‘Park at Gatwick,’ Heap said. ‘Train to Reading, change there for Oxford.’
‘We’d better see if she’s there first,’ Gilchrist said.
‘I took the liberty of asking the Oxford police to pop round and see,’ Sylvia Wade said. ‘She’s there.’
‘Well done, DC Wade. Please phone them back and say that, with their permission, we’d like to call on her. And can we organize some divers down here. This dredger is great but it’s going to need help in a lake this size.’
‘Already on their way ma’am.’
As they drove up to Gatwick, Gilchrist phoned Frank Bilson.
‘Frank. It’s Sarah. Anything on the Major Rabbitt killing?’
‘You think you need to tell me it’s you? As if I didn’t know that voice. There’s this new Orson Welles film showing at the Duke of York’s, if you’d like to come along.’
‘I’ve vaguely heard of Orson Welles – didn’t he die years ago?’
‘All the more reason to see his new film, I would say.’
‘Ha! It’s a tempting offer – sort of – but I’m more interested in your absolute silence about our murder victim.’
‘What’s to say? The throat was cut by a curved blade, probably of Tibetan origin, from right to left, so the killer was probably left-handed and, judging by the angle of the cut, was some inches taller than the victim – let’s say six foot six. He walked with a limp – the indentations in the soft soil near the corpse – possibly made by an artificial limb. He had spent some time in India. He has a beard, a pockmarked face and answers to the name of Juggles.’
Gilchrist had started making notes but stopped. She glanced over at Heap. ‘Very funny, Frank. Are you all right?’
‘Never better. Why do you ask?’
‘Are you, by any chance, drunk?’
‘Not exactly. Next question.’
This was a first.
‘Not exactly?’
‘You’ve never been drunk, Sarah?’
‘More times than I can count.’
‘Well, then, you will recognize the difference between someone who is drunk and someone whose mood is merely elevated.’
‘Fair enough,’ Gilchrist said. ‘I won’t ask why your mood is elevated.’
‘I will answer your unasked question nevertheless. It is because of the absurdity of existence. But I am clinging to Camus’s remark that the realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.’
Gilchrist couldn’t think of anything to say. She’d never known Bilson to be in such a weird mood. ‘I’ll let you get on. I’m sorry to disturb you.’
‘You’ve been disturbing me for as long as I’ve known you, Divine Sarah.’
Gawd.
‘But there’s something else SOCO asked me to pass on if I spoke to you,’ Bilson said.
‘About the white containers?’
‘No. Nor about the victim’s dentures – they’re still looking for them for me, but then they’ll be dredging the whole lake so who knows what else they’ll turn up. The carp are very unhappy, I imagine.’
‘The dredger has just arrived. We’ve just left the lake. What else?’
‘A fixed camera hidden in a hide on the other side of the lake up near the cattle grid.’
‘A Peeping Tom thing?’
‘Well, I’m not sure. It’s a pretty sophisticated one and it’s filming digitally and sending the images somewhere – finding out where is your area, I think. Motion sensitive I would imagine so it sleeps most of the time.’
‘You say it’s fixed – what is it pointing at?’
‘Well, it’s hard to say what the lens is – how wide angle, I mean – but in the general direction of the island.’
‘You’re saying it might have filmed Rabbitt’s murder?’
‘Who knows how lucky you might be? But perhaps you can check with Ms Grace to see if she knows anything about it?’
‘Frank, I could k— hug you.’
‘Well, I’d welcome that but I can’t take the credit alas. Still, you might be less keen to hug those hairy SOCO men and women – funny lot, as you know – so I’ll accept it on their behalf. When next I see you.’ Bilson hung up.
‘Did you get that?’ Gilchrist said to Heap. He nodded. Gilchrist called Grace and put her on speakerphone. ‘Ms Grace, we’re not going to be able to make lunch. I’m very sorry but we have to go to Oxford for a couple of hours.’
