by Amy Myers
‘That’s true,’ Mike granted. ‘So tell me who I need to speak to about Daks’ connection with Lance Venyon?’
‘His daughter Elaine. Jago Priest, our main contact, was a friend not family. Do you,’ Peter asked, politely for him, since when he normally addressed Mike it was still as DI to sergeant, ‘have other lines of enquiry?’
Mike looked at him contemplatively for a few moments, as if making him wait. Then: ‘It depends,’ he said.
‘On what?’ Georgia asked.
‘On whether this Venyon is a Marsh & Daughter case, or still one of your little hunches.’
When did a hunch become a case, Georgia wondered. Usually when facts began to support it. Marsh & Daughter’s cases usually sprang from unresolved crimes that had left their mark on the place where they were committed, as tenprints (in police jargon) on time.
Mike didn’t go in for atmosphere, or even hunches. No tenprints on time had yet made any appearance so far as Lance Venyon was concerned – unless he was connected with the corner of the churchyard. No, that was too tenuous, Georgia thought uneasily. Unless of course that was where his grave was? Stop, she told her racing mind. There is nothing, but nothing, to suggest anything unresolved about Lance Venyon.
Except his name, her mind retaliated. Spoken by a young man who was now dead.
She could tell that even Peter was stuck to answer Mike’s question, which he confirmed by his eventual reply: ‘We don’t yet know.’
‘My call, then. I’ll go with you. The reason that brought Daks to this village is a tenable line of enquiry, which means that Venyon could be too. Now for fact. You tell me Lance Venyon died in 1961 as the result of a yachting accident. We can check that. It’s too far back for anyone still active in the force to remember, unless we’re very lucky, and I doubt if any files remain, even if there were any in the first place. You said the family believes he was murdered. That’s no evidence, of course, but interesting.’
‘The wife is dead, so we’re only going by what the daughter and grandson tell us, and Jago Priest doesn’t agree with the murder thesis,’ Georgia explained to Mike.
‘Airy-fairy, so far, then?’
‘That’s our privilege,’ Peter rejoined. ‘You know we leave any airy-fairyness on our part behind when we take up a case,’ and when Mike reluctantly nodded, added, ‘Then Georgia and I will take on the Lance Venyon case. OK by you, Georgia?’
‘It breaks our rules . . .’ she began, then stopped. What she couldn’t voice was her trepidation at the thought of a murderer of today strolling towards them arm in arm with Lance Venyon, especially with King Arthur grinning in the background. It was a formidable prospect. Then she remembered Sandro Daks, who had been a young man in his early twenties but was now dead. A lost life. She owed it to him to see what this was all about. ‘It could all be coincidence,’ she ended hopefully.
‘I don’t believe in coincidence,’ Peter said flatly, ‘until it’s proved to be one.’
‘You’re right. Let’s go ahead,’ she agreed.
Peter visibly relaxed. ‘Good,’ he said briskly. ‘What are the other lines of enquiry, Mike?’
‘Mine,’ Mike replied warningly. ‘You keep strictly to 1961 and Lance Venyon’s death.’
‘And if he clashes with today?’
‘You know the rules. You’re on to me quicker than broadband.’
‘Of course.’
‘Sandro Daks lodged with a Mrs Saxon on a farm on the outskirts of the village. We’ve been over his room for next-of-kin details in Budapest. He used the attic for painting.’
‘Karen at the Green Man said he did landscape sketches,’ Georgia observed. ‘That’s unusual for an art student today, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe not this one. We spoke to his tutor this morning. He was a talented pupil, but he didn’t specialize. He was a first-class copyist, and as for his own work he did line drawings, landscapes, portraits – you name it, he painted it. He earned money by sketching local sites for tourists.’
‘How did he sell them? In the street?’
‘One step up. Through a gallery and small craft shops. In particular a gallery in Dover, so we discovered from his room. We’re going to check it out. It’s run by a Roy Cook.’
