BLIND SPOT - AND TWO OTHERS

THE OXMARKET ASPAL MURDER MYSTERY - EPISODE SIX

12

  Detective Inspector Paul Silver sat opposite me and sighed.

  “I’m not saying you haven’t got anything, John,” he said slowly.  “Personally, I think you have.  But it’s not much.  Not much at all.”

  “By itself it is not much,” I agreed.  “There must be more.”

  “Sergeant Higgins and I ought to have spotted that newspaper.”

  “It’s not your fault.  The crime was so obvious.  Robbery with violence. The room all pulled about, the money missing.  Why should there any significance to you in a torn newspaper among all the other confusion.”

  “I should have got that.”  DI Silver repeated obstinately.  “And that bloody printer cartridge.”

  “I heard about that purely accidentally.  It was a lucky break that was all.”

  “Yet it meant something to you. Why?”

  “Only because of that comment about her hardly ever using her computer.  You and me, use a computer as a matter of course.  Faith Roberts didn’t.”

  DI Silver sighed heavily.  Then he laid out on the table four photographs.

  “These are the photos you asked me to get.  The original photos that the Oxmarket Sunday Echo used. At any rate they’re a little clearer than the reproductions.  But they’re not much to go on.”

  “Do you agree with me that we can discard Sandra Cavendish?”

  “I would have thought so,” DI Silver said.  “If Sandra Cavendish was in Oxmarket Aspal, everyone would know.  Retelling her sad personal story seems to have been her speciality.”

  “What can you tell me about the others?”

  “I’ve found out what I could.  Kirsten Braun took the name Hope Newman and the police opinion of her doesn’t quite match up with the article.”

  I smiled and then asked, “What the police think is not evidence but is usually a very sound guide.”

  “Exactly.  I was quite a young chap at the time and I remember hearing it being discussed by my old boss, Assistant Commissioner William Frederick Patterson.  He believed that the idea of killing Mrs Porter was all Kirsten Braun’s idea and that she not only thought of it, but she did it.  Michael Porter came home one day and found that his young mistress had taken a shortcut.  She thought it would all pass off as natural causes, but Porter knew better.  He started to s**t himself and disposed of the body in the cellar and elaborated the plan of having his wife die in Switzerland. Then, when the whole thing came out, he was insistent that he’d done it alone, that Kirsten Braun knew nothing about it.  Well,” DI Silver shrugged his shoulders, “nobody could prove anything else.  Forensics, SOCOs, all drew a blank.  Kirsten Braun was all innocence and horror. Assistant Commissioner Patterson had his doubts, but there was nothing to go on.  It’s not evidence, though John.”

  “What about Kay Kempster?”

  “I checked her out on the police computer.  A nasty b***h.  Her husband was a horrible bastard as well.  Really Unpleasant pair.  Nothing to choose between them, and she really worked her s****l charms on that young man until he didn’t know his arse from his elbow.”

  “Did she marry him?”

  “No idea,” DI Silver replied, shaking his head.

  “Where did she end up?”

  “Haven’t got a clue?”  DI Silver shrugged.  “She was free woman and hadn’t been charged in any way.”

  “She might be walking round Oxmarket Aspal,” I said, thinking of Dr Hogg’s remark.

  “Exactly.”

  I shifted my gaze to the last photograph.

  “And Jo Pedder?”

  “Last heard of in Ireland.  I think you can count her out, John.  The same as Sandra Cavendish.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said.  “It was a violent attack on her aunt and a violent attack on Faith Roberts.”

  “Yes, I see,” DI Silver said.  “So, what is your opinion on all this, John?”

  “Kirsten Braun, if she is still alive, would be now approaching sixty.  Her daughter, of whose adult life the Oxmarket Sunday Echo paints such a touching picture, would be now in her thirties.  Jo Pedder would also be about that age.  Kay Kempster would now be not far short of fifty.”

  DI Silver nodded in agreement.

