BLIND SPOT - AND TWO OTHERS

THE OXMARKET ASPAL MURDER MYSTERY - EPISODE TEN

23

  “I really don’t see, John, however you came to suspect Oliver Terret.”

  I looked complacently at the faces turned towards me.  I always enjoyed giving explanations.

  “I should have suspected him sooner,” I said.  “The clue, such a simple clue, was the sentence uttered by Karen Bellagamba at the party the other day.  She said to Oliver Terret:  ‘I don’t like being adopted, do you?’  Those were the revealing two words do you?  They meant – they could only mean – that Lorraine Terret was not Oliver’s own mother.”

  “Oh, I see.”  DI Silver exclaimed.

  “Lorraine Terret was really anxious herself that no one should know that Oliver was not her son.  She had few intimate friends, so it was an easy secret to protect.  However, from the very first time I visited Clarendon Cottage, I felt something was not quite right.  Oliver Terret’ attitude to Lorraine was not that of a spoiled child or of a devoted son.  And Lorraine Terret, though she was clearly very fond of Oliver, nevertheless unconsciously treated him as a prized possession that she had bought and paid for.”

  I sipped my third pint before continuing.

  “So there is Oliver Terret, comfortably established with Lorraine Terret’s money to back his ventures, and then into his assured world comes Faith Roberts who has recognized the photograph that he keeps in a drawer – the photograph with ‘my mother’ written on the back of it.  Faith Roberts, of course, thinks that the photograph is of Lorraine Terret when young, since she assumes as a matter of course that she is Oliver’s own mother.  I do not think that actual blackmail ever entered Faith’s mind, but she did hope, perhaps for a ‘nice little present,’ as a reward for holding her tongue about a piece of bygone gossip which would not be pleasant for a ‘proud’ woman like Lorraine Terret.”

  I could see that once more I had everyone’s attention.

  “Oliver Terret was taking no chances.  He steals the meat tenderizer, laughingly referred to as a perfect weapon for murder by Karen Bellagamba, and on the following evening, he calls at Faith Roberts’ cottage.  She invites him, quite unsuspicious, and he kills her. He knows where she kept her savings – everyone in Oxmarket Aspal seemed to know – and he faked a burglary, hiding the money outside the house.  Marcus Dye is suspected and arrested.  Everything is now safe for the very clever Oliver Terret.”

  I looked at the empty chair where Oliver had been sitting before being handcuffed and led away by Sergeant Higgins.

  “Then suddenly, I came on the scene and produced four photographs, and Lorraine Terret recognizes the one of Sue Myers.  She needs time to think things through.  Murder is involved. But what action she decided to take we will now never know. Oliver Terret wasn’t going to take any chances though and planned the whole thing like a theatrical scene setting with prepared props.  The coffee cup smeared with lipstick taken from Helena Brooks-Nunn’s handbag as well as even buying a bottle of her distinctive perfume.  While we waited in the car before going down to the pub, Oliver ran back twice into the house.  The murder took a matter of seconds.  After that, there was the swift distribution of the ‘props.’  And with Lorraine Terret dead, he inherited a large fortune, and no suspicion would be attached to him since it would seem obvious that the murder was committed by a woman.  With three women visiting the Clarendon Cottage that night one of them was bound to be suspected.  And that, indeed, was so.”

  “My God,” Julie Lawes exclaimed.

  “But Oliver, like all criminals, was careless and overconfident.  Not only was there a book in the cottage with his original name scribbled in it, but he also kept, for purposes of his own, the fatal photograph.  It would have been much safer for him if he had destroyed it, but he clung to the belief that he could use it to incriminate someone else at the right moment.”

  “The bastard!”  Karen Bellagamba interjected.

