a date of birth when he took out nationalisation papers in the U.S. in 1951: that was one of the bits of information the Yard got from the F.B.I. when Edward Tuke’s background was being looked into. It may not have been the actual date, but obviously the chap wouldn’t have given one wildly wide of the mark. If the registration of his birth isn’t recorded at St Catherine’s House he must have emigrated on a faked passport or somebody else’s called Tuke. I should have thought getting this cleared up might be a starting point, and I’m wondering if Fordyce actually did get that far, and hit on something he doesn’t want us to know about young Tuke or his father. If he did, we’ll get on to it in the end with the help of some of the Yard ferrets... Your turn.’

  ‘I think there was more to how he filled in that hour on the Wednesday afternoon than having a bit of kip in the sun.’

  ‘I’m with you. The Kenway-Potters got back from their lunch party at half-past three. Did Fordyce hang around after peering in at the windows of Bridge Cottage in order to contact Rodney and pass on whatever it was he had unearthed? If you remember, Mrs K-P is alleged to have gone upstairs for a rest on her bed and would have been out of the way? I didn’t think Fordyce looked guilty at this point, just rather uncomfortable, as if he’d being doing a bit of petty pilfering or something like that.’

  ‘Perhaps he had,’ Toye said, taking the suggestion literally. ‘He’s a scholar. Perhaps he’d got into the cottage through an open window and nicked one of Bolling’s books.’

  ‘It’s theoretically possible,’ Pollard replied, secretly amused. ‘Are we together over Fordyce’s third bit of evasion? Always keeping the filing cabinet in his study locked?’

  Toye nodded. ‘Got a bit rattled over that, didn’t he? Stiffened up.’

  ‘To me, you know,’ Pollard said, resuming his doodling, ‘there’s another possible pointer there to Kenway-Potter. If Fordyce was teaching him how to research into his family tree it seems quite possible that he let him come over and consult reference books and whatever when he himself wasn’t there.’

  ‘Mrs Fordyce being on the spot would give her plenty of chances to have a look inside the cabinet if it ever was left unlocked.’

  ‘From what she sounded like over the phone this morning, I shouldn’t think she’d be able to make much of the stuff he keeps inside it. However, that’s a quite unwarranted deduction as I’ve never seen her. My first idea while we were talking to him about the filing cabinet was to ask if she had gone home and would be available if we went over later. But I decided against it. I’m convinced she wanted to keep out of my way this morning. It might just have been nerves, of course, but if she’s been up to any funny business we’re much more likely to get on to it if we turn up out of the blue. Anyway, if there was information relating to Edward Tuke in the filing cabinet, how did it get there? Fordyce stated categorically just now that he hadn’t started on the search. Was he lying? I think our next move is to try to find out if he has recently been working at St Catherine’s House. He must be known to the staff there, and it’s possible that there could be some record of the particular indexes he consulted. It’s a long shot, but worth trying, I think.’

  ‘Back to London?’ Toye asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so. But there are one or two things to do first. We need the best photographs of Kenway-Potter and Fordyce that the people here can rustle up, for one thing.’

  On enquiry there was no difficulty in getting a copy of a good photograph of Rodney Kenway-Potter on account of his involvement in local affairs which were frequently reported in the Littlechester Evening News. James Fordyce was more of a problem until Inspector Deeds remembered that on the occasion of his retirement from the Inland Revenue Office there had been a gathering of his colleagues at which a presentation had been made to him. After some delay, research into the files of the Evening News located an excellent photograph of him in the act of being handed a book and an envelope which doubtless contained a cheque. After further delay a copy of the photograph was produced.

  In the meantime Pollard had contacted Mrs Kenway-Potter’s doctor and learnt that if she continued to make satisfactory progress he should be able to see her by the middle of the following week. As things were going at the moment he could assume that an interview on Wednesday was possible.

  ‘Let’s make for the Yard and home,’ he said to Toye. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here at the moment. Perhaps this tangled-up affair will look better from a distance.’

  Chapter Seven

  In spite of the satisfaction of spending an undisturbed Sunday at home, Pollard, as always, found marking time in the middle of an investigation frustrating. At intervals the complex situation at Woodcombe irrupted tiresomely into the enjoyment of Wimbledon Common, helping the nine-year-old twins with their current enthusiasms and lazing in the garden. After supper his wife asked him what was biting him particularly about the case.

  ‘Undercurrents,’ he told her. ‘Interlocking ones. Do undercurrents interlock, or am I mixing my metaphors?’

  ‘You must mean cross-currents,’ she suggested.

  He threw a cushion at her and felt better.

  On the following morning he asked for an appointment with his A
ssistant Commissioner on arriving at the Yard, and proceeded to give him a competent and rather humourless summary of the ground covered up to date.

  ‘What the hell’s the matter with you today?’ the A.C. demanded when it came to an end. ‘Hipped already because you haven’t made an arrest? You haven’t been on the job a week yet. You’ve brought off too many eye-catching coups over the years — that’s your trouble.’

  Pollard grinned a shade sheepishly. ‘It’s not just that, sir, I swear it isn’t, though I admit to anyway average human vanity. It’s the conviction I’ve got that the case is lousy with motives of one sort or another, and they’re so bloody difficult to get at. With means and opportunity and all that, there’s at least something concrete to work on.’

  ‘You ought to be grateful for the chance of investigating something a bit out of the usual run instead of bellyaching about it,’ the A.C. commented robustly. ‘What do you propose to do next?’

  ‘Work on the hypothesis that Edward Tuke’s death was engineered because of something somebody at Woodcombe knew about him, sir.’

  Pollard went on to explain why, in his opinion, James Fordyce and Rodney Kenway-Potter were the most probable people to have made such a discovery, whatever it was.

  ‘I want to get one of the chaps we call on for tracking down information in records of various sorts to find out if either Fordyce or Kenway-Potter have recently consulted the National Indexes of births, marriages and deaths, for a start. I’ve got good photographs of both of them. I don’t know if a note is kept of the volumes of the Indexes people ask for, but I think it’s a line worth working on. And if Mrs Kenway-Potter had a child by Edward Tuke’s father before she married her present husband in 1950, there must be a registration of the birth.’

  ‘You better get that rum chap Hildebrand Robinson on to the job. There’s nothing he likes better than ploughing through acres of the printed word to isolate a fact. In the meantime you’ll see Mrs Kenway-Potter, I suppose? Even if Edward Tuke can’t have been her bastard son she may fit into the picture somewhere. Your suggestion of a child by Tuke before he emigrated sounds feasible.’