An Air That Kills (37 page)

She recognised the note of misery in his voice. ‘I thought it was just a burglary.'

‘It's a little more than that.'

Her hand tightened on the phone. She knew better than to ask for details now. ‘So we'll expect you when we see you, shall we?'

‘Yes,' he said, sounding very far away. ‘Don't wait up.'

He rang off. She put down the phone and smoothed her skirt over her hips. The familiar dread settled over her. She began to shiver. It was the recurrent fear, the one that never went away and often slipped into her dreams: Richard having to deal single-handedly with a murderer who was probably armed and by definition ruthless.

He was so proud of his job and she tried never to show him how much it worried her.
Be careful
, she had wanted to say to him.
We need you
.

Chapter Twenty-two

‘Damn,' Charlotte said when the doorbell rang. She prodded her husband with her toe. ‘You get it, dear, will you?'

Philip rubbed his eyes and yawned.

‘The door, Philip. Someone's at the front door.'

He tore himself away from his armchair and left the room. It was a little after three o'clock. This was the dead time of a Sunday afternoon – after lunch and before tea time. On Sundays, once lunch was out of the way, Susan was off duty for the rest of the day.

‘Such an inconvenient time to call,' Charlotte grumbled. ‘Whoever can it be?'

Jill already knew that Nemesis had arrived at Troy House in a small Austin. She could see out of the window from where she was sitting at one end of the sofa, with Antonia pretending to read a book at the other. The sight of Thornhill getting out of the car had brought her to the edge of panic. She felt powerless to avert whatever was going to happen: as if all of them were at the mercy of a huge and passionless machine.

She heard Philip's voice in the hall and then Thornhill's. The door opened.

‘Antonia,' Philip said. ‘Mr Thornhill would like a word.'

Charlotte was already on her feet and advancing towards the doorway. ‘Inspector, what a terrible business this is. Would you like to use the dining room? You'd be quite undisturbed there.'

There was a soft thud. Jill glanced round. Antonia had let her book fall to the carpet. She was sitting with her hands on her lap, staring straight ahead.

‘Just a few loose ends, Miss Harcutt,' Thornhill said.

‘Would you like me to come, too?' Jill asked Antonia.

‘Yes,' Antonia said.

Jill glanced at Thornhill, daring him to argue. But he nodded as if her suggestion were the most natural in the world. Antonia stuffed her cigarettes into a pocket of her cardigan, stood up and shuffled towards the doorway.

Charlotte led them into the dining room where she fussed over the seating arrangements, tried without success to separate Thornhill from his overcoat and briefcase and offered them tea. Thornhill got rid of her with a courteous efficiency which Jill couldn't help but envy.

The three of them sat down at one end of the large mahogany table. All the furniture in the room was heavy and of ample proportions. A three-quarter-length portrait of Grandpa Wemyss reading his own newspaper hung over the fireplace.

‘I have some news for you,' Thornhill said.

Antonia stared at him.

‘I don't know whether you've heard that a man was killed in Templefields this morning?'

She gave no sign that she had heard.

‘Well, in connection with that, we have arrested a man, and when we found him, we also found a number of items which we think may have come from Chandos Lodge. I've got a few of them here. I wonder if you can identify them.'

He lifted the briefcase on to the table and unpacked some of its contents. One by one he laid on the table two gold watches, three rings and a pair of jade earrings. Jill stared at them. The rings were old and very grubby; and if their stones were real, they would be valuable.

‘I remember my mother wearing those earrings – and that ring, I think, the one with the diamonds in it.' Antonia's voice trembled. ‘Who stole them?'

‘Someone you used to know, Miss Harcutt. Charlie Meague.'

‘No. Please, no.'

‘Why do you say that?'

Antonia shook her head and took refuge once more in silence.

Thornhill waited a moment and then went on: ‘Shall I tell you what we think happened? And I'd appreciate any help you could give me with the details.' Again he paused, but Antonia said nothing. ‘Charlie Meague needed money for reasons which needn't concern you. So he turned to burglary. But burglary's a specialised trade and he wasn't very good at it. His mother used to work at each of the houses he tried. But Chandos Lodge was rather different. For one thing, he had a grudge against your father. I understand that he sacked Meague and his mother in 1939. Can you confirm that?'