  “Very much so,” I agreed and then pointed to her. “He tried to incriminate you.  After all, the meat tenderizer was hers, and she was, he knew, an adopted child and might find it hard to prove she was not Sue Myers’ daughter.  However, when Chloe Bird admitted having been on the scene of the crime he conceived the idea of planting the photograph among her possessions.  He tried to do so, using a ladder that the gardener had leant against the window.  But Lady Osborne was nervous and had insisted on all the windows being kept locked, so Oliver did not succeed in his purpose.  He went straight back to the guest house and while I sat there meditating with my eyes shut and put the photograph in a drawer which, unfortunately for him, I had searched only a short time before.”

  “I didn’t see him come in,” Karen Bellagamba stated.

  “You were too busy looking for some paperwork and I knew the photograph had been planted.  Even with my eyes shut I can tell the difference between a male and female footsteps and since the name of Kirsten Brown had been written on the inside of the book from the cottage, Kirsten Brown must be either Lorraine Terret or Oliver Terret.”

  I finished my drink and signalled to the barman for a refill.

  “I should have seen this all a lot sooner.  I was handicapped by the fact that someone tried to push me onto the railway line and that the person who had done so was the murderer of Faith Roberts.  Now on that occasion Oliver Terret was practically the only person who could not have been at the railway station at that time.”

  There was sudden chuckle from Eric Bellagamba.  “It could have been an accident.”  He suggested.

  “Could have been,” I said.  “But Oliver Terret was far too conceited to fear me at all.  It is a characteristic of murderers.  Fortunately, perhaps. For in this case, there was very little evidence.”

  “Do you mean to say,” Julie Lawes demanded incredulously, “that Oliver murdered his mother whilst we sat outside in the car and that we hadn’t the least idea of it?  There wouldn’t have been time!”

  “I’m afraid there was.”  I said.  “It wasn’t a spontaneous killing.  It was all very contrived.  Pre-eminently a theatrical murder.”

  “The bastard!”  She said with emphasis and I couldn’t disagree with her.

24

  “I’m not going back to Anglia Meats,” Joanne Burton told me.  “They’re a lousy firm anyway.”

  “And they have served their purpose.”

  “What do you mean by that, John?”

  “Why did you come to Oxmarket Aspal?”

  “I supposed being Mr Clever-Clogs, you think you know?”

  “I have a little idea.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I have been discreet,” I said looking meditatively at Joanne’s hair.  “It was assumed that the woman who went into Lorraine Terret’s house, the fair-haired woman that was seen, was Helena Brooks-Nunn, and that she had denied being there simply out of fright.  Since it was Oliver Terret who killed Lorraine, her presence had no more significance than that of Chloe Bird.  But all the same I don’t think it was, Helena.  I think that woman who was seen was you, Joanne.”

  “Why me?”  Her voice was hard.

  “Why were you so interested in Oxmarket Aspal?” I countered with another question.  “Why, when you went over there, did you ask Oliver Terret for an autograph?  You’re not the autographing type.  What did you know about the Terret’s?  Why did you come to Suffolk in the first place?”

  “I’ve nothing to hide.”  She opened her handbag.  From a worn notecase, she pulled out a small newspaper cutting frayed with age.  It showed the face that by now I knew so well.  The simpering face of Sue Myers.”

  Written across it were the words: She killed my mother.

  “I thought so,” I said handing back to her.  “Your real name is Porter?”

  Joanne nodded.

  “I was brought up by relatives.  Very kind to me, they were.  But I was old enough to know what had gone on.  Sue Myers was a manipulator and my father was just weak and besotted by her.  But he took the rap for something that I always believed that she did.  After a lot of research I found out that she’d had a son and had christened Kirsten Brown.” 

  She paused as the emotion started to well up inside her before continuing once she had composed herself.