  “So we come to the residents of Oxmarket Aspal with special reference to those for whom Faith Roberts worked.”

  “Go on.”  DI Silver edged forward in his seat.

  “This case is complicated by the fact that Faith did occasional odd work here and there, but we will assume for the time being that she saw whatever she did see, presumably a photograph at one of her regular ‘houses.’”

  “Go on,” DI Silver said again.

  “Then as far as age goes that gives us as possibilities – first Lord and Lady Osborne where Faith Roberts worked on the day of her death.  Lady Osborne is the right age for Kirsten Braun, and she has a daughter of the right age to be Kirsten Myer’s daughter – a daughter said to be by a previous marriage.”

  “And as regards the photograph?”

  “I’m afraid no positive identification from that is possible.  Too much time has passed, too much water has gone under the bridge.  I can say that Lady Osborne is a very attractive woman, but she is much too fragile and helpless to be a murderer, but then that was the popular belief about Kirsten Braun.  How much actual physical strength would have been needed to kill Faith Roberts is difficult to say without knowing exactly what weapon was used.”

  “That still grates with me that we couldn’t find it.”

  “Lord Osborne is a different kettle of fish. He could be very unpleasant if he so wished.  The daughter is fanatically devoted to her mother and hates her father with a vengeance. I’m only presenting these facts for consideration.  The daughter might kill to prevent her mother’s past reaching her stepfather’s ears.  Mother might kill for the same reason.  Father might kill to prevent the ‘scandal’ coming out.  You and I both know that more murders have been committed for respectability than one would believe possible!  The Osborne’s are ‘nice people.’”

  DI Silver nodded and then said.  “If – I say if – there is anything in this Oxmarket Sunday Echo business, then the Osborne’s are clearly the best bet.”

  “Exactly. The only other person in Oxmarket Aspal who would fit in age is Kirsten Braun is Lorraine Terret.  There are two arguments against Lorraine Terret, as Kirsten Braun, having killed Faith Roberts.  First, she suffers from arthritis and spends most of the time in a wheel-chair -”

  “In a detective novel,” DI Silver said enviously, “that wheel-chair business would be a ruse.”

  “Secondly,” I continued.  “Lorraine Terret seems dogmatic and forceful, more inclined to bully than coax.”

  “Lorraine Terret is not impossible but highly unlikely,” DI Silver conceded.  “What about Kay Kempster?”

  “No one in Oxmarket Aspal is the right age.”

  “Unless she’s had plastic surgery.” 

  “There are three women of thirty-odd.  There is Chloe Bird.  There is Keldine Hogg and there is Helena Brooks-Nunn.  That is to say, any one of these could be Jo Pedder or alternatively Kirsten Braun’ daughter as far as age goes.”

  “And as far as possibility goes?”

  I sighed.  “Kirsten Braun’ daughter may be tall or short, dark or fair – we have no guide to what she looks like.  We have considered Chloe Bird in that role.  Now for the other two.  First I will tell you this:  Keldine Hogg fears something.”

  “Afraid of you?”

  “Possibly.”

  “That might be significant,” DI Silver said slowly.  “You’re suggesting that Keldine Hogg might be Kirsten Myer’s daughter or Jo Pedder. Is she fair or dark?”

  “Fair.”

  “Jo Pedder was a fair-haired child.”

  “Helena Brooks-Nunn is also fair-haired.  Expensively made up with remarkable wide-open dark-blue eyes.”

  “Now, John,” DI Silver shook his head at me smiling. “I’ll tell, Kimberley.”

  “She knows what I’m like,” I laughed in return and gently with my forefinger, I tapped the photograph of the child Jo Pedder in her thick spectacles.

  “So that’s what you think?  Jo Pedder?”