Well, well. Husband of the famous Kelly whom Georgia remembered from Gwen and Terry’s wedding. She also remembered her instant limpet-like attachment to Colin. Had she applied her claws to Sandro too?
‘. . . girlfriend in Canterbury,’ Mike was saying, ‘according to his mates, and one in Dover too.’
Just like Lance Venyon, Georgia thought. At least King Arthur never flaunted his floozies.
Chapter Four
‘You really think King Arthur’s involved in this?’ Luke was gracious enough not to laugh. Indeed he had immediately put his publisher’s hat on when she began to talk about Lance Venyon, and so mirth would have been out of place.
‘I can’t quite believe in a rumoured golden goblet being a serious motive for murder, but I suppose Arthur himself could have provided one through those paintings. Or some other art theft could be involved in it.’
Georgia was conscious that she was breaking the ‘rules’ by chatting about work while setting the table for dinner. They’d been living together for less than six months, and such ‘rules’ and ‘vetoes’ took time to be established. Medlars, however, was a relaxed home to live in, and it was all too easy to forget that in talking to her partner, she was also talking to her publisher. The only fixed ‘rule’ so far was that Luke’s oast-house office was his kingdom alone, and she entered it only on Marsh & Daughter business. Seeing Luke leave for the thirty-yard walk to the oast house was like bidding farewell to King Arthur galloping off for Camelot. She couldn’t blame Luke, since she and Peter had their own ivory towers. Haden Shaw was only a mile or two from Medlars, but it felt much more once she was working in Peter’s office there or her own.
Luke frowned. ‘You mean Venyon could have been on the track of some shady deal that went wrong?’
‘That’s one theory. Another is that a girlfriend bumped him off, or even his wife, but we haven’t made any progress on that front yet.’
‘And the death of Sandro D might have been connected with it?’
‘Only by an enormous jump. All we have is a coincidence waiting to be turned into evidence.’
‘The snag is,’ Luke said, watching her drain the spaghetti, ‘that if there is a link you can’t write it as a Marsh & Daughter case while the police are investigating the Daks death or if a trial is pending.’
‘You’re right.’ Trust Luke to hit the weak point, which Peter had been reluctant to face. ‘But we’ll take the risk when and if it comes.’
‘Georgia . . .’ he began tentatively.
She knew what he was going to say, and would make it easy for him. ‘You can’t sign the book up with that proviso hanging over it.’
‘Not without safeguards.’
‘No contract or no money?’ she asked practically. Now the question was raised, she might as well get it answered.
He put his arm round her. ‘I do love doing business with you, Georgia. The answer to that is no money and a get-out clause on both sides, if you want a contract now.’
‘I do love doing business with you, Luke. So generous.’
‘But still in business, you note.’ He looked anxious, though. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Georgia?’
‘No. We foresaw it.’ Well, it was almost true. Peter had been blithely hoping for the best, of course. ‘But Peter is stuck on this one at present.’
‘And you?’
‘I feel duty-bound and getting warmer,’ she acknowledged. ‘It has an odd attraction in that Venyon’s working life and character are intriguing even if there’s no evidence of murder so far. But I must admit it’s hard to see how we could ever make a credible case for it if he was simply pushed off the boat.’
‘Please don’t name a living murderer, that’s all I beg of you.’
*
Georgia finished her last set of notes, printed them out for Peter – he liked it that way, even though as they shared a computer system he could easily read it on screen or print it out himself. ‘Days of feudal grandeur of having secretaries,’ she regularly mocked him, but he simply agreed with her, so teasing him was no fun.
She left her own small house in Haden Shaw guiltily. It always seemed to be looking at her reproachfully for neglecting it. She still kept her office here, and put up occasional visitors, since Medlars was only being ‘sorted out’ little by little. Most of her time was spent in Peter’s office next door, although her own house provided valuable thinking and writing space.
‘I’ve been studying the newspaper reports of the death and later inquest again,’ Peter greeted her glumly. ‘Not much to go on, are they?’