‘Yes. And he shouldn't have done it. There was no reason.'

‘You probably won't have heard that Mrs Meague died in hospital last night. Pneumonia. She was delirious towards the end. According to Dr Bayswater, she said something about poor Miss Tony. And she also said, more than once, ‘It wasn't you, was it, Charlie?' What do you think she might have meant?'

‘How do I know? It was so long ago. I haven't seen the Meagues for years.'

‘I think Charlie Meague had seen your father more recently. Just before his dog was run over, Major Harcutt was seen talking to a tall man outside the gates of Chandos Lodge. In fact, there's a suggestion that Milly was chasing the man when she was run over. There again, we found the remains of a clock in the dustbin this morning. Rather a nice clock, as it happens.'

Antonia hugged herself.

Thornhill smiled at her. ‘Can you tell us when the clock was broken?'

‘Yesterday morning.' Antonia frowned. ‘It seems like months ago. I think my father knocked it off the mantelpiece while Jill and I were out doing the poppies.'

Thornhill glanced at Jill who nodded in confirmation. ‘We've just had it fingerprinted,' he said. ‘It's got Charlie Meague's prints on it.'

‘I don't understand,' Antonia said.

‘It suggests that Meague visited Chandos Lodge between his return to Lydmouth and before the clock was broken – in other words, before the burglary.' Thornhill hesitated. ‘In fact it confirms what Meague told me today. He was so drunk I wasn't sure he knew what he was saying. He also told me he recognised something when he found the bones at the Rose in Hand. The box they were in. Apparently it used to be in the garden shed at Chandos Lodge.' Thornhill turned back to Jill. ‘You and Mrs Wemyss-Brown surprised him looking for it on Friday evening. He was making sure.'

‘But that's impossible.' Jill thought her voice must sound shrill and false to the others. ‘It can't have been the same box. It—'

‘Where
is
Charlie?' Antonia interrupted, her voice shrill. ‘He's not dead, is he?'

‘No, of course not,' Thornhill said. ‘When I last saw him, he was snoring away.'

‘But he killed this man in Templefields?'

‘That's for a jury to decide, Miss Harcutt.'

‘But it's what you think.'

Thornhill leant forward. ‘I'm afraid this may be painful for you. You see, I do have to bear in mind the possibility that Charlie Meague also killed your father.'

Antonia stared at him. She opened her mouth and tried to speak. In the end all that emerged was a whispered ‘No'.

‘Do you feel all right?' Jill asked her. ‘Now you've identified the jewellery, I'm sure the inspector wouldn't mind if we postponed the rest.'

Thornhill was still staring at Antonia; he ignored Jill's suggestion. ‘We're pretty sure that Meague was in the house last night. He might easily have found your father in a very deep sleep because of the whisky and the barbiturates. It would have been a simple matter for Meague to turn off the gas fire and then turn it on again without relighting it. He could have done it in the room or at the mains. If it were done carefully, there would be no fingerprints.'

‘But why?' Jill said. ‘Or don't you bother about motives?'

‘They aren't as important to a policeman as you might think, Miss Francis. In this case, however, I think Meague hated Major Harcutt because he believed that he and his mother had been sacked unreasonably. We have to remember that Meague was in an unsettled state of mind because his mother was seriously ill. He also had very pressing financial problems. There's a strong possibility that he tried to blackmail Major Harcutt yesterday morning. If the major refused, that would have given Meague an additional reason to hate him. And finally . . .' Thornhill broke off. ‘If you'd prefer, Miss Harcutt, we could ask Miss Francis to leave the room for a moment at this point.'

Antonia shook her head. ‘It doesn't matter. Jill knows.'

Thornhill glanced at Jill and raised his eyebrows. ‘Knows what?'

‘Don't say anything,' Jill said to Antonia. ‘This is all speculation.'

‘Not entirely, Miss Francis. For one thing there are the bones from the Rose in Hand.'

