Rules of Murder (21 page)

“Hardly something one would expect to find,” Drew conceded. “So what is your theory now, Inspector? Obviously we’re well past the lovers’ quarrel idea.”

“Looks that way.”

“But if it is someone after whatever he can steal from
Farlinford, why the bit about Marielle, if that’s her name? And whyever would he kill Constance?”

Birdsong returned the list of missing items to the folder, his thin lips twitching beneath his heavy mustache. “You may not have all the answers, Detective Farthering, but you do ask some very good questions.”

It was a short drive southwest of Winchester to Chandlers Ford. The Merchants Bank and Trust was a small but reputable organization long established in a dour Georgian building on Winchester Road just down from the train station. Drew had never heard of them. And though it was not far from Farthering St. John, he had not often visited Chandlers Ford.

Birdsong showed the woman at the front desk his identification, and he and Drew were immediately shown into the manager’s office. There they were greeted by a middle-aged man whose portly physique and florid face spoke to his keen enjoyment of good food and fine wine.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen, I am Joseph Grambs, the manager. You must be Chief Inspector Birdsong.” Birdsong shook his hand, and then Grambs extended his hand to Drew. “And you are . . . ?”

“I’m Drew Farthering. I am one of the directors of Farlinford Processing. My stepfather is Mason Parker, the managing partner.”

“I see. Well, I hope you can appreciate our position in this matter, Mr. Farthering. The papers were in order, if you’d care to review them. And as you say, Mr. Parker is the managing partner of your company.”

“Yes, he is, Mr. Grambs,” Drew said with a smile. “Might we sit?”

“Oh, yes, certainly.”

Drew and Birdsong sat in the pair of leather chairs that faced Mr. Grambs’s imposing mahogany desk.

“Now, Mr. Grambs,” Birdsong began, “if you don’t mind, I’d like to hear exactly what happened.”

After taking his seat behind the desk, Grambs began, “Well, as I told your man on the telephone, it was the end of last month. Our Mr. Rodale received a call from someone claiming to be a Mr. Lincoln at Farlinford Processing. He said he wanted to sell some bearer bonds the company had held for some while now, and asked if we could accommodate him. As it was rather a large amount, Mr. Rodale came and spoke to me about it. I told him that so long as they had the proper authorization from the directors of the company, we would be happy to make the transaction. That afternoon a messenger arrived with the bonds and a declaration from the board of directors approving the sale.”

“And you’re contacting us now because . . . ?”

“Well, after I heard about the goings-on at Farlinford, I thought I’d better make certain I didn’t have possession of stolen goods.”

Birdsong narrowed his eyes. “May I see the declaration?”

“Certainly.”

Grambs took an official-looking document from a file and pushed it across the desk. “You’ll see it’s on Farlinford’s stationery and signed by two directors as required. Very aboveboard.”

Birdsong inspected the paper and then handed it over to Drew. It was indeed on company stationery, signed by Edwin M. Rushford and David Lincoln.

“Do you know if those signatures are genuine?” the chief inspector asked Drew.

“I really couldn’t say. Did you happen to see the messenger, Mr. Grambs?”

“No. Mr. Rodale dealt with him.”

“And Mr. Rodale was the only one to speak to the man on the telephone?”

“He was.”

“Is it possible to have your Mr. Rodale come in here for a moment?”

“Of course.” Grambs stood and walked over to the door of his office. Poking his head through the doorway, he said to the woman at the front desk, “Miss Stapleton . . .”

“Yes, Mr. Grambs?”

“If you would, please ask Mr. Rodale to come to my office.”

“Right away, sir.”

A few moments later, Mr. Rodale stepped into Grambs’s office, shielded behind the sheaf of files and loose papers he carried in both arms. “You wished to see me, sir?”

Grambs introduced Drew and the chief inspector. “They’d like to ask you about the Farlinford matter.”

“Certainly, sir.” He juggled his papers to allow himself the opportunity to push his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose. “How may I help?”

“Tell us what you remember,” Birdsong said, and Rodale dutifully repeated the story Grambs had already related.

“The Mr. Lincoln on the telephone,” Drew said, “what sort of voice did he have?”

Rodale thought for a moment. “Nothing unusual, I suppose. Rather an ordinary voice.”

“Young or old?”

“Sort of middling, I’d have to say. Or perhaps a bit more on the young side, but not much.”

Birdsong made a note in his book.

“And the messenger?” Drew asked.

“Young chap. Looked barely out of school.”

“What sort of voice did he have?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think he was the same one on the phone. Working class, going by the way he spoke. And he didn’t say much, anyway. Just a hasty ‘Package for you, sir’ and ‘Sign here, please,’ and he was off.”

“You didn’t pay for the bonds in cash, did you?” Birdsong asked.

“I should say not. We gave the boy a check made out to Farlinford Processing.”