  “No, I am only suggesting what might be.  At the time Faith Roberts died Helena Brooks-Nunn was not yet Mrs Brooks-Nunn.  She was a young widow, terribly off, living in a rented cottage.  She was engaged to be married to the richest man in the area.  A man with political ambitions and full of his self-importance.  If Richard Brooks-Nunn had found out that he was about to marry, say, a child who had obtained a notoriety by killing her aunt, or alternatively the daughter of Michael Porter, one of the most notorious murderers from this area.  You would say perhaps if he was in love then the answer would be yes!  But he is not that sort of man.   I would put him down as selfish and ambitious.  I think that if Helena was anxious to achieve her goal she would have been extremely desperate that her past was not revealed to her future husband.”

  “I see, you think it’s her do you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m examining only the possibilities.  Helena Brooks-Nunn was on her guard against me, watchful, alarmed.”

  “That looks bad.”

  “Yes. But it is all very difficult. Once I stayed with some friends and one day we all went out shooting.  Did you know the way it goes?  You walk with the dogs and the guns; the beaters beat and the birds fly out of the woods, up into the air and then bang!  That is like us. There isn’t only one bird up in the air there are quite a few, and we’ve got to make sure we bag the right one. During Helena’s widowhood, there may have been affairs, no worse than that, but still, something that might be a little embarrassing.  Certainly, there must be some reason why she told me that Faith Roberts was a liar!”

  “What do you really think, John?”

  “What I think doesn’t matter.  I am only interested in finding out the facts.”

  “If we could get anything definite,” DI Silver murmured.  “One really suspicious circumstance, then that will turn the whole case on its head.  At the moment all we’ve got is theory and do people really murder for the reasons you’re considering?”

  “That depends on a lot of family circumstances I don’t know yet.  But the passion for respectability in Oxmarket Aspal is strong.  The postmistress said so.  Nice people like to preserve their niceness.  The village is like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. People pretending to be happily married where their pasts are kept secret from each other.  Someone might say ‘I would rather die than my husband or wife find out!’  Or “I would rather die than have my children discover who I really am!”  And then you could go on and say ‘that maybe it was better if Faith Roberts was shut up permanently!’”

  “So you think it's Lord and Lady Osborne?”

  “No.”  I said firmly.  “Lorraine Terret fits the bill more than Lady Osborne. She has determination and willpower, and she fairly dotes on her son.  I think she would do anything to prevent Oliver Terret from finding out her past before she married his father.”

  “Would he mind finding out?”

  “Probably not,” I shrugged.  “He is extremely self-centred and is certainly less devoted to his mother than she to him.”

  “What if his mother was really Kirsten Braun?  Would he have killed Faith Roberts to prevent that from coming out?”

  “He would probably capitalize on it and use the publicity for his plays.  Oliver Terret would only commit murder if he could gain out of it.”

  “It’s a wide playing field, John.”  DI Silver said, sighing.

  “I know,” I said.  “That’s what makes this case so complicated.”

    I felt a sudden hard purposeful shove in the small of my back.  It was so violent and so unexpected that I was taken completely unawares.  In another second I would have fallen on the line under the incoming train, but a man beside me on the platform caught hold of me in the nick of time and pulled me back.               

  “f**k me, are you alright?”  The man demanded.  He was a big burly man, covered in tattoos and wearing an Ipswich Town football shirt.  “You’re not trying to top yourself are you?”

  “No, I lost my balance,” I said quickly. “Thanks very much for catching me.”

  “I thought you were a goner, mate.”

  Already the crowd was milling around us, boarding the train, others leaving it.  Oblivious to what had just happened.

  “You, okay?”  The man asked me again, as I stepped onto the train.

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

    But how wrong had I been!  Among those I had interviewed in Oxmarket Aspal one discussion had achieved a result.  Somebody had been afraid.  Somebody had sought to put an end to my dangerous reopening of a closed case.

  On my mobile phone walking from the station at Oxmarket Aspal, I rang Detective Inspector Paul Silver.

  “I have some news,” I said.  “Someone has tried to kill me!”

  I listened with satisfaction to the flow of remarks from the other end.