  “I then found out that he’d changed his name to Oliver Terret, and he wrote plays.  I traced him to Oxmarket Aspal and when he was pointed out to me with his mother I initially thought that Sue Myers was still alive and had now got a load of money.  I got myself a job because I was curious.  Really curious, and I admit that I wanted to get even.  Then when you brought up all that Marcus Dye business, I jumped to the wrong conclusion that it was Lorraine Terret who’d killed Faith Roberts.  Sue Myers up to her tricks again.  I saw you, Julie Lawes and Oliver Terret go down the pub, so I went to Clarendon Cottage and I found her.  Sitting there dead, her face all purple and swollen.  All the things I’d been thinking seemed silly and melodramatic.  I knew that I’d never, really, want to kill anyone when it actually came to it. Then I realized that it might be awkward to explain what I’d been doing in the cottage. It was a cold night and I’d got gloves on, so I knew I hadn’t left any fingerprints and I didn’t think anyone had seen me.”  She paused and added abruptly.  “Are you going to tell the police?”

  “No,” I said shaking my head.  “I wish you all the best for the future that is all.”

EPILOGUE

  Detective Inspector Paul Silver and I celebrated in the Italian Restaurant in the centre of Oxmarket.

  As coffee was served DI Silver leaned back in his chair and gave a deep sigh of repletion.

  “That was fantastic, John,” he said approvingly.

  “It always is in here,” I agreed.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, John.” A slight smile creased his wooden countenance.  “I didn’t think you could do it, but you really pulled it off. It was lucky that Oliver Terret didn’t realize how little evidence we actually had on him.  A good lawyer would have crucified you in the dock.  Luckily, he incriminated himself when you pressurized him.”

  “It was not entirely luck,” I said reprovingly.

  “Nice to see you deal with Eric Bellagamba so well,” DI Silver said with a grin.  “Got a temper he has, but you quickly put him in his place.”

  I said nothing.  I was trained in unarmed combat and I hadn’t had much call to use it since I had moved to Suffolk from London.

  “Such a complicated business,” ruminated DI Silver.  “Just shows how true the old saying is that everyone’s got something to hide.  At one stage, I was all set to arrest Helena Brooks-Nunn.  If ever a woman acted guilty, she did.”

  He sipped his coffee, and then gave a low chuckle.

  “Then take Lord and Lady Osborne.  Sinister sort of house. Hate and malice.  Awkward frustrated sort of girl.  And what’s behind that? Nothing sinister.  Just money!”

  “As simple as that!”

  “The girl has the money – quite a lot of it. Left her by an aunt.  So, mother keeps tight hold of her in case she should want to marry.  And the stepfather loathes her because she has the money and pays the bill.  I gather he has had a few business failures.  A mean bastard by all accounts and as for the Lady Osborne, she’s pure poison dissolved in sugar.”

  I nodded my head in a satisfied fashion.  “It is fortunate that the girl has money.  It will help her pay for her wedding to Marcus Dye.”

  DI Silver looked surprised.  “What?”

  “They don’t know it yet, but I guarantee that will happen in the next couple of years.  They are attracted to each other without knowing it.”

  “Like interfering in other people’s lives do you?”  DI Silver grinned.

  “You’re a one to talk.” I said and then suggested a brandy.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  I gave the order.

  “There is something else I need to tell you,” DI Silver said.

  “Go on.”

  “Apparently at his previous practice in Grimsby, his first wife died and the police there got some rather nasty anonymous letters, saying that he had killed her.  Poisoned her in fact.  She’d been attended by a different doctor, reputable man, so everything was quite above board. There was nothing to go upon except the fact they’d mutually insured their lives in each other’s favour but the married couple’s do that all the time.”

  I remember Keldine Hogg’s frightened air.  Her mention of anonymous letters, and her insistence that she did not believe anything they said.  I remembered, too, her certainty that my inquiry about Faith Roberts was only a pretext.

  “I should imagine that it was not only the police who got anonymous letters.”

  “Who else got them?”

  “Keldine Hogg,” I said.  “When I appeared in Oxmarket Aspal, she thought I was on her husband’s track and the Faith Roberts murder investigation was a pretext.  Yes – and he thought so too . . .  That explains it!  It was Dr Hogg who tried to push me under the train!”

  “Do you think he’ll have a shot at doing this wife in, too?”

  “I think she would be wise not to insure her life in his favour,” I said dryly.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him.”