She agreed. Two weeks had passed, but all their endeavours had produced were two short reports of the inquest in local newspapers, one in the Dover Herald, the other in the Canterbury Express, together with one of the memorial service six months after Lance’s disappearance and one of the funeral. Apart from a list of principal mourners at the funeral, in which the only recognizable names were Mary Venyon and Jago and Jennifer Priest, it told them little. The yacht had been a classic all-wood eighteen-foot Hillyard, and Lance had sailed from Hythe at seven in the morning on 14 September 1961. His car was found parked on the seafront. His wife had said he had left in the mid-afternoon of the day before to meet someone, intending to stay in Hythe overnight on the boat and go sailing the next day – she didn’t know whether it was alone or with someone. The boat had been found drifting about four miles off the French coast the following day with the dinghy still on board.
The inquest reports, still closed to the public, had been available to Mike, but had given little relevant information on the body that they didn’t already know from Jago, save that there was no indication from the remains of how Lance had died. Due to their poor condition, the remaining organs, which to some extent had been protected by adipocere, having been in the water so long, revealed nothing that could indicate the cause of death, such as the presence of water in the lungs.
‘Leading to an open verdict,’ Peter had said gloomily, ‘and the obvious assumption that it was an accident, especially since the dinghy was still on board.’
What was interesting was Mike’s revelation, having seen what police records there still were, that Mary Venyon had clearly been a thorn in the police’s side, with her constant demands to view every possible body washed up.
‘Which could be a sign of how distraught she was,’ Peter had pointed out, ‘or the contrary.’
‘A guilty conscience? Scared that the body might display signs of her attack on him. After all, why didn’t she create a stink at the time if she thought it was murder?’ Georgia said.
‘Perhaps she did, and they told her politely to go away,’ Peter said fairly.
‘What about the yacht? Could she have found something on it when it was recovered that made her suspicious that it was murder, such as signs that two people had been on board?’
‘Again, why not tell the police?’ Peter replied. ‘We’re getting nowhere fast on this, even on the Daks front. Mike has spoken to Kenyon’s daughter, but she couldn’t help over Daks. She knew of no family connection and had never spoken to him herself or been approached by him. She did give Mike a family tree proving the Venyons are all Brits, no East European connections so far as he could see. So where now? Do we press on for evidence of murder? And if so where?’
Georgia decided she should come clean. ‘There’s the churchyard,’ she said flatly. ‘The fingerprints on time were shrieking at me.’
‘Of course. You’d just seen a murdered body there.’
‘Give me credit, Peter,’ she said patiently. ‘It went beyond that.’
‘As far as Lance Venyon?’
‘Suppose that’s where his grave is?’ she blurted out. So far as she recalled, Luke hadn’t told her at Gwen’s wedding exactly where the grave was. ‘I was in too much of a state to look at whose gravestones they were when I found Sandro.’
Peter looked taken aback, but he rallied. ‘Suppose you check that out before I get excited and wheel myself over there.’
‘In the hope that King Arthur is calling faintly from the hills?’ she managed to joke. ‘Where are you in the hour of his need?’
‘He’s probably hoping he won’t be accused of murdering Lance Venyon,’ Peter said caustically. ‘You leave King Arthur to me.’
‘Have you put him on Suspects Anonymous?’
‘Do not, I tell you do not, speak lightly of Charlie’s modus operandi.’
It had been her cousin who had invented the software designed to digest all evidence and spit it out in visible form with all its clashes and contradictions. As with so many contributions from the computer world, Suspects Anonymous was helpful within limits. The footslogging soldiers still had their part to play.
*
Maureen Jones was hardly welcoming when Georgia at last managed to arrange a meeting for Wednesday – this time at her home, which was a cottage on the green facing the pub. At least this was a tangible line to follow up. All too tangible. Georgia could picture Maureen’s lean angular form at the head of a crusaders’ army holding her own particular banner of uprightness and holiness aloft. She wondered how her affable and informal aunt was faring in this village if all its matriarchs were so rigid and unbending. Even Maureen’s garden proclaimed a military approach to life. Despite the rain, the flowers were not allowed to spread in the usual May joyousness of spring, but were neatly trimmed and kept to their own patch of ground. No sprawling by the troops stationed here.