‘No problem. Listen. I’m having a little party this evening. Not to celebrate Rabbitt’s death, I hasten to add. Bad timing I know but it’s been in the local winemakers’ calendar for ages. Nothing fancy and certainly not showbizzy. It’s more of a wine-tasting thing. Mostly neighbours who you’ll probably want to speak to more formally at some point anyway. Bring your significant others – or your insignificant others, if you prefer.’
‘Er, sure,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Thank you. Perhaps I could bring Bob Watts?’
‘Who? Oh, him. As long as you two don’t get up to anything on top of everybody’s coats in the designated bedroom-cum-coat dump.’
Gilchrist glanced at Heap but couldn’t think of a witty retort so said nothing.
‘Just kidding. This won’t be a student party. As I said, local winegrowers showing off their wines. Sussex sparkling always does very well in competitions even though, like the whites, it’s overpriced. Sparkling and white are both good though. Not much in the way of reds yet, so if they are your tipple, bring your own.’
‘My significant other is busy this evening, I’m afraid,’ Heap said.
‘But perhaps you can pop by anyway?’
‘Sure – but, Ms Grace? We called about another matter. We found something by your lake. A camera.’
‘Not again. I thought they’d moved on to drones by now.’
‘We’re not sure this is paparazzi or a Peeping Tom. It’s fixed focus, possibly wide angle. It’s hidden in a hide at lake level. Pretty much opposite your island.’
‘Oh, shit – I forgot about that.’
‘You know about it?’
‘It’s not exactly CCTV but they use it for recording nightlife in the wood and duck breeding patterns, day and night. There were two. One in a hide and one up a tree on the island but that tree one got vandalized a while ago. I get sent footage every month but it’s mostly shots of not much happening on a placid pond.’
‘You forgot?’
‘Yes. You find that hard to understand? I don’t go to that particular part of the pond very often, as I explained. Plus I’ve got a lot on my plate.’
‘You said “they”?’
‘Waterfowl fanatics. I never look at the footage. It’s one of those webcam things so goes straight to someone’s computer. Somewhere in Bristol, I think. I get sent particularly interesting stuff once a month or so.’
‘So you have a contact?’
‘Of course. Hang on, I’ll get the case for one of the DVDs.’ She came back on the line after a moment. ‘Not Bristol. Oxford. The Wetlands Centre. Maybe you can call in when you’re there.’ She read out the phone number. ‘You think perhaps they filmed Rabbitt’s murder? I was in a Tony Scott film once where that happened. If it’s anything like that film, Angelina Jolie’s dad is your killer.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Gilchrist said.
‘That would be a great break, wouldn’t it? Not Jon Voight – I’m sure he’s got an alibi – but a film of the murderer.’
‘It certainly would.’
Gilchrist looked at Heap when the call ended. ‘She doesn’t seem overly concerned about a death at her lake.’
‘Maybe she’s the life-goes-on type,’ Heap said. ‘And she was upfront about not liking the major.’
‘Camus?’ Gilchrist said, harking back to Bilson’s odd behaviour.
‘I think we’d be here all day if I even began to answer that seemingly straightforward question. I can see one question begetting another and that one begetting another.’
‘You’re sounding qui
te biblical, Bellamy. But point taken.’
FOUR
The trip to Oxford took under an hour. Tallulah Granger’s house was on Abbey Road, two streets behind the station. Gilchrist and Heap walked down a slip road from the station, past a YHA on one side and a café in a wooden hut on the other and did a little zigzag onto Abbey Road. It was a road of tall terraced houses, all with bay windows. From the map on Heap’s iPad they had seen that her house was on the side of the road that backed onto the river and canal complex at the bottom of Botley Road. It was on a flood plain and Heap mentioned that Osney Island, on the other side of Botley Road, regularly flooded.
Coincidentally, the Wetlands Centre was just a few hundred yards up the Botley Road on marshland on the right beside the River Cherwell.
Tallulah Granger opened the door and led them down a narrow corridor past a closed door and into a high-ceilinged room. The floor was stripped wood and a fireplace, in which a coal fire burned, had been stripped back to the brick. There was a long wooden table in the centre of the room with four chairs around. A laptop was open on the table.
‘You disappeared on us, Ms Granger,’ Gilchrist said.
‘I do apologize,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you had any further use of me. I assume you were able to get what you needed from Richard’s office without me.’
‘There seem to be one or two things missing,’ Gilchrist said as she wandered over to a set of French windows and looked out into a paved yard. There was a garden brazier there. It looked like papers had been recently burned in it. There were a couple of sandbags placed against the base of a back gate. Over the back wall, Gilchrist glimpsed the river and, on the other bank, allotments.
‘His computer for one thing,’ Heap said, looking pointedly at the laptop on the table.
‘I’ve just made some vervain – would you like some?’ Granger said, walking into a narrow kitchen that was obviously a later extension to the house. It ran along one side of the yard.
Gilchrist followed her in. ‘His diary is missing too.’
‘The river is just on the other side of my back gate – well, the towpath and then the river,’ Granger said. ‘Did you see?’
‘Ms Granger? The missing items?’
‘Yes, I know,’ Granger said, dropping a tea cosy over an ornate metal teapot she’d put on a tray with three mugs. ‘I’m afraid I don’t do biscuits.’
‘Do you get flooded often?’ Heap called from the other room.
‘Never. Although the insurance companies don’t believe us, since we’re designated as a flood risk. The premiums are sky-high.’
‘I heard this whole area flooded regularly,’ Heap said.
‘You’re mistaken. There is something about the confluence of the canal and the river – which occurs just a hundred yards up the river there – that means the current takes the water over the other side. Those allotments are under water regularly. I’m surprised somebody isn’t growing rice.
‘The water surges down under the bridge on Botley Road and floods Osney Island and the bottom end of Botley Road. But here, on this side of the river, we’ve never got more than a little spillage. I have sandbags by the back gate but they are hardly ever needed.’
She carried the tray into the other room and set it on the table. ‘Help yourself but use the tea cosy to lift the pot – that metal handle gets very hot. I bought the teapot in Marrakesh – where indeed I bought the loose leaf vervain. For some reason it’s impossible to get over here – even in fashionable Oxford covered market – and vervain tea bags just aren’t the same.’
As Heap poured the herb tea into three mugs, Granger continued. ‘This is my laptop, not Richard’s. When I left on Monday evening his desktop computer was on his desk. He didn’t use a laptop. Very old-fashioned was Richard. He couldn’t type, except with one finger, which is why he needed a secretary. Well, that and for other comforts. If he could have used a quill pen for all his correspondence he probably would have.’
‘You’re saying he and Rhoda Knowles had a relationship?’ Gilchrist said.
‘I have no idea whether they had a relationship or not but he certainly would have tried it on. He had quite a high turnover of secretaries. The Me Too movement hadn’t penetrated as far as Plumpton Down House.’
‘The diary?’ Heap said.
‘I didn’t notice his diary but I wasn’t looking. I didn’t take it. But do bear in mind the house is constantly full of strangers because of the wretched Airbnb business he insists on, because it’s more profitable than simply letting out the rooms longer term. He used to insist on, should I say.’
Gilchrist frowned. ‘I understood he wasn’t keen on the Airbnb – he just let you get on with it.’
‘Who told you that? Rhoda? That was his Squire Rabbitt pose – you know, letting rooms was below him – but in private he told me otherwise. He was an avaricious man, as interested in the pennies as the pounds. Then again, everybody in the area seems to do Airbnb these days – I think they even have a couple of rooms they rent in Danny House over at Hurstpierpoint. And when you say he let me get on with it that just means I did all the work.’
‘It looks like you’ve been burning papers,’ Heap said, gesturing to the brazier in the yard.
‘Does it? You’re mistaken. Not papers – pornographic magazines. I had tenants here until the weekend and when they left my cleaner discovered they had left them behind. I only rent this out to visiting academics so that’s a sorry state of affairs, is it not?’
‘Why did you leave Plumpton Down House so abruptly?’
