Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder (20 page)

No one said very much at lunch, except Veronica whose chatter was so persistent and inane that no one took any notice of it. There was a story about the flowers in the church on Easter Sunday which Fanny had heard several times before. Only her father pretended to be interested in it. And Molly Palmer-Jones. She seemed to be interested in everything. Because Nan Oliver had been late to work and because the whole routine of the house had fallen apart after Eleanor’s death, it had been a late lunch. It had been almost two o’clock when they sat down and by the time the plates were cleared and they were sitting over the dregs of the coffee it was almost three.

‘We might as well make the most of this,’ Veronica said. ‘We’ll have more guests next week.’

‘Are you sure,’ Richard said, ‘that you want people in so soon? We can always put them off.’

‘No,’ Veronica said. ‘With any luck it will all be over by then. They’ll surely catch the man soon.’

Then, aware of a lack of tact she blushed and looked at Nan Oliver who had begun to stack plates in the dishwasher. But the woman seemed not to have heard and continued the work without pause. Only Molly was aware of a stiffness of her neck and a tightening of her grip on the handle of the dishwasher door.

They had all finished and were reluctantly preparing to leave the warmth of the kitchen. It was bright and cheerful there and they were enjoying the companionship which they missed in the rest of the house. Suddenly Helen burst in. She was wearing a bright blue jacket and her hair was covered in a mist of raindrops. She was breathless and excited.

‘Have the police phoned yet?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Richard Mead said sharply. He still seemed annoyed because she had not made the effort to be back for lunch. ‘Why should they have done?’

Helen looked at Nan Oliver and spoke directly at her. ‘ They’ve found Steve,’ she said. ‘I went to see Laurie and the police came there. He was stopped at Dover by the customs.’

‘Was he trying to leave the country?’ Molly asked.

‘No,’ Helen said. ‘He was trying to get back in. The police think he had smuggled the birds out and was on his way home. They’re bringing him back to Sarne for questioning tonight.’

Pritchard had been told of Stephen Oliver’s arrest while he and George were still at Puddleworth, and on the car journey to Gorse Hill George had to tolerate Pritchard’s triumphant good humour. The policeman seemed convinced that the inquiry was all but over and that Stephen Oliver would lead them to his father. He sang snatches of Welsh hymns and even expected George to join in the mood of jubilation and self-congratulation.

‘It was all your doing,’ he said. ‘If your wife hadn’t found out about the passports, customs wouldn’t have been so vigilant. They’re usually a dozy lot, customs officers.’ And he began to sing ‘ Cwm Rhondda’ with joyous abandon, his head back; all trace of fatigue gone.

George found it hard to share Pritchard’s optimism. There had been no real evidence to prove that Kerry Fenn had begun the agency to supply falconers with birds and eggs, or that she had developed it to its present sophistication. She seemed very young for such a responsibility. It seemed to him that for the past two days they had been misled, and that the trail took them back to Gorse Hill.

Pritchard took George straight back to Gorse Hill. He would have time to go home and spend part of the evening at least with Bethan and the boys, before young Oliver arrived from the south coast. He was in a hurry. He wanted to be back for bath time.

They arrived at the hotel at six o’clock and for the first time that day the rain had stopped. The house seemed ordinary, comforting. It seemed impossible to George then that violence had been planned there; Pritchard must be right after all. Eleanor’s death had been caused by unhappy chance, not premeditation. George stepped out of the car to the smell of cedar and wet grass.

‘Thank you,’ he said, like a polite child who has been taken for a treat by an estranged parent. ‘It was a very interesting couple of days.’ He was tired and glad to be back. He wanted a hot bath and a drink, and to be left alone.

‘I’ll come and pick you up later,’ Pritchard said, ‘when I go to interview the boy.’

‘Oh no,’ George said. ‘I couldn’t impose on you any further.’

‘No question of imposition,’ Pritchard said. ‘We’re all on the same side.’ He looked sharply at George. ‘ You do want to come?’ he said. ‘ You do want to see the thing through?’ Then answering his own question, ‘Of course you do. You’re a professional. You couldn’t let it go now.’

