Design for Murder (14 page)

“That’s my impression, too.” He picked up his tankard of beer and held it against the light. “I’d say that her present
state of nerves isn’t caused by guilt, but by grief.”

“Heavens above!” I exclaimed. “Did I hear that correctly? Detective Inspector Neil Grant actually basing his judgment on something other than cold, hard, provable fact.”

“Isn’t it lucky for some people,” he said, switching his gaze to me, “that once in a while I do?”

I asked hastily, “Do you have anyone else of interest on your list?”

“Yes. Mrs. Ursula Kemp. Now there’s a strange woman.”

“Strange?”

“Didn’t you spot her in court this morning?”

“Yes, I saw her,” I said cautiously.

“She would have had to close her shop in order to come.
But there was no need for her presence, it wasn’t required by the coroner.”

“I suppose ... well, Oliver was a friend, and I suppose she felt that she ought to.”

“It’s not his funeral we’re talking about, Tracy, where peo
ple attend to pay their respects. Why was Mrs. Kemp so anx
ious to hear the proceedings? She was very jumpy, wasn’t she?
Would you say that she’s a nervous person?”

I had to admit that one wouldn’t describe Ursula as nerv
ous.

“Okay,” I said, “so what was the outcome when you asked her about the magazine?”

“Puzzling. I made that particular call myself, yesterday afternoon. Mrs. Kemp searched around vaguely, then announced
that she must have thrown it out. She chattered about build
ing up a terrible accumulation of stuff if you aren’t careful to
turn things out regularly.”

“That makes sense.”

“I might have thought so, too, except for one thing. Glanc
ing round the shop while she was supposed to be looking in
her bedroom upstairs, I noticed a pile of back numbers of
Cotswold Illustrated.
Now, if Mrs. Kemp reckoned that she could make a few pence by selling them second-hand, why on earth should she have thrown away the copy in question?”

“Did you ask her?”

“No, I was anxious to avoid alerting her too much because
there was something else I wanted to ask her.”

“What was that?”

Neil seemed to be considering how much to tell me. He
began slowly, choosing his words, “We’ve been having a look
at Oliver Medway’s personal bank account. It won’t come as any surprise to you, I imagine, that he was frequently overdrawn?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“The credits consisted mainly of a regular monthly allow
ance made to him by his father, the salary he paid himself
from the Design Studio, and a weekly cheque which ap
parently covered the business expenses he had claimed. I as
sume, knowing your role in the firm, that you kept a fairly
close eye on Medway’s spending in that direction.”

“You assume correctly. Knowing that I’d query every ex
travagance kept a brake on Oliver.”

Neil nodded. “The puzzling thing about his bank account is
that every now and then a considerable sum was paid in—
several hundreds of pounds in one go. In cash. And usually at a time when the bank manager was getting restless about the
size of his overdraft. Now where, do you think, would Oliver
Medway have obtained that sort of money in banknotes?”

“His bookmaker, perhaps? He did quite a bit of betting.”

“And quite a bit of losing. But when on rare occasions he had a win, the bookie always paid by cheque.”

I shrugged. “There must be an explanation.”

“There’s an explanation for everything, Tracy. But not always a pleasant one.”

Neil was making me feel uneasy, and I couldn’t quite pin
down why.

“You surely aren’t hinting that Oliver was some kind of
thief?”

“Not in the accepted sense. But perhaps that mysterious
money was payments he received in exchange for his silence.”

“You don’t mean blackmail?” I gasped.

“It’s a possibility we can’t rule out.”

“But
...
but Oliver wasn’t like that. He would never
have ...”

“I wonder how well you really knew him,” Neil inter
rupted. “I’ll tell you this much, Tracy, my superintendent has
a full scale investigation going. And I don’t just mean in and around Steeple Haslop.”

I was reduced to silence. The barman came out and cleared some empty glasses from a nearby table, made some remark
about the fine weather, and disappeared inside again.

At last I said, reluctantly, “You mentioned Ursula earlier.
You surely can’t be thinking that Oliver was blackmailing
her?”

“It’s possible, though somehow I don’t think it’s likely.”

“So how are you trying to make a connection with
Ursula?”

“There was clearly a special sort of relationship between
those two. The fact that they could share a giggle over that
rampant fertility god is one indication, and you’ve told me
that he was often round at her shop. Perhaps it was a relief to
Oliver Medway to have just one woman with whom he could
relax, with whom he could drop the devastating seducer
image and be himself.”

“He was able to do that with me,” I objected.

“You must surely see that it was different with you, Tracy.
However friendly you two were, his guard would have been up to some extent because you were the watchdog put in by
his father. Only a minute ago you were explaining to me how
you kept a brake on his expenses, and you told me earlier
about your function of preventing Medway’s wilder flights of
fancy and holding
him
down to practicalities. Yes?”

“Yes, but...”

“So if there was anyone in or around Steeple Haslop,” Neil continued smoothly, “with whom Oliver Medway would have
talked freely and let his hair down a bit, I reckoned that person was Ursula Kemp. Therefore, it seemed possible that he
might have made an off-guard reference to her about some
one or something in his past which would give us a clue to his
killer. Mrs. Kemp herself, not knowing the lines along which
we are thinking, might not have attributed any special
significance to such a reference. Why should she? All the
same, I thought it worth doing a little digging with her.”

My pulses quickened. “And did you discover anything?”

“Not yet. She was being very wary—some people are like
that with the police, whether they have anything to hide or
not.”

“So does that mean you’ll be questioning her again?”