“Has that check been deposited?”

“It has,” Mr. Rodale said. “It was cashed at the bank in Otterbourne that same day.”

“Another bank with which Farlinford has never had dealings,” Drew said, and Birdsong nodded.

“The messenger, was he from a service?” Drew asked Rodale.

“Not that I could tell. He didn’t have a uniform or anything of the sort. I thought he’d been sent over from your firm.”

Drew sighed.

The chief inspector removed some photographs from his pocket and spread them out on the manager’s desk for Rodale to see—pictures of Lincoln, Mason, Rushford, Peterson the gardener, and even Nick, along with three or four others Drew did not know. “Do you recognize any of these men, Mr. Rodale?” Birdsong asked.

Rodale studied them for a minute or two, then slid one of the photographs back toward the chief inspector. “I’ve seen that man. I know I have.”

Drew leaned forward in his chair. “Really? Where?”

“Give me a moment, Mr. Farthering. I’ll think of it.”

Drew glanced at Birdsong, but instead of the excitement he expected to see on the chief inspector’s face, there was only mild disgust.

“That’s Detective Inspector Cook from our fraud division. We put his picture in there so as not to unduly influence any of our witnesses.”

Drew sighed once more.

“Cook, Cook,” Rodale mused, tapping his chin, and then he beamed at them. “Ah, yes! He won the cycling race they held at the fair in Highbridge last summer. Bested their local chappie by a good fifteen seconds. Grand day, that was.”

Chief Inspector Birdsong stood and thanked the two men for their time, and then Drew followed him back onto Winchester Road.

“A slippery fellow, this Lincoln,” Drew said after he and the inspector had driven toward Winchester for some minutes in near silence.

“We’ll have him,” Birdsong grumbled, grinding the gears as he shifted into third. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Farthering.”

“Where do you think he’s got to just now?”

Birdsong frowned, considering. “If he was smart, he’d be long gone by now. Grambs said they bought those bonds at the end of last month.”

“But we know he was in Winchester no longer ago than Friday, when he broke into the office.”

“True enough.”

“Why do you suppose he hasn’t made good his escape to South America or China or some such?”

“Obviously he was after something at Farlinford. Question is, did he find what he was looking for?”

Drew nodded. “And if he didn’t, where is he now, and will he be coming back for it?”

I
n his own car now and heading back to Farthering Place, Drew considered the question of where Lincoln might be secreting himself since his supposed death. Searches at Farthering Place had turned up nothing. Where else might he be? Somewhere close enough for him to prowl about the place at night, skulking in the wood or climbing trellises into upstairs windows. Drew hadn’t actually checked the trellises around the house, but he supposed there would be broken tendrils and scuffed or damaged bits of wood or brick if someone had climbed one.

On a whim he drove past the drive up to Farthering and headed into the village instead. Of course, the lad he’d seen climbing down from the window at the inn couldn’t have been Lincoln, even if the man was a wizard at disguising himself. Still, if a boy could climb a trellis, so could a man. It couldn’t hurt to make inquiries. Any clue would be welcome, and perhaps all wasn’t as advertised at the Royal Elizabeth Inn.

Mrs. Burrell started when she saw him at the back door of her inn.

“Mr. Drew! What are you doing here? Wasn’t anyone at the front to see to you?”

Drew removed his hat and stepped into her kitchen, into the simmering, tantalizing smells coming from a variety of bubbling pots on the enormous iron stove.

“I didn’t go up front, actually. I came to see you, if you’ll forgive the intrusion.”

She smiled a little uncertainly and pushed a limp strand of graying hair behind one ear. “I’ll be happy to help however I can, of course, but—”

“I was just having a look in your garden, to be perfectly honest, and I was wondering if you could tell me if anyone’s been climbing down that trellis from that window there?”

“I should say not,” she huffed. “That little rapscallion who helps round the inn climbed up it a few days ago, and didn’t I half tan him when I caught him at it.”

“What was he doing?”

“Said there was a pound note caught up there and he went to bring it down. I won’t have him up there spoiling the ivy and tramping his mud back through the inn.”

“And was there a pound note?”

“Funny enough, there was. I checked to make sure there wasn’t nobody missing of it, then I couldn’t do nothing but let the little rascal keep it. Heaven knows what he’ll be wasting it on.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, Friday, I suppose it was. He’d been warned not to get into mischief, not if he wanted to keep his job. Mind you, I can find another little imp to do the fetching and such round here if he doesn’t behave, and I told him as much.”

“Quite right,” Drew agreed. “Is, um . . . is he about at the moment?”

“I sent him to gather up the breakfast things from any of the
rooms as ordered up. Shouldn’t take a minute, but he takes his precious time, he does. Those should have been down long ago.”

“Mind if I pop up just for a bit and talk to him?”

