Fate Worse Than Death (27 page)

‘If she
is
being held captive,' said Hilary practically, ‘someone will have to visit her regularly with food. Why don't we start keeping a watch on the lot of them?'

Quantrill shook his head. ‘That'd tie up too much manpower. Look at it like this: if the same people who held Sandra Websdell have now got Mrs Yardley, we have reason to believe that they mean her no physical harm. In that case, we can afford to leave her with them for another twenty-four hours.

‘But if she really was thrown from her horse and she's lying out there in the forest in this heat – with no water, and possibly badly injured – we must find her as soon as possible. For that, we need all our manpower, plus every volunteer we can raise, to make a concentrated search before nightfall.'

Martin Tait was so annoyed by the words he'd had with Chief Inspector Quantrill that he made no offer to help in the search for Mrs Yardley.
It's their problem, let them get on with it
, he thought. Besides, he had things of his own to do that evening.

Next day, Saturday 12 August, he went flying again. There was still no break in the weather. Heat haze, augmented by smoke from the last of the straw fires in the harvested fields, continued to obscure the horizon. But he decided to make a longer trip, as a navigational exercise: down to Ipswich for a touch-and-go landing, and then across country to Cambridge, where he stopped for a snack lunch.

As he returned to Horkey, approaching the airfield at 2,000 feet, he noticed some unusual activity five or six miles north of Fodderstone. The area – an uninhabited part of the forest – was a stretch of heath bounded on one side by a conifer plantation. On the other side of the heath was a large field of pale stubble that was flickering into orange blossoms as fire was put to heaps of straw. The open heath was crossed by a dirt road, and travelling along it were a number of vehicles; twenty or more of them, all heading northwards.

But Tait had no time to see where they were going, because he was flying south and the airfield was in sight. He called the control tower when he was overhead, and then began to descend to circuit height. He looked again for the vehicles when he was flying the crosswind leg, but the flames from the burning straw had turned to smoke that spread over the heathland and obscured his view.

After he had landed and parked his Cessna in the hangar, he found that Hilary Lloyd was waiting for him outside the clubhouse. Her face was grave and her tone unusually formal as she told him that Chief Inspector Quantrill wanted to see him in Fodderstone, as a matter of urgency.

‘What's up?' said Tait. ‘Haven't you found Mrs Yardley yet? Look, I had Doug Quantrill here yesterday, trying to grill me about her private life, and I'm damned if I'm going to put up with any more of it. I've already told him I know nothing at all about the woman. Believe it or not, Hilary, I took your advice and walked out on her.'

‘I'm glad to hear it,' she said seriously. ‘We haven't found Mrs Yardley yet, and of course we're still looking. But –'

‘Was that convoy, going across the heath to the north of what used to be Fodderstone Hall, anything to do with your search?' asked Tait. ‘Because if not, it seems a bit odd that twenty private vehicles should all be heading purposefully towards nowhere in particular. It might be worth your while to investigate the area. I'll show you on my map.'

They had reached his parked Alfa. He opened the door and bent to take out his Ordnance Survey map of the forest, but Hilary touched his arm to stop him.

‘Martin,' she said quietly. ‘This is nothing to do with Mrs Yardley. It's bad news for you personally, I'm afraid.'

He straightened very slowly, his hands on the hot metal of the car roof, and stared out over the exhausted grass of the airfield. The air was heavy, almost too thick to breathe. He felt sweat springing on his forehead, and wiped it away with the back of his hand.

He cleared his throat. Without looking at Hilary he asked, ‘Is it – my aunt?'

‘Yes. I really am sorry, Martin. I'm afraid she's dead.'

He gripped the edge of the car roof. ‘Aunt Con must have killed herself,' he said. ‘It was suicide, wasn't it?'

‘Tell me: what made you say that Mrs Schultz must have taken her own life?'

Chief Inspector Quantrill stood with his arms folded, watching the younger man. Tait sat – uncharacteristically slumped – on his aunt's chintz-covered sofa, gazing blankly through the sitting-room window of number 9 Fodderstone Green. He looked grey-faced, shattered. Ordinarily Quantrill would have offered his condolences and left the man alone; but the circumstances of Constance Alice Schultz's death had given rise to suspicion.

