A Dreadful Murder (7 page)

There was a brief silence before Harriet Huish spoke.

‘Put it this way,’ she said, ‘there’s plenty more likely to have done it than the Major-General.’

‘Someone like John Farrell, perhaps?’

Cook made a scornful noise in her throat. ‘It’s a miracle his wife’s still alive,’ she said. ‘He’s a nasty piece of work, and his son’s just as bad.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Will Farrell? Seventeen . . . eighteen. He goes out poaching with Michael Blaine from Stone Street. They’re as vicious as snakes and as idle as the day is long.’

Taylor made his way to Miss Amy Pegg’s house in the High Street. She was the ‘bitter old spinster’ of Jane Pugmore’s list, and Taylor understood why when he realised how lonely the woman was.

She invited him into her parlour and he wished he had his constable with him. There was something slightly mad about the way the woman behaved. One minute she was cowering away, the next she was flashing her eyes at him like an ageing flirt.

He wondered if her mind had gone, because she seemed to think he wanted to hear her life story. She told him rambling tales about growing up in Ightham, claiming Charles Luard had been her ‘childhood sweetheart’ before Caroline had stolen him away.

She seemed unaware that the Luards had been married for thirteen years before they moved to Ightham Knoll, and that neither of them had lived in Kent before.

But it wasn’t until she claimed she was giving ‘dear Charles’ all the help she could ‘at this difficult time’ that Taylor held up his hand. ‘We both know that’s not true, Miss Pegg. The only people helping him are his close friends and servants.’

Her face became spiteful. ‘You mean Henry Warde, I suppose. He’d say black was white to protect Charles.’

‘That’s not true either,’ said Taylor. ‘You might as well accuse the police from Scotland Yard of not doing their job properly. Are you accusing
me
, Miss Pegg?’

She wrapped her arms across her thin chest. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ she whined. ‘You’re a bully. I’m afraid of you.’

Taylor took the hate letters from his pocket. ‘The only bullies round here are people who write poison like this. Do you want to explain why you’re one of them?’

She stared at him with mad-looking eyes. ‘I’m doing God’s work.’

* * *

Taylor was left with a nasty taste in his mouth. All he’d done was pry into the misery of an unhappy woman. He had no better luck with the next person on Jane’s list – the secret sherry guzzler.

She was fat and florid, slurred her words and told him she knew for a fact that Caroline Luard had gone to the summer house to meet a younger lover. The Major-General followed in secret and shot his wife out of jealousy when he caught her ‘at it’.

Taylor didn’t believe this sexual fantasy any more than he believed that Miss Pegg had been Charles’s childhood sweetheart. There would have been two bodies on the veranda floor if Luard had fired his gun in the heat of anger. It was a rare husband who killed his wife but spared his rival.

As Superintendent Taylor emerged into the fresh air, he made a mental note to listen the next time his wife told him she was bored and wanted a job. It clearly wasn’t healthy to sit alone with nothing to do all day.

The irony of that thought hit him when he reached John Farrell’s door at five o’clock. The woman who opened it looked very ill, but not from under-work, he thought. She had a yellow bruise around one of her eyes, and was surrounded by half-starved, pale-faced children.

Taylor didn’t need the smell of wet washing in the tiny house, or the sheets hanging on the line outside, to tell him she took in laundry for a living. The only time her hands were out of water, he guessed, was when she was asleep.

He explained who he was and asked if her husband was at home. Mrs Farrell nodded to a curtained alcove in the corner of the room. ‘It’s best not to wake him.’

‘He knows I’m coming.’

‘Don’t make no difference. He has a bad temper when he’s in drink.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Taylor, stepping inside the door.

There was only one room on the ground floor, though some rickety steps in the corner suggested a bedroom upstairs. Taylor pulled the curtain aside to expose John Farrell, fully clothed and flat on his back on a stained mattress. He nudged the man with his foot but got no response.

‘You have my sympathy, Mrs Farrell,’ he said loudly. ‘You made a rotten bargain when you picked this one.’

If he hadn’t been ready for it, the man’s speed would have taken him by surprise. Farrell launched himself off the mattress in a roaring charge, fists flying.