The woman smiled, splitting her face into two crinkled halves. “’Course I don’t mind. He’ll listen to you, I don’t doubt. Remind him of where his heathen ways will end him up. Tell him a layabout never comes to any good.”

“Yes, well, I’ll have a talk with him. Don’t you worry, Mrs. Burrell. What’s the boy’s name?”

“May as well be Mischief Maker, if you ask me, but it’s Eddie. Eddie Jenkins.”

“One of the Jenkinses from over by the mill pond?”

“The very same, sir.”

“Right. Thank you.”

“You send him down with those dishes too when you’re done, sir. He’ll be all day about it otherwise.”

“Right away.”

Drew hurried up the stairs and found the boy tottering down the hallway with a trayful of dirty breakfast ware and three pairs of boots to be blacked. It was a heavy load for a ten-year-old.

“Well, you must be Eddie,” Drew said, smiling, and the boy stopped and nodded, big dark eyes uncertain under a mass of lank black hair.

“I’m Drew Farthering and—”

“I know who you are. You come from up at Farthering Place.”

“That’s right.”

“I ain’t done nothing.”

“Of course not,” Drew said as he took the tray from him. “I just thought you might be able to help me with something.”

“You oughtn’t do that. It’s my job.”

“That’s all right, Eddie. I don’t mind helping you a bit, too.”

“Did that man and lady really get killed at your house?”

“I’m afraid they did.”

The boy dropped his eyes and fussed with the lace on one of the boots he still had slung over his shoulder. “My mum’s dead, too.”

“It’s a tough go, isn’t it?” Drew set the tray on the floor and gestured toward the two Morris chairs that graced the little alcove in the hallway. “How about we sit right here and talk a bit?”

The boy shook his head. “I ain’t allowed. I might get the chairs dirty.”

“Come on now,” Drew urged. “If you do, I’ll make it all right with Mrs. Burrell. Fair enough?”

Still looking as if he were about to be scolded, the boy sat down. Drew joined him.

“Now, this is better, isn’t it?”

The boy nodded, obviously certain that it wasn’t.

“Now, Eddie, I understand you got in a bit of a jam with Mrs. Burrell awhile back. What was that about?”

“Didn’t mean nothing by it. There was a pound note up in the ivy in back of the inn, and I went to fetch it down.”

“A pound? How do you suppose it got up there?”

“Dunno. I thought maybe the wind got it. One of the guests, the gentleman with the white mustache, he was looking up at it, figuring what it was, and said I might as well have it if I wanted to go up. That was all. I didn’t steal it, and I didn’t break nothing.”

“I believe you. Do you know the name of the gentleman with the white mustache?”

The boy shook his head. “But he’s in number twenty-two, ’long with the other gentleman that don’t come out.”

“Never?”

“Well, in the late mornings, I think. But only for a bit. And he’s all wrapped up, like he’s ill.”

“Yes, I heard that he wasn’t feeling well. Have you been in there yet today?”

“Not yet. I couldn’t carry anything more, so I thought I’d take this lot down and then do the evens.”

“Is he out now?”

“Him and the gentleman with the mustache, yeah.”

“I see.” Drew smiled again. “What do you say we go take a quick look round number twenty-two, and then I’ll help you clear up the evens? How would that be?”

The boy narrowed his eyes. “If you take something, I’ll be the one getting the blame.”

Drew put one hand upon his heart. “Upon my word, Eddie, I won’t touch a thing. I’m just curious about how the gentleman knew there was a pound note up there, and I should think it quite worth another pound if you’ll let me have a look round. What do you say?”

“I dunno . . .”

“Just one little look. Help a fellow out.”

With a sigh the boy led him down the hall to the door labeled 22, and with a turn of the passkey they were inside.

The room was unremarkable as hotel rooms go. Situated in the oldest part of the inn, it was a corner room with two windows, one above the back garden, the other overlooking the roof of the new addition, and farther on, the churchyard and Holy Trinity itself. Under each window was a single bed and night table. Both beds were in need of making up. As explanation for the acrid odor in the air, the ashtray on one of the night tables was overflowing, and the other, though empty, was still grimed with recent ash.

On the table in the middle of the room was an assortment of dirty plates and cups, and a crumpled napkin lay on the floor under one of the chairs. Drew picked it up. There was a
large water spot on one corner, and in the center of it, a tiny pinkish smudge.

“Tell me, Eddie, was there another napkin when you brought up breakfast today?”

“I dunno. There should have been, but I don’t bring up the breakfast unless Maggie’s sick. I just clear up.”

He started picking up the dishes, but Drew stopped him. “Just let me have a quick look first.”

One of the occupants of the room had been decidedly hungrier than the other, but of course anyone who was ill was likely to suffer a loss of appetite. Half a cup of cold coffee sat next to the nearly full plate, and Drew took a moment to examine it. Something had been wiped off the inner and outer rim of one side of the cup, something that had left a sticky, slightly greasy residue. There was nothing like it on the empty cup or plate.