  “No, I’m not hurt. But it was close. Yes, under a train.  No, I did not see who did it, but rest assured, I shall find out!  I know now that I am on the right track.”

13

  With a glass of Baileys over Ice in one hand, Julie Lawes approached me towards the end of the Brooks-Nunn’s party.  I was grateful because I wondered how the hell I had got roped into attending.  I had returned to the guest house to find an invitation left with Karen Bellagamba and telephoned the Detective Inspector to see if he had the same doubts that I had about going.

  I was surprised about his response.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” he told me.  “But be a bit more on your guard this time. Somebody has already tried to kill you and they will try again.”

  Julie Lawes clinked my glass of Aberlour.  A ten-year-old single malt whisky.

  “How are you?”  She asked.

  “Good thanks.”  I said.  “You?”

    “Come out on the terrace,” she said to me, in a conspiratorial whisper.

  At the same time she pressed into my hand a small piece of paper.

  Together they stepped out through the French windows and walked along the terrace.  I unfolded the piece of paper.

  “Dr Hogg?”  I asked, looking questioningly at the author.  Julie Lawes nodded vigorously, a large plume of grey hair fell across her face as she did so.

  “He’s the murderer,” she said.

  “Really?  What makes you think that?”

  “I just know it,” she insisted.  “He’s the type.”

  “Perhaps.”  I tried to hide the tone in my voice, but I couldn’t help sound unconvinced.  “What was his motive?”

  “Misconduct.”  She said.  “And Faith Roberts knew it.”

  In reply, I remarked conversationally:  “Yesterday someone tried to push me on to the railway line at Ox upland station.”

  “Bloody hell!”  She exclaimed.  “And Dr Hogg was out doing home visits.”

 “I believe so.”

  “Then that settles it,” she said with satisfaction.

  “Not quite,” I said.  “Both Mr and Mrs Brooks-Nunn were in Ox upland last night and came home separately.  Mrs Hogg may have sat at home all evening watching television, or she may not – no one can say.  Chloe Bird often goes to the cinema in Oxmarket.”

  “She didn’t be last night.  She was at home.  She told me so.”

  “You cannot believe all you are told,” I said reprovingly.  “The foreign maid, Agatha, on the other hand, was at the cinema with her boyfriend last night, so she cannot tell me who was or was not at home!  You see, it is not so easy to narrow things down.”

  “I can vouch for Lorraine and Oliver Terret,” she said.  “We were playing the Sherlock Holmes edition of Cluedo.”

  “I thought you would have been busy collaborating with your murder mystery play?”

  “Leaving his mother to leap on a motor bicycle concealed in the shrubbery?”  Julie Lawes laughed.  “No, Mrs Terret was there the whole time.”  She sighed as sadder thoughts came to her.  “Collaborating indeed,” she said bitterly.  “The whole thing is a bloody nightmare.”

   “I think I’m pissed,” Karen Bellagamba announced.  “Valpolicella always does that to me.  We don’t often have parties in Oxmarket Aspal. It’s because both of you have come to stay.  I wish could write books like you, Miss Lawes.  The trouble with me is, I can’t do anything properly.”

  “I’m sure you’re a good wife and mother, Mrs Bellagamba.”

  She was silent for a moment or two, her attractive hazel eyes alcoholically hazy, as though she was looking into the far distance.

  “The other day there was an article in the Oxmarket Sunday Echo,” she said suddenly.  “An idiotic letter from a woman asking what was the best thing for her to do. Have her illegitimate child adopted so that it stood a chance in the future with a better education, clothes, comfortable surroundings, want for nothing or try and bring her up on her own. I think that is idiotic.  She shouldn’t have got herself pregnant in the first place.  Stupid bitch.” 

  She stared down into her empty glass as though it were a crystal.

  “I ought to know,” she said. “I was an adopted child.  My mother parted with me and my adoptive parents gave me every advantage, but it always hurts me to know that I wasn’t really wanted by my mother.”

  “Maybe it was for the best,” I said.

  Her eyes met mine.