‘A
very
bad bargain,’ Taylor grunted, jabbing his knee into Farrell’s groin and crowding him back against the wall. He slammed his forearm against the man’s throat. ‘A brute when he’s drunk and a fool when he’s sober.’

The woman wrung her hands. ‘He’ll take it out on me and the kids if you don’t let him go,’ she wailed.

‘He’ll do that anyway,’ said Taylor, staring into the other man’s eyes. ‘He doesn’t need reasons to inflict pain.’

‘You don’t know him like I do, sir. He can be nice when he wants.’

The Superintendent wondered why battered women always said the same. It made no sense to him. He eased the pressure on the other man’s throat. ‘Does your husband own a revolver, Mrs Farrell?’

He heard the sudden tremor in her voice. ‘He wasn’t the one shot Mrs Luard, sir. He was here with me when the poor lady died.’

‘And you’ll swear to that on the Bible, I suppose?’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘I doubt it. The truth is he’ll beat you within an inch of your life if you don’t lie for him.’ Taylor dropped his arm and stepped away. ‘You’re a better fit for a woman-killer than the Major-General, Mr Farrell.’

‘You heard the wife,’ the man growled. ‘It wasn’t me. What business would I have had in Frankfield Park that day?’

‘A better question would be, what business did you have here at 3.15 on a Monday afternoon? Why weren’t you out working?’

‘Times are hard.’

‘Is that right? So where did your beer money come from in the pub this lunchtime? Did you pawn a couple of stolen rings, perhaps?’

Farrell wasn’t used to fighting men. He signalled his moves in advance and looked surprised when Taylor dodged. The Superintendent easily landed a punch in the pit of the lumbering oaf’s stomach, but it was hardly a fair contest. Farrell was drunk, and Taylor had been a champion boxer in his day.

The man doubled up, winded. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he whined. ‘It wasn’t me killed Mrs Luard.’ He flicked an assessing glance at his wife. ‘It’s the ones who were out and about you should be after.’

Taylor felt – rather than saw – the woman’s sudden movement. He glanced round and watched her grab the wrist of the thin-faced youth who was standing beside her. The boy looked scared, and it seemed to Taylor that his mother was trying to keep him from running.

‘It’s you who keeps picking the fight,’ Taylor told Farrell. ‘I’m just defending myself.’

The man made a retching sound. ‘Yeah, well, you’d better be watching your back from now on.’

‘You interest me more and more, Mr Farrell. Is that how you usually attack a person? From behind?’

There was a short silence before the woman spoke. ‘You have to believe me, sir. John was sleeping off the drink . . . like he does every afternoon.’

Taylor eyed her for a moment then shifted his gaze to the youth. ‘Is this Will? What about him? Where was he when Mrs Luard was shot?’

The woman tightened her grip on the lad’s wrist. ‘He was here,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘I can’t do the laundry without him.’

* * *

Taylor’s last visit that day was to Ightham police station. He expected the local bobby to be manning the desk, but instead he found George Hamble sorting through some notes.

Taylor propped his shoulder against the wall. ‘Anything new?’ he asked.

The Inspector shook his head. ‘What about your end?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ Taylor took Sarah Anderson’s list from his pocket and placed it on the desk. ‘Have you come across any of these families?’

The other man glanced at the names. ‘Every copper in the district knows them.’

‘For what?’

‘Drunk and disorderly . . . petty theft . . . trespass . . . vandalism. They take up more police time than everyone else round here put together. Why are you interested?’

‘Whoever shot Mrs Luard probably has a history of criminal behaviour. It’s a big step from honest citizen to ruthless murderer.’

The Inspector gave a dry laugh. ‘Unless she was killed by a jealous husband who also happens to be a Justice of the Peace.’

Taylor shook his head. ‘There’d still be a history. The Major-General would have given her a black eye every time she tried to lock him out of her bedroom.’

Hamble placed his hand on the list. ‘There are some bad apples here but I can’t see any of them shooting Mrs Luard. They wouldn’t have dared. Country folk have more respect for their betters than city dwellers.’

Taylor moved to the window. Dusk was falling quickly but he could see a little knot of serving girls, hurrying to buy bread before the baker closed for the night. Here and there, flickering candles shone through ground-floor windows. In the gathering darkness he might have been looking at a street in the East End.