Drew went to the window and looked down on the trellis he’d seen Eddie on a few days before. He’d certainly made a mess of the vine and the paint with his climbing. He’d scuffed up the sill, too.

“How far did you climb up here, Eddie? All the way to the window?”

“Oh, no, sir. Just enough to reach the money. I was standing just about where that drainpipe bends. Then somebody yelled at me from the street, and I nipped back down. That was when Mrs. Burrell caught me.”

Drew swallowed down a chuckle. “Bad luck, that.”

Eddie started to empty the ashtray that was full, but Drew stopped him and examined the remains.

“Hmmm. I say, Eddie . . .”

“Yes, sir?”

“Does this room have a bath, or do they use the one in the hall?”

“No, sir. Mrs. Burrell said they was very particular to have a room with a bath. Can I take away the breakfast things now?”

“Yes, that’ll be fine.” Drew pointed to a door across from the one that led to the hallway. “Through here?”

Eddie nodded as he began stacking dishes, and Drew pushed open the door. The bathroom was perfectly empty, including the little medicine cabinet, except for the towels and the sliver of soap provided by the hotel. Even the wastebasket, apart from a small paper bag, was unoccupied.

Drew opened up the crumpled paper and looked inside. It too was empty, but the inside was coated with what looked and smelled like cigarette ash. Drew smiled to himself. So that was it.

He walked back into the main room.

“I say, Eddie . . .”

The boy was in no position to answer any more questions. As it was, Mrs. Burrell had him by one ear, her face the picture of affronted authority.

“Mr. Drew!”

Drew smiled, the appealing, apologetic-but-mischievous smile that always softened the hardest of female hearts, especially the middle-aged ones. “Sorry, Mrs. Burrell. I know this doesn’t look exactly on the up-and-up and all, but well, you know, everyone’s been a bit curious about this Flesch chappie, and I didn’t think it would do any harm just to—”

“I don’t see as it matters, Mr. Drew, what you think, begging your pardon, sir, if our guests think they can’t leave their rooms and have us keep them private for them. Be still, you.” Her face red and shining from the effort, she shook Eddie by the ear, pinching a little harder to keep him from squirming away. “Now, Mr. Drew, sir, I think you’d best be going before Mr. Whiteside and Mr. Flesch come back and find there’s been goings-on in
their room while they were out. And here I thought you were going to set a fine example for the boy.”

“I didn’t do nothing,” Eddie whined, and Mrs. Burrell shook him again.

“The blame is entirely mine, I assure you,” Drew said. “I was going to help him gather up the breakfast things so he could get them down to you quickly, as you asked.” He tried the smile again. “I’m a hopelessly curious creature. Anyone will tell you so. No need to take it out on him.”

Lips pursed, she pushed Eddie toward the little table. “You clear off those dishes and get them all down to the kitchen, and don’t you let me hear you say boo.”

He scrambled to do as she said and was out of the room in a flash.

“It really was all my doing,” Drew said once the boy was gone.

“Well, I can hardly be surprised to see that young scalawag up to mischief. I was taking a chance trusting him in here in the first place. I only did it long of his mother passing on and all. But you, Mr. Drew, and a gentleman born, as well! I hardly know what to say.”

“But I—”

“No, sir, I think there’s no need of saying anything more. If you’ll just leave me to my work as I try to put things right before the reputation of my hotel is put in further danger, I will thank you.”

Chastened, Drew made one last apology and then hurried out into the hallway and down the front stairs. He slipped a five-pound note into little Eddie’s hand as he passed him, and then he spied Maggie, the girl who did most of the scrub work at the inn, cleaning up at the bar.

“Hullo,” Drew said with a tip of his hat. “Has it been a busy morning?”

The girl gave him a shy smile. “Not really, Mr. Drew. Hasn’t been much of anybody round the place today. But then we haven’t started serving the drinks yet, either.”

She wiped down the bar and started cleaning the ashtrays. Only the one closest to the end had anything in it.

“Do you tidy up here every day, Maggie?”

“Yes, sir. Mrs. Burrell won’t have it no other way.”

“That’s a lot of ash for a slow day, isn’t it?” Drew asked, taking a quick look at the cigarette butts before she dumped them into her trash bin.

“Suppose it is. Some folk smoke one after another, you know.”

“Was there a lady in here today?”

Maggie frowned for a moment, thinking. “Not as I seen, Mr. Drew. ’Course, I was helping in the kitchen and taking up trays most of the morning, so I suppose there could have been. Why?”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’m just a nosey Parker with too much time on his hands.” He gave her a wink and, setting his hat on his head at a jaunty angle, went whistling out into the street.