  “I that’s a load of s**t,” she responded venomously.  “For my mother it was a way of convincing herself that she was doing the right thing.”

  Oliver Terret came along the terrace and joined us.

  “What are you all talking about?”

  “Adoption,” Karen said.  “I don’t like being adopted, do you?”

  “Well, it’s much better than being an orphan, don’t you think?  I think we ought to go now, don’t you, Julie.”

  We all left simultaneously. Dr Hogg had already had to hurry away and the rest of us walked down the hill together talking loudly and happily with that extra hilarity that alcohol induces.

  When we reached the gate of Clarendon Cottage, Oliver Terret insisted that they should all come in.

  “Just to tell mother all about the party.  So boring for her, not being able to go because he legs were playing up, and she so hates to miss these things.”

  We surged in cheerfully and Lorraine Terret seemed pleased to see us.

  “Who else was there?” She asked.  “Lord and Lady Osborne?”

  “No, Lady Osborne didn’t feel well enough, and that dim Chloe wouldn’t come without her.”

  “She’s pathetic, isn’t she?”  Keldine Hogg said.

  “I think almost pathological,” Oliver said.

  “Is that mother of hers,” Karen said.  “Some mothers really do almost eat their young, don’t they?”

  She blushed suddenly as she met Lorraine Terret’s quizzical eye.

  “Do I devour you, Oliver?”  Lorraine Terret asked.

  “Of course not, Mum.”

  To cover her confusion Karen hastily plunged into an account of her breeding experiences with Springer Spaniels.  The conversation became technical.

  “You can’t get away from heredity in people as well as dogs,” Lorraine Terret said decisively.

  “Don’t you think it’s the environment?”  Keldine Hogg murmured.

  “No, I don’t.”  Lorraine Terret said cutting her short.  “The environment just gives Oxmarket Aspal its veneer, no more.  It’s what bred in people that counts.”

  My eyes rested curiously on Keldine Hogg’s flushed face.  “But that’s cruel.  Unfair.”  She responded with what seemed like unnecessary passion.

  “Life is unfair,” Lorraine Terret said.

  The slow lazy voice of Eric Bellagamba joined in.  “I agree with, Lorraine.  Breeding tells.”

  “You mean things are handed down.”  Julie Lawes said questioningly.  “Unto the third or fourth generation?”

  “But that question goes on,” Karen said suddenly in her sweet high voice.

  Once again everybody seemed a little embarrassed, perhaps at the serious note that had crept into the conversation.  They made a diversion by attacking me.

  “Tell us all about Faith Roberts, Mr Handful.  Why don’t you think Marcus Dye killed her?”

  “He used to mutter, you know,” Oliver said.  “Walking about the lanes. I’ve often met him.  And really, definitely, he looked like an oddball.”

  “You must have some reason for thinking he didn’t kill her, Mr Handful.  Do tell us?”

  I smiled at them, but did not respond.

 “If he didn’t kill her, who did?”

  “Yes, who did?”

  “Don’t embarrass him,” Lorraine Terret said dryly.  “He probably suspects one of us.”

  “One of us?  Bloody hell!”

  In the clamour my eyes met those of Lorraine Terret.  They were amused and something else.  Challenging?”

  “He suspects one of us,” Oliver said delightedly.  “Now then, Karen,” he assumed the manner of a bullying prosecuting counsel.  “Where were you on the night of the – what night was it?”

  “November 22nd,” I said.

  “On the night of the 22nd?”

  “I don’t know,” Karen said.

  “Nobody could know after all this time,” Keldine Hogg said.

  “Well, I can,” Oliver said.  “Because I was giving a talk on some aspects of the theatre on Suffolk Radio. I remember because I discussed Miss Lawes’ cleaning lady in My Enemy’s Enemy Is My Friend at great length and the next day Faith Roberts was killed, and I wondered if the cleaning lady in the novel had been like her.”