‘No,’ George said. It was true. He could not give up now. ‘I’ll see you later then.’ He walked stiffly over the gravel and up the steps into the house.

Molly heard the car on the drive and from their bedroom window saw her husband, walking as straight as an old soldier on a British Legion parade, enter the hotel. She was unaccountably nervous, as if she were about to meet a stranger. Her resentment over his inability to see Eleanor Masefield clearly, as the unpleasant, dictatorial woman she was, still irked her, yet she was very glad to see him home. She went into their bathroom and began to run a bath and put the towels on the radiator to heat, so when he found her she was standing in a cloud of steam, and her spectacles were misted so she could not see him.

‘I thought you might like a bath,’ she said, taking off her glasses and wiping them ineffectually with her cardigan.

Despite his tiredness he could tell something was wrong. She was usually completely natural, but now there was a constraint in her voice. She wanted to let him know that she was displeased with him and for some reason would not say so outright. How tedious it must have been for her here with nothing to do!

‘I’m sorry I went,’ he said, ‘without properly asking you first.

You are my partner. I should have asked if you thought it would be worth it.’

‘Was it worth it?’ she asked and he thought she seemed happier and that he had said the right thing.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it when I’m in the bath.’

‘All right,’ she said, ‘but I’ve something to tell you first.’ He lay back in the large old bath and she sat on a cork stool beside him. He was surprised that she took control of the conversation so readily. She told him first about the phone call she had taken from the man with the foreign accent. George was unexpectedly interested.

‘Tell me exactly what the man said,’ he demanded, but found it hard to be authoritative lying with water and bubbles up to his neck.

‘He said that Kerry Fenn had suggested that he ring. He told me it was a business matter.’

Molly did not resent his imperious tone. It was a habit, she thought. He did not mean it.

‘It did not occur to me at first,’ she said, ‘but then I thought that any link between the Fenns and Gorse Hill was important.’

‘It is, of course,’ he said. He climbed out of the bath and dressed.

‘Tell me what you found out,’ she said.

‘It seems there is a thriving business operation – an agency supplying falconers with eggs and birds,’ he said. ‘Frank Oliver and a taxidermist called Theo Williams have systematically been taking birds and eggs from the wild. Kerry Fenn is involved in it too. Pritchard thinks she is the organizing influence. But it seems to me she is too young. I got the impression that the agency’s been established for years. It runs very smoothly and they seem to have developed contacts all over the world. Kerry Fenn only left school three years ago. Even though her father is a well-known falconer, I doubt if she would be sufficiently trusted to provide birds for the class of customer the business seems to be supplying.’

‘So you think someone else might be involved?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ George said.

‘And the phone call would suggest it’s someone at Gorse Hill?’

‘Don’t you think that’s possible?’ Again it seemed to George that he was dependent on Molly to form his opinions. I’m tired, he thought as he waited for her to answer. She considered.

‘It would be a much more plausible motive for murder,’ she said. ‘I always found it hard to accept the explanation that Eleanor was killed because she had interrupted someone stealing the birds. She was close to whoever killed her.’

‘You could be right,’ he said. ‘And then the body was arranged so dramatically.’

‘Why do you think she was killed?’ Molly asked. He felt for a moment patronized, as if she were consulting him as a matter of form. But when he looked at her he saw that she really wanted to know.

‘I believe someone at Gorse Hill was behind the falconry agency. Eleanor found out so she had to be murdered.’

‘Is that likely?’ Molly said. ‘ If so, why would the murderer arrange her body so near the falcons? The police were bound then to make the falconry connection and find out about the agency.’

‘I don’t know,’ George said. ‘Really I don’t know.’

‘I think the falconry’s a red herring,’ Molly said flatly. ‘I think Eleanor was killed because of the sort of woman she was.’

‘Of course Pritchard’s convinced Oliver’s the murderer,’ George said a little desperately, avoiding the implication of her last statement. ‘We’ll have to find some definite proof to persuade him otherwise.’

‘You do realize,’ she persisted, ‘that none of her family liked her? Even Veronica is glad that she’s dead. She manipulated them all.’