She had last been seen by her neighbours, Mr and Mrs Braithwaite and Mr and Mrs Websdell, at approximately 6 p.m. the previous evening. A police car with a loudspeaker had driven through Fodderstone Green calling for further volunteers to help in the search for Mrs Yardley, and all the able-bodied residents had gathered on the Green to receive their instructions. Both Marjorie Braithwaite and Beryl Websdell had thought that Mrs Schultz was not looking well, and they had persuaded her to return home.

The following morning – that morning – Mrs Braithwaite had made a neighbourly call on Mrs Schultz at approximately 9.30 a.m. The back door was unlocked, but Mrs Schultz was not in. Mrs Braithwaite had then walked down the garden, expecting to find her neighbour there.

As she neared the garage, Mrs Braithwaite heard the noise of an engine. The garage doors were closed but not locked. Opening them, Mrs Braithwaite saw that the white Ford Escort was filled with fumes, and that a vacuum-cleaner hose led from the exhaust and through the partly open rear window of the car. The remainder of the window opening was blocked with a cloth.

Mrs Braithwaite opened the driver's door and found Mrs Schultz at the wheel, apparently unconscious. The key – one of a bunch – was in the ignition, and Mrs Braithwaite switched off the engine. She tried to rouse Mrs Schultz, but was unable to do so. She then ran to her own house and telephoned for the police.

A uniformed police officer from the Fodderstone incident room went immediately to the scene, together with a detective constable. They removed Mrs Schultz's body from the car, and a police surgeon who arrived shortly afterwards confirmed their opinion that she was dead. Her body was taken to Breckham Market mortuary to await a post-mortem examination.

Inside the car, on the passenger seat, was found a bottle of brandy one-quarter empty. A glass that had held brandy was on top of the dashboard. Also on the passenger seat was a battery-operated tape-recorder, and in it a run-through tape of the St John's College, Cambridge recording of Gabriel Fauré's
Messe de Requiem
. No note from the dead woman was found in the car.

Having heard from Mrs Braithwaite the identity of Mrs Schultz's next-of-kin, the detective constable tried to get in touch with her nephew, without immediate success. He and his uniformed colleague then carried out the necessary search of the house in an attempt to find the reason for Mrs Schultz's death; again, no note was found. The detective subsequently took statements from the dead woman's neighbours, as a result of which he called in Detective Chief Inspector Quantrill.

‘What was your reason for saying that your aunt must have killed herself?' repeated Quantrill. ‘Because that was your immediate reaction to what Sergeant Lloyd told you. If Miss Lloyd had said that your aunt had been “found dead”, then suicide might have been a reasonable inference. But all you were told, on my instructions, was, “She's dead.” For all you knew, the old lady might have had a heart attack, or a stroke, or a car accident. And yet you immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was suicide. Why?'

‘Because Aunt Con told me what she was going to do,' said Tait in a leaden voice. He stood up and began to walk about the room. ‘Oh, not in so many words. She never mentioned suicide. But everything she did and said while I was staying with her pointed to the fact that she was making her final arrangements.'

He explained to the Chief Inspector about his aunt's expressed intention to leave Fodderstone Green, and her refusal to look for alternative accommodation; about her attempt to give him her furniture, and her insistence that he should take the family valuables with him; about the way she had disposed of her old clothing, and burned letters and diaries and photographs.

‘Aunt Con even told me what kind of funeral she wanted. She asked me to take notes … God, what a fool I was not to realize what she was planning! I suppose I was too absorbed in my own affairs to think about her, at the time. But as soon as Hilary said she had bad news for me, everything clicked into place. I didn't need to be told anything else. I knew that my aunt had killed herself, and I knew how she'd done it.'

Quantrill gave the younger man a hard green stare. ‘But she didn't leave a note. And you know as well as I do that the coroner will want to know
why
she did it.'

‘Aunt Con told me that, too, in a way. You see, she was growing old, and the garden was getting too much for her to manage, and her dog had died –'

‘That doesn't add up to any reason for killing herself at the age of seventy. Not unless she was ill with depression, and neither of her women neighbours believes that of her. I understand that Mrs Schultz was on friendly terms with both of them. She hadn't seemed to them to be depressed, she'd never mentioned suicide, and neither of them can believe it.'