‘I have explained already to the police that I did not feel well that evening,’ Maureen explained stiffly, ‘and so decided to do my flower duty early the following morning. I did so with some difficulty owing to various police impediments.’
Georgia made sympathetic noises, although they were more for the police than Maureen. Any thoughts the police might have about her involvement with the murder would surely be conquered at one blow when faced with the Mighty Maureen herself.
‘I expect Gwen explained it was I who found the body when I came to look for you,’ Georgia began, ‘although it wasn’t about the murder that I wanted to see you today.’
‘Indeed? Gwen implied it was when she rang this morning.’ Her tone suggested that Gwen would be hearing about this.
‘Only indirectly,’ Georgia amended. ‘When Sandro Daks came to the village he mentioned that he wanted to see a Lance Venyon, who in fact had died in 1961. My father and I are investigating that death, and I understand that Lance was a friend of your mother’s.’
‘I’ve heard of him, of course, but not through my mother.’ The reply was very firm. ‘She has never referred to him so far as I recall. She hasn’t lived in the village for a great many years.’
This was hopeful. ‘She’s still alive?’ Georgia asked.
‘Yes. She is not in good health.’
Keep away, in other words. Maureen’s tone made it clear that Georgia hadn’t a hope of meeting her.
‘I would of course travel to see her, but if she doesn’t want me to contact her then I quite understand,’ Georgia said warmly. ‘I’d be so grateful if you could ask her, however.’ She made her request sound entirely reasonable.
‘Very well.’ It was ungracious, but at least a concession.
‘Thank you,’ Georgia said smoothly, handing over her business card. It seemed to be her bad luck always to be running into the guardians of those who didn’t want or need to be guarded. With any luck Venetia Wain might prove one of them. Unless, of course, Lance Venyon’s former lover had something to hide.
Just as she rose to go, the doorbell rang, and Maureen went to answer it. To Georgia’s pleased surprise it was Elaine Holt, and she decided to take instant advantage. Today Elaine looked less matronly than in her mauve wedding outfit, but her black tr
ousers, blouse and jacket still suggested this was a lady of firm opinions – a suitable chum for Maureen.
‘You were responsible for that delicious food at Gwen and Terry’s wedding.’ Answer that, Mrs Gorgon, she thought to herself.
To her guilt, the Gorgon proved far from being one the moment her face broke into beaming – and, it seemed, genuine – appreciation.
‘You’re Georgia Marsh, aren’t you? I had a long chat with your father. Lots of fun. Remember, Maureen? We both talked to him.’
A good start, but where to go from here? Maureen was still clearly edging her out, but to her relief Elaine detained her. ‘Colin told me he’d been spilling the beans on the family skeletons to you.’
‘Only one, and not hidden in any closet,’ Georgia replied.
‘I never paid much attention to it. I hardly recall my father, being only a toddler when he died, and so it didn’t upset me. The police asked me about my father, too – thanks to you, I imagine.’
She didn’t seem to mind, fortunately. ‘My father used to work with DCI Gilroy in his police-career days, and still does consulting work for them,’ Georgia explained. True enough, even if not quite so officially as this sounded.
‘I remember someone did come to the village years and years ago, asking for my father. It was just after we moved here, so it would have been about 1990 or so. My mother talked to him. Good-looking chap, foreign, that’s why I remember him.’
‘Do sit down,’ Maureen suggested. It was a lukewarm invitation to Georgia at least, but even so the atmosphere was warmer, and she accepted. After all, Maureen wouldn’t want to miss out on gossip as juicy as this. Georgia reproved herself. If she went on this way she’d be turning into a village matriarch herself.
‘My father wasn’t the sort to have an accident, so my mother argued,’ Elaine told her, settling herself on the sofa. ‘He was careful on the boat, so she said. He’d learned to take care of himself because of his job, and perhaps he had need to.’