“Certainly I will. And I shall go on questioning her until
I’m quite satisfied that there’s no information to be extracted
from that source.”

I thought for a moment. “Does Ursula understand why
you’ve been asking her all those questions?”

“Naturally not. Any mention of the word blackmail might make her clam up completely.”

I had never felt any strong liking for Ursula Kemp. Look
ing back, I recognised that there might even have been a
slight antipathy in my attitude towards her, caused by the very
thing Neil was talking about ... her rather special rela
tionship with Oliver. I didn’t much like to acknowledge it, but
I realised now that I’d taken a certain pride in thinking of
myself as the
only
woman with whom Oliver had any kind of
closeness that didn’t involve sex.

All the same, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Ursula now because of the way she was being badgered by the police. If she was an actual murder suspect, fair enough. But Neil was
merely using her, trying to winkle out information which
Ursula might not even possess. So what construction would she put on his visits? Even that one call from Neil yesterday
afternoon seemed to have scared her half out of her mind.

“I’ll have to be going in a minute,” I told Neil. “There’s
loads of work waiting to be done.”

“Is everything settled with Sir Robert Medway now? I
mean, about your taking over the Design Studio?”

“I haven’t heard any more, but he said that he’d be getting his solicitor to draw up an agreement.”

“The old boy still looks in pretty bad shape,” Neil com
mented.

“So would you,” I said sourly, “if you had a dicky heart and your son had just been murdered.”

“Perhaps so.” He seemed about to add something more, but thought better of it.

I’d suddenly had enough of Neil and his little chats. He pretended that I was in his confidence. But was he just using me in exactly the same way as he was using Ursula?

“Thanks for the drink,” I said, and stood up abruptly.

Neil followed suit. “I’ll just walk you back to your car.”

“There’s no need.”

“But I want to, Tracy.”

As we walked the short distance to the forecourt of the mu
nicipal offices, Neil asked my opinion of the architecture of the new police headquarters which we passed on our way.
Though I considered it an innocuous building, some impulse
made me say, “I think it’s hideous.”

“Aesthetically, you could be right,” he granted. “But at
least it’s well suited to its purpose. Care to see inside?”

I couldn’t avoid a shudder, which he probably noticed.

“I told you, I’ve no time to spare.”

“Pity. Still, we can always make it another day. You’d be
amazed, Tracy, at what goes on inside that building. Why,
just on this murder enquiry alone the Chief Superintendent’s
got a whole team of us beavering away.”

“I’d hardly have thought,” I countered, “that you’ve been
beavering away this past half-hour.”

Neil grinned. “I’d better pass that one. Anything I say in
reply might be taken down and used in evidence against me.”

There was a
CLOSED
card hanging behind the glass door of Ursula Kemp’s shop, but it was lunch-time by now so I wasn’t surprised.

I pressed the bell-push, waited, then pressed it again. After
further delay the door to the private quarters at the back
opened and Ursula came through. She began gesticulating
that the shop was closed, then saw it was me. Reluctantly, I felt sure, she came to open up.

“Hallo, Tracy.”

“Hi. I spotted you in court this morning, Ursula, but you
left so quickly that I didn’t have a chance for a word. Er
... am I disturbing your lunch?”

She shook her head, vaguely.

“Well then,” I said with a bright smile, “I’ll just come in for a minute or two.”

“All right.” Unenthusiastically, she stood aside and motioned me to go on through to the back.

Ursula’s living room had a delightful outlook over a small,
rose-trellised garden with a stream at the bottom. Her tiny kitchen was to one side, and I knew—though I’d never seen
them—that there were two bedrooms and a bathroom above.

There was no sign of any lunch. Just half a cup of coffee,
which appeared to have been allowed to go stone cold. Seeing
Ursula nearer to, she looked quite ill, suddenly a lot older. She held her cardigan clutched about her, and I noticed that
her hands were trembling. She waited in silence for me to
speak.

“The verdict came as no surprise, of course,” I said, to get
a conversation launched. “I suppose that Sir Robert must be
thankful to have the ordeal behind him, though he still has
the funeral to face.”

Ursula gave an odd little jerky nod. Clearly she was under
great strain. For a moment I even wondered if her rela
tionship with Oliver could possibly have been closer than I’d
supposed, but I dismissed the thought at once.

“Would ... would you like some coffee?” she asked in a cracked voice.

I started to refuse, since I was about to go home for lunch,
then it struck me that she might like a few minutes alone in the kitchen to get a grip on herself
...
as Cynthia Fairford
had done the other day.

“Thanks,” I said. “I could use a cup.”

While she was gone, I stood at the window watching the
breeze ruffling the leaves of some willow trees across the
stream. Then I turned and glanced around the room. My eye was caught by a magazine on a side table. The picture on the
cover was familiar, three horses taking a hurdle at Chel
tenham races. I realised that it was last month’s issue of
Cots
wold Illustrated.
Moving across hurriedly, I picked it up and flipped through the pages. They were all intact.

Before I could put the magazine down again Ursula had re
turned with my coffee. There was a tinge of colour to her
cheeks, and I distinctly caught a whiff of brandy. She must
have taken a quick nip to steady her nerves.

Seeing what I was holding, she remarked with tight-knit
brow, “The detective inspector was here yesterday afternoon, and he asked about that magazine. I couldn’t lay my hands on it at the time, then it turned up last night in my sewing cup
board.”

I was about to tell her what it was that Neil had been after
but I kept silent, a new thought clawing at my mind—or
rather, an old thought that I’d dismissed before. Was Ursula Kemp the sender of that anonymous letter?