  “That’s right,” Keldine Hogg said suddenly.  “And I remember now because you said your mother would be all alone, and I came down here after dinner to keep her company.  Only unfortunately I couldn’t make her hear.”

  “Let me think,” Lorraine Terret said.  “Oh!  Yes, of course.  I’d gone to bed with a headache and my bedroom faces the back garden.”

  “And next day,” Keldine said, “when I heard that Faith had been killed, I thought that I might have passed the murderer in the dark because at first we all thought it must have been some tramp who broke in.”

  “Well, I still don’t remember what I was doing,” Karen said.  “But I do remember the next morning.  It was the postman who told us what had happened.”

  She gave a shiver.

  “It’s horrible really, isn’t it?” She said.

  Lorraine Terret was still watching me.

  “Have you any clues, Mr Handful?”  Keldine Hogg urged, querulously.

  Eric Bellagamba’s long dark face lit up enthusiastically.

  “That’s what I love about detective stories.”  He said.  “Clues that mean everything to the detective and nothing to you until the end when you kick yourself for not knowing.  Can you give us any clues, Mr Handful?”

   “There you go,” I said, sharply.  “Pick the bones out of that fucker!”

  And with a dramatic gesture, I tossed them down on the table in front of me.  By the look on their faces I wasn’t sure whether it was the photographs or my foul language that had shocked them.  Whichever it was it had the desired fact as they all clustered round, bending and uttering ejaculations.

  “Look!”

  “What grim looking women!”

  “The hair!”

  “That child looked like she fell out of the ugly tree.”

  “But who are they?”

  “Why are they clues?”

  I looked slowly round at the circle of faces and saw nothing that I might have expected to see.

  “Does anyone recognize any of them?”

  “Recognize?”

  “You do not, shall I say, remember having seen any of those photographs before?  Lorraine?  You recognize someone doesn’t you?”

  She hesitated.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Which one?”

  Her forefinger went out and rested on the spectacled child-like face of Jo Pedder.

  “You have seen that photograph?”  I pressed. “When?”

  “Quite recently . . . Now where – no, I can’t remember.  But I’m sure I’ve seen a photograph just like that.”

  She sat frowning, her brows drawn together.

  She came out of her abstraction as Keldine Hogg came to her.

  “Goodbye, Lorraine.  I hope you’ll come to tea with me one day if you feel up to it.”

  “Thank you, my dear.  If Oliver pushes me up the hill.”

  “Of course, I will, Mum.  I’ve developed the most tremendous muscles pushing that chair.  Do you remember the day we went to Lord and Lady Osborne’s and it was so muddy?”

  “Ah!”  Lorraine said suddenly.

  “What is it, Mum?”

  “Nothing.  Go on.”

  “Getting you up the hill again.  First the chair skidded, and then I skidded.  I thought we’d never get home.”

  Laughing, everybody bid their farewells and trooped out into the night.

  Alcohol, I thought, certainly loosens the tongue. 

  Had I been wise or foolish to display those photographs?  Had that gesture also been the result of alcohol?  I wasn’t sure.

  Halfway along the road, I murmured an excuse to the others and turned back.

   “Oh,” she said.  “It’s you.  You made me jump.”

  “Sorry.  Did you think it was someone else?  Who did you think it was?”

  She did not answer that, she merely said, “Have you left something behind?”

  “What I feared I had left behind was danger.”

  “Danger?”

  “Because you recognized one of those photographs?”

  “All old photographs look the same.”

  “I believe, Faith Roberts recognized one of those photographs.  And she is now dead.  So, if you know anything at all.  Tell me now.  It could save your life.”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” she said, sharply.  “I’m not sure at all that I recognize anything.  Not definitely.”

  “But there is something!”  I persisted.

  “I need to think it through.”  She replied.  “And only when I am one hundred per cent certain will I tell you.”

  “If you won’t talk to me what about Detective Inspector Paul Silver of the Suffolk Constabulary? He is based in Oxmarket.”

  “Not the police. Not at this stage.”