What’s she doing to me? George thought. Why is she behaving like some idiotic newlywed who needs endless reassurances that she’s loved? Why is it so important to her? For God’s sake, she must know that I never had any intention of having a wild, passionate affair with Eleanor Masefield. I’m too old for that. So what does she want me to say? That I hated the woman too? She knows that’s not true.

Then he saw how important it was to Molly that he should answer her unspoken question. She wanted to know what he had felt for Eleanor. She wanted to know if the memory of the woman would remain with them for ever, coming between them at times of crisis. Yet he found it hard to speak. They had lived together for so long and knew each other so well that there had been no reason, for many years, to have this sort of conversation.

‘I’ll trust your judgement about Eleanor Masefield,’ he said. ‘ I was infatuated with her beauty. Now I don’t think I knew her very well at all.’ He hesitated. ‘ It was never anything important,’ he said. ‘It was never anything that really mattered.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it was.’

She kissed him and they went to join the family for dinner.

Richard had laid a table in the dining room and cooked a meal for them himself. Nan Oliver had disappeared when she heard the news of Stephen’s arrest. George found them all calmer than they had been before he went to Puddleworth. They were a normal family again, more normal even than they had been when Eleanor was still alive. He understood then what Molly had been trying to tell him. In Eleanor’s presence the family had found it impossible to be themselves. There had been a hectic attempt at deception in order to please her. Now Richard Mead brought bottles of wine to the table and it was almost as if the meal was a feast of celebration at Eleanor’s disappearance.

It was Molly who mentioned Eleanor and then the family seemed a little annoyed as if she were guilty of bad manners.

‘How will you manage at Gorse Hill without Eleanor?’ she asked. ‘It’s hard to imagine the hotel without her. She was such a good organizer wasn’t she? And she always seemed so much in control.’

‘Richard’s a brilliant organizer too,’ Veronica said, looking around the table for support from the girls. ‘He’s always done most of the work.’

‘Of course we’ll miss Grandmother,’ Helen said dismissively, ‘but she had some very peculiar ideas, you know. She was so old-fashioned!’

Then George realized that the new gaiety was a sham too. They were pretending to be stronger than they were. What right had they to suggest that they had never needed Eleanor, that they had never been dependent on her? He wished that Molly had not spoilt the meal with her question. He knew she was emphasizing her theory that Eleanor’s character was an important factor in the crime, but he was convinced that the falconry agency was involved in her murder too. She was not killed simply because she was a dominating, interfering old lady. He had regained sufficient confidence in his own judgement to be sure of that.

Pritchard was later than George had expected and he thought perhaps the policeman had changed his mind and decided to interview Stephen Oliver alone. He waited on the porch at the top of the stone steps for Pritchard to arrive, hoping the fresh air would clear his mind and make him less tired. There was no moon, but occasionally the breeze would separate the cloud and there would be a scatter of stars. A tawny owl called from the trees behind the house. He began to relax and to feel able to take control of the investigation once more.

He saw headlight beams through the trees and a car pulled up on the gravel.

Pritchard’s mood had changed completely. At first George thought there may have been some private grief – perhaps one of his boys was ill or a relative had died – and he did not like to ask what was wrong. Pritchard sat still and made no move to drive away or to talk to George. He seemed absorbed in some sadness or guilt of his own. He might have been drunk. Outside the car the wind blew through the trees and the owl called again.

‘It something the matter?’ George asked at last. He felt foolish sitting there in the dark. Perhaps Pritchard would release him now, let him go back to Gorse Hill where he had more important things to think of.

‘We were wrong all the time,’ Pritchard said. He was feeling not grief, but anger at his own incompetence. His pride had been hurt.

‘In what way? Have you spoken to the boy?’

‘Yes,’ Pritchard said. ‘Briefly.’ And he was silent again.

‘Did he see his father kill Eleanor Masefield?’ Impatience was leading to irritation.

‘He says, he didn’t see Eleanor Masefield at all,’ Pritchard said, ‘and I believe him. He’s frightened. If he knew anything about the murder he would have said so. Frank Oliver was with him all that Sunday afternoon. The whole trip to Puddleworth and Wolverhampton was a waste of time.’