‘What if a woman like Mrs Luard was murdered in Hyde Park, George? Where do you think we’d be looking for her murderer? Out here in the wilds of Kent or somewhere in London?’

‘London.’

‘Even closer. We’d be looking for people who lived and worked in the Hyde Park area. Criminals tend to operate close to home because they know the best escape routes.’

‘Our man had two and a half hours to disappear.’

‘Maybe so, but don’t you find it odd that a stranger managed to enter and leave Frankfield Park without being seen? How did he get there? On foot? On a bicycle? Which direction did he come from? Several people saw the Major-General but no one remembers a stranger.’

‘No one remembers the people on this list either.’

‘How do you know?’ Taylor turned from the window. ‘Has anyone even been asked that question?’

Saturday morning broke cold and clear, and the Scotland Yard detectives put on extra vests to travel by pony and trap. They planned to start in the village of Stone Street before moving on to Borough Green and the other places beyond Ightham.

Kent’s police chief, Henry Warde, had refused the London visitors the use of his Daimler because it was too well known. Asking questions of the poor and needy was Superintendent Taylor’s line of inquiry. If Scotland Yard came up with anything, Kent Police would take the credit. If they didn’t, Warde would deny that the poor had ever been his target.

Stone Street was a smaller village than Ightham, clustered on the southern border of Frankfield Park. For that reason the people who lived there were of interest to Taylor. In particular, one family on Sarah Anderson’s list.

‘
Mrs Blaine
,’ she had written. ‘
Three young children, husband in prison, and an older stepson, Michael (20). She’s afraid of him
.’

‘What’s the plan?’ Constable Philpott asked as the village came into view.

Taylor ordered the driver to stop and jumped down from the seat. The broadleaf woodland of Frankfield Park ran along the other side of the road, and some five hundred yards ahead on the right, he could just make out the turning that led to St Lawrence’s Church and the wicket gate where the Luards had separated for the last time.

‘We’ll go to house-to-house,’ he told Philpott. ‘I want the name or description of anyone seen walking along this road on the 24th August, including the people who live here.’

Memories were surprisingly good. As several villagers said, it focused the mind to have a murder on the doorstep. The same names cropped up again and again. Various tradesmen. The baker’s boy on his bicycle. The butcher’s cart delivering meat. The farrier coming to shoe one of Mr Wallace’s horses. The vicar in his car.

One or two claimed to have seen Major-General Luard and Sergeant emerge from Church Road and turn towards Godden Green. But of more interest to Taylor, an elderly farm worker said he had noticed Michael Blaine heading up the same road some two hours earlier.

‘Did you see him come back?’ the Superintendent asked.

‘Never do. Stays out till all hours.’

‘Where does he work?’

The old man shrugged. ‘You’ll have to ask him. I don’t pry into other people’s affairs.’

‘Does he go out poaching?’

‘Not my place to say.’

Taylor put a hand on the door to keep it open. ‘Are you afraid of Michael Blaine?’

There was a tiny pause. ‘His stepmother is.’ With a sudden push he shut the policeman out of the house.

The Blaines’ house – a wooden shack – stood at the end of a rutted lane, on the other side of the road from the Church Road turning. It was a quarter the size of the summer house at Frankfield House, had no windows and was in a bad state of repair. The rickety front door stood open to let some light in.

‘I’d probably want to vandalise La Casa myself if I lived in a dump like this,’ Philpott muttered to his boss as the pair of detectives approached.

Taylor was thinking the same. He rapped his knuckles on the door frame. ‘Mrs Blaine,’ he called, peering into the gloomy interior. ‘I’m Superintendent Taylor of Scotland Yard and this is Constable Philpott. May we come in?’

There was a scurry of movement before a woman appeared in front of them. Her alarm was obvious but she did her best to hide it. She tried to keep the two men outside but Taylor had already stepped over the threshold.

‘We’re asking everyone in Stone Street where they were and who they saw on the day Mrs Luard died,’ he told her. He smiled at the three little urchins who clustered around her skirt. ‘Were you out playing that day, kids? Do you remember seeing the Major-General and his dog?’

‘They don’t know nothing,’ said Mrs Blaine, shooing the children outside. ‘None of us does.’