‘Which just goes to show how little they really knew her,' said Tait in the superior voice that never failed to irritate his colleagues. ‘My aunt liked to be friendly with her neighbours, yes. But she would never have discussed her private affairs with them. She was independent, and she had her own reasons for what she did. I respected her, and I can accept that. If her neighbours can't, that's their problem.'

‘True … But that brings us back to the question why Mrs Schultz didn't leave a note. An elderly lady who plans her own death in such detail is almost certain to leave notes for relatives, and usually for the coroner too.'

‘That's easily explained,' said Tait. ‘My aunt had told me so much that she knew there was no need for her to put it in writing. She'd even said good-bye to me, though of course I didn't realize it was for the last time –' His voice wavered, and for a moment he looked stricken again, rather than superior. ‘Of course, there might have been a medical reason for what she did. She didn't look well, I noticed that. Perhaps she had a terminal disease.'

‘We've checked,' said Quantrill. ‘The last time your aunt saw her doctor was eighteen months ago, when she had bronchitis.'

‘Aunt Con wasn't the kind of woman to keep running to her doctor,' said Tait, superior again. ‘But that doesn't mean she wasn't ill.'

‘Possibly,' Quantrill conceded. ‘We shall find that out for sure from the post-mortem, shan't we?'

‘Not necessarily. Even if no pathological evidence of disease is found, it doesn't mean that she didn't
feel
ill. Or imagine it. And as I said, she was an independent woman. She'd have hated the idea of having to be dependent on anyone.' Tait shook his head in self-reproach. ‘Poor Aunt Con – it doesn't seem possible that I shall never see her again … It doesn't seem possible, now, that I didn't realize what she was planning. But I can understand her logic. And when it comes to the inquest, I'm sure the coroner will understand it too.'

‘Maybe,' said the Chief Inspector heavily. ‘It sounds plausible. But that's the trouble with you, boy, you always were a damn sight too plausible.' He paused, angry with himself that even after all these years as a detective, he was unable to decide whether the young man standing in front of him was an honest smoothie or a smooth liar.

‘Look, Martin,' he went on, ‘this isn't an official interview because I've already reported the matter to the Assistant Chief Constable. I had no option. Not in view of the circumstances the investigating detective uncovered. But we've worked together for a year or two, you and I, and the least I can do is to tell you what I know. You see, my information is that some days before she died, your aunt told you that she was a very rich woman. She also said that she was virtually cutting you out of her will.'

Tait stood silent, his skin drawn tight over his cheekbones, his nose sharper than usual, as Chief Inspector Quantrill went through the details of his quarrel with his aunt.

‘I can guess where your information came from,' Tait said at last. ‘That bloody snooper from number 10, Marjorie Braithwaite! She must've been looking for an opportunity to get back at me ever since I told her to mind her own business.'

‘You don't deny the quarrel with your aunt, then?'

‘No. I regret it, now that Aunt Con's dead. I regret the unkind things I said to her. But at least I did my best to make up for it. I went out of my way to be really nice to her for the rest of my stay.'

Quantrill gave him a narrow-eyed look. ‘Why?' he said bluntly.

Tait shrugged. ‘Partly out of a sense of shame, I suppose. But I'll admit that it was mostly self-interest. I decided that Aunt Con had been so taken up with the idea of giving her money to charity that she hadn't looked at it from my point of view at all. I felt sure that when she'd had time to think it over, she'd realize the injustice of cutting me out – particularly if I showed her that I really was a deserving character, despite the row. The snag was that I didn't know whether she'd actually made a new will, or whether she was merely thinking of it.'

He hesitated, and then said with an attempt at nonchalance, ‘Was a will found when this house was searched for a suicide note?'

‘No. But there was the name of a Woodbridge firm of solicitors in her address book. Your family was connected with the firm at one time, I believe. They tell me they've had no recent communication from Mrs Schultz – but they are holding her will.' Quantrill paused, deliberately keeping the younger man in suspense. Tait's lips had parted, and his breathing was fast and shallow.