‘As I have said, I did not realize that I had. You may look at my calendar on my laptop to see that I always intended to come here on Monday. I had intended to come earlier in the day but then the police called. Evening was the earliest I could get away.
‘I always visit when there is a changeover of tenant to ensure everything is shipshape and also to spend a few days in this house and city I love so much before the next tenants move in. I studied here – Christchurch. In fact, I bought this house from Christchurch – they own the freehold on the entire street.’ She looked out of the window. ‘There are lovely walks along both river and canal that end up at the Meadows and nearby Jericho. And there’s nothing quite like having breakfast amid the bustle of the covered market.’
‘Did you drive here?’
‘I did.’
‘In Major Rabbitt’s car?’
‘In my own car.’
‘Do you know where Major Rabbitt’s car is?’
‘Somewhere around the perimeter of the house, I imagine.’ She looked from one to the other. ‘Isn’t it?’
Gilchrist shook her head. ‘It’s missing.’
‘I can’t think where it could be.’
‘We spoke to Rhoda Knowles earlier today,’ Heap said. ‘She suggested there was some hostility between your brother and an ostrich farmer?’
‘You think Mark Harrison stole my husband’s car?’
‘No,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Sorry, that was an awkward segue.’
‘It was. Yes, my brother hated the idea of such alien creatures on land that he regarded as properly his – you know his ambition was to put the Plumpton Down Estate back together after it had been sold off in parcels back in the nineties? A common ambition, I understand, of people who have rather grand ideas about their own importance.’
‘Did he have the same objection to the llamas?’
‘Oddly not. Indeed, that herd belongs to him. He’d taken a trip to Machu Picchu and became very taken with the llama while in Peru, so he decided to import a few.’
‘They don’t seem in keeping with his general ethos about the estate.’
‘I know – made no sense to me, except as a rich man’s hobby. They are not economically viable, especially when you factor in the salary of Reg Dwight, the full time shepherd or herdsman or whatever a llama keeper is called. They only cost £500 each but they don’t breed quickly enough to be any good as meat and you can’t get enough
fibre off them – they don’t call it wool – to turn a profit. But my brother got fixed ideas and he wasn’t exactly consistent.’
‘Can you think where his computer and diary might have gone?’ Gilchrist said.
Granger shook her head. ‘Rhoda has no idea? Well, as I said, we have a lot of strangers wandering about the right wing of the house and the public rooms. I vet them as best I can but I’m sure a criminal element could slip through. Perhaps it was opportunist theft. Though why the diary too, I have no idea. Perhaps that has just been misplaced. This visit to Oxford is a short one, alas. I’m coming back this evening – you could have saved yourself the journey – so I’ll have a root around, with Rhoda’s permission.’
‘Are you in charge of the whole thing now?’
‘I suppose I am,’ Granger said. ‘I hadn’t thought. I mean, the boys will inherit it but until they are of age …’
‘What about Mrs Rabbitt?’
‘I think she’s pretty firmly excluded from the will though I fully expect her to contest that.’
Gilchrist rose and Heap followed. ‘Thank you for the tea,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Vervain did you say? Very refreshing and a nice scent. I’ve not had it before.’ At the door Gilchrist turned and said: ‘Did you burn the pornographic magazines before or after the Oxford police called round today to tell you we were coming?’
Granger smiled: ‘Do you know, I can’t remember. So much on my mind that everything is a bit of a blur at the moment.’
As they walked down the street Gilchrist said to Heap: ‘She sounded quite plausible. And certainly assured.’
‘That’s Oxbridge for you,’ Heap said. ‘And probably means she’s hiding something.’
‘Indeed – you old cynic you. Let’s hope the Wetlands Centre has something for us.’
The Wetlands Centre did indeed have something for them, though it took a while to find it on the film footage of Grace’s lake. They had the help of a Barry Fitzgerald, an earnest young man in a suit and horn-rimmed glasses.
‘Can we look at the footage from Beard’s Pond in Plumpton Down over the past week?’
‘All of it? It would take you a week to watch it.’
The Lady of the Lake Page 7