‘Amelia Rushwick's baby?' Even as she spoke, Jill knew it was no use.

‘The baby which Major Harcutt encouraged us to associate with Amelia Rushwick.'

‘But the brooch – and the newspaper.'

Thornhill looked steadily at Jill. ‘Easy enough to plant that sort of evidence. On forensic grounds, it's impossible to tell whether the bones are fifteen years old or fifty years old. Indeed, it's something of a miracle there's anything left of them at all, once the rats and the cats had had their fill. And the brooch raises an interesting point: Major Harcutt knew that it was made of silver. Do you remember my asking you if you or Mrs Wemyss-Brown had told him that? And you said you hadn't.'

‘Perhaps he heard from someone else.'

‘Very unlikely – on your own admission, you and Mrs Wemyss-Brown were the first to tell him about the discovery.'

‘Perhaps he simply assumed it was silver. Many brooches are.'

‘Perhaps. But there's another possibility, isn't there? By the way, Miss Harcutt, did you know that your father considered taking out a lease on the Rose in Hand yard from the Ruispidge Estate in 1939?'

‘For Christ's sake,' Antonia muttered, ‘must you go on and on?'

‘I'm sorry to upset you. Would you rather leave this till later?'

‘An excellent idea,' Jill said.

‘No, let's get it over with.' Antonia's hands struggled with her cigarette packet. ‘Has anyone got a match?'

There was a moment's pause while Thornhill lit her cigarette and found her an ashtray. He stared at her for a second.

‘I'm sorry to have to ask this, Miss Harcutt, but were you pregnant in 1939?'

Antonia nodded slowly. She kept her head bowed. A few flakes of dandruff drifted down to the table.

‘What happened to the baby?'

‘My father took him away. He was going to be adopted. That's what my father said.'

‘We have to consider the possibility that the Templefields remains were those of your baby and that they were put there by your father. Furthermore, that he took care to ensure that if any traces of the body were found some years later, they would be assumed to be the work of Amelia Rushwick, or at least to have had something to do with the Rose in Hand in the last century. Charlie Meague guessed or knew all this, or enough of it to make it worth his while to try blackmail.'

‘But he couldn't possibly have known anything about it,' Jill pointed out.

‘He could if he were the baby's father,' Thornhill said. ‘I think his mother suspected it. That would fit in perfectly with what she said to Dr Bayswater. And, of course, it explains why Major Harcutt sacked the Meagues. He couldn't go to the police without his daughter's part in it coming out. It wouldn't have been just the social stigma. Technically, you see, Miss Harcutt had committed a criminal offence.'

‘This is sheer fantasy,' Jill said. ‘And I don't like the way you're trying to browbeat Miss Harcutt.' She knew as she spoke that the accusation was unfair.

‘We should have a few more facts after we've talked to Charlie Meague again,' Thornhill said. ‘But it seemed wiser and kinder to talk to Miss Harcutt first.'

It was a reprimand, and Jill felt herself flushing. For an instant there was a look of triumph on Thornhill's face, and in that instant she hated him.

‘There's another reason why this is important,' he said to Antonia. ‘It could affect the case against Meague.'

Jill sat up sharply. ‘He's already on a capital charge, isn't he? So this could mean the difference between a prison sentence and being hanged.'

There was a crash as Antonia's hands hit the table. She dropped the cigarette which rolled across the gleaming wood. Her mouth was open and her lips were drawn back as if in a silent scream or snarl. She began to pant. She tried to speak and failed. The others waited. Thornhill picked up the cigarette and rested it in the ashtray. It had left a small burn on the otherwise immaculate surface of the table.

‘But it wasn't Charlie,' Antonia gasped. ‘He never touched me. And he didn't kill my father either. It was my father who made me pregnant. It was my father who took away my baby. And do you know what I found out yesterday? He didn't have my baby adopted as he said he would. He killed him and tossed him in a cesspit in Templefields and left him for the rats.
That's
why I killed him.'

The room was silent, apart from their breathing. Thornhill was looking at Antonia. Jill was conscious of a fiercely maternal urge to